f state--imbued with her precepts is of more
value than all the speculative, retired philosophers or cynical revilers
of princes and magistrates that ever lived upon earth.

_Diogenes_.--Don't tell me of the music of Orpheus, and of his taming
wild beasts. A wild beast brought to crouch and lick the hand of a
master, is a much viler animal than he was in his natural state of
ferocity. You seem to think that the business of philosophy is to polish
men into slaves; but I say, it is to teach them to assert, with an
untamed and generous spirit, their independence and freedom. You profess
to instruct those who want to ride their fellow-creatures, how to do it
with an easy and gentle rein; but I would have them thrown off, and
trampled under the feet of all their deluded or insulted equals, on whose
backs they have mounted. Which of us two is the truest friend to
mankind?

_Plato_.--According to your notions all government is destructive to
liberty; but I think that no liberty can subsist without government. A
state of society is the natural state of mankind. They are impelled to
it by their wants, their infirmities, their affections. The laws of
society are rules of life and action necessary to secure their happiness
in that state. Government is the due enforcing of those laws. That
government is the best which does this post effectually, and most
equally; and that people is the freest which is most submissively
obedient to such a government.

_Diogenes_.--Show me the government which makes no other use of its power
than duly to enforce the laws of society, and I will own it is entitled
to the most absolute submission from all its subjects.

_Plato_.--I cannot show you perfection in human institutions. It is far
more easy to blame them than it is to amend them, much may be wrong in
the best: but a good man respects the laws and the magistrates of his
country.

_Diogenes_.--As for the laws of my country, I did so far respect them as
not to philosophise to the prejudice of the first and greatest principle
of nature and of wisdom, self-preservation. Though I loved to prate
about high matters as well as Socrates, I did not choose to drink hemlock
after his example. But you might as well have bid me love an ugly woman,
because she was dressed up in the gown of Lais, as respect a fool or a
knave, because he was attired in the robe of a magistrate.

_Plato_.--All I desired of you was, not to amuse yourself and the