republic.txt

children, the community of property, and the constitution of the state.
The population is divided into two classes—one of husbandmen, and the
other of warriors; from this latter is taken a third class of
counsellors and rulers of the state. But Socrates has not determined
whether the husbandmen and artists are to have a share in the
government, and whether they too are to carry arms and share in
military service or not. He certainly thinks that the women ought to
share in the education of the guardians, and to fight by their side.
The remainder of the work is filled up with digressions foreign to the
main subject, and with discussions about the education of the
guardians. In the Laws there is hardly anything but laws; not much is
said about the constitution. This, which he had intended to make more
of the ordinary type, he gradually brings round to the other or ideal
form. For with the exception of the community of women and property, he
supposes everything to be the same in both states; there is to be the
same education; the citizens of both are to live free from servile
occupations, and there are to be common meals in both. The only
difference is that in the Laws the common meals are extended to women,
and the warriors number about 5000, but in the Republic only 1000.’

(2) by Plato in the Laws (Book v.), from the side of the Republic:—

‘The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of
the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying
that “Friends have all things in common.” Whether there is now, or ever
will be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which
the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things
which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have
become common, and all men express praise and blame, and feel joy and
sorrow, on the same occasions, and the laws unite the city to the
utmost,—whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting
upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state more exalted in
virtue, or truer or better than this. Such a state, whether inhabited
by Gods or sons of Gods, will make them blessed who dwell therein; and
therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to
cling to this, and, as far as possible, to seek for one which is like
this. The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be
nearest to immortality and unity in the next degree; and after that, by
the grace of God, we will complete the third one. And we will begin by
speaking of the nature and origin of the second.’

The comparatively short work called the Statesman or Politicus in its
style and manner is more akin to the Laws, while in its idealism it
rather resembles the Republic. As far as we can judge by various
indications of language and thought, it must be later than the one and
of course earlier than the other. In both the Republic and Statesman a
close connection is maintained between Politics and Dialectic. In the
Statesman, enquiries into the principles of Method are interspersed
with discussions about Politics. The comparative advantages of the rule
of law and of a person are considered, and the decision given in favour
of a person (Arist. Pol.). But much may be said on the other side, nor
is the opposition necessary; for a person may rule by law, and law may
be so applied as to be the living voice of the legislator. As in the
Republic, there is a myth, describing, however, not a future, but a
former existence of mankind. The question is asked, ‘Whether the state
of innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own
which possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is
the preferable condition of man.’ To this question of the comparative
happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed
in the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman,
though less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range,
may justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato’s dialogues.

6. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to be the
vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express, or which
went beyond their own age. The classical writing which approaches most
nearly to the Republic of Plato is the ‘De Republica’ of Cicero; but
neither in this nor in any other of his dialogues does he rival the art
of Plato. The manners are clumsy and inferior; the hand of the
rhetorician is apparent at every turn. Yet noble sentiments are
constantly recurring: the true note of Roman patriotism—‘We Romans are
a great people’—resounds through the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero
turns away from the phenomena of the heavens to civil and political
life. He would rather not discuss the ‘two Suns’ of which all Rome was
talking, when he can converse about ‘the two nations in one’ which had
divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi. Like Socrates again,
speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume
too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is
discussing among friends the two sides of a question. He would confine
the terms King or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will
not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But
under the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the
natural superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to
the soul ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms of
government to any single one. The two portraits of the just and the
unjust, which occur in the second book of the Republic, are transferred
to the state—Philus, one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his
will the necessity of injustice as a principle of government, while the
other, Laelius, supports the opposite thesis. His views of language and
number are derived from Plato; like him he denounces the drama. He also
declares that if his life were to be twice as long he would have no
time to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated by
him word for word, though he had hardly shown himself able to ‘carry
the jest’ of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence the humorous
fancy about the animals, who ‘are so imbued with the spirit of
democracy that they make the passers-by get out of their way.’ His
description of the tyrant is imitated from Plato, but is far inferior.
The second book is historical, and claims for the Roman constitution
(which is to him the ideal) a foundation of fact such as Plato probably
intended to have given to the Republic in the Critias. His most
remarkable imitation of Plato is the adaptation of the vision of Er,
which is converted by Cicero into the ‘Somnium Scipionis’; he has
‘romanized’ the myth of the Republic, adding an argument for the
immortality of the soul taken from the Phaedrus, and some other touches
derived from the Phaedo and the Timaeus. Though a beautiful tale and
containing splendid passages, the ‘Somnium Scipionis; is very inferior
to the vision of Er; it is only a dream, and hardly allows the reader
to suppose that the writer believes in his own creation. Whether his
dialogues were framed on the model of the lost dialogues of Aristotle,
as he himself tells us, or of Plato, to which they bear many
superficial resemblances, he is still the Roman orator; he is not
conversing, but making speeches, and is never able to mould the
intractable Latin to the grace and ease of the Greek Platonic dialogue.
But if he is defective in form, much more is he inferior to the Greek
in matter; he nowhere in his philosophical writings leaves upon our
minds the impression of an original thinker.

Plato’s Republic has been said to be a church and not a state; and such
an ideal of a city in the heavens has always hovered over the Christian
world, and is embodied in St. Augustine’s ‘De Civitate Dei,’ which is
suggested by the decay and fall of the Roman Empire, much in the same
manner in which we may imagine the Republic of Plato to have been
influenced by the decline of Greek politics in the writer’s own age.
The difference is that in the time of Plato the degeneracy, though
certain, was gradual and insensible: whereas the taking of Rome by the
Goths stirred like an earthquake the age of St. Augustine. Men were
inclined to believe that the overthrow of the city was to be ascribed
to the anger felt by the old Roman deities at the neglect of their
worship. St. Augustine maintains the opposite thesis; he argues that
the destruction of the Roman Empire is due, not to the rise of
Christianity, but to the vices of Paganism. He wanders over Roman
history, and over Greek philosophy and mythology, and finds everywhere
crime, impiety and falsehood. He compares the worst parts of the
Gentile religions with the best elements of the faith of Christ. He
shows nothing of the spirit which led others of the early Christian
Fathers to recognize in the writings of the Greek philosophers the
power of the divine truth. He traces the parallel of the kingdom of
God, that is, the history of the Jews, contained in their scriptures,
and of the kingdoms of the world, which are found in gentile writers,
and pursues them both into an ideal future. It need hardly be remarked
that his use both of Greek and of Roman historians and of the sacred
writings of the Jews is wholly uncritical. The heathen mythology, the
Sybilline oracles, the myths of Plato, the dreams of Neo-Platonists are
equally regarded by him as matter of fact. He must be acknowledged to
be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best of
everything on one side and the worst of everything on the other. He has
no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek life, nor
has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise out of
the ruins of the Roman empire. He is not blind to the defects of the
Christian Church, and looks forward to a time when Christian and Pagan
shall be alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of
God shall appear...The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory of
antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with Christian
ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a slender knowledge
of the Greek literature and language. He was a great genius, and a
noble character, yet hardly capable of feeling or understanding
anything external to his own theology. Of all the ancient philosophers
he is most attracted by Plato, though he is very slightly acquainted
with his writings. He is inclined to believe that the idea of creation
in the Timaeus is derived from the narrative in Genesis; and he is
strangely taken with the coincidence (?) of Plato’s saying that ‘the
philosopher is the lover of God,’ and the words of the Book of Exodus
in which God reveals himself to Moses (Exod.) He dwells at length on
miracles performed in his own day, of which the evidence is regarded by
him as irresistible. He speaks in a very interesting manner of the
beauty and utility of nature and of the human frame, which he conceives
to afford a foretaste of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of
the body. The book is not really what to most persons the title of it
would imply, and belongs to an age which has passed away. But it
contains many fine passages and thoughts which are for all time.

The short treatise de Monarchia of Dante is by far the most remarkable
of mediaeval ideals, and bears the impress of the great genius in whom
Italy and the Middle Ages are so vividly reflected. It is the vision of
an Universal Empire, which is supposed to be the natural and necessary
government of the world, having a divine authority distinct from the
Papacy, yet coextensive with it. It is not ‘the ghost of the dead Roman
Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,’ but the legitimate heir
and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and
the beneficence of their rule. Their right to be the governors of the
world is also confirmed by the testimony of miracles, and acknowledged
by St. Paul when he appealed to Caesar, and even more emphatically by
Christ Himself, Who could not have made atonement for the sins of men
if He had not been condemned by a divinely authorized tribunal. The
necessity for the establishment of an Universal Empire is proved partly
by a priori arguments such as the unity of God and the unity of the
family or nation; partly by perversions of Scripture and history, by
false analogies of nature, by misapplied quotations from the classics,
and by odd scraps and commonplaces of logic, showing a familiar but by
no means exact knowledge of Aristotle (of Plato there is none). But a
more convincing argument still is the miserable state of the world,
which he touchingly describes. He sees no hope of happiness or peace
for mankind until all nations of the earth are comprehended in a single
empire. The whole treatise shows how deeply the idea of the Roman
Empire was fixed in the minds of his contemporaries. Not much argument
was needed to maintain the truth of a theory which to his own
contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial. He speaks, or rather
preaches, from the point of view, not of the ecclesiastic, but of the
layman, although, as a good Catholic, he is willing to acknowledge that
in certain respects the Empire must submit to the Church. The beginning
and end of all his noble reflections and of his arguments, good and
bad, is the aspiration ‘that in this little plot of earth belonging to
mortal man life may pass in freedom and peace.’ So inextricably is his
vision of the future bound up with the beliefs and circumstances of his
own age.

The ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More is a surprising monument of his genius,
and shows a reach of thought far beyond his contemporaries. The book
was written by him at the age of about 34 or 35, and is full of the
generous sentiments of youth. He brings the light of Plato to bear upon
the miserable state of his own country. Living not long after the Wars
of the Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is
indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the
nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities
caused by war. To the eye of More the whole world was in dissolution
and decay; and side by side with the misery and oppression which he has
described in the First Book of the Utopia, he places in the Second Book
the ideal state which by the help of Plato he had constructed. The
times were full of stir and intellectual interest. The distant murmur
of the Reformation was beginning to be heard. To minds like More’s,
Greek literature was a revelation: there had arisen an art of
interpretation, and the New Testament was beginning to be understood as
it had never been before, and has not often been since, in its natural
sense. The life there depicted appeared to him wholly unlike that of
Christian commonwealths, in which ‘he saw nothing but a certain
conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name
and title of the Commonwealth.’ He thought that Christ, like Plato,
‘instituted all things common,’ for which reason, he tells us, the
citizens of Utopia were the more willing to receive his doctrines
(‘Howbeit, I think this was no small help and furtherance in the
matter, that they heard us say that Christ instituted among his, all
things common, and that the same community doth yet remain in the
rightest Christian communities’ (Utopia).). The community of property
is a fixed idea with him, though he is aware of the arguments which may
be urged on the other side (‘These things (I say), when I consider with
myself, I hold well with Plato, and do nothing marvel that he would
make no laws for them that refused those laws, whereby all men should
have and enjoy equal portions of riches and commodities. For the wise
men did easily foresee this to be the one and only way to the wealth of
a community, if equality of all things should be brought in and
established’ (Utopia).). We wonder how in the reign of Henry VIII,
though veiled in another language and published in a foreign country,
such speculations could have been endured.

He is gifted with far greater dramatic invention than any one who
succeeded him, with the exception of Swift. In the art of feigning he
is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting from a small portion
of fact, he founds his tale with admirable skill on a few lines in the
Latin narrative of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. He is very precise
about dates and facts, and has the power of making us believe that the
narrator of the tale must have been an eyewitness. We are fairly
puzzled by his manner of mixing up real and imaginary persons; his boy
John Clement and Peter Giles, citizen of Antwerp, with whom he disputes
about the precise words which are supposed to have been used by the
(imaginary) Portuguese traveller, Raphael Hythloday. ‘I have the more
cause,’ says Hythloday, ‘to fear that my words shall not be believed,
for that I know how difficultly and hardly I myself would have believed
another man telling the same, if I had not myself seen it with mine own
eyes.’ Or again: ‘If you had been with me in Utopia, and had presently
seen their fashions and laws as I did which lived there five years and
more, and would never have come thence, but only to make the new land
known here,’ etc. More greatly regrets that he forgot to ask Hythloday
in what part of the world Utopia is situated; he ‘would have spent no
small sum of money rather than it should have escaped him,’ and he begs
Peter Giles to see Hythloday or write to him and obtain an answer to
the question. After this we are not surprised to hear that a Professor
of Divinity (perhaps ‘a late famous vicar of Croydon in Surrey,’ as the
translator thinks) is desirous of being sent thither as a missionary by
the High Bishop, ‘yea, and that he may himself be made Bishop of
Utopia, nothing doubting that he must obtain this Bishopric with suit;
and he counteth that a godly suit which proceedeth not of the desire of
honour or lucre, but only of a godly zeal.’ The design may have failed
through the disappearance of Hythloday, concerning whom we have ‘very
uncertain news’ after his departure. There is no doubt, however, that
he had told More and Giles the exact situation of the island, but
unfortunately at the same moment More’s attention, as he is reminded in
a letter from Giles, was drawn off by a servant, and one of the company
from a cold caught on shipboard coughed so loud as to prevent Giles
from hearing. And ‘the secret has perished’ with him; to this day the
place of Utopia remains unknown.

The words of Phaedrus, ‘O Socrates, you can easily invent Egyptians or
anything,’ are recalled to our mind as we read this lifelike fiction.
Yet the greater merit of the work is not the admirable art, but the
originality of thought. More is as free as Plato from the prejudices of
his age, and far more tolerant. The Utopians do not allow him who
believes not in the immortality of the soul to share in the
administration of the state (Laws), ‘howbeit they put him to no
punishment, because they be persuaded that it is in no man’s power to
believe what he list’; and ‘no man is to be blamed for reasoning in
support of his own religion (‘One of our company in my presence was
sharply punished. He, as soon as he was baptised, began, against our
wills, with more earnest affection than wisdom, to reason of Christ’s
religion, and began to wax so hot in his matter, that he did not only
prefer our religion before all other, but also did despise and condemn
all other, calling them profane, and the followers of them wicked and
devilish, and the children of everlasting damnation. When he had thus
long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, accused him, and
condemned him into exile, not as a despiser of religion, but as a
seditious person and a raiser up of dissension among the people’).’ In
the public services ‘no prayers be used, but such as every man may
boldly pronounce without giving offence to any sect.’ He says
significantly, ‘There be that give worship to a man that was once of
excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as God, but also the
chiefest and highest God. But the most and the wisest part, rejecting
all these, believe that there is a certain godly power unknown, far
above the capacity and reach of man’s wit, dispersed throughout all the
world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power. Him they call the
Father of all. To Him alone they attribute the beginnings, the
increasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things.
Neither give they any divine honours to any other than him.’ So far was
More from sharing the popular beliefs of his time. Yet at the end he
reminds us that he does not in all respects agree with the customs and
opinions of the Utopians which he describes. And we should let him have
the benefit of this saving clause, and not rudely withdraw the veil
behind which he has been pleased to conceal himself.

Nor is he less in advance of popular opinion in his political and moral
speculations. He would like to bring military glory into contempt; he
would set all sorts of idle people to profitable occupation, including
in the same class, priests, women, noblemen, gentlemen, and ‘sturdy and
valiant beggars,’ that the labour of all may be reduced to six hours a
day. His dislike of capital punishment, and plans for the reformation
of offenders; his detestation of priests and lawyers (Compare his
satirical observation: ‘They (the Utopians) have priests of exceeding
holiness, and therefore very few.); his remark that ‘although every one
may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves and cruel man-eaters, it is not
easy to find states that are well and wisely governed,’ are curiously
at variance with the notions of his age and indeed with his own life.
There are many points in which he shows a modern feeling and a
prophetic insight like Plato. He is a sanitary reformer; he maintains
that civilized states have a right to the soil of waste countries; he
is inclined to the opinion which places happiness in virtuous
pleasures, but herein, as he thinks, not disagreeing from those other
philosophers who define virtue to be a life according to nature. He
extends the idea of happiness so as to include the happiness of others;
and he argues ingeniously, ‘All men agree that we ought to make others
happy; but if others, how much more ourselves!’ And still he thinks
that there may be a more excellent way, but to this no man’s reason can
attain unless heaven should inspire him with a higher truth. His
ceremonies before marriage; his humane proposal that war should be
carried on by assassinating the leaders of the enemy, may be compared
to some of the paradoxes of Plato. He has a charming fancy, like the
affinities of Greeks and barbarians in the Timaeus, that the Utopians
learnt the language of the Greeks with the more readiness because they
were originally of the same race with them. He is penetrated with the
spirit of Plato, and quotes or adapts many thoughts both from the
Republic and from the Timaeus. He prefers public duties to private, and
is somewhat impatient of the importunity of relations. His citizens
have no silver or gold of their own, but are ready enough to pay them
to their mercenaries. There is nothing of which he is more contemptuous
than the love of money. Gold is used for fetters of criminals, and
diamonds and pearls for children’s necklaces (When the ambassadors came
arrayed in gold and peacocks’ feathers ‘to the eyes of all the Utopians
except very few, which had been in other countries for some reasonable
cause, all that gorgeousness of apparel seemed shameful and
reproachful. In so much that they most reverently saluted the vilest
and most abject of them for lords—passing over the ambassadors
themselves without any honour, judging them by their wearing of golden
chains to be bondmen. You should have seen children also, that had cast
away their pearls and precious stones, when they saw the like sticking
upon the ambassadors’ caps, dig and push their mothers under the sides,
saying thus to them—“Look, though he were a little child still.” But
the mother; yea and that also in good earnest: “Peace, son,” saith she,
“I think he be some of the ambassadors’ fools.”’)

Like Plato he is full of satirical reflections on governments and
princes; on the state of the world and of knowledge. The hero of his
discourse (Hythloday) is very unwilling to become a minister of state,
considering that he would lose his independence and his advice would
never be heeded (Compare an exquisite passage, of which the conclusion
is as follows: ‘And verily it is naturally given...suppressed and
ended.’) He ridicules the new logic of his time; the Utopians could
never be made to understand the doctrine of Second Intentions (‘For
they have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions,
amplifications, and suppositions, very wittily invented in the small
Logicals, which here our children in every place do learn. Furthermore,
they were never yet able to find out the second intentions; insomuch
that none of them all could ever see man himself in common, as they
call him, though he be (as you know) bigger than was ever any giant,
yea, and pointed to of us even with our finger.’) He is very severe on
the sports of the gentry; the Utopians count ‘hunting the lowest, the
vilest, and the most abject part of butchery.’ He quotes the words of
the Republic in which the philosopher is described ‘standing out of the
way under a wall until the driving storm of sleet and rain be
overpast,’ which admit of a singular application to More’s own fate;
although, writing twenty years before (about the year 1514), he can
hardly be supposed to have foreseen this. There is no touch of satire
which strikes deeper than his quiet remark that the greater part of the
precepts of Christ are more at variance with the lives of ordinary
Christians than the discourse of Utopia (‘And yet the most part of them
is more dissident from the manners of the world now a days, than my
communication was. But preachers, sly and wily men, following your
counsel (as I suppose) because they saw men evil-willing to frame their
manners to Christ’s rule, they have wrested and wried his doctrine,
and, like a rule of lead, have applied it to men’s manners, that by
some means at the least way, they might agree together.’)

The ‘New Atlantis’ is only a fragment, and far inferior in merit to the
‘Utopia.’ The work is full of ingenuity, but wanting in creative fancy,
and by no means impresses the reader with a sense of credibility. In
some places Lord Bacon is characteristically different from Sir Thomas
More, as, for example, in the external state which he attributes to the
governor of Solomon’s House, whose dress he minutely describes, while
to Sir Thomas More such trappings appear simple ridiculous. Yet, after
this programme of dress, Bacon adds the beautiful trait, ‘that he had a
look as though he pitied men.’ Several things are borrowed by him from
the Timaeus; but he has injured the unity of style by adding thoughts
and passages which are taken from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The ‘City of the Sun’ written by Campanella (1568-1639), a Dominican
friar, several years after the ‘New Atlantis’ of Bacon, has many
resemblances to the Republic of Plato. The citizens have wives and
children in common; their marriages are of the same temporary sort, and
are arranged by the magistrates from time to time. They do not,
however, adopt his system of lots, but bring together the best natures,
male and female, ‘according to philosophical rules.’ The infants until
two years of age are brought up by their mothers in public temples; and
since individuals for the most part educate their children badly, at
the beginning of their third year they are committed to the care of the
State, and are taught at first, not out of books, but from paintings of
all kinds, which are emblazoned on the walls of the city. The city has
six interior circuits of walls, and an outer wall which is the seventh.
On this outer wall are painted the figures of legislators and
philosophers, and on each of the interior walls the symbols or forms of
some one of the sciences are delineated. The women are, for the most
part, trained, like the men, in warlike and other exercises; but they
have two special occupations of their own. After a battle, they and the
boys soothe and relieve the wounded warriors; also they encourage them
with embraces and pleasant words. Some elements of the Christian or
Catholic religion are preserved among them. The life of the Apostles is
greatly admired by this people because they had all things in common;
and the short prayer which Jesus Christ taught men is used in their
worship. It is a duty of the chief magistrates to pardon sins, and
therefore the whole people make secret confession of them to the
magistrates, and they to their chief, who is a sort of Rector
Metaphysicus; and by this means he is well informed of all that is
going on in the minds of men. After confession, absolution is granted
to the citizens collectively, but no one is mentioned by name. There
also exists among them a practice of perpetual prayer, performed by a
succession of priests, who change every hour. Their religion is a
worship of God in Trinity, that is of Wisdom, Love and Power, but
without any distinction of persons. They behold in the sun the
reflection of His glory; mere graven images they reject, refusing to
fall under the ‘tyranny’ of idolatry.

Many details are given about their customs of eating and drinking,
about their mode of dressing, their employments, their wars. Campanella
looks forward to a new mode of education, which is to be a study of
nature, and not of Aristotle. He would not have his citizens waste
their time in the consideration of what he calls ‘the dead signs of
things.’ He remarks that he who knows one science only, does not really
know that one any more than the rest, and insists strongly on the
necessity of a variety of knowledge. More scholars are turned out in
the City of the Sun in one year than by contemporary methods in ten or
fifteen. He evidently believes, like Bacon, that henceforward natural
science will play a great part in education, a hope which seems hardly
to have been realized, either in our own or in any former age; at any
rate the fulfilment of it has been long deferred.

There is a good deal of ingenuity and even originality in this work,
and a most enlightened spirit pervades it. But it has little or no
charm of style, and falls very far short of the ‘New Atlantis’ of
Bacon, and still more of the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More. It is full of
inconsistencies, and though borrowed from Plato, shows but a
superficial acquaintance with his writings. It is a work such as one
might expect to have been written by a philosopher and man of genius
who was also a friar, and who had spent twenty-seven years of his life
in a prison of the Inquisition. The most interesting feature of the
book, common to Plato and Sir Thomas More, is the deep feeling which is
shown by the writer, of the misery and ignorance prevailing among the
lower classes in his own time. Campanella takes note of Aristotle’s
answer to Plato’s community of property, that in a society where all
things are common, no individual would have any motive to work (Arist.
Pol.): he replies, that his citizens being happy and contented in
themselves (they are required to work only four hours a day), will have
greater regard for their fellows than exists among men at present. He
thinks, like Plato, that if he abolishes private feelings and
interests, a great public feeling will take their place.

Other writings on ideal states, such as the ‘Oceana’ of Harrington, in
which the Lord Archon, meaning Cromwell, is described, not as he was,
but as he ought to have been; or the ‘Argenis’ of Barclay, which is an
historical allegory of his own time, are too unlike Plato to be worth
mentioning. More interesting than either of these, and far more
Platonic in style and thought, is Sir John Eliot’s ‘Monarchy of Man,’
in which the prisoner of the Tower, no longer able ‘to be a politician
in the land of his birth,’ turns away from politics to view ‘that other
city which is within him,’ and finds on the very threshold of the grave
that the secret of human happiness is the mastery of self. The change
of government in the time of the English Commonwealth set men thinking
about first principles, and gave rise to many works of this class...The
great original genius of Swift owes nothing to Plato; nor is there any
trace in the conversation or in the works of Dr. Johnson of any
acquaintance with his writings. He probably would have refuted Plato
without reading him, in the same fashion in which he supposed himself
to have refuted Bishop Berkeley’s theory of the non-existence of
matter. If we except the so-called English Platonists, or rather
Neo-Platonists, who never understood their master, and the writings of
Coleridge, who was to some extent a kindred spirit, Plato has left no
permanent impression on English literature.

7. Human life and conduct are affected by ideals in the same way that
they are affected by the examples of eminent men. Neither the one nor
the other are immediately applicable to practice, but there is a virtue
flowing from them which tends to raise individuals above the common
routine of society or trade, and to elevate States above the mere
interests of commerce or the necessities of self-defence. Like the
ideals of art they are partly framed by the omission of particulars;
they require to be viewed at a certain distance, and are apt to fade
away if we attempt to approach them. They gain an imaginary
distinctness when embodied in a State or in a system of philosophy, but
they still remain the visions of ‘a world unrealized.’ More striking
and obvious to the ordinary mind are the examples of great men, who
have served their own generation and are remembered in another. Even in
our own family circle there may have been some one, a woman, or even a
child, in whose face has shone forth a goodness more than human. The
ideal then approaches nearer to us, and we fondly cling to it. The
ideal of the past, whether of our own past lives or of former states of
society, has a singular fascination for the minds of many. Too late we
learn that such ideals cannot be recalled, though the recollection of
them may have a humanizing influence on other times. But the
abstractions of philosophy are to most persons cold and vacant; they
give light without warmth; they are like the full moon in the heavens
when there are no stars appearing. Men cannot live by thought alone;
the world of sense is always breaking in upon them. They are for the
most part confined to a corner of earth, and see but a little way
beyond their own home or place of abode; they ‘do not lift up their
eyes to the hills’; they are not awake when the dawn appears. But in
Plato we have reached a height from which a man may look into the
distance and behold the future of the world and of philosophy. The
ideal of the State and of the life of the philosopher; the ideal of an
education continuing through life and extending equally to both sexes;
the ideal of the unity and correlation of knowledge; the faith in good
and immortality—are the vacant forms of light on which Plato is seeking
to fix the eye of mankind.

8. Two other ideals, which never appeared above the horizon in Greek
Philosophy, float before the minds of men in our own day: one seen more
clearly than formerly, as though each year and each generation brought
us nearer to some great change; the other almost in the same degree
retiring from view behind the laws of nature, as if oppressed by them,
but still remaining a silent hope of we know not what hidden in the
heart of man. The first ideal is the future of the human race in this
world; the second the future of the individual in another. The first is
the more perfect realization of our own present life; the second, the
abnegation of it: the one, limited by experience, the other,
transcending it. Both of them have been and are powerful motives of
action; there are a few in whom they have taken the place of all
earthly interests. The hope of a future for the human race at first
sight seems to be the more disinterested, the hope of individual
existence the more egotistical, of the two motives. But when men have
learned to resolve their hope of a future either for themselves or for
the world into the will of God—‘not my will but Thine,’ the difference
between them falls away; and they may be allowed to make either of them
the basis of their lives, according to their own individual character
or temperament. There is as much faith in the willingness to work for
an unseen future in this world as in another. Neither is it
inconceivable that some rare nature may feel his duty to another
generation, or to another century, almost as strongly as to his own, or
that living always in the presence of God, he may realize another world
as vividly as he does this.

The greatest of all ideals may, or rather must be conceived by us under
similitudes derived from human qualities; although sometimes, like the
Jewish prophets, we may dash away these figures of speech and describe
the nature of God only in negatives. These again by degrees acquire a
positive meaning. It would be well, if when meditating on the higher
truths either of philosophy or religion, we sometimes substituted one
form of expression for another, lest through the necessities of
language we should become the slaves of mere words.

There is a third ideal, not the same, but akin to these, which has a
place in the home and heart of every believer in the religion of
Christ, and in which men seem to find a nearer and more familiar truth,
the Divine man, the Son of Man, the Saviour of mankind, Who is the
first-born and head of the whole family in heaven and earth, in Whom
the Divine and human, that which is without and that which is within
the range of our earthly faculties, are indissolubly united. Neither is
this divine form of goodness wholly separable from the ideal of the
Christian Church, which is said in the New Testament to be ‘His body,’
or at variance with those other images of good which Plato sets before
us. We see Him in a figure only, and of figures of speech we select but
a few, and those the simplest, to be the expression of Him. We behold
Him in a picture, but He is not there. We gather up the fragments of
His discourses, but neither do they represent Him as He truly was. His
dwelling is neither in heaven nor earth, but in the heart of man. This
is that image which Plato saw dimly in the distance, which, when
existing among men, he called, in the language of Homer, ‘the likeness
of God,’ the likeness of a nature which in all ages men have felt to be
greater and better than themselves, and which in endless forms, whether
derived from Scripture or nature, from the witness of history or from
the human heart, regarded as a person or not as a person, with or
without parts or passions, existing in space or not in space, is and
will always continue to be to mankind the Idea of Good.




 THE REPUBLIC.




 PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.


Socrates, who is the narrator.

Glaucon.

Adeimantus.

Polemarchus.

Cephalus.

Thrasymachus.

Cleitophon.

And others who are mute auditors.

The scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus; and the
whole dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took
place to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are
introduced in the Timaeus.




 BOOK I.


I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston,
that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian
Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would
celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the
procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally,
if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the
spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant
Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a
distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to
run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak
behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.

I turned round, and asked him where his master was.

There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.

Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus
appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son
of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.

Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your
companion are already on your way to the city.

You are not far wrong, I said.

But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?

Of course.

And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to
remain where you are.

May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to
let us go?

But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.

Certainly not, replied Glaucon.

Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.

Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in
honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?

With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches
and pass them one to another during the race?

Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will be
celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon
after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young
men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.

Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.

Very good, I replied.

Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found
his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the
Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of
Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I
had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was
seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had
been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the
room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He
saluted me eagerly, and then he said:—

You don’t come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were
still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at
my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come
oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the
pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and
charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house
your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends,
and you will be quite at home with us.

I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus,
than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have
gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to
enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have
arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’—Is
life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my
age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says;
and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is—I cannot
eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away:
there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer
life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by
relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age
is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that
which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too
being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But
this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.
How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,—are you still the man
you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of
which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious
master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem
as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly
old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of
one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these
regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed
to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and
tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the
pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and
age are equally a burden.

I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go
on—Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general
are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age
sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but
because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is
something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I
might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was
abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but
because he was an Athenian: ‘If you had been a native of my country or
I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.’ And to those who are
not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for
to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad
rich man ever have peace with himself.

May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part
inherited or acquired by you?

Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art
of making money I have been midway between my father and grandfather:
for my grandfather, whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of
his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I possess now;
but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at
present: and I shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less
but a little more than I received.

That was why I asked you the question, I replied, because I see that
you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of
those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired
them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation
of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems,
or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for
the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And
hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but
the praises of wealth.

That is true, he said.

Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?—What do you
consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your
wealth?

One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others.
For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be
near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had
before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted
there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he
is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the
weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other
place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms
crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what
wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his
transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in
his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him
who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is
the kind nurse of his age:

‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and
holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his
journey;—hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.’

How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not
say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to
deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally;
and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension
about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to
this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and
therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many
advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my
opinion the greatest.

Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is
it?—to speak the truth and to pay your debts—no more than this? And
even to this are there not exceptions? Suppose that a friend when in
his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them when he
is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one
would say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more
than they would say that I ought always to speak the truth to one who
is in his condition.

You are quite right, he replied.

But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a
correct definition of justice.

Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said
Polemarchus interposing.

I fear, said Cephalus, that I must go now, for I have to look after the
sacrifices, and I hand over the argument to Polemarchus and the
company.

Is not Polemarchus your heir? I said.

To be sure, he answered, and went away laughing to the sacrifices.

Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what did Simonides say, and
according to you truly say, about justice?

He said that the repayment of a debt is just, and in saying so he
appears to me to be right.

I should be sorry to doubt the word of such a wise and inspired man,
but his meaning, though probably clear to you, is the reverse of clear
to me. For he certainly does not mean, as we were just now saying, that
I ought to return a deposit of arms or of anything else to one who asks
for it when he is not in his right senses; and yet a deposit cannot be
denied to be a debt.

True.

Then when the person who asks me is not in his right mind I am by no
means to make the return?

Certainly not.

When Simonides said that the repayment of a debt was justice, he did
not mean to include that case?

Certainly not; for he thinks that a friend ought always to do good to a
friend and never evil.

You mean that the return of a deposit of gold which is to the injury of
the receiver, if the two parties are friends, is not the repayment of a
debt,—that is what you would imagine him to say?

Yes.

And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them?

To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe them, and an
enemy, as I take it, owes to an enemy that which is due or proper to
him—that is to say, evil.

Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would seem to have spoken
darkly of the nature of justice; for he really meant to say that
justice is the giving to each man what is proper to him, and this he
termed a debt.

That must have been his meaning, he said.

By heaven! I replied; and if we asked him what due or proper thing is
given by medicine, and to whom, what answer do you think that he would
make to us?

He would surely reply that medicine gives drugs and meat and drink to
human bodies.

And what due or proper thing is given by cookery, and to what?

Seasoning to food.

And what is that which justice gives, and to whom?

If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of the
preceding instances, then justice is the art which gives good to
friends and evil to enemies.

That is his meaning then?

I think so.

And who is best able to do good to his friends and evil to his enemies
in time of sickness?

The physician.

Or when they are on a voyage, amid the perils of the sea?

The pilot.

And in what sort of actions or with a view to what result is the just
man most able to do harm to his enemy and good to his friend?

In going to war against the one and in making alliances with the other.

But when a man is well, my dear Polemarchus, there is no need of a
physician?

No.

And he who is not on a voyage has no need of a pilot?

No.

Then in time of peace justice will be of no use?

I am very far from thinking so.

You think that justice may be of use in peace as well as in war?

Yes.

Like husbandry for the acquisition of corn?

Yes.

Or like shoemaking for the acquisition of shoes,—that is what you mean?

Yes.

And what similar use or power of acquisition has justice in time of
peace?

In contracts, Socrates, justice is of use.

And by contracts you mean partnerships?

Exactly.

But is the just man or the skilful player a more useful and better
partner at a game of draughts?

The skilful player.

And in the laying of bricks and stones is the just man a more useful or
better partner than the builder?

Quite the reverse.

Then in what sort of partnership is the just man a better partner than
the harp-player, as in playing the harp the harp-player is certainly a
better partner than the just man?

In a money partnership.

Yes, Polemarchus, but surely not in the use of money; for you do not
want a just man to be your counsellor in the purchase or sale of a
horse; a man who is knowing about horses would be better for that,
would he not?

Certainly.

And when you want to buy a ship, the shipwright or the pilot would be
better?

True.

Then what is that joint use of silver or gold in which the just man is
to be preferred?

When you want a deposit to be kept safely.

You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie?

Precisely.

That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless?

That is the inference.

And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then justice is useful
to the individual and to the state; but when you want to use it, then
the art of the vine-dresser?

Clearly.