Laws. Plato
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our soldiers are archers, equipped with bows and arrows. The legislator was under the idea that war was the natural state of all mankind, and that peace is only a pretence; he thought that no possessions had any value which were not secured against enemies.' And do you think that superiority in war is the proper aim of government? 'Certainly I do, and my Spartan friend will agree with me.' And are there wars, not only of state against state, but of village against village, of family against family, of individual against individual? 'Yes.' And is a man his own enemy? 'There you come to first principles, like a true votary of the goddess Athene; and this is all the better, for you will the sooner recognize the truth of what I am saying—that all men everywhere are the enemies of all, and each individual of every other and of himself; and, further, that there is a victory and defeat—the best and the worst—which each man sustains, not at the hands of another, but of himself.' And does this extend to states and villages as well as to individuals? 'Certainly; there is a better in them which conquers or is conquered by the worse.' Whether the worse ever really conquers the better, is a question which may be left for the present; but your meaning is, that bad citizens do sometimes overcome the good, and that the state is then conquered by herself, and that when they are defeated the state is victorious over herself. Or, again, in a family there may be several brothers, and the bad may be a majority; and when the bad majority conquer the good minority, the family are worse than themselves. The use of the terms 'better or worse than himself or themselves' may be doubtful, but about the thing meant there can be no dispute. 'Very true.' Such a struggle might be determined by a judge. And which will be the better judge—he who destroys the worse and lets the better rule, or he who lets the better rule and makes the others voluntarily obey; or, thirdly, he who destroys no one, but reconciles the two parties? 'The last, clearly.' But the object of such a judge or legislator would not be war. 'True.' And as there are two kinds of war, one without and one within a state, of which the internal is by far the worse, will not the legislator chiefly direct his attention to this latter? He will reconcile the contending factions, and unite them against their external enemies. 'Certainly.' Every legislator will aim at the greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil or external, but mutual peace and good-will, as in the body health is preferable to the purgation of disease. He who makes war his object instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not a true statesman. 'And yet, Stranger, the laws both of Crete and Sparta aim entirely at war.' Perhaps so; but do not let us quarrel about your legislators—let us be gentle; they were in earnest quite as much as we are, and we must try to discover their meaning. The poet Tyrtaeus (you know his poems in Crete, and my Lacedaemonian friend is only too familiar with them)—he was an Athenian by birth, and a Spartan citizen:—'Well,' he says, 'I sing not, I care not about any man, however rich or happy, unless he is brave in war.' Now I should like, in the name of us all, to ask the poet a question. Oh Tyrtaeus, I would say to him, we agree with you in praising those who excel in war, but which kind of war do you mean?—that dreadful war which is termed civil, or the milder sort which is waged against foreign enemies? You say that you abominate 'those who are not eager to taste their enemies' blood,' and you seem to mean chiefly their foreign enemies. 'Certainly he does.' But we contend that there are men better far than your heroes, Tyrtaeus, concerning whom another poet, Theognis the Sicilian, says that 'in a civil broil they are worth their weight in gold and silver.' For in a civil war, not only courage, but justice and temperance and wisdom are required, and all virtue is better than a part. The mercenary soldier is ready to die at his post; yet he is commonly a violent, senseless creature. And the legislator, whether inspired or uninspired, will make laws with a view to the highest virtue; and this is not brute courage, but loyalty in the hour of danger. The virtue of Tyrtaeus, although needful enough in his own time, is really of a fourth-rate description. 'You are degrading our legislator to a very low level.' Nay, we degrade not him, but ourselves, if we believe that the laws of Lycurgus and Minos had a view to war only. A divine lawgiver would have had regard to all the different kinds of virtue, and have arranged his laws in corresponding classes, and not in the modern fashion, which only makes them after the want of them is felt—about inheritances and heiresses and assaults, and the like. As you truly said, virtue is the business of the legislator; but you went wrong when you referred all legislation to a part of virtue, and to an inferior part. For the object of laws, whether the Cretan or any other, is to make men happy. Now happiness or good is of two kinds—there are divine and there are human goods. He who has the divine has the human added to him; but he who has lost the greater is deprived of both. The lesser goods are health, beauty, strength, and, lastly, wealth; not the blind God, Pluto, but one who has eyes to see and follow wisdom. For mind or wisdom is the most divine of all goods; and next comes temperance, and justice springs from the union of wisdom and temperance with courage, which is the fourth or last. These four precede other goods, and the legislator will arrange all his ordinances accordingly, the human going back to the divine, and the divine to their leader mind. There will be enactments about marriage, about education, about all the states and feelings and experiences of men and women, at every age, in weal and woe, in war and peace; upon all the law will fix a stamp of praise and blame. There will also be regulations about property and expenditure, about contracts, about rewards and punishments, and finally about funeral rites and honours of the dead. The lawgiver will appoint guardians to preside over these things; and mind will harmonize his ordinances, and show them to be in agreement with temperance and justice. Now I want to know whether the same principles are observed in the laws of Lycurgus and Minos, or, as I should rather say, of Apollo and Zeus. We must go through the virtues, beginning with courage, and then we will show that what has preceded has relation to virtue.
'I wish,' says the Lacedaemonian, 'that you, Stranger, would first criticize Cleinias and the Cretan laws.' Yes, is the reply, and I will criticize you and myself, as well as him. Tell me, Megillus, were not the common meals and gymnastic training instituted by your legislator with a view to war? 'Yes; and next in the order of importance comes hunting, and fourth the endurance of pain in boxing contests, and in the beatings which are the punishment of theft. There is, too, the so-called Crypteia or secret service, in which our youth wander about the country night and day unattended, and even in winter go unshod and have no beds to lie on. Moreover they wrestle and exercise under a blazing sun, and they have many similar customs.' Well, but is courage only a combat against fear and pain, and not against pleasure and flattery? 'Against both, I should say.' And which is worse—to be overcome by pain, or by pleasure? 'The latter.' But did the lawgivers of Crete and Sparta legislate for a courage which is lame of one leg—able to meet the attacks of pain but not those of pleasure, or for one which can meet both? 'For a courage which can meet both, I should say.' But if so, where are the institutions which train your citizens to be equally brave against pleasure and pain, and superior to enemies within as well as without? 'We confess that we have no institutions worth mentioning which are of this character.' I am not surprised, and will therefore only request forbearance on the part of us all, in case the love of truth should lead any of us to censure the laws of the others. Remember that I am more in the way of hearing criticisms of your laws than you can be; for in well-ordered states like Crete and Sparta, although an old man may sometimes speak of them in private to a ruler or elder, a similar liberty is not allowed to the young. But now being alone we shall not offend your legislator by a friendly examination of his laws. 'Take any freedom which you like.'
My first observation is, that your lawgiver ordered you to endure hardships, because he thought that those who had not this discipline would run away from those who had. But he ought to have considered further, that those who had never learned to resist pleasure would be equally at the mercy of those who had, and these are often among the worst of mankind. Pleasure, like fear, would overcome them and take away their courage and freedom. 'Perhaps; but I must not be hasty in giving my assent.'
Next as to temperance: what institutions have you which are adapted to promote temperance? 'There are the common meals and gymnastic exercises.' These are partly good and partly bad, and, as in medicine, what is good at one time and for one person, is bad at another time and for another person. Now although gymnastics and common meals do good, they are also a cause of evil in civil troubles, and they appear to encourage unnatural love, as has been shown at Miletus, in Boeotia, and at Thurii. And the Cretans are said to have invented the tale of Zeus and Ganymede in order to justify their evil practices by the example of the God who was their lawgiver. Leaving the story, we may observe that all law has to