Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Plato the philosopher, having derived benefit from Moses concerning legislation, found fault with the constitution of Minos and Lycurgus for looking only to courage, but praised as more venerable the constitution that speaks of one thing and inclines always toward a single doctrine; for he says that it is more fitting for us to philosophize with strength and reverence and understanding, having regard to the dignity of heaven, unchangingly employing the same judgment and about the same things. Does he not, in interpreting the things concerning the law, incline toward looking to one God and enjoining the doing of what is just? Of the statesman-like he speaks of two kinds, the one legal, the other called political by the same name; and by "political" in the proper sense he hints darkly at the Demiurge, in the book bearing that same name, and he calls those who look to him and live actively and justly, together with contemplation, "political" men; while the kind called political on an equal footing with the legal he divides into cosmic magnanimity and private arrangement, which they have named orderliness and harmony and self-control, whenever rulers are fitting to the ruled, and the ruled become obedient to the rulers — which is exactly what the enterprise according to Moses is earnestly concerned to bring about.
Further, the legal pertains to becoming, while the political pertains to friendship and concord; and Plato, having derived benefit from this, in the Laws set alongside the philosopher the one in the Epinomis, the man who knows the whole course of all becoming through the wandering bodies, and set another philosopher, the one in the Timaeus, being an astronomer and a contemplator of the motion of those bodies and of their sympathy and communion with one another, and joins this in sequence to the Republic, and then . . . for I think that the end both of the political man and of the man living according to law is contemplation; it is necessary, at any rate, to govern rightly, but it is best to philosophize. For the man of understanding would live his whole life directed toward knowledge, guiding his life by good deeds, and holding in dishonor the opposite things, pursuing instead those studies that contribute toward truth. Now law is not the things that are customary (for neither is seeing the things that are seen), nor is it every opinion (for neither is the wicked opinion law), but law is good opinion, and good opinion is true opinion, and true opinion is that which finds what is, and attains to it: "He who is has sent me," says Moses. Following this, evidently, in accordance with good opinion, some have said that law is right reason, commanding the things that must be done, and forbidding the things that must not be done.
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