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will tell you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will
have his eyes put out, and will at last be crucified (literally
impaled)—and all this because he ought to have preferred seeming to
being. How different is the case of the unjust who clings to appearance
as the true reality! His high character makes him a ruler; he can marry
where he likes, trade where he likes, help his friends and hurt his
enemies; having got rich by dishonesty he can worship the gods better,
and will therefore be more loved by them than the just.’

I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the already
unequal fray. He considered that the most important point of all had
been omitted:—‘Men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards;
parents and guardians make reputation the incentive to virtue. And
other advantages are promised by them of a more solid kind, such as
wealthy marriages and high offices. There are the pictures in Homer and
Hesiod of fat sheep and heavy fleeces, rich corn-fields and trees
toppling with fruit, which the gods provide in this life for the just.
And the Orphic poets add a similar picture of another. The heroes of
Musaeus and Eumolpus lie on couches at a festival, with garlands on
their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a paradise of immortal
drunkenness. Some go further, and speak of a fair posterity in the
third and fourth generation. But the wicked they bury in a slough and
make them carry water in a sieve: and in this life they attribute to
them the infamy which Glaucon was assuming to be the lot of the just
who are supposed to be unjust.

‘Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry and
prose:—“Virtue,” as Hesiod says, “is honourable but difficult, vice is
easy and profitable.” You may often see the wicked in great prosperity
and the righteous afflicted by the will of heaven. And mendicant
prophets knock at rich men’s doors, promising to atone for the sins of
themselves or their fathers in an easy fashion with sacrifices and
festive games, or with charms and invocations to get rid of an enemy
good or bad by divine help and at a small charge;—they appeal to books
professing to be written by Musaeus and Orpheus, and carry away the
minds of whole cities, and promise to “get souls out of purgatory;” and
if we refuse to listen to them, no one knows what will happen to us.

‘When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what will be his
conclusion? “Will he,” in the language of Pindar, “make justice his
high tower, or fortify himself with crooked deceit?” Justice, he
reflects, without the appearance of justice, is misery and ruin;
injustice has the promise of a glorious life. Appearance is master of
truth and lord of happiness. To appearance then I will turn,—I will put
on the show of virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. I
hear some one saying that “wickedness is not easily concealed,” to
which I reply that “nothing great is easy.” Union and force and
rhetoric will do much; and if men say that they cannot prevail over the
gods, still how do we know that there are gods? Only from the poets,
who acknowledge that they may be appeased by sacrifices. Then why not
sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin? For if the righteous are
only unpunished, still they have no further reward, while the wicked
may be unpunished and have the pleasure of sinning too. But what of the
world below? Nay, says the argument, there are atoning powers who will
set that matter right, as the poets, who are the sons of the gods, tell
us; and this is confirmed by the authority of the State.

‘How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice? Add good
manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of both
worlds. Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from smiling
at the praises of justice? Even if a man knows the better part he will
not be angry with others; for he knows also that more than human virtue
is needed to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is
incapable of injustice.

‘The origin of the evil is that all men from the beginning, heroes,
poets, instructors of youth, have always asserted “the temporal
dispensation,” the honours and profits of justice. Had we been taught
in early youth the power of justice and injustice inherent in the soul,
and unseen by any human or divine eye, we should not have needed others
to be our guardians, but every one would have been the guardian of
himself. This is what I want you to show, Socrates;—other men use
arguments which rather tend to strengthen the position of Thrasymachus
that “might is right;” but from you I expect better things. And please,
as Glaucon said, to exclude reputation; let the just be thought unjust
and the unjust just, and do you still prove to us the superiority of
justice’...

The thesis, which for the sake of argument has been maintained by
Glaucon, is the converse of that of Thrasymachus—not right is the
interest of the stronger, but right is the necessity of the weaker.
Starting from the same premises he carries the analysis of society a
step further back;—might is still right, but the might is the weakness
of the many combined against the strength of the few.

There have been theories in modern as well as in ancient times which
have a family likeness to the speculations of Glaucon; e.g. that power
is the foundation of right; or that a monarch has a divine right to
govern well or ill; or that virtue is self-love or the love of power;
or that war is the natural state of man; or that private vices are
public benefits. All such theories have a kind of plausibility from
their partial agreement with experience. For human nature oscillates
between good and evil, and the motives of actions and the origin of
institutions may be explained to a certain extent on either hypothesis
according to the character or point of view of a particular thinker.
The obligation of maintaining authority under all circumstances and
sometimes by rather questionable means is felt strongly and has become
a sort of instinct among civilized men. The divine right of kings, or
more generally of governments, is one of the forms under which this
natural feeling is expressed. Nor again is there any evil which has not
some accompaniment of good or pleasure; nor any good which is free from
some alloy of evil; nor any noble or generous thought which may not be
attended by a shadow or the ghost of a shadow of self-interest or of
self-love. We know that all human actions are imperfect; but we do not
therefore attribute them to the worse rather than to the better motive
or principle. Such a philosophy is both foolish and false, like that
opinion of the clever rogue who assumes all other men to be like
himself. And theories of this sort do not represent the real nature of
the State, which is based on a vague sense of right gradually corrected
and enlarged by custom and law (although capable also of perversion),
any more than they describe the origin of society, which is to be
sought in the family and in the social and religious feelings of man.
Nor do they represent the average character of individuals, which
cannot be explained simply on a theory of evil, but has always a
counteracting element of good. And as men become better such theories
appear more and more untruthful to them, because they are more
conscious of their own disinterestedness. A little experience may make
a man a cynic; a great deal will bring him back to a truer and kindlier
view of the mixed nature of himself and his fellow men.

The two brothers ask Socrates to prove to them that the just is happy
when they have taken from him all that in which happiness is ordinarily
supposed to consist. Not that there is (1) any absurdity in the attempt
to frame a notion of justice apart from circumstances. For the ideal
must always be a paradox when compared with the ordinary conditions of
human life. Neither the Stoical ideal nor the Christian ideal is true
as a fact, but they may serve as a basis of education, and may exercise
an ennobling influence. An ideal is none the worse because ‘some one
has made the discovery’ that no such ideal was ever realized. And in a
few exceptional individuals who are raised above the ordinary level of
humanity, the ideal of happiness may be realized in death and misery.
This may be the state which the reason deliberately approves, and which
the utilitarian as well as every other moralist may be bound in certain
cases to prefer.

Nor again, (2) must we forget that Plato, though he agrees generally
with the view implied in the argument of the two brothers, is not
expressing his own final conclusion, but rather seeking to dramatize
one of the aspects of ethical truth. He is developing his idea
gradually in a series of positions or situations. He is exhibiting
Socrates for the first time undergoing the Socratic interrogation.
Lastly, (3) the word ‘happiness’ involves some degree of confusion
because associated in the language of modern philosophy with conscious
pleasure or satisfaction, which was not equally present to his mind.

Glaucon has been drawing a picture of the misery of the just and the
happiness of the unjust, to which the misery of the tyrant in Book IX
is the answer and parallel. And still the unjust must appear just; that
is ‘the homage which vice pays to virtue.’ But now Adeimantus, taking
up the hint which had been already given by Glaucon, proceeds to show
that in the opinion of mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of
rewards and reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to
such arguments as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conventional
morality of mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of ‘justifying the
ways of God to man.’ Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether
the morality of actions is determined by their consequences; and both
of them go beyond the position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the
class of goods not desirable for themselves only, but desirable for
themselves and for their results, to which he recalls them. In their
attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their
condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. The common life of
Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate deeper into the
nature of things.

It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon
and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not
more truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by
Socrates, and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being,
first in the State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new
answer to his old question (Protag.), ‘whether the virtues are one or
many,’ viz. that one is the ordering principle of the three others. In
seeking to establish the purely internal nature of justice, he is met
by the fact that man is a social being, and he tries to harmonise the
two opposite theses as well as he can. There is no more inconsistency
in this than was inevitable in his age and country; there is no use in
turning upon him the cross lights of modern philosophy, which, from
some other point of view, would appear equally inconsistent. Plato does
not give the final solution of philosophical questions for us; nor can
he be judged of by our standard.

The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the
sons of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark in what
immediately follows:—First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether
indirect. He does not say that happiness consists in the contemplation
of the idea of justice, and still less will he be tempted to affirm the
Stoical paradox that the just man can be happy on the rack. But first
he dwells on the difficulty of the problem and insists on restoring man
to his natural condition, before he will answer the question at all. He
too will frame an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract
justice, but the whole relations of man. Under the fanciful
illustration of the large letters he implies that he will only look for
justice in society, and that from the State he will proceed to the
individual. His answer in substance amounts to this,—that under
favourable conditions, i.e. in the perfect State, justice and happiness
will coincide, and that when justice has been once found, happiness may
be left to take care of itself. That he falls into some degree of
inconsistency, when in the tenth book he claims to have got rid of the
rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted; for he has left those
which exist in the perfect State. And the philosopher ‘who retires
under the shelter of a wall’ can hardly have been esteemed happy by
him, at least not in this world. Still he maintains the true attitude
of moral action. Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he
will be happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident
which attends him. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’

Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine character
of Greek thought in beginning with the State and in going on to the
individual. First ethics, then politics—this is the order of ideas to
us; the reverse is the order of history. Only after many struggles of
thought does the individual assert his right as a moral being. In early
ages he is not ONE, but one of many, the citizen of a State which is
prior to him; and he has no notion of good or evil apart from the law
of his country or the creed of his church. And to this type he is
constantly tending to revert, whenever the influence of custom, or of
party spirit, or the recollection of the past becomes too strong for
him.

Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the
individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early
Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of
influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual
action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are
sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human
action, whenever we either elevate politics into ethics, or lower
ethics to the standard of politics. The good man and the good citizen
only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be
attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all,
by education fashioning them from within.

...Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, ‘inspired offspring of the
renowned hero,’ as the elegiac poet terms them; but he does not
understand how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of injustice
while their character shows that they are uninfluenced by their own
arguments. He knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of
deserting justice in the hour of need. He therefore makes a condition,
that having weak eyes he shall be allowed to read the large letters
first and then go on to the smaller, that is, he must look for justice
in the State first, and will then proceed to the individual.
Accordingly he begins to construct the State.

Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food; his
second a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the
possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together
on the same spot; and this is the beginning of a State, which we take
the liberty to invent, although necessity is the real inventor. There
must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to
which may be added a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are
required to make a city. Now men have different natures, and one man
will do one thing better than many; and business waits for no man.
Hence there must be a division of labour into different employments;
into wholesale and retail trade; into workers, and makers of workmen’s
tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all this
will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be very
large. But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate
exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the
taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too we must
have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers
will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted
in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be
complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of the
citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.

Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend their
days in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their
own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food
is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best
of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children.
‘But,’ said Glaucon, interposing, ‘are they not to have a relish?’
Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and
fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ‘’Tis a city of pigs,
Socrates.’ Why, I replied, what do you want more? ‘Only the comforts of
life,—sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.’ I see; you want not
only a State, but a luxurious State; and possibly in the more complex
frame we may sooner find justice and injustice. Then the fine arts must
go to work—every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be
wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks,
barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for
the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is
the source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part
of our neighbour’s land, and they will want a part of ours. And this is
the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other
political evils. Our city will now require the slight addition of a
camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again
our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The
art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural
aptitude for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who
have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and
strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage,
such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But
these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the
union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears
to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both
qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an
answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your
dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing;
and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness.
The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which
will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without
education?

But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned
sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music
includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false.
‘What do you mean?’ he said. I mean that children hear stories before
they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have
at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early
life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they
will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a
censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of
them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer
and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus
and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never
be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in
a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some
unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their
fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel
by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall
they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of
Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales
may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are
incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to
be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers;
we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be
written; to write them is the duty of others.

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not
as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the
poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has
two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus
to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of
Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to
destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was
just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was
evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will
allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great
principle—God is the author of good only.

And the second principle is like unto it:—With God is no variableness
or change of form. Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change
in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself. By
another?—but the best works of nature and art and the noblest qualities
of mind are least liable to be changed by any external force. By
himself?—but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change for
the worse. He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image.
Therefore we refuse to listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging
in the likeness of a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at
night in strange disguises; all that blasphemous nonsense with which
mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be suppressed. But
some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a
form in relation to us. Why should he? For gods as well as men hate the
lie in the soul, or principle of falsehood; and as for any other form
of lying which is used for a purpose and is regarded as innocent in
certain exceptional cases—what need have the gods of this? For they are
not ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their
enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs. God then is true, he is
absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not, by day or night, by
word or sign. This is our second great principle—God is true. Away with
the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis
against Apollo in Aeschylus...

In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato
proceeds to trace the first principles of mutual need and of division
of labour in an imaginary community of four or five citizens. Gradually
this community increases; the division of labour extends to countries;
imports necessitate exports; a medium of exchange is required, and
retailers sit in the market-place to save the time of the producers.
These are the steps by which Plato constructs the first or primitive
State, introducing the elements of political economy by the way. As he
is going to frame a second or civilized State, the simple naturally
comes before the complex. He indulges, like Rousseau, in a picture of
primitive life—an idea which has indeed often had a powerful influence
on the imagination of mankind, but he does not seriously mean to say
that one is better than the other (Politicus); nor can any inference be
drawn from the description of the first state taken apart from the
second, such as Aristotle appears to draw in the Politics. We should
not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a poem or a parable in
too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On the other hand, when we
compare the lively fancy of Plato with the dried-up abstractions of
modern treatises on philosophy, we are compelled to say with
Protagoras, that the ‘mythus is more interesting’ (Protag.)

Several interesting remarks which in modern times would have a place in
a treatise on Political Economy are scattered up and down the writings
of Plato: especially Laws, Population; Free Trade; Adulteration; Wills
and Bequests; Begging; Eryxias, (though not Plato’s), Value and Demand;
Republic, Division of Labour. The last subject, and also the origin of
Retail Trade, is treated with admirable lucidity in the second book of
the Republic. But Plato never combined his economic ideas into a
system, and never seems to have recognized that Trade is one of the
great motive powers of the State and of the world. He would make retail
traders only of the inferior sort of citizens (Rep., Laws), though he
remarks, quaintly enough (Laws), that ‘if only the best men and the
best women everywhere were compelled to keep taverns for a time or to
carry on retail trade, etc., then we should knew how pleasant and
agreeable all these things are.’

The disappointment of Glaucon at the ‘city of pigs,’ the ludicrous
description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and
the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the
nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of
offering some almost unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to
be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to
his mother, are touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In
speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a
child must be trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. Yet
this is not very different from saying that children must be taught
through the medium of imagination as well as reason; that their minds
can only develope gradually, and that there is much which they must
learn without understanding. This is also the substance of Plato’s
view, though he must be acknowledged to have drawn the line somewhat
differently from modern ethical writers, respecting truth and
falsehood. To us, economies or accommodations would not be allowable
unless they were required by the human faculties or necessary for the
communication of knowledge to the simple and ignorant. We should insist
that the word was inseparable from the intention, and that we must not
be ‘falsely true,’ i.e. speak or act falsely in support of what was
right or true. But Plato would limit the use of fictions only by
requiring that they should have a good moral effect, and that such a
dangerous weapon as falsehood should be employed by the rulers alone
and for great objects.

A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question
whether his religion was an historical fact. He was just beginning to
be conscious that the past had a history; but he could see nothing
beyond Homer and Hesiod. Whether their narratives were true or false
did not seriously affect the political or social life of Hellas. Men
only began to suspect that they were fictions when they recognised them
to be immoral. And so in all religions: the consideration of their
morality comes first, afterwards the truth of the documents in which
they are recorded, or of the events natural or supernatural which are
told of them. But in modern times, and in Protestant countries perhaps
more than in Catholic, we have been too much inclined to identify the
historical with the moral; and some have refused to believe in religion
at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was discernible in every part of
the record. The facts of an ancient or religious history are amongst
the most important of all facts; but they are frequently uncertain, and
we only learn the true lesson which is to be gathered from them when we
place ourselves above them. These reflections tend to show that the
difference between Plato and ourselves, though not unimportant, is not
so great as might at first sight appear. For we should agree with him
in placing the moral before the historical truth of religion; and,
generally, in disregarding those errors or misstatements of fact which
necessarily occur in the early stages of all religions. We know also
that changes in the traditions of a country cannot be made in a day;
and are therefore tolerant of many things which science and criticism
would condemn.

We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mythology,
said to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before
Christ by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of
Plato, and here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was
rejected by him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men
have reached another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by
fictions is in accordance with universal experience. Great is the art
of interpretation; and by a natural process, which when once discovered
was always going on, what could not be altered was explained away. And
so without any palpable inconsistency there existed side by side two
forms of religion, the tradition inherited or invented by the poets and
the customary worship of the temple; on the other hand, there was the
religion of the philosopher, who was dwelling in the heaven of ideas,
but did not therefore refuse to offer a cock to Aesculapius, or to be
seen saying his prayers at the rising of the sun. At length the
antagonism between the popular and philosophical religion, never so
great among the Greeks as in our own age, disappeared, and was only
felt like the difference between the religion of the educated and
uneducated among ourselves. The Zeus of Homer and Hesiod easily passed
into the ‘royal mind’ of Plato (Philebus); the giant Heracles became
the knight-errant and benefactor of mankind. These and still more
wonderful transformations were readily effected by the ingenuity of
Stoics and neo-Platonists in the two or three centuries before and
after Christ. The Greek and Roman religions were gradually permeated by
the spirit of philosophy; having lost their ancient meaning, they were
resolved into poetry and morality; and probably were never purer than
at the time of their decay, when their influence over the world was
waning.

A singular conception which occurs towards the end of the book is the
lie in the soul; this is connected with the Platonic and Socratic
doctrine that involuntary ignorance is worse than voluntary. The lie in
the soul is a true lie, the corruption of the highest truth, the
deception of the highest part of the soul, from which he who is
deceived has no power of delivering himself. For example, to represent
God as false or immoral, or, according to Plato, as deluding men with
appearances or as the author of evil; or again, to affirm with
Protagoras that ‘knowledge is sensation,’ or that ‘being is becoming,’
or with Thrasymachus ‘that might is right,’ would have been regarded by
Plato as a lie of this hateful sort. The greatest unconsciousness of
the greatest untruth, e.g. if, in the language of the Gospels (John),
‘he who was blind’ were to say ‘I see,’ is another aspect of the state
of mind which Plato is describing. The lie in the soul may be further
compared with the sin against the Holy Ghost (Luke), allowing for the
difference between Greek and Christian modes of speaking. To this is
opposed the lie in words, which is only such a deception as may occur
in a play or poem, or allegory or figure of speech, or in any sort of
accommodation,—which though useless to the gods may be useful to men in
certain cases. Socrates is here answering the question which he had
himself raised about the propriety of deceiving a madman; and he is
also contrasting the nature of God and man. For God is Truth, but
mankind can only be true by appearing sometimes to be partial, or
false. Reserving for another place the greater questions of religion or
education, we may note further, (1) the approval of the old traditional
education of Greece; (2) the preparation which Plato is making for the
attack on Homer and the poets; (3) the preparation which he is also
making for the use of economies in the State; (4) the contemptuous and
at the same time euphemistic manner in which here as below he alludes
to the ‘Chronique Scandaleuse’ of the gods.

BOOK III. There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to
banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is afraid of death, or
who believes the tales which are repeated by the poets concerning the
world below. They must be gently requested not to abuse hell; they may
be reminded that their stories are both untrue and discouraging. Nor
must they be angry if we expunge obnoxious passages, such as the
depressing words of Achilles—‘I would rather be a serving-man than rule
over all the dead;’ and the verses which tell of the squalid mansions,
the senseless shadows, the flitting soul mourning over lost strength
and youth, the soul with a gibber going beneath the earth like smoke,
or the souls of the suitors which flutter about like bats. The terrors
and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the
rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. Such tales may have
their use; but they are not the proper food for soldiers. As little can
we admit the sorrows and sympathies of the Homeric heroes:—Achilles,
the son of Thetis, in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up
and down the sea-shore in distraction; or Priam, the cousin of the
gods, crying aloud, rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated
at the loss of children or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him;
and therefore lamentations over the dead should not be practised by men
of note; they should be the concern of inferior persons only, whether
women or men. Still worse is the attribution of such weakness to the
gods; as when the goddesses say, ‘Alas! my travail!’ and worst of all,
when the king of heaven himself laments his inability to save Hector,
or sorrows over the impending doom of his dear Sarpedon. Such a
character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be
imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be given to excess of
laughter—‘Such violent delights’ are followed by a violent re-action.
The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the
clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. ‘Certainly not.’

Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we
were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a
medicine. But this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of
state; the common man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any
more than the patient would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor
to his captain.

In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists
in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which
Homer teaches in some places: ‘The Achaeans marched on breathing
prowess, in silent awe of their leaders;’—but a very different one in
other places: ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the
heart of a stag.’ Language of the latter kind will not impress
self-control on the minds of youth. The same may be said about his
praises of eating and drinking and his dread of starvation; also about
the verses in which he tells of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here,
or of how Hephaestus once detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a
similar occasion. There is a nobler strain heard in the words:—‘Endure,
my soul, thou hast endured worse.’ Nor must we allow our citizens to
receive bribes, or to say, ‘Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend
kings;’ or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he
should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the
meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his
requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or
his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead
Patroclus of his own hair which had been already dedicated to the other
river-god Spercheius; or his cruelty in dragging the body of Hector
round the walls, and slaying the captives at the pyre: such a
combination of meanness and cruelty in Cheiron’s pupil is
inconceivable. The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are
equally unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not the sons
of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any more than
the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth who believes
that such things are done by those who have the blood of heaven flowing
in their veins will be too ready to imitate their example.

Enough of gods and heroes;—what shall we say about men? What the poets
and story-tellers say—that the wicked prosper and the righteous are
afflicted, or that justice is another’s gain? Such misrepresentations
cannot be allowed by us. But in this we are anticipating the definition
of justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry.

The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows
style. Now all poetry is a narrative of events past, present, or to
come; and narrative is of three kinds, the simple, the imitative, and a
composition of the two. An instance will make my meaning clear. The
first scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly
description and partly dialogue. But if you throw the dialogue into the
‘oratio obliqua,’ the passage will run thus: The priest came and prayed
Apollo that the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if
Agamemnon would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks
assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on—The whole then becomes
descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the
narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles—which
of them is to be admitted into our State? ‘Do you ask whether tragedy
and comedy are to be admitted?’ Yes, but also something more—Is it not
doubtful whether our guardians are to be imitators at all? Or rather,
has not the question been already answered, for we have decided that
one man cannot in his life play many parts, any more than he can act
both tragedy and comedy, or be rhapsodist and actor at once? Human
nature is coined into very small pieces, and as our guardians have
their own business already, which is the care of freedom, they will
have enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should
imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask
which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We cannot allow men to
play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping, scolding, or boasting
against the gods,—least of all when making love or in labour. They must
not represent slaves, or bullies, or cowards, drunkards, or madmen, or
blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding
rivers, or a raging sea. A good or wise man will be willing to perform
good and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play an inferior part
which he has never practised; and he will prefer to employ the
descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. The man who has
no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything;
sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will
be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the descriptive style there
are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many. Poets and
musicians use either, or a compound of both, and this compound is very
attractive to youth and their teachers as well as to the vulgar. But
our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for
complexity. And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen
offers to exhibit himself and his poetry we will show him every
observance of respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no
room for his kind in our State; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and
will not depart from our original models (Laws).

Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts,—the subject, the
harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the
first. As we banished strains of lamentation, so we may now banish the
mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as
our citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial
harmonies, such as the Ionian and pure Lydian. Two remain—the Dorian
and Phrygian, the first for war, the second for peace; the one
expressive of courage, the other of obedience or instruction or
religious feeling. And as we reject varieties of harmony, we shall also
reject the many-stringed, variously-shaped instruments which give
utterance to them, and in particular the flute, which is more complex
than any of them. The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the town,
and the Pan’s-pipe in the fields. Thus we have made a purgation of
music, and will now make a purgation of metres. These should be like
the harmonies, simple and suitable to the occasion. There are four
notes of the tetrachord, and there are three ratios of metre, 3/2, 2/2,
2/1, which have all their characteristics, and the feet have different
characteristics as well as the rhythms. But about this you and I must
ask Damon, the great musician, who speaks, if I remember rightly, of a
martial measure as well as of dactylic, trochaic, and iambic rhythms,
which he arranges so as to equalize the syllables with one another,
assigning to each the proper quantity. We only venture to affirm the
general principle that the style is to conform to the subject and the
metre to the style; and that the simplicity and harmony of the soul
should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity has to be
learnt by every one in the days of his youth, and may be gathered
anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as well as from the
forms of plants and animals.

Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or
unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to
the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in
our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians
must grow up, not amid images of deformity which will gradually poison
and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they
will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of
all these influences the greatest is the education given by music,
which finds a way into the innermost soul and imparts to it the sense
of beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious; but
when reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes her as
the friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read, first we
acquire the elements or letters separately, and afterwards their
combinations, and cannot recognize reflections of them until we know
the letters themselves;—in like manner we must first attain the
elements or essential forms of the virtues, and then trace their
combinations in life and experience. There is a music of the soul which
answers to the harmony of the world; and the fairest object of a
musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body. Some defect in the
latter may be excused, but not in the former. True love is the daughter
of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of
bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair
ending with love.

Next we pass on to gymnastics; about which I would remark, that the
soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and therefore if
we educate the mind we may leave the education of the body in her
charge, and need only give a general outline of the course to be
pursued. In the first place the guardians must abstain from strong
drink, for they should be the last persons to lose their wits. Whether
the habits of the palaestra are suitable to them is more doubtful, for
the ordinary gymnastic is a sleepy sort of thing, and if left off
suddenly is apt to endanger health. But our warrior athletes must be
wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and
climate. Hence they will require a simpler kind of gymnastic, akin to
their simple music; and for their diet a rule may be found in Homer,
who feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no fish
although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which
involve an apparatus of pots and pans; and, if I am not mistaken, he
nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic confections
and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and
Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden. Where gluttony and
intemperance prevail the town quickly fills with doctors and pleaders;
and law and medicine give themselves airs as soon as the freemen of a
State take an interest in them. But what can show a more disgraceful
state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you
have none of your own at home? And yet there IS a worse stage of the
same disease—when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the
twists and turns of the law; not considering how much better it would
be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding
justice. And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for
the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because a man has by
laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were unknown in the days
of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. Eurypylus
after he has been wounded drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of
a heating nature; and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the
damsel who gives him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him.
The truth is that this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced
by Herodicus the trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution, by a
compound of training and medicine tortured first himself and then a
good many other people, and lived a great deal longer than he had any
right. But Asclepius would not practise this art, because he knew that
the citizens of a well-ordered State have no leisure to be ill, and
therefore he adopted the ‘kill or cure’ method, which artisans and
labourers employ. ‘They must be at their business,’ they say, ‘and have
no time for coddling: if they recover, well; if they don’t, there is an
end of them.’ Whereas the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who
can afford to be ill. Do you know a maxim of Phocylides—that ‘when a
man begins to be rich’ (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ‘he should
practise virtue’? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent
with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of
virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student imagines that
philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always
unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no
such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not
wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to
wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was
wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and
drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and
worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out
of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a
thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie—following
our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he
was not the son of a god.

Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best
judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience
of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two
professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his
own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But the
judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be
corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to
be wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived
by evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and
therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have
been innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the
practice of it, but by the observation of it in others. This is the
ideal of a judge; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully
suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he
is at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as
himself. Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. This is
the sort of medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our
State; they will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body
will be left to die by the one, and the evil soul will be put to death
by the other. And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good
music which will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which
will give health to the body. Not that this division of music and
gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for they are both
equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused
and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with
their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much
gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper
which has too much music becomes enervated. While a man is allowing
music to pour like water through the funnel of his ears, the edge of
his soul gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited element
is melted out of him. Too little spirit is easily exhausted; too much
quickly passes into nervous irritability. So, again, the athlete by
feeding and training has his courage doubled, but he soon grows stupid;
he is like a wild beast, ready to do everything by blows and nothing by
counsel or policy. There are two principles in man, reason and passion,
and to these, not to the soul and body, the two arts of music and
gymnastic correspond. He who mingles them in harmonious concord is the
true musician,—he shall be the presiding genius of our State.

The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? First, the elder must
rule the younger; and the best of the elders will be the best
guardians. Now they will be the best who love their subjects most, and
think that they have a common interest with them in the welfare of the
state. These we must select; but they must be watched at every epoch of
life to see whether they have retained the same opinions and held out
against force and enchantment. For time and persuasion and the love of
pleasure may enchant a man into a change of purpose, and the force of
grief and pain may compel him. And therefore our guardians must be men
who have been tried by many tests, like gold in the refiner’s fire, and
have been passed first through danger, then through pleasure, and at
every age have come out of such trials victorious and without stain, in
full command of themselves and their principles; having all their
faculties in harmonious exercise for their country’s good. These shall
receive the highest honours both in life and death. (It would perhaps
be better to confine the term ‘guardians’ to this select class: the
younger men may be called ‘auxiliaries.’)

And now for one magnificent lie, in the belief of which, Oh that we
could train our rulers!—at any rate let us make the attempt with the
rest of the world. What I am going to tell is only another version of
the legend of Cadmus; but our unbelieving generation will be slow to
accept such a story. The tale must be imparted, first to the rulers,
then to the soldiers, lastly to the people. We will inform them that
their youth was a dream, and that during the time when they seemed to
be undergoing their education they were really being fashioned in the
earth, who sent them up when they were ready; and that they must
protect and cherish her whose children they are, and regard each other
as brothers and sisters. ‘I do not wonder at your being ashamed to
propound such a fiction.’ There is more behind. These brothers and
sisters have different natures, and some of them God framed to rule,
whom he fashioned of gold; others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries;
others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by
him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock,
a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son,
and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must
descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an
oracle says ‘that the State will come to an end if governed by a man of
brass or iron.’ Will our citizens ever believe all this? ‘Not in the
present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.’

Now let the earthborn men go forth under the command of their rulers,
and look about and pitch their camp in a high place, which will be safe
against enemies from without, and likewise against insurrections from
within. There let them sacrifice and set up their tents; for soldiers
they are to be and not shopkeepers, the watchdogs and guardians of the
sheep; and luxury and avarice will turn them into wolves and tyrants.
Their habits and their dwellings should correspond to their education.
They should have no property; their pay should only meet their
expenses; and they should have common meals. Gold and silver we will
tell them that they have from God, and this divine gift in their souls
they must not alloy with that earthly dross which passes under the name
of gold. They only of the citizens may not touch it, or be under the
same roof with it, or drink from it; it is the accursed thing. Should
they ever acquire houses or lands or money of their own, they will
become householders and tradesmen instead of guardians, enemies and
tyrants instead of helpers, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves
and the rest of the State, will be at hand.

The religious and ethical aspect of Plato’s education will hereafter be
considered under a separate head. Some lesser points may be more
conveniently noticed in this place.

1. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave
irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about
ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting
to distinguish the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the
text from design; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer
inaccurately, after the manner of the early logographers turning the
Iliad into prose, and delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from
his words, or to make ludicrous applications of them. He does not, like
Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but
uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on
a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the
Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them
are sound, although the premises are fictitious. These fanciful appeals
to Homer add a charm to Plato’s style, and at the same time they have
the effect of a satire on the follies of Homeric interpretation. To us
(and probably to himself), although they take the form of arguments,
they are really figures of speech. They may be compared with modern
citations from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power
even when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of.
The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Memorabilia
of Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations. Great in all ages
and countries, in religion as well as in law and literature, has been
the art of interpretation.

2. ‘The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.’
Notwithstanding the fascination which the word ‘classical’ exercises
over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the
Greek poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought
often exceeds the power of lucid expression in Aeschylus and Pindar; or
that rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet
Euripides. Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the
two; in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a
Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away; at
least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them. The
connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not
unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic the poet was
unable to draw out. Many thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and
he had no power of disengaging or arranging them. For there is a subtle
influence of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to
poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by
poetry into prose. In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own
meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full of
associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of
another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to
others. There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets
which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion between
style and subject, in which any half-expressed figure, any harsh
construction, any distorted collocation of words, any remote sequence
of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice ‘coming sweetly from
nature,’ or music adding the expression of feeling to thought. As if
there could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without ease and
clearness. The obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out
of the state of language and logic which existed in their age. They are
not examples to be followed by us; for the use of language ought in
every generation to become clearer and clearer. Like Shakespere, they
were great in spite, not in consequence, of their imperfections of
expression. But there is no reason for returning to the necessary
obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of literature. The English
poets of the last century were certainly not obscure; and we have no
excuse for losing what they had gained, or for going back to the
earlier or transitional age which preceded them. The thought of our own
times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato’s ‘art of
measuring’ is the rule cause of the disproportion between them.

3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a
theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up
as follows:—True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and
ideal,—the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or
repose. To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble and
simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of
influences,—the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought
up. That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will
have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the poets
are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of
reason—like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but
confined to the preliminary education, and acting through the power of
habit; and this conception of art is not limited to strains of music or
the forms of plastic art, but pervades all nature and has a wide
kindred in the world. The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of
Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side.

There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two
or three passages does he even allude to them (Rep.; Soph.). He is not
lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the
Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene. He would probably have
regarded any abstract truth of number or figure as higher than the
greatest of them. Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence, such
as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from
the works of art which he saw around him. We are living upon the
fragments of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of
truth and beauty. But in Plato this feeling has no expression; he
nowhere says that beauty is the object of art; he seems to deny that
wisdom can take an external form (Phaedrus); he does not distinguish
the fine from the mechanical arts. Whether or no, like some writers, he
felt more than he expressed, it is at any rate remarkable that the
greatest perfection of the fine arts should coincide with an almost
entire silence about them. In one very striking passage he tells us
that a work of art, like the State, is a whole; and this conception of
a whole and the love of the newly-born mathematical sciences may be
regarded, if not as the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating
principles of Greek art (Xen. Mem.; and Sophist).

4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better
not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his
own person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of
evil; he is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence,
became acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore,
according to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man
according to Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy.
The bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge
of virtue. It may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection
is well founded. In a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged
that the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. The union of
gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet
was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have
found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence
of it. There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight
into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural
sense independent of any special experience of good or evil.

5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek
and also very different from anything which existed at all in his age
of the world, is the transposition of ranks. In the Spartan state there
had been enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under
special circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit
was certainly recognized as one of the elements on which government was
based. The founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors,
who were raised by their great actions above the ordinary level of
humanity; at a later period, the services of warriors and legislators
were held to entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of
citizenship and to the first rank in the state. And although the
existence of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains
of early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such a
character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual Hellenic
state—or indeed to any state which has ever existed in the world—still
the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of philosophers, who
probably accommodated a good deal their views of primitive history to
their own notions of good government. Plato further insists on applying
to the guardians of his state a series of tests by which all those who
fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing
body, or not admitted to it; and this ‘academic’ discipline did to a
certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. He also
indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of
the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world,
should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware
how deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the
order of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form
of what he himself calls a ‘monstrous fiction.’ (Compare the ceremony
of preparation for the two ‘great waves’ in Book v.) Two principles are
indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent
on circumstances prior to the individual: second, that this distinction
is and ought to be broken through by personal qualities. He adapts
mythology like the Homeric poems to the wants of the state, making ‘the
Phoenician tale’ the vehicle of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth
respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale
of earthborn men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is
told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification
of the ‘monstrous falsehood.’ Ancient poetry had spoken of a gold and
silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another, but Plato