commemoration of them. Living on this wise, we shall be accepted of the Gods, and shall pass our days in good hope. The law will determine all our various duties towards relatives and friends and other citizens, and the whole state will be happy and prosperous. But if the legislator would persuade as well as command, he will add prefaces to his laws which will predispose the citizens to virtue. Even a little accomplished in the way of gaining the hearts of men is of great value. For most men are in no particular haste to become good. As Hesiod says:
'Long and steep is the first half of the way to virtue, But when you have reached the top the rest is easy.'
'Those are excellent words.' Yes; but may I tell you the effect which the preceding discourse has had upon me? I will express my meaning in an address to the lawgiver: – O lawgiver, if you know what we ought to do and say, you can surely tell us; – you are not like the poet, who, as you were just now saying, does not know the effect of his own words. And the poet may reply, that when he sits down on the tripod of the Muses he is not in his right mind, and that being a mere imitator he may be allowed to say all sorts of opposite things, and cannot tell which of them is true. But this licence cannot be allowed to the lawgiver. For example, there are three kinds of funerals; one of them is excessive, another mean, a third moderate, and you say that the last is right. Now if I had a rich wife, and she told me to bury her, and I were to sing of her burial, I should praise the extravagant kind; a poor man would commend a funeral of the meaner sort, and a man of moderate means would prefer a moderate funeral. But you, as legislator, would have to say exactly what you meant by 'moderate.' 'Very true.' And is our lawgiver to have no preamble or interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice to his subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are there not two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are freemen and learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and doctor's assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on their masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the gentlemen doctors practise upon freemen, and that slave doctors confine themselves to slaves? The latter go about the country or wait for the slaves at the dispensaries. They hold no parley with their patients about their diseases or the remedies of them; they practise by the rule of thumb, and give their decrees in the most arbitrary manner. When they have doctored one patient they run off to another, whom they treat with equal assurance, their duty being to relieve the master of the care of his sick slaves. But the other doctor, who practises on freemen, proceeds in quite a different way. He takes counsel with his patient and learns from him, and never does anything until he has persuaded him of what he is doing. He trusts to influence rather than force. Now is not the use of both methods far better than the use of either alone? And both together may be advantageously employed by us in legislation.
We may illustrate our proposal by an example. The laws relating to marriage naturally come first, and therefore we may begin with them. The simple law would be as follows: – A man shall marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; if he do not, he shall be fined or deprived of certain privileges. The double law would add the reason why: Forasmuch as man desires immortality, which he attains by the procreation of children, no one should deprive himself of his share in this good. He who obeys the law is blameless, but he who disobeys must not be a gainer by his celibacy; and therefore he shall pay a yearly fine, and shall not be allowed to receive honour from the young. That is an example of what I call the double law, which may enable us to judge how far the addition of persuasion to threats is desirable. 'Lacedaemonians in general, Stranger, are in favour of brevity; in this case, however, I prefer length. But Cleinias is the real lawgiver, and he ought to be first consulted.' 'Thank you, Megillus.' Whether words are to be many or few, is a foolish question: – the best and not the shortest forms are always to be approved. And legislators have never thought of the advantages which they might gain by using persuasion as well as force, but trust to force only. And I have something else to say about the matter. Here have we been from early dawn until noon, discoursing about laws, and all that we have been saying is only the preamble of the laws which we are about to give. I tell you this, because I want you to observe that songs and strains have all of them preludes, but that laws, though called by the same name (nomoi), have never any prelude. Now I am disposed to give preludes to laws, dividing them into two parts – one containing the despotic command, which I described under the image of the slave doctor – the other the persuasive part, which I term the preamble. The legislator should give preludes or preambles to his laws. 'That shall be the way in my colony.' I am glad that you agree with me; this is a matter which it is important to remember. A preamble is not always necessary to a law: the lawgiver must determine when it is needed, as the musician determines when there is to be a prelude to a song. 'Most true: and now, having a preamble, let us recommence our discourse.' Enough has been said of Gods and parents, and we may proceed to consider what relates to the citizens – their souls, bodies, properties, – their occupations and amusements; and so arrive at the nature of education.
The first word of the Laws somewhat abruptly introduces the thought which is present to the mind of Plato throughout the work, namely, that Law is of divine origin. In the words of a great English writer – 'Her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world.' Though the particular laws of Sparta and Crete had a narrow and imperfect aim, this is not true of divine laws, which are based upon the principles of human nature, and not framed to meet the exigencies of the moment. They have their natural divisions, too, answering to the kinds of virtue; very unlike the discordant enactments of an Athenian assembly or of an English Parliament. Yet we may observe two inconsistencies in Plato's treatment of the subject: first, a lesser, inasmuch as he does not clearly distinguish the Cretan and Spartan laws, of which the exclusive aim is war, from those other laws of Zeus and Apollo which are said to be divine, and to comprehend all virtue. Secondly, we may retort on him his own complaint against Sparta and Crete, that he has himself given us a code of laws, which for the most part have a military character; and that we cannot point to 'obvious examples of similar institutions which are concerned with pleasure;' at least there is only one such, that which relates to the regulation of convivial intercourse. The military spirit which is condemned by him in the beginning of the Laws, reappears in the seventh and eighth books.
The mention of Minos the great lawgiver, and of Rhadamanthus the righteous administrator of the law, suggests the two divisions of the laws into enactments and appointments of officers. The legislator and the judge stand side by side, and their functions cannot be wholly distinguished. For the judge is in some sort a legislator, at any rate in small matters; and his decisions growing into precedents, must determine the innumerable details which arise out of the conflict of circumstances. These Plato proposes to leave to a younger generation of legislators. The action of courts of law in making law seems to have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge. In reading the Laws of Plato, or any other ancient writing about Laws, we should consider how gradual the process is by which not only a legal system, but the administration of a court of law, becomes perfected.
There are other subjects on which Plato breaks ground, as his manner is, early in the work. First, he gives a sketch of the subject of laws; they are to comprehend the whole of human life, from infancy to age, and from birth to death, although the proposed plan is far from being regularly executed in the books which follow, partly owing to the necessity of describing the constitution as well as the laws of his new colony. Secondly, he touches on the power of music, which may exercise so great an influence on the character of men for good or evil; he refers especially to the great offence – which he mentions again, and which he had condemned in the Republic – of varying the modes and rhythms, as well as to that of separating the words from the music. Thirdly, he reprobates the prevalence of unnatural loves in Sparta and Crete, which he attributes to the practice of syssitia and gymnastic exercises, and considers to be almost inseparable from them. To this subject he again returns in the eighth book. Fourthly, the virtues are affirmed to be inseparable from one another, even if not absolutely one; this, too, is a principle which he reasserts at the conclusion of the work. As in the beginnings of Plato's other writings, we have here several 'notes' struck, which form the preludes of longer discussions, although the hint is less ingeniously given, and the promise more imperfectly
