The Republic · ¶383

On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through life and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of some kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of Solon, ‘I grow old learning many things,’ cannot be applied literally. Himself ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and delighting in solid geometry (Rep. vii. 528), he has no difficulty in imagining that a lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know how many more men of business there are in the world than real students or thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes for his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,—a life not for the many, but for the few.

Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett · composite transcription based on the 1888 third edition
Benjamin Jowett, revised third edition (1888), with Stephanus numbering from the 1908 edition; composite transcription, Project Gutenberg #55201
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.