to the case of the Laws, we have now
to point out that they contain the class of refined or unconscious
similarities which are indicative of genuineness. The parallelisms are
like the repetitions of favourite thoughts into which every one is apt
to fall unawares in conversation or in writing. They are found in a work
which contains many beautiful and remarkable passages. We may therefore
begin by claiming this presumption in their favour. Such undesigned
coincidences, as we may venture to call them, are the following. The
conception of justice as the union of temperance, wisdom, courage
(Laws; Republic): the latent idea of dialectic implied in the notion
of dividing laws after the kinds of virtue (Laws); the approval of the
method of looking at one idea gathered from many things, 'than which a
truer was never discovered by any man' (compare Republic): or again the
description of the Laws as parents (Laws; Republic): the assumption
that religion has been already settled by the oracle of Delphi (Laws;
Republic), to which an appeal is also made in special cases (Laws): the
notion of the battle with self, a paradox for which Plato in a manner
apologizes both in the Laws and the Republic: the remark (Laws) that
just men, even when they are deformed in body, may still be perfectly
beautiful in respect of the excellent justice of their minds (compare
Republic): the argument that ideals are none the worse because they
cannot be carried out (Laws; Republic): the near approach to the idea of
good in 'the principle which is common to all the four virtues,' a
truth which the guardians must be compelled to recognize (Laws; compare
Republic): or again the recognition by reason of the right pleasure and
pain, which had previously been matter of habit (Laws; Republic): or
the blasphemy of saying that the excellency of music is to give pleasure
(Laws; Republic): again the story of the Sidonian Cadmus (Laws), which
is a variation of the Phoenician tale of the earth-born men (Republic):
the comparison of philosophy to a yelping she-dog, both in the Republic
and in the Laws: the remark that no man can practise two trades (Laws;
Republic): or the advantage of the middle condition (Laws; Republic):
the tendency to speak of principles as moulds or forms; compare the
ekmageia of song (Laws), and the tupoi of religion (Republic): or the
remark (Laws) that 'the relaxation of justice makes many cities out of
one,' which may be compared with the Re