is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be ill. 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. *408* 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 {xlvi} 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. *409* 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; *410* 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