are passed for the good of particular classes and not for the good of the whole state.  States which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning.  I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in your state to any one because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth:  but he who is most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the palm; and to him who is victorious in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the gods; and the second to him who bears the second palm; and on a similar principle shall all the other offices be assigned to those who come next in order.  And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well- or ill-being of the state.  For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.

Cleinias:  Truly, Stranger, you see with the keen vision of age.

Athenian:  Why, yes; every man when he is young has that sort of vision dullest, and when he is old keenest.

Cleinias:  Very true.

Athenian:  And now, what is to be the next step?  May we not suppose the colonists to have arrived, and proceed to make our speech to them?

Cleinias:  Certainly.

Athenian:  ‘Friends,’ we say to them,—­’God, as the old tradition declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is, travels according to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end.  Justice always accompanies Him, and is the punisher of those who fall short of the divine law.  To justice, he who would be happy holds fast, and follows in her company with all humility and order; but he who is lifted up with pride, or elated by wealth or rank, or beauty, who is young and foolish, and has a soul hot with insolence, and thinks that he has no need of any guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the guide of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about, throwing all things into confusion, and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly destroyed, and his family and city with him.  Wherefore, seeing that human things are thus ordered, what should a wise man do or think, or not do or think’?

Cleinias:  Every man ought to make up his mind that he will be one of the followers of God; there can be no doubt of that.