If such were the mode of procedure, Socrates,
about these sciences and about generalship, and any branch of hunting, or
about painting or imitation in general, or carpentry, or any sort of
handicraft, or husbandry, or planting, or if we were to see an art of
rearing horses, or tending herds, or divination, or any ministerial
service, or draught-playing, or any science conversant with number, whether
simple or square or cube, or comprising motion,--I say, if all these things
were done in this way according to written regulations, and not according
to art, what would be the result?
YOUNG SOCRATES: All the arts would utterly perish, and could never be
recovered, because enquiry would be unlawful. And human life, which is bad
enough already, would then become utterly unendurable.
STRANGER: But what, if while compelling all these operations to be
regulated by written law, we were to appoint as the guardian of the laws
some one elected by a show of hands, or by lot, and he caring nothing about
the laws, were to act contrary to them from motives of interest or favour,
and without knowledge,--would not this be a still worse evil than the
former?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: To go against the laws, which are based upon long experience,
and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously recommended them and
persuaded the multitude to pass them, would be a far greater and more
ruinous error than any adherence to written law?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
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