BOOK X. *595* Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there

was nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. The

division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation. I

do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage on the

understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge which heals

error. I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even now he appears

to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But much as I love the man,

I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out: and first of all, will

you explain what is imitation, for really I do not understand? 'How likely

then that I should understand!' *596* That might very well be, for the

duller often sees better than the keener eye. 'True, but in your presence

I can hardly venture to say what I think.' Then suppose that we begin in

our old fashion, with the doctrine of universals. Let us assume the

existence of beds and tables. There is one idea of a bed, or of a table,

which the maker of each had in his mind when making them; he did not make

the ideas of beds and tables, but he made beds and tables according to the

ideas. And is there not a maker of the works of all workmen, who makes not

only vessels but plants and animals, himself, the earth and heaven, and

things in heaven and under the earth? He makes the Gods also. 'He must be

a wizard indeed!' But do you not see that there is a sense in which you

could do the same? You have only to take a mirror, and catch the

reflection of the sun, and the earth, or anything else--there now you have

made them. 'Yes, but only in appearance.' Exactly so; and the painter is

such a creator as you are with the mirror, and he is even more unreal than

the carpenter; although neither the carpenter *597* nor any other artist

can be supposed to make the absolute bed. 'Not if philosophers may be

believed.' Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect relation

to the truth. Reflect:--Here are three beds; one in nature, which is made

by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the third, by the

painter. God only made one, nor could he have made more than one; for if

there had been two, there {cxlvii} would always have been a third--more

absolute and abstract than either, under which they would have been

included. We may therefore conceive God to be the natural maker of the

bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker; but the painter

is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he has to do with a

creation which is thrice removed from reality. And the tragic poet is an

imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice removed from the king

and from the truth. The painter imitates not the original bed, *598* but

the bed made by the carpenter. And this, without being really different,

appears to be different, and has many points of view, of which only one is

caught by the painter, who represents everything because he represents a

piece of everything, and that piece an image. And he can paint any other

artist, although he knows nothing of their arts; and this with sufficient

skill to deceive children or simple people. Suppose now that somebody came

to us and told us, how he had met a man who knew all that everybody knows,

and better than anybody:--should we not infer him to be a simpleton who,

having no discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or

enchanter, whom he fancied to be all-wise? And when we hear persons saying

that Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must

we not infer that they are under a similar delusion? *599* they do not see

that the poets are imitators, and that their creations are only

imitations. 'Very true.' But if a person could create as well as imitate,

he would rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only; he

would rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? 'Yes, for then he

would have more honour and advantage.'

Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer, say I to him,

I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your poems

incidentally refer, but about their main subjects--war, military tactics,

politics. If you are only twice and not thrice removed from the truth--not

an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what good you have ever

done to mankind? Is there any city which professes to have received laws

from you, as Sicily and Italy have from Charondas, *600* Sparta from

Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? Or was any war ever carried on by your

counsels? or is any invention attributed to you, as there is to Thales and

Anacharsis? Or is there any {cxlviii} Homeric way of life, such as the

Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is called after

you? 'No, indeed; and Creophylus [Flesh-child] was even more unfortunate

in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as tradition says, Homer in

his lifetime was allowed by him and his other friends to starve.' Yes, but

could this ever have happened if Homer had really been the educator of

Hellas? Would he not have had many devoted followers? If Protagoras and

Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries that no one can manage house or

State without them, is it likely that Homer and Hesiod would have been

allowed to go about as beggars--I mean if they had really been able to do

the world any good?--would not men have compelled them to stay where they

were, or have followed them about in order to get education? But they did

not; and therefore we may infer that Homer and all the poets are only

imitators, who do but imitate the appearances of things. *601* For as a

painter by a knowledge of figure and colour can paint a cobbler without

any practice in cobbling, so the poet can delineate any art in the colours

of language, and give harmony and rhythm to the cobbler and also to the

general; and you know how mere narration, when deprived of the ornaments

of metre, is like a face which has lost the beauty of youth and never had

any other. Once more, the imitator has no knowledge of reality, but only

of appearance. The painter paints, and the artificer makes a bridle and

reins, but neither understands the use of them--the knowledge of this is

confined to the horseman; and so of other things. Thus we have three arts:

one of use, another of invention, a third of imitation; and the user

furnishes the rule to the two others. The flute-player will know the good

and bad flute, and the maker will put faith in him; but *602* the imitator

will neither know nor have faith--neither science nor true opinion can be

ascribed to him. Imitation, then, is devoid of knowledge, being only a

kind of play or sport, and the tragic and epic poets are imitators in the

highest degree.

And now let us enquire, what is the faculty in man which answers to

imitation. Allow me to explain my meaning: Objects are differently seen

when in the water and when out of the water, when near and when at a

distance; and the painter or juggler makes use of this variation to impose

upon us. And {cxlix} the art of measuring and weighing and calculating

comes in to save our bewildered minds from the power of appearance; for,

as we were saying, *603* two contrary opinions of the same about the same

and at the same time, cannot both of them be true. But which of them is

true is determined by the art of calculation; and this is allied to the

better faculty in the soul, as the arts of imitation are to the worse. And

the same holds of the ear as well as of the eye, of poetry as well as

painting. The imitation is of actions voluntary or involuntary, in which

there is an expectation of a good or bad result, and present experience of

pleasure and pain. But is a man in harmony with himself when he is the

subject of these conflicting influences? Is there not rather a

contradiction in him? Let me further ask, whether *604* he is more likely

to control sorrow when he is alone or when he is in company. 'In the

latter case.' Feeling would lead him to indulge his sorrow, but reason and

law control him and enjoin patience; since he cannot know whether his

affliction is good or evil, and no human thing is of any great

consequence, while sorrow is certainly a hindrance to good counsel. For

when we stumble, we should not, like children, make an uproar; we should

take the measures which reason prescribes, not raising a lament, but

finding a cure. And the better part of us is ready to follow reason, while

the irrational principle is full of sorrow and distraction at the

recollection of our troubles. Unfortunately, however, this latter

furnishes the chief materials of the imitative arts. Whereas reason is

ever in repose and cannot easily be displayed, especially to a mixed

multitude who have no experience of her. *605* Thus the poet is like the

painter in two ways: first he paints an inferior degree of truth, and

secondly, he is concerned with an inferior part of the soul. He indulges

the feelings, while he enfeebles the reason; and we refuse to allow him to

have authority over the mind of man; for he has no measure of greater and

less, and is a maker of images and very far gone from truth.

But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the indictment--the

power which poetry has of injuriously exciting the feelings. When we hear

some passage in which a hero laments his sufferings at tedious length, you

know that we sympathize with him and praise the poet; and yet in our own

{cl} sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as effeminate and

unmanly (cp. Ion, 535 E). Now, ought a man to feel pleasure in seeing

another do what he hates and abominates in himself? *606* Is he not giving

way to a sentiment which in his own case he would control?--he is off his

guard because the sorrow is another's; and he thinks that he may indulge

his feelings without disgrace, and will be the gainer by the pleasure. But

the inevitable consequence is that he who begins by weeping at the sorrows

of others, will end by weeping at his own. The same is true of

comedy,--you may often laugh at buffoonery which you would be ashamed to

utter, and the love of coarse merriment on the stage will at last turn you

into a buffoon at home. Poetry feeds and waters the passions and desires;

she lets them rule instead of ruling them. And therefore, when we hear the

encomiasts of Homer affirming that he is the educator of Hellas, *607* and

that all life should be regulated by his precepts, we may allow the

excellence of their intentions, and agree with them in thinking Homer a

great poet and tragedian. But we shall continue to prohibit all poetry

which goes beyond hymns to the Gods and praises of famous men. Not

pleasure and pain, but law and reason shall rule in our State.

These are our grounds for expelling poetry; but lest she should charge us

with discourtesy, let us also make an apology to her. We will remind her

that there is an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, of which

there are many traces in the writings of the poets, such as the saying of

'the she-dog, yelping at her mistress,' and 'the philosophers who are

ready to circumvent Zeus,' and 'the philosophers who are paupers.'

Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow her to return

upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in verse; and her

supporters who are not poets may speak in prose. We confess her charms;

but if she cannot show that she is useful as well as delightful, like

rational lovers, we must renounce our love, though endeared to us by early

associations. *608* Having come to years of discretion, we know that

poetry is not truth, and that a man should be careful how he introduces

her to that state or constitution which he himself is; for there is a

mighty issue at stake--no less than the good or evil of a human soul. And

it is not worth while to forsake justice and virtue {cli} for the

attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of honour or wealth.

'I agree with you.'

And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described. 'And

can we conceive things greater still?' Not, perhaps, in this brief span of

life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of eternity?

'I do not understand what you mean?' Do you not know that the soul is

immortal? 'Surely you are not prepared to prove that?' Indeed I am. 'Then

let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.'

*609* You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil.

In all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this cannot destroy

them, nothing else will. The soul too has her own corrupting principles,

which are injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and the like. But none of

these destroy the soul in the same sense that disease destroys the body.

The soul may be full of all iniquities, but is not, by reason of them,

brought any nearer to death. Nothing which was not destroyed from within

ever perished by external affection of evil. The body, which is one thing,

*610* cannot be destroyed by food, which is another, unless the badness of

the food is communicated to the body. Neither can the soul, which is one

thing, be corrupted by the body, which is another, unless she herself is

infected. And as no bodily evil can infect the soul, neither can any

bodily evil, whether disease or violence, or any other destroy the soul,

unless it can be shown to render her unholy and unjust. But no one will

ever prove that the souls of men become more unjust when they die. If a

person has the audacity to say the contrary, the answer is--Then why do

criminals require the hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves?

'Truly,' he said, 'injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a

cessation of evil; but I rather believe that the injustice which murders

others may tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the unjust.' You are

quite right. If sin which is her own natural and inherent evil cannot

destroy the soul, hardly will anything else destroy her. *611* But the

soul which cannot be destroyed either by internal or external evil must be

immortal and everlasting. And if this be true, souls will always exist in

the same number. They cannot diminish, because they cannot be destroyed;

nor yet increase, for the increase of the immortal must come from

something {clii} mortal, and so all would end in immortality. Neither is

the soul variable and diverse; for that which is immortal must be of the

fairest and simplest composition. If we would conceive her truly, and so

behold justice and injustice in their own nature, she must be viewed by

the light of reason pure as at birth, or as she is reflected in philosophy

when holding converse with the divine and immortal and eternal. In her

present condition we see her only like the sea-god Glaucus, bruised and

maimed in the sea which is the world, *612* and covered with shells and

stones which are incrusted upon her from the entertainments of earth.

Thus far, as the argument required, we have said nothing of the rewards

and honours which the poets attribute to justice; we have contented

ourselves with showing that justice in herself is best for the soul in

herself, even if a man should put on a Gyges' ring and have the helmet of

Hades too. And now you shall repay me what you borrowed; and I will

enumerate the rewards of justice in life and after death. I granted, for

the sake of argument, as you will remember, that evil might perhaps escape

the knowledge of Gods and men, although this was really impossible. And

since I have shown that justice has reality, you must grant me also that

she has the palm of appearance. In the first place, the just man is known

to the Gods, *613* and he is therefore the friend of the Gods, and he will

receive at their hands every good, always excepting such evil as is the

necessary consequence of former sins. All things end in good to him,

either in life or after death, even what appears to be evil; for the Gods

have a care of him who desires to be in their likeness. And what shall we

say of men? Is not honesty the best policy? The clever rogue makes a great

start at first, but breaks down before he reaches the goal, and slinks

away in dishonour; whereas the true runner perseveres to the end, and

receives the prize. And you must allow me to repeat all the blessings

which you attributed to the fortunate unjust--they bear rule in the city,

they marry and give in marriage to whom they will; and the evils which you

attributed to the unfortunate just, do really fall in the end on the

unjust, although, as you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in

silence.

*614* But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when

{cliii} compared with those which await good men after death. 'I should

like to hear about them.' Come, then, and I will tell you the story of Er,

the son of Armenius, a valiant man. He was supposed to have died in

battle, but ten days afterwards his body was found untouched by corruption

and sent home for burial. On the twelfth day he was placed on the funeral

pyre and there he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the

world below. He said that his soul went with a great company to a place,

in which there were two chasms near together in the earth beneath, and two

corresponding chasms in the heaven above. And there were judges sitting in

the intermediate space, bidding the just ascend by the heavenly way on the

right hand, having the seal of their judgment set upon them before, while

the unjust, having the seal behind, were bidden to descend by the way on

the left hand. Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their

messenger to men from the world below. And he beheld and saw the souls

departing after judgment at either chasm; some who came from earth, were

worn and travel-stained; others, who came from heaven, were clean and

bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest awhile in the meadow; here they

discoursed with one another of what they had seen in the other world.

*615* Those who came from earth wept at the remembrance of their sorrows,

but the spirits from above spoke of glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He

said that for every evil deed they were punished tenfold--now the journey

was of a thousand years' duration, because the life of man was reckoned as

a hundred years--and the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He

added something hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon

as they were born. Of parricides and other murderers he had tortures still

more terrible to narrate. He was present when one of the spirits

asked--Where is Ardiaeus the Great? (This Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who

had murdered his father, and his elder brother, a thousand years before.)

Another spirit answered, 'He comes not hither, and will never come. And I

myself,' he added, 'actually saw this terrible sight. At the entrance of

the chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and some other

sinners--most of whom had been tyrants, but not all--and just as they

fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm gave a roar, *616* and

then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the {cliv} meaning of the sound,

seized him and several others, and bound them hand and foot and threw them

down, and dragged them along at the side of the road, lacerating them and

carding them like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that they were

going to be cast into hell.' The greatest terror of the pilgrims ascending

was lest they should hear the voice, and when there was silence one by one

they passed up with joy. To these sufferings there were corresponding

delights.

On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their journey, and in

four days came to a spot whence they looked down upon a line of light, in

colour like a rainbow, only brighter and clearer. One day more brought

them to the place, and they saw that this was the column of light which

binds together the whole universe. The ends of the column were fastened to

heaven, and from them hung the distaff of Necessity, on which all the

heavenly bodies turned--the hook and spindle were of adamant, and the

whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in form like a number of boxes

fitting into one another with their edges turned upwards, making together

a single whorl which was pierced by the spindle. The outermost had the rim

broadest, and the inner whorls were smaller and smaller, and had their

rims narrower. The largest (the fixed stars) was spangled--the seventh

(the sun) was brightest--the eighth (the moon) shone by the light of the

seventh-- *617* the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) were most like

one another and yellower than the eighth--the third (Jupiter) had the

whitest light--the fourth (Mars) was red--the sixth (Venus) was in

whiteness second. The whole had one motion, but while this was revolving

in one direction the seven inner circles were moving in the opposite, with

various degrees of swiftness and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees

of Necessity, and a Siren stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis,

Clotho, and Atropos, the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal

intervals, singing of past, present, and future, responsive to the music

of the Sirens; Clotho from time to time guiding the outer circle with a

touch of her right hand; Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding

the inner circles; Lachesis in turn putting forth her hand from time to

time to guide both of them. On their arrival the pilgrims went to

Lachesis, and there was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from

her {clv} knees lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said:

'Mortal souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. A

new period of mortal life has begun, and you may choose what divinity you

please; the responsibility of choosing is with you--God is blameless.'

*618* After speaking thus, he cast the lots among them and each one took

up the lot which fell near him. He then placed on the ground before them

the samples of lives, many more than the souls present; and there were all

sorts of lives, of men and of animals. There were tyrannies ending in

misery and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their different

qualities; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and poverty, sickness

and health. Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human life, and therefore

the whole of education should be directed to the acquisition of such a

knowledge as will teach a man to refuse the evil and choose the good. He

should know all the combinations which occur in life--of beauty with

poverty or with wealth,--of knowledge with external goods,--and at last

choose with reference to the nature of the soul, regarding that only as

the better life which makes men better, and leaving the rest. And *619* a

man must take with him an iron sense of truth and right into the world

below, that there too he may remain undazzled by wealth or the allurements

of evil, and be determined to avoid the extremes and choose the mean. For

this, as the messenger reported the interpreter to have said, is the true

happiness of man; and any one, as he proclaimed, may, if he choose with

understanding, have a good lot, even though he come last. 'Let not the

first be careless in his choice, nor the last despair.' He spoke; and when

he had spoken, he who had drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not

see that he was fated to devour his own children--and when he discovered

his mistake, he wept and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and

anybody rather than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven,

and in his previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but

he had only habit and no philosophy. Like many another, he made a bad

choice, because he had no experience of life; whereas those who came from

earth and had seen trouble were not in such a hurry to choose. But if a

man had followed philosophy while upon earth, and had been moderately

fortunate in his lot, he might not only be happy here, but his pilgrimage

both from and {clvi} to this world would be smooth and heavenly. Nothing

was more curious than the spectacle of the choice, at once sad and

laughable and wonderful; most of the souls only seeking to avoid their own

condition in a previous life. *620* He saw the soul of Orpheus changing

into a swan because he would not be born of a woman; there was Thamyras

becoming a nightingale; musical birds, like the swan, choosing to be men;

the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax, preferring the life of a lion

to that of a man, in remembrance of the injustice which was done to him in

the judgment of the arms; and Agamemnon, from a like enmity to human

nature, passing into an eagle. About the middle was the soul of Atalanta

choosing the honours of an athlete, and next to her Epeus taking the

nature of a workwoman; among the last was Thersites, who was changing

himself into a monkey. Thither, the last of all, came Odysseus, and sought

the lot of a private man, which lay neglected and despised, and when he

found it he went away rejoicing, and said that if he had been first

instead of last, his choice would have been the same. Men, too, were seen

passing into animals, and wild and tame animals changing into one another.

When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each of

them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all

brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the revolution

of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were carried to

Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; *621* whence, without turning

round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all

passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness and

rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water could not be

retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a certain

quantity--some of them drank more than was required, and he who drank

forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from drinking. When they had

gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were thunderstorms and

earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven divers ways, shooting like

stars to their birth. Concerning his return to the body, he only knew that

awaking suddenly in the morning he found himself lying on the pyre.

Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation, if we

believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the {clvii} heavenly

way of Justice and Knowledge. So shall we pass undefiled over the river of

Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves and to the Gods, and have a crown

of reward and happiness both in this world and also in the millennial

pilgrimage of the other.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Republic X._ Introduction.]

The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions: first,

resuming an old thread which has been interrupted, Socrates assails the

poets, who, now that the nature of the soul has been analyzed, are seen to

be very far gone from the truth; and secondly, having shown the reality of

the happiness of the just, he demands that appearance shall be restored to

him, and then proceeds to prove the immortality of the soul. The argument,

as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is supplemented by the vision of a future

life.

* * * * *

Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and

dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and especially

to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that truth may be

embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are some indefinable

lights and shadows of human life which can only be expressed in

poetry--some elements of imagination which always entwine with reason; why

he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably associated with the

impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he should try Homer and

Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of utility,--are questions which

have always been debated amongst students of Plato. Though unable to give

a complete answer to them, we may show--first, that his views arose

naturally out of the circumstances of his age; and secondly, we may elicit

the truth as well as the error which is contained in them.

He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in his own

lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws (iii. 701 A), had

taken the place of an intellectual aristocracy. Euripides exhibited the

last phase of the tragic drama, and in him Plato saw the friend and

apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist of tragedy. The old comedy was

almost extinct; the new had not yet arisen. Dramatic and lyric poetry,

like every other branch of Greek literature, was falling under the power

of rhetoric. There was no 'second or third' to Æschylus and {clviii}

Sophocles in the generation which followed them. Aristophanes, in one of

his later comedies (Frogs, 89 foll.), speaks of 'thousands of

tragedy-making prattlers,' whose attempts at poetry he compares to the

chirping of swallows; 'their garrulity went far beyond Euripides,'--'they

appeared once upon the stage, and there was an end of them.' To a man of

genius who had a real appreciation of the godlike Æschylus and the noble

and gentle Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their

'theology' (Rep. ii. 380), these 'minor poets' must have been contemptible

and intolerable. There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of Plato

than a sense of the decline and decay both in literature and in politics

which marked his own age. Nor can he have been expected to look with

favour on the licence of Aristophanes, now at the end of his career, who

had begun by satirizing Socrates in the Clouds, and in a similar spirit

forty years afterwards had satirized the founders of ideal commonwealths

in his Eccleziazusae, or Female Parliament (cp. x. 606 C, and Laws ii. 658

ff.; 817).

There were other reasons for the antagonism of Plato to poetry. The

profession of an actor was regarded by him as a degradation of human

nature, for 'one man in his life' cannot 'play many parts;' the characters

which the actor performs seem to destroy his own character, and to leave

nothing which can be truly called himself. Neither can any man live his

life and act it. The actor is the slave of his art, not the master of it.

Taking this view Plato is more decided in his expulsion of the dramatic

than of the epic poets, though he must have known that the Greek

tragedians afforded noble lessons and examples of virtue and patriotism,

to which nothing in Homer can be compared. But great dramatic or even

great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with firmness or strength of

mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally associated with a weak or

dissolute character.

In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections. First, he

says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in the third degree

removed from the truth. His creations are not tested by rule and measure;

they are only appearances. In modern times we should say that art is not

merely imitation, but rather the expression of the ideal in forms of

sense. Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his argument

derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist {clix} may ennoble

the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, or by the feeling of

home which he introduces; and there have been modern painters who have

imparted such an ideal interest to a blacksmith's or a carpenter's shop.

The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can give dignity and pathos to

a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed [Rembrandt], to the hull of a vessel

'going to its last home' [Turner]. Still more would this apply to the

greatest works of art, which seem to be the visible embodiment of the

divine. Had Plato been asked whether the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was

the imitation of an imitation only, would he not have been compelled to

admit that something more was to be found in them than in the form of any

mortal; and that the rule of proportion to which they conformed was

'higher far than any geometry or arithmetic could express?' (Statesman,

257 A.)

Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express the emotional

rather than the rational part of human nature. He does not admit

Aristotle's theory, that tragedy or other serious imitations are a

purgation of the passions by pity and fear; to him they appear only to

afford the opportunity of indulging them. Yet we must acknowledge that we

may sometimes cure disordered emotions by giving expression to them; and

that they often gain strength when pent up within our own breast. It is

not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be condemned. For there

may be a gratification of the higher as well as of the lower--thoughts

which are too deep or too sad to be expressed by ourselves, may find an

utterance in the words of poets. Every one would acknowledge that there

have been times when they were consoled and elevated by beautiful music or

by the sublimity of architecture or by the peacefulness of nature. Plato

has himself admitted, in the earlier part of the Republic, that the arts

might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind;

but in the Tenth Book he regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium.

He asks only 'What good have they done?' and is not satisfied with the

reply, that 'They have given innocent pleasure to mankind.'

He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets, since he has

found by the analysis of the soul that they are concerned with the

inferior faculties. He means to say that {clx} the higher faculties have

to do with universals, the lower with particulars of sense. The poets are

on a level with their own age, but not on a level with Socrates and Plato;

and he was well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a rule of

life by any process of legitimate interpretation; his ironical use of them

is in fact a denial of their authority; he saw, too, that the poets were

not critics--as he says in the Apology, 'Any one was a better interpreter

of their writings than they were themselves' (22 C). He himself ceased to

be a poet when he became a disciple of Socrates; though, as he tells us of

Solon, 'he might have been one of the greatest of them, if he had not been

deterred by other pursuits' (Tim. 21 C) Thus from many points of view

there is an antagonism between Plato and the poets, which was foreshadowed

to him in the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry. The poets, as he

says in the Protagoras (316 E), were the Sophists of their day; and his

dislike of the one class is reflected on the other. He regards them both

as the enemies of reasoning and abstraction, though in the case of

Euripides more with reference to his immoral sentiments about tyrants and

the like. For Plato is the prophet who 'came into the world to convince

men'--first of the fallibility of sense and opinion, and secondly of the

reality of abstract ideas. Whatever strangeness there may be in modern

times in opposing philosophy to poetry, which to us seem to have so many

elements in common, the strangeness will disappear if we conceive of

poetry as allied to sense, and of philosophy as equivalent to thought and

abstraction. Unfortunately the very word 'idea,' which to Plato is

expressive of the most real of all things, is associated in our minds with

an element of subjectiveness and unreality. We may note also how he

differs from Aristotle who declares poetry to be truer than history, for

the opposite reason, because it is concerned with universals, not like

history, with particulars (Poet. c. 9, 3).

The things which are seen are opposed in Scripture to the things which are

unseen--they are equally opposed in Plato to universals and ideas. To him

all particulars appear to be floating about in a world of sense; they have

a taint of error or even of evil. There is no difficulty in seeing that

this is an illusion; for there is no more error or variation in an

individual man, horse, {clxi} bed, etc., than in the class man, horse,

bed, etc.; nor is the truth which is displayed in individual instances

less certain than that which is conveyed through the medium of ideas. But

Plato, who is deeply impressed with the real importance of universals as

instruments of thought, attributes to them an essential truth which is

imaginary and unreal; for universals may be often false and particulars

true. Had he attained to any clear conception of the individual, which is

the synthesis of the universal and the particular; or had he been able to

distinguish between opinion and sensation, which the ambiguity of the

words [Greek: do/xa, phai/nesthai, ei)ko\s] and the like, tended to

confuse, he would not have denied truth to the particulars of sense.

But the poets are also the representatives of falsehood and feigning in

all departments of life and knowledge, like the sophists and rhetoricians

of the Gorgias and Phaedrus; they are the false priests, false prophets,

lying spirits, enchanters of the world. There is another count put into

the indictment against them by Plato, that they are the friends of the

tyrant, and bask in the sunshine of his patronage. Despotism in all ages

has had an apparatus of false ideas and false teachers at its service--in

the history of Modern Europe as well as of Greece and Rome. For no

government of men depends solely upon force; without some corruption of

literature and morals--some appeal to the imagination of the masses--some

pretence to the favour of heaven--some element of good giving power to

evil (cp. i. 352), tyranny, even for a short time, cannot be maintained.

The Greek tyrants were not insensible to the importance of awakening in

their cause a Pseudo-Hellenic feeling; they were proud of successes at the

Olympic games; they were not devoid of the love of literature and art.

Plato is thinking in the first instance of Greek poets who had graced the

courts of Dionysius or Archelaus: and the old spirit of freedom is roused

within him at their prostitution of the Tragic Muse in the praises of

tyranny. But his prophetic eye extends beyond them to the false teachers

of other ages who are the creatures of the government under which they

live. He compares the corruption of his contemporaries with the idea of a

perfect society, and gathers up into one mass of evil the evils and errors

of mankind; to him they are personified in the {clxii} rhetoricians,

sophists, poets, rulers who deceive and govern the world.

A further objection which Plato makes to poetry and the imitative arts is

that they excite the emotions. Here the modern reader will be disposed to

introduce a distinction which appears to have escaped him. For the

emotions are neither bad nor good in themselves, and are not most likely

to be controlled by the attempt to eradicate them, but by the moderate

indulgence of them. And the vocation of art is to present thought in the

form of feeling, to enlist the feelings on the side of reason, to inspire

even for a moment courage or resignation; perhaps to suggest a sense of

infinity and eternity in a way which mere language is incapable of

attaining. True, the same power which in the purer age of art embodies

gods and heroes only, may be made to express the voluptuous image of a

Corinthian courtezan. But this only shows that art, like other outward

things, may be turned to good and also to evil, and is not more closely

connected with the higher than with the lower part of the soul. All

imitative art is subject to certain limitations, and therefore necessarily

partakes of the nature of a compromise. Something of ideal truth is

sacrificed for the sake of the representation, and something in the

exactness of the representation is sacrificed to the ideal. Still, works

of art have a permanent element; they idealize and detain the passing

thought, and are the intermediates between sense and ideas.

In the present stage of the human mind, poetry and other forms of fiction

may certainly be regarded as a good. But we can also imagine the existence

of an age in which a severer conception of truth has either banished or

transformed them. At any rate we must admit that they hold a different

place at different periods of the world's history. In the infancy of

mankind, poetry, with the exception of proverbs, is the whole of

literature, and the only instrument of intellectual culture; in modern

times she is the shadow or echo of her former self, and appears to have a

precarious existence. Milton in his day doubted whether an epic poem was

any longer possible. At the same time we must remember, that what Plato

would have called the charms of poetry have been partly transferred

{clxiii} to prose; he himself (Statesman 304) admits rhetoric to be the

handmaiden of Politics, and proposes to find in the strain of law (Laws

vii. 811) a substitute for the old poets. Among ourselves the creative

power seems often to be growing weaker, and scientific fact to be more

engrossing and overpowering to the mind than formerly. The illusion of the

feelings commonly called love, has hitherto been the inspiring influence

of modern poetry and romance, and has exercised a humanizing if not a

strengthening influence on the world. But may not the stimulus which love

has given to fancy be some day exhausted? The modern English novel which

is the most popular of all forms of reading is not more than a century or

two old: will the tale of love a hundred years hence, after so many

thousand variations of the same theme, be still received with unabated

interest?

Art cannot claim to be on a level with philosophy or religion, and may

often corrupt them. It is possible to conceive a mental state in which all

artistic representations are regarded as a false and imperfect expression,

either of the religious ideal or of the philosophical ideal. The fairest

forms may be revolting in certain moods of mind, as is proved by the fact

that the Mahometans, and many sects of Christians, have renounced the use

of pictures and images. The beginning of a great religion, whether

Christian or Gentile, has not been 'wood or stone,' but a spirit moving in

the hearts of men. The disciples have met in a large upper room or in

'holes and caves of the earth'; in the second or third generation, they

have had mosques, temples, churches, monasteries. And the revival or

reform of religions, like the first revelation of them, has come from

within and has generally disregarded external ceremonies and

accompaniments.

But poetry and art may also be the expression of the highest truth and the

purest sentiment. Plato himself seems to waver between two opposite

views--when, as in the third Book, he insists that youth should be brought

up amid wholesome imagery; and again in Book x, when he banishes the poets

from his Republic. Admitting that the arts, which some of us almost deify,

have fallen short of their higher aim, we must admit on the other hand

that to banish imagination wholly would be suicidal {clxiv} as well as

impossible. For nature too is a form of art; and a breath of the fresh air

or a single glance at the varying landscape would in an instant revive and

reillumine the extinguished spark of poetry in the human breast. In the

lower stages of civilization imagination more than reason distinguishes

man from the animals; and to banish art would be to banish thought, to

banish language, to banish the expression of all truth. No religion is

wholly devoid of external forms; even the Mahometan who renounces the use

of pictures and images has a temple in which he worships the Most High, as

solemn and beautiful as any Greek or Christian building. Feeling too and

thought are not really opposed; for he who thinks must feel before he can

execute. And the highest thoughts, when they become familiarized to us,

are always tending to pass into the form of feeling.

Plato does not seriously intend to expel poets from life and society. But

he feels strongly the unreality of their writings; he is protesting

against the degeneracy of poetry in his own day as we might protest

against the want of serious purpose in modern fiction, against the

unseemliness or extravagance of some of our poets or novelists, against

the time-serving of preachers or public writers, against the

regardlessness of truth which to the eye of the philosopher seems to

characterize the greater part of the world. For we too have reason to

complain that our poets and novelists 'paint inferior truth' and 'are

concerned with the inferior part of the soul'; that the readers of them

become what they read and are injuriously affected by them. And we look in

vain for that healthy atmosphere of which Plato speaks,--'the beauty which

meets the sense like a breeze and imperceptibly draws the soul, even in

childhood, into harmony with the beauty of reason.'

For there might be a poetry which would be the hymn of divine perfection,

the harmony of goodness and truth among men: a strain which should renew

the youth of the world, and bring back the ages in which the poet was

man's only teacher and best friend,--which would find materials in the

living present as well as in the romance of the past, and might subdue to

the fairest forms of speech and verse the intractable materials of modern

civilisation,--which might elicit the simple principles, or, as Plato

{clxv} would have called them, the essential forms, of truth and justice

out of the variety of opinion and the complexity of modern society,--which

would preserve all the good of each generation and leave the bad

unsung,--which should be based not on vain longings or faint imaginings,

but on a clear insight into the nature of man. Then the tale of love might

begin again in poetry or prose, two in one, united in the pursuit of

knowledge, or the service of God and man; and feelings of love might still

be the incentive to great thoughts and heroic deeds as in the days of

Dante or Petrarch; and many types of manly and womanly beauty might appear

among us, rising above the ordinary level of humanity, and many lives

which were like poems (Laws vii. 817 B), be not only written, but lived by

us. A few such strains have been heard among men in the tragedies of

Æeschylus and Sophocles, whom Plato quotes, not, as Homer is quoted by

him, in irony, but with deep and serious approval,--in the poetry of

Milton and Wordsworth, and in passages of other English poets,--first and

above all in the Hebrew prophets and psalmists. Shakespeare has taught us

how great men should speak and act; he has drawn characters of a wonderful

purity and depth; he has ennobled the human mind, but, like Homer (Rep. x.

599 foll.), he 'has left no way of life.' The next greatest poet of modern

times, Goethe, is concerned with 'a lower degree of truth'; he paints the

world as a stage on which 'all the men and women are merely players'; he

cultivates life as an art, but he furnishes no ideals of truth and action.

The poet may rebel against any attempt to set limits to his fancy; and he

may argue truly that moralizing in verse is not poetry. Possibly, like

Mephistopheles in Faust, he may retaliate on his adversaries. But the

philosopher will still be justified in asking, 'How may the heavenly gift

of poesy be devoted to the good of mankind?'

Returning to Plato, we may observe that a similar mixture of truth and

error appears in other parts of the argument. He is aware of the absurdity

of mankind framing their whole lives according to Homer; just as in the

Phaedrus he intimates the absurdity of interpreting mythology upon

rational principles; both these were the modern tendencies of his own age,

which he deservedly ridicules. On the other hand, his argument that

{clxvi} Homer, if he had been able to teach mankind anything worth

knowing, would not have been allowed by them to go about begging as a

rhapsodist, is both false and contrary to the spirit of Plato (cp. Rep.

vi. 489 A foll.). It may be compared with those other paradoxes of the

Gorgias, that 'No statesman was ever unjustly put to death by the city of

which he was the head'; and that 'No Sophist was ever defrauded by his

pupils' (Gorg. 519 foll.)......

The argument for immortality seems to rest on the absolute dualism of soul

and body. Admitting the existence of the soul, we know of no force which

is able to put an end to her. Vice is her own proper evil; and if she

cannot be destroyed by that, she cannot be destroyed by any other. Yet

Plato has acknowledged that the soul may be so overgrown by the

incrustations of earth as to lose her original form; and in the Timaeus he

recognizes more strongly than in the Republic the influence which the body

has over the mind, denying even the voluntariness of human actions, on the

ground that they proceed from physical states (Tim. 86, 87). In the

Republic, as elsewhere, he wavers between the original soul which has to

be restored, and the character which is developed by training and

education......

The vision of another world is ascribed to Er, the son of Armenius, who is

said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster. The tale has

certainly an oriental character, and may be compared with the pilgrimages

of the soul in the Zend Avesta (cp. Haug, Avesta, p. 197). But no trace of

acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato's writings, and

there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian. The

philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from Zoroaster,

and still less the myths of Plato.

The local arrangement of the vision is less distinct than that of the

Phaedrus and Phaedo. Astronomy is mingled with symbolism and mythology;

the great sphere of heaven is represented under the symbol of a cylinder

or box, containing the seven orbits of the planets and the fixed stars;

this is suspended from an axis or spindle which turns on the knees of

Necessity; the revolutions of the seven orbits contained in the cylinder

are guided by the fates, and their harmonious motion produces {clxvii} the

music of the spheres. Through the innermost or eighth of these, which is

the moon, is passed the spindle; but it is doubtful whether this is the

continuation of the column of light, from which the pilgrims contemplate

the heavens; the words of Plato imply that they are connected, but not the

same. The column itself is clearly not of adamant. The spindle (which is

of adamant) is fastened to the ends of the chains which extend to the

middle of the column of light--this column is said to hold together the

heaven; but whether it hangs from the spindle, or is at right angles to

it, is not explained. The cylinder containing the orbits of the stars is

almost as much a symbol as the figure of Necessity turning the

spindle;--for the outermost rim is the sphere of the fixed stars, and

nothing is said about the intervals of space which divide the paths of the

stars in the heavens. The description is both a picture and an orrery, and

therefore is necessarily inconsistent with itself. The column of light is

not the Milky Way--which is neither straight, nor like a rainbow--but the

imaginary axis of the earth. This is compared to the rainbow in respect

not of form but of colour, and not to the undergirders of a trireme, but

to the straight rope running from prow to stern in which the undergirders

meet.

The orrery or picture of the heavens given in the Republic differs in its

mode of representation from the circles of the same and of the other in

the Timaeus. In both the fixed stars are distinguished from the planets,

and they move in orbits without them, although in an opposite direction:

in the Republic as in the Timaeus (40 B) they are all moving round the

axis of the world. But we are not certain that in the former they are

moving round the earth. No distinct mention is made in the Republic of the

circles of the same and other; although both in the Timaeus and in the

Republic the motion of the fixed stars is supposed to coincide with the

motion of the whole. The relative thickness of the rims is perhaps

designed to express the relative distances of the planets. Plato probably

intended to represent the earth, from which Er and his companions are

viewing the heavens, as stationary in place; but whether or not herself

revolving, unless this is implied in the revolution of the axis, is

uncertain (cp. Timaeus). The spectator {clxviii} may be supposed to look

at the heavenly bodies, either from above or below. The earth is a sort of

earth and heaven in one, like the heaven of the Phaedrus, on the back of

which the spectator goes out to take a peep at the stars and is borne

round in the revolution. There is no distinction between the equator and

the ecliptic. But Plato is no doubt led to imagine that the planets have

an opposite motion to that of the fixed stars, in order to account for

their appearances in the heavens. In the description of the meadow, and

the retribution of the good and evil after death, there are traces of

Homer.

The description of the axis as a spindle, and of the heavenly bodies as

forming a whole, partly arises out of the attempt to connect the motions

of the heavenly bodies with the mythological image of the web, or weaving

of the Fates. The giving of the lots, the weaving of them, and the making

of them irreversible, which are ascribed to the three Fates--Lachesis,

Clotho, Atropos, are obviously derived from their names. The element of

chance in human life is indicated by the order of the lots. But chance,

however adverse, may be overcome by the wisdom of man, if he knows how to

choose aright; there is a worse enemy to man than chance; this enemy is

himself. He who was moderately fortunate in the number of the lot--even

the very last comer--might have a good life if he chose with wisdom. And

as Plato does not like to make an assertion which is unproven, he more

than confirms this statement a few sentences afterwards by the example of

Odysseus, who chose last. But the virtue which is founded on habit is not

sufficient to enable a man to choose; he must add to virtue knowledge, if

he is to act rightly when placed in new circumstances. The routine of good

actions and good habits is an inferior sort of goodness; and, as Coleridge

says, 'Common sense is intolerable which is not based on metaphysics,' so

Plato would have said, 'Habit is worthless which is not based upon

philosophy.'

The freedom of the will to refuse the evil and to choose the good is

distinctly asserted. 'Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours

her he will have more or less of her.' The life of man is 'rounded' by

necessity; there are circumstances prior to birth which affect him (cp.

Pol. 273 B). But within the walls of necessity there is an open space in

which he is his own master, {clxix} and can study for himself the effects

which the variously compounded gifts of nature or fortune have upon the

soul, and act accordingly. All men cannot have the first choice in

everything. But the lot of all men is good enough, if they choose wisely

and will live diligently.

The verisimilitude which is given to the pilgrimage of a thousand years,

by the intimation that Ardiaeus had lived a thousand years before; the

coincidence of Er coming to life on the twelfth day after he was supposed

to have been dead with the seven days which the pilgrims passed in the

meadow, and the four days during which they journeyed to the column of

light; the precision with which the soul is mentioned who chose the

twentieth lot; the passing remarks that there was no definite character

among the souls, and that the souls which had chosen ill blamed any one

rather than themselves; or that some of the souls drank more than was

necessary of the waters of Forgetfulness, while Er himself was hindered

from drinking; the desire of Odysseus to rest at last, unlike the

conception of him in Dante and Tennyson; the feigned ignorance of how Er

returned to the body, when the other souls went shooting like stars to

their birth,--add greatly to the probability of the narrative. They are

such touches of nature as the art of Defoe might have introduced when he

wished to win credibility for marvels and apparitions.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Republic._ Introduction.]

There still remain to be considered some points which have been

intentionally reserved to the end: (I) the Janus-like character of the

Republic, which presents two faces--one an Hellenic state, the other a

kingdom of philosophers. Connected with the latter of the two aspects are

(II) the paradoxes of the Republic, as they have been termed by

Morgenstern: ([Greek: a]) the community of property; ([Greek: b]) of

families; ([Greek: g]) the rule of philosophers; ([Greek: d]) the analogy

of the individual and the State, which, like some other analogies in the

Republic, is carried too far. We may then proceed to consider (III) the

subject of education as conceived by Plato, bringing together in a general

view the education of youth and the education of after-life; (IV) we may

note further some essential differences between ancient and modern

politics which are suggested by the Republic; {clxx} (V) we may compare

the Politicus and the Laws; (VI) we may observe the influence exercised by

Plato on his imitators; and (VII) take occasion to consider the nature and

value of political, and (VIII) of religious ideals.

I. Plato expressly says that he is intending to found an Hellenic State

(Book v. 470 E). Many of his regulations are characteristically Spartan;

such as the prohibition of gold and silver, the common meals of the men,

the military training of the youth, the gymnastic exercises of the women.

The life of Sparta was the life of a camp (Laws ii. 666 E), enforced even

more rigidly in time of peace than in war; the citizens of Sparta, like

Plato's, were forbidden to trade--they were to be soldiers and not

shopkeepers. Nowhere else in Greece was the individual so completely

subjected to the State; the time when he was to marry, the education of

his children, the clothes which he was to wear, the food which he was to

eat, were all prescribed by law. Some of the best enactments in the

Republic, such as the reverence to be paid to parents and elders, and some

of the worst, such as the exposure of deformed children, are borrowed from

the practice of Sparta. The encouragement of friendships between men and

youths, or of men with one another, as affording incentives to bravery, is

also Spartan; in Sparta too a nearer approach was made than in any other

Greek State to equality of the sexes, and to community of property; and

while there was probably less of licentiousness in the sense of

immorality, the tie of marriage was regarded more lightly than in the rest

of Greece. The 'suprema lex' was the preservation of the family, and the

interest of the State. The coarse strength of a military government was

not favourable to purity and refinement; and the excessive strictness of

some regulations seems to have produced a reaction. Of all Hellenes the

Spartans were most accessible to bribery; several of the greatest of them

might be described in the words of Plato as having a 'fierce secret

longing after gold and silver.' Though not in the strict sense communists,

the principle of communism was maintained among them in their division of

lands, in their common meals, in their slaves, and in the free use of one

another's goods. Marriage was a public institution: and the women were

educated by the State, and sang and danced in public with the men.

{clxxi} Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with

which the magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music and

poetry; as in the Republic of Plato, the new-fangled poet was to be

expelled. Hymns to the Gods, which are the only kind of music admitted

into the ideal State, were the only kind which was permitted at Sparta.

The Spartans, though an unpoetical race, were nevertheless lovers of

poetry; they had been stirred by the Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they had

crowded around Hippias to hear his recitals of Homer; but in this they

resembled the citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal State

(548 E). The council of elder men also corresponds to the Spartan

_gerousia_; and the freedom with which they are permitted to judge about

matters of detail agrees with what we are told of that institution. Once

more, the military rule of not spoiling the dead or offering arms at the

temples; the moderation in the pursuit of enemies; the importance attached

to the physical well-being of the citizens; the use of warfare for the

sake of defence rather than of aggression--are features probably suggested

by the spirit and practice of Sparta.

To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline; and the

character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the Spartan citizen.

The love of Lacedaemon not only affected Plato and Xenophon, but was

shared by many undistinguished Athenians; there they seemed to find a

principle which was wanting in their own democracy. The [Greek:

eu)kosmi/a] of the Spartans attracted them, that is to say, not the

goodness of their laws, but the spirit of order and loyalty which

prevailed. Fascinated by the idea, citizens of Athens would imitate the

Lacedaemonians in their dress and manners; they were known to the

contemporaries of Plato as 'the persons who had their ears bruised,' like

the Roundheads of the Commonwealth. The love of another church or country

when seen at a distance only, the longing for an imaginary simplicity in

civilized times, the fond desire of a past which never has been, or of a

future which never will be,--these are aspirations of the human mind which

are often felt among ourselves. Such feelings meet with a response in the

Republic of Plato.

But there are other features of the Platonic Republic, as, for example,

the literary and philosophical education, and the grace {clxxii} and

beauty of life, which are the reverse of Spartan. Plato wishes to give his

citizens a taste of Athenian freedom as well as of Lacedaemonian

discipline. His individual genius is purely Athenian, although in theory

he is a lover of Sparta; and he is something more than either--he has also

a true Hellenic feeling. He is desirous of humanizing the wars of Hellenes

against one another; he acknowledges that the Delphian God is the grand

hereditary interpreter of all Hellas. The spirit of harmony and the Dorian

mode are to prevail, and the whole State is to have an external beauty

which is the reflex of the harmony within. But he has not yet found out

the truth which he afterwards enunciated in the Laws (i. 628 D)--that he

was a better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who

trained them for war. The citizens, as in other Hellenic States,

democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an upper class; for,

although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes are allowed to

fade away into the distance, and are represented in the individual by the

passions. Plato has no idea either of a social State in which all classes

are harmonized, or of a federation of Hellas or the world in which

different nations or States have a place. His city is equipped for war

rather than for peace, and this would seem to be justified by the ordinary

condition of Hellenic States. The myth of the earth-born men is an

embodiment of the orthodox tradition of Hellas, and the allusion to the

four ages of the world is also sanctioned by the authority of Hesiod and

the poets. Thus we see that the Republic is partly founded on the ideal of

the old Greek _polis_, partly on the actual circumstances of Hellas in

that age. Plato, like the old painters, retains the traditional form, and

like them he has also a vision of a city in the clouds.

There is yet another thread which is interwoven in the texture of the

work; for the Republic is not only a Dorian State, but a Pythagorean

league. The 'way of life' which was connected with the name of Pythagoras,

like the Catholic monastic orders, showed the power which the mind of an

individual might exercise over his contemporaries, and may have naturally

suggested to Plato the possibility of reviving such 'mediaeval

institutions.' The Pythagoreans, like Plato, enforced a rule of life and a

moral and intellectual training. The influence ascribed to music, which to

{clxxiii} us seems exaggerated, is also a Pythagorean feature; it is not

to be regarded as representing the real influence of music in the Greek

world. More nearly than any other government of Hellas, the Pythagorean

league of three hundred was an aristocracy of virtue. For once in the

history of mankind the philosophy of order or [Greek: ko/smos], expressing

and consequently enlisting on its side the combined endeavours of the

better part of the people, obtained the management of public affairs and

held possession of it for a considerable time (until about B.C. 500).

Probably only in States prepared by Dorian institutions would such a

league have been possible. The rulers, like Plato's [Greek: phu/lakes],

were required to submit to a severe training in order to prepare the way

for the education of the other members of the community. Long after the

dissolution of the Order, eminent Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of

Tarentum, retained their political influence over the cities of Magna

Graecia. There was much here that was suggestive to the kindred spirit of

Plato, who had doubtless meditated deeply on the 'way of life of

Pythagoras' (Rep. x. 600 B) and his followers. Slight traces of

Pythagoreanism are to be found in the mystical number of the State, in the

number which expresses the interval between the king and the tyrant, in

the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in

the great though secondary importance ascribed to mathematics in

education.

But as in his philosophy, so also in the form of his State, he goes far

beyond the old Pythagoreans. He attempts a task really impossible, which

is to unite the past of Greek history with the future of philosophy,

analogous to that other impossibility, which has often been the dream of

Christendom, the attempt to unite the past history of Europe with the

kingdom of Christ. Nothing actually existing in the world at all resembles

Plato's ideal State; nor does he himself imagine that such a State is

possible. This he repeats again and again; e.g. in the Republic (ix. _sub

fin._), or in the Laws (Book v. 739), where, casting a glance back on the

Republic, he admits that the perfect state of communism and philosophy was

impossible in his own age, though still to be retained as a pattern. The

same doubt is implied in the earnestness with which he argues in the

Republic (v. 472 D) that ideals are none the worse because they cannot be

realized in fact, and {clxxiv} in the chorus of laughter, which like a

breaking wave will, as he anticipates, greet the mention of his proposals;

though like other writers of fiction, he uses all his art to give reality

to his inventions. When asked how the ideal polity can come into being, he

answers ironically, 'When one son of a king becomes a philosopher'; he

designates the fiction of the earth-born men as 'a noble lie'; and when

the structure is finally complete, he fairly tells you that his Republic

is a vision only, which in some sense may have reality, but not in the

vulgar one of a reign of philosophers upon earth. It has been said that

Plato flies as well as walks, but this falls short of the truth; for he

flies and walks at the same time, and is in the air and on firm ground in

successive instants.

Niebuhr has asked a trifling question, which may be briefly noticed in

this place--Was Plato a good citizen? If by this is meant, Was he loyal to

Athenian institutions?--he can hardly be said to be the friend of

democracy: but neither is he the friend of any other existing form of

government; all of them he regarded as 'states of faction' (Laws viii.

832 C); none attained to his ideal of a voluntary rule over voluntary

subjects, which seems indeed more nearly to describe democracy than any

other; and the worst of them is tyranny. The truth is, that the question

has hardly any meaning when applied to a great philosopher whose writings

are not meant for a particular age and country, but for all time and all

mankind. The decline of Athenian politics was probably the motive which

led Plato to frame an ideal State, and the Republic may be regarded as

reflecting the departing glory of Hellas. As well might we complain of St.

Augustine, whose great work 'The City of God' originated in a similar

motive, for not being loyal to the Roman Empire. Even a nearer parallel

might be afforded by the first Christians, who cannot fairly be charged

with being bad citizens because, though 'subject to the higher powers,'

they were looking forward to a city which is in heaven.

II. The idea of the perfect State is full of paradox when judged of

according to the ordinary notions of mankind. The paradoxes of one age

have been said to become the commonplaces of the next; but the paradoxes

of Plato are at least as paradoxical to us as they were to his

contemporaries. The {clxxv} modern world has either sneered at them as

absurd, or denounced them as unnatural and immoral; men have been pleased

to find in Aristotle's criticisms of them the anticipation of their own

good sense. The wealthy and cultivated classes have disliked and also

dreaded them; they have pointed with satisfaction to the failure of

efforts to realize them in practice. Yet since they are the thoughts of

one of the greatest of human intelligences, and of one who had done most

to elevate morality and religion, they seem to deserve a better treatment

at our hands. We may have to address the public, as Plato does poetry, and

assure them that we mean no harm to existing institutions. There are

serious errors which have a side of truth and which therefore may fairly

demand a careful consideration: there are truths mixed with error of which

we may indeed say, 'The half is better than the whole.' Yet 'the half' may

be an important contribution to the study of human nature.

([Greek: a]) The first paradox is the community of goods, which is

mentioned slightly at the end of the third Book, and seemingly, as

Aristotle observes, is confined to the guardians; at least no mention is

made of the other classes. But the omission is not of any real

significance, and probably arises out of the plan of the work, which

prevents the writer from entering into details.

Aristotle censures the community of property much in the spirit of modern

political economy, as tending to repress industry, and as doing away with

the spirit of benevolence. Modern writers almost refuse to consider the

subject, which is supposed to have been long ago settled by the common

opinion of mankind. But it must be remembered that the sacredness of

property is a notion far more fixed in modern than in ancient times. The

world has grown older, and is therefore more conservative. Primitive

society offered many examples of land held in common, either by a tribe or

by a township, and such may probably have been the original form of landed

tenure. Ancient legislators had invented various modes of dividing and

preserving the divisions of land among the citizens; according to

Aristotle there were nations who held the land in common and divided the

produce, and there were others who divided the land and stored the produce

in common. The evils of debt and the inequality of property were far

greater in ancient than in modern {clxxvi} times, and the accidents to

which property was subject from war, or revolution, or taxation, or other

legislative interference, were also greater. All these circumstances gave

property a less fixed and sacred character. The early Christians are

believed to have held their property in common, and the principle is

sanctioned by the words of Christ himself, and has been maintained as a

counsel of perfection in almost all ages of the Church. Nor have there

been wanting instances of modern enthusiasts who have made a religion of

communism; in every age of religious excitement notions like Wycliffe's

'inheritance of grace' have tended to prevail. A like spirit, but fiercer

and more violent, has appeared in politics. 'The preparation of the Gospel

of peace' soon becomes the red flag of Republicanism.

We can hardly judge what effect Plato's views would have upon his own

contemporaries; they would perhaps have seemed to them only an

exaggeration of the Spartan commonwealth. Even modern writers would

acknowledge that the right of private property is based on expediency, and

may be interfered with in a variety of ways for the public good. Any other

mode of vesting property which was found to be more advantageous, would in

time acquire the same basis of right; 'the most useful,' in Plato's words,

'would be the most sacred.' The lawyers and ecclesiastics of former ages

would have spoken of property as a sacred institution. But they only meant

by such language to oppose the greatest amount of resistance to any

invasion of the rights of individuals and of the Church.

When we consider the question, without any fear of immediate application

to practice, in the spirit of Plato's Republic, are we quite sure that the

received notions of property are the best? Is the distribution of wealth

which is customary in civilized countries the most favourable that can be

conceived for the education and development of the mass of mankind? Can

'the spectator of all time and all existence' be quite convinced that one

or two thousand years hence, great changes will not have taken place in

the rights of property, or even that the very notion of property, beyond

what is necessary for personal maintenance, may not have disappeared? This

was a distinction familiar to Aristotle, though likely to be laughed at

among ourselves. Such a change would not be greater than some other

changes through {clxxvii} which the world has passed in the transition

from ancient to modern society, for example, the emancipation of the serfs

in Russia, or the abolition of slavery in America and the West Indies; and

not so great as the difference which separates the Eastern village

community from the Western world. To accomplish such a revolution in the

course of a few centuries, would imply a rate of progress not more rapid

than has actually taken place during the last fifty or sixty years. The

kingdom of Japan underwent more change in five or six years than Europe in

five or six hundred. Many opinions and beliefs which have been cherished

among ourselves quite as strongly as the sacredness of property have

passed away; and the most untenable propositions respecting the right of

bequests or entail have been maintained with as much fervour as the most

moderate. Some one will be heard to ask whether a state of society can be

final in which the interests of thousands are perilled on the life or

character of a single person. And many will indulge the hope that our

present condition may, after all, be only transitional, and may conduct to

a higher, in which property, besides ministering to the enjoyment of the

few, may also furnish the means of the highest culture to all, and will be

a greater benefit to the public generally, and also more under the control

of public authority. There may come a time when the saying, 'Have I not a

right to do what I will with my own?' will appear to be a barbarous relic

of individualism;--when the possession of a part may be a greater blessing

to each and all than the possession of the whole is now to any one.

Such reflections appear visionary to the eye of the practical statesman,

but they are within the range of possibility to the philosopher. He can

imagine that in some distant age or clime, and through the influence of

some individual, the notion of common property may or might have sunk as

deep into the heart of a race, and have become as fixed to them, as

private property is to ourselves. He knows that this latter institution is

not more than four or five thousand years old: may not the end revert to

the beginning? In our own age even Utopias affect the spirit of

legislation, and an abstract idea may exercise a great influence on

practical politics.

The objections that would be generally urged against Plato's community of

property, are the old ones of Aristotle, that motives {clxxviii} for

exertion would be taken away, and that disputes would arise when each was

dependent upon all. Every man would produce as little and consume as much

as he liked. The experience of civilized nations has hitherto been adverse

to Socialism. The effort is too great for human nature; men try to live in

common, but the personal feeling is always breaking in. On the other hand

it may be doubted whether our present notions of property are not

conventional, for they differ in different countries and in different

states of society. We boast of an individualism which is not freedom, but

rather an artificial result of the industrial state of modern Europe. The

individual is nominally free, but he is also powerless in a world bound

hand and foot in the chains of economic necessity. Even if we cannot

expect the mass of mankind to become disinterested, at any rate we observe

in them a power of organization which fifty years ago would never have

been suspected. The same forces which have revolutionized the political

system of Europe, may effect a similar change in the social and industrial

relations of mankind. And if we suppose the influence of some good as well

as neutral motives working in the community, there will be no absurdity in

expecting that the mass of mankind having power, and becoming enlightened

about the higher possibilities of human life, when they learn how much

more is attainable for all than is at present the possession of a favoured

few, may pursue the common interest with an intelligence and persistency

which mankind have hitherto never seen.

Now that the world has once been set in motion, and is no longer held fast

under the tyranny of custom and ignorance; now that criticism has pierced

the veil of tradition and the past no longer overpowers the present,--the

progress of civilization may be expected to be far greater and swifter

than heretofore. Even at our present rate of speed the point at which we

may arrive in two or three generations is beyond the power of imagination

to foresee. There are forces in the world which work, not in an

arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio of increase. Education, to use

the expression of Plato, moves like a wheel with an ever-multiplying

rapidity. Nor can we say how great may be its influence, when it becomes

universal,--when it has been inherited by many generations,--when it is

freed from the trammels {clxxix} of superstition and rightly adapted to

the wants and capacities of different classes of men and women. Neither do

we know how much more the co-operation of minds or of hands may be capable

of accomplishing, whether in labour or in study. The resources of the

natural sciences are not half-developed as yet; the soil of the earth,

instead of growing more barren, may become many times more fertile than

hitherto; the uses of machinery far greater, and also more minute than at

present. New secrets of physiology may be revealed, deeply affecting human

nature in its innermost recesses. The standard of health may be raised and

the lives of men prolonged by sanitary and medical knowledge. There may be

peace, there may be leisure, there may be innocent refreshments of many

kinds. The ever-increasing power of locomotion may join the extremes of

earth. There may be mysterious workings of the human mind, such as occur

only at great crises of history. The East and the West may meet together,

and all nations may contribute their thoughts and their experience to the

common stock of humanity. Many other elements enter into a speculation of

this kind. But it is better to make an end of them. For such reflections

appear to the majority far-fetched, and to men of science, commonplace.

([Greek: b]) Neither to the mind of Plato nor of Aristotle did the

doctrine of community of property present at all the same difficulty, or

appear to be the same violation of the common Hellenic sentiment, as the

community of wives and children. This paradox he prefaces by another

proposal, that the occupations of men and women shall be the same, and

that to this end they shall have a common training and education. Male and

female animals have the same pursuits--why not also the two sexes of man?

But have we not here fallen into a contradiction? for we were saying that

different natures should have different pursuits. How then can men and

women have the same? And is not the proposal inconsistent with our notion

of the division of labour?--These objections are no sooner raised than

answered; for, according to Plato, there is no organic difference between

men and women, but only the accidental one that men beget and women bear

children. Following the analogy of the other animals, he contends that all

natural gifts are scattered about indifferently among both sexes, though

there may be a superiority of degree {clxxx} on the part of the men. The

objection on the score of decency to their taking part in the same

gymnastic exercises, is met by Plato's assertion that the existing feeling

is a matter of habit.

That Plato should have emancipated himself from the ideas of his own

country and from the example of the East, shows a wonderful independence

of mind. He is conscious that women are half the human race, in some

respects the more important half (Laws vi. 781 B); and for the sake both

of men and women he desires to raise the woman to a higher level of

existence. He brings, not sentiment, but philosophy to bear upon a

question which both in ancient and modern times has been chiefly regarded

in the light of custom or feeling. The Greeks had noble conceptions of

womanhood in the goddesses Athene and Artemis, and in the heroines

Antigone and Andromache. But these ideals had no counterpart in actual

life. The Athenian woman was in no way the equal of her husband; she was

not the entertainer of his guests or the mistress of his house, but only

his housekeeper and the mother of his children. She took no part in

military or political matters; nor is there any instance in the later ages

of Greece of a woman becoming famous in literature. 'Hers is the greatest

glory who has the least renown among men,' is the historian's conception

of feminine excellence. A very different ideal of womanhood is held up by

Plato to the world; she is to be the companion of the man, and to share

with him in the toils of war and in the cares of government. She is to be

similarly trained both in bodily and mental exercises. She is to lose as

far as possible the incidents of maternity and the characteristics of the

female sex.

The modern antagonist of the equality of the sexes would argue that the

differences between men and women are not confined to the single point

urged by Plato; that sensibility, gentleness, grace, are the qualities of

women, while energy, strength, higher intelligence, are to be looked for

in men. And the criticism is just: the differences affect the whole

nature, and are not, as Plato supposes, confined to a single point. But

neither can we say how far these differences are due to education and the

opinions of mankind, or physically inherited from the habits and opinions

of former generations. Women have been always taught, not exactly that

they are slaves, but that they are in an inferior {clxxxi} position, which

is also supposed to have compensating advantages; and to this position

they have conformed. It is also true that the physical form may easily

change in the course of generations through the mode of life; and the

weakness or delicacy, which was once a matter of opinion, may become a

physical fact. The characteristics of sex vary greatly in different

countries and ranks of society, and at different ages in the same

individuals. Plato may have been right in denying that there was any

ultimate difference in the sexes of man other than that which exists in

animals, because all other differences may be conceived to disappear in

other states of society, or under different circumstances of life and

training.

The first wave having been passed, we proceed to the second--community of

wives and children. 'Is it possible? Is it desirable?' For as Glaucon

intimates, and as we far more strongly insist, 'Great doubts may be

entertained about both these points.' Any free discussion of the question

is impossible, and mankind are perhaps right in not allowing the ultimate

bases of social life to be examined. Few of us can safely enquire into the

things which nature hides, any more than we can dissect our own bodies.

Still, the manner in which Plato arrived at his conclusions should be

considered. For here, as Mr. Grote has remarked, is a wonderful thing,

that one of the wisest and best of men should have entertained ideas of

morality which are wholly at variance with our own. And if we would do

Plato justice, we must examine carefully the character of his proposals.

First, we may observe that the relations of the sexes supposed by him are

the reverse of licentious: he seems rather to aim at an impossible

strictness. Secondly, he conceives the family to be the natural enemy of

the state; and he entertains the serious hope that an universal

brotherhood may take the place of private interests--an aspiration which,

although not justified by experience, has possessed many noble minds. On

the other hand, there is no sentiment or imagination in the connections

which men and women are supposed by him to form; human beings return to

the level of the animals, neither exalting to heaven, nor yet abusing the

natural instincts. All that world of poetry and fancy which the passion of

love has called forth in modern literature and romance would have been

banished by Plato. The arrangements {clxxxii} of marriage in the Republic

are directed to one object--the improvement of the race. In successive

generations a great development both of bodily and mental qualities might

be possible. The analogy of animals tends to show that mankind can within

certain limits receive a change of nature. And as in animals we should

commonly choose the best for breeding, and destroy the others, so there

must be a selection made of the human beings whose lives are worthy to be

preserved.

We start back horrified from this Platonic ideal, in the belief, first,

that the higher feelings of humanity are far too strong to be crushed out;

secondly, that if the plan could be carried into execution we should be

poorly recompensed by improvements in the breed for the loss of the best

things in life. The greatest regard for the weakest and meanest of human

beings--the infant, the criminal, the insane, the idiot, truly seems to us

one of the noblest results of Christianity. We have learned, though as yet

imperfectly, that the individual man has an endless value in the sight of

God, and that we honour Him when we honour the darkened and disfigured

image of Him (cp. Laws xi. 931 A). This is the lesson which Christ taught

in a parable when He said, 'Their angels do always behold the face of My

Father which is in heaven.' Such lessons are only partially realized in

any age; they were foreign to the age of Plato, as they have very

different degrees of strength in different countries or ages of the

Christian world. To the Greek the family was a religious and customary

institution binding the members together by a tie inferior in strength to

that of friendship, and having a less solemn and sacred sound than that of

country. The relationship which existed on the lower level of custom,

Plato imagined that he was raising to the higher level of nature and

reason; while from the modern and Christian point of view we regard him as

sanctioning murder and destroying the first principles of morality.

The great error in these and similar speculations is that the difference

between man and the animals is forgotten in them. The human being is

regarded with the eye of a dog- or bird-fancier (v. 459 A), or at best of

a slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder of

animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength; in a few cases at

courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the

great desideratum. {clxxxiii} But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor

yet for their superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing carts.

Neither does the improvement of the human race consist merely in the

increase of the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of

the mind. Hence there must be 'a marriage of true minds' as well as of

bodies, of imagination and reason as well as of lusts and instincts. Men

and women without feeling or imagination are justly called brutes; yet

Plato takes away these qualities and puts nothing in their place, not even

the desire of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know their own

children. The most important transaction of social life, he who is the

idealist philosopher converts into the most brutal. For the pair are to

have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal festival; their

children are not theirs, but the state's; nor is any tie of affection to

unite them. Yet here the analogy of the animals might have saved Plato

from a gigantic error, if he had 'not lost sight of his own illustration'

(ii. 375 D). For the 'nobler sort of birds and beasts' (v. 459 A) nourish

and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.

An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while 'to try and place life on a

physical basis.' But should not life rest on the moral rather than upon

the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower, first the human and

rational, afterwards the animal. Yet they are not absolutely divided; and

in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they seem to be only

different aspects of a common human nature which includes them both.

Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but the expansion and

enlargement of it,--the highest form which the physical is capable of

receiving. As Plato would say, the body does not take care of the body,

and still less of the mind, but the mind takes care of both. In all human

action not that which is common to man and the animals is the

characteristic element, but that which distinguishes him from them. Even

if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all virtue into health of body

'_la façon que notre sang circule_,' still on merely physical grounds we

must come back to ideas. Mind and reason and duty and conscience, under

these or other names, are always reappearing. There cannot be health of

body without health of mind; nor health of mind without the sense of duty

and the love of truth (cp. Charm. 156 D, E).

That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his regulations

{clxxxiv} about marriage have fallen into the error of separating body and

mind, does indeed appear surprising. Yet the wonder is not so much that

Plato should have entertained ideas of morality which to our own age are

revolting, but that he should have contradicted himself to an extent which

is hardly credible, falling in an instant from the heaven of idealism into

the crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift of reflection, he

appears to have thought out a subject about which he had better have

followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The general sentiment of

Hellas was opposed to his monstrous fancy. The old poets, and in later

time the tragedians, showed no want of respect for the family, on which

much of their religion was based. But the example of Sparta, and perhaps

in some degree the tendency to defy public opinion, seems to have misled

him. He will make one family out of all the families of the state. He will

select the finest specimens of men and women and breed from these only.

Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part of human

nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise of philosophy

as well as of poetry), and also because any departure from established

morality, even where this is not intended, is apt to be unsettling, it may

be worth while to draw out a little more at length the objections to the

Platonic marriage. In the first place, history shows that wherever

polygamy has been largely allowed the race has deteriorated. One man to

one woman is the law of God and nature. Nearly all the civilized peoples

of the world at some period before the age of written records, have become

monogamists; and the step when once taken has never been retraced. The

exceptions occurring among Brahmins or Mahometans or the ancient Persians,

are of that sort which may be said to prove the rule. The connexions

formed between superior and inferior races hardly ever produce a noble

offspring, because they are licentious; and because the children in such

cases usually despise the mother and are neglected by the father who is

ashamed of them. Barbarous nations when they are introduced by Europeans

to vice die out; polygamist peoples either import and adopt children from

other countries, or dwindle in numbers, or both. Dynasties and

aristocracies which have disregarded the laws of nature have decreased in

numbers and degenerated in {clxxxv} stature; 'mariages de convenance'

leave their enfeebling stamp on the offspring of them ((cp. King Lear, Act

i. Sc. 2). The marriage of near relations, or the marrying in and in of

the same family tends constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children,

sometimes assuming the form as they grow older of passionate

licentiousness. The common prostitute rarely has any offspring. By such

unmistakable evidence is the authority of morality asserted in the

relations of the sexes: and so many more elements enter into this

'mystery' than are dreamed of by Plato and some other philosophers.

Recent enquirers have indeed arrived at the conclusion that among

primitive tribes there existed a community of wives as of property, and

that the captive taken by the spear was the only wife or slave whom any

man was permitted to call his own. The partial existence of such customs

among some of the lower races of man, and the survival of peculiar

ceremonies in the marriages of some civilized nations, are thought to

furnish a proof of similar institutions having been once universal. There

can be no question that the study of anthropology has considerably changed

our views respecting the first appearance of man upon the earth. We know

more about the aborigines of the world than formerly, but our increasing

knowledge shows above all things how little we know. With all the helps

which written monuments afford, we do but faintly realize the condition of

man two thousand or three thousand years ago. Of what his condition was

when removed to a distance 200,000 or 300,000 years, when the majority of

mankind were lower and nearer the animals than any tribe now existing upon

the earth, we cannot even entertain conjecture. Plato (Laws iii. 676

foll.) and Aristotle (Metaph. xi. 8, §§ 19, 20) may have been more right

than we imagine in supposing that some forms of civilisation were

discovered and lost several times over. If we cannot argue that all

barbarism is a degraded civilization, neither can we set any limits to the

depth of degradation to which the human race may sink through war,

disease, or isolation. And if we are to draw inferences about the origin

of marriage from the practice of barbarous nations, we should also

consider the remoter analogy of the animals. Many birds and animals,

especially the carnivorous, have only one mate, and the love and care of

offspring which seems to be natural is inconsistent {clxxxvi} with the

primitive theory of marriage. If we go back to an imaginary state in which

men were almost animals and the companions of them, we have as much right

to argue from what is animal to what is human as from the barbarous to the

civilized man. The record of animal life on the globe is fragmentary,--the

connecting links are wanting and cannot be supplied; the record of social

life is still more fragmentary and precarious. Even if we admit that our

first ancestors had no such institution as marriage, still the stages by

which men passed from outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of

China, Assyria, and Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly

unknown to us.

Such speculations are apt to be unsettling, because they seem to show that

an institution which was thought to be a revelation from heaven, is only

the growth of history and experience. We ask what is the origin of

marriage, and we are told that like the right of property, after many wars

and contests, it has gradually arisen out of the selfishness of

barbarians. We stand face to face with human nature in its primitive

nakedness. We are compelled to accept, not the highest, but the lowest

account of the origin of human society. But on the other hand we may truly

say that every step in human progress has been in the same direction, and

that in the course of ages the idea of marriage and of the family has been

more and more defined and consecrated. The civilized East is immeasurably

in advance of any savage tribes; the Greeks and Romans have improved upon

the East; the Christian nations have been stricter in their views of the

marriage relation than any of the ancients. In this as in so many other

things, instead of looking back with regret to the past, we should look

forward with hope to the future. We must consecrate that which we believe

to be the most holy, and that 'which is the most holy will be the most

useful.' There is more reason for maintaining the sacredness of the

marriage tie, when we see the benefit of it, than when we only felt a

vague religious horror about the violation of it. But in all times of

transition, when established beliefs are being undermined, there is a

danger that in the passage from the old to the new we may insensibly let

go the moral principle, finding an excuse for listening to the voice of

passion in the uncertainty of knowledge, or the {clxxxvii} fluctuations of

opinion. And there are many persons in our own day who, enlightened by the

study of anthropology, and fascinated by what is new and strange, some

using the language of fear, others of hope, are inclined to believe that a

time will come when through the self-assertion of women, or the rebellious

spirit of children, by the analysis of human relations, or by the force of

outward circumstances, the ties of family life may be broken or greatly

relaxed. They point to societies in America and elsewhere which tend to

show that the destruction of the family need not necessarily involve the

overthrow of all morality. Wherever we may think of such speculations, we

can hardly deny that they have been more rife in this generation than in

any other; and whither they are tending, who can predict?

To the doubts and queries raised by these 'social reformers' respecting

the relation of the sexes and the moral nature of man, there is a

sufficient answer, if any is needed. The difference about them and us is

really one of fact. They are speaking of man as they wish or fancy him to

be, but we are speaking of him as he is. They isolate the animal part of

his nature; we regard him as a creature having many sides, or aspects,

moving between good and evil, striving to rise above himself and to become

'a little lower than the angels.' We also, to use a Platonic formula, are

not ignorant of the dissatisfactions and incompatibilities of family life,

of the meannesses of trade, of the flatteries of one class of society by

another, of the impediments which the family throws in the way of lofty

aims and aspirations. But we are conscious that there are evils and

dangers in the background greater still, which are not appreciated,

because they are either concealed or suppressed. What a condition of man

would that be, in which human passions were controlled by no authority,

divine or human, in which there was no shame or decency, no higher

affection overcoming or sanctifying the natural instincts, but simply a

rule of health! Is it for this that we are asked to throw away the

civilization which is the growth of ages?

For strength and health are not the only qualities to be desired; there

are the more important considerations of mind and character and soul. We

know how human nature may be degraded; we do not know how by artificial

means any improvement in the breed can be effected. The problem is a

complex one, for if we {clxxxviii} go back only four steps (and these at

least enter into the composition of a child), there are commonly thirty

progenitors to be taken into account. Many curious facts, rarely admitting

of proof, are told us respecting the inheritance of disease or character

from a remote ancestor. We can trace the physical resemblances of parents

and children in the same family--

'Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat';

but scarcely less often the differences which distinguish children both

from their parents and from one another. We are told of similar mental

peculiarities running in families, and again of a tendency, as in the

animals, to revert to a common or original stock. But we have a difficulty

in distinguishing what is a true inheritance of genius or other qualities,

and what is mere imitation or the result of similar circumstances. Great

men and great women have rarely had great fathers and mothers. Nothing

that we know of in the circumstances of their birth or lineage will

explain their appearance. Of the English poets of the last and two

preceding centuries scarcely a descendant remains,--none have ever been

distinguished. So deeply has nature hidden her secret, and so ridiculous

is the fancy which has been entertained by some that we might in time by

suitable marriage arrangements or, as Plato would have said, 'by an

ingenious system of lots,' produce a Shakespeare or a Milton. Even

supposing that we could breed men having the tenacity of bulldogs, or,

like the Spartans, 'lacking the wit to run away in battle,' would the

world be any the better? Many of the noblest specimens of the human race

have been among the weakest physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own

Newton, would have been exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest and

strongest men and women have been among the wickedest and worst. Not by

the Platonic device of uniting the strong and fair with the strong and

fair, regardless of sentiment and morality, nor yet by his other device of

combining dissimilar natures (Statesman 310 A), have mankind gradually

passed from the brutality and licentiousness of primitive marriage to

marriage Christian and civilized.

Few persons would deny that we bring into the world an inheritance of

mental and physical qualities derived first from our parents, or through

them from some remoter ancestor, {clxxxix} secondly from our race, thirdly

from the general condition of mankind into which we are born. Nothing is

commoner than the remark, that 'So and so is like his father or his

uncle'; and an aged person may not unfrequently note a resemblance in a

youth to a long-forgotten ancestor, observing that 'Nature sometimes skips

a generation.' It may be true also, that if we knew more about our

ancestors, these similarities would be even more striking to us. Admitting

the facts which are thus described in a popular way, we may however remark

that there is no method of difference by which they can be defined or

estimated, and that they constitute only a small part of each individual.

The doctrine of heredity may seem to take out of our hands the conduct of

our own lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terrible

to us. For what we have received from our ancestors is only a fraction of

what we are, or may become. The knowledge that drunkenness or insanity has

been prevalent in a family may be the best safeguard against their

recurrence in a future generation. The parent will be most awake to the

vices or diseases in his child of which he is most sensible within

himself. The whole of life may be directed to their prevention or cure.

The traces of consumption may become fainter, or be wholly effaced: the

inherent tendency to vice or crime may be eradicated. And so heredity,

from being a curse, may become a blessing. We acknowledge that in the

matter of our birth, as in our nature generally, there are previous

circumstances which affect us. But upon this platform of circumstances or

within this wall of necessity, we have still the power of creating a life

for ourselves by the informing energy of the human will.

There is another aspect of the marriage question to which Plato is a

stranger. All the children born in his state are foundlings. It never

occurred to him that the greater part of them, according to universal

experience, would have perished. For children can only be brought up in

families. There is a subtle sympathy between the mother and the child

which cannot be supplied by other mothers, or by 'strong nurses one or

more' (Laws vii. 789 E). If Plato's 'pen' was as fatal as the Crèches of

Paris, or the foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine-tenths of his

children would have perished. There would have been no need to expose or

put out of the way the weaklier children, for they would have {cxc} died

of themselves. So emphatically does nature protest against the destruction

of the family.

What Plato had heard or seen of Sparta was applied by him in a mistaken

way to his ideal commonwealth. He probably observed that both the Spartan

men and women were superior in form and strength to the other Greeks; and

this superiority he was disposed to attribute to the laws and customs

relating to marriage. He did not consider that the desire of a noble

offspring was a passion among the Spartans, or that their physical

superiority was to be attributed chiefly, not to their marriage customs,

but to their temperance and training. He did not reflect that Sparta was

great, not in consequence of the relaxation of morality, but in spite of

it, by virtue of a political principle stronger far than existed in any

other Grecian state. Least of all did he observe that Sparta did not

really produce the finest specimens of the Greek race. The genius, the

political inspiration of Athens, the love of liberty--all that has made

Greece famous with posterity, were wanting among the Spartans. They had no

Themistocles, or Pericles, or Aeschylus, or Sophocles, or Socrates, or

Plato. The individual was not allowed to appear above the state; the laws

were fixed, and he had no business to alter or reform them. Yet whence has

the progress of cities and nations arisen, if not from remarkable

individuals, coming into the world we know not how, and from causes over

which we have no control? Something too much may have been said in modern

times of the value of individuality. But we can hardly condemn too

strongly a system which, instead of fostering the scattered seeds or

sparks of genius and character, tends to smother and extinguish them.

Still, while condemning Plato, we must acknowledge that neither

Christianity, nor any other form of religion and society, has hitherto

been able to cope with this most difficult of social problems, and that

the side from which Plato regarded it is that from which we turn away.

Population is the most untameable force in the political and social world.

Do we not find, especially in large cities, that the greatest hindrance to

the amelioration of the poor is their improvidence in marriage?--a small

fault truly, if not involving endless consequences. There are whole

countries too, such as India, or, nearer home, Ireland, in which a {cxci}

right solution of the marriage question seems to lie at the foundation of

the happiness of the community. There are too many people on a given

space, or they marry too early and bring into the world a sickly and

half-developed offspring; or owing to the very conditions of their

existence, they become emaciated and hand on a similar life to their

descendants. But who can oppose the voice of prudence to the 'mightiest

passions of mankind' (Laws viii. 835 C), especially when they have been

licensed by custom and religion? In addition to the influences of

education, we seem to require some new principles of right and wrong in

these matters, some force of opinion, which may indeed be already heard

whispering in private, but has never affected the moral sentiments of

mankind in general. We unavoidably lose sight of the principle of utility,

just in that action of our lives in which we have the most need of it. The

influences which we can bring to bear upon this question are chiefly

indirect. In a generation or two, education, emigration, improvements in

agriculture and manufactures, may have provided the solution. The state

physician hardly likes to probe the wound: it is beyond his art; a matter

which he cannot safely let alone, but which he dare not touch:

'We do but skin and film the ulcerous place.'

When again in private life we see a whole family one by one dropping into

the grave under the Ate of some inherited malady, and the parents perhaps

surviving them, do our minds ever go back silently to that day twenty-five

or thirty years before on which under the fairest auspices, amid the

rejoicings of friends and acquaintances, a bride and bridegroom joined

hands with one another? In making such a reflection we are not opposing

physical considerations to moral, but moral to physical; we are seeking to

make the voice of reason heard, which drives us back from the extravagance

of sentimentalism on common sense. The late Dr. Combe is said by his

biographer to have resisted the temptation to marriage, because he knew

that he was subject to hereditary consumption. One who deserved to be

called a man of genius, a friend of my youth, was in the habit of wearing

a black ribbon on his wrist, in order to remind him that, being liable to

outbreaks of insanity, he must not give way to the natural impulses of

affection: he died unmarried in a {cxcii} lunatic asylum. These two little

facts suggest the reflection that a very few persons have done from a

sense of duty what the rest of mankind ought to have done under like

circumstances, if they had allowed themselves to think of all the misery

which they were about to bring into the world. If we could prevent such

marriages without any violation of feeling or propriety, we clearly ought;

and the prohibition in the course of time would be protected by a 'horror

naturalis' similar to that which, in all civilized ages and countries, has

prevented the marriage of near relations by blood. Mankind would have been

the happier, if some things which are now allowed had from the beginning

been denied to them; if the sanction of religion could have prohibited

practices inimical to health; if sanitary principles could in early ages

have been invested with a superstitious awe. But, living as we do far on

in the world's history, we are no longer able to stamp at once with the

impress of religion a new prohibition. A free agent cannot have his

fancies regulated by law; and the execution of the law would be rendered

impossible, owing to the uncertainty of the cases in which marriage was to

be forbidden. Who can weigh virtue, or even fortune against health, or

moral and mental qualities against bodily? Who can measure probabilities

against certainties? There has been some good as well as evil in the

discipline of suffering; and there are diseases, such as consumption,

which have exercised a refining and softening influence on the character.

Youth is too inexperienced to balance such nice considerations; parents do

not often think of them, or think of them too late. They are at a distance

and may probably be averted; change of place, a new state of life, the

interests of a home may be the cure of them. So persons vainly reason when

their minds are already made up and their fortunes irrevocably linked

together. Nor is there any ground for supposing that marriages are to any

great extent influenced by reflections of this sort, which seem unable to

make any head against the irresistible impulse of individual attachment.

Lastly, no one can have observed the first rising flood of the passions in

youth, the difficulty of regulating them, and the effects on the whole

mind and nature which follow from them, the stimulus which is given to

them by the imagination, without feeling that there is something

unsatisfactory in our method of {cxciii} treating them. That the most

important influence on human life should be wholly left to chance or

shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or understood,

should be required to conform only to an external standard of

propriety--cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory

condition of human things. And still those who have the charge of youth

may find a way by watchfulness, by affection, by the manliness and

innocence of their own lives, by occasional hints, by general admonitions

which every one can apply for himself, to mitigate this terrible evil

which eats out the heart of individuals and corrupts the moral sentiments

of nations. In no duty towards others is there more need of reticence and

self-restraint. So great is the danger lest he who would be the counsellor

of another should reveal the secret prematurely, lest he should get

another too much into his power; or fix the passing impression of evil by

demanding the confession of it.

Nor is Plato wrong in asserting that family attachments may interfere with

higher aims. If there have been some who 'to party gave up what was meant

for mankind,' there have certainly been others who to family gave up what

was meant for mankind or for their country. The cares of children, the

necessity of procuring money for their support, the flatteries of the rich

by the poor, the exclusiveness of caste, the pride of birth or wealth, the

tendency of family life to divert men from the pursuit of the ideal or the

heroic, are as lowering in our own age as in that of Plato. And if we

prefer to look at the gentle influences of home, the development of the

affections, the amenities of society, the devotion of one member of a

family for the good of the others, which form one side of the picture, we

must not quarrel with him, or perhaps ought rather to be grateful to him,

for having presented to us the reverse. Without attempting to defend Plato

on grounds of morality, we may allow that there is an aspect of the world

which has not unnaturally led him into error.

We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State, like all other

abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato. To us the State seems to

be built up out of the family, or sometimes to be the framework in which

family and social life is contained. But to Plato in his present mood of

mind the family {cxciv} is only a disturbing influence which, instead of

filling up, tends to disarrange the higher unity of the State. No

organization is needed except a political, which, regarded from another

point of view, is a military one. The State is all-sufficing for the wants

of man, and, like the idea of the Church in later ages, absorbs all other

desires and affections. In time of war the thousand citizens are to stand

like a rampart impregnable against the world or the Persian host; in time

of peace the preparation for war and their duties to the State, which are

also their duties to one another, take up their whole life and time. The

only other interest which is allowed to them besides that of war, is the

interest of philosophy. When they are too old to be soldiers they are to

retire from active life and to have a second novitiate of study and

contemplation. There is an element of monasticism even in Plato's

communism. If he could have done without children, he might have converted

his Republic into a religious order. Neither in the Laws (v. 739 B), when

the daylight of common sense breaks in upon him, does he retract his

error. In the state of which he would be the founder, there is no marrying

or giving in marriage: but because of the infirmity of mankind, he

condescends to allow the law of nature to prevail.

([Greek: g]) But Plato has an equal, or, in his own estimation, even

greater paradox in reserve, which is summed up in the famous text, 'Until

kings are philosophers or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease

from ill.' And by philosophers he explains himself to mean those who are

capable of apprehending ideas, especially the idea of good. To the

attainment of this higher knowledge the second education is directed.

Through a process of training which has already made them good citizens

they are now to be made good legislators. We find with some surprise (not

unlike the feeling which Aristotle in a well-known passage describes the

hearers of Plato's lectures as experiencing, when they went to a discourse

on the idea of good, expecting to be instructed in moral truths, and

received instead of them arithmetical and mathematical formulae) that

Plato does not propose for his future legislators any study of finance or

law or military tactics, but only of abstract mathematics, as a

preparation for the still more abstract conception of good. We ask, with

Aristotle, What is the use of a man knowing the idea of {cxcv} good, if he

does not know what is good for this individual, this state, this condition

of society? We cannot understand how Plato's legislators or guardians are

to be fitted for their work of statesmen by the study of the five

mathematical sciences. We vainly search in Plato's own writings for any

explanation of this seeming absurdity.

The discovery of a great metaphysical conception seems to ravish the mind

with a prophetic consciousness which takes away the power of estimating

its value. No metaphysical enquirer has ever fairly criticised his own

speculations; in his own judgment they have been above criticism; nor has

he understood that what to him seemed to be absolute truth may reappear in

the next generation as a form of logic or an instrument of thought. And

posterity have also sometimes equally misapprehended the real value of his

speculations. They appear to them to have contributed nothing to the stock

of human knowledge. The _idea_ of good is apt to be regarded by the modern

thinker as an unmeaning abstraction; but he forgets that this abstraction

is waiting ready for use, and will hereafter be filled up by the divisions

of knowledge. When mankind do not as yet know that the world is subject to

law, the introduction of the mere conception of law or design or final

cause, and the far-off anticipation of the harmony of knowledge, are great

steps onward. Even the crude generalization of the unity of all things

leads men to view the world with different eyes, and may easily affect

their conception of human life and of politics, and also their own conduct

and character (Tim. 90 A). We can imagine how a great mind like that of

Pericles might derive elevation from his intercourse with Anaxagoras

(Phaedr. 270 A). To be struggling towards a higher but unattainable

conception is a more favourable intellectual condition than to rest

satisfied in a narrow portion of ascertained fact. And the earlier, which

have sometimes been the greater ideas of science, are often lost sight of

at a later period. How rarely can we say of any modern enquirer in the

magnificent language of Plato, that 'He is the spectator of all time and

of all existence!'

Nor is there anything unnatural in the hasty application of these vast

metaphysical conceptions to practical and political life. In the first

enthusiasm of ideas men are apt to see them {cxcvi} everywhere, and to

apply them in the most remote sphere. They do not understand that the

experience of ages is required to enable them to fill up 'the intermediate

axioms.' Plato himself seems to have imagined that the truths of

psychology, like those of astronomy and harmonics, would be arrived at by

a process of deduction, and that the method which he has pursued in the

Fourth Book, of inferring them from experience and the use of language,

was imperfect and only provisional. But when, after having arrived at the

idea of good, which is the end of the science of dialectic, he is asked,

What is the nature, and what are the divisions of the science? He refuses

to answer, as if intending by the refusal to intimate that the state of

knowledge which then existed was not such as would allow the philosopher

to enter into his final rest. The previous sciences must first be studied,

and will, we may add, continue to be studied till the end of time,

although in a sense different from any which Plato could have conceived.

But we may observe, that while he is aware of the vacancy of his own

ideal, he is full of enthusiasm in the contemplation of it. Looking into

the orb of light, he sees nothing, but he is warmed and elevated. The

Hebrew prophet believed that faith in God would enable him to govern the

world; the Greek philosopher imagined that contemplation of the good would

make a legislator. There is as much to be filled up in the one case as in

the other, and the one mode of conception is to the Israelite what the

other is to the Greek. Both find a repose in a divine perfection, which,

whether in a more personal or impersonal form, exists without them and

independently of them, as well as within them.

There is no mention of the idea of good in the Timaeus, nor of the divine

Creator of the world in the Republic; and we are naturally led to ask in

what relation they stand to one another. Is God above or below the idea of

good? Or is the Idea of Good another mode of conceiving God? The latter

appears to be the truer answer. To the Greek philosopher the perfection

and unity of God was a far higher conception than his personality, which

he hardly found a word to express, and which to him would have seemed to

be borrowed from mythology. To the Christian, on the other hand, or to the

modern thinker in {cxcvii} general, it is difficult, if not impossible, to

attach reality to what he terms mere abstraction; while to Plato this very

abstraction is the truest and most real of all things. Hence, from a

difference in forms of thought, Plato appears to be resting on a creation

of his own mind only. But if we may be allowed to paraphrase the idea of

good by the words 'intelligent principle of law and order in the universe,

embracing equally man and nature,' we begin to find a meeting-point

between him and ourselves.

The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a philosopher is one

that has not lost interest in modern times. In most countries of Europe

and Asia there has been some one in the course of ages who has truly

united the power of command with the power of thought and reflection, as

there have been also many false combinations of these qualities. Some kind

of speculative power is necessary both in practical and political life;

like the rhetorician in the Phaedrus, men require to have a conception of

the varieties of human character, and to be raised on great occasions

above the commonplaces of ordinary life. Yet the idea of the

philosopher-statesman has never been popular with the mass of mankind;

partly because he cannot take the world into his confidence or make them

understand the motives from which he acts; and also because they are

jealous of a power which they do not understand. The revolution which

human nature desires to effect step by step in many ages is likely to be

precipitated by him in a single year or life. They are afraid that in the

pursuit of his greater aims he may disregard the common feelings of

humanity, he is too apt to be looking into the distant future or back into

the remote past, and unable to see actions or events which, to use an

expression of Plato's 'are tumbling out at his feet.' Besides, as Plato

would say, there are other corruptions of these philosophical statesmen.

Either 'the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast

of thought,' and at the moment when action above all things is required he

is undecided, or general principles are enunciated by him in order to

cover some change of policy; or his ignorance of the world has made him

more easily fall a prey to the arts of others; or in some cases he has

been converted into a courtier, who enjoys {cxcviii} the luxury of holding

liberal opinions, but was never known to perform a liberal action. No

wonder that mankind have been in the habit of calling statesmen of this

class pedants, sophisters, doctrinaires, visionaries. For, as we may be

allowed to say, a little parodying the words of Plato, 'they have seen bad

imitations of the philosopher-statesman.' But a man in whom the power of

thought and action are perfectly balanced, equal to the present, reaching

forward to the future, 'such a one,' ruling in a constitutional state,

'they have never seen.'

But as the philosopher is apt to fail in the routine of political life, so

the ordinary statesman is also apt to fail in extraordinary crises. When

the face of the world is beginning to alter, and thunder is heard in the

distance, he is still guided by his old maxims, and is the slave of his

inveterate party prejudices; he cannot perceive the signs of the times;

instead of looking forward he looks back; he learns nothing and forgets

nothing; with 'wise saws and modern instances' he would stem the rising

tide of revolution. He lives more and more within the circle of his own

party, as the world without him becomes stronger. This seems to be the

reason why the old order of things makes so poor a figure when confronted

with the new, why churches can never reform, why most political changes

are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises in the history of

nations have often been met by an ecclesiastical positiveness, and a more

obstinate reassertion of principles which have lost their hold upon a

nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary statesman may be compared to

madness; they grow upon him, and he becomes possessed by them; no

judgement of others is ever admitted by him to be weighed in the balance

against his own.

([Greek: d]) Plato, labouring under what, to modern readers, appears to

have been a confusion of ideas, assimilates the state to the individual,

and fails to distinguish Ethics from Politics. He thinks that to be most

of a state which is most like one man, and in which the citizens have the

greatest uniformity of character. He does not see that the analogy is

partly fallacious, and that the will or character of a state or nation is

really the balance or rather the surplus of individual wills, which are

limited by the condition of having to act in common. {cxcix} The movement

of a body of men can never have the pliancy or facility of a single man;

the freedom of the individual, which is always limited, becomes still more

straitened when transferred to a nation. The powers of action and feeling

are necessarily weaker and more balanced when they are diffused through a

community; whence arises the often discussed question, 'Can a nation, like

an individual, have a conscience?' We hesitate to say that the characters

of nations are nothing more than the sum of the characters of the

individuals who compose them; because there may be tendencies in

individuals which react upon one another. A whole nation may be wiser than

any one man in it; or may be animated by some common opinion or feeling

which could not equally have affected the mind of a single person, or may

have been inspired by a leader of genius to perform acts more than human.

Plato does not appear to have analysed the complications which arise out

of the collective action of mankind. Neither is he capable of seeing that

analogies, though specious as arguments, may often have no foundation in

fact, or of distinguishing between what is intelligible or vividly present

to the mind, and what is true. In this respect he is far below Aristotle,

who is comparatively seldom imposed upon by false analogies. He cannot

disentangle the arts from the virtues--at least he is always arguing from

one to the other. His notion of music is transferred from harmony of

sounds to harmony of life: in this he is assisted by the ambiguities of

language as well as by the prevalence of Pythagorean notions. And having

once assimilated the state to the individual, he imagines that he will

find the succession of states paralleled in the lives of individuals.

Still, through this fallacious medium, a real enlargement of ideas is

attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct conception to the

mind, a great advance was made by the comparison of them with the arts;

for virtue is partly art, and has an outward form as well as an inward

principle. The harmony of music affords a lively image of the harmonies of

the world and of human life, and may be regarded as a splendid

illustration which was naturally mistaken for a real analogy. In the same

way the identification of ethics with politics has a tendency to give

definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and ennoble men's {cc} notions

of the aims of government and of the duties of citizens; for ethics from

one point of view may be conceived as an idealized law and politics; and

politics, as ethics reduced to the conditions of human society. There have

been evils which have arisen out of the attempt to identify them, and this

has led to the separation or antagonism of them, which has been introduced

by modern political writers. But we may likewise feel that something has

been lost in their separation, and that the ancient philosophers who

estimated the moral and intellectual wellbeing of mankind first, and the

wealth of nations and individuals second, may have a salutary influence on

the speculations of modern times. Many political maxims originate in a

reaction against an opposite error; and when the errors against which they

were directed have passed away, they in turn become errors.

* * * * *

III. Plato's views of education are in several respects remarkable; like

the rest of the Republic they are partly Greek and partly ideal, beginning

with the ordinary curriculum of the Greek youth, and extending to

after-life. Plato is the first writer who distinctly says that education

is to comprehend the whole of life, and to be a preparation for another in

which education begins again (vi. 498 D). This is the continuous thread

which runs through the Republic, and which more than any other of his

ideas admits of an application to modern life.

He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is

disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are one

and not many. He is not unwilling to admit the sensible world into his

scheme of truth. Nor does he assert in the Republic the involuntariness of

vice, which is maintained by him in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Laws (cp.

Protag. 345 foll., 352, 355; Apol. 25 E; Gorg. 468, 509 E). Nor do the

so-called Platonic ideas recovered from a former state of existence affect

his theory of mental improvement. Still we observe in him the remains of

the old Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge must be elicited from

within, and is to be sought for in ideas, not in particulars of sense.

Education, as he says, will implant a principle of intelligence which is

better than ten {cci} thousand eyes. The paradox that the virtues are one,

and the kindred notion that all virtue is knowledge, are not entirely

renounced; the first is seen in the supremacy given to justice over the

rest; the second in the tendency to absorb the moral virtues in the

intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the contemplation of the idea

of good. The world of sense is still depreciated and identified with

opinion, though admitted to be a shadow of the true. In the Republic he is

evidently impressed with the conviction that vice arises chiefly from

ignorance and may be cured by education; the multitude are hardly to be

deemed responsible for what they do (v. 499 E). A faint allusion to the

doctrine of reminiscence occurs in the Tenth Book (621 A); but Plato's

views of education have no more real connection with a previous state of

existence than our own; he only proposes to elicit from the mind that

which is there already. Education is represented by him, not as the

filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of the soul towards the

light.

He treats first of music or literature, which he divides into true and

false, and then goes on to gymnastics; of infancy in the Republic he takes

no notice, though in the Laws he gives sage counsels about the nursing of

children and the management of the mothers, and would have an education

which is even prior to birth. But in the Republic he begins with the age

at which the child is capable of receiving ideas, and boldly asserts, in

language which sounds paradoxical to modern ears, that he must be taught

the false before he can learn the true. The modern and ancient

philosophical world are not agreed about truth and falsehood; the one

identifies truth almost exclusively with fact, the other with ideas. This

is the difference between ourselves and Plato, which is, however, partly a

difference of words (cp. supra, p. xxxviii). For we too should admit that

a child must receive many lessons which he imperfectly understands; he

must be taught some things in a figure only, some too which he can hardly

be expected to believe when he grows older; but we should limit the use of

fiction by the necessity of the case. Plato would draw the line

differently; according to him the aim of early education is not truth as a

matter of fact, but truth as a matter of principle; the child is to be

taught first simple religious truths, and then simple moral truths, and

insensibly to learn the lesson of good manners and good taste. He {ccii}

would make an entire reformation of the old mythology; like Xenophanes and

Heracleitus he is sensible of the deep chasm which separates his own age

from Homer and Hesiod, whom he quotes and invests with an imaginary

authority, but only for his own purposes. The lusts and treacheries of the

gods are to be banished; the terrors of the world below are to be

dispelled; the misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is not to be a model for

youth. But there is another strain heard in Homer which may teach our

youth endurance; and something may be learnt in medicine from the simple

practice of the Homeric age. The principles on which religion is to be

based are two only: first, that God is true; secondly, that he is good.

Modern and Christian writers have often fallen short of these; they can

hardly be said to have gone beyond them.

The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of the way of

sights or sounds which may hurt the character or vitiate the taste. They

are to live in an atmosphere of health; the breeze is always to be wafting

to them the impressions of truth and goodness. Could such an education be

realized, or if our modern religious education could be bound up with

truth and virtue and good manners and good taste, that would be the best

hope of human improvement. Plato, like ourselves, is looking forward to

changes in the moral and religious world, and is preparing for them. He

recognizes the danger of unsettling young men's minds by sudden changes of

laws and principles, by destroying the sacredness of one set of ideas when

there is nothing else to take their place. He is afraid too of the

influence of the drama, on the ground that it encourages false sentiment,

and therefore he would not have his children taken to the theatre; he

thinks that the effect on the spectators is bad, and on the actors still

worse. His idea of education is that of harmonious growth, in which are

insensibly learnt the lessons of temperance and endurance, and the body

and mind develope in equal proportions. The first principle which runs

through all art and nature is simplicity; this also is to be the rule of

human life.

The second stage of education is gymnastic, which answers to the period of

muscular growth and development. The simplicity which is enforced in music

is extended to gymnastic; Plato is aware that the training of the body may

be inconsistent with the {cciii} training of the mind, and that bodily

exercise may be easily overdone. Excessive training of the body is apt to

give men a headache or to render them sleepy at a lecture on philosophy,

and this they attribute not to the true cause, but to the nature of the

subject. Two points are noticeable in Plato's treatment of

gymnastic:--First, that the time of training is entirely separated from

the time of literary education. He seems to have thought that two things

of an opposite and different nature could not be learnt at the same time.

Here we can hardly agree with him; and, if we may judge by experience, the

effect of spending three years between the ages of fourteen and seventeen

in mere bodily exercise would be far from improving to the intellect.

Secondly, he affirms that music and gymnastic are not, as common opinion

is apt to imagine, intended, the one for the cultivation of the mind and

the other of the body, but that they are both equally designed for the

improvement of the mind. The body, in his view, is the servant of the

mind; the subjection of the lower to the higher is for the advantage of

both. And doubtless the mind may exercise a very great and paramount

influence over the body, if exerted not at particular moments and by fits

and starts, but continuously, in making preparation for the whole of life.

Other Greek writers saw the mischievous tendency of Spartan discipline

(Arist. Pol. viii. 4, § 1 foll.; Thuc. ii. 37, 39). But only Plato

recognized the fundamental error on which the practice was based.

The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of medicine,

which he further illustrates by the parallel of law. The modern disbelief

in medicine has led in this, as in some other departments of knowledge, to

a demand for greater simplicity; physicians are becoming aware that they

often make diseases 'greater and more complicated' by their treatment of

them (Rep. iv. 426 A). In two thousand years their art has made but

slender progress; what they have gained in the analysis of the parts is in

a great degree lost by their feebler conception of the human frame as a

whole. They have attended more to the cure of diseases than to the

conditions of health; and the improvements in medicine have been more than

counterbalanced by the disuse of regular training. Until lately they have

hardly thought of air and water, the importance of which was well

understood by the ancients; as Aristotle remarks, 'Air and water, being

the elements {cciv} which we most use, have the greatest effect upon

health' (Polit. vii. 11, § 4.). For ages physicians have been under the

dominion of prejudices which have only recently given way; and now there

are as many opinions in medicine as in theology, and an equal degree of

scepticism and some want of toleration about both. Plato has several good

notions about medicine; according to him, 'the eye cannot be cured without

the rest of the body, nor the body without the mind' (Charm. 156 E). No

man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would take physic; and we heartily

sympathize with him in the Laws when he declares that 'the limbs of the

rustic worn with toil will derive more benefit from warm baths than from

the prescriptions of a not over wise doctor' (vi. 761 C). But we can

hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority of Homer, he

depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in which he would get

rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving them to die. He does not seem

to have considered that the 'bridle of Theages' might be accompanied by

qualities which were of far more value to the State than the health or

strength of the citizens; or that the duty of taking care of the helpless

might be an important element of education in a State. The physician

himself (this is a delicate and subtle observation) should not be a man in

robust health; he should have, in modern phraseology, a nervous

temperament; he should have experience of disease in his own person, in

order that his powers of observation may be quickened in the case of

others.

The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of law; in

which, again, Plato would have men follow the golden rule of simplicity.

Greater matters are to be determined by the legislator or by the oracle of

Delphi, lesser matters are to be left to the temporary regulation of the

citizens themselves. Plato is aware that _laissez faire_ is an important

element of government. The diseases of a State are like the heads of a

hydra; they multiply when they are cut off. The true remedy for them is

not extirpation but prevention. And the way to prevent them is to take

care of education, and education will take care of all the rest. So in

modern times men have often felt that the only political measure worth

having--the only one which would produce any certain or lasting effect,

was a measure of national education. And in our own more than in any

previous age the necessity has been {ccv} recognized of restoring the

ever-increasing confusion of law to simplicity and common sense.

When the training in music and gymnastic is completed, there follows the

first stage of active and public life. But soon education is to begin

again from a new point of view. In the interval between the Fourth and

Seventh Books we have discussed the nature of knowledge, and have thence

been led to form a higher conception of what was required of us. For true

knowledge, according to Plato, is of abstractions, and has to do, not with

particulars or individuals, but with universals only; not with the

beauties of poetry, but with the ideas of philosophy. And the great aim of

education is the cultivation of the habit of abstraction. This is to be

acquired through the study of the mathematical sciences. They alone are

capable of giving ideas of relation, and of arousing the dormant energies

of thought.

Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part of that

which is now included in them; but they bore a much larger proportion to

the sum of human knowledge. They were the only organon of thought which

the human mind at that time possessed, and the only measure by which the

chaos of particulars could be reduced to rule and order. The faculty which

they trained was naturally at war with the poetical or imaginative; and

hence to Plato, who is everywhere seeking for abstractions and trying to

get rid of the illusions of sense, nearly the whole of education is

contained in them. They seemed to have an inexhaustible application,

partly because their true limits were not yet understood. These Plato

himself is beginning to investigate; though not aware that number and

figure are mere abstractions of sense, he recognizes that the forms used

by geometry are borrowed from the sensible world (vi. 510, 511). He seeks

to find the ultimate ground of mathematical ideas in the idea of good,

though he does not satisfactorily explain the connexion between them; and

in his conception of the relation of ideas to numbers, he falls very far

short of the definiteness attributed to him by Aristotle (Met. i. 8, § 24;

ix. 17). But if he fails to recognize the true limits of mathematics, he

also reaches a point beyond them; in his view, ideas of number become

secondary to a higher conception of knowledge. The dialectician is as much

above the mathematician as the mathematician is above the ordinary man

(cp. vii. 526 D, {ccvi} 531 E). The one, the self-proving, the good which

is the higher sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to which all

things ascend, and in which they finally repose.

This self-proving unity or idea of good is a mere vision of which no

distinct explanation can be given, relative only to a particular stage in

Greek philosophy. It is an abstraction under which no individuals are

comprehended, a whole which has no parts (cf. Arist., Nic. Eth., i. 4).

The vacancy of such a form was perceived by Aristotle, but not by Plato.

Nor did he recognize that in the dialectical process are included two or

more methods of investigation which are at variance with each other. He

did not see that whether he took the longer or the shorter road, no

advance could be made in this way. And yet such visions often have an

immense effect; for although the method of science cannot anticipate

science, the idea of science, not as it is, but as it will be in the

future, is a great and inspiring principle. In the pursuit of knowledge we

are always pressing forward to something beyond us; and as a false

conception of knowledge, for example the scholastic philosophy, may lead

men astray during many ages, so the true ideal, though vacant, may draw

all their thoughts in a right direction. It makes a great difference

whether the general expectation of knowledge, as this indefinite feeling

may be termed, is based upon a sound judgment. For mankind may often

entertain a true conception of what knowledge ought to be when they have

but a slender experience of facts. The correlation of the sciences, the

consciousness of the unity of nature, the idea of classification, the

sense of proportion, the unwillingness to stop short of certainty or to

confound probability with truth, are important principles of the higher

education. Although Plato could tell us nothing, and perhaps knew that he

could tell us nothing, of the absolute truth, he has exercised an

influence on the human mind which even at the present day is not

exhausted; and political and social questions may yet arise in which the

thoughts of Plato may be read anew and receive a fresh meaning.

The Idea of good is so called only in the Republic, but there are traces

of it in other dialogues of Plato. It is a cause as well as an idea, and

from this point of view may be compared with the creator of the Timaeus,

who out of his goodness created {ccvii} all things. It corresponds to a

certain extent with the modern conception of a law of nature, or of a

final cause, or of both in one, and in this regard may be connected with

the measure and symmetry of the Philebus. It is represented in the

Symposium under the aspect of beauty, and is supposed to be attained there

by stages of initiation, as here by regular gradations of knowledge.

Viewed subjectively, it is the process or science of dialectic. This is

the science which, according to the Phaedrus, is the true basis of

rhetoric, which alone is able to distinguish the natures and classes of

men and things; which divides a whole into the natural parts, and reunites

the scattered parts into a natural or organized whole; which defines the

abstract essences or universal ideas of all things, and connects them;

which pierces the veil of hypotheses and reaches the final cause or first

principle of all; which regards the sciences in relation to the idea of

good. This ideal science is the highest process of thought, and may be

described as the soul conversing with herself or holding communion with

eternal truth and beauty, and in another form is the everlasting question

and answer--the ceaseless interrogative of Socrates. The dialogues of

Plato are themselves examples of the nature and method of dialectic.

Viewed objectively, the idea of good is a power or cause which makes the

world without us correspond with the world within. Yet this world without

us is still a world of ideas. With Plato the investigation of nature is

another department of knowledge, and in this he seeks to attain only

probable conclusions (cp. Timaeus, 44 D).

If we ask whether this science of dialectic which Plato only half explains

to us is more akin to logic or to metaphysics, the answer is that in his

mind the two sciences are not as yet distinguished, any more than the

subjective and objective aspects of the world and of man, which German

philosophy has revealed to us. Nor has he determined whether his science

of dialectic is at rest or in motion, concerned with the contemplation of

absolute being, or with a process of development and evolution. Modern

metaphysics may be described as the science of abstractions, or as the

science of the evolution of thought; modern logic, when passing beyond the

bounds of mere Aristotelian forms, may be defined as the science of

method. The germ of {ccviii} both of them is contained in the Platonic

dialectic; all metaphysicians have something in common with the ideas of

Plato; all logicians have derived something from the method of Plato. The

nearest approach in modern philosophy to the universal science of Plato,

is to be found in the Hegelian 'succession of moments in the unity of the

idea.' Plato and Hegel alike seem to have conceived the world as the

correlation of abstractions; and not impossibly they would have understood

one another better than any of their commentators understand them (Swift's

Voyage to Laputa, c. 8[4]). There is, however, a difference between them:

for whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind, which

developes the stages of the idea in different countries or at different

times in the same country, with Plato these gradations are regarded only

as an order of thought or ideas; the history of the human mind had not yet

dawned upon him.

[Footnote 4: 'Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned

for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that

Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators;

but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to attend in the

court and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish these

two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other.

Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for

one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever

beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was

meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered

that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and

had never seen or heard of them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost,

who shall be nameless, "That these commentators always kept in the most

distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a

consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly

misrepresented the meaning of these authors to posterity." I introduced

Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better

than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to

enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience

with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to

him; and he asked them "whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces

as themselves?"']

Many criticisms may be made on Plato's theory of education. While in some

respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others he is in

advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which prevailed

in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered new ones. He

does {ccix} not see that education is relative to the characters of

individuals; he only desires to impress the same form of the state on the

minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of literature on the

formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates that of mathematics. His

aim is above all things to train the reasoning faculties; to implant in

the mind the spirit and power of abstraction; to explain and define

general notions, and, if possible, to connect them. No wonder that in the

vacancy of actual knowledge his followers, and at times even he himself,

should have fallen away from the doctrine of ideas, and have returned to

that branch of knowledge in which alone the relation of the one and many

can be truly seen--the science of number. In his views both of teaching

and training he might be styled, in modern language, a doctrinaire; after

the Spartan fashion he would have his citizens cast in one mould; he does

not seem to consider that some degree of freedom, 'a little wholesome

neglect,' is necessary to strengthen and develope the character and to

give play to the individual nature. His citizens would not have acquired

that knowledge which in the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the

pilgrims from their experience of evil.

On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and

theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through life

and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of some

kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of Solon,

'I grow old learning many things,' cannot be applied literally. Himself

ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and delighting in

solid geometry (Rep. vii. 528), he has no difficulty in imagining that a

lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know how many

more men of business there are in the world than real students or

thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes for

his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of genius,

interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,--a life not for the

many, but for the few.

Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to our

own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be realized, it

may have a great effect in elevating the characters of mankind, and

raising them above the routine {ccx} of their ordinary occupation or

profession. It is the best form under which we can conceive the whole of

life. Nevertheless the idea of Plato is not easily put into practice. For

the education of after life is necessarily the education which each one

gives himself. Men and women cannot be brought together in schools or

colleges at forty or fifty years of age; and if they could the result

would be disappointing. The destination of most men is what Plato would

call 'the Den' for the whole of life, and with that they are content.

Neither have they teachers or advisers with whom they can take counsel in

riper years. There is no 'schoolmaster abroad' who will tell them of their

faults, or inspire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the

ambition of a true success in life; no Socrates who will convict them of

ignorance; no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them of sin.

Hence they have a difficulty in receiving the first element of

improvement, which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir

them; they rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects. A few only who

have come across great men and women, or eminent teachers of religion and

morality, have received a second life from them, and have lighted a candle

from the fire of their genius.

The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons continue

to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not know the

way. They 'never try an experiment,' or look up a point of interest for

themselves; they make no sacrifices for the sake of knowledge; their

minds, like their bodies, at a certain age become fixed. Genius has been

defined as 'the power of taking pains'; but hardly any one keeps up his

interest in knowledge throughout a whole life. The troubles of a family,

the business of making money, the demands of a profession destroy the

elasticity of the mind. The waxen tablet of the memory which was once

capable of receiving 'true thoughts and clear impressions' becomes hard

and crowded; there is not room for the accumulations of a long life

(Theaet. 194 ff.). The student, as years advance, rather makes an exchange

of knowledge than adds to his stores. There is no pressing necessity to

learn; the stock of Classics or History or Natural Science which was

enough for a man at twenty-five is enough for him at fifty. Neither is it

easy to give a definite answer to any one who asks how he is to improve.

For self-education consists in a {ccxi} thousand things, commonplace in

themselves,--in adding to what we are by nature something of what we are

not; in learning to see ourselves as others see us; in judging, not by

opinion, but by the evidence of facts; in seeking out the society of

superior minds; in a study of lives and writings of great men; in

observation of the world and character; in receiving kindly the natural

influence of different times of life; in any act or thought which is

raised above the practice or opinions of mankind; in the pursuit of some

new or original enquiry; in any effort of mind which calls forth some

latent power.

If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic education of

after-life, some such counsels as the following may be offered to

him:--That he shall choose the branch of knowledge to which his own mind

most distinctly inclines, and in which he takes the greatest delight,

either one which seems to connect with his own daily employment, or,

perhaps, furnishes the greatest contrast to it. He may study from the

speculative side the profession or business in which he is practically

engaged. He may make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Bacon the friends

and companions of his life. He may find opportunities of hearing the

living voice of a great teacher. He may select for enquiry some point of

history or some unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour a day passed in

such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as many facts as the

memory can retain, and will give him 'a pleasure not to be repented of'

(Timaeus, 59 D). Only let him beware of being the slave of crotchets, or

of running after a Will o' the Wisp in his ignorance, or in his vanity of

attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming the air of a

philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers. Better to build

up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from one thing to

another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests in knowledge,

than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be realized. But

perhaps, as Plato would say, 'This is part of another subject' (Tim. 87

B); though we may also defend our digression by his example (Theaet. 72,

77).

* * * * *

IV. We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or {ccxii} the

natural growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political

philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato and

Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human

affairs; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of

empires (cp. Plato, Statesman 301, 302, and Sulpicius' Letter to Cicero,

Ad Fam. iv. 5); by them fate and chance were deemed to be real powers,

almost persons, and to have had a great share in political events. The

wiser of them like Thucydides believed that 'what had been would be

again,' and that a tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the

past. Also they had dreams of a Golden Age which existed once upon a time

and might still exist in some unknown land, or might return again in the

remote future. But the regular growth of a state enlightened by

experience, progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the

citizens were educated by the fulfilment of political duties, appears

never to have come within the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a

state had never been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them.

Their experience (cp. Aristot. Metaph. xi. 21; Plato, Laws iii. 676-9) led

them to conclude that there had been cycles of civilization in which the

arts had been discovered and lost many times over, and cities had been

overthrown and rebuilt again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and

other natural convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition

told them of many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a

remnant. The world began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of

the fragments of itself. Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown

antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them

grow, and could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man which

preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian

monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but

literally, were ten thousand years old (Laws ii. 656 E), and they

contrasted the antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.

The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the later

history: they are at a distance, and the intermediate region is concealed

from view; there is no road or path which leads from one to the other. At

the beginning of Greek history, in the vestibule of the temple, is seen

standing first of all the figure of {ccxiii} the legislator, himself the

interpreter and servant of the God. The fundamental laws which he gives

are not supposed to change with time and circumstances. The salvation of

the state is held rather to depend on the inviolable maintenance of them.

They were sanctioned by the authority of heaven, and it was deemed impiety

to alter them. The desire to maintain them unaltered seems to be the

origin of what at first sight is very surprising to us--the intolerant

zeal of Plato against innovators in religion or politics (cp. Laws x.

907-9); although with a happy inconsistency he is also willing that the

laws of other countries should be studied and improvements in legislation

privately communicated to the Nocturnal Council (Laws xii. 951, 2). The

additions which were made to them in later ages in order to meet the

increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed by a fiction to the

original legislator; and the words of such enactments at Athens were

disputed over as if they had been the words of Solon himself. Plato hopes

to preserve in a later generation the mind of the legislator; he would

have his citizens remain within the lines which he has laid down for them.

He would not harass them with minute regulations, he would have allowed

some changes in the laws: but not changes which would affect the

fundamental institutions of the state, such for example as would convert

an aristocracy into a timocracy, or a timocracy into a popular form of

government.

Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress has been the

exception rather than the law of human history. And therefore we are not

surprised to find that the idea of progress is of modern rather than of

ancient date; and, like the idea of a philosophy of history, is not more

than a century or two old. It seems to have arisen out of the impression

left on the human mind by the growth of the Roman Empire and of the

Christian Church, and to be due to the political and social improvements

which they introduced into the world; and still more in our own century to

the idealism of the first French Revolution and the triumph of American

Independence; and in a yet greater degree to the vast material prosperity

and growth of population in England and her colonies and in America. It is

also to be ascribed in a measure to the greater study of the philosophy of

history. The optimist temperament of some great writers has {ccxiv}

assisted the creation of it, while the opposite character has led a few to

regard the future of the world as dark. The 'spectator of all time and of

all existence' sees more of 'the increasing purpose which through the ages

ran' than formerly: but to the inhabitant of a small state of Hellas the

vision was necessarily limited like the valley in which he dwelt. There

was no remote past on which his eye could rest, nor any future from which

the veil was partly lifted up by the analogy of history. The narrowness of

view, which to ourselves appears so singular, was to him natural, if not

unavoidable.

* * * * *

V. For the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and the Laws, and the

two other works of Plato which directly treat of politics, see the

Introductions to the two latter; a few general points of comparison may be

touched upon in this place.

And first of the Laws. (1) The Republic, though probably written at

intervals, yet speaking generally and judging by the indications of

thought and style, may be reasonably ascribed to the middle period of

Plato's life: the Laws are certainly the work of his declining years, and

some portions of them at any rate seem to have been written in extreme old

age. (2) The Republic is full of hope and aspiration: the Laws bear the

stamp of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which

received the last touches of the author: the other is imperfectly

executed, and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty of

youth: the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the severity

and knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age. (3) The most

conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of dramatic power, whereas

the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and oppositions of

character. (4) The Laws may be said to have more the nature of a sermon,

the Republic of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more

intellectual. (5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas,

the government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws;

the immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii. 959, 967; the

person of Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and

children is renounced; the institution of common or public meals for women

(Laws vi. 781) is for the first time introduced {ccxv} (Ar. Pol. ii. 6,

§ 5). (6) There remains in the Laws the old enmity to the poets (vii. 817),

who are ironically saluted in high-flown terms, and, at the same time, are

peremptorily ordered out of the city, if they are not willing to submit

their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (cp. Rep. iii. 398).

(7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few passages

in the Laws, such as v. 727 ff. (the honour due to the soul), viii. 835

ff. (the evils of licentious or unnatural love), the whole of Book x.

(religion), xi. 918 ff. (the dishonesty of retail trade), and 923 ff.

(bequests), which come more home to us, and contain more of what may be

termed the modern element in Plato than almost anything in the Republic.

The relation of the two works to one another is very well given:

(i) by Aristotle in the Politics (ii. 6, §§ 1-5) from the side of the

Laws:--

'The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato's later work, the

Laws, and therefore we had better examine briefly the constitution which

is therein described. In the Republic, Socrates has definitely settled in

all a few questions only; such as the community of women and children, the

community of property, and the constitution of the state. The population

is divided into two classes--one of husbandmen, and the other of warriors;

from this latter is taken a third class of counsellors and rulers of the

state. But Socrates has not determined whether the husbandmen and artists

are to have a share in the government, and whether they too are to carry

arms and share in military service or not. He certainly thinks that the

women ought to share in the education of the guardians, and to fight by

their side. The remainder of the work is filled up with digressions

foreign to the main subject, and with discussions about the education of

the guardians. In the Laws there is hardly anything but laws; not much is

said about the constitution. This, which he had intended to make more of

the ordinary type, he gradually brings round to the other or ideal form.

For with the exception of the community of women and property, he supposes

everything to be the same in both states; there is to be the same

education; the citizens of both are to live free from servile occupations,

and there are to be common meals in both. The only difference is that in

the Laws the common meals are {ccxvi} extended to women, and the warriors

number about 5000, but in the Republic only 1000.'

(ii) by Plato in the Laws (Book v. 739 B-E), from the side of the

Republic:--

'The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the

law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying that

"Friends have all things in common." Whether there is now, or ever will

be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which the

private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which

are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become

common, and all men express praise and blame, and feel joy and sorrow, on

the same occasions, and the laws unite the city to the utmost,--whether

all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other

principle, will ever constitute a state more exalted in virtue, or truer

or better than this. Such a state, whether inhabited by Gods or sons of

Gods, will make them blessed who dwell therein; and therefore to this we

are to look for the pattern of the state, and to cling to this, and, as

far as possible, to seek for one which is like this. The state which we

have now in hand, when created, will be nearest to immortality and unity

in the next degree; and after that, by the grace of God, we will complete

the third one. And we will begin by speaking of the nature and origin of

the second.'

The comparatively short work called the Statesman or Politicus in its

style and manner is more akin to the Laws, while in its idealism it rather

resembles the Republic. As far as we can judge by various indications of

language and thought, it must be later than the one and of course earlier

than the other. In both the Republic and Statesman a close connection is

maintained between Politics and Dialectic. In the Statesman, enquiries

into the principles of Method are interspersed with discussions about

Politics. The comparative advantages of the rule of law and of a person

are considered, and the decision given in favour of a person (Arist. Pol.

iii. 15, 16). But much may be said on the other side, nor is the

opposition necessary; for a person may rule by law, and law may be so

applied as to be the living voice of the legislator. As in the Republic,

there is a myth, describing, however, not a future, but a former existence

of mankind. The question is {ccxvii} asked, 'Whether the state of

innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own which

possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is the

preferable condition of man.' To this question of the comparative

happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed in

the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman, though

less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range, may justly

be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato's dialogues.

* * * * *

VI. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to be the

vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express, or which went

beyond their own age. The classical writing which approaches most nearly

to the Republic of Plato is the 'De Republica' of Cicero; but neither in

this nor in any other of his dialogues does he rival the art of Plato. The

manners are clumsy and inferior; the hand of the rhetorician is apparent

at every turn. Yet noble sentiments are constantly recurring: the true

note of Roman patriotism--'We Romans are a great people'--resounds through

the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero turns away from the phenomena of the

heavens to civil and political life. He would rather not discuss the 'two

Suns' of which all Rome was talking, when he can converse about 'the two

nations in one' which had divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi.

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. His views of language and number

are derived {ccxviii} from Plato; like him he denounces the drama. He also

declares that if his life were to be twice as long he would have no time

to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated by him

word for word, though he had hardly shown himself able to 'carry the jest'

of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence the humorous fancy about the

animals, who 'are so imbued with the spirit of democracy that they make

the passers-by get out of their way' (i. 42). His description of the

tyrant is imitated from Plato, but is far inferior. The second book is

historical, and claims for the Roman constitution (which is to him the

ideal) a foundation of fact such as Plato probably intended to have given

to the Republic in the Critias. His most remarkable imitation of Plato is

the adaptation of the vision of Er, which is converted by Cicero into the

'Somnium Scipionis'; he has 'romanized' the myth of the Republic, adding

an argument for the immortality of the soul taken from the Phaedrus, and

some other touches derived from the Phaedo and the Timaeus. Though a

beautiful tale and containing splendid passages, the 'Somnium Scipionis'

is very inferior to the vision of Er; it is only a dream, and hardly

allows the reader to suppose that the writer believes in his own creation.

Whether his dialogues were framed on the model of the lost dialogues of

Aristotle, as he himself tells us, or of Plato, to which they bear many

superficial resemblances, he is still the Roman orator; he is not

conversing, but making speeches, and is never able to mould the

intractable Latin to the grace and ease of the Greek Platonic dialogue.

But if he is defective in form, much more is he inferior to the Greek in

matter; he nowhere in his philosophical writings leaves upon our minds the

impression of an original thinker.

Plato's Republic has been said to be a church and not a state; and such an

ideal of a city in the heavens has always hovered over the Christian

world, and is embodied in St. Augustine's 'De Civitate Dei,' which is

suggested by the decay and fall of the Roman Empire, much in the same

manner in which we may imagine the Republic of Plato to have been

influenced by the decline of Greek politics in the writer's own age. The

difference is that in the time of Plato the degeneracy, though certain,

was gradual and insensible: whereas the taking of Rome by the Goths

stirred like an earthquake the age of St. Augustine. Men {ccxix} were

inclined to believe that the overthrow of the city was to be ascribed to

the anger felt by the old Roman deities at the neglect of their worship.

St. Augustine maintains the opposite thesis; he argues that the

destruction of the Roman Empire is due, not to the rise of Christianity,

but to the vices of Paganism. He wanders over Roman history, and over

Greek philosophy and mythology, and finds everywhere crime, impiety and

falsehood. He compares the worst parts of the Gentile religions with the

best elements of the faith of Christ. He shows nothing of the spirit which

led others of the early Christian Fathers to recognize in the writings of

the Greek philosophers the power of the divine truth. He traces the

parallel of the kingdom of God, that is, the history of the Jews,

contained in their scriptures, and of the kingdoms of the world, which are

found in gentile writers, and pursues them both into an ideal future. It

need hardly be remarked that his use both of Greek and of Roman historians

and of the sacred writings of the Jews is wholly uncritical. The heathen

mythology, the Sybilline oracles, the myths of Plato, the dreams of

Neo-Platonists are equally regarded by him as matter of fact. He must be

acknowledged to be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes

the best of everything on one side and the worst of everything on the

other. He has no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek

life, nor has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise

out of the ruins of the Roman empire. He is not blind to the defects of

the Christian Church, and looks forward to a time when Christian and Pagan

shall be alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of God

shall appear.... The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory of

antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with Christian

ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a slender knowledge of

the Greek literature and language. He was a great genius, and a noble

character, yet hardly capable of feeling or understanding anything

external to his own theology. Of all the ancient philosophers he is most

attracted by Plato, though he is very slightly acquainted with his

writings. He is inclined to believe that the idea of creation in the

Timaeus is derived from the narrative in Genesis; and he is strangely

taken with the coincidence (?) of Plato's saying that 'the philosopher

{ccxx} is the lover of God,' and the words of the Book of Exodus in which

God reveals himself to Moses (Exod. iii. 14) He dwells at length on

miracles performed in his own day, of which the evidence is regarded by

him as irresistible. He speaks in a very interesting manner of the beauty

and utility of nature and of the human frame, which he conceives to afford

a foretaste of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of the body. The