_Sokr._--Do you call law a hurt or benefit to the city? _Hip._--Law is enacted with a view to benefit: but it sometimes hurts if it be badly enacted.[7] _Sokr._--But what? Do not the enactors enact it as the maximum of good, without which the citizens cannot live a regulated life? _Hip._--Certainly: they do so. _Sokr._--Therefore, when those who try to enact laws miss the attainment of good, they also miss the lawful and law itself. How say you? _Hip._--They do so, if you speak with strict propriety: but such is not the language which men commonly use. _Sokr._--What men? the knowing? or the ignorant? _Hip._--The Many. _Sokr._--The Many; is it _they_ who know what truth is? _Hip._--Assuredly not. _Sokr._--But surely those who do know, account the profitable to be in truth more lawful than the unprofitable, to all men. Don't you admit this? _Hip._--Yes, I admit they account it so in truth. _Sokr._--Well, and it is so, too: the truth is as the knowing men account it. _Hip._--Most certainly. _Sokr._--Now you affirm, that it is more profitable to the Spartans to be educated according to your scheme, foreign as it is, than according to their own native scheme. _Hip._--I affirm it, and with truth too. _Sokr._--You affirm besides, that things more profitable are at the same time more lawful? _Hip._--I said so. _Sokr._--According to your reasoning, then, it is more lawful for the Spartan children to be educated by Hippias, and more unlawful for them to be educated by their fathers-- if in reality they will be more benefited by you? _Hip._--But they will be more benefited by me. _Sokr._--The Spartans therefore act unlawfully, when they refuse to give you money and to confide to you their sons? _Hip._--I admit that they do: indeed your reasoning seems to make in my favour, so that I am noway called upon to resist it. _Sokr._--We find then, after all, that the Spartans are enemies of law, and that too in the most important matters--though they are esteemed the most exemplary followers of law.[8] [Footnote 7: Plato, Hipp. Maj. 284 C-B.] [Footnote 8: Plato, Hipp. Maj. 285.] * * * * * [Side-note: Comparison of the argument of the Platonic Sokrates with that of the Xenophontic Sokrates.]