"INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS. ">

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
witne