Ath. I will endeavour to do as you wish:-Concerning the soul,thus much would be generally said and allowed, that one element in hernature is passion, which may be described either as a state or apart of her, and is hard to be striven against and contended with, andby irrational force overturns many things.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. And pleasure is not the same with passion, but has anopposite power, working her will by persuasion and by the force ofdeceit in all things.
Cle. Quite true.
Ath. A man may truly say that ignorance is a third cause ofcrimes. Ignorance, however, may be conveniently divided by thelegislator into two sorts: there is simple ignorance, which is thesource of lighter offences, and double ignorance, which is accompaniedby a conceit of wisdom; and he who is under the influence of thelatter fancies that he knows all about matters of which he knowsnothing. This second kind of ignorance, when possessed of power andstrength, will be held by the legislator to be the source of great andmonstrous times, but when attended with weakness, will only resultin the errors of children and old men; and these he will treat aserrors, and will make laws accordingly for those who commit them,which will be the mildest and most merciful of all laws.
Cle. You are perfectly right.
Ath. We all of us remark of one man that he is superior topleasure and passion, and of another that he is inferior to them;and this is true.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. But no one was ever yet heard to say that one of us is superiorand another inferior to ignorance.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. We are speaking of motives which incite men to the fulfilmentof their will; although an individual may be often drawn by them inopposite directions at the same time.
Cle. Yes, often.
Ath. And now I can define to you clearly, and without ambiguity,what I mean by the just and unjust, according to my notion ofthem:-When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies anddesires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not-Icall all this injustice. But when the opinion of the best, in whateverpart of human nature states or individuals may suppose that todwell, has dominion in the soul and orders the life of every man, evenif it be sometimes mistaken, yet what is done in accordance therewith,the principle in individuals which obeys this rule, and is best forthe whole life of man, is to be called just; although the hurt done bymistake is thought by many to be involuntary injustice. Leaving thequestion of names, about which we are not going to quarrel, and havingalready delineated three sources of error, we may begin by recallingthem somewhat more vividly to our memory:-One of them was of thepainful sort, which we denominate anger and fear.
Cle. Quite right.
Ath. There was a second consisting of pleasures and desires, and athird of hopes, which aimed at true opinion about the best. The latterbeing subdivided into three, we now get five sources of actions; andfor these five we will make laws of two kinds.
Cle. What are the two kinds?
Ath. There is one kind of actions done by violence and in thelight of day, and another kind of actions which are done in darknessand with secret deceit, or sometimes both with violence and deceit;the laws concerning these last ought to have a character of severity.
Cle. Naturally.
Ath. And now let us return from this digression and complete thework of legislation. Laws have been already enacted by us concerningthe robbers of the Gods, and concerning traitors, and alsoconcerning those who corrupt the laws for the purpose of subvertingthe government. A man may very likely commit some of these crimes,either in a state of madness or when affected by disease, or under theinfluence of extreme old age, or in a fit of childish wantonness,himself no better than a child. And if this be made evident to thejudges elected to try the cause, on the appeal of the criminal orhis advocate, and he be judged to have been in this state when hecommitted the offence, he shall simply pay for the hurt which he mayhave done to another; but he shall be exempt from other penalties,unless he have slain some one, and have on his hands the stain ofblood. And in that case he shall go to another land and country, andthere dwell for a year; and if he return before the expiration ofthe time which the law appoints, or even set his foot at all on hisnative land, he shall be bound by the guardians of the law in thepublic prison for two years, and then go free.
Having begun to speak of homicide, let us endeavour to lay down lawsconcerning every different kind of homicides, and, first of all,concerning violent and involuntary homicides. If any one in anathletic contest, and at the public games, involuntarily kills afriend, and he dies either at the time or afterwards of the blowswhich he has received; or if the like misfortune happens to any one inwar, or military exercises, or mimic contests. of which themagistrates enjoin the practice, whether with or without arms, when hehas been purified according to the law brought from Delphi relating tothese matters, he shall be innocent. And so in the case of physicians:
if their patient dies against their will, they shall be held guiltlessby the law. And if one slay another with his own hand, butunintentionally, whether he be unarmed or have some instrument or dartin his hand; or if he kill him by administering food or drink or bythe application of fire or cold, or by suffocating him, whether hedo the deed by his own hand, or by the agency of others, he shall bedeemed the agent, and shall suffer one of the followingpenalties:-If he kill the slave of another in the belief that he ishis own, he shall bear the master of the dead man harmless fromloss, or shall pay a penalty of twice the value of the dead man, whichthe judges shall assess; but purifications must be used greater andmore numerous than for those who committed homicide at the games;-whatthey are to be, the interpreters whom the God appoints shall beauthorized to declare. And if a man kills his own slave, when he hasbeen purified according to laws he shall be quit of the homicide.
