Laws: Book V
Book V
ATHENIAN: Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about Gods, and
about our dear forefathers:--Of all the things which a man has, next to
the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now in every
man there are two parts: the better and superior, which rules, and the
worse and inferior, which serves; and the ruling part of him is always to
be preferred to the subject. Wherefore I am right in bidding every one
next to the Gods, who are our masters, and those who in order follow them
(i.e. the demons), to honour his own soul, which every one seems to
honour, but no one honours as he ought; for honour is a divine good, and
no evil thing is honourable; and he who thinks that he can honour the soul
by word or gift, or any sort of compliance, without making her in any way
better, seems to honour her, but honours her not at all. For example,
every man, from his very boyhood, fancies that he is able to know
everything, and thinks that he honours his soul by praising her, and he is
very ready to let her do whatever she may like. But I mean to say that in
acting thus he injures his soul, and is far from honouring her; whereas,
in our opinion, he ought to honour her as second only to the Gods. Again,
when a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and not himself, for the
errors which he has committed from time to time, and the many and great
evils which befell him in consequence, and is always fancying himself to
be exempt and innocent, he is under the idea that he is honouring his
soul; whereas the very reverse is the fact, for he is really injuring her.
And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he
indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her; he only
dishonours her, and fills her full of evil and remorse; or when he does
not endure to the end the labours and fears and sorrows and pains which
the legislator approves, but gives way before them, then, by yielding, he
does not honour the soul, but by all such conduct he makes her to be
dishonourable; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a good, does
he honour her, but yet once more he dishonours her; for the soul having a
notion that the world below is all evil, he yields to her, and does not
resist and teach or convince her that, for aught she knows, the world of
the Gods below, instead of being evil, may be the greatest of all goods.
Again, when any one prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real
and utter dishonour of the soul? For such a preference implies that the
body is more honourable than the soul; and this is false, for there is
nothing of earthly birth which is more honourable than the heavenly, and
he who thinks otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he undervalues
this wonderful possession; nor, again, when a person is willing, or not
unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then honour his soul with
gifts--far otherwise; he sells her glory and honour for a small piece of
gold; but all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to
give in exchange for virtue. In a word, I may say that he who does not
estimate the base and evil, the good and noble, according to the standard
of the legislator, and abstain in every possible way from the one and
practise the other to the utmost of his power, does not know that in all
these respects he is most foully and disgracefully abusing his soul, which
is the divinest part of man; for no one, as I may say, ever considers that
which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing--namely, to
grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the
conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and
follow after the company of the bad. And he who is joined to them must do
and suffer what such men by nature do and say to one another,--a suffering
which is not justice but retribution; for justice and the just are noble,
whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon injustice; and
whether a man escape or endure this, he is miserable,--in the former case,
because he is not cured; while in the latter, he perishes in order that
the rest of mankind may be saved.
Speaking generally, our glory is to follow the better and improve the
inferior, which is susceptible of improvement, as far as this is possible.
And of all human possessions, the soul is by nature most inclined to avoid
the evil, and track out and find the chief good; which when a man has
found, he should take up his abode with it during the remainder of his
life. Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour; and
third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural
order. Having determined this, we have next to consider that there is a
natural honour of the body, and that of honours some are true and some are
counterfeit. To decide which are which is the business of the legislator;
and he, I suspect, would intimate that they are as follows:--Honour is not
to be given to the fair body, or to the strong or the swift or the tall,
or to the healthy body (although many may think otherwise), any more than
to their opposites; but the mean states of all these habits are by far the
safest and most moderate; for the one extreme makes the soul braggart and
insolent, and the other, illiberal and base; and money, and property, and
distinction all go to the same tune. The excess of any of these things is
apt to be a source of hatreds and divisions among states and individuals;
and the defect of them is commonly a cause of slavery. And, therefore, I
would not have any one fond of heaping up riches for the sake of his
children, in order that he may leave them as rich as possible. For the
possession of great wealth is of no use, either to them or to the state.
The condition of youth which is free from flattery, and at the same time
not in need of the necessaries of life, is the best and most harmonious of
all, being in accord and agreement with our nature, and making life to be
most entirely free from sorrow. Let parents, then, bequeath to their
children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence. We, indeed,
fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when
they show a want of reverence. But this quality is not really imparted to
them by the present style of admonition, which only tells them that the
young ought always to be reverential. A sensible legislator will rather
exhort the elders to reverence the younger, and above all to take heed
that no young man sees or hears one of themselves doing or saying anything
disgraceful; for where old men have no shame, there young men will most
certainly be devoid of reverence. The best way of training the young is to
train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always
carrying out your own admonitions in practice. He who honours his kindred,
and reveres those who share in the same Gods and are of the same blood and
family, may fairly expect that the Gods who preside over generation will
be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed. And he who deems the
services which his friends and acquaintances do for him, greater and more
important than they themselves deem them, and his own favours to them less
than theirs to him, will have their good-will in the intercourse of life.
And surely in his relations to the state and his fellow citizens, he is by
far the best, who rather than the Olympic or any other victory of peace or
war, desires to win the palm of obedience to the laws of his country, and
who, of all mankind, is the person reputed to have obeyed them best
through life. In his relations to strangers, a man should consider that a
contract is a most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of
strangers are more directly dependent on the protection of God, than
wrongs done to citizens; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends,
is more to be pitied by Gods and men. Wherefore, also, he who is most able
to avenge him is most zealous in his cause; and he who is most able is the
genius and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of Zeus, the
god of strangers. And for this reason, he who has a spark of caution in
him, will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the
stranger. And of offences committed, whether against strangers or fellow-
countrymen, that against suppliants is the greatest. For the God who
witnessed to the agreement made with the suppliant, becomes in a special
manner the guardian of the sufferer; and he will certainly not suffer
unavenged.
Thus we have fairly described the manner in which a man is to act about
his parents, and himself, and his own affairs; and in relation to the
state, and his friends, and kindred, both in what concerns his own
countrymen, and in what concerns the stranger. We will now consider what
manner of man he must be who would best pass through life in respect of
those other things which are not matters of law, but of praise and blame
only; in which praise and blame educate a man, and make him more tractable
and amenable to the laws which are about to be imposed.
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to Gods and men; and he
who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the
truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be
trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he
who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither condition is enviable,
for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend, and as time advances he
becomes known, and lays up in store for himself isolation in crabbed age
when life is on the wane: so that, whether his children or friends are
alive or not, he is equally solitary.--Worthy of honour is he who does no
injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no
injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any; the first may count
as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rulers of
the injustice of others. And yet more highly to be esteemed is he who co-
operates with the rulers in correcting the citizens as far as he can--he
shall be proclaimed the great and perfect citizen, and bear away the palm
of virtue. The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and
all other goods which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a
man for himself; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men,
and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place;
but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to
partake in a friendly way of any good, is deserving of blame: the good,
however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is
possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our
power. Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let
there be no envy. For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of
states--he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man;
but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming
others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and
reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he
makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of
virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man
should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly
curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others,
a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering,
and by never ceasing to punish them; and no man who is not of a noble
spirit is able to accomplish this. As to the actions of those who do evil,
but whose evil is curable, in the first place, let us remember that the
unjust man is not unjust of his own free will. For no man of his own free
will would choose to possess the greatest of evils, and least of all in
the most honourable part of himself. And the soul, as we said, is of a
truth deemed by all men the most honourable. In the soul, then, which is
the most honourable part of him, no one, if he could help, would admit, or
allow to continue the greatest of evils (compare Republic). The
unrighteous and vicious are always to be pitied in any case; and one can
afford to forgive as well as pity him who is curable, and refrain and calm
one's anger, not getting into a passion, like a woman, and nursing ill-
feeling. But upon him who is incapable of reformation and wholly evil, the
vials of our wrath should be poured out; wherefore I say that good men
ought, when occasion demands, to be both gentle and passionate.
Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate,
and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting; I
mean, what is expressed in the saying that 'Every man by nature is and
ought to be his own friend.' Whereas the excessive love of self is in
reality the source to each man of all offences; for the lover is blinded
about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and
the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the
truth. But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his
interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of
another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own
ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing,
think that we know all things; and because we will not let others act for
us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves.
Wherefore let every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to
follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in
the way. There are also minor precepts which are often repeated, and are
quite as useful; a man should recollect them and remind himself of them.
For when a stream is flowing out, there should be water flowing in too;
and recollection flows in while wisdom is departing. Therefore I say that
a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should
exhort his neighbour to do the same; he should veil his immoderate sorrow
or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his good
fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he
seems to be mounting high and steep places, the Gods oppose him in some of
his enterprises. Still he may ever hope, in the case of good men, that
whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and
that present evils He will change for the better; and as to the goods
which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be
added to them, and that they will be fortunate. Such should be men's
hopes, and such should be the exhortations with which they admonish one
another, never losing an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly
reminding themselves and others of all these things, both in jest and
earnest.
Enough has now been said of divine matters, both as touching the practices
which men ought to follow, and as to the sort of persons who they ought
severally to be. But of human things we have not as yet spoken, and we
must; for to men we are discoursing and not to Gods. Pleasures and pains
and desires are a part of human nature, and on them every mortal being
must of necessity hang and depend with the most eager interest. And
therefore we must praise the noblest life, not only as the fairest in
appearance, but as being one which, if a man will only taste, and not,
while still in his youth, desert for another, he will find to surpass also
in the very thing which we all of us desire,--I mean in having a greater
amount of pleasure and less of pain during the whole of life. And this
will be plain, if a man has a true taste of them, as will be quickly and
clearly seen. But what is a true taste? That we have to learn from the
argument--the point being what is according to nature, and what is not
according to nature. One life must be compared with another, the more
pleasurable with the more painful, after this manner:--We desire to have
pleasure, but we neither desire nor choose pain; and the neutral state we
are ready to take in exchange, not for pleasure but for pain; and we also
wish for less pain and greater pleasure, but less pleasure and greater
pain we do not wish for; and an equal balance of either we cannot venture
to assert that we should desire. And all these differ or do not differ
severally in number and magnitude and intensity and equality, and in the
opposites of these when regarded as objects of choice, in relation to
desire. And such being the necessary order of things, we wish for that
life in which there are many great and intense elements of pleasure and
pain, and in which the pleasures are in excess, and do not wish for that
in which the opposites exceed; nor, again, do we wish for that in which
the elements of either are small and few and feeble, and the pains exceed.
And when, as I said before, there is a balance of pleasure and pain in
life, this is to be regarded by us as the balanced life; while other lives
are preferred by us because they exceed in what we like, or are rejected
by us because they exceed in what we dislike. All the lives of men may be
regarded by us as bound up in these, and we must also consider what sort
of lives we by nature desire. And if we wish for any others, I say that we
desire them only through some ignorance and inexperience of the lives
which actually exist.
Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and
beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of
them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and
noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible? Let us say that the
temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and the
courageous another, and the healthful another; and to these four let us
oppose four other lives--the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate, the
diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all
things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid
desires and loves not insane; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in
all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging
desires, and loves utterly insane; and in the temperate life the pleasures
exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the
pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two
lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more
painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live
intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man
is voluntarily intemperate; but that the whole multitude of men lack
temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-
control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy life;
they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure exceeds the
pain, and in sickness the pain exceeds the pleasure. Now our intention in
choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed, but the life in
which pain is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to be the more
pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life has the elements
both of pleasure and pain fewer and smaller and less frequent than the
intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life, and the life of
courage than the life of cowardice; one of each pair exceeding in pleasure
and the other in pain, the courageous surpassing the cowardly, and the
wise exceeding the foolish. And so the one class of lives exceeds the
other class in pleasure; the temperate and courageous and wise and healthy
exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives; and
generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of body or soul, is
pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude
and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be
infinitely happier than the opposite.
Enough of the preamble; and now the laws should follow; or, to speak more
correctly, an outline of them. As, then, in the case of a web or any other
tissue, the warp and the woof cannot be made of the same materials
(compare Statesman), but the warp is necessarily superior as being
stronger, and having a certain character of firmness, whereas the woof is
softer and has a proper degree of elasticity;--in a similar manner those
who are to hold great offices in states, should be distinguished truly in
each case from those who have been but slenderly proven by education. Let
us suppose that there are two parts in the constitution of a state--one
the creation of offices, the other the laws which are assigned to them to
administer.
But, before all this, comes the following consideration:--The shepherd or
herdsman, or breeder of horses or the like, when he has received his
animals will not begin to train them until he has first purified them in a
manner which befits a community of animals; he will divide the healthy and
unhealthy, and the good breed and the bad breed, and will send away the
unhealthy and badly bred to other herds, and tend the rest, reflecting
that his labours will be vain and have no effect, either on the souls or
bodies of those whom nature and ill nurture have corrupted, and that they
will involve in destruction the pure and healthy nature and being of every
other animal, if he should neglect to purify them. Now the case of other
animals is not so important--they are only worth introducing for the sake
of illustration; but what relates to man is of the highest importance; and
the legislator should make enquiries, and indicate what is proper for each
one in the way of purification and of any other procedure. Take, for
example, the purification of a city--there are many kinds of purification,
some easier and others more difficult; and some of them, and the best and
most difficult of them, the legislator, if he be also a despot, may be
able to effect; but the legislator, who, not being a despot, sets up a new
government and laws, even if he attempt the mildest of purgations, may
think himself happy if he can complete his work. The best kind of
purification is painful, like similar cures in medicine, involving
righteous punishment and inflicting death or exile in the last resort. For
in this way we commonly dispose of great sinners who are incurable, and
are the greatest injury of the whole state. But the milder form of
purification is as follows:--when men who have nothing, and are in want of
food, show a disposition to follow their leaders in an attack on the
property of the rich--these, who are the natural plague of the state, are
sent away by the legislator in a friendly spirit as far as he is able; and
this dismissal of them is euphemistically termed a colony. And every
legislator should contrive to do this at once. Our present case, however,
is peculiar. For there is no need to devise any colony or purifying
separation under the circumstances in which we are placed. But as, when
many streams flow together from many sources, whether springs or mountain
torrents, into a single lake, we ought to attend and take care that the
confluent waters should be perfectly clear, and in order to effect this,
should pump and draw off and divert impurities, so in every political
arrangement there may be trouble and danger. But, seeing that we are now
only discoursing and not acting, let our selection be supposed to be
completed, and the desired purity attained. Touching evil men, who want to
join and be citizens of our state, after we have tested them by every sort
of persuasion and for a sufficient time, we will prevent them from coming;
but the good we will to the utmost of our ability receive as friends with
open arms.
Another piece of good fortune must not be forgotten, which, as we were
saying, the Heraclid colony had, and which is also ours,--that we have
escaped division of land and the abolition of debts; for these are always
a source of dangerous contention, and a city which is driven by necessity
to legislate upon such matters can neither allow the old ways to continue,
nor yet venture to alter them. We must have recourse to prayers, so to
speak, and hope that a slight change may be cautiously effected in a
length of time. And such a change can be accomplished by those who have
abundance of land, and having also many debtors, are willing, in a kindly
spirit, to share with those who are in want, sometimes remitting and
sometimes giving, holding fast in a path of moderation, and deeming
poverty to be the increase of a man's desires and not the diminution of
his property. For this is the great beginning of salvation to a state, and
upon this lasting basis may be erected afterwards whatever political order
is suitable under the circumstances; but if the change be based upon an
unsound principle, the future administration of the country will be full
of difficulties. That is a danger which, as I am saying, is escaped by us,
and yet we had better say how, if we had not escaped, we might have
escaped; and we may venture now to assert that no other way of escape,
whether narrow or broad, can be devised but freedom from avarice and a
sense of justice--upon this rock our city shall be built; for there ought
to be no disputes among citizens about property. If there are quarrels of
long standing among them, no legislator of any degree of sense will
proceed a step in the arrangement of the state until they are settled. But
that they to whom God has given, as He has to us, to be the founders of a
new state as yet free from enmity--that they should create themselves
enmities by their mode of distributing lands and houses, would be
superhuman folly and wickedness.
How then can we rightly order the distribution of the land? In the first
place, the number of the citizens has to be determined, and also the
number and size of the divisions into which they will have to be formed;
and the land and the houses will then have to be apportioned by us as
fairly as we can. The number of citizens can only be estimated
satisfactorily in relation to the territory and the neighbouring states.
The territory must be sufficient to maintain a certain number of
inhabitants in a moderate way of life--more than this is not required; and
the number of citizens should be sufficient to defend themselves against
the injustice of their neighbours, and also to give them the power of
rendering efficient aid to their neighbours when they are wronged. After
having taken a survey of their's and their neighbours' territory, we will
determine the limits of them in fact as well as in theory. And now, let us
proceed to legislate with a view to perfecting the form and outline of our
state. The number of our citizens shall be 5040--this will be a convenient
number; and these shall be owners of the land and protectors of the
allotment. The houses and the land will be divided in the same way, so
that every man may correspond to a lot. Let the whole number be first
divided into two parts, and then into three; and the number is further
capable of being divided into four or five parts, or any number of parts
up to ten. Every legislator ought to know so much arithmetic as to be able
to tell what number is most likely to be useful to all cities; and we are
going to take that number which contains the greatest and most regular and
unbroken series of divisions. The whole of number has every possible
division, and the number 5040 can be divided by exactly fifty-nine
divisors, and ten of these proceed without interval from one to ten: this
will furnish numbers for war and peace, and for all contracts and
dealings, including taxes and divisions of the land. These properties of
number should be ascertained at leisure by those who are bound by law to
know them; for they are true, and should be proclaimed at the foundation
of the city, with a view to use. Whether the legislator is establishing a
new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of Gods and
temples,--the temples which are to be built in each city, and the Gods or
demi-gods after whom they are to be called,--if he be a man of sense, he
will make no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or
the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner,
whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to
which mankind have established sacrifices in connexion with mystic rites,
either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or
some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have
consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out
a sacred domain for each of them. The least part of all these ought not to
be disturbed by the legislator; but he should assign to the several
districts some God, or demi-god, or hero, and, in the distribution of the
soil, should give to these first their chosen domain and all things
fitting, that the inhabitants of the several districts may meet at fixed
times, and that they may readily supply their various wants, and entertain
one another with sacrifices, and become friends and acquaintances; for
there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known
to one another. When not light but darkness and ignorance of each other's
characters prevails among them, no one will receive the honour of which he
is deserving, or the power or the justice to which he is fairly entitled:
wherefore, in every state, above all things, every man should take heed
that he have no deceit in him, but that he be always true and simple; and
that no deceitful person take any advantage of him.
The next move in our pastime of legislation, like the withdrawal of the
stone from the holy line in the game of draughts, being an unusual one,
will probably excite wonder when mentioned for the first time. And yet, if
a man will only reflect and weigh the matter with care, he will see that
our city is ordered in a manner which, if not the best, is the second
best. Perhaps also some one may not approve this form, because he thinks
that such a constitution is ill adapted to a legislator who has not
despotic power. The truth is, that there are three forms of government,
the best, the second and the third best, which we may just mention, and
then leave the selection to the ruler of the settlement. Following this
method in the present instance, let us speak of the states which are
respectively first, second, and third in excellence, and then we will
leave the choice to Cleinias now, or to any one else who may hereafter
have to make a similar choice among constitutions, and may desire to give
to his state some feature which is congenial to him and which he approves
in his own country.
The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the
law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that
'Friends have all things in common.' Whether there is anywhere now, or
will ever be, this communion of women and children and of property, in
which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and
things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have
become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men
express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions,
and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost (compare
Republic),--whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting
upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which will be truer
or better or more exalted in virtue. Whether such a state is governed by
Gods or sons of Gods, one, or more than one, happy are the men who, living
after this manner, dwell there; and therefore to this we are to look for
the pattern of the state, and to cling to this, and to seek with all our
might for one which is like this. The state which we have now in hand,
when created, will be nearest to immortality and the only one which takes
the second place; and after that, by the grace of God, we will complete
the third one. And we will begin by speaking of the nature and origin of
the second.
Let the citizens at once distribute their land and houses, and not till
the land in common, since a community of goods goes beyond their proposed
origin, and nurture, and education. But in making the distribution, let
the several possessors feel that their particular lots also belong to the
whole city; and seeing that the earth is their parent, let them tend her
more carefully than children do their mother. For she is a goddess and
their queen, and they are her mortal subjects. Such also are the feelings
which they ought to entertain to the Gods and demi-gods of the country.
And in order that the distribution may always remain, they ought to
consider further that the present number of families should be always
retained, and neither increased nor diminished. This may be secured for
the whole city in the following manner:--Let the possessor of a lot leave
the one of his children who is his best beloved, and one only, to be the
heir of his dwelling, and his successor in the duty of ministering to the
Gods, the state and the family, as well the living members of it as those
who are departed when he comes into the inheritance; but of his other
children, if he have more than one, he shall give the females in marriage
according to the law to be hereafter enacted, and the males he shall
distribute as sons to those citizens who have no children, and are
disposed to receive them; or if there should be none such, and particular
individuals have too many children, male or female, or too few, as in the
case of barrenness--in all these cases let the highest and most honourable
magistracy created by us judge and determine what is to be done with the
redundant or deficient, and devise a means that the number of 5040 houses
shall always remain the same. There are many ways of regulating numbers;
for they in whom generation is affluent may be made to refrain (compare
Arist. Pol.), and, on the other hand, special care may be taken to
increase the number of births by rewards and stigmas, or we may meet the
evil by the elder men giving advice and administering rebuke to the
younger--in this way the object may be attained. And if after all there be
very great difficulty about the equal preservation of the 5040 houses, and
there be an excess of citizens, owing to the too great love of those who
live together, and we are at our wits' end, there is still the old device
often mentioned by us of sending out a colony, which will part friends
with us, and be composed of suitable persons. If, on the other hand, there
come a wave bearing a deluge of disease, or a plague of war, and the
inhabitants become much fewer than the appointed number by reason of
bereavement, we ought not to introduce citizens of spurious birth and
education, if this can be avoided; but even God is said not to be able to
fight against necessity.
Wherefore let us suppose this 'high argument' of ours to address us in the
following terms:--Best of men, cease not to honour according to nature
similarity and equality and sameness and agreement, as regards number and
every good and noble quality. And, above all, observe the aforesaid number
5040 throughout life; in the second place, do not disparage the small and
modest proportions of the inheritances which you received in the
distribution, by buying and selling them to one another. For then neither
will the God who gave you the lot be your friend, nor will the legislator;
and indeed the law declares to the disobedient that these are the terms
upon which he may or may not take the lot. In the first place, the earth
as he is informed is sacred to the Gods; and in the next place, priests
and priestesses will offer up prayers over a first, and second, and even a
third sacrifice, that he who buys or sells the houses or lands which he
has received, may suffer the punishment which he deserves; and these their
prayers they shall write down in the temples, on tablets of cypress-wood,
for the instruction of posterity. Moreover they will set a watch over all
these things, that they may be observed;--the magistracy which has the
sharpest eyes shall keep watch that any infringement of these commands may
be discovered and punished as offences both against the law and the God.
How great is the benefit of such an ordinance to all those cities, which
obey and are administered accordingly, no bad man can ever know, as the
old proverb says; but only a man of experience and good habits. For in
such an order of things there will not be much opportunity for making
money; no man either ought, or indeed will be allowed, to exercise any
ignoble occupation, of which the vulgarity is a matter of reproach to a
freeman, and should never want to acquire riches by any such means.
Further, the law enjoins that no private man shall be allowed to possess
gold and silver, but only coin for daily use, which is almost necessary in
dealing with artisans, and for payment of hirelings, whether slaves or
immigrants, by all those persons who require the use of them. Wherefore
our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current among
themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind; with a view,
however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands,--for embassies, or
for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a herald, the state
must also possess a common Hellenic currency. If a private person is ever
obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of the magistrates and go;
and if when he returns he has any foreign money remaining, let him give
the surplus back to the treasury, and receive a corresponding sum in the
local currency. And if he is discovered to appropriate it, let it be
confiscated, and let him who knows and does not inform be subject to curse
and dishonour equally him who brought the money, and also to a fine not
less in amount than the foreign money which has been brought back. In
marrying and giving in marriage, no one shall give or receive any dowry at
all; and no one shall deposit money with another whom he does not trust as
a friend, nor shall he lend money upon interest; and the borrower should
be under no obligation to repay either capital or interest. That these
principles are best, any one may see who compares them with the first
principle and intention of a state. The intention, as we affirm, of a
reasonable statesman, is not what the many declare to be the object of a
good legislator, namely, that the state for the true interests of which he
is advising should be as great and as rich as possible, and should possess
gold and silver, and have the greatest empire by sea and land;--this they
imagine to be the real object of legislation, at the same time adding,
inconsistently, that the true legislator desires to have the city the best
and happiest possible. But they do not see that some of these things are
possible, and some of them are impossible; and he who orders the state
will desire what is possible, and will not indulge in vain wishes or
attempts to accomplish that which is impossible. The citizen must indeed
be happy and good, and the legislator will seek to make him so; but very
rich and very good at the same time he cannot be, not, at least, in the
sense in which the many speak of riches. For they mean by 'the rich' the
few who have the most valuable possessions, although the owner of them may
quite well be a rogue. And if this is true, I can never assent to the
doctrine that the rich man will be happy--he must be good as well as rich.
And good in a high degree, and rich in a high degree at the same time, he
cannot be. Some one will ask, why not? And we shall answer--Because
acquisitions which come from sources which are just and unjust
indifferently, are more than double those which come from just sources
only; and the sums which are expended neither honourably nor
disgracefully, are only half as great as those which are expended
honourably and on honourable purposes. Thus, if the one acquires double
and spends half, the other who is in the opposite case and is a good man
cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first--I am speaking of the
saver and not of the spender--is not always bad; he may indeed in some
cases be utterly bad, but, as I was saying, a good man he never is. For he
who receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither nor
unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the other hand, the
utterly bad is in general profligate, and therefore very poor; while he
who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just means only, can
hardly be remarkable for riches, any more than he can be very poor. Our
statement, then, is true, that the very rich are not good, and, if they
are not good, they are not happy. But the intention of our laws was, that
the citizens should be as happy as may be, and as friendly as possible to
one another. And men who are always at law with one another, and amongst
whom there are many wrongs done, can never be friends to one another, but
only those among whom crimes and lawsuits are few and slight. Therefore we
say that gold and silver ought not to be allowed in the city, nor much of
the vulgar sort of trade which is carried on by lending money, or rearing
the meaner kinds of live stock; but only the produce of agriculture, and
only so much of this as will not compel us in pursuing it to neglect that
for the sake of which riches exist--I mean, soul and body, which without
gymnastics, and without education, will never be worth anything; and
therefore, as we have said not once but many times, the care of riches
should have the last place in our thoughts. For there are in all three
things about which every man has an interest; and the interest about
money, when rightly regarded, is the third and lowest of them: midway
comes the interest of the body; and, first of all, that of the soul; and
the state which we are describing will have been rightly constituted if it
ordains honours according to this scale. But if, in any of the laws which
have been ordained, health has been preferred to temperance, or wealth to
health and temperate habits, that law must clearly be wrong. Wherefore,
also, the legislator ought often to impress upon himself the question--
'What do I want?' and 'Do I attain my aim, or do I miss the mark?' In this
way, and in this way only, he may acquit himself and free others from the
work of legislation.
Let the allottee then hold his lot upon the conditions which we have
mentioned.
It would be well that every man should come to the colony having all
things equal; but seeing that this is not possible, and one man will have
greater possessions than another, for many reasons and in particular in
order to preserve equality in special crises of the state, qualifications
of property must be unequal, in order that offices and contributions and
distributions may be proportioned to the value of each person's wealth,
and not solely to the virtue of his ancestors or himself, nor yet to the
strength and beauty of his person, but also to the measure of his wealth
or poverty; and so by a law of inequality, which will be in proportion to
his wealth, he will receive honours and offices as equally as possible,
and there will be no quarrels and disputes. To which end there should be
four different standards appointed according to the amount of property:
there should be a first and a second and a third and a fourth class, in
which the citizens will be placed, and they will be called by these or
similar names: they may continue in the same rank, or pass into another in
any individual case, on becoming richer from being poorer, or poorer from
being richer. The form of law which I should propose as the natural sequel
would be as follows:--In a state which is desirous of being saved from the
greatest of all plagues--not faction, but rather distraction;--there
should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty, nor, again,
excess of wealth, for both are productive of both these evils. Now the
legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or wealth.
Let the limit of poverty be the value of the lot; this ought to be
preserved, and no ruler, nor any one else who aspires after a reputation
for virtue, will allow the lot to be impaired in any case. This the
legislator gives as a measure, and he will permit a man to acquire double
or triple, or as much as four times the amount of this (compare Arist.
Pol.). But if a person have yet greater riches, whether he has found them,
or they have been given to him, or he has made them in business, or has
acquired by any stroke of fortune that which is in excess of the measure,
if he give back the surplus to the state, and to the Gods who are the
patrons of the state, he shall suffer no penalty or loss of reputation;
but if he disobeys this our law, any one who likes may inform against him
and receive half the value of the excess, and the delinquent shall pay a
sum equal to the excess out of his own property, and the other half of the
excess shall belong to the Gods. And let every possession of every man,
with the exception of the lot, be publicly registered before the
magistrates whom the law appoints, so that all suits about money may be
easy and quite simple.
The next thing to be noted is, that the city should be placed as nearly as
possible in the centre of the country; we should choose a place which
possesses what is suitable for a city, and this may easily be imagined and
described. Then we will divide the city into twelve portions, first
founding temples to Hestia, to Zeus and to Athene, in a spot which we will
call the Acropolis, and surround with a circular wall, making the division
of the entire city and country radiate from this point. The twelve
portions shall be equalized by the provision that those which are of good
land shall be smaller, while those of inferior quality shall be larger.
The number of the lots shall be 5040, and each of them shall be divided
into two, and every allotment shall be composed of two such sections; one
of land near the city, the other of land which is at a distance (compare
Arist. Pol.). This arrangement shall be carried out in the following
manner: The section which is near the city shall be added to that which is
on the borders, and form one lot, and the portion which is next nearest
shall be added to the portion which is next farthest; and so of the rest.
Moreover, in the two sections of the lots the same principle of
equalization of the soil ought to be maintained; the badness and goodness
shall be compensated by more and less. And the legislator shall divide the
citizens into twelve parts, and arrange the rest of their property, as far
as possible, so as to form twelve equal parts; and there shall be a
registration of all. After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve
Gods, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several
portions, and call the tribes after them. And they shall distribute the
twelve divisions of the city in the same way in which they divided the
country; and every man shall have two habitations, one in the centre of
the country, and the other at the extremity. Enough of the manner of
settlement.
Now we ought by all means to consider that there can never be such a happy
concurrence of circumstances as we have described; neither can all things
coincide as they are wanted. Men who will not take offence at such a mode
of living together, and will endure all their life long to have their
property fixed at a moderate limit, and to beget children in accordance
with our ordinances, and will allow themselves to be deprived of gold and
other things which the legislator, as is evident from these enactments,
will certainly forbid them; and will endure, further, the situation of the
land with the city in the middle and dwellings round about;--all this is
as if the legislator were telling his dreams, or making a city and
citizens of wax. There is truth in these objections, and therefore every
one should take to heart what I am going to say. Once more, then, the
legislator shall appear and address us:--'O my friends,' he will say to
us, 'do not suppose me ignorant that there is a certain degree of truth in
your words; but I am of opinion that, in matters which are not present but
future, he who exhibits a pattern of that at which he aims, should in
nothing fall short of the fairest and truest; and that if he finds any
part of this work impossible of execution he should avoid and not execute
it, but he should contrive to carry out that which is nearest and most
akin to it; you must allow the legislator to perfect his design, and when
it is perfected, you should join with him in considering what part of his
legislation is expedient and what will arouse opposition; for surely the
artist who is to be deemed worthy of any regard at all, ought always to
make his work self-consistent.'
Having determined that there is to be a distribution into twelve parts,
let us now see in what way this may be accomplished. There is no
difficulty in perceiving that the twelve parts admit of the greatest
number of divisions of that which they include, or in seeing the other
numbers which are consequent upon them, and are produced out of them up to
5040; wherefore the law ought to order phratries and demes and villages,
and also military ranks and movements, as well as coins and measures, dry
and liquid, and weights, so as to be commensurable and agreeable to one
another. Nor should we fear the appearance of minuteness, if the law
commands that all the vessels which a man possesses should have a common
measure, when we consider generally that the divisions and variations of
numbers have a use in respect of all the variations of which they are
susceptible, both in themselves and as measures of height and depth, and
in all sounds, and in motions, as well those which proceed in a straight
direction, upwards or downwards, as in those which go round and round. The
legislator is to consider all these things and to bid the citizens, as far
as possible, not to lose sight of numerical order; for no single
instrument of youthful education has such mighty power, both as regards
domestic economy and politics, and in the arts, as the study of
arithmetic. Above all, arithmetic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and
dull, and makes him quick to learn, retentive, shrewd, and aided by art
divine he makes progress quite beyond his natural powers (compare
Republic). All such things, if only the legislator, by other laws and
institutions, can banish meanness and covetousness from the souls of men,
so that they can use them properly and to their own good, will be
excellent and suitable instruments of education. But if he cannot, he will
unintentionally create in them, instead of wisdom, the habit of craft,
which evil tendency may be observed in the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and
many other races, through the general vulgarity of their pursuits and
acquisitions, whether some unworthy legislator of theirs has been the
cause, or some impediment of chance or nature. For we must not fail to
observe, O Megillus and Cleinias, that there is a difference in places,
and that some beget better men and others worse; and we must legislate
accordingly. Some places are subject to strange and fatal influences by
reason of diverse winds and violent heats, some by reason of waters; or,
again, from the character of the food given by the earth, which not only
affects the bodies of men for good or evil, but produces similar results
in their souls. And in all such qualities those spots excel in which there
is a divine inspiration, and in which the demigods have their appointed
lots, and are propitious, not adverse, to the settlers in them. To all
these matters the legislator, if he have any sense in him, will attend as
far as man can, and frame his laws accordingly. And this is what you,
Cleinias, must do, and to matters of this kind you must turn your mind
since you are going to colonize a new country.
CLEINIAS: Your words, Athenian Stranger, are excellent, and I will do as
you say.