The Republic · ¶403

The words of Phaedrus (275 B), ‘O Socrates, you can easily invent Egyptians or anything,’ are recalled to our mind as we read this lifelike fiction. Yet the greater merit of the work is not the admirable art, but the originality of thought. More is as free as Plato from the prejudices of his age, and far more tolerant. The Utopians do not allow him who believes not in the immortality of the soul to share in the administration of the state (cp. Laws x. 908 foll.), ‘howbeit they put him to no punishment, because they be persuaded that it is in no man’s power to believe what he list’; and ‘no man is to be blamed for reasoning in support of his own religion.’ In the public services ‘no prayers be used, but such as every man may boldly pronounce without giving offence to any sect.’ He says significantly, ‘There be that give worship to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous…

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.