Socrates Iron And Gold

In order to avoid questions about why one child is deemed to be a ruler over another, Socrates creates a myth that says all people were born from the earth. There are three types of people that were created from the earth: iron and bronze, silver, and gold. An iron and bronze person is full of appetitive desires, such as food, drink, or sex. These types of people are the farmers and craftsmen in a city. A silver person can be ruled by a spirited desire, or have the potential to be spirited. This means that the person’s desires consist of ones for honor, victory, and good reputation. People who are silver are warriors. A gold soul can become rational by gaining a better education, meaning that he or she can learn to desire knowledge and truth.
A real ethical or political education can influence a person to change in their desires and therefore their pursuits of happiness. When this occurs, a person’s spirited and rational parts of his/her soul have been trained and educated enough to be put in charge of the appetitive element. For instance, an opium addict is an iron/bronze soul, living a life pursuing his appetitive desire for opium. A real education for him would be placing him in a drug rehabilitation center. Socrates says that by doing so, education will change the opium addict from an appetitive type to a reasonable type. After all, education to Plato is the act of reorganizing the soul in order to let reason
It is made up of reason, spirit, and appetite. The function of reason is to know what is genuinely good for the soul. In other words, it is having the wisdom to distinguish good from bad. The spirit exercises the belief of reason and obeys it. This portion of the soul has the courage to persevere through. The appetitive portion of the soul serves to continue to obey reason, despite the temptations that may be encountered. When the appetitive element in the soul becomes uncontrollable, reason and spirit will no longer dominate the soul. In the example of the opium addict, this would occur if the addict stopped gaining his education, or no longer resided in drug rehabilitation. The addict would begin to use and abuse opium and the addiction would grow to a point where he would have no control over his appetite. Spirit and reason would not be able to help much and the addict would have to succumb to the intake of opium in order to satisfy his body’s desires. Similar to how a city needs to have a balance of justice in order to survive, there must be a balance of justice in an individual. The city has the virtues of wisdom, courage and moderation in its citizens while the individual soul has the three parts. A balance between reason, spirit, and appetite leads to a just man. This balance in a person is reached when the rational and spirited portions rule over the appetites in the soul, just as how a moderation in a city is reached when