und that he is a corrupter
of the young, who would persuade them to follow the art of medicine or
piloting in an unlawful manner, and to exercise an arbitrary rule over
their patients or ships, any one who is qualified by law may inform
against him, and indict him in some court, and then if he is found to
be persuading any, whether young or old, to act contrary to the written
law, he is to be punished with the utmost rigour; for no one should
presume to be wiser than the laws; and as touching healing and health
and piloting and navigation, the nature of them is known to all, for
anybody may learn the written laws and the national customs. If such
were the mode of procedure, Socrates, about these sciences and about
generalship, and any branch of hunting, or about painting or imitation
in general, or carpentry, or any sort of handicraft, or husbandry, or
planting, or if we were to see an art of rearing horses, or tending
herds, or divination, or any ministerial service, or draught-playing, or
any science conversant with number, whether simple or square or cube,
or comprising motion,--I say, if all these things were done in this way
according to written regulations, and not according to art, what would
be the result?

YOUNG SOCRATES: All the arts would utterly perish, and could never be
recovered, because enquiry would be unlawful. And human life, which is
bad enough already, would then become utterly unendurable.

STRANGER: But what, if while compelling all these operations to be
regulated by written law, we were to appoint as the guardian of the laws
some one elected by a show of hands, or by lot, and he caring nothing
about the laws, were to act contrary to them from motives of interest
or favour, and without knowledge,--would not this be a still worse evil
than the former?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: To go against the laws, which are based upon long experience,
and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously recommended them and
persuaded the multitude to pass them, would be a far greater and more
ruinous error than any adherence to written law?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Therefore, as there is a danger of this, the next best thing
in legislating is not to allow either the individual or the multitude to
break the law in any respect whatever.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: The laws would be copies of the true particulars of action as
far as they admit of being written down from the