I will be wiser now and acknowledge that we must go to the bottom of another question: What is to be the education of our guardians?
It was agreed that they were to be lovers of their country, and were to be tested in the refiner's fire of pleasures and pains, and those who came forth pure and remained fixed in their principles were to have honours and rewards in life and after death.
But at this point, the argument put on her veil and turned into another path.

I hesitated to make the assertion which I now hazard,--that our guardians must be philosophers.

You remember all the contradictory elements, which met in the philosopher--how difficult to find them all in a single person! Intelligence and spirit are not often combined with steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is averse to intellectual toil.
And yet these opposite elements are all necessary, and therefore, as we were saying before, the aspirant must be tested in pleasures and dangers; and also, as we must now further add, in the highest branches of knowledge.

You will remember, that when we spoke of the virtues mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied to leave unexplored.

'Enough seemed to have been said.' Enough, my friend; but what is enough while anything remains wanting?
Of all men the guardian must not faint in the search after truth; he must be prepared to take the longer road, or he will never reach that higher region which is above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must not only get an outline, but a clear and distinct vision.