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.

Statesman