[485d]
“By no
means.” “Then the true lover of knowledge must, from
childhood up, be most of all a striver after truth in every form.”
“By all means.” “But, again, we surely are
aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to any one thing, they
are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been diverted into
another channel.1 “Surely.”
“So, when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel
of learning and all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, I presume,
with the pleasures of the soul in itself, and will be indifferent to those
of which the body is the instrument,2 if the
man is a true and not a sham3 philosopher.”
1 For this figure Cf. Laws 844 A and 736 B, Eurip.Suppl. 1111παρεκτρέποντες ὀχετόν, Empedocles, Diels1 195λόγου λόγον ἐξοχετεύωνLucretius ii. 365 “derivare queunt animum”; and for the idea cf. also Laws 643 C-D.
2 Cf. my Unity of Plato's Thought, pp. 45-46, esp. n. 330, followed by Apelt, Republic, pp. 490-491. Cf. also Friedlander, Platon, ii. pp. 579-580, 584.
3 For πεπλασμένως Cf. Soph. 216 Cμὴ πλαστῶς ἀλλ᾽ ὄντως φιλόσοφοι.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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