Plato — Republic, an Excerpt

Plato — Republic, an Excerpt

[A reworked Coptic version of a passage from Plato’s Republic on the soul; the rendering is rough and altered from the Greek.]

Let us make an image of the soul, that the one who said wrongdoing profits a man may see what he says. Let us fashion a beast of many heads, with the heads of tame and of wild animals all around, able to change and to bring forth all of them from itself. This is hard to fashion; yet for word it is easier than for wax. Make then a second image, of a lion; and a third, of a man. Then join the three into one, so that they grow together and seem to be one living thing, a man.

Now to one who says it profits a man to do wrong, say this: it is nothing else but to feed the many-headed beast and the lion, and to make them strong, while the man within is starved and dragged about and torn, so that the beasts devour one another. But to one who says it profits to do right: this is to act so that the inner man rules, and tends the many-headed beast like a farmer, nourishing the tame and checking the wild, making the lion his ally, and caring for all in common, that they may be friends with one another and with him. [Meaning uncertain]

[The excerpt is preserved only in this altered form.]