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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: and good judge, who paying little or no regard to the law, attempted to
decide with perfect justice the cases that were brought before him. To the
uneducated person he would appear to be the ideal of a judge. Such justice
has been often exercised in primitive times, or at the present day among
eastern rulers. But in the first place it depends entirely on the personal
character of the judge. He may be honest, but there is no check upon his
dishonesty, and his opinion can only be overruled, not by any principle of
law, but by the opinion of another judging like himself without law. In
the second place, even if he be ever so honest, his mode of deciding
questions would introduce an element of uncertainty into human life; no one
would know beforehand what would happen to him, or would seek to conform in
Statesman |
