"Because no free person should learn anything like a slave."

"Because no free person should learn anything like a slave. Forced bodily labor does no harm to the body, but nothing taught by force stays in the soul."

What makes a good ruler? Here, Socrates is trying to emphasize to Glaucon that to be a good ruler there must be a good balance between warrior and philosophy. Together they sit and discuss which of the sciences best lend themselves to the foundation of what a future ruler must know in addition to the training they would receive as an athletic combatant. Yet despite what Socrates and Glaucon agree is best, Socrates steps back from the argument to say that one cannot force these rigiments upon a child and exepect them to suceed naturally since to find the best ruler one must sort out those whom he calls "summoners" or those who can see the positive and negative of a thing at the same time, and those who "do not awaken understanding." Forcing a child to learn will not produce an ideal result, as the child must be extraordinarily quick, smart, persisstant and hard working.

Plato. "The Allegory of the Cave" Book VII of The Republic, pp. 1132-1155. Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Assc Ed. D.S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis, IN/Cambridge, UK: Hackett Publishing, 1997.

**Here is a link to a picture of the cave in case anyone like me, was trying to imagine what it might look like when Socrate's was depicting it:
CAVE IMAGE