if he can complete his work.  The best kind of purification is painful, like similar cures in medicine, involving righteous punishment and inflicting death or exile in the last resort.  For in this way we commonly dispose of great sinners who are incurable, and are the greatest injury of the whole state.  But the milder form of purification is as follows:—­when men who have nothing, and are in want of food, show a disposition to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the rich—­these, who are the natural plague of the state, are sent away by the legislator in a friendly spirit as far as he is able; and this dismissal of them is euphemistically termed a colony.  And every legislator should contrive to do this at once.  Our present case, however, is peculiar.  For there is no need to devise any colony or purifying separation under the circumstances in which we are placed.  But as, when many streams flow together from many sources, whether springs or mountain torrents, into a single lake, we ought to attend and take care that the confluent waters should be perfectly clear, and in order to effect this, should pump and draw off and divert impurities, so in every political arrangement there may be trouble and danger.  But, seeing that we are now only discoursing and not acting, let our selection be supposed to be completed, and the desired purity attained.  Touching evil men, who want to join and be citizens of our state, after we have tested them by every sort of persuasion and for a sufficient time, we will prevent them from coming; but the good we will to the utmost of our ability receive as friends with open arms.

Another piece of good fortune must not be forgotten, which, as we were saying, the Heraclid colony had, and which is also ours,—­that we have escaped division of land and the abolition of debts; for these are always a source of dangerous contention, and a city which is driven by necessity to legislate upon such matters can neither allow the old ways to continue, nor yet venture to alter them.  We must have recourse to prayers, so to speak, and hope that a slight change may be cautiously effected in a length of time.  And such a change can be accomplished by those who have abundance of land, and having also many debtors, are willing, in a kindly spirit, to share with those who are in want, sometimes remitting and sometimes giving, holding fast in a path of moderation, and deeming poverty to be the increase of a man’s desires and not the diminution of his property.  For this is the great beginning of salvation to a state, and upon this lasting basis may be erected afterwards whatever political order is suitable under the circumstances; but if the change be based upon an unsound principle, the future administration of the country will be full of difficulties.  That is a danger which, as I am saying, is escaped by us, and yet we had better say how, if we had not escaped, we might have escaped; and we may venture now to assert that no other way