of habit (Laws; Republic): or the blasphemy of saying that the excellency
of music is to give pleasure (Laws; Republic): again the story of the
Sidonian Cadmus (Laws), which is a variation of the Phoenician tale of the
earth-born men (Republic): the comparison of philosophy to a yelping she-
dog, both in the Republic and in the Laws: the remark that no man can
practise two trades (Laws; Republic): or the advantage of the middle
condition (Laws; Republic): the tendency to speak of principles as moulds
or forms; compare the ekmageia of song (Laws), and the tupoi of religion
(Republic): or the remark (Laws) that 'the relaxation of justice makes
many cities out of one,' which may be compared with the Republic: or the
description of lawlessness 'creeping in little by little in the fashions
of music and overturning all things,'--to us a paradox, but to Plato's
mind a fixed idea, which is found in the Laws as well as in the Republic:
or the figure of the parts of the human body under which the parts of the
state are described (Laws; Republic): the apology for delay and
diffuseness, which occurs not unfrequently in the Republic, is carried to
an excess in the Laws (compare Theaet.): the remarkable thought (Laws)
that the soul of the sun is better than the sun, agrees with the relation
in which the idea of good stands to the sun in the Republic, and with the
substitution of mind for the idea of good in the Philebus: the passage
about the tragic poets (Laws) agrees generally with the treatment of them
in the Republic, but is more finely conceived, and worked out in a nobler
spirit. Some lesser similarities of thought and manner should not be
omitted, such as the mention of the thirty years' old students in the
Republic, and the fifty years' old choristers in the Laws; or the making
of the citizens out of wax (Laws) compared with the other image
(Republic); or the number of the tyrant (729), which is NEARLY equal with
the number of days and nights in the year (730), compared with the 'slight
correction' of the sacred number 5040, which is divisible by all the
numbers from 1 to 12 except 11, and divisible by 11, if two families be