LAWS by Plato - Complete text

Part 1 Page 27

Ath. Is there any argument which will prove to us that we ought to encourage the taste for drinking instead of doing all we can to avoid it?

Cle. I suppose that there is; you at any rate, were just now saying that you were ready to maintain such a doctrine.

Ath. True, I was; and I am ready still, seeing that you have both declared that you are anxious to hear me.

Cle. To sure we are, if only for the strangeness of the paradox, which asserts that a man ought of his own accord to plunge into utter degradation.

Ath. Are you speaking of the soul?

Cle. Yes.

Ath. And what would you say about the body, my friend? Are you not surprised at any one of his own accord bringing upon himself deformity, leanness, ugliness, decrepitude?

Cle. Certainly.

Ath. Yet when a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop, and takes medicine, is he not aware that soon, and for many days afterwards, he will be in a state of body which he would die rather than accept as the permanent condition of his life? Are not those who train in gymnasia, at first beginning reduced to a state of weakness?

Cle. Yes, all that is well known.

Ath. Also that they go of their own accord for the sake of the subsequent benefit?

Cle. Very good.

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