YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: To nothing short of the whole regulation of human life. For the
orderly class are always ready to lead a peaceful life, quietly doing their
own business; this is their manner of behaving with all men at home, and
they are equally ready to find some way of keeping the peace with foreign
States. And on account of this fondness of theirs for peace, which is
often out of season where their influence prevails, they become by degrees
unwarlike, and bring up their young men to be like themselves; they are at
the mercy of their enemies; whence in a few years they and their children
and the whole city often pass imperceptibly from the condition of freemen
into that of slaves.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What a cruel fate!
STRANGER: And now think of what happens with the more courageous natures.
Are they not always inciting their country to go to war, owing to their
excessive love of the military life? they raise up enemies against
themselves many and mighty, and either utterly ruin their native-land or
enslave and subject it to its foes?
YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is true.
STRANGER: Must we not admit, then, that where these two classes exist,
they always feel the greatest antipathy and antagonism towards one
another?
YOUNG SOCRATES: We cannot deny it.
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