to wealth rather than to poverty, or to a royal rather than to a private station, where the divine and inspired lawgiver has not originally commanded them to be given. For no man ought to have pre-eminent honour in a state because he surpasses others in wealth, any more than because he is swift of foot or fair or strong, unless he have some virtue in him; nor even if he have virtue, unless he have this particular virtue of temperance. MEGILLUS: What do you mean, Stranger? ATHENIAN: I suppose that courage is a part of virtue? MEGILLUS: To be sure. ATHENIAN: Then, now hear and judge for yourself:--Would you like to have for a fellow-lodger or neighbour a very courageous man, who had no control over himself? MEGILLUS: Heaven forbid! ATHENIAN: Or an artist, who was clever in his profession, but a rogue? MEGILLUS: Certainly not. ATHENIAN: And surely justice does not grow apart from temperance? MEGILLUS: Impossible. ATHENIAN: Any more than our pattern wise man, whom we exhibited as having his pleasures and pains in accordance with and corresponding to true reason, can be intemperate? MEGILLUS: No. ATHENIAN: There is a further consideration relating to the due and undue award of honours in states. MEGILLUS: What is it? ATHENIAN: I should like to know whether temperance without the other virtues, existing alone in the soul of man, is rightly to be praised or blamed? MEGILLUS: I cannot tell. ATHENIAN: And that is the best answer; for whichever alternative you had chosen, I think that you would have gone wrong. MEGILLUS: I am fortunate. ATHENIAN: Very good; a quality, which is a mere appendage of things which can be praised or blamed, does not deserve an expression of opinion, but is best passed over in silence. MEGILLUS: You are speaking of temperance? ATHENIAN: Yes; but of the other virtues, that which having this appendage is also most beneficial, will be most deserving of honour, and next that which is beneficial in the next degree; and so each of them will be rightly honoured according to a regular order. MEGILLUS: True. ATHENIAN: And ought not the legislator to determine these classes? MEGILLUS: Certainly he should. ATHENIAN: Suppose that we leave to him the arrangement of details. But the general division of laws according to their importance into a first and second and third class, we who are lovers of law may make ourselves. MEGILLUS: Very good.