Athenian:  Perhaps; but I should like to know whether you and I are agreed about a certain thing.

Cleinias:  About what thing?

Athenian:  You know the endless labour which painters expend upon their pictures—­they are always putting in or taking out colours, or whatever be the term which artists employ; they seem as if they would never cease touching up their works, which are always being made brighter and more beautiful.

Cleinias:  I know something of these matters from report, although I have never had any great acquaintance with the art.

Athenian:  No matter; we may make use of the illustration notwithstanding:  —­Suppose that some one had a mind to paint a figure in the most beautiful manner, in the hope that his work instead of losing would always improve as time went on—­do you not see that being a mortal, unless he leaves some one to succeed him who will correct the flaws which time may introduce, and be able to add what is left imperfect through the defect of the artist, and who will further brighten up and improve the picture, all his great labour will last but a short time?

Cleinias:  True.

Athenian:  And is not the aim of the legislator similar?  First, he desires that his laws should be written down with all possible exactness; in the second place, as time goes on and he has made an actual trial of his decrees, will he not find omissions?  Do you imagine that there ever was a legislator so foolish as not to know that many things are necessarily omitted, which some one coming after him must correct, if the constitution and the order of government is not to deteriorate, but to improve in the state which he has established?

Cleinias:  Assuredly, that is the sort of thing which every one would desire.

Athenian:  And if any one possesses any means of accomplishing this by word or deed, or has any way great or small by which he can teach a person to understand how he can maintain and amend the laws, he should finish what he has to say, and not leave the work incomplete.

Cleinias:  By all means.

Athenian:  And is not this what you and I have to do at the present moment?

Cleinias:  What have we to do?

Athenian:  As we are about to legislate and have chosen our guardians of the law, and are ourselves in the evening of life, and they as compared with us are young men, we ought not only to legislate for them, but to endeavour to make them not only guardians of the law but legislators themselves, as far as this is possible.

Cleinias:  Certainly; if we can.

Athenian:  At any rate, we must do our best.

Cleinias:  Of course.