cknowledge that such a
comparison affords a new ground of real weight for believing the Laws to
be a genuine writing of Plato.

V. The relation of the Republic to the Laws is clearly set forth by
Plato in the Laws. The Republic is the best state, the Laws is the best
possible under the existing conditions of the Greek world. The Republic
is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may
not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or
son of a God (who can say?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of
all other states and the exemplar of human life. The Laws distinctly
acknowledge what the Republic partly admits, that the ideal is
inimitable by us, but that we should 'lift up our eyes to the heavens'
and try to regulate our lives according to the divine image. The
citizens are no longer to have wives and children in common, and are
no longer to be under the government of philosophers. But the spirit of
communism or communion is to continue among them, though reverence for
the sacredness of the family, and respect of children for parents, not
promiscuous hymeneals, are now the foundation of the state; the sexes
are to be as nearly on an equality as possible; they are to meet
at common tables, and to share warlike pursuits (if the women will
consent), and to have a common education. The legislator has taken the
place of the philosopher, but a council of elders is retained, who are
to fulfil the duties of the legislator when he has passed out of life.
The addition of younger persons to this council by co-optation is
an improvement on the governing body of the Republic. The scheme of
education in the Laws is of a far lower kind than that which Plato had
conceived in the Republic. There he would have his rulers trained in all
knowledge meeting in the idea of good, of which the different branches
of mathematical science are but the hand-maidens or ministers; here he
treats chiefly of popular education, stopping short with the preliminary
sciences,--these are to be studied partly with a view to their practical
usefulness, which in the Republic he holds cheap, and even more with a
view to avoiding impiety, of which in the Republic he says nothing; he
touches very lightly on dialectic, which is still to be retained for
the rulers. Yet in the Laws there remain traces of the old educational
ideas. He is still for banishing the poets; and as he finds the works of
prose writers equally dangerou