Most persons in
their marriages seek after wealth or power; or they are clannish, and
choose those who are like themselves,--the temperate marrying the
temperate, and the courageous the courageous. The two classes thrive and
flourish at first, but they soon degenerate; the one become mad, and the
other feeble and useless. This would not have been the case, if they had
both originally held the same notions about the honourable and the good;
for then they never would have allowed the temperate natures to be
separated from the courageous, but they would have bound them together by
common honours and reputations, by intermarriages, and by the choice of
rulers who combine both qualities. The temperate are careful and just, but
are wanting in the power of action; the courageous fall short of them in
justice, but in action are superior to them: and no state can prosper in
which either of these qualities is wanting. The noblest and best of all
webs or states is that which the royal science weaves, combining the two
sorts of natures in a single texture, and in this enfolding freeman and
slave and every other social element, and presiding over them all.
'Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less than of the
Sophist, is quite perfect.'
...
The principal subjects in the Statesman may be conveniently embraced under
six or seven heads:--(1) the myth; (2) the dialectical interest; (3) the
political aspects of the dialogue; (4) the satirical and paradoxical vein;
(5) the necessary imperfection of law; (6) the relation of the work to the
other writings of Plato; lastly (7), we may briefly consider the
genuineness of the Sophist and Statesman, which can hardly be assumed
without proof, since the two dialogues have been questioned by three such
eminent Platonic scholars as Socher, Schaarschmidt, and Ueberweg.
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