t allow anything to be done contrary to
his appointment, or any question to be asked--not even in sudden changes
of circumstances, when something happens to be better than what he
commanded for some one.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; the law treats us all precisely in the manner
which you describe.

STRANGER: A perfectly simple principle can never be applied to a state
of things which is the reverse of simple.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Then if the law is not the perfection of right, why are
we compelled to make laws at all? The reason of this has next to be
investigated.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Let me ask, whether you have not meetings for gymnastic
contests in your city, such as there are in other cities, at which men
compete in running, wrestling, and the like?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; they are very common among us.

STRANGER: And what are the rules which are enforced on their pupils by
professional trainers or by others having similar authority? Can you
remember?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: The training-masters do not issue minute rules for
individuals, or give every individual what is exactly suited to his
constitution; they think that they ought to go more roughly to work, and
to prescribe generally the regimen which will benefit the majority.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And therefore they assign equal amounts of exercise to them
all; they send them forth together, and let them rest together from
their running, wrestling, or whatever the form of bodily exercise may
be.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And now observe that the legislator who has to preside over
the herd, and to enforce justice in their dealings with one another,
will not be able, in enacting for the general good, to provide exactly
what is suitable for each particular case.

YOUNG SOCRATES: He cannot be expected to do so.

STRANGER: He will lay down laws in a general form for the majority,
roughly meeting the cases of individuals; and some of them he will
deliver in writing, and others will be unwritten; and these last will be
traditional customs of the country.

YOUNG SOCRATES: He will be right.

STRANGER: Yes, quite right; for how can he sit at every man's side all
through his life, prescribing for him the exact particulars of his duty?
Who, Socrates, would be equal to such a task? No one who really had the
royal science, if he had been able to do this, would have imposed