STRANGER: But in those who were originally of a private betrothals and espousals. For most persons noble nature, and who have been nurtured in noble form marriage connexions without due regard to ways, and in those only, may we not say that union what is best for the procreation of children.
is implanted by law, and that this is the medicine which art prescribes for them, and of all the bonds YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way?
which unite the dissimilar and contrary parts of virtue is not this, as I was saying, the divinest?
STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
a serious censure.
STRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider is no difficulty in imagining, or when you have imag-them at all.
ined, in creating the other bonds, which are human only.
STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those who make family their chief aim, YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds and to indicate their error.
do you mean?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between States by giving and tak-STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; ing children in marriage, or between individuals by they seek their ease and receive with open arms 139
Statesman
those who are like themselves, and hate those who STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is are unlike them, being too much influenced by feel-over-full of modesty and has no element of courage ings of dislike.
in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
and useless.
STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for na-YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.
tures like their own, and as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this class, STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there and the courageous do the same; they seek natures would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both like their own, whereas they should both do pre-classes originally held the same opinion about the cisely the opposite.
honourable and good;—indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised—
YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?
never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and by the gentler nature during many generations, may honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts forth to one another; and out of them forming one smooth into downright madness.
and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?