LAWS by Plato - Complete text

Part 2 Page 25

Ath. Consider, then, to whom our state is to be entrusted. For there is a thing which has occurred times without number in states -

Cle. What thing?

Ath. That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants - they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them. Now, according to our view, such governments are not polities at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of particular classes and not for the good of the whole state. States which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning. I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in your state to any one because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth: but he who is most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the palm; and to him who is victorious in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the gods; and the second to him who bears the second palm; and on a similar principle shall all the other be assigned to those who come next in order. And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well - or ill - being of the state. For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.

Cle. Truly, Stranger, you see with the keen vision of age.

Ath. Why, yes; every man when he is young has that sort of vision dullest, and when he is old keenest.

Cle. Very true.

Ath. And now, what is to be the next step? May we not suppose the colonists to have arrived, and proceed to make our speech to them?

Cle. Certainly.

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