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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: without law.
'I do not like the notion, that there can be good government without law.'
I must explain: Law-making certainly is the business of a king; and yet
the best thing of all is, not that the law should rule, but that the king
should rule, for the varieties of circumstances are endless, and no simple
or universal rule can suit them all, or last for ever. The law is just an
ignorant brute of a tyrant, who insists always on his commands being
fulfilled under all circumstances. 'Then why have we laws at all?' I will
answer that question by asking you whether the training master gives a
different discipline to each of his pupils, or whether he has a general
rule of diet and exercise which is suited to the constitutions of the
Statesman |
