Thus the virtues arise in us neither by nature nor against nature. Rather we are by nature able to acquire them, and reach our complete perfection through habit. p.673
Telle est donc la règle la meilleure, et tel est le critère le plus beau pour les biens extérieurs : qu’on soit empêché le moins possible par eux de servir et de contempler Dieu. This, therefore, is the end and the best limit regarding external things, so that the soul may be hindered as little as possible from the contemplation of God and His worship. Hic igitur finis sit et optimus terminus ad res externas respicienti, ut quam minime impediatur anima a contemplatione dei et cultu eius
Nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily.
We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way of the sophist, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as teh cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than is is.
Athenian Stranger. Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?
We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the universe has an end. The world has received animals, mortal and immortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visible animal containing the visible--the sensible God who is the image of the intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most perfect--the one only begotten heaven.
When one with honeyed words but evil min Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
"Equality is what is natural for mankind. The more and the less are always at enmity with one another and begin the day of hatred. It is Equality that established for mankind measures and divisions of weights and defined number. The sightless eye of night and the light of the sun walk the year’s circle on equal terms, and neither of them is envious when it is defeated." (Lines 538–545)
My dear Socrates, that, then, is the nature of the Spirit called Love.
The next step, apparently, is for us to try to discover, and point out, what the failings are in cities nowadays, which stop them being run in this way, and what is the minimum change which could help a city arrive at political arrangements of this kind. Ideally a single change. Failing that, two. And failing that, as few as possible in number and as small as possible in impact. 472b p.175