republic.txt

supposes these differences in the natures of men to exist together in a
single state. Mythology supplies a figure under which the lesson may be
taught (as Protagoras says, ‘the myth is more interesting’), and also
enables Plato to touch lightly on new principles without going into
details. In this passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does
not tell us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected.
Indeed throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to fade into
the distance. We do not know whether they are to carry arms, and
whether in the fifth book they are or are not included in the
communistic regulations respecting property and marriage. Nor is there
any use in arguing strictly either from a few chance words, or from the
silence of Plato, or in drawing inferences which were beyond his
vision. Aristotle, in his criticism on the position of the lower
classes, does not perceive that the poetical creation is ‘like the air,
invulnerable,’ and cannot be penetrated by the shafts of his logic
(Pol.).

6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest
degree fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections,
are to be found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great
power of music, so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us
in modern times, when the art or science has been far more developed,
and has found the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly,
the indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed
to exercise over the body.

In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may
also observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at
the present day. With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few
only, there seems to mingle in Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence
for numbers and numerical proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger.
Intervals of sound and number are to him sacred things which have a law
of their own, not dependent on the variations of sense. They rise above
sense, and become a connecting link with the world of ideas. But it is
evident that Plato is describing what to him appears to be also a fact.
The power of a simple and characteristic melody on the impressible mind
of the Greek is more than we can easily appreciate. The effect of
national airs may bear some comparison with it. And, besides all this,
there is a confusion between the harmony of musical notes and the
harmony of soul and body, which is so potently inspired by them.

The second paradox leads up to some curious and interesting
questions—How far can the mind control the body? Is the relation
between them one of mutual antagonism or of mutual harmony? Are they
two or one, and is either of them the cause of the other? May we not at
times drop the opposition between them, and the mode of describing
them, which is so familiar to us, and yet hardly conveys any precise
meaning, and try to view this composite creature, man, in a more simple
manner? Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a
higher and a lower principle, divided by no distinct line, which at
times break asunder and take up arms against one another? Or again,
they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously in the
ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some noble aim,
to be attained not without an effort, and for which every thought and
nerve are strained. And then the body becomes the good friend or ally,
or servant or instrument of the mind. And the mind has often a
wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and weakness
and calling out a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the
intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as
to form a single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting; and
the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the
most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body through the
appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other.
There is a tendency in us which says ‘Drink.’ There is another which
says, ‘Do not drink; it is not good for you.’ And we all of us know
which is the rightful superior. We are also responsible for our health,
although into this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which
may be beyond our control. Still even in the management of health, care
and thought, continued over many years, may make us almost free agents,
if we do not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that
all human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.

We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation
which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,
depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a
definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is
afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does not
recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily
disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by
little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither
does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely
influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any
other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of
the will can be more simple or truly asserted.

7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.

(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing
that he is passing lightly over the subject.

(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he
proceeds with the construction of the State.

(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again
as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains
the reader’s interest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We may note

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOK V. I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline in
states, when Polemarchus—he was sitting a little farther from me than
Adeimantus—taking him by the coat and leaning towards him, said
something in an undertone, of which I only caught the words, ‘Shall we
let him off?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Adeimantus, raising his voice.
Whom, I said, are you not going to let off? ‘You,’ he said. Why?
‘Because we think that you are not dealing fairly with us in omitting
women and children, of whom you have slily disposed under the general
formula that friends have all things in common.’ And was I not right?
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but there are many sorts of communism or community,
and we want to know which of them is right. The company, as you have
just heard, are resolved to have a further explanation.’ Thrasymachus
said, ‘Do you think that we have come hither to dig for gold, or to
hear you discourse?’ Yes, I said; but the discourse should be of a
reasonable length. Glaucon added, ‘Yes, Socrates, and there is reason
in spending the whole of life in such discussions; but pray, without
more ado, tell us how this community is to be carried out, and how the
interval between birth and education is to be filled up.’ Well, I said,
the subject has several difficulties—What is possible? is the first
question. What is desirable? is the second. ‘Fear not,’ he replied,
‘for you are speaking among friends.’ That, I replied, is a sorry
consolation; I shall destroy my friends as well as myself. Not that I
mind a little innocent laughter; but he who kills the truth is a
murderer. ‘Then,’ said Glaucon, laughing, ‘in case you should murder us
we will acquit you beforehand, and you shall be held free from the
guilt of deceiving us.’

Socrates proceeds:—The guardians of our state are to be watch-dogs, as
we have already said. Now dogs are not divided into hes and shes—we do
not take the masculine gender out to hunt and leave the females at home
to look after their puppies. They have the same employments—the only
difference between them is that the one sex is stronger and the other
weaker. But if women are to have the same employments as men, they must
have the same education—they must be taught music and gymnastics, and
the art of war. I know that a great joke will be made of their riding
on horseback and carrying weapons; the sight of the naked old wrinkled
women showing their agility in the palaestra will certainly not be a
vision of beauty, and may be expected to become a famous jest. But we
must not mind the wits; there was a time when they might have laughed
at our present gymnastics. All is habit: people have at last found out
that the exposure is better than the concealment of the person, and now
they laugh no more. Evil only should be the subject of ridicule.

The first question is, whether women are able either wholly or
partially to share in the employments of men. And here we may be
charged with inconsistency in making the proposal at all. For we
started originally with the division of labour; and the diversity of
employments was based on the difference of natures. But is there no
difference between men and women? Nay, are they not wholly different?
THERE was the difficulty, Glaucon, which made me unwilling to speak of
family relations. However, when a man is out of his depth, whether in a
pool or in an ocean, he can only swim for his life; and we must try to
find a way of escape, if we can.

The argument is, that different natures have different uses, and the
natures of men and women are said to differ. But this is only a verbal
opposition. We do not consider that the difference may be purely
nominal and accidental; for example, a bald man and a hairy man are
opposed in a single point of view, but you cannot infer that because a
bald man is a cobbler a hairy man ought not to be a cobbler. Now why is
such an inference erroneous? Simply because the opposition between them
is partial only, like the difference between a male physician and a
female physician, not running through the whole nature, like the
difference between a physician and a carpenter. And if the difference
of the sexes is only that the one beget and the other bear children,
this does not prove that they ought to have distinct educations.
Admitting that women differ from men in capacity, do not men equally
differ from one another? Has not nature scattered all the qualities
which our citizens require indifferently up and down among the two
sexes? and even in their peculiar pursuits, are not women often, though
in some cases superior to men, ridiculously enough surpassed by them?
Women are the same in kind as men, and have the same aptitude or want
of aptitude for medicine or gymnastic or war, but in a less degree. One
woman will be a good guardian, another not; and the good must be chosen
to be the colleagues of our guardians. If however their natures are the
same, the inference is that their education must also be the same;
there is no longer anything unnatural or impossible in a woman learning
music and gymnastic. And the education which we give them will be the
very best, far superior to that of cobblers, and will train up the very
best women, and nothing can be more advantageous to the State than
this. Therefore let them strip, clothed in their chastity, and share in
the toils of war and in the defence of their country; he who laughs at
them is a fool for his pains.

The first wave is past, and the argument is compelled to admit that men
and women have common duties and pursuits. A second and greater wave is
rolling in—community of wives and children; is this either expedient or
possible? The expediency I do not doubt; I am not so sure of the
possibility. ‘Nay, I think that a considerable doubt will be
entertained on both points.’ I meant to have escaped the trouble of
proving the first, but as you have detected the little stratagem I must
even submit. Only allow me to feed my fancy like the solitary in his
walks, with a dream of what might be, and then I will return to the
question of what can be.

In the first place our rulers will enforce the laws and make new ones
where they are wanted, and their allies or ministers will obey. You, as
legislator, have already selected the men; and now you shall select the
women. After the selection has been made, they will dwell in common
houses and have their meals in common, and will be brought together by
a necessity more certain than that of mathematics. But they cannot be
allowed to live in licentiousness; that is an unholy thing, which the
rulers are determined to prevent. For the avoidance of this, holy
marriage festivals will be instituted, and their holiness will be in
proportion to their usefulness. And here, Glaucon, I should like to ask
(as I know that you are a breeder of birds and animals), Do you not
take the greatest care in the mating? ‘Certainly.’ And there is no
reason to suppose that less care is required in the marriage of human
beings. But then our rulers must be skilful physicians of the State,
for they will often need a strong dose of falsehood in order to bring
about desirable unions between their subjects. The good must be paired
with the good, and the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one
must be reared, and of the other destroyed; in this way the flock will
be preserved in prime condition. Hymeneal festivals will be celebrated
at times fixed with an eye to population, and the brides and
bridegrooms will meet at them; and by an ingenious system of lots the
rulers will contrive that the brave and the fair come together, and
that those of inferior breed are paired with inferiors—the latter will
ascribe to chance what is really the invention of the rulers. And when
children are born, the offspring of the brave and fair will be carried
to an enclosure in a certain part of the city, and there attended by
suitable nurses; the rest will be hurried away to places unknown. The
mothers will be brought to the fold and will suckle the children; care
however must be taken that none of them recognise their own offspring;
and if necessary other nurses may also be hired. The trouble of
watching and getting up at night will be transferred to attendants.
‘Then the wives of our guardians will have a fine easy time when they
are having children.’ And quite right too, I said, that they should.

The parents ought to be in the prime of life, which for a man may be
reckoned at thirty years—from twenty-five, when he has ‘passed the
point at which the speed of life is greatest,’ to fifty-five; and at
twenty years for a woman—from twenty to forty. Any one above or below
those ages who partakes in the hymeneals shall be guilty of impiety;
also every one who forms a marriage connexion at other times without
the consent of the rulers. This latter regulation applies to those who
are within the specified ages, after which they may range at will,
provided they avoid the prohibited degrees of parents and children, or
of brothers and sisters, which last, however, are not absolutely
prohibited, if a dispensation be procured. ‘But how shall we know the
degrees of affinity, when all things are common?’ The answer is, that
brothers and sisters are all such as are born seven or nine months
after the espousals, and their parents those who are then espoused, and
every one will have many children and every child many parents.

Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous
and also consistent with our entire polity. The greatest good of a
State is unity; the greatest evil, discord and distraction. And there
will be unity where there are no private pleasures or pains or
interests—where if one member suffers all the members suffer, if one
citizen is touched all are quickly sensitive; and the least hurt to the
little finger of the State runs through the whole body and vibrates to
the soul. For the true State, like an individual, is injured as a whole
when any part is affected. Every State has subjects and rulers, who in
a democracy are called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our
State they are called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in
other States are termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and
paymasters, and those who are termed comrades and colleagues in other
places, are by us called fathers and brothers. And whereas in other
States members of the same government regard one of their colleagues as
a friend and another as an enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to
another; for every citizen is connected with every other by ties of
blood, and these names and this way of speaking will have a
corresponding reality—brother, father, sister, mother, repeated from
infancy in the ears of children, will not be mere words. Then again the
citizens will have all things in common, in having common property they
will have common pleasures and pains.

Can there be strife and contention among those who are of one mind; or
lawsuits about property when men have nothing but their bodies which
they call their own; or suits about violence when every one is bound to
defend himself? The permission to strike when insulted will be an
‘antidote’ to the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. But
no younger man will strike an elder; reverence will prevent him from
laying hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the rest of the
family may retaliate. Moreover, our citizens will be rid of the lesser
evils of life; there will be no flattery of the rich, no sordid
household cares, no borrowing and not paying. Compared with the
citizens of other States, ours will be Olympic victors, and crowned
with blessings greater still—they and their children having a better
maintenance during life, and after death an honourable burial. Nor has
the happiness of the individual been sacrificed to the happiness of the
State; our Olympic victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he
has a happiness beyond that of any cobbler. At the same time, if any
conceited youth begins to dream of appropriating the State to himself,
he must be reminded that ‘half is better than the whole.’ ‘I should
certainly advise him to stay where he is when he has the promise of
such a brave life.’

But is such a community possible?—as among the animals, so also among
men; and if possible, in what way possible? About war there is no
difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted to military service.
Parents will take their children to look on at a battle, just as
potters’ boys are trained to the business by looking on at the wheel.
And to the parents themselves, as to other animals, the sight of their
young ones will prove a great incentive to bravery. Young warriors must
learn, but they must not run into danger, although a certain degree of
risk is worth incurring when the benefit is great. The young creatures
should be placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they
should have wings—that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which
they may fly away and escape. One of the first things to be done is to
teach a youth to ride.

Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen;
gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented
to the enemy. But what shall be done to the hero? First of all he shall
be crowned by all the youths in the army; secondly, he shall receive
the right hand of fellowship; and thirdly, do you think that there is
any harm in his being kissed? We have already determined that he shall
have more wives than others, in order that he may have as many children
as possible. And at a feast he shall have more to eat; we have the
authority of Homer for honouring brave men with ‘long chines,’ which is
an appropriate compliment, because meat is a very strengthening thing.
Fill the bowl then, and give the best seats and meats to the brave—may
they do them good! And he who dies in battle will be at once declared
to be of the golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of
Hesiod’s guardian angels. He shall be worshipped after death in the
manner prescribed by the oracle; and not only he, but all other
benefactors of the State who die in any other way, shall be admitted to
the same honours.

The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies? Shall Hellenes be
enslaved? No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing
under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall the dead be despoiled?
Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and
has been the ruin of many an army. There is meanness and feminine
malice in making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the
owner has fled—like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels
with the stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of
Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are
a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds
there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory—the
houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried
off. For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is
properly termed ‘discord,’ and only the second ‘war;’ and war between
Hellenes is in reality civil war—a quarrel in a family, which is ever
to be regarded as unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted
with a view to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of
those who would chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against
a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women, and
children, but only against a few guilty persons; when they are punished
peace will be restored. That is the way in which Hellenes should war
against one another—and against barbarians, as they war against one
another now.

‘But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a
State possible? I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness
of being one family—fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out to
war together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal
State.’ You are too unmerciful. The first wave and the second wave I
have hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the
third. When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to
take pity. ‘Not a whit.’

Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after
justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this ideal at
all the worse for being impracticable? Would the picture of a perfectly
beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? Can any
reality come up to the idea? Nature will not allow words to be fully
realized; but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a
measure, I think that an approach may be made to the perfection of
which I dream by one or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes
in the present constitution of States. I would reduce them to a single
one—the great wave, as I call it. Until, then, kings are philosophers,
or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor
the human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being. I know
that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive.
‘Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you with
sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to prepare an
answer.’ You got me into the scrape, I said. ‘And I was right,’ he
replied; ‘however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing,
well-meaning ally.’ Having the help of such a champion, I will do my
best to maintain my position. And first, I must explain of whom I speak
and what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and
rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how
indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn
blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning
grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are
faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new
term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is ‘honey-pale.’
Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their
affection in every form. Now here comes the point:—The philosopher too
is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity.
‘But will curiosity make a philosopher? Are the lovers of sights and
sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac
festivals, to be called philosophers?’ They are not true philosophers,
but only an imitation. ‘Then how are we to describe the true?’

You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice,
beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various
combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are
philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and
understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or
waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the
light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only.
Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify
him without revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if
he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of
something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and
there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of
opinion only. Opinion and knowledge, then, having distinct objects,
must also be distinct faculties. And by faculties I mean powers unseen
and distinguishable only by the difference in their objects, as opinion
and knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is
unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the
object of knowledge, and not-being of ignorance, and these are the
extremes, opinion must lie between them, and may be called darker than
the one and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent
matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence
and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good friend, who denies
abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many
just, whether everything he sees is not in some point of view
different—the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? Is
not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative
terms which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the
old riddle—‘A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a
bird with a stone and not a stone.’ The mind cannot be fixed on either
alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted
objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being
and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable
objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the
world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is
not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only...

The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the
community of property and of family are first maintained, and the
transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these
Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of
Book IV, which fall unperceived on the reader’s mind, as they are
supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus.
The ‘paradoxes,’ as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the
Republic will be reserved for another place; a few remarks on the
style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added.

First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of
scheme or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third
and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All
that can be said of the extravagance of Plato’s proposals is
anticipated by himself. Nothing is more admirable than the hesitation
with which he proposes the solemn text, ‘Until kings are philosophers,’
etc.; or the reaction from the sublime to the ridiculous, when Glaucon
describes the manner in which the new truth will be received by
mankind.

Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the
communistic plan. Nothing is told us of the application of communism to
the lower classes; nor is the table of prohibited degrees capable of
being made out. It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal
festival may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of
its parents, at another. Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at
the same time he does not wish to bring before us the fact that the
city would be divided into families of those born seven and nine months
after each hymeneal festival. If it were worth while to argue seriously
about such fancies, we might remark that while all the old affinities
are abolished, the newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural
or rational principle, but only upon the accident of children having
been born in the same month and year. Nor does he explain how the lots
could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together the
fairest and best. The singular expression which is employed to describe
the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet.

In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature
of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of
Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or
feelings. They are partly facetious, but also contain a germ of truth.
That science is a whole, remains a true principle of inductive as well
as of metaphysical philosophy; and the love of universal knowledge is
still the characteristic of the philosopher in modern as well as in
ancient times.

At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of contingent
matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on the Ethics
and Theology of the modern world, and which occurs here for the first
time in the history of philosophy. He did not remark that the degrees