STRANGER: And what are the rules which are enforced on their pupils by
professional trainers or by others having similar authority? Can you
remember?
YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: The training-masters do not issue minute rules for individuals,
or give every individual what is exactly suited to his constitution; they
think that they ought to go more roughly to work, and to prescribe
generally the regimen which will benefit the majority.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: And therefore they assign equal amounts of exercise to them all;
they send them forth together, and let them rest together from their
running, wrestling, or whatever the form of bodily exercise may be.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: And now observe that the legislator who has to preside over the
herd, and to enforce justice in their dealings with one another, will not
be able, in enacting for the general good, to provide exactly what is
suitable for each particular case.
YOUNG SOCRATES: He cannot be expected to do so.
STRANGER: He will lay down laws in a general form for the majority,
roughly meeting the cases of individuals; and some of them he will deliver
in writing, and others will be unwritten; and these last will be
traditional customs of the country.
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