The Minos

Socrates: What is law with us?

Minos: About what kind of law do you interrogate?

Socrates: What is that by which law differs from law, according to this very thing, the being law? For consider what I ask you. For I ask as if I should inquire what gold is; and if you in a similar manner should ask me, about what kind of gold I inquire, I should think you would not rightly interrogate. For neither does gold differ in any thing from gold, so far as it is gold, nor a stone from a stone, so far as it is a stone. And in like manner, neither does law differ in any thing from law; but all laws are the same. For each of them is similarly law; nor is one more, but the other less so. I ask you, therefore, the whole of this very thing, what law is; and if you have an answer at hand give it me.

Minos: What else, Socrates, will law be than things established by law?

Socrates: Does speech also appear to you to be things which are spoken? or sight things which are seen? or hearing things which are heard? Or is speech one thing, and are things spoken another? Is sight one thing, and are things seen another? Is hearing one thing, and are things heard another? And, is law one thing, and are things established by law another? Is this the case, or how does it appear to you?

Minos: This now appears to me to be the case.

Socrates: Law, therefore, is not things established by law.

Minos: It does not appear to me that it is.

Socrates: What law, therefore, may be, let us thus consider. If some one should ask us respecting those things of which we have just now spoken, since you say that things visible are seen by the sight, what the sight is by which they are seen? we should answer him, that it is a sense which through the eyes manifests colours to us. And if he should again ask us what the hearing is by which things are heard? we should reply, that it is a sense which through the ears manifests to us sounds. In like manner, if he should ask us, since legal institutions are legally established by law, what is law by which they are thus established? whether is it a certain sense, or manifestation? in the same manner as things which are learnt, are learnt by science rendering them manifest. Or is it a certain invention? just as things which are discovered are invented: as, for instance, things salubrious and noxious are discovered by medicine; but the conceptions of the Gods, as prophets say, by divination. For the divining art is with us an invention of such like things: Or is it not?

Minos: Entirely so.