Our third law will be a general one, concerning the procedure and the judges in cases of treason.  As regards the remaining or departure of the family of the offender, the same law shall apply equally to the traitor, the sacrilegious, and the conspirator.

A thief, whether he steals much or little, must refund twice the amount, if he can do so without impairing his lot; if he cannot, he must go to prison until he either pays the plaintiff, or in case of a public theft, the city, or they agree to forgive him.  ’But should all kinds of theft incur the same penalty?’ You remind me of what I know—­that legislation is never perfect.  The men for whom laws are now made may be compared to the slave who is being doctored, according to our old image, by the unscientific doctor.  For the empirical practitioner, if he chance to meet the educated physician talking to his patient, and entering into the philosophy of his disease, would burst out laughing and say, as doctors delight in doing, ’Foolish fellow, instead of curing the patient you are educating him!’ ‘And would he not be right?’ Perhaps; and he might add, that he who discourses in our fashion preaches to the citizens instead of legislating for them.  ‘True.’  There is, however, one advantage which we possess—­that being amateurs only, we may either take the most ideal, or the most necessary and utilitarian view.  ’But why offer such an alternative?  As if all our legislation must be done to-day, and nothing put off until the morrow.  We may surely rough-hew our materials first, and shape and place them afterwards.’  That will be the natural way of proceeding.  There is a further point.  Of all writings either in prose or verse the writings of the legislator are the most important.  For it is he who has to determine the nature of good and evil, and how they should be studied with a view to our instruction.  And is it not as disgraceful for Solon and Lycurgus to lay down false precepts about the institutions of life as for Homer and Tyrtaeus?  The laws of states ought to be the models of writing, and what is at variance with them should be deemed ridiculous.  And we may further imagine them to express the affection and good sense of a father or mother, and not to be the fiats of a tyrant.  ‘Very true.’

Let us enquire more particularly about sacrilege, theft and other crimes, for which we have already legislated in part.  And this leads us to ask, first of all, whether we are agreed or disagreed about the nature of the honourable and just.  ‘To what are you referring?’ I will endeavour to explain.  All are agreed that justice is honourable, whether in men or things, and no one who maintains that a very ugly men who is just, is in his mind fair, would be thought extravagant.  ‘Very true.’  But if honour is to be attributed to justice, are just sufferings honourable, or only just actions?  ‘What do you mean?’ Our laws supply a case in point; for we enacted that the robber of temples