Diogenes.—­Yes, if he sees it abused to support the evil purposes of superstition and tyranny.

Plato.—­May not the abuse be corrected without losing the benefit?  Is there no difference between reformation and destruction.

Diogenes.—­Half-measures do nothing.  He who desires to reform must not be afraid to pull down.

Plato.—­I know that you and your sect are for pulling down everything that is above your own level.  Pride and envy are the motives that set you all to work.  Nor can one wonder that passions, the influence of which is so general, should give you many disciples and many admirers.

Diogenes.—­When you have established your Republic, if you will admit me into it I promise you to be there a most respectful subject.

Plato.—­I am conscious, Diogenes, that my Republic was imaginary, and could never be established.  But they show as little knowledge of what is practicable in politics as I did in that book, who suppose that the liberty of any civil society can be maintained by the destruction of order and decency or promoted by the petulance of unbridled defamation.

Diogenes.—­I never knew any government angry at defamation, when it fell on those who disliked or obstructed its measures.  But I well remember that the thirty tyrants at Athens called opposition to them the destruction of order and decency.

Plato.—­Things are not altered by names.

Diogenes.—­No, but names have a strange power to impose on weak understandings.  If, when you were in Egypt, you had laughed at the worship of an onion, the priests would have called you an atheist, and the people would have stoned you.  But I presume that, to have the honour of being initiated into the mysteries of that reverend hierarchy, you bowed as low to it as any of their devout disciples.  Unfortunately my neck was not so pliant, and therefore I was never initiated into the mysteries either of religion or government, but was feared or hated by all who thought it their interest to make them be respected.

Plato.—­Your vanity found its account in that fear and that hatred.  The high priest of a deity or the ruler of a state is much less distinguished from the vulgar herd of mankind than the scoffer at all religion and the despiser of all dominion.  But let us end our dispute.  I feel my folly in continuing to argue with one who in reasoning does not seek to come at truth, but merely to show his wit.  Adieu, Diogenes; I am going to converse with the shades of Pythagoras, Solon, and Bias.  You may jest with Aristophanes or rail with Thersites.

DIALOGUE XXXI.

ARISTIDES—­PHOCION—­DEMOSTHENES.

Aristides.—­How could it happen that Athens, after having recovered an equality with Sparta, should be forced to submit to the dominion of Macedon when she had two such great men as Phocion and Demosthenes at the head of her State?