It is illuminating to attempt to stop and consider, when thinking what is the right direction for the city in a specific circumstance, whether the same is true internally for one’s own soul. It is also interesting to consider whether it scales larger—can the whole commonwealth of all the cities on the planet be analogous to a soul? Plato says each thing has its own specific excellence: the excellence of a horse is not the excellence of a tree. So can the excellence of a city be the same as the excellence of a soul?

I think it may be easier for me to consider this than for most people, because I remember coming to consciousness in ignorance, and also because I was fortunate enough to be guided by Sokrates in my earliest explorations.

IV. On Priorities and Will

Sokrates and I were conversing one day in the agora, near the Temple of Athene and the library. We had been talking about education and rhetoric, and I was finding much to ponder in his views on these topics when suddenly Lukretia came dashing up and informed me that a pipe was blocked in the latrine fountain of the birthing house of Ferrara, and asked me to mend it urgently. I hastened off to get on with my work. Sokrates followed along, skipping to keep up with me.

“Why are you hurrying off in this way?” he asked.

“Lukretia say fountain broken,” I inscribed on the flagstones. I was surprised that he asked, as he had been there and must have heard Lukretia for himself. Sokrates paused to read this and then hurried on after me.

“Yes, but why are you going?” he asked when he came panting up.

“Mend fountain,” I wrote.

“Oh, this is hopeless,” Sokrates said. “I can see I won’t get any sense out of you until we get there.”

So I trundled off and he followed behind at his own speed. When I reached the Ferrara birthing house, the attendants were extremely pleased to see me. I went inside and mended the fountain. It was easy. A part of the flushing mechanism had been pulled loose, which kept the plugs pulled out so that the water ran straight through without allowing either tank to refill. It took me only a short time to fix it, and soon the latrine fountains were back in working order. When I went outside, Sokrates was sitting on the wall with a naked baby on his lap, playing a game with her toes that made her laugh. This was the first time I had seen a baby close up—this one was about a year old, beginning to learn to talk. “They wouldn’t let me inside in case I profaned the mystery of birth, so I waited here for you, and I have been amusing myself playing with this baby,” he said.