Would a forger have had the wit to select the most peculiar and characteristic thoughts of Plato; would he have caught the spirit of his philosophy; would he, instead of openly borrowing, have half concealed his favourite ideas; would he have formed them into a whole such as the Laws; would he have given another the credit which he might have obtained for himself; would he have remembered and made use of other passages of the Platonic writings and have never deviated into the phraseology of them?
Without pressing such arguments as absolutely certain, we must acknowledge that such a comparison affords a new ground of real weight for believing the Laws to be a genuine writing of Plato.
V.The relation of the Republic to the Laws is clearly set forth by Plato in the Laws.

The Republic is the best state, the Laws is the best possible under the existing conditions of the Greek world.

The Republic is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or son of a God (who can say ?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of all other states and the exemplar of human life.

The Laws distinctly acknowledge what the Republic partly admits, that the ideal is inimitable by us, but that we should 'lift up our eyes to the heavens' and try to regulate our lives according to the divine image.

The citizens are no longer to have wives and children in common, and are no longer to be under the government of philosophers.