Like Socrates again, speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is discussing among friends the two sides of a question.

He would confine the terms King or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy.

But under the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the natural superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to the soul ruling over the body.

He prefers a mixture of forms of government to any single one.

The two portraits of the just and the unjust, which occur in the second book of the Republic, are transferred to the state--Philus, one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his will the necessity of injustice as a principle of government, while the other, Laelius, supports the opposite thesis.