Key Arguments

• Analogy to earlier military exposure: 'like young hounds, have a taste of blood given them... The same practice may be followed... in all these things—labours, lessons, dangers'.
• Select for comfort across domains: 'he who is most at home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number.'
• Gymnastic phase blocks learning: 'the period whether of two or three years... is useless for any other purpose; for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning.'
• At 20: 'those who are selected from the class of twenty years old will be promoted to higher honour'.
• Integration: 'the sciences which they learned without any order in their early education will now be brought together... see the natural relationship... to true being.'
• Criterion of talent: 'the capacity for such knowledge is the great criterion of dialectical talent: the comprehensive mind is always the dialectical.'
• At 30 with dialectical testing: 'when they have arrived at the age of thirty... you will have to prove them by the help of dialectic... to give up the use of sight and the other senses... to attain absolute being'.
• Caution: 'And here, my friend, great caution is required.'

Source Quotes

Yes, I remember. The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these things—labours, lessons, dangers—and he who is most at home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number. At what age?

Certainly, he replied. After that time those who are selected from the class of twenty years old will be promoted to higher honour, and the sciences which they learned without any order in their early education will now be brought together, and they will be able to see the natural relationship of them to one another and to true being. Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting root.

Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting root. Yes, I said; and the capacity for such knowledge is the great criterion of dialectical talent: the comprehensive mind is always the dialectical. I agree with you, he said.

I agree with you, he said. These, I said, are the points which you must consider; and those who have most of this comprehension, and who are most steadfast in their learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they have arrived at the age of thirty have to be chosen by you out of the select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will have to prove them by the help of dialectic, in order to learn which of them is able to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with truth to attain absolute being: And here, my friend, great caution is required.

Key Concepts

• labours, lessons, dangers
• he who is most at home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number
• the sciences which they learned without any order in their early education will now be brought together
• the comprehensive mind is always the dialectical
• to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with truth to attain absolute being

Context

Specifies selection trials and the staged educational pathway from post-gymnastic screening to integrative studies and dialectical examination.

Perspectives

Plato

Supports experiential screening and integrative study culminating in dialectic as institutional mechanisms to identify philosopher-rulers.

Socrates

Details practical steps and age-milestones, emphasizing integration and sensory detachment as tests for noetic capacity.