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Title: Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 4

Author: George Grote

Release date: August 7, 2012 [eBook #40438]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Ed Brandon as part of the on-line Grote Project

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLATO AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES, 3RD ED. VOLUME 4 ***

PLATO, AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

PLATO,

AND THE

OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

BY

GEORGE GROTE,

AUTHOR OF THE ‘HISTORY OF GREECE’.

A NEW EDITION.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. IV.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1888.

The right of Translation is reserved.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXV.

PLATONIC    REPUBLIC — ABSTRACT.

Declared theme of the Republic — Expansion and multiplication of the topics connected with it

1

Personages of the dialogue

2

Views of Kephalus about old age

ib.

Definition of Justice by Simonides — It consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him

ib.

Objections to it by Sokrates — There are cases in which it is not right to restore what is owing, or to tell the truth

3

Explanation by Polemarchus — Farther interrogations by Sokrates — Justice renders what is proper and suitable: but how? in what cases, proper? Under what circumstances is Justice useful?

4

The just man, being good for keeping property guarded, must also be good for stealing property — Analogies cited

5

Justice consists in doing good to friends, evil to enemies — But how, if a man mistakes who his friends are, and makes friends of bad men?

6

Justice consists in doing good to your friend, if really a good man: hurt to your enemy, with the like proviso. Sokrates affirms that the just man will do no hurt to any one. Definition of Simonides rejected

ib.

Thrasymachus takes up the dialogue — Repulsive portrait drawn of him

7

Violence of Thrasymachus — Subdued manner of Sokrates — Conditions of useful colloquy

ib.

Definition given by Thrasymachus — Justice is that which is advantageous to the more powerful. Comments by Sokrates. What if the powerful man mistakes his own advantage?

8

Correction by Thrasymachus — if the Ruler mistakes, he is pro tanto no Ruler — The Ruler, quâ Ruler — quâ Craftsman — is infallible

9

Reply by Sokrates — The Ruler, quâ infallible Craftsman, studies the interest of those whom he governs, and not his own interest

ib.

Thrasymachus denies this — Justice is the good of another. The just many are worse off than the unjust One, and are forced to submit to his superior strength

10

Position laid for the subsequent debate and exposition

11

Arguments of Sokrates — Injustice is a source of weakness — Every multitude must observe justice among themselves, in order to avoid perpetual quarrels. The same about any single individual: if he is unjust, he will be at war with himself, and perpetually weak

ib.

Farther argument of Sokrates — The just man is happy, the unjust man miserable — Thrasymachus is confuted and silenced. Sokrates complains that he does not yet know what Justice is

ib.

Glaukon intimates that he is not satisfied with the proof, though he agrees in the opinion expressed by Sokrates. Tripartite distribution of Good — To which of the three heads does Justice belong?

12

Glaukon undertakes to set forth the case against Sokrates, though professing not to agree with it

ib.

Pleading of Glaukon. Justice is in the nature of a compromise for all — a medium between what is best and what is worst

13

Comparison of the happiness of the just man derived from his justice alone, when others are unjust to him with that of the unjust man under parallel circumstances

14

Pleading of Adeimantus on the same side. He cites advice given by fathers to their sons, recommending just behaviour by reason of its consequences

15

Nobody recommends Justice per se, but only by reason of its consequences

16

Adeimantus calls upon Sokrates to recommend and enforce Justice on its own grounds, and to explain how Justice in itself benefits the mind of the just man

17

Relation of Glaukon and Adeimantus to Thrasymachus

18

Statement of the question as it stands after the speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus. What Sokrates undertakes to prove

ib.

Position to be proved by Sokrates — Justice makes the just man happy per se, whatever be its results

20

Argument of Sokrates to show what Justice is — Assumed analogy between the city and the individual

ib.

Fundamental principle, to which communities of mankind owe their origin — Reciprocity of want and service between individuals — No individual can suffice to himself

ib.

Moderate equipment of a sound and healthy city — Few wants

22

Enlargement of the city — Multiplied wants and services. First origin of war and strife with neighbours — It arises out of these multiplied wants

ib.

Separate class of soldiers or Guardians. One man cannot do well more than one business. Character required in the Guardians — Mildness at home with pugnacity against enemies

23

Peculiar education necessary, musical as well as gymnastical

23

Musical education, by fictions as well as by truth. Fictions addressed to the young: the religious legends now circulating are often pernicious: censorship necessary

24

Orthodox type to be laid down: all poets are required to conform their legends to it. The Gods are causes of nothing but good: therefore they are causes of few things. Great preponderance of actual evil

ib.

The Guardians must not fear death. No terrible descriptions of Hades must be presented to them: no intense sorrow, nor violent nor sensual passion, must be re counted either of Gods or Heroes

25

Type for all narratives respecting men

26

Style of narratives. The poet must not practise variety of imitation: he must not speak in the name of bad characters

ib.

Rhythm and Melody regulated. None but simple and grave music allowed: only the Dorian and Phrygian moods, with the lyre and harp

ib.

Effect of musical training of the mind — makes youth love the Beautiful and hate the Ugly

27

Training of the body — simple and sober. No refined medical art allowed. Wounds or temporary ailments treated; but sickly frames cannot be kept alive

28

Value of Gymnastic in imparting courage to the mind — Gymnastic and Music necessary to correct each other

29

Out of the Guardians a few of the very best must be chosen as Elders or Rulers — highly educated and severely tested

ib.

Fundamental creed required to be planted in the minds of all the citizens respecting their breed and relationship

30

How is such a fiction to be accredited in the first instance? Difficulty extreme, of first beginning; but if once accredited, it will easily transmit itself by tradition

31

Guardians to reside in barracks and mess together; to have no private property or home; to be maintained by contribution from the people

32

If the Guardians fail in these precautions, and acquire private interests, the city will be ruined

32

Complete unity of the city, every man performing his own special function

33

The maintenance of the city depends upon that of the habits, character, and education of the Guardians

34

Religious legislation — Consult the Delphian Apollo

ib.

The city is now constituted as a good city — that is, wise, courageous, temperate, just. Where is its Justice?

ib.

First, where is the wisdom of the city? It resides in the few elder Rulers

ib.

Where is the Courage? In the body of Guardians or Soldiers

35

Where is the Temperance? It resides in all and each, Rulers, Guardians, and People. Superiors rule and Inferiors obey

ib.

Where is the Justice? In all and each of them also. It consists in each performing his own special function, and not meddling with the function of the others

36

Injustice arises when any one part of the city interferes with the functions of the other part, or undertakes double functions

37

Analogy of the city to the individual — Each man is tripartite, having in his mind Reason, Energy, Appetite. These three elements are distinct, and often conflicting

ib.

Reason, Energy, Appetite, in the individual — analogous to Rulers, Guardians, Craftsmen in the city. Reason is to rule Appetite. Energy assists Reason in ruling it

39

A man is just when these different parts of his mind exercise their appropriate functions without hindrance

ib.

Justice and Injustice in the mind — what health and disease are in the body

40

Original question now resumed — Does Justice make a man happy, and Injustice make him miserable, apart from all consequences? Answer — Yes

ib.

Glaukon requires farther explanation about the condition of the Guardians, in regard to sexual and family ties

41

Men and women will live together and perform the duties of Guardians alike — They will receive the same gymnastic and musical training

41

Nature does not prescribe any distribution of functions between men and women. Women are inferior to men in every thing. The best women are equal to second-best men

42

Community of life and relations between the male and female Guardians. Temporary marriages arranged by contrivance of the Elders. No separate families

ib.

Regulations about age, for procreation — Children brought up under public authority

44

Perfect communion of sentiment and interest among the Guardians — Causes of pleasure and pain the same to all, like parts of the same organism

ib.

Harmony — absence of conflicting interest — assured scale of equal comfort — consequent happiness — among the Guardians

45

In case of war both sexes will go together to battle — Rewards to distinguished warriors

46

War against Hellenic enemies to be carried on mildly — Hellens are all by nature kinsmen

47

Question — How is the scheme practicable? It is difficult, yet practicable on one condition — That philosophy and political power should come into the same hands

ib.

Characteristic marks of the philosopher — He contemplates and knows Entia or unchangeable Forms, as distinguished from fluctuating particulars or Fientia

48

Ens alone can be known — Non-Ens is unknowable. That which is midway between Ens and Non-Ens (particulars) is matter only of opinion. Ordinary men attain nothing beyond opinion

49

Particulars fluctuate: they are sometimes just or beautiful, sometimes unjust or ugly. Forms or Entia alone remain constant

50

The many cannot discern or admit the reality of Forms — Their minds are always fluctuating among particulars

51

The philosopher will be ardent for all varieties of knowledge — His excellent moral attributes — He will be trained to capacity for active life

ib.

Adeimantus does not dispute the conclusion, but remarks that it is at variance with actual facts — Existing philosophers are either worthless pretenders, or when they are good, useless

52

Sokrates admits the fact to be so — His simile of the able steersman on shipboard, among a disobedient crew

53

The uselessness of the true philosopher is the fault of the citizen, who will not invoke his guidance

54

The great qualities required to form a philosopher, become sources of perversion, under a misguiding public opinion

ib.

Mistake of supposing that such perversion arises from the Sophists. Irresistible effect of the public opinion generally, in tempting or forcing a dissenter into orthodoxy

55

The Sophists and other private teachers accept the prevalent orthodoxy, and conform their teaching to it

56

The people generally hate philosophy — A youth who aspires to it will be hated by the people, and persecuted even by his own relatives

57

The really great minds are thus driven away from the path of philosophy — which is left to empty pretenders

58

Rare cases in which a highly qualified philosopher remains — Being at variance with public opinion, he can achieve nothing, and is lucky if he can obtain safety by silence

ib.

The philosopher must have a community suitable to him, and worthy of him

59

It must be such a community as Sokrates has been describing — But means must be taken to keep up a perpetual succession of philosophers as Rulers

60

Proper manner of teaching philosophy — Not to begin at a very early age

ib.

If the multitude could once see a real, perfect, philosopher, they could not fail to love him: but this never happens

61

Course of training in the Platonic city, for imparting philosophy to the Rulers. They must be taught to ascend to the Idea of Good. But what is Good?

ib.

Ancient disputes upon this point, though every one yearns after Good. Some say Intelligence; some say Pleasure. Neither is satisfactory

62

Adeimantus asks what Sokrates says. Sokrates says that he can not answer: but he compares it by a metaphor to the Sun

63

The Idea of Good rules the ideal or intelligible world, as the Sun rules the sensible or visible world

64

To the intelligible world there are applicable two distinct modes of procedure — the Geometrical — the Dialectic. Geometrical procedure assumes diagrams

65

Dialectic procedure assumes nothing. It departs from the highest Form, and steps gradually down to the lowest, without meddling with any thing except Forms

66

Two distinct grades of Cognition — Direct or Superior — Nous — Indirect or Inferior — Dianoia

ib.

Two distinct grades of Opinion also in the Sensible World — Faith or Belief — Conjecture

67

Distinction between the philosopher and the unphilosophical public, illustrated by the simile of the Cave, and the captives imprisoned therein

ib.

Daylight of philosophy contrasted with the firelight and shadows of the Cave

69

Purpose of a philosophical training, to turn a man round from facing the bad light of the Cave to face the daylight of philosophy, and to see the eternal Forms

ib.

Those who have emerged from the Cave into full daylight amidst eternal Forms, must be forced to come down again and undertake active duties — Their reluctance to do this

70

Studies serving as introduction to philosophy — Arithmetic, its awakening power — shock to the mind by felt contradiction

ib.

Perplexity arising from the One and Many, stimulates the mind to an intellectual effort for clearing it up

72

Geometry conducts the mind to wards Universal Ens

ib.

Astronomy — how useful — not useful as now taught — must be studied by ideal figures, not by observation

73

Acoustics, in like manner — The student will be thus conducted to the highest of all studies — Dialectic: and to the region of pure intelligible Forms

74

Question by Glaukon — What is the Dialectic Power? Sokrates declares that he cannot answer with certainty, and that Glaukon could not follow him if he did

75

He answers partially — It is the consummation of all the sciences, raising the student to the contemplation of pure Forms, and especially to that of the highest Form — Good

ib.

The Synoptic view peculiar to the Dialectician

76

Scale and duration of various studies for the Guardians, from youth upwards

ib.

All these studies, and this education, are common to females as well as males

77

First formation of the Platonic city — how brought about: difficult, but not impossible

78

The city thus formed will last long, but not for ever. After a certain time, it will begin to degenerate. Stages of its degeneracy

ib.

1. Timocracy and the timocratical individual. 2 Oligarchy, and the oligarchical individual

79

3. Democracy, and the democratical individual

80

4. Passage from democracy to despotism. Character of the despotic city

81

Despotic individual corresponding to that city

82

The city has thus passed by four stages, from best to worse. Question — How are Happiness and Misery apportioned among them?

ib.

Misery of the despotised city

83

Supreme Misery of the despotising individual

ib.

Conclusion — The Model city and the individual corresponding to it, are the happiest of all — That which is farthest removed from it, is the most miserable of all

84

The Just Man is happy in and through his Justice, however he may be treated by others. The Unjust Man, miserable

84

Other arguments proving the same conclusion — Pleasures of Intelligence are the best of all pleasures

ib.

They are the only pleasures completely true and pure. Comparison of pleasure and pain with neutrality. Prevalent illusions

86

Most men know nothing of true and pure pleasure. Simile of the Kosmos — Absolute height and depth

87

Nourishment of the mind partakes more of real essence than nourishment of the body — Replenishment of the mind imparts fuller pleasure than replenishment of the body

88

Comparative worthlessness of the pleasures of Appetite and Ambition, when measured against those of Intelligence

89

The Just Man will be happy from his justice — He will look only to the good order of his own mind — He will stand aloof from public affairs, in cities as now constituted

90

Tenth Book — Censure of the poets is renewed — Mischiefs of imitation generally, as deceptive — Imitation from imitation

91

Censure of Homer — He is falsely extolled as educator of the Hellenic world. He and other poets only deceive their hearers

92

The poet chiefly appeals to emotions — Mischiefs of such eloquent appeals, as disturbing the rational government of the mind

ib.

Ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry — Plato fights for philosophy, though his feelings are strongly enlisted for poetry

93

Immortality of the soul affirmed and sustained by argument — Total number of souls always the same

ib.

Recapitulation — The Just Man will be happy, both from his justice and from its consequences, both here and hereafter

94

CHAPTER XXXVI.

REPUBLIC    — REMARKS ON ITS MAIN THESIS.

Summary of the preceding chapter

95

Title of the Republic, of ancient date, but only a partial indication of its contents

96

Parallelism between the Commonwealth and the Individual

96

Each of them a whole, composed of parts distinct in function and unequal in merit

97

End proposed by Plato. Happiness of the Commonwealth. Happiness of the individual. Conditions of happiness

98

Peculiar view of Justice taken by Plato

99

Pleadings of Glaukon and Adeimantus

ib.

The arguments which they enforce were not invented by the Sophists, but were the received views anterior to Plato

100

Argument of Sokrates to refute them. Sentiments in which it originates. Panegyric on Justice

101

Different senses of justice — wider and narrower sense

102

Plato’s sense of the word Justice or Virtue — self-regarding

104

He represents the motives to it, as arising from the internal happiness of the just agents

105

His theory departs more widely from the truth than that which he opposes. Argument of Adeimantus discussed

106

A Reciprocity of rights and duties between men in social life — different feelings towards one and towards the other

109

Plato’s own theory, respecting the genesis of society, is based on reciprocity

111

Antithesis and correlation of obligation and right. Necessity of keeping the two ideas together, as the basis of any theory respecting society

112

Characteristic feature of the Platonic Commonwealth — specialization of services to that function for which each man is fit — will not apply to one individual separately

114

Plato has not made good his refutation — the thesis which he impugns is true

116

Statement of the real issue between him and his opponents

117

He himself misrepresents this issue — he describes his opponents as enemies of justice

ib.

Farther arguments of Plato in support of his thesis. Comparison of three different characters of men

118

His arguments do not go to the point which he professes to aim at

120

Exaggerated parallelism between the Commonwealth and the individual man

121

Second Argument of Plato to prove the happiness of the just man — He now recalls his previous concession, and assumes that the just man will receive just treatment and esteem from others

ib.

Dependence of the happiness of the individual on the society in which he is placed

123

Inconsistency of affirming general positions respecting the happiness of the just man, in all societies without distinction

124

Qualified sense in which only this can be done

125

Question — Whether the just man is orthodox or dissenter in his society? — important in discussing whether he is happy

126

Comparison of the position of Sokrates at Athens, with that of his accusers

ib.

Imperfect ethical basis on which Plato has conducted the discussion in the Republic

127

Plato in Republic is preacher, inculcating useful beliefs — not philosopher, establishing scientific theory. State of Just and Unjust Man in the Platonic Commonwealth

129

Comparative happiness of the two in actual communities. Plato is dissatisfied with it — This is his motive for recasting society on his own principles

130

Confusion between the preacher and the philosopher in the Platonic Republic

131

Remarks on the contrast between ethical theory and ethical precepts

ib.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

REPUBLIC    — REMARKS ON THE PLATONIC COMMONWEALTH.

Double purpose of the Platonic Republic — ethical and political

133

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

133

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

134

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

135

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

137

Difficulties left unsolved, but overleaped by Plato

138

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

ib.

Platonic Commonwealth — only an outline — partially filled up

139

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

ib.

Comparison of Plato with Xenophon — Cyropædia — Œconomicus

141

Both of them combine polity with education — temporal with spiritual

142

Differences between them — Character of Cyrus

ib.

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

144

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

146

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

147

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

148

Music and Gymnastic — multifarious and varied effects of music

149

Great influence of the poets and their works on education

ib.

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

151

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

ib.

Strict limits imposed by Plato on poets

153

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

154

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

155

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

156

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

158

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

159

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

161

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

ib.

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

163

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

165

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

ib.

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

168

Restrictions imposed by Plato upon musical modes and reciters

ib.

All these restrictions intended for the emotional training of the Guardians

169

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

ib.

Purpose of Plato in these regulations

ib.

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

171

His arguments against the ordinary doctrine

172

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

173

Collective family relations and denominations among the Guardians

174

Restrictions upon sexual intercourse — Purposes of such restrictions

175

Regulations about marriages and family

176

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

177

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

178

Platonic scheme — partial communism

179

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

180

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

181

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

182

Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon or Aristotle

183

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

ib.

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

184

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

ib.

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

186

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

187

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

189

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

191

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

192

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

193

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

194

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

195

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

197

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

198

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

ib.

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

202

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

ib.

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

203

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

204

Training of the few select philosophers to act as chiefs

205

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

206

Valuable remarks on the effects of these preparatory studies

207

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

ib.

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

208

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

209

Contradiction with the character and declarations of Sokrates

210

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

211

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

ib.

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

212

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

213

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TIMÆUS    AND KRITIAS.

Persons and scheme of the Timæus and Kritias

215

The Timæus is the earliest ancient physical theory, which we possess in the words of its author

216

Position and character of the Pythagorean Timæus

ib.

Poetical imagination displayed by Plato. He pretends to nothing more than probability. Contrast with Sokrates, Isokrates, Xenophon

217

Fundamental distinction between Ens and Fientia

219

Postulates of Plato. The Demiurgus — The Eternal Ideas — Chaotic Materia or Fundamentum. The Kosmos is a living being and a God

220

The Demiurgus not a Creator — The Kosmos arises from his operating upon the random movements of Necessity. He cannot controul necessity — he only persuades

ib.

Meaning of Necessity in Plato

221

Process of demiurgic construction — The total Kosmos comes logically first, constructed on the model of the Αὐτοζῶον

223

Body of the Kosmos, perfectly spherical — its rotations

225

Soul of the Kosmos — its component ingredients — stretched from centre to circumference

ib.

Regular or measured Time — began with the Kosmos

227

Divine tenants of the Kosmos. Primary and Visible Gods — Stars and Heavenly Bodies

229

Secondary and generated Gods — Plato’s dictum respecting them. His acquiescence in tradition

230

Remarks on Plato’s Canon of Belief

231

Address and order of the Demiurgus to the generated Gods

233

Preparations for the construction of man. Conjunction of three souls and one body

ib.

Proceedings of the generated Gods — they fabricate the cranium, as miniature of the Kosmos, with the rational soul rotating within it

235

The cranium is mounted on a tall body — six varieties of motion — organs of sense. Vision — Light

236

Principal advantages of sight and hearing. Observations of the rotation of the Kosmos

237

The Kosmos is product of joint action of Reason and Necessity. The four visible and tangible elements are not primitive

238

Forms or Ideas and Materia Prima — Forms of the Elements — Place, or Receptivity

ib.

Primordial Chaos — Effect of intervention by the Demiurgus

240

Geometrical theory of the elements — fundamental triangles — regular solids

ib.

Varieties of each element

242

Construction of man imposed by the Demiurgus upon the secondary Gods. Triple Soul. Distribution thereof in the body

243

Functions of the heart and lungs. Thoracic soul

245

Abdominal Soul — difficulty of controuling it — functions of the liver

ib.

The liver is made the seat of the prophetic agency. Function of the spleen

246

Length of the intestinal canal, in order that food might not be frequently needed

247

Bone — Flesh — Marrow

ib.

Nails — Mouth — Teeth. Plants produced for nutrition of man

248

General view of Diseases and their Causes

249

Diseases of mind — wickedness is a disease — no man is voluntarily wicked

ib.

Badness of mind arises from body

250

Preservative and healing agencies against disease — well-regulated exercise, of mind and body proportionally

250

Treatment proper for mind alone, apart from body — supremacy of the rational soul must be cultivated

251

We must study and understand the rotations of the Kosmos — this is the way to amend the rotations of the rational soul

252

Construction of women, birds, quadrupeds, fishes, &c., all from the degradation of primitive man

ib.

Large range of topics introduced in the Timæus

254

The Demiurgus of the Platonic Timæus — how conceived by other philosophers of the same century

ib.

Adopted and welcomed by the Alexandrine Jews, as a parallel to the Mosaic Genesis

256

Physiology of the Platonic Timæus — subordinate to Plato’s views of ethical teleology. Triple soul — each soul at once material and mental

257

Triplicity of the soul — espoused afterwards by Galen

258

Admiration of Galen for Plato — his agreement with Plato, and his dissension from Plato — his improved physiology

259

Physiology and Pathology of Plato — compared with that of Aristotle and the Hippokratic treatises

260

Contrast between the admiration of Plato for the constructors of the Kosmos, and the defective results which he describes

262

Degeneration of the real tenants of Earth from their primitive type

263

Close of the Timæus. Plato turns away from the shameful results, and reverts to the glorification of the primitive types

264

Kritias: a fragment

265

Proœmium to Timæus. Intended Tetralogy for the Republic. The Kritias was third piece in that Tetralogy

ib.

Subject of the Kritias. Solon and the Egyptian priests. Citizens of Platonic Republic are identified with ancient Athenians

266

Plato professes that what he is about to recount is matter of history, recorded by Egyptian priests

268

Description of the vast island of Atlantis and its powerful kings

ib.

Corruption and wickedness of the Atlantid people

269

Conjectures as to what the Platonic Kritias would have been — an ethical epic in prose

ib.

Plato represents the epic Kritias as matter of recorded history

270

CHAPTER XXXIX.

LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

Leges, the longest of Plato’s works — Persons of the dialogue

272

Abandonment of Plato’s philosophical projects prior to the Leges

273

Untoward circumstances of Plato’s later life — His altered tone in regard to philosophy

ib.

General comparison of Leges with Plato’s earlier works

275

Scene of the Leges, not in Athens, but in Krete. Persons Kretan and Spartan, comparatively illiterate

277

Gymnastic training, military drill, and public mess, in Krete and Sparta

279

Difference between Leges and Republic, illustrated by reference to the Politikus

280

Large proportion of preliminary discussions and didactic exhortation in the Leges

281

Scope of the discussion laid down by the Athenian speaker — The Spartan institutions are framed only for war — This is narrow and erroneous

282

Principles on which the institutions of a state ought to be defended — You must show that its ethical purpose and working is good

284

Religious and ethical character postulated by Plato for a community

ib.

Endurance of pain enforced as a part of the public discipline at Sparta

285

Why are not the citizens tested in like manner, in regard to resistance against the seductions of pleasure?

ib.

Drunkenness forbidden at Sparta, and blamed by the Spartan converser. The Athenian proceeds to inquire how far such unqualified prohibition is justifiable

286

Description of Sokrates in the Symposion — his self-command under abundant potations

287

Sokrates — an ideal of self-command, both as to pain and as to pleasure

288

Trials for testing the self-controul of the citizen, under the influence of wine. Dionysiac banquets, under a sober president

289

The gifts of Dionysus may, by precautions, be rendered useful — Desultory manner of Plato

ib.

Theory of ethical and æsthetical education — Training of the emotions of youth through the influence of the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus. Choric practice and ceremonies

290

Music and dancing — imitation of the voice and movements of brave and virtuous men. Youth must be taught to take delight in this

291

Bad musical exhibitions and poetry forbidden by the lawgiver. Songs and dances must be consecrated by public authority. Prizes at the musical festivals to be awarded by select judges

292

The Spartan and Kretan agree with the Athenian, that poets must be kept under a strict censorship. But they do not agree as to what the poets are required to conform to

ib.

Ethical creed laid down by the Athenian — Poets required to conform to it

294

The Spartan and Kretan do not agree with him

296

Chorus of Elders are required to set an example in keeping up the purity of the music prescribed

297

The Elders require the stimulus of wine, in order to go through the choric duties with spirit

ib.

Peculiar views of Plato about intoxication

298

General ethical doctrine held by Plato in Leges

299

Pleasure — Good — Happiness — What is the relation between them?

ib.

Comparison of the doctrine laid down in Leges

300

Doctrine in Leges about Pleasure and Good — approximates more nearly to the Protagoras than to Gorgias and Philêbus

301

Comparison of Leges with Republic and Gorgias

302

Plato here mistrusts the goodness of his own proof. He falls back upon useful fiction

303

Deliberate ethical fiction employed as means of governing

304

Importance of music and chorus as an engine of teaching for Plato. Views of Xenophon and Aristotle compared

305

Historical retrospect as to the growth of cities — Frequent destruction of established communities, with only a small remnant left

307

Historical or legendary retrospect — The Trojan war — The return of the Herakleids

308

Difficulties of government — Conflicts about command — Seven distinct titles to command exist among mankind, all equally natural, and liable to conflict

309

Imprudence of founding government upon any one of these titles separately — Governments of Argos and Messênê ruined by the single principle — Sparta avoided it

310

Plato casts Hellenic legend into accordance with his own political theories

311

Persia and Athens compared — Excess of despotism. Excess of liberty

312

Cyrus and Darius — Bad training of sons of kings

ib.

Changes for the worse in government of Athens, after the Persian invasion of Greece

313

This change began in music, and the poets introduced new modes of composition — they appealed to the sentiment of the people, and corrupted them

314

Danger of changes in the national music — declared by Damon, the musical teacher

315

Plato’s aversion to the tragic and comic poetry at Athens

316

This aversion peculiar to himself, not shared either by oligarchical politicians, or by other philosophers

317

Doctrines of Plato in this prefatory matter

318

Compared with those of the Republic and of the Xenophontic Cyropædia

319

Constructive scheme — Plato’s new point of view

320

New Colony to be founded in Krete — its general conditions

ib.

The Athenian declares that he will not merely promulgate peremptory laws, but will recommend them to the citizens by prologues or hortatory discourses

321

General character of these prologues — didactic or rhetorical homilies

322

Great value set by Plato himself upon these prologues. They are to serve as type for all poets. No one is allowed to contradict them

323

Contrast of Leges with Gorgias and Phædrus

324

Regulations for the new colony — About religious worship, the oracles of Delphi and Dodona are to be consulted

325

Perpetuity of number of citizens, and of lots of land, one to each, inalienable and indivisible

326

Plato reasserts his adherence to the principle of the Republic, though the repugnance of others hinders him from realising it

327

Regulations about land, successions, marriages, &c. The number of citizens must not be allowed to increase

328

Position of the city and akropolis — Distribution of the territory and citizens into twelve equal sections or tribes

329

Movable property — Inequality therein reluctantly allowed, as far as four to one, but no farther

330

Census of the citizens — four classes, with graduated scale of property. No citizen to possess gold or silver. No loans or interest. No debts enforced by law

331

Board of thirty-seven Nomophylakes — general supervisors of the laws and their execution — how elected

332

Military commanders — General council of 360 — complicated mode of election

ib.

Character of the electoral scheme — Plato’s views about wealth — he caters partly for the oligarchical sentiment, partly for the democratical

333

Meetings of council — other magistrates — Agoranomi — Astynomi, &c.

335

Defence of the territory — rural police — Agronomi, &c.

ib.

Comparison with the Lacedæmonian Kryptia

336

Priests — Exêgêtæ — Property belonging to temples

337

Superintendence of Music and Gymnastic. Educational function

ib.

Grave duties of the Minister of Education — precautions in electing him

338

Judicial duties

339

Private Causes — how tried

ib.

Public Causes must be tried directly by the citizens — strong feeling among Greeks about this

340

Plato’s way of meeting this feeling — intermediate inquiry and report by a special Commissioner

340

What laws the magistrates are to enforce — Many details must be left to the Nomophylakes

341

Marriage-Laws — Rich husbands to choose poor wives — No dowries — costly marriage festivals are forbidden

342

Laws about slavery. Slaves to be well fed, and never treated with cruelty or insolence. The master must not converse with them

ib.

Circular form for the city — Temples in the centre — No walls round it

344

Mode of life prescribed to new-married couples They are to take the best care about good procreation for the city

ib.

Board of superintending matrons

345

Age fixed for marriage. During the first ten years the couple are under obligation to procreate for the city — Restrictions during these ten years

ib.

How infants are to be brought up — Nurses — Perpetual regulated movements useful for toning down violent emotions

346

Choric and orchestic movements, their effect in discharging strong emotions

347

Training of boys and girls

348

Musical and literary teaching for youth — Poetry, songs, music, dances, must all be fixed by authority, and never changed — Mischief done by poets aiming to please

349

Boys and girls to learn letters and the lyre, from ten to thirteen years of age. Masters will teach the laws and homilies of the lawgiver, and licensed extracts from the poets

350

The teaching is to be simple, and common to both sexes

351

Rudiments of arithmetic and geometry to be taught

352

Astronomy must be taught, in order that the citizens may not assert libellous falsehoods respecting the heavenly bodies

354

Hunting — how far permitted or advised

355

Large general sense which Plato gives to the word hunting

356

Number of religious sacrifices to be determined by lawgiver

357

Military muster of the whole citizen population once in each month — men, women, and children

358

Gymnastic training must have reference to war, not to athletic prizes

358

Regulation of sexual intercourse. Syssitia or public mess

359

Regulations about landed property — Boundaries — Limited power of fining by magistrates

360

Regulations about artisans — Distribution of the annual landed produce

361

Admission of resident Metics — conditions attached

362

Offences and penal judicature — Procedure of the Dikasts

ib.

Sacrilege, the gravest of all crimes. High Treason

363

Theft punished by pœna dupli. General exhortation founded by Plato upon this enactment

364

All unjust men are unjust involuntarily. — No such thing as voluntary injustice. Injustice depends upon the temper of the agent — Distinction between damage and injury

365

Damage may be voluntary or involuntary — Injustice is shown often by conferring corrupt profit upon another — Purpose of punishment, to heal the distemper of the criminal

ib.

Three distinct causes of misguided proceedings. 1. Painful stimulus. 2. Pleasurable stimulus. 3. Ignorance

366

The unjust man is under the influence either of the first or second of these causes, without controul of Reason. If he acts under controul of Reason, though the Reason be bad, he is not unjust

367

Reasoning of Plato to save his doctrine — That no man commits injustice voluntarily

ib.

Peculiar definition of injustice. A man may do great voluntary hurt to others, and yet not be unjust, provided he does it under the influence of Reason, and not of Appetite

368

Plato’s purpose in the Laws is to prevent or remedy not only injustice but misconduct

369

Varieties of homicide — modes of dealing with them penally

370

Homicide involuntary — Homicide under provocation

ib.

Homicide voluntary

371

Homicide between kinsmen

372

Homicide justifiable — in what cases

ib.

Infliction of wounds

ib.

Infliction of blows

373

Plato has borrowed much from Attic procedure, especially in regard to Homicide — Peculiar view of Homicide at Athens, as to procedure

374

Impiety or outrage offered to divine things or places

375

All impiety arises from one or other of three heresies. 1. No belief in the Gods. 2. Belief that the Gods interfere very little. 3. Belief that they may be appeased by prayer and sacrifice

376

Punishment for these three heretical beliefs, with or without overt act

ib.

Heretic, whose conduct has been virtuous and faultless, to be imprisoned for five years, perhaps more

ib.

Heretic with bad conduct — punishment to be inflicted

377

No private worship or religious rites allowed. Every citizen must worship at the public temples

ib.

Uncertain and mischievous action of the religious sentiment upon individuals, if not controuled by public authority

378

Intolerant spirit of Plato’s legislation respecting uniformity of belief

379

The persons denounced by Plato as heretics, and punished as such, would have included a majority of the Grecian world

381

Proëm or prefatory discourse of Plato, for these severe laws against heretics

383

The third variety of heresy is declared to be the worst — the belief in Gods persuadable by prayer and sacrifice

384

Heretics censured by Plato — Sokrates censured before the Athenian Dikasts

385

Kosmological and Kosmogonical theory announced in Leges

386

Soul — older, more powerful in the universe than Body. Different souls are at work in the universe — the good soul and the bad soul

ib.

Plato’s argument is unsatisfactory and inconsistent

388

Reverence of Plato for uniform circular rotation

389

Argument of Plato to confute the second class of heretics

ib.

Contrary doctrine of Plato in Republic

390

Argument of Plato to refute the third class of heretics

391

General belief in Greece about the efficacy of prayer and sacrifice to appease the Gods

392

Incongruities of Plato’s own doctrine

393

Both Herodotus and Sokrates dissented from Plato’s doctrine

394

Great opposition which Plato’s doctrine would have encountered in Greece

395

Local infallibility was claimed as a rule in each community, though rarely enforced with severity: Plato both claims it more emphatically, and enforces it more rigorously

396

Farther civil and political regulations for the Magnetic community. No evidence that Plato had studied the working of different institutions in practice

397

Modes of acquiring property — legitimate and illegitimate

ib.

Plato’s general regulations leave little room for disputes about ownership

398

Plato’s principles of legislation, not consistent — comparison of them with the Attic law about Eranoi

399

Regulations about slaves, and about freedmen

400

Provisions in case a slave is sold, having a distemper upon him

401

Retailers. Strict regulations about them. No citizen can be a retailer

ib.

Frauds committed by sellers — severe punishments on them

402

Comparison with the lighter punishment inflicted by Attic law

403

Regulations about Orphans and Guardians: also about Testamentary powers

404

Plato’s general coincidence with Attic law and its sentiment

406

Tutelage of Orphans — Disagreement of Married Couples — Divorce

ib.

Neglect of Parents

407

Poison — Magic — Incantations — Severe punishment

ib.

Punishment is inflicted with a view to future prevention or amendment

408

Penalty for abusive words — for libellous comedy. Mendicity forbidden

409

Regulations about witnesses on judicial trials

ib.

Censure of forensic eloquence, and the teachers of it. Penalties against contentious litigation

410

Many of Plato’s laws are discharges of ethical antipathy. The antipathy of Melêtus against Sokrates was of the same character

411

Penalty for abuse of public trust — wrongful appropriation of public money — evasion of military service

412

Oaths. Dikasts, Judges, Electors, are to be sworn: but no parties to a suit, or interested witnesses, can be sworn

413

Regulations about admission of strangers, and foreign travel of citizens

414

Suretyship — Length of prescription for ownership, &c.

415

Judicial trial — three stages. 1. Arbitrators. 2. Tribe-Dikasteries. 3. Select Dikastery

ib.

Funerals — proceedings prescribed — expense limited

ib.

Conservative organ to keep up the original scheme of the lawgiver. Nocturnal Council for this purpose — how constituted

ib.

This Council must keep steadily in view the one great end of the city — Mistakes made by existing cities about the right end

417

The one end of the city is the virtue of its citizens — that property which is common to the four varieties of Virtue — Reason, Courage, Temperance, Justice

ib.

The Nocturnal Council must comprehend this unity of Virtue, explain it to others, and watch that it be carried out in detail

418

They must also adopt, explain, and enforce upon the citizens, an orthodox religious creed. Fundamental dogmas of such creed

419

Leges close, without describing the education proper for the Nocturnal Counsellors. Epinomis supplying this defect

420

The Athenian declares his plan of education — Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy

ib.

Theological view of Astronomy — Divine Kosmos — Soul more ancient and more sovereign than Body

421

Improving effects of the study of Astronomy in this spirit

422

Study of arithmetic and geometry: varieties of proportion

423

When the general forms of things have thus been learnt, particular individuals in nature must be brought under them

ib.

Question as to education of the Nocturnal Council is answered in the Epinomis

424

Problem which the Nocturnal Council are required to solve, What is the common property of Prudence, Courage, Temperance, Justice, by reason of which each is called Virtue?

425

The only common property is that all of them are essential to the maintenance of society, and tend to promote human security and happiness

ib.

Tendency of the four opposite qualities to lessen human happiness

426

A certain measure of all the four virtues is required. In judging of particular acts instigated by each, there is always a tacit reference to the hurt or benefit in the special case

ib.

Plato places these four virtues in the highest scale of Expetenda or Bona, on the ground that all the other Bona are sure to flow from them

428

In thus directing the attention of the Council to the common property of the four virtues, Plato enforces upon them the necessity of looking to the security and happiness of their community as the paramount end

429

But he enjoins also other objectionable ends

ib.

Intolerance of Plato — Comparison of the Platonic community with Athens

ib.

CHAPTER XXXV.

PLATONIC REPUBLIC — ABSTRACT.

The Republic is the longest of all the Platonic dialogues, except the dialogue De Legibus. It consists of ten books, each of them as long as any one of the dialogues which we have passed in review. Partly from its length — partly from its lofty pretensions as the great constructive work of Plato — I shall give little more than an abstract of it in the present chapter, and shall reserve remark and comment for the succeeding.

Declared theme of the Republic — Expansion and multiplication of the topics connected with it.

The professed subject is — What is Justice? Is the just man happy in or by reason of his justice? whatever consequences may befall him? Is the unjust man unhappy by reason of his injustice? But the ground actually travelled over by Sokrates, from whose mouth the exposition proceeds, is far more extensive than could have been anticipated from this announced problem. An immense variety of topics, belonging to man and society, is adverted to more or less fully. A theory of psychology or phrenology generally, is laid down and advocated: likewise a theory of the Intellect, distributed into its two branches: 1. Science, with the Platonic Forms or Ideas as Realities corresponding to it; 2. Opinion, with the fluctuating semi-realities or pseudo-realities, which form its object. A sovereign rule, exercised by philosophy, is asserted as indispensable to human happiness. The fundamental conditions of a good society, as Plato conceived it, are set forth at considerable length, and contrasted with the social corruptions of various existing forms of government. The outline of a perfect education, intellectual and emotional, is drawn up and prescribed for the ruling class: with many accompanying remarks on the objectionable tendencies of the popular and consecrated poems. The post-existence, as well as the pre-existence of the soul, is affirmed in the concluding books. As the result of the whole, Plato emphatically proclaims his conviction, that the just man is happy in and through his justice, quite apart from all consideration of consequences — yet that the consequences also will be such as to add to his happiness, both during life as well as after death: and the unjust man unhappy in and through his injustice.1

1  Plat. Repub. i. pp. 328 A, 350 D, 354 A.

Personages of the dialogue.

The dramatic introduction of the dialogue (which is described as held during the summer, immediately after the festival of the Bendideia in Peiræus), with the picture of the aged Kephalus and his views upon old age, is among the richest and most spirited in the Platonic works: but the discussion does not properly begin until Kephalus retires, leaving it to be carried on by Sokrates with Polemarchus, Glaukon, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus.

Views of Kephalus about old age.

“Old age has its advantages to reasonable men (says Kephalus). If I have lost the pleasures of youth, I have at the same time lost the violent desires which then overmastered me. I now enjoy tranquillity and peace. Without doubt, this is in part owing to my wealth. But the best that wealth does for me is, that it enables me to make compensation for deceptions and injustice, practised on other men in my younger days — and to fulfil all vows made to the Gods. An old man who is too poor to render such atonement for past falsehood and injustice, becomes uneasy in his mind as death approaches; he begins to fear that the stories about Hades, which he has heard and ridiculed in his youth, may perhaps prove true.”2

2  Plato, Repub. i. pp. 330-331.

Compare the language of Cato, more rhetorical and exaggerated than that of Kephalus, in Cic. De Senect. c. 13-14.

Definition of Justice by Simonides — It consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him.

“Is that your explanation of justice (asks Sokrates): that it consists in telling truth, and rendering to every one what you have had from him?” The old man Kephalus here withdraws; Polemarchus and the others prosecute the discussion. “The poet Simonides (says Polemarchus) gives an explanation like to that which you have stated — when he affirms, That just dealing consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him.”

Objections to it by Sokrates — There are cases in which it is not right to restore what is owing, or to tell the truth.

“I do not know what Simonides means,” replies Sokrates. “He cannot mean that it is always right to tell the truth, or always right to give back a deposit. If my friend, having deposited arms with me, afterwards goes mad, and in that state demands them back, it would not be right in me either to restore the arms, or to tell the truth, to a man in that condition. Therefore to say that justice consists in speaking truth and in giving back what we have received, cannot be a good definition.”3

3  Plato, Repub. i. p. 331 C-D.

The historical Sokrates argues in the same manner (in the Memorabilia of Xenophon. See his conversation with Euthydemus, iv. 2; and Cicero, De Offic. iii. 25, 94-95).

Polemarchus here gives a peculiar meaning to the phrase of Simonides: a man owes good to his friends — evil to his enemies: and he ought to pay back both. Upon this Sokrates comments.4

4  Sokrates here remarks that the precepts — Speak truth; Restore what has been confided to you — ought not to be considered as universally binding. Sometimes justice, or those higher grounds upon which the rules of justice are founded, prescribe that we should disobey the precepts. Sokrates takes this for granted, as a matter which no one will dispute; and it is evident that what Plato had here in his mind was, the obvious consideration that to tell the truth or restore a weapon deposited, to one who had gone mad, would do no good to any one, and might do immense mischief: thus showing that general utility is both the foundation and the limiting principle of all precepts respecting just and unjust. That this is present to the mind of Plato appears evident from his assuming the position as a matter of course; it is moreover Sokratic, as we see by the Memorabilia of Xenophon.

But Plato, in another passage of the Republic, clothes this Sokratic doctrine in a language and hypothesis of his own. He sets up Forms or Ideas, per se. The Just, — The Unjust, — The Honourable, — The Base, &c. He distinguishes each of these from the many separate manifestations in which it is specialised. The Form, though one reality in itself, appears manifold when embodied and disguised in these diversified accompaniments. It remains One and Unchanged, the object of Science and universal infallible truth; but each of its separate manifestations is peculiar to itself, appears differently to different minds, and admits of no higher certainty than fallible opinion. Though the Form of Justice always remains the same, yet its subordinate embodiments ever fluctuate; there is no given act nor assemblage of acts which is always just. Every just act (see Republic, v. pp. 476 A-479 A) is liable under certain circumstances to become unjust; or to be invaded and overclouded by the Form of Injustice. The genuine philosopher will detect the Form of Justice wherever it is to be found, in the midst of accompaniments however discrepant and confused, over all which he will ascend to the region of universal truth and reality. The unphilosophical mind cannot accomplish this ascent, nor detect the pure Form, nor even recognise its real existence: but sees nothing beyond the multiplicity of diverse particular cases in which it is or appears to be embodied. Respecting these particular cases there is no constant or universal truth, no full science. They cannot be thrown into classes to which the superior Form constantly and unconditionally adheres. They are midway between reality and non-reality: they are matters of opinion more or less reasonable, but not of certain science or unconditional affirmation. Among mankind generally, who see nothing of true and absolute Form, the received rules and dogmas respecting the Just, the Beautiful, &c., are of this intermediate and ambiguous kind: they can neither be affirmed universally, nor denied universally; they are partly true, partly false, determinable only by opinion in each separate case. Plato, Repub. v. p. 479 C-D: οὔτ’ εἶναι οὔτε μὴ εἶναι οὐδὲν αὐτῶν δυνατὸν παγίως νοῆσαι, οὔτε ἀμφότερα οὔτε οὐδέτερον … Τὰ τῶν πολλῶν πολλὰ νόμιμα, καλοῦ τε πέρι καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, μεταξύ που κυλινδεῖται τοῦ τε μὴ ὄντος καὶ τοῦ ὄντος εἰλικρινῶς.

Of the distinction here drawn in general terms by Plato, between the pure unchangeable Form, and the subordinate classes of particulars in which that Form is or appears to be embodied, the reasoning above cited respecting truth-telling and giving back a deposit is an example.

Explanation by Polemarchus — Farther interrogations by Sokrates — Justice renders what is proper and suitable: but how? in what cases, proper? Under what circumstances is Justice useful?

S. — Simonides meant to say (you tell me) that Justice consists in rendering benefits to your friends, evil to your enemies: that is, in rendering to each what is proper and suitable. But we must ask him farther — Proper and suitable — how? in what cases? to whom? The medical art is that which renders what is proper and suitable, of nourishment and medicaments for the health of the body: the art of cookery is that which renders what is proper and suitable, of savoury ingredients for the satisfaction of the palate. In like manner, the cases must be specified in which justice renders what is proper and suitable — to whom, how, or what?5 P. — Justice consists in doing good to friends, evil to enemies. S. — Who is it that is most efficient in benefiting his friends and injuring his enemies, as to health or disease? P. — It is the physician. S. — Who, in reference to the dangers in navigation by sea? P. — The steersman. S. — In what matters is it that the just man shows his special efficiency, to benefit friends and hurt enemies?6 P. — In war: as a combatant for the one and against the other. S. — To men who are not sick, the physician is of no use nor the steersman, to men on dry land: Do you mean in like manner, that the just man is useless to those who are not at war? P. — No: I do not mean that. Justice is useful in peace also. S. — So also is husbandry, for raising food — shoemaking, for providing shoes. Tell me for what want or acquisition justice is useful during peace? P. — It is useful for the common dealings and joint transactions between man and man. S. — When we are engaged in playing at draughts, the good player is our useful co-operator: when in laying bricks and stones, the skilful mason: much more than the just man. Can you specify in what particular transactions the just man has any superior usefulness as a co-operator? P. — In affairs of money, I think. S. — Surely not in the employment of money. When you want to buy a horse, you must take for your assistant, not the just man, but one who knows horses: so also, if you are purchasing a ship. What are those modes of jointly employing money, in which the just man is more useful than others? P. — He is useful when you wish to have your money safely kept. S. — That is, when your money is not to be employed, but to lie idle: so that when your money is useless, then is the time when justice is useful for it. P. — So it seems. S. — In regard to other things also, a sickle, a shield, a lyre when you want to use them, the pruner, the hoplite, the musician, must be invoked as co-operators: justice is useful only when you are to keep them unused. In a word, justice is useless for the use of any thing, and useful merely for things not in use. Upon this showing, it is at least a matter of no great worth.7

5  Plato, Republic, i. p. 332 D. ἡ οὖν δὴ τίσι τί ἀποδιδοῦσα τέχνη δικαιοσύνη ἂν καλοῖτο;

6  Plato, Republic, i. p. 332 E. ὁ δίκαιος ἐν τίνι πράξει καὶ πρὸς τί ἔργον δυνατώτατος φίλους ὠφελεῖν καὶ ἐχθροὺς βλάπτειν;

7  Plat. Repub. i. pp. 332-333. 333 E: Οὐκ ἂν οὖν πάνυ γέ τι σπουδαῖον εἴη ἡ δικαιοσύνη, εἰ πρὸς τὰ ἄχρηστα χρήσιμον ὂν τυγχάνει;

The just man, being good for keeping property guarded, must also be good for stealing property — Analogies cited.

But let us pursue the investigation (continues Sokrates). In boxing or in battle, is not he who is best in striking, best also in defending himself? In regard to disease, is not he who can best guard himself against it, the most formidable for imparting it to others? Is not the general who watches best over his own camp, also the most effective in surprising and over-reaching the enemy? In a word, whenever a man is effective as a guard of any thing, is he not also effective as a thief of it? P. — Such seems the course of the discussion. S. — Well then, the just man turns out to be a sort of thief, like the Homeric Autolykus. According to the explanation of Simonides, justice is a mode of thieving, for the profit of friends and damage of enemies.8 P. — It cannot be so. I am in utter confusion. Yet I think still that justice is profitable to friends, and hurtful to enemies.

8  Plat. Repub. i. p. 334 B. ἔοικεν οὖν ἡ δικαιοσύνη … κλεπτική τις ρἶναι, ἐπ’ ὠφελείᾳ μέντοι τῶν φίλων, καὶ ἐπὶ βλάβῃ τῶν ἐχθρῶν.

Justice consists in doing good to friends, evil to enemies — But how, if a man mistakes who his friends are, and makes friends of bad men?

S. — Whom do you call friends: those whom a man believes to be good, — or those who really are good, whether he believes them to be so or not: and the like, in reference to enemies? P. — I mean those whom he believes to be good. It is natural that he should love them and that he should hate those whom he believes to be evil. S. — But is not a man often mistaken in this belief? P. — Yes: often. S. — In so far as a man is mistaken, the good men are his enemies, and the evil men his friends. Justice, therefore, on your showing, consists in doing good to the evil men, and evil to the good men. P. — So it appears. S. — Now good men are just, and do no wrong to any one. It is therefore just, on your explanation, to hurt those who do no wrong. P. — Impossible! that is a monstrous doctrine. S. — You mean, then, that it is just to hurt unjust men, and to benefit just men? P. — Yes; that is something better. S. — It will often happen, therefore, when a man misjudges about others, that justice will consist in hurting his friends, since they are in his estimation the evil men: and in benefiting his enemies, since they are in his estimation the good men. Now this is the direct contrary of what Simonides defined to be justice.9

9  Plato, Republic, i. p. 334 D.

Justice consists in doing good to your friend, if really a good man: hurt to your enemy, with the like proviso. Sokrates affirms that the just man will do no hurt to any one. Definition of Simonides rejected.

“We have misconceived the meaning of Simonides (replies Polemarchus). He must have meant that justice consists in benefiting your friend, assuming him to be a good man: and in hurting your enemy, assuming him to be an evil man.” Sokrates proceeds to impugn the definition in this new sense. He shows that justice does not admit of our hurting any man, either evil or good. By hurting the evil man, we only make him more evil than he was before. To do this belongs not to justice, but to injustice.10 The definition of justice — That it consists in rendering benefit to friends and hurt to enemies — is not suitable to a wise man like Simonides, but to some rich potentate like Periander or Xerxes, who thinks his own power irresistible.11

10  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 335-336.

11  Here is a characteristic specimen of searching cross-examination in the Platonic or Sokratic style: citing multiplied analogies, and requiring the generalities of a definition to be clothed with particulars, that its sufficiency may be proved in each of many successive as well as different cases.

Thrasymachus takes up the dialogue — Repulsive portrait drawn of him.

At this turn of the dialogue, when the definition given by Simonides has just been refuted, Thrasymachus breaks in, and takes up the conversation with Sokrates. He is depicted as angry, self-confident to excess, and coarse in his manners even to the length of insult. The portrait given of him is memorable for its dramatic vivacity, and is calculated to present in an odious point of view the doctrines which he advances: like the personal deformities which Homer heaps upon Thersites in the Iliad.12 But how far it is a copy of the real man, we have no evidence to inform us.

12  Homer, Iliad B 216. Respecting Thrasymachus the reader should compare Spengel — Συναγωγὴ Τεχνῶν — pp. 94-98: which abates the odium inspired by this picture in the Republic.

Violence of Thrasymachus — Subdued manner of Sokrates — Conditions of useful colloquy.

In the contrast between Sokrates and Thrasymachus, Plato gives valuable hints as to the conditions of instructive colloquy. “What nonsense is all this!” (exclaims Thrasymachus). “Do not content yourself with asking questions, Sokrates, which you know is much easier than answering: but tell us yourself what Justice is: give us a plain answer: do not tell us that it is what is right — or profitable — or for our interest — or gainful — or advantageous: for I will not listen to any trash like this.” “Be not so harsh with us, Thrasymachus” (replies Sokrates, in a subdued tone). “If we have taken the wrong course of inquiry, it is against our own will. You ought to feel pity for us rather than anger.” “I thought” (rejoined Thrasymachus, with a scornful laugh) “that you would have recourse to your usual pretence of ignorance, and would decline answering.” S. — How can I possibly answer, when you prescribe beforehand what I am to say or not to say? If you ask men — How much is twelve? and at the same time say — Don’t tell me that it is twice six, or three times four, or four times three — how can any man answer your question? T. — As if the two cases were similar! S. — Why not similar? But even though they be not similar, yet if the respondent thinks them so, how can he help answering according as the matter appears to him, whether we forbid him or not? T. — Is that what you intend to do? Are you going to give me one of those answers which I forbade? S. — Very likely I may, if on consideration it appears to me the proper answer.13 T. — What will you say if I show you another answer better than all of them? What penalty will you then impose upon yourself? S. — What penalty? — why, that which properly falls upon the ignorant. It is their proper fate to learn from men wiser than themselves: that is the penalty which I am prepared for.14

13  Plato, Repub. i. p. 337 C. Εἰ δ’ οὖν καὶ μὴ ἔστιν ὅμοιον, φαίνεται δὲ τῷ ἐρωτηθέντι τοιοῦτον, ἧττόν τι αὐτὸν οἴει ἀποκρινεῖσθαι τὸ φαινόμενον ἑαυτῷ, ἐάν τε ἡμεῖς ἀπαγορεύωμεν, ἐάν τε μή; Ἄλλο τι οὖν, ἔφη, καὶ σὺ οὕτω ποιήσεις; ὧν ἐγὼ ἀπεῖπον, τούτων τι ἀποκρινεῖ; Οὐκ ἂν θαυμάσαιμι, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, εἴ μοι σκεψαμένῳ οὕτω δόξειεν.

This passage deserves notice, inasmuch as Plato here affirms, in very plain language, the Protagorean doctrine, which we have seen him trying to refute in the Theætêtus and Kratylus, — “Homo Mensura, — Every man is a measure to himself. That is true or false to every man which appears to him so.”

Most of Plato’s dialogues indeed imply this truth; for no man makes more constant appeal to the internal assent or dissent of the individual interlocutor. But it is seldom that he declares it in such express terms.

14  Plato, Republic, i. p. 337 D.

Definition given by Thrasymachus — Justice is that which is advantageous to the more powerful. Comments by Sokrates. What if the powerful man mistakes his own advantage?

After a few more words, in the same offensive and insolent tone ascribed to him from the beginning, Thrasymachus produces his definition of Justice:— “Justice is that which is advantageous to the more powerful”. Some comments from Sokrates bring out a fuller explanation, whereby the definition stands amended:— “Justice is that which is advantageous to the constituted authority, or to that which holds power, in each different community: monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy, as the case may be. Each of these authorities makes laws and ordinances for its own interest: declares what is just and unjust: and punishes all citizens who infringe its commands. Justice consists in obeying these commands. In this sense, justice is everywhere that which is for the interest or advantage of the more powerful.”15 “I too believe” (says Sokrates) “that justice is something advantageous, in a certain sense. But whether you are right in adding these words — ‘to the more powerful’ — is a point for investigation.16 Assuming that the authorities in each state make ordinances for their own advantage, you will admit that they sometimes mistake, and enact ordinances tending to their own disadvantage. In so far as they do this, justice is not that which is advantageous, but that which is disadvantageous, to the more powerful.17 Your definition therefore will not hold.”

15  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 338-339.

16  Plato, Republic, i. p. 339 B. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ξυμφέρον γέ τι εἶναι καὶ ἐγὼ ὁμολογῶ τὸ δίκαιον, σὺ δὲ προστίθης καὶ αὐτὸ φὴς εἶναι τὸ τοῦ κρείττονος, ἐγὼ δὲ ἀγνοῶ, σκεπτέον δή.

17  Plato, Republic, i. p. 339 E.

Correction by Thrasymachus — if the Ruler mistakes, he is pro tanto no Ruler — The Ruler, quâ Ruler — quâ     Craftsman — is infallible.

Thrasymachus might have replied to this objection by saying, that he meant what the superior power conceived to be for its own advantage, and enacted accordingly, whether such conception was correct or erroneous. This interpretation, though indicated by a remark put into the mouth of Kleitophon, is not farther pursued.18 But in the reply really ascribed to Thrasymachus, he is made to retract what he had just before admitted — that the superior authority sometimes commits mistakes. In so far as a superior or a ruler makes mistakes (Thrasymachus says), he is not a superior. We say, indeed, speaking loosely, that the ruler falls into error, just as we say that the physician or the steersman falls into error. The physician does not err quâ physician, nor the steersman quâ steersman. No craftsman errs quâ craftsman. If he errs, it is not from his craft, but from want of knowledge: that is, from want of craft.19 What the ruler, as such, declares to be best for himself, and therefore enacts, is always really best for himself: this is justice for the persons under his rule.

18  Plato, Republic, i. p. 340 B.

19  Plato, Republic, i. p. 340 E. ἐπιλιπούσης γὰρ ἐπιστήμης ὁ ἁμαρτάνων ἁμαρτάνει, ἐν ᾧ οὔκ ἐστι δημιουργός· ὥστε δημιουργὸς ἢ σοφὸς ἢ ἄρχων οὐδεὶς ἁμαρτάνει τότε ὅταν ἄρχων ᾖ.

Reply by Sokrates — The Ruler, quâ     infallible Craftsman, studies the interest of those whom he governs, and not his own interest.

To this subtle distinction, Sokrates replies by saying (in substance), “If you take the craftsman in this strict meaning, as representing the abstraction Craft, it is not true that his proceedings are directed towards his own interest or advantage. What he studies is, the advantage of his subjects or clients, not his own. The physician, as such, has it in view to cure his patients: the steersman, to bring his passengers safely to harbour: the ruler, so far forth as craftsman, makes laws for the benefit of his subjects, and not for his own. If obedience to these laws constitutes justice, therefore, it is not true that justice consists in what is advantageous to the superior or governing power. It would rather consist in what is advantageous to the governed.”20

20  Plato, Republic, i. p. 342.

Thrasymachus denies this — Justice is the good of another. The just many are worse off than the unjust One, and are forced to submit to his superior strength.

Thrasymachus is now represented as renouncing the abstraction above noted,21 and reverting to the actualities of life. “Such talk is childish!” (he exclaims, with the coarseness imputed to him in this dialogue). “Shepherds and herdsmen tend and fatten their flocks and herds, not for the benefit of the sheep and oxen, but for the profit of themselves and the proprietors. So too the genuine ruler in a city: he regards his subjects as so many sheep, looking only to the amount of profit which he can draw from them.22 Justice is, in real truth, the good of another; it is the profit of him who is more powerful and rules — the loss of those who are weaker and must obey. It is the unjust man who rules over the multitude of just and well-meaning men. They serve him because he is the stronger: they build up his happiness at the cost of their own. Everywhere, both in private dealing and in public function, the just man is worse off than the unjust. I mean by the unjust, one who has the power to commit wrongful seizure on a large scale. You may see this if you look at the greatest injustice of all — the case of the despot, who makes himself happy while the juster men over whom he rules are miserable. One who is detected in the commission of petty crimes is punished, and gets a bad name: but if a man has force enough to commit crime on the grand scale, to enslave the persons of the citizens, and to appropriate their goods — instead of being called by a bad name, he is envied and regarded as happy, not only by the citizens themselves, but by all who hear him named. Those who blame injustice, do so from the fear of suffering it, not from the fear of doing it. Thus then injustice, in its successful efficiency, is strong, free, and over-ruling, as compared with justice. Injustice is profitable to a man’s self: justice (as I said before) is what is profitable to some other man stronger than he.”23

21  Plato, Republic, p. 345 B-C.

22  Plato, Republic, p. 343 B.

A similar comparison is put into the mouth of Sokrates himself by Plato in the Theætêtus, p. 174 D.

23  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 343-344.

Position laid for the subsequent debate and exposition.

Thrasymachus is described as laying down this position in very peremptory language, and as anxious to depart immediately after it, if he had not been detained by the other persons present. His position forms the pivot of the subsequent conversation. The two opinions included in it — (That justice consists in obedience yielded by the weak to the orders of the strong, for the advantage of the strong — That injustice, if successful, is profitable and confers happiness: justice the contrary) — are disputed, both of them, by Sokrates as well as by Glaukon.24

24  Plato, Repub. i. pp. 345 A-348 A.

Arguments of Sokrates — Injustice is a source of weakness — Every multitude must observe justice among themselves, in order to avoid perpetual quarrels. The same about any single individual: if he is unjust, he will be at war with himself, and perpetually weak.

Sokrates is represented as confuting and humiliating Thrasymachus by various arguments, of which the two first at least are more subtle than cogent.25 He next proceeds to argue that injustice, far from being a source of strength, is a source of weakness — That any community of men, among whom injustice prevails, must be in continual dispute; and therefore incapable of combined action against others — That a camp of mercenary soldiers or robbers, who plunder every one else, must at least observe justice among themselves — That if they have force, this is because they are unjust only by halves: that if they were thoroughly unjust, they would also be thoroughly impotent — That the like is true also of an individual separately taken, who, so far as he is unjust, is in a perpetual state of hatred and conflict with himself, as well as with just men and with the Gods: and would thus be divested of all power to accomplish any purpose.26

25  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 346-350.

26  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 351-352 D.

Farther argument of Sokrates — The just man is happy, the unjust man miserable — Thrasymachus is confuted and silenced. Sokrates complains that he does not yet know what Justice is.

Having thus shown that justice is stronger than injustice, Sokrates next offers an argument to prove that it is happier or confers more happiness than injustice. The conclusion of this argument is — That the just man is happy, and the unjust miserable.27 Thrasymachus is confuted, and retires humiliated from the debate. Yet Sokrates himself is represented as dissatisfied with the result. “At the close of our debate” (he says) “I find that I know nothing about the matter. For as I do not know what justice is, I can hardly expect to know whether it is a virtue or not; nor whether the man who possesses it is happy or not happy.”28

27  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 353-354 A.

28  Plato, Republic, i. fin. p. 354 C. ὥστε μοι γέγονεν ἐκ τοῦ διαλόγου μηδὲν εἰδέναι· ὁπότε γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον μὴ οἶδα ὃ ἐστι, σχολῇ εἴσομαι εἴτε ἀρετή τις οὖσα τυγχάνει εἴτε καὶ οὔ, καὶ πότερον ὁ ἔχων αὐτὸ οὐκ εὐδαίμων ἐστὶν ἢ εὐδαίμων.

Glaukon intimates that he is not satisfied with the proof, though he agrees in the opinion expressed by Sokrates. Tripartite distribution of Good — To which of the three heads does Justice belong?

Here Glaukon enters the lists, intimating that he too is dissatisfied with the proof given by Sokrates, that justice is every way better than injustice: though he adopts the conclusion, and desires much to hear it fully demonstrated. “You know” (he says), “Sokrates, that there are three varieties of Good — 1. Good, per se, and for its own sake (apart from any regard to ulterior consequences): such as enjoyment and the innocuous pleasures. 2. Good both in itself, and by reason of its ulterior consequences: such as full health, perfect vision, intelligence, &c. 3. Good, not in itself, but altogether by reason of its consequences: such as gymnastic training, medical treatment, professional business, &c. Now in which of these branches do you rank Justice?” S. — I rank it in the noblest — that is — in the second branch: which is good both in itself, and by reason of its consequences. G. — Most persons put it in the third branch: as being in itself difficult and laborious, but deserving to be cultivated in consequence of the reward and good name which attaches to the man who is reputed just.29 S. — I know that this is the view taken by Thrasymachus and many others: but it is not mine. G. — Neither is it mine.

29  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 357.

Glaukon undertakes to set forth the case against Sokrates, though professing not to agree with it.

Yet still I think that you have not made out your case against Thrasymachus, and that he has given up the game too readily. I will therefore re-state his argument, not at all adopting his opinion as my own, but simply in order to provoke a full refutation of it from you, such as I have never yet heard from any one. First, I shall show what his partisans say as to the nature and origin of justice. Next, I shall show that all who practise justice, practise it unwillingly; not as good per se, but as a necessity. Lastly, I shall prove that such conduct on their part is reasonable. If these points can be made out, it will follow that the life of the unjust man is much better than that of the just.30

30  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 358.

Pleading of Glaukon. Justice is in the nature of a compromise for all — a medium between what is best and what is worst.

The case, as set forth first by Glaukon, next by Adeimantus, making themselves advocates of Thrasymachus — is as follows. “To do injustice, is by nature good: to suffer injustice is by nature evil: but the last is greater as an evil, than the first as a good: so that when men have tasted of both, they find it advantageous to agree with each other, that none shall either do or suffer injustice. These agreements are embodied in laws; and what is prescribed by the law is called lawful and just. Here you have the generation and essence of justice, which is intermediate between what is best and what is worst: that is, between the power of committing injustice with impunity, and the liability to suffer injustice without protection or redress. Men acquiesce in such compromise, not as in itself good, but because they are too weak to commit injustice safely. For if any man were strong enough to do so, and had the dispositions of a man, he would not make such a compromise with any one: it would be madness in him to do so.31

31  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 358-359.

“That men are just, only because they are too weak to be unjust, will appear if we imagine any of them, either the just or the unjust, armed with full power and impunity, such as would be conferred by the ring of Gyges, which rendered the wearer invisible at pleasure. If the just man could become thus privileged, he would act in the same manner as the unjust: his temper would never be adamantine enough to resist the temptations which naturally prompt every man to unlimited satisfaction of his desires. Such temptations are now counteracted by the force of law and opinion; but if these sanctions were nullified, every man, just or unjust, would seize every thing that he desired, without regard to others. When he is just, he is so not willingly, but by compulsion. He chooses that course not as being the best for him absolutely, but as the best which his circumstances will permit.

Comparison of the happiness of the just man derived from his justice alone, when others are unjust to him with that of the unjust man under parallel circumstances.

“To determine which of the two is happiest, the just man or the unjust, let us assume each to be perfect in his part, and then compare them. The unjust man must be assumed to have at his command all means of force and fraud, so as to procure for himself the maximum of success; i.e., the reputation of being a just man, along with all the profitable enormities of injustice. Against him we will set the just man, perfect in his own simplicity and righteousness; a man who cares only for being just in reality, and not for seeming to be so. We shall suppose him, though really just, to be accounted by every one else thoroughly unjust. It is only thus that we can test the true value of his justice: for if he be esteemed just by others, he will be honoured and recompensed, so that we cannot be sure that his justice is not dictated by regard to these adventitious consequences. He must be assumed as just through life, yet accounted by every one else unjust, and treated accordingly: while the unjust man, with whom we compare him, is considered and esteemed by others as if he were perfectly just. Which of the two will have the happiest life? Unquestionably the unjust man. He will have all the advantages derived from his unscrupulous use of means, together with all that extrinsic favour and support which proceeds from good estimation on the part of others: he will acquire superior wealth, which will enable him both to purchase partisans, and to offer costly sacrifices ensuring to him the patronage of the Gods. The just man, on the contrary, will not only be destitute of all these advantages, but will be exposed to a life of extreme suffering and torture. He will learn by painful experience that his happiness depends, not upon being really just, but upon being accounted just by others.”32

32  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 361-362.

Pleading of Adeimantus on the same side. He cites advice given by fathers to their sons, recommending just behaviour by reason of its consequences.

Here Glaukon concludes. Adeimantus now steps in as second counsel on the same side, to the following effect:33 “Much yet remains to be added to the argument. To make it clearer, we must advert to the topics insisted on by those who oppose Glaukon — those who panegyrise justice and denounce injustice. A father, who exhorts his sons to be just, says nothing about the intrinsic advantages of justice per se: he dwells upon the beneficial consequences which will accrue to them from being just. Through such reputation they will obtain from men favours, honours, commands, prosperous alliances — from the Gods, recompenses yet more varied and abundant. If, on the contrary, they commit injustice, they will be disgraced and ill-treated among men, severely punished by the Gods. Such are the arguments whereby a father recommends justice, and dissuades injustice, he talks about opinions and after consequences only, he says nothing about justice or injustice in themselves. Such are the allegations even of those who wish to praise and enforce justice. But there are others, and many among them, who hold an opposite language, proclaiming unreservedly that temperance and justice are difficult to practise — injustice and intemperance easy and agreeable, though law and opinion brand them as disgraceful. These men affirm that the unjust life is for the most part more profitable than the just. They are full of panegyrics towards the wealthy and powerful, however unprincipled; despising the poor and weak, whom nevertheless they admit to be better men.34 They even say that the Gods themselves entail misery upon many good men, and confer prosperity on the wicked. Then there come the prophets and jugglers, who profess to instruct rich men, out of many books, composed by Orpheus and Musæus, how they may by appropriate presents and sacrifices atone for all their crimes and die happy.35

33  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 362-367.

34  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 364 A-B.

35  Plato, Republic, p. 364 C-E.

“When we find that the case is thus stated respecting justice, both by its panegyrists and by its enemies — that the former extol it only from the reputation which it procures, and that the latter promise to the unjust man, if clever and energetic, a higher recompense than any such reputation can obtain for him — what effect can we expect to be produced on the minds of young men of ability, station, and ambition? What course of life are they likely to choose? Surely they will thus reason: A just life is admitted to be burdensome — and it will serve no purpose, unless I acquire, besides, the reputation of justice in the esteem of others. Now the unjust man, who can establish such reputation, enjoys the perfection of existence. My happiness turns not upon the reality, but upon the seeming: upon my reputation with others.36 Such reputation then it must be my aim to acquire. I must combine the real profit of injustice with the outside show and reputation of justice. Such combination is difficult: but all considerable enterprises are difficult: I must confederate with partisans to carry my point by force or fraud. If I succeed, I attain the greatest prize to which man can aspire. I may be told that the Gods will punish me; but the same poets, who declare the existence of the Gods, assure me also that they are placable by prayer and sacrifice: and the poets are as good authority on the one point as on the other.37 Such” (continues Adeimantus) “will be the natural reasoning of a powerful, energetic, aspiring, man. How can we expect that such a man should prefer justice, when the rewards of injustice on its largest scale are within his reach?38 Unless he be averse to injustice, from some divine peculiarity of disposition — or unless he has been taught to abstain from it by the acquisition of knowledge, — he will treat the current encomiums on justice as ridiculous. No man is just by his own impulse. Weak men or old men censure injustice, because they have not force enough to commit it with success: which is proved by the fact than any one of them who acquires power, immediately becomes unjust as far as his power reaches.

36  Plat. Rep. ii. pp. 365 E, 366 A.

37  Plat. Rep. ii. p. 365 B-D.

38  Plat. Rep. ii. p. 366 B-D.

Nobody recommends Justice per se    , but only by reason of its consequences.

“The case as I set it forth” (pursues Adeimantus) “admits of no answer on the ground commonly taken by those who extol justice and blame injustice, from the earliest poets down to the present day.39 What they praise is not justice per se, but the reputation which the just man obtains, and the consequences flowing from it. What they blame is not injustice per se, but its results. They never commend, nor even mention, justice as it exists in and moulds the internal mind and character of the just man; even though he be unknown, misconceived and detested, by Gods as well as by men. Nor do they ever talk of the internal and intrinsic effects of injustice upon the mind of the unjust man, but merely of his ulterior prospects. They never attempt to show that injustice itself, in the mind of the unjust man, is the gravest intrinsic evil: and justice in the mind of the just man, the highest intrinsic good: apart from consequences on either side. If you had all held this language from the beginning, and had impressed upon us such persuasion from our childhood, there would have been no necessity for our keeping watch upon each other to prevent injustice. Every man would have been the best watch upon himself, through fear lest by becoming unjust he might take into his own bosom the gravest evil.40

39  Plat. Rep. ii. p. 366 D-E. πάντων ὑμῶν, ὅσοι ἐπαινέται φατὲ δικαιοσύνης εἶναι, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἡρώων ἀρξάμενοι, ὅσων λόγοι λελειμμένοι, μέχρι τῶν νῦν ἀνθρώπων, οὐδεὶς πώποτε ἔψεξεν ἀδικίαν οὐδ’ ἐπῄνεσε δικαιοσύνην ἄλλως ἢ δόξας τε καὶ τιμὰς καὶ δωρεὰς τὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν δυνάμει ἐν τῇ τοῦ ἔχοντος ψυχῇ ἐνὸν καὶ λανθάνον θεούς τε καὶ ἀνθρώπους, οὐδεὶς πώποτε οὔτ’ ἐν ποιήσει οὔτ’ ἐν ἰδίοις λόγοις ἐπεξῆλθεν ἱκανῶς τῷ λόγῳ, &c. Compare p. 362 E.

Whoever reads this, will see that Plato does not intend (as most of his commentators assert) that the arguments which Sokrates combats in the Republic were the invention of Protagoras, Prodikus, and other Sophists of the Platonic century.

40  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 A. εἰ γὰρ οὔτως ἐλέγετο ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπὸ πάντων ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐκ νέων ἡμᾶς ἐπείθετε, οὐκ ἀν ἀλλήλους ἐφυλάττομεν μὴ ἀδικεῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ ἦν ἕκαστος φύλαξ, δεδιὼς μὴ ἀδικῶν τῷ μεγίστῳ κακῷ ξύνοικος ᾖ.

Adeimantus calls upon Sokrates to recommend and enforce Justice on its own grounds, and to explain how Justice in itself benefits the mind of the just man.

“Here therefore is a deficiency in the argument on behalf of justice, which I call upon you,41 Sokrates, who have employed all your life in these meditations, to supply. You have declared justice to be good indeed for its consequences, but still more of a good from its own intrinsic nature. Explain how it is good, and how injustice is evil, in its own intrinsic nature: what effect each produces on the mind, so as to deserve such an appellation. Omit all notice of consequences accruing to the just or unjust man, from the opinion, favourable or otherwise, entertained towards him by others. You must even go farther: you must suppose that both of them are misconceived, and that the just man is disgraced and punished as if he were unjust — the unjust man honoured and rewarded as if he were just. This is the only way of testing the real intrinsic value of justice and injustice, considered in their effects upon the mind. If you expatiate on the consequences — if you regard justice as in itself indifferent, but valuable on account of the profitable reputation which it procures, and injustice as in itself profitable, but dangerous to the unjust man from the hostile sentiment and damage which it brings upon him — the real drift of your exhortation will be, to make us aspire to be unjust in reality, but to aim at maintaining a reputation of justice along with it. In that line of argument you will concede substantially the opinion of Thrasymachus — That justice is another man’s good, the advantage of the more powerful: and injustice the good or profit of the agent, but detrimental to the weaker.”42

41  Plat. Rep. ii. p. 367 E. διότι πάντα τὸν βίον οὐδὲν ἄλλο σκοπῶν διελήλυθας ἢ τοῦτο (you, Sokrates).

42  Plat. Republic, ii. p. 367 C-D.

Relation of Glaukon and Adeimantus to Thrasymachus.

With the invocation here addressed to Sokrates, Adeimantus concludes his discourse. Like Glaukon, he disclaims participation in the sentiments which the speech embodies. Both of them, professing to be dissatisfied with the previous refutation of Thrasymachus by Sokrates, call for a deeper exposition of the subject. Both of them then enunciate a doctrine, resembling partially, though not entirely, that of Thrasymachus — but without his offensive manner, and with superior force of argument. They propose it as a difficult problem, which none but Sokrates can adequately solve. He accepts the challenge, though with apparent diffidence: and we now enter upon his solution, which occupies the remaining eight books and a half of the Republic. All these last books are in fact expository, though in the broken form of dialogue. The other speakers advance scarce any opinions for Sokrates to confute, but simply intervene with expressions of assent, or doubt, or demand for farther information.

Statement of the question as it stands after the speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus. What Sokrates undertakes to prove.

I here repeat the precise state of the question, which is very apt to be lost amidst the mæanderings of a Platonic dialogue.

First, What is Justice? Sokrates had declared at the close of the first book, that he did not know what Justice was; and that therefore he could not possibly decide, whether it was a virtue or not:— nor whether the possessor of it was happy or not.

Secondly, To which of the three classes of good things does Justice belong? To the second class — i. e. things good per se, and good also in their consequences? Or to the third class — i. e. things not good per se, but good only in their consequences? Sokrates replies (in the beginning of the second book) that it belongs to the second class.

Evidently, these two questions cannot stand together. In answering the second, Sokrates presupposes a certain determination of the first; inconsistent with that unqualified ignorance, of which he had just made profession. Sokrates now professes to know, not merely that Justice is a good, but to what class of good things it belongs. The first question has thus been tacitly dropped without express solution, and has given place to the second. Yet Sokrates, in providing his answer to the second, includes implicitly an answer to the first, so far as to assume that Justice is a good thing, and proceeds to show in what way it is good.

Some say that Justice is good (i.e. that it ensures, or at least contributes to, the happiness of the agent), but not per se: only in its ulterior consequences. Taken per se, it imposes privation, loss, self-denial; diminishing instead of augmenting the agent’s happiness. But taken along with its results, this preliminary advance is more than adequately repaid; since without it the agent would not obtain from others that reciprocity of justice, forbearance, and good treatment without which his life would be intolerable.

If this last opinion be granted, Glaukon argues that Justice would indeed be good for weak and middling agents, but not for men of power and energy, who had a good chance of extorting the benefit without paying the antecedent price. And Thrasymachus, carrying this view still farther, assumes that there are in every society men of power who despotise over the rest; and maintains that Justice consists, for the society generally, in obeying the orders of these despots. It is all gain to the strong, all loss to the weak. These latter profit by it in no other way than by saving themselves from farther punishment or ill usage on the part of the strong.

Position to be proved by Sokrates — Justice makes the just man happy per se    , whatever be its results.

Sokrates undertakes to maintain the opposite — That Justice is a good per se, ensuring the happiness of the agent by its direct and intrinsic effects on the mind: whatever its ulterior consequences may be. He maintains indeed that these ulterior consequences are also good: but that they do not constitute the paramount benefit, or the main recommendation of Justice: that the good of Justice per se is much greater. In this point of view, Justice is not less valuable and necessary to the strong than to the weak. He proceeds to show, what Justice is, and how it is beneficial per se to the agent, apart from consequences: also, what Injustice is, and how it is injurious to the agent per se, apart from consequences.43

43  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 368 seq.

Argument of Sokrates to show what Justice is — Assumed analogy between the city and the individual.

He begins by affirming the analogy between an entire city or community, and each individual man or agent. There is justice (he says) in the entire city — and justice in each individual man. In the city, the characteristics of Justice are stamped in larger letters or magnified, so as to be more easily legible. We will therefore first read them in the city, and then apply the lesson to explain what appears in smaller type in the individual man.44 We will trace the steps by which a city is generated, in order that we may see how justice and injustice spring up in it.

44  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 368-369.

It is in this way that Plato first conducts us to the formation of a political community. A parallel is assumed between the entire city and each individual man: the city is a man on a great scale — the man is a city on a small scale. Justice belongs both to one and to the other. The city is described and analysed, not merely as a problem for its own sake, but in order that the relation between its constituent parts may throw light on the analogous constituent parts, which are assumed to exist in each individual man.45

45  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 A. τὴν τοῦ μείζονος ὁμοιότητα ἐν τῇ τοῦ ἐλάττονος ἰδέᾳ ἐπισκοποῦντες.

Fundamental principle, to which communities of mankind owe their origin — Reciprocity of want and service between individuals — No individual can suffice to himself.

The fundamental principle (Sokrates affirms) to which cities or communities owe their origin, is, existence of wants and necessities in all men. No single man is sufficient for himself: every one is in want of many things, and is therefore compelled to seek communion or partnership with neighbours and auxiliaries. Reciprocal dealings begin: each man gives to others, and receives from others, under the persuasion that it is better for him to do so.46 Common needs, helplessness of individuals apart, reciprocity of service when they are brought together — are the generating causes of this nascent association. The simplest association, comprising the mere necessaries of life, will consist only of four or five men: the husbandman, builder, weaver, shoemaker, &c. It is soon found advantageous to all, that each of these should confine himself to his own proper business: that the husbandman should not attempt to build his own house or make his own shoes, but should produce corn enough for all, and exchange his surplus for that of the rest in their respective departments. Each man has his own distinct aptitudes and dispositions; so that he executes both more work and better work, by employing himself exclusively in the avocation for which he is suited. The division of labour thus becomes established, as reciprocally advantageous to all. This principle soon extends itself: new wants arise: the number of different employments is multiplied. Smiths, carpenters, and other artisans, find a place: also shepherds and herdsmen, to provide oxen for the farmer, wool and hides for the weaver and the shoemaker. Presently a farther sub-division of labour is introduced for carrying on exchange and distribution: markets are established: money is coined: foreign merchants will import and export commodities: dealers, men of weak body, and fit for sedentary work, will establish themselves to purchase wholesale the produce brought by the husbandman, and to sell it again by retail in quantities suitable for distribution. Lastly, the complement of the city will be made up by a section of labouring men who do jobs for hire: men of great bodily strength, though not adding much to the intelligence of the community.47

46  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369.

47  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 371.

It is remarkable that in this first outline of the city Plato recognises only free labour, not slave labour.

Moderate equipment of a sound and healthy city — Few wants.

Such is the full equipment of the sound and healthy city, confined to what is simple and necessary. Those who compose it will have sufficient provision of wheat and barley, for loaves and cakes — of wine to drink — of clothing and shoes — of houses for shelter, and of myrtle and yew twigs for beds. They will enjoy their cheerful social festivals, with wine, garlands, and hymns to the Gods. They will take care not to beget children in numbers greater than their means, knowing that the consequence thereof must be poverty or war.48 They will have, as condiment, salt and cheese, olives, figs, and chestnuts, peas, beans, and onions. They will pass their lives in peace, and will die in a healthy old age, bequeathing a similar lot to their children. Justice and injustice, which we are seeking for, will be founded on a certain mode of mutual want and dealing with each other.49

48  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 372 B-C. οὐχ ὑπὲρ τὴν οὐσίαν ποιούμενοι τοὺς παῖδας, εὐλαβούμενοι πενίαν ἢ πόλεμον.

49  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 372 A. ἐν αὐτῶν τούτων χρείᾳ τινὶ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

You feed your citizens, Sokrates (observes Glaukon), as if you were feeding pigs. You must at least supply them with as many sweets and condiments as are common at Athens: and with beds and tables besides.

Enlargement of the city — Multiplied wants and services. First origin of war and strife with neighbours — It arises out of these multiplied wants.

I understand you (replies Sokrates): you are not satisfied with a city of genuine simplicity: you want a city luxurious and inflated. Well then — we will suppose it enlarged until it comprehends all the varieties of elegant and costly enjoyment: gold, silver, and ivory: musicians and painters in their various branches: physicians: and all the crowd of attendants required for a society thus enlarged. Such extension of consumption will carry with it a numerous population, who cannot be maintained from the lands belonging to the city. We shall be obliged to make war upon our neighbours and seize some of their lands. They too will do the same by us, if they have acquired luxurious habits. Here we see the first genesis of war, with all its consequent evils: springing from the acquisition of wealth, beyond the limit of necessity.50 Having war upon our hands, we need soldiers, and a considerable camp of them. Now war is essentially a separate craft and function, requiring to be carried on by persons devoted to it, who have nothing else to do. We laid down from the beginning, that every citizen ought to confine himself exclusively to that business for which he was naturally fit; and that no one could be allowed to engage in two distinct occupations. This rule is above all things essential for the business of war. The soldier must perform the duties of a soldier, and undertake no others.51

50  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 373.

51  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 374.

Separate class of soldiers or Guardians. One man cannot do well more than one business. Character required in the Guardians — Mildness at home with pugnacity against enemies.

The functions of these soldiers are more important than those of any one else. Upon them the security of the whole community depends. They are the Guardians of the city: or rather, those few seniors among them, who are selected from superior merit and experience, and from a more perfect education to exercise command, are the proper Guardians: while the remaining soldiers are their Auxiliaries.52 These Guardians, or Guardians and their Auxiliaries, must be first chosen with the greatest care, to ensure that they have appropriate natural dispositions: next, their training and education must be continued as well as systematic. Appropriate natural dispositions are difficult to find: for we require the coincidence of qualities which are rarely found together. The Auxiliaries must be mild and gentle towards their fellow citizens, passionate and fierce towards enemies. They must be like generous dogs, full of kindness towards those whom they know, angrily disposed towards those whom they do not know.53

52  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 414 B.

53  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 376.

Peculiar education necessary, musical as well as gymnastical.

Assuming children of these dispositions to be found, we must provide for them the best training and education. The training must be twofold: musical, addressed to the mind: gymnastical, addressed to the body — pursuant to the distribution dating from ancient times.54 Music includes all training by means of words or sounds: speech and song, recital and repetition, reading and writing, &c.

54  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 376 E. Τίς οὖν ἡ παιδεία; ἢ χαλεπὸν εὑρεῖν βελτίω τῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ χρόνου εὑρημένης ἔστι δέ που ἡ μὲν ἐπὶ σώμασι γυμναστική, ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ ψυχῇ μουσική.

This appeal of Plato to antiquity and established custom deserves notice.

Musical education, by fictions as well as by truth. Fictions addressed to the young: the religious legends now circulating are often pernicious: censorship necessary.

The earliest training of every child begins from the stories or fables which he hears recounted: most of which are false, though some among them are true. We must train the child partly by means of falsehood, partly by means of truth: and we must begin first with the falsehood. The tenor of these fictions, which the child first hears, has a powerful effect in determining his future temper and character. But such fictions as are now currently repeated, will tend to corrupt his mind, and to form in him sentiments and opinions adverse to those which we wish him to entertain in after life. We must not allow the invention and circulation of stories at the pleasure of the authors: we must establish a censorship over all authors; licensing only such of their productions as we approve, and excluding all the rest, together with most of those now in circulation.55 The fables told by Homer, Hesiod, and other poets, respecting the Gods and Heroes, are in very many cases pernicious, and ought to be suppressed. They are not true; and even were they true, ought not to be mentioned before children. Stories about battles between the Gods and the Giants, or quarrels among the Gods themselves, are mischievous, whether intended as allegories or not: for young hearers cannot discriminate the allegorical from the literal.56

55  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 377 C. ὧν δὲ νῦν λέγουσι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκβλητέον.

Compare the animadversions in Sextus Empiricus about the mischievous doctrines to be found in the poets, adv. Mathematicos, i. s. 276-293.

56  Plato, Republ. p. 378 D.

Orthodox type to be laid down: all poets are required to conform their legends to it. The Gods are causes of nothing but good: therefore they are causes of few things. Great preponderance of actual evil.

I am no poet (continues the Platonic Sokrates), nor can I pretend to compose legends myself: but I shall lay down a type of theological orthodoxy, to which all the divine legends in our city must conform. Every poet must proclaim that the Gods are good, and therefore cannot be the cause of anything except good. No poet can be allowed to describe the Gods (according to what we now read in Homer and elsewhere) as dispensing both good and evil to mankind. The Gods must be announced as causes of all the good which exists, but other causes must be found for all the evil: the Gods therefore are causes of comparatively few things, since bad things are far more abundant among us than good.57 No poetical tale can be tolerated which represents the Gods as assuming the forms of different persons, and going about to deceive men into false beliefs.58 Falsehood is odious both to Gods and to men: though there are some cases in which it is necessary as a precaution against harm, towards enemies, or even towards friends during seasons of folly or derangement.59 But none of these exceptional circumstances can apply to the Gods.

57  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 379 C. Οὐδ’ ἄρα ὁ θεός, ἐπειδὴ ἀγαθός, πάντων ἂν εἴη αἴτιος, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀλίγων μὲν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις αἴτιος, πολλῶν δὲ ἀναίτιος· πολὺ γὰρ ἐλάττω τἀγαθὰ τῶν κακῶν ἡμῖν. Καὶ τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν οὐδένα ἄλλον αἰτιατέον, τῶν δὲ κακῶν ἄλλ’ ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸν θεόν.

58  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 380-381.

Dacier blames Plato for this as an error, saying, that God may appear, and has appeared to men, under the form of an Angel or of some man whom he has created after his own image (Traduction de Platon, tom. i. p. 172).

59  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 382 C.

The Guardians must not fear death. No terrible descriptions of Hades must be presented to them: no intense sorrow, nor violent nor sensual passion, must be recounted either of Gods or Heroes.

It is indispensable to inspire these youthful minds with courage, and to make them fear death as little as possible. But the terrific descriptions, given by the poets, of Hades and the underworld, are above all things likely to aggravate the fear of death. Such descriptions must therefore be interdicted, as neither true nor useful. Even if poetically striking, they are all the more pernicious to be listened to by youths whom we wish to train up as spirited free-men, fearing enslavement more than death.60 We must also prohibit the representations of intense grief and distress, imputed by Homer to Heroes or Gods, to Achilles, Priam, or Zeus, for the death of friends and relatives. A perfectly reasonable man will account death no great evil, either for himself or for his friend: he will be, in a peculiar degree, sufficient to himself for his own happiness, and will therefore endure with comparative equanimity the loss of friends, relatives, or fortune.61 We must teach youth to be ashamed of indulging in immoderate grief or in violent laughter.62 We must teach them also veracity and temperance, striking out all those passages in Homer which represent the Gods or Heroes as incontinent, sensual, furiously vindictive, reckless of obligation, or money-loving.63 The poets must either not recount such proceedings at all, or must not ascribe them to Gods and Heroes.

60  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 386-387.

61  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 387 D-E.

62  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 388 B-E.

63  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 390-391.

Type for all narratives respecting men.

We have thus prescribed the model to which all poets must accommodate their narratives respecting Gods and Heroes. We ought now to set out a similar model for their narratives respecting men. But this is impossible, until our present investigation is brought to a close: because one of the worst misrepresentations which the poets give of human affairs, is, when they say that there are many men unjust, yet happy — just, yet still miserable:— that successful injustice is profitable, and that justice is a benefit to other persons, but a loss to the agent. We affirm that this is a misrepresentation; but we cannot assume it as such at present, since the present enquiry is intended to prove that it is so.64

64  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 392 C.

Style of narratives. The poet must not practise variety of imitation: he must not speak in the name of bad characters.

From the substance of these stories we pass to the style and manner. The poet will recount either in his own person, by simple narrative: or he will assume the characters and speak in the names of others, thus making his composition imitative. He will imitate every diversity of character, good and bad, wise and foolish. This however cannot be tolerated in our city. We can permit no imitation except that of the reasonable and virtuous man. Every man in our city exercises one simple function: we have no double-faced or many-faced citizens. We shall respectfully dismiss the poet who captivates us by variety of characters, and shall be satisfied with the dry recital of simple stories useful in their tendency, expressing the feeling of the reasonable man and no other.65

65  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 396-398.

Rhythm and Melody regulated. None but simple and grave music allowed: only the Dorian and Phrygian moods, with the lyre and harp.

We must farther regulate the style of the Odes and Songs, consistent with what has been already laid down. Having prescribed what the sense of the words must be, we must now give directions about melody and rhythm. We shall permit nothing but simple music, calculated less to please the ear, than to inspire grave, dignified, and resolute sentiment. We shall not allow either the wailing Lydian, or the soft and convivial Ionic mood: but only the Phrygian and Dorian moods. Nor shall we tolerate either the fife, or complicated stringed instruments: nothing except the lyre and harp, with the panspipe for rural abodes.66 The rhythm or measure must also be simple, suitable to the movements of a calm and moderate man. Both good rhythm, graceful and elegant speaking, and excellence of sense, flow from good and virtuous dispositions, tending to inspire the same dispositions in others:67 just as bad rhythm, ungraceful and indecorous demeanour, defective proportion, &c., are companions of bad speech and bad dispositions. Contrasts of this kind pervade not only speech and song, but also every branch of visible art: painting, architecture, weaving, embroidery, pottery, and even the natural bodies of animals and plants. In all of them we distinguish grace and beauty, the accompaniments of a good and sober disposition — from ungracefulness and deformity, visible signs of the contrary disposition. Now our youthful Guardians, if they are ever to become qualified for their functions, must be trained to recognise and copy such grace and beauty.68 For this purpose our poets, painters, architects, and artisans, must be prohibited from embodying in their works any ungraceful or unseemly type. None will be tolerated as artists, except such as can detect and embody the type of the beautiful. Our youth will thus insensibly contract exclusive familiarity, both through the eye and through the ear, with beauty in its various manifestations: so that their minds will be brought into harmonious preparation for the subsequent influence of beautiful discourse.69

66  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 398-399.

67  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 400 A.

68  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 400-401.

69  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 401 C-D.

Effect of musical training of the mind — makes youth love the Beautiful and hate the Ugly.

This indeed (continues Sokrates) is the principal benefit arising from musical tuition, that the internal mind of a youth becomes imbued with rhythm and harmony. Hence he learns to commend and be delighted with the beautiful, and to hate and blame what is ugly; before he is able to render any reason for his sentiments: so that when mature age arrives, his sentiments are found in unison with what reason enjoins, and already predisposed to welcome it.70 He becomes qualified to recognise the Forms of Temperance, Courage, Liberality, Magnanimity, and their embodiments in particular persons. To a man brought up in such sentiments, no spectacle can be so lovely as that of youths combining beauty of mental disposition with beauty of exterior form. He may indeed tolerate some defects in the body, but none in the mind.71 His love, being genuine and growing out of musical and regulated contemplations, will attach itself to what is tempered and beautiful; not to the intense pleasures of sense, which are inconsistent with all temperance. Such will be the attachments subsisting in our city, and such is the final purpose of musical training — To generate love of the Beautiful.72

70  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 402 A.

71  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 402 D-E.

72  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 403 C. δεῖ δέ που τελευτᾷν τὰ μουσικὰ εἰς τὰ τοῦ καλοῦ ἐρωτικά.

Training of the body — simple and sober. No refined medical art allowed. Wounds or temporary ailments treated; but sickly frames cannot be kept alive.

We next proceed to gymnastic training, which must be simple, for the body — just as our musical training was simple for the mind. We cannot admit luxuries and refinements either in the one or in the other. Our gymnastics must impart health and strength to the body, as our music imparts sobriety to the mind.73 We shall require few courts of justice and few physicians. Where many of either are needed, this is a proof that ill-regulated minds and diseased bodies abound. It would be a disgrace to our Guardians if they could not agree on what is right and proper among themselves, without appealing to the decision of others. Physicians too are only needed for wounds or other temporary and special diseases. We cannot admit those refinements of the medical art, and that elaborate nomenclature and classification of diseases, which the clever sons of Æsculapius have invented, in times more recent than Æsculapius himself.74 He knew, but despised, such artifices; which, having been devised chiefly by Herodikus, serve only to keep alive sickly and suffering men — who are disqualified for all active duty through the necessity of perpetual attention to health, — and whose lives are worthless both to themselves and to the city. In our city, every man has his distinct and special function, which he is required to discharge. If he be disqualified by some temporary ailment, the medical art will be well employed in relieving and restoring him to activity: but he has no leisure to pass his life as a patient under cure, and if he be permanently unfit to fill his place in the established cycle of duties, his life ought not to be prolonged by art, since it is useless to himself and useless to the city also.75 Our medical treatment for evils of the body, and our judicial treatment for evils of the mind, must be governed by analogous principles. Where body and mind are sound at bottom, we must do our best to heal temporary derangements: but if a man has a body radically unsound, he must be suffered to die — and if he has a mind unsound and incurable, he must be put to death by ourselves.76

73  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 404 B.

74  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 405 D. φύσας τε καὶ κατάῤῥους νοσήμασιν ὀνόματα τίθεσθαι ἀναγκάζειν τοὺς κομψοὺς Ἀσκληπιάδας, οὐκ αἰσχρὸν δοκεῖ; Καὶ μάλ’, ἔφη, ὡς ἀληθῶς καινὰ ταῦτα καὶ ἄτοπα νοσημάτων ὀνόματα. Οἷα, ὡς οἶμαι, οὐκ ἦν ἐπ’ Ἀσκληπιοῦ. Also 406 C.

75  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 406 C. οὐδενὶ σχολὴ διὰ βίου κάμνειν ἰατρευομένῳ. 406 D: οὐ σχολὴ κάμνειν οὐδὲ λυσιτελεῖ οὕτω ζῆν, νοσήματι τὸν νοῦν προσέχοντα, τῆς δὲ προκειμένης ἐργασίας ἀμελοῦντα. 407 D-E: ἀλλὰ τὸν μὴ δυνάμενον ἐν τῇ καθεστηκυίᾳ περιόδῳ ζὴν, μὴ οἴεσθαι δεῖν θεραπεύειν, ὡς οὔτε αὑτῷ οὔτε πόλει λυσιτελῆ. P. 408 A.

76  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 409-410.

Value of Gymnastic in imparting courage to the mind — Gymnastic and Music necessary to correct each other.

Gymnastic training does some good in strengthening the body, but it is still more serviceable in imparting force and courage to the mind. As regards the mind, gymnastic and music form the indispensable supplement one to the other. Gymnastic by itself makes a man’s nature too savage and violent: he acquires no relish for knowledge, comes to hate discourse, and disdains verbal persuasion.77 On the other hand, music by itself makes him soft, cowardly, and sensitive, unfit for danger or hardship. The judicious combination of the two is the only way to form a well-balanced mind and character.78

77  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 411 D. Μισολόγος δὴ ὁ τοιοῦτος γίγνεται καὶ ἄμουσος, καὶ πειθοῖ μὲν διὰ λόγων οὐδὲν ἔτι χρῆται, &c.

78  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 410-411.

Out of the Guardians a few of the very best must be chosen as Elders or Rulers — highly educated and severely tested.

Such must be the training, from childhood upwards, of these Guardians and Auxiliaries of our city. We must now select from among these men themselves, a few to be Governors or chief Guardians; the rest serving as auxiliaries. The oldest and best of them must be chosen for this purpose, those who possess in the greatest perfection the qualities requisite for Guardians. They must be intelligent, capable, and solicitous for the welfare of the city. Now a man is solicitous for the welfare of that which he loves. He loves those whose interests he believes to be the same as his own; those whose well-being he believes to coincide with his own well-being79 — the contrary, with the contrary. The Guardians chosen for Chiefs must be those who are most thoroughly penetrated with such sympathy; who have preserved most tenaciously throughout all their lives the resolution to do every thing which they think best for the city, and nothing which they do not think to be best for it. They must be watched and tested in temptations pleasurable as well as painful, to see whether they depart from this resolution. The elders who have best stood such trial, must be named Governors.80 These few will be the chief Guardians or Rulers: the remaining Guardians will be their auxiliaries or soldiers, acting under their orders.

79  Plato, Republ. iii. p. 412 C. Οὐκοῦν φρονίμους τε εἰς τοῦτο δεῖ ὑπάρχειν καὶ δυνατοὺς καὶ ἔτι κηδεμόνας τῆς πόλεως; Ἔστι ταῦτα. Κήδοιτο δέ γ’ ἄν τις μάλιστα τούτου ὃ τυγχάνοι φιλῶν. Ἀνάγκη. Καὶ μὴν τοῦτό γ’ ἂν μάλιστα φιλοῖ, ᾧ ξυμφέρειν ἡγοῖτο τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ἑαυτῷ καὶ ὅταν μάλιστα ἐκείνου μὲν εὖ πράττοντος οἴοιτο ξυμβαίνειν καὶ ἑαυτῷ εἶ πράττειν, μὴ δέ, τοὐναντίον.

80  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 413-414.

Refer to De Leg. (I. p. 633-636-637) about resisting pleasure as well as pain.

Fundamental creed required to be planted in the minds of all the citizens respecting their breed and relationship.

Here then our city will take its start; the body of Guardians marching in arms under the orders of their Chiefs, and encamping in a convenient acropolis, from whence they may best be able to keep order in the interior and to repel foreign attack.81 But it is indispensable that both they and the remaining citizens should be made to believe a certain tale, — which yet is altogether fictitious and of our own invention. They must be told that they are all earthborn, sprung from the very soil which they inhabit: all therefore brethren, from the same mother Earth: the auxiliaries or soldiers, born with their arms and equipments. But there was this difference (we shall tell them) between the different brethren. Those fit for Chiefs or Rulers, were born with a certain mixture of gold in their constitution: those fit for soldiers or Guardians simply, with a like mixture of silver: the remainder, with brass or iron. In most individual cases, each of these classes will beget an offspring like themselves. But exceptions will sometimes happen, in which the golden man will have a child of silver, or brass, — or the brazen or iron man, a child of nobler metal than his own. Now it is of the last importance that the Rulers should keep watch to preserve the purity of these breeds. If any one of their own children should turn out to be of brass or iron, they must place him out among the husbandmen or artisans: if any of the brazen or iron men should chance to produce a child of gold, they must receive him among themselves, since he belongs to them by his natural constitution. Upon the maintenance of these distinct breeds, each in its appropriate function, depends the entire fate of the city: for an oracle has declared that it will perish, if ever iron or brazen men shall become its Guardians.82

81  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 415 D.

82  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 414-415.

How is such a fiction to be accredited in the first instance? Difficulty extreme, of first beginning; but if once accredited, it will easily transmit itself by tradition.

It is indispensable (continues Sokrates) that this fiction should be circulated and accredited, as the fundamental, consecrated, unquestioned, creed of the whole city, from which the feeling of harmony and brotherhood among the citizens springs. But how can we implant such unanimous and unshaken belief, in a story altogether untrue? Similar fables have often obtained implicit credence in past times: but no such case has happened of late, and I question whether it could happen now.83 The postulate seems extravagant: do you see by what means it could be realised? — I see no means (replies Glaukon) by which the fiction could be first passed off and accredited, among these men themselves: but if it were once firmly implanted, in any one generation, I do not doubt that their children and descendants would inherit and perpetuate it.84 We must be satisfied with thus much (replies Sokrates): assuming the thing to be done, and leaving the process of implanting it to spontaneous and oracular inspiration.85 I now proceed with the description of the city.

83  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 414 B. Τίς ἂν οὖν ἡμῖν μηχανὴ γένοιτο τῶν ψευδῶν τῶν ἐν δέοντι γιγνομένων, ὧν δὴ νῦν ἐλέγομεν, γενναῖόν τι ἓν ψευδομένους πεῖσαι μάλιστα μὲν καὶ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, εἰ δὲ μή, τὴν ἄλλην πόλιν; … Μηδὲν καινόν, ἀλλὰ Φοινικικόν τι, πρότερον μὲν ἤδη πολλαχοῦ γεγονός, ὥς φασιν οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ πεπείκασιν, ἐφ’ ἡμῶν δὲ οὐ γεγονὸς οὐδ’ οἶδα εἰ γενόμενον ἄν, πεῖσαι δὲ συχνῆς πειθοῦς.

84  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 415 C-D Τοῦτον οὖν τὸν μῦθον ὅπως ἂν πεισθεῖεν, ἔχεις τινὰ μηχανήν; Οὐδαμῶς, ἔφη, ὅπως γ’ ἂν αὐτοὶ οὗτοι· ὅπως μέντ’ ἂν οἱ τούτων υἱεῖς καὶ οἱ ἔπειτα, οἵ τ’ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι οἱ ὕστερον.

85  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 415 D. Καὶ τοῦτο μὲν δὴ ἕξει ὅπῃ ἂν αὐτὸ ἡ φήμη ἀγάγῃ.

Guardians to reside in barracks and mess together; to have no private property or home; to be maintained by contribution from the people.

The Rulers and their auxiliaries the body of Guardians must be lodged in residences, sufficient for shelter and comfort, yet suitable for military men, and not for tradesmen. Every arrangement must be made for rendering them faithful guardians of the remaining citizens. It would be awful indeed, if they were to employ their superior strength in oppressing instead of protecting the flock entrusted to them. To ensure their gentleness and fidelity, the most essential guarantee is to be found in the good musical and gymnastic training which they will have received. But this alone will not suffice. All the conditions of their lives must be so determined, that they shall have the least possible motive for committing injustice towards the other citizens. None of them must have any separate property of his own, unless in special case of proved necessity: nor any house or store cupboard from which others are excluded. They must receive, from the contributions of the remaining citizens, sufficient subsistence for the health and comfort of military men, but nothing beyond. They must live together in their camp or barrack, and dine together at a public mess-table. They must not be allowed either to possess gold and silver, or to drink in cups of those metals, or to wear them as appendages to clothing, or even to have them under the same roof. They must be told, that these metals, though not forbidden to the other citizens, are forbidden to them, because they have permanently inherent in their mental constitution the divine gold and silver, which would be corrupted by intermixture with human.86

86  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 416-417.

If the Guardians fail in these precautions, and acquire private interests, the city will be ruined.

If these precautions be maintained, the Guardians may be secure themselves, and may uphold in security the entire city. But if the precautions be relinquished — if the Guardians or Soldiers acquire separate property in lands, houses, and money — they will then become householders and husbandmen instead of Guardians or Soldiers: hostile masters, instead of allies and protectors to their fellow-citizens. They will hate their fellow-citizens, and be hated by them in return: they will conspire against them, and will be themselves conspired against. In this manner they will pass their lives, dreading their enemies within far more than their enemies without. They, and the whole city along with them, will be perpetually on the brink of destruction.87

87  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 417 A-B.

Complete unity of the city, every man performing his own special function.

But surely (remarks Adeimantus), according to this picture, your Guardians or Soldiers, though masters of all the city, will be worse off than any of the other citizens. They will be deprived of those means of happiness which the others are allowed to enjoy. Perhaps they will (replies Sokrates): yet I should not be surprised if they were to be the happiest of all. Be that as it may, however, my purpose is, not to make them especially happy, but to make the whole city happy. The Guardians can enjoy only such happiness as consists with the due performance of their functions as Guardians. Every man in our city must perform his appropriate function, and must be content with such happiness as his disposition will admit, subject to this condition.88 In regard to all the citizens without exception, it must be the duty of the Guardians to keep out both riches and poverty, both of which spoil the character of every one. No one must be rich, and no one must be poor.89 In case of war, the constant discipline of our soldiers will be of more avail than money, in making them efficient combatants against other cities.90 Moreover, other cities are divided against themselves: each is many cities, and not one: poor and rich are at variance with each other, and various fractions of each of these classes against other fractions. Our city alone, constituted as I propose, will be really and truly One. It will thus be the greatest of all cities, even though it have only one thousand fighting men. It may be permitted to increase, so long as it will preserve its complete unity, but no farther.91 Farthermore, each of our citizens is one and not many: confined to that special function for which he is qualified by his nature.

88  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 420-421.

89  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 421 E.

90  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 422 B.

91  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 423 A.

The maintenance of the city depends upon that of the habits, character, and education of the Guardians.

It will devolve upon our Guardians to keep up this form of communion unimpaired; and they will have no difficulty in doing so, as long as they maintain their own education and training unimpaired. No change must be allowed either in the musical or gymnastic training: especially not in the former, where changes are apt to creep in, with pernicious effect.92 Upon this education depends the character and competence of the Guardians. They will provide legislation in detail, which will be good, if their general character is good — bad, on the contrary supposition. If their character and the constitution of the city be defective at the bottom, it is useless for us to prescribe regulations of detail, as we would do for sick men. The laws in detail cannot be good, while the general constitution of the city is bad. Those teachers are mistaken who exhort us to correct the former, but to leave the latter untouched.93

92  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 424 A.

93  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 425-426.

Religious legislation — Consult the Delphian Apollo.

In regard to religious legislation — the raising of temples, arrangement of sacrifices, &c. — we must consult Apollo at Delphi, and obey what he directs. We know nothing ourselves about these matters, nor is there any other authority equally trustworthy.94

94  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 427 B. τὰ γὰρ δὴ τοιαῦτα οὔτ’ ἐπιστάμεθα ἡμεῖς, &c.

The city is now constituted as a good city — that is, wise, courageous, temperate, just. Where is its Justice?

Our city is now constituted and peopled (continues Sokrates). We mast examine it, and see where we can find Justice and Injustice — reverting to our original problem, which was, to know what each of them was, and which of the two conferred happiness. Now assuming our city to be rightly constituted, it will be perfectly good: that is, it will be wise, courageous, temperate, and just. These four constituents cover the whole: accordingly, if we can discover and set out Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance — that which remains afterwards will be Justice.95

95  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 427-428.

First, where is the wisdom of the city? It resides in the few elder Rulers.

First, we can easily see where Wisdom resides. The city includes in itself a great variety of cognitions, corresponding to all the different functions in which its citizens are employed. But it is not called wise, from its knowledge of husbandry, or of brazier’s and carpenter’s craft: since these are specialties which cover only a small fraction of its total proceedings. It is called wise, or well-advised, from that variety of intelligence or cognition which directs it as a whole, in its entire affairs: that is, the intelligence possessed by the chief Guardians or Rulers. Now the number of persons possessing this variety of intelligence is smaller than the number of those who possess any other variety. The wisdom of the entire city resides in this very small presiding fraction, and in them alone.96

96  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 428-429.

Where is the Courage? In the body of Guardians or Soldiers.

Next, we can also discern without difficulty in what fraction of the city Courage resides. The city is called courageous from the valour of those Guardians or Soldiers upon whom its defence rests. These men will have learnt, in the course of their training, what are really legitimate objects of fear, and what are not legitimate objects of fear. To such convictions they will resolutely adhere, through the force of mind implanted by their training, in defiance of all disturbing impulses. It is these right convictions, respecting the legitimate objects of fear, which I (says Sokrates) call true political courage, when they are designedly inculcated and worked in by regular educational authority: when they spring up without any rational foundation, as in animals or slaves, I do not call them Courage. The Courage of the entire city thus resides in its Guardians or Soldiers.97

97  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 429-430.

Where is the Temperance? It resides in all and each, Rulers, Guardians, and People. Superiors rule and Inferiors obey.

Thirdly, wherein resides the Temperance of the city? Temperance implies a due relation, proportion, or accord, between different elements. The temperate man is called superior to himself: but this expression, on first hearing, seems unmeaning, since the man must also be inferior to himself. But the expression acquires a definite meaning, when we recognise it as implying that there are in the same man’s mind better and worse elements: and that when the better rules over the worse, he is called superior to himself, or temperate — when the worse rules over the better, he is called inferior to himself, or intemperate. Our city will be temperate, because the better part of it, though smaller in number, rules over the worse and inferior part, numerically greater. The pleasures, pains, and desires of our few Rulers, which are moderate and reasonable, are preponderant: controuling those of the Many, which are miscellaneous, irregular, and violent. And this command is exercised with the perfect consent and good-will of the subordinates. The Many are not less willing to obey than the Few to command. There is perfect unanimity between them as to the point — Who ought to command, and who ought to obey? It is this unanimity which constitutes the temperance of the city: which thus resides, not in any one section of the city, like Courage and Wisdom, but in all sections alike: each recognising and discharging its legitimate function.98

98  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 431-432.

Where is the Justice? In all and each of them also. It consists in each performing his own special function, and not meddling with the function of the others.

There remains only Justice for us to discover. Wherein does the Justice of the city reside? Not far off. Its justice consists in that which we pointed out at first as the fundamental characteristic of the city, when we required each citizen to discharge one function, and one alone — that for which he was best fitted by nature. That each citizen shall do his own work, and not meddle with others in their work — that each shall enjoy his own property, as well as do his own work — this is true Justice.99 It is the fundamental condition without which neither temperance, nor courage, nor wisdom could exist; and it fills up the good remaining after we have allowed for the effects of the preceding three.100 All the four are alike indispensable to make up the entire Good of the city: Justice, or each person (man, woman, freeman, slave, craftsman, guardian) doing his or her own work — Temperance, or unanimity as to command and obedience between Chiefs, Guardians, and the remaining citizens — Courage, or the adherence of the Guardians to right reason, respecting what is terrible and not terrible — Wisdom, or the tutelary superintendence of the Chiefs, who protect each person in the enjoyment of his own property.101

99  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 432-433. 433 A: Καὶ μὴν ὅτι γε τὸ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν δικαιοσύνη ἐστί, καὶ τοῦτο ἄλλων τε πολλῶν ἀκηκόαμεν, καὶ αὐτοὶ πολλάκις εἰρήκαμεν.

433 E. ἡ τοῦ οἰκείου τε καὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἕξις τε καὶ πρᾶξις δικαιοσύνη ἂν ὁμολογοῖτο.

100  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 433 B. δοκεῖ μοι τὸ ὑπόλοιπον ἐν τῇ πόλει ὧν ἐσκέμμεθα, σωφροσύνης καὶ ἀνδρείας καὶ φρονήσεως, τοῦτο εἶναι ὃ πᾶσιν ἐκείνοις τὴν δύναμιν πάρεσχεν ὥστε ἐγγενέσθαι, καὶ ἐγγενομένοις γε σωτηρίαν παρέχειν, ἕως περ ἂν ἐνῇ.

101  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 433 D.

Injustice arises when any one part of the city interferes with the functions of the other part, or undertakes double functions.

As justice consists in each person doing his own work, and not meddling with that of another — so injustice occurs, when a person undertakes the work of another instead of his own, or in addition to his own. The mischief is not great, when such interference takes place only in the subordinate functions: when, for example, the carpenter pretends to do the work of the shoemaker, or vice versâ; or when either of them undertake both. But the mischief becomes grave and deplorable, when a man from the subordinate functions meddles with the higher — when a craftsman, availing himself of some collateral support, wealth or party or strength, thrusts himself into the functions of a soldier or auxiliary — or when the Guardian, by similar artifice, usurps the functions of a Chief — or when any one person combines these several functions all at once in himself. Herein consists the true injustice, ruinous to the city: when the line of demarcation is confounded between these three classes — men of business, Guardians, Chiefs. That each of these classes should do its own work, is Justice: that either of them should meddle with the work of the rest, and especially that the subordinate should meddle with the business of the superior, is Injustice, with ruin following in its train.102 It is from these opposite characteristics that the titles Just or Unjust will be rightfully bestowed upon our city.

102  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 434 B-C. ἡ τριῶν ἄρα ὄντων γενῶν πολυπραγμοσύνη καὶ μεταβολὴ εἰς ἄλληλα, μεγίστη τε βλάβη τῇ πόλει καὶ ὀρθότατ’ ἂν προσαγορεύοιτο μάλιστα κακουργία … Κακουργίαν δὲ τὴν μεγίστην τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πόλεως οὐκ ἀδικίαν φήσεις εἶναι;…

χρηματιστικοῦ, ἐπικουρικοῦ, φυλακικοῦ, γένους οἰκειοπραγία, … δικαιοσύνη τ’ ἂν εἴη, καὶ τὴν πόλιν δικαίαν πάρεχοι.

Analogy of the city to the individual — Each man is tripartite, having in his mind Reason, Energy, Appetite. These three elements are distinct, and often conflicting.

We must now apply, as we undertook to do, the analogy of the city to the individual. The just man, so far forth as justice is concerned, cannot differ from the just city. He must therefore have in his own individual mind three distinct parts, elements, or classes, corresponding to the three classes above distinguished in the city. But is it the fact that there are in each man three such mental constituents — three different classes, sorts, or varieties, of mind?

To settle this point as it ought to be settled, would require a stricter investigation than our present dialogue will permit: but we may contribute something towards it.103 It is manifest that there exist different individuals in whom reason, energy (courage or passion), and appetite, are separately and unequally developed: thus in the Thracians there is a predominance of energy or courage — in the Phœnicians of appetite — in the Athenians, of intellect or reason. The question is, whether we employ one and the same mind for all the three — reason, energy, and appetite; or whether we do not employ a different mind or portion of mind, when we exercise reason — another, when we are under the influence of energy — and a third, when we follow appetite.104

103  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 435 C.

Schleiermacher (in the Introduction to his translation of the Republic, p. 71) considers that this passage of the Republic is intended to note as a desideratum the exposition in the Timæus; wherein the constituent elements of mind or soul are more fully laid down, and its connection with the fundamental elements of the Kosmos.

104  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 436 A.

To determine this question, we must consider that the same thing cannot at the same time do or suffer opposites, in the same respect and with reference to the same thing. The same thing or person cannot at the same time, and in the same respect, both stand still and move. This may be laid down as an universal truth: but since some may not admit it to be so, we will at any rate assume it as an hypothesis.105 Now in reference to the mind, we experience at the same time various movements or affections contrary to each other: assent and dissent — desire and aversion — the attracting any thing to ourselves, and the repelling it from ourselves: each of these is different from and contrary to the other. As a specimen of desires, we will take thirst. When a man is in this condition, his mind desires nothing else but to drink; and strains entirely towards that object. If there be any thing which drags back his mind when in this condition, it must be something different from that which pulls him forward and attracts him to drink. That which attracts him, and that which repels him, cannot be the same: just as when the archer at the same time pulls his bow towards him and pushes it away from him, it is one of his hands that pulls and another that pushes.106 Now it often happens that a man athirst refuses to drink: there is something within him that prompts him to drink, and something still more powerful that forbids him. These two cannot be the same: one of them is different from the other: that which prompts is appetite, that which forbids is reason. The rational element of the mind is in like manner something different or distinguishable from all the appetites, which tend towards repletion and pleasure.

105  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 437 A.

106  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 439 A-B.

Reason, Energy, Appetite, in the individual — analogous to Rulers, Guardians, Craftsmen in the city. Reason is to rule Appetite. Energy assists Reason in ruling it.

Here then we have two distinct species, forms, or kinds, existing in the mind.107 Besides these two, however, there is a third, distinct from both: Energy, Passion, Courage, which neither belongs to Appetite nor to individual Reason. Each of these three acts apart from, and sometimes in contrariety to, each of the others.108 There are thus three distinct elements or varieties of mind in the individual — Reason, Energy, Appetite: corresponding to the three constituent portions of the city — The Chiefs or Rulers — The Guardians or Soldiers — The Craftsmen, or the remaining Community.109 The Wisdom of the city resides in its Elders: that of the individual in his Reason. The Courage of the city resides in its Guardians or Soldiers: that of the individual in his Energy. But in the city as well as in the individual, it is the right and privilege of the rational element to exercise command, because it alone looks to the welfare and advantage of the whole compound:110 it is the duty of the two other elements — the energetic and the appetitive — to obey. It is moreover the special function of the Guardians in the city to second the Chiefs in enforcing obedience upon the Craftsmen: so also in the individual, it is the special function of Energy or Courage to second Reason in controuling Appetite.

107  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 439 E. Ταῦτα μὲν τοίνυν δύο ἡμῖν ὡρίσθω εἴδη ἐν ψυχῇ ἐνόντα, &c.

108  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 440-441.

109  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 441 C. τὰ αὐτὰ μὲν ἐν πόλει, τὰ αὐτὰ δ’ ἐν ἑνὸς ἑκάστου τῇ ψυχῇ γένη ἐνεῖναι, καὶ ἴσα τὸν ἀριθμόν. 443 D: τὰ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γένη, &c.

110  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 441 E, 442 C. τῷ μὲν λογιστικῷ ἄρχειν προσήκει, σοφῷ ὄντι καὶ ἔχοντι τὴν ὑπὲρ ἁπάσης τῆς ψυχῆς προμήθειαν .… Σοφὸν δέ γε (ἕνα ἕκαστον καλοῦμεν) ἐκείνῳ τῷ σμικρῷ μέρει, τῷ ὃ ἦρχέ τ’ ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ταῦτα παρήγγελλεν, ἔχον αὖ κἀκεῖνο ἐπιστήμην ἐν αὑτῷ τὴν τοῦ ξυμφέροντος ἑκάστῳ τε καὶ ὅλῳ τῷ κοινῷ σφῶν αὐτῶν τριῶν ὄντων.

A man is just when these different parts of his mind exercise their appropriate functions without hindrance.

These special functions of the separate parts being laid down, Justice as well as Temperance will appear analogous in the individual and in the city. Both Justice and Temperance reside in all the parts equally: not in one of them exclusively, as Wisdom and Courage reside. Justice and Temperance belong to the subordinate as well as to the dominant parts. Justice exists when each of the parts performs its own function, without encroaching on the function of the others: Temperance exists when all the parts are of one opinion as to the title of the higher or rational element to exercise command.111

111  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 442 C, 443 B.

A man as well as a city is just, when each of his three sorts or varieties of mind confines itself to its own legitimate function: when Reason reigns over and controuls the other two, and when Energy seconds Reason in controuling Appetite. Such a man will not commit fraud, theft, treachery, perjury, or any like proceedings.112 On the contrary, injustice exists when the parts are in conflict with each other: when either of them encroaches on the function of the other: or when those parts which ought to be subordinate rise in insurrection against that which ought to be superior.

112  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 442-443.

Justice and Injustice in the mind — what health and disease are in the body.

Justice is in the mind what health is in the body, when the parts are so arranged as to controul and be controuled pursuant to the dictates of nature. Injustice is in the mind what disease is in the body, when the parts are so arranged as to controul and be controuled contrary to the dictates of nature. Virtue is thus the health, beauty, good condition of the mind: Vice is the disease, ugliness, weakness, of the mind.113

113  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 444 B-C.

Original question now resumed — Does Justice make a man happy, and Injustice make him miserable, apart from all consequences? Answer — Yes.

Having thus ascertained the nature of justice and injustice, we are now in a condition (continues Sokrates) to reply to the question proposed for investigation — Is it profitable to a man to be just and to do justice per se, even though he be not known as just either by Gods or men, and may thus be debarred from the consequences which would ensue if he were known? Or is it profitable to him to be unjust, if he can contrive to escape detection and punishment? We are enabled to answer the first question in the affirmative, and the second question in the negative. As health is the greatest good, and sickness the greatest evil, of body: so Justice is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil, of mind. No measure of luxury, wealth, or power, could render life tolerable, if we lost our bodily health: no amount of prosperity could make life tolerable, without mental health or justice. As bodily health is good per se, and sickness evil per se, even apart from its consequences: so justice also is good in itself, and injustice evil in itself, apart from its consequences.114

114  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 445 A.

Glaukon requires farther explanation about the condition of the Guardians, in regard to sexual and family ties.

Sokrates now assumes the special question of the dialogue to be answered, and the picture of the just or perfect city, as well as of the just or perfect individual, to be completed. He is next proceeding to set forth the contrasts to this picture — that is, the varieties of injustice, or the various modes of depravation and corruption — when he is arrested by Polemarchus and Adeimantus: who call upon him to explain more at large the position of the body of Guardians or Soldiers in the city, in regard to women, children, and the family.115

115  Plato, Republic, v. p. 449 C.

Men and women will live together and perform the duties of Guardians alike — They will receive the same gymnastic and musical training.

In reply, Sokrates announces his intention to make such provision as will exclude separate family ties, as well as separate property, among these Guardians. The Guardians will consist both of men and women. The women will receive the same training, both musical and gymnastical, as the men.116 They will take part both in the bodily exercises of the palæstra, in the military drill, and in the combats of war. Those who deride these naked exercises as preposterous for the female sex, should be reminded (Sokrates says) that not long ago it was considered unseemly among the Greeks (as it still is among many of the barbari) for men to expose their naked bodies in the palæstra: but such repugnance has been overpowered by the marked usefulness of the practice: the Kretans first setting the example, next the Lacedæmonians; lastly all other Greeks doing the same.117 We maintain the principle which we laid down in the beginning, that one person should perform only one duty — that for which he is best qualified. But there is no one function, or class of functions, for which women as such are peculiarly qualified, or peculiarly disqualified. Between women generally, and men generally, in reference to the discharge of duties, there is no other difference, except that men are superior to women in every thing:118 the best women will be on a level only with the second-best men, but they will be superior to all men lower than the second best. But among women, as among men, there are great individual differences: one woman is fit for one duty, another for another: and in our city, each must be employed for the duty suitable to her individual disposition. Those who are best qualified by nature for the office of Guardians, must be allotted to that office: they must discharge it along with the men, and must be trained for it by the same education as the men, musical and gymnastical.

116  Plato, Republic, v. p. 452 A.

117  Plato, Republic, v. p. 452 D.

118  Plato, Republic, v. p. 455 C-D.

Nature does not prescribe any distribution of functions between men and women. Women are inferior to men in every thing. The best women are equal to second-best men.

If an objector accuses us of proposing arrangements contrary to nature, we not only deny the force of the objection, but we retort the charge. We affirm that the arrangements now existing in society, which restrict all women to a limited number of domestic and family functions, are contrary to nature — and that ours are founded upon the genuine and real dictates of nature.119 The only difference admissible between men and women, in the joint discharge of the functions of Guardians, is, that the easier portion of such functions must in general be assigned to women, and the more difficult to men, in consequence of the inferiority of the feminine nature.120

119  Plato, Republic, v. p. 456 C. κατὰ φύσιν ἐτίθεμεν τὸν νόμον· ἀλλὰ τὰ νῦν παρὰ ταῦτα γιγνόμενα παρὰ φύσιν μᾶλλον, ὡς ἔοικε, γίγνεται.

120  Plato, Republic, v. p. 457 B.

Community of life and relations between the male and female Guardians. Temporary marriages arranged by contrivance of the Elders. No separate families.

These intermingled male and female Guardians, in the discharge of their joint functions, will live together in common barracks and at common mess-tables. There must be no separate houses or separate family-relations between them. All are wives or husbands of all: no youth must know his own father, no mature man must know his own son: all the mature men and women are fathers or mothers of all the younger: all of the same age are brothers and sisters.121 We do not intend, however, that the copulation between them shall take place in a promiscuous and arbitrary manner: we shall establish laws to regulate the intermarriages and breeding.122 We must copy the example of those who regulate the copulation of horses, dogs, and other animals: we must bring together those who will give existence to the best offspring.123 We must couple, as often as we can, the men who are best, with the women who are best, both in mind and body; and the men who are least good, with the women who are least good. We must bring up the offspring of the former couples — we must refuse to bring up the offspring of the latter.124 And such results must be accomplished by underhand arrangements of the Elder Chiefs; so as to be unknown to every one else, in order to prevent discontent and quarrel among the body of the Guardians. These Elders will celebrate periodical festivals, in which they will bring together the fitting brides and bridegrooms, under solemn hymns and sacrifices. They must regulate the number of marriages in such manner as to keep the total list of Guardians as much as possible without increase as well as without diminution.125 The Elders must make an artful use of the lot, so that these couplings shall appear to every one else the effect of chance. Distinguished warriors must be rewarded with a larger licence of copulation with different women, which will produce the farther advantage of having as many children as possible born from their procreation.126 All the children as soon as born must be consigned to the Chiefs or Elders, male and female, who will conceal in some convenient manner those who are born either from the worst couples or with any bodily imperfection: while they place the offspring of the best couples in special outbuildings under the charge of nurses. Those mothers who are full of milk will be brought here to give suck, but every precaution will be taken that none of them shall know her own child: wet-nurses will also be provided in addition, to ensure a full supply: but all the care of the children will devolve on the public nurses, not on the mothers.127

121  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 457-458.

122  Plato, Republic, v. p. 458 E.

123  Plato, Republic, v. p. 459 A.

124  Plato, Republic, v. p. 459 D-E. δεῖ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ὡμολογημένων τοὺς ἀρίστους ταῖς ἀρίσταις συγγίγνεσθαι ὡς πλειστάκις, τοὺς δὲ φαυλοτάτους ταῖς φαυλοτάταις τοὐναντίον, καὶ τῶν μὲν τὰ ἔκγονα τρέφειν, τῶν δὲ μή, εἰ μέλλει τὸ ποίμνιον ὅ, τι ἀκρότατον εἶναι· καὶ ταῦτα πάντα γιγνόμενα λανθάνειν πλὴν αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, εἰ αὖ ἡ ἀγέλη τῶν φυλάκων ὅ, τι μάλιστα ἀστασίαστος ἔσται.

125  Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 A.

126  Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 B.

127  Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 C-D.

Regulations about age, for procreation — Children brought up under public authority.

The age for such intermarriages, destined to be procreative for the benefit of the city, must be from thirty to fifty-five, for men — from twenty to forty, for women. No man or woman, above or below these limits of age, will be allowed to meddle with the function of intermarriage and procreation for the public; which function must always be conducted under superintendence of the authorities, with proper sacrifice and prayers to the Gods. Nor will any man, even within the licensed age, be allowed to approach any woman except by assignment from the authorities. If any infringement of this law should occur, the offspring arising from it will be pronounced spurious and outcast.128 But when the above limits of age are passed, both men and women may have intercourse with whomsoever they please, except fathers with daughters or sons with mothers: under condition, however, that no offspring shall be born from such intercourse, or that if any offspring be born, it shall be exposed.129

128  Plato, Republic, v. p. 461 A-B.

129  Plato, Republic, v. p. 461 C.

How is the father to know his own daughter (it is asked), or the son his own mother? They cannot know (replies Sokrates): but each couple will consider every child born in the seventh month or tenth month after their marriage, as their child, and will address him or her by the appellation of son or daughter. The fathers and mothers will be fathers and mothers of all the children born at that time: the sons and daughters will be in filial relation to all the couples brought together at the given antecedent period.130

130  Plato, Republic, v. p. 461 D.

Perfect communion of sentiment and interest among the Guardians — Causes of pleasure and pain the same to all, like parts of the same organism.

The main purpose of such regulations, in respect to family as in respect to property, is to establish the fullest communion between all the Guardians, male and female — and to eliminate as much as possible the feeling of separate interest in any fraction of them. The greatest evil to any city is, that which pulls it to pieces and makes it many instead of one: the greatest good to it is that which binds it together and makes it one. Now what is most efficacious in binding it together, is, community of the causes of pleasure and pain: when each individual feels pleasure from the same causes and on the same occasions as all the rest, and pain in like manner. On the other hand, when the causes of pleasure and pain are distinct, this tends to dissolution; and becomes fatal if the opposition is marked, so that some individuals are much delighted, and others much distressed, under the same circumstances. That city is the best arranged, wherein all the citizens pronounce the words Mine and Not Mine, with reference to the same things: when they coalesce into an unity like the organism of a single individual. To him a blow in the finger is a blow to the whole man: so also in the city, pleasure or pain to any one citizen ought to communicate itself by sympathy as pleasure and pain to all.131

131  Plato, Republic, v. p. 462 D.

Harmony — absence of conflicting interest — assured scale of equal comfort — consequent happiness — among the Guardians.

Now the Guardians under our regulations will present as much as possible this community of Mine and Not Mine, as well as of pleasures and pains — and this exclusion of the separate individual Mine and Not Mine, as well as of separate pleasures and pains. No individual among them will have either separate property or separate family relationship: each will have both one and the other in common with the rest.132 No one will have property of his own to be increased, nor a family of his own to be benefited, apart from the rest: all will be as much as possible common recipients of pleasure and pain.133 All the ordinary causes of dispute and litigation will thus be excluded. If two Guardians of the same age happen to quarrel, they must fight it out: this will discharge their wrath and prevent worse consequences — while at the same time it will encourage attention to gymnastic excellence.134 But no younger Guardian will raise his hand against an older Guardian, whom he is taught to reverence as his father, and whom every one else would protect if attacked. If the Guardians maintain harmony among themselves, they will easily ensure it among the remaining inhabitants. Assured of sufficient but modest comforts, the Guardians will be relieved from all struggles for the maintenance of a family, from the arts of trade, and from subservience to the rich.135 They will escape all these troubles, and will live a life happier than the envied Olympic victor: for they will gain the victory in an enterprise more illustrious than he undertakes, and they will receive from their fellow-citizens fuller maintenance and higher privilege than what is awarded to him, as well as honours after death.136 Their lives are not to be put in comparison with those of the farmer or the shoemaker. They must not indeed aspire to any happiness incompatible with their condition and duty as Guardians. But that condition will itself involve the highest happiness. And if any silly ambition prompts them to depart from it, they will assuredly change for the worse.137

132  Plato, Republic, v. p. 464 B.

133  Plato, Republic, v. p. 464 D. πάντας εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν ὁμοπαθεῖς λύπης τε καὶ ἡδονῆς εἶναι.

134  Plato, Republic, v. p. 464 E.

135  Plato, Republic, v. p. 465 C. τῶν κακῶν … ὧν ἀπηλλαγμένοι ἂν εἶεν, κολακείας τε πλουσίων πένητες ἀπορίας τε καὶ ἀλγηδόνας, &c.

136  Plato, Republic, v. p. 465 D. Πάντων τε δὴ τούτων ἀπαλλάξονται, ζήσουσί τε τοῦ μακαριστοῦ βίου, ὃν οἱ Ὀλυμπιονῖκαι ζῶσι, μακαριώτερον.

137  Plato, Republic, v. p. 466 A-C.

In case of war both sexes will go together to battle — Rewards to distinguished warriors.

Such is the communion of sexes which must be kept up for the duties of Guardians, and for the exigencies of military defence. As in other races of animals, males and females must go out to fight, and each will inspire the other with bravery. The children must be taken out on horseback to see the encounters from a distance, so that they may be kept clear of danger, yet may nevertheless be gradually accustomed to the sight of it.138 If any one runs away from the field, he must be degraded from the rank of Guardian to that of husbandman or craftsman. If any man suffers himself to be taken prisoner, he is no loss: the enemy may do what they choose with him. When any one distinguishes himself in battle, he shall be received on his return by garlands and by an affectionate welcome from the youth.139 Should he be slain in battle, he shall be recognised as having become a Dæmon or Demigod (according to the Hesiodic doctrine), and his sepulchre shall be honoured by appropriate solemnities.140

138  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 466-467.

139  Plato, Republic, v. p. 468 B.

140  Plato, Republic, v. p. 469 B.

War against Hellenic enemies to be carried on mildly — Hellens are all by nature kinsmen.

In carrying on war, our Guardians will observe a marked difference in their manner of treating Hellenic enemies and barbaric enemies. They will never enslave any Hellenic city, nor hold any Hellenic person in slavery. They will never even strip the body of an Hellenic enemy, except so far as to take his arms. They will never pile up in their temples the arms, nor burn the houses and lands, of Hellenic enemies. They will always keep in mind the members of the Hellenic race as naturally kindred with each other, and bound to aid each other in mutual defence, against Barbaric aliens who are the natural enemies of all of them.141 They will not think themselves authorised to carry on war as Hellens now do against each other, except when their enemies are Barbaric.

141  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 470-471.

Enough of this, Sokrates, replies Glaukon. I admit that your city will have all the excellencies and advantages of which you boast. But you have yet to show me that it is practicable, and how.142

142  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 471-472.

Question — How is the scheme practicable? It is difficult, yet practicable on one condition — That philosophy and political power should come into the same hands.

The task which you impose (says Sokrates) is one of great difficulty: even if you grant me, what must be granted, that every reality must fall short of its ideal type.143 One condition, and one only, is essential to render it practicable: a condition which you may ridicule as preposterous, but which, though not probable, is certainly supposable. Either philosophers must acquire the ruling power, or else the present rulers of mankind must themselves become genuine philosophers. In one or other of these two ways philosophy and political power must come into the into the same hands. Unless such condition be fulfilled, our city can never be made a reality, nor can there ever be any respite of suffering to the human race.144

143  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 472-473.

144  Plato, Republic, v. p. 473 D.

The supremacy which you claim for philosophers (replies Glaukon), will be listened to with repugnance and scorn. But at least you must show who the philosophers are, on whose behalf you invoke such supremacy. You must show that it belongs to them by nature both to pursue philosophy, and to rule in the various cities: and that by nature also, other men ought to obey them as well as to abstain from philosophy.145

145  Plato, Republic, v. p. 474 A-B.

Characteristic marks of the philosopher — He contemplates and knows Entia or unchangeable Forms, as distinguished from fluctuating particulars or Fientia.

The first requisite for a philosopher (replies Sokrates) is, that he shall love and pursue eagerly every sort of knowledge or wisdom, without shrinking from labour for such purpose. But it is not sufficient that he should be eager about hearing tragedies or learning the minor arts. Other men, accomplished and curious, are fond of hearing beautiful sounds and discourses, or of seeing beautiful forms and colours. But the philosopher alone can see or distinguish truth.146 It is only he who can distinguish the genuine Form or Idea, in which truth consists, from the particular embodiments in which it occurs. These Forms or Ideas exist, eternal and unchangeable. Since Pulchrum is the opposite of Turpe, they must be two, and each of them must be One: the same about Just and Unjust, Good and Evil; each of these is a distinct Form or Idea, existing as One and Unchangeable by itself, but exhibiting itself in appearance as manifold, diverse, and frequently changing, through communion with different objects and events, and through communion of each Form with others.147 Now the accomplished, but unphilosophical, man cannot see or recognise this Form in itself. He can see only the different particular cases and complications in which it appears embodied.148 None but the philosopher can contemplate each Form by itself, and discriminate it from the various particulars in conjunction with which it appears. Such philosophers are few in number, but they are the only persons who can be said truly to live. Ordinary and even accomplished men — who recognise beautiful things, but cannot recognise Beauty in itself, nor even follow an instructor who points it out to them — pass their lives in a sort of dream or reverie: for the dreamer, whether asleep or awake, is one who believes what is similar to another thing to be not merely similar, but to be the actual thing itself.149 The philosopher alone, who embraces in his mind the one and unchangeable Form or Idea, along with, yet distinguished from, its particular embodiments, possesses knowledge or science. The unphilosophical man, whose mind embraces nothing higher than variable particulars, does not know — but only opines, or has opinions.150

146  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 474-475. τοὺς τῆς ἀληθείας φιλοθεάμονας (p. 475 E).

147  Plato, Republic, v. p. 476 A. Ἐπειδή ἐστιν ἐναντίον καλὸν αἰσχρῷ, δύο αὐτὼ εἶναι … Οὐκοῦν ἐπειδὴ δύο, καὶ ἓν ἐκάτερον; … Καὶ περὶ δικαίου καὶ ἀδίκου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ καὶ πάντων τῶν εἰδῶν πέρι, ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος, αὐτὸ μὲν ἓν ἕκαστον εἶναι, τῇ δὲ τῶν πράξεων καὶ σωμάτων καὶ ἀλλήλων κοινωνίᾳ πανταχοῦ φανταζόμενα πολλὰ φαίνεσθαι ἕκαστον;

148  Plato, Republic, v. p. 476 B.

149  Plato, Republic, v. p. 476 B.

150  Plato, Republic, v. p. 476 D. Οὐκοῦν τούτου μὲν τὴν διάνοιαν ὡς γιγνώσκοντος γνώμην ἂν ὀρθῶς φαῖμεν εἶναι, τοῦ δὲ δόξαν, ὡς δοξάζοντος.

Ens alone can be known — Non-Ens is unknowable. That which is midway between Ens and Non-Ens (particulars) is matter only of opinion. Ordinary men attain nothing beyond opinion.

This latter, the unphilosophical man, will not admit what we say. Accordingly, we must prove it to him. You cannot know without knowing Something: that is, Some Ens: for Non-Ens cannot be known. That which is completely and absolutely Ens, is completely and absolutely cognizable: that which is Non-Ens and nowhere, is in every way uncognizable. If then there be anything which is at once Ens and Non-Ens, it will lie midway between these two: it will be something neither absolutely and completely cognizable, nor absolutely and completely uncognizable: it belongs to something between ignorance and science. Now science or knowledge is one thing, its object is, complete Ens. Opinion is another thing, its object also is different. Knowing and Opining belong, like Sight and Hearing, to the class of Entia called Powers or Faculties, which we and others possess, and by means of which — that is, by means of one or other of them — we accomplish everything that we do accomplish. Now no one of these powers or faculties has either colour or figure, whereby it may be recognised or distinguished from others. Each is known and distinguished, not by what it is in itself, but by what it accomplishes, and by the object to which it has special relation. That which has the same object and accomplishes the same result, I call the same power or faculty: that which has a different object, and accomplishes a different result, I call a different power or faculty. Now Knowing, Cognition, Science, is one of our faculties or powers, and the strongest of all: Opining is another, and a different one. A marked distinction between the two is, that Knowing or Cognition is infallible — Opining is fallible. Since Cognition is one power or faculty, and Opining another — the object of one must be different from the object of the other. But the object of Cognition is, the Complete Ens: the object of Opining must therefore be, not the Complete Ens, but something different from it. What then is the object of Opining? It is not Complete Ens, but it is still Something. It is not Non-Ens, or Nothing; for Non-Ens or Nothing is not thinkable or opinable: you cannot think or opine, and yet think or opine nothing. Whoever opines or thinks, must opine or think something. Ens is the object of Cognition, Non-Ens is the object of non-Cognition or Ignorance: Opination or Opinion is midway between Cognition and Ignorance, darker than the former, but clearer than the latter. The object of opination is therefore something midway between Ens and Non-Ens.

Particulars fluctuate: they are sometimes just or beautiful, sometimes unjust or ugly. Forms or Entia alone remain constant.

But what is this Something, midway between Ens and Particulars Non-Ens, and partaking of both — which is the object of Opination? To make out this, we must revert to the case of the unphilosophical man. We have described him, as not believing in the existence of the Form or Idea of Beauty, or Justice per se; not enduring to hear it spoken of as a real Ens and Unum; not knowing anything except of the many diverse particulars, beautiful and just. We must remind him that every one of these particular beautiful things will appear repulsive also: every one of these just and holy particulars, will appear unjust and unholy also. He cannot refuse to admit that each of them will appear under certain circumstances beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, holy and unholy. In like manner, every particular double will appear also a half: every light thing will appear heavy: every little thing great. Of each among these many particulars, if you can truly predicate any one quality about it, you may with equal truth predicate the opposite quality also. Each of them both is, and is not, the substratum of all these different and opposite qualities. You cannot pronounce them to be either one or the other, with fixity and permanence: they are at once both and neither.

The many cannot discern or admit the reality of Forms — Their minds are always fluctuating among particulars.

Here then we find the appropriate object of Opination: that which is neither Ens nor Non-Ens, but something between both. Particulars are the object of Opination, as distinguished from universal Entities, Forms, or Ideas, which are the object of Cognition. The many, who disbelieve or ignore the existence of these Forms, and whose minds dwell exclusively among particulars — cannot know, but only opine. Their usages and creeds, as to beautiful, just, honourable, float between positive Ens and Non-Ens. It is these intermediate fluctuations which are caught up by their opining faculty, intermediate as it is between Cognition and Ignorance. It is these also, the objects of Opination, which they love and delight in: they neither recognise nor love the objects of Cognition or Knowledge. They are lovers of opinion and its objects, not lovers of Knowledge. The philosopher alone recognises and loves Knowledge and the objects of Knowledge. His mind dwells, not amidst the fluctuating, diverse, and numerous particulars, but in contemplation of the One, Universal, permanent, unchangeable, Form or Idea.

The philosopher will be ardent for all varieties of knowledge — His excellent moral attributes — He will be trained to capacity for active life.

Here is the characteristic difference (continues Sokrates) which you required me to point out, between the philosopher and the unphilosophical man, however accomplished. The philosopher sees, knows, and contemplates, the One, Real, unchangeable, Form or Idea: the unphilosophical man knows nothing of this Form per se, and sees only its multifarious manifestations, each perpetually variable and different from all the rest. The philosopher, having present to his mind this type — and approximating to it, as far as may be, the real institutions and practices — will be the person most competent to rule our city: especially as his education will give him farthermore — besides such familiarity with the Form or Type — as large a measure of experience, and as much virtue, as can fall to the lot of the unphilosophical man.151 The nature and disposition of the true philosopher, if improved by education, will include all the virtue and competence of the practical man. The philosopher is bent on learning everything which can make him familiar with Universal Forms and Essences in their pure state, not floating amidst the confusion of generated and destroyed realities: and with Forms and Essences little as well as great, mean as well as sublime.152 Devoted to knowledge and truth — hating falsehood — he has little room in his mind for the ordinary desires: he is temperate, indifferent to money, free from all meanness or shabbiness. A man like him, whose contemplations stretch over all time and all essence, thinks human life a small affair, and has no fear of death. He will be just, mild in his demeanour, quick in apprehension, retentive in memory, elegant in his tastes and movements. All these excellences will be united in the philosophers to whom we confide the rule of our city.153

151  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 484.

152  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 485 A.

153  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 485-486.

Adeimantus does not dispute the conclusion, but remarks that it is at variance with actual facts — Existing philosophers are either worthless pretenders, or when they are good, useless.

It is impossible, Sokrates (remarks Adeimantus), to answer in the negative to your questions. Nevertheless we who hear and answer, are not convinced of the truth of your conclusion. Unskilled as we are in the interrogatory process, we feel ourselves led astray little by little at each successive question; until at length, through the accumulated effect of such small deviations, we are driven up into a corner without the power of moving, like a bad player at draughts defeated by one superior to himself.154 Here in this particular case your conclusion has been reached by steps to which we cannot refuse assent. Yet if we look at the facts, we see something quite the reverse as to the actual position of philosophers. Those who study philosophy, not simply as a branch of juvenile education but as a continued occupation throughout life, are in most cases strange creatures, not to say thoroughly unprincipled: while the few of them who are most reasonable, derive nothing from this pursuit which you so much extol, except that they become useless in their respective cities.155

154  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 487 B. Πρὸς μὲν ταῦτα σοι οὐδεὶς ἂν οἷός τ’ εἴη ἀντειπεῖν· ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοιόνδε τι πάσχουσιν οἱ ἀκούοντες ἑκάστοτε ἂ νῦν λέγεις· ἡγοῦνται δι’ ἀπειρίαν τοῦ ἐρωτᾷν τε καὶ ἀποκρίνεσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου παρ’ ἕκαστον τὸ ἐρώτημα σμικρὸν παραγόμενοι, ἀθροισθέντων τῶν σμικρῶν ἐπὶ τελευτῆς τῶν λόγων, μέγα τὸ σφάλμα καὶ ἐναντίον τοῖς πρώτοις ἀναφαίνεσθαι, &c.

This is an interesting remark on the effect produced upon many hearers by the Sokratic and Platonic dialogues, — puzzling, silencing, and ultimately stimulating the mind, but not satisfying or convincing, rather raising suspicions as to the trustworthiness of the process, which suspicions have to be turned over and scrutinised by subsequent meditation.

155  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 487 D.

Sokrates admits the fact to be so — His simile of the able steersman on shipboard, among a disobedient crew.

Yes (replies Sokrates), your picture is a correct one. The position of true and reasonable philosophers, in their respective cities, is difficult and uncomfortable. Conceive a ship on her voyage, under the management of a steersman distinguished for force of body as well as for skill in his craft, but not clever in dealing with, or acting upon other men. Conceive the seamen all quarrelling with each other to get possession of the rudder; each man thinking himself qualified to steer, though he has never learnt it — nor had any master in it — nor even believes it to be teachable, but is ready to massacre all who affirm that it is teachable.156 Imagine, besides, these seamen importuning the qualified steersman to commit the rudder to them, each being ready to expel or kill any others whom he may prefer to them: and at last proceeding to stupify with wine or drugs the qualified steersman, and then to navigate the vessel themselves according to their own views; feasting plentifully on the stores. These men know nothing of what constitutes true and able steersmanship. They extol, as a perfect steersman, that leader who is most efficacious, either by persuasion or force, in seizing the rudder for them to manage: they despise as useless any one who does not possess this talent. They never reflect that the genuine steersman has enough to do in surmounting the dangers of his own especial art, and in watching the stars and the winds: and that if he is to acquire technical skill and practice adequate to such a purpose, he cannot at the same time possess skill and practice in keeping his hold of the rudder whether the crew are pleased with him or not. Such being the condition of the ship and the crew, you see plainly that they will despise and set aside the true steersman as an useless proser and star-gazer.157

156  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 488.

157  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 488 D-E.

The uselessness of the true philosopher is the fault of the citizen, who will not invoke his guidance.

Now the crew of this ship represent the citizens and leaders of our actual cities: the steersman represents the true philosopher. He is, and must be, useless in the ship: but his uselessness is the fault of the crew and not his own. It is not for the true steersman to entreat permission from the seamen, that they will allow him to command; nor for the wise man to solicit employment at the doors of the rich. It is for the sick man, whether he be poor or rich, to ask for the aid of the physician; and for every one who needs to be commanded, to invoke the authority of the person qualified to command. No man really qualified will submit to ask command as a favour.158

158  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 489 B. τῆς μέντοι ἀχρηστίας τοὺς μὴ χρωμένους κέλευε αἰτιᾶσθαι, ἀλλὰ μὴ τοὺς ἐπιεικεῖς. Οὐ γὰρ ἔχει φύσιν κυβερνήτην ναυτῶν δεῖσθαι ἄρχεσθαι ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ, &c.

Thus, Adeimantus (continues Sokrates), I have dealt with the first part of your remark, that the true philosopher is an useless man in cities as now constituted: I have shown you this is not his fault — that it could not be otherwise, — and that a man even of the highest aptitude, cannot enjoy reputation among those whose turn of mind is altogether at variance with his own.159

159  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 489 D. ἔκ τε τοίνυν τούτων καὶ ἐν τούτοις οὐ ῥᾴδιον εὐδοκιμεῖν τὸ βέλτιστον ἐπιτήδευμα ὑπὸ τῶν τἀναντία ἐπιτηδευόντων.

I shall now deal with your second observation — That while even the best philosophers are useless, the majority of those who cultivate philosophy are worthless men, who bring upon her merited discredit. I admit that this also is correct; but I shall prove that philosophy is not to be blamed for it.160

160  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 489 E. ὅτι οὐδὲ τούτου φιλοσοφία αἰτία, πειραθῶμεν δεῖξαι.

The great qualities required to form a philosopher, become sources of perversion, under a misguiding public opinion.

You will remember the great combination of excellent dispositions, intellectual as well as moral, which I laid down as indispensable to form the fundamental character of the true philosopher. Such a combination is always rare. Even under the best circumstances philosophers must be very few. But these few stand exposed, in our existing cities, to such powerful causes of corruption, that they are prevented from reaching maturity, except by some happy accident. First, each one of those very qualities, which, when combined, constitute the true philosopher, — serves as a cause of corruption, if it exists by itself and apart from the rest. Next, what are called good things, or external advantages, act in the same manner — such as beauty, strength, wealth, powerful connections, &c. Again, the stronger a man’s natural aptitudes and the greater his external advantages, — the better will he become under favourable circumstances, the worse will he become, if circumstances are unfavourable. Heinous iniquity always springs from a powerful nature perverted by bad training: not from a feeble nature, which will produce no great effects either for good or evil. Thus the eminent predispositions, — which, if properly improved, would raise a man to the highest rank in virtue, — will, if planted in an unfavourable soil, produce a master-mind in deeds of iniquity, unless counteracted by some providential interposition.

Mistake of supposing that such perversion arises from the Sophists. Irresistible effect of the public opinion generally, in tempting or forcing a dissenter into orthodoxy.

The multitude treat these latter as men corrupted by the Sophists. But this is a mistake. Neither Sophists nor other private individuals produce mischief worth mentioning. It is the multitude themselves, utterers of these complaints, who are the most active Sophists and teachers: it is they who educate and mould every individual, man and woman, young and old, into such a character as they please.161 When they are assembled in the public assembly or the dikastery, in the theatre or the camp — when they praise some things and blame others, with vociferation and vehemence echoed from the rocks around — how irresistible will be the impression produced upon the mind of a youth who hears them! No private training which he may have previously received can hold out against it. All will be washed away by this impetuous current of multitudinous praise or blame, which carries him along with it. He will declare honourable or base the same things as they declare to be so: he will adopt the character, and follow the pursuits, which they enjoin. Moreover, if he resists such persuasive influence, these multitudinous teachers and Sophists have stronger pressure in store for him.162 They punish the disobedient with disgrace, fine, and even death. What other Sophist, or what private exhortation, can contend successfully against teachers such as these? Surely none. The attempt to do so is insane. There neither is, nor has been, nor will be, any individual human disposition educated to virtue in opposition to the training of the multitude:163 I say human, as distinguished from divine, of which I make exception: for in the existing state of society, any individual who is preserved from these ascendant influences to acquire philosophical excellence, owes his preservation to the divine favour.

161  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 492 A. ἢ καὶ σὺ ἡγεῖ, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοί, διαφθειρομένους τινὰς εἶναι ὑπὸ σοφιστῶν νέους, διαφθείροντας δέ τινας σοφιστὰς ἰδιωτικούς, ὅ, τι καὶ ἄξιον λόγον, ἀλλ’ οὐκ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ταῦτα λέγοντας μεγίστους μὲν εἶναι σοφιστάς; παιδεύειν δὲ τελεώτατα καὶ ἀπεργάζεσθαι οἵους βούλονται εἶναι καὶ νέους καὶ πρεσβυτέρους καὶ ἄνδρας καὶ γυναῖκας;

162  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 492 C-D. Καὶ φήσειν τε τὰ αὐτὰ τούτοις καλὰ καὶ αἰσχρὰ εἶναι, καὶ ἐπιτηδεύσειν ἅπερ ἂν οὗτοι, καὶ ἔσεσθαι τοιοῦτον … Καὶ μὴν οὕπω τὴν μεγίστην ἀνάγκην εἰρήκαμεν. Ποίαν; Ἓν ἔργῳ προστιθέασι, λόγῳ μὴ πείθοντες, οὗτοι οἱ παιδευταί τε καὶ σοφισταί. Ἢ οὐκ οἶσθα ὅτι τὸν μὴ πειθόμενον ἀτιμίαις τε καὶ χρήμασι καὶ θανάτοις κολάζουσιν; Καὶ μάλα, ἔφη, σφόδρα.

163  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 492 D.

The Sophists and other private teachers accept the prevalent orthodoxy, and conform their teaching to it.

Moreover, though the multitude complain of these professional teachers as rivals, and decry them as Sophists — yet we must recollect that such teachers inculcate only the opinions received among the multitude themselves, and extol these same opinions as wisdom.164 The teachers know nothing of what is really honourable and base, — good and evil, — just and unjust. They distribute all these names only with reference to the opinions of the multitude:— pronouncing those things which please the multitude to be good, and those which displease to be evil, — without furnishing any other rational account. They call things necessary by the name of just and honourable; not knowing the material difference between what is good and what is necessary, nor being able to point out that difference to others. Thus preposterous are the teachers, who count it wisdom to suit the taste and feelings of the multitude, whether in painting or in music or in social affairs. For whoever lives among them, publicly exhibiting either poetry or other performances private or official, thus making the multitude his masters beyond the strict limits of necessity — the consequence is infallible, that he must adapt his works to that which they praise. But whether the works which he executes are really good and honourable, he will be unable to render any tolerable account.165

164  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 493 A. ἕκαστον τῶν μισθαρνούντων ἰδιωτῶν, οὓς δὴ οὗτοι σοφιστὰς καλοῦσι καὶ ἀντιτέχνους ἡγοῦνται, μὴ ἄλλα παιδεύειν ἢ ταῦτα τὰ τῶν πολλῶν δόγματα, ἃ δοξάζουσιν ὅταν ἀθροισθῶσι, καὶ σοφίαν ταύτην καλεῖν.

165  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 493 C-D.

The people generally hate philosophy — A youth who aspires to it will be hated by the people, and persecuted even by his own relatives.

It is therefore the multitude, or the general voice of society — not the Sophists or private teachers, mere echoes of that general voice — which works upon and moulds individuals. Now the multitude cannot tolerate or believe in the existence of those Universals or Forms which the philosopher contemplates. They know only the many particulars, not the One Universal. Incapable of becoming philosophers themselves, they look upon the philosopher with hatred: and this sentiment is adopted by all those so-called philosophers who seek to please them.166 Under these circumstances, what chance is there that those eminent predispositions, which we pointed out as the foundation of the future philosopher, can ever be matured to their proper result? A youth of such promise, especially if his body be on a par with his mind, will be at once foremost among all his fellows. His relatives and fellow-citizens, eager to make use of him for their own purposes, and anxious to appropriate to themselves his growing force, will besiege him betimes with solicitations and flatteries.167 Under these influences, if we assume him to be rich, well born, and in a powerful city, he will naturally become intoxicated with unlimited hopes and ambition; fancying himself competent to manage the affairs of all governments, and giving himself the empty airs of a lofty potentate.168 If there be any one to give him a quiet hint that he has not yet acquired intelligence, nor can acquire it without labour — he will turn a deaf ear. But suppose that such advice should by chance prevail, in one out of many cases, so that the youth alters his tendencies and devotes himself to philosophy — what will be the conduct of those who see, that they will thereby be deprived of his usefulness and party-service, towards their own views? They will leave no means untried to prevent him from following the advice, and even to ruin the adviser, by private conspiracy and judicial prosecution.169 It is impossible that the young man can really turn to philosophy, against obstructions thus powerful. You see that those very excellences and advantages, which form the initial point of the growing philosopher, become means and temptations for corrupting him. The best natures, rare as they always are, become thus not only ruined, but turned into instruments of evil. For the same men (as I have already said) who, under favourable training, would have done the greatest good, become perpetrators of the greatest evil, if they are badly placed. Small men will do nothing important, either in the one way or the other.170

166  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 494 A. φιλόσοφον μὲν ἄρα πλῆθος ἀδύνατον εἶναι … Καὶ τοὺς φιλσοφοῦντας ἄρα ἀνάγκη ψέγεσθαι ὑπ’ αὐτῶν … καὶ ὑπὸ τούτων δὴ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν, ὅσοι προσομιλοῦντες ὄχλῳ ἀρέσκειν αὐτῷ ἐπιθυμοῦσιν.

167  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 494 B.

168  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 494 C. πληρωθήσεσθαι ἀμηχάνου ἐλπίδος, ἡγούμενον καὶ τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ τὰ τῶν βαρβάρων ἱκανὸν εἶναι πράττειν.

169  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 494 D-E. ἐὰν δ’ οὖν, διὰ τὸ εὖ πεφυκέναι καὶ τὸ ξυγγενὲς τῶν λόγων, εἶς αἰσθάνηταί τέ πῃ καὶ κάμπτηται καὶ ἕλκηται πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν, τί οἰόμεθα δράσειν ἐκείνους τοὺς ἡγουμένους ἀπολλύναι αὐτοῦ τὴν χρείαν τε καὶ ἑταιρείαν; οὐ πᾶν μὲν ἔργον, πᾶν δ’ ἔπος, λέγοντάς τε καὶ πράττοντας καὶ περὶ αὐτόν, ὅπως ἂν μὴ πεισθῇ, καὶ περὶ τὸν πείθοντα, ὅπως ἂν μὴ οἷός τ’ ᾖ, καὶ ἰδίᾳ ἐπιβουλεύοντας καὶ δημοσίᾳ εἰς ἀγῶνας καθίσταντας;

170  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 495 A-B.

The really great minds are thus driven away from the path of philosophy — which is left to empty pretenders.

It is thus that the path of philosophy is deserted by those who ought to have trodden it, and who pervert their exalted powers to unworthy objects. That path — being left vacant, yet still full of imposing titles and pretensions, and carrying a show of superior dignity as compared with the vulgar professions — becomes invaded by interlopers of inferior worth and ability, who quit their own small craft, and set up as philosophers.171 Such men, poorly endowed by nature, and debased by habits of trade, exhibit themselves, in their self-assumed exaltation as philosophers, like a slave recently manumitted, who has put on new clothes and married his master’s daughter.172 Having intruded themselves into a career for which they are unfit, they cannot produce any grand or genuine philosophical thoughts, or any thing better than mere neat sophisms, pleasing to the ear.173 Through them arises the discredit which is now attached to philosophers.

171  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 495 C-D. καθορῶντες γὰρ ἄλλοι ἀνθρωπίσκοι κενὴν τὴν χώραν ταύτην γιγνομένην, καλῶν δὲ ὀνομάτων καὶ προσχημάτων μεστήν, ὥσπερ οἱ ἐκ τῶν εἰργμῶν εἰς τὰ ἱερὰ ἀποδιδράσκοντες, ἄσμενοι καὶ οὗτοι ἐκ τῶν τεχνῶν ἐκπηδῶσιν εἰς τὴν φιλοσοφίαν.

172  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 495 E.

173  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 496 A.

Rare cases in which a highly qualified philosopher remains — Being at variance with public opinion, he can achieve nothing, and is lucky if he can obtain safety by silence.

Amidst such general degradation of philosophy, some few and rare cases are left, in which the pre-eminent natures qualified for philosophy remain by some favourable accident uncorrupted. One of these is Theagês, who would have been long ago drawn away from philosophy to active politics, had he not been disqualified by bad health. The restraining Dæmon, peculiar to myself (says Sokrates), is another case.174 Such an exceptional man, having once tasted the sweetness and happiness of philosophy, embraces it as an exclusive profession. He sees that the mass of society are wrongheaded — that scarce any one takes wholesome views on social matters — that he can find no partisans to aid him in upholding justice175 — that while he will not take part in injustice, he is too weak to contend single-handed against the violence of all, and would only become a victim to it without doing any good either to the city or to his friends — like a man who has fallen among wild beasts. On these grounds he stands aloof in his own separate pursuit, like one sheltering himself under a wall against a hurricane of wind and dust. Witnessing the injustice committed by all around, he is content if he can keep himself clear and pure from it during his life here, so as to die with satisfaction and good hopes.

174  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 496 D.

175  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 496 C-D. καὶ τούτων δὴ τῶν ὀλίγων οἱ γευόμενοι καὶ γευσάμενοι ὡς ἡδὺ καὶ μακάριον τὸ κτῆμα, καὶ τῶν πολλῶν αὖ ἱκανῶς ἰδόντες τὴν μανίαν, καὶ ὅτι οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, περὶ τὰ τῶν πόλεων πράττει, οὐδ’ ἔστι ξύμμαχος μεθ’ ὅτου τις ἰὼν ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν δικαίων βοήθειαν σώζοιτ’ ἄν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἰς θηρία ἄνθρωπος ἐμπεσών, οὔτε ξυναδικεῖν ἐθέλων οὔτε ἱκανὸς ὢν εἷς πᾶσιν ἀγρίοις ἀντέχειν, πρίν τι τὴν πόλιν ἢ φίλους ὀνησαι προαπολόμενος ἀνωφελὴς αὑτῷ τε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἂν γένοιτο — ταῦτα πάντα λογισμῷ λαβῶν, ἡσυχίαν ἔχων καὶ τὰ αὐτοῦ πράττων … ὁρῶν τοὺς ἄλλους καταπιμπλαμένους ἀνομίας, ἀγαπᾷ εἴ πη αὐτὸς καθαρὸς ἀδικίας, &c.

He will perform no small achievement (remarks Adeimantus) if he keeps clear to the end.176

176  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 497 A.

The philosopher must have a community suitable to him, and worthy of him.

True (replies Sokrates) — yet nevertheless he can perform no great achievement, unless he meets with a community suited to him. Amidst such a community he will himself rise to greatness, and will preserve the public happiness as well as his own. But there exists no such community anywhere, at the present moment. Not one of those now existing is worthy of a philosophical disposition:177 which accordingly becomes perverted, and degenerates into a different type adapted to its actual abode, like exotic seed transported to a foreign soil. But if this philosophical disposition were planted in a worthy community, so as to be able to assert its own superior excellence, it would then prove itself truly divine, leaving other dispositions and pursuits behind as merely human.

177  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 497 B-C.

It must be such a community as Sokrates has been describing — But means must be taken to keep up a perpetual succession of philosophers as Rulers.

You mean by a worthy community (observes Adeimantus), such an one as that of which you have been drawing the outline? — I do (replies Sokrates): with this addition, already hinted but not explained, that there must always be maintained in it a perpetual supervising authority representing the scheme and purpose of the primitive lawgiver. This authority must consist of philosophers: and the question now arises — difficult but indispensable — how such philosophers are to be trained up and made efficient for the good of the city.

Proper manner of teaching philosophy — Not to begin at a very early age.

The plan now pursued for imparting philosophy is bad. Some do not learn it at all: and even to those who learn it best, the most difficult part (that which relates to debate and discourse) is taught when they are youths just emerging from boyhood, in the intervals of practical business and money-getting.178 After that period, in their mature age, they abandon it altogether; they will scarcely so much as go to hear an occasional lecture on the subject, without any effort of their own: accordingly it has all died out within them, when they become mature in years. This manner of teaching philosophy ought to be reversed. In childhood and youth, instruction of an easy character and suitable to that age ought to be imparted; while the greatest care is taken to improve and strengthen the body during its period of growth, as a minister and instrument to philosophy. As age proceeds, and the mind advances to perfection, the mental exercises ought to become more difficult and absorbing. Lastly, when the age of bodily effort passes away, philosophy ought to become the main and principal pursuit.179

178  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 498 A. Νῦν μὲν οἱ καὶ ἁπτόμενοι μειράκια ὄντα ἄρτι ἐκ παιδῶν τὸ μεταξὺ οἰκονομίας καὶ χρηματισμοῦ πλησιάσαντες αὐτοῦ τῷ χαλεπωτάτῳ ἀπαλλάττονται, οἱ φιλοσοφώτατοι ποιούμενοι· λέγω δὲ χαλεπώτατον τὸ περὶ τοὺς λόγους· ἐν δὲ τῷ ἔπειτα, ἐὰν καὶ ἄλλων τοῦτο πραττόντων παρακαλούμενοι ἐθέλωσιν ἀκροαταὶ γίγνεσθαι, μεγάλα ἡγοῦνται, πάρεργον οἰόμενοι αὐτὸ δεῖν πράττειν.

179  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 498 C.

If the multitude could once see a real, perfect, philosopher, they could not fail to love him: but this never happens.

Most people will hear all this (continues Sokrates) with mingled incredulity and repugnance. We cannot wonder that they do so: for they have had no experience of one or a few virtuously trained men ruling in a city suitably prepared.180 Such combination of philosophical rulers within a community adapted to them, we must assume to be realised.181 Though difficult, it is noway impracticable: and even the multitude will become reconciled to it, if you explain to them mildly what sort of persons we mean by philosophers. We do not mean such persons as the multitude now call by that name; interlopers in the pursuit, violent in dispute and quarrel with each other, and perpetually talking personal scandal.182 The multitude cannot hate a philosophical temper such as we depict, when they once come to know it — a man who, indifferent to all party disputes, dwells in contemplation of the Universal Forms, and tries to mould himself and others into harmony with them.183 Such a philosopher will not pretend to make regulations, either for a city or for an individual, until he has purified it thoroughly. He will then make regulations framed upon the type of the Eternal Forms — Justice, Temperance, Beauty — adapting them as well as he can to human exigencies.184 The multitude, when they know what is really meant, will become perfectly reconciled to it. One single prince, if he rises so as to become a philosopher, and has a consenting community, will suffice to introduce the system which we have been describing. So fortunate an accident can undoubtedly occur but seldom; yet it is not impossible, and one day or other it will really occur.185

180  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 498 E.

181  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 499 B-C.

182  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 499-500.

183  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 500 C-D.

184  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 501 A.

185  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 502.

Course of training in the Platonic city, for imparting philosophy to the Rulers. They must be taught to ascend to the Idea of Good. But what is Good?

I must now (continues Sokrates) explain more in detail the studies and training through which these preservers Rulers of our city, the complete philosophers, must be created. The most perfect among the Guardians, after having been tested by years of exercises and temptations of various kinds, will occupy that distinguished place. Very few will be found uniting those distinct and almost incompatible excellences which qualify them for the post. They must give proof of self-command against pleasures as well as pains, and of competence to deal with the highest studies.186 But what are the highest studies? What is the supreme object of knowledge? It is the Idea of Good — the Form of Good: to the acquisition of which our philosophers must be trained to ascend, however laborious and difficult the process may be.187 Neither justice nor any thing else can be useful or profitable, unless we superadd to them a knowledge of the Idea of Good: without this, it would profit us nothing to possess all other knowledge.188

186  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 503.

187  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 504.

188  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A. ὅτι γε ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα μέγιστον μάθημα πολλάκις ἀκήκοας, ᾖ δίκαια καὶ τἄλλα προσχρησάμενα χρήσιμα καὶ ὠφέλιμα γίγνεται, &c.

Ancient disputes upon this point, though every one yearns after Good. Some say Intelligence; some say Pleasure. Neither is satisfactory.

Now as to the question, What Good is? there are great and long-standing disputes. Every mind pursues Good, and does every thing for the sake of it — yet without either knowledge or firm assurance what Good is, and consequently with perpetual failure in deriving benefit from other acquisitions.189 Most people say that Pleasure is the Good: an ingenious few identify Intelligence with the Good. But neither of these explanations is satisfactory. For when a man says that Intelligence is the Good, our next question to him must be, What sort of Intelligence do you mean? — Intelligence of what? To this he must reply, Intelligence of the Good: which is absurd, since it presumes us to know already what the Good is — the very point which he is pretending to elucidate. Again, he who contends that Pleasure is the Good, is forced in discussion to admit that there are such things as bad pleasures: in other words, that pleasure is sometimes good, sometimes bad.190 From these doubts and disputes about the real nature of good, we shall require our philosophical Guardians to have emancipated themselves, and to have attained a clear vision. They will be unfit for their post it they do not well know what the Good is, and in what manner just or honourable things come to be good.191 Our city will have received its final consummation, when it is placed under the superintendence of one who knows what the Good is.

189  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 E. Ὃ δὴ διώκει μὲν ἅπασα ψυχὴ καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα πάντα πράττει, ἀπομαντευομένη τὶ εἶναι, ἀποροῦσα δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἔχουσα λαβεῖν ἱκανῶς τί ποτ’ ἐστίν, οὐδὲ πίστει χρήσασθαι μονίμῳ, οἵᾳ καὶ περὶ τἄλλα, διὰ τοῦτο δὲ ἀποτυγχάνει καὶ τῶν ἄλλων εἴ τι ὄφελος ἦν, &c.

190  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 C.

191  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 A. δίκαιά τε καὶ καλὰ ἀγνοούμενα ὅπῃ ποτὲ ἀγαθά ἐστιν, οὐ πολλοῦ τινὸς ἄξιον φύλακα κεκτῆσθαι ἂν ἑαυτῶν τὸν τοῦτο ἀγνοοῦντα.

Adeimantus asks what Sokrates says. Sokrates says that he can not answer: but he compares it by a metaphor to the Sun.

But tell me, Sokrates (asks Adeimantus), what do you conceive the Good to be — Intelligence or Pleasure, or any other thing different from these? I do not profess to know (replies Sokrates), and cannot tell you. We must decline the problem, What Good itself is? as more arduous than our present impetus will enable us to reach.192 Nevertheless I will partially supply the deficiency by describing to you the offspring of Good, very like its parent. You will recollect that we have distinguished the Many from the One: the many just particulars, beautiful particulars, from the One Universal Idea or Form, Just per se, Beautiful per se. The many particulars are seen but not conceived: the one Idea is conceived, but not seen.193 We see the many particulars through the auxiliary agency of light, which emanates from the Sun, the God of the visible world. Our organ and sense of vision are not the Sun itself, but they are akin to the Sun in a greater degree than any of our other senses. They imbibe their peculiar faculty from the influence of the Sun.194 The Sun furnishes to objects the power of being seen, and to our eyes the power of seeing: we can see no colour unless we turn to objects enlightened by its rays. Moreover it is the Sun which also brings about the generation, the growth, and the nourishment, of these objects, though it is itself out of the limits of generation: it generates and keeps them in existence, besides rendering them visible.195 Now the Sun is the offspring and representative of the Idea of Good: what the Sun is in the sensible and visible world, the Idea of Good is in the intelligible or conceivable world.196 As the Sun not only brings into being the objects of sense, but imparts to them the power of being seen so the Idea of Good brings into being the objects of conception or cognition, imparts to them the power of being known, and to the mind the power of knowing them.197 It is from the Idea of Good that all knowledge, all truth, and all real essence spring. Yet the Idea of Good is itself extra-essential; out of or beyond the limits of essence, and superior in beauty and dignity both to knowledge and to truth; which are not Good itself, but akin to Good, as vision is akin to the Sun.198

192  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 B-E. Αὐτὸ μὲν τί ποτ’ ἐστὶ τἀγαθὸν ἐάσωμεν τὰ νῦν εἶναι· πλέον γάρ μοι φαίνεται ἢ κατὰ τὴν παροῦσαν ὁρμὴν ἐφικέσθαι τοῦ γε δοκοῦντος ἐμοὶ τὰ νῦν· ὅς δὲ ἔκγονός τε τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φαίνεται καὶ ὁμοιότατος ἐκείνῳ, λέγειν ἐθέλω (p. 506 E).

193  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 507 B-C. Καὶ τὰ μὲν (πολλὰ) δὴ ὁρᾶσθαί φαμεν, νοεῖσθαι δὲ οὔ· τὰς δ’ αὖ ἰδέας νοεῖσθαι μέν, ὁρᾶσθαι δὲ οὔ.

194  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 508 A. ἡ ὄψις — ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ὀργάνων.

195  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 509 B. Τὸν ἥλιον τοῖς ὁρωμένοις οὐ μόνον τὴν τοῦ ὁρᾶσθαι δύναμιν παρέχειν φήσεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ αὔξην καὶ τροφήν, οὐ γένεσιν αὐτὸν ὄντα.

196  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 508 B-C. Τοῦτον (τὸν ἥλιον) τὸν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἔκγονον, ὃν τἀγαθὸν ἐγέννησεν ἀνάλογον ἑαυτῷ, ὅ, τι περ αὐτὸ ἐν τῷ νοητῷ τόπῳ πρός τε νοῦν καὶ τὰ νοούμενα, τοῦτο τοῦτον ἐν τῷ ὁρατῷ πρός τε ὄψιν καὶ τὰ ὁρώμενα.

197  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 508 E. Τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχον τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις καὶ τῷ γιγνώσκοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἀποδιδὸν τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν φάθι εἶναι, αἰτίαν δ’ ἐπιστήμης οὖσαν καὶ ἀληθείας ὡς γιγνωσκομένης, &c.

198  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 509 B. Καὶ τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις τοίνυν μὴ μόνον τὸ γιγνώσκεσθαι φάναι ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ παρεῖναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τε καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου αὐτοις προσεῖναι, οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος. Καὶ ὁ Γλαύκων μάλα γελοίως, Ἄπολλον, ἔφη, δαιμονίας ὑπερβολῆς! Σὺ γάρ, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, αἴτιος, ἀναγκάζων τὰ ἐμοὶ δοκοῦντα περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγειν. — Also p. 509 A.

The Idea of Good rules the ideal or intelligible world, as the Sun rules the sensible or visible world.

Here then we have two distinct regions or genera; one, the conceivable or intelligible, ruled by the Idea of Good — the other the visible, ruled by the Sun, which is the offspring of Good. Now let us subdivide each of these regions or genera, into two portions. The two portions of the visible will be — first, real objects, visible such as animals, plants, works of art, &c. — second, the images or representations of these, such as shadows, reflexions in water or in mirrors, &c. The first of these two subdivisions will be greatly superior in clearness to the second: it will be distinguished from the second as truth is distinguished from not-truth.199 Matter of knowledge is in the same relation to matter of opinion, as an original to its copy. Next, the conceivable or intelligible region must be subdivided into two portions, similarly related one to the other: the first of these portions will be analogous to the real objects of vision, the second to the images or representations of these objects: the first will thus be the Forms, Ideas, or Realities of Conception or Intellect — the second will be particular images or embodiments thereof.200

199  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 509-510. 510 A: διῃρῆσθαι ἀληθείᾳ τε καὶ μή, ὡς τὸ δοξαστὸν πρὸς τὸ γνωστόν, οὔτω τὸ ὁμοιωθὲν πρὸς τὸ ᾧ ὡμοιώθη.

200  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 510 B.

To the intelligible world there are applicable two distinct modes of procedure — the Geometrical — the Dialectic. Geometrical procedure assumes diagrams.

Now in regard to these two portions of the conceivable or intelligible region, two different procedures of the mind are employed: the pure Dialectic, and the Geometrical, procedure. The Geometer or the Arithmetician begins with certain visible images, lines, figures, or numbered objects, of sense: he takes his departure from certain hypotheses or assumptions, such as given numbers, odd and even — given figures and angles, of three different sorts.201 He assumes these as data without rendering account of them, or allowing them to be called in question, as if they were self-evident to every one. From these premisses he deduces his conclusions, carrying them down by uncontradicted steps to the solution of the problem which he is examining.202 But though he has before his eyes the visible parallelogram inscribed on the sand, with its visible diagonal, and though all his propositions are affirmed respecting these — yet what he has really in his mind is something quite different — the Parallelogram per se, or the Form of a Parallelogram — the Form of a Diagonal, &c. The visible figure before him is used only as an image or representative of this self-existent form; which last he can contemplate only in conception, though all his propositions are intended to apply to it.203 He is unable to take his departure directly from this Form, as from a first principle: he is forced to assume the visible figure as his point of departure, and cannot ascend above it: he treats it as something privileged and self-evident.204

201  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 510 B. ᾗ το μὲν αὐτοῦ (τμῆμα) τοῖς τότε τμηθεῖσιν ὡς εἰκόσι χρωμένη (this is farther illustrated by p. 511 A — εἰκόσι χρωμένην αὐτοῖς τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν κάτω ἀπεικασθεῖσἰ) ψυχὴ ζητεῖν ἀναγκάζεται ἐξ ὑποθέσεων, οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀρχὴν πορευομένη ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τελευτήν, &c.

202  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 510 C-D. οἱ περὶ τὰς γεωμετρίας τε καὶ λογισμοὺς καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πραγματευόμενοι, ὑποθέμενοι τό τε περιττὸν καὶ τὸ ἄρτιον καὶ τὰ σχήματα καὶ γωνιῶν τριττὰ εἴδη καὶ ἄλλα τούτων ἀδελφὰ καθ’ ἑκάστην μέθοδον, ταῦτα μὲν ὡς εἰδότες, ποιησάμενοι ὑποθέσεις αὐτά, οὐδένα λόγον οὔτε αὑτοῖς οὔτε τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔτι ἀξιοῦσι περὶ αὐτῶν διδόναι, ὡς παντὶ φανερῶν· ἐκ τούτων δ’ ἀρχόμενοι τὰ λοιπὰ ἤδη διεξιόντες τελευτῶσιν ὁμολογουμένως ἐπὶ τοῦτο, οὖ ἂν ἐπὶ σκέψιν ὁρμήσωσιν.

203  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 510 D-E. τοῖς ὁρωμένοις εἴδεσι προσχρῶνται, καὶ τοὺς λόγους περὶ αὐτῶν ποιοῦνται, οὐ περὶ τούτων διανοούμενοι, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνων πέρι οἷς ταῦτα ἔοικε, τοῦ τετραγώνου αὐτοῦ ἕνεκα τοὺς λόγους ποιούμενοι καὶ διαμέτρον αὐτῆς, ἀλλ’ οὐ ταύτης ἣν γράφουσι, καὶ τἄλλα οὕτως· αὐτὰ μὲν ταῦτα ἃ πλάττουσί τε καὶ γράφουσιν, ὧν καὶ σκιαὶ καὶ ἐν ὕδασιν εἰκόνες εἰσί, τούτοις μὲν ὡς εἰκόσιν αὖ χρώμενοι, ζητοῦντές τε αὐτὰ ἐκεῖνα ἰδεῖν, ἃ οὐκ ἂν ἄλλως ἴδοι τις ἢ τῇ διανοίᾳ.

204  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 511 A. οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀρχὴν ἰοῦσαν, ὡς οὐ δυναμένην τῶν ὑποθέσεων ἀνωτέρω ἐκβαίνειν, εἰκόσι δὲ χρωμένην αὐτοῖς τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν κάτω ἀπεικασθεῖσιν, καὶ ἐκείνοις πρὸς ἐκεῖνα ὡς ἐναργέσι δεδοξασμένοις τε καὶ τετιμημένοις.

Dialectic procedure assumes nothing. It departs from the highest Form, and steps gradually down to the lowest, without meddling with any thing except Forms.

From the geometrical procedure thus described, we must now distinguish the other section — the pure Dialectic. Here the Intellect ascends to the absolute Form, and grasps it directly. Particular assumptions or hypotheses are indeed employed, but only as intervening stepping-stones, by which the Intellect is to ascend to the Form: they are afterwards to be discarded: they are not used here for first principles of reasoning, as they are by the Geometer.205 The Dialectician uses for his first principle the highest absolute Form; he descends from this to the next highest, and so lower and lower through the orderly gradation of Forms, until he comes to the end or lowest: never employing throughout the whole descent any hypothesis or assumption, nor any illustrative aid from sense. He contemplates and reasons upon the pure intelligible essence, directly and immediately: whereas the Geometer can only contemplate it indirectly and mediately, through the intervening aid of particular assumptions.206

205  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 511 B. τὸ ἕτερον τμῆμα τοῦ νοητοῦ … οὖ αὐτὸς ὁ λόγος ἅπτεται τῇ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι δυνάμει, τὰς ὑποθέσεις ποιούμενος οὐκ ἀρχὰς ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι ὑποθέσεις, οἷον ἐπιβάσεις τε καὶ ὁρμάς, ἵνα μέχρι τοῦ ἀνυποθέτου, ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν ἰών, ἁψάμενος αὐτῆς, πάλιν αὖ ἐχόμενος τῶν ἐκείνης ἐχομένων, οὕτως ἐπὶ τελευτὴν καταβαίνῃ, αἰσθητῷ παντάπασιν οὐδενὶ προσχρώμενος, ἀλλ’ εἴδεσιν αὐτοῖς δι’ αὐτῶν εἰς αὐτά, καὶ τελευτᾷ εἰς εἴδη.

206  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 511 C. σαφέστερον εἶναι τὸ ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι ἐπιστήμης τοῦ ὄντος τε καὶ νοητοῦ θεωρούμενον ἢ τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν τεχνῶν καλουμένων, αἷς αἱ ὑποθέσεις ἀρχαί, &c.

Two distinct grades of Cognition — Direct or Superior — Noûs — Indirect or Inferior — Dianoia.

The distinction here indicated between the two different sections of the Intelligible Region, and the two different sections of the Region of Sense — we shall mark (continues Sokrates) by appropriate terms. The Dialectician alone has Noûs or Intellect, direct or the highest cognition: he alone grasps and comprehends directly the pure intelligible essence or absolute Form. The Geometer does not ascend to this direct contemplation or intuition of the Form: he knows it only through the medium of particular assumptions, by indirect Cognition or Dianoia; which is a lower faculty than Noûs or Intellect, yet nevertheless higher than Opinion.

Two distinct grades of Opinion also in the Sensible World — Faith or Belief — Conjecture.

As we assign two distinct grades of Cognition to the Intelligible Region, so we also assign two distinct grades of Opinion to the Region of Sense, and its two sections. To the first of these two sections, or to real objects of sense, we assign the highest grade of Opinion, viz.: Faith or Belief. To the second of the two, or to the images of real objects of sense, we assign the lower grade, viz.: Conjecture.

Here then are the four grades. Two grades of Cognition — 1. Noûs, or Direct Cognition. 2. Dianoia, or Indirect Cognition: both of them belonging to the Intelligible Region, and both of them higher than Opinion. Next follow the two grades of Opinion. 3. The higher grade, Faith or Belief. 4. The lower grade, Conjecture. Both the two last belong to the sensible world; the first to real objects, the last to images of those objects.207

207  Plato, Republic, p. 511 D-E.

Distinction between the philosopher and the unphilosophical public, illustrated by the simile of the Cave, and the captives imprisoned therein.

Sokrates now proceeds to illustrate the contrast between the philosopher and the unphilosophical or ordinary man, by the memorable simile of the cave and its shadows. Mankind live in a cave, with its aperture directed towards the light of the sun; but they are so chained, that their backs are constantly turned towards this aperture, so that they cannot see the sun and sunlight. What they do see is by means of a fire which is always burning behind them. Between them and this fire there is a wall; along the wall are posted men who carry backwards and forwards representations or images of all sorts of objects; so that the shadows of these objects by the firelight are projected from behind these chained men upon the ground in front of them, and pass to and fro before their vision. All the experience which such chained men acquire, consists in what they observe of the appearance and disappearance, the transition, sequences, and co-existences, of these shadows, which they mistake for truth and realities, having no no acquaintance with any other phenomena.208 If now we suppose any one of them to be liberated from his chains, turned round, and brought up to the light of the sun and to real objects — his eyesight would be at first altogether dazzled, confounded, and distressed. Distinguishing as yet nothing clearly, he would believe that the shadows which he had seen in his former state were true and distinct objects, and that the new mode of vision to which he had been suddenly introduced was illusory and unprofitable. He would require a long time to accustom him to daylight: at first his eyes would bear nothing but shadows — next images in the water — then the stars at night — lastly, the full brightness of the Sun. He would learn that it was the Sun which not only gave light, but was the cause of varying seasons, growth, and all the productions of the visible world. And when his mind had been thus opened, he would consider himself much to be envied for the change, looking back with pity on his companions still in the cave.209 He would think them all miserably ignorant, as being conversant not with realities, but only with the shadows which passed before their eyes. He would have no esteem even for the chosen few in the cave, who were honoured by their fellows as having best observed the co-existences and sequences among these shadows, so as to predict most exactly how the shadows would appear in future.210 Moreover if, after having become fully accustomed to daylight and the contemplation of realities, he were to descend again into the cave, his eyesight would be dim and confused in that comparative darkness; so that he would not well recognise the shadows, and would get into disputes about them with his companions. They on their side would deride him as having spoilt his sight as well as his judgment, and would point him out as an example to deter others from emerging out of the cave into daylight.211 Far from wishing to emerge themselves, they would kill, if they could, any one who tried to unchain them and assist them in escaping.212

208  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 514-515.

209  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 515-516.

210  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 516 C. Τιμαὶ δὲ καὶ ἔπαινοι εἴ τινες αὐτοῖς ἦσαν τότε παρ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ γέρα τῷ ὀξύτατα καθορῶντι τὰ παριόντα, καὶ μνημονεύοντι μάλιστα ὅσα τε πρότερα αὐτῶν καὶ ὕστερα εἰώθει καὶ ἅμα πορεύεσθαι, καὶ ἐκ τούτων δὴ δυνατώτατα ἀπομαντευομένῳ τὸ μέλλον ἥξειν, δοκεῖς ἂν αὐτὸν ἐπιθυμητικῶς αὐτῶν ἔχειν καὶ ζηλοῦν τοὺς παρ’ ἐκείνοις τιμωμένους τε καὶ ἐνδυναστεύοντας;

211  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 517 A. ἆρ’ οὐ γέλωτ’ ἂν παράσχοι καὶ λέγοιτο ἂν περὶ αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀναβὰς ἄνω διεφθαρμένος ἥκει τὰ ὄμματα, καὶ ὅτι οὐκ ἄξιον οὐδὲ πειρᾶσθαι ἄνω ἰέναι;

212  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 517 A. καὶ τὸν ἐπιχειροῦντα λύειν τε καὶ ἀνάγειν, εἴ πως ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ δύναιτο λαβεῖν καὶ ἀποκτεῖναι, ἀποκτιννύναι ἂν;

Daylight of philosophy contrasted with the firelight and shadows of the Cave.

By this simile (continues Sokrates) I intend to illustrate, as far as I can, yet without speaking confidently,213 the relations of the sensible world to the intelligible world: the world of transitory shadows, dimly seen and admitting only opinion, contrasted with that of unchangeable realities steadily contemplated and known, illuminated by the Idea of Good, which is itself visible in the background, being the cause both of truth in speculation and of rectitude in action.214 No wonder that the few who can ascend into the intelligible region, amidst the clear contemplations of Truth and Justice per se, are averse to meddle again with the miseries of human affairs and to contend with the opinions formed by ordinary men respecting the shadows of Justice, the reality of which these ordinary men have never seen. There are two causes of temporary confused vision: one, when a man moves out of darkness into light — the other when he moves from light into darkness. It is from the latter cause that the philosopher suffers when he redescends into the obscure cave.215

213  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 517. τῆς γ’ ἐμῆς ἐλπίδος, ἐπειδὴ ταύτης ἐπιθυμεῖς ἀκούειν· θεὸς δέ που οἶδεν εἰ ἀληθὴς οὖσα τυγχάνει.

This tone of uncertainty in Plato deserves notice. It forms a striking contrast with the dogmatism of many among his commentators.

214  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 517 C.

215  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 517-518.

Purpose of a philosophical training, to turn a man round from facing the bad light of the Cave to face the daylight of philosophy, and to see the eternal Forms.

The great purpose of education is to turn a man round from his natural position at the bottom of this dark cave, where he sees nothing but shadows: to fix his eyes in the other direction, and to induce him to ascend into clear daylight. Education does not, as some suppose, either pour knowledge into an empty mind, or impart visual power to blind persons. Men have good eyes, but these eyes are turned in the wrong direction. The clever among them see sharply enough what is before them: but they have nothing before them except shadows, and the sharper their vision the more mischief they do.216 What is required is to turn them round and draw them up so as to face the real objects of daylight. Their natural eyesight would then suffice to enable them to see these objects well.217 The task of our education must be, to turn round the men of superior natural aptitude, and to draw them up into the daylight of realities. Next, when they shall have become sufficiently initiated in truth and philosophy, we must not allow them to bury themselves permanently in such studies — as they will themselves be but too eager to do. We must compel them to come down again into the cave and exercise ascendancy among their companions, for whose benefit their superior mental condition will thus become available.218

216  Plato, Republic, p. 519 A-B.

217  Plato, Republic, p. 519 B. ὧν εἰ ἀπαλλαγὲν περιεστρέφετο εἰς τἀληθῆ, καὶ ἐκεῖνα ἂν τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο τῶν αὐτῶν ἀνθρώπων ὀξύτατα ἑώρα, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐφ’ ἂ νῦν τέτραπται.

218  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 519-520.

Those who have emerged from the Cave into full daylight amidst eternal Forms, must be forced to come down again and undertake active duties — Their reluctance to do this.

Coming as they do from the better light, they will, after a little temporary perplexity, be able to see the dim shadows better than those who have never looked at anything else. Having contemplated the true and real Forms of the Just, Beautiful, Good — they will better appreciate the images of these Forms which come and go, pass by and repass in the cave.219 They will indeed be very reluctant to undertake the duties or exercise the powers of government: their genuine delight is in philosophy; and if left to themselves, they would cultivate nothing else. But such reluctance is in itself one proof that they are the fittest persons to govern. If government be placed in the hands of men eager to possess it, there will be others eager to dispossess them, so that competition and factions will arise. Those who come forward to govern, having no good of their own, and seeking to extract their own good from the exercise of power, are both unworthy of trust and sure to be resisted by opponents of the like disposition. The philosopher alone has his own good in himself. He enjoys a life better than that of a ruler; which life he is compelled to forego when he accepts power and becomes a ruler.220

219  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 520 C.

220  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 520-521.

Studies serving as introduction to philosophy — Arithmetic, its awakening power — shock to the mind by felt contradiction.

The main purpose of education, I have said (continues Sokrates) is, to turn round the faces of the superior men, and to invite them upwards from darkness to light — from the region of perishable shadows to that of imperishable realities.221 Now what cognitions, calculated to aid such a purpose, can we find to teach?222 Gymnastic, music, the vulgar arts, are all useful to be taught: but they do not tend to that which we are here seeking. Arithmetic does so to a certain extent, if properly taught which at present it is not.223 It furnishes a stimulus to awaken the dormant intellectual and reflective capacity. Among the variety of sensible phenomena, there are some in which the senses yield a clear and satisfactory judgment, leaving no demand in the mind for anything beyond: there are others in which the senses land us in apparent equivocation, puzzle, and contradiction — so that the mind is stung by this apparent perplexity, and instigated to find a solution by some intellectual effort.224 Thus, if we see or feel the fingers of our hand, they always appear to the sense, fingers: in whatever order or manner they may be looked at, there is no contradiction or discrepancy in the judgment of sense. But if we see or feel them as great or small, thick or thin, hard or soft, &c., they then appear differently according as they are seen or felt in different order or under different circumstances. The same object which now appears great, will at another time appear small: it will seem to the sense hard or soft, light or heavy, according as it is seen under different comparisons and relations.225 Here then, sense is involved in an apparent contradiction, declaring the same object to be both hard and soft, great and small, light and heavy, &c. The mind, painfully confounded by such a contradiction, is obliged to invoke intellectual reflection to clear it up. Great and small are presented by the sense as inhering in the same object. Are they one thing, or two separate things? Intellectual reflection informs us that they are two: enabling us to conceive separately two things, which to our sense appeared confounded together. Intellectual (or abstract) conception is thus developed in our mind, as distinguished from sense, and as a refuge from the confusion and difficulties of sense, which furnish the stimulus whereby it is awakened.226

221  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 521 C. ψυχῆς περιαγωγή, ἐκ νυκτερινης τινὸς ἡμέρας εἰς ἀληθινὴν τοῦ ὄντος ἰούσης ἐπάνοδον, ἣν δὴ φιλοσοφίαν ἀληθῆ φήσομεν εἶναι.

222  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 521 C. Τί ἂν οὖν εἴη μάθημα ψυχῆς ὁλκὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ γιγνομένου ἐπὶ τὸ ὄν;

223  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 522-523 A.

224  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 523 C.

225  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 523-524.

226  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 524 B-C.

Perplexity arising from the One and Many, stimulates the mind to an intellectual effort for clearing it up.

Now arithmetic, besides its practical usefulness for arrangements of war, includes difficulties and furnishes a stimulus of this nature. We see the same thing both as One and as infinite in multitude: as definite and indefinite in number.227 We can emerge from these difficulties only by intellectual and abstract reflection. It is for this purpose, and not for purposes of traffic, that our intended philosophers must learn Arithmetic. Their minds must be raised from the confusion of the sensible world to the clear daylight of the intelligible.228 In teaching Arithmetic, the master sets before his pupils numbers in the concrete, that is, embodied in visible and tangible objects — so many balls or pebbles.229 Each of these balls he enumerates as One, though they be unequal in magnitude, and whatever be the magnitude of each. If you remark that the balls are unequal — and that each of them is Many as well as One, being divisible into as many parts as you please — he will laugh at the objection as irrelevant. He will tell you that the units to which his numeration refers are each Unum per se, indivisible and without parts; and all equal among themselves without the least shade of difference. He will add that such units cannot be exhibited to the senses, but can only be conceived by the intellect: that the balls before you are not such units in reality, but serve to suggest and facilitate the effort of abstract conception.230 In this manner arithmetical teaching conducts us to numbers in the abstract — to the real, intelligible, indivisible unit — the Unum per se.

227  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 525 A. ἅμα γὰρ ταὐτὸν ὡς ἕν τε ὁρῶμεν καὶ ὡς ἄπειρα τὸ πλῆθος.

228  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 525 B. διὰ τὸ τῆς οὐσίας ἁπτέον εἶναι γενέσεως ἐξαναδύντι, &c.

229  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 525 D. ὁρατὰ ἢ ἁπτὰ σώματα ἔχοντας ἀριθμοὺς, &c.

230  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 526 A. εἴ τις ἔροιτο αὐτούς, Ὦ θαυμάσιοι, περὶ ποίων ἀριθμῶν διαλέγεσθε, ἐν οἷς τὸ ἓν οἷον ὑμεῖς ἀξιοῦτέ ἐστιν, ἴσον τε ἕκαστον πᾶν παντὶ καὶ οὐδὲ σμικρὸν διαφέρον, μόριόν τε ἔχον ἐν ἑαυτῷ οὐδέν; τί ἂν οἴει αὐτοὺς ἀποκρίνασθαι; Τοῦτο ἔγωγε, ὅτι περὶ τούτων λέγουσιν ὧν διανοηθῆναι μόνον ἐγχωρεῖ, ἄλλως δ’ οὐδαμῶς μεταχειρίζεσθαι δυνατόν.

Geometry conducts the mind to wards Universal Ens.

Geometrical teaching conducts the mind to the same order of contemplations; leading it away from variable particulars to unchangeable universal Essence. Some persons extol Geometry chiefly on the ground of its usefulness in applications to practice. But this is a mistake: its real value is in conducing to knowledge, and to elevated contemplations of the mind. It does, however, like Arithmetic, yield useful results in practice: and both of them are farther valuable as auxiliaries to other studies.231

231  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 526-527.

Astronomy — how useful — not useful as now taught — must be studied by ideal figures, not by observation.

After Geometry — the measurement of lines and superficial areas — the proper immediate sequel is Stereometry, the measurement of solids. But this latter is nowhere properly honoured and cultivated: though from its intrinsic excellence, it forces its way partially even against public neglect and discouragement.232 Most persons omit it, and treat Astronomy as if it were the immediate sequel to Geometry: which is a mistake, for Astronomy relates to solid bodies in a state of rotatory movement, and ought to be preceded by the treatment of solid bodies generally.233 Assuming Stereometry, therefore, as if it existed, we proceed to Astronomy.

232  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 528 A-C.

233  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 528 A-B. ἐν περιφορᾷ ὂν ἤδη στερεὸν λαβόντες, πρὶν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ λαβεῖν. Also 528 E.

Certainly (remarks Glaukon) Astronomy, besides its usefulness in regard to the calendar, and the seasons, must be admitted by every one to carry the mind upwards, to the contemplation of things not below but on high. I do not admit this at all (replies Sokrates), as Astronomy is now cultivated: at least in my sense of the words, looking upwards and looking downwards. If a man lies on his back, contemplating the ornaments of the ceiling, he may carry his eyes upward, but not his mind.234 To look upwards, as I understand it, is to carry the mind away from the contemplation of sensible things, whereof no science is attainable — to the contemplation of intelligible things, entities invisible and unchangeable, which alone are the objects of science. Observation of the stars, such as astronomers now teach, does not fulfil any such condition. The heavenly bodies are the most beautiful of all visible bodies and the most regular of all visible movements, approximating most nearly, though still with a long interval of inferiority, to the ideal figures and movements of genuine and self-existent Forms — quickness, slowness, number, figure, &c., as they are in themselves, not visible to the eye, but conceivable only by reason and intellect.235 The movements of the heavenly bodies are exemplifications, approaching nearest to the perfection of these ideal movements, but still falling greatly short of them. They are like visible circles or triangles drawn by some very exact artist; which, however beautiful as works of art, are far from answering to the conditions of the idea and its definition, and from exhibiting exact equality and proportion.236 So about the movements of the sun and stars: they are comparatively regular, but they are yet bodily and visible, never attaining the perfect sameness and unchangeableness of the intelligible world and its forms. We cannot learn truth by observation of phenomena constantly fluctuating and varying. We must study astronomy, as we do geometry, not by observation, but by mathematical theorems and hypotheses: which is a far more arduous task than astronomy as taught at present. Only in this way can it be made available to improve and strengthen the intellectual organ of the mind.237

234  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 529 B.

235  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 529 D.

236  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 529-530.

237  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 530 B. Προβλήμασιν ἄρα χρώμενοι ὥσπερ γεωμετρίαν, οὕτω καὶ ἀστρονομίαν μέτιμεν· τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ οὐράνῳ ἐάσομεν, &c.

Acoustics, in like manner — The student will be thus conducted to the highest of all studies — Dialectic: and to the region of pure intelligible Forms.

In like manner (continues Sokrates), Acoustics or Harmonics must be studied, not by the ear, listening to and comparing various sounds, but by the contemplative intellect, applying arithmetical relations and theories.238

After going through all these different studies, the student will have his mind elevated so as to perceive the affinity of method239 and principle which pervades them all. In this state he will be prepared for entering on Dialectic, which is the final consummation of his intellectual career. He will then have ascended from the cave into daylight. He will have learnt to see real objects, and ultimately the Sun itself, instead of the dim and transitory shadows below. He will become qualified to grasp the pure Intelligible Form with his pure Intellect alone, without either aid or disturbance from sense. He will acquire that dialectical discursive power which deals exclusively with these Intelligible Forms, carrying on ratiocination by means of them only, with no reference to sensible objects. He will attain at length the last goal of the Dialectician — the contemplation of Bonum per se (the highest perfection and elevation of the Intelligible)240 with Intellect per se in its full purity: the best part of his mind will have been raised to the contemplation and knowledge of the best and purest entity.241

238  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 531.

239  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 531 D.

240  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 532 A. οὕτω καὶ ὅταν τις τῷ διαλέγεσθαι ἐπιχειρῇ, ἄνευ πασῶν τῶν αἰσθήσεων διὰ τοῦ λόγου ἐπ’ αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν ἕκαστον ὁρμᾷ, καὶ μὴ ἀποστῇ πρὶν ἂν αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν ἀγαθὸν αὐτῇ τῇ νοήσει λάβῃ, ἐπ’ αὐτῷ γίγνεται τῷ τοῦ νοητοῦ τέλει, &c.

241  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 532 D.

Question by Glaukon — What is the Dialectic Power? Sokrates declares that he cannot answer with certainty, and that Glaukon could not follow him if he did.

I know not whether I ought to admit your doctrine, Sokrates (observes Glaukon). There are difficulties both in admitting and denying it. However, let us assume it for the present. Your next step must be to tell us what is the characteristic function of this Dialectic power — what are its different varieties and ways of proceeding? I would willingly do so (replies Sokrates), but you would not be able to follow me.242 I would lay before you not merely an image of the truth but the very truth itself; as it appears to me at least, whether I am correct or not — for I ought not to be sure of my own correctness.

242  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 533 A.

He answers partially — It is the consummation of all the sciences, raising the student to the contemplation of pure Forms, and especially to that of the highest Form — Good    .

But I am sure that the dialectic power is something of the nature which I have described. It is the only force which can make plain the full truth to students who have gone through the preliminary studies that we have described. It is the only study which investigates rationally real forms and essences243 — what each thing is, truly in itself. Other branches of study are directed either towards the opinions and preferences of men — or towards generation and combination of particular results — or towards upholding of combinations already produced or naturally springing up: while even as to geometry and the other kindred studies, we have seen that as to real essence, they have nothing better than dreams244 — and that they cannot see it as it is, so long as they take for their principle or point of departure certain assumptions or hypotheses of which they can render no account. The principle being thus unknown, and the conclusion as well as the intermediate items being spun together out of that unknown, how can such a convention deserve the name of Science?245 Pursuant to custom, indeed, we call these by the name of Sciences. But they deserve no higher title than that of Intellectual Cognitions, lower than Science, yet higher than mere Opinion. It is the Dialectician alone who discards all assumptions, ascending at once to real essence as his principle and point of departure:246 defining, and discriminating by appropriate words, each variety of real essence — rendering account of it to others — and carrying it safely through the cross-examining process of question and answer.247 Whoever cannot discriminate in this way the Idea or Form of Good from every thing else, will have no proper cognition of Good itself, but only, at best, opinions respecting the various shadows of Good. Dialectic — the capacity of discriminating real Forms and maintaining them in cross-examining dialogue is thus the coping-stone, completion, or consummation, of all the other sciences.248

243  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 533 B. ὡς αὐτοῦ γε ἑκάστου πέρι, ὃ ἔστιν ἕκαστον, οὐκ ἄλλη τις ἐπιχειρεῖ μέθοδος ὁδῷ περὶ παντὸς λαμβάνειν, &c.

244  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 533 C. ὡς ὀνειρώττουσι μὲν περὶ τὸ ὄν, ὕπαρ δὲ ἀδύνατον αὐταῖς ἰδεῖν, ἕως ἂν ὑποθέσεσι χρώμεναι ταύτας ἀκινήτους ἐῶσιν, &c.

245  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 533 D.

246  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 533 E.

247  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 534 B. ἦ καὶ διαλεκτικὸν καλεῖς τὸν λόγον ἕκαστου λαμβάνοντα τῆς οὐσίας;

248  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 534 C-E. ὥσπερ θριγκὸς τοῖς μαθήμασιν ἡ διαλεκτικὴ ἡμῖν ἐπάνω κεῖσθαι, &c.

The Synoptic view peculiar to the Dialectician.

Scale and duration of various studies for the Guardians, from youth upwards.

The preliminary sciences must be imparted to our Guardians during the earlier years of life, together with such bodily and mental training as may test their energy and perseverance of character.249 After the age of twenty, those who have distinguished themselves in the juvenile studies and gymnastics, must be placed in a select class of honour above the rest, and must be initiated in a synoptic view of the affinity pervading all the separate cognitions which have been imparted to them. They must also be introduced to the view of Real Essence and its nature. This is the test of aptitude for Dialectics: it is the synoptic view only, which constitutes the Dialectician.250

249  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 535-536 D.

250  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 536-537 C. καὶ μεγίστη πεῖρα διαλεκτικῆς φύσεως καὶ μή· ὁ μὲν γὰρ συνοπτικὸς διαλεκτικός, ὁ δὲ μή, οὔ.

In these new studies they will continue until thirty years of age: after which a farther selection must be made, of those who have most distinguished themselves. The men selected will be enrolled in a class of yet higher honour, and will be tested by dialectic cross-examination: so that we may discover who among them are competent to apprehend true, pure, and real Essence, renouncing all visual and sensible perceptions.251 It is important that such Dialectic exercises should be deferred until this advanced age — and not imparted, as they are among us at present, to immature youths: who abuse the license of interrogation, find all their homegrown opinions uncertain, and end by losing all positive convictions.252 Our students will remain under such dialectic tuition for five years, until they are thirty-five years of age: after which they must be brought again down into the cave, and constrained to acquire practical experience by undertaking military and administrative functions. In such employments they will spend fifteen years: during which they will undergo still farther scrutiny, to ascertain whether they can act up to their previous training, in spite of all provocations and temptations.253 Those who well sustain all these trials will become, at fifty years of age, the finished Elders or Chiefs of the Republic. They will pass their remaining years partly in philosophical contemplations, partly in application of philosophy to the regulation of the city. It is these Elders whose mental eye will have been so trained as to contemplate the Real Essence of Good, and to copy it as an archetype in all their ordinances and administration. They will be the Moderators of the city: but they will perform this function as a matter of duty and necessity — not being at all ambitious of it as a matter of honour.254

251  Plato, Republic, p. 537 D.

252  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 538-539.

253  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 539 D-E.

254  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 539-540.

All these studies, and this education, are common to females as well as males.

What has here been said about the male guardians and philosophers must be understood to apply equally to the female. We recognise no difference in this respect between the two sexes. Those females who have gone through the same education and have shown themselves capable of enduring the same trials as males, will participate, after fifty years of age, in the like philosophical contemplations, and in superintendence of the city.255

255  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 540 C.

First formation of the Platonic city — how brought about: difficult, but not impossible.

I have thus shown (Sokrates pursues) how the fundamental postulate for our city may be brought about. — That philosophers, a single man or a few, shall become possessed of supreme rule: being sufficiently exalted in character to despise the vulgar gratifications of ambition, and to carry out systematically the dictates of rectitude and justice. The postulate is indeed hard to be realised — yet not impossible.256 Such philosophical rulers, as a means for first introducing their system into a new city, will send all the inhabitants above ten years old away into the country, reserving only the children, whom they will train up in their own peculiar manners and principles. In this way the city, according to our scheme, will be first formed: when formed, it will itself be happy, and will confer inestimable benefit on the nation to which it belongs.257

256  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 540 E.

257  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 541 A.

Plato thus assumes his city, and the individual man forming a parallel to his city, to be perfectly well constituted. Reason, the higher element, exercises steady controul: the lower elements, Energy and Appetite, both acquiesce contentedly in her right to controul, and obey her orders — the former constantly and forwardly — the latter sometimes requiring constraint by the strength of the former.

The city thus formed will last long, but not for ever. After a certain time, it will begin to degenerate. Stages of its degeneracy.

But even under the best possible administration, the city, though it will last long, will not last for ever. Eternal continuance belongs only to Ens; every thing generated must one day or other be destroyed.258 The fatal period will at length arrive, when the breed of Guardians will degenerate. A series of changes for the worse will then commence, whereby the Platonic city will pass successively into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism. The first change will be, that the love of individual wealth and landed property will get possession of the Guardians: who, having in themselves the force of the city, will divide the territory among themselves, and reduce the other citizens to dependence and slavery.259 They will at the same time retain a part of their former mental training. They will continue their warlike habits and drill: they will be ashamed of their wealth, and will enjoy it only in secret: they will repudiate money-getting occupations as disgraceful. They will devote themselves to the contests of war and political ambition — the rational soul becoming subordinate to the energetic and courageous.260 The system which thus obtains footing will be analogous to the Spartan and Kretan, which have many admirers.261 The change in individual character will correspond to this change in the city. Reason partially losing its ascendancy, while energy and appetite both gain ground — an intermediate character is formed in which energy or courage predominates. We have the haughty, domineering, contentious, man.262

258  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 546 A. γενομένῳ παντὶ φθορά ἐστιν, &c.

259  Plato, Republic, vii. p. 547.

260  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 547-548 D. διαφανέστατον δ’ ἐν αὐτῇ ἐστὶν ἕν τι μόνον ὑπὸ τοῦ θυμοειδοῦς κρατοῦντος — φιλονείκιαι καὶ φιλοτίμιαι.

261  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 544 C.

262  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 549-550.

1. Timocracy and the timocratical individual. 2 Oligarchy, and the oligarchical individual.

Out of this timocracy, or timarchy, the city will next pass into an oligarchy, or government of wealth. The rich will here govern, to the exclusion of the poor. Reason, in the timocracy, was under the dominion of energy or courage: in the oligarchy, it will be under the dominion of appetite. The love of wealth will become predominant, instead of the love of force and aggrandisement. Now the love of wealth is distinctly opposed to the love of virtue: virtue and wealth are like weights in opposite scales.263 The oligarchical city will lose all its unity, and will consist of a few rich with a multitude of discontented poor ready to rise against them.264 The character of the individual citizen will undergo a modification similar to that of the collective city. He will be under the rule of appetite: his reason will be only invoked as the servant of appetite, to teach him how he may best enrich himself.265 He will be frugal, — will abstain from all unnecessary expenditure, even for generous and liberal purposes — and will keep up a fair show of honesty, from the fear of losing what he has already got.266

263  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 550 D-E-551 A. 550 E: προϊόντες εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν τοῦ χρηματίζεσθαι, ὅσῳ ἂν τοῦτο τιμιώτερον ἡγῶνται, τοσούτῳ ἀρετὴν ἀτιμοτέραν. ἢ οὐχ οὕτω πλούτου ἀρετὴ διέστηκεν, ὥσπερ ἐν πλάστιγγι ζυγοῦ κειμένου ἑκατέρου ἀεὶ τοὐναντίον ῥέποντε; Also p. 555 D.

264  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 552 D-E.

265  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 553 C.

266  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 554 D.

3. Democracy, and the democratical individual.

The oligarchical city will presently be transformed into a democracy, mainly through the abuse and exaggeration of its own ruling impulse — the love of wealth. The rulers, anxious to enrich themselves, rather encourage than check the extravagance of young spendthrifts, to whom they lend money at high interest, or whose property they buy on advantageous terms. In this manner there arises a class of energetic men, with ruined fortunes and habits of indulgence. Such are the adventurers who put themselves at the head of the discontented poor, and overthrow the oligarchy.267 The ruling few being expelled or put down, a democracy is established with equal franchise, and generally with officers chosen by lot.268

267  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 555-556.

268  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 557 A.

The characteristic of the democracy is equal freedom and open speech to all, with liberty to each man to shape his own life as he chooses. Hence there arises a great diversity of individual taste and character. Uniformity of pursuit or conduct is scarcely enforced: there is little restraint upon any one. A man offers himself for office whenever he chooses and not unless he chooses. He is at war or at peace, not by obedience to any public authority, but according to his own individual preference. If he be even condemned by a court of justice, he remains in the city careless of the sentence, which is never enforced against him. This democracy is an equal, agreeable, diversified, society, with little or no government: equal in regard to all — to the good, bad, and indifferent.269

269  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 557-558.

So too the democratical individual. The son of one among these frugal and money-getting oligarchs, departing from the habits and disregarding the advice of his father, contracts a taste for expensive and varied indulgences. He loses sight of the distinction between what is necessary, and what is not necessary, in respect to desires and pleasures. If he be of a quiet temperament, not quite out of the reach of advice, he keeps clear of ruinous excess in any one direction; but he gives himself up to a great diversity of successive occupations and amusements, passing from one to the other without discrimination of good from bad, necessary from unnecessary.270 His life and character thus becomes an agreeable, unconstrained, changeful, comprehensive, miscellany, like the society to which he belongs.271

270  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 560-561 B. εἰς ἴσον δή τι καταστήσας τὰς ἡδονὰς διάγει, τῇ παραπιπτούσῃ ἀεὶ ὥσπερ λαχούσῃ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχὴν παραδιδούς, ἕως ἂν πληρωθῇ, καὶ αὖθις ἄλλῃ, οὐδεμίαν ἀτιμάζων, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἴσου τρέφων.

271  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 561 D-E. παντοδαπόν τε καὶ πλείστων ἡθῶν μεστόν, καὶ τὸν καλόν τε καὶ ποικίλον, ὥσπερ ἐκείνην τὴν πόλιν, τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα εἶναι.

4. Passage from democracy to despotism. Character of the despotic city.

Democracy, like oligarchy, becomes ultimately subverted by an abuse of its own characteristic principle. Freedom is gradually pushed into extravagance and excess, while all other considerations are neglected. No obedience is practised: no authority is recognised. The son feels himself equal to his father, the disciple to his teacher, the metic to the citizen, the wife to her husband, the slave to his master. Nay, even horses, asses, and dogs, go free about, so that they run against you in the road, if you do not make way for them.272 The laws are not obeyed: every man is his own master.

272  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 562-563 C.

The subversion of such a democracy arises from the men who rise to be popular leaders in it: violent, ambitious, extravagant, men, who gain the favour of the people by distributing among them confiscations from the property of the rich. The rich, resisting these injustices, become enemies to the constitution: the people, in order to put them down, range themselves under the banners of the most energetic popular leader, who takes advantage of such a position to render himself a despot.273 He begins his rule by some acceptable measures, such as abolition of debts, and assignment of lands to the poorer citizens, until he has expelled or destroyed the parties opposed to him. He seeks pretences for foreign war, in order that the people may stand in need of a leader, and may be kept poor by the contributions necessary to sustain war. But presently he finds, or suspects, dissatisfaction among the more liberal spirits. He kills or banishes them as enemies: and to ensure the continuance of his rule, he is under the necessity of dispatching in like manner every citizen prominent either for magnanimity, intelligence, or wealth.274 Becoming thus odious to all the better citizens, he is obliged to seek support by enlisting a guard of mercenary foreigners and manumitted slaves. He cannot pay his guards, without plundering the temples, extorting perpetual contributions from the people, and grinding them down by severe oppression and suffering.275 Such is the government of the despot, which Euripides and other poets employ their genius in extolling.276

273  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 565-566.

274  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 567 B.

275  Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 568-569.

276  Plato, Republic, viii. p. 568 B.

Despotic individual corresponding to that city.

We have now to describe the despotic individual, the parallel of the despotised city. As the democratic individual arises from the son of an oligarchical citizen departing from the frugality of his father and contracting habits of costly indulgence: so the son of this democrat will contract desires still more immoderate and extravagant than his father, and will thus be put into training for the despotic character. He becomes intoxicated by insane appetites, which serve as seconds and auxiliaries to one despotic passion or mania, swaying his whole soul.277 To gratify such desires, he spends all his possessions, and then begins to borrow money wherever he can. That resource being exhausted, he procures additional funds by fraud or extortion; he cheats and ruins his father and mother; he resorts to plunder and violence. If such men are only a small minority, amidst citizens of better character, they live by committing crimes on the smaller scale. But if they are more numerous, they set up as a despot the most unprincipled and energetic of their number, and become his agents for the enslavement of their fellow-citizens.278 The despotic man passes his life always in the company of masters, or instruments, or flatterers: he knows neither freedom nor true friendship — nothing but the relation of master and slave. The despot is the worst and most unjust of mankind: the longer he continues despot, the worse he becomes.279

277  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 572-573 D. Ἔρως τύραννος ἔνδον οἰκῶν διακυβερνᾷ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἅπαντα. 574 E-575 A: τυραννευθεὶς ὑπὸ Ἔρωτος — Ἔρως μόναρχος, &c.

278  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 574-575.

279  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 575-576.

The city has thus passed by four stages, from best to worse. Question — How are Happiness and Misery apportioned among them?

We have thus gone through the four successive depravations which our perfect city will undergo — timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism. Step by step we have passed from the best to the worst — from one extreme to the other. As is the city, so is the individual citizen — good or bad: the despotic city is like the despotic individual, — and so about the rest. Now it remains to decide whether in each case happiness and misery is proportioned to good and evil: whether the best is the happiest, the worst the most miserable, — and so proportionally about the intermediate.280 On this point there is much difference of opinion.281

280  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 576 D.

281  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 576 C. τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς πολλὰ καὶ δοκεῖ.

Misery of the despotised city.

If we look at the condition of the despotised city, it plainly exhibits the extreme of misery; while our model city presents the extreme of happiness. Every one in the despotised city is miserable, according to universal admission, except the despot himself with his immediate favourites and guards. To be sure, in the eyes of superficial observers, the despots with these few favourites will appear perfectly happy and enviable. But if we penetrate beyond this false exterior show, and follow him into his interior, we shall find him too not less miserable than those over whom he tyrannises.282

282  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 577 A.

Supreme Misery of the despotising individual.

What is true of the despotised city, is true also of the despotising individual.283 The best parts of his mind are under subjection to the worst: the rational mind is trampled down by the appetitive mind, with its insane and unsatisfied cravings. He is full of perpetual perturbation, anxiety, and fear; grief when he fails, repentance even after he has succeeded. Speaking of his mind as a whole, he never does what he really wishes for the rational element, which alone can ensure satisfaction to the whole mind, and guide to the attainment of his real wishes, is enslaved by furious momentary impulses.284 The man of despotical mind is thus miserable; and most of all miserable, the more completely he succeeds in subjugating his fellow-citizens and becoming a despot in reality. Knowing himself to be hated by everyone, he lives in constant fear of enemies within as well as enemies without, against whom he can obtain support only by courting the vilest of men as partisans.285 Though greedy of all sorts of enjoyment, he cannot venture to leave his city, or visit any of the frequented public festivals. He lives indoors like a woman, envying those who can go abroad and enjoy these spectacles.286 He is in reality the poorest and most destitute of men, having the most vehement desires, which he can never satisfy.287 Such is the despot who, not being master even of himself, becomes master of others: in reality, the most wretched of men, though he may appear happy to superficial judges who look only at external show.288

283  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 577 C-D. τὴν ὁμοιότητα ἀναμιμνησκόμενος τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τοῦ ἀνδρός … εἰ οὖν ὅμοιος ἀνὴρ τῇ πόλει, οὐ καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῳ ἀνάγκη τὴν αὐτὴν τάξιν ἐνεῖναι; &c. Also 579 E.

284  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 577-578. Καὶ ἡ τυραννουμένη ἄρα ψυχὴ ἥκιστα ποιήσει ἃ ἂν βουλήθῃ, ὡς περὶ ὅλης εἰπεῖν ψυχῆς· ὑπὸ δὲ οἴστρου ἀεὶ ἑλκομένη βίᾳ ταραχῆς καὶ μεταμελείας μεστὴ ἔσται (557 E).

285  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 578-579.

286  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 579 C.

287  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 579 E.

288  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 579-580.

Conclusion — The Model city and the individual corresponding to it, are the happiest of all — That which is farthest removed from it, is the most miserable of all.

Thus then (concludes Sokrates) we may affirm with confidence, having reference to the five distinct cities above described — (1. The Model-City, regal or aristocratical. 2. Timocracy. 3. Oligarchy. 4. Democracy. 5. Despotism) — that the first of these is happy, and the last miserable: the three intermediate cities being more or less happy in the order which they occupy from the first to the last.

The Just Man is happy in and through his Justice, however he may be treated by others. The Unjust Man, miserable.

Each of these cities has its parallel in an individual citizen. The individual citizen corresponding to the first is happy — he who corresponds to the last is miserable: and so proportionally for the individual corresponding to the three intermediate cities. He is happy or miserable, in and through himself, or essentially; whether he be known to Gods and men or not — whatever may be the sentiment entertained of him by others.289

289  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 580 D. ἐάν τε λανθάνωσι τοιοῦτοι ὄντες ἐάν τε μὴ πάντας ἀνθρώπους τε καὶ θεούς.

There are two other lines of argument (continues Sokrates) establishing the same conclusion.

Other arguments proving the same conclusion — Pleasures of Intelligence are the best of all pleasures.

1. We have seen that both the collective city and the individual mind are distributed into three portions: Reason, Energy, Appetite. Each of these portions has its own peculiar pleasures and pains, desires and aversions, beginnings or principles of action: Love of Knowledge: Love of Honour: Love of Gain. If you question men in whom these three varieties of temper respectively preponderate, each of them will extol the pleasures of his own department above those belonging to the other two. The lover of wealth will declare the pleasures of acquisition and appetite to be far greater than those of honour or of knowledge: each of the other two will say the same for himself, and for the pleasures of his own department. Here then the question is opened, Which of the three is in the right? Which of the three varieties of pleasure and modes of life is the more honourable or base, the better or worse, the more pleasurable or painful?290 By what criterion, or by whose judgment, is this question to be decided? It must be decided by experience, intelligence and rational discourse.291 Now it is certain that the lover of knowledge, or the philosopher, has greater experience of all the three varieties of pleasure than is possessed by either of the other two men. He must in his younger days have tasted and tried the pleasures of both; but the other two have never tasted his.292 Moreover, each of the three acquires more or less of honour, if he succeeds in his own pursuits: accordingly the pleasures belonging to the love of honour are shared, and may be appreciated, by the philosopher; while the lover of honour as such, has no sense for the pleasures of philosophy. In the range of personal experience, therefore, the philosopher surpasses the other two: he surpasses them no less in exercised intelligence, and in rational discourse, which is his own principal instrument.293 If wealth and profit furnished the proper means of judgment, the money-lover would have been the best judge of the three: if honour and victory furnished the proper means, we should consult the lover of honour: but experience, intelligence, and rational discourse, have been shown to be the means — and therefore it is plain that the philosopher is a better authority than either of the other two. His verdict must be considered as final. He will assuredly tell us, that the pleasures belonging to the love of knowledge are the greatest: those belonging to the love of honour and power, the next: those belonging to the love of money and to appetite, the least.294

290  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 581.

291  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 582 A. ἐμπειρίᾳ τε καὶ φρονήσει καὶ λόγῳ.

292  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 582 B.

293  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 582 C-D. λόγοι δὲ τούτου μάλιστα ὄργανον.

294  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 582-583.

They are the only pleasures completely true and pure. Comparison of pleasure and pain with neutrality. Prevalent illusions.

2. The second argument, establishing the same conclusion, is as follows:— No pleasures, except those belonging to philosophy or the love of wisdom, are completely true and pure. All the other pleasures are mere shadowy outlines, looking like pleasure at a distance, but not really pleasures when you contemplate them closely.295 Pleasure and pain are two conditions opposite to each other. Between them both is another state, neither one nor the other, called neutrality or indifference. Now a man who has been sick and is convalescent, will tell you that nothing is more pleasurable than being in health, but that he did not know what the pleasure of it was, until he became sick. So too men in pain affirm that nothing is more pleasurable than relief from pain. When a man is grieving, it is exemption or indifference, not enjoyment, which he extols as the greatest pleasure. Again, when a man has been in a state of enjoyment, and the enjoyment ceases, this cessation is painful. We thus see that the intermediate state — cessation, neutrality, indifference — will be some times pain, sometimes pleasure, according to circumstances. Now that which is neither pleasure nor pain cannot possibly be both.296 Pleasure is a positive movement or mutation of the mind: so also is pain. Neutrality or indifference is a negative condition, intermediate between the two: no movement, but absence of movement: non-pain, non-pleasure. But non-pain is not really pleasure: non-pleasure is not really pain. When therefore neutrality or non-pain, succeeding immediately after pain, appears to be a pleasure — this is a mere appearance or illusion, not a reality. When neutrality or non-pleasure, succeeding immediately after pleasure, appears to be pain — this also is a mere appearance or illusion, not a reality. There is nothing sound or trustworthy in such appearances. Pleasure is not cessation of pain, but something essentially different: pain is not cessation of pleasure, but something essentially different.

295  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 583 B. οὐδὲ παναληθής ἐστιν ἑ τῶν ἄλλων ἡδονὴ πλὴν τῆς τοῦ φρονίμου, οὐδὲ καθαρά, ἀλλ’ ἐσκιαγραφημένη τις, ὡς ἐγὼ δοκῶ μοι τῶν σοφῶν τινὸς ἀκηκοέναι.

296  Plato, Republ. ix. pp. 583 E-584 A. Ὃ μεταξὺ ἄρα νῦν δὴ ἀμφοτέρων ἔφαμεν εἶναι, τὴν ἡσυχίαν, τοῦτό ποτε ἀμφότερα ἔσται, λύπη τε καὶ ἡδονή … Ἦ καὶ δυνατὸν τὸ μηδέτερα ὂν ἀμφότερα γίγνεσθαι; Οὔ μοι δοκεῖ. Καὶ μὴν τό γε ἡδὺ ἐν ψυχῇ γιγνόμενον καὶ τὸ λυπηρὸν κίνησίς τις ἀμφοτέρω ἔστον; ἢ οὔ; Ναί. Τὸ δὲ μήτε ἡδὺ μήτε λυπηρὸν οὐχὶ ἡσυχία μέντοι καὶ ἐν μέσῳ τούτων ἐφάνη ἄρτι; Ἐφάνη γάρ. Πῶς οὖν ὀρθῶς ἔστι τὸ μὴ ἀλγεῖν ἡδὺ ἡγεῖσθαι, ἢ τὸ μὴ χαίρειν ἀνιαρόν; Οὐδαμῶς. Οὐκ ἔστιν ἄρα τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ φαίνεται, παρὰ τὸ ἀλγεινὸν ἡδὺ καὶ παρὰ τὸ ἡδὺ ἀλγεινὸν τότε ἡ ἡσυχία, καὶ οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς τούτων τῶν φαντασμάτων πρὸς ἡδονῆς ἀλήθειαν, ἀλλὰ γοητεία τις.

Most men know nothing of true and pure pleasure. Simile of the Kosmos — Absolute height and depth.

Take, for example, the pleasures of smell, which are true and genuine pleasures, of great intensity: they spring up instantaneously without presupposing any anterior pain — they depart without leaving any subsequent pain.297 These are true and pure pleasures, radically different from cessation of pain: so also true and pure pains are different from cessation of pleasure. Most of the so-called pleasures, especially the more intense, which reach the mind through the body, are in reality not pleasures at all, but only cessations or reliefs from pain. The same may be said about the pleasures and pains of anticipation belonging to these so-called bodily pleasures.298 They may be represented by the following simile:— There is in nature a real Absolute Up and uppermost point — a real Absolute Down and lowest point — and a centre between them.299 A man borne from the lowest point to the centre will think himself moving upwards, and will be moving upwards relatively. If his course be stopped in the centre, he will think himself at the absolute summit — on looking to the point from which he came, and ignorant as he is of any thing higher. If he be forced to return from the centre to the point from whence he came, he will think himself moving downwards, and will be really moving downwards, absolutely as well as relatively. Such misapprehension arises from his not knowing the portion of the Kosmos above the centre — the true and absolute Up or summit. Now the case of pleasure and pain is analogous to this. Pain is the absolute lowest — Pleasure the absolute highest — non-pleasure, non-pain, the centre intermediate between them. But most men know nothing of the region above the centre, or the absolute highest — the region of true and pure pleasure: they know only the centre and what is below it, or the region of pain. When they fall from the centre to the point of pain, they conceive the situation truly, and they really are pained: but when they rise from the lowest point to the centre, they misconceive the change, and imagine themselves to be in a process of replenishment and acquisition of pleasure. They mistake the painless condition for pleasure, not knowing what true pleasure is: just as a man who has seen only black and not white, will fancy, if dun be shown to him, that he is looking on white.300

297  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 584 B.

298  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 584 C.

299  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 584 C. Νομίζεις τι ἐν τῇ φύσει εἶναι τὸ μὲν ἄνω, τὸ δὲ κάτω, τὸ δὲ μέσον; Ἔγωγε.

300  Plato, Republic, pp. 584 E-585 A. Οὐκοῦν ταῦτα πάσχοι ἂν πάντα διὰ τὸ μὴ ἔμπειρος εἶναι τοῦ ἀληθινῶς ἄνω τε ὄντος καὶ ἐν μέσῳ; … ὅταν μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ λυπηρὸν φέρωνται, ἀληθῆ τε οἴονται καὶ τῷ ὄντι λυποῦνται, ὅταν δὲ ἀπὸ λύπης ἐπὶ τὸ μεταξύ, σφόδρα μὲν οἴονται πρὸς πληρώσει τε καὶ ἡδονῇ γίγνεσθαι, ὥσπερ δὲ πρὸς μέλαν φαιὸν ἀποσκοποῦντες ἀπειρίᾳ λευκοῦ, καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἄλυπον οὕτω λύπην ἀφορῶντες ἀπειρίᾳ ἡδονῆς ἀπατῶνται;

Nourishment of the mind partakes more of real essence than nourishment of the body — Replenishment of the mind imparts fuller pleasure than replenishment of the body.

Hunger and thirst are states of emptiness in the body: ignorance and folly are states of emptiness in the mind. A hungry man in eating or drinking obtains replenishment: an ignorant man becoming instructed obtains replenishment also. Now replenishment derived from that which exists more fully and perfectly is truer and more real than replenishment from that which exists less fully and perfectly.301 Let us then compare the food which serves for replenishment of the body, with that which serves for replenishment of the mind. Which of the two is most existent? Which of the two partakes most of pure essence? Meat and drink — or true opinions, knowledge, intelligence, and virtue? Which of the two exists most perfectly? That which embraces the true, eternal, and unchangeable — and which is itself of similar nature? Or that which embraces the mortal, the transient, and the ever variable — being itself of kindred nature? Assuredly the former. It is clear that what is necessary for the sustenance of the body partakes less of truth and real essence, than what is necessary for the sustenance of the mind. The mind is replenished with nourishment more real and essential: the body with nourishment less so: the mind itself is also more real and essential than the body. The mind therefore is more, and more thoroughly, replenished than the body. Accordingly, if pleasure consists in being replenished with what suits its peculiar nature, the mind will enjoy more pleasure and truer pleasure than the body.302 Those who are destitute of intelligence and virtue, passing their lives in sensual pursuits, have never tasted any pure or lasting pleasure, nor ever carried their looks upwards to the higher region in which alone it resides. Their pleasures, though seeming intense, and raising vehement desires in their uninstructed minds, are yet only phantoms deriving a semblance of pleasure from contrast with pains:303 they are like the phantom of Helen, for which (as Stesichorus says) the Greeks and Trojans fought so many battles, knowing nothing about the true Helen, who was never in Troy.

301  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 585 B. Πλήρωσις δὲ ἀληθεστέρα τοῦ ἧττον ἢ τοῦ μᾶλλον ὄντος; Δῆλον ὅτι τοῦ μᾶλλον. Πότερα οὖν ἡγεῖ τὰ γένη μᾶλλον καθαρᾶς οὐσίας μετέχειν, τὰ οἷον σίτου καὶ ποτοῦ καὶ ὄψου καὶ ξυμπάσης τροφῆς, ἢ τὸ δόξης τε ἀληθοῦς εἶδος καὶ ἐπιστήμης καὶ νοῦ καὶ ξυλλήβδην ξυμπάσης ἀρετῆς;

302  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 585 E.

303  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 586.

Comparative worthlessness of the pleasures of Appetite and Ambition, when measured against those of Intelligence.

The pleasures belonging to the Love of Honour (Energy or Passion) are no better than those belonging to the Love of Money (Appetite). In so far as the desires belonging to both these departments of mind are under the controul of the third or best department (Love of Wisdom, or Reason), the nearest approach to true pleasure, which it is in the nature of either of them to bestow, will be realised. But in so far as either of them throws off the controul of Reason, it will neither obtain its own truest pleasures, nor allow the other departments of mind to obtain theirs.304 The desires connected with love, and with despotic power, stand out more than the others, as recusant to Reason. Law, and Regulation. The kingly and moderate desires are most obedient to this authority. The lover and the despot, therefore, will enjoy the least pleasure: the kindly-minded man will enjoy the most. Of the three sorts of pleasure, one true and legitimate, two bastard, the despot goes most away from the legitimate, and to the farthest limit of the bastard. His condition is the most miserable, that of the kingly-minded man is the happiest: between the two come the oligarchical and the democratical man. The difference between the two extremes is as 1: 729.305

304  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 586-587.

305  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 587 E.

The Just Man will be happy from his justice — He will look only to the good order of his own mind — He will stand aloof from public affairs, in cities as now constituted.

I have thus refuted (continues Sokrates) the case of those who contend — That the unjust man is a gainer by his injustice, provided he could carry it on successfully, and with the reputation of being just. I have shown that injustice is the greatest possible mischief, intrinsically and in itself, apart from consequences and apart from public reputation: inasmuch as it enslaves the better part of the mind to the worse. Justice, on the other hand, is the greatest possible good, intrinsically and in itself, apart from consequences and reputation, because it keeps the worse parts of the mind under due controul and subordination to the better.306 Vice and infirmity of every kind is pernicious, because it puts the best parts of the mind under subjection to the worst.307 No success in the acquisition of wealth, aggrandisement, or any other undue object, can compensate a man for the internal disorder which he introduces into his own mind by becoming unjust. A well-ordered mind, just and temperate, with the better part governing the worse, is the first of all objects: greater even than a healthy, strong, and beautiful body.308 To put his mind into this condition, and to acquire all the knowledge thereunto conducing, will be the purpose of a wise man’s life. Even in the management of his body, he will look not so much to the health and strength of his body, as to the harmony and fit regulation of his mind. In the acquisition of money, he will keep the same end in view: he will not be tempted by the admiration and envy of people around him to seek great wealth, which will disturb the mental polity within him:309 he will, on the other hand, avoid depressing poverty, which might produce the same effect. He will take as little part as possible in public life, and will aspire to no political honours, in cities as at present constituted — nor in any other than the model-city which we have described.310

306  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 588-589.

307  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 590 B-C.

308  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 591 B.

309  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 591 D-E. καὶ τὸν ὄγκον τοῦ πλήθους οὐκ, ἐκπληττόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ τῶν πολλῶν μακαρισμοῦ, ἄπειρον αὐξήσει, ἀπέραντα κακὰ ἔχων … Ἀλλ’ ἀποβλέπων γε, πρὸς τὴν ἐν αὑτῷ πολιτείαν, καὶ φυλάττων μή τι παρακινῇ αὐτοῦ τῶν ἐκεῖ διὰ πλῆθος οὐσίας ἢ δι’ ὀλιγότητα, οὕτω κυβερνῶν προσθήσει καὶ ἀναλώσει τῆς οὐσίας, καθ’ ὅσον ἂν οἷός τ’ ᾖ.

310  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 592.

Tenth Book — Censure of the poets is renewed — Mischiefs of imitation generally, as deceptive — Imitation from imitation.

The tenth and last book of the Republic commences with an argument of considerable length, repeating and confirming by farther reasons the sentence of expulsion which Plato had already pronounced against the poets in his second and third books.311 The Platonic Sokrates here not only animadverts upon poetry, but extends his disapprobation to other imitative arts, such as painting. He attacks the process of imitation generally, as false and deceptive; pleasing to ignorant people, but perverting their minds by phantasms which they mistake for realities. The work of the imitator is not merely not reality, but is removed from it by two degrees. What is real is the Form or Idea: the one conceived object denoted by each appellative name common to many particulars. There is one Form or Idea, and only one, known by the name of Bed; another by the name of Table.312 When the carpenter constructs a bed or a table, he fixes his contemplation on this Form or Idea, and tries to copy it. What he constructs, however, is not the true, real, existent, table, which alone exists in nature, and may be presumed to be made by the Gods313 — but a something like the real existent table: not true Ens, but only quasi-Ens:314 dim and indistinct, as compared with the truth, and standing far off from the truth. Next to the carpenter comes the painter, who copies not the real existent table, but the copy of that table made by the carpenter. The painter fixes his contemplation upon it, not as it really exists, but simply as it appears: he copies an appearance or phantasm, not a reality. Thus the table will have a different appearance, according as you look at it from near or far — from one side or the other: yet in reality it never differs from itself. It is one of these appearances that the painter copies, not the reality itself. He can in like manner paint any thing and every thing, since he hardly touches any thing at all — and nothing whatever except in appearance. He can paint all sorts of craftsmen and their works — carpenters, shoemakers, &c. without knowledge of any one of their arts.315

311  Plato, Republic, x. p. 607 B. The language here used by Plato seems to imply that his opinions adverse to poetry had been attacked and required defence.

312  Plato, Republic, x. p. 596 A-B. Βούλει οὖν ἔνθενδε ἀρξώμεθα ἐπισκοπούντες, ἐκ τῆς εἰωθυίας μεθόδου; εἶδος γάρ πού τι ἓν ἕκαστον εἰώθαμεν τίθεσθαι περὶ ἕκαστα τὰ πολλά, οἷς ταὐτὸν ὄνομα ἐπιφέρομεν … θῶμεν δὴ καὶ νῦν ὅτι βούλει τῶν πολλῶν· οἷον, εἰ θέλεις πολλαί πού εἰσι κλῖναι καὶ τράπεζαι … Ἀλλ’ ἰδέαι γέ που περὶ ταῦτα τὰ σκεύη δύο, μία μὲν κλίνης, μία δὲ τραπέζης.

313  Plato, Republic, x. p. 597 B-D. 597 B: μία μὲν ἡ ἐν τῇ φύσει οὖσα, ἣν φαῖμεν ἄν, ὡς ἐγῷμαι, θεὸν ἐργάσασθαι.

314  Plato, Republic, x. p. 597 A. οὐκ ἂν τὸ ὂν ποιοῖ, ἀλλά τι τοιοῦτον οἷον τὸ ὄν, ὂν δὲ οὔ.

315  Plato, Republic, x. p. 598 B-C.

Censure of Homer — He is falsely extolled as educator of the Hellenic world. He and other poets only deceive their hearers.

The like is true also of the poets. Homer and the tragedians give us talk and affirmations about everything: government, legislation, war, medicine, husbandry, the character and proceedings of the Gods, the habits and training of men, &c. Some persons even extol Homer as the great educator of the Hellenic world, whose poems we ought to learn by heart as guides for education and administration.316 But Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets, had no real knowledge of the multifarious matters which they profess to describe. These poets know nothing except about appearances, and will describe only appearances, to the satisfaction of the ignorant multitude.317 The representations of the painter, reproducing only the appearances to sense, will be constantly fallacious and deceptive, requiring to be corrected by measuring, weighing, counting — which are processes belonging to Reason.318 The lower and the higher parts of the mind are here at variance; and the painter addresses himself to the lower, supplying falsehood as if it were truth. The painter does this through the eye, the poet through the ear.319

316  Plato, Republic, p. 606 E.

317  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 600-601 C. 601 B: τοῦ μὲν ὄντος οὐδὲν ἐπαΐει, τοῦ δὲ φαινομένου. 602 B: οἷον φαίνεται καλὸν εἶναι τοῖς πολλοῖς τε καὶ μηδὲν εἰδόσι, τοῦτο μιμήσεται.

318  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 602-603.

319  Plato, Republic, x. p. 603 B.

The poet chiefly appeals to emotions — Mischiefs of such eloquent appeals, as disturbing the rational government of the mind.

In the various acts and situations of life a man is full of contradictions. He is swayed by manifold impulses, often directly contradicting each other. Hence we have affirmed that there are in his mind two distinct principles, one contradicting the other: the emotional and the rational.320 When a man suffers misfortune, emotion prompts him to indulge in extreme grief, and to abandon himself like a child to the momentary tide. Reason, on the contrary, exhorts him to resist, and to exert himself immediately in counsel to rectify or alleviate what has happened, adapting his conduct as well as he can to the actual throw of the dice which has befallen him.321 Now it is these vehement bursts of emotion which lend themselves most effectively to the genius of the poet, and which he must work up to please the multitude in the theatre: the state of rational self-command can hardly be described so as to touch their feelings. We see thus that the poet, like the painter, addresses himself to the lower department of the mind, exalting the emotional into preponderance over the rational — the foolish over the wise — the false over the true.322 He introduces bad government into the mind, giving to pleasure and pain the sceptre over reason. Hence we cannot tolerate the poet, in spite of all his sweets and captivations. We can only permit him to compose hymns for the Gods and encomiums for good men.323

320  Plato, Republic, x. p. 603 D. μυρίων τοιούτων ἐναντιωμάτων ἅμα γιγνομένων ἡ ψυχὴ γέμει ἡμῶν … 604 B: ἐναντίας δὲ ἀγωγῆς γιγνομένης ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ περὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἅμα δύο τινέ φαμεν ἐν αὐτῷ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι.

321  Plato, Republic, x. p. 604 C. Τῷ βουλεύεσθαι περὶ τὸ γεγονὸς καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν πτώσει κύβων πρὸς τὰ πεπτωκότα τίθεσθαι τὰ αὐτοῦ πράγματα, ὅπῃ ὁ λόγος αἱρεῖ βέλτιστ’ ἂν ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ προσπταίσαντας, καθάπερ παῖδας, ἐχομένους τοῦ πληγέντος ἐν τῷ βοᾶν διατρίβειν, &c.

322  Plato, Republic, x. p. 605.

323  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 605-606-607. 605 B: τὸν μιμητικὸν ποιητὴν φήσομεν κακὴν πολιτείαν ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστου τῇ ψυχῇ ἐμποιεῖν, τῷ ἀνοήτῳ αὐτής χαριζόμενον … 607 A: εἰ δὲ τὴν ἡδυσμένην μοῦσαν παραδέξει ἐν μέλεσιν ἢ ἔπεσιν, ἡδονή σοι καὶ λύπη βασιλεύσετον ἀντὶ νόμου τε καὶ τοῦ κοινῇ ἀεὶ δόξαντος εἶναι βελτίστου λόγου.

Ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry — Plato fights for philosophy, though his feelings are strongly enlisted for poetry.

This quarrel between philosophy and poetry (continues the Platonic Sokrates) is of ancient date.324 I myself am very sensible to the charms of poetry, especially that of Homer. I should be delighted if a case could be made out to justify me in admitting it into our city. But I cannot betray the cause of what seems to me truth. We must resist our sympathies and preferences, when they are incompatible with the right government of the mind.325

324  Plato, Republic, x. p. 607 B. παλαιά τις διαφορὰ φιλοσοφίᾳ τε καὶ ποιητικῇ.

325  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 607-608.

Immortality of the soul affirmed and sustained by argument — Total number of souls always the same.

To maintain the right government and good condition of the soul or mind, is the first of all considerations: and will be seen yet farther to be such, when we consider that it is immortal and imperishable. Of this Plato proceeds to give a proof,326 concluding with a mythical sketch of the destiny of the soul after death. The soul being immortal (he says), the total number of souls is and always has been the same — neither increasing nor diminishing.327

326  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 609-610.

327  Plato, Republic, x. p. 611 A.

Recapitulation — The Just Man will be happy, both from his justice and from its consequences, both here and hereafter.

I have proved (the Platonic Sokrates concludes) in the preceding discourse, that Justice is better, in itself and intrinsically, than Injustice, quite apart from consequences in the way of reward and honour; that a man for the sake of his own happiness, ought to be just, whatever may be thought of him by Gods or men — even though he possessed the magic ring of Gyges. Having proved this, and having made out the intrinsic superiority of justice to injustice, we may now take in the natural consequences and collateral bearings of both. We have hitherto reasoned upon the hypothesis that the just man was mistaken for unjust, and treated accordingly — that the unjust man found means to pass himself off for just, and to attract to himself the esteem and the rewards of justice. But this hypothesis concedes too much, and we must now take back the concession. The just man will be happier than the unjust, not simply from the intrinsic working of justice on his own mind, but also from the exterior consequences of justice.328 He will be favoured and rewarded both by Gods and men. Though he may be in poverty, sickness, or any other apparent state of evil, he may be assured that the Gods will compensate him for it by happiness either in life or after death.329 And men too, though they may for a time be mistaken about the just and the unjust character, will at last come to a right estimation of both. The just man will finally receive honour, reward, and power, from his fellow-citizens: the unjust man will be finally degraded and punished by them.330 And after death, the reward of the just man, as well as the punishment of the unjust, will be far greater than even during life.

328  Plato, Republic, x. p. 612 B-C.

329  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 612-613.

330  Plato, Republic, x. p. 613 C-D.

This latter position is illustrated at some length by the mythe with which the Republic concludes, describing the realm of Hades, with the posthumous condition and treatment of the departed souls.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON ITS MAIN THESIS.

Summary of the preceding chapter.

The preceding Chapter has described, in concise abstract, that splendid monument of Plato’s genius, which passes under the name of the Πολιτεία or Republic. It is undoubtedly the grandest of all his compositions; including in itself all his different points of excellence. In the first Book, we have a subtle specimen of negative Dialectic, — of the Sokratic cross-examination or Elenchus. In the second Book, we find two examples of continuous or Ciceronian pleading (like that ascribed to Protagoras in the dialogue called by his name), which are surpassed by nothing in ancient literature, for acuteness and ability in the statement of a case. Next, we are introduced to Plato’s most sublime effort of constructive ingenuity, in putting together both the individual man and the collective City: together with more information (imperfect as it is even here) about his Dialectic or Philosophy, than any other dialogue furnishes. The ninth Book exhibits his attempts to make good his own thesis against the case set forth in his own antecedent counter-pleadings. The last Book concludes with a highly poetical mythe, embodying a Νεκυία shaped after his own fancy, — and the outline of cosmical agencies afterwards developed, though with many differences, in the Timæus. The brilliancy of the Republic will appear all the more conspicuous, when we come to compare it with Plato’s two posterior compositions: with the Pythagorean mysticism and theology of the Timæus — or with the severe and dictatorial solemnity of the Treatise De Legibus.

Title of the Republic, of ancient date, but only a partial indication of its contents.

The title borne by this dialogue — the Republic or Polity — whether affixed by Plato himself or not, dates at least from his immediate disciples, Aristotle among them.1 This title hardly presents a clear idea either of its proclaimed purpose or of its total contents.

1  See Schleiermacher, Einl. zum Staat, p. 63 seq.; Stallbaum, Proleg. p. lviii. seq.

The larger portion of the treatise is doubtless employed in expounding the generation of a commonwealth generally: from whence the author passes insensibly to the delineation of a Model-Commonwealth — enumerating the conditions of aptitude for its governors and guardian-soldiers, estimating the obstacles which prevent it from appearing in the full type of goodness — and pointing out the steps whereby, even if fully realised, it is likely to be brought to perversion and degeneracy. Nevertheless the avowed purpose of the treatise is, not to depict the ideal of a commonwealth, but to solve the questions, What is Justice? What is Injustice? Does Justice, in itself and by its own intrinsic working, make the just man happy, apart from all consequences, even though he is not known to be just, and is even treated as unjust, either by Gods or men? Does Injustice, under the like hypothesis, (i.e. leaving out all consideration of consequences either from Gods or from men), make the unjust man miserable? The reasonings respecting the best polity, are means to this end — intermediate steps to the settlement of this problem. We must recollect that Plato insists strongly on the parallelism between the individual and the state: he talks of “the polity” or Republic in each man’s mind, as of that in the entire city.2

2  Plato, Repub. ix. p. 591 E. ἀποβλέπων πρὸς τὴν ἐν αὑτῷ πολιτείαν. x. p. 608 B: περὶ τῆς ἐν αὑτῷ πολιτείας δεδιότι, &c.

Parallelism between the Commonwealth and the Individual.

The Republic, or Commonwealth, is introduced by Plato as being the individual man “writ large,” and therefore more clearly discernible and legible to an observer.3 To illustrate the individual man, he begins by describing (to use Hobbes’s language) the great Leviathan called a “Commonwealth or State, in Latin Civitas, which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended”.4 He pursues in much detail this parallel between the individual and the commonwealth, as well as between the component parts and forces of the one, and those of the other. The perfection of the commonwealth (he represents) consists in its being One:5 an integer or unit, of which the constituent individuals are merely functions, each having only a fractional, dependent, relative existence. As the commonwealth is an individual on a large scale, so the individual is a commonwealth on a small scale; in which the constituent fractions, Reason, — Energy or Courage, — and many-headed Appetite, — act each for itself and oppose each other. It is the tendency of Plato’s imagination to bestow vivid reality on abstractions, and to reason upon metaphorical analogy as if it were close parallelism. His language exaggerates both the unity of the commonwealth, and the partibility of the individual, in illustrating the one by comparison with the other. The commonwealth is treated as capable of happiness or misery as an entire Person, apart from its component individuals:6 while on the other hand, Reason, Energy, Appetite, are described as distinct and conflicting Persons, packed up in the same wrapper and therefore looking like One from the outside, yet really distinct, each acting and suffering by and for itself: like the charioteer and his two horses, which form the conspicuous metaphor in the Phædrus.7 We are thus told, that though the man is apparently One, he is in reality Many or multipartite: though the perfect Commonwealth is apparently Many, it is in reality One.

3  Plato, Repub. ii. p. 368 D.

“New presbyter is but old priest writ large.” — (Milton.)

4  This is the language of Hobbes. Preface to the Leviathan. In the same treatise (Part ii. ch. 17, pp. 157-158, Molesworth’s edition) Hobbes says:— “The only way to erect such a common power as may be able to defend men from the invasion of foreigners and the injury of one another, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices to one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person. This is more than consent or concord: it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man. This done, the multitude so united in one person, is called a Commonwealth, in Latin Civitas. This is the generation of that great Leviathan,” &c.

5  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 423.

6  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 420-421.

7  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 588, x. p. 604, iv. pp. 436-441. ix. p. 588 E: ὥστε τῷ μὴ δυναμένῳ τὰ ἐντὸς ὁρᾷν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἔξω μόνον ἔλυτρον ὁρῶντι, ἓν ζῶον φαίνεσθαι, ἄνθρωπον.

Each of them a whole, composed of parts distinct in function and unequal in merit.

Of the parts composing a man, as well as of the parts composing a commonwealth, some are better, others worse. A few are good and excellent; the greater number are low and bad; while there are intermediate gradations between the two. The perfection of a commonwealth, and the perfection of an individual man, is attained when each part performs its own appropriate function and no more, — not interfering with the rest. In the commonwealth there are a small number of wise Elders or philosophers, whose appropriate function it is to look out for the good or happiness of the whole; and to controul the ordinary commonplace multitude, with a view to that end. Each of the multitude has his own special duty or aptitude, to which he confines himself, and which he executes in subordination to the wise or governing Few. And to ensure such subordination, there are an intermediate number of trained, or disciplined Guardians; who employ their force under the orders of the ruling Few, to controul the multitude within, as well as to repel enemies without. So too in the perfect man. Reason is the small but excellent organ whose appropriate function is, to controul the multitude of desires and to watch over the good of the whole: the function of Energy or Courage is, while itself obeying the Reason, to assist Reason in maintaining this controul over the Desires: the function of each several desire is to obey, pursuing its own special end in due harmony with the rest.

End proposed by Plato. Happiness of the Commonwealth. Happiness of the individual. Conditions of happiness.

The End to be accomplished, and with reference to which Plato tests the perfection of the means, is, the happiness of the entire commonwealth, — the happiness of the entire individual man. In order to be happy, a commonwealth or an individual man must be at once wise, brave, temperate, just. There is however this difference between the four qualities. Though all four are essential, yet wisdom and bravery belong only to separate fractions of the commonwealth and separate fractions of the individual: while justice and temperance belong equally to all the fractions of the commonwealth and all the fractions of the individual. In the perfect commonwealth, Wisdom or Reason is found only in the One or Few Ruling Elders:— Energy or Courage only in the Soldiers or Guardians: but Elders, Guardians, and the working multitude, alike exhibit Justice and Temperance. All are just, inasmuch as each performs his appropriate business: all are temperate, inasmuch as all agree in recognising what is the appropriate business of each fraction — that of the Elders is, to rule — that of the others is, to obey. So too the individual: he is wise only in his Reason, brave only in his Energy or Courage: but he is just and temperate in his Reason, Courage, and Appetites alike — each of these Fractions acting in its own sphere under proper relations to the rest. In fact, according to the definitions given by Plato in the Republic, justice and temperance are scarce at all distinguishable from each other — and must at any rate be inseparable.

Peculiar view of Justice taken by Plato.

Now in regard to the definition here given by Plato of Justice, which is the avowed object of his Treatise, we may first remark that it is altogether peculiar to Plato; and that if we reason about Justice in the Platonic sense, we must take care not to affirm of it predicates which might be true in a more usual acceptation of the word. Next, that even adopting Plato’s own meaning of Justice, it does not answer the purpose for which he produces it — viz.: to provide reply to the objections, and solution for the difficulties, which he had himself placed in the mouths of Glaukon and Adeimantus.

Pleadings of Glaukon and Adeimantus.

These two speakers (in the second Book) have advanced the position (which they affirm to be held by every one, past and present) — That justice is a good thing or a cause of happiness to the just agent — not in itself or separately, since the performance of just acts is more or less onerous and sometimes painful, presenting itself in the aspect of an obligation, but — because of its consequences, as being indispensable to procure for him some ulterior good, such as esteem and just treatment from others. Sokrates on the other hand declares justice to be good, or a cause of happiness, to the just agent, most of all in itself — but also, additionally, in its consequences: and injustice to be bad, or a cause of misery to the unjust agent, on both grounds also.

Suppose (we have seen it urged by Glaukon and Adeimantus) that a man is just, but is mis-esteemed by the society among whom he lives, and believed to be unjust. He will certainly be hated and ill-used by others, and may be ill-used to the greatest possible extent — impoverishment, scourging, torture, crucifixion. Again, suppose a man to be unjust, but to be in like manner misconceived, and treated as if he were just. He will receive from others golden opinions, just dealing, and goodwill, producing to him comfortable consequences: and he will obtain, besides, the profits of injustice. Evidently, under these supposed circumstances, the just man will be miserable, in spite of his justice: the unjust man will, to say the least, be the happier of the two.

Moreover (so argues Glaukon), all fathers exhort their sons to be just, and forbid them to be unjust, admitting that justice is a troublesome obligation, but insisting upon it as indispensable to avert evil consequences and procure good. So also poets and teachers. All of them assume that justice is not inviting for itself, but only by reason of its consequences: and that injustice is in itself easy and inviting, were it not for mischievous consequences and penalties more than countervailing the temptation. All of them either anticipate, or seek to provide, penalties to be inflicted in case the agent commits injustice, and not to be inflicted if he continues just: so that the treatment which he receives afterwards shall be favourable, or severe, conditional upon his own conduct. Such treatment may emanate either from Gods or from men: but in either case, it is assumed that the agent shall be known, or shall seem, to be what he really is: that the unjust agent shall seem, or be known, to be unjust — and that the just shall seem also to be what he is.

The arguments which they enforce were not invented by the Sophists, but were the received views anterior to Plato.

It is against this doctrine that the Platonic Sokrates in the Republic professes to contend. To refute it, he sets forth his own explanation, wherein justice consists. How far, or with what qualifications, the Sophists inculcated the doctrine (as various commentators tell us) we do not know. But Plato himself informs us that it was current and received in society, before Protagoras and Prodikus were born: taught by parents to their children, and by poets in their compositions generally circulated.8 Moreover, Sokrates himself (in the Platonic Apology) recommends virtue on the ground of its remunerative consequences to the agent in the shape of wealth and other good things.9 Again, the Xenophontic Sokrates, as well as Xenophon himself, agree in the same general doctrine: presenting virtue as laborious and troublesome in itself, but as being fully requited by its remunerative consequences in the form of esteem and honour, to the attainment of which it is indispensable. In the memorable Choice of Heraklês, that youth is represented as choosing a life of toil and painful self-denial, crowned ultimately by the attainment of honourable and beneficial results — in preference to a life of easy and inactive enjoyment.10

8  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 363-364.

9  Plato, Apolog. Sokrat. p. 30 B.

λέγων ὅτι οὐκ ἐκ χρημάτων ἀρετὴ γίγνεται, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρετῆς χρήματα καὶ τἄλλα ἀγαθὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἅπαντα καὶ ἰδία καὶ δημοσίᾳ.

Xenophon in the Cyropædia puts the following language into the mouth of the hero Cyrus, in addressing his officers (Cyrop. i. 5, 9). Καίτοι ἔγωγε οἶμαι, οὐδεμίαν ἀρετὴν ἀσκεῖσθαι ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων, ὡς μηδὲν πλέον ἔχωσιν οἱ ἐσθλοὶ γενόμενοι τῶν πονηρῶν· ἀλλ’ οἵ τε τῶν παραυτίκα ἡδονῶν ἀπεχόμενοι, οὔχ ἵνα μηδέποτε εὐφρανθῶσι, τοῦτο πράττουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς διὰ ταύτην τὴν ἐγκράτειαν πολλαπλάσια εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον εὐφρανούμενοι, οὕτω παρασκευάζονται, &c.

The love of praise is represented as the prominent motive of Cyrus to the practice of virtue (i. 5, 12, i. 2, 1).

Compare also Xenophon, Cyropæd. ii. 3, 5-15, vii. 5, 82, and Xenophon, Economic. xiv. 5-9; Xenophon, De Venatione, xii. 15-19.

10  Xenophon, Memorab. ii. 1, 19-20, &c. We read in the ‘Works and Days’ of Hesiod, 287:—

Τὴν μέν τοι κακότητα καὶ ἰλαδὸν ἔστιν ἐλέσθαι

Ῥηϊδίως· λείη μὲν ὁδός, μάλα δ’ ἐγγύθι ναίει.

Τῆς δ’ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν

Ἀθάνατοι· μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἶμος ἐπ’ αὐτήν,

Καὶ τρῆχυς τοπρῶτον· ἐπὴν δ’ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηαι,

Ῥηϊδίη δ’ ἠπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ ἐοῦσα.

It is remarkable that while the Xenophontic Sokrates cites these verses from Hesiod as illustrating and enforcing the drift of his exhortation, the Platonic Sokrates cites them as misleading, and as a specimen of the hurtful errors instilled by the poets (Republic, ii. p. 364 D).

We see thus that the doctrine which the Platonic Sokrates impugns in the Republic, is countenanced elsewhere by Sokratic authority. It is, in my judgment, more true than that which he opposes to it. The exhortations and orders of parents to their children, which he condemns — were founded upon views of fact and reality more correct than those which the Sokrates of the Republic would substitute in place of them.

Argument of Sokrates to refute them. Sentiments in which it originates. Panegyric on Justice.

Let us note the sentiment in which Plato’s creed here originates. He desires, above every thing, to stand forward as the champion and panegyrist of justice — as the enemy and denouncer of injustice. To praise justice, not in itself, but for its consequences — and to blame injustice in like manner — appears to him disparaging and insulting to justice.11 He is not satisfied with showing that the just man benefits others by his justice, and that the unjust man hurts others by his injustice: he admits nothing into his calculation, except happiness or misery to the agent himself: and happiness, moreover, inherent in the process of just behaviour — misery inherent in the process of unjust behaviour — whatever be the treatment which the agent may receive from either Gods or men. Justice per se (affirms Plato) is the cause of happiness to the just agent, absolutely and unconditionally: injustice, in like manner, of misery to the unjust — quand même — whatever the consequences may be either from men or Gods. This is the extreme strain of panegyric suggested by Plato’s feeling, and announced as a conclusion substantiated by his reasons. Nothing more thoroughgoing can be advanced in eulogy of justice. “Neither the eastern star nor the western star is so admirable” — to borrow a phrase from Aristotle.12

11  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 368 B-C. δέδοικα γὰρ μὴ οὐδ’ ὅσιον ᾖ παραγενόμενον δικαιοσύνῃ κακηγορουμένῃ ἀπαγορεύειν καὶ μὴ βοηθεῖν, &c.

12  Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. v. 3 (1), 1129, b. 28. οὔθ’ ἕσπερος οὔθ’ ἑῷος οὕτω θαυμαστός.

Plato is here the first proclaimer of the doctrine afterwards so much insisted on by the Stoics — the all-sufficiency of virtue to the happiness of the virtuous agent, whatever may be his fate in other respects — without requiring any farther conditions or adjuncts. It will be seen that Plato maintains this thesis with reference to the terms justice and its opposite injustice; sometimes (though not often) using the general term virtue or wisdom, which was the ordinary term with the Stoics afterwards.

Different senses of justice — wider and narrower sense.

The ambiguous meaning of the word justice is known to Plato himself (as it is also to Aristotle). One professed purpose of the dialogue called the Republic is to remove such ambiguity. Apart from the many other differences of meaning (arising from dissentient sentiments of different men and different ages), there is one duplicity of meaning which Aristotle particularly dwells upon.13 In the stricter and narrower sense, justice comprehends only those obligations which each individual agent owes to others, and for the omission of which he becomes punishable as unjust — though the performance of them, under ordinary circumstances, carries little positive merit: in another and a larger sense, justice comprehends these and a great deal more, becoming co-extensive with wise, virtuous, and meritorious character generally. The narrower sense is that which is in more common use; and it is that which Plato assumes provisionally when he puts forward the case of opponents in the speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus. But when he comes to set forth his own explanation, and to draw up his own case, we see that he uses the term justice in its larger sense, as the condition of a mind perfectly well-balanced and well-regulated: as if a man could not be just, without being at the same time wise, courageous, and temperate. The just man described in the counter-pleadings of Glaukon and Adeimantus, would be a person like the Athenian Aristeides: the unjust man whom they contrast with him, would be one who maltreats, plunders, or deceives others, or usurps power over them. But the just man, when Sokrates replies to them and unfolds his own thesis, is made to include a great deal more: he is a person in whose mind each of the three constituent elements is in proper relation of controul or obedience to the others, so that the whole mind is perfect: a person whose Reason, being illuminated by contemplation of the Universals or self-existent Ideas of Goodness, Justice, Virtue, has become qualified to exercise controul over the two inferior elements: one of which (Energy) is its willing subordinate and auxiliary — while the lowest of the three (Appetite) is kept in regulation by the joint action of the two. The just man, so described, becomes identical with the true philosopher: no man who is not a philosopher can be just.14 Aristeides would not at all correspond to the Platonic ideal of justice. He would be a stranger to the pleasure extolled by Plato as the exclusive privilege of the just and virtuous — the pleasure of contemplating universal Ideas and acquiring extended knowledge.15

13  Aristotel. Eth. Nikom. v. 2 (1), 1129, a. 25. ἔοικε δὲ πλεοναχῶς λέγεσθαι ἡ δικαιοσύνη καὶ ἡ ἀδικία.

Also v. 3 (1), 1130, a. 3. διὰ δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ ἀλλότριον ἀγαθὸν δοκεῖ εἶναι ἡ δικαιοσύνη, μόνη τῶν ἀρετῶν, ὅτι πρὸς ἕτερον ἐστιν· ἄλλῳ γὰρ τὰ συμφέροντα πράττει, ἢ ἄρχοντι ἢ κοινῷ.

This proposition — that justice is ἀλλότριον ἀγαθόν — is the very proposition which Thrasymachus is introduced as affirming and Sokrates as combating, in the first book of the Republic.

Compare also Aristotle’s Ethica Magna, i. 34, p. 1193, b. 19, where the same explanation of justice is given: also p. 1194, a. 7, where the Republic of Plato is cited, and the principle of reciprocity, as laid down at the end of the second book of the Republic, is repeated. We read in a fragment of the lost treatise of Cicero, De Republicâ (iii. 6, 7):— “Justitia foras spectat, et projecta tota est atque eminet. — Quæ virtus, præter cæteras, tota se ad alienas porrigit utilitates atque explicat.”

14  This is the same distinction as that drawn by Epiktetus between the φιλόσοφος and the ἰδιώτης (Arrian, Epiktet. iii. 19). An ἰδιώτης may be just in the ordinary meaning of the word. Aristeides was an ἰδιώτης. The Greek word ἰδιώτης, designating the ordinary average citizen, as distinguished from any special or professional training, is highly convenient.

15  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 582 C. τῆς δὲ τοῦ ὄντος θέας, οἵαν ἡδονὴν ἔχει, ἀδύνατον ἄλλῳ γεγεῦσθαι πλὴν τῷ φιλοσόφῳ.

Plato’s sense of the word Justice or Virtue — self-regarding.

The Platonic conception of justice or Virtue on the one side, and of Injustice or Vice on the other, is self-regarding and prudential. Justice is in the mind a condition analogous to good health and strength in the body — (mens sana in corpore sano) — Injustice is a condition analogous to sickness, corruption, impotence, in the body.16 The body is healthy, when each of its constituent parts performs its appropriate function: it is unhealthy, when there is failure in this respect, either defective working of any part, or interference of one part with the rest. So too in the just mind, each of its tripartite constituents performs its appropriate function — the rational mind directing and controuling, the energetic and appetitive minds obeying such controul. In the unjust mind, the case is opposite: Reason exercises no supremacy: Passion and Appetite, acting each for itself, are disorderly, reckless, exorbitant. To possess a healthy body is desirable for its consequences as a means towards other constituents of happiness; but it is still more desirable in itself, as an essential element of happiness per se, i.e., the negation of sickness, which would of itself make us miserable. On the other hand, an unhealthy or corrupt body is miserable by reason of its consequences, but still more miserable per se, even apart from consequences. In like manner, the just mind blesses the possessor twice: first and chiefly, as bringing to him happiness in itself — next also, as it leads to ulterior happy results:17 the unjust mind is a curse to its possessor in itself, and apart from results — though it also leads to ulterior results which render it still more a curse to him.

16  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 591 B, iv. p. 444 E.

17  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 C. ἐπειδὴ οὖν ὡμολόγησας τῶν μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν εἶναι δικαιοσύνην, ἃ τῶν τε ἀποβαινόντων ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἕνεκα ἄξια κεκτῆσθαι, πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτὰ αὑτῶν, &c.

This theory respecting justice and injustice was first introduced into ethical speculation by Plato. He tells us himself (throughout the speeches ascribed to Glaukon and Adeimantus), that no one before him had announced it: that all with one accord18 — both the poets in addressing an audience, and private citizens in exhorting their children — inculcated a different doctrine, enforcing justice as an onerous duty, and not as a self-recommending process: that he was the first who extolled justice in itself, as conferring happiness on the just agent, apart from all reciprocity or recognition either by men or Gods — and the first who condemned injustice in itself, as inflicting misery on the unjust agent, independent of any recognition by others. Here then we have the first introduction of this theory into ethical speculation. Injustice is an internal taint, corruption of mind, which (like bad bodily health) is in itself misery to the agent, however he may be judged or treated by men or Gods; and justice is (like good bodily health) a state of internal happiness to the agent, independent of all recognition and responsive treatment from others.

18  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 364 A. πάντες ἐξ ἑνὸς στόματος ὑμνοῦσιν, &c. Also p. 366 D.

He represents the motives to it, as arising from the internal happiness of the just agents.

The Platonic theory, or something substantially equivalent to it under various forms of words, has been ever since upheld by various ethical theorists, from the time of Plato downward.19 Every one would be glad if it could be made out as true: Glaukon and Adeimantus are already enlisted in its favour, and only demand from Sokrates a decent justification for their belief. Moreover, those who deny its truth incur the reproach of being deficient in love of virtue or in hatred of vice. What is still more remarkable — Plato has been complimented as if his theory had been the first antithesis to what is called the “selfish theory of morals” — a compliment which is certainly noway merited: for Plato’s theory is essentially self-regarding.20 He does not indeed lay his main stress on the retribution and punishments which follow injustice, because he represents injustice as being itself a state of misery to the unjust agent: nor upon the rewards attached to justice, because he represents justice itself as a state of intrinsic happiness to the just agent. Nevertheless the motive to performance of justice, and to avoidance of injustice, is derived in his theory (as it is in what is called the selfish theory) entirely from the happiness or misery of the agent himself. The just man is not called upon for any self-denial or self-sacrifice, since by the mere fact of being just, he acquires a large amount of happiness: it is the unjust man who, from ignorance or perversion, sacrifices that happiness which just behaviour would have ensured to him. Thus the Platonic theory is entirely self-regarding; looking to the conduct of each separate agent as it affects his own happiness, not as it affects the happiness of others.

19  It will be found maintained by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and impugned by Rutherford in his Essay on Virtue: also advocated by Sir James Mackintosh in his Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica; and controverted, or rather reduced to its proper limits, by Mr. James Mill, in his very acute and philosophical volume, Fragment on Mackintosh, published in 1835, see pp. 174-188 seq. Sir James indeed uses the word Benevolence where Plato uses that of Justice: he speaks of “the inherent delights and intrinsic happiness of Benevolence,” &c.

20  Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Plat. Rep. p. lvii. “Quo facto deinceps ad gravissimam totius sermonis partem ita transitur, ut inter colloquentes conveniat, justitiæ vim et naturam eo modo esse investigandam, ut emolumentorum atque commodorum ex eâ redundantium nulla plané ratio habeatur.”

This is not strictly exact, for Plato claims on behalf of justice not only that the performance of it is happy in itself, but also that it entails an independent result of ulterior happiness. But he dwells much less upon the second point; which indeed would be superfluous if the first could be thoroughly established. Compare Cicero, Tusc. Disput. v. 12-34, and the notes on Mr. James Harris’s Three Treatises, p. 351 seq., wherein the Stoical doctrine — Πάντα αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα πράττειν — is explained.

His theory departs more widely from the truth than that which he opposes. Argument of Adeimantus discussed.

So much to explain what the Platonic theory is. But when we ask whether it consists with the main facts of society, or with the ordinary feelings of men living in society, the reply must be in the negative.

“If” (says Plato, putting the words into the counter-pleading of Adeimantus) — “If the Platonic theory were preached by all of you, and impressed upon our belief from childhood, we should not have watched each other to prevent injustice; since each man would have been the best watch upon himself, from fear lest by committing injustice he should take to his bosom the maximum of evil.”21

21  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 A. εἰ γὰρ οὕτως ἐλέγετο ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπὸ πάντων ὑμῶν καὶ ἐκ νέων ἡμᾶς ἐπείθετε, οὐκ ἂν ἀλλήλους ἐφυλάττομεν μὴ ἀδικεῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ ἦν ἕκαστος ἄριστος φύλαξ, δεδιὼς μὴ ἀδικῶν τῷ μεγίστῳ κακῷ ξύνοικος ᾖ.

These words are remarkable. They admit of two constructions:— 1. If this Platonic theory were true. 2. If the Platonic theory, though not true, were constantly preached and impressed upon every one’s belief from childhood.

Understanding the words in the first of these two constructions, the hypothetical proposition put into the mouth of Adeimantus is a valid argument against the theory afterwards maintained by Sokrates. If the theory were conformable to facts, no precautions would need to be taken by men against the injustice of each other. But such precautions have been universally recognised as indispensable, and universally adopted. Therefore the Sokratic theory is not conformable to facts. It is not true that the performance of duty (considered apart from consequences) is self-inviting and self-remunerative — the contrary path self-deterring and self-punitory — to each individual agent. Plato might perhaps argue that it would be true, if men were properly educated; and that the elaborate education which he provides for his Guardians in the Republic would suffice for this purpose. But even if this were granted, we must recollect that the producing Many of his Republic would receive no such peculiar education.

Understanding the words in the second construction, they would then mean that the doctrine, though not true, ought to be preached and accredited by the lawgiver as an useful fiction: that if every one were told so from his childhood, without ever hearing either doubt or contradiction, it would become an established creed which each man would believe, and each agent would act upon: that the effect in reference to society would therefore be the same as if the doctrine were true. This is in fact expressly affirmed by Plato in another place.22 Now undoubtedly the effect of preaching and teaching, assuming it to be constant and unanimous, is very great in accrediting all kinds of dogmas. Plato believed it to be capable of almost unlimited extension — as we may see by the prescriptions which he gives for the training of the Guardians in his Republic. But to persuade every one that the path of duty and justice was in itself inviting, would be a task overpassing the eloquence even of Plato, since every man’s internal sentiment would refute it. You might just as well expect to convince a child, through the declarations and encouragements of his nurse, that the medicine prescribed to him during sickness was very nice. Every child has to learn obedience as a necessity, under the authority and sanction of his parents. You may assure him that what is at first repulsive will become by habit comparatively easy: and that the self-reproach, connected with evasion of duty, will by association become a greater pain than that which is experienced in performing duty. This is to a great degree true, but it is by no means true to the full extent: still less can it be made to appear true before it has been actually realised. You cannot cause a fiction like this to be universally accredited. A child is compelled to practise justice by the fear of displeasure and other painful consequences from those in authority over him: the reason for bringing this artificial motive to bear upon him, is, that it is essential in the first instance for the comfort and security of others: in the second instance for his own. In Plato’s theory, the first consideration is omitted, while not only the whole stress is laid upon the second, but more is promised in regard to the second than the reality warrants.

22  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 663-664.

The opponents whom the Platonic Sokrates here seeks to confute held — That Justice is an obligation in itself onerous to the agent, but indispensable in order to ensure to him just dealing and estimation from others — That injustice is a path in itself easy and inviting to the agent, but necessary to be avoided, because he forfeits his chance of receiving justice from others, and draws upon himself hatred and other evil consequences. This doctrine (argues Plato) represents the advantages of justice to the just agent as arising, not from his actually being just, but from his seeming to be so, and being reputed by others to be so: in like manner, it represents the misery of injustice to the unjust agent as arising not from his actually being unjust, but from his being reputed to be so by others. The inference which a man will naturally draw from hence (adds Plato) is, That he must aim only at seeming to be just, not at being just in reality: that he must seek to avoid the reputation of injustice, not injustice in reality: that the mode of life most enviable is, to be unjust in reality, but just in seeming — to study the means either of deceiving others into a belief that you are just, or of coercing others into submission to your injustice.23 This indeed cannot be done unless you are strong or artful: it you are weak or simple-minded, the best thing which you can do is to be just. The weak alone are gainers by justice: the strong are losers by it, and gainers by injustice.24

23  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 362-367.

24  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 366 C.

These are legitimate corollaries (so Glaukon and Adeimantus are here made to argue) from the doctrine preached by most fathers to their children, that the obligations of justice are in themselves onerous to the just agent, and remunerative only so far as they determine just conduct on the part of others towards him. Plato means, not that fathers, in exhorting their children, actually drew these corollaries: but that if they followed out their own doctrine consistently, they would have drawn them: and that there is no way of escaping them, except by adopting the doctrine of the Platonic Sokrates — That justice is in itself a source of happiness to the just agent, and injustice a source of misery to the unjust agent — however each of them may be esteemed or treated by others.

A Reciprocity of rights and duties between men in social life — different feelings towards one and towards the other.

Now upon this we may observe, that Plato, from anxiety to escape corollaries which are only partially true, and which, in so far as they are true, may be obviated by precautions — has endeavoured to accredit a fiction misrepresenting the constant phenomena and standing conditions of social life. Among those conditions, reciprocity of services is one of the most fundamental. The difference of feeling which attaches to the services which a man renders, called duties or obligations — and the services which he receives from others, called his rights — is alike obvious and undeniable. Each individual has both duties and rights: each is both an agent towards others, and a patient or sentient from others. He is required to be just towards others, they are required to be just towards him: he in his actions must have regard, within certain limits, to their comfort and security — they in their actions must have regard to his. If he has obligations towards them, he has also rights against them; or (which is the same thing) they have obligations towards him. If punishment is requisite to deter him from doing wrong to them, it is equally requisite to deter them from doing wrong to him. Whoever theorises upon society, contemplating it as a connected scheme or system including different individual agents, must accept this reciprocity as a fundamental condition. The rights and obligations, of each towards the rest, must form inseparable and correlative parts of the theory. Each agent must be dealt with by others according to his works, and must be able to reckon beforehand on being so dealt with:— on escaping injury or hurt, and receiving justice, from others, if he behaves justly towards them. The theory supposes, that whether just or unjust, he will appear to others what he really is, and will be appreciated accordingly.25

25  Euripid. Herakleid. 425.

Οὐ γὰρ τυραννίδ’, ὥστε βαρβάρων, ἔχω,

Ἀλλ’, ἢν δίκαια δρῶ, δίκαια πείσομαι.

In a remarkable passage of the Laws, Plato sets a far higher value upon correct estimation from others, which in the Republic he depicts under the contemptuous appellation of show or seeming.

Plato, Legg. xii. p. 950 B. Χρὴ δὲ οὔποτε περὶ σμικροῦ ποιεῖσθαι τὸ δοκεῖν ἀγαθοὺς εἶναι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἢ μὴ δοκεῖν· οὐ γὰρ ὅσον οὐσίας ἀρετῆς ἀπεσφαλμένοι τυγχάνουσιν οἱ πολλοί, τοσοῦτον καὶ τοῦ κρίνειν τοὺς ἄλλους οἱ πονηροὶ καὶ ἄχρηστοι, θεῖον δέ τι καὶ εὔστοχόν ἐστι καὶ τοῖς κακοῖς. ὥστε πάμπολλοι καὶ τῶν σφόδρα κακῶν εὖ τοῖς λόγοις καὶ ταῖς δόξαις διαιροῦνται τοὺς ἀμείνους τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τοὺς χείρους. Διὸ καλὸν ταῖς πολλαῖς πόλεσι τὸ παρακέλευσμά ἐστι, προτιμᾷν τὴν εὐδοξίαν πρὸς τῶν πολλῶν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὀρθότατον καὶ μέγιστον, ὄντα ἀγαθὸν ἀληθῶς οὕτω τὸν εὔδοξον βίον θηρεύειν — χωρὶς δὲ μηδαμῶς, τόν γε τέλεον ἄνδρα ἐσόμενον.

The fathers of families, whose doctrine Plato censures, adopted this doctrine of reciprocity, and built upon it their exhortations to their children. “Be just to others: without that condition, you cannot expect that they will be just to you.” Plato objects to their doctrine, on the ground, that it assumed justice to be onerous to the agent, and therefore indirectly encouraged the evading of the onerous preliminary condition, for the purpose of extorting or stealing the valuable consequent without earning it fairly. Persons acting thus unjustly would efface reciprocity by taking away the antecedent. Now Plato, in correcting them, sets up a counter-doctrine which effaces reciprocity by removing the consequent. His counter-doctrine promises me that if I am just towards others, I shall be happy in and through that single circumstance; and that I ought not to care whether they behave justly or unjustly towards me. Reciprocity thus disappears. The authoritative terms right and obligation lose all their specific meaning.

Plato’s own theory, respecting the genesis of society, is based on reciprocity.

In thus eliminating reciprocity — in affirming that the performance of justice is not an onerous duty, but in itself happiness-giving, to the just agent — Plato contradicts his own theory respecting the genesis and foundation of society. What is the explanation which he himself gives (in this very Republic) of the primary origin of a city? It arises (he says) from the fact, that each individual among us is not self-sufficing, but full of wants. All having many wants, each takes to himself others as partners and auxiliaries to supply them: thus grows up the aggregation called a city.26 Each man gives to another, and receives from another, in the belief that it will be better for him to do so. It is found most advantageous to all, that each man shall devote himself exclusively to one mode of production, and shall exchange his produce with that of others. Such interchange of productions and services is the generating motive which brings about civic communion.27 Justice and injustice will be found in certain modes of carrying on this useful interchange between each man and the rest.28

26  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 B-C. γίγνεται πόλις, ἐπειδὴ τυγχάνει ἡμῶν ἕκαστος οὐκ αὐτάρκης ἀλλὰ πολλῶν ἐνδεής … μεταδίδωσι δὴ ἄλλος ἄλλῳ, εἴ τι μεταδίδωσιν, ἢ μεταλαμβάνει, οἰόμενος αὑτῷ ἄμεινον εἶναι … ποιήσει δὲ αὐτὴν (τὴν πόλιν), ὡς ἔοικεν, ἢ ἡμετέρα χρεία.

27  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 371 B. Τί δὲ δή; ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ πόλει πῶς ἀλλήλοις μεταδώσουσιν ὧν ἂν ἕκαστοι ἐργάζωνται; ὧν δὴ ἕνεκα καὶ κοινωνίαν ποιησάμενοι πόλιν ᾠκίσαμεν.

28  Plato, Republ. ii. pp. 371 E-372 A. Ποῦ οὖν ἄν ποτε ἐν αὐτῇ (τῇ πόλει) εἴη ἥ τε δικαιοσύνη καὶ ἡ ἀδικία; … Ἐγὼ οὐκ ἑννοῶ, εἰ μή που ἐν αὐτῶν τούτων χρείᾳ τινὶ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

Here Plato expressly declares the principle of reciprocity to be the fundamental cause which generates and sustains the communion called the city. No man suffices to himself: every man has wants which require supply from others: every man can contribute something to supply the wants of others. Justice or injustice have place, according as this reciprocal service is carried out in one manner or another. Each man labours to supply the wants of others as well as his own.

This is the primitive, constant, indispensable, bond whereby society is brought and held together. Doubtless it is not the only bond, nor does Plato say that it is. There are other auxiliary social principles besides, of great value and importance: but they presuppose and are built upon the fundamental principle — reciprocity of need and service — which remains when we reduce society to its lowest terms; and which is not the less real as underlying groundwork, though it is seldom enunciated separately, but appears overlaid, disguised, and adorned, by numerous additions and refinements. Plato correctly announces the reciprocity of need and service as one indivisible, though complex fact, when looked at with reference to the social communion. Neither of the two parts of that fact, without the other part, would serve as adequate groundwork. Each man must act, not for himself alone, but for others also: he must keep in view the requirements of others, to a certain extent, as well as his own. In his purposes and scheme of life, the two must be steadily combined.

Antithesis and correlation of obligation and right. Necessity of keeping the two ideas together, as the basis of any theory respecting society.

It is clear that Plato — in thus laying down the principle of reciprocity, or interchange of service, as the ground-work of the social union — recognises the antithesis, and at the same time the correlation, between obligation and right. The service which each man renders to supply the wants of others is in the nature of an onerous duty; the requital for which is furnished to him in the services rendered by others to supply his wants. It is payment against receipt, and is expressly so stated by Plato — which every man conforms to, “believing that he will be better off thereby”. Taking the two together, every man is better off; but no man would be so by the payment alone; nor could any one continue paying out, if he received nothing in return. Justice consists in the proper carrying on of this interchange in its two correlative parts.29

29  We may remark that Plato, though he states the principle of reciprocity very justly, does not state it completely. He brings out the reciprocity of need and service; he does not mention the reciprocal liability of injury. Each man can do hurt to others: each man may receive hurt from others. Abstinence on the part of each from hurting others, and security to each that he shall not be hurt by others, are necessities quite as fundamental as that of production and interchange.

The reciprocal feeling of security, or absence of all fear of ill-usage from others (τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀδεὲς καὶ ἀνεπιβούλευτον πρὸς ἀλλήλους, to use the phrase of Thucydides iii. 37), is no less essential to social sentiment, than the reciprocal confidence that each man may obtain from others a supply of his wants, on condition of supplying theirs.

We see therefore that Plato contradicts his own fundamental principle, when he denies the doing of justice to be an onerous duty, and when he maintains that it is in itself happiness-giving to the just agent, whether other men account him just and do justice to him in return — or not. By this latter doctrine he sets aside that reciprocity of want and service, upon which he had affirmed the social union to rest. The fathers, whom he blames, gave advice in full conformity with his own principle of reciprocity — when they exhorted their sons to the practice of justice, not as self-inviting, but as an onerous service towards others, to be requited by corresponding services and goodwill from others towards them. If (as he urges) such advice operates as an encouragement to crime, because it admits that the successful tyrant or impostor, who gets the services of others for nothing, is better off than the just man who gets them only in exchange for an onerous equivalent — this inference equally flows from that proclaimed reciprocity of need and service, which he himself affirms to be the generating cause of human society. If it be true (as Plato states) that each individual is full of wants, and stands in need of the services of others — then it cannot be true, that payment without receipt, as a systematic practice, is self-inviting and self-satisfying. That there are temptations for strong or cunning men to evade obligation and to usurp wrongful power, is an undeniable fact. We may wish that it were not a fact: but we gain nothing by denying or ignoring it. The more clearly the fact is stated, the better; in order that society may take precaution against such dangers — a task which has always been found necessary and often difficult. In reviewing the Gorgias,30 we found Sokrates declaring, that Archelaus, the energetic and powerful king of Macedonia, who had usurped the throne by means of crime and bloodshed, was thoroughly miserable: far more miserable than he would have been, had he been defeated in his enterprise and suffered cruel punishment. Such a declaration represents the genuine sentiment of Sokrates as to what he himself would feel, and what ought to be (in his conviction) the feeling of every one, after having perpetrated such nefarious acts. But it does not represent the feeling of Archelaus himself, nor that of the large majority of bystanders: both to these latter, and to himself, Archelaus appears an object of envy and admiration.31 And it would be a fatal mistake, if the peculiar sentiment of Sokrates were accepted as common to others besides, and as forming a sound presumption to act upon: that is, if, under the belief that no ambitious man will voluntarily bring upon himself so much misery, it were supposed that precautions against his designs were unnecessary. The rational and tutelary purpose of punishment is, to make the proposition true and obvious to all — That the wrong-doer will draw upon himself a large preponderance of mischief by his wrong-doing. But to proclaim the proposition by voice of herald (which Plato here proposes) as if it were already an established fact of human nature, independent of all such precautions — would be only an unhappy delusion.32

30  See above, ch. xxiv., vol. ii., pp. 325-29.

31  Xenophon, Cyropæd. iii. 3, 52-53. Cyrus says:—

Ἆρ’ οὐκ, εἰ μέλλουσι τοιαῦται διάνοιαι ἐγγενήσεσθαι ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἔμμονοι ἔσεσθαι, πρῶτον μὲν νόμους ὑπάρξαι δεῖ τοιούτους, δι’ ὧν τοῖς μὲν ἀγαθοῖς ἔντιμος καὶ ἐλευθέριος ὁ βίος παρασκευασθήσεται, τοῖς δὲ κακοῖς ταπεινός τε καὶ ἀλγεινὸς καὶ ἀβίωτος ὁ αἰὼν ἐπανακείσεται; Ἔπειτα δὲ διδασκάλους, οἴμαι, δεῖ καὶ ἄρχοντας ἐπὶ τούτοις γενέσθαι, οἵτινες δείξουσί τε ὀρθῶς καὶ διδάξουσι καὶ ἐθίσουσι ταῦτα δρᾷν, ἔστ’ ἂν ἐγγένηται αὐτοῖς, τοὺς μὲν ἀγαθοὺς καὶ εὐκλεεῖς εὐδαιμονεστάτους τῷ ὄντι νομίζειν, τοὺς δὲ κακοὺς καὶ δυσκλεεῖς ἀθλιωτάτους ἁπάντων ἡγεῖσθαι.

Xenophon here uses language at variance with that of Plato, and consonant to that of the fathers of families whom Plato censures. To create habits of just action, and to repress habits of unjust action, society must meet both the one and the other by a suitable response. Assuming such conditional reciprocity to be realised, you may then persuade each agent that the unjust man, whom society brands with dishonour, is miserable (οἱ κακοὶ καὶ δυσκλεεῖς).

32  Xenophon, Economic. xiii. 11. Ischomachus there declares:—

Πάνυ γάρ μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἀθυμία ἐγγίγνεσθαι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς, ὅταν ὁρῶσι τὰ μὲν ἔργα δι’ αὐτῶν καταπραττόμενα, τῶν δὲ ὁμοίων τυγχάνοντας ἑαυτοῖς τοὺς μήτε πονεῖν μήτε κινδυνεύειν ἐθέλοντας, ὅταν δέῃ. — Also xiv. 9-10.

Characteristic feature of the Platonic Commonwealth — specialization of services to that function for which each man is fit — will not apply to one individual separately.

The characteristic feature of the Platonic commonwealth is to specialize the service of each individual in that function for which he is most fit. It is assumed, that each will render due service to the rest, and will receive from them due service in requital. Upon this assumption, Plato pronounces that the community will be happy.

Let us grant for the present that this conclusion follows from his premisses. He proceeds forthwith to apply it by analogy to another and a different case — the case of the individual man. He presumes complete analogy between the community and an individual.33 To a certain extent, the analogy is real: but it fails on the main point which Plato’s inference requires as a basis. The community, composed of various and differently endowed members, suffices to itself and its own happiness: “the individual is not sufficient to himself, but stands in need of much aid from others”34 — a grave fact which Plato himself proclaims as the generating cause and basis of society. Though we should admit, therefore, that Plato’s commonwealth is perfectly well-constituted, and that a well-constituted commonwealth will be happy — we cannot from thence infer that an individual, however well-constituted, will be happy. His happiness depends upon others as well as upon himself. He may have in him the three different mental varieties of souls, or three different persons — Reason, Energy, Appetite — well tempered and adjusted; so as to produce a full disposition to just behaviour on his part: but constant injustice on the part of others will nevertheless be effectual in rendering him miserable. From the happiness of a community, all composed of just men — you cannot draw any fair inference to that of one just man in an unjust community.

33  The parallel between the Commonwealth and the individual is perpetually reproduced in Plato’s reasoning. Republic, ii. pp. 368-369, vii. p. 541 B, ix. pp. 577 C-D, 579 E, &c.

34  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 B.

Thus much to show that the parallel between the community and the individual, which Plato pursues through the larger portion of the Republic, is fallacious. His affirmation — That the just man is happy in his justice, quand même — in his own mental perfection, whatever supposition may be made as to the community among whom he lives — implies that the just man is self-sufficing: and Plato himself expressly declares that no individual is self-sufficing. Indeed, no author can set forth more powerfully than Plato himself in this very dialogue — the uncomfortable and perilous position of a philosophical individual, when standing singly as a dissenter among a community with fixed habits and sentiments — unphilosophical and anti-philosophical. Such a person (Plato says) is like a man who has fallen into a den of wild beasts: he may think himself fortunate, if by careful retirement and absence from public manifestation, he can preserve himself secure and uncorrupted: but his characteristic and superior qualities can obtain no manifestation. The philosopher requires a community suited to his character. Nowhere does any such community (so Plato says) exist at present.35

35  Plato, Repub. vi. pp. 494 E, 496 D, 497 B. ὥσπερ εἰς θηρία ἄνθρωπος ἐμπεσών, &c. Compare also ix. p. 592 A.

Plato has not made good his refutation — the thesis which he impugns is true.

I cannot think, therefore, that the main thesis which Sokrates professes to have established, against the difficulties raised by Glaukon, is either proved or provable. Plato has fallen into error, partly by exaggerating the parallelism between the individual man and the commonwealth: partly by attempting to reason on justice and injustice in abstract isolation, without regard to the natural consequences of either — while yet those consequences cannot be really excluded from consideration, when we come to apply to these terms, predicates either favourable or unfavourable. That justice, taken along with its ordinary and natural consequences, tends materially to the happiness of the just agent — that injustice, looked at in the same manner, tends to destroy or impair the happiness of the unjust — these are propositions true and valuable to be inculcated. But this was the very case embodied in the exhortations of the ordinary moralists and counsellors, whom Plato intends to refute. He is not satisfied to hear them praise justice taken along with its natural consequences: he stands forward to panegyrise justice abstractedly, and without its natural consequences: nay, even if followed by consequences the very reverse of those which are ordinary and natural.36 He insists that justice is eligible and pleasing per se, self-recommending: that among the three varieties of Bona (1. That which we choose for itself and from its own immediate attractions. 2. That which is in itself indifferent or even painful, but which we choose from regard to its ulterior consequences. 3. That which we choose on both grounds, both as immediately attractive and as ultimately beneficial), it belongs to the last variety: whereas the opponents whom he impugns referred it to the second.

36  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 B. εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἀφαιρήσεις ἑκατέρωθεν (i.e. both from justice and from injustice) τὰς ἀληθεῖς, τὰς δὲ ψευδεῖς προσθήσεις, οὐ τὸ δίκαιον φήσομεν ἐπαινεῖν σε, ἀλλὰ τὸ δοκεῖν, οὐδὲ τὸ ἄδικον εἶναι ψέγειν, ἀλλὰ τὸ δοκεῖν, καὶ παρακελεύεσθαι ἄδικον ὄντα λανθάνειν, &c.

Statement of the real issue between him and his opponents.

Here the point at issue between the two sides is expressly set forth. Both admit that Justice is a Bonum — both of them looking at the case with reference only to the agent himself. But the opponents contend, that it is Bonum (with reference to the agent) only through its secondary effects, and noway Bonum or attractive in its primary working: being thus analogous to medical treatment or gymnastic discipline, which men submit to only for the sake of ulterior benefits. On the contrary, Plato maintained that it is good both in its primary and secondary effects: good by reason of the ulterior benefits which it confers, but still better and more attractive in its direct and primary effect: thus combining the pleasurable and the useful, like a healthy constitution and perfect senses. Both parties agree in recognising justice as a good: but they differ in respect of the grounds on which, and the mode in which, it is good.

He himself misrepresents this issue — he describes his opponents as enemies of justice.

Such is the issue as here announced by Plato himself: and the announcement deserves particular notice because the Platonic Sokrates afterwards, in the course of his argument, widens and misrepresents the issue: ascribing to his opponents the invidious post of enemies who defamed justice and recommended injustice, while he himself undertakes to counterwork the advocates of injustice, and to preserve justice from unfair calumny37 — thus professing to be counsel for Justice versus Injustice. Now this is not a fair statement of the argument against which Sokrates is contending. In that argument, justice was admitted to be a Good, but was declared to be a Good of that sort which is laborious and irksome to the agent in the primary proceedings required from him — though highly beneficial and indispensable to him by reason of its ulterior results: like medicine, gymnastic discipline, industry,38 &c. Whether this doctrine be correct or not, those who hold it cannot be fairly described as advocates of injustice and enemies of Justice:39 any more than they are enemies of medicine, gymnastic discipline, industry, &c., which they recommend as good and indispensable, on the same grounds as they recommend justice.

37  Plato, Repub. ii. p. 368 B-C. δέδοικα γὰρ μὴ οὐδ’ ὅσιον ᾖ παραγενόμενον δικαιοσύνῃ κακηγορουμένῃ ἀπαγορεύειν καὶ μὴ βοηθεῖν, ἔτι ἐμπνέοντα καὶ δυνάμενον φθέγγεσθαι.

38  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 357-358.

39  In the lost treatise De Republicâ of Cicero, Philus, one of the disputants, was introduced as spokesman of the memorable discourse delivered by Karneades at Rome, said to have been against Justice, and in favour of Injustice — “patrocinium injustitiæ”. Lælius replied to him, as “Justitiæ defensor”. The few fragments preserved do not enable us to appreciate the line of argument taken by Karneades: but as far as we can judge, it seems to have been very different from that which is assigned to Glaukon and Adeimantus in the Platonic Republic. See the Fragments of the third book De Republicâ in Orelli’s edition of Cicero, pp. 460-467.

It may suit Plato's purpose, when drawing up an argument which he intends to refute, to give to it the colour of being a panegyric upon injustice: but this is no real or necessary part of the opponent’s case. Nevertheless the commentators on Plato bring it prominently forward. The usual programme affixed to the Republic is — Plato, the defender of Justice, against Thrasymachus and the Sophists, advocates and panegyrists of Injustice. How far the real Thrasymachus may have argued in the slashing and offensive style described in the first book of the Republic, we have no means of deciding. But the Sophists are here brought in as assumed preachers of injustice, without any authority either from Plato or elsewhere: not to mention the impropriety of treating the Sophists as one school with common dogmas. Glaukon (as I have already observed) announces the doctrine against which Sokrates contends, not as a recent corruption broached by the Sophists, but as the generally received view of Justice: held by most persons, repeated by the poets from ancient times downwards, and embodied by fathers in lessons to their children: Sokrates farther declares the doctrine which he himself propounds to be propounded for the first time.40

40  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 358 A. Οὐ τοίνυν δοκεῖ τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἐπιπόνου εἴδους, &c. 358 C-D: ἀκούων Θρασυμάχου καὶ μυρίων ἄλλων. τὸν δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆς δικαιοσύνης λόγον οὐδενός πω ἀκήκοα ὡς βούλομαι. 362 E-364: λέγουσι δέ που καὶ παρακελεύονται πατέρες τε υἱέσι καὶ πάντες οἵ τινων κηδόμενοι, &c. — τούτοις δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς λόγοις μάρτυρας ποιητὰς ἐπάγονται (p. 364 C). Also p. 366 D.

Farther arguments of Plato in support of his thesis. Comparison of three different characters of men.

Over and above the analogy between the just commonwealth and the just individual, we find two additional and independent arguments, to confirm the proof of the Platonic thesis, respecting the happiness of the just man. Plato distributes mankind into three varieties. 1. He in whom Reason is preponderant — the philosopher. 2. He in whom Energy or Courage is preponderant — the lover of dominion and superiority — the ambitious man. 3. He in whom Appetite is preponderant — the lover of money. Plato considers the two last as unjust men, contrasting them with the first, who alone is to be regarded as just.

The language of Plato in arguing this point is vague, and requires to be distinguished before we can appreciate the extent to which he has made out his point. At one time, he states his conclusion to the effect — That the man who pursues and enjoys the pleasures of ambition or enrichment, but only under the conditions and limits which reason prescribes, is happier than he who pursues them without any such controul, and who is the slave of violent and ungovernable impulses.41 This is undoubtedly true.

41  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 586-587.

But elsewhere Plato puts his thesis in another way. He compares the pleasures of the philosopher, arising from intellectual contemplation and the acquisition of knowledge — with the pleasures of the ambitious man and the money-lover, in compassing their respective ends, the attainment of power and wealth. If you ask (says Plato) each of these three persons which is the best and most pleasurable mode of life, each will commend his own: each will tell you that the pleasures of his own mode of life are the greatest, and that those of the other two are comparatively worthless.42 But though each thus commends his own, the judgment of the philosopher is decidedly the most trustworthy of the three. For the necessities of life constrain the philosopher to have some experience of the pleasures of the other two, while they two are altogether ignorant of his: moreover, the comparative estimate must be made by reason and intelligent discussion, which is his exclusive prerogative. Therefore, the philosopher is to be taken as the best judge, when he affirms that his pleasures are the greatest, in preference to the other two.43 To establish this same conclusion, Plato even goes a step farther. No pleasures, except those peculiar to the philosopher, are perfectly true and genuine, pure from any alloy or mixture of pain. The pleasures of the ambitious man, and of the money-lover, are untrue, spurious, alloyed with pain and for the most part mere riddances from pain — appearing falsely to be pleasures by contrast with the antecedent pains to which they are consequent. The pleasures of the philosophic life are not preceded by any pains. They are mental pleasures, having in them closer affinity with truth and reality than the corporeal: the matter of knowledge, with which the philosophising mind is filled and satisfied, comes from the everlasting and unchangeable Ideas and is thus more akin to true essence and reality, than the perishable substances which relieve bodily hunger and thirst.44

42  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 581 C-D.

43  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 582-583.

44  Plato, Republic, ix. pp. 585-586.

His arguments do not go to the point which he professes to aim at.

It is by these two lines of reasoning, and especially by the last, that Plato intends to confirm and place beyond dispute the triumph of the just man over the unjust.45 He professes to have satisfied the requirement of Glaukon, by proving that the just man is happy by reason of his justice — quand même — however he may be esteemed or dealt with either by Gods or men. But even if we grant the truth of his premisses, no such conclusion can be elicited from them. He appears to be successful only because he changes the terminology, and the state of the question. Assume it to be true, that the philosopher, whose pleasures are derived chiefly from the love of knowledge and of intellectual acquisitions, has a better chance of happiness than the ambitious or the money-loving man. This I believe to be true in the main, subject to many interfering causes — though the manner in which Plato here makes it out is much less satisfactory than the handling of the same point by Aristotle after him.46 But when the point is granted, nothing is proved about the just and the unjust man, except in a sense of those terms peculiar to Plato himself.

45  Plato, Republic, ix. p. 583 B. Ταῦτα μὲν τοίνυν οὔτω δύ’ ἐφεξῆς ἂν εἴη καὶ δὶς νενικηκὼς ὁ δίκαιος τὸν ἄδικον· τὸ δὲ τρίτον … τοῦτ’ ἂν εἴη μέγιστόν τε καὶ κυριώτατον τῶν πτωμάτων.

46  Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. i. 5, p. 1095 b, 1096 a, x. 6-9, pp. 1176-1179.

Nor indeed is Plato’s conclusion proved, even in his own sense of the words. He identifies the just man with the philosopher or man of reason — the unjust man with the pursuer of power or wealth. Now, even in this Platonic meaning, the just man or philosopher cannot be called happy quand même: he requires, as one condition of his happiness, a certain amount of service, forbearance, and estimation, on the part of his fellows. He is not completely self-sufficing, nor can any human being be so.

Exaggerated parallelism between the Commonwealth and the individual man.

The confusion, into which Plato has here fallen, arises mainly from his exaggerated application of the analogy between the Commonwealth and the Individual: from his anxiety to find in the individual something like what he notes as justice in the Commonwealth: from his assimilating the mental attributes of each individual, divisible only in logical abstraction, — to the really distinct individual citizens whose association forms the Commonwealth.47 It is only by a poetical or rhetorical metaphor that you can speak of the several departments of a man’s mind, as if they were distinct persons, capable of behaving well or ill towards each other. A single man, considered without any reference to others, cannot be either just or unjust. “The just man” (observes Aristotle, in another line of argument), “requires others, towards whom and with whom he may behave justly.”48 Even when we talk by metaphor of a man being just towards himself, reference to others is always implied, as a standard with which comparison is taken.

47  Plato, Republic, i. pp. 351 C, 352 C. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἀπείχοντο ἀλλήλων κομιδῇ ὄντες ἄδικοι, ἀλλὰ δῆλον ὅτι ἐνῆν τις αὐτοῖς δικαιοσύνη, ἣ αὐτοὺς ἐποίει μή τοι καὶ ἀλλήλους γε καὶ ἐφ’ οὓς ᾔεσαν ἅμα ἀδικεῖν, δι’ ἣν ἔπραξαν ἃ ἔπραξαν, ὥρμησαν δὲ ἐπὶ τὰ ἄδικα ἀδικίᾳ ἡμιμόχθηροι ὄντες, &c.

We find the same sentiment in the Opera et Dies of Hesiod, 275, contrasting human society with animal life:—

ἴχθυσι μὲν καὶ θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖς πετεήνοις

ἔσθειν ἀλλήλους, ἐπεὶ οὐ δίκη ἐστὶν ἐν αὐτοῖς·

ἀνθρώποισι δ’ ἔδωκε (Ζεὺς) δίκην, ἣ πολλὸν ἀρίστη

γίνεται.

48  Aristotel. Ethic. Nikomach. x. 7. ὁ δίκαιος δεῖται πρὸς οὓς δικαιοπραγήσει, καὶ μεθ’ ὧν.

Second Argument of Plato to prove the happiness of the just man — He now recalls his previous concession, and assumes that the just man will receive just treatment and esteem from others.

In the main purpose of the Republic, therefore — to prove that the just man is happy in his justice, and the unjust miserable in his injustice, whatever supposition may be made as to consequent esteem or treatment from Gods or men — we cannot pronounce Plato to have succeeded. He himself indeed speaks with triumphant confidence of his own demonstration. Yet we find him at the close of the dialogue admitting that he had undertaken the defence of a position unnecessarily difficult. “I conceded to you” (he says) “for argument’s sake that the just man should be accounted unjust, by Gods as well as men, and that the unjust man should be accounted just. But this is a concession which I am not called upon to make; for the real fact will be otherwise. I now compare the happiness of each, assuming that each has the reputation and the treatment which he merits from others. Under this supposition, the superior happiness of the just man over the unjust, is still more manifest and undeniable.”49

49  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 612-613.

Plato then proceeds to argue the case upon this hypothesis, which he affirms to be conformable to the reality. The just man will be well-esteemed and well-treated by men: he will also be favoured and protected by the Gods, both in this life and after this life. The unjust man, on the contrary, will be ill-esteemed and ill-treated by men: he will farther be disapproved and punished by the Gods, both while he lives and after his death. Perhaps for a time the just man may seem to be hardly dealt with and miserable the unjust man to be prosperous and popular but in the end, all this will be reversed.50

50  Plato, Republic, x. p. 613.

The second line of argument is essentially different from the first. Plato dispatches it very succinctly, in two pages: while in trying to prove the first, and in working out the very peculiar comparison on which his proof rests, he had occupied the larger portion of this very long treatise.

In the first line of argument, justice was recommended as implicated with happiness per se or absolutely — quand même — to the agent: injustice was discouraged, as implicated with misery. In the second line, justice is recommended by reason of its happy ulterior consequences to the agent: injustice is dissuaded on corresponding grounds, by reason of its miserable ulterior consequences to the agent.

It will be recollected that this second line of argument is the same as that which Glaukon described as adopted by parents and by other monitors, in discourse with pupils. Plato therefore here admits that their exhortations were founded on solid grounds; though he blames them for denying or omitting the announcement, that just behaviour conferred happiness upon the agent by its own efficacy, apart from all consequences. He regards the happiness attained by the just man, through the consequent treatment by men and Gods, as real indeed, — but as only supplemental and secondary, inferior in value to the happiness involved in the just behaviour per se.

In this part of the argument, too, as well as in the former, we are forced to lament the equivocal meaning of the word justice: and to recollect the observation of Plato at the close of the first book, that those who do not know what justice is, can never determine what is to be truly predicated of it, and what is not.51 If by the just man he means the philosopher, and by the unjust man the person who is not a philosopher, — he has himself told us before, that in societies as actually constituted, the philosopher enjoys the minimum of social advantages, and is even condemned to a life of insecurity; while the unphilosophical men (at least a certain variety of them) obtain sympathy, esteem, and promotion.52

51  Plato, Republic, i. p. 354 B.

52  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 492-494-495-497.

Now in this second line of argument, Plato holds a totally different language respecting the way in which the just man is treated by society. He even exaggerates, beyond what can be reasonably expected, the rewards accruing to the just man: who (Plato tells us), when he has become advanced in life and thoroughly known, acquires command in his own city if he chooses it, and has his choice among the citizens for the best matrimonial alliances: while the unjust man ends in failure and ignominy, incurring the hatred of every one and suffering punishment.53 This is noway consistent with Plato’s previous description of the position of the philosopher in actual society: yet nevertheless his argument identifies the just man with the philosopher.

53  Plato, Republic, x. p. 613 D-E.

Dependence of the happiness of the individual on the society in which he is placed.

Plato appears so anxious to make out a triumphant case in favour of justice and against injustice, that he forgets not only the reality of things, but the main drift of his own previous reasonings. Nothing can stand out more strikingly, throughout this long and eloquent treatise, than the difference between one society and another: the necessary dependence of every one’s lot, partly indeed upon his own character, but also most materially upon the society to which he belongs: the impossibility of affirming any thing generally respecting the result of such and such dispositions in the individual, until you know the society of which he is a member, as well as his place therein. Hence arises the motive for Plato’s own elaborate construction — a new society upon philosophical principles. This essentially relative point of view pervades the greater part of his premisses, and constitutes the most valuable part of them.

Whether the commonwealth as a whole, assuming it to be once erected, would work as he expects, we will not here enquire. But it is certain that the commonwealth and the individuals are essential correlates of each other; and that the condition of each individual must be criticised in reference to the commonwealth in which he is embraced. Take any member of the Platonic Commonwealth, and place him in any other form of government, at Athens, Syracuse, Sparta, &c. — immediately his condition, both active and passive, is changed. Thus the philosophers, for whom Plato assumes unqualified ascendancy as the cardinal principle in his system, become, when transferred to other systems, divested of influence, hated by the people, and thankful if they can obtain even security. “The philosopher (says Plato) must have a community suited to him and docile to his guidance: in communities such as now exist, he not only has no influence as philosopher, but generally becomes himself corrupted by the contagion and pressure of opinions around him: this is the natural course of events, and it would be wonderful if the fact were otherwise.”54

54  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 487-488-489 B, 497 B-C. 492 C: καὶ φήσειν τὰ αὐτὰ τούτοις καλὰ καὶ αἰσχρὰ εἶναι, καὶ ἐπιτηδεύσειν ἅπερ ἂν οὗτοι, καὶ ἔσεσθαι τοιοῦτον; Compare also ix. pp. 592 A, 494 A: τοὺς φιλοσοφοῦντας ἄρα ἀνάγκη ψέγεσθαι ὑπ’ αὐτῶν (τοῦ πλήθους). And vii. p. 517 A.

Inconsistency of affirming general positions respecting the happiness of the just man, in all societies without distinction.

After thus forcibly insisting upon the necessary correlation between the individual and the society, as well as upon the variability and uncertainty of justice and injustice in different existing societies55 — Plato is inconsistent with himself in affirming, as an universal position, that the just man receives the favour and good treatment of society, the unjust man, hatred and punishment.56 You cannot decide this until you know in what society the just man is placed. In order to make him comfortable, Plato is obliged to construct an imaginary society suited to him: which would have been unnecessary, if you can affirm that he is sure to be well treated in every society.

55  Plato, Republic, v. p. 479, vi. p. 493 C.

56  Plato, Republic, x. p. 613.

Qualified sense in which only this can be done.

There is a sense indeed (different from what Plato intended), in which the proposition is both true, and consistent with his own doctrine about the correlation between the individual and the society. When Plato speaks of the just or the unjust man, to whose judgment does he make appeal? To his own judgment? or to which of the numerous other dissentient judgments? For that there were numerous dissentient opinions on this point, Plato himself testifies: a person regarded as just or unjust in one community, would not be so regarded in another. All this ethical and intellectual discord is fully recognised as a fact, by Plato himself: who moreover keenly felt it, when comparing his own judgment with that of the Athenians his countrymen. Such being the ambiguity of the terms, we can affirm nothing respecting the just or the unjust man absolutely and generally — respecting justice or injustice in the abstract: We cannot affirm any thing respecting the happiness or misery of either, except with reference to the sentiments of the community wherein each is placed. Assuming their sentiments to be known, we may pronounce that any individual citizen who is unjust relatively to them (i.e., who behaves in a manner which they account unjust), will be punished by their superior force, and rendered miserable: while any one who abstains from such behaviour, and conducts himself in a manner which they account just, will receive from them just dealing, with a certain measure of trust, and esteem: Taken in this relative sense, we may truly say of the unjust man, that he will be unhappy; because displeasure, hatred, and punitory infliction from his countrymen will be quite sufficient to make him so, without any other causes of unhappiness. Respecting the just man, we can only say that he will be happy, so far as exemption from this cause of misery is concerned: but we cannot make sure that he will be happy on the whole, because happiness is a product to which many different conditions, positive and negative, must concur — while the serious causes of misery are efficacious, each taken singly, in producing their result.

Question — Whether the just man is orthodox or dissenter in his society? — important in discussing whether he is happy.

Moreover, in estimating the probable happiness either of the just (especially taking this word sensu Platonico as equivalent to the philosophers) or the unjust, another element must be included: which an illustrious self-thinking reasoner like Plato ought not to have omitted. Does the internal reason and sentiment of the agent coincide with that of his countrymen, as to what is just and unjust? Is he essentially homogeneous with his countrymen (to use the language of Plato in the Gorgias57), a chip of the same block? Or has he the earnest conviction that the commandments and prohibitions which they enforce upon him, on the plea of preventing injustice, are themselves unjust? Is he (like the philosopher described by Plato among societies actually constituted, or like Sokrates at Athens58) a conscientious dissenter from the orthodox creed — political, ethical, or æsthetical — received among his fellow-citizens generally? Does he (like Sokrates) believe himself to be inculcating useful and excellent lessons, while his countrymen blame and silence him as a corruptor of youth, and as a libeller of the elders?59 Does he, in those actions which he performs either under legal restraint or under peremptory unofficial custom, submit merely to what he regards as civium ardor prava jubentium, or as vultus instantis tyranni?

57  Plato, Gorgias, p. 513 B. αὐτοφυῶς ὅμοιος τῇ πολιτείᾳ, &c.

58  Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 496-497. Plato, Gorgias, p. 521 D.

59  Plato, Gorgias, p. 522 B. ἐάν τέ τίς με ἢ νεωτέρους φῇ διαφθείρειν ἀπορεῖν ποιοῦντα, ἢ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους κακηγορεῖν λέγοντα πικροὺς λόγους ἢ ἰδίᾳ ἢ δημοσίᾳ, οὔτε τὸ ἀληθὲς ἕξω εἰπεῖν, ὅτι Δικαίως πάντα ταῦτα ἐγὼ λέγω καὶ πράττω τὸ ὑμέτερον δὴ τοῦτο, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, οὔτε ἄλλο οὐδέν· ὥστε ἴσως, ὅ, τι ἂν τύχω, τοῦτο πείσομαι.

Comparison of the position of Sokrates at Athens, with that of his accusers.

This is a question essentially necessary to be answered, when we are called upon to affirm the general principle — “That the just man is happy, and that the unjust man is unhappy”. Antipathy and ill-treatment will be the lot of any citizen who challenges opinions which his society cherish as consecrated, or professes such as they dislike. Such was the fate of Sokrates himself at Athens. He was indicted as unjust and criminal (Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης), while his accusers, Anytus and Melêtus, carried away the esteem and sympathy of their fellow-citizens generally, as not simply just men, but zealous champions of justice — as resisting the assailants of morality and religion, of the political constitution, and of parental authority. How vehement was the odium and reprobation which Sokrates incurred from the majority of his fellow-citizens, we are assured by his own Apology60 before the Dikasts. Now it is to every one a serious and powerful cause of unhappiness, to feel himself the object of such a sentiment. Most men dread it so much, like the Platonic Euthyphron, that they refrain from uttering, or at least are most reserved in communicating, opinions which are accounted heretical among their countrymen or companions.61 The resolute and free-spoken Sokrates braved that odium; which, aggravated by particular circumstances, as well as by the character of his own defence, attained at last such a height as to bring about his condemnation to death. That he was sustained in this unthankful task by native force of character, conscientious persuasion, and belief in the approbation of the Gods — is a fact which we should believe, even if he himself had not expressly told us so. But to call him happy, would be a misapplication of the term, which no one would agree with Plato in making — least of all the friends of Sokrates in the last months of his life. Besides, if we are to call Sokrates happy on these grounds, his accusers would be still happier: for they had the same conscientious conviction, and the same belief in the approbation of the Gods: while they enjoyed besides the sympathy of their country men as champions of religion and morality.

60  Plato, Apolog. Sokr. pp. 28 A. 37 D.

πολλή μοι ἀπεχθεία γέγονε καὶ πρὸς πολλούς, &c.

61  Plato, Euthyphron, p. 3 C-D. Ἀθηναίοις γάρ τοι οὐ σφόδρα μέλει, ἄν τινα δεινὸν οἴωνται εἶναι, μὴ μέντοι διδασκαλικὸν τῆς αὑτοῦ σοφίας· ὃν δ’ ἂν καὶ ἄλλους οἴωνται ποιεῖν τοιούτους, θυμοῦνται, εἴτ’ οὖν φθόνῳ, εἴτε δι’ ἄλλο τι.

Euthyphr. Τούτου μὲν πέρι ὅπως ποτὲ πρὸς ἐμὲ ἔχουσιν, οὐ πάνυ ἐπιθυμῶ πειραθῆναι.

Sokrat. Ἴσως γὰρ σὺ μὲν δοκεῖς σπάνιον σεαυτὸν παρέχειν, καὶ διδάσκειν οὐκ ἐθέλειν τὴν σεαυτοῦ σοφίαν, &c.

Imperfect ethical basis on which Plato has conducted the discussion in the Republic.

In spite of all the charm and eloquence, therefore, which abounds in the Republic, we are compelled to declare that the Platonic Sokrates has not furnished the solution required from him by Glaukon and Adeimantus: and that neither the first point (ix. p. 580 D) nor the second point of his conclusion (x. p. 613) is adequately made out. The very grave ethical problem, respecting the connexion between individual just behaviour and individual happiness, is discussed in a manner too exclusively self-regarding, and inconsistent with that reciprocity which Plato himself sets forth as the fundamental, generating, sustaining, principle of human society. If that principle of reciprocity is to be taken as the starting-point, you cannot discuss the behaviour of any individual towards society, considered in reference to his own happiness, without at the same time including the behaviour of society towards him. Now Plato, in the conditions that he expressly prescribes for the discussion,62 insists on keeping the two apart; and on establishing a positive conclusion about the first, without at all including the second. He rejects peremptorily the doctrine — “That just behaviour is performed for the good of others, apart from the agent”. Yet if society be, in the last analysis (as Plato says that it is), an exchange of services, rendered indispensable by the need which every one has of others — the services which each man renders are rendered for the good of others, as the services which they render to him are rendered for his good. The just dealing of each man is, in the first instance, beneficial to others: in its secondary results, it is for the most part beneficial to himself.63 His unjust dealing, in like manner, is, in the first instance, injurious to others: in its secondary results, it is for the most part injurious to himself. Particular acts of injustice may, under certain circumstances, be not injurious, nay even beneficial, to the unjust agent: but they are certain to be hurtful to others: were it not so, they would not deserve to be branded as injustice. I am required to pay a debt, for the benefit of my creditor, and for the maintenance of a feeling of security among other creditors though the payment may impose upon myself severe privation: indirectly, indeed, I am benefited, because the same law which compels me, compels others also to perform their contracts towards me. The law (to use a phrase of Aristotle) guarantees just dealing by and towards each.64 The Platonic Thrasymachus, therefore, is right in so far as he affirms — That injustice is Malum Alienum, and justice Bonum Alienum,65 meaning that such is the direct and primary characteristic of each. The unjust man is one who does wrong to others, or omits to render to others a service which they have a right to exact, with a view to some undue profit or escape of inconvenience for himself: the just man is one who abstains from wrong to others, and renders to others the full service which they have a right to require, whatever hardship it may impose upon himself. A man is called just or unjust, according to his conduct towards others.

62  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367.

63  See the instructive chapter on the Moral Sense, in Mr. James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, ch. xxiii. vol. ii. p. 280.

“The actions from which men derive advantage have all been classed under four titles — Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, Beneficence… When those names are applied to our own acts, the first two, Prudent and Brave, express acts which are useful to ourselves, in the first instance: the latter two, Just and Beneficent, express acts which are useful to others, in the first instance… It is further to be remarked, that those acts of ours which are primarily useful to ourselves, are secondarily useful to others; and those which are primarily useful to others, are secondarily useful to ourselves. Thus, it is by our own prudence and fortitude that we are best enabled to do acts of justice and beneficence to others. And it is by acts of justice and beneficence to others, that we best dispose them to do similar acts to us.”

64  Aristot. Polit. iii. 9, 1280, b. 10, ὁ νόμος συνθήκη, καὶ καθάπερ ἔφη Λυκόφρων ὁ σοφιστής, ἐγγυητὴς ἀλλήλοις τῶν δικαίων. Chrysippus also, writing against Plato, maintained that ἀδικία was essentially πρὸς ἕτερον, οὐ πρὸς ἑαυτόν (Plutarch, Stoic. Repugnant. c. 16, p. 1041 D).

65  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 C. καὶ ὁμολογεῖν Θρασυμάχῳ ὅτι τὸ μὲν δίκαιον, ἀλλότριον ἀγαθόν, ξυμφέρον τοῦ κρείττονος· τὸ δὲ ἄδικον, αὐτῷ μὲν ξυμφέρον καὶ λυσιτελοῦν, τῷ δὲ ἥττονι, ἀξύμφορον.

Plato in Republic is preacher, inculcating useful beliefs — not philosopher, establishing scientific theory. State of Just and Unjust Man in the Platonic Commonwealth.

In considering the main thesis of the Republic, we must look upon Plato as preacher — inculcating a belief which he thinks useful to be diffused; rather than as philosopher, announcing general truths of human nature, and laying down a consistent, scientific, theory of Ethics. There are occasions on which even he himself seems to accept this character. “If the fable of Kadmus and the dragon’s teeth” (he maintains) “with a great many other stories equally improbable, can be made matters of established faith, surely a doctrine so plausible as mine, about justice and injustice, can be easily taught and accredited.”66 To ensure unanimous acquiescence, Plato would constrain all poets to proclaim and illustrate his thesis — and would prohibit them from uttering anything inconsistent with it.67 But these or similar official prohibitions may be employed for the upholding of any creed, whatever it be: and have been always employed, more or less, in every society, for the upholding of the prevalent creed. Even in the best society conceivable under the conditions of human life, assuming an ideal commonwealth in which the sentiments of just and unjust have received the most systematic, beneficent, and rational embodiments, and have become engraven on all the leading minds — even then Plato’s first assertion — That the just man is happy quand même — could not be admitted without numerous reserves and qualifications. Justice must still be done by each agent, not as a self-inviting process, but as an obligation entailing more or less of sacrifice made by him to the security and comfort of others. Plato’s second assertion — That the unjust man is miserable — would be more near the truth; because the ideal commonwealth is assumed to be one in which the governing body has both the disposition and the power to punish injustice — and the discriminating equanimity, or absence of antipathies, which secures them against punishing anything else. The power of society to inflict misery is far more extensive than its power of imparting happiness. But even thus, we have to recollect that the misery of the unjust person arises not from his in justice per se, but from consequent treatment at the hands of others.

66  See Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 663-664.

Good and simple people, in the earlier times (says Plato) believed every thing that was told them. They were more virtuous and just then than they are now (Legg. iii. p. 679 C-E).

67  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 661-662. Illustrated in the rigid and detailed censorship which he imposes on the poets in the Republic, in the second and third books.

In the Legg., however, Plato puts his thesis in a manner less untenable than in the Republic:— “Neither to do wrong to others, nor to suffer wrong from others; this is the happiest condition” (Legg. ii. p. 663 A). This is a very different proposition from that which is defended in the Republic; where we are called upon to believe, that the man who acts justly will be happy, whatever may be the conduct of others towards him.

Epikurus laid down, as one of the doctrines in his Κύριαι Δόξαι (see Diog. Laert. x. 150): Τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιον ἐστὶ σύμβολον τοῦ συμφέροντος, εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι. Ὅσα τῶν ζῴων μὴ ἠδύνατο συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἄλληλα μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πρὸς ταῦτα οὐθέν ἐστιν οὐδὲ δίκαιον οὔδὲ ἄδικον. Ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅσα μὴ ἠδύνατο, ἢ μὴ ἐβούλετο, τὰς συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, &c.

Lucretius expresses the same — v. 1020:—

“Tunc et amicitiam cœperunt jungere aventes

“Finitimi inter se nec lædere nec violari,” &c.

Comparative happiness of the two in actual communities. Plato is dissatisfied with it — This is his motive for recasting society on his own principles.

Thus much for the Platonic or ideal commonwealth. But when we pass from that hypothesis into the actual world, the case becomes far stronger against the truth of both Plato’s assertions. Of actual societies, even the best have many imperfections — the less good, many attributes worse than imperfections:— “ob virtutes certissimum exitium”. The dissenter for the better, is liable to be crucified alongside of the dissenter for the worse: King Nomos will tolerate neither.

Confusion between the preacher and the philosopher in the Platonic Republic.

Plato as a preacher holds one language: as a philosopher and analyst, another. When he is exhorting youth to justice, or dissuading them from injustice, he thinks himself entitled to depict the lot of the just man in the most fascinating colours, that of the unjust man as the darkest contrast against it, — without any careful observance of the line between truth and fiction: the fiction, if such there be, becomes in his eyes a pia fraus, excused or even ennobled by its salutary tendency. But when he drops this practical purpose, and comes to philosophise on the principles of society, he then proclaims explicitly how great is the difference between society as it now stands, and society as it ought to be: how much worse is the condition of the just, how much less bad that of the unjust (in every sense of the words, but especially in the Platonic sense) than a perfect commonwealth would provide. Between the exhortations of Plato the preacher, and the social analysis of Plato the philosopher, there is a practical contradiction, which is all the more inconvenient because he passes backwards and forwards almost unconsciously, from one character to the other. The splendid treatise called the Republic is composed of both, in portions not easy to separate.

Remarks on the contrast between ethical theory and ethical precepts.

The difference between the two functions just mentioned — the preceptor, and the theorizing philosopher — deserves careful attention, especially in regard to Ethics. If I lay down a theory of social philosophy, I am bound to take in all the conditions and circumstances of the problem: to consider the whole position of each individual in society, as an agent affecting the security and comfort of others, and also as a person acted on by others, and having his security and comfort affected by their behaviour: as subject to obligations or duties, in the first of the two characters — and as enjoying rights (i.e., having others under obligation to him) in the second. This reciprocity of service and need — of obligation and right — is the basis of social theory: its two parts are in indivisible correlation: alike integrant and co-essential. But when a preceptor delivers exhortations on conduct, it is not necessary that he should insist equally on each of the two parts. As a general fact of human nature, it is known that men are disposed proprio motu to claim their rights, but not so constantly or equally disposed to perform their obligations: accordingly, the preceptor insists upon this second part of the case, which requires extraneous support and enforcement — leaving untouched the first part, which requires none. But the very reason why the second part needs such support, is, because the performance of the obligation is seldom self-inviting, and often the very reverse: that is, because the Platonic doctrine misrepresents the reality. The preceptor ought not to indulge in such misrepresentation: he may lay stress especially upon one part of the entire social theory, but he ought not to employ fictions which deny the necessary correlation of the other omitted part. Many preceptors have insisted on the performance of obligation, in language which seemed to imply that they considered a man to exist only for the performance of obligation, and to have no rights at all. Plato in another way undermines equally the integrity of the social theory, when he contends, that the performance of obligations alone, without any rights, is delightful per se, and suffices to ensure happiness to the performer. Herein we can recognise only a well-intentioned preceptor, narrowing and perverting the social theory for the purpose of edification to his hearers.

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 than 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.

1  Plato, Rep. iii. p. 397 E.

2  The principle laid down in the Protagoras will be remembered — εἷς ἔχων τέχνην πολλοῖς ἱκανὸς ἰδιώταις (Protag. p. 322 D).

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, in 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.

3  Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 427 D-428 A. ᾠκισμένη μὲν τοίνυν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, ἤδη ἄν σοι εἴη, ὦ παῖ Ἀρίστωνος, ἡ πόλις … Οἶμαι ἡμῖν τὴν πόλιν, εἴπερ ὀρθῶς γε ᾤκισται, τέλεως ἀγαθὴν εἶναι. Ἀνάγκη, ἔφη. Δῆλον δή, ὅτι σοφή τ’ ἐστὶ καὶ ἀνδρεία καὶ σώφρων καὶ δικαία. Δῆλον. Οὐκοῦν, ὅ, τι ἂν αὐτῶν εὕρωμεν ἐν αὐτῇ, τὸ ὑπόλοιπον ἔσται τὸ οὐχ εὑρημένον; &c.

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 forced — 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.

4  Plat. Rep. iv. p. 432 B. τὸ δὲ δὴ λοιπὸν εἶδος, δι’ ὃ ἂν ἔτι ἀρετῆς μετέχοι πόλις, τί ποτ’ ἂν εἴη; δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι τοῦτό ἐστιν ἡ δικαιοσύνη.

Compare p. 444 D, where he defines Ἀρετή — Ἀρετὴ μὲν ἄρα, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὑγίεια τέ τις ἂν εἴη καὶ κάλλος καὶ εὐεξία ψυχῆς· κακία δὲ, νόσος τε καὶ αἶσχος καὶ ἀσθένεια.

5  Xenoph. Mem. iii. 9, 4-5. σοφίαν δὲ καὶ σωφροσύνην οὐ διώριζεν, &c.

Compare the discussion of σωφροσύνη, iv. 5, 9-11, where Sokrates enforces the practice of it on the ground that it ensured to a man both more pleasures and greater pleasures, of which he would deprive himself if he were foolish enough to be intemperate.

6  Schleiermacher, Einl. zum Staat, pp. 25-26. “Dieser Tadel trifft höchstens die Aufstellung jener vier zusammengehörigen Tugenden; welche Platon offenbar genug nur mit richtigem praktischen Sinne aus Ehrfurcht für das Bestehende aufgenommen hat: wie sie denn schon auf dieselbe Weise aus dem gemeinen Gebrauch in die Lehrweise des Sokrates übergegangen sind.”

7  Plato, Repub. iv. p. 433 A. καὶ μὴν ὅτι γε τὸ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν δικαιοσύνη ἐστί, καὶ τοῦτο ἄλλων τε πολλῶν ἀκηκόαμεν, καὶ αὐτοὶ πολλάκις εἰρήκαμεν. Compare iii. p. 406 E.

8  See Charmidês, pp. 161-162. Heindorf observes in his note on this passage:— “A sophistis ergo vulgata hæc σωφροσύνης definitio: ad justitiam quoque ab iisdem ut videtur, translata. Republ. iv. p. 433 (the passage cited in note preceding). Quo pertinent illa Ciceronis, De Officiis, i. 9, 2. Item ad prudentiam, Aristot. Eth. Nicom. vi. 8, Philosopho vero hoc tribuit Sokrates, Gorgias, p. 526).”

The definition given in the Charmidês appears plainly ascribed to Kritias as its author (p. 162 D). The affirmation that it was “a sophistis vulgata,” and afterwards transferred by these same to Justice, is made without any authority produced; and is expressed in the language usual with the Platonic commentators, who treat the Sophists as a philosophical sect or school.

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 individual 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.

9  In some of the Platonic Dialogues these four varieties are not understood as exhausting the sum total of Virtue: ἡ ὁσιότης is included also; see Lachês, p. 199 D, Protagoras, p. 329 D, Euthyphron, pp. 5-6. Plato does not advert to τὸ ὅσιον in the Republic as a separate constituent, seemingly because on matters of piety he enjoins direct reference to Apollo and the Delphian oracle (Rep. iv. p. 427 B).

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 several 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.

10  Plat. Hipp. Maj. pp. 286 D, 304 C.

11  Plato, Menon, pp. 71 B-C, 86 B, 100 B.

12  See Lachês p. 195 A. τὴν τῶν δεινῶν καὶ θαῤῥαλέων ἐπιστήμην, pp. 196 C-199 A-E — in the cross-examination of Nikias by Sokrates: and the question in the cross-examination of Lachês (who has defined Courage to be ἡ φρόνιμος καρτερία) put by Sokrates — ἡ εἰς τί φρόνιμος; compared with Republic, iv. pp. 429 C, 430 B, 433 C. See also Charmidês, pp. 161 B, 162 B-C, compared with Republic, iv. p. 433 B-D.

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 the 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

13  The concluding chapter of the Nikomachean Ethics contains some striking remarks upon this separation.

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

14  Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 420-421. The objection that the Guardians will have no happiness, is put by Plato into the mouth of Adeimantus, but is denied by Sokrates; who, however, says that even if it were true he could not admit it as applicable, since what he wishes is that the entire commonwealth shall be happy. Aristotle (Politic. ii. 5, 1264, 6-15) repeats the objection of Adeimantus, and declares that collective happiness (not enjoyed by some individuals) is impossible.

See the valuable chapter on Ideal Models in Politics (vol. ii. ch. xxii. p. 236 seq.) in Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s Treatise on the methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics. The different ideal models framed by theorists ancient and modern, Plato among the number, are there collected, with judicious remarks in comparing and appreciating them.

15  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 421 C.

He lays down this minute sub-division and speciality of aptitude in individuals as a fundamental property of human nature. Repub. iii. p. 395 B, καὶ ἔτι γε τούτων φαίνεταί μοι εἰς σμικρότερα κατακεκερματίσθαι ἡ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσις, &c.

Compare Xenophon, Cyropæd. ii. 1, 21, where the same principle is laid down. Another passage in the same treatise (Cyropæd. viii. 2, 5) is also interesting. Xenophon there contrasts the smaller towns, where many trades were combined in the same hand and none of the works well performed, with the larger towns, where there was a minuter subdivision of labour, each man doing one work only, and doing it well.

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 One 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.

16  Plato, Republic, iv. p. 421.

17  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 417.

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, not.”18 “The Rulers must be wise, powerful, and affectionately solicitous for the city.”

18  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 412 D.

Καὶ μὲν τοῦτό γ’ ἂν μάλιστα φιλοῖ, ᾧ ξυμφέρειν ἡγοῖτο τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ἑαυτῷ, καὶ ὅταν μάλιστα ἐκείνου μὲν εὖ πράττοντος οἴηται ξυμβαίνειν καὶ ἑαυτῷ εὖ πράττειν, μὴ δέ, τοὐναντίον.

Compare v. pp. 463-464.

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 individuals 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.

19  Xenophon, Rep. Lacedæm. i. 2. Λυκοῦργος, οὐ μιμησάμενος τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐναντία γνοὺς ταῖς πλείσταις, προέχουσαν εὐδαιμονίᾳ τὴν πατρίδα ἀπέδειξεν.

20  Compare Plato, Legg. vi. p. 780 A.

21  Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 2, 2-6. Οὗτοι δὲ δοκοῦσιν οἱ νόμοι ἄρχεσθαι τοῦ κοινοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἐπιμελούμενοι οὐκ ἔνθεν ὅθενπερ ἐν ταῖς πλείσταις πόλεσιν ἄρχονται. Αἱ μὲν γὰρ πλεῖσται πόλεις, ἀφεῖσαι παιδεύειν ὅπως τις ἐθέλει τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας καὶ αὐτοὺς τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους ὅπως ἐθέλουσι διάγειν, ἔπειτα προστάττουσιν αὐτοὺς μὴ κλέπτειν.… Οἱ δὲ Περσικοὶ νόμοι προλαβόντες ἐπιμέλονται ὅπως τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ τοιοῦτοι ἔσονται οἱ πολῖται, οἷοι πονηροῦ τινος ἢ αἰσχροῦ ἔργου ἐφίεσθαι. Ἐπιμέλονται δὲ δὴ ὧδε.

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

22  In Xenophon all Persians are supposed to be legally admissible to the public training; but in practice, none can frequent it constantly except those whose families can maintain them without labour; nor can any be received into the advanced stages, except those who have passed through the lower. Hence none go really through the training except the Homotimoi.

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 governments, 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 competition 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

23  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 1, 3. ἤν τις ἐπισταμένως τοῦτο πράττῃ.

Compare Xenoph. Economic. c. xxi. where τὸ ἐθελόντων ἄρχειν is declared to be a superhuman good, while τὸ ἀκόντων τυραννεῖν is reckoned as a curse equivalent to that of Tantalus.

24  Xenophon, Cyropæd. viii. 6, 1-10.

25  Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 1, 43-45, viii. 6, 13, vii. 5, 79. viii. 5, 24: εἰ δὲ σύ, ὦ Κῦρε, ἐπαρθεὶς ταῖς παρούσαις τύχαις, ἐπιχειρήσεις καὶ Περσῶν ἄρχειν ἐπὶ πλεονεξίᾳ, ὥσπερ τῶν ἄλλων, &c.

26  Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 1, 40. ἀλλὰ καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾤετο χρῆναι αὐτούς. Also viii. 3, 1.

27  Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 2, viii. 4, 3.

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 his 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 the 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

28  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 2, 16, viii. 1, 42, viii. 8, 8. He insists repeatedly upon this point. Compare a curious passage in the Meditations of Marcus Antoninus, vi. 30.

29  Plato, Legg. i. p. 626. Plutarch, Lykurg. 25. Compare Lykurg. and Num. c. 4.

30  Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 2, 6-8.

The boys are appointed to adjudicate, under the supervision of the teacher, in disputes which occur among their fellows. As an instance of this practice, we find the well-known adjudication by young Cyrus, between the great boy and the little boy, in regard to the two coats; and a very instructive illustration it is, of the principle of property (Cyrop. i. 3, 17).

31  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 3, 16, iii. 3, 35. Cyrus is indeed represented as having taken lessons from a paid teacher in the art τοῦ στρατηγεῖν: but these lessons were meagre, comprising nothing beyond τὰ τακτικά, i. 6, 12-15.

32  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 1, 6. ποίᾳ τινὶ παιδείᾳ παιδευθεὶς τοσοῦτον διήνεγκεν εἰς τὸ ἄρχειν ἀνθρώπων.

33  Xenoph. Cyrop. v. 1, 24. The queen-bee is masculine in Xenophon’s conception.

34  Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 7, 3, iv. 2, 15, iv. 1, 24. Compare Xenoph. Economic. v. 19-20.

35  Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 6, 46. Οὕτως ἥ γε ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία οὐδὲν μᾶλλον οἶδε τὸ ἄριστον αἰρεῖσθαι, ἢ εἰ κληρούμενος ὅ, τι λάχοι τοῦτό τις πράττοι. Θεοὶ δὲ ἀεὶ ὄντες πάντα ἴσασι τά τε γεγενημένα καὶ τὰ ὄντα, καὶ ὅ, τι ἐξ ἑκάστου αὐτῶν ἀποβήσεται· καὶ τῶν συμβουλευομένων ἀνθρώπων οἷς ἂν ἰλέῳ ὦσι, προσημαίνουσιν ἅ τε χρὴ ποιεῖν καὶ ἅ οὐ χρή. Εἰ δὲ μὴ πᾶσιν ἐθέλουσι συμβουλεύειν, οὐδὲν θαυμαστόν· οὐ γὰρ ἀνάγκη αὐτοῖς ἐστιν, ὧν ἂν μὴ θέλωσιν, ἐπιμελεῖσθαι.

Compare i. 6, 6-23, also the Memorab. i. 1, 8, where the same doctrine is ascribed to Sokrates.

36  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 6, 46 ad fin.

37  Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 6, 3-5.

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.

38  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 709 E, 710-713.

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 so 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.

39  Plato pronounces Cyrus to have been a good general and a patriot, but not to have received any right education, and especially to have provided no good education for his children, who in consequence became corrupt and degenerate (Legg. iii. 694). Upon this remark some commentators of antiquity founded the supposition of grudge or quarrel between Plato and Xenophon. We have no evidence to prove such a state of unfriendly feeling between the two, yet it is no way unlikely: and I think it highly probable that the remark just cited from Plato may have had direct reference to the Xenophontic Cyropædia. When we read the elaborate intellectual training which Plato prescribes for the rulers in his Republic, we may easily understand that, in his view, the Xenophontic Cyrus had received no right education at all. His remark moreover brings to view the defect of all schemes built upon a perfect despot — that they depend upon an individual life.

40  Plato, Timæus, pp. 20-26. Plato, Kritias, p. 108.

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.

41  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 376 E.

42  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 410 B. πρὸς τὸ θυμοειδὲς τῆς φύσεως βλέπων κἀκεῖνο ἐγείρων πονήσει μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς ἰσχύν, οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι ἀθληταὶ ῥώμης ἕνεκα.

43  Plato, Republ. iii. pp. 410-411. 411 D-E: Μισόλογος δή, οἶμαι, ὁ τοιοῦτος γίγνεται καὶ ἄμουσος, καὶ πειθοῖ μὲν διὰ λόγων οὐδὲν ἔτι χρῆται, βίᾳ δὲ καὶ ἀγριότητι ὥσπερ θηρίον πρὸς πάντα διαπράττεται, καὶ ἐν ἀμαθίᾳ καὶ σκαιότητι μετὰ ἀῤῥυθμίας τε καὶ ἀχαριστίας ζῇ.

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 this — 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.

44  Thucyd. ii. 38-39-40.

The comparison between this speech and the third book of Plato’s Republic (pp. 401-402-410-411), is very interesting. The words of Perikles, φιλοκαλοῦμεν γὰρ μετ’ εὐτελείας καὶ φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας, taken along with the chapter preceding, mark that concurrent development of τὸ φιλόσοφον and τὸ θυμοειδὲς which Plato provides, and the avoidance of those defects which spring from the separate and exclusive cultivation of either.

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 be 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

45  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 376 B-C. If we examine Plato’s tripartite classification of the varieties of soul or mind, as it is given both in the Republic and in the Timæus (1. Reason, in the cranium. 2. Energy, θυμός, in the thoracic region. 3. Appetite, in the abdominal region) — we shall see that it assigns no place to the gentle, the tender, or the æsthetical emotions. These cannot be properly ranked either with energy (θυμὸς) or with appetite (ἐπιθυμία). Plato can find no root for them except in reason or knowledge, from which he presents them as being collateral derivatives — a singular origin. He illustrates his opinion by the equally singular analogy of the dog, who is gentle towards persons whom he knows, fierce towards those whom he does not know; so that gentleness is the product of knowledge.

46  See the argument between Æschylus and Euripides in the Ranæ of Aristophanes, 1043-1061-1068.

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, 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

47  Aristoph. Ranæ, 1053. Æschylus is made to say:—

Ἀλλ’ ἀποκρύπτειν χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τόν γε ποιητήν,

καὶ μὴ παράγειν μηδὲ διδάσκειν· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παιδαρίοισιν

ἐστὶ διδάσκαλος ὅστις φράζει, τοῖσιν δ’ ἡβῶσι ποιηταί.

πάνυ δὴ δεῖ χρηστὰ λέγειν ἡμᾶς.

Compare the words of Pluto which conclude the Ranæ, 1497.

Plato, Repub. x. p. 598 D-E. ἐπειδή τινων ἀκούομεν ὅτι οὗτοι (Homer and the poets) πάσας μὲν τέχνας ἐπίσανται, πάντα δὲ τἀνθρώπεια τὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ κακίαν, καὶ τά γε θεῖα, &c. Also Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 810-811; Ion, pp. 536 A, 541 B: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6, where we learn that Nikeratus could repeat by heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey.

48  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 810. ὅλους ποιητὰς ἐκμανθάνοντας, &c.

49  It was to gain this facility that Kritias and Alkibiades, as Xenophon tells us, frequented the society of Sokrates, who (as Xenophon also tells us) “handled persons conversing with him just as he pleased” (Memor. i. 2, 14-18.)

A speaker in one of the Orations of Lysias (Orat. viii. Κακολογιῶν, s. 12) considers this power of arguing a disputed case as one of the manifestations τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν — Καὶ ἐγὼ μὲν ᾤμην φιλοσοφοῦντας αὐτοὺς περὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἀντιλέγειν τὸν ἐναντίον λόγον· οἱ δ’ ἄρα οὐκ ἀντέλεγον ἀλλ’ ἀντέπραττον.

Compare the curious oration of Demosthenes against Lakritus, where the speaker imputes to Lakritus this abuse of argumentative power, as having been purchased by him at a large price from the teaching of Isokrates the Sophist, pp. 928-937-938.

50  Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 57-60.

Plato’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.

51  The language of Plato is remarkable on this point. Republic, ii. p. 376 E. Τίς οὖν ἡ παιδεία; ἣ χαλεπὸν εὑρεῖν βελτίω τῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ χρόνου εὑρημένης; ἐστὶ δέ που ἡ μὲν ἐπὶ σώμασι γυμναστική, ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ ψυχῇ μουσική — and a striking passage in the Kriton (p. 50 D), where education in μουσικὴ and γυμναστικὴ is represented as a positive duty on the part of fathers towards their sons.

About the multifarious and indefinite province of the Muses, comprehending all παιδεία and λόγος, see Plutarch, Sympos. Problem. ix. 14, 2-3, p. 908-909. Also Plutarch, De Audiendis Poetis, p. 31 F, about the many diverse interpretations of Homer; especially those by Chrysippus and Kleanthes.

The last half of the eighth Book of Aristotle’s Politica contains remarkable reflections on the educational effects of music, showing the refined distinctions which philosophical men of that day drew respecting the varieties of melody and rhythm. Aristotle adverts to music as an agency not merely for παιδεία but also for κάθαρσις (viii. 7, 1341, b. 38); to which last Plato does not advert. Aristotle also notices various animadversions by musical critics upon some of the dicta on musical subjects in the Platonic Republic (καλῶς ἐπιτιμῶσι καὶ τοῦτο Σωκράτει τῶν περὶ τὴν μουσικήν τινες, 1342, b. 23) — perhaps Aristoxenus: also 1342, a. 32. That the established character and habits of music could not be changed without leading to a revolution, ethical and political, in the minds of the citizens — is a principle affirmed by Plato, not as his own, but as having been laid down previously by Damon the celebrated musical instructor (Repub. iii. p. 424 C).

The following passage about Luther is remarkable:—

“Après avoir essayé de la théologie, Luther fut décidé par les conseils de ses amis, à embrasser l’étude du droit; qui conduisait alors aux postes les plus lucratifs de l’État et de l’Église. Mais il ne semble pas s’y être jamais livré avec goût. Il aimait bien mieux la belle littérature, et surtout la musique. C’était son art de prédilection. Il la cultiva toute sa vie et l’enseigna à ses enfans. Il n’hésite pas à déclarer que la musique lui semble le premier des arts, après la théologie. La musique (dit il) est l’art des prophètes: c’est le seul qui, comme la théologie, puisse calmer les troubles de l’ame et mettre le diable en fuite. Il touchait du luth, jouait de la flûte.” (Michelet, Mémoires de Luther, écrits par lui-même, pp. 4-5, Paris, 1835.)

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, almost 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 beautiful 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

52  Plato, Republ. x. p. 607 B. παλαιὰ μέν τις διαφορὰ φιλοσοφίᾳ τε καὶ ποιητικῇ, &c.

53  Plato, Republ. x. p. 607 A-C. τὴν ἡδυσμένην Μοῦσαν … ἡ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ποιητικὴ καὶ ἡ μίμησις, &c.

Compare also Leges ii. p. 655 D seq., about the μουσικῆς ὀρθότης.

54  It is interesting to read in the first book of Strabo (pp. 15-19-25-27, &c.) the controversy which he carries on with Eratosthenes, as to the function of poets generally, and as to the purpose of Homer in particular. Eratosthenes considered Homer, and the other poets also, as having composed verses to please and interest, not to teach — ψυχαγωγίας χάριν, οὐ διδασκαλίας. Strabo (following the astronomer Hipparchus) controverts this opinion; affirming that poets had been the earliest philosophers and teachers of mankind, and that they must always continue to be the teachers of the multitude, who were unable to profit by history and philosophy. Strabo has the strongest admiration for Homer, not merely as a poet but as a moralising teacher. While Plato banishes Homer from his commonwealth, on the ground of pernicious ethical influence, Strabo claims for Homer the very opposite merit, and extols him as the best of all popular teachers — ἡ δὲ ποιητικὴ δημωφελεστέρα καὶ θέατρα πληροῦν δυναμένη· ἡ δὲ δὴ τοῦ Ὁμηροῦ ὑπερβαλλόντως … Ἄτε δὴ πρὸς τὸ παιδευτικὸν εἶδος τοὺς μύθους ἀναφέρων ὁ ποιητὴς ἐφρόντισε πολὺ μέρος τἀληθοῦς (Strabo, i. p. 20). The contradiction between Plato and Strabo is remarkable. Compare the beginning of Horace’s Epistle, i. 2. In the time of Strabo (more than three centuries after Plato’s death) there existed an abundant prose literature on matters of erudition, history, science, philosophy. The work of instruction was thus taken out of the poet’s hands; yet Strabo cannot bear to admit this. In the age of Plato the prose literature was comparatively small. Alexandria and its school did not exist: the poets covered a far larger portion of the entire ground of instruction.

As a striking illustration of the continued and unquestioning faith in the ancient legends, we may cite Galen: who, in a medical argument against Erasistratus, cites the cure of the daughters of Prœtus by Melampus as an incontestable authentic fact in medical evidence; putting to shame Erasistratus, who had not attended to it in his reasoning (Galen, De Atrâ Bile, T. v. p. 132, Kühn).

55  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 606-607, iii. p. 387 B.

56  Plato, Republic, x. pp. 598-599. When Plato attacks the poets so severely on the ground of their departure from truth and reality, and their false representations of human life — the poets might have retorted, that Plato departed no less from truth and reality in many parts of his Republic, and especially in his panegyric upon Justice; not to mention the various mythes which we read in Republic, Phædon, Phædrus, Politikus, &c.

Plato’s fictions are indeed ethical, intended to serve a pedagogic purpose; Homer's fictions are æsthetical, addressed to the fancy and emotions.

But it is not fair in Plato, the avowed champion of useful fiction, to censure the poets on the ground of their departing from truth.

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 not merely fictions, but mischievous fictions: not fit to be circulated, even if they had been true.

57  Plutarch, Sympos. Quæst. viii. 2, 2, p. 719.

Ὁ Πλάτων, ἅτε δὴ τῷ Σωκράτει τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἀναμιγνύς, &c.

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 for 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

58  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 377 E.

59  Plato, Repub. ii. pp. 378-379. Plutarch observes about Chrysippus — ὅτι τῷ θεῷ καλὰς μὲν ἐπικλήσεις καὶ φιλανθρώπους ἀεί, ἄγρια δ’ ἔργα καὶ βάρβαρα καὶ Γαλακτικὰ προστίθησιν (De Stoic. Repugnant. c. 32, p. 1049 B).

60  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 380 B. Plato in the beginning of his Sophistês treats this doctrine of the appearances of the Gods with greater respect. Lucretius argues that the Gods, being in a state of perfect happiness and exempt from all want, cannot change; Lucret. v. 170, compared with Plato, Rep. ii. p. 381 B.

61  Plato, Republ. ii. pp. 380-381-383.

62  Plato, Republ. iii. p. 386 C. Maximus Tyrius (Diss. xxiv. c. 5) remarks, that upon the principles here laid down by Plato, much of what occurs in the Platonic dialogues respecting the erotic vehemence and enthusiasm of Sokrates ought to be excluded from education.

63  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 387 D-E. ὁ ἐπιεικὴς ἀνὴρ τῷ ἐπιεικεῖ, οὗπερ καὶ ἑταῖρός ἐστι, τὸ τεθνάναι οὐ δεινὸν ἡγήσεται … Οὐκ ἄρα ὑπέρ γε ἐκείνου ὡς δεινόν τι πεπονθότος ὀδύροιτ’ ἄν … Ἀλλὰ μὴν … ὁ τοιοῦτος μάλιστα αὐτὸς αὑτῷ αὐτάρχης πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῇν καὶ διαφερόντως τῶν ἄλλων ἥκιστα ἑτέρου προσδεῖται … Ἥκιστ’ ἄρα αὐτῷ δεινὸν στερηθῆναι υἱέος, ἢ ἀδέλφου, ἢ χρημάτων, ἢ ἄλλου του τῶν τοιούτων &c.

The doctrine of Epikurus, as laid down by Lucretius (iii. 844-920), coincides here with that of Plato:—

Tu quidem ut es leto sopitus, sic eris ævi

Quod superest, cunctis privatu’ doloribus ægris;

At nos horrifico cinefactum te propé busto

Insatiabiliter deflebimus, æternumque

Nulla dies nobis mœrorem e pectore demet.

Illud ab hoc igitur quærendum est, quid sit amari

Tantopere, ad somnum si res redit atque quietem

Cur quisquam æterno possit tabescere luctu?

Plato insists, not less strenuously than Lucretius, upon preserving the minds of his Guardians from the frightful pictures of Hades, which terrify all hearers — φρίττειν δὴ ποιεῖ ὡς οἷόν τε πάντας τοὺς ἀκούοντας (Repub. iii. p. 387 C). Lucret. iii. 37:

“metus ille foras præceps Acheruntis agendus

Funditus, humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo”.

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

64  Compare also Plato de Legg. x. p. 886 C, xii. p. 941 B.

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 reveals 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

65  As one example, Plato cites the story in the Iliad, that Achilles cut off his hair as an offering to the deceased Patroklus, after his hair had been consecrated by vow to the river Spercheius (Rep. iii. p. 391). If we look at the Iliad (xxiii. 150), we find that the vow to the Spercheius had been originally made by Peleus, conditionally upon the return of Achilles to his native land. Now Achilles had been already forewarned that he would never return thither, consequently the vow to Spercheius was void, and the execution of it impracticable.

Plato does not disbelieve the legend of Hippolytus; the cruel death of an innocent youth, brought on by the Gods in consequence of the curse of his father Theseus (Legg. xi. p. 931 B).

66  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 379 C. Οὐδ’ ἄρα ὁ θεός, ἐπειδὴ ἀγαθός, πάντων ἂν εἴη αἴτιος, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀλίγων μὲν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις αἴτιος, πολλῶν δὲ ἀναίτιος· πολὺ γὰρ ἐλάττω τἀγαθὰ τῶν κακῶν ἡμῖν. Καὶ τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν οὐδένα ἄλλον αἰτιατέον, τῶν δὲ κακῶν ἄλλ’ ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸν θεόν.

67  Plato, Rep, ii. p. 380 B. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollonium (107 C, 115 E), citation from Pindar — ἓν παρ’ ἐσθλὸν πήματα σύνδυο δαίονται βροτοῖς Ἀθάνατοι — πολλῷ γὰρ πλείονα τὰ κακά· καὶ τὰ μὲν (sc. ἀγαθὰ) μόγις καὶ διὰ πολλῶν φροντίδων κτώμεθα, τὰ δὲ κακά, πάνυ ῥᾳδίως.

In the Sept. cont. Thebas of Æschylus, Eteokles complains of this doctrine as a hardship and unfairness to the chief. If (says he) we defend the city successfully, our success will be ascribed to the Gods; if, on the contrary, we fail, Eteokles alone will be the person blamed for it by all the citizens:—

Εἰ μὲν γὰρ εὖ πράξαιμεν, αἰτία θεοῦ·

Εἰ δ’ αὖθ’, ὃ μὴ γένοιτο, συμφορὰ τύχοι,

Ἐτεοκλέης ἂν εἷς πολὺς κατὰ πτόλιν

Ὑμνοῖθ’ ὑπ’ ἀστῶν φροιμίοις πολυῤῥόθοις

Οἰμώγμασιν θ’ — (v. 4).

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 they 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 Rulers 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

68  Plato, Republ. iii. p. 389 B; compare ii. p. 382 C.

Dähne (Darstellung der Jüdisch-Alexandrin. Religions-Philosophie, i. pp. 48-56) sets forth the motives which determined the new interpretations of the Pentateuch by the Alexandrine Jews, from the translators of the Septuagint down to Philo. In the view of Philo there was a double meaning: the literal meaning, for the vulgar: but also besides this, there was an allegorical, the real and true meaning, discoverable only by sagacious judges. Moses (he said) gave the literal meaning, though not true, πρὸς τὴν τῶν πολλῶν διδασκαλίαν. Μανθανέτωσαν οὖν πάντες οἱ τοιοῦτοι τᾶ ψευδῆ, δι’ ὧν ὠφεληθήσονται, εἰ μὴ δύνανται δι’ ἀληθείας σωφρονίζεσθαι (Philo, Quæst. in Genesin, ap. Dähne, p. 50). Compare also Philo, on the κανόνες καὶ νόμοι τῆς ἀλληγορίας, Dähne, pp. 60-68.

Herakleitus (Allegoriæ Homericæ ed. Mehler, 1851) defends Homer warmly against the censorial condemnation of Plato. Herakleitus contends for an allegorical interpretation, and admits that it is necessary to find one. He inveighs against Plato in violent terms. Ἐῤῥίφθω δὲ καὶ Πλάτων ὁ κόλαξ, &c.

Isokrates (Orat. Panathen. s. 22-28) complains much of the obloquy which he incurred, because some opponents alleged that he depreciated the poets, especially Homer and Hesiod.

69  Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 389 B, 414 C.

70  Plato, Repub. iii. p. 414 B-C. Τίς ἂν οὖν ἡμῖν μηχανὴ γένοιτο τῶν ψευδῶν τῶν ἐν δέοντι γιγνομένων, ὧν νῦν δὴ ἐλέγομεν, γενναῖόν τι ἓν ψευδομένους πεῖσαι, μάλιστα μὲν καὶ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, εἰ δὲ μή, τὴν ἄλλην πόλιν; Ποῖον τι; Μηδὲν καινόν, ἀλλὰ Φοινικικόν τι, πρότερον μὲν ἤδη πολλαχοῦ γεγονός, ὡς φασιν οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ πεπείκασιν, ἐφ’ ἡμῶν δὲ οὐ γεγονὸς οὐδ’ οἶδα εἰ γενόμενον ἄν, πεῖσαι δὲ συχνῆς πειθοῦς. Compare De Legg. pp. 663-664.

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.

71  Plato, Repub. iii. p. 415 C-D. Τοῦτον οὖν τὸν μῦθον ὅπως ἂν πεισθεῖεν, ἔχεις τινὰ μηχανήν; Οὐδαμῶς, ὅπως γ’ ἂν αὐτοὶ οὗτοι· ὅπως μέντ’ ἂν οἱ τούτων υἱεῖς καὶ οἱ ἔπειτα οἵ τ’ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι οἱ ὕστερον.

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 of 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

72  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 679 C-E. ἀγαθοὶ μὲν δὴ διὰ ταῦτά τε ἦσαν καὶ διὰ τὴν λεγομένην εὐήθειαν· ἃ γὰρ ἤκουον καλὰ καὶ αἰσχρά, εὐήθεις ὄντες ἡγοῦντο ἀληθέστατα λέγεσθαι καὶ ἐπείθοντο· ψεῦδος γὰρ ὑπονοεῖν οὐδεὶς ἠπίστατο διὰ σοφίαν, ὥσπερ τὰ νῦν, ἀλλὰ περὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων τὰ λεγόμενα ἀληθῆ νομίζοντες ἔζων κατὰ ταῦτα … τῶν νῦν ἀτεχνότεροι μὲν καὶ ἀμαθέστεροι … εὐηθέστεροι δὲ καὶ ἀνδρειότεροι καὶ ἅμα σωφρονέστεροι καὶ ξύμπαντα δικαιότεροι.

73  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 E.

This carelessness about historical matter of fact, as such — is not uncommon with ancient moralists and rhetoricians. Both of them were apt to treat history not as a series of true matters of fact, exemplifying the laws of human nature and society, and enlarging our knowledge of them for future inference — but as if it were a branch of fiction, to be handled so as to please our taste or improve our morality. Dionysius of Halikarnassus, blaming Thucydides for the choice of his subject, goes so far as to say “that the Peloponnesian war, a period of ruinous discord in Greece, ought to have been left in oblivion, and never to have passed into history” (Dion. Hal. ad Cn. Pomp. de Præc. Histor. Judic. p. 768 Reiske).

See a note at the beginning of chap. 38 of my “History of Greece”.

74  Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, ix. 54, p. 562. Compare Polybius, vi. 56; Dion. Hal. ii. 13; Strabo, i. p. 19.

These three, like Plato, consider the matters of religious belief to be fictions prescribed by the lawgiver for the purpose of governing those minds which are of too low a character to listen to truth and reason. Strabo states, more clearly than the other two, the employment of μῦθοι by the lawgiver for purposes of education and government; he extends this doctrine to πᾶσα θεολογία ἀρχαϊκὴ … πρὸς τοὺς νηπιόφρονας (p. 19).

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 of 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

75  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 389 B. ἐν φαρμάκου εἴδει. Compare De Legg. ii. p. 663 D.

Eusebius enumerates this as one of the points of conformity between Plato and the Hebrew records: in which, Eusebius says, you may find numberless similar fictions (μυρία τοιαῦτα), such as the statements of God being jealous or angry or affected by other human passions, which are fictions recounted for the benefit of those who require such treatment (Euseb. Præpar. Evan. xii. 31).

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 exhibited: 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

76  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 679; compare x. p. 887 C, xi. p. 913 C.

So again in the Timæus (p. 40 E), he accepts the received genealogy of the Gods, upon the authority of the sons and early descendants of the Gods. These sons must have known their own fathers; we ought therefore “to follow the law and believe them” (ἐπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον) though they spoke without either probable or demonstrative proof (ἀδύνατον οὖν θεῶν παισὶν ἀπιστεῖν, καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων καὶ ἀναγκαίων ἀποδείξεων λέγουσιν).

That which Plato here enjoins to be believed is the genealogy of Hesiod and other poets, though he does not expressly name the poets. Julian in his remark on the passage (Orat. vii. p. 237) understands the poets to be meant, and their credibility to be upheld, by Plato — καὶ τοιαῦτα ἕτερα ἐν Τιμαίῳ· πιστεύειν γὰρ ἁπλῶς ἀξιοῖ καὶ χωρὶς ἀποδείξεως λεγομένοις, ὅσα ὑπὲρ τῶν θεῶν φασὶν οἱ ποιηταί. See Lindau’s note on this passage in his edition of the Timæus, p. 62.

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 causes (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

77  Aristotel. Politic. ii. 1, &c. Compare the second of the Platonic Epistles, p. 314.

78  Ζεὺς παναίτιος, πανεργέτας, &c. Æschyl. Agamem. 1453. Xenophon, Memorab. i. 1, 8-9.

79  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 899 D, 888 C. He intimates that there were no inconsiderable number of persons who then held the doctrine, compare p. 891 B.

80  Lucretius, ii. 180:

Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse creatam

Naturam mundi, quæ tantâ ‘st prædita culpâ —

ii. 1093:—

Nam — pro sancta Deûm tranquillâ pectora pace,

Quæ placidum degunt ævum, vitamque serenam —

Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi

Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas?

Compare v. 167-196, vi. 68.

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 religion, 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

81  Xenoph. Memorab. i. 1. Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης, οὓς μὲν ἡ πόλις νομίζει θεοὺς οὐ νομίζων, ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων· ἀδικεῖ δὲ καὶ τοὺς νέους διαφθείρων.

This was the form of the indictment against Sokrates. The Republic of Plato certainly shows ground for the first part of it. Sokrates did not introduce new names and persons of Gods, but he preached new views about their characters and agency, and (what probably would cause the greatest offence) he emphatically blames the received views. The Republic of Plato here embodies what we read in the Platonist Maximus Tyrius (ix. 8) as the counter-indictment of Sokrates against the Athenian people — ἡ δὲ Σωκράτους κατὰ Ἀθηναίων γραφή· Ἀδικεῖ ὁ Ἀθηναίων δῆμος, οὓς μὲν Σωκράτης νομίζει θεοὺς οὐ νομίζων, ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια ἐπεισφέρων … Ἀδικεῖ δὲ ὁ δῆμος καὶ τοὺς νέους διαφθείρων.

82  Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag. c. 138-148. Adhortatio ad Philosophiam, p. 324, ed. Kiessling. See chap. xxxvii. of my “History of Greece,” p. 345, last edit.

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 corresponded 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

83  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 379.

In the sixteenth chapter of my “History of Greece” (see p. 504 seq.) I have given many remarks on the ancient Grecian legends, and on the varying views entertained in ancient times respecting them, considered chiefly in reference to the standard of historical belief. I here regard them more as matters of religious belief and emotion.

84  Nowhere is the relation between men and the Gods, and the all-covering variety of divine agency, in ancient Grecian belief, more instructively illustrated than in the Hippolytus of Euripides. Hippolytus, a youth priding himself on piety and still more upon inexorable continence (1140-1365), is not merely the constant worshipper of the goddess Artemis, but also her companion; she sits with him, hunts with him; he hears her voice and converses with her; he knows her presence by the divine odour, though he does not see her (σύνθακε, συγκύναγε, 1093-1391-87). But he disdains to address a respectful word to Aphrodité, or to yield in any way to her influence, though he continually passes by her statue which stands at his gates; he even speaks of her in disparaging terms (13-101). Aphrodité becomes deeply indignant with him, not because he is devoted to Artemis, but because he neglects and despises herself (20): for the Gods take offence when they are treated with disrespect, just as men do (6-94). His faithful attendant laments this misguided self-sufficiency, and endeavours in vain to reason his master out of it (see the curious dialogue 87-120, also 445). Aphrodité accordingly resolves to punish Hippolytus for this neglect by inspiring Phædra, his step-mother, with an irresistible passion for him: she foresees that this will prove the destruction of Phædra as well as of Hippolytus, but no such consideration can be allowed to countervail the necessity of punishing her enemies. She accordingly smites Phædra with love-sickness, which, since Phædra will not reveal the cause, the chorus ascribes to the displeasure and visitation of some unknown divinity, Pan, Hekatê, Kybelê, &c. (142-238). The course of this beautiful drama is well known: Aphrodité proves herself a goddess and something more (359): Phædra and Hippolytus both perish; Theseus is struck down with grief and remorse (1402); while Artemis, who appears at the end to console the dying Hippolytus and reprove Theseus, laments that it was not in her power, according to the established etiquette among the Gods, to interpose for the protection of Hippolytus against the anger of Aphrodité, but promises to avenge him by killing with her unerring arrows some marked favourite of Aphrodité (1327-1421). “Non esse curæ Diis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem.” — Tacitus.

85  Homer, Iliad xxiv. 527.

86  The opinion is memorable, which Herodotus puts into the mouth of the wisest and best man of his age — Solon. Ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάμενόν με τὸ θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες, ἐπειρωτᾶς ἀνθρωπηΐων πραγμάτων περί; (Herod. i. 32). Krœsus was overtaken by a terrible divine judgment because he thought himself the happiest of men (i. 34). The Gods strike at persons of high rank and position: they do not suffer any one except themselves to indulge in self-exaltation (vii. 10). Herodotus ascribes the like sentiment to another man distinguished for prudence — Amasis king of Egypt (iii. 40-44-125). Compare Pausanias, ii. 33, and Æschyl. Pers. 93, Supplices, 388, Hermann. Herodotus and Pausanias proclaim the envy and jealousy of the Gods more explicitly than other writers. About the usual disposition to regard the jealousy of the Gods as causing misfortunes and suffering, see Thucyd. ii. 54, vii. 77; especially when a man by rash speech or act brings grave misfortune on himself, he is supposed to be under a misguiding influence by the Gods, expressed by Herodotus in the remarkable word θεοβλαβής (Herodot. i. 127, viii. 137; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 3; Soph. Œd. Kol. 371). The poverty in which Xenophon found himself when he quitted the Cyreian army, is ascribed by himself, at the suggestion of the prophet Eukleides, to his having omitted to sacrifice to Zeus Meilichius during the whole course of the expedition and retreat. The next day Xenophon offered an ample sacrifice to this God, and good fortune came upon him immediately afterwards; he captured Asidates the Persian, receiving a large ransom, with an ample booty, and thus enriched himself (Xenoph. Anab. vii. 8, 4-23). Compare about θεῶν φθόνος, Pindar, Pyth. x. 20-44; Demosthenes cont. Timokratem, p. 738; Nägelsbach, Die Nach-Homerische Theologie der Griechen, pp. 330-355.

Repugnance 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.

87  Æschines cont. Timarch. Σωκράτη τὸν σοφιστήν.

Lucretius, i. 80.

Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis

Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque

Indugredi sceleris —

Plato, in Leges, v. 738 B, recognises the danger of disturbing the established and accredited religious φῆμαι, as well as the rites and ceremonies.

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

Though the Platonic Sokrates, repudiating most of the narratives 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 In his eyes, the religious traditions were part and parcel of the established faith, customs and laws of the state; and Sokrates, in 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.

88  Aristophan. Nubes, 358: λεπτοτάτων λήρων ἱερεῦ. 885: γνώμας καινὰς ἐξευρίσκων.

1381. —

ὡς ἡδὺ καινοῖς πράγμασιν καὶ δεξιοῖς ὁμιλεῖν,

καὶ τῶν καθεστώτων νόμων ὑπερφρονεῖν δύνασθαι.

894. —

(Ἄδικος Λόγος.) —

Πῶς δῆτα δίκης οὔσης, ὁ Ζεὺς

οὐκ ἀπόλωλεν, τὸν πατέρ’ αὑτοῦ

δήσας;

(Δίκ. Λόγος) αἰβοῖ, τουτὶ καὶ δὴ

χωρεῖ τὸ κακόν· δότε μοι λεκάνην.

1061. —

μοιχὸς γὰρ ἢν τύχῃς ἁλούς, τάδ’ ἀντερεῖς πρὸς αὐτόν,

ὡς οὐδὲν ἠδίκηκας· εἶτ’ ἐς τὸν Δί’ ἐπανενεγκεῖν·

κἀκεῖνος ὡς ἥττων ἔρωτός ἐστι καὶ γυναικῶν.

While Aristophanes introduces the freethinker as justifying unlawful acts by the example of Zeus, Plato (in the dialogue called Euthyphron) represents Euthyphron as indicting his father for murder, and justifying himself by the analogy of Zeus; Euthyphron being a very religious man, who believed all the divine matters commonly received and more besides (p. 6). This exhibits the opposition between the Platonic and the Aristophanic point of view. In the Eumenides of Æschylus (632), these Goddesses reproach Zeus with inconsistency, after chaining up his old father Kronus, in estimating so highly the necessity of avenging Agamemnon’s death, as to authorise Orestes to kill Klytæmnestra.

An extract from Butler’s Analogy, in reply to the objections offered by Deists against the Old Testament, will serve to illustrate the view which pious Athenians took of those ancient narratives which Plato censures. Butler says: “It is the province of Reason to judge of the morality of the Scripture; i.e. not whether it contains things different from what we should have expected from a wise, just, and good Being, . . . but whether it contains things plainly contradictory to Wisdom, Justice, or Goodness; to what the light of Nature teaches us of God. And I know nothing of this sort objected against Scripture, excepting such objections as are formed upon suppositions which would equally conclude that the constitution of Nature is contradictory to wisdom, justice, or goodness; which most certainly it is not. Indeed, there are some particular precepts in Scripture, given to particular persons, requiring actions which would be immoral and vicious, were it not for such precepts. But it is easy to see that all these are of such a kind, as that the precept changes the whole nature of the case and of the action, and both constitutes and shows that not to be unjust or immoral which, prior to the precept, must have appeared and really been so; which may well be, since none of these precepts are contrary to immutable morality. If it were commanded to cultivate the principles, and act from the spirit, of treachery, ingratitude, cruelty; the command would not alter the nature of the case or of the action, in any of these instances. But it is quite otherwise in precepts which require only the doing an external action; for instance, taking away the property or life of any. For men have no right to either life or property, but what arises solely from the grant of God; when this grant is revoked, they cease to have any right at all in either; and when this revocation is made known, as surely it is possible it may be, it must cease to be unjust to deprive them of either. And though a course of external acts which, without command, would be immoral, must make an immoral habit; yet a few detached commands have no such natural tendency.

“I thought proper to say thus much of the few Scripture precepts which require, not vicious actions, but actions which would have been vicious had it not been for such precepts; because they are sometimes weakly urged as immoral, and great weight is laid upon objections drawn from them. But to me there seems no difficulty at all in these precepts, but what arises from their being offences — i.e. from their being liable to be perverted, as indeed they are, by wicked designing men, to serve the most horrid purposes, and perhaps to mislead the weak and enthusiastic. And objections from this head are not objections against Revelation, but against the whole notion of Religion as a trial, and against the whole constitution of Nature.” (Butler’s Analogy, Part. ii. ch. 3.)

I do not here propose to examine the soundness of this argument (which has been acutely discussed in a good pamphlet by Miss Hennell — ‘Essay on the Sceptical Tendency of Butler’s Analogy,’ p. 15, John Chapman, 1859). It appeared satisfactory to an able reasoner like Butler: and believers at Athens would have found satisfaction in similar arguments, when the narratives in which they believed were pronounced by Sokrates mischievous and incredible, as imputing to the Gods unworthy acts. For example — Zeus and Athêne instigate Pandarus to break the sworn truce between the Greeks and Trojans: Zeus sends Oneirus, or the Dream-God, to deceive Agamemnon (Plat. Rep. ii. pp. 379-383). Here are acts (the orthodox reasoner would say) which would be immoral if it were not for the special command: but Agamemnon and the Greeks had no right to life or property, much less to any other comforts or advantages, except what arose from the gift of the Gods. Now the Gods, on this particular occasion, thought fit to revoke the right which they had granted, making known such revocation to Pandarus; who, accordingly, in that particular case, committed no injustice in trying to kill Menelaus, and in actually wounding him. The Gods did not give any general command “to cultivate the spirit and act upon the principles” of perjury and faithlessness: they merely licensed the special act of Pandarus — hic et nunc — by making known to him that they had revoked the right of the Greeks to have faith observed with them, at that particular moment. When any man argues — “Pandarus was instigated by Zeus to break faith: therefore faithlessness is innocent and authorised: therefore I may break faith” — this is “a perversion by wicked and designing men for a horrid purpose, and can mislead only the weak and enthusiastic”.

Farther, If the Gods may by special mandates cause the murder or impoverishment of particular men by other men to be innocent acts, without sanctioning any inference by analogy — much more may the same be said respecting the acts of the Gods among themselves, which Sokrates censures, viz. their quarrels, violent manifestations by word and deed, amorous gusts, hearty laughter, &c. These too are particular acts, not intended to lead to consequences in the way of example. The Gods have not issued any general command. “Be quarrelsome, be violent,” &c. If they are quarrelsome themselves on particular occasions, they have a right to be so; just as they have a right to take away any man’s life or property whenever they choose: but you are not to follow their example, and none but wicked men will advise you to do so.

To those believers who denounced Sokrates as a freethinker (Plat. Euthyp. p. 6 A) such arguments would probably appear satisfactory. “Sunt Superis sua jura” is a general principle, flexible and wide in its application. Of arguments analogous to those of Butler, really used in ancient times by advocates who defended the poets against censures like those of Plato, we find an illustrative specimen in the Scholia on Sophokles. At the beginning of the Elektra (35-50), Orestes comes back with his old attendant or tutor to Argos, bent on avenging the death of his father. He has been stimulated to that enterprise by the Gods (70), having consulted Apollo at Delphi, and having been directed by him to accomplish it not by armed force but by deceits (δόλοισι κλέψαι, 36). Keeping himself concealed, he sends the old attendant into the house of Ægisthus, with orders to communicate a false narrative that he (Orestes) is dead, having perished by an accident in the Pythian chariot-race: and he directs the attendant to certify this falsehood by oath (ἄγγελλε δ’ ὄρκῳ προστιθείς, 47). Upon which last words the Scholiast observes as follows:— “We must not take captious exception to the poet, as if he were here exhorting men to perjure themselves. For Orestes is bound to obey the God, who commands him to accomplish the whole by deceit; so that while he appears to be impious by swearing a false oath, he by that very act shows his piety, since he does it in obedience to the God” — μὴ σμικρολόγως τις ἐπιλάβηται, ὡς κελεύοντος ἐπιορκεῖν τοῦ ποιητοῦ· δεῖ γὰρ αὐτὸν πείθεσθαι τῷ θεῷ, τὸ πᾶν δόλῳ πράσσειν παρακελευομένῳ· ὥστε ἐν οἷς δοκεῖ ἐπιορκῶν δυσσεβεῖν, διὰ τούτων εὐσεβεῖ, πειθόμενος τῷ θεῷ.

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 from 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

89  Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 399-400.

90  Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 400 D-401 B. ὁ τρόπος τῆς λέξεως — τῷ τῆς ψυχῆς ἤθει ἕπεται — προσαναγκαστέον τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ εἰκόνα ἤθους ἐμποιεῖν.

91  Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 401-402 A.

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.

92  Plato, Repub. x. p. 608 B. περὶ τῆς ἐν αὑτῷ πολιτείας δεδιότι — μέγας ὁ ἀγών, μέγας, οὐχ ὅσος δοκεῖ, τὸ χρηστὸν ἢ κακὸν γενέσθαι.

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 together, 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; 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

93  Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 421-A 423 D.

94  Plato, Repub. iii. p. 417 A-B.

95  Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 416-417.

96  Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 423-424 D-425 A-C.

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 many 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

97  Plato, Repub. v. p. 451 D.

98  See this remarkable argument — Republic, v. pp. 453-456 — γυναῖκες μέντοι πολλαὶ πολλῶν ἀνδρῶν βελτίους εἰς πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὅλον ἔχει ὡς σὺ λέγεις. Οὐδὲν ἄρα ἐστὶν ἐπιτήδευμα τῶν πόλιν διοικούντων γυναικὸς διότι γυνή, οὔδ’ ἀνδρὸς διότι ἀνήρ, ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως διεσπαρμέναι αἱ φύσεις ἐν ἀμφοῖν τοῖν ζώοιν, καὶ πάντων μὲν μετέχει γυνὴ ἐπιτηδευμάτων κατὰ φύσιν, πάντων δὲ ἀνήρ· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ ἀσθενέστερον γυνὴ ἀνδρός (p. 455 D). It would appear (from p. 455 C) that those who maintained the special fitness of women for certain occupations and their special unfitness for others, cited, as examples of occupations in which women surpassed men, weaving and cookery. But Plato denies this emphatically as a matter of fact; pronouncing that women were inferior to men (i.e. the best women to the best men) in weaving and cookery no less than in other things. We should have been glad to know what facts were present to his mind as bearing out such an assertion, and what observations were open to him of weaving as performed by males. In Greece, weaving was the occupation of women very generally, whether exclusively or not we can hardly say; in Phœnicia, during the Homeric times, the finest robes are woven by Sidonian women (Iliad vi. 289): in Egypt, on the contrary, it was habitually performed by men, and Herodotus enumerates this as one of the points in which the Egyptians differed from other countries (Herodot. ii. 35; Soph. Œd. Kol. 340, with the Scholia, and the curious citation contained therein from the Βαρβαρικὰ of Nymphodorus). The process of weaving was also conducted in a different manner by the Egyptians. Whether Plato had seen finer webs in Egypt than in Greece we cannot say.

99  Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A.

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 connoted 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

100  Plato, Republic, v. p. 454 A. διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασται κατ’ εἴδη διαιρούμενοι τὸ λεγόμεον ἐπισκοπεῖν, ἀλλὰ κατ’ αὐτὸ τὸ ὄνομα διώκειν τοῦ λεχθέντος τὴν ἐναντίωσιν, ἔριδι, οὐ διαλέκτῳ, πρὸς ἀλλήλους χρώμενοι. 454 B: ἐπεσκεψάμεθα δὲ οὐδ’ ὁπῃοῦν, τί εἶδος τὸ τῆς ἑτέρας τε καὶ τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως, καὶ πρὸς τί τεῖνον ὡριζόμεθα τότε, ὅτε τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα ἄλλῃ φύσει ἄλλα, τῇ δὲ αὐτῇ τὰ αὐτά, ἀπεδίδομεν. Xenophon is entirely opposed to Plato on this point. He maintains emphatically the distinct special aptitudes of man and woman. Œconom. vii. 20-38; compare Euripid. Electra, 74.

101  Plato, Repub. v. p. 455 C-D.

102  Plato, Repub. v. p. 456.

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 true 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

103  Plato, Repub. v. p. 456 C. Οὐκ ἄρα ἀδύνατά γε, οὐδὲ εὐχαῖς ὅμοια, ἐνομοθετοῦμεν, ἐπείπερ κατὰ φύσιν ἐτίθεμεν τὸν νόμον· ἀλλὰ τὰ νῦν παρὰ ταῦτα γιγνόμενα παρὰ φύσιν μᾶλλον, ὡς ἔοικε, γίγνεται.

104  Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 B. Ὁ δὲ γελῶν ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ γυμναῖς γυναιξί, τοῦ βελτίστου ἕνεκα γυμναζομέναις, ἀτελῆ τοῦ γελοίου σοφίας δρέπων καρπόν, οὐδὲν οἶδεν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐφ’ ᾧ γελᾷ οὐδ’ ὅ, τι πράττει· κάλλιστα γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο καὶ λέγεται καὶ λελέξεται, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ὠφέλιμον, καλόν — τὸ δὲ βλαβερόν, αἰσχρόν.

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, shall be expanded so as to embrace all of appropriate age.

105  Plato, Republic, v. p. 457 C-D. τὰς γυναῖκας ταύτας τῶν ἀνδρῶν τούτων πάντων πάσας εἶναι κοινάς, ἰδίᾳ δὲ μηδενὶ μηδεμίαν συνοικεῖν· καὶ τοὺς παῖδας αὖ κοινούς, καὶ μήτε γονέα ἔκγονον εἰδέναι τὸν αὐτοῦ μήτε παῖδα γονέα.

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

106  Plato, Repub. v. p. 458 E. ἀτάκτως μὲν μίγνυσθαι ἀλλήλοις ἢ ἄλλο ὁτιοῦν ποιεῖν οὔτε ὅσιον ἐν εὐδαιμόνων πόλει οὔτ’ ἐάσουσιν οἱ ἄρχοντες.

107  Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 A. τὸ δὲ πλῆθος τῶν γάμων ἐπὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσι ποιήσομεν, ἵν’ ὡς μάλιστα διασώζωσι τὸν αὐτὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν ἀνδρῶν, πρὸς πολέμους τε καὶ νόσους καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα ἀποσκοποῦντες, καὶ μήτε μεγάλη ἡμῖν ἡ πόλις κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν μήτε σμικρὰ γίγνηται.

108  Plato, Repub. v. p. 459.

109  This is his phrase, repeated more than once — τίκτειν τῇ πόλει, γεννᾷν τῇ πόλει — τῶν εἰς τὸ κοινὸν γεννήσεων (pp. 460-461).

What Lucan (ii. 387) observes about Cato of Utica, is applicable to the Guardians of the Platonic Republic:—

“Venerisque huic maximus usus

Progenies. Urbi pater est, Urbique maritus.”

110  Plato, Repub. v. p. 460 A.

Regulations 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

111  Plato, Repub. v. p. 460.

112  Plato, Repub. v. pp. 460 B, 468 C. In the latter passage it even appears that he is allowed to make a choice.

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 those 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

113  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460 D, 461 D.

114  Compare Republic, v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C, with Timæus, p. 19 A. In Timæus, where the leading doctrines of the Republic are briefly recapitulated, Plato directs that the children considered as unworthy shall be secretly distributed among the remaining community, i.e. not among the Guardians: in the Republic itself, his language, though not clear, seems to imply that they shall be exposed and got rid of.

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 in 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

115  Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 C.

116  Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 D.

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-headed 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

117  This number of 1000 appears stated by Aristotle (Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. 9), and is probably derived from Republic, iv. p. 423 A; though that passage appears scarcely sufficient to prove that Plato meant to declare the number 1000 as peremptory. However the understanding of Aristotle himself on the point is one material evidence to make us believe that this is the real construction intended by Plato.

118  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 462-463-464 D. διὰ τὸ μηδένα ἴδιον ἐκτῆσθαι πλὴν τὸ σῶμα, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα κοινά. Compare Plato, Legg. v. p. 739 C.

119  Plato, Republic, v. pp. 464-465.

120  Plato, Republic, v. p. 465 C.

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 women, 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.

121  See Plato, De Legibus, v. p. 739 D. The Republic is second best; that which appears sketched in the treatise De Legibus is third best.

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

122  Aristotle, in his comments upon the Platonic Republic (Politic. ii. 5. p. 1262, b. 42 seq.), advances arguments just in themselves, in favour of individual property, and against community of property. But these arguments have little application to the Republic.

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 Eastern 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.

123  Aristot. Politic. vii. 10. Herodot. ii. 164. Plato alludes (Timæ. 24 A) to the analogy of Egyptian castes.

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 unlimited 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.

124  See Xenophon, Hellenic. vi. 4, 16, the account of what passed at Sparta after the battle of Leuktra, related also in my “History of Greece,” chap. 78, vol. x. p. 253.

125  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 632 D, 634 A.

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 Rulers. 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

126  Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 416-417.

127  See the contrary opinion asserted by Nikias in his speech at Athens, Thucyd. vi. 9.

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 same (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.

128  Aristotle, Politic. vii. 9, p. 1328, b. 40, p. 1329, a. 25.

129  Aristot. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 12-26, respecting the Platonic Commonwealth, καίτοι σχεδὸν τόγε πλῆθος τῆς πόλεως τὸ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν γίνεται πλῆθος, &c. …

Ποιεῖ γὰρ (Plato) τοὺς μὲν φύλακας οἷον φρουρούς, τοὺς δὲ γεωργοὺς καὶ τοὺς τεχνίτας καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους, πολίτας.

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 well 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 an 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

130  Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 24. ἐν μιᾷ γὰρ πόλει δύο πόλεις, ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι, καὶ ταύτας ὑπεναντίας ἀλλήλαις.

The most forcible of the objections urged by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic, are those contained in this chapter respecting the relations between the Guardians and the rest of the community.

131  The oneness, which Plato proclaims as belonging to his whole city, belongs in reality only to the body of Guardians; of whom he sometimes speaks as if they were the whole city, which however is not his real intention; see Republic, v. p. 462-463 A.

132

Τοὺς μὲν ἑταίρους ἦγεν ἴσους μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν,

Τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἡγεῖτ’ οὔτ’ ἐν λόγῳ οὔτ’ ἐν ἀριθμῷ.

133  Plato, Republ. v. 465 D.

Aristotle says (in the Nikom. Ethics, i. 5) when discussing the various ideas entertained about happiness — Οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ παντελῶς ἀνδραποδώδεις φαίνονται βοσκημάτων βίον προαιρούμενοι. This is much the estimation which the Platonic Guardians would be apt to form respecting the Demos.

134  The foregoing remarks are an expansion, and a sequel, of Aristotle’s objection against the Platonic Republic — That it is not One City, but two discordant cities in that which is nominally One. I must however add that the same objection may be urged against the Xenophontic constitution of a city; and also, in substance, even against the proposition of Aristotle himself for the same purpose. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, proposes a severe, life-long drill and discipline, like that of the Spartans: from which indeed he does not formally exclude any citizens, but which he announces to be actually attended only by the wealthy, since they alone can afford to attend continuously and habitually, the poorer men being engaged in the cares of maintenance. All the functions of the state, civil and military, are performed exclusively by those who go through the public discipline. We have here the two cities in One, which Aristotle objects to in Plato; with the consequent loss of civic fraternity between them. And when we look to that which Aristotle himself suggests, we find him evading the objection by a formal sanction of the very mischief upon which the objection is founded. He puts the husbandmen and artisans altogether out of the pale of his city, which is made to include the disciplined citizens or Guardians alone. His city may thus be called One, inasmuch as it admits only homogeneous elements, and throws out all such as are heterogeneous; but he thus avowedly renounces as insoluble the problem which Plato and Xenophon try, though unsuccessfully, to solve. If there be discord and alienation among the constituent members of the Platonic and Xenophontic city — there will subsist the like feelings, in Aristotle’s proposition, between the members of the city and the outlying, though indispensable, adjuncts. There will be the same mischief in kind, and probably exaggerated in amount: since the abolition of the very name and idea of fellow-citizen tends to suppress altogether an influence of tutelary character, however insufficient as to its force.

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 training — 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

135  Aristotel. Politic. viii. 1, p. 1337, Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἓν τὸ τέλος τῇ πόλει πάσῃ, φανερὸν ὅτι καὶ τὴν παιδείαν μίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι πάντων, καὶ ταύτης τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι κοινὴν καὶ μὴ κατ’ ἰδίαν· ὃν τρόπον νῦν ἕκαστος ἐπιμελεῖται τῶν αὐτοῦ τέκνων ἰδία τε καὶ μάθησιν ἰδίαν, ἣν ἂν δόξῃ, διδάσκων … Ἅμα δὲ οὐδὲ χρὴ νομίζειν αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ τινὰ εἶναι τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλὰ πάντας τῆς πόλεως … ἡ δ’ ἐπιμέλειας πέφυκεν ἑκάστου μορίου βλέπειν πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου ἐπιμέλειαν.

The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to him 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, though 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

136  Aristotel. Politic. ii. 9, p. 1269, b. 12. Ἔτι δ’ ἡ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἄνεσις καὶ πρὸς τὴν προαίρεσιν τῆς πολιτείας βλαβερὰ καὶ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν πόλεως … Ὡστ’ ἐν ὅσαις πολιτείαις φαύλως ἔχει τὸ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς πόλεως εἶναι δεῖ νομίζειν ἀνομοθέτητον. Ὅπερ ἐκεῖ (at Sparta) συμβέβηκεν· ὅλην γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ὁ νομοθέτης εἶναι βουλόμενος καρτερικήν, κατὰ μὲν τοὺς ἄνδρας φανερός ἐστι τοιοῦτος ὤν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐξημέληκεν, &c. … Τὰ δὲ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἔχοντα μὴ καλῶς ἔοικεν οὐ μόνον ἀπρέπειάν τινα ποιεῖν τῆς πόλεως αὐτῆς καθ’ αὑτήν, ἀλλὰ συμβάλλεσθαί τι πρὸς τὴν φιλοχρηματίαν.

Plato has a similar remark, Legg. vi. pp. 780-781.

137  Stallbaum (in his note on Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 C, τὴν τῶν γυναικῶν παρ’ ὑμῖν ἄνεσιν) observes — “Lacænarum licentiam, quum ex aliis institutis patriis, tum ex gymnicarum exercitationum usu repetendam, Plato carpit etiam infrà,” &c. This is a mistake. Plato does not blame the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens: the four passages to which Stallbaum refers do not prove his assertion. They even countenance the reverse of that assertion. Plato approves of gymnastic and military exercises for maidens in the Laws, and for all the female Guardians in the Republic.

Stallbaum also refers to Aristotle as disapproving the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens. I cannot think that this is correct. Aristotle does indeed blame the arrangements for women at Sparta, but not, as I understand him, because the women were subjected to gymnastic exercise; his blame is founded on the circumstance that the women were not regulated, but left to do as they pleased, while the men were under the strictest drill. This I conceive to be the meaning of γυναικῶν ἄνεσις. Euripides indeed has a very bitter passage condemning the exercises of the Spartan maidens; but neither Plato nor Aristotle shared this view.

Respecting the Spartan maidens and their exercises, see Xenophon, Republ. Laced. i. 4; Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14.

138  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 8. Πεπονημένην μὲν οὖν ἔχειν δεῖ τὴν ἕξιν, πεπονημένην δὲ πόνοις μὴ βιαίοις, μηδὲ πρὸς ἕνα μόνον, ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν ἀθλητῶν ἕξις, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἐλευθερίων πράξεις. Ὁμοίως δὲ δεῖ ταῦτα ὑπάρχειν ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξί. Compare also i. 8, near the end of the first book.

139  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, a. 20, b. 15.

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

140  If we take the sentence from Aristotle’s Politics, cited in a note immediately preceding, to the effect that all the citizens belonged to the city, and that each was a part of the city (viii. 1, p. 1337, a. 28) in conjunction with another passage in the Politics (i. 3, p. 1254, a. 10) — Τό τε γὰρ μόριον, οὐ μόνον ἄλλου ἐστὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως ἄλλου — it is difficult to see how he can, consistently with these principles, assign to his citizens any individual self-regarding agency. Plato denies all such to his Guardians, and in so doing he makes deductions consistent with the principles of Aristotle, who lays down his principles too absolutely for the use which he afterwards makes of them.

141  Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1263, b. 29. φαίνεται δ’ εἶναι πάμπαν ἀδύνατος ὁ βίος.

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, 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 first 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.

142  Plato indeed in one place tells us that a single despot, becoming by inspiration or accident a philosopher, and having an obedient city, would accomplish the primary construction of his commonwealth (Republic, vi. p. 502 B). That despot (Plato supposes) will send away all the population of his city above ten years old, and will train up the children in the Platonic principles (vii. pp. 540-541).

This is little better than an εὐχή, whatever Plato may say to deprecate the charge of uttering εὐχάς, p. 540 D.

143  Aristotel. Metaphys. A. p. 991, a. 22. Τί γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἐργαζόμενον, πρὸς τὰς ἰδέας ἀποβλέπον;

We find Aristotle arguing, in the course of his remarks on the Platonic Republic, that it is useless now to promulgate any such novelties; a long time has elapsed, and such things would already have been found established if they had been good (Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 2). This would have applied (somewhat less in degree, yet with quite sufficient force) to the ideal commonwealth of Aristotle himself, as well as to that of Plato.

Because such institutions have never yet been established anywhere as those proposed by Plato or Aristotle, you cannot fairly argue that they would not be good, or that they would not stand if established. What you may fairly argue is, that they are not at all likely to be established; no originating force will be forthcoming adequate to the first creation of them. Existing societies have fixed modes of thinking and feeling on social and political matters; each moves in its own groove, and the direction in which it will henceforward move will be a consequence and continuance of the direction in which it is already moving, by virtue of powerful causes now in operation. New originating force is a very rare phenomenon. Overwhelming enemies or physical calamities may destroy what exists, but they will not produce any such innovations as those under discussion.

144  Plato himself makes this very remark in the Treatise De Legibus (viii. p. 839 D) in defending the practicability of some of the ordinances therein recommended.

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 forcible, 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.

145  Herodot. iii. 38. οἱ δέ, ἀμβώσαντες μέγα, εὐφημέειν μιν ἐκέλευον.

Plato in a remarkable passage of the Leges (i. 638 B), deprecates and complains of this instantaneous condemnation without impartial hearing of argument on both sides.

146  See the arguments urged by Aristotle, Politic. ii. 4, p. 1262, a. 25 et seq. His remarks upon the fictions which Plato requires to be impressed on the belief of his Guardians are extremely just. There are, however, several objections urged by him which turn more upon the Platonic language than upon the Platonic vein of thought, and which, if judged by Plato from his own point of view, would have appeared admissions in his favour rather than objections. In reply to Plato, whose aim it is that all or many of the Guardians shall say mine in reference to the same persons or the same things, and not in reference to different persons and different things, Aristotle contends that the word mine will not then designate any such strong affection as it does now, when it is special, exclusive, and concentrated on a few persons or things; that each Guardian, having many persons whom he called brother and many persons whom he called father, would not feel towards them as persons now feel towards brothers and fathers; that the affection by being disseminated would be weakened, and would become nothing more than a “diluted friendship” — φιλία ὑδαρής. See Aristot. Politic. ii. 3, p. 1261, b. 22; ii. 4, p. 1262, b. 15.

Plato, if called upon for an answer to this reasoning, would probably have allowed it to be just; but would have said that the “diluted friendship” pervading all the Guardians was apt and sufficient for his purpose, as bringing the whole number most nearly into the condition of one organism. Strong exclusive affections, upon whatever founded, between individuals, he wishes to discourage: the hateful or unfriendly sentiments he is bent on rooting out. What he desires to see preponderant, in each Guardian, is a sense of duty to the public: subordinate to that, he approves moderate and kindly affections, embracing all the Guardians; towards the elders as fathers, towards those of the same age as brothers. Aristotle’s expression — φιλία ὑδαρής — describes such a sentiment fairly enough. See Republic, v. pp. 462-463. It must be conceded, however, that Plato’s language is open to Aristotle’s objection.

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 person. 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 sexes, 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

147  Eurip. Androm. 598.

The criticisms of Xenophon in the first chapter of his treatise, De Laced. Republ., exhibit a point of view on many points analogous to that of Plato respecting the female sex, and differing from that which he puts into the mouth of Ischomachus in his Œkonomicus. See above, p. 172, note 3. Among the lost treatises of Kleanthes, successor of Zeno as Scholarch of the Stoic School, one was composed expressly to show Ὅτι ἡ αὐτὴ ἀρετὴ καὶ ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός. (Diog. Laert. vii. 175.)

148  Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A-B. Ἀποδυτέον δὴ ταῖς τῶν φυλάκων γυναιξίν, ἐπείπερ ἀρετὴν ἀντὶ ἱματίων ἀμφιέσονται, καὶ κοινωνητέον πολέμου τε καὶ τῆς ἄλλης φυλακῆς τῆς περὶ τὴν πόλιν, καὶ οὐκ ἄλλα πρακτέον· τούτων δ’ αὐτῶν τὰ ἐλαφρότερα ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἢ τοῖς ἀνδράσι δοτέον, διὰ τὴν τοῦ γένους ἀσθένειαν. Ὁ δὲ γελῶν ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ γυμναῖς γυναιξί, τοῦ βελτίστου ἕνεκα γυμναζομέναις, ἀτελῆ τοῦ γελοίου σοφίας δρέπων καρπόν, οὐδὲν οἶδεν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐφ’ ᾧ γελᾷ οὐδ’ ὅ, τι πράττει. Κάλλιστα γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο καὶ λέγεται καὶ λελέξεται, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ὠφέλιμον, καλόν — τὸ δὲ βλαβερόν, αἰσχρόν.

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 the 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.

149  Plato, Republic, v. p. 456 C. τὰ νῦν παρὰ ταῦτα γιγνόμενα παρὰ φύσιν μᾶλλον, &c. Also p. 466 D.

150  Compare a similar appeal to the analogy of animals, as proving the ἔρωτας ἀῤῥένων to be unnatural, Plato, Legg. viii. p. 836 C.

151  Aristotel. Politic. i. 13, p. 1260 a. 20-30.

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 opens, 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 matters 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.

152  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 C. εἰθισμένον γὰρ δεδοικὸς καὶ σκοτεινὸν ζῆν, &c.

153  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 795 C, 796 C, 802 A.

154  Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 804-805-806. 804 E: ἀκούων μὲν γὰρ δὴ μύθους παλαιοῦς πέπεισμαι, τὰ δὲ νῦν, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, οἶδα ὅτι μυριάδες ἀναρίθμητοι γυναικῶν εἰσὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Πόντον, ἃς Σαυροματίδας καλοῦσιν, αἷς οὐχ ἵππων μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τόξων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅπλων κοινωνία καὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἴση προστεταγμένη ἴσως ἀσκεῖται. We may doubt whether Plato knew anything of the brave and skilful Artemisia, queen of Halikarnassus, who so greatly distinguished herself in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 87), and, indeed, whether he had ever read the history of Herodotus. His argument might have been strengthened by another equally pertinent example, if he could have quoted the original letter addressed by the Emperor Aurelian to the Roman Senate, attesting the courage, vigour, and prudence, of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. Trebellius Pollio, Vitæ Triginta Tyrannorum in Histor. August. p. 198 (De Zenobia, xxix.: cap. xxx.): “Audio, Patres Conscripti, mihi objici, quod non virile munus impleverim, Zenobiam triumphando. Næ, illi qui me reprehendunt, satis laudarent, si scirent qualis illa est mulier, quam prudens in consiliis, quam constans in dispositionibus, quam erga milites gravis, quam larga cum necessitas postulet, quam tristis cum severitas poscat. Possum dicere illius esse quod Odenatus Persas vicit, ac fugato Sapore Ctesiphontem usque pervenit. Possum asserere, tanto apud Orientales et Ægyptiorum populos timori mulierem fuisse, ut se non Arabes, non Saraceni, non Armenii, commoverent. Nec ego illi vitam conservassem, nisi eam scissem multum Romanæ Reipublicæ profuisse, cum sibi vel liberis suis Orientis servaret imperium.

155  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 813-814.

156  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 D.

157  Plutarch, Theseus, c. 27; Æschylus, Eumenid. 682; Isokrates, Panegyr. ss. 76-78. How popular a subject the Amazons were for sculptors, we learn from the statement of Pliny (xxxiv. 8, 19) that all the most distinguished sculptors executed Amazons; and that this subject was the only one upon which a direct comparison could be made between them.

158  Homer, Iliad, xv. 123.

159  Homer, Iliad, v. 333-592.

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 —

Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus

Pernicis uxor Apuli — (HOR. Epod. ii. 41-42).

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, the 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.

160  Homer, Hymn. ad Venerem, 10; Iliad, v. 425; Euripid. Hippolyt. 1400-1420.

Athênê combined the attributes of φιλοπόλεμος and φιλόσοφος. Plato, Timæus, p. 24 D; compare Kritias, p. 109 D.

161  See Aristophan. Ranæ, 1042.

Eurip. Μὰ Δί’ οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν τῆς Ἀφροδίτης οὐδέν σοι.

Æschyl. Μηδέ γ’ ἐπείη. Ἀλλ’ ἐπί σοί τοι καὶ τοῖς σοῖσιν πολλὴ πολλοῦ ’πικαθῆτο.

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 increase 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 which 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.

162  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16.

163  Compare the view (not unlike though founded on different reasons) of the stationary state taken by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in a valuable chapter of his Principles of Political Economy, Book iv. chap. 6. He says (s. 2):— “The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward”. This would come near to the views of Plato and Aristotle.

164  See a striking passage in Plato, Legg. v. pp. 742-743. He speaks of rich men as they are spoken of in some verses of the Gospels — a very rich man can hardly be a good man. Wealth and poverty are both of them evils, p. 744 D. Repub. iv. p. 421.

Pheidon the Corinthian, an ancient lawgiver (we do not know when or where), prescribed an unchangeable number both of lots (of land) and of citizens, but the lots were not to be all equal. Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 14.

165  Aristot. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 10. Τὸ δ’ ἀφεῖσθαι (τὴν τεκνοποιΐαν ἀόριστον), καθάπερ ἐν ταῖς πλείσταις πόλεσιν, πενίας ἀναγκαῖον αἴτιον γίνεσθαι τοῖς πολίταις· ἡ δὲ πενία στάσιν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ κακουργίαν. Compare ibid. ii. 7, p. 1266, b. 8.

166  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 28-38. λειτουργεῖν πρὸς τεκνοποιΐαν … ἀφεῖσθαι δεῖ τῆς εἰς τὸ φανερὸν γεννήσεως.

Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460-461. τίκτειν τῇ πόλει — γεννᾷν τῇ πόλει — τῶν εἰς τὸ κοινὸν γεννήσεων.

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 guarantee 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

167  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 772-773-774. The wording is characteristic of the view taken by these philosophers, and of the extent to which they subordinated individual sentiment to public considerations. κατὰ παντὸς εἷς ἔστω μῦθος γάμου· τὸν γὰρ τῇ πόλει δεῖ ξυμφέροντα μνηστεύειν γάμον ἕκαστον, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸν ἥδιστον αὑτῷ. φέρεται δέ πως πᾶς ἀεὶ κατὰ φύσιν πρὸς τὸν ὁμοιότατον αὑτῷ, &c. (p. 773 B). In marriage (he says) the natural tendency is that like seeks like; but it is good for the city that like should be coupled to unlike, rich to poor, hasty tempers with sober tempers, &c., in order that the specialties may be blended together and mitigated. He does not pretend to embody this in a written law, but directs the authorities to obtain it as far as they can by exhortation. P. 733 E. Compare the Politikus, p. 311.

168  Plato, Legg. v. p. 740 D. ποριζέτω μηχανὴν ὅτι μάλιστα, ὅπως αἱ πεντακισχίλιαι καὶ τετταράκοντα οἰκήσεις ἀεὶ μόνον ἔσονται· καὶ γὰρ ἐπισχέσεις γενέσεως, οἷς ἂν εὔρους εἴη γένεσις, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἐπιμέλειαι καὶ σπουδαὶ πλήθους γεννημάτων εἰσὶν, &c.

169  Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1264, a. 38; ii. 7, p. 1266, b. 10; vii. 16.

Aristotle has not fully considered all that Plato says, when he blames him for inconsistency in proposing to keep properties equal, without taking pains to impose and maintain a constant limit on offspring in families. Ἄτοπον δὲ καὶ τὸ τὰς κτήσεις ἰσάζοντα (Plato) τὸ περὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολιτῶν μὴ κατασκευάζειν, ἀλλ’ ἀφεῖναι τὴν τεκνοποιΐαν ἀόριστον, &c. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. fin.)

What Plato really directs is stated in my text and in my note immediately preceding.

170  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1334, b. 39. εἴπερ οὖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τὸν νομοθέτην ὁρᾷν δεῖ, ὅπως βέλτιστα τὰ σώματα γένηται τῶν τρεφομένων, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπιμελητέον περὶ τὴν σύζευξιν, πότε καὶ ποίους τινὰς ὄντας χρὴ ποιεῖσθοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὴν γαμικὴν ὁμιλίαν, &c. He names thirty-seven as the age proper for a man, eighteen for a woman, to marry. At the age of fifty-five a man becomes unfit to procreate for the public, and none of his children are to appear (ἀφεῖσθαι τῆς εἰς τὸ φανερὸν γεννήσεως, vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 36).

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 prudential 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 nurses — 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

171  Plato, Republ. v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C.

172  Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, 10, p. 1335, b. 20. Περὶ δὲ ἀποθέσεως καὶ τροφῆς τῶν γιγνομένων, ἔστω νόμος, μηδὲν πεπηρωμένον τρέφειν· διὰ δὲ πλῆθος τέκνων, ἐὰν ἡ τάξις τῶν ἐθῶν κωλύῃ, μηδὲν ἀποτίθεσθαι τῶν γιγνομένων· ὥρισται γὰρ δὴ τῆς τεκνοποιΐας τὸ πλῆθος. ἐὰν δέ τισι γίγνηται παρὰ ταῦτα συνδυασθέντων, πρὶν αἴσθησιν ἐγγενέσθαι καὶ ζωήν, ἐμποιεῖσθαι δεῖ τὴν ἄμβλωσιν· τὸ γὰρ ὅσιον καὶ τὸ μὴ διωρισμένον τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ τῷ ζῇν ἔσται. For the text of this passage I have followed Bekker and the Berlin edition. As to the first half of the passage there are some material differences in the text and in the MSS.; some give ἐθνῶν instead of ἐθων, and ὡρίσθαι γὰρ δεῖ instead of ὥρισται γὰρ δὴ. Compare Plato, Theætêt. 149 C.

173  Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 C. τὰ δὲ τῶν χειρόνων (τέκνα), καὶ ἐάν τι τῶν ἑτέρων ἀνάπηρον γίγνηται, ἐν ἀποῤῥήτῳ τε καὶ ἀδήλῳ κατακρύψουσιν ὡς πρέπει. Aristot. ut suprâ, ἔστω νόμος, μηδὲν πεπηρωμένον τρέφειν, &c.

174  Plutarch, Lykurgus, c. 16.

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, 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.

175  Aristotel. Politic. viii. 2, p. 1337, b. 2. Περί τε τῶν πρὸς ἀρετήν, οὐθέν ἐστιν ὁμολογούμενον· καὶ γὰρ τὴν ἀρετὴν οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν εὐθὺς πάντες τιμῶσιν· ὥστ’ εὐλόγως διαφέρονται καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄσκησιν αὐτῆς.

Ethica Nikomach. i. 3, p. 1094, b. 15. Τὰ δὲ καλὰ καὶ τὰ δίκαια, περὶ ὧν ἡ πολιτικὴ σκοπεῖται, τοσαύτην ἔχει διαφορὰν καὶ πλάνην, ὥστε δοκεῖν νόμῳ μόνον εἶναι, φύσει δὲ μή.

176  The extraordinary variety and discrepancy of approved and consecrated customs prevalent in different portions of the ancient world, is instructively set forth in the treatise of the Syrian Christian Bardisanes, in the time of the Antonines. A long extract from this treatise is given in Eusebius, Præparat. Evang., vi. 10; it has been also published by Orelli, annexed to his edition (Zurich, 1824) of the argument of Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 202. Compare Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv. 30.

Bardisanes is replying to the arguments of astrologers and calculators of nativities, who asserted the uniform and uncontrollable influence of the heavenly bodies, in given positions, over human conduct. As a proof that mankind are not subject to any such necessity, but have a large sphere of freewill (αὐτεξούσιον), he cites these numerous instances of diverse and contradictory institutions among different societies. Several of the most conspicuous among these differences relate to the institutions concerning sex and family, the conduct and occupations held obligatory in men and women, &c.

Compare Sextus Empiric., Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. s. 198 seqq.

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 or 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 distinguished 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

177  Plato, Republic, v. p. 473, vi. p. 503 B. τοὺς ἀκριβεστάτους φύλακας φιλοσόφους δεῖ καθιστάναι.

178  Plato, Repub. v. p. 474 B. τοῖς μὲν προσήκει φύει, ἅπτεσθαί τε φιλοσοφίας, ἡγεμονεύειν τ’ ἐν πόλει· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις μήτε ἅπτεσθαι, ἀκολουθεῖν τε τῷ ἡγουμένῳ.

476 B: σπάνιοι ἂν εἶεν. Also vi. 503, vii. 535. They are to be ἐκ τῶν προκρίτων πρόκριτοι, vii. 537 D.

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 also 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

179  Plato, Repub. vii. p. 529 C-D.

The manner in which Plato here depreciates astronomical observation is not easily reconcileable with his doctrine in the Timæus. He there tells us that the rotations of the Nous (intellective soul) in the interior of the human cranium, are cognate or analogous to those of the cosmical spheres, but more confused and less perfect: our eyesight being expressly intended for the purpose, that we might contemplate the perfect and unerring rotations of the cosmical spheres, so as to correct thereby the disturbed rotations in our own brain (Timæus, pp. 46-47).

Malebranche shares the feeling of Plato on the subject of astronomical observation. Recherche de la Vérité, liv. iv. ch. vii. vol. ii. p. 219, ed. 1772 (p. 278, ed. 1721).

“Car enfin qu’y a-t-il de grand dans la connoissance des mouvemens des planètes? et n’en sçavons nous pas assez présentement pour régler nos mois et nos années? Qu’avons nous tant à faire de sçavoir, si Saturne est environné d’un anneau ou d’un grand nombre de petites lunes, et pourquoi prendre parti là-dessus? Pourquoi se glorifier d’avoir prédit la grandeur d’une éclipse, où l’on a peut-être mieux rencontré qu’un autre, parcequ’on a été plus heureux? Il y a des personnes destinées, par l’ordre du Prince, à observer les astres; contentons nous de leurs observations… Nous devons être pleinement satisfaits sur une matière qui nous touche si peu, lorsqu’ils nous font partie de leurs découvertes.”

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 to 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, take 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

180  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 538 D-539. ὅταν τὸν οὕτως ἔχοντα ἐλθὸν ἐρώτημα ἔρηται, τί ἐστι τὸ καλόν, καὶ ἀποκρινάμενον ὃ τοῦ νομοθετοῦ ἤκουεν ἐξελεγχῇ ὁ λόγος, καὶ πολλάκις καὶ πολλαχῆ ἐλέγχων εἰς δόξαν καταβαλῇ ὡς τοῦτο οὐδὲν μάλλον καλὸν ἢ αἰσχρὸν, καὶ περὶ δικαίου ὡσαύτως καὶ ἀδίκου, καὶ ἃ μάλιστα ἦγεν ἐν τιμῇ, &c.

181  Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 B.

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

182  Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 D.

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: 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

183  Plato, Parmenidês, pp. 135 D, 137 B. Theætêt. 146 A.

Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês (p. 778, Stallbaum), adverts to the passage of the Republic here discussed, and endeavours to show that it is not inconsistent with the Parmenidês. He states that the exhortation to practise dialectic debate in youth, as the appropriate season, must be understood as specially and exclusively addressed to a youth of the extraordinary mental qualities of Sokrates; while the passage in the Republic applies the prohibition only to the general regiment of Guardians. But this justification is noway satisfactory; for Plato in the Republic makes no exception in favour of the most promising Guardians. He lays down the position generally. Again, in the Parmenidês, we find the encouragement to dialectic debate addressed not merely to the youthful Sokrates, but to the youthful Aristoteles (p. 137 B). Moreover, we are not to imagine that all the youths who are introduced as respondents in the Platonic dialogues are implied as equal to Sokrates himself, though they are naturally represented as superior and promising subjects. Compare Plato, Sophistês, p. 217 E; Politikus, p. 257 E.

184  Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 ad fin. εἰρήσθω τοίνυν τοῦτό τε καὶ ὅτι, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἓν εἴτ’ ἔστιν, εἰτε μὴ ἔστιν, αὐτό τε καὶ τἄλλα καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα πάντα πάντως ἔστι τε καὶ οὐκ ἔστι, καὶ φαίνεται τε καὶ οὐ φαίνεται. Ἀληθέστατα.

185  Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2.

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”. But 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

186  Plato, Apolog. Sokrat c. 10, p. 23 D, c. 22, p. 33 C, c. 27, p. 37 E, c. 30, p. 39 C.

187  Plato, Sophist. p. 230.

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

188  Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.

189  Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38.

Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii. Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).

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 among 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.

190  Plato, Repub. vii. p. 541.

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

191  Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 533-534.

192  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A.

193  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 A.

194  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 D.

What 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?

195  Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A-E. Ὃ δὴ διώκει μὲν ἅπασα ψυχὴ καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα πάντα πράττει, ἀπομαντευομένη τὶ εἶναι, ἀποροῦσα δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἔχουσα λαβεῖν ἱκανῶς τί ποτ’ ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πίστει χρήσασθαι μονίμῳ, οἵᾳ καὶ περὶ τἄλλα, διὰ τοῦτο δὲ ἀποτυγχάνει καὶ τῶν ἄλλων εἴ τι ὄφελος ἦν, &c.

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 grasp and determine what it is197 — he has unconsciously described the condition of his own.

196  Certainly when we see the way in which Plato deals with the ἰδέα ἀγαθοῦ, we cannot exempt him from the criticism which he addresses to others, vi. p. 493 E. ὡς δὲ καὶ ἀγαθὰ καὶ καλὰ ταῦτα τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ἤδη πωποτέ τοῦ ἤκουσας αὐτῶν λόγον διδόντος οὐ καταγέλαστον;

We may illustrate this procedure of Plato by an Oriental fable, cited in an instructive Dissertation of M. Ernest Renan.

“Aristoteles primum sub Almamuno (813-833, A.D.) arabicè factus est. Somniumque effictum à credulis hominibus: vidisse Almamunum in somno virum aspectu venerabili, solio insidentem: mirantem Almamunum quæsivisse, quisnam ille esset? responsum, Aristotelem esse. Quo audito, Chalifam ab eo quæsivisse, Quidnam Bonum esset? respondisse Aristotelem: Quod sapientiores probarent. Quærenti Chalifæ quid hoc esset? Quod lex divina probat — dixisse. Interroganti porro illi, Quid hoc? Quod omnes probarent — respondisse: neque alii ultra quæstioni respondere voluisse. Quo somnio permotum Almamunum à Græcorum imperatore veniam petiisse, ut libri philosophici in ipsius regno quærerentur: hujusque rei gratiâ viros doctos misisse.” Ernest Renan, De Philosophiâ Peripateticâ apud Syros, commentatio Historica, p. 57; Paris, 1852.

Among the various remarks which might be made upon this curious dream, one is, that Bonum is always determined as having relation to the appreciative apprehension of some mind — the Wise Men, the Divine Mind, the Mind of the general public. Bonum is that which some mind or minds conceive and appreciate as such. The word has no meaning except in relation to some apprehending Subject.

197  Plato, Republ. vi. p. 505 E. ἀπομαντευομένη τι εἶναι, ἀποροῦσα δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἔχουσα λαβεῖν ἱκανῶς τί ποτ’ ἐστίν, &c.

The remarks of Aristotle in impugning the Platonic ἰδέαν ἀγαθοῦ are very instructive, Ethic. Nikom. i. p. 1096-1097; Ethic. Eudem. i. p. 1217-1218. He maintains that there exists nothing corresponding to the word; and that even if it did exist, it would neither be πρακτὸν nor κτητὸν ἀνθρώπῳ. Aristotle here looks upon Good as being essentially relative or phenomenal: he understands τὸ ἁπλῶς ἀγαθὸν to mean τὸ ἀγαθὸν τὸ φαινόμενον τῷ σπουδαίῳ (Eth. Nik. iii. p. 1113, b. 16-32). But he does not uniformly adhere to this meaning.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TIMÆUS AND KRITIAS.

Persons and scheme of the Timæus and Kritias.

Though the Republic of Plato appears as a substantive composition, not including in itself any promise of an intended sequel — yet the Timæus and Kritias are introduced by Plato as constituting a sequel to the Republic. Timæus the Pythagorean philosopher of Lokri, the Athenian Kritias, and Hermokrates, are now introduced, as having been the listeners while Sokrates was recounting his long conversation of ten Books, first with Thrasymachus, next with Glaukon and Adeimantus. The portion of that conversation, which described the theory of a model commonwealth, is recapitulated in its main characteristics: and Sokrates now claims from the two listeners some requital for the treat which he has afforded to them. He desires to see the citizens, whose training he has described at length, and whom he has brought up to the stage of mature capacity — exhibited by some one else as living, acting, and affording some brilliant evidence of courage and military discipline.1 Kritias undertakes to satisfy his demand, by recounting a glorious achievement of the ancient citizens of Attica, who had once rescued Europe from an inroad of countless and almost irresistible invaders, pouring in from the vast island of Atlantis in the Western Ocean. This exploit is supposed to have been performed nearly 10,000 years before; and though lost out of the memory of the Athenians themselves, to have been commemorated and still preserved in the more ancient records of Sais in Egypt, and handed down through Solon by a family tradition to Kritias. But it is agreed between Kritias and Timæus,2 that before the former enters upon his quasi-historical or mythical recital about the invasion from Atlantis, the latter shall deliver an expository discourse, upon a subject very different and of far greater magnitude. Unfortunately the narrative promised by Kritias stands before us only as a fragment. There is reason to believe that Plato never completed it.3 But the discourse assigned to Timæus was finished, and still remains, as a valuable record of ancient philosophy.

1  Plato, Timæus, p. 20 B.

2  Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A.

3  Plutarch, Solon, c. 33.

Another discourse appears to have been contemplated by Plato, to be delivered by Hermokrates after Kritias had concluded (Plato, Timæus, p. 20 A; Kritias, p. 108). But nothing of this was probably ever composed.

The Timæus is the earliest ancient physical theory, which we possess in the words of its author.

For us, modern readers, the Timæus of Plato possesses a species of interest which it did not possess either for the contemporaries of its author, or for the ancient world generally. We read in it a system — at least the sketch of a system — of universal philosophy, the earliest that has come to us in the words of the author himself. Among the many other systems, anterior or simultaneous — those of Thales and the other Ionic philosophers, of Herakleitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Demokritus — not one remains to us as it was promulgated by its original author or supporters. We know all of them only in fragments and through the criticisms of others: fragments always scanty — criticisms generally dissentient, often harsh, sometimes unfair, introduced by the critic to illustrate opposing doctrines of his own. Here, however, the Platonic system is made known to us, not in this fragmentary and half-attested form, but in the full exposition which Plato himself deemed sufficient for it. This is a remarkable peculiarity.

Position     and character of the Pythagorean Timæus.

Timæus is extolled by Sokrates as combining the character of a statesman with that of a philosopher: as being of distinguished wealth and family in his native city (the Epizephyrian Lokri), where he had exercised the leading political functions:— and as having attained besides, the highest excellence in science, astronomical as well as physical.4 We know from other sources (though Plato omits to tell us so, according to his usual undefined manner of designating contemporaries) that he was of the Pythagorean school. Much of the exposition assigned to him is founded on Pythagorean principles, though blended by Plato with other doctrines, either his own or borrowed elsewhere. Timæus undertakes to requite Sokrates by giving a discourse respecting “The Nature of the Universe”; beginning at the genesis of the Kosmos, and ending with the constitution of man.5 This is to serve as an historical or mythical introduction to the Platonic Republic recently described; wherein Sokrates had set forth the education and discipline proper for man when located as an inhabitant of the earth. Neither during the exposition of Timæus, nor after it, does Sokrates make any remark. But the commencement of the Kritias (which is evidently intended as a second part or continuation of the Timæus) contains, first, a prayer from Timæus that the Gods will pardon the defects of his preceding discourse and help him to amend them — next an emphatic commendation bestowed by Sokrates upon the discourse: thus supplying that recognition which is not found in the first part.6

4  Plato, Timæus, pp. 20 A, 27 A.

5  Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A. ἔδοξε γὰρ ἡμῖν Τίμαιον μέν, ἅτε ἀστρονομικώτατον ἡμῶν, καὶ περὶ φύσεως τοῦ παντὸς εἰδέναι μάλιστα ἔργον πεποιημένον, πρῶτον λέγειν ἀρχόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως, τελευτᾷν δὲ εἰς ἀνθρώπων φύσιν.

6  Plato, Kritias, p. 108 B.

Poetical imagination displayed by Plato. He pretends to nothing more than probability. Contrast with Sokrates, Isokrates, Xenophon.

In this Hymn of the Universe (to use a phrase of the rhetor Menander7 respecting the Platonic Timæus) the prose of Plato is quite as much the vehicle of poetical imagination as the hexameters of Hesiod, Empedokles, or Parmenides. The Gods and Goddesses, whom Timæus invokes at the commencement,8 supply him with superhuman revelations, like the Muses to Hesiod, or the Goddess of Wisdom to Parmenides. Plato expressly recognises the multiplicity of different statements current, respecting the Gods and the generation of the Universe. He claims no superior credibility for his own. He professes to give us a new doctrine, not less probable than the numerous dissentient opinions already advanced by others, and more acceptable to his own mind. He bids us be content with such a measure of probability, because the limits of our human nature preclude any fuller approach to certainty.9 It is important to note the modest pretensions here unreservedly announced by Plato as to the conviction and assent of hearers:— so different from the confidence manifested in the Republic, where he hires a herald to proclaim his conclusion — and from the overbearing dogmatism which we read in his Treatise De Legibus, where he is providing a catechism for the schooling of citizens, rather than proofs to be sifted by opponents. He delivers, respecting matters which he admits to be unfathomable, the theory most in harmony with his own religious and poetical predispositions, which he declares to be as probable as any other yet proclaimed. The Xenophontic Sokrates, who disapproved all speculation respecting the origin and structure of the Kosmos, would probably have granted this equal probability, and equal absence of any satisfactory grounds of preferential belief — both to Plato on one side and to the opposing theorists on the other. And another intelligent contemporary, Isokrates, would probably have considered the Platonic Timæus as one among the same class of unprofitable extravagancies, to which he assigns the theories of Herakleitus, Empedokles, Alkmæon, Parmenides, and others.10 Plato himself (in the Sophistês)11 characterises the theories of these philosophers as fables recited to an audience of children, without any care to ensure a rational comprehension and assent. They would probably have made the like criticism upon his Timæus. While he treats it as fable to apply to the Gods the human analogy of generation and parentage — they would have considered it only another variety of fable, to apply to them the equally human analogy of constructive fabrication or mixture of ingredients. The language of Xenophon shows that he agreed with his master Sokrates in considering such speculations as not merely unprofitable, but impious.12 And if the mission from the Gods — constituting Sokrates Cross-Examiner General against the prevailing fancy of knowledge without the reality of knowledge — drove him to court perpetual controversy with the statesmen, poets, and Sophists of Athens; the same mission would have compelled him, on hearing the sweeping affirmations of Timæus, to apply the test of his Elenchus, and to appear in his well-known character of confessed13 but inquisitive ignorance. The Platonic Timæus is positively anti-Sokratic. It places us at the opposite or dogmatic pole of Plato’s character.14

7  Menander, De Encomiis, i. 5, p. 39. Compare Karsten, De Empedoclis Vitâ, p. 72; De Parmenidis Vitâ, p. 21.

8  Plato, Timæus, p. 27 D; Hesiod, Theogon, 22-35-105.

9  Plato, Timæus, pp. 29 D, 28 D, 59 C-D, 68 C, 72 D. κατ’ ἐμὴν δόξαν — παρὰ τῆς ἐμῆς ψήφου (p. 52 D). In many parts of the dialogue he repeats that he is delivering his own opinion — that he is affirming what is probable. In the Phædon, however, we find that εἰκότες λόγοι are set aside as deceptive and dangerous, Phædon, p. 92 D. In the remarkable passage of the Timæus, p. 48 C-D, Plato intimates that he will not in the present discourse attempt to go to the bottom of the subject — τὴν μὲν περὶ ἁπάντων εἴτε ἀρχὴν εἴτε ἀρχὰς εἴτε ὅπῃ δοκεῖ τούτων πέρι, τὸ νῦν οὐ ῥητέον — but that he will confine himself to εἰκότες λόγοι — τὸ δὲ κατ’ ἀρχὰς ῥηθὲν διαφυλάττων, τὴν τῶν εἰκότων λόγων δύναμιν, πειράσομαι μηδενὸς ἧττον εἰκότα, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἔμπροσθεν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς περὶ ἑκάστων καὶ ξυμπάντων λέγειν.

What these principia are, which Plato here keeps in the background, I do not clearly understand. Susemihl (Entwickelung der Plat. Phil. ii. p. 405) and Martin (Études sur le Timée, ii. p. 173, note 56) have both given elucidations of this passage, but neither of them appear to me satisfactory. Simplikius says:— Ὁ Πλάτων τὴν φυσιολογίαν εἰκοτολογίαν ἔλεγεν εἶναι, ᾧ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης συμμαρτυρεῖ, Schol. Aristot. Phys. 325, a. 25 Brandis.

10  Isokrates, De Permutatione, Or. xv. s. 287-288-304. ἡγοῦμαι γὰρ τὰς μὲν τοιαύτας περιττολογίας ὁμοίας εἶναι ταῖς θαυματοποιίαις ταῖς οὐδὲν μὲν ὠφελούσαις, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν ἀνοήτων περιστάτοις γιγνομέναις (s. 288). …

τοὺς δὲ τῶν μὲν ἀναγκαίων ἀμελοῦντας, τὰς δὲ τῶν παλαιῶν σοφιστῶν τερατολογίας ἀγαπῶντας, φιλοσοφεῖν φασίν (s. 304).

Compare another passage of Isokrates, the opening of Orat. x. Encomium Helenæ; in which latter passage he seems plainly to notice one of the main ethical doctrines advanced by Plato, though he does not mention Plato’s name, nor indeed the name of any living person.

11  Plato, Sophist. pp. 242-243. Μῦθόν τινα ἕκαστος φαίνεταί μοι διηγεῖσθαι παισὶν ὡς οὖσιν ἡμῖν· ὁ μὲν ὡς τρία τὰ ὄντα, πολεμεῖ δὲ ἀλλήλοις ἐνίοτε αὐτῶν ἄττα πῃ, τότε δὲ καὶ φίλα γιγνόμενα γάμους τε καὶ τόκους καὶ τροφὰς τῶν ἐκγόνων παρέχεται (p. 242 C-D).

12  Xenophon, Memorab. i. 1, 11-14. Οὐδεὶς δὲ πώποτε Σωκράτους οὐδὲν ἀσεβὲς οὐδὲ ἀνόσιον οὔτε πράττοντος εἶδεν οὔτε λέγοντος ἤκουσεν· οὐδὲ γὰρ περὶ τῆς τῶν πάντων φύσεως ἧπερ τῶν ἄλλων οἵ πλεῖστοι, διελέγετο, σκοπῶν ὅπως ὁ καλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν κόσμος ἔχει, καὶ τίσιν ἀνάγκαις ἕκαστα γίγνεται τῶν οὐρανίων· ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς φροντίζοντας τὰ τοιαῦτα μωραίνοντας ἀπεδείκνυε.

Lucretius, i. 80:—

Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis

Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque

Indugredi sceleris, &c.

The above cited passage of Xenophon shows that the term Κόσμος was in his time a technical word among philosophers, not yet accepted in that meaning by the general public. The aversion to investigation of the Kosmos, on the ground of impiety, entertained by Sokrates and Xenophon, is expressed by Plato in the Leges (vii. 821 A) in the following words of the principal speaker, — Τὸν μέγιστον θεὸν καὶ ὅλον τὸν κόσμον φαμὲν οὔτε ζητεῖν δεῖν οὔτε πολυπραγμονεῖν τὰς αἰτίας ἐρευνῶντας· οὐ γὰρ οὐδ’ ὅσιον εἶναι· τὸ δὲ ἔοικε πᾶν τούτου τοὐναντίον γιγνόμενον ὀρθῶς ἂν γίγνεσθαι. This last passage is sometimes cited as if the word φαμὲν expressed the opinion of the principal speaker, or of Plato himself — which is a mistake: φαμὲν here expresses the opinion which the principal speaker is about to controvert.

13  See above, vol. i. ch. ix. of the present work, where the Platonic Apology is reviewed.

14  “Quocirca Timæus non dialecticé disserens inducitur, sed loquitur ut hierophanta, qui mundi arcana aliunde accepta grandi ac magnificâ oratione pronunciat; quin etiam quæ experientiæ suspicionem superant, mythorum ac symbolorum involucris obtegit, eoque modo quam ea certa sint, legentibus non obscuré significat.” — Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Platon. Timæum, c. iv. p. 37.

Fundamental distinction between Ens and Fientia.

Timæus begins by laying down the capital distinction between — 1. Ens or the Existent, the eternal and unchangeable, the world of Ideas or Forms, apprehended only by mental conception or Reason, but the object of infallible cognition. 2. The Generated and Perishable — the sensible, phenomenal, material world — which never really exists, but is always appearing and disappearing; apprehended by sense, yet not capable of becoming the object of cognition, nor of anything better than opinion or conjecture. The Kosmos, being a visible and tangible body, belongs to this last category. Accordingly, it can never be really known: no true or incontestable propositions can be affirmed respecting it: you can arrive at nothing higher than opinion and probability.

Plato seems to have had this conviction, respecting the uncertainty of all affirmations about the sensible world or any portions of it, forcibly present to his mind.

Postulates of Plato. The Demiurgus — The Eternal Ideas — Chaotic Materia or Fundamentum. The Kosmos is a living being and a God.

He next proceeds to assume or imply, as postulates, his eternal Ideas or Forms — a coeternal chaotic matter or indeterminate Something — and a Demiurgus or Architect to construct, out of this chaos, after contemplation of the Forms, copies of them as good as were practicable in the world of sense. The exposition begins with these postulates. The Demiurgus found all visible matter, not in a state of rest, but in discordant and irregular motion. He brought it out of disorder into order. Being himself good (says Plato), and desiring to make everything else as good as possible, he transformed this chaos into an orderly Kosmos.15 He planted in its centre a soul spreading round, so as to pervade all its body — and reason in the soul: so that the Kosmos became animated, rational — a God.

15  Plato, Timæus, pp. 29-30.

The Demiurgus not a Creator — The Kosmos arises from his operating upon the random movements of Necessity. He cannot controul necessity — he only persuades.

The Demiurgus of Plato is not conceived as a Creator,16 but as a Constructor or Artist. He is the God Promêtheus, conceived as pre-kosmical, and elevated to the primacy of the Gods: instead of being subordinate to Zeus, as depicted by Æschylus and others. He represents provident intelligence or art, and beneficent purpose, contending with a force superior and irresistible, so as to improve it as far as it will allow itself to be improved.17 This pre-existing superior force Plato denominates Necessity — “the erratic, irregular, random causality,” subsisting prior to the intervention of the Demiurgus; who can only work upon it by persuasion, but cannot coerce or subdue it.18 The genesis of the Kosmos thus results from a combination of intelligent force with the original, primordial Necessity; which was persuaded, and consented, to have its irregular agency regularised up to a certain point, but no farther. Beyond this limit the systematising arrangements of the Demiurgus could not be carried; but all that is good or beautiful in the Kosmos was owing to them.19

16  “The notion of absolute Creation is unknown to Plato, as it is to all Grecian and Roman antiquity” (Brandis, Gesch. der Griech. Röm. Philos. vol. ii. part 2, p. 306).

17  The verbs used by Plato to describe the proceedings of the Demiurgus are ξυνετεκταίνετο, ξυνέστησε, ξυνεκεράσατο, ἐμηχανήσατο, and such like.

18  Plato, Timæus, pp. 47 E-48 A. ἐπιδέδεικται τὰ διὰ νοῦ δεδημιουργημένα· δεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ δι’ ἀνάγκης γιγνόμενα τῷ λόγῳ παραθέσθαι. Μεμιγμένη γὰρ οὖν ἡ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου γένεσις ἐξ ἀνάγκης τε καὶ νοῦ ξυστάσεως ἐγεννήθη· νοῦ δὲ ἀνάγκης ἄρχοντος τῷ πείθειν αὐτὴν τῶν γιγνομένων τὰ πλεῖστα ἐπὶ τὸ βέλτιστον ἄγειν, ταύτῃ κατὰ ταῦτά τε δι’ ἀνάγκης ἡττωμένης ὑπὸ πείθους ἔμφρονος, οὕτω κατ’ ἀρχὰς ξυνίστατο τόδε τὸ πᾶν. Εἴ τις οὖν ἧ γέγονε, κατὰ ταῦτα ὄντως ἐρεῖ, μικτέον καὶ τὸ τῆς πλανωμένης εἶδος αἰτίας, ἧ φέρειν πέφυκεν. Compare p. 56 C: ὅπῃπερ ἡ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἑκοῦσα πεισθεῖσά τε φύσις ὑπεῖκε. Also pp. 68 E, 75 B, 30 A.

Τέχνη δ’ ἀνάγκης ἀσθενεστέρα μακρῷ says Prometheus in Æschylus (P. V. 514). He identifies Ἀνάγκη with the Μοῖραι: and we read in Herodotus (i. 91) of Apollo as trying to persuade the Fates to spare Krœsus, but obtaining for him only a respite of three years — οὐκ οἷόν τε ἐγένετο παραγαγεῖν μοίρας, ὅσον δὲ ἐνέδωκαν αὗται, ἠνύσατο καὶ ἐχαρίσατό οἱ. This is the language used by Plato about Ἀνάγκη and the Demiurgus. A valuable exposition of the relations believed to subsist between the Gods and Μοῖρα is to be found in Naegelsbach, Homerische Theologie (chap. iii. pp. 113-131).

19  Plutarch reproduces this theory (Phokion, c. 2, ad fin.) of God governing the Kosmos, not by superior force, but by reason and persuasion — ᾗ καὶ τὸν κόσμον ὁ θεὸς λέγεται διοικεῖν, οὐ βιαζόμενος, ἀλλὰ πειθοῖ καὶ λόγῳ παράγων τὴν ἀνάγκην.

Meaning of Necessity in Plato.

We ought here to note the sense in which Plato uses the word Necessity. This word is now usually understood as denoting what is fixed, permanent, unalterable, knowable beforehand. In the Platonic Timæus it means the very reverse:— the indeterminate, the inconstant, the anomalous, that which can neither be understood nor predicted. It is Force, Movement, or Change, with the negative attribute of not being regular, or intelligible, or determined by any knowable antecedent or condition — Vis consili expers. It coincides, in fact, with that which is meant by Freewill, in the modern metaphysical argument between Freewill and Necessity: it is the undetermined or self-determining, as contrasted with that which depends upon some given determining conditions, known or knowable. The Platonic Necessity20 is identical with the primeval Chaos, recognised in the Theogony or Kosmogony of Hesiod. That poet tells us that Chaos was the primordial Something: and that afterwards came Gæa, Eros, Uranus, Nyx, Erebus, &c., who intermarried, males with females, and thus gave birth to numerous divine persons or kosmical agents — each with more or less of definite character and attributes. By these supervening agencies, the primeval Chaos was modified and regulated, to a greater or less extent. The Platonic Timæus starts in the same manner as Hesiod, from an original Chaos. But then he assumes also, as coæval with it, but apart from it, his eternal Forms or Ideas: while, in order to obtain his kosmical agents, he does not have recourse, like Hesiod, to the analogy of intermarriages and births, but employs another analogy equally human and equally borrowed from experience — that of a Demiurgus or constructive professional artist, architect, or carpenter; who works upon the model of these Forms, and introduces regular constructions into the Chaos. The antithesis present to the mind of Plato is that between disorder or absence of order, announced as Necessity, — and order or regularity, represented by the Ideas.21 As the mediator between these two primeval opposites, Plato assumes Nous, or Reason, or artistic skill personified in his Demiurgus: whom he calls essentially good — meaning thereby that he is the regularising agent by whom order, method, and symmetry, are copied from the Ideas and partially realised among the intractable data of Necessity. Good is something which Plato in other works often talks about, but never determines: his language implies sometimes that he knows what it is, sometimes that he does not know. But so far as we can understand him, it means order, regularity, symmetry, proportion — by consequence, what is ascertainable and predictable.22 I will not say that Plato means this always and exclusively, by Good: but he seems to mean so in the Timæus. Evil is the reverse. Good or regularity is associated in his mind exclusively with rational agency. It can be produced, he assumes, only by a reason, or by some personal agent analogous to a reasonable and intelligent man. Whatever is not so produced, must be irregular or bad.

20  In the Symposion (pp. 195 D, 197 B) we find Eros panegyrised as having amended and mollified the primeval empire of Ἀνάγκη.

The Scholiast on Hesiod, Theogon. 119, gives a curious metaphysical explanation of Ἔρος, mentioned in the Hesiodic text — τὴν ἐγκατεσπαρμένην φυσικῶς κινητικὴν αἰτίαν ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὀντων, καθ’ ἣν ἐφίεται ἕκαστος τοῦ εἶναι.

21  In the Philêbus, p. 23 C-D, these three are recognised under the terms:— 1. Πέρας. 2. Ἄπειρον. 3. Αἰτία — τῆς ξυμμίξεως τούτων πρὸς ἄλληλα τὴν αἰτίαν.

Compare a curious passage of Plutarch, Symposiacon, viii. 2, p. 719 E, illustrating the Platonic phrase — τὸν θεὸν ἀεὶ γεωμετρεῖν.

22  Plato, Timæus, p. 30 A. Compare the Republic, vi. p. 506, Philêbus, pp. 65-66, and the investigation in the Euthydêmus, pp. 279-293, which ends in no result.

Process of demiurgic construction — The total Kosmos comes logically first, constructed on the model of the Αὐτοζῶον.

These are the fundamental ideas which Plato expands into a detailed Kosmology. The first application which he makes of them is, to construct the total Kosmos. The total is here the logical Prius, or anterior to the parts in his order of conception. The Kosmos is one vast and comprehensive animal: just as in physiological description, the leading or central idea is, that of the animal organism as a whole, to which each and all the parts are referred. The Kosmos is constructed by the Demiurgus according to the model of the Αὐτοζῶον,23 — (the Form or Idea of Animal — the eternal Generic or Self-Animal,) — which comprehends in itself the subordinate specific Ideas of different sorts of animals. This Generic Idea of Animal comprehended four of such specific Ideas: 1. The celestial race of animals, or Gods, who occupied the heavens. 2. Men. 3. Animals living in air — Birds. 4. Animals living on land or in water.24 In order that the Kosmos might approach near to its model the Self-animal, it was required to contain all these four species. As there was but one Self-Animal, so there could only be one Kosmos.

23  Plato, Timæus, p. 30 D.

24  Plat. Timæus, pp. 39 E-40 A. ἧπερ οὖν νοῦς ἐνούσας ἰδέας τῷ ὃ ἔστι ζῶον, οἷαί τε ἔνεισι καὶ ὅσαι, καθορᾷ, τοιαύτας καὶ τοσαύτας διενοήθη δεῖν καὶ τόδε σχεῖν. Εἰσὶ δὲ τέτταρες, μία μὲν οὐράνιον θεῶν γένος, ἄλλη δὲ πτηνὸν καὶ ἀεροπόρον, τρίτη δὲ ἔνυδρον εἶδος, πεζὸν δὲ καὶ χερσαῖον τέταρτον.

We see thus, that the primary and dominant idea, in Plato’s mind, is, not that of inorganic matter, but that of organised and animated matter — life or soul embodied. With him, biology comes before physics.

The body of the Kosmos was required to be both visible and tangible: it could not be visible without fire: it could not be tangible without something solid, nor solid without earth. But two things cannot be well put together by themselves, without a third to serve as a bond of connection: and that is the best bond which makes them One as much as possible. Geometrical proportion best accomplishes this object. But as both Fire and Earth were solids and not planes, no one mean proportional could be found between them. Two mean proportionals were necessary. Hence the Demiurgus interposed air and water, in such manner, that as fire is to air, so is air to water: and as air is to water, so is water to earth.25 Thus the four elements, composing the body of the Kosmos, were bound together in unity and friendship. Of each of the four, the entire total was used up in the construction: so that there remained nothing of them apart, to hurt the Kosmos from without, nor anything as raw material for a second Kosmos.26

25  Plato, Tim. pp. 31-32. The comment of Macrobius on this passage (Somn. Scip. i. 6, p. 30) is interesting, if not conclusive. But the language in which Plato lays down this doctrine about mean proportionals is not precise, and has occasioned much difference of opinion among commentators. Between two solids (he says), that is, solid numbers, or numbers generated out of the product of three factors, no one mean proportional can be found. This is not universally true. The different suggestions of critics to clear up this difficulty will be found set forth in the elaborate note of M. Martin (Études sur le Timée, vol. 1, note xx. pp. 337-345), who has given what seems a probable explanation. Plato (he supposes) is speaking only of prime numbers and their products. In the language of ancient arithmeticians linear numbers, par excellence or properly so-called, were the prime numbers, measurable by unity only; plane numbers were the products of two such linear numbers or prime numbers; solid numbers were the products of three such. Understanding solid numbers in this restricted sense, it will be perfectly true that between any two of them you can never find any one solid number or any whole number which shall be a mean proportional, but you can always find two solid numbers which shall be mean proportionals. One mean proportional will never be sufficient. On the contrary, one mean proportional will be sufficient between two plane numbers (in the restricted sense) when these numbers are squares, though not if they are not squares. It is therefore true, that in the case of two solid numbers (so understood) one such mean proportional will never be sufficient, while two can always be found; and that between two plane numbers (so understood) one such mean proportional will in certain cases be sufficient and may be found. This is what is present to Plato’s mind, though in enunciating it he does not declare the restriction under which alone it is true. M. Boeckh (Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, p. 17) approves of Martin’s explanation. At the same time M. Martin has given no proof that Plato had in his mind the distinction between prime numbers and other numbers, for his references in p. 338 do not prove this point; moreover, the explanation assumes such very loose expression, that the phrase of M. Cousin in his note (p. 334) is, after all, perfectly just: “Platon n’a pas songé à donner à sa phrase une rigueur mathématique”: and the more simple explanation of M. Cousin (though Martin rejects it as unworthy) may perhaps include all that is really intended. “Si deux surfaces peuvent être unies par un seul terme intermédiaire, il faudra deux termes intermédiaires pour unir deux solides: et l’union sera encore plus parfaite si la raison des deux proportions est la même.”

26  Plat. Timæus, p. 32 E.

Body of the Kosmos, perfectly spherical — its rotations.

The Kosmos was constructed as a perfect sphere, rounded, because that figure both comprehends all other figures, and is, at the same time, the most perfect, and most like to itself.27 The Demiurgus made it perfectly smooth on the outside, for various reasons.28 First, it stood in no need of either eyes or ears, because there was nothing outside to be seen or heard. Next, it did not want organs of respiration, inasmuch as there was no outside air to be breathed:— nor nutritive and excrementary organs, because its own decay supplied it with nourishment, so that it was self-sufficing, being constructed as its own agent and its own patient.29 Moreover the Demiurgus did not furnish it with hands, because there was nothing for it either to grasp or repel — nor with legs, feet, or means of standing, because he assigned to it only one of the seven possible varieties of movement.30 He gave to it no other movement except that of rotation in a circle, in one and the same place: which is the sort of movement that belongs most to reason and intelligence, while it is impracticable to all other figures except the spherical.31

27  Plato, Timæus, p. 33 B. κυκλοτερὲς αὐτὸ ἐτορνεύσατο, &c.

28  Plato, Timæus, p. 33 C. λεῖον δὲ δὴ κύκλῳ πᾶν ἔξωθεν αὐτὸ ἀπηκριβοῦτο, πολλῶν χάριν, &c.

Aristotle also maintains that the sphericity of the Kosmos is so exact that no piece of workmanship can make approach to it. (De Cœlo, ii. p. 287, b. 15.)

29  Plato, Timæus, p. 33 E. On this point the Platonic Timæus is not Pythagorean, but the reverse. The Pythagoreans recognised extraneous to the Kosmos, τὸ ἄπειρον πνεῦμα or τὸ κενόν. The Kosmos was supposed to inhale this vacuum, which penetrating into the interior, formed the separating interstices between its constituent parts (Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 213, b. 22).

30  Plato, Timæus, p. 34 A. ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν περίοδον ταύτην, ἅτ’ οὐδὲν ποδῶν δέον, ἀσκελὲς καὶ ἄπουν αὐτὸ ἐγέννησεν.

Plato reckons six varieties of rectilinear motion, neither of which was assigned to the Kosmos — forward, backward, upward, downward, to the right, to the left.

31  Plat. Tim. p. 34 A. κίνησιν γὰρ ἀπένειμεν αὐτῷ τὴν τοῦ σώματος οἰκείαν, τῶν ἕπτα τὴν περὶ νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν μάλιστα οὔσαν. This predicate respecting circular motion belongs to Plato and not to Aristotle; but Aristotle makes out, in his own way, a strong case to show that circular motion must belong to the Πρῶτον σῶμα, as being the first among all varieties of motion, the most dignified and privileged, the only one which can be for ever uniform and continuous. Aristot. Physic. ix. p. 265, a. 15; De Cœlo, i. pp. 269-270, ii. p. 284, a. 10.

Soul of the Kosmos — its component ingredients — stretched from centre to circumference.

The Kosmos, one and only-begotten, was thus perfect as to its body, including all existent bodily material, — smooth, even, round, and equidistant from its centre to all points of the circumference.32 The Demiurgus put together at the same time its soul or mind; which he planted in the centre and stretched throughout its body in every direction, — so as not only to reach the circumference, but also to enclose and wrap it round externally. The soul, being intended to guide and govern the body, was formed of appropriate ingredients, three distinct ingredients mixed together: 1. The Same — The Identical — The indivisible, and unchangeable essence of Ideas. 2. The Different — The Plural — The divisible essence of bodies or of the elements. 3. A third compound, formed of both these ingredients melted into one. — These three ingredients — Same, Different, Same and Different in one, — were blended together in one compound, to form the soul of the Kosmos: though the Different was found intractable and hard to conciliate.33 The mixture was divided, and the portions blended together, according to a scale of harmonic numerical proportion complicated and difficult to follow.34 The soul of the Kosmos was thus harmonically constituted. Among its constituent elements, the Same, or Identity, is placed in an even and undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos, — while the Different, or Diversity, is distributed among the rotations, all oblique, of the seven interior or planetary spheres — that is, the five planets, Sun, and Moon. The outer sphere revolved towards the right: the interior spheres in an opposite direction towards the left. The rotatory force of the Same (of the outer Sphere) being not only one and undivided, but connected with and dependent upon the solid revolving axis which traverses the diameter of the Kosmos — is far greater than that of the divided spheres of the Different; which, while striving to revolve in an opposite direction, each by a movement of its own — are overpowered and carried along with the outer sphere, though the time of revolution, in the case of each, is more or less modified by its own inherent counter-moving force.35

32  Plat. Tim. p. 31 B. εἷς ὅδε μονογενὴς οὐρανός, &c.

33  Plat. Tim. p. 35 A. Ταὐτὸν — τὸ ἀμέριστον — θάτερον — τὸ μεριστὸν — τρίτον ἐξ ἀμφοῖν οὐσίας εἶδος.

34  Plato, Timæus, pp. 35-36. The pains which were taken by commentators in antiquity to expound and interpret this numerical scale may be seen especially illustrated in Plutarch’s Treatise, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, pp. 1012-1030, and the Epitome which follows it. There were two fundamental τετρακτύες or quaternions, one on a binary, the other on a ternary scale of progression, which were arranged by Krantor (Plutarch, p. 1027 E) in the form of the letter Λ, as given in Macrobius (Somn. Scip. i. 6, p. 35). The intervals between these figures, are described by Plato as filled up by intervening harmonic fractions, so as to constitute an harmonic or musical diagram or scale of four octaves and a major sixth. (Boeckh’s Untersuch. p. 19.) M. Boeckh has expounded this at length in his Dissertation, Ueber die Bildung der Welt-Seele im Timäos. Other expositors after him.

35  Plato, Timæus, p. 36 C. τὴν μὲν οὖν ἔξω φορὰν ἐπεφήμισεν εἶναι τῆς ταὐτοῦ φύσεως, τὴν δ’ ἐντός, τῆς θἀτέρου. τὴν μὲν δὴ ταὐτοῦ κατὰ πλευρὰν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ περιήγαγε, τὴν δὲ θατέρου κατὰ διάμετρον ἐπ’ ἀριστερά.

For the meaning of κατὰ πλευρὰν and κατὰ διάμετρον, referring to the equator and the ecliptic, see the explanation and diagram in Boeckh, Untersuchungen, p. 25, also in the note of Stallbaum. The allusion in Plato to the letter χῖ is hardly intelligible without both a commentary and a diagram.

In regard to the constitution of the kosmical soul, we must note, that as it is intended to know Same, Different, and Same and Different in one — so it must embody these three ingredients in its own nature: according to the received axiom. Like knows like — Like is known by like.36 Thus began, never to end, the rotatory movements of the living Kosmos or great Kosmical God. The invisible soul of the Kosmos, rooted at its centre and stretching from thence so as to pervade and enclose its visible body, circulates and communicates, though without voice or sound, throughout its own entire range, every impression of identity and of difference which it encounters either from essence ideal and indivisible, or from that which is sensible and divisible. Information is thus circulated, about the existing relations between all the separate parts and specialties.37 Reason and Science are propagated by the Circle of the Same: Sense and Opinion, by those of the Different. When these last-mentioned Circles are in right movement, the opinions circulated are true and trustworthy.

36  Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2, 7, i. 3, 11 (pp. 404, b. 16 — 406 b. 26), with Trendelenburg’s note, pp. 227-253; Stallbaum, not. ad Timæum, pp. 136-157. See also the interpretation of Plato’s opinion by Krantor, as given in Plutarch, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, p. 1012 E. We learn from Plutarch, however, that the passage gave much trouble to commentators.

37  Plato, Timæus, pp. 36-37. 37 A: λέγει κινουμένη διὰ πάσης ἑαυτῆς, ὅτῳ τ’ ἄν τι ταὐτὸν ᾗ, καὶ ὅτου ἂν ἕτερον, πρὸς ὅ, τι τε μάλιστα καὶ ὅπῃ καὶ ὅπως καὶ ὁπότε ξυμβαίνει κατὰ τὰ γιγνόμενά τε πρὸς ἕκαστον ἕκαστα εἶναι καὶ πάσχειν, καὶ πρὸς τὰ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχοντα ἀεί.

Regular or measured Time — began with the Kosmos.

With the rotations of the Kosmos, began the course of Time — years, months, days, &c. Anterior to the Kosmos, there was no time: no past, present, and future: no numerable or mensurable motion or change. The Ideas are eternal essences, without fluctuation or change: existing sub specie æternitatis, and having only a perpetual present, but no past or future.38 Along with them subsisted only the disorderly, immeasurable, movements of Chaos. The nearest approach which the Demiurgus could make in copying these Ideas, was, by assigning to the Kosmos an eternal and unchanging motion, marked and measured by the varying position of the heavenly bodies. For this purpose, the sun, moon, and planets, were distributed among the various portions of the circle of Different: while the fixed stars were placed in the Circle of the Same, or the outer Circle, revolving in one uniform rotation and in unaltered position in regard to each other. The interval of one day was marked by one revolution of this outer or most rational Circle:39 that of one month, by a revolution of the moon: that of one year, by a revolution of the sun. Among all these sidereal and planetary Gods the Earth was the first and oldest. It was packed close round the great axis which traversed the centre of the Kosmos, by the turning of which axis the outer circle of the Kosmos was made to revolve, generating night and day. The Earth regulated the movement of this great kosmical axis, and thus become the determining agent and guarantee of night and day.40

38  Plato, Timæus, pp. 37-38. Lassalle, in his copious and elaborate explanation of the doctrine of Herakleitus (Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln, Berlin, 1858, vol. ii. p. 210, s. 26), represents this doctrine of Plato respecting Time as “durch und durch heraklitisch”. To me it seems quite distinct from, or rather the inversion of, that which Lassalle himself sets down as the doctrine of Herakleitus. Plato begins with τὸ ἀΐδιον or αἰώνιον, an eternal sameness or duration, without succession, change, generation or destruction, — this passes into perpetual succession or change, with frequent generation and destruction. Herakleitus, on the other hand, recognises for his primary or general law perpetual succession, interchange of contraries, generation and destruction; this passes into a secondary state, in which there is temporary duration and sameness of particulars — the flux being interrupted.

The ideal λόγος or law of Herakleitus is that of unremitting process, flux, revolution, implication of Ens with Non-Ens: the real world is an imperfect manifestation of this law, because each particular clings to existence, and thereby causes temporary halts in the process. Now Plato’s starting point is τὸ αἰώνιον τὸ ἀεὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχον τὸ ὄντως ὄν: the perishable world of sense and particulars is the world of process, and is so far degenerate from the eternal uniformity of primordial Ens. See Lassalle, pp. 39-292-319.

39  Plato, Timæus, p. 39 C. ἡ τῆς μιᾶς καὶ φρονιμωτάτης κυκλήσεως περίοδος. Plato remarks that there was a particular interval of time measured off and designated by the revolution of each of the other planets, but that these intervals were unnoticed and unknown by the greater part of mankind.

40  My explanation of this much controverted sentence differs from that of previous commentators. I have given reasons for adopting it in a separate Dissertation (‘Plato and the Rotation of the Earth,’ Murray), to which I here refer. In that Dissertation I endeavoured to show cause for dissenting from the inference of M. Boeckh: who contends that Plato cannot have believed in the diurnal rotation of the Earth, because he (Plato) explicitly affirms the diurnal rotation of the outer celestial sphere, or Aplanes. These two facts nullify each other, so that the effect would be the same as if there were no rotation of either. My reply to this argument was, in substance, that though the two facts really are inconsistent — the one excluding the other — yet we cannot safely conclude that Plato must have perceived the inconsistency; the more so as Aristotle certainly did not perceive it. To hold incompatible doctrines without being aware of the incompatibility, is a state of mind sufficiently common even in the present advanced condition of science, which I could illustrate by many curious examples if my space allowed. It must have been much more common in the age of Plato than it is now.

Batteux observes (Traduction et Remarques sur Ocellus Lucanus, ch. iv. p. 116):— “Il y a un maxime qu’on ne doit jamais perdre de vue en discutant les opinions des Anciens: c’est de ne point leur prêter les conséquences de leurs principes, ni les principes de leurs conséquences”.

As a general rule, I subscribe to the soundness of this admonition.

Divine tenants of the Kosmos. Primary and Visible Gods — Stars and Heavenly Bodies.

It remained for the Demiurgus, — in order that the Kosmos might become a full copy of its model the Generic Animal or Idea of Animal, — to introduce into it those various species of animals which that Idea contained. He first peopled it with Gods: the eldest and earliest of whom was the Earth, planted in the centre as sentinel over night and day: next the fixed stars, formed for the most part of fire, and annexed to the circle of the Same or the exterior circle, so as to impart to it light and brilliancy. Each star was of spherical figure and had two motions, — one, of uniform rotation peculiar to itself, — the other, an uniform forward movement of translation, being carried along with the great outer circle in its general rotation round the axis of the Kosmos.41 It is thus that the sidereal orbs, animated beings eternal and divine, remained constantly turning round in the same relative position: while the sun, moon, and planets, belonging to the inner circles of the Different, and trying to revolve by their own effort in the opposite direction to the outer sphere, became irregular in their own velocities and variable in their relative positions.42 The complicated movements of these planetary bodies, alternately approaching and receding — together with their occultations and reappearances, full of alarming prognostic as to consequences — cannot be described without having at hand some diagrams or mechanical illustrations to refer to.43

41  Plato, Timæus, p. 40.

42  Plato, Timæus, p. 40 B. ὅσ’ ἀπλανῆ τῶν ἄστρων ζῶα θεῖα ὄντα καὶ ἀΐδια, &c.

43  Plato, Timæus, p. 40 D. τὸ λέγειν ἄνευ διόψεως τούτων αὖ τῶν μιμημάτων μάταιος ἂν εἴη πόνος. Plato himself here acknowledges the necessity of diagrams: the necessity was hardly less in the preceding part of his exposition.

Secondary and generated Gods — Plato’s dictum respecting them. His acquiescence in tradition.

Such were all the primitive Gods visible and generated44 by the Demiurgus, to preside over and regulate the Kosmos. By them are generated, and from them are descended, the remaining Gods.

44  Plato, Timæ. p. 40 D. θεῶν ὁρατῶν καὶ γεννητῶν.

Respecting these remaining Gods, however, the Platonic Timæus holds a different language. Instead of speaking in his own name and delivering his own convictions, as he had done about the Demiurgus and the cosmical Gods — with the simple reservation, that such convictions could be proclaimed only as probable and not as demonstratively certain — he now descends to the Sokratic platform of confessed ignorance and incapacity. “The generation of these remaining Gods (he says) is a matter too great for me to understand and declare. I must trust to those who have spoken upon the subject before me — who were, as they themselves said, offspring of the Gods, and must therefore have well known their own fathers. It is impossible to mistrust the sons of the Gods. Their statements indeed are unsupported either by probabilities or by necessary demonstration; but since they here profess to be declaring family traditions, we must obey the law and believe.45 Thus then let it stand and be proclaimed, upon their authority, respecting the generation of the remaining Gods. The offspring of Uranus and Gæa were, Okeanus and Tethys: from whom sprang Phorkys, Kronus, Rhea, and those along with them. Kronus and Rhea had for offspring Zeus, Hêrê, and all these who are termed their brethren: from whom too, besides, we hear of other offspring. Thus were generated all the Gods, both those who always conspicuously revolve, and those who show themselves only when they please.”46

45  Plato, Timæus, pp. 40 D-E. Περὶ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων δαιμόνων εἰπεῖν καὶ γνῶναι τὴν γένεσιν μεῖζον ἢ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, πειστέον δὲ τοῖς εἰρηκόσιν ἔμπροσθεν, ἐκγόνοις μὲν θεῶν οὖσιν, σαφῶς δέ που τούς γε αὐτων προγόνους εἰδόσιν· ἀδύνατον οὖν θεῶν παισὶν ἀπιστεῖν, καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων καὶ ἀναγκαίων ἀποδείξεων λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς οἰκεῖα φάσκουσιν ἀπαγγέλλειν, ἐπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον. Οὕτως οὖν κατ’ ἐκείνους ἡμῖν ἡ γένεσις περὶ τούτων τῶν θεῶν ἐχέτω καὶ λεγέσθω.

So, too, in the Platonic Epinomis, attached as an appendix to the Treatise De Legibus, we find (p. 984) Plato — after arranging his quintuple scale of elemental animals (fire, æther, air, water, earth), the highest and most divine being the stars or visible Gods, the lowest being man, and the three others intermediate between the two; after having thus laid out the scale, he leaves to others to determine, ὁπῇ τις ἐθέλει, in which place Zeus, Hêrê, and the other Gods, are to be considered as lodged. He will not contradict any one’s feeling on that point; he strongly protests (p. 985 D) against all attempts on the part of the lawgiver to innovate (καινοτομεῖν) in contravention of ancient religious tradition — this is what Aristophanes in the Nubes, and Melêtus before the Dikasts, accuse Sokrates of doing — but he denounces harshly all who will not acknowledge with worship and sacrifice the sublime divinity of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets.

The Platonic declaration given here — ἐπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον — is illustrated in the lines of Euripides, Bacchæ, 202 —

οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν·

πατρίους παραδοχάς, ἅς θ’ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ

κεκτήμεθ’, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος,

οὐδ’ ἢν δι’ ἀκρῶν τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρενῶν.

46  Plato, Timæ. p. 41 A. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν πάντες ὅσοι τε περιπολοῦσι φανερῶς, καὶ ὅσοι φαίνονται καθ’ ὅσον ἂν ἐθέλωσι, θεοὶ γένεσιν ἔσχον.

Remarks on Plato’s Canon of Belief.

The passage above cited serves to illustrate both Plato’s own canon of belief, and his position in regard to his countrymen. The question here is, about the Gods of tradition and of the popular faith: with the paternity and filiation ascribed to them, by Hesiod and the other poets, from whom Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. learnt their Theogony.47 Plato was a man both competent and willing to strike out a physical theology of his own, but not to follow passively in the track of orthodox tradition. I have stated briefly what he has affirmed about the cosmical Gods (Earth, Stars, Sun, Planets) generated or constructed by the Demiurgus as portions or members of the Kosmos: their bodies, out of fire and other elements, — their souls out of the Forms or abstractions called Identity and Diversity; while the entire Kosmos is put together after the model of the Generic Idea or Form of Animal. All this, combined with supposed purposes, and fancies of arithmetical proportion dictating the proceedings of the Demiurgus, Plato does not hesitate to proclaim on his own authority and as his own belief — though he does not carry it farther than probability.

47  Herodot. ii. 53.

But while the feeling of spontaneous belief thus readily arises in Plato’s mind, following in the wake of his own constructive imagination and ethical or æsthetical sentiment (fingunt simul creduntque) — it does not so readily cleave to the theological dogmas in actual circulation around him. In the generation of Gods from Uranus and Gæa — which he as well as other Athenian youths must have learnt when they recited Hesiod with their schoolmasters — he can see neither proof nor probability: he can find no internal ground for belief.48 He declares himself incompetent: he will not undertake to affirm any thing upon his own judgment: the mystery is too dark for him to penetrate. Yet on the other hand, though it would be rash to affirm, it would be equally rash to deny. Nearly all around him are believers, at least as well satisfied with their creed as he was with the uncertified affirmations of his own Timæus. He cannot prove them to be wrong, except by appealing to an ethical or æsthetical sentiment which they do not share. Among the Gods said to be descended from Uranus and Gæa, were all those to whom public worship was paid in Greece, — to whom the genealogies of the heroic and sacred families were traced, — and by whom cities as well as individuals believed themselves to be protected in dangers, healed in epidemics, and enlightened on critical emergencies through seasonable revelations and prophecies. Against an established creed thus avouched, it was dangerous to raise any doubts. Moreover Plato could not have forgotten the fate of his master Sokrates;49 who was indicted both for not acknowledging the Gods whom the city acknowledged, and for introducing other new divine matters and persons. There could be no doubt that Plato was guilty on this latter count: prudence therefore rendered it the more incumbent on him to guard against being implicated in the former count also. Here then Plato formally abnegates his own self-judging power, and submits himself to orthodox authority. “It is impossible to doubt what we have learnt from witnesses, who declared themselves to be the offspring of the Gods, and who must of course have known their own family affairs. We must obey the law and believe.” In what proportion such submission, of reason to authority, embodied the sincere feeling of Pascal and Malebranche, or the irony of Bayle and Voltaire, we are unable to determine.50

48  The remark made by Condorcet upon Buffon is strikingly applicable to Plato:— “On n’a reproché à M. de Buffon que ses hypothèses. Ce sont aussi des espèces de fables — mais des fables produites par une imagination active qui a besoin de créer, et non par une imagination passive qui cède à des impressions étrangères” (Condorcet, Éloge de Buffon, ad fin.).

Αὐτοδίδακτος δ’ εἰμί, θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας

Παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν — (Homer, Odyss. xxii. 347) —

the declaration of the bard Phemius.

49  Xenoph. Memor. i. 1. Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης, οὓς μὲν ἡ πόλις νομίζει θεούς, οὐ νομίζων, ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων.

The word δαιμόνια may mean matters, or persons, or both together.

50  M. Martin supposes Plato to speak ironically, or with a prudent reserve, Études sur le Timée, ii. p. 146.

What Plato says here about the Gods who bore personal names, and were believed in by the contemporary public — is substantially equivalent to the well-known profession of ignorance enunciated by the Sophist Protagoras, introduced by him at the beginning of one of his treatises. Περὶ δὲ θεῶν οὔτε εἰ εἰσίν, οὔθ’ ὁποῖοί τινές εἰσι, δύναμαι λέγειν· πολλὰ γάρ ἐστι τὰ κωλύοντά με (Sextus Emp. adv. Mathem. ix. 56); a declaration which, circumspect as it was (see the remark of the sillographer Timon in Sextus), drew upon him the displeasure of the Athenians, so that his books were burnt, and himself forced to leave the city.

Address and order of the Demiurgus to the generated Gods.

Having thus, during one short paragraph, proclaimed his deference, if not his adhesion, to inspired traditions, Plato again resumes the declaration of his own beliefs and his own book of Genesis, without any farther appeal to authority, and without any intimation that he is touching on mysteries too great for his reason. When these Gods, the visible as well as the invisible,51 had all been constructed or generated, he (or Timæus) tells us that the Demiurgus addressed them and informed them that they would be of immortal duration — not indeed in their own nature, but through his determination: that to complete the perfection of the newly-begotten Kosmos, there were three other distinct races of animals, all mortal, to be added: that he could not himself undertake the construction of these three, because they would thereby be rendered immortal, but that he confided such construction to them (the Gods): that he would himself supply, for the best of these three new races, an immortal element as guide and superintendent, and that they were to join along with it mortal and bodily accompaniments, to constitute men and animals; thus imitating the power which he had displayed in the generation of themselves.52

51  Plato, Timæus, p. 41 A.

52  Plato, Timæus, p. 41 C. τρέπεσθε κατὰ φύσιν ὑμεῖς ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ζώων δημιουργίαν, μιμούμενοι τὴν ἐμὴν δύναμιν περὶ τὴν ὑμετέραν γένεσιν.

Preparations for the construction of man. Conjunction of three souls and one body.

After this address (which Plato puts into the first person, in Homeric manner), the Demiurgus compounded together, again and in the same bowl, the remnant of the same elements out of which he had formed the kosmical soul, but in perfection and purity greatly inferior. The total mass thus formed was distributed into souls equal in number to the stars. The Demiurgus placed each soul in a star of its own, carried it round thus in the kosmical rotation, and explained to it the destiny intended for all. For each alike there was to be an appointed hour of birth, and of conjunction with a body, as well as with two inferior sorts or varieties of soul or mind. From such conjunction would follow, as a necessary consequence, implanted sensibility and motive power, with all its accompaniments of pleasure, pain, desire, fear, anger, and such like. These were the irrational enemies, which the rational and immortal soul would have to controul and subdue, as a condition of just life. If it succeeded in the combat so as to live a good life, it would return after death to the abode of its own peculiar star. But if it failed, it would have a second birth into the inferior nature and body of a female: if, here also, it continued to be evil, it would be transferred after death to the body of some inferior animal. Such transmigration would be farther continued from animal to animal, until the rational soul should acquire thorough controul over the irrational and turbulent. When this was attained, the rational soul would be allowed to return to its original privilege and happiness, residing in its own peculiar star.53

53  Plato, Timæus, p. 42 B-D.

It was thus that the Demiurgus confided to the recently-generated Gods the task of fabricating both mortal bodies, and mortal souls, to be joined with these immortal souls in their new stage of existence — and of guiding and governing the new mortal animal in the best manner, unless in so far as the latter should be the cause of mischief to himself. The Demiurgus decreed and proclaimed this beforehand, in order (says Plato) that he might not himself be the cause of any of the evil which might ensue54 to individual men.

54  Plato, Timæus, p. 42 D-E. Διαθεσμοθετήσας δὲ πάντα αὐτοῖς ταῦτα, ἵνα τῆς ἔπειτα εἴη κακίας ἑκάστων ἀναίτιος … παρέδωκε θεοῖς σώματα πλάττειν θνητά, τό τε ἐπίλοιπον ὅσον ἔτ’ ἦν ψυχῆς ἀνθρωπίνης δέον προσγενέσθαι, τοῦτο καὶ πάνθ’ ὅσα ἀκόλουθα ἐκείνοις ἀπεργασαμένους ἄρχειν, καὶ κατὰ δύναμιν ὅ, τι κάλλιστα καὶ ἄριστα τὸ θνητὸν διακυβερνᾷν ζῶον, ὅ, τι μὴ κακῶν αὐτὸ ἑαυτῷ γίγνοιτο αἴτιον.

We have here the theory, intimated but not expanded by Plato, that man is, by misconduct or folly, the cause of all the evil suffered on earth. That the Gods are not the cause of any evil, he tells us in Republ. ii. p. 379. It seems, however, that he did not remain satisfied with the theory of the Timæus, because we find a different theory in the treatise De Legibus (x. p. 896 E) — two kosmical souls, one good, the other evil.

Moreover, the recital of the Timæus itself (besides another express passage in it, pp. 86 D-87 A) plainly contradicts the theory, that man is the cause of his own sufferings and evil. The Demiurgus himself is described as the cause, by directing immortal souls to be joined with mortal bodies. The Demiurgus had constructed a beautiful Kosmos, with perfect and regular rotations — with the Gods, sidereal, planetary, and invisible — and with immortal souls distributed throughout the stars and earth, understanding and appreciating the cosmical rotations. So far all is admirable and faultless. But he is not satisfied with this. He determines to join each of these immortal souls with two mortal souls and with a mortal body. According to Plato’s own showing, the immortal soul incurs nothing but corruption, disturbance, and stupidity, by such junction: as Empedokles and Herakleitus had said before (Plut. Solert. Animal. 7, p. 964 E). It is at first deprived of all intelligence (ἄνους); from this stupefaction it gradually but partially recovers; yet nothing short of the best possible education and discipline will enable it to contend, and even then imperfectly, against the corruption and incumbrance arising out of its companion the body; lastly, if it should contend with every success, the only recompense which awaits it is to be re-transferred to the star from whence it came down. What reason was there for removing the immortal soul from its happy and privileged position, to be degraded by forced companionship with an unworthy body and two inferior souls? The reason assigned is, that the Demiurgus required the Kosmos to be enlarged into a full and exact copy of the Αὐτόζωον or Generic Animal, which comprehended four subordinate varieties of animals; one of them good (the Gods) — the other three inferior and corrupt, Men, Birds, Fishes. But here, according to Plato’s own exposition, it was the Demiurgus himself and his plan that was at fault. What necessity was there to copy the worst parts of the Generic Animal as well as the best? The Kosmos would have been decidedly better, though it might have been less complete, without such unenviable accompaniments. When Plato constructs his own community (Republic and Legg.) he does not knowingly train up defective persons, or prepare the foundation for such, in order that every variety of character may be included. We may add here, according to Plato himself, Νοῦς (intelligence or reason) belongs not to all human beings, but only to a small fraction of them (Timæus, p. 51 E). Except in these few, the immortal soul is therefore irrecoverably debased by its union with the body.

Proceedings of the generated Gods — they fabricate the cranium, as miniature of the Kosmos, with the rational soul rotating within it.

Accordingly the Gods, sons of the Demiurgus, entered upon the task, trying to imitate their father. Borrowing from the Kosmos portions of the four elements, with engagement that what was borrowed should one day be paid back, they glued them together, and fastened them by numerous minute invisible pegs into one body. Into this body, always decaying and requiring renovation, they introduced the immortal soul, with its double circular rotations — the Circles of the Same and of the Diverse: embodying it in the cranium, which was made spherical in exterior form like the Kosmos, and admitting within it no other motion but the rotatory. The head, the most divine portion of the human system, was made master; while the body was admitted only as subject and ministerial. The body was endowed with all the six varieties of motive power, forward, backwards — upward, downward — to the right, to the left.55 The phenomena of nutrition and sensation began. But all these irregular movements, and violent multifarious agitations, checked or disturbed the regular rotations of the immortal soul in the cranium, perverting the arithmetical proportion, and harmony belonging to them. The rotations of the Circles of Same and Diverse were made to convey false and foolish affirmation. The soul became utterly destitute of intelligence, on being first joined to the body, and for some time afterwards.56 But in the course of time the violence of these disturbing currents abates, so that the rotations of the Circles in the head can take place with more quiet and regularity. The man then becomes more and more intelligent. If subjected to good education and discipline, he will be made gradually sound and whole, free from corruption: but if he neglect this precaution, his life remains a lame one, and he returns back to Hades incomplete and unprofitable.57

55  Plato, Timæus, pp. 43 B, 44 D.

Plato supposes an etymological connection between αἰσθήσεις and ἀΐσσω, p. 43 C.

56  Plato, Timæus, p. 44 B. καὶ διὰ δὴ πάντα ταῦτα τὰ παθήματα νῦν κατ’ ἀρχάς τε ἄνους ψυχὴ γίγνεται τὸ πρῶτον, ὅταν εἰς σῶμα ἐνδεθῇ θνητόν.

57  Plato, Timæus, p. 44 C.

The cranium is mounted on a tall body — six varieties of motion — organs of sense. Vision — Light.

The Gods, when they undertook the fabrication of the body, foresaw the inconvenience of allowing the head — with its intelligent rotations, and with the immortal soul enclosed in it — to roll along the ground, unable to get over a height, or out of a hollow.58 Accordingly they mounted it upon a tall body; with arms and legs as instruments of movement, support, and defence. They caused the movements to be generally directed forward and not backward; since front is more honourable and more commanding than rear. For the same reason, they placed the face, with the organs of sense, in the fore part of the head. Within the eyes, they planted that variety of fire which does not burn, but is called light, homogeneous with the light without. We are enabled to see in the daytime, because the light within our eyes pours out through the centre of them, and commingles with the light without. The two, being thus confounded together, transmit movements from every object which they touch, through the eye inward to the soul; and thus bring about the sensation of sight. At night no vision takes place: because the light from the interior of our eyes, even when it still comes out, finds no cognate light in the air without, and thus becomes extinguished in the darkness. All the light within the eye would thus have been lost, if the Gods had not provided a protection: they contrived the eyelids which drop and shut up the interior light within. This light, being prevented from egress, diffuses itself throughout the interior system, and tranquillises the movements within so as to bring on sleep: without dreams, if all the movements are quenched — with dreams, corresponding to the movements which remain if there are any such.59

58  Plato, Timæus, p. 44 D-E. ἵν’ οὖν μὴ κυλινδούμενον ἐπὶ γῆς, ὕλη τε καὶ βάθη παντοδαπὰ ἐχούσης, ἀποροῖ τὰ μὲν ὑπερβαίνειν, ἔνθεν δὲ ἐκβαίνειν, ὄχημ’ αὐτῷ τοῦτο καὶ εὐπορίαν ἔδοσαν.

59  Plato, Timæus, p. 45. The theory of vision here given by Plato is interesting. A theory, similar in the main, had been propounded by Empedoklês before him. Aristotel. De Sensu, p. 437 b.; Theophrast. De Sensu, cap. 5-9, p. 88 of Philipson’s Ὕλη Ἀνθρωπίνη. Aristotle himself impugns the theory. It is reported and discussed in Galen, De Hippocratis et Platonis Dogmat. vii. 5, 6, p. 619 seqq. ed. Kühn.

The different theories of vision among the ancient philosophers anterior to Aristotle are thus enumerated by E. H. von Baumhauer (De Sententiis Veterum Philosophorum Græcorum de Visu, Lumine, et Coloribus, Utrecht, 1843, p. 137):— “De videndi modo tres apud antiquos primarias theorias invenimus: et primam quidem, emanatione lucis ex oculis ad corpora externa, ejusque reflexu ad oculos (Pythagorei, Alcmæon): alteram emanationibus e corporibus, quæ per oculos veluti per canales ad animum penetrent (Eleatici, Heraclitus, Gorgias): quam sententiam Anaxagoras et Diogenes Apolloniates eatenus mutarunt, quod dicerent pupillam quasi speculum esse quod imagines acceptas ad animum rejiciat. Tertia theoria, orta è conjunctione duarum priorum, statuebat tam ex oculis quam corporibus emanationes fieri, et ambarum illarum concursu visum effici, quum conformata imago per meatus ad animum perveniat (Empedocles, Protagoras, Plato). Huic sententiæ etiam Democritus annumerari potest; qui eam planè secundum materiam, ut dicunt, exposuit.”

The theory of Plato is described in the same treatise, pp. 106-112.

Principal advantages of sight and hearing. Observations of the rotation of the Kosmos.

Such are the auxiliary causes (continues Plato), often mistaken by others for principal causes, which the Gods employed to bring about sight. In themselves, they have no regularity of action: for nothing can be regular in action without mind and intelligence.60 But the most important among all the advantages of sight is, that it enables us to observe and study the rotations of the Kosmos and of the sidereal and planetary bodies. It is the observed rotations of days, months, and years, which impart to us the ideas of time and number, and enable us to investigate the universe. Hence we derive philosophy, the greatest of all blessings. Hence too we learn to apply the celestial rotations as a rule and model to amend the rotations of intelligence in our own cranium — since the first are regular and unerring, while the second are disorderly and changeful.61 It was for the like purpose, in view to the promotion of philosophy, that the Gods gave us voice and hearing. Both discourse and musical harmony are essential for this purpose. Harmony and rhythm are presents to us, from the Muses, not, as men now employ them, for unreflecting pleasure and recreation — but for the same purpose of regulating and attuning the disorderly rotations of the soul, and of correcting the ungraceful and unmeasured movements natural to the body.62

60  Plato, Timæus, p. 46 D-E.

61  Plato, Timæus, pp. 47 B-C, 90 C.

62  Plato, Timæus, p. 47 D-E. ἡ δὲ ἁρμονία … ξύμμαχος ὑπὸ Μουσῶν δέδοται· καὶ ῥυθμὸς αὖ … ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐδόθη. Here we see Plato, in the usual Hellenic vein, particularising the functions and attributes of the different Gods and Goddesses.

The Kosmos is product of joint action of Reason and Necessity. The four visible and tangible elements are not primitive.

At this point of the exposition, the Platonic Timæus breaks off the thread, and takes up a new commencement. Thus far (he says) we have proceeded in explaining the part of Reason or Intelligence in the fabrication of the Kosmos. We must now explain the part of Necessity: for the genesis of the Kosmos results from co-operation of the two. By necessity (as has been said before) Plato means random, indeterminate, chaotic, pre-existent, spontaneity of movement or force: spontaneity (ἡ πλανωμένη αἰτία) upon which Reason works by persuasion up to a certain point, prevailing upon it to submit to some degree of fixity and regularity.63 Timæus had described the body of the Kosmos as being constructed by the Demiurgus out of the four elements; thus assuming fire, air, earth, water, as pre-existent. But he now corrects himself, and tells us that such assumption is unwarranted. We must (he remarks) give a better and fuller explanation of the Kosmos. No one of these four elements is either primordial, or permanently distinct and definite in itself.

63  Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A.

The only primordial reality is, an indeterminate, all-recipient fundamentum: having no form or determination of its own, but capable of receiving any form or determination from without.

Forms or Ideas and Materia Prima — Forms of the Elements — Place, or Receptivity.

In the second explanation now given by Plato of the Kosmos and its genesis, he assumes this invisible fundamentum (which he had not assumed before) as “the mother or nurse of all generation”. He assumes, besides, the eternal Forms or Ideas, to act upon it and to bestow determination or quality. These forms fulfil the office of father: the offspring of the two is — the generated, concrete, visible, objects,64 imitations of the Forms or Ideas, begotten out of this mother. How the Ideas act upon the Materia Prima, Plato cannot well explain: but each Form stamps an imitation or copy of itself upon portions of the common Fundamentum.65

64  Plato, Timæus, p. 51 A. τὴν τοῦ γεγονότος ὁρατοῦ καὶ πάντως αἰσθητοῦ μητέρα καὶ ὑποδοχήν.

65  Plato, Timæus, pp. 50-51. 50 C: τυπωθέντα ἀπ’ αὐτῶν τρόπον τινὰ δύσφραστον καὶ θαυμαστόν. 51 A: ἀνόρατον εἶδός τι, καὶ ἄμορφον, πανδεχές, μεταλαμβάνον δὲ ἀπορώτατά πῃ τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ δυσαλωτότατον.

But do there really exist any such Forms or Ideas — as Fire per se, the Generic Fire — Water per se, the Generic Water, invisible and intangible?66 Or is this mere unfounded speech? Does there exist nothing really anywhere, beyond the visible objects which we see and touch?67

66  Plato, Timæus, p. 51 C.

67  Ueberweg, in a learned Dissertation, Ueber die Platonische Weltseele (pp. 52-53), seeks to establish a greater distinction between the Phædrus, Phædon, and Timæus, in respect to the way in which Plato affirms the separate substantiality of Ideas, than the language of the dialogues warrants. He contends that the separate substantiality of the Platonic Ideas is more peremptorily affirmed in the Timæus than in the Phædrus. But this will not be found borne out if we look at Phædrus, p. 247, where the affirmation is quite as peremptory as that in the Timæus; correlating too, as it does in the Timæus, with Νοῦς as the contemplating subject. Indeed the point may be said to be affirmed more positively in the Phædrus, because the ὑπερουράνιος τόπος is assigned to the Ideas, while in the Timæus all τόπος or local existence is denied to them (p. 52 B-C). Sensible objects are presented in the Phædrus as faint resemblances of the archetypal Ideas (p. 250 C), just as they are in the Timæus: on the other hand, τὸ μεταλαμβάνειν τοῦ νοητοῦ occurs in the Timæus (p. 51 A), equivalent to τὸ μετέχειν, which Ueberweg states to be discontinued.

We must assume (says Plato, after a certain brief argument which he himself does not regard as quite complete) the Forms or Ideas of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, as distinct and self-existent, eternal, indestructible, unchangeable — neither visible nor tangible, but apprehended by Reason or Intellect alone — neither receiving anything else from without, nor themselves moving to anything else. Distinct from these — images of these, and bearing the same name — are the sensible objects called Fire, Water, &c. — objects of sense and opinion — always in a state of transition — generated and destroyed, but always generated in some place and destroyed out of some place. There is to be assumed, besides, distinct from the two preceding — as a third fundamentum — the place or receptacle in which these images are localised, generated, and nursed up. This place, or formless primitive receptivity, is indestructible, but out of all reach of sense, and difficult to believe in, inasmuch as it is only accessible by a spurious sort of ratiocination.68

68  Plato, Timæus, p. 52 B. αὐτὸ δὲ μετ’ ἀναισθησίας ἁπτὸν λογισμῷ τινὶ νόθῳ, μόγις πιστόν.

Primordial Chaos — Effect of intervention by the Demiurgus.

Anterior to the construction of the Kosmos, the Forms or Ideas of the four elements had already begun to act upon this primitive recipient or receptacle, but in a confused and irregular way. Neither of the four could impress itself in a special and definite manner: there were some vestiges of each, but each was incomplete: all were in stir and agitation, yet without any measure or fixed rule. Thick and heavy, however, were tending to separate from thin and light, and each particle thus tending to occupy a place of its own.69 In this condition (the primordial moving chaos of the poets and earlier philosophers), things were found by the Demiurgus, when he undertook to construct the Kosmos. There was no ready made Fire, Water, &c. (as Plato had assumed at the opening of the Timæus), but an agitated imbroglio of all, with the portions tending to separate from each other, and to agglomerate each in a place of its own. The Demiurgus brought these four elements out of confusion into definite bodies and regular movements. He gave to each a body, constructed upon the most beautiful proportions of arithmetic and geometry, as far as this was possible.70

69  Plato, Timæus, pp. 52-53. 53 A: τὰ τέτταρα γένη σειόμενα ὑπὸ τῆς δεξαμένης, κινουμένης αὐτῆς οἷον ὀργάνου σεισμὸν παρέχοντος, τὰ μὲν ἀνομοιότατα πλεῖστον αὐτὰ ἀφ’ αὑτῶν ὁρίζειν, τὰ δ’ ὁμοιότατα μάλιστα εἰς ταὐτὸν ξυνωθεῖν· διὸ δὴ καὶ χώραν ταῦτα ἄλλα ἄλλην ἴσχειν, πρὶν καὶ τὸ πᾶν ἐξ αὐτῶν διακοσμηθὲν γενέσθαι. 57 C: διέστηκε μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γένους ἑκάστου τὰ πλήθη κατὰ τόπον ἴδιον διὰ τὴν τῆς δεχομένης κίνησιν. 58 C.

70  Plato, Timæus, p. 53 B. τὸ δὲ ᾗ δυνατὸν ὡς κάλλιστα ἄριστά τε ἐξ οὐχ οὕτως ἐχόντων τὸν θεὸν αὐτὰ ξυνιστάναι, παρὰ πάντα ἡμῖν, ὡς ἀεί, τοῦτο λεγόμενον ὑπαρχέτω.

This is the hypothesis pervading all the Timæus — construction the best and finest which the case admitted. The limitations accompany the assumed purpose throughout.

Geometrical theory of the elements — fundamental triangles — regular solids.

Respecting such proportions, the theory which Plato here lays out is admitted by himself to be a novel one; but it is doubtless borrowed, with more or less modification, from the Pythagoreans. Every solid body is circumscribed by plane surfaces: every plane surface is composed of triangles: all triangles are generated out of two — the right-angled isoskeles triangle — and the right-angled scalene or oblong triangle. Of this oblong there are infinite varieties: but the most beautiful is a right-angled triangle, having the hypotenuse twice as long as the lesser of the two other sides.71 From this sort of oblong triangle are generated the tetrahedron or pyramid — the octahedron — and the eikosihedron: from the equilateral triangle is generated the cube. The cube, as the most stable and solid, was assigned by the Demiurgus for the fundamental structure of earth: the pyramid for that of fire: the octahedron for that of air: the eikosihedron for that of water. The purpose was that the four should be in continuous geometrical proportion: as Fire to Air, so Air to Water: as Air to Water, so Water to Earth. Lastly, the Dodekahedron was assigned as the basis of structure for the spherical Kosmos itself or universe.72 Upon this arrangement each of the three elements — fire, water, air — passes into the other; being generated from the same radical triangle. But earth does not pass into either of the three (nor either of these into earth), being generated from a different radical triangle. The pyramid, as thin, sharp, and cutting, was assigned to fire as the quickest and most piercing of the four elements: the cube as most solid and difficult to move, was allotted to earth, the stationary element. Fire was composed of pyramids of different size, yet each too small to be visible by itself, and becoming visible only when grouped together in masses: the earth was composed of cubes of different size, each invisible from smallness: the other elements in like manner, each from its respective solid,73 in exact proportion and harmony, as far as Necessity could be persuaded to tolerate. All the five regular solids were thus employed in the configuration and structure of the Kosmos.74

71  Plato, Timæus, pp. 53-54. 53 C: ἀηθεῖ λόγῳ δηλοῦν.

72  That Plato intended, by this elaborate geometrical construction, to arrive at a continuous geometrical proportion between the four elements, he tells us (p. 32 A-B), adding the qualifying words καθ’ ὅσον ἦν δυνατόν. M. Boeckh, however (De Platonicâ Corporis Mundani Fabricâ, pp. viii.-xxvi.), has shown that the geometrical proportion cannot be properly concluded from the premisses assumed by Plato:— “Platonis elementorum doctrinam et parum sibi constare, neque omnibus numeris absolutam esse, immo multis incommodis laborare, et divini ingenii lusui magis quam disciplinæ severitati originem debere fatebimur; nec profundiorem et abstrusiorem naturæ cognitionem in eâ sitam esse suspicabimur — in quem errorem etiam Joh. Keplerus, summi ingenii homo, incidit”.

Respecting the Dodekahedron, see Zeller, Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 513, ed. 2nd. There is some obscurity about it. In the Epinomis (p. 981 C) Plato gives the Æther as a fifth element, besides the four commonly known and recited in the Timæus. It appears that Philolaus, as well as Xenokrates, conceived the Dodekahedron as the structural form of Æther (Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. p. 427, a. 16, Brandis): and Xenokrates expressly says, that Plato himself recognised it as such. Zeller dissents from this view, and thinks that nothing more is meant than the implication, that the Dodekahedron can have a sphere described round it more readily than any of the other figures named.

Opponents of Plato remarked that he κατεμαθηματικεύσατο τὴν φύσιν, Schol. ad Aristot. Metaph. A. 985, b. 23, p. 539, Brandis. Aristotle devotes himself in many places to the refutation of the Platonic doctrine on this point; see De Cœlo, iii. 8, 306-307, and elsewhere.

73  Plato, Timæus, p. 56 C. ὅπηπερ ἡ τῆς Ἀνάγκης ἑκοῦσα πεισθεῖσα τε φύσις ὑπεῖκε.

74  Plato, Timæus, pp. 55-56.

Such was the mode of formation of the four so-called elemental bodies.75 Of each of the four, there are diverse species or varieties: and that which distinguishes one variety of the same element from another variety is, that the constituent triangles, though all similar, are of different magnitudes. The diversity of these combinations, though the primary triangles are similar, is infinite: the student of Nature must follow it out, to obtain any probable result.76

75  Plato, Timæus, p. 57 C. ὅσα ἄκρατα καὶ πρῶτα σώματα.

The Platonist Attikus (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xv. 7) blames Aristotle for dissenting from Plato on this point, and for recognising the celestial matter as a fifth essence distinct from the four elements. Plato (he says) followed both anterior traditions and self-evident sense (τῇ περὶ αὐτὰ ἐναργείᾳ) in admitting only the four elements, and in regarding all things as either compounds or varieties of these. But Aristotle, thinking to make parade of superior philosophical sagacity, προσκατηρίθμησε τοῖς φαινομένοις τέτταρσι σώμασι τὴν πέμπτην οὐσίαν, πάνυ μὲν λαμπρῶς καὶ φιλοδώρως τῇ φύσει χρησάμενος, μὴ συνιδὼν δὲ ὅτι οὐ νομοθετεῖν δεῖ φυσιολογοῦντα, τὰ δὲ τῆς φύσεως αὐτῆς ἐξιστορεῖν. This last precept is what we are surprised to read in a Platonist of the third century B.C. “When you are philosophising upon Nature, do not lay down the law, but search out the real facts of Nature.” It is truly Baconian: it is justly applicable as a caution to Aristotle, against whom Attikus directs it; but it is still more eminently applicable to Plato, against whom he does not direct it.

76  Plato, Timæus, p. 57 D.

Varieties of each element.

Plato next enumerates the several varieties of each element — fire, water, earth.77 He then proceeds to mention the attributes, properties, affections, &c., of each: which he characterises as essentially relative to a sentient Subject: nothing being absolute except the constituent geometrical figures. You cannot describe these attributes (he says) without assuming (what has not yet been described) the sensitive or mortal soul, to which they are relative.78 Assuming this provisionally, Plato gives account of Hot and Cold, Hard and Soft, Heavy and Light, Rough and Smooth, &c.79 Then he describes, first, the sensations of pleasure and pain, common to the whole body — next those of the special senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.80 These descriptions are very curious and interesting. I am compelled to pass them over by want of space, and shall proceed to the statements respecting the two mortal souls and the containing organism — which belong to a vein more analogous to that of the other Platonic dialogues.

77  Plato, Timæus, pp. 58-61 C.

78  Plato, Timæus, p. 61 C-D. Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὑπάρχειν αἴσθησιν δεῖ τοῖς λεγομένοις (γένεσιν) ἀεί· σαρκὸς δὲ καὶ τῶν περὶ σάρκα γένεσιν, ψυχῆς τε ὅσον θνητόν, οὕπω διεληλύθαμεν. Τυγχάνει δὲ οὔτε ταῦτα χωρὶς τῶν περὶ τὰ παθήματα ὅσα αἰσθητικά, οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνα ἄνευ τούτων δυνατὰ ἱκανῶς λεχθῆναι· τὸ δὲ ἅμα σχεδὸν οὐ δυνατόν. Ὑποθετέον δὴ πρότερον θάτερα, τὰ δ’ ὕστερα ὑποτεθέντα ἐπάνιμεν αὖθις. Ἵνα οὖν ἑξῆς τὰ παθήματα λέγηται τοῖς γένεσιν, ἔστω πρότερα ἡμῖν τὰ περὶ σῶμα καὶ ψυχὴν ὄντα.

79  Plato, Tim. pp. 62-64 B. Demokritus appears to have held on this point an opinion approaching to that of Plato. See Democr. Frag. ed. Mullach, pp. 204-215: Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 985, b. 15; De Sensu, s. 62-65; Sextus Empiric. adv. Math. vii. 135.

Περὶ μὲν οὖν βαρέος καὶ κούφου καὶ σκληροῦ καὶ μαλακοῦ, ἐν τούτοις ἀφορίζει — τῶν δ’ ἄλλων αἰσθητῶν οὐδενὸς εἶναι φύσιν, ἀλλὰ πάντα πάθη τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἀλλοιουμένης. We may remark that Plato includes hardness and softness, the different varieties of resistance, among the secondary or relative qualities of matter; all that he seems to conceive as absolute are extension and figure, the geometrical conception of matter. In the view of most modern philosophers, resistance is considered as the most obviously and undeniably absolute of all the attributes of matter, as that which serves to prove that matter itself is absolute. Dr. Johnson refuted the doctrine of Berkeley by knocking a stick against the ground; and a similar refutation is adopted in words by Reid and Stewart (see Mill’s System of Logic, Book vi. ad finem, also Book i. ch. 3, s. 7-8). To me the fact appealed to by Johnson appears an evidence in favour of Berkeley’s theory rather than against it. The Resistant (ὃ παρέχει προσβολὴν καὶ ἐπαφήν τινα, Plato, Sophist. p. 246 A) can be understood only as a correlate of something which is resisted: the fact of sense called Resistance is an indivisible fact, involving the implication of the two. In the first instance it is the resistance experienced to our own motions (A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, p. 91, 3rd ed.), and thus involves the feeling of our own spontaneous muscular energy.

The Timæus of Plato is not noticed by Sir W. Hamilton in his very learned and instructive Dissertation on the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Body (notes to his edition of Reid’s Works, p. 826), though it bears upon his point more than the Theætêtus, which he mentions.

80  Plato, Timæus, pp. 65-69 E.

Construction of man imposed by the Demiurgus upon the secondary Gods. Triple Soul. Distribution thereof in the body.

The Demiurgus, after having constructed the entire Kosmos, together with the generated Gods, as well as Necessity would permit — imposed upon these Gods the task of constructing Man: the second best of the four varieties of animals whom he considered it necessary to include in the Kosmos. He furnished to them as a basis an immortal rational soul (diluted remnant from the soul of the Kosmos); with which they were directed to combine two mortal souls and a body.81 They executed their task as well as the conditions of the problem admitted. They were obliged to include in the mortal souls pleasure and pain, audacity and fear, anger, hope, appetite, sensation, &c., with all the concomitant mischiefs. By such uncongenial adjuncts the immortal rational soul was unavoidably defiled. The constructing Gods however took care to defile it as little as possible.82 They reserved the head as a separate abode for the immortal soul: planting the mortal soul apart from it in the trunk, and establishing the neck as an isthmus of separation between the two. Again the mortal soul was itself not single but double: including two divisions, a better and a worse. The Gods kept the two parts separate; placing the better portion in the thoracic cavity nearer to the head, and the worse portion lower down, in the abdominal cavity: the two being divided from each other by the diaphragm, built across the body as a wall of partition: just as in a dwelling-house, the apartments of the women are separated from those of the men. Above the diaphragm and near to the neck, was planted the energetic, courageous, contentious, soul; so placed as to receive orders easily from the head, and to aid the rational soul in keeping under constraint the mutinous soul of appetite, which was planted below the diaphragm.83 The immortal soul84 was fastened or anchored in the brain, the two mortal souls in the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the brain: which line thus formed the thread of connection between the three. The heart was established as an outer fortress for the exercise of influence by the immortal soul over the other two. It was at the same time made the initial point of the veins, the fountain from whence the current of blood proceeded to pass forcibly through the veins round to all parts of the body. The purpose of this arrangement is, that when the rational soul denounces some proceeding as wrong (either on the part of others without, or in the appetitive soul within), it may stimulate an ebullition of anger in the heart, and may transmit from thence its exhortations and threats through the many small blood channels to all the sensitive parts of the body: which may thus be rendered obedient everywhere to the orders of our better nature.85

81  Plato, Timæus, p. 69 C.

82  Plato, Tim. p. 69 D. ξυγκερασάμενοί τ’ αὐτὰ ἀναγκαίως τὸ θνητὸν γένος ξυνέθεσαν. καὶ διὰ ταῦτα δὴ σεβόμενοι μιαίνειν τὸ θεῖον, ὅ τι μὴ πᾶσα ἦν ἀνάγκη, &c.

83  Plato, Timæus, pp. 69-70.

84  Plato, Timæus, p. 73 B-D.

85  Plato, Timæus, p. 70 B-C.

Functions of the heart and lungs. Thoracic soul.

In such ebullitions of anger, as well as in moments of imminent danger, the heart leaps violently, becoming overheated and distended by excess of fire. The Gods foresaw this, and provided a safeguard against it by placing the lungs close at hand with the wind-pipe and trachea. The lungs were constructed soft and full of internal pores and cavities like a sponge; without any blood,86 — but receiving, instead of blood, both the air inspired through the trachea, and the water swallowed to quench thirst. Being thus always cool, and soft like a cushion, the lungs received and deadened the violent beating and leaping of the heart; at the same time that they cooled down its excessive heat, and rendered it a more equable minister for the orders of reason.87

86  Plato, Timæus, p. 70 C. τὴν τοῦ πλεύμονος ἰδέαν ἐνεφύτευσαν, πρῶτον μὲν μαλακὴν καὶ ἄναιμον, εἶτα σήραγγας ἐντὸς ἔχουσαν οἷον σπόγγου κατατετρημένας.

Aristotle notices this opinion as held by some persons (not naming Plato), but impugns it as erroneous. He affirms that the lungs have more blood in them than any of the other viscera (Histor. Animal. i. 17, p. 496, b. 1-8; De Respirat. c. 15, p. 478, a. 13).

87  Plato, Timæus, p. 70.

Abdominal Soul — difficulty of controuling it — functions of the liver.

The third or lowest soul, of appetite and nutrition, was placed between the diaphragm and the navel. This region of the body was set apart like a manger for containing necessary food: and the appetitive soul was tied up to it like a wild beast; indispensable indeed for the continuance of the race, yet a troublesome adjunct, and therefore placed afar off, in order that its bellowings might disturb as little as possible the deliberations of the rational soul in the cranium, for the good of the whole. The Gods knew that this appetitive soul would never listen to reason, and that it must be kept under subjection altogether by the influence of phantoms and imagery. They provided an agency for this purpose in the liver, which they placed close upon the abode of the appetitive soul.88 They made the liver compact, smooth, and brilliant, like a mirror reflecting images:— moreover, both sweet and bitter on occasions. The thoughts of the rational soul were thus brought within view of the appetitive soul, in the form of phantoms or images exhibited on the mirror of the liver. When the rational soul is displeased, not only images corresponding to this feeling are impressed, but the bitter properties of the liver are all called forth. It becomes crumpled, discoloured, dark and rough; the gall bladder is compressed; the veins carrying the blood are blocked up, and pain as well as sickness arise. On the contrary, when the rational soul is satisfied, so as to send forth mild and complacent inspirations, — all this bitterness of the liver is tranquillised, and all its native sweetness called forth. The whole structure becomes straight and smooth; and the images impressed upon it are rendered propitious. It is thus through the liver, and by means of these images, that the rational soul maintains its ascendancy over the appetitive soul; either to terrify and subdue, or to comfort and encourage it.89

88  Plato, Timæus, p. 71 A. εἰδότες δὲ αὐτὸ ὡς λόγου μὲν οὔτε ξυνήσειν ἔμελλεν, εἴτε πῃ καὶ μεταλάμβανοι τινὸς αὖ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, οὐκ ἔμφυτον αὐτῷ τὸ μέλειν τινῶν ἔσοιτο λόγων, ὑπὸ δὲ εἰδώλων καὶ φαντασμάτων νυκτός τε καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν μάλιστα ψυχαγωγήσοιτο, τούτῳ δὴ θεὸς ἐπιβουλεύσας αὐτῷ τὴν τοῦ ἥπατος ἰδέαν ξυνέστησεν.

89  Plato, Timæus, p. 71 C-D.

The liver is made the seat of the prophetic agency. Function of the spleen.

Moreover, the liver was made to serve another purpose. It was selected as the seat of the prophetic agency; which the Gods considered to be indispensable, as a refuge and aid for the irrational department of man. Though this portion of the soul had no concern with sense or reason, they would not shut it out altogether from some glimpse of truth. The revelations of prophecy were accordingly signified on the liver, for the instruction and within the easy view of the appetitive soul: and chiefly at periods when the functions of the rational soul are suspended — either during sleep, or disease, or fits of temporary ecstasy. For no man in his perfect senses comes under the influence of a genuine prophetic inspiration. Sense and intelligence are often required to interpret prophecies, and to determine what is meant by dreams or signs or prognostics of other kinds: but such revelations are received by men destitute of sense. To receive them, is the business of one class of men: to interpret them, that of another. It is a grave mistake, though often committed, to confound the two. It was in order to furnish prophecy to man, therefore, that the Gods devised both the structure and the place of the liver. During life, the prophetic indications are clearly marked upon it: but after death they become obscure and hard to decipher.90

90  Plato, Timæus, pp. 71-72. 71 E: ἱκανὸν δὲ σημεῖον, ὡς μαντικὴν ἀφροσύνῃ θεὸς ἀνθρωπίνῃ δέδωκεν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔννους ἐφάπτεται μαντικῆς ἐνθέου καὶ ἀληθοῦς.

The spleen was placed near the liver, corresponding to it on the left side, in order to take off from it any impure or excessive accretions or accumulations, and thus to preserve it clean and pure.91

91  Plato, Timæus, p. 72 D.

Such was the distribution of the one immortal and the two mortal souls, and such the purposes by which it was dictated. We cannot indeed (says Plato) proclaim this with full assurance as truth, unless the Gods would confirm our declarations. We must take the risk of affirming what appears to us probable — and we shall proceed with this risk yet further.92 The following is the plan and calculation according to which it was becoming that our remaining bodily frame should be put together.

92  Plato, Timæus, p. 72 D-E. τὸ μὲν ἀληθές, ὡς εἴρηται, θεοῦ ξυμφήσαντος τότ’ ἂν οὕτω μόνως διϊσχυριζοίμεθα· τό γε μὴν εἰκὸς ἡμῖν εἰρησθαι καὶ νῦν καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀνασκοποῦσι διακινδυνευτέον τὸ φάναι, καὶ πεφάσθω … ἐκ δὴ λογισμοῦ τοιοῦδε ξυνίστασθαι μάλιστ’ ἂν αὐτὸ πάντων πρέποι.

Length of the intestinal canal, in order that food might not be frequently needed.

The Gods foresaw that we should be intemperate in our appetite for food and drink, and that we should thus bring upon ourselves many diseases injurious to life. To mitigate this mischief, they provided us with a great length of intestinal canal, but twisted it round so as to occupy but a small space, in the belly. All the food which we introduce remains thus a long time within us, before it passes away. A greater interval elapses before we need fresh supplies of food. If the food passed away speedily, so that we were constantly obliged to renew it, and were therefore always eating — the human race would be utterly destitute of intelligence and philosophy. They would be beyond the controul of the rational soul.93

93  Plato, Timæus, p. 73 A.

Bone — Flesh — Marrow.

Bone and flesh come next to be explained. Both of them derive their origin from the spinal marrow: in which the bonds of life are fastened, and soul is linked with body — the root of the human race. The origin of the spinal marrow itself is special and exceptional. Among the triangles employed in the construction of all the four elements, the Gods singled out the very best of each sort. Those selected were combined harmoniously with each other, and employed in the formation of the spinal marrow, as the universal seed ground (πανσπερμίαν) for all the human race. In this marrow the Gods planted the different sorts of souls; distributing and accommodating the figure of each portion of marrow to the requirements of each different soul. For that portion (called the encephalon, as being contained in the head) which was destined to receive the immortal soul, they employed the spherical figure and none other: for the remaining portion, wherein the mortal soul was to be received, they employed a mixture of the spherical and the oblong. All of it together was called by the same name marrow, covered and protected by one continuous bony case, and established as the holding ground to fasten the whole extent of soul with the whole extent of body.94

94  Plato, Timæus, p. 73 C-D.

Nails — Mouth — Teeth. Plants produced for nutrition of man.

Plato next explains the construction of ligaments and flesh — of the mouth, tongue, teeth, and lips: of hair and nails.95 These last were produced with a long-sighted providence: for the Gods foresaw that the lower animals would be produced from the degeneration of man, and that to them nails and claws would be absolutely indispensable: accordingly, a sketch or rudiment of nails was introduced into the earliest organisation of man.96 Nutrition being indispensable to man, the Gods produced for this purpose plants (trees, shrubs, herbs, &c.) — with a nature cognate to that of man, but having only the lowest of the three human souls.97 They then cut ducts and veins throughout the human body, in directions appropriate for distributing the nutriment everywhere. They provided proper structures (here curiously described) for digestion, inspiration, and expiration.98 The constituent triangles within the body, when young and fresh, overpower the triangles, older and weaker, contained in the nutritive matters swallowed, and then appropriate part of them to the support and growth of the body: in old age, the triangles within are themselves overpowered, and the body decays. When the fastenings, whereby the triangles in the spinal marrow have been fitted together, are worn out and give way, they let go the fastenings of the soul also. The soul, when thus released in a natural way, flies away with delight. Death in this manner is pleasurable: though it is distressing, when brought on violently, by disease or wounds.99

95  Plato, Tim. pp. 75-76.

96  Plat. Tim. p. 76 E. ὅθεν ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐθὺς γιγνομένοις ὑπετυπώσαντο τὴν τῶν ὀνύχων γένεσιν.

97  Plat. Tim. p. 77 B-C.

98  Plat. Tim. pp. 78-79.

99  Plat. Tim. p. 81.

General view of Diseases and their Causes.

Here Plato passes into a general survey of diseases and the proper treatment of them. “As to the source from whence diseases arise (he says) this is a matter evident to every one. They arise from unnatural excess, deficiency, or displacement, of some one or more of the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) which go to compose the body.”100 If the element in excess be fire, heat and continuous fever are produced: if air, the fever comes on alternate days: if water (a duller element), it is a tertian fever: if earth, it is a quartan — since earth is the dullest and most sluggish of the four.101

100  Plat. Tim. p. 81 E. τὸ δὲ τῶν νόσων ὅθεν ξυνίσταται, δῆλόν που καὶ παντί.

101  Plat. Tim. p. 86 A. τὸ δὲ γῆς, τετάρτως ὂν νωθέστατον τούτων.

Diseases of mind — wickedness is a disease — no man is voluntarily wicked.

Having dwelt at considerable length on the distempers of the body, the Platonic Timæus next examines those of the soul, which proceed from the condition of the body.102 The generic expression for all distemper of the soul is, irrationality — unreason — absence of reason or intelligence. Of this there are two sorts — madness and ignorance. Intense pleasures and pains are the gravest cause of madness.103 A man under either of these two influences — either grasping at the former, or running away from the latter, out of season — can neither see nor hear any thing rightly. He is at that moment mad and incapable of using his reason. When the flow of sperm round his marrow is overcharged and violent, so as to produce desires with intense throes of uneasiness beforehand and intense pleasure when satisfaction arrives, — his soul is really distempered and irrational, through the ascendancy of his body. Yet such a man is erroneously looked upon in general not as distempered, but as wicked voluntarily, of his own accord. The truth is, that sexual intemperance is a disorder of the soul arising from an abundant flow of one kind of liquid in the body, combined with thin bones or deficiency in the solids. And nearly all those intemperate habits which are urged as matters of reproach against a man — as if he were bad willingly, — are urged only from the assumption of an erroneous hypothesis. No man is bad willingly, but only from some evil habit of body and from wrong or perverting treatment in youth; which is hostile to his nature, and comes upon him against his own will.104

102  Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. Καὶ τὰ μὲν περὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσήματα ταύτῃ ξυμβαίνει γιγνόμενα, τὰ δὲ περὶ ψυχὴν διὰ σώματος ἕξιν τῇδε.

103  Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. νόσον μὲν δὴ ψυχῆς ἄνοιαν ξυγχωρητέον. Δύο δ’ ἀνοίας γένη, τὸ μὲν μανίαν, τὸ δὲ ἀμαθίαν.

104  Plato, Timæus, p. 86 C-D.

Badness of mind arises from body.

Again, not merely by way of pleasures, but by way of pains also, the body operates to entail evil or wickedness on the soul. When acid or salt phlegm — when bitter and bilious humours — come to spread through the body, remaining pent up therein, without being able to escape by exhalation, — the effluvia which ought to have been exhaled from them become confounded with the rotation of the soul, producing in it all manner of distempers. These effluvia attack all the three different seats of the soul, occasioning great diversity of mischiefs according to the part attacked — irascibility, despondency, rashness, cowardice, forgetfulness, stupidity. Such bad constitution of the body serves as the foundation of ulterior mischief. And when there supervene, in addition, bad systems of government and bad social maxims, without any means of correction furnished to youth through good social instruction — it is from these two combined causes, both of them against our own will, that all of us who are wicked become wicked. Parents and teachers are more in fault than children and pupils. We must do our best to arrange the bringing up, the habits, and the instruction, so as to eschew evil and attain good.105

105  Plato, Timæus, p. 87 A-C.

Preservative and healing agencies against disease — well-regulated exercise, of mind and body proportionally.

After thus describing the causes of corruption, both in body and mind, Plato adverts to the preservative and corrective agencies applicable to them. Between the one and the other, constant proportion and symmetry must be imperatively maintained. When the one is strong, and the other weak, nothing but mischief can ensue.106 Mind must not be exercised alone, to the exclusion of body; nor body alone, without mind. Each must be exercised, so as to maintain adequate reaction and equilibrium against the other.107 We ought never to let the body be at rest: we must keep up within it a perpetual succession of moderate shocks, so that it may make suitable resistance against foreign causes of movement, internal and external.108 The best of all movements is, that which is both in itself and made by itself: analogous to the self-continuing rotation both of the Kosmos and of the rational soul in our cranium.109 Movement in itself, but by an external agent, is less good. The worst of all is, movement neither in itself nor by itself. Among these three sorts of movement, the first is, Gymnastic: the second, propulsion backwards and forwards in a swing, gestation in a carriage: the third is, purgation or medicinal disturbance.110 This last is never to be employed, except in extreme emergencies.

106  Plat. Tim. pp. 87-88 A.

107  Plat. Tim. p. 88 C.

108  Plat. Tim. p. 88 D-E.

109  Plat. Tim. p. 89 A. τῶν δ’ αὖ κινήσεων ἡ ἐν ἑαυτῷ ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ἀρίστη κίνησις· μάλιστα γὰρ τῇ διανοητικῇ καὶ τῇ τοῦ παντὸς κινήσει ξυγγενής· ἡ δ’ ὑπ’ ἄλλου χείρων.

110  Plat. Tim. p. 89 A. δευτέρα δὲ ἡ διὰ τῶν αἰωρήσεων.

Foes, in the Œconomia Hippocratica v. Αἰώρα, gives information about these pensiles gestationes, upon which the ancient physicians bestowed much attention.

Treatment proper for mind alone, apart from body — supremacy of the rational soul must be cultivated.

We must now indicate the treatment necessary for mind alone, apart from body. It has been already stated, that there are in each of us three souls, or three distinct varieties of soul; each having its own separate place and special movements. Of these three, that which is most exercised must necessarily become the strongest: that which is left unexercised, unmoved, at rest or in indolence, — will become the weakest. The object to be aimed at is, that all three shall be exercised in harmony or proportion with each other. Respecting the soul in our head, the grandest and most commanding of the three, we must bear in mind that it is this which the Gods have assigned to each man as his own special Dæmon or presiding Genius. Dwelling as it does in the highest region of the body, it marks us and links us as akin with heaven — as a celestial and not a terrestrial plant, having root in heaven and not in earth. It is this encephalic or head-soul, which, connected with and suspended from the divine soul of the Kosmos, keeps our whole body in its erect attitude. Now if a man neglects this soul, directing all his favour and development towards the two others (the energetic or the appetitive), — all his judgments will infallibly become mortal and transient, and he himself will be degraded into a mortal being, as far as it is possible for man to become so. But if he devotes himself to study and meditation on truth, exercising the encephalic soul more than the other two — he will assuredly, if he seizes truth,111 have his mind filled with immortal and divine judgments, and will become himself immortal, as far as human nature admits of it. Cultivating as he does systematically the divine element within him, and having his in-dwelling Genius decorated as perfectly as possible, he will be eminently well-inspired or happy.112

111  Plato, Timæus, p. 90 C. ἄν περ ἀληθείας ἐφάπτηται.

112  Plato, Timæus, p. 90 B-D. ἔχοντά τε αὐτὸν εὖ μάλα κεκοσμημένον τὸν δαίμονα ξύνοικον ἐν αὑτῷ, διαφερόντως εὐδαίμονα εἶναι.

It is hardly possible to translate this play upon the word εὐδαίμων.

We must study and understand the rotations of the Kosmos — this is the way to amend the rotations of the rational soul.

The mode of cultivating or developing each soul is the same — to assign to each the nourishment and the movement which is suitable to it. Now the movements which are kindred and congenial to our divine encephalic soul, are — the rotations of the Kosmos and the intellections traversing the Kosmical soul. It is these that we ought to follow and study. By learning and embracing in our minds the rotations and proportions of the Kosmos, we shall assimilate the comprehending subject to the comprehended object, and shall rectify that derangement of our own intra-cranial rotations, which was entailed upon us by our birth into a body. By such assimilation, we shall attain the perfection of the life allotted to us, both at present and for the future.113

113  Plato, Timæus, pp. 90 D, 91 C-D. The phrase of Plato in describing the newly introduced mode of procreation — ὡς εἰς ἄρουραν τὴν μήτραν ἀόρατα ὑπὸ σμικρότητος καὶ ἀδιάπλαστα ζῶα κατασπείραντες — is remarkable, as it might be applied to the spermatozoa, which nevertheless he cannot have known.

Construction of women, birds, quadrupeds, fishes, &c., all from the degradation of primitive man.

We have thus — says the Platonic Timæus in approaching his conclusion — gone through all those matters which we promised at the beginning, from the first construction of the Kosmos to the genesis of man. We must now devote a few words to the other animals. All of these derive their origin from man, by successive degradations. The first transition is from man into woman. Men whose lives had been characterised by cowardice or injustice, were after death and in their second birth born again as women. It was then that the Gods planted in us the sexual impulse, reconstructing the bodily organism with suitable adjustment, on the double pattern, male and female.114

114  Plat. Tim. p. 91 D. Whoever compares the step of marked degeneration here indicated — in passing from men to women — with that which is affirmed by Plato in the fifth book of the Republic about the character, attributes, and capacities of women, will recognise a material difference between the two.

Such was the genesis of women, by a partial transformation and diversification of the male structure.

We next come to birds; who are likewise a degraded birth or formation, derived from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in man: hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. Birds were formed from the harmless, but light, airy, and superficial men; who, though carrying their minds aloft to the study of kosmical phenomena, studied them by visual observation and not by reason, foolishly imagining that they had discovered the way of reaching truth.115

115  Plato, Timæus, p. 91 E.

The more brutal land animals proceeded from men totally destitute of philosophy, who neither looked up to the heavens nor cared for celestial objects: from men making no use whatever of the rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such tastes and occupations, both their heads and their anterior limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of affinity. Moreover, when the rotations of the encephalic soul, from want of exercise, became slackened and fell into desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost, and converted into an oblong or some other form. These men thus degenerated into quadrupeds and multipeds: the Gods furnishing a greater number of feet in proportion to the stupidity of each, in order that its approximations to earth might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, however, the Gods gave no feet nor limbs at all; constraining them to drag the whole length of their bodies along the ground, and to become Reptiles.116

116  Plato, Timæus, pp. 91-92.

Out of the most stupid and senseless of mankind, by still greater degeneracy, the Gods formed Fishes or Aquatic Animals:— the fourth and lowest genus, after Men, Birds, Land-Animals. This race of beings, from their extreme want of mind, were not considered worthy to live on earth, or to respire thin and pure air. They were condemned to respire nothing but deep and turbid water, many of them, as oysters, and other descriptions of shellfish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bottom.117

117  Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B.

It is by such transitions (concludes the Platonic Timæus) that the different races of animals passed originally, and still continue to pass, into each other. The interchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of reason or irrationality.118

118  Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B. καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα δὴ πάντα τότε καὶ νῦν διαμείβεται τὰ ζῶα εἰς ἄλληλα, νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα.

Large range of topics introduced in the Timæus.

The vast range of topics, included in this curious exposition, is truly remarkable: Kosmogony or Theogony, First Philosophy, Physics (resting upon Geometry and Arithmetic), Zoology, Physiology, Anatomy, Pathology, Therapeutics, mental as well as physical. Of all these, I have not been able to furnish more than scanty illustrations; but the whole are well worthy of study, as the conjectures of a great and ingenious mind in the existing state of knowledge and belief among the Greeks: and all the more worthy, because they form in many respects a striking contrast with the points of view prevalent in more recent times.

The Demiurgus of the Platonic Timæus — how conceived by other philosophers of the same century.

The position and functions of the Demiurgus, in the Timæus, form a peculiar phase in Grecian Philosophy, and even in the doctrine of Plato himself: for the theology and kosmology of the Timæus differ considerably from what we read in the Phædrus, Politikus, Republic, Leges, &c. The Demiurgus is presented in Timæus as a personal agent, pre-kosmical and extra-kosmical: but he appears only as initiating; he begets or fabricates, once for all, a most beautiful Kosmos (employing all the available material, so that nothing more could afterwards be added). The Kosmos having body and soul, is itself a God, but with many separate Gods resident within it, or attached to it. The Demiurgus then retires, leaving it to be peopled and administered by the Gods thus generated, or by its own soul. His acting and speaking is recounted in the manner of the ancient mythes: and many critics, ancient as well as modern, have supposed that he is intended by Plato only as a mythical personification of the Idea Boni: the construction described being only an ideal process, like the generation of a geometrical figure.119 Whatever may have been Plato’s own intention, in this last sense his hypothesis was interpreted by his immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenokrates, as well as by Eudêmus.120 Aristotle in his comments upon Plato takes little notice of the Demiurgus: the hypothesis (of a distinct personal constructive agent) did not fit into his principia of the Kosmos, and he probably ranked it among those mythical modes of philosophising which he expressly pronounces to be unworthy of serious criticism.121 Various succeeding philosophers also, especially the Stoics, while they insisted much upon Providence, conceived this as residing in the Kosmos itself, and in the divine intra-kosmical agencies.

119  Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Timæum, p. 47.

Zeller, Platonische Studien, pp. 207-215; also his Gesch. d. Phil. d. Griech. vol. ii. p. 508 seq. ed. 2nd; and Susemihl, Genetische Entwicklung der Platon. Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 322-340. Ueberweg, Ueber die Platon. Welt-seele, p. 69; Brandis, Gesch. der Griech. Philos. ii. cx. pp. 357-365.

A good note of Ast (Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 363 seq. ) illustrates the analogy between the Platonic Timæus and the old Greek cosmogonic poems.

120  Respecting Speusippus and Xenokrates, see Aristotel. De Cœlo, i. 10, pp. 279-280, with Scholia, 487, b. 37, 488, b. 15, 489, a. 10, Brandis. Respecting Eudemus, Krantor, Eudorus, and the majority of the Platonic followers, see Plutarch, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, 1012 D, 1013 A, 1015 D, 1017 B, 1028 B.

Plutarch reasons against them; but he recognises their interpretation as the predominant one.

See also the view ascribed to Speusippus and the Pythagoreans by Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 1072, a. 1, b. 30).

121  Proklus ad Platon. Tim. ii. pp. 138 E, 328, ed. Schn.: ἢ γὰρ μόνος ἢ μάλιστα, Πλάτων τῇ ἀπὸ τοῦ προνοοῦντος αἰτίᾳ κατεχρήσατο, φησὶν ὁ Θεόφραστος, τοῦτό γε καλῶς αὐτῷ μαρτυρῶν. And another reference to Theophrastus, in Proklus, pp. 117, 417 Schn. Also pp. 118 E-F, 279 Schn.: Ἀριστοτέλης μὲν οὖν τὴν ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ τάξιν οὐκ οἶδεν … ὁ δὲ Πλάτων Ὀρφεῖ συνεπόμενος ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ πρῶτον εἶναι φησι τὴν τάξιν, καὶ τὸ πρὸ τῶν μερῶν ὅλον. For further coincidences between the Platonic Timæus and Orpheus (ὁ θεολόγος) see Proklus ad Timæ. pp. 233-235, Schn. The passage of Aristotle respecting those who blended mythe and philosophy is remarkable, Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 9-20. Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Ἡσίοδον, καὶ πάντες ὅσοι θεολόγοι, μόνον ἐφρόντισαν τοῦ πιθανοῦ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτούς, ἡμῶν δ’ ὠλιγώρησαν … Ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τῶν μυθικῶς σοφιζομένων οὐκ ἄξιον μετὰ σπουδῆς σκοπεῖν· παρὰ δὲ τῶν δι’ ἀποδείξεως λεγόντων δεῖ πυνθάνεσθαι διερωτῶντας, &c. About those whom Aristotle calls οἱ μεμιγμένοι (partly mythe, partly philosophy), see Metaphys. N. 1091, b. 8.

Compare, on Aristotle’s non-recognition of the Platonic Demiurgus, a remarkable note of Prantl, ad Aristot. Physica, viii. p. 524, also p. 478, in his edition of that treatise, Leipsic, 1854. Weisse speaks to the same effect in his translation of the Physica of Aristotle, pp. 350-356, Leips. 1829.

Lichtenstädt, in his ingenious work, (Ueber Platon’s Lehren auf dem Gebiete der Natur-Forschung und der Heilkunde, Leipsic, 1826), ranks several of the characteristic tenets of the Timæus as only mythical: the pre-existent Chaos, the divinity of the entire Kosmos, even the metempsychosis, though it is affirmed most directly, — see pp. 24, 46, 48, 86, &c. How much of all this Plato intended as purely mythical, appears to me impossible to determine. I agree with the opinion of Ueberweg, that Plato did not draw any clear line in his own mind between the mythical and the real (Ueber die Platon. Weltseele, pp. 70-71).

Adopted and welcomed by the Alexandrine Jews, as a parallel to the Mosaic Genesis.

But though the idea of a pre-kosmic Demiurgus found little favour among the Grecian schools of philosophy, before the Christian era — it was greatly welcomed among the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria, from Aristobulus (about B. C. 150) down to Philo. It formed the suitable point of conjunction, between Hellenic and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by Plato between the Demiurgus, and the constructed or generated Kosmos, with its in-dwelling Gods — provided a suitable place for the Supreme God of the Jews, degrading the Pagan Gods in comparison. The Timæus was compared with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed that Plato had copied. He received the denomination of the atticising Moses: Moses writing in Attic Greek.122 It was thus that the Platonic Timæus became the medium of transition, from the Polytheistic theology which served as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the omnipotent Monotheism to which philosophy became subordinated after the Christian era.

122  The learned work of Gfrörer — Philo und die Jüdisch-Alexandrin. Theosophie — illustrates well this coalescence of Platonism with the Pentateuch in the minds of the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria. “Aristobulus maintained, 150 years earlier than Philo, that not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, &c., but also the most celebrated thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a very old translation of the Pentateuch” (Gfrörer, i. p. 308, also ii. 111-118). The first form of Grecian philosophy which found favour among the Alexandrine Jews was the Platonic:— “since a Jew could not fail to be pleased — besides the magnificent style and high moral tone — with a certain likeness between the Oriental Kosmogonies and the Timæus, the favourite treatise of all Theosophists,” see p. 72. Compare the same work, pp. 78-80-167-184-314.

Philo calls Sokrates ἀνὴρ παρὰ Μωϋσεῖ τὰ προτέλεια τῆς σοφίας ἀναδιδαχθείς: he refers to the terminology of the Platonic Timæus (Gfrörer, 308-327-328).

Eusebius (Præp. Ev. ix. 6, xi. 10), citing Aristobulus and Numenius, says Τί γὰρ ἔστι Πλάτων, ἢ Μωϋσὴς ἀττικίζων; Compare also the same work, xi. 16-25-29, and xiii. 18, where the harmony between Plato and Moses, and the preference of the author for Plato over other Greek philosophers, are earnestly declared.

See also Vacherot, Histoire Critique de l’École d’Alexandrie, vol. i. pp. 110-163-319-335.

Physiology of the Platonic Timæus — subordinate to Plato’s views of ethical teleology. Triple soul — each soul at once material and mental.

Of the vast outline sketched in the Timæus, no part illustrates better the point of view of the author, than what is said about human anatomy and physiology. The human body is conceived altogether as subservient to an ethical and æsthetical teleology: it is (like the Praxitelean statue of Eros123) a work adapted to an archetypal model in Plato’s own heart — his emotions, preferences, antipathies.124 The leading idea in his mind is, What purposes would be most suitable to the presumed character of the Demiurgus, and to those generated Gods who are assumed to act as his ministers? The purposes which Plato ascribes, both to the one and to the others, emanate from his own feelings: they are such as he would himself have aimed at accomplishing, if he had possessed demiurgic power: just as the Republic describes the principles on which he would have constituted a Commonwealth, had he been lawgiver or Oekist. His inventive fancy depicts the interior structure, both of the great Kosmos and of its little human miniature, in a way corresponding to these sublime purposes. The three souls, each with its appropriate place and functions, form the cardinal principle of the organism:125 the unity of which is maintained by the spinal marrow in continuity with, the brain; all the three souls having their roots in different parts of this continuous line. Neither of these three souls is immaterial, in the sense which that word now bears: even the encephalic rational soul — the most exalted in function, and commander of the other two — has its own extension and rotatory motion: as the kosmical soul has also, though yet more exalted in its endowments. All these souls have material properties, and are implicated essentially with other material agents:126 all are at once material and mental. The encephalic or rational soul has its share in material properties, while the abdominal or appetitive soul also has its share in mental properties: even the liver has for its function to exhibit images impressed by the rational soul, and to serve as the theatre of prophetic representations.127

123

Πραξιτέλης ὃν ἔπασχε διηκρίβωσεν Ἔρωτα

ἐξ ἰδίης ἕλκων ἀρχέτυπον κραδίης — (Anthologia).

124  Plato says (Tim. p. 53 E) that in investigating the fundamental configuration of the elements you must search for the most beautiful: these will of course be the true ones. Again, p. 72 E, ἐκ δὴ λογισμοῦ τοίουδε ξυνίστασθαι μάλιστ’ ἂν αὑτῷ πάντων πρέποι. Galen applies an analogous principle of reasoning to explain the structure of apes, whom he pronounces to be a caricature of man. Man having a rational and intelligent soul, Nature has properly attached to it an admirable bodily organism: with equal propriety she has assigned to the ape a ridiculous bodily organism, because he has a ridiculous soul — λέξειεν ἂν ἡ φύσις, γελοίῳ τὴν ψυχὴν ζώῳ γελοίαν ἐχρῆν δοθῆναι σώματος κατασκευήν (De Usu Partium, i. c. 13, pp. 80-81, iii. 16, p. 284, xiii. 2, p. 127, xv. 8, p. 252, Kühn).

125  Respecting a view analogous to that of Plato, M. Littré observes, in his Proleg. to the Hippokratic treatise Περὶ Καρδίης (Œuvres d’Hippocrate T. ix. p. 77):— “Deux fois l’auteur s’occupe des fins de la structure (du cœur) et admire avec quelle habileté elles sont atteintes. La première, c’est à propos des valvules sigmöides: il est instruit de leur usage, qui est de fermer le cœur du côté de l’artère; et dès-lors, son admiration ne se méprend pas, quand il fait remarquer avec quelle exactitude ils accomplissent leur office. Mais elle se méprend quand, se tournant vers les oreillettes, elle loue la main de l’artiste habile qui les a si bien arrangées pour souffler l’air dans le cœur. Ces déceptions de la téléologie sont perpétuelles dans l’histoire de la science; à chaque instant, on s’est extasié devant des structures que l’imagination seule appropriait à certaines fonctions. ‘Cet optimisme’ (dit Condorcet dans son Fragment sur l’Atlantide) ‘qui consiste à trouver tout à merveille dans la nature telle qu’on l’invente, à condition d’admirer également sa sagesse, si par malheur on avait découvert qu’elle a suivi d’autres combinaisons; cet optimisme de détail doit être banni de la philosophie, dont le but n’est pas d’admirer, mais de connaître; qui, dans l’étude, cherche la vérité, et non des motifs de reconnaissance.’”

126  Proklus could hardly make out that Plato recognised any ψυχὴν ἀμέθεκτον, ad Tim. ii. pp. 220, 94 A.

127  Plat. Tim. p. 71 B-C. The criticism of Aristotle (De Partibus Animal. iv. 2, 676, b. 21) is directed against this doctrine, but without naming Plato. But when Aristotle says Οἱ λέγοντες τὴν φύσιν τῆς χολῆς αἰσθήσεως τινὸς εἶναι σημεῖον, οὐ καλῶς λέγουσιν, he substitutes the bile in place of the liver. In Aristotle’s mind the two are intimately associated.

Triplicity of the soul — espoused afterwards by Galen.

The Platonic doctrine, of three souls in one organism, derives a peculiar interest from the earnest way in which it is espoused afterwards by Galen. This last author represents Plato as agreeing in main doctrines with Hippokrates. He has composed nine distinct Dissertations or Books, for the purpose of upholding their joint doctrines. But the agreement which he shows between Hippokrates and Plato is very vague, and his own agreement with Plato is rather ethical than physiological. What is the essence of the three souls, and whether they are immortal or not, Galen leaves undecided:128 but that there must be three distinct souls in each human body, and that the supposition of one soul only is an absurdity — he considers Plato to have positively demonstrated. He rejects the doctrine of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Poseidonius, and others, who acknowledged only one soul, lodged in the heart, but with distinct co-existent powers.129

128  Galen, De Fœtuum Formatione, p. 701, Kühn. Περὶ Οὐσίας τῶν φυσικῶν δυνάμεων, p. 763. Περὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς Ἠθῶν, p. 773.

129  Galen, De Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. iii. pp. 337-347, Kühn, vi. pp. 515-516, i. p. 200, iv. p. 363, ix. p. 727.

Admiration of Galen for Plato — his agreement with Plato, and his dissension from Plato — his improved physiology.

So far Galen concurs with Plato. But he connects this triplicity of soul with a physiological theory of his own, which he professes to derive from, or at least to hold in common with, Hippokrates and Plato. Galen recognises three ἀρχὰς — principia, beginnings, originating and governing organs — in the body: the brain, which is the origin of all the nerves, both of sensation and motion: the heart, the origin of the arteries: the liver, the sanguifacient organ, and the origin of the veins which distribute nourishment to all parts of the body. These three are respectively the organs of the rational, the energetic, and the appetitive soul.130

130  Galen, Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. viii. pp. 656-657, Kühn. ἐξ ὧν ἐπεραίνετο ἡ τῶν φλεβῶν ἀρχὴ τὸ ἧπαρ ὑπάρχειν· ᾧ πάλιν εἵπετο, καὶ τῆς κοινῆς πρὸς τὰ φυτὰ δυνάμεως ἀρχὴν εἶναι τοῦτο τὸ σπλάγχνον, ἥντινα δύναμιν ὁ Πλάτων ἐπιθυμητικὴν ὀνομάζει. Compare vi. 519-572, vii. 600-601.

The same triplicity of ἀρχαὶ in the organism had been recognised by Erasistratus, later than Aristotle, though long before Galen. Καὶ Ἐρασίστρατος δὲ ὡς ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα ὅλου σώματος ὑποτιθέμενος τὴν τριπλοκίαν τῶν ἀγγείων, νεῦρα, καὶ φλέβας, καὶ ἀρτηρίας (Galen, T. iv. p. 375, ed. Basil). See Littré, Introduction aux Œuvres d’Hippocrate, T. i. p. 203.

Plato does not say, as Galen declares him to say, that the appetitive soul has its primary seat or ἀρχὴ in the liver. It has its seat between the diaphragm and the navel; the liver is placed in this region as an outlying fort, occupied by the rational soul, and used for the purpose of controuling the rebellious tendencies of the appetitive soul. Chrysippus (ap. Galen, Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. iii. p. 288, Kühn) stated Plato’s doctrine about the τριμερὴς ψυχὴ more simply and faithfully than Galen himself. Compare his words ib. viii. p. 651, vi. p. 519. Galen represents Plato as saying that nourishment is furnished by the stomach first to the liver, to be there made into blood and sent round the body through the veins (pp. 576-578). This is Galen’s own theory (De Usu Partium, iv. p. 268, Kühn), but it is not to be found in Plato. Whoever reads the Timæus, pp. 77-78, will see that Plato’s theory of the conversion of food into blood, and its transmission as blood through the veins, is altogether different. It is here that he propounds his singular hypothesis — the interior network of air and fire, and the oscillating ebb and flow of these intense agencies in the cavity of the abdomen. The liver has nothing to do with the process.

So again Galen (p. 573) puts upon the words of Plato about the heart — πηγὴν τοῦ περιφερομένου σφοδρῶς αἵματος — an interpretation conformable to the Galenian theory, but noway consistent with the statements of the Timæus itself. And he treats the comparison of the cranium and the rotations of the brain within, to the rotations of the spherical Kosmos — which comparison weighed greatly in Plato’s mind — as an illustrative simile without any philosophical value (Galen, H. et P. D. ii. 4, p. 230, Kühn; Plato, Tim. pp. 41 B, 90 A).

The Galenian theory here propounded (which held its place in physiology until Harvey’s great discovery of the circulation of the blood in the seventeenth century), though proved by fuller investigation to be altogether erroneous as to the liver — and partially erroneous as to the heart — is nevertheless made by its author to rest upon plausible reasons, as well as upon many anatomical facts, and results of experiments on the animal body, by tying or cutting nerves and arteries.131 Its resemblance with the Platonic theory is altogether superficial: while the Galenian reasoning, so far from resembling the Platonic, stands in striking contrast with it. Anxious as Galen is to extol Plato, his manner of expounding and defending the Platonic thesis is such as to mark the scientific progress realised during the five centuries intervening between the two. Plato himself, in the Timæus, displays little interest or curiosity about the facts of physiology: the connecting principles, whereby he explains to himself the mechanism of the organs as known by ordinary experience, are altogether psychological, ethical, teleological. In the praise which Galen, with his very superior knowledge of the human organism, bestows upon the Timæus, he unconsciously substitutes a new doctrine of his own, differing materially from that of Plato.

131  Galen (Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. ii. p. 233, Kühn). καίτοι γε ἡμεῖς, ἅπερ ἐπαγγελλόμεθα λόγῳ, ταῦτα ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν ζῶων ἀνατομαῖς ἐπιδείκνυμεν, &c. P. 220: Πόθεν οὖν τοῦτο δειχθήσεται; πόθεν ἄλλοθεν ἢ ἐκ τῶν ἀνατομῶν;

Physiology and pathology of Plato — compared with that of Aristotle and the Hippokratic treatises.

I have no space here to touch on the interesting comparisons which might be made between the physiology and pathology of the Timæus — and that which we read in other authors of the same century — Aristotle and the Hippokratic treatises. More than one allusion is made in the Timæus to physicians: and Plato cites Hippokrates in other dialogues with respect.132 The study and practice of medicine was at that time greatly affected by the current speculations respecting Nature as a whole: accomplished physicians combined both lines of study, implicating kosmical and biological theories:133 and in the Platonic Timæus, the former might properly be comprised in the latter, since the entire Kosmos is regarded as one animated and rational being. Among the sixty treatises in the Hippokratic collection, composed by different authors, there are material differences — sometimes even positive opposition — both of doctrine and spirit. Some of them are the work of practitioners, familiar with the details of sickness and bodily injuries, as well as with the various modes of treatment: others again proceed from pure theorists, following out some speculative dogmas more or less plausible, but usually vague and indeterminate. It is to one of this last class of treatises that Galen chiefly refers, when he dwells upon the agreement between Plato and Hippokrates.134 This is the point which the Platonic Timæus has in common with both Hippokrates and Aristotle. But on the other hand, Timæus appears entirely wanting in that element of observation, and special care about matters of fact, which these two last-mentioned authors very frequently display, even while confusing themselves by much vagueness of dogmatising theory. The Timæus evinces no special study of matters of fact: it contains ingenious and fanciful combinations, dictated chiefly from the ethical and theological point of view, but brought to bear upon such limited amount of knowledge as an accomplished man of Plato’s day could hardly fail to acquire without special study. In the extreme importance which it assigns to diet, regimen, and bodily discipline, it agrees generally with Hippokrates: but for the most part, the points of contrast are more notable than those of agreement.

132  Plato, Phædrus, p. 270; Protagoras, p. 311.

133  See a remarkable passage, Aristotel. De Sensu, 436, a. 21, τῶν ἰατρῶν οἱ φιλοσοφωτέρως τὴν τέχνην μετιόντες, &c.: also De Respiratione, ad finem, 480, b. 21, and Περὶ τῆς καθ’ ὕπνον μαντικῆς, i. p. 463, a. 5. τῶν ἰατρῶν οἱ χαριέντες. Compare Hippokrat. De Aere, Locis, &c., c. 2.

M. Littré observes:—

“La science antique, et par conséquent la médecine qui en formait une branche, était essentiellement synthétique. Platon, dans le Charmide, dit qu’on ne peut guérir la partie sans le tout. Le philosophe avait pris cette idée à l’enseignement médical qui se donnait de son temps: cet enseignement partait donc du tout, de l’ensemble; nous en avons la preuve dans le livre même du Pronostic, qui nous montre d’une manière frappante comment la composition des écrits particuliers se subordonne à la conception générale de la science; ce livre, tel qu’Hippocrate l’a composé, ne pouvait se faire qu’à une époque où la médecine conservait encore l’empreinte des doctrines encyclopédiques qui avaient constitué le fond de tout l’enseignement oriental.” (Littré, Œuvres D’Hippocrate, T. ii. p. 96. Argument prefixed to the Prognostikon.)

134  He alludes especially to the Hippokratic treatise Περὶ Φύσιος ἀνθρώπου, see De Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. viii. pp. 674-710, ed. Kühn.

In the valuable Hippokratic composition — Περὶ Ἀρχαίης Ἰητρικῆς — (vol. i. pp. 570-636, ed. Littré) the author distinguished ἰητροί, properly so-called, from σοφισταί, who merely laid down general principles about medicine. He enters a protest against the employment, in reference to medicine, of those large and indefinite assumptions which characterised the works of Sophists or physical philosophers such as Empedokles (pp. 570-620, Littré). “Such compositions,” he says, “belong less to the medical art than to the art of literary composition” — ἐγὼ δὲ τουτέων μὲν ὅσα τινὶ εἴρηται σοφιστῇ ἢ ἰητρῷ, ἢ γέγραπται περὶ φύσιος, ἧσσον νομίζω τῇ ἰητρικῇ τέχνῃ προσήκειν ἢ τῇ γραφικῇ (p. 620). Such men cannot (he says) deal with a case of actual sickness: they ought to speak intelligible language — γνωστὰ λέγειν τοῖσι δημότῃσι (p. 572). Again, in the Treatise De Aere, Locis, et Aquis, Hippokrates defends himself against the charge of entering upon topics which are μετεωρολόγα (vol. ii. p. 14, Littré).

The Platonic Timæus would have been considered by Hippokrates as the work of a σοφιστής. It was composed not for professional readers alone, but for the public — ἐπίστασθαι ἐς ὅσον εἰκὸς ἰδιώτην — (Hippokrat. Περὶ Παθῶν, vol. vi. p. 208, Littré).

The Hippokratic treatises afford evidence of an established art, with traditions of tolerably long standing, a considerable medical literature, and even much oral debate on medical subjects — ἐναντίον ἀκροατέων (Hipp. Περὶ Νούσων, vol. vi. pp. 140-142-150, Littré). Ὃς ἂν περὶ ἰήσιος ἐθέλῃ ἐρωτᾷν τε ὀρθῶς, καὶ ἐρωτῶντι ἀποκρίνεσθαι, καὶ ἀντιλέγειν ὀρθῶς, ἐνθυμέεσθαι χρὴ τάδε (p. 140) … Ταῦτα ἐνθυμηθέντα διαφυλάσσειν δεῖ ἐν τοῖσι λόγοισιν· ὅ, τι ἂν δέ τις τούτων ἁμαρτάνῃ, ἢ λέγων ἢ ἐρωτῶν ἢ ἀποκρινόμενος, … ταύτῃ φυλάσσοντα χρὴ ἐπιτίθεσθαι ἐν τῇ ἀντιλογίῃ (p. 142).

The method, which Sokrates and Plato applied to ethical topics was thus applied by others to medicine and medical dogmas. How the dogmas of the Platonic Timæus would have fared, if scrutinised with oral interrogations in this spirit, by men even far inferior to Sokrates himself in acuteness — I will not say.

Contrast between the admiration of Plato for the constructors of the Kosmos, and the defective results which he describes.

From the glowing terms in which Plato describes the architectonic skill and foresight of those Gods who put together the three souls and the body of man, we should anticipate that the fabric would be perfect, and efficacious for all intended purposes, in spite of interruptions or accidents. But Plato, when he passes from purposes to results, is constrained to draw a far darker picture. He tells us that the mechanism of the human body will work well, only so long as the juncture of the constituent triangles is fresh and tight: after that period of freshness has passed, it begins to fail.135 But besides this, there exist a formidable catalogue of diseases, attacking both body and mind: the cause of which (Plato says) “is plain to every one”: they proceed from excess, or deficiency, or displacement, of some one among the four constituent elements of the human body.136 If we enquire why the wise Constructors put together their materials in so faulty a manner, the only reply to be made is, that the counteracting hand of Necessity was too strong for them. In the Hesiodic and other legends respecting anthropogony we find at least a happy commencement, and the deterioration gradually supervening after it. But Plato opens the scene at once with all the suffering reality of the iron age —

Πλείη μὲν γὰρ γαῖα κακῶν, πλείη δὲ θάλασσα·

Νοῦσοι δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἢδ’ ἐπὶ νυκτὶ

Αὐτόματοι φοιτῶσι —137

135  Plat. Tim. pp. 81-89 B.

136  Plat. Tim. p. 82. δῆλόν που καὶ παντί.

137  Compare what Plato says in Republic, ii. p. 379 C, about the prodigious preponderance of κακὰ over ἀγαθὰ in the life of man.

Degeneration of the real tenants of Earth from their primitive type.

When Plato tells us that most part of the tenants of earth, air, and water — all women, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, and fishes — are the deteriorated representatives of primitive men, constructed at the beginning with the most provident skill, but debased by degeneracy in various directions — this doctrine (something analogous to the theory of Darwin with its steps inverted) indicates that the original scheme of the Demiurgus, though magnificent in its ensemble with reference to the entire Kosmos, was certain from the beginning to fail in its details. For we are told that the introduction of birds, quadrupeds, &c., as among the constituents of the Auto-zôon, was an essential part of the original scheme.138 The constructing Gods, while forming men upon a pure non-sexual type (such as that invoked by the austere Hippolytus) exempt from the temptations of the most violent appetite,139 foresaw that such an angelic type could not maintain itself:— that they would be obliged to reconstruct the whole human organism upon the bi-sexual principle, introducing the comparatively lower type of woman:— and that they must make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties of birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid portion of mankind would sink.140 Plato does indeed tell us, that the primitive non-sexual type had the option of maintaining itself; and that it perished by its own fault alone.141 But since we find that not one representative of it has been able to hold his ground:— and since we also read in Plato, that no man is willingly corrupt, but that corruption and stupidity of mind are like fevers and other diseases, under which a man suffers against his own consent142:— we see that the option was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties: and that the steady and continued degradation, under which the human race has sunk from its original perfection into the lower endowments of the animal world, can be ascribed only to the impracticability of the original scheme: that is, in other words, to the obstacles interposed by implacable Necessity, frustrating the benevolent purposes of the Constructors.

138  Plat. Tim. p. 41 B-C.

139  Eurip. Hippol. 615; Medea, 573; Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 888.

χρὴν ἄρ’ ἄλλοθέν ποθεν βροτοὺς

παῖδας τεκνοῦσθαι, θῆλυ δ’ οὐκ εἶναι γένος·

χοὕτως ἂν οὐκ ἦν οὐδὲν ἀνθρώποις κακόν.

140  Plat. Tim. p. 76 D. ὡς γάρ ποτε ἐξ ἀνδρῶν γυναῖκες καὶ τἄλλα θηρία γενήσοιντο, ἠπίσταντο οἱ ξυνιστάντες ἡμᾶς, &c. Compare pp. 90 E, 91.

141  Plat. Tim. p. 42.

142  Plat. Tim. pp. 86-87.

Close of the Timæus. Plato turns away from the shameful results, and reverts to the glorification of the primitive types.

However, all these details, attesting the low and poor actual condition of the tenants of earth, water, and air — and forming so marked a contrast to the magnificent description of the Kosmos as a whole, with the splendid type of men who were established at first alone in its central region — all these are hurried over by Plato, as unwelcome accompaniments which he cannot put out of sight. They have their analogies even in the kosmical agencies: there are destructive kosmical forces, earthquakes, deluges, conflagrations, &c., noticed as occurring periodically, and as causing the almost total extinction of different communities.143 Though they must not be altogether omitted, he will nevertheless touch them as briefly as possible.144 He turns aside from this, the shameful side of the Kosmos, to the sublime conception of it with which he had begun, and which he now builds up again in the following poetical doxology the concluding words of the Timæus:—

“Let us now declare that the discourse respecting the Universe is brought to its close. This Kosmos, having received its complement of animals, mortal and immortal, has become greatest, best, most beautiful and most perfect: a visible animal comprehending all things visible — a perceivable God the image of the cogitable God: this Uranus, one and only begotten.”145

143  Plato, Timæus, pp. 22, 23. Legg. iii. 677. Politikus, pp. 272, 273.

144  Plat. Tim. p. 90 E. τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα ζῶα ᾗ γέγονεν αὖ, διὰ βραχέων ἐπιμνηστέον, ὅ, τι μή τις ἀνάγκη μηκύνειν· οὕτω γὰρ ἐμμετρότερός τις ἂν αὐτῷ δόξειε περὶ τοὺς τούτων λόγους εἶναι.

145  Plat. Tim. p. 92 C. Καὶ δὴ καὶ τέλος περὶ τοῦ παντὸς νῦν ἤδη τὸν λόγον ἡμῖν φῶμεν ἔχειν· θνητὰ γὰρ καὶ ἀθάνατα ζῶα λαβὼν καὶ ξυμπληρωθεὶς ὅδε ὁ κόσμος, οὕτω ζῶον ὁρατὸν τὰ ὁρατὰ περιέχον, εἰκὼν τοῦ νοητοῦ θεὸς αἰσθητός, μέγιστος καὶ ἄριστος κάλλιστός τε καὶ τελεώτατος γέγονεν, — εἷς οὐρανὸς ὅδε, μονογενὴς ὤν.

Weh! Weh!

Du hast sie zerstört,

Die schöne Welt,

Mit mächtiger Faust;

Sie stürzt, sie zerfällt!

Ein Halb-Gott hat sie zerschlagen!

Wir tragen

Die Trümmern ins Nichts hinüber,

Und klagen

Ueber die verlorne Schöne!

Mächtiger

Der Erdensöhne,

Prächtiger

Baue sie wieder,

In deinem Busen baue sie auf!

(The response of the Geister-Chor, in Goethe’s Faust, after the accumulated imprecations uttered by Faust in his despair.)

KRITIAS.

Kritias: a fragment.

The dialogue Kritias exists only as a fragment, breaking off abruptly in the middle of a sentence. The ancient Platonists found it in the same condition, and it probably was never finished. We know, however, the general scheme and purpose for which it was destined.

Proœmium to Timæus. Intended Tetralogy for the Republic. The Kritias was third piece in that Tetralogy.

The proœmium to the Timæus introduces us to three persons146: Kritias and Hermokrates, along with Sokrates. It is to them (as we now learn) that Sokrates had on the preceding day recited the Republic: a fourth hearer having been present besides, whom Sokrates expects to see now, but does not see — and who is said to be absent from illness. In requital for the intellectual treat received from Sokrates, Timæus delivers the discourse which we have just passed in review: Kritias next enters upon his narrative or exposition, now lying before us as a fragment: and Hermokrates was intended to follow it up with a fourth discourse, upon some other topic not specified. It appears as if Plato, after having finished the Republic as a distinct dialogue, conceived subsequently the idea of making it the basis of a Tetralogy, to be composed as follows: 1. Timæus: describing the construction of the divine Kosmos, soul and body — with its tenants divine and human; “the diapason ending full in man” — but having its harmony spoiled by the degeneration of man, and the partial substitution of inferior animals. 2. Republic: Man in a constituted society, administered by a few skilful professional Rulers, subject to perfect ethical training, and fortified by the most tutelary habits. 3. Kritias: this perfect society, exhibited in energetic action, and under pressure of terrible enemies. 4. Hermokrates — subject unknown: perhaps the same society, exhibited under circumstances calculated to try their justice and temperance, rather than their courage. Of this intended tetralogy the first two members alone exist: the third was left unfinished: and the fourth was never commenced. But the Republic appears to me to have been originally a distinct composition. An afterthought of Plato induced him to rank it as second piece in a projected tetralogy.147

146  Plato, Tim. p. 17 A. εἷς, δύο, τρεῖς· ὁ δὲ δὴ τέταρτος ἡμῖν, ὦ φίλε Τίμαιε, ποῦ, τῶν χθὲς μὲν δαιτυμόνων, τὰ νῦν δ’ ἑστιατόρων;

These are the words with which the Platonic Sokrates opens this dialogue. Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (i. pp. 5-10-14, ed. Schneider), notices a multiplicity of insignificant questions raised by the ancient Platonic critics upon this exordium. The earliest whom he notices is Praxiphanes, the friend of Theophrastus, who blamed Plato for the absurdity of making Sokrates count aloud one, two, three, &c. Porphyry replied to him at length.

We see here that the habit of commenting on the Platonic dialogues began in the generation immediately after Plato’s death, that is, the generation of Demetrius Phalereus.

Whom does Plato intend for the fourth person, unnamed and absent? Upon this point the Platonic critics indulged in a variety of conjectures, suggesting several different persons as intended. Proklus (p. 14, Schn.) remarks upon these critics justly — ὡς οὔτε ἄξια ζητήσεως ζητοῦντας, οὔτ’ ἀσφαλές τι λέγοντας. But the comments which he proceeds to cite from his master Syrianus are not at all more instructive (pp. 15-16, Schn.).

147  Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 370-371) declares the fragment of the Kritias now existing to be spurious and altogether unworthy of Plato. His opinion appears to me unfounded, and has not obtained assent; but his arguments are as good as those upon which other critics reject so many other dialogues. He thinks the Kritias an inferior production: therefore it cannot have been composed by Plato. Socher also thinks that the whole allusion, made by Plato in this dialogue to Solon, is a fiction by Plato himself. That the intended epic about Atlantis would have been Plato’s own fiction, I do not doubt, but it appears to me that Solon’s poems (as they then existed, though fragmentary) must have contained allusions to Egyptian priests with whom he had conversed in Egypt, and to their abundance of historical anecdote (Plutarch, Solon, c. 26-31). It is not improbable that Solon did leave an unfinished Egyptian poem.

Subject of the Kritias. Solon and the Egyptian priests. Citizens of Platonic Republic are identified with ancient Athenians.

The subject embraced by the Kritias is traced back to an unfinished epic poem of Solon, intended by that poet and lawgiver to celebrate a memorable exploit of Athenian antiquity, which he had heard from the Priests of the Goddess Neith or Athênê at Sais in Egypt. These priests (Plato tells us) treated the Greeks as children, compared with the venerable antiquity of their own ancestors; they despised the short backward reckoning of the heroic genealogies at Athens or Argos. There were in the temple of Athênê at Sais records of past time for 9000 years back: and among these records was one, of that date, commemorating a glorious exploit, of the Athenians as they then had been, unknown to Solon or any of his countrymen.148 The Athens, of 9000 years anterior to Solon, had been great, powerful, courageous, admirably governed, and distinguished for every kind of virtue.149 Athênê, the presiding Goddess both of Athens and of Sais, had bestowed upon the Athenians a salubrious climate, fertile soil, a healthy breed of citizens, and highly endowed intelligence. Under her auspices, they were excellent alike in war and in philosophy.150 The separation of professions was fully realised among them, according to the principle laid down in the Republic as the only foundation for a good commonwealth. The military class, composed of both sexes, was quartered in barrack on the akropolis; which was at that time more spacious than it had since become — and which possessed then, in common with the whole surface of Attica, a rich soil covering that rocky bottom to which it had been reduced in the Platonic age, through successive deluges.151 These soldiers, male and female, were maintained by contributions from the remaining community: they lived in perpetual drill, having neither separate property, nor separate families, nor gold nor silver: lastly, their procreation was strictly regulated, and their numbers kept from either increase or diminution.152 The husbandmen and the artizans were alike excellent in their respective professions, to which they were exclusively confined:153 Hephæstus being the partner of Athênê in joint tutelary presidency, and joint occupation of the central temple on the akropolis. Thus admirably administered, the Athenians were not only powerful at home, but also chiefs or leaders of all the cities comprised under the Hellenic name: chiefs by the voluntary choice and consent of the subordinates. But the old Attic race by whom these achievements had been performed, belonged to a former geological period: they had perished, nearly all, by violent catastrophe — leaving the actual Athenians as imperfect representatives.

148  Plato, Timæus, pp. 22-23. The great knowledge of past history (real or supposed) possessed by the Egyptian priests, and the length of their back chronology, alleged by themselves to depend upon records preserved from a period of 17,000 years, are well known from the interesting narrative of Herodotus (ii. 37-43-77-145) — μνήμην ἀνθρώπων πάντων ἐπασκέοντες (the priests of Egypt) μάλιστα, λογιώτατοί εἰσι μακρῷ τῶν ἐγὼ ἐς διάπειραν ἀφικόμην (ii. 77) … καὶ ταῦτα ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι, αἰεί τε λογιζόμενοι, καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα (ii. 145). Herodotus (ii. 143) tells us that the Egyptian priests at Thebes held the same language to the historian Hekatæus, as Plato here says that they held to Solon, when he talked about Grecian antiquity in the persons of Phorôneus and Niobê. Hekatæus laid before them his own genealogy — a dignified list of sixteen ancestors, beginning from a God — upon which they out-bid him with a counter-genealogy (ἀντεγενεαλόγησαν) of 345 chief priests, who had succeeded each other from father to son. Plato appears to have contracted great reverence for this long duration of unchanged regulations in Egypt, and for the fixed, consecrated, customs, with minute subdivision of professional castes and employments: the hymns, psalmody, and music, having continued without alteration for 10,000 years (literally 10,000 — οὐχ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν μυριοστόν, ἀλλ’ ὄντως, Plat. Legg. ii. p. 656 E).

149  Plato, Timæus, p. 23 C-D.

150  Plato, Tim. p. 24 D. ἅτε οὖν φιλοπόλεμός τε καὶ φιλόσοφος ἡ θεὸς οὖσα, &c. Also p. 23 C.

151  Plato, Krit. pp. 110 C, 112 B-D.

152  Plato, Krit. p. 112 D. πλῆθος δὲ διαφυλάττοντες ὅ, τι μάλιστα ταὐτὸν ἑαυτῶν εἶναι πρὸς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, &c.

153  Plato, Krit. p. 111 E. ὑπὸ γεωργῶν μὲν ἀληθινῶν καὶ πραττόντων αὐτὸ τοῦτο, γῆν δὲ ἀρίστην καὶ ὕδωρ ἀφθονώτατον ἐχόντων, &c. Also p. 110 C.

Plato professes that what he is about to recount is matter of history, recorded by Egyptian priests.

Such was the enviable condition of Athens and Attica, at a period 9400 years before the Christian era. The Platonic Kritias takes pains to assure us that the statement was true, both as to facts and as to dates: that he had heard it himself when a boy of ten years old, from his grandfather Kritias, then ninety years old, whose father Dropides had been the intimate friend of Solon: and that Solon had heard it from the priests at Sais, who offered to show him the contemporary record of all its details in their temple archives.154 Kritias now proposes to repeat this narrative to Sokrates, as a fulfilment of the wish expressed by the latter to see the citizens of the Platonic Republic exhibited in full action and movement. For the Athenians of 9000 years before, having been organised on the principles of that Republic, may fairly be taken as representing its citizens. And it will be more satisfactory to Sokrates to hear a recital of real history than a series of imagined exploits.155

154  Plat. Tim. pp. 23 E, 24 A-D. τὸ δ’ ἀκριβὲς περὶ πάντων ἐφεξῆς εἰσαῦθις κατὰ σχολήν, αὐτὰ τὰ γράμματα λαβόντες διέξιμεν (24 A).

155  Plat. Tim. p. 26 D-E.

Description of the vast island of Atlantis and its powerful kings.

Accordingly, Kritias proceeds to describe, in some detail, the formidable invaders against whom these old Athenians had successfully contended: the inhabitants of the vast island Atlantis (larger than Libya and Asia united), which once occupied most of the space now filled by the great ocean westward of Gades and the pillars of Heraklês. This prodigious island was governed by ten kings of a common ancestry: descending respectively from ten sons (among whom Atlas was first-born and chief) of the God Poseidon by the indigenous Nymph Kleito.156 We read an imposing description of its large population and abundant produce of every kind: grain for man, pasture for animals, elephants being abundant among them:157 timber and metals of all varieties: besides which the central city, with its works for defence, and its artificial canals, bridges, and harbour, is depicted as a wonder to behold.158 The temple of Poseidon was magnificent and of vast dimensions, though in barbaric style.159 The harbour, surrounded by a dense and industrious population, was full of trading vessels arriving with merchandise from all quarters.160

156  Plat. Krit. pp. 113-114.

157  Plat. Krit. p. 114 E.

158  Plat. Krit. p. 115 D. εἰς ἔκπληξιν μεγέθεσι κάλλεσί τε ἔργων ἰδεῖν, &c.

159  Plat. Krit. p. 116 D-E.

160  Plat. Krit. p. 117 E.

Corruption and wickedness of the Atlantid people.

The Atlantid kings, besides this great power and prosperity at home, exercised dominion over all Libya as far as Egypt, and over all Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The corrupting influence of such vast power was at first counteracted by their divine descent and the attributes attached to it: but the divine attributes became more and more adulterated at each successive generation, so that the breed was no longer qualified to contend against corruption. The kings came to be intoxicated with wealth, full of exorbitant ambition and rapacity, reckless of temperance or justice. The measure of their iniquity at length became full; and Zeus was constrained to take notice of it, for the purpose of inflicting the chastisement which the case required.161 He summoned a meeting of the Gods, at his own Panoptikon in the centre of the Kosmos and there addressed them.

161  Plat. Krit. p. 121.

Conjectures as to what the Platonic Kritias would have been — an ethical epic in prose.

At this critical moment the fragment called Kritias breaks off. We do not know what was the plan which Plato (in the true spirit of the ancient epic) was about to put into the mouth of Zeus, for the information of the divine agora. We learn only that Plato intended to recount an invasion of Attica, by an army of Atlantids almost irresistible: and the glorious repulse thereof by Athens and her allies, with very inferior forces. The tale would have borne much resemblance to the Persian invasion of Greece, as recounted by Herodotus: but Plato, while employing the same religious agencies which that historian puts in the foreground, would probably have invested them with a more ethical character, and would have arranged the narrative so as to illustrate the triumph of philosophical Reason and disciplined Energy, over gigantic, impetuous, and reckless Strength. He would have described in detail the heroic valour and endurance of the trained Athenian Soldiers, women as well as men: and he would have embodied the superior Reason of the philosophical Chiefs not merely in prudent orders given to subordinates, but also in wise discourses162 and deliberations such as we read in the Cyropædia of Xenophon. We should have had an edifying epic in prose, if Plato had completed his project. Unfortunately we know only two small fractions of it: first the introductory prologue (which I have already noticed) — lastly, the concluding catastrophe. The conclusion was, that both the victors and the vanquished disappeared altogether, and became extinct. Terrific earthquakes, and not less terrific deluges, shook and overspread the earth. The whole military caste of Attica were, in one day and night, swallowed up into the bowels of the earth (the same release as Zeus granted to the just Amphiaraus)163 and no more heard of: while not only the population of Atlantis, but that entire island itself, was submerged beneath the ocean. The subsidence of this vast island has rendered navigation impossible; there is nothing in the Atlantic Ocean but shallow water and mud.164

162  Plat. Tim. p. 19 C-E. κατά τε τὰς ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις πράξεις καὶ κατὰ τὰς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις διερμηνεύσεις (19 C).

163  Apollodorus, iii. 6, 6; Pausanias, ix. 8, 2.

164  Plat. Tim. p. 25 C-D. σεισμῶν ἐξαισίων καὶ κατακλυσμῶν γενομένων, μιᾶς ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς χαλεπῆς ἐπελθούσης … ἄπορον καὶ ἀδιερεύνητον γέγονε τὸ ἐκεῖ πέλαγος, &c.

Respecting the shallow and muddy water of the Atlantic and its unnavigable character, as believed in the age of Plato, see a long note in my ‘History of Greece’ (ch. xviii. vol. iii. p. 381).

Plato represents the epic Kritias as matter of recorded history.

The epic of Plato would thus have concluded with an appalling catastrophe of physical agencies or divine prodigies (such as that which we read at the close of the Æschylean Prometheus165), under which both the contending parties perished. These gigantic outbursts of kosmical forces, along with the other facts, Plato affirms to have been recorded in the archives of the Egyptian priests. He wishes us to believe that the whole transaction is historical. As to particular narratives, the line between truth and fiction was obscurely drawn in his mind.

165  Æschyl. Prom. 1086.

Another remark here deserving of notice is, That in this epic of the Kritias, Plato introduces the violent and destructive kosmical agencies (earthquakes, deluges, and the like) as frequently occurring, and as one cause of the periodical destruction of many races or communities. It is in this way that the Egyptian priest is made to explain to Solon the reason why no long-continued past records were preserved in Attica, or anywhere else, except in Egypt.166 This last-mentioned country was exempt from such calamities: but in other countries, the thread of tradition was frequently broken, because the whole race (except a few) were periodically destroyed by deluges or conflagrations, leaving only a few survivors miserably poor, without arts or letters. The affirmation of these frequent destructions stands in marked contradiction with the chief thesis announced at the beginning of the Timæus — viz., the beauty and perfection of the Kosmos.

166  Plato, Tim. pp. 22 C-D, 23 B-C.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

Leges, the longest of Plato’s works — Persons of the dialogue.

The Dialogue, entitled Leges — De Legibus — The Laws — distributed into twelve books, besides its Appendix the Epinomis, and longer than any other of the Platonic compositions — is presented to us as held in Krete during a walk from the town of Knossus to the temple of Zeus under Mount Ida — between three elderly persons: Megillus, a Spartan — Kleinias, a Kretan of Knossus — and an Athenian who bears no name, but serves as the principal expositor and conductor. That this dialogue was composed by Plato after the Republic, we know from the express deposition of Aristotle: that it was the work of Plato’s old age — probably the last which he ever composed, and perhaps not completely finished at his death — is what we learn from the scanty amount of external evidence accessible to us. The internal evidence, as far as it goes, tends to bear out the same conclusion, and to show that it was written during the last seven years of his life, when he was more than seventy years of age.1

1  The allusions of Aristotle to Plato as the author of the Laws, after the Republic, occur in Politica, ii. b. 1264, b. 26, 1267, b. 5, 1271, b. 1, 1274, b. 9. According to Diogenes Laertius (v. 22) Aristotle had composed separate works Τὰ ἐκ Νόμων Πλάτωνος γ — Τὰ ἐκ τῆς Πολιτείας β.

Plutarch (De Isid. et Osir. p. 370 E) ascribes the composition of the Laws to Plato’s old age. In the Προλεγόμενα εἰς τὴν Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφίαν, it is said that the treatise was left unfinished at his death, and completed afterwards by his disciple the Opuntian Philippus (Hermann’s Edition of Plato’s Works, vol. vi. p. 218). — Diog. Laert. iii. 37.

See the learned Prolegomena of Stallbaum, who collects all the information on this subject, and who gives his own judgment (p. lxxxi.) respecting the tone of senility pervading the Leges, in terms which deserve the more attention as coming from so unqualified an admirer of Plato: “Totum Legum opus nescio quid senile refert, ut profecto etiam hanc ob caussam a sene scriptum esse longé verisimillimum videatur.” The allusion in the Laws (i. p. 638 B) to the conquest of the Epizephyrian Lokrians by the Syracusans, which occurred in 356 B.C., is pointed out by Boeckh as showing that the composition was posterior to that date (Boeckh, ad Platon. Minoem, pp. 72-73).

It is remarkable that Aristotle, in canvassing the opinions delivered by the Ἀθηναῖος ξένος in the Laws, cites them as the opinions of Sokrates (Politic. ii. 1265, b. 11), who, however, does not appear at all in the dialogue. Either this is a lapse of memory on the part of Aristotle; or else (which I think very possible) the Laws were originally composed with Sokrates as the expositor introduced, the change of name being subsequently made from a feeling of impropriety in transporting Sokrates to Krete, and from the dogmatising anti-dialectic tone which pervades the lectures ascribed to him. Some Platonic expositors regarded the Athenian Stranger in Leges as Plato himself (Diog. Laert. iii. 52; Schol. ad Legg. 1). Diogenes himself calls him a πλάσμα ἀνώνυμον.

Abandonment of Plato’s philosophical projects prior to the Leges.

All critics have remarked the many and important differences between the Republic and the Laws. And it seems certain, that during the interval which separates the two, Plato’s point of view must have undergone a considerable change. We know from himself that he intended the Kritias as a sequel to the Timæus and Republic: a portion of the Kritias still exists — as we have just seen — but it breaks off abruptly, and there is no ground for believing that it was ever completed. We know farther from himself that he projected an ulterior dialogue or exposition, assigned to Hermokrates, as sequel to the Kritias: both being destined to exhibit in actual working and manifestation, the political scheme, of which the Republic had described the constituent elements.2 While the Kritias was prematurely arrested in its progress towards maturity, the Hermokrates probably was never born. Yet we know certainly that both the one and the other were conceived by Plato, as parts of one comprehensive project, afterwards abandoned. Nay, the Kritias was so abruptly abandoned, that it terminates with an unfinished sentence: as I have stated in the last chapter.

2  Plato, Timæus, pp. 20-27. Plato, Kritias, p. 108.

Untoward circumstances of Plato’s later life — His altered tone in regard to philosophy.

To what extent such change of project was brought about by external circumstances in Plato’s life, we cannot with certainty determine. But we know that there really occurred circumstances, well calculated to produce a material change in his intellectual character and point of view. His personal adventures and experience, after his sixty-first year, and after the death of the elder Dionysius (B.C. 367), were of an eventful and melancholy character. Among them were included his two visits to the younger Dionysius at Syracuse; together with the earnest sympathy and counsel which he bestowed on his friend Dion; whose chequered career terminated, after an interval of brilliant promise, in disappointment, disgrace, and violent death. Plato not only suffered much distress, but incurred more or less of censure, from the share which he had taken, or was at least supposed to have taken, in the tragedy. His own letters remain to attest the fact.3 Considering the numerous enemies which philosophy has had at all times, we may be sure that such enemies would be furnished with abundant materials for invidious remark — by the entire failure of Plato himself at Syracuse as well as by the disgraceful proceedings first of Dion, next, of his assassin Kallippus: both of them pupils, and the former a favourite pupil, of Plato in the Academy. The prospect, which accident had opened, of exalting philosophy into active influence over mankind, had been closed in a way no less mournful than dishonourable. Plato must have felt this keenly enough, even apart from the taunts of opponents. We might naturally expect that his latest written compositions would be coloured by such a temper of mind: that he would contract, if not an alienation from philosophy, at least a comparative mistrust of any practical good to come from it: and that if his senile fancy still continued to throw out any schemes of social construction, they would be made to rest upon other foundations, eliminating or reducing to a minimum that ascendancy of the philosophical mind, which he had once held to be omnipotent and indispensable.

3  See especially the interesting and valuable Epistola vii. of Plato; also the life of Dion by Plutarch.

The reader will find a full account of Plato’s proceedings in Sicily, and of the adventures of Dion, in chap. 84 of my ‘History of Greece’.

The passage of Plato in Legg. iv. 709-710 (alluding to the concurrence and co-operation of a youthful despot, sober-minded and moderate, but not exalted up to the level of philosophy, with a competent lawgiver for the purpose of constructing a civic community, furnished with the best laws) is supposed by K. F. Hermann (System der Platon. Philos. p. 69) and by Zeller (Phil. d. Griech. vol. ii. p. 310, ed. 2nd.) to allude to the hopes which Plato cherished when he undertook his first visit to the younger Dionysius at Syracuse. See Epistol. vii. pp. 327 C, 330 A-B, 334 C; Epistol. ii. 311 B.

Such allusion is sufficiently probable. Yet we must remember that the Magnetic community, described by Plato in the Treatise De Legibus, does not derive its origin from any established despot or prince, but from a general resolution supposed to have been taken by the Kretan cities, and from a Decemviral executive Board of Knossian citizens nominated by them. Kleinias, as a chief member of this Board, solicits the suggestion of laws from the Athenian elder (Legg. iii. p. 702 C). This is more analogous to Plato’s subsequent counsel, after his attempt to guide the younger Dionysius had failed. See Epistol. vii. p. 337 C-E.

General comparison of Leges with Plato’s earlier works.

Comparing the Laws with the earlier compositions of Plato, the difference between them will be found to correspond pretty nearly with the change thus indicated in his point of view. If we turn to the Republic, we find Plato dividing the intelligible world (τὸ νοητὸν) into two sections: the higher, that of pure and absolute Ideas, with which philosophy and dialectics deal — the lower, that of Ideas not quite pure, but implicated more or less with sensible illustration, to which the mathematician applies himself: the chief use of the lower section is said to consist in its serving as preparation for a comprehension of the higher.4 But in the Laws, this higher or dialectical section — the last finish or crowning result of the teaching process, is left out; while even the lower or mathematical section is wrapped up with theology. Moreover, the teaching provided in the Laws, for the ruling Elders, is presented as something new, which Plato has much difficulty both in devising and in explaining: we must therefore understand him to distinguish it pointedly from the teaching which he had before provided for the Elders in the Republic.5 Again, literary occupation is now kept down rather than encouraged: Plato is more afraid lest his citizens should have too much of it than too little.6 As for the Sokratic Elenchus, it is not merely not commended, but it is even proscribed and denounced by implication, since free speech and criticism generally is barred out by the rigorous Platonic censorship. On the other hand, the ethical sentiment in the Leges, with its terms designating the varieties of virtue, is much the same as in other Platonic compositions: the political and social doctrine also, though different in some material points, is yet very analogous on several others. But these ethical and political doctrines appear in the Laws much more merged in dogmatic theology than in other dialogues. This theology is of Pythagorean character — implicated directly and intimately with astronomy — and indirectly with arithmetic and geometry also. We have here an astronomical religion, or a religious astronomy, by whichever of the two names it may be called. Right belief on astronomy is orthodoxy and virtue: erroneous belief on astronomy is heretical and criminal.

4  See the passages, Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 811 B-819 A. Plato, Republic, vi. pp. 510-511. τὰ δύο τμήματα or εἴδη τοῦ νοητοῦ. vii. p. 534 E: ὥσπερ θριγκὸς τοῖς μαθήμασιν ἡ διαλεκτικὴ ἡμῖν ἐπάνω κεῖσθαι.

5  Plat. Legg. p. 966 D, xii. pp. 968 C-E, 969 A. Compare vii. p. 818 E. In p. 966 D, the study of astronomy is enforced on the ground that it is one of the strongest evidence of natural theology: in p. 818 C, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy are advocated as studies, because, without having gone through them, a man cannot become a God, a Dæmon, or a Hero, competent to exercise effective care over mankind. This is altogether different from the Republic.

6  Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 811 B, 819 A.

In the Timæus, Plato recommended the study of astronomy, in order that the rotations of man’s soul in his cranium, which were from the beginning disturbed and irregular, might become regularised, and assimilated by continued contemplation to the perfect uniformity of the celestial and cosmical movements.7 In the Leges, he recommends astronomy to be studied, because without it we fall into blasphemous errors respecting the cosmical movements, and because such cosmical errors are among the three varieties of heresy, to one or other of which the commission of all crimes against society may be traced.8 Hence we find Plato, in the city here described, consecrating his astronomical views as a part of the state-religion, and prohibiting dissent from them under the most stringent penalties. In the general spirit of the Treatise de Legibus, Plato approximates to Xenophon and the Spartan model. He keeps his eye fixed on the perpetual coercive discipline of the average citizen. This discipline, prescribed in all its details by the lawgiver, includes a modicum of literary teaching equal to all; small in quantity, and rigorously sifted as to quality, through the censorial sieve. The intellectual and speculative genius of the community, which other Platonic dialogues bring into the foreground, has disappeared from the Treatise de Legibus. We find here no youths pregnant with undisclosed original thought, which Sokrates assists them in bringing forth: such as Theætêtus, Charmidês, Kleinias, and others — pictures among the most interesting which the ancient world presents, and lending peculiar charm to the earlier dialogues. Not only no provision is made for them, but severe precautions are taken against them. Even in the Republic, Plato had banished poets, or had at least forbidden them to follow the free inspirations of the Muse, and had subjected them to censorial controul. But such controul was presumed to be exercised by highly trained speculative and philosophical minds, for the perpetual succession of whom express provision was made. In the Treatise De Legibus, such speculative minds are no longer admitted. Philosophy is interdicted or put in chains as well as poetry. An orthodox religious creed is exalted into exclusive ascendancy. All crime or immorality is ascribed to a departure from this creed.9 The early communities (Plato tells us10), who were simple and ignorant, destitute of arts and letters, but who at the same time believed implicitly all that they heard from their seniors respecting Gods and men, and adopted the dicta of their seniors respecting good and evil, without enquiry or suspicion — were decidedly superior to his contemporaries in all the departments of virtue — justice, temperance, and courage. This antithesis, between virtue and religious faith on the one side, and arts and letters with an inquisitive spirit on the other, presenting the latter as a depraving influence, antagonistic to the former — is analogous to the Bacchæ of Euripides — the work of that poet’s old age11 — and analogous also to the Nubes of Aristophanes, wherein the literary and philosophical teaching of Sokrates is represented as withdrawing youth from the received religious creed, and as leading them by consequence to the commission of fraud and crime.12

7  Plato, Timæus, p. 47 B-C.

8  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 821 D, 822 C; x. pp. 885 B, 886 E.

9  Plato, Legg. x. p. 885 B.

10  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 679. Compare p. 689 D.

11  Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 623. “Superest fabula (Euripidis), Bacchæ, dithyrambi quam tragœdiæ similior, totaque ita comparata, ut contra illius temporis Rationalistas scripta videatur; qua et Bacchicarum religionum sanctimonia commendatur … et rerum divinarum disceptatio ab eruditorum judiciis ad populi transfertur suffragia:—

σοφὰν δ’ ἄπεχε πραπίδα φρένα τε

περισσῶν παρὰ φωτῶν·

τὸ πλῆθος ὅ, τι τὸ φαυλότερον

ἐνόμισε χρῆταί τε, τόδε τοι λεγοίμαν.

[λέγοιμ’ ἄν, Matthiæ] (427).

Compare vv. 200-203 of the same drama.

12  Aristophan. Nubes, 116-875, &c.

Scene of the Leges, not in Athens, but in Krete. Persons Kretan and Spartan, comparatively illiterate.

The submergence and discredit of letters and philosophy, which pervades the Dialogue De Legibus, is farther indicated by the personages introduced as conversing. In all the other Platonic dialogues, the scene is laid at Athens, and the speakers are educated citizens of Athens; sometimes visitors, equally or better educated, from other Grecian cities. Generally, they are either adults who have already acquired some intellectual eminence, or youths anxious to acquire it. Nikias and Laches, Melesias and Lysimachus (in the Lachês), are among the leaders (past or present) of the Athenian public assembly. Anytus (in the Menon) is a man not so much ignorant of letters as despising letters.13 Moreover Sokrates himself formally disclaims positive knowledge, professing to be only a searcher for truth along with the rest.14 But the scene of the Laws is laid in Krete, not at Athens: the three speakers are not merely all old men, but frequently allude to their old age. One of them only is an Athenian, to whom the positive and expository duty is assigned: the other two are Megillus, a Spartan, and Kleinias, a Kretan of Knossus. Now both Sparta, and the communities of Krete, were among the most unlettered portions of the Hellenic name. They were not only strangers to that impulse of rhetoric, dialectic, and philosophical speculation which, having its chief domicile at Athens, had become diffused more or less over a large portion of Greece since the Persian war — but they were sparingly conversant even with that old poetical culture, epic and lyric, which belonged to the age of Solon and the Seven Wise Men. The public training of youth at Sparta, equal for all the citizens, included nothing of letters and music, which in other cities were considered to be the characteristics of an educated Greek:15 though probably individual Spartans, more or fewer, acquired these accomplishments for themselves. Gymnastics, with a slight admixture of simple chronic music and a still slighter admixture of poetry and letters, formed the characteristic culture of Sparta and Krete.16 In the Leges, Plato not only notes the fact, but treats it as indicating a better social condition, compared with Athens and other Greeks — that both Spartans and Kretans were alike unacquainted with the old epic or theological poems (Hesiod, Orpheus, &c.), and with the modern philosophical speculations.17

13  Tacitus, Dialog. de Orator. c. 2. “Aper, communi eruditione imbutus, contemnebat potius literas quam nesciebat.”

Nikias is said to have made his son Nikêratus learn by heart the entire Iliad and Odyssey of Homer; at least this is the statement of Nikêratus himself in the Symposion of Xenophon (iii. 5).

14  This profession appears even in the Gorgias (p. 506 A) and in the Republic (v. p. 450 D).

15  See Xenophon, Republ. Laced. c. 2.

Compare the description given by Xenophon in the Cyropædia (i. 2, 6), of the public training of Persian youth, which passage bears striking analogy to his description of the Spartan training. The public διδάσκαλοι are not mentioned as teaching γράμματα, which belong to Athens and other cities, but as teaching justice, temperance, self-command, obedience, bodily endurance, the use of the bow and the javelin, &c.

16  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 673 B.

17  Plato, Legg. x. p. 886 B-C. εἰσὶν ἡμῖν ἐν γράμμασι λόγοι κείμενοι, οἵ παρ’ ὑμῖν οὐκ εἰσὶ δι’ ἀρετὴν πολιτείας, ὡς ἐγὼ μανθάνω, οἱ μὲν ἔν τισι μέτροις, οἱ δὲ καὶ ἄνευ μέτρων λέγοντες περὶ θεῶν, οἱ μὲν παλαιόταταοι, ὡς γέγονεν ἡ πρώτη φύσις οὐράνου τῶν τε ἄλλων, προϊόντες δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς οὐ πολὺ θεογονίαν διεξέρχονται, γενόμενοί τε ὡς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὡμίλησαν. Ἃ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν εἰ μὲν εἰς ἄλλο τι καλῶς ἢ μὴ καλῶς ἔχει, οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἐπιτιμᾷν παλαιοῖς οὖσι, &c.

Gymnastic training, military drill, and public mess, in Krete and Sparta.

Not simply on this negative ground, but on another positive ground also, Sparta and Krête were well suited to furnish listeners for the Laws.18 Their gymnastic discipline and military drill, especially the Spartan, were stricter and more continuous than anywhere else in Greece: including toilsome fatigue, endurance of pain, heat, and cold, and frequent conflicts with and without arms between different factions of citizens. The individual and the family were more thoroughly merged in the community: the citizens were trained for war, interdicted from industry, and forbidden to go abroad without permission: attendance on the public mess-table was compulsory on all citizens: the training of youth was uniform, under official authority: the two systems were instituted, both of them, by divine authority — the Spartan by Apollo, the Kretan by Zeus — Lykurgus and Minos, semi-divine persons, being the respective instruments and mediators. In neither of them was any public criticism tolerated upon the laws and institutions (this is a point capital in Plato’s view19). No voice was allowed among the young men except that of constant eulogy, extolling the system as not merely excellent but of divine origin, and resenting all contradiction: none but an old man was permitted to suggest doubts, and he only in private whisper to the Archon, when no young man was near. Both in Sparta and Krete the public authorities stood forward as the conspicuous, positive, constant, agents; enforcing upon each individual a known type of character and habits. There was thus an intelligible purpose, political and social, as contrasted with other neighbouring societies, in which no special purpose revealed itself.20 Both Sparta and Krete, moreover, had continued in the main unchanged from a time immemorial. In this, as in numerous other points, the two systems were cognate and similar.21

18  Ephorus, ap. Strabo, x. 480; Xenophon, Repub. Lac. c. 4-6; Isokrates, Busiris, Orat. xi. s. 19; Aristot. Politic. ii. capp. 9 and 10, pp. 1270-1271, and viii. 9, p. 1338, b. 15; also chap. vi. of the second part of my ‘History of Greece,’ with the references there given.

19  Plato, Legg. i. p. 634 D-E. ὑμῖν μὲν γάρ, εἴπερ καὶ μετρίως κατεσκεύασται τὰ τῶν νόμων, εἷς τῶν καλλίστων ἂν εἴη νόμων μὴ ζητεῖν τῶν νέων μηδένα ἐᾷν ποῖα καλῶς αὐτῶν ἢ μὴ καλῶς ἔχει, μιᾷ δὲ φωνῇ καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς στόματος πάντας συμφωνεῖν ὡς πάντα καλῶς κείται θέντων θεῶν, καὶ ἐάν ἄλλως λέγῃ, μὴ ἀνέχεσθαι τὸ παράπαν ἀκούοντας, &c.

Compare Demosthen. adv. Leptin. p. 489, where a similar affirmation is made respecting Sparta.

20  These other cities are what Plato calls αἱ τῶν εἰκῇ πολιτευομένων πολιτεῖαι (Legg. i. p. 635 E), and what Aristotle calls νόμιμα χύδην κείμενα, Polit. vii. 1324, b. 5.

21  Plato, Legg. i. p. 624, iii. pp. 691 E, 696 A, iii. p. 683. Krete and Sparta, ἀδελφοὶ νόμοι.

K. F. Hermann (in his instructive Dissertation, De Vestigiis Institutorum veterum imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis de Legibus libros indagandis) represents Sparta and Krete as types of customs and institutions which had once been general in Greece, but had been discontinued in the other Grecian cities. “Hoc imprimis in Lacedæmoniorum et Cretensium res publicas cadit, quæ quum et antiquissimam Græciæ indolem fidelissimé servasse viderentur, et moribus ac disciplinâ publicâ optimé fundatæ essent, non mirum est eas Græco philosopho adeò placuisse ut earum formam et libris de Civitate et Legibus quasi pro fundamento subjiceret” (p. 19, compare pp. 13-15-23) … “unde (sc. a legitimis Græcarum civitatum principiis) licet plurimi temporum decursu descivissent atque in aliâ omnia abiissent, nihil tamen Plato proposuit, nisi quod optimus quisque in Græciâ semper expetierat ac persecutus erat” (p. 15). I think this view is not correct, though it is adopted more or less by various critics. Sparta and Krete are not specimens (in my judgment) of what all or most Grecian cities once had been — nor of pure Dorism, as K. O. Müller affirms. On the contrary I believe them to have been very peculiar, Sparta especially. So far they resembled all early Greeks, that neither literature nor luxury had grown up among them. But neither the Syssitia nor the disciplina publica had ever subsisted among other Greeks: and these were the two characteristic features of Krete and Sparta, more especially of the latter. They were the two features which arrested Plato’s attention, and upon which he brought his constructive imagination to bear; constructing upon one principle in his Republic, and upon a different principle in his Dialogue de Legibus. While he copies these two main features from Sparta, he borrows many or most of his special laws from Athens; but the ends, with reference to which he puts these elements together, are his own. K. F. Hermann, in his anxiety to rescue Plato from the charge of rashness (“temerario ingenii lusu,” p. 18), understates Plato’s originality.

Difference between Leges and Republic, illustrated by reference to the Politikus.

Comparing the Platonic Leges with the Platonic Republic the difference between them will be illustrated by the theory laid down in the Politikus. We read therein,22 that the process of governing mankind well is an art, depending upon scientific principles; like the art of the physician, the general, the steersman: that it aims at the attainment of a given End, the well-being of the governed — and that none except the scientific or artistic Ruler know either the end or the means of attaining it: that such rulers are the rarest of all artists, never more than one or a very few, combining philosophical aptitude with philosophical training: but that when they are found, society ought to trust and obey their directions without any fixed law: that no peremptory law can be made to fit all contingencies, and that their art is the only law which they ought to follow in each particular conjuncture. If no such persons can be found, good government is an impossibility: but the next best thing to be done is, to establish fixed laws, as good as you can, and to ensure that they shall be obeyed by every one. Now the Platonic Republic aims at realising the first of these two ideal projects: everything in it turns upon the discretionary orders of the philosophical King or Oligarchy, and even the elaborate training of the Guardians serves only to make them perfect instruments for the execution of those orders. But the Platonic Leges or Treatise on Laws corresponds only to the second or less ambitious project — a tolerable imitation of the first and best.23 Instead of philosophical rulers, one or a few invested with discretionary power, we have a scheme of political constitution — an alternation of powers temporary and responsible, an apportionment of functions and duties — a variety of laws enacted, with magistrates and dikasteries provided to apply them. Plato, or his Athenian spokesman, appears as adviser and as persuader; but the laws must be such as the body of citizens can be persuaded to adopt. There is moreover a scheme of education embodied in the laws: the individual citizen is placed under dominion at once spiritual and temporal: but the infallibility resides in the laws, and authority is exercised over him only by periodical magistrates who enforce them and determine in their name. It is the Laws which govern — not philosophical Artists of King-Craft.

22  See above, vol. iii. ch. xxx. p. 273, seq.

23  Plato, Politikus, pp. 293 C-297 C.

Large proportion of preliminary discussions and didactic exhortation in the Leges.

The three first books of the Leges are occupied with general preliminary discussions on the ends at which laws and political institutions ought to aim — on the means which they ought to employ — and on the ethical effects of various institutions in moulding the character of the citizens. “For private citizens” (the Athenian says), “it is enough to say, in reply to the criticism of strangers, This is the law or custom with us. But what I propose to examine is, the wisdom of the lawgiver from whom the law proceeds.”24 At the end of book three, Kleinias announces that the Kretans are about to found a new colony on a deserted site at one end of the island, and that they have confided to a committee of ten Knossians (himself among the number), the task of establishing a constitution and laws for the colony. He invites the Athenian to advise and co-operate with this committee. In the fourth book, we enter upon the special conditions of this colonial project, to which the constitution and laws must conform. It is not until the fifth book that the Athenian speaker begins to declare what constitutional provisions, and what legal enactments, he recommends. His recommendations are continued throughout all the remaining Treatise — from the fifth book, to the twelfth or last. They are however largely interspersed with persuasive addresses, expositions, homilies, and comminations, sometimes of extreme prolixity and vehemence,25 on various topics of ethics and religion: which indeed occupy a much larger space than the laws themselves.

24  Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 C-D. πᾶς γὰρ ἀποκρινόμενος ἐρεῖ θαυμάζοντι ξένῳ, τὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἀήθειαν ὁρῶντι, Μὴ θαύμαζε, ὦ ξένε· νόμος ἔσθ’ ἡμῖν οὗτος, ἴσως δ’ ὑμῖν περὶ αὐτῶν τούτων ἕτερος· ἡμῖν δ’ ἐστὶ νῦν οὐ περὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἄλλων ὁ λόγος, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῶν νομοθετῶν αὐτῶν κακίας τε καὶ ἀρετῆς.

25  This is what Plato alludes to in the Politikus (p. 304 A) as “rhetoric enlisted in the service of the Ruler,” — ὅση βασιλικῇ κοινωνοῦσα ῥητορεία ξυγδιακυβερνᾷ τὰς ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι πράξεις.

Scope of the discussion laid down by the Athenian speaker — The Spartan institutions are framed only for war — This is narrow and erroneous.

The Athenian speaker avails himself of the privilege of old age to criticise the Spartan and Kretan institutions more freely than is approved by his two companions; who feel bound to uphold against all dissentients the divine origin of their respective polities.26 On enquiring from them what is the purpose of their peculiar institutions — the Syssitia or public mess-table — the gymnastic discipline — the military drill — he is informed by both, that the purpose is to ensure habits of courage, strength, and skill, with a view to superiority in war over foreign enemies: war being, in their judgment, the usual and natural condition of the different communities into which mankind are distributed.27 Such is the test according to which they determine the good constitution of a city. But the Athenian — proclaiming as the scope of his enquiry,28 What is it which is right or wrong by nature, in laws? — will not admit the test as thus laid down. War against foreign enemies (i.e. enemies foreign to the city-community) is only one among many varieties of war. There exist other varieties besides:— war among the citizens of the same town — among the constituent villages of the same city-community — among the brethren of the same family — among the constituent elements of the same individual man.29 Though these varieties of war or discord are of frequent occurrence, they are not the less evils, inconsistent with that idéal of the Best which a wise lawgiver will seek to approach.30 Whenever any of them occur, he ought to ensure to the good and wise elements victory over the evil and stupid. But his idéal should be, to obviate the occurrence of war altogether — to adjust harmoniously the relation between the better and worse elements, disposing the latter towards a willing subordination and co-operation with the former.31 Though courage in war is one indispensable virtue, it stands only fourth on the list — wisdom, justice, and temperance, being before it. Your aim is to inculcate not virtue, but only one part of virtue.32 Many mercenary soldiers, possessing courage in perfection, are unjust, foolish, and worthless in all other respects.33

26  Plato, Legg. i. p. 630 D, ii. p. 667 A.

27  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 625-626. ὅρον τῆς εὖ πολιτευομένης πόλεως, &c. (p. 626 B).

28  Plato, Legg. i. p. 627 C. ὀρθότητός τε καὶ ἁμαρτίας πέρι νόμων, ἥτις ποτ’ ἐστὶ φύσει. Also 630 E.

Compare the inquiry in the Kratylus respecting naming, wherein consists the ὀρθότης φύσει τῶν ὀνομάτων. See above, vol. iii. ch. xxxi. p. 285, seq.

29  Plato, Legg. i. p. 626.

30  Plato, Legg. i. p. 628 D.

31  Plato, Legg. i. p. 627 E. ὃς ἂν τοὺς μὲν χρηστοὺς ἄρχειν, τοὺς χείρους δ’ ἐάσας ζῇν ἄρχεσθαι ἕκοντας ποιήσειε.

The idéal which Plato here sets forth coincides mainly with that which Xenophon adopts as his theme both in the Cyropædia and in the Œconomicus (see the beginning of the former and the close of the latter) τὸ ἐθελόντων ἄρχειν.

32  Aristotle cites and approves this criticism of Plato, ἐν τοῖς Νόμοις, Politic. ii. 9, p. 1271, b. 1. Compare vii. 14, 1333, b. 15.

33  Plato, Legg. i. p. 630 A. The doctrine — that courage is possessed by many persons who have no other virtue — which is here assigned by Plato to his leading speaker the Athenian, appears in the Protagoras as advocated by Protagoras and impugned by Sokrates (p. 349 D-E). But the arguments whereby Sokrates impugns it are (according to Stallbaum) known by Plato himself to be mere captious tricks (laquei dialetici — captiosé et arguté conclusa, ad sophistam ludendum et perturbandum comparata) employed only for the purpose of puzzling and turning into ridicule an eminent Sophist. (See Stallbaum, not. ad Protag. p. 349 E. and Præf. ad Protag. p. 28.) I have already remarked elsewhere, that I think this supposition alike gratuitous and improbable.

Principles on which the institutions of a state ought to be defended — You must show that its ethical purpose and working is good.

If you wish (says the Athenian to Kleinias) to make out a plenary defence and advocacy of the Kretan system, you ought to do it in the following way:

Our laws deserve the celebrity which they have acquired in Greece, because they make us happy, and provide us with all kinds of good things: both with such as are divine and with such as are human. The divine are, Wisdom or Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage: the human are, Health, Beauty, Strength, Activity, Wealth. The human depend upon the divine, are certain to follow them, and are not to be obtained without them. All the regulations and precepts of the lawgiver are directed to the attainment and protection of these ends — to establish among the citizens a moral tone of praise and blame favourable to that purpose. He seeks to inculcate on the citizens a body of sentiment, as to what is honourable and not honourable — such as may guide their pleasures and pains, their desires and aversions — and such as may keep their minds right amidst all the disaster (disease, war, poverty, &c.) as well as the prosperity of life. He next regulates the properties, the acquisitions, and the expenditure of the citizens, together with their relations to each other on these heads, upon principles of justice enforced by suitable penalties. Lastly, he appoints magistrates of approved wisdom and right judgment to enforce the regulations. The cementing authority is thus wisdom, following out purposes of temperance and justice, not of ambition or love of money.

Such is the course of exposition (says the Athenian) which ought to be adopted. Now tell me — In what manner are the objects here defined ensured by the institutions of Apollo and Zeus at Sparta and Krete? You two ought to show me: for I myself cannot discern it.34

34  Plato, Legg. i. p. 632.

Religious and ethical character postulated by Plato for a community.

This passage is of some value, because it gives us, thus early in the Treatise, a brief summary of that which Plato desiderates in the two systems here noted — and of that which he intends to supply in his own. We see that he looks upon a political constitution and laws as merely secondary and instrumental: that he postulates as the primary and fundamental fabric, a given religious and ethical character implanted in the citizens: that the lawgiver, in his view, combines the spiritual and temporal authority, making the latter subordinate to the former, and determining not merely what laws the citizens shall obey, but how they shall distribute their approval and aversion — religious, ethical, and æsthetical. It is the lawgiver alone who is responsible and who is open to praise or censure: for to the people, of each different community and different system, established custom is always a valid authority.35

35  Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 D.

Endurance of pain enforced as a part of the public discipline at Sparta.

We Spartans (says Megillus) implant courage in our citizens not merely by our public mess-table and gymnastic, but also by inuring them to support pain and hardship. We cause them to suffer severe pain in the gymnopædia, in pugilistic contests, and other ways: we put them to hardships and privations in the Kryptia and in hunting. We thus accustom them to endurance. Moreover, we strictly forbid all indulgences such as drunkenness. Nothing of the kind is seen at Sparta, not even at the festival of Dionysus; nothing like the drinking which I have seen at Athens, and still more at Tarentum.36

36  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 633-B 637 A.

Plato puts into the mouth of the Athenian a remark that in some other cities (not Sparta or Kretan) these συσσίτια or public mess-tables had been found to lead to intestine sedition and disturbance (p. 636 B). He instances the cases of the Bœotians, the Milesians, and the Thurians. It is much to be lamented that we cannot assign the particular events and conjunctures here adverted to. The Spartan and Kretan Syssitia were daily, compulsory, and universal among the citizens, besides the strictness of the regulations: under such conditions they were peculiar to these two places, as far as our knowledge goes: the Syssitia in Southern Italy (noticed by Aristotle, Polit. vii. 10, p. 1329 b.) are not known and seemingly unimportant. The Syssitia in Bœotia, &c., may probably have been occasional or periodical banquets among members of the same tribe, deme, club, or θίασος — and voluntary besides, neither prescribed nor regulated by law. Such meetings might very probably give occasion to disturbances under particular circumstances.

Why are not the citizens tested in like manner, in regard to resistance against the seductions of pleasure?

How is it (says the Athenian) that you deal so differently with pains and pleasures? To make your citizens firm against pain, you expose them designedly to severe pains: if they were kept free from pains, you would have no confidence in their firmness against painful actualities, when any such shall occur. But in regard to pleasures, you are content with simple prohibition. You provide no means for strengthening your citizens against the temptations of pleasure. Are you satisfied that their courage (or self-command) shall be lame or one-sided — good against pains, but not good against pleasures?37 In determining about laws, the whole enquiry turns upon pleasures and pains, both in the city and in individual dispositions. These are the two natural fountains, from which he who draws such draughts as is proper, obtains happiness: while every one who draws unwisely and out of season, will fail of obtaining happiness.38

37  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 633-634 A. χωλὴν τὴν ἀνδρείαν.

38  Plato, Legg. i. p. 636 D-E.

Drunkenness forbidden at Sparta, and blamed by the Spartan converser. The Athenian proceeds to inquire how far such unqualified prohibition is justifiable.

Besides, as to drunkenness, we must not be too hasty in condemnation of it. We must not pronounce generally respecting any institution without examining the circumstances, persons, regulations, &c., attending it. Such hasty praise and censure is very misleading. Many other nations act upon the opposite practice. But I (says Plato) shall not pretend to decide the point by witnesses and authority. I shall adopt another course of investigation, and shall show you, in this particular case, a specimen of the way in which all such institutions ought to be criticised and appreciated.39

39  Plato, Legg. i. p. 638 D-E. Τρόπον δὲ ἄλλον, ὃν ἐμοὶ φαίνεται δεῖν, ἐθέλω λέγειν περὶ αὐτοῦ τούτου, τῆς μέθης, πειρώμενος ἂν ἄρα δύνωμαι τὴν περὶ ἁπάντων τούτων ὀρθὴν μέθοδον ὑμῖν δηλοῦν, ἐπειδὴ καὶ μυρία ἐπὶ μυρίοις ἔθνη περὶ αὐτῶν ἀμφισβητοῦντα ὑμῖν πόλεσι δυεῖν τῷ λόγῳ διαμάχοιτ’ ἄν.

Here Plato (as in the Sophistês, Politikus, and elsewhere) announces that the special inquiry is intended to illustrate a general method.

Plato here digresses40 from his main purpose to examine the question of drunkenness. He will not allow it to be set aside absolutely and offhand, by a self-justifying ethical sentiment, without reason assigned, defence tendered, accompanying precautions discussed. Upon this, as upon the social functions proper for the female sex, he is a dissenter from the common view. He selects the subject as a case for exhibiting the proper method of criticism respecting social institutions; not without some consciousness that the discussion, if looked at in itself (like the examples of scientific classification or diæresis in the Sophistês and Politikus), would appear unduly prolonged.41

40  He himself notes it as a digression, iii. p. 682 E.

41  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 642 A, 645 D. Compare the Politikus, pp. 264 A-286 C-E.

Description of Sokrates in the Symposion — his self-command under abundant potations.

To illustrate his peculiar views42 on the subject of drunkenness, we may refer to the picture of Sokrates which he presents in the Symposion, more especially in the latter half of that dialogue, after the appearance of Alkibiades. In this dialogue the occasion is supposed to be festive and joyous. Eros is in the ascendant, and is made the subject of a panegyric by each of the guests in succession. Sokrates partakes in the temper of the society, proclaiming himself to be ignorant of all other matters except those relating to Love.43 In all the Platonic writings there is hardly anything more striking than the panegyric upon Eros there pronounced by Sokrates, blending the idea of love with that of philosophical dialectics, and refining the erotic impulse into an enthusiastic aspiration for that generation of new contemplative power, by the colloquial intercourse of two minds reciprocally stimulating each other, which brings them at last into a clear view of the objects of the ideal or intelligible world. Until the appearance of Alkibiades, little wine is swallowed, and the guests are perfectly sober. But Alkibiades, being intoxicated when he first comes in, becomes at once the prominent character of the piece. He is represented as directing the large wine-cooler to be filled with wine (about four pints), first swallowing the whole himself then ordering it to be filled again for Sokrates, who does the like: Alkibiades observing, “Whatever quantity of wine you prescribe to Sokrates, he will drink it without becoming drunk”.44 Alkibiades then, instead of panegyrising Eros, undertakes to pronounce a panegyric on Sokrates: proclaiming that nothing shall be said but what is true, and being relieved from all reserve by his drunken condition.45 In this panegyric he describes emphatically the playful irony of Sokrates, and the magical influence exercised by his conversation over young men. But though Sokrates thus acquired irresistible ascendancy over others, himself (Alkibiades) included, no one else acquired the least hold over Sokrates. His will and character, under a playful exterior, were self-sufficing and self-determining; independent of influences from without, to such a degree as was almost insulting to any one who sought either to captivate or oblige him.46 The self-command of Sokrates was unshaken either by seduction on one side, or by pain and hardship on the other. He faced danger with a courage never surpassed; he endured hunger, fatigue, the extremities of heat and cold, in a manner such as none of his comrades in the army could parallel.47 He was indifferent to the gratifications of love, even when they were presented to him in a manner the most irresistible to Grecian imagination; while at festive banquets, though he did not drink of his own accord, yet if the society imposed obligation to do so, he outdid all in respect to quantity of wine. No one ever saw Sokrates intoxicated.48 Such is the tenor of the panegyric pronounced by Alkibiades upon Sokrates. A general drinking-bout closes the Symposion, in which Sokrates swallows large draughts of wine along with the rest, but persists all the while in his dialectic cross-examination, with unabated clearness of head. One by one the guests drop asleep, and at daybreak Sokrates alone is left awake. He rises and departs, goes forthwith to the Lykeum, and there passes the whole day in his usual colloquial occupation, without being at all affected by the potations of the preceding night.49

42  Aristotle especially notes this as one among the peculiarities of Plato (Politic. ii. 9, 20).

43  Plato, Symp. p. 177 D. ἐγὼ ὃς οὐδέν φημι ἄλλο ἐπίστασθαι ἢ τὰ ἐρωτικά, &c. 198 D: ἔφην εἶναι δεινὸς τὰ ἐρωτικά.

44  Plato, Symp. pp. 213-214.

45  Plato, Symp. pp. 214-215-217 E.

46  Plato, Symp. pp. 219 C. τῆς Σωκράτους ὑπερηφανίας. Compare 222 A.

47  Plato, Symp. p. 220.

48  Plato, Symp. p. 220 A.

What has been here briefly recapitulated will be found in my twenty-sixth chapter, vol. iii. pp. 20-21, seq.

49  Plato, Sympos. p. 223. Compare what Plato puts into the mouth of Sokrates in the Protagoras (p. 347 D): well educated men will carry on a dialectic debate with intelligence and propriety, “though they may drink ever so much wine,” — κἂν πάνυ πολὺν οἶνον πίωσιν.

Sokrates — an ideal of self-command, both as to pain and as to pleasure.

I have thus cited the Symposion to illustrate Plato’s view of the ideal of character. The self-command of Sokrates is tested both by pain and by pleasure. He resists both of them alike and equally: under the one as well as under the other, his reason works with unimpaired efficacy, and his deliberate purposes are pursued with unclouded serenity. This is not because he keeps out of the way of temptation and seduction: on the contrary, he is frequently exposed to situations of a tempting character, and is always found superior to them.

Trials for testing the self-controul of the citizen, under the influence of wine. Dionysiac banquets, under a sober president.

Now Plato’s purpose is, to impart to his citizens the character which he here ascribes to Sokrates, and to make them capable of maintaining unimpaired the controul of reason against the disturbances both of pain and pleasure. He remarks that the Spartan training kept in check the first of these two enemies, but not the second. He thinks that the citizen ought to be put through a regulated system of trials for measuring and testing his competence to contend with pleasure, as the Spartans provided in regard to pain. The Dionysiac festivals50 afforded occasions of applying these trials of pleasure, just as the Gymnopædia at Sparta were made to furnish deliberate inflictions of pain. But the Dionysiac banquets ought to be conducted under the superintendence of a discreet president, himself perfectly sober throughout the whole ceremony. All the guests would drink largely of wine, and each would show how far and how long he could resist its disturbing tendencies. As there was competition among the youths at the Gymnopædia, to show how much pain each could endure without flinching — honour being shown to those who endured most, and most successfully — so there would be competition at the Dionysia to prove how much wine each could bear without having his reason and modesty overset. The sober president would decide as judge. Each man’s self-command, as against seductive influences, would be strengthened by a repetition of such trials, while proof would be afforded how far each man could be counted on.51

50  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 650 A, 637 A. 633 D.

51  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 647 D-E-649 D.

Compare the Republic, iii. pp. 412-413, where the same general doctrine is enforced.

The gifts of Dionysus may, by precautions, be rendered useful — Desultory manner of Plato.

This is one mode in which the unmeasured potations (common throughout the Grecian cities, with the exception of Sparta and Krete) might under proper regulation be rendered useful for civic training. But there is another mode also, connected with the general musical and gymnastical training of the city. Plato will not allow Dionysus — and wine, the special gift of that God to mankind — to be censured as absolutely mischievous.52

52  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 672 A.

In developing this second topic, he is led into a general theory of ethical and æsthetical education for his city. This happens frequently enough in the desultory manner of the Platonic dialogues. We are sometimes conducted from an incidental and outlying corollary, without warning and through a side door, into the central theory from which it ramifies. The practice is noway favourable to facility of comprehension, but it flows naturally from the unsystematic and spontaneous sequence of the dialogue.

Theory of ethical and æsthetical education — Training of the emotions of youth through the influence of the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus. Choric practice and ceremonies.

Education of youth consists mainly in giving proper direction to their pleasures and pains — their love and their hatred. Young persons are capable only of emotions, well or ill directed: in this consists their virtue or vice. At that age they cannot bear serious teaching: they are incapable of acquiring reason, or true, firm opinions, which constitute the perfection of the mature man; indeed, if a man acquires these even when old, he may be looked on as fortunate.53 The young can only have their emotions cultivated so as to conform to reason: they may thus be made to love what reason, personified in and enforced by the lawgiver, enjoins — and to hate what reason forbids — but without knowing wherefore. Unfortunately the hard realities of life are perpetually giving a wrong turn to the emotions. To counteract and correct this, the influence of the Muses, of Apollo, and of Dionysus, are indispensable: together with the periodical festivals of which these Deities are respectively presidents and auxiliaries. Their influence is exercised through the choric ceremony — music, singing, dancing, blended together. Every young man is spontaneously disposed to constant indeterminate movement and exercise of various kinds — running, jumping, speaking, &c. This belongs to man in common with the young of other animals: but what is peculiar to man exclusively is, the sense of rhythm and harmony, as well as of the contrary, in these movements and sounds. Such rhythm and harmony, in song and dance united, is expressed by the chorus at the festivals, in which the Muses and Apollo take part along with the assembled youth. Here we find the only way of properly schooling the emotions.54 The unschooled man is he who has not gone through a good choric practice; which will require that the matter which he sings shall be good and honourable, while the movements of his frame and the tones of his voice must be rhythmical and graceful. Such choric practice must be universal among the citizens, distributed into three classes: youths, mature men, elders.55

53  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 653-659 D-E. παιδεία μέν ἐσθ’ ἡ παιδῶν ὁλκή τε καὶ ἀγωγὴ πρὸς τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου λόγον ὀρθὸν εἰρημένον καὶ τοῖς ἐπιεικεστάτοις καὶ πρεσβυτάτοις δι’ ἐμπειρίαν ξυνδιδογμένον, ὡς ὄντως ὀρθός ἐστιν· ἵν’ οὖν ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ παιδὸς μὴ ἐναντία χαίρειν καὶ λυπεῖσθαι ἐθίζηται τῷ νόμῳ καὶ τοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου πεπεισμένοις, ἀλλὰ ξυνέπηται χαίρουσά τε καὶ λυπουμένη τοῖς αὐτοις τούτοις οἷσπερ ὁ γέρων, τούτων ἕνεκα, ἃς ᾠδὰς καλοῦμεν, ὄντως μὲν ἐπῳδαὶ ταὶς ψυχαῖς αὗται νῦν γεγονέναι, πρὸς τὴν τοιαύτην ἢν λέγομεν ξυμφωνίαν ἐσπουδασμέναι, διὰ δὲ τὸ σπουδὴν μὴ δύνασθαι φέρειν τὰς τῶν νέων ψυχὰς παιδιαί τε καὶ ᾠδαὶ καλεῖσθαι καὶ πράττεσθαι, &c.

54  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 654-660 A.

55  This triple distribution of classes for choric instruction and practice is borrowed from Spartan customs, Plutarch, Lykurgus, 21; Schol. ad Legg. p. 633 A.

Music and dancing — imitation of the voice and movements of brave and virtuous men. Youth must be taught to take delight in this.

But what is the good and honourable — or the bad and dishonourable? We must be able to settle this point:— otherwise we cannot know how far the chorus complies with the conditions above-named. Suppose a brave man and a coward in the face of danger: the gestures and speech of the former will be strikingly different from those of the latter. So with other virtues and vices. Now the manifestations, bodily and mental, of the virtuous man, are beautiful and honourable: those of the vicious man, are ugly and base. These are the really beautiful, — the same universally, or what ought to be beautiful to all: this is the standard of rectitude in music. But they do not always appear beautiful to all. There is great diversity in the tastes and sentiments of different persons: what appears to one man agreeable and pleasurable, appears to another disgusting or indifferent.56 Such diversity is either in the natural disposition, or in the habits acquired. A man’s pleasure depends upon the former, his judgment of approbation on the latter. If both his nature and his acquired habits coincide with the standard of rectitude, he will both delight in what is really beautiful, and will approve it as beautiful. But if his nature be in discordance with the standard, while his habits coincide with that standard he will approve of what is honourable, but he will take no delight in it: he will delight in what is base, but will at the same time disapprove it as base. He will however be ashamed to proclaim his delight before persons whom he respects, and will never indulge himself in the delightful music except when he is alone.57

56  Plato, Legg. p. 655 B.

57  Plato, Legg. pp. 655-656.

Bad musical exhibitions and poetry forbidden by the lawgiver. Songs and dances must be consecrated by public authority. Prizes at the musical festivals to be awarded by select judges.

To take delight in gestures or songs which are manifestations of bad qualities, produces the same kind of mischievous effect upon the spectator as association with bad men in real life. His character becomes assimilated to the qualities in the manifestations of which he delights, although he may be ashamed to commend them. This is a grievous corruption, arising from bad musical and choric exhibitions, which the lawgiver must take care to prevent. He must not allow poets to exhibit what they may prefer or may think to be beautiful. He must follow the practice of Egypt, where both the music and the pictorial type has been determined by the Gods or by divine lawgivers from immemorial antiquity, according to the standard of natural rectitude and where the government allows neither poet nor painter to innovate or depart from this consecrated type.58 Accordingly, Egyptian compositions of the present day are exactly like what they were ten thousand years ago: neither more nor less beautiful. The lawgiver must follow this example, and fix the type of his musical and choric exhibitions; forbidding all innovation introduced on the plea of greater satisfaction either to the poet or to the audience. In the festivals where there is competition among poets, the prize must not be awarded by the pleasure of the auditors, whose acclamations tend only to corrupt and pervert the poets. The auditors ought to hear nothing but what is better than their own characters, in order that their tastes may thus be exalted. The prize must be awarded according to the preference of a few elders — or better still, of one single elder — eminent for excellent training and virtue. This judge ought not to follow the taste of the auditors, but to consider himself as their teacher and improver.59

58  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 656-657.

59  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 659 A, 668 A.

The Spartan and Kretan agree with the Athenian, that poets must be kept under a strict censorship. But they do not agree as to what the poets are required to conform to.

Such is the exposition given by the Athenian speaker, respecting the characteristic function, and proper regulating principles, of choric training (poems learnt, music and dancing) for the youth. The Spartan and Kretan cordially concur with him: especially with that provision which fixes and consecrates the old established type, forbidding all novelties and spontaneous inspiration of the poets. They claim this compulsory orthodoxy, tolerating no dissent from the ancient and consecrated canon of music and orchestic, as the special feature of their two states; as distinguishing Sparta and Krete from other Hellenic cities, which were invaded with impunity by novel compositions of every variety.60

60  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 660 C-D.

The Athenian is thus in full agreement with his two companions, on the general principle of subjecting the poets to an inflexible censorship. But the agreement disappears, when he comes to specify the dogmas which the poets are required to inculcate in their hymns. While complimenting his two friends upon their enforcement of an exclusive canon, he proceeds to assume that of course there can be but ONE canon; — that there is no doubt what the dogmas contained in it are to be. He then unfolds briefly the Platonic ethical creed. “You Spartans and Kretans (he says)61 of course constrain your poets to proclaim that the just and temperate man is happy, whether he be tall, strong, and rich — or short, feeble, and poor: and that the bad man is wretched and lives in suffering, though he be richer than Midas, and possessor besides of every other advantage in life. Most men appreciate falsely good and evil things. They esteem as good things, health, beauty, strength, perfect sight and hearing, power, long life, immortality: they account the contrary to be bad things. But you and I take a different view.62 We agree in proclaiming, that all these so-called good things are good only to the just man. To the unjust man, we affirm that health, strength, perfection of senses, power, long life, &c., are not good, but exceedingly bad. This, I presume, is the doctrine which you compel your poets to proclaim, and no other — in suitable rhythm and harmony.63 You agree with me in this, do you not?”

61  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 660 E.

62  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 661 B. ὑμεῖς δὲ καὶ ἐγώ που τάδε λέγομεν, ὡς ταῦτά ἐστι ξύμπαντα δικαίοις μὲν καὶ ὁσίοις ἀνδράσιν ἄριστα κτήματα, ἀδίκοις δὲ κάκιστα ξύμπαντα, ἀρξάμενα ἀπὸ τῆς ὑγιείας.

63  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 661 C. Ταῦτα δὴ λέγειν οἶμαι τοὺς παρ’ ὑμῖν ποιητὰς πείσετε καὶ ἀναγκάσετε, &c.

“We agree with you (replies Kleinias) on some of your affirmations, but we disagree with you wholly on others.”

“What? (says the Athenian.) Do you disagree with me when I affirm, that a man healthy, rich, strong, powerful, fearless, long-lived, exempt from all the things commonly reputed to be evils, but at the same time unjust and exorbitant — when I say that such a man is not happy, but miserable?”

“We do disagree with you when you affirm this,” answers the Kretan.

“But will you not admit that such a man lives basely or dishonourably?”

“Basely or dishonourably. — Yes, we grant it.”

“What then — do you not grant farther, that he lives badly, disagreeably, disadvantageously, to himself?”

“No. We cannot possibly grant you that,” — replies Kleinias.

Ethical creed laid down by the Athenian — Poets required to conform to it.

“Then (says the Athenian) you and I are in marked opposition.64 For to me what I have affirmed appears as necessary as the existence of Krete is indisputable. If I were lawgiver, I should force the poets and all the citizens to proclaim it with one voice: and I should punish most severely every one65 who affirmed that there could be any wicked men who lived agreeably — or that there could be any course advantageous or profitable, which was not at the same time the most just. These and other matters equally at variance with the opinions received among Kretans, Spartans, and mankind generally — should persuade my citizens to declare unanimously. — For let us assume for a moment your opinion, and let us ask any lawgiver or any father advising his son. — You say that the just course of life is one thing, and that the agreeable course is another: I ask you which of the two is the happiest? If you say that the agreeable course is the happiest, what do you mean by always exhorting me to be just? Do you wish me not to be happy?66 If on the contrary you tell me that the just course of life is happier than the agreeable, I put another question — What is this Good and Beautiful which the lawgiver extols as superior to pleasure, and in which the just man’s happiness consists? What good can he possess, apart from pleasure?67 He obtains praise and honour:— Is that good, but disagreeable — and would the contrary, infamy, be agreeable? A life in which a man neither does wrong to others nor receives wrong from others, — is that disagreeable, though good and honourable — and would the contrary life be agreeable, but dishonourable? You will not affirm that it is.68

64  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 A-B. ἢ τοῦτο μέν ἴσως ἂν ξυγχωρήσαιτε, τό γε αἰσχρῶς (ζῆν); Κλεινίας. Πάνυ μὲν οὖν. Ἀθηναῖος. Τί δέ; τὸ καὶ κακῶς; Κλειν. Οὐκ ἂν ἔτι τοῦθ’ ὁμοίως. Ἀθην. Τί δέ; τὸ καὶ ἀηδώς καὶ μὴ ξυμφερόντως αὐτῷ; Κλειν. Καὶ πώς ἂν ταῦτά γ’ ἔτι ξυγχωροῖμεν; Ἀθην. Ὅπως; εἰ θεὸς ἡμῖν ὡς ἔοικεν, ὦ φίλοι, δοίη τις συμφωνίαν, ὡς νῦν γε σχεδὸν ἀπᾴδομεν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων. Ἐμοὶ γὰρ δὴ φαίνεται ταῦτα οὕτως ἀναγκαῖα, ὡς οὐδὲ Κρήτη νῆσος σαφῶς.

65  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 B-C. ζημίαν τε ὀλίγου μεγίστην ἐπιτιθείην ἂν, εἰ τις ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ φθέγξαιτο ὡς εἰσί τινες ἄνθρωποί ποτε πονηροὶ μέν, ἡδέως δὲ ζῶντες, &c.

66  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 D-E.

67  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 E. εἰ δ’ αὖ τὸν δικαιότατον εὐδαιμονέστατον ἀποφαίνοιτο βίον εἶναι, ζητοῖ που πᾶς ἂν ὁ ἀκούων, οἶμαι, τί ποτ’ ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς κρεῖττον ἀγαθόν τε καὶ καλὸν ὁ νόμος ἐνὸν ἐπαινεῖ; τί γὰρ δὴ δικαίῳ χωριζόμενον ἡδονῆς ἀγαθὸν ἂν γίγνοιτο;

68  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 A.

“Surely then, my doctrine — which regards the pleasurable, the just, the good, and the honourable, as indissolubly connected, — has at least a certain force of persuasion, if it has nothing more, towards inducing men to live a just and holy life: so that the lawgiver would be both base and wanting to his own purposes, if he did not proclaim it as a truth. For no one will be willingly persuaded to do anything which does not carry with it in its consequences more pleasure than pain.69 There is indeed confusion in every man’s vision, when he looks at these consequences in distant outline: but it is the duty of the lawgiver to clear up such confusion, and to teach his citizens in the best way he can, by habits, encouraging praises, discourses, &c., how they ought to judge amidst these deceptive outlines. Injustice, when looked at thus in prospect, seems to the unjust man pleasurable, while justice seems to him thoroughly disagreeable. On the contrary, to the just man, the appearance is exactly contrary: to him justice seems pleasurable, injustice repulsive. Now which of these two judgments shall we pronounce to be the truth? That of the just man. The verdict of the better soul is unquestionably more trustworthy than that of the worse. We must therefore admit it to be a truth, that the unjust life is not merely viler and more dishonourable, but also in truth more disagreeable, than the just life.”70

69  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 B. Οὐκοῦν ὁ μὲν μὴ χωρίζων λόγος ἡδύ τε καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀγαθόν τε καὶ καλόν, πιθανὸς γ’, εἰ μηδὲν ἕτερον, πρὸς τό τινα ἐθέλειν ζῆν τὸν ὅσιον καὶ δίκαιον βίον· ὥστε νομοθέτῃ γε αἴσχιστος λόγων καὶ ἐναντιώτατος, ὃς ἂν μὴ φῇ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχειν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἂν ἑκὼν ἔθελοι πείθεσθαι πράττειν τοῦτο, ὅτῳ μὴ τὸ χαίρειν τοῦ λυπεῖσθαι πλέον ἕπεται.

70  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 C-D.

The Spartan and Kretan do not agree with him.

Such is the course of proof which Plato’s Athenian speaker considers sufficient to establish this ethical doctrine. But he proceeds to carry the reasoning a step farther, as follows:—

“Nay, even if this were not a true position — as I have just shown it to be — any lawgiver even of moderate worth, if ever he ventured to tell a falsehood to youth for useful purposes, could proclaim no falsehood more useful than this, nor more efficacious towards making them disposed to practise justice willingly, without compulsory force.”71

71  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 D-E. Νομοθέτης δέ, οὗ τι καὶ σμικρὸν ὄφελος, εἰ καὶ μὴ τοῦτο ἦν οὕτως ἔχον, ὡς καὶ νῦν αὐτὸ ᾕρηχ’ ὁ λόγος ἔχειν, εἴπερ τι καὶ ἄλλο ἐτόλμησεν ἂν ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς νέους, ἔστιν ὅ, τι τούτον ψεῦδος λυσιτελέστερον ἂν ἐψεύσατό ποτε, καὶ δυνάμενον μᾶλλον ποιεῖν μὴ βίᾳ ἀλλ’ ἑκόντας πάντα τὰ δίκαια;

“Truth is honourable (observes the Kretan) and durable. You will not find it easy to make them believe what you propose.”

“Why, it was found easy (replies the Athenian) to make men believe the mythe respecting Kadmus and the armed men who sprang out of the earth after the sowing of the dragon’s teeth — and many other mythes equally incredible. Such examples show conclusively that the lawgiver can implant in youthful minds any beliefs which he tries to implant. He need therefore look to nothing, except to determine what are those beliefs which, if implanted, would be most beneficial to the city. Having determined this, he will employ all his machinery to make all his citizens proclaim these beliefs constantly, with one voice, and without contradiction, in all hymns, stories, and discourses.”72

72  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 664 A.

“This brings me to my own proposition. My three Choruses (youthful, mature, elderly) will be required to sing perpetually to the tender minds of children all the honourable and good doctrines which I shall prescribe in detail. But the sum and substance of them will be — The best life has been declared by the Gods to be also the most pleasurable, and it is the most pleasurable.73 The whole city — man, boy, freeman, slave, male, female — will be always singing this doctrine to itself in choric songs, diversified by the poets in such manner as to keep up the interest and satisfaction of the singers.”74

73  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 664 B.

74  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 665 C.

It will be understood that here, as elsewhere, I give the substance of Plato’s reasoning without binding myself to the translation of the particular words.

Chorus of Elders are required to set an example in keeping up the purity of the music prescribed.

Here, then, we have the general doctrine, ethical and social, which is to be maintained in exclusive possession of the voice, ear, and mind, of the Platonic citizens. The imitative movements of the tripartite Chorus must be kept in perfect accordance with it:75 for all music is imitative, and care must be taken to imitate the right things in a right manner. To ensure such accordance, magistrates must be specially chosen as censors over both poets and singers. But this, in Plato’s view, is not enough. He requires, besides, that the choristers should themselves understand both what they ought to imitate, and how it should be imitated. Such understanding cannot be expected from the Chorus of youths nor even from that of mature men. But it may be expected, and it must be required, in the chorus of Elders: which will thus set an example to the other two, of strict adherence to the rectitude of the musical standard.76 The purity of the Platonic musical training depends mainly upon the constant and efficacious choric activity of the old citizens.

75  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 668 A. Οὐκοῦν μουσικήν γε πᾶσάν φαμεν εἰκαστικήν τε εἶναι καὶ μιμητικήν;

76  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 670 B-D; vi. p. 764 C; vii. p. 812 B.

Aristotle directs that the elders shall be relieved from active participation in choric duties, and confined to the function of judging or criticising (Politic. viii. 6, 1340, b. 38).

But how is such activity to be obtained? Old men will not only find it repugnant to their natural dispositions, but will even be ashamed to exhibit themselves in choric music and dance before the younger citizens.

The Elders require the stimulus of wine, in order to go through the choric duties with spirit.

It is here that Plato invokes the aid of wine-drinking and intoxication. The stimulus of wine, drunk by the old men at the Dionysiac banquets, will revive in them a temporary fit of something like juvenile activity, and will supply an antidote to inconvenient diffidence.77 Under such partial excitement, they will stand forward freely to discharge their parts in the choric exhibitions; which, as performed by them, will be always in full conformity with the canon of musical rectitude, and will prevent it from becoming corrupted or relaxed by the younger choristers. To ensure however that the excitement shall not overpass due limits, Plato prescribes that the president of the banquet shall be a grave person drinking no wine at all. The commendation or reproof of such a president will sustain the reason and self-command of the guests, at the pitch compatible with full execution of their choric duty.78 Plato interdicts wine altogether to youths, until 18 years of age — allows it only in small quantities until the age of 40 — but permits and even encourages elders above 40 to partake of the full inspiration of the Dionysiac banquets.79

77  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 666 B-C. ἐπίκουρον τῆς τοῦ γήρως αὐστηρότητος ἐδωρήσατο (Διόνυσος) τὸν οἶνον, φάρμακον, ὥστε ἀνηβᾷν ἡμᾶς … πρῶτον μὲν δὴ διατεθεὶς οὕτως ἕκαστος ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν ἔθελοι προθυμότερόν γε, ἧττον αἰσχυνόμενος … ᾄδειν.

78  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 671.

79  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 666 A.

Peculiar views of Plato about intoxication.

This manner of regarding intoxication must probably have occurred to Plato at a time later than the composition of the Republic, wherein we find it differently handled.80 It deserves attention as an illustration, both of his boldness in following out his own ethical views, in spite of the consciousness81 that they would appear strange to others — and of the prominent function which he assigns to old men in this dialogue De Legibus. He condemns intoxication decidedly, when considered simply as a mode of enjoyment, and left to the taste of the company without any president or regulation. But with most moralists such condemnation is an unreflecting and undistinguishing sentiment. Against this Plato enters his protest. He considers that intoxication, if properly regulated, may be made conducive to valuable ends, ethical and social. Without it the old men cannot be wound up to the pitch of choric activity; without such activity, constant and unfaltering, the rectitude of the choric system has no adequate security against corruption: without such security, the emotional training of the citizens generally will degenerate. Farthermore, Plato takes occasion from drunkenness to lay down a general doctrine respecting pleasures. Men must be trained to self-command against pleasures, as they are against pains, not by keeping out of the way of temptation, but by regulated exposure to temptations, with motives at hand to help them in the task of resistance. Both these views are original and suggestive, like so many others in the Platonic writings: tending to rescue Ethics from that tissue of rhetorical and emotional commonplace in which it so frequently appears; — and to keep present before those who handle it, those ideas of an end to be attained, and of discrimination as to means — which are essential to its pretensions as a science.

80  In the Republic (iii. p. 398 E) Plato pronounced intoxication (μέθη) to be most unbecoming for his Guardians. He places it in the same class of defects as indolence and effeminacy. He also repudiates those varieties of musical harmony called Ionic and Lydian, because they were languid, effeminate, symposiac, or suitable for a drinking society (μαλακαί τε καὶ συμποτικαί, χαλαραί). Various musical critics of the day (τῶν περὶ τὴν μουσικήν τινες — we learn this curious fact from Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, near the end) impugned this opinion of Plato. They affirmed that drunkenness was exciting and stimulating, — not relaxing nor favourable to languor and heaviness: that the effeminate musical modes were not congenial to drunkenness. When we read the Treatise De Legibus, we observe that Plato altered his opinion respecting μέθη, and had come round to agree with these musical critics. He treats μέθη as exciting and stimulating, not relaxing and indolent; he even applies it as a positive stimulus to wind up the Elders. Moreover, instead of repudiating it absolutely, he defends its usefulness under proper regulations. Perhaps the change of his opinion may have been partly owing to these very criticisms.

81  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 665 B. Old Philokleon, in the Vespæ of Aristophanes (1320 seq.), under the influence of wine and jovial excitement, is a pregnant subject for comic humour.

General ethical doctrine held by Plato in Leges.

But the general ethical discussion — which Plato tells us82 that he introduces to establish premisses for his enactment respecting drunkenness — is of greater importance than the enactment itself. He prescribes imperatively the doctrine and matter which alone is to be tolerated in his choric hymns or heard in his city. I have given an abstract (p. 292-297) of the doctrine here laid down and the reasonings connected therewith, because they admit of being placed in instructive comparison with his manner of treating the same subject in other dialogues.

82  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 664 D.

Pleasure — Good — Happiness — What is the relation between them?

What is the relation between Pleasure, Good, and Happiness? Pain, Evil, Unhappiness? Do the names in the first triplet mean substantially the same thing, only looked at in different aspects and under different conditions? Or do they mean three distinct things, separable and occurring the one without the other? This important question was much debated, and answered in many different ways, by Grecian philosophers from the time of Sokrates downward — and by Roman philosophers after them. Plato handles it not merely in the dialogue now before us, but in several others — differently too in each: in Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Philêbus, &c.83

83  See above, vol. ii. ch. xxiv. pp. 353.

Comparison of the doctrine laid down in Leges.

Here, in the Dialogue De Legibus (by incidental allusion, too, in some of the Epistles), we have the latest form in which these doctrines about Pleasure, Happiness, Good — and their respective contraries — found expression in Plato’s compositions. Much of the doctrines is the same — yet with some material variation. It is here reasserted, by the Athenian, that the just and temperate man is happy, and that the unjust man is miserable, whatever may befall him: moreover that good things (such as health, strength, sight, hearing, &c.) are good only to the just man, evil to the unjust — while the contrary (such as sickness, weakness, blindness) are good things to the unjust, evil only to the just. To this position both the Spartan and the Kretan distinctly refuse their assent: and Plato himself admits that mankind in general would agree with them in such refusal.84 He vindicates his own opinion by a new argument which had not before appeared. “The just man himself” (he urges), “one who has been fully trained in just dispositions, will feel it to be as I say: the unjust man will feel the contrary. But the just man is much more trustworthy than the unjust: therefore we must believe what he says to be the truth.”85 Appeal is here made, not to the Wise Man or Artist, but to the just man: whose sentence is invested with a self-justifying authority, wherein Plato looks for his aliquid inconcussum. Now it is for philosophy, or for the true Artist, that this pre-eminence is claimed in the Republic,86 where Sokrates declares, that each of the three souls combined in the individual man (the rational or philosophical, in the head — the passionate or ambitious, between the neck and the diaphragm — and the appetitive, below the diaphragm) has its special pleasures; that each prefers its own; but that the judgment of the philosophical man must be regarded as paramount over the other two.87 Comparing this demonstration in the Republic with the unsupported inference here noted in the Leges — we perceive the contrast of the oracular and ethical character of the latter, with the intellectual and dialectic character of the former.

84  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 C.

85  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 C.

86  Plato, Repub. ix. pp. 580 E-583 A.

87  Plato, Repub. ix. p. 583 A. Ἀνάγκη ἃ ὁ φιλόσοφός τε καὶ ὁ φιλολόγος ἐπαινεῖ, ἀληθέστατα εἶναι … κύριος γοῦν ἐπαινέτης ὢν ἐπαινεῖ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον ὁ φρόνιμος.

Again, here in the Leges, the Athenian puts it to his two companions, Whether the unjust man, assuming him to possess every imaginable endowment and advantage in life, will not live, nevertheless, both dishonourably and miserably? They admit that he will live dishonourably: they deny that he will live miserably.88 The Athenian replies by reasserting emphatically his own opinion, without any attempt to prove it. Now in the Gorgias, the same issue is raised between Sokrates and Polus: Sokrates refutes his opponent by a dialectic argument, showing that if the first of the two doctrines (the living dishonourably — αἰσχρῶς) be granted, the second (the living miserably — κακῶς) cannot be consistently denied.89 The dialectic of Sokrates is indeed more ingenious than conclusive: but still it is dialectic — and thus stands contrasted with the oracular emphasis which is substituted for it in Leges.

88  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 A.

89  Plato, Gorgias, pp. 474 C, 478 E.

Doctrine in Leges about Pleasure and Good — approximates more nearly to the Protagoras than to Gorgias and Philêbus.

Farthermore, the distinction between Pleasure and Good, in the language of the Athenian speaker in the Leges, approximates more nearly to the doctrine of Sokrates in the Protagoras, than to his doctrine in the Gorgias, Philêbus, and Republic. The Athenian proclaims that he is dealing with men, and not with Gods, and that he must therefore recognise the nature of man, with its fundamental characteristics: that no man will willingly do anything from which he does not anticipate more pleasure than pain: that every man desires the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain, and desires nothing else: that there neither is nor can be any Good, apart from Pleasure or superior to Pleasure: that to insist upon a man being just, if you believe that he will obtain more pleasure or less pain from an unjust mode of life, is absurd and inconsistent: that the doctrine which declares the life of pleasure and the life of justice to lead in two distinct paths, is a heresy deserving not only censure but punishment.90 Plato here enunciates, as distinctly as Epikurus did after him, that Pleasures and Pains must be regulated (here regulated by the lawgiver), so that each man may attain the maximum of the former with the minimum of the latter: and that Good, apart from maximum of pleasure or minimum of pain accruing to the agent himself,91 cannot be made consistent with the nature or aspirations of man.

90  Plato, Legg. ii. pp. 662 C-D-E, 663 B.

In v. pp. 732 E to 734, the Athenian speaker delivers τὰ ἀνθρώπινα of the general preface or proëm to his Laws, after having previously delivered τὰ θεῖα (v. pp. 727-732).

Τὰ θεῖα. These are precepts respecting piety to the Gods, and behaviour to parents, strangers, suppliants; and respecting the duty of rendering due honour, first to the mind, next to the body — of maintaining both the one and the other in a sound and honourable condition. Repeated exhortation is given to obey the enactments whereby the lawgiver regulates pleasures and pains: the precepts are also enforced by insisting on the suffering which will accrue to the agent if they be neglected. We also read (what is said also in Gorgias) that the δίκη κακουργίας μεγίστη is τὸ ὁμοιοῦσθαι κακοῖς ἀνδράσιν (p. 728 B).

Τὰ ἀνθρώπινα, which follow τὰ θεῖα, indicate the essential conditions of human character which limit and determine the application of such precepts to man. To love pleasure — to hate pain — are the paramount and indefeasible attributes of man; but they admit of being regulated, and they ought to be regulated by wisdom — the μετρητικὴ τέχνη — insisted on by Sokrates in the Protagoras (p. 356 E). Compare Legg. i. p. 636 E, ii. p. 653 A.

91  It is among the tests of a well-disciplined army (according to Xenophon, Cyropæd. i. 6, 26) ὁπότε τὸ πείθεσθαι αὐτοῖς ἥδιον εἴη τοῦ ἀπειθεῖν.

Comparison of Leges with Republic and Gorgias.

There is another point too in which the Athenian speaker here recedes from the lofty pretensions of Sokrates in the Republic and the Gorgias. In the second Book of the Republic, we saw Glaukon and Adeimantus challenge Sokrates to prove that justice, apart from all its natural consequences, will suffice per se to make the just man happy;92 per se, that is, even though all the society misconceive his character, and render no justice to him, but heap upon him nothing except obloquy and persecution. If (Glaukon urges) you can only recommend justice when taken in conjunction with the requiting esteem and reciprocating justice from others towards the just agent, this is no recommendation of justice at all. Your argument implies a tacit admission, that it will be better still if he can pass himself off as just in the opinion of others, without really being just himself: and you must be understood as recommending to him this latter course — if he can do it successfully. Sokrates accepts the challenge, and professes to demonstrate the thesis tendered to him: which is in substance the cardinal dogma afterwards espoused by the Stoics. I have endeavoured to show (in a former chapter93), that his demonstration is altogether unsuccessful: and when we turn to the Treatise De Legibus, we shall see that the Athenian speaker recedes from the doctrine altogether: confining himself to the defence of justice with its requiting and reciprocating consequences, not without them. The just man, as the Athenian speaker conceives him, is one who performs his obligations towards others, and towards whom others perform their obligations also: he is one who obtains from others that just dealing and that esteem which is his due: and when so conceived, his existence is one of pleasure and happiness.94 This is, in substance, the Epikurean doctrine substituted for the Stoic. It is that which Glaukon and Adeimantus in the Republic deprecate as unworthy disparagement of justice; and which they adjure Sokrates, by his attachment to justice, to stand up and repel.95 Now even this, the Epikurean doctrine, is true only with certain qualifications: since there are various other conditions essential to happiness, over and above the ethical conditions. Still it is not so utterly at variance with the truth as the doctrine which Sokrates undertakes to prove, but never does prove, in the Republic.

92  Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 359-367.

93  See above, chap. xxxvi. p. 100, seq.

94  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 A.

95  Plato, Republ. ii. p. 368 B. δέδοικα γὰρ μὴ οὐδ’ ὅσιον ᾖ παραγενόμενον δικαιοσύνῃ κακηγορουμένῃ μὴ βοηθεῖν.

Plato here mistrusts the goodness of his own proof. He falls back upon useful fiction.

The last point which I shall here remark in this portion of the Treatise De Legibus is, the sort of mistrust manifested by Plato of the completeness of his own proof. Notwithstanding the vehement phrases in which the Athenian speaker proclaims his internal persuasion of the truth of his doctrine, while acknowledging at the same time that not only his two companions, but most other persons also, took the opposite view96 — he finds it convenient to reinforce the demonstration of the expositor by the omnipotent infallibility of the lawgiver. He descends from the region of established truth to that of useful fiction. “Even if the doctrine (that the pleasurable, the just, the good, and the honourable, are indissoluble) were not true, the lawgiver ought to adopt it as an useful fiction for youth, effective towards inducing them to behave justly without compulsion. The law giver can obtain belief for any fiction which he pleases to circulate, as may be seen by the implicit belief obtained for the Theban mythe about the dragon’s teeth, and a thousand other mythes equally difficult of credence. He must proclaim the doctrine as an imperative article of faith; carefully providing that it shall be perpetually recited, by one and all his citizens, in the public hymns, narratives, and discourses, without any voice being heard to call it in question.”97

96  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 B.

97  Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 D. ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς νέους, &c. Also 664 A. So, in the Bacchæ of Euripides (332), the two old men, Kadmus and Teiresias, after vainly attempting to inculcate upon Pentheus the belief in and the worship of Dionysus, at last appeal to his prudence, and admonish him of the danger of unbelief:—

κεὶ μὴ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς οὗτος, ὡς σὺ φής,

παρὰ σοὶ λεγέσθω, καὶ καταψεύδου καλῶς

ὡς ἔστι, Σεμέλη θ’ ἵνα δοκῇ θεὸν τεκεῖν,

ἡμῖν τε τιμὴ Ἀκταίωνος ἄθλιον μόρον;

… ὃ μὴ παθῇς σύ.

Deliberate ethical fiction employed as means of governing.

Here is a second attempt on the part of Plato, in addition to that which we have seen in the Republic,98 to employ deliberate ethical fiction as a means of governing his citizens: first to implant and accredit it — next to prescribe its incessant iteration by all the citizens in the choric ceremonies — lastly to consecrate it, and to forbid all questioners or opponents: all application of the Sokratic Elenchus to test it. In this treatise he speaks of the task as easier to the lawgiver than he had described it to be in his Republic: in which latter we found him regarding a new article of faith as difficult to implant, but as easy to uphold if once it be implanted; while in the Treatise De Legibus both processes are treated as alike achievable and certain. The conception of dogmatic omnipotence had become stronger in Plato’s mind during the interval between the two treatises. Intending to postulate for himself the complete regulation not merely of the actions, but also of the thoughts and feelings of his citizens — intending moreover to exclude free or insubordinate intellects — he naturally looks upon all as docile recipients of any faith which he thinks it right to preach. When he appeals, however, as proofs of the facility of his plan, to the analogy of the numerous mythes received with implicit faith throughout the world around him — we see how low an estimate he formed of the process whereby beliefs are generated in the human mind, and of their evidentiary value as certifying the truth of what is believed. People believed what was told them at first by some imposing authority, and transmitted the belief to their successors, even without the extraneous support of inquisitorial restrictions such as the Platonic lawgiver throws round the Magnêtic community in the Leges. It is in reference to such self-supporting beliefs that Sokrates stands forth, in the earlier Platonic compositions, as an enquirer into the reasons on which they rested — a task useful as well as unpleasant to those whom he questioned — attracting unpopularity as well as reputation to himself. Plato had then keenly felt the inestimable value of this Elenchus or examining function personified in his master; but in the Treatise De Legibus the master has no place, and the function is severely proscribed. Plato has come round to the dogmatic pole, extolling the virtue of passive recipient minds who have no other sentiment than that which the lawgiver issues to them. Yet while he postulates in his own city the infallible authority of the lawgiver, and enforces it by penalties, as final and all-sufficient to determine the ethical beliefs of all the Platonic citizens — we shall find in a subsequent book of this Treatise that he denounces and punishes those who generalise this very postulate; and who declare the various ethical beliefs, actually existing in communities of men, to have been planted each by some human authority — not to have sprung from any unseen oracle called Nature.99

98  Plato, Republic, iii. p. 414; v. p. 459 D.

99  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 889-890.

Importance of music and chorus as an engine of teaching for Plato. Views of Xenophon and Aristotle compared.

Such is the ethical doctrine which Plato proclaims in the Leges, and which he directs to be sung by each Chorus among the three (boys, men, elders), with appropriate music and dancing. It is on the constancy, strictness, and sameness of these choric and musical influences, that he relies for the emotional training of youth. If the musical training be either intermitted or allowed to vary from the orthodox canon — if the theatrical exhibitions be regulated by the taste of the general audience, and not by the judgment of a few discerning censors — the worst consequences will arise: the character of the citizens will degenerate, and the institutions of his city will have no foundation to rest upon.100 The important effects of music, as an instrument in the hands of the lawgiver for regulating the emotions of the citizens, and especially for inspiring a given emotional character to youth — are among the characteristic features of Plato’s point of view, common to both the Republic and the Laws. There is little trace of this point of view either in Xenophon or in Isokrates; but Aristotle embraces it to a considerable extent. It grew out of the practice and tradition of the Grecian cities, in most of which the literary teaching of youth was imparted by making them read, learn, recite, or chaunt the works of various poets; while the use of the lyre was also taught, together with regulated movements in the dance. The powerful ethical effect of musical teaching (even when confined to the simplest choric psalmody and dance), enforced by perpetual drill both of boys and men, upon the unlettered Arcadians — may be seen recognised even by a practical politician like Polybius,101 who considers it indispensable for the softening of violent and sanguinary tempers: the diversity of the effect, according to the different modes of music employed, is noted by Aristotle,102 and was indeed matter of common repute. Plato, as lawgiver, postulates poetry and music of his own dictation. He relies upon constant supplies of this wholesome nutriment, for generating in the youth such emotional dispositions and habits as will be in harmony, both with the doctrines which he preaches, and with the laws which he intends to impose upon them as adults. Here (as in Republic and Timæus) he proclaims that the perfection of character consists in willing obedience or harmonious adjustment of the pleasures and pains, the desires and aversions, to the paramount authority of reason or wisdom — or to the rational conviction of each individual as to what is good and honourable. If, instead of obedience and harmony, there be discord — if the individual, though rationally convinced that a proceeding is just and honourable, nevertheless hates it — or if, while convinced that a proceeding is unjust and dishonourable, he nevertheless loves it — such discord is the worst state of stupidity or mental incompetence.103 We must recollect that (according to the postulate of Treatise De Legibus) the rational convictions of each individual, respecting what is just and honourable, are assumed to be accepted implicitly from the lawgiver, and never called in question by any one. There exists therefore only one individual reason in the community — that of the lawgiver, or Plato himself.

100  Plato, Republ. iv. p. 424 C-D; Legg. iii. pp. 700-701.

101  Polybius, iv. pp. 20-21, about the rude Arcadians of Kynætha. He ascribes to this simple choric practice the same effect which Ovid ascribes to “ingenuæ artes,” or elegant literature generally:—

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

See the remarkable contention between Æschylus and Euripides in Aristophan. Ran. 876 seq., about the function and comparative excellence of poets (also Nubes, 955). Aristophanes, comparing Æschylus with Euripides, denounces music as having degenerated, and poetry as having been corrupted, at Athens. So far he agrees with Plato; but he ascribes this corruption in a great degree to the conversation of Euripides with Sokrates (Ranæ, 1487); and here Plato would not have gone along with him — at least not when Plato composed his earlier dialogues — though the ἦθος of the Treatise De Legibus is in harmony with this sentiment. Polybius cites, with some displeasure, the remark of the historian Ephorus, who asserted that musical teaching was introduced among men for purposes of cheating and mystification — ἐπ’ ἀπάτῃ καὶ γοητείᾳ παρεισκῆχθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οὐδαμῶς ἁρμόζοντα λόγον αὐτῷ ῥίψας (iv. 20). Polybius considers this an unbecoming criticism.

102  Aristotle, Polit. viii. c. 4-5-7, p. 1340, a. 10, 1341, a. 15, 1342, a. 30. We see by these chapters how much the subject was discussed in his day.

The ethical and emotional effects conveyed by the sense of hearing, and distinguishing it from the other senses, are noticed in the Problemata of Aristotle, xix. 27-29, pp. 919-920.

103  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 689 A. ἡ μεγίστη ἀμαθία … ὅταν τῷ τι δόξῃ καλὸν ἢ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, μὴ φιλῇ τοῦτο ἀλλὰ μισῇ, τὸ δὲ πονηρὸν καὶ ἄδικον δοκοῦν εἶναι φιλῇ τε καὶ ἀσπάζηται· ταύτην τὴν διαφωνίαν λύπης τε καὶ ἡδονῆς πρὸς τὴν κατὰ λόγον δόξαν, ἁμαθίαν φημὶ εἶναι τὴν ἐσχάτην. Compare p. 688 A.

Historical retrospect as to the growth of cities — Frequent destruction of established communities, with only a small remnant left.

Besides all the ethical prefatory matter, above noticed, Plato gives us also some historical and social prefatory matter, not essential to his constructive scheme (which after all takes its start partly from theoretical principles laid down by himself, partly from a supposed opportunity of applying those principles in the foundation of a new colony), but tending to illustrate the growth of political society, and the abuses into which it naturally tends to lapse. There existed in his time a great variety of distinct communities: some in the simplest, most patriarchal, Cyclopian condition, nothing more than families — some highly advanced in civilization, with its accompanying good and evil — some in each intermediate stage between these two extremes. — The human race (Plato supposes) has perhaps had no beginning, and will have no end. At any rate it has existed from an indefinite antiquity, subject to periodical crises, destructive kosmical outbursts, deluges, epidemic distempers, &c.104 A deluge, when it occurs, sweeps away all the existing communities with their property, arts, instruments, &c., leaving only a small remnant, who, finding shelter on the top of some high mountain not covered with water, preserve only their lives. Society, he thinks, has gone through a countless number of these cycles.105 At the end of each, when the deluge recedes, each associated remnant has to begin its development anew, from the rudest and poorest condition. Each little family or sept exists at first separately, with a patriarch whom all implicitly obey, and peculiar customs of its own. Several of these septs gradually coalesce together into one community, choosing one or a few lawgivers to adjust and modify their respective customs into harmonious order, and submitting implicitly to the authority of such chosen few.106 By successive coalitions of this kind, operated in a vast length of time,107 large cities are gradually formed on the plain and on the seaboard. Property and public force is again accumulated; together with letters, arts, and all the muniments of life.

104  Plato, Legg. iii. pp. 677-678, vi. p. 782 A.

105  Plato, Legg. p. 680 A. τοῖς ἐν τούτῳ τῷ μέρει τῆς περιόδου γεγονόσιν, &c.

106  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 681 C-D.

107  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 683 A. ἐν χρόνου τινὸς μήκεσιν ἀπλέτοις.

Historical or legendary retrospect — The Trojan war — The return of the Herakleids.

Such is the idea which Plato here puts forth of the natural genesis and development of human society. Having thus arrived at the formation of considerable cities with powerful military armaments, he carries us into the midst of Hellenic legend — the Trojan War, the hostile reception which the victorious heroes found on their return to Greece after the siege, the Return of the Herakleids to Peloponnesus, and the establishment of the three Herakleid brethren, Têmenus, Kresphontês, Aristodêmus, as kings of Argos, Messênê, and Sparta. The triple Herakleid kingdom was originally founded (he affirms) as a mode of uniting and consolidating the force of Hellas against the Asiatics, who were eager to avenge the capture of Troy. It received strong promises of permanence, both from prophets and from the Delphian oracle.108 But these hopes were frustrated by misconduct on the part of the kings of Argos and Messênê: who, being youths destitute of presiding reason, and without external checks, obeyed the impulse of unmeasured ambition, oppressed their subjects, and broke down their own power.

108  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 685-686.

Difficulties of government — Conflicts about command — Seven distinct titles to command exist among mankind, all equally natural, and liable to conflict.

To conduct a political community well is difficult; for there are inherent causes of discord and sedition which can only be neutralised in their effects, but can never be eradicated. Among the foremost of these inherent causes, Plato numbers the many distinct and conflicting titles to obedience which are found among mankind, all co-existent and co-ordinate. There are seven such titles, all founded in the nature of man and the essential conditions of society:109 — 1. Parents over children. 2. Men of high birth and breed (such as the Herakleids at Sparta) over men of low birth. 3. Old over young. 4. Masters over slaves. 5. The stronger man over the weaker. 6. The wiser man over the man destitute of wisdom. 7. The fortunate man, who enjoys the favour of the Gods (one case of this is indicated by drawing of the best lot), over the less fortunate man (who draws an inferior lot).

109  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 690 A-D. ἀξιώματα τοῦ τε ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι, &c. … Ὅσα ἐστὶ πρὸς ἄρχοντας ἀξιώματα καὶ ὅτι πεφυκότα πρὸς ἀλληλα ἐναντίως.

Of these seven titles to command, coexisting, distinct, and conflicting with each other, Plato pronounces the sixth — that of superior reason and wisdom — to be the greatest, preferable to all the rest, in his judgment: though he admits the fifth — that of superior force to be the most extensively prevalent in the actual world.110

110  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 690 C.

This enumeration by Plato of seven distinct and conflicting ἀξιώματα τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι, deserves notice in many ways. All the seven are natural: nature is considered as including multifarious and conflicting titles (compare Xenophon, Memorab. ii. 6, 21), and therefore as not furnishing in itself any justification or ground of preference for one above the rest. The ἀξίωμα of superior force is just as natural as the ἀξίωμα of superior wisdom, though Plato himself pronounces the latter to be the greatest; that is — greatest, not φύσει but νόμῳ or τέχνῃ, according to his own rational and deliberate estimation. Plato is not uniform in this view, for he uses elsewhere the phrases φύσει and κατὰ φύσιν as if they specially and exclusively belonged to that which he approves, and furnished a justification for it (see Legg. x. pp. 889-890, besides the Republic and the Gorgias). Again the lot, or the process of sortition, is here described as carrying with it both the preference of the Gods and the principles of justice (τὸ δικαιότατον εἶναί φαμεν). The Gods determine upon whom the lot should fall — compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 179. This is a remarkable view of the lot, and represents a feeling much diffused among the ancient democracies.

The relation of master and slave counts, in Plato’s view, among the natural relations, with its consequent rights and obligations.

The force of εὐτυχία, as a title to command, is illustrated in the speech addressed by Alkibiades to the Athenian assembly. Thucyd. vi. 16-17: he allows it even in his competitor Nikias — ἀλλ’ ἕως τε ἔτι ἀκμάζω μετ’ αὐτῆς καὶ ὁ Νικίας εὐτυχὴς δοκεῖ εἶναι, ἀποχρήσασθε τῇ ἑκατέρου ἡμῶν ὠφελία. Compare also the language of Nikias himself in his own last speech under the extreme distress of the Athenian army in Sicily, Thucyd. vii. 77.

In the Politikus (p. 293 and elsewhere) Plato admits no ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἄρχειν as genuine or justifiable, except Science, Art, superior wisdom, in one or a few Artists of governing; the same in Republic, v. p. 474 C, respecting what he there calls φιλοσοφία.

Imprudence of founding government upon any one of these titles separately — Governments of Argos and Messênê ruined by the single principle — Sparta avoided it.

Plato thinks it imprudent to found the government of society upon any one of these seven titles singly and separately. He requires that each one of them shall be checked and modified by the conjoint operation of others. Messênê and Argos were depraved and ruined by the single principle: while Sparta was preserved and exalted by a mixture of different elements. The kings of Argos and Messênê, irrational youths with nothing to restrain them (except oaths, which they despised), employed their power to abuse and mischief. Such was the consequence of trusting to the exclusive title of high breed, embodied in one individual person. But Apollo and Lykurgus provided better for Sparta. They softened regal insolence by establishing the double line of co-ordinate kings: they introduced the title of old age, along with that of high breed, by founding the Senate of twenty-eight elders: they farther introduced the title of sortition, or something near it, by nominating the annual Ephors. The mixed government of Sparta was thus made to work for good, while the unmixed systems of Argos and Messênê both went wrong.111 Both the two latter states were in perpetual war with Sparta, so as to frustrate that purpose — union against Asiatics — with a view to which the triple Herakleid kingdom was originally erected in Peloponnesus. Had each of these three kingdoms been temperately and moderately governed, like Sparta, so as to maintain unimpaired the projected triple union — the Persian invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes would never have taken place.112

111  Plato, Legg. iii. pp. 691-692.

112  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 692 C-D.

Plato casts Hellenic legend into accordance with his own political theories.

Such is the way in which Plato casts the legendary event, called the Return of the Herakleids, into accordance with a political theory of his own. That event, in his view, afforded the means of uniting Hellas internally, and of presenting such a defensive combination as would have deterred all invasions from Asia, if only the proper principles of legislation and government had been understood and applied. The lesson to be derived from this failure is, that we ought not to concentrate great authority in one hand; and that we ought to blend together several principles of authority, instead of resorting to the exclusive action of one alone.113 This lesson deserves attention, as a portion of political theory; but I feel convinced that neither Herodotus nor Thucydides would have concurred in Plato’s historical views. Neither of them would have admitted the disunion between Sparta, Argos, and Messênê as a main cause of the Persian invasion of Greece.

113  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 693 A. ὡς ἄρα οὐ δεῖ μεγάλας ἀρχὰς οὐδ’ αὖ ἀμίκτους νομοθετεῖν. Compare pp. 685-686.

Plato here affirms not only that Messênê and Argos were and had been constantly at war with Sparta, but that they were so at the time of the Persian invasion of Greece — and that Messênê thus hindered the Spartans from assisting the Athenians at Marathon, pp. 692 E, 698 E. His statement that Argos was at least neutral, if not treacherous and philo-Persian, during the invasion of Xerxes, is coincident with Herodotus; but not so his statement that the Lacedæmonians were kept back by the war against Messênê. Indeed at that time the Messenians had no separate domicile or independent station in Peloponnesus. They had been conquered by Sparta long before, and their descendants in the same territory were Helots (Thucyd. i. 101). It is true that there always existed struggling remnants of expatriated Messenians, who maintained the name, and whom Athens protected and favoured during the Peloponnesian war; but there was no independent Messenian government in Peloponnesus until the foundation of the city of Messênê by Epaminondas in 369 B.C., two years after the battle of Leuktra: there had never been any city of that name in the Peloponnesus before.

Now Plato wrote his Treatise De Legibus after the foundation of this city of Messênê and the re-establishment of an independent Messenian community in Peloponnesus. The new city was peopled partly by returning Messenian exiles, partly by enfranchised Helots. It is probable enough that both these classes might be disposed to disguise (as far as they could) the past period of servitude — and to represent the Messenian name and community as never having been wholly effaced in the neighbourhood of Ithômê, though always struggling against an oppressive neighbour. Traditions of this tenor would become current, and Plato has adopted one of them in his historical sketch.

If we look back to what Plato says about the Kretan prophet Epimenides, we shall see that here too he must have followed erroneous traditions. He makes Epimenides contemporary with the invasion of Greece by Darius, instead of contemporary with the Kylonian sacrilege (B.C. 612). When a prophet had got reputation, a great many new prophecies were fathered upon him (as upon Bakis and Musæus) with very little care about chronological consistency. Plato may well have been misled by one of these fictions (Legg. i. p. 642, iii. p. 677).

Persia and Athens compared — Excess of despotism. Excess of liberty.

A lesson — analogous, though not exactly the same — is derived by Plato from the comparison of the Persian with the Athenian government. Persia presents an excess of despotism: Athens an excess of liberty. There are two distinct primordial forms of government — mother-polities, Plato calls them — out of which all existing governments may be said to have been generated or diversified. One of these is monarchy, of which the Persians manifest the extreme: the other is democracy, of which Athens manifests the extreme. Both extremes are mischievous. The wise law-giver must blend and combine the two together in proper proportion. Without such combination, he cannot attain good government, with its three indispensable constituents — freedom, intelligence or temperance, and mutual attachment among the citizens.114

114  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 693 B-C. Aristotle (Politic. ii. 6, pp. 1265-1266) alludes to this portion of Plato’s doctrine, and approves what is said about the combination of diverse political elements; but he does not approve the doctrine which declares the two “mother-forms” of government to be extreme despotism or extreme democracy. He says that these two are either no governments at all, or the very worst of governments. Plato gives the same opinion about them, yet he thinks it convenient to make them the starting-points of his theory. The objection made by Aristotle appears to be dictated by a sentiment which often influences his theories — Τὸ τέλειον πρότερόν ἐστι τῇ φύσει τοῦ ἀτελοῦς. The perfect is prior in order of nature to the imperfect. He does not choose to take his theoretical point of departure from the worst or most imperfect.

Cyrus and Darius — Bad training of sons of kings.

The Persians, according to Plato, at the time when they made their conquests under Cyrus, were not despotically governed, but enjoyed a fair measure of freedom under a brave and patriotic military chief, who kept the people together in mutual attachment. But Cyrus, though a great military chief, had neither received a good training himself, nor knew how to secure it for his own sons.115 He left them to be educated by the women in the harem, where they were brought up with unmeasured indulgence, acquiring nothing but habits of insolence and caprice. Kambyses became a despot; and after committing great enormities, was ultimately deprived of empire by Smerdis and the Medians. Darius, not a born prince, but an usurper, renovated the Persian empire, and ruled it with as much ability and moderation as Cyrus. But he made the same mistake as Cyrus, in educating his sons in the harem. His son Xerxes became thoroughly corrupted, and ruled despotically. The same has been the case with all the successive kings, all brought up as destined for the sceptre, and morally ruined by a wretched education. The Persian government has been nothing but a despotism ever since Darius.116 All freedom of action or speech has been extinguished, and the mutual attachment among the subjects exists no more.117

115  Plato, Legg. p. 694 C. Μαντεύομαι περί γε Κύρου τὰ μὲν ἄλλ’ αὐτὸν στρατηγόν τε ἀγαθὸν εἶναι καὶ φιλόπολιν, παιδείας δὲ ὀρθῆς οὐχ ἧφθαι τὸ παράπαν.

I think it very probable that these words are intended to record Plato’s dissent from the Κύρου Παιδεία of Xenophon. Aulus Gellius (xiv. 3) had read that Xenophon composed the Cyropædia in opposition to the two first books of the Platonic Republic, and that between Xenophon and Plato there existed a grudge (simultas) or rivalry; so also Athenæus, xi. p. 504. It is possible that this may have been the case but no evidence is produced to prove it. Both of them selected Sokrates as the subject of their descriptions; in so far there may have been a literary competition between them: and various critics seem to have presumed that there could not be æmulatio without simultas. Each of them composed a Symposion for the purpose of exhibiting Sokrates in his joyous moments. The differences between the two handlings are interesting to notice; but the evidences which some authors produce, to show that Xenophon in his Symposion alluded to the Symposion of Plato, are altogether uncertain. See the Preface of Schneider to his edition of the Xenophontic Symposion, and his extract from Cornarius.

116  Plato, Legg. iii. pp. 694-695.

117  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 697 D.

Changes for the worse in government of Athens, after the Persian invasion of Greece.

While the Persian government thus exhibits despotism in excess, that of Athens exhibits the contrary mischief — liberty in excess. This has been the growth of the time subsequent to the Persian invasion. At the time when that invasion occurred, the government of Athens was an ancient constitution with a quadruple scale of property, according to which scale political privilege and title to office were graduated: while the citizens generally were then far more reverential to authority, and obedient to the laws, than they are now. Moreover, the invasion itself, being dangerous and terrific in the extreme, was enough to make them obedient and united among themselves, for their own personal safety.118 But after the invasion had been repelled, the government became altered. The people acquired a great increase of political power, assumed habits of independence and self-judgment, and became less reverential both to the magistrates and to the laws.

118  Plato, Legg. iii. pp. 698-699.

This change began in music, and the poets introduced new modes of composition — they appealed to the sentiment of the people, and corrupted them.

The first department in which this change was wrought at Athens was the department of music: from whence it gradually extended itself to the general habits of the people. Before the invasion, Music had been distributed, according to ancient practice and under the sanction of ancient authority, under four fixed categories — Hymns, Dirges, Pæans, Dithyrambs.119 The ancient canons in regard to each were strictly enforced: the musical exhibitions were superintended, and the prizes adjudged by a few highly-trained elders: while the general body of citizens listened in respectful silence, without uttering a word of acclamation, or even conceiving themselves competent to judge what they heard. Any manifestations on their part were punished by blows from the sticks of the attendants.120 But this docile submission of the Athenians to authority became gradually overthrown, after the repulse of the Persians, first in the theatre, next throughout all social and political life. The originators of this corruption were the poets: men indeed of poetical genius, but ignorant of the ethical purpose which their compositions ought to aim at, as well as of the rightful canons by which they ought to be guided and limited. These poets, looking to the pleasure of the audience as their true and only standard, exhibited pieces in which all the old musical distinctions were confounded together — hymns with dirges, the pæan with the dithyramb, and the flute with the harp. To such irregular rhythm and melody, words equally irregular were adapted. The poet submitted his compositions to the assembled audience, appealing to them as competent judges, and practically declaring them to be such. The audience responded to the appeal. Acclamation in the theatre was substituted for silence; and the judgment of the people became paramount instead of that pronounced by the enlightened few according to antecedent custom. Hence the people — having once shaken off the reverence for authority, and learnt to exercise their own judgment, in the theatre121 — began speedily to do the same on other matters also. They fancied themselves wise enough to decide everything for themselves, and contracted a shameless disregard for the opinion of better and wiser men. An excessive measure of freedom was established, tending in its ultimate consequences to an anarchical or Titanic nature: indifferent to magistrates, laws, parents, elders, covenants, oaths, and the Gods themselves.122

119  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 700 B. ὕμνοι — θρῆνοι — παιᾶνες — διθύραμβος.

120  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 700 C. τὸ δὲ κῦρος τούτων γνῶναί τε καὶ ἅμα γνόντα δικάσαι, ζημιοῦν τε αὖ τὸν μὴ πειθόμενον, οὐ σύριγξ ἦν οὐδέ τινες ἄμουσοι βοαὶ πλήθους, καθάπερ τὰ νῦν, οὐδ’ αὖ κρότοι ἐπαίνους ἀποδιδόντες, ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν γεγονόσι περὶ παίδευσιν δεδογμένον ἀκούειν ἦν αὐτοῖς μετὰ σιγῆς διὰ τέλους, παισὶ δὲ καὶ παιδαγωγοῖς καὶ τῷ πλείστῳ ὄχλῳ ῥάβδου κοσμούσης ἡ νουθέτησις ἐγίγνετο.

The testimony here given by Plato respecting the practice of his own time is curious and deserves notice: respecting the practice of the times anterior to the Persian invasion he could have had no means of accurate knowledge.

121  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 701 A. νῦν δὲ ἦρξε μὲν ἡμῖν ἐκ μουσικῆς ἡ πάντων εἰς πάντα σοφίας δόξα καὶ παρανομία, ξυνεφέσπετο δὲ ἐλευθερία.

122  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 701 B. Ἐφεξῆς δὴ ταύτῃ τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡ τοῦ μὴ ἐθέλειν τοῖς ἄρχουσι δουλεύειν γίγνοιτ’ ἄν.

The phrase here employed by Plato affirms inferential tendencies — not facts realised. How much of the tendencies had passed into reality at Athens, he leaves to the imagination of his readers to supply. It is curious to contrast the faithless and lawless character of Athens, here insinuated by Plato — with the oration of Demosthenes adv. Leptinem (delivered B.C. 355, near upon the time when the Platonic Leges were composed), where the main argument which the orator brings to bear upon the Dikasts, emphatically and repeatedly, to induce them to reject the proposition of Leptines, is — τὸ τῆς πόλεως ἦθος ἀψευδὲς καὶ χρηστόν, οὐ τὸ λυσιτελέστατον πρὸς ἀργύριον σκοποῦν, ἀλλά τι καὶ καλὸν πρᾶξαι (p. 461) … οὐδ’ ὁ πλεῖστος λόγος ἔμοιγε περὶ τῆς ἀτελείας ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ πονηρὸν ἔθος εἰσάγειν τὸν νόμον, καὶ τοιοῦτον δι’ οὖ παντ’ ἄπιστ’ ὅσα ὁ δῆμος δίδωσιν ἔσται, also pp. 500-507, and indeed throughout nearly the whole oration. So also in the other discourses, not only of Demosthenes but of the other orators also — good faith, public and private, and respectful obedience to the laws, are constantly invoked as primary and imperative necessities.

Indeed, in order to find a contradiction to the picture here presented by Plato, of Athenian tendencies since the Persian war, we need not go farther than Plato himself. We have only to read the Menexenus, wherein he professes to describe and panegyrise the achievements of Athens during that very period which he paints in such gloomy colours in the Leges — the period succeeding the Persian invasion. Who is to believe that the people, upon whose virtue he pronounces these encomiums, had thrown off all reverence for good faith, obligation, and social authority? As for the Τιτανικὴ φύσις, to which Plato represents the Athenians as approximating, the analogy is principally to be found in the person of the Titan Promêtheus, with his philanthropic disposition (see Plato, Menexenus, pp. 243 E, 244 E), and the beneficent suggestions which he imparted to mankind in the way of science and art (Æschyl. Prom. 440-507 — Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως).

Danger of changes in the national music — declared by Damon, the musical teacher.

The opinion here expressed by Plato — that the political constitution of Athens was too democratical, and that the changes (effected by Perikles and others during the half century succeeding the Persian invasion) whereby it had been rendered more democratical, were mischievous — was held by him in common with a respectable and intelligent minority at Athens. That minority had full opportunity of expressing their disapprobation — as we may see by the language of Plato himself; though he commends the Spartans for not allowing any such opportunity to dissenters at Sparta, and expressly prohibits any open expression of dissent in his own community. But his assertion, that the deterioration at Athens was introduced and originated by an innovation in the established canon of music and poetry — is more peculiarly his own. The general doctrine of the powerful revolutionising effect wrought by changes in the national music, towards subverting the political constitution, was adopted by him from the distinguished musical teacher Damon,123 the contemporary and companion of Perikles. The fear of such danger to the national institutions is said to have operated on the authorities at Sparta, when they forbade the musical innovations of the poet Timotheus, and destroyed the four new strings which he had just added to the established seven strings of his lyre.124

123  Plato, Republ. iv. p. 424 D.

124  Cicero, De Legib. ii. 15; Pausanias, iii. 12.

Cicero agrees with Plato as to the mischievous tendency of changes in the national music.

Plato’s aversion to the tragic and comic poetry at Athens.

Of this general doctrine, however, Plato makes a particular application in the passage now before us, which he would have found few Athenians, either oligarchical or democratical, to ratify. What he really condemns is, the tragic and comic poetical representations at Athens, which began to acquire importance only after the Persian war, and continued to increase in importance for the next half century. The greatest revolution which Grecian music and poetry ever underwent was that whereby Attic tragedy and comedy were first constituted:— built up by distinguished poets from combination and enlargement of the simpler pre-existent forms — out of the dithyrambic and phallic choruses.125 The first who imparted to tragedy its grand development and its special novelty of character was Æschylus — a combatant at Marathon as well as one of the greatest among ancient poets: after him, Sophokles carried improvement still further. It is them that Plato probably means, when he speaks of the authors of this revolution as men of true poetical genius, but ignorant of the lawful purpose of the Muse — as authors who did not recognise any rightful canon of music, nor any end to be aimed at beyond the emotional satisfaction of a miscellaneous audience. The abundance of dramatic poetry existing in Plato’s time must have been prodigious (a few choice specimens only have descended to us):— while its variety of ingredients and its popularity outshone those four ancient and simple manifestations, which alone he will tolerate as legitimate. He censures the innovations of Æschylus and Sophokles as a deplorable triumph of popular preference over rectitude of standard and purpose. He tacitly assumes — what Aristotle certainly does not believe, and what, so far as I can see, there is no ground for believing — that the earlier audience were passive, showing no marks of favour or disfavour: and that the earlier poets had higher aims, adapting their compositions to the judgment of a wise few, and careless about giving satisfaction to the general audience. This would be the practice in the Platonic city, but it never was the practice at Athens. We may surely presume that Æschylus stood distinguished from his predecessors not by desiring popularity more, but by greater success in attaining it: and that he attained it partly from his superior genius, partly from increasing splendour in the means of exhibition at Athens. The simpler early compositions had been adapted to the taste of the audience who heard them, and gave satisfaction for the time; until the loftier genius of Æschylus and the other great constructive dramatists was manifested.

125  Aristotle, Poetic. c. 4. p. 1449 a.

The ethical repugnance expressed by Plato against the many-sided and deceptive spirit of tragic and comic compositions, is also expressed in the censure said to have been pronounced by Solon against Thespis, when the latter first produced his dramas (Plutarch, Solon, 29; Diog. Laert. i. 59).

This aversion peculiar to himself, not shared either by oligarchical politicians, or by other philosophers.

However Plato — while he tolerates no poetry except in so far as it produces ethical correction or regulation of the emotions, and blames as hurtful the poet who simply touches or kindles emotion — is in a peculiar manner averse to dramatic poetry, with its diversity of assumed characters and its obligation of giving speech to different points of view. His aversion had been exhibited before, both in the Republic and in the Gorgias:126 but it reappears here in the Treatise De Legibus, with this aggravating feature — that the revolution in music and poetry is represented as generating cause of a deteriorated character and an ultra-democratical polity of Athens. This (as I have before remarked) is a sentiment peculiar to Plato. For undoubtedly, oligarchical politicians (such as Thucydides, Nikias, Kritias), who agreed with him in disliking the democracy, would never have thought of ascribing what they disliked to such a cause as alteration in the Athenian music and poetry. They would much more have agreed with Aristotle,127 when he attributes the important change both in the character and polity of the Athenian people after the Persian invasion, to the events of that invasion itself — to the heroic and universal efforts made by the citizens, on shipboard as well as on land, against the invading host — and to the necessity for continuing those efforts by organising the confederacy of Delos. Hence arose a new spirit of self-reliance and enterprise — or rather an intensification of what had already begun after the expulsion of Hippias and the reform by Kleisthenes — which rendered the previous constitutional forms too narrow to give satisfaction.128 The creation of new and grander forms of poetry may fairly be looked upon as one symptom of this energetic general outburst: but it is in no way a primary or causal fact, as Plato wishes us to believe. Nor can Plato himself have supposed it to be so, at the time when he composed his Menexenus: wherein the events of the post-Xerxeian period are presented in a light very different from that in which he viewed them when he wrote his Leges — presented with glowing commendations on his countrymen.

126  Plato, Republ. iii. pp. 395-396, x. p. 605 B; Gorgias, p. 502 B; Legg. iv. p. 719 B.

Aristotle takes a view of tragedy quite opposed to that of Plato: he considers it as calculated to purge or purify the emotions of fear, compassion, &c. (Aristot. Poet. c. 13. Compare Politic. viii. 7, 9). Unfortunately the Poetica exist only as a fragment, so that his doctrine about κάθαρσις is only declared and not fully developed.

Rousseau (in his Lettre à d’Alembert Sur les Spectacles, p. 33 seq.) impugns this doctrine of Aristotle, and condemns theatrical representations, partly with arguments similar to those of Plato, partly with others of his own.

127  Aristotel. Politic. v. 4, p. 1304, a. 20; ii. 12, p. 1274, a. 12; viii. 6, 1340, a. 30.

128  Herodot. v. 78.

Doctrines of Plato in this prefatory matter.

The long ethical prefatory matter129 which we have gone through, includes these among other doctrines — 1. That the life of justice, and the life of pleasure, are essentially coincident. 2. That Reason, as declared by the lawgiver, ought to controul all our passions and emotions. 3. That intoxication, under certain conditions, is an useful stimulus to elderly men. 4. That the political constitution of society ought not to be founded upon one single principle of authority, but upon a combination of several. 5. That the extreme of liberty, and the extreme of despotism, are both bad.130

129  What Aristotle calls τοῖς ἔξωθεν λόγοις, in reference to the Republic of Plato (Aristotel. Politic. ii. 36, p. 1264, b. 39).

130  Compare on this point Plato’s Epistol. viii. pp. 354-355, where this same view is enforced.

Compared with those of the Republic and of the Xenophontic Cyropædia.

Of these five positions, the two first are coincident with the doctrines of the Republic: the third is not coincident compared with them, but indirectly in opposition to them: the fourth and fifth put Plato on a standing point quite different from that of the Republic, and different also from that of the Xenophontic Cyropædia. In the Cyropædia, all government is strictly personal: the subjects both obey willingly, and are rendered comfortable because of the supreme and manifold excellence of one person — their chief, Cyrus — in every department of practical administration, civil as well as military. In the Platonic Republic, the government is also personal: to this extent — that Plato provides neither political checks, nor magistrates, nor laws, nor judicature: but aims only at the perfect training of the Guardians, and the still more elaborate and philosophical training of those few chief or elder Guardians, who are to direct the rest. He demands only a succession of these philosophers, corresponding to the regal Artist sketched in the Politikus: and he leaves all ulterior directions to them. Upon their perfect dispositions and competence, all the weal or woe of the community depends. All is personal government; but it is lodged in the hands of a few philosophers, assumed to be super-excellent, like the one chief in the Xenophontic Cyropædia. When however we come to the Leges, we find that Plato ceases to presume upon such supreme personal excellence. He drops it as something beyond the limit of human attainment, and as fit only for the golden or Saturnian age.131 He declares that power, without adequate restraints, is a privilege with which no man can be trusted.132 Nevertheless the magistrates must be vested with sufficient power: since excess of liberty is equally dangerous. To steer between these two rocks,133 you want not only a good despot but a sagacious lawgiver. It is he who must construct a constitutional system, having regard to the various natural foundations of authority in the minds of the citizens. He must provide fixed laws, magistrates, and a competent judicature: moreover, both the magistrates and the judicature must be servants of the law, and nothing beyond.134 The lawgiver must frame his laws with single-minded view, not to the happiness of any separate section of the city, but to that of the whole. He must look to the virtue of the whole, in its most comprehensive sense, and to all good things, ranked in their triple subordination and their comparative value — that is, First, the good things belonging to the mind — Secondly, Those belonging to the body — Thirdly, Wealth and External acquisitions.135

131  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 713-714.

132  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 687 E — iv. p. 713 B, ix. p. 875 C.

133  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 710-711.

134  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 715 C-D. τοὺς δ’ ἄρχοντας λεγομένους νῦν ὑπηρέτας τοῖς νόμοις ἐκάλεσα, οὖ τι καινοτομίας ὀνομάτων ἕνεκα, ἀλλ’, &c. It appears as if this phrase, calling “magistrates the servants or ministers of the law,” was likely to be regarded as a harsh and novel metaphor.

135  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 707 B, 714 B; iii. p. 697 A.

Constructive scheme — Plato’s new point of view.

We now enter upon this constructive effort of Plato’s old age. That a political constitution with fixed laws (he makes the Athenian say) and with magistrates acting merely as servants of the laws, is the only salvation for a city and its people — this is a truth which every man sees most distinctly in his old age, though when younger he was very dull in discerning it.136 Probably enough what we here read represents the change in Plato’s own mind: the acquisition of a new point of view, which was not present to him when he composed his Republic and his Politikus.

136  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 715 E. Νέος μὲν γὰρ ὢν πᾶς ἄνθρωπος τὰ τοιαῦτα ἀμβλύτατα αὐτὸς ὁρᾷ, γέρων δὲ ὀξύτατα.

Compare vii. pp. 819 D-821 D, for marks of Plato’s old age and newly acquired opinions.

New Colony to be founded in Krete — its general conditions.

Here the exposition assumes a definite shape. The Kretan Kleinias apprises his Athenian companion, that the Knossians with other Kretans are about to establish a new colony on an unsettled point in Krete; and that himself with nine others are named commissioners for framing and applying the necessary regulations. He invites the co-operation of the Athenian:137 who accordingly sets himself to the task of suggesting such laws and measures as are best calculated to secure the march of the new Magnetic settlement towards the great objects defined in the preceding programme.

137  Plato, Legg. iii. p. 702 C.

The new city is to be about nine English miles from the sea. The land round it is rough, poor, and without any timber for shipbuilding; but it is capable of producing all supplies absolutely indispensable, so that little need will be felt of importation from abroad. The Athenian wishes that the site were farther from the sea. Yet he considers the general conditions to be tolerably good; inasmuch as the city need not become commercial and maritime, and cannot have the means of acquiring much gold and silver — which is among the greatest evils that can befall a city, since it corrupts justice and goodness in the citizens.138 The settlers are all Greeks, from various towns of Krete and Peloponnesus. This (remarks the Athenian) is on the whole better than if they came from one single city. Though it may introduce some additional chance of discord, it will nevertheless render them more open-minded and persuadable for the reception of new institutions.139

138  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 705.

139  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 708.

The Athenian declares that he will not merely promulgate peremptory laws, but will recommend them to the citizens by prologues or hortatory discourses.

The colonists being supposed to be assembled in their new domicile and ready for settlement, Plato, or his Athenian spokesman, addresses to them a solemn exhortation, inculcating piety towards the Gods, celestial and subterranean, as well as to the Dæmons and Heroes — and also reverence to parents.140 He then intimates that, though he does not intend to consult the settlers on the acceptance or rejection of laws, but assumes to himself the power of prescribing such laws as he thinks best for them — he nevertheless will not content himself with promulgating his mandates in a naked and peremptory way. He will preface each law with a proëm or prologue (i.e. a string of preliminary recommendations): in order to predispose their minds favourably, and to obtain from them a willing obedience.141 He will employ not command only, but persuasion along with or antecedent to command: as the physician treats his patients when they are freemen, not as he sends his slaves to treat slave-patients, with a simple compulsory order.142 To begin with an introductory proëm or prelude, prior to the announcement of the positive law, is (he says) the natural course of proceeding. It is essential to all artistic vocal performances: it is carefully studied and practised both by the rhetor and the musician.143 Yet in spite of this analogy, no lawgiver has ever yet been found to prefix proëms to his laws: every one has contented himself with issuing peremptory commands.144 Here then Plato undertakes to set the example of prefixing such prefatory introductions. The nature of the case would prescribe that every law, every speech, every song, should have its suitable proëm: but such prolixity would be impolitic. A discretion must be entrusted to the lawgiver, as it is to the orator and the musician. Proëms or prologues must be confined to the great and important laws.145

140  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 716-718.

141  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 718-719-723.

142  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 720. This is a curious indication respecting the medical profession and practice at Athens.

143  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 722 D-723 D. τῷ τε ῥήτορι καὶ τῷ μελῳδῷ καὶ τῷ νομοθέτῃ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἑκάστοτε ἐπιτρεπτέον.

144  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 722 B-E.

The προοίμια δημηγορικά of Demosthenes are well known.

145  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 723 C-D. About τὰ τῶν νόμων προοίμια, compare what Plato says about his communications with the younger Dionysius, shortly after his (Plato’s) second arrival at Syracuse, Plato, Epistol. iii. p. 316 A.

General character of these prologues — didactic or rhetorical homilies.

Accordingly, from hence to the end of the Treatise De Legg., Plato proceeds upon the principle here laid down. He either prefixes a prologue to each of his laws — or blends the law with its proëm — or gives what may be called a proëm without a law, that is a string of hortatory or comminatory precepts. There are various points (he says) on which the lawgiver cannot propose any distinct and peremptory enactment, but must confine himself to emphatic censure146 and declaration of opinion, with threats of displeasure on the part of the Gods: the rather as he cannot hope to accomplish his public objects, without the largest interference with private habits — nor without bringing his regulations to bear upon individual life, where positive law can hardly reach.147 The Platonic prologues are sometimes expositions of the reasons of the law — i. e. of the dangers which it is intended to ward off, or the advantages to be secured by it. But far more frequently, they are morsels of rhetoric — lectures, discourses, or homilies — addressed to the emotions and not to the reason, insisting on the ethical and religious point of view, and destined to operate with persuasive or intimidating effect upon an uninstructed multitude.148

146  Cicero (De Legg. ii. 6) professes to follow Plato in this practice of prefixing proëms to his Laws. He calls the proëm an encomium upon the law, which in most cases it is — “ut priusquam ipsam legem recitem, de ejus legis laude dicam”.

147  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 780 A.

148  Plato, Legg. iv. p. 722 B. πρὸς τούτῳ δὲ οὐδεὶς ἔοικε διανοηθῆναι πώποτε τῶν νομοθετῶν, ὡς ἐξὸν δυοῖν χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὰς νομοθεσίας, πειθοῖ καὶ βίᾳ, καθ’ ὅσον οἷόν τε ἐπὶ τὸν ἄπειρον παιδείας ὄχλον τῷ ἑτέρῳ χρῶνται μόνον.

Great value set by Plato himself upon these prologues. They are to serve as type for all poets. No one is allowed to contradict them.

It seems that Plato took credit to himself for what he thought a beneficial innovation, in thus blending persuasive exhortation with compulsory command. His assurance, that no Grecian lawgiver had ever done so before, is doubtless trustworthy:149 though we may remark that the confusion of the two has been the general rule with Oriental lawgivers — the Hindoos, the Jews, the Mahommedan Arabs, &c. But with him the innovation serves a farther purpose. He makes it the means of turning rhetoric to account; and of enlisting in his service, as lawgiver, not only all the rhetoric but all the poetry, in his community. His Athenian speaker is so well satisfied with these prologues, that he considers them to possess the charm of a poetical work, and suspects them to have been dictated by inspiration from the Gods.150 He pronounces them the best and most suitable compositions for the teaching of youth, and therefore prescribes that teachers shall cause the youth to recite and learn them, instead of the poetical and rhetorical works usually employed. He farther enjoins that his prologues shall serve as type and canon whereby all other poetical and rhetorical compositions shall be tried. If there be any compositions in full harmony and analogy with this type, the teachers shall be compelled to learn them by heart, and teach them to pupils. Any teacher refusing to do so shall be dismissed.151 Nor shall any poet be allowed to compose and publish works containing sentiments contradictory to the declaration of the lawgiver.152

149  The testimony of Plato shows that the προοίμια τῆς νομοθεσίας ascribed to Zaleukus and Charondas (Diodor. xii. 12-20) are composed by authors later than his time, and probably in imitation of his προοίμια: which indeed is probable enough on other grounds. See Heyne, Opuscula, vol. ii., Prolus i. vi., De Zaleuci et Charondæ Legibus.

Cicero read the proëms ascribed to Zaleukus and Charondas as genuine (Legg. ii. 6); so did Diodôrus, xii. 17-20; Stobæus, Serm. xlii.

150  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 811 C. οὐκ ἄνευ τινὸς ἐπιπνοίας θεῶν, ἔδοξαν δ’ οὖν μοι παντάπασι ποιήσει τινὶ προσομοίως εἰρῆσθαι.

151  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 811 D-E.

152  Plato, Legg. p. 811 E.

Contrast of Leges with Gorgias and Phædrus.

As a contrast to this view of Plato in his later years, it is interesting to turn to that which he entertained in an earlier part of his life, in the Gorgias and the Phædrus, respecting rhetoric. In the former dialogue, Gorgias is recognised as a master of the art of persuasion, especially as addressed to a numerous audience, and respecting ethical questions, What is just, and what is unjust? Sokrates, on the contrary, pointedly distinguishes persuasion from teaching — discredits simple persuasion, without teaching, as merely deceptive — and contends that rhetorical discourse addressed to a multitude, upon such topics, can never convey any teaching.153 But in the Leges we find that the art of persuasion has risen greatly in Plato’s estimation. Whether it be a true art, or a mere unartistic knack, he now recognises its efficacy in modifying the dispositions of the uninstructed multitude, and announces himself to be the first lawgiver who will employ it systematically for that purpose. He combines the seductions of the rhetor with the unpalatable severities of the lawgiver: the two distinct functions of Gorgias and his brother the physician Herodikus, when Gorgias accompanied his brother to visit suffering patients, and succeeded by force of rhetoric in overcoming their repugnance to the cutting and burning indispensable for cure.154 Again, in the Phædrus, Plato treats the art of persuasion, when applied at once to a mixed assemblage of persons, either by writing or discourse, as worthless and unavailing.155 He affirms that it makes no durable impression on the internal mind of the individuals: the same discourse will never suit all. Individuals differ materially in their cast of mind; moreover, they differ in opinion upon ethical topics (just and unjust) more than upon any other. Some men are open to persuasion by topics which will have no effect on others. Accordingly, you must go through a laborious discrimination: first, you must discriminate generally the various classes of minds and the various classes of discourse — next, you must know to which classes of minds the individuals of the multitude before you belong. You must then address to each mind the mode of persuasion specially adapted to it. The dialectic philosopher is the only one who possesses the true art of persuasion. Such was Plato’s point of view in the Phædrus. I need hardly point out how completely it is dropped in his Leges: wherein he pours persuasion into the ears of an indiscriminate multitude, through the common channel of a rhetorical lecture, considering it of such impressive efficacy as to justify the supposition of inspiration from the Gods.156

153  Plato, Gorgias, pp. 454-456.

154  Plato, Gorgias, p. 456 B.

155  Plato, Phædrus, pp. 263 A, 271-272-273 E — 275 E — 276 A —277 C.

156  Zeller, in his ‘Platonische Studien’ (pp. 66-72-88, &c.), insists much on the rhetorical declamatory prolixity visible throughout the Treatise De Legibus, as quite at variance with the manner of Plato in his earlier and better dialogues, and even as specimens of what Plato there notes as the rhetorical or sophistical manner. He expresses his surprise that the Athenian should be made to ascribe such discourses to the inspiration of the Gods (p. 107). Zeller enumerates these and many other dissimilarities in the Treatise De Legibus, as compared with other Platonic dialogues, as premisses to sustain his conclusion that the treatise is not by Plato. In my judgment they do not bear out that conclusion (which indeed Zeller has since renounced in his subsequent work); but they are not the less real and notable, marking the change in Plato’s own mind.

How poor an opinion had Plato of the efficacy of the νουθετητικὸν εἶδος λόγων at the time when he composed the Sophistês (p. 230 A)! What a superabundance of such discourse does he deliver in the Treatise De Legibus, taking especial pride in the peculiarity!

Regulations for the new colony — About religious worship, the oracles of Delphi and Dodona are to be consulted.

After this unusual length of preliminaries, Plato enters on the positive regulation of his colony. As to the worship of the Gods, he directs little or nothing of his own authority. The colony must follow the advice of the oracles of Delphi, Dodona, and Ammon — together with any consecrated traditions, epiphanies, or inspirations from the Gods belonging to the spot — as to the Gods who shall be publicly worshipped, and the suitable temples and rites. Only he directs that to each portion of the territory set apart for civil purposes, some God, Dæmon, or Hero, shall be specially assigned as Patron,157 with a chapel and precinct wherein all meetings of the citizens of the district shall be held, whether for religious ceremonies, or for recreation, or for political duties.

157  Plato, Legg. v. p. 738 C-D. ὅπως ἂν ξύλλογοι ἑκάστων τῶν μερῶν κατὰ χρόνους γιγνόμενοι τοὺς προσταχθέντας … μετὰ θυσιῶν.

That such “ordained seasons” for meetings and sacrifices should be punctually attended to — was a matter of great moment, on religious no less than on civil grounds. It was with a view to that object principally that each Grecian city arranged its calendar and its system of intercalation. Plato himself states this (vii. p. 809 D).

Sir George Lewis, in his Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, adverts to the passage of Plato here cited, and gives a very instructive picture of the state of the Hellenic world as to Calendar and computation of time (see p. 19; also the greater part of chapter i. of his valuable work). The object of all the cities was to adjust lunar time with solar time by convenient intercalations, but hardly any two cities agreed in the method of doing so. Different schemes of intercalation and periods (trietêric, octaetêric, enneadekaetêric) were either adopted by civic authority or suggested by private astronomers, such as Kleostratus and Meton. The practical dissonance and confusion was great, and the theoretical dissatisfaction also.

Now in this dialogue De Legibus, Plato recognises both the importance of the object and the problem to be solved, yet he suggests no means of his own for solving it. He makes no arrangement for the calendar of his new Magnêtic city. I confess that this is to me a matter of some surprise. To combine an exertion of authority with an effort of arithmetical calculation, is in his vein; and the exactness of observances as respects the Gods, in harmony with the religious tone of the treatise, depended on some tolerable solution of the problem.

We may perhaps presume that Plato refused to deal with the problem because he considered it as mathematically insoluble. Days, months, and years are not exactly commensurable with each other. In the Timæus (p. 36 C) Plato declares that the rotation of the Circle of the Same, or the outermost sidereal sphere, upon which the succession of day and night depends, is according to the side of a parallelogram (κατὰ πλευράν) — while the rotations of the Moon and Sun (two of the seven branches composing the Circle of the Different) are according to the diagonal thereof (κατὰ διάμετρον): now the side and the diagonal represented the type of incommensurable magnitudes among the ancient reasoners. It would appear also that he considers the rotations of the Moon and Sun to be incommensurable with each other, both of them being members included in the Circle of the Different.

Since an exact mathematical solution was thus unattainable, Plato may probably have despised a merely approximative solution, sufficient for practical convenience — to which last object he generally pays little attention. He might also fancy that even the attempt to meddle with the problem betokened that confusion of the incommensurable with the commensurable, which he denounces in this very treatise (vii. pp. 819-820).

Perpetuity of number of citizens, and of lots of land, one to each, inalienable and indivisible.

Plato requires for his community a fixed and peremptory total of 5040 citizens, never to be increased, and never to be diminished: a total sufficient, in his judgment, to defend the territory against invaders, and to lend aid on occasion to an oppressed neighbour. He distributes the whole territory into 5040 lots of land, each of equal value, assigning one lot to each citizen. Each lot is assumed to be sufficient for the maintenance of a family of sober habits, and no more. The total number (5040) is selected because of the great variety of divisors by which it may be divided without remainder.158

158  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 737-738, vi. p. 771 C.

Aristotle declares this total of 5040 to be extravagantly great, inasmuch as it would require an amount of territory beyond the scale which can be reckoned upon for a Grecian city, to maintain so many unproductive persons, including not merely the 5040 adult citizens, but also their wives, children, and personal attendants, none of whom would take part in any productive industry (Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 16).

The remark here cited indicates the small numerical scale upon which the calculations of a Greek politician were framed. But we can hardly be surprised at it, seeing that the new city is intended for the Island of Krete, where none even of the existing cities were considerable. Moreover Aristotle had probably present to his mind the analogy of Sparta. The Spartan citizens were in a situation more analogous to the 5040 than any other Grecian residents. But the Spartan citizens could not have been near so numerous as 5040 at that time; not even one-fifth of it — Aristotle tells us, Politic. ii. 9, 1270, a. 31. Aristotle goes on to remark on the definition given by Plato of the size and value of each lot of land sufficient for the citizen and his family to live σωφρόνως: it ought to be (says Aristotle) σωφρόνως καὶ ἐλευθερίως. These are the two modes of excellence, and the only two, which a man can display in the use of his property (1265, a. 35). But this change would only aggravate the difficulty as to the total area of land required for the 5040. Compare the remark of Aristotle on the scheme of Hippodamus, Politic. ii. 8, 1268, a. 42.

Plato reasserts his adherence to the principle of the Republic, though the repugnance of others hinders him from realising it.

We thus see that Plato, in laying down his fundamental principle (ὑπόθεσιν), recognises separate individual property and separate family among his citizens: both of which had been strenuously condemned and strictly excluded, in respect to the Guardians of his Republic. But he admits the principle only with the proviso that there shall be a peremptory limit to number of citizens, to individual wealth, and to individual poverty: moreover, even with this proviso, he admits it only as a second-best, because mankind will not accept, and are not sufficiently exalted to work out, what is in itself the best. He reasserts the principle of the Republic, that separate property and separate family are both essentially mischievous: that all individuality, either of interest or sympathy or sentiment, ought to be extinguished as far as possible.159 Though constrained against his will to renounce this object, he will still approximate to it as near as he can in his second-best. Moreover, he may possibly, at some future time (D.V.), propose a third-best. When once departure from the genuine standard is allowed, the departure may be made in many different ways.

159  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 739-740; vii. p. 807 B.

This declaration deserves notice as attesting the undiminished adhesion of Plato to the main doctrines of his Republic. The point here noted is one main difference of principle between the Treatise De Legibus and the Republic: the enactment of written fundamental laws with prologues serving as homilies to be preached to the citizens, is another. Both of them are differences of principle: each gives rise to many subordinate differences or corollaries.160

160  Plato, Legg. v. p. 739 E. ἣν δὲ νῦν ἡμεῖς ἐπικεχειρήκαμεν, εἴη τε ἂν γενομένη πως ἀθανασίας ἐγγύτατα καὶ ἡ μία δευτέρως· τρίτην δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα, ἐὰν θεὸς ἐθέλῃ, διαπερανούμεθα. Upon this passage K. F. Hermann observes: “Hæc enim est quam ordine tertiam appellat Plato, quæ Aristoteli [Politic. iv. 1, 2] ἐξ ὑποθέσεως πολιτεία dicitur: quod tamen nolim ita accipi, ut à nonnullis factum est, ut hanc quoque olim singulari scripto persecuturum fuisse philosophum credamus, quasi tribus exemplis absolvi rerum publicarum formas censuisset; innumeræ enim pro singularum nationum et urbium fortuna esse possunt,” &c. (De Vestigiis Instit. Vet. imprimis Attic. per Plat. de Legg. libros indag., p. 16).

That Plato did intend to compose a third work upon an analogous subject appears to me clear from the words, — but it does not at all follow that he thought that three varieties would exhaust all possibility. Upon this point I dissent from Hermann, and also upon his interpretation of Aristotle’s phrase ἡ ἐξ ὑποθέσεως πολιτεία. Aristotle distinguishes three distinct varieties of end which the political constructor may propose to himself:— 1. τὴν πολιτείαν τὴν ἁπλῶς ἀρίστην, τὴν μάλιστα κατ’ εὐχήν. 2. Τὴν ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀρίστην. 3. Τὴν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως ἀρίστην. Now K. F. Hermann here maintains, and Boeckh had already maintained before him (ad Platonis Minoem et de Legibus, pp. 66-67), that the city sketched in Plato’s treatise De Legibus coincides with No. 2 in Aristotle’s enumeration, and that the projected τρίτη in Plato coincides with No. 3 — τὴν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. I differ from them here. There is no ground for presuming that what Plato puts third must also be put by Aristotle third. I think that the Platonic city De Legibus corresponds to No. 3 in Aristotle and not to No. 2. It is a city ἐξ ὑποθέσεως, not ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀρίστην. Plato borrows little or nothing from τὰ ὑποκείμενα, and almost everything from his own ὑπόθεσις or assumed principle, which in this case is the fixed number of the citizens as well as of the lots of land, the imposition of a limit on each man’s proprietary acquisitions, and the recognition of separate family establishments subject to these limits. This is the ὑπόθεσις of Plato’s second city, to which all his regulations of detail are accommodated: it is substituted by him (unwillingly, because of the repugnance of others) in place of the ὑπόθεσις of his first city or the Republic, which ὑπόθεσις is perfect communism among the φύλακες, without either separate property or separate family. This last is Plato’s ἁπλως ἀρίστη.

Regulations about land, successions, marriages, &c. The number of citizens must not be allowed to increase.

Each citizen proprietor shall hold his lot of land, not as his own, but as part and parcel of the entire territory, which, taken as a whole, is Goddess and Mistress — conjointly with all the local Gods and Heroes — of the body of citizens generally. No citizen shall either sell or otherwise alienate his lot, nor divide it, nor trench upon its integrity. The total number of lots, the integrity of each lot, and the total number of citizens, shall all remain consecrated in perpetuity, without increase or diminution. Each citizen in dying shall leave one son as successor to his lot: if he has more than one, he may choose which of them he will prefer. The successor so chosen shall maintain the perpetuity of worship of the Gods, reverential rites to the family and deceased ancestors, and obligations towards the city.161 If the citizen has other sons, they will be adopted into the families of other citizens who happen to be childless: if he has daughters, he will give them out in marriage, but without any dowry. Such family relations will be watched over by a special board of magistrates: with this peremptory condition, that they shall on no account permit either the number of citizen proprietors, or the number of separate lots, to depart from the consecrated 5040.162 Each citizen’s name, and each lot of land, will be registered on tablets of cypress wood. These registers will be preserved in the temples, in order that the magistrates may be able to prevent fraud.163

161  Plato, Legg. v. p. 740 A-B.

162  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 740 D-742 C. Aristotle remarks that in order to attain the object which Plato here proclaims, restriction ought to be imposed on τεκνοποιΐα. No citizen ought to be allowed to beget more than a certain number of children. He observes that this last-mentioned restriction, if imposed alone and without any others, would do more than all the rest to maintain the permanent 5040 lots, and that without this no other restrictions could be efficacious (Politic. ii. 6, 1265, a. 37, 1266, b. 9).

Plato concurs in this opinion, though he trusts to prudence and the admonition of elders for bringing about this indispensable limitation of births in a family, without legal prohibition. I have already touched upon this matter in my review of Plato’s Republic. See above — chap. xxxvii. p. 198 seq.

The νόμοι θετικοὶ of Philolaus at Thebes, regulating τὴν παιδοποιΐαν with a view to keep the lots of land unchanged, are only known by the brief allusion of Aristotle, Polit. ii. 12, 1274, b. 4.

163  Plato, Legg. v. p. 741 C. κυπαριττίνας μνήμας, &c.

Position of the city and akropolis — Distribution of the territory and citizens into twelve equal sections or tribes.

The city, with its appropriate accessories, shall be placed as nearly as possible in the middle of the territory. The akropolis, sacred to Hestia and Athênê, will be taken as a centre from whence twelve radiating lines will be drawn to the extremity of the territory, so as to distribute the whole area into twelve sections, not all equal in magnitude, but equalised in value by diminishing the area in proportion to superior goodness of land. The total number of citizens will be distributed also in twelve sections, of 420 each (5040/12), among whom the lots of land contained in each twelfth will be apportioned. This duodecimal division, the fundamental canon of Plato’s municipal arrangements, is a sanctified present from the Gods, in harmony with the months and with the kosmical revolutions.164 Each twelfth, land and citizens together, will be constituted a Tribe, and will be consecrated to some God (determined by lot) whose name it will bear, and at whose altar two monthly festivals will be celebrated: one for the tribe, the other for the entire city. The tribes are peremptorily equal in respect to number of citizens; but care shall also be taken to make them as nearly equal as possible in respect to registered property: that is, in respect to property other than land, which each citizen brings with him to the settlement, and which will all be recorded (as well as the land) in the public registers.165 The lot of land assigned to each citizen will include a portion near the centre, and a portion near the circumference: the most central portion being coupled with the most outlying, and so on in order. Each citizen will thus have two separate residences:166 one nearer to the city, the other more distant from it.

164  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 771 B. Plato here reckons the different numerical divisions adopted in different cities as being all both natural and consecrated, but he considers his own as the most fortunate and right. He insists much upon the importance of symmetrical distribution, with definite numerical ratio, in all the departments of life: in the various civil subdivisions of the Tribe, such as Phratries, Dêmes, Villages — in the arrangements of the citizens for military service, τάξεις καὶ ἀγωγάς — in the coins, weights and measures — in the modulations of the voice, and in the direction of movements either rectilinear or rotatory. (Whoever looks at Aristophanes, Aves, 1010 seq., will see all such regularity and symmetry derided in the person of Meton.) Nay, he enjoins that all the vessels made for common use shall be exact fractions or exact multiples of each other. This will make it necessary for all the citizens to learn elementary arithmetic, which Plato considers to be of essential value, not only for practical use but as a stimulus to the dormant intelligence. On this point he notes the Egyptians and Phenicians as standing higher than the Greeks (vii. p. 818), but as applying their superior arithmetical knowledge only to a mean and disgraceful thirst for wealth. Against this last defect Plato reckons upon guarding his citizens by other precautions, while he encourages in them the learning of arithmetic (Legg. v. p. 747). Plato here speaks of the Egyptians and Phenicians, much as the Jews have been spoken of in later times. And it is curious that he seems to consider their peculiarities of character as referable to their local domicile. He maintains that one place is intrinsically different from another in respect to producing good and bad characters; some places are even privileged by θεία ἐπίπνοια καὶ δαιμόνων λήξεις &c.

165  Plato, Legg. v. p. 745.

166  Plato, Legg. v. p. 745, vi. p. 771 D.

Movable property — Inequality therein reluctantly allowed, as far as four to one, but no farther.

Plato would be glad if he were able to establish among all the citizens, equality not merely of landed property, but property of all other property besides. This, however, he recognises his inability to exact. The colonists will bring with them movable property — some more, some less: and inequality must be tolerated up to a certain limit. Each citizen is allowed to possess movable property as far as four times the value of his lot of land, but no more. The maximum of wealth possessed by any citizen will thus be equal to five times the value of his lot of land: the minimum of the poorest citizen will be the lot of land itself, which cannot, under the worst circumstances, be alienated or diminished. If any citizen shall in any way acquire property above the maximum here named, he is directed to make it over to the city and to the Gods. In case of disobedience, he may be indicted before the Nomophylakes; and if found guilty, shall be disgraced, excluded from his share of public distributions, and condemned to pay twice as much — half being assigned as recompense to the prosecutor.167 The public register kept by the magistrates, in which is enrolled all the property of every kind belonging to each citizen, will enable them to enforce this regulation, and will be farther useful in all individual suits respecting money.

167  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 744-745, vi. p. 754 E.

Census of the citizens — four classes, with graduated scale of property. No citizen to possess gold or silver. No loans or interest. No debts enforced by law.

In the public census of the city, the citizens will be distributed into four classes, according to their different scales of property. The richest will be four minæ: the other three minæ, two, and one mina, respectively. Direct taxation will be assessed upon them according to the difference of wealth: to which also a certain reference will be had in the apportionment of magistracies, and in the regulation of the voting privilege.168

168  Plato, Legg. v. p. 744 B, vi. p. 754 E.

By this determination of a maximum and minimum, coupled with a certain admitted preference to wealth in the assignment of political power, Plato considers that he has guarded against the intestine dissensions and other evils likely to arise from inequality of property. He accounts great poverty to be a serious cause of evil; yet he is very far from looking upon wealth as a cause of good. On the contrary, he proclaims that great wealth is absolutely incompatible either with great virtue or great happiness.169 Accordingly, while he aims at preserving every individual citizen from poverty, he at the same time disclaims all purpose of making his community either richer or more powerful.170 He forbids every private citizen to possess gold and silver. The magistrates must hold a certain stock of it in reserve, in case of public dealing with foreign cities: but they will provide for the daily wants of the community by a special cheap currency, having no value beyond the limits of the territory.171 Moreover, Plato prohibits all loans on interest. He refuses to enforce by law the restoration even of a deposit. He interdicts all dowry or marriage portion with daughters.172

169  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 742 E, 743 A, 744 E.

170  Plato, Legg. v. p. 742 D.

171  Plato, Legg. v. p. 742 A.

172  Plato, Legg. v. p. 742 C.

Board of thirty-seven Nomophylakes — general supervisors of the laws and their execution — how elected.

How is the Platonic colony to be first set on its march, and by whom are its first magistrates to be named? By the inhabitants of Knôssus, its mother city — replies Plato. The Knossians will appoint a provisional Board of two hundred: half from their own citizens, half from the elders and most respected men among the colonists themselves.173 This Board will choose the first Nomophylakes, consisting of thirty-seven persons, half Knossians, half colonists. These Nomophylakes are intended as a Council of State, and will be elected by the citizens in the following way, when the colony is once in full march:— All the citizens who perform or have performed military service, either as hoplites or cavalry, will be electors. They will vote by tablets laid upon the altar, and inscribed with the name both of the voter himself and of the person whom he prefers. First, three hundred persons will be chosen by the majority of votes according to this process. Next, out of these three hundred, one hundred will be chosen by a second process of the same kind. Lastly, out of these one hundred, thirty-seven will be chosen by a third similar process, but with increased solemnity: these thirty-seven will constitute the Board of Nomophylakes, or Guardians of the Laws.174 No person shall be eligible for Guardian until he has attained the age of fifty. When elected, he shall continue to serve until he is seventy, and no longer: so that if elected at sixty, he will have ten years of service.175 The duties of this Board will be to see that all the laws are faithfully executed: in which function they will have superintendence over all special magistrates and officers.

173  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 752 D, 754 C.

174  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 753 C-D.

175  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 755 A.

Military commanders — General council of 360 — complicated mode of election.

For the office of General and Minister of War, three persons shall be chosen by show of hands of the military citizens. It shall be the duty of the Nomophylakes to propose three names for this office: but other citizens may also propose different names, and the show of hands will decide. The three Generals, when chosen, shall propose twelve names as Taxiarchs, one for each tribe: other names may also be proposed, and the show of hands of each tribe will determine.176

176  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 755 E.

A Council shall be annually chosen, consisting of 360 members, ninety from each of the four proprietary scales in the Census. The mode of electing this Council is highly complicated. First, Plato provides that 360 Councillors shall be chosen out of the first (or richest) class, and as many out of the second class, by universal suffrage, every citizen being compelled to give his vote: then that 360 Councillors shall be chosen out of the third class, by universal suffrage, but under this condition, that the three richest classes are compelled to vote, while the fourth class may abstain from voting, if they please: next, that 360 Councillors shall be chosen out of the fourth class, still by universal suffrage, but with liberty to the third and fourth classes to abstain from voting, while the first and second classes are compelled to vote. Out of the four batches, of 360 names from each class, 180 names from each class are to be chosen by universal suffrage compulsory on all. This last list of 180 names is to be reduced, by drawing lots, to 90 from each class, or 360 in all: who constitute the Council for the year.177

177  Plato, Legg vi. p. 756. Compare Aristot. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1266, a. 14.

The passage of Plato is not perspicuous. It appears to me to have been misunderstood by some commentators, who suppose that only 90 βουλευταὶ are to be chosen out of each census in the original voting (see Schneider’s Comment. on the passage of Aristotle above alluded to, p. 99). The number originally chosen from each class must be 360, because it is directed, in the final process, to be reduced first (by election) to 180 from each class, and next (by sortition) to 90 from each class.

Character of the electoral scheme — Plato’s views about wealth — he caters partly for the oligarchical sentiment, partly for the democratical.

Here the evident purpose of Plato is to obtain in the last result a greater number of votes from the rich than from the poor, without absolutely disfranchising the poor. Where the persons to be voted for are all of the richer classes, there the poor are compelled to come and vote as well as the rich: where the persons to be voted for are all of the poorer class, there the rich are compelled to vote, while the poor are allowed to stay away. He seems to look on the vote, not as a privilege which citizens will wish to exercise, but as a duty which they must be compelled by fine to discharge. This is (as Aristotle calls it) an oligarchical provision. It exhibits Plato’s mode of attaining the end stated by Livy as proposed in the Servian constitution at Rome, and the end contemplated (without being announced) by the framers of most other political constitutions recorded in history — “Gradus facti, ut neque exclusus quisquam suffragio videretur, et vis omnis penes primores civitatis esset”.178 Plato defends it by distinguishing two sorts of equality: one complete and undistinguishing, in which all the citizens are put upon a level: the other in which the good and able citizen is distinguished from the bad and incapable citizen, so that he acquires power and honour in proportion to his superior merit.179 This second sort of equality Plato approves, pronouncing it to be political justice. But such defence tacitly assumes that superiority in wealth, as between the four classes of his census, is to count as evidence of, or as an equivalent for, superior merit: an assumption doubtless received by many Grecian politicians, and admitted in the general opinion of Greece — but altogether at variance with the declared judgment of Plato himself as to the effect of wealth upon the character of the wealthy man. The poorest citizen in the Platonic community must have his lot of land, which Plato considers sufficient for a sober-minded family: the richest citizen can possess only five times as much: and all receive the same public instruction. Here, therefore, there can be no presumption of superior merit in the richer citizen as compared with the poorer, whatever might be said about the case as it stood in actual Grecian communities. We see that Plato in this case forgets his own peculiar mode of thought, and accommodates himself to received distinctions, without reflecting that the principles of his own political system rendered such distinctions inapplicable. He bows to the oligarchical sentiment of his contemporaries, by his preferential encouragement to the votes of the rich: he bows to the democratical sentiment, when he consents to employ to a small extent the principle of the lot.180

178  Livy i. 43.

Aristotle characterises these regulations of the Platonic community as oligarchical, and remarks that this is in contradiction to the principle with which Plato set out — that it ought to be a compound of monarchy and democracy. Aristotle understands this last principle somewhat differently from what Plato seems to have intended (Politic. ii. 6, 1266, a. 10).

179  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 757 A-B.

Compare a like distinction drawn between two sorts of ἰσότης in Isokrates, Areiopagitic. Orat. vii. s. 23-24; also Aristotel. Politic.

180  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 757 E. διὸ τῷ τοῦ κλήρου ἴσῳ ἀνάγκη προσχρήσασθαι, δυσκολίας τῶν πολλῶν ἕνεκα, &c.

Meetings of council — other magistrates — Agoranomi — Astynomi, &c.

Of the annually-chosen Council, one twelfth part only (or thirty Councillors) will be in constant session in the city: each of their sessions lasting for one month, and the total thus covering the year. The remaining eleven twelfths will be attending to their private affairs, except when special necessities arise. The Council will have the general superintendence of the city, and controul over all meetings of the citizens.181 Provision is made for three magistrates called Astynomi, to regulate the streets, roads, public buildings, water-courses, &c.: and for five Agoranomi, to watch over the public market with its appertaining temples and fountains, and to take cognisance of disputes or offences occurring therein. None but citizens of the two richest classes of the census are eligible as Astynomi or Agoranomi: first, twice the number required are chosen by public show of hands — next, half of the number so chosen are drawn off by lot. In regard to the show of hands, Plato again decrees, that all citizens of the two richer classes shall be compelled to take part in it, under fine: all citizens of the two poorer classes may take part if they choose, but are not compelled.182 By this provision, as before, Plato baits for the oligarchical sentiment: by the partial use of the lot, for the democratical.

181  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 758 C-D.

182  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 763-764.

Defence of the territory — rural police — Agronomi, &c.

The defence of the territory is entrusted to the Agronomi, five persons selected from each of the twelve tribes, making sixty in all; and assisted by sixty other junior subordinates, selected by the five Agronomi (those of each tribe choosing twelve) from their respective tribes. Each of these companies of seventeen will be charged with the care of one of the twelve territorial districts, as may be determined by lot. Each will then pass by monthly change from one district to another, so as to make the entire circuit of the twelve districts in one year, going round in an easterly direction or to the right: each will then make the same circuit backward, during a second year, in a westerly direction or to the left.183 Their term of service will be two years in all, during which all of them will have become familiarly acquainted with every portion of the territory. A public mess will be provided for these companies, and each man among them will be held to strict continuity of service. Their duties will be, not merely to keep each district in a condition of defence against a foreign enemy, but also to improve its internal condition: to facilitate the outflow of water where there is too much, and to retard it where there is too little: to maintain, in the precincts sacred to the Gods, reservoirs of spring-water, partly as ornament, partly also as warm baths (for the heating of which large stocks of dry wood must be collected) — to benefit the old, the sick, and the overworked husbandman.184 Farthermore, these Agronomi will adjudicate upon disputes and offences among the rural population, both slave and free. If they abuse their trust, they will be accountable, first to the assembled citizens of the district, next to the public tribunals in the city.

183  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 760 D. τοὺς τῆς χώρας τόπους μεταλλάττοντας ἀεὶ τῶν ἑξῆς τόπων ἑκάστου μηνὸς ἡγεῖσθαι τοὺς φρουράρχους ἐπὶ δεξιὰ κύκλῳ· τὸ δ’ ἐπιδέξια γιγνέσθω τὸ πρὸς ἕω.

In reference to omens and auguries the Greek spectator looked towards the north, so that he had the east on his right hand.

184  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 761 A-D.

Agreeable and refreshing combinations of springs with shady trees near the precincts of the Gods were frequent. See Xenophon, Hellen. v. 3, 19.

The thermal waters were also generally connected with some precinct of Hêraklês or Asklêpius.

In some temples it was forbidden to use this adjoining water except for sacred rites, Thucyd. iv. 97.

Comparison with the Lacedæmonian Kryptia.

Plato considers that these Agronomi will go through hard work during their two years of service, inasmuch as they will have no slaves, and will have to do everything for themselves: though in the performance of any public work they are empowered to put in requisition both men and cattle from the neighbourhood.185 He pronounces it to be a salutary discipline for the young men, whom he admonishes that an apprenticeship in obedience is indispensable to qualify them for command, and that exact obedience to the laws and magistrates will be their best title to posts of authority when older.186 Moreover, he insists on the necessity that all citizens should become minutely acquainted with the whole territory: towards which purpose he encourages young men in the exercise of hunting. He compares (indirectly) his movable guard of Agronomi to the Lacedæmonian Krypti, who maintained the police of Laconia, and kept watch over the Helots:187 though they are also the parallel of the youthful Peripoli at Athens, who were employed as Guards for two years round various parts of Attica.

185  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 760 E-763 A.

186  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 762 E.

187  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 763 A-B. εἴτε τις κρυπτοὺς εἴτε ἀγρονόμους εἴθ’ ὅ, τι καλῶν χαίρει, &c. He notes the hardships endured by these Κρυπτοὶ in their Κρυπτεία, i. p. 633 C.

The phrase seems however to indicate that Plato did not much like to call his Agronomi by the name of Κρυπτοί. The duties performed by the Lacedæmonian Κρυπτοὶ against the Helots were of the harshest character. See chap. vi. p. 509 of my ‘History of Greece’. Schömann, Antiq. Juris Publ. Græc. iv. 1-4, p. 111, v. 1, 21, p. 199.

Priests — Exêgêtæ — Property belonging to temples.

Besides Astynomi and Agoranomi, Plato provides priests for the care of the sacred buildings in the city, and for the service of the Gods. In choosing these priests, as in choosing the other magistrates, election and sortition are to be combined: to satisfy at once the oligarchical and the democratical sentiment. The lot will be peculiarly suitable in a case where priests are to be chosen — because the God may be expected to guide it in a manner agreeable to himself.188 Plato himself however is not confident on this point, for he enjoins additional precautions: the person chosen must be sixty years old at least, free from all bodily defect, of legitimate birth, and of a family untainted by previous crime. Plato prescribes farther, that laws or canons respecting matters of divine concern shall be obtained from the Delphian oracle: and that certain Exêgêtæ shall be named as authorised interpreters of these canons, as long as they live.189 Treasurers or stewards shall also be chosen, out of the two richer classes of the census, to administer the landed property and produce belonging to the various temples.190

188  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 749 D.

189  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 759 E.

190  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 760 A.

In the execution of the duties imposed upon them, the Agoranomi and Astynomi are empowered to fine an offender to the extent of one mina (one hundred drachmæ), each of them separately — and when both sit together, to the extent of two minæ.191

191  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 764 B.

Here, as in other provisions, Plato copies the practice at Athens, where each individual magistrate was empowered to impose a fine of definite amount (ἐπιβολὴν ἐπιβάλλειν), though we do not know what that amount was. The Proedri could impose a fine as high as one mina, the Senate as high as five minæ (Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 34).

Superintendence of Music and Gymnastic. Educational function.

Music and Gymnastic. — For each of these, two magisterial functions must be constituted: one to superintend the teaching and training — the other, to preside over the matches and distribution of prizes. In regard to the musical matches, one President must be appointed for the monôdic single-headed exhibitions, another for the choric exhibitions. The President of the former must be not less than thirty years of age. The President of the latter must be not less than forty years of age. In order to appoint a fit person, the Nomophylakes shall constrain all the citizens whom they believe to be conversant with monôdic or choric matters, to assemble and agree on a preliminary list of ten candidates, who shall undergo a Dokimasy or examination, upon the single point of skill and competency, and no other. If they all pass, recourse shall be had to lot, and the one who draws the first lot shall be President for the year. In regard to the gymnastic matches, of men as well as of horses, the citizens of the three richest classes shall be constrained to come together (those of the fourth class may come, or stay away, as they please), and to fix upon twenty suitable persons; who shall undergo the Dokimasy, and out of whom three shall be selected by lot as Presidents of gymnastic contests for the year.192

192  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 764-765.

Grave duties of the Minister of Education — precautions in electing him.

We observe that in the nomination of Presidents for the musical and gymnastic contests, Plato adopts the same double-faced machinery as before — To please the oligarchical sentiment by treating the votes of the rich as indispensable, the votes of the poor as indifferent — To please the democratical sentiment by a partial application of the lot. But in regard to the President of musical and gymnastic education or training, he prescribes a very different manner of choice. He declares this to be the most important function in the city. Upon the way in which the Minister of Education discharges his functions, the ultimate character of the citizens will mainly turn. Accordingly, this magistrate must be a man of fifty years of age, father of legitimate children — and, if possible, of daughters as well as sons. He must also be one of the thirty-seven Nomophylakes. He will be selected, not by the votes of the citizens generally, but by the votes of all the magistrates (except the annual Councillors and the Prytanes): such votes being deposited secretly in the temple of Apollo. The person who obtains the most of these secret votes will be submitted to a farther Dokimasy by all the voting magistrates (except the Nomophylakes themselves), and will, if approved, be constituted President of musical and gymnastic education for five years.193

193  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 765-766.

Judicial duties.

From the magisterial authority in his city, Plato now passes to the judicial or dikastic. He remarks that no peremptory line of separation can be drawn between the two. Every magistrate exercises judicial functions on some matters: every dikast, on the days when he sits, decides magisterially.194 He then proceeds to distinguish (as the Attic forum did) between two sorts of causes:— Private, disputes between man and man, where the persons complaining of being wronged are one or a few individuals — Public, where the party wronged or alleged to be wronged is the state.195

194  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 767 A.

195  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 767 B.

This was the main distinction adopted in the Attic law. 1. Complaint, founded upon injury alleged to be done to the interest of some individual — ἀγὼν ἴδιος, δίκη ἰδία, δίκη in the narrow sense. 2. Complaint, founded upon injury alleged to be done towards some interest not strictly individual — ἀγὼν δημόσιος, δίκη δημοσία, γραφή (Meier und Schömann, der Attische Prozess, p. 162).

Private Causes — how tried.

In regard to the private causes, he institutes Tribe-Dikasteries, taken by lot out of the citizens of each tribe, and applied without notice to each particular cause as it comes on, so that no one can know beforehand in what cause he is to adjudicate, nor can any one be solicited or bribed.196 He institutes farthermore a superior court of appeal, formed every year by the various Boards of Magistrates, each choosing out of its own body the most esteemed member, subject to approval by an ensuing Dokimasy.197 When one citizen believes himself to be wronged by another, he must first submit the complaint to arbitration by neighbours and common friends. If this arbitration fails to prove satisfactory, he must next bring the complaint before the Tribe-Dikastery. Should their decision prove unsatisfactory, the case may be brought (seemingly by either of the parties) before the superior court of appeal, whose decision will be final. Plato directs that this superior Court shall hold its sittings publicly, in presence of all the Magistrates and all the Councillors, as well as of any other citizen who may choose to attend. The members of the Court are to give their votes openly.198 Should they be suspected of injustice or corruption, they may be impeached before the Nomophylakes; who, if convinced of their guilt, shall compel them to make good the wrong done, and shall impose penalties besides, if the case requires.199

196  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 768 B.

197  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 767-C-D. γιγνέσθω κοινὸν ἅπασι τοῖς τὸ τρίτον ἀμφισβητοῦσιν ἰδιώταις πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

198  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 767 A-D, 768 B. Compare xii. p. 956.

199  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 767 E.

Public Causes must be tried directly by the citizens — strong feeling among Greeks about this.

In regard to Public Causes, Plato makes unusual concession to a feeling much prevalent in Greece, and especially potent at Athens. Where the wrong done is to the public, he recognises that the citizens generally will not submit to be excluded from the personal cognizance of it: the citizen excluded from that privilege feels as if he had no share in the city.200 If one citizen accuses another of treason, or peculation, or other wrong towards the public, the accusation shall be originated at first, and decided at last, before the general body of citizens. But after having been originated before this general assembly, the charge must be submitted to an intermediate stage of examination, before three of the principal Boards of Magistrates; who shall sift the allegations of the accuser, as well as the defence of the accused. These commissioners (we must presume) will make a report on the case, which report will be brought before the general assembly; who will then adjudicate upon it finally, and condemn or acquit as they think right.201

200  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 768 B. ὁ γὰρ ἀκοινώνητος ὢν ἐξουσίας τοῦ συνδικάζειν, ἡγεῖται τὸ παράπαν τῆς πόλεως οὐ μέτοχος εἶναι. This is a remarkable indication about the tone of Grecian feeling from a very adverse witness.

201  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 768 A. τὴν δὲ βάσανον ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀρχαῖς τρισίν, &c.

Here the word βάσανος is used in a much more extended sense than usual, so as to include the whole process of judicial enquiry.

Plato’s way of meeting this feeling — intermediate inquiry and report by a special Commissioner.

This proposition deserves notice. Plato proclaims his disapprobation of the numerous Dikasteries in Athens, wherein the Dikasts sat, heard, and voted — perhaps with applause or murmurs, but with no searching questions of their own — leaving the whole speech to the parties and their witnesses. To decide justly (he says), the judicial authority must not remain silent, but must speak more than the parties, and must undertake the substantial conduct of the inquiry. No numerous assembly — nor even any few, unless they be intelligent — are competent to such a duty: nor even an intelligent few, without much time and patience.202 To secure such an inquiry on these public causes — as far as is possible consistent with the necessity of leaving the final decision to the general assembly — is the object of Plato’s last-mentioned proposition. It is one of the most judicious propositions in his whole scheme.

202  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 766 E.

What laws the magistrates are to enforce — Many details must be left to the Nomophylakes.

Plato has now constituted the magistrates and the judicial machinery. It is time to specify the laws which they are to obey and to enforce.203

203  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 768 E.

Plato considers the Nomophylakes (together with another board called the Nocturnal Council, to be hereafter described) as the permanent representatives of himself: destined to ensure that the grand ethical purpose of the lawgiver shall be constantly kept in view, and to supply what may have been left wanting in the original programme.204 Especially at the first beginning, provision will be found wanting in many details, which the Nomophylakes will take care to supply. In respect to the choric festivals, which are of so much importance for the training and intercourse of young men and maidens, the lawgiver must trust to the Choric Superintendents and the Nomophylakes for regulating, by their experience, much which he cannot foresee. But an experience of ten years will enable them to make all the modifications and additions required; and after that period they shall fix and consecrate in perpetuity the ceremonies as they then stand, forbidding all farther change. Neither in that nor in any other arrangement shall any subsequent change be allowed, except on the unanimous requisition of all the magistrates, all the people, and all the oracles of the Gods.205

204  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 770 C-E.

205  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 772 C-D.

Marriage-Laws — Rich husbands to choose poor wives — No dowries — costly marriage festivals are forbidden.

The choric festivals, in which the youths and maidens will take part, both of them naked as far as a sober modesty will allow, present occasions for mutual acquaintance between them, which serves as foundation for marriage.206 At the age of twenty-five a young man is permitted to marry; and before the age of thirty-five he is required to marry, under penalty of fine and disgrace, if he does not.207 Plato introduces here a discourse, in the form of a prologue to his marriage law, wherein he impresses on young men the general principles according to which they ought to choose their wives. The received sentiment, which disposes a rich youth to choose his wife from a rich family, is (in Plato’s view) altogether wrong. Rich husbands ought to assort themselves with poor wives; and in general the characters of husband and wife ought to be opposite rather than similar, in order that the offspring may not inherit the defects of either.208 The religious ceremonies antecedent to marriage are to be regulated by the Exêgêtæ. A costly marriage feast — and, above all, drunkenness at that feast — are emphatically forbidden. Any offspring begotten when the parent is in this disorderly and insane condition,209 will probably be vitiated from the beginning. Out of the two residences which every citizen’s lot will comprise, one must be allotted to the son when the son marries.210

206  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 772 A. γυμνοὺς καὶ γυμνὰς μέχρι περ αἰδοῦς σώφρονος ἑκάστων, &c.

207  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 772 E, 774 A.

208  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 773 C-D.

Compare the Politikus, pp. 310-311, where the necessity is insisted on of coupling in marriage two persons of opposite dispositions — τὸ ἀνδρεῖον ἦθος with τὸ κόσμιον ἦθος. There is a natural inclination (Plato says) for the ἀνδρεῖοι to intermarry with each other, and for the κόσμιοι to do the like: but the lawgiver must contend against this. If this be permitted, each of the breeds will degenerate through excess of its own peculiarity.

209  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 775.

210  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 776 A.

Laws about slavery. Slaves to be well fed, and never treated with cruelty or insolence. The master must not converse with them.

Plato now enters upon his laws respecting property; and first of all upon the most critical variety of property; that in human beings, or slavery. This he declares to be a subject full of difficulty. There is much difference of opinion on the subject. Some speak of slaves as deserving trust and good treatment, in proof of which various anecdotes of exemplary fidelity on their part are cited: others again regard them as incorrigibly debased, fit for nothing better than the whip and spur, like cattle. Then moreover the modified form of slavery, such as that of the Helots in Laconia, and the Penestæ in Thessaly, has been found full of danger and embarrassment, though the Spartans themselves are well satisfied with it.211 (It will be recollected that the Helots and Penestæ were not slaves bought and imported from abroad, as the slaves in Attica were, but conquered Hellenic communities who had been degraded from freedom into slavery, and from the condition of independent proprietorship into that of tributary tenants or serfs; but with the right to remain permanently on their lands, without ever being sold for exportation.) This form of slavery (where the slaves are of the same race and language, with reciprocal bonds of sympathy towards each other) Plato denounces as especially dangerous. Care must be taken that there shall be among the slaves as little fellowship of language and feelings as possible; but they must be well fed: moreover everything like cruelty and insolence in dealing with them must be avoided, even more carefully than in dealing with freemen. This he prescribes partly for the protection of the slave himself, but still more for the interest of the master: whose intrinsic virtue, or want of virtue, will be best tested by his behaviour as a master. The slaves must be punished judicially, when they deserve it. But the master must never exhort or admonish them, as he would address himself to a freeman: he must never say a word to them, except to give an order: above all, he must abstain from all banter and joking, either with male or female slaves.212 Many foolish masters indulge in such behaviour, which emboldens the slaves to give themselves airs, and renders the task of governing them almost impracticable.213

211  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 777. He alludes also to the enslavement of the indigenous population called the Mariandyni, by the Grecian colonists of Herakleia on the southern coast of the Euxine; and to the disturbances and disorders which had occurred through movements of the slaves in Southern Italy. Probably this last may be connected with that revolt whereby the Bruttians became enfranchised; but we can make out nothing definite from Plato’s language.

212  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 777 D-E. κολάζειν γε μὴν ἐν δίκη δούλους ἀεὶ, καὶ μὴ νουθετοῦντας ὡς ἐλευθέρους θρύπτεσθαι ποιεῖν. Τὴν δὲ οἰκετοῦ πρόσρησιν χρὴ σχεδὸν ἐπίταξιν πᾶσαν γίγνεσθαι, μὴ προσπαίζοντας μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς οἰκεταῖς, μήτ’ οὖν θηλείαις μήτ’ ἄῤῥεσιν.

213  Aristotle (Polit. vii. p. 1330, a. 27; Œconom. i. p. 1344, b. 18) agrees with Plato as to the danger of having slaves who speak the same language and are of the same tribes, with common lineage and sympathies. He disapproves of anything which tends to impart spirit and independence to the slave’s character; and he takes occasion from hence to deduce some objections against various arrangements of the Platonic Republic (Politic. ii. p. 1264, a. 35). These are precautions — πρὸς τὸ μηδὲν νεωτερίζειν. But Aristotle dissents from Plato on another point — where Plato enjoins that the master shall not exhort or admonish his slave, but shall address to him no word except the word of command (Aristot. Politic. i. p. 1260, b. 5). Aristotle says that there is a certain special and inferior kind of ἀρετὴ which the slave can possess and ought to possess; that this ought to be communicated to him by the admonition and exhortation of the master; and that the master ought to admonish his slaves even more than he admonishes his children. The slave requires a certain ἠθικὴν ἀρετήν, so that he may not be hindered from his duty by ἀκολασία or δειλία: but it is an ἀρετὴ μικρά: the courage required for the slave is ὑπηρετική, that for the master ἀρχική (ib. p. 1260, a. 22-35). This measure of virtue the master must impart to the slave by exhortation, over and above the orders which he gives as to the performance of work. It would appear, however, that in Aristotle’s time there were various persons who denied that there was any ἀρετὴ belonging to a slave — παρὰ τὰς ὀργανικὰς καὶ διακονικάς (p. 1259, b. 23). Upon this last theory is founded the injunction of Plato which Aristotle here controverts.

What Aristotle says about slaves in the fifth chapter of the first book of his Œconomica, is superior to what he says in the Politica, and superior to anything which we read in the Platonic Treatise De Legibus.

Circular form for the city — Temples in the centre — No walls round it.

As to the construction of the city, Plato prescribes that its external contour shall be of circular form, encircling the summit of an eminence, with the agora near the centre. The temples of the Gods shall be planted around the agora, and the buildings for gymnasia and schooling, for theatrical representation, for magistrative, administrative, and judicial business, near at hand. Plato follows the example of Sparta in prohibiting any special outer wall for the fortification of the city, which he treats as an indication of weakness and timidity: nevertheless he suggests that the houses constituting the city may be erected on such a plan, and in such connection, as to be equivalent to a fortification.214 When once the city is erected, the Astynomi or Ædiles are to be charged with the duty of maintaining its integrity and cleanliness.

214  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 778-779.

Mode of life prescribed to new-married couples They are to take the best care about good procreation for the city.

Plato next proceeds to regulate the mode of life proper for all his new-married couples. He proclaims broadly that large interference with private and individual life is unavoidable; and that no great public reform can be accomplished without it.215 He points out that this principle was nowhere sufficiently admitted: not even at Sparta, where it was carried farther than anywhere else. Even the Spartans and Kretans adopted the public mess-table only for males, and not for females.216 In Plato’s view, it is essential for both. He would greatly prefer (as announced already in his Republic) that it should be one and the same for both — males and females taking their meals together.

215  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 780 A, vii. p. 790 A.

216  Plato. Legg. vi. p. 781 A.

Board of superintending matrons.

The newly-married couples are enjoined to bestow their best attention upon the production of handsome and well-constituted children: this being their primary duty to the city for ten years after their marriage. Their conduct will be watched by a Board of Matrons, chosen for the purpose by the Nomophylakes, and assembling every day in the temple of Eileithuia. In case of any dispute, or unfaithful or unseemly conduct, these Matrons will visit them to admonish or threaten, if they see reason. Should such interference fail of effect, the Matrons will apprise the Nomophylakes, who will on their parts admonish and censure, and will at last denounce the delinquents, if still refractory, to the public authority. The delinquents will then be disgraced, and debarred from the public ceremonies, unless they can clear themselves by indicting and convicting their accusers before the public tribunal.217

217  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 784.

Age fixed for marriage. During the first ten years the couple are under obligation to procreate for the city — Restrictions during these ten years.

The age of marriage is fixed at from thirty to thirty-five for males, from sixteen to twenty for females. The first ten years after marriage are considered as appropriated to the production of children for the city, and are subject to the strict supervision above mentioned. If any couple have no offspring for ten years, the marriage shall be dissolved by authority. After ten years the supervision is suspended, and the couple are left to themselves. If either of them shall commit an infidelity with another person still under the decennial restriction, the party so offending is liable to the same penalty as if he were still himself also under it.218 But if the person with whom infidelity is committed be not under that restriction, no penalty will be incurred beyond a certain general discredit, as compared with others whose conduct is blameless, and who will receive greater honour. However, Plato advises that nothing shall be said in the law respecting the conduct of married couples after the period of decennial restriction has elapsed, unless there be some grave scandal to call attention to the subject.219

218  Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 784-785.

219  Plato, Legg. vi. p. 785 A. καὶ μετριαζόντων μὲν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν πλειόνων ἀνομοθέτητα σιγῇ κείσθω, ἀκοσμούντων δὲ νομοθετηθέντα ταύτῃ πραττέσθω, &c.

How infants are to be brought up — Nurses — Perpetual regulated movements — useful for toning down violent emotions.

Plato now proceeds to treat about the children just born. The principle of separate family being admitted in the Treatise De Legibus, he refrains from promulgating any peremptory laws on this subject, because it is impossible for the lawgiver or the magistrate to enter into each private house, and to enforce obedience on such minute and numerous details: while it would be discreditable for him to command what he could not enforce, and it would moreover accustom citizens to disobey the law with impunity. Still, however, Plato220 thinks it useful to deliver some general advice, which he hopes that fathers and mothers will spontaneously follow. He begins with the infant as soon as born, and even before birth. The mother during pregnancy is admonished to take regular exercise; the infant when born must be carried about constantly in the nurse’s arms. The invigorating effects of such gestation are illustrated by the practice of Athenian cock-fighters, who cause the cocks while under training to be carried about under the arms of attendants in long walks.221 Besides that the nurses (slaves) must be strong women, there must also be more than one to each infant, in order that he may be sufficiently carried about. He must be kept in swaddling-clothes for the first two years, and must not be allowed to walk until he is three years of age.222 The perpetual movement and dandling, in the arms of the nurse, produces a good effect not only on the health and bodily force of the infant, but also upon his emotions.223 The infant ought to be kept (if it were possible) in movement as constant and unceasing as if he were on shipboard. Nurses know this by experience, when they lull to sleep an insomnious child, not by holding him still, but by swinging him about in their arms, and by singing a ditty. So likewise the insane and furious emotions inspired by Dionysus (also by Zeus, by the mother of the Gods, &c.) are appeased by the regulated movement, dance and music, solemnly performed at the ceremonial worship of the God who excited the emotions. These are different varieties of fear and perturbation: they are morbid internal movements, which we overpower and heal by muscular and rhythmical movements impressed from without, with appropriate music and religious solemnities.224

220  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 788-790 A.

221  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 789.

222  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 789 E, 790 A.

223  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 790 C-D. λάβωμεν τοίνυν τοῦτο οἷον στοιχεῖον ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα σώματός τε καὶ ψυχῆς τῶν πάνυ νέων, τὴν τιθήνησιν καὶ κίνησιν, γιγνομένην ὅτι μάλιστα διὰ πάσης νυκτός τε καὶ ἡμέρας, ὡς ἔστι ξύμφορος ἅπασι μέν, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τοῖς ὅ, τι νεωτάτοισι, καὶ οἰκεῖν, εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν, οἷον ἀεὶ πλέοντας· νῦν δ’ ὡς ἐγγύτατα τούτου ποιεῖν δεῖ περὶ τὰ νεογενῆ παίδων θρέμματα.

224  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 790 E-791 A. δειμαίνειν ἐστί που ταῦτ’ ἀμφότερα τὰ πάθη, καὶ ἔστι δείματα δι’ ἕξιν φαύλην τῆς ψυχῆς τινά. ὅταν οὖν ἔξωθέν τις προσφέρη τοῖς τοιούτοις πάθεσι σεισμόν, ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς φοβερὰν οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν, κρατήσασα δὲ γαλήνην ἡσυχίαν τῆς περὶ τὰ τῆς καρδίας χαλεπῆς γενομένης ἑκάστων πηδήσεως.

About the effect of the movement, bustle, noise, and solemn exhibitions, &c., of a Grecian festival, in appeasing the over-wrought internal excitement of those who took part in it, see Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 689.

Compare Euripid. Hippolyt. 141, where the Chorus addresses the love-sick Phædra:—

σὺ τἄρ’ ἔνθεος, ὦ κούρα,

εἴτ’ ἐκ Πανὸς εἴθ’ Ἑκάτας,

ἢ σεμνῶν Κορυβάντων,

ἢ ματρὸς ὀρείας φοιτᾷς.

Also Eurip. Medea, 1172 about Πανὸς ὀργάς.

To guard the child, during the first three years of his life, against disturbing fears, or at least to teach him to conquer them when they may spring up, is to lay the best foundation of a fearless character for the future.225 By extreme indulgence he would be rendered wayward: by extreme harshness his spirit would be broken.226 A middle course ought to be pursued, guarding him against pains as far as may be, yet at the same time keeping pleasures out of his reach, especially the stronger pleasures: thus shall we form in him a gentle and propitious disposition, such as that which we ascribe to the Gods.227

225  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 791 C.

226  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 791 D.

227  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 792 C-D.

Choric and orchestic movements, their effect in discharging strong emotions.

The comparison made here by Plato between the effect produced by these various religious ceremonies upon the mind of the votary, and that produced by the dandling of the nurse upon the perturbed child in her arms, is remarkable. In both, the evil is the same — unfounded and irrational fear — an emotional disturbance within: in both, the remedy is the same — regulated muscular movement and excitement from without: more gentle in the case of the infant, more violent in the case of the adult. Emotion is a complex fact, physical as well as mental; and the physical aspect and basis of it (known to Aristotle228 as well as to Plato) is here brought to view. To speak the language of modern science (with which their views here harmonise, in spite of their imperfect acquaintance with human anatomy), if the energies of the nervous system are overwrought within, they may be diverted into a new channel by bodily movements at once strenuous and measured, and may thus be discharged in a way tranquillising to the emotions. This is Plato’s theory about the healing effects of the choric and orchestic religious ceremonies of his day. The God was believed first to produce the distressing excitement within — then to suggest and enjoin (even to share in) the ceremonial movements for the purpose of relieving it. The votary is brought back from the condition of comparative madness to that of sober reason.229 Strong emotion of any kind is, in Plato’s view, a state of distemper. The observances here prescribed respecting wise regulation of the emotions, especially in young children, are considered by Plato as not being laws in the proper and positive sense, but as the unwritten customs, habits, rules, discipline, &c., upon which all positive laws repose and depend. Though they appear to go into excessive and petty details, yet unless they be well understood and efficaciously realised, the laws enacted will fail to attain their purpose.230

228  Aristot. De Animâ, i. 1.

229  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 791 B. κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν.

Servius observes (Not. ad Virgil. Bucol. v. 73):— “Sane, ut in religionibus saltaretur, hæc ratio est, quod nullam majores nostri partem corporis esse voluerunt, quæ non sentiret religionem. Nam cantus ad animam, saltatio ad mobilitatem pertinet corporis.”

230  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 793 C-D.

Training of boys and girls.

Pursuant to this view of the essential dependence of leges upon mores, Plato continues his directions about the training of children. From the age of three to six, the child must be supplied with amusements, under a gentle but sufficient controul. The children of both sexes will meet daily at the various temples near at hand, with discreet matrons to preside over them, and will find amusement for each other. At six years of age the boys and girls will be separated, and will be consigned to different male and female tutors. The boys shall learn riding, military exercise, and the use of the various weapons of war. The girls shall learn these very same things also, if it be possible. Plato is most anxious that they should learn, but he fears that the feelings of the community will not tolerate the practice.231 All the teaching will be conducted under the superintendence of teachers, female as well as male: competent individuals, of both sexes, being appointed to the functions of command without distinction.232 The children will be taught to use their left hands as effectively as their right.233 Wrestling shall be taught up to a certain point, to improve the strength and flexibility of the limbs; but elaborate wrestling and pugilism is disapproved. Imitative dancing, choric movements, and procession, shall also be taught, but always in arms, to familiarise the youth with military details.234

231  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 794 B-D.

232  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 795 D. ἀρχούσαις τε καὶ ἄρχουσι. Also p. 806 E.

233  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 794-795, 804 D.

234  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 796 C-D.

Musical and literary teaching for youth — Poetry, songs, music, dances, must all be fixed by authority, and never changed — Mischief done by poets aiming to please.

Plato now enters upon the musical and literary teaching proper for the youthful portion of his community. Poetry, music, and dancing, as connected with the service and propitiation of the Gods, are in the first instance recreative and amusing; but they also involve serious consequences.235 It is most important to the community that these exercises should not only be well arranged, but that when arranged they should be fixed by authority, so as to prevent all innovations or deviations by individual taste. Plato here repeats, with emphasis, his commendation of the Egyptian practice to consecrate all the songs, dances, and festive ceremonies, and to tolerate no others whatever.236 Change is in itself a most serious evil, and change in one department provokes an appetite for change in all. Plato forbids all innovation, even in matters of detail, such as the shape of vessels or articles of furniture.237 He allows no poet to circulate any ode except such as is in full harmony with the declaration of the lawgiver respecting good and evil. All the old poems must be sifted and weeded. All new hymns and prayers to the Gods, even before they are shown to a single individual, must be examined by Censors above fifty years of age, in order that it may be seen whether the poet knows what he ought to praise or blame, and what he ought to pray for. In general, the poets do not know what is good and what is evil. By mistaken prayers — especially for wealth, which the lawgiver discountenances as prejudicial — they may bring down great mischief upon the city.238 Different songs must be composed for the two sexes: songs of a bold and martial character for males — of a sober and quiet character for females.239 But the poet must on no account cultivate “the sweet Muse,” or make it his direct aim to produce emotions delightful to the audience. The sound and useful music will always in the end become agreeable, provided the pupils hear it from their earliest childhood, and hear nothing else.240 Plato censures the tragic representations exhibited in the Grecian cities (at Athens, more than anywhere else) as being unseemly, and even impious, because, close to the altar where sacrifice was offered to the Gods, choric and dramatic performances of the most touching and pathetic character were exhibited. The poet who gained the prize was he who touched most deeply the tender emotions of the audience, and caused the greatest flow of tears among them. Now, in the opinion of Plato, the exhibition of so much human misery, and the communication of so much sorrowful sympathy, was most unsuitable to the festival day, and offensive to the Gods. It was tolerable only on the inauspicious days of the year, and when exhibited by hired Karian mourners, such as those who wailed loudly at funerals. The music at the festivals ought to have no emotional character, except that of gentle, kindly, auspicious cheerfulness.241

235  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 803 C-E.

236  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 799.

237  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 797.

238  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 800 A, 801 B, 802 B.

239  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 802 D-E.

240  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 802 C. καὶ μὴ παρατιθεμένης τῆς γλυκείας Μούσης.

241  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800 B-E. 801 A: εὐφημία, καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ τῆς ᾠδῆς γένος εὔφημον ἡμῖν πάντῃ πάντως ὑπαρχέτω.

This is a remarkable declaration of Plato, condemning the tragic representations at Athens. Compare Gorgias, p. 501; Republic, x. p. 605; also about the effect on the spectators, Ion, p. 535 E.

The idea of εὐφημία is more negative than positive; it is often shown by silence. The δυσφήμιαι (Soph. Phil. 10), or βλασφημία, as Plato calls it, are the positive act or ill-omened manifestation. Plato, Phædon, p. 117: ἐν εὐφημίᾳ χρὴ τελευτᾷν.

Boys and girls to learn letters and the lyre, from ten to thirteen years of age. Masters will teach the laws and homilies of the lawgiver, and licensed extracts from the poets.

At ten years old, the boys and girls (who have hitherto been exercised in recitation, singing, dancing, &c.) are to learn their letters, or reading and writing. They will continue this process until thirteen years old. They will learn the use of the lyre, for three years. The same period and duration is fixed for all of them, not depending at all upon the judgment or preference of the parents.242 It is sufficient if they learn to read and and write tolerably, without aiming to do it either quickly or very well. The boys will be marched to school at daybreak every morning, under the care of a tutor, who is chosen by the magistrate for the purpose of keeping them under constant supervision and discipline.243 The masters for teaching will be special persons paid for the duty, usually foreigners.244 They will be allowed to teach nothing except the laws and homilies of the lawgiver, together with any selections from existing poets which may be in full harmony with these.245 Plato here proclaims how highly he is himself delighted with his own string of homilies: which are not merely exhortations useful to be heard, but also have the charm of poetry, and have been aided by inspirations from the Gods.246 As for the poets themselves, whether serious or comic, whose works were commonly employed in teaching, being committed wholly or partially to memory — Plato repudiates them as embodying a large proportion of mischievous doctrine which his pupils ought never to hear. Much reading, or much learning, he discountenances as dangerous to youths.247

242  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 810 A.

243  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 808 C, 809 B.

244  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 804 D, 813 E.

245  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 811 E. Any new poet who wishes to exhibit must submit his compositions to the Censors. P. 817 C-D.

246  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 811 C-D. οὐκ ἄνευ τινὸς ἐπιπνοίας θεῶν … μάλα ἡσθῆναι. Stallbaum in his note (p. 337) treats this as said in jest (faceté dicit). To me it seems sober earnest, and quite in character with the didactic solemnity of the whole treatise. Plato himself would have been astonished (I think) at the note of his commentator.

247  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 810-811. κίνδυνόν φημι εἶναι φέρουσαν τοῖς παισὶ τὴν πολυμαθίαν (811 B). Compare p. 819 A.

The teaching is to be simple, and common to both sexes.

The teaching of the harp and of music (occupying the three years from thirteen to sixteen, after the three preceding years of teaching letters) will not be suffered to extend to any elaborate or complicated combinations. The melody will be simple: the measure grave and dignified. The imitative movement or dancing will exhibit only the gestures and demeanour suitable to the virtuous man in the various situations of life, whether warlike or pacific:248 the subject-matter of the songs or hymns will be regulated (as above described) by censorial authority. The practice will be consecrated and unchangeable, under the supervision of a magistrate for education.249

248  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 812 C-D. Still Plato allows the exhibition, under certain conditions, of low, comic, ludicrous dances; yet not by any freemen or citizens, but by slaves and hired persons of mean character. He even considers it necessary that the citizens should see such low exhibitions occasionally, in order to appreciate by contrast the excellence of their own dignified exhibitions. Of two opposites you cannot know the one unless you also learn to know the other — ἄνευ γὰρ γελοίων τὰ σπουδαῖα καὶ πάντων τῶν ἐναντίων τὰ ἐναντία μαθεῖν μὲν οὐ δυνατόν, εἰ μέλλει τις φρόνιμος ἔσεσθαι, ποιεῖν δὲ οὐκ ἂν δυνατὸν ἀμφότερα, &c. (p. 816 E).

249  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 813 A.

All this teaching is imparted to the youth of both sexes: to boys, by male teachers — to girls, by female teachers, both of them paid. The training in gymnastic and military exercises and in arms, is also common to girls and boys.250 Plato deems it disgraceful that the females shall be brought up timorous and helpless — unable to aid in defending the city when it is menaced, and even unmanning the male citizens by demonstrations of terror.251

250  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 813 C-E, 814-815. πολεμικὴ ὄρχησις — εἰρηνική or ἀπόλεμος ὄρχησις.

251  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 814 B. See Æschylus, Sept. adv. Thebas, 172-220.

Rudiments of arithmetic and geometry to be taught.

We next come to arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Plato directs that all his citizens shall learn the rudiments of these sciences — not for the reason urged by most persons, because of the necessities of practical life (which reason he discards as extravagantly silly, though his master Sokrates was among those who urged it) — but because these are endowments belonging to the divine nature, and because without them no man can become a God, Dæmon, or Hero, capable of watching over mankind.252 In Egypt elementary arithmetic and geometry were extensively taught to boys — but very little in Greece:253 though he intimates that both in Egypt, and in the Phenician towns, they were turned only to purposes of traffic, and were joined with sordid dispositions which a good lawgiver ought to correct by other provisions. In the Platonic city, both arithmetic and geometry will be taught, so far as to guard the youth against absurd blunders about measurement, and against confusion of incommensurable lines and spaces with commensurable. Such blunders are now often made by Greeks.254 By a good method, the teaching of these sciences may be made attractive and interesting; so that no force will be required to compel youth to learn.255

252  Plato. Legg. vii. p. 812 B-C. οὗτος πάντως τῶν λόγων εὐηθέστατός ἐστι μακρῷ. In interpreting this curious passage we must remember that regularity, symmetry, exact numerical proportion, &c., are the primary characteristics of the divine agents in Plato’s view: of Uranus and the Stars, as the first of them, compare Æschyl. Prometh. 460.

253  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 818 E, 819 B-D. ᾐσχύνθην … ὑπὲρ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων. Compare Legg. v. p. 747 C, and Republic, iv. p. 436 A.

Respecting the distinction between θεοί, δαίμονες, ἥρωες, see Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, pp. 104-115.

254  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 819 E, 820 A-C.

255  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 820 D. μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἅμα μανθανόμενα ὠφελήσει.

I transcribe here the curious passage which we read a little before.

Plat. Legg. vii. p. 819 A-C. Τοσάδε τοίνυν ἕκαστα χρὴ φάναι μανθάνειν δεῖν τοὺς ἐλευθέρους, ὅσα καὶ πάμπολυς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ παίδων ὄχλος ἅμα γράμμασι μανθάνει. Πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ περὶ λογισμοὺς ἀτεχνῶς παισὶν ἐξευρημένα μαθήματα, μετὰ παιδιᾶς τε καὶ ἡδονῆς μανθάνειν· μήλων τέ τινῶν διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν ἅμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν, ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν … καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πως διαδιδόντες, ὅπερ εἶπον, εἰς παιδιὰν ἐναρμόττοντες τὰς τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἀριθμῶν χρήσεις, ὠφελοῦσι τοὺς μανθάνοντας εἰς τε τὰς τῶν στρατοπέδων τάξεις καὶ ἀγωγὰς καὶ στρατείας καὶ εἰς οἰκονομίας αὖ· καὶ πάντως χρησιμωτέρους αὐτοὺς αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐγρηγορότας μᾶλλον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀπεργάζονται.

The information here given is valuable respecting the extensive teaching of elementary arithmetic as well as of letters among Egyptian boys, far more extensive than among Hellenic boys. The priests especially, in Egypt a numerous order, taught these matters to their own sons (Diodor. i. 81), probably to other boys also. The information is valuable too in another point of view, as respects the method of teaching arithmetic to boys; not by abstract numbers, nor by simple effort of memory in the repetition of a multiplication-table, but by concrete examples and illustrations exhibited to sense in familiar objects. The importance of this concrete method, both in facilitating comprehension and in interesting the youthful learner, are strongly insisted on by Plato, as they have been also by some of the ablest modern teachers of elementary arithmetic: see Professor Leslie’s Philosophy of Arithmetic, and Mr. Horace Grant’s Arithmetic for Young Children and Second Stage of Arithmetic. The following passage from a work of Sir John Herschel (Review of Whewell’s History of Inductive Sciences, in the Quarterly Review, June, 1841) bears a striking and curious analogy to the sentences above transcribed from Plato:— “Number we cannot help regarding as an abstraction, and consequently its general properties or its axioms to be of necessity inductively concluded from the consideration of particular cases. And surely this is the way in which children do acquire their knowledge of number, and in which they learn its axioms. The apples and the marbles are put in requisition (μήλων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων, Plato), and through the multitude of gingerbread nuts their ideas acquire clearness, precision, and generality.”

I borrow the above references from Mr. John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, Book ii. ch. vi. p. 335, ed. 1. They are annexed as a note to the valuable chapters of his work on Demonstration and Necessary Truths, in which he shows that the truth so-called, both in Geometry and Arithmetic, rest upon inductive evidence.

“The fundamental truths of the Science of Number all rest upon the evidence of sense: they are proved by showing to our eyes and to our fingers that any given number of objects, ten balls for example, may by separation and re-arrangement exhibit to our senses all the different sets of numbers, the sum of which is equal to ten. All the improved methods of teaching arithmetic to children proceed upon a knowledge of this fact. All who wish to carry the child’s mind along with them in learning arithmetic — all who (as Dr. Biber in his remarkable Letters on Education expresses it) wish to teach numbers and not mere ciphers — now teach it through the evidence of the senses, in the manner we have described” (p. 335).

Astronomy must be taught, in order that the citizens may not assert libellous falsehoods respecting the heavenly bodies.

Astronomy must also be taught up to a certain point, in order that the youth may imbibe correct belief respecting those great Divinities — Hêlios, Selênê, and the Planets — or may at any rate be protected from the danger of unconsciously advancing false affirmations about them, discreditable to their dignity. The general public consider it impious to study the Kosmos and the celestial bodies, with a view to detect the causes of what occurs:256 while at the same time they assert that the movements of Hêlios and Selênê are irregular, and they call the planets Wanderers. Regular action is (in Plato’s view) the characteristic mark of what is good and perfect: irregularity is the foremost of all defects, and cannot without blasphemy be imputed to any of the celestial bodies. Moreover, many persons also assert untruly, that among the celestial bodies the one which is really the slowest mover, moves the fastest — and that the one which is really the fastest mover, moves the slowest. How foolish would it appear (continues Plato) if they made the like mistake about the Olympic runners, and if they selected the defeated competitor, instead of the victor, to be crowned and celebrated in panegyrical odes! How offensive is such falsehood, when applied to the great Gods in the heavens! Each of them has in reality one uniform circular movement, though they appear to have many and variable movements. Our youth must be taught enough of astronomy to guard against such heresies. The study of astronomy up to this point, far from being impious, is indispensable as a safeguard against impiety.257 Plato intimates that these astronomical truths were of recent acquisition, even to himself.258

256  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 821 A. We must observe that the Athenian (who here represents Plato himself) does not give this repugnance to astronomical study as his own feeling, but, on the contrary, as a prejudice from which he dissents. There is no ground, therefore, so far as this passage is concerned, for the charge of contradiction advanced by Velleius against Plato in Cicero De Nat. Deor. i. 12, 30.

257  Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 821 B-822 C. καταψευδόμεθα νῦν, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, Ἕλληνες πάντες μεγάλων θεῶν, Ἡλίου τε ἅμα καὶ Σελήνης (821 B) … περὶ θεῶν τῶν κατ’ οὔρανον τούς γε ἡμετέρους πολίτας τε καὶ τοὺς νέους τὸ μέχρι τοσούτου μαθεῖν περὶ ἁπάντων τούτων, μέχρι τοῦ μὴ βλασφημεῖν περὶ αὐτά, εὐφημεῖν δὲ ἀεὶ θύοντας τε καὶ ἐν εὐχαῖς εὐχομένους εὐσεβως (821C-D). The five Planets were distinguished and named, and their periods to a certain extent understood, by Plato; but by many persons in his day the word Planet was understood more generally as comprehending all the celestial bodies, sun and moon among them — (except fixed stars) therefore comets also — τὰ μὴ ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ περιφορᾷ ὄντα, Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 5, where an opinion is ascribed to Sokrates quite opposed to that which Plato here expresses. See Schaubach, Geschichte der Astronomie, pp. 212-477.

258  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 819 D, 821 E.

This portion of the Leges is obscure, and would be hardly intelligible if it were not illustrated by a passage in the Timæus (p. 38). Even with such help it is difficult, and has been understood differently by different interpreters. Proklus (in Timæum, pp. 262-263) and Martin (Études sur le Timée, ii. note 36, p. 84) interpret it as alluding to the spiral line (ἕλικα) described by each planet (Sun and Moon are each counted as planets) round the Earth, arising from the combination of the force of the revolving sidereal sphere or Aplanês, carrying all the planets round along with it from East to West, with the counter-movement (contrary, but obliquely contrary) inherent in each planet. The spiral movement of each planet, resulting from combination of these two distinct forces, is a regular movement governed by law; though to an observer who does not understand the law, the movements appear irregular. Compare Derkyllides ap. Theon Smyrn. c. 41, f. 27, p. 330, ed. Martin.

The point here discussed forms one of the items of controversy between Gruppe and Boeckh, in the recent discussion about Plato’s astronomical views. Gruppe, Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, pp. 157-168: Boeckh, Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, pp. 45-57.

Gruppe has an ingenious argument to show that the novelty (παράδοξον) which Plato had in his mind, but was afraid to declare openly because of existing prejudices, was the heliocentric or Copernican system, which he believes to have been Plato’s discovery. Boeckh refutes Gruppe’s reasoning; and refutes it, in my judgment, completely. He sustains the interpretation given by Proklus and Martin.

Boeckh also illustrates (pp. 35-38-49-54), in a manner more satisfactory than Gruppe, the dicta of Plato about the comparative velocity of the Planets (Sun and Moon counted among them).

Plato declares the Moon to be the quickest mover among the planets, and Saturn to be the slowest. On the contrary Demokritus pronounced the Moon to be the slowest mover of all; slower than the Sun, because the Sun was farther from the Earth and nearer to the outermost or sidereal sphere. It was the rotation of this last-mentioned sphere (according to Demokritus) which carried round along with it the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets: the bodies near to it were more forcibly acted upon by its rotation, and carried round more rapidly, than the bodies distant from it — hence the Moon was the least rapid mover of all (Lucretius, v. 615-635. See Sir George Lewis’s Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, ch. ii. pp. 139-140).

It appears to me probable that Plato, in the severe remarks which he makes on persons who falsely affirmed the quickest mover in the heavens to be the slowest, had in view these doctrines of Demokritus. Plato never once mentions Demokritus by name (see Mullach, Fragment. Demokrit. p. 25); but he is very sparing in mentioning by name any contemporaries. It illustrates the difference between the manner of Aristotle and Plato, that Aristotle frequently names Demokritus — seventy-eight times according to Mullach (p. 107) — even in the works which we possess.

Hunting — how far permitted or advised.

In regard to hunting, Plato thinks that it is a subject on which positive laws are unsuitable or insufficient, and he therefore gives certain general directions which partake of the nature both of advice and of law. The good citizen (he says) is one who not only obeys the positive laws prescribed by the lawgiver, but who also conforms his conduct to the general cast of the lawgiver’s opinions: practising what is commended therein, abstaining from what is blamed.259 Plato commends one mode of hunting — the chase after quadrupeds: yet only with horses, dogs, javelins, &c., wherein both courage and bodily strength are improved — but not with nets or snares, where no such result is produced. He blames other modes — such as fishing and bird-snaring (especially by night). He blames still more emphatically theft and piracy, which he regards also as various modes of hunting.260

259  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 822 E.

260  Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 823-824.

Large general sense which Plato gives to the word hunting.

What principally deserves notice here is, the large general idea which Plato conceives to himself under the term Hunting, and the number of diverse particulars comprehended therein. 1. Hunting of quadrupeds; either with dogs and javelins openly, or with snares, by stratagem. 2. Hunting of birds, in the air. 3. Hunting of fishes, in the water. 4. Hunting after the property of other men, in the city or country. 5. Hunting after men as slaves, or after other valuables, by means of piratical vessels. 6. Hunting of public enemies, by one army against an opposite one. 7. Hunting of men to conciliate their friendship or affection, sometimes by fair means, sometimes by foul.261

261  Plato, Legg. vii. p. 823. θήρα γὰρ παμπολύ τι πρᾶγμά ἐστι, περιειλημμένον ὀνόματι σχεδὸν ἑνὶ … πολλὴ δὲ ἡ κατὰ φιλίαν θηρεύουσα (823 B) … ἄγρας ἀνθρώπων κατὰ θάλατταν … κλωπείας ἐν χώρᾳ καὶ πόλει (823 E). Compare the Epinomis, p. 975 C.

So also in the Sophistês (pp. 221-222) Plato analyses and distributes the general idea of θηρευτική: including under it, as one variety, the hunting after men by violent means (τὴν βίαιον θήραν, τὴν λῃστικήν, ἀνδραποδιστικὴν, τυραννικήν, καὶ ξύμπασαν τὴν πολεμικήν) — and as another variety, the hunting after men by persuasive or seductive means (τὴν πιθανουργικήν, ἐρωτικήν, κολακικήν). In the Memorabilia of Xenophon also (ii. 6, 29-33), Sokrates expands this same idea — τὴν θήραν ἀνθρώπων — τὰ τῶν φίλων θηρατικά, &c. Compare also the conversation between Sokrates and Theodotê (iii. 11, 8-15) — θηρώμενος, ib. i. 2, 24 — and Plato Protag. init.

That all these processes — which Plato here includes as so many varieties of hunting — present to the mind, when they are compared, a common point of analogy, is not to be denied. The number of different comparisons which the mind can make between phenomena, is almost unlimited. Analogies may be followed from one to another, until at last, after successive steps, the analogy between the first and the last becomes faint or imperceptible. Yet the same word, transferred successively from the first to the last, conceals this faintness of analogy and keeps them all before the mind as one. To us, this extension of the word hunting to particular cases dissimilar in so many respects, appears more as poetical metaphor: to intelligent Greeks of the Sokratic school, it seemed a serious comparison: and to Plato, with his theory of Ideas, it ought to have presented a Real Idea or permanent One, which alone remained constant amidst an indefinite multitude of fugitive, shadowy, and deceptive, particulars. But though this is the consistent corollary, from Plato’s theory of Ideas, he does not so state it in the Treatise De Legibus, and probably he did not so conceive it. Critics have already observed that in this Treatise scarce any mention is made of the theory of Ideas. Plato had passed into other points of view: yet he neither formally renounces the points of view which we find in anterior dialogues, nor takes the trouble of reconciling them with the thoughts of the later dialogues. Whether there exists any Real, Abstract, Idea of Hunting, apart from the particular acts and varieties of hunting — is a question which he does not touch upon. Yet this is the main feature of the Platonic philosophy, and the main doctrine most frequently impugned by Aristotle as Platonic.

Number of religious sacrifices to be determined by lawgiver.

Although, in regard to the religious worship of his community, the oracle of Delphi is asked to prescribe what sacrifices are to be offered, and to what Gods — yet the religious lawgiver will determine the number of such sacrifices and festivals, as well as the times and seasons.262 Each day in the year, sacrifice will be offered by one of the magistrates to some God or Dæmon. Once in every month, there will be a solemn sacrifice and festival, with matches of music and gymnastics, offered by each tribe to its eponymous God. The offerings to the celestial Gods will be kept distinct from the offerings to the subterranean Gods. Among these last, Pluto will be especially worshipped during the twelfth month of the year. The festivals will be adjusted to the seasons, and there will on proper occasions be festivals for women separately and exclusively.263

262  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 828.

263  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 828.

Military muster of the whole citizen population once in each month — men, women, and children.

Once a month certainly — and more than once, if the magistrates command — on occasion of one of these festivals, all the citizen population are ordered to attend in military muster — men, women and children. They will be brought together in such divisions and detachments as the magistrate shall direct. They will here go through gymnastic and military exercises. They will also have fights, with warlike weapons not likely to inflict mortal wounds, yet involving sufficient danger to test their bravery and endurance: one against one, two against two, ten against ten.264 The victors will receive honorary wreaths, and public encomium in appropriate songs. Both men and women will take part alike in these exercises and contests, and in the composition of the odes to celebrate the victors.265

264  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 833 E.

265  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 829 B-E. Τὰ αὐτὰ δὲ λέγω στρατείας τε περὶ καὶ τῆς ἐν ποιήσεσι παῤῥησίας γυναιξί τε καὶ ἀνδράσιν ὁμοίως γίγνεσθαι δεῖν. 830 E: χρωμένους ὑποκινδύνοις βέλεσιν.

Such monthly musters, over and above the constant daily gymnastics of the youthful population, are indispensable as preliminary training; without which the citizens cannot fight with efficiency and success, in the event of a real foreign enemy invading the territory.266 No athlete ever feels himself qualified to contend at the public games without the most laborious special training beforehand. Yet Plato expresses apprehension that his proposal of regular musters for warlike exercises with sham-battles, will appear ridiculous. He states that nothing of the kind existed in any Grecian city, by reason of two great corruptions:— First, the general love of riches and money-getting: Secondly, the bad governments everywhere existing, whether democracy, oligarchy, or despotism — each of which was in reality a faction or party-government, i.e., government by one part over another unwilling part.267

266  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 830.

267  Plat. Legg. viii. pp. 831-832.

I read with surprise the declaration of Plato, that no such military training exercises existed anywhere in Greece. How is this to be reconciled with the statements of Xenophon in his Treatise on the Republic of the Lacedæmonians, wherein he expressly calls the Spartans τεχνίτας τῶν πολεμικῶν — or even with statement of Plato himself about Sparta in the first book of this Treatise De Legibus? Compare Thucyd. v. 69.

Gymnastic training must have reference to war, not to athletic prizes.

Plato prescribes that the gymnastic training in his community shall be such as to have a constant reference to war; and that elaborate bodily excellence, for the purpose simply of obtaining prizes at the public games, shall be discouraged. There will be foot-races, for men, for boys, and for young women up to twenty years of age — the men always running in full panoply.268 Horse-racing is permitted, but chariot-racing is discountenanced.269 There will also be practice with the bow and with other weapons of light warfare, in which the young women are encouraged to take part — yet not constrained, in deference to prevalent sentiment.270

268  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 833 B-C.

269  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 834 B.

270  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 834 C-D.

Regulation of sexual intercourse. Syssitia or public mess.

In regard to sexual intercourse, Plato recognises that the difficulty of regulating it according to the wisdom of the lawgiver is greater in his city than in any actual city, because of the more free and public life of the women. Neither Krete nor Sparta furnish a good example to follow on this point.271 He thinks however that by causing one doctrine on the subject to be continually preached, and by preventing any other from being even mentioned, the lawgiver may be able so to consecrate this doctrine as to procure for it pretty universal obedience. The lawgiver may thus be able to suppress pæderasty altogether, and to restrict generally the sexual intercourse to that of persons legally married — or to enforce at least the restriction, that the exceptional cases of sexual intercourse departing from these conditions shall be covered with the veil of secrecy.272 The constant bodily exercises prescribed in the Platonic community will tend to diminish the influence of such appetites in the citizens: while the example of the distinguished prize combatants at the Olympic games, in whose long-continued training strict continence was practised, shows that even more than what Plato anticipates can be obtained, under the stimulus of sufficient motive.273

271  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 836 B.

272  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 841.

273  Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 840 A, 841 A.

Compare the remarks which I have made above in this volume (p. 197) respecting the small probable influence of Aphroditê in the Platonic Republic. A like remark may be made, though not so emphatically, respecting the Platonic community in the Leges.

What is here proposed respecting the sexual appetite finds no approbation from Kleinias, since the customs in Krete were altogether different. But the Syssitia, or public mess-table for the citizens, are welcomed readily both by the Kretan and the Spartan. The Syssitia existed both in Krete and at Sparta; but were regulated on very different principles in one and in the other. Plato declines to discuss this difference, pronouncing it to be unimportant. But Aristotle informs us what it was; and shows that material consequences turned upon it, in reference to the citizenship at Sparta.274

274  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 842 B; Aristot. Politic. ii. 9-10, p. 1271, a. 26, 1272, a. 12. The statement of Aristotle, about the manner in which the cost of the Kretan Syssitia was provided, while substantially agreeing with Ephorus (ap. Strabo. x. p. 480), does not exactly coincide with the account given by Dosiadas of the Kretans in Lyktus (ap. Athenæum, iv. p. 143). Compare Hoeckh, Kreta, vol. iii. pp. 134-138.

Regulations about landed property — Boundaries — Limited power of fining by magistrates.

Plato enters now upon the economical and proprietary rules proper for his community. As there will be neither gold and silver nor foreign commerce, he is dispensed from the necessity of making laws about shipments, retailing, interest, mine-digging, collectors of taxes, &c. The persons under his charge will be husbandmen, shepherds, bee-keepers, &c., with those who work under them, and with the artisans who supply implements to them.275 The first and most important of all regulations is, the law of Zeus Horius or Terminalis — Not to disturb or transgress the boundary marks between different properties. Upon this depends the maintenance of those unalterable fundi or lots, which is the cardinal principle of the Platonic community. Severe penalties, religious as well as civil, are prescribed for offenders against this rule.276 Each proprietor is directed to have proper regard to the convenience of neighbours, and above all to abstain from annoying or damaging them, especially in regard to the transit, or retention, or distribution, of water. To intercept the supply, or corrupt the quality of water, is a high crime.277 Regulations are made about the carrying of the harvest, both of grain and fruit. Disputes arising upon these points are to be decided by the magistrates, up to the sum of three minæ: above that sum, by the public Dikasteries. Many rules of detail will require to be made by the magistrates themselves with a view to fulfil the purposes of the lawgiver. So soon as the magistrates think that enough of these regulations have been introduced, they will consecrate the system as it stands, rendering it perpetual and unalterable.278

275  Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 842 D, 846 D.

276  Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 842-843.

277  Plat. Legg. viii. pp. 844 A, 845 E.

278  Plat. Legg. viii. p. 846 A-D.

Regulations about artisans — Distribution of the annual landed produce.

Next, Plato passes to the Demiurgi or Artisans. These are all non-citizens or metics: for it is a peremptory law, that no citizen shall be an artisan in any branch. Nor is any artisan permitted to carry on two crafts trades at once.279 If any article be imperatively required from abroad, either for implements of war or for religious purposes, the magistrates shall cause it to be imported. But there shall be no retailing, nor reselling with profit, of any article.280

279  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 846 D-E.

280  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 847.

The distribution of the produce of land shall be made on a principle approaching to that which prevails in Krete.281 The total produce raised will be distributed into twelve portions, each equivalent to one month’s consumption. Each twelfth portion will then be divided into equal thirds. Two of these thirds will be consumed by the citizens, their families, their slaves, and their agricultural animals: the other third will be sold in the market for the consumption of artisans and strangers, who alone are permitted to buy it, all citizens being forbidden to do so. Each citizen will make the apportionment of his own two-thirds among freemen and slaves: a measured quantity shall then be given to each of the working animals.282 On the first of each month, the sale of barley and wheat will be made in the market-place, and every artisan or stranger will then purchase enough for his monthly consumption: the like on the twelfth of each month, for wine and other liquids — and on the twentieth of each month, for animals and animal products, such as wool and hides. Firewood may be purchased daily by any stranger or artisan, from the proprietors on whose lands the trees grow, and may be resold by him to other artisans: other articles can only be sold at the monthly market-days. The Agoranomi, or regulators of the market, will preside on those days, and will fix the spots on which the different goods shall be exposed for sale. They will also take account of the quantity which each man has for sale, fixing a certain price for each article. They will then adjust the entries of each man’s property in the public registers according to these new transactions. But if the actual purchases and sales be made at any rate different from what is thus fixed, the Agoranomi will modify their entries in the register according to the actual rate, either in plus or in minus. These entries of individual property in the public register will be made both for citizens and resident strangers alike.283

281  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 847 E. ἐγγὺς τῆ τοῦ Κρητικοῦ νόμου.

282  Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 847-848.

283  Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 849-850.

These regulations are given both briefly and obscurely.

Admission of resident Metics — conditions attached.

It shall be open to any one who chooses, to come and reside in the city as a stranger or artisan to exercise his craft, without payment of any fee, simply on condition of good conduct; and of being enrolled with his property in the register. But he shall not acquire any fixed settlement. After twenty years, he must depart and take away his property. When he departs, the entries belonging to his name, in the proprietary register, shall be cancelled. If he has a son, the son may also exercise the same art and reside as a metic in the city for twenty years, but no longer; beginning from the age of fifteen. Any metic who may render special service to the city, may have his term prolonged, the magistrates and the citizens consenting.284

284  Plato, Legg. viii. p. 850.

Offences and penal judicature — Procedure of the Dikasts.

Plato now passes to the criminal code of his community: the determination of offences, penalties, and penal judicature. Serious and capital offences will be judged by the thirty-seven Nomophylakes, in conjunction with a Board of Select Dikasts, composed of the best among the magistrates of the preceding year.285 They will hear first the pleading of the accuser, next that of the accused: they will then proceed, in the order of seniority, to put questions to both these persons, sifting the matter of charge. Plato requires them to be active in this examination, and to get at the facts by mental effort of their own. They will take notes of the examination, then seal up the tablet, and deposit it upon the altar of Hestia. On the morrow they will reassemble and repeat their examination, hearing witnesses and calling for information respecting the affair. On the third day, again the like: after which they will deliver their verdict on the altar of Hestia. Upon this altar two urns will be placed, for condemnation and acquittal: each Dikast will deposit his pebble in one or other of these, openly before the accuser and accused, and before the assembled citizens.286

285  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 855-856. This judicial Board is mentioned also in xi. pp. 926 D, 928 B, 938 B, under the title of τὸ τῶν ἐκκρίτων δικαστήριον — τὸ τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν δικαστήριον. It forms the parallel to the Areiopagus at Athens. See K. F. Hermann, De Vestigiis Institut. Attic., &c., pp. 45-46, &c.

286  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 855-856. Compare the procedure before the Areiopagus at Athens, as described by Schömann, Antiq. Juris Publ. Græc. Part v. s. 63, p. 292. It does not appear that the Areiopagites at Athens were in the practice of exercising any such ἀνάκρισις of the parties before them, as Plato enjoins upon his ἐκλεκτοὶ δικασταί: though it was competent to the Dikasts at Athens to put questions if they chose. Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 718.

Conformably to the general sentiment announced still more distinctly in the Republic, Plato speaks here also of penal legislation as if it were hardly required. He regards it as almost an insult to assume that any of his citizens can grow up capable of committing grave crimes, when they have been subjected to such a training, discipline, and government as he institutes. Still human nature is perverse: we must provide for the occurrence of some exceptional criminals among our citizens, even after all our precautionary supervision: besides, over and above the citizens, we have metics and slaves to watch over.287

287  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 853 C-D-E.

Sacrilege, the gravest of all crimes. High Treason.

The first and gravest of all crimes is Sacrilege: pillage or destruction of places or objects consecrated to the Gods. Next comes high treason: either betrayal of the city to foreign enemies, or overthrow of the established laws and government. Persons charged with these crimes shall be tried before the Select Dikasts, or High Court above constituted. If found guilty, they shall be punished either capitally or by such other sentence as the court may award. But no sentence either of complete disfranchisement or of perpetual banishment can be passed against any citizen, because every one of the 5040 lots of land must always remain occupied.288 Nor can any citizen be fined to any greater extent than what he possesses over and above his lot of land. He may be imprisoned, or flogged, or exposed in the pillory, or put to do penance in some sacred precinct. But his punishment shall noway extend to his children, unless persons of the same family shall be condemned to death for three successive generations. Should this occur, the family shall be held as tainted. Their lot of land shall be considered vacant, and assigned to some deserving young man of another citizen family.289

288  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 855 C.

Compare the penalties inflicted by Plato with those which were inflicted in Attic procedure. Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, pp. 739-740 seq. There is considerable difference between the two, arising to a great degree out of Plato’s peculiar institution about the unalterable number of lots of land (5040) and of citizen families — as well as out of his fixation of maximum and minimum of property. Flogging or beating is prescribed by Plato, but had no place at Athens: ἀτιμία was a frequent punishment at Athens: Plato’s substitute for it seems to be the pillory — τινὰς ἀμόρφους ἕδρας. Fine was frequent at Athens as a punishment: Plato is obliged to employ it sparingly.

289  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 856 D.

Theft punished by pœna dupli    . General exhortation founded by Plato upon this enactment.

Theft. — Plato next adverts to theft, and prescribes that the punishment for a convicted thief shall be one and the same in all cases — to compensate the party robbed to the extent of double the value of the property, or to be imprisoned until he does so.290 But upon a question upon this being raised, how far one and the same pœna dupli, neither more nor less, can be properly applied to all cases of theft, we are carried (according to the usual unsystematic manner of the Platonic dialogue) into a general discussion on the principles of penal legislation. We are reminded that the Platonic lawgiver looks beyond the narrow and defective objects to which all other lawgivers have hitherto unwisely confined themselves.291 He is under no pressing necessity to legislate at once: he can afford time for preliminary discussion and exposition: he desires to instruct his citizens respecting right and wrong, as well as to constrain their acts by penalty.292 As he is better qualified than the poets to enlighten them about the just and honourable, so the principles which he lays down ought to have more weight than the verses of Homer or Tyrtæus.293 In regard to Justice and Injustice generally, there are points on which Plato differs from the public, and also points on which the public are at variance with themselves. For example, every one is unanimous in affirming that whatever is just is also beautiful or honourable. But if this be true, then not only what is justly done, but also what is justly suffered, is beautiful or honourable. Now the penalty of death, inflicted on the sacrilegious person, is justly inflicted. It must therefore be beautiful or honourable: yet every one agrees in declaring it to be shocking and infamous. Here there is an inconsistency or contradiction in the opinions of the public themselves.294

290  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 857 A, xii. p. 941. The Solonian Law at Athens provided, that if a man was sued for theft under the ἰδία δίκη κλοπῆς, he should be condemned to the pœna dupli and to a certain προστίμημα besides (Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. 733-736). But it seems that the thief might be indicted by a γραφή, and then the punishment might be heavier. See Aulus Gellius, xi. 18, and chap. xi. of my ‘History of Greece,’ p. 189.

291  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 857 C. τὰ περὶ τὴν τῶν νόμων θέσιν οὐδενὶ τρόπῳ πώποτε γέγονεν ὀρθῶς διαπεπονημένα, &c.

292  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 857 E, 858 A.

293  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 858-859.

294  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 859-860.

The same argument is employed by Sokrates in the Gorgias, p. 476 E.

All unjust men are unjust involuntarily. — No such thing as voluntary injustice. Injustice depends upon the temper of the agent — Distinction between damage and injury.

But Plato differs from the public on another point also. He affirms all wicked or unjust men to be unwillingly wicked or unjust: he affirms that no man does injustice willingly.295 How is he to carry out this maxim in his laws? He cannot make any distinction (as all existing cities make it) in the penalties prescribed for voluntary injustice, and for involuntary injustice; for he does not recognise the former as real.296 He must explain upon what foundation his dissent from the public rests. He discriminates between Damnum and Injuria — between Damage or Hurt, and Injustice. When damage is done, it is sometimes done voluntarily — sometimes, and quite as often, involuntarily. The public call this latter by the name of involuntary injustice; but in Plato’s view it is no injustice at all. Injustice is essentially distinct from damage: it depends on the temper, purpose, or disposition of the agent, not on the result as affecting the patient. A man may be unjust when he is conferring benefit upon another, as well as when he is doing hurt to another. Whether the result be beneficial or hurtful, the action will be right or wrong, and the agent just or unjust, according to the condition of his own mind in doing it.297

295  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 860 D-E.

296  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 861 B. ἃ δὴ κατὰ πάσας τὰς πόλεις ὑπὸ νομοθετῶν πάντων τῶν πώποτε γενομένων ὡς δύο εἴδη τῶν ἀδικημάτων ὄντα, τὰ μὲν ἑκούσια, τὰ δὲ ἀκούσια, ταύτῃ καὶ νομοθετεῖται.

The eighth chapter, fifth Book, of Aristotle’s Nikomachean Ethics, discusses this question more instructively than Plato.

297  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 861-862.

Damage may be voluntary or involuntary — Injustice is shown often by conferring corrupt profit upon another — Purpose of punishment, to heal the distemper of the criminal.

The real distinction therefore (according to Plato) is not between voluntary and involuntary injustice, but between voluntary and involuntary damage. Voluntary damage is injustice, but it is not voluntary injustice. The unjust agent, so far forth as unjust, acts involuntarily: he is under the perverting influence of mental distemper. He must be compelled to make good the damage which he has done, or to offer such requital as may satisfy the feelings of the person damaged: and he must besides be subjected to such treatment as will heal the distemper of his mind, so that he will not be disposed to do farther voluntary damage in future. And he ought to be subjected to this treatment equally, whether his mental distemper (injustice) has shown itself in doing wilful damage to another, or in conferring corrupt profit on another — in taking away another man’s property, or in giving away his own property wrongfully.298 The healing treatment may be different in different cases: discourses addressed, or works imposed — pleasures or pains, honour or disgrace, fine or otherwise. But in all cases the purpose is one and the same — to heal the distemper of his mind, and to make him hate injustice. If he be found incurable, he must be put to death. It is a gain for himself to die, and a still greater gain for society that he should die, since his execution will serve as a warning to others.299

298  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 B. οὔτ’ εἴ τίς τῳ δίδωσί τι τῶν ὄντων οὔτ’ εἰ τοὐναντίον ἀφαιρεῖται, δίκαιον ἁπλῶς ἢ ἄδικον χρὴ τὸ τοιοῦτον οὕτω λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ἤθει καὶ δικαίῳ τρόπῳ χρώμενός τις ὠφελῇ τινά τι καὶ βλάπτῃ, τοῦτό ἐστι τῷ νομοθέτῃ θεατέον, καὶ πρὸς δύο ταῦτα δὴ βλεπτέον, πρός τε ἀδικίαν καὶ βλαβήν.

299  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 C-E.

Three distinct causes of misguided proceedings. 1. Painful stimulus. 2. Pleasurable stimulus. 3. Ignorance.

Of misguided or erroneous proceeding there are in the human mind three producing causes, acting separately or conjointly:— 1. The painful stimulus — Anger, Envy, Hatred, or Fear. 2. The seductive stimulus, of Pleasure or Desire. 3. Ignorance. Ignorance is twofold:— 1. Ignorance pure and simple. 2. Ignorance combined with the false persuasion of knowledge. This last again is exhibited under two distinguishable cases:— 1. When combined with power; and in this case it produces grave and enormous crimes. 2. When found in weak persons, children or old men, in which case it produces, nothing worse than slight and venial offences, giving little trouble to the lawgiver.300

300  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 863 C. Τρίτον μὴν ἄγνοιαν λέγων ἄν τις τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων αἰτίαν οὐκ ἂν ψεύδοιτο.

The unjust man is under the influence either of the first or second of these causes, without controul of Reason. If he acts under controul of Reason, though the Reason be bad, he is not unjust.

Now the unjust man (Plato tells us) is he in whose mind either one or other of the two first causes are paramount, and not controuled by Reason: either Hatred, Anger, Fear — or else Appetite and the Desire of Pleasure. What he does under either of these two stimuli is unjust, whether he damages any one else or not. But if neither of these two stimuli be prevalent in his mind — if, on the contrary, both of them are subordinated to the opinion which he entertains about what is good and right — then everything which he does is just, even though he falls into error. If in this state of mind he hurts any one else, it will be simply hurt, not injustice. Those persons are incorrect who speak of it as injustice, but as involuntary injustice. The proceedings of such a man may be misguided or erroneous, but they will never be unjust.301

301  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 864 A. τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἀρίστου δόξαν, ὅπῃ περ ἂν ἔσεσθαι τοῦτο ἡγήσωνται πόλις εἴτε ἰδιῶταί τινες, ἐὰν αὔτη κρατοῦσα ἐν ψυχῇ διακοσμῇ πάντα ἄνδρα, κἂν σφάλληταί τι, δίκαιον μὲν πᾶν εἶναι τὸ ταύτῃ πραχθὲν καὶ τὸ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχῆς γιγνόμενον ὑπήκοον ἑκάστων, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἅπαντα ἄνθρώπων βίον ἄριστον.

All these three causes may realise themselves in act under three varieties of circumstances: 1. By open and violent deeds. 2. By secret, deceitful, premeditated contrivance. 3. By a combination of both the two. Our laws must make provision for all the three.302

302  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 864 C.

Reasoning of Plato to save his doctrine — That no man commits injustice voluntarily.

Such is the theory here advanced by Plato to reconcile his views and recommendations in the Leges with a doctrine which he had propounded and insisted upon elsewhere:— That no man commits injustice voluntarily — That all injustice is involuntary, arising from ignorance — That every one would be just, if he only knew wherein justice consists — That knowledge, when it exists in the mind, will exercise controul and preponderance over the passions and appetites.303

303  Compare Legg. v. p. 731 C; Timæus, p. 86 D; Republic, ix. p. 589 C; Protagoras, pp. 345 D — 352 D.

The distinction whereby Plato here proposes to save all inconsistency, is a distinction between misconduct or misguided actions (ἁμαρτήματα, or ἁμαρτανόμενα), and unjust actions (ἀδικήματα). The last of these categories is comprised by him in the first, as one species or variety thereof. That is, all ἀδικήματα are ἁμαρτήματα: but all ἁμαρτήματα are not ἀδικήματα. He reckons three distinct causes of ἁμαρτήματα: two belonging to the emotional department of mind; one to the intellectual. Those ἁμαρτήματα which arise from either of the two first causes are also ἀδικήματα: those which arise from the third are not ἀδικήματα.

This is the distinction which Plato here draws, with a view to save consistency in his own doctrine — at least as far as I can understand it, for the reasoning is not clear. It proceeds upon a restricted definition, peculiar to himself, of the word injustice — a restriction, however, which coincides in part with that which he gives of Justice in the Republic,304 where he treats Justice as consisting in the controul exercised over Passion and Appetite (the emotional department) by Reason (the intellectual): each of the three departments of the soul or each of the three separate souls, keeping in its own place, and discharging its own appropriate functions. Every act which a man does under the influence of persuasion or opinion of the best, is held by Plato to be just — whatever his persuasion may be — whether it be true or false305 If he be sincerely persuaded that he is acting for the best, he cannot commit injustice.

304  Plato, Republ. iv. pp. 443-444.

305  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 863 C, 864 A.

Peculiar definition of Injustice. A man may do great voluntary hurt to others, and yet not be unjust, provided he does it under the influence of Reason, and not of Appetite.

Injustice being thus restricted to mean the separate and unregulated action of emotional impulse — and such unregulated action being, as a general fact, a cause of misery to the agent — Plato’s view is, that no man is voluntarily unjust: for no man wishes to be miserable. Every man wishes to be happy: therefore every man wishes to be just: because some controul of impulse by reason is absolutely essential to happiness. When once such controul is established, a man becomes just: he no longer commits injustice. But he may still commit misconduct, and very gross misconduct: moreover, this misconduct will be, or may be, voluntary. For though the rational soul be now preponderant and controuling over the emotional (which controul constitutes justice), yet the rational soul itself may be imperfectly informed (ignorance simple); or may not only be ignorant, but preoccupied besides with false persuasions and prejudices. Under such circumstances the just man may commit misconduct, and do serious hurt to others. What he does may be done voluntarily, in full coincidence with his own will: for the will postulates only the controul of reason over emotion, and here that condition is fulfilled, the fault lying with the controuling reason itself.

Plato’s purpose in the Laws is to prevent or remedy not only injustice but misconduct.

Plato’s reasoning here (obscure and difficult to follow) is intended to show that there can be no voluntary injustice, but that there is much both of voluntary misconduct, and voluntary mischief. His purpose as lawgiver is to prevent or remedy not only (what he calls) injustice, but also misconduct and mischief. As a remedy for mischief done, he prescribes that the agent thereof shall make full compensation to the sufferer. As an antidote to injustice, he applies his educational discipline as well as his penal and remuneratory treatment, to the emotions, with a view to subdue some and develop others.306 As a corrective to misconduct in all its branches, he assumes to himself as lawgiver a spiritual power, applied to the improvement of the rational or intellectual man: prescribing what doctrines and beliefs shall be accredited in his city, tolerating no others, and forbidding all contradiction, or dissentient individuality of judgment.307 He thus ensures that every man s individual reason shall be in harmony with the infallible reason.

306  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 C-D.

307  K. F. Hermann, in his valuable Dissertation, De Vestigiis Institutorum Veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis de Legibus libros indagandis, Marburg, 1836, p. 55, says:— “Philosophi [Platonis] manum novatricem in iis tantum agnosco, quæ de exsilii tempore pro diversis criminum fontibus diverso argutatur; qui quum omnino omnium, nisi fallor, primus in hoc ipso Legum Opere veterem usuque receptam criminum divisionem in voluntaria et invita reprehenderit, eaque secundum tres animi partes trifariam distribuerit, ita hic quoque mediam inter imprudentiam et dolum malum iracundiam inseruit, quâ quis motus cædem vel extemplo committeret vel etiam posterius animum suum sanguine explêret.”

I do not conceive Plato’s reasoning exactly in the same way as Hermann. Plato denies only the reality of ἑκούσια ἀδικήματα: he considers all ἀδικήματα as essentially ἀκούσια. But he does not deny ἑκούσια ἀδικήματα (which is the large genus comprehending ἀδικήματα as one species): he recognises both ἁμαρτήματα ἑκούσια and ἁμαρτήματα ἀκούσια. And he considers the ἁμαρτήματα arising from θυμὸς to be midway between the two. But he also recognises ἁμαρτήματα as springing from the three different sources in the human mind. The two positions are not incompatible; though the whole discussion is obscured by the perplexing distinction between ἁμαρτήματα and ἀδικήματα.

The peculiar sense in which Plato uses the words justice and injustice is perplexing throughout this discussion. The words, as he uses them, coincide only in part with the ordinary meaning. They comprehend more in one direction, and less in another.

Plato now proceeds to promulgate laws in respect to homicide, wounds, beating, &c.

Varieties of homicide — modes of dealing with them penally.

Homicide, however involuntary and unintentional, taints the person by whose hands it is committed. He must undergo purification, partly by such expiatory ceremonies as the Exêgêtæ may appoint, partly by a temporary exile from the places habitually frequented by the person slain: who even after death (according to the doctrine of an ancient fable, which Plato here ratifies308), if he saw the homicidal agent among his prior haunts, while the occurrence was yet recent, would be himself disturbed, and would communicate tormenting disturbance to the agent. This latter accordingly is commanded to leave the territory for a year, and to refrain from visiting any of the sacred precincts until he has been purified. If he obeys, the relatives of the person slain shall forgive him; and he shall, after his year’s exile, return to his ordinary abode and citizenship. But if he evades obedience, these relatives shall indict him for the act, and he shall incur double penalties. Should the nearest relative, under these circumstances, neglect to indict, he may himself be indicted by any one who chooses, and shall be condemned to an exile of five years.309

308  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 865 A-D — 866 B.

Compare Antiphon. Accus. Cæd. p. 116, and Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 301. The old law of Drako is given in substance in Demosthen. adv. Leptin. p. 505. Ἀπενιαυτισμός, compulsory year of exile. K. F. Hermann, Griechische Privat-Alterthümer, s. 61, not. 23.

309  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 866.

Homicide involuntary — Homicide under provocation.

Plato provides distinct modes of proceeding for this same act of involuntary homicide, under varieties of persons and circumstances — citizens, metics, strangers, slaves, &c. He especially lays it down that physicians, if a patient dies under their hands, they being unwilling — shall be held innocent, and shall not need purification.310

310  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 865 B.

After involuntary homicide, Plato passes to the case of homicide committed under violent passion or provocation; which he ranks as intermediate between the involuntary and the voluntary — approaching the one or the other, according to circumstances:311 according as it is done instantaneously, or with more or less of interval and premeditation. If the act be committed instantaneously, the homicide shall undergo two years’ exile: if after time for deliberation, the time of exile must be extended to three years.312 But if the slain person before his death shall have expressed forgiveness, the case shall be dealt with as one of involuntary homicide.313 Special enactments are made for the case of a slave killed by a citizen, a citizen killed by a slave, a son killed by his father, a wife by her husband, &c., under the influence of passion or strong provocation. Homicide in self-defence against a previous aggressor is allowed universally.314

311  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 866 E. θυμῷ καὶ ὅσοι προπηλακισθέντες λόγοις ἢ καὶ ἀτίμοις ἔργοις … μεταξύ που τοῦ τε ἑκουσίου καὶ ἀκουσίου.

312  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 867 D.

313  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 869 D.

314  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 868-869 C.

Homicide voluntary.

Thirdly, Plato passes to the case of homicide voluntary, the extreme of injustice, committed under the influence of pleasure, appetite, envy, jealousy, ambition, fear of voluntary divulgation of dangerous secrets, &c. — homicide premeditated and unjust. Among all these causes, the chief and most frequent is love of wealth; which gets possession of most men, in consequence of the untrue and preposterous admiration of wealth imbibed in their youth from the current talk and literature. The next in frequency is the competition of ambitious men for power or rank.315 Whoever has committed homicide upon a fellow-citizen, under these circumstances, shall be interdicted from all the temples and other public places, and shall be indicted by the nearest relatives of the deceased. If found guilty, he shall be put to death: if he leave the country to evade trial, he must be banished in perpetuity. The nearest relative is bound to indict, otherwise he draws down upon himself the taint, and may himself be indicted. Certain sacrifices and religious ceremonies will be required in such cases, to accompany the legal procedure. These, together with the names of the Gods proper to invoke, will be prescribed by the Nomophylakes, in conjunction with the prophets and the Exêgêtæ, or religious interpreters.316 The Dikasts before whom such trials will take place are the Nomophylakes, together with some select persons from the magistrates of the past year: the same as in the case of sacrilege and treason.317 The like procedure and penalty will be employed against any one who has contrived the death of another, not with his own hands, but by suborning some third person: except that this contriver may be buried within the limits of the territory, while the man whose hands are stained with blood cannot be buried therein.318

315  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 870.

316  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 871.

317  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 871 D.

318  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 872 A.

Homicide between kinsmen.

For the cases of homicide between kinsmen or relatives, Plato provides a form of procedure still more solemn, and a still graver measure of punishment. He also declares suicide to leave a taint upon the country, which requires to be purified as the Exêgêtæ may prescribe: unless the act has been committed under extreme pain or extreme disgrace. The person who has killed himself must be buried apart without honour, not in the regular family burying places.319 The most cruel mode of death is directed to be inflicted upon a slave who has voluntarily slain, or procured to be slain, a freeman. If a slave be put to death without any fault of his own, but only from apprehension of secrets which he may divulge, the person who kills him shall be subjected to the same trial and sentence as if he had killed a citizen.320 If any animal, or even any lifeless object, has caused the death of a man, the surviving relatives must prosecute, and the animal or the object must be taken away from the country.321

319  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 873.

320  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 872 D.

321  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 873 E. He makes exception of the cases in which death of a man is caused by thunder or some such other missile from the Gods — πλὴν ὅσα κεραυνὸς ἢ τι παρὰ θεοῦ τοιοῦτον βέλος ἰόν.

Homicide justifiable — in what cases.

Justifiable Homicide. — Some special cases are named in which he who voluntarily kills another, is nevertheless perfectly untainted. A housebreaker caught in act may thus be rightfully slain: so also a clothes-stealer, a ravisher, a person who attacks the life of any man’s father, mother, or children.322

322  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 874 C.

Infliction of wounds.

Wounds. — Next to homicide, Plato deals with wounds inflicted: introducing his enactments by a preface on the general necessity of obedience to law.323 Whosoever, having intended to kill another (except in the special cases wherein homicide is justifiable), inflicts a wound which proves not mortal, is as criminal as if he had killed him. Nevertheless he is not required to suffer so severe a punishment, inasmuch as an auspicious Dæmon and Fortune have interposed to ward off the worst results of his criminal purpose. He must make full compensation to the sufferer, and then be exiled in perpetuity.324 The Dikastery will decide how much compensation he shall furnish. In general, Plato trusts much to the discretion of the Dikastery, under the great diversity of the cases of wounds inflicted. He would not have allowed so much discretion to the numerous and turbulent Dikasteries of Athens: but he regards his select Dikastery as perfectly trustworthy.325 Peculiar provision is made for cases in which the person inflicting the wound is kinsman or relative of the sufferer — also for homicide under the same circumstances. Plato also directs how to supply the vacancy which perpetual banishment will occasion in the occupation of one among the 5040 citizen-lots.326 If one man wounds another in a fit of passion, he must pay simple, double, or triple, compensation according as the Dikasts may award: he must farther do all the military duty which would have been incumbent on the wounded man, should the latter be disabled.327 But if the person inflicting the wound be a slave and the wounded man a freeman, the slave shall be handed over to the wounded freeman to deal with as he pleases. If the master of the slave will not give him up, he must himself make compensation for the wound, unless he can prove before the Dikastery that the case is one of collusion between the wounded freeman and the slave; in which case the wounded freeman will become liable to the charge of unlawfully suborning away the slave from his master.328

323  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 875.

324  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877 A.

325  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 876 A.

326  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877.

327  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 878 C.

328  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 A.

Infliction of blows.

Beating. — The laws of Plato on the subject of beating are more peculiar. They are mainly founded in reverence for age. One who strikes a person twenty years older than himself, is severely punished: but if he strikes a person of the same age with himself, that person must defend himself as he can with his own hands — no punishment being provided.329 For him who strikes his father or mother, the heaviest penalty, excommunication and perpetual banishment, is provided.330 If a slave strike a freeman, he shall be punished with as many blows as the person stricken directs, nevertheless in such manner as not to diminish his value to his master.331

329  Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 879-880.

The person who struck first blow was guilty of αἰκία, Demosth. adv. Euerg. and Mnesibul. pp. 1141-1151.

330  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 881.

331  Plato, Legg. p. 882 A.

Plato has borrowed much from Attic procedure, especially in regard to Homicide — Peculiar view of Homicide at Athens, as to procedure.

Throughout all this Treatise De Legibus, in regard both to civil and criminal enactments, Plato has borrowed largely from Attic laws and procedure. But in regard to homicide and wounds, he has borrowed more largely than in any other department. Both the general character, and the particular details, of his provisions respecting homicide, are in close harmony with ancient Athenian sentiment, and with the embodiments of that sentiment by the lawgivers Drako and Solon. At Athens, though the judicial procedure generally, as well as the political constitution, underwent great modification between the time of Solon and that of Demosthenes, yet the procedure in the case of homicide remained without any material change. It was of a sanctified character, depending mainly upon ancient religious tradition. The person charged with homicide was not tried before the general body of Dikasts, drawn by lot, but before special ancient tribunals and in certain consecrated places, according to the circumstances under which the act of homicide was charged. The principal object contemplated, was to protect the city and its public buildings against the injurious consequences arising from the presence of a tainted man — and to mollify the posthumous wrath of the person slain. This view of the Attic procedure332 against homicide is copied by the Platonic. Plato keeps prominently in view the religious bearing and consequences of such an act; he touches comparatively little upon its consequences in causing distress and diminishing the security of life. He copies the Attic law both in the justifications which he admits for homicide, and in the sentence of banishment which he passes against both animals and inanimate objects to whom any man owes his death. He goes beyond the Attic law in the solemnity and emphasis of his details about homicide among members of the same family and relatives: as well as in the severe punishment which he imposes upon the surviving relatives of the person slain, if they should neglect their obligation of indicting.333 Throughout all this chapter, Plato not only follows the Attic law, but overpasses it, in dealing with homicide as a portion of the Jus Sacrum rather than of the Jus Civile.

332  The oration of Demosthenes against Aristokrates treats copiously of this subject, pp. 627-646. εἴργειν τῆς τοῦ παθόντος πατρίδος, δίκαιον εἶναι — ὅσων τῷ παθόντι ζῶντι μετῆν, τούτων εἴργει τὸν δεδρακότα, πρῶτον μὲν τῆς πατρίδος (632-633).

The first of Matthiæ’s Dissertations, De Judiciis Atheniensium (Miscellanea Philologica, vol. i. pp. 145-176), collects the information on these matters: and K. F. Hermann (De Vestigiis Institutorum Veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis De Legibus Libros indagandis, Marburg, 1836) gives a detailed comparison of Plato’s directions with what we know about the Attic Law:— ”Ipsas homicidiorum religiones (Plato) ex antiquissimo jure patrio in suum ita transtulit, ut nihil opportunius ad illustranda illius vestigia inveniri posse videatur” (p. 49). … “quæ omnia Solonis Draconisve in legibus ferè ad verbum eadem inveniuntur” (p. 50). The same about τραύματα ἐκ προνοίας, pp. 58-59.

333  K. F. Hermann, De Vestigiis, ut suprà, p. 54. Compare Demosthenes adv. Theokrin. p. 1331.

In respect to the offence of beating, he does not follow the Attic law, when he permits it between citizens of the same age, and throws the beaten person upon his powers of self-defence. This is Spartan, not Athenian. It is also Spartan when he makes the criminality, in giving blows, to turn upon the want of reverence for age: upon the circumstance, that the person beaten is twenty years older than the beater.334

334  Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 C. He admits the same provision as to blows between ἥλικες into his Republic (v. p. 464 E).

Compare, about Sparta, Xenophon, Rep. Laced. iv. 5; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27; Pausanias, iii. 14: Dionys. Halikarnass. Arch. Rom. xx. 2. Λακεδαιμόνιοι ὅτι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἐπέτρεπον τοὺς ἀκοσμοῦντας τῶν πολιτῶν ἐν ὅτῳ δή τινι τῶν δημοσίων τόπων ταῖς βακτηρίαις παίειν.

Impiety or outrage offered to divine things or places.

From these various crimes — sacrilege or plunder of holy places, theft, homicide, wounding, beating — Plato passes in the tenth book to insult or outrage (ὕβρις). These outrages (he considers) are essentially the acts of wild young men. Outrage may be offered towards five different subjects. 1. Public temples. 2. Private chapels and sepulchres. 3. Parents. 4. The magistrates, in their dignity or their possessions. 5. Private citizens, in respect of their civic rights and dignity.335 The tenth book is devoted entirely to the two first-mentioned heads, or to impiety and its alleged sources: the others come elsewhere, not in any definite order.336

335  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 884-885.

336  Treatment of parents comes xi. pp. 930-931.

All impiety arises from one or other of three heresies. 1. No belief in the Gods. 2. Belief that the Gods interfere very little. 3. Belief that they may be appeased by prayer and sacrifice.

Plato declares that all impiety, either in word or deed, springs from one of three heretical doctrines. 1. The heretic does not believe in the Gods at all. 2. He believes the Gods to exist, but believes also that they do not interest themselves about human affairs; or at least that they interfere only to a small extent. 3. He believes that they exist, and that they direct every thing; but that it is perfectly practicable to appease their displeasure, and to conciliate their favour, by means of prayer and sacrifice.337

337  Plato, Legg. x. p. 885.

Punishment for these three heretical beliefs, with or without overt act.

If a person displays impiety, either by word or deed, in either of these three ways, he shall be denounced to the archons by any citizen who becomes acquainted with the fact. The archons, on pain of taking the impiety on themselves, shall assemble the dikastery, and put the person accused on trial. If found guilty, he shall be put in chains and confined in one or other of the public prisons. These public prisons are three in number: one in the market-place, for ordinary offenders: a second, called the House of Correction (σωφρονιστήριον), attached to the building in which the Supreme Board of Magistrates hold their nocturnal sittings: a third, known by some designation of solemn penalty, in the centre of the territory, but in some savage and desolate spot.338

338  Plato, Legg. x. p. 908. δεσμὸς μὲν οὖν ὑπαρχέτω πᾶσι· δεσμωτηρίων δὲ ὄντων ἐν τῇ πόλει τριῶν, &c.

Imprisonment included chains round the prisoner’s legs. Sokrates was put in chains during his thirty days’ confinement, arising from the voyage of the Theôric ship to Delos (Plat. Phædon, p. 60 B).

Heretic, whose conduct has been virtuous and faultless, to be imprisoned for five years, perhaps more.

Suppose the heretic, under either one of the three heads, to be found guilty of heresy pure and simple — but that his conduct has been just, temperate, unexceptionable, and his social dispositions steadily manifested, esteeming the society of just men, and shunning that of the unjust.339 There is still danger that by open speech or scoffing he should shake the orthodox belief of others: he must therefore be chained in the house of Correction for a term not less than five years. During this term no citizen whatever shall be admitted to see him, except the members of the Nocturnal Council of Magistrates. These men will constantly commune with him, administering exhortations for the safety of his soul and for his improvement. If at the expiration of the five years, he appears to be cured of his heresy and restored to a proper state of mind, he shall be set at liberty, and allowed to live with other proper-minded persons. But if no such cure be operated, and if he shall be found guilty a second time of the same offence, he shall suffer the penalty of death.340

339  Plato, Legg. p. 908 B-E. ᾧ γὰρ ἄν, μὴ νομίζοντι θεοὺς εἶναι τὸ παράπαν, ἦθος φύσει προσγένηται δίκαιον, μισοῦντές τε γίγνονται τοὺς κακούς, καὶ τῷ δυσχεραίνειν τὴν ἀδικίαν οὔτε τὰς τοιαύτας πράξεις προσίενται πράττειν, τούς τε μὴ δικαίους τῶν ἀνθρώπων φεύγουσι, καὶ τοὺς δικαίους στέργουσι, &c.

340  Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 A. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ μηδεὶς τῶν πολιτῶν αὐτοῖς ἄλλος ξυγγιγνέσθω, πλὴν οἱ τοῦ νυκτερινοῦ ξυλλόγου κοινωνοῦντες, ἐπὶ νουθετήσει τε καὶ τῇ τῆς ψυχῆς σωτηρίᾳ ὁμιλοῦντες.

Heretic with bad conduct — punishment to be inflicted.

Again — the heretic may be found guilty, not of heresy pure and simple in one of its three varieties, but of heresy manifesting itself in bad conduct and with aggravating circumstances. He may conceal his real opinion, and acquire the reputation of the best dispositions, employing that reputation to overreach others, and combining dissolute purposes with superior acuteness and intelligence: he may practise stratagems to succeed as a despot, a public orator, a general, or a sophist: he may take up, and will more frequently take up, the profession of a prophet or religious ritualist or sorcerer, professing to invoke the dead or to command the aid of the Gods by prayer and sacrifice. He may thus try to bring ruin upon citizens, families, and cities.341 A heretic of this description (says Plato) deserves death not once or twice only, but several times over, if it were possible.342 If found guilty he must be kept in chains for life in the central penal prison — not allowed to see any freemen — not visited by any one, except the slave who brings to him his daily rations. When he dies, his body must be cast out of the territory without burial: and any freeman who may assist in burying it, shall himself incur the penalty of impiety. From the day that the heretic is imprisoned, he shall be considered as civilly dead; his children being placed under wardship as orphans.343

341  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 908-909.

342  Plato, Legg. x. p. 908 E. ὧν τὸ μὲν εἰρωνικὸν οὐχ ἑνὸς οὐδὲ δυοῖν ἄξια θανάτοιν ἁμαρτάνον, &c.

343  Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 C.

No private worship or religious rites allowed. Every citizen must worship at the public temples.

As a still farther assurance for reaching and punishing these dangerous heretics, Plato enacts — No one shall erect any temple or altar, no one shall establish any separate worship or sacrifice, in his own private precincts. No one shall propitiate the Gods by secret prayer and sacrifice of his own. When a man thinks fit to offer prayer and sacrifice, he must do it at the public temples, through and along with recognised priests and priestesses. If a man keep in his house any sacred object to which he offers sacrifice, the archons shall require him to bring it into the public temples, and shall punish him until he does so. But if he be found guilty of sacrificing either at home or in the public temples, after the commission of any act which the Dikastery may consider grave impiety — he shall be condemned to death.344

344  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 909-910.

Uncertain and mischievous action of the religious sentiment upon individuals, if not controuled by public authority.

In justifying this stringent enactment, Plato not only proclaims that the proper establishment of temples and worship can only be dictated by a man of the highest intelligence, but he also complains of the violent and irregular working of the religious feeling in the minds of individuals. Many men (he says) when sick, or in danger and troubles of what kind soever, or when alarmed by dreams or by spectres seen in their waking hours, or when calling to mind and recounting similar narratives respecting the past, or when again experiencing unexpected good fortune — many men under such circumstances, and all women, are accustomed to give a religious colour to the situation, and to seek relief by vows, sacrifices, and altars to the Gods. Hence the private houses and villages become full of such foundations and proceedings.345 Such religious sentiments and fears, springing up spontaneously in the minds of individuals, are considered by Plato to require strict repression. He will allow no religious worship or manifestation, except that which is public and officially authorised.

345  Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 E-910 A. ἔθος τε γυναιξί τε δὴ διαφερόντως πάσαις καὶ τοῖς ἀσθενοῦσι πάντῃ καὶ κινδυνεύουσι καὶ ἀποροῦσιν, ὅπῃ τις ἂν ἀπορῇ, … καθιεροῦν τε τὸ παρὸν ἀεί, καὶ θυσίας εὔχεσθαι καὶ ἱδρύσεις ὑπισχνεῖσθαι θεοῖς, &c.

If, however, we turn back to v. p.738 C, we shall see that Plato ratifies these καθιερώσεις, when they have once got footing, and rejects only the new ones. The rites, worship, and sacrifices, in his city, are assumed to have been determined by local or oracular inspiration (v. p. 738 B): the orthodox creed is set out by himself.

Intolerant spirit of Plato’s legislation respecting uniformity of belief.

Such is the Act of Uniformity promulgated by Plato for his new community of the Magnêtes, and such the terrible sanctions by which it is enforced. The lawgiver is the supreme and exclusive authority, spiritual as well as temporal, on matters religious as well as on matters secular. No dissenters from the orthodoxy prescribed by him are admitted. Those who believe more than he does, and those who believe less, however blameless their conduct, are condemned alike to pass through a long solitary imprisonment to execution. Not only the speculations of enquiring individual reason, but also the spontaneous inspirations of religious disquietude or terror, are suppressed and punished.346

346  Plato himself is here the Νόμος Πόλεως, which the Delphian oracle, in its responses, sanctioned as the proper rule for individual citizens, Xenophon, Memor. iv. 3, 16. Compare iv. 6. 2, and i. 3, 1; Lysias, Or. xxx. 21-26. θύειν τὰ πάτρια — θύειν τὰ ἐκ τῶν κύρβεων, is εὐσεβεία.

See K. F. Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen, sect. 10: Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, pp. 201-204.

Cicero also enacts, in his Treatise De Legibus (ii. 8-10):— “Separatim nemo habessit Deos: neve novos, sed ne advenas, nisi publicé adscitos, privatim colunto.” Compare Livy, xxxix. 16, about the Roman prohibitions of sacra externa. But Cicero does not propose to inflict such severe penalties as Plato.

We seem to be under a legislation imbued with the persecuting spirit and self-satisfied infallibility of mediaeval Catholicism and the Inquisition. The dissenter is a criminal, and among the worst of criminals, even if he do nothing more than proclaim his opinions.347 How striking is the contradiction between this spirit and that in which Plato depicts the Sokrates of the Phædon, the Apology, and the Gorgias! How fully does Sokrates in the Phædon348 recognise and respect the individual reason of his two friends, though dissenting from his own! How emphatically does he proclaim, in the Apology and Gorgias, not merely his own individual dissent from his fellow-citizens, but also his resolution to avow and maintain it against one and all, until he should hear such reasons as convinced him that it was untrue! How earnestly does he declare (in the Apology) that he has received from the Delphian God a mission to cross-examine the people of Athens, and that he will obey the God in preference to them:349 thus claiming to himself that special religious privilege which his accuser Melêtus imputes to him as a crime, and which Plato, in his Magnêtic colony, also treats as a crime, interdicting it under the severest penalties! During the interval of forty-five years (probably) between the trial of Sokrates and the composition of the Leges, Plato had passed from sympathy with the free-spoken dissenter to an opposite feeling — hatred of all dissent, and an unsparing employment of penalties for upholding orthodoxy. I have already remarked on the Republic, and I here remark it again — if Melêtus lived long enough to read the Leges, he would have found his own accusation of Sokrates amply warranted by the enactments and doctrines of the most distinguished Sokratic Companion.350

347  Milton, in his Areopagitica, or Argument for Unlicensed Printing (vol. i. p. 149, Birch’s edition of Milton’s Prose Works), has some strenuous protestations against the rigour of the Platonic censorship in this tenth Book. In the year 1480 Hermolaus Barbarus wrote to George Merula as follows:— “Plato, in Institutione De Legibus, inter prima commemorat, in omni republicâ præscribi caverique oportere, ne cui liceat, quæ composuerit, aut privatim ostendere, aut in usum publicum edere, antequam ea constitute super id judices viderint, nec damnarint. Utinam hodieque haberetur hæc lex: neque enim tam multi scriberent, neque tam pauci bonas litteras discerent. Nunc et copiâ malorum librorum offundimur, et omissis eminentissimis autoribus, plebeios et minutulos consectamur. Et, quod calamitosissimum est, periti juxta imperitique de studiis impuné ac promiscué judicant” (Politiani Opera, 1553, p. 197).

I transcribe the above passage from an interesting article upon Book-Censors, in Beckmann’s History of Inventions (Ed. 1817, vol. iii. p. 93 seq.), where numerous examples are cited of the prohibition, combustion, or licensing of books by authority, from the burning of the work of Protagoras by decree of the Athenian assembly, down to modern times; illustrating the tendency of different sects and creeds, in proportion as they acquired power, to silence all open contradiction. The Christian Arnobius, at a time when his creed was under disfavour by the Emperors, protests against this practice, in a liberal and comprehensive phrase which would have much offended Plato (at the time when he wrote the Leges) and Hermolaus:— “Alios audio mussitare indignanter et dicere:— Oportere statui per Senatum, aboleantur ut hæc scripta quibus Christiana religio comprobetur et vetustatis opprimatur auctoritas. … Nam intercipere scripta, et publicatam velle submergere lectionem, non est Deos defendere, sed veritatis testificationem timere” (Arnob. adv. Gentes, iii. p. 104. Also iv. p. 152).

“We are told by Eusebius (Beckmann, ed. 1817, vol. iii. p. 96; Bohn’s ed., vol. ii. p. 514) that Diocletian caused the sacred Scriptures to be burnt. After the spreading of the Christian religion, the clergy exercised against books that were either unfavourable or disagreeable to them, the same severity which they had censured in the heathens as foolish and prejudicial to their own cause. Thus were the writings of Arius condemned to the flames at the Council of Nice; and Constantine threatened with the punishment of death those who should conceal them. The clergy assembled at the Council of Ephesus requested the Emperor Theodosius II. to cause the works of Nestorius to be burnt; and this desire was complied with. The writings of Eutyches shared the like fate at the Council of Chalcedon: and it would not be difficult to collect examples of the same kind from each of the following centuries.”

Dr. Vaughan observes, in criticising the virtuous character and sincere persecuting spirit of Sir Thomas More:— “If there be any opinion which it would be just to punish as a crime, it is the opinion which makes it to be a virtue not to tolerate opinion." (Revolutions in English History, vol. ii. p. 178.)

I find the following striking anecdote in the transactions of the Académie Royale de Belgique, 1862; Bulletins, 2me Sér., tom. xiii. p. 567 seq.; Vie et Travaux de Nicolas Cleynaerts par M. Thonissen. Cleynaerts (or Clenardus) was a learned Belgian (born 1495 — died 1543), professor both at Louvain and at Salamanca, and author of Grammaticæ Institutiones, both of the Greek and the Hebrew languages. He acquired, under prodigious difficulties and disadvantages, a knowledge of the Arabic language; and he employed great efforts to organise a course of regular instruction in that language at Louvain, with a view to the formation of missionaries who would combat the doctrines of Islam.

At Grenada, in Spain (1538), “Clenardus ne réussit pas mieux à arracher aux bûchers de l’inquisition les manuscrits et les livres” (Moorish and Arabic books which had been seized after the conquest of Grenada by the Spaniards) “qu’elle avait entassés dans sa succursale de Grenade. Ce fut en vain que Cleynaerts, faisant valoir le but éminemment chrétien qu’il voulait atteindre, prodigua les démarches et les prières, pour se faire remettre ‘ces papiers plus nécessaires à lui qu’à Vulcain’.… L’inexorable inquisition refusa de lâcher sa proie. Un savant théologien, Jean-Martin Silicæus, précepteur de Philippe II., fit cependant entendre à notre compatriote, que ses vœux pourraient être exaucés, s’il consentait à fonder son école, non à Louvain, mais à Grenade, où une multitude de néophytes faisaient semblant de professer le Christianisme, tout en conservant les préceptes de Mahomet au fond du cœur. Mais le linguiste Belge lui fit cette réponse, doublement remarquable à cause du pays et de l’époque où elle fut émise: ‘C’est en Brabant, et nullement en Espagne, que je poserai les fondements de mon œuvre. Je cherche des compagnons d’armes pour lutter là où la lutte peut être loyale et franche. Les habitants du royaume de Grenade n’oseraient pas me répondre, puisque la terreur de l’inquisition les force à se dire chrétiens. Le combat est impossible, là où personne n’ose assumer le rôle de l’ennemi’ — .” Galen calls for a strict censorship, even over medical books — ad Julianum — Vol. xviii. p. 247 Kühn.

348  Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 29. Gorgias, p. 472 A-B: καὶ νῦν περὶ ὧν σὺ λέγεις ὀλίγου σοι πάντες συμφήσουσι ταὐτὰ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ ξένοι … Ἀλλ’ ἐγώ σοι εἷς ὢν οὐχ ὁμολογῶ.

Compare also p. 482 B of the same dialogue, where Sokrates declares his anxiety to maintain consistency with himself, and his indifference to other authority.

349  Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 29 D. πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν. Comp. pp. 30 A, 31 D, 33 C.

350  The indictment of Melêtus against Sokrates ran thus — Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης, οὓς μὲν ἡ πόλις νομίζει θεούς, οὐ νομίζων, ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσηγούμενος· ἀδικεῖ δὲ καὶ τοὺς νέους διαφθείρων· τίμημα, θάνατος (Diog. Laert. ii. 40; Xenoph. Memor. i. 1). The charge as to introduction of καινὰ δαιμόνια was certainly well founded against Sokrates (compare Plato, Republic, vi. p. 496 C). Whoever was guilty of promulgating καινὰ δαιμόνια in the Platonic city De Legibus, would have perished miserably long before he reached the age of 70; which Sokrates attained at Athens.

Compare my ‘History of Greece,’ ch. xxviii.

I have in one passage greatly understated the amount of severity which Plato employs against heretics. I there affirm that he banishes them: whereas the truth is, that he imprisons them, and ultimately, unless they recant, puts them to death.

The persons denounced by Plato as heretics, and punished as such, would have included a majority of the Grecian world.

It is true that the orthodoxy which Plato promulgates, and forbids to be impugned, in the Magnêtic community, is an orthodoxy of his own, different from that which was recognised at Athens; but this only makes the case more remarkable, and shows the deep root of intolerance in the human bosom — esteemed as it frequently is, by a sincere man, among the foremost of his own virtues. Plato marks out three varieties of heresy, punishable by long imprisonment, and subsequent death in case of obstinate persistence. Now under one or other of the three varieties, a large majority of actual Greeks would have been included. The first variety — those who did not believe the Gods to exist — was doubtless confined to a small minority of reflecting men; though this minority (according to Plato351), not contemptible even in number, was distinguished in respect to intellectual accomplishments. The second variety — that of those who believed the Gods to exist, but believed them to produce some results only, not all — was more numerous. And the third variety — that of those who believed them to be capable of being appeased or won over by prayer and sacrifice — was the most numerous of all. Plato himself informs us352 that this last doctrine was proclaimed by the most eminent poets, rhetors, prophets, and priests, as well as by thousands and tens of thousands besides. That prayer and sacrifice were means of appeasing the displeasure or unfavourable dispositions of the Gods — was the general belief of the Grecian world, from the Homeric times downwards. The oracles or individual prophets were constantly entreated to inform petitioners, what was the nature or amount of expiatory ceremony which would prove sufficient for any specific case; but that there was some sort of expiatory ceremony which would avail, was questioned by few sincere believers.353 All these would have been ranked as heretics by Plato. If the Magnêtic community had become a reality, the solitary cells of the Platonic Inquisition might have been found to include Anaxagoras, and most of the Ionic philosophers, under the first head of heresy; Aristotle and Epikurus under the second; Herodotus and Nikias under the third. Indeed most of the 5040 Magnêtic colonists must have adjusted anew their canon of orthodoxy in order to satisfy the exigence of the Platonic Censors.

351  Plato, Legg. x. p. 886 E. πάμπολλοι. Also pp. 888 E, 891 B.

Fabricius tells us that Plato himself has been considered and designated as an atheist, by various critics:— “Alii Platonem atheis, alii Spinozæ præcursoribus, adnumerarunt. Utriusque criminis reum eum fecit Nic. Henr. Gundling… At alii bené defenderunt philosophum ab illo crimine.” (Bibliothec. Græc. tom. iii. pp. 69, not. hh, ed. Harles.)

This illustrates the loose manner in which the epithet ἄθεος has been applied in philosophical and theological controversies: a practice forcibly exposed in the following acute note of Wyttenbach.

Wyttenbach, Præf. ad Plutarch. De Superstit. vol. vi. pars ii. p. 995. “Nam quæ est superstitio? quæ ἀθεότης? quæ harum species? qui gradus? His demum explicitis et inter se comparatis intelligi poterit, quæ ἀθεότητος species cui superstitionis speciei, qui gradus hujus cui gradui illius, anteferri aut postponi debeat. Ac primum in ipsis illis de quibus agitur rebus definiendis magna est difficultas. Quamquam atheum quidem definire non difficile videtur; quippe quo ipso nomine significetur is qui nullum esse deum putet. Atqui hæc etiam definitio non intelligatur, nisi antea declaretur quid sit id quod Dei vocabulo significemus — omnino quæ sit definitio Dei. Jam nemo ignorat quantopere in notione ac definitione Dei dissentiant non modo universi populi, sed et singuli homines: nec solum vulgus, sed et sapientes: ita quidem, ut quo plures partes sint, ex quibus hæc notio constituatur, eo minus in ea consentiant. Sed fac esse qui eam paucissimis complectatur proprietatibus, ut dicat Deum esse mentem æternam, omnium rerum creatricem et gubernatricem. Erunt qui eum parum, erunt qui nimium, dixisse putent: neutri se atheos volent, utrique et hunc et se invicem atheos dicent. . . Ita se res habet. Quotidié jactatur tralatitium illud, verus Deus: quo suam quisque de Deo notionem significat, sæpe illam ineptam et summi numinis majestate indignam. Et bene nobiscum ageretur, si non nisi ab indocto vulgo jactaretur. Nunc philosophi, certe qui se philosophos haberi volunt, item crepant. Disputant de vero Deo, nec ab ejus definitione proficiscuntur, quasi vero hæc nemini ignota sit. … Pervulgata illa veri Dei appellatio nobis venit a consuetudine Ecclesiæ, cujus diversæ quondam sectæ notionem Dei diverso modo informantes, ejus ignorationem et ἀθεότητα non modo profanis, sed invicem aliæ aliis sectis exprobrare solebant. Hæc de notione athei: quæ profecto, nisi constitutâ notione Dei, constitui ipsa nequit.”

352  Plato, Legg. x. p. 885 D. νῦν μὲν γὰρ ταῦτα ἀκούοντές τε καὶ τοιαῦθ’ ἕτερα τῶν λεγομένων ἀρίστων εἶναι ποιητῶν τε καὶ ῥητόρων καὶ μάντεων καὶ ἱερέων καὶ ἄλλων μυριάκις μυρίων, &c.

353  See the sections 23 and 24 of the Lehrbuch of K. F. Hermann, Über die Gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen: Herodot. vi. 91; Thucydid. i. 134. — Respecting Plato’s aversion for Anaxagoras — and the physical philosophers — see Legg. x. 888 E. xii. 967 A., with Stallbaum’s notes.

Proëm or prefatory discourse of Plato, for these severe laws against heretics.

To these severe laws and penalties against heretics, Plato prefixes a Proëm or Prologue of considerable length, commenting upon and refuting their doctrines. In the earlier part of this dialogue he had taken credit to himself for having been the first to introduce his legal mandates by a prefatory harangue, intended to persuade and conciliate the persons upon whom the mandate was imposed, and to procure cheerful obedience.354 For such a purpose the Proëm in the tenth Book would be badly calculated. But Plato here introduces it with a different view:355 partly to demonstrate a kosmical and theological theory, partly to excite alarm and repugnance in the heretics whom he marks out and condemns. How many among them might be convinced by Plato’s reasonings, I do not know; but the large majority of them could not fail to be offended and exasperated by the tone of his Proëm or prefatory discourse. Confessing his inability to maintain completely the calmness and dignity of philosophical discussion, he addresses them partly with passionate asperity, partly with the arrogant condescension of a schoolmaster lecturing indocile pupils. He describes them now as hateful and unprincipled men — now as presumptuous youths daring to form opinions before they are competent, and labouring under a distemper of reason;356 and this too, although he intimates that the first-named variety of heresy was adopted by most of the physical philosophers; and the third variety by many of the best poets, rhetors, prophets, and priests.357 Such unusual vehemence is justified by Plato on the ground of a virtuous indignation against the impugners of orthodox belief. We learn from the Platonic and Xenophontic Apologies, that Melêtus and Anytus, when they accused Sokrates of impiety before the Dikastery, indulged in the same invective, announced the same justification, and felt the same confidence that they were righteous champions of the national faith, against an impious and guilty assailant.

354  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 722-723. 723 A: ἵνα γὰρ εὐμενῶς καὶ διὰ τὴν εὐμένειαν εὐμαθέστερον τὴν ἐπίταξιν, ὃ δή ἐστιν ὁ νόμος, δέξηται ᾧ τὸν νόμον ὁ νομοθέτης λέγει, &c.

355  Plato, Legg. x. p. 887 A.

356  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 887 B-E, 888 B, 891 B, 900 B, 907 A-C. καὶ μὴν εἴρηνταί γέ πως σφοδρότερον (οἱ λόγοι) διὰ φιλονεικίαν τῶν κακῶν ἀνθρώπων — προθυμία μὲν δὴ διὰ ταῦτα νεωτέρως εἰπεῖν ἡμῖν γέγονεν.

357  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 891 D, 885 D.

The third variety of heresy is declared to be the worst — the belief in Gods persuadable by prayer and sacrifice.

Among the three varieties of heresy, Plato considers the third to be the worst. He accounts it a greater crime to believe in indulgent and persuadeable Gods, than not to believe in any Gods at all.358 Respecting the entire unbelievers, he acknowledges that a certain proportion are so from intellectual, not from moral, default: and that there are, among them, persons of blameless life and disposition.359 It must be remembered that the foremost of these unbelievers, and the most obnoxious to Plato, were the physical astronomers: those who did not agree with him in recognising the Sun, Moon, and Stars as animated and divine Beings — those who studied their movements as if they were mechanical agents. Plato gives a brief summary of various cosmogonic doctrines professed by these heretics, who did not recognise (he says) either God, or reason, or art, in the cosmogonic process; but ascribed to nature, chance, and necessity, the genesis of celestial and terrestrial substances, which were afterwards modified by human art and reason. Among these matters regulated by human art and reason, were included (these men said) the beliefs of each society respecting the Gods and religion, respecting political and social arrangements, respecting the just and the beautiful: though there were (they admitted) certain things beautiful by nature, yet not those which the lawgiver declared to be such. Lastly, these persons affirmed (Plato tells us) that the course of life naturally right was, for each man to seize all the wealth, and all the power over others, which his strength enabled him to secure, without any regard to the requirements of the law. And by such teaching they corrupted the minds of youth.360

358  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 907 A, 906 B.

359  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 886 A, 908 B.

360  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 889-890.

Heretics censured by Plato — Sokrates censured before the Athenian Dikasts.

Who these teachers were, whom Plato groups together as if they taught the same doctrine, we do not know. Having no memorials from themselves, we cannot fully trust the description of their teaching given by an opponent: especially when we reflect, that it coincides substantially with the accusation which Melêtus and Anytus urged against Sokrates before the Athenian Dikastery — viz.: that he was irreligious, and that he corrupted youth by teaching them to despise both the laws and their senior relatives — of which corruption Kritias and Alkibiades were cited as examples. Such allegations, when advanced against Sokrates, are noted both by Plato and Xenophon as the stock-topics, always ready at hand for those who wished to depreciate philosophers.361

361  Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 23. τὰ κατὰ πάντων τῶν φιλοσοφούντων πρόχειρα ταῦτα λέγουσιν, ὅτι τὰ μετέωρα καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς καὶ θεοὺς μὴ νομίζειν καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν. Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 31. See generally the first two chapters of the Memorabilia, where Xenophon intimates that Sokrates was accused of training youth to a life of lawless and unprincipled ambition and selfishness, and especially of having trained Kritias and Alkibiades.

In so far as these heretics affirmed that right as opposed to wrong, just as opposed to unjust, true belief as opposed to false respecting the Gods, were determined by the lawgiver and not by any other authority — Plato has little pretence for blaming them: because he himself claims such authority explicitly in his Magnêtic community, and punishes severely not merely those who disobey his laws in act, but those who contradict his dogmas in speech or argument. Before he proclaims his intended punishments in a penal law, he addresses the heretics in a proëm or prefatory discourse intended to persuade or win them over: a discourse which was the more indispensable, since their doctrines (he tells us) were disseminated everywhere.362 If he seriously intended to persuade real dissentients, his attempt is certainly a failure: for the premisses on which he reasons are such as would not have been granted by them — nor indeed by many who agreed in the conclusion which he was himself trying to prove.

362  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 890 D, 891 A.

Kosmological and Kosmogonical theory announced in Leges.

The theory here given by Plato, represents the state of his own convictions at the time when the Leges were composed. It is a theory of kosmology of universal genesis: different in many respects from what he propounds in the Timæus, since it comprises no mention of the extra-kosmical Demiurgus — nor of the eternal Ideas — nor of the primordial chaotic movements called Necessity — while it contains (what we do not find in the Timæus) the allegation of a twofold or multiple soul pervading the universe — the good soul (one or more), being co-existent and co-eternal with others (one or more), that are bad.363

363  Plato, Legg. x. p. 896 E.

Soul — older, more powerful in the universe than Body. Different souls are at work in the universe — the good soul and the bad soul.

The fundamental principle which he lays down (in this tenth Book De Legibus) is — That soul or mind is older, prior, and more powerful, than body. Soul is the principle of self-movement, activity, spontaneous change. Body cannot originate any movement or change by itself. It is simply passive, receiving movement from soul, and transmitting movement onward. The movement or change which we witness in the universe could never have begun at first, except through the originating spontaneity of soul. None of the four elements — earth, water, air, or fire — is endowed with any self-moving power.364 As soul is older and more powerful than body, so the attributes of soul are older and more powerful than those of body: that is, pleasure, pain, desire, fear, love, hatred, volition, deliberation, reason, reflection, judgment true or false — are older and more powerful than heat, cold, heaviness, lightness, hardness, softness, whiteness, sweetness, &c.365 The attributes and changes of body are all secondary effects, brought about, determined, modified, or suspended, by the prior and primitive attributes and changes of soul. In all things that are moved there dwells a determining soul: which is thus the cause of all effects however contrary — good and bad, just and unjust, honourable and base. But it is one variety of soul which works to good, another variety which works to evil.366 The good variety of soul works under the guidance of Νοῦς or Reason — the bad variety works irrationally.367 Now which of the two (asks Plato) directs the movements of the celestial sphere, the Sun, Moon, and Stars? Certainly, the good soul, and not the bad. This is proved by the nature and character of their movements: which movements are rotatory in a circle, and exactly uniform and equable. Now among all the ten different sorts of motion or change, rotatory motion in a circle is the one which is most akin or congenial to Reason.368 The motion of Reason, and the motion of the stars, is alike rotatory, and the same, and unchangeable — in the same place, round the same centre, and returning into itself. The bad soul, acting without reason, produces only irregular movements, intermittent, and accompanied by constant change of place.369 Though it is the good variety of soul which produces the celestial rotation, yet there are many distinct and separate souls, all of this same variety, which concur to the production of the result. The Sun, the Moon, and each of the Stars, has a distinct soul inherent in itself or peculiar to its own body.370 Each of these souls, invested in the celestial substance and in each of the visible celestial bodies, is a God: and thus all things are full of Gods.371

364  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 894 D, 895 B.

365  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 896 A, 897 A. The κινήσεις of soul are πρωτουργοί — those of body are δευτερουργοί.

366  Plato, Legg. x. p. 896 E. ψυχὴν δὴ διοικοῦσαν καὶ ἐνοικοῦσαν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς πάντῃ κινουμένοις.

As an illustration or comment on this portion of Plato De Legibus, Lord Monboddo’s Ancient Metaphysics are instructive. See vol. i. pp. 2-7-9-25. He adopts the distinction between Mind and Body made both in the tenth Book De Legg., and in the Epinomis. He considers that Body and Mind are mixed together in each part of nature; and in the material world never separated: that motion is perpetual; and “Where there is motion, there must be there something that moves. What is moved, I call body; what moves, I call mind.

“Under mind, in this definition, I include:— 1. The rational and intellectual; 2. The animal life; 3. That principle in the vegetable, by which it is nourished, grows, and produces its like, and which therefore is commonly called the vegetable life; and 4. That motive principle which I understand to be in all bodies, even such as are thought to be inanimate. This is the distinction between body and mind made by Plato in his tenth Book of Laws” (pp. 8-9).

“The Greek word ψυχή denotes the three first kinds I have mentioned, which are not expressed by any one word that I know in English; for the word mind, that I have used to express them, denotes in common use only the rational mind or soul, as it is otherwise called. The fourth kind that I have mentioned, viz., the motive principle in all bodies, is not commonly in Greek called ψυχή. But Aristotle, in a passage which I shall afterwards quote, says that it is ὥσπερ ψυχή (p. 8, note).

“As to the principle of motion or moving principle, which Aristotle supposes to be in all bodies, it is what he calls nature (p. 9). … He makes Nature also to be the principle of rest in bodies; by which I suppose he means, that those bodies which he calls heavy, that is, which move towards the centre of the earth, would rest if they were there” (p. 9, note).

“From the account here given of motion, it is evident that by it the whole business of nature, above, below, and round about us, is carried on. … To those who hold that mind is the first of things, and principal in the universe, it will not appear surprising that I have made moving, or producing motion, an essential attribute of mind” (p. 25).

In the same Treatise — which exhibits very careful study both of Plato and of Aristotle — Lord Monboddo analyses the ten varieties of motion here recognised by Plato, and shows that Plato’s account is confused and unsatisfactory. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. i. pp. 23-230-252.

367  Plato, Legg. x. p. 897 B.

368  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 897 E-898 A. ᾗ προσέοικε κινήσει νοῦς τῶν δέκα ἐκείνων κινήσεων τὴν εἰκόνα λάβωμεν … τούτοιν δὴ τοῖν κινήσεοιν τὴν ἐν ἑνὶ φερομένην ἀεὶ περί γέ τι μέσον ἀνάγκη κινεῖσθαι, τῶν ἐντόρνων οὐσῶν [al. οὖσαν] μίμημά τι κύκλων, εἶναί τε αὐτὴν τῇ τοῦ νοῦ περιόδῳ πάντως ὡς δυνατὸν οἰκειοτάτην τε καὶ ὁμοίαν.

369  Plato, Legg. x. p. 898 B-C.

370  Plato, Legg. x. p. 898 D.

371  Plato, Legg. x. p. 899 B. εἴθ’ ὅστις ὁμολογεῖ ταῦτα, ὑπομένει μὴ θεῶν εἶναι πλήρη πάντα;

Plato’s argument is unsatisfactory and inconsistent.

In this argument — which Plato tells us that no man will be insane enough to dispute,372 and which he proclaims to be a triumphant refutation of the unbelievers — we find, instead of the extra-kosmical Demiurgus and pre-kosmical Chaos or necessity (the doctrine of the Platonic Timæus373), two opposing primordial forces both intra-kosmical: the good soul and the bad soul, there being a multiplicity of each. Though Plato here proclaims his conclusion with an unqualified confidence which contrasts greatly with the modest reserve often expressed in his Timæus — yet the conclusion is rather disproved than proved by his own premisses. It cannot be true that all things are full of Gods, since there are two varieties of soul existing and acting, the bad as well as the good: and Plato calls the celestial bodies Gods, as endowed with and moved by good and rational souls. Aristotle in his theory draws a marked distinction between the regularity and perfection of the celestial region, and the irregularity and imperfection of the terrestrial and sublunary: Plato’s premisses as here laid out would have called upon him to do the same, and to designate the Kosmos as the theatre of counteracting agencies, partly divine, partly not divine. So he terms it indeed in the Timæus.374

372  Plato, Legg. x. p. 899 C. οὐκ ἔστιν οὕτως παραφρονῶν οὐδείς.

373  Plato, Timæus, pp. 48 A, 69 A-B.

374  Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A.

The remarks of Zeller, in the second edition of his work, Die Philosophie der Griechen (vol. ii. p. 634 seq.), upon this portion of the Treatise De Legibus, are very acute and instructive. He exposes the fallacy of the attempt made by various critics to explain away the Manichæan doctrine declared in this treatise, and to reconcile the Leges with the Timæus. The subject is handled in a manner superior to the Platonische Studien of the same author (wherein the Leges are pronounced to be spurious, while in the History of Philosophy Zeller retracts this opinion), though in that work also there is much instruction. — Stallbaum’s copious notes on these passages (pp. 188-189-195-207-213 of his edition of Leges), while admitting the discrepancy between Leges and Timæus, furnish what he thinks a satisfactory explanation. One portion of his explanation is, that Plato here accommodates himself “ad captum hominum vulgarem (p. 189) … ad captum civium communem accommodaté et populari ratione explicari” (p. 207). I dissent from this as a matter of fact. I think that the heretics of the second and third class coincide rather with the “captus vulgaris”. So Plato himself intimates.

Reverence of Plato for uniform circular rotation.

There is another feature, common both to the Timæus and the Leges, which deserves attention as illustrating Plato’s point of view. It is the reverential sentiment with which he regards uniform rotatory movement in the same place. This he pronounces to be the perfect, regular, movement appertaining and congenial to Reason and the good variety of soul. Because the celestial bodies move thus and only thus, he declares them to be Gods. It is this circular rotation which continues with perfect and unchangeable regularity in the celestial sphere of the Kosmos, and also, though imperfect and perturbed, in the spherical cranium of man.375 Aristotle in his theory maintains unabated the reverence for this mode of motion, as the perfection of reason and regularity. The feeling here noted exercised a powerful and long-continued influence over the course of astronomical speculations.

375  Plato, Timæus, pp. 44 B, 47 C.

Argument of Plato to confute the second class of heretics.

Having demonstrated to his own full satisfaction, from the regularity of the celestial rotations, that the heavenly bodies are wise and good Gods, and that all things are full of Gods — Plato applies this conclusion to refute the second class of heretics — those who did not believe that the Gods directed all human affairs, the small things as well as the great;376 that is, the lot of each individual person as well as that of the species or of its component aggregates. He himself affirms that they direct all things. It is inconsistent with their attributes of perfect intelligence, power, and goodness (he maintains) that they should leave anything, either small or great, without regulation. All good human administrators, generals, physicians, pilots, &c., regulate all things, small and great, in their respective provinces: the Gods cannot be inferior to them, and must be held to do the same. They regulate every thing with a view to the happiness of the whole, in which each man has his share and interest; and each man has his special controuling Deity watching over his minutest proceedings, whether the individual sees it or not.377 Soul, both in its good variety and its bad variety, is essentially in change from one state to another, and passes from time to time out of one body into another. In the perpetual conflict between the good and the bad variety of soul, according as each man’s soul inclines to the better or to the worse, the Gods or Fate exalt it to a higher region or degrade it to a lower. By this means the Gods do the best they can to ensure triumph to virtue, and defeat to vice, in the entire Kosmos. This reference to the entire Kosmos is overlooked by the heretics who deny the all-pervading management of the Gods.378

376  The language of Plato sometimes implies, that the opponents whom he is controverting disbelieve altogether the intervention of the Gods in human affairs, pp. 899 E, 900 A, 885 B. But the main stress of his argument is directed against those who, admitting the intervention of the Gods in great things, deny it in small, pp. 900 D, 901 A-B-C-D, 902 A-B.

377  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 902-903 B-C.

378  This argument is set forth from p. 903 B to 905 B. It is obscure and difficult to follow.

Contrary doctrine of Plato in Republic.

Plato gives here an outburst of religious eloquence which might prove impressive when addressed to fellow-believers — but which, if employed for the avowed purpose of convincing dissentients, would fail of its purpose, as involving assumptions to which they would not subscribe. As to the actual realities of human life, past as well as present, Plato himself always gives a very melancholy picture of them. “The heaven is full of good things, and also full of things opposite to good: but mostly of things not good.”379 Moreover, when we turn back to the Republic, we find Plato therein expressly blaming a doctrine very similar to what he declares true here in the Leges — as a dangerous heresy, although extensively believed, from the time of Homer downward. “Since God is good” (Plato had there affirmed380) “he cannot be the cause of all things, as most men pronounce him to be. He is the cause of a few things, but of most things he is not the cause: for the good things in our lot are much fewer than the evil. We must ascribe all the good things to him, but for the evil things we must seek some other cause, and not God.” The confessed imperfection of the actual result381 was one of the main circumstances urged by those heretics, who denied that all-pervading administration of the Gods which Plato in the Leges affirms.382 If he undertook to convince them at all, he would have done well to state and answer more fully their arguments, and to clear up the apparent inconsistencies in his own creed.

379  Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 A. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ συγκεχωρήκαμεν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς εἶναι μὲν τὸν οὐρανὸν πολλῶν μεστὸν ἀγαθῶν, εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, πλειόνων δὲ τῶν μή, μάχη δή, φαμέν, ἀθάνατός ἐστιν ἡ τοιαύτη καὶ φυλακῆς θαυμαστῆς δεομένη. Ast in his note affirms that after μὴ is understood ἀγαθῶν. Stallbaum thinks, though with some hesitation, that ἐναντίων is understood after μή. I agree with Ast.

Compare iii. pp. 676-677, where Plato states that in the earlier history of the human race, a countless number of different societies (μυρίαι ἐπὶ μυρίαις) have all successively grown up and successively perished, with extinction of all their comforts and civilization.

380  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 379 C. Οὐδ’ ἄρα ὁ θεὸς, ἐπειδὴ ἀγαθὸς, πάντων ἂν εἴη αἴτιος, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσιν· ἀλλ’ ὀλίγων μὲν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις αἴτιος, πολλῶν δὲ ἀναίτιος· πολὺ γὰρ ἐλάττω τἀγαθὰ τῶν κακῶν ἡμῖν· καὶ τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν οὐδένα ἄλλον αἰτιατέον, τῶν δὲ κακῶν ἄλλ’ ἅττα ζητεῖν δεῖ τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸν θεόν. See a striking passage in Arnobius, adv. Gentes, ii. 46.

381  Plato, Legg. x. p. 903 A-B. Πείθωμεν τὸν νεανίαν τοῖς λόγοις … ὧν ἓν καὶ τὸ σόν, ὦ σχέτλιε, μόριον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ξυντείνει βλέπον ἀεί.

382  Lucretius, v. 197:—

Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam

Naturam mundi: tantâ stat prædita culpâ.

Argument of Plato to refute the third class of heretics.

A similar criticism may be made still more forcibly, upon the demonstration whereby he professes to refute the third and most culpable class of heretics — “Those who believe that the Gods exercise an universal agency, but that they can be persuaded by prayer and conciliated by sacrifice”. Here he was treading on dangerous ground: for he was himself a heretic, by his own confession, if compared with Grecian belief generally. Not merely the ordinary public, but the most esteemed and religious persons among the public383 — poets, rhetors, prophets, and priests — believed the doctrine which he here so vehemently condemns. Moreover it was the received doctrine of the city384 — that is, it was assumed as the basis of the official and authorised religious manifestations: and the law of the city was recognised by the Delphian oracle385 as the proper standard of reference for individual enquirers who came there to ask for information on matters of doubtful religious propriety. In the received Grecian conception of religious worship, prayer and sacrifice were correlative and inseparable: sacrifice was the gift of man to the Gods, accompanying the prayer for gifts from the Gods to man, and accounted necessary to render the prayer efficacious.386 The priest was the professional person competent and necessary to give advice as to the details: but as a general principle, it was considered disrespectful to ask favours from the Gods without tendering to them some present, suitable to the means of the petitioner.

383  Plato, Legg. x. p. 885 D; Republic, ii. pp. 364-365-366.

384  Plato, Republic, ii. p. 366 A-B. ἀλλ’ ὠφελήσουσιν ἁγνιζομένους αἱ τελεταὶ καὶ οἱ λύσιοι θεοί, ὡς αἱ μέγισται πόλεις λέγουσι καὶ οἱ θεῶν παῖδες, ποιηταὶ καὶ προφῆται τῶν θεῶν γενόμενοι, οἳ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχειν μηνύουσιν.

385  Xenophon, Memor. i. 3, 1, iv. 3, 16; Cicero, Legg. ii. 16.

386  See Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, Part 5, 1, p. 194 seq., where this doctrine is set forth and largely illustrated.

In approaching a king a satrap or any other person of exalted position above the level of ordinary men, it was the custom to come with a present. Thucyd. ii. 97; Xenoph. Anab. vii. 3, 26; Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 1, 10-12.

The great person, to whom the presents were made, usually requited them magnificently.

General belief in Greece about the efficacy of prayer and sacrifice to appease the Gods.

Plato himself states this view explicitly in his Politikus.387 Moreover, when a man desired information from the Gods on any contemplated project or on any grave matter of doubt, he sought it by means of sacrifice.388 Such sacrifice was a debt to the God: and if it remained unpaid, his displeasure was incurred.389 The motive for sacrificing to the Gods was thus, not simply to ensure the granting of prayers, but to pay a debt: and thus either to prevent or to appease the wrath of the Gods. The religious practice of Greece rested upon the received belief that the Gods were not merely pleased with presents, but exacted them as a mark of respect, and were angry if they were not offered: yet that being angry, their wrath might be appeased by acceptable presents and supplications.390 To learn what proceedings of this kind were suitable, a man went to consult the oracle, the priests, or the Exêgêtæ: in cases wherein he believed that he had incurred the displeasure of the Gods by any wrong or omission.391

387  Plato, Politikus, p. 290 D. καὶ μὴν καὶ τὸ τῶν ἱερέων αὖ γένος, ὡς τὸ νόμιμόν φησι, παρὰ μὲν ἡμῶν δωρεὰς θεοῖς διὰ θυσιῶν ἐπιστῆμόν ἐστι κατὰ νοῦν ἐκείνοις δωρεῖσθαι, παρὰ δὲ ἐκείνων ἡμῖν εὐχαῖς κτῆσιν ἀγαθῶν αἰτήσασθαι. Compare Euthyphron, p. 14.

388  Xenophon, Anab. vii. 6, 44; Euripid. Ion. 234.

389  Plato, Republic, i. p. 331 B. Compare also Phædon, p. 118, the last words spoken by Sokrates before his decease — ὀφείλομεν Ἀσκληπιῷ ἀλεκτρύονα· ἀλλ’ ἀπόδοτε καὶ μὴ ἀμελήσητε.

390  See Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, pp. 211-213.

391  See, as one example among a thousand, the proceeding of the Spartan government, Thucyd. i. 134; also ii. 48-54.

Incongruities of Plato’s own doctrine.

Now it is against this latter sentiment — that which recognised the Gods as placable or forgiving392 — that Plato declares war as the worst of all heresies. He admits indeed, implicitly, that the Gods are influenced by prayer and sacrifice; since he directs both the one and the other to be constantly offered up, by the citizens of his Magnêtic city, in this very Treatise. He even implies that the Gods are too facile and compliant: for in his second Alkibiadês, Sokrates is made to remark that it was dangerous for an ignorant man to pray for specific advantages, because he might very probably bring ruin upon himself by having his prayers granted —

“Evertêre domos totas, optantibus ipsis,

Di faciles.”

Farthermore Plato does not scruple to notice393 it as a real proceeding of the Gods, that they executed the prayer or curse of Theseus, by bringing a cruel death upon the blameless youth Hippolytus; which Theseus himself is the first to deplore when he becomes acquainted with the true facts. That the Gods should inflict punishment on a person who did not deserve it, Plato accounts not unworthy of their dignity: but that they should remit punishment in any case where he conceives it to have been deserved, he repudiates with indignation. Though accessible and easily influenced by prayer and sacrifice from other persons, they are deaf and inexorable to those who have incurred their displeasure by wrong-doing.394 The prayer so offered is called by Plato a treacherous cajolery, the sacrifice a guilty bribe, to purchase their indulgence.395 Since, in human affairs, no good magistrate, general, physician, pilot, &c., will allow himself to be persuaded by prayers or presents to betray his trust: much less can we suppose (he argues) the Gods to be capable of such betrayal.396

392  The common sentiment is expressed in a verse of Euripides — Τίνα δεῖ μακάρων ἐκθυσαμένους Εὑρεῖν μόχθων ἀνάπαυλαν — (Fragm. Ino 155); compare Eurip. Hippol. 1323.

393  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 931 C. ἀραῖος γὰρ γονεὺς ἐκγόνοις ὡς οὐδεὶς ἕτερος ἄλλοις, δικαιότατα. Also iii. p. 687 D.

394  Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 716-717.

395  Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 B. θωπείαις λόγων.

396  Plato, Legg. x. pp. 906-907.

Both Herodotus and Sokrates dissented from Plato’s doctrine.

The general doctrine, upon which Plato here lays so much stress, and the dissent from which he pronounces to be a capital offence — that the Gods, though persuadeable by every one else, were thoroughly unforgiving, deaf to any prayer or sacrifice from one who had done wrong — is a doctrine from which Sokrates397 himself dissented; and to which few of Plato’s contemporaries, perhaps hardly even himself, consistently adhered. The argument, upon which Plato rests for convincing all these numerous dissentients, is derived from his conception of the character and functions of the Gods. But this, though satisfactory to himself, would not have been granted by his opponents. The Gods were conceived by Herodotus as jealous, meddlesome, intolerant of human happiness beyond a narrow limit, and keeping all human calculations in a state of uncertainty:398 in this latter attribute Sokrates also agreed. He affirmed that the Gods kept all the important results essentially unpredictable by human study, reserving them for special revelations by way of prophecy to those whom they preferred. These were privileged and exclusive communications to favoured individuals, among whom Sokrates was one:399 and Plato, though not made a recipient of the same favour as Sokrates, declares his own full belief in the reality of such special revelations from the Gods, to particular persons and at particular places.400 Aristotle, on the other hand, pronounces action and construction, especially action in details, to be petty and unworthy of the Gods; whom he regards as employed in perpetual contemplation and theorising, as the only occupation worthy to characterise their blessed immortality.401 Epikurus and his numerous followers, though not agreeing with Aristotle in regarding the Gods as occupied in intellectual contemplation, agreed with him fully in considering the existence of the Gods as too dignified and enviable to be disturbed by the vexation of meddling with human affairs, or to take on the anxieties of regard for one man, displeasure towards another.

397  Xenophon, Memorab. ii. 2, 14. Σὺ οὖν, ὦ παῖ, ἂν σωφρονῇς, τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς παραιτήσῃ συγγνώμονάς σοι εἶναι, εἴ τι παρημέληκας τῆς μητρός, μή σε καὶ οὗτοι νομίσαντες ἀχάριστον εἶναι οὐκ ἐθέλωσιν εὖ ποιεῖν.

At the same time, Sokrates maintains that the Gods accepted sacrifices from good men with greater favour than sacrifices from bad men. Xenoph. Mem. i. 3, 3.

398  Herodotus, i. 32, iii. 40.

399  Xenoph. Mem. i. 1, 8-9. τοὺς θεοὺς γάρ, οἷς ἂν ὦσιν ἵλεῳ, σημαίνειν. Also i. 3, 4, iv. 3, 12; Cyropæd. i. 6, 5-23-46. θεοὶ ἀεὶ ὄντες πάντα ἴσασι … καὶ τῶν συμβουλευομένων ἀνθρώπων οἷς ἂν ἵλεῳ ὦσι, προσημαίνουσιν ἅ τε χρὴ ποιεῖν καὶ ἃ οὐ χρή. Εἰ δὲ μὴ πᾶσιν ἐθέλουσι συμβουλεύειν, οὐδὲν θαυμαστόν· οὐ γὰρ ἀνάγκη αὐτοῖς ἐστιν, ὧν ἂν μὴ θέλωσιν, ἐπιμελεῖσθαι (Cyrop. i. 6, 46).

Solon. Frag. v. 53, ed. Gaisf.:—

Ἄλλον μάντεν ἔθηκιν ἄναξ ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων·

Ἔγνω δ’ ἀνδρὶ κακὸν τήλοθεν ἐρχόμενον.

See the curious narrative in Herodotus ix. 94 seq. about the prophetic gifts bestowed on Euenius. The same narrative attests the full belief prevalent respecting both the displeasure of the Gods and their placability on the proper expiation being made. It conflicts signally in every respect with the canon of orthodoxy set up by Plato.

400  Plato, Legg. v. pp. 738 C, 747 E, vii. p. 811 D; Republic, vi. pp. 496 C, 499 C.

401  Aristotle, Ethic. Nikom. x. 8, p. 1178 b. 21. ὥστε ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνέργεια, μακαριότητι διαφέρουσα, θεωρητικὴ ἂν εἴη.

Great opposition which Plato’s doctrine would have encountered in Greece.

The orthodox religious belief, which Plato imposes upon his 5040 Magnêtic citizens under the severest penalties, would thus be found inconsistent with the general belief, not merely of ordinary Greeks, but also of the various lettered and philosophical individuals who thought for themselves. Most of these latter would have passed, under one of the three heads of Platonic heresy, into the Platonic prison for five years, and from thence either to recantation or death. The arguments which Plato considered so irresistible, that none but silly youths could be deaf to them — did not appear conclusive to Aristotle and other intelligent contemporaries. Plato makes up his own mind, what proceedings he thinks worthy and unworthy of the Gods, and then proclaims with confidence as a matter of indisputable fact, that they act conformably. But neither Herodotus, nor Aristotle, would have granted his premisses: they conceived the attributes and character of the Gods differently from him, and differently from each other. And if we turn to the Kratylus of Plato, we find Sokrates there declaring, that men knew nothing about the Gods: that speculations about the Gods were in reality speculations about the opinions of men respecting the Gods.402

402  Plato, Kratylus, pp. 400-401. Περὶ θεῶν οὐδὲν ἴσμεν, οὔτε περὶ αὐτῶν, οὔτε περὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων, ἅττα ποτὲ αὐτοὶ ἑαυτοὺς καλοῦσι (400 D) … σκοπῶμεν ὥσπερ προειπόντες τοῖς θεοῖς ὅτι περὶ αὐτῶν οὐδὲν ἡμεῖς σκεψόμεθα, οὐ γὰρ ἀξιοῦμεν οἷοί τ’ ἂν εἶναι σκοπεῖν, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἥντινά ποτε δόξαν ἔχοντες ἐτίθεντο αὐτοῖς τὰ ὀνόματα· τοῦτο γὰρ ἀνεμέσητον (401 A). Compare also Kratyl. p. 425 B.

Local infallibility was claimed as a rule in each community, though rarely enforced with severity: Plato both claims it more emphatically, and enforces it more rigorously.

Such opinions were local, traditional, and dissentient, among the numerous distinct cities and tribes which divided the inhabited earth between them in Plato’s time.403 Each of these claimed a local infallibility, principally as to religious rites and customs, indirectly also as to dogmas and creed: and Plato’s Magnêtic community, if it had come into existence, would have added one to the number of distinct varieties. To this general sentiment, deeply rooted in the emotions and unused to the scrutiny of reason, the philosophers were always more or less odious, as dissenters, enquirers, and critics, each on his own ground.404 At Athens the sentiment manifested itself occasionally in severe decrees and judicial sentences against obnoxious freethinkers, especially in the case of Sokrates. If the Athenians had carried out consistently and systematically the principle involved in their sentence against Sokrates, philosophy must have been banished from Athens.405 The school of Plato could never have been maintained. But the principle of intolerance was usually left dormant at Athens: philosophical debate continued active and unshackled, so that the school of Plato subsisted in the city without interruption for nearly forty years until his death. We might have expected that the philosophers, to whose security toleration of free dissent and debate was essential, would have upheld it as a general principle against the public. But here we find the most eminent among them, at the close of a long life, not only disallowing all liberty of philosophising to others, and assuming to himself the exclusive right of dictating the belief, as well as the conduct, of his imaginary citizens — but also enforcing this exclusive principle with an amount of systematic rigour, which I do not believe to have been equalled in any actual Grecian city. This is a memorable fact in the history of Grecian philosophy. The Stoic Kleanthes, in the century after Plato’s death, declared that the Samian astronomer Aristarchus ought to be indicted for impiety, because he had publicly advocated the doctrine of the Earth’s rotation round the Sun. Kleanthês and Plato thus stand out as known examples, among Grecian philosophers before the Christian era, of that intolerance which would apply legal penalties against individual dissenters and competitors.406

403  Plato, Politikus, p. 262 D. γένεσιν ἀπείροις οὖσι καὶ ἀμίκτοις καὶ ἀσυμφώνοις πρὸς ἄλληλα. Herodot. iii. 39.

404  Plato, Euthyphron, p. 3.

405  See the Apologies both of Plato and Xenophon. In one of the rhetorical discourses cited by Aristotle, on the subject of the trial of Sokrates (seemingly that by the Rhetor Theodektês), the point is put thus:— Μέλλετε δὲ κρίνειν, οὐ περὶ Σωκράτους, ἀλλὰ περὶ ἐπιτηδεύματος, εἰ χρὴ φιλοσοφεῖν (Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 1399, a. 8, b. 10).

406  The Platonist and astronomer Derkyllides afterwards (about 100-120 A.D.) declares those who affirm the doctrine, that the earth moves and that the stars are stationary, to be accursed and impious — τοὺς δὲ τὰ κινητὰ στήσαντας, τὰ δὲ ἀκίνητα φύσει καὶ ἕδρᾳ κινήσαντας, ὡς παρὰ τὰς τῆς μαντικῆς ὑποθέσεις, ἀποδιοπομπεῖται. (Theon Smyrnæus, De Astronomiâ, ch. 41, p. 328, fol. 26, ed. Martin.)

Farther civil and political regulations for the Magnêtic community. No evidence that Plato had studied the working of different institutions in practice.

The eleventh Book of the Treatise De Legibus, and the larger portion of the twelfth, are devoted to a string of civil and political regulations for the Magnêtic community. Each regulation is ushered in with an expository prologue, often with severe reproof towards persons committing the various forbidden acts. There is little of systematic order in the enumeration of subjects. In general we may remark that neither here nor elsewhere in the Treatise is there any proof, that Plato — though doubtless he had visited Italy, Sicily, and Egypt, perhaps other countries — had taken much pains to acquaint himself with the practice of human life, or that he had studied and compared the working of different institutions in different communities. His experience seems all derived from Athenian law and practice: the criticisms and modifications which he applies to it flow from his own sentiment and theory: from his religious or ethical likings or dislikings. He sets up a type of character which he desires to enforce among his citizens, and which he guards against adulteration by very stringent interference. The displeasure of the Gods is constantly appealed to, as a justification for the penalties which he proposed: sometimes even the current mythes are invoked as authority, though in other places Plato so greatly disparages them.407

407  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 913 D.

Modes of acquiring property — legitimate and illegitimate.

Various modes of acquiring property are first forbidden as illegitimate. The maxim408 — “That which you have not put down, do not take up” — is rigorously enforced: any man who finds a buried treasure is prohibited from touching it, though he find it by accident and though the person who buried it be unknown. If a man violates this law, every one, freeman or slave, is invited and commanded to inform against him. Should he be found guilty, a special message must be sent to the Delphian oracle, to ask what is to be done both with the treasure and with the offender. So again, an article of property left on the highway is declared to be under protection of the Goddess or Dæmon of the Highway: whoever finds and takes it, if he be a slave, shall be severely flogged by any freeman above thirty years of age who meets him: if he be a freeman, he shall be disgraced and shall pay, besides, ten times its value to the person who left it.409 These are average specimens of Plato’s point of view and manner of handling offences respecting property.

408  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 913 C. Ἃ μὴ κατέθου, μὴ ἀνελῇ. This does not include, however, what has been deposited by a man’s father or grandfather.

409  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 914. Seemingly, if any man found a treasure buried in the ground, or a purse lying on the road without an owner, he was not considered by most persons dishonest if he appropriated it; to do so was looked upon as an admissible piece of good luck. See Theophrastus, περὶ Μεμψιμοιρίας. From Plato’s language we gather that the finder sometimes went to consult the prophets what he should do, p. 913 B — μήτε τοῖς λεγομένοις μάντεσιν ἀνακοινώσαιμι: his phrase is not very respectful towards the prophets.

Plato’s general regulations leave little room for disputes about ownership.

The general constitution of Plato’s community restricts within comparatively narrow limits the occasions of proprietary dispute. His 5040 lots of land are all marked out, unchangeable, and indivisible, each possessed by one citizen. No man is allowed to acquire or possess movable property to a greater value than four times the lot of land: every article of property possessed by every man is registered by the magistrates. Disputes as to ownership, if they arise, are settled by reference to this register.410 If the disputed article be not registered, the possessor is bound to produce the seller or donor from whom he received it. All purchases and sales are required to take place in the public market before the Agoranomi: and all for ready-money, or by immediate interchange and delivery. If a man chooses to deliver his property, without receiving the consideration, or in any private place, he does so at his own risk: he has no legal claim against the receiver.411 So likewise respecting the Eranoi or Associations for mutual Succour and Benefit. Plato gives no legal remedy to a contributor or complainant respecting any matter arising out of these associations. He requires that every man shall contribute at his own risk: and trust for requital to the honesty or equity of his fellow-contributors.412

410  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 914 D.

411  The same principle is laid down by Plato, Republic, viii. p. 556 A, and was also laid down by Charondas (Theophrast. ap. Stobæum Serm. xliv. 21, p. 204). Aristotle alludes to some Grecian cities in which it was the established law. K. F. Hermann, Privat-Alterthümer der Griechen, s. 71, n. 10.

412  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 915 D-E.

Plato’s principles of legislation, not consistent — comparison of them with the Attic law about Eranoi.

A remark must here be made upon Plato’s refusal to allow any legal redress in such matters as sale on credit, or payments for the purpose of mutual succour and relief. Such refusal appears to contradict his general manner of proceeding: for his usual practice is, to estimate offences not according to the mischief which they inflict, but according to the degree of wickedness or impiety which he supposes them to imply in the doer. Now the contributor to an association for mutual succour, who, after paying his contributions for the aid of his associates, finds that they refuse to contribute to his aid when the hour of his necessity arrives — suffers not only heavy calamity but grievous disappointment: which implies very bad dispositions on the part of those who, not being themselves distressed, nevertheless refuse. Of such dispositions Plato takes no notice in the present case. He does not expatiate (as he does in many other cases far more trifling and disputable) upon the displeasure of the Gods when they see a man who has been benefited in distress by his neighbour’s contributions, refusing all requital at the time of that neighbour’s need. Plato indeed treats it as a private affair between friends. You do a service to your friend, and you must take your chance whether he will do you a service in return: you must not ask for legal redress, if he refuses: what you have contributed was a present voluntarily given, not a loan lent to be repaid. This is an intelligible point of view, but it excludes those ethical and sentimental considerations which Plato usually delights in enforcing.413 His ethics here show themselves by leading him to turn aside from that which takes the form of a pecuniary contract. It was in this form that the Eranoi or Mutual Assurance Associations were regarded by Attic judicature: that is, they seem to have been considered as a sort of imperfect obligation, which the Dikastery would enforce against any citizen whose circumstances were tolerably prosperous, but not against one in bad circumstances. Such Eranic actions before the Attic Dikastery were among those that enjoyed the privilege of speedy adjudication (ἔμμηνοι δίκαι).414

413  In Xenophon’s ideal legislation, or rather education of the Persian youth, in the Cyropædia, he introduces legal trial and punishment for ingratitude generally (Cyropæd. i. 2, 7). The Attic judicature took cognizance of neglect or bad conduct towards parents, which Xenophon ranks as a sort of ingratitude — but not of ingratitude towards any one else (Xenoph. Memor. ii. 2, 13). There is an interesting discussion in Seneca (De Beneficiis, iii. 6-18) about the propriety of treating ingratitude as a legal offence.

414  Respecting the ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadversiones in Salmasium, vi. 1, p. 407 seq.; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 540 seq.; K. F. Hermann, Staats Alterth. s. 146, not. 9.

The word ἔρανος meant very different things — a pic-nic banquet, a club for festive meetings kept up by subscription with a common purse, a contribution made to relieve a friend in distress, carrying obligation on the receiver to requite it if the donor fell into equal distress. This last sense is the prevalent one in the Attic orators, and is brought out well in the passage of Theophrastus — Περὶ Μεμψιμοιρίας. Probably the Attic ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι took cognizance of complaints arising out of ἔρανος in all its senses.

Regulations about slaves, and about freedmen.

As to property in slaves, Plato allows any owner to lay hold of a fugitive slave belonging either to himself or to any friend. If a third party reclaims the slave as being not rightfully in servitude, he must provide three competent sureties, and the slave will then be set free until legal trial can be had. Moreover, Plato enacts, respecting one who has been a slave, but has been manumitted, that such freedman (ἀπελεύθρος), if he omits to pay “proper attention” to his manumitter, may be laid hold of by the latter and re-enslaved. Proper attention consists in: 1. Going three times per month to the house of his former master, to tender service in all lawful ways. 2. Not contracting marriage without consulting his former master. 3. Not acquiring so much wealth as to become richer than his former master: if he should do so the latter may appropriate all that is above the limit. The freed man, when liberated, does not become a citizen, but is only a non-citizen or metic. He is therefore subject to the same necessity as all other metics — of departing from the territory after a residence of twenty years,415 and of never acquiring more wealth than is possessed by the second class of citizens enrolled in the Schedule.

415  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 915 A-B.

The duties imposed by Plato on the freedman towards his former master — involving a formal recognition at least of the prior dependence, and some positive duties besides — are deserving of remark, as we know so little of the condition or treatment of this class of persons in antiquity.

Provisions in case a slave is sold, having a distemper upon him.

Regulations are made to provide for the case where a slave, sold by his master, is found to be distempered or mad, or to have committed a murder. If the sale has been made to a physician or a gymnast, Plato holds that these persons ought to judge for themselves about the bodily condition of the slave bought: he therefore grants them no redress. But if the buyer be a non-professional man, he may within one month restore the distempered slave (or within one year, if the distemper be the Morbus Sacer), and may cause a jury of physicians to examine the case. Should they decide the distemper of the slave to be undoubted, the seller must take him back: repaying the full price, if he be a private man — double the price, if he be a professional man, who ought to have known, and perhaps did know, the real condition of the slave sold.416

416  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 916 B-C.

Retailers. Strict regulations about them. No citizen can be a retailer.

In regard to Retail Selling, and to frauds committed either in sale or in barter, Plato provides or enjoins strict regulations. The profession of the retailer, and the function of money as auxiliary to it, he pronounces to be useful and almost indispensable to society, for the purpose of rendering different articles of value commensurable with each other, and of ensuring a distribution suitable to the requirements of individuals. This could not be done without retailers, merchants, hired agents, &c.417 But though retailing is thus useful, if properly conducted, it slides easily and almost naturally into cheating, lying, extortion, &c., from the love of money inherent in most men. Such abuses must be restrained: at any rate they must not be allowed to corrupt the best part of the community. Accordingly, none of the 5040 citizens will be allowed either to practise retailing, or to exercise any hired function, except under his own senior relatives, and of a dignified character. The discrimination of what is dignified and not dignified must be made according to the liking or antipathy of a court of honour, composed of such citizens as have obtained prizes for virtue.418 None must be permitted to sell by retail except metics or non-citizens: and these must be kept under strict watch by the Nomophylakes, who, after enquiring into the details of each article, will fix its price at such sum as will afford to the dealer a moderate profit.419

417  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 918 B. The like view of retail trade is given in the Republic, ii. p. 371. It indicates just and penetrating social observation, taken in reference to Plato’s age.

418  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 918-919. 919 E: τὸ δ’ ἐλευθερικὸν καὶ ἀνελεύθερον ἀκριβῶς μὲν οὐ ῥᾴδιον νομοθετεῖν, κρινέσθω γε μὴν ὑπὸ τῶν τὰ ἀριστεῖα εἰληφότων τῷ ἐκείνων μίσει τε καὶ ἀσπασμῷ.

419  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920 B-C.

Frauds committed by sellers — severe punishments on them.

If there be any fraud committed by the seller (which is nearly akin to retailing),420 Plato prescribes severe penalty. The seller must never name two prices for his article during the same day. He must declare his price: and if no one will give it, he must withdraw the article for the day.421 He is not allowed to praise his own articles, or to take any oath respecting them. If he shall take any oath, any citizen above thirty years of age shall be held bound to thrash him, and may do so with impunity: such citizen, if he neglect to thrash the swearer, will himself be amenable to censure for betraying the laws. If the seller shall sell a spurious or fraudulent article, the magistrates must be informed of it by any one cognizant. The informer, if a slave or a metic, shall be rewarded by having the article made over to him. If he be a citizen, he will receive the article, but is bound to consecrate it to the Gods who preside over the market: if being cognizant he omits to inform, he shall be proclaimed a wicked man, for defrauding the Gods of that to which they are entitled. The magistrates, on receiving information, will not only deprive the seller of the spurious article, but will cause him to be flogged by the herald in the market-place — one stripe for every drachma contained in the price demanded. The herald will publicly proclaim the reason why the flogging is given. Besides this, the magistrates will collect and write up in the market-place both regulations of detail for the sellers, and information to put buyers on their guard.422

420  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920 C. τῆς κιβδηλείας πέρι, ξυγγενοῦς τούτῳ (καπηλείᾳ) πράγματος, &c.

Plato is more rigorous on these matters than the Attic law. See K. F. Hermann, Griech. Privat-Alterthümer, s. 62.

421  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-C. I do not quite see how this is to be reconciled with Plato’s direction that the prices of articles sold shall be fixed by the magistrates; but both of the two are here found.

422  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-D.

Comparison with the lighter punishment inflicted by Attic law.

Compare this enactment in Plato with the manner in which the Attic law would have dealt with the like offence. The defrauded buyer would have brought his action before the Dikastery against the fraudulent seller, who, if found guilty, would have been condemned in damages to make good the wrong: perhaps fined besides. The penalties inflicted by the usual course of law at Athens were fine, disfranchisement, civil disability of one kind or other, banishment, confiscation of property: occasionally imprisonment — sometimes, though rarely, death by the cup of hemlock in prison.423 Except in very rare cases, an accused person might retire into banishment if he chose, and might thus escape any penalty worse than banishment and confiscation of property. But corporal punishment was never inflicted by the law at Athens. The people, especially the poorer citizens, were very sensitive on this point,424 regarding it as one great line of distinction between the freeman and the slave. At Sparta, on the contrary, corporal chastisement was largely employed as a penalty: moreover the use of the fist in private contentions, by the younger citizens, was encouraged rather than forbidden.425

423  See Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, B. iv. Chap. 13, 740.

424  See Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 58.

425  Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 3, 11: De Republ. Laced. ii. 8, iv. 6, ix. 5; Aristophanes, Aves, 1013.

Plato follows the analogy of Sparta in preference to that of Athens. Here, as elsewhere, he employs corporal punishment abundantly as a penalty. Here, as elsewhere, he not only prescribes that it shall be inflicted by a public agent under the supervision of magistrates, but also directs it to be administered, against certain offenders, by private unofficial citizens. I believe that this feature of his system would have been more repugnant than any other, to the feelings of all classes of Athenian citizens — to all the different types of character represented by Perikles, Nikias, Kleon, Isokrates, Demosthenes, and Sokrates. Abstinence from manual violence was characteristic of Athenian manners. Whatever licence might be allowed to the tongue, it was at least a substitute for the aggressive employment of the arm and hand. Athens exhibited marked respect for the sanctity of the person against blows — much equality of dealing between man and man — much tolerance, public as well as private, of individual diversity in taste and character — much keenness of intellectual and oral competition, liable to degenerate into unfair stratagem in political, forensic, professional, and commercial life, as well as in rhetorical, dialectical, and philosophical exercises. All these elements, not excepting even the first, were distasteful to Plato. But those who copy the disparaging judgment which he pronounces against Athenian manners, ought in fairness to take account of the point of view from which that judgment is delivered. To a philosopher whose ideal is depicted in the two treatises De Republicâ and De Legibus, Athenian society would appear repulsive enough. We learn from these two treatises what it was that a great speculative politician of the day desired to establish as a substitute.

Regulations about Orphans and Guardians: also about Testamentary powers.

Plato next goes on to make regulations about orphans and guardians, and in general for cases arising out of the death of a citizen. The first question presenting itself naturally is, How far is the citizen to be allowed to direct by testament the disposition of his family and property? What restriction is to be placed upon his power of making a valid will? Many persons (Plato says) affirmed that it was unjust to impose any restriction: that the dying man had a right to make such dispositions as he chose, for his property and family after his death. Against this view Plato enters his decided protest. Each man — and still more each man’s property — belongs not to himself, but to his family and to the city: besides which, an old man’s judgment is constantly liable to be perverted by decline of faculties, disease, or the cajoleries of those around him.426 Accordingly Plato grants only a limited liberty of testation. Here, as elsewhere, he adopts the main provisions of the Attic law, with such modifications as were required by the fundamental principles of his Magnêtic city: especially by the fixed total of 5040 lots or fundi, each untransferable and indivisible. The lot, together with the plant or stock for cultivating it,427 must descend entire to one son: but the father, if he has more than one son, may determine by will to which of them it shall descend. If there be any one among the sons whom another citizen (being childless) is disposed to adopt, such adoption can only take place with the father’s consent. But if the father gives his consent, he cannot bequeath his own lot to the son so adopted, because two lots cannot be united in the same possessor. Whatever property the father possesses over and above his lot and its appurtenances, he may distribute by will among his other sons, in any proportion he pleases. If he dies, leaving no sons, but only daughters, he may select which of them he pleases; and may appoint by will some suitable husband, of a citizen family, to marry her and inherit his lot. If a citizen (being childless) has adopted a son out of any other family, he must bequeath to that son the whole of his property, except one-tenth part of what he possesses over and above his lot and its appurtenances: this tenth he may bequeath to any one whom he chooses.428

426  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 923 B.

It is to be observed that Plato does not make any allusion to these misguiding influences operating upon an aged man, when he talks about the curse of a father against his son being constantly executed by the Gods: xi. p. 931 B.

427  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 923 D. πλὴν τοῦ πατρῴου κλήρου καὶ τῆς περὶ τὸν κλῆρον κατασκεύης πάσης.

428  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 923-924. The language of Plato seems to imply that this childless citizen would not be likely to make any will, but that having adopted a son, the son so adopted would hardly be satisfied unless he inherited the whole.

If the father dies intestate, leaving only daughters, the nearest relative who has no lot of his own shall marry one of the daughters, and succeed to the lot. The nearest is the brother of the deceased; next, the brother of the deceased’s wife (paternal and maternal uncles of the maiden); next, their sons; next, the parental and maternal uncle of the deceased father, and their sons. If all these relatives be wanting, the magistrates will provide a suitable husband, in order that the lot of land may not remain unoccupied.429 If a citizen die both intestate and childless, two of his nearest unmarried relatives, male and female, shall intermarry and succeed to his property: reckoning in the order of kinship above mentioned.430 In thus imposing marriage as a legal obligation upon persons in a certain degree of kinship, Plato is aware that there will be individual cases of great hardship and of repugnance almost insurmountable. He treats this as unavoidable: providing however that there shall be a select judicial Board of Appeal, before which persons who feel aggrieved by the law may bring their complaints, and submit their grounds for dispensation.431

429  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 924-925.

430  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 925 C-D. These provisions appear to me not very clear.

431  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 926 B-D. He directs also (p. 925 A) that the Dikasts shall determine the fit season when these young persons become marriageable by examining their naked bodies: that is, the males quite naked, the females half naked. A direction seemingly copied from Athenian practice, and illustrating curiously the language of Philokleon in Aristophanes, Vesp. 598. See K. F. Hermann, Vestig. Juris Domestici ap. Platonem cum Græciæ Institutis Comparata, p. 27.

Plato’s general coincidence with Attic law and its sentiment.

These provisions deserve notice as showing how largely Plato coincides with the prevalent Attic sentiment respecting family and relationship. He does not award the slightest preference to primogeniture, among brothers: he grants to agnates a preference over cognates: he regards it as a public misfortune that any house shall be left empty, so as to cause interruption of the sacred rites of the family: lastly, he ensures that the family, in default of lineal male heirs, shall be continued by inter-marriage with the nearest relatives — and he especially approves the marriage of an heiress with her paternal or maternal uncle. On these points Plato is in full harmony with his countrymen, though he dissents widely from modern sentiment.

Tutelage of Orphans — Disagreement of Married Couples — Divorce.

Respecting tutelage of orphans, he makes careful provision against abuse, as the Attic law also did: he tries also to meet the cases of family discord, where father and son are in bitter wrath against each other. A father may formally renounce his son, but not without previously obtaining the concurrence of a conseil de famille: if the father has become imbecile with age, and wastes his substance, the son may institute a suit as for lunacy, but not without the permission of the Nomophylakes.432 Respecting disagreement between married couples, ten of the Nomophylakes, together with ten women chosen as supervisors of marriages, are constituted a Board of reference,433 to obtain a reconciliation, if it be possible: but if this be impossible, then to divorce the couple, and unite each with some more suitable partner. The lawgiver must keep in view, as far as he can, to obtain from each married couple a sufficiency of children — that is, one male and one female child from each, whereby the total of 5040 lots may be kept up.434 If a husband loses his wife before he has these two children, the law requires him to marry another wife: but if he becomes a widower, having already the sufficiency of children, he is advised not to marry a second wife (who will become stepmother), though not prohibited from doing so, if he chooses. So also, if a woman becomes a widow, not having the sufficient number of children, she must be compelled to marry again: if she already has the sufficient number, she is directed to remain in the house, and to bring them up. In case she is still young, and her health requires a husband, her relatives will apply to the Female Supervisors of Marriage, and will make such arrangements as may seem advisable.435

432  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 928-929.

433  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 929-930.

434  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 930 D. παίδων δὲ ἱκανότης ἀκριβὴς ἄῤῥην καὶ θήλεια ἔστω τῷ νόμῳ.

435  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 930 C.

Neglect of Parents.

Against neglect of aged parents by their children, Plato both denounces the most stringent legal penalties, and delivers the most emphatic reproofs: commending with full faith the ancient traditional narratives, that the curse of an offended parent against his sons was always executed by the Gods, as in the cases of Œdipus, Theseus, Amyntor, &c.436 In the event of lunacy, he directs that the lunatic shall be kept in private custody by his relatives, who will be fined if they neglect the duty.437

436  Plato, Legg, xi. p. 931-932.

437  Plato, Legg, xi. p. 934 D.

Hurt or damage, not deadly, done by one man to another. — Plato enumerates two different modes of inflicting damage:— 1. By drugs (applied externally or internally), magic, or sorcery. 2. By theft or force.438

438  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 932 E-933 E. Both these come under the general head ὅσα τις ἄλλος ἄλλον πημαίνει.

Poison — Magic — Incantations — Severe punishment.

As to the first mode, if the drug be administered by a physician, he must be put to death: if by one not a physician, the Dikasts will determine the nature of his punishment. And in the case of magical arts, or incantations, if the person who resorts to them be a prophet, or an inspector of prodigies, he must be put to death: another person doing the same will be punished at the discretion of the Dikasts. Here we see that the prophet is ranked as a professional person (the like appears in Homer) along with the physician,439 — who must know what he is about, while another person perhaps may not know. But Plato’s own opinion respecting magical incantations is delivered with singular reserve. He will neither avouch them nor reject them. He intimates that a man can hardly find out what is true on the subject; and even if he could, it would be harder still to convince others. Most men are in serious alarm when they see waxen statuettes hung at their doors or at their family tombs; and it is useless to attempt to tranquillise them by reminding them that they have no certain evidence on the subject.440 Here we see how Plato discourages the received legends and the current faith, when he believes them to be hurtful — as contrasted with his vehemence in upholding them when he thinks them useful: as in the case of the paternal curse, and the judgments of the Gods. The question of their truth is made to depend on their usefulness.441 The Gods are made to act exactly as he thinks they ought to act. They are not merely invoked, but positively counted on, as executioners of Plato’s ethical sentences.

439  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 933 C. ὡς πρῶτον μὲν τὸν ἐπιχειροῦντα φαρμάττειν οὐκ εἰδότα τί δρᾷ, τά τε κατὰ σώματα, ἐὰν μὴ τυγχάνῃ ἐπιστήμων ὢν ἰατρικῆς, τά τε αὖ περὶ τὰ μαγγανεύματα, ἐὰν μὴ μάντις ἢ τερατοσκόπος ὢν τυγχάνῃ.

Homer, Odys. xvii. 383:—

… τῶν οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασι,

μάντιν, ἢ ἰήτηρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,

ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδόν, &c.

440  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 933 B. ἄν ποτε ἴδωσί που κήρινα μιμήματα πεπλασμένα. Compare Theokritus, Idyll, ii. 28-59.

See the remarkable narrative of the death of Germanicus in Syria, supposed to have been brought about by the magical artifices wrought under the auspices of Piso (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 69).

441  Cicero, Legg, ii. 7, 16. “Utiles autem esse has opiniones, quis neget, cum intelligat, quam multa firmentur jurejurando,” &c.

Punishment is inflicted with a view to future prevention or amendment.

Respecting the second mode of damage — by theft or violence — Plato’s law forms a striking contrast to that which has been just set forth. The person who inflicts damage must repay it, or make full compensation for it, to the sufferer: small, if the damage be small — great, if it be great. Besides this, the guilty person must undergo some farther punishment with a view to correction or reformation. This will be smaller, if he be young and seduced by the persuasion of others; but it must be graver, if he be self-impelled by his own desires, fears, wrath, jealousy, &c. Understand, however (adds Plato), that such ulterior punishment is not imposed on account of the past misdeed — for the past cannot be recalled or undone — but on account of the future: to ensure that he shall afterwards hate wrong-doing, and that those who see him punished shall hate it also. The Dikasts must follow out in detail the general principle here laid down.442

442  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 933-934. Compare Plato, Protagor. p. 324 B.

This passage proclaims distinctly an important principle in regard to the infliction of legal penalties: which principle, if kept in mind, might have lead Plato to alter or omit a large portion of the Leges.

Penalty for abusive words — for libellous comedy. Mendicity forbidden.

Respecting words of abuse, or revilement, or insulting derision. — These are altogether forbidden. If used in any temple, market, or public and frequented place, the magistrate presiding must punish the offender forthwith, as he thinks fit: if elsewhere, any citizen by-stander, being older than the offender, is authorised thrash him.443 No writer of comedy is allowed to ridicule or libel any citizen.

443  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 935 C-D. The Attic law expressly forbade the utterance of abusive words against any individual in an office or public place upon any pretence (Lysias, Or. ix. Pro Milite, s. 6-9). Demosthenes (contra Konon. p. 1263) speaks of κακηγορία or λοιδορία as in itself trifling, but as forbidden by the law, lest it should lead to violence and blows.

Mendicity is strictly prohibited. Every mendicant must be sent away at once, in order that the territory may be rid of such a creature.444 Every man, who has passed an honest life, will be sure to have made friends who will protect him against the extremity of want.

444  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 936 C. ὅπως ἡ χώρα τοῦ τοιούτου ζώου καθαρὰ γίγνηται τὸ παράπαν.

Regulations about witnesses on judicial trials.

The rules provided by Plato about witnesses in judicial trials and indictments for perjury, are pretty much the same as those prevalent at Athens: with some peculiarities. Thus he permits a free woman to bear witness, and to address the court in support of a party interested, provided she be above forty years of age. Moreover, she may institute a suit, if she have no husband: but not if she be married.445 A slave or a child may bear witness at a trial for murder; provided security be given that they will remain in the city to await an indictment for perjury, if presented against them.

445  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 937 A-B.

It appears that women were not admitted as witnesses before the Athenian Dikasteries. Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, pp. 667-668. The testimony of slaves was received after they had been tortured; which was considered as a guarantee for truth, required in regard to them, but not required in regard to a free-man. The torture is not mentioned in this Platonic treatise. Plato treats a male as young up to the age of thirty (compare Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 35), a female as young up to the age of forty (pp. 932 B-C, 961 B).

Censure of forensic eloquence, and the teachers of it. Penalties against contentious litigation.

Among Plato’s prohibitions, we are not surprised to find one directed emphatically against forensic eloquence, and against those who professed to teach it. Every thing beneficial to man (says he) has its accompanying poison and corruption. Justice is a noble thing, the great civilising agent in human affairs: to aid any one in obtaining justice, is of course a noble thing also. But these benefits are grossly abused by men, who pretend to possess an art, whereby every one may be sure of judicial victory, either as principal or as auxiliary, whether his cause be just or unjust:— and who offer to teach this art to all who pay a stipulated price. Whether this be (as they pretend) a real art, or a mere inartificial knack — it would be a disgrace to our city, and must be severely punished. Whoever gives show of trying to pervert the force of justice in the minds of the Dikasts, or indulges in unseasonable and frequent litigation, or even lends his aid to other litigants — may be indicted by any citizen as guilty of abuse of justice, either as principal or auxiliary. He shall be tried before the Court of Select Judges: who, if they find him guilty, will decide whether he has committed the offence from love of money, or from love of contention and ambitious objects. If from love of contention, he shall be interdicted, for such time as the Court may determine, from instituting any suit at law on his own account as well as from aiding in any suit instituted by others.446 If from love of money, the citizen found guilty shall be capitally punished, the non-citizen shall be banished in perpetuity. Moreover the citizen convicted of committing this offence even from love of contention, if it be a second conviction for the offence, shall be put to death also.447

446  Plato, Legg. xi. p. 938 B. τιμᾷν αὐτῷ τὸ δικαστήριου ὅσου χρὴ χρόνου τὸν τοιοῦτον μηδενὶ λαχεῖν δίκην μηδὲ ξυνδικῆσαι. I cannot understand why Stallbaum, in his very useful notes on the Leges, observes upon this passage (p. 330):— “λαγχάνειν δίκην de caussidicis accipiendum, qui caussam aliquam pro aliis in foro agendam ac defendendam suscipiunt”. This is the explanation belonging to ξυνδικῆσαι: λαχεῖν δίκην is the well known phrase for a plaintiff or a prosecutor as principal.

447  Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 937 E, 938 C.

Many of Plato’s laws are discharges of ethical antipathy. The antipathy of Melêtus against Sokrates was of the same character.

The vague and undefined character of this offence, for which Plato denounces capital punishment, shows how much his penal laws are discharges of ethical antipathy and hostility against types of character conceived by himself — rather than measures intended for application, in which he had weighed beforehand the practical difficulties of singling out and striking the right individual. On this matter the Athenian public had the same ethical antipathy as himself; and Melêtus took full advantage of it, when he brought his accusation against Sokrates. We know both from the Apologies of Plato and Xenophon, and from the Nubes of Aristophanes — that Sokrates was rendered odious to the Athenian people and Dikasts, partly as heterodox and irreligious, but partly also as one who taught the art of using speech so as to make the worse appear the better reason. Both Aristophanes and Melêtus would have sympathised warmly with the Platonic law. If there had been any Solonian law to the same effect, which Melêtus could have quoted in his accusatory speech, his case against Sokrates would have been materially strengthened. Especially, he would have had the express sanction of law for his proposition of death as the penalty: a proposition to which the Athenian Dikasts would not have consented, had they not been affronted and driven to it by the singular demeanour of Sokrates himself when before them. It would be irrelevant here to say that Sokrates was not guilty of what was imputed to him: that he never came before the Dikastery until the time of his trial — and that he did not teach “the art of words”. If he did not teach it, he was at least believed to teach it, not merely by Aristophanes and by the Athenian Dikasts, but also by intelligent men like Kritias and Charikles,448 who knew him perfectly well: while the example of Antiphon shows that a man might be most acute and efficacious as a forensic adviser, without coming in person before the Dikastery.449 What the defence really makes us feel is, the indefinite nature of the charge: which is neither provable nor disprovable, and which is characterised, both by Xenophon and in the Platonic Apology, as one of the standing calumnies against all philosophising men.450 Here, in the Platonic Leges, this same unprovable offence is adopted and made capital: the Select Platonic Dikasts being directed to ascertain, not only whether a man has really committed it, but whether he has been impelled to commit it by love of money, or by love of victory and personal consequence.

448  Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 31 seq.

449  Thucydid. viii. 68.

450  Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 23.

Such was the colloquial power of Sokrates, in the portrait drawn by Xenophon (Mem. i. 2, 14), “that he handled all who conversed with him just as he pleased — τοῖς δὲ διαλεγομένοις αὐτῷ πᾶσι χρώμενον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ὅπως βούλοιτο. Kritias and Alkibiades (Xenophon tells us) sought his society for the purpose of strengthening their own oratorical powers as political men, and of becoming κρείττονε τῶν συγγιγνομένων (i. 2, 16). Looked at from the point of view of opponents, this would be described as the proceeding of one who himself both could pervert justice — and who taught others to pervert it also. This was the picture of Sokrates which the accusers presented to the Athenian Dikastery: as we may see by the language of Sokrates himself at the beginning of the Platonic Apology.

Penalty for abuse of public trust — wrongful appropriation of public money — evasion of military service.

The twelfth and last Book of the Treatise De Legibus deals with various cases of obligation, not towards individuals, but towards the public or the city. Abuse of trust in the character of a public envoy is declared punishable. This offence (familiar to us at Athens through the two harangues of Demosthenes and Æschines) is invested by Plato with a religious colouring, as desecrating the missions and commands of Hermês and Zeus.451 Wrongful appropriation of the public money by a citizen is also made capital. The penalty is to be inflicted equally whether the sum appropriated be large or small: in either case the guilt is equal, and the evidence of wicked disposition the same, for one who has gone through the public education and training.452 This is quite different from Plato’s principle of dealing with theft or wrongful abstraction of property from private persons: in which case, the sentence of Plato was, that the amount of damage done, small or great, should be made good by the offender, and that a certain ulterior penalty should be inflicted sufficient to deter him as well as others from a repetition.

451  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 941 A.

452  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 941: compare xi. p. 934 A.

Provision is farther made for punishing any omission of military service either by males or females, or any discreditable abandonment of arms.453 The orders of the military commander must be implicitly and exactly obeyed. The actions of all must be orderly, uniform, and simultaneous. Nothing can be more mischievous than that each should act for himself, separately and apart from others. This is confessedly true as to war; but it is no less essential as to the proceedings in peace.454 Suppression of individuality, and conversion of life into a perpetual, all-pervading, drill and discipline — is a favourite aspiration always present to Plato.

453  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 944. It is curious to compare this passage of Plato with the two orations of Lysias κατὰ Θεομνήστου A and B (Oratt. x.-xi.). Plato enjoins upon all accusers the greatest caution and precision in the terms used to indicate what they intended to charge upon the accused. To call a man ῥίψασπις is a more aggravated offensive designation than to call him ἀποβολεὺς ὅπλων, which latter term is more general, and may possibly be applied to those who have lost their arms under the pressure of irresistible necessity, without any disgrace. On the other hand, we read in Lysias, that the offence which was punishable under the Attic law was ὅπλων ἀποβολή, and that to assert falsely respecting any citizen, τὰ ὅπλα ἀποβέβληκε, was an ἀπόῤῥητον or forbidden phrase, which exposed the speaker to a fine of 500 drachmæ (sect. 1-12). But to assert respecting any man that he was ῥίψασπις was not expressly ἀπόῤῥητον (compare Lysias cont. Agorat., Or. xiii. ss. 87-89), and the speaker might argue (successfully or not) that he had said nothing ἀπόῤῥητον, and was not guilty of legal κακηγορία. — There is another phrase in this section of Plato to which I would call attention. He enumerates the excusable cases of losing arms as follows — ὁπόσοι κατὰ κρημνῶν ῥιφέντες ἀπώλεσαν ὅπλα ἢ κατὰ θάλατταν (p. 944 A). Now the cases of soldiers being thrown down cliffs are, I believe, unknown until the Phokian prisoners were so dealt with in the Sacred War, as sacrilegious offenders against Apollo and the Delphian temple. Hence we may probably infer that this was composed after the Sacred War began, B.C. 356. See Diodorus and my ‘Hist. of Greece,’ chap. 87, p. 350 seq.

454  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 942 B-945. ἑνί τε λόγῳ τὸ χωρίς τι τῶν ἄλλων πράττειν διδάξαι τὴν ψυχὴν ἔθεσι μήτε γιγνώσκειν μήτ’ ἐπίστασθαι τὸ παράπαν, ἀλλ’ ἀθρόον ἀεὶ καὶ ἅμα καὶ κοινὸν τὸν βίον ὅ, τι μάλιστα πᾶσι πάντων γίγνεσθαι.

A Board of Elders is constituted by Plato, as auditors of the proceedings of all Magistrates after their term of office.455 The mode of choosing these Elders, as well as their duties, liabilities, privileges, and honours, both during life and after death, are prescribed with the utmost solemnity.

455  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 946-948.

Oaths. Dikasts, Judges, Electors, are to be sworn: but no parties to a suit, or interested witnesses, can be sworn.

Plato forbids the parties in any judicial suit from swearing: they will present their case to the court, but not upon oath. No judicial oath is allowed to be taken by any one who has a pecuniary interest in the matter on hand. The Dikasts — the judges in all public competitions — the Electors before they elect to a public trust — are all to be sworn: but neither the parties to any cause, nor (seemingly) the witnesses. If oaths were taken on both sides, one or other of the parties must be perjured: and Plato considers it dreadful, that they should go on living with each other afterwards in the same city. In aforetime Rhadamanthus (he tells us) used to settle all disputes simply, by administering an oath to the parties: for in his time no one would take a false oath: men were then not only pious, but even sons or descendants of the Gods. But now (in the Platonic days) impiety has gained ground, and men’s oaths are no longer to be trusted, where anything is to be gained by perjury.456

456  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 948-949.

Regulations about admission of strangers, and foreign travel of citizens.

Strict regulations are provided, as to exit from the Platonic city, and ingress into it. Plato fears contamination to his citizens from converse with the outer world. He would introduce the peremptory Spartan Xenelasy, if he were not afraid of the obloquy attending it. He strictly defines the conditions on which the foreigner will be allowed to come in, or the citizen to go out. No citizen is allowed to go out before he is forty years of age.457 Envoys must be sent on public missions; and sacred legations (theôries) must be despatched to the four great Hellenic festivals — Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian. But private citizens are not permitted to visit even these great festivals at their own pleasure. The envoys sent must be chosen and trustworthy men: moreover, on returning, they will assure their youthful fellow-citizens, that the home institutions are better than anything that can be seen abroad.458

457  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 950.

458  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 951.

Special travellers, between the ages of fifty and sixty, will also be permitted to go abroad, and will bring back reports to the Magistrates of what they have observed. Strangers are admitted into the city or its neighbourhood, under strict supervision; partly as observers, partly as traders, for the limited amount of traffic which the lawgiver tolerates.459 Thus scanty is the worship which Plato will allow his Magnêtes to pay to Zeus Xenius.460 He seems however to take credit for it as liberal dealing.

459  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 952-953.

460  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 953 D-E. Τούτοις δὴ τοῖς νόμοις ὑποδέχεσθαί τε χρὴ πάντας ξένους τε καὶ ξένας καὶ τοὺς αὑτῶν ἐκπέμπειν, τιμῶντας ξένιον Δία, μὴ βρώμασι καὶ θύμασι τὰς ξενηλασίας ποιουμένους, καθάπερ ποιοῦσι νῦν θρέμματα Νείλου, μηδὲ κηρύγμασιν ἀγρίοις. Stallbaum says in his note (p. 384):— “μὴ βρώμασι καὶ θύμασι — peregrinos non expellentes cœnis et sacrificiis, h. e. eorum usu iis interdicentes”. This surely is not the right explanation. Plato means to say that the Egyptian habits as to eating and sacrifice were intolerably repulsive to a foreigner. We may see this from κηρύγμασι, which follows. The peculiarities of Egypt, which Herodotus merely remarks upon with astonishment, may well have given offence to the fastidious and dictatorial spirit of Plato.

Suretyship — Length of prescription for ownership, &c.

Plato proceeds with various enactments respecting suretyship — time of prescription for ownership — keeping men away by force either from giving testimony in court or from contending at the public matches — receiving of stolen goods — private war or alliance on the part of any individual citizen, without the consent of the city — receipt of bribes by functionaries — return and registration of each citizen’s property — dedications and offerings to the Gods.461 No systematic order or classification can be traced in the successive subjects.

461  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 954-956.

Judicial trial — three stages. 1. Arbitrators. 2. Tribe-Dikasteries. 3. Select Dikastery.

In respect to judiciary matters, he repeats (what had before been directed) his constitution of three stages of tribunals. First, Arbitrators, chosen by both parties in the dispute. From their decision, either party may appeal to the Tribe-Dikasteries, composed of all the citizens of the Tribe or Dême: or at least, composed of a jury taken from these. After this, there is a final appeal to the Select Dikastery, chosen among all the Magistrates for the time being.462 Plato leaves to his successors the regulations of details, respecting the mode of impannelling and the procedure of these Juries.

462  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 956.

Funerals — proceedings prescribed — expense limited.

Lastly come the regulations respecting funerals — the cost, ceremonies, religious proceedings, mode of showing sorrow and reverence, &c.463 These are given in considerable detail, and with much solemnity of religious exhortation.

463  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 957-958.

Conservative organ to keep up the original scheme of the lawgiver. Nocturnal Council for this purpose — how constituted.

We have now reached the close. The city has received its full political and civil outfit: as much legal regulation as it is competent for the lawgiver to provide at the beginning. One guarantee alone is wanting. Some security must be provided for the continuance and durability of the enactments.464 We must have a special conservative organ, watching over and keeping up the scheme of the original lawgiver. For this function, Plato constitutes a Board, which, from its rule of always beginning its sittings before daybreak, he calls the Nocturnal council. It will comprise ten of the oldest Nomophylakes: all those who have obtained prizes for good conduct or orderly discipline: all those who have been authorised to go abroad, and have been approved on their return. Each of these members will introduce into the Synod one young man of thirty years of age, chosen by himself, but approved by the others.465 The members will thus be partly old, partly young.

464  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 960 C-D. Compare Plato, Republ. vi. p. 497 D: ὅτι δέησοί τι ἀεὶ ἐνεῖναι ἐν τῇ πόλει, λόγον ἔχον τῆς πολιτείας τὸν αὐτὸν ὅνπερ καὶ σὺ ὁ νομοθέτης ἔχων τοὺς νόμους ἐτίθης.

465  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 961 A-B.

This Nocturnal council is intended as the conservative organ of the Platonic city. It is, in the city, what the soul and head are in an animal. The soul includes Reason: the head includes the two most perfect senses — Sight and Hearing. The fusion, in one, of Reason with these two senses ensures the preservation of the animal.466 In the Nocturnal council, the old members represent Reason, the young members represent the two superior senses, serving as instruments and means of communication between Reason and the outer world. The Nocturnal council, embracing the agency of both, maintains thereby the life and continuity of the city.467

466  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 961 D.

467  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 964 D-965 A.

It is the special duty of this council, to serve as a perpetual embodiment of the original lawgiver, and to comprehend as well as to realise the main purpose for which the city was put together. The councillors must keep constantly in view this grand political end, as the pilot keeps in view safe termination of the voyage — as the military commander keeps in view victory, and the physician, recovery of health. Should the physician or the pilot either not know his end, or not know the conditions under which it may be attained — his labour will be in vain. So, if there does not exist in the city an authority understanding the great political end and the means (either by laws or human agents) of accomplishing it, the city will be a failure. Hence the indispensable necessity of the Nocturnal council, with members properly taught and organised.468

468  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 962 B. δεῖ … εἶναί τι τὸ γιγνῶσκον ἐν αὐτῷ (the city) πρῶτον μὲν τοῦτο ὃ λέγομεν, τὸν σκοπόν, ὅστις ποτὲ ὁ πολιτικὸς ὢν ἡμῖν τυγχάνει, ἔπειτα ὅντινα τρόπον δεῖ μετασχεῖν τούτου καὶ τίς αὐτῷ καλῶς ἢ μὴ συμβουλεύει τῶν νόμων αὐτῶν πρῶτον, ἔπειτα ἀνθρώπων.

This Council must keep steadily in view the one great end of the city — Mistakes made by existing cities about the right end.

The great political end must be one, and not many. All the arrows aimed by the central Conservative organ must be aimed at one and the same point.469 This is the chief excellence of a well-constituted conservative authority. Existing cities err all of them in one of two ways. Either they aim at one single End, but that End bad or wrong: or they aim at a variety of Ends without giving exclusive attention to any one. Survey existing cities: you will find that in one, the great purpose, and the main feature of what passes for justice, is, that some party or faction shall obtain or keep political power, whether its members be better or worse than their fellow-citizens: in a second city, it is wealth — in a third freedom of individuals — in a fourth, freedom combined with power over foreigners. Some cities, again, considering themselves wiser than the rest, strive for all these objects at once or for a variety of others, without exclusive attention to any one.470 Amidst such divergence and error in regard to the main end, we cannot wonder that all cities fail in attaining it.

469  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 962 D. δεῖ δὴ τοῦτον (the nocturnal synod) … πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἔχειν, ἧς ἄρχει τὸ μὴ πλανᾶσθαι πρὸς πολλὰ στοχαζόμενον, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἓν βλέποντα πρὸς τοῦτο ἀεὶ τὰ πάντα οἷον βέλη ἀφιέναι.

470  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 962 D-E. Compare Aristot. Eth. Nikom. x. 1180, a. 26.

The one end of the city is the virtue of its citizens — that property which is common to the four varieties of Virtue — Reason, Courage, Temperance, Justice.

The One End proposed by our city is, the virtue of its citizens. But virtue is fourfold, or includes four varieties — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice. Our End is and must be One. The medical Reason has its One End, Good Health:471 the stratêgic Reason has its One End — Victory: What is that One End (analogous to these) which the political Reason aims at? It must be that in which the four cardinal virtues — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — are One, or coincide: that common property, possessed by all and by each, which makes them to be virtue, and constitutes the essential meaning of the name, Virtue. We must know the four as four, that is, the points of difference between them: but it is yet more important to know them as One — to discern the point of essential coincidence and union between them.472

471  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 963 A-B. νοῦν γὰρ δὴ κυβερνητικὸν μὲν καὶ ἰατρικὸν καὶ στρατηγικὸν εἴπομεν εἰς τὸ ἓν ἐκεῖνο οἷ δεῖ βλέπειν, τὸν δὲ πολιτικὸν ἐλέγχοντες ἐνταῦθ’ ἐσμὲν νῦν … Ὦ θαυμάσιε, σὺ δὲ δὴ ποῖ σκοπεῖς; Τί ποτ’ ἐκεῖνό ἐστι τὸ ἓν, ὃ δὴ σαφῶς ὁ μὲν ἰατρικὸς νοῦς ἔχει φράζειν, σὺ δ’ ὢν δὴ διαφέρων, ὡς φαίης ἄν, πάντων τῶν ἐμφρόνων, οὐχ ἕξεις εἰπεῖν;

472  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 963 E-964 A.

The Nocturnal Council must comprehend this unity of Virtue, explain it to others, and watch that it be carried out in detail.

To understand thoroughly this unity of virtue, so as to act upon it themselves, to explain it to others and to embody it in all their orders — is the grand requisite for the supreme Guardians of our city — the Nocturnal council. We cannot trust such a function in the hands of poets, or of visiting discoursers who announce themselves as competent to instruct youth. It cannot be confided to any less authority than the chosen men — the head and senses — of our city, properly and specially trained to exercise it.473 Upon this depends the entire success or failure of our results. Our guardians must be taught to see that one Idea which pervades the Multiple and the Diverse:474 to keep it steadily before their own eyes, and to explain and illustrate it in discourse to others. They must contemplate the point of coincidence and unity between Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice: as well as between the many different things called Beautiful, and the many different things called Good.475 They must declare whether the name Virtue, common to all the four, means something One — or a Whole or Aggregate — or both together.476 If they cannot explain to us whether Virtue is Manifold or Fourfold, or in what manner it is One — they are unfit for their task, and our city will prove a failure. To know the truth about these important matters — to be competent to explain and defend it to others — to follow it out in practice, and to apply it in discriminating what is well done and what is ill done — these are the imperative and indispensable duties of our Guardians.477

473  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 964 D.

474  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 965 C. τὸ πρὸς μίαν ἰδέαν ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ ἀνομοίων δυνατὸν εἶναι βλέπειν.

475  Plato, Legg. xii. pp. 965 D, 966 A-B.

476  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 965 D. πρὶν ἂν ἱκανῶς εἴπωμεν τί ποτέ ἐστιν, εἰς ὃ βλεπτέον, εἴτε ὡς ἓν, εἴτε ὡς ὅλον, εἴτε ἀμφότερα, εἴτε ὅπως ποτὲ πέφυκεν· ἢ τούτου διαφυγόντος ἡμᾶς οἰόμεθά ποτε ἡμῖν ἱκανῶς ἕξειν τὰ πρὸς ἀρετήν, περὶ ἧς οὔτ’ εἰ πολλά ἐστ’, οὔτ’ εἰ τέτταρα, οὔθ’ ὡς ἕν, δυνατοὶ φράζειν ἐσόμεθα;

477  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 966 B.

They must also adopt, explain, and enforce upon the citizens, an orthodox religious creed. Fundamental dogmas of such creed.

Farthermore it is also essential that they should adopt an orthodox religious creed, and should be competent to explain and defend it. The citizens generally must believe without scrutiny such dogmas as the lawgiver enjoins; but the Guardians must master the proofs of them.478 The proofs upon which, in Plato’s view, all true piety rests, are two479 (he here repeats them):— 1. Mind or soul is older than Body — anterior to Body as a moving power — and invested with power to impel, direct, and controul Body. 2. When we contemplate the celestial rotation, we perceive such extreme exactness and regularity in the movement of the stars (each one of the vast multitude maintaining its relative position in the midst of prodigious velocity of movement) that we cannot explain it except by supposing a Reason or Intelligence pervading and guiding them all. Many astronomers have ascribed this regular movement to an inherent Necessity, and have hereby drawn upon science reproaches from poets and others, as if it were irreligious. But these astronomers (Plato affirms) were quite mistaken in excluding Mind and Reason from the celestial bodies, and in pronouncing the stars to be bodies without mind, like earth or stones. Necessity cannot account for their exact and regular movements: no other supposition is admissible except the constant volition of mind in-dwelling in each, impelling and guiding them towards exact goodness of result. Astronomy well understood is, in Plato’s view, the foundation of true piety. It is only the erroneous astronomical doctrines which are open to the current imputations of irreligion.480

478  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 966 D.

479  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 E.

480  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 A-D. διανοίαις βουλήσεως ἀγαθῶν περὶ τελουμένων … μήποτ’ ἂν ἄψυχα ὄντα οὕτως εἰς ἀκρίβειαν θαυμαστοῖς λογισμοῖς ἂν ἐχρῆτο, νοῦν μὴ κεκτημένα … τόν τε εἰρημένον ἐν τοῖς ἄστροις νοῦν τῶν ὄντων.

These are the capital religious or kosmical dogmas which the members of the Nocturnal Council must embrace and expound to others, together with the mathematical and musical teaching suitable to illustrate them. Application must be made of these dogmas to improve the laws and customs of the city, and the dispositions of the citizens.481

481  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 E.

When this Nocturnal Council, with its members properly trained and qualified, shall be established in the akropolis — symbolising the conjunction of Reason with the head or with the two knowledge-giving senses — the Magnêtic City may securely be entrusted to it, with certainty of an admirable result.482

482  Plato, Legg. xii. p. 969 B.

EPINOMIS.

Leges close, without describing the education proper for the Nocturnal Counsellors. Epinomis     — supplying this defect.

Here closes the dialogue called Leges: somewhat prematurely, since the peculiar training indispensable for these Nocturnal Counsellors has not yet been declared. The short dialogue called Epinomis supplies this defect. It purports to be a second day’s conversation between the same trio.

The Athenian declares his plan of education — Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy.

The Athenian — adverting to the circumstances of human life generally, as full of toil and suffering, with few and transient moments of happiness — remarks that none except the wise have any chance of happiness; and that few can understand what real wisdom is, though every one presumes that there must be something of the kind discoverable.483 He first enumerates what it is not. It is not any of the useful arts — husbandry, house-building, metallurgy, weaving, pottery, hunting, &c.: nor is it prophecy, or the understanding of omens: nor any of the elegant arts — music, poetry, painting: nor the art of war, or navigation, or medicine, or forensic eloquence: nor does it consist in the natural endowments of quick wit and good memory.484 True wisdom is something different from all these. It consists in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, leading to a full comprehension of the regular movements of the Kosmos — combined with a correct religious creed as to the divine attributes of the Kosmos and its planetary bodies which are all pervaded and kept in harmonious rotation by divine, in-dwelling, soul or mind.485 It is the God Uranus (or Olympus, or Kosmos), with the visible Gods included therein, who furnishes to us not only the gifts of the seasons and the growth of food, but also varied intelligence, especially the knowledge of number, without which no other knowledge would be attainable.486 Number and proportion are essential conditions of every variety of art. The regular succession of night and day, and the regularly changing phases of the moon — the comparison of months with the year — first taught us to count, and to observe the proportions of numbers to each other.487

483  Plato, Epinom. pp. 973-974.

484  Plato, Epinom. pp. 975-976.

485  Plato, Epinom. pp. 976-977.

486  Plato, Epinom. pp. 977-978.

487  Plato, Epinom. pp. 978-979.

Theological view of Astronomy — Divine Kosmos — Soul more ancient and more sovereign than Body.

The Athenian now enters upon the directly theological point of view, and re-asserts the three articles of orthodoxy which he had laid down in the tenth book of Leges: together with the other point of faith also — That Soul or Mind is older than body: soul is active and ruling — body, passive and subject. An animal is a compound of both. There are five elementary bodies — fire, air, æther, water, earth488 — which the kosmical soul moulded, in varying proportions, so as to form different animals and plants. Man, animals, and plants were moulded chiefly of earth, yet with some intermixture of the other elements: the stars were moulded chiefly from fire, having the most beautiful bodies, endowed with divine and happy souls, and immortal, or very long-lived.489 Next to the stars were moulded the Dæmons, out of æther, and inhabitants of that element: after them, the animals inhabiting air, and Nymphs inhabiting water. These three occupy intermediate place between the stars above and man below.490 They serve as media of communication between man and the Gods: and also for the diffusion of thought and intelligence among all parts of the Kosmos.491 The Gods of the ordinary faith — Zeus, Hêrê, and others — must be left to each person’s disposition, if he be inclined to worship them: but the great visible Kosmos, and the sidereal Gods, must be solemnly exalted and sanctified, with prayer and the holiest rites.492 Those astronomers who ignore this divine nature, and profess to explain their movements by physical or mechanical forces, are guilty of grave impiety. The regularity of their movements is a proof of their divine nature, not a proof of the contrary, as some misguided persons affirm.493

488  Plato, Epinom. pp. 980-981. We know, from a curious statement of Xenokrates (see Fragm. of his work Περὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος βίου, cited by Simplikius, ad Aristot. Physic. p. 427, a. 17, Schol. Brandis), that this quintuple elementary scale was a doctrine of Plato. But it is not the doctrine of the Timæus. The assertion of Xenokrates (good evidence) warrants us in believing that Plato altered his views after the composition of Timæus, and that his latest opinions are represented in the Epinomis. Zeller indeed thinks that the dodekahedron in the Timæus might be construed as a fifth element, but this is scarcely tenable. Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, vol. ii. p. 513, ed. 2nd.

489  Plat. Epinom. pp. 981-982.

490  Plat. Epinom. pp. 983-984.

491  Plat. Epinom. p. 984.

492  Plat. Epinom. pp. 984 D-985 D.

493  Plat. Epinom. pp. 982 D, 983 C.

Improving effects of the study of Astronomy in this spirit.

Next, the Athenian intimates that the Greeks have obtained their astronomical knowledge, in the first instance, from Egypt and Assyria, but have much improved upon what they learnt (p. 987): that the Greeks at first were acquainted only with the three φοραὶ — the outer or sidereal sphere (Ἀπλανὴς), the Sun, and the Moon — but unacquainted with the other five or planetary φοραὶ, which they first learned from these foreigners, though not the names of the planets (p. 986): that all these eight were alike divine, fraternal agents, partakers in the same rational nature, and making up altogether the divine Κόσμος: that those who did not recognise all the eight as divine, consummately rational, and revolving with perfectly uniform movement, were guilty of impiety (p. 985 E): that these kosmical, divine, rational agents taught to mankind arithmetic and the art of numeration (p. 988 B): that soul, or plastic, demiurgic, cognitive force (p. 981 C), was an older and more powerful agent in the universe than body — but that there were two varieties of soul, a good and bad, of which the good variety was the stronger: the good variety of soul produced all the good movements, the bad variety produced all the bad movements (p. 988 D, E): that in studying astronomy, a man submitted himself to the teaching of this good soul and these divine agents, from whom alone he could learn true wisdom and piety (pp. 989 B-990 A): that this study, however, must be conducted not with a view to know the times of rising and setting of different stars (like Hesiod) but to be able to understand and follow the eight περιφοράς (p. 990 B).

Study of arithmetic and geometry: varieties of proportion.

To understand these — especially the five planetary and difficult περιφορὰς — arithmetic must also be taught, not in the concrete, but in the abstract (p. 990 C, D), to understand how much the real nature of things is determined by the generative powers and combination of Odd and Even Number. Next, geometry also must be studied, so as to compare numbers with plane and solid figures, and thus to determine proportions between two numbers which are not directly commensurable. The varieties of proportion, which are marvellously combined, must be understood — first arithmetical and geometrical proportions, the arithmetical proportion increasing by equal addition (1 + 1 = 2), or the point into a line — then the geometrical proportion by way of multiplication (2 × 2 = 4; 4 × 2 = 8), or the line raised into a surface, and the surface raised into a cube. Moreover there are two other varieties of proportion (τὸ ἡμιόλιον or sesquialterum, and τὸ ἐπίτριτον or sesquitertium) both of which occur in the numbers between the ratio of 6 to 12 (i.e. 9 is τὸ ἡμιόλιον of 6, or 9 = 6 + 6/2; again 8 is, τὸ ἐπίτριτον of 6, or 8 = 6 + 6/3). This last is harmonic proportion, when there are three terms, of which the third is as much greater than the middle, as the middle is greater than the first (3 : 4 : 6) — six is greater than four by one-third of six, while four is greater than three by one-third of three (p. 991 A).

When the general forms of things have thus been learnt, particular individuals in nature must be brought under them.

Lastly, having thus come to comprehend the general forms of things, we must bring under them properly the visible individuals in nature; and in this process interrogation and cross-examination must be applied (p. 991 C). We must learn to note the accurate regularity with which time brings all things to maturity, and we shall find reason to believe that all things are full of Gods (p. 991 D). We shall come to perceive that there is one law of proportion pervading every geometrical figure, every numerical series, every harmonic combination, and all the celestial rotations: one and the same bond of union among all (p. 991 E). These sciences, whether difficult or easy, must be learnt: for without them no happy nature will be ever planted in our cities (p. 992 A). The man who learns all this will be the truly wise and happy man, both in this life and after it; only a few men can possibly arrive at such happiness (p. 992 C). But it is these chosen few who, when they become Elders, will compose our Nocturnal Council, and maintain unimpaired the perpetual purity of the Platonic City.

Question as to education of the Nocturnal Council is answered in the Epinomis.

Such then is the answer given by the Epinomis, to the question left unanswered in the Leges. However unsatisfactory it may appear, to those who look for nothing but what is admirable in Plato — I believe it to represent the latest views of his old age, when dialectic had given place in his mind to the joint ascendancy of theological sentiment and Pythagorean arithmetic.494

494  In connection with the treatise called Epinomis, the question arises, What were the modifications which Plato’s astronomical doctrines underwent during the latter years of his life? In what respect did they come to differ from what we read in the Platonic Timæus, where a geocentric system is proclaimed: whether we suppose (as Boeckh and others do) that the Earth is represented as stationary at the centre — or (as I suppose) that the Earth is represented as fastened to the centre of the kosmical axis, and revolving with it. The Epinomis delivers a geocentric system also.

Now it is upon this very point that Plato’s opinions are said to have changed towards the close of his life. He came to repent that he had assigned to the Earth the central place in the system; and to conceive that place as belonging properly to something else, some other better (or more powerful) body. This is a curious statement, made in two separate passages by Plutarch, and in one of the two passages with reference to Theophrastus as his witness (Plutarch, Vit. Numæ, c. 11; Platonic. Quæst. 8, p. 1006 C).

Boeckh (Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, pp. 144-149) and Martin (Études sur le Timée, ii. 91) discredit the statement ascribed by Plutarch to Theophrastus. But I see no sufficient ground for such discredit. Sir George Lewis remarks very truly (Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 143):— “The testimony of Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, and nearly his contemporary, has great weight on this point. The ground of the opinion alludes to the Pythagorean doctrine mentioned by Aristotle, that the centre is the most dignified place, and that the earth is not the first in dignity among the heavenly bodies. It has no reference to observed phenomena, and is not founded on inductive scientific arguments. … The doctrine as to the superior dignity of the central place, and of the impropriety of assigning the most dignified station to the earth, was of Pythagorean origin and was probably combined with the Philolaic cosmology.”

This remark of Sir George Lewis deserves attention, not merely from the proper value which he assigns to the testimony of Theophrastus, but because he confines himself to the exact matter which Theophrastus affirmed; viz., that Plato in his old age came to repent of his own cosmical views on one particular point and on one special ground. Theophrastus does not tell us what it was that Plato supposed to be in the centre, after he had become convinced that it was too dignified a place for the earth. Plato may have come to adopt the positive opinion of Philolaus (that of a central fire) as well as the negative opinion (that the Earth was not the central body). But we cannot affirm that he did adopt either this positive opinion or any other positive opinion upon that point. I take Theophrastus to have affirmed exactly what Plutarch makes him affirm, and no more: that Plato came to repent of having assigned to the earth the central place which did not befit it, and to account the centre the fit place “for some other body better than the Earth,” yet without defining what that other body was. If Theophrastus had named what the other body was, surely Plutarch would never have suppressed the specific designation to make room for the vague ἑτέρῳ τινὶ κρείττονι.

There is thus, in my judgment, ground for believing that Plato in his old age (after the publication of the Treatise De Legibus) came to distrust the geocentric dogma which he had previously supported; but we do not know whether he adopted any other dogma in place of it. The geocentric doctrine passed to the Epinomis as a continuation of the Treatise De Legibus. The phrase which Plutarch cites from Theophrastus deserves notice — Θεόφραστος δὲ καὶ προσιστορεῖ τῷ Πλάτωνι πρεσβυτέρῳ γενομένῳ μεταμελεῖν, ὡς οὐ προσήκουσαν ἀποδόντι τῇ γῇ τὴν μέσην χώραν τοῦ παντός. Plato repented. Whoever reads the Treatise De Legibus (especially Books vii. and x.) will see that Plato at that period of his life considered astronomical errors as not merely errors, but heresies offensive to the Gods; and that he denounced those who supported such errors as impious. If Plato came afterwards to alter his astronomical views, he would repent of his own previous views as of a heresy. He came to believe that he had rated the dignity of the Earth too high; and we can see how this change of view may have been occasioned. Earth was looked upon by him, as well as by many others, in two distinct points of view. 1. As a cosmical body, divine, and including τοὺς χθονίους θεούς. 2. As one of the four elements, along with water, air, and fire; in which sense it was strung together with λίθοι, and had degrading ideas associated with it (Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 26 D). These two meanings, not merely distinct but even opposed to each other, occur in the very same sentence of De Legibus, x. p. 886 D. The elemental sense of Earth was brought prominently forward by those reasoners whom Plato refutes in Book x.: and the effect of such reasonings upon him was, that though he still regarded Earth as a Deity, he no longer continued to regard Earth as worthy of the cosmical post of honour. At that age, however, he might well consider himself excused from broaching any new positive theory.

Problem which the Nocturnal Council are required to solve, What is the common property of Prudence, Courage, Temperance, Justice, by reason of which each is called Virtue?

Assuming that the magistrates of the Nocturnal Council have gone through the course of education prescribed in the Epinomis, and have proved themselves unimpeachable on the score of orthodoxy — will they be able to solve the main problem which he has imposed upon them at the close of the Leges? There, as elsewhere, he proclaims a problem as indispensable to be solved, but does not himself furnish any solution. What is the common property, or point of similarity between Prudence, Courage, Temperance, Justice — by reason of which each is termed Virtue? What are the characteristic points of difference, by reason of which Virtue sometimes receives one of these names, sometimes another?

The only common property is that all of them are essential to the maintenance of society, and tend to promote human security and happiness.

The proper way of answering this question has been much debated, from Plato’s day down to the present. It is one of the fundamental problems of Ethical Philosophy.

The subjective matter of fact, implied by every one who designates an act or a person as virtuous, is an approving or admiring sentiment which each man knows in his own bosom. But Plato assumes that there is, besides this, an objective connotation: a common object or property to which such sentiment refers. What is that common object? I see no other except that which is indicated by the principle of Utility: I mean that principle which points out Happiness and Unhappiness, not merely of the agent himself, but also of others affected or liable to be affected by his behaviour, as the standard to which these denominations refer. Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, all tend to prevention and mitigation of unhappiness, and to increase of happiness, as well for the agent himself as for the society surrounding him. The opposite qualities — Timidity, Imprudence, Intemperance, Injustice — tend with equal certainty either to increase positively the unhappiness of the agent and of society, or to remove the means for warding it off or abating it. Indeed there is a certain minimum of all the four — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — without which or below which neither society could hold together, nor the life of the individual agent himself could be continued.

Tendency of the four opposite qualities to lessen human happiness.

Here then is one answer at least to the question of Plato. Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — all of them mental attributes of rational voluntary agents — have also the common property of being, in a certain minimum degree, absolutely essential to the life of the agent and the maintenance of society — and of being, above that degree, tutelary against the suffering, and beneficial to the happiness, of both. This tutelary or beneficent tendency is the common objective property signified by the general term Virtue; and is implicated with the subjective property before mentioned — the sentiment of approbation. The four opposite qualities are designated by the general term Vice or Defect, connoting both maleficent tendency and the sentiment of disapprobation.

A certain measure of all the four virtues is required. In judging of particular acts instigated by each, there is always a tacit reference to the hurt or benefit in the special case.

This proposition will be farther confirmed, if we look at all the four qualities — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — in another point of view. Taking them in their reference to Virtue, each of them belongs to Virtue as a part to the whole,495 not as one species contradistinguished from and excluding other species. The same person may have, and ought to have, a certain measure of all: he will not be called virtuous unless he has a measure of all. Excellence in any one will not compensate for the entire absence of the others.

495  Compare Plato, Legg. i. p. 629 B, where he describes τὴν ξύμπασαν ἀρετὴν — δικαιοσύνη καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ φρόνησις εἰς ταὐτὸν ἐλθοῦσα μετ’ ἀνδρείας: also pp. 630 C-E, 631 A, where he considers all these as μόρια ἀρετῆς, but φρόνησις as the first of the four and ἀνδρεία as the last.

See also iii. pp. 688 B, 696 C-D, iv. p. 705 D.

A just and temperate man will not be accounted virtuous, if (to use an Aristotelian simile) he be so extravagantly timid as to fear every insect that flits by, or the noise of a mouse.496 All probability of beneficent results from his agency is effaced by this capital defect: and it is the probability of such results which constitute his title to be called virtuous.

496  Aristot. Ethic. Nikomach. vii. 6, p. 1148, a. 8; Politic. vii. 1, p. 1323, a. 29. κἂν ψοφήσῃ μῦς … δεδιὼς τὰς παραπετομένας μυίας.

When we speak of the four as qualities or attributes of men (as Plato does in this treatise, while considering the proper type of character which the lawgiver should aim at forming) we speak of them in the abstract — that is, making abstraction of particular circumstances, and regarding only what is common to most men in most situations. But in the realities of life these particulars are always present: there is a series of individual agents and patients, acts and sufferings, each surrounded by its own distinct circumstances and situation. Now in each of these situations an agent is held responsible for the consequences of his acts, when they are such as he knows and foresees, or might by reasonable care know and foresee. An officer who (like Charles XII. at Bender) marches up without necessity at the head of a corporal’s guard to attack a powerful hostile army of good soldiers, exhibits the maximum of courage: but his act, far from being commended as virtue, must be blamed as rashness, or pitied as folly. If a friend has deposited in my care a sword or other deadly weapon (to repeat the very case put by Sokrates497), justice requires me to give it back to him when he asks for it. Yet if, at the time when he asks, he be insane, and exhibits plain indications of being about to employ it for murderous purposes, my just restoration of it will not be commended as an act of virtue. When we look at these four qualities — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — not in the abstract, but in reference to particular acts, agents, and situations — we find that before a just or courageous act can be considered to deserve the name of Virtue, there is always a tacit supposition, that no considerable hurt to innocent persons is likely or predictable from it in the particular case. The sentiment of approbation, implied in the name Virtue, will not go along with the act, if in the particular case it produce a certain amount of predictable mischief. This is another property common to all the four attributes of mind — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice:— and forming one of the conditions under which they become entitled to the denomination of Virtue.

497  Plato, Republic, i. p. 331 C; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 17; Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 25.

Plato places these four virtues in the highest scale of Expetenda or Bona, on the ground that all the other Bona are sure to flow from them.

In the first books of the Leges, Plato498 puts forward Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, as the parts or sorts of Virtue: telling us that the natural rectitude of laws consists in promoting, not any one of the four separately, but all the four together in their due subordination. He classifies good things (Bona or Expetenda) in a triple scale of value.499 First, and best of all, come the mental attributes — which he calls divine — Prudence or Intelligence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage: Second, or second best, come the attributes of body — health, strength, beauty, activity, manual dexterity: Third, or last, come the extraneous advantages, Wealth, Power, Family-Position, &c. It is the duty of the lawgiver to employ his utmost care to ensure to his citizens the first description of Bona (the mental attributes) — upon which (Plato says) the second and third description depend, so that if the first are ensured, the second and third will be certain to follow: while if the lawgiver, neglecting the first, aims at the second and third exclusively or principally, he will miss all three.500 Here we see, that while Plato assigns the highest scale of value to the mental attributes, he justifies such preference by assuring us that they are the essential producing causes of the other sorts of Bona. His assurance is even given in terms more unqualified than the realities of life will bear out.

498  Plato, Legg. i. pp. 627 D, 631 A-C.

499  Plato, Legg. i. p. 631 B-D, iii. p. 697 B. This tripartite classification of Bona differs altogether from the tripartite classification of Bona given at the commencement of the second book of the Republic. But it agrees with that, the “tria genera Bonorum,” distinguished by Aristotle in the first Book of the Nikomachean Ethics (p. 1098, b. 12), among which τὰ περὶ ψυχήν were κυριώτατα καὶ μάλιστα ἀγαθά. This recognition of “tria genera Bonorum” is sometimes quoted as an opinion characteristic of the Peripatetics; but Aristotle himself declares it to be ancient and acknowledged, and we certainly have it here in Plato.

500  Plato, Legg. i. p. 631 C. ἤρτηται δ’ ἐκ τῶν θείων θάτερα, καὶ ἐὰν μὲν δέχηταί τις τὰ μείζονα πόλις, κτᾶται καὶ τὰ ἐλάττονα· εἰ δὲ μή, στέρεται ἀμφοῖν.

The same doctrine is declared by Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, pp. 29-30. λέγων, ὅτι οὐκ ἐκ χρημάτων ἀρετὴ γίγνεται, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρετῆς χρήματα καὶ τἄλλα ἀγαθὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἅπαντα καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ (30 B).

In thus directing the attention of the Council to the common property of the four virtues, Plato enforces upon them the necessity of looking to the security and happiness of their community as the paramount end.

When Plato therefore proclaims it as the great desideratum for his Supreme Council, that they shall understand the common relation of the four great mental attributes (Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice) to each other as well as to the comprehensive whole, Virtue — he fastens their attention on the only common property which the four can be found to possess: i.e. that they are mental attributes required in every one for the security and comfort of himself and of society. To ward off or mitigate the suffering, and to improve the comfort of society, is thus inculcated as the main and constant end for them to keep in view. It is their prescribed task, to preserve and carry forward that which he as lawgiver had announced as his purpose in the beginning of the Leges.

But he enjoins also other objectionable ends.

In thus taking leave of Plato, at the close of his longest, latest, and most affirmative composition, it is satisfactory to be able to express unqualified sympathy with this main purpose which, as departing lawgiver, he directs his successors to promote. But to these salutary directions, unfortunately, he has attached others noway connected with them except by common feelings of reverence in his own mind and far less deserving of sympathy. He requires that his own religious belief shall be erected into a peremptory orthodoxy, and that heretics shall be put down by the severest penalties. Now a citizen might be perfectly just, temperate, brave, and prudent — and yet dissent altogether from the Platonic creed. For such a citizen — the counterpart of Sokrates at Athens — no existence would be possible in the Platonic community.

Intolerance of Plato — Comparison of the Platonic community with Athens.

We must farther remark that, even when Plato’s ends are unexceptionable, the amount of interference which he employs to accomplish them is often extravagant. As a Constructor, he carries the sentiment of his own infallibility — which in a certain measure every lawgiver must assume — to an extreme worthy only of the kings of the Saturnian age:501 manifesting the very minimum of tolerance for that enquiring individual reason of which his own negative dialogues remain as immortal masterpieces. We trace this intolerance through all the dialogue Leges. Even when he condescends to advise and persuade, he speaks rather in the tone of an encyclical censor, than of one who has before him a reasonable opponent to be convinced. The separate laws proposed by Plato are interesting to read, as illustrating antiquity: but most of them are founded on existing Athenian law. Where they depart from it, they depart as often for the worse as for the better — so far as I can pretend to judge. And in spite of all the indisputable defects, political and judicial, of that glorious city, where Plato was born and passed most of his days — it was, in my judgment, preferable to his Magnêtic city, as to all the great objects of security, comfort, recreation, and enjoyment. Athens was preferable, even for the ordinary citizen: but for the men of free, inquisitive, self-thinking, minds — the dissentient minority, who lived upon that open speech of which Athenian orators and poets boasted — it was a condition of existence: since the Platonic censorship would have tolerated neither their doctrines nor their persons.

501  Plato, Politikus, pp. 271 E, 275 A-C.

APPENDIX.

Since the commencement of the present century, with its increased critical study of Plato, different and opposite opinions have been maintained by various authors respecting the genuineness or spuriousness of the Treatise De Legibus. Schleiermacher (Platons Werke, I. i. p. 51) admitted it as a genuine work of Plato, but ranked it among the Nebenwerke, or outlying dialogues: i.e., as a work that did not form an item or stepping-stone in the main Platonic philosophical series (which Schleiermacher attempts to lay out according to a system of internal sequence and gradual development), but was composed separately, in general analogy with the later or more constructive portion of that series. On the other hand, Ast (Platons Leben und Schriften, pp. 376-392) distinctly maintains that the Treatise De Legibus is not the composition of Plato, but of one of his scholars and contemporaries, perhaps Xenokrates or the Opuntian Philippus. Ast supports this opinion by many internal grounds, derived from a comparison of the treatise with other Platonic dialogues.

Zeller (in his Platonische Studien, Tübingen, 1839, pp. 1-144) discussed the same question in a more copious and elaborate manner, and declared himself decidedly in favour of Ast’s opinion — that the Treatise De Legibus was not the work of Plato, but of one among his immediate scholars. But in his History of Grecian Philosophy (vol. ii. pp. 348-615-641, second edition), Zeller departs from this judgment, and pronounces the Treatise to be a genuine work of Plato — the last form of his philosophy, modified in various ways.

Again Suckow (in his work, Die wissenschaftliche und künstlerische Form der Platonischen Schriften, Berlin, 1855, I. pp. 111-118 seq.) advocates Zeller’s first opinion — that the Treatise De Legibus is not the work of Plato.

Lastly Stallbaum, in the Prolegomena prefixed to his edition of the Treatise, strenuously vindicates its Platonic authorship. This is also the opinion of Boeckh and K. F. Hermann; and was, moreover, the opinion of all critics (I believe) anterior to Ast.

To me, I confess, it appears that the Treatise De Legibus is among the best authenticated works of the Platonic collection. I do not know what better positive proof can be tendered than the affirmation of Aristotle in his Politics — distinct and unqualified, mentioning both the name of the author and the title of the work, noting also the relation in which it stood to the Republic, both as a later composition of the same author, and as discrepant on some points of doctrine, analogous on others. This in itself is the strongest primâ facie evidence, not to be rebutted, except by some counter-testimony, or by some internal mark of chronological impossibility: moreover, it coincides with the consentient belief of all the known ancient authors later than Aristotle — such as Zeno the Stoic, who composed a treatise in seven books — Πρὸς τοὺς Πλάτωνος Νόμους (Diog. Laert. vii. 36), Persæus, the Alexandrine critics, Cicero, Plutarch, &c. (Stallbaum, Prolegg. p. xliv.) Aristophanes Grammaticus classified both Leges and Epinomis as Plato’s works. The arguments produced in Zeller’s Platonische Studien, to show that Aristotle may have been mistaken in his assertion, are of little or no force. Nor will it be material to the present question, even if we concede to Zeller and Suckow another point which they contend for — that the remarks of Aristotle upon Plato’s opinions are often inaccurate at least, if not unfair. For here Aristotle is produced in court only as a witness to authenticity.

Among the points raised by Suckow, there is indeed one, which if it were made out, would greatly invalidate, if not counterbalance, the testimony of Aristotle. Suckow construes the passage in the Oration of Isokrates ad Philippum (p. 84, § 14) — ὁμοίως οἱ τοιοῦτοι τῶν λόγων ἄκυροι τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες τοῖς νόμοις καὶ ταῖς πολιτείαις ταῖς ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν γεγραμμέναις — as if it alluded to the Platonic Republic, and to the Treatise De Legibus; but as if it implied, at the same time, that the two treatises were not composed by the same author, but by different authors, indicated by the plural σοφιστῶν. If this were the true meaning of Isokrates, we should then have Aristotle distinctly contradicted by another respectable contemporary witness, which would of course much impair the value of his testimony.

But Stallbaum (p. lii.) disputes altogether the meaning ascribed by Suckow to the words of Isokrates, and contends that the plural σοφιστῶν noway justifies the hypothesis of a double authorship. So far, I think, he is decidedly right: and this clears away the only one item of counter-testimony which has yet been alleged against Aristotle as a witness. Stallbaum, indeed, goes a step farther. He contends that the passage above cited from Isokrates is an evidence on his side, and against Suckow: that Isokrates alludes to Plato as author of both Republic and Leges, and thus becomes available as a second contemporary witness, confirming the testimony of Aristotle. This is less certain; yet perhaps supposable. We may imagine that Isokrates, when he composed the passage, had in his mind Plato pre-eminently — then recently dead at a great age, and the most illustrious of all the Sophists who had written upon political theory. The vague and undefined language in which Isokrates speaks, however, sets forth, by contrast, the great evidentiary value of Aristotle’s affirmation, which is distinct and specific in the highest degree, declaring Plato to be the author of Leges.

To contradict this affirmation — an external guarantee of unusual force — Zeller produces a case of internal incredibility. The Legg. cannot be the work of Plato (he argues) because of the numerous disparities and marked inferiority of style, handling, and doctrine, which are very frequently un-Platonic, and not seldom anti-Platonic. Whoever will read the Platonische Studien, will see that Zeller has made out a strong case of this sort, set forth with remarkable ability and ingenuity. Indeed, the strength of the case, as to internal discrepancy, is fully admitted by his opponent Stallbaum, who says in general terms (Prolegg. vol. ii. p. v.) — “Argumentatio quidem ac disserendi ratio, quæ in Legibus regnat, ubi considerata fuerit paullo accuratius, dubitare nemo sanè poterit, quin multa propria ac peculiaria habere judicanda sit, quæ ab aliorum librorum Platonicorum usu et consuetudine longissimé recedant”. He then proceeds to enumerate in detail many serious points of discrepancy. See the second part (ch. xv.) of his Prolegomena, prefixed to Book v. Legg., and in Prolegg. to his edition of 1859, pp. lv.-lix. But in spite of such undeniable force of internal improbability, Stallbaum still maintains that the Treatise is really the work of Plato. Of course, he does not admit that the whole of the internal evidence is nothing but discrepancy. He points out also much that is homogeneous and Platonic.

I agree with his conclusion (which is also the subsequent conclusion of Zeller) respecting the authorship of Legg. To me the testimony of Aristotle appears conclusive. But when I perceive how strong are the grounds for doubt, so long as we discuss the question on grounds of internal evidence simply (that is, by comparison with other Platonic dialogues) while yet such doubts are over-ruled, by our fortunately possessing incontestable authenticating evidence ab extra — an inference suggests itself to me, of which Platonic critics seem for the most part unconscious. I mean the great fallibility of reasonings founded simply on internal evidence, for the purpose of disproving authenticity, where we have no external evidence, contemporary or nearly contemporary, to controul them. In this condition are the large majority of the dialogues. I do not affirm that such reasonings are never to be trusted; but I consider them eminently fallible. To compare together the various dialogues, indeed, and to number as well as to weigh the various instances of analogy and discrepancy between them, is a process always instructive. It is among the direct tasks and obligations of the critic. But when, after detecting discrepancies, more or less grave and numerous, he proceeds to conclude, that the dialogue in which they occur cannot have been composed by Plato, he steps upon ground full of hypothesis and uncertainty. Who is to fix the limit of admissible divergence between the various compositions of a man like Plato? Who can determine what changes may have taken place in Plato’s opinions, or point of view, or intellectual powers — during a long literary life of more than fifty years, which we know only in mere outline? Considering that Plato systematically lays aside his own personal identity, and speaks only under the assumed names of different expositors, opponents, and respondents — which of us can claim to possess a full and exhaustive catalogue of all the diverse phases of Platonism, so as to make sure that some unexpected variety has no legitimate title to be ranked among them?

For my part, I confess that these questions appear to me full of doubt and difficulty. I am often surprised at the confidence with which critics, upon the faith of internal evidence purely and simply, pronounce various dialogues of the Platonic collection to be spurious. A lesson of diffidence may be learnt from the Leges: which, if internal evidence alone were accessible, would stand among the questionable items of the Platonic catalogue — while it now takes rank among the most unquestionable, from the complete external certificate which has been fortunately preserved to us.

Stallbaum, who maintains the authenticity of the Platonic Leges, disallows altogether that of the Epinomis. In his long and learned Prolegg. (vol. iii. p. 441-470), he has gone over the whole case, and stated at length his reasons for this opinion. I confess that his reasons do not satisfy me. If, on the faith of those reasons, I rejected the Epinomis, I should also on the grounds stated by Ast and Zeller reject the Leges. The reasons against the Leges are of the same character and tenor as those against the Epinomis, and scarce at all less weighty. Respecting both of them, it may be shown that they are greatly inferior in excellence to the Republic and the other masterpieces of the Platonic genius, and that they contain points of doctrine and reasoning different from what we read in other Platonic works. But when, from these premisses, I am called upon to admit that they are not the works of Plato, I cannot assent either about the one or the other. I have already observed that I expect to find among his genuine compositions, some inferior in merit, others dissentient in doctrine — especially in compositions admitted to belong to his oldest age. All critics from Aristophanes down to Tennemann, have admitted the Epinomis as genuine: and when Stallbaum contends that Diogenes mentions doubts on the point entertained even in antiquity — I think he is not warranted by the words of that author, iii. 37: ἔνιοί τε φασὶν ὅτι Φίλιππος ὁ Ὀπούντιος τοὺς Νόμους αὐτοῦ (Πλάτωνος) μετέγραψεν ὄντας ἐν κηρῷ· τούτου δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἐπινομίδα φασὶν εἶναι. I do not think we can infer from these words anything more than this — that “Philippus transcribed the Epinomis also out of the waxen tablet as he had transcribed the Leges”. The persons (whosoever they were — ἔνιοι) to whom Diogenes refers, considered Philippus as in part the author of the Νόμοι; because he had first transcribed them in a legible form from the rough original, and might possibly have introduced changes of his own in the transcription. If they had meant to distinguish what he did in respect to the Leges, from what he did in respect to the Epinomis: if they had meant to assert that he transcribed the Leges, but that he composed the Epinomis as an original addition of his own; I think they would have employed, not the conjunction καὶ, but some word indicating contrast and antithesis.

But even if we concede that the persons here alluded to by Diogenes did really believe, that the Epinomis was the original composition of Philippus and not of Plato — we must remember that all the critics of antiquity known to us believed the contrary — that it was the genuine work of Plato. In particular, Aristophanes Grammaticus acknowledges it as such; enrolling it in one trilogy with the Minos and the Leges. The testimony of Aristophanes, and the records of the Alexandrine Library in his time, greatly outweigh the suspicions of the unknown critics alluded to by Diogenes; even if we admit that those critics did really conceive the Epinomis as an actual composition of Philippus.

THE END.

GENERAL INDEX.

A.

ABSOLUTE and relative, radically distinct points of view, i. 23 n.;

of Xenophanes, 18;

of Parmenides, 20-24, 66;

agrees with Kant’s, 21;

of Herakleitus, 29;

and Parmenides opposed, 37;

of Anaxagoras, homœomeries, 59 n.;

of Demokritus, 71, 80;

of Zeno, 93, 101;

Gorgias the Leontine reasoned against, as ens or entia, 103;

and relative, antithetised by Plato in regard to the beautiful, ii. 54;

Plato’s argument against, iii. 204, 227;

to Plato the only real, 385;

an objective, impossible, 294 n., 298 n.;

see Relative.

ABSTRACT, dialectic deals with, rhetoric with concrete, ii. 52, 53;

and concrete aggregates, ib.;

terms, debates about meaning, iii. 76-78;

different views of Aristotle and Plato, 76;

and concrete, difference not conspicuous in Plato’s time, 229.

ACADEMY, the, i. 254;

decorations, 269 n.;

Platonic school removed, 87 B.C. , 265 n.;

library founded for use of inmates and special visitors, 278 n.;

Cicero on negative vein of, 131 n.

ACHILLEUS, and the tortoise, i. 97;

preferred by Hippias to Odysseus, ii. 56.

ACOUSTICS, to be studied by applying arithmetical relations and theories, iv. 74.

ACTUAL and potential, Aristotle’s distinction, iii. 135 n., i. 139.

Ἀδικήματα, iv. 367, 368.

ÆLIAN, ii. 85 n.

ÆSCHINES, SOKRATICUS, dialogues of, i. 112, 114 n., 115, 211 n.;

Lysias’ oration against, 112.

ÆSCULAPIUS, belief in, ii. 418 n.

ÆTHIOPS, i. 195.

AFFIRMATIVE, see Negative.

AGGREGATE, see Whole.

Αἰδώς, meaning, ii. 269 n.

Αἴσθησις, relation to ἐπιστήμη, iii. 164 n.;

conceptions of Aristotle and Plato compared, ib.;

connected by Plato with ἀΐσσω, iv. 235 n.;

see Sense.

Ἀκολασία, derivation, iii. 302 n.

Ἀλήθεια, derivation, iii. 302 n.

ALEXANDER of Aphrodisias, on Chance, i. 143 n.

ALEXANDRIAN MUSEUM founded as a copy of the Platonic and Aristotelic μουσεῖα at Athens, i. 277;

date of foundation, 280;

Demetrius Phalereus chief agent in its establishment, ib.;

its contents, 275;

rapid accumulation of books, ib.;

under charge of Aristophanes, 273;

contained Plato’s works before time of Aristophanes, 274;

editions of Plato issued, 295;

its authority followed by ancient critics, 297, 299.

ALEXIS, iii. 387 n.

ALKIBIADÊS, when young, frequented Sokrates’ society, ii. 21;

attachment of Sokrates to, iii. 8;

fitness as ideal in Alkibiadês I. and II., ii. 22;

see Alkibiadês I. and II. and Symposion.

Alkibiadês I. and II., different critical opinions, ii. 17;

date, i. 306, 308-11, ii. 22;

authenticity, i. 306-7, 309-10, ii. 2 n., 17;

prolixity, 26;

circumstances and interlocutors, 1;

fitness of historical Alkibiadês for ideal, 22;

no bearing on the historical Alkibiadês, 20 n.;

the Platonic picture an ideal, 22;

illustrates Sokratico-Platonic method in negative and positive aspect, 7;

actual and anticipated effects of dialectic, 11;

analogy with Xenophontic dialogues, 21, 29;

Alkibiadês as Athenian adviser, 2;

advises on war and peace, his standard the just and unjust, 3;

whence knowledge of it, 4;

from the multitude, their judgment worthless, 5;

the expedient and inexpedient substituted, 6;

the just identified with the good, honourable, expedient, 7;

ignorance of Athenian statesmen, eulogy of Spartan and Persian kings, 8;

Alkibiadês must become good — for what end and how, 8-10;

confesses his ignorance, 10;

will never leave Sokrates, 12;

Delphian maxim — the mind the self, 11;

self-knowledge, from looking into other minds is temperance, 11;

situation in Second, 12;

danger of prayer for mischievous gifts — most men unwise, ib.;

instances of injurious gifts — mischiefs of ignorance, 14;

depend on the subject-matter, ib.;

few wise public counsellors, why called wise, 15;

special accomplishments often hurtful, if no knowledge of the good, 16;

Sokrates on prayer and sacrifice, ib.;

Sokrates’ purpose, to humble presumptuous youths, 21;

his mission against false persuasion of knowledge, 24;

his positive solutions illusory, 26-7;

opinion embraces all varieties of knowledge save of the good, 30;

the good, how known — unsolved, 31.

ALLEGORICAL interpretation of poets, ii. 285;

see Mythe.

Ἀλυπία, the Good, iii. 338 n.;

not identical with pleasure, 353, 377;

and pleasure included in Hedonists’ end, ib.;

is a negative condition intermediate between pleasure and pain, iv. 86.

AMABILE PRIMUM, ii. 181, 191;

approximates to Idea of Good, 192;

the Good, 194;

compared with Aristotle’s prima amicitia, ib.

Ἁμαρτήματα, iv. 367, 368.

AMAZONS, iv. 196.

ANA of philosophers, i. 153 n.

ANALOGICAL and generic wholes, ii. 47, 193 n., iii. 365.

ANALOGY, Aristotle first distinguished ὁμώνυμα, συνώνυμα, and κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, iii. 94 n.;

see Metaphor.

Ἀνάμνησις different from μνήμη, iii. 350 n.;

see Reminiscence.

Ἀναθυμίασις, i. 35 n.

ANAXAGORAS, chiefly physical, i. 48;

physics, 49;

homœomeries, 48, 52 n., 53, 55-6, 58 n.;

essential intermixture of Demokritean atoms analogous, 79 n.;

denied generation and destruction, 48;

and simple bodies, 52 n.;

chaos, 50, 50 n., 54;

Nous, relation to the homœomeries, 54-57;

originates rotatory movement in chaotic mass, 50;

exercised only a catalytic agency, 55;

alone pure and unmixed, 50;

immaterial and impersonal, 56 n.;

its two attributes, to move and to know, ib.;

compared with Herakleitus’ περιέχον, ib.;

Plato’s Idea of Good, ii. 412;

represented later as a god, i. 54;

his own view of it. ib.;

theory as understood by Sokrates, ii. 393, 400, 402 n.;

Hegel on, 403 n.;

erroneously charged with inconsistency, i. 56, ii. 394, 407;

animal bodies purer than air or earth, i. 51;

suggested partly by the phenomenon of animal nutrition, 53;

air and fire, 52, 56 n.;

astronomy, 57;

his geology, meteorology, and physiology, 58;

his heresy, Sokrates on, 413;

threatened prosecution for impiety, 59;

accused of substituting physical for mental causes, ii. 401;

opposed Empedokles’ theory of sensation, i. 58;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

illusions of sense, i. 59 n.;

compared with Empedokles, 52;

relation to Anaximander, 54;

agreement with Diogenes of Apollonia, 64;

influence on Aristotle, 89.

ANAXIMANDER, philosophy, i. 5;

Infinite reproduced in chaos of Anaxagoras, 54;

relation to Empedokles, ib.

ANAXIMENES, i. 7.

ANGLER, definition of, iii. 189.

ANIMAL bodies purer than air or earth, i. 51;

generation, Empedokles on, 42;

Demokritus’ researches in, 75;

kosmos the copy of the Αὐτόζωον, iv. 223, 235 n., 263;

genesis of inferior from degenerate man, 252;

genesis of, 421.

ANNIKERIS, i. 202.

Ἀνόητα, meaning, iii. 65 n.

ANTALKIDAS, peace of, iii. 404.

Anterastæ, see Erastæ.

Ἀνθρώπινα, τά, iv. 302 n.

ANTIPATER, i. 195.

ANTISTHENES, works, i. 111, 115, 163 n.;

constant friend of Sokrates, 152;

copied manner of Sokrates in plainness and rigour, 150, 158 n.;

ethical, not transcendental, 122, 149;

and ascetic, 151, 160;

did not borrow from the Veda, 159 n.;

only identical predication possible, iii. 221, 223, 232 n., 252, i. 165;

coincidence with Plato, ii. 47 n.;

refutation of, in Sophistês, iii. 223, 390 n., i. 163, 165;

misconceived the function of the copula, iii. 221;

errors due to the then imperfect logic, 241;

fallacies of, ii. 215;

not caricatured in Kratylus, iii. 304 n., 322 n.;

on pleasure, 389 n.;

compared with Aristippus, i. 190;

antipathy to Plato, 151, 152 n., 165;

opposed Platonic ideas, 164;

the first protest of Nominalism against Realism, ib.;

qualities non-existent without the mind, iii. 74 n.;

distinction of simple and complex objects, i. 171;

simple undefinable, ib.;

Aristotle on, 172;

Plato, ib.;

Mill, ib. n.;

Aristotle on school of, 115;

doctrines developed by Stoics, 198.

ANTONINUS, MARCUS, view of death, i. 422 n.;

etymologies, iii. 308 n.;

Pius, compared to Sokrates, ii. 382 n., iii. 21 n.

ANYTUS, hostility to Sophists, ii. 240;

and philosophy generally, 255.

Ἄπειρον, see Infinite.

APHORISMS of Herakleitus and the Pythagoreans, i. 106.

APHRODITÊ, influence very small in Platonic state, iv. 197, 359 n.

Ἀφροσύνη, equivoque, ii. 279.

APOLLO, to be consulted for religious legislation, iv. 34, 137 n., 325, 337;

Xenophon on, i. 237;

consulted by Xenophon under Sokrates’ advice, 208.

APOLOGY, naturally the first dialogue for review, i. 411;

authenticity, 304, 306, 410, 422 n., ii. 421 n.;

date, i. 306-8, 311, 313, 330;

Zeno, the Stoic, attracted to Athens by perusal of, 418;

its general character, 412;

is Sokrates’ real defence not intentionally altered 410;

testimony to truth of general features of Sokrates’ character in, 419 n.;

differently set forth in Kriton, 428;

Sokrates’ mission, to combat false persuasion of knowledge, 374, ii. 24;

influence of public beliefs, generated without any ostensible author, i. 424;

Sokrates’ judgment on poets, expanded, ii. 129;

compared with Gorgias, 362 n., 368;

Phædon, 419;

Kleitophon, iii. 421;

Antigone of Sophokles, i. 429 n.

APPETITE subordinated by Plato and Aristotle to reason and duty, iv. 204;

soul, 245;

analogous to craftsmen in state, 39.

À PRIORI, Plato’s dogmas are, i. 399;

reasonings, Plato differs from moderns, ii. 251;

element of cognition, iii. 118.

ARCHELAUS of Macedonia, ii. 325, 333 n., 334, 336.

ARCHILOCHUS, censured by Herakleitus, i. 26.

Ἀρετή, derivation, iii. 301 n.

ARÊTÊ, i. 195.

ARGOS, bad basis of government, iv. 310.

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM, i. 98.

ARISTEIDES, pupil of Sokrates, ii. 102;

reply to Gorgias, 371 n., i. 243 n.;

belief in dreams, iii. 146 n.

ARISTIPPUS, works, i. 111, 116;

ethical, not transcendental, 122;

discourse of Sokrates with, 175;

the choice of Herakles, 177;

Sokrates on the Good and Beautiful, 184;

good is relative to human beings and wants, 185;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 126 n., i. 198, 204;

the just and honourable, by law, not nature, 197;

prudence, a good from its consequent pleasures, ib.;

acted on Sokrates’ advice, 187, 199, 201;

aspiration for self-mastery, 188;

ethical theory, 195, 200 n.;

compared with Diogenes and Antisthenes, 190;

developed by Epikurus, 198;

scheme of life, 181, 188;

Horace’s analogous, 192 n.;

pleasure a generation, iii. 378 n.;

communism of wives, i. 189 n.;

contempt for geometry and physics, 186, 192;

taught as a Sophist, 193;

intercourse with Dionysius, ib.;

antipathy to Xenophon, 182 n.

ARISTOGEITON, iii. 4 n.

ARISTOPHANES, the Euthyphron a retort against, i. 442;

connects idea of immorality with free thought, iv. 166;

Sokrates in the Nubes, 230 n.;

function of poet, 306 n.;

Nubes analogous to Plato’s Leges, 277;

Vespæ, 298 n.;

Aves, 329 n.

ARISTOPHANES γραμματικός, librarian at Alexandria, i. 273;

labours, ib. n.;

first to arrange Platonic canon, 286;

catalogue of Plato trustworthy, 285;

division of Plato into trilogies, 273;

principle followed by Thrasyllus, 295, 299.

ARISTOTLE and Plato represent pure Hellenic philosophy, i. xiv;

St. Jerome on, xv;

MSS., 270, 283;

Arabic translation, iv. 213 n.;

zoological works, iii. 62 n.;

lost Dialogues, i. 262 n.;

different in form from Plato’s, 356 n.;

style, 405;

no uniform consistency, 340 n.;

relation to predecessors, 85, 91;

importance of his information about early Greek philosophy, 85;

as historian, misled by his own conceptions, 24 n.;

contrasts “human wisdom” with primitive theology, 3 n.;

treatment of his predecessors compared by Bacon to conduct of a Sultan, 85 n.;

blames Ionic philosophy for attending to material cause alone, 87;

abstractions of, compared with Ionians, ib.;

erroneously identified heat with Parmenides’ ens, 24 n.;

on Zeno’s arguments, 93;

on Anaxagorean homœomeries, 52 n.;

charges Anaxagoras with inconsistency, 56;

relation to Empedokles and Anaxagoras, 89;

approves of fundamental tenet of Diogenes of Apollonia, 61 n.;

Demokritus often mentioned in, iv. 355 n.;

blames Demokritus for omitting final causes, i. 73 n.;

on flux of Herakleitus, iii. 154 n.;

accused of substituting physical for mental causes, ii. 401 n.;

cause, difference from Plato, 407;

controversy with Megarics about Power, i. 135;

depends on question of universal regularity of sequence, 141;

Megarics defended by Hobbes, 143;

Aristotle’s arguments not valid, 136-9;

himself concedes the doctrine, 139 n.;

distinction of actual and potential, iii. 135 n., i. 139;

graduation of causes, 142;

motion, coincides nearly with Diodôrus Kronus, 146;

and Hobbes, ib.;

chance, 142;

physics retrograded with, 89 n.;

sphericity of kosmos, 25 n., iv. 225 n.;

Demiurgus little noticed in, 255;

Plato’s geometrical theory of the elements, 241 n.;

espoused and enlarged astronomical theory of Eudoxus, i. 257 n.;

reason of the kosmos, different from Sokrates’ conception, ii. 402 n.;

on Eudoxus, iii. 375 n., 379 n.;

time, 103;

friend of Ptolemy Soter, i. 279;

pupil of Plato, 260;

opposition during Plato’s lifetime, 360 n.;

mode of alluding to Plato, iii. 186 n.;

on Plato’s lectures, i. 347;

on poetical vein in Plato, 343, iv. 255 n.;

Plato’s tendency to found arguments on metaphor, ii. 337 n.;

ontology substratum for phenomenology, i. 24 n.;

philosophia prima, 358 n., iii. 230 n., 382;

materia prima, i. 72;

view of logic of a science, different from Plato’s, 358 n.;

on Plato’s ideas, 348, 360 n., ii. 192, 194 n., 410 n., iii. 64 n., 65 n., 66 n., 67 n., 77 n., 78, 245, 367 n., iv. 214 n., i. 120 n.;

generic and analogical aggregates, ii. 193, iii. 365 n.;

Sophistês an approximation to Aristotle’s view, 247;

definition of ens, 230 n., 242 n.;

on the different, 238 n.;

partly successful in fitting on the ideas to facts of sense, 78;

percept prior to the percipient, 76 n.;

conception of αἴσθησις, 165 n.;

Plato’s theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

Plato’s doctrine of naming, iii. 286 n., 294 n., 325 n.;

etymologies, 301 n., 307 n., 308 n.;

no analysis or classification of propositions before, 222;

propositions, some true, others false, assumed, 249;

definition of simple objects, i. 172;

on only identical predication possible, 166, 171;

more careful than Plato in distinguishing equivoques, ii. 170, 279 n.;

equivocal meaning of know, 213 n.;

indeterminate predicates Ens, Unum, Idem, &c., iii. 94;

first to attempt classification of fallacies, ii. 212;

De Sophisticis Elenchis, 222;

first distinguished ὁμώνυμα, συνώνυμα, and κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, iii. 94 n.;

two methods, coincide with Thrasyllus’ classification, i. 303;

basis of dialectic, 133 n.;

negative method, its necessity as a condition of reasoned truth, 372 n.;

distinct aptitudes required for dialectic, ii. 54;

on dissecting function of dialectic, 70 n.;

distinction of dialectic and eristic, 221 n.;

precepts for debate, iii. 91 n.;

Rhetoric, 43;

on Menexenus, 409 n., 412 n.;

distinction of ends, 374 n.;

good the object of universal desire, 372 n.;

threefold division of good, iv. 428 n.;

no common end among established νόμιμα, iii. 282 n.;

combats Sokrates’ thesis in Memorabilia and Hippias Minor, ii. 67;

lying not justifiable, iii. 386 n.;

meanings of justice, iv. 102;

meaning of φύσει, iii. 294 n.;

on opposition of natural and legal justice, ii. 340 n.;

nature, iv. 387 n.;

on Law, ii. 92 n.;

theory of politics to resist King Nomos, i. 392;

on virtue is knowledge, ii. 67 n., 290 n.;

divine inspiration, 131 n.;

σοφία and φρόνησις, 120 n.;

on τὸ ἀδικεῖν βέλτιον τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι, 333 n.;

treatment of courage and temperance, compared with Plato’s, 170;

derivation of σωφροσύνη, iii. 301 n.;

on pleasure, 383 n., 386 n.;

pleasure not a generation, 378 n.;

painless pleasures of geometry, 357, 388 n.;

on intense pleasures, 376 n.;

on Antisthenes, 253 n.;

school of Antisthenes, i. 115;

on friendship, ii. 186;

prima amicitia, compared with Sokrates’ amabile primum, 194;

on Plato’s reminiscence, 250 n.;

immortality of soul, 420 n.;

relation of body to soul, iii. 389 n.;

on function of lungs, iv. 245 n.;

liver, 258 n.;

Plato’s physiology and pathology compared with, 260;

definition of sophist, ii. 210;

equally with Sophists, laid claim to universal knowledge, iii. 219;

on Homo mensura, 120 n., 128 n., 131 n., 132 n., 149 n., 152;

cites from the Protagoras, ii. 290 n.;

category of relation, iii. 128 n.;

the Axioms of Mathematics, i. 358 n.;

ethics and politics treated apart, iv. 138;

three ends of political constructor, 328 n.;

education combined with polity, 142, 184;

on principle that every citizen belongs to the city, 187, 189 n.;

training of Spartan women, 188;

views on teaching, iii. 53 n.;

chorus of elders only criticise, iv. 297 n.;

importance of music in education, 151 n., 305;

ethical and emotional effects conveyed by sense of hearing, 307 n.;

implication of intelligence and emotion, iii. 374 n.;

view of tragic poetry, iv. 317 n.;

Plato’s ideal state, 139 n.;

it is two states, 185;

objection valid against his own ideal, 186 n.;

the Demos adjuncts, not members of state, 184;

Plato’s state impossible, in what sense true, 189;

democracy and monarchy not mother-polities, 312 n.;

oligarchical character of Plato’s second idéal, 334 n.;

idéal of character, different from Spartan, 182;

differs from Plato on slavery, 344 n.;

land of citizens, 327 n.;

number of citizens limited, 198-201, 326 n.;

communism, 180 n.;

Plato’s family restrictions, 329 n.;

on marriage, 189, 198-202;

on infanticide, 202;

recognised Malthus’ law of population, ib.;

allusions to Leges, 272 n., 432;

prayer and sacrifice, 394.

ARITHMETIC, Pythagorean, i. 15;

modern application of their principle, 10 n.;

subject of Plato’s lectures, 349 n.;

twofold, iii. 359, 394;

to be studied, iv. 423;

awakening power of, 71, 72;

value of, 329 n., 352;

acoustics to be studied by relations and theories of, 74;

proportionals, 224 n., 423;

its axioms from induction, 353 n.;

Mill on assumption in axioms of, iii. 396 n.

ART, the supreme, is philosophy, ii. 119, 120;

disparaged by Plato, 355;

relation to science, iii. 43 n., 45, 155, 263;

relation to morality, see Education, Poets.

ASCETIC life of philosopher, ii. 386;

Pythagoreans, iii. 390 n.;

Orphics, ib.;

Cynics, i. 151, 157;

Diogenes compared with Indian Gymnosophists and Selli, 157, 159 n., 163 n.;

Indian Gynmosophists, antiquity of, 159 n.;

Selli, 163 n.

ASPASIA, iii. 402, i. 112, 211 n.

ASSOCIATION of Ideas, i. 423 n.;

Plato’s statement of general law of, ii. 191;

Aristotle, ib. n.;

Straton on, iii. 166 n.

AST, theory of Platonic canon, i. 304;

admits only fourteen, 305;

on Apology, 422 n.;

Lachês, ii. 151;

Hippias Major, 33 n.;

Kratylus, iii. 310 n.;

Menexenus, 412 n.;

Timæus, iv. 255 n.;

Leges, 431, 434.

ASTRONOMY, ancient, i. 3;

of Anaxagoras, 57;

modern, doctrine of aerolithes anticipated by Diogenes of Apollonia, 64 n.;

first systematic Greek hypothesis propounded by Eudoxus, 255;

Planets, meaning in Plato’s age, iv. 354 n., 422;

Demokritus’ idea of motions of, 355 n.;

Plato’s idea of motions of, ib.;

Sokrates avoided, i. 376;

Plato’s relation to theory of Eudoxus, 257 n.;

theological view of, iv. 421;

advantages of this view, 422;

object of instruction in, 354;

must be studied by ideal figures, not observation, 73.

ATHEIST, loose use of term, iv. 382 n.

ATHENIANS, proceedings of Sokrates repugnant to, i. 387;

statesmen, ignorance of, ii. 8, 360;

characteristics of, 118;

customs of, iii. 24 n.;

intellect predominant in, iv. 38;

Plato’s idéal of character, 147, 151;

ancient, citizens of Plato’s state identified with, 266;

general coincidence of Platonic and Attic law, 364, 374 n., 403, 406, 430;

taxes of, i. 242 n.

ATHENS, less intolerance at, than elsewhere, iii. 277, iv. 396;

lauded, iii. 405, 409 n.;

by Xenophon, i. 238;

funeral harangues at, iii. 401-5;

hatred to βάρβαροι, 406 n.;

and Persia compared, iv. 312;

excess of liberty at, ib.;

change for worse at, after Persian invasion, 313;

contrast in Demosthenes and Menexenus, 315 n., 318;

Plato’s aversion to dramatic poetry at, 316;

peculiar to himself, 317;

Aristotle differs, ib. n.;

Plato’s ideal compared with, 430;

secession of philosophers from, i. 111 n.

ATLANTIC, unnavigable, the belief in Plato’s age, iv. 270.

ATLANTIS, iv. 215;

description of, 268;

corruption and wickedness of people, 269;

address of Zeus, ib.;

submergence, 270.

ATOMS, atomic theory, i. 65;

relation to Eleatics, 66;

of Demokritus, differ, only in magnitude, figure, position, and arrangement, 69;

generate qualities by movements and combinations, ib., 70;

possess inherent force, 73;

not really objects of sense, 72 n.;

essentially separate from each other, 71;

yet analogous to the homœomeries of Anaxagoras, 79 n.;

different from Platonic Idea and Aristotle’s materia prima, 72;

mental, 75;

thought produced by influx of, 79.

ATTIKUS, iv. 242 n.

AUGUSTINE, ST., iii. 303 n.

AUSTIN, meaning of law, ii. 92 n.

AUTHORITY, early appearance in Greece of a few freethinkers, i. 384;

multiplicity of individual authorities characteristic of Greek philosophy, 84;

distinguished them from contemporary nations, 90;

advantages, ib.;

influence of, on most men, 378-82, 392, 424, ii. 333, iv. 351;

Aristophanes connects idea of immorality with free thought, 166;

freedom of thought essential to philosophy, i. 383, 394 n., ii. 368, iii. 151 n.;

the basis of dialectic, 147, 297, 337 n.;

all exposition an assemblage of individual judgments, 139;

belief on, relation to Homo mensura, 142, 143, 293;

Sokrates asserts right of satisfaction for his own individual reason, i. 386, 423, 436, ii. 233;

individual reason authoritative to each, i. 432;

Plato on difficulty of resisting, 392 n.;

combated by Plato, 398 n.;

Plato’s dissent from established religious doctrine, iv. 161, 163;

danger of one who dissents from the public, ii. 359, 364, 366;

dignity and independence of philosophic dissenter, upheld, 375;

individual reason worthless, Herakleitus, i. 34;

of public judgment, nothing, of expert, everything, 426, 435;

different view, 446 n.;

Sokrates does not name, but himself acts as, expert, 435;

appeal to, suppressed in Academic sect, 368 n.;

Epiktetus on, 388 n.;

Cicero, 369, 384 n.;

Bishop Huet, ib.;

Council of Trent, 390 n.;

Dr. Vaughan, iv. 380 n.;

see Orthodoxy.

AVERROISM, iii. 68 n.

AXIOMATA MEDIA, iii. 52, 369.

AXIOMS of Mathematics, Aristotle’s view, i. 358 n.;

of Arithmetic and Geometry, from induction, iii. 396 n., iv. 353 n.

B.

BACON, importance of negative method, i. 373 n., 386;

on doubt, 394 n.;

misrepresents Aristotle’s treatment of his predecessors, 85 n.;

contrasts Plato and Aristotle with Pre-Sokratic philosophy, 88 n.;

Idola, ii. 218;

anticipation of nature, 219 n.;

relativity of mental and sensational processes, iii. 122 n.;

axiomata media, 52, 369.

BADHAM, DR., on Philêbus, iii. 365 n., 381 n., 389 n., 392 n., 396 n.

BAIN, PROF., on the Beautiful, ii. 50 n.;

the Tender Emotion, 188 n.;

law of mental association, 192 n.;

analysis of Belief, 218;

reciprocity of regard indispensable to society, 312 n.;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 123 n.;

on pleasures, 383 n.

BATTEUX, iv. 229 n.

BAYLE, iv. 233.

BEAUTIFUL, the, as translation of τὸ καλόν, ii. 49 n.;

Hippias’ lectures at Sparta on, 39;

what is, ib.;

instances given, 40;

gold makes all things beautiful, 41;

not the becoming or the profitable, 43, 50 n.;

a variety of the pleasurable, 45;

inadmissible, ib.;

Dugald Stewart, Mill, and Bain on, 50 n.;

Plato’s antithesis of relative and absolute, 54;

difference of Sokrates and Plato, 55;

as object of attachment, 194;

aspect of physical, awakens reminiscence of Ideas, 422, iii. 4, 14;

Greek sentiment towards youths, 1;

stimulus to mental procreation, 4, 6, 18;

different view, Phædon, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Republic, 18 ib.;

exaltation of Eros in a few, love of beauty in genere, 7, 16;

love of, excited by musical training, iv. 27;

and the good, iii. 5 n.;

Idea of, exclusively presented in Symposion, 18;

discourse of Sokrates with Aristippus, i. 184.

BECKMANN, book-censors, iv. 379 n.

BELIEF, Prof. Bain’s analysis, ii. 218;

causes of, variable, iii. 150;

always relative to the believer’s mind, 292, 297;

sentiments of disbelief and, common, but grounds different with different men and ages, 296;

and conjecture, two grades of opinion, iv. 67;

Plato’s canon of, 231.

BENTHAM, meaning of Law, ii. 92 n.

BERKELEY, theory of, iv. 243 n.;

implication of subject and object, iii. 123 n.;

his use of sensation, 165 n.

BION, on Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, ii. 249 n.

BODY, animal bodies purer than air or earth, Anaxagoras doctrine, i. 51;

Plato’s antithesis of soul to, ii. 384;

soul prior to and more powerful than, iv. 386,419, 421;

relation of mind to organs of, iii. 159;

Aristotle, 389 n.;

Monboddo, iv. 387 n.;

discredit of, in Phædon, ii. 422;

life a struggle between soul and, 386, 388, iv. 233, 235 n.;

derivation of σῶμα, iii. 301 n.;

alone reflects beauty of ideal world, ii. 422, iii. 4, 14;

Ideas gained through bodily senses, ii. 422;

of kosmos, iv. 225;

genesis of, 421;

Demiurgus prepares for man’s construction, places a soul in each star, 235;

Demiurgus conjoins three souls and one body, 233;

generated gods fabricate cranium as miniature of kosmos with rational soul rotating within, 235;

generated gods mount cranium on a tall body, 236;

genesis of women and inferior animals from degenerate man, 252;

this degeneracy originally intended, 263;

organs of sense, 236;

vision, sleep, dreams, ib.;

sleep, doctrine of Herakleitus, i. 34;

principal advantages of sight and hearing, iv. 237;

each part of the soul is at once material and mental, 257;

thoracic soul, function of heart and lungs, 245;

Empedokles’ belief as to the movement of the blood, i. 43;

Empedokles illustrated respiration by klepsydra, 44 n.;

abdominal soul, function of liver, iv. 245, 258;

seat of prophetic agency, 246;

function of spleen, ib.;

object of length of intestinal canal, 247;

bone, flesh, marrow, nails, mouth, teeth, ib.;

general survey of diseases, 249;

diseases of mind from, ib.;

intense pleasures belong to distempered, iii. 355, 391;

preservative and healing agencies, iv. 250;

training should be simple, 28.

BOECKH, on Minos and Hipparchus, i. 337 n., ii. 93;

Kleitophon, iii. 419 n.;

Timæus, iv. 224 n., 226 n., 227 n., 241 n.;

Leges, 273 n., 355 n.;

Epinomis, 424 n.;

Xenophon’s financial schemes, i. 242 n.

BOETHIUS, on Plato’s reminiscence, ii. 250 n.

BÖHME, lingua Adamica, iii. 322 n.

BOISSIER, GASTON, on Varro’s etymologies, iii. 311 n.;

influence of belief on practice, i. 157 n.

BONITZ, on Theætêtus, iii. 184 n.

BOOKS, writing as an art, iii. 27;

is it teachable by system? 28;

worthless for teaching, ii. 136, 233 n., iii. 33-35, 49, 52, 54, 337 n.;

may remind, 50, 53;

censorship, iv. 379 n.;

ancient bookselling, i. 278 n., 281 n.;

ancient libraries, official MSS., 284 n.;

making copies, ib. n.;

forgeries of books, 287 n.

BRANDIS, on Parmenidês, iii. 88 n.

BROWN, on power, i. 138 n.

BRYSON, dialogues, i. 112 n.

BUDDHISM, i. 378 n.

BUFFON, iv. 232 n.

BUTLER, BP., iv. 166 n.

C.

CABANIS, i. 168 n.

CALENDAR, ancients’, iv. 325 n.

CAMPBELL, DR. GEORGE, iii. 391 n.

CAMPBELL, PROF. LEWIS, on Theætêtus, iii. 111 n., 112 n., 146 n., 158 n.;

advance of modern experimental science, 155 n.

CANON of Plato, ancient discussions, i. 264;

works in Alexandrine library at the time of Kallimachus, 276;

probability of being in Alexandrine library at formation, 283;

editions from Alexandrine library, 295;

spurious works possibly in other libraries, 286;

Aristophanes, the grammarian, first arranged Platonic canon, ib.;

in trilogies, 273;

indicated by Plato himself, 325;

catalogue by Aristophanes trustworthy, 285;

ten dialogues rejected by all ancient critics, following Alexandrine authorities, 297;

Thrasyllus follows Aristophanes’ classification, 295, 299;

Tetralogies, 273 n.;

not the order established by Plato, 335 n.;

his classification, 289;

its principle, 295 n.;

division into dramatic and diegematic, 288;

incongruity of divisions, 294;

classification, defective but useful — dialogues of Search, of Exposition, 361;

erroneously applied, 364;

the scheme, when its principles correctly applied, 365;

sub-classes recognised, 366;

coincides with Aristotle’s two methods, Dialectic, Demonstrative, 363;

Thrasyllus did not doubt Hipparchus, 297 n.;

authority acknowledged till 16th century, 301;

more trustworthy than modern critics, 299 n., 335;

Diogenes Laertius, 291 n., 294;

Serranus, 302;

Phædrus considered by Tennemann keynote of series, 303;

Schleiermacher, ib.;

proofs slender, 317, 324;

includes a preconceived scheme and an order of interdependence, 318;

assumptions as to Phædrus inadmissible, 319;

his reasons internal, ib., 337, iv. 431;

Phædon, the first dialogue disallowed upon internal grounds, i. 288;

considered spurious by Panætius the Stoic, ib.;

no internal theory yet established, 319;

Ast, 304;

admits only fourteen, 305;

Socher, 306;

Stallbaum, 307;

K. F. Hermann, ib.;

coincides with Susemihl, 310;

principle reasonable, 322;

more tenable than Schleiermacher’s, 324;

Ueberweg attempts reconcilement of Schleiermacher and Hermann, 313;

Steinhart rejects several, 309;

Munk, 311;

next to Schleiermacher’s in ambition, 320;

Trendelenburg, 345 n.;

other critics, 316;

the problem incapable of solution, 317;

few certainties or reasonable presumptions for fixing date or order of dialogues, 324;

positive date of any dialogue unknown, 326;

age of Sokrates in a dialogue, of no moment, 320;

no sequence or interdependence of the dialogues provable, 322, 407;

circumstances of Plato’s intellectual and philosophical development little known, 323 n.;

Plato did not write till after death of Sokrates, 326, 334, 443 n.;

proofs, 327-334;

unsafe ground of modern theories, 336;

shown by Schleiermacher, 337;

a true theory must recognise Plato’s varieties and be based on all the works in the canon, 339;

dialogues may be grouped, 361;

inconsistency no proof of spuriousness, xiii., 344, 375, 400 n., ii. 299, iii. 71, 85, 93, 176, 179, 182 n., 284, 332, 400, 420, iv. 138;

see Dialogues, Epistles.

CATEGORY of relation, iii. 128 n.

CAUSE, Aristotle blames Demokritus for omitting final, i. 73 n.;

only the material attended to by Ionic philosophy, 88;

designing cause, 74 n.;

Sokrates’ intellectual development turned on different views as to a true, ii. 398;

first doctrine, rejected, 391, 399;

second principle, optimistic, renounced, 395, 403;

efficient and co-efficient, 394, 400;

third doctrine, assumption of ideas as separate entia, 396, 403;

ideas the only true, 396;

substitution of physical for mental, Anaxagoras, Sokrates, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, 401;

tendency to embrace logical phantoms as real, 404 n.;

no common idea of, 405, 407, 410 n.;

but common search for, 406;

Aristotle and Plato differ, 407;

Plato’s formal and final, 408 n.;

principal and auxiliary, iii. 266;

controversy of Megarics and Aristotle, i. 135-141;

depends on question of universal regularity of sequence, 141;

potential as distinguished from actual, 139;

meaning of, Hobbes, ib. n., 144;

regular and irregular, ii. 408;

no regular sequence of antecedent on consequent, doctrine of Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, i. 142;

Aristotle’s graduation of, ib.;

Aristotle’s notion of Chance, ib.;

Stoics, 143 n.;

Aristotle’s four, in middle ages, ii. 409 n.;

More’s Emanative, 403 n.;

modern inductive theory, 408;

chief point of divergence of modern schools, 409 n.

CAVE, simile of, iv. 67-70.

CAVENDISH, discovery of composition of water, ii. 163 n.

CHANCE, of Demokritus and the Epikureans, i. 73 n.;

Aristotle’s notion of, 142;

Theophrastus, 143 n.;

Stoics, ib.

CHAOS, Hesiod, i. 4 n.;

Empedokles, 39, 54;

Anaxagoras, 50, ib. n.;

postulated in Timæus, iv. 220, 240.

Charmidês, authenticity, i. 306-7, ii. 171;

date, i. 308-10, 312, 315, 328, 331;

excellent specimen of dialogues of search, ii. 163;

scene and interlocutors, 153;

temperance, a kind of sedateness, objections, 154;

a variety of feeling of shame, refuted, ib.;

doing one’s own business, refuted, 155, iv. 136, 137;

distinction of making and doing, ii. 155;

self-knowledge, ib.;

is impossible, 167;

no object of knowledge distinct from the knowledge itself, 156;

knowledge of knowledge impossible, analogies, ib.;

all properties relative, 157;

all knowledge relative to some object, ib.;

if cognition of cognition possible, yet cognition of non-cognition impossible, 158;

temperance as cognition of cognition and of non-cognition, of no avail for happiness, 159, 161;

knowledge of good and evil contributes most to happiness, 160;

different from other sciences, 168;

temperance not the science of good and evil, 161;

temperance undiscovered, but a good, 162;

compared with Lachês, 168;

Lysis, 172, 184 n.;

Politikus, iii. 282;

Republic, iv. 137, 138.

CHARONDAS, iv. 323 n., 398 n.

CHINESE compared with Pythagorean philosophers, i. 159 n.

CHRYSIPPUS, sophisms, i. 128 n., 141;

communism of wives, 189 n.

CICERO, on freedom of thought, i. 384 n.;

state religion alone allowed, iv. 379 n.;

De Amicitia compared with Lysis, ii. 189 n.;

Plato’s reminiscence, 250 n.;

immortality of the soul, 423 n.;

pleasure, iii. 389 n.;

Menexenus, 407 n.;

Sokrates, concitatio, 423 n.;

proëms to laws, iv. 322 n.;

Stoics, i. 130 n., 157 n.;

Academics, 131 n.;

Megarics, 135 n.

CLASSES, fiction as to origin of, iv. 30;

see Demos, State.

CLASSIFICATION, emotional and scientific contrasted, iii. 61, 195, 196 n.;

conscious and unconscious, 345;

the feeling of Plato’s age respecting, 192 n., 344;

dialogues of search a lesson in, 177, 188;

novelty and value of this, 190;

all particulars of equal value, 195;

tendency to omit sub-classes, 255, 342;

well illustrated in Philêbus, 254, 344;

but feebly applied, 369;

importance of founding it on sensible resemblances, 255;

Plato’s doctrine not necessarily connected with that of Ideas, 345;

Plato enlarges Pythagorean doctrine, 368;

same principle of, applied to cognitions and pleasures in Philêbus, 382, 394;

its valuable principles, 395;

of sciences as more or less true, dialectic the standard, 382;

of Megarics, over-refined, 196 n.

CLEYNAERTS, iv. 380 n.

CLIMATE, influence of, iv. 330 n.

COLENSO, BP., iii. 303 n.

COLLARD, ROYER, iii. 165 n.

COLOUR, Demokritean theory, i. 77;

defined, ii. 235;

pleasures of, true, iii. 356.

COMEDY, mixed pleasure and pain excited, iii. 355 n.;

Plato’s aversion to Athenian, iv. 316;

peculiar to himself, 317;

Aristotle differs, ib. n.

COMMERCE, each artisan only one trade, iv. 361;

importation, by magistrates, of what is imperatively necessary only, ib.;

Benefit Societies, 399;

retailers, 21, 361, 401;

punishment for fraud, 492;

Attic law compared, 403;

Xenophon inexperienced in, i. 236;

admired by Xenophon, ib.;

Metics, iv. 362;

Xenophon on encouragement of, i. 238.

COMMUNISM of guardians, iv. 140, 169, 198;

necessary to maintenance of state, 170, 178;

peculiarity of Plato’s, 179;

Aristotle on, 189 n.;

acknowledged impracticable, 327;

of wives, opinions of Aristippus, Diogenes, Zeno, and Chrysippus, i. 189, ib. n.

COMTE, three stages of progress, ii. 407.

CONCRETE, its Greek equivalent, ii. 52 n.;

see Abstract.

CONDORCET, iv. 232 n., 258 n.

CONNOTATION, or essence, to be known before accidents and antecedents, ii. 242.

CONSCIOUSNESS, judgment implied in every act of, iii. 165 n.;

the facts of, not explicable by independent Subject and Object, 131.

CONTRADICTION, principle of, in Plato, iii. 99 n.;

logical maxim of, 239;

necessity of setting forth counter-propositions, 149 n., 150;

contradictory propositions not possible, i. 166 n.

CONTRARIES, ten pairs of opposing, Pythagorean, i. 15;

the Pythagorean “principia of existing things,” ib. n.;

Herakleitus, 29, 31;

excluded in nothing save the self-existent Idea, ii. 7 n.

COPULA, logical function of, i. 169;

misconceived by Antisthenes, iii. 221, 232 n., 251 n., ii. 47 n.

CORNUTUS, i. 128, 133.

COUNCIL, Nocturnal, to conserve the original scheme of State, iv. 416, 418;

to comprehend and carry out the end of the State, ib., 425, 429;

training in Epinomis, 420, 424.

COURAGE, what is, ii. 143;

not endurance, 144;

is knowledge, 288;

a right estimate of terrible things, 144, 296, 307, iv. 138;

such intelligence not possessed by professional artists, ii. 148;

the intelligence of good and evil generally, too wide, 146;

relation to rest of virtue, 288, 304 n., iv. 426, 283 n.;

of philosopher and ordinary citizen, different principles, ii. 308 n.;

in state, iv. 34-5;

imparted by gymnastic, 29;

Lachês difficulties ignored in Politikus, iii. 282;

Plato and Aristotle compared, ii. 170.

COUSIN, the absolute, iii. 298 n.;

on Sophistês, 244;

Timæus, iv. 224 n.

CREATION out of nothing denied by all ancient physical philosophers, i. 52;

see Body, Kosmos.

CRIME, distinction of damage and injury, iv. 365, 367-9;

three causes of misguided proceedings, 366;

purpose of punishment, to heal criminals’ distemper or deter, ib., 408;

sacrilege and high treason the gravest, 363;

see Law-administration.

CRITICISM, value of, ii. 118.

CUDWORTH, entities, iii. 74 n.

CYNICS, origin of name, i. 150 n.;

a αἵρεσις, 160 n.;

asceticism, 157;

Sokrates’ precepts fullest carried out by, 160;

suicide, 161 n.;

coincidence of Hegesias with, 203;

an order of mendicant friars, 163;

connection with Christian monks, ib. n.;

the decorous and the indecorous, iii. 390 n.

CYRUS, iv. 312, i. 223.

D.

DÆMON, of Sokrates, i. 437, ii. 104, i. 115;

his experience of, ii. 102;

explains his eccentricity, 104;

variously alluded to in Plato — its character and working impenetrable, 107, 108;

in Theagês and Theætêtus, 107;

a special revelation, 108, 131 n.;

privileged communications common, 130, 131 n.;

see Inspiration;

belief of Empedokles, i. 47;

etymology, iii. 301 n.;

Eros, intermediate between gods and men, 9;

subordinate to divine steersman of kosmos, 265 n.;

intermediate, iv. 421.

DÄHNE, on Philo-Judæus, iii. 308 n., iv. 157 n.

DAMON, a teacher of μουσική, ii. 139 n.;

dangers of change in national music, iv. 315.

DANCING to be regulated by authority, iv. 292;

laws, 291;

three choruses, youths, mature men, elders, 296, 305;

and music, effect on emotions, 347;

comic, by slaves or mean persons only, 352 n.

DARIUS, iv. 312.

DEATH, doctrine of Parmenides, i. 26 n.;

Herakleitus, 34;

Sokrates, 422, 430 n.;

emancipates soul from struggle with body, ii. 386, 388, iv. 234, 235 n.;

guardians must not fear, 25;

see Immortality.

DEBATE of secondary questions before settling fundamental notions, mischief of, ii. 242;

see Dialectic.

DEFINITION gives classes, Type, natural groups, ii. 47, 193 n.;

Sokrates introduced search for, 47;

frequent mistake of giving a particular example, i. 444, ii. 143;

dialogues of search illustrate process of, iii. 29, 176, 188;

novelty and value of this, 190;

importance in Plato’s time of bringing forward logical subordinations and distinctions, ii. 235;

tested by clothing it in particulars, iv. 3 n.;

of common and vague terms, hopelessness of, ii. 186 n.;

Aristotle on, 234 n.;

none of a general word, Sextus Empiricus, i. 168, n.;

none of simple objects, Antisthenes, 171;

Plato on, 172;

Aristotle, ib.;

Mill, ib. n.;

and division, the two processes of dialectic, iii. 29, 39;

necessity for, 29;

conditions of a good, ii. 318.

DEGÉRANDO, M., iii. 140 n., 152 n.

Δεινός, meaning, ii. 145 n.

DEKAD, the Pythagorean perfect number, i. 11.

Δεκτικόν, τό, see Matter.

DELPHIAN ORACLE, reply to Sokrates, i. 413;

maxim, Know thyself, ii. 11, 25;

to be consulted for religious legislation, iv. 34, 137 n., 325.

DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS, Alexandrine librarian, i. 274 n.;

chief agent in establishment of Alexandrine library, 280;

history and character, 279;

Apology, 111 n.

DEMIURGUS, opposed to ἰδιώτης, ii. 272 n.;

of kosmos, iii. 265 n.;

postulated, iv. 220;

is not a creator, ib.;

produces kosmos, by persuading Necessity, ib., 222;

on pattern of ideas, 227;

evolved the four elements from primordial chaos, 240;

addresses generated gods, 233;

prepares for man’s construction, places a soul in each star, ib.;

conjoins three souls and one body, 234;

how conceived by other philosophers of same century, 254;

little noticed in Aristotle, 255;

degeneracy of man originally intended by, 263.

DEMOCHARES, law against philosophers, i. 111 n.

DEMOCRACY, least bad of unscientific governments, iii. 270, 278;

origin, iv. 80;

monarchy and, the mother-polities, 312;

dissent of Aristotle, ib. n.;

Plato’s second ideal state a compromise of oligarchy and, 333, 337.

DEMOKRITUS, life and travels, i. 65;

Plato’s antipathy to, 66 n., 82 n., ii. 118, iv. 355 n.;

often mentioned in Aristotle, ib.;

opinions of ancients on, i. 82 n.;

his universality, 82;

relation to Parmenidean theory, 66;

plena and vacua, ens and non-ens, 67, iii. 243 n.;

his absolute and relative, i. 71, 80;

atoms differ only in magnitude, figure, position, and arrangement, 69;

different from Plato’s Idea, and Aristotle’s materia prima, 72;

not really objects of sense, ib. n.;

inherent force, 73;

his ultimatum, the course of nature, ib.;

primary and secondary qualities, iv. 243 n.;

air, i. 76, 78;

theory of colour, 77;

theory of vision, combated by Theophrastus, 78 n.;

hearing and taste, 78;

motions of planets, iv. 355 n.;

blamed by Aristotle for omitting final causes, i. 73 n.;

chance, ib.;

φύσις, 70 n.;

mind is heat throughout nature, 75;

parts of the soul, 76;

on its immortality, ii. 425 n.;

truth obtainable by reason only, i. 72;

thought produced by influx of atoms, 79;

on Homo mensura, 82, iii. 152;

knowledge is obscure, or sensation, and genuine, or thought, i. 80;

the gods, 81;

ethical views, 82;

treatise on Pythagoras, ib. n.;

researches in zoology and animal generation, 75;

influence on growth of dialectic, 82;

works of, 65;

in Alexandrine library, 276;

divided into Tetralogies by Thrasyllus, 273 n., 295 n.

DÊMOS, in state, analogous to appetite in individual mind, iv. 39;

Plato more anxious for good treatment of, than Xenophon and Aristotle, 183;

in Aristotle adjuncts, not members, of state, 184;

Plato’s scheme fails from no training for, 186;

see State.

DEMOSTHENES, pupil of Plato, i. 261 n.;

rhetorical powers, iii. 408 n.;

teaching of Isokrates, iv. 150 n.;

adv. Leptinem contrasted with Leges, 315 n.

DESCARTES, advantages of protracted study, i. 404 n.;

accused of substituting physical for mental causes, ii. 401 n.;

argument for being of God, a “fallacy of confusion,” iii. 297 n.;

on criticism by report, i. 118 n.

DESIRE for what is akin to us or our own, cause of friendship, ii. 182;

good, object of universal, 243, iii. 335, 371, 392 n.;

largest measure and all varieties of, are good, ii. 344;

belongs to the mind, presupposes a bodily want and memory of previous satisfaction, iii. 350;

exception, 351 n., 387 n.

DESPOT, has no real power, ii. 324;

worst of unscientific governments, iii. 270, 278;

origin, iv. 81;

excess of despotism in Persia, 312;

Solon on, i. 219 n.;

Xenophon on interior life of, 218, 220;

Xenophon’s scheme of government, a wisely arranged Oriental despotism, 234.

DETERMINING, Pythagorean doctrine of the, i. 11;

the, iii. 346;

it is intelligence, 348.

DEUSCHLE, on Kratylus, iii. 325 n.

DEYCKS, on Megarics, i. 127 n., 136 n.

DIALECTIC, little or none in earliest theorists, i. 93;

Demokritus’ influence on its growth, 82;

of Zeno the Eleate, 93; iii. 107;

its purpose and result, i. 98;

compared with Parmenidês, 100;

early physics discredited by growth of, 91;

its introduction changes the character of philosophy, 105, 107;

repugnant to Herakleiteans, 106 n.;

influence of Drama and Dikastery, 385;

debate common in Sokratic age, 370, ii. 284;

died out in later philosophy, i. 394 n.;

disputations in the Middle Ages, 397 n.;

modern search for truth goes on silently, 369;

process per se interesting to Plato, 403, 406;

has done more than any one else to interest others in it, 405;

its importance, 91, 354, 372, ii. 167, 221;

debate a generating cause of friendship, 188 n.;

and Eristic, 210, 221 n.;

of Sokrates, x;

contrasted with Sophists’, 197, i. 124;

Sokrates first applied negative analysis to the common consciousness, 385, 389 n.;

to social, political, ethical, topics, 385;

necessity of negative vein, 91, 371, 373, 386, 394 n., 421, 444, 130;

a value by itself, iii. 51, 70, 85, 149-50, 176, 184 n., 284, 422;

see Negative Method;

procedure of Sokrates repugnant to Athenian public, i. 387, ii. 305;

colloquial companion necessary to Sokrates, 287;

Sokrates asserts right of satisfaction for his own individual reason, i. 386;

Sokrates’ reason for attachment to, iii. 258 n.;

Sokrates to the last insists on freedom of, ii. 379;

stimulates, i. 420, 449, iv. 52 n.;

as stimulating, not noticed in Republic training, 208;

its negative and positive aspect, illustrated in Alkibiadês I. and II. , ii. 7;

indiscriminate, not insisted on in Gorgias, 367;

protest against, iii. 335;

Euthydemus popular among enemies of, ii. 222;

common want of scrutiny, i. 398 n.;

value of formal debate, as corrective of fallacies, ii. 221;

its actual and anticipated effects, 11;

Sokrates’ positive solutions illusory, 26;

its ethical basis, iii. 113;

autonomy of the individual mind, 147, 297, 298;

contrast with the Leges, 148;

Aristotle on, i. 133 n.;

obstetric method, lead of the respondent followed, 368;

the respondent makes the discoveries for himself, 367;

assumptions necessary in, iii. 251;

precepts for, 91 n.;

long answers inadmissible, ii. 281;

brought to bear on Sokrates himself, iii. 57, 89;

the sovereign purifier, 197;

its result, Knowledge, i. 396;

contrasted with lectures, ii. 277, iii. 337 n.;

alone useful for teaching, 34, 49, 53;

a test of the expository process, i. 358, 396;

attainment of dialectical aptitude, purpose of Sophistês and Politikus, iii. 261;

antithesis of rhetoric and, i. 433, ii. 52-3,70, 277, 278 n., 282, 303;

difference of method, illustrated in Protagoras, 300;

superiority over rhetoric, claimed, 282;

issue unsatisfactorily put, 369;

rhetoric, as a real art, is comprised in, iii. 30, 34;

rhetoric superior in usefulness and celebrity, 360, 380;

Plato’s desire for celebrity in rhetoric and, 408;

its object, definition, i. 452, ii. 318;

its two processes, definition and division, iii. 29, 39;

testing of definitions by clothing them in particulars, iv. 7 n.;

Inductive and Syllogistic, ii. 27;

and Demonstrative, Aristotle’s two intellectual methods, 363;

the purest of all cognitions, iii. 360;

and geometry, two modes of mind’s procedure applicable to ideal world, iv. 65;

requires no diagrams, deals with forms only, descending from highest, 66;

is the consummation of all the sciences, gives the contemplation of the ideas, 75;

one of the manifestations τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν, 150 n.;

standard for classifying sciences, iii. 382-3, 394;

valuable principle, 395;

exercises in, iv. 76;

Republic contradicts other dialogues, 207-212;

difference of Aristotle’s and Plato’s view, i. 363;

mixture in Plato of poetical fancy and religious mysticism with dialectic theory, iii. 16;

distinct aptitudes required by Aristotle for, ii. 54;

Aristotle on its dissecting function, 70 n.;

Stoic View, i. 371 n.;

Theopompus, 450.

DIALOGUES, the Sokratic, i. x, xi;

the lost, of Aristotle, 262 n., 356 n.;

of Sokratici viri, 111, 114;

of Plato, give little information about him personally, 262;

different in form from Aristotle’s, 356 n.;

vary in value, ii. 19;

variety of Plato, i. 344;

dramatic pictures, not historical, 419 n., ii. 33 n., 150, 155 n., 163, 172, 195, 199, 203, 265 n., iii. 9 n., 19, 25;

of common form — Plato never speaks in his own name, i. 344;

reluctant to publish doctrines on his own responsibility, 350, 352, 355, 361 n.;

may have published under the name of others, 360;

his lectures differ from, in being given in his own name, 402;

Plato assumed impossibility of teaching by written exposition, 350, 355, ii. 56 n., 64;

assumption intelligible in his day, i. 357;

Sokratic elenchus, a test of the expository process, 358;

of Search predominate, 366;

a necessary preliminary to those of Exposition, ii. 201;

their basis, Sokratic doctrine that false persuasion of knowledge is universal, i. 367, 393;

illustrated by Hippias and Charmidês, ii. 64, 163;

appeal to authority, suppressed in Academics, i. 368;

debate common in the Sokratic age, 370;

process per se interesting to Plato, 403;

the obstetric method — lead of the respondent followed, 368;

modern search for truth goes on silently, 369;

purpose to stimulate intellect, and form verifying power, iii. 177, 188, 284;

novelty and value of this, 190;

process of generalisation always kept in view in, i. 406;

affirmative and negative veins distinct, 399, 402, 420;

often no ulterior affirmative end, 375;

but Plato presumes the search will be renewed, 395;

value as suggestive, and reviewing under different aspects, ii. 69;

untenable hypothesis that Plato communicated solutions to a few, i. xii, 360, 401;

no assignable interdependence, 407;

each has its end in itself, xii, 344, 375, 400 n., ii. 300 n., iii. 71, 85, 93, 176, 179, 184 n., 284, 332, 400, 420, iv. 138;

of Exposition, pedagogic tone, iii. 368 n.;

Plato’s change in old age, iv. 273, 320, 380, 424, i. 244;

Xenophon compared, ib.;

order for review, i. 408;

see Canon.

DIANOIA, Nous and, two grades of intelligence, iv. 66.

DIKÆARCHUS, ii. 425 n.

DIKASTS, opposition of feeling between Sokrates and, i. 375;

influence of dikastery on growth of Dialectic, 385.

DIODORUS KRONUS, doctrine of Power, i. 140;

defended by Hobbes, 143;

hypothetical propositions, 145;

time, difficulties of Now, ib.;

motion, 146;

Aristotle nearly coincides with, ib.;

and Hobbes, ib.;

his death, 147.

DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA, life and doctrines, i. 60;

air his primordial element, 61;

many properties of, ib.;

physiology, 60 n., 62;

cosmology and meteorology, 64;

often followed Herakleitus, ib. n.;

anticipated modern doctrine of aerolithes, ib.;

Agreement with Anaxagoras, 65;

fundamental tenet, agreement with Aristotle and Demokritus, 69 n.;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.

DIOGENES OF SINÔPÊ, i. 152;

works, 155;

doctrines, 154;

Sokrates’ precepts fullest carried out by, 160;

asceticism, 157;

compared with Indian Gymnosophists and Selli, ib., 160 n., 163 n.;

with Aristippus, 190;

Communism of wives, 189 n.;

opposed Platonic ideas, 163;

the first protest of Nominalism against Realism, 164.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS, i. 291 n., 294.

DION CHRYSOSTOM, i. 112 n.

DIONYSIUS, the elder, Aristippus’ intercourse with, i. 193;

visited by Plato, 351;

the younger, visited by Plato, 258, 355;

expedition of Dion against, 259.

DIONYSIUS HAL., on Apology, i. 411 n.;

rhetorical powers of Plato and Demosthenes, iii. 407 n.;

rivalry of Plato and Lysias, 411 n.;

contrasts Plato’s with Σωκρατικοὶ διάλογοι, i. 110 n.;

Plato’s jealousy and love of supremacy, 117 n.

DIOTIMA, iii. 8 n., 9.

DISEASE, general survey of, iv. 249;

preservative and healing agencies, 250.

DITTRICH on Kratylus, iii. 303 n.

DIVERSUM, iv. 226;

form of, pervades all others, iii. 209, 232;

Aristotle on, 238 n.

DIVISION, logical, ii. 27;

and definition, the two processes of dialectic, iii. 29, 39;

dialogues of search illustrate process, 29, 177, 188;

novelty and value of this, ii. 235, iii. 190;

by dichotomy, 254;

importance of founding on sensible resemblances, 255;

sub-classes often overlooked, 341;

well illustrated in Philêbus, 344;

but feebly applied, 369;

Plato enlarges Pythagorean doctrine, 368.

DIVORCE, iv. 406.

DODONA, oracle to be consulted, iv. 325;

Xenophon, i. 237.

DOING and making, ii. 155;

use of εὖ ζῆν and εὖ πράττειν in Charmidês, 216 n.

DRAMA, influence on growth of Dialectic, i. 385;

mixed pleasure and pain excited by, iii. 355 n.;

Plato’s aversion to Athenian, iv. 316, 350;

peculiar to himself, 317;

Aristotle differs, ib. n.;

see Poetry.

DREAMS, doctrine of Demokritus, caused by images from objects, i. 81;

Plato’s theory of, iv. 237;

as affecting doctrine Homo mensura, iii. 130;

belief of rhetor Aristeides in, 146 n.

DRUNKENNESS, Sokrates proof against, iii. 21, 23, iv. 287;

is test of self-control, iii. 21 n., iv. 289, 298;

forbidden at Sparta, how far justifiable, 286;

chorus of elders require, 297;

unbecoming the guardians, 298 n.

E.

EBERHARD, ii. 300 n.

ECLIPSE, foretold by Thales, i. 4 n.;

Anaximander’s doctrine, 6 n.;

Pythagoras’, 14 n.;

Herakleitus’, 32.

EDUCATION, who is to judge what constitutes, ii. 142;

combined with polity by Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, iv. 142, 185, 337;

on principle that every citizen belongs to the city, 186;

precautions in electing Minister of, 338;

of men compared by Sokrates with training of inferior animals, iii. 62 n.;

bad, of kings’ sons, iv. 312;

training of boys and girls, 348;

by music and gymnastic, 23;

musical training excites love of the beautiful, 27;

importance of music, 305;

views of Xenophon, Polybius, Aristotle, ib.;

music, Platonic sense, 149;

by fictions as well as by truth, 24;

actual place of poetry in Greek, compared with Plato’s ideal, 149-153;

type for narratives about men, 26;

songs, music, and dancing to be regulated, 25, 289, 291, 349;

to keep emotions in a proper state, 169;

prizes at festivals, 292, 337;

but object of training, war, not prizes, 358;

only grave music allowed, 26, 168;

music and gymnastic necessary to correct each other, 29;

gymnastic imparts courage, ib.;

training to ascend to the idea of good, 61;

purpose, 69;

studies introductory to philosophy, 70-74, 206;

difference in Leges, 275 n.;

arithmetic, 423;

awakening power, 70;

stimulus from contradiction of one and many, 72;

geometry, 423;

conducts mind towards universal ens, 72;

value of arithmetic and geometry, 352;

by concrete method, 353 n.;

particulars to be brought under the general forms, 423;

astronomy, 422;

object of teaching, 354;

by ideal figures, not observation, 72;

acoustics, by applying arithmetical relations and theories, 74;

of Nocturnal Counsellors, 420, 424;

exercises in dialectic, 76;

Plato’s remarks on effect of, 207;

age for studies, 76, 350;

philosophy should not be taught at a very early age, 60, 76;

Republic contradicts other dialogues, 207-211;

same training for men and women, 77;

maintained in Leges, and harmonises with ancient legends, 195;

contrast with Aristotle, 194;

public training at Sparta and Krete, 279;

Plato’s scheme fails from no training for Demos, 186;

Xenophon’s scheme, i. 226-31;

geometry and physics, Aristippus’ contempt for, 186, 192.

EGGER, i. 376 n.

EGO, and Mecum or non-ego, antithesis of, iii. 132 n., 144 n.

EGYPTIANS, iv. 330 n., 352, 353 n., 415 n.;

priests, historical knowledge of, 266, 268;

causes, 271;

Plato’s reverence for regulations of, 267 n.

Εἰρωνεία, characteristic of Sokrates and Sophists, iii. 217 n.

ELEATIC philosophy, i. 16-26, 93-103;

Leukippus, 65;

relation to atomic theory, ib.;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

compared with Hindoo philosophers, i. 160 n.

ELEIANS, iii. 24 n.

ELEMENTS, the four, not primitive, iv. 238;

varieties of each, 242;

forms of the, 238;

geometrical theory of, 240;

Aristotle on, 241 n.;

a fifth added, ib. n., 421.

EMOTIONS, appealed to in the Kriton, i. 433;

Bain on the Tender, ii. 188 n.;

a degenerate appendage of human nature, 126, iii. 389;

implication of intelligence and, 374;

antithesis of science and, 61, 195, 196 n.;

the tender and aesthetic, no place for, in tripartite division of soul, iv. 149 n.;

poet’s appeal to, disturbs the rational government of the mind, 92, 152, 349;

restrictions on music and poetry, to keep emotions in a proper state, 169, 347;

similitude of, in all, but dissimilarity of objects, i. 452 n.

EMPEDOKLES, of universal pretensions, i. 47;

doctrines, 38;

four principles, ib.;

dissents from Ionic School and Herakleitus, ib., 48;

denies φύσις (in sense of γένεσις), 38 n.;

compared with Anaxagoras, 52;

Anaximander, 54;

the moving forces, Love and Enmity, 39;

modern attraction and repulsion, 40 n.;

physics, 38;

predestined cycle, 39;

Chaos, ib., 54;

was aware of effect of pressure of air, 44 n.;

movements of the blood, 43;

illustrated respiration by Klepsydra, 44 n.;

perception, 44, iv. 235 n.;

contrary to Anaxagoras, i. 58;

knowledge of like by like, 44;

God, 40 n., 42;

dæmons, 47;

religious mysticism in, 47 n.;

claims magical powers, 47;

sacredness of life, metempsychosis, 46;

friendship, ii. 179;

deplores impossibility of finding out truth from shortness of life, i. 47;

influence on Aristotle, 91;

doctrines identified by Plato with Homo Mensura, iii. 114, 115.

ENDS, science of, postulated, ii. 32, 169;

dimly indicated by Plato, 148;

correlation with the unknown Wise Man, 149;

distinction of, iii. 374 n.;

no common, among established νόμιμα, 282 n.

ENERGY, analogous to guardians in state, iv. 39;

Aristotle’s ἐνέργεια, ii. 355.

ENS, of Xenophanes, i. 17;

of Parmenides, 66, iii. 58;

combines extension and duration, i. 19;

and Non-Ens, an inherent contradiction in human mind, 20;

alone contains truth — phenomena, probability, 24;

erroneously identified by Aristotle with Heat, ib. n.;

Zeno, 93;

Gorgias the Leontine, 103-4;

Demokritus, 67;

contraries the Pythagorean principles of, 15 n.;

an intermediate predicate, iii. 94;

theories of philosophers about, 200, 231;

materialists and idealists, 202;

of Plato, comprehends objects of perception and of conception, 229, 231;

is ens one or many, 201;

difficulties about non-ens and ens equally great, ib., 206;

is equivalent to potentiality, 204;

includes both the unchangeable and the changeable, 205;

a tertium quid, distinct from motion and rest, 206;

philosopher lives in region of ens, — Sophist, of non-ens, 208;

non-ens, 331;

different views about, 243 n.;

its different meanings in Plato, 181 n.;

non-ens inconceivable, 200;

five forms examined, 208, 231-5;

a real form, not contrary to, but different from, ens, 211, 233;

inter-communion of forms of non-ens and of proposition, opinion, judgment, 213, 214, 235;

non-ens in Sophistês different from other dialogues, 242;

Plato’s view of non-ens, ib. n., 249 n.;

unsatisfactory, ib. n.;

alone knowable, non-ens unknowable, iv. 49;

what is between ens and non-ens, the object of opinion, ib.;

fundamental distinction of ens from fientia, 219;

see Relativity, Ontology.

ENTITIES, quadruple distribution of, iii. 346;

Cudworth’s immutable, 74 n.

EPICHARMUS, i. 9.

EPIKTÊTUS, on authority, i. 388 n.;

objective and subjective, 451 n.;

φιλόσοφος and ἰδιώτης, iv. 104 n.;

scheme conformable to nature, i. 162 n.

EPIKURUS, garden, i. 255 n.;

school and library, 269 n.;

Symposion of, iii. 22 n.;

developed Aristippus’ doctrines, i. 198;

identity of good and pleasure, ii. 315 n., 355 n., iii. 374, 377 n., 387 n., iv. 301;

scheme conformable to nature, i. 163 n.;

on justice, iv. 130 n.;

antithesis of speculative and political life, ii. 368 n.;

immortality of the soul, 425 n.;

against repulsive pictures of Hades, iv. 155 n.;

prayer and sacrifice, 395;

agreement with Demokritean doctrine of chance, i. 73 n.;

Plato’s theology compared with, iv. 161.

EPIMENIDÊS, date, iv. 311 n.

EPIMÊTHEUS, ii. 268.

Epinomis, its authorship, i. 299 n., 306, 307, 309;

represents Plato’s latest opinions, iv. 421 n., 424 n.;

gives education of Nocturnal Counsellors, 420, 424;

soul prior to and more powerful than body, 421;

genesis of kosmos, ib.;

five elements, 240 n., 421;

wisdom, ib.;

theological view of astronomy, ib.;

arithmetic and geometry, proportionals, 423;

particulars to be brought under the general forms, 423.

Ἐπιστήμη, relation to αἴσθησις, iii. 164 n.;

see Science.

EPISTLES, Plato’s, i. 333 n.;

genuineness, 306-7, 309, 349 n.;

written when old, 262;

valuable illustrations of his character, 339 n.;

intentional obscurity as to philosophical doctrine, 350, 353 n.

Ἐπιθυμία, derivation, iii. 302 n.

EQUIVOQUES, ii. 8 n., 214, iii. 29;

Sokrates does not distinguish, ii. 279;

Aristotle more careful than Plato, 170, 279 n.;

fallacies of equivocation, 212, 352 n.;

gain, 82;

know, 213 n.;

εὖ ζῆν and εὖ πράττειν, 216 n., 352 n.;

Nature, 341 n., iv. 194;

Cause, ii. 404, 409, 410 n.;

Good, 406, iii. 370;

Ens, 231;

Unum, Ens, Idem, Diversum, &c., 94;

Pleasure, 379 n.;

Justice, iv. 102, 120, 123, 125.

ERANOS, meaning, iv. 400 n.;

Plato inconsistent, 399.

ERASISTRATUS, iv. 259 n.

ERASTÆ, authenticity, i. 306-7, 309, 315, ii. 121;

subject and interlocutors, 111;

vivacity, 116;

philosophy the perpetual accumulation of knowledge, 112;

how to fix the quantity, 113;

philosophy not multiplication of learned acquirements, 114;

special art for discriminating bad and good, 115, 119;

supreme, 120;

the philosopher its regular practitioner, 115;

the philosopher, second best in several arts, 114;

Aristotle’s σοφία and φρόνησις, 120 n.;

relation of second-best man to regular practitioner, 113, 115, 118;

supposed to point at Demokritus, ib.;

humiliation of literary erastes, 116.

ERETRIAN school, transcendental, not ethical, i. 121;

qualities non-existent without the mind, iii. 74 n.;

Phædon, i. 148;

Menedêmus, ib., 149.

ERISTIC and dialectic, ii. 221 n.;

Aristotle’s definition, 210.

EROS, differently understood, necessity for definition, iii. 29;

derivation, 308 n.;

contrast of Hellenic and modern sentiment, 1;

erotic dialogues, Phædrus and Symposion, ib.;

as conceived by Plato, ib., 4, 11;

inconsistent with expulsion of poets, 3 n.;

purpose of Symposion, to contrast Plato’s with other views, 8;

views of interlocutors in Symposion, 9;

a Dæmon intermediate between gods and men, 9;

but in Phædrus a powerful god, ib. n., 11 n.;

the stimulus to improving philosophical communion, 4, 6, 18;

Phædon, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Republic, ib.;

exaltation of, in a few, love of Beauty in genere, 7, 15;

analogy to philosophy, 10, 11, 14;

disparaged, then panegyrised, by Sokrates in Phædrus, 11;

a variety of madness, ib.;

Sokrates as representative of Eros Philosophus, 15, 25;

Xenophon’s view, ib.

ETHICS, diversity of beliefs, noticed by the ancients, i. 378, iii. 282 n.;

hostility to novel attempts at analysis, i. 387 n.;

Sokrates distinguished objective and subjective views, 451;

subjective unanimity coincident with objective dissent, ib.;

Aristophanes connects idea of immorality with free thought, iv. 166;

the matter of ethical sentiment variable, the form permanent, 203;

Pascal on, i. 231 n.;

with political and social life, topic of Sokrates, 376, ii. 362, iii. 113;

self-regarding doctrine of Sokrates, ii. 349, 354 n.;

order of problems as conceived by Sokrates, 299;

to do, worse than to suffer, evil, 326, 332, 338, 359;

no man voluntarily does, iv. 249, 365-7;

ἁμαρτήματα and ἀδικήματα distinguished, 365, 367;

and politics treated together by Plato, 133;

apart by Aristotle, 138;

Sokrates and Plato dwell too exclusively on intellectual conditions, ii. 67, 83;

rely too much on analogy of arts, and do not note what underlies epithets, 68;

Plato blends ontology with, iii. 365;

forced conjunction of kosmology and, 391;

physiology of Timæus subordinated to ethical teleology, iv. 257;

different points of view in Plato, ii. 167;

modern theories, intuition, 348;

moral sense, not recognised in Gorgias and Protagoras, ib.;

permanent and transient elements of human agency, 353-5;

τὰ ἀνθρώπινα, iv. 302 n.;

the permanent, and not immediate satisfaction, the end, ii. 360;

τὸ ἕνεκά του confused with τὸ διά τι, 182 n.;

basis in Republic imperfect, iv. 127-32;

Plato more a preacher than philosopher in the Republic, 131, 132;

purpose in Leges, to remedy all misconduct, 369;

of Demokritus, i. 82;

see Cynics, Kyrenaics, Epikurus, &c.

ETYMOLOGY, see Name.

EUBULIDES, sophisms of, i. 128, 133.

EUDEMUS, iv. 255;

Proklus borrowed from, i. 85 n.

EUDOXUS, i. 255;

identity of good and pleasure, ii. 315 n., iii. 375 n., 379 n.

EUKLEIDES, i. 116;

enlarged summum genus of Parmenides, iii. 196 n.;

blended Parmenides with Sokrates, i. 118;

Good, iii. 365, i. 119, 127 n.;

nearly Plato’s last view, 120.

Εὐπραγία, equivoque, ii. 8 n., 352 n.

EURIPIDES, Bacchæ analogous to Leges, iv. 277, 304 n.;

Hippolytus illustrates popular Greek religious belief, 163 n.

EUSEBIUS, i. 384 n., iv. 160 n., 256 n.

Euthydêmus, authenticity, i. 306, ii. 195;

date, i. 308-11, 312, 315, 320, 325 n., ii. 227 n., iii. 36 n.;

scenery and personages, ii. 195;

dramatic and comic exuberance, ib.;

purpose, i. 309 n., ii. 198, 204 n., 211, i. 128;

Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus do not represent Protagoras and Gorgias, ii. 202;

ironical admiration of Sophists, 208;

earliest known attempt to expose fallacies, 216;

the result of habits of formal debate, 221;

character drawn of Sokrates suitable to its purpose, 203;

possession of good things, without intelligence, useless, 204;

intelligence must include making and use, 205;

fallacies of equivocation, 212, iii. 238 n.;

à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, ii. 213, 214;

extra dictionem, 215;

involving deeper logical principles, ib.;

its popularity among enemies of dialectic, 222;

the epilogue to obviate this inference, 223;

Euthydêmus the representative of dialectic and philosophy, 226;

disparagement of half-philosophers, half-politicians, 224;

Plato’s view untenable, 229;

is Isokrates meant? 227, iii. 38 n.;

no teacher can be indicated, ii. 225;

compared with Parmenidês, 200;

Republic, Philêbus, Protagoras, 208, iii. 373 n.

Euthyphron, date of, i. 457 n.;

its Sokratic spirit, 449;

gives Platonic Sokrates’ reply to Melêtus, Xenophontic compared, 441, 455;

a retort against Aristophanes, 442;

interlocutors, 437;

Euthyphron indicts his father for homicide, 438, ii. 329 n.;

as warranted by piety, i. 439;

acts on Sokratic principle of making oneself like the gods, 440;

Holiness, 439;

answer by a particular example, 444;

not what pleases the gods, 445, 448, 454;

Sokrates disbelieves discord among gods, 440;

why gods love the Holy, 446;

not a branch of justice, 447;

for gods gain nothing, 448;

holiness not a right traffic between men and gods, ib.;

dialogue useful as showing the subordination of logical terms, 455.

EVIL, to do, worse than to suffer, ii. 326, 332, 338, 359;

contrast of usual with Platonic meaning, 331;

the greatest, ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, iii. 197;

great preponderance of, iv. 25, 262 n., 390;

gods not the cause of, 24;

the good and the bad souls at work in the universe, 386;

man the cause of, 234;

inconsistency, ib., n.;

diseases of mind arise from body, 250;

no man voluntarily wicked, ii. 292, iv. 249, 365-7;

done by the good man wilfully, by the bad unwillingly, ii. 61;

three causes of misguided proceedings, iv. 366;

see Good, Virtue, Body.

Ἕξις, Aristotelic, ii. 355.

EXISTENCE, notion of, iii. 135 n., 205, 226, 229, 231.

EXPERIENCE, Zeno’s arguments not contradictions of data generalized from, i. 100;

Plato’s theory of pre-natal, ii. 252;

operation of pre-natal on man’s intellectual faculties, iii. 13;

reminiscence of pre-natal knowledge gained by, 17;

post-natal not ascertained and measured by him, ii. 252;

no appeal to observation or, in studying astronomy and acoustics, iv. 73, 74;

see Sense.

EXPERT, authority of public judgment, nothing, of Expert, everything, i. 426, 435;

opposition to Homo mensura, iii. 135, 143;

different view, i. 446 n.;

correlation with undiscovered science of ends, ii. 149;

is never seen or identified, 117, 142;

how known, 141;

Sokrates himself acts as, i. 436;

the pentathlos of Erastæ, ii. 119 n.;

finds out and certifies truth and reality, 87, 88;

badness of all reality, iii. 330;

required to discriminate pleasures, ii. 345;

as dialectician and rhetorician, iii. 39;

impracticable, 42;

true government by, 268;

postulated for names in Kratylus, 329.

F.

FABRICIUS, iv. 382 n.

FAITH and Conjecture, two grades of opinion, iv. 67.

FALLACIES, Sophists abused, ii. 199;

did not invent, 217, i. 133 n.;

inherent liabilities to error in ordinary process of thinking, ii. 217, i. 129;

corrected by formal debate, ii. 217, 220 n., 221;

exposure of, by multiplication of particular examples, 211;

by conclusion shown aliunde to be false, 216;

Plato enumerates, Aristotle tries to classify, 212;

Euthydêmus, earliest known attempt to expose, 216;

Bacon’s Idola, 218;

Mill’s complete enumeration of heads of, 218;

of sufficient Reason, i. 6 n.;

of equivocation, ii. 212, 352 n.;

extra dictionem, 214;

à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, 213, 214;

Plato and Aristotle fall into, iii. 138, 158;

of confusion, 297 n.;

arguing in a circle, ii. 428 n.;

of Ratiocination, 213, 219;

of Megarics and Antisthenes, 215;

see Sophisms, Equivoques.

FAMILY, Greek views of, iii. 1 n.;

restrictions at Thebes, iv. 329 n.;

no separate families for guardians, 41, 174, 178;

ties mischievous, but can not practically be got rid of, 327;

to be watched over by magistrates, 328;

treatment of infants, 346;

see Education, Communism, Woman, Infanticide.

FARRAR, F. W., iii. 326 n.

FATE, relation to gods, iv. 221 n., i. 142;

see Chance.

FERRIER, on scope and purpose of philosophy, i. viii, n.;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 123 n.;

antithesis of Ego and Mecum, 132 n.;

necessity of setting forth counter-propositions, 148.

FICINUS, interpretation of Plato, i. xi;

followed Thrasyllean classification, 301;

on Good and Beauty, iii. 5 n.;

on Parmenidês, 84 n.;

mystic sanctity of names, 323 n.

FIGURE, defined, ii. 235;

pleasures of, true, iii. 356.

FINANCE, see Xenophon.

FINITE, Zeno’s reductiones ad Absurdum, i. 93;

natural coalescence of infinite and, iii. 340;

illustration from speech and music, 342;

insufficient, 343.

FIRE, doctrine of Anaximander, i. 5;

Anaximenes, 7;

Pythagoras, 13;

Herakleitus, 27, 30 n., 32;

soul compared to, 34;

Empedokles, 38;

Anaxagoras, 50, 52, 56 n.;

identified with mind by Demokritus, 75.

FISCHER, KUNO, iii. 84 n.

FOES, iv. 251 n.

FREEWILL, the Necessity of Plato, iv. 221.

FRIENDSHIP, a moving force, in Empedokles, i. 38;

problem in Lysis too general, ii. 186;

causes of enmity and, exist by nature, 341 n.;

colloquial debate as a generating cause, 188 n.;

desire for what is akin to us or our own, 182;

not likeness and unlikeness, 179, 180, 359;

physical analogy 188 n.;

the Indifferent friend to Good, 180, 189;

illustrated by philosopher, 181;

the primum amabile, ib., 192;

prima amicitia of Aristotle, compared, 194;

Xenophontic Sokrates and Aristotle, 186.

G.

GAIN, double meaning of, ii. 82;

no tenable definition found, ib., 83;

see Hipparchus.

GALEN, relation to Plato, iv. 258;

soul threefold, ib.;

a κρᾶσις of bodily elements, ii. 391 n.;

immortal, 423 n., 427;

on Philêbus, iii. 365 n.;

belief in legends, iv. 153 n.;

Plato’s theory of vision, 237 n.;

structure of apes, 257 n.

GALUPPI, PASCAL, iii. 118.

GENERAL maxims readily laid down by pre-Sokratic philosophers, i. 69 n.;

terms vaguely understood, 398 n., 452 n., ii. 49 n., 166, 242, 279 n., 279, 341 n.;

Mill on, 48 n.;

hopelessness of defining, 186 n.

GENERALS, Greek, no professional experience, ii. 134.

GENERIC and specific terms, distinction unfamiliar in Plato’s time, ii. 13;

and analogical wholes, 48, 193 n., iii. 365;

unity, how distributed among species and individuals, 339, 346.

GENIUS, why not hereditary, ii. 271, 272, 274.

GEOMETRY, Pythagorean, i. 12;

modern application, 10 n.;

subject of Plato’s lectures, 349 n.;

value of, iv. 352, 423;

Lucian against, i. 385 n.;

successive stages of its teaching illustrate Platonic doctrine, 353;

twofold, iii. 359, 395;

pure and applied mathematics, 396 n.;

Aristotle’s view of axioms of, i. 358 n.;

from induction, iv. 353 n.;

painless pleasures of, iii. 356, 388 n.;

and dialectic, two modes of mind’s procedure applicable to ideal world, iv. 65;

geometry, assumes diagrams, ib.;

conducts mind towards universal ens, 72;

uselessness of written treatises, ii. 136;

proportionals, iv. 224 n., 241 n., 423;

geometrical theory of the elements, i. 349 n., iv. 240;

Aristotle on, 241 n.;

Kyrenaic and Cynic contempt for, i. 155, 186, 192.

GFRÖRER, iv. 256 n.

GODS, derivation of θεοί, iii. 300 n.;

Xenophanes, i. 16, 119 n.;

Parmenides, 19, 24;

Empedokles, 40 n., 42, 47;

Anaxagorean Nous represented later as a god, 54;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 64 n.;

Demokritus, 81;

Sokrates, 414, 440, ii. 28;

Plato’s proofs of existence of, iv. 385, 389, 419;

locality assigned to, 230 n.;

fabricated men and animals, ii. 268;

possess the Idea of cognition, iii. 66, 67 n.;

free from pleasure and pain, 389;

do not assume man’s form, iv. 25, 154 n.;

Lucretius on, ib.;

cause good only, 24;

no repulsive fictions to be tolerated about, 25, 154;

Dodona and Delphi to be consulted for religious legislation, 34, 137 n., 325, 337;

τὰ θεῖα, 302 n.;

primary and visible gods, 229;

secondary and generated gods, 230;

Plato’s dissent from established religious doctrine, 161, 163;

Plato compared with Epikurus, 161, 395;

Plato’s view of popular theology, 238 n., 328, 337;

popular Greek belief, well illustrated in Euripides’ Hippolytus, 163 n.;

God’s φθόνος, 164 n.;

Aristotle, 395;

see Demiurgus, Religion, Inspiration.

GOLD, makes all things beautiful, ii. 41.

GOOD, Demokritus’ theory, i. 82;

the Pythagorean καιρός, first cause of, iii. 397 n.;

an equivoque, 370;

and pleasurable, as conceived by the Athenians, ii. 371;

contrast of usual with Platonic meaning, 331, 335;

universal desire of, 243, 324, iii. 5, 335, 371, 392 n.;

akin, evil alien, to every one, ii. 183;

alone caused by gods, iv. 24;

its three varieties, ii. 306 n., 350 n., iv. 12, 116, 428;

Eros one, iii. 5;

as object of attachment, ii. 194;

the four virtues the highest, and source of all other goods, iv. 428;

is the just, honourable, expedient, ii. 7;

not knowledge, 29;

is gain, 72-6;

True and Real coalesce in Plato’s mind, 88;

Campbell on erroneous identification of truth and, iii. 391 n.;

the primum amabile, ii. 181, 191;

approximation to Idea, 192;

Indifferent friend to, 180, 189;

pleasure is, 289, 306 n., 347 n.;

agreement with Aristippus, i. 199-202;

meaning of pleasure as the summum bonum, iii. 338;

the permanent, and not immediate satisfaction, the end, ii. 360;

Sokrates’ reasoning, 307;

too narrow and exclusively prudential, 309;

not Utilitarianism, 310 n.;

not ironical, 314;

compared with Republic, 310;

Protagoras, 345;

coincidence of Republic and Protagoras, 350 n.;

inconsistent with Gorgias, 306, 345;

argument in Gorgias untenable, 351;

Platonic idéal, view of Order, undefined results, 374;

Plato’s view of rhetoric dependent on his idéal of, 374;

is ἀλυπία, iii. 338 n.;

is maximum of pleasure and minimum of pain, iv. 293-97, 299-303;

at least an useful fiction, 303;

not intelligence nor pleasure, 62;

and happiness, correlative terms in Philêbus, iii. 335;

is it intense pleasure without any intelligence, 338;

or intelligence without pleasure or pain, ib.;

intelligence more cognate than pleasure to, 347, 361;

pleasure a generation, therefore not an end, nor the good, 357;

a tertium quid, 339, 361;

intelligence the determining, pleasure the indeterminate, 348;

a mixture, 361;

five constituents, 362;

the answer as to, does not satisfy the tests Plato lays down, 371;

has not the unity of an idea, 365;

Plato’s in part an eclectic doctrine, 366;

special accomplishments oftener hurtful, if no knowledge of the good, ii. 16;

man who has knowledge of, can alone do evil wilfully, 61;

knowledge of, identified with νοῦς, 30;

postulated under different titles, 31;

special art for discriminating, 115;

how known, undetermined, 31, 206;

only distinct answer in Protagoras, 208, 308, 347;

the profitable, general but not constant explanation of Plato, 38;

is essentially relative, iv. 213 n., i. 185;

Idea of, rules the world of Ideas, as sun the visible, iv. 63, 64;

Aristotle on, 214 n.;

Anaxagoras’ nous, ii. 412;

training to ascend to Idea, iv. 62;

dialectic gives the contemplation of, 75;

rulers alone know, 212;

Idea of, left unknown, 213;

changes in Plato’s views, i. 119;

Eukleides, iii. 365, i. 119, 127 n.;

nearly same as Plato’s last doctrine, 120;

discourse of Sokrates with Aristippus, 184, 185;

Xenophontic Sokrates, iii. 366.

GORGIAS the Leontine, reasoned against the Absolute as either Ens or Entia, i. 103;

Ens incogitable and unknowable, 104;

contrasted with earlier philosophers, 105;

not represented by Dionysodorus in Euthydemus, ii. 202;

celebrity, 317;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.

Gorgias, the date, i. 305-7, 308-10, 312, 315, ii. 228 n., 318 n., 367;

its general character, discrediting the actualities of life, 355;

reply to, by Aristeides, 371 n.;

upholds independence and dignity of philosophic dissenter, 375;

scenery and person ages, 317;

rhetoric the artisan of persuasion, 319;

a branch of flattery, 321, 370;

citation of four statesmen, 358, 362;

true and counterfeit arts, 322;

multifarious arts of flattery, aiming at immediate pleasure, 357;

despots and rhetors have no real power, 324;

description of rhetors, untrue, 369;

rhetoric is of little use, 329, iii. 410;

Sokrates’ view different in Xenophon, ii. 371 n.;

issue unsatisfactorily put by Plato, 369;

view stands or falls with idéal of Good, 374;

all men wish for Good, 324;

illustration from Archelaus, 325, 333 n., 334, 336, i. 179;

Plato’s peculiar view of Good, ii. 331, 335;

contrasted with usual meaning, 331;

καλὸν and αἰσχρὸν defined, 327, 334;

definition untenable, 334;

to do, a greater evil than to suffer, wrong, 326, 359;

inconsistent with description of Archelaus, 333;

reciprocity of regard indispensable, ib.;

opposition of Law and Nature, ib., 338;

no allusion to Sophists, 339;

uncertainty of referring to nature, 340;

punishment a relief to the wrong-doer, 327, 328, 335;

the only cure for criminals’ mental distemper, 328;

consequences of theory, 336;

analogy of mental and bodily distemper pushed too far, 337;

its incompleteness, 363;

are largest measure, and all varieties, of desire, good, 344;

good and pleasurable as conceived by the Athenians, 371;

good and pleasurable not identical, 345, iii. 380 n.;

argument untenable, ii. 351;

expert required to discriminate pleasures, 345, 347;

idéal of measure, view of order, undefined results, 374;

permanent and transient elements of human agency 353-5;

psychology defective, 354;

temperance the condition of virtue and happiness, 358;

Sokrates resolves on scheme of life, 360;

agreement of Sokrates with Aristippus, i. 200 n.;

Sokrates alone follows the true political art, ii. 361-2;

condition of success in life, 359;

danger of dissenter, ib.;

Sokrates as a dissenter, 364;

claim of locus standi for philosophy, 367;

but indiscriminate cross-examination given up, 368;

mythe respecting Hades, 361;

compared with Protagoras, 270 n., 306 n., 345-8, 349-55, iii. 379;

Philêbus, ib., 380;

Apology, Kriton, Republic, ii. 362;

Leges, ib., iv. 301, 302, 324;

Menexenus, 409;

Xenophontic Sokrates, i. 178, 221.

GOVERNMENT, natural rectitude of, ii. 89;

Plato does not admit the received classification, iii. 267;

true classification, scientific or unscientific, 268;

monarchy and democracy the mother-polities, iv. 312;

dissent of Aristotle, ib. n.;

seven distinct natural titles to, 309;

illustrated by Argos, Messênê, Sparta, 310;

imprudent to found on any one title only, ib.;

five types of, 78-84;

three constituents of good, 312;

Plato’s idéal, ii. 363;

unscientific, or by many, counterfeit, iii. 268;

genuine, by the one scientific man, ib., 273, iv. 280;

counter-theory in Protagoras, ii. 268, iii. 275;

distinguished from general, &c., 271;

no laws, 269;

practicable only in golden age, iv. 319;

by fixed laws the second best, iii. 270;

excess of energetic virtues entails death or banishment, of gentle, slavery, 273;

true ruler aims at forming virtuous citizens, 272;

standard of ethical orthodoxy to be maintained, 273;

of unscientific forms despotism worst, democracy least bad, 270, 278;

a bad government no government, 281 n.;

timocracy, iv. 79;

oligarchy, ib.;

democracy, 80;

despot, 81;

education combined with, by Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, 142;

Sokratic ideal differently worked out by Plato and Xenophon, iii. 273;

Xenophon’s idéal, citizen willing to be ruled, i. 215, 218, 219;

and scientific ruler, 224;

Xenophon’s scheme of, a wisely arranged Oriental despotism, 234;

see State.

GRÄFENHAHN, iii. 312 n.

GRAMMAR, no formal, existed in Plato’s time, ii. 34 n., iii. 222.

GREECE, political changes in, during Plato’s life, i. 1;

Greeks all by nature kinsmen, iv. 47.

GRIMM, iii. 314 n., 329 n.

GRUPPE, on Leges, iv. 355 n.

GUARDIANS, characteristics, iv. 23, 25;

drunkenness unbecoming, 298 n.;

consist of men and women, 41, 46;

syssitia, 359;

communism of, ib., 44, 140, 169;

maintenance of city dependent on their habits, character, education, 32, 34, 139, 170, 178;

no family ties, 41, 174-8;

temporary marriages, 44, 175;

object, 198;

number limited, Plato and Aristotle, 178, 198-200;

age for studies, 76;

studies introductory to philosophy, 70-4;

courage seated in, 35;

analogous to reason and energy in individuals, 39;

divided into rulers and auxiliaries, 29;

compared with modern soldiers, 148, 180.

GYMNASTIC, art reducible to rule, ii. 372 n.;

measured quantity alone good, 112;

education in, necessary for guardians, iv. 23;

should be simple, 28;

imparts courage, 29;

prizes at festivals, 338;

but object of training, war, not prizes, 358;

music necessary to correct, 29.

H.

HADES, no repulsive fictions tolerated of, iv. 25, 154;

mythe of, in Republic, 94;

in Gorgias, ii. 361.

HAMILTON, SIR WM., doctrines inconsistent, i. xiii. n.;

Plato’s reasonings on the soul, ii. 250 n., 428 n.;

Reid and Berkeley, iii. 165 n.;

Judgment implied in every act of Consciousness, 166 n.;

relativity of knowledge, 133 n.;

primary and secondary qualities, iv. 243 n.

HAPPINESS, relation to knowledge, ii. 159, 160;

Plato’s peculiar view of, 335;

contrasted with usual meaning, 331;

its elements depreciated, 353;

temperance the condition of, 358;

all men love Good as means to, iii. 5;

and good, correlative terms in Philêbus, 335;

Sydenham on seat of, 372 n.;

the end of the state and individual, iv. 98;

flowing from justice, 20, 84, 90;

see Good, Pleasure.

HARMODIUS, iii. 4 n.

HARRIS, JAMES, on Homo Mensura, iii. 139 n.;

Plato’s etymologies, 302 n.;

on Stoical doctrine of virtue, iv. 106 n.;

on sophism Κυριεύων, i. 141 n.;

time, 146 n.

HARVEY, DR. WM., iv. 259.

HEBREW studies, their effect on classical scholarship, i. xv. n.;

uniformity of tradition contrasted with diversity of Greek philosophy, 384 n.;

allegorical interpretation of prophets, ii. 286 n.;

writers, Plato’s resemblance to, iv. 160 n., 256.

HEDONISTS, doctrine, iii. 374;

included ἀλυπία in end, 377;

did not set aside all idea of limit, 392 n.;

basis adopted in Plato’s argument, 375, 387 n.;

enforced same view as Plato on intense pleasures, 378;

see Pleasure.

HEGEL, origin of philosophy, i. 382 n.;

ideal expert, ib.;

Plato’s view of the soul, ii. 414 n.;

Anaxagoras’ nous, 403 n.

HEGESIAS, the “death-persuader,” i. 202;

coincidence with Cynics, 203;

doctrine of relativity, 204.

HEINDORF, on Kratylus, iii. 310 n.;

Charmidês, iv. 136 n.;

Republic, ib.

HEKATÆUS, censured by Herakleitus, i. 26.

HERAKLEITUS, works and obscure style, i. 26;

dogmatism and censure of his predecessors, ib.;

metaphysical, 27;

physics, ib., 32;

did not rest proof of a principle on induction of particulars, iii. 309 n.;

Fieri his principle, i. 28;

Parmenides’ opposed, 37;

the law of Fieri alone permanent, 29;

no substratum, 30;

identified with Homo Mensura, iii. 114, 115, 126, 128;

rejected by Aristotle, but approved by modern science, i. 37 n., iii. 126 n., 154 n.;

exposition by metaphors, i. 28, 30;

fire and air, 27, 31;

fire a symbol for the universal force or law, 30 n.;

distinction of ideal and elementary fire, 32 n.;

doctrine of contraries, 30, 31, iii. 101 n.;

the soul an effluence of the Universal, i. 34;

individual reason worthless, ib.;

Universal Reason, the reason of most men as it ought to be, 35;

περιέχον compared with Anaxagorean Nous, 56 n.;

sleep, 34;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

time, 228 n.;

paradoxes, i. 37 n.;

Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει, 26;

reappears in Plato, ii. 30;

enigmatical doctrine of his followers, iii. 159 n.;

their repugnance to dialectic, i. 106 n.;

names first imposed in accordance with his theory, iii. 301 n., 314-7;

names the essence of things, 324 n., 325;

theory admitted, 316;

some names not consistent with it, 318;

the theory uncertain, 321;

flux, true of particulars, not of Ideas, 320;

antipathy to Pythagoras, 316 n.;

influence on the development of logic, i. 37;

on Diogenes of Apollonia, 64 n.;

Protagoras, iii. 159 n.;

Plato, i. 27;

Stoics, 27, 34 n.

HERAKLEITUS the Allegorist, iii. 3 n., iv. 157 n.

HÊRAKLÊS, the choice of, ii. 267 n., i. 177.

HERESY, see Orthodoxy.

HERMANN, GODFREY, natural rectitude of names, iii. 300 n.

HERMANN, K. F., theory of Platonic canon, i. 307;

Susemihl coincides, 310;

principle of arrangement reasonable, 322;

more tenable than Schleiermacher’s, 324;

Ueberweg attempts to reconcile Schleiermacher with, 313;

on Hippias Major, ii. 34 n.;

Kratylus, iii. 309 n.;

Republic, 244 n.;

Leges, iv. 274 n., 328 n., 369 n., 374 n.

HERMOKRATES, intended as last in Republic tetralogy, i. 325, iv. 266, 273.

HERODOTUS, infers original aqueous state of earth from prints of shells and fishes, i. 19 n.;

Psammetichus’ experiment, iii. 289 n.;

the gods’ jealousy, iv. 164 n.;

sacrifice and prayer, 394, ib. n.

HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN, axioms of arithmetic from induction, iv. 353 n.

HESIOD, cosmology, i. 2-3, 4 n.;

censured by Xenophanes, 16;

by Herakleitus, 26.

HETÆRÆ, iv. 359, i. 188-90.

HINDOOS, Sleeman on grounds of belief among, iii. 150 n.;

philosophers compared with Eleatics, i. 159 n.

HIPPARCHIA, wife of Krates, i. 173.

Hipparchus, authenticity, i. 297 n., 307, 309, 337 n., ii. 82, 93;

and Minos analogous and inferior to other works, 82;

purpose, 84;

subject — definition of lover of gain, 71;

double meaning of gain, 82;

first definition, rejected, 71;

character and precept of Hipparchus the Peisistratid, eulogy of Sokrates, 73;

Gain is good — apparent contradiction, ib.;

gain the valuable, the profitable, and therefore the good, 75;

some gain is good, some evil, 74;

objections, ib.;

no tenable definition of gain found, 82, 83.

Hippias Major, authenticity, i. 306, 315, ii. 33 n.;

date, i. 307, 308-10, 313;

situation and interlocutors, ii. 33;

Hippias lectured at Sparta on the beautiful, the fine, the honourable, 35, 39;

no success at Sparta — law forbids, 35;

the lawful is the profitable, 36;

comparison with Xenophon, 34, 37;

the beautiful? 39;

instances, 40;

Gold makes all things beautiful, 41;

complaint of vulgar analogies, 42;

answer fails of universal application, ib.;

the becoming, and the useful — objections, 43-4;

a variety of the pleasurable, 45;

inadmissible, ib.;

Sokrates attempts to assign some general concept, 47, 193 n., iii. 365;

analogy of Sokrates’ explanations in Memorabilia, ii. 49;

and Minor illustrate general theory of the dialogues of Search, 63;

antithetise rhetoric and dialectic, 70.

Hippias Minor, authenticity, i. 306, ii. 55 n., 57 n.;

date, i. 306, 308-10, 310, 315;

and Major illustrate general theory of dialogues of Search, ii. 63;

antithetise rhetoric and dialectic, 70;

polemical and philosophical purpose, 63;

its thesis maintained by Sokrates in Memorabilia, 66;

combated by Aristotle, 67;

characters and situation, 55;

Achilleus preferred by Hippias to Odysseus, veracity to mendacity, 56, 58;

contested by Sokrates veracious and mendacious man the same, 57;

to hurt wilfully better than to do so unwillingly, 58;

Hippias dissents, 60;

good man alone does evil wilfully, Sokrates’ perplexity, 61;

critics on the sophistry of Sokrates, 62.

HIPPOKRATES, iv. 260.

HOBBES on similitude of passions in all, but dissimilarity of objects, i. 452 n.;

exercises for students, iii. 80 n., 90 n.;

subject and object, 117 n.;

analogy of state to individual, iv. 96;

cause, i. 139 n., 144;

Diodorus’ doctrine defended, 143;

coincides with Aristotle on motion, 146.

HOLINESS, what is? i. 439;

not what gods love, 445, 448, 454;

why the gods love it, 446;

how far like justice, ii. 278;

not a branch of justice, i. 447;

not a right traffic between men and gods, 448;

is it holy? ii. 278;

the holy, one type in Platonic, various in Xenophontic, Sokrates, i. 454.

HOMER, cosmology, i. 2;

censured by Xenophanes, 16;

Herakleitus, 26;

considered more as an instructor than as a poet, ii. 126;

and poets, the great teachers, 135;

picture in Republic, as really knowing nothing ib., iv. 92;

Strabo on, 152 n.;

Herakleitus the allegorist, iii. 3 n., iv. 157 n.;

Plato’s fictions contrasted with, 153 n.;

diversity of subjects, ii. 132;

inspired by gods, 128;

analogy of Magnet, ib.;

on friendship, 179;

identified by Plato with Homo Mensura, iii. 114.

HOMO MENSURA, see Relativity.

HOMŒOMERIES, see Anaxagoras.

HOMICIDE, varieties of, iv. 370-4;

penalties, 370;

Plato follows peculiar Attic view, 374.

HONOURABLE, the, Hippias’ lectures at Sparta on, ii. 39;

identified with the just, good, expedient, 7;

actions conducive to pleasure are, 295;

by law, not nature, Aristippus’ doctrine, i. 197.

HORACE, scheme of life, i. 191 n., 192 n.

HUET, BP., i. 384 n.

HUMBOLDT, WM. VON, origin of language, iii. 326 n.

HUME, Athenian taxation, i. 242 n.

HUNTING, meaning of, iv. 356;

how far permitted, 355.

HUTCHESON, FRANCIS, iv. 105 n.

HYPOTHESIS, discussion of, distinct from discussion of its consequences, ii. 397, 411;

ultimate appeal to extremely general hypothesis, ib.;

in Republic, only a stepping-stone to the first principle, 412;

provisional assumption of, and consequences traced, exercise for students, iii. 79;

illustration, 81.

I.

IDEAS, Plato’s, differ from Pythagorean Number, i. 10;

identified by Plato with the Pythagorean symbols, 348, iii. 71 n., 368;

differ from Demokritean atoms, i. 72;

the definitions Sokrates sought for, 453;

Plato assumed the common characteristic, by objectivising the word itself, ib.;

doctrine derived its plausibility from metaphors, 343;

soul’s immortality rests on assumption of, ii. 412;

reminiscence of the, iii. 13;

as Forms, ii. 412;

the only causes, 396;

formal, 408 n.;

logical phantoms as real causes, 404 n.;

truth resides in, 411;

alone exclude contrary, 7 n.;

unchangeable, iii. 246 n., iv. 50;

Herakleitean flux not true of, iii. 320;

partly changeable and partly unchangeable, 228;

disguised in particulars, iv. 3 n.;

fundamental distinction of particulars, and, 219;

alone knowable, 49;

opinion, of what is between ens and non-ens, ib.;

assumption of, as separate entia, ii. 396, 403;

great multitude of, 410;

characteristics of world of, iii. 63;

Ideas separate from, but participable by, sensible objects, 59;

objections, 60-7;

the genuine Platonic theory attacked, 68;

none of some objects, 60;

how participable by objects, 63, 65, 72, iv. 138;

not fitted on to the facts of sense, iii. 78;

Aristotle partly successful in attempt, 76.;

analogous difficulty of predication, i. 169;

“the third man,” iii. 64 n.;

not merely conceptions, 64, 73;

not mere types, 65;

not cognizable, since not relative to ourselves, ib., 72;

gods have Idea of cognition, 67, 68 n.;

dilemma, ideas exist or philosophy impossible, 68;

intercommunion of some forms, 207, 250 n.;

analogy of letters and syllables, 208;

what forms, determined by philosopher, ib.;

of non-ens, and proposition, opinion, judgment, 213, 214;

of Diversum pervades all others, 209;

τῶν ἀποφάσεων, 238 n.;

of Animal, iv. 223, 235 n., 263;

kosmos on pattern of, 223;

action on Materia Prima, 238;

of the elements, 239;

of insects, &c., iii. 195 n.;

of names and things nameable, 286 n., 289, 326 n.;

names fabricated by lawgiver on type of, 287, 290, 325;

names the essence of things, 324 n.;

doctrine about classification not necessarily connected with, 345;

of Beauty exclusively presented in Symposion, 18;

of Good, approximation of primum amabile, ii. 192;

training to ascend to the idea of good, iv. 61, 66;

comparison of idea of good to sun, 63, 64;

of Good, in Phædon, Anaxagoras’ nous, ii. 412;

known to the rulers alone, iv. 212;

left unsolved, 213;

the contemplation of, by dialectic, 75;

reluctance to undertake active duties, of those who have contemplated, 70;

philosopher lives in region of, sophist in region of non-ens, iii. 208, iv. 48;

little said of, in Menon, ii. 253, 254 n.;

postulated in Timæus, iv. 220;

discrepancy of Sophistês and other dialogues, iii. 244;

the idealists’ doctrine the same as Plato’s in Phædon, &c., ib., 246;

Phædrus, Phædon, and Timæus compared, iv. 239 n.;

Plato’s various views, ii. 404, i. 119;

the last, 120;

Aristotle on, 360 n., ii. 192, 193 n., 410 n., iii. 76, 245, 365 n., 367, iv. 214 n., i. 120 n.;

Sophistês approximates to Aristotle’s view, iii. 247;

generic and analogical aggregates, ii. 48, 193 n., iii. 365;

Antisthenes and Diogenes on, i. 163;

the first protest of Nominalism against Realism, 164;

see Particulars, Phenomena, Universal.

IDEAL, to Plato the only real, ii. 89.

IDEALISTS, iii. 201;

meaning of ens, 231;

argument against, 204, 225, 244;

doctrine of, the same as Plato’s in Phædon, &c., ib., 246.

IDENTITY, personal, ii. 11, 25, iii. 6;

and contradiction, principle of, 101.

Ἰδιώτης distinguished from φιλόσοφος, iv. 104 n.;

τεχνίτης, ii. 272 n.

IGNORANCE, mischiefs of, ii. 12;

depend on the subject-matter, 14;

to hurt knowingly, better than ignorantly, 58, 59;

evil done by bad man unwillingly, by good wilfully, 61;

not pleasure, the cause of wrongdoing, 294;

mistaking itself for knowledge, the worst evil, iii. 197;

see Knowledge.

IMITATOR, logical classification of, iii. 215;

of the wise man, sophist is, 216;

poets’ mischievous imitation of imitation, iv. 91.

IMMORTALITY, beliefs as to partial, ii. 385 n.;

popular Greek belief, 427;

metempsychosis a general element in all old doctrines, 425 n.;

of rational soul only, iv. 243;

of all three parts of soul? ii. 385;

Plato’s demonstration rests on assumption of ideas, 412;

includes pre-existence of all animals, and metempsychosis, 414;

fails, 423, 428, iii. 15;

leaves undetermined mode of pre-existence and post-existence, ii. 424;

was not generally accepted, 426;

Xenophon’s doctrine, 420 n.;

Aristotle’s, ib.;

common desire for, iii. 6;

attained through mental procreation, beauty the stimulus, ib.;

only metaphorical in Symposion, 17.

INDETERMINATE, Pythagorean doctrine of the, i. 11;

pleasure the, iii. 348;

see Infinite.

INDIAN philosophy, compared with Greek, i. 107, 378 n., 160 n., 162;

analogy of Plato’s doctrine of the soul, ii. 389 n., 426 n.;

Gymnosophists, compared with Diogenes, i. 157, 160 n.;

antiquity of, 159 n.;

suicide, 162 n.;

Antisthenes did not borrow from, 159 n.;

antithesis of law and nature, 162.

INDIFFERENT, the, ii. 180, 189.

INDIVIDUAL, analogy to kosmical process, i. 36 n.;

tripartite division of mind, iv. 37;

analogous to three classes in state, 39;

analogy to state, 11, 20, 37, 79-84, 96;

Hobbes on, ib.;

parallelism exaggerated, 114, 121, 124;

dependent on society, 21, 121, 123;

four stages of degeneracy, 79-84;

proportions of happiness and misery in them, 83;

happiness of, through justice, 20, 84, 90;

one man can do only one thing well, 23, 33, 97, 98, 183;

Xenophon on, 139 n.

INDIVIDUALISM, see Authority.

INDUCTIVE and syllogistic dialectic, ii. 27;

process of, always kept in view in dialogues of search, i. 406;

illustrated in history of science, ii. 163;

trial and error the natural process of the human mind, 165;

length of Plato’s process, 100 n.;

usefulness of negative result, 186;

the mind rises from sensation to opinion, then cognition, iii. 164;

verification from experience, not recognised as necessary or possible, 168.

INFANTICIDE, iv. 43, 44, 177;

Aristotle on, 202;

contrast of modern sentiment, 203.

INFINITE, of Anaximander, i. 5;

reproduced in chaos of Anaxagoras, 54;

Zeno’s reductiones ad Absurdum, 93;

natural coalescence of finite and, iii. 340, 346, 348 n.;

illustration from speech and music, 341;

explanation insufficient, 343;

see Indeterminate.

INGRATITUDE, iv. 399.

INSPIRATION, special, a familiar fact in Greek life, ii. 130, iii. 352, iv. 15;

in rhapsode and poet, ii. 127;

of rhapsode through medium of poets, 128, 129, 134;

of philosopher, 383;

see Dæmon;

Plato’s view, 131;

the reason temporarily withdrawn, 132, iii. 11, 309 n.;

opposed to knowledge, ii. 136;

right opinion of good statesmen from, 241;

all existing virtue is from, 242.

INSTANTANEOUS, Plato’s imagination of the, iii. 100;

found no favour, 102.

INTEREST, forbidden, iv. 331.

Ion, authenticity, i. 306, ii. 124;

date, i. 307, 308-9, 311, 312, 315;

interlocutors, ii. 124;

Ion as a rhapsode, 126;

devoted himself to Homer, 127;

the poetic art is one, ib.;

inspiration of rhapsodes and poets, ib.;

inspiration of Ion through Homer, 128;

analogy of magnet, ib., 129;

Plato’s contrast of systematic with unsystematic procedure, ib.;

Ion does not admit his own inspiration, 132;

province of rhapsode, ib.;

the rhapsode the best general, 133;

exposition through divine inspiration, 134.

IONIC philosophy compared with the abstractions of Plato and Aristotle, i. 87;

defect of, 88;

attended to material cause only, ib.;

see Philosophy — Pre-Sokratic.

ISLANDS of the Blest, ii. 416.

ISOKRATES, probably the half-philosopher, half-politician of Euthydêmus, ii. 227, iii. 35;

variable feeling between, and Plato, ii. 228, 331 n., iii. 36;

praised in Phædrus, 35;

compared with Lysias, ib.38;

his school at Athens, 36;

teaching of, iv. 150 n.;

as Sophist, i. 212 n.;

teachableness of virtue, ii. 240 n.;

age for dialectic exercises, iv. 211 n.;

criticism on other philosophers, iii. 38 n.;

on aspersions of rivals, 408 n.;

on the poets, iv. 157 n.;

contrasted with Plato in Timæus, 217;

on Leges, 432;

oratio panegyrica, iii. 406 n.;

great age of, i. 245.

ITALY, slaves in, iv. 343 n.

J.

JAMBLICHUS on metempsychosis, ii. 426 n.

JASON, of Pheræ, iii. 388 n.

JEROME, ST., on Plato and Aristotle, i. xv.

JOHNSON, DR., on Berkeley, iv. 243 n.

JOUFFROY, à priori element of cognition, iii. 119 n.

JUDGMENT, akin to proposition, and may be false, by partnership with form non-ens, iii. 213-4;

implied in every act of consciousness, 165 n.

JUST, the holy a branch of the, i. 447;

and unjust, standard of the better, ii. 3;

whence knowledge of it, 4;

identified with the good, honourable, expedient, 7;

or Good is the profitable — general, but not constant, explanation of Plato, 38;

the just, by law, not nature, Aristippus’ doctrine, i. 197.

JUSTICE, is it just, ii. 278;

varieties of meaning, i. 452 n., iv. 102, 120, 123, 125;

derivation of δικαιοσύνη, iii. 301 n.;

of δίκαιον, 308 n.;

with temperance, the condition of happiness and freedom, ii. 12;

and sense of shame possessed and taught by all citizens, 269;

how far like holiness, i. 447, ii. 278;

opposition of natural and legal, 338, i. 197;

what is, iii. 416;

unsatisfactory answers of Sokrates and his friends, ib.;

is rendering what is owing, iv. 2;

rejected, 6;

is what is advantageous to the most powerful, 8;

modified, 9;

is the good of another, 10;

necessary to society and individual, injustice a source of weakness, 11;

is a source of happiness, 12, 14, 18;

is a compromise, 13;

good only from consequences, 15, 16, 99;

Xenophon on, 114 n.;

the received view anterior to Plato, 100;

a good per se, 20, 40, 84, 90, 116;

and from its consequences, 94, 121, 123, 294;

proved also by superiority of pleasures of intelligence, 84;

proof fails, 116, 118-21;

all-sufficient for happiness, germ of Stoical doctrine, 102;

inconsistent with actual facts, 106;

incorrect, for individual dependent on society, ib., 123;

Plato’s affirmation true in a qualified sense, 125;

orthodoxy or dissent of just man must be taken into account, 126, 131;

in state, 34;

is in all classes, 36;

is performing one’s own function, ib., 37, 39;

analogy to bodily health, 40;

what constitutes injustice, 367-9;

no man voluntarily wicked, 249, 365-7;

distinction of damage and injury, 366;

relation to rest of virtue, 428;

distinction effaced between temperance and, 135;

ethical basis imperfect, 127;

view peculiar to Plato, 99;

Platonic conception is self-regarding, 104;

motives to it arise from internal happiness of the just, 105;

view substantially maintained since, ib.;

essential reciprocity in society, ii. 312, 333, iv. 100, 133;

the basis of Plato’s own theory of city’s genesis, 111;

incompletely stated, 112 n.;

any theory of society must present antithesis and correlation of obligation and right, 112;

Xenophon’s definition unsatisfactory, i. 231;

Karneades, iv. 118 n.;

Epikurus, 130 n.;

Lucretius, ib.;

Pascal, i. 231 n.

K.

Κακία, derivation, iii. 301 n.

KALLIKLES, rhetor and politician, ii. 340.

KALLIMACHUS, Plato’s works known to, i. 276, 296 n.;

issued catalogue of Alexandrine library, 275.

Καλόν, τό, translated by beautiful, ii. 49 n.;

defined, 327, 334;

rejected, ib.;

see Beautiful, Honourable.

KANT, his Noumenon agrees with Ens of Parmenides, i. 21.

KAPILA, i. 378 n.;

analogy to Plato, ii. 389 n.

KARNEADES, on justice, iv. 118 n.

KEPLER, applied Pythagorean conception, i. 14 n.;

devotion to mathematics, iii. 388 n.

KING, see Monarch.

Kleitophon, fragmentary, i. 268, iii. 419, 424;

authenticity, i. 305-7, 309, 315, iii. 419 n., 420, 426 n.;

posthumous, 420;

in Republic tetralogy, i. 406 n., iii. 419, 425;

represents the point of view of many objectors, 424;

scenery and persons, 413;

Sokrates has power in awakening ardour for virtue, 415;

but does not explain what virtue is, ib., 421-24;

what is justice or virtue, 416;

unsatisfactory replies of Sokrates’ friends, ib.;

Kleitophon believes Sokrates knows but will not tell, 418;

compared with Republic, 425;

Apology, 421.

KNOW, Aristotle on equivocal meaning of, ii. 213 n.;

to know and be known is action and passion, iii. 287 n.

KNOWLEDGE, claim to universal, common to ancient philosophers, iii. 219;

kinds of, i. xii. n.;

of like by like, 44, iv. 227;

Demokritus’ theory, i. 72, 76, 80;

Zeno, 98;

Gorgias the Leontine, 104;

Kyrenaics, 199, 204;

false persuasion of, the natural state of human mind, Sokrates’ theory, 374, 414, ii. 166 n., 218, 243, 263;

regarded as an ethical defect, iii. 177;

Sokrates’ mission, i. 374, 376, ii. 24, 146, 419, iii. 422, iv. 219;

search after, the business of life to Sokrates and Plato, i. 396;

per se interesting, 403;

necessity of scrutiny, 398 n.;

Mill on vagueness of common words, ii. 48 n.;

omnipotence of King Nomos, i. 378-84;

different views of Plato, iii. 163, 164 n.;

evolution of indwelling conceptions, i. 359 n., ii. 249, iii. 17;

Sokrates’ mental obstetric, 112;

attained only by dialectic, i. 396;

its test, power of going through a Sokratic cross-examination, ib., ii. 64;

genesis of, 391;

reminiscence of the ideas, 237, iii. 13, 17;

gods possess the Idea of, 67, 68 n.;

philosophy the perpetual accumulation of, ii. 112;

of good and evil, distinct from other sciences, 168;

necessary to use of good things, 205;

must include both making and right use205;

no action contrary to, 291;

virtue is, 239, 321, 67 n., 149;

of what unsolved, 244;

to hurt knowingly or wilfully better than unwillingly, 58;

analogies from the arts, 59;

evil done by good man with, by bad without, 61;

as condition of human conduct, Sokrates and Plato dwell too exclusively on, 67, 83;

rely too much on analogy of arts, and do not note what underlies epithets, 68;

and moderation identical, having same contrary, 280;

of self, Delphian maxim, 11, 25;

from looking into other minds, is temperance, 12;

opposed to divine inspiration, 136;

no object of, distinct from knowledge itself, 156;

of ens alone, iv. 49;

all, relative to some object, ii. 157, 169;

is sensible perception, iii. 111, 113, 154, 172 n.;

erroneously identified with Homo Mensura, 113, 118, 120 n., 125, 162 n.;

objections, sensible facts, different to different percipients, 153;

sensible perception does not include memory, 157;

argument from analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time, ib.;

lies in the mind’s comparisons respecting sensible perceptions, 161;

difference from modern views, 162;

the mind rises from sensation to opinion, then cognition, 164;

verification from experience, not recognised as necessary or possible, 168;

of good, identified with νοῦς, of other things with δόξα, ii. 30;

relation to opinion, iii. 167 n., 172, 184 n.;

are false opinions possible, 169;

waxen memorial tablet in the mind, ib.;

distinction of possessing and having actually in hand, 170;

simile of pigeon-cage, 171;

false opinion is the confusion of cognitions and non-cognitions, refuted, ib.;

distinguished from right opinion, ii. 253, 255 n., iii. 168;

rhetor communicates true opinion, not knowledge, 172;

Plato’s compared with modern views, ii. 254;

is true opinion plus rational explanation, iii. 173;

analogy of elements and compounds, ib.;

three meanings of rational explanation, 174;

definition rejected, 175;

antithesis of opinion and, not so marked in Politikus as Theætêtus, 256;

opposite cognitions unlike each other, 336, 396;

pleasures of, true, 356, 387 n.;

good a mixture of pleasure and, 361;

same principle of classification applied to pleasure as to, 382;

classification of true and false, how applied to cognitions, 394;

its valuable principles, 395;

see Relativity, Science, Self-knowledge.

KOSMOS, the first topic of Greek speculation, i. ix.;

primitive belief, 2;

early explanation by Polytheism, ib.;

Homer and Hesiod, ib.;

Thales, 4;

water once covered the earth, notices of the argument from prints of shells and fishes, 18;

Anaximander, 5-7;

Anaximenes, 7-8;

Pythagoras, 12;

Pythagorean music of the spheres, 14;

Xenophanes, 18, 119 n.;

Parmenides, 24, 90 n.;

Herakleitus, 32;

Empedokles, 39, 41;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 64;

its Reason, different conceptions of Sokrates and Aristotle, ii. 402 n.;

soul prior to and more powerful than body, iv. 386, 419, 421;

the good and the bad souls at work in the universe, 386;

all things full of gods, 388;

soul of, iii. 265 n., iv. 421;

its position and elements, 225;

affinity of soul of, and human, iii. 366 n.;

mythe in Politikus, 265 n.;

divine steersman and dæmons, ib.;

analogy of individual mind and cosmical process, i. 36 n.;

comparison of man to kosmos unnecessary and confusing, iii. 367;

free from pleasure and pain, 389;

forced conjunction of kosmology and ethics, 391;

idea of good rules the ideal, as sun the visible, iv. 64;

simile of, absolute height and depth, 87;

unchangeable essences of, rarely studied, iii. 361;

aversion to studying, on ground of impiety, iv. 219 n.;

no knowledge of, obtainable, 220;

theory in Timæus acknowledged to be merely an εἰκὼς λόγος, 217;

Demiurgus, ideas, chaos postulated, 220;

Time began with the, 227;

is a living being and a god, 220, 223;

Demiurgus produces, by persuading Necessity, 220;

process of demiurgic construction, 223;

the copy of the Αὐτόζωον, ib., 227, 235 n., 264;

product of joint action of reason and necessity, 238;

body, spherical form, and rotations, i. 25 n., iv. 225, 229, 237, 252, 325 n., 388-9;

to be studied for mental hygienic, 252;

primary and visible gods, 229;

secondary and generated gods, 230;

construction of man, 243;

generated gods fabricate cranium as miniature of kosmos, with rational soul rotating within, 235;

four elements not primitive, 238;

action of Ideas on prime matter, 238;

Forms of the elements, ib.;

primordial chaos, 240;

geometrical theory of the elements, ib.;

borrowed from Pythagoreans, i. 349 n.;

Aristotle on, iv. 241 n.;

varieties of each element, 242;

contrast of Plato’s admiration, with degenerate realities, 262, 264;

degeneracy originally intended, 263;

recurrence of destructive agencies, 270, 307;

change of view in Epinomis, 421, 424 n.

KRATES, the “door-opener,” i. 173;

Sokrates’ precepts fully carried out by Diogenes and, 160, 174.

KRATIPPUS, the Peripatetic, i. 258 n.

Kratylus, purpose, iii. 302-8, 309 n., 321, 323, 325 n.;

authenticity, i. 316;

date, 306, 309, 310, 312;

subject and personages, iii. 285;

speaking and naming conducted according to fixed laws, 286;

names distinguished by Plato as true or false, ib. n.;

connected with doctrine of Ideas, 326 n.;

the thing spoken of suffers, 287 n.;

name, a didactic instrument, made by lawgiver on type of name-form, 287, 312, 329;

Plato’s idéal, 325, 328 n., 329;

compared with his views on social institutions, 327;

natural rectitude of names, 289, 300 n., 305 n.;

names vary in degree of aptitude, 319;

aptitude consists in resemblance, 313;

difficult to harmonise with facts, 323;

forms of names and of things nameable, 289;

lawgiver alone discerns essences of names, and assigns them correctly, 290;

proofs cited from etymology, 299, 300 n., 307 n.;

not caricatures of sophists, 302, 304, 310 n., 314 n., 321, 323;

the etymologies serious, 306-12, 317 n.;

counter-theory, Homo Mensura, 291, 326 n.;

objection, it levels all animals, 292;

analogy of physical processes, unsuitable, 294;

belief not dependent on will, 297;

first imposer of names a Herakleitean, 301 n., 314-5, 320 n.;

how names have become disguised, 312;

changes hard to follow, 315;

onomastic art, letters as well as things must be distinguished with their essential properties, 313;

Herakleitean theory admitted, 317;

some names not consistent with it, 319;

things known only through names, not true, 320;

Herakleitean flux, true of particulars, not of Ideas, ib.;

the theory uncertain, implicit trust not to be put in names, 321, 324;

compared with Politikus, 281, 329;

Sophistês. 331;

Timæus, ib.;

various reading in, p. 429C, 317 n.

KRETE, unlettered community, iv. 277;

public training and mess, 279;

its customs peculiar to itself and Sparta, 280 n.

Kritias, a fragment, i. 268, iv. 265;

probably would have been an ethical epic in prose, 269;

in Republic tetralogy, 215, 265;

date, i. 309, 311-3, 315, 325;

authenticity, 307, iv. 266 n.;

subject, 266;

citizens of Plato’s state identified with ancient Athenians, ib.;

Solon and Egyptian priests, ib., 268;

explanation of their learning, 271;

island Atlantis and its kings, 268;

address of Zeus, 269;

corruption and wickedness of people, ib.;

submergence, 270;

mythe incomplete, iii. 409 n.;

presented as matter of history, iv. 270;

recurrence of destructive kosmical agencies, ib.

Kriton, rhetorical, not dialectical, i. 433;

compared with Gorgias, ii. 362;

general purpose, subject, and interlocutors, i. 425, 428;

authority of public judgment, nothing, of Expert, everything, 420, 435;

Sokrates does not name, but himself acts as, expert, 436;

Sokrates’ answer to Kriton’s appeal to flee, 426;

Sokrates’ principle, Never act unjustly, 427;

this a cardinal point, though most men differ from him, ib.;

character and disposition of Sokrates, differently set forth, 428;

imaginary pleading of the Laws of Athens, ib.;

agreement with Athenian democratic sentiment, 430, 432;

Plato’s purpose in this, 428;

attempts reconciliation of constitutional allegiance with Sokrates’ individuality, 432;

Sokrates characteristics overlooked in the harangue, 431;

maintained by his obedience from conviction, ib.

KYRENAICS, scheme of life, i. 188;

ethical theory, 195;

logical theory, 197;

doctrine of relativity, ib., 204;

Æthiops, Antipater, and Arêtê, 195;

Theodorus on the gods, 202;

see Aristippus, Hegesias.

L.

LABOUR, division of, iv. 138.

Lachês, authenticity, i. 305, ii. 151;

date, i. 304, 306, 308-10, 312, 315, 328, 331 n.;

subject and interlocutors, ii. 138;

dramatic contrast of Lachês and Sokrates, 150;

should lessons be received from a master of arms, 138;

Sokrates refers to a professional judge, 139;

the judge must prove his competence, Sokrates confesses incompetence, 140;

marks of the Expert, 141;

education — virtue must first be known, 142;

courage, 143;

example instead of definition, ib.;

not endurance, 144;

intelligence of things terrible and not terrible, 145, iv. 138;

such intelligence not possessed by professional artists, ii. 148;

but is an inseparable part of knowledge of good and evil generally, 149;

intelligence of good and evil generally — too wide, 146;

apparent tendency of Plato’s mind in looking for a solution, 147;

compared with Theagês, 104;

Charmidês, 168;

Politikus, iii. 282-4;

Republic, iv. 138.

LACTANTIUS, the soul, ii. 425 n.

LAND, division of, twelve tribes, iv. 329;

perpetuity of lots of, 326, 360;

Aristotle on, 326 n.;

succession, 328, 404;

distribution of annual produce, 361.

LANGUAGE, natural rectitude of, ii. 89;

origin of, iii. 326 n., 328 n., 329 n.;

Leibnitz on a philosophical, 322 n.;

see Names.

LASSALLE, on Herakleitus, iii. 101 n., 159 n., 309 n., 324 n.;

Homo Mensura, 297 n.;

Kratylus, 306 n., 307 n.;

Timæus, iv. 228 n.

LAVOISIER, discovery of composition of water, ii. 164 n.

LAW, its various meanings, ii. 91, 92 n.;

our idea of, less extensive than Nomos (q. v.), i. 380 n., 382 n., ii. 92 n.;

and Nature, antithesis of, 333, 338, i. 197;

also in Indian philosophy, 162;

Sokrates’ disobedience of, 434 n.;

the lawful is the profitable, ii. 36;

the consecrated and binding customs, the decree of the city, social or civic opinion, 76;

objection, discordance of, 78;

is good opinion of the city, true opinion, or finding out of reality, 77;

real things are always accounted real, analogies, 79;

of Cretan Minos divine and excellent, extant, 80, 90;

to Plato only what ought to be law, is, 88-90, iii. 317 n.;

reality found out by the Expert, ii. 87-88;

fixed, recognised by Demokritus, i. 73;

all proceedings of nature conducted according to fixed, iii. 286;

of nature, Mill on number of ultimate, 132 n.;

no laws to limit scientific governor, 269;

different view, iv. 319;

government by fixed, the second-best, iii. 270;

test of, goodness of ethical purpose and working, iv. 384;

proëm to every important, 321;

Cicero coincides, 322 n.;

the proëms, didactic or rhetorical homilies, 322;

to serve as type for poets, 323;

proëm to laws against heresy, 383;

of Zaleukus and Charondas, 323 n.

LAW-ADMINISTRATION, objects of punishment, to deter or reform, ii. 270, iv. 408;

general coincidence of Platonic and Attic, 363 n., 374, 374 n., 403, 406, 430;

many of Plato’s laws are discharges of ethical antipathy, 411;

penalties against contentious litigation, 410;

oaths for dikasts, judges, and electors only, 413;

thirty-seven nomophylakes, 332;

many details left to nomophylakes, 341;

assisted by select Dikasts, 362;

limited power of fining, 360;

necessity of precision in terms of accusation, 413 n.;

public and private causes, 339;

public, three stages, 340, 415;

criminal procedure, 362;

distinction of damage and injury, 365;

witnesses, 409;

abuse of public trust, 412;

evasion of military service, ib.;

varieties of homicide, 370-2;

penalties, 370;

wounds and beating, 372, 374, 408;

heresy, and ὕβρις to divine things or places, 375-386;

neglect of parents, 399 n., 407;

testaments, 404;

divorce, 408;

lunacy, 407;

poison and sorcery, 407;

libels, 409;

fugitive slaves, 400;

theft, 364, 409;

property found, 398;

fraudulent traders, 402;

mendicants, 409;

Benefit societies, 399;

suretyship, 415;

funerals, ib.

LAWS the, see Leges.

LECTURES, Plato’s revealed solution of difficulties, an untenable hypothesis, i. 401;

differ from dialogues in being given in his own name, 402;

of Protagoras, ii. 301;

contrasted with cross-examination, 277, 303;

dialectic a test of the efficacy of the expository process, i. 358;

worthless for instruction, ii. 136, 233 n., iii. 33-5, 49, 52, 54, 337 n.;

difference in Timæus and Kritias, 53.

Leges, authenticity, i. 304, 306, 338, iv. 325 n., 389 n., 429;

date, i. 313, 315, 324, iv. 272, 413 n.;

scene and persons, 272, 277;

change in Plato’s circumstances and feelings, 273, 320;

analogous to Euripides’ Bacchæ and Aristophanes’ Nubes, 277;

Xenophon compared, i. 244;

Plato’s purpose, to remedy all misconduct, iv. 369;

no evidence of Plato’s study of practical working of different institutions, 397;

large proportion of preliminary discussions and didactic exhortation, 281;

soul prior to and more powerful than body, 386, 419;

the good and the bad souls at work in universe, 386;

all things full of gods, 388;

Manichæanism in, 389 n.;

good identical with maximum of pleasure and minimum of pain, 292-297, 299-303;

at least an useful fiction, 333;

justice a good per se and from its consequences, 294;

what constitutes injustice, 367-9;

no man voluntarily wicked, 365, 367;

three causes of misguided proceedings, 366;

punishment, to deter or reform, ib., 408;

threefold division of good, 428;

virtue fourfold, 417;

the four virtues the highest, and source of all other, goods, 428;

unity of state’s end to be kept in view, 417;

the end is the virtue of the citizens, ib.;

Nocturnal Council to comprehend and carry out this end, 416, 418, 425, 429;

and enforce orthodox creed, 419;

training of counsellors in Epinomis, 420, 424;

basis of Spartan institutions too narrow, 282;

Plato’s state, a compromise of oligarchical and democratical sentiment, 333, 337;

historical retrospect of society, 307-315;

frequent destruction of communities, 307;

difficulties of government, seven distinct natural titles to, 309;

view of the lot, 310;

imprudent to found government on any one title only, ib.;

illustrated by Argos, Messênê, Sparta, ib.;

Persia and Athens compared, 312;

monarchy and democracy the mother-polities, ib.;

bad training of king’s sons, ib.;

the Magnetic community, origin of, 274 n.;

its ὑπόθεσις, 328 n.;

site and settlers, 320, 329, 336;

circular form, unwalled, 344;

defence of territory, rural police, 335;

Spartan Kryptia compared, 336;

test of laws, goodness of ethical purpose and working, 284;

general coincidence of Platonic and Attic law, 363 n., 374, 374 n., 403, 406, 430;

many of Plato’s laws are discharges of ethical antipathy, 411;

state’s laws, with their proëms, 321;

the proëms, didactic or rhetorical homilies, 322;

Cicero on, ib. n.;

to serve as type for poets, 323;

training of the emotions through influence of the Muses, Apollo and Dionysus, 290, 347;

endurance of pain in Spartan discipline, 285;

drunkenness forbidden at Sparta, how far justifiable, 286;

citizens tested against pleasure, 285;

Dionysiac banquets, under a sober president, 289;

elders require stimulus of wine, 297;

precautions in electing minister of education, 338;

age, and matter of teaching, 348, 350;

the teaching simple and common to both sexes, 351;

music and dancing, 291;

three choruses, youths, mature men, and elders, 296, 305;

elders, by example, to keep up purity of music, 297;

prizes at musical and gymnastic festivals, 292, 337;

but object of training, war, not prizes, 358;

importance of music in education, 305;

musical and literary education, fixed type, 292, 338, 349;

poets to conform to ethical creed, 292-7;

change for worse at Athens after Persian invasion, 313;

this change began in music, 314;

contrast in Demosthenes and Menexenus, 315 n., 318;

dangers of change in national music, doctrine also of Damon, 315;

Plato’s aversion to dramatic poetry of Athens, 316, 350;

peculiar to himself, 317;

value of arithmetic, 330 n.;

purpose of teaching astronomy, 354;

planets, Plato’s idea of motions of, ib.;

circular motion best, 388, 389;

hunting, meaning of, 356;

hunting, how far permitted, 355;

for religion, oracles of Dodona and Delphi to be consulted, 325, 337;

temples and priests, 337;

number of sacrifices determined by lawgiver, 357;

only state worship allowed, 378;

contrast with Sokratic teaching, iii. 148;

Milton on, iv. 379 n.;

necessity of enforcing state religion, 378;

ὕβρις to divine things or places, 375;

proëm to laws against, 383;

impiety, from one of three heresies, 376;

punishment, 376-9;

majority of Greek world would have been included in one of the three varieties, 381;

first heresy confuted, 386;

argument inconsistent and unsatisfactory, 388;

second confuted, 389;

the third the worst, 384;

confuted, 391;

incongruity of Plato’s doctrine, 393;

dissent of Herodotus and Sokrates, 394;

opposition to Plato’s doctrine in Greece, 395;

general Greek belief, 392, 394;

division of citizens and land, twelve tribes, 329;

four classes, property qualification for magistracies and voters, 331;

perpetuity of lots of land, 326, 360;

Aristotle on, 326 n.;

succession, 328;

number of citizens, 326, 328;

Aristotle on, 326 n.;

syssitia, 344, 359;

same duties and training for women as men, 195;

family ties mischievous, but cannot practically be got rid of, 327;

to be watched over by magistrates, 328;

marriage, ib., 332, 342, 344, 359, 405, 406;

board of Matrons, 345;

divorce, 406;

treatment of infants, 346;

orphans, guardians, 404, 406;

limited inequality tolerated as to movable property, 330;

modes of acquiring property, 397;

length of prescription for ownership, 415;

no private possession of gold or silver, no loans or interest, 331;

slavery, 342, 400;

Aristotle differs, 343 n.;

distribution of annual produce, 361;

each artisan only one trade, ib.;

retailers, regulations about, ib., 401;

punishment for fraud, 402;

Benefit Societies, 399;

Metics, 362;

strangers and foreign travel of citizens, 414;

electoral scheme, 333;

thirty-seven nomophylakes, 332;

assisted by select Dikasts, 362;

many details left to, 341;

the council, and other magistrates, 335;

limited power of fining, 360;

military commanders and council, 332;

monthly military muster of whole population, 358;

oaths for dikasts, judges, and electors only, 413;

penal ties against contentious litigation, 410;

judicial duties, public and private causes, 339;

public, three stages, 340, 415;

witnesses, 409;

distinction of damage and injury, 365;

sacrilege and high treason the gravest crimes, 363;

abuse of public trust, 412;

evasion of military service, 412;

homicide, penalties, 370;

varieties of, 370-2;

wounds and beating, 372, 373, 408;

poison and sorcery, 407;

neglect of parents, ib.;

lunacy, ib.;

libels, 409;

theft, 364, 409;

suretyship, 415;

mendicants, 409;

funerals, 415;

compared with earlier works, 275, 280;

Cyropædia, 319;

Protagoras, 301;

Gorgias, ii. 362, iv. 301-2, 324;

Phædrus, ib.;

Philêbus, 301;

Republic, 298 n., 302, 319, 327, 390, 429;

Timæus, 389 n.

LEHRSCH, iii. 308 n., 309 n.

LEIBNITZ, interdependence of nature, ii. 248 n.;

agreement with Plato’s metaphysics, ib.;

pre-existence of soul, ib.;

natural significant aptitude of letters, iii. 313 n.;

on a philosophical language, 322 n.

LENORMANT, iii. 306 n.

LEUKIPPUS, i. 65, 66, iii. 243 n.

LEWIS, SIR G. C., ancient astronomy, iv. 355 n., 424 n.

LIBERTY, excess of, at Athens, iv. 312.

LIBRARIES, ancient, i. 270, 278 n., 280, 286;

copying by librarii and private friends, 281 n., 284 n.;

official MSS., ib.;

see Alexandrine, Lykeum, Academy.

LICHTENSTÄDT, iv. 256 n.

LIGHT, Plato’s theory, iv. 236.

LIKE known by like, i. 354 n., ii. 359 n.;

friend to like, 359.

LITTRÉ, the soul, iv. 257 n.;

synthetic character of ancient medicine, 260 n.

LOANS, disallowed, iii. 331.

LOBECK, iii. 304 n., 311 n., 312 n.

LOCKE, atomic doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, i. 70;

good identical with pleasure, ii. 306 n.

LOGIC, influence of Herakleitus on development of, i. 37;

of a science, Plato’s different from Aristotelic and modern view, 358 n.;

objects of perception and of conception, comprised in Plato’s ens, iii. 229, 231;

concepts and percepts, relative, 75;

in Sokrates, the subordination of terms, i. 455;

position of Megarics in history of, 131 n.;

negative, of Antisthenes’ school, 149;

Kyrenaic theory, 197;

elementary distinctions unfamiliar in Plato’s time, ii. 13, 34 n., 235, 319, iii. 190, 222, 229, 241;

the dialogues of search are lessons in method, 177, 188;

collection of sophisms necessary for a theory of, i. 131;

Aristotle first distinguished ὁμώνυμα, συνώνυμα, and κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, iii. 94 n.;

generalisation and division, ii. 27;

process of classification not much attended to, iii. 344;

definition and division illustrated in Phædrus and Philêbus, 29, 344;

names relative and non-relative, 232;

connotation of a word, to be known before its accidents and antecedents, ii. 242;

logical subject has no real essence apart from predicates, i. 168 n.;

logical and concrete aggregates, ii. 52, 53;

concrete, its Greek equivalent, 52 n.;

opposites, only one to each thing, 13 n.;

contraries, the Pythagorean “principia of existing things,” i. 15 n.;

Herakleitus’ theory, 30, 31;

are excluded in nothing save the self-existent Idea, ii. 7 n.;

judgment, akin to proposition, and may be false by partnership with form non-ens, iii. 213-4;

implied in every act of consciousness, 165 n.;

Plato’s canon of belief, iv. 231;

contradictory propositions not possible, i. 166 n.;

principle of contradiction, not laid down in Plato’s time, iii. 99;

logical maxim of, 239;

function of copula, i. 170 n.;

misconceived by Antisthenes, iii. 221, 232 n., 251 n.;

Plato’s view of causal reasoning, ii. 253;

modern views on à priori reasonings, difference of Plato’s, 251;

see Fallacies, Predication, Proposition.

LOGOGRAPHERS, iii. 27 n., 36 n.

LOT, principle of the, iv. 309, 310 n.

LOVE, a moving force in Empedokles, i. 38;

cause of, desire for what is akin to us or our own, ii. 182;

see Eros.

LUCIAN, worthlessness of geometry, i. 384 n.;

on time wasted in philosophic training, 404 n.

LUCRETIUS, on Anaxagorean homœomeries, i. 52 n.;

origin of language, iii. 329 n.;

on pleasure, 379 n., 387 n., i. 163 n.;

on justice, iv. 130 n.;

appearances of gods to men, 155 n.;

theology of, 162 n.

Λυσιτέλουν, derivation, iii. 301 n.

LUTHER, on music, iv. 151 n.

LYKEUM, Peripatetic school, i. 269;

the library, founded for use of inmates and special visitors, 279 n.;

loss of library, 270.

LYKURGUS, relation to Plato, i. 344 n.

LYSIAS, rhetorical powers, iii. 48 n.;

Isokrates compared, 35, 37;

unfairly treated in Phædrus, 47-8;

rivalry with Plato, 408, 410 n., 411 n.;

oration against Æschines, i. 112.

Lysis, authenticity, i. 306, ii. 184 n.;

date, i. 308-10, 313, 326, ii. 184 n.;

subject suited for dialogue of search, 185;

problem of friendship too general, 186;

debate partly real, partly verbal, 188;

scenery and personages, 172;

mode of talking with youth, 173;

servitude of the ignorant, 176;

lesson of humility, 177;

illustrates Sokratic manner, ib.;

what is a friend, 178;

appeal to maxims of poets, 179;

likeness and unlikeness, ib., 188 n.;

the Indifferent, friend to Good, 180, 189;

anxious to escape from felt evil, 180;

illustrated by philosopher’s condition, 181, 190;

the primum amabile, ib., 191;

cause of friendship, desire for what is akin to us or our own, 182;

good akin, evil alien, to every one, 183;

the Good and Beautiful as objects of attachment, 194;

failure of enquiry, 184;

compared with Cicero De Amicitia, 189 n.;

Charmidês, 172, 184 n.

M.

MACAULAY, LORD, Theology not a progressive science, ii. 428.

MACKINTOSH, SIR J., iv. 105 n.

MADNESS, Plato’s view, ii. 129;

of philosophers, 383;

varieties of, Eros one, iii. 11;

see Inspiration.

MAGIC, Empedokles claims powers of, i. 47;

Plato’s laws against, iv. 407.

MAGNET, analogy to poetic inspiration, ii. 128, 129.

MAGNETIC colony, see Leges.

MAINE, meaning of natural justice, ii. 342 n.;

influence of Law in early societies, i. 382 n.

MAKING and doing, ii. 155.

MALEBRANCHE, ii. 404 n., iv. 233.

MALLET, on Sophistês, iii. 245 n.

MALTHUS, law of population, iv. 201;

recognised by Plato and Aristotle, 202.

MAN, Plato on antiquity of, iv. 307;

construction of, 243;

the cause of evil, 234;

inconsistency ib. n.;

see Body, Soul, Immortality.

MANICHÆANISM of Leges, iv. 389 n.

MANSEL, DR., iii. 124 n.

MANTINEIA, i. 211.

MARATHON, iii. 406.

MARBACH, i. 132 n.

MARIANDYNI, iv. 343 n.

MARRIAGE, temporary for guardians, iv. 43, 175-8;

object, 198;

Plato’s and modern sentiments, 192;

Aristotle, 188, 198-201;

laws in second idéal, 328, 332, 341, 344, 359, 405, 406;

board of Matrons, 345;

Malthus’ law recognised by Plato and Aristotle, 202;

divorce, 406.

MARTIN on Timæus, iv. 218 n., 224 n., 233 n., 424 n.;

Leges, 355 n.

MATERIALISTS, iii. 203, 223;

meaning of ens, 231;

argument against, 203, 224, 226, 228;

reply open to, 224, 229.

MATTER, Aristotle’s materia prima, i. 72, iii. 397 n.;

τὸ δεκτικὸν of Timæus, ib.;

four elements not primitive, iv. 238;

prime, action of Ideas on, ib.;

Voltaire on, i. 168 n.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS, on Plato’s reminiscence, ii. 250 n.;

variety, iii. 400 n.

MEASURE, Plato’s conception, ii. 112, 117, iii. 260;

τὸ μέτριον of Plato, 397 n.;

Platonic idéal, undefined results, ii. 374;

Pythagorean καιρός, iii. 397 n.;

necessary, to choose pleasures rightly, ii. 293, 357 n., iii. 391;

virtue a right estimate of pleasure and pain, ii. 293, 305;

courage a just estimate of things terrible, 307;

false estimates of pleasures habitual, iii. 353;

true pleasures admit of, 357;

directive sovereignty of, 391;

how applied in Protagoras, ib.;

how explained in Philêbus, 393.

MEDICAL ART, analogy of rhetoric to, iii. 31;

reducible to rule, ii. 372 n.;

physician not bound by peremptory rules, iii. 269;

no refined, allowed, iv. 28;

Plato’s view of, 250;

synthetic character of ancient, 260 n.

MEGARICS, transcendental, not ethical, i. 122;

shared with Plato the eristic of Sokrates, 124, 126;

logical position misrepresented by historians, 131;

negative dialectic attributed by historians to, 371;

not peculiar to, 387;

the charge brought by contemporaries against Sokrates, 388;

fallacies of, ii. 215, iii. 92;

sophisms of Eubulides, i. 133;

real character of, 135;

alleged over-refinement in classification of, iii. 196 n.;

not the idealists of Sophistês, 244;

controversy with Aristotle about Power, i. 135;

Aristotle’s arguments not valid, 136-8;

Aristotle himself concedes the doctrine, 139 n.;

doctrine of Diodôrus Kronus, 140, 143;

defended by Hobbes, ib.;

depends on question of universal regularity of sequence, 141;

sophism of Diodôrus Kronus, ib., 143;

Stilpon, 147;

Cicero on, 135 n.;

Ritter, 129 n.;

Prantl, ib., 132 n.;

Zeller, 131 n.;

Winckelmann, 132 n.;

Marbach, ib.;

Tiedemann, ib.;

Stallbaum, ib.;

Deycks, 136 n.;

see Eukleides.

MELÊTUS, reply of Sokrates to, Plato and Xenophon compared, i. 456;

Plato’s views coincide with, iv. 211, 230 n., 381, 385, 411, i. 113.

MELISSUS of Samos, i. 93.

MEMORY, difference of μνήμη and ἀνάμνησις, iii. 350 n.;

see Association.

MÉNAGE, on etymology, iii. 303 n.

MENEDÊMUS the Eretrian, i. 148;

disallowed negative predications, 170.

Menexenus, its authenticity, i. 316, 338, iii. 412 n.;

date, i. 307, 309, 313, 324;

anachronism, iii. 411;

scenery and persons, 401;

funeral harangues at Athens, ib., 404;

Sokrates recites harangue learnt from Aspasia, 402;

framed on the established type, 405;

excited much admiration, 407;

probable motives of Plato, ib., 410;

contrast with Leges, iv. 315 n., 318;

Gorgias, ii. 374, iii. 409.

Menon, date, i. 306-7, 308-10, 313, 315, 325 n., ii. 228 n., 246 n.;

purpose, 235;

gives points in common between Sokrates and Sophists, 257;

scenery and persons, 232;

is virtue teachable, ib., 239, iii. 330 n.;

plurality of virtues, ii. 233;

search for common property, 234;

how is process of search useful, 237;

Sokrates’ cross-examination like effect of torpedo, ib.;

analogies, definitions of figure and colour, 235;

Menon’s definition, refuted, 236;

theory of reminiscence, 237;

illustrated by questioning Menon’s slave, 238, 249 n., 251;

metempsychosis, 249;

little said of the Ideas, 253, 255 n.;

virtue is knowledge, 239;

and so teachable, 240;

relation of opinion to knowledge, 241, 255 n., 392 n., iii. 172 n.;

right opinion of good statesmen, from inspiration, ii. 242;

highest virtue teachable, but all existing virtue is from inspiration, ib.;

virtue itself remains unknown, ib., 245;

Sokrates’ doctrine, universal desire of good, 243;

compared with Phædrus and Phædon, 249;

Protagoras, 244;

Politikus, iii. 283;

Timæus, Gorgias, Republic, ii. 254 n.

MENTIENS, sophism, i. 128, 133.

MESSÊNÊ, bad basis of government, iv. 310.

METAPHOR, Herakleitus’ exposition by, i. 28, 30, 37 n.;

Plato’s tendency to found arguments on, 343, 353, n., ii. 337 n., iii. 65 n., 173, 207, 351, 364;

doctrine of Ideas derived its plausibility from, i. 343;

waxen memorial tablet in the mind, iii. 169;

pigeon-cage, 171;

souls’ κνῆσις compared to children’s teething, 399 n.;

the steersman, iv. 53;

Idea of Good in intellectual, as sun in visible, 63;

the cave, iii. 257 n., iv. 67-70;

analogy of state and individual, 11, 20, 39, 79-84, 96;

exaggerated, 115, 121, 124;

kosmos, absolute height and depth, 87.

METAPHYSICS, see Ontology.

METEOROLOGY, of Anaxagoras, i. 58;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 64;

Sokrates avoided, 376.

METEMPSYCHOSIS, included in all ancient speculations, ii. 390, 425 n.;

belief of Empedokles, i. 46;

included in Plato’s proof of soul’s immortality, ii. 414;

theory of, 237, 247, iv. 234;

of ordinary men only, ii. 390, 416, 425;

mythe, iii. 12, 14 n.;

general doctrine in Virgil, ii. 425 n.

METHOD, revolutionised by Sokrates, i. x;

obstetric, 367, ii. 251, iii. 112, 176;

Aristotle’s Dialectic and Demonstrative, i. 363;

see Dialectic, Negative, Inductive.

METICS, admission of, iv. 362;

Xenophon on, i. 238.

Μέτριον, τό, of Plato, iii. 397 n.

MICHELET, iv. 151 n.

MIDDLE AGES, disputations in the, i. 397 n.;

views on causation, ii. 409 n.

Μίγμα, see Chaos.

MILL, JAS., on law of mental association, ii. 192 n.;

transmission of established morality of a society, 275 n.;

on the moral sense, iv. 128 n.;

ethical end, 105 n.

MILL, J. S., on vague connotation of general terms, ii. 48 n.;

evils of informal debate, 220 n., 222 n.;

definition of fallacy, i. 129;

heads of fallacies, ii. 218;

fallacies of confusion, Descartes’ argument, iii. 297 n.;

of Sufficient Reason, earliest example of, i. 6 n.;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 128 n.;

abstract names, 78 n.;

simple objects undefinable, i. 172 n.;

comparison of Form with particular phenomena, iii. 64 n.;

necessity of Verification, 168 n.;

antecedent, consequent, simultaneous, 165 n.;

assumption in axioms of arithmetic, 396 n.;

axioms of arithmetic and geometry, from induction, iv. 353 n.;

ultimate laws of nature, iii. 132 n.;

relation of art to science, 43 n.;

the beautiful, ii. 50 n.;

hostility to novel attempts at analysis of ethics, i. 387 n.;

Liberty, 395 n., ii. 367 n.;

Sokrates’ Utilitarianism, 310 n.;

theory of syllogism, 255 n.;

approximation to Plato and Aristotle as to ideal state of society, iv. 199 n.

MILTON, on Plato’s intolerance, iv. 379 n.

MIND, doctrine of Parmenides, i. 26;

identified with heat by Demokritus, 75;

its seat in various parts of the body, Demokritus, 76;

Sokrates’ theory of natural state of human, 373;

elenchus the sovereign purifier of, iii. 197;

Sokrates’ obstetric, 112;

the self, ii. 11, 25;

state of agent’s, as to knowledge, frequent enquiry in Plato, 83;

Plato’s view, an assemblage of latent capacities, 164;

knowledge is dominant agency in, 290;

usefulness of negative result for training, 186;

operation of pre-natal experience on, iii. 13;

rhetoric should include a classification of minds and discourses, 32;

idéal unattainable, 42, 45;

compared to paper, 169, 351;

of each individual, tripartite, iv. 37;

analogous to rulers, guardians, craftsmen, 39;

high development of body and, equally necessary, ii. 422 n.;

relation to bodily organs, iii. 159, iv. 387 n.;

diseases of, from body, 250;

no man voluntarily wicked, 249, 365-8;

preservative and healing agencies, 250;

treatment of, by itself, 251;

rotations of kosmos to be studied, 252;

see Reason, Soul.

Minos, authenticity, i. 306-7, 309, 336, 337 n., ii. 82, 93;

in Leges trilogy, 91;

and Hipparchus analogous and inferior to other works, 82;

subject the characteristic property connoted by law, 76, 86;

discussed by historical Sokrates, ib.;

its meanings, 91;

three parts, objections, 76;

is good opinion of the city, true opinion, or finding out of reality, 77;

real things always accounted real, analogies, 79;

only what ought to be law, is, 80, 88-9, iii. 281 n., 317 n.;

Expert finds out and certifies truth, ii. 87-9;

laws of Cretan Minos divine and excellent, extant, 80, 90;

Minos’ character variously represented, 81;

what does the lawgiver prescribe for health of mind — unanswered, ib.;

bad definitions of law, 86;

Sokrates’ reasoning unsound but Platonic, 88.

Μνήμη, derivation, iii. 302 n.;

difference of ἀνάμνησις, 350 n.

MOHL, PROF., on Hafiz, iii. 16 n.

Μοῖραι, relation to Gods, iv. 221 n.

MONAD, the Pythagorean, i. 11-12;

Platonic form of Pythagorean doctrine, 15 n.;

see Number.

MONARCHY, and democracy the mother-polities, iv. 312;

dissent of Aristotle, ib. n.;

monarch a Principal Cause, iii. 266;

true government by the one scientific man, 268, 273;

no laws to limit scientific governor, 269;

idéal attainable only in Saturnian period, 264, iv. 319;

distinguished from general, rhetor, &c., iii. 271;

aims at forming virtuous citizens, 272;

Sokratic ideal differently worked out by Plato and Xenophon, 273;

of Atlantis, iv. 268;

bad education of kings’ son, 312.

MONBODDO, on Cartesian and Newtonian theories, ii. 402 n.;

on Ideas, 408 n.;

mind and body, iv. 387 n.

MONKEYS, Galen on structure of, iv. 257 n.

MORALITY of a society, how transmitted, ii. 274;

relation of art to, see Education, Poetry; Ethics.

MORE, DR. HENRY, emanative cause, ii. 403 n.;

metempsychosis, 427 n.;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 124 n.

MOSES, Plato compared to, iv. 256.

MOTION, of atoms, the capital fact of Demokritean kosmos, i. 72;

Zeno’s arguments, 97;

not denied as a phenomenal and relative fact, 102;

form of, iii. 209-10, 232, 245 n.;

varieties of rectilinear, iv. 225 n.;

circular, the best, 225, 388-9;

Diodôrus Kronus, i. 145;

Aristotle nearly coincides with, 146;

and Hobbes, ib.;

Monboddo on Aristotle and Plato, iv. 386 n.

MOTIVES, distinction of, ii. 357 n.

MÜLLER, PROF. MAX, origin of language, iii. 326 n.;

vague use of words, i. 398 n.

MUNK, DR. EDWARD, i. 311, 320, 401 n.

MUSIC, Pythagorean, of the spheres, i. 14;

and speech illustrate coalescence of finite and infinite, iii. 340;

Cynics’ contempt for, i. 151, 155;

Platonic sense, iv. 149;

disparaged, ii. 355;

education in, necessary for guardians, iv. 23;

and dancing, effect on emotions, 347;

excites love of the beautiful, 27;

importance of, in education, 305;

Aristotle on, 151 n., 306;

Xenophon, ib., i. 228;

Luther, iv. 151 n.;

gymnastic necessary to correct, 29;

prizes at festivals, 292, 337, 358;

three choruses, youths, mature men, elders, 296, 305;

only grave allowed, 32, 168, 298 n.;

regulated by authority, 292-4, 349;

to keep emotions in a proper state, 169;

elders, by example, to keep up purity of music, 297;

change for worse at Athens began in, 313, 314 n., 318;

dangers of change in national, doctrine also of Damon, 315.

MYSTICISM, religious, in Empedokles, i. 47 n.;

mixture in Plato of poetical fancy and religious, with dialectic theory, iii. 16.

MYTHE, general character of Plato’s, ii. 415, iii. 310, iv. 255 n.;

disparaged, in Sophistês, iii. 265 n.;

Plato’s resemblance to Hebrew writers, iv. 160 n.;

Aristotle on blending philosophy with, 255 n.;

probably often used by Sophists, ii. 267 n.;

of Prometheus and Epimetheus, 267;

value of, 276;

of Hades in Gorgias, 361;

of soul in Phædon, 415;

of pre-existent soul, iii. 12, 14 n.;

of the kosmos in Politikus, 265 n.;

Timæus, 409 n.;

Kritias, ib., iv. 268;

of departed souls in Republic, 94;

the choice of Herakles, i. 177;

training by fictions, iv. 24, 154;

Plato’s view of the purpose of, ib., 303-5;

Plato’s and Homer’s fictions contrasted, 153 n.;

retort open to poets, ib., 154 n.;

no repulsive fictions to be tolerated about gods or Hades, 25, 154;

a better class to be substituted from religion for the existing fictions, 160;

poet must avoid variety of imitation, 26, 155;

type for narratives about men, 26;

fiction as to origin of classes, 30;

difficulty of procuring first admission for fiction, 158.

MYTHOLOGY, prolonged belief in, iv. 152 n.;

Xenophanes’ censure of, i. 16;

Herakleitus’, 26;

Plato and the popular, 441 n., ii. 415, iii. 265 n., iv. 24, 155 n., 196, 238 n., 325, 328, 337, 398.

N.

NAMES, relative and non-relative, iii. 232 n.;

Pythagorean theory, 304 n., 316 n.;

mystic sanctity of, 323 n.;

distinction of divine and human, 300 n.;

natural rectitude of, ii. 89, iii. 286 n., 300 n., 306 n.;

connected with doctrine of Ideas, 286 n., 327 n.;

difficult to harmonise with facts, 323;

the essence of things, 305 n.;

things known only through names, not true, 320;

the thing spoken of suffers, 287 n.;

forms of names and of things nameable, 289;

didactic instruments made by law-giver on type of name-forms, 287, 290, 313;

onomastic art, ib.;

proofs cited from etymology, 299, 300 n., 307 n.;

specimens of ancient etymologies, 307 n., 308 n., 309 n., 310 n., 311 n.;

not caricatures of sophists, 302, 304, 306-12, 314 n., 317 n., 321, 324;

Plato’s idéal, 325, 328 n., 330;

compared with his views on social institutions, 327;

Homo Mensura the counter theory of language, 326 n.;

intrinsic aptitude of, for particular things, 289;

consists in resemblance, 313;

vary in degree of aptitude, 318;

first imposer of, a Herakleitean, 302 n., 314-7, 319 n.;

how they have become disguised, 312;

changes hard to follow, 315;

Herakleitean theory admitted, 310;

some names not consistent with it, 319;

the theory uncertain, implicit trust not to be put in names, 321, 325;

see Language.

NATURE, course of, the ultimatum of Demokritus and moderns, i. 73, ib. n.;

all proceedings of, conducted according to fixed laws, iii. 286;

Greek view of, hostile to philosophical speculation, i. 86;

interdependence of, ii. 247;

antithesis of law and, 333, 338, i. 197;

also in Indian philosophy, 162;

φύσει and κατὰ φύσιν, iii. 294 n., iv. 309 n.;

Aristotle, 387 n.;

uncertainty of referring to, ii. 340, iv. 194, i. 162;

meaning of law of, ii. 341 n.;

Mill on number of ultimate Laws of, iii. 132;

no object in, mean to the philosopher, 61.

NECESSARY truth, iii. 253 n.

NECESSITY, means Freewill in Plato, iv. 221;

kosmos produced by joint action of reason and, 238.

NEGATIVE, Plato’s view of the, erroneous, iii. 236. 239;

predications disallowed by Menedêmus, i. 170.

NEGATIVE METHOD, harshly censured by historians of philosophy, i. 123;

preponderated in Plato’s age, ib.;

erroneously attributed to Sophists and Megarics, 371, 387;

the charge brought by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates, 388;

Sokrates and Plato its champions, vii, x, 372;

Sokrates the greatest Eristic of his age, 124;

first applied negative analysis to the common consciousness, 385, 389 n.;

to social, political, ethical topics, 385;

the Megarics shared with Plato the negative impulse of Sokrates, 126;

Academics, 131 n.;

negative and affirmative veins in Plato distinct, 399, 403, 420;

the negative extreme in Parmenidês, iii. 71, i. 125;

overlooked in Kriton, 433;

well illustrated in Lysis, ii. 177;

the affirmative prominent in his old age, i. 408;

its necessity as a condition of reasoned truth, 91, 371, 373, 387, 395 n., 421, ii. 186, i. 130;

a value by itself, iii. 51, 70, 85, 149-50, 176, 184 n., 284, 422;

a necessary preliminary to the affirmative, ii. 186, 201;

essential to control of the affirmative, iii. 92 n., i. 123;

its difficulties never solved, iii. 51;

see Dialectic.

NEMESIUS, relativity of mental and sensational processes, iii. 122 n.

NEWTON, accused of substituting physical for mental causes, ii. 402 n.

NILE, inundation of, explanation of Anaxagoras, i. 58 n.

Νόμιμον, equivocal use, ii. 38.

NOMINALISM, first protest against Realism, Antisthenes, i. 164;

of Stilpon, 167.

NOMOS, idea of law less extensive than, i. 380 n., 382 n., ii. 92 n.;

omnipotence of King, i. 378, 380, 392 n., 424, ii. 333;

Sokrates an exception, ib.;

Plato’s and Aristotle’s theory of politics to resist King, i. 393 n.;

Plato appeals to, iv. 24 n.;

Epiktêtus, i. 388 n.;

common sense of a community, its propagation, ii. 274;

no common End among established νόμιμα, iii. 282 n., iv. 204 n.;

see Authority, Orthodoxy.

NON-ENS, see Ens.

NOUMENON of Kant agrees with Parmenidês’ ens, i. 21.

NOUS, see Reason.

NUMBER, the principle of Pythagoreans, i. 9-12, 14;

differs from Plato’s Idea, 10;

its modern application, ib. n., 14 n.;

limited to ten, according to Plato and Pythagoreans, 11 n.;

the Greek geometrical conception of, iii. 112 n.;

mean proportionals, iv. 224 n.;

see Arithmetic.

O.

OATHS, iv. 413.

OBJECTIVE, and subjective views of ethics, Sokrates distinguished, i. 451;

dissent coincident with subjective unanimity, ib.;

see Relativity.

OBSERVATION, astronomy must not be studied by, iv. 73;

nor acoustics, 74.

OBSTETRIC, of Sokrates, i. 367, ii. 251, iii. 112, 176.

ODYSSEUS, ii. 56.

OKEN, Pythagoreanism, i. 10 n.

OLD AGE, iv. 2.

OLIGARCHY, iv. 79;

Plato’s second state a compromise of democracy and, 333, 337.

Ὁμώνυμα, first distinguished from συνώνυμα by Aristotle, iii. 94 n.

Ὁμωνύμως, ii. 193.

ONE, in the Many, and Many in the One, aim of philosophy, i. 407;

difficulties about many and, iii. 339;

see Idea.

ONTOLOGY and physics, radically distinct points of view, i. 23 n.;

the science of Ens, first appears in the Eleates, 22;

reconciliation of physics with, attempted unsuccessfully after Parmenides, 23 n.;

Plato blends ethics with, iii. 306;

Aristotle’s substratum for phenomenology, i. 24 n.;

tendency to embrace logical phantoms as real causes, ii. 404 n.;

see Ens, Philosophy.

OPINION, public, see Authority.

OPINION, Xenophanes’ doctrine, i. 18;

Parmenides’, 20;

Demokritus’, 72;

embraces all varieties of knowledge save of the Good, ii. 30;

right, of good statesmen, derived from inspiration, 242;

compared with knowledge, 241, 253, 255 n., iii. 167 n., 181 n.;

antithesis less marked in Theætêtus than Politikus, 257;

Plato’s compared with modern views, ii. 254;

the mind rises from sensation to opinion, then cognition, iii. 164;

distinct from sensation, 166;

true, knowledge is, 168;

verification from experience, not recognised as necessary or possible, ib.;

if false, possible, 169, 181 n., 351;

waxen memorial tablet in the mind, 169;

false, is the confusion of cognitions and non-cognitions, refuted, 171;

wherein different from knowledge, 172;

true, not knowledge, communicated by rhetor, ib.;

true, plus rational explanation, is knowledge, 173;

analogy of elements and compounds, ib.;

rejected, 174;

intercommunion of forms of non-ens and of proposition, opinion, judgment, 213, 214;

akin to proposition, and may be false, by partnership with form non-ens, 214;

relation to kosmical soul, iv. 227;

its matter, what is between ens and non-ens, 49;

two grades of, Faith or Belief, and Conjecture, 67;

true pleasure attached to true, iii. 351.

OPPOSITES, only one to each thing, ii. 13 n.

OPTIMISM, ii. 393-6.

ORPHANS, iv. 406-7.

ORPHIC canon of life, iii. 390 n., iv. 15;

coincidence of Timæus with, 255 n.

ORTHODOXY, local infallibility claimed, but rarely severely enforced in Greece, iv. 396;

less intolerance at Athens than elsewhere, iii. 277, iv. 126;

Sophists conform to prevalent, 56;

irresistible effect of public opinion in producing, i. 392, iv. 55;

common sense of a community, its propagation, ii. 274;

Plato on, i. xi, 342, 392 n., 424, iv. 69 n., 165;

probable feelings of Plato, ii. 367;

Sokrates in Phædon contrasted with Apology, 421;

inconsistently exacted in Plato’s state, iii. 277-8, iv. 24, 156, 160, 327, 379, 430;

three varieties of heresy, 376;

proëm to laws against, 383;

first confuted, 386;

argument inconsistent and unsatisfactory, 388;

second confuted, 389;

contradicts Republic, 390;

the third the worst, 384;

confuted, 391;

general Greek belief, 381, 391, 394;

incongruity of Plato’s doctrine, 393;

opposition to Plato’s doctrine in Greece, 395;

Cicero, 379 n.;

Milton, ib.;

Bp. Butler, 166 n.;

book-burning, 379 n.;

see Authority.

Οὐσία, must be known before πάθη, ii. 243 n.

P.

Παιδεραστία, iii. 20 n., iv. 359.

PAIN, see ἀλυπία, Pleasure.

PALEY, remarks illustrative of Sokratic dialectic, i. 377 n.

PANÆTIUS, style, i. 406 n.;

on Phædon, 288, 334 n.;

Plato’s immortality of the soul, ii. 423 n.;

dialogues of Sokratici viri, i. 112 n.

PARMENIDÊS, metaphysical and geometrical rather than physical, i. 23 n., 89;

the absolute, 19-24, iii. 104;

Herakleitus opposed to, i. 37;

ens and non-ens, an inherent contradiction in human mind, 19;

ens alone contains truth, phenomena probability, 24;

ens erroneously identified by Aristotle with heat, ib. n.;

non-ens, iii. 243 n.;

opposition to Homo Mensura, 113;

phenomena of, the object of modern physics, i. 23 n.;

mind, 26;

theology, 19, 25;

physics, 7 n., 90 n.;

two physical principles, 24;

doctrine defended by Zeno, 93, 99, iii. 58;

relation of Demokritus to, i. 66;

with Pythagoras supplied basis of Platonic philosophy, 89;

refutation of, in Sophistês, iii. 211, 223;

summum genus enlarged by Eukleides, 196 n.;

and Sokrates blended by Eukleides, i. 118.

Parmenidês, the, date, i. 309, 315, 316 n., 338 n., iii. 71 n., 244 n.;

authenticity, i. 307-11, 320, 327, 338 n., 401 n., iii. 68 n., 69, 88 n., 185 n.;

criticism of dialogue generally, 82;

its character, 56;

purpose negative, 71, 85 n., 85, 93, 97, 108, i. 125;

the genuine Platonic theory attacked, iii. 68;

attack not unnatural, 71;

its dialectic, compared with Zeno’s, i. 100;

scenery and personages, iii. 58;

Sokrates impugns Zeno’s doctrine, 59;

and affirms Ideas separate from, but participable by, sensible objects, ib.;

objections, 60-7;

no object in nature mean to the philosopher, 61, 195 n.;

ideas, how participable by objects, 63, 72, iv. 138;

analogous difficulty of predication, i. 169;

not merely conceptions, iii. 64, 74;

“the third man,” 64 n.;

not mere types, 65;

not cognizable, since not relative to ourselves, ib., 72;

cognizable only through unattained Idea of cognition, 66;

which gods have, 67, 68 n.;

dilemma, ideas exist or philosophy impossible, 68;

exercises required from students, 79;

provisional assumption of hypotheses, and their consequences traced, ib.;

nine demonstrations from unum est and unum non est, 81, 340;

criticism of antinomies, 82, 85 n., 88 n., 99 n.;

exercises only specimens of method applicable to other antinomies, 91;

more formidable than problems of Megarics, 92;

these assumptions convey the minimum of determinate meaning, 94;

different meanings of the same proposition in words, 95, 97 n.;

first demonstration a Reductio ad absurdum of Unum non multa, 96, 101;

second, demonstrates Both of what the first demonstrated Neither, 98, 101;

third mediates, 100, 101;

but unsatisfactory, 102;

Plato’s imagination of the Instantaneous, 100;

found no favour, 102;

the fourth and fifth, 101, 102;

the sixth and seventh, 103;

unwarranted steps in the reasoning, 105;

seventh is founded on genuine doctrine of Parmenidês, 104;

eighth and ninth, 106;

conclusion compared to enigma in Republic, 108;

compared with Sophistês and Politikus, 187 n., 259;

Philêbus, 97 n., 340 n., 343;

Republic, iv. 138;

Euthydêmus, ii. 200.

PARTICULARS, doctrine of Herakleitus, i. 29;

the one in the many, and many in one, aim of philosophy, 407;

Herakleitean flux true of, but not of Ideas, iii. 320;

universals amidst, 257;

and universals, different dialogues compared, ib.;

difficulties about one and many, 339;

natural coalescence of finite and infinite, 340;

illustration from speech and music, 342;

explanation insufficient, 343;

no constant truth in, iv. 3 n.;

fluctuate, 50;

ordinary men discern only, 49, 51;

see Phenomena.

PASCAL, on King Nomos, i. 381 n.;

Cartesian theory, ii. 401 n.;

justice, i. 231 n.;

authority, iv. 232.

Πάθη, must be known after οὐσία, ii. 243 n.

PATHOLOGY of Plato, compared with Aristotle and Hippokrates, iv. 260.

PAUSANIAS, the gods jealousy, iv. 164 n.

PELOPONNESIAN war, iii. 406.

PENTATEUCH, allegorical interpretation of, iv. 157 n.;

relation to Greek schemes, 256.

PENTATHLOS, the, ii. 114;

expert of Plato and Aristotle, 119 n.

PERCEPT and concept, relative, iii. 75;

prior to the percipient, 76 n.

PERCEPTION, doctrine of Parmenides, i. 26;

Empedokles, 44;

Theophrastus, 46 n.;

Anaxagoras, opposed to Empedokles, 58;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 62;

Demokritus, 77;

Plato, iii. 159;

different views of Plato, 163;

sensible, province wider in Politikus than Theætêtus, 256;

knowledge is sensible, 111, 113, 154, 173 n.;

identified with Homo Mensura, 123, 162 n.;

sensible perception does not include memory, 157;

argument from analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time, ib.;

knowledge lies in the mind’s comparisons respecting sensible perceptions, 161;

difference from modern views, 162;

objects of conception and of, comprised in Plato’s ens, 229, 231.

PERGAMUS, library of, i. 270 n., 280 n.

PERIANDER, iv. 7.

Περιέχον of Herakleitus, i. 35 n.;

compared with Nous of Anaxagoras, 56 n.

PERIKLES, upheld the claims of intellect, ii. 373;

rhetorical power, 370, 371.

PERIPATETIC school at the Lykeum, i. 269;

change after death of Theophrastus, 272;

loss of library, 270;

see Lykeum.

PERSIAN and Spartan kings eulogised, ii. 8;

and Athens compared, iv. 312;

invasion, 311, 313;

customs blended with Spartan in Cyropædia, i. 222;

government, 235.

PHÆDON the Eretrian, i. 148.

Phædon, the, authenticity, i. 334 n.;

first dialogue disallowed upon internal grounds, 288;

date, 309-313, 315, ii. 377 n.;

affirmative and expository, 377;

much transcendental assertion, iii. 56;

purpose, ii. 382 n.;

antithesis and complement of Symposion, iii. 22;

scenery and interlocutors, ii. 377;

Sokrates to the last insists on freedom of debate, 379;

value of exposition, 398;

no tripartite soul, antithesis of soul and body, 384;

life a struggle between soul and body, 386, 388, 422;

emotions, a degenerate appendage of human nature, iii. 389;

death emancipates, ii. 386, 388;

yet soul may suffer punishment, inconsistency, 415;

philosophy gives partial emancipation, 387;

purification of soul, 388, i. 159;

inseparable conjunction of pleasure with pain, iii. 38-9, 71.;

pleasures to be estimated by intelligence, 375;

pleasures of intelligence more valuable than of sense, ib.;

courage of philosopher and ordinary citizens, different principles, ii. 308 n.;

the soul a mixture, refuted, 390;

soul’s pre-existence admitted, ib., iii. 122;

soul is essentially living and therefore immortal, ii. 413;

proof of immortality includes pre-existence of all animals, and metempsychosis, 414;

depends on assumption of Ideas, 412;

metempsychosis of ordinary men only, 387, 415, 425;

Plato’s demonstration fails, iii. 16;

not generally accepted, ii. 426;

Sokrates’ intellectual development, 391;

turned on different views as to a true cause, 398;

illustration of Comte’s three stages of progress, 407;

Sokrates’ early study, 391;

genesis of knowledge, ib.;

first doctrine of Cause, rejected, ib., 399;

second doctrine, from Anaxagoras, 393, 401, 403;

doctrine laid down in Philêbus, 407 n.;

Anaxagoras did not carry out his principle, 394, 407;

Anaxagoras’ nous, as understood by Sokrates, 402 n.;

causes efficient and co-efficient, 394, 400;

third principle, assumption of Ideas as separate entia, 396, 403, 407, iv. 239 n.;

multitude of ideas, ii. 410;

the only causes, 396;

truth resides in ideas, 411;

discussion of hypothesis, and of its consequences, distinct, 397, 411;

ultimate appeal to extremely general hypothesis, ib.;

Sokrates’ equanimity before death, 416, 417;

Sokrates’ soul — islands of the blest, 416;

Sokrates’ last words and death, 417;

burial, 416;

compared with Apology, i. 422 n., ii. 419-21;

Symposion, 382, iii. 16-19;

Menon, ii. 249;

Phædrus, ib., iii. 16-19;

Politikus, 262, 265 n.;

Republic, ii. 383, 412, 414 n.;

Timæus, 383, 407 n., 411-12.

Phædrus, its date, i. 263, 304-10, 313-4, 315, 319, ib. n., 323, 326 n., 327, 330, ii. 227, 228 n., iii. 36 n., 38;

ancient criticism on, i. 319 n.;

considered by Tennemann as keynote of series, 302;

assumptions of Schleiermacher inadmissible, 319, 329 n.;

much transcendental assertion, iii. 56;

Eros differently understood, necessity for definition, 29;

derivation of ἔρως, 308 n.;

of μαντικὴ and οἰωνιστική, 310 n.;

Eros, a variety of madness, 11;

Eros disparaged, then panegyrised, by Sokrates, ib.;

mythe of pre-existent soul, 12, 14 n.;

soul’s κνῆσις compared to children’s teething, 399 n.;

reminiscence of the Ideas, 13, 17, iv. 239 n.;

operation of pre-natal experience on man’s intellectual faculties, iii. 13;

reminiscence kindled by aspect of physical beauty, ii. 422, iii. 4, 14;

debate on Rhetoric, 26;

Sokrates’ theory, all persuasion founded on a knowledge of the truth, 28;

writing and speaking, as art, 27;

is it teachable by system, 28;

Sokrates compares himself with Lysias, 29;

Lysias unfairly treated in, 47-8, 408, 410 n., 411 n.;

Sokrates’ reason for attachment to dialectic, 258 n.;

the two processes of dialectic, 29, 39;

exemplified in Sokrates’ discourses, 29;

essential to genuine rhetoric, 30, 34;

rhetoric as a real art, is comprised in dialectic, 30, 34;

analogy to medical art, 31;

includes a classification of minds and discourses, and their mutual application, 32, 41, 45;

books and lectures useless, 33, 34, 49, 51, 53-5;

may remind, 33, 50;

rhetorician must acquire real truth, 33, 34;

theory more Platonic than Sokratic, 38;

rhetorician insufficiently rewarded, 33;

dialectician alone can teach, 37;

idéal, cannot be realised, 51;

except under hypothesis of pre-existence and reminiscence, 52;

dialectic teaches minds unoccupied, rhetoric minds pre-occupied, 40;

Plato’s idéal a philosophy, not an art, of rhetoric, 45;

unattainable, 42, 46;

comparison with the rhetorical teachers, 44;

charge against rhetorical teachers not established, 47;

compared with Republic, Gorgias, Euthydêmus, ii. 229;

Menon, 249;

Phædon, ib., 423, iii. 17-8, iv. 239 n.;

Symposion, iii. 1, 11, 15, 17-19;

Sophistês, 257;

Politikus, ib., 265 n.;

Philêbus, 398;

Timæus and Kritias, 53;

Leges, iv. 324.

PHENICIANS, iv. 330 n., 352;

appetite predominant in, 38.

PHENOMENA, early Greek explanation of, by polytheism, i. 2;

doctrine of Xenophanes, 18;

Parmenides, 20, 24, 66;

of Parmenides, the object of modern physics, 23 n.;

of Parmenides contain only probability, not truth, 24;

doctrine of Zeno, 93;

Leontine Gorgias, 104 n.;

Herakleitus, 29;

Anaxagoras, 59 n.;

Demokritus, 68;

Kyrenaics, 197;

the Ideas not fitted on to, iii. 78;

Aristotle, i. 24 n.;

see Particulars.

Philêbus, authenticity, iii. 369 n.;

date, i. 307-9, 311-3, 315, iii. 369 n.;

peculiarity, 382;

illustrates logical partition, 254, 344;

merit as a didactic composition, 365, 368 n.;

method contrasted with Theætêtus, 335 n.;

recent editions, 365 n.;

reading in p. 17A, 341 n.;

subject and persons, 334;

protest against Sokratic elenchus, 335;

happiness and good used as correlative terms, ib.;

good, object of universal desire, ib., 371, 392 n.;

what mental condition will ensure happiness, 335;

is it pleasure or wisdom, ib., 337;

pleasures, and opposite cognitions, unlike each other, 336, 396;

is good intense pleasure without any intelligence, 338;

or intelligence without pleasure or pain, 339;

such a life conceivable, at least second-best, 349;

Plato inconsistent in putting the alternative, 372;

emotions, a degenerate appendage of human nature, 389;

contrast with other dialogues, 398;

good a tertium quid, 339, 361;

pleasure, of the infinite, intelligence a combining cause, 347;

intelligence the determining, pleasure the indeterminate, 348, iv. 221;

intelligence postulated by the Hedonists, iii. 374;

analogy of intelligence and pleasure, 360;

intelligence more cognate to good than pleasure is, 348, 361;

pain, disturbance of system’s fundamental harmony, pleasure the restoration, 348;

pleasure pre-supposes pain, 349;

except in the derivative pleasures of memory and expectation, ib.;

desire presupposes a bodily want and memory of previous satisfaction, 350;

true pleasures attached to true opinions, 351;

can pleasure be true or false, 286 n., 351, 352, 356, 380, ib. n., 382;

false pleasures are pleasures falsely estimated, 353, 369 n.;

to Plato the absolute the only real, 385;

true pleasures of beautiful colours, odours, sounds, acquisition of knowledge, &c., 356;

pure pleasures admit of measure, 357;

directive sovereignty of measure, 391, 393;

pleasure not identical with ἀλυπία, 353, 377;

theory of pleasure-haters, partly true, 354;

allusion in οἱ δυσχερεῖς, 389 n.;

intense pleasures connected with bodily or mental distemper, 355, 391;

but more pleasure in health, 356;

intense pleasures not compatible with cognition, 362;

same view enforced by Hedonists, 378, 387 n.;

Aristotle on, 376 n.;

drama, feelings excited by — φθόνος, 355 n.;

pleasure is generation, therefore not an End, nor the Good, 357;

Aristippus and Aristotle on, 378 n.;

pleasure is an end, and cannot be compared with intelligence, a means. 373, 377 n.;

Plato’s doctrine not defensible against pleasure-haters, 387, 390 n.;

Sokrates differs little from pleasure-haters, 389;

gods and kosmos free from pleasure and pain, ib.;

comparison of man to kosmos unnecessary and confusing, 367;

forced conjunction of kosmology and ethics, 391;

difficulties about one and many, 339;

natural coalescence of finite and infinite, 340;

illustration from speech and music, 342;

explanation insufficient, 343;

classes between one and infinite many often overlooked, 341;

Plato enlarges Pythagorean doctrine, 368;

but feebly applies, 369;

quadruple distribution of existences, 346;

varieties of intelligence, classified, 358;

dialectic the purest, 360;

classification of true and false, how applied to cognitions, 394;

difference from other dialogues, 395;

rhetoric superior in usefulness and celebrity, 360, 380;

arithmetic and geometry are two-fold, 359, 394;

unchangeable essences of the kosmos rarely studied, 361;

good a mixture, ib.;

this good has not the unity of an idea, ii. 407 n., iii. 365;

all cognitions included, 362;

but only true, pure, and necessary pleasures, ib.;

five graduated constituents of good, 364, 397;

Plato’s in part an eclectic doctrine, 366;

blends ontology with ethics, ib.;

does not satisfy the tests himself lays down, 371;

compared with Euthydêmus, 374 n.;

Protagoras, 379, 391;

Gorgias, 379-81;

Phædrus, 398;

Symposion, 370 n., 398;

Parmenidês, 97 n., 340 n., 343;

Sophistês, 369 n.;

Politikus, 263, 369 n.;

Republic, 370, 373 n., 395;

Timæus, 397 n.;

Leges, iv. 301.

PHILO, etymologies, iii. 308 n.;

hypothetical propositions, i. 145 n.;

allegorical interpretation, iv. 157 n.

PHILOLAUS, i. 9.

Φίλον, πρώτον, see Amabile primum.

PHILOSOPHERS, ancient, common claim to universal knowledge, iii. 219;

charged with pride, i. 153 n.;

secession from Athens, 111 n.;

contrast of philosopher with practical men, ii. 52, 145 n., iii. 183, 274, iv. 51-4;

uselessness in practical life due to not being called in by citizens, 54;

disparagement of half-philosophers, half-politicians, ii. 224;

forced seclusion of, iv. 59;

require a community suitable, ib.;

philosophical aptitude perverted under misguiding public opinion, 54;

model city practicable if philosophy and political power united, 47;

divine men, iii. 187;

the fully qualified practitioner, ii. 114, 116, 119;

not wise, yet painfully feeling ignorance, 181;

value set by Sokrates and Plato on this attribute, 190;

dissenters, upheld, 375;

life, a struggle between soul and body, 386;

ascetic life, 388, i. 158;

exempted from metempsychosis, ii. 387, 416, 425;

rewarded in Hades — mythe in Gorgias, 361;

stages of intellectual development, 391;

value of exposition, 398;

Eros the stimulus to improving philosophical communion, iii. 4, 6;

Sokrates as representative of Eros Philosophus, 15, 25;

distinguished from ἰδιώτης, iv. 104 n.;

not distinguishable from sophists, ii. 210, 211 n.;

alone can teach, iii. 37, 40;

as expositors, teach minds unoccupied, as rhetoricians, minds pre-occupied, 39;

realisable only under hypothesis of pre-existence and reminiscence, 52;

alone grasp Ideas in reasoning, 290 n.;

test of, the synoptic view, iv. 76;

compared with rhetors, iii. 178;

masters of debates, 179;

determine what forms admit of intercommunion, 208;

live in region of ens, ib.;

contemplate unchangeable forms, iv. 48;

distinction of ordinary men and, illustrated by simile of Cave, 67-70;

distinctive marks of, 51;

no object in nature mean to, iii. 61.

PHILOSOPHIA PRIMA of Aristotle, i. 358 n., iii. 230 n., 382.

PHILOSOPHY, is reasoned truth, i. vii-x;

Ferrier on scope and purpose of, viii n.;

necessarily polemical, viii;

modern idea of, includes authoritative teaching, positive results, direct proofs, 366;

usually positive systems advocated, iii. 70;

difference of ancient and modern problems, 52;

chief point of divergence of modern schools, ii. 409 n.;

its beginning, i. 375 n., 382, ii. 404, 407 n.;

free judgment the first condition for, i. 382, 395 n., ii. 368, iii. 152 n.;

negative vein as necessary as affirmative for, i. 130;

preponderated in Plato’s age, 123;

early appearance of a few free thinkers in Greece, 384;

brought down from heaven by Sokrates, x;

Greek, in its purity, xiv;

Greek, characterised by multiplicity of individual authorities, 84, 90, 340 n.;

advantages, 90;

contrasted with uniform tradition of Jews and Christians, 384 n.;

early Christian view of, affected by Hebrew studies, xv n.;

polytheism the first form of, 2;

Aristotle contrasts “human wisdom” with primitive theology, 3 n.;

Indian, 378 n.;

compared with Pre-Sokratic, 107;

analogy of Greek with Indian, 160 n., 162;

difficulties of early, iii. 184 n.;

opposition from prevalent views of Nature, &c., i. 86;

common repugnance to its rationalistic element, 3, 59-60, 261 n., 279 n., 387 n., 388, 437, 441, iv. 57;

encyclopædic character of Greek, iii. 219;

new epoch, by Plato’s establishment of a school, i. 266;

its march up to or down from principia, 403;

the protracted study necessary, an advantage, ib.;

definition first sought for in Erastæ, ii. 117;

the perpetual accumulation of knowledge, 112;

a province by itself, 119;

the supreme art, 120;

to be studied by itself exclusively, 229;

claim of locus standi for, 367;

relation to politics, 224, 227, 229, 230 n.;

comparative value of, and of practical (q.v.) life, 365 n., 368 n., ib., iii. 182, i. 204;

antithesis of rhetoric and, ii. 365;

issue unsatisfactorily put by Plato, 369;

ancient quarrel between poetry and, iv. 93, 152, 309;

Aristotle on blending mythe with, 255 n.;

gives a partial emancipation of soul, ii. 386;

analogy of Eros to, iii. 10, 11, 14;

Eros the stimulus to, 18;

different view, Phædon, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Republic, ib.;

antithesis of emotion and science, 61;

ideas exist or philosophy impossible, 68;

should be confined to discussion among select minds, i. 351;

should not be taught at a very early age, iv. 60, 76;

studies introductory to, 70-75;

difference in Leges, 275 n.;

Plato’s remarks on effect of, 207;

Republic contradicts other dialogues, 207-11;

Plato more a preacher than philosopher in Republic, 129, 131;

difference between theorist and preceptor, ib.;

Plato’s altered tone in regard to, in later life, 273.

PHILOSOPHY, PRE-SOKRATIC, i. 1-83;

value, xiv;

form compared with the Indian, 107;

studied in the third and second centuries B. C. , 92;

importance of Aristotle’s information about, 85;

Plato’s criticism on, 87 n.;

relation of early schemes, 86;

Aristotle’s relation to, 85;

abstractions of Plato and Aristotle compared with Ionians, 87;

Timæus resembled Ionic philosophy, 88 n.;

theories in circulation in Platonic period, 91;

Ionians attended to material cause only, 88;

defect of Ionic principles, 89;

little or no dialectic in earliest theorists, 93;

physics discredited by growth of dialectic, 91;

new characteristic with Zeno and Gorgias, 105.

PHLOGISTON theory, ii. 164 n.

Φρόνησις, ii. 120 n., iii. 301 n., 370 n.

Φθόνος, meaning, iii. 356 n.

Φύσις, of Demokritus, i. 70 n.;

in sense of γένεσις, denied by Empedokles, 38 n.;

φύσει and κατὰ φύσιν, iii. 294 n., iv. 310 n.;

see Nature.

PHYSICS, transcendentalism in modern, i. 400 n.;

creation out of nothing, denied by all ancient physical philosophers, 52;

aversion to studying, on ground of impiety, iv. 219 n., 397 n.;

Thales, i. 4;

Anaximander, 4-7;

Anaximenes, 7;

Pythagorean, 12;

Xenophanes, 18;

Parmenides, 24, 90 n.;

his phenomena the object of modern, 23 n.;

and ontology, radically distinct points of view, ib.;

reconciliation of ontology with, attempted unsuccessfully after Parmenides, ib.;

Herakleitus, 27, 32;

Empedokles, 38;

attraction and repulsion illustrate his love and enmity, 40 n.;

Anaxagoras, 49, 57;

denied simple bodies, 52 n.;

atomic doctrine, 65, 67;

early, discredited by growth of dialectic, 91;

retrograded in Plato and Aristotle, 88 n.;

theories in circulation in Platonic period, 91;

Eudoxus, 255 n.;

early study of Sokrates, ii. 391;

Sokrates avoided, i. 376;

Cynics’ contempt for, 151;

and Aristippus’, 192;

see Kosmos.

PHYSIOLOGY, of Empedokles, i. 43;

Theophrastus, 46 n.;

Anaxagoras, 58;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 60 n., 62;

Demokritus, 76;

of Timæus subordinated to ethical teleology, iv. 256;

of Plato, see Body;

compared with Aristotle and Hippokrates, 260.

PLANTS for man’s nutrition, iv. 248;

soul of, ib.

PLATÆA, iii. 406.

PLATO, life, little known, i. 246;

birth, parentage, and education, 247, 306 n.;

early relations with Sokrates, 248;

service as a citizen and soldier, 249;

political life, 251;

political changes in Greece during life, 1;

travels alter death of Sokrates, 253;

permanently established at Athens, 254;

teaches at the Academy, ib.;

received presents, not fees, iii. 218 n.;

his pupils, numerous, wealthy, and from different cities, i. 255;

many subsequently politicians, 261 n.;

Eudoxus, 255;

Aristotle, 260;

Demosthenes, 261 n.;

visits the younger Dionysius, 258, 351, 194 n.;

relations with Dionysius, 255;

disappointments, 280;

varying relations with Isokrates, ii. 331 n., iii. 35;

his jealousy and love of supremacy, i. 117 n., 153 n.;

alleged ill-nature, 117 n.;

antipathy to Antisthenes, 151, 152 n., 165;

alleged enmity between Xenophon and, iii. 22 n., iv. 146 n., 312 n.;

rivalry with Lysias, iii. 408, 410 n., 411 n.;

death, i. 200;

Plato and Aristotle represent pure Hellenic philosophy, xiv;

St. Jerome on, xv;

criticism on early Greek philosophy, 87 n.;

relation to predecessors, 91;

theories in circulation in his time, ib.;

Parmenidês and Pythagoras supplied basis for, 89;

relation to Sokrates, 344 n., ii. 303;

Pythagoreanism, i. 10 n., 15 n., 87, 344 n., 346 n., 347, 349 n., ii. 426 n., iii. 368, iv. 424 n.;

Herakleitus, i. 27, ii. 30;

Demokritus, i. 66 n., 82 n., iv. 355 n.;

abstractions of Plato and Aristotle compared with Ionic philosophy, i. 87;

physics retrograded with, 88 n.;

analogy to Indian philosophy, ii. 389 n.;

resemblance to Hebrew writers, iv. 157 n., 256;

little known of him from his Dialogues, i. 260, 339;

personality only in his Epistles, 349;

valuable illustrations of his character from Epistles, 339 n.;

his school fixed at Athens and transmitted to successors, 265;

scarcely known to us in his function of a lecturer and president of a school, 346;

lectures at the Academy, never published, 360;

miscellaneous character of audience, effect, 348;

lectures, 347;

De Bono, ib., 349;

on principles of geometry, 349 n.;

circumstances of his intellectual and philosophical development little known, 323 n.;

did not write till after death of Sokrates, 326, 334, 443 n.;

proofs, 327-334;

variety, 339, 342, 344, ii. 155 n., iii. 26 n., 54, 179 n., 259, 265 n., 400, 420;

style, i. 405;

prolixity, ii. 100 n., 276, iii. 259, 369 n., iv. 325 n.;

poetical vein predominant in some works, i. 343, iv. 153 n.;

mixture of poetical fancy and religious mysticism with dialectic theory, iii. 16;

comic vein, 410 n.;

builds on metaphor, i. 353 n., iii. 65 n., 351, 364;

rhetorical powers, 178 n., 392 n., 408, 409, 410;

irony, ii. 208;

tendency to embrace logical phantoms as real causes, 404 n.;

both sceptical and dogmatical, i. 342;

his affirmative and negative veins distinct, 399, 400 n., 403, 420;

in old age the affirmative vein, 408;

altered tone in regard to philosophy in later life, iv. 273, 320, 379, 424, i. 244;

intolerance, 423, iii. 277, iv. 157, 159, 379, 430;

inconsistencies, i. xiii, ii. 29, 303, 345, 416 n., iii. 17, 172 n., 273, 277, 332, 372, iv. 24, 219, 379-86, 396;

absence of system, i. xiii, 340 n., 344, 375;

untenable hypothesis that he communicated solutions to a few, xi, 360, 401;

assumed impossibility of teaching by written exposition, 349, 357, ii. 56 n.;

this assumption intelligible in his day, i. 357;

a champion of the negative dialectic, 372;

devoted to philosophy, 333;

his aim, 406;

is a searcher, 375, iii. 158 n.;

search after knowledge the business of his life, i. 396;

has done more than any one else to interest others in it, 405;

anxiety to keep up research, ii. 246;

combated commonplace, i. 398 n.;

equally with Sophists, laid claim to universal knowledge, iii. 219;

anachronisms, i. 335, ii. 20 n., iii. 411;

colours facts to serve his arguments, ii. 356 n., 369, iii. 46, iv. 311;

probably never read Thucydides, iii. 410 n.;

acquiescence in tradition, iv. 230-3, 242 n.;

relation to popular mythology, i. 441 n., ii. 416, iii. 265 n., iv. 24, 155 n., 196, 238 n., 325, 328, 337, 398;

theory of politics to resist King Nomos, i. 393;

reverence for Egyptian regulations, iv. 266 n.;

latest opinion in Epinomis, 421 n., 424 n.;

agreement of Leibnitz with, ii. 248 n.;

see Canon, Dialogue, Epistles, &c.

PLATONISTS, influenced by Pythagoreans, iii. 390 n.;

pleasure a form of evil, ib.;

erroneous identification of truth and good, 391 n.

PLEASURABLE, Beautiful a variety of, ii. 45;

inadmissible, 45-7;

and Good, as conceived by the Athenians, 371;

is it identical with good, 289.

PLEASURE, an equivoque, iii. 377 n.;

meaning as the summum bonum, 338;

Plato’s various doctrines compared, 385 n.;

is the good, ii. 292, 305, 347 n.;

agreement with Aristippus, i. 199-201;

right comparison of pains and, necessary, ii. 293;

virtue a right comparison of pain and, ib., 305;

ignorance, not pleasure, the cause of wrongdoing, 294;

actions conducive to, are honourable, 295;

Sokrates’ reasoning, 307;

not ironical, 314;

not Utilitarianism, 310 n.;

theory more distinct than any in other dialogues, 308, 347;

but too narrow and exclusively prudential, 309;

compared with Gorgias, 306 n., 345-6;

Republic, 210, 350 n.;

not identical with Good, 345, iii. 380 n., iv. 62;

Sokrates’ argument untenable, ii. 351;

its elements depreciated, 355;

arts of flattery aiming at immediate, 357;

Expert required to discriminate, 345, 347;

science of measure necessary to estimate pleasures, 357 n., iii. 357, 369 n., 376 n., 391, iv. 301;

is it good, iii. 335, 337;

pleasures unlike each other, 336, 396;

is good intense pleasure without any intelligence, 338;

life without pain or pleasure conceivable, at least second-best, 349, 372;

less cognate than intelligence to good, 339, 347, 361;

not identical with ἀλυπία, 338 n., 353, 377;

is of the infinite, 347;

is the indeterminate, 348;

pre-supposes pain, 349, 389 n.;

except in the derivative pleasures of memory and expectation, 349;

is the restoration of the system’s harmony, 348;

antithesis of body and mind in desire, no true pleasure, 350;

true, attached to true opinion, 351;

same principle of classification applied to cognitions as to, 382;

can they be true or false, 351, 352, 385, 380 n., 382;

false, are pleasures falsely estimated, 352, 384;

theory of pleasure-haters, partly true, 354;

intense, not compatible with cognition, 363;

Aristotle on, 376 n.;

same view enforced by Hedonists, 378, 387 n.;

intense, connected with bodily or mental distemper, 356, 391;

but more pleasure in health, 356;

feelings excited by drama, φθόνος, 355 n.;

true, of beautiful colours, odours, sounds, acquisition of knowledge, 356;

of geometry, painless, ib., 387 n.;

of intelligence more valuable than of sense, 375 n., 386 n., iv. 85, 89, 118;

analogy of cognition and, iii. 360;

true, admit of measure, 357, 369 n.;

is generation, therefore, not an end, nor the good, 357;

Aristippus and Aristotle on, 378 n.;

is an end, and cannot be compared with intelligence, a means, 373, 377 n.;

good a mixture of pleasure and cognition, 361;

only true, pure, and necessary pleasures included in good, 362;

gods and kosmos free from pleasure and pain, 389;

intelligence postulated by the Hedonists, 374;

Plato argues on Hedonistic basis by comparing, 375;

both ἀλυπία and pleasure included in Hedonists’ end, 377;

Sokrates differs little from pleasure-haters, 389;

doctrine not defensible against pleasure-haters, 387, 390 n.;

of intelligence, the best, and alone pure, iv. 85, 89;

of φιλομάθεια superior to φιλοκέρδεια and φιλοτιμία, 85, 89, 118;

neutral condition of mind intermediate between pain and pleasure, 86;

pure pleasure, unknown to most men, 87;

more from replenishment of mind than of body, 88;

citizens should be tested against, 285;

Sokrates the ideal of self-command as to, 288;

good identical with maximum of, and minimum of pain, 292-7, 299, 303;

at least an useful fiction, ib.;

a form of evil, Platonists’ doctrine, iii. 390 n.;

Speusippus on, 386 n., 390 n.;

Kyrenaic theory, i. 196;

Antisthenes, iii. 390 n.;

Cynics’ contempt for, i. 154;

Aristotle, iii. 386 n.;

Epikurus, ii. 355 n., iii. 387 n.;

Lucretius, 387 n.;

Cicero, 389 n.;

Prof. Bain, 383 n.

PLOTINUS, i. 376 n., iii. 84 n.

POETS, censured by Herakleitus, i. 26;

Xenophanes, 16;

the art is one, ii. 127;

arbitrary exposition by the rhapsodes, 125;

and rhapsodes work by divine inspiration, 127, 129;

deliver wisdom without knowing it, 285;

the great teachers, 135;

really know nothing, ib.;

Strabo against, iv. 152 n.;

appeal to maxims of, ii. 178;

importance of knowledge of, 283;

Plato’s forced interpretations of, 286, ib. n.;

relation of sophists, rhetors, philosophers to, iv. 149;

ancient quarrel between philosophy and, 93, 151;

Plato’s feelings enlisted for, 93;

Plato’s aversion to Athenian dramatic, 316, 350;

peculiar to himself, 317;

Aristotle differs, ib. n.;

change for worse at Athens began in, 313;

censured, ii. 355, iv. 91, 130 n.;

their mischievous imitation of imitation, 91;

retort open to, 153 n., 154 n.;

mischievous appeal to emotions, ii. 126, iv. 92, 152, 349;

only deceive their hearers, 91;

credibility upheld by Plato, 161;

must avoid variety of imitation, 26;

orthodox type imposed on, 24, 153, 155, 292-6, 323, 349;

to keep emotions in a proper state, 169;

Plato’s expulsion of, censured, iii. 3;

actual place of, in Greek education, compared with Plato’s idéal, iv. 149-53;

mixture in Plato of poetry with religious mysticism and dialectic theory, iii. 16;

poetic vein of Sokrates in Phædon contrasted with Apology, ii. 421;

Aristophanes on function of, iv. 306 n.

POLITICAL art, its use, ii. 206, iii. 415;

Sokrates declares he alone follows the true, ii. 361;

society and ethics, topic of Sokrates, i. 376;

ethics merged by Sokrates in, ii. 362;

treated together by Plato, iv. 133;

apart by Aristotle, 138;

Plato’s and Aristotle’s new theory of, to resist King Nomos, i. 393;

relation to philosophy, ii. 224, 227, 229, 230 n., 365 n., 368 n., ib., iii. 179, 183, iv. 51-4, i. 181 n., 182;

to be studied by itself exclusively, ii. 229;

Lewis on ideals, iv. 139 n.;

see Government, Monarchy, Ruler.

Politikus, authenticity, i. 307, 316 n., iii. 185 n., 265 n.;

date, i. 309, 410, 313, 315, 325;

purpose, iii. 188, 253, 257 n., 261;

value, 190;

relation to Theætêtus, 187;

scenery and personages, 185;

in a logical classification all particulars of equal value, 195;

province of sensible perception narrower in Theætêtus, 256;

importance of founding logical partition on sensible resemblances, 255;

the attainment of the standard the purpose of each art, 260;

necessity of declaring standard, 262;

Plato’s views on mensuration, 260;

Plato’s defence against critics, 262;

the mythe of the kosmos, 265 n.;

causes principal and auxiliary, 266;

the king the principal cause, ib.;

Plato does not admit received classification of governments, 267;

three kinds of polity, 278;

true classification of governments, scientific or unscientific, 268;

unscientific government, or by many, counterfeit, ib.;

of unscientific governments, despot worst, democracy least bad, 270, 278;

true government, by the one scientific man, i. 273, iv. 280, 310 n.;

counter-theory in Protagoras, iii. 275;

government by fixed laws the second-best, 269;

scientific governor, unlimited by laws, 269;

distinguished from general, &c., 271;

aims at forming virtuous citizens, 272;

maintains ethical standard, 273;

natural dissidence of gentle and energetic virtues, ib.;

excess of the energetic entails death or banishment, of the gentle, slavery, ib.;

courage and temperance assumed, 282;

compared with Lachês, 282-4;

Charmidês, ib.;

Menon, 283;

Protagoras, 262, 275;

Phædon, 262, 265 n.;

Phædrus, 257, 265 n.;

Parmenidês, 259;

Theætêtus, 184 n., 187, 256;

Kratylus, 281, 329;

Philêbus, 262, 369 n.;

Republic, 257 n., 279.

Πολυπράγμων, ii. 362 n.

POLYBIUS, on music, iv. 306.

POLYTHEISM, early Greek explanation of phenomena by, i. 2;

believed in after genesis of philosophy, 3;

hostile to philosophy, 86;

substitution of physical forces for, ii. 402;

Euripides’ Hippolytus illustrates popular Greek religious belief, iv. 163 n.

POPULATION, Malthus’ law of, iv. 201;

recognised by Plato and Aristotle, 202.

PORPHYRY, on Metempsychosis, ii. 426 n.

POSTE, MR., on Philêbus, iii. 365 n., 369 n., 381 n., 384 n., 390 n., 396 n., 397 n.;

abstract theories of Plato and Aristotle compared, ib.

POTENTIAL and actual, Aristotle’s distinction, iii. 134;

ens equivalent to, 204.

POWER, controversy of Aristotle with Megarics, i. 135;

Aristotle’s arguments not valid, 136-8;

Aristotle himself concedes the doctrine, 139 n.;

doctrine of Diodôrus Kronus, 140, 143;

defended by Hobbes, 143;

Brown on, 138 n.

PRACTICAL life disparaged, ii. 355, iii. 329;

and philosophy, ii. 365 n., 368 n., ib., iii. 179, 183, iv. 51-4, i. 181 n., 182;

uselessness of philosopher in, due to his not being called in by citizens, iv. 54;

condition of success in, ii. 359;

influence of belief on, i. 180 n.;

Boissier on, 157 n.

PRANTL, objection to Homo Mensura, iii. 151 n.;

Timæus, iv. 255 n.;

Megarics, i. 129 n., 132 n.

PRAXIPHANES, on Kritias, iv. 265 n.

PRAYER, danger of, for mischievous gifts, ii. 12;

Sokrates on, and sacrifice, 17, 417, 419;

Sokrates prays for undefined favours — premonitions, 28;

Sokrates’ belief, iv. 394;

heresy that gods appeased by, 376, 384;

general Greek belief, 392, 394;

Herodotus, ib.;

Epikurus, 395;

Aristotle, ib.

PREDICABLES, iii. 77 n.

PREDICATION, predicate not recognised in Plato’s analysis, iii. 235;

only identical, legitimate, 223, 232 n., 251;

coincidence in Plato, ii. 46 n.;

analogous difficulty in Parmenidês, i. 169;

error due to the then imperfect logic, iii. 241;

misconception of function of copula, 221, i. 170 n.;

arguments against, iii. 206, 212, 221;

Aristotle on, i. 166, 170;

after Aristotle, asserted by Stilpon, 166, 169;

Stilpon against accidental, 167;

logical subject has no real essence apart from predicates, 168 n.;

Menedêmus disallowed negative, 170;

see Proposition.

PRE-EXISTENCE of all animals, included in Plato’s proof of soul’s immortality, ii. 414.

PRE-SOKRATIC, see Philosophy.

PRIESTLEY, DR., character of, i. 403 n.

PRINCIPLE, march of philosophy up to or down from, i. 403;

of Thales, 4;

Anaximander, 5;

Anaximenes, 7;

Pythagoreans, 9-12, 14;

Parmenides, 24;

Herakleitos, 27;

Empedokles, 38;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 60;

defect of the Ionic philosophers, 38.

PRINSTERER, G. VAN, iii. 412 n.

PRODIKUS, as a writer and critic, iii. 304, 308 n.;

less a sophist than Sokrates, 219;

the choice of Herakles, ii. 267 n.

PROËMS, of Zaleukus and Charondas, iv. 323 n.;

didactic or rhetorical homilies, 322;

to every important law, 321, 383;

as type for poets, 323.

PROKLUS, borrowed from Rhodian Eudemus, i. 85 n.;

interpretation of Plato, xi;

on Leges, iv. 355 n.;

Kritias, 265 n.;

Parmenidês, iii. 64 n., 80 n., 80, 90 n.;

Kratylus, 294 n., 310 n., 323 n.;

distinction of divine and human names, 300 n.;

analysis of propositions, 237 n.

PROMÊTHEUS, mythe, ii. 267.

PROPERTY, private, an evil, iv. 327, 333;

perpetuity of lots of land, 326;

succession, 405;

modes of acquiring, 397;

length of prescription, 415;

direct taxation according to, 331;

qualification for magistracies and votes, ib., 333;

limited inequality tolerated as to movable, 330;

no private possession of gold or silver, no loans or interest, 331;

see Communism.

PROPHESY, Plato’s theory of liver’s function, iv. 246;

see Inspiration.

PROPOSITION, analysis of, iii. 213;

imperfect, 230, 235;

intercommunion of forms of non-ens and of proposition, opinion, judgment, 213-4;

no analysis or classification of, before Aristotle, 222;

quality of, 235, 248;

Plato’s view of the negative erroneous, 236, 239;

Ideas τῶν ἀποφάσεων, 238 n.;

are false possible, 232;

Plato undertakes impossible task, 249;

some true, others false, assumed by Aristotle, ib.;

hypothetical, Diodôrus Kronus on, i. 145;

Philo, ib. n.;

contradictory, impossible, 166;

the subject, no real essence apart from predicates, 168 n.;

see Copula, Predication.

PROTAGORAS, character of, ii. 265 n.;

not represented in Euthydêmus, 202;

less a sophist than Sokrates, iii. 219;

not disparagingly viewed by Plato, ii. 288 n., 290 n., 296 n., 303, 314;

relation to Herakleitus, iii. 159 n.;

Homo Mensura, 113;

see Relativity;

combated by Demokritus, i. 82;

taught by lectures, ii. 203, 301;

Περὶ τοῦ ὄντος, iii. 153 n.;

as a writer and critic, 304, 308 n.;

treatise on eristic, i. 125 n.;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

on the gods, 233 n.

Protagoras, the, date, i. 304-7, 308, 77, 312, 315, 321, 327, 328, 331 n., ii. 228 n., 298 n.;

purpose, 277, 278 n.;

two distinct aspects of ethics and politics, 299;

difference of rhetorical and dialectical method, 300;

introduction illustrates Sokrates’ mission, 263;

question unsolved, 297, 316;

scenery and personages, 259;

Hippokrates eager for acquaintance with Protagoras, 260, iii. 217 n.;

not noticed at the close, ii. 298;

Sophists as teachers, 261;

danger of going to sophist, without knowing what he is about to teach, 262;

visit to Kallias, respect for Protagoras, 264;

Protagoras questioned, ib.;

is virtue, teachable, 266;

intends to train youths as virtuous citizens, ib.;

Protagoras’ mythe, first fabrication of animals by gods, 267;

its value, 276;

social art conferred by Zeus, 268, iii. 275;

Protagoras’ discourse, ii. 269;

its purpose, 274;

prolix, 275;

parodied by Sokrates, 283;

mythe and discourse explain propagation of established sentiment of a community, 274, iii. 274;

justice and sense of shame possessed and taught by all citizens, ii. 269;

virtue taught by parents, &c., 272;

quantity acquired depends on individual aptitude, ib.;

analogy of learning the vernacular, 273;

theory of punishment, 270;

combines the two modern theories, 270 n.;

why genius not hereditary, 271, 272, 274;

Sokrates analyses, 276;

how far is justice like holiness, 278;

intelligence and moderation identical, having same contrary, 279;

Sokrates’ reasons insufficient, ib.;

Protagoras’ prolix reply, 280, 281, 284;

Alkibiades claims superiority for Sokrates, 282, 287;

dialectic superior to rhetoric, 282;

Sokrates inferior in continuous debate, 284;

Sokrates on song, and concealed Sophists at Krete and Sparta, 283;

Protagoras on importance of knowledge of poets, ib.;

interpretation of a song of Simonides, ib.;

forced interpretation of poets, 285;

poets deliver wisdom without knowing it, 285;

Sokrates depreciates value of debates on poets, ib.;

colloquial companion necessary to Sokrates, 287;

courage differs materially from rest of virtue, 285, 304 n., iv. 283 n.;

Sokrates argues that courage is knowledge, ii. 288;

Aristotle on, 170 n.;

courage a right estimate of terrible things, 296, 307;

the reasoning unsatisfactory, 313;

knowledge is dominant agency in mind, 290;

no man does evil voluntarily, 292;

ignorance, not pleasure, the cause of wrongdoing, 294;

pleasure the good, 289, 292, 305, 344-50;

agreement with Aristippus, i. 199-201;

right comparison of pleasures and pains necessary, ii. 293, iii. 391;

virtue a right comparison of pleasures and pains, ii. 293, 305;

actions conducive to pleasure are honourable, 295;

reasoning of Sokrates, 307;

not ironical, 314;

not Utilitarianism, 310 n.;

theory more distinct than any in other dialogues, 308;

but too narrow and exclusively prudential, 309-11, 313, 350 n.;

reciprocity of regard indispensable, 311;

ethical end involves regard for pleasures and pains of others, 312;

permanent and transient elements of human agency, 353-5;

compared with Menon, 245;

Gorgias, 306 n., 345-8, 349-57, iii. 379;

Politikus, 262, 275, 276;

Philêbus, 380, 391;

Republic, ii. 310, 350 n.;

Timæus, 268 n.;

Leges, iv. 301.

PRUDENCE, relation to rest of virtue, iv. 426;

a good from its consequent pleasures, Aristippus’ doctrine, i. 197.

PSAMMETICHUS, iii. 289 n.

Ψεῦδος, derivation, iii. 301 n.

Ψυχή, meaning, iv. 387 n.;

see Mind, Soul, Reason.

PSYCHOLOGY, defective in Gorgias, ii. 354;

great advance by Plato in analytical, iii. 164;

classification of minds and aptitudes required in true rhetoric, 32, 43.

PTOLEMIES, i. 279, 284 n., 285.

PUNISHMENT, theory of, ii. 270;

combines the two modern theories, ib. n.;

a relief to the wrongdoer, 326, 328, 335, iv. 366;

consequences of theory, ii. 336;

its incompleteness, 363;

analogy of mental and bodily distemper pushed too far, 337;

objects to deter or reform, iv. 408;

corporal, 403.

PYRRHO the Sceptic, i. 154 n.

PYTHAGORAS, life and doctrines, i. 8;

metaphysical and geometrical rather than physical, 89;

censured by Herakleitus, 26;

Demokritus on, 82 n.;

antipathy of Herakleitus, iii. 316 n.;

see Pythagoreans.

PYTHAGOREANS, the brotherhood, i. 8, ii. 374;

absence of individuality, i. 8;

divergences of doctrine, 9 n., 14 n.;

canon of life, iii. 390 n.;

compared with Chinese philosophers, i. 159 n.;

Number, differs from Plato’s Idea, 10, 348;

modern application of the principle, 10 n.;

fundamental conception applied by Kepler, 14 n.;

Platonic form of doctrine of Monas and Duas, 15 n.;

number limited to ten, 11 n.;

καιρός, the first cause of good, iii. 397 n.;

music of the spheres, i. 14;

harmonies, 16;

geometrical construction of kosmos, re-appears in Timæus, 349 n.;

vacuum extraneous to the kosmos, iv. 225 n.;

doctrine of one cosmical soul, ii. 248 n.;

metempsychosis, 426 n.;

Contraries, the principles of ὄντα, i. 15 n.;

theory of vision, iv. 237 n.;

not the idealists of Sophistês, iii. 245 n.;

doctrine of classification, enlarged by Plato, 368;

on etymology, 304 n., 316 n., 323 n.;

doctrines in Plato, i. 11 n., 16 n., 88, 344 n., 346 n., 347, 349 n., ii. 426 n., iii. 368, iv. 424 n.;

Platonists, iii. 390 n.

Q.

QUALITIES, primary and secondary, i. 70, iv. 243 n.;

all are relative, ii. 157;

no existence without the mind, iii. 73 n.;

ἀλλοίωσις, 103 n.

QUALITY of propositions, iii. 235 n., 248.

QUINTILIAN, iii. 311 n.

R.

RAVAISSON, M., iii. 242 n.

REALISM, first protest against, Antisthenes, i. 164.

REASON, the universal, of Herakleitus, i. 34;

is the reason of most men as it ought to be, 35;

the individual, worthless, 34;

of Anaxagoras, identical with the vital principle, 54;

alone pure and unmixed, 51;

immaterial and impersonal, 56 n.;

two attributive to move and to know, ib.;

relation to the homœomeries, 55-7;

originates rotatory movement in chaotic mass, 50;

exercised only a catalytic agency, 89;

compared with Herakleitus’ περιέχον, 56 n.;

not used as a cause, ii. 394;

of Demokritus, produced by influx of atoms, i. 79;

relation to sense, 68 n.;

alone gives true knowledge, 72;

worlds of sense and, distinct, 403;

varieties of, classified, iii. 358;

dialectic the purest, 360;

two grades of, Nous and Dianoia, iv. 66;

relation to νοητόν, i. 354 n.;

the Universal, assigned as measure of truth, iii. 151 n.;

relation to kosmical soul, iv. 226;

kosmos produced by joint action of necessity and, 237;

in individual, analogous to ruler in state, 39;

temporarily withdrawn under inspiration, ii. 131, iii. 11;

belongs only to gods and a few men, 121 n., iv. 234, 235 n.;

is the determining, iii. 348;

a combining cause, 347;

postulated by the Hedonists, 374;

analogy of pleasure and, 360;

more cognate than pleasure with good, 339, 347, 361;

is it happiness, 335, 337;

is good a life of, without pleasure or pain, 338, 349, 372;

pleasure an end, and cannot be compared with intelligence, a means, 373, 377 n.;

all cognitions included in good, 362;

good is not, iv. 62;

implication of emotion and, iii. 374;

knowledge of good identical with, of other things with δόξα, ii. 30;

perfect state of, the one sufficient condition of virtue, 149;

earliest example of fallacy of Sufficient, i. 6 n.

REID, on Berkeley, iv. 243 n.;

atomic doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, i. 70.

RELATION, category of, iii. 128 n.

RELATIVE and non-relative names, iii. 232 n.;

and absolute, radically distinct points of view, i. 23 n.;

antithetised by Plato in regard to the beautiful, ii. 54;

the, of Xenophanes, i. 18;

doctrine of Parmenides, 20-24, 66;

alone knowable, Zeno, 98, 101;

incommunicable, Gorgias the Leontine, 104 n.;

doctrine of Anaxagoras, 59 n.;

Demokritus, 71, 80;

alone knowable, iii. 63, 73;

Idea of Good is essentially, iv. 214 n., i. 185;

see Absolute, Relativity.

RELATIVITY, perpetual implication of subject and object, iii. 118, 123 n., 122 seq., 128-9, 287 n., i. 204 n.;

true both in regard to ratiocinative combinations and percipient faculties of each individual, iii. 118;

the doctrine of Sokrates, i. 432, iii. 140 n., 147, 162 n.;

in regard to intelligible world, proved from Plato, 121, 125, 227, 322 n., 337 n.;

shown more easily than in reference to sense, 122;

of some sensible facts, 126, 298, iv. 242;

two-fold, to comparing subject, and to another object, besides the one directly described, iii. 127;

relations are nothing in the object without a comparing subject, ib.;

the facts of consciousness not explicable by independent subject and object, 131;

Homo Mensura, formula unpopular, 150;

objected to as “Subjectivism,” 151;

true meaning, ii. 341 n., iii. 116, 137, 143, 292, 297;

its counter-proposition, 148;

its value, 131, 164 n.;

relation to belief on authority, 142, 143, 146, 293;

counter-theory of naming, 291, 326 n.;

all exposition an assemblage of individual judgments, 139;

sentiments of belief and disbelief common, but grounds different with different men and ages, 296;

belief not dependent on will but relative to circumstances of individual mind, 297;

Homo Mensura, an objection to cognisability of Ideas, 72;

identified with Herakleiteanism, 128;

Demokritus on, i. 82, iii. 152;

Plato’s arguments against, 135;

identified erroneously by Plato with knowledge is sensible perception, 114 n., 118, 120 n., 125, 162 n.;

Plato ignores the proper qualification, 137;

the doctrine equalises all animals, 135, 292;

analogy of physical processes, 294;

not true in the sense meant, 141, 296;

it annuls dialectic — not true, 146;

the wise man alone a measure, 145;

divergences of men, from mental and associative differences, 155;

Aristotle on, 128 n., 131 n., 132 n., 149 n., 152;

Kyrenaics, i. 197. 204;

Hamilton, iii. 133 n.;

Dugald Stewart, 156 n.;

see Relative.

RELIGION, Greek, hostile to philosophy, i. 86;

mysticism in Empedokles, 47 n.;

Xenophanes, 16-18;

loose meaning of ἄθεος, iv. 382 n.;

Manichæanism of Leges, 389 n.;

Plato’s relation to popular mythology, i. 441 n., ii. 416, iii. 265 n., iv. 24, 155 n., 195, 238 n., 325, 328, 337, 398;

dissent from his country’s, 161, 163;

fundamental dogmas, 419;

doctrines had emanated from lawgivers, 160;

temples and priests, regulations, 337;

number of sacrifices determined by lawgiver, 357;

sacrilege, gravest of all crimes, 363;

heresy, and ὕβρις to divine things, or places, 375-86;

εὐφημία and βλασφημία, 350 n.;

only state worship allowed, 24, 159, 337, 419, 430;

Cicero, 379 n.;

Delphi and Dodona to be consulted, 34, 137 n., 325, 337;

Xenophon, i. 237;

communications common in Plato’s age, ii. 130, 131 n., i. 225 n.;

see Orthodoxy, Prayer, Polytheism, Sacrifice, Theology.

REMINISCENCE, theory of, ii. 237, 249, 252, iii. 13, 17;

kindled by aspect of physical beauty, 14;

not accepted, ii. 247;

Bion and Straton on, 249 n.;

purification of soul for, 389;

necessary hypothesis for didactic idéal, iii. 52;

not recognised in Symposion, 17;

nor in Republic training, iv. 207.

RENAN, on absence of system in ancient philosophy, i. 340 n.;

influence of professorial lectures, 346 n.;

Averroism, iii. 68 n.;

Kratylus, 290 n.;

origin of language, 326 n., 328 n., 329 n.;

Almamuns’ dream, iv. 213 n.

Republic, date, i. 307, 309, 311-3, 315, 324, ii. 318 n.;

title only partially applicable, iv. 96;

Kleitophon intended as first book, i. 406 n., iii. 419, 425;

Hermokrates projected as last in tetralogy, i. 325, iv. 266, 273;

Timæus and Kritias, sequel to, 215, 265;

overleaps difficulties of other dialogues, 138;

summarised, 1, 95;

double purpose, ethical and political, 133, 138;

polity and education combined, 185;

Plato more a preacher than philosopher in, 129-31;

scenery and persons, 2;

Kephalus’ views about old age, ib.;

preponderance of evil, 262 n.;

tripartite division of goods, 12, 116;

Good, not intelligence nor pleasure, 62;

the four cardinal virtues assumed as an exhaustive classification, 135;

as constituting all Virtue where each resides, 134;

difference in other dialogues, 137;

justice an equivocal word, 120, 123-6;

Simonides’ definition of justice, rendering what is owing, 2;

objections, 3;

defective explanations, 4;

definition rejected, 6;

Thrasymachus’ definition, justice what is advantageous to the most powerful, 8;

modified, 9;

ruler qua ruler infallible, ib.;

justice the good of another, 10;

a good to society and individual, injustice a source of weakness, 11;

justice a source of happiness, 12;

a compromise, 13;

recommended by fathers from its consequences, 15, 16, 99;

the received view anterior to Plato, 100;

Xenophon on, 114 n.;

arguments compared, and question stated, 18;

the real issue, 117;

justice a good per se, 20, 40, 84, 90;

not demonstrated, 116;

is performing one’s own function, 36, 37;

in individual, when each mental part performs its own function, 40;

analogy to bodily health, ib.;

distinction between temperance and justice effaced, 135;

view peculiar to Plato, 99;

happiness of just and unjust compared, 14;

neutral condition of mind intermediate between pain and pleasure, 86;

pure pleasure unknown to most men, iii. 387 n., iv. 87;

simile of kosmos, absolute height and depth, 87;

more pleasure from replenishment of mind than of body, 88;

proved also by superiority of pleasures of intelligence, iii. 375 n., iv. 85, 89;

the arguments do not establish the point aimed at, 118-20;

a good per se, and from its consequences, 94, 121-3;

all-sufficient for happiness, germ of Stoical doctrine, 102;

inconsistent with actual facts, 103, 123;

individual dependent on society, ib.;

essential reciprocity in society, 109;

the basis of Plato’s own theory of city’s genesis, 111;

but incompletely stated, 112 n.;

any theory of society must present antithesis and correlation of obligation and right, 112;

Plato’s affirmation true in a qualified sense, 125;

orthodoxy or dissent of just man must be taken into account, 126, 131;

Plato’s ethical basis imperfect, 127;

his conception is self-regarding, 3 n., 104;

motives to it arise from internal happiness of the just, 105;

view substantially maintained since, ib.;

each individual mind tripartite, ii. 384, iv. 37;

the gentle, tender, and æsthetical emotions omitted, 149 n.;

reason, energy, appetite, analogous to rulers, guardians, craftsmen, 39;

analogy of city and individual, 20, 37, 79-84, 96;

parallelism exaggerated, 114, 121, 124;

unity of the city, every man does one thing well, 23, 33, 183;

Xenophon on, 139 n.;

perfection of state and individual, each part performing its own function, 97;

happiness of entire state the end, 98, 139 n.;

origin of society, common want, ii. 343, iii. 327 n., iv. 21, 111, 112 n., 133;

ideal state — only an outline, 139;

a military bureaucracy, 183;

type of character is Athenian, Xenophontic is Spartan, 147, 151;

Plato more anxious for good treatment of Demos, 183;

Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon or Aristotle, ib.;

Aristotle objects, it is two states, 185, 189;

healthy city has few wants, enlargement of city’s wants, 22;

war, from multiplied wants, ib.;

good state possesses wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, 34, 35;

fiction as to origin of classes, 30;

difficulty of procuring first admission for fiction, 158;

this the introduction of a new religious creed, 156;

class of soldiers or guardians, characteristics, 23, 25, 298 n.;

division of guardians into rulers and auxiliaries, 29;

maintenance of city dependent on guardians’ habits, character, education, 32, 34, 140, 170, 178;

musical and gymnastical education necessary, 23;

compared with that of modern soldiers, 148, 180;

Xenophon compared, 141-8;

musical training excites love of the beautiful, 27;

music, Platonic sense, 149;

by fictions as well as by truth, 24, 154;

ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, 93, 151;

Plato fights for philosophy, but his feelings enlisted for poetry, 93;

poets censured, 91, 130 n.;

Homer not educator of Greek world, 92;

Herakleitus the Allegorist on, iii. 3 n.;

actual place of poetry in Greek education compared with Plato’s idéal, iv. 150-2;

poets’ mischievous appeal to emotions, 92, 152;

their mischievous imitation of imitation, 91;

retort open to poets, 153 n., 154 n.;

censorship of mythology, 24;

religion in connection with state, ib., 159;

Delphian Apollo to be consulted for religious legislation, 34, 137 n.;

Sokrates of Republic compared with the real, 211;

Plato compared with Epikurus, 161;

poets must conform to orthodox standard, 24, 153, 155;

must avoid variety of imitation, 20;

gods cause good only, do not assume man’s form, 24;

no repulsive fictions tolerated about gods or Hades, 25, 154;

a better class to be substituted from religion for the existing fictions, 159;

type for narratives about men, 26;

only grave music allowed, 26, 168;

restrictions on music and poetry to keep emotions in a proper state, 169;

gymnastic and music necessary to correct each other, 29;

gymnastic imparts courage, ib.;

bodily training simple, 28;

no refined medical art allowed, ib.;

συσσίτια of guardians, 32;

their communism, ib., 44, 140, 169;

its peculiarity, 179;

Plato’s view of wealth, 199 n.;

the guardians consist of men and women, 41, 46;

both sexes to go together to battle, 46;

best women equal by nature to second best men, 42, 171-4;

same duties and training for women as men, 41, 77;

on principle that every citizen belongs to the city, 187;

maintained in Leges, and harmonises with ancient legends, 195;

contrast with Aristotle, ib.;

no family ties, 32, 174;

temporary marriages, 43, 175-8, 194 n.;

Plato’s and modern sentiments, 192;

in Platonic state, influence of Aphrodité very small, 197, 359 n.;

infanticide, 43, 44, 177, 203;

contrast of modern sentiment, ib.;

number of guardians, 178;

checks on population, 198-202;

Malthus’ law recognised, 202;

approximation in Mill, 199 n.;

scheme practicable if philosophy and political power united, 47;

how to be realised, 78, 190 n.;

of state and individual, four stages of degeneracy, 78-84;

timocracy, 79;

oligarchy, ib.;

democracy, 80;

despotism, 81;

proportions of happiness and misery in them, 83;

Plato’s state impossible, in what sense true, 189;

its real impossibility, adverse established sentiments, 191;

fails from no training for Demos, 186;

perpetual succession maintained of philosopher-rulers, 60;

philosophers true rulers, 310 n.;

hated by the people, 57;

whence pretenders, and forced seclusion of philosophers, 58, 90;

distinctive marks of philosopher, 51;

the philosopher contemplates unchangeable forms, 48;

ens alone knowable, 49;

opinion, of what is between ens and non-ens, iii. 184 n., iv. 49;

two grades of opinion, Faith or Belief, and Conjecture, 67;

and of intelligence, Nous and Dianoia, 66;

ordinary men discern only particulars, 49, 51;

particulars fluctuate, 50;

simile of Cave, iii. 257 n., iv. 67-70;

those who have contemplated forms reluctant to undertake active duties, 70;

relation of philosopher to practical life, 51-4;

simile of the steersman, 53;

philosopher requires a community suitable to himself, 59;

uselessness of philosopher in practical life, due to his not being called in by citizens, 54;

philosophical aptitude perverted under misguiding public opinion, ib.;

irresistible effect of public opinion in producing orthodoxy, 55;

perversion not due to Sophists, ib.;

the Sophists conform to prevalent orthodoxy, 56;

studies introductory to philosophy, 61, 70-5, 206;

object, 69;

no mention of Reminiscence, or of negative Elenchus, 207;

age for studies, 76;

dialectic and geometry, two modes of mind’s procedure applicable to ideal world, 65;

geometry assumes diagrams, ib.;

dialectic requires no diagrams, deals with forms only, descending from highest, 66;

awakening power of arithmetic, 71;

stimulus from contradiction of one and many, 72;

astronomy must be studied by ideal figures, not observation, 73;

geometry conducts mind towards universal ens, 72;

acoustics, by applying arithmetical relations and theories, 74;

exercises in dialectic, 76;

effect of, 207;

philosophy should not be taught to youths, 60, 76;

opposition to other dialogues and Sokrates’ character, 208-12;

dialectic the consummation of all the sciences, 75;

the standard for classifying sciences as more or less true, iii. 383 n.;

the synoptic view the test of the dialectician, 290 n., iv. 76;

Idea of Good compared to sun, 63, 64;

known to the rulers alone, 212;

what Good is, is unsolved, 213;

mythe of Hades, 94;

compared with Lachês, 138;

Charmidês, 136, 138;

Protagoras, ii. 310, 350 n.;

Gorgias, 353, iii. 380 n.;

Phædon, ii. 412, 414 n.;

Phædrus, iii. 18;

Parmenidês, 108, iv. 138;

Sophistês, iii. 18, 242, 257;

Politikus, 257, 279;

Philêbus, 273, 277 n., 395;

Kleitophon, 425;

Timæus, iv. 38 n., 234 n., 252;

Leges, 195, 275, 280, 298 n., 302, 318, 319, 327, 390, 428 n.

REST, form of, iii. 206, 209-10, 231, 245 n.

RHAPSODES, as a class, ii. 124;

functions, 125, 132, 320;

popularity, 126;

and poet work by divine inspiration, 127;

inspired through medium of poets, 128, 129, 134.

RHETOR, has no real power, ii. 324;

aims at flattering the public, 357;

practical value of instruction of, iii. 44;

the genuine, must acquire real truth, 33, 34;

is insufficiently rewarded, 33;

guides methodically from error to truth, 40;

compared with philosopher, ii. 52, iii. 178;

auxiliary of true governor, 271;

relation to poets, iv. 150;

Plato’s desire for celebrity as dialectician, and, iii. 408;

see Rhetoric.

RHETORIC, popularly preferred to dialectic, i. 451;

how employed at Athens, ii. 373;

ἀκριβολία distasteful to rhetors, 278 n.;

antithesis of dialectic and, i. 433, ii. 70, 275, 365;

deals with the concrete, dialectic with the abstract, 52, 53;

difference of method illustrated in Protagoras, 300;

superior to dialectic in usefulness and celebrity, iii. 360, 380;

superiority of dialectic over, claimed, ii. 282, 285, iii. 337 n.;

communicates true opinion, not knowledge, 172;

the artisan of persuasion, ii. 319;

a branch of flattery, 321, 370;

is of little use, 329, iii. 411;

and dialectic, issue unsatisfactorily put, ii. 369;

view stands or falls with idéal of good, 374;

Sokrates’ view different in Xenophon, 371 n.;

compared with Menexenus, iii. 409;

and Leges, iv. 322, 324;

Aristotle on, i. 133 n.;

Aristeides, 243 n.;

Sokrates’ theory, all persuasion founded on a knowledge of the truth, iii. 28;

as art, 27;

is comprised in dialectic, 30, 34;

analogy to medical art, 31;

theory more Platonic than Sokratic, 39;

is it teachable by system, 28;

definition and division essential to genuine, 30, 35;

should include a classification of minds and discourses, and their mutual application, 32, 41, 45;

Plato’s idéal a philosophy, not an art, 46;

involves impracticable conditions, 41-3, 46;

comparison with the rhetorical teachers, 44;

charge against its teachers not established, 47;

censure of forensic eloquence, iv. 410;

rhetorical powers of Plato, i. 433, ii. 356 n., iii. 392 n., 408, 409, 411;

see Rhetor.

RITTER, on Sophistês, iii. 244 n., 247 n.;

Eukleides, i. 127 n.;

Megarics, 129 n.

RIVALES, see Erastæ.

ROSE, VALENTINE, on the dates of Plato’s compositions, i. 326 n., 329 n.

ROYER-COLLARD, iii. 165 n.

RULER, of a superior breed in the Saturnian period, iii. 264, 266 n.;

a principle cause, 266;

scientific alone good, iv. 280;

qua ruler infallible, 9;

division of guardians into, and auxiliaries, 29;

wisdom is seated in, 34;

analogous to reason in individual, 39;

perpetual succession maintained of philosopher-rulers, 60;

alone know the Idea of Good, 212;

see Government, Political Art.

RUTHERFORD, iv. 105 n.

S.

SACRIFICE, Sokrates on, ii. 17, 417-9, iv. 394;

heresy that gods appeased by, 376, 384;

general Greek belief, 392, 394;

Herodotus, ib.;

Aristotle, 395;

Epikurus, ib.;

number determined by lawgiver, 357.

SACRILEGE, gravest of all crimes, iv. 363.

ST.-HILAIRE, BARTHÉLEMY, on Sankhya and Buddhism, i. 378 n.;

metempsychosis, ii. 426 n.;

fallacies, i. 133 n.

SALAMIS, iii. 406.

SAME, form of, iii. 209, 231, iv. 226.

SANKHYA, i. 378 n., ii. 389 n., 426 n.

SALVADOR, JACOB, iii. 300 n.

SCEPTICISM, of Xenophanes, i. 18;

Plato, 342;

Greek sceptics, iii. 293 n.

SCHLEIERMACHER, on Plato’s view of knowledge and opinion, iii. 167 n.;

theory of Platonic canon, i. 303;

includes a preconceived scheme, and an order of interdependence, 318;

proofs slender, 317, 325 n.;

assumptions as to Phædrus inadmissible, 319, 329 n.;

reasons internal, 319, 337, iv. 431;

himself shows the unsafe grounds of modern critics, i. 336;

Ueberweg attempts to reconcile Hermann with, 313;

theory adopted by Trendelenburg, 345 n.;

on relation of Euthyphron to Protagoras and Parmenidês, 443 n.;

Menon, ii. 247 n.;

Parmenidês, iii. 85 n.;

Sophistês, 244 n., i. 127;

Kratylus, iii. 303 n., 304 n.; 307 n., 310 n., 321, 321 n.;

Philêbus, 334 n., 365 n., 369 n., 398 n.;

Euthydêmus, i. 127;

Menexenus, iii. 408;

Kleitophon, 426 n.;

Republic, iv. 38 n.;

Leges, 430.

SCHNEIDER, on Xenophon’s Symposion, iv. 313 n.

SCHOOL, σχολή, i. 121 n., 127 n.;

Plato’s establishment of, a new epoch in philosophy, 266;

of Plato fixed at Athens, 254;

and transmitted to successors, 265;

its importance for his manuscripts, 266, 267;

decorations of the Academy and Lykeum, 209;

Peripatetic at Lykeum, ib.;

of Isokrates, iii. 35;

Eretrian, i. 121, 148;

Megaric, 121.

SCHÖNE, on the dates of Plato’s compositions, i. 326 n.

SCHWEGLER, on Parmenidês, iii. 86 n.;

Homo Mensura, 151 n.

SCIENCE, derivation of ἐπιστήμη, iii. 301 n.;

scientia, 302 n.;

logic of a, Plato’s different from Aristotelic and modern view, i. 358 n.;

science of good and evil distinct from others, ii. 161, 168;

relation to art, iii. 43 n., 46, 263;

antithesis of emotion and, 61, 195, 197 n.;

dialectic the standard for classifying, as more or less true, 382;

dialectic the consummation of, iv. 75;

relation to kosmical soul, 227;

see Knowledge.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE, temperance is, ii. 155;

what is the object known in, 156;

in Charmidês declared impossible, elsewhere essential and inestimable, 167.

SELLI, asceticism of, i. 163 n.

SENECA, on the Good, iii. 372 n.;

filial ingratitude, iv. 400 n.;

Diogenes of Sinôpê, i. 156 n.

SENSATION, Empedokles’ theory, i. 44;

Theophrastus, 46 n.;

theory of Anaxagoras, opposed to Empedokles’, 58;

Diogenes of Apollonia, 62;

Demokritus, 71, 76, 77, 80;

the mind rises from sensation to opinion, then cognition, iii. 164;

distinct from opinion, 167;

verification from experience, not recognised as necessary or possible, 168.

SENSE, derivation of αἴσθησις, iii. 308 n.;

doctrine of Empedokles, i. 44;

illusions of, belief of Anaxagoras, 59 n.;

defects of, belief of Demokritus, 68 n., 71;

Zeno’s arguments, 93;

Plato’s conception of, iii. 164 n.;

worlds of intellect and, distinct, i. 403;

organs of, iv. 236;

principal advantages of sight and hearing, 238;

hearing, i. 46, 62, 78;

ethical and emotional effects conveyed by, iv. 307 n.;

smell, i. 46;

pleasures of, true, iii. 356;

Homo Mensura, 122;

relativity of sensible facts, 126, 154, 298;

its verifications recognised by Plato as the main guarantee for accuracy, 155 n., 240;

fundamental distinction of ens and fientia, iv. 219;

relation to kosmical soul, 227;

see Particulars, Phenomena, Sensation.

SERRANUS, on Platonic canon, i. 302.

SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, doctrine, iii. 292 n.;

no definition of a general word, i. 168 n.;

on poets, iv. 24 n.

SHAFTESBURY, LORD, iv. 105 n.

SIMONIDES, interpretation of a song of, ii. 283;

definition of justice, iv. 2, 7.

SLAVERY, iv. 309, 342, 400;

Aristotle differs, 344 n.;

evidence of slaves. 410 n.

SLEEMAN, SIR WM., grounds of belief among Hindoos, iii. 150 n.

SLEEP, doctrine of Herakleitus, i. 34;

Plato, iv. 237.

SMITH, ADAM, Moral Sentiments, iii. 333.

SOCHER, theory of Platonic canon, i. 306;

Parmenidês, 338 n., iii. 88 n., 185 n.;

Politikus, ib., 196 n., 265 n.;

Sophistês, 185 n., 196 n., 243 n., 244;

Philêbus, 369 n.;

Kritias, iv. 266 n.

SOCIETIES, BENEFIT, iv. 399.

SOCIETY, ethics and politics, topic of Sokrates, i. 376;

genesis of, common want, ii. 343, iii. 327, iv. 21, 111, 112 n., 133;

social art conferred by Zeus, ii. 268;

dissent a necessary condition of its progressiveness, 367 n.;

frequent destruction of communities, iv. 307;

historical retrospect of, 307-314;

see State.

SOKRATES, life, character, and surroundings, i. 410 n.;

character unparalleled in history, vi;

personal appearance and peculiar character, iii. 19;

patience, 24 n.;

courage and equanimity, 21 n.;

compared to Antoninus Pius, ii. 382 n.;

proof against temptation, iii. 20, 22, 23, iv. 287, 288;

sensibility to youthful beauty, ii. 22 n.;

as representative of Eros Philosophus, iii. 15, 25;

income, i. 192 n.;

procedure of, repugnant to Athenian public, 387, 412, 441, iv. 127;

aggravated by his extreme publicity of speech, i. 393;

feels his own isolation as a dissenter, ii. 365;

accused of corrupting the youths, i. 391 n., 183 n.;

Plato’s reply, magical influence ascribed to his conversation, ii. 23, iii. 19, 21 n., 24 n., 113 n., 388 n., iv. 412 n., i. 110;

influence he claims, enlarged by Plato and Xenophon, 418;

disobedience of the laws, 434 n.;

imprisonment, 425;

indictment, against, 412, 418 n., 437, iv. 230, i. 113;

grounds for his indictment, iv. 162 n., 211, 381, 385;

reply to Melêtus, Plato and Xenophon compared, i. 456, ii. 421 n.;

opposition of feeling between, and the Dikasts, i. 375;

trial and death might have been avoided without dishonour, 426 n.;

equanimity before death, ii. 417, 418;

answer to Kriton’s appeal to fly, i. 426;

last words and death, ii. 377, 418;

general features of character in Apology confirmed, i. 419 n.;

character and disposition, differently set forth in Kriton, 428, 431-2;

of Apology and Phædon contrasted, ii. 421;

the real compared with character in Republic, iv. 211;

Plato’s early relations with, i. 248;

of Xenophon and Plato compared, ii. 37, i. 178, 199;

Xenophon’s relations with, 206-10;

uniform description of, in dialogues of viri Sokratici, 115;

brought down philosophy from heaven, x;

revolutionised method, ib.;

progenitor of philosophy of 4th century B.C. , 111 n.;

theory of natural state of human mind, 373, 414;

false persuasion of knowledge, an ethical defect, iii. 177;

omnipotence of King Nomos, i. 378-84;

differs from others by consciousness of ignorance, 413, 416;

Delphian oracle, on his wisdom, 413;

combated commonplace, 398 n.;

in reference to social, political, ethical, topics, 376;

mission, x, 374, 395, ii. 146, 419, iii. 219, 422, iv. 219, 381;

declared in Alkibiadês I. and Apology, ii. 24;

imposed on him by the gods, i. 415;

his dæmon, 437, ii. 104, i. 115;

his experience of it, ii. 102;

explains his eccentricity, 105;

a special revelation, 110, 130-1;

variously alluded to, 106-11;

determined to persevere in mission, i. 416;

not a teacher, 417, ii. 140, 146, 162, 165, 184, 232, 237, 242;

only stimulates, i. 449, iii. 415, 421-24, iv. 52 n.;

his excuse, ii. 106;

knows of no teacher, i. 417, ii. 225;

a positive teacher, employing indirect methods, modern assumption, i. 419;

incorrect, for his Elenchus does not furnish a solution, 420;

his positive solutions illusory, ii. 26;

obstetric, i. 367, ii. 251, iii. 112, 176;

the Sokratic dialogue, i. x, xi;

usefulness of, ii. 186, 207;

effect like shock of torpedo, 237;

diversified conversations, i. 182;

humbles presumptuous youths, ii. 21;

manner well illustrated in Lysis, 177;

asserts right of satisfaction for his own individual reason, i. 386, 423, 436, ii. 379;

on Homo Mensura, i. 432, iii. 162 n.;

his Eristic character, ii. 203;

the greatest Eristic of his age, i. 124;

followed by Plato and Megarics, ib., 126;

resemblance to Sophists, ii. 280, iii. 198 n., 216, iv. 165, 412 n.;

Menon gives points in common between Sophists and, ii. 257;

the “sophistic art” peculiar to him, iii. 218;

negative vein, i. viii, x, 370, 372, 373 n., 375, 387;

affirmative and negative veins distinct, 420;

charge against him of negative method, by his contemporaries, 371, 388;

first applied negative analysis to the common consciousness, 389 n.;

to social, political, ethical topics, 376, 385;

value and importance of Elenchus, 421;

see Negative;

introduced search for definitions, ii. 48;

authority of public judgment nothing — of Expert, everything, i. 426, 435;

does not name, but himself acts as, Expert, ib.;

early study, ii. 391;

stages of intellectual development, ib.;

turned on different views as to a true cause, 398;

accused of substituting physical for mental causes, 401;

does not distinguish different meanings of same term, 279;

not always consistent, 29, 303;

sophistry in Hippias Minor, 62;

avoided physics, i. 376;

the Reason of the kosmos, ii. 402 n.;

distinguished objective and subjective views of Ethics, i. 451;

proper study of mankind, 122;

order of ethical problems as conceived by, ii. 299;

not observed by Xenophon, i. 230;

and Plato dwell too exclusively on intellectual conditions of human conduct, ii. 67;

fruits of virtue, i. 415;

Utilitarianism, ii. 310 n., i. 185 n.;

belief in the deity, 413, 414;

disbelieves discord among gods, 440;

principle of making oneself like the gods, ib.;

on the holy, difference in Plato and Xenophon, 454;

on prayer and sacrifice, ii. 17, 418-9, iv. 394;

much influenced by prophecies, dreams, &c., ii. 418 n., 420, iii. 351, iv. 395, i. 225 n.;

on death, 422, 429 n.;

and Plato, difference on subject of beauty, ii. 54;

companions of, i. 111;

their proceedings after his death, 116;

no Sokratic school, 117;

Antisthenes constant friend of, 152;

manner copied by Antisthenes, 150, 159 n.;

precepts fullest carried out by Diogenes and Krates, 160, 174;

and Parmenides, blended by Eukleides, 118;

discourse with Aristippus, 175;

the choice of Heraklês, 177;

the Good and Beautiful, 184.

SOLDIERS, class of, characteristics, iv. 23;

division of guardians into rulers and, 29;

Plato’s training compared with modern, 148;

modern development of military profession, 180.

SOLON, on despotism, i. 219 n.;

unfinished poem of, subject of Kritias, iv. 266.

Σοφία and φρόνησις of Aristotle, ii. 120 n.;

identical with σωφροσύνη, ii. 280.

SOPHISMS, a collection of, necessary for a logical theory, i. 131;

discussion of popular at philosophers’ banquets, 134 n.;

of Eubulides, 128, 133;

Theophrastus on, 134 n.;

Diodôrus Kronus, 141, 143;

real character of, 135;

of Stoics, 128 n., 138;

see Fallacy.

SOPHIST, meaning of σοφιστής, i. 256 n., 391 n., ii. 261, iii. 27 n.;

compared to an angler, 191;

Plato’s definition, 191-4, 196 n.;

a juggler, 198;

imitator of the wise man, 216;

Plato’s ironical admiration, ii. 208, 283;

no real class, 210, 341 n., iii. 249 n., iv. 136 n., i. 178;

Theopompus on profession of, 212 n.;

usually depicted from opponents’ misrepresentations, 308 n., ii. 210;

accused of generating scepticism and uncertainty, 64 n.;

negative dialectic attributed by historians to, i. 371;

did not first apply negative analysis to the common consciousness, 389 n.;

negative dialectic not peculiar to, 387;

the charge brought by contemporaries against Sokrates, 388;

dialectic contrasted with Sokrates’, ii. 197;

Sokrates the greatest Eristic of his age, i. 124;

Sokrates a, ii. 183 n., 185 n., 188, 199, iv. 165, 412 n.;

Menon gives point in common between Sokrates and, ii. 257;

in Euthydêmus, 196;

not represented by Kallikles, 339;

lives in region of non-ens, iii. 208;

devoted to the production of falsehood, 215;

is ἐναντιοποιολογικὸς and εἴρων, 216;

those the characteristics of Sokrates, ib.;

the “sophistic art” peculiar to Sokrates, 218;

their alleged claim to universal knowledge — common to all philosophers then, 219;

etymologies in Kratylus not caricatures of, 302, 310 n., 314 n., 317 n., 321, 323;

no proof of their etymologising, 304;

as teachers, ii. 261;

motives of pupils, ib. n., 264 n.;

as corruptors of public mind, 288 n.;

jealousy of parents towards influential teachers, 265 n.;

probably often used illustrative mythes, 267 n.;

money-making, 210, ib. n., iii. 27 n., i. 212 n.;

not distinguishable from dialectician, ii. 210, 211 n.;

raised question of criterion of truth, 246;

logical distinctions, 236 n.;

did not invent fallacies, 217, i. 133 n.;

abuse of fallacies, biddings for popularity, ii. 199;

did not deny natural justice, 341 n.;

not the perverters of philosophy, iv. 55;

conform to prevalent orthodoxy, 56;

relation to poets, 150;

Demochares’ law against, i. 111 n.;

Aristippus taught as a, 193.

Sophistês, date, i. 305-11, 313, 315, 324-5, iii. 369 n.;

authenticity, i. 307, 316 n., iii. 185 n., 243 n.;

purpose, 188, 190, 223, 253, 261, 267;

relation to Theætêtus, 187;

scenery and personages, 185;

in a logical classification all particulars of equal value, 195;

definition of angler, 189;

sophist compared to an angler, 192;

defined, 191-5, 196 n.;

a juggler, 198, 200;

imitator of the wise man, 216;

classification of imitators, 215;

philosopher lives in region of ens, sophist, of non-ens, 208;

bodily and mental evil, 197;

the worst, ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, ib.;

Elenchus the sovereign purifier, ib.;

is false thought or speech possible, 172 n., 199, 249;

falsehood possible, and object of sophists’ profession, 181 n., 214;

imperfect analysis of propositions, 235, 238;

view of the negative erroneous, 237, 239;

theories of philosophers about ens, 201;

non-ens inconceivable, 200;

is ens one or many, 201;

difficulties about ens and non-ens equally great, ib., 206;

the materialists and the idealists, 203;

argument against materialists, ib., 223, 226, 228;

reply open to materialists, 224, 230;

argument against idealists, 204, 225;

their doctrine the same as Plato’s in Phædon, &c., 244, 246;

no allusion intended to Megarics or Pythagoreans, 244, 390 n.;

communion implies relativity, 125, 205;

to know and to be known is action and passion, 205, 226, 287 n.;

motion and rest both agree in ens, which is therefore a tertium quid, 206;

argument against “only identical predication legitimate,” ib., 212, 221, 251;

Antisthenes meant, i. 163, 165;

intercommunion of some Forms, iii. 207, 228, 246 n., 251 n.;

analogy of letters and syllables, 207;

what forms admit of it, determined by philosopher, 208;

of non-ens and of proposition, opinion, judgment, 213, 214, 235;

τὸ μὴ ὄν, meaning, 181 n.;

five forms examined, 208, 231, 233;

Plato’s view of non-ens unsatisfactory, 236, 239, 242 n., 248 n.;

an approximation to Aristotle’s view, 247;

different from other dialogues, 242;

compared with Phædon, 244, 246;

Phædrus, 18, 257;

Symposion, 19;

Theætêtus, 182 n., 187, 242, 256, 332;

Kratylus, ib.;

Philêbus, 369 n.;

Republic, 242, 257.

SOPHOKLES, Antigone, compared with Apology, i. 429 n.;

its popularity, ii. 135 n.;

as a general, 135.

Σωφροσύνη, ii. 153 n.;

see Temperance;

derivation, iii. 301 n.;

identical with σοφία, ii. 279;

and αἰδώς, 269 n.

SORITES, i. 128, 133, 135 n.

SOUL, derivation of ψυχή, iii. 301 n.;

meaning, iv. 387 n.;

prior to and more powerful than body, 386, 419-20;

the good and the bad souls at work in the universe, 386;

one continuous cosmical, ii. 248 n.;

of the kosmos, iii. 265 n., iv. 220, 421;

affinity to human, iii. 366 n.;

of kosmos, position and elements of, iv. 225;

of plants, 248;

doctrine of Herakleitus, i. 34;

Empedokles, 44;

Anaxagoras, 54;

Demokritus, 75;

Plato’s conception of existence, iii. 205, 226, 229, 231;

not tripartite, antithesis to body, ii. 384;

Hegel on Plato’s view, 414 n.;

a mixture, refuted, 390;

life a struggle between body and, 386, 388, iv. 234, 235 n.;

partial emancipation of, by philosophy, ii. 386;

purification of, 388;

κνῆσις compared to children’s teething, iii. 399 n.;

pre-existence admitted, ii. 390;

mythe, iii. 12, 15 n.;

Leibnitz on, ii. 248 n.;

pre-existence of, necessary hypothesis for didactic idéal, iii. 52;

metempsychosis of ordinary men only, ii. 387, iv. 234;

mythe of departed, in Republic, 94;

state after emancipation from body, ii. 416;

yet may suffer punishment, inconsistency, ib.;

three constituent elements of, iii. 232 n.;

Galen, iv. 258;

are the three parts immortal, ii. 385, iv. 243;

no place for tender and æsthetic emotions in tripartite division of, 149 n.;

each part at once material and mental, 257;

supremacy of rational, to be cultivated, 251;

Demiurgus conjoins three souls and one body, 233, 243;

Demiurgus prepares for man’s construction, places a soul in each star, 233;

generated gods fabricate cranium as miniature of kosmos with rational soul rotating within, ib.;

mount cranium on a tall body, 236;

seat of, 235-7, 243-7, 259 n.;

Littré, 257 n.;

abdominal, function of liver, 245, 259;

seat of prophetic agency, 246;

thoracic, function of heart and lungs, 245, 259 n.;

of spleen, 246;

vision, sleep, dreams, 236;

Aristotle on relation of body to, iii. 389 n.;

Monboddo, iv. 387 n.;

see Body, Immortality, Mind, Reason.

SOUND, Zeno’s arguments, i. 96;

pleasures of, true, iii. 356.

SPACE, and time comprised in Parmenides’ ens, i. 19;

Zeno’s reductiones ad absurdum, 94;

contents of the idea of, 20 n.

SPARTA, unlettered community, iv. 278;

law forbids introduction of foreign instruction, ii. 35;

Hippias lectures at, 39;

mixed government, iv. 310;

kings eulogised, ii. 8;

customs of, iii. 24 n.;

peculiar to itself and Krete, iv. 280 n.;

blended with Persian in Cyropædia, i. 222;

influence on philosopher’s theories, iv. 181;

Xenophon’s idéal of character, 147, 148, 182;

Plato’s in Leges, 276, 280 n., 403;

basis of institutions too narrow, 282;

endurance of pain in discipline of, 285;

public training and mess, 279, 280 n., 285 n.;

no training for women, censured, 188;

infanticide, 203;

number of citizens, 327 n.;

drunkenness forbidden at, 286;

kryptia, Plato’s agronomi compared, 336.

SPECIFIC and generic terms, distinction unfamiliar in Plato’s time, ii. 13.

SPEECH, conducted according to fixed laws, iii. 286;

the thing spoken of suffers, 287 n.;

Psammetichus’ experiment, 289 n.;

and music illustrate coalescence of finite and infinite, 340-3.

SPENCER, HERBERT, abstract names, iii. 78 n.

SPENGEL, on Thrasymachus, iv. 7 n.;

Kratylus, iii. 309 n.

SPEUSIPPUS, borrowed from Pythagoreans, iii. 390 n.;

on pleasure, 386 n., 389 n.;

on the Demiurgus, iv. 255.

SPHERE, the earth a, early views, i. 25 n.;

Pythagorean music of the spheres, 14;

Sphærus of Empedokles, 39.

STALLBAUM, on Platonic canon, i. 307, 443 n.;

Erastæ, ii. 121;

Theagês, 100 n.;

Euthydêmus, 202;

Protagoras, 314, iv. 284 n.;

Theætêtus, iii. 158 n.;

Sophistês and Politikus, 196 n., 257 n.;

Kratylus, 303 n., 305 n., 310 n., 321, 323 n.;

Philêbus, 342 n., 343 n., 347 n., 356 n., 389 n., 398 n.;

Menexenus, 408, 409;

Republic iv. 106 n.;

Timæus, 219 n.;

Leges, 188 n., 272 n., 410 n., 431;

theory of Ideas, iii. 69 n.;

Sophists, ii. 209 n.;

Megarics, i. 132 n.

STARS, iv. 229.

STATE, Lewis on idéals, iv. 139 n.;

realisation of idéals, 190 n.;

three ends of political constructor, 328 n.;

influence of Spartan institutions, on theories, 181;

no evidence of Plato’s study of practical working of different institutions, 397;

Aristeides on, i. 243 n.;

citizens willing to be ruled, idéal of Plato and Xenophon, iv. 283 n.;

Platonic type of character is Athenian, Xenophontic is Spartan, 147, 148, 182;

its religious and ethical character primary, constitution and laws secondary, 284;

religion in connection with, 24, 160;

and education combined, 185;

Plato’s ideal, compared with Athens, 430;

the Spartan adopted in Leges, 276, 280 n., 403;

Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon or Aristotle, 183;

more anxious for good treatment of Demos, ib.;

in Aristotle the Demos adjuncts, not members, of state, 184;

model city practicable if philosophy and political power united, 47;

perpetual succession maintained of philosopher-rulers, 60;

those who have contemplated Ideas are reluctant to undertake active duties. 70;

as at present constituted, the just man stands aloof from, 90;

ideal, how to be realised, 78, 190 n.;

admitted only partially realisable, 327;

only an outline, 139;

a military bureaucracy, 183;

second, a compromise of oligarchical and democratical sentiment, 333, 337;

Aristotle objects to Plato’s ideal, it is two states, 185;

objection valid against his own ideal, 186 n.;

Plato fails from no training for Demos, 186;

Plato’s state impossible, in what sense true, 189;

from adverse established sentiments, 191;

genesis, common want, ii. 343, iii. 327, iv. 20, 111, 112 n., 133;

historical retrospect of society, 307-314;

analogy of individual and, 11, 21, 37, 79-84, 96;

Hobbes on, ib.;

parallelism exaggerated, 114, 121, 123;

its ὑπόθεσις, 328 n.;

basis of Spartan institutions too narrow, 282;

site, 320, 329, 336;

circular form, unwalled, 344;

influence of climate, 330 n.;

wisdom and courage in the guardians, 34;

justice and temperance in all classes, 35;

class of guardians, characteristics, 23;

divided into rulers and soldiers, 29;

same duties and training for women as men, 41, 46, 77, 171-4;

on principle that every citizen belongs to the city, 187;

maintained in Leges, and harmonises with ancient legends, 195;

contrast with Aristotle, 194;

συσσίτια, 32, 345, 359;

communism of guardians, ib., 140, 169;

necessary to city’s safety, 32, 34, 44, 140, 170-179;

peculiarity of Plato’s communism, 179;

Plato’s view of wealth, 199 n.;

no family ties, 41, 174, 178;

temporary marriages for guardians, 175-8;

Plato’s and modern sentiments, 192, 194;

influence of Aphroditê very small in Platonic, 197, 359;

citizens should be tested against pleasure, 285;

self-control tested by wine, 289;

healthy, has few wants, enlargement of city’s wants, 22;

from multiplied wants, war, ib.;

perfection of, each part performing its own function, 97;

one man can do only one thing well, 23, 33, 183, 361;

unity of end to be kept in view, 417;

end, happiness of entire state, 98, 139 n.;

and virtue of the citizens, 417;

three classes in, analogous to reason, energy, appetite, in individual, 39;

fiction as to origin of classes, 30;

four stages of degeneracy, 79-84;

proportions of happiness and misery in them, 83;

in healthy condition, possesses wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, 34;

laws about marriage, 328, 331, 341, 344;

Aristotle, 198-201;

Malthus’ law recognised by Plato and Aristotle, 202;

number of citizens, 178, 326, 328;

limited, Plato and Aristotle, 198-201;

Aristotle, 326 n.;

approximation in Mill, 199 n.;

rearing of children, 43, 44;

infanticide, ib., 177;

Aristotle, 202;

contrast of modern sentiment, 203;

citizens of Plato’s ideal, identified with ancient Athenians, 266;

division of citizens and land, twelve tribes, 329;

perpetuity of lots of land, 320, 360;

Aristotle, 326 n.;

succession, 328;

orphans, guardians, 404, 406;

limited inequality tolerated as to movable property, 330;

no private possession of gold or silver, no loans or interest, 331;

distribution of annual produce, 361;

state importation of necessary articles, ib.;

regulations for retailers, 21, 361, 401;

admission of Metics, 362, i. 238;

of strangers, and foreign travel of citizens, iv. 414;

slavery, 342;

Aristotle differs, 344 n.;

direct taxation, according to wealth, 331;

four classes, property classification for magistracies and votes, ib.;

thirty-seven nomophylakes, 332;

military commanders and council, ib.;

monthly military muster of whole population, 358;

electoral scheme, 333;

the council, and other magistrates, 335;

Nocturnal Council to comprehend and carry out the end, 418, 425, 429;

and enforce orthodox creed, 419;

most important magistrate, minister of education, 338;

defence of territory, rural police, 335;

Spartan kryptia compared, 336;

Xenophon’s ideal of an active citizen, i. 214;

he admires active commerce and variety of pursuits, 236;

encouragement of metics, 238;

training of citizens, 226;

formation of treasury funds, 238;

distribution among citizens, three oboli each, daily, 239;

its purpose and principle, 240, 241 n.;

see Government, Political Art, &c.

STATESMEN, ignorant of the true, the ideal, ii. 89;

incompetent to teach. 100, 357, 360, 369;

the philosopher the fully qualified practitioner, 114, 116, 118;

disparagement of half-philosophers, half-politicians, 224;

dislike of Sokrates and Sophists, 256;

their right opinion, from inspiration, 242;

defects of best Athenian, 360;

considered by Sokrates as spiritual teachers and trainers, 362;

Plato’s idéal, 363;

relation of philosopher to practical, iii. 179, 183, 273;

definition of, 263.

STEERSMAN, simile of, iv. 53.

STEINHART, on Platonic canon, rejects several, i. 309;

τὸ ἐξαίφνης, iii. 103 n.;

Parmenidês, 109 n., 245 n.;

Theætêtus, 167 n.;

Sophistês, 245 n.;

Kratylus, 307 n.;

Menexenus, 412 n.

STEINTHAL, no objective absolute, iii. 296 n.

STEWART, DUGALD, on the beautiful, ii. 50 n.;

relativity of knowledge, iii. 156 n.;

Berkeley, iv. 243 n.

STILPON, nominalism of, i. 167;

only identical predication possible, 166, 168;

of Megara, 148.

STOICS, influenced by Herakleitus, i. 27, 34 n.;

developed Antisthenes’ doctrines, 198;

practical life preferable, 181 n.;

πάντα αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα πράττειν, iv. 106 n.;

all-sufficiency of virtue, germ of doctrine in Republic, 102;

fate, i. 143 n.;

view of Dialectic, 371 n.;

style of their works, 406;

doctrine of one cosmical soul, ii. 248 n.;

notion of time, iii. 101 n.;

natural rectitude of signification of names, 286 n.;

etymologies, 308 n.;

sophisms of, i. 128 n., 138;

minute reasons of, 130 n.;

Cicero on, 157.

STRABO, value of poets, iv. 152 n.

STRATON, theory of sensation, i. 63 n., iii. 166 n.;

Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, ii. 250 n.

STRÜMPELL, on Parmenidês, iii. 71 n., 75 n.

SUBJECT, independent object and, do not explain facts of consciousness, iii. 131;

perpetually implicated with object, 118, 122 n., 123, 128;

in regard to intelligible world, proved from Plato, 121, 125;

shown more easily than in reference to sense, 122;

Hobbes on, 117 n.;

relations are nothing in the object without a comparing subject, 127;

see Relativity.

SUBJECTIVE, of Xenophanes, i. 18;

and objective views of ethics, Sokrates distinguished, 451;

unanimity coincident with objective dissent, ib.;

Plato’s reference to objective and, iii. 134.

SUBJECTIVISM, an objection to Homo Mensura, iii. 151.

SUCKOW, on Menexenus, iii. 412 n.;

Sophistês and Politikus, 185 n.;

Leges, iv. 431, 432.

SUICIDE, Hegesias, the death-persuader, i. 202;

Cynics, and Indian Gymnosophists, 161 n.

Συμφέρον, derivation, iii. 301 n.

Συνώνυμα and ὁμώνυμα first distinguished by Aristotle, iii. 94 n.;

συνωνύμως, ii. 194.

SUSEMIHL, on Platonic canon, coincides with Hermann, i. 310;

Timæus, iv. 218 n.

SYDENHAM, on Aristippus and Eudoxus, i. 202 n.;

seat of happiness, iii. 372 n.;

Philêbus, 376 n.

SYLLOGISTIC and Inductive Dialectic, ii. 27.

SYMPOSION, of Xenophon, i. 152;

date, iii. 26 n.;

compared with Plato’s, 22;

of Epikurus, ib. n.

Symposion, the, date, i. 307, 309, 311, 312, 324, iii. 26 n.;

purpose, ii. 382 n., iii. 8;

antithesis and complement of Phædon, 22;

contains much transcendental assertion, 56;

censured for erotic character, 3 n.;

Idea of Beauty exclusively presented in, 18;

Eros, views of interlocutors, 9;

a Dæmon intermediate between gods and men, ib.;

but in Phædrus a powerful god, ib. n., 11 n.;

amends empire of Necessity, iv. 222 n.;

discourse of Sokrates, iii. 11;

analogy of Eros to philosophy, 10, 11;

the stimulus to mental procreation, 4, 6;

knowledge, by evolution of indwelling conceptions, 17;

exaltation of Eros in a few, love of beauty in genere, 7;

common desire for immortality, 6;

attained through mental procreation, beauty the stimulus, ib.;

only metaphorical immortality recognised in, 17;

Sokrates’ personal appearance and peculiar character, 19;

proof against temptation, 20, iv. 287;

concluding scene, iii. 19;

compared with Xenophon, 22;

Phædon, ii. 382, iii. 17-8, 22;

Phædrus, 11 n., 11, 15, 16-8;

Philêbus, 370 n., 399;

reading in p. 201D, μαντικῆς, 8 n.

SYRACUSE, the Athenian expedition against, iii. 406.

SYSSITIA, iv. 280 n., 285 n., 335, 345.

T.

TACITUS, iv. 408 n., i. 245 n.

TASTE, Empedokles, i. 46;

Demokritus, 78.

TAXATION, direct, according to wealth, iv. 331.

TEACHING, denied in Menon, ii. 254 n.;

διδαχὴ and πειθώ, distinct, ib., iii. 172 n.;

knowledge to be elicited out of untutored mind, how far correct, ii. 249;

dialectician alone can teach, iii. 37;

idéal unrealisable, 51;

books (q. v.) and lectures of little use, 34;

proper use of dialectic and rhetoric, 40;

of rhetoricians, practical value of, 45;

Sokrates’ and Aristotle’s views, 53 n.;

exercises for students, 79, 80 n., 90 n.;

parents’ jealousy towards influential teachers, ii. 265 n.

Τεχνίτης, ii. 272 n.

TELEOLOGY, physiology of Timæus subordinated to ethical, iv. 257;

see Ends.

TEMPERANCE, σωφροσύνη, ii. 153 n.;

as treated by Plato and Aristotle, 170;

is self-knowledge, 155;

and with justice the condition of happiness and freedom, 12;

the condition of virtue and happiness, 358;

and intelligence identical, having same contrary, 279;

a kind of sedateness, objections, 154;

a variety of feeling of shame, refuted, ib.;

doing one’s own business, refuted, 155;

as cognition of cognition and of non-cognition, of no avail for our end, happiness, 159, 160;

not the science of good and evil, and of little service, 161;

undiscovered, but a good, 162;

Charmidês, difficulties unnoticed in Politikus, iii. 282;

in state, iv. 34-5;

distinction effaced between justice and, 135;

relation to rest of virtue, 425.

TENNEMANN, i. 302.

THALES, philosophy, i. 4;

doctrine of eclipses, 6 n.;

foretold eclipse, 4 n.;

misrepresented by Cicero, ib.

Θαρράλεος, ii. 145 n.

Theætêtus, date, i. 307-10, 313, 315, 324, 325 n., ii. 228 n., iii. 111 n.;

purpose, 167 n., 176;

value, 177;

great advance in analytical psychology, 164;

negative result, 176;

difficulties not solved in any other dialogue, 180;

sophisms in, 158 n.;

like Megarics, i. 134 n.;

method contrasted with Philêbus, iii. 335 n.;

scenery and personages, 110;

Sokrates’ mental obstetric, 112;

what is knowledge, 111;

sensible perception, ib., 113, 154, 256;

doctrine erroneously identified with Homo Mensura, 113, 118, 120 n., 122, 162 n.;

Herakleitean flux, 114, 115, 126, 128;

Empedokles’ doctrine, 114, 115;

Plato’s exposition confused, 114;

relativity of sensible facts, 126, 154;

divergences of men, from mental and associative difference, 155;

statesman and philosopher contrasted, 183;

the genuine ruler a shepherd, iv. 10;

relativity twofold, to comparing subject, and to another object, besides the one directly described, iii. 127;

relations are nothing in the object without a comparing subject, ib.;

no absolute ens, 129;

arguments from dreams, &c., answered, 130;

Plato’s reference to subjective and objective, 134;

Homo Mensura, true meaning, 137, 164 n.;

its counter-proposition, 148;

Plato’s arguments against Homo Mensura, 135;

he ignores the proper qualification, 137;

the doctrine equalises all animals, 135, 292;

not true in the sense meant, 141;

the wise man alone a measure, 136;

reply, 143;

special knowledge required, where future consequences involved, 136;

but Relativity does not imply that every man believes himself to be infallible, 145;

it annuls dialectic — not true, 146;

sensible perception does not include memory, 157;

argument from analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time, ib.;

the mind sees not with but through the eyes, 159;

the mind makes several judgments by itself, 160;

knowledge lies in the mind’s comparisons respecting sensible perceptions, 161;

difference from modern views, 162;

cognition is true opinion — objections, 168, 184 n.;

are false opinions possible, 169, 181 n.;

waxen memorial tablet in the mind, 169;

distinction of possessing, and having actually in hand, knowledge, 170;

simile of pigeon-cage, 171;

false opinion impossible or a man may know what he does not know, 170;

the confusions of cognitions and non-cognitions, refuted, 171;

for rhetors communicate true opinion, not knowledge, 172;

knowledge is true opinion plus rational explanation, 173;

analogy of elements and compounds, ib.;

rejected, 175;

compared with Phædrus, 18;

Symposion, ib.;

Sophistês, 181 n., 187, 227, 242, 258, 332;

Politikus, 185 n., 187, 256;

Kratylus, 332;

Philêbus, 335 n.

Theagês, authenticity, i. 306, 309, 319, ii. 98, 100 n., 107;

prolixity, 100 n.;

analogy with Lachês, 104;

its peculiarity, the dæmon, ib.;

explains eccentricity of Sokrates, 105;

Theagês desires a teacher of wisdom, 99;

incompetence of best statesmen for teaching, 100;

Sokrates asked to teach — declares inability, 101;

excuse, 105;

sometimes useful — his experience of his dæmon, 102;

Theagês anxious to be Sokrates’ companion, 103.

THEBANS, iii. 24 n.

THEMISTIUS, i. 388 n.

THEODORUS, i. 202.

THEOLOGY, not a progressive science, ii. 428;

primitive, contrasted by Aristotle with “human wisdom,” i. 3 n.;

see God, Religion.

THEOPHRASTUS, friend of Ptolemy Soter, i. 279;

banished from Athens, ib. n.;

change in Peripatetic school after death of, 272;

physiology, 46 n.;

combated Demokritus’ theory of vision, 78 n.;

criticises Demokritean division of qualities, 80 n.;

astronomy, 257 n.;

Plato’s doctrine of earth’s position, iv. 424 n.;

sophism, Mentiens, i. 134 n.;

fate, 143 n.

THEOPOMPUS, view of dialectic, i. 450;

qualities non-existent without the mind, iii. 74 n.;

on profession of Sophist, i. 212 n.;

authorship of Plato’s dialogues, 112 n., 115.

THEORY, difference between precepts and, iv. 131.

THOMSON, on Parmenidês, iii. 84 n.

THONISSEN, iv. 380 n.

THRACIANS, iv. 38.

THRASYLLUS, on Platonic canon, i. 265;

follows Aristophanes’ classification, 295, 299;

not an internal sentiment, 298;

trustworthiness, 299;

acknowledged till 16th century, 301;

more trustworthy than moderns, 335;

classifies in Tetralogies works of Plato and Demokritus, 273 n.;

not the order established by Plato, 335 n.;

classification of Demokritus, 295 n.;

Plato’s works — dramatic, philosophical, 289;

his principle, 294 n.;

incongruity, 294;

of Search, of Exposition defective but useful, 361;

erroneously applied, 364;

coincides with Aristotle’s two methods, Dialectic, Demonstrative, 362;

sub-classes recognised, 366;

the scheme, when principles correctly applied, 365;

did not doubt Hipparchus, 297 n.;

nor Erastæ, ii. 121;

Kleitophon in Republic tetralogy, iii. 419.

THRASYMACHUS, iii. 419, iv. 7.

THUCYDIDES, pupil of Sokrates, ii. 102;

probably never read by Plato, iii. 411 n.;

the gods’ jealousy, iv. 165 n.;

speeches of Perikles, ii. 373 n., 373, iv. 148 n.;

Melian dialogue, ii. 341 n., i. 180 n.

Θυμός, derivation, iii. 301 n.

THUROT, on Sophists, i. 389 n.

TIEDEMANN, i. 132 n.

Timæus, date, i. 307, 309, 311-3, 315, 325, iii. 368 n.;

sequel to Republic, iv. 215;

is earliest physical theory extant in its author’s words, 216;

how much mythical, 255 n.;

relation to old Greek cosmogonies, i. 87, iv. 255 n.;

coincidence with Orpheus, ib.;

adopted by Alexandrine Jews as a parallel to Mosaic Genesis, 256;

physiology subordinated to ethical teleology, 257;

Plato’s theory, acknowledged to be merely an εἰκὼς λόγος, 217;

contrast with Sokrates, Isokrates, Xenophon, ib.;

subject and persons, 215;

position and character of Pythagorean Timæus, 216;

fundamental distinction of ens and fientia, 219;

no knowledge of kosmos obtainable, 220;

Demiurgus, Ideas, and Chaos postulated, ib., iii. 121;

Demiurgus, how conceived by other philosophers of same century, iv. 254;

kosmos a living being and a god, 220, 223;

Time began with, 227;

Demiurgus produces kosmos by persuading Necessity, 220, 238;

process of demiurgic construction, iii. 409 n., iv. 223;

copy of the Αὐτόζωον, 223, 227, 235 n., 263;

body, form, and rotation of kosmos, 225, 229, 237, 252;

change of view in Epinomis, 424 n.;

position and elements of soul of kosmos, 225;

affinity to human, iii. 366 n.;

four elements not primitive, iv. 238;

varieties of each element, 242;

forms of the elements, 239;

Ideas and Materia Prima, iii. 397 n., iv. 239;

primordial chaos, 240;

geometrical theory of the elements, ib.;

borrowed from Pythagoreans, i. 349 n.;

Aristotle on, iv. 241 n.;

primary and visible gods, 229;

secondary and generated gods, 230;

Plato’s acquiescence in tradition, 230-3, 241 n.;

address of Demiurgus to generated gods, 233;

preparations for man’s construction, a soul placed in each star, 235;

construction of man, 243;

Demiurgus conjoins three souls and one body, 233;

generated gods fabricate cranium as miniature of kosmos, with rational soul rotating within, 235;

mount cranium on a tall body, 236;

man the cause of evil, 234;

inconsistency, ib. n.;

organs of sense, 236;

soul tripartite, compared with Phædon, ii. 384;

the gentle, tender, and æsthetical emotions omitted, iv. 149 n.;

each part at once material and mental, 257;

seat of, 259 n.;

thoracic, function of heart and lungs, 245, 259 n.;

abdominal, function of liver, 245, 259;

seat of prophetic agency, 246;

function of spleen, ib.;

object of length of intestinal canal, 247;

bone, flesh, marrow, nails, mouth, teeth, 247;

vision, sleep, dreams, 237;

advantages of sight and hearing, ib.;

mortal soul of plants, 248;

plants for man’s nutrition, ib.;

general survey of diseases, 249;

Plato compared with Aristotle and Hippokrates, 260;

mental diseases arise from body, 250;

no man voluntarily wicked, 249;

preservative and healing agencies, 260;

treatment of mind by itself, 251;

rotations of kosmos to be studied, 252;

contrast of Plato’s admiration, with degenerate realities, 262, 264;

genesis of women and inferior animals from degenerate man, 252;

degeneracy originally intended, 263;

poetical close, 264;

compared with Protagoras, ii. 268 n.;

Phædon, 383, 407 n., 411, 412, 422, iv. 239 n.;

Phædrus, ib.;

Theætêtus, iii. 163;

Philêbus, 397 n.;

Republic, iv. 38 n., 253 n.;

Leges, 276, 389 n.;

Epinomis, 424 n.

TIME, contents of the idea of, i. 20 n.;

and space comprised in Parmenides’ ens, 19;

Herakleitus’ doctrine, iv. 228 n.;

Plato’s imagination of momentary stoppages in, iii. 100, 102;

Aristotle, 103;

began with the kosmos, iv. 227;

difficulties of Diodôrus Kronus, i. 145;

Stoical belief, iii. 101 n.;

Harris, i. 146 n.;

calendar of ancients, iv. 325 n.

TIMOCRACY, iv. 79.

TRACY, DESTUTT, Homo Mensura, iii. 292 n.;

individualism, 139 n.;

origin of language, 328 n.

TRADE, see Commerce.

TRAGEDY, mixed pleasure and pain excited by, iii. 355 n.;

Plato’s aversion to Athenian, iv. 316, 350;

peculiar to himself, 317;

Aristotle differs, ib. n.

TRENDELENBURG, on Platonic canon, i. 345 n.;

Philêbus, iii. 398 n.;

relativity of knowledge, 124 n.

TRENT, Council of, i. 390 n.

TRUTH, and Good and Real, coalesce in Plato’s mind, ii. 88, iii. 391;

obtainable by reason only, Demokritus’ doctrine, i. 72;

the search after, the business of life to Sokrates and Plato, 396;

per se interesting, 403;

modern search goes on silently, 369;

philosophy is reasoned, vii-ix;

its criterion, ii. 247;

resides in universals, 411, 412, iv. 3 n.;

necessary, iii. 253 n.;

all persuasion founded on a knowledge of, 28;

generating cause of error, 33;

dialectic the standard for classifying sciences as more or less true, 383;

classification of true and false, how applied to cognitions, 394;

its valuable principles, 395;

is falsehood possible? 199;

is theoretically possible, and its production may be object of such a profession as Sophists, 214;

lie for useful end, justifiable, ii. 347 n., iv. 3 n.;

Aristotle on, iii. 386 n.;

see Mythe.

TURGOT, on etymology, iii. 303 n.;

Existence, 135 n.;

hopelessness of defining common and vague terms, ii. 186 n.

TYNDALL, PROF., i. 373 n.

TYPE gives natural groups, definition classes, ii. 48, 193 n.

U.

UEBERWEG, on Platonic canon, attempts reconcilement of Schleiermacher and Hermann, i. 313;

the Dialogues, 401 n.;

Theætêtus, iii. 167 n.;

Sophistês, 186 n., 253, 369 n.;

Politikus, 186 n.;

Philêbus, 368 n.;

Timæus, ib., iv. 255 n.;

Menexenus, iii. 412 n.;

Ideas, iv. 239 n.

UNIVERSALS, debates about meaning, iii. 76-7;

different views of Aristotle and Plato, 76;

definition of, the object of the Sokratic dialectic, i. 452;

Sokrates sought the common characteristic, Plato found it in his Idea, 454;

process of forming, ii. 27;

truth resides in, 411-2, iv. 3 n.;

amidst particulars, iii. 257;

different dialogues compared, ib.;

how is generic unity distributed among species and individuals, 339;

natural coalescence of finite and infinite, 340;

illustration from speech and music, 342;

explanation insufficient, 343;

see Ideas, One.

UPTON, sophism Κυριεύων, i. 141 n.

USEFUL, the Good, ii. 30;

the Just or Good — general but not constant explanation in Plato, 38;

the lawful is the, 36;

not identical with the beautiful, 44, 50 n.

UTILITARIANISM, its standard, ii. 310 n.;

doctrine of Sokrates, 349, 354 n.;

theory in Protagoras, 308;

Republic, iv. 3 n., 12, 14, 104.

V.

VACHEROT, i. 376 n.

VACUUM, theory of Demokritus, i. 67;

Pythagorean different from Plato’s doctrine, iv. 225 n.

VARRO, etymologies, iii. 311 n.

VAUGHAN, DR., iv. 380 n.

VERON, M., Relativity, iii. 144 n.

VIRGIL, general doctrine of metempsychosis in, ii. 425 n.

VIRTUE, identified with knowledge by Sokrates, ii. 67 n., 239, 240, 321;

of what, unsolved, 244;

Sokrates and Plato dwell too exclusively on intellectual conditions, 67-8, 83;

its one sufficient condition, perfect state of the intelligence, 149;

is it teachable, 232, 239, 240, 266, 275, iii. 330 n.;

Xenophon on, i. 230;

plurality of virtues, ii. 233;

the highest, teachable, but all existing virtue is from inspiration, 242;

problem unsolved, ib.;

taught by citizens, 269, 272;

quantity acquired depends on individual aptitude, ib.;

analogy of learning the vernacular, 273;

is it in divisible, or of parts, homogeneous or heterogeneous, 277;

no man does evil voluntarily, 292, iv. 249, 365-7;

a right comparison of pleasure and pain, ii. 293, 305;

temperance the condition of, 358;

natural dissidence of the gentle and the energetic, iii. 272;

excess of the energetic entail death or banishment, of the gentle, slavery, 273;

Sokrates’ power in awakening ardour for, 415;

but he does not explain what it is, ib.;

unsatisfactory answers of Sokrates and his friends, 416;

quadruple distribution in city, iv. 34;

Platonic conception is self-regarding, 104;

motives to it arise from internal happiness of the just, 105;

view substantially maintained since, ib.;

four cardinal virtues assumed as constituting all virtue where each resides, 134;

as an exhaustive classification, 135, 417;

difference in other dialogues, 137;

the four, source of all other goods, 428;

the only common property of, 425;

and of vice, 426;

of the citizens, the end of the state, 417;

Xenophon on motive to practice of, 101 n., 135 n.;

Sokrates on its fruits, i. 415;

all-sufficiency of, germ in Republic of Stoical doctrine, iv. 102;

see Courage, Holiness, Justice, Temperance, Wisdom.

VISION, doctrine of Empedokles, i. 45;

caused by images from objects, Demokritus, 78;

Plato’s conception of the act of, iii. 129 n., 159;

Plato’s theory, iv. 236;

Aristotle on, 237 n.;

ancient theories of, ib.;

principal advantages of, 237.

VOLTAIRE, iv. 233, i. 168 n.

W.

WAR, from city’s increased wants, iv. 22;

class of soldiers, characteristics, 23;

both sexes to go together to battle, 46;

against Greek enemies to be carried on mildly, 47;

Spartan institutions adapted to, 282;

military commanders and council, 332;

military training of youths, 349;

Sokrates on qualities for, i. 133 n.

WATER, the Chaos of Hesiod, i. 4 n.;

principle of Thales, 4;

originally covered the earth, according to Xenophanes, &c., 18;

Empedokles, 38;

discovery of the composition of, ii. 163 n.

WATT, discovery of composition of water, ii. 163 n.

WEALTH, Plato’s view of, iv. 199 n.

WEDGWOOD, H., iii. 326 n.

WEISSE, on Timæus, iv. 256 n.

WESTERMANN, on Menexenus, iii. 408 n.

WHATELY, ABP., on Fallacies, ii. 217.

WHEWELL, DR., ii. 48, 193 n.

WHOLES, abstract and concrete, ii. 52, 53;

generic and analogical, 48, 193 n., iii. 365.

WILSON, DR. GEO., ii. 163 n.

WINCKELMANN, i. 132 n.

WISDOM, no positive knowledge of, i. 414, 416;

in state, iv. 34-5;

what it is, 421, 423;

see Knowledge.

WISE, term applied when men know when and how far to use their accomplishments, ii. 15.

WISE MAN, the Ideal, see Expert.

WOMEN, position of Greek, iii. 1;

genesis from degenerate man, iv. 252;

inferiority to men, 234, 252;

best, equal by nature to second-best men, 42, 171-4;

not superior in weaving and cookery, 172 n.;

temporary marriages, 43, 175-8;

object, 198;

Plato’s and modern sentiments, 192, 194 n.;

influence of Aphroditê very small in Platonic state, 197;

both sexes to go together to battle, 46;

same duties and training for women as men, 41, 46;

same duties and training as men, 77;

on principle that every citizen belongs to the city, 187;

maintained in Leges, and harmonises with ancient legends, 196;

contrast with Aristotle, 195.

WORDSWORTH, ii. 250 n.

WRITING, see Books.

WYTTENBACH, on meaning of Atheist, iv. 382 n.;

Plato’s immortality of the soul, ii. 423 n.

X.

XANTHIPPÊ, iii. 23 n.

XANTHUS, i. 19 n.

XENOKRATES, iv. 255.

XENOPHANES, life, i. 16;

doctrines, ib.;

unsatisfactory, 18;

held Non-Ens inadmissible, ib.;

the relative and absolute, 19;

infers original aqueous state of earth from prints of shells and fishes, ib.;

censured by Herakleitus, 26;

scepticism, 18;

popular mythology censured, 16;

religious element in, ib., 18;

the Universe God, 119 n.

XENOPHON, date of, i. 207;

Sokratic element an accessory in, 206;

essentially a man of action, ib.;

personal history, 207-12, 215, 220;

alleged enmity between Plato and, iii. 22 n., iv. 146 n., 312 n.;

antipathy to Aristippus, i. 182 n.;

enlarges the influence claimed by Sokrates, 418;

Sokrates of Plato and, 178, 199;

Sokrates on the Holy, different from Platonic Sokrates, 454;

and Plato compared, on Sokrates’ reply to Melêtus, 456, ii. 420 n.;

Sokrates’ character one-sided, iii. 423;

discussion of law, ii. 86;

the ideal the only real, 88 n.;

Sokrates on friendship, 186;

natural causes of friendship, 341 n.;

view of Eros, iii. 25;

παιδεραστία, 20 n.;

Sokrates’ identification of Good with pleasure, ii. 305;

Sokrates’ doctrine of good, iii. 365;

motive to practice of virtue, iv. 99, 101 n., 135 n.;

immortality of soul, ii. 420 n.;

on filial ingratitude, iv. 399 n.;

Sokrates on qualities for war, i. 133 n.;

Sokrates’ view of rhetoric, ii. 371 n.;

relation of mind to kosmos, iii. 368;

the gods’ jealousy, iv. 165 n.;

change in old age, Plato compared, i. 244;

contrasted with Plato in Timæus, iv. 219;

works, i. 213;

analogy with Alkibiadês I. and II. , ii. 21;

Sokrates’ order of problems not observed, i. 230;

Symposion of, 152;

date, iii. 26 n.;

compared with Plato’s, 22;

Memorabilia compared with Alkibiadês II. , ii. 29;

debate of Sokrates and Hippias, 34, 37, 49, 66;

Œkonomikus, ideal of an active citizen, i. 214;

Hieron, contents, 216-20;

Sokrates not introduced in Hieron and Cyropædia, 216;

Hieron compared with Gorgias, 221;

why Syracusan despot taken for subject, 220-2;

interior life of despot, 218, 220;

Sokratic ideal of government differently worked out by Plato, and, iii. 273;

idéal, citizens willing to be ruled, iv. 283 n., i. 215, 218, 225;

love of subjects obtainable by good government, 220;

Cyropædia, a romance, blending Persian and Spartan customs, 222;

compared with Leges, iv. 319;

contents, i. 223-35;

his experience of younger Cyrus, 222;

education of Cyrus the Great, 223;

scientific ruler best, 224;

Cyropædia does not solve the problem, 225;

Cyrus, of heroic genius, ib.;

biography, 232;

generous and amiable qualities, 234;

scheme of government, a wisely arranged Oriental despotism, ib.;

position of the Demos, iv. 183;

ideal state wants unity, 186 n.;

training of citizens, i. 226;

Plato’s training of guardians compared, iv. 141-7;

idéal of character is Spartan, Plato’s is Athenian, 147, 151, 182, 276, 280 n., 403;

Persian training, 278 n.;

details of education, i. 227;

its good effects, 228;

tuition in justice, 229;

definition of justice unsatisfactory, 231;

Sokrates on justice, iv. 3 n.;

music omitted in education, 305, i. 229;

theoretical and practical geometry, iii. 395;

relation of sexes, iv. 194 n.;

division of labour, 139 n.;

inexperienced in finance and commerce, i. 236;

admires active commerce and variety of pursuits, ib.;

formation of treasury funds, 238;

encouragement of Metics, ib.;

distribution among citizens, three oboli each, daily, 239;

its purpose and principle, 240, 241 n.;

visionary anticipations, 241;

financial scheme, Boeckh on, 242 n.;

exhortation to peace, 243.

XERXES, iv. 7.

Y.

YXEM, on Kleitophon, iii. 419 n.;

Hipparchus, ii. 97;

Erastæ, 121.

Z.

ZALEUKUS, laws of, iv. 323 n.

ZELLER, on Plato, iii. 245 n.;

Parmenidês, 84 n.;

Leges, i. 338 n., iv. 274 n., 325 n., 389 n., 431-3;

Ideas, i. 120 n.;

Eukleides, 127 n.;

Megarics, 131 n.;

Sophists, 389 n.

ZENO of Elea, i. 93;

contrasted with earlier philosophers, 105;

modern critics on, 101;

defended Parmenidean doctrine, 93, 98, iii. 8;

the relative alone knowable, i. 98;

two worlds, impugned by Sokrates, iii. 59;

arguments in regard to space, i. 95;

motion, 97;

not denied as a phenomenal and relative fact, 102;

Sorites, 135 n.;

reductiones ad absurdum, 94, 121 n.;

not contradictions of data generalised from experience, 100;

no systematic theory of scepticism, iii. 93;

dialectic, 107;

purpose and result, i. 98;

carried out by Sokrates, 371;

compared with Platonic Parmenidês, 100.

ZENO the Stoic, i. 160;

attracted to Athens by perusal of Apology, 418;

eclectic, 174;

communism of wives, 189 n.

ZENODOTUS, Alexandrine librarian, i. 274 n.

ZEUS conferred social art on men, ii. 268.

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Transcriber’s Note

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Table of Contents

PLATO, AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

PLATO,

and the

OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

GEORGE GROTE,

author of the ‘history of greece’.

A NEW EDITION.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

Vol. IV.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1888.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXV. PLATONIC REPUBLIC — ABSTRACT.

CHAPTER XXXVI. REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON ITS MAIN THESIS.

CHAPTER XXXVII. REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON THE PLATONIC COMMONWEALTH.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. TIMÆUS AND KRITIAS.

KRITIAS.

CHAPTER XXXIX. LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

EPINOMIS.

APPENDIX.

GENERAL INDEX.

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G.

H.

I.

J.

K.

L.

M.

N.

O.

P.

Q.

R.

S.

T.

U.

V.

W.

X.

Y.

Z.

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Transcriber’s Note

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