Book 4
714
Ath. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason’s ordering the name of law.A double word-play:νοῦς=νόμος, and διανομάς=δαίμονας. Laws, being the dispensation of reason, take the place of the daemons of the age of Cronos: the divine element in man (τὸ δαιμόνιον), which claims obedience, is reason (νοῦς). But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now) no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do.
714
Clin. We must, of course, believe it.
714
Ath. Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? And how many constitutions are commonly recognized we have recently recounted.Plat. Laws 712c. Please do not suppose that the problem now raised is one of small importance; rather it is of the highest importance. For we are againCp. Plat. Laws 630b, 690b, 690c. faced with the problem as to what ought to be the aim of justice and injustice. The assertion of the people I refer to is this,— that the laws ought not to aim either at war or at goodness in general, but ought to have regard to the benefit of the established polity, whatever it may be, so that it may keep in power forever and never be dissolved; and that the natural definition of justice is best stated in this way.
714
Clin. In what way?
