NIAS: Do not hesitate, Stranger; I see that you are afraid of such
a discussion carrying you beyond the limits of legislation. But if there
be no other way of showing our agreement in the belief that there are
Gods, of whom the law is said now to approve, let us take this way, my
good sir.

ATHENIAN: Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of
those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions;
they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and
destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is
last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true
nature of the Gods.

CLEINIAS: Still I do not understand you.

ATHENIAN: Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the
nature and power of the soul, especially in what relates to her origin:
they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all
bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions. And
if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, must not the
things which are of the soul's kindred be of necessity prior to those
which appertain to the body?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will be
prior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and the great
and primitive works and actions will be works of art; they will be
the first, and after them will come nature and works of nature, which
however is a wrong term for men to apply to them; these will follow, and
will be under the government of art and mind.

CLEINIAS: But why is the word 'nature' wrong?

ATHENIAN: Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is
the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval
element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other
things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true
if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right.

ATHENIAN: Shall we, then, take this as the next point to which our
attention should be directed?

CLEINIAS: By all means.

ATHENIAN: Let us be on our guard lest this most deceptive argument with
its youthful looks, beguiling us old men, give us the slip and make a
laughing-stock of us. Who knows but we may be aiming at the greater, and
fail of attaining the lesser? Suppose that we three have to pass a rapid
river, and I, being the youn