Greek Texts & Translations

How comes it, Stranger, that we are ruling that it makes no difference to the thief whether the thing he steals be great or small, and whether the place it is stolen from be holy or unhallowed, or whatever other differences may exist in the manner of a theft; whereas the lawgiver ought to suit the punishment to the crime by inflicting dissimilar penalties in these varying cases?

Well said, Clinias! You have collided with me 857cwhen I was going, as it were, full steam ahead, and so have woken me up. You have reminded me of a previous reflection of mine, how that none of the attempts hitherto made at legislation have ever been carried out rightly—as in fact we may infer from the instance before us. What do I mean to imply by this remark? It was no bad comparison we made ^note when we compared all existing legislation to the doctoring of slaves by slaves. For one should carefully notice this, that if any of the doctors who practice medicine by purely empirical methods, 857ddevoid of theory, were to come upon a free-born doctor conversing with a free-born patient, and using arguments, much as a philosopher would, dealing with the course of the ailment from its origin and surveying the natural constitution of the human body,—he would at once break out into a roar of laughter, and the language he would use would be none other than that which always comes ready to the tongue of most so-called “doctors”: “You fool,” he would say, “you are not doctoring your patient, but schooling him, so to say, as though what he wanted was to be made, not a sound man, 857ebut a doctor.”

And in saying so, would he not be right?

Possibly, provided that he should also take the view that the man who treats of laws in the way that we are now doing is schooling the citizens rather than legislating. Would he not seem to be right in saying that, too?

Probably.

How fortunate we are in the conclusion we have now come to!

What conclusion?

This,—that there is no need to legislate, 858abut only to become students ourselves, and endeavor to discern in regard to every polity how the best form might come about, and how that which is the least elaborate possible. Moreover, we are now allowed, as it seems, to study, if we choose, the best form of legislation, or, if we choose, the least elaborate. So let us make our choice between these two.

The choice we propose, Stranger, is an absurd one: we should be acting like legislators 858bwho were driven by some overpowering necessity to pass laws on the spot, because it is impossible for them to do so on the morrow. But for us (if Heaven will) it is quite possible to do as bricklayers do, or men starting on any other kind of construction,—that is, to collect material piecemeal, from which we may select what is suitable for the edifice we intend to build, and, what is more, select it at our leisure. Let us assume, then, that we are not now building under compulsion, but that we are still at leisure, and engaged partly in collecting material and partly in putting it together; so that we may rightly say that our laws are being in part 858calready erected and in part collected.

In this way, Clinias, our survey of laws will at any rate follow nature's course more closely. Now let us consider, I adjure you, the following point about legislators.

What point?

We have in our States not only the writings and written speeches of many other people, but also the writings and speeches of the lawgiver.

Certainly.

Are we, then, to pay attention to the compositions of the others— 858dpoets, and all who, either with or without meter, have composed and put on record their counsels concerning life,—but to pay no attention to those of the lawgivers? Or should we not attend to them above all others?

Yes, far above all.

But we surely do not mean that the lawgiver alone of all the writers is not to give counsel about what is noble, good and just, teaching what these are, and how those who intend to be happy must practice them.

Of course he must do so. 858e

Well then, is it more disgraceful on the part of Homer and Tyrtaeus and the rest of the poets to lay down in their writings bad rules about life and its pursuits, and less disgraceful on the part of Lycurgus and Solon and all the legislators who have written? Or rather, is it not right that, of all the writings which exist in States, those which concern laws should be seen, when unrolled, to be by far the fairest and best, and all other writings to be either modelled on them or, 859aif disagreeing with them, contemptible? Are we to conceive that the written laws in our States should resemble persons moved by love and wisdom, such as a father or a mother, or that they should order and threaten, like some tyrant and despot, who writes his decree on the wall, and there is an end of it? So let us now consider whether we are going to try to discuss laws