meals in common; and as our country, owing to its
ruggedness, is ill-suited for heavy-armed cavalry or infantry, our
soldiers are archers, equipped with bows and arrows. The legislator was
under the idea that war was the natural state of all mankind, and that
peace is only a pretence; he thought that no possessions had any
value which were not secured against enemies.' And do you think that
superiority in war is the proper aim of government? 'Certainly I do, and
my Spartan friend will agree with me.' And are there wars, not only of
state against state, but of village against village, of family against
family, of individual against individual? 'Yes.' And is a man his own
enemy? 'There you come to first principles, like a true votary of the
goddess Athene; and this is all the better, for you will the sooner
recognize the truth of what I am saying--that all men everywhere are the
enemies of all, and each individual of every other and of himself;
and, further, that there is a victory and defeat--the best and the
worst--which each man sustains, not at the hands of another, but of
himself.' And does this extend to states and villages as well as to
individuals? 'Certainly; there is a better in them which conquers or
is conquered by the worse.' Whether the worse ever really conquers
the better, is a question which may be left for the present; but your
meaning is, that bad citizens do sometimes overcome the good, and that
the state is then conquered by herself, and that when they are defeated
the state is victorious over herself. Or, again, in a family there may
be several brothers, and the bad may be a majority; and when the
bad majority conquer the good minority, the family are worse than
themselves. The use of the terms 'better or worse than himself or
themselves' may be doubtful, but about the thing meant there can be no
dispute. 'Very true.' Such a struggle might be determined by a judge.
And which will be the better judge--he who destroys the worse and lets
the better rule, or he who lets the better rule and makes the others
voluntarily obey; or, thirdly, he who destroys no one, but reconciles
the two parties? 'The last, clearly.' But the object of such a judge or
legislator would not be war. 'True.' And as there are two kinds of war,
one without and one within a state, of which the internal is by far
the worse, will not the legislator chiefly direct his attention to
this latter? He will reconcile the contending factions, a