406 PLA TO
singular circumstance) destroys and distracts from philosophy the soul which is the possessor of them.
That is very singular, he said.
Then there are all the ordinary goods of life — beauty, wealth, strength, rank, and great connections in the State — you understand the sort of things — these also have a corrupting and distracting effect.
I understand ; but I should like to know more pre- cisely what you mean about them.
Grasp the truth as a whole, I said, and in the right way ; you will then have no difficulty in apprehending the preceding remarks, and they will no longer appear strange to you.
And how am I to do so ? he asked.
Why, I said, we know that all plants or seeds, whether vegetable or animal, when they fail to meet with proper nutriment or climate or soil, in proportion to their vigor, are all the more sensitive to the want of a suitable environment, for evil is a greater enemy to what is good than to Λvhat is not.
Very true.
There is reason in supposing that the finest natures, when under alien conditions, receive more injury than the inferior, because the contrast is greater.
Certainly.
And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill-educated, become pre- eminently bad ? Do not great crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely cajsable of any very great good or very great evil ?
There I think that you are right.
And our philosopher follows the same analogy —
