arise out of the conflict of
circumstances. These Plato proposes to leave to a younger generation
of legislators. The action of courts of law in making law seems to
have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular
assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to
have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge. In reading the Laws of
Plato, or any other ancient writing about Laws, we should consider
how gradual the process is by which not only a legal system, but the
administration of a court of law, becomes perfected.

There are other subjects on which Plato breaks ground, as his manner is,
early in the work. First, he gives a sketch of the subject of laws; they
are to comprehend the whole of human life, from infancy to age, and from
birth to death, although the proposed plan is far from being regularly
executed in the books which follow, partly owing to the necessity of
describing the constitution as well as the laws of his new colony.
Secondly, he touches on the power of music, which may exercise so
great an influence on the character of men for good or evil; he refers
especially to the great offence--which he mentions again, and which he
had condemned in the Republic--of varying the modes and rhythms, as
well as to that of separating the words from the music. Thirdly, he
reprobates the prevalence of unnatural loves in Sparta and Crete, which
he attributes to the practice of syssitia and gymnastic exercises, and
considers to be almost inseparable from them. To this subject he again
returns in the eighth book. Fourthly, the virtues are affirmed to be
inseparable from one another, even if not absolutely one; this, too, is
a principle which he reasserts at the conclusion of the work. As in
the beginnings of Plato's other writings, we have here several 'notes'
struck, which form the preludes of longer discussions, although the hint
is less ingeniously given, and the promise more imperfectly fulfilled
than in the earlier dialogues.

The distinction between ethics and politics has not yet dawned upon
Plato's mind. To him, law is still floating in a region between the two.
He would have desired that all the acts and laws of a state should
have regard to all virtue. But he did not see that politics and law are
subject to their own conditions, and are distinguished from ethics by
natural differences. The actions of which politics take cognisance are
necessarily collective or represent