YOUNG SOCRATES: He who is willing to take a and as touching healing and health and piloting and command under such conditions, deserves to suf-navigation, the nature of them is known to all, for fer any penalty.
anybody may learn the written laws and the national customs. If such were the mode of procedure, STRANGER: Yet once more, we shall have to enact Socrates, about these sciences and about generalship, that if any one is detected enquiring into piloting and any branch of hunting, or about painting or and navigation, or into health and the true nature of imitation in general, or carpentry, or any sort of medicine, or about the winds, or other conditions of handicraft, or husbandry, or planting, or if we were the atmosphere, contrary to the written rules, and to see an art of rearing horses, or tending herds, or has any ingenious notions about such matters, he is divination, or any ministerial service, or draught-play-not to be called a pilot or physician, but a cloudy ing, or any science conversant with number, whether prating sophist;—further, on the ground that he is a simple or square or cube, or comprising motion,—I corrupter of the young, who would persuade them say, if all these things were done in this way accord-to follow the art of medicine or piloting in an unlaw-ing to written regulations, and not according to art, ful manner, and to exercise an arbitrary rule over what would be the result?
their patients or ships, any one who is qualified by law may inform against him, and indict him in some YOUNG SOCRATES: All the arts would utterly court, and then if he is found to be persuading any, perish, and could never be recovered, because en-whether young or old, to act contrary to the written quiry would be unlawful. And human life, which is law, he is to be punished with the utmost rigour; for bad enough already, would then become utterly un-no one should presume to be wiser than the laws; endurable.