Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: That’s quite right.

  ATHENIAN: So should the legislator whom we appoint skip any such announcement at the beginning of his laws? Is he to say without ceremony [720] what one should and should not do, and simply threaten the penalty for disobedience before passing on to the next law, without adding to his statutes a single word of encouragement or persuasion? It’s just the same with doctors, you know, when we’re ill: one follows one method of treatment, one another. Let’s recall the two methods, so that we can make the same request of the legislator that a child might make of its doctor, to treat him as gently as possible. You want an example? Well, we usually speak, I think, of doctors and doctors’ assistants, but of course we call the latter ‘doctors’ too.

  [b] CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: And these ‘doctors’ (who may be free men or slaves) pick up the skill empirically, by watching and obeying their masters; they’ve no systematic knowledge such as the free doctors have learned for themselves and pass on to their pupils. You’d agree in putting ‘doctors’ into these two categories?

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  [c] ATHENIAN: Now here’s another thing you notice. A state’s invalids include not only free men but slaves too, who are almost always treated by other slaves who either rush about on flying visits or wait to be consulted in their surgeries. This kind of doctor never gives any account of the particular illness of the individual slave, or is prepared to listen to one; he simply prescribes what he thinks best in the light of experience, as if he had precise knowledge, and with the self-confidence of a dictator. Then he dashes off on his way to the next slave-patient, and so takes off his [d] master’s shoulders some of the work of attending the sick. The visits of the free doctor, by contrast, are mostly concerned with treating the illnesses of free men; his method is to construct an empirical case-history by consulting the invalid and his friends; in this way he himself learns something from the sick and at the same time he gives the individual patient all the instruction he can. He gives no prescription until he has somehow gained the invalid’s consent; then, coaxing him into continued cooperation, he [e] tries to complete his restoration to health. Which of the two methods do you think makes a doctor a better healer, or a trainer more efficient? Should they use the double method to achieve a single effect, or should the method too be single—the less satisfactory approach that makes the invalid more recalcitrant?

  CLINIAS: The double, sir, is much better, I think.

  ATHENIAN: Would you like us to see how this double method and the single work out when applied to legislation?

  CLINIAS: Yes, I’d like that very much.

  ATHENIAN: Well then, in heaven’s name, what will be the first law our legislator will establish? Surely the first subject he will turn to in his regulations will be the very first step that leads to the birth of children in [721] the state.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: And this first step is, in all states, the union of two people in the partnership of marriage?

  CLINIAS: Naturally.

  ATHENIAN: So the correct policy for every state will probably be to pass marriage laws first.

  CLINIAS: No doubt about it.

  ATHENIAN: Now then, to start with, let’s have the simple form. It might run more or less like this:

  A man must marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. [b]

  If he does not, he must be punished by fines and disgrace—

  and the fines and disgrace will then be specified. So much for the simple version of the marriage law; this will be the double version:

  A man must marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, reflecting that there is a sense in which nature has not only somehow endowed the human race with a degree of immortality, but also planted in us all a longing to achieve it, which we express in every way we can. One [c] expression of that longing is the desire for fame and the wish not to lie nameless in the grave. Thus mankind is by nature a companion of eternity, and is linked to it, and will be linked to it, forever. Mankind is immortal because it always leaves later generations behind to preserve its unity and identity for all time: it gets its share of immortality by means of procreation. It is never a holy thing voluntarily to deny oneself this prize, and he who neglects to take a wife and have children does [d] precisely that. So if a man obeys the law he will be allowed to go his way without penalty, but

  If a man disobeys, and reaches the age of thirty-five without having married, he must pay a yearly fine

  (of a sum to be specified; that ought to stop him thinking that life as a bachelor is all cakes and ale),

  and be deprived too of all the honors which the younger people in the state pay to their elders on the appropriate occasions.

  When one has heard this law and compared it with the other, one can judge whether in general laws should run to at least twice the length by [e] combining persuasion and threats, or restrict themselves to threats alone and be of ‘single’ length only.

  MEGILLUS: The Spartan instinct, sir, is always to prefer brevity. But if I were asked to sit in judgment on these statutes and say which of the two I’d like to see committed to writing in the state, I’d choose the longer one, [722] and my choice would be precisely the same for every law drafted in the alternative versions of which you’ve given us specimens. Still, I suppose Clinias here too must approve this present legislation, seeing that it’s his state that is contemplating the adoption of laws modeled on it.

  CLINIAS: You’ve put it all very well, Megillus.

  ATHENIAN: However, it would be pretty fatuous to spend our time talking [b] about the length or brevity of the text: it’s high quality that we should value, I think, not extreme brevity or length. One of the kinds of laws we mentioned just now is twice as valuable for practical purposes as the other, but that’s not all: as we said a little while ago, the two types of doctors were an extremely apt parallel:14 A relevant point here is that no legislator ever seems to have noticed that in spite of its being open to them to use two methods in their legislation, compulsion and persuasion (subject to the limitations imposed by the uneducated masses), in fact they use only [c] one. They never mix in persuasion with force when they brew their laws, but administer compulsion neat. As for myself, my dear sirs, I can see a third condition that should be observed in legislation—not that it ever is.

  CLINIAS: What condition do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: Providentially enough, the point is brought out by the very conversation we’ve had today. Since we began to discuss legislation dawn has become noon and we’ve reached this splendid resting-place; we’ve [d] talked about nothing but laws—and yet I suspect it was only a moment ago that we really got round to framing any, and that everything we’ve said up till now has been simply legislative preamble. Now why have I pointed this out? I want to make the point that the spoken word, and in general all compositions that involve using the voice, employ ‘preludes’ (a sort of limbering up, so to speak), and that these introductions are artistically designed to aid the coming performance. For instance, the ‘nomes’ of songs to the harp, and all other kinds of musical composition, [e] are preceded by preludes of fantastic elaboration. But in the case of the real ‘nomes’,15 the kind we call ‘administrative’, nobody has ever so much as breathed the word ‘prelude’ or composed one and given it to the world; the assumption has been that such a thing would be repugnant to nature. But in my opinion the discussion we’ve had indicates that it is perfectly natural; and this means that the laws which seemed ‘double’ when I described them a moment ago are not really ‘double’ in the straightforward sense the term suggests: it’s just that they have two elements, ‘law’ and ‘preface to law’. The ‘dictatorial prescription’, which we compared to the [723] prescriptions of the ‘slavish’ doctors, is the law pure and simple; and the part that comes before it, although in point of fact ‘persuasive’ (as Megillus put it), nevertheless has a function, analogous to that of a preamble in a speech. It seems obvious to
me that the reason why the legislator gave that entire persuasive address was to make the person to whom he promulgated his law accept his orders—the law—in a more co-operative frame of mind and with a correspondingly greater readiness to learn. That’s why, as I see it, this element ought properly to be termed not the ‘text’ of the [b] law, but the ‘preamble’. So after all that, what’s the next point I’d like made? It’s this: the legislator must see that both the permanent body of laws and the individual sub-divisions are always supplied with preambles. The gain will be just as great as it was in the case of the two specimens we gave just now.

  CLINIAS: As far as I’m concerned, I’d certainly instruct our lawgiver, master of his art though he is, to legislate in no way but that.

  ATHENIAN: Yes, Clinias, I think you’re right to agree that all laws have [c] their preambles and that the first task must be to preface the text of each part of the legal code with the appropriate introduction, because the announcement it introduces is important, and it matters a great deal whether it is clearly remembered or not. However, we should be wrong to demand that both ‘major’ laws and minor rules should invariably be [d] headed by a preface. Not every song and speech, after all, needs this treatment. (They all have introductions in the nature of the case, but it’s not always appropriate to use them.) Still, the decision in all these cases must be left to the discretion of the orator or singer or legislator.

  CLINIAS: I think all this is very true. But let’s not waste any more time delaying, sir. Let’s get back to our theme and make a fresh start, if you are agreeable, on the subject you dealt with before, when you were not professing to compose in preamble form; let’s go over the topic again (‘second time lucky’, as they say in games), on the understanding that we [e] are not talking at random, as we did just now, but composing a preface; and we should begin by agreeing that this is what we are doing. We’ve heard enough said just now about the worship of the gods and the services to be rendered to our ancestors;16 let’s try to deal with the subsequent topics until you think the entire preface has been adequately put together. Then you will go on to work through the actual laws.

  ATHENIAN: So our feeling at the moment is that we have already produced [724] an adequate preface about the gods and the powers below them, and about parents living and dead. Your instructions now, I think, are that I should, as it were, take the covers off the remainder of the preface.

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: Well now, the next thing is this: how far should a man concentrate or relax the efforts he devotes to looking after his soul, his body, and his property? This is a suitable topic, and it will be to the mutual [b] advantage of both speaker and listeners to ponder it and so perfect their education as far as they can. So beyond a shadow of a doubt here’s the next subject for explanation and the next topic to listen to.

  CLINIAS: You’re quite right.

  1. Nine or ten miles.

  2. Apparently in part a quotation from Alcman, a Spartan poet of the seventh century. See D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric (Loeb), vol. II, pp. 468–69.

  3. The Athenians killed Androgeos, son of Minos, King of Crete, who then exacted a tribute of seven girls and seven boys as victims for the Minotaur, a Cretan monster.

  4. Iliad xiv.96–102.

  5. Accepting the conjecture of anerōtētheis in e4.

  6. See 691c.

  7. See 690a ff.

  8. See 690b and note.

  9. Protagoras, a philosopher and sophist of the fifth century, maintained that ‘man is the measure of all things’.

  10. A reference to the Pythagorean list of opposites: Odd, Even; Right, Left; Male, Female; Good, Bad; and a number of others.

  11. Reading toi nundē in d2.

  12. Works and Days 287–92.

  13. See 656c ff.

  14. The point seems to be that in the case of the doctors, one kind of treatment was ‘much better’ (720e) than the other (not simply twice as good). In other words, if you double the length of your laws, you more than double their value.

  15. I.e., laws, the Greek word nomoi meaning both ‘laws’ and ‘melodies’.

  16. See 715e–718a.

  Book V

  [726] ATHENIAN: Everyone who was listening to the address just now about the gods and our dearly beloved ancestors, should now pay attention.

  Of all the things a man can call his own, the holiest (though the gods are holier still) is his soul, his most intimate possession. There are two elements that make up the whole of every man. One is stronger and superior, and acts as master; the other, which is weaker and inferior, is a slave; and so a man must always respect the master in him in preference to the slave. Thus when I say that next after the gods—our masters—and [727] their attendant spirits, a man must honor his soul, my recommendation is correct. But hardly a man among us honors it in the right way: he only thinks he does. You see, nothing that is evil can confer honor, because to honor something is to confer marvelous benefits upon it; and anyone who reckons he is magnifying his soul by flattery or gifts or indulgence, so that he fails to make it better than it was before, may think he is honoring it, but in fact that is not what he is doing at all. For instance, a person has [b] only to reach adolescence to imagine he is capable of deciding everything; he thinks he is honoring his soul if he praises it, and he is only too keen to tell it to do what it likes. But our present doctrine is that in doing this he is not honoring but harming it; whereas we are arguing that he should honor it next after the gods. Similarly when a man thinks that the responsibility for his every fault lies not in himself but in others, whom he blames for his most frequent and serious misfortunes, while exonerating himself, [c] he doubtless supposes he is honoring his soul. But far from doing that, he is injuring it. Again, when he indulges his pleasures and disobeys the recommendations and advice of the legislator, he is not honoring his soul at all, but dishonoring it, by filling it with misery and repentance. Or, to take the opposite case, he may not brace himself to endure the recommended toils and fears and troubles and pains, and simply give up; but his surrender confers no honor on his soul, because all such conduct brings [d] disgrace upon it. Nor does he do it any honor if he thinks that life is a good thing no matter what the cost. This too dishonors his soul, because he surrenders to its fancy that everything in the next world is an evil, whereas he should resist the thought and enlighten his soul by demonstrating that he does not really know whether our encounter with the gods in the next world may not be in fact the best thing that ever happens to us. And when a man values beauty above virtue, the disrespect he shows his soul is total and fundamental, because he would argue that the body [e] is more to be honored than the soul—falsely, because nothing born on earth is to be honored more than what comes from heaven; and anyone who holds a different view of the soul does not realize how wonderful is this possession which he scorns. Again, a man who is seized by lust to [728] obtain money by improper means and feels no disgust in the acquisition, will find that in the event he does his soul no honor by such gifts—far from it: he sells all that gives the soul its beauty and value for a few paltry pieces of gold; but all the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it does not compensate for lack of virtue.

  To sum up, the legislator will list and classify certain things as disgraceful and wicked, and others as fine and good; everyone who is not prepared to make all efforts to refrain from the one kind of action and practice the other to the limits of his power must be unaware that in all such conduct he is treating his soul, the most holy possession he has, in the most disrespectful [b] and abominable manner. You see, practically no one takes into account the greatest ‘judgment’, as it is called, on wrongdoing. This is to grow to resemble men who are evil, and as the resemblance increases to shun good men and their wholesome conversation and to cut oneself off from them, while seeking to attach oneself to the other kind and keep their company. The inevitable result of consorting with such people is that what you do and have done to you is exactly w
hat they naturally do and say [c] to each other. Consequently, this condition is not really a ‘judgment’ at all, because justice and judgment are fine things: it is mere punishment, suffering that follows a wrongdoing. Now whether a man is made to suffer or not, he is equally wretched. In the former case he is not cured, in the latter he will ultimately be killed to ensure the safety of many others.

  To put it in a nutshell, ‘honor’ is to cleave to what is superior, and, where practicable, to make as perfect as possible what is deficient. Nothing that nature gives a man is better adapted than his soul to enable him to avoid evil, keep on the track of the highest good, and when he has captured [d] his quarry to live in intimacy with it for the rest of his life.

  For those reasons the soul has been allotted the second rank of honor;1 third—as everyone will realize—comes the honor naturally due to the body. Here again it is necessary to examine the various reasons for honoring it, and see which are genuine and which are false; this is the job of a legislator, and I imagine he will list them as follows. The body that deserves to be honored is not the handsome one or the strong or the swift—nor yet the healthy (though a good many people would think it was); and it [e] is certainly not the one with the opposite qualities to all these. He will say that the body which achieves a mean between all these extreme conditions is by far the soundest and best-balanced, because the one extreme makes the soul bold and boastful, while the other makes it abject and groveling.