BOOK III. *386* There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to

banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is {xl} afraid of death, or

who believes the tales which are repeated by the poets concerning the

world below. They must be gently requested not to abuse hell; they may be

reminded that their stories are both untrue and discouraging. Nor must

they be angry if we expunge obnoxious passages, such as the depressing

words of Achilles--'I would rather be a serving-man than rule over all the

dead;' and the verses which tell of the squalid mansions, the senseless

shadows, the flitting soul mourning over lost strength and youth, *387*

the soul with a gibber going beneath the earth like smoke, or the souls of

the suitors which flutter about like bats. The terrors and horrors of

Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the rest of their

Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. Such tales may have their use; but

they are not the proper food for soldiers. As little can we admit the

sorrows and sympathies of the Homeric heroes:--Achilles, the son of

Thetis, in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up and down the

sea-shore in distraction; or Priam, the cousin of the gods, crying aloud,

rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated at the loss of children

or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him; and therefore lamentations

over the dead should not be practised by men of note; *388* they should be

the concern of inferior persons only, whether women or men. Still worse is

the attribution of such weakness to the gods; as when the goddesses say,

'Alas! my travail!' and worst of all, when the king of heaven himself

laments his inability to save Hector, or sorrows over the impending doom

of his dear Sarpedon. Such a character of God, if not ridiculed by our

young men, is likely to be imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be

given to excess of laughter--'Such violent delights' are followed by a

violent re-action. The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their

sides at the clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us.

'Certainly not.'

Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we

were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a medicine.

But this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of state; the

common man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any more than the

patient would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor to his captain.

In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists in

self-control and obedience to authority. That is a {xli} lesson which

Homer teaches in some places: 'The Achaeans marched on breathing prowess,

in silent awe of their leaders;'--but a very different one in other

places: 'O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a

stag.' *390* Language of the latter kind will not impress self-control on

the minds of youth. The same may be said about his praises of eating and

drinking and his dread of starvation; also about the verses in which he

tells of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here, or of how Hephaestus once

detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a similar occasion. There is a

nobler strain heard in the words:--'Endure, my soul, thou hast endured

worse.' Nor must we allow our citizens to receive bribes, or to say,

'Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend kings;' or to applaud the ignoble

advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he should get money out of the Greeks

before he assisted them; or the meanness of Achilles himself in taking

gifts from Agamemnon; *391* or his requiring a ransom for the body of

Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or his insolence to the river-god

Scamander; or his dedication to the dead Patroclus of his own hair which

had been already dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius; or his

cruelty in dragging the body of Hector round the walls, and slaying the

captives at the pyre: such a combination of meanness and cruelty in

Cheiron's pupil is inconceivable. The amatory exploits of Peirithous and

Theseus are equally unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not

the sons of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any

more than the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth who

believes that such things are done by *392* those who have the blood of

heaven flowing in their veins will be too ready to imitate their example.

Enough of gods and heroes;--what shall we say about men? What the poets

and story-tellers say--that the wicked prosper and the righteous are

afflicted, or that justice is another's gain? Such misrepresentations

cannot be allowed by us. But in this we are anticipating the definition of

justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry.

The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows style.

Now all poetry is a narrative of events past, present, or to come; and

narrative is of three kinds, the simple, the imitative, and a composition

of the two. An instance will {xlii} make my meaning clear. *393* The first

scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly description and

partly dialogue. But if you throw the dialogue into the 'oratio obliqua,'

the passage will run thus: *394* The priest came and prayed Apollo that

the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if Agamemnon would

only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks assented, but

Agamemnon was wroth, and so on--The whole then becomes descriptive, and

the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the narrative, the

whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles--which of them is to be

admitted into our State? 'Do you ask whether tragedy and comedy are to be

admitted?' Yes, but also something more--Is it not doubtful whether our

guardians are to be imitators at all? Or rather, has not the question been

already answered, for we have decided that one man cannot in his life play

many parts, any more than *395* he can act both tragedy and comedy, or be

rhapsodist and actor at once? Human nature is coined into very small

pieces, and as our guardians have their own business already, which is the

care of freedom, they will have enough to do without imitating. If they

imitate they should imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good

only; for the mask which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We

cannot allow men to play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping,

scolding, or boasting against the gods,--least of all when making love or

in labour. They must not represent slaves, or bullies, or *396* cowards,

drunkards, or madmen, or blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing

bulls, or sounding rivers, or a raging sea. A good or wise man will be

willing to perform good and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play

an inferior part which he has never practised; and he will prefer to

employ the descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. *397*

The man who has no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and

anything; sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole

performance will be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the descriptive

style there are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many.

Poets and musicians use either, or a compound of both, and this compound

is very attractive to youth and their teachers as well as to the vulgar.

But our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for

complexity. *398* And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen

offers to exhibit {xliii} himself and his poetry we will show him every

observance of respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no room

for his kind in our State; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and will not

depart from our original models (ii. 379 foll.; cp. Laws, vii. 817).

Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts,--the subject, the

harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the

first. As we banished strains of lamentation, so we may now banish the

mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as our

citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial harmonies, such

as the Ionian and pure Lydian. *399* Two remain--the Dorian and Phrygian,

the first for war, the second for peace; the one expressive of courage,

the other of obedience or instruction or religious feeling. And as we

reject varieties of harmony, we shall also reject the many-stringed,

variously-shaped instruments which give utterance to them, and in

particular the flute, which is more complex than any of them. The lyre and

the harp may be permitted in the town, and the Pan's-pipe in the fields.

Thus we have made a purgation of music, and will now make a purgation of

metres. *400* These should be like the harmonies, simple and suitable to

the occasion. There are four notes of the tetrachord, and there are three

ratios of metre, 3/2, 2/2, 2/1, which have all their characteristics, and

the feet have different characteristics as well as the rhythms. But about

this you and I must ask Damon, the great musician, who speaks, if I

remember rightly, of a martial measure as well as of dactylic, trochaic,

and iambic rhythms, which he arranges so as to equalize the syllables with

one another, assigning to each the proper quantity. We only venture to

affirm the general principle that the style is to conform to the subject

and the metre to the style; and that the simplicity and harmony of the

soul should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity has to

be learnt by every one in the days of his youth, *401* and may be gathered

anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as well as from the

forms of plants and animals.

Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or

unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to

the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in our

city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians must

grow up, not amid images of {xliv} deformity which will gradually poison

and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they

will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of

all these influences the greatest is the education given by music, which

finds a way into the innermost soul and *402* imparts to it the sense of

beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious; but when

reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes her as the

friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read, first we acquire the

elements or letters separately, and afterwards their combinations, and

cannot recognize reflections of them until we know the letters

themselves;--in like manner we must first attain the elements or essential

forms of the virtues, and then trace their combinations in life and

experience. There is a music of the soul which answers to the harmony of

the world; and the fairest object of a musical soul is the fair mind in

the fair body. Some defect in the latter may be excused, but not in the

former. *403* True love is the daughter of temperance, and temperance is

utterly opposed to the madness of bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of

music, which makes a fair ending with love.

Next we pass on to gymnastics; about which I would remark, that the soul

is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and therefore if we

educate the mind we may leave the education of the body in her charge, and

need only give a general outline of the course to be pursued. In the first

place the guardians must abstain from strong drink, for they should be the

last persons to lose their wits. *404* Whether the habits of the palaestra

are suitable to them is more doubtful, for the ordinary gymnastic is a

sleepy sort of thing, and if left off suddenly is apt to endanger health.

But our warrior athletes must be wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured

to all changes of food and climate. Hence they will require a simpler kind

of gymnastic, akin to their simple music; and for their diet a rule may be

found in Homer, who feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no

fish although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which

involve an apparatus of pots and pans; and, if I am not mistaken, he

nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic confections and

Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and Ionian

melodies are to music, must be forbidden. *405* Where gluttony and

intemperance prevail the town quickly fills {xlv} with doctors and

pleaders; and law and medicine give themselves airs as soon as the freemen

of a State take an interest in them. But what can show a more disgraceful

state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you have

none of your own at home? And yet there _is_ a worse stage of the same

disease--when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the twists

and turns of the law; not considering how much better it would be for them

so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding justice. And there

is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for the cure of wounds or

epidemic disorders, but because a man has by laziness and luxury

contracted diseases which were unknown in the days of Asclepius. How

simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. Eurypylus after he has been

wounded *406* drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of a heating

nature; and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the damsel who gives

him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him. The truth is that

this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced by Herodicus the

trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution, by a compound of training

and medicine tortured first himself and then a good many other people, and

lived a great deal longer than he had any right. But Asclepius would not

practise this art, because he knew that the citizens of a well-ordered

State have no leisure to be ill, and therefore he adopted the 'kill or

cure' method, which artisans and labourers employ. 'They must be at their

business,' they say, 'and have no time for coddling: if they recover,

well; if they don't, there is an end of them.' *407* Whereas the rich man

is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be ill. Do you know a

maxim of Phocylides--that 'when a man begins to be rich' (or, perhaps, a

little sooner) 'he should practise virtue'? But how can excessive care of

health be inconsistent with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent

with that practice of virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student

imagines that philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he

is always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised

no such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not

wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to wretched

sires. *408* Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was

wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and drink

what he liked. But {xlvi} they declined to treat intemperate and worthless

subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out of them.

As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a thunderbolt for

restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie--following our old rule we

must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he was not the son of

a god.

Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best judges

will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience of

diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two

professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his

own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. *409* But the

judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be

corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to be

wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived by

evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and therefore

the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have been innocent,

and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the practice of it,

but by the observation of it in others. This is the ideal of a judge; the

criminal turned detective is wonderfully suspicious, but when in company

with good men who have experience, he is at fault, for he foolishly

imagines that every one is as bad as himself. Vice may be known of virtue,

but cannot know virtue. This is the sort of medicine and this the sort of

law which will prevail in our State; *410* they will be healing arts to

better natures; but the evil body will be left to die by the one, and the

evil soul will be put to death by the other. And the need of either will

be greatly diminished by good music which will give harmony to the soul,

and good gymnastic which will give health to the body. Not that this

division of music and gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for

they are both equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one

and aroused and sustained by the other. The two together supply our

guardians with their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it

has too much gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or

philosophic temper which has too much music becomes enervated. *411* While

a man is allowing music to pour like water through the funnel of his ears,

the edge of his soul gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited

element is melted out of him. Too little {xlvii} spirit is easily

exhausted; too much quickly passes into nervous irritability. So, again,

the athlete by feeding and training has his courage doubled, but he soon

grows stupid; he is like a wild beast, ready to do everything by blows and

nothing by counsel or policy. There are two principles in man, reason and

passion, and to these, *412* not to the soul and body, the two arts of

music and gymnastic correspond. He who mingles them in harmonious concord

is the true musician,--he shall be the presiding genius of our State.

The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? First, the elder must rule

the younger; and the best of the elders will be the best guardians. Now

they will be the best who love their subjects most, and think that they

have a common interest with them in the welfare of the state. These we

must select; but they must be watched at every epoch of life to see

whether they have retained the same opinions and held out against force

and enchantment. *413* For time and persuasion and the love of pleasure

may enchant a man into a change of purpose, and the force of grief and

pain may compel him. And therefore our guardians must be men who have been

tried by many tests, like gold in the refiner's fire, and have been passed

first through danger, then through pleasure, and at every age have come

out of such trials victorious and without stain, in full command of

themselves and their principles; having all their faculties in harmonious

exercise for their country's good. These shall receive the highest honours

both in life and death. *414* (It would perhaps be better to confine the

term 'guardians' to this select class: the younger men may be called

'auxiliaries.')

And now for one magnificent lie, in the belief of which, Oh that we could

train our rulers!--at any rate let us make the attempt with the rest of

the world. What I am going to tell is only another version of the legend

of Cadmus; but our unbelieving generation will be slow to accept such a

story. The tale must be imparted, first to the rulers, then to the

soldiers, lastly to the people. We will inform them that their youth was a

dream, and that during the time when they seemed to be undergoing their

education they were really being fashioned in the earth, who sent them up

when they were ready; and that they must protect and cherish her whose

children they are, and regard {xlviii} each other as brothers and sisters.

'I do not wonder at your being ashamed to propound such a fiction.' There

is more behind. *415* These brothers and sisters have different natures,

and some of them God framed to rule, whom he fashioned of gold; others he

made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again to be husbandmen and

craftsmen, and these were formed by him of brass and iron. But as they are

all sprung from a common stock, a golden parent may have a silver son, or

a silver parent a golden son, and then there must be a change of rank; the

son of the rich must descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the

social scale; for an oracle says 'that the State will come to an end if

governed by a man of brass or iron.' Will our citizens ever believe all

this? 'Not in the present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.'

Now let the earthborn men go forth under the command of their rulers, and

look about and pitch their camp in a high place, which will be safe

against enemies from without, and likewise against insurrections from

within. There let them sacrifice and set up their tents; *416* for

soldiers they are to be and not shopkeepers, the watchdogs and guardians

of the sheep; and luxury and avarice will turn them into wolves and

tyrants. Their habits and their dwellings should correspond to their

education. They should have no property; their pay should only meet their

expenses; and they should have common meals. Gold and silver we will tell

them that they have from God, and this divine gift in their souls they

must not *417* alloy with that earthly dross which passes under the name

of gold. They only of the citizens may not touch it, or be under the same

roof with it, or drink from it; it is the accursed thing. Should they ever

acquire houses or lands or money of their own, they will become

householders and tradesmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants

instead of helpers, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and the rest

of the State, will be at hand.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Republic III._ Introduction.]

The religious and ethical aspect of Plato's education will hereafter be

considered under a separate head. Some lesser points may be more

conveniently noticed in this place.

1. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave irony,

Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a {xlix} witness about

ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting to

distinguish the better lesson from the worse (390), sometimes altering the

text from design (388, and, perhaps, 389); more than once quoting or

alluding to Homer inaccurately (391, 406), after the manner of the early

logographers turning the Iliad into prose (393), and delighting to draw

far-fetched inferences from his words, or to make ludicrous applications

of them. He does not, like Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and

Archilochus (Heracl. Frag. 119, ed. Bywater), but uses their words and

expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on a system like Theagenes

of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the Stoics, but as fancy may

dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them are sound, although the

premises are fictitious. These fanciful appeals to Homer add a charm to

Plato's style, and at the same time they have the effect of a satire on

the follies of Homeric interpretation. To us (and probably to himself),

although they take the form of arguments, they are really figures of

speech. They may be compared with modern citations from Scripture, which

have often a great rhetorical power even when the original meaning of the

words is entirely lost sight of. The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as

we gather from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, was fond of making similar

adaptations (i. 2, 58; ii. 6, 11). Great in all ages and countries, in

religion as well as in law and literature, has been the art of

interpretation.

2. 'The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.'

Notwithstanding the fascination which the word 'classical' exercises over

us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the Greek

poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought often

exceeds the power of lucid expression in Æschylus and Pindar; or that

rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet Euripides.

Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the two; in him

alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a Greek statue, in

which there is nothing to add or to take away; at least this is true of

single plays or of large portions of them. The connection in the Tragic

Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not unfrequently a tangled thread

which in an age before logic the poet was unable to draw out. Many

thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and he had no power of

disengaging or {l} arranging them. For there is a subtle influence of

logic which requires to be transferred from prose to poetry, just as the

music and perfection of language are infused by poetry into prose. In all

ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own meaning (Apol. 22 B); for he

does not see that the word which is full of associations to his own mind

is difficult and unmeaning to that of another; or that the sequence which

is clear to himself is puzzling to others. There are many passages in some

of our greatest modern poets which are far too obscure; in which there is

no proportion between style and subject, in which any half-expressed

figure, any harsh construction, any distorted collocation of words, any

remote sequence of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice 'coming

sweetly from nature,' or music adding the expression of feeling to

thought. As if there could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without

ease and clearness. The obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily

out of the state of language and logic which existed in their age. They

are not examples to be followed by us; for the use of language ought in

every generation to become clearer and clearer. Like Shakespeare, they were

great in spite, not in consequence, of their imperfections of expression.

But there is no reason for returning to the necessary obscurity which

prevailed in the infancy of literature. The English poets of the last

century were certainly not obscure; and we have no excuse for losing what

they had gained, or for going back to the earlier or transitional age

which preceded them. The thought of our own times has not out-stripped

language; a want of Plato's 'art of measuring' is the real cause of the

disproportion between them.

3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a theory

of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up as

follows:--True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and

ideal,--the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or

repose. To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble and

simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of

influences,--the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought

up. That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will

have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the poets are

to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of {li}

reason--like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but

confined to the preliminary education, and acting through the power of

habit (vii. 522 A); and this conception of art is not limited to strains

of music or the forms of plastic art, but pervades all nature and has a

wide kindred in the world. The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of

Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side.

There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two or

three passages does he even allude to them (cp. Rep. iv. 420; Soph. 236

A). He is not lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the

Parthenon, the Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene. He would probably

have regarded any abstract truth of number or figure (529 E) as higher

than the greatest of them. Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence,

such as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from

the works of art which he saw around him. We are living upon the fragments

of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of truth and beauty.

But in Plato this feeling has no expression; he nowhere says that beauty

is the object of art; he seems to deny that wisdom can take an external

form (Phaedrus, 250 E); he does not distinguish the fine from the

mechanical arts. Whether or no, like some writers, he felt more than he

expressed, it is at any rate remarkable that the greatest perfection of

the fine arts should coincide with an almost entire silence about them. In

one very striking passage he tells us that a work of art, like the State,

is a whole; and this conception of a whole and the love of the newly-born

mathematical sciences may be regarded, if not as the inspiring, at any

rate as the regulating principles of Greek art (cp. Xen. Mem. iii. 10. 6;

and Sophist, 235, 236).

4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better

not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his own

person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of evil; he

is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence, became

acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore, according

to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man according to

Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy. The bad, on the

other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge {lii} of virtue. It

may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection is well founded.

In a remarkable passage of the Laws (xii. 950 B) it is acknowledged that

the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. The union of gentleness

and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet was

afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have found that

the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence of it (cp.

infra, ix. 582). There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an

insight into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a

natural sense independent of any special experience of good or evil.

5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek and

also very different from anything which existed at all in his age of the

world, is the transposition of ranks. In the Spartan state there had been

enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under special

circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit was certainly

recognized as one of the elements on which government was based. The

founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors, who were raised

by their great actions above the ordinary level of humanity; at a later

period, the services of warriors and legislators were held to entitle them

and their descendants to the privileges of citizenship and to the first

rank in the state. And although the existence of an ideal aristocracy is

slenderly proven from the remains of early Greek history, and we have a

difficulty in ascribing such a character, however the idea may be defined,

to any actual Hellenic state--or indeed to any state which has ever

existed in the world--still the rule of the best was certainly the

aspiration of philosophers, who probably accommodated a good deal their

views of primitive history to their own notions of good government. Plato

further insists on applying to the guardians of his state a series of

tests by which all those who fell short of a fixed standard were either

removed from the governing body, or not admitted to it; and this

'academic' discipline did to a certain extent prevail in Greek states,

especially in Sparta. He also indicates that the system of caste, which

existed in a great part of the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the

modern European world, should be set aside from time to time in favour of

merit. He is aware how deeply the greater part of {liii} mankind resent

any interference with the order of society, and therefore he proposes his

novel idea in the form of what he himself calls a 'monstrous fiction.'

(Compare the ceremony of preparation for the two 'great waves' in Book v.)

Two principles are indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of

ranks dependent on circumstances prior to the individual: second, that

this distinction is and ought to be broken through by personal qualities.

He adapts mythology like the Homeric poems to the wants of the state,

making 'the Phoenician tale' the vehicle of his ideas. Every Greek state

had a myth respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have

a tale of earthborn men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the

tale is told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient

verification of the 'monstrous falsehood.' Ancient poetry had spoken of a

gold and silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another, but Plato

supposes these differences in the natures of men to exist together in a

single state. Mythology supplies a figure under which the lesson may be

taught (as Protagoras says, 'the myth is more interesting'), and also

enables Plato to touch lightly on new principles without going into

details. In this passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does not

tell us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected. Indeed

throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to fade into the

distance. We do not know whether they are to carry arms, and whether in

the fifth book they are or are not included in the communistic regulations

respecting property and marriage. Nor is there any use in arguing strictly

either from a few chance words, or from the silence of Plato, or in

drawing inferences which were beyond his vision. Aristotle, in his

criticism on the position of the lower classes, does not perceive that the

poetical creation is 'like the air, invulnerable,' and cannot be

penetrated by the shafts of his logic (Pol. 2, 5, 18 foll.).

6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest degree

fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections, are to be

found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great power of music,

so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us in modern times,

when the art or science has been far more developed, and has found {liv}

the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly, the indefinite and

almost absolute control which the soul is supposed to exercise over the

body.

In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may also

observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at the

present day. With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few only,

there seems to mingle in Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence for numbers

and numerical proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger. Intervals of

sound and number are to him sacred things which have a law of their own,

not dependent on the variations of sense. They rise above sense, and

become a connecting link with the world of ideas. But it is evident that

Plato is describing what to him appears to be also a fact. The power of a

simple and characteristic melody on the impressible mind of the Greek is

more than we can easily appreciate. The effect of national airs may bear

some comparison with it. And, besides all this, there is a confusion

between the harmony of musical notes and the harmony of soul and body,

which is so potently inspired by them.

The second paradox leads up to some curious and interesting questions--How

far can the mind control the body? Is the relation between them one of

mutual antagonism or of mutual harmony? Are they two or one, and is either

of them the cause of the other? May we not at times drop the opposition

between them, and the mode of describing them, which is so familiar to us,

and yet hardly conveys any precise meaning, and try to view this composite

creature, man, in a more simple manner? Must we not at any rate admit that

there is in human nature a higher and a lower principle, divided by no

distinct line, which at times break asunder and take up arms against one

another? Or again, they are reconciled and move together, either

unconsciously in the ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit

of some noble aim, to be attained not without an effort, and for which

every thought and nerve are strained. And then the body becomes the good

friend or ally, or servant or instrument of the mind. And the mind has

often a wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and

weakness and calling out a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the

intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as to

form a {lv} single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting; and

the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the

most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body through the

appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other.

There is a tendency in us which says 'Drink.' There is another which says,

'Do not drink; it is not good for you.' And we all of us know which is the

rightful superior. We are also responsible for our health, although into

this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which may be beyond our

control. Still even in the management of health, care and thought,

continued over many years, may make us almost free agents, if we do not

exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that all human freedom

is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.

We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation which

he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,

depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a

definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is

afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does not

recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily

disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by

little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither

does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely

influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any

other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of the

will can be more simple or truly asserted.

7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked. (1) The affected ignorance of

music, which is Plato's way of expressing that he is passing lightly over

the subject. (2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second

book, he proceeds with the construction of the State. (3) The description

of the State sometimes as a reality (389 D; 416 B), and then again as a

work of imagination only (cp. 534 C; 592 B); these are the arts by which

he sustains the reader's interest. (4) Connecting links (e.g. 408 C with

379), or the preparation (394 D) for the entire expulsion of the poets in