Laws
Gods, while the good are accepted of them. I have told you the mark at
which we ought to aim. You will say, How, and with what weapons? In the
first place we affirm, that after the Olympian Gods and the Gods of the
state, honour should be given to the Gods below, and to them should
be offered everything in even numbers and of the second choice; the
auspicious odd numbers and everything of the first choice are reserved
for the Gods above. Next demi-gods or spirits must be honoured, and
then heroes, and after them family gods, who will be worshipped at their
local seats according to law. Further, the honour due to parents should
not be forgotten; children owe all that they have to them, and the debt
must be repaid by kindness and attention in old age. No unbecoming word
must be uttered before them; for there is an avenging angel who hears
them when they are angry, and the child should consider that the parent
when he has been wronged has a right to be angry. After their death
let them have a moderate funeral, such as their fathers have had before
them; and there shall be an annual commemoration of them. Living on this
wise, we shall be accepted of the Gods, and shall pass our days in good
hope. The law will determine all our various duties towards relatives
and friends and other citizens, and the whole state will be happy and
prosperous. But if the legislator would persuade as well as command,
he will add prefaces to his laws which will predispose the citizens to
virtue. Even a little accomplished in the way of gaining the hearts of
men is of great value. For most men are in no particular haste to become
good. As Hesiod says:
'Long and steep is the first half of the way to virtue, But when you
have reached the top the rest is easy.'
'Those are excellent words.' Yes; but may I tell you the effect which
the preceding discourse has had upon me? I will express my meaning in
an address to the lawgiver:--O lawgiver, if you know what we ought to do
and say, you can surely tell us;--you are not like the poet, who, as you
were just now saying, does not know the effect of his own words. And the
poet may reply, that when he sits down on the tripod of the Muses he is
not in his right mind, and that being a mere imitator he may be allowed
to say all sorts of opposite things, and cannot tell which of them is
true. But this licence cannot be allowed to the lawgiver. For example,
there are three kinds of funerals; one of them is excessive, another
mean, a third moderate, and you say that the last is right. Now if I
had a rich wife, and she told me to bury her, and I were to sing of her
burial, I should praise the extravagant kind; a poor man would commend
a funeral of the meaner sort, and a man of moderate means would prefer a
moderate funeral. But you, as legislator, would have to say exactly what
you meant by 'moderate.' 'Very true.' And is our lawgiver to have no
preamble or interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice
to his subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are
there not two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are
freemen and learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and
doctor's assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on
their masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the
gentlemen doctors practise upon freemen, and that slave doctors confine
themselves to slaves? The latter go about the country or wait for the
slaves at the dispensaries. They hold no parley with their patients
about their diseases or the remedies of them; they practise by the rule
of thumb, and give their decrees in the most arbitrary manner. When they
have doctored one patient they run off to another, whom they treat with
equal assurance, their duty being to relieve the master of the care
of his sick slaves. But the other doctor, who practises on freemen,
proceeds in quite a different way. He takes counsel with his patient and
learns from him, and never does anything until he has persuaded him of
what he is doing. He trusts to influence rather than force. Now is not
the use of both methods far better than the use of either alone? And
both together may be advantageously employed by us in legislation.
We may illustrate our proposal by an example. The laws relating to
marriage naturally come first, and therefore we may begin with them. The
simple law would be as follows:--A man shall marry between the ages of
thirty and thirty-five; if he do not, he shall be fined or deprived of
certain privileges. The double law would add the reason why: Forasmuch
as man desires immortality, which he attains by the procreation of
children, no one should deprive himself of his share in this good. He
who obeys the law is blameless, but he who disobeys must not be a gainer
by his celibacy; and therefore he shall pay a yearly fine, and shall not
be allowed to receive honour from the young. That is an example of what
I call the double law, which may enable us to judge how far the addition
of persuasion to threats is desirable. 'Lacedaemonians in general,
Stranger, are in favour of brevity; in this case, however, I prefer
length. But Cleinias is the real lawgiver, and he ought to be first
consulted.' 'Thank you, Megillus.' Whether words are to be many or few,
is a foolish question:--the best and not the shortest forms are always
to be approved. And legislators have never thought of the advantages
which they might gain by using persuasion as well as force, but trust to
force only. And I have something else to say about the matter. Here have
we been from early dawn until noon, discoursing about laws, and all that
we have been saying is only the preamble of the laws which we are about
to give. I tell you this, because I want you to observe that songs and
strains have all of them preludes, but that laws, though called by the
same name (nomoi), have never any prelude. Now I am disposed to give
preludes to laws, dividing them into two parts--one containing the
despotic command, which I described under the image of the slave
doctor--the other the persuasive part, which I term the preamble. The
legislator should give preludes or preambles to his laws. 'That shall
be the way in my colony.' I am glad that you agree with me; this is
a matter which it is important to remember. A preamble is not always
necessary to a law: the lawgiver must determine when it is needed, as
the musician determines when there is to be a prelude to a song. 'Most
true: and now, having a preamble, let us recommence our discourse.'
Enough has been said of Gods and parents, and we may proceed to consider
what relates to the citizens--their souls, bodies, properties,--their
occupations and amusements; and so arrive at the nature of education.
The first word of the Laws somewhat abruptly introduces the thought
which is present to the mind of Plato throughout the work, namely, that
Law is of divine origin. In the words of a great English writer--'Her
seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world.' Though
the particular laws of Sparta and Crete had a narrow and imperfect aim,
this is not true of divine laws, which are based upon the principles of
human nature, and not framed to meet the exigencies of the moment. They
have their natural divisions, too, answering to the kinds of virtue;
very unlike the discordant enactments of an Athenian assembly or of an
English Parliament. Yet we may observe two inconsistencies in Plato's
treatment of the subject: first, a lesser, inasmuch as he does not
clearly distinguish the Cretan and Spartan laws, of which the exclusive
aim is war, from those other laws of Zeus and Apollo which are said to
be divine, and to comprehend all virtue. Secondly, we may retort on him
his own complaint against Sparta and Crete, that he has himself given us
a code of laws, which for the most part have a military character; and
that we cannot point to 'obvious examples of similar institutions which
are concerned with pleasure;' at least there is only one such, that
which relates to the regulation of convivial intercourse. The military
spirit which is condemned by him in the beginning of the Laws, reappears
in the seventh and eighth books.
The mention of Minos the great lawgiver, and of Rhadamanthus the
righteous administrator of the law, suggests the two divisions of the
laws into enactments and appointments of officers. The legislator and
the judge stand side by side, and their functions cannot be wholly
distinguished. For the judge is in some sort a legislator, at any
rate in small matters; and his decisions growing into precedents, must
determine the innumerable details which arise out of the conflict of
circumstances. These Plato proposes to leave to a younger generation
of legislators. The action of courts of law in making law seems to
have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular
assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to
have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge. In reading the Laws of
Plato, or any other ancient writing about Laws, we should consider
how gradual the process is by which not only a legal system, but the
administration of a court of law, becomes perfected.
There are other subjects on which Plato breaks ground, as his manner is,
early in the work. First, he gives a sketch of the subject of laws; they
are to comprehend the whole of human life, from infancy to age, and from
birth to death, although the proposed plan is far from being regularly
executed in the books which follow, partly owing to the necessity of
describing the constitution as well as the laws of his new colony.
Secondly, he touches on the power of music, which may exercise so
great an influence on the character of men for good or evil; he refers
especially to the great offence--which he mentions again, and which he
had condemned in the Republic--of varying the modes and rhythms, as
well as to that of separating the words from the music. Thirdly, he
reprobates the prevalence of unnatural loves in Sparta and Crete, which
he attributes to the practice of syssitia and gymnastic exercises, and
considers to be almost inseparable from them. To this subject he again
returns in the eighth book. Fourthly, the virtues are affirmed to be
inseparable from one another, even if not absolutely one; this, too, is
a principle which he reasserts at the conclusion of the work. As in
the beginnings of Plato's other writings, we have here several 'notes'
struck, which form the preludes of longer discussions, although the hint
is less ingeniously given, and the promise more imperfectly fulfilled
than in the earlier dialogues.
The distinction between ethics and politics has not yet dawned upon
Plato's mind. To him, law is still floating in a region between the two.
He would have desired that all the acts and laws of a state should
have regard to all virtue. But he did not see that politics and law are
subject to their own conditions, and are distinguished from ethics by
natural differences. The actions of which politics take cognisance are
necessarily collective or representative; and law is limited to external
acts which affect others as well as the agents. Ethics, on the other
hand, include the whole duty of man in relation both to himself and
others. But Plato has never reflected on these differences. He fancies
that the life of the state can be as easily fashioned as that of the
individual. He is favourable to a balance of power, but never seems
to have considered that power might be so balanced as to produce an
absolute immobility in the state. Nor is he alive to the evils
of confounding vice and crime; or to the necessity of governments
abstaining from excessive interference with their subjects.