at I should live as justly as
possible'? and if to be just is to be happy, what is that principle of
happiness or good which is superior to pleasure? Is the approval of
gods and men to be deemed good and honourable, but unpleasant, and their
disapproval the reverse? Or is the neither doing nor suffering evil good
and honourable, although not pleasant? But you cannot make men like what
is not pleasant, and therefore you must make them believe that the
just is pleasant. The business of the legislator is to clear up this
confusion. He will show that the just and the unjust are identical with
the pleasurable and the painful, from the point of view of the just man,
of the unjust the reverse. And which is the truer judgment? Surely that
of the better soul. For if not the truth, it is the best and most moral
of fictions; and the legislator who desires to propagate this useful
lie, may be encouraged by remarking that mankind have believed the story
of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth, and therefore he may be assured that
he can make them believe anything, and need only consider what fiction
will do the greatest good. That the happiest is also the holiest, this
shall be our strain, which shall be sung by all three choruses alike.
First will enter the choir of children, who will lift up their voices
on high; and after them the young men, who will pray the God Paean to be
gracious to the youth, and to testify to the truth of their words;
then will come the chorus of elder men, between thirty and sixty; and,
lastly, there will be the old men, and they will tell stories enforcing
the same virtues, as with the voice of an oracle. 'Whom do you mean by
the third chorus?' You remember how I spoke at first of the restless
nature of young creatures, who jumped about and called out in a
disorderly manner, and I said that no other animal attained any
perception of rhythm; but that to us the Gods gave Apollo and the Muses
and Dionysus to be our playfellows. Of the two first choruses I have
already spoken, and I have now to speak of the third, or Dionysian
chorus, which is composed of those who are between thirty and sixty
years old. 'Let us hear.' We are agreed (are we not?) that men, women,
and children should be always charming themselves with strains of
virtue, and that there should be a variety in the strains, that they may
not weary of them? Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be
uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot