ATHENIAN: What truth and what justice require of us, if I am not
mistaken, when speaking in behalf of divine excellence;--that the
legislator when making his laws had in view not a part only, and this
the lowest part of virtue, but all virtue, and that he devised classes
of laws answering to the kinds of virtue; not in the way in which modern
inventors of laws make the classes, for they only investigate and offer
laws whenever a want is felt, and one man has a class of laws about
allotments and heiresses, another about assaults; others about ten
thousand other such matters. But we maintain that the right way of
examining into laws is to proceed as we have now done, and I admired the
spirit of your exposition; for you were quite right in beginning with
virtue, and saying that this was the aim of the giver of the law, but I
thought that you went wrong when you added that all his legislation had
a view only to a part, and the least part of virtue, and this called
forth my subsequent remarks. Will you allow me then to explain how I
should have liked to have heard you expound the matter?
CLEINIAS: By all means.
ATHENIAN: You ought to have said, Stranger--The Cretan laws are with
reason famous among the Hellenes; for they fulfil the object of laws,
which is to make those who use them happy; and they confer every sort of
good. Now goods are of two kinds: there are human and there are divine
goods, and the human hang upon the divine; and the state which attains
the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the
greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is health, the
second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and
bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god
(Pluto), but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his
companion. For wisdom is chief and leader of the divine class of goods,
and next follows temperance; and from the union of these two with
courage springs justice, and fourth in the scale of virtue is courage.
All these naturally take precedence of the other goods, and this is the
order in which the legislator must place them, and after them he will
enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens with a view to these,
the human looking to the divine, and the divine looking to their leader
mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to contracts of marriage which
they make one with another, and then to the procreation and education of
children, both male and female; the duty of the lawgiver will be to take
charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and at every time of life,
and to give them punishments and rewards; and in reference to all their
intercourse with one another, he ought to consider their pains and
pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their passions; he
should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them rightly by the
mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and terror, and