YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and as
far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this class,
and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their own, whereas
they should both do precisely the opposite.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?
STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during
many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts
forth into downright madness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.
STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has
no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too
indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.
STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty
in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion
about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole
process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures to
be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and
the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the
giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one smooth and
even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.
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