constantly changed at the pleasure of the hearers.' I am afraid that I
misled you; not liking to be always finding fault with mankind as they
are, I described them as they ought to be. But let me understand: you say
that such customs exist among the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and that the
rest of the world would be improved by adopting them? 'Much improved.' And
you compel your poets to declare that the righteous are happy, and that
the wicked man, even if he be as rich as Midas, is unhappy? Or, in the
words of Tyrtaeus, 'I sing not, I care not about him' who is a great
warrior not having justice; if he be unjust, 'I would not have him look
calmly upon death or be swifter than the wind'; and may he be deprived of
every good--that is, of every true good. For even if he have the goods
which men regard, these are not really goods: first health; beauty next;
thirdly wealth; and there are others. A man may have every sense purged
and improved; he may be a tyrant, and do what he likes, and live for ever:
but you and I will maintain that all these things are goods to the just,
but to the unjust the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; not so great
if he live for a short time only. If a man had health and wealth, and
power, and was insolent and unjust, his life would still be miserable; he
might be fair and rich, and do what he liked, but he would live basely,
and if basely evilly, and if evilly painfully. 'There I cannot agree with
you.' Then may heaven give us the spirit of agreement, for I am as
convinced of the truth of what I say as that Crete is an island; and, if I
were a lawgiver, I would exercise a censorship over the poets, and I would
punish them if they said that the wicked are happy, or that injustice is
profitable. And these are not the only matters in which I should make my
citizens talk in a different way to the world in general. If I asked Zeus
and Apollo, the divine legislators of Crete and Sparta,--'Are the just and
pleasant life the same or not the same'?--and they replied,--'Not the
same'; and I asked again--'Which is the happier'? And they said'--'The
pleasant life,' this is an answer not fit for a God to utter, and