Laws

Ath. For the wicked man is unclean of soul, whereas the good man is clean; and from him that is defiled no good man, nor god, can ever rightly receive gifts. Therefore all the great labor that impious men spend upon the gods is in vain, but that of the pious is most profitable to them all. Here, then, is the mark at which we must aim; but as to shafts we should shoot, and (so to speak) the flight of them,—what kind of shafts, think you, would fly most straight to the mark? First of all, we say, if—after the honors paid to the Olympians and the gods who keep the State—we should assign the Even and the Left as their honors to the gods of the under-world, we would be aiming most straight at the mark of piety— as also in assigning to the former gods the things superior, the opposites of these.[*](This account of the ritual proper to the worship of the various deities is obscure. Plainly, however, it is based on the Pythagorean doctrine of Opposites, in which the Odd (number) is superior to the Even, and the Right (side) to the Left (as also the Male to the Female). It is here laid down that honors (or worship) of the superior grade are to be offered only to the deities of Olympus, or of the State, and inferior honors only to the deities of the underworld. In Greek augury, also, the left was the side of ill omen (sinister), whereas in Roman augury the right is so.) Next after these gods the wise man will offer worship to the daemons, and after the daemons to the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. For to these duty enjoins that the debtor should pay back the first and greatest of debts, the most primary of all dues, and that he should acknowledge that all that he owns and has belongs to those who begot and reared him, so that he ought to give them service to the utmost of his power—with substance, with body, and with soul, all three—thus making returns for the loans of care and pain spent on the children by those who suffered on their behalf in bygone years, and recompensing the old in their old age, when they need help most. And throughout all his life he must diligently observe reverence of speech towards his parents above all things, seeing that for light and winged words there is a most heavy penalty,—for over all such matters Nemesis, messenger of Justice, is appointed to keep watch;[*](Cp. S. Matth. xii. 36: Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement.) wherefore the son must yield to his parents when they are wroth, and when they give rein to their wrath either by word or deed, he must pardon them, seeing that it is most natural for a father to be especially wroth when he deems that he is wronged by his own son. When parents die, the most modest funeral rites are the best, whereby the son neither exceeds the accustomed pomp, nor falls short of what his forefathers paid to their sires; and in like manner he should duly bestow the yearly attentions, which ensure honor, on the rites already completed.

Ath. He should always venerate them, by never failing to provide a continual memorial, and assigning to the deceased a due share of the means which fortune Provides for expenditure. Every one of us, if we acted thus and observed these rules of life, would win always a due reward from the gods and from all that are mightier than ourselves, and would pass the greatest part of our lives in the enjoyment of hopes of happiness. As regards duties to children, relations, friends and citizens, and those of service done to strangers for Heaven’s sake, and of social intercourse with all those classes,—by fulfilling which a man should brighten his own life and order it as the law enjoins,— the sequel of the laws themselves, partly by persuasion and partly (when men’s habits defy persuasion) by forcible and just chastisement, will render our State, with the concurrence of the gods, a blessed State and a prosperous. There are also matters which a lawgiver, if he shares my view, must necessarily regulate, though they are ill-suited for statement in the form of a law; in dealing with these he ought, in my opinion, to produce a sample for his own use and that of those for whom he is legislating, and, after expounding all other matters as best he can, pass on next to commencing the task of legislation.

Clin. What is the special form in which such matters are laid down?

Ath. It is by no means easy to embrace them all in a single model of statement (so to speak) but let us conceive of them in some such way as this, in case we may succeed in affirming something definite about them.

Clin. Tell us what that something is.

Ath. I should desire the people to be as docile as possible in the matter of virtue; and this evidently is what the legislator will endeavor to effect in all his legislation.

Clin. Assuredly.

Ath. I thought the address we have made might prove of some help in making them listen to its monitions with souls not utterly savage, but in a more civil and less hostile mood. So that we may be well content if as I say, it renders the hearer even but a little more docile, because a little less hostile. For there is no great plenty or abundance of persons anxious to become with all speed as good as possible; the majority, indeed, serve to show how wise Hesiod was when he said,

smooth is the way that leadeth unto wickedness, and that no sweat is needed to traverse it, since it is passing short,

1. In front of goodness the immortal gods
2. Have set the sweat of toil, and thereunto
3. Long is the road and steep, and rough withal
4. The first ascent; but when the crest is won,
5. ’Tis easy travelling, albeit ’twas hard.

Clin. The poet speaks nobly, I should say.

Ath. He certainly does. Now I wish to put before you what I take to be the result of the foregoing argument.

Clin. Do so.

Ath. Let us address the lawgiver and say: Tell us, O lawgiver: if you knew what we ought to do and say, is it not obvious that you would state it?

Clin. Inevitably.

Ath.Now did not we hear you saying a little while ago[*](Plat. Laws 656.) that the lawgiver should not permit the poets to compose just as they please? For they would not be likely to know what saying of theirs might be contrary to the laws and injurious to the State.

Clin. That is quite true.

Ath. Would our address be reasonable, if we were to address him on behalf of the poets[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 719d.) in these terms?—

Clin. What terms?

Ath. These:—There is, O lawgiver, an ancient saying—constantly repeated by ourselves and endorsed by everyone else—that whenever a poet is seated on the Muses’ tripod, he is not in his senses, but resembles a fountain, which gives free course to the upward rush of water and, since his art consists in imitation, he is compelled often to contradict himself, when he creates characters of contradictory moods; and he knows not which of these contradictory utterances is true. But it is not possible for the lawgiver in his law thus to compose two statements about a single matter; but he must always publish one single statement about one matter. Take an example from one of your own recent statements.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 717e.) A funeral may be either excessive or defective or moderate: of these three alternatives you chose one, the moderate, and this you prescribe, after praising it unconditionally. I, on the other hand, if (in my poem) I had a wife of surpassing wealth, and she were to bid me bury her, would extol the tomb of excessive grandeur; while a poor and stingy man would praise the defective tomb, and the person of moderate means, if a moderate man himself, would praise the same one as you. But you should not merely speak of a thing as moderate, in the way you have now done, but you should explain what the moderate is, and what is its size; otherwise it is too soon for you to propose that such a statement should be made law.

Clin. Exceedingly true.

Ath. Should, then, our appointed president of the laws commence his laws with no such prefatory statement, but declare at once what must be done and what not, and state the penalty which threatens disobedience, and so turn off to another law, without adding to his statutes a single word of encouragement and persuasion? Just as is the way with doctors, one treats us in this fashion, and another in that: they have two different methods, which we may recall, in order that, like children who beg the doctor to treat them by the mildest method, so we may make a like request of the lawgiver. Shall I give an illustration of what I mean? There are men that are doctors, we say, and others that are doctors’ assistants; but we call the latter also, to be sure, by the name of doctors.

Clin. We do.

Ath. These, whether they be free-born or slaves, acquire their art under the direction of their masters, by observation and practice and not by the study of nature—which is the way in which the free-born doctors have learnt the art themselves and in which they instruct their own disciples. Would you assert that we have here two classes of what are called doctors?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. You are also aware that, as the sick folk in the cities comprise both slaves and free men, the slaves are usually doctored by slaves, who either run round the town or wait in their surgeries; and not one of these doctors either gives or receives any account of the several ailments of the various domestics, but prescribes for each what he deems right from experience, just as though he had exact knowledge, and with the assurance of an autocrat; then up he jumps and off he rushes to another sick domestic, and thus he relieves his master in his attendance on the sick. But the free-born doctor is mainly engaged in visiting and treating the ailments of free men, and he does so by investigating them from the commencement and according to the course of nature; he talks with the patient himself and with his friends, and thus both learns himself from the sufferers and imparts instruction to them, so far as possible; and he gives no prescription until he has gained the patient’s consent, and only then, while securing the patient’s continued docility by means of persuasion, does he attempt to complete the task of restoring him to health. Which of these two methods of doctoring shows the better doctor, or of training, the better trainer? Should the doctor perform one and the same function in two ways, or do it in one way only[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 634d, 634e; Plat. Laws 722b, 722c; Plat. Laws 857e.) and that the worse way of the two and the less humane?

Clin. The double method, Stranger, is by far the better.

Ath. Do you wish us to examine the double method and the single as applied also to actual legislation?

Clin. Most certainly I wish it.

Ath. Come, tell me then, in Heaven’s name,—what would be the first law to be laid down by the lawgiver? Will he not follow the order of nature, and in his ordinances regulate first the starting-point of generation in States?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Does not the starting-point of generation in all States lie in the union and partnership of marriage?[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 631d, 631e.).

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. So it seems that, if the marriage laws were the first to be enacted, that would be the right course in every State.

Clin. Most assuredly.

Ath. Let us state the law in its simple form first: how will it run? Probably like this:—A man shall marry when he is thirty years old and under five and thirty;[*](But cp. Plat. Laws 772d.) if he fails to do so, he shall be punished both by a fine in money and by degradation, the fine being of such and such an amount, and the degradation of such and such a kind. Such shall be the simple form of marriage law. The double form shall be this,—A man shall marry when he is thirty years old and under thirty-five, bearing in mind that this is the way by which the human race, by nature’s ordinance, shares in immortality, a thing for which nature has implanted in everyone a keen desire. The desire to win glory, instead of lying in a nameless grave, aims at a like object. Thus mankind is by nature coeval with the whole of time, in that it accompanies it continually both now and in the future; and the means by which it is immortal is this:—by leaving behind it children’s children and continuing ever one and the same, it thus by reproduction shares in immortality. That a man should deprive himself thereof voluntarily is never an act of holiness; and he who denies himself wife and children is guilty of such intentional deprivation. He who obeys the law may be dismissed without penalty, but he that disobeys and does not marry when thirty-five years old shall pay a yearly fine of such and such an amount,—lest he imagine that single life brings him gain and ease,—and he shall have no share in the honors which are paid from time to time by the younger men in the State to their seniors. When one hears and compares this law with the former one, it is possible to judge in each particular case whether the laws ought to be at least double in length, through combining threats with persuasion, or only single in length, through employing threats alone.

Meg. Our Laconian way, Stranger, is to prefer brevity always. But were I bidden to choose which of these two statutes I should desire to have enacted in writing in my State, I should choose the longer; and what is more, I should make the same choice in the case of every law in which, as in the example before us, these two alternatives were offered. It is necessary, however, that the laws we are now enacting should have the approval of our friend Clinias also; for it is his State which is now proposing to make use of such things.

Clin. I highly approve of all you have said, Megillus.

Ath. Still, it is extremely foolish to argue about the length or brevity of writings, for what we should value, I suppose, is not their extreme brevity or prolixity, but their excellence; and in the case of the laws mentioned just now, not only does the one form possess double the value of the other in respect of practical excellence, but the example of the two kinds of doctors, recently mentioned,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 720c.) presents a very exact analogy. But as regards this, it appears that no legislator has ever yet observed that, while it is in their power to make use in their law-making of two methods,—namely, persuasion and force,—in so far as that is feasible in dealing with the uncultured populace, they actually employ one method only: in their legislation they do not temper compulsion with persuasion, but use untempered force alone. And I, my dear sirs, perceive still a third requisite which ought to be found in laws, but which is nowhere to be found at present.

Clin. What is it you allude to?

Ath. A matter which, by a kind of divine direction, has sprung out of the subjects we have now been discussing. It was little more than dawn when we began talking about laws, and now it is high noon, and here we are in this entrancing resting-place; all the time we have been talking of nothing but laws, yet it is only recently that we have begun, as it seems, to utter laws, and what went before was all simply preludes to laws. What is my object in saying this? It is to explain that all utterances and vocal expressions have preludes and tunings-up (as one might call them), which provide a kind of artistic preparation which assists towards the further development of the subject. Indeed, we have examples before us of preludes, admirably elaborated, in those prefixed to that class of lyric ode called the nome,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 700b.) and to musical compositions of every description. But for the nomes (i.e. laws) which are real nomes—and which we designate political—no one has ever yet uttered a prelude, or composed or published one, just as though there were no such thing. But our present conversation proves, in my opinion, that there is such a thing; and it struck me just now that the laws we were then stating are something more than simply double, and consist of these two things combined—law, and prelude to law.

Ath. The part which we called the despotic prescription— comparing it to the prescriptions of the slave-doctors we mentioned—is unblended law; but the part which precedes this, and which is uttered as persuasive thereof, while it actually is persuasion, yet serves also the same purpose as the prelude to an oration.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 718c.) To ensure that the person to whom the lawgiver addresses the law should accept the prescription quietly—and, because quietly, in a docile spirit,—that, as I supposed, was the evident object with which the speaker uttered all his persuasive discourse.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 715e.) Hence, according to my argument, the right term for it would be, not legal statement, but prelude, and no other word. Having said this, what is the next statement I would desire to make? It is this: that the lawgiver must never omit to furnish preludes, as prefaces both to the laws as a whole and to each individual statute, whereby they shall surpass their original form by as much as the double examples recently given surpassed the single.

Clin. I, for my part, would charge the expert in these matters to legislate thus, and not otherwise.

Ath. You are right, I believe, Clinias, in asserting at least thus much,—that all laws have preludes, and that, in commencing each piece of legislation, one ought to preface each enactment with the prelude that naturally belongs to it—for the statement that is to follow the prelude is one of no small importance, and it makes a vast difference whether these statements are distinctly or indistinctly remembered; still, we should be wrong if we prescribed that all statutes, great and small, should be equally provided with preludes. For neither ought that to be done in the case of songs and speeches of every kind; for they all naturally have preludes, but we cannot employ them always; that is a thing which must be left in each case to the judgment of the actual orator or singer or legislator.

Clin. What you say is, I believe, very true. But let us not spend more time, Stranger, in delay, but return to our main subject, and start afresh (if you agree) from the statements you made above—and made not by way of prelude. Let us, then, repeat from the start the second thoughts that are best (to quote the players’ proverb), treating them throughout as a prelude, and not, as before, as a chance discourse; and let us handle the opening part as being confessedly a prelude. As to the worship of the gods and the attention to be paid to ancestors, our previous statement[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 716b.) is quite sufficient; it is what comes next to these that you must try to state, until the whole of the prelude has been, in our opinion, adequately set forth by you. After that you will proceed with your statement of the actual laws.

Ath. So then the prelude we previously composed concerning the gods and those next to the gods, and concerning parents, living and dead, was, as we now declare, sufficient; and you are now bidding me, I understand, to bring up, as it were, to the light of day the residue of this same subject.

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. Well, surely it is both fitting and of the greatest mutual advantage that, next to the matters mentioned, the speaker and his hearers should deal with the question of the degree of zeal or slackness which men ought to use in respect of their souls, their bodies, and their goods, and should ponder thereon, and thus get a grasp of education as far as possible. Precisely this, then, is the statement which we must actually make and listen to next.

Clin. Perfectly right.

Ath. Let everyone who has just heard the ordinances concerning gods and dear forefathers now give ear. Of all a man’s own belongings, the most divine is his soul, since it is most his own. A man’s own belongings are invariably twofold: the stronger and better are the ruling elements, the weaker and worse those that serve; wherefore of one’s own belongings one must honor those that rule above those that serve.

Ath. Thus it is that in charging men to honor their own souls next after the gods who rule and the secondary divinities, I am giving a right injunction. But there is hardly a man of us all who pays honor rightly, although he fancies he does so; for honor paid to a thing divine is beneficent, whereas nothing that is maleficent confers honor; and he that thinks to magnify his soul by words or gifts or obeisances, while he is improving it no whit in goodness, fancies indeed that he is paying it honor, but in fact does not do so. Every boy, for example, as soon as he has grown to manhood, deems himself capable of learning all things, and supposes that by lauding his soul he honors it, and by eagerly permitting it to do whatsoever it pleases. But by acting thus, as we now declare, he is not honoring his soul, but injuring it; whereas, we affirm, he ought to pay honor to it next after the gods. Again, when a man counts not himself but others responsible always for his own sins and for the most and greatest evils, and exempts himself always from blame, thereby honoring, as he fancies, his own soul,—then he is far indeed from honoring it, since he is doing it injury. Again, when a man gives way to pleasures contrary to the counsel and commendation of the lawgiver, he is by no means conferring honor on his soul, but rather dishonor, by loading it with woes and remorse. Again, in the opposite case, when toils, fears, hardships and pains are commended, and a man flinches from them, instead of stoutly enduring them,—then by his flinching he confers no honor on his soul; for by all such actions he renders it dishonored. Again, when a man deems life at any price to be a good thing, then also he does not honor, but dishonor, to his soul; for he yields to the imagination of his soul that the conditions in Hades are altogether evil, instead of opposing it, by teaching and convincing his soul that, for all it knows, we may find, on the contrary, our greatest blessings in the realm of the gods below. Again, when a man honors beauty above goodness, this is nothing else than a literal and total dishonoring of the soul; for such a statement asserts that the body is more honorable than the soul,— but falsely, since nothing earth-born is more honorable than the things of heaven, and he that surmises otherwise concerning the soul knows not that in it he possesses, and neglects, a thing most admirable.

Ath. Again, when a man craves to acquire wealth ignobly, or feels no qualm in so acquiring it, he does not then by his gifts pay honor to his soul,—far from it, in sooth!—for what is honorable therein and noble he is bartering away for a handful of gold; yet all the gold on earth, or under it, does not equal the price of goodness. To speak shortly:—in respect of the things which the lawgiver enumerates and describes as either, on the one hand, base and evil, or, on the other hand, noble and good, if any man refuses to avoid by every means the one kind, and with all his power to practise the other kind,—such a man knows not that everyone who acts thus is treating most dishonorably and most disgracefully that most divine of things, his soul. Hardly anyone takes account of the greatest judgment (as men call it) upon evil-doing; that greatest judgment is this,—to grow like unto men that are wicked, and, in so growing, to shun good men and good counsels and cut oneself off from them,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 716c, Plat. Laws 716d.) but to cleave to the company of the wicked and follow after them; and he that is joined to such men inevitably acts and is acted upon in the way that such men bid one another to act. Now such a resultant condition is not a judgment (for justice and judgment are things honorable) , but a punishment, an infliction that follows on injustice; both he that undergoes this and he that undergoes it not are alike wretched,—the one in that he remains uncured, the other in that he is destroyed in order to secure the salvation of many others.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 731c, Plat. Laws 854c ff., Plat. Laws 957b.) Thus we declare that honor, speaking generally, consists in following the better, and in doing our utmost to effect the betterment of the worse, when it admits of being bettered. Man has no possession better fitted by nature than the soul for the avoidance of evil and the tracking and taking of what is best of all, and living in fellowship therewith, when he has taken it, for all his life thereafter. Wherefore the soul is put second[*](The first place belongs to the gods (i.e. to Divine Reason) .) in order of honor; as for the third, everyone would conceive that this place naturally belongs to the honor due to the body. But here again one has to investigate the various forms of honor,—which of them are genuine, which spurious; and this is the lawgiver’s task. Now he, as I suppose, declares that the honors are these and of these kinds:—the honorable body is not the fair body nor the strong nor the swift nor the large, nor yet the body that is sound in health, although this is what many believe; neither is it a body of the opposite kind to any of these; rather those bodies which hold the mean position between all these opposite extremes are by far the most temperate and stable; for while the one extreme makes the souls puffed up and proud, the other makes them lowly and spiritless.

Ath. The same holds good of the possession of goods and chattels, and they are to be valued on a similar scale. In each case, when they are in excess, they produce enmities and feuds both in States and privately, while if they are deficient they produce, as a rule, serfdom. And let no man love riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as wealthy as possible; for that is good neither for them nor for the State. For the young the means that attracts no flatterers, yet is not lacking in things necessary, is the most harmonious of all and the best; for it is in tune with us and in accord, and thus it renders our life in all respects painless. To his children it behoves a man to bequeath modesty, not money, in abundance. We imagine that chiding the young for their irreverence is the way to bequeath this; but no such result follows from the admonition commonly given nowadays to the young, when people tell them that youth must reverence everyone. Rather will the prudent lawgiver admonish the older folk to reverence the young, and above all to beware lest any of them be ever seen or heard by any of the young either doing or saying anything shameful; for where the old are shameless, there inevitably will also the young be very impudent. The most effective way of training the young—as well as the older people themselves—is not by admonition, but by plainly practising throughout one’s own life the admonitions which one gives to others. By paying honor and reverence to his kinsfolk, and all who share in the worship of the tribal gods and are sprung from the same blood, a man will, in proportion to his piety, secure the goodwill of the gods of Birth to bless his own begetting of children. Moreover, a man will find his friends and companions kindly disposed, in regard to life’s intercourse, if he sets higher than they do the value and importance of the services he receives from them, while counting the favors he confers on them as of less value than they are deemed by his companions and friends themselves. In relation to his State and fellow-citizens that man is by far the best who, in preference to a victory at Olympia or in any other contest of war or peace, would choose to have a victorious reputation for service to his native laws, as being the one man above all others who has served them with distinction throughout his life. Further, a man should regard contracts made with strangers as specially sacred; for practically all the sins against Strangers are—as compared with those against citizens—connected more closely with an avenging deity.

Ath. For the stranger, inasmuch as he is without companions or kinsfolk, is the more to be pitied by men and gods; wherefore he that is most able to avenge succors them most readily, and the most able of all, in every case, is the Strangers’ daemon and god, and these follow in the train of Zeus Xenios.[*](The supreme Guardian of the rights of hospitality.) Whoso, then, is possessed of but a particle of forethought will take the utmost care to go through life to the very end without committing any offence in respect of Strangers. Of offences against either Strangers or natives, that which touches suppliants is in every case the most grave; for when a suppliant, after invoking a god as witness, is cheated of his compact, that god becomes the special guardian of him who is wronged, so that he will never be wronged without vengeance being taken for his wrongs. As concerns a man’s social relations towards his parents, himself and his own belongings, towards the State also and friends and kindred,—whether foreign relations or domestic,—our exposition is now fairly complete. It remains to expound next the character which is most conducive to nobility of life; and after that we shall have to state all the matters which are subject, not to law, but rather to praise or blame,—as the instruments whereby the citizens are educated individually and rendered more tractable and well-inclined towards the laws which are to be imposed on them. Of all the goods, for gods and men alike, truth stands first. Thereof let every man partake from his earliest days, if he purposes to become blessed and happy, that so he may live his life as a true man so long as possible. He is a trusty man; but untrustworthy is the man who loves the voluntary lie; and senseless is the man who loves the involuntary lie; and neither of these two is to be envied. For everyone that is either faithless or foolish is friendless; and since, as time goes on, he is found out, he is making for himself, in his woeful old-age, at life’s close, a complete solitude, wherein his life becomes almost equally desolate whether his companions and children are living or dead. He that does no wrong is indeed a man worthy of honor; but worthy of twice as much honor as he, and more, is the man who, in addition, consents not to wrongdoers when they do wrong;[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 663a, Plat. Laws 829a.) for while the former counts as one man, the latter counts as many, in that he informs the magistrates of the wrongdoing of the rest. And he that assists the magistrates in punishing, to the best of his power, let him be publicly proclaimed to be the Great Man of the State and perfect, the winner of the prize for excellence. Upon temperance and upon wisdom one should bestow the same praise, and upon all the other goods which he who possesses them can not only keep himself but can share also with others.

Ath. He that thus shares these should be honored as highest in merit; and he that would fain share them but cannot, as second in merit; while if a man is jealous and unwilling to share any good things with anyone in a friendly spirit, then the man himself must be blamed, but his possession must not be disesteemed any the more because of its possessor,—rather one should strive to gain it with all one’s might. Let every one of us be ambitious to gain excellence, but without jealousy. For a man of this character enlarges a State, since he strives hard himself and does not thwart the others by calumny; but the jealous man, thinking that calumny of others is the best way to secure his own superiority, makes less effort himself to win true excellence, and disheartens his rivals by getting them unjustly blamed; whereby he causes the whole State to be ill-trained for competing in excellence, and renders it, for his part, less large in fair repute. Every man ought to be at once passionate and gentle in the highest degree.[*](Cp.Plat. Rep. 375b ff., Plat. Rep. 410c ff.) For, on the one hand, it is impossible to escape from other men’s wrongdoings, when they are cruel and hard to remedy, or even wholly irremediable, otherwise than by victorious fighting and self-defence, and by punishing most rigorously; and this no soul can achieve without noble passion. But, on the other hand, when men commit wrongs which are remediable, one should, in the first place, recognize that every wrongdoer is a wrongdoer involuntarily;[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 868c ff.; Plat. Laws 863b ff.; Plat. Prot. 345d ff; Plat. Tim. 86d ff.) for no one anywhere would ever voluntarily acquire any of the greatest evils, least of all in his own most precious possessions. And most precious in very truth to every man is, as we have said, the soul. No one, therefore, will voluntarily admit into this most precious thing the greatest evil and live possessing it all his life long. Now while in general the wrong-doer and he that has these evils are to be pitied, it is permissible to show pity to the man that has evils that are remediable, and to abate one’s passion and treat him gently, and not to keep on raging like a scolding wife; but in dealing with the man who is totally and obstinately perverse and wicked one must give free course to wrath. Wherefore we affirm that it behoves the good man to be always at once passionate and gentle. There is an evil, great above all others, which most men have, implanted in their souls, and which each one of them excuses in himself and makes no effort to avoid. It is the evil indicated in the saying that every man is by nature a lover of self, and that it is right that he should be such.[*](Cp. Eur. Fr. 460: ἐκεῖνο γὰρ πέπονθ’ ὅπερ πάντες βροτοί: φιλῶν μάλιστ’ ἐμαυτὸν οὐκ αἰσχύνομαι. Ar. Rhet. 1371b 19; Pol. 1263b 2.) But the truth is that the cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self.

Ath. For the lover is blind in his view of the object loved, so that he is a bad judge[*](Cp.Plat. Rep. 474d ff, Plat. Rep. 474e ff.) of things just and good and noble, in that he deems himself bound always to value what is his own more than what is true; for the man who is to attain the title of Great must be devoted neither to himself nor to his own belongings, but to things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own or rather those of another man. And it is from this same sin that every man has derived the further notion that his own folly is wisdom; whence it comes about that though we know practically nothing, we fancy that we know everything; and since we will not entrust to others the doing of things we do not understand, we necessarily go wrong in doing them ourselves. Wherefore every man must shun excessive self-love, and ever follow after him that is better than himself, allowing no shame to prevent him from so doing. Precepts that are less important than these and oftentimes repeated—but no less profitable—a man should repeat to himself by way of reminder; for where there is a constant efflux, there must also be a corresponding influx, and when wisdom flows away, the proper influx consists in recollection;[*](Cp.Plat. Phileb. 33e ff.) wherefore men must be restrained from untimely laughter and tears,[*](Cp.Plat. Rep. 388e f., Plat. Rep. 606c ff.) and every individual, as well as the whole State, must charge every man to try to conceal all show of extreme joy or sorrow, and to behave himself seemly, alike in good fortune and in evil, according as each man’s Genius[*](i.e. divine controlling force, or destiny.) ranges itself,—hoping always that God will diminish the troubles that fall upon them by the blessings which he bestows, and will change for the better the present evils; and as to their blessings, hoping that they, contrariwise, will, with the help of good fortune, be increased. In these hopes, and in the recollections of all these truths, it behoves every man to live, sparing no pains, but constantly recalling them clearly to the recollection both of himself and of his neighbor, alike when at work and when at play. Thus, as regards the right character of institutions and the right character of individuals, we have now laid down practically all the rules that are of divine sanction. Those that are of human origin we have not stated as yet, but state them we must; for our converse is with men, not gods. Pleasures, pains and desires are by nature especially human; and from these, of necessity, every mortal creature is, so to say, suspended and dependent by the strongest cords of influence.

Ath. Thus one should commend the noblest life, not merely because it is of superior fashion in respect of fair repute, but also because, if a man consents to taste it and not shun it in his youth, it is superior likewise in that which all men covet,—an excess, namely, of joy and a deficiency of pain throughout the whole of life. That this will clearly be the result, if a man tastes of it rightly, will at once be fully evident. But wherein does this rightness consist? That is the question which we must now, under the instruction of our Argument, consider; comparing the more pleasant life with the more painful, we must in this wise consider whether this mode is natural to us, and that other mode unnatural. We desire that pleasure should be ours, but pain we neither choose nor desire; and the neutral state we do not desire in place of pleasure, but we do desire it in exchange for pain; and we desire less pain with more pleasure, but we do not desire less pleasure with more pain; and when the two are evenly balanced, we are unable to state any clear preference. Now all these states—in their number, quantity, intensity, equality, and in the opposites thereof—have, or have not, influence on desire, to govern its choice of each. So these things being thus ordered of necessity, we desire that mode of life in which the feelings are many, great, and intense, with those of pleasure predominating, but we do not desire the life in which the feelings of pain predominate; and contrariwise, we do not desire the life in which the feelings are few, small, and gentle, if the painful predominate, but if the pleasurable predominate, we do desire it. Further, we must regard the life in which there is an equal balance of pleasure and pain as we previously regarded the neutral state: we desire the balanced life in so far as it exceeds the painful life in point of what we like, but we do not desire it in so far as it exceeds the pleasant lives in point of the things we dislike. The lives of us men must all be regarded as naturally bound up in these feelings, and what kinds of lives we naturally desire is what we must distinguish; but if we assert that we desire anything else, we only say so through ignorance and inexperience of the lives as they really are. What, then, and how many are the lives in which a man—when he has chosen the desirable and voluntary in preference to the undesirable and the involuntary, and has made it into a private law for himself, by choosing what is at once both congenial and pleasant and most good and noble—may live as happily as man can? Let us pronounce that one of them is the temperate life, one the wise, one the brave, and let us class the healthy life as one;

Ath. and to these let us oppose four others—the foolish, the cowardly, the licentious, and the diseased. He that knows the temperate life will set it down as gentle in all respects, affording mild pleasures and mild pains, moderate appetites and desires void of frenzy; but the licentious life he will set down as violent in all directions, affording both pains and pleasures that are extreme, appetites that are intense and maddening, and desires the most frenzied possible; and whereas in the temperate life the pleasures outweigh the pains, in the licentious life the pains exceed the pleasures in extent, number, and frequency. Whence it necessarily results that the one life must be naturally more pleasant, the other more painful to us; and it is no longer possible for the man who desires a pleasant life voluntarily to live a licentious life, but it is clear by now (if our argument is right) that no man can possibly be licentious voluntarily: it is owing to ignorance or incontinence, or both, that the great bulk of mankind live lives lacking in temperance. Similarly with regard to the diseased life and the healthy life, one must observe that while both have pleasures and pains, the pleasures exceed the pains in health, but the pains the pleasures in disease. Our desire in the choice of lives is not that pain should be in excess, but the life we have judged the more pleasant is that in which pain is exceeded by pleasure. We will assert, then, that since the temperate life has its feelings smaller, fewer and lighter than the licentious life, and the wise life than the foolish, and the brave than the cowardly, and since the one life is superior to the other in pleasure, but inferior in pain, the brave life is victorious over the cowardly and the wise over the foolish; consequently the one set of lives ranks as more pleasant than the other: the temperate, brave, wise, and healthy lives are more pleasant than the cowardly, foolish, licentious and diseased. To sum up, the life of bodily and spiritual virtue, as compared with that of vice, is not only more pleasant, but also exceeds greatly in nobility, rectitude, virtue and good fame, so that it causes the man who lives it to live ever so much more happily than he who lives the opposite life. Thus far we have stated the prelude of our laws, and here let that statement end: after the prelude must necessarily follow the tune,[*](A play on the double sense of νόμος—law and musical nome or tune .)—or rather, to be strictly accurate, a sketch of the State-organization.

Ath. Now, just as in the case of a piece of webbing, or any other woven article, it is not possible to make both warp and woof of the same materials, but the stuff of the warp must be of better quality—for it is strong and is made firm by its twistings, whereas the woof is softer and shows a due degree of flexibility[*](In weaving the ancients used an upright loom, in which the fixed, vertical threads of the warp were of coarser fiber than the transverse threads of the woof. )—from this we may see that in some such way we must mark out those who are to hold high offices in the State and those who are to hold low offices,[*](Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1265b 18 ff.) after applying in each case an adequate educational test. For of State organization there are two divisions, of which the one is the appointment of individuals to office, the other the assignment of laws to the offices. But, in truth, before we deal with all these matters we must observe the following. In dealing with a flock of any kind, the shepherd or cowherd, or the keeper of horses or any such animals, will never attempt to look after it until he has first applied to each group of animals the appropriate purge—which is to separate the sound from the unsound, and the well-bred from the ill-bred,[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 410a.) and to send off the latter to other herds, while keeping the former under his own care; for he reckons that his labor would be fruitless and unending if it were spent on bodies and souls which nature and ill-nurture have combined to ruin, and which themselves bring ruin on a stock that is sound and clean both in habit and in body,—whatever the class of beast,—unless a thorough purge be made in the existing herd. This is a matter of minor importance in the case of other animals, and deserves mention only by way of illustration; but in the case of man it is of the highest importance for the lawgiver to search out and to declare what is proper for each class both as regards purging out and all other modes of treatment. For instance, in respect of civic purgings, this would be the way of it. Of the many possible modes of purging, some are milder, some more severe; those that are severest and best a lawgiver who was also a despot[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 709e.) might be able to effect, but a lawgiver without despotic power might be well content if, in establishing a new polity and laws, he could effect even the mildest of purgations. The best purge is painful, like all medicines of a drastic nature,— the purge which hales to punishments by means of justice linked with vengeance, crowning the vengeance with exile or death: it, as a rule, clears out the greatest criminals when they are incurable and cause serious damage to the State.

Ath. A milder form of purge is one of the following kind:—when, owing to scarcity of food, people are in want, and display a readiness to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the wealthy,—then the lawgiver, regarding all such as a plague inherent in the body politic, ships them abroad as gently as possible, giving the euphemistic title of emigration to their evacuation. By some means or other this must be done by every legislator at the beginning, but in our case the task is now even more simple; for we have no need to contrive for the present either a form of emigration or any other purgative selection; but just as when there is a confluence of floods from many sources—some from springs, some from torrents—into a single pool we have to take diligent precautions to ensure that the water may be of the utmost possible purity, by drawing it off in some cases, and in others by making channels to divert its course.[*](The citizens who are to form the new Magnesian colony are to be drawn from various quarters, and they must be carefully tested (like streams flowing into a reservoir) before being admitted.) Yet toil and risk, it would appear, are involved in every exercise of statecraft. Since, however, our present efforts are verbal rather than actual, let us assume that our collection of citizens is now completed, and its purity secured to our satisfaction; for we shall test thoroughly by every kind of test and by length of time the vicious among those who attempt to enter our present State as citizens, and so prevent their arrival, whereas we shall welcome the virtuous with all possible graciousness and goodwill. And let us not omit to notice this piece of good luck—that, just as we said[*](Plat. Laws 684e.) that the colony of the Heraclidae was fortunate in avoiding fierce and dangerous strife concerning the distribution of land and money and the cancelling of debts (so we are similarly lucky) ; for when a State is obliged to settle such strife by law, it can neither leave vested interests unaltered nor yet can it in any wise alter them, and no way is left save what one might term that of pious aspiration and cautious change, little by little, extended over a long period, and that way is this:—there must already exist a supply of men to effect the change, who themselves, on each occasion, possess abundance of land and have many persons in their debt, and who are kind enough to wish to give a share of these things to those of them who are in want, partly by remissions and partly by distributions, making a kind of rule of moderation and believing that poverty consists, not in decreasing one’s substance, but in increasing one’s greed.

Ath. For this is the main foundation of the security of a State, and on this as on a firm keel it is possible to build whatever kind of civic organization may be subsequently built suitable for the arrangement described; but if the foundation be rotten, the subsequent political operations will prove by no means easy for any State. This difficulty, as we say, we avoid; it is better, however, that we should explain the means by which, if we had not actually avoided it, we might have found a way of escape. Be it explained, then, that that means consists in renouncing avarice by the aid of justice, and that there is no way of escape, broad or narrow, other than this device. So let this stand fixed for us now as a kind of pillar of the State. The properties of the citizens must be established somehow or other on a basis that is secure from intestine disputes; otherwise, for people who have ancient disputes with one another, men will not of their own free will proceed any further with political construction, if they have a grain of sense.[*](There may be an allusion here to Solon; the first step in his political reforms was a measure for the abolition of debts (Seisachtheia).) But as for those to whom—as to us now—God has given a new State to found, and one free as yet from internal feuds,—that those founders should excite enmity against themselves because of the distribution of land and houses would be a piece of folly combined with utter depravity of which no man could be capable. What then would be the plan of a right distribution? First, we must fix at the right total the number of citizens; next, we must agree about the distribution of them,—into how many sections, and each of what size, they are to be divided; and among these sections we must distribute, as equally as we can, both the land and the houses. An adequate figure for the population could not be given without reference to the territory and to the neighboring States. Of land we need as much as is capable of supporting so many inhabitants of temperate habits, and we need no more; and as to population, we need a number such that they will be able to defend themselves against injury from adjoining peoples, and capable also of lending some aid to their neighbors when injured. These matters we shall determine, both verbally and actually, when we have inspected the territory and its neighbors; but for the present it is only a sketch in outline of our legislation that our argument will now proceed to complete. Let us assume that there are—as a suitable number—5,040 men, to be land-holders and to defend their plots;[*](Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1265a 30 ff.) and let the land and houses be likewise divided into the same number of parts—the man and his allotment forming together one division. First, let the whole number be divided into two; next into three; then follow in natural order four and five, and so on up to ten.