Ath.The friendship which arises from contraries is horrible and coarse,and has often no tie of communion;but that which,arises from likeness is gentle,and has a tie of communion which lasts through life.As to the mixed sort which is made up of them both,there is,first of all,a in determining what he who is possessed by this third love desires;moreover,he is drawn different ways,and is in doubt between the two principles;the one exhorting him to enjoy the beauty of youth,and the other forbidding him.For the one is a lover of the body,and hungers after beauty,like ripe fruit,and would fain satisfy himself without any regard to the character of the beloved;the other holds the desire of the body to be a secondary matter,and looking rather than loving and with his soul desiring the soul of the other in a becoming manner,regards the satisfaction of the bodily love as wantonness;he reverences and respects temperance and courage and magnanimity and wisdom,and wishes to live chastely with the chaste object of his affection.Now the sort of love which is made up of the other two is that which we have described as the third.Seeing then that there are these three sorts of love,ought the law to prohibit and forbid them all to exist among us?Is it not rather clear that we should wish to have in the state the love which is of virtue and which desires the beloved youth to be the best possible;and the other two,if possible,we should hinder?What do you say,friend Megillus?
Megillus.I think,Stranger,that you are perfectly right in what you have been now saying.
Ath.I knew well,my friend,that I should obtain your assent,which I accept,and therefore have no need to analyse your custom any further.Cleinias shall be prevailed upon to give me his assent at some other time.Enough of this;and now let us proceed to the laws.
Meg.Very good.
Ath.Upon reflection I see a way of imposing the law,which,in one respect,is easy,but,in another,is of the utmost difficulty.
Meg.What do you mean?
Ath.We are all aware that most men,in spite of their lawless natures,are very strictly and precisely restrained from intercourse with the fair,and this is not at all against their will,but entirely with their will.
Meg.When do you mean?
Ath.When any one has a brother or sister who is fair;and about a son or daughter the same unwritten law holds,and is a most perfect safeguard,so that no open or secret connection ever takes place between them.Nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the minds of most of them.
Meg.Very true.
Ath.Does not a little word extinguish all pleasures of that sort?
Meg.What word?
Ath.The declaration that they are unholy,hated of God,and most infamous;and is not the reason of this that no one has ever said the opposite,but every one from his earliest childhood has heard men speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere,whether in comedy or in the graver language of tragedy?When the poet introduces on the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus,or a Macareus having secret intercourse with his sister,he represents him,when found out,ready to kill himself as the penalty of his sin.
Meg.You are very right in saying that tradition,if no breath of opposition ever assails it,has a marvellous power.
Ath.Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them?He will consecrate the tradition of their evil character among all,slaves and freemen,women and children,throughout the city:-that will be the surest foundation of the law which he can make.
Meg.Yes;but will he ever succeed in making all mankind use the same language about them?
Ath.A good objection;but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural,not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase,or sowing them in stony places,in which they will take no root;and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow?Now if a law to this effect could only be made perpetual,and gain an authority such as already prevents intercourse of parents and children-such a law,extending to other sensual desires,and conquering them,would be the source of ten thousand blessings.For,in the first place,moderation is the appointment of nature,and deters men from all frenzy and madness of love,and from all adulteries and immoderate use of meats and drinks,and makes them good friends to their own wives.
And innumerable other benefits would result if such a could only be enforced.I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by,and who,on hearing this enactment,declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws,and fills the world with his outcry.And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law,which was very easy in one respect,but in another most difficult.There is no difficulty in seeing that such a law is possible,and in what way;for,as I was saying,the ordinance once consecrated would master the soul of,every man,and terrify him into obedience.But matters have now come to such a pass that even then the desired result seems as if it could not be attained,just as the continuance of an entire state in the practice of common meals is also deemed impossible.And although this latter is partly disproven by the fact of their existence among you,still even in your cities the common meals of women would be regarded as unnatural and impossible.I was thinking of the rebelliousness of the human heart when I said that the permanent establishment of these things is very difficult.
Meg.Very true.
Ath.Shall I try and find some sort of persuasive argument which will prove to you that such enactments are possible,and not beyond human nature?
Cle.By all means.