Laws
the situation of the country and the order of the laws, considering that
the mere preservation and continuance of life is not the most honourable
thing for men, as the vulgar think, but the continuance of the best
life, while we live; and that again, if I am not mistaken, is a remark
which has been made already.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: Then we have only to ask, whether we are taking the course
which we acknowledge to be the best for the settlement and legislation
of states.
CLEINIAS: The best by far.
ATHENIAN: And now let me proceed to another question: Who are to be the
colonists? May any one come out of all Crete; and is the idea that
the population in the several states is too numerous for the means of
subsistence? For I suppose that you are not going to send out a general
invitation to any Hellene who likes to come. And yet I observe that to
your country settlers have come from Argos and Aegina and other parts of
Hellas. Tell me, then, whence do you draw your recruits in the present
enterprise?
CLEINIAS: They will come from all Crete; and of other Hellenes,
Peloponnesians will be most acceptable. For, as you truly observe, there
are Cretans of Argive descent; and the race of Cretans which has the
highest character at the present day is the Gortynian, and this has come
from Gortys in the Peloponnesus.
ATHENIAN: Cities find colonization in some respects easier if the
colonists are one race, which like a swarm of bees is sent out from
a single country, either when friends leave friends, owing to some
pressure of population or other similar necessity, or when a portion
of a state is driven by factions to emigrate. And there have been whole
cities which have taken flight when utterly conquered by a superior
power in war. This, however, which is in one way an advantage to the
colonist or legislator, in another point of view creates a difficulty.
There is an element of friendship in the community of race, and
language, and laws, and in common temples and rites of worship; but
colonies which are of this homogeneous sort are apt to kick against any
laws or any form of constitution differing from that which they had at
home; and although the badness of their own laws may have been the cause
of the factions which prevailed among them, yet from the force of habit
they would fain preserve the very customs which were their ruin, and the
leader of the colony, who is their legislator, finds them troublesome
and rebellious. On the other hand, the conflux of several populations
might be more disposed to listen to new laws; but then, to make them
combine and pull together, as they say of horses, is a most difficult
task, and the work of years. And yet there is nothing which tends more
to the improvement of mankind than legislation and colonization.
CLEINIAS: No doubt; but I should like to know why you say so.
ATHENIAN: My good friend, I am afraid that the course of my speculations
is leading me to say something depreciatory of legislators; but if
the word be to the purpose, there can be no harm. And yet, why am I
disquieted, for I believe that the same principle applies equally to all
human things?
CLEINIAS: To what are you referring?
ATHENIAN: I was going to say that man never legislates, but accidents of
all sorts, which legislate for us in all sorts of ways. The violence
of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning
governments and changing laws. And the power of disease has often caused
innovations in the state, when there have been pestilences, or when
there has been a succession of bad seasons continuing during many years.
Any one who sees all this, naturally rushes to the conclusion of which
I was speaking, that no mortal legislates in anything, but that in human
affairs chance is almost everything. And this may be said of the arts of
the sailor, and the pilot, and the physician, and the general, and may
seem to be well said; and yet there is another thing which may be said
with equal truth of all of them.
CLEINIAS: What is it?
ATHENIAN: That God governs all things, and that chance and opportunity
co-operate with Him in the government of human affairs. There is,
however, a third and less extreme view, that art should be there also;
for I should say that in a storm there must surely be a great advantage
in having the aid of the pilot's art. You would agree?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And does not a like principle apply to legislation as well
as to other things: even supposing all the conditions to be favourable
which are needed for the happiness of the state, yet the true legislator
must from time to time appear on the scene?
CLEINIAS: Most true.
ATHENIAN: In each case the artist would be able to pray rightly for
certain conditions, and if these were granted by fortune, he would then
only require to exercise his art?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And all the other artists just now mentioned, if they were
bidden to offer up each their special prayer, would do so?
CLEINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: And the legislator would do likewise?
CLEINIAS: I believe that he would.
ATHENIAN: 'Come, legislator,' we will say to him; 'what are the
conditions which you require in a state before you can organize it?' How
ought he to answer this question? Shall I give his answer?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: He will say--'Give me a state which is governed by a tyrant,
and let the tyrant be young and have a good memory; let him be quick
at learning, and of a courageous and noble nature; let him have that
quality which, as I said before, is the inseparable companion of all the
other parts of virtue, if there is to be any good in them.'
CLEINIAS: I suppose, Megillus, that this companion virtue of which the
Stranger speaks, must be temperance?
ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, temperance in the vulgar sense; not that which
in the forced and exaggerated language of some philosophers is called
prudence, but that which is the natural gift of children and animals, of
whom some live continently and others incontinently, but when isolated,
was, as we said, hardly worth reckoning in the catalogue of goods. I
think that you must understand my meaning.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Then our tyrant must have this as well as the other qualities,
if the state is to acquire in the best manner and in the shortest time
the form of government which is most conducive to happiness; for there
neither is nor ever will be a better or speedier way of establishing a
polity than by a tyranny.
CLEINIAS: By what possible arguments, Stranger, can any man persuade
himself of such a monstrous doctrine?
ATHENIAN: There is surely no difficulty in seeing, Cleinias, what is in
accordance with the order of nature?
CLEINIAS: You would assume, as you say, a tyrant who was young,
temperate, quick at learning, having a good memory, courageous, of a
noble nature?
ATHENIAN: Yes; and you must add fortunate; and his good fortune must be
that he is the contemporary of a great legislator, and that some happy
chance brings them together. When this has been accomplished, God has
done all that he ever does for a state which he desires to be eminently
prosperous; He has done second best for a state in which there are two
such rulers, and third best for a state in which there are three.
The difficulty increases with the increase, and diminishes with the
diminution of the number.
CLEINIAS: You mean to say, I suppose, that the best government is
produced from a tyranny, and originates in a good lawgiver and an
orderly tyrant, and that the change from such a tyranny into a perfect
form of government takes place most easily; less easily when from an
oligarchy; and, in the third degree, from a democracy: is not that your
meaning?
ATHENIAN: Not so; I mean rather to say that the change is best made out
of a tyranny; and secondly, out of a monarchy; and thirdly, out of
some sort of democracy: fourth, in the capacity for improvement, comes
oligarchy, which has the greatest difficulty in admitting of such
a change, because the government is in the hands of a number of
potentates. I am supposing that the legislator is by nature of the true
sort, and that his strength is united with that of the chief men of the
state; and when the ruling element is numerically small, and at the
same time very strong, as in a tyranny, there the change is likely to be
easiest and most rapid.
CLEINIAS: How? I do not understand.
ATHENIAN: And yet I have repeated what I am saying a good many times;
but I suppose that you have never seen a city which is under a tyranny?
CLEINIAS: No, and I cannot say that I have any great desire to see one.
ATHENIAN: And yet, where there is a tyranny, you might certainly see
that of which I am now speaking.
CLEINIAS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN: I mean that you might see how, without trouble and in no very
long period of time, the tyrant, if he wishes, can change the manners
of a state: he has only to go in the direction of virtue or of vice,
whichever he prefers, he himself indicating by his example the lines of
conduct, praising and rewarding some actions and reproving others, and
degrading those who disobey.
CLEINIAS: But how can we imagine that the citizens in general will at
once follow the example set to them; and how can he have this power both
of persuading and of compelling them?
ATHENIAN: Let no one, my friends, persuade us that there is any quicker
and easier way in which states change their laws than when the rulers
lead: such changes never have, nor ever will, come to pass in any other
way. The real impossibility or difficulty is of another sort, and is
rarely surmounted in the course of ages; but when once it is surmounted,
ten thousand or rather all blessings follow.
CLEINIAS: Of what are you speaking?
ATHENIAN: The difficulty is to find the divine love of temperate and
just institutions existing in any powerful forms of government, whether
in a monarchy or oligarchy of wealth or of birth. You might as well hope
to reproduce the character of Nestor, who is said to have excelled
all men in the power of speech, and yet more in his temperance. This,
however, according to the tradition, was in the times of Troy; in our
own days there is nothing of the sort; but if such an one either has
or ever shall come into being, or is now among us, blessed is he and
blessed are they who hear the wise words that flow from his lips. And
this may be said of power in general: When the supreme power in man
coincides with the greatest wisdom and temperance, then the best laws
and the best constitution come into being; but in no other way. And
let what I have been saying be regarded as a kind of sacred legend or
oracle, and let this be our proof that, in one point of view, there may
be a difficulty for a city to have good laws, but that there is another
point of view in which nothing can be easier or sooner effected,
granting our supposition.
CLEINIAS: How do you mean?
ATHENIAN: Let us try to amuse ourselves, old boys as we are, by moulding
in words the laws which are suitable to your state.
CLEINIAS: Let us proceed without delay.
ATHENIAN: Then let us invoke God at the settlement of our state; may He
hear and be propitious to us, and come and set in order the State and
the laws!
CLEINIAS: May He come!
ATHENIAN: But what form of polity are we going to give the city?
CLEINIAS: Tell us what you mean a little more clearly. Do you mean some
form of democracy, or oligarchy, or aristocracy, or monarchy? For we
cannot suppose that you would include tyranny.
ATHENIAN: Which of you will first tell me to which of these classes his
own government is to be referred?
MEGILLUS: Ought I to answer first, since I am the elder?
CLEINIAS: Perhaps you should.