STRANGER: And returning to the enquiry with which we began, have we not
found that considerable portions of virtue are at variance with one
another, and give rise to a similar opposition in the characters who are
endowed with them?
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: Let us consider a further point.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: I want to know, whether any constructive art will make any, even
the most trivial thing, out of bad and good materials indifferently, if
this can be helped? does not all art rather reject the bad as far as
possible, and accept the good and fit materials, and from these elements,
whether like or unlike, gathering them all into one, work out some nature
or idea?
YOUNG SOCRATES: To, be sure.
STRANGER: Then the true and natural art of statesmanship will never allow
any State to be formed by a combination of good and bad men, if this can be
avoided; but will begin by testing human natures in play, and after testing
them, will entrust them to proper teachers who are the ministers of her
purposes--she will herself give orders, and maintain authority; just as the
art of weaving continually gives orders and maintains authority over the
carders and all the others who prepare the material for the work,
commanding the subsidiary arts to execute the works which she deems
necessary for making the web.
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