[Footnote 37: M. Boeckh remarks justly in his note on this passage--"neque enim illud demonstratum est, eadem omnibus legitima esse--sed tantum, _notionem_" (rather the sentiment or emotion) "_legitimi_ omnibus eandem esse. Sed omnia scriptor hic confundit."]
[Side-note: Reasoning of Sokrates in the Minos is unsound, but Platonic. The Good, True, and Real, coalesce in the mind of Plato--he acknowledges nothing to be Law, except what he thinks ought to _be_ Law.]
That the reasoning of Sokrates in this dialogue is confused and unsound (as M. Boeckh and other critics have remarked), I perfectly agree. But it is not the less completely Platonic; resting upon views and doctrines much cherished and often reproduced by Plato. The dialogue Minos presents, in a rude and awkward manner, without explanation or amplification, that worship of the Abstract and the Ideal, which Plato, in other and longer dialogues, seeks to diversify as well as to elaborate. The definitions of Law here combated and given by Sokrates, illustrate this. The good, the true, the right, the beautiful, the real--all coalesce in the mind of Plato. There is nothing (in his view) real, except _The_ Good, _The_ Just, &c. ([Greek: to\ au)to-a)gatho\n]; [Greek: au)to-di/kaion]--Absolute Goodness and Justice): particular good and just things have no reality, they are no more good and just than bad and unjust--they are one or the other, according to circumstances--they are ever variable, floating midway between the real and unreal.[39] The real alone is knowable, correlating with knowledge or with the knowing Intelligence [Greek: Nou=s]. As Sokrates distinguishes elsewhere [Greek: to\ di/kaion] or [Greek: au)to-di/kaion] from [Greek: ta\ di/kaia]--so here he distinguishes ([Greek: no/mos] from [Greek: ta\ nomizo/mena]) _Law_, from the assemblage of actual commands or customs received as _laws_ among mankind. These latter are variable according to time and place; but Law is always one and the same. Plato will acknowledge nothing to _be_ Law, except that which (he thinks) _ought to be_ Law: that which emanates from a lawgiver of consummate knowledge, who aims at the accomplishment of the good and the real, and knows how to discover and realise that end. So far as "the decree of the city" coincides with what would have been enacted by this lawgiver (_i. e._ so far as it is good and right), Sokrates admits it as a valid explanation of Law; but no farther. He considers the phrase _bad law_ to express a logical impossibility, involving a contradiction _in adjecto_.[40] What others call a bad law, he regards as being no real law, but only a fallacious image, mistaken for such by the ignorant. He does not consider such ignorant persons as qualified to judge: he recognises only the judgment of the knowing one or few, among whom he affirms that there can be no difference of opinion. Every one admits just things to be just,--unjust things to be unjust,--heavy things to be heavy,--the existent and the real, to be the existent and the real. If then the lawgiver in any of his laws fails to attain this reality, he fails in the very purpose essential to the conception of law:[41] _i. e._ his pretended law is no law at all.