Str. But hear what follows:-When the year of office has expired, the
pilot or physician has to come before a court of review, in which
the judges are either selected from the wealthy classes or chosen by
lot out of the whole people; and anybody who pleases may be their
accuser, and may lay to their charge, that during the past year they
have not navigated their vessels or healed their patients according to
the letter of the law and the ancient customs of their ancestors;
and if either of them is condemned, some of the judges must fix what
he is to suffer or pay.

  Y. Soc. He who is willing to take a command under such conditions,
deserves to suffer any penalty.

  Str. Yet once more, we shall have to enact that if any one is
detected enquiring into piloting and navigation, or into health and
the true nature of medicine, or about the winds, or other conditions
of the atmosphere, contrary to the written rules, and has any
ingenious notions about such matters, he is not to be called a pilot
or physician, but a cloudy prating sophist;-further, on the ground
that he is a corrupter of the young, who would persuade them. to
follow the art of medicine or piloting in an unlawful manner, and to
exercise an arbitrary rule over their patients or ships, any one who
is qualified by law may inform against him, and indict him in some
court, and then if he is found to be persuading any, whether young
or old, to act contrary to the written law, he is to be punished
with the utmost rigour; for no one should presume to be wiser than the
laws; and as touching healing and health and piloting and
navigation, the nature of them is known to all, for anybody may
learn the written laws and the national customs. If such were the mode
of procedure, Socrates, about these sciences and about generalship,
and any branch of hunting, or about painting or imitation in
general, or carpentry, or any sort of handicraft, or husbandry, or
planting, or if we were to see an art of rearing horses, or tending
herds, or divination, or any ministerial service, or
draught-playing, or any science conversant with number, whether simple
or square or cube, or comprising motion-I say, if all these things
were done in this way according to written regulations, and not
according to art, what would be the result?

  Y. Soc. All the arts would utterly perish, and could never be
recovered, because enquiry would be unlawful. And human life, which is
bad enough already, would then become utterly unendurable.

  Str. But what, if while compelling all these operations to be
regulated by written law, we were to appoint as the guardian of the
laws some one elected by a show of hands, or by lot, and he caring
nothing about the laws, were to act contrary to them from motives of
interest or favour, and without knowledge-would not this be a still
worse evil than the former?

  Y. Soc. Very true.

  Str. To go against the laws, which are based upon long experience,
and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously recommended them and
persuaded the multitude to pass them, would be a far greater and
more ruinous error than any adherence to written law?

  Y. Soc. Certainly.

  Str. Therefore, as there is a danger of this, the next best thing in
legislating is not to allow either the individual or the multitude
to break the law in any respect whatever.

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. The laws would be copies of the true particulars of action as
far as they admit of being written down from the lips of those who
have knowledge?

  Y. Soc. Certainly they would.

  Str. And, as we were saying, he who has knowledge and is a true
Statesman, will do many things within his own sphere of action by
his art without regard to the laws, when he is of opinion that
something other than that which he has written down and enjoined to be
observed during his absence would be better.

  Y. Soc. Yes, we said so.

  Str. And any individual or any number of men, having fixed laws,
in acting contrary to them with a view to something better, would only
be acting, as far as they are able, like the true Statesman?

  Y. Soc. Certainly.

  Str. If they had no knowledge of what they were doing, they would
imitate the truth, and they would always imitate ill; but if they
had knowledge, the imitation would be the perfect truth, and an
imitation no longer.

  Y. Soc. Quite true.

  Str. And the principle that no great number of men are able to
acquire a knowledge of any art has been already admitted by us.

  Y. Soc. Yes, it has.

  Str. Then the royal or political art, if there be such an art,
will never be attained either by the wealthy or by the other mob.