STRANGER: And returning to the enquiry with which we began, have we
not found that considerable portions of virtue are at variance with one
another, and give rise to a similar opposition in the characters who are
endowed with them?
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: Let us consider a further point.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: I want to know, whether any constructive art will make
any, even the most trivial thing, out of bad and good materials
indifferently, if this can be helped? does not all art rather reject the
bad as far as possible, and accept the good and fit materials, and from
these elements, whether like or unlike, gathering them all into one,
work out some nature or idea?
YOUNG SOCRATES: To, be sure.
STRANGER: Then the true and natural art of statesmanship will never
allow any State to be formed by a combination of good and bad men, if
this can be avoided; but will begin by testing human natures in play,
and after testing them, will entrust them to proper teachers who are the
ministers of her purposes--she will herself give orders, and maintain
authority; just as the art of weaving continually gives orders and
maintains authority over the carders and all the others who prepare the
material for the work, commanding the subsidiary arts to execute the
works which she deems necessary for making the web.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: In like manner, the royal science appears to me to be the
mistress of all lawful educators and instructors, and having this
queenly power, will not permit them to train men in what will produce
characters unsuited to the political constitution which she desires to
create, but only in what will produce such as are suitable. Those
which have no share of manliness and temperance, or any other virtuous
inclination, and, from the necessity of an evil nature, are violently
carried away to godlessness and insolence and injustice, she gets rid of
by death and exile, and punishes them with the greatest of disgraces.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That is commonly said.
STRANGER: But those who are wallowing in ignorance and baseness she bows
under the yoke of slavery.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right.
STRANGER: The rest of the citizens, out of whom, if they have education,
something noble may be made, and who are capable of being united by the
statesman, the kingly art blends and weaves together; taking on the one
hand those whose natures tend rather to courage, which is the stronger
element and may be regarded as the warp, and on the other hand those
which incline to order and gentleness, and which are represented in
the figure as spun thick and soft, after the manner of the woof--these,
which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and weave together in the
following manner:
YOUNG SOCRATES: In what manner?
STRANGER: First of all, she takes the eternal element of the soul and
binds it with a divine cord, to which it is akin, and then the animal
nature, and binds that with human cords.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand what you mean.
STRANGER: The meaning is, that the opinion about the honourable and
the just and good and their opposites, which is true and confirmed
by reason, is a divine principle, and when implanted in the soul, is
implanted, as I maintain, in a nature of heavenly birth.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; what else should it be?
STRANGER: Only the Statesman and the good legislator, having the
inspiration of the royal muse, can implant this opinion, and he, only in
the rightly educated, whom we were just now describing.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough.
STRANGER: But him who cannot, we will not designate by any of the names
which are the subject of the present enquiry.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very right.
STRANGER: The courageous soul when attaining this truth becomes
civilized, and rendered more capable of partaking of justice; but when
not partaking, is inclined to brutality. Is not that true?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: And again, the peaceful and orderly nature, if sharing in
these opinions, becomes temperate and wise, as far as this may be in a
State, but if not, deservedly obtains the ignominious name of silliness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: Can we say that such a connexion as this will lastingly unite
the evil with one another or with the good, or that any science would
seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join such materials?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.
STRANGER: But in those who were originally of a noble nature, and who
have been nurtured in noble ways, and in those only, may we not say
that union is implanted by law, and that this is the medicine which art
prescribes for them, and of all the bonds which unite the dissimilar and
contrary parts of virtue is not this, as I was saying, the divinest?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there is no difficulty in
imagining, or when you have imagined, in creating the other bonds, which
are human only.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds do you mean?
STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between
States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between individuals
by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons form marriage
connexions without due regard to what is best for the procreation of
children.
YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way?
STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are
objects not worthy even of a serious censure.
YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider them at all.
STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those who
make family their chief aim, and to indicate their error.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; they seek their ease and
receive with open arms those who are like themselves, and hate those who
are unlike them, being too much influenced by feelings of dislike.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and
as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this
class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their own,
whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?
STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during
many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts
forth into downright madness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.
STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and
has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow
too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.
STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty
in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion
about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole
process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures
to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the
warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and
by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one
smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?
STRANGER: Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who
has both these qualities--when many, you must mingle some of each, for
the temperate ruler is very careful and just and safe, but is wanting in
thoroughness and go.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly, that is very true.
STRANGER: The character of the courageous, on the other hand, falls
short of the former in justice and caution, but has the power of action
in a remarkable degree, and where either of these two qualities is
wanting, there cities cannot altogether prosper either in their public
or private life.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they cannot.
STRANGER: This then we declare to be the completion of the web of
political action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the brave
and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn the two
minds into communion with one another by unanimity and friendship, and
having perfected the noblest and best of all the webs which political
life admits, and enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities,
whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs and
presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is vouchsafed to a
city, in no particular fails to secure their happiness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no
less than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.