rt in the Laws. The
illustrations, such as the two kinds of doctors, 'the three kinds of
funerals,' the fear potion, the puppet, the painter leaving a successor
to restore his picture, the 'person stopping to consider where three
ways meet,' the 'old laws about water of which he will not divert the
course,' can hardly be said to do much credit to Plato's invention. The
citations from the poets have lost that fanciful character which gave
them their charm in the earlier dialogues. We are tired of images taken
from the arts of navigation, or archery, or weaving, or painting, or
medicine, or music. Yet the comparisons of life to a tragedy, or of
the working of mind to the revolution of the self-moved, or of the aged
parent to the image of a God dwelling in the house, or the reflection
that 'man is made to be the plaything of God, and that this rightly
considered is the best of him,' have great beauty.

2. The clumsiness of the style is exhibited in frequent mannerisms and
repetitions. The perfection of the Platonic dialogue consists in the
accuracy with which the question and answer are fitted into one another,
and the regularity with which the steps of the argument succeed one
another. This finish of style is no longer discernible in the Laws.
There is a want of variety in the answers; nothing can be drawn out
of the respondents but 'Yes' or 'No,' 'True,' 'To be sure,' etc.; the
insipid forms, 'What do you mean?' 'To what are you referring?' are
constantly returning. Again and again the speaker is charged, or charges
himself, with obscurity; and he repeats again and again that he will
explain his views more clearly. The process of thought which should
be latent in the mind of the writer appears on the surface. In several
passages the Athenian praises himself in the most unblushing manner,
very unlike the irony of the earlier dialogues, as when he declares that
'the laws are a divine work given by some inspiration of the Gods,' and
that 'youth should commit them to memory instead of the compositions of
the poets.' The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the Protagoras
and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it. The
legislator is always addressing the speakers or the youth of the state,
and the speakers are constantly making addresses to the legislator. A
tendency to a paradoxical manner of statement is also observable. 'We
must have drinking,' 'we must have a virtuous tyrant'--this is too much
for the