The best-governed Hellenic states traced the origin of their laws to individual lawgivers. These were real persons, though we are uncertain how far they originated or only modified the institutions which are ascribed to them. But the lawgiver, though not a myth, was a fixed idea in the mind of the Greek,—as fixed as the Trojan war or the earth-born Cadmus. 'This was what Solon meant or said'—was the form in which the Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a disputed point of law. And the constant reference in the Laws of Plato to the lawgiver is altogether in accordance with Greek modes of thinking and speaking.
There is also, as in the Republic, a Pythagorean element. The highest branch of education is arithmetic; to know the order of the heavenly bodies, and to reconcile the apparent contradiction of their movements, is an important part of religion; the lives of the citizens are to have a common measure, as also their vessels and coins; the great blessing of the state is the number 5040. Plato is deeply impressed by the antiquity of Egypt, and the unchangeableness of her ancient forms of song and dance. And he is also struck by the progress which the Egyptians had made in the mathematical sciences—in comparison of them the Greeks appeared to him to be little better than swine. Yet he censures the Egyptian meanness and inhospitality to strangers. He has traced the growth of states from their rude beginnings in a philosophical spirit; but of any life or growth of the Hellenic world in future ages he is silent. He has made the reflection that past time is the maker of states (Book iii.); but he does not argue from the past to the future, that the process is always going on, or that the institutions of nations are relative to their stage of civilization. If he could have stamped indelibly upon Hellenic states the will of the legislator, he would have been satisfied. The utmost which he expects of future generations is that they should supply the omissions, or correct the errors which younger statesmen detect in his enactments. When institutions have been once subjected to this process of criticism, he would have them fixed for ever.
THE PREAMBLE.
BOOK I. Strangers, let me ask a question of you—Was a God or a man the author of your laws? 'A God, Stranger. In Crete, Zeus is said to have been the author of them; in Sparta, as Megillus will tell you, Apollo.' You Cretans believe, as Homer says, that Minos went every ninth year to converse with his Olympian sire, and gave you laws which he brought from him. 'Yes; and there was Rhadamanthus, his brother, who is reputed among us to have been a most righteous judge.' That is a reputation worthy of the son of Zeus. And as you and Megillus have been trained under these laws, I may ask you to give me an account of them. We can talk about them in our walk from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus. I am told that the distance is considerable, but probably there are shady places under the trees, where, being no longer young, we may often rest and converse. 'Yes, Stranger, a little onward there are beautiful groves of cypresses, and green meadows in which we may repose.'
My first question is, Why has the law ordained that you should have common meals, and practise gymnastics, and bear arms? 'My answer is, that all our institutions are of a military character. We lead the life of the camp even in time of peace, keeping up the organization of an army, and having meals in common; and as our country, owing to its ruggedness, is ill-suited for heavy-armed cavalry or infantry, our soldiers are archers, equipped with bows and arrows. The legislator was under the idea that war was the natural state of all mankind, and that peace is only a pretence; he thought that no possessions had any value which were not secured against enemies.' And do you think that superiority in war is the proper aim of government? 'Certainly I do, and my Spartan friend will agree with me.' And are there wars, not only of state against state, but of village against village, of family against family, of individual against individual? 'Yes.' And is a man his own enemy? 'There you come to first principles, like a true votary of the goddess Athene; and this is all the better, for you will the sooner recognize the truth of what I am saying—that all men everywhere are the enemies of all, and each individual of every other and of himself; and, further, that there is a victory and defeat—the best and the worst—which each man sustains, not at the hands of another, but of himself.' And does this extend to states and villages as well as to individuals? 'Certainly; there is a better in them which conquers or is conquered by the worse.' Whether the worse ever really conquers the better, is a question which may be left for the present; but your meaning is, that bad citizens do sometimes overcome the good, and that the state is then conquered by herself, and that when they are defeated the state is victorious over herself. Or, again, in a family there may be several brothers, and the bad may be a majority; and when the bad majority conquer the good minority, the family are worse than themselves. The use of the terms 'better or worse than himself or themselves' may be doubtful, but about the thing meant there can be no dispute. 'Very true.' Such a struggle might be determined by a judge. And which will be the better judge—he who destroys the worse and lets the better rule, or he who lets the better rule and makes the others voluntarily obey; or, thirdly, he who destroys no one, but reconciles the two parties? 'The last, clearly.' But the object of such a judge or legislator would not be war. 'True.' And as there are two kinds of war, one without and one within a state, of which the internal is by far the worse, will not the legislator chiefly direct his attention to this latter? He will reconcile the contending factions, and unite them against their external enemies. 'Certainly.' Every legislator will aim at the greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil or external, but mutual peace and good-will, as in the body health is preferable to the purgation of disease. He who makes war his object instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not a true statesman. 'And yet, Stranger, the laws both of Crete and Sparta aim entirely at war.' Perhaps so; but do not let us quarrel about your legislators—let us be gentle; they were in earnest quite as much as we are, and we must try to discover their meaning. The poet Tyrtaeus (you know his poems in Crete, and my Lacedaemonian friend is only too familiar with them)—he was an Athenian by birth, and a Spartan citizen:—'Well,' he says, 'I sing not, I care not about any man, however rich or happy, unless he is brave in war.' Now I should like, in the name of us all, to ask the poet a question. Oh Tyrtaeus, I would say to him, we agree with you in praising those who excel in war, but which kind of war do you mean?—that dreadful war which is termed civil, or the milder sort which is waged against foreign enemies? You say that you abominate 'those who are not eager to taste their enemies' blood,' and you seem to mean chiefly their foreign enemies. 'Certainly he does.' But we contend that there are men better far than your heroes, Tyrtaeus, concerning whom another poet, Theognis the Sicilian, says that 'in a civil broil they are worth their weight in gold and silver.' For in a civil war, not only courage, but justice and temperance and wisdom are required, and all virtue is better than a part. The mercenary soldier is ready to die at his post; yet he is commonly a violent, senseless creature. And the legislator, whether inspired or uninspired, will make laws with a view to the highest virtue; and this is not brute courage, but loyalty in the hour of danger. The virtue of Tyrtaeus, although needful enough in his own time, is really of a fourth-rate description. 'You are degrading our legislator to a very low level.' Nay, we degrade not him, but ourselves, if we believe that the laws of Lycurgus and Minos had a view to war only. A divine lawgiver would have had regard to all the different kinds of virtue, and have arranged his laws in corresponding classes, and not in the modern fashion, which only makes them after the want of them is felt,—about inheritances and heiresses and assaults, and the like. As you truly said, virtue is the business of the legislator; but you went wrong when you referred all legislation to a part of virtue, and to an inferior part. For the object of laws, whether the Cretan or any other, is to make men happy. Now happiness or good is of two kinds—there are divine and there are human goods. He who has the divine has the human added to him; but he who has lost the greater is deprived of both. The lesser goods are health, beauty, strength, and, lastly, wealth; not the blind God, Pluto, but one who has eyes to see and follow wisdom. For mind or wisdom is the most divine of all goods; and next comes temperance, and justice springs from the union of wisdom and temperance with courage, which is the fourth or last. These four precede other goods, and the legislator will arrange all his ordinances accordingly, the human going back to the divine, and the divine to their leader mind. There will be enactments about marriage, about education, about all the states and feelings and experiences of men and women, at every age, in weal and woe, in war and peace; upon all the law will fix a stamp of praise and blame. There will also be regulations about property and expenditure, about contracts, about rewards and punishments, and finally about funeral rites and honours of the dead. The lawgiver will appoint guardians to preside over these things; and mind will harmonize his ordinances, and show them to be in agreement with temperance and justice. Now I want to know whether the same principles are observed in the laws of Lycurgus and Minos, or, as I should rather say, of Apollo and Zeus. We must go through the virtues, beginning with courage, and then we will show that what has preceded has relation to virtue.
'I wish,' says the Lacedaemonian, 'that you, Stranger, would first criticize Cleinias and the Cretan laws.' Yes, is the reply, and I will criticize you and myself, as well as him. Tell me, Megillus, were not the common meals and gymnastic training instituted by your legislator with a view to war? 'Yes; and next in the order of importance comes hunting, and fourth the endurance of pain in boxing contests, and in the beatings which are the punishment of theft. There is, too, the so-called Crypteia or secret service, in which our youth wander about the country night and day unattended, and even in winter go unshod and have no beds to lie on. Moreover they wrestle and exercise under a blazing sun, and they have many similar customs.' Well, but is courage only a combat against fear and pain, and not against pleasure and flattery? 'Against both, I should say.' And which is worse,—to be overcome by pain, or by pleasure? 'The latter.' But did the lawgivers of Crete and Sparta legislate for a courage which is lame of one leg,—able to meet the attacks of pain but not those of pleasure, or for one which can meet both? 'For a courage which can meet both, I should say.' But if so, where are the institutions which train your citizens to be equally brave against pleasure and pain, and superior to enemies within as well as without? 'We confess that we have no institutions worth mentioning which are of this character.' I am not surprised, and will therefore only request forbearance on the part of us all, in case the love of truth should lead any of us to censure the laws of the others. Remember that I am more in the way of hearing criticisms of your laws than you can be; for in well-ordered states like Crete and Sparta, although an old man may sometimes speak of them in private to a ruler or elder, a similar liberty is not allowed to the young. But now being alone we shall not offend your legislator by a friendly examination of his laws. 'Take any freedom which you like.'
My first observation is, that your lawgiver ordered you to endure hardships, because he thought that those who had not this discipline would run away from those who had. But he ought to have considered further, that those who had never learned to resist pleasure would be equally at the mercy of those who had, and these are often among the worst of mankind. Pleasure, like fear, would overcome them and take away their courage and freedom. 'Perhaps; but I must not be hasty in giving my assent.'
Next as to temperance: what institutions have you which are adapted to promote temperance? 'There are the common meals and gymnastic exercises.' These are partly good and partly bad, and, as in medicine, what is good at one time and for one person, is bad at another time and for another person. Now although gymnastics and common meals do good, they are also a cause of evil in civil troubles, and they appear to encourage unnatural love, as has been shown at Miletus, in Boeotia, and at Thurii. And the Cretans are said to have invented the tale of Zeus and Ganymede in order to justify their evil practices by the example of the God who was their lawgiver. Leaving the story, we may observe that all law has to do with pleasure and pain; these are two fountains which are ever flowing in human nature, and he who drinks of them when and as much as he ought, is happy, and he who indulges in them to excess, is miserable. 'You may be right, but I still incline to think that the Lacedaemonian lawgiver did well in forbidding pleasure, if I may judge from the result. For there is no drunken revelry in Sparta, and any one found in a state of intoxication is severely punished; he is not excused as an Athenian would be at Athens on account of a festival. I myself have seen the Athenians drunk at the Dionysia—and at our colony, Tarentum, on a similar occasion, I have beheld the whole city in a state of intoxication.' I admit that these festivals should be properly regulated. Yet I might reply, 'Yes, Spartans, that is not your vice; but look at home and remember the licentiousness of your women.' And to all such accusations every one of us may reply in turn:—'Wonder not, Stranger; there are different customs in different countries.' Now this may be a sufficient answer; but we are speaking about the wisdom of lawgivers and not about the customs of men. To return to the question of drinking: shall we have total abstinence, as you have, or hard drinking, like the Scythians and Thracians, or moderate potations like the Persians? 'Give us arms, and we send all these nations flying before us.' My good friend, be modest; victories and defeats often arise from unknown causes, and afford no proof of the goodness or badness of institutions. The stronger overcomes the weaker, as the Athenians have overcome the Ceans, or the Syracusans the Locrians, who are, perhaps, the best governed state in that part of the world. People are apt to praise or censure practices without enquiring into the nature of them. This is the way with drink: one person brings many witnesses, who sing the praises of wine; another declares that sober men defeat drunkards in battle; and he again is refuted in turn. I should like to conduct the argument on some other method; for if you regard numbers, there are two cities on one side, and ten thousand on the other. 'I am ready to pursue any method which is likely to lead us to the truth.' Let me put the matter thus: Somebody praises the useful qualities of a goat; another has seen goats running about wild in a garden, and blames a goat or any other animal which happens to be without a keeper. 'How absurd!' Would a pilot who is sea-sick be a good pilot? 'No.' Or a general who is sick and drunk with fear and ignorant of war a good general? 'A general of old women he ought to be.' But can any one form an estimate of any society, which is intended to have a ruler, and which he only sees in an unruly and lawless state? 'No.' There is a convivial form of society—is there not? 'Yes.' And has this convivial society ever been rightly ordered? Of course you Spartans and Cretans have never seen anything of the kind, but I have had wide experience, and made many enquiries about such societies, and have hardly ever found anything right or good in them. 'We acknowledge our want of experience, and desire to learn of you.' Will you admit that in all societies there must be a leader? 'Yes.' And in time of war he must be a man of courage and absolutely devoid of fear, if this be possible? 'Certainly.' But we are talking now of a general who shall preside at meetings of friends—and as these have a tendency to be uproarious, they ought above all others to have a governor. 'Very good.' He should be a sober man and a man of the world, who will keep, make, and increase the peace of the society; a drunkard in charge of drunkards would be singularly fortunate if he avoided doing a serious mischief. 'Indeed he would.' Suppose a person to censure such meetings—he may be right, but also he may have known them only in their disorderly state, under a drunken master of the feast; and a drunken general or pilot cannot save his army or his ships. 'True; but although I see the advantage of an army having a good general, I do not equally see the good of a feast being well managed.' If you mean to ask what good accrues to the state from the right training of a single youth or a single chorus, I should reply, 'Not much'; but if you ask what is the good of education in general, I answer, that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly and overcome their enemies in battle. Victory is often suicidal to the victors, because it creates forgetfulness of education, but education itself is never suicidal. 'You imply that the regulation of convivial meetings is a part of education; how will you prove this?' I will tell you. But first let me offer a word of apology. We Athenians are always thought to be fond of talking, whereas the Lacedaemonian is celebrated for brevity, and the Cretan is considered to be sagacious and reserved. Now I fear that I may be charged with spinning a long discourse out of slender materials. For drinking cannot be rightly ordered without correct principles of music, and music runs up into education generally, and to discuss all these matters may be tedious; if you like, therefore, we will pass on to another part of our subject. 'Are you aware, Athenian, that our family is your proxenus at Sparta, and that from my boyhood I have regarded Athens as a second country, and having often fought your battles in my youth, I have become attached to you, and love the sound of the Attic dialect? The saying is true, that the best Athenians are more than ordinarily good, because they are good by nature; therefore, be assured that I shall be glad to hear you talk as much as you please.' 'I, too,' adds Cleinias, 'have a tie which binds me to you. You know that Epimenides, the Cretan prophet, came and offered sacrifices in your city by the command of an oracle ten years before the Persian war. He told the Athenians that the Persian host would not come for ten years, and would go away again, having suffered more harm than they had inflicted. Now Epimenides was of my family, and when he visited Athens he entered into friendship with your forefathers.' I see that you are willing to listen, and I have the will to speak, if I had only the ability. But, first, I must define the nature and power of education, and by this road we will travel on to the God Dionysus. The man who is to be good at anything must have early training;—the future builder must play at building, and the husbandman at digging; the soldier must learn to ride, and the carpenter to measure and use the rule,—all the thoughts and pleasures of children should bear on their after-profession.—Do you agree with me? 'Certainly.' And we must remember further that we are speaking of the education, not of a trainer, or of the captain of a ship, but of a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and how to obey; and such an education aims at virtue, and not at wealth or strength or mere cleverness. To the good man, education is of all things the most precious, and is also in constant need of renovation. 'We agree.' And we have before agreed that good men are those who are able to control themselves, and bad men are those who are not. Let me offer you an illustration which will assist our argument. Man is one; but in one and the same man are two foolish counsellors who contend within him—pleasure and pain, and of either he has expectations which we call hope and fear; and he is able to reason about good and evil, and reason, when affirmed by the state, becomes law. 'We cannot follow you.' Let me put the matter in another way: Every creature is a puppet of the Gods—whether he is a mere plaything or has any serious use we do not know; but this we do know, that he is drawn different ways by cords and strings. There is a soft golden cord which draws him towards virtue—this is the law of the state; and there are other cords made of iron and hard materials drawing him other ways. The golden reasoning influence has nothing of the nature of force, and therefore requires ministers in order to vanquish the other principles. This explains the doctrine that cities and citizens both conquer and are conquered by themselves. The individual follows reason, and the city law, which is embodied reason, either derived from the Gods or from the legislator. When virtue and vice are thus distinguished, education will be better understood, and in particular the relation of education to convivial intercourse. And now let us set wine before the puppet. You admit that wine stimulates the passions? 'Yes.' And does wine equally stimulate the reasoning faculties? 'No; it brings the soul back to a state of childhood.' In such a state a man has the least control over himself, and is, therefore, worst. 'Very true.' Then how can we believe that drinking should be encouraged? 'You seem to think that it ought to be.' And I am ready to maintain my position. 'We should like to hear you prove that a man ought to make a beast of himself.' You are speaking of the degradation of the soul: but how about the body? Would any man willingly degrade or weaken that? 'Certainly not.' And yet if he goes to a doctor or a gymnastic master, does he not make himself ill in the hope of getting well? for no one would like to be always taking medicine, or always to be in training. 'True.' And may not convivial meetings have a similar remedial use? And if so, are they not to be preferred to other modes of training because they are painless? 'But have they any such use?' Let us see: Are there not two kinds of fear—fear of evil and fear of an evil reputation? 'There are.' The latter kind of fear is opposed both to the fear of pain and to the love of pleasure. This is called by the legislator reverence, and is greatly honoured by him and by every good man; whereas confidence, which is the opposite quality, is the worst fault both of individuals and of states. This sort of fear or reverence is one of the two chief causes of victory in war, fearlessness of enemies being the other. 'True.' Then every one should be both fearful and fearless? 'Yes.' The right sort of fear is infused into a man when he comes face to face with shame, or cowardice, or the temptations of pleasure, and has to conquer them. He must learn by many trials to win the victory over himself, if he is ever to be made perfect. 'That is reasonable enough.' And now, suppose that the Gods had given mankind a drug, of which the effect was to exaggerate every sort of evil and danger, so that the bravest man entirely lost his presence of mind and became a coward for a time:—would such a drug have any value? 'But is there such a drug?' No; but suppose that there were; might not the legislator use such a mode of testing courage and cowardice? 'To be sure.' The legislator would induce fear in order to implant fearlessness; and would give rewards or punishments to those who behaved well or the reverse, under the influence of the drug? 'Certainly.' And this mode of training, whether practised in the case of one or many, whether in solitude or in the presence of a large company—if a man have sufficient confidence in himself to drink the potion amid his boon companions, leaving off in time and not taking too much,—would be an equally good test of temperance? 'Very true.' Let us return to the lawgiver and say to him, 'Well, lawgiver, no such fear-producing potion has been given by God or invented by man, but there is a potion which will make men fearless.' 'You mean wine.' Yes; has not wine an effect the contrary of that which I was just now describing,—first mellowing and humanizing a man, and then filling him with confidence, making him ready to say or do anything? 'Certainly.' Let us not forget that there are two qualities which should be cultivated in the soul—first, the greatest fearlessness, and, secondly, the greatest fear, which are both parts of reverence. Courage and fearlessness are trained amid dangers; but we have still to consider how fear is to be trained. We desire to attain fearlessness and confidence without the insolence and boldness which commonly attend them. For do not love, ignorance, avarice, wealth, beauty, strength, while they stimulate courage, also madden and intoxicate the soul? What better and more innocent test of character is there than festive intercourse? Would you make a bargain with a man in order to try whether he is honest? Or would you ascertain whether he is licentious by putting your wife or daughter into his hands? No one would deny that the test proposed is fairer, speedier, and safer than any other. And such a test will be particularly useful in the political science, which desires to know human natures and characters. 'Very true.'
BOOK II. And are there any other uses of well-ordered potations? There are; but in order to explain them, I must repeat what I mean by right education; which, if I am not mistaken, depends on the due regulation of convivial intercourse. 'A high assumption.' I believe that virtue and vice are originally present to the mind of children in the form of pleasure and pain; reason and fixed principles come later, and happy is he who acquires them even in declining years; for he who possesses them is the perfect man. When pleasure and pain, and love and hate, are rightly implanted in the yet unconscious soul, and after the attainment of reason are discovered to be in harmony with her, this harmony of the soul is virtue, and the preparatory stage, anticipating reason, I call education. But the finer sense of pleasure and pain is apt to be impaired in the course of life; and therefore the Gods, pitying the toils and sorrows of mortals, have allowed them to have holidays, and given them the Muses and Apollo and Dionysus for leaders and playfellows. All young creatures love motion and frolic, and utter sounds of delight; but man only is capable of taking pleasure in rhythmical and harmonious movements. With these education begins; and the uneducated is he who has never known the discipline of the chorus, and the educated is he who has. The chorus is partly dance and partly song, and therefore the well-educated must sing and dance well. But when we say, 'He sings and dances well,' we mean that he sings and dances what is good. And if he thinks that to be good which is really good, he will have a much higher music and harmony in him, and be a far greater master of imitation in sound and gesture than he who is not of this opinion. 'True.' Then, if we know what is good and bad in song and dance, we shall know what education is? 'Very true.' Let us now consider the beauty of figure, melody, song, and dance. Will the same figures or sounds be equally well adapted to the manly and the cowardly when they are in trouble? 'How can they be, when the very colours of their faces are different?' Figures and melodies have a rhythm and harmony which are adapted to the expression of different feelings (I may remark, by the way, that the term 'colour,' which is a favourite word of music-masters, is not really applicable to music). And one class of harmonies is akin to courage and all virtue, the other to cowardice and all vice. 'We agree.' And do all men equally like all dances? 'Far otherwise.' Do some figures, then, appear to be beautiful which are not? For no one will admit that the forms of vice are more beautiful than the forms of virtue, or that he prefers the first kind to the second. And yet most persons say that the merit of music is to give pleasure. But this is impiety. There is, however, a more plausible account of the matter given by others, who make their likes or dislikes the criterion of excellence. Sometimes nature crosses habit, or conversely, and then they say that such and such fashions or gestures are pleasant, but they do not like to exhibit them before men of sense, although they enjoy them in private. 'Very true.' And do vicious measures and strains do any harm, or good measures any good to the lovers of them? 'Probably.' Say, rather 'Certainly': for the gentle indulgence which we often show to vicious men inevitably makes us become like them. And what can be worse than this? 'Nothing.' Then in a well-administered city, the poet will not be allowed to make the songs of the people just as he pleases, or to train his choruses without regard to virtue and vice. 'Certainly not.' And yet he may do this anywhere except in Egypt; for there ages ago they discovered the great truth which I am now asserting, that the young should be educated in forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed and consecrated in their temples; and no artist or musician is allowed to deviate from them. They are literally the same which they were ten thousand years ago. And this practice of theirs suggests the reflection that legislation about music is not an impossible thing. But the particular enactments must be the work of God or of some God-inspired man, as in Egypt their ancient chants are said to be the composition of the goddess Isis. The melodies which have a natural truth and correctness should be embodied in a law, and then the desire of novelty is not strong enough to change the old fashions. Is not the origin of music as follows? We rejoice when we think that we prosper, and we think that we prosper when we rejoice, and at such times we cannot rest, but our young men dance dances and sing songs, and our old men, who have lost the elasticity of youth, regale themselves with the memory of the past, while they contemplate the life and activity of the young. 'Most true.' People say that he who gives us most pleasure at such festivals is to win the palm: are they right? 'Possibly.' Let us not be hasty in deciding, but first imagine a festival at which the lord of the festival, having assembled the citizens, makes a proclamation that he shall be crowned victor who gives the most pleasure, from whatever source derived. We will further suppose that there are exhibitions of rhapsodists and musicians, tragic and comic poets, and even marionette-players—which of the pleasure-makers will win? Shall I answer for you?—the marionette-players will please the children; youths will decide for comedy; young men, educated women, and people in general will prefer tragedy; we old men are lovers of Homer and Hesiod. Now which of them is right? If you and I are asked, we shall certainly say that the old men's way of thinking ought to prevail. 'Very true.' So far I agree with the many that the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure; but then the pleasure must be that of the good and educated, or better still, of one supremely virtuous and educated man. The true judge must have both wisdom and courage. For he must lead the multitude and not be led by them, and must not weakly yield to the uproar of the theatre, nor give false judgment out of that mouth which has just appealed to the Gods. The ancient custom of Hellas, which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, left the judgment to the spectators, but this custom has been the ruin of the poets, who seek only to please their patrons, and has degraded the audience by the representation of inferior characters. What is the inference? The same which we have often drawn, that education is the training of the young idea in what the law affirms and the elders approve. And as the soul of a child is too young to be trained in earnest, a kind of education has been invented which tempts him with plays and songs, as the sick are tempted by pleasant meats and drinks. And the wise legislator will compel the poet to express in his poems noble thoughts in fitting words and rhythms. 'But is this the practice elsewhere than in Crete and Lacedaemon? In other states, as far as I know, dances and music are constantly changed at the pleasure of the hearers.' I am afraid that I misled you; not liking to be always finding fault with mankind as they are, I described them as they ought to be. But let me understand: you say that such customs exist among the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and that the rest of the world would be improved by adopting them? 'Much improved.' And you compel your poets to declare that the righteous are happy, and that the wicked man, even if he be as rich as Midas, is unhappy? Or, in the words of Tyrtaeus, 'I sing not, I care not about him' who is a great warrior not having justice; if he be unjust, 'I would not have him look calmly upon death or be swifter than the wind'; and may he be deprived of every good—that is, of every true good. For even if he have the goods which men regard, these are not really goods: first health; beauty next; thirdly wealth; and there are others. A man may have every sense purged and improved; he may be a tyrant, and do what he likes, and live for ever: but you and I will maintain that all these things are goods to the just, but to the unjust the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; not so great if he live for a short time only. If a man had health and wealth, and power, and was insolent and unjust, his life would still be miserable; he might be fair and rich, and do what he liked, but he would live basely, and if basely evilly, and if evilly painfully. 'There I cannot agree with you.' Then may heaven give us the spirit of agreement, for I am as convinced of the truth of what I say as that Crete is an island; and, if I were a lawgiver, I would exercise a censorship over the poets, and I would punish them if they said that the wicked are happy, or that injustice is profitable. And these are not the only matters in which I should make my citizens talk in a different way to the world in general. If I asked Zeus and Apollo, the divine legislators of Crete and Sparta,—'Are the just and pleasant life the same or not the same'?—and they replied,—'Not the same'; and I asked again—'Which is the happier'? And they said'—'The pleasant life,' this is an answer not fit for a God to utter, and therefore I ought rather to put the same question to some legislator. And if he replies 'The pleasant,' then I should say to him, 'O my father, did you not tell me that I should live as justly as possible'? and if to be just is to be happy, what is that principle of happiness or good which is superior to pleasure? Is the approval of gods and men to be deemed good and honourable, but unpleasant, and their disapproval the reverse? Or is the neither doing nor suffering evil good and honourable, although not pleasant? But you cannot make men like what is not pleasant, and therefore you must make them believe that the just is pleasant. The business of the legislator is to clear up this confusion. He will show that the just and the unjust are identical with the pleasurable and the painful, from the point of view of the just man, of the unjust the reverse. And which is the truer judgment? Surely that of the better soul. For if not the truth, it is the best and most moral of fictions; and the legislator who desires to propagate this useful lie, may be encouraged by remarking that mankind have believed the story of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth, and therefore he may be assured that he can make them believe anything, and need only consider what fiction will do the greatest good. That the happiest is also the holiest, this shall be our strain, which shall be sung by all three choruses alike. First will enter the choir of children, who will lift up their voices on high; and after them the young men, who will pray the God Paean to be gracious to the youth, and to testify to the truth of their words; then will come the chorus of elder men, between thirty and sixty; and, lastly, there will be the old men, and they will tell stories enforcing the same virtues, as with the voice of an oracle. 'Whom do you mean by the third chorus?' You remember how I spoke at first of the restless nature of young creatures, who jumped about and called out in a disorderly manner, and I said that no other animal attained any perception of rhythm; but that to us the Gods gave Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus to be our playfellows. Of the two first choruses I have already spoken, and I have now to speak of the third, or Dionysian chorus, which is composed of those who are between thirty and sixty years old. 'Let us hear.' We are agreed (are we not?) that men, women, and children should be always charming themselves with strains of virtue, and that there should be a variety in the strains, that they may not weary of them? Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot let them off. But how can we make them sing? For a discreet elderly man is ashamed to hear the sound of his own voice in private, and still more in public. The only way is to give them drink; this will mellow the sourness of age. No one should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen to thirty they may take a little; but when they have reached forty years, they may be initiated into the mystery of drinking. Thus they will become softer and more impressible; and when a man's heart is warm within him, he will be more ready to charm himself and others with song. And what songs shall he sing? 'At Crete and Lacedaemon we only know choral songs.' Yes; that is because your way of life is military. Your young men are like wild colts feeding in a herd together; no one takes the individual colt and trains him apart, and tries to give him the qualities of a statesman as well as of a soldier. He who was thus trained would be a greater warrior than those of whom Tyrtaeus speaks, for he would be courageous, and yet he would know that courage was only fourth in the scale of virtue. 'Once more, I must say, Stranger, that you run down our lawgivers.' Not intentionally, my good friend, but whither the argument leads I follow; and I am trying to find some style of poetry suitable for those who dislike the common sort. 'Very good.' In all things which have a charm, either this charm is their good, or they have some accompanying truth or advantage. For example, in eating and drinking there is pleasure and also profit, that is to say, health; and in learning there is a pleasure and also truth. There is a pleasure or charm, too, in the imitative arts, as well as a law of proportion or equality; but the pleasure which they afford, however innocent, is not the criterion of their truth. The test of pleasure cannot be applied except to that which has no other good or evil, no truth or falsehood. But that which has truth must be judged of by the standard of truth, and therefore imitation and proportion are to be judged of by their truth alone. 'Certainly.' And as music is imitative, it is not to be judged by the criterion of pleasure, and the Muse whom we seek is the muse not of pleasure but of truth, for imitation has a truth. 'Doubtless.' And if so, the judge must know what is being imitated before he decides on the quality of the imitation, and he who does not know what is true will not know what is good. 'He will not.' Will any one be able to imitate the human body, if he does not know the number, proportion, colour, or figure of the limbs? 'How can he?' But suppose we know some picture or figure to be an exact resemblance of a man, should we not also require to know whether the picture is beautiful or not? 'Quite right.' The judge of the imitation is required to know, therefore, first the original, secondly the truth, and thirdly the merit of the execution? 'True.' Then let us not weary in the attempt to bring music to the standard of the Muses and of truth. The Muses are not like human poets; they never spoil or mix rhythms or scales, or mingle instruments and human voices, or confuse the manners and strains of men and women, or of freemen and slaves, or of rational beings and brute animals. They do not practise the baser sorts of musical arts, such as the 'matured judgments,' of whom Orpheus speaks, would ridicule. But modern poets separate metre from music, and melody and rhythm from words, and use the instrument alone without the voice. The consequence is, that the meaning of the rhythm and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what they are to avoid. The opinion of the multitude about these matters is worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot be critics of music. 'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive innocent pleasure. This is a knowledge which goes beyond that either of the poets or of their auditors in general. For although the poet must understand rhythm and music, he need not necessarily know whether the imitation is good or not, which was the third point required in a judge; but our chorus of elders must know all three, if they are to be the instructors of youth.
And now we will resume the original argument, which may be summed up as follows: A convivial meeting is apt to grow tumultuous as the drinking proceeds; every man becomes light-headed, and fancies that he can rule the whole world. 'Doubtless.' And did we not say that the souls of the drinkers, when subdued by wine, are made softer and more malleable at the hand of the legislator? the docility of childhood returns to them. At times however they become too valiant and disorderly, drinking out of their turn, and interrupting one another. And the business of the legislator is to infuse into them that divine fear, which we call shame, in opposition to this disorderly boldness. But in order to discipline them there must be guardians of the law of drinking, and sober generals who shall take charge of the private soldiers; they are as necessary in drinking as in fighting, and he who disobeys these Dionysiac commanders will be equally disgraced. 'Very good.' If a drinking festival were well regulated, men would go away, not as they now do, greater enemies, but better friends. Of the greatest gift of Dionysus I hardly like to speak, lest I should be misunderstood. 'What is that?' According to tradition Dionysus was driven mad by his stepmother Here, and in order to revenge himself he inspired mankind with Bacchic madness. But these are stories which I would rather not repeat. However I do acknowledge that all men are born in an imperfect state, and are at first restless, irrational creatures: this, as you will remember, has been already said by us. 'I remember.' And that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus gave us harmony and rhythm? 'Very true.' The other story implies that wine was given to punish us and make us mad; but we contend that wine is a balm and a cure; a spring of modesty in the soul, and of health and strength in the body. Again, the work of the chorus is co-extensive with the work of education; rhythm and melody answer to the voice, and the motions of the body correspond to all three, and the sound enters in and educates the soul in virtue. 'Yes.' And the movement which, when pursued as an amusement, is termed dancing, when studied with a view to the improvement of the body, becomes gymnastic. Shall we now proceed to speak of this? 'What Cretan or Lacedaemonian would approve of your omitting gymnastic?' Your question implies assent; and you will easily understand a subject which is familiar to you. Gymnastic is based on the natural tendency of every animal to rapid motion; and man adds a sense of rhythm, which is awakened by music; music and dancing together form the choral art. But before proceeding I must add a crowning word about drinking. Like other pleasures, it has a lawful use; but if a state or an individual is inclined to drink at will, I cannot allow them. I would go further than Crete or Lacedaemon and have the law of the Carthaginians, that no slave of either sex should drink wine at all, and no soldier while he is on a campaign, and no magistrate or officer while he is on duty, and that no one should drink by daylight or on a bridal night. And there are so many other occasions on which wine ought to be prohibited, that there will not be many vines grown or vineyards required in the state.
BOOK III. If a man wants to know the origin of states and societies, he should behold them from the point of view of time. Thousands of cities have come into being and have passed away again in infinite ages, every one of them having had endless forms of government; and if we can ascertain the cause of these changes in states, that will probably explain their origin. What do you think of ancient traditions about deluges and destructions of mankind, and the preservation of a remnant? 'Every one believes in them.' Then let us suppose the world to have been destroyed by a deluge. The survivors would be hill-shepherds, small sparks of the human race, dwelling in isolation, and unacquainted with the arts and vices of civilization. We may further suppose that the cities on the plain and on the coast have been swept away, and that all inventions, and every sort of knowledge, have perished. 'Why, if all things were as they now are, nothing would have ever been invented. All our famous discoveries have been made within the last thousand years, and many of them are but of yesterday.' Yes, Cleinias, and you must not forget Epimenides, who was really of yesterday; he practised the lesson of moderation and abstinence which Hesiod only preached. 'True.' After the great destruction we may imagine that the earth was a desert, in which there were a herd or two of oxen and a few goats, hardly enough to support those who tended them; while of politics and governments the survivors would know nothing. And out of this state of things have arisen arts and laws, and a great deal of virtue and a great deal of vice; little by little the world has come to be what it is. At first, the few inhabitants would have had a natural fear of descending into the plains; although they would want to have intercourse with one another, they would have a difficulty in getting about, having lost the arts, and having no means of extracting metals from the earth, or of felling timber; for even if they had saved any tools, these would soon have been worn out, and they could get no more until the art of metallurgy had been again revived. Faction and war would be extinguished among them, for being solitary they would incline to be friendly; and having abundance of pasture and plenty of milk and flesh, they would have nothing to quarrel about. We may assume that they had also dwellings, clothes, pottery, for the weaving and plastic arts do not require the use of metals. In those days they were neither poor nor rich, and there was no insolence or injustice among them; for they were of noble natures, and lived up to their principles, and believed what they were told; knowing nothing of land or naval warfare, or of legal practices or party conflicts, they were simpler and more temperate, and also more just than the men of our day. 'Very true.' I am showing whence the need of lawgivers arises, for in primitive ages they neither had nor wanted them. Men lived according to the customs of their fathers, in a simple manner, under a patriarchal government, such as still exists both among Hellenes and barbarians, and is described in Homer as prevailing among the Cyclopes:—
'They have no laws, and they dwell in rocks or on the tops of mountains, and every one is the judge of his wife and children, and they do not trouble themselves about one another.'
'That is a charming poet of yours, though I know little of him, for in Crete foreign poets are not much read.' 'But he is well known in Sparta, though he describes Ionian rather than Dorian manners, and he seems to take your view of primitive society.' May we not suppose that government arose out of the union of single families who survived the destruction, and were under the rule of patriarchs, because they had originally descended from a single father and mother? 'That is very probable.' As time went on, men increased in number, and tilled the ground, living in a common habitation, which they protected by walls against wild beasts; but the several families retained the laws and customs which they separately received from their first parents. They would naturally like their own laws better than any others, and would be already formed by them when they met in a common society: thus legislation imperceptibly began among them. For in the next stage the associated families would appoint plenipotentiaries, who would select and present to the chiefs those of all their laws which they thought best. The chiefs in turn would make a further selection, and would thus become the lawgivers of the state, which they would form into an aristocracy or a monarchy. 'Probably.' In the third stage various other forms of government would arise. This state of society is described by Homer in speaking of the foundation of Dardania, which, he says,