e general reflection,--'What wonders might not strength and military
resources have accomplished, if the possessor had only known how to use
them!' For consider: if the generals of the army had only known how
to arrange their forces, might they not have given their subjects
everlasting freedom, and the power of doing what they would in all the
world? 'Very true.' Suppose a person to express his admiration of wealth
or rank, does he not do so under the idea that by the help of these
he can attain his desires? All men wish to obtain the control of all
things, and they are always praying for what they desire. 'Certainly.'
And we ask for our friends what they ask for themselves. 'Yes.' Dear is
the son to the father, and yet the son, if he is young and foolish, will
often pray to obtain what the father will pray that he may not obtain.
'True.' And when the father, in the heat of youth or the dotage of age,
makes some rash prayer, the son, like Hippolytus, may have reason to
pray that the word of his father may be ineffectual. 'You mean that a
man should pray to have right desires, before he prays that his desires
may be fulfilled; and that wisdom should be the first object of our
prayers?' Yes; and you will remember my saying that wisdom should be the
principal aim of the legislator; but you said that defence in war
came first. And I replied, that there were four virtues, whereas you
acknowledged one only--courage, and not wisdom which is the guide of all
the rest. And I repeat--in jest if you like, but I am willing that you
should receive my words in earnest--that 'the prayer of a fool is full
of danger.' I will prove to you, if you will allow me, that the ruin
of those states was not caused by cowardice or ignorance in war, but
by ignorance of human affairs. 'Pray proceed: our attention will show
better than compliments that we prize your words.' I maintain that
ignorance is, and always has been, the ruin of states; wherefore the
legislator should seek to banish it from the state; and the greatest
ignorance is the love of what is known to be evil, and the hatred of
what is known to be good; this is the last and greatest conflict of
pleasure and reason in the soul. I say the greatest, because affecting
the greater part of the soul; for the passions are in the individual
what the people are in a state. And when they become opposed to reason
or law, and instruction no longer avails--that is the last and greatest
ignorance of st