Do you know a maxim of Phocylides—that ‘when a
man begins to be rich’ (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ‘he should
practise virtue’? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent
with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of
virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student imagines that
philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always
unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no
such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not
wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to
wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was
wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and
drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and
worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out
of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a
thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie—following
our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he
was not the son of a god.
Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best
judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience
of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two
professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his
own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But the
judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be
corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to
be wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived
by evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and
therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have
been innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the
practice of it, but by the observation of it in others. This is the
ideal of a judge; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully
suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he
is at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as
himself. Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. This is
the sort of medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our
State; they will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body
will be left to die by the one, and the evil soul will be put to death
by the other. And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good
music which will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which
will give health to the body. Not that this division of music and
gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for they are both
equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused
and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with
their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much
gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper