third court, then if he win he shall receive
from the defendant the amount of the damages and, as I said before,
half as much again, and the plaintiff, if he lose, shall pay half of the
damages claimed. Now the assignment by lot of judges to courts and the
completion of the number of them, and the appointment of servants to the
different magistrates, and the times at which the several causes
should be heard, and the votings and delays, and all the things that
necessarily concern suits, and the order of causes, and the time in
which answers have to be put in and parties are to appear--of these and
other things akin to these we have indeed already spoken, but there
is no harm in repeating what is right twice or thrice: All lesser and
easier matters which the elder legislator has omitted may be supplied by
the younger one. Private courts will be sufficiently regulated in this
way, and the public and state courts, and those which the magistrates
must use in the administration of their several offices, exist in many
other states. Many very respectable institutions of this sort have
been framed by good men, and from them the guardians of the law may
by reflection derive what is necessary for the order of our new state,
considering and correcting them, and bringing them to the test of
experience, until every detail appears to be satisfactorily determined;
and then putting the final seal upon them, and making them irreversible,
they shall use them for ever afterwards. As to what relates to the
silence of judges and the abstinence from words of evil omen and the
reverse, and the different notions of the just and good and honourable
which exist in our own as compared with other states, they have been
partly mentioned already, and another part of them will be mentioned
hereafter as we draw near the end. To all these matters he who would be
an equal judge shall justly look, and he shall possess writings about
them that he may learn them. For of all kinds of knowledge the knowledge
of good laws has the greatest power of improving the learner; otherwise
there would be no meaning in the divine and admirable law possessing
a name akin to mind (nous, nomos). And of all other words, such as the
praises and censures of individuals which occur in poetry and also in
prose, whether written down or uttered in daily conversation, whether
men dispute about them in the spirit of contention or weakly assent
to them, as is often the case--of all th