He imagines human society to have been interrupted by natural convulsions; and beginning from the last of these, he traces the steps by which the family has grown into the state, and the original scattered society, becoming more and more civilised, has finally passed into military organizations like those of Crete and Sparta.

His conception of the origin of states is far truer in the Laws than in the Republic; but it must be remembered that here he is giving an historical, there an ideal picture of the growth of society.
Modern enquirers, like Plato, have found in infinite ages the explanation not only of states, but of languages, men, animals, the world itself; like him, also, they have detected in later institutions the vestiges of a patriarchal state still surviving.

Thus far Plato speaks as 'the spectator of all time and all existence,' who may be thought by some divine instinct to have guessed at truths which were hereafter to be revealed.

He is far above the vulgar notion that Hellas is the civilized world (Statesman), or that civilization only began when the Hellenes appeared on the scene.

But he has no special knowledge of 'the days before the flood'; and when he approaches more historical times, in preparing the way for his own theory of mixed government, he argues partially and erroneously.