Ath. The first statement, my dear sir, which these people make about the gods is that they exist by art and not by nature,—by certain legal conventions Footnote 1A view ascribed to Critias. which differ from place to place, according as each tribe agreed when forming their laws. They assert, moreover, that there is one class of things beautiful by nature, and another class beautiful by convention Footnote 2Cp. Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1094 b 14 ff. ; while as to things just, they do not exist at all by nature, but men are constantly in dispute about them and continually altering them, and whatever alteration they make at any time is at that time authoritative, though it owes its existence to art and the laws, and not in any way to nature. All these, my friends, are views which young people imbibe from men of science, both prose-writers and poets, who maintain that the height of justice is to succeed by force; whence it comes that the young people are afflicted with a plague of impiety, as though the gods were not such as the law commands us to conceive them; and, because of this, factions also arise, when these teachers attract them towards the life that is right according to nature,
which consists in being master over the rest in reality, instead of being a slave to others according to legal convention. Footnote 3This antithesis between Nature (φύσις) and Convention (νόμος) was a familiar one in ethical and political discussion from the time of the Sophists. The supremacy of Nature,
as an ethical principle, was maintained (it is said) by Hippias and Prodicus; that of Convention,
by Protagoras and Gorgias: Plato goes behind both to the higher principle of Reason (νοῦς), cp. Introduction. p. xiv.
Clin. What a horrible statement you have described, Stranger! And what widespread corruption of the young in private families as well as publicly in the States!
Ath. That is indeed true, Clinias. What, then, do you think the lawgiver ought to do, seeing that these people have been armed in this way for a long time past? Should he merely stand up in the city and threaten all the people that unless they affirm that the gods exist and conceive them in their minds to be such as the law maintains Footnote 4Cp. Plat. Laws 634d, Plat. Laws 634e; Plat. Laws 859b, al. and so likewise with regard to the beautiful and the just and all the greatest things, as many as relate to virtue and vice, that they must regard and perform these in the way prescribed by the lawgiver in his writings; and that whosoever fails to show himself obedient to the laws must either be put to death or else be punished, in one case by stripes and imprisonment, in another by degradation, in others by poverty and exile? But as to persuasion, should the lawgiver, while enacting the people’s laws, refuse to blend any persuasion with his statements, and thus tame them so far as possible?
Clin. Certainly not, Stranger; on the contrary, if persuasion can be applied in such matters in even the smallest degree, no lawgiver who is of the slightest account must ever grow weary, but must (as they say) leave no stone unturned
Footnote 5Literally, utter every voice (leave nothing unsaid). to reinforce the ancient saying that gods exist, and all else that you recounted just now; and law itself he must also defend and art, as things which exist by nature or by a cause not inferior to nature, since according to right reason they are the offspring of mind, even as you are now, as I think, asserting; and I agree with you.
Ath. What now, my most ardent Clinias? Are not statements thus made to the masses difficult for us to keep up with in argument, and do they not also involve us in arguments portentously long?