the Laws.  Again, in the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger rises above law to the conception of the living voice of the lawgiver, who is able to provide for individual cases.  A similar thought is repeated in the Laws:  ’If in the order of nature, and by divine destiny, a man were able to apprehend the truth about these things, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no law or order above knowledge, nor can mind without impiety be deemed the subject or slave of any, but rather the lord of all.’  The union of opposite natures, who form the warp and the woof of the political web, is a favourite thought which occurs in both dialogues (Laws; Statesman).

The Laws are confessedly a Second-best, an inferior Ideal, to which Plato has recourse, when he finds that the city of Philosophers is no longer ‘within the horizon of practical politics.’  But it is curious to observe that the higher Ideal is always returning (compare Arist.  Polit.), and that he is not much nearer the actual fact, nor more on the level of ordinary life in the Laws than in the Republic.  It is also interesting to remark that the new Ideal is always falling away, and that he hardly supposes the one to be more capable of being realized than the other.  Human beings are troublesome to manage; and the legislator cannot adapt his enactments to the infinite variety of circumstances; after all he must leave the administration of them to his successors; and though he would have liked to make them as permanent as they are in Egypt, he cannot escape from the necessity of change.  At length Plato is obliged to institute a Nocturnal Council which is supposed to retain the mind of the legislator, and of which some of the members are even supposed to go abroad and inspect the institutions of foreign countries, as a foundation for changes in their own.  The spirit of such changes, though avoiding the extravagance of a popular assembly, being only so much change as the conservative temper of old members is likely to allow, is nevertheless inconsistent with the fixedness of Egypt which Plato wishes to impress upon Hellenic institutions.  He is inconsistent with himself as the truth begins to dawn upon him that ’in the execution things for the most part fall short of our conception of them’ (Republic).

And is not this true of ideals of government in general?  We are always disappointed in them.  Nothing great can be accomplished in the short space of human life; wherefore also we look forward to another (Republic).  As we grow old, we are sensible that we have no power actively to pursue our ideals any longer.  We have had our opportunity and do not aspire to be more than men:  we have received our ‘wages and are going home.’  Neither do we despair of the future of mankind, because we have been able to do so little in comparison of the whole.  We look in vain for consistency either in men or things.  But we have seen enough of improvement in our own time to justify us in the belief that the world is worth working for and that a good man’s life is not thrown away.  Such reflections may help us to bring home to ourselves by inward sympathy the language of Plato in the Laws, and to combine into something like a whole his various and at first sight inconsistent utterances.