The same argument is brought to bear by the Platonic Sokrates against Hippias in the Hippias Major, 284-285. If the laws are not really profitable, which is the only real purpose for which they were established, they are no laws at all. The Spartans are [Greek: para/nomoi]. Some of the answers assigned to Hippias (284 D) are pertinent enough; but he is overborne.] [Footnote 41: Plato, Minos, 316 B. [Greek: O(\s a)\n a)/ra tou= o)/ntos a(marta/nê, tou= nomi/mou a(marta/nei.]] [Side-note: Plato worships the Ideal of his own mind--the work of systematic constructive theory by the Wise Man.] By _Law_ then, Plato means--not the assemblage of actual positive rules, nor any general property common to and characteristic of them, nor the free determination of an assembled Demos as distinguished from the mandates of a despot--but the Type of Law as it ought to be, and as it would be, if prescribed by a perfectly wise ruler, aiming at good and knowing how to realise it. This, which is the ideal of his own mind, Plato worships and reasons upon as if it were the only reality; as Law by nature, or natural Law, distinguished from actual positive laws: which last have either been set by some ill-qualified historical ruler, or have grown up insensibly. Knowledge, art, philosophy, systematic and constructive, applied by some one or few exalted individuals, is (in his view) the only cause capable of producing that typical result which is true, good, real, permanent, and worthy of the generic name. [Side-note: Different applications of this general Platonic view, in the Minos, Politikus, Kratylus, &c. _Natural_ Rectitude of Law, Government, Names, &c.]