OUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds do you mean?

STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between
States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between individuals
by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons form marriage
connexions without due regard to what is best for the procreation of
children.

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way?

STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are
objects not worthy even of a serious censure.

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider them at all.

STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those who
make family their chief aim, and to indicate their error.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; they seek their ease and
receive with open arms those who are like themselves, and hate those who
are unlike them, being too much influenced by feelings of dislike.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and
as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this
class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their own,
whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?

STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during
many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts
forth into downright madness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.

STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and
has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow
too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.

STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty
in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion
about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole
process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures
to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the
warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and
by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one
smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?

STRANGER: Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who
has both these qualities--when many, you must mingle some of