5. Unequal as the Laws are in style, they contain a few passages which
are very grand and noble. For example, the address to the poets: 'Best
of strangers, we also are poets of the best and noblest tragedy; for
our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we
affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.' Or again, the sight
of young men and maidens in friendly intercourse with one another,
suggesting the dangers to which youth is liable from the violence of
passion; or the eloquent denunciation of unnatural lusts in the same
passage; or the charming thought that the best legislator 'orders
war for the sake of peace and not peace for the sake of war;' or the
pleasant allusion, 'O Athenian--inhabitant of Attica, I will not say,
for you seem to me worthy to be named after the Goddess Athene because
you go back to first principles;' or the pithy saying, 'Many a victory
has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never
suicidal;' or the fine expression that 'the walls of a city should
be allowed to sleep in the earth, and that we should not attempt to
disinter them;' or the remark that 'God is the measure of all things in
a sense far higher than any man can be;' or that 'a man should be from
the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long
as possible;' or the principle repeatedly laid down, that 'the sins of
the fathers are not to be visited on the children;' or the description
of the funeral rites of those priestly sages who depart in innocence;
or the noble sentiment, that we should do more justice to slaves than
to equals; or the curious observation, founded, perhaps, on his own
experience, that there are a few 'divine men in every state however
corrupt, whose conversation is of inestimable value;' or the acute
remark, that public opinion is to be respected, because the judgments
of mankind about virtue are better than their practice; or the deep
religious and also modern feeling which pervades the tenth book
(whatever may be thought of the arguments); the sense of the duty of
living as a part of a whole, and in dependence on the will of God, who
takes care of the least things as well as the greatest; and the picture
of parents praying for their children--not as we may say, slightly
altering the words of Plato, as if there were no truth or reality in the
Gentile religions, but as if there were the greatest--are very striking
to us. We must remember that the Laws, unlike the Republic, do not
exhibit an ideal state, but are supposed to be on the level of human
motives and feelings; they are also on the level of the popular
religion, though elevated and purified: hence there is an attempt made
to show that the pleasant is also just. But, on the other hand, the
priority of the soul to the body, and of God to the soul, is always
insisted upon as the true incentive to virtue; especially with great
force and eloquence at the commencement of Book v. And the work of