and officers of the state to instruct the citizens in the nature of virtue and vice, instead of leaving them to be taught by some chance poet or sophist?  A city which is without instruction suffers the usual fate of cities in our day.  What then shall we do?  How shall we perfect the ideas of our guardians about virtue? how shall we give our state a head and eyes?  ‘Yes, but how do you apply the figure?’ The city will be the body or trunk; the best of our young men will mount into the head or acropolis and be our eyes; they will look about them, and inform the elders, who are the mind and use the younger men as their instruments:  together they will save the state.  Shall this be our constitution, or shall all be educated alike, and the special training be given up?  ’That is impossible.’  Let us then endeavour to attain to some more exact idea of education.  Did we not say that the true artist or guardian ought to have an eye, not only to the many, but to the one, and to order all things with a view to the one?  Can there be any more philosophical speculation than how to reduce many things which are unlike to one idea?  ‘Perhaps not.’  Say rather, ‘Certainly not.’  And the rulers of our divine state ought to have an exact knowledge of the common principle in courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, which is called by the name of virtue; and unless we know whether virtue is one or many, we shall hardly know what virtue is.  Shall we contrive some means of engrafting this knowledge on our state, or give the matter up?  ‘Anything rather than that.’  Let us begin by making an agreement.  ‘By all means, if we can.’  Well, are we not agreed that our guardians ought to know, not only how the good and the honourable are many, but also how they are one?  ‘Yes, certainly.’  The true guardian of the laws ought to know their truth, and should also be able to interpret and execute them?  ‘He should.’  And is there any higher knowledge than the knowledge of the existence and power of the Gods?  The people may be excused for following tradition; but the guardian must be able to give a reason of the faith which is in him.  And there are two great evidences of religion—­the priority of the soul and the order of the heavens.  For no man of sense, when he contemplates the universe, will be likely to substitute necessity for reason and will.  Those who maintain that the sun and the stars are inanimate beings are utterly wrong in their opinions.  The men of a former generation had a suspicion, which has been confirmed by later thinkers, that things inanimate could never without mind have attained such scientific accuracy; and some (Anaxagoras) even in those days ventured to assert that mind had ordered all things in heaven; but they had no idea of the priority of mind, and they turned the world, or more properly themselves, upside down, and filled the universe with stones, and earth, and other inanimate bodies.  This led to great impiety, and the poets said many foolish things against the