The Republic, with introduction (tr. B. Jowett)
by Plato
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the
Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches
to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or
Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more
clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the
Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has
the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows
an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which
are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in
Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or
more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made
to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy.
The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped;
here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI,
VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like
Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge,
although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from
the substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an
abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest
metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any
other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained. The
sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments
of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates and
Plato. The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, the fallacy
of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents
of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and
conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent,
and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
unnecessary--these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be
found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The
greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy
are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and things, has
been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl),
although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own
writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up truth in logical formulae,--
logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the science which he imagines to
'contemplate all truth and all existence' is very unlike the doctrine of
the syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered (Soph. Elenchi).

Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a still
larger design which was to have included an ideal history of Athens, as
well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of the Critias
has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in importance to the
tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as a fact to have
inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth century. This
mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the wars of the
Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be founded upon an
unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood in the same relation
as the writings of the logographers to the poems of Homer. It would have
told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. Tim.), intended to represent the
conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of
the Timaeus, from the fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third
book of the Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated this high
argument. We can only guess why the great design was abandoned; perhaps
because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a fictitious history,
or because he had lost his interest in it, or because advancing years
forbade the completion of it; and we may please ourselves with the fancy
that had this imaginary narrative ever been finished, we should have found
Plato himself sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp.
Laws), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making
the reflection of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the
Athenian empire--'How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made
the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in greatness!' or,
more probably, attributing the victory to the ancient good order of Athens
and to the favor of Apollo and Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).

Again, Plato may be regarded as the 'captain' ('arhchegoz') or leader of a
goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the original
of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City of God, of the Utopia of
Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary States which are
framed upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the
Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the Politics has been little
recognised, and the recognition is the more necessary because it is not
made by Aristotle himself. The two philosophers had more in common than
they were conscious of; and probably some elements of Plato remain still
undetected in Aristotle. In English philosophy too, many affinities may be
traced, not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great
original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That
there is a truth higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been
enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has
had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first
treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,
Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante
or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is
profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church he
exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on
politics. Even the fragments of his words when 'repeated at second-hand'
(Symp.) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen
reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in
philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions
of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, the reign
of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipated in a dream by
him.

The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of
which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old man--then
discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and Polemarchus--
then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates--
reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become
invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal State which is
constructed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers is to be education,
of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenic model, providing only
for an improved religion and morality, and more simplicity in music and
gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry, and greater harmony of the
individual and the State. We are thus led on to the conception of a higher
State, in which 'no man calls anything his own,' and in which there is
neither 'marrying nor giving in marriage,' and 'kings are philosophers' and
'philosophers are kings;' and there is another and higher education,
intellectual as well as moral and religious, of science as well as of art,
and not of youth only but of the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to
be realized in this world and quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal
succeeds the government of the soldier and the lover of honour, this again
declining into democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but
regular order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When 'the
wheel has come full circle' we do not begin again with a new period of
human life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and there we
end. The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of the
Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is
discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and Homer, as
well as the dramatic poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is sent
into banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is supplemented
by the revelation of a future life.

The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis in
the Classical Museum.), is probably later than the age of Plato. The
natural divisions are five in number;--(1) Book I and the first half of
Book II down to the paragraph beginning, 'I had always admired the genius
of Glaucon and Adeimantus,' which is introductory; the first book
containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical notions of justice,
and concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues, without arriving at any
definite result. To this is appended a restatement of the nature of
justice according to common opinion, and an answer is demanded to the
question--What is justice, stripped of appearances? The second division
(2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of the third and
fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the construction of the first
State and the first education. The third division (3) consists of the
fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is
the subject of enquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles
of communism and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea
of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth
and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of pleasure
and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in the individual man.
The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole, in which the relations
of philosophy to poetry are finally determined, and the happiness of the
citizens in this life, which has now been assured, is crowned by the vision
of another.

Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first (Books
I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally in
accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in the
second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an ideal
kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the perversions.
These two points of view are really opposed, and the opposition is only
veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like the Phaedrus (see
Introduction to Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole; the higher light of
philosophy breaks through the regularity of the Hellenic temple, which at
last fades away into the heavens. Whether this imperfection of structure
arises from an enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect reconcilement
in the writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought which are
now first brought together by him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the
work at different times--are questions, like the similar question about the
Iliad and the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a
distinct answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of
publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering or
adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no
absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a time,
or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would be more
likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing. In all
attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic writings on
internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being
composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must be admitted to
affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws, more than shorter
ones. But, on the other hand, the seeming discrepancies of the Republic
may only arise out of the discordant elements which the philosopher has
attempted to unite in a single whole, perhaps without being himself able to
recognise the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a
judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to
anticipate for themselves. They do not perceive the want of connexion in
their own writings, or the gaps in their systems which are visible enough
to those who come after them. In the beginnings of literature and
philosophy, amid the first efforts of thought and language, more
inconsistencies occur than now, when the paths of speculation are well worn
and the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency, too, is the
growth of time; and some of the greatest creations of the human mind have
been wanting in unity. Tried by this test, several of the Platonic
Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be defective, but the
deficiency is no proof that they were composed at different times or by
different hands. And the supposition that the Republic was written
uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is in some degree confirmed by
the numerous references from one part of the work to another.

The second title, 'Concerning Justice,' is not the one by which the
Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and,
like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may therefore be
assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked whether the
definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the construction of
the State is the principal argument of the work. The answer is, that the
two blend in one, and are two faces of the same truth; for justice is the
order of the State, and the State is the visible embodiment of justice
under the conditions of human society. The one is the soul and the other
is the body, and the Greek ideal of the State, as of the individual, is a
fair mind in a fair body. In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality
of which justice is the idea. Or, described in Christian language, the
kingdom of God is within, and yet developes into a Church or external
kingdom; 'the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,' is
reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic
image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through
the whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed,
the conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or
different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the
individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and punishments in
another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which common honesty in
buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good,
which is the harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the
institutions of states and in motions of the heavenly bodies (cp. Tim.).
The Timaeus, which takes up the political rather than the ethical side of
the Republic, and is chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the
outward world, yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed
to reign over the State, over nature, and over man.

Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and
modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether of
nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient writings, and
indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element which
was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows under the
author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not
worked out the argument to the end before he begins. The reader who seeks
to find some one idea under which the whole may be conceived, must
necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general. Thus Stallbaum, who is
dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations of the argument of the
Republic, imagines himself to have found the true argument 'in the
representation of human life in a State perfected by justice, and governed
according to the idea of good.'  There may be some use in such general
descriptions, but they can hardly be said to express the design of the
writer. The truth is, that we may as well speak of many designs as of one;
nor need anything be excluded from the plan of a great work to which the
mind is naturally led by the association of ideas, and which does not
interfere with the general purpose. What kind or degree of unity is to be
sought after in a building, in the plastic arts, in poetry, in prose, is a
problem which has to be determined relatively to the subject-matter. To
Plato himself, the enquiry 'what was the intention of the writer,' or 'what
was the principal argument of the Republic' would have been hardly
intelligible, and therefore had better be at once dismissed (cp. the
Introduction to the Phaedrus).

Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which, to
Plato's own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the State?
Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or 'the day of the
Lord,' or the suffering Servant or people of God, or the 'Sun of
righteousness with healing in his wings' only convey, to us at least, their
great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State Plato reveals to us his
own thoughts about divine perfection, which is the idea of good--like the
sun in the visible world;--about human perfection, which is justice--about
education beginning in youth and continuing in later years--about poets and
sophists and tyrants who are the false teachers and evil rulers of mankind
--about 'the world' which is the embodiment of them--about a kingdom which
exists nowhere upon earth but is laid up in heaven to be the pattern and
rule of human life. No such inspired creation is at unity with itself, any
more than the clouds of heaven when the sun pierces through them. Every
shade of light and dark, of truth, and of fiction which is the veil of
truth, is allowable in a work of philosophical imagination. It is not all
on the same plane; it easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from
facts to figures of speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great
part of it, and ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the
probabilities of history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an
artistic whole; they take possession of him and are too much for him. We
have no need therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato has
conceived is practicable or not, or whether the outward form or the inward
life came first into the mind of the writer. For the practicability of his
ideas has nothing to do with their truth; and the highest thoughts to which
he attains may be truly said to bear the greatest 'marks of design'--
justice more than the external frame-work of the State, the idea of good
more than justice. The great science of dialectic or the organisation of
ideas has no real content; but is only a type of the method or spirit in
which the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the spectator of all time
and all existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh books that Plato
reaches the 'summit of speculation,' and these, although they fail to
satisfy the requirements of a modern thinker, may therefore be regarded as
the most important, as they are also the most original, portions of the
work.

It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has been
raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the conversation
was held (the year 411 B.C. which is proposed by him will do as well as any
other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a writer who, like Plato,
is notoriously careless of chronology (cp. Rep., Symp., etc.), only aims at
general probability. Whether all the persons mentioned in the Republic
could ever have met at any one time is not a difficulty which would have
occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty years later, or to Plato
himself at the time of writing (any more than to Shakespeare respecting one
of his own dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now. Yet this may be a
question having no answer 'which is still worth asking,' because the
investigation shows that we cannot argue historically from the dates in
Plato; it would be useless therefore to waste time in inventing far-fetched
reconcilements of them in order to avoid chronological difficulties, such,
for example, as the conjecture of C.F. Hermann, that Glaucon and Adeimantus
are not the brothers but the uncles of Plato (cp. Apol.), or the fancy of
Stallbaum that Plato intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates
at which some of his Dialogues were written.

The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears in the
introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the first argument, and
Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the close of the first book. The
main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Among
the company are Lysias (the orator) and Euthydemus, the sons of Cephalus
and brothers of Polemarchus, an unknown Charmantides--these are mute
auditors; also there is Cleitophon, who once interrupts, where, as in the
Dialogue which bears his name, he appears as the friend and ally of
Thrasymachus.

Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately engaged in
offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost done
with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He feels
that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger around
the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to visit
him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the consciousness
of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the tyranny of youthful
lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his indifference to
riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of character. He is not
one of those who have nothing to say, because their whole mind has been
absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges that riches have the
advantage of placing men above the temptation to dishonesty or falsehood.
The respectful attention shown to him by Socrates, whose love of
conversation, no less than the mission imposed upon him by the Oracle,
leads him to ask questions of all men, young and old alike, should also be
noted. Who better suited to raise the question of justice than Cephalus,
whose life might seem to be the expression of it? The moderation with
which old age is pictured by Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of
existence is characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling
generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in the De
Senectute. The evening of life is described by Plato in the most
expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks
(Ep. ad Attic.), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the
discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood nor
taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety (cp. Lysimachus in
the Laches).

His 'son and heir' Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and will
not 'let him off' on the subject of women and children. Like Cephalus, he
is limited in his point of view, and represents the proverbial stage of
morality which has rules of life rather than principles; and he quotes
Simonides (cp. Aristoph. Clouds) as his father had quoted Pindar. But
after this he has no more to say; the answers which he makes are only
elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He has not yet experienced
the influence of the Sophists like Glaucon and Adeimantus, nor is he
sensible of the necessity of refuting them; he belongs to the pre-Socratic
or pre-dialectical age. He is incapable of arguing, and is bewildered by
Socrates to such a degree that he does not know what he is saying. He is
made to admit that justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the
analogy of the arts. From his brother Lysias (contra Eratosth.) we learn
that he fell a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is here made
to his fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of
Syracusan origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.

The 'Chalcedonian giant,' Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard in
the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to Plato's
conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He is vain and
blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond of making an
oration, and hoping thereby to escape the inevitable Socrates; but a mere
child in argument, and unable to foresee that the next 'move' (to use a
Platonic expression) will 'shut him up.'  He has reached the stage of
framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and
Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and
vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. Whether
such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by
him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy
serious errors about morality might easily grow up--they are certainly put
into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present
with Plato's description of him, and not with the historical reality. The
inequality of the contest adds greatly to the humour of the scene. The
pompous and empty Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great
master of dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and
weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates, but his
noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open to the thrusts of
his assailant. His determination to cram down their throats, or put
'bodily into their souls' his own words, elicits a cry of horror from
Socrates. The state of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as the
process of the argument. Nothing is more amusing than his complete
submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems to
continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent good-will,
and he even testifies his interest at a later stage by one or two
occasional remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously protected by
Socrates 'as one who has never been his enemy and is now his friend.'  From
Cicero and Quintilian and from Aristotle's Rhetoric we learn that the
Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man of note whose writings
were preserved in later ages. The play on his name which was made by his
contemporary Herodicus (Aris. Rhet.), 'thou wast ever bold in battle,'
seems to show that the description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude.

When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents, Glaucon
and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy (cp.
Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are introduced. At first sight the two
sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the two friends
Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer examination of them the
similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be distinct characters. Glaucon
is the impetuous youth who can 'just never have enough of fechting' (cp.
the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii. 6); the man of pleasure who is
acquainted with the mysteries of love; the 'juvenis qui gaudet canibus,'
and who improves the breed of animals; the lover of art and music who has
all the experiences of youthful life. He is full of quickness and
penetration, piercing easily below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus to
the real difficulty; he turns out to the light the seamy side of human
life, and yet does not lose faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who
seizes what may be termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the
world, to whom a state of simplicity is 'a city of pigs,' who is always
prepared with a jest when the argument offers him an opportunity, and who
is ever ready to second the humour of Socrates and to appreciate the
ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music, or in the lovers of
theatricals, or in the fantastic behaviour of the citizens of democracy.
His weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates, who, however, will
not allow him to be attacked by his brother Adeimantus. He is a soldier,
and, like Adeimantus, has been distinguished at the battle of Megara (anno
456?)...The character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the
profounder objections are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more
demonstrative, and generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the
argument further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of
youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world.
In the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall
be considered without regard to their consequences, Adeimantus remarks that
they are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their
consequences; and in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the beginning
of the fourth book that Socrates fails in making his citizens happy, and is
answered that happiness is not the first but the second thing, not the
direct aim but the indirect consequence of the good government of a State.
In the discussion about religion and mythology, Adeimantus is the
respondent, but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest, and carries on the
conversation in a lighter tone about music and gymnastic to the end of the
book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers the criticism of common sense
on the Socratic method of argument, and who refuses to let Socrates pass
lightly over the question of women and children. It is Adeimantus who is
the respondent in the more argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and
more imaginative portions of the Dialogue. For example, throughout the
greater part of the sixth book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy
and the conception of the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus.
Glaucon resumes his place of principal respondent; but he has a difficulty
in apprehending the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits
in the course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the
allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious State;
in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues to the end.

Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive stages
of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden time, who
is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his life by
proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of the Sophists,
and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher, who know the
sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them, and desire to go
deeper into the nature of things. These too, like Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one another. Neither in the
Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato, is a single character
repeated.

The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent. In
the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is depicted in
the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of Plato, and in the
Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the old enemy of the
Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well as to argue
seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the Sophists abates;
he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the
corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic and constructive,
passing beyond the range either of the political or the speculative ideas
of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato himself seems to intimate that
the time had now come for Socrates, who had passed his whole life in
philosophy, to give his own opinion and not to be always repeating the
notions of other men. There is no evidence that either the idea of good or
the conception of a perfect state were comprehended in the Socratic
teaching, though he certainly dwelt on the nature of the universal and of
final causes (cp. Xen. Mem.; Phaedo); and a deep thinker like him, in his
thirty or forty years of public teaching, could hardly have failed to touch
on the nature of family relations, for which there is also some positive
evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem.)  The Socratic method is nominally
retained; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates. But
any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation grows
wearisome as the work advances. The method of enquiry has passed into a
method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the same thesis is
looked at from various points of view. The nature of the process is truly
characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as a companion who is
not good for much in an investigation, but can see what he is shown, and
may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more fluently than another.

Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in the
Republic (cp. Apol.); nor is there any reason to suppose that he used myths
or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction, or that he
would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek mythology. His
favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made of the daemonium,
or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as a phenomenon peculiar
to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching, which is more prominent
in the Republic than in any of the other Dialogues of Plato, is the use of
example and illustration (Greek): 'Let us apply the test of common
instances.'  'You,' says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, 'are so
unaccustomed to speak in images.'  And this use of examples or images,
though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into
the form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has
been already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus
the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions of
knowledge in Book VI. The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory of
the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true pilot
in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the philosophers
in the State which has been described. Other figures, such as the dog, or
the marriage of the portionless maiden, or the drones and wasps in the
eighth and ninth books, also form links of connexion in long passages, or
are used to recall previous discussions.

Plato is most true to the character of his master when he describes him as
'not of this world.'  And with this representation of him the ideal state
and the other paradoxes of the Republic are quite in accordance, though
they cannot be shown to have been speculations of Socrates. To him, as to
other great teachers both philosophical and religious, when they looked
upward, the world seemed to be the embodiment of error and evil. The
common sense of mankind has revolted against this view, or has only
partially admitted it. And even in Socrates himself the sterner judgement
of the multitude at times passes into a sort of ironical pity or love. Men
in general are incapable of philosophy, and are therefore at enmity with
the philosopher; but their misunderstanding of him is unavoidable: for
they have never seen him as he truly is in his own image; they are only
acquainted with artificial systems possessing no native force of truth--
words which admit of many applications. Their leaders have nothing to
measure with, and are therefore ignorant of their own stature. But they
are to be pitied or laughed at, not to be quarrelled with; they mean well
with their nostrums, if they could only learn that they are cutting off a
Hydra's head. This moderation towards those who are in error is one of the
most characteristic features of Socrates in the Republic. In all the
different representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato, and
amid the differences of the earlier or later Dialogues, he always retains
the character of the unwearied and disinterested seeker after truth,
without which he would have ceased to be Socrates.

Leaving the characters we may now analyse the contents of the Republic, and
then proceed to consider (1) The general aspects of this Hellenic ideal of
the State, (2) The modern lights in which the thoughts of Plato may be
read.

BOOK I. The Republic opens with a truly Greek scene--a festival in honour
of the goddess Bendis which is held in the Piraeus; to this is added the
promise of an equestrian torch-race in the evening. The whole work is
supposed to be recited by Socrates on the day after the festival to a small
party, consisting of Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates, and another; this we
learn from the first words of the Timaeus.

When the rhetorical advantage of reciting the Dialogue has been gained, the
attention is not distracted by any reference to the audience; nor is the
reader further reminded of the extraordinary length of the narrative. Of
the numerous company, three only take any serious part in the discussion;
nor are we informed whether in the evening they went to the torch-race, or
talked, as in the Symposium, through the night. The manner in which the
conversation has arisen is described as follows:--Socrates and his
companion Glaucon are about to leave the festival when they are detained by
a message from Polemarchus, who speedily appears accompanied by Adeimantus,
the brother of Glaucon, and with playful violence compels them to remain,
promising them not only the torch-race, but the pleasure of conversation
with the young, which to Socrates is a far greater attraction. They return
to the house of Cephalus, Polemarchus' father, now in extreme old age, who
is found sitting upon a cushioned seat crowned for a sacrifice. 'You
should come to me oftener, Socrates, for I am too old to go to you; and at
my time of life, having lost other pleasures, I care the more for
conversation.'  Socrates asks him what he thinks of age, to which the old
man replies, that the sorrows and discontents of age are to be attributed
to the tempers of men, and that age is a time of peace in which the tyranny
of the passions is no longer felt. Yes, replies Socrates, but the world
will say, Cephalus, that you are happy in old age because you are rich.
'And there is something in what they say, Socrates, but not so much as they
imagine--as Themistocles replied to the Seriphian, "Neither you, if you had
been an Athenian, nor I, if I had been a Seriphian, would ever have been
famous," I might in like manner reply to you, Neither a good poor man can
be happy in age, nor yet a bad rich man.'  Socrates remarks that Cephalus
appears not to care about riches, a quality which he ascribes to his having
inherited, not acquired them, and would like to know what he considers to
be the chief advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when you are old the
belief in the world below grows upon you, and then to have done justice and
never to have been compelled to do injustice through poverty, and never to
have deceived anyone, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates, who
is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the meaning of
the word justice? To tell the truth and pay your debts? No more than
this? Or must we admit exceptions? Ought I, for example, to put back into
the hands of my friend, who has gone mad, the sword which I borrowed of him
when he was in his right mind? 'There must be exceptions.'  'And yet,'
says Polemarchus, 'the definition which has been given has the authority of
Simonides.'  Here Cephalus retires to look after the sacrifices, and
bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously remarks, the possession of the argument
to his heir, Polemarchus...

The description of old age is finished, and Plato, as his manner is, has
touched the key-note of the whole work in asking for the definition of
justice, first suggesting the question which Glaucon afterwards pursues
respecting external goods, and preparing for the concluding mythus of the
world below in the slight allusion of Cephalus. The portrait of the just
man is a natural frontispiece or introduction to the long discourse which
follows, and may perhaps imply that in all our perplexity about the nature
of justice, there is no difficulty in discerning 'who is a just man.'  The
first explanation has been supported by a saying of Simonides; and now
Socrates has a mind to show that the resolution of justice into two
unconnected precepts, which have no common principle, fails to satisfy the
demands of dialectic.

...He proceeds: What did Simonides mean by this saying of his? Did he
mean that I was to give back arms to a madman? 'No, not in that case, not
if the parties are friends, and evil would result. He meant that you were
to do what was proper, good to friends and harm to enemies.'  Every act
does something to somebody; and following this analogy, Socrates asks, What
is this due and proper thing which justice does, and to whom? He is
answered that justice does good to friends and harm to enemies. But in
what way good or harm? 'In making alliances with the one, and going to war
with the other.'  Then in time of peace what is the good of justice? The
answer is that justice is of use in contracts, and contracts are money
partnerships. Yes; but how in such partnerships is the just man of more
use than any other man? 'When you want to have money safely kept and not
used.'  Then justice will be useful when money is useless. And there is
another difficulty: justice, like the art of war or any other art, must be
of opposites, good at attack as well as at defence, at stealing as well as
at guarding. But then justice is a thief, though a hero notwithstanding,
like Autolycus, the Homeric hero, who was 'excellent above all men in theft
and perjury'--to such a pass have you and Homer and Simonides brought us;
though I do not forget that the thieving must be for the good of friends
and the harm of enemies. And still there arises another question: Are
friends to be interpreted as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming?
And are our friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil?
The answer is, that we must do good to our seeming and real good friends,
and evil to our seeming and real evil enemies--good to the good, evil to
the evil. But ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will
only make men more evil? Can justice produce injustice any more than the
art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold? The final
conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just return evil for
evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man, Periander, Perdiccas,
or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C. 398-381)...

Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is shown to be
inadequate to the wants of the age; the authority of the poets is set
aside, and through the winding mazes of dialectic we make an approach to
the Christian precept of forgiveness of injuries. Similar words are
applied by the Persian mystic poet to the Divine being when the questioning
spirit is stirred within him:--'If because I do evil, Thou punishest me by
evil, what is the difference between Thee and me?'  In this both Plato and
Kheyam rise above the level of many Christian (?) theologians. The first
definition of justice easily passes into the second; for the simple words
'to speak the truth and pay your debts' is substituted the more abstract
'to do good to your friends and harm to your enemies.'  Either of these
explanations gives a sufficient rule of life for plain men, but they both
fall short of the precision of philosophy. We may note in passing the
antiquity of casuistry, which not only arises out of the conflict of
established principles in particular cases, but also out of the effort to
attain them, and is prior as well as posterior to our fundamental notions
of morality. The 'interrogation' of moral ideas; the appeal to the
authority of Homer; the conclusion that the maxim, 'Do good to your friends
and harm to your enemies,' being erroneous, could not have been the word of
any great man, are all of them very characteristic of the Platonic
Socrates.

...Here Thrasymachus, who has made several attempts to interrupt, but has
hitherto been kept in order by the company, takes advantage of a pause and
rushes into the arena, beginning, like a savage animal, with a roar.
'Socrates,' he says, 'what folly is this?--Why do you agree to be
vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?'  He then prohibits all
the ordinary definitions of justice; to which Socrates replies that he
cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to say 2 x 6, or 3 x 4,
or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is reluctant to argue; but at
length, with a promise of payment on the part of the company and of praise
from Socrates, he is induced to open the game. 'Listen,' he says, 'my
answer is that might is right, justice the interest of the stronger: now
praise me.'  Let me understand you first. Do you mean that because
Polydamas the wrestler, who is stronger than we are, finds the eating of
beef for his interest, the eating of beef is also for our interest, who are
not so strong? Thrasymachus is indignant at the illustration, and in
pompous words, apparently intended to restore dignity to the argument, he
explains his meaning to be that the rulers make laws for their own
interests. But suppose, says Socrates, that the ruler or stronger makes a
mistake--then the interest of the stronger is not his interest.
Thrasymachus is saved from this speedy downfall by his disciple Cleitophon,
who introduces the word 'thinks;'--not the actual interest of the ruler,
but what he thinks or what seems to be his interest, is justice. The
contradiction is escaped by the unmeaning evasion: for though his real and
apparent interests may differ, what the ruler thinks to be his interest
will always remain what he thinks to be his interest.

Of course this was not the original assertion, nor is the new
interpretation accepted by Thrasymachus himself. But Socrates is not
disposed to quarrel about words, if, as he significantly insinuates, his
adversary has changed his mind. In what follows Thrasymachus does in fact
withdraw his admission that the ruler may make a mistake, for he affirms
that the ruler as a ruler is infallible. Socrates is quite ready to accept
the new position, which he equally turns against Thrasymachus by the help
of the analogy of the arts. Every art or science has an interest, but this
interest is to be distinguished from the accidental interest of the artist,
and is only concerned with the good of the things or persons which come
under the art. And justice has an interest which is the interest not of
the ruler or judge, but of those who come under his sway.

Thrasymachus is on the brink of the inevitable conclusion, when he makes a
bold diversion. 'Tell me, Socrates,' he says, 'have you a nurse?'  What a
question! Why do you ask? 'Because, if you have, she neglects you and
lets you go about drivelling, and has not even taught you to know the
shepherd from the sheep. For you fancy that shepherds and rulers never
think of their own interest, but only of their sheep or subjects, whereas
the truth is that they fatten them for their use, sheep and subjects alike.
And experience proves that in every relation of life the just man is the
loser and the unjust the gainer, especially where injustice is on the grand
scale, which is quite another thing from the petty rogueries of swindlers
and burglars and robbers of temples. The language of men proves this--our
'gracious' and 'blessed' tyrant and the like--all which tends to show (1)
that justice is the interest of the stronger; and (2) that injustice is
more profitable and also stronger than justice.'

Thrasymachus, who is better at a speech than at a close argument, having
deluged the company with words, has a mind to escape. But the others will
not let him go, and Socrates adds a humble but earnest request that he will
not desert them at such a crisis of their fate. 'And what can I do more
for you?' he says; 'would you have me put the words bodily into your
souls?'  God forbid! replies Socrates; but we want you to be consistent in
the use of terms, and not to employ 'physician' in an exact sense, and then
again 'shepherd' or 'ruler' in an inexact,--if the words are strictly
taken, the ruler and the shepherd look only to the good of their people or
flocks and not to their own: whereas you insist that rulers are solely
actuated by love of office. 'No doubt about it,' replies Thrasymachus.
Then why are they paid? Is not the reason, that their interest is not
comprehended in their art, and is therefore the concern of another art, the
art of pay, which is common to the arts in general, and therefore not
identical with any one of them? Nor would any man be a ruler unless he
were induced by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment;--the reward
is money or honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a man
worse than himself. And if a State (or Church) were composed entirely of
good men, they would be affected by the last motive only; and there would
be as much 'nolo episcopari' as there is at present of the opposite...

The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and
apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced. There
is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind do not
like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay.

...Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more
important--that the unjust life is more gainful than the just. Now, as you
and I, Glaucon, are not convinced by him, we must reply to him; but if we
try to compare their respective gains we shall want a judge to decide for
us; we had better therefore proceed by making mutual admissions of the
truth to one another.

Thrasymachus had asserted that perfect injustice was more gainful than
perfect justice, and after a little hesitation he is induced by Socrates to
admit the still greater paradox that injustice is virtue and justice vice.
Socrates praises his frankness, and assumes the attitude of one whose only
wish is to understand the meaning of his opponents. At the same time he is
weaving a net in which Thrasymachus is finally enclosed. The admission is
elicited from him that the just man seeks to gain an advantage over the
unjust only, but not over the just, while the unjust would gain an
advantage over either. Socrates, in order to test this statement, employs
once more the favourite analogy of the arts. The musician, doctor, skilled
artist of any sort, does not seek to gain more than the skilled, but only
more than the unskilled (that is to say, he works up to a rule, standard,
law, and does not exceed it), whereas the unskilled makes random efforts at
excess. Thus the skilled falls on the side of the good, and the unskilled
on the side of the evil, and the just is the skilled, and the unjust is the
unskilled.

There was great difficulty in bringing Thrasymachus to the point; the day
was hot and he was streaming with perspiration, and for the first time in
his life he was seen to blush. But his other thesis that injustice was
stronger than justice has not yet been refuted, and Socrates now proceeds
to the consideration of this, which, with the assistance of Thrasymachus,
he hopes to clear up; the latter is at first churlish, but in the judicious
hands of Socrates is soon restored to good-humour: Is there not honour
among thieves? Is not the strength of injustice only a remnant of justice?
Is not absolute injustice absolute weakness also? A house that is divided
against itself cannot stand; two men who quarrel detract from one another's
strength, and he who is at war with himself is the enemy of himself and the
gods. Not wickedness therefore, but semi-wickedness flourishes in states,
--a remnant of good is needed in order to make union in action possible,--
there is no kingdom of evil in this world.

Another question has not been answered: Is the just or the unjust the
happier? To this we reply, that every art has an end and an excellence or
virtue by which the end is accomplished. And is not the end of the soul
happiness, and justice the excellence of the soul by which happiness is
attained? Justice and happiness being thus shown to be inseparable, the
question whether the just or the unjust is the happier has disappeared.

Thrasymachus replies: 'Let this be your entertainment, Socrates, at the
festival of Bendis.'  Yes; and a very good entertainment with which your
kindness has supplied me, now that you have left off scolding. And yet not
a good entertainment--but that was my own fault, for I tasted of too many
things. First of all the nature of justice was the subject of our enquiry,
and then whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil and folly; and then
the comparative advantages of just and unjust: and the sum of all is that
I know not what justice is; how then shall I know whether the just is happy
or not?...

Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished, chiefly by appealing to
the analogy of the arts. 'Justice is like the arts (1) in having no
external interest, and (2) in not aiming at excess, and (3) justice is to
happiness what the implement of the workman is to his work.'  At this the
modern reader is apt to stumble, because he forgets that Plato is writing
in an age when the arts and the virtues, like the moral and intellectual
faculties, were still undistinguished. Among early enquirers into the
nature of human action the arts helped to fill up the void of speculation;
and at first the comparison of the arts and the virtues was not perceived
by them to be fallacious. They only saw the points of agreement in them
and not the points of difference. Virtue, like art, must take means to an
end; good manners are both an art and a virtue; character is naturally
described under the image of a statue; and there are many other figures of
speech which are readily transferred from art to morals. The next
generation cleared up these perplexities; or at least supplied after ages
with a further analysis of them. The contemporaries of Plato were in a
state of transition, and had not yet fully realized the common-sense
distinction of Aristotle, that 'virtue is concerned with action, art with
production' (Nic. Eth.), or that 'virtue implies intention and constancy of
purpose,' whereas 'art requires knowledge only'. And yet in the
absurdities which follow from some uses of the analogy, there seems to be
an intimation conveyed that virtue is more than art. This is implied in
the reductio ad absurdum that 'justice is a thief,' and in the
dissatisfaction which Socrates expresses at the final result.

The expression 'an art of pay' which is described as 'common to all the
arts' is not in accordance with the ordinary use of language. Nor is it
employed elsewhere either by Plato or by any other Greek writer. It is
suggested by the argument, and seems to extend the conception of art to
doing as well as making. Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be
noted in the words 'men who are injured are made more unjust.'  For those
who are injured are not necessarily made worse, but only harmed or ill-
treated.

The second of the three arguments, 'that the just does not aim at excess,'
has a real meaning, though wrapped up in an enigmatical form. That the
good is of the nature of the finite is a peculiarly Hellenic sentiment,
which may be compared with the language of those modern writers who speak
of virtue as fitness, and of freedom as obedience to law. The mathematical
or logical notion of limit easily passes into an ethical one, and even
finds a mythological expression in the conception of envy (Greek). Ideas
of measure, equality, order, unity, proportion, still linger in the
writings of moralists; and the true spirit of the fine arts is better
conveyed by such terms than by superlatives.

'When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness.'  (King John.)

The harmony of the soul and body, and of the parts of the soul with one
another, a harmony 'fairer than that of musical notes,' is the true
Hellenic mode of conceiving the perfection of human nature.

In what may be called the epilogue of the discussion with Thrasymachus,
Plato argues that evil is not a principle of strength, but of discord and
dissolution, just touching the question which has been often treated in
modern times by theologians and philosophers, of the negative nature of
evil. In the last argument we trace the germ of the Aristotelian doctrine
of an end and a virtue directed towards the end, which again is suggested
by the arts. The final reconcilement of justice and happiness and the
identity of the individual and the State are also intimated. Socrates
reassumes the character of a 'know-nothing;' at the same time he appears to
be not wholly satisfied with the manner in which the argument has been
conducted. Nothing is concluded; but the tendency of the dialectical
process, here as always, is to enlarge our conception of ideas, and to
widen their application to human life.

BOOK II. Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on
continuing the argument. He is not satisfied with the indirect manner in
which, at the end of the last book, Socrates had disposed of the question
'Whether the just or the unjust is the happier.'  He begins by dividing
goods into three classes:--first, goods desirable in themselves; secondly,
goods desirable in themselves and for their results; thirdly, goods
desirable for their results only. He then asks Socrates in which of the
three classes he would place justice. In the second class, replies
Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves and also for their results.
'Then the world in general are of another mind, for they say that justice
belongs to the troublesome class of goods which are desirable for their
results only. Socrates answers that this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus
which he rejects. Glaucon thinks that Thrasymachus was too ready to listen
to the voice of the charmer, and proposes to consider the nature of justice
and injustice in themselves and apart from the results and rewards of them
which the world is always dinning in his ears. He will first of all speak
of the nature and origin of justice; secondly, of the manner in which men
view justice as a necessity and not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the
reasonableness of this view.

'To do injustice is said to be a good; to suffer injustice an evil. As the
evil is discovered by experience to be greater than the good, the
sufferers, who cannot also be doers, make a compact that they will have
neither, and this compact or mean is called justice, but is really the
impossibility of doing injustice. No one would observe such a compact if
he were not obliged. Let us suppose that the just and unjust have two
rings, like that of Gyges in the well-known story, which make them
invisible, and then no difference will appear in them, for every one will
do evil if he can. And he who abstains will be regarded by the world as a
fool for his pains. Men may praise him in public out of fear for
themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts (Cp. Gorgias.)

'And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine the unjust
man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes and easily correcting
them; having gifts of money, speech, strength--the greatest villain bearing
the highest character: and at his side let us place the just in his
nobleness and simplicity--being, not seeming--without name or reward--
clothed in his justice only--the best of men who is thought to be the
worst, and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would rather
put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice--they will tell
you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will have his eyes
put out, and will at last be crucified (literally impaled)--and all this
because he ought to have preferred seeming to being. How different is the
case of the unjust who clings to appearance as the true reality! His high
character makes him a ruler; he can marry where he likes, trade where he
likes, help his friends and hurt his enemies; having got rich by dishonesty
he can worship the gods better, and will therefore be more loved by them
than the just.'

I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the already
unequal fray. He considered that the most important point of all had been
omitted:--'Men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards; parents and
guardians make reputation the incentive to virtue. And other advantages
are promised by them of a more solid kind, such as wealthy marriages and
high offices. There are the pictures in Homer and Hesiod of fat sheep and
heavy fleeces, rich corn-fields and trees toppling with fruit, which the
gods provide in this life for the just. And the Orphic poets add a similar
picture of another. The heroes of Musaeus and Eumolpus lie on couches at a
festival, with garlands on their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a
paradise of immortal drunkenness. Some go further, and speak of a fair
posterity in the third and fourth generation. But the wicked they bury in
a slough and make them carry water in a sieve: and in this life they
attribute to them the infamy which Glaucon was assuming to be the lot of
the just who are supposed to be unjust.

'Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry and prose:--
"Virtue," as Hesiod says, "is honourable but difficult, vice is easy and
profitable."  You may often see the wicked in great prosperity and the
righteous afflicted by the will of heaven. And mendicant prophets knock at
rich men's doors, promising to atone for the sins of themselves or their
fathers in an easy fashion with sacrifices and festive games, or with
charms and invocations to get rid of an enemy good or bad by divine help
and at a small charge;--they appeal to books professing to be written by
Musaeus and Orpheus, and carry away the minds of whole cities, and promise
to "get souls out of purgatory;" and if we refuse to listen to them, no one
knows what will happen to us.

'When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what will be his
conclusion? "Will he," in the language of Pindar, "make justice his high
tower, or fortify himself with crooked deceit?"  Justice, he reflects,
without the appearance of justice, is misery and ruin; injustice has the
promise of a glorious life. Appearance is master of truth and lord of
happiness. To appearance then I will turn,--I will put on the show of
virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. I hear some one saying
that "wickedness is not easily concealed," to which I reply that "nothing
great is easy."  Union and force and rhetoric will do much; and if men say
that they cannot prevail over the gods, still how do we know that there are
gods? Only from the poets, who acknowledge that they may be appeased by
sacrifices. Then why not sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin? For
if the righteous are only unpunished, still they have no further reward,
while the wicked may be unpunished and have the pleasure of sinning too.
But what of the world below? Nay, says the argument, there are atoning
powers who will set that matter right, as the poets, who are the sons of
the gods, tell us; and this is confirmed by the authority of the State.

'How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice? Add good
manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of both worlds.
Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from smiling at the
praises of justice? Even if a man knows the better part he will not be
angry with others; for he knows also that more than human virtue is needed
to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is incapable of
injustice.

'The origin of the evil is that all men from the beginning, heroes, poets,
instructors of youth, have always asserted "the temporal dispensation," the
honours and profits of justice. Had we been taught in early youth the
power of justice and injustice inherent in the soul, and unseen by any
human or divine eye, we should not have needed others to be our guardians,
but every one would have been the guardian of himself. This is what I want
you to show, Socrates;--other men use arguments which rather tend to
strengthen the position of Thrasymachus that "might is right;" but from you
I expect better things. And please, as Glaucon said, to exclude
reputation; let the just be thought unjust and the unjust just, and do you
still prove to us the superiority of justice'...

The thesis, which for the sake of argument has been maintained by Glaucon,
is the converse of that of Thrasymachus--not right is the interest of the
stronger, but right is the necessity of the weaker. Starting from the same
premises he carries the analysis of society a step further back;--might is
still right, but the might is the weakness of the many combined against the
strength of the few.

There have been theories in modern as well as in ancient times which have a
family likeness to the speculations of Glaucon; e.g. that power is the
foundation of right; or that a monarch has a divine right to govern well or
ill; or that virtue is self-love or the love of power; or that war is the
natural state of man; or that private vices are public benefits. All such
theories have a kind of plausibility from their partial agreement with
experience. For human nature oscillates between good and evil, and the
motives of actions and the origin of institutions may be explained to a
certain extent on either hypothesis according to the character or point of
view of a particular thinker. The obligation of maintaining authority
under all circumstances and sometimes by rather questionable means is felt
strongly and has become a sort of instinct among civilized men. The divine
right of kings, or more generally of governments, is one of the forms under
which this natural feeling is expressed. Nor again is there any evil which
has not some accompaniment of good or pleasure; nor any good which is free
from some alloy of evil; nor any noble or generous thought which may not be
attended by a shadow or the ghost of a shadow of self-interest or of self-
love. We know that all human actions are imperfect; but we do not
therefore attribute them to the worse rather than to the better motive or
principle. Such a philosophy is both foolish and false, like that opinion
of the clever rogue who assumes all other men to be like himself. And
theories of this sort do not represent the real nature of the State, which
is based on a vague sense of right gradually corrected and enlarged by
custom and law (although capable also of perversion), any more than they
describe the origin of society, which is to be sought in the family and in
the social and religious feelings of man. Nor do they represent the
average character of individuals, which cannot be explained simply on a
theory of evil, but has always a counteracting element of good. And as men
become better such theories appear more and more untruthful to them,
because they are more conscious of their own disinterestedness. A little
experience may make a man a cynic; a great deal will bring him back to a
truer and kindlier view of the mixed nature of himself and his fellow men.

The two brothers ask Socrates to prove to them that the just is happy when
they have taken from him all that in which happiness is ordinarily supposed
to consist. Not that there is (1) any absurdity in the attempt to frame a
notion of justice apart from circumstances. For the ideal must always be a
paradox when compared with the ordinary conditions of human life. Neither
the Stoical ideal nor the Christian ideal is true as a fact, but they may
serve as a basis of education, and may exercise an ennobling influence. An
ideal is none the worse because 'some one has made the discovery' that no
such ideal was ever realized. And in a few exceptional individuals who are
raised above the ordinary level of humanity, the ideal of happiness may be
realized in death and misery. This may be the state which the reason
deliberately approves, and which the utilitarian as well as every other
moralist may be bound in certain cases to prefer.

Nor again, (2) must we forget that Plato, though he agrees generally with
the view implied in the argument of the two brothers, is not expressing his
own final conclusion, but rather seeking to dramatize one of the aspects of
ethical truth. He is developing his idea gradually in a series of
positions or situations. He is exhibiting Socrates for the first time
undergoing the Socratic interrogation. Lastly, (3) the word 'happiness'
involves some degree of confusion because associated in the language of
modern philosophy with conscious pleasure or satisfaction, which was not
equally present to his mind.

Glaucon has been drawing a picture of the misery of the just and the
happiness of the unjust, to which the misery of the tyrant in Book IX is
the answer and parallel. And still the unjust must appear just; that is
'the homage which vice pays to virtue.'  But now Adeimantus, taking up the
hint which had been already given by Glaucon, proceeds to show that in the
opinion of mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of rewards and
reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to such arguments
as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conventional morality of
mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of 'justifying the ways of God to
man.'  Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether the morality of
actions is determined by their consequences; and both of them go beyond the
position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the class of goods not
desirable for themselves only, but desirable for themselves and for their
results, to which he recalls them. In their attempt to view justice as an
internal principle, and in their condemnation of the poets, they anticipate
him. The common life of Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate
deeper into the nature of things.

It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon and
Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not more
truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by Socrates,
and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being, first in the
State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new answer to his
old question (Protag.), 'whether the virtues are one or many,' viz. that
one is the ordering principle of the three others. In seeking to establish
the purely internal nature of justice, he is met by the fact that man is a
social being, and he tries to harmonise the two opposite theses as well as
he can. There is no more inconsistency in this than was inevitable in his
age and country; there is no use in turning upon him the cross lights of
modern philosophy, which, from some other point of view, would appear
equally inconsistent. Plato does not give the final solution of
philosophical questions for us; nor can he be judged of by our standard.

The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the sons
of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark in what immediately
follows:--First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether indirect. He
does not say that happiness consists in the contemplation of the idea of
justice, and still less will he be tempted to affirm the Stoical paradox
that the just man can be happy on the rack. But first he dwells on the
difficulty of the problem and insists on restoring man to his natural
condition, before he will answer the question at all. He too will frame an
ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract justice, but the whole
relations of man. Under the fanciful illustration of the large letters he
implies that he will only look for justice in society, and that from the
State he will proceed to the individual. His answer in substance amounts
to this,--that under favourable conditions, i.e. in the perfect State,
justice and happiness will coincide, and that when justice has been once
found, happiness may be left to take care of itself. That he falls into
some degree of inconsistency, when in the tenth book he claims to have got
rid of the rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted; for he has left
those which exist in the perfect State. And the philosopher 'who retires
under the shelter of a wall' can hardly have been esteemed happy by him, at
least not in this world. Still he maintains the true attitude of moral
action. Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he will be
happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident which attends
him. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all
these things shall be added unto you.'

Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine character of
Greek thought in beginning with the State and in going on to the
individual. First ethics, then politics--this is the order of ideas to us;
the reverse is the order of history. Only after many struggles of thought
does the individual assert his right as a moral being. In early ages he is
not ONE, but one of many, the citizen of a State which is prior to him; and
he has no notion of good or evil apart from the law of his country or the
creed of his church. And to this type he is constantly tending to revert,
whenever the influence of custom, or of party spirit, or the recollection
of the past becomes too strong for him.

Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the individual
and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early Greek
speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of
influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual
action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are
sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human action,
whenever we either elevate politics into ethics, or lower ethics to the
standard of politics. The good man and the good citizen only coincide in
the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be attained by legislation
acting upon them from without, but, if at all, by education fashioning them
from within.

...Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, 'inspired offspring of the
renowned hero,' as the elegiac poet terms them; but he does not understand
how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of injustice while their
character shows that they are uninfluenced by their own arguments. He
knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of deserting justice in
the hour of need. He therefore makes a condition, that having weak eyes he
shall be allowed to read the large letters first and then go on to the
smaller, that is, he must look for justice in the State first, and will
then proceed to the individual. Accordingly he begins to construct the
State.

Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food; his second
a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the possibility of
satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together on the same spot;
and this is the beginning of a State, which we take the liberty to invent,
although necessity is the real inventor. There must be first a husbandman,
secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to which may be added a cobbler.
Four or five citizens at least are required to make a city. Now men have
different natures, and one man will do one thing better than many; and
business waits for no man. Hence there must be a division of labour into
different employments; into wholesale and retail trade; into workers, and
makers of workmen's tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which
includes all this will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet
not be very large. But then again imports will be required, and imports
necessitate exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to
attract the taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too
we must have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and
sellers will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be
wasted in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State
will be complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of
the citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.

Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend their days
in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their own clothes
and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food is meal and
flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best of terms with
each other, and take care not to have too many children. 'But,' said
Glaucon, interposing, 'are they not to have a relish?'  Certainly; they
will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and fruits, and chestnuts
to roast at the fire. ''Tis a city of pigs, Socrates.'  Why, I replied,
what do you want more? 'Only the comforts of life,--sofas and tables, also
sauces and sweets.'  I see; you want not only a State, but a luxurious
State; and possibly in the more complex frame we may sooner find justice
and injustice. Then the fine arts must go to work--every conceivable
instrument and ornament of luxury will be wanted. There will be dancers,
painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks, barbers, tire-women, nurses,
artists; swineherds and neatherds too for the animals, and physicians to
cure the disorders of which luxury is the source. To feed all these
superfluous mouths we shall need a part of our neighbour's land, and they
will want a part of ours. And this is the origin of war, which may be
traced to the same causes as other political evils. Our city will now
require the slight addition of a camp, and the citizen will be converted
into a soldier. But then again our old doctrine of the division of labour
must not be forgotten. The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and
there must be a natural aptitude for military duties. There will be some
warlike natures who have this aptitude--dogs keen of scent, swift of foot
to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of
courage, such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit.
But these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the
union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be
an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities. Who
then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an answer. For dogs
are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your dog is a philosopher
who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing; and philosophy, whether
in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness. The human watchdogs must be
philosophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. And how
are they to be learned without education?

But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned
sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music
includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false. 'What
do you mean?' he said. I mean that children hear stories before they learn
gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have at most one or
two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early life is very
impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn
when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales,
banishing some and keeping others. Some of them are very improper, as we
may see in the great instances of Homer and Hesiod, who not only tell lies
but bad lies; stories about Uranus and Saturn, which are immoral as well as
false, and which should never be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at
all; or, if at all, then in a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an
Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be
encouraged to beat their fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be
incited to quarrel by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the
gods? Shall they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother,
and of Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such
tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are
incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to be
allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers; we
only lay down the principles according to which books are to be written; to
write them is the duty of others.

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as
the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the poets
to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks
full of destinies;--or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the
treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the
Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them.
Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men
were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God
the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old
or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle--God is the
author of good only.

And the second principle is like unto it:--With God is no variableness or
change of form. Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change in God,
he must be changed either by another or by himself. By another?--but the
best works of nature and art and the noblest qualities of mind are least
liable to be changed by any external force. By himself?--but he cannot
change for the better; he will hardly change for the worse. He remains for
ever fairest and best in his own image. Therefore we refuse to listen to
the poets who tell us of Here begging in the likeness of a priestess or of
other deities who prowl about at night in strange disguises; all that
blasphemous nonsense with which mothers fool the manhood out of their
children must be suppressed. But some one will say that God, who is
himself unchangeable, may take a form in relation to us. Why should he?
For gods as well as men hate the lie in the soul, or principle of
falsehood; and as for any other form of lying which is used for a purpose
and is regarded as innocent in certain exceptional cases--what need have
the gods of this? For they are not ignorant of antiquity like the poets,
nor are they afraid of their enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs.
God then is true, he is absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not,
by day or night, by word or sign. This is our second great principle--God
is true. Away with the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the
accusation of Thetis against Apollo in Aeschylus...

In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato proceeds
to trace the first principles of mutual need and of division of labour in
an imaginary community of four or five citizens. Gradually this community
increases; the division of labour extends to countries; imports necessitate
exports; a medium of exchange is required, and retailers sit in the market-
place to save the time of the producers. These are the steps by which
Plato constructs the first or primitive State, introducing the elements of
political economy by the way. As he is going to frame a second or
civilized State, the simple naturally comes before the complex. He
indulges, like Rousseau, in a picture of primitive life--an idea which has
indeed often had a powerful influence on the imagination of mankind, but he
does not seriously mean to say that one is better than the other
(Politicus); nor can any inference be drawn from the description of the
first state taken apart from the second, such as Aristotle appears to draw
in the Politics. We should not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than
a poem or a parable in too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On the other
hand, when we compare the lively fancy of Plato with the dried-up
abstractions of modern treatises on philosophy, we are compelled to say
with Protagoras, that the 'mythus is more interesting' (Protag.)

Several interesting remarks which in modern times would have a place in a
treatise on Political Economy are scattered up and down the writings of
Plato: especially Laws, Population; Free Trade; Adulteration; Wills and
Bequests; Begging; Eryxias, (though not Plato's), Value and Demand;
Republic, Division of Labour. The last subject, and also the origin of
Retail Trade, is treated with admirable lucidity in the second book of the
Republic. But Plato never combined his economic ideas into a system, and
never seems to have recognized that Trade is one of the great motive powers
of the State and of the world. He would make retail traders only of the
inferior sort of citizens (Rep., Laws), though he remarks, quaintly enough
(Laws), that 'if only the best men and the best women everywhere were
compelled to keep taverns for a time or to carry on retail trade, etc.,
then we should knew how pleasant and agreeable all these things are.'

The disappointment of Glaucon at the 'city of pigs,' the ludicrous
description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and the
afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the nature of
the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of offering some almost
unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to be celebrated, the
behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to his mother, are
touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In speaking of
education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a child must be
trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. Yet this is not very
different from saying that children must be taught through the medium of
imagination as well as reason; that their minds can only develope
gradually, and that there is much which they must learn without
understanding. This is also the substance of Plato's view, though he must
be acknowledged to have drawn the line somewhat differently from modern
ethical writers, respecting truth and falsehood. To us, economies or
accommodations would not be allowable unless they were required by the
human faculties or necessary for the communication of knowledge to the
simple and ignorant. We should insist that the word was inseparable from
the intention, and that we must not be 'falsely true,' i.e. speak or act
falsely in support of what was right or true. But Plato would limit the
use of fictions only by requiring that they should have a good moral
effect, and that such a dangerous weapon as falsehood should be employed by
the rulers alone and for great objects.

A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question whether
his religion was an historical fact. He was just beginning to be conscious
that the past had a history; but he could see nothing beyond Homer and
Hesiod. Whether their narratives were true or false did not seriously
affect the political or social life of Hellas. Men only began to suspect
that they were fictions when they recognised them to be immoral. And so in
all religions: the consideration of their morality comes first, afterwards
the truth of the documents in which they are recorded, or of the events
natural or supernatural which are told of them. But in modern times, and
in Protestant countries perhaps more than in Catholic, we have been too
much inclined to identify the historical with the moral; and some have
refused to believe in religion at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was
discernible in every part of the record. The facts of an ancient or
religious history are amongst the most important of all facts; but they are
frequently uncertain, and we only learn the true lesson which is to be
gathered from them when we place ourselves above them. These reflections
tend to show that the difference between Plato and ourselves, though not
unimportant, is not so great as might at first sight appear. For we should
agree with him in placing the moral before the historical truth of
religion; and, generally, in disregarding those errors or misstatements of
fact which necessarily occur in the early stages of all religions. We know
also that changes in the traditions of a country cannot be made in a day;
and are therefore tolerant of many things which science and criticism would
condemn.

We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mythology, said
to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before Christ
by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of Plato, and
here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was rejected by
him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men have reached
another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by fictions is in
accordance with universal experience. Great is the art of interpretation;
and by a natural process, which when once discovered was always going on,
what could not be altered was explained away. And so without any palpable
inconsistency there existed side by side two forms of religion, the
tradition inherited or invented by the poets and the customary worship of
the temple; on the other hand, there was the religion of the philosopher,
who was dwelling in the heaven of ideas, but did not therefore refuse to
offer a cock to Aesculapius, or to be seen saying his prayers at the rising
of the sun. At length the antagonism between the popular and philosophical
religion, never so great among the Greeks as in our own age, disappeared,
and was only felt like the difference between the religion of the educated
and uneducated among ourselves. The Zeus of Homer and Hesiod easily passed
into the 'royal mind' of Plato (Philebus); the giant Heracles became the
knight-errant and benefactor of mankind. These and still more wonderful
transformations were readily effected by the ingenuity of Stoics and neo-
Platonists in the two or three centuries before and after Christ. The
Greek and Roman religions were gradually permeated by the spirit of
philosophy; having lost their ancient meaning, they were resolved into
poetry and morality; and probably were never purer than at the time of
their decay, when their influence over the world was waning.

A singular conception which occurs towards the end of the book is the lie
in the soul; this is connected with the Platonic and Socratic doctrine that
involuntary ignorance is worse than voluntary. The lie in the soul is a
true lie, the corruption of the highest truth, the deception of the highest
part of the soul, from which he who is deceived has no power of delivering
himself. For example, to represent God as false or immoral, or, according
to Plato, as deluding men with appearances or as the author of evil; or
again, to affirm with Protagoras that 'knowledge is sensation,' or that
'being is becoming,' or with Thrasymachus 'that might is right,' would have
been regarded by Plato as a lie of this hateful sort. The greatest
unconsciousness of the greatest untruth, e.g. if, in the language of the
Gospels (John), 'he who was blind' were to say 'I see,' is another aspect
of the state of mind which Plato is describing. The lie in the soul may be
further compared with the sin against the Holy Ghost (Luke), allowing for
the difference between Greek and Christian modes of speaking. To this is
opposed the lie in words, which is only such a deception as may occur in a
play or poem, or allegory or figure of speech, or in any sort of
accommodation,--which though useless to the gods may be useful to men in
certain cases. Socrates is here answering the question which he had
himself raised about the propriety of deceiving a madman; and he is also
contrasting the nature of God and man. For God is Truth, but mankind can
only be true by appearing sometimes to be partial, or false. Reserving for
another place the greater questions of religion or education, we may note
further, (1) the approval of the old traditional education of Greece; (2)
the preparation which Plato is making for the attack on Homer and the
poets; (3) the preparation which he is also making for the use of economies
in the State; (4) the contemptuous and at the same time euphemistic manner
in which here as below he alludes to the 'Chronique Scandaleuse' of the
gods.

BOOK III. There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to
banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is 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, 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; 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 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.'
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;
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 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 make my meaning clear. 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: 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 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 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. 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. And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic
gentlemen offers to exhibit 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 (Laws).

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. 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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. Where gluttony and intemperance
prevail the town quickly fills 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 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.'  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. 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 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. 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; 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. 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 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, 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. 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. (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 each other as brothers and sisters. 'I do not wonder at
your being ashamed to propound such a fiction.'  There is more behind.
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; 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 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.

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 witness about ethics and
psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting to distinguish
the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the text from design;
more than once quoting or alluding to Homer inaccurately, after the manner
of the early logographers turning the Iliad into prose, 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.), 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. 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 Aeschylus 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 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.); 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 Shakespere, 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 rule 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 reason--like love in the
Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but confined to the preliminary
education, and acting through the power of habit; 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 (Rep.; Soph.). 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 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); 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 (Xen.
Mem.; and Sophist).

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 of virtue. It may
be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection is well founded. In
a remarkable passage of the Laws 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. 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 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.).

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 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 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, and then again as
a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains the
reader's interest.

(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of the
poets in Book X.

(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the
valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the
manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up into
the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius, should not
escape notice.

BOOK IV. Adeimantus said: 'Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that you
make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they are the
lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men, lands and
houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and are always
mounting guard.'  You may add, I replied, that they receive no pay but only
their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or a mistress. 'Well,
and what answer do you give?'  My answer is, that our guardians may or may
not be the happiest of men,--I should not be surprised to find in the long-
run that they were,--but this is not the aim of our constitution, which was
designed for the good of the whole and not of any one part. If I went to a
sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest
feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: 'The eye must
be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.'  'Now I can well
imagine a fool's paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking,
clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their
wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers
and all the other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. And
a State may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into
boon companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we are not
talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man is
expected to do his own work. The happiness resides not in this or that
class, but in the State as a whole. I have another remark to make:--A
middle condition is best for artisans; they should have money enough to buy
tools, and not enough to be independent of business. And will not the same
condition be best for our citizens? If they are poor, they will be mean;
if rich, luxurious and lazy; and in neither case contented. 'But then how
will our poor city be able to go to war against an enemy who has money?'
There may be a difficulty in fighting against one enemy; against two there
will be none. In the first place, the contest will be carried on by
trained warriors against well-to-do citizens: and is not a regular athlete
an easy match for two stout opponents at least? Suppose also, that before
engaging we send ambassadors to one of the two cities, saying, 'Silver and
gold we have not; do you help us and take our share of the spoil;'--who
would fight against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join with them in
preying upon the fatted sheep? 'But if many states join their resources,
shall we not be in danger?'  I am amused to hear you use the word 'state'
of any but our own State. They are 'states,' but not 'a state'--many in
one. For in every state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor,
which you may set one against the other. But our State, while she remains
true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of Hellenic
states.

To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of unity; it
must be neither too large nor too small to be one. This is a matter of
secondary importance, like the principle of transposition which was
intimated in the parable of the earthborn men. The meaning there implied
was that every man should do that for which he was fitted, and be at one
with himself, and then the whole city would be united. But all these
things are secondary, if education, which is the great matter, be duly
regarded. When the wheel has once been set in motion, the speed is always
increasing; and each generation improves upon the preceding, both in
physical and moral qualities. The care of the governors should be directed
to preserve music and gymnastic from innovation; alter the songs of a
country, Damon says, and you will soon end by altering its laws. The
change appears innocent at first, and begins in play; but the evil soon
becomes serious, working secretly upon the characters of individuals, then
upon social and commercial relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a
state; and there is ruin and confusion everywhere. But if education
remains in the established form, there will be no danger. A restorative
process will be always going on; the spirit of law and order will raise up
what has fallen down. Nor will any regulations be needed for the lesser
matters of life--rules of deportment or fashions of dress. Like invites
like for good or for evil. Education will correct deficiencies and supply
the power of self-government. Far be it from us to enter into the
particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education, and
education will take care of all other things.

But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will
make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by
some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of living.
If you tell such persons that they must first alter their habits, then they
grow angry; they are charming people. 'Charming,--nay, the very reverse.'
Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good graces, nor the state which
is like them. And such states there are which first ordain under penalty
of death that no one shall alter the constitution, and then suffer
themselves to be flattered into and out of anything; and he who indulges
them and fawns upon them, is their leader and saviour. 'Yes, the men are
as bad as the states.'  But do you not admire their cleverness? 'Nay, some
of them are stupid enough to believe what the people tell them.'  And when
all the world is telling a man that he is six feet high, and he has no
measure, how can he believe anything else? But don't get into a passion:
to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut
off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play.
Minute enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad
ones.

And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to
Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all
things--that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon
the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any
sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No foreign god shall be supreme in
our realms...

Here, as Socrates would say, let us 'reflect on' (Greek) what has preceded:
thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens, but only of
the well-being of the State. They may be the happiest of men, but our
principal aim in founding the State was not to make them happy. They were
to be guardians, not holiday-makers. In this pleasant manner is presented
to us the famous question both of ancient and modern philosophy, touching
the relation of duty to happiness, of right to utility.

First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas. The
utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of error, and shows to us
a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. It may be admitted further
that right and utility are co-extensive, and that he who makes the
happiness of mankind his object has one of the highest and noblest motives
of human action. But utility is not the historical basis of morality; nor
the aspect in which moral and religious ideas commonly occur to the mind.
The greatest happiness of all is, as we believe, the far-off result of the
divine government of the universe. The greatest happiness of the
individual is certainly to be found in a life of virtue and goodness. But
we seem to be more assured of a law of right than we can be of a divine
purpose, that 'all mankind should be saved;' and we infer the one from the
other. And the greatest happiness of the individual may be the reverse of
the greatest happiness in the ordinary sense of the term, and may be
realised in a life of pain, or in a voluntary death. Further, the word
'happiness' has several ambiguities; it may mean either pleasure or an
ideal life, happiness subjective or objective, in this world or in another,
of ourselves only or of our neighbours and of all men everywhere. By the
modern founder of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested
motives of action are included under the same term, although they are
commonly opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. The word happiness
has not the definiteness or the sacredness of 'truth' and 'right'; it does
not equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the
conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the comforts and
conveniences of life; too little with 'the goods of the soul which we
desire for their own sake.'  In a great trial, or danger, or temptation, or
in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely thought of. For these
reasons 'the greatest happiness' principle is not the true foundation of
ethics. But though not the first principle, it is the second, which is
like unto it, and is often of easier application. For the larger part of
human actions are neither right nor wrong, except in so far as they tend to
the happiness of mankind (Introd. to Gorgias and Philebus).

The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or expedient
seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater authority. For
concerning political measures, we chiefly ask: How will they affect the
happiness of mankind? Yet here too we may observe that what we term
expediency is merely the law of right limited by the conditions of human
society. Right and truth are the highest aims of government as well as of
individuals; and we ought not to lose sight of them because we cannot
directly enforce them. They appeal to the better mind of nations; and
sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests to resist. They
are the watchwords which all men use in matters of public policy, as well
as in their private dealings; the peace of Europe may be said to depend
upon them. In the most commercial and utilitarian states of society the
power of ideas remains. And all the higher class of statesmen have in them
something of that idealism which Pericles is said to have gathered from the
teaching of Anaxagoras. They recognise that the true leader of men must be
above the motives of ambition, and that national character is of greater
value than material comfort and prosperity. And this is the order of
thought in Plato; first, he expects his citizens to do their duty, and then
under favourable circumstances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State,
their happiness is assured. That he was far from excluding the modern
principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other
passages; in which 'the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most
honourable', and also 'the most sacred'.

We may note

(1) The manner in which the objection of Adeimantus here, is designed to
draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates.

(2) The conception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of politics
and of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of criticism, which,
under the various names of harmony, symmetry, measure, proportion, unity,
the Greek seems to have applied to works of art.

(3) The requirement that the State should be limited in size, after the
traditional model of a Greek state; as in the Politics of Aristotle, the
fact that the cities of Hellas were small is converted into a principle.

(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the
light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the
'charming' patients who are always making themselves worse; or again, the
playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave irony
with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six feet high
because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is to be pardoned
for his ignorance--he is too amusing for us to be seriously angry with him.

(5) The light and superficial manner in which religion is passed over when
provision has been made for two great principles,--first, that religion
shall be based on the highest conception of the gods, secondly, that the
true national or Hellenic type shall be maintained...

Socrates proceeds: But where amid all this is justice? Son of Ariston,
tell me where. Light a candle and search the city, and get your brother
and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her. 'That won't do,'
replied Glaucon, 'you yourself promised to make the search and talked about
the impiety of deserting justice.'  Well, I said, I will lead the way, but
do you follow. My notion is, that our State being perfect will contain all
the four virtues--wisdom, courage, temperance, justice. If we eliminate
the three first, the unknown remainder will be justice.

First then, of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will be
wise because politic. And policy is one among many kinds of skill,--not
the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of the
husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of the
whole State. Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are a small
class in number, far smaller than the blacksmiths; but in them is
concentrated the wisdom of the State. And if this small ruling class have
wisdom, then the whole State will be wise.

Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in
another class--that of soldiers. Courage may be defined as a sort of
salvation--the never-failing salvation of the opinions which law and
education have prescribed concerning dangers. You know the way in which
dyers first prepare the white ground and then lay on the dye of purple or
of any other colour. Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no soap or
lye will ever wash them out. Now the ground is education, and the laws are
the colours; and if the ground is properly laid, neither the soap of
pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever wash them out. This power
which preserves right opinion about danger I would ask you to call
'courage,' adding the epithet 'political' or 'civilized' in order to
distinguish it from mere animal courage and from a higher courage which may
hereafter be discussed.

Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. More than the preceding
virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. Some light is thrown upon
the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as 'master of
himself'--which has an absurd sound, because the master is also the
servant. The expression really means that the better principle in a man
masters the worse. There are in cities whole classes--women, slaves and
the like--who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the better; and in
our State the former class are held under control by the latter. Now to
which of these classes does temperance belong? 'To both of them.'  And our
State if any will be the abode of temperance; and we were right in
describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused through the whole,
making the dwellers in the city to be of one mind, and attuning the upper
and middle and lower classes like the strings of an instrument, whether you
suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength or wealth.

And now we are near the spot; let us draw in and surround the cover and
watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away and escape. Tell
me, if you see the thicket move first. 'Nay, I would have you lead.'  Well
then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult; but we
must push on. I begin to see a track. 'Good news.'  Why, Glaucon, our
dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our eyes into
the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as bad as people
looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have you forgotten our
old principle of the division of labour, or of every man doing his own
business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation of the State--what
but this was justice? Is there any other virtue remaining which can
compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in the scale of political
virtue? For 'every one having his own' is the great object of government;
and the great object of trade is that every man should do his own business.
Not that there is much harm in a carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a
cobbler transforming himself into a carpenter; but great evil may arise
from the cobbler leaving his last and turning into a guardian or
legislator, or when a single individual is trainer, warrior, legislator,
all in one. And this evil is injustice, or every man doing another's
business. I do not say that as yet we are in a condition to arrive at a
final conclusion. For the definition which we believe to hold good in
states has still to be tested by the individual. Having read the large
letters we will now come back to the small. From the two together a
brilliant light may be struck out...

Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of
residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the three
parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State, although the
third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony than the first two.
If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be sought for in the relation of
the three parts in the soul or classes in the State to one another. It is
obvious and simple, and for that very reason has not been found out. The
modern logician will be inclined to object that ideas cannot be separated
like chemical substances, but that they run into one another and may be
only different aspects or names of the same thing, and such in this
instance appears to be the case. For the definition here given of justice
is verbally the same as one of the definitions of temperance given by
Socrates in the Charmides, which however is only provisional, and is
afterwards rejected. And so far from justice remaining over when the other
virtues are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with
difficulty be distinguished. Temperance appears to be the virtue of a part
only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of the whole
soul. Yet on the other hand temperance is also described as a sort of
harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. Justice seems to differ
from temperance in degree rather than in kind; whereas temperance is the
harmony of discordant elements, justice is the perfect order by which all
natures and classes do their own business, the right man in the right
place, the division and co-operation of all the citizens. Justice, again,
is a more abstract notion than the other virtues, and therefore, from
Plato's point of view, the foundation of them, to which they are referred
and which in idea precedes them. The proposal to omit temperance is a mere
trick of style intended to avoid monotony.

There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier Dialogues of
Plato (Protagoras; Arist. Nic. Ethics), 'Whether the virtues are one or
many?'  This receives an answer which is to the effect that there are four
cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in ethical
philosophy), and one supreme over the rest, which is not like Aristotle's
conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others, but the whole
of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal conception of justice
or order in the first education and in the moral nature of man, the still
more universal conception of the good in the second education and in the
sphere of speculative knowledge seems to succeed. Both might be equally
described by the terms 'law,' 'order,' 'harmony;' but while the idea of
good embraces 'all time and all existence,' the conception of justice is
not extended beyond man.

...Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. But
first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul. His
argument is as follows:--Quantity makes no difference in quality. The word
'just,' whether applied to the individual or to the State, has the same
meaning. And the term 'justice' implied that the same three principles in
the State and in the individual were doing their own business. But are
they really three or one? The question is difficult, and one which can
hardly be solved by the methods which we are now using; but the truer and
longer way would take up too much of our time. 'The shorter will satisfy
me.'  Well then, you would admit that the qualities of states mean the
qualities of the individuals who compose them? The Scythians and Thracians
are passionate, our own race intellectual, and the Egyptians and
Phoenicians covetous, because the individual members of each have such and
such a character; the difficulty is to determine whether the several
principles are one or three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one
part of our nature, desire with another, are angry with another, or whether
the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry,
however, requires a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the
same relation cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no
impossibility in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top
which is fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no
necessity to mention all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally
assume that opposites cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same
relation. And to the class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire
and avoidance. And one form of desire is thirst and hunger: and here
arises a new point--thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food;
not of warm drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single
exception of course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies
that it is good. When relative terms have no attributes, their
correlatives have no attributes; when they have attributes, their
correlatives also have them. For example, the term 'greater' is simply
relative to 'less,' and knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge. But on
the other hand, a particular knowledge is of a particular subject. Again,
every science has a distinct character, which is defined by an object;
medicine, for example, is the science of health, although not to be
confounded with health. Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us return
to the original instance of thirst, which has a definite object--drink.
Now the thirsty soul may feel two distinct impulses; the animal one saying
'Drink;' the rational one, which says 'Do not drink.'  The two impulses are
contradictory; and therefore we may assume that they spring from distinct
principles in the soul. But is passion a third principle, or akin to
desire? There is a story of a certain Leontius which throws some light on
this question. He was coming up from the Piraeus outside the north wall,
and he passed a spot where there were dead bodies lying by the executioner.
He felt a longing desire to see them and also an abhorrence of them; at
first he turned away and shut his eyes, then, suddenly tearing them open,
he said,--'Take your fill, ye wretches, of the fair sight.'  Now is there
not here a third principle which is often found to come to the assistance
of reason against desire, but never of desire against reason? This is
passion or spirit, of the separate existence of which we may further
convince ourselves by putting the following case:--When a man suffers
justly, if he be of a generous nature he is not indignant at the hardships
which he undergoes: but when he suffers unjustly, his indignation is his
great support; hunger and thirst cannot tame him; the spirit within him
must do or die, until the voice of the shepherd, that is, of reason,
bidding his dog bark no more, is heard within. This shows that passion is
the ally of reason. Is passion then the same with reason? No, for the
former exists in children and brutes; and Homer affords a proof of the
distinction between them when he says, 'He smote his breast, and thus
rebuked his soul.'

And now, at last, we have reached firm ground, and are able to infer that
the virtues of the State and of the individual are the same. For wisdom
and courage and justice in the State are severally the wisdom and courage
and justice in the individuals who form the State. Each of the three
classes will do the work of its own class in the State, and each part in
the individual soul; reason, the superior, and passion, the inferior, will
be harmonized by the influence of music and gymnastic. The counsellor and
the warrior, the head and the arm, will act together in the town of
Mansoul, and keep the desires in proper subjection. The courage of the
warrior is that quality which preserves a right opinion about dangers in
spite of pleasures and pains. The wisdom of the counsellor is that small
part of the soul which has authority and reason. The virtue of temperance
is the friendship of the ruling and the subject principles, both in the
State and in the individual. Of justice we have already spoken; and the
notion already given of it may be confirmed by common instances. Will the
just state or the just individual steal, lie, commit adultery, or be guilty
of impiety to gods and men? 'No.'  And is not the reason of this that the
several principles, whether in the state or in the individual, do their own
business? And justice is the quality which makes just men and just states.
Moreover, our old division of labour, which required that there should be
one man for one use, was a dream or anticipation of what was to follow; and
that dream has now been realized in justice, which begins by binding
together the three chords of the soul, and then acts harmoniously in every
relation of life. And injustice, which is the insubordination and
disobedience of the inferior elements in the soul, is the opposite of
justice, and is inharmonious and unnatural, being to the soul what disease
is to the body; for in the soul as well as in the body, good or bad actions
produce good or bad habits. And virtue is the health and beauty and well-
being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of
the soul.

Again the old question returns upon us: Is justice or injustice the more
profitable? The question has become ridiculous. For injustice, like
mortal disease, makes life not worth having. Come up with me to the hill
which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of virtue, and
the infinite forms of vice, among which are four special ones,
characteristic both of states and of individuals. And the state which
corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have been
describing, wherein reason rules under one of two names--monarchy and
aristocracy. Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and of
souls...

In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties, Plato
takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. And the
criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the faculties.
The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. But the path of
early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he will not proceed a
step without first clearing the ground. This leads him into a tiresome
digression, which is intended to explain the nature of contradiction.
First, the contradiction must be at the same time and in the same relation.
Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced into either of the terms in
which the contradictory proposition is expressed: for example, thirst is
of drink, not of warm drink. He implies, what he does not say, that if, by
the advice of reason, or by the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from
drinking, this proves that thirst, or desire under which thirst is
included, is distinct from anger and reason. But suppose that we allow the
term 'thirst' or 'desire' to be modified, and say an 'angry thirst,' or a
'revengeful desire,' then the two spheres of desire and anger overlap and
become confused. This case therefore has to be excluded. And still there
remains an exception to the rule in the use of the term 'good,' which is
always implied in the object of desire. These are the discussions of an
age before logic; and any one who is wearied by them should remember that
they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in the first development of
the human faculties.

The psychology of Plato extends no further than the division of the soul
into the rational, irascible, and concupiscent elements, which, as far as
we know, was first made by him, and has been retained by Aristotle and
succeeding ethical writers. The chief difficulty in this early analysis of
the mind is to define exactly the place of the irascible faculty (Greek),
which may be variously described under the terms righteous indignation,
spirit, passion. It is the foundation of courage, which includes in Plato
moral courage, the courage of enduring pain, and of surmounting
intellectual difficulties, as well as of meeting dangers in war. Though
irrational, it inclines to side with the rational: it cannot be aroused by
punishment when justly inflicted: it sometimes takes the form of an
enthusiasm which sustains a man in the performance of great actions. It is
the 'lion heart' with which the reason makes a treaty. On the other hand
it is negative rather than positive; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood,
but does not, like Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the vision
of Truth or Good. It is the peremptory military spirit which prevails in
the government of honour. It differs from anger (Greek), this latter term
having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. Although Aristotle
has retained the word, yet we may observe that 'passion' (Greek) has with
him lost its affinity to the rational and has become indistinguishable from
'anger' (Greek). And to this vernacular use Plato himself in the Laws
seems to revert, though not always. By modern philosophy too, as well as
in our ordinary conversation, the words anger or passion are employed
almost exclusively in a bad sense; there is no connotation of a just or
reasonable cause by which they are aroused. The feeling of 'righteous
indignation' is too partial and accidental to admit of our regarding it as
a separate virtue or habit. We are tempted also to doubt whether Plato is
right in supposing that an offender, however justly condemned, could be
expected to acknowledge the justice of his sentence; this is the spirit of
a philosopher or martyr rather than of a criminal.

We may observe how nearly Plato approaches Aristotle's famous thesis, that
'good actions produce good habits.'  The words 'as healthy practices
(Greek) produce health, so do just practices produce justice,' have a sound
very like the Nicomachean Ethics. But we note also that an incidental
remark in Plato has become a far-reaching principle in Aristotle, and an
inseparable part of a great Ethical system.

There is a difficulty in understanding what Plato meant by 'the longer
way': he seems to intimate some metaphysic of the future which will not be
satisfied with arguing from the principle of contradiction. In the sixth
and seventh books (compare Sophist and Parmenides) he has given us a sketch
of such a metaphysic; but when Glaucon asks for the final revelation of the
idea of good, he is put off with the declaration that he has not yet
studied the preliminary sciences. How he would have filled up the sketch,
or argued about such questions from a higher point of view, we can only
conjecture. Perhaps he hoped to find some a priori method of developing
the parts out of the whole; or he might have asked which of the ideas
contains the other ideas, and possibly have stumbled on the Hegelian
identity of the 'ego' and the 'universal.'  Or he may have imagined that
ideas might be constructed in some manner analogous to the construction of
figures and numbers in the mathematical sciences. The most certain and
necessary truth was to Plato the universal; and to this he was always
seeking to refer all knowledge or opinion, just as in modern times we seek
to rest them on the opposite pole of induction and experience. The
aspirations of metaphysicians have always tended to pass beyond the limits
of human thought and language: they seem to have reached a height at which
they are 'moving about in worlds unrealized,' and their conceptions,
although profoundly affecting their own minds, become invisible or
unintelligible to others. We are not therefore surprized to find that
Plato himself has nowhere clearly explained his doctrine of ideas; or that
his school in a later generation, like his contemporaries Glaucon and
Adeimantus, were unable to follow him in this region of speculation. In
the Sophist, where he is refuting the scepticism which maintained either
that there was no such thing as predication, or that all might be
predicated of all, he arrives at the conclusion that some ideas combine
with some, but not all with all. But he makes only one or two steps
forward on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected system of ideas,
or even to a knowledge of the most elementary relations of the sciences to
one another.

BOOK V. 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
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.'  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. 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. 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 person, and now they laugh no more. Evil only should be
the subject of ridicule.

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.

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. 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, 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 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.
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. 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, 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. Hymeneal festivals
will be celebrated at times fixed with an eye to population, and the brides
and bridegrooms will 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, 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, 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 State,
like an individual, is injured as a whole when any part is affected. 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. 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? 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. Nor has the happiness of the individual been sacrificed to the
happiness of the State; 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 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, 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. 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. 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--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; 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, 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. 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; 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
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,
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.'  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, 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; 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 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, 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. 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, 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...

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, 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 hesitation with which he proposes the
solemn text, 'Until kings are philosophers,' etc.; 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 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.
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 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; 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) 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.

BOOK VI. Having determined that the many have no knowledge of true being,
and have no clear patterns in their minds of justice, beauty, truth, and
that philosophers have such patterns, we have now to ask whether they or
the many shall be rulers in our State. But who can doubt that philosophers
should be chosen, if they have the other qualities which are required in a
ruler? For they are lovers of the knowledge of the eternal and of all
truth; they are haters of falsehood; their meaner desires are absorbed in
the interests of knowledge; they are spectators of all time and all
existence; and in the magnificence of their contemplation the life of man
is as nothing to them, nor is death fearful. Also they are of a social,
gracious disposition, equally free from cowardice and arrogance. They
learn and remember easily; they have harmonious, well-regulated minds;
truth flows to them sweetly by nature. Can the god of Jealousy himself
find any fault with such an assemblage of good qualities?

Here Adeimantus interposes:--'No man can answer you, Socrates; but every
man feels that this is owing to his own deficiency in argument. He is
driven from one position to another, until he has nothing more to say, just
as an unskilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by a more
skilled opponent. And yet all the time he may be right. He may know, in
this very instance, that those who make philosophy the business of their
lives, generally turn out rogues if they are bad men, and fools if they are
good. What do you say?'  I should say that he is quite right. 'Then how
is such an admission reconcileable with the doctrine that philosophers
should be kings?'

I shall answer you in a parable which will also let you see how poor a hand
I am at the invention of allegories. The relation of good men to their
governments is so peculiar, that in order to defend them I must take an
illustration from the world of fiction. Conceive the captain of a ship,
taller by a head and shoulders than any of the crew, yet a little deaf, a
little blind, and rather ignorant of the seaman's art. The sailors want to
steer, although they know nothing of the art; and they have a theory that
it cannot be learned. If the helm is refused them, they drug the captain's
posset, bind him hand and foot, and take possession of the ship. He who
joins in the mutiny is termed a good pilot and what not; they have no
conception that the true pilot must observe the winds and the stars, and
must be their master, whether they like it or not;--such an one would be
called by them fool, prater, star-gazer. This is my parable; which I will
beg you to interpret for me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher
has such an evil name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who
will not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher should
not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. The wise man should
not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or
poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him. Now
the pilot is the philosopher--he whom in the parable they call star-gazer,
and the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians by whom he is rendered
useless. Not that these are the worst enemies of philosophy, who is far
more dishonoured by her own professing sons when they are corrupted by the
world. Need I recall the original image of the philosopher? Did we not
say of him just now, that he loved truth and hated falsehood, and that he
could not rest in the multiplicity of phenomena, but was led by a sympathy
in his own nature to the contemplation of the absolute? All the virtues as
well as truth, who is the leader of them, took up their abode in his soul.
But as you were observing, if we turn aside to view the reality, we see
that the persons who were thus described, with the exception of a small and
useless class, are utter rogues.

The point which has to be considered, is the origin of this corruption in
nature. Every one will admit that the philosopher, in our description of
him, is a rare being. But what numberless causes tend to destroy these
rare beings! There is no good thing which may not be a cause of evil--
health, wealth, strength, rank, and the virtues themselves, when placed
under unfavourable circumstances. For as in the animal or vegetable world
the strongest seeds most need the accompaniment of good air and soil, so
the best of human characters turn out the worst when they fall upon an
unsuitable soil; whereas weak natures hardly ever do any considerable good
or harm; they are not the stuff out of which either great criminals or
great heroes are made. The philosopher follows the same analogy: he is
either the best or the worst of all men. Some persons say that the
Sophists are the corrupters of youth; but is not public opinion the real
Sophist who is everywhere present--in those very persons, in the assembly,
in the courts, in the camp, in the applauses and hisses of the theatre re-
echoed by the surrounding hills? Will not a young man's heart leap amid
these discordant sounds? and will any education save him from being carried
away by the torrent? Nor is this all. For if he will not yield to
opinion, there follows the gentle compulsion of exile or death. What
principle of rival Sophists or anybody else can overcome in such an unequal
contest? Characters there may be more than human, who are exceptions--God
may save a man, but not his own strength. Further, I would have you
consider that the hireling Sophist only gives back to the world their own
opinions; he is the keeper of the monster, who knows how to flatter or
anger him, and observes the meaning of his inarticulate grunts. Good is
what pleases him, evil what he dislikes; truth and beauty are determined
only by the taste of the brute. Such is the Sophist's wisdom, and such is
the condition of those who make public opinion the test of truth, whether
in art or in morals. The curse is laid upon them of being and doing what
it approves, and when they attempt first principles the failure is
ludicrous. Think of all this and ask yourself whether the world is more
likely to be a believer in the unity of the idea, or in the multiplicity of
phenomena. And the world if not a believer in the idea cannot be a
philosopher, and must therefore be a persecutor of philosophers. There is
another evil:--the world does not like to lose the gifted nature, and so
they flatter the young (Alcibiades) into a magnificent opinion of his own
capacity; the tall, proper youth begins to expand, and is dreaming of
kingdoms and empires. If at this instant a friend whispers to him, 'Now
the gods lighten thee; thou art a great fool' and must be educated--do you
think that he will listen? Or suppose a better sort of man who is
attracted towards philosophy, will they not make Herculean efforts to spoil
and corrupt him? Are we not right in saying that the love of knowledge, no
less than riches, may divert him? Men of this class (Critias) often become
politicians--they are the authors of great mischief in states, and
sometimes also of great good. And thus philosophy is deserted by her
natural protectors, and others enter in and dishonour her. Vulgar little
minds see the land open and rush from the prisons of the arts into her
temple. A clever mechanic having a soul coarse as his body, thinks that he
will gain caste by becoming her suitor. For philosophy, even in her fallen
estate, has a dignity of her own--and he, like a bald little blacksmith's
apprentice as he is, having made some money and got out of durance, washes
and dresses himself as a bridegroom and marries his master's daughter.
What will be the issue of such marriages? Will they not be vile and
bastard, devoid of truth and nature? 'They will.'  Small, then, is the
remnant of genuine philosophers; there may be a few who are citizens of
small states, in which politics are not worth thinking of, or who have been
detained by Theages' bridle of ill health; for my own case of the oracular
sign is almost unique, and too rare to be worth mentioning. And these few
when they have tasted the pleasures of philosophy, and have taken a look at
that den of thieves and place of wild beasts, which is human life, will
stand aside from the storm under the shelter of a wall, and try to preserve
their own innocence and to depart in peace. 'A great work, too, will have
been accomplished by them.'  Great, yes, but not the greatest; for man is a
social being, and can only attain his highest development in the society
which is best suited to him.

Enough, then, of the causes why philosophy has such an evil name. Another
question is, Which of existing states is suited to her? Not one of them;
at present she is like some exotic seed which degenerates in a strange
soil; only in her proper state will she be shown to be of heavenly growth.
'And is her proper state ours or some other?'  Ours in all points but one,
which was left undetermined. You may remember our saying that some living
mind or witness of the legislator was needed in states. But we were afraid
to enter upon a subject of such difficulty, and now the question recurs and
has not grown easier:--How may philosophy be safely studied? Let us bring
her into the light of day, and make an end of the inquiry.

In the first place, I say boldly that nothing can be worse than the present
mode of study. Persons usually pick up a little philosophy in early youth,
and in the intervals of business, but they never master the real
difficulty, which is dialectic. Later, perhaps, they occasionally go to a
lecture on philosophy. Years advance, and the sun of philosophy, unlike
that of Heracleitus, sets never to rise again. This order of education
should be reversed; it should begin with gymnastics in youth, and as the
man strengthens, he should increase the gymnastics of his soul. Then, when
active life is over, let him finally return to philosophy. 'You are in
earnest, Socrates, but the world will be equally earnest in withstanding
you--no more than Thrasymachus.'  Do not make a quarrel between
Thrasymachus and me, who were never enemies and are now good friends
enough. And I shall do my best to convince him and all mankind of the
truth of my words, or at any rate to prepare for the future when, in
another life, we may again take part in similar discussions. 'That will be
a long time hence.'  Not long in comparison with eternity. The many will
probably remain incredulous, for they have never seen the natural unity of
ideas, but only artificial juxtapositions; not free and generous thoughts,
but tricks of controversy and quips of law;--a perfect man ruling in a
perfect state, even a single one they have not known. And we foresaw that
there was no chance of perfection either in states or individuals until a
necessity was laid upon philosophers--not the rogues, but those whom we
called the useless class--of holding office; or until the sons of kings
were inspired with a true love of philosophy. Whether in the infinity of
past time there has been, or is in some distant land, or ever will be
hereafter, an ideal such as we have described, we stoutly maintain that
there has been, is, and will be such a state whenever the Muse of
philosophy rules. Will you say that the world is of another mind? O, my
friend, do not revile the world! They will soon change their opinion if
they are gently entreated, and are taught the true nature of the
philosopher. Who can hate a man who loves him? Or be jealous of one who
has no jealousy? Consider, again, that the many hate not the true but the
false philosophers--the pretenders who force their way in without
invitation, and are always speaking of persons and not of principles, which
is unlike the spirit of philosophy. For the true philosopher despises
earthly strife; his eye is fixed on the eternal order in accordance with
which he moulds himself into the Divine image (and not himself only, but
other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as public.
When mankind see that the happiness of states is only to be found in that
image, will they be angry with us for attempting to delineate it?
'Certainly not. But what will be the process of delineation?'  The artist
will do nothing until he has made a tabula rasa; on this he will inscribe
the constitution of a state, glancing often at the divine truth of nature,
and from that deriving the godlike among men, mingling the two elements,
rubbing out and painting in, until there is a perfect harmony or fusion of
the divine and human. But perhaps the world will doubt the existence of
such an artist. What will they doubt? That the philosopher is a lover of
truth, having a nature akin to the best?--and if they admit this will they
still quarrel with us for making philosophers our kings? 'They will be
less disposed to quarrel.'  Let us assume then that they are pacified.
Still, a person may hesitate about the probability of the son of a king
being a philosopher. And we do not deny that they are very liable to be
corrupted; but yet surely in the course of ages there might be one
exception--and one is enough. If one son of a king were a philosopher, and
had obedient citizens, he might bring the ideal polity into being. Hence
we conclude that our laws are not only the best, but that they are also
possible, though not free from difficulty.

I gained nothing by evading the troublesome questions which arose
concerning women and children. I will be wiser now and acknowledge that we
must go to the bottom of another question: What is to be the education of
our guardians? It was agreed that they were to be lovers of their country,
and were to be tested in the refiner's fire of pleasures and pains, and
those who came forth pure and remained fixed in their principles were to
have honours and rewards in life and after death. But at this point, the
argument put on her veil and turned into another path. I hesitated to make
the assertion which I now hazard,--that our guardians must be philosophers.
You remember all the contradictory elements, which met in the philosopher--
how difficult to find them all in a single person! Intelligence and spirit
are not often combined with steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is
averse to intellectual toil. And yet these opposite elements are all
necessary, and therefore, as we were saying before, the aspirant must be
tested in pleasures and dangers; and also, as we must now further add, in
the highest branches of knowledge. You will remember, that when we spoke
of the virtues mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied
to leave unexplored. 'Enough seemed to have been said.'  Enough, my
friend; but what is enough while anything remains wanting? Of all men the
guardian must not faint in the search after truth; he must be prepared to
take the longer road, or he will never reach that higher region which is
above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must not only get an
outline, but a clear and distinct vision. (Strange that we should be so
precise about trifles, so careless about the highest truths!)  'And what
are the highest?'  You to pretend unconsciousness, when you have so often
heard me speak of the idea of good, about which we know so little, and
without which though a man gain the world he has no profit of it! Some
people imagine that the good is wisdom; but this involves a circle,--the
good, they say, is wisdom, wisdom has to do with the good. According to
others the good is pleasure; but then comes the absurdity that good is bad,
for there are bad pleasures as well as good. Again, the good must have
reality; a man may desire the appearance of virtue, but he will not desire
the appearance of good. Ought our guardians then to be ignorant of this
supreme principle, of which every man has a presentiment, and without which
no man has any real knowledge of anything? 'But, Socrates, what is this
supreme principle, knowledge or pleasure, or what? You may think me
troublesome, but I say that you have no business to be always repeating the
doctrines of others instead of giving us your own.'  Can I say what I do
not know? 'You may offer an opinion.'  And will the blindness and
crookedness of opinion content you when you might have the light and
certainty of science? 'I will only ask you to give such an explanation of
the good as you have given already of temperance and justice.'  I wish that
I could, but in my present mood I cannot reach to the height of the
knowledge of the good. To the parent or principal I cannot introduce you,
but to the child begotten in his image, which I may compare with the
interest on the principal, I will. (Audit the account, and do not let me
give you a false statement of the debt.)  You remember our old distinction
of the many beautiful and the one beautiful, the particular and the
universal, the objects of sight and the objects of thought? Did you ever
consider that the objects of sight imply a faculty of sight which is the
most complex and costly of our senses, requiring not only objects of sense,
but also a medium, which is light; without which the sight will not
distinguish between colours and all will be a blank? For light is the
noble bond between the perceiving faculty and the thing perceived, and the
god who gives us light is the sun, who is the eye of the day, but is not to
be confounded with the eye of man. This eye of the day or sun is what I
call the child of the good, standing in the same relation to the visible
world as the good to the intellectual. When the sun shines the eye sees,
and in the intellectual world where truth is, there is sight and light.
Now that which is the sun of intelligent natures, is the idea of good, the
cause of knowledge and truth, yet other and fairer than they are, and
standing in the same relation to them in which the sun stands to light. O
inconceivable height of beauty, which is above knowledge and above truth!
('You cannot surely mean pleasure,' he said. Peace, I replied.)  And this
idea of good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth, and the author not
of knowledge only, but of being, yet greater far than either in dignity and
power. 'That is a reach of thought more than human; but, pray, go on with
the image, for I suspect that there is more behind.'  There is, I said; and
bearing in mind our two suns or principles, imagine further their
corresponding worlds--one of the visible, the other of the intelligible;
you may assist your fancy by figuring the distinction under the image of a
line divided into two unequal parts, and may again subdivide each part into
two lesser segments representative of the stages of knowledge in either
sphere. The lower portion of the lower or visible sphere will consist of
shadows and reflections, and its upper and smaller portion will contain
real objects in the world of nature or of art. The sphere of the
intelligible will also have two divisions,--one of mathematics, in which
there is no ascent but all is descent; no inquiring into premises, but only
drawing of inferences. In this division the mind works with figures and
numbers, the images of which are taken not from the shadows, but from the
objects, although the truth of them is seen only with the mind's eye; and
they are used as hypotheses without being analysed. Whereas in the other
division reason uses the hypotheses as stages or steps in the ascent to the
idea of good, to which she fastens them, and then again descends, walking
firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as
descent, and finally resting in them. 'I partly understand,' he replied;
'you mean that the ideas of science are superior to the hypothetical,
metaphorical conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences,
whichever is to be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse
to make subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle,
although when resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher
sphere.'  You understand me very well, I said. And now to those four
divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding faculties--pure
intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second; to
the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of shadows--and the
clearness of the several faculties will be in the same ratio as the truth
of the objects to which they are related...

Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philosopher. In
language which seems to reach beyond the horizon of that age and country,
he is described as 'the spectator of all time and all existence.'  He has
the noblest gifts of nature, and makes the highest use of them. All his
desires are absorbed in the love of wisdom, which is the love of truth.
None of the graces of a beautiful soul are wanting in him; neither can he
fear death, or think much of human life. The ideal of modern times hardly
retains the simplicity of the antique; there is not the same originality
either in truth or error which characterized the Greeks. The philosopher
is no longer living in the unseen, nor is he sent by an oracle to convince
mankind of ignorance; nor does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas
leading upwards by regular stages to the idea of good. The eagerness of
the pursuit has abated; there is more division of labour and less of
comprehensive reflection upon nature and human life as a whole; more of
exact observation and less of anticipation and inspiration. Still, in the
altered conditions of knowledge, the parallel is not wholly lost; and there
may be a use in translating the conception of Plato into the language of
our own age. The philosopher in modern times is one who fixes his mind on
the laws of nature in their sequence and connexion, not on fragments or
pictures of nature; on history, not on controversy; on the truths which are
acknowledged by the few, not on the opinions of the many. He is aware of
the importance of 'classifying according to nature,' and will try to
'separate the limbs of science without breaking them' (Phaedr.). There is
no part of truth, whether great or small, which he will dishonour; and in
the least things he will discern the greatest (Parmen.). Like the ancient
philosopher he sees the world pervaded by analogies, but he can also tell
'why in some cases a single instance is sufficient for an induction'
(Mill's Logic), while in other cases a thousand examples would prove
nothing. He inquires into a portion of knowledge only, because the whole
has grown too vast to be embraced by a single mind or life. He has a
clearer conception of the divisions of science and of their relation to the
mind of man than was possible to the ancients. Like Plato, he has a vision
of the unity of knowledge, not as the beginning of philosophy to be
attained by a study of elementary mathematics, but as the far-off result of
the working of many minds in many ages. He is aware that mathematical
studies are preliminary to almost every other; at the same time, he will
not reduce all varieties of knowledge to the type of mathematics. He too
must have a nobility of character, without which genius loses the better
half of greatness. Regarding the world as a point in immensity, and each
individual as a link in a never-ending chain of existence, he will not
think much of his own life, or be greatly afraid of death.

Adeimantus objects first of all to the form of the Socratic reasoning, thus
showing that Plato is aware of the imperfection of his own method. He
brings the accusation against himself which might be brought against him by
a modern logician--that he extracts the answer because he knows how to put
the question. In a long argument words are apt to change their meaning
slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions inferred with rather
too much certainty or universality; the variation at each step may be
unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes considerable. Hence the
failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or algebraic formulae to logic.
The imperfection, or rather the higher and more elastic nature of language,
does not allow words to have the precision of numbers or of symbols. And
this quality in language impairs the force of an argument which has many
steps.

The objection, though fairly met by Socrates in this particular instance,
may be regarded as implying a reflection upon the Socratic mode of
reasoning. And here, as elsewhere, Plato seems to intimate that the time
had come when the negative and interrogative method of Socrates must be
superseded by a positive and constructive one, of which examples are given
in some of the later dialogues. Adeimantus further argues that the ideal
is wholly at variance with facts; for experience proves philosophers to be
either useless or rogues. Contrary to all expectation Socrates has no
hesitation in admitting the truth of this, and explains the anomaly in an
allegory, first characteristically depreciating his own inventive powers.
In this allegory the people are distinguished from the professional
politicians, and, as elsewhere, are spoken of in a tone of pity rather than
of censure under the image of 'the noble captain who is not very quick in
his perceptions.'

The uselessness of philosophers is explained by the circumstance that
mankind will not use them. The world in all ages has been divided between
contempt and fear of those who employ the power of ideas and know no other
weapons. Concerning the false philosopher, Socrates argues that the best
is most liable to corruption; and that the finer nature is more likely to
suffer from alien conditions. We too observe that there are some kinds of
excellence which spring from a peculiar delicacy of constitution; as is
evidently true of the poetical and imaginative temperament, which often
seems to depend on impressions, and hence can only breathe or live in a
certain atmosphere. The man of genius has greater pains and greater
pleasures, greater powers and greater weaknesses, and often a greater play
of character than is to be found in ordinary men. He can assume the
disguise of virtue or disinterestedness without having them, or veil
personal enmity in the language of patriotism and philosophy,--he can say
the word which all men are thinking, he has an insight which is terrible
into the follies and weaknesses of his fellow-men. An Alcibiades, a
Mirabeau, or a Napoleon the First, are born either to be the authors of
great evils in states, or 'of great good, when they are drawn in that
direction.'

Yet the thesis, 'corruptio optimi pessima,' cannot be maintained generally
or without regard to the kind of excellence which is corrupted. The alien
conditions which are corrupting to one nature, may be the elements of
culture to another. In general a man can only receive his highest
development in a congenial state or family, among friends or fellow-
workers. But also he may sometimes be stirred by adverse circumstances to
such a degree that he rises up against them and reforms them. And while
weaker or coarser characters will extract good out of evil, say in a
corrupt state of the church or of society, and live on happily, allowing
the evil to remain, the finer or stronger natures may be crushed or spoiled
by surrounding influences--may become misanthrope and philanthrope by
turns; or in a few instances, like the founders of the monastic orders, or
the Reformers, owing to some peculiarity in themselves or in their age, may
break away entirely from the world and from the church, sometimes into
great good, sometimes into great evil, sometimes into both. And the same
holds in the lesser sphere of a convent, a school, a family.

Plato would have us consider how easily the best natures are overpowered by
public opinion, and what efforts the rest of mankind will make to get
possession of them. The world, the church, their own profession, any
political or party organization, are always carrying them off their legs
and teaching them to apply high and holy names to their own prejudices and
interests. The 'monster' corporation to which they belong judges right and
truth to be the pleasure of the community. The individual becomes one with
his order; or, if he resists, the world is too much for him, and will
sooner or later be revenged on him. This is, perhaps, a one-sided but not
wholly untrue picture of the maxims and practice of mankind when they 'sit
down together at an assembly,' either in ancient or modern times.

When the higher natures are corrupted by politics, the lower take
possession of the vacant place of philosophy. This is described in one of
those continuous images in which the argument, to use a Platonic
expression, 'veils herself,' and which is dropped and reappears at
intervals. The question is asked,--Why are the citizens of states so
hostile to philosophy? The answer is, that they do not know her. And yet
there is also a better mind of the many; they would believe if they were
taught. But hitherto they have only known a conventional imitation of
philosophy, words without thoughts, systems which have no life in them; a
(divine) person uttering the words of beauty and freedom, the friend of man
holding communion with the Eternal, and seeking to frame the state in that
image, they have never known. The same double feeling respecting the mass
of mankind has always existed among men. The first thought is that the
people are the enemies of truth and right; the second, that this only
arises out of an accidental error and confusion, and that they do not
really hate those who love them, if they could be educated to know them.

In the latter part of the sixth book, three questions have to be
considered: 1st, the nature of the longer and more circuitous way, which
is contrasted with the shorter and more imperfect method of Book IV; 2nd,
the heavenly pattern or idea of the state; 3rd, the relation of the
divisions of knowledge to one another and to the corresponding faculties of
the soul

1. Of the higher method of knowledge in Plato we have only a glimpse.
Neither here nor in the Phaedrus or Symposium, nor yet in the Philebus or
Sophist, does he give any clear explanation of his meaning. He would
probably have described his method as proceeding by regular steps to a
system of universal knowledge, which inferred the parts from the whole
rather than the whole from the parts. This ideal logic is not practised by
him in the search after justice, or in the analysis of the parts of the
soul; there, like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues from
experience and the common use of language. But at the end of the sixth
book he conceives another and more perfect method, in which all ideas are
only steps or grades or moments of thought, forming a connected whole which
is self-supporting, and in which consistency is the test of truth. He does
not explain to us in detail the nature of the process. Like many other
thinkers both in ancient and modern times his mind seems to be filled with
a vacant form which he is unable to realize. He supposes the sciences to
have a natural order and connexion in an age when they can hardly be said
to exist. He is hastening on to the 'end of the intellectual world'
without even making a beginning of them.

In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the process of acquiring
knowledge is here confused with the contemplation of absolute knowledge.
In all science a priori and a posteriori truths mingle in various
proportions. The a priori part is that which is derived from the most
universal experience of men, or is universally accepted by them; the a
posteriori is that which grows up around the more general principles and
becomes imperceptibly one with them. But Plato erroneously imagines that
the synthesis is separable from the analysis, and that the method of
science can anticipate science. In entertaining such a vision of a priori
knowledge he is sufficiently justified, or at least his meaning may be
sufficiently explained by the similar attempts of Descartes, Kant, Hegel,
and even of Bacon himself, in modern philosophy. Anticipations or
divinations, or prophetic glimpses of truths whether concerning man or
nature, seem to stand in the same relation to ancient philosophy which
hypotheses bear to modern inductive science. These 'guesses at truth' were
not made at random; they arose from a superficial impression of
uniformities and first principles in nature which the genius of the Greek,
contemplating the expanse of heaven and earth, seemed to recognize in the
distance. Nor can we deny that in ancient times knowledge must have stood
still, and the human mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought,
if philosophy had been strictly confined to the results of experience.

2. Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the artist will
fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. Is this a pattern laid up in
heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to gaze with wondering eye?
The answer is, that such ideals are framed partly by the omission of
particulars, partly by imagination perfecting the form which experience
supplies (Phaedo). Plato represents these ideals in a figure as belonging
to another world; and in modern times the idea will sometimes seem to
precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand of the artist. As in
science, so also in creative art, there is a synthetical as well as an
analytical method. One man will have the whole in his mind before he
begins; to another the processes of mind and hand will be simultaneous.

3. There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato's divisions of knowledge
are based, first, on the fundamental antithesis of sensible and
intellectual which pervades the whole pre-Socratic philosophy; in which is
implied also the opposition of the permanent and transient, of the
universal and particular. But the age of philosophy in which he lived
seemed to require a further distinction;--numbers and figures were
beginning to separate from ideas. The world could no longer regard justice
as a cube, and was learning to see, though imperfectly, that the
abstractions of sense were distinct from the abstractions of mind. Between
the Eleatic being or essence and the shadows of phenomena, the Pythagorean
principle of number found a place, and was, as Aristotle remarks, a
conducting medium from one to the other. Hence Plato is led to introduce a
third term which had not hitherto entered into the scheme of his
philosophy. He had observed the use of mathematics in education; they were
the best preparation for higher studies. The subjective relation between
them further suggested an objective one; although the passage from one to
the other is really imaginary (Metaph.). For metaphysical and moral
philosophy has no connexion with mathematics; number and figure are the
abstractions of time and space, not the expressions of purely intellectual
conceptions. When divested of metaphor, a straight line or a square has no
more to do with right and justice than a crooked line with vice. The
figurative association was mistaken for a real one; and thus the three
latter divisions of the Platonic proportion were constructed.

There is more difficulty in comprehending how he arrived at the first term
of the series, which is nowhere else mentioned, and has no reference to any
other part of his system. Nor indeed does the relation of shadows to
objects correspond to the relation of numbers to ideas. Probably Plato has
been led by the love of analogy (Timaeus) to make four terms instead of
three, although the objects perceived in both divisions of the lower sphere
are equally objects of sense. He is also preparing the way, as his manner
is, for the shadows of images at the beginning of the seventh book, and the
imitation of an imitation in the tenth. The line may be regarded as
reaching from unity to infinity, and is divided into two unequal parts, and
subdivided into two more; each lower sphere is the multiplication of the
preceding. Of the four faculties, faith in the lower division has an
intermediate position (cp. for the use of the word faith or belief,
(Greek), Timaeus), contrasting equally with the vagueness of the perception
of shadows (Greek) and the higher certainty of understanding (Greek) and
reason (Greek).

The difference between understanding and mind or reason (Greek) is
analogous to the difference between acquiring knowledge in the parts and
the contemplation of the whole. True knowledge is a whole, and is at rest;
consistency and universality are the tests of truth. To this self-
evidencing knowledge of the whole the faculty of mind is supposed to
correspond. But there is a knowledge of the understanding which is
incomplete and in motion always, because unable to rest in the subordinate
ideas. Those ideas are called both images and hypotheses--images because
they are clothed in sense, hypotheses because they are assumptions only,
until they are brought into connexion with the idea of good.

The general meaning of the passage, 'Noble, then, is the bond which links
together sight...And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible...' so far as
the thought contained in it admits of being translated into the terms of
modern philosophy, may be described or explained as follows:--There is a
truth, one and self-existent, to which by the help of a ladder let down
from above, the human intelligence may ascend. This unity is like the sun
in the heavens, the light by which all things are seen, the being by which
they are created and sustained. It is the IDEA of good. And the steps of
the ladder leading up to this highest or universal existence are the
mathematical sciences, which also contain in themselves an element of the
universal. These, too, we see in a new manner when we connect them with
the idea of good. They then cease to be hypotheses or pictures, and become
essential parts of a higher truth which is at once their first principle
and their final cause.

We cannot give any more precise meaning to this remarkable passage, but we
may trace in it several rudiments or vestiges of thought which are common
to us and to Plato: such as (1) the unity and correlation of the sciences,
or rather of science, for in Plato's time they were not yet parted off or
distinguished; (2) the existence of a Divine Power, or life or idea or
cause or reason, not yet conceived or no longer conceived as in the Timaeus
and elsewhere under the form of a person; (3) the recognition of the
hypothetical and conditional character of the mathematical sciences, and in
a measure of every science when isolated from the rest; (4) the conviction
of a truth which is invisible, and of a law, though hardly a law of nature,
which permeates the intellectual rather than the visible world.

The method of Socrates is hesitating and tentative, awaiting the fuller
explanation of the idea of good, and of the nature of dialectic in the
seventh book. The imperfect intelligence of Glaucon, and the reluctance of
Socrates to make a beginning, mark the difficulty of the subject. The
allusion to Theages' bridle, and to the internal oracle, or demonic sign,
of Socrates, which here, as always in Plato, is only prohibitory; the
remark that the salvation of any remnant of good in the present evil state
of the world is due to God only; the reference to a future state of
existence, which is unknown to Glaucon in the tenth book, and in which the
discussions of Socrates and his disciples would be resumed; the surprise in
the answers; the fanciful irony of Socrates, where he pretends that he can
only describe the strange position of the philosopher in a figure of
speech; the original observation that the Sophists, after all, are only the
representatives and not the leaders of public opinion; the picture of the
philosopher standing aside in the shower of sleet under a wall; the figure
of 'the great beast' followed by the expression of good-will towards the
common people who would not have rejected the philosopher if they had known
him; the 'right noble thought' that the highest truths demand the greatest
exactness; the hesitation of Socrates in returning once more to his well-
worn theme of the idea of good; the ludicrous earnestness of Glaucon; the
comparison of philosophy to a deserted maiden who marries beneath her--are
some of the most interesting characteristics of the sixth book.

Yet a few more words may be added, on the old theme, which was so oft
discussed in the Socratic circle, of which we, like Glaucon and Adeimantus,
would fain, if possible, have a clearer notion. Like them, we are
dissatisfied when we are told that the idea of good can only be revealed to
a student of the mathematical sciences, and we are inclined to think that
neither we nor they could have been led along that path to any satisfactory
goal. For we have learned that differences of quantity cannot pass into
differences of quality, and that the mathematical sciences can never rise
above themselves into the sphere of our higher thoughts, although they may
sometimes furnish symbols and expressions of them, and may train the mind
in habits of abstraction and self-concentration. The illusion which was
natural to an ancient philosopher has ceased to be an illusion to us. But
if the process by which we are supposed to arrive at the idea of good be
really imaginary, may not the idea itself be also a mere abstraction? We
remark, first, that in all ages, and especially in primitive philosophy,
words such as being, essence, unity, good, have exerted an extraordinary
influence over the minds of men. The meagreness or negativeness of their
content has been in an inverse ratio to their power. They have become the
forms under which all things were comprehended. There was a need or
instinct in the human soul which they satisfied; they were not ideas, but
gods, and to this new mythology the men of a later generation began to
attach the powers and associations of the elder deities.

The idea of good is one of those sacred words or forms of thought, which
were beginning to take the place of the old mythology. It meant unity, in
which all time and all existence were gathered up. It was the truth of all
things, and also the light in which they shone forth, and became evident to
intelligences human and divine. It was the cause of all things, the power
by which they were brought into being. It was the universal reason
divested of a human personality. It was the life as well as the light of
the world, all knowledge and all power were comprehended in it. The way to
it was through the mathematical sciences, and these too were dependent on
it. To ask whether God was the maker of it, or made by it, would be like
asking whether God could be conceived apart from goodness, or goodness
apart from God. The God of the Timaeus is not really at variance with the
idea of good; they are aspects of the same, differing only as the personal
from the impersonal, or the masculine from the neuter, the one being the
expression or language of mythology, the other of philosophy.

This, or something like this, is the meaning of the idea of good as
conceived by Plato. Ideas of number, order, harmony, development may also
be said to enter into it. The paraphrase which has just been given of it
goes beyond the actual words of Plato. We have perhaps arrived at the
stage of philosophy which enables us to understand what he is aiming at,
better than he did himself. We are beginning to realize what he saw darkly
and at a distance. But if he could have been told that this, or some
conception of the same kind, but higher than this, was the truth at which
he was aiming, and the need which he sought to supply, he would gladly have
recognized that more was contained in his own thoughts than he himself
knew. As his words are few and his manner reticent and tentative, so must
the style of his interpreter be. We should not approach his meaning more
nearly by attempting to define it further. In translating him into the
language of modern thought, we might insensibly lose the spirit of ancient
philosophy. It is remarkable that although Plato speaks of the idea of
good as the first principle of truth and being, it is nowhere mentioned in
his writings except in this passage. Nor did it retain any hold upon the
minds of his disciples in a later generation; it was probably
unintelligible to them. Nor does the mention of it in Aristotle appear to
have any reference to this or any other passage in his extant writings.

BOOK VII. And now I will describe in a figure the enlightenment or
unenlightenment of our nature:--Imagine human beings living in an
underground den which is open towards the light; they have been there from
childhood, having their necks and legs chained, and can only see into the
den. At a distance there is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners
a raised way, and a low wall is built along the way, like the screen over
which marionette players show their puppets. Behind the wall appear moving
figures, who hold in their hands various works of art, and among them
images of men and animals, wood and stone, and some of the passers-by are
talking and others silent. 'A strange parable,' he said, 'and strange
captives.'  They are ourselves, I replied; and they see only the shadows of
the images which the fire throws on the wall of the den; to these they give
names, and if we add an echo which returns from the wall, the voices of the
passengers will seem to proceed from the shadows. Suppose now that you
suddenly turn them round and make them look with pain and grief to
themselves at the real images; will they believe them to be real? Will not
their eyes be dazzled, and will they not try to get away from the light to
something which they are able to behold without blinking? And suppose
further, that they are dragged up a steep and rugged ascent into the
presence of the sun himself, will not their sight be darkened with the
excess of light? Some time will pass before they get the habit of
perceiving at all; and at first they will be able to perceive only shadows
and reflections in the water; then they will recognize the moon and the
stars, and will at length behold the sun in his own proper place as he is.
Last of all they will conclude:--This is he who gives us the year and the
seasons, and is the author of all that we see. How will they rejoice in
passing from darkness to light! How worthless to them will seem the
honours and glories of the den! But now imagine further, that they descend
into their old habitations;--in that underground dwelling they will not see
as well as their fellows, and will not be able to compete with them in the
measurement of the shadows on the wall; there will be many jokes about the
man who went on a visit to the sun and lost his eyes, and if they find
anybody trying to set free and enlighten one of their number, they will put
him to death, if they can catch him. Now the cave or den is the world of
sight, the fire is the sun, the way upwards is the way to knowledge, and in
the world of knowledge the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty,
but when seen is inferred to be the author of good and right--parent of the
lord of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other.
He who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards; he is
unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts of law; for his
eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows of images which they behold
in them--he cannot enter into the ideas of those who have never in their
lives understood the relation of the shadow to the substance. But
blindness is of two kinds, and may be caused either by passing out of
darkness into light or out of light into darkness, and a man of sense will
distinguish between them, and will not laugh equally at both of them, but
the blindness which arises from fulness of light he will deem blessed, and
pity the other; or if he laugh at the puzzled soul looking at the sun, he
will have more reason to laugh than the inhabitants of the den at those who
descend from above. There is a further lesson taught by this parable of
ours. Some persons fancy that instruction is like giving eyes to the
blind, but we say that the faculty of sight was always there, and that the
soul only requires to be turned round towards the light. And this is
conversion; other virtues are almost like bodily habits, and may be
acquired in the same manner, but intelligence has a diviner life, and is
indestructible, turning either to good or evil according to the direction
given. Did you never observe how the mind of a clever rogue peers out of
his eyes, and the more clearly he sees, the more evil he does? Now if you
take such an one, and cut away from him those leaden weights of pleasure
and desire which bind his soul to earth, his intelligence will be turned
round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as he now discerns his
meaner ends. And have we not decided that our rulers must neither be so
uneducated as to have no fixed rule of life, nor so over-educated as to be
unwilling to leave their paradise for the business of the world? We must
choose out therefore the natures who are most likely to ascend to the light
and knowledge of the good; but we must not allow them to remain in the
region of light; they must be forced down again among the captives in the
den to partake of their labours and honours. 'Will they not think this a
hardship?'  You should remember that our purpose in framing the State was
not that our citizens should do what they like, but that they should serve
the State for the common good of all. May we not fairly say to our
philosopher,--Friend, we do you no wrong; for in other States philosophy
grows wild, and a wild plant owes nothing to the gardener, but you have
been trained by us to be the rulers and kings of our hive, and therefore we
must insist on your descending into the den. You must, each of you, take
your turn, and become able to use your eyes in the dark, and with a little
practice you will see far better than those who quarrel about the shadows,
whose knowledge is a dream only, whilst yours is a waking reality. It may
be that the saint or philosopher who is best fitted, may also be the least
inclined to rule, but necessity is laid upon him, and he must no longer
live in the heaven of ideas. And this will be the salvation of the State.
For those who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule; and, if you
can offer to our citizens a better life than that of rulers generally is,
there will be a chance that the rich, not only in this world's goods, but
in virtue and wisdom, may bear rule. And the only life which is better
than the life of political ambition is that of philosophy, which is also
the best preparation for the government of a State.

Then now comes the question,--How shall we create our rulers; what way is
there from darkness to light? The change is effected by philosophy; it is
not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the conversion of a soul from
night to day, from becoming to being. And what training will draw the soul
upwards? Our former education had two branches, gymnastic, which was
occupied with the body, and music, the sister art, which infused a natural
harmony into mind and literature; but neither of these sciences gave any
promise of doing what we want. Nothing remains to us but that universal or
primary science of which all the arts and sciences are partakers, I mean
number or calculation. 'Very true.'  Including the art of war? 'Yes,
certainly.'  Then there is something ludicrous about Palamedes in the
tragedy, coming in and saying that he had invented number, and had counted
the ranks and set them in order. For if Agamemnon could not count his feet
(and without number how could he?) he must have been a pretty sort of
general indeed. No man should be a soldier who cannot count, and indeed he
is hardly to be called a man. But I am not speaking of these practical
applications of arithmetic, for number, in my view, is rather to be
regarded as a conductor to thought and being. I will explain what I mean
by the last expression:--Things sensible are of two kinds; the one class
invite or stimulate the mind, while in the other the mind acquiesces. Now
the stimulating class are the things which suggest contrast and relation.
For example, suppose that I hold up to the eyes three fingers--a fore
finger, a middle finger, a little finger--the sight equally recognizes all
three fingers, but without number cannot further distinguish them. Or
again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these ideas of
greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense, but by the mind.
And the perception of their contrast or relation quickens and sets in
motion the mind, which is puzzled by the confused intimations of sense, and
has recourse to number in order to find out whether the things indicated
are one or more than one. Number replies that they are two and not one,
and are to be distinguished from one another. Again, the sight beholds
great and small, but only in a confused chaos, and not until they are
distinguished does the question arise of their respective natures; we are
thus led on to the distinction between the visible and intelligible. That
was what I meant when I spoke of stimulants to the intellect; I was
thinking of the contradictions which arise in perception. The idea of
unity, for example, like that of a finger, does not arouse thought unless
involving some conception of plurality; but when the one is also the
opposite of one, the contradiction gives rise to reflection; an example of
this is afforded by any object of sight. All number has also an elevating
effect; it raises the mind out of the foam and flux of generation to the
contemplation of being, having lesser military and retail uses also. The
retail use is not required by us; but as our guardian is to be a soldier as
well as a philosopher, the military one may be retained. And to our higher
purpose no science can be better adapted; but it must be pursued in the
spirit of a philosopher, not of a shopkeeper. It is concerned, not with
visible objects, but with abstract truth; for numbers are pure
abstractions--the true arithmetician indignantly denies that his unit is
capable of division. When you divide, he insists that you are only
multiplying; his 'one' is not material or resolvable into fractions, but an
unvarying and absolute equality; and this proves the purely intellectual
character of his study. Note also the great power which arithmetic has of
sharpening the wits; no other discipline is equally severe, or an equal
test of general ability, or equally improving to a stupid person.

Let our second branch of education be geometry. 'I can easily see,'
replied Glaucon, 'that the skill of the general will be doubled by his
knowledge of geometry.'  That is a small matter; the use of geometry, to
which I refer, is the assistance given by it in the contemplation of the
idea of good, and the compelling the mind to look at true being, and not at
generation only. Yet the present mode of pursuing these studies, as any
one who is the least of a mathematician is aware, is mean and ridiculous;
they are made to look downwards to the arts, and not upwards to eternal
existence. The geometer is always talking of squaring, subtending,
apposing, as if he had in view action; whereas knowledge is the real object
of the study. It should elevate the soul, and create the mind of
philosophy; it should raise up what has fallen down, not to speak of lesser
uses in war and military tactics, and in the improvement of the faculties.

Shall we propose, as a third branch of our education, astronomy? 'Very
good,' replied Glaucon; 'the knowledge of the heavens is necessary at once
for husbandry, navigation, military tactics.'  I like your way of giving
useful reasons for everything in order to make friends of the world. And
there is a difficulty in proving to mankind that education is not only
useful information but a purification of the eye of the soul, which is
better than the bodily eye, for by this alone is truth seen. Now, will you
appeal to mankind in general or to the philosopher? or would you prefer to
look to yourself only? 'Every man is his own best friend.'  Then take a
step backward, for we are out of order, and insert the third dimension
which is of solids, after the second which is of planes, and then you may
proceed to solids in motion. But solid geometry is not popular and has not
the patronage of the State, nor is the use of it fully recognized; the
difficulty is great, and the votaries of the study are conceited and
impatient. Still the charm of the pursuit wins upon men, and, if
government would lend a little assistance, there might be great progress
made. 'Very true,' replied Glaucon; 'but do I understand you now to begin
with plane geometry, and to place next geometry of solids, and thirdly,
astronomy, or the motion of solids?'  Yes, I said; my hastiness has only
hindered us.

'Very good, and now let us proceed to astronomy, about which I am willing
to speak in your lofty strain. No one can fail to see that the
contemplation of the heavens draws the soul upwards.' I am an exception,
then; astronomy as studied at present appears to me to draw the soul not
upwards, but downwards. Star-gazing is just looking up at the ceiling--no
better; a man may lie on his back on land or on water--he may look up or
look down, but there is no science in that. The vision of knowledge of
which I speak is seen not with the eyes, but with the mind. All the
magnificence of the heavens is but the embroidery of a copy which falls far
short of the divine Original, and teaches nothing about the absolute
harmonies or motions of things. Their beauty is like the beauty of figures
drawn by the hand of Daedalus or any other great artist, which may be used
for illustration, but no mathematician would seek to obtain from them true
conceptions of equality or numerical relations. How ridiculous then to
look for these in the map of the heavens, in which the imperfection of
matter comes in everywhere as a disturbing element, marring the symmetry of
day and night, of months and years, of the sun and stars in their courses.
Only by problems can we place astronomy on a truly scientific basis. Let
the heavens alone, and exert the intellect.

Still, mathematics admit of other applications, as the Pythagoreans say,
and we agree. There is a sister science of harmonical motion, adapted to
the ear as astronomy is to the eye, and there may be other applications
also. Let us inquire of the Pythagoreans about them, not forgetting that
we have an aim higher than theirs, which is the relation of these sciences
to the idea of good. The error which pervades astronomy also pervades
harmonics. The musicians put their ears in the place of their minds.
'Yes,' replied Glaucon, 'I like to see them laying their ears alongside of
their neighbours' faces--some saying, "That's a new note," others declaring
that the two notes are the same.'  Yes, I said; but you mean the empirics
who are always twisting and torturing the strings of the lyre, and
quarrelling about the tempers of the strings; I am referring rather to the
Pythagorean harmonists, who are almost equally in error. For they
investigate only the numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend
no higher,--of the true numerical harmony which is unheard, and is only to
be found in problems, they have not even a conception. 'That last,' he
said, 'must be a marvellous thing.'  A thing, I replied, which is only
useful if pursued with a view to the good.

All these sciences are the prelude of the strain, and are profitable if
they are regarded in their natural relations to one another. 'I dare say,
Socrates,' said Glaucon; 'but such a study will be an endless business.'
What study do you mean--of the prelude, or what? For all these things are
only the prelude, and you surely do not suppose that a mere mathematician
is also a dialectician? 'Certainly not. I have hardly ever known a
mathematician who could reason.'  And yet, Glaucon, is not true reasoning
that hymn of dialectic which is the music of the intellectual world, and
which was by us compared to the effort of sight, when from beholding the
shadows on the wall we arrived at last at the images which gave the
shadows? Even so the dialectical faculty withdrawing from sense arrives by
the pure intellect at the contemplation of the idea of good, and never
rests but at the very end of the intellectual world. And the royal road
out of the cave into the light, and the blinking of the eyes at the sun and
turning to contemplate the shadows of reality, not the shadows of an image
only--this progress and gradual acquisition of a new faculty of sight by
the help of the mathematical sciences, is the elevation of the soul to the
contemplation of the highest ideal of being.

'So far, I agree with you. But now, leaving the prelude, let us proceed to
the hymn. What, then, is the nature of dialectic, and what are the paths
which lead thither?'  Dear Glaucon, you cannot follow me here. There can
be no revelation of the absolute truth to one who has not been disciplined
in the previous sciences. But that there is a science of absolute truth,
which is attained in some way very different from those now practised, I am
confident. For all other arts or sciences are relative to human needs and
opinions; and the mathematical sciences are but a dream or hypothesis of
true being, and never analyse their own principles. Dialectic alone rises
to the principle which is above hypotheses, converting and gently leading
the eye of the soul out of the barbarous slough of ignorance into the light
of the upper world, with the help of the sciences which we have been
describing--sciences, as they are often termed, although they require some
other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than
science, and this in our previous sketch was understanding. And so we get
four names--two for intellect, and two for opinion,--reason or mind,
understanding, faith, perception of shadows--which make a proportion--
being:becoming::intellect:opinion--and science:belief::understanding:
perception of shadows. Dialectic may be further described as that science
which defines and explains the essence or being of each nature, which
distinguishes and abstracts the good, and is ready to do battle against all
opponents in the cause of good. To him who is not a dialectician life is
but a sleepy dream; and many a man is in his grave before his is well waked
up. And would you have the future rulers of your ideal State intelligent
beings, or stupid as posts? 'Certainly not the latter.'  Then you must
train them in dialectic, which will teach them to ask and answer questions,
and is the coping-stone of the sciences.

I dare say that you have not forgotten how our rulers were chosen; and the
process of selection may be carried a step further:--As before, they must
be constant and valiant, good-looking, and of noble manners, but now they
must also have natural ability which education will improve; that is to
say, they must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil, retentive,
solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues; not
lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily exercise and indolent in mind, or
conversely; not a maimed soul, which hates falsehood and yet
unintentionally is always wallowing in the mire of ignorance; not a bastard
or feeble person, but sound in wind and limb, and in perfect condition for
the great gymnastic trial of the mind. Justice herself can find no fault
with natures such as these; and they will be the saviours of our State;
disciples of another sort would only make philosophy more ridiculous than
she is at present. Forgive my enthusiasm; I am becoming excited; but when
I see her trampled underfoot, I am angry at the authors of her disgrace.
'I did not notice that you were more excited than you ought to have been.'
But I felt that I was. Now do not let us forget another point in the
selection of our disciples--that they must be young and not old. For Solon
is mistaken in saying that an old man can be always learning; youth is the
time of study, and here we must remember that the mind is free and dainty,
and, unlike the body, must not be made to work against the grain. Learning
should be at first a sort of play, in which the natural bent is detected.
As in training them for war, the young dogs should at first only taste
blood; but when the necessary gymnastics are over which during two or three
years divide life between sleep and bodily exercise, then the education of
the soul will become a more serious matter. At twenty years of age, a
selection must be made of the more promising disciples, with whom a new
epoch of education will begin. The sciences which they have hitherto
learned in fragments will now be brought into relation with each other and
with true being; for the power of combining them is the test of speculative
and dialectical ability. And afterwards at thirty a further selection
shall be made of those who are able to withdraw from the world of sense
into the abstraction of ideas. But at this point, judging from present
experience, there is a danger that dialectic may be the source of many
evils. The danger may be illustrated by a parallel case:--Imagine a person
who has been brought up in wealth and luxury amid a crowd of flatterers,
and who is suddenly informed that he is a supposititious son. He has
hitherto honoured his reputed parents and disregarded the flatterers, and
now he does the reverse. This is just what happens with a man's
principles. There are certain doctrines which he learnt at home and which
exercised a parental authority over him. Presently he finds that
imputations are cast upon them; a troublesome querist comes and asks, 'What
is the just and good?' or proves that virtue is vice and vice virtue, and
his mind becomes unsettled, and he ceases to love, honour, and obey them as
he has hitherto done. He is seduced into the life of pleasure, and becomes
a lawless person and a rogue. The case of such speculators is very
pitiable, and, in order that our thirty years' old pupils may not require
this pity, let us take every possible care that young persons do not study
philosophy too early. For a young man is a sort of puppy who only plays
with an argument; and is reasoned into and out of his opinions every day;
he soon begins to believe nothing, and brings himself and philosophy into
discredit. A man of thirty does not run on in this way; he will argue and
not merely contradict, and adds new honour to philosophy by the sobriety of
his conduct. What time shall we allow for this second gymnastic training
of the soul?--say, twice the time required for the gymnastics of the body;
six, or perhaps five years, to commence at thirty, and then for fifteen
years let the student go down into the den, and command armies, and gain
experience of life. At fifty let him return to the end of all things, and
have his eyes uplifted to the idea of good, and order his life after that
pattern; if necessary, taking his turn at the helm of State, and training
up others to be his successors. When his time comes he shall depart in
peace to the islands of the blest. He shall be honoured with sacrifices,
and receive such worship as the Pythian oracle approves.

'You are a statuary, Socrates, and have made a perfect image of our
governors.'  Yes, and of our governesses, for the women will share in all
things with the men. And you will admit that our State is not a mere
aspiration, but may really come into being when there shall arise
philosopher-kings, one or more, who will despise earthly vanities, and will
be the servants of justice only. 'And how will they begin their work?'
Their first act will be to send away into the country all those who are
more than ten years of age, and to proceed with those who are left...

At the commencement of the sixth book, Plato anticipated his explanation of
the relation of the philosopher to the world in an allegory, in this, as in
other passages, following the order which he prescribes in education, and
proceeding from the concrete to the abstract. At the commencement of Book
VII, under the figure of a cave having an opening towards a fire and a way
upwards to the true light, he returns to view the divisions of knowledge,
exhibiting familiarly, as in a picture, the result which had been hardly
won by a great effort of thought in the previous discussion; at the same
time casting a glance onward at the dialectical process, which is
represented by the way leading from darkness to light. The shadows, the
images, the reflection of the sun and stars in the water, the stars and sun
themselves, severally correspond,--the first, to the realm of fancy and
poetry,--the second, to the world of sense,--the third, to the abstractions
or universals of sense, of which the mathematical sciences furnish the
type,--the fourth and last to the same abstractions, when seen in the unity
of the idea, from which they derive a new meaning and power. The true
dialectical process begins with the contemplation of the real stars, and
not mere reflections of them, and ends with the recognition of the sun, or
idea of good, as the parent not only of light but of warmth and growth. To
the divisions of knowledge the stages of education partly answer:--first,
there is the early education of childhood and youth in the fancies of the
poets, and in the laws and customs of the State;--then there is the
training of the body to be a warrior athlete, and a good servant of the
mind;--and thirdly, after an interval follows the education of later life,
which begins with mathematics and proceeds to philosophy in general.

There seem to be two great aims in the philosophy of Plato,--first, to
realize abstractions; secondly, to connect them. According to him, the
true education is that which draws men from becoming to being, and to a
comprehensive survey of all being. He desires to develop in the human mind
the faculty of seeing the universal in all things; until at last the
particulars of sense drop away and the universal alone remains. He then
seeks to combine the universals which he has disengaged from sense, not
perceiving that the correlation of them has no other basis but the common
use of language. He never understands that abstractions, as Hegel says,
are 'mere abstractions'--of use when employed in the arrangement of facts,
but adding nothing to the sum of knowledge when pursued apart from them, or
with reference to an imaginary idea of good. Still the exercise of the
faculty of abstraction apart from facts has enlarged the mind, and played a
great part in the education of the human race. Plato appreciated the value
of this faculty, and saw that it might be quickened by the study of number
and relation. All things in which there is opposition or proportion are
suggestive of reflection. The mere impression of sense evokes no power of
thought or of mind, but when sensible objects ask to be compared and
distinguished, then philosophy begins. The science of arithmetic first
suggests such distinctions. The follow in order the other sciences of
plain and solid geometry, and of solids in motion, one branch of which is
astronomy or the harmony of the spheres,--to this is appended the sister
science of the harmony of sounds. Plato seems also to hint at the
possibility of other applications of arithmetical or mathematical
proportions, such as we employ in chemistry and natural philosophy, such as
the Pythagoreans and even Aristotle make use of in Ethics and Politics,
e.g. his distinction between arithmetical and geometrical proportion in the
Ethics (Book V), or between numerical and proportional equality in the
Politics.

The modern mathematician will readily sympathise with Plato's delight in
the properties of pure mathematics. He will not be disinclined to say with
him:--Let alone the heavens, and study the beauties of number and figure in
themselves. He too will be apt to depreciate their application to the
arts. He will observe that Plato has a conception of geometry, in which
figures are to be dispensed with; thus in a distant and shadowy way seeming
to anticipate the possibility of working geometrical problems by a more
general mode of analysis. He will remark with interest on the backward
state of solid geometry, which, alas! was not encouraged by the aid of the
State in the age of Plato; and he will recognize the grasp of Plato's mind
in his ability to conceive of one science of solids in motion including the
earth as well as the heavens,--not forgetting to notice the intimation to
which allusion has been already made, that besides astronomy and harmonics
the science of solids in motion may have other applications. Still more
will he be struck with the comprehensiveness of view which led Plato, at a
time when these sciences hardly existed, to say that they must be studied
in relation to one another, and to the idea of good, or common principle of
truth and being. But he will also see (and perhaps without surprise) that
in that stage of physical and mathematical knowledge, Plato has fallen into
the error of supposing that he can construct the heavens a priori by
mathematical problems, and determine the principles of harmony irrespective
of the adaptation of sounds to the human ear. The illusion was a natural
one in that age and country. The simplicity and certainty of astronomy and
harmonics seemed to contrast with the variation and complexity of the world
of sense; hence the circumstance that there was some elementary basis of
fact, some measurement of distance or time or vibrations on which they must
ultimately rest, was overlooked by him. The modern predecessors of Newton
fell into errors equally great; and Plato can hardly be said to have been
very far wrong, or may even claim a sort of prophetic insight into the
subject, when we consider that the greater part of astronomy at the present
day consists of abstract dynamics, by the help of which most astronomical
discoveries have been made.

The metaphysical philosopher from his point of view recognizes mathematics
as an instrument of education,--which strengthens the power of attention,
developes the sense of order and the faculty of construction, and enables
the mind to grasp under simple formulae the quantitative differences of
physical phenomena. But while acknowledging their value in education, he
sees also that they have no connexion with our higher moral and
intellectual ideas. In the attempt which Plato makes to connect them, we
easily trace the influences of ancient Pythagorean notions. There is no
reason to suppose that he is speaking of the ideal numbers; but he is
describing numbers which are pure abstractions, to which he assigns a real
and separate existence, which, as 'the teachers of the art' (meaning
probably the Pythagoreans) would have affirmed, repel all attempts at
subdivision, and in which unity and every other number are conceived of as
absolute. The truth and certainty of numbers, when thus disengaged from
phenomena, gave them a kind of sacredness in the eyes of an ancient
philosopher. Nor is it easy to say how far ideas of order and fixedness
may have had a moral and elevating influence on the minds of men, 'who,' in
the words of the Timaeus, 'might learn to regulate their erring lives
according to them.'  It is worthy of remark that the old Pythagorean
ethical symbols still exist as figures of speech among ourselves. And
those who in modern times see the world pervaded by universal law, may also
see an anticipation of this last word of modern philosophy in the Platonic
idea of good, which is the source and measure of all things, and yet only
an abstraction (Philebus).

Two passages seem to require more particular explanations. First, that
which relates to the analysis of vision. The difficulty in this passage
may be explained, like many others, from differences in the modes of
conception prevailing among ancient and modern thinkers. To us, the
perceptions of sense are inseparable from the act of the mind which
accompanies them. The consciousness of form, colour, distance, is
indistinguishable from the simple sensation, which is the medium of them.
Whereas to Plato sense is the Heraclitean flux of sense, not the vision of
objects in the order in which they actually present themselves to the
experienced sight, but as they may be imagined to appear confused and
blurred to the half-awakened eye of the infant. The first action of the
mind is aroused by the attempt to set in order this chaos, and the reason
is required to frame distinct conceptions under which the confused
impressions of sense may be arranged. Hence arises the question, 'What is
great, what is small?' and thus begins the distinction of the visible and
the intelligible.

The second difficulty relates to Plato's conception of harmonics. Three
classes of harmonists are distinguished by him:--first, the Pythagoreans,
whom he proposes to consult as in the previous discussion on music he was
to consult Damon--they are acknowledged to be masters in the art, but are
altogether deficient in the knowledge of its higher import and relation to
the good; secondly, the mere empirics, whom Glaucon appears to confuse with
them, and whom both he and Socrates ludicrously describe as experimenting
by mere auscultation on the intervals of sounds. Both of these fall short
in different degrees of the Platonic idea of harmony, which must be studied
in a purely abstract way, first by the method of problems, and secondly as
a part of universal knowledge in relation to the idea of good.

The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning. The den
or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law (compare the
description of the philosopher and lawyer in the Theaetetus), and the light
of the eternal ideas is supposed to exercise a disturbing influence on the
minds of those who return to this lower world. In other words, their
principles are too wide for practical application; they are looking far
away into the past and future, when their business is with the present.
The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual life, and may
often be at variance with them. And at first, those who return are unable
to compete with the inhabitants of the den in the measurement of the
shadows, and are derided and persecuted by them; but after a while they see
the things below in far truer proportions than those who have never
ascended into the upper world. The difference between the politician
turned into a philosopher and the philosopher turned into a politician, is
symbolized by the two kinds of disordered eyesight, the one which is
experienced by the captive who is transferred from darkness to day, the
other, of the heavenly messenger who voluntarily for the good of his
fellow-men descends into the den. In what way the brighter light is to
dawn on the inhabitants of the lower world, or how the idea of good is to
become the guiding principle of politics, is left unexplained by Plato.
Like the nature and divisions of dialectic, of which Glaucon impatiently
demands to be informed, perhaps he would have said that the explanation
could not be given except to a disciple of the previous sciences.
(Symposium.)

Many illustrations of this part of the Republic may be found in modern
Politics and in daily life. For among ourselves, too, there have been two
sorts of Politicians or Statesmen, whose eyesight has become disordered in
two different ways. First, there have been great men who, in the language
of Burke, 'have been too much given to general maxims,' who, like J.S. Mill
or Burke himself, have been theorists or philosophers before they were
politicians, or who, having been students of history, have allowed some
great historical parallel, such as the English Revolution of 1688, or
possibly Athenian democracy or Roman Imperialism, to be the medium through
which they viewed contemporary events. Or perhaps the long projecting
shadow of some existing institution may have darkened their vision. The
Church of the future, the Commonwealth of the future, the Society of the
future, have so absorbed their minds, that they are unable to see in their
true proportions the Politics of to-day. They have been intoxicated with
great ideas, such as liberty, or equality, or the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, or the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer care to
consider how these ideas must be limited in practice or harmonized with the
conditions of human life. They are full of light, but the light to them
has become only a sort of luminous mist or blindness. Almost every one has
known some enthusiastic half-educated person, who sees everything at false
distances, and in erroneous proportions.

With this disorder of eyesight may be contrasted another--of those who see
not far into the distance, but what is near only; who have been engaged all
their lives in a trade or a profession; who are limited to a set or sect of
their own. Men of this kind have no universal except their own interests
or the interests of their class, no principle but the opinion of persons
like themselves, no knowledge of affairs beyond what they pick up in the
streets or at their club. Suppose them to be sent into a larger world, to
undertake some higher calling, from being tradesmen to turn generals or
politicians, from being schoolmasters to become philosophers:--or imagine
them on a sudden to receive an inward light which reveals to them for the
first time in their lives a higher idea of God and the existence of a
spiritual world, by this sudden conversion or change is not their daily
life likely to be upset; and on the other hand will not many of their old
prejudices and narrownesses still adhere to them long after they have begun
to take a more comprehensive view of human things? From familiar examples
like these we may learn what Plato meant by the eyesight which is liable to
two kinds of disorders.

Nor have we any difficulty in drawing a parallel between the young Athenian
in the fifth century before Christ who became unsettled by new ideas, and
the student of a modern University who has been the subject of a similar
'aufklarung.'  We too observe that when young men begin to criticise
customary beliefs, or to analyse the constitution of human nature, they are
apt to lose hold of solid principle (Greek). They are like trees which
have been frequently transplanted. The earth about them is loose, and they
have no roots reaching far into the soil. They 'light upon every flower,'
following their own wayward wills, or because the wind blows them. They
catch opinions, as diseases are caught--when they are in the air. Borne
hither and thither, 'they speedily fall into beliefs' the opposite of those
in which they were brought up. They hardly retain the distinction of right
and wrong; they seem to think one thing as good as another. They suppose
themselves to be searching after truth when they are playing the game of
'follow my leader.'  They fall in love 'at first sight' with paradoxes
respecting morality, some fancy about art, some novelty or eccentricity in
religion, and like lovers they are so absorbed for a time in their new
notion that they can think of nothing else. The resolution of some
philosophical or theological question seems to them more interesting and
important than any substantial knowledge of literature or science or even
than a good life. Like the youth in the Philebus, they are ready to
discourse to any one about a new philosophy. They are generally the
disciples of some eminent professor or sophist, whom they rather imitate
than understand. They may be counted happy if in later years they retain
some of the simple truths which they acquired in early education, and which
they may, perhaps, find to be worth all the rest. Such is the picture
which Plato draws and which we only reproduce, partly in his own words, of
the dangers which beset youth in times of transition, when old opinions are
fading away and the new are not yet firmly established. Their condition is
ingeniously compared by him to that of a supposititious son, who has made
the discovery that his reputed parents are not his real ones, and, in
consequence, they have lost their authority over him.

The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is also
noticeable. Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the mathematician
is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense which recognizes and
combines first principles. The contempt which he expresses for
distinctions of words, the danger of involuntary falsehood, the apology
which Socrates makes for his earnestness of speech, are highly
characteristic of the Platonic style and mode of thought. The quaint
notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon could not
have counted his feet; the art by which we are made to believe that this
State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity with which the first step is
taken in the actual creation of the State, namely, the sending out of the
city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the
business of education by a generation, are also truly Platonic. (For the
last, compare the passage at the end of the third book, in which he expects
the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the second generation.)

BOOK VIII. And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that in the perfect
State wives and children are to be in common; and the education and
pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common, and
kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the State
are to live together, having all things in common; and they are to be
warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the other
citizens. Now let us return to the point at which we digressed. 'That is
easily done,' he replied: 'You were speaking of the State which you had
constructed, and of the individual who answered to this, both of whom you
affirmed to be good; and you said that of inferior States there were four
forms and four individuals corresponding to them, which although deficient
in various degrees, were all of them worth inspecting with a view to
determining the relative happiness or misery of the best or worst man.
Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led to another
argument,--and so here we are.'  Suppose that we put ourselves again in the
same position, and do you repeat your question. 'I should like to know of
what constitutions you were speaking?'  Besides the perfect State there are
only four of any note in Hellas:--first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan
commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils; thirdly,
democracy, which follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny, which is the
disease or death of all government. Now, States are not made of 'oak and
rock,' but of flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five States there
must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them. And
first, there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian
State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical; and
fourthly, the tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with the
perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the happier,
and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of Thrasymachus
or our own is the more convincing. And as before we began with the State
and went on to the individual, so now, beginning with timocracy, let us go
on to the timocratical man, and then proceed to the other forms of
government, and the individuals who answer to them.

But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State? Plainly, like all
changes of government, from division in the rulers. But whence came
division? 'Sing, heavenly Muses,' as Homer says;--let them condescend to
answer us, as if we were children, to whom they put on a solemn face in
jest. 'And what will they say?'  They will say that human things are fated
to decay, and even the perfect State will not escape from this law of
destiny, when 'the wheel comes full circle' in a period short or long.
Plants or animals have times of fertility and sterility, which the
intelligence of rulers because alloyed by sense will not enable them to
ascertain, and children will be born out of season. For whereas divine
creations are in a perfect cycle or number, the human creation is in a
number which declines from perfection, and has four terms and three
intervals of numbers, increasing, waning, assimilating, dissimilating, and
yet perfectly commensurate with each other. The base of the number with a
fourth added (or which is 3:4), multiplied by five and cubed, gives two
harmonies:--the first a square number, which is a hundred times the base
(or a hundred times a hundred); the second, an oblong, being a hundred
squares of the rational diameter of a figure the side of which is five,
subtracting one from each square or two perfect squares from all, and
adding a hundred cubes of three. This entire number is geometrical and
contains the rule or law of generation. When this law is neglected
marriages will be unpropitious; the inferior offspring who are then born
will in time become the rulers; the State will decline, and education fall
into decay; gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and silver
and brass and iron will form a chaotic mass--thus division will arise.
Such is the Muses' answer to our question. 'And a true answer, of course:
--but what more have they to say?'  They say that the two races, the iron
and brass, and the silver and gold, will draw the State different ways;--
the one will take to trade and moneymaking, and the others, having the true
riches and not caring for money, will resist them: the contest will end in
a compromise; they will agree to have private property, and will enslave
their fellow-citizens who were once their friends and nurturers. But they
will retain their warlike character, and will be chiefly occupied in
fighting and exercising rule. Thus arises timocracy, which is intermediate
between aristocracy and oligarchy.

The new form of government resembles the ideal in obedience to rulers and
contempt for trade, and having common meals, and in devotion to warlike and
gymnastic exercises. But corruption has crept into philosophy, and
simplicity of character, which was once her note, is now looked for only in
the military class. Arts of war begin to prevail over arts of peace; the
ruler is no longer a philosopher; as in oligarchies, there springs up among
them an extravagant love of gain--get another man's and save your own, is
their principle; and they have dark places in which they hoard their gold
and silver, for the use of their women and others; they take their
pleasures by stealth, like boys who are running away from their father--the
law; and their education is not inspired by the Muse, but imposed by the
strong arm of power. The leading characteristic of this State is party
spirit and ambition.

And what manner of man answers to such a State? 'In love of contention,'
replied Adeimantus, 'he will be like our friend Glaucon.'  In that respect,
perhaps, but not in others. He is self-asserting and ill-educated, yet
fond of literature, although not himself a speaker,--fierce with slaves,
but obedient to rulers, a lover of power and honour, which he hopes to gain
by deeds of arms,--fond, too, of gymnastics and of hunting. As he advances
in years he grows avaricious, for he has lost philosophy, which is the only
saviour and guardian of men. His origin is as follows:--His father is a
good man dwelling in an ill-ordered State, who has retired from politics in
order that he may lead a quiet life. His mother is angry at her loss of
precedence among other women; she is disgusted at her husband's
selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence
of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the
youth:--'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.'  All
the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while
a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this
spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally well
disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a
middle point and becomes ambitious and a lover of honour.

And now let us set another city over against another man. The next form of
government is oligarchy, in which the rule is of the rich only; nor is it
difficult to see how such a State arises. The decline begins with the
possession of gold and silver; illegal modes of expenditure are invented;
one draws another on, and the multitude are infected; riches outweigh
virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of
politicians; and, in time, political privileges are confined by law to the
rich, who do not shrink from violence in order to effect their purposes.

Thus much of the origin,--let us next consider the evils of oligarchy.
Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take a bad pilot because he
was rich, or refuse a good one because he was poor? And does not the
analogy apply still more to the State? And there are yet greater evils:
two nations are struggling together in one--the rich and the poor; and the
rich dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are unwilling to pay
for defenders out of their own money. And have we not already condemned
that State in which the same persons are warriors as well as shopkeepers?
The greatest evil of all is that a man may sell his property and have no
place in the State; while there is one class which has enormous wealth, the
other is entirely destitute. But observe that these destitutes had not
really any more of the governing nature in them when they were rich than
now that they are poor; they were miserable spendthrifts always. They are
the drones of the hive; only whereas the actual drone is unprovided by
nature with a sting, the two-legged things whom we call drones are some of
them without stings and some of them have dreadful stings; in other words,
there are paupers and there are rogues. These are never far apart; and in
oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler,
you will find abundance of both. And this evil state of society originates
in bad education and bad government.

Like State, like man,--the change in the latter begins with the
representative of timocracy; he walks at first in the ways of his father,
who may have been a statesman, or general, perhaps; and presently he sees
him 'fallen from his high estate,' the victim of informers, dying in prison
or exile, or by the hand of the executioner. The lesson which he thus
receives, makes him cautious; he leaves politics, represses his pride, and
saves pence. Avarice is enthroned as his bosom's lord, and assumes the
style of the Great King; the rational and spirited elements sit humbly on
the ground at either side, the one immersed in calculation, the other
absorbed in the admiration of wealth. The love of honour turns to love of
money; the conversion is instantaneous. The man is mean, saving, toiling,
the slave of one passion which is the master of the rest: Is he not the
very image of the State? He has had no education, or he would never have
allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being
uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish,
breeding in his soul. If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the power
to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that
his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason. Hence he leads
a divided existence; in which the better desires mostly prevail. But when
he is contending for prizes and other distinctions, he is afraid to incur a
loss which is to be repaid only by barren honour; in time of war he fights
with a small part of his resources, and usually keeps his money and loses
the victory.

Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oligarchy and the
oligarchical man. Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an
oligarchy; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may gain
by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus men of family often lose their
property or rights of citizenship; but they remain in the city, full of
hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for revolution.
The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them; he passes by, and
leaves his sting--that is, his money--in some other victim; and many a man
has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied into a family of
children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by him. The only way of
diminishing the evil is either to limit a man in his use of his property,
or to insist that he shall lend at his own risk. But the ruling class do
not want remedies; they care only for money, and are as careless of virtue
as the poorest of the citizens. Now there are occasions on which the
governors and the governed meet together,--at festivals, on a journey,
voyaging or fighting. The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger he
is not despised; he sees the rich man puffing and panting, and draws the
conclusion which he privately imparts to his companions,--'that our people
are not good for much;' and as a sickly frame is made ill by a mere touch
from without, or sometimes without external impulse is ready to fall to
pieces of itself, so from the least cause, or with none at all, the city
falls ill and fights a battle for life or death. And democracy comes into
power when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling some, and
giving equal shares in the government to all the rest.

The manner of life in such a State is that of democrats; there is freedom
and plainness of speech, and every man does what is right in his own eyes,
and has his own way of life. Hence arise the most various developments of
character; the State is like a piece of embroidery of which the colours and
figures are the manners of men, and there are many who, like women and
children, prefer this variety to real beauty and excellence. The State is
not one but many, like a bazaar at which you can buy anything. The great
charm is, that you may do as you like; you may govern if you like, let it
alone if you like; go to war and make peace if you feel disposed, and all
quite irrespective of anybody else. When you condemn men to death they
remain alive all the same; a gentleman is desired to go into exile, and he
stalks about the streets like a hero; and nobody sees him or cares for him.
Observe, too, how grandly Democracy sets her foot upon all our fine
theories of education,--how little she cares for the training of her
statesmen! The only qualification which she demands is the profession of
patriotism. Such is democracy;--a pleasing, lawless, various sort of
government, distributing equality to equals and unequals alike.

Let us now inspect the individual democrat; and first, as in the case of
the State, we will trace his antecedents. He is the son of a miserly
oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain the love of unnecessary
pleasures. Perhaps I ought to explain this latter term:--Necessary
pleasures are those which are good, and which we cannot do without;
unnecessary pleasures are those which do no good, and of which the desire
might be eradicated by early training. For example, the pleasures of
eating and drinking are necessary and healthy, up to a certain point;
beyond that point they are alike hurtful to body and mind, and the excess
may be avoided. When in excess, they may be rightly called expensive
pleasures, in opposition to the useful ones. And the drone, as we called
him, is the slave of these unnecessary pleasures and desires, whereas the
miserly oligarch is subject only to the necessary.

The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner:--The youth
who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone's honey; he
meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new pleasure. As in
the State, so in the individual, there are allies on both sides,
temptations from without and passions from within; there is reason also and
external influences of parents and friends in alliance with the
oligarchical principle; and the two factions are in violent conflict with
one another. Sometimes the party of order prevails, but then again new
desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of passions gets
possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul, which they find void
and unguarded by true words and works. Falsehoods and illusions ascend to
take their place; the prodigal goes back into the country of the Lotophagi
or drones, and openly dwells there. And if any offer of alliance or parley
of individual elders comes from home, the false spirits shut the gates of
the castle and permit no one to enter,--there is a battle, and they gain
the victory; and straightway making alliance with the desires, they banish
modesty, which they call folly, and send temperance over the border. When
the house has been swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices,
and, crowning them with garlands, bring them back under new names.
Insolence they call good breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence,
impudence courage. Such is the process by which the youth passes from the
necessary pleasures to the unnecessary. After a while he divides his time
impartially between them; and perhaps, when he gets older and the violence
of passion has abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort
of equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if
reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and honourable, and
others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says that he can make no
distinction between them. Thus he lives in the fancy of the hour;
sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns abstainer; he practises in
the gymnasium or he does nothing at all; then again he would be a
philosopher or a politician; or again, he would be a warrior or a man of
business; he is

'Every thing by starts and nothing long.'

There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all States--
tyranny and the tyrant. Tyranny springs from democracy much as democracy
springs from oligarchy. Both arise from excess; the one from excess of
wealth, the other from excess of freedom. 'The great natural good of
life,' says the democrat, 'is freedom.'  And this exclusive love of freedom
and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the change from
democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong wine of freedom, and
unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes and insults them;
equality and fraternity of governors and governed is the approved
principle. Anarchy is the law, not of the State only, but of private
houses, and extends even to the animals. Father and son, citizen and
foreigner, teacher and pupil, old and young, are all on a level; fathers
and teachers fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom of the young man is
a match for the elder, and the old imitate the jaunty manners of the young
because they are afraid of being thought morose. Slaves are on a level
with their masters and mistresses, and there is no difference between men
and women. Nay, the very animals in a democratic State have a freedom
which is unknown in other places. The she-dogs are as good as their she-
mistresses, and horses and asses march along with dignity and run their
noses against anybody who comes in their way. 'That has often been my
experience.'  At last the citizens become so sensitive that they cannot
endure the yoke of laws, written or unwritten; they would have no man call
himself their master. Such is the glorious beginning of things out of
which tyranny springs. 'Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?'  The
ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; for there is a law of
contraries; the excess of freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and
the greater the freedom the greater the slavery. You will remember that in
the oligarchy were found two classes--rogues and paupers, whom we compared
to drones with and without stings. These two classes are to the State what
phlegm and bile are to the human body; and the State-physician, or
legislator, must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones
out of the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are
more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are
inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the
keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent
their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in democratic
States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the
drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who
are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the
people. When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be
brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich
are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part
themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. Their victims attempt to
resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become
downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and
convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse
into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature
of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus,
which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other
victims will turn into a wolf. Even so the protector, who tastes human
blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at
abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a
wolf--that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back
from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means,
they plot his assassination. Thereupon the friend of the people makes his
well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant,
thinking only of his danger and not of their own. Now let the rich man
make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do
so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands
proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant: Let us enquire
into the nature of his happiness.

In the early days of his tyranny he smiles and beams upon everybody; he is
not a 'dominus,' no, not he: he has only come to put an end to debt and
the monopoly of land. Having got rid of foreign enemies, he makes himself
necessary to the State by always going to war. He is thus enabled to
depress the poor by heavy taxes, and so keep them at work; and he can get
rid of bolder spirits by handing them over to the enemy. Then comes
unpopularity; some of his old associates have the courage to oppose him.
The consequence is, that he has to make a purgation of the State; but,
unlike the physician who purges away the bad, he must get rid of the high-
spirited, the wise and the wealthy; for he has no choice between death and
a life of shame and dishonour. And the more hated he is, the more he will
require trusty guards; but how will he obtain them? 'They will come
flocking like birds--for pay.'  Will he not rather obtain them on the spot?
He will take the slaves from their owners and make them his body-guard;
these are his trusted friends, who admire and look up to him. Are not the
tragic poets wise who magnify and exalt the tyrant, and say that he is wise
by association with the wise? And are not their praises of tyranny alone a
sufficient reason why we should exclude them from our State? They may go
to other cities, and gather the mob about them with fine words, and change
commonwealths into tyrannies and democracies, receiving honours and rewards
for their services; but the higher they and their friends ascend
constitution hill, the more their honour will fail and become 'too
asthmatic to mount.'  To return to the tyrant--How will he support that
rare army of his? First, by robbing the temples of their treasures, which
will enable him to lighten the taxes; then he will take all his father's
property, and spend it on his companions, male or female. Now his father
is the demus, and if the demus gets angry, and says that a great hulking
son ought not to be a burden on his parents, and bids him and his riotous
crew begone, then will the parent know what a monster he has been
nurturing, and that the son whom he would fain expel is too strong for him.
'You do not mean to say that he will beat his father?'  Yes, he will, after
having taken away his arms. 'Then he is a parricide and a cruel, unnatural
son.'  And the people have jumped from the fear of slavery into slavery,
out of the smoke into the fire. Thus liberty, when out of all order and
reason, passes into the worst form of servitude...

In the previous books Plato has described the ideal State; now he returns
to the perverted or declining forms, on which he had lightly touched at the
end of Book IV. These he describes in a succession of parallels between
the individuals and the States, tracing the origin of either in the State
or individual which has preceded them. He begins by asking the point at
which he digressed; and is thus led shortly to recapitulate the substance
of the three former books, which also contain a parallel of the philosopher
and the State.

Of the first decline he gives no intelligible account; he would not have
liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his ideal State,
which to us would appear to be the impracticability of communism or the
natural antagonism of the ruling and subject classes. He throws a veil of
mystery over the origin of the decline, which he attributes to ignorance of
the law of population. Of this law the famous geometrical figure or number
is the expression. Like the ancients in general, he had no idea of the
gradual perfectibility of man or of the education of the human race. His
ideal was not to be attained in the course of ages, but was to spring in
full armour from the head of the legislator. When good laws had been
given, he thought only of the manner in which they were likely to be
corrupted, or of how they might be filled up in detail or restored in
accordance with their original spirit. He appears not to have reflected
upon the full meaning of his own words, 'In the brief space of human life,
nothing great can be accomplished'; or again, as he afterwards says in the
Laws, 'Infinite time is the maker of cities.'  The order of constitutions
which is adopted by him represents an order of thought rather than a
succession of time, and may be considered as the first attempt to frame a
philosophy of history.

The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of
soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; this is
a government of force, in which education is not inspired by the Muses, but
imposed by the law, and in which all the finer elements of organization
have disappeared. The philosopher himself has lost the love of truth, and
the soldier, who is of a simpler and honester nature, rules in his stead.
The individual who answers to timocracy has some noticeable qualities. He
is described as ill educated, but, like the Spartan, a lover of literature;
and although he is a harsh master to his servants he has no natural
superiority over them. His character is based upon a reaction against the
circumstances of his father, who in a troubled city has retired from
politics; and his mother, who is dissatisfied at her own position, is
always urging him towards the life of political ambition. Such a character
may have had this origin, and indeed Livy attributes the Licinian laws to a
feminine jealousy of a similar kind. But there is obviously no connection
between the manner in which the timocratic State springs out of the ideal,
and the mere accident by which the timocratic man is the son of a retired
statesman.

The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less
historical foundation. For there is no trace in Greek history of a polity
like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of wealth, or of the
oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy. The order of history appears
to be different; first, in the Homeric times there is the royal or
patriarchal form of government, which a century or two later was succeeded
by an oligarchy of birth rather than of wealth, and in which wealth was
only the accident of the hereditary possession of land and power.
Sometimes this oligarchical government gave way to a government based upon
a qualification of property, which, according to Aristotle's mode of using
words, would have been called a timocracy; and this in some cities, as at
Athens, became the conducting medium to democracy. But such was not the
necessary order of succession in States; nor, indeed, can any order be
discerned in the endless fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in
the Euripus), except, perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy
to aristocracy in the earliest times. At first sight there appears to be a
similar inversion in the last step of the Platonic succession; for tyranny,
instead of being the natural end of democracy, in early Greek history
appears rather as a stage leading to democracy; the reign of Peisistratus
and his sons is an episode which comes between the legislation of Solon and
the constitution of Cleisthenes; and some secret cause common to them all
seems to have led the greater part of Hellas at her first appearance in the
dawn of history, e.g. Athens, Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, and nearly every
State with the exception of Sparta, through a similar stage of tyranny
which ended either in oligarchy or democracy. But then we must remember
that Plato is describing rather the contemporary governments of the
Sicilian States, which alternated between democracy and tyranny, than the
ancient history of Athens or Corinth.

The portrait of the tyrant himself is just such as the later Greek
delighted to draw of Phalaris and Dionysius, in which, as in the lives of
mediaeval saints or mythic heroes, the conduct and actions of one were
attributed to another in order to fill up the outline. There was no
enormity which the Greek was not today to believe of them; the tyrant was
the negation of government and law; his assassination was glorious; there
was no crime, however unnatural, which might not with probability be
attributed to him. In this, Plato was only following the common thought of
his countrymen, which he embellished and exaggerated with all the power of
his genius. There is no need to suppose that he drew from life; or that
his knowledge of tyrants is derived from a personal acquaintance with
Dionysius. The manner in which he speaks of them would rather tend to
render doubtful his ever having 'consorted' with them, or entertained the
schemes, which are attributed to him in the Epistles, of regenerating
Sicily by their help.

Plato in a hyperbolical and serio-comic vein exaggerates the follies of
democracy which he also sees reflected in social life. To him democracy is
a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what
is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit of
liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading
idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to think.
But if he is not a believer in liberty, still less is he a lover of
tyranny. His deeper and more serious condemnation is reserved for the
tyrant, who is the ideal of wickedness and also of weakness, and who in his
utter helplessness and suspiciousness is leading an almost impossible
existence, without that remnant of good which, in Plato's opinion, was
required to give power to evil (Book I). This ideal of wickedness living
in helpless misery, is the reverse of that other portrait of perfect
injustice ruling in happiness and splendour, which first of all
Thrasymachus, and afterwards the sons of Ariston had drawn, and is also the
reverse of the king whose rule of life is the good of his subjects.

Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding ethical
gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not extinguishing
but harmonizing the passions, and training them in virtue; in the timocracy
and the timocratic man the constitution, whether of the State or of the
individual, is based, first, upon courage, and secondly, upon the love of
honour; this latter virtue, which is hardly to be esteemed a virtue, has
superseded all the rest. In the second stage of decline the virtues have
altogether disappeared, and the love of gain has succeeded to them; in the
third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free
play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. But this
freedom, which leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in
reality only a state of weakness and dissipation. At last, one monster
passion takes possession of the whole nature of man--this is tyranny. In
all of them excess--the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the
element of decay.

The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and fanciful
allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a greater extent
than anywhere else in Plato. We may remark,

(1), the description of the two nations in one, which become more and more
divided in the Greek Republics, as in feudal times, and perhaps also in our
own;

(2), the notion of democracy expressed in a sort of Pythagorean formula as
equality among unequals;

(3), the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are characteristic of
liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal mistrust are of the tyrant;

(4), the proposal that mere debts should not be recoverable by law is a
speculation which has often been entertained by reformers of the law in
modern times, and is in harmony with the tendencies of modern legislation.
Debt and land were the two great difficulties of the ancient lawgiver: in
modern times we may be said to have almost, if not quite, solved the first
of these difficulties, but hardly the second.

Still more remarkable are the corresponding portraits of individuals:
there is the family picture of the father and mother and the old servant of
the timocratical man, and the outward respectability and inherent meanness
of the oligarchical; the uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat,
in which the young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong as
he pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far country
(note here the play of language by which the democratic man is himself
represented under the image of a State having a citadel and receiving
embassies); and there is the wild-beast nature, which breaks loose in his
successor. The hit about the tyrant being a parricide; the representation
of the tyrant's life as an obscene dream; the rhetorical surprise of a more
miserable than the most miserable of men in Book IX; the hint to the poets
that if they are the friends of tyrants there is no place for them in a
constitutional State, and that they are too clever not to see the propriety
of their own expulsion; the continuous image of the drones who are of two
kinds, swelling at last into the monster drone having wings (Book IX),--are
among Plato's happiest touches.

There remains to be considered the great difficulty of this book of the
Republic, the so-called number of the State. This is a puzzle almost as
great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation, and though
apparently known to Aristotle, is referred to by Cicero as a proverb of
obscurity (Ep. ad Att.). And some have imagined that there is no answer to
the puzzle, and that Plato has been practising upon his readers. But such
a deception as this is inconsistent with the manner in which Aristotle
speaks of the number (Pol.), and would have been ridiculous to any reader
of the Republic who was acquainted with Greek mathematics. As little
reason is there for supposing that Plato intentionally used obscure
expressions; the obscurity arises from our want of familiarity with the
subject. On the other hand, Plato himself indicates that he is not
altogether serious, and in describing his number as a solemn jest of the
Muses, he appears to imply some degree of satire on the symbolical use of
number. (Compare Cratylus; Protag.)

Our hope of understanding the passage depends principally on an accurate
study of the words themselves; on which a faint light is thrown by the
parallel passage in the ninth book. Another help is the allusion in
Aristotle, who makes the important remark that the latter part of the
passage (Greek) describes a solid figure. (Pol.--'He only says that
nothing is abiding, but that all things change in a certain cycle; and that
the origin of the change is a base of numbers which are in the ratio of
4:3; and this when combined with a figure of five gives two harmonies; he
means when the number of this figure becomes solid.')  Some further clue
may be gathered from the appearance of the Pythagorean triangle, which is
denoted by the numbers 3, 4, 5, and in which, as in every right-angled
triangle, the squares of the two lesser sides equal the square of the
hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25).

Plato begins by speaking of a perfect or cyclical number (Tim.), i.e. a
number in which the sum of the divisors equals the whole; this is the
divine or perfect number in which all lesser cycles or revolutions are
complete. He also speaks of a human or imperfect number, having four terms
and three intervals of numbers which are related to one another in certain
proportions; these he converts into figures, and finds in them when they
have been raised to the third power certain elements of number, which give
two 'harmonies,' the one square, the other oblong; but he does not say that
the square number answers to the divine, or the oblong number to the human
cycle; nor is any intimation given that the first or divine number
represents the period of the world, the second the period of the state, or
of the human race as Zeller supposes; nor is the divine number afterwards
mentioned (Arist.). The second is the number of generations or births, and
presides over them in the same mysterious manner in which the stars preside
over them, or in which, according to the Pythagoreans, opportunity,
justice, marriage, are represented by some number or figure. This is
probably the number 216.

The explanation given in the text supposes the two harmonies to make up the
number 8000. This explanation derives a certain plausibility from the
circumstance that 8000 is the ancient number of the Spartan citizens
(Herod.), and would be what Plato might have called 'a number which nearly
concerns the population of a city'; the mysterious disappearance of the
Spartan population may possibly have suggested to him the first cause of
his decline of States. The lesser or square 'harmony,' of 400, might be a
symbol of the guardians,--the larger or oblong 'harmony,' of the people,
and the numbers 3, 4, 5 might refer respectively to the three orders in the
State or parts of the soul, the four virtues, the five forms of government.
The harmony of the musical scale, which is elsewhere used as a symbol of
the harmony of the state, is also indicated. For the numbers 3, 4, 5,
which represent the sides of the Pythagorean triangle, also denote the
intervals of the scale.

The terms used in the statement of the problem may be explained as follows.
A perfect number (Greek), as already stated, is one which is equal to the
sum of its divisors. Thus 6, which is the first perfect or cyclical
number, = 1 + 2 + 3. The words (Greek), 'terms' or 'notes,' and (Greek),
'intervals,' are applicable to music as well as to number and figure.
(Greek) is the 'base' on which the whole calculation depends, or the
'lowest term' from which it can be worked out. The words (Greek) have been
variously translated--'squared and cubed' (Donaldson), 'equalling and
equalled in power' (Weber), 'by involution and evolution,' i.e. by raising
the power and extracting the root (as in the translation). Numbers are
called 'like and unlike' (Greek) when the factors or the sides of the
planes and cubes which they represent are or are not in the same ratio:
e.g. 8 and 27 = 2 cubed and 3 cubed; and conversely. 'Waxing' (Greek)
numbers, called also 'increasing' (Greek), are those which are exceeded by
the sum of their divisors: e.g. 12 and 18 are less than 16 and 21.
'Waning' (Greek) numbers, called also 'decreasing' (Greek) are those which
succeed the sum of their divisors: e.g. 8 and 27 exceed 7 and 13. The
words translated 'commensurable and agreeable to one another' (Greek) seem
to be different ways of describing the same relation, with more or less
precision. They are equivalent to 'expressible in terms having the same
relation to one another,' like the series 8, 12, 18, 27, each of which
numbers is in the relation of (1 and 1/2) to the preceding. The 'base,' or
'fundamental number, which has 1/3 added to it' (1 and 1/3) = 4/3 or a
musical fourth. (Greek) is a 'proportion' of numbers as of musical notes,
applied either to the parts or factors of a single number or to the
relation of one number to another. The first harmony is a 'square' number
(Greek); the second harmony is an 'oblong' number (Greek), i.e. a number
representing a figure of which the opposite sides only are equal. (Greek)
= 'numbers squared from' or 'upon diameters'; (Greek) = 'rational,' i.e.
omitting fractions, (Greek), 'irrational,' i.e. including fractions; e.g.
49 is a square of the rational diameter of a figure the side of which = 5:
50, of an irrational diameter of the same. For several of the explanations
here given and for a good deal besides I am indebted to an excellent
article on the Platonic Number by Dr. Donaldson (Proc. of the Philol.
Society).

The conclusions which he draws from these data are summed up by him as
follows. Having assumed that the number of the perfect or divine cycle is
the number of the world, and the number of the imperfect cycle the number
of the state, he proceeds: 'The period of the world is defined by the
perfect number 6, that of the state by the cube of that number or 216,
which is the product of the last pair of terms in the Platonic Tetractys (a
series of seven terms, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27); and if we take this as the
basis of our computation, we shall have two cube numbers (Greek), viz. 8
and 27; and the mean proportionals between these, viz. 12 and 18, will
furnish three intervals and four terms, and these terms and intervals stand
related to one another in the sesqui-altera ratio, i.e. each term is to the
preceding as 3/2. Now if we remember that the number 216 = 8 x 27 = 3
cubed + 4 cubed + 5 cubed, and 3 squared + 4 squared = 5 squared, we must
admit that this number implies the numbers 3, 4, 5, to which musicians
attach so much importance. And if we combine the ratio 4/3 with the number
5, or multiply the ratios of the sides by the hypotenuse, we shall by first
squaring and then cubing obtain two expressions, which denote the ratio of
the two last pairs of terms in the Platonic Tetractys, the former
multiplied by the square, the latter by the cube of the number 10, the sum
of the first four digits which constitute the Platonic Tetractys.'  The two
(Greek) he elsewhere explains as follows: 'The first (Greek) is (Greek),
in other words (4/3 x 5) all squared = 100 x 2 squared over 3 squared. The
second (Greek), a cube of the same root, is described as 100 multiplied
(alpha) by the rational diameter of 5 diminished by unity, i.e., as shown
above, 48: (beta) by two incommensurable diameters, i.e. the two first
irrationals, or 2 and 3: and (gamma) by the cube of 3, or 27. Thus we
have (48 + 5 + 27) 100 = 1000 x 2 cubed. This second harmony is to be the
cube of the number of which the former harmony is the square, and therefore
must be divided by the cube of 3. In other words, the whole expression
will be: (1), for the first harmony, 400/9: (2), for the second harmony,
8000/27.'

The reasons which have inclined me to agree with Dr. Donaldson and also
with Schleiermacher in supposing that 216 is the Platonic number of births
are: (1) that it coincides with the description of the number given in the
first part of the passage (Greek...): (2) that the number 216 with its
permutations would have been familiar to a Greek mathematician, though
unfamiliar to us: (3) that 216 is the cube of 6, and also the sum of 3
cubed, 4 cubed, 5 cubed, the numbers 3, 4, 5 representing the Pythagorean
triangle, of which the sides when squared equal the square of the
hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25): (4) that it is also the period of the
Pythagorean Metempsychosis: (5) the three ultimate terms or bases (3, 4,
5) of which 216 is composed answer to the third, fourth, fifth in the
musical scale: (6) that the number 216 is the product of the cubes of 2
and 3, which are the two last terms in the Platonic Tetractys: (7) that
the Pythagorean triangle is said by Plutarch (de Is. et Osir.), Proclus
(super prima Eucl.), and Quintilian (de Musica) to be contained in this
passage, so that the tradition of the school seems to point in the same
direction: (8) that the Pythagorean triangle is called also the figure of
marriage (Greek).

But though agreeing with Dr. Donaldson thus far, I see no reason for
supposing, as he does, that the first or perfect number is the world, the
human or imperfect number the state; nor has he given any proof that the
second harmony is a cube. Nor do I think that (Greek) can mean 'two
incommensurables,' which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but rather,
as the preceding clause implies, (Greek), i.e. two square numbers based
upon irrational diameters of a figure the side of which is 5 = 50 x 2.

The greatest objection to the translation is the sense given to the words
(Greek), 'a base of three with a third added to it, multiplied by 5.'  In
this somewhat forced manner Plato introduces once more the numbers of the
Pythagorean triangle. But the coincidences in the numbers which follow are
in favour of the explanation. The first harmony of 400, as has been
already remarked, probably represents the rulers; the second and oblong
harmony of 7600, the people.

And here we take leave of the difficulty. The discovery of the riddle
would be useless, and would throw no light on ancient mathematics. The
point of interest is that Plato should have used such a symbol, and that so
much of the Pythagorean spirit should have prevailed in him. His general
meaning is that divine creation is perfect, and is represented or presided
over by a perfect or cyclical number; human generation is imperfect, and
represented or presided over by an imperfect number or series of numbers.
The number 5040, which is the number of the citizens in the Laws, is
expressly based by him on utilitarian grounds, namely, the convenience of
the number for division; it is also made up of the first seven digits
multiplied by one another. The contrast of the perfect and imperfect
number may have been easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle,
which were made first by Meton and secondly by Callippus; (the latter is
said to have been a pupil of Plato). Of the degree of importance or of
exactness to be attributed to the problem, the number of the tyrant in Book
IX (729 = 365 x 2), and the slight correction of the error in the number
5040/12 (Laws), may furnish a criterion. There is nothing surprising in
the circumstance that those who were seeking for order in nature and had
found order in number, should have imagined one to give law to the other.
Plato believes in a power of number far beyond what he could see realized
in the world around him, and he knows the great influence which 'the little
matter of 1, 2, 3' exercises upon education. He may even be thought to
have a prophetic anticipation of the discoveries of Quetelet and others,
that numbers depend upon numbers; e.g.--in population, the numbers of
births and the respective numbers of children born of either sex, on the
respective ages of parents, i.e. on other numbers.

BOOK IX. Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to
enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live--in happiness or in misery?
There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the
appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them are
unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various degrees
by the power of reason and law. 'What appetites do you mean?'  I mean
those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which get up
and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and there is no
conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of which, in
imagination, they may not be guilty. 'True,' he said; 'very true.'  But
when a man's pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a feast of
reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to rest, and has
satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their perturbing his reason,
which remains clear and luminous, and when he is free from quarrel and
heat,--the visions which he has on his bed are least irregular and
abnormal. Even in good men there is such an irregular wild-beast nature,
which peers out in sleep.

To return:--You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the son
of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and repressed the
ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got into fine company,
and began to entertain a dislike to his father's narrow ways; and being a
better man than the corrupters of his youth, he came to a mean, and led a
life, not of lawless or slavish passion, but of regular and successive
indulgence. Now imagine that the youth has become a father, and has a son
who is exposed to the same temptations, and has companions who lead him
into every sort of iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him
right. The counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining
him is to implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires
buzz around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster
love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest
thought or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and the
tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a drinking,
lusting, furious sort of animal.

And how does such an one live? 'Nay, that you must tell me.'  Well then, I
fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will be the
lord and master of the house. Many desires require much money, and so he
spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has nothing the young
ravens are still in the nest in which they were hatched, crying for food.
Love urges them on; and they must be gratified by force or fraud, or if
not, they become painful and troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed
the old ones, so will the son take possession of the goods of his parents;
if they show signs of refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if
they openly resist, what then? 'I can only say, that I should not much
like to be in their place.'  But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for
some new-fangled and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and
mother, best and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the
hour! Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When
there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket, or
robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he becomes
in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He waxes
strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed of daring
that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a well-ordered State
there are only a few such, and these in time of war go out and become the
mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace they stay at home and do
mischief; they are the thieves, footpads, cut-purses, man-stealers of the
community; or if they are able to speak, they turn false-witnesses and
informers. 'No small catalogue of crimes truly, even if the perpetrators
are few.'  Yes, I said; but small and great are relative terms, and no
crimes which are committed by them approach those of the tyrant, whom this
class, growing strong and numerous, create out of themselves. If the
people yield, well and good, but, if they resist, then, as before he beat
his father and mother, so now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and
places his mercenaries over them. Such men in their early days live with
flatterers, and they themselves flatter others, in order to gain their
ends; but they soon discard their followers when they have no longer any
need of them; they are always either masters or servants,--the joys of
friendship are unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and
unjust, if the nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize
our dream; and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life
of a tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the
worst of them, will also be the most miserable.

Like man, like State,--the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which is
the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the other
the worst. But which is the happier? Great and terrible as the tyrant may
appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid to go in and
ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the happiest, and the
tyrannical the most miserable of States. And may we not ask the same
question about the men themselves, requesting some one to look into them
who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and will not be panic-
struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose that he is one who has
lived with him, and has seen him in family life, or perhaps in the hour of
trouble and danger.

Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek, let us
begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of all, whether
the State is likely to be free or enslaved--Will there not be a little
freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of the bad, and
the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as well as to the
State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and the better part is
enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would, and his mind is full of
confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman. The State will be poor and
full of misery and sorrow; and the man's soul will also be poor and full of
sorrows, and he will be the most miserable of men. No, not the most
miserable, for there is yet a more miserable. 'Who is that?'  The
tyrannical man who has the misfortune also to become a public tyrant.
'There I suspect that you are right.'  Say rather, 'I am sure;' conjecture
is out of place in an enquiry of this nature. He is like a wealthy owner
of slaves, only he has more of them than any private individual. You will
say, 'The owners of slaves are not generally in any fear of them.'  But
why? Because the whole city is in a league which protects the individual.
Suppose however that one of these owners and his household is carried off
by a god into a wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him--will he
not be in an agony of terror?--will he not be compelled to flatter his
slaves and to promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose
the same god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them
should be punished with death. 'Still worse and worse! He will be in the
midst of his enemies.'  And is not our tyrant such a captive soul, who is
tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living indoors
always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and see the world?

Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more
miserable in a public station? Master of others when he is not master of
himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the meanest of
slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all things, and never
able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and distraction, like the State
of which he is the representative. His jealous, hateful, faithless temper
grows worse with command; he is more and more faithless, envious,
unrighteous,--the most wretched of men, a misery to himself and to others.
And so let us have a final trial and proclamation; need we hire a herald,
or shall I proclaim the result? 'Made the proclamation yourself.'  The son
of Ariston (the best) is of opinion that the best and justest of men is
also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most royal master of
himself; and that the unjust man is he who is the greatest tyrant of
himself and of his State. And I add further--'seen or unseen by gods or
men.'

This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of
pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul--reason, passion,
desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as sensual
appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love of
reputation. Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of truth,
and careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the difference of
men's natures, one of these three principles is in the ascendant, and they
have their several pleasures corresponding to them. Interrogate now the
three natures, and each one will be found praising his own pleasures and
depreciating those of others. The money-maker will contrast the vanity of
knowledge with the solid advantages of wealth. The ambitious man will
despise knowledge which brings no honour; whereas the philosopher will
regard only the fruition of truth, and will call other pleasures necessary
rather than good. Now, how shall we decide between them? Is there any
better criterion than experience and knowledge? And which of the three has
the truest knowledge and the widest experience? The experience of youth
makes the philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the
avaricious and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and
wisdom. Honour he has equally with them; they are 'judged of him,' but he
is 'not judged of them,' for they never attain to the knowledge of true
being. And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only wealth
and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be the truest.
And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the rational part of
the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the pleasantest. He who
has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes the life of ambition, and, in
the third place, that of money-making.

Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust--once more, as in an Olympian
contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let him try a
fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the