  Socrates’ long discussion in Books Two and Three of how to educate  the guardians for the ideal city offers a different approach (E. Brown 2004, Singpurwalla 2006; cf. Gill 1985, Kamtekar 1998, and Scott 1999). This  education is most often noted for its carefully censored “reading  list;” the young guardians-to-be will not be exposed to inappropriate images of gods and human beings. Less often noted is how optimistic  Socrates is about the results of a sufficiently careful education.  A well-trained guardian will “praise fine things, be pleased by them,  receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine  and good,” and each will “rightly object to what is shameful, hating  it while he’s still young and unable to grasp the reason”  (401e4–402a2; cf. 441e). Note that Socrates has the young guardians  not only responding to good things as honorable (with spirited  attitudes), but also becoming fine and good. Moreover,  Socrates is confident that the spirited guardians are stably good:  when he is describing the possibility of civic courage in Book Four,  he suggests that proper education can stain the spirited part of the  soul with the right dispositions so deeply that they will be  preserved “through everything” (429b8, 429c8, 430b2–3).