materials for a work than a finished composition which may rank with the
other Platonic dialogues. To use his own image, 'Some stones are regularly
inserted in the building; others are lying on the ground ready for use.'
There is probably truth in the tradition that the Laws were not published
until after the death of Plato. We can easily believe that he has left
imperfections, which would have been removed if he had lived a few years
longer. The arrangement might have been improved; the connexion of the
argument might have been made plainer, and the sentences more accurately
framed. Something also may be attributed to the feebleness of old age.
Even a rough sketch of the Phaedrus or Symposium would have had a very
different look. There is, however, an interest in possessing one writing
of Plato which is in the process of creation.

We must endeavour to find a thread of order which will carry us through
this comparative disorder. The first four books are described by Plato
himself as the preface or preamble. Having arrived at the conclusion that
each law should have a preamble, the lucky thought occurs to him at the
end of the fourth book that the preceding discourse is the preamble of the
whole. This preamble or introduction may be abridged as follows:--

The institutions of Sparta and Crete are admitted by the Lacedaemonian and
Cretan to have one aim only: they were intended by the legislator to
inspire courage in war. To this the Athenian objects that the true
lawgiver should frame his laws with a view to all the virtues and not to
one only. Better is he who has temperance as well as courage, than he who
has courage only; better is he who is faithful in civil broils, than he
who is a good soldier only. Better, too, is peace than war; the
reconciliation than the defeat of an enemy. And he who would attain all
virtue should be trained amid pleasures as well as pains. Hence there
should be convivial intercourse among the citizens, and a man's temperance