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Laws, a non-fiction book by Plato |
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The Preamble - Book 5 |
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_ THE PREAMBLE - BOOK V Hear now, all ye who heard the laws about Gods and ancestors: Of all human possessions the soul is most divine, and most truly a man's own. For in every man there are two parts--a better which rules, and an inferior which serves; and the ruler is to be preferred to the servant. Wherefore I bid every one next after the Gods to honour his own soul, and he can only honour her by making her better. A man does not honour his soul by flattery, or gifts, or self-indulgence, or conceit of knowledge, nor when he blames others for his own errors; nor when he indulges in pleasure or refuses to bear pain; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a good, because he fears the world below, which, far from being an evil, may be the greatest good; nor when he prefers beauty to virtue--not reflecting that the soul, which came from heaven, is more honourable than the body, which is earth-born; nor when he covets dishonest gains, of which no amount is equal in value to virtue;--in a word, when he counts that which the legislator pronounces evil to be good, he degrades his soul, which is the divinest part of him. He does not consider that the real punishment of evil-doing is to grow like evil men, and to shun the conversation of the good: and that he who is joined to such men must do and suffer what they by nature do and say to one another, which suffering is not justice but retribution. For justice is noble, but retribution is only the companion of injustice. And whether a man escapes punishment or not, he is equally miserable; for in the one case he is not cured, and in the other case he perishes that the rest may be saved. The glory of man is to follow the better and improve the inferior. And the soul is that part of man which is most inclined to avoid the evil and dwell with the good. Wherefore also the soul is second only to the Gods in honour, and in the third place the body is to be esteemed, which often has a false honour. For honour is not to be given to the fair or the strong, or the swift or the tall, or to the healthy, any more than to their opposites, but to the mean states of all these habits; and so of property and external goods. No man should heap up riches that he may leave them to his children. The best condition for them as for the state is a middle one, in which there is a freedom without luxury. And the best inheritance of children is modesty. But modesty cannot be implanted by admonition only--the elders must set the example. He who would train the young must first train himself. He who honours his kindred and family may fairly expect that the Gods will give him children. He who would have friends must think much of their favours to him, and little of his to them. He who prefers to an Olympic, or any other victory, to win the palm of obedience to the laws, serves best both the state and his fellow-citizens. Engagements with strangers are to be deemed most sacred, because the stranger, having neither kindred nor friends, is immediately under the protection of Zeus, the God of strangers. A prudent man will not sin against the stranger; and still more carefully will he avoid sinning against the suppliant, which is an offence never passed over by the Gods. I will now speak of those particulars which are matters of praise and blame only, and which, although not enforced by the law, greatly affect the disposition to obey the law. Truth has the first place among the gifts of Gods and men, for truth begets trust; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither the ignorant nor the untrustworthy man is happy; for they have no friends in life, and die unlamented and untended. Good is he who does no injustice--better who prevents others from doing any--best of all who joins the rulers in punishing injustice. And this is true of goods and virtues in general; he who has and communicates them to others is the man of men; he who would, if he could, is second-best; he who has them and is jealous of imparting them to others is to be blamed, but the good or virtue which he has is to be valued still. Let every man contend in the race without envy; for the unenvious man increases the strength of the city; himself foremost in the race, he harms no one with calumny. Whereas the envious man is weak himself, and drives his rivals to despair with his slanders, thus depriving the whole city of incentives to the exercise of virtue, and tarnishing her glory. Every man should be gentle, but also passionate; for he must have the spirit to fight against incurable and malignant evil. But the evil which is remediable should be dealt with more in sorrow than anger. He who is unjust is to be pitied in any case; for no man voluntarily does evil or allows evil to exist in his soul. And therefore he who deals with the curable sort must be long-suffering and forbearing; but the incurable shall have the vials of our wrath poured out upon him. The greatest of all evils is self-love, which is thought to be natural and excusable, and is enforced as a duty, and yet is the cause of many errors. The lover is blinded about the beloved, and prefers his own interests to truth and right; but the truly great man seeks justice before all things. Self-love is the source of that ignorant conceit of knowledge which is always doing and never succeeding. Wherefore let every man avoid self-love, and follow the guidance of those who are better than himself. There are lesser matters which a man should recall to mind; for wisdom is like a stream, ever flowing in and out, and recollection flows in when knowledge is failing. Let no man either laugh or grieve overmuch; but let him control his feelings in the day of good- or ill-fortune, believing that the Gods will diminish the evils and increase the blessings of the righteous. These are thoughts which should ever occupy a good man's mind; he should remember them both in lighter and in more serious hours, and remind others of them. So much of divine matters and the relation of man to God. But man is man, and dependent on pleasure and pain; and therefore to acquire a true taste respecting either is a great matter. And what is a true taste? This can only be explained by a comparison of one life with another. Pleasure is an object of desire, pain of avoidance; and the absence of pain is to be preferred to pain, but not to pleasure. There are infinite kinds and degrees of both of them, and we choose the life which has more pleasure and avoid that which has less; but we do not choose that life in which the elements of pleasure are either feeble or equally balanced with pain. All the lives which we desire are pleasant; the choice of any others is due to inexperience. Now there are four lives--the temperate, the rational, the courageous, the healthful; and to these let us oppose four others--the intemperate, the foolish, the cowardly, the diseased. The temperate life has gentle pains and pleasures and placid desires, the intemperate life has violent delights, and still more violent desires. And the pleasures of the temperate exceed the pains, while the pains of the intemperate exceed the pleasures. But if this is true, none are voluntarily intemperate, but all who lack temperance are either ignorant or wanting in self-control: for men always choose the life which (as they think) exceeds in pleasure. The wise, the healthful, the courageous life have a similar advantage--they also exceed their opposites in pleasure. And, generally speaking, the life of virtue is far more pleasurable and honourable, fairer and happier far, than the life of vice. Let this be the preamble of our laws; the strain will follow. As in a web the warp is stronger than the woof, so should the rulers be stronger than their half-educated subjects. Let us suppose, then, that in the constitution of a state there are two parts, the appointment of the rulers, and the laws which they have to administer. But, before going further, there are some preliminary matters which have to be considered. As of animals, so also of men, a selection must be made; the bad breed must be got rid of, and the good retained. The legislator must purify them, and if he be not a despot he will find this task to be a difficult one. The severer kinds of purification are practised when great offenders are punished by death or exile, but there is a milder process which is necessary when the poor show a disposition to attack the property of the rich, for then the legislator will send them off to another land, under the name of a colony. In our case, however, we shall only need to purify the streams before they meet. This is often a troublesome business, but in theory we may suppose the operation performed, and the desired purity attained. Evil men we will hinder from coming, and receive the good as friends. Like the old Heraclid colony, we are fortunate in escaping the abolition of debts and the distribution of land, which are difficult and dangerous questions. But, perhaps, now that we are speaking of the subject, we ought to say how, if the danger existed, the legislator should try to avert it. He would have recourse to prayers, and trust to the healing influence of time. He would create a kindly spirit between creditors and debtors: those who have should give to those who have not, and poverty should be held to be rather the increase of a man's desires than the diminution of his property. Good-will is the only safe and enduring foundation of the political society; and upon this our city shall be built. The lawgiver, if he is wise, will not proceed with the arrangement of the state until all disputes about property are settled. And for him to introduce fresh grounds of quarrel would be madness. Let us now proceed to the distribution of our state, and determine the size of the territory and the number of the allotments. The territory should be sufficient to maintain the citizens in moderation, and the population should be numerous enough to defend themselves, and sometimes to aid their neighbours. We will fix the number of citizens at 5040, to which the number of houses and portions of land shall correspond. Let the number be divided into two parts and then into three; for it is very convenient for the purposes of distribution, and is capable of fifty-nine divisions, ten of which proceed without interval from one to ten. Here are numbers enough for war and peace, and for all contracts and dealings. These properties of numbers are true, and should be ascertained with a view to use. In carrying out the distribution of the land, a prudent legislator will be careful to respect any provision for religious worship which has been sanctioned by ancient tradition or by the oracles of Delphi, Dodona, or Ammon. All sacrifices, and altars, and temples, whatever may be their origin, should remain as they are. Every division should have a patron God or hero; to these a portion of the domain should be appropriated, and at their temples the inhabitants of the districts should meet together from time to time, for the sake of mutual help and friendship. All the citizens of a state should be known to one another; for where men are in the dark about each other's characters, there can be no justice or right administration. Every man should be true and single-minded, and should not allow himself to be deceived by others. And now the game opens, and we begin to move the pieces. At first sight, our constitution may appear singular and ill-adapted to a legislator who has not despotic power; but on second thoughts will be deemed to be, if not the very best, the second best. For there are three forms of government, a first, a second, and a third best, out of which Cleinias has now to choose. The first and highest form is that in which friends have all things in common, including wives and property,--in which they have common fears, hopes, desires, and do not even call their eyes or their hands their own. This is the ideal state; than which there never can be a truer or better--a state, whether inhabited by Gods or sons of Gods, which will make the dwellers therein blessed. Here is the pattern on which we must ever fix our eyes; but we are now concerned with another, which comes next to it, and we will afterwards proceed to a third. Inasmuch as our citizens are not fitted either by nature or education to receive the saying, Friends have all things in common, let them retain their houses and private property, but use them in the service of their country, who is their God and parent, and of the Gods and demigods of the land. Their first care should be to preserve the number of their lots. This may be secured in the following manner: when the possessor of a lot dies, he shall leave his lot to his best-beloved child, who will become the heir of all duties and interests, and will minister to the Gods and to the family, to the living and to the dead. Of the remaining children, the females must be given in marriage according to the law to be hereafter enacted; the males may be assigned to citizens who have no children of their own. How to equalize families and allotments will be one of the chief cares of the guardians of the laws. When parents have too many children they may give to those who have none, or couples may abstain from having children, or, if there is a want of offspring, special care may be taken to obtain them; or if the number of citizens becomes excessive, we may send away the surplus to found a colony. If, on the other hand, a war or plague diminishes the number of inhabitants, new citizens must be introduced; and these ought not, if possible, to be men of low birth or inferior training; but even God, it is said, cannot always fight against necessity. Wherefore we will thus address our citizens:--Good friends, honour order and equality, and above all the number 5040. Secondly, respect the original division of the lots, which must not be infringed by buying and selling, for the law says that the land which a man has is sacred and is given to him by God. And priests and priestesses will offer frequent sacrifices and pray that he who alienates either house or lot may receive the punishment which he deserves, and their prayers shall be inscribed on tablets of cypress-wood for the instruction of posterity. The guardians will keep a vigilant watch over the citizens, and they will punish those who disobey God and the law. To appreciate the benefit of such an institution a man requires to be well educated; for he certainly will not make a fortune in our state, in which all illiberal occupations are forbidden to freemen. The law also provides that no private person shall have gold or silver, except a little coin for daily use, which will not pass current in other countries. The state must also possess a common Hellenic currency, but this is only to be used in defraying the expenses of expeditions, or of embassies, or while a man is on foreign travels; but in the latter case he must deliver up what is over, when he comes back, to the treasury in return for an equal amount of local currency, on pain of losing the sum in question; and he who does not inform against an offender is to be mulcted in a like sum. No money is to be given or taken as a dowry, or to be lent on interest. The law will not protect a man in recovering either interest or principal. All these regulations imply that the aim of the legislator is not to make the city as rich or as mighty as possible, but the best and happiest. Now men can hardly be at the same time very virtuous and very rich. And why? Because he who makes twice as much and saves twice as much as he ought, receiving where he ought not and not spending where he ought, will be at least twice as rich as he who makes money where he ought, and spends where he ought. On the other hand, an utterly bad man is generally profligate and poor, while he who acquires honestly, and spends what he acquires on noble objects, can hardly be very rich. A very rich man is therefore not a good man, and therefore not a happy one. But the object of our laws is to make the citizens as friendly and happy as possible, which they cannot be if they are always at law and injuring each other in the pursuit of gain. And therefore we say that there is to be no silver or gold in the state, nor usury, nor the rearing of the meaner kinds of live-stock, but only agriculture, and only so much of this as will not lead men to neglect that for the sake of which money is made, first the soul and afterwards the body; neither of which are good for much without music and gymnastic. Money is to be held in honour last or third; the highest interests being those of the soul, and in the second class are to be ranked those of the body. This is the true order of legislation, which would be inverted by placing health before temperance, and wealth before health. It might be well if every man could come to the colony having equal property; but equality is impossible, and therefore we must avoid causes of offence by having property valued and by equalizing taxation. To this end, let us make four classes in which the citizens may be placed according to the measure of their original property, and the changes of their fortune. The greatest of evils is revolution; and this, as the law will say, is caused by extremes of poverty or wealth. The limit of poverty shall be the lot, which must not be diminished, and may be increased fivefold, but not more. He who exceeds the limit must give up the excess to the state; but if he does not, and is informed against, the surplus shall be divided between the informer and the Gods, and he shall pay a sum equal to the surplus out Of his own property. All property other than the lot must be inscribed in a register, so that any disputes which arise may be easily determined. The city shall be placed in a suitable situation, as nearly as possible in the centre of the country, and shall be divided into twelve wards. First, we will erect an acropolis, encircled by a wall, within which shall be placed the temples of Hestia, and Zeus, and Athene. From this shall be drawn lines dividing the city, and also the country, into twelve sections, and the country shall be subdivided into 5040 lots. Each lot shall contain two parts, one at a distance, the other near the city; and the distance of one part shall be compensated by the nearness of the other, the badness and goodness by the greater or less size. Twelve lots will be assigned to twelve Gods, and they will give their names to the tribes. The divisions of the city shall correspond to those of the country; and every man shall have two habitations, one near the centre of the country, the other at the extremity. The objection will naturally arise, that all the advantages of which we have been speaking will never concur. The citizens will not tolerate a settlement in which they are deprived of gold and silver, and have the number of their families regulated, and the sites of their houses fixed by law. It will be said that our city is a mere image of wax. And the legislator will answer: 'I know it, but I maintain that we ought to set forth an ideal which is as perfect as possible. If difficulties arise in the execution of the plan, we must avoid them and carry out the remainder. But the legislator must first be allowed to complete his idea without interruption.' The number twelve, which we have chosen for the number of division, must run through all parts of the state,--phratries, villages, ranks of soldiers, coins, and measures wet and dry, which are all to be made commensurable with one another. There is no meanness in requiring that the smallest vessels should have a common measure; for the divisions of number are useful in measuring height and depth, as well as sounds and motions, upwards or downwards, or round and round. The legislator should impress on his citizens the value of arithmetic. No instrument of education has so much power; nothing more tends to sharpen and inspire the dull intellect. But the legislator must be careful to instil a noble and generous spirit into the students, or they will tend to become cunning rather than wise. This may be proved by the example of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, who, notwithstanding their knowledge of arithmetic, are degraded in their general character; whether this defect in them is due to some natural cause or to a bad legislator. For it is clear that there are great differences in the power of regions to produce good men: heat and cold, and water and food, have great effects both on body and soul; and those spots are peculiarly fortunate in which the air is holy, and the Gods are pleased to dwell. To all this the legislator must attend, so far as in him lies. _ |
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