Kitap 6
751
Ath. Yet, with the hand on the plough, as they say, there is no looking back.Literally, a contest does not at all admit excuses; i.e. once engaged in it, you cannot draw back. And so it must be now with you and me; for you, as you tell me,Plat. Laws 702b, Plat. Laws 702c. have given your pledge to the Cretan nation that you, with your nine colleagues, will devote yourself to the founding of that State; and I, for my part, have promised to lend you aid in the course of our present imaginative sketch.
752
Ath. And indeed I should be loth to leave our sketch headless;Cp.Plat. Gorg. 505d ff. for it would look entirely shapeless if it wandered about in that guise.
752
Clin. I heartily approve of what you say, Stranger.
752
Ath. And what is more, I shall act as I say to the best of my power.
752
Clin. By all means let us do as we say.
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Ath. It shall be done, if God will and if we can thus far master our old age.
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Clin. Probably God will be willing.
752
Ath. Probably he will; and with him as leader let us observe this also—
752
Clin. What?
752
Ath. How bold and adventurous is the fashion in which we shall now have founded this State of ours.
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Clin. What is now specially in your mind, and what makes you say so?
752
Ath. The fact that we are legislating lightheartedly and boldly for inexperienced men, in the hope that they will accept the laws we have now enacted. Thus much at least is plain, Clinias, to almost everyone—even to the meanest intelligence— that they will not readily accept any of those laws at the start; but if those laws could remain unchanged until those who have imbibed them in infancy, and have been reared up in them and grown fully used to them, have taken part in elections to office in every department of State,—then, when this has been effected (if any means or method can be found to effect it rightly) , we have, as I think, a strong security that, after this transitional period of disciplined adolescence, the State will remain firm.
752
Clin. It is certainly reasonable to suppose so.
