Book 1
626
Ath. Your training, Stranger, has certainly, as it seems to me, given you an excellent understanding of the legal practices of Crete. But tell me this more clearly still: by the definition you have given of the well-constituted State you appear to me to imply that it ought to be organized in such a way as to be victorious in war over all other States. Is that so?
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Clin. Certainly it is; and I think that our friend here shares my opinion.
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Meg. No Lacedaemonian, my good sir, could possibly say otherwise.
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Ath. If this, then, is the right attitude for a State to adopt towards a State, is the right attitude for village towards village different?
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Clin. By no means.
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Ath. It is the same, you say?
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Clin. Yes.
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Ath. Well then, is the same attitude right also for one house in the village towards another, and for each man towards every other?
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Clin. It is.
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Ath. And must each individual man regard himself as his own enemy? Or what do we say when we come to this point?
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Clin. O Stranger of Athens, for I should be loth to call you a man of Attica, since methinks you deserve rather to be named after the goddess Athena, seeing that you have made the argument more clear by taking it back again to its starting-point; whereby you will the more easily discover the justice of our recent statement that, in the mass, all men are both publicly and privately the enemies of all, and individually also each man is his own enemy.
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Ath. What is your meaning, my admirable sir?
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Clin. It is just in this war, my friend, that the victory over self is of all victories the first and best while self-defeat is of all defeats at once the worst and the most shameful. For these phrases signify that a war against self exists within each of us.Cp. Plat. Rep. 430e ff.: Proverbs xiv 32.
