terrorem, to go on to another law; offering never a word of advice or
exhortation to those for whom he is legislating, after the manner of
some doctors? For of doctors, as I may remind you, some have a gentler,
others a ruder method of cure; and as children ask the doctor to be
gentle with them, so we will ask the legislator to cure our disorders
with the gentlest remedies. What I mean to say is, that besides doctors
there are doctors' servants, who are also styled doctors.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And whether they are slaves or freemen makes no difference;
they acquire their knowledge of medicine by obeying and observing their
masters; empirically and not according to the natural way of learning,
as the manner of freemen is, who have learned scientifically themselves
the art which they impart scientifically to their pupils. You are aware
that there are these two classes of doctors?

CLEINIAS: To be sure.

ATHENIAN: And did you ever observe that there are two classes of
patients in states, slaves and freemen; and the slave doctors run about
and cure the slaves, or wait for them in the dispensaries--practitioners
of this sort never talk to their patients individually, or let them talk
about their own individual complaints? The slave doctor prescribes what
mere experience suggests, as if he had exact knowledge; and when he has
given his orders, like a tyrant, he rushes off with equal assurance
to some other servant who is ill; and so he relieves the master of the
house of the care of his invalid slaves. But the other doctor, who is
a freeman, attends and practices upon freemen; and he carries his
enquiries far back, and goes into the nature of the disorder; he enters
into discourse with the patient and with his friends, and is at once
getting information from the sick man, and also instructing him as far
as he is able, and he will not prescribe for him until he has first
convinced him; at last, when he has brought the patient more and more
under his persuasive influences and set him on the road to health, he
attempts to effect a cure. Now which is the better way of proceeding in
a physician and in a trainer? Is he the better who accomplishes his
ends in a double way, or he who works in one way, and that the ruder and
inferior?

CLEINIAS: I should say, Stranger, that the double way is far better.

ATHENIAN: Should you like to see an example of the double and single
method in legislation?

CLEINIAS: Certai