Y. Soc. Very true.

  Str. And the government of the few they distinguish by the names
of aristocracy and oligarchy.

  Y. Soc. Certainly.

  Str. Democracy alone, whether rigidly observing the laws or not, and
whether the multitude rule over the men of property with their consent
or against their consent, always in ordinary language has the same
name.

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. But do you suppose that any form of government which is defined
by these characteristics of the one, the few, or the many, of
poverty or wealth, of voluntary or compulsory submission, of written
law or the absence of law, can be a right one?

  Y. Soc. Why not?

  Str. Reflect; and follow me.

  Y. Soc. In what direction?

  Str. Shall we abide by what we said at first, or shall we retract
our words?

  Y. Soc. To what do you refer?

  Str. If I am not mistaken, we said that royal power was a science?

  Y. Soc. Yes.

  Str. And a science of a peculiar kind, which was selected out of the
rest as having a character which is at once judicial and
authoritative?

  Y. Soc. Yes.

  Str. And there was one kind of authority over lifeless things and
another other living animals; and so we proceeded in the division step
by step up to this point, not losing the idea of science, but unable
as yet to determine the nature of the particular science?

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. Hence we are led to observe that the distinguishing principle
of the State cannot be the few or many, the voluntary or
involuntary, poverty or riches; but some notion of science must
enter into it, if we are to be consistent with what has preceded.

  Y. Soc. And we must be consistent.

  Str. Well, then, in which of these various forms of States may the
science of government, which is among the greatest of all sciences and
most difficult to acquire, be supposed to reside? That we must
discover, and then we shall see who are the false politicians who
pretend to be politicians but are not, although they persuade many,
and shall separate them from the wise king.

  Y. Soc. That, as the argument has already intimated, will be our
duty.

  Str. Do you think that the multitude in a State can attain political
science?

  Y. Soc. Impossible.

  Str. But, perhaps, in a city of a thousand men, there would be a
hundred, or say fifty, who could?

  Y. Soc. In that case political science would certainly be the
easiest of all sciences; there could not be found in a city of that
number as many really first-rate draught-players, if judged by the
standard of the rest of Hellas, and there would certainly not be as
many kings. For kings we may truly call those who possess royal
science, whether they rule or not, as was shown in the previous
argument.

  Str. Thank you for reminding me; and the consequence is that any
true form of government can only be supposed to be the government of
one, two, or, at any rate, of a few.

  Y. Soc. Certainly.

  Str. And these, whether they rule with the will, or against the will
of their subjects, with written laws or. without written laws, and
whether they are poor or rich, and whatever be the nature of their
rule, must be supposed, according to our present view, to rule on some
scientific principle; just as the physician, whether he cures us
against our will or with our will, and whatever be his mode of
treatment-incision, burning, or the infliction of some other
pain-whether he practises out of a book or not out of a book, and
whether he be rich or poor, whether he purges or reduces in some other
way, or even fattens his patients, is a physician all the same, so
long as he exercises authority over them according to rules of art, if
he only does them good and heals and saves them. And this we lay
down to be the only proper test of the art of medicine, or of any