hand those
which incline to order and gentleness, and which are represented in
the figure as spun thick and soft, after the manner of the woof--these,
which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and weave together in the
following manner:

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what manner?

STRANGER: First of all, she takes the eternal element of the soul and
binds it with a divine cord, to which it is akin, and then the animal
nature, and binds that with human cords.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand what you mean.

STRANGER: The meaning is, that the opinion about the honourable and
the just and good and their opposites, which is true and confirmed
by reason, is a divine principle, and when implanted in the soul, is
implanted, as I maintain, in a nature of heavenly birth.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; what else should it be?

STRANGER: Only the Statesman and the good legislator, having the
inspiration of the royal muse, can implant this opinion, and he, only in
the rightly educated, whom we were just now describing.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough.

STRANGER: But him who cannot, we will not designate by any of the names
which are the subject of the present enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very right.

STRANGER: The courageous soul when attaining this truth becomes
civilized, and rendered more capable of partaking of justice; but when
not partaking, is inclined to brutality. Is not that true?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And again, the peaceful and orderly nature, if sharing in
these opinions, becomes temperate and wise, as far as this may be in a
State, but if not, deservedly obtains the ignominious name of silliness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: Can we say that such a connexion as this will lastingly unite
the evil with one another or with the good, or that any science would
seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join such materials?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.

STRANGER: But in those who were originally of a noble nature, and who
have been nurtured in noble ways, and in those only, may we not say
that union is implanted by law, and that this is the medicine which art
prescribes for them, and of all the bonds which unite the dissimilar and
contrary parts of virtue is not this, as I was saying, the divinest?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there is no difficulty in
imagining, or when you have imagined, in creating the other bonds, which
are human only.

Y