Laws
both in the Laws and at Athens theft is commonly punished by a twofold
restitution of the article stolen. The distinction between civil and
criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized...Possession gives a
right of property after a certain time...The religious aspect under
which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just
and natural estimate of their guilt...As among ourselves, the intent to
murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder...We note that
both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the market-place and
personality in the theatre were forbidden...Both in Plato and Athenian
law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as
well as the principal...Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to
act as a judge of it...Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a
suit...Both at Athens and in Plato's Laws capital punishment for
murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into
exile...Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced
by the law as well as by public opinion...Plato proclaims the noble
sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the
offender... Finally, he repeats twice over, as with the voice of a
prophet, that the crimes of the fathers are not to be visited upon the
children. In this respect he is nobly distinguished from the Oriental,
and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy,--dei kai
autous kai tous ek touton atimous einai), as the Hebrew in the age of
Ezekial is from the Jewish people of former ages.
Of all Plato's provisions the object is to bring the practice of the law
more into harmony with reason and philosophy; to secure impartiality,
and while acknowledging that every citizen has a right to share in the
administration of justice, to counteract the tendency of the courts to
become mere popular assemblies.
...
Thus we have arrived at the end of the writings of Plato, and at the
last stage of philosophy which was really his. For in what followed,
which we chiefly gather from the uncertain intimations of Aristotle, the
spirit of the master no longer survived. The doctrine of Ideas passed
into one of numbers; instead of advancing from the abstract to the
concrete, the theories of Plato were taken out of their context, and
either asserted or refuted with a provoking literalism; the Socratic or
Platonic element in his teaching was absorbed into the Pythagorean or
Megarian. His poetry was converted into mysticism; his unsubstantial
visions were assailed secundum artem by the rules of logic. His
political speculations lost their interest when the freedom of Hellas
had passed away. Of all his writings the Laws were the furthest removed
from the traditions of the Platonic school in the next generation. Both
his political and his metaphysical philosophy are for the most part
misinterpreted by Aristotle. The best of him--his love of truth, and
his 'contemplation of all time and all existence,' was soonest lost; and
some of his greatest thoughts have slept in the ear of mankind almost
ever since they were first uttered.
We have followed him during his forty or fifty years of authorship, from
the beginning when he first attempted to depict the teaching of Socrates
in a dramatic form, down to the time at which the character of Socrates
had disappeared, and we have the latest reflections of Plato's own mind
upon Hellas and upon philosophy. He, who was 'the last of the poets,' in
his book of Laws writes prose only; he has himself partly fallen
under the rhetorical influences which in his earlier dialogues he was
combating. The progress of his writings is also the history of his life;
we have no other authentic life of him. They are the true self of the
philosopher, stripped of the accidents of time and place. The great
effort which he makes is, first, to realize abstractions, secondly,
to connect them. In the attempt to realize them, he was carried into a
transcendental region in which he isolated them from experience, and we
pass out of the range of science into poetry or fiction. The fancies of
mythology for a time cast a veil over the gulf which divides phenomena
from onta (Meno, Phaedrus, Symposium, Phaedo). In his return to earth
Plato meets with a difficulty which has long ceased to be a difficulty
to us. He cannot understand how these obstinate, unmanageable ideas,
residing alone in their heaven of abstraction, can be either combined
with one another, or adapted to phenomena (Parmenides, Philebus,
Sophist). That which is the most familiar process of our own minds, to
him appeared to be the crowning achievement of the dialectical art. The
difficulty which in his own generation threatened to be the destruction
of philosophy, he has rendered unmeaning and ridiculous. For by his
conquests in the world of mind our thoughts are widened, and he has
furnished us with new dialectical instruments which are of greater
compass and power. We have endeavoured to see him as he truly was, a
great original genius struggling with unequal conditions of knowledge,
not prepared with a system nor evolving in a series of dialogues ideas
which he had long conceived, but contradictory, enquiring as he goes
along, following the argument, first from one point of view and then
from another, and therefore arriving at opposite conclusions, hovering
around the light, and sometimes dazzled with excess of light, but always
moving in the same element of ideal truth. We have seen him also in his
decline, when the wings of his imagination have begun to droop, but his
experience of life remains, and he turns away from the contemplation of
the eternal to take a last sad look at human affairs.
...
And so having brought into the world 'noble children' (Phaedr.), he
rests from the labours of authorship. More than two thousand two hundred
years have passed away since he returned to the place of Apollo and
the Muses. Yet the echo of his words continues to be heard among men,
because of all philosophers he has the most melodious voice. He is the
inspired prophet or teacher who can never die, the only one in whom the
outward form adequately represents the fair soul within; in whom the
thoughts of all who went before him are reflected and of all who come
after him are partly anticipated. Other teachers of philosophy are dried
up and withered,--after a few centuries they have become dust; but he
is fresh and blooming, and is always begetting new ideas in the minds of
men. They are one-sided and abstract; but he has many sides of wisdom.
Nor is he always consistent with himself, because he is always moving
onward, and knows that there are many more things in philosophy than can
be expressed in words, and that truth is greater than consistency. He
who approaches him in the most reverent spirit shall reap most of
the fruit of his wisdom; he who reads him by the light of ancient
commentators will have the least understanding of him.
We may see him with the eye of the mind in the groves of the Academy,
or on the banks of the Ilissus, or in the streets of Athens, alone or
walking with Socrates, full of those thoughts which have since become
the common possession of mankind. Or we may compare him to a statue hid
away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth,
a statue which has a look as of the God himself. Or we may once more
imagine him following in another state of being the great company
of heaven which he beheld of old in a vision (Phaedr.). So, 'partly
trifling, but with a certain degree of seriousness' (Symp.), we linger
around the memory of a world which has passed away (Phaedr.).
LAWS
BOOK I.
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: An Athenian Stranger, Cleinias (a Cretan),
Megillus (a Lacedaemonian).
ATHENIAN: Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the
author of your laws?
CLEINIAS: A God, Stranger; in very truth a God: among us Cretans he is
said to have been Zeus, but in Lacedaemon, whence our friend here comes,
I believe they would say that Apollo is their lawgiver: would they not,
Megillus?
MEGILLUS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And do you, Cleinias, believe, as Homer tells, that every
ninth year Minos went to converse with his Olympian sire, and was
inspired by him to make laws for your cities?
CLEINIAS: Yes, that is our tradition; and there was Rhadamanthus, a
brother of his, with whose name you are familiar; he is reputed to have
been the justest of men, and we Cretans are of opinion that he earned
this reputation from his righteous administration of justice when he was
alive.
ATHENIAN: Yes, and a noble reputation it was, worthy of a son of Zeus.
As you and Megillus have been trained in these institutions, I dare say
that you will not be unwilling to give an account of your government and
laws; on our way we can pass the time pleasantly in talking about them,
for I am told that the distance from Cnosus to the cave and temple of
Zeus is considerable; and doubtless there are shady places under the
lofty trees, which will protect us from this scorching sun. Being no
longer young, we may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the
whole journey without difficulty, beguiling the time by conversation.
CLEINIAS: Yes, Stranger, and if we proceed onward we shall come to
groves of cypresses, which are of rare height and beauty, and there are
green meadows, in which we may repose and converse.
ATHENIAN: Very good.
CLEINIAS: Very good, indeed; and still better when we see them; let us
move on cheerily.
ATHENIAN: I am willing--And first, I want to know why the law has
ordained that you shall have common meals and gymnastic exercises, and
wear arms.
CLEINIAS: I think, Stranger, that the aim of our institutions is easily
intelligible to any one. Look at the character of our country: Crete is
not like Thessaly, a large plain; and for this reason they have horsemen
in Thessaly, and we have runners--the inequality of the ground in our
country is more adapted to locomotion on foot; but then, if you have
runners you must have light arms--no one can carry a heavy weight when
running, and bows and arrows are convenient because they are light.
Now all these regulations have been made with a view to war, and
the legislator appears to me to have looked to this in all his
arrangements:--the common meals, if I am not mistaken, were instituted
by him for a similar reason, because he saw that while they are in the
field the citizens are by the nature of the case compelled to take their
meals together for the sake of mutual protection. He seems to me to have
thought the world foolish in not understanding that all men are always
at war with one another; and if in war there ought to be common meals
and certain persons regularly appointed under others to protect an army,
they should be continued in peace. For what men in general term peace
would be said by him to be only a name; in reality every city is in a
natural state of war with every other, not indeed proclaimed by heralds,
but everlasting. And if you look closely, you will find that this was
the intention of the Cretan legislator; all institutions, private as
well as public, were arranged by him with a view to war; in giving them
he was under the impression that no possessions or institutions are of
any value to him who is defeated in battle; for all the good things of
the conquered pass into the hands of the conquerors.
ATHENIAN: You appear to me, Stranger, to have been thoroughly trained
in the Cretan institutions, and to be well informed about them; will
you tell me a little more explicitly what is the principle of government
which you would lay down? You seem to imagine that a well-governed state
ought to be so ordered as to conquer all other states in war: am I right