The noblest life has the greatest pleasures and the fewest pains...Having finished the preamble, and touched on some other preliminary considerations, we proceed to the Laws, beginning with the constitution of the state.
There he would have his rulers trained in all knowledge meeting in the idea of good, of which the different branches of mathematical science are but the hand-maidens or ministers; here he treats chiefly of popular education, stopping short with the preliminary sciences,—these are to be studied partly with a view to their practical usefulness, which in the Republic he holds cheap, and even more with a view to avoiding impiety, of which in the Republic he says nothing; he touches very lightly on dialectic, which is still to be retained for the rulers.
But, before going further, there are some preliminary matters which have to be considered.
But of what has to be said, and must be said by the legislator who is of my way of thinking, and yet, if said in the form of law, would be out of place—of this I think that he may give a sample for the instruction of himself and of those for whom he is legislating; and then when, as far as he is able, he has gone through all the preliminaries, he may proceed to the work of legislation.
ATHENIAN: And now having made an end of the preliminaries we will proceed to the appointment of magistracies.
A city which has no regular courts of law ceases to be a city; and again, if a judge is silent and says no more in preliminary proceedings than the litigants, as is the case in arbitrations, he will never be able to decide justly; wherefore a multitude of judges will not easily judge well, nor a few if they are bad.
For readers unacquainted with the progress that has been made in recent years by earnest students of occultism attached to the Theosophical Society, the significance of the statement embodied in the following pages would be misapprehended without some preliminary explanation.
Some reference to the very mystical subject of the Manus is a necessary preliminary to the consideration of the origin of a Root Race.
Reading and writing, which were regarded as mere preliminaries, had already been taught them in the primary schools.
From the small minority who aspired to initiation, and had touch with the higher spiritual life—who knew that good will towards all men, control of thought, and purity of life and action were the necessary preliminaries to the attainment of the highest states of consciousness and the widest realms of vision—innumerable phases led down through the more or less blind worship of cosmic powers, or of anthropomorphic gods, to the degraded but most widely extended ritual in which each man adored his own image, and to the blood-stained rites of the elemental worship.
In all studies of deep content, there are ever dry preliminaries which have to be mastered.
To conclude these preliminaries.