Having determined that the many have no knowledge of true being, and have no clear patterns in their minds of justice, beauty, truth, and that philosophers have such patterns, we have now to ask whether they or the many shall be rulers in our State.

But who can doubt that philosophers should be chosen, if they have the other qualities which are required in a ruler?
For they are lovers of the knowledge of the eternal and of all truth; they are haters of falsehood; their meaner desires are absorbed in the interests of knowledge; they are spectators of all time and all existence; and in the magnificence of their contemplation the life of man is as nothing to them, nor is death fearful.

Also they are of a social, gracious disposition, equally free from cowardice and arrogance.

They learn and remember easily; they have harmonious, well-regulated minds; truth flows to them sweetly by nature.
Can the god of Jealousy himself find any fault with such an assemblage of good qualities?
Here Adeimantus interposes:--'No man can answer you, Socrates; but every man feels that this is owing to his own deficiency in argument.

He is driven from one position to another, until he has nothing more to say, just as an unskilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by a more skilled opponent.