and in custom, and knowledge is divorced from action, can we wonder,

Socrates, at the miseries which there are, and always will be, in

States? Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus conducted,

would ruin all that it touched. Ought we not rather to wonder at the

natural strength of the political bond? For States have endured all

this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still remain and are not

overthrown, though many of them, like ships at sea, founder from time

to time, and perish and have perished and will hereafter perish, through

the badness of their pilots and crews, who have the worst sort of

ignorance of the highest truths--I mean to say, that they are wholly

unaquainted with politics, of which, above all other sciences, they

believe themselves to have acquired the most perfect knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then the question arises:--which of these untrue forms of

government is the least oppressive to their subjects, though they are

all oppressive; and which is the worst of them? Here is a consideration

which is beside our present purpose, and yet having regard to the whole

it seems to influence all our actions: we must examine it.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must.

STRANGER: You may say that of the three forms, the same is at once the

hardest and the easiest.

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Statesman