On the tenth, there shall be a sale of liquids, and
on the twenty-third of animals, skins, woven or woollen stuffs, and
other things which husbandmen have to sell and foreigners want to buy.
None of these commodities, any more than barley or flour, or any other
food, may be retailed by a citizen to a citizen; but foreigners may
sell them to one another in the foreigners' market. There must also be
butchers who will sell parts of animals to foreigners and craftsmen,
and their servants; and foreigners may buy firewood wholesale of the
commissioners of woods, and may sell retail to foreigners. All other
goods must be sold in the market, at some place indicated by the
magistrates, and shall be paid for on the spot. He who gives credit, and
is cheated, will have no redress. In buying or selling, any excess or
diminution of what the law allows shall be registered. The same rule
is to be observed about the property of metics. Anybody who practises a
handicraft may come and remain twenty years from the day on which he is
enrolled; at the expiration of this time he shall take what he has and
depart. The only condition which is to be imposed upon him as the tax
of his sojourn is good conduct; and he is not to pay any tax for being
allowed to buy or sell. But if he wants to extend the time of his
sojourn, and has done any service to the state, and he can persuade the
council and assembly to grant his request, he may remain. The children
of metics may also be metics; and the period of twenty years, during
which they are permitted to sojourn, is to count, in their case, from
their fifteenth year.

No mention occurs in the Laws of the doctrine of Ideas. The will of God,
the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have
taken their place in the mind of Plato. If we ask what is that truth or
principle which, towards the end of his life, seems to have absorbed
him most, like the idea of good in the Republic, or of beauty in the
Symposium, or of the unity of virtue in the Protagoras, we should
answer--The priority of the soul to the body: his later system mainly
hangs upon this. In the Laws, as in the Sophist and Statesman, we pass
out of the region of metaphysical or transcendental ideas into that of
psychology.

The opening of the fifth book, though abrupt and unconnected in style,
is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling
which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the
bl