Answer--Law is, 1. The consecrated and binding customs. 2. The decree of the city. 3. Social or civic opinion _ib._ Cross-examination by Sokrates--just and lawfully-behaving men are so through law; unjust and lawless men are so through the absence of law. Law is highly honourable and useful: lawlessness is ruinous. Accordingly, bad decrees of the city--or bad social opinion--cannot be law 77 Suggestion by Sokrates--Law is the _good_ opinion of the city--but good opinion is true opinion, or the finding out of reality. Law therefore wishes (tends) to be the finding out of reality, though it does not always succeed in doing so 77 Objection taken by the Companion--That there is great discordance of laws in different places--he specifies several cases of such discordance at some length. Sokrates reproves his prolixity, and requests him to confine himself to question or answer 78 Farther questions by Sokrates--Things heavy and light, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable, &c., are so, and are accounted so everywhere. Real things are always accounted real. Whoever fails in attaining the real, fails in attaining the lawful _ib._ There are laws of health and of cure, composed by the few physicians wise upon those subjects, and unanimously declared by them. So also there are laws of farming, gardening, cookery, declared by the few wise in those respective pursuits. In like manner, the laws of a city are the judgments declared by the few wise men who know how to rule 79 That which is right is the regal law, the only true and real law--that which is not right, is not law, but only seems to be law in the eyes of the ignorant 80 Minos, King of Krete--his laws were divine and excellent, and have remained unchanged from time immemorial _ib._ Question about the character of Minos--Homer and Hesiod declare him to have been admirable, the Attic tragedians defame him as a tyrant, because he was an enemy of Athens 81 That Minos was really admirable--and that he has found out truth and reality respecting the administration of the city--we may be sure from the fact that his laws have remained so long unaltered _ib._ The question is made more determinate--What is it that the good lawgiver prescribes and measures out for the health of the mind, as the physician measures out food and exercise for the body? Sokrates cannot tell. Close 81 The Hipparchus and Minos are analogous to each other, and both of them inferior works of Plato, perhaps unfinished 82 Hipparchus--double meaning of [Greek: philokerdê\s] and [Greek: ke/rdos] _ib._ State or mind of the agent, as to knowledge, frequent inquiry in Plato. No tenable definition found 83 Admitting that there is bad gain, as well as good gain, what is the meaning of the word _gain_**? None is found _ib._ Purpose of Plato in the dialogue--to lay bare the confusion, and to force the mind of the respondent into efforts for clearing it up 84