YOUNG SOCRATES: No one can deny what has been now said.
STRANGER: Neither, if you consider, can any one deny the other statement.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What was it?
STRANGER: We said that no great number of persons, whoever they may be,
can attain political knowledge, or order a State wisely, but that the true
government is to be found in a small body, or in an individual, and that
other States are but imitations of this, as we said a little while ago,
some for the better and some for the worse.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? I cannot have understood your previous
remark about imitations.
STRANGER: And yet the mere suggestion which I hastily threw out is highly
important, even if we leave the question where it is, and do not seek by
the discussion of it to expose the error which prevails in this matter.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: The idea which has to be grasped by us is not easy or familiar;
but we may attempt to express it thus:--Supposing the government of which I
have been speaking to be the only true model, then the others must use the
written laws of this--in no other way can they be saved; they will have to
do what is now generally approved, although not the best thing in the
world.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is this?
STRANGER: No citizen should do anything contrary to the laws, and any
infringement of them should be punished with death and the most extreme
penalties; and this is very right and good when regarded as the second best
thing, if you set aside the first, of which I was just now speaking.
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