Part 15 (2/2)
STRANGER: Suppose further, that the pilots and physicians are appointed annually, either out of the rich, or out of the whole people, and that they are elected by lot; and that after their election they navigate vessels and heal the sick according to the written rules.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Worse and worse.
STRANGER: But hear what follows:--When the year of office has expired, the pilot or physician has to come before a court of review, in which the judges are either selected from the wealthy cla.s.ses or chosen by lot out of the whole people; and anybody who pleases may be their accuser, and may lay to their charge, that during the past year they have not navigated their vessels or healed their patients according to the letter of the law and the ancient customs of their ancestors; and if either of them is condemned, some of the judges must fix what he is to suffer or pay.
YOUNG SOCRATES: He who is willing to take a command under such conditions, deserves to suffer any penalty.
STRANGER: Yet once more, we shall have to enact that if any one is detected enquiring into piloting and navigation, or into health and the true nature of medicine, or about the winds, or other conditions of the atmosphere, contrary to the written rules, and has any ingenious notions about such matters, he is not to be called a pilot or physician, but a cloudy prating sophist;--further, on the ground that he is a corrupter of the young, who would persuade them to follow the art of medicine or piloting in an unlawful manner, and to exercise an arbitrary rule over their patients or s.h.i.+ps, any one who is qualified by law may inform against him, and indict him in some court, and then if he is found to be persuading any, whether young or old, to act contrary to the written law, he is to be punished with the utmost rigour; for no one should presume to be wiser than the laws; and as touching healing and health and piloting and navigation, the nature of them is known to all, for anybody may learn the written laws and the national customs. If such were the mode of procedure, Socrates, about these sciences and about generals.h.i.+p, and any branch of hunting, or about painting or imitation in general, or carpentry, or any sort of handicraft, or husbandry, or planting, or if we were to see an art of rearing horses, or tending herds, or divination, or any ministerial service, or draught-playing, or any science conversant with number, whether simple or square or cube, or comprising motion,--I say, if all these things were done in this way according to written regulations, and not according to art, what would be the result?
YOUNG SOCRATES: All the arts would utterly perish, and could never be 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 mult.i.tude to pa.s.s 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 mult.i.tude 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.
STRANGER: And the principle that no great number of men are able to acquire a knowledge of any art has been already admitted by us.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, it has.
STRANGER: Then the royal or political art, if there be such an art, will never be attained either by the wealthy or by the other mob.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.
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