YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they cannot.

STRANGER: This then we declare to be the completion of the web of

political action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the brave

and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn the two

minds into communion with one another by unanimity and friendship, and

having perfected the noblest and best of all the webs which political

life admits, and enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities,

whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs and

presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is vouchsafed to a

city, in no particular fails to secure their happiness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no

less than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.

126

Statesman