Str. Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between
States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between
individuals by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons
form; marriage connection without due regard to what is best for the
procreation of children.

  Y. Soc. In what way?

  Str. They seek after wealth and power, which, in matrimony are
objects not worthy-even of a serious censure.

  Y. Soc. There is no need to consider them at all.

  Str. More reason is-there to consider the practice of those who make
family their chief aim, and to indicate their error.

  Y. Soc. Quite true.

  Str. They act on no true principle at all; they seek their ease
and receive with open arms those are like themselves, and hate those
who are unlike them, being too much influenced by feelings of dislike.

  Y. Soc. How so?

  Str. The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and as
far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this
class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their
own, whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.

  Y. Soc. How and why is that?

  Str. Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during
many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last
bursts forth into downright madness.

  Y. Soc. Like enough.

  Str. And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has
no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow
too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.

  Y. Soc. That, again, is quite likely.

  Str. It was of these bonds I said that there would be no
difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held
the same opinion about the honourable and good;-indeed, in this single
work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised-never to allow
temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them
together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours
and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another; and out
of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the
offices of State.

  Y. Soc. How do you mean?

  Str. Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who
has both these qualities-when many, you must mingle some of each,
for the temperate ruler is very careful and just and safe, but is
wanting in thoroughness and go.

  Y. Soc. Certainly, that is very true.

  Str. The character of the courageous, on the other hand, falls short
of the former in justice and caution, but has the power of action in a
remarkable degree, and where either of these two qualities is wanting,
there cities. cannot altogether prosper either in their public or
private life.

  Y. Soc. Certainly they cannot.

  Str. This then we declare to be the completion of the web of
political Action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the
brave and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn
the two minds into communion with one another by unanimity and
friendship, and having perfected the noblest and best of all the
webs which political life admits, and enfolding therein all other
inhabitants of cities, whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one
fabric and governs and presides over them, and, in so far as to be
happy is vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails to secure
their happiness.

  Y. Soc. Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less
than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.

                            -THE END-
.