[435e]
said I, “impossible for us to avoid admitting1 this much, that the same forms and qualities are to be found
in each one of us that are in the state? They could not get there from any
other source. It would be absurd to suppose that the element of high spirit
was not derived in states from the private citizens who are reputed to have
this quality as the populations of the Thracian and Scythian lands and
generally of northern regions; or the quality of love of knowledge, which
would chiefly be attributed to2 the region where we dwell,
1 Plato takes for granted as obvious the general correspondence which some modern philosophers think it necessary to reaffirm. Cf. Mill, Logic, vi. 7. 1 “Human beings in society have no properties, but those which are derived from and may be resolved into the laws and the nature of individual man”; Spencer, Autobiog. ii. p. 543 “Society is created by its units. . . . The nature of its organization is determined by the nature of its units.” Plato illustrates the commonplace in a slight digression on national characteristics, with a hint of the thought partially anticipated by Hippocrates and now identified with Buckle's name, that they are determined by climate and environment. Cf. Newman, Introduction to Aristotle Politics pp. 318-320.
2 αἰτιάσαιτο: this merely varies the idiom αἰτίαν ἔχειν, “predicate of,” “say of.” Cf. 599 E. It was a common boast of the Athenians that the fine air of Athens produced a corresponding subtlety of wit. Cf. Euripides Medea 829-830, Isocrates vii. 74, Roberts, The Ancient Boeotians, pp. 59, 76.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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