Megillus:  You are very right in saying that tradition, if no breath of opposition ever assails it, has a marvellous power.

Athenian:  Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them?  He will consecrate the tradition of their evil character among all, slaves and freemen, women and children, throughout the city:  that will be the surest foundation of the law which he can make.

Megillus:  Yes; but will he ever succeed in making all mankind use the same language about them?

Athenian:  A good objection; but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which they will take no root; and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow?  Now if a law to this effect could only be made perpetual, and gain an authority such as already prevents intercourse of parents and children—­such a law, extending to other sensual desires, and conquering them, would be the source of ten thousand blessings.  For, in the first place, moderation is the appointment of nature, and deters men from all frenzy and madness of love, and from all adulteries and immoderate use of meats and drinks, and makes them good friends to their own wives.  And innumerable other benefits would result if such a law could only be enforced.  I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by, and who, on hearing this enactment, declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws, and fills the world with his outcry.  And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law, which was very easy in one respect, but in another most difficult.  There is no difficulty in seeing that such a law is possible, and in what way; for, as I was saying, the ordinance once consecrated would master the soul of every man, and terrify him into obedience.  But matters have now come to such a pass that even then the desired result seems as if it could not be attained, just as the continuance of an entire state in the practice of common meals is also deemed impossible.  And although this latter is partly disproven by the fact of their existence among you, still even in your cities the common meals of women would be regarded as unnatural and impossible.  I was thinking of the rebelliousness of the human heart when I said that the permanent establishment of these things is very difficult.

Megillus:  Very true.

Athenian:  Shall I try and find some sort of persuasive argument which will prove to you that such enactments are possible, and not beyond human nature?

Cleinias:  By all means.

Athenian:  Is a man more likely to abstain from the pleasures of love and to do what he is bidden about them, when his body is in a good condition, or when he is in an ill condition, and out of training?