charming thought that the best legislator 'orders war for the sake of
peace and not peace for the sake of war;' or the pleasant allusion, 'O
Athenian--inhabitant of Attica, I will not say, for you seem to me worthy
to be named after the Goddess Athene because you go back to first
principles;' or the pithy saying, 'Many a victory has been and will be
suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal;' or the fine
expression that 'the walls of a city should be allowed to sleep in the
earth, and that we should not attempt to disinter them;' or the remark
that 'God is the measure of all things in a sense far higher than any man
can be;' or that 'a man should be from the first a partaker of the truth,
that he may live a true man as long as possible;' or the principle
repeatedly laid down, that 'the sins of the fathers are not to be visited
on the children;' or the description of the funeral rites of those
priestly sages who depart in innocence; or the noble sentiment, that we
should do more justice to slaves than to equals; or the curious
observation, founded, perhaps, on his own experience, that there are a few
'divine men in every state however corrupt, whose conversation is of
inestimable value;' or the acute remark, that public opinion is to be
respected, because the judgments of mankind about virtue are better than
their practice; or the deep religious and also modern feeling which
pervades the tenth book (whatever may be thought of the arguments); the
sense of the duty of living as a part of a whole, and in dependence on the
will of God, who takes care of the least things as well as the greatest;
and the picture of parents praying for their children--not as we may say,
slightly altering the words of Plato, as if there were no truth or reality
in the Gentile religions, but as if there were the greatest--are very
striking to us. We must remember that the Laws, unlike the Republic, do
not exhibit an ideal state, but are supposed to be on the level of human
motives and feelings; they are also on the level of the popular religion,
though elevated and purified: hence there is an attempt made to show that