just now saying, does not know the effect of his own words. And the poet
may reply, that when he sits down on the tripod of the Muses he is not in
his right mind, and that being a mere imitator he may be allowed to say
all sorts of opposite things, and cannot tell which of them is true. But
this licence cannot be allowed to the lawgiver. For example, there are
three kinds of funerals; one of them is excessive, another mean, a third
moderate, and you say that the last is right. Now if I had a rich wife,
and she told me to bury her, and I were to sing of her burial, I should
praise the extravagant kind; a poor man would commend a funeral of the
meaner sort, and a man of moderate means would prefer a moderate funeral.
But you, as legislator, would have to say exactly what you meant by
'moderate.' 'Very true.' And is our lawgiver to have no preamble or
interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice to his
subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are there not
two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are freemen and
learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and doctor's
assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on their
masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the
gentlemen doctors practise upon freemen, and that slave doctors confine
themselves to slaves? The latter go about the country or wait for the
slaves at the dispensaries. They hold no parley with their patients about
their diseases or the remedies of them; they practise by the rule of
thumb, and give their decrees in the most arbitrary manner. When they have
doctored one patient they run off to another, whom they treat with equal
assurance, their duty being to relieve the master of the care of his sick
slaves. But the other doctor, who practises on freemen, proceeds in quite
a different way. He takes counsel with his patient and learns from him,
and never does anything until he has persuaded him of what he is doing. He
trusts to influence rather than force. Now is not the use of both methods
far better than the use of either alone? And both together may be