Page - 852 - in The Complete Plato

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. STRANGER: Therefore, as there is a danger of this, the next best thing in legislating is not to allow either the individual or the multitude to break the law in any respect whatever. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: The laws would be copies of the true particulars of action as far as they admit of being written down from the lips of those who have knowledge? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they would. STRANGER: And, as we were saying, he who has knowledge and is a true Statesman, will do many things within his own sphere of action by his art without regard to the laws, when he is of opinion that something other than that which he has written down and enjoined to be observed during his absence would be better. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we said so. STRANGER: And any individual or any number of men, having fixed laws, in acting contrary to them with a view to something better, would only be acting, as far as they are able, like the true Statesman? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: If they had no knowledge of what they were doing, they would imitate the truth, and they would always imitate ill; but if they had knowledge, the imitation would be the perfect truth, and an imitation no longer. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true. 852