Laws Part 8

CLEINIAS: Right.

ATHENIAN: If, then, drinking and amus.e.m.e.nt were regulated in this way, would not the companions of our revels be improved? they would part better friends than they were, and not, as now, enemies. Their whole intercourse would be regulated by law and observant of it, and the sober would be the leaders of the drunken.

CLEINIAS: I think so too, if drinking were regulated as you propose.

ATHENIAN: Let us not then simply censure the gift of Dionysus as bad and unfit to be received into the State. For wine has many excellences, and one pre-eminent one, about which there is a difficulty in speaking to the many, from a fear of their misconceiving and misunderstanding what is said.

CLEINIAS: To what do you refer?

ATHENIAN: There is a tradition or story, which has somehow crept about the world, that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Here, and that out of revenge he inspires Bacchic furies and dancing madnesses in others; for which reason he gave men wine. Such traditions concerning the G.o.ds I leave to those who think that they may be safely uttered (compare Euthyph.; Republic); I only know that no animal at birth is mature or perfect in intelligence; and in the intermediate period, in which he has not yet acquired his own proper sense, he rages and roars without rhyme or reason; and when he has once got on his legs he jumps about without rhyme or reason; and this, as you will remember, has been already said by us to be the origin of music and gymnastic.

CLEINIAS: To be sure, I remember.

ATHENIAN: And did we not say that the sense of harmony and rhythm sprang from this beginning among men, and that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus were the G.o.ds whom we had to thank for them?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: The other story implied that wine was given man out of revenge, and in order to make him mad; but our present doctrine, on the contrary, is, that wine was given him as a balm, and in order to implant modesty in the soul, and health and strength in the body.

CLEINIAS: That, Stranger, is precisely what was said.

ATHENIAN: Then half the subject may now be considered to have been discussed; shall we proceed to the consideration of the other half?

CLEINIAS: What is the other half, and how do you divide the subject?

ATHENIAN: The whole choral art is also in our view the whole of education; and of this art, rhythms and harmonies form the part which has to do with the voice.

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: The movement of the body has rhythm in common with the movement of the voice, but gesture is peculiar to it, whereas song is simply the movement of the voice.

CLEINIAS: Most true.

ATHENIAN: And the sound of the voice which reaches and educates the soul, we have ventured to term music.

CLEINIAS: We were right.

ATHENIAN: And the movement of the body, when regarded as an amus.e.m.e.nt, we termed dancing; but when extended and pursued with a view to the excellence of the body, this scientific training may be called gymnastic.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: Music, which was one half of the choral art, may be said to have been completely discussed. Shall we proceed to the other half or not? What would you like?

CLEINIAS: My good friend, when you are talking with a Cretan and Lacedaemonian, and we have discussed music and not gymnastic, what answer are either of us likely to make to such an enquiry?

ATHENIAN: An answer is contained in your question; and I understand and accept what you say not only as an answer, but also as a command to proceed with gymnastic.

CLEINIAS: You quite understand me; do as you say.

ATHENIAN: I will; and there will not be any difficulty in speaking intelligibly to you about a subject with which both of you are far more familiar than with music.

CLEINIAS: There will not.

ATHENIAN: Is not the origin of gymnastics, too, to be sought in the tendency to rapid motion which exists in all animals; man, as we were saying, having attained the sense of rhythm, created and invented dancing; and melody arousing and awakening rhythm, both united formed the choral art?

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And one part of this subject has been already discussed by us, and there still remains another to be discussed?

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: I have first a final word to add to my discourse about drink, if you will allow me to do so.

CLEINIAS: What more have you to say?

ATHENIAN: I should say that if a city seriously means to adopt the practice of drinking under due regulation and with a view to the enforcement of temperance, and in like manner, and on the same principle, will allow of other pleasures, designing to gain the victory over them-in this way all of them may be used. But if the State makes drinking an amus.e.m.e.nt only, and whoever likes may drink whenever he likes, and with whom he likes, and add to this any other indulgences, I shall never agree or allow that this city or this man should practise drinking. I would go further than the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and am disposed rather to the law of the Carthaginians, that no one while he is on a campaign should be allowed to taste wine at all, but that he should drink water during all that time, and that in the city no slave, male or female, should ever drink wine; and that no magistrates should drink during their year of office, nor should pilots of vessels or judges while on duty taste wine at all, nor any one who is going to hold a consultation about any matter of importance; nor in the day-time at all, unless in consequence of exercise or as medicine; nor again at night, when any one, either man or woman, is minded to get children. There are numberless other cases also in which those who have good sense and good laws ought not to drink wine, so that if what I say is true, no city will need many vineyards. Their husbandry and their way of life in general will follow an appointed order, and their cultivation of the vine will be the most limited and the least common of their employments. And this, Stranger, shall be the crown of my discourse about wine, if you agree.

CLEINIAS: Excellent: we agree.

BOOK III.

ATHENIAN: Enough of this. And what, then, is to be regarded as the origin of government? Will not a man be able to judge of it best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good or evil?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.

CLEINIAS: How so?

ATHENIAN: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?

CLEINIAS: Hardly.

ATHENIAN: But are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished? And has not each of them had every form of government many times over, now growing larger, now smaller, and again improving or declining?

CLEINIAS: To be sure.

ATHENIAN: Let us endeavour to ascertain the cause of these changes; for that will probably explain the first origin and development of forms of government.

CLEINIAS: Very good. You shall endeavour to impart your thoughts to us, and we will make an effort to understand you.

ATHENIAN: Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions?

CLEINIAS: What traditions?

ATHENIAN: The traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of a remnant?

CLEINIAS: Every one is disposed to believe them.

ATHENIAN: Let us consider one of them, that which was caused by the famous deluge.

CLEINIAS: What are we to observe about it?

ATHENIAN: I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds,-small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains.

CLEINIAS: Clearly.

ATHENIAN: Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted with the arts and the various devices which are suggested to the dwellers in cities by interest or ambition, and with all the wrongs which they contrive against one another.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plain and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed at that time.

CLEINIAS: Very good.

ATHENIAN: Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?

CLEINIAS: Why, yes, my friend; and if things had always continued as they are at present ordered, how could any discovery have ever been made even in the least particular? For it is evident that the arts were unknown during ten thousand times ten thousand years. And no more than a thousand or two thousand years have elapsed since the discoveries of Daedalus, Orpheus and Palamedes,-since Marsyas and Olympus invented music, and Amphion the lyre-not to speak of numberless other inventions which are but of yesterday.

ATHENIAN: Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really of yesterday?

CLEINIAS: I suppose that you mean Epimenides.

ATHENIAN: The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of all mankind by his invention; for he carried out in practice, as you declare, what of old Hesiod (Works and Days) only preached.

CLEINIAS: Yes, according to our tradition.

ATHENIAN: After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state of man was something of this sort:-In the beginning of things there was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended them?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And of cities or governments or legislation, about which we are now talking, do you suppose that they could have any recollection at all?

CLEINIAS: None whatever.

ATHENIAN: And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Why, my good friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities could have attained their full development, whether of virtue or of vice?

CLEINIAS: I understand your meaning, and you are quite right.

ATHENIAN: But, as time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to be what the world is.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: Doubtless the change was not made all in a moment, but little by little, during a very long period of time.

CLEINIAS: A highly probable supposition.

ATHENIAN: At first, they would have a natural fear ringing in their ears which would prevent their descending from the heights into the plain.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting at one another; for iron and bra.s.s and all metals were jumbled together and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of extracting ore from them; and they had scarcely any means of felling timber. Even if you suppose that some implements might have been preserved in the mountains, they must quickly have worn out and vanished, and there would be no more of them until the art of metallurgy had again revived.

CLEINIAS: There could not have been.

ATHENIAN: In how many generations would this be attained?

CLEINIAS: Clearly, not for many generations.

ATHENIAN: During this period, and for some time afterwards, all the arts which require iron and bra.s.s and the like would disappear.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Faction and war would also have died out in those days, and for many reasons.

CLEINIAS: How would that be?

ATHENIAN: In the first place, the desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and goodwill towards one another; and, secondly, they would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases; and from their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quant.i.ty or quality. They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron: and G.o.d has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase. Hence in those days mankind were not very poor; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver:-such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the n.o.blest principles; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings. And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practised it. No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now; but what they heard about G.o.ds and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them.

CLEINIAS: That quite accords with my views, and with those of my friend here.

ATHENIAN: Would not many generations living on in a simple manner, although ruder, perhaps, and more ignorant of the arts generally, and in particular of those of land or naval warfare, and likewise of other arts, termed in cities legal practices and party conflicts, and including all conceivable ways of hurting one another in word and deed;-although inferior to those who lived before the deluge, or to the men of our day in these respects, would they not, I say, be simpler and more manly, and also more temperate and altogether more just? The reason has been already explained.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: I should wish you to understand that what has preceded and what is about to follow, has been, and will be said, with the intention of explaining what need the men of that time had of laws, and who was their lawgiver.

CLEINIAS: And thus far what you have said has been very well said.

ATHENIAN: They could hardly have wanted lawgivers as yet; nothing of that sort was likely to have existed in their days, for they had no letters at this early period; they lived by habit and the customs of their ancestors, as they are called.