The Republic | Page 3

distribute this etext in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary
form, including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- cessing or hypertext
software, but only so long as *EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not* contain characters
other than those intended by the author of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and
underline (_) characters may be used to convey punctuation intended by the author, and
additional characters may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into plain ASCII,
EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays the etext (as is the case, for
instance, with most word processors); OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost, fee or expense,
a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent
proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive
calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax
return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, OCR
software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of
contribution you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

THE REPUBLIC by PLATO

Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws, and is
certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the
Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and
institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato
has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal
knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old,
and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater
wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is
the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with
philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped;
here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI, VII) to which
ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns,
was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although neither of them always
distinguished the bare outline or form from the substance of truth; and both of them had
to be content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the
greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any
other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic
and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are
based upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the law of
contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and
accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and conditions;

also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of
pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary--these and other great forms of
thought are all of them to be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by
Plato. The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are
most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and things, has been most
strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl), although he has not always
avoided the confusion of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up
truth in logical formulae,-- logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the science which he
imagines to 'contemplate all truth and all existence' is very unlike the doctrine of the
syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered (Soph. Elenchi).
Neither must