The Republic

BOOK I. · 1/14

The Republic

BOOK I.

¹THE REPUBLIC By Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett Note: See also “The Republic” by Plato, Jowett, eBook #150 Contents INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS. ²THE REPUBLIC. ³PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE. ⁴INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS. ⁵The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. ⁶There 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. ⁷But 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. ⁸Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. ⁹Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. ¹⁰The 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. ¹¹Plato 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. ¹²He 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. ¹³The 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. ¹⁴The 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. ¹⁵The 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. ¹⁶Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl. 435, 436 ff), although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own writings (e.g. ¹⁷Rep.). ¹⁸But 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. ¹⁹Elenchi, 33. ²⁰18). ²¹Neither 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. ²²The 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. ²³This 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. ²⁴It would have told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. ²⁵Tim. ²⁶25 C), intended to represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. ²⁷We 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. ²⁸We 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. ²⁹Laws, iii. 698 ff.), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus (v. 78) 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!’ ³⁰or, more probably, attributing the victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo and Athene (cp. ³¹Introd. to Critias). ³²Again, 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. ³³Augustine’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. ³⁴The 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. ³⁵The two philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle. ³⁶In 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. ³⁷That 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. ³⁸Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest influence. ³⁹The 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. ⁴⁰Like 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. ⁴¹Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated at second-hand’ (Symp. ⁴²215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. ⁴³He is the father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. ⁴⁴And 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. ⁴⁵The 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. ⁴⁶The 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. ⁴⁷We 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. ⁴⁸Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world and quickly degenerates. ⁴⁹To 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. ⁵⁰When ‘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. ⁵¹The 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. ⁵²Poetry 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. ⁵³And the idea of the State is supplemented by the revelation of a future life. ⁵⁴The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. ⁵⁵Sir G.C. ⁵⁶Lewis in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. p 1.), is probably later than the age of Plato. ⁵⁷The 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. ⁵⁸To 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? ⁵⁹The 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. ⁶⁰The 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. ⁶¹In 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. ⁶²The 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. ⁶³Or 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. ⁶⁴These two points of view are really opposed, and the opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. ⁶⁵The 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. ⁶⁶Whether 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. ⁶⁷In 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. ⁶⁸There 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. ⁶⁹In 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. ⁷⁰But, 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. ⁷¹For there is a judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to anticipate for themselves. ⁷²They 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. ⁷³In 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. ⁷⁴For consistency, too, is the growth of time; and some of the greatest creations of the human mind have been wanting in unity. ⁷⁵Tried 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. ⁷⁶And 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. ⁷⁷The 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. ⁷⁸Morgenstern 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. ⁷⁹The 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. ⁸⁰The 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. ⁸¹In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the idea. ⁸²Or, 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. ⁸³Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the whole texture. ⁸⁴And 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. ⁸⁵The 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. ⁸⁶Tim. ⁸⁷47). ⁸⁸The 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. ⁸⁹Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and modern times. ⁹⁰There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to design. ⁹¹Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element which was not comprehended in the original design. ⁹²For 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. ⁹³The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general. ⁹⁴Thus 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.’ ⁹⁵There may be some use in such general descriptions, but they can hardly be said to express the design of the writer. ⁹⁶The 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. ⁹⁷What 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. ⁹⁸To 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). ⁹⁹Is 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? ¹⁰⁰Just 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. ¹⁰¹No such inspired creation is at unity with itself, any more than the clouds of heaven when the sun pierces through them. ¹⁰²Every shade of light and dark, of truth, and of fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a work of philosophical imagination. ¹⁰³It is not all on the same plane; it easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of speech. ¹⁰⁴It 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. ¹⁰⁵The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole; they take possession of him and are too much for him. ¹⁰⁶We 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. ¹⁰⁷For 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. ¹⁰⁸The 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. ¹⁰⁹It 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. ¹¹⁰It 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. ¹¹¹Rep., Symp., 193 A, etc.), only aims at general probability. ¹¹²Whether 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. ¹¹³Yet 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. ¹¹⁴Hermann, that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of Plato (cp. ¹¹⁵Apol. ¹¹⁶34 A), or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of his Dialogues were written. ¹¹⁷The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. ¹¹⁸Cephalus 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. ¹¹⁹The main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. ¹²⁰Among 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. ¹²¹Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately engaged in offering a sacrifice. ¹²²He is the pattern of an old man who has almost done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. ¹²³He feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger around the memory of the past. ¹²⁴He 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. ¹²⁵His love of conversation, his affection, his indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of character. ¹²⁶He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. ¹²⁷Yet he acknowledges that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. ¹²⁸The 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. ¹²⁹Who better suited to raise the question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of it? ¹³⁰The 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. ¹³¹The evening of life is described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. ¹³²As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), 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. ¹³³Lysimachus in the Laches). ¹³⁴His ‘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. ¹³⁵Like 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. ¹³⁶Aristoph. ¹³⁷Clouds) as his father had quoted Pindar. ¹³⁸But after this he has no more to say; the answers which he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. ¹³⁹He 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. ¹⁴⁰He is incapable of arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he does not know what he is saying. ¹⁴¹He is made to admit that justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the arts. ¹⁴²From 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. ¹⁴³The ‘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. ¹⁴⁴He 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.’ ¹⁴⁵He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. ¹⁴⁶But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. ¹⁴⁷Whether 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. ¹⁴⁸The inequality of the contest adds greatly to the humour of the scene. ¹⁴⁹The 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. ¹⁵⁰He 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. ¹⁵¹His determination to cram down their throats, or put ‘bodily into their souls’ his own words, elicits a cry of horror from Socrates. ¹⁵²The state of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as the process of the argument. ¹⁵³Nothing is more amusing than his complete submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. ¹⁵⁴At 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. ¹⁵⁵When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously protected by Socrates ‘as one who has never been his enemy and is now his friend.’ ¹⁵⁶From 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. ¹⁵⁷The play on his name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus (Aris. ¹⁵⁸Rhet.), ‘thou wast ever bold in battle,’ seems to show that the description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude. ¹⁵⁹When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents, Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy (cp. ¹⁶⁰Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are introduced. ¹⁶¹At first sight the two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the two friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. ¹⁶²But on a nearer examination of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be distinct characters. ¹⁶³Glaucon is the impetuous youth who can ‘just never have enough of fechting’ (cp. the character of him in Xen. ¹⁶⁴Mem. 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. ¹⁶⁵He 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. ¹⁶⁶It 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. ¹⁶⁷His weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates, who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother Adeimantus. ¹⁶⁸He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been distinguished at the battle of Megara (anno 456?)... ¹⁶⁹The character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder objections are commonly put into his mouth. ¹⁷⁰Glaucon is more demonstrative, and generally opens the game. ¹⁷¹Adeimantus pursues the argument further. ¹⁷²Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world. ¹⁷³In 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. ¹⁷⁴In 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. ¹⁷⁵It 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. ¹⁷⁶It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions of the Dialogue. ¹⁷⁷For 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. ¹⁷⁸Glaucon 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. ¹⁷⁹Once 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. ¹⁸⁰Thus 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. ¹⁸¹These too, like Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one another. ¹⁸²Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato, is a single character repeated. ¹⁸³The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent. ¹⁸⁴In 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. ¹⁸⁵He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well as to argue seriously. ¹⁸⁶But in the sixth book his enmity towards the Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the corrupters of the world. ¹⁸⁷He also becomes more dogmatic and constructive, passing beyond the range either of the political or the speculative ideas of the real Socrates. ¹⁸⁸In 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. ¹⁸⁹There 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. ¹⁹⁰Xen. ¹⁹¹Mem.; 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.) ¹⁹²The 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. ¹⁹³But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation grows wearisome as the work advances. ¹⁹⁴The 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. ¹⁹⁵The 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. ¹⁹⁶Neither 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. ¹⁹⁷Apol.); 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. ¹⁹⁸His 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. ¹⁹⁹A 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 τὰ φορτικὰ αὐτῷ προσφέροντες, ‘Let us apply the test of common instances.’ ²⁰⁰‘You,’ says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, ‘are so unaccustomed to speak in images.’ ²⁰¹And 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. ²⁰²Thus the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions of knowledge in Book VI. ²⁰³The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory of the parts of the soul. ²⁰⁴The 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. ²⁰⁵Other 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. ²⁰⁶Plato is most true to the character of his master when he describes him as ‘not of this world.’ ²⁰⁷And 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. ²⁰⁸To 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. ²⁰⁹The common sense of mankind has revolted against this view, or has only partially admitted it. ²¹⁰And even in Socrates himself the sterner judgement of the multitude at times passes into a sort of ironical pity or love. ²¹¹Men 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. ²¹²Their leaders have nothing to measure with, and are therefore ignorant of their own stature. ²¹³But 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. ²¹⁴This moderation towards those who are in error is one of the most characteristic features of Socrates in the Republic. ²¹⁵In 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. ²¹⁶Leaving 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. ²¹⁷BOOK I. ²¹⁸The 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. ²¹⁹The 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. ²²⁰When 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. ²²¹Of 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. ²²²The 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. ²²³They 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. ²²⁴‘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.’ ²²⁵Socrates 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. ²²⁶Yes, replies Socrates, but the world will say, Cephalus, that you are happy in old age because you are rich. ²²⁷‘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.’ ²²⁸Socrates 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. ²²⁹Cephalus 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. ²³⁰Socrates, who is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the meaning of the word justice? ²³¹To tell the truth and pay your debts? ²³²No more than this? ²³³Or must we admit exceptions? ²³⁴Ought 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? ²³⁵‘There must be exceptions.’ ²³⁶‘And yet,’ says Polemarchus, ‘the definition which has been given has the authority of Simonides.’ ²³⁷Here Cephalus retires to look after the sacrifices, and bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously remarks, the possession of the argument to his heir, Polemarchus... ²³⁸The 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. ²³⁹The 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.’ ²⁴⁰The 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. ... ²⁴¹He proceeds: What did Simonides mean by this saying of his? ²⁴²Did he mean that I was to give back arms to a madman? ²⁴³‘No, not in that case, not if the parties are friends, and evil would result. ²⁴⁴He meant that you were to do what was proper, good to friends and harm to enemies.’ ²⁴⁵Every act does something to somebody; and following this analogy, Socrates asks, What is this due and proper thing which justice does, and to whom? ²⁴⁶He is answered that justice does good to friends and harm to enemies. ²⁴⁷But in what way good or harm? ²⁴⁸‘In making alliances with the one, and going to war with the other.’ ²⁴⁹Then in time of peace what is the good of justice? ²⁵⁰The answer is that justice is of use in contracts, and contracts are money partnerships. ²⁵¹Yes; but how in such partnerships is the just man of more use than any other man? ²⁵²‘When you want to have money safely kept and not used.’ ²⁵³Then justice will be useful when money is useless. ²⁵⁴And 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. ²⁵⁵But 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. ²⁵⁶And still there arises another question: Are friends to be interpreted as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming? ²⁵⁷And are our friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil? ²⁵⁸The 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. ²⁵⁹But ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will only make men more evil? ²⁶⁰Can justice produce injustice any more than the art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold? ²⁶¹The 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. ²⁶²398-381)... ²⁶³Thus 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. ²⁶⁴Similar 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?’ ²⁶⁵In this both Plato and Kheyam rise above the level of many Christian (?) ²⁶⁶theologians. ²⁶⁷The 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.’ ²⁶⁸Either of these explanations gives a sufficient rule of life for plain men, but they both fall short of the precision of philosophy. ²⁶⁹We 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. ²⁷⁰The ‘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. ... ²⁷¹Here 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. ²⁷²‘Socrates,’ he says, ‘what folly is this?—Why do you agree to be vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?’ ²⁷³He 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. ²⁷⁴At 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. ²⁷⁵‘Listen,’ he says, ‘my answer is that might is right, justice the interest of the stronger: now praise me.’ ²⁷⁶Let me understand you first. ²⁷⁷Do 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? ²⁷⁸Thrasymachus 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. ²⁷⁹But suppose, says Socrates, that the ruler or stronger makes a mistake—then the interest of the stronger is not his interest. ²⁸⁰Thrasymachus 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. ²⁸¹The 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. ²⁸²Of course this was not the original assertion, nor is the new interpretation accepted by Thrasymachus himself. ²⁸³But Socrates is not disposed to quarrel about words, if, as he significantly insinuates, his adversary has changed his mind. ²⁸⁴In 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. ²⁸⁵Socrates is quite ready to accept the new position, which he equally turns against Thrasymachus by the help of the analogy of the arts. ²⁸⁶Every 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. ²⁸⁷And justice has an interest which is the interest not of the ruler or judge, but of those who come under his sway. ²⁸⁸Thrasymachus is on the brink of the inevitable conclusion, when he makes a bold diversion. ²⁸⁹‘Tell me, Socrates,’ he says, ‘have you a nurse?’ ²⁹⁰What a question! ²⁹¹Why do you ask? ²⁹²‘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. ²⁹³For 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. ²⁹⁴And 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. ²⁹⁵The 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.’ ²⁹⁶Thrasymachus, who is better at a speech than at a close argument, having deluged the company with words, has a mind to escape. ²⁹⁷But 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. ²⁹⁸‘And what can I do more for you?’ ²⁹⁹he says; ‘would you have me put the words bodily into your souls?’ ³⁰⁰God forbid! ³⁰¹replies 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. ³⁰²‘No doubt about it,’ replies Thrasymachus. ³⁰³Then why are they paid? ³⁰⁴Is 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? ³⁰⁵Nor 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. ³⁰⁶And 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... ³⁰⁷The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced. ³⁰⁸There is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind do not like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay. ... ³⁰⁹Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more important—that the unjust life is more gainful than the just. ³¹⁰Now, 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. ³¹¹Thrasymachus 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. ³¹²Socrates praises his frankness, and assumes the attitude of one whose only wish is to understand the meaning of his opponents. ³¹³At the same time he is weaving a net in which Thrasymachus is finally enclosed. ³¹⁴The 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. ³¹⁵Socrates, in order to test this statement, employs once more the favourite analogy of the arts. ³¹⁶The 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. ³¹⁷Thus 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. ³¹⁸There 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. ³¹⁹But 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? ³²⁰Is not the strength of injustice only a remnant of justice? ³²¹Is not absolute injustice absolute weakness also? ³²²A 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. ³²³Not 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. ³²⁴Another question has not been answered: Is the just or the unjust the happier? ³²⁵To this we reply, that every art has an end and an excellence or virtue by which the end is accomplished. ³²⁶And is not the end of the soul happiness, and justice the excellence of the soul by which happiness is attained? ³²⁷Justice and happiness being thus shown to be inseparable, the question whether the just or the unjust is the happier has disappeared. ³²⁸Thrasymachus replies: ‘Let this be your entertainment, Socrates, at the festival of Bendis.’ ³²⁹Yes; and a very good entertainment with which your kindness has supplied me, now that you have left off scolding. ³³⁰And yet not a good entertainment—but that was my own fault, for I tasted of too many things. ³³¹First 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?... ³³²Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished, chiefly by appealing to the analogy of the arts. ³³³‘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.’ ³³⁴At 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. ³³⁵Among 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. ³³⁶They only saw the points of agreement in them and not the points of difference. ³³⁷Virtue, 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. ³³⁸The next generation cleared up these perplexities; or at least supplied after ages with a further analysis of them. ³³⁹The 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. ³⁴⁰Eth.), or that ‘virtue implies intention and constancy of purpose,’ whereas ‘art requires knowledge only’. ³⁴¹And 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. ³⁴²This is implied in the reductio ad absurdum that ‘justice is a thief,’ and in the dissatisfaction which Socrates expresses at the final result. ³⁴³The expression ‘an art of pay’ which is described as ‘common to all the arts’ is not in accordance with the ordinary use of language. ³⁴⁴Nor is it employed elsewhere either by Plato or by any other Greek writer. ³⁴⁵It is suggested by the argument, and seems to extend the conception of art to doing as well as making. ³⁴⁶Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be noted in the words ‘men who are injured are made more unjust.’ ³⁴⁷For those who are injured are not necessarily made worse, but only harmed or ill-treated. ³⁴⁸The second of the three arguments, ‘that the just does not aim at excess,’ has a real meaning, though wrapped up in an enigmatical form. ³⁴⁹That 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. ³⁵⁰The mathematical or logical notion of limit easily passes into an ethical one, and even finds a mythological expression in the conception of envy (Greek). ³⁵¹Ideas 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. ³⁵²‘When workmen strive to do better than well, They do confound their skill in covetousness.’ ³⁵³(King John. ³⁵⁴Act. iv. ³⁵⁵Sc. ³⁵⁶2.) ³⁵⁷The 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. ³⁵⁸In 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. ³⁵⁹In 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. ³⁶⁰The final reconcilement of justice and happiness and the identity of the individual and the State are also intimated. ³⁶¹Socrates 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. ³⁶²Nothing 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. ³⁶³BOOK II. ³⁶⁴Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on continuing the argument. ³⁶⁵He 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.’ ³⁶⁶He 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. ³⁶⁷He then asks Socrates in which of the three classes he would place justice. ³⁶⁸In the second class, replies Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves and also for their results. ³⁶⁹‘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. ³⁷⁰Socrates answers that this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus which he rejects. ³⁷¹Glaucon 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. ³⁷²He 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. ³⁷³‘To do injustice is said to be a good; to suffer injustice an evil. ³⁷⁴As 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. ³⁷⁵No one would observe such a compact if he were not obliged. ³⁷⁶Let 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. ³⁷⁷And he who abstains will be regarded by the world as a fool for his pains. ³⁷⁸Men may praise him in public out of fear for themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts (Cp. ³⁷⁹Gorgias.) ³⁸⁰‘And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. ³⁸¹Imagine 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. ³⁸²I 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. ³⁸³How different is the case of the unjust who clings to appearance as the true reality! ³⁸⁴His 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.’ ³⁸⁵I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the already unequal fray. ³⁸⁶He 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. ³⁸⁷And other advantages are promised by them of a more solid kind, such as wealthy marriages and high offices. ³⁸⁸There 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. ³⁸⁹And the Orphic poets add a similar picture of another. ³⁹⁰The 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. ³⁹¹Some go further, and speak of a fair posterity in the third and fourth generation. ³⁹²But 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. ³⁹³‘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.” ³⁹⁴You may often see the wicked in great prosperity and the righteous afflicted by the will of heaven. ³⁹⁵And 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. ³⁹⁶‘When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what will be his conclusion? ³⁹⁷“Will he,” in the language of Pindar, “make justice his high tower, or fortify himself with crooked deceit?” ³⁹⁸Justice, he reflects, without the appearance of justice, is misery and ruin; injustice has the promise of a glorious life. ³⁹⁹Appearance is master of truth and lord of happiness. ⁴⁰⁰To appearance then I will turn,—I will put on the show of virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. ⁴⁰¹I hear some one saying that “wickedness is not easily concealed,” to which I reply that “nothing great is easy.” ⁴⁰²Union 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? ⁴⁰³Only from the poets, who acknowledge that they may be appeased by sacrifices. ⁴⁰⁴Then why not sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin? ⁴⁰⁵For 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. ⁴⁰⁶But what of the world below? ⁴⁰⁷Nay, 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. ⁴⁰⁸‘How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice? ⁴⁰⁹Add good manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of both worlds. ⁴¹⁰Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from smiling at the praises of justice? ⁴¹¹Even 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. ⁴¹²‘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. ⁴¹³Had 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. ⁴¹⁴This 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. ⁴¹⁵And 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’... ⁴¹⁶The 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. ⁴¹⁷Starting 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. ⁴¹⁸There 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. ⁴¹⁹All such theories have a kind of plausibility from their partial agreement with experience. ⁴²⁰For 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. ⁴²¹The 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. ⁴²²The divine right of kings, or more generally of governments, is one of the forms under which this natural feeling is expressed. ⁴²³Nor 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. ⁴²⁴We 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. ⁴²⁵Such a philosophy is both foolish and false, like that opinion of the clever rogue who assumes all other men to be like himself. ⁴²⁶And 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. ⁴²⁷Nor 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. ⁴²⁸And as men become better such theories appear more and more untruthful to them, because they are more conscious of their own disinterestedness. ⁴²⁹A 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. ⁴³⁰The 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. ⁴³¹Not that there is (1) any absurdity in the attempt to frame a notion of justice apart from circumstances. ⁴³²For the ideal must always be a paradox when compared with the ordinary conditions of human life. ⁴³³Neither 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. ⁴³⁴An ideal is none the worse because ‘some one has made the discovery’ that no such ideal was ever realized. ⁴³⁵And 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. ⁴³⁶This 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. ⁴³⁷Nor 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. ⁴³⁸He is developing his idea gradually in a series of positions or situations. ⁴³⁹He is exhibiting Socrates for the first time undergoing the Socratic interrogation. ⁴⁴⁰Lastly, (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. ⁴⁴¹Glaucon 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. ⁴⁴²And still the unjust must appear just; that is ‘the homage which vice pays to virtue.’ ⁴⁴³But 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. ⁴⁴⁴He seems to feel the difficulty of ‘justifying the ways of God to man.’ ⁴⁴⁵Both 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. ⁴⁴⁶In their attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. ⁴⁴⁷The common life of Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate deeper into the nature of things. ⁴⁴⁸It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. ⁴⁴⁹May 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? ⁴⁵⁰He 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. ⁴⁵¹In 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. ⁴⁵²There 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. ⁴⁵³Plato does not give the final solution of philosophical questions for us; nor can he be judged of by our standard. ⁴⁵⁴The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the sons of Ariston. ⁴⁵⁵Three points are deserving of remark in what immediately follows:—First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether indirect. ⁴⁵⁶He 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. ⁴⁵⁷But 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. ⁴⁵⁸He too will frame an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract justice, but the whole relations of man. ⁴⁵⁹Under 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. ⁴⁶⁰His 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. ⁴⁶¹That 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. ⁴⁶²And the philosopher ‘who retires under the shelter of a wall’ can hardly have been esteemed happy by him, at least not in this world. ⁴⁶³Still he maintains the true attitude of moral action. ⁴⁶⁴Let 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. ⁴⁶⁵‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ⁴⁶⁶Secondly, 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. ⁴⁶⁷First ethics, then politics—this is the order of ideas to us; the reverse is the order of history. ⁴⁶⁸Only after many struggles of thought does the individual assert his right as a moral being. ⁴⁶⁹In 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. ⁴⁷⁰And 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. ⁴⁷¹Thirdly, 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. ⁴⁷²The 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. ⁴⁷³The 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. ... ⁴⁷⁴Socrates 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. ⁴⁷⁵He knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of deserting justice in the hour of need. ⁴⁷⁶He 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. ⁴⁷⁷Accordingly he begins to construct the State. ⁴⁷⁸Society arises out of the wants of man. ⁴⁷⁹His first want is food; his second a house; his third a coat. ⁴⁸⁰The 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. ⁴⁸¹There must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to which may be added a cobbler. ⁴⁸²Four or five citizens at least are required to make a city. ⁴⁸³Now men have different natures, and one man will do one thing better than many; and business waits for no man. ⁴⁸⁴Hence 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. ⁴⁸⁵A city which includes all this will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be very large. ⁴⁸⁶But 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. ⁴⁸⁷In 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. ⁴⁸⁸If we add hired servants the State will be complete. ⁴⁸⁹And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of the citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear. ⁴⁹⁰Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. ⁴⁹¹They spend their days in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. ⁴⁹²Their principal food is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. ⁴⁹³They live on the best of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children. ⁴⁹⁴‘But,’ said Glaucon, interposing, ‘are they not to have a relish?’ ⁴⁹⁵Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ⁴⁹⁶‘’Tis a city of pigs, Socrates.’ ⁴⁹⁷Why, I replied, what do you want more? ⁴⁹⁸‘Only the comforts of life,—sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.’ ⁴⁹⁹I 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. ⁵⁰⁰Then the fine arts must go to work—every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be wanted. ⁵⁰¹There 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. ⁵⁰²To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part of our neighbour’s land, and they will want a part of ours. ⁵⁰³And this is the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other political evils. ⁵⁰⁴Our city will now require the slight addition of a camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. ⁵⁰⁵But then again our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. ⁵⁰⁶The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural aptitude for military duties. ⁵⁰⁷There will be some warlike natures who have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. ⁵⁰⁸And as spirit is the foundation of courage, such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. ⁵⁰⁹But 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. ⁵¹⁰Who then can be a guardian? ⁵¹¹The image of the dog suggests an answer. ⁵¹²For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. ⁵¹³Your 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. ⁵¹⁴The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. ⁵¹⁵And how are they to be learned without education? ⁵¹⁶But what shall their education be? ⁵¹⁷Is any better than the old-fashioned sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? ⁵¹⁸Music includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false. ⁵¹⁹‘What do you mean?’ ⁵²⁰he said. ⁵²¹I 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. ⁵²²Now 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. ⁵²³Some 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. ⁵²⁴Shall 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? ⁵²⁵Shall they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? ⁵²⁶Such tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are incapable of understanding allegory. ⁵²⁷If 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. ⁵²⁸And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as the author of all things, but of good only. ⁵²⁹We 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. ⁵³⁰Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. ⁵³¹But 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. ⁵³²This is our first and great principle—God is the author of good only. ⁵³³And the second principle is like unto it:—With God is no variableness or change of form. ⁵³⁴Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself. ⁵³⁵By 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. ⁵³⁶By himself?—but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change for the worse. ⁵³⁷He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image. ⁵³⁸Therefore 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. ⁵³⁹But some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a form in relation to us. ⁵⁴⁰Why should he? ⁵⁴¹For 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? ⁵⁴²For they are not ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs. ⁵⁴³God then is true, he is absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not, by day or night, by word or sign. ⁵⁴⁴This is our second great principle—God is true. ⁵⁴⁵Away with the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis against Apollo in Aeschylus... ⁵⁴⁶In 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. ⁵⁴⁷Gradually 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. ⁵⁴⁸These are the steps by which Plato constructs the first or primitive State, introducing the elements of political economy by the way. ⁵⁴⁹As he is going to frame a second or civilized State, the simple naturally comes before the complex. ⁵⁵⁰He 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. ⁵⁵¹We should not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a poem or a parable in too literal or matter-of-fact a style. ⁵⁵²On 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.) ⁵⁵³Several 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. ⁵⁵⁴The last subject, and also the origin of Retail Trade, is treated with admirable lucidity in the second book of the Republic. ⁵⁵⁵But 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. ⁵⁵⁶He 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.’ ⁵⁵⁷The 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. ⁵⁵⁸In speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a child must be trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. ⁵⁵⁹Yet 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. ⁵⁶⁰This 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. ⁵⁶¹To 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. ⁵⁶²We 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. ⁵⁶³But 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. ⁵⁶⁴A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question whether his religion was an historical fact. ⁵⁶⁵He was just beginning to be conscious that the past had a history; but he could see nothing beyond Homer and Hesiod. ⁵⁶⁶Whether their narratives were true or false did not seriously affect the political or social life of Hellas. ⁵⁶⁷Men only began to suspect that they were fictions when they recognised them to be immoral. ⁵⁶⁸And 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. ⁵⁶⁹But 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. ⁵⁷⁰The 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. ⁵⁷¹These reflections tend to show that the difference between Plato and ourselves, though not unimportant, is not so great as might at first sight appear. ⁵⁷²For 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. ⁵⁷³We 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. ⁵⁷⁴We 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. ⁵⁷⁵That 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. ⁵⁷⁶Great 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. ⁵⁷⁷And 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. ⁵⁷⁸At 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. ⁵⁷⁹The 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. ⁵⁸⁰These 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. ⁵⁸¹The 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. ⁵⁸²A 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. ⁵⁸³The 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. ⁵⁸⁴For 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. ⁵⁸⁵The 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. ⁵⁸⁶The 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. ⁵⁸⁷To 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. ⁵⁸⁸Socrates 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. ⁵⁸⁹For God is Truth, but mankind can only be true by appearing sometimes to be partial, or false. ⁵⁹⁰Reserving 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. ⁵⁹¹BOOK III. ⁵⁹²There 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. ⁵⁹³They must be gently requested not to abuse hell; they may be reminded that their stories are both untrue and discouraging. ⁵⁹⁴Nor 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. ⁵⁹⁵The terrors and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. ⁵⁹⁶Such tales may have their use; but they are not the proper food for soldiers. ⁵⁹⁷As 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. ⁵⁹⁸A good man is not prostrated at the loss of children or fortune. ⁵⁹⁹Neither 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. ⁶⁰⁰Still worse is the attribution of such weakness to the gods; as when the goddesses say, ‘Alas! ⁶⁰¹my travail!’ ⁶⁰²and 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. ⁶⁰³Such a character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be imitated by them. ⁶⁰⁴Nor should our citizens be given to excess of laughter—‘Such violent delights’ are followed by a violent re-action. ⁶⁰⁵The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. ⁶⁰⁶‘Certainly not.’ ⁶⁰⁷Truth 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. ⁶⁰⁸But 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. ⁶⁰⁹In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists in self-control and obedience to authority. ⁶¹⁰That 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.’ ⁶¹¹Language of the latter kind will not impress self-control on the minds of youth. ⁶¹²The 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. ⁶¹³There is a nobler strain heard in the words:—‘Endure, my soul, thou hast endured worse.’ ⁶¹⁴Nor 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. ⁶¹⁵The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are equally unworthy. ⁶¹⁶Either 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. ⁶¹⁷The 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. ⁶¹⁸Enough of gods and heroes;—what shall we say about men? ⁶¹⁹What the poets and story-tellers say—that the wicked prosper and the righteous are afflicted, or that justice is another’s gain? ⁶²⁰Such misrepresentations cannot be allowed by us. ⁶²¹But in this we are anticipating the definition of justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry. ⁶²²The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows style. ⁶²³Now 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. ⁶²⁴An instance will make my meaning clear. ⁶²⁵The first scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly description and partly dialogue. ⁶²⁶But 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. ⁶²⁷These are the three styles—which of them is to be admitted into our State? ⁶²⁸‘Do you ask whether tragedy and comedy are to be admitted?’ ⁶²⁹Yes, but also something more—Is it not doubtful whether our guardians are to be imitators at all? ⁶³⁰Or 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? ⁶³¹Human 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. ⁶³²If 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. ⁶³³We 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. ⁶³⁴They 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. ⁶³⁵A 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. ⁶³⁶The 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. ⁶³⁷Now in the descriptive style there are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many. ⁶³⁸Poets 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. ⁶³⁹But our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for complexity. ⁶⁴⁰And 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). ⁶⁴¹Next as to the music. ⁶⁴²A song or ode has three parts,—the subject, the harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the first. ⁶⁴³As 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. ⁶⁴⁴Two 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. ⁶⁴⁵And 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. ⁶⁴⁶The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the town, and the Pan’s-pipe in the fields. ⁶⁴⁷Thus we have made a purgation of music, and will now make a purgation of metres. ⁶⁴⁸These should be like the harmonies, simple and suitable to the occasion. ⁶⁴⁹There 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. ⁶⁵⁰But 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. ⁶⁵¹We 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. ⁶⁵²This 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. ⁶⁵³Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or unseemliness. ⁶⁵⁴Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to the law of simplicity. ⁶⁵⁵He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. ⁶⁵⁶For 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. ⁶⁵⁷And 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. ⁶⁵⁸At 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. ⁶⁵⁹As 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. ⁶⁶⁰There 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. ⁶⁶¹Some defect in the latter may be excused, but not in the former. ⁶⁶²True love is the daughter of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of bodily pleasure. ⁶⁶³Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair ending with love. ⁶⁶⁴Next 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. ⁶⁶⁵In the first place the guardians must abstain from strong drink, for they should be the last persons to lose their wits. ⁶⁶⁶Whether 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. ⁶⁶⁷But our warrior athletes must be wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and climate. ⁶⁶⁸Hence 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. ⁶⁶⁹Sicilian cookery and Attic confections and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden. ⁶⁷⁰Where 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. ⁶⁷¹But 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? ⁶⁷²And 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. ⁶⁷³And 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. ⁶⁷⁴How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. ⁶⁷⁵Eurypylus 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. ⁶⁷⁶The 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. ⁶⁷⁷But 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. ⁶⁷⁸‘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.’ ⁶⁷⁹Whereas the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be ill. ⁶⁸⁰Do you know a maxim of Phocylides—that ‘when a man begins to be rich’ (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ‘he should practise virtue’? ⁶⁸¹But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of virtue which Phocylides inculcates? ⁶⁸²When a student imagines that philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always unwell. ⁶⁸³This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no such art. ⁶⁸⁴They 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. ⁶⁸⁵Honest 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. ⁶⁸⁶But they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out of them. ⁶⁸⁷As 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. ⁶⁸⁸Glaucon 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. ⁶⁸⁹Socrates draws a distinction between the two professions. ⁶⁹⁰The physician should have had experience of disease in his own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. ⁶⁹¹But the judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be corrupted by crime. ⁶⁹²Where then is he to gain experience? ⁶⁹³How is he to be wise and also innocent? ⁶⁹⁴When 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. ⁶⁹⁵This 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. ⁶⁹⁶Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. ⁶⁹⁷This 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. ⁶⁹⁸And 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. ⁶⁹⁹Not 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. ⁷⁰⁰The two together supply our guardians with their twofold nature. ⁷⁰¹The passionate disposition when it has too much gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper which has too much music becomes enervated. ⁷⁰²While 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. ⁷⁰³Too little spirit is easily exhausted; too much quickly passes into nervous irritability. ⁷⁰⁴So, 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. ⁷⁰⁵There 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. ⁷⁰⁶He who mingles them in harmonious concord is the true musician,—he shall be the presiding genius of our State. ⁷⁰⁷The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? ⁷⁰⁸First, the elder must rule the younger; and the best of the elders will be the best guardians. ⁷⁰⁹Now 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. ⁷¹⁰These 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. ⁷¹¹For 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. ⁷¹²And 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. ⁷¹³These shall receive the highest honours both in life and death. ⁷¹⁴(It would perhaps be better to confine the term ‘guardians’ to this select class: the younger men may be called ‘auxiliaries.’) ⁷¹⁵And 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. ⁷¹⁶What 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. ⁷¹⁷The tale must be imparted, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, lastly to the people. ⁷¹⁸We 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. ⁷¹⁹‘I do not wonder at your being ashamed to propound such a fiction.’ ⁷²⁰There is more behind. ⁷²¹These 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. ⁷²²But 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.’ ⁷²³Will our citizens ever believe all this? ⁷²⁴‘Not in the present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.’ ⁷²⁵Now 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. ⁷²⁶There 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. ⁷²⁷Their habits and their dwellings should correspond to their education. ⁷²⁸They should have no property; their pay should only meet their expenses; and they should have common meals. ⁷²⁹Gold 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. ⁷³⁰They 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. ⁷³¹Should 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. ⁷³²The religious and ethical aspect of Plato’s education will hereafter be considered under a separate head. ⁷³³Some lesser points may be more conveniently noticed in this place. ⁷³⁴The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting to distinguish the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the text from design; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer inaccurately, after the manner of the early logographers turning the Iliad into prose, and delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from his words, or to make ludicrous applications of them. ⁷³⁵He does not, like Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. ⁷³⁶And the conclusions drawn from them are sound, although the premises are fictitious. ⁷³⁷These fanciful appeals to Homer add a charm to Plato’s style, and at the same time they have the effect of a satire on the follies of Homeric interpretation. ⁷³⁸To us (and probably to himself), although they take the form of arguments, they are really figures of speech. ⁷³⁹They may be compared with modern citations from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power even when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of. ⁷⁴⁰The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations. ⁷⁴¹Great in all ages and countries, in religion as well as in law and literature, has been the art of interpretation. ⁷⁴²‘The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.’ ⁷⁴³Notwithstanding the fascination which the word ‘classical’ exercises over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the Greek poetry which has come down to us. ⁷⁴⁴We cannot deny that the thought often exceeds the power of lucid expression in Aeschylus and Pindar; or that rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet Euripides. ⁷⁴⁵Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the two; in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away; at least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them. ⁷⁴⁶The connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic the poet was unable to draw out. ⁷⁴⁷Many thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and he had no power of disengaging or arranging them. ⁷⁴⁸For there is a subtle influence of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by poetry into prose. ⁷⁴⁹In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full of associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to others. ⁷⁵⁰There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion between style and subject, in which any half-expressed figure, any harsh construction, any distorted collocation of words, any remote sequence of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice ‘coming sweetly from nature,’ or music adding the expression of feeling to thought. ⁷⁵¹As if there could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without ease and clearness. ⁷⁵²The obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out of the state of language and logic which existed in their age. ⁷⁵³They are not examples to be followed by us; for the use of language ought in every generation to become clearer and clearer. ⁷⁵⁴Like Shakespere, they were great in spite, not in consequence, of their imperfections of expression. ⁷⁵⁵But there is no reason for returning to the necessary obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of literature. ⁷⁵⁶The English poets of the last century were certainly not obscure; and we have no excuse for losing what they had gained, or for going back to the earlier or transitional age which preceded them. ⁷⁵⁷The thought of our own times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato’s ‘art of measuring’ is the rule cause of the disproportion between them. ⁷⁵⁸In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. ⁷⁵⁹His views may be summed up as follows:—True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and ideal,—the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or repose. ⁷⁶⁰To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble and simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of influences,—the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought up. ⁷⁶¹That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. ⁷⁶²For though the poets are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of reason—like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but confined to the preliminary education, and acting through the power of habit; and this conception of art is not limited to strains of music or the forms of plastic art, but pervades all nature and has a wide kindred in the world. ⁷⁶³The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side. ⁷⁶⁴There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two or three passages does he even allude to them (Rep.; Soph.). ⁷⁶⁵He is not lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene. ⁷⁶⁶He would probably have regarded any abstract truth of number or figure as higher than the greatest of them. ⁷⁶⁷Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence, such as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from the works of art which he saw around him. ⁷⁶⁸We are living upon the fragments of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of truth and beauty. ⁷⁶⁹But in Plato this feeling has no expression; he nowhere says that beauty is the object of art; he seems to deny that wisdom can take an external form (Phaedrus); he does not distinguish the fine from the mechanical arts. ⁷⁷⁰Whether or no, like some writers, he felt more than he expressed, it is at any rate remarkable that the greatest perfection of the fine arts should coincide with an almost entire silence about them. ⁷⁷¹In one very striking passage he tells us that a work of art, like the State, is a whole; and this conception of a whole and the love of the newly-born mathematical sciences may be regarded, if not as the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating principles of Greek art (Xen. ⁷⁷²Mem.; and Sophist). ⁷⁷³Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his own person. ⁷⁷⁴But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of evil; he is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence, became acquainted late in life with the vices of others. ⁷⁷⁵And therefore, according to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man according to Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy. ⁷⁷⁶The bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge of virtue. ⁷⁷⁷It may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection is well founded. ⁷⁷⁸In a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged that the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. ⁷⁷⁹The union of gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. ⁷⁸⁰And Plato might also have found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence of it. ⁷⁸¹There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight into vice. ⁷⁸²And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural sense independent of any special experience of good or evil. ⁷⁸³One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek and also very different from anything which existed at all in his age of the world, is the transposition of ranks. ⁷⁸⁴In the Spartan state there had been enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under special circumstances. ⁷⁸⁵And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit was certainly recognized as one of the elements on which government was based. ⁷⁸⁶The founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors, who were raised by their great actions above the ordinary level of humanity; at a later period, the services of warriors and legislators were held to entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of citizenship and to the first rank in the state. ⁷⁸⁷And although the existence of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains of early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such a character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual Hellenic state—or indeed to any state which has ever existed in the world—still the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of philosophers, who probably accommodated a good deal their views of primitive history to their own notions of good government. ⁷⁸⁸Plato further insists on applying to the guardians of his state a series of tests by which all those who fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing body, or not admitted to it; and this ‘academic’ discipline did to a certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. ⁷⁸⁹He also indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world, should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. ⁷⁹⁰He is aware how deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the order of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form of what he himself calls a ‘monstrous fiction.’ ⁷⁹¹(Compare the ceremony of preparation for the two ‘great waves’ in Book v.) ⁷⁹²Two principles are indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent on circumstances prior to the individual: second, that this distinction is and ought to be broken through by personal qualities. ⁷⁹³He adapts mythology like the Homeric poems to the wants of the state, making ‘the Phoenician tale’ the vehicle of his ideas. ⁷⁹⁴Every Greek state had a myth respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale of earthborn men. ⁷⁹⁵The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification of the ‘monstrous falsehood.’ ⁷⁹⁶Ancient poetry had spoken of a gold and silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another, but Plato supposes these differences in the natures of men to exist together in a single state. ⁷⁹⁷Mythology supplies a figure under which the lesson may be taught (as Protagoras says, ‘the myth is more interesting’), and also enables Plato to touch lightly on new principles without going into details. ⁷⁹⁸In this passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does not tell us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected. ⁷⁹⁹Indeed throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to fade into the distance. ⁸⁰⁰We do not know whether they are to carry arms, and whether in the fifth book they are or are not included in the communistic regulations respecting property and marriage. ⁸⁰¹Nor is there any use in arguing strictly either from a few chance words, or from the silence of Plato, or in drawing inferences which were beyond his vision. ⁸⁰²Aristotle, in his criticism on the position of the lower classes, does not perceive that the poetical creation is ‘like the air, invulnerable,’ and cannot be penetrated by the shafts of his logic (Pol.). ⁸⁰³Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest degree fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections, are to be found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great power of music, so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us in modern times, when the art or science has been far more developed, and has found the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly, the indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed to exercise over the body. ⁸⁰⁴In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may also observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at the present day. ⁸⁰⁵With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few only, there seems to mingle in Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence for numbers and numerical proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger. ⁸⁰⁶Intervals of sound and number are to him sacred things which have a law of their own, not dependent on the variations of sense. ⁸⁰⁷They rise above sense, and become a connecting link with the world of ideas. ⁸⁰⁸But it is evident that Plato is describing what to him appears to be also a fact. ⁸⁰⁹The power of a simple and characteristic melody on the impressible mind of the Greek is more than we can easily appreciate. ⁸¹⁰The effect of national airs may bear some comparison with it. ⁸¹¹And, besides all this, there is a confusion between the harmony of musical notes and the harmony of soul and body, which is so potently inspired by them. ⁸¹²The second paradox leads up to some curious and interesting questions—How far can the mind control the body? ⁸¹³Is the relation between them one of mutual antagonism or of mutual harmony? ⁸¹⁴Are they two or one, and is either of them the cause of the other? ⁸¹⁵May we not at times drop the opposition between them, and the mode of describing them, which is so familiar to us, and yet hardly conveys any precise meaning, and try to view this composite creature, man, in a more simple manner? ⁸¹⁶Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a higher and a lower principle, divided by no distinct line, which at times break asunder and take up arms against one another? ⁸¹⁷Or again, they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously in the ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some noble aim, to be attained not without an effort, and for which every thought and nerve are strained. ⁸¹⁸And then the body becomes the good friend or ally, or servant or instrument of the mind. ⁸¹⁹And the mind has often a wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and weakness and calling out a hidden strength. ⁸²⁰Reason and the desires, the intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as to form a single human being. ⁸²¹They are ever parting, ever meeting; and the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the most part unnoticed by us. ⁸²²When the mind touches the body through the appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other. ⁸²³There is a tendency in us which says ‘Drink.’ ⁸²⁴There is another which says, ‘Do not drink; it is not good for you.’ ⁸²⁵And we all of us know which is the rightful superior. ⁸²⁶We are also responsible for our health, although into this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which may be beyond our control. ⁸²⁷Still even in the management of health, care and thought, continued over many years, may make us almost free agents, if we do not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that all human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind. ⁸²⁸We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day, depreciates the effects of diet. ⁸²⁹He would like to have diseases of a definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. ⁸³⁰He is afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. ⁸³¹He does not recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. ⁸³²Neither does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of the will can be more simple or truly asserted. ⁸³³Lesser matters of style may be remarked. ⁸³⁴(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing that he is passing lightly over the subject. ⁸³⁵(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he proceeds with the construction of the State. ⁸³⁶(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains the reader’s interest. ⁸³⁷(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of the poets in Book X. ⁸³⁸(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius, should not escape notice. ⁸³⁹BOOK IV. ⁸⁴⁰Adeimantus said: ‘Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that you make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they are the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men, lands and houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and are always mounting guard.’ ⁸⁴¹You may add, I replied, that they receive no pay but only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or a mistress. ⁸⁴²‘Well, and what answer do you give?’ ⁸⁴³My answer is, that our guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,—I should not be surprised to find in the long-run that they were,—but this is not the aim of our constitution, which was designed for the good of the whole and not of any one part. ⁸⁴⁴If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: ‘The eye must be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.’ ⁸⁴⁵‘Now I can well imagine a fool’s paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. ⁸⁴⁶And a State may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into boon companions, then the ruin is complete. ⁸⁴⁷Remember that we are not talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man is expected to do his own work. ⁸⁴⁸The happiness resides not in this or that class, but in the State as a whole. ⁸⁴⁹I have another remark to make:—A middle condition is best for artisans; they should have money enough to buy tools, and not enough to be independent of business. ⁸⁵⁰And will not the same condition be best for our citizens? ⁸⁵¹If they are poor, they will be mean; if rich, luxurious and lazy; and in neither case contented. ⁸⁵²‘But then how will our poor city be able to go to war against an enemy who has money?’ ⁸⁵³There may be a difficulty in fighting against one enemy; against two there will be none. ⁸⁵⁴In the first place, the contest will be carried on by trained warriors against well-to-do citizens: and is not a regular athlete an easy match for two stout opponents at least? ⁸⁵⁵Suppose also, that before engaging we send ambassadors to one of the two cities, saying, ‘Silver and gold we have not; do you help us and take our share of the spoil;’—who would fight against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join with them in preying upon the fatted sheep? ⁸⁵⁶‘But if many states join their resources, shall we not be in danger?’ ⁸⁵⁷I am amused to hear you use the word ‘state’ of any but our own State. ⁸⁵⁸They are ‘states,’ but not ‘a state’—many in one. ⁸⁵⁹For in every state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor, which you may set one against the other. ⁸⁶⁰But our State, while she remains true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of Hellenic states. ⁸⁶¹To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of unity; it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. ⁸⁶²This is a matter of secondary importance, like the principle of transposition which was intimated in the parable of the earthborn men. ⁸⁶³The meaning there implied was that every man should do that for which he was fitted, and be at one with himself, and then the whole city would be united. ⁸⁶⁴But all these things are secondary, if education, which is the great matter, be duly regarded. ⁸⁶⁵When the wheel has once been set in motion, the speed is always increasing; and each generation improves upon the preceding, both in physical and moral qualities. ⁸⁶⁶The care of the governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from innovation; alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon end by altering its laws. ⁸⁶⁷The change appears innocent at first, and begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is ruin and confusion everywhere. ⁸⁶⁸But if education remains in the established form, there will be no danger. ⁸⁶⁹A restorative process will be always going on; the spirit of law and order will raise up what has fallen down. ⁸⁷⁰Nor will any regulations be needed for the lesser matters of life—rules of deportment or fashions of dress. ⁸⁷¹Like invites like for good or for evil. ⁸⁷²Education will correct deficiencies and supply the power of self-government. ⁸⁷³Far be it from us to enter into the particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education, and education will take care of all other things. ⁸⁷⁴But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of living. ⁸⁷⁵If you tell such persons that they must first alter their habits, then they grow angry; they are charming people. ⁸⁷⁶‘Charming,—nay, the very reverse.’ ⁸⁷⁷Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good graces, nor the state which is like them. ⁸⁷⁸And such states there are which first ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the constitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and out of anything; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them, is their leader and saviour. ⁸⁷⁹‘Yes, the men are as bad as the states.’ ⁸⁸⁰But do you not admire their cleverness? ⁸⁸¹‘Nay, some of them are stupid enough to believe what the people tell them.’ ⁸⁸²And when all the world is telling a man that he is six feet high, and he has no measure, how can he believe anything else? ⁸⁸³But don’t get into a passion: to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. ⁸⁸⁴Minute enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones. ⁸⁸⁵And now what remains of the work of legislation? ⁸⁸⁶Nothing for us; but to Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all things—that is to say, religion. ⁸⁸⁷Only our ancestral deity sitting upon the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any sense, in an affair of such magnitude. ⁸⁸⁸No foreign god shall be supreme in our realms... ⁸⁸⁹Here, as Socrates would say, let us ‘reflect on’ (Greek) what has preceded: thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens, but only of the well-being of the State. ⁸⁹⁰They may be the happiest of men, but our principal aim in founding the State was not to make them happy. ⁸⁹¹They were to be guardians, not holiday-makers. ⁸⁹²In this pleasant manner is presented to us the famous question both of ancient and modern philosophy, touching the relation of duty to happiness, of right to utility. ⁸⁹³First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas. ⁸⁹⁴The utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of error, and shows to us a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. ⁸⁹⁵It may be admitted further that right and utility are co-extensive, and that he who makes the happiness of mankind his object has one of the highest and noblest motives of human action. ⁸⁹⁶But utility is not the historical basis of morality; nor the aspect in which moral and religious ideas commonly occur to the mind. ⁸⁹⁷The greatest happiness of all is, as we believe, the far-off result of the divine government of the universe. ⁸⁹⁸The greatest happiness of the individual is certainly to be found in a life of virtue and goodness. ⁸⁹⁹But we seem to be more assured of a law of right than we can be of a divine purpose, that ‘all mankind should be saved;’ and we infer the one from the other. ⁹⁰⁰And the greatest happiness of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest happiness in the ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised in a life of pain, or in a voluntary death. ⁹⁰¹Further, the word ‘happiness’ has several ambiguities; it may mean either pleasure or an ideal life, happiness subjective or objective, in this world or in another, of ourselves only or of our neighbours and of all men everywhere. ⁹⁰²By the modern founder of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested motives of action are included under the same term, although they are commonly opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. ⁹⁰³The word happiness has not the definiteness or the sacredness of ‘truth’ and ‘right’; it does not equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the conscience of mankind. ⁹⁰⁴It is associated too much with the comforts and conveniences of life; too little with ‘the goods of the soul which we desire for their own sake.’ ⁹⁰⁵In a great trial, or danger, or temptation, or in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely thought of. ⁹⁰⁶For these reasons ‘the greatest happiness’ principle is not the true foundation of ethics. ⁹⁰⁷But though not the first principle, it is the second, which is like unto it, and is often of easier application. ⁹⁰⁸For the larger part of human actions are neither right nor wrong, except in so far as they tend to the happiness of mankind (Introd. to Gorgias and Philebus). ⁹⁰⁹The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or expedient seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater authority. ⁹¹⁰For concerning political measures, we chiefly ask: How will they affect the happiness of mankind? ⁹¹¹Yet here too we may observe that what we term expediency is merely the law of right limited by the conditions of human society. ⁹¹²Right and truth are the highest aims of government as well as of individuals; and we ought not to lose sight of them because we cannot directly enforce them. ⁹¹³They appeal to the better mind of nations; and sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests to resist. ⁹¹⁴They are the watchwords which all men use in matters of public policy, as well as in their private dealings; the peace of Europe may be said to depend upon them. ⁹¹⁵In the most commercial and utilitarian states of society the power of ideas remains. ⁹¹⁶And all the higher class of statesmen have in them something of that idealism which Pericles is said to have gathered from the teaching of Anaxagoras. ⁹¹⁷They recognise that the true leader of men must be above the motives of ambition, and that national character is of greater value than material comfort and prosperity. ⁹¹⁸And this is the order of thought in Plato; first, he expects his citizens to do their duty, and then under favourable circumstances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State, their happiness is assured. ⁹¹⁹That he was far from excluding the modern principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other passages; in which ‘the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most honourable’, and also ‘the most sacred’. ⁹²⁰We may note (1) The manner in which the objection of Adeimantus here, is designed to draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates. ⁹²¹(2) The conception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of politics and of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of criticism, which, under the various names of harmony, symmetry, measure, proportion, unity, the Greek seems to have applied to works of art. ⁹²²(3) The requirement that the State should be limited in size, after the traditional model of a Greek state; as in the Politics of Aristotle, the fact that the cities of Hellas were small is converted into a principle. ⁹²³(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the ‘charming’ patients who are always making themselves worse; or again, the playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is to be pardoned for his ignorance—he is too amusing for us to be seriously angry with him. ⁹²⁴(5) The light and superficial manner in which religion is passed over when provision has been made for two great principles,—first, that religion shall be based on the highest conception of the gods, secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type shall be maintained... ⁹²⁵Socrates proceeds: But where amid all this is justice? ⁹²⁶Son of Ariston, tell me where. ⁹²⁷Light a candle and search the city, and get your brother and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her. ⁹²⁸‘That won’t do,’ replied Glaucon, ‘you yourself promised to make the search and talked about the impiety of deserting justice.’ ⁹²⁹Well, I said, I will lead the way, but do you follow. ⁹³⁰My notion is, that our State being perfect will contain all the four virtues—wisdom, courage, temperance, justice. ⁹³¹If we eliminate the three first, the unknown remainder will be justice. ⁹³²First then, of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will be wise because politic. ⁹³³And policy is one among many kinds of skill,—not the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of the husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of the whole State. ⁹³⁴Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are a small class in number, far smaller than the blacksmiths; but in them is concentrated the wisdom of the State. ⁹³⁵And if this small ruling class have wisdom, then the whole State will be wise. ⁹³⁶Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in another class—that of soldiers. ⁹³⁷Courage may be defined as a sort of salvation—the never-failing salvation of the opinions which law and education have prescribed concerning dangers. ⁹³⁸You know the way in which dyers first prepare the white ground and then lay on the dye of purple or of any other colour. ⁹³⁹Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no soap or lye will ever wash them out. ⁹⁴⁰Now the ground is education, and the laws are the colours; and if the ground is properly laid, neither the soap of pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever wash them out. ⁹⁴¹This power which preserves right opinion about danger I would ask you to call ‘courage,’ adding the epithet ‘political’ or ‘civilized’ in order to distinguish it from mere animal courage and from a higher courage which may hereafter be discussed. ⁹⁴²Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. ⁹⁴³More than the preceding virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. ⁹⁴⁴Some light is thrown upon the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as ‘master of himself’—which has an absurd sound, because the master is also the servant. ⁹⁴⁵The expression really means that the better principle in a man masters the worse. ⁹⁴⁶There are in cities whole classes—women, slaves and the like—who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the better; and in our State the former class are held under control by the latter. ⁹⁴⁷Now to which of these classes does temperance belong? ⁹⁴⁸‘To both of them.’ ⁹⁴⁹And our State if any will be the abode of temperance; and we were right in describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to be of one mind, and attuning the upper and middle and lower classes like the strings of an instrument, whether you suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength or wealth. ⁹⁵⁰And now we are near the spot; let us draw in and surround the cover and watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away and escape. ⁹⁵¹Tell me, if you see the thicket move first. ⁹⁵²‘Nay, I would have you lead.’ ⁹⁵³Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. ⁹⁵⁴The way is dark and difficult; but we must push on. ⁹⁵⁵I begin to see a track. ⁹⁵⁶‘Good news.’ ⁹⁵⁷Why, Glaucon, our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! ⁹⁵⁸While we are straining our eyes into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. ⁹⁵⁹We are as bad as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. ⁹⁶⁰Have you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every man doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation of the State—what but this was justice? ⁹⁶¹Is there any other virtue remaining which can compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in the scale of political virtue? ⁹⁶²For ‘every one having his own’ is the great object of government; and the great object of trade is that every man should do his own business. ⁹⁶³Not that there is much harm in a carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself into a carpenter; but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his last and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single individual is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. ⁹⁶⁴And this evil is injustice, or every man doing another’s business. ⁹⁶⁵I do not say that as yet we are in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. ⁹⁶⁶For the definition which we believe to hold good in states has still to be tested by the individual. ⁹⁶⁷Having read the large letters we will now come back to the small. ⁹⁶⁸From the two together a brilliant light may be struck out... ⁹⁶⁹Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of residues. ⁹⁷⁰Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State, although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony than the first two. ⁹⁷¹If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be sought for in the relation of the three parts in the soul or classes in the State to one another. ⁹⁷²It is obvious and simple, and for that very reason has not been found out. ⁹⁷³The modern logician will be inclined to object that ideas cannot be separated like chemical substances, but that they run into one another and may be only different aspects or names of the same thing, and such in this instance appears to be the case. ⁹⁷⁴For the definition here given of justice is verbally the same as one of the definitions of temperance given by Socrates in the Charmides, which however is only provisional, and is afterwards rejected. ⁹⁷⁵And so far from justice remaining over when the other virtues are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with difficulty be distinguished. ⁹⁷⁶Temperance appears to be the virtue of a part only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of the whole soul. ⁹⁷⁷Yet on the other hand temperance is also described as a sort of harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. ⁹⁷⁸Justice seems to differ from temperance in degree rather than in kind; whereas temperance is the harmony of discordant elements, justice is the perfect order by which all natures and classes do their own business, the right man in the right place, the division and co-operation of all the citizens. ⁹⁷⁹Justice, again, is a more abstract notion than the other virtues, and therefore, from Plato’s point of view, the foundation of them, to which they are referred and which in idea precedes them. ⁹⁸⁰The proposal to omit temperance is a mere trick of style intended to avoid monotony. ⁹⁸¹There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier Dialogues of Plato (Protagoras; Arist. ⁹⁸²Nic. ⁹⁸³Ethics), ‘Whether the virtues are one or many?’ ⁹⁸⁴This receives an answer which is to the effect that there are four cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in ethical philosophy), and one supreme over the rest, which is not like Aristotle’s conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others, but the whole of virtue relative to the parts. ⁹⁸⁵To this universal conception of justice or order in the first education and in the moral nature of man, the still more universal conception of the good in the second education and in the sphere of speculative knowledge seems to succeed. ⁹⁸⁶Both might be equally described by the terms ‘law,’ ‘order,’ ‘harmony;’ but while the idea of good embraces ‘all time and all existence,’ the conception of justice is not extended beyond man. ... ⁹⁸⁷Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. ⁹⁸⁸But first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul. ⁹⁸⁹His argument is as follows:—Quantity makes no difference in quality. ⁹⁹⁰The word ‘just,’ whether applied to the individual or to the State, has the same meaning. ⁹⁹¹And the term ‘justice’ implied that the same three principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own business. ⁹⁹²But are they really three or one? ⁹⁹³The question is difficult, and one which can hardly be solved by the methods which we are now using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time. ⁹⁹⁴‘The shorter will satisfy me.’ ⁹⁹⁵Well then, you would admit that the qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose them? ⁹⁹⁶The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because the individual members of each have such and such a character; the difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature, desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action. ⁹⁹⁷This enquiry, however, requires a very exact definition of terms. ⁹⁹⁸The same thing in the same relation cannot be affected in two opposite ways. ⁹⁹⁹But there is no impossibility in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. ¹⁰⁰⁰There is no necessity to mention all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally assume that opposites cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same relation. ¹⁰⁰¹And to the class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire and avoidance. ¹⁰⁰²And one form of desire is thirst and hunger: and here arises a new point—thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food; not of warm drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single exception of course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies that it is good. ¹⁰⁰³When relative terms have no attributes, their correlatives have no attributes; when they have attributes, their correlatives also have them. ¹⁰⁰⁴For example, the term ‘greater’ is simply relative to ‘less,’ and knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge. ¹⁰⁰⁵But on the other hand, a particular knowledge is of a particular subject. ¹⁰⁰⁶Again, every science has a distinct character, which is defined by an object; medicine, for example, is the science of health, although not to be confounded with health. ¹⁰⁰⁷Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us return to the original instance of thirst, which has a definite object—drink. ¹⁰⁰⁸Now the thirsty soul may feel two distinct impulses; the animal one saying ‘Drink;’ the rational one, which says ‘Do not drink.’ ¹⁰⁰⁹The two impulses are contradictory; and therefore we may assume that they spring from distinct principles in the soul. ¹⁰¹⁰But is passion a third principle, or akin to desire? ¹⁰¹¹There is a story of a certain Leontius which throws some light on this question. ¹⁰¹²He was coming up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, and he passed a spot where there were dead bodies lying by the executioner. ¹⁰¹³He felt a longing desire to see them and also an abhorrence of them; at first he turned away and shut his eyes, then, suddenly tearing them open, he said,—‘Take your fill, ye wretches, of the fair sight.’ ¹⁰¹⁴Now is there not here a third principle which is often found to come to the assistance of reason against desire, but never of desire against reason? ¹⁰¹⁵This is passion or spirit, of the separate existence of which we may further convince ourselves by putting the following case:—When a man suffers justly, if he be of a generous nature he is not indignant at the hardships which he undergoes: but when he suffers unjustly, his indignation is his great support; hunger and thirst cannot tame him; the spirit within him must do or die, until the voice of the shepherd, that is, of reason, bidding his dog bark no more, is heard within. ¹⁰¹⁶This shows that passion is the ally of reason. ¹⁰¹⁷Is passion then the same with reason? ¹⁰¹⁸No, for the former exists in children and brutes; and Homer affords a proof of the distinction between them when he says, ‘He smote his breast, and thus rebuked his soul.’ ¹⁰¹⁹And now, at last, we have reached firm ground, and are able to infer that the virtues of the State and of the individual are the same. ¹⁰²⁰For wisdom and courage and justice in the State are severally the wisdom and courage and justice in the individuals who form the State. ¹⁰²¹Each of the three classes will do the work of its own class in the State, and each part in the individual soul; reason, the superior, and passion, the inferior, will be harmonized by the influence of music and gymnastic. ¹⁰²²The counsellor and the warrior, the head and the arm, will act together in the town of Mansoul, and keep the desires in proper subjection. ¹⁰²³The courage of the warrior is that quality which preserves a right opinion about dangers in spite of pleasures and pains. ¹⁰²⁴The wisdom of the counsellor is that small part of the soul which has authority and reason. ¹⁰²⁵The virtue of temperance is the friendship of the ruling and the subject principles, both in the State and in the individual. ¹⁰²⁶Of justice we have already spoken; and the notion already given of it may be confirmed by common instances. ¹⁰²⁷Will the just state or the just individual steal, lie, commit adultery, or be guilty of impiety to gods and men? ¹⁰²⁸‘No.’ ¹⁰²⁹And is not the reason of this that the several principles, whether in the state or in the individual, do their own business? ¹⁰³⁰And justice is the quality which makes just men and just states. ¹⁰³¹Moreover, our old division of labour, which required that there should be one man for one use, was a dream or anticipation of what was to follow; and that dream has now been realized in justice, which begins by binding together the three chords of the soul, and then acts harmoniously in every relation of life. ¹⁰³²And injustice, which is the insubordination and disobedience of the inferior elements in the soul, is the opposite of justice, and is inharmonious and unnatural, being to the soul what disease is to the body; for in the soul as well as in the body, good or bad actions produce good or bad habits. ¹⁰³³And virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul. ¹⁰³⁴Again the old question returns upon us: Is justice or injustice the more profitable? ¹⁰³⁵The question has become ridiculous. ¹⁰³⁶For injustice, like mortal disease, makes life not worth having. ¹⁰³⁷Come up with me to the hill which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of virtue, and the infinite forms of vice, among which are four special ones, characteristic both of states and of individuals. ¹⁰³⁸And the state which corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have been describing, wherein reason rules under one of two names—monarchy and aristocracy. ¹⁰³⁹Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and of souls... ¹⁰⁴⁰In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties, Plato takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. ¹⁰⁴¹And the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the faculties. ¹⁰⁴²The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. ¹⁰⁴³But the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he will not proceed a step without first clearing the ground. ¹⁰⁴⁴This leads him into a tiresome digression, which is intended to explain the nature of contradiction. ¹⁰⁴⁵First, the contradiction must be at the same time and in the same relation. ¹⁰⁴⁶Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced into either of the terms in which the contradictory proposition is expressed: for example, thirst is of drink, not of warm drink. ¹⁰⁴⁷He implies, what he does not say, that if, by the advice of reason, or by the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from drinking, this proves that thirst, or desire under which thirst is included, is distinct from anger and reason. ¹⁰⁴⁸But suppose that we allow the term ‘thirst’ or ‘desire’ to be modified, and say an ‘angry thirst,’ or a ‘revengeful desire,’ then the two spheres of desire and anger overlap and become confused. ¹⁰⁴⁹This case therefore has to be excluded. ¹⁰⁵⁰And still there remains an exception to the rule in the use of the term ‘good,’ which is always implied in the object of desire. ¹⁰⁵¹These are the discussions of an age before logic; and any one who is wearied by them should remember that they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in the first development of the human faculties. ¹⁰⁵²The psychology of Plato extends no further than the division of the soul into the rational, irascible, and concupiscent elements, which, as far as we know, was first made by him, and has been retained by Aristotle and succeeding ethical writers. ¹⁰⁵³The chief difficulty in this early analysis of the mind is to define exactly the place of the irascible faculty (Greek), which may be variously described under the terms righteous indignation, spirit, passion. ¹⁰⁵⁴It is the foundation of courage, which includes in Plato moral courage, the courage of enduring pain, and of surmounting intellectual difficulties, as well as of meeting dangers in war. ¹⁰⁵⁵Though irrational, it inclines to side with the rational: it cannot be aroused by punishment when justly inflicted: it sometimes takes the form of an enthusiasm which sustains a man in the performance of great actions. ¹⁰⁵⁶It is the ‘lion heart’ with which the reason makes a treaty. ¹⁰⁵⁷On the other hand it is negative rather than positive; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood, but does not, like Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the vision of Truth or Good. ¹⁰⁵⁸It is the peremptory military spirit which prevails in the government of honour. ¹⁰⁵⁹It differs from anger (Greek), this latter term having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. ¹⁰⁶⁰Although Aristotle has retained the word, yet we may observe that ‘passion’ (Greek) has with him lost its affinity to the rational and has become indistinguishable from ‘anger’ (Greek). ¹⁰⁶¹And to this vernacular use Plato himself in the Laws seems to revert, though not always. ¹⁰⁶²By modern philosophy too, as well as in our ordinary conversation, the words anger or passion are employed almost exclusively in a bad sense; there is no connotation of a just or reasonable cause by which they are aroused. ¹⁰⁶³The feeling of ‘righteous indignation’ is too partial and accidental to admit of our regarding it as a separate virtue or habit. ¹⁰⁶⁴We are tempted also to doubt whether Plato is right in supposing that an offender, however justly condemned, could be expected to acknowledge the justice of his sentence; this is the spirit of a philosopher or martyr rather than of a criminal. ¹⁰⁶⁵We may observe how nearly Plato approaches Aristotle’s famous thesis, that ‘good actions produce good habits.’ ¹⁰⁶⁶The words ‘as healthy practices (Greek) produce health, so do just practices produce justice,’ have a sound very like the Nicomachean Ethics. ¹⁰⁶⁷But we note also that an incidental remark in Plato has become a far-reaching principle in Aristotle, and an inseparable part of a great Ethical system. ¹⁰⁶⁸There is a difficulty in understanding what Plato meant by ‘the longer way’: he seems to intimate some metaphysic of the future which will not be satisfied with arguing from the principle of contradiction. ¹⁰⁶⁹In the sixth and seventh books (compare Sophist and Parmenides) he has given us a sketch of such a metaphysic; but when Glaucon asks for the final revelation of the idea of good, he is put off with the declaration that he has not yet studied the preliminary sciences. ¹⁰⁷⁰How he would have filled up the sketch, or argued about such questions from a higher point of view, we can only conjecture. ¹⁰⁷¹Perhaps he hoped to find some a priori method of developing the parts out of the whole; or he might have asked which of the ideas contains the other ideas, and possibly have stumbled on the Hegelian identity of the ‘ego’ and the ‘universal.’ ¹⁰⁷²Or he may have imagined that ideas might be constructed in some manner analogous to the construction of figures and numbers in the mathematical sciences. ¹⁰⁷³The most certain and necessary truth was to Plato the universal; and to this he was always seeking to refer all knowledge or opinion, just as in modern times we seek to rest them on the opposite pole of induction and experience. ¹⁰⁷⁴The aspirations of metaphysicians have always tended to pass beyond the limits of human thought and language: they seem to have reached a height at which they are ‘moving about in worlds unrealized,’ and their conceptions, although profoundly affecting their own minds, become invisible or unintelligible to others. ¹⁰⁷⁵We are not therefore surprized to find that Plato himself has nowhere clearly explained his doctrine of ideas; or that his school in a later generation, like his contemporaries Glaucon and Adeimantus, were unable to follow him in this region of speculation. ¹⁰⁷⁶In the Sophist, where he is refuting the scepticism which maintained either that there was no such thing as predication, or that all might be predicated of all, he arrives at the conclusion that some ideas combine with some, but not all with all. ¹⁰⁷⁷But he makes only one or two steps forward on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected system of ideas, or even to a knowledge of the most elementary relations of the sciences to one another. ¹⁰⁷⁸BOOK V. ¹⁰⁷⁹I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline in states, when Polemarchus—he was sitting a little farther from me than Adeimantus—taking him by the coat and leaning towards him, said something in an undertone, of which I only caught the words, ‘Shall we let him off?’ ¹⁰⁸⁰‘Certainly not,’ said Adeimantus, raising his voice. ¹⁰⁸¹Whom, I said, are you not going to let off? ¹⁰⁸²‘You,’ he said. ¹⁰⁸³Why? ¹⁰⁸⁴‘Because we think that you are not dealing fairly with us in omitting women and children, of whom you have slily disposed under the general formula that friends have all things in common.’ ¹⁰⁸⁵And was I not right? ¹⁰⁸⁶‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but there are many sorts of communism or community, and we want to know which of them is right. ¹⁰⁸⁷The company, as you have just heard, are resolved to have a further explanation.’ ¹⁰⁸⁸Thrasymachus said, ‘Do you think that we have come hither to dig for gold, or to hear you discourse?’ ¹⁰⁸⁹Yes, I said; but the discourse should be of a reasonable length. ¹⁰⁹⁰Glaucon added, ‘Yes, Socrates, and there is reason in spending the whole of life in such discussions; but pray, without more ado, tell us how this community is to be carried out, and how the interval between birth and education is to be filled up.’ ¹⁰⁹¹Well, I said, the subject has several difficulties—What is possible? ¹⁰⁹²is the first question. ¹⁰⁹³What is desirable? ¹⁰⁹⁴is the second. ¹⁰⁹⁵‘Fear not,’ he replied, ‘for you are speaking among friends.’ ¹⁰⁹⁶That, I replied, is a sorry consolation; I shall destroy my friends as well as myself. ¹⁰⁹⁷Not that I mind a little innocent laughter; but he who kills the truth is a murderer. ¹⁰⁹⁸‘Then,’ said Glaucon, laughing, ‘in case you should murder us we will acquit you beforehand, and you shall be held free from the guilt of deceiving us.’ ¹⁰⁹⁹Socrates proceeds:—The guardians of our state are to be watch-dogs, as we have already said. ¹¹⁰⁰Now dogs are not divided into hes and shes—we do not take the masculine gender out to hunt and leave the females at home to look after their puppies. ¹¹⁰¹They have the same employments—the only difference between them is that the one sex is stronger and the other weaker. ¹¹⁰²But if women are to have the same employments as men, they must have the same education—they must be taught music and gymnastics, and the art of war. ¹¹⁰³I know that a great joke will be made of their riding on horseback and carrying weapons; the sight of the naked old wrinkled women showing their agility in the palaestra will certainly not be a vision of beauty, and may be expected to become a famous jest. ¹¹⁰⁴But we must not mind the wits; there was a time when they might have laughed at our present gymnastics. ¹¹⁰⁵All is habit: people have at last found out that the exposure is better than the concealment of the person, and now they laugh no more. ¹¹⁰⁶Evil only should be the subject of ridicule. ¹¹⁰⁷The first question is, whether women are able either wholly or partially to share in the employments of men. ¹¹⁰⁸And here we may be charged with inconsistency in making the proposal at all. ¹¹⁰⁹For we started originally with the division of labour; and the diversity of employments was based on the difference of natures. ¹¹¹⁰But is there no difference between men and women? ¹¹¹¹Nay, are they not wholly different? ¹¹¹²THERE was the difficulty, Glaucon, which made me unwilling to speak of family relations. ¹¹¹³However, when a man is out of his depth, whether in a pool or in an ocean, he can only swim for his life; and we must try to find a way of escape, if we can. ¹¹¹⁴The argument is, that different natures have different uses, and the natures of men and women are said to differ. ¹¹¹⁵But this is only a verbal opposition. ¹¹¹⁶We do not consider that the difference may be purely nominal and accidental; for example, a bald man and a hairy man are opposed in a single point of view, but you cannot infer that because a bald man is a cobbler a hairy man ought not to be a cobbler. ¹¹¹⁷Now why is such an inference erroneous? ¹¹¹⁸Simply because the opposition between them is partial only, like the difference between a male physician and a female physician, not running through the whole nature, like the difference between a physician and a carpenter. ¹¹¹⁹And if the difference of the sexes is only that the one beget and the other bear children, this does not prove that they ought to have distinct educations. ¹¹²⁰Admitting that women differ from men in capacity, do not men equally differ from one another? ¹¹²¹Has not nature scattered all the qualities which our citizens require indifferently up and down among the two sexes? ¹¹²²and even in their peculiar pursuits, are not women often, though in some cases superior to men, ridiculously enough surpassed by them? ¹¹²³Women are the same in kind as men, and have the same aptitude or want of aptitude for medicine or gymnastic or war, but in a less degree. ¹¹²⁴One woman will be a good guardian, another not; and the good must be chosen to be the colleagues of our guardians. ¹¹²⁵If however their natures are the same, the inference is that their education must also be the same; there is no longer anything unnatural or impossible in a woman learning music and gymnastic. ¹¹²⁶And the education which we give them will be the very best, far superior to that of cobblers, and will train up the very best women, and nothing can be more advantageous to the State than this. ¹¹²⁷Therefore let them strip, clothed in their chastity, and share in the toils of war and in the defence of their country; he who laughs at them is a fool for his pains. ¹¹²⁸The first wave is past, and the argument is compelled to admit that men and women have common duties and pursuits. ¹¹²⁹A second and greater wave is rolling in—community of wives and children; is this either expedient or possible? ¹¹³⁰The expediency I do not doubt; I am not so sure of the possibility. ¹¹³¹‘Nay, I think that a considerable doubt will be entertained on both points.’ ¹¹³²I meant to have escaped the trouble of proving the first, but as you have detected the little stratagem I must even submit. ¹¹³³Only allow me to feed my fancy like the solitary in his walks, with a dream of what might be, and then I will return to the question of what can be. ¹¹³⁴In the first place our rulers will enforce the laws and make new ones where they are wanted, and their allies or ministers will obey. ¹¹³⁵You, as legislator, have already selected the men; and now you shall select the women. ¹¹³⁶After the selection has been made, they will dwell in common houses and have their meals in common, and will be brought together by a necessity more certain than that of mathematics. ¹¹³⁷But they cannot be allowed to live in licentiousness; that is an unholy thing, which the rulers are determined to prevent. ¹¹³⁸For the avoidance of this, holy marriage festivals will be instituted, and their holiness will be in proportion to their usefulness. ¹¹³⁹And here, Glaucon, I should like to ask (as I know that you are a breeder of birds and animals), Do you not take the greatest care in the mating? ¹¹⁴⁰‘Certainly.’ ¹¹⁴¹And there is no reason to suppose that less care is required in the marriage of human beings. ¹¹⁴²But then our rulers must be skilful physicians of the State, for they will often need a strong dose of falsehood in order to bring about desirable unions between their subjects. ¹¹⁴³The good must be paired with the good, and the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one must be reared, and of the other destroyed; in this way the flock will be preserved in prime condition. ¹¹⁴⁴Hymeneal festivals will be celebrated at times fixed with an eye to population, and the brides and bridegrooms will meet at them; and by an ingenious system of lots the rulers will contrive that the brave and the fair come together, and that those of inferior breed are paired with inferiors—the latter will ascribe to chance what is really the invention of the rulers. ¹¹⁴⁵And when children are born, the offspring of the brave and fair will be carried to an enclosure in a certain part of the city, and there attended by suitable nurses; the rest will be hurried away to places unknown. ¹¹⁴⁶The mothers will be brought to the fold and will suckle the children; care however must be taken that none of them recognise their own offspring; and if necessary other nurses may also be hired. ¹¹⁴⁷The trouble of watching and getting up at night will be transferred to attendants. ¹¹⁴⁸‘Then the wives of our guardians will have a fine easy time when they are having children.’ ¹¹⁴⁹And quite right too, I said, that they should. ¹¹⁵⁰The parents ought to be in the prime of life, which for a man may be reckoned at thirty years—from twenty-five, when he has ‘passed the point at which the speed of life is greatest,’ to fifty-five; and at twenty years for a woman—from twenty to forty. ¹¹⁵¹Any one above or below those ages who partakes in the hymeneals shall be guilty of impiety; also every one who forms a marriage connexion at other times without the consent of the rulers. ¹¹⁵²This latter regulation applies to those who are within the specified ages, after which they may range at will, provided they avoid the prohibited degrees of parents and children, or of brothers and sisters, which last, however, are not absolutely prohibited, if a dispensation be procured. ¹¹⁵³‘But how shall we know the degrees of affinity, when all things are common?’ ¹¹⁵⁴The answer is, that brothers and sisters are all such as are born seven or nine months after the espousals, and their parents those who are then espoused, and every one will have many children and every child many parents. ¹¹⁵⁵Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous and also consistent with our entire polity. ¹¹⁵⁶The greatest good of a State is unity; the greatest evil, discord and distraction. ¹¹⁵⁷And there will be unity where there are no private pleasures or pains or interests—where if one member suffers all the members suffer, if one citizen is touched all are quickly sensitive; and the least hurt to the little finger of the State runs through the whole body and vibrates to the soul. ¹¹⁵⁸For the true State, like an individual, is injured as a whole when any part is affected. ¹¹⁵⁹Every State has subjects and rulers, who in a democracy are called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our State they are called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in other States are termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and paymasters, and those who are termed comrades and colleagues in other places, are by us called fathers and brothers. ¹¹⁶⁰And whereas in other States members of the same government regard one of their colleagues as a friend and another as an enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to another; for every citizen is connected with every other by ties of blood, and these names and this way of speaking will have a corresponding reality—brother, father, sister, mother, repeated from infancy in the ears of children, will not be mere words. ¹¹⁶¹Then again the citizens will have all things in common, in having common property they will have common pleasures and pains. ¹¹⁶²Can there be strife and contention among those who are of one mind; or lawsuits about property when men have nothing but their bodies which they call their own; or suits about violence when every one is bound to defend himself? ¹¹⁶³The permission to strike when insulted will be an ‘antidote’ to the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. ¹¹⁶⁴But no younger man will strike an elder; reverence will prevent him from laying hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the rest of the family may retaliate. ¹¹⁶⁵Moreover, our citizens will be rid of the lesser evils of life; there will be no flattery of the rich, no sordid household cares, no borrowing and not paying. ¹¹⁶⁶Compared with the citizens of other States, ours will be Olympic victors, and crowned with blessings greater still—they and their children having a better maintenance during life, and after death an honourable burial. ¹¹⁶⁷Nor has the happiness of the individual been sacrificed to the happiness of the State; our Olympic victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he has a happiness beyond that of any cobbler. ¹¹⁶⁸At the same time, if any conceited youth begins to dream of appropriating the State to himself, he must be reminded that ‘half is better than the whole.’ ¹¹⁶⁹‘I should certainly advise him to stay where he is when he has the promise of such a brave life.’ ¹¹⁷⁰But is such a community possible?—as among the animals, so also among men; and if possible, in what way possible? ¹¹⁷¹About war there is no difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted to military service. ¹¹⁷²Parents will take their children to look on at a battle, just as potters’ boys are trained to the business by looking on at the wheel. ¹¹⁷³And to the parents themselves, as to other animals, the sight of their young ones will prove a great incentive to bravery. ¹¹⁷⁴Young warriors must learn, but they must not run into danger, although a certain degree of risk is worth incurring when the benefit is great. ¹¹⁷⁵The young creatures should be placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they should have wings—that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which they may fly away and escape. ¹¹⁷⁶One of the first things to be done is to teach a youth to ride. ¹¹⁷⁷Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen; gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented to the enemy. ¹¹⁷⁸But what shall be done to the hero? ¹¹⁷⁹First of all he shall be crowned by all the youths in the army; secondly, he shall receive the right hand of fellowship; and thirdly, do you think that there is any harm in his being kissed? ¹¹⁸⁰We have already determined that he shall have more wives than others, in order that he may have as many children as possible. ¹¹⁸¹And at a feast he shall have more to eat; we have the authority of Homer for honouring brave men with ‘long chines,’ which is an appropriate compliment, because meat is a very strengthening thing. ¹¹⁸²Fill the bowl then, and give the best seats and meats to the brave—may they do them good! ¹¹⁸³And he who dies in battle will be at once declared to be of the golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of Hesiod’s guardian angels. ¹¹⁸⁴He shall be worshipped after death in the manner prescribed by the oracle; and not only he, but all other benefactors of the State who die in any other way, shall be admitted to the same honours. ¹¹⁸⁵The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies? ¹¹⁸⁶Shall Hellenes be enslaved? ¹¹⁸⁷No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing under the yoke of the barbarians. ¹¹⁸⁸Or shall the dead be despoiled? ¹¹⁸⁹Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and has been the ruin of many an army. ¹¹⁹⁰There is meanness and feminine malice in making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the owner has fled—like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels with the stones which are thrown at him instead. ¹¹⁹¹Again, the arms of Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. ¹¹⁹²And on similar grounds there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory—the houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried off. ¹¹⁹³For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is properly termed ‘discord,’ and only the second ‘war;’ and war between Hellenes is in reality civil war—a quarrel in a family, which is ever to be regarded as unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted with a view to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of those who would chasten but not utterly enslave. ¹¹⁹⁴The war is not against a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women, and children, but only against a few guilty persons; when they are punished peace will be restored. ¹¹⁹⁵That is the way in which Hellenes should war against one another—and against barbarians, as they war against one another now. ¹¹⁹⁶‘But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a State possible? ¹¹⁹⁷I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness of being one family—fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out to war together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal State.’ ¹¹⁹⁸You are too unmerciful. ¹¹⁹⁹The first wave and the second wave I have hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the third. ¹²⁰⁰When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to take pity. ¹²⁰¹‘Not a whit.’ ¹²⁰²Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after justice, and the just man answered to the just State. ¹²⁰³Is this ideal at all the worse for being impracticable? ¹²⁰⁴Would the picture of a perfectly beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? ¹²⁰⁵Can any reality come up to the idea? ¹²⁰⁶Nature will not allow words to be fully realized; but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a measure, I think that an approach may be made to the perfection of which I dream by one or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes in the present constitution of States. ¹²⁰⁷I would reduce them to a single one—the great wave, as I call it. ¹²⁰⁸Until, then, kings are philosophers, or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor the human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being. ¹²⁰⁹I know that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive. ¹²¹⁰‘Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you with sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to prepare an answer.’ ¹²¹¹You got me into the scrape, I said. ¹²¹²‘And I was right,’ he replied; ‘however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing, well-meaning ally.’ ¹²¹³Having the help of such a champion, I will do my best to maintain my position. ¹²¹⁴And first, I must explain of whom I speak and what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and rulers. ¹²¹⁵As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn blemishes into beauties. ¹²¹⁶The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is ‘honey-pale.’ ¹²¹⁷Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their affection in every form. ¹²¹⁸Now here comes the point:—The philosopher too is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity. ¹²¹⁹‘But will curiosity make a philosopher? ¹²²⁰Are the lovers of sights and sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac festivals, to be called philosophers?’ ¹²²¹They are not true philosophers, but only an imitation. ¹²²²‘Then how are we to describe the true?’ ¹²²³You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various combinations appear to be many. ¹²²⁴Those who recognize these realities are philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only. ¹²²⁵Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify him without revealing the disorder of his mind? ¹²²⁶Suppose we say that, if he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of opinion only. ¹²²⁷Opinion and knowledge, then, having distinct objects, must also be distinct faculties. ¹²²⁸And by faculties I mean powers unseen and distinguishable only by the difference in their objects, as opinion and knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. ¹²²⁹If being is the object of knowledge, and not-being of ignorance, and these are the extremes, opinion must lie between them, and may be called darker than the one and brighter than the other. ¹²³⁰This intermediate or contingent matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence and of non-existence. ¹²³¹Now I would ask my good friend, who denies abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many just, whether everything he sees is not in some point of view different—the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? ¹²³²Is not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative terms which pass into one another? ¹²³³Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle—‘A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a stone and not a stone.’ ¹²³⁴The mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are the proper matter of knowledge. ¹²³⁵And he who grovels in the world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only... ¹²³⁶The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the community of property and of family are first maintained, and the transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. ¹²³⁷For both of these Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of Book IV, which fall unperceived on the reader’s mind, as they are supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus. ¹²³⁸The ‘paradoxes,’ as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the Republic will be reserved for another place; a few remarks on the style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added. ¹²³⁹First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of scheme or plan of the book. ¹²⁴⁰The first wave, the second wave, the third and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. ¹²⁴¹All that can be said of the extravagance of Plato’s proposals is anticipated by himself. ¹²⁴²Nothing is more admirable than the hesitation with which he proposes the solemn text, ‘Until kings are philosophers,’ etc.; or the reaction from the sublime to the ridiculous, when Glaucon describes the manner in which the new truth will be received by mankind. ¹²⁴³Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the communistic plan. ¹²⁴⁴Nothing is told us of the application of communism to the lower classes; nor is the table of prohibited degrees capable of being made out. ¹²⁴⁵It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal festival may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of its parents, at another. ¹²⁴⁶Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at the same time he does not wish to bring before us the fact that the city would be divided into families of those born seven and nine months after each hymeneal festival. ¹²⁴⁷If it were worth while to argue seriously about such fancies, we might remark that while all the old affinities are abolished, the newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural or rational principle, but only upon the accident of children having been born in the same month and year. ¹²⁴⁸Nor does he explain how the lots could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together the fairest and best. ¹²⁴⁹The singular expression which is employed to describe the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet. ¹²⁵⁰In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or feelings. ¹²⁵¹They are partly facetious, but also contain a germ of truth. ¹²⁵²That science is a whole, remains a true principle of inductive as well as of metaphysical philosophy; and the love of universal knowledge is still the characteristic of the philosopher in modern as well as in ancient times. ¹²⁵³At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of contingent matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on the Ethics and Theology of the modern world, and which occurs here for the first time in the history of philosophy. ¹²⁵⁴He did not remark that the degrees of knowledge in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the object. ¹²⁵⁵With him a word must answer to an idea; and he could not conceive of an opinion which was an opinion about nothing. ¹²⁵⁶The influence of analogy led him to invent ‘parallels and conjugates’ and to overlook facts. ¹²⁵⁷To us some of his difficulties are puzzling only from their simplicity: we do not perceive that the answer to them ‘is tumbling out at our feet.’ ¹²⁵⁸To the mind of early thinkers, the conception of not-being was dark and mysterious; they did not see that this terrible apparition which threatened destruction to all knowledge was only a logical determination. ¹²⁵⁹The common term under which, through the accidental use of language, two entirely different ideas were included was another source of confusion. ¹²⁶⁰Thus through the ambiguity of (Greek) Plato, attempting to introduce order into the first chaos of human thought, seems to have confused perception and opinion, and to have failed to distinguish the contingent from the relative. ¹²⁶¹In the Theaetetus the first of these difficulties begins to clear up; in the Sophist the second; and for this, as well as for other reasons, both these dialogues are probably to be regarded as later than the Republic. ¹²⁶²BOOK VI. ¹²⁶³Having determined that the many have no knowledge of true being, and have no clear patterns in their minds of justice, beauty, truth, and that philosophers have such patterns, we have now to ask whether they or the many shall be rulers in our State. ¹²⁶⁴But who can doubt that philosophers should be chosen, if they have the other qualities which are required in a ruler? ¹²⁶⁵For they are lovers of the knowledge of the eternal and of all truth; they are haters of falsehood; their meaner desires are absorbed in the interests of knowledge; they are spectators of all time and all existence; and in the magnificence of their contemplation the life of man is as nothing to them, nor is death fearful. ¹²⁶⁶Also they are of a social, gracious disposition, equally free from cowardice and arrogance. ¹²⁶⁷They learn and remember easily; they have harmonious, well-regulated minds; truth flows to them sweetly by nature. ¹²⁶⁸Can the god of Jealousy himself find any fault with such an assemblage of good qualities? ¹²⁶⁹Here Adeimantus interposes:—‘No man can answer you, Socrates; but every man feels that this is owing to his own deficiency in argument. ¹²⁷⁰He is driven from one position to another, until he has nothing more to say, just as an unskilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by a more skilled opponent. ¹²⁷¹And yet all the time he may be right. ¹²⁷²He may know, in this very instance, that those who make philosophy the business of their lives, generally turn out rogues if they are bad men, and fools if they are good. ¹²⁷³What do you say?’ ¹²⁷⁴I should say that he is quite right. ¹²⁷⁵‘Then how is such an admission reconcileable with the doctrine that philosophers should be kings?’ ¹²⁷⁶I shall answer you in a parable which will also let you see how poor a hand I am at the invention of allegories. ¹²⁷⁷The relation of good men to their governments is so peculiar, that in order to defend them I must take an illustration from the world of fiction. ¹²⁷⁸Conceive the captain of a ship, taller by a head and shoulders than any of the crew, yet a little deaf, a little blind, and rather ignorant of the seaman’s art. ¹²⁷⁹The sailors want to steer, although they know nothing of the art; and they have a theory that it cannot be learned. ¹²⁸⁰If the helm is refused them, they drug the captain’s posset, bind him hand and foot, and take possession of the ship. ¹²⁸¹He who joins in the mutiny is termed a good pilot and what not; they have no conception that the true pilot must observe the winds and the stars, and must be their master, whether they like it or not;—such an one would be called by them fool, prater, star-gazer. ¹²⁸²This is my parable; which I will beg you to interpret for me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher has such an evil name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who will not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. ¹²⁸³The philosopher should not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. ¹²⁸⁴The wise man should not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him. ¹²⁸⁵Now the pilot is the philosopher—he whom in the parable they call star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians by whom he is rendered useless. ¹²⁸⁶Not that these are the worst enemies of philosophy, who is far more dishonoured by her own professing sons when they are corrupted by the world. ¹²⁸⁷Need I recall the original image of the philosopher? ¹²⁸⁸Did we not say of him just now, that he loved truth and hated falsehood, and that he could not rest in the multiplicity of phenomena, but was led by a sympathy in his own nature to the contemplation of the absolute? ¹²⁸⁹All the virtues as well as truth, who is the leader of them, took up their abode in his soul. ¹²⁹⁰But as you were observing, if we turn aside to view the reality, we see that the persons who were thus described, with the exception of a small and useless class, are utter rogues. ¹²⁹¹The point which has to be considered, is the origin of this corruption in nature. ¹²⁹²Every one will admit that the philosopher, in our description of him, is a rare being. ¹²⁹³But what numberless causes tend to destroy these rare beings! ¹²⁹⁴There is no good thing which may not be a cause of evil—health, wealth, strength, rank, and the virtues themselves, when placed under unfavourable circumstances. ¹²⁹⁵For as in the animal or vegetable world the strongest seeds most need the accompaniment of good air and soil, so the best of human characters turn out the worst when they fall upon an unsuitable soil; whereas weak natures hardly ever do any considerable good or harm; they are not the stuff out of which either great criminals or great heroes are made. ¹²⁹⁶The philosopher follows the same analogy: he is either the best or the worst of all men. ¹²⁹⁷Some persons say that the Sophists are the corrupters of youth; but is not public opinion the real Sophist who is everywhere present—in those very persons, in the assembly, in the courts, in the camp, in the applauses and hisses of the theatre re-echoed by the surrounding hills? ¹²⁹⁸Will not a young man’s heart leap amid these discordant sounds? ¹²⁹⁹and will any education save him from being carried away by the torrent? ¹³⁰⁰Nor is this all. ¹³⁰¹For if he will not yield to opinion, there follows the gentle compulsion of exile or death. ¹³⁰²What principle of rival Sophists or anybody else can overcome in such an unequal contest? ¹³⁰³Characters there may be more than human, who are exceptions—God may save a man, but not his own strength. ¹³⁰⁴Further, I would have you consider that the hireling Sophist only gives back to the world their own opinions; he is the keeper of the monster, who knows how to flatter or anger him, and observes the meaning of his inarticulate grunts. ¹³⁰⁵Good is what pleases him, evil what he dislikes; truth and beauty are determined only by the taste of the brute. ¹³⁰⁶Such is the Sophist’s wisdom, and such is the condition of those who make public opinion the test of truth, whether in art or in morals. ¹³⁰⁷The curse is laid upon them of being and doing what it approves, and when they attempt first principles the failure is ludicrous. ¹³⁰⁸Think of all this and ask yourself whether the world is more likely to be a believer in the unity of the idea, or in the multiplicity of phenomena. ¹³⁰⁹And the world if not a believer in the idea cannot be a philosopher, and must therefore be a persecutor of philosophers. ¹³¹⁰There is another evil:—the world does not like to lose the gifted nature, and so they flatter the young (Alcibiades) into a magnificent opinion of his own capacity; the tall, proper youth begins to expand, and is dreaming of kingdoms and empires. ¹³¹¹If at this instant a friend whispers to him, ‘Now the gods lighten thee; thou art a great fool’ and must be educated—do you think that he will listen? ¹³¹²Or suppose a better sort of man who is attracted towards philosophy, will they not make Herculean efforts to spoil and corrupt him? ¹³¹³Are we not right in saying that the love of knowledge, no less than riches, may divert him? ¹³¹⁴Men of this class (Critias) often become politicians—they are the authors of great mischief in states, and sometimes also of great good. ¹³¹⁵And thus philosophy is deserted by her natural protectors, and others enter in and dishonour her. ¹³¹⁶Vulgar little minds see the land open and rush from the prisons of the arts into her temple. ¹³¹⁷A clever mechanic having a soul coarse as his body, thinks that he will gain caste by becoming her suitor. ¹³¹⁸For philosophy, even in her fallen estate, has a dignity of her own—and he, like a bald little blacksmith’s apprentice as he is, having made some money and got out of durance, washes and dresses himself as a bridegroom and marries his master’s daughter. ¹³¹⁹What will be the issue of such marriages? ¹³²⁰Will they not be vile and bastard, devoid of truth and nature? ¹³²¹‘They will.’ ¹³²²Small, then, is the remnant of genuine philosophers; there may be a few who are citizens of small states, in which politics are not worth thinking of, or who have been detained by Theages’ bridle of ill health; for my own case of the oracular sign is almost unique, and too rare to be worth mentioning. ¹³²³And these few when they have tasted the pleasures of philosophy, and have taken a look at that den of thieves and place of wild beasts, which is human life, will stand aside from the storm under the shelter of a wall, and try to preserve their own innocence and to depart in peace. ¹³²⁴‘A great work, too, will have been accomplished by them.’ ¹³²⁵Great, yes, but not the greatest; for man is a social being, and can only attain his highest development in the society which is best suited to him. ¹³²⁶Enough, then, of the causes why philosophy has such an evil name. ¹³²⁷Another question is, Which of existing states is suited to her? ¹³²⁸Not one of them; at present she is like some exotic seed which degenerates in a strange soil; only in her proper state will she be shown to be of heavenly growth. ¹³²⁹‘And is her proper state ours or some other?’ ¹³³⁰Ours in all points but one, which was left undetermined. ¹³³¹You may remember our saying that some living mind or witness of the legislator was needed in states. ¹³³²But we were afraid to enter upon a subject of such difficulty, and now the question recurs and has not grown easier:—How may philosophy be safely studied? ¹³³³Let us bring her into the light of day, and make an end of the inquiry. ¹³³⁴In the first place, I say boldly that nothing can be worse than the present mode of study. ¹³³⁵Persons usually pick up a little philosophy in early youth, and in the intervals of business, but they never master the real difficulty, which is dialectic. ¹³³⁶Later, perhaps, they occasionally go to a lecture on philosophy. ¹³³⁷Years advance, and the sun of philosophy, unlike that of Heracleitus, sets never to rise again. ¹³³⁸This order of education should be reversed; it should begin with gymnastics in youth, and as the man strengthens, he should increase the gymnastics of his soul. ¹³³⁹Then, when active life is over, let him finally return to philosophy. ¹³⁴⁰‘You are in earnest, Socrates, but the world will be equally earnest in withstanding you—no more than Thrasymachus.’ ¹³⁴¹Do not make a quarrel between Thrasymachus and me, who were never enemies and are now good friends enough. ¹³⁴²And I shall do my best to convince him and all mankind of the truth of my words, or at any rate to prepare for the future when, in another life, we may again take part in similar discussions. ¹³⁴³‘That will be a long time hence.’ ¹³⁴⁴Not long in comparison with eternity. ¹³⁴⁵The many will probably remain incredulous, for they have never seen the natural unity of ideas, but only artificial juxtapositions; not free and generous thoughts, but tricks of controversy and quips of law;—a perfect man ruling in a perfect state, even a single one they have not known. ¹³⁴⁶And we foresaw that there was no chance of perfection either in states or individuals until a necessity was laid upon philosophers—not the rogues, but those whom we called the useless class—of holding office; or until the sons of kings were inspired with a true love of philosophy. ¹³⁴⁷Whether in the infinity of past time there has been, or is in some distant land, or ever will be hereafter, an ideal such as we have described, we stoutly maintain that there has been, is, and will be such a state whenever the Muse of philosophy rules. ¹³⁴⁸Will you say that the world is of another mind? ¹³⁴⁹O, my friend, do not revile the world! ¹³⁵⁰They will soon change their opinion if they are gently entreated, and are taught the true nature of the philosopher. ¹³⁵¹Who can hate a man who loves him? ¹³⁵²Or be jealous of one who has no jealousy? ¹³⁵³Consider, again, that the many hate not the true but the false philosophers—the pretenders who force their way in without invitation, and are always speaking of persons and not of principles, which is unlike the spirit of philosophy. ¹³⁵⁴For the true philosopher despises earthly strife; his eye is fixed on the eternal order in accordance with which he moulds himself into the Divine image (and not himself only, but other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as public. ¹³⁵⁵When mankind see that the happiness of states is only to be found in that image, will they be angry with us for attempting to delineate it? ¹³⁵⁶‘Certainly not. ¹³⁵⁷But what will be the process of delineation?’ ¹³⁵⁸The artist will do nothing until he has made a tabula rasa; on this he will inscribe the constitution of a state, glancing often at the divine truth of nature, and from that deriving the godlike among men, mingling the two elements, rubbing out and painting in, until there is a perfect harmony or fusion of the divine and human. ¹³⁵⁹But perhaps the world will doubt the existence of such an artist. ¹³⁶⁰What will they doubt? ¹³⁶¹That the philosopher is a lover of truth, having a nature akin to the best?—and if they admit this will they still quarrel with us for making philosophers our kings? ¹³⁶²‘They will be less disposed to quarrel.’ ¹³⁶³Let us assume then that they are pacified. ¹³⁶⁴Still, a person may hesitate about the probability of the son of a king being a philosopher. ¹³⁶⁵And we do not deny that they are very liable to be corrupted; but yet surely in the course of ages there might be one exception—and one is enough. ¹³⁶⁶If one son of a king were a philosopher, and had obedient citizens, he might bring the ideal polity into being. ¹³⁶⁷Hence we conclude that our laws are not only the best, but that they are also possible, though not free from difficulty. ¹³⁶⁸I gained nothing by evading the troublesome questions which arose concerning women and children. ¹³⁶⁹I will be wiser now and acknowledge that we must go to the bottom of another question: What is to be the education of our guardians? ¹³⁷⁰It was agreed that they were to be lovers of their country, and were to be tested in the refiner’s fire of pleasures and pains, and those who came forth pure and remained fixed in their principles were to have honours and rewards in life and after death. ¹³⁷¹But at this point, the argument put on her veil and turned into another path. ¹³⁷²I hesitated to make the assertion which I now hazard,—that our guardians must be philosophers. ¹³⁷³You remember all the contradictory elements, which met in the philosopher—how difficult to find them all in a single person! ¹³⁷⁴Intelligence and spirit are not often combined with steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is averse to intellectual toil. ¹³⁷⁵And yet these opposite elements are all necessary, and therefore, as we were saying before, the aspirant must be tested in pleasures and dangers; and also, as we must now further add, in the highest branches of knowledge. ¹³⁷⁶You will remember, that when we spoke of the virtues mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied to leave unexplored. ¹³⁷⁷‘Enough seemed to have been said.’ ¹³⁷⁸Enough, my friend; but what is enough while anything remains wanting? ¹³⁷⁹Of all men the guardian must not faint in the search after truth; he must be prepared to take the longer road, or he will never reach that higher region which is above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must not only get an outline, but a clear and distinct vision. ¹³⁸⁰(Strange that we should be so precise about trifles, so careless about the highest truths!) ¹³⁸¹‘And what are the highest?’ ¹³⁸²You to pretend unconsciousness, when you have so often heard me speak of the idea of good, about which we know so little, and without which though a man gain the world he has no profit of it! ¹³⁸³Some people imagine that the good is wisdom; but this involves a circle,—the good, they say, is wisdom, wisdom has to do with the good. ¹³⁸⁴According to others the good is pleasure; but then comes the absurdity that good is bad, for there are bad pleasures as well as good. ¹³⁸⁵Again, the good must have reality; a man may desire the appearance of virtue, but he will not desire the appearance of good. ¹³⁸⁶Ought our guardians then to be ignorant of this supreme principle, of which every man has a presentiment, and without which no man has any real knowledge of anything? ¹³⁸⁷‘But, Socrates, what is this supreme principle, knowledge or pleasure, or what? ¹³⁸⁸You may think me troublesome, but I say that you have no business to be always repeating the doctrines of others instead of giving us your own.’ ¹³⁸⁹Can I say what I do not know? ¹³⁹⁰‘You may offer an opinion.’ ¹³⁹¹And will the blindness and crookedness of opinion content you when you might have the light and certainty of science? ¹³⁹²‘I will only ask you to give such an explanation of the good as you have given already of temperance and justice.’ ¹³⁹³I wish that I could, but in my present mood I cannot reach to the height of the knowledge of the good. ¹³⁹⁴To the parent or principal I cannot introduce you, but to the child begotten in his image, which I may compare with the interest on the principal, I will. ¹³⁹⁵(Audit the account, and do not let me give you a false statement of the debt.) ¹³⁹⁶You remember our old distinction of the many beautiful and the one beautiful, the particular and the universal, the objects of sight and the objects of thought? ¹³⁹⁷Did you ever consider that the objects of sight imply a faculty of sight which is the most complex and costly of our senses, requiring not only objects of sense, but also a medium, which is light; without which the sight will not distinguish between colours and all will be a blank? ¹³⁹⁸For light is the noble bond between the perceiving faculty and the thing perceived, and the god who gives us light is the sun, who is the eye of the day, but is not to be confounded with the eye of man. ¹³⁹⁹This eye of the day or sun is what I call the child of the good, standing in the same relation to the visible world as the good to the intellectual. ¹⁴⁰⁰When the sun shines the eye sees, and in the intellectual world where truth is, there is sight and light. ¹⁴⁰¹Now that which is the sun of intelligent natures, is the idea of good, the cause of knowledge and truth, yet other and fairer than they are, and standing in the same relation to them in which the sun stands to light. ¹⁴⁰²O inconceivable height of beauty, which is above knowledge and above truth! ¹⁴⁰³(‘You cannot surely mean pleasure,’ he said. ¹⁴⁰⁴Peace, I replied.) ¹⁴⁰⁵And this idea of good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth, and the author not of knowledge only, but of being, yet greater far than either in dignity and power. ¹⁴⁰⁶‘That is a reach of thought more than human; but, pray, go on with the image, for I suspect that there is more behind.’ ¹⁴⁰⁷There is, I said; and bearing in mind our two suns or principles, imagine further their corresponding worlds—one of the visible, the other of the intelligible; you may assist your fancy by figuring the distinction under the image of a line divided into two unequal parts, and may again subdivide each part into two lesser segments representative of the stages of knowledge in either sphere. ¹⁴⁰⁸The lower portion of the lower or visible sphere will consist of shadows and reflections, and its upper and smaller portion will contain real objects in the world of nature or of art. ¹⁴⁰⁹The sphere of the intelligible will also have two divisions,—one of mathematics, in which there is no ascent but all is descent; no inquiring into premises, but only drawing of inferences. ¹⁴¹⁰In this division the mind works with figures and numbers, the images of which are taken not from the shadows, but from the objects, although the truth of them is seen only with the mind’s eye; and they are used as hypotheses without being analysed. ¹⁴¹¹Whereas in the other division reason uses the hypotheses as stages or steps in the ascent to the idea of good, to which she fastens them, and then again descends, walking firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as descent, and finally resting in them. ¹⁴¹²‘I partly understand,’ he replied; ‘you mean that the ideas of science are superior to the hypothetical, metaphorical conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences, whichever is to be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse to make subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle, although when resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher sphere.’ ¹⁴¹³You understand me very well, I said. ¹⁴¹⁴And now to those four divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding faculties—pure intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second; to the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of shadows—and the clearness of the several faculties will be in the same ratio as the truth of the objects to which they are related... ¹⁴¹⁵Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philosopher. ¹⁴¹⁶In language which seems to reach beyond the horizon of that age and country, he is described as ‘the spectator of all time and all existence.’ ¹⁴¹⁷He has the noblest gifts of nature, and makes the highest use of them. ¹⁴¹⁸All his desires are absorbed in the love of wisdom, which is the love of truth. ¹⁴¹⁹None of the graces of a beautiful soul are wanting in him; neither can he fear death, or think much of human life. ¹⁴²⁰The ideal of modern times hardly retains the simplicity of the antique; there is not the same originality either in truth or error which characterized the Greeks. ¹⁴²¹The philosopher is no longer living in the unseen, nor is he sent by an oracle to convince mankind of ignorance; nor does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas leading upwards by regular stages to the idea of good. ¹⁴²²The eagerness of the pursuit has abated; there is more division of labour and less of comprehensive reflection upon nature and human life as a whole; more of exact observation and less of anticipation and inspiration. ¹⁴²³Still, in the altered conditions of knowledge, the parallel is not wholly lost; and there may be a use in translating the conception of Plato into the language of our own age. ¹⁴²⁴The philosopher in modern times is one who fixes his mind on the laws of nature in their sequence and connexion, not on fragments or pictures of nature; on history, not on controversy; on the truths which are acknowledged by the few, not on the opinions of the many. ¹⁴²⁵He is aware of the importance of ‘classifying according to nature,’ and will try to ‘separate the limbs of science without breaking them’ (Phaedr.). ¹⁴²⁶There is no part of truth, whether great or small, which he will dishonour; and in the least things he will discern the greatest (Parmen.). ¹⁴²⁷Like the ancient philosopher he sees the world pervaded by analogies, but he can also tell ‘why in some cases a single instance is sufficient for an induction’ (Mill’s Logic), while in other cases a thousand examples would prove nothing. ¹⁴²⁸He inquires into a portion of knowledge only, because the whole has grown too vast to be embraced by a single mind or life. ¹⁴²⁹He has a clearer conception of the divisions of science and of their relation to the mind of man than was possible to the ancients. ¹⁴³⁰Like Plato, he has a vision of the unity of knowledge, not as the beginning of philosophy to be attained by a study of elementary mathematics, but as the far-off result of the working of many minds in many ages. ¹⁴³¹He is aware that mathematical studies are preliminary to almost every other; at the same time, he will not reduce all varieties of knowledge to the type of mathematics. ¹⁴³²He too must have a nobility of character, without which genius loses the better half of greatness. ¹⁴³³Regarding the world as a point in immensity, and each individual as a link in a never-ending chain of existence, he will not think much of his own life, or be greatly afraid of death. ¹⁴³⁴Adeimantus objects first of all to the form of the Socratic reasoning, thus showing that Plato is aware of the imperfection of his own method. ¹⁴³⁵He brings the accusation against himself which might be brought against him by a modern logician—that he extracts the answer because he knows how to put the question. ¹⁴³⁶In a long argument words are apt to change their meaning slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions inferred with rather too much certainty or universality; the variation at each step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes considerable. ¹⁴³⁷Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or algebraic formulae to logic. ¹⁴³⁸The imperfection, or rather the higher and more elastic nature of language, does not allow words to have the precision of numbers or of symbols. ¹⁴³⁹And this quality in language impairs the force of an argument which has many steps. ¹⁴⁴⁰The objection, though fairly met by Socrates in this particular instance, may be regarded as implying a reflection upon the Socratic mode of reasoning. ¹⁴⁴¹And here, as elsewhere, Plato seems to intimate that the time had come when the negative and interrogative method of Socrates must be superseded by a positive and constructive one, of which examples are given in some of the later dialogues. ¹⁴⁴²Adeimantus further argues that the ideal is wholly at variance with facts; for experience proves philosophers to be either useless or rogues. ¹⁴⁴³Contrary to all expectation Socrates has no hesitation in admitting the truth of this, and explains the anomaly in an allegory, first characteristically depreciating his own inventive powers. ¹⁴⁴⁴In this allegory the people are distinguished from the professional politicians, and, as elsewhere, are spoken of in a tone of pity rather than of censure under the image of ‘the noble captain who is not very quick in his perceptions.’ ¹⁴⁴⁵The uselessness of philosophers is explained by the circumstance that mankind will not use them. ¹⁴⁴⁶The world in all ages has been divided between contempt and fear of those who employ the power of ideas and know no other weapons. ¹⁴⁴⁷Concerning the false philosopher, Socrates argues that the best is most liable to corruption; and that the finer nature is more likely to suffer from alien conditions. ¹⁴⁴⁸We too observe that there are some kinds of excellence which spring from a peculiar delicacy of constitution; as is evidently true of the poetical and imaginative temperament, which often seems to depend on impressions, and hence can only breathe or live in a certain atmosphere. ¹⁴⁴⁹The man of genius has greater pains and greater pleasures, greater powers and greater weaknesses, and often a greater play of character than is to be found in ordinary men. ¹⁴⁵⁰He can assume the disguise of virtue or disinterestedness without having them, or veil personal enmity in the language of patriotism and philosophy,—he can say the word which all men are thinking, he has an insight which is terrible into the follies and weaknesses of his fellow-men. ¹⁴⁵¹An Alcibiades, a Mirabeau, or a Napoleon the First, are born either to be the authors of great evils in states, or ‘of great good, when they are drawn in that direction.’ ¹⁴⁵²Yet the thesis, ‘corruptio optimi pessima,’ cannot be maintained generally or without regard to the kind of excellence which is corrupted. ¹⁴⁵³The alien conditions which are corrupting to one nature, may be the elements of culture to another. ¹⁴⁵⁴In general a man can only receive his highest development in a congenial state or family, among friends or fellow-workers. ¹⁴⁵⁵But also he may sometimes be stirred by adverse circumstances to such a degree that he rises up against them and reforms them. ¹⁴⁵⁶And while weaker or coarser characters will extract good out of evil, say in a corrupt state of the church or of society, and live on happily, allowing the evil to remain, the finer or stronger natures may be crushed or spoiled by surrounding influences—may become misanthrope and philanthrope by turns; or in a few instances, like the founders of the monastic orders, or the Reformers, owing to some peculiarity in themselves or in their age, may break away entirely from the world and from the church, sometimes into great good, sometimes into great evil, sometimes into both. ¹⁴⁵⁷And the same holds in the lesser sphere of a convent, a school, a family. ¹⁴⁵⁸Plato would have us consider how easily the best natures are overpowered by public opinion, and what efforts the rest of mankind will make to get possession of them. ¹⁴⁵⁹The world, the church, their own profession, any political or party organization, are always carrying them off their legs and teaching them to apply high and holy names to their own prejudices and interests. ¹⁴⁶⁰The ‘monster’ corporation to which they belong judges right and truth to be the pleasure of the community. ¹⁴⁶¹The individual becomes one with his order; or, if he resists, the world is too much for him, and will sooner or later be revenged on him. ¹⁴⁶²This is, perhaps, a one-sided but not wholly untrue picture of the maxims and practice of mankind when they ‘sit down together at an assembly,’ either in ancient or modern times. ¹⁴⁶³When the higher natures are corrupted by politics, the lower take possession of the vacant place of philosophy. ¹⁴⁶⁴This is described in one of those continuous images in which the argument, to use a Platonic expression, ‘veils herself,’ and which is dropped and reappears at intervals. ¹⁴⁶⁵The question is asked,—Why are the citizens of states so hostile to philosophy? ¹⁴⁶⁶The answer is, that they do not know her. ¹⁴⁶⁷And yet there is also a better mind of the many; they would believe if they were taught. ¹⁴⁶⁸But hitherto they have only known a conventional imitation of philosophy, words without thoughts, systems which have no life in them; a (divine) person uttering the words of beauty and freedom, the friend of man holding communion with the Eternal, and seeking to frame the state in that image, they have never known. ¹⁴⁶⁹The same double feeling respecting the mass of mankind has always existed among men. ¹⁴⁷⁰The first thought is that the people are the enemies of truth and right; the second, that this only arises out of an accidental error and confusion, and that they do not really hate those who love them, if they could be educated to know them. ¹⁴⁷¹In the latter part of the sixth book, three questions have to be considered: 1st, the nature of the longer and more circuitous way, which is contrasted with the shorter and more imperfect method of Book IV; 2nd, the heavenly pattern or idea of the state; 3rd, the relation of the divisions of knowledge to one another and to the corresponding faculties of the soul: 1. ¹⁴⁷²Of the higher method of knowledge in Plato we have only a glimpse. ¹⁴⁷³Neither here nor in the Phaedrus or Symposium, nor yet in the Philebus or Sophist, does he give any clear explanation of his meaning. ¹⁴⁷⁴He would probably have described his method as proceeding by regular steps to a system of universal knowledge, which inferred the parts from the whole rather than the whole from the parts. ¹⁴⁷⁵This ideal logic is not practised by him in the search after justice, or in the analysis of the parts of the soul; there, like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues from experience and the common use of language. ¹⁴⁷⁶But at the end of the sixth book he conceives another and more perfect method, in which all ideas are only steps or grades or moments of thought, forming a connected whole which is self-supporting, and in which consistency is the test of truth. ¹⁴⁷⁷He does not explain to us in detail the nature of the process. ¹⁴⁷⁸Like many other thinkers both in ancient and modern times his mind seems to be filled with a vacant form which he is unable to realize. ¹⁴⁷⁹He supposes the sciences to have a natural order and connexion in an age when they can hardly be said to exist. ¹⁴⁸⁰He is hastening on to the ‘end of the intellectual world’ without even making a beginning of them. ¹⁴⁸¹In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the process of acquiring knowledge is here confused with the contemplation of absolute knowledge. ¹⁴⁸²In all science a priori and a posteriori truths mingle in various proportions. ¹⁴⁸³The a priori part is that which is derived from the most universal experience of men, or is universally accepted by them; the a posteriori is that which grows up around the more general principles and becomes imperceptibly one with them. ¹⁴⁸⁴But Plato erroneously imagines that the synthesis is separable from the analysis, and that the method of science can anticipate science. ¹⁴⁸⁵In entertaining such a vision of a priori knowledge he is sufficiently justified, or at least his meaning may be sufficiently explained by the similar attempts of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and even of Bacon himself, in modern philosophy. ¹⁴⁸⁶Anticipations or divinations, or prophetic glimpses of truths whether concerning man or nature, seem to stand in the same relation to ancient philosophy which hypotheses bear to modern inductive science. ¹⁴⁸⁷These ‘guesses at truth’ were not made at random; they arose from a superficial impression of uniformities and first principles in nature which the genius of the Greek, contemplating the expanse of heaven and earth, seemed to recognize in the distance. ¹⁴⁸⁸Nor can we deny that in ancient times knowledge must have stood still, and the human mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought, if philosophy had been strictly confined to the results of experience. ¹⁴⁸⁹Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the artist will fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. ¹⁴⁹⁰Is this a pattern laid up in heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to gaze with wondering eye? ¹⁴⁹¹The answer is, that such ideals are framed partly by the omission of particulars, partly by imagination perfecting the form which experience supplies (Phaedo). ¹⁴⁹²Plato represents these ideals in a figure as belonging to another world; and in modern times the idea will sometimes seem to precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand of the artist. ¹⁴⁹³As in science, so also in creative art, there is a synthetical as well as an analytical method. ¹⁴⁹⁴One man will have the whole in his mind before he begins; to another the processes of mind and hand will be simultaneous. ¹⁴⁹⁵There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato’s divisions of knowledge are based, first, on the fundamental antithesis of sensible and intellectual which pervades the whole pre-Socratic philosophy; in which is implied also the opposition of the permanent and transient, of the universal and particular. ¹⁴⁹⁶But the age of philosophy in which he lived seemed to require a further distinction;—numbers and figures were beginning to separate from ideas. ¹⁴⁹⁷The world could no longer regard justice as a cube, and was learning to see, though imperfectly, that the abstractions of sense were distinct from the abstractions of mind. ¹⁴⁹⁸Between the Eleatic being or essence and the shadows of phenomena, the Pythagorean principle of number found a place, and was, as Aristotle remarks, a conducting medium from one to the other. ¹⁴⁹⁹Hence Plato is led to introduce a third term which had not hitherto entered into the scheme of his philosophy. ¹⁵⁰⁰He had observed the use of mathematics in education; they were the best preparation for higher studies. ¹⁵⁰¹The subjective relation between them further suggested an objective one; although the passage from one to the other is really imaginary (Metaph.). ¹⁵⁰²For metaphysical and moral philosophy has no connexion with mathematics; number and figure are the abstractions of time and space, not the expressions of purely intellectual conceptions. ¹⁵⁰³When divested of metaphor, a straight line or a square has no more to do with right and justice than a crooked line with vice. ¹⁵⁰⁴The figurative association was mistaken for a real one; and thus the three latter divisions of the Platonic proportion were constructed. ¹⁵⁰⁵There is more difficulty in comprehending how he arrived at the first term of the series, which is nowhere else mentioned, and has no reference to any other part of his system. ¹⁵⁰⁶Nor indeed does the relation of shadows to objects correspond to the relation of numbers to ideas. ¹⁵⁰⁷Probably Plato has been led by the love of analogy (Timaeus) to make four terms instead of three, although the objects perceived in both divisions of the lower sphere are equally objects of sense. ¹⁵⁰⁸He is also preparing the way, as his manner is, for the shadows of images at the beginning of the seventh book, and the imitation of an imitation in the tenth. ¹⁵⁰⁹The line may be regarded as reaching from unity to infinity, and is divided into two unequal parts, and subdivided into two more; each lower sphere is the multiplication of the preceding. ¹⁵¹⁰Of the four faculties, faith in the lower division has an intermediate position (cp. for the use of the word faith or belief, (Greek), Timaeus), contrasting equally with the vagueness of the perception of shadows (Greek) and the higher certainty of understanding (Greek) and reason (Greek). ¹⁵¹¹The difference between understanding and mind or reason (Greek) is analogous to the difference between acquiring knowledge in the parts and the contemplation of the whole. ¹⁵¹²True knowledge is a whole, and is at rest; consistency and universality are the tests of truth. ¹⁵¹³To this self-evidencing knowledge of the whole the faculty of mind is supposed to correspond. ¹⁵¹⁴But there is a knowledge of the understanding which is incomplete and in motion always, because unable to rest in the subordinate ideas. ¹⁵¹⁵Those ideas are called both images and hypotheses—images because they are clothed in sense, hypotheses because they are assumptions only, until they are brought into connexion with the idea of good. ¹⁵¹⁶The general meaning of the passage, ‘Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight... ¹⁵¹⁷And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible...’ so far as the thought contained in it admits of being translated into the terms of modern philosophy, may be described or explained as follows:—There is a truth, one and self-existent, to which by the help of a ladder let down from above, the human intelligence may ascend. ¹⁵¹⁸This unity is like the sun in the heavens, the light by which all things are seen, the being by which they are created and sustained. ¹⁵¹⁹It is the IDEA of good. ¹⁵²⁰And the steps of the ladder leading up to this highest or universal existence are the mathematical sciences, which also contain in themselves an element of the universal. ¹⁵²¹These, too, we see in a new manner when we connect them with the idea of good. ¹⁵²²They then cease to be hypotheses or pictures, and become essential parts of a higher truth which is at once their first principle and their final cause. ¹⁵²³We cannot give any more precise meaning to this remarkable passage, but we may trace in it several rudiments or vestiges of thought which are common to us and to Plato: such as (1) the unity and correlation of the sciences, or rather of science, for in Plato’s time they were not yet parted off or distinguished; (2) the existence of a Divine Power, or life or idea or cause or reason, not yet conceived or no longer conceived as in the Timaeus and elsewhere under the form of a person; (3) the recognition of the hypothetical and conditional character of the mathematical sciences, and in a measure of every science when isolated from the rest; (4) the conviction of a truth which is invisible, and of a law, though hardly a law of nature, which permeates the intellectual rather than the visible world. ¹⁵²⁴The method of Socrates is hesitating and tentative, awaiting the fuller explanation of the idea of good, and of the nature of dialectic in the seventh book. ¹⁵²⁵The imperfect intelligence of Glaucon, and the reluctance of Socrates to make a beginning, mark the difficulty of the subject. ¹⁵²⁶The allusion to Theages’ bridle, and to the internal oracle, or demonic sign, of Socrates, which here, as always in Plato, is only prohibitory; the remark that the salvation of any remnant of good in the present evil state of the world is due to God only; the reference to a future state of existence, which is unknown to Glaucon in the tenth book, and in which the discussions of Socrates and his disciples would be resumed; the surprise in the answers; the fanciful irony of Socrates, where he pretends that he can only describe the strange position of the philosopher in a figure of speech; the original observation that the Sophists, after all, are only the representatives and not the leaders of public opinion; the picture of the philosopher standing aside in the shower of sleet under a wall; the figure of ‘the great beast’ followed by the expression of good-will towards the common people who would not have rejected the philosopher if they had known him; the ‘right noble thought’ that the highest truths demand the greatest exactness; the hesitation of Socrates in returning once more to his well-worn theme of the idea of good; the ludicrous earnestness of Glaucon; the comparison of philosophy to a deserted maiden who marries beneath her—are some of the most interesting characteristics of the sixth book. ¹⁵²⁷Yet a few more words may be added, on the old theme, which was so oft discussed in the Socratic circle, of which we, like Glaucon and Adeimantus, would fain, if possible, have a clearer notion. ¹⁵²⁸Like them, we are dissatisfied when we are told that the idea of good can only be revealed to a student of the mathematical sciences, and we are inclined to think that neither we nor they could have been led along that path to any satisfactory goal. ¹⁵²⁹For we have learned that differences of quantity cannot pass into differences of quality, and that the mathematical sciences can never rise above themselves into the sphere of our higher thoughts, although they may sometimes furnish symbols and expressions of them, and may train the mind in habits of abstraction and self-concentration. ¹⁵³⁰The illusion which was natural to an ancient philosopher has ceased to be an illusion to us. ¹⁵³¹But if the process by which we are supposed to arrive at the idea of good be really imaginary, may not the idea itself be also a mere abstraction? ¹⁵³²We remark, first, that in all ages, and especially in primitive philosophy, words such as being, essence, unity, good, have exerted an extraordinary influence over the minds of men. ¹⁵³³The meagreness or negativeness of their content has been in an inverse ratio to their power. ¹⁵³⁴They have become the forms under which all things were comprehended. ¹⁵³⁵There was a need or instinct in the human soul which they satisfied; they were not ideas, but gods, and to this new mythology the men of a later generation began to attach the powers and associations of the elder deities. ¹⁵³⁶The idea of good is one of those sacred words or forms of thought, which were beginning to take the place of the old mythology. ¹⁵³⁷It meant unity, in which all time and all existence were gathered up. ¹⁵³⁸It was the truth of all things, and also the light in which they shone forth, and became evident to intelligences human and divine. ¹⁵³⁹It was the cause of all things, the power by which they were brought into being. ¹⁵⁴⁰It was the universal reason divested of a human personality. ¹⁵⁴¹It was the life as well as the light of the world, all knowledge and all power were comprehended in it. ¹⁵⁴²The way to it was through the mathematical sciences, and these too were dependent on it. ¹⁵⁴³To ask whether God was the maker of it, or made by it, would be like asking whether God could be conceived apart from goodness, or goodness apart from God. ¹⁵⁴⁴The God of the Timaeus is not really at variance with the idea of good; they are aspects of the same, differing only as the personal from the impersonal, or the masculine from the neuter, the one being the expression or language of mythology, the other of philosophy. ¹⁵⁴⁵This, or something like this, is the meaning of the idea of good as conceived by Plato. ¹⁵⁴⁶Ideas of number, order, harmony, development may also be said to enter into it. ¹⁵⁴⁷The paraphrase which has just been given of it goes beyond the actual words of Plato. ¹⁵⁴⁸We have perhaps arrived at the stage of philosophy which enables us to understand what he is aiming at, better than he did himself. ¹⁵⁴⁹We are beginning to realize what he saw darkly and at a distance. ¹⁵⁵⁰But if he could have been told that this, or some conception of the same kind, but higher than this, was the truth at which he was aiming, and the need which he sought to supply, he would gladly have recognized that more was contained in his own thoughts than he himself knew. ¹⁵⁵¹As his words are few and his manner reticent and tentative, so must the style of his interpreter be. ¹⁵⁵²We should not approach his meaning more nearly by attempting to define it further. ¹⁵⁵³In translating him into the language of modern thought, we might insensibly lose the spirit of ancient philosophy. ¹⁵⁵⁴It is remarkable that although Plato speaks of the idea of good as the first principle of truth and being, it is nowhere mentioned in his writings except in this passage. ¹⁵⁵⁵Nor did it retain any hold upon the minds of his disciples in a later generation; it was probably unintelligible to them. ¹⁵⁵⁶Nor does the mention of it in Aristotle appear to have any reference to this or any other passage in his extant writings. ¹⁵⁵⁷BOOK VII. ¹⁵⁵⁸And now I will describe in a figure the enlightenment or unenlightenment of our nature:—Imagine human beings living in an underground den which is open towards the light; they have been there from childhood, having their necks and legs chained, and can only see into the den. ¹⁵⁵⁹At a distance there is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners a raised way, and a low wall is built along the way, like the screen over which marionette players show their puppets. ¹⁵⁶⁰Behind the wall appear moving figures, who hold in their hands various works of art, and among them images of men and animals, wood and stone, and some of the passers-by are talking and others silent. ¹⁵⁶¹‘A strange parable,’ he said, ‘and strange captives.’ ¹⁵⁶²They are ourselves, I replied; and they see only the shadows of the images which the fire throws on the wall of the den; to these they give names, and if we add an echo which returns from the wall, the voices of the passengers will seem to proceed from the shadows. ¹⁵⁶³Suppose now that you suddenly turn them round and make them look with pain and grief to themselves at the real images; will they believe them to be real? ¹⁵⁶⁴Will not their eyes be dazzled, and will they not try to get away from the light to something which they are able to behold without blinking? ¹⁵⁶⁵And suppose further, that they are dragged up a steep and rugged ascent into the presence of the sun himself, will not their sight be darkened with the excess of light? ¹⁵⁶⁶Some time will pass before they get the habit of perceiving at all; and at first they will be able to perceive only shadows and reflections in the water; then they will recognize the moon and the stars, and will at length behold the sun in his own proper place as he is. ¹⁵⁶⁷Last of all they will conclude:—This is he who gives us the year and the seasons, and is the author of all that we see. ¹⁵⁶⁸How will they rejoice in passing from darkness to light! ¹⁵⁶⁹How worthless to them will seem the honours and glories of the den! ¹⁵⁷⁰But now imagine further, that they descend into their old habitations;—in that underground dwelling they will not see as well as their fellows, and will not be able to compete with them in the measurement of the shadows on the wall; there will be many jokes about the man who went on a visit to the sun and lost his eyes, and if they find anybody trying to set free and enlighten one of their number, they will put him to death, if they can catch him. ¹⁵⁷¹Now the cave or den is the world of sight, the fire is the sun, the way upwards is the way to knowledge, and in the world of knowledge the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty, but when seen is inferred to be the author of good and right—parent of the lord of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other. ¹⁵⁷²He who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards; he is unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts of law; for his eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows of images which they behold in them—he cannot enter into the ideas of those who have never in their lives understood the relation of the shadow to the substance. ¹⁵⁷³But blindness is of two kinds, and may be caused either by passing out of darkness into light or out of light into darkness, and a man of sense will distinguish between them, and will not laugh equally at both of them, but the blindness which arises from fulness of light he will deem blessed, and pity the other; or if he laugh at the puzzled soul looking at the sun, he will have more reason to laugh than the inhabitants of the den at those who descend from above. ¹⁵⁷⁴There is a further lesson taught by this parable of ours. ¹⁵⁷⁵Some persons fancy that instruction is like giving eyes to the blind, but we say that the faculty of sight was always there, and that the soul only requires to be turned round towards the light. ¹⁵⁷⁶And this is conversion; other virtues are almost like bodily habits, and may be acquired in the same manner, but intelligence has a diviner life, and is indestructible, turning either to good or evil according to the direction given. ¹⁵⁷⁷Did you never observe how the mind of a clever rogue peers out of his eyes, and the more clearly he sees, the more evil he does? ¹⁵⁷⁸Now if you take such an one, and cut away from him those leaden weights of pleasure and desire which bind his soul to earth, his intelligence will be turned round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as he now discerns his meaner ends. ¹⁵⁷⁹And have we not decided that our rulers must neither be so uneducated as to have no fixed rule of life, nor so over-educated as to be unwilling to leave their paradise for the business of the world? ¹⁵⁸⁰We must choose out therefore the natures who are most likely to ascend to the light and knowledge of the good; but we must not allow them to remain in the region of light; they must be forced down again among the captives in the den to partake of their labours and honours. ¹⁵⁸¹‘Will they not think this a hardship?’ ¹⁵⁸²You should remember that our purpose in framing the State was not that our citizens should do what they like, but that they should serve the State for the common good of all. ¹⁵⁸³May we not fairly say to our philosopher,—Friend, we do you no wrong; for in other States philosophy grows wild, and a wild plant owes nothing to the gardener, but you have been trained by us to be the rulers and kings of our hive, and therefore we must insist on your descending into the den. ¹⁵⁸⁴You must, each of you, take your turn, and become able to use your eyes in the dark, and with a little practice you will see far better than those who quarrel about the shadows, whose knowledge is a dream only, whilst yours is a waking reality. ¹⁵⁸⁵It may be that the saint or philosopher who is best fitted, may also be the least inclined to rule, but necessity is laid upon him, and he must no longer live in the heaven of ideas. ¹⁵⁸⁶And this will be the salvation of the State. ¹⁵⁸⁷For those who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule; and, if you can offer to our citizens a better life than that of rulers generally is, there will be a chance that the rich, not only in this world’s goods, but in virtue and wisdom, may bear rule. ¹⁵⁸⁸And the only life which is better than the life of political ambition is that of philosophy, which is also the best preparation for the government of a State. ¹⁵⁸⁹Then now comes the question,—How shall we create our rulers; what way is there from darkness to light? ¹⁵⁹⁰The change is effected by philosophy; it is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the conversion of a soul from night to day, from becoming to being. ¹⁵⁹¹And what training will draw the soul upwards? ¹⁵⁹²Our former education had two branches, gymnastic, which was occupied with the body, and music, the sister art, which infused a natural harmony into mind and literature; but neither of these sciences gave any promise of doing what we want. ¹⁵⁹³Nothing remains to us but that universal or primary science of which all the arts and sciences are partakers, I mean number or calculation. ¹⁵⁹⁴‘Very true.’ ¹⁵⁹⁵Including the art of war? ¹⁵⁹⁶‘Yes, certainly.’ ¹⁵⁹⁷Then there is something ludicrous about Palamedes in the tragedy, coming in and saying that he had invented number, and had counted the ranks and set them in order. ¹⁵⁹⁸For if Agamemnon could not count his feet (and without number how could he?) ¹⁵⁹⁹he must have been a pretty sort of general indeed. ¹⁶⁰⁰No man should be a soldier who cannot count, and indeed he is hardly to be called a man. ¹⁶⁰¹But I am not speaking of these practical applications of arithmetic, for number, in my view, is rather to be regarded as a conductor to thought and being. ¹⁶⁰²I will explain what I mean by the last expression:—Things sensible are of two kinds; the one class invite or stimulate the mind, while in the other the mind acquiesces. ¹⁶⁰³Now the stimulating class are the things which suggest contrast and relation. ¹⁶⁰⁴For example, suppose that I hold up to the eyes three fingers—a fore finger, a middle finger, a little finger—the sight equally recognizes all three fingers, but without number cannot further distinguish them. ¹⁶⁰⁵Or again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense, but by the mind. ¹⁶⁰⁶And the perception of their contrast or relation quickens and sets in motion the mind, which is puzzled by the confused intimations of sense, and has recourse to number in order to find out whether the things indicated are one or more than one. ¹⁶⁰⁷Number replies that they are two and not one, and are to be distinguished from one another. ¹⁶⁰⁸Again, the sight beholds great and small, but only in a confused chaos, and not until they are distinguished does the question arise of their respective natures; we are thus led on to the distinction between the visible and intelligible. ¹⁶⁰⁹That was what I meant when I spoke of stimulants to the intellect; I was thinking of the contradictions which arise in perception. ¹⁶¹⁰The idea of unity, for example, like that of a finger, does not arouse thought unless involving some conception of plurality; but when the one is also the opposite of one, the contradiction gives rise to reflection; an example of this is afforded by any object of sight. ¹⁶¹¹All number has also an elevating effect; it raises the mind out of the foam and flux of generation to the contemplation of being, having lesser military and retail uses also. ¹⁶¹²The retail use is not required by us; but as our guardian is to be a soldier as well as a philosopher, the military one may be retained. ¹⁶¹³And to our higher purpose no science can be better adapted; but it must be pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, not of a shopkeeper. ¹⁶¹⁴It is concerned, not with visible objects, but with abstract truth; for numbers are pure abstractions—the true arithmetician indignantly denies that his unit is capable of division. ¹⁶¹⁵When you divide, he insists that you are only multiplying; his ‘one’ is not material or resolvable into fractions, but an unvarying and absolute equality; and this proves the purely intellectual character of his study. ¹⁶¹⁶Note also the great power which arithmetic has of sharpening the wits; no other discipline is equally severe, or an equal test of general ability, or equally improving to a stupid person. ¹⁶¹⁷Let our second branch of education be geometry. ¹⁶¹⁸‘I can easily see,’ replied Glaucon, ‘that the skill of the general will be doubled by his knowledge of geometry.’ ¹⁶¹⁹That is a small matter; the use of geometry, to which I refer, is the assistance given by it in the contemplation of the idea of good, and the compelling the mind to look at true being, and not at generation only. ¹⁶²⁰Yet the present mode of pursuing these studies, as any one who is the least of a mathematician is aware, is mean and ridiculous; they are made to look downwards to the arts, and not upwards to eternal existence. ¹⁶²¹The geometer is always talking of squaring, subtending, apposing, as if he had in view action; whereas knowledge is the real object of the study. ¹⁶²²It should elevate the soul, and create the mind of philosophy; it should raise up what has fallen down, not to speak of lesser uses in war and military tactics, and in the improvement of the faculties. ¹⁶²³Shall we propose, as a third branch of our education, astronomy? ¹⁶²⁴‘Very good,’ replied Glaucon; ‘the knowledge of the heavens is necessary at once for husbandry, navigation, military tactics.’ ¹⁶²⁵I like your way of giving useful reasons for everything in order to make friends of the world. ¹⁶²⁶And there is a difficulty in proving to mankind that education is not only useful information but a purification of the eye of the soul, which is better than the bodily eye, for by this alone is truth seen. ¹⁶²⁷Now, will you appeal to mankind in general or to the philosopher? ¹⁶²⁸or would you prefer to look to yourself only? ¹⁶²⁹‘Every man is his own best friend.’ ¹⁶³⁰Then take a step backward, for we are out of order, and insert the third dimension which is of solids, after the second which is of planes, and then you may proceed to solids in motion. ¹⁶³¹But solid geometry is not popular and has not the patronage of the State, nor is the use of it fully recognized; the difficulty is great, and the votaries of the study are conceited and impatient. ¹⁶³²Still the charm of the pursuit wins upon men, and, if government would lend a little assistance, there might be great progress made. ¹⁶³³‘Very true,’ replied Glaucon; ‘but do I understand you now to begin with plane geometry, and to place next geometry of solids, and thirdly, astronomy, or the motion of solids?’ ¹⁶³⁴Yes, I said; my hastiness has only hindered us. ¹⁶³⁵‘Very good, and now let us proceed to astronomy, about which I am willing to speak in your lofty strain. ¹⁶³⁶No one can fail to see that the contemplation of the heavens draws the soul upwards.’ ¹⁶³⁷I am an exception, then; astronomy as studied at present appears to me to draw the soul not upwards, but downwards. ¹⁶³⁸Star-gazing is just looking up at the ceiling—no better; a man may lie on his back on land or on water—he may look up or look down, but there is no science in that. ¹⁶³⁹The vision of knowledge of which I speak is seen not with the eyes, but with the mind. ¹⁶⁴⁰All the magnificence of the heavens is but the embroidery of a copy which falls far short of the divine Original, and teaches nothing about the absolute harmonies or motions of things. ¹⁶⁴¹Their beauty is like the beauty of figures drawn by the hand of Daedalus or any other great artist, which may be used for illustration, but no mathematician would seek to obtain from them true conceptions of equality or numerical relations. ¹⁶⁴²How ridiculous then to look for these in the map of the heavens, in which the imperfection of matter comes in everywhere as a disturbing element, marring the symmetry of day and night, of months and years, of the sun and stars in their courses. ¹⁶⁴³Only by problems can we place astronomy on a truly scientific basis. ¹⁶⁴⁴Let the heavens alone, and exert the intellect. ¹⁶⁴⁵Still, mathematics admit of other applications, as the Pythagoreans say, and we agree. ¹⁶⁴⁶There is a sister science of harmonical motion, adapted to the ear as astronomy is to the eye, and there may be other applications also. ¹⁶⁴⁷Let us inquire of the Pythagoreans about them, not forgetting that we have an aim higher than theirs, which is the relation of these sciences to the idea of good. ¹⁶⁴⁸The error which pervades astronomy also pervades harmonics. ¹⁶⁴⁹The musicians put their ears in the place of their minds. ¹⁶⁵⁰‘Yes,’ replied Glaucon, ‘I like to see them laying their ears alongside of their neighbours’ faces—some saying, “That’s a new note,” others declaring that the two notes are the same.’ ¹⁶⁵¹Yes, I said; but you mean the empirics who are always twisting and torturing the strings of the lyre, and quarrelling about the tempers of the strings; I am referring rather to the Pythagorean harmonists, who are almost equally in error. ¹⁶⁵²For they investigate only the numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend no higher,—of the true numerical harmony which is unheard, and is only to be found in problems, they have not even a conception. ¹⁶⁵³‘That last,’ he said, ‘must be a marvellous thing.’ ¹⁶⁵⁴A thing, I replied, which is only useful if pursued with a view to the good. ¹⁶⁵⁵All these sciences are the prelude of the strain, and are profitable if they are regarded in their natural relations to one another. ¹⁶⁵⁶‘I dare say, Socrates,’ said Glaucon; ‘but such a study will be an endless business.’ ¹⁶⁵⁷What study do you mean—of the prelude, or what? ¹⁶⁵⁸For all these things are only the prelude, and you surely do not suppose that a mere mathematician is also a dialectician? ¹⁶⁵⁹‘Certainly not. ¹⁶⁶⁰I have hardly ever known a mathematician who could reason.’ ¹⁶⁶¹And yet, Glaucon, is not true reasoning that hymn of dialectic which is the music of the intellectual world, and which was by us compared to the effort of sight, when from beholding the shadows on the wall we arrived at last at the images which gave the shadows? ¹⁶⁶²Even so the dialectical faculty withdrawing from sense arrives by the pure intellect at the contemplation of the idea of good, and never rests but at the very end of the intellectual world. ¹⁶⁶³And the royal road out of the cave into the light, and the blinking of the eyes at the sun and turning to contemplate the shadows of reality, not the shadows of an image only—this progress and gradual acquisition of a new faculty of sight by the help of the mathematical sciences, is the elevation of the soul to the contemplation of the highest ideal of being. ¹⁶⁶⁴‘So far, I agree with you. ¹⁶⁶⁵But now, leaving the prelude, let us proceed to the hymn. ¹⁶⁶⁶What, then, is the nature of dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither?’ ¹⁶⁶⁷Dear Glaucon, you cannot follow me here. ¹⁶⁶⁸There can be no revelation of the absolute truth to one who has not been disciplined in the previous sciences. ¹⁶⁶⁹But that there is a science of absolute truth, which is attained in some way very different from those now practised, I am confident. ¹⁶⁷⁰For all other arts or sciences are relative to human needs and opinions; and the mathematical sciences are but a dream or hypothesis of true being, and never analyse their own principles. ¹⁶⁷¹Dialectic alone rises to the principle which is above hypotheses, converting and gently leading the eye of the soul out of the barbarous slough of ignorance into the light of the upper world, with the help of the sciences which we have been describing—sciences, as they are often termed, although they require some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than science, and this in our previous sketch was understanding. ¹⁶⁷²And so we get four names—two for intellect, and two for opinion,—reason or mind, understanding, faith, perception of shadows—which make a proportion— being:becoming::intellect:opinion—and science:belief::understanding: perception of shadows. ¹⁶⁷³Dialectic may be further described as that science which defines and explains the essence or being of each nature, which distinguishes and abstracts the good, and is ready to do battle against all opponents in the cause of good. ¹⁶⁷⁴To him who is not a dialectician life is but a sleepy dream; and many a man is in his grave before his is well waked up. ¹⁶⁷⁵And would you have the future rulers of your ideal State intelligent beings, or stupid as posts? ¹⁶⁷⁶‘Certainly not the latter.’ ¹⁶⁷⁷Then you must train them in dialectic, which will teach them to ask and answer questions, and is the coping-stone of the sciences. ¹⁶⁷⁸I dare say that you have not forgotten how our rulers were chosen; and the process of selection may be carried a step further:—As before, they must be constant and valiant, good-looking, and of noble manners, but now they must also have natural ability which education will improve; that is to say, they must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil, retentive, solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues; not lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily exercise and indolent in mind, or conversely; not a maimed soul, which hates falsehood and yet unintentionally is always wallowing in the mire of ignorance; not a bastard or feeble person, but sound in wind and limb, and in perfect condition for the great gymnastic trial of the mind. ¹⁶⁷⁹Justice herself can find no fault with natures such as these; and they will be the saviours of our State; disciples of another sort would only make philosophy more ridiculous than she is at present. ¹⁶⁸⁰Forgive my enthusiasm; I am becoming excited; but when I see her trampled underfoot, I am angry at the authors of her disgrace. ¹⁶⁸¹‘I did not notice that you were more excited than you ought to have been.’ ¹⁶⁸²But I felt that I was. ¹⁶⁸³Now do not let us forget another point in the selection of our disciples—that they must be young and not old. ¹⁶⁸⁴For Solon is mistaken in saying that an old man can be always learning; youth is the time of study, and here we must remember that the mind is free and dainty, and, unlike the body, must not be made to work against the grain. ¹⁶⁸⁵Learning should be at first a sort of play, in which the natural bent is detected. ¹⁶⁸⁶As in training them for war, the young dogs should at first only taste blood; but when the necessary gymnastics are over which during two or three years divide life between sleep and bodily exercise, then the education of the soul will become a more serious matter. ¹⁶⁸⁷At twenty years of age, a selection must be made of the more promising disciples, with whom a new epoch of education will begin. ¹⁶⁸⁸The sciences which they have hitherto learned in fragments will now be brought into relation with each other and with true being; for the power of combining them is the test of speculative and dialectical ability. ¹⁶⁸⁹And afterwards at thirty a further selection shall be made of those who are able to withdraw from the world of sense into the abstraction of ideas. ¹⁶⁹⁰But at this point, judging from present experience, there is a danger that dialectic may be the source of many evils. ¹⁶⁹¹The danger may be illustrated by a parallel case:—Imagine a person who has been brought up in wealth and luxury amid a crowd of flatterers, and who is suddenly informed that he is a supposititious son. ¹⁶⁹²He has hitherto honoured his reputed parents and disregarded the flatterers, and now he does the reverse. ¹⁶⁹³This is just what happens with a man’s principles. ¹⁶⁹⁴There are certain doctrines which he learnt at home and which exercised a parental authority over him. ¹⁶⁹⁵Presently he finds that imputations are cast upon them; a troublesome querist comes and asks, ‘What is the just and good?’ ¹⁶⁹⁶or proves that virtue is vice and vice virtue, and his mind becomes unsettled, and he ceases to love, honour, and obey them as he has hitherto done. ¹⁶⁹⁷He is seduced into the life of pleasure, and becomes a lawless person and a rogue. ¹⁶⁹⁸The case of such speculators is very pitiable, and, in order that our thirty years’ old pupils may not require this pity, let us take every possible care that young persons do not study philosophy too early. ¹⁶⁹⁹For a young man is a sort of puppy who only plays with an argument; and is reasoned into and out of his opinions every day; he soon begins to believe nothing, and brings himself and philosophy into discredit. ¹⁷⁰⁰A man of thirty does not run on in this way; he will argue and not merely contradict, and adds new honour to philosophy by the sobriety of his conduct. ¹⁷⁰¹What time shall we allow for this second gymnastic training of the soul?—say, twice the time required for the gymnastics of the body; six, or perhaps five years, to commence at thirty, and then for fifteen years let the student go down into the den, and command armies, and gain experience of life. ¹⁷⁰²At fifty let him return to the end of all things, and have his eyes uplifted to the idea of good, and order his life after that pattern; if necessary, taking his turn at the helm of State, and training up others to be his successors. ¹⁷⁰³When his time comes he shall depart in peace to the islands of the blest. ¹⁷⁰⁴He shall be honoured with sacrifices, and receive such worship as the Pythian oracle approves. ¹⁷⁰⁵‘You are a statuary, Socrates, and have made a perfect image of our governors.’ ¹⁷⁰⁶Yes, and of our governesses, for the women will share in all things with the men. ¹⁷⁰⁷And you will admit that our State is not a mere aspiration, but may really come into being when there shall arise philosopher-kings, one or more, who will despise earthly vanities, and will be the servants of justice only. ¹⁷⁰⁸‘And how will they begin their work?’ ¹⁷⁰⁹Their first act will be to send away into the country all those who are more than ten years of age, and to proceed with those who are left... ¹⁷¹⁰At the commencement of the sixth book, Plato anticipated his explanation of the relation of the philosopher to the world in an allegory, in this, as in other passages, following the order which he prescribes in education, and proceeding from the concrete to the abstract. ¹⁷¹¹At the commencement of Book VII, under the figure of a cave having an opening towards a fire and a way upwards to the true light, he returns to view the divisions of knowledge, exhibiting familiarly, as in a picture, the result which had been hardly won by a great effort of thought in the previous discussion; at the same time casting a glance onward at the dialectical process, which is represented by the way leading from darkness to light. ¹⁷¹²The shadows, the images, the reflection of the sun and stars in the water, the stars and sun themselves, severally correspond,—the first, to the realm of fancy and poetry,—the second, to the world of sense,—the third, to the abstractions or universals of sense, of which the mathematical sciences furnish the type,—the fourth and last to the same abstractions, when seen in the unity of the idea, from which they derive a new meaning and power. ¹⁷¹³The true dialectical process begins with the contemplation of the real stars, and not mere reflections of them, and ends with the recognition of the sun, or idea of good, as the parent not only of light but of warmth and growth. ¹⁷¹⁴To the divisions of knowledge the stages of education partly answer:—first, there is the early education of childhood and youth in the fancies of the poets, and in the laws and customs of the State;—then there is the training of the body to be a warrior athlete, and a good servant of the mind;—and thirdly, after an interval follows the education of later life, which begins with mathematics and proceeds to philosophy in general. ¹⁷¹⁵There seem to be two great aims in the philosophy of Plato,—first, to realize abstractions; secondly, to connect them. ¹⁷¹⁶According to him, the true education is that which draws men from becoming to being, and to a comprehensive survey of all being. ¹⁷¹⁷He desires to develop in the human mind the faculty of seeing the universal in all things; until at last the particulars of sense drop away and the universal alone remains. ¹⁷¹⁸He then seeks to combine the universals which he has disengaged from sense, not perceiving that the correlation of them has no other basis but the common use of language. ¹⁷¹⁹He never understands that abstractions, as Hegel says, are ‘mere abstractions’—of use when employed in the arrangement of facts, but adding nothing to the sum of knowledge when pursued apart from them, or with reference to an imaginary idea of good. ¹⁷²⁰Still the exercise of the faculty of abstraction apart from facts has enlarged the mind, and played a great part in the education of the human race. ¹⁷²¹Plato appreciated the value of this faculty, and saw that it might be quickened by the study of number and relation. ¹⁷²²All things in which there is opposition or proportion are suggestive of reflection. ¹⁷²³The mere impression of sense evokes no power of thought or of mind, but when sensible objects ask to be compared and distinguished, then philosophy begins. ¹⁷²⁴The science of arithmetic first suggests such distinctions. ¹⁷²⁵The follow in order the other sciences of plain and solid geometry, and of solids in motion, one branch of which is astronomy or the harmony of the spheres,—to this is appended the sister science of the harmony of sounds. ¹⁷²⁶Plato seems also to hint at the possibility of other applications of arithmetical or mathematical proportions, such as we employ in chemistry and natural philosophy, such as the Pythagoreans and even Aristotle make use of in Ethics and Politics, e.g. his distinction between arithmetical and geometrical proportion in the Ethics (Book V), or between numerical and proportional equality in the Politics. ¹⁷²⁷The modern mathematician will readily sympathise with Plato’s delight in the properties of pure mathematics. ¹⁷²⁸He will not be disinclined to say with him:—Let alone the heavens, and study the beauties of number and figure in themselves. ¹⁷²⁹He too will be apt to depreciate their application to the arts. ¹⁷³⁰He will observe that Plato has a conception of geometry, in which figures are to be dispensed with; thus in a distant and shadowy way seeming to anticipate the possibility of working geometrical problems by a more general mode of analysis. ¹⁷³¹He will remark with interest on the backward state of solid geometry, which, alas! ¹⁷³²was not encouraged by the aid of the State in the age of Plato; and he will recognize the grasp of Plato’s mind in his ability to conceive of one science of solids in motion including the earth as well as the heavens,—not forgetting to notice the intimation to which allusion has been already made, that besides astronomy and harmonics the science of solids in motion may have other applications. ¹⁷³³Still more will he be struck with the comprehensiveness of view which led Plato, at a time when these sciences hardly existed, to say that they must be studied in relation to one another, and to the idea of good, or common principle of truth and being. ¹⁷³⁴But he will also see (and perhaps without surprise) that in that stage of physical and mathematical knowledge, Plato has fallen into the error of supposing that he can construct the heavens a priori by mathematical problems, and determine the principles of harmony irrespective of the adaptation of sounds to the human ear. ¹⁷³⁵The illusion was a natural one in that age and country. ¹⁷³⁶The simplicity and certainty of astronomy and harmonics seemed to contrast with the variation and complexity of the world of sense; hence the circumstance that there was some elementary basis of fact, some measurement of distance or time or vibrations on which they must ultimately rest, was overlooked by him. ¹⁷³⁷The modern predecessors of Newton fell into errors equally great; and Plato can hardly be said to have been very far wrong, or may even claim a sort of prophetic insight into the subject, when we consider that the greater part of astronomy at the present day consists of abstract dynamics, by the help of which most astronomical discoveries have been made. ¹⁷³⁸The metaphysical philosopher from his point of view recognizes mathematics as an instrument of education,—which strengthens the power of attention, developes the sense of order and the faculty of construction, and enables the mind to grasp under simple formulae the quantitative differences of physical phenomena. ¹⁷³⁹But while acknowledging their value in education, he sees also that they have no connexion with our higher moral and intellectual ideas. ¹⁷⁴⁰In the attempt which Plato makes to connect them, we easily trace the influences of ancient Pythagorean notions. ¹⁷⁴¹There is no reason to suppose that he is speaking of the ideal numbers; but he is describing numbers which are pure abstractions, to which he assigns a real and separate existence, which, as ‘the teachers of the art’ (meaning probably the Pythagoreans) would have affirmed, repel all attempts at subdivision, and in which unity and every other number are conceived of as absolute. ¹⁷⁴²The truth and certainty of numbers, when thus disengaged from phenomena, gave them a kind of sacredness in the eyes of an ancient philosopher. ¹⁷⁴³Nor is it easy to say how far ideas of order and fixedness may have had a moral and elevating influence on the minds of men, ‘who,’ in the words of the Timaeus, ‘might learn to regulate their erring lives according to them.’ ¹⁷⁴⁴It is worthy of remark that the old Pythagorean ethical symbols still exist as figures of speech among ourselves. ¹⁷⁴⁵And those who in modern times see the world pervaded by universal law, may also see an anticipation of this last word of modern philosophy in the Platonic idea of good, which is the source and measure of all things, and yet only an abstraction (Philebus). ¹⁷⁴⁶Two passages seem to require more particular explanations. ¹⁷⁴⁷First, that which relates to the analysis of vision. ¹⁷⁴⁸The difficulty in this passage may be explained, like many others, from differences in the modes of conception prevailing among ancient and modern thinkers. ¹⁷⁴⁹To us, the perceptions of sense are inseparable from the act of the mind which accompanies them. ¹⁷⁵⁰The consciousness of form, colour, distance, is indistinguishable from the simple sensation, which is the medium of them. ¹⁷⁵¹Whereas to Plato sense is the Heraclitean flux of sense, not the vision of objects in the order in which they actually present themselves to the experienced sight, but as they may be imagined to appear confused and blurred to the half-awakened eye of the infant. ¹⁷⁵²The first action of the mind is aroused by the attempt to set in order this chaos, and the reason is required to frame distinct conceptions under which the confused impressions of sense may be arranged. ¹⁷⁵³Hence arises the question, ‘What is great, what is small?’ ¹⁷⁵⁴and thus begins the distinction of the visible and the intelligible. ¹⁷⁵⁵The second difficulty relates to Plato’s conception of harmonics. ¹⁷⁵⁶Three classes of harmonists are distinguished by him:—first, the Pythagoreans, whom he proposes to consult as in the previous discussion on music he was to consult Damon—they are acknowledged to be masters in the art, but are altogether deficient in the knowledge of its higher import and relation to the good; secondly, the mere empirics, whom Glaucon appears to confuse with them, and whom both he and Socrates ludicrously describe as experimenting by mere auscultation on the intervals of sounds. ¹⁷⁵⁷Both of these fall short in different degrees of the Platonic idea of harmony, which must be studied in a purely abstract way, first by the method of problems, and secondly as a part of universal knowledge in relation to the idea of good. ¹⁷⁵⁸The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning. ¹⁷⁵⁹The den or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law (compare the description of the philosopher and lawyer in the Theaetetus), and the light of the eternal ideas is supposed to exercise a disturbing influence on the minds of those who return to this lower world. ¹⁷⁶⁰In other words, their principles are too wide for practical application; they are looking far away into the past and future, when their business is with the present. ¹⁷⁶¹The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual life, and may often be at variance with them. ¹⁷⁶²And at first, those who return are unable to compete with the inhabitants of the den in the measurement of the shadows, and are derided and persecuted by them; but after a while they see the things below in far truer proportions than those who have never ascended into the upper world. ¹⁷⁶³The difference between the politician turned into a philosopher and the philosopher turned into a politician, is symbolized by the two kinds of disordered eyesight, the one which is experienced by the captive who is transferred from darkness to day, the other, of the heavenly messenger who voluntarily for the good of his fellow-men descends into the den. ¹⁷⁶⁴In what way the brighter light is to dawn on the inhabitants of the lower world, or how the idea of good is to become the guiding principle of politics, is left unexplained by Plato. ¹⁷⁶⁵Like the nature and divisions of dialectic, of which Glaucon impatiently demands to be informed, perhaps he would have said that the explanation could not be given except to a disciple of the previous sciences. ¹⁷⁶⁶(Symposium.) ¹⁷⁶⁷Many illustrations of this part of the Republic may be found in modern Politics and in daily life. ¹⁷⁶⁸For among ourselves, too, there have been two sorts of Politicians or Statesmen, whose eyesight has become disordered in two different ways. ¹⁷⁶⁹First, there have been great men who, in the language of Burke, ‘have been too much given to general maxims,’ who, like J.S. ¹⁷⁷⁰Mill or Burke himself, have been theorists or philosophers before they were politicians, or who, having been students of history, have allowed some great historical parallel, such as the English Revolution of 1688, or possibly Athenian democracy or Roman Imperialism, to be the medium through which they viewed contemporary events. ¹⁷⁷¹Or perhaps the long projecting shadow of some existing institution may have darkened their vision. ¹⁷⁷²The Church of the future, the Commonwealth of the future, the Society of the future, have so absorbed their minds, that they are unable to see in their true proportions the Politics of to-day. ¹⁷⁷³They have been intoxicated with great ideas, such as liberty, or equality, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer care to consider how these ideas must be limited in practice or harmonized with the conditions of human life. ¹⁷⁷⁴They are full of light, but the light to them has become only a sort of luminous mist or blindness. ¹⁷⁷⁵Almost every one has known some enthusiastic half-educated person, who sees everything at false distances, and in erroneous proportions. ¹⁷⁷⁶With this disorder of eyesight may be contrasted another—of those who see not far into the distance, but what is near only; who have been engaged all their lives in a trade or a profession; who are limited to a set or sect of their own. ¹⁷⁷⁷Men of this kind have no universal except their own interests or the interests of their class, no principle but the opinion of persons like themselves, no knowledge of affairs beyond what they pick up in the streets or at their club. ¹⁷⁷⁸Suppose them to be sent into a larger world, to undertake some higher calling, from being tradesmen to turn generals or politicians, from being schoolmasters to become philosophers:—or imagine them on a sudden to receive an inward light which reveals to them for the first time in their lives a higher idea of God and the existence of a spiritual world, by this sudden conversion or change is not their daily life likely to be upset; and on the other hand will not many of their old prejudices and narrownesses still adhere to them long after they have begun to take a more comprehensive view of human things? ¹⁷⁷⁹From familiar examples like these we may learn what Plato meant by the eyesight which is liable to two kinds of disorders. ¹⁷⁸⁰Nor have we any difficulty in drawing a parallel between the young Athenian in the fifth century before Christ who became unsettled by new ideas, and the student of a modern University who has been the subject of a similar ‘aufklärung.’ ¹⁷⁸¹We too observe that when young men begin to criticise customary beliefs, or to analyse the constitution of human nature, they are apt to lose hold of solid principle (ἅπαν τὸ βέβαιον αὐτῶν ἐξοίχεται). ¹⁷⁸²They are like trees which have been frequently transplanted. ¹⁷⁸³The earth about them is loose, and they have no roots reaching far into the soil. ¹⁷⁸⁴They ‘light upon every flower,’ following their own wayward wills, or because the wind blows them. ¹⁷⁸⁵They catch opinions, as diseases are caught—when they are in the air. ¹⁷⁸⁶Borne hither and thither, ‘they speedily fall into beliefs’ the opposite of those in which they were brought up. ¹⁷⁸⁷They hardly retain the distinction of right and wrong; they seem to think one thing as good as another. ¹⁷⁸⁸They suppose themselves to be searching after truth when they are playing the game of ‘follow my leader.’ ¹⁷⁸⁹They fall in love ‘at first sight’ with paradoxes respecting morality, some fancy about art, some novelty or eccentricity in religion, and like lovers they are so absorbed for a time in their new notion that they can think of nothing else. ¹⁷⁹⁰The resolution of some philosophical or theological question seems to them more interesting and important than any substantial knowledge of literature or science or even than a good life. ¹⁷⁹¹Like the youth in the Philebus, they are ready to discourse to any one about a new philosophy. ¹⁷⁹²They are generally the disciples of some eminent professor or sophist, whom they rather imitate than understand. ¹⁷⁹³They may be counted happy if in later years they retain some of the simple truths which they acquired in early education, and which they may, perhaps, find to be worth all the rest. ¹⁷⁹⁴Such is the picture which Plato draws and which we only reproduce, partly in his own words, of the dangers which beset youth in times of transition, when old opinions are fading away and the new are not yet firmly established. ¹⁷⁹⁵Their condition is ingeniously compared by him to that of a supposititious son, who has made the discovery that his reputed parents are not his real ones, and, in consequence, they have lost their authority over him. ¹⁷⁹⁶The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is also noticeable. ¹⁷⁹⁷Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense which recognizes and combines first principles. ¹⁷⁹⁸The contempt which he expresses for distinctions of words, the danger of involuntary falsehood, the apology which Socrates makes for his earnestness of speech, are highly characteristic of the Platonic style and mode of thought. ¹⁷⁹⁹The quaint notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon could not have counted his feet; the art by which we are made to believe that this State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity with which the first step is taken in the actual creation of the State, namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation, are also truly Platonic. ¹⁸⁰⁰(For the last, compare the passage at the end of the third book, in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the second generation.) ¹⁸⁰¹BOOK VIII. ¹⁸⁰²And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and the education and pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common, and kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the State are to live together, having all things in common; and they are to be warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the other citizens. ¹⁸⁰³Now let us return to the point at which we digressed. ¹⁸⁰⁴‘That is easily done,’ he replied: ‘You were speaking of the State which you had constructed, and of the individual who answered to this, both of whom you affirmed to be good; and you said that of inferior States there were four forms and four individuals corresponding to them, which although deficient in various degrees, were all of them worth inspecting with a view to determining the relative happiness or misery of the best or worst man. ¹⁸⁰⁵Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led to another argument,—and so here we are.’ ¹⁸⁰⁶Suppose that we put ourselves again in the same position, and do you repeat your question. ¹⁸⁰⁷‘I should like to know of what constitutions you were speaking?’ ¹⁸⁰⁸Besides the perfect State there are only four of any note in Hellas:—first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils; thirdly, democracy, which follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny, which is the disease or death of all government. ¹⁸⁰⁹Now, States are not made of ‘oak and rock,’ but of flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five States there must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them. ¹⁸¹⁰And first, there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical; and fourthly, the tyrannical. ¹⁸¹¹This last will have to be compared with the perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the happier, and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of Thrasymachus or our own is the more convincing. ¹⁸¹²And as before we began with the State and went on to the individual, so now, beginning with timocracy, let us go on to the timocratical man, and then proceed to the other forms of government, and the individuals who answer to them. ¹⁸¹³But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State? ¹⁸¹⁴Plainly, like all changes of government, from division in the rulers. ¹⁸¹⁵But whence came division? ¹⁸¹⁶‘Sing, heavenly Muses,’ as Homer says;—let them condescend to answer us, as if we were children, to whom they put on a solemn face in jest. ¹⁸¹⁷‘And what will they say?’ ¹⁸¹⁸They will say that human things are fated to decay, and even the perfect State will not escape from this law of destiny, when ‘the wheel comes full circle’ in a period short or long. ¹⁸¹⁹Plants or animals have times of fertility and sterility, which the intelligence of rulers because alloyed by sense will not enable them to ascertain, and children will be born out of season. ¹⁸²⁰For whereas divine creations are in a perfect cycle or number, the human creation is in a number which declines from perfection, and has four terms and three intervals of numbers, increasing, waning, assimilating, dissimilating, and yet perfectly commensurate with each other. ¹⁸²¹The base of the number with a fourth added (or which is 3:4), multiplied by five and cubed, gives two harmonies:—the first a square number, which is a hundred times the base (or a hundred times a hundred); the second, an oblong, being a hundred squares of the rational diameter of a figure the side of which is five, subtracting one from each square or two perfect squares from all, and adding a hundred cubes of three. ¹⁸²²This entire number is geometrical and contains the rule or law of generation. ¹⁸²³When this law is neglected marriages will be unpropitious; the inferior offspring who are then born will in time become the rulers; the State will decline, and education fall into decay; gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and silver and brass and iron will form a chaotic mass—thus division will arise. ¹⁸²⁴Such is the Muses’ answer to our question. ¹⁸²⁵‘And a true answer, of course:—but what more have they to say?’ ¹⁸²⁶They say that the two races, the iron and brass, and the silver and gold, will draw the State different ways;—the one will take to trade and moneymaking, and the others, having the true riches and not caring for money, will resist them: the contest will end in a compromise; they will agree to have private property, and will enslave their fellow-citizens who were once their friends and nurturers. ¹⁸²⁷But they will retain their warlike character, and will be chiefly occupied in fighting and exercising rule. ¹⁸²⁸Thus arises timocracy, which is intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy. ¹⁸²⁹The new form of government resembles the ideal in obedience to rulers and contempt for trade, and having common meals, and in devotion to warlike and gymnastic exercises. ¹⁸³⁰But corruption has crept into philosophy, and simplicity of character, which was once her note, is now looked for only in the military class. ¹⁸³¹Arts of war begin to prevail over arts of peace; the ruler is no longer a philosopher; as in oligarchies, there springs up among them an extravagant love of gain—get another man’s and save your own, is their principle; and they have dark places in which they hoard their gold and silver, for the use of their women and others; they take their pleasures by stealth, like boys who are running away from their father—the law; and their education is not inspired by the Muse, but imposed by the strong arm of power. ¹⁸³²The leading characteristic of this State is party spirit and ambition. ¹⁸³³And what manner of man answers to such a State? ¹⁸³⁴‘In love of contention,’ replied Adeimantus, ‘he will be like our friend Glaucon.’ ¹⁸³⁵In that respect, perhaps, but not in others. ¹⁸³⁶He is self-asserting and ill-educated, yet fond of literature, although not himself a speaker,—fierce with slaves, but obedient to rulers, a lover of power and honour, which he hopes to gain by deeds of arms,—fond, too, of gymnastics and of hunting. ¹⁸³⁷As he advances in years he grows avaricious, for he has lost philosophy, which is the only saviour and guardian of men. ¹⁸³⁸His origin is as follows:—His father is a good man dwelling in an ill-ordered State, who has retired from politics in order that he may lead a quiet life. ¹⁸³⁹His mother is angry at her loss of precedence among other women; she is disgusted at her husband’s selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father. ¹⁸⁴⁰The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—‘When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.’ ¹⁸⁴¹All the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. ¹⁸⁴²The young man compares this spirit with his father’s words and ways, and as he is naturally well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a middle point and becomes ambitious and a lover of honour. ¹⁸⁴³And now let us set another city over against another man. ¹⁸⁴⁴The next form of government is oligarchy, in which the rule is of the rich only; nor is it difficult to see how such a State arises. ¹⁸⁴⁵The decline begins with the possession of gold and silver; illegal modes of expenditure are invented; one draws another on, and the multitude are infected; riches outweigh virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of politicians; and, in time, political privileges are confined by law to the rich, who do not shrink from violence in order to effect their purposes. ¹⁸⁴⁶Thus much of the origin,—let us next consider the evils of oligarchy. ¹⁸⁴⁷Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take a bad pilot because he was rich, or refuse a good one because he was poor? ¹⁸⁴⁸And does not the analogy apply still more to the State? ¹⁸⁴⁹And there are yet greater evils: two nations are struggling together in one—the rich and the poor; and the rich dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are unwilling to pay for defenders out of their own money. ¹⁸⁵⁰And have we not already condemned that State in which the same persons are warriors as well as shopkeepers? ¹⁸⁵¹The greatest evil of all is that a man may sell his property and have no place in the State; while there is one class which has enormous wealth, the other is entirely destitute. ¹⁸⁵²But observe that these destitutes had not really any more of the governing nature in them when they were rich than now that they are poor; they were miserable spendthrifts always. ¹⁸⁵³They are the drones of the hive; only whereas the actual drone is unprovided by nature with a sting, the two-legged things whom we call drones are some of them without stings and some of them have dreadful stings; in other words, there are paupers and there are rogues. ¹⁸⁵⁴These are never far apart; and in oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler, you will find abundance of both. ¹⁸⁵⁵And this evil state of society originates in bad education and bad government. ¹⁸⁵⁶Like State, like man,—the change in the latter begins with the representative of timocracy; he walks at first in the ways of his father, who may have been a statesman, or general, perhaps; and presently he sees him ‘fallen from his high estate,’ the victim of informers, dying in prison or exile, or by the hand of the executioner. ¹⁸⁵⁷The lesson which he thus receives, makes him cautious; he leaves politics, represses his pride, and saves pence. ¹⁸⁵⁸Avarice is enthroned as his bosom’s lord, and assumes the style of the Great King; the rational and spirited elements sit humbly on the ground at either side, the one immersed in calculation, the other absorbed in the admiration of wealth. ¹⁸⁵⁹The love of honour turns to love of money; the conversion is instantaneous. ¹⁸⁶⁰The man is mean, saving, toiling, the slave of one passion which is the master of the rest: Is he not the very image of the State? ¹⁸⁶¹He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. ¹⁸⁶²And being uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his soul. ¹⁸⁶³If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason. ¹⁸⁶⁴Hence he leads a divided existence; in which the better desires mostly prevail. ¹⁸⁶⁵But when he is contending for prizes and other distinctions, he is afraid to incur a loss which is to be repaid only by barren honour; in time of war he fights with a small part of his resources, and usually keeps his money and loses the victory. ¹⁸⁶⁶Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oligarchy and the oligarchical man. ¹⁸⁶⁷Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an oligarchy; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. ¹⁸⁶⁸Thus men of family often lose their property or rights of citizenship; but they remain in the city, full of hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for revolution. ¹⁸⁶⁹The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them; he passes by, and leaves his sting—that is, his money—in some other victim; and many a man has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied into a family of children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by him. ¹⁸⁷⁰The only way of diminishing the evil is either to limit a man in his use of his property, or to insist that he shall lend at his own risk. ¹⁸⁷¹But the ruling class do not want remedies; they care only for money, and are as careless of virtue as the poorest of the citizens. ¹⁸⁷²Now there are occasions on which the governors and the governed meet together,—at festivals, on a journey, voyaging or fighting. ¹⁸⁷³The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger he is not despised; he sees the rich man puffing and panting, and draws the conclusion which he privately imparts to his companions,—‘that our people are not good for much;’ and as a sickly frame is made ill by a mere touch from without, or sometimes without external impulse is ready to fall to pieces of itself, so from the least cause, or with none at all, the city falls ill and fights a battle for life or death. ¹⁸⁷⁴And democracy comes into power when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the rest. ¹⁸⁷⁵The manner of life in such a State is that of democrats; there is freedom and plainness of speech, and every man does what is right in his own eyes, and has his own way of life. ¹⁸⁷⁶Hence arise the most various developments of character; the State is like a piece of embroidery of which the colours and figures are the manners of men, and there are many who, like women and children, prefer this variety to real beauty and excellence. ¹⁸⁷⁷The State is not one but many, like a bazaar at which you can buy anything. ¹⁸⁷⁸The great charm is, that you may do as you like; you may govern if you like, let it alone if you like; go to war and make peace if you feel disposed, and all quite irrespective of anybody else. ¹⁸⁷⁹When you condemn men to death they remain alive all the same; a gentleman is desired to go into exile, and he stalks about the streets like a hero; and nobody sees him or cares for him. ¹⁸⁸⁰Observe, too, how grandly Democracy sets her foot upon all our fine theories of education,—how little she cares for the training of her statesmen! ¹⁸⁸¹The only qualification which she demands is the profession of patriotism. ¹⁸⁸²Such is democracy;—a pleasing, lawless, various sort of government, distributing equality to equals and unequals alike. ¹⁸⁸³Let us now inspect the individual democrat; and first, as in the case of the State, we will trace his antecedents. ¹⁸⁸⁴He is the son of a miserly oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain the love of unnecessary pleasures. ¹⁸⁸⁵Perhaps I ought to explain this latter term:—Necessary pleasures are those which are good, and which we cannot do without; unnecessary pleasures are those which do no good, and of which the desire might be eradicated by early training. ¹⁸⁸⁶For example, the pleasures of eating and drinking are necessary and healthy, up to a certain point; beyond that point they are alike hurtful to body and mind, and the excess may be avoided. ¹⁸⁸⁷When in excess, they may be rightly called expensive pleasures, in opposition to the useful ones. ¹⁸⁸⁸And the drone, as we called him, is the slave of these unnecessary pleasures and desires, whereas the miserly oligarch is subject only to the necessary. ¹⁸⁸⁹The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner:—The youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone’s honey; he meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new pleasure. ¹⁸⁹⁰As in the State, so in the individual, there are allies on both sides, temptations from without and passions from within; there is reason also and external influences of parents and friends in alliance with the oligarchical principle; and the two factions are in violent conflict with one another. ¹⁸⁹¹Sometimes the party of order prevails, but then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul, which they find void and unguarded by true words and works. ¹⁸⁹²Falsehoods and illusions ascend to take their place; the prodigal goes back into the country of the Lotophagi or drones, and openly dwells there. ¹⁸⁹³And if any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes from home, the false spirits shut the gates of the castle and permit no one to enter,—there is a battle, and they gain the victory; and straightway making alliance with the desires, they banish modesty, which they call folly, and send temperance over the border. ¹⁸⁹⁴When the house has been swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices, and, crowning them with garlands, bring them back under new names. ¹⁸⁹⁵Insolence they call good breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence, impudence courage. ¹⁸⁹⁶Such is the process by which the youth passes from the necessary pleasures to the unnecessary. ¹⁸⁹⁷After a while he divides his time impartially between them; and perhaps, when he gets older and the violence of passion has abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort of equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and honourable, and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says that he can make no distinction between them. ¹⁸⁹⁸Thus he lives in the fancy of the hour; sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns abstainer; he practises in the gymnasium or he does nothing at all; then again he would be a philosopher or a politician; or again, he would be a warrior or a man of business; he is ‘Every thing by starts and nothing long.’ ¹⁸⁹⁹There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all States—tyranny and the tyrant. ¹⁹⁰⁰Tyranny springs from democracy much as democracy springs from oligarchy. ¹⁹⁰¹Both arise from excess; the one from excess of wealth, the other from excess of freedom. ¹⁹⁰²‘The great natural good of life,’ says the democrat, ‘is freedom.’ ¹⁹⁰³And this exclusive love of freedom and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the change from democracy to tyranny. ¹⁹⁰⁴The State demands the strong wine of freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes and insults them; equality and fraternity of governors and governed is the approved principle. ¹⁹⁰⁵Anarchy is the law, not of the State only, but of private houses, and extends even to the animals. ¹⁹⁰⁶Father and son, citizen and foreigner, teacher and pupil, old and young, are all on a level; fathers and teachers fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom of the young man is a match for the elder, and the old imitate the jaunty manners of the young because they are afraid of being thought morose. ¹⁹⁰⁷Slaves are on a level with their masters and mistresses, and there is no difference between men and women. ¹⁹⁰⁸Nay, the very animals in a democratic State have a freedom which is unknown in other places. ¹⁹⁰⁹The she-dogs are as good as their she-mistresses, and horses and asses march along with dignity and run their noses against anybody who comes in their way. ¹⁹¹⁰‘That has often been my experience.’ ¹⁹¹¹At last the citizens become so sensitive that they cannot endure the yoke of laws, written or unwritten; they would have no man call himself their master. ¹⁹¹²Such is the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs. ¹⁹¹³‘Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?’ ¹⁹¹⁴The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; for there is a law of contraries; the excess of freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the greater the freedom the greater the slavery. ¹⁹¹⁵You will remember that in the oligarchy were found two classes—rogues and paupers, whom we compared to drones with and without stings. ¹⁹¹⁶These two classes are to the State what phlegm and bile are to the human body; and the State-physician, or legislator, must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of the hive. ¹⁹¹⁷Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard. ¹⁹¹⁸And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the people. ¹⁹¹⁹When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. ¹⁹²⁰Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. ¹⁹²¹Then follow informations and convictions for treason. ¹⁹²²The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. ¹⁹²³The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf. ¹⁹²⁴Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf—that is, a tyrant. ¹⁹²⁵Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination. ¹⁹²⁶Thereupon the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their own. ¹⁹²⁷Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do so then. ¹⁹²⁸And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant: Let us enquire into the nature of his happiness. ¹⁹²⁹In the early days of his tyranny he smiles and beams upon everybody; he is not a ‘dominus,’ no, not he: he has only come to put an end to debt and the monopoly of land. ¹⁹³⁰Having got rid of foreign enemies, he makes himself necessary to the State by always going to war. ¹⁹³¹He is thus enabled to depress the poor by heavy taxes, and so keep them at work; and he can get rid of bolder spirits by handing them over to the enemy. ¹⁹³²Then comes unpopularity; some of his old associates have the courage to oppose him. ¹⁹³³The consequence is, that he has to make a purgation of the State; but, unlike the physician who purges away the bad, he must get rid of the high-spirited, the wise and the wealthy; for he has no choice between death and a life of shame and dishonour. ¹⁹³⁴And the more hated he is, the more he will require trusty guards; but how will he obtain them? ¹⁹³⁵‘They will come flocking like birds—for pay.’ ¹⁹³⁶Will he not rather obtain them on the spot? ¹⁹³⁷He will take the slaves from their owners and make them his body-guard; these are his trusted friends, who admire and look up to him. ¹⁹³⁸Are not the tragic poets wise who magnify and exalt the tyrant, and say that he is wise by association with the wise? ¹⁹³⁹And are not their praises of tyranny alone a sufficient reason why we should exclude them from our State? ¹⁹⁴⁰They may go to other cities, and gather the mob about them with fine words, and change commonwealths into tyrannies and democracies, receiving honours and rewards for their services; but the higher they and their friends ascend constitution hill, the more their honour will fail and become ‘too asthmatic to mount.’ ¹⁹⁴¹To return to the tyrant—How will he support that rare army of his? ¹⁹⁴²First, by robbing the temples of their treasures, which will enable him to lighten the taxes; then he will take all his father’s property, and spend it on his companions, male or female. ¹⁹⁴³Now his father is the demus, and if the demus gets angry, and says that a great hulking son ought not to be a burden on his parents, and bids him and his riotous crew begone, then will the parent know what a monster he has been nurturing, and that the son whom he would fain expel is too strong for him. ¹⁹⁴⁴‘You do not mean to say that he will beat his father?’ ¹⁹⁴⁵Yes, he will, after having taken away his arms. ¹⁹⁴⁶‘Then he is a parricide and a cruel, unnatural son.’ ¹⁹⁴⁷And the people have jumped from the fear of slavery into slavery, out of the smoke into the fire. ¹⁹⁴⁸Thus liberty, when out of all order and reason, passes into the worst form of servitude... ¹⁹⁴⁹In the previous books Plato has described the ideal State; now he returns to the perverted or declining forms, on which he had lightly touched at the end of Book IV. ¹⁹⁵⁰These he describes in a succession of parallels between the individuals and the States, tracing the origin of either in the State or individual which has preceded them. ¹⁹⁵¹He begins by asking the point at which he digressed; and is thus led shortly to recapitulate the substance of the three former books, which also contain a parallel of the philosopher and the State. ¹⁹⁵²Of the first decline he gives no intelligible account; he would not have liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his ideal State, which to us would appear to be the impracticability of communism or the natural antagonism of the ruling and subject classes. ¹⁹⁵³He throws a veil of mystery over the origin of the decline, which he attributes to ignorance of the law of population. ¹⁹⁵⁴Of this law the famous geometrical figure or number is the expression. ¹⁹⁵⁵Like the ancients in general, he had no idea of the gradual perfectibility of man or of the education of the human race. ¹⁹⁵⁶His ideal was not to be attained in the course of ages, but was to spring in full armour from the head of the legislator. ¹⁹⁵⁷When good laws had been given, he thought only of the manner in which they were likely to be corrupted, or of how they might be filled up in detail or restored in accordance with their original spirit. ¹⁹⁵⁸He appears not to have reflected upon the full meaning of his own words, ‘In the brief space of human life, nothing great can be accomplished’; or again, as he afterwards says in the Laws, ‘Infinite time is the maker of cities.’ ¹⁹⁵⁹The order of constitutions which is adopted by him represents an order of thought rather than a succession of time, and may be considered as the first attempt to frame a philosophy of history. ¹⁹⁶⁰The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; this is a government of force, in which education is not inspired by the Muses, but imposed by the law, and in which all the finer elements of organization have disappeared. ¹⁹⁶¹The philosopher himself has lost the love of truth, and the soldier, who is of a simpler and honester nature, rules in his stead. ¹⁹⁶²The individual who answers to timocracy has some noticeable qualities. ¹⁹⁶³He is described as ill educated, but, like the Spartan, a lover of literature; and although he is a harsh master to his servants he has no natural superiority over them. ¹⁹⁶⁴His character is based upon a reaction against the circumstances of his father, who in a troubled city has retired from politics; and his mother, who is dissatisfied at her own position, is always urging him towards the life of political ambition. ¹⁹⁶⁵Such a character may have had this origin, and indeed Livy attributes the Licinian laws to a feminine jealousy of a similar kind. ¹⁹⁶⁶But there is obviously no connection between the manner in which the timocratic State springs out of the ideal, and the mere accident by which the timocratic man is the son of a retired statesman. ¹⁹⁶⁷The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less historical foundation. ¹⁹⁶⁸For there is no trace in Greek history of a polity like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of wealth, or of the oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy. ¹⁹⁶⁹The order of history appears to be different; first, in the Homeric times there is the royal or patriarchal form of government, which a century or two later was succeeded by an oligarchy of birth rather than of wealth, and in which wealth was only the accident of the hereditary possession of land and power. ¹⁹⁷⁰Sometimes this oligarchical government gave way to a government based upon a qualification of property, which, according to Aristotle’s mode of using words, would have been called a timocracy; and this in some cities, as at Athens, became the conducting medium to democracy. ¹⁹⁷¹But such was not the necessary order of succession in States; nor, indeed, can any order be discerned in the endless fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in the Euripus), except, perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy to aristocracy in the earliest times. ¹⁹⁷²At first sight there appears to be a similar inversion in the last step of the Platonic succession; for tyranny, instead of being the natural end of democracy, in early Greek history appears rather as a stage leading to democracy; the reign of Peisistratus and his sons is an episode which comes between the legislation of Solon and the constitution of Cleisthenes; and some secret cause common to them all seems to have led the greater part of Hellas at her first appearance in the dawn of history, e.g. ¹⁹⁷³Athens, Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, and nearly every State with the exception of Sparta, through a similar stage of tyranny which ended either in oligarchy or democracy. ¹⁹⁷⁴But then we must remember that Plato is describing rather the contemporary governments of the Sicilian States, which alternated between democracy and tyranny, than the ancient history of Athens or Corinth. ¹⁹⁷⁵The portrait of the tyrant himself is just such as the later Greek delighted to draw of Phalaris and Dionysius, in which, as in the lives of mediaeval saints or mythic heroes, the conduct and actions of one were attributed to another in order to fill up the outline. ¹⁹⁷⁶There was no enormity which the Greek was not today to believe of them; the tyrant was the negation of government and law; his assassination was glorious; there was no crime, however unnatural, which might not with probability be attributed to him. ¹⁹⁷⁷In this, Plato was only following the common thought of his countrymen, which he embellished and exaggerated with all the power of his genius. ¹⁹⁷⁸There is no need to suppose that he drew from life; or that his knowledge of tyrants is derived from a personal acquaintance with Dionysius. ¹⁹⁷⁹The manner in which he speaks of them would rather tend to render doubtful his ever having ‘consorted’ with them, or entertained the schemes, which are attributed to him in the Epistles, of regenerating Sicily by their help. ¹⁹⁸⁰Plato in a hyperbolical and serio-comic vein exaggerates the follies of democracy which he also sees reflected in social life. ¹⁹⁸¹To him democracy is a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. ¹⁹⁸²Of a people animated by a common spirit of liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to think. ¹⁹⁸³But if he is not a believer in liberty, still less is he a lover of tyranny. ¹⁹⁸⁴His deeper and more serious condemnation is reserved for the tyrant, who is the ideal of wickedness and also of weakness, and who in his utter helplessness and suspiciousness is leading an almost impossible existence, without that remnant of good which, in Plato’s opinion, was required to give power to evil (Book I). ¹⁹⁸⁵This ideal of wickedness living in helpless misery, is the reverse of that other portrait of perfect injustice ruling in happiness and splendour, which first of all Thrasymachus, and afterwards the sons of Ariston had drawn, and is also the reverse of the king whose rule of life is the good of his subjects. ¹⁹⁸⁶Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding ethical gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not extinguishing but harmonizing the passions, and training them in virtue; in the timocracy and the timocratic man the constitution, whether of the State or of the individual, is based, first, upon courage, and secondly, upon the love of honour; this latter virtue, which is hardly to be esteemed a virtue, has superseded all the rest. ¹⁹⁸⁷In the second stage of decline the virtues have altogether disappeared, and the love of gain has succeeded to them; in the third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. ¹⁹⁸⁸But this freedom, which leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in reality only a state of weakness and dissipation. ¹⁹⁸⁹At last, one monster passion takes possession of the whole nature of man—this is tyranny. ¹⁹⁹⁰In all of them excess—the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the element of decay. ¹⁹⁹¹The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and fanciful allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a greater extent than anywhere else in Plato. ¹⁹⁹²We may remark, (1), the description of the two nations in one, which become more and more divided in the Greek Republics, as in feudal times, and perhaps also in our own; (2), the notion of democracy expressed in a sort of Pythagorean formula as equality among unequals; (3), the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are characteristic of liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal mistrust are of the tyrant; (4), the proposal that mere debts should not be recoverable by law is a speculation which has often been entertained by reformers of the law in modern times, and is in harmony with the tendencies of modern legislation. ¹⁹⁹³Debt and land were the two great difficulties of the ancient lawgiver: in modern times we may be said to have almost, if not quite, solved the first of these difficulties, but hardly the second. ¹⁹⁹⁴Still more remarkable are the corresponding portraits of individuals: there is the family picture of the father and mother and the old servant of the timocratical man, and the outward respectability and inherent meanness of the oligarchical; the uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat, in which the young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong as he pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far country (note here the play of language by which the democratic man is himself represented under the image of a State having a citadel and receiving embassies); and there is the wild-beast nature, which breaks loose in his successor. ¹⁹⁹⁵The hit about the tyrant being a parricide; the representation of the tyrant’s life as an obscene dream; the rhetorical surprise of a more miserable than the most miserable of men in Book IX; the hint to the poets that if they are the friends of tyrants there is no place for them in a constitutional State, and that they are too clever not to see the propriety of their own expulsion; the continuous image of the drones who are of two kinds, swelling at last into the monster drone having wings (Book IX),—are among Plato’s happiest touches. ¹⁹⁹⁶There remains to be considered the great difficulty of this book of the Republic, the so-called number of the State. ¹⁹⁹⁷This is a puzzle almost as great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation, and though apparently known to Aristotle, is referred to by Cicero as a proverb of obscurity (Ep. ad Att.). ¹⁹⁹⁸And some have imagined that there is no answer to the puzzle, and that Plato has been practising upon his readers. ¹⁹⁹⁹But such a deception as this is inconsistent with the manner in which Aristotle speaks of the number (Pol.), and would have been ridiculous to any reader of the Republic who was acquainted with Greek mathematics. ²⁰⁰⁰As little reason is there for supposing that Plato intentionally used obscure expressions; the obscurity arises from our want of familiarity with the subject. ²⁰⁰¹On the other hand, Plato himself indicates that he is not altogether serious, and in describing his number as a solemn jest of the Muses, he appears to imply some degree of satire on the symbolical use of number. ²⁰⁰²(Compare Cratylus; Protag.) ²⁰⁰³Our hope of understanding the passage depends principally on an accurate study of the words themselves; on which a faint light is thrown by the parallel passage in the ninth book. ²⁰⁰⁴Another help is the allusion in Aristotle, who makes the important remark that the latter part of the passage (Greek) describes a solid figure. ²⁰⁰⁵(Pol.—‘He only says that nothing is abiding, but that all things change in a certain cycle; and that the origin of the change is a base of numbers which are in the ratio of 4:3; and this when combined with a figure of five gives two harmonies; he means when the number of this figure becomes solid.’) ²⁰⁰⁶Some further clue may be gathered from the appearance of the Pythagorean triangle, which is denoted by the numbers 3, 4, 5, and in which, as in every right-angled triangle, the squares of the two lesser sides equal the square of the hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25). ²⁰⁰⁷Plato begins by speaking of a perfect or cyclical number (Tim.), i.e. a number in which the sum of the divisors equals the whole; this is the divine or perfect number in which all lesser cycles or revolutions are complete. ²⁰⁰⁸He also speaks of a human or imperfect number, having four terms and three intervals of numbers which are related to one another in certain proportions; these he converts into figures, and finds in them when they have been raised to the third power certain elements of number, which give two ‘harmonies,’ the one square, the other oblong; but he does not say that the square number answers to the divine, or the oblong number to the human cycle; nor is any intimation given that the first or divine number represents the period of the world, the second the period of the state, or of the human race as Zeller supposes; nor is the divine number afterwards mentioned (Arist.). ²⁰⁰⁹The second is the number of generations or births, and presides over them in the same mysterious manner in which the stars preside over them, or in which, according to the Pythagoreans, opportunity, justice, marriage, are represented by some number or figure. ²⁰¹⁰This is probably the number 216. ²⁰¹¹The explanation given in the text supposes the two harmonies to make up the number 8000. ²⁰¹²This explanation derives a certain plausibility from the circumstance that 8000 is the ancient number of the Spartan citizens (Herod.), and would be what Plato might have called ‘a number which nearly concerns the population of a city’; the mysterious disappearance of the Spartan population may possibly have suggested to him the first cause of his decline of States. ²⁰¹³The lesser or square ‘harmony,’ of 400, might be a symbol of the guardians,—the larger or oblong ‘harmony,’ of the people, and the numbers 3, 4, 5 might refer respectively to the three orders in the State or parts of the soul, the four virtues, the five forms of government. ²⁰¹⁴The harmony of the musical scale, which is elsewhere used as a symbol of the harmony of the state, is also indicated. ²⁰¹⁵For the numbers 3, 4, 5, which represent the sides of the Pythagorean triangle, also denote the intervals of the scale. ²⁰¹⁶The terms used in the statement of the problem may be explained as follows. ²⁰¹⁷A perfect number (Greek), as already stated, is one which is equal to the sum of its divisors. ²⁰¹⁸Thus 6, which is the first perfect or cyclical number, = 1 + 2 + 3. ²⁰¹⁹The words (Greek), ‘terms’ or ‘notes,’ and (Greek), ‘intervals,’ are applicable to music as well as to number and figure. ²⁰²⁰(Greek) is the ‘base’ on which the whole calculation depends, or the ‘lowest term’ from which it can be worked out. ²⁰²¹The words (Greek) have been variously translated—‘squared and cubed’ (Donaldson), ‘equalling and equalled in power’ (Weber), ‘by involution and evolution,’ i.e. by raising the power and extracting the root (as in the translation). ²⁰²²Numbers are called ‘like and unlike’ (Greek) when the factors or the sides of the planes and cubes which they represent are or are not in the same ratio: e.g. 8 and 27 = 2 cubed and 3 cubed; and conversely. ²⁰²³‘Waxing’ (Greek) numbers, called also ‘increasing’ (Greek), are those which are exceeded by the sum of their divisors: e.g. 12 and 18 are less than 16 and 21. ²⁰²⁴‘Waning’ (Greek) numbers, called also ‘decreasing’ (Greek) are those which succeed the sum of their divisors: e.g. 8 and 27 exceed 7 and 13. ²⁰²⁵The words translated ‘commensurable and agreeable to one another’ (Greek) seem to be different ways of describing the same relation, with more or less precision. ²⁰²⁶They are equivalent to ‘expressible in terms having the same relation to one another,’ like the series 8, 12, 18, 27, each of which numbers is in the relation of (1 and 1/2) to the preceding. ²⁰²⁷The ‘base,’ or ‘fundamental number, which has 1/3 added to it’ (1 and 1/3) = 4/3 or a musical fourth. ²⁰²⁸(Greek) is a ‘proportion’ of numbers as of musical notes, applied either to the parts or factors of a single number or to the relation of one number to another. ²⁰²⁹The first harmony is a ‘square’ number (Greek); the second harmony is an ‘oblong’ number (Greek), i.e. a number representing a figure of which the opposite sides only are equal. ²⁰³⁰(Greek) = ‘numbers squared from’ or ‘upon diameters’; (Greek) = ‘rational,’ i.e. omitting fractions, (Greek), ‘irrational,’ i.e. including fractions; e.g. 49 is a square of the rational diameter of a figure the side of which = 5: 50, of an irrational diameter of the same. ²⁰³¹For several of the explanations here given and for a good deal besides I am indebted to an excellent article on the Platonic Number by Dr. ²⁰³²Donaldson (Proc. of the Philol. ²⁰³³Society). ²⁰³⁴The conclusions which he draws from these data are summed up by him as follows. ²⁰³⁵Having assumed that the number of the perfect or divine cycle is the number of the world, and the number of the imperfect cycle the number of the state, he proceeds: ‘The period of the world is defined by the perfect number 6, that of the state by the cube of that number or 216, which is the product of the last pair of terms in the Platonic Tetractys (a series of seven terms, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27); and if we take this as the basis of our computation, we shall have two cube numbers (Greek), viz. 8 and 27; and the mean proportionals between these, viz. 12 and 18, will furnish three intervals and four terms, and these terms and intervals stand related to one another in the sesqui-altera ratio, i.e. each term is to the preceding as 3/2. ²⁰³⁶Now if we remember that the number 216 = 8 x 27 = 3 cubed + 4 cubed + 5 cubed, and 3 squared + 4 squared = 5 squared, we must admit that this number implies the numbers 3, 4, 5, to which musicians attach so much importance. ²⁰³⁷And if we combine the ratio 4/3 with the number 5, or multiply the ratios of the sides by the hypotenuse, we shall by first squaring and then cubing obtain two expressions, which denote the ratio of the two last pairs of terms in the Platonic Tetractys, the former multiplied by the square, the latter by the cube of the number 10, the sum of the first four digits which constitute the Platonic Tetractys.’ ²⁰³⁸The two (Greek) he elsewhere explains as follows: ‘The first (Greek) is (Greek), in other words (4/3 x 5) all squared = 100 x 2 squared over 3 squared. ²⁰³⁹The second (Greek), a cube of the same root, is described as 100 multiplied (alpha) by the rational diameter of 5 diminished by unity, i.e., as shown above, 48: (beta) by two incommensurable diameters, i.e. the two first irrationals, or 2 and 3: and (gamma) by the cube of 3, or 27. ²⁰⁴⁰Thus we have (48 + 5 + 27) 100 = 1000 x 2 cubed. ²⁰⁴¹This second harmony is to be the cube of the number of which the former harmony is the square, and therefore must be divided by the cube of 3. ²⁰⁴²In other words, the whole expression will be: (1), for the first harmony, 400/9: (2), for the second harmony, 8000/27.’ ²⁰⁴³The reasons which have inclined me to agree with Dr. ²⁰⁴⁴Donaldson and also with Schleiermacher in supposing that 216 is the Platonic number of births are: (1) that it coincides with the description of the number given in the first part of the passage (Greek...): (2) that the number 216 with its permutations would have been familiar to a Greek mathematician, though unfamiliar to us: (3) that 216 is the cube of 6, and also the sum of 3 cubed, 4 cubed, 5 cubed, the numbers 3, 4, 5 representing the Pythagorean triangle, of which the sides when squared equal the square of the hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25): (4) that it is also the period of the Pythagorean Metempsychosis: (5) the three ultimate terms or bases (3, 4, 5) of which 216 is composed answer to the third, fourth, fifth in the musical scale: (6) that the number 216 is the product of the cubes of 2 and 3, which are the two last terms in the Platonic Tetractys: (7) that the Pythagorean triangle is said by Plutarch (de Is. et Osir.), Proclus (super prima Eucl.), and Quintilian (de Musica) to be contained in this passage, so that the tradition of the school seems to point in the same direction: (8) that the Pythagorean triangle is called also the figure of marriage (Greek). ²⁰⁴⁵But though agreeing with Dr. ²⁰⁴⁶Donaldson thus far, I see no reason for supposing, as he does, that the first or perfect number is the world, the human or imperfect number the state; nor has he given any proof that the second harmony is a cube. ²⁰⁴⁷Nor do I think that (Greek) can mean ‘two incommensurables,’ which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but rather, as the preceding clause implies, (Greek), i.e. two square numbers based upon irrational diameters of a figure the side of which is 5 = 50 x 2. ²⁰⁴⁸The greatest objection to the translation is the sense given to the words (Greek), ‘a base of three with a third added to it, multiplied by 5.’ ²⁰⁴⁹In this somewhat forced manner Plato introduces once more the numbers of the Pythagorean triangle. ²⁰⁵⁰But the coincidences in the numbers which follow are in favour of the explanation. ²⁰⁵¹The first harmony of 400, as has been already remarked, probably represents the rulers; the second and oblong harmony of 7600, the people. ²⁰⁵²And here we take leave of the difficulty. ²⁰⁵³The discovery of the riddle would be useless, and would throw no light on ancient mathematics. ²⁰⁵⁴The point of interest is that Plato should have used such a symbol, and that so much of the Pythagorean spirit should have prevailed in him. ²⁰⁵⁵His general meaning is that divine creation is perfect, and is represented or presided over by a perfect or cyclical number; human generation is imperfect, and represented or presided over by an imperfect number or series of numbers. ²⁰⁵⁶The number 5040, which is the number of the citizens in the Laws, is expressly based by him on utilitarian grounds, namely, the convenience of the number for division; it is also made up of the first seven digits multiplied by one another. ²⁰⁵⁷The contrast of the perfect and imperfect number may have been easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle, which were made first by Meton and secondly by Callippus; (the latter is said to have been a pupil of Plato). ²⁰⁵⁸Of the degree of importance or of exactness to be attributed to the problem, the number of the tyrant in Book IX (729 = 365 x 2), and the slight correction of the error in the number 5040/12 (Laws), may furnish a criterion. ²⁰⁵⁹There is nothing surprising in the circumstance that those who were seeking for order in nature and had found order in number, should have imagined one to give law to the other. ²⁰⁶⁰Plato believes in a power of number far beyond what he could see realized in the world around him, and he knows the great influence which ‘the little matter of 1, 2, 3’ exercises upon education. ²⁰⁶¹He may even be thought to have a prophetic anticipation of the discoveries of Quetelet and others, that numbers depend upon numbers; e.g.—in population, the numbers of births and the respective numbers of children born of either sex, on the respective ages of parents, i.e. on other numbers. ²⁰⁶²BOOK IX. ²⁰⁶³Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live—in happiness or in misery? ²⁰⁶⁴There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the appetites, which I should like to consider first. ²⁰⁶⁵Some of them are unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various degrees by the power of reason and law. ²⁰⁶⁶‘What appetites do you mean?’ ²⁰⁶⁷I mean those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which get up and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and there is no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of which, in imagination, they may not be guilty. ²⁰⁶⁸‘True,’ he said; ‘very true.’ ²⁰⁶⁹But when a man’s pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a feast of reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to rest, and has satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their perturbing his reason, which remains clear and luminous, and when he is free from quarrel and heat,—the visions which he has on his bed are least irregular and abnormal. ²⁰⁷⁰Even in good men there is such an irregular wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. ²⁰⁷¹To return:—You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and repressed the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got into fine company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father’s narrow ways; and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth, he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless or slavish passion, but of regular and successive indulgence. ²⁰⁷²Now imagine that the youth has become a father, and has a son who is exposed to the same temptations, and has companions who lead him into every sort of iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him right. ²⁰⁷³The counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining him is to implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires buzz around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest thought or wish. ²⁰⁷⁴Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and the tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a drinking, lusting, furious sort of animal. ²⁰⁷⁵And how does such an one live? ²⁰⁷⁶‘Nay, that you must tell me.’ ²⁰⁷⁷Well then, I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will be the lord and master of the house. ²⁰⁷⁸Many desires require much money, and so he spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has nothing the young ravens are still in the nest in which they were hatched, crying for food. ²⁰⁷⁹Love urges them on; and they must be gratified by force or fraud, or if not, they become painful and troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed the old ones, so will the son take possession of the goods of his parents; if they show signs of refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if they openly resist, what then? ²⁰⁸⁰‘I can only say, that I should not much like to be in their place.’ ²⁰⁸¹But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for some new-fangled and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and mother, best and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour! ²⁰⁸²Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! ²⁰⁸³When there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket, or robs a temple. ²⁰⁸⁴Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he becomes in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. ²⁰⁸⁵He waxes strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed of daring that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. ²⁰⁸⁶In a well-ordered State there are only a few such, and these in time of war go out and become the mercenaries of a tyrant. ²⁰⁸⁷But in time of peace they stay at home and do mischief; they are the thieves, footpads, cut-purses, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able to speak, they turn false-witnesses and informers. ²⁰⁸⁸‘No small catalogue of crimes truly, even if the perpetrators are few.’ ²⁰⁸⁹Yes, I said; but small and great are relative terms, and no crimes which are committed by them approach those of the tyrant, whom this class, growing strong and numerous, create out of themselves. ²⁰⁹⁰If the people yield, well and good, but, if they resist, then, as before he beat his father and mother, so now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and places his mercenaries over them. ²⁰⁹¹Such men in their early days live with flatterers, and they themselves flatter others, in order to gain their ends; but they soon discard their followers when they have no longer any need of them; they are always either masters or servants,—the joys of friendship are unknown to them. ²⁰⁹²And they are utterly treacherous and unjust, if the nature of justice be at all understood by us. ²⁰⁹³They realize our dream; and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life of a tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the worst of them, will also be the most miserable. ²⁰⁹⁴Like man, like State,—the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which is the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the other the worst. ²⁰⁹⁵But which is the happier? ²⁰⁹⁶Great and terrible as the tyrant may appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid to go in and ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the happiest, and the tyrannical the most miserable of States. ²⁰⁹⁷And may we not ask the same question about the men themselves, requesting some one to look into them who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and will not be panic-struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? ²⁰⁹⁸I will suppose that he is one who has lived with him, and has seen him in family life, or perhaps in the hour of trouble and danger. ²⁰⁹⁹Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek, let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved—Will there not be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery? ²¹⁰⁰And the freedom is of the bad, and the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as well as to the State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and the better part is enslaved to the worse. ²¹⁰¹He cannot do what he would, and his mind is full of confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman. ²¹⁰²The State will be poor and full of misery and sorrow; and the man’s soul will also be poor and full of sorrows, and he will be the most miserable of men. ²¹⁰³No, not the most miserable, for there is yet a more miserable. ²¹⁰⁴‘Who is that?’ ²¹⁰⁵The tyrannical man who has the misfortune also to become a public tyrant. ²¹⁰⁶‘There I suspect that you are right.’ ²¹⁰⁷Say rather, ‘I am sure;’ conjecture is out of place in an enquiry of this nature. ²¹⁰⁸He is like a wealthy owner of slaves, only he has more of them than any private individual. ²¹⁰⁹You will say, ‘The owners of slaves are not generally in any fear of them.’ ²¹¹⁰But why? ²¹¹¹Because the whole city is in a league which protects the individual. ²¹¹²Suppose however that one of these owners and his household is carried off by a god into a wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him—will he not be in an agony of terror?—will he not be compelled to flatter his slaves and to promise them many things sore against his will? ²¹¹³And suppose the same god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them should be punished with death. ²¹¹⁴‘Still worse and worse! ²¹¹⁵He will be in the midst of his enemies.’ ²¹¹⁶And is not our tyrant such a captive soul, who is tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living indoors always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and see the world? ²¹¹⁷Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more miserable in a public station? ²¹¹⁸Master of others when he is not master of himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the meanest of slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all things, and never able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and distraction, like the State of which he is the representative. ²¹¹⁹His jealous, hateful, faithless temper grows worse with command; he is more and more faithless, envious, unrighteous,—the most wretched of men, a misery to himself and to others. ²¹²⁰And so let us have a final trial and proclamation; need we hire a herald, or shall I proclaim the result? ²¹²¹‘Made the proclamation yourself.’ ²¹²²The son of Ariston (the best) is of opinion that the best and justest of men is also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most royal master of himself; and that the unjust man is he who is the greatest tyrant of himself and of his State. ²¹²³And I add further—‘seen or unseen by gods or men.’ ²¹²⁴This is our first proof. ²¹²⁵The second is derived from the three kinds of pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul—reason, passion, desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as sensual appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love of reputation. ²¹²⁶Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of truth, and careless of money and reputation. ²¹²⁷In accordance with the difference of men’s natures, one of these three principles is in the ascendant, and they have their several pleasures corresponding to them. ²¹²⁸Interrogate now the three natures, and each one will be found praising his own pleasures and depreciating those of others. ²¹²⁹The money-maker will contrast the vanity of knowledge with the solid advantages of wealth. ²¹³⁰The ambitious man will despise knowledge which brings no honour; whereas the philosopher will regard only the fruition of truth, and will call other pleasures necessary rather than good. ²¹³¹Now, how shall we decide between them? ²¹³²Is there any better criterion than experience and knowledge? ²¹³³And which of the three has the truest knowledge and the widest experience? ²¹³⁴The experience of youth makes the philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the avaricious and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and wisdom. ²¹³⁵Honour he has equally with them; they are ‘judged of him,’ but he is ‘not judged of them,’ for they never attain to the knowledge of true being. ²¹³⁶And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only wealth and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be the truest. ²¹³⁷And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the rational part of the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the pleasantest. ²¹³⁸He who has a right to judge judges thus. ²¹³⁹Next comes the life of ambition, and, in the third place, that of money-making. ²¹⁴⁰Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust—once more, as in an Olympian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let him try a fall. ²¹⁴¹A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the wise are true and pure; all others are a shadow only. ²¹⁴²Let us examine this: Is not pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not a mean state which is neither? ²¹⁴³When a man is sick, nothing is more pleasant to him than health. ²¹⁴⁴But this he never found out while he was well. ²¹⁴⁵In pain he desires only to cease from pain; on the other hand, when he is in an ecstasy of pleasure, rest is painful to him. ²¹⁴⁶Thus rest or cessation is both pleasure and pain. ²¹⁴⁷But can that which is neither become both? ²¹⁴⁸Again, pleasure and pain are motions, and the absence of them is rest; but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other? ²¹⁴⁹Thus we are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and witchery of the senses. ²¹⁵⁰And these are not the only pleasures, for there are others which have no preceding pains. ²¹⁵¹Pure pleasure then is not the absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most of the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their anticipations before they come. ²¹⁵²They can be best described in a simile. ²¹⁵³There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would think, and truly think, that he was descending. ²¹⁵⁴All this arises out of his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. ²¹⁵⁵And a like confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things. ²¹⁵⁶The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure. ²¹⁵⁷Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and folly of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge of the other. ²¹⁵⁸Now which is the purer satisfaction—that of eating and drinking, or that of knowledge? ²¹⁵⁹Consider the matter thus: The satisfaction of that which has more existence is truer than of that which has less. ²¹⁶⁰The invariable and immortal has a more real existence than the variable and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth. ²¹⁶¹The soul, again, has more existence and truth and knowledge than the body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure. ²¹⁶²Those who feast only on earthly food, are always going at random up to the middle and down again; but they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true pleasure. ²¹⁶³They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they are not filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). ²¹⁶⁴Their pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth. ²¹⁶⁵The same may be said of the passionate element:—the desires of the ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior satisfaction. ²¹⁶⁶Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the other principles do their own business or attain the pleasure which is natural to them. ²¹⁶⁷When not attaining, they compel the other parts of the soul to pursue a shadow of pleasure which is not theirs. ²¹⁶⁸And the more distant they are from philosophy and reason, the more distant they will be from law and order, and the more illusive will be their pleasures. ²¹⁶⁹The desires of love and tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of the king are nearest to it. ²¹⁷⁰There is one genuine pleasure, and two spurious ones: the tyrant goes beyond even the latter; he has run away altogether from law and reason. ²¹⁷¹Nor can the measure of his inferiority be told, except in a figure. ²¹⁷²The tyrant is the third removed from the oligarch, and has therefore, not a shadow of his pleasure, but the shadow of a shadow only. ²¹⁷³The oligarch, again, is thrice removed from the king, and thus we get the formula 3 x 3, which is the number of a surface, representing the shadow which is the tyrant’s pleasure, and if you like to cube this ‘number of the beast,’ you will find that the measure of the difference amounts to 729; the king is 729 times more happy than the tyrant. ²¹⁷⁴And this extraordinary number is NEARLY equal to the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730); and is therefore concerned with human life. ²¹⁷⁵This is the interval between a good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between them in comeliness of life and virtue! ²¹⁷⁶Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning of our discussion that the unjust man was profited if he had the reputation of justice. ²¹⁷⁷Now that we know the nature of justice and injustice, let us make an image of the soul, which will personify his words. ²¹⁷⁸First of all, fashion a multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all manner of animals, tame and wild, and able to produce and change them at pleasure. ²¹⁷⁹Suppose now another form of a lion, and another of a man; the second smaller than the first, the third than the second; join them together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are completely concealed. ²¹⁸⁰When this has been done, let us tell the supporter of injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and starving the man. ²¹⁸¹The maintainer of justice, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen the man; he is nourishing the gentle principle within him, and making an alliance with the lion heart, in order that he may be able to keep down the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and with themselves. ²¹⁸²Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the unjust wrong. ²¹⁸³But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error. ²¹⁸⁴Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the God in man; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to the beast? ²¹⁸⁵And if so, who would receive gold on condition that he was to degrade the noblest part of himself under the worst?—who would sell his son or daughter into the hands of brutal and evil men, for any amount of money? ²¹⁸⁶And will he sell his own fairer and diviner part without any compunction to the most godless and foul? ²¹⁸⁷Would he not be worse than Eriphyle, who sold her husband’s life for a necklace? ²¹⁸⁸And intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great relaxation of spirit. ²¹⁸⁹Flattery and meanness again arise when the spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to become a monkey. ²¹⁹⁰The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those who are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their desires; therefore we say that they should be placed under the control of the better principle in another because they have none in themselves; not, as Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the subjects, but for their good. ²¹⁹¹And our intention in educating the young, is to give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may go their ways. ²¹⁹²‘What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world’ and become more and more wicked? ²¹⁹³Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if the concealment of evil prevents the cure? ²¹⁹⁴If he had been punished, the brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in his soul—a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts. ²¹⁹⁵The man of understanding will honour knowledge above all; in the next place he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and soul. ²¹⁹⁶In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and harmony; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of his own soul. ²¹⁹⁷For the same reason he will only accept such honours as will make him a better man; any others he will decline. ²¹⁹⁸‘In that case,’ said he, ‘he will never be a politician.’ ²¹⁹⁹Yes, but he will, in his own city; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine accident. ²²⁰⁰‘You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which has no place upon earth.’ ²²⁰¹But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image. ²²⁰²Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not; he will act according to that pattern and no other... ²²⁰³The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:—(1) the account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the king from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven. ²²⁰⁴Plato’s account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which are attributed to them by Aristotle. ²²⁰⁵He is not, like the Cynics, opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the Epicureans in describing pleasure as something more than the absence of pain. ²²⁰⁶This is proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which have no antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and anticipation. ²²⁰⁷In the previous book he had made the distinction between necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and he now observes that there are a further class of ‘wild beast’ pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle’s (Greek). ²²⁰⁸He dwells upon the relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. ²²⁰⁹The pre-eminence of royal pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. ²²¹⁰Thus, in his treatment of pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is ‘sawn up into quantities’ by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further technical distinctions. ²²¹¹Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the knowledge from which they are derived. ²²¹²Neither do we like to admit that the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus). ²²¹³The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant, and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. ²²¹⁴Which Plato characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life, because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year. ²²¹⁵He is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea. ²²¹⁶Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring (Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. ²²¹⁷And in modern times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a philosophical formula. ²²¹⁸‘It is not easy to estimate the loss of the tyrant, except perhaps in this way,’ says Plato. ²²¹⁹So we might say, that although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad man, yet you may measure the difference between them by valuing one minute of the one at an hour of the other (‘One day in thy courts is better than a thousand’), or you might say that ‘there is an infinite difference.’ ²²²⁰But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, ‘They are a thousand miles asunder.’ ²²²¹And accordingly Plato finds the natural vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this arithmetical formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both here and in the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of the truth of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical figure; just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. ²²²²In speaking of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably intended to intimate that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the royal life. ²²²³The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. ²²²⁴There is some difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained; the oligarch is removed in the third degree from the royal and aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third degree from the oligarchical; but we have to arrange the terms as the sides of a square and to count the oligarch twice over, thus reckoning them not as = 5 but as = 9. ²²²⁵The square of 9 is passed lightly over as only a step towards the cube. ²²²⁶Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. ²²²⁷At the end of the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city of philosophers on earth. ²²²⁸The vision which has received form and substance at his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. ²²²⁹And yet this distant kingdom is also the rule of man’s life. ²²³⁰(‘Say not lo! ²²³¹here, or lo! ²²³²there, for the kingdom of God is within you.’) ²²³³Thus a note is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future life in the following Book. ²²³⁴But the future life is present still; the ideal of politics is to be realized in the individual. ²²³⁵BOOK X. ²²³⁶Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. ²²³⁷The division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation. ²²³⁸I do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage on the understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge which heals error. ²²³⁹I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even now he appears to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. ²²⁴⁰But much as I love the man, I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out: and first of all, will you explain what is imitation, for really I do not understand? ²²⁴¹‘How likely then that I should understand!’ ²²⁴²That might very well be, for the duller often sees better than the keener eye. ²²⁴³‘True, but in your presence I can hardly venture to say what I think.’ ²²⁴⁴Then suppose that we begin in our old fashion, with the doctrine of universals. ²²⁴⁵Let us assume the existence of beds and tables. ²²⁴⁶There is one idea of a bed, or of a table, which the maker of each had in his mind when making them; he did not make the ideas of beds and tables, but he made beds and tables according to the ideas. ²²⁴⁷And is there not a maker of the works of all workmen, who makes not only vessels but plants and animals, himself, the earth and heaven, and things in heaven and under the earth? ²²⁴⁸He makes the Gods also. ²²⁴⁹‘He must be a wizard indeed!’ ²²⁵⁰But do you not see that there is a sense in which you could do the same? ²²⁵¹You have only to take a mirror, and catch the reflection of the sun, and the earth, or anything else—there now you have made them. ²²⁵²‘Yes, but only in appearance.’ ²²⁵³Exactly so; and the painter is such a creator as you are with the mirror, and he is even more unreal than the carpenter; although neither the carpenter nor any other artist can be supposed to make the absolute bed. ²²⁵⁴‘Not if philosophers may be believed.’ ²²⁵⁵Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect relation to the truth. ²²⁵⁶Reflect:—Here are three beds; one in nature, which is made by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the third, by the painter. ²²⁵⁷God only made one, nor could he have made more than one; for if there had been two, there would always have been a third—more absolute and abstract than either, under which they would have been included. ²²⁵⁸We may therefore conceive God to be the natural maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker; but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality. ²²⁵⁹And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice removed from the king and from the truth. ²²⁶⁰The painter imitates not the original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter. ²²⁶¹And this, without being really different, appears to be different, and has many points of view, of which only one is caught by the painter, who represents everything because he represents a piece of everything, and that piece an image. ²²⁶²And he can paint any other artist, although he knows nothing of their arts; and this with sufficient skill to deceive children or simple people. ²²⁶³Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better than anybody:—should we not infer him to be a simpleton who, having no discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or enchanter, whom he fancied to be all-wise? ²²⁶⁴And when we hear persons saying that Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must we not infer that they are under a similar delusion? ²²⁶⁵they do not see that the poets are imitators, and that their creations are only imitations. ²²⁶⁶‘Very true.’ ²²⁶⁷But if a person could create as well as imitate, he would rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only; he would rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? ²²⁶⁸‘Yes, for then he would have more honour and advantage.’ ²²⁶⁹Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. ²²⁷⁰Friend Homer, say I to him, I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your poems incidentally refer, but about their main subjects—war, military tactics, politics. ²²⁷¹If you are only twice and not thrice removed from the truth—not an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what good you have ever done to mankind? ²²⁷²Is there any city which professes to have received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from Charondas, Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? ²²⁷³Or was any war ever carried on by your counsels? ²²⁷⁴or is any invention attributed to you, as there is to Thales and Anacharsis? ²²⁷⁵Or is there any Homeric way of life, such as the Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is called after you? ²²⁷⁶‘No, indeed; and Creophylus (Flesh-child) was even more unfortunate in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as tradition says, Homer in his lifetime was allowed by him and his other friends to starve.’ ²²⁷⁷Yes, but could this ever have happened if Homer had really been the educator of Hellas? ²²⁷⁸Would he not have had many devoted followers? ²²⁷⁹If Protagoras and Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries that no one can manage house or State without them, is it likely that Homer and Hesiod would have been allowed to go about as beggars—I mean if they had really been able to do the world any good?—would not men have compelled them to stay where they were, or have followed them about in order to get education? ²²⁸⁰But they did not; and therefore we may infer that Homer and all the poets are only imitators, who do but imitate the appearances of things. ²²⁸¹For as a painter by a knowledge of figure and colour can paint a cobbler without any practice in cobbling, so the poet can delineate any art in the colours of language, and give harmony and rhythm to the cobbler and also to the general; and you know how mere narration, when deprived of the ornaments of metre, is like a face which has lost the beauty of youth and never had any other. ²²⁸²Once more, the imitator has no knowledge of reality, but only of appearance. ²²⁸³The painter paints, and the artificer makes a bridle and reins, but neither understands the use of them—the knowledge of this is confined to the horseman; and so of other things. ²²⁸⁴Thus we have three arts: one of use, another of invention, a third of imitation; and the user furnishes the rule to the two others. ²²⁸⁵The flute-player will know the good and bad flute, and the maker will put faith in him; but the imitator will neither know nor have faith—neither science nor true opinion can be ascribed to him. ²²⁸⁶Imitation, then, is devoid of knowledge, being only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic and epic poets are imitators in the highest degree. ²²⁸⁷And now let us enquire, what is the faculty in man which answers to imitation. ²²⁸⁸Allow me to explain my meaning: Objects are differently seen when in the water and when out of the water, when near and when at a distance; and the painter or juggler makes use of this variation to impose upon us. ²²⁸⁹And the art of measuring and weighing and calculating comes in to save our bewildered minds from the power of appearance; for, as we were saying, two contrary opinions of the same about the same and at the same time, cannot both of them be true. ²²⁹⁰But which of them is true is determined by the art of calculation; and this is allied to the better faculty in the soul, as the arts of imitation are to the worse. ²²⁹¹And the same holds of the ear as well as of the eye, of poetry as well as painting. ²²⁹²The imitation is of actions voluntary or involuntary, in which there is an expectation of a good or bad result, and present experience of pleasure and pain. ²²⁹³But is a man in harmony with himself when he is the subject of these conflicting influences? ²²⁹⁴Is there not rather a contradiction in him? ²²⁹⁵Let me further ask, whether he is more likely to control sorrow when he is alone or when he is in company. ²²⁹⁶‘In the latter case.’ ²²⁹⁷Feeling would lead him to indulge his sorrow, but reason and law control him and enjoin patience; since he cannot know whether his affliction is good or evil, and no human thing is of any great consequence, while sorrow is certainly a hindrance to good counsel. ²²⁹⁸For when we stumble, we should not, like children, make an uproar; we should take the measures which reason prescribes, not raising a lament, but finding a cure. ²²⁹⁹And the better part of us is ready to follow reason, while the irrational principle is full of sorrow and distraction at the recollection of our troubles. ²³⁰⁰Unfortunately, however, this latter furnishes the chief materials of the imitative arts. ²³⁰¹Whereas reason is ever in repose and cannot easily be displayed, especially to a mixed multitude who have no experience of her. ²³⁰²Thus the poet is like the painter in two ways: first he paints an inferior degree of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an inferior part of the soul. ²³⁰³He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles the reason; and we refuse to allow him to have authority over the mind of man; for he has no measure of greater and less, and is a maker of images and very far gone from truth. ²³⁰⁴But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the indictment—the power which poetry has of injuriously exciting the feelings. ²³⁰⁵When we hear some passage in which a hero laments his sufferings at tedious length, you know that we sympathize with him and praise the poet; and yet in our own sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as effeminate and unmanly (Ion). ²³⁰⁶Now, ought a man to feel pleasure in seeing another do what he hates and abominates in himself? ²³⁰⁷Is he not giving way to a sentiment which in his own case he would control?—he is off his guard because the sorrow is another’s; and he thinks that he may indulge his feelings without disgrace, and will be the gainer by the pleasure. ²³⁰⁸But the inevitable consequence is that he who begins by weeping at the sorrows of others, will end by weeping at his own. ²³⁰⁹The same is true of comedy,—you may often laugh at buffoonery which you would be ashamed to utter, and the love of coarse merriment on the stage will at last turn you into a buffoon at home. ²³¹⁰Poetry feeds and waters the passions and desires; she lets them rule instead of ruling them. ²³¹¹And therefore, when we hear the encomiasts of Homer affirming that he is the educator of Hellas, and that all life should be regulated by his precepts, we may allow the excellence of their intentions, and agree with them in thinking Homer a great poet and tragedian. ²³¹²But we shall continue to prohibit all poetry which goes beyond hymns to the Gods and praises of famous men. ²³¹³Not pleasure and pain, but law and reason shall rule in our State. ²³¹⁴These are our grounds for expelling poetry; but lest she should charge us with discourtesy, let us also make an apology to her. ²³¹⁵We will remind her that there is an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, of which there are many traces in the writings of the poets, such as the saying of ‘the she-dog, yelping at her mistress,’ and ‘the philosophers who are ready to circumvent Zeus,’ and ‘the philosophers who are paupers.’ ²³¹⁶Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow her to return upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in verse; and her supporters who are not poets may speak in prose. ²³¹⁷We confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is useful as well as delightful, like rational lovers, we must renounce our love, though endeared to us by early associations. ²³¹⁸Having come to years of discretion, we know that poetry is not truth, and that a man should be careful how he introduces her to that state or constitution which he himself is; for there is a mighty issue at stake—no less than the good or evil of a human soul. ²³¹⁹And it is not worth while to forsake justice and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of honour or wealth. ²³²⁰‘I agree with you.’ ²³²¹And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described. ²³²²‘And can we conceive things greater still?’ ²³²³Not, perhaps, in this brief span of life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of eternity? ²³²⁴‘I do not understand what you mean?’ ²³²⁵Do you not know that the soul is immortal? ²³²⁶‘Surely you are not prepared to prove that?’ ²³²⁷Indeed I am. ²³²⁸‘Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.’ ²³²⁹You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil. ²³³⁰In all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this cannot destroy them, nothing else will. ²³³¹The soul too has her own corrupting principles, which are injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and the like. ²³³²But none of these destroy the soul in the same sense that disease destroys the body. ²³³³The soul may be full of all iniquities, but is not, by reason of them, brought any nearer to death. ²³³⁴Nothing which was not destroyed from within ever perished by external affection of evil. ²³³⁵The body, which is one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is another, unless the badness of the food is communicated to the body. ²³³⁶Neither can the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the body, which is another, unless she herself is infected. ²³³⁷And as no bodily evil can infect the soul, neither can any bodily evil, whether disease or violence, or any other destroy the soul, unless it can be shown to render her unholy and unjust. ²³³⁸But no one will ever prove that the souls of men become more unjust when they die. ²³³⁹If a person has the audacity to say the contrary, the answer is—Then why do criminals require the hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves? ²³⁴⁰‘Truly,’ he said, ‘injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a cessation of evil; but I rather believe that the injustice which murders others may tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the unjust.’ ²³⁴¹You are quite right. ²³⁴²If sin which is her own natural and inherent evil cannot destroy the soul, hardly will anything else destroy her. ²³⁴³But the soul which cannot be destroyed either by internal or external evil must be immortal and everlasting. ²³⁴⁴And if this be true, souls will always exist in the same number. ²³⁴⁵They cannot diminish, because they cannot be destroyed; nor yet increase, for the increase of the immortal must come from something mortal, and so all would end in immortality. ²³⁴⁶Neither is the soul variable and diverse; for that which is immortal must be of the fairest and simplest composition. ²³⁴⁷If we would conceive her truly, and so behold justice and injustice in their own nature, she must be viewed by the light of reason pure as at birth, or as she is reflected in philosophy when holding converse with the divine and immortal and eternal. ²³⁴⁸In her present condition we see her only like the sea-god Glaucus, bruised and maimed in the sea which is the world, and covered with shells and stones which are incrusted upon her from the entertainments of earth. ²³⁴⁹Thus far, as the argument required, we have said nothing of the rewards and honours which the poets attribute to justice; we have contented ourselves with showing that justice in herself is best for the soul in herself, even if a man should put on a Gyges’ ring and have the helmet of Hades too. ²³⁵⁰And now you shall repay me what you borrowed; and I will enumerate the rewards of justice in life and after death. ²³⁵¹I granted, for the sake of argument, as you will remember, that evil might perhaps escape the knowledge of Gods and men, although this was really impossible. ²³⁵²And since I have shown that justice has reality, you must grant me also that she has the palm of appearance. ²³⁵³In the first place, the just man is known to the Gods, and he is therefore the friend of the Gods, and he will receive at their hands every good, always excepting such evil as is the necessary consequence of former sins. ²³⁵⁴All things end in good to him, either in life or after death, even what appears to be evil; for the Gods have a care of him who desires to be in their likeness. ²³⁵⁵And what shall we say of men? ²³⁵⁶Is not honesty the best policy? ²³⁵⁷The clever rogue makes a great start at first, but breaks down before he reaches the goal, and slinks away in dishonour; whereas the true runner perseveres to the end, and receives the prize. ²³⁵⁸And you must allow me to repeat all the blessings which you attributed to the fortunate unjust—they bear rule in the city, they marry and give in marriage to whom they will; and the evils which you attributed to the unfortunate just, do really fall in the end on the unjust, although, as you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in silence. ²³⁵⁹But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when compared with those which await good men after death. ²³⁶⁰‘I should like to hear about them.’ ²³⁶¹Come, then, and I will tell you the story of Er, the son of Armenius, a valiant man. ²³⁶²He was supposed to have died in battle, but ten days afterwards his body was found untouched by corruption and sent home for burial. ²³⁶³On the twelfth day he was placed on the funeral pyre and there he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the world below. ²³⁶⁴He said that his soul went with a great company to a place, in which there were two chasms near together in the earth beneath, and two corresponding chasms in the heaven above. ²³⁶⁵And there were judges sitting in the intermediate space, bidding the just ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand, having the seal of their judgment set upon them before, while the unjust, having the seal behind, were bidden to descend by the way on the left hand. ²³⁶⁶Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their messenger to men from the world below. ²³⁶⁷And he beheld and saw the souls departing after judgment at either chasm; some who came from earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who came from heaven, were clean and bright. ²³⁶⁸They seemed glad to meet and rest awhile in the meadow; here they discoursed with one another of what they had seen in the other world. ²³⁶⁹Those who came from earth wept at the remembrance of their sorrows, but the spirits from above spoke of glorious sights and heavenly bliss. ²³⁷⁰He said that for every evil deed they were punished tenfold—now the journey was of a thousand years’ duration, because the life of man was reckoned as a hundred years—and the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. ²³⁷¹He added something hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon as they were born. ²³⁷²Of parricides and other murderers he had tortures still more terrible to narrate. ²³⁷³He was present when one of the spirits asked—Where is Ardiaeus the Great? ²³⁷⁴(This Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who had murdered his father, and his elder brother, a thousand years before.) ²³⁷⁵Another spirit answered, ‘He comes not hither, and will never come. ²³⁷⁶And I myself,’ he added, ‘actually saw this terrible sight. ²³⁷⁷At the entrance of the chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and some other sinners—most of whom had been tyrants, but not all—and just as they fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm gave a roar, and then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the meaning of the sound, seized him and several others, and bound them hand and foot and threw them down, and dragged them along at the side of the road, lacerating them and carding them like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that they were going to be cast into hell.’ ²³⁷⁸The greatest terror of the pilgrims ascending was lest they should hear the voice, and when there was silence one by one they passed up with joy. ²³⁷⁹To these sufferings there were corresponding delights. ²³⁸⁰On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their journey, and in four days came to a spot whence they looked down upon a line of light, in colour like a rainbow, only brighter and clearer. ²³⁸¹One day more brought them to the place, and they saw that this was the column of light which binds together the whole universe. ²³⁸²The ends of the column were fastened to heaven, and from them hung the distaff of Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turned—the hook and spindle were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. ²³⁸³The whorl was in form like a number of boxes fitting into one another with their edges turned upwards, making together a single whorl which was pierced by the spindle. ²³⁸⁴The outermost had the rim broadest, and the inner whorls were smaller and smaller, and had their rims narrower. ²³⁸⁵The largest (the fixed stars) was spangled—the seventh (the sun) was brightest—the eighth (the moon) shone by the light of the seventh—the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) were most like one another and yellower than the eighth—the third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars) was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. ²³⁸⁶The whole had one motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness and slowness. ²³⁸⁷The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens; Clotho from time to time guiding the outer circle with a touch of her right hand; Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner circles; Lachesis in turn putting forth her hand from time to time to guide both of them. ²³⁸⁸On their arrival the pilgrims went to Lachesis, and there was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from her knees lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said: ‘Mortal souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. ²³⁸⁹A new period of mortal life has begun, and you may choose what divinity you please; the responsibility of choosing is with you—God is blameless.’ ²³⁹⁰After speaking thus, he cast the lots among them and each one took up the lot which fell near him. ²³⁹¹He then placed on the ground before them the samples of lives, many more than the souls present; and there were all sorts of lives, of men and of animals. ²³⁹²There were tyrannies ending in misery and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their different qualities; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and poverty, sickness and health. ²³⁹³Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human life, and therefore the whole of education should be directed to the acquisition of such a knowledge as will teach a man to refuse the evil and choose the good. ²³⁹⁴He should know all the combinations which occur in life—of beauty with poverty or with wealth,—of knowledge with external goods,—and at last choose with reference to the nature of the soul, regarding that only as the better life which makes men better, and leaving the rest. ²³⁹⁵And a man must take with him an iron sense of truth and right into the world below, that there too he may remain undazzled by wealth or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the extremes and choose the mean. ²³⁹⁶For this, as the messenger reported the interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man; and any one, as he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have a good lot, even though he come last. ²³⁹⁷‘Let not the first be careless in his choice, nor the last despair.’ ²³⁹⁸He spoke; and when he had spoken, he who had drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not see that he was fated to devour his own children—and when he discovered his mistake, he wept and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather than himself. ²³⁹⁹He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he had only habit and no philosophy. ²⁴⁰⁰Like many another, he made a bad choice, because he had no experience of life; whereas those who came from earth and had seen trouble were not in such a hurry to choose. ²⁴⁰¹But if a man had followed philosophy while upon earth, and had been moderately fortunate in his lot, he might not only be happy here, but his pilgrimage both from and to this world would be smooth and heavenly. ²⁴⁰²Nothing was more curious than the spectacle of the choice, at once sad and laughable and wonderful; most of the souls only seeking to avoid their own condition in a previous life. ²⁴⁰³He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan because he would not be born of a woman; there was Thamyras becoming a nightingale; musical birds, like the swan, choosing to be men; the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax, preferring the life of a lion to that of a man, in remembrance of the injustice which was done to him in the judgment of the arms; and Agamemnon, from a like enmity to human nature, passing into an eagle. ²⁴⁰⁴About the middle was the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete, and next to her Epeus taking the nature of a workwoman; among the last was Thersites, who was changing himself into a monkey. ²⁴⁰⁵Thither, the last of all, came Odysseus, and sought the lot of a private man, which lay neglected and despised, and when he found it he went away rejoicing, and said that if he had been first instead of last, his choice would have been the same. ²⁴⁰⁶Men, too, were seen passing into animals, and wild and tame animals changing into one another. ²⁴⁰⁷When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. ²⁴⁰⁸He first of all brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness and rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water could not be retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a certain quantity—some of them drank more than was required, and he who drank forgot all things. ²⁴⁰⁹Er himself was prevented from drinking. ²⁴¹⁰When they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven divers ways, shooting like stars to their birth. ²⁴¹¹Concerning his return to the body, he only knew that awaking suddenly in the morning he found himself lying on the pyre. ²⁴¹²Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation, if we believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the heavenly way of Justice and Knowledge. ²⁴¹³So shall we pass undefiled over the river of Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves and to the Gods, and have a crown of reward and happiness both in this world and also in the millennial pilgrimage of the other. ²⁴¹⁴The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions: first, resuming an old thread which has been interrupted, Socrates assails the poets, who, now that the nature of the soul has been analyzed, are seen to be very far gone from the truth; and secondly, having shown the reality of the happiness of the just, he demands that appearance shall be restored to him, and then proceeds to prove the immortality of the soul. ²⁴¹⁵The argument, as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is supplemented by the vision of a future life. ²⁴¹⁶Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which can only be expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students of Plato. ²⁴¹⁷Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we may show—first, that his views arose naturally out of the circumstances of his age; and secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as the error which is contained in them. ²⁴¹⁸He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in his own lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws, had taken the place of an intellectual aristocracy. ²⁴¹⁹Euripides exhibited the last phase of the tragic drama, and in him Plato saw the friend and apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist of tragedy. ²⁴²⁰The old comedy was almost extinct; the new had not yet arisen. ²⁴²¹Dramatic and lyric poetry, like every other branch of Greek literature, was falling under the power of rhetoric. ²⁴²²There was no ‘second or third’ to Aeschylus and Sophocles in the generation which followed them. ²⁴²³Aristophanes, in one of his later comedies (Frogs), speaks of ‘thousands of tragedy-making prattlers,’ whose attempts at poetry he compares to the chirping of swallows; ‘their garrulity went far beyond Euripides,’—‘they appeared once upon the stage, and there was an end of them.’ ²⁴²⁴To a man of genius who had a real appreciation of the godlike Aeschylus and the noble and gentle Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their ‘theology’ (Rep.), these ‘minor poets’ must have been contemptible and intolerable. ²⁴²⁵There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of Plato than a sense of the decline and decay both in literature and in politics which marked his own age. ²⁴²⁶Nor can he have been expected to look with favour on the licence of Aristophanes, now at the end of his career, who had begun by satirizing Socrates in the Clouds, and in a similar spirit forty years afterwards had satirized the founders of ideal commonwealths in his Eccleziazusae, or Female Parliament (Laws). ²⁴²⁷There were other reasons for the antagonism of Plato to poetry. ²⁴²⁸The profession of an actor was regarded by him as a degradation of human nature, for ‘one man in his life’ cannot ‘play many parts;’ the characters which the actor performs seem to destroy his own character, and to leave nothing which can be truly called himself. ²⁴²⁹Neither can any man live his life and act it. ²⁴³⁰The actor is the slave of his art, not the master of it. ²⁴³¹Taking this view Plato is more decided in his expulsion of the dramatic than of the epic poets, though he must have known that the Greek tragedians afforded noble lessons and examples of virtue and patriotism, to which nothing in Homer can be compared. ²⁴³²But great dramatic or even great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with firmness or strength of mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally associated with a weak or dissolute character. ²⁴³³In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections. ²⁴³⁴First, he says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in the third degree removed from the truth. ²⁴³⁵His creations are not tested by rule and measure; they are only appearances. ²⁴³⁶In modern times we should say that art is not merely imitation, but rather the expression of the ideal in forms of sense. ²⁴³⁷Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his argument derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist may ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, or by the feeling of home which he introduces; and there have been modern painters who have imparted such an ideal interest to a blacksmith’s or a carpenter’s shop. ²⁴³⁸The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can give dignity and pathos to a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed (Rembrandt), to the hull of a vessel ‘going to its last home’ (Turner). ²⁴³⁹Still more would this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to be the visible embodiment of the divine. ²⁴⁴⁰Had Plato been asked whether the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was the imitation of an imitation only, would he not have been compelled to admit that something more was to be found in them than in the form of any mortal; and that the rule of proportion to which they conformed was ‘higher far than any geometry or arithmetic could express?’ ²⁴⁴¹(Statesman.) ²⁴⁴²Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express the emotional rather than the rational part of human nature. ²⁴⁴³He does not admit Aristotle’s theory, that tragedy or other serious imitations are a purgation of the passions by pity and fear; to him they appear only to afford the opportunity of indulging them. ²⁴⁴⁴Yet we must acknowledge that we may sometimes cure disordered emotions by giving expression to them; and that they often gain strength when pent up within our own breast. ²⁴⁴⁵It is not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be condemned. ²⁴⁴⁶For there may be a gratification of the higher as well as of the lower—thoughts which are too deep or too sad to be expressed by ourselves, may find an utterance in the words of poets. ²⁴⁴⁷Every one would acknowledge that there have been times when they were consoled and elevated by beautiful music or by the sublimity of architecture or by the peacefulness of nature. ²⁴⁴⁸Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier

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