Diogenes.—­Don’t tell me of the music of Orpheus, and of his taming wild beasts.  A wild beast brought to crouch and lick the hand of a master, is a much viler animal than he was in his natural state of ferocity.  You seem to think that the business of philosophy is to polish men into slaves; but I say, it is to teach them to assert, with an untamed and generous spirit, their independence and freedom.  You profess to instruct those who want to ride their fellow-creatures, how to do it with an easy and gentle rein; but I would have them thrown off, and trampled under the feet of all their deluded or insulted equals, on whose backs they have mounted.  Which of us two is the truest friend to mankind?

Plato.—­According to your notions all government is destructive to liberty; but I think that no liberty can subsist without government.  A state of society is the natural state of mankind.  They are impelled to it by their wants, their infirmities, their affections.  The laws of society are rules of life and action necessary to secure their happiness in that state.  Government is the due enforcing of those laws.  That government is the best which does this post effectually, and most equally; and that people is the freest which is most submissively obedient to such a government.

Diogenes.—­Show me the government which makes no other use of its power than duly to enforce the laws of society, and I will own it is entitled to the most absolute submission from all its subjects.

Plato.—­I cannot show you perfection in human institutions.  It is far more easy to blame them than it is to amend them, much may be wrong in the best:  but a good man respects the laws and the magistrates of his country.

Diogenes.—­As for the laws of my country, I did so far respect them as not to philosophise to the prejudice of the first and greatest principle of nature and of wisdom, self-preservation.  Though I loved to prate about high matters as well as Socrates, I did not choose to drink hemlock after his example.  But you might as well have bid me love an ugly woman, because she was dressed up in the gown of Lais, as respect a fool or a knave, because he was attired in the robe of a magistrate.

Plato.—­All I desired of you was, not to amuse yourself and the populace by throwing dirt upon the robe of a magistrate, merely because he wore that robe, and you did not.

Diogenes.—­A philosopher cannot better display his wisdom than by throwing contempt on that pageantry which the ignorant multitude gaze at with a senseless veneration.

Plato.—­He who tries to make the multitude venerate nothing is more senseless than they.  Wise men have endeavoured to excite an awful reverence in the minds of the vulgar for external ceremonies and forms, in order to secure their obedience to religion and government, of which these are the symbols.  Can a philosopher desire to defeat that good purpose?