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Title: The Republic


Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Release date: October 1, 1998 [eBook #1497]
                Most recently updated: September 11, 2021

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REPUBLIC ***



THE REPUBLIC

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Note: See also “The Republic” by Plato, Jowett, eBook #150


Contents

 INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
 THE REPUBLIC.
 PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.
 BOOK I.
 BOOK II.
 BOOK III.
 BOOK IV.
 BOOK V.
 BOOK VI.
 BOOK VII.
 BOOK VIII.
 BOOK IX.
 BOOK X.




 INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.


The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of
the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer
approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;
the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of
the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other
Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same
perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or
contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not
of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or
a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in
any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and
speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is
the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here
philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI,
VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks,
like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of
knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the bare
outline or form from the substance of truth; and both of them had to be
content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He
was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in
him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future
knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which
have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based
upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition,
the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the
distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,
between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the
division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible
elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
unnecessary—these and other great forms of thought are all of them to
be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato.
The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on
philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and
things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.;
Cratyl. 435, 436 ff), although he has not always avoided the confusion
of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up truth
in logical formulae,—logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the
science which he imagines to ‘contemplate all truth and all existence’
is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to
have discovered (Soph. Elenchi, 33. 18).

Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a
still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of
Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of
the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in
importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as
a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth
century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the
wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be
founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood
in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the poems
of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. Tim. 25 C),
intended to represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge
from the noble commencement of the Timaeus, from the fragment of the
Critias itself, and from the third book of the Laws, in what manner
Plato would have treated this high argument. We can only guess why the
great design was abandoned; perhaps because Plato became sensible of
some incongruity in a fictitious history, or because he had lost his
interest in it, or because advancing years forbade the completion of
it; and we may please ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary
narrative ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself
sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws,
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!’ or, more probably, attributing the
victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo
and Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).

Again, Plato may be regarded as the ‘captain’ (‘arhchegoz’) or leader
of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the
original of Cicero’s De Republica, of St. Augustine’s City of God, of
the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary
States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which
Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
Politics has been little recognised, and the recognition is the more
necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle.
In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced, not only in
the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers
like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a
truth higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been
enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato
has had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first
treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,
Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like
Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is
profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church
he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of
Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated
at second-hand’ (Symp. 215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of
men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the
father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many
of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the
unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes,
have been anticipated in a dream by him.

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

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

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

The second title, ‘Concerning Justice,’ is not the one by which the
Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and,
like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may therefore
be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked
whether the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the
construction of the State is the principal argument of the work. The
answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same
truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State is the
visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society.
The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of
the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In
Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the
idea. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is
within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; ‘the house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ is reduced to the
proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image,
justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the
whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed, the
conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or
different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the
individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and
punishments in another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which
common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is
based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is
reflected both in the institutions of states and in motions of the
heavenly bodies (cp. Tim. 47). The Timaeus, which takes up the
political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly
occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet contains
many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over the State,
over nature, and over man.

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

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

It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has
been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the
conversation was held (the year 411 B.C. which is proposed by him will
do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology (cp.
Rep., Symp., 193 A, etc.), only aims at general probability. Whether
all the persons mentioned in the Republic could ever have met at any
one time is not a difficulty which would have occurred to an Athenian
reading the work forty years later, or to Plato himself at the time of
writing (any more than to Shakespeare respecting one of his own
dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now. Yet this may be a
question having no answer ‘which is still worth asking,’ because the
investigation shows that we cannot argue historically from the dates in
Plato; it would be useless therefore to waste time in inventing
far-fetched reconcilements of them in order to avoid chronological
difficulties, such, for example, as the conjecture of C.F. Hermann,
that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of
Plato (cp. Apol. 34 A), or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato
intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of
his Dialogues were written.

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

Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately engaged in
offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost
done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He
feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to
visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the
consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the
tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his
indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of
character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because
their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges
that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to
dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by
Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed
upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young
and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the
question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the
expression of it? The moderation with which old age is pictured by
Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic,
not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the
exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is
described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest
possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. 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. Lysimachus in the Laches).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness.’ (King John. Act. iv. Sc.
2.)


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

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

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

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

‘And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine the
unjust man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes and easily
correcting them; having gifts of money, speech, strength—the greatest
villain bearing the highest character: and at his side let us place the
just in his nobleness and simplicity—being, not seeming—without name or
reward—clothed in his justice only—the best of men who is thought to be
the worst, and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would
rather put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice—they