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translation: Benjamin Jowett

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BOOK III
THE ARTS IN EDUCATION

(SOCRATES, ADEIMANTUS.)

 

SUCH, then, I said, are our principles of theology--some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upward, if we mean them to honor the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another.

Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons beside these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses

"I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless

man than rule over all the dead who have come to naught." We must also expunge the verse which tells us how Pluto feared

"Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should

be seen both of mortals and immortals." And again:

"O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly

form but no mind at all!" Again of Tiresias:

"[To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he

alone should be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades." Again:

"The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamentng her

fate, leaving manhood and youth." Again:

"And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the

earth." And,

"As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has

dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and

cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together as

they moved." And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

Undoubtedly.

Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe the world below--Cocytus and Styx, ghosts under the earth, and sapless shades, and any similar words of which the very mention causes a shudder to pass through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.

There is a real danger, he said.

Then (...)

(......)