PLATO,

CHAPTER XXXVII.

REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON THE PLATONIC COMMONWEALTH.

Double purpose of the Platonic Republic — ethical and political.

In my last Chapter, I discussed the manner in which Plato had endeavoured to solve the ethical problem urged upon him by Glaukon and Adeimantus. But this is not the entire purpose of the Republic. Plato, drawing the closest parallel between the Commonwealth and the individual, seeks solution of the problem first in the former; because it is there (he says) written in larger and clearer letters. He sketches the picture of a perfect Commonwealth — shows wherein its justice consists — and proves, to his own satisfaction, that it will be happy in and through its justice — per se. This picture of a Commonwealth is unquestionably one of the main purposes of the dialogue; serving as commencement — or more properly as intermediate stage — to the Timæus and Kritias. Most critics have treated it as if it were the dominant and almost exclusive purpose. Aristotle, the earliest of all critics, adverts to it in this spirit; numbering Plato or the Platonic Sokrates among those who, not being practical politicians, framed schemes for ideal commonwealths, like Phaleas or Hippodamus. I shall now make some remarks on the political provisions of the Platonic Commonwealth: but first I shall notice the very peculiar manner in which Plato discovers therein the notions of Justice and Injustice.

Plato recognises the generating principle of human society — reciprocity of need and service. Particular direction which he gives to this principle.

The Platonic Sokrates (as I remarked above) lays down as the fundamental, generating, principle of human society, the reciprocity of need and service, essentially belonging to human beings: exchange of services is indispensable, because each man has many wants more 134than he can himself supply, and thus needs the services of others: while each also can contribute something to supply the wants of others. To this general principle Plato gives a peculiar direction. He apportions the services among the various citizens; and he provides that each man shall be specialised for the service to which he is peculiarly adapted, and confined to that alone. No double man1 is tolerated. How such specialisation is to be applied in detail among the multitude of cultivators and other producers, Plato does not tell us. Each is to have his own employment: we know no more. But in regard to the two highest functions, he gives more information: first, the small cabinet of philosophical Elders,2 Chiefs, or Rulers — artists in the craft of governing, who supply professionally that necessity of the Commonwealth, and from whom all orders emanate: next, the body of Guardians, Soldiers, Policemen, who execute the orders of this cabinet, and defend the territory against all enemies. Respecting both of these, Plato carefully prescribes both the education which they are to receive, and the circumstances under which they are to live. They are to be of both sexes intermingled, but to know neither family nor property: they live together in barrack, and with common mess, receiving subsistence and the means of decent comfort, but no more, from the producers: respecting sexual relations and births, I shall say more presently.

The four cardinal virtues are assumed as constituting the whole of Good or Virtue, where each of these virtues resides.

When Plato has provided thus much, he treats his city as already planted and brought to consummation. He thinks himself farther entitled to proclaim it as perfectly good, and therefore as including the four constituent elements of Good: that is, as being wise, brave, temperate, just.3 He then looks to find wherein each of these four elements resides: wisdom resides specially in the cabinet of Rulers — courage specially in the Guardians — temperance and justice, 135in these two, but in the producing multitude also. The two last virtues are universal in the Commonwealth. Temperance consists in the harmony of opinion between the multitude and the two higher classes as to obedience: the Guardians are as ready to obey as the Chiefs to command: the multitude are also for the most part ready to obey — but should they ever fail in obedience, the Guardians are prepared to lend their constraining force to the authority of the Chiefs. Having thus settled three out of the four elements of Good, which enumeration he assumes to be exhaustive — Plato assumes that what remains must be Justice. This remainder he declares to be — That each of the three portions of the Commonwealth performs its own work and nothing else: and this is Justice. Justice and Temperance are thus common to all the three portions of the Commonwealth: while Wisdom and Prudence belong entirely to the Chiefs, and Courage entirely to the Guardians.

First mention of these, as an exhaustive classification, in ethical theory. Plato effaces the distinction between Temperance and Justice.

Here, for the first time in Ethical Theory, Prudence, Courage, Temperance, Justice, are assumed as an exhaustive enumeration of virtues: each distinct from the other three, but all together including the whole of Virtue.4 Through Cicero and others, these four have come down as the cardinal virtues. From whom Plato derived it, I do not know: not certainly from the historical Sokrates, who resolved the last three into the first.5 Nor is it indeed in harmony with Plato’s own view: for temperance and justice are substantially coincident, in his explanation of them (since he does not recognise the characteristic feature of Justice, as directly tending to the good of a person other than the agent): and the line, by which he endeavours to part them, is obscure as well as unimportant. Schleiermacher — who admits that the distinction drawn here between Temperance and Justice is altogether forced136 — supposes that Plato took up this quadruple classification, because he found it already established in the common, non-theorising, consciousness.6 If this be true, the real distinction between Justice (as directly bearing on the rights of another person) and Temperance (as directly concerning only the future happiness of the agent himself), which is one of the most important distinctions in Ethics — must have been already felt, without being formulated, in the common mind: and Plato, by retaining the two words, but effacing the distinction between the two, and giving a new meaning to Justice — took a step in the wrong direction. He himself however tells us, that the definition, here given of Justice, is not his own; but that he had heard it enunciated by many others before him.7 What makes this more remarkable is, That the same definition (to do your own business and not to meddle with other people’s business) is what we read in the Charmidês as delivered respecting Temperance, by Charmides and Kritias:8 delivered by them, and afterwards pulled to pieces in cross-examination by Sokrates. Herein we see farther proof how little distinction Plato drew between Justice and Temperance.

From whomsoever Plato may have derived this ethical classification — Virtue as a whole, distributed into four varieties — 1. Prudence or Knowledge — 2. Courage or Energy — 3. Temperance — 4. Justice — we find it here placed in the foreground of his doctrine, respecting both the collective Commonwealth and the 137individual man.9 He professes to understand and explain what they are — to reason upon them all with confidence — and to apply them to very important conclusions.

All the four are here assumed as certain and determinate, though in former dialogues they appear indeterminate and full of unsolved difficulties.

But let us pause for a moment to ask, how these professions harmonise with the dialogues reviewed in my preceding volumes. No reader will have forgotten the doubts and difficulties, exposed by the Sokratic Elenchus throughout the Dialogues of Search: the confessed inability of Sokrates himself to elucidate them, while at the same time his contempt for the false persuasion of knowledge — for those who talk confidently about matters which they can neither explain nor defend — is expressed without reserve. Now, when we turn to the Hippias Major, we find Sokrates declaring, that no man can affirm, and that a man ought to be ashamed to pretend to affirm, what particular matters are beautiful (fine, honourable) or ugly (mean, base), unless he knows and can explain what Beauty is.10 A similar declaration appears in the Menon, where Sokrates treats it as absurd to affirm or deny any predicate respecting a Subject, until you have satisfied yourself that you know what the Subject itself is: and where he farther proclaims, that as to Virtue, he does not know what it is, and that he has never yet found any one who did know.11 Such ignorance is stated at the end of the dialogue not less emphatically than at the beginning. Again, respecting the four varieties or parts of Virtue. The first of the four, Prudence — (Wisdom — Knowledge) — has been investigated in the Theætêtus — one of the most elaborate of all the Platonic dialogues: several different explanations of it are proposed by Theætêtus, and each is shown by Sokrates to be untenable; the problem remains unsolved at last. As to Courage and Temperance, we have not been more fortunate. The Lachês and Charmidês exhibit nothing but a fruitless search both for one and for the other. And here the case is more remarkable; because in the Lachês, one of the 138several definitions of Courage, tendered to Sokrates and refuted by him, is, the very definition of Courage delivered by him in the Republic as complete and satisfactory: while in the Charmidês, one of the definitions of Temperance, refuted, and even treated as scarcely intelligible, by Sokrates (τὸ πράττειν τὰ ἑαυτοῦ) is the same as that which Sokrates in the Republic relies on as a valid definition of Justice.12 Lastly, every one who has read the Parmenidês, will remember the acute objections there urged against the Platonic hypothesis of substantive Ideas, participated in by particulars: of which objections no notice is taken in the Republic, though so much is said therein about these Ideas, in regard to the training of the philosophical Chiefs.

Difficulties left unsolved, but overleaped by Plato.

If we revert to these passages (and many others which might be produced) of past dialogues, we shall find no means provided of harmonising them with the Republic. The logical and ethical difficulties still exist: they have never been elucidated: the Republic does not pretend to elucidate them, but overlooks or overleaps them. In composing it, Plato has his mind full of a different point of view, to which he seeks to give full effect. While his spokesman Sokrates was leader of opposition, Plato delighted to arm him with the maximum of negative cross-examining acuteness: but here Sokrates has passed over to the ministerial benches, and has undertaken the difficult task of making out a case in reply to the challenge of Glaukon and Adeimantus. No new leader of opposition is allowed to replace him. The splendid constructive effort of the Republic would have been spoiled, if exposed to such an analytical cross-examination as that which we read in Menon, Lachês, or Charmidês.

Ethical and political theory combined by Plato, treated apart by Aristotle.

In remarking upon the Platonic Republic as a political scheme only, we pass from the Platonic point of view to the Aristotelian: that is, to the discussion of Ethics and Politics as separate subjects, though adjoining and partially overlapping each other. Plato conceives 139the two in intimate union, and even employs violent metaphors to exaggerate the intimacy. Xenophon also conceives them in close conjunction. Aristotle goes farther in separating the two: a great improvement in regard to the speculative dealing with both of them.13

Platonic Commonwealth — only an outline — partially filled up.

If, following the example of Aristotle, we criticise the Platonic Republic as a scheme of political constitution, we find that on most points which other theorists handle at considerable length, Plato is intentionally silent. His project is an outline and nothing more. He delineates fully the brain and heart of the great Leviathan, but leaves the rest in very faint outline. He announces explicitly the purpose of all his arrangements, to obtain happiness for the whole city: by which he means, not happiness for the greatest number of individuals, but for the abstract unity called the City, supposed to be capable of happiness or misery, apart from any individuals, many or few, composing it.14 Each individual is to do the work for which he is best fitted, contributory to the happiness of the whole — and to do nothing else. Each must be content with such happiness as consists with his own exclusive employment.15

Absolute rule of a few philosophers — Careful and peculiar training of the Guardians.

The Chiefs or Rulers are assumed to be both specially qualified and specially trained for the business of governing. Their authority is unlimited: they represent that 140One Infallible Wise Man, whom Plato frequently appeals to (in the Politikus, Kriton, Gorgias, and other dialogues), but never names. They are a very small number, perhaps only one: the persons naturally qualified being very few, and even they requiring the severest preparatory training. The Guardians, all of them educated up to a considerable point, both obey themselves the orders of these few Chiefs, and enforce obedience upon the productive multitude. Of this last-mentioned multitude, constituting numerically almost the whole city, we hear little or nothing: except that the division of labour is strictly kept up among them, and that neither wealth nor poverty is allowed to grow up.16 How this is to be accomplished, Plato does not point out: nor does he indicate how the mischievous working (i.e., mischievous, in his point of view, and as he declares it) of the proprietary and the family relations is to be obviated. His scheme tacitly assumes that separate property and family are to subsist among the great mass of the community, but not among the Guardians: he proclaims explicitly, that if the proprietary relations or the family relations were permitted among the Guardians, entire corruption of their character would ensue.17 Among the Demos or multitude, he postulates nothing except unlimited submission to the orders of the Rulers enforced through the Guardians. The regulative powers of the Rulers are assumed to be of omnipotent efficacy against every cause of mischief, subject only to one condition — That the purity of the golden breed, together with the Platonic training and discipline, are to be maintained among them unimpaired.

Everything in the Platonic Republic turns upon this elaborate training of the superior class: most of all, the Chiefs or Rulers — next, the Soldiers or Guardians. Besides this training, they are required to be placed in circumstances which will prevent them from feeling any private or separate interest of their own, apart from or adverse to that of the multitude. “Every man” (says Plato) “will best love those whose advantage he believes to coincide with his own, and when he is most convinced that if they do well, he himself will do well also: if not,141 not.”18 “The Rulers must be wise, powerful, and affectionately solicitous for the city.”

These then are the two circumstances which Plato works out: The Education of the Rulers and Guardians: Their position and circumstances in regard to each other and to the remaining multitude. He does not himself prescribe, or at least he prescribes but rarely, what is to be enacted or ordered. He creates the generals and the soldiers; he relies upon the former for ordering, upon the latter for enforcing, aright.

Comparison of Plato with Xenophon — Cyropædia — Œconomicus.

On this point we may usefully compare him with his contemporary Xenophon. He, like Plato, presents himself to mankind as a preceptor or schoolmaster, rather than as a lawgiver. Most Grecian cities (he remarks) left the education of youth in the hands of parents, and permitted adults to choose their own mode of life, subject only to the necessity of obeying the laws: that is, of abstaining from certain defined offences, and of performing certain defined obligations — under penalties if such obedience were not rendered. From this mode of proceeding Xenophon dissents, and commends the Spartan Lawgiver Lykurgus for departing from it.19 To regulate public matters, without regulating the private life of the citizens, appeared to him impossible.20 At Sparta, the citizen was subject to authoritative regulation, from childhood to old age. In the public education, or in the public drill, he was constantly under supervision, going through prescribed exercises. This produced, according to Xenophon, “a city of pre-eminent happiness”. He proclaims and follows out the same peculiar principle, in his ideal scheme of society called the Persian laws. He embodies in the Cyropædia the biography of a model chief, trained up from his youth in (what Xenophon calls) the Persian system, and applying the virtues acquired therein to military exploits and to the government of mankind. The Persian polity, in which the hero Cyrus receives his training, is described. Instead of leaving individuals142 to their own free will, except as to certain acts or abstinences specifically enjoined, this polity placed every one under a regimental training: which both shaped his character beforehand, so as to make sure that he should have no disposition to commit offences21 — and subjected him to perpetual supervision afterwards, commencing with boyhood and continued to old age, through the four successive stages of boys, youths, mature men, and elders.

Both of them combine polity with education — temporal with spiritual.

This general principle of combining polity with education, is fundamental both with Plato and Xenophon: to a great degree, it is retained also by Aristotle. The lawgiver exercises a spiritual as well as a temporal function. He does not content himself with prohibitions and punishments, but provides for fashioning every man’s character to a predetermined model, through systematic discipline begun in childhood and never discontinued. This was the general scheme, realised at Sparta in a certain manner and degree, and idealised both by Plato and Xenophon. The full application of the scheme, however, is restricted, in all the three, to a select body of qualified citizens; who are assumed to exercise dominion or headship over the remaining community.22

Differences between them — Character of Cyrus.

Thus far the general conception of Xenophon and Plato is similar: yet there are material differences between them. In Xenophon, the ultimate purpose is, to set forth the personal qualities of Cyrus: to which purpose the description of the general training of the citizens is preparatory, occupying only a small portion of the Cyropædia, and serving to explain the system out of which Cyrus sprang. And the character of Cyrus is looked at in reference to the government of mankind. Xenophon had seen 143governments, of all sorts, resisted and overthrown — despotisms, oligarchies, democracies. His first inference from these facts is, that man is a very difficult animal to govern:— much more difficult than sheep or oxen. But on farther reflection he recognises that the problem is noway insoluble: that a ruler may make sure of ruling mankind with their own consent, and of obtaining hearty obedience — provided that he goes to work in an intelligent manner.23 Such a ruler is described in Cyrus; who both conquered many distant and unconnected nations, — and governed them, when conquered, skilfully, so as to ensure complete obedience without any active discontent. The abilities and exploits of Cyrus thus step far beyond the range of the systematic Persian discipline, though that discipline is represented as having first formed both his character and that of his immediate companions. He is a despot responsible to no one, but acting with so much sagacity, justice, and benevolence, that his subjects obey him willingly. His military orders are arranged with the utmost prudence and calculation of consequences. He promotes the friends who have gone through the same discipline with himself, to be satraps of the conquered provinces, exacting from them submission, and tribute-collection for himself, together with just dealing towards the subjects. Each satrap is required to maintain his ministers, officers, and soldiers around him under constant personal inspection, with habits of temperance and constant exercise in hunting.24 These men and the Persians generally, constitute the privileged class and the military force of the empire:25 the other mass of subjects are not only kept disarmed, but governed as “gens tailleables et corvéables”. Moreover, besides combining justice and personal activity with generosity and winning manners, Cyrus does not neglect such ceremonial artifices and pomp as may impose on the imagination of spectators.26 He keeps up designedly not merely competition144 but mutual jealousy and ill-will among those around him. And he is careful that the most faithful among them shall be placed on his left hand at the banquet, because that side is the most exposed to treachery.27

Xenophontic genius for command — Practical training — Sokratic principles applied in Persian training.

What is chiefly present to the mind of Xenophon is, a select fraction of citizens passing their whole lives in a regimental training like that of Lacedæmon: uniformity of habits, exact obedience, the strongest bodily exercise combined with the simplest nutritive diet, perfect command of the physical appetites and necessities, so that no such thing as spitting or blowing the nose is seen.28 The grand purpose of the system, as at Sparta,29 is warlike efficiency: war being regarded as the natural state of man. The younger citizens learn the use of the bow and javelin, the older that of the sword and shield. As war requires not merely perfectly trained soldiers, but also the initiative of a superior individual chief, so Xenophon assumes in the chief of these men (like Agesilaus at Sparta) an unrivalled genius for command. The Xenophontic Cyrus is altogether a practical man. We are not told that he learnt anything except in common with the rest. Neither he nor they receive any musical or literary training. The course which they go through is altogether ethical, gymnastical, and military. Their boyhood is passed in learning justice and temperance,30 which are made express subjects of teaching by Xenophon and under express masters: Xenophon thus supplies the deficiency so often lamented by the Platonic Sokrates, who remarks that neither at Athens nor elsewhere can he find either teaching or teacher of justice. Cyrus learns justice and temperance along with the rest,31 but he does not learn more than the rest: nor does Xenophon perform 145his promise of explaining by what education such extraordinary genius for command is brought about.32 The superior character of Cyrus is assumed and described, but noway accounted for: indeed his rank and position at the court of Astyages (in which he stands distinguished from the other Persians) present nothing but temptations to indulgence, partially countervailed by wise counsel from his father Kambyses. We must therefore consider Cyrus to be a king by nature, like the chief bee in each hive33 — an untaught or self-taught genius, in his excellence as general and emperor. He obtains only one adventitious aid peculiar to himself. Being of divine progeny, he receives the special favour and revelations of the Gods, who, in doubtful emergencies, communicate to him by signs, omens, dreams, and sacrifices, what he ought to do and what he ought to leave undone.34 Such privileged communications are represented as indispensable to the success of a leader: for though it was his duty to learn all that could be learnt, yet even after he had done this, so much uncertainty remained behind, that his decisions were little better than a lottery.35 The Gods arranged the sequences of events partly in a regular and decypherable manner, so that a man by diligent study might come to understand them: but they reserved many important events for their own free-will, so as not to be intelligible by any amount of human study. Here the wisest man was at fault no less than the most ignorant: nor could he obtain the knowledge of them except by special revelation solicited or obtained. The Gods communicated such peculiar knowledge to their favourites, but not to every one indiscriminately: for they were under no necessity to take care of men towards whom they felt no inclination.36 Cyrus was one of the men thus specially privileged: but he was diligent in cultivating 146the favour of the Gods by constant worship, not merely at times when he stood in need of their revelations, but at other times also: just as in regard to human friends or patrons, assiduous attentions were requisite to keep up their goodwill.37

When it is desired to realise an ideal improvement of society (says Plato),38 the easiest postulate is to assume a despot, young, clever, brave, thoughtful, temperate, and aspiring, belonging to that superhuman breed which reigned under the presidency of Kronus. Such a postulate is assumed by Xenophon in his hero Cyrus. The Xenophontic scheme, though presupposing a collective training, resolves itself ultimately into the will of an individual, enforcing good regulations, and full of tact in dealing with subordinates. What Cyrus is in campaign and empire, Ischomachus (see the Economica of Xenophon) is in the household: but everything depends on the life of this distinguished individual. Xenophon leads us at once into practice, laying only a scanty basis of theory.

Plato does not build upon an individual hero. Platonic training compared with Xenophontic.

In Plato’s Republic, on the contrary, the theory predominates. He does not build upon any individual hero: he constructs a social and educational system, capable of self-perpetuation at least for a considerable time.39 He describes the generating and sustaining principles of his system, but he does not exhibit it in action, by any pseudo-historical narrative: we learn indeed, that he had intended to subjoin such a narrative, in the dialogue called Kritias, of which only the commencement was ever written.40 He aims at forming a certain type of character, common to all the Guardians: superadding new features 147so as to form a still more exalted type, peculiar to those few Elders selected from among them to exercise the directorial function. He not only lays down the process of training in greater detail than Xenophon, but he also gives explanatory reasons for most of his recommendations.

One prominent difference between the two deserves to be noticed. In the Xenophontic training, the ethical, gymnastic, and military, exigencies are carefully provided for: but the musical and intellectual exigencies are left out. The Xenophontic Persians are not affirmed either to learn letters, or to hear and repeat poetry, or to acquire the knowledge of any musical instrument. Nor does it appear, even in the case of the historical Spartans, that letters made any part of their public training. But the Platonic training includes music and gymnastics as co-ordinate and equally indispensable. Words or intellectual exercises, come in under the head of music.41 Indeed, in Plato’s view, even gymnastics, though bearing immediately on the health and force of the body, have for their ultimate purpose a certain action upon the mind; being essential to the due development of courage, energy, endurance, and self-assertion.42 Gymnastics without music produce a hard and savage character, insensible to persuasive agencies, hating discourse or discussion,43 ungraceful as well as stupid. Music without gymnastics generates a susceptible temperament, soft, tender, and yielding to difficulties, with quick but transient impulses. Each of the two, music and gymnastic, is indispensable as a supplement and corrective to the other.

Platonic type of character compared with Xenophontic, is like the Athenian compared with the Spartan.

The type of character here contemplated by Plato deserves particular notice, as contrasted with that of Xenophon. It is the Athenian type against the Spartan. Periklês in his funeral oration, delivered at Athens in the first year of the Peloponnesian war, boasts that the Athenians had already reached a type similar to 148this — and that too, without any special individual discipline, legally enforced: that they combined courage, ready energy, and combined action — with developed intelligence, the love of discourse, accessibility to persuasion, and taste for the Beautiful. That which Plato aims at accomplishing in his Guardians, by means of a state-education at once musical and gymnastical — Periklês declares to have been already realised at Athens without any state-education, through the spontaneous tendencies of individuals called forth and seconded by the general working of the political system.44 He compliments his countrymen as having accomplished this object without the unnecessary rigour of a positive state-discipline, and without any other restraints than the special injunctions and prohibitions of a known law. It is this absence of state-discipline to which both Xenophon and Plato are opposed. Both of them follow Lykurgus in proclaiming the insufficiency of mere prohibitions; and in demanding a positive routine of duty to be prescribed by authority, and enforced upon individuals through life. In regard to end, Plato is more in harmony with Periklês: in regard to means, with Xenophon.

Plato’s views respecting special laws and criminal procedure generally are remarkable. He not only manifests that repugnance towards the Dikastery — which is common to Sokrates, Xenophon, Isokrates, and Aristophanes — but he excludes it almost entirely from his system, as being superseded by the constant public discipline of the Guardians.

Professional soldiers are the proper modern standard of comparison with the regulations of Plato and Xenophon.

It is to be remembered that these propositions of Plato have reference, not to an entire and miscellaneous community, but to a select body called the Guardians, required to possess the bodily and mental attributes of soldiers, policemen, and superintendents. The standard of comparison in modern times, for the Lykurgean, Xenophontic or Platonic, training, is to 149be sought in the stringent discipline of professional soldiers; not in the general liberty, subject only to definite restrictions, enjoyed by non-military persons. In regard to soldiers, the Platonic principle is now usually admitted — that it is not sufficient to enact articles of war, defining what a soldier ought to do, and threatening him with punishment in case of infraction — but that, besides this, it is indispensable to exact from him a continued routine of positive performances, under constant professional supervision. Without this preparation, few now expect that soldiers should behave effectively when the moment of action arrives. This is the doctrine applied by Plato and Xenophon to the whole life of the citizen.

Music and Gymnastic — multifarious and varied effects of music.

Music and Gymnastic are regarded by Plato mainly as they bear upon and influence the emotional character of his citizens. Each of them is the antithesis, and at the same time the supplement, to the other. Gymnastic tends to develop exclusively the courageous and energetic emotions:— anger and the feeling of power — but no others. Whereas music (understood in the Platonic sense) has a far more multifarious and varied agency: it may develop either those, or the gentle and tender emotions, according to circumstances.45 In the hands of Tyrtæus and Æschylus, it generates vehement and fearless combatants: in the hands of Euripides and other pathetic poets, it produces tender, amatory, effeminate natures, ingenious in talk but impotent for action.46

Great influence of the poets and their works on education.

In the age of Plato, Homer and other poets were extolled as the teachers of mankind, and as themselves possessing universal knowledge. They enjoyed a religious respect, being supposed to speak under divine inspiration,150 and to be the privileged reporters or diviners of a forgotten past.47 They furnished the most interesting portion of that floating mass of traditional narrative respecting Gods, Heroes, and ancestors, which found easy credence both as matter of religion and as matter of history: being in full harmony with the emotional preconceptions, and uncritical curiosity, of the hearers. They furnished likewise exhortation and reproof, rules and maxims, so expressed as to live in the memory — impressive utterance for all the strong feelings of the human bosom. Poetry was for a long time the only form of literature. It was not until the fifth century B.C. that prose compositions either began to be multiplied, or were carried to such perfection as to possess a charm of their own calculated to rival the poets, who had long enjoyed a monopoly as purveyors for æsthetical sentiment and fancy. Rhetors, Sophists, Philosophers, then became their competitors; opening new veins of intellectual activity,48 and sharing, to a certain extent, the pædagogic influence of the poets — yet never displacing them from their traditional function of teachers, narrators, and guides to the intelligence, as well as improving ministers to the sentiments, emotions, and imagination, of youth. Indeed, many Sophists and Rhetors presented themselves not as superseding,49 but as expounding and illustrating, the poets. Sokrates also did this occasionally, though not upon system.50

151Plato’s idea of the purpose which poetry and music ought to serve in education.

It is this educational practice — common to a certain extent among Greeks, but more developed at Athens than elsewhere51 — which Plato has in his mind, when he draws up the outline of a musical education for his youthful Guardians. He does not intend it as a scheme for fostering the highest intellectual powers, or for exalting men into philosophers — which he reserves as an ulterior improvement, to be communicated at a later period of life, and only to a chosen few — the large majority being supposed incapable of appropriating it. His musical training (co-operating with the gymnastical) is intended to form the character of the general body of Guardians: to implant in them from early childhood a peculiar vein of sentiments, habits, emotions and emotional beliefs, ethical esteem and disesteem, love and hatred, &c., to inspire them (in his own phrase) with love of the beautiful or honourable.

He declares war against most of the traditional and consecrated poetry, as mischievous.

It is in this spirit that he deals with the traditional, popular, 152almost consecrated, poetical literature which prevailed around him. He undertakes to revise and recast the whole of it. Repudiating avowedly the purpose of the authors, he sets up a different point of view by which they are to be judged. The contest of principle, into which he now enters, subsisted (he tells us) long before his time: a standing discord between the philosophers and the poets.52 The poet is an artist53 whose aim is to give immediate pleasure and satisfaction: appealing to æsthetical sentiment, feeding imagination and belief, and finding embodiment for emotions, religious or patriotic, which he shares with his hearers: the philosopher is a critic, who lays down authoritatively deeper and more distant ends which he considers that poetry ought to serve, judging the poets according as they promote, neglect, or frustrate those ends. Plato declares the end which he requires poetry to serve in the training of his Guardians. It must contribute to form the ethical character which he approves: in so far as it thus contributes, he will tolerate it, but no farther. The charm and interest especially, belonging to beautiful poems, is not only no reason for admitting them, but is rather a reason (in his view) for excluding them.54 The more 153beautiful a poem is, the more effectively does it awaken, stimulate, and amplify, the emotional forces of the mind: the stronger is its efficacy in giving empire to pleasure and pain, and in resisting or overpowering the rightful authority of Reason. It thus directly contravenes the purpose of the Platonic education — the formation of characters wherein Reason shall effectively controul all the emotions and desires.55 Hence he excludes all the varieties of imitative poetry:— that is, narrative, descriptive, or dramatic poetry. He admits only hymns to the Gods and panegyrics upon good citizens:— probably also didactic, gnomic, or hortative, poetry of approved tone. Imitative poetry is declared objectionable farther, not only as it exaggerates the emotions, but on another ground — that it fills the mind with false and unreal representations; being composed by men who have no real knowledge of their subject, though they pretend to a sort of fallacious omniscience, and talk boldly about every thing.56

Strict limits imposed by Plato on poets.

Even hymns to the Gods, however, may be composed in many different strains, according to the conception which the poet entertains of their character and attributes. The Homeric Hymns which we now possess could not be acceptable to Plato. While denouncing much of the current theological poetry, he assumes a censorial authority, in his joint character of Lykurgus and Sokrates,57 to dictate what sort of poetical compositions shall be tolerated among his Guardians. He pronounces many of the tales in Homer and Hesiod to be 154not merely fictions, but mischievous fictions: not fit to be circulated, even if they had been true.

His view of the purposes of fiction — little distinction between fiction and truth. His censures upon Homer and the tragedians.

Plato admits fiction, indeed, along with truth as an instrument for forming the character. Nay, he draws little distinction between the two, as regards particular narratives. But the point upon which he specially insists, is, that all the narratives in circulation, true or false, respecting Gods and Heroes, shall ascribe to them none but qualities ethically estimable and venerable. He condemns Homer and Hesiod as having misrepresented the Gods and Heroes, and as having attributed to them acts inconsistent with their true character, like a painter painting a portrait unlike to the original.58 He rejects in this manner various tales told in these poems respecting Zeus, Hêrê, Hephæstus — the fraudulent rupture of the treaty between the Greeks and Trojans by Pandarus, at the instigation of Zeus and Athênê — the final battle of the Gods, in the Iliad59 — the transformations of Proteus and Thetis, and the general declaration in the Odyssey that the Gods under the likeness of various strangers visit human cities as inspectors of good and bad behaviour60 — the dream sent by Zeus to deceive Agamemnon (in the second book of the Iliad), and the charge made by Thetis in Æschylus against Apollo, of having deceived her and killed her son Achilles61 — the violent amorous impulse of Zeus, in the fourteenth book of the Iliad — the immoderate laughter among the Gods, when they saw the lame Hephæstus busying himself in the service of the banquet. Plato will not permit the realm of Hades to be described as odious and full of terrors, because the Guardians will thereby learn to fear death.62 Nor will he tolerate the Homeric pictures of heroes or semi-divine persons, like Priam or Achilles, plunged in violent sorrow 155for the death of friends and relatives:— since a thoroughly right-minded man, while he regards death as no serious evil to the deceased, is at the same time most self-sufficing in character, and least in need of extraneous sympathy.63

Type of character prescribed by Plato, to which all poets must conform, in tales about Gods and Heroes.

These and other condemnations are passed by Plato upon the current histories respecting Gods, and respecting heroes the sons or immediate descendants of Gods. He entirely forbids such histories, as suggesting bad examples to his Guardians. He prohibits all poetical composition, except under his own censorial supervision. He lays down, as a general doctrine, that the Gods are good; and he will tolerate no narrative which is not in full harmony with this predetermined type. Without giving any specimens of approved narratives — which he declares to be the business not of the lawgiver, but of the poet — he insists only that all poets shall conform in their compositions to his general standard of orthodoxy.64

Applying such a principle of criticism, Plato had little difficulty in finding portions of the current mythology offensive to his ideal type of goodness. Indeed he might have found many others, yet more offensive to it than some of those which he has selected.65 But the extent of his variance with the current views 156reveals itself still more emphatically, when he says that the Gods are not to be represented as the cause of evil things to us, but only of good things. Most persons (he says) consider the Gods as causes of all things, evil as well as good: but this is untrue:66 the Gods dispense only the good things, not the evil; and the good things are few in number compared with the evil. Plato therefore requires the poet to ascribe all good things to the Gods and to no one else; but to find other causes, apart from the Gods, for sufferings and evils. But if the poet chooses to describe sufferings as inflicted by the Gods, he must at the same time represent these sufferings as a healing penalty or real benefit to the sufferers.67

The principle involved in these criticisms of Plato deserves notice, in more than one point of view.

Position of Plato as an innovator on the received faith and traditions. Fictions indispensable to the Platonic Commonwealth.

That which he proposes for his commonwealth is hardly less than a new religious creed, retaining merely old names of the Gods and old ceremonies. He intends it to consist of a body of premeditated fictitious stories, prepared by poets under his inspection and controul. He does not set up any pretence of historical truth for these stories, when first promulgated: he claims no traditionary evidence, no divine inspiration, such as were associated more or less with the received legends, in the minds both of those who recited and of those who heard them. He rejects these legends, because 157they are inconsistent with his belief and sentiment as to the character of the Gods. Such rejection we can understand:— but he goes a step farther, and directs the coinage of a new body of legends, which have no other title to credence, except that they are to be in harmony with his belief about the general character of the Gods, and that they will produce a salutary ethical effect upon the minds of his Guardians. They are deliberate fictions, the difference between fact and fiction being altogether neglected: they are pious frauds, constructed upon an authoritative type, and intended for an orthodox purpose. The exclusive monopoly of coining and circulating fictions is a privilege which Plato exacts for himself as founder, and for the Rulers, after his commonwealth is founded.68 All the narrative matter circulating in his community is to be prepared with reference to his views, and stamped at his mint. He considers it not merely a privilege, but a duty of the Rulers, to provide and circulate fictions for the benefit of the community, like physicians administering wholesome medicines.69 This is a part of the machinery essential to his purpose. He remarks that it had already been often worked successfully by others, for the establishment of cities present or past. There had been no recent example of it, indeed, nor will he guarantee the practicability of it among his own contemporaries. Yet, unless certain fundamental fictions can be accredited among his citizens, the scheme of his commonwealth must fail. They must be made to believe that they are all earthborn and all brethren; that the earth which they inhabit is also their mother: but that there is this difference among them — the 158Rulers have gold mingled with their constitution, the other Guardians have silver, the remaining citizens have brass or iron. This bold fiction must be planted as a fundamental dogma, as an article of unquestioned faith, in the minds of all the citizens, in order that they may be animated with the proper sentiments of reverence towards the local soil as their common mother — of universal mutual affection among themselves as brothers — and of deference, on the part of the iron and brazen variety, towards the gold and silver. At least such must be the established creed of all the other citizens except the few Rulers. It ought also to be imparted, if possible, to the Rulers themselves; but they might be more difficult to persuade.70

Difficulty of procuring first admission for fictions. Ease with which they perpetuate themselves after having been once admitted.

Plato fully admits the extreme difficulty of procuring a first introduction and establishment for this new article of faith, which nevertheless is indispensable to set his commonwealth afloat. But if it can be once established, there will be no difficulty at all in continuing and perpetuating it.71 Even as to the first commencement, difficulty is not to be confounded with impossibility: for the attempt has already been made with success in many different places, though there happens to be no recent instance.

We learn hence to appreciate the estimate which Plato formed of the ethical and religious faith, prevalent in the various societies around him. He regards as fictions the accredited stories respecting Gods and Heroes, which constituted the matter of religious belief among his contemporaries; being familiarised to all through the works of poets, painters, and sculptors, as well as through votive offerings, such as the robe annually worked by the women of Athens for the Goddess Athênê. These fictions he supposes to have originally obtained credence either through the charm of poets and narrators, or through the deliberate coinage 159of an authoritative lawgiver; presupposing in the community a vague emotional belief in the Gods — invisible, quasi-human agents, of whom they knew nothing distinct — and an entire ignorance of recorded history, past as well as present. Once received into the general belief, which is much more an act of emotion than of reason, such narratives retain their hold both by positive teaching and by the self-operating transmission of this emotional faith to each new member of the community, as well as by the almost entire absence of criticism: especially in earlier days, when men were less intelligent but more virtuous than they are now (in Plato’s time) — when among their other virtues, that of unsuspecting faith stood conspicuous, no one having yet become clever enough to suspect falsehood.72 This is what Plato assumes as the natural mental condition of society, to which he adapts his improvements. He disapproves of the received fictions, not because they are fictions, but because they tend to produce a mischievous ethical effect, from the acts which they ascribe to the Gods and Heroes. These acts were such, that many of them (he says), even if they had been true, ought never to be promulgated. Plato does not pretend to substitute truth in place of fiction; but to furnish a better class of fictions in place of a worse.73 The religion of the Commonwealth, in his view, is to furnish fictions and sanctions to assist the moral and political views of the lawgiver, whose duty it is to employ religion for this purpose.74

Views entertained by Kritias and others, that the religious doctrines generally believed had originated with law-givers, for useful purposes.

We read in a poetical fragment of Kritias (the contemporary 160of Plato, though somewhat older) an opinion advanced — that even the belief in the existence of the Gods sprang originally from the deliberate promulgation of lawgivers, for useful purposes. The opinion of Plato is not exactly the same, but it is very analogous: for he holds that all which the community believe, respecting the attributes and acts of the Gods, must consist of fictions, and that accordingly it is essential for the lawgiver to determine what the accredited fictions in his own community shall be: he must therefore cause to be invented and circulated such as conduce to the ethical and political results which he himself approves. Private citizens are forbidden to tell falsehood; but the lawgiver is to administer falsehood, on suitable occasions, as a wholesome medicine.75

Plato lays down his own individual preconception respecting the characters of the Gods, as orthodoxy for his Republic: directing that the poets shall provide new narratives conformable to that type. What is more, he establishes a peremptory censorship to prevent the circulation of any narratives dissenting from it. As to truth or falsehood, all that he himself claims is that his general preconception of the character of the Gods is true, and worthy of their dignity; while those entertained by his contemporaries are false; the particular narratives are alike fictitious in both cases. Fictitious as they are, however, Plato has fair reason for his confident assertion, that if they could once be imprinted on the minds of his citizens, as portions of an established creed, they would maintain themselves for a long time in unimpaired force and credit. He guards them by the artificial protection of a censorship, stricter than any real Grecian city 161exhibited: over and above the self-supporting efficacy, usually sufficient without farther aid, which inheres in every established religious creed.

Main points of dissent between Plato and his countrymen, in respect to religious doctrine.

The points upon which Plato here chiefly takes issue with his countrymen, are — the general character of the Gods — and the extent to which the Gods determine the lot of human beings. He distinctly repudiates as untrue, that which he declares to be the generally received faith: though in other parts of his writings, we find him eulogising the merit of uninquiring faith — of that age of honest simplicity when every one believed what was told him from his childhood, and when no man was yet clever enough to suspect falsehood.76

Theology of Plato compared with that of Epikurus — Neither of them satisfied the exigencies of a believing religious mind of that day.

The discord on this important point between Plato and the religious faith of his countrymen, deserves notice the rather, because the doctrines in the Republic are all put into the mouth of Sokrates, and are even criticised by Aristotle under the name of Sokrates.77 Most people, and among them the historical Sokrates, believed in the universal agency of the Gods.78 No — (affirms Plato) the Gods are good beings, whose nature is inconsistent with the production of evil: we must therefore divide the course of events into two portions, referring the good only to the Gods and the evil to other causes. Moreover — since the evil in the world is not merely considerable, but so considerable as greatly to preponderate over good, we must pronounce that most things are produced by these other 162causes (not farther particularised by Plato) and comparatively few things by the Gods. Now Epikurus (and some contemporaries79 of Plato even before Epikurus) adopted these same premisses as to the preponderance of evil — but drew a different inference. They inferred that the Gods did not interfere at all in the management of the universe. Epikurus conceived the Gods as immortal beings living in eternal tranquillity and happiness; he thought it repugnant to their nature to exchange this state for any other — above all, to exchange it for the task of administering the universe, which would impose upon them endless vexation without any assignable benefit. Lastly, the preponderant evil, visibly manifested in the universe, afforded to his mind a positive proof that it was not administered by them.80

Comparing the two doctrines, we see that Plato, though he did not reject altogether, as Epikurus did, the agency of the Gods in the universe, — restricted it here nevertheless so as to suit the ethical exigencies of his own mind. He thus discarded so large a portion of it, as to place himself, or rather his spokesman Sokrates, in marked hostility with the received religious faith. If Melêtus and Anytus lived to read the Platonic Republic (we may add, also the dialogue called Euthyphron), they would probably have felt increased persuasion that their indictment against Sokrates was well-grounded:81 since he stood proclaimed by the most eminent of his companions as an innovator in matters of 163religion, and as disbelieving a very large portion of what was commonly received by pious Athenians. With many persons, it was considered a species of sacrilege to disbelieve any narrative which had once been impressed upon them respecting the Gods or the divine agency: the later Pythagoreans laid it down as a canon, that this was never to be done.82

Plato conceives the Gods according to the exigencies of his own mind — complete discord with those of the popular mind.

Now the Gods, as here conceived by Plato conformably to his own ethical exigencies, are representatives of abstract goodness, or of what he considers as such83 — but they are nothing else. They have no other human emotions: they are invoked for the purposes of the schoolmaster and the lawgiver, to distribute prizes, and inflict chastisements, on occasions which Plato thinks suitable. But Gods with these restricted functions were hardly less at variance with the current religious belief than the contemplative, theorising, Gods of Aristotle — or the perfectly tranquil and happy Gods of Epikurus. The Gods of the popular faith were not thus specialised types, embodiments of one abstract, ethical, idea. They were concrete personalities, many-sided and many-coloured, endowed with great variety of dispositions and emotions: having sympathies and antipathies, preferences and dislikes, to persons, places, and objects: sensitive on the score of attention paid to themselves, and of offerings tendered by men, jealous of any person who appeared to make light of them, or to put himself upon a footing of independence or rivalry: connected with particular men and cities by ties of family and residence.84 They corresponded164 with all the feelings of the believer; with his hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows, his pride or his shame, his love or preference towards some persons or institutions, his hatred and contempt for others. They were sometimes benevolent, sometimes displeased and unpropitious, according to circumstances. They were indeed believed to interfere for the protection of what the believer accounted innocence or merit, and for the avenging of what he called wrong. But this was only one of many occasions on which they interfered. They dispensed alternately evil and good, out of the two casks mentioned in that Homeric verse85 which Plato so emphatically censures. Nay, it was as much a necessity of the believer’s imagination to impute marked and serious suffering to the envy or jealousy of the Gods, as good fortune and prosperity to their kindness. Such a turn of thought is not less visible in Herodotus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Lykurgus, &c., than in Homer and the other poets whom Plato rebukes. Moreover it is frequently expressed or implied in the answers or admonitions delivered from oracles.86

165Repugnance of ordinary Athenians in regard to the criticism of Sokrates on the religious legends.

When therefore the Platonic Sokrates in this treatise affirms authoritatively, — and affirms without any proof — his restricted version of the agency of the Gods, calling upon his countrymen to reject all that large portion of their religious belief, which rested upon the assumption of a wider agency, as being unworthy of the real attributes of the Gods, — he would confirm, in the minds of ordinary Athenians, the charge of culpable innovation in religion, preferred against him by his accusers. To set up à priori a certain type (either Platonic or Epikurean) of what the Gods must be, different from what they were commonly believed to be, — and then to disallow, as unworthy and incredible, all that was inconsistent with this type, including a full half of the narratives consecrated in the emotional belief of the public — all this could not but appear as “impious rationalism,” on the part of “the Sophist Sokrates”.87 It would be not less repugnant to the feelings of ordinary Greeks, and would appear not more conclusive to their reason, than the arguments of rationalising critics upon many narratives of the Old Testament appear to orthodox readers of modern times — when these critics disallow as untrue many acts therein ascribed to God, on the ground that such acts are unworthy of a just and good being.

Aristophanes connects the idea of immorality with the freethinkers and their wicked misinterpretations.

Though the Platonic Sokrates, repudiating most of the narratives166 believed respecting Gods and Heroes, as being immoral and suggesting bad examples to the hearers, proposes to construct a body of new fictions in place of them — yet, if we turn to the Clouds of Aristophanes, we shall find that the old-fashioned and unphilosophical Athenian took quite the opposite view. He connected immoral conduct with the new teaching, not with the old: he regarded the narratives respecting the Gods as realities of an unrecorded past, not as fictions for the purposes of the training-school: he did not imagine that the conduct of Zeus, in chaining up his father Kronus, was a proper model to be copied by himself or any other man: nay, he denounced all such disposition to copy, and to seek excuse for human misconduct in the example of the Gods, as abuse and profanation introduced by the sophistry of the freethinkers.88 167In his eyes, the religious traditions were part and parcel of the established faith, customs and laws of the state; and Sokrates, 168in discrediting the traditions, set himself up as a thinker above the laws. As to this feature, the Aristophanic Sokrates in the Clouds, and the Platonic Sokrates in the Republic, perfectly agree — however much they differ in other respects.

Heresies ascribed to Sokrates by his own friends — Unpopularity of his name from this circumstance.

In reviewing the Platonic Republic, I have thought it necessary to appreciate the theological and pædagogic doctrines, not merely with reference to mankind in the abstract, but also as they appeared to the contemporaries among whom they were promulgated.

Restrictions imposed by Plato upon musical modes and reciters.

To all the above mentioned restrictions imposed by Plato upon the manifestation of the poet, both as to thoughts, words, and manner of recital — we must add those which he provides for music in its limited sense: the musical modes and instruments, the varieties of rhythm. He allows only the lyre and the harp, with the panspipe for shepherds tending their flocks. He forbids both the flute and all complicated stringed instruments. Interdicting the lugubrious, passionate, soft, and convivial, modes of music, he tolerates none but the Dorian and Phrygian, suitable to a sober, resolute, courageous, frame of mind: to which also all the rhythm and movement of the body is to be adapted.89 Each particular manifestation of speech, music, poetry, and painting, having a natural affinity with some particular emotional and volitional state — emanating 169from it in the mind of the author and suggesting it in other minds — nothing is to be tolerated except what exhibits goodness and temperance of disposition, — grace, proportion, and decency of external form.90 Artisans are to observe the like rules in their constructions: presenting to the eye nothing but what is symmetrical. The youthful Guardians, brought up among such representations, will have their minds imbued with correct æsthetical sentiment; they will learn even in their youngest years, before they are competent to give reasons, to love what is beautiful and honourable to hate what is ugly and mean.91

All these restrictions intended for the emotional training of the Guardians.

All these enactments and prohibitions have for their purpose the ethical and æsthetical training of the Guardians: to establish and keep up in each individual Guardian, a good state of the emotions, and a proper internal government — that is, a due subordination of energy and appetite to Reason.92 Their bodies will also be trained by a good and healthy scheme of gymnastics, which will at the same time not only impart to them strength but inspire them with courage. The body is here considered, not (like what we read in Phædon and Philêbus) as an inconvenient and depraving companion to the mind: but as an indispensable co-operator, only requiring to be duly reined.

Regulations for the life of the Guardians, especially the prohibition of separate property and family.

The Guardians, of both sexes, thus educated and disciplined, are intended to pass their whole lives in the discharge of their duties as Guardians; implicitly obeying the orders of the Few Philosophical chiefs, and quartered in barracks under strict regulations. Among these regulations, there are two in particular which have always provoked more surprise and comment than any other features in the commonwealth; first, the prohibition of separate property — next, the prohibition of separate family — including the respective position of the two sexes.

Purpose of Plato in these regulations.

The directions of Plato on these two points not only hang 170together, but are founded on the same reason and considerations. He is resolved to prevent the growth of any separate interest, affections, or aspirations, in the mind of any individual Guardian. Each Guardian is to perform his military and civil duties to the Commonwealth, and to do nothing else. He must find his happiness in the performance of his duty: no double functions or occupations are tolerated. This principle, important in Plato’s view as regards every one, is of supreme importance as applying to the Guardians,93 in whom resides the whole armed force of the Commonwealth and by whom the orders of the Chiefs or Elders are enforced. If the Guardians aspire to private ends of their own, and employ their force for the attainment of such ends, nothing but oppression and ruin of the remaining community can ensue. A man having land of his own to cultivate, or a wife and family of his own to provide with comforts, may be a good economist, but he will never be a tolerable Guardian.94 To be competent for this latter function, he must neither covet wealth nor be exposed to the fear of poverty: he must desire neither enjoyments nor power, except what are common to his entire regiment. He must indulge neither private sympathies nor private antipathies: he must be inaccessible to all motives which could lead him to despoil or hurt his fellow-citizens the producers. Accordingly the hopes and fears involved in self-maintenance — the feelings of buyer, seller, donor, or receiver — the ideas of separate property, house, wife, or family — must never be allowed to enter into his mind. The Guardians will receive from the productive part of the community a constant provision, sufficient, but not more than sufficient, for their reasonable maintenance. Their residence will be in public barracks and their meals at a common mess: they must be taught to regard it as a disgrace to meddle in any way with gold and silver.95 Men and women will live all together, or distributed in a few fractional companies, but always in companionship, and under perpetual drill; beginning from the earliest years with both sexes. Boys and girls will be placed from the beginning under the same superintendence;171 and will receive the same training, as well in gymnastic as in music. The characters of both will be exposed to the same influences and formed in the same mould. Upon the maintenance of such early, equal, and collective training, especially in music, under the orders of the Elders, — Plato declares the stability of the Commonwealth to depend.96

Common life, education, drill, collective life, and duties, for Guardians of both sexes. Views of Plato respecting the female character and aptitudes.

The purpose being, to form good and competent Guardians the same training which will be best for the boys will also be best for the girls. But is it true that women are competent to the function of Guardians? Is the female nature endued with the same aptitudes for such duties as the male? Men will ridicule the suggestion (says Plato) and will maintain the negative. They will say that there are some functions for which men are more competent, others for which women are more competent than men: and that women are unfit for any such duty as that of Guardians. Plato dissents from this opinion altogether. There is no point on which he speaks in terms of more decided conviction. Men and women (he says) can perform this duty conjointly, just as dogs of both sexes take part in guarding the flock. It is not true that the female, by reason of the characteristic properties of sex — parturition and suckling — is disqualified for out-door occupations and restricted to the interior of the house.97 As in the remaining animals generally, so also in the human race. There is no fundamental difference between the two sexes, other than that of the sexual attributes themselves. From that difference no consequences flow, in respect to aptitude for some occupations, inaptitude for others. There are great individual differences between one woman and another, as there are between one man and another: this woman is peculiarly fit for one task, that woman for something else. But speaking of women generally and collectively, there is not a single profession for which they are peculiarly fit, or more fit than men. Men are superior to women in every thing; in one occupation as well as in another. Yet among both sexes, there are serious individual differences, so that 172many women, individually estimated, will be superior to many men; no women will equal the best men, but the best women will equal the second-best men, and will be superior to the men below them.98 Accordingly, in order to obtain the best Guardians, selection must be made from both sexes indiscriminately. For ordinary duties, both will be found equally fit: but the heaviest and most difficult duties, those which require the maximum of competence to perform, will usually devolve upon men.99

His arguments against the ordinary doctrine.

Those who maintain (continues Plato) that because women are different from men, therefore the occupations of the two ought to be different — argue like vexatious disputants who mistake verbal distinctions for real: who do not enquire what is the formal or specific distinction indicated by a name, or whether it has any essential bearing on the matter under discussion.100 Long-haired men are different from bald-heads: but shall we conclude, that if the former are fit to make shoes, the latter are unfit? Certainly not: for when we inquire into the formal distinction 173connoted by these words, we find that it has no bearing upon such handicraft processes. So again the formal distinction implied by the terms male, female, in the human race as in other animals, lies altogether in the functions of sex and procreation.101 Now this has no essential bearing on the occupations of the adult; nor does it confer on the male fitness for one set of occupations — on the female, fitness for another. Each sex is fit for all, but the male is most fit for all: in each sex there are individuals better and worse, and differing one from another in special aptitudes. Men are competent for the duties of Guardians, only on condition of having gone through a complete musical and gymnastical education. Women are competent also, under the like condition; and are equally capable of profiting by the complete education. Moreover, the chiefs must select for those duties the best natural subjects. The total number of such is very limited: and they must select the best that both sexes afford.102

Opponents appealed to nature as an authority against Plato. He invokes Nature on his own side against them.

The strong objections, generally entertained against thus assigning to women equal participation in the education and functions of the Guardians, were enforced by saying — That it was a proceeding contrary to Nature. But Plato not only denies the validity of this argument: he even retorts it upon the objectors, and affirms that the existing separation of functions between the two sexes is contrary to Nature, and that his proposition alone is conformable thereunto.103 He has shown that the specific or formal distinction of the two has no essential bearing on the question, and therefore that no argument can be founded upon it. The specific or formal characteristic, in the case of males, is doubtless superior, taken abstractedly: yet in particular men it is embodied or manifested with various degrees of perfection, from very good to very bad. In the case of females, though inferior abstractedly, it is in its best particular embodiments equal to all except the best males, and superior to all such as are inferior to the best. Accordingly, the 174true dictate of Nature is, not merely that females may be taken, but that they ought to be taken, conjointly with males, under the selection of the Rulers, to fulfil the most important duties in the Commonwealth. The select females must go through the same musical and gymnastic training as the males. He who ridicules them for such bodily exercises, prosecuted with a view to the best objects, does not know what he is laughing at. “For this is the most valuable maxim which is now, or ever has been, proclaimed — What is useful, is honourable. What is hurtful, is base.”104

Collective family relations and denominations among the Guardians.

Plato now proceeds to unfold the relations of the sexes as intended to prevail among the mature Guardians, after all have undergone the public and common training from their earliest infancy. He conceives them as one thousand in total number, composed of both sexes in nearly equal proportion: since they are to be the best individuals of both sexes, the male sex, superior in formal characteristic, will probably furnish rather a greater number than the female. It has already been stated that they are all required to live together in barracks, dining at a common mess-table, with clothing and furniture alike for all. There is no individual property or separate house among them: the collective expense, in a comfortable but moderate way, is defrayed by contributions from the producing class. Separate families are unknown: all the Guardians, male and female, form one family, and one only: the older are fathers and mothers of all the younger, the younger are sons and daughters of all the older: those of the same age are all alike brothers and sisters of each other: those who, besides being of the same age, are within the limits of the nuptial age and of different sexes, are all alike husbands and wives of each other.105 It is the principle of the Platonic Commonwealth that the affections implied in these family-words, instead of being confined to one or a few exclusively,175 shall be expanded so as to embrace all of appropriate age.

Restrictions upon sexual intercourse — Purposes of such restrictions.

But Plato does not at all intend that sexual intercourse shall take place between these men and women promiscuously, or at the pleasure of individuals. On the contrary, he expressly denounces and interdicts it.106 A philosopher who has so much general disdain for individual impulse or choice, was not likely to sanction it in this particular case. Indeed it is the special purpose of his polity to bring impulse absolutely under the controul of reason, or of that which he assumes as such. This purpose is followed out in a remarkable manner as to procreation. What he seeks as lawgiver is, to keep the numbers of the Guardians nearly stationary, with no diminution and scarcely any increase:107 and to maintain the breed pure, so that the children born shall be as highly endowed by nature as possible. To these two objects the liberty of sexual intercourse is made subservient. The breeding is regulated like that of noble horses or dogs by an intelligent proprietor: the best animals of both sexes being brought together, and the limits of age fixed beforehand.108 Plato prescribes, as the limits of age, from twenty to forty for females — from thirty to fifty-five for males — when the powers of body and mind are at the maximum in both. All who are younger as well as all who are older, are expressly forbidden to meddle in the procreation for the city: this being a public function.109 Between the ages above named, couples will be invited to marry in such numbers as the Rulers may consider expedient for ensuring a supply of offspring sufficient and not more than sufficient — having regard to wars, distempers, or any other recent causes of mortality.110

176Regulations about marriages and family.

There is no part of the Platonic system in which individual choice is more decidedly eliminated, and the intervention of the Rulers made more constantly paramount, than this respecting the marriages: and Plato declares it to be among the greatest difficulties which they will have to surmount. They will establish festivals, in which they bring together the brides and bridegrooms, with hymns, prayer, and sacrifices, to the Gods: they will determine by lot what couples shall be joined, so as to make up the number settled as appropriate: but they will arrange the sortition themselves so cleverly, that what appears chance to others will be a result to them predetermined. The best men will thus always be assorted with the best women, the inferior with the inferior: but this will appear to every one, except themselves, the result of chance.111 Any young man (of thirty and upwards) distinguished for bravery or excellence will be allowed to have more than one wife; since it is good not merely to recompense his merit, but also to multiply his breed.112

In the seventh month, or in the tenth month, after the ceremonial day, offspring will be born, from these unions. But the children, immediately on being born, will be taken away from their mothers, and confided to nurses in an appropriate lodgment. The mothers will be admitted to suckle them, and wet-nurses will also be provided, as far as necessary: but the period for the mother to suckle will be abridged as much as possible, and all other trouble required for the care of infancy will be undertaken, not by her, but by the nurses. Moreover the greatest precautions will be taken that no mother shall know her own child: which is considered to be practicable, since many children will be born at nearly the same time.113 The children in infancy will be examined by the Rulers and other good judges, who will determine how many of them are sufficiently well constituted to promise fitness for the duties of Guardians. The children of the good and vigorous couples, except in any case of bodily deformity, will be brought up and placed under the public training for Guardians: the unpromising children, and 177those of the inferior couples, being regarded as not fit subjects for the public training, will be secretly got rid of, or placed among the producing class of the Commonwealth.114

Procreative powers of individual Guardians required to be held at the disposal of the rulers, for purity of breed.

What Plato here understands by marriage, is a special, solemn, consecrated, coupling for the occasion, with a view to breed for the public. It constitutes no permanent bond between the two persons coupled: who are brought together by the authorities under a delusive sortition, but who may perhaps never be brought together at any future sortition, unless it shall please the same authorities. The case resembles that of a breeding stud of horses and mares, to which Plato compares it: nothing else is wanted but the finest progeny attainable. But this, in Plato’s judgment, is the most important of all purposes: his commonwealth cannot maintain itself except under a superior breed of Guardians. Accordingly, he invests his marriages with the greatest possible sanctity. The religious solemnities accompanying them are essential to furnish security for the goodness of the offspring. Any proceeding, either of man or woman, which contravenes the provisions of the rulers on this point, is peremptorily forbidden: and any child, born from unauthorised intercourse without the requisite prayers and sacrifices, is considered as an outcast. Within the limits of the connubial age, all persons of both sexes hold their procreative powers exclusively at the disposition of the lawgiver. But after that age is past, both men and women may indulge in intercourse with whomsoever they please, since they are no longer in condition to procreate for the public. They are subject only to this one condition: not to produce any children, or, if perchance they do, not to bring them up.115 There is moreover one restriction upon the personal liberty of intercourse, after the connubial limits of age. No intercourse is permitted between father and daughter, or between mother and son. But how can such restriction be enforced, since no individual paternity or maternity is recognised 178in the Commonwealth? Plato answers by admitting a collective paternity and maternity. Every child born in the seventh month or in the tenth month after a couple have been solemnly wedded will be considered by them as their son or daughter, and will consider himself as such.116

Besides all these direct provisions for the purity of the breed of Guardians, which will succeed (so Plato anticipates) in a large majority of cases — the Rulers will keep up an effective supervision of detail, so as to exclude any unworthy exception, and even to admit into the Guardians any youth of very rare and exceptional promise who may be born among the remaining community. For Plato admits that there may be accidental births both ways: brass and iron may by occasional accident give birth to gold or silver — and vice versâ.

Purpose to create an intimate and equal sympathy among all the Guardians, but to prevent exclusive sympathy of particular members.

It is in this manner that Plato constitutes his body of Guardians; one thousand adult persons of both sexes,117 in nearly equal numbers, together with a small proportion of children — the proportion of these latter must be very small since the total number is not allowed to increase. His end here is to create an intimate and equal sympathy among them all, like that between all the members of the same bodily organism: to abolish all independent and exclusive sympathies of particular parts: to make the city One and Indivisible — a single organism, instead of many distinct conterminous organisms: to provide that the causes of pleasure and pain shall be the same to all, so that a man shall have no feeling of mine or thine, except in reference to his own body and that of another, which Plato notes as the greatest good — instead of each individual struggling apart for his own objects and rejoicing on occasions when his neighbour sorrows, which Plato regards as the greatest evil.118 All standing causes of disagreement or antipathy among the Guardians are assumed to be thus removed. But if any two hot-179headed youths get into a quarrel, they must fight it out on the spot. This will serve as a lesson in gymnastics:— subject however to the interference of any old man as by-stander, whom they as well as all other young men are bound implicitly to obey.119 Moreover all the miseries, privations, anxiety, and dependence, inseparable from the life of a poor man under the system of private property, will disappear entirely.120

Such are the main features of Plato’s Republic, in reference to his Guardians. They afford a memorable example of that philosophical analysis, applied to the circumstances of man and society, which the Greek mind was the first to conceive and follow out. Plato lays down his ends with great distinctness, as well as the means whereby he proposes to attain them. Granting his ends, the means proposed are almost always suitable and appropriate, whether practicable or otherwise.

Platonic scheme — partial communism.

The Platonic scheme is communism, so far as concerns the Guardians: but not communism in reference to the entire Commonwealth. In this it falls short of his own ideal, and is only a second best: the best of all would be, in his view, a communion that should pervade all persons and all acts and sentiments, effacing altogether the separate self.121 Not venturing to soar so high, he confined his perfect communion to the Guardians. Moreover his communism differs from modern theories in this. They contemplate individual producers and labourers, handing over the produce to be distributed among themselves by official authority; they contemplate also a regulation not merely of distribution, but of reserved capital and productive agency, under the same authority. But the Platonic Guardians are not producers at all. Everything which they consume is found for them. They are in the nature of paid functionaries, exempted from all cares and anxiety of self-maintenance, either present or future. They are all comfortably provided, without hopes of wealth or fear of poverty: moreover they are all equally comfortable, so that no sentiment can grow up among them, arising from comparison of each other’s possessions or enjoyments. Among such men and 180women, brought up from infancy as Plato directs, the sentiment of property, with all the multifarious associations derived from it, would be unknown. No man’s self-esteem, no man’s esteem of others, would turn upon it.

In this respect, the remaining members of the city, apart from the Guardians, and furnishing all the subsistence of the Guardians, are differently circumstanced. They are engaged in different modes of production, each exclusively in one mode. They exchange, buy, and sell, with each other: there exist therefore among them gradations of strength, skill, perseverance, frugality, and good luck — together with the consequent gradations of wealth and poverty. The substance or capital of the Commonwealth is maintained altogether by the portion of it which is extraneous to the Guardians; and among that portion there is no communism. The maintenance of the Guardians is a tax which these men have to pay: but after paying it, they apply or enjoy the rest of their produce as they please, subject to the requirements of the Rulers for public service.122

Nevertheless we are obliged to divine what Plato means about the condition of the producing classes in his Commonwealth. He himself tells us little or nothing about them; though they must constitute the large numerical majority. And this defect is in him the less excusable, since he reckons them as component members of his Commonwealth; while Aristotle, in his ideal Commonwealth, does not reckon them as component members or citizens, but merely as indispensable adjuncts, in the same manner as slaves. All that we know about the producers in the Platonic Commonwealth is, that each man is to have only one business — that for which he is most fit:— and that all are to be under the administration of the Rulers through the Guardians.

Soldiership as a separate profession has acquired greater development in modern times.

The enlistment of soldiers, apart from civilians, and the holding of them under distinct laws and stricter discipline, is a practice familiar to modern ideas, though it had little place among the Greeks of Plato’s day. There prevailed also in Egypt123 and in parts of Eastern181 Asia, from time immemorial, a distinction of castes: one caste being soldiers, invested with the defence of the country, and enjoying certain lands by the tenure of such military service: but in other respects, private proprietors like the rest — and receiving no special discipline, training, or education. In Grecian Ideas, military duties were a part, but only a part, of the duties of a citizen. This was the case even at Sparta. Though in practice, the discipline of that city tended in a preponderant degree towards military aptitude, yet the Spartan was still a citizen, not exclusively a soldier.

Spartan institutions — great impression which they produced upon speculative Greek minds.

It was from the Spartan institutions (and the Kretan, in many respects analogous) that the speculative political philosophers in Greece usually took the point of departure for their theories. Not only Plato did so, but Xenophon and Aristotle likewise. The most material fact which they saw before them at Sparta was, a public discipline both strict and continued, which directed the movements of the citizens, and guided their thoughts and feelings, from infancy to old age. To this supreme controul the private feelings, both of family and property, though not wholly suppressed, were made to bend: and occasionally in a way quite as remarkable as any restrictions proposed by either Plato or Xenophon.124 Moreover, the Spartan institutions were of immemorial antiquity; believed to have been suggested or sanctioned originally by Apollo and the Delphian oracle, as the Kretan institutions were by Zeus.125 They had lasted longer than other Hellenic institutions without forcible subversion: they obtained universal notice, admiration, and deference, throughout Greece. It was this conspicuous fact which emboldened the Grecian theorists to postulate for the lawgiver that unbounded controul, over the life and habits of citizens, which we read not merely in the Republic of Plato but in the Cyropædia of Xenophon, and to a great degree even in the Politica of Aristotle. To an objector, who asked them how they could possibly expect that individuals would submit to such 182unlimited interference, they would have replied — “Look at Sparta. You see there interference, as constant and rigorous as that which I propose, endured by the citizens not only without resistance, but with a tenacity and long continuance such as is not found among other communities with more lax regulations. The habits and sentiments of the Spartan citizen are fashioned to these institutions. Far from being anxious to shake them off, he accounts them a necessity as well as an honour.” This reply would have appeared valid and reasonable, in the fourth century before the Christian era. And it explains — what, after all, is the most surprising circumstance to a modern reader — the extreme boldness of speculation, the ideal omnipotence, assumed by the leading Grecian political theorists: much even by Aristotle, though his aspirations were more limited and practical — far more by Xenophon — most of all by Plato. Any theorist, proceeding avowedly κατ’ εὐχὴν, considered himself within bounds when he assumed to himself no greater influence than had actually been exercised by Lykurgus.

Plans of these speculative minds compared with Spartan — Different types of character contemplated.

Assuming such influence, however, he intended to employ it for ends approved by himself: agreeing with Lykurgus in the general principle of forming the citizen’s character by public and compulsory discipline, but not agreeing with him in the type of character proper to be aimed at. Xenophon departs least from the Spartan type: Aristotle and Plato greatly more, though in different directions. Each of them applies to a certain extent the process of abstraction and analysis both to the individual and to the community: considering both of them as made up of component elements working simultaneously either in co-operation or conflict. But in Plato the abstraction is carried farthest: the wholeness of the individual Guardian is completely effaced, so that each constitutes a small fraction or wheel of the real Platonic whole — the commonwealth. The fundamental Platonic principle is, that each man shall have one function, and one only: an extreme application of that which political economists call the division of labour. Among these many different functions, one, and doubtless the most difficult as well as important, is that of directing, administering, and defending the community: which is done by the Guardians and 183Rulers. It is to this one function that all Plato’s treatise is devoted: he tells us how such persons are to be trained and circumstanced. What he describes, therefore, is not properly citizens administering their own affairs, but commanders and officers watching over the interests of others: a sort of military bureaucracy, with chiefs at its head, directing as well as guarding a multitude beneath them. And what mainly distinguishes the Platonic system, is the extreme abstraction with which this public and official character is conceived: the degree to which the whole man is merged in the performance of his official duties: the entire extinction within him of the old individual Adam — of all private feelings and interests.

Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon or Aristotle.

Both in Xenophon and in Aristotle, as well as at Sparta, the citizen is subjected to a public compulsory training, severe as well as continuous: but he is still a citizen as well as a functionary. He has private interests as well as public duties:— a separate home, property, wife, and family. Plato, on the contrary, contends that the two are absolutely irreconcileable: that if the Guardian has private anxieties for his own maintenance, private house and lands to manage, private sympathies and antipathies to gratify — he will become unfaithful to his duties as Guardian, and will oppress instead of protecting the people.126 You must choose between the two (he says): you cannot have the self-caring citizen and the public-minded Guardian in one.127

Anxiety shown by Plato for the good treatment of the Demos, greater than that shown by Xenophon and Aristotle.

Looking to ideal perfection, I think Plato is right. If the Rulers and Guardians have private interests of their own, those interests will corrupt more or less the discharge of their public duties. The evil may be mitigated, by forms of government (representative and other arrangements), which make the continuance of power dependent upon popular estimation of the functionaries: but it cannot be abolished. Neither Xenophon, nor Aristotle, nor the Spartan system, provided any remedy for this difficulty. They scarcely even recognise the difficulty as real. In all the three, the proportion of trained citizens to the rest of the people, would be about the 184same (so far as we can judge) as the proportion of the Platonic Guardians to the Demos or rest of the people. But when we look to see what security either of the three systems provide for good behaviour on the part of citizens towards non-citizens, we find no satisfaction; nor do they make it, as Plato does, one prominent object of their public training. Plato shows extreme anxiety for the object: as is proved by his sacrificing, in order to ensure it, all the private sources of pleasure to his Guardians. Aristotle reproaches him with doing this, so as to reduce the happiness of his Guardians to nothing: but Plato, from his own point of view, would not admit the justice of such reproach, since he considers happiness to be derived from, and proportional to, the performance of duty.

In Aristotle’s theory, the Demos are not considered as members of the Commonwealth, but as adjuncts.

This last point must be perpetually kept in mind, in following Plato’s reasoning. But though he does not consider himself as sacrificing the happiness of his Guardians to their duty, we must give him credit for anxiety, greater than either Aristotle or Xenophon has shown, to ensure a faithful discharge of duty on the part of the Guardians towards the rest of the people. In Aristotle’s theory,128 the rest of the people are set aside as not members of the Commonwealth, thus counting as a secondary and inferior object in his estimation; while the citizens, who alone are members, are trained to practise virtue for its own sake and for their own happiness. In Plato’s theory, the rest of the people are not only proclaimed as members of the Commonwealth,129 but are the ultimate and capital objects of all his solicitude. It is in protecting, governing, and administering them, that the lives of the Rulers and Guardians are passed. Though they (the remaining people) receive no public training, yet Plato intends them to reap all the benefit of the laborious training bestowed on the Guardians. This is a larger and more generous conception of the purpose of political institutions, than we find either in Aristotle or in Xenophon.

Objection urged by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic, that it will be two cities. Spiritual pride of the Guardians, contempt for the Demos.

There is however another objection, which seems grave and 185well founded, advanced by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic. He remarks that it will be not one city, but two cities, with tendencies more or less adverse to each other:130 that the Guardians, educated under the very peculiar training and placed under the peculiar relations prescribed to them, will form one city — while the remaining people, who have no part either in the one or the other, but are private proprietors with separate families — will form another city. I do not see what reply the Platonic Republic furnishes to this objection. Granting full success to Plato in his endeavours to make the Guardians One among themselves, we find nothing to make them One with the remaining people, nor to make the remaining people One with them.131 On the contrary, we observe such an extreme divergence of sentiment, character, pursuit, and education, as to render mutual sympathy very difficult, and to open fatal probabilities of mutual alienation: probabilities hardly less, than if separate proprietary interests had been left to subsist among the Guardians. This is a source of mischief which Plato has not taken into his account. The entire body of Guardians cannot fail to carry in their bosoms a sense of extreme pride in their own training, and a proportionally mean estimate of the untrained multitude alongside of them. The sentiment of the gold and silver men, towards the brass and iron men, will have in it too much of contempt to be consistent with civic fraternity: like the pride of the Twice-Born Hindoo Brahmin, when comparing himself with the lower Hindoo castes: or like that of the Pythagorean brotherhood, who “regarded the brethren as equal to the blessed Gods, but held all the rest to be unworthy of any account”.132 The Spartan training appears to have produced a similar effect upon the minds of the citizens who went through it. And indeed such 186an effect appears scarcely avoidable, under the circumstances assumed by Plato. He himself is proud of his own ideal training, so as to ascribe to those who receive it a sentiment akin to that of the Olympic victors: while he employs degrading analogies to signify the pursuits and enjoyments of the untrained multitude, who are assimilated to the appetite or lower element in the organism, existing only as a mutinous crew necessary to be kept down.133 That spiritual pride, coupled with spiritual contempt, should be felt by the Guardians, is the natural result; as it is indeed the essential reimbursement to their feelings, for the life of drill and self-denial which Plato imposes upon them. And how, under such a sentiment, the two constituent elements in his system are to be competent to work out his promised result of mutual happiness, he has not shown.134

Plato’s scheme fails, mainly because he provides no training for the Demos.

In explanation of the foregoing remarks, I will add that Plato fails in his purpose not from the goodness of the training which he provides for his select Few, but from leaving the rest of his people without any training187 — without even so much as would enable them properly to appreciate superior training in the few who obtain it — without any powers of self-defence or self-helpfulness. His fundamental postulate — That every man shall do only one thing — when applied to the Guardians, realises itself in something great and considerable: but when applied to the ordinary pursuits of life, reduces every man to a special machine, unfit for any other purpose than its own. Though it is reasonable that a man should get his living by one trade, and should therefore qualify himself peculiarly and effectively for that trade — it is not reasonable that he should be altogether impotent as to every thing else: nor that his happiness should consist, as Plato declares that it ought, exclusively in the performance of this one service to the commonwealth. In the Platonic Republic, the body of the people are represented not only as without training, but as machines rather than individual men. They exist partly as producers to maintain, partly as governable matter to obey, the Guardians; and to be cared for by them.

Principle of Aristotle — That every citizen belongs to the city, not to himself — applied by Plato to women.

Aristotle, when speaking about the citizens of his own ideal commonwealth (his citizens form nearly the same numerical proportion of the whole population, as the Platonic Guardians), tells us — “Since the End for which the entire City exists is One, it is obviously necessary that the education of all the citizens should be one and the same, and that the care of such education should be a public duty — not left in private hands as it is now, for a man to teach his children what he thinks fit. Public exigencies must be provided for by public training. Moreover, we ought not to regard any of the citizens as belonging to himself, but all of them as belonging to the city: for each is a part of the city: and nature prescribes that the care of each part shall be regulated with a view to the care of the whole.”135

The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to 188him with Plato, and lies at the bottom of the schemes of polity imagined by both. Each has his own way of applying it.

Plato clearly perceives that it cannot be applied with consistency and effect, unless women are brought under its application as well as men. And to a great extent, Aristotle holds the same opinion too. While commending the Spartan principle, that the character of the citizen must be formed and upheld by continued public training and discipline — Aristotle blames Lykurgus for leaving the women (that is, a numerical half of the city) without training or discipline; which omission produced (he says) very mischievous effects, especially in corrupting the character of the men. He pronounces this to be a serious fault, making the constitution inconsistent and self-contradictory, and indeed contrary to the intentions of Lykurgus himself; who had tried to bring the women under public discipline as well as the men, but was forced to desist by their strenuous opposition.136 Such remarks from Aristotle are the more remarkable, since it appears as matter of history, that the maidens at Sparta (though not the married women) did to a great extent go through gymnastic exercises along with the young men.137 These exercises, 189though almost a singular exception in Greece, must have appeared to Aristotle very insufficient. What amount or kind of regulation he himself would propose for women, he has not defined. In his own ideal commonwealth, he lays it down as alike essential for men and women to have their bodies trained and exercised so as to be adequate to the active duties of free persons (as contrasted with the harder preparation requisite for the athletic contests, which he disapproves), but he does not go into farther particulars.138 The regulations which he proposes, too, with reference to marriage generally and to the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, show, that he considered it an important part of the lawgiver’s duty to keep up by positive interference the physical condition both of males and females.139

In principle, therefore, Aristotle agrees with Plato,140 as to the propriety of comprehending women as well as men under public training and discipline: but he does not follow out the principle with the same consistency. He maintains the Platonic Commonwealth to be impossible.141

Aristotle declares the Platonic Commonwealth impossible — In what sense this is true.

If we go through the separate objections which Aristotle advances as justifying his verdict, we shall find them altogether inadequate for the purpose. He shows certain inconveniences and difficulties as belonging to it, — which are by no means all real, but which, even conceding them in full force, would have to be set against the objections admitted by himself to bear against other actual societies before we can determine whether they are sufficiently weighty to render the scheme to which they belong impossible. The Platonic commonwealth,190 and the Aristotelian commonwealth, are both of them impossible, in my judgment, for the same reason: that all the various communities of mankind exist under established customs, beliefs, and sentiments, in complete discordance with them: and that we cannot understand from whence the force is to come, tending and competent to generate either of these two new systematic projects. Both of them require a simultaneous production of many reciprocally adapted elements: both therefore require an express initiative force, exceptional and belonging to some peculiar crisis — something analogous to Zeus in Krete, and to Apollo at Sparta. This is alike true of both: though the Platonic Republic, departing more widely from received principles and sentiments than the Aristotelian, would of course require a more potent initiative.142 In the treatises of the two philosophers, each explains and vindicates the principles of his system, without including in the hypothesis any specification of a probable source from whence it was to acquire its first start. Where is the motive, operative, demiurgic force, ready to translate such an idea into reality?143 But if we assume that either of them had once begun, there is no reason why it might not have continued. The causes which 191first brought about the Spartan constitution and discipline must have been very peculiar, though we have no historical account what they were. At any rate they never occurred a second time; for no second Sparta was ever formed, in spite of the admiration inspired by the first. If Sparta had never been actually established, and if Aristotle had read a description of it as a mere project, he would probably have pronounced it impracticable:144 though when once brought into reality, it proved eminently durable. In like manner, the laws, customs, beliefs, and feelings, prevalent in Egypt, — which astonished so vehemently Herodotus and other observing Greeks — would have been declared to be impossible, if described simply in project: yet, when once established, they were found to last longer without change than those of other nations.

The real impossibility of the Platonic Commonwealth, arises from the fact that discordant sentiments are already established.

The Platonic project is submitted, however, not to impartial judges comparing different views on matters yet undetermined, but to hearers with a canon of criticism already fixed and anti-Platonic “animis consuetudine imbutis”. It appears impossible, because it contradicts sentiments conceived as fundamental and consecrated, respecting the sexual and family relations. The supposed impossibility is the mode of expressing strong disapprobation and repugnance: like that which Herodotus describes as manifested by the Greeks on one side and by the Indians on the other — when Darius, having asked each of them at what price they would consent to adopt the practice of the other respecting the mode of treating the bodies of deceased parents, was answered by a loud cry of horror at the mere proposition.145 The reasons offered to prove the Platonic project impossible, are principally founded upon the very sentiment above adverted to, and derive all their force from being associated with it. Such is the character of many among the Aristotelian objections.146 The real, and the truly 192forcible, objection consists in the sentiment itself. If that be deeply rooted in the mind, it is decisive. To those who feel thus, the Platonic project would be both intolerable and impossible.

Plato has strong feelings of right and wrong about sexual intercourse, but referring to different objects.

But we must recollect that it is these very sentiments which Plato impugns and declares to be inapplicable to his Guardians: so that an opponent who, not breaking off at once with the cry of horror uttered by the Indians to Darius, begins to discuss the question with him, is bound to forego objections and repugnances springing as corollaries from a basis avowedly denied. Plato has earnest feelings of right and wrong, in regard both to the functions of women and to the sexual intercourse: but his feelings dissent entirely from those of readers generally. That is right, in his opinion, which tends to keep up the excellence of the breed and the proper number of Guardians, as well as to ensure the exact and constant fulfilment of their mission: that is wrong, which tends to defeat or abridge such fulfilment, or to impair the breed, or to multiply the number beyond its proper limit. Of these ends the Rulers are the proper judges, not the individual 193person. All the Guardians are enjoined to leave the sexual power absolutely unexercised until the age of thirty for men, of twenty for women — and then only to exercise it under express sanction and authorisation, according as the Rulers may consider that children are needed to keep up the legitimate number.

Marriage is regarded as holy, and celebrated under solemn rites — all the more because both the ceremony is originated, and the couples selected, by the magistrates, for the most important public purpose: which being fulfilled, the marriage ceases and determines. It is not celebrated with a view to the couple themselves, still less with a view to establish any permanent exclusive attachment between them: which object Plato not only does not contemplate, but positively discountenances: on the same general principle as the Catholic Church forbids marriage to priests: because he believes that it will create within them motives and sentiments inconsistent with the due discharge of their public mission.

Different sentiment which would grow up in the Platonic Commonwealth respecting the sexual relations.

It is clear that among such a regiment as that which Plato describes in his Guardians, a sentiment would grow up, respecting the intercourse of the sexes, totally different from that which prevailed elsewhere around him. The Platonic restriction upon that intercourse up in the (until the ulterior limits of age) would be far more severe: but it would be applied with reference to different objects. Instead of being applied to enforce the exclusive consecration of one woman to one man, choosing each other or chosen by fathers, without any limit on the multiplication of children, — and without any attention to the maintenance or deterioration of the breed — it would be directed to the obtaining of the most perfect breed and of the appropriate number, leaving the Guardians, female as well as male, free from all permanent distracting influences to interfere with the discharge of their public duties. In appreciating the details of the Platonic community, we must look at it with reference to this form of sexual morality; which would generate in the Guardians an appreciation of details consistent with itself both as to the women and as to the children. The sentiment of obligation, of right and wrong, respecting the relations of the 194sexes, is everywhere very strong; but it does not everywhere attach to the same acts or objects. The important obligation for a woman never to show her face in public, which is held sacred through so large a portion of the Oriental world, is noway recognised in the Occidental: and in Plato’s time, when mankind were more disseminated among small independent communities, the divergence was yet greater than it is now. The Spartans were not induced, by the censures or mockery of persons in other Grecian cities,147 to suppress the gymnastic exercises practised by their maidens in conjunction with the young men: nor is Plato deterred by the ridicule or blame which others may express, from proclaiming his conviction, that the virtue of his female Guardians is the same as that of the male — consisting in the faithful performance of their duty as Guardians, after going through all the requisite training, gymnastic and musical. And he follows this up by the general declaration, one of the most emphatic in all his writings, “The best thing which is now said or ever has been said, is, that what is profitable is honourable — and what is hurtful, is base”.148

What Nature prescribes in regard to the relations of the two sexes — Direct contradiction between Plato and Aristotle.

Plato in truth reduces the distinction between the two sexes to its lowest terms: to the physical difference in regard to procreation — and to the general fact, that the female is every way weaker and inferior to the male; while yet, individually taken, many women are superior to many men, and both sexes are alike improvable by training. He maintains that this similarity of training and function is the real order of Nature, and that 195the opposite practice, which insists on a separation of life and functions between the sexes, is unnatural:149 which doctrine he partly enforces by the analogy of the two sexes in other animals.150 Aristotle disputes this reasoning altogether: declaring that Nature prescribes a separation of life and functions between the two sexes — that the relation of man to woman is that of superiority and command on one side, inferiority and obedience on the other, like the relation between father and child, master and slave, though with a difference less in degree — that virtue in a man, and virtue in a woman, are quite different, imposing diverse obligations.151 It shows how little stress can be laid on arguments based on the word Nature, when we see two such distinguished thinkers completely at issue as to the question, what Nature indicates, in this important case. Each of them decorates by that name the rule which he himself approves; whether actually realised anywhere, or merely recommended as a reform of something really existing. In this controversy, Aristotle had in his favour the actualities around him, against Plato: but Aristotle himself is far from always recognising experience and practice as authoritative interpreters of the dictates of Nature, as we may see by his own ideal commonwealth.

Opinion of Plato respecting the capacities of women, and the training proper for women, are maintained in the Leges, as well as in the Republic. Ancient legends harmonising with this opinion.

How strongly Plato was attached to his doctrines about the capacity of women — how unchanged his opinion continued about the mischief of separating the training and functions of the two sexes, and of confining women to indoor occupations, or to what he calls “a life of darkness and fear”152 — may be seen farther by his Treatise De Legibus. Although in that treatise he recedes (perforce and without retracting) from the principles of his Republic, so far as to admit separate properties and families for all his citizens — yet he still continues to enjoin public gymnastic and military training, for women and men alike: and he still 196opens, to both sexes alike, superintending social functions to a great extent, as well as the privilege of being honoured by public hymns after death, in case of distinguished merit.153 Respecting military matters, he speaks with peculiar earnestness. That women are perfectly capable of efficient military service, if properly trained, he proves not only by the ancient legends, but also by facts actual and contemporary, the known valour of the Scythian and Sarmatian women. Whatever doubts persons may have hitherto cherished (says Plato), this is now established matter of fact:154 the cowardice and impotence of women is not less disgraceful in itself than detrimental to the city, as robbing it of one-half of its possible force.155 He complains bitterly of the repugnance felt even to the discussion of this proposition.156 Most undoubtedly, there were ancient legends which tended much to countenance his opinion. The warlike Amazons, daughters of Arês, were among the most formidable forces that had ever appeared on earth; they had shown their power once by invading Attica and bringing such peril on Athens, that it required all the energy of the great Athenian hero Theseus to repel them. We must remember that these stories were not only familiarised to the public eye in conspicuous painting and sculpture, but were also fully believed as 197matters of past history.157 Moreover the Goddess Athênê, patroness of Athens, was the very impersonation of intelligent terror-striking might — constraining and subduing Arês158 himself: the Goddess Enŷo presided over war, no less than the God Arês:159 lastly Artemis, though making war only on wild beasts, was hardly less formidable in her way — indefatigable as well as rapid in her movements and unerring with her bow, as Athênê was irresistible with her spear. Here were abundant examples in Grecian legend, to embolden Plato in his affirmations respecting the capacity of the female sex for warlike enterprise and laborious endurance.

In a Commonwealth like the Platonic, the influence of Aphroditê would probably have been reduced to a minimum.

The two Goddesses, Athênê and Artemis, were among the few altogether insensible to amorous influences and to the inspirations of Aphroditê: who is the object of contemptuous sarcasm on the part of Athênê, and of repulsive antipathy on the part of Artemis.160 This may supply an illustration for the Republic of Plato. As far as one can guess what the effect of his institutions would have been, it is probable that the influence of Aphroditê would have been at its minimum among his Guardians of both sexes: as it was presented in the warlike dramas of Æschylus.161 There would have been everything to deaden it, with an entire absence of all provocatives. The muscular development, but rough and unadorned bodies, of females —

the indiscriminate companionship, with perfect identity of treatment and manners, between the two sexes from the earliest infancy — the training of both together for the same public duties, 198the constant occupation of both throughout life in the performance of those duties, under unceasing official supervision — the strict regulation of exercise and diet, together with the monastic censorship on all poetry and literature — the self-restraint, equal and universal, enforced as the characteristic feature and pride of the regiment, and seconded by the jealous espionage of all over all, the more potent because privacy was unknown — such an assemblage of circumstances would do as much as circumstances could do to starve the sexual appetite, to prevent it from becoming the root of emotional or imaginative associations, and to place it under the full controul of the lawgiver for purposes altogether public. Such was probably Plato’s intention: since he more generally regards the appetites as enemies to be combated and extirpated so far as practicable — rather than as sources of pleasure, yet liable to accompaniments of pain, requiring to be regulated so as to exclude the latter and retain the former.

Other purposes of Plato — limitation of number of Guardians — common to Aristotle also.

The public purposes, with a view to which Plato sought to controul the sexual appetite in his Guardians, were three, as I have already stated. 1. To obtain from each of them individually, faithful performance of the public duties, and observance of the limits, prescribed by his system. 2. To ensure the best and purest breed. 3. To maintain unaltered the same total number, without excess or deficiency.

Law of population expounded by Malthus — Three distinct checks to population — alternative open between preventive and positive.

The first of these three purposes is peculiar to the Platonic system. The two last are not peculiar to it. Aristotle recognises them162 as ends, no less than Plato, though he does not approve Plato’s means for attaining them. In reference to the limitation of number, Aristotle is even more pronounced than Plato. The great evil of over-population forced itself upon these philosophers; living as both of them did among small communities, each with its narrow area hedged in by others — each liable to intestine dispute, sometimes caused, always aggravated, by the presence of large families and numerous poor freemen — and each importing bought slaves as labourers. To obtain for their community the quickest possible 199increase in aggregate wealth and population, was an end which they did not account either desirable or commendable. The stationary state, far from appearing repulsive or discouraging, was what they looked upon as the best arrangement163 of things. A mixed number of lots of land, indivisible and inalienable, is the first principle of the Platonic community in the treatise De Legibus. Not to encourage wealth, but to avert, as far as possible, the evils of poverty and dependence, and to restrain within narrow limits the proportion of the population which suffered those evils — was considered by Plato and Aristotle to be among the gravest problems for the solution of the statesman.164 Consistent with these conditions, essential to security and tranquillity, whatever the form of government might be, there was only room for the free population then existing: not always for that (seeing that the proportion of poor citizens was often uncomfortably great), and never for any sensible increase above that. If all the children were born and brought up, that it was possible for adult couples to produce, a fearful aggravation of poverty, with all its accompanying public troubles and sufferings, would have been inevitable.165 Accordingly both Plato (for the Guardians in the Republic) and Aristotle agree in opinion that a limit must be fixed upon the number of children which each couple is permitted to introduce. If any objector had argued that each couple, by going through the solemnity of marriage, acquired a natural right to produce as many children as they could, and that others were under a natural obligation to support those children — both philosophers would have denied the plea altogether. But they went even further. They considered procreation as a duty 200which each citizen owed to the public, in order that the total of citizens might not fall below the proper minimum — yet as a duty which required controul, in order that the total might not rise above the proper maximum.166 Hence they did not even admit the right of each couple to produce as many children as their private means could support. They thought it necessary to impose a limit on the number of children in every family, binding equally on rich and poor: the number prescribed might be varied from time to time, as circumstances indicated. As the community could not safely admit more than a certain aggregate of births, these philosophers commanded all couples indiscriminately, the rich not excepted, to shape their conduct with a view to that imperative necessity.

Plato in his Republic (as I have already mentioned) assumes for his Archons the privilege of selecting (by a pretended sortition) the couples through whom the legitimate amount of breeding shall be accomplished: in the semi-Platonic commonwealth (De Legibus), he leaves the choice free, but prescribes the limits of age, rendering marriage a peremptory duty between twenty and thirty-five years of age, and adding some emphatic exhortations, though not peremptory enactments, respecting the principles which ought to guide individual choice.167 In the same manner too he deals with procreation: recognising the necessity of imposing a limit on individual discretion, yet not naming that limit by law, but leaving it to be enforced according to circumstances by the magistrates: who (he says), by advice, praise, and censure, can apply either effective restraints on procreation, or encouragements if the case requires.168 Aristotle blames this 201guarantee as insufficient: he feels so strongly the necessity of limiting procreation, that he is not satisfied unless a proper limit be imposed by positive law. Unless such a result be made thoroughly sure (he says), all other measures of lawgivers for equalising properties, or averting poverty and the discontents growing out of it — must fail in effect.169 Aristotle also lays it down as a part of the duty of the lawgiver to take care that the bodies of the children brought up shall be as good as possible: hence he prescribes the ages proper for marriage, and the age after which no parents are to produce any more children.170

The paramount necessity of limiting the number of children born in each family, here enforced by Plato and Aristotle, rests upon that great social fact which Malthus so instructively expounded at the close of the last century. Malthus, enquiring specially into the law of population, showed upon what conditions the increase of population depends, and what were the causes constantly at work to hold it back — checks to population. He ranged these causes under three different heads, though the two last are multiform in detail. 1. Moral or prudential restraint — the preventive check. 2. Vice, and 3. Misery — the two positive checks. He farther showed that though the aggregate repressive effect of these three causes is infallible and inevitable, determined by the circumstances of each given society — yet that mankind might exercise an option through which of the three the check should be applied: that the effect of the two last causes was in inverse proportion to that of the first — in other words, that the less there was of prudential202 restraint limiting the number of births, the more there must be of vice or misery, under some of their thousand forms, to shorten the lives of many of the children born — and é converso, the more there was of prudential restraint, the less would be the operation of the other checks tending to shorten life.

Plato and Aristotle saw the same law as Malthus, but arranged the facts under a different point of view.

Three distinct facts — preventive restraint, vice, and misery — having nothing else in common, are arranged under one general head by Malthus, in consequence of the one single common property which they possess — that of operating as checks to population. To him, that one common property was the most important of all, and the most fit to be singled out as the groundwork of classification, having reference to the subject of his enquiry. But Plato and Aristotle looked at the subject in a different point of view. They had present to their minds the same three facts, and the tendency of the first to avert or abate the second and third: but as they were not investigating the law of population, they had nothing to call their attention to the one common property of the three. They did not regard vice and misery as causes tending to keep down population, but as being in themselves evils; enemies among the worst which the lawgiver had to encounter, in his efforts to establish a good political and social condition — and enemies which he could never successfully encounter, without regulating the number of births. Such regulation they considered as an essential tutelary measure to keep out disastrous poverty. The inverse proportion, between regulated or unregulated number of births on the one hand, and diminution or increase of poverty on the other, was seen as clearly by Aristotle and Plato as by Malthus.

Regulations of Plato and Aristotle as to number of births and newborn children.

But these two Greek philosophers ordain something yet more remarkable. Having prescribed both the age of marriage and the number of permitted births, so as to ensure both vigorous citizens and a total compatible with the absence of corrupting poverty — they direct what shall be done if the result does not correspond to their orders. Plato in his Republic (as I have already stated) commands that all the children born to his wedded couples shall be immediately consigned to the care of public 203nurses — that the offspring of the well-constituted parents shall be brought up, that of the ill-constituted parents not brought up — and that no children born of parents after the legitimate age shall be brought up.171 Aristotle forbids the exposure of children, wherever the habits of the community are adverse to it: but if after any married couple have had the number of children allowed by law, the wife should again become pregnant, he directs that abortion shall be procured before the commencement of life or sense in the fœtus: after such commencement, he pronounces abortion to be wrong.172 On another point Plato and Aristotle agree: both of them command that no child born crippled or deformed shall be brought up:173 a practice actually adopted at Sparta under the Lykurgean institutions, and even carried farther, since no child was allowed to be brought up until it had been inspected and approved by the public nurses.174

Such regulations disapproved and forbidden by modern sentiment — Variability of ethical sentiment as to objects approved or disapproved.

We here find both these philosophers not merely permitting, but enjoining — and the Spartan legislation, more admired than any in Greece, systematically realising — practices which modern sentiment repudiates and punishes. Nothing can more strikingly illustrate — what Plato and Aristotle have themselves repeatedly observed175 — how variable and indeterminate is the matter of ethical sentiment, in different ages and communities, while the form of ethical sentiment is the same universally: how all men agree subjectively,204 in that which they feel — disapprobation and hatred of wrong and vice, approbation and esteem of right and virtue — yet how much they differ objectively, as to the acts or persons which they designate by these names and towards which their feelings are directed. It is with these emotions as with the other emotions of human nature: all men are moved in the same manner, though in different degree, by love and hatred — hope and fear — desire and aversion — sympathy and antipathy — the emotions of the beautiful, the sublime, the ludicrous: but when we compare the objects, acts, or persons, which so move them, we find only a very partial agreement, amidst wide discrepancy and occasionally strong opposition.176 The present case is one of the strongest opposition. Practices now abhorred as wrong, are here directly commanded by Plato and Aristotle, the two greatest authorities of the Hellenic world: men differing on many points from each other, but agreeing in this: men not only of lofty personal character, but also of first-rate intellectual force, in whom the ideas of virtue and vice had been as much developed by reflection as they ever have been in any mind: lastly, men who are extolled by the commentators as the champions of religion and sound morality, against what are styled the unprincipled cavils of the Sophists.

Plato and Aristotle required subordination of impulse to reason and duty — they applied this to the procreative impulse, as to others.

It is, in my judgment, both curious and interesting to study the manner in which these two illustrious men — Plato and Aristotle — dealt with the problem of population. Grave as that problem is in all times, it was peculiarly grave among the small republics of antiquity. Neither of them were disposed to ignore 205or overlook it: nor to impute to other causes the consequences which it produces: nor to treat as indifferent the question, whether poor couples had a greater or less family, to share subsistence already scanty for themselves. Still less were these philosophers disposed to sanction the short-sighted policy of some Hellenic statesmen, who under a mistaken view of increasing the power of the state, proclaimed encouragement and premium simply to the multiplication of male births, without any regard to the comfort and means of families. Both Plato and Aristotle saw plainly, that a married couple, by multiplying their offspring, produced serious effects not merely upon their own happiness but upon that of others besides: up to a certain limit, for good — beyond that limit, for evil. Hence they laid it down, that procreation ought to be a rational and advised act, governed by a forecast of those consequences — not a casual and unforeseen result of present impulse. The same preponderance of reason over impulse as they prescribed in other cases, they endeavoured to enforce in this. They regarded it too, not simply as a branch of prudence, but as a branch of duty; a debt due by each citizen to others and to the commonwealth. It was the main purpose of their elaborate political schemes, to produce a steady habit and course of virtue in all the citizens: and they considered every one as greatly deficient in virtue, who refused to look forward to the consequences of his own procreative acts — thereby contributing to bring upon the state an aggravated measure of poverty, which was the sure parent of discord, sedition, and crime. That the rate of total increase should not be so great as to produce these last-mentioned effects — and that the limit of virtue and prudence should be made operative on all the separate families — was in their judgment one of the most important cares of the lawgiver.

We ought to disengage this general drift and purpose, common both to Plato and Aristotle, on the subject of population, from the various means — partly objectionable, partly impossible to be enforced — whereby they intended to carry the purpose into effect.

Training of the few select philosophers to act as chiefs.

I pass from Plato’s picture of the entire regiment of Guardians, under the regulations above described — to his description of the special training whereby the few most 206distinguished persons in the regiment (male or female, as the case may be) are to be improved, tested, and exalted to the capacity of philosophers: qualified to act as Rulers or Chiefs.177 These are the two marked peculiarities of Plato’s Republic. The Guardians are admirable as instruments, but have no initiative of their own: we have now to find the chiefs from whom they will receive it. How are philosophers to be formed? None but a chosen Few have the precious gold born with them, empowering them to attain this elevation. To those Few, if properly trained, the privilege and right to exercise command belongs, by Nature. For the rest, obedience is the duty prescribed by Nature.178

Comprehensive curriculum for aspirants to philosophy — consummation by means of Dialectic.

I have already given, in Chap. XXXV., a short summary of the peculiar scientific training which Sokrates prescribes for ripening these heroic aspirants into complete philosophers. They pass years of intellectual labour, all by their own spontaneous impulse, over and above the full training of Guardians. They study Arithmetic, Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy, Acoustics, &c., until the age of thirty: they then continue in the exercise of Dialectic, with all the test of question and answer, for five years longer: after which they enter upon the duties of practice and administration, succeeding ultimately to the position of chiefs if found competent. It is assumed that this long course of study, consummated by Dialectic, has operated within them that great mental revolution which Plato calls, turning the eye from the shadows in the cave to the realities of clear daylight: that they will no longer be absorbed in the sensible world or in passing phenomena, but will become familiar with the unchangeable Ideas or Forms of the Intelligible world, knowable only by intellectual intuition. Reason has with them been exalted to its highest power: not only strengthening them to surmount all intellectual difficulties and to deal with the most complicated conjectures of practice — but 207also ennobling their dispositions, so as to overcome all the disturbing temptations and narrow misguiding prejudices inherent in the unregenerate man. Upon the perfection of character, emotional and intellectual, imparted to these few philosophers, depends the Platonic Commonwealth.

Valuable remarks on the effects of these preparatory studies.

The remarks made by Plato on the effect of this preparatory curriculum, and on the various studies composing it, are highly interesting and instructive — even when they cannot be defended as exact. Much of what he so eloquently enunciates respecting philosophy and the philosophical character, is in fact just and profound, whatever view we may take as to Universals: whether we regard them (like Plato) as the only Real Entia, cognizable by the mental eye, and radically disparate from particulars — or whether we hold them to be only general Concepts, abstracted and generalised more or less exactly from particulars. The remarks made by Plato on the educational effect produced by Arithmetic and the other studies, are valuable and suggestive. Even the discredit which he throws on observations of fact, in Astronomy and Acoustics — the great antithesis between him and modern times — is useful as enabling us to enter into his point of view.179

Differences between the Republic and other dialogues — no mention of reminiscence nor of the Elenchus.

But his point of view in the Republic differs materially from that which we read in other dialogues: especially in two ways.

First, The scientific and long-continued Quadrivium, through which Plato here conducts the student 208to philosophy, is very different from the road to philosophy as indicated elsewhere. Nothing is here said about reminiscence — which in the Menon, Phædon, Phædrus, and elsewhere, stands in the foreground of his theory, as the engine for reviving in the mind Forms or Ideas. With these Forms it had been familiar during a prior state of existence, but they had become buried under the sensible impressions arising from its conjunction with the body. Nor do we find in the Republic any mention of that electric shock of the negative Elenchus, which (in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and several other dialogues) is declared indispensable for stirring up the natural mind not merely from ignorance and torpor, but even from a state positively distempered — the false persuasion of knowledge.

Different view taken by Plato in the Republic about Dialectic — and different place assigned to it.

Secondly, following out this last observation, we perceive another discrepancy yet more striking, in the directions given by Plato respecting the study of Dialectic. He prescribes that it shall upon no account be taught to young men: and that it shall come last of all in teaching, only after the full preceding Quadrivium. He censures severely the prevalent practice of applying it to young men, as pregnant with mischief. Young men (he says) brought up in certain opinions inculcated by the lawgiver, as to what is just and honourable, are interrogated on these subjects, and have questions put to them. When asked What is the just and the honourable, they reply in the manner which they have learnt from authority: but this reply, being exposed to farther interrogatories, is shown to be untenable and inconsistent, such as they cannot defend to their own satisfaction. Hence they lose all respect for the established ethical creed, which however stands opposed in their minds to the seductions of immediate enjoyment: yet they acquire no new or better conviction in its place. Instead of following an established law, they thus come to live without any law.180 Besides, young men when initiated in dialectic debate, 209take great delight in the process, as a means of exposing and puzzling the respondent. Copying the skilful interrogators whom they have found themselves unable to answer, they interrogate others in their turn, dispute everything, and pride themselves on exhibiting all the negative force of the Elenchus. Instead of employing dialectic debate for the discovery of truth, they use it merely as a disputatious pastime, and thus bring themselves as well as philosophy into discredit.181

Accordingly, we must not admit (says Plato) either young men, or men of ordinary untrained minds, to dialectic debate. We must admit none but mature persons, of sedate disposition, properly prepared: who will employ it not for mere disputation, but for the investigation of truth.182

Contradiction with the spirit of other dialogues — Parmenidês, &c.

Now the doctrine thus proclaimed, with the grounds upon which it rests — That dialectic debate is unsuitable and prejudicial to young men — distinctly contradict both the principles laid down by himself elsewhere, and the frequent indications of his own dialogues: not to mention the practice of Sokrates as described by Xenophon. In the Platonic Parmenidês, and Theætêtus, the season of youth is expressly pronounced to be that in which dialectic exercise is not merely appropriate, but indispensable to the subsequent attainment of truth.183 Moreover, Plato puts into the mouth of Parmenides a specimen intentionally given to represent that dialectic exercise which will be profitable to youth. The specimen is one full of perplexing, though ingenious, subtleties:210 ending in establishing, by different trains of reasoning, the affirmative, as well as the negative, of several distinct conclusions. Not only it supplies no new positive certainty, but it appears to render any such consummation more distant and less attainable than ever.184 It is therefore eminently open to the censure which Plato pronounces, in the passage just cited from his Republic, against dialectic as addressed to young men. The like remark may be made upon the numerous other dialogues (though less extreme in negative subtlety than the Parmenidês), wherein the Platonic Sokrates interrogates youths (or interrogates others, in the presence of youths) without any positive result: as in the Theætêtus, Charmidês, Lysis, Alkibiadês, Hippias, &c., to which we may add the conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydemus and others.185

Contradiction with the character and declarations of Sokrates.

In fact, the Platonic Sokrates expressly proclaims himself (in the Apology as well as in the other dialogues just named) to be ignorant and incapable of teaching anything. His mission was to expose the ignorance of those, who fancy that they know without really knowing: he taught no one anything, but he cross-examined every one who would submit to it, before all the world, and in a manner especially interesting to young men. Sokrates mentions that these young men not only listened with delight, but tried to imitate him as well as they could, by cross-examining others in the same manner:186 and in mentioning the fact, he expresses neither censure nor regret, but satisfaction in the thought that the chance would be thereby increased, of exposing that false persuasion of knowledge which prevailed so widely everywhere. Now Plato, in the passage just cited from the Republic, blames this contagious spirit of cross-examination on the part of young men, as a vice which proved the mischief of dialectic debate addressed to them at that age. He farther deprecates the disturbance of “those opinions which they have heard from the lawgiver respecting what is just and honourable”. 211But it is precisely these opinions which, in the Alkibiadês, Menon, Protagoras, and other dialogues, the Platonic Sokrates treats as untaught, if not unteachable:— as having been acquired, no man knew how, without the lessons of any assignable master and without any known period of study:— lastly, as constituting that very illusion of false knowledge without real knowledge, of which Sokrates undertakes to purge the youthful mind, and which must be dispelled before any improvement can be effected in it.187

The remarks here made upon the effect of Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus against Sokrates.

We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth — cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates — is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.188 Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:— to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years — we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.189

Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.

The matter to which I here advert, illustrates a material distinction between some writings of Plato as compared with others, and between different points of view which his mind took on at different times. In the Platonic Apology, we find Sokrates confessing his own ignorance, and proclaiming himself to be isolated 212among an uncongenial public falsely persuaded of their own knowledge. In several other dialogues, he is the same: he cannot teach anything, but can only cross-examine, test, and apply the spur to respondents. But the Republic presents him in a new character. He is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of fixed, inherited, convictions.190 He is himself on the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is determined. Hence we now find him passing to the opposite pole; taking up the orthodox, conservative, point of view, the same as Melêtus and Anytus maintained in their accusation against Sokrates at Athens. He now expects every individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions, prescribed by authority: including among those opinions deliberate ethical and political fictions, such as that about the gold and silver earthborn men. Free-thinking minds, who take views of their own, and enquire into the evidence of these beliefs, become inconvenient and dangerous. Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic Apology, nor his negative Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic.

Idea of Good — The Chiefs alone know what it is — If they did not they would be unfit for their functions.

One word more must be said respecting a subject which figures conspicuously in the Republic — the Idea or Form of Good. The chiefs alone (we read) at the end of their long term of study, having ascended gradually from the phenomena of sense to intellectual contemplation and familiarity with the unchangeable Ideas — will come to discern and embrace the highest of all Ideas — the Form of Good:191 by the help of which alone, Justice, Temperance, and the other virtues, become useful and profitable.192 If the Archons do not know how and why just and honourable things are good, they will not be fit for their duty.193 In regard to Good (Plato tells us) no man is satisfied with mere appearance. Here every man desires and postulates that which is really good: while as to the just and the honourable, many are satisfied with the appearance, without caring for the reality.194

213What is the Good? Plato does not know; but he requires the Chiefs to know it. Without this the Republic would be a failure.

Plato proclaims this Real Good, as distinguished from Apparent Good, to be the paramount and indispensable object of knowledge, without which all other knowledge is useless. It is that which every man divines to exist, yearns for, and does everything with a view to obtain: but which he misses, from not knowing where to seek; missing also along with it that which gives value to other acquisitions.195 What then is this Real Good — the Noumenon, Idea, or form of Good?

This question is put by Glaukon to Sokrates, with much earnestness, in the dialogue of the Republic. But unfortunately it remains unanswered. Plato declines all categorical reply; though the question is one, as he himself emphatically announces, upon which all the positive consequences of his philosophy turn.196 He conducts us to the chamber wherein this precious and indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the door. In describing the condition of other men’s minds — that they divine a Real Good — Αὐτὸ-ἀγαθὸν or Bonum per se — do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle themselves in vain to 214grasp and determine what it is197 — he has unconsciously described the condition of his own.

END OF CHAPTER XXXVII.

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