virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find the common element of the
virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical theses that they are one, or
that they are identical with knowledge. The dialectic and the idea of
good, which even Glaucon in the Republic could not understand, would be
out of place in a less ideal work. There may also be a change in his own
mind, the purely intellectual aspect of philosophy having a diminishing
interest to him in his old age.

Some confusion occurs in the passage in which Plato speaks of the
Republic, occasioned by his reference to a third state, which he proposes
(D.V.) hereafter to expound. Like many other thoughts in the Laws, the
allusion is obscure from not being worked out. Aristotle (Polit.) speaks
of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor the best under
existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior to either,
destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of life--apparently such a
beginning of primitive society as is described in Laws iii. But it is not
clear that by this the third state of Plato is intended. It is possible
that Plato may have meant by his third state an historical sketch, bearing
the same relation to the Laws which the unfinished Critias would have
borne to the Republic; or he may, perhaps, have intended to describe a
state more nearly approximating than the Laws to existing Greek states.

The Statesman is a mere fragment when compared with the Laws, yet
combining a second interest of dialectic as well as politics, which is
wanting in the larger work. Several points of similarity and contrast may
be observed between them. In some respects the Statesman is even more
ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of paradisiacal
life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic looks forward
to a coming kingdom of philosophers. Of this kingdom of Cronos there is
also mention in the Laws. Again, in the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger