Theology of the modern world, and which occurs here for the first time in
the history of philosophy. He did not remark that the degrees of knowledge
in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the object. With him
a word must answer to an idea; and he could not conceive of an opinion
which was an opinion about nothing. The influence of analogy led him to
invent 'parallels and conjugates' and to overlook facts. To us some of his
difficulties are puzzling only from their simplicity: we do not perceive
that the answer to them 'is tumbling out at our feet.' To the mind of
early thinkers, the conception of not-being was dark and mysterious; they
did not see that this terrible apparition which threatened destruction to
all knowledge was only a logical determination. The common term under
which, through the accidental use of language, two entirely different ideas
were included was another source of confusion. Thus through the ambiguity
of (Greek) Plato, attempting to introduce order into the first chaos of
human thought, seems to have confused perception and opinion, and to have
failed to distinguish the contingent from the relative. In the Theaetetus
the first of these difficulties begins to clear up; in the Sophist the
second; and for this, as well as for other reasons, both these dialogues
are probably to be regarded as later than the Republic.

BOOK VI. 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,