BOOK V. *449* I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline

in states, when Polemarchus--he was sitting a little farther from me than

Adeimantus--taking him by the coat and leaning towards him, said something

in an undertone, of which I only caught the words, 'Shall we let him off?'

'Certainly not,' said Adeimantus, raising his voice. Whom, I said, are you

{lxx} not going to let off? 'You,' he said. Why? 'Because we think that

you are not dealing fairly with us in omitting women and children, of whom

you have slily disposed under the general formula that friends have all

things in common.' And was I not right? 'Yes,' he replied, 'but there are

many sorts of communism or community, and we want to know which of them is

right. The company, as you have just heard, are resolved to have a further

explanation.' *450* Thrasymachus said, 'Do you think that we have come

hither to dig for gold, or to hear you discourse?' Yes, I said; but the

discourse should be of a reasonable length. Glaucon added, 'Yes, Socrates,

and there is reason in spending the whole of life in such discussions; but

pray, without more ado, tell us how this community is to be carried out,

and how the interval between birth and education is to be filled up.'

Well, I said, the subject has several difficulties--What is possible? is

the first question. What is desirable? is the second. 'Fear not,' he

replied, 'for you are speaking among friends.' That, I replied, is a sorry

consolation; I shall destroy my friends as well as myself. *451* Not that

I mind a little innocent laughter; but he who kills the truth is a

murderer. 'Then,' said Glaucon, laughing, 'in case you should murder us we

will acquit you beforehand, and you shall be held free from the guilt of

deceiving us.'

Socrates proceeds:--The guardians of our state are to be watch-dogs, as we

have already said. Now dogs are not divided into hes and shes--we do not

take the masculine gender out to hunt and leave the females at home to

look after their puppies. They have the same employments--the only

difference between them is that the one sex is stronger and the other

weaker. But if women are to have the same employments as men, they must

have the same education--they must be taught music and gymnastics, and the

art of war. *452* I know that a great joke will be made of their riding on

horseback and carrying weapons; the sight of the naked old wrinkled women

showing their agility in the palaestra will certainly not be a vision of

beauty, and may be expected to become a famous jest. But we must not mind

the wits; there was a time when they might have laughed at our present

gymnastics. All is habit: people have at last found out that the exposure

is better than the concealment of the {lxxi} person, and now they laugh no

more. Evil only should be the subject of ridicule.

*453* The first question is, whether women are able either wholly or

partially to share in the employments of men. And here we may be charged

with inconsistency in making the proposal at all. For we started

originally with the division of labour; and the diversity of employments

was based on the difference of natures. But is there no difference between

men and women? Nay, are they not wholly different? _There_ was the

difficulty, Glaucon, which made me unwilling to speak of family relations.

However, when a man is out of his depth, whether in a pool or in an ocean,

he can only swim for his life; and we must try to find a way of escape, if

we can.

*454* The argument is, that different natures have different uses, and the

natures of men and women are said to differ. But this is only a verbal

opposition. We do not consider that the difference may be purely nominal

and accidental; for example, a bald man and a hairy man are opposed in a

single point of view, but you cannot infer that because a bald man is a

cobbler a hairy man ought not to be a cobbler. Now why is such an

inference erroneous? Simply because the opposition between them is partial

only, like the difference between a male physician and a female physician,

not running through the whole nature, like the difference between a

physician and a carpenter. And if the difference of the sexes is only that

the one beget and the other bear children, this does not prove that they

ought to have distinct educations. *455* Admitting that women differ from

men in capacity, do not men equally differ from one another? Has not

nature scattered all the qualities which our citizens require

indifferently up and down among the two sexes? and even in their peculiar

pursuits, are not women often, though in some cases superior to men,

ridiculously enough surpassed by them? Women are the same in kind as men,

and have the same aptitude or want of aptitude for medicine or gymnastic

or war, *456* but in a less degree. One woman will be a good guardian,

another not; and the good must be chosen to be the colleagues of our

guardians. If however their natures are the same, the inference is that

their education must also be the same; there is no longer anything

unnatural or impossible in a woman learning music {lxxii} and gymnastic.

And the education which we give them will be the very best, far superior

to that of cobblers, and will train up the very best women, and nothing

can be more advantageous to the State than this. *457* Therefore let them

strip, clothed in their chastity, and share in the toils of war and in the

defence of their country; he who laughs at them is a fool for his pains.

The first wave is past, and the argument is compelled to admit that men

and women have common duties and pursuits. A second and greater wave is

rolling in--community of wives and children; is this either expedient or

possible? The expediency I do not doubt; I am not so sure of the

possibility. 'Nay, I think that a considerable doubt will be entertained

on both points.' I meant to have escaped the trouble of proving the first,

but as you have detected the little stratagem I must even submit. *458*

Only allow me to feed my fancy like the solitary in his walks, with a

dream of what might be, and then I will return to the question of what can

be.

In the first place our rulers will enforce the laws and make new ones

where they are wanted, and their allies or ministers will obey. You, as

legislator, have already selected the men; and now you shall select the

women. After the selection has been made, they will dwell in common houses

and have their meals in common, and will be brought together by a

necessity more certain than that of mathematics. But they cannot be

allowed to live in licentiousness; that is an unholy thing, which the

rulers are determined to prevent. For the avoidance of this, *459* holy

marriage festivals will be instituted, and their holiness will be in

proportion to their usefulness. And here, Glaucon, I should like to ask

(as I know that you are a breeder of birds and animals), Do you not take

the greatest care in the mating? 'Certainly.' And there is no reason to

suppose that less care is required in the marriage of human beings. But

then our rulers must be skilful physicians of the State, for they will

often need a strong dose of falsehood in order to bring about desirable

unions between their subjects. The good must be paired with the good, and

the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one must be reared, and of

the other destroyed; in this way the flock will be preserved in prime

condition. *460* Hymeneal festivals will be celebrated at times fixed with

an eye to population, and the brides and bridegrooms will {lxxiii} meet at

them; and by an ingenious system of lots the rulers will contrive that the

brave and the fair come together, and that those of inferior breed are

paired with inferiors--the latter will ascribe to chance what is really

the invention of the rulers. And when children are born, the offspring of

the brave and fair will be carried to an enclosure in a certain part of

the city, and there attended by suitable nurses; the rest will be hurried

away to places unknown. The mothers will be brought to the fold and will

suckle the children; care however must be taken that none of them

recognise their own offspring; and if necessary other nurses may also be

hired. The trouble of watching and getting up at night will be transferred

to attendants. 'Then the wives of our guardians will have a fine easy time

when they are having children.' And quite right too, I said, that they

should.

The parents ought to be in the prime of life, which for a man may be

reckoned at thirty years--from twenty-five, *461* when he has 'passed the

point at which the speed of life is greatest,' to fifty-five; and at

twenty years for a woman--from twenty to forty. Any one above or below

those ages who partakes in the hymeneals shall be guilty of impiety; also

every one who forms a marriage connexion at other times without the

consent of the rulers. This latter regulation applies to those who are

within the specified ages, after which they may range at will, provided

they avoid the prohibited degrees of parents and children, or of brothers

and sisters, which last, however, are not absolutely prohibited, if a

dispensation be procured. 'But how shall we know the degrees of affinity,

when all things are common?' The answer is, that brothers and sisters are

all such as are born seven or nine months after the espousals, and their

parents those who are then espoused, *462* and every one will have many

children and every child many parents.

Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous

and also consistent with our entire polity. The greatest good of a State

is unity; the greatest evil, discord and distraction. And there will be

unity where there are no private pleasures or pains or interests--where if

one member suffers all the members suffer, if one citizen is touched all

are quickly sensitive; and the least hurt to the little finger of the

State runs through the whole body and vibrates to the soul. For the true

{lxxiv} State, like an individual, is injured as a whole when any part is

affected. *463* Every State has subjects and rulers, who in a democracy

are called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our State they are

called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in other States are

termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and paymasters, and those who

are termed comrades and colleagues in other places, are by us called

fathers and brothers. And whereas in other States members of the same

government regard one of their colleagues as a friend and another as an

enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to another; for every citizen is

connected with every other by ties of blood, and these names and this way

of speaking will have a corresponding reality--brother, father, sister,

mother, repeated from infancy in the ears of children, will not be mere

words. *464* Then again the citizens will have all things in common, in

having common property they will have common pleasures and pains.

Can there be strife and contention among those who are of one mind; or

lawsuits about property when men have nothing but their bodies which they

call their own; or suits about violence when every one is bound to defend

himself? *465* The permission to strike when insulted will be an

'antidote' to the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. But no

younger man will strike an elder; reverence will prevent him from laying

hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the rest of the family may

retaliate. Moreover, our citizens will be rid of the lesser evils of life;

there will be no flattery of the rich, no sordid household cares, no

borrowing and not paying. Compared with the citizens of other States, ours

will be Olympic victors, and crowned with blessings greater still--they

and their children having a better maintenance during life, and after

death an honourable burial. *466* Nor has the happiness of the individual

been sacrificed to the happiness of the State (cp. iv. 419 E); our Olympic

victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he has a happiness beyond

that of any cobbler. At the same time, if any conceited youth begins to

dream of appropriating the State to himself, he must be reminded that

'half is better than the whole.' 'I should certainly advise him to stay

where he is when he has the promise of such a brave life.'

But is such a community possible?--as among the animals, so {lxxv} also

among men; and if possible, in what way possible? About war there is no

difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted to military service.

Parents will take their children to look on at a battle, *467* just as

potters' boys are trained to the business by looking on at the wheel. And

to the parents themselves, as to other animals, the sight of their young

ones will prove a great incentive to bravery. Young warriors must learn,

but they must not run into danger, although a certain degree of risk is

worth incurring when the benefit is great. The young creatures should be

placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they should have

wings--that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which they may fly

away and escape. *468* One of the first things to be done is to teach a

youth to ride.

Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen;

gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented to

the enemy. But what shall be done to the hero? First of all he shall be

crowned by all the youths in the army; secondly, he shall receive the

right hand of fellowship; and thirdly, do you think that there is any harm

in his being kissed? We have already determined that he shall have more

wives than others, in order that he may have as many children as possible.

And at a feast he shall have more to eat; we have the authority of Homer

for honouring brave men with 'long chines,' which is an appropriate

compliment, because meat is a very strengthening thing. Fill the bowl

then, and give the best seats and meats to the brave--may they do them

good! And he who dies in battle will be at once declared to be of the

golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of Hesiod's guardian

angels. *469* He shall be worshipped after death in the manner prescribed

by the oracle; and not only he, but all other benefactors of the State who

die in any other way, shall be admitted to the same honours.

The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies? Shall Hellenes be

enslaved? No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing

under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall the dead be despoiled?

Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and has

been the ruin of many an army. There is meanness and feminine malice in

making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the owner has

fled-- {lxxvi} like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels

with the stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of

Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; *470* they

are a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds

there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory--the

houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried off.

For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is properly

termed 'discord,' and only the second 'war;' and war between Hellenes is

in reality civil war--a quarrel in a family, which is ever to be regarded

as unpatriotic and unnatural, *471* and ought to be prosecuted with a view

to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of those who would

chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against a whole nation who

are a friendly multitude of men, women, and children, but only against a

few guilty persons; when they are punished peace will be restored. That is

the way in which Hellenes should war against one another--and against

barbarians, as they war against one another now.

'But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a

State possible? I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness of

being one family--fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out to war

together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal State.'

You are too unmerciful. *472* The first wave and the second wave I have

hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the third. When

you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to take pity. 'Not a

whit.'

Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after

justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this ideal at all

the worse for being impracticable? Would the picture of a perfectly

beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? Can any

reality come up to the idea? Nature will not allow words to be fully

realized; *473* but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a

measure, I think that an approach may be made to the perfection of which

I dream by one or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes in the

present constitution of States. I would reduce them to a single one--the

great wave, as I call it. _Until, then, kings are philosophers, or

philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor the

{lxxvii} human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being._

I know that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive.

'Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you with

sticks and stones, *474* and therefore I would advise you to prepare an

answer.' You got me into the scrape, I said. 'And I was right,' he

replied; 'however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing,

well-meaning ally.' Having the help of such a champion, I will do my best

to maintain my position. And first, I must explain of whom I speak and

what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and rulers. As

you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate

lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn blemishes into

beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak

of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are

manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented

expressly for them, which is 'honey-pale.' *475* Lovers of wine and lovers

of ambition also desire the objects of their affection in every form. Now

here comes the point:--The philosopher too is a lover of knowledge in

every form; he has an insatiable curiosity. 'But will curiosity make a

philosopher? Are the lovers of sights and sounds, who let out their ears

to every chorus at the Dionysiac festivals, to be called philosophers?'

They are not true philosophers, but only an imitation. 'Then how are we to

describe the true?'

You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, *476* such as

justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various

combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are

philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and

understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or waking

vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the light of

knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only. Perhaps he

of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify him without

revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if he has

knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of something which

is, as ignorance is of something which is not; *477* and there is a third

thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of opinion only. Opinion

and knowledge, then, having distinct objects, must also be distinct

faculties. And {lxxviii} by faculties I mean powers unseen and

distinguishable only by the difference in their objects, as opinion and

knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is

unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the object

of knowledge, *478* and not-being of ignorance, and these are the

extremes, opinion must lie between them, and may be called darker than the

one and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent matter is

and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence and of

non-existence. *479* Now I would ask my good friend, who denies abstract

beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many just, whether

everything he sees is not in some point of view different--the beautiful

ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? Is not the double also the half,

and are not heavy and light relative terms which pass into one another?

Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle--'A man and not a man shot

and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a stone and not a stone.' The

mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous,

intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly

movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter

of opinion, *480* as the immutable objects are the proper matter of

knowledge. And he who grovels in the world of sense, and has only this

uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but a lover of

opinion only....

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Republic V._ Introduction.]

The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the

community of property and of family are first maintained, and the

transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these

Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of Book

IV (424 A), which fall unperceived on the reader's mind, as they are

supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus. The

'paradoxes,' as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the Republic will

be reserved for another place; a few remarks on the style, and some

explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added.

First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of scheme

or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third and

greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All that can

be said of the extravagance of Plato's proposals is anticipated by

himself. Nothing is more admirable than the {lxxix} hesitation with which

he proposes the solemn text, 'Until kings are philosophers,' &c.; or the

reaction from the sublime to the ridiculous, when Glaucon describes the

manner in which the new truth will be received by mankind.

Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the

communistic plan. Nothing is told us of the application of communism to

the lower classes; nor is the table of prohibited degrees capable of being

made out. It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal festival

may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of its parents,

at another. Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at the same time he

does not wish to bring before us the fact that the city would be divided

into families of those born seven and nine months after each hymeneal

festival. If it were worth while to argue seriously about such fancies, we

might remark that while all the old affinities are abolished, the newly

prohibited affinity rests not on any natural or rational principle, but

only upon the accident of children having been born in the same month and

year. Nor does he explain how the lots could be so manipulated by the

legislature as to bring together the fairest and best. The singular

expression (460 E) which is employed to describe the age of

five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet.

In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature of

philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of

Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or feelings

(cp. v. 474, 475). They are partly facetious, but also contain a germ of

truth. That science is a whole, remains a true principle of inductive as

well as of metaphysical philosophy; and the love of universal knowledge is

still the characteristic of the philosopher in modern as well as in

ancient times.

At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of contingent

matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on the Ethics and

Theology of the modern world, and which occurs here for the first time in

the history of philosophy. He did not remark that the degrees of knowledge

in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the object. With him

a word must answer to an idea; and he could not conceive of an opinion

which was an opinion about nothing. The influence of analogy led him to

invent 'parallels and conjugates' and to overlook facts. To us {lxxx} some

of his difficulties are puzzling only from their simplicity: we do not

perceive that the answer to them 'is tumbling out at our feet.' To the

mind of early thinkers, the conception of not-being was dark and

mysterious (Sophist, 254 A); they did not see that this terrible

apparition which threatened destruction to all knowledge was only a

logical determination. The common term under which, through the accidental

use of language, two entirely different ideas were included was another

source of confusion. Thus through the ambiguity of [Greek: dokei=n,

phai/netai, e)/oiken, k.t.l.], Plato, attempting to introduce order into

the first chaos of human thought, seems to have confused perception and

opinion, and to have failed to distinguish the contingent from the

relative. In the Theaetetus the first of these difficulties begins to

clear up; in the Sophist the second; and for this, as well as for other

reasons, both these dialogues are probably to be regarded as later than

the Republic.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Republic VI._ Analysis.]