Principles on which the institutions of a state ought to be defended — You must show that its ethical purpose and working is good.
If you wish (says the Athenian to Kleinias) to make out a plenary defence and advocacy of the Kretan system, you ought to do it in the following way:
Our laws deserve the celebrity which they have acquired in Greece, because they make us happy, and provide us with all kinds of good things: both with such as are divine and with such as are human. The divine are, Wisdom or Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage: the human are, Health, Beauty, Strength, Activity, Wealth. The human depend upon the divine, are certain to follow them, and are not to be obtained without them. All the regulations and precepts of the lawgiver are directed to the attainment and protection of these ends — to establish among the citizens a moral tone of praise and blame favourable to that purpose. He seeks to inculcate on the citizens a body of sentiment, as to what is honourable and not honourable — such as may guide their pleasures and pains, their desires and aversions — and such as may keep their minds right amidst all the disaster (disease, war, poverty, &c.) as well as the prosperity of life. He next regulates the properties, the acquisitions, and the expenditure of the citizens, together with their relations to each other on these heads, upon principles of justice enforced by suitable penalties. Lastly, he appoints magistrates of approved wisdom and right judgment to enforce the regulations. The cementing authority is thus wisdom, following out purposes of temperance and justice, not of ambition or love of money.
Such is the course of exposition (says the Athenian) which ought to be adopted. Now tell me — In what manner are the objects here defined ensured by the institutions of Apollo and Zeus at Sparta and Krete? You two ought to show me: for I myself cannot discern it.[34]
[34] Plato, Legg. i. p. 632.
Religious and ethical character postulated by Plato for a community.
This passage is of some value, because it gives us, thus early in the Treatise, a brief summary of that which Plato desiderates in the two systems here noted — and of that which he intends to supply in his own. We see that he looks upon a political constitution and laws as merely secondary and instrumental: that he postulates as the primary and fundamental fabric, a given religious and ethical character implanted in the citizens: that the lawgiver, in his view, combines the spiritual and temporal authority, making the latter subordinate to the former, and determining not merely what laws the citizens shall obey, but how they shall distribute their approval and aversion — religious, ethical, and æsthetical. It is the lawgiver alone who is responsible and who is open to praise or censure: for to the people, of each different community and different system, established custom is always a valid authority.[35]
[35] Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 D.
Endurance of pain enforced as a part of the public discipline at Sparta.
We Spartans (says Megillus) implant courage in our citizens not merely by our public mess-table and gymnastic, but also by inuring them to support pain and hardship. We cause them to suffer severe pain in the gymnopædia, in pugilistic contests, and other ways: we put them to hardships and privations in the Kryptia and in hunting. We thus accustom them to endurance. Moreover, we strictly forbid all indulgences such as drunkenness. Nothing of the kind is seen at Sparta, not even at the festival of Dionysus; nothing like the drinking which I have seen at Athens, and still more at Tarentum.[36]