Page - 864 - in The Complete Plato

civilized, and rendered more capable of partaking of justice; but when not partaking, is inclined to brutality. Is not that true? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: And again, the peaceful and orderly nature, if sharing in these opinions, becomes temperate and wise, as far as this may be in a State, but if not, deservedly obtains the ignominious name of silliness. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true. STRANGER: Can we say that such a connexion as this will lastingly unite the evil with one another or with the good, or that any science would seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join such materials? YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible. STRANGER: But in those who were originally of a noble nature, and who have been nurtured in noble ways, and in those only, may we not say that union is implanted by law, and that this is the medicine which art prescribes for them, and of all the bonds which unite the dissimilar and contrary parts of virtue is not this, as I was saying, the divinest? YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there is no difficulty in imagining, or when you have imagined, in creating the other bonds, which are human only. YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds do you mean? STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between individuals by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons form marriage connexions without due regard to what is best for the procreation of children. YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way? STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of a serious censure. YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider them at all. STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those who make family their chief aim, and to indicate their error. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true. STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; they seek their ease and receive with open arms those who are like themselves, and hate those who are unlike them, being too much influenced by feelings of dislike. 864