Some very small number then (says the Platonic Socrates) is
left, of those who in worthy fashion hold converse with
philosophy: either, it may be, some soul of in-born worth and
well brought up, to which it has happened to be exiled in a
foreign land, holding to philosophy by a tie of nature, and
through lack of those who will corrupt it; or when it may
chance that a great soul comes to birth in an insignificant
state, to the politics of which it gives no heed, because it
thinks them despicable: perhaps a certain fraction also, of
good parts, may come to philosophy from some other craft,
through a just contempt of that. The bridle too of our
companion Theages has a restraining power. For in the case
of Theages also, all the other conditions were in readiness
to his falling away from philosophy; but the nursing of his
sickly body, excluding him from politics, keeps him back. Our
own peculiarity is not worth speaking of--the sign from heaven!
for I suppose it has occurred to scarce anyone before. And so,
those who have been of this number, and have tasted how sweet
and blessed the possession is; and again, having a full view
of the folly of the many, and that no one, I might say, effects
any sound result in what concerns the state, or is an ally in
whose company one might proceed safe and sound to the help of
the just, but that, like a man falling among wild beasts,
neither willing to share their evil deeds, nor sufficient by
himself to resist the whole fierce band, flung away before he
shall have done any service [110] to the city or to his own
friends, he would become useless both to himself and to others:
taking all this into consideration, keeping silence and doing
his own business, as one standing aside under a hedge in some
storm of dust and spray beneath a driven wind, seeing those
about him replete with lawlessness, he is content if by any
means, pure from injustice and unholy deeds, himself shall
live through his life here, and in turn make his escape with
good hope, in cheerful and kindly mood. (What long sentences
Plato writes!) Yet in truth, he said, he would make his escape
after not the least of achievements.--Nor yet the greatest, I
observed, because he did not light upon the polity fitted for
him: for, in that fitting polity, himself will grow to
completer stature, and, together with what belongs to him, he
will be the saviour also of the commonwealth. Republic, 496.+