Com.
Yes.
Soc.
And true opinion is discovery of reality?
Com.
Yes, it is.
Soc.
So law tends to be discovery of reality.
Com.
Then how is it, Socrates, if law is discovery of reality, that we do not use always the same laws on the same matters, if we have thus got realities discovered?
Soc.
Law tends none the less to be discovery of reality: but men, who do not use
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always the same laws, as we observe, are not always able to discover what the law is intent on—reality. For come now, let us see if from this point onward we can get it clear whether we use always the same laws or different ones at different times, and whether we all use the same, or some of us use some, and others others.
Com.
Why, that, Socrates, is no difficult matter to determine—that the same men do not use always the same laws, and also that different men use different ones. With us, for instance, human sacrifice is not legal, but unholy,
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whereas the Carthaginians perform it as a thing they account holy and legal, and that too when some of them sacrifice even their own sons to Cronos, as I daresay you yourself have heard. And not merely is it foreign peoples who use different laws from ours, but our neighbors in Lycaea
1
and the descendants of Athamas
2
—you know their sacrifices, Greeks though they be. And as to ourselves too, you know, of course, from what you have heard yourself, the kind of laws we formerly used in regard to our dead, when we slaughtered sacred victims before
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the funeral procession, and engaged urn-women to collect the bones from the ashes. Then again, a yet earlier generation used to bury the dead where they were, in the house: but we do none of these things. One might give thousands of other instances; for there is ample means of proving that neither we copy ourselves nor mankind each other always in laws and customs.
Soc.
And it is no wonder, my excellent friend, if what you say is correct, and I have overlooked it. But if you continue to express your views after your own fashion in lengthy speeches,
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and I speak likewise, we shall never come to any agreement, in my opinion: but if we study the matter jointly, we may perhaps concur. Well now, if you like, hold a joint inquiry with me by asking me questions; or if you prefer, by answering them.
Com.
Why, I am willing, Socrates, to answer anything you like.
Soc.
Come then, do you consider
3
just things to be unjust and unjust things just, or just things to be just and unjust things unjust?
Minos. Plato. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1927.
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