Book 3
687
Ath. The desire that, if possible, everything,—or failing that, all that is humanly possible—should happen in accordance with the demands of one’s own heart.
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Meg. To he sure.
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Ath. Since this, then, is what we all wish always, alike in childhood and manhood and old age, it is for this, necessarily, that we should pray continually.
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Meg. Of course.
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Ath. Moreover, on behalf of our friends we will join in making the same prayer which they make on their own behalf.
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Meg. To be sure.
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Ath. And a son is a friend to his father, the boy to the man.
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Meg. Certainly.
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Ath. Yet the father will often pray the gods that the things which the son prays to obtain may in no wise he granted according to the son’s prayers.
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Meg. Do you mean, when the son who is praying is still young and foolish?
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Ath. Yes, and also when the father, either through age or through the hot temper of youth, being devoid of all sense of right and justice, indulges in the vehement prayers of passion (like those of Theseus against Hippolytus Hippolytus was accused by his stepmother, Phaedra, of attempting to dishonor her: therefore his father (Theseus) invoked a curse upon him, and Poseidon (father of Theseus) sent a bull which scared the horses of H.’s chariot so that they upset the chariot and dragged him till he was dead., when he met his luckless end), while the son, on the contrary, has a sense of justice,—in this case do you suppose that the son will echo his father’s prayers?
687
Meg. I grasp your meaning. You mean, as I suppose, that what a man ought to pray and press for is not that everything should follow his own desire, while his desire in no way follows his own reason; but it is the winning of wisdom that everyone of us, States and individuals alike, ought to pray for and strive after.
