“Laws” bear the stamp of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which received the last touches of the author: the other is imperfectly executed, and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty of youth: the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the severity and knowledge of life which are characteristic of old age. (3) The most conspicuous defect of the “Laws” is the failure of dramatic power, whereas the “Republic” is full of striking contrasts of ideas and oppositions of character. (4) The “Laws” may be said to have more the nature of a sermon, the “Republic” of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more intellectual. (5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the “Laws;” the immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii. 959, 967; the person of Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and children is renounced; the institution of common or public meals for women (“Laws” vi. 781) is for the first time introduced (Ar. “Pol.” ii. 6, § 5). (6) There remains in the “Laws” the old enmity to the poets (vii. 817), who are ironically saluted in high-flown terms, and, at the same time, are peremptorily ordered out of the city, if they are not willing to submit their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (cp. “Rep.” iii. 398). (7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few passages in the “Laws,” such as v. 727 ff. (the honor due to the soul), viii. 835 ff. (the evils of licentious or unnatural love), the whole of Book X. (religion), xi. 918 ff. (the dishonesty of retail trade), and 923 ff. (bequests), which come more home to us, and contain more of what may be termed the modern element in Plato than almost anything in the “Republic.”
The relation of the two works to one another is very well given:
(i) By Aristotle in the “Politics” (ii. 6, §§ 1–5) from the side of the “Laws:”
“The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato’s later work, the ‘Laws,’ and therefore we had better examine briefly the constitution which is therein described. In the ‘Republic,’ Socrates has definitely settled in all a few questions only; such as the community of women and children, the community of property, and the constitution of the State. The
