Plato believed that people who had natural gifts and talents could come from any class or strata of society. He believed that talents and natural gifts were not genetically determined or passed from one generation to another. In fact, talent can be found in people whose parentage was from mothers and fathers who seemed fairly ordinary.

While a person could be special and have inherent natural gifts and talents from birth, the gifts have to be enriched and developed for the person to truly be able to use them. Thus, it is up to the state to nurture the gifts through education to maximize the talent. According to the philosopher, talents are useless without the state’s tutelage and direction.

In The Republic, Plato therefore advocated that people who appeared to have been born with inherent raw natural talents and gifts should be trained by the state. Having talent that was not refined and developed through a good education was a waste. To fully leverage one’s gifts, a person needed to be educated in a broad curriculum that included philosophy, diplomacy, the arts, the law, etc. Talented children needed a formal education regardless of the social strata into which they had been born. Plato felt that education was a type of experience that could hone the talented person’s skills to maximize their potential and enable that person to produce great ideas and works that others could enjoy. By creating ideas, art, works, and so on, the talented person could gain a legacy that could last well beyond their years.

The talented person, once developed by the state, was also then fully prepared to enter the ruling class of society. Under the state’s direction, the individual was deemed to be rational and would be expected to use the talents wisely and not in an aggressive manner so as to abuse the position that the state's education had enabled them to attain.