The important features of the dialogue are not the particular tentative scientific hypotheses but its leading methodological principles. We should note the introduction of God as the intelli gent efficient cause of all order and structure in the world of "be coming," which preludes to the natural theology of the Laws, and the emphatic recognition of the essentially tentative, and therefore progressive, character of natural science. It is also noticeable that though Plato's scientific ideal is a mathematical corpuscular phy sics—his influence in creating this ideal has been much more im portant than that of the ancient Atomists—he constructs his physical world without "matter" as a metaphysical "substrate." The place of matter is taken in his analysis, as Aristotle com plained, by x6pa, space, as in the Principia of Descartes, a point of view to which physical speculation seems to be returning. He analyses the "passage of Nature" into three factors : 6v ("being": a Form), xc.'pa (space), 'yivens (happening), much as Whitehead analyses it into "objects," "events" and the "ingredience of object into event." It is a fundamental point that the presence of xc;.)pa as a factor makes it necessary to recognise over and above "God" or "mind" a subordinate element of a.v6.7K77, "necessity" in events. Since necessity is also called the "errant" cause, 7rXamoilbin atria (with an allusion to the name of the "planets" or "tramp-stars") the word clearly does not mean "conformity to law." It is rather a name for the fact that there is always in the actual an irreducible remainder of "brute" datum, "conjunctions" in Hume's phrase, which we cannot rationalize completely into intelligible "connections." Thus axItyrii is not a rebel or evil principle in the constitution of things; its function is everywhere to be instru mental to the intelligent and beneficent purpose of "mind" or God. There are many facts which we have to be content to accept words used of the earth I.XXohipnv rept TOY bLet. ravvis iroXov admit of only one rendering "going up and down on the path about the axis of the universe." Timaeus thinks of the earth as placed about the axis of the whole universe and being displaced to North and South by a sliding movement along this axis. Aristotle was then exactly right in saying that Timaeus teaches that the earth "is at the centre" and moves there (de Coelo 293 b3o) and distinguishing this view carefully from that which he ascribes to the Pythagoreans, "that the earth revolves as a planet about the centre." It is this second view which is implied in the language of Laws 822a and Epinomis 987b and expressly attributed to Plato "in his later years" by Theoph rastus ap. Plutarch Quaest. Plat. ioo6c. There is no reason to suppose that Plato ever himself held the curious view he has ascribed to his fifth century Pythagorean. He has his own reasons for insisting as strongly as he does on the provisional character of all the science of the dialogue.
simply as facts without seeing their "reason why." We do not know and may never know, why it is "best" that they should be as they are—e.g., why "it is best" that we should live on a moving i earth—but we may be sure that, since it is the fact, it is in some way best that it should be so. This seems to be what is meant by the statement that God or "mind" (vas) persuades 6,P6ryKn. It is the expression of a rational faith in Providence and the supremacy of the moral order. The details of the cosmology, physiology and psycho-physics of the dialogue are of great im portance for the history of science, but metaphysically of sec ondary interest.
Plato's attempt to do work of this kind himself, at Syracuse, had borne no immediate fruit, but had given the Academy a recognized standing as a school of scientific politics and juris prudence. The work of constitution-making and legislation was
going on in many quarters at the end of his life, and his ex perience might be made fruitful in sage counsels to younger men. The practical character of the subject explains some novelties in the outward form of the work. As the dialogue is assumed to be dealing with the actual present, Socrates has disappeared and his place is taken by an unnamed Athenian who is, to all intents, Plato himself.
The scene is laid in Crete; the imagined situation is that the Cretans are about to found a settlement on the site of a long deserted city. The chief Commissioner for the project is walking out to inspect the proposed site with a Spartan friend, when they fall in with the Athenian, and being favourably impressed by his conversation invite him to join them as an "expert adviser." The problem thus differs from that of the Republic; the ques tion is not the construction of an ideal Utopia, but the framing of a constitution and code which might be successfully adopted by a society of average Greeks in the middle of the fourth century. Hence the demands made on average human nature, though exacting, are not pitched too high ; the communion of the Republic is dropped. And for the same reason it is assumed all through that the regulations are carefully adapted to the particular economic and geographical conditions, though it is said that these conditions will not really suit any actual Cretan locality. If so, we must suppose that Plato, under a transparent disguise, is contem plating the actual conditions in quarters from which the Academy was more likely to receive appeals for help.
The special purpose of the work also explains why purely speculative philosophy and science are excluded from its pur view. The metaphysical interest is introduced only so far as to provide a basis for a moral theology; the one matter of first-rate scientific importance touched on is the diurnal motion of the earth, and this is only hinted in connection with the practical problem of the construction of the Calendar. In compensation, the Laws is exceptionally rich in political and juristic wisdom, and appears, indirectly, through its influence on the law of the Hellenistic age, to have left its mark on the great system of Roman jurisprudence.
It is impossible to do more than to call attention to a few of the striking features of this great work. The ethical ideal is still that familiar from earlier dialogues. It is interesting that the demand is expressly made that all "unnatural" vices shall be completely suppressed, and that the rule of sexual life is to be monogamous marriage with strict chastity, outside the limits of marriage, for both sexes. In politics, Plato declares himself definitely in favour of a "mixed" constitution; a good government demands a balance between two principles, "popular control," and Atovapxia, "personal authority." Persia is an illustra tion of the mischief of unqualified autocracy, Athens of the evils which come from elimination of the "authoritarian" principle, and considerable care is taken in the suggested system of magis tracies to secure both genuine "popular representation" and the proper regard for personal qualifications. The basis of society is to be agriculture, not commerce ; the citizens are to be "peasant, proprietors"—communism is regretfully abandoned as imprac ticable in a society of ordinary human beings. But the patrimony of each household is to be strictly inalienable, and differences in "personal", property are to be kept within strict bounds by what amounts to a super-tax of i00% on incomes beyond the statutory limits. Education, as in the Republic, is regarded as the most important of all the functions of government; it is placed under the control of a minister who is the "premier." As far as possible, the distinction between the sexes is, as in the Republic, to be treated as irrelevant to the educational programme.