Classical literature; Political science -- Early works to 1800
wealth or power; or they are clannish, and choose those who are like
themselves,--the temperate marrying the temperate, and the courageous
the courageous. The two classes thrive and flourish at first, but they
soon degenerate; the one become mad, and the other feeble and useless.
This would not have been the case, if they had both originally held
the same notions about the honourable and the good; for then they
never would have allowed the temperate natures to be separated from the
courageous, but they would have bound them together by common honours
and reputations, by intermarriages, and by the choice of rulers who
combine both qualities. The temperate are careful and just, but are
wanting in the power of action; the courageous fall short of them in
justice, but in action are superior to them: and no state can prosper in
which either of these qualities is wanting. The noblest and best of all
webs or states is that which the royal science weaves, combining the two
sorts of natures in a single texture, and in this enfolding freeman and
slave and every other social element, and presiding over them all.
'Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less than of the
Sophist, is quite perfect.'
...
The principal subjects in the Statesman may be conveniently embraced
under six or seven heads:--(1) the myth; (2) the dialectical interest;
(3) the political aspects of the dialogue; (4) the satirical and
paradoxical vein; (5) the necessary imperfection of law; (6) the
relation of the work to the other writings of Plato; lastly (7), we may
briefly consider the genuineness of the Sophist and Statesman, which
can hardly be assumed without proof, since the two dialogues have
been questioned by three such eminent Platonic scholars as Socher,
Schaarschmidt, and Ueberweg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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