The Republic

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Title: The Republic

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Release date: October 1, 1998 [eBook #1497]
Most recently updated: March 31, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497

Credits: Sue Asscher and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REPUBLIC ***

THE REPUBLIC

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Note: See also “The Republic” by Plato, Jowett, eBook #150

Contents

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
THE REPUBLIC.
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.
BOOK I.
BOOK II.
BOOK III.
BOOK IV.
BOOK V.
BOOK VI.
BOOK VII.
BOOK VIII.
BOOK IX.
BOOK X.

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of
the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer
approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;
the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of
the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other
Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same
perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or
contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not
of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or
a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in
any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and
speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is
the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here
philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI,
VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks,
like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of
knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the bare
outline or form from the substance of truth; and both of them had to be
content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He
was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in
him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future
knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which
have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based
upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition,
the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the
distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,
between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the
division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible
elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
unnecessary—these and other great forms of thought are all of them to
be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato.
The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on
philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and
things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.;
Cratyl. 435, 436 ff), although he has not always avoided the confusion
of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up truth
in logical formulae,—logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the
science which he imagines to ‘contemplate all truth and all existence’
is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to
have discovered (Soph. Elenchi, 33. 18).

Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a
still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of
Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of
the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in
importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as
a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth
century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the
wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be
founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood
in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the poems
of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. Tim. 25 C),
intended to represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge
from the noble commencement of the Timaeus, from the fragment of the
Critias itself, and from the third book of the Laws, in what manner
Plato would have treated this high argument. We can only guess why the
great design was abandoned; perhaps because Plato became sensible of
some incongruity in a fictitious history, or because he had lost his
interest in it, or because advancing years forbade the completion of
it; and we may please ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary
narrative ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself
sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws,
iii. 698 ff.), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis,
perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus (v. 78) where he
contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire—‘How brave a thing is
freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every
other state of Hellas in greatness!’ or, more probably, attributing the
victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo
and Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).

Again, Plato may be regarded as the ‘captain’ (‘arhchegoz’) or leader
of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the
original of Cicero’s De Republica, of St. Augustine’s City of God, of
the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary
States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which
Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
Politics has been little recognised, and the recognition is the more
necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle.
In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced, not only in
the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers
like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a
truth higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been
enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato
has had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first
treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,
Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like
Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is
profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church
he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of
Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated
at second-hand’ (Symp. 215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of
men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the
father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many
of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the
unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes,
have been anticipated in a dream by him.

The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of
which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old
man—then discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and
Polemarchus—then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by
Socrates—reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and
having become invisible in the individual reappears at length in the
ideal State which is constructed by Socrates. The first care of the
rulers is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after the old
Hellenic model, providing only for an improved religion and morality,
and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry,
and greater harmony of the individual and the State. We are thus led on
to the conception of a higher State, in which ‘no man calls anything
his own,’ and in which there is neither ‘marrying nor giving in
marriage,’ and ‘kings are philosophers’ and ‘philosophers are kings;’
and there is another and higher education, intellectual as well as
moral and religious, of science as well as of art, and not of youth
only but of the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in
this world and quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal succeeds the
government of the soldier and the lover of honour, this again declining
into democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular
order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When ‘the wheel
has come full circle’ we do not begin again with a new period of human
life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and there we end.
The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of
the Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is
discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and Homer,
as well as the dramatic poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is
sent into banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is
supplemented by the revelation of a future life.

The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis
in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. p 1.), is probably later than the age
of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number;—(1) Book I and the
first half of Book II down to the paragraph beginning, ‘I had always
admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus,’ which is introductory;
the first book containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical
notions of justice, and concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues,
without arriving at any definite result. To this is appended a
restatement of the nature of justice according to common opinion, and
an answer is demanded to the question—What is justice, stripped of
appearances? The second division (2) includes the remainder of the
second and the whole of the third and fourth books, which are mainly
occupied with the construction of the first State and the first
education. The third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject
of enquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles of
communism and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea
of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the
eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the
individuals who correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the
nature of pleasure and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in
the individual man. The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole,
in which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally determined,
and the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been
assured, is crowned by the vision of another.

Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first
(Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally
in accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in
the second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an
ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the
perversions. These two points of view are really opposed, and the
opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like
the Phaedrus (see Introduction to Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole; the
higher light of philosophy breaks through the regularity of the
Hellenic temple, which at last fades away into the heavens. Whether
this imperfection of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan;
or from the imperfect reconcilement in the writer’s own mind of the
struggling elements of thought which are now first brought together by
him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at different
times—are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the
Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct
answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication,
and an author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a
work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no
absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a
time, or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would
be more likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing.
In all attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic
writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single
Dialogue being composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must
be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws,
more than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the seeming
discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the discordant
elements which the philosopher has attempted to unite in a single
whole, perhaps without being himself able to recognise the
inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a judgment of after
ages which few great writers have ever been able to anticipate for
themselves. They do not perceive the want of connexion in their own
writings, or the gaps in their systems which are visible enough to
those who come after them. In the beginnings of literature and
philosophy, amid the first efforts of thought and language, more
inconsistencies occur than now, when the paths of speculation are well
worn and the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency, too,
is the growth of time; and some of the greatest creations of the human
mind have been wanting in unity. Tried by this test, several of the
Platonic Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be
defective, but the deficiency is no proof that they were composed at
different times or by different hands. And the supposition that the
Republic was written uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is in
some degree confirmed by the numerous references from one part of the
work to another.

The second title, ‘Concerning Justice,’ is not the one by which the
Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and,
like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may therefore
be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked
whether the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the
construction of the State is the principal argument of the work. The
answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same
truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State is the
visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society.
The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of
the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In
Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the
idea. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is
within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; ‘the house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ is reduced to the
proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image,
justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the
whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed, the
conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or
different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the
individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and
punishments in another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which
common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is
based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is
reflected both in the institutions of states and in motions of the
heavenly bodies (cp. Tim. 47). The Timaeus, which takes up the
political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly
occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet contains
many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over the State,
over nature, and over man.

Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and
modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether
of nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient writings,
and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element
which was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows
under the author’s hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of
writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he
begins. The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the
whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most
general. Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary
explanations of the argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have
found the true argument ‘in the representation of human life in a State
perfected by justice, and governed according to the idea of good.’
There may be some use in such general descriptions, but they can hardly
be said to express the design of the writer. The truth is, that we may
as well speak of many designs as of one; nor need anything be excluded
from the plan of a great work to which the mind is naturally led by the
association of ideas, and which does not interfere with the general
purpose. What kind or degree of unity is to be sought after in a
building, in the plastic arts, in poetry, in prose, is a problem which
has to be determined relatively to the subject-matter. To Plato
himself, the enquiry ‘what was the intention of the writer,’ or ‘what
was the principal argument of the Republic’ would have been hardly
intelligible, and therefore had better be at once dismissed (cp. the
Introduction to the Phaedrus).

Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which, to
Plato’s own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the
State? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or ‘the day
of the Lord,’ or the suffering Servant or people of God, or the ‘Sun of
righteousness with healing in his wings’ only convey, to us at least,
their great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State Plato reveals
to us his own thoughts about divine perfection, which is the idea of
good—like the sun in the visible world;—about human perfection, which
is justice—about education beginning in youth and continuing in later
years—about poets and sophists and tyrants who are the false teachers
and evil rulers of mankind—about ‘the world’ which is the embodiment of
them—about a kingdom which exists nowhere upon earth but is laid up in
heaven to be the pattern and rule of human life. No such inspired
creation is at unity with itself, any more than the clouds of heaven
when the sun pierces through them. Every shade of light and dark, of
truth, and of fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a
work of philosophical imagination. It is not all on the same plane; it
easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and
ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities of
history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole;
they take possession of him and are too much for him. We have no need
therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato has conceived is
practicable or not, or whether the outward form or the inward life came
first into the mind of the writer. For the practicability of his ideas
has nothing to do with their truth; and the highest thoughts to which
he attains may be truly said to bear the greatest ‘marks of
design’—justice more than the external frame-work of the State, the
idea of good more than justice. The great science of dialectic or the
organisation of ideas has no real content; but is only a type of the
method or spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the
spectator of all time and all existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and
seventh books that Plato reaches the ‘summit of speculation,’ and
these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern
thinker, may therefore be regarded as the most important, as they are
also the most original, portions of the work.

It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has
been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the
conversation was held (the year 411 B.C. which is proposed by him will
do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology (cp.
Rep., Symp., 193 A, etc.), only aims at general probability. Whether
all the persons mentioned in the Republic could ever have met at any
one time is not a difficulty which would have occurred to an Athenian
reading the work forty years later, or to Plato himself at the time of
writing (any more than to Shakespeare respecting one of his own
dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now. Yet this may be a
question having no answer ‘which is still worth asking,’ because the
investigation shows that we cannot argue historically from the dates in
Plato; it would be useless therefore to waste time in inventing
far-fetched reconcilements of them in order to avoid chronological
difficulties, such, for example, as the conjecture of C.F. Hermann,
that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of
Plato (cp. Apol. 34 A), or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato
intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of
his Dialogues were written.

The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears in
the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the first
argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the close of the
first book. The main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and
Adeimantus. Among the company are Lysias (the orator) and Euthydemus,
the sons of Cephalus and brothers of Polemarchus, an unknown
Charmantides—these are mute auditors; also there is Cleitophon, who
once interrupts, where, as in the Dialogue which bears his name, he
appears as the friend and ally of Thrasymachus.

Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately engaged in
offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost
done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He
feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to
visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the
consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the
tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his
indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of
character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because
their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges
that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to
dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by
Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed
upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young
and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the
question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the
expression of it? The moderation with which old age is pictured by
Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic,
not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the
exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is
described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest
possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged
Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows,
and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a
violation of dramatic propriety (cp. Lysimachus in the Laches).

His ‘son and heir’ Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and
will not ‘let him off’ on the subject of women and children. Like
Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and represents the
proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life rather than
principles; and he quotes Simonides (cp. Aristoph. Clouds) as his
father had quoted Pindar. But after this he has no more to say; the
answers which he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of
Socrates. He has not yet experienced the influence of the Sophists like
Glaucon and Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting
them; he belongs to the pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is
incapable of arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree
that he does not know what he is saying. He is made to admit that
justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the
arts. From his brother Lysias (contra Eratosth.) we learn that he fell
a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is here made to his
fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of
Syracusan origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.

The ‘Chalcedonian giant,’ Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard
in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to
Plato’s conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He
is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond
of making an oration, and hoping thereby to escape the inevitable
Socrates; but a mere child in argument, and unable to foresee that the
next ‘move’ (to use a Platonic expression) will ‘shut him up.’ He has
reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in
advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending
them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with
banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him
by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is
uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality
might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers
in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato’s description
of him, and not with the historical reality. The inequality of the
contest adds greatly to the humour of the scene. The pompous and empty
Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master of
dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and
weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates, but
his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open to the
thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram down their throats,
or put ‘bodily into their souls’ his own words, elicits a cry of horror
from Socrates. The state of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as
the process of the argument. Nothing is more amusing than his complete
submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems
to continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent
good-will, and he even testifies his interest at a later stage by one
or two occasional remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously
protected by Socrates ‘as one who has never been his enemy and is now
his friend.’ From Cicero and Quintilian and from Aristotle’s Rhetoric
we learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man
of note whose writings were preserved in later ages. The play on his
name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus (Aris. Rhet.), ‘thou
wast ever bold in battle,’ seems to show that the description of him is
not devoid of verisimilitude.

When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents,
Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy
(cp. Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are introduced. At first sight
the two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the
two friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer
examination of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be
distinct characters. Glaucon is the impetuous youth who can ‘just never
have enough of fechting’ (cp. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii.
6); the man of pleasure who is acquainted with the mysteries of love;
the ‘juvenis qui gaudet canibus,’ and who improves the breed of
animals; the lover of art and music who has all the experiences of
youthful life. He is full of quickness and penetration, piercing easily
below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus to the real difficulty; he
turns out to the light the seamy side of human life, and yet does not
lose faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who seizes what may be
termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the world, to whom
a state of simplicity is ‘a city of pigs,’ who is always prepared with
a jest when the argument offers him an opportunity, and who is ever
ready to second the humour of Socrates and to appreciate the
ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music, or in the lovers of
theatricals, or in the fantastic behaviour of the citizens of
democracy. His weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates,
who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother
Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been
distinguished at the battle of Megara (anno 456?)...The character of
Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder objections are
commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more demonstrative, and
generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the argument further.
Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of youth;
Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world. In
the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall
be considered without regard to their consequences, Adeimantus remarks
that they are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their
consequences; and in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the
beginning of the fourth book that Socrates fails in making his citizens
happy, and is answered that happiness is not the first but the second
thing, not the direct aim but the indirect consequence of the good
government of a State. In the discussion about religion and mythology,
Adeimantus is the respondent, but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest,
and carries on the conversation in a lighter tone about music and
gymnastic to the end of the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers
the criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and
who refuses to let Socrates pass lightly over the question of women and
children. It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more
argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions
of the Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of the sixth
book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the conception of
the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Glaucon resumes his
place of principal respondent; but he has a difficulty in apprehending
the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the
course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the
allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious
State; in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues
to the end.

Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive
stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden
time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his
life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of
the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher,
who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them,
and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one
another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato,
is a single character repeated.

The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent.
In the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is
depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of
Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the
old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well
as to argue seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the
Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives
rather than the corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic
and constructive, passing beyond the range either of the political or
the speculative ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato
himself seems to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who
had passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and
not to be always repeating the notions of other men. There is no
evidence that either the idea of good or the conception of a perfect
state were comprehended in the Socratic teaching, though he certainly
dwelt on the nature of the universal and of final causes (cp. Xen.
Mem.; Phaedo); and a deep thinker like him, in his thirty or forty
years of public teaching, could hardly have failed to touch on the
nature of family relations, for which there is also some positive
evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem.) The Socratic method is nominally
retained; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates.
But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation
grows wearisome as the work advances. The method of enquiry has passed
into a method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the
same thesis is looked at from various points of view. The nature of the
process is truly characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as
a companion who is not good for much in an investigation, but can see
what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more
fluently than another.

Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in
the Republic (cp. Apol.); nor is there any reason to suppose that he
used myths or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction,
or that he would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek
mythology. His favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made
of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as
a phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching,
which is more prominent in the Republic than in any of the other
Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example and illustration τὰ φορτικὰ
αὐτῷ προσφέροντες, ‘Let us apply the test of common instances.’ ‘You,’
says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, ‘are so unaccustomed to
speak in images.’ And this use of examples or images, though truly
Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the form of
an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been
already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus
the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions
of knowledge in Book VI. The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory
of the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true
pilot in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the
philosophers in the State which has been described. Other figures, such
as the dog, or the marriage of the portionless maiden, or the drones
and wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of connexion
in long passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.

Plato is most true to the character of his master when he describes him
as ‘not of this world.’ And with this representation of him the ideal
state and the other paradoxes of the Republic are quite in accordance,
though they cannot be shown to have been speculations of Socrates. To
him, as to other great teachers both philosophical and religious, when
they looked upward, the world seemed to be the embodiment of error and
evil. The common sense of mankind has revolted against this view, or
has only partially admitted it. And even in Socrates himself the
sterner judgement of the multitude at times passes into a sort of
ironical pity or love. Men in general are incapable of philosophy, and
are therefore at enmity with the philosopher; but their
misunderstanding of him is unavoidable: for they have never seen him as
he truly is in his own image; they are only acquainted with artificial
systems possessing no native force of truth—words which admit of many
applications. Their leaders have nothing to measure with, and are
therefore ignorant of their own stature. But they are to be pitied or
laughed at, not to be quarrelled with; they mean well with their
nostrums, if they could only learn that they are cutting off a Hydra’s
head. This moderation towards those who are in error is one of the most
characteristic features of Socrates in the Republic. In all the
different representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato,
and amid the differences of the earlier or later Dialogues, he always
retains the character of the unwearied and disinterested seeker after
truth, without which he would have ceased to be Socrates.

Leaving the characters we may now analyse the contents of the Republic,
and then proceed to consider (1) The general aspects of this Hellenic
ideal of the State, (2) The modern lights in which the thoughts of
Plato may be read.

BOOK I. The Republic opens with a truly Greek scene—a festival in
honour of the goddess Bendis which is held in the Piraeus; to this is
added the promise of an equestrian torch-race in the evening. The whole
work is supposed to be recited by Socrates on the day after the
festival to a small party, consisting of Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates,
and another; this we learn from the first words of the Timaeus.

When the rhetorical advantage of reciting the Dialogue has been gained,
the attention is not distracted by any reference to the audience; nor
is the reader further reminded of the extraordinary length of the
narrative. Of the numerous company, three only take any serious part in
the discussion; nor are we informed whether in the evening they went to
the torch-race, or talked, as in the Symposium, through the night. The
manner in which the conversation has arisen is described as
follows:—Socrates and his companion Glaucon are about to leave the
festival when they are detained by a message from Polemarchus, who
speedily appears accompanied by Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and
with playful violence compels them to remain, promising them not only
the torch-race, but the pleasure of conversation with the young, which
to Socrates is a far greater attraction. They return to the house of
Cephalus, Polemarchus’ father, now in extreme old age, who is found
sitting upon a cushioned seat crowned for a sacrifice. ‘You should come
to me oftener, Socrates, for I am too old to go to you; and at my time
of life, having lost other pleasures, I care the more for
conversation.’ Socrates asks him what he thinks of age, to which the
old man replies, that the sorrows and discontents of age are to be
attributed to the tempers of men, and that age is a time of peace in
which the tyranny of the passions is no longer felt. Yes, replies
Socrates, but the world will say, Cephalus, that you are happy in old
age because you are rich. ‘And there is something in what they say,
Socrates, but not so much as they imagine—as Themistocles replied to
the Seriphian, “Neither you, if you had been an Athenian, nor I, if I
had been a Seriphian, would ever have been famous,” I might in like
manner reply to you, Neither a good poor man can be happy in age, nor
yet a bad rich man.’ Socrates remarks that Cephalus appears not to care
about riches, a quality which he ascribes to his having inherited, not
acquired them, and would like to know what he considers to be the chief
advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when you are old the belief in
the world below grows upon you, and then to have done justice and never
to have been compelled to do injustice through poverty, and never to
have deceived anyone, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates,
who is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the
meaning of the word justice? To tell the truth and pay your debts? No
more than this? Or must we admit exceptions? Ought I, for example, to
put back into the hands of my friend, who has gone mad, the sword which
I borrowed of him when he was in his right mind? ‘There must be
exceptions.’ ‘And yet,’ says Polemarchus, ‘the definition which has
been given has the authority of Simonides.’ Here Cephalus retires to
look after the sacrifices, and bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously
remarks, the possession of the argument to his heir, Polemarchus...

The description of old age is finished, and Plato, as his manner is,
has touched the key-note of the whole work in asking for the definition
of justice, first suggesting the question which Glaucon afterwards
pursues respecting external goods, and preparing for the concluding
mythus of the world below in the slight allusion of Cephalus. The
portrait of the just man is a natural frontispiece or introduction to
the long discourse which follows, and may perhaps imply that in all our
perplexity about the nature of justice, there is no difficulty in
discerning ‘who is a just man.’ The first explanation has been
supported by a saying of Simonides; and now Socrates has a mind to show
that the resolution of justice into two unconnected precepts, which
have no common principle, fails to satisfy the demands of dialectic.

...He proceeds: What did Simonides mean by this saying of his? Did he
mean that I was to give back arms to a madman? ‘No, not in that case,
not if the parties are friends, and evil would result. He meant that
you were to do what was proper, good to friends and harm to enemies.’
Every act does something to somebody; and following this analogy,
Socrates asks, What is this due and proper thing which justice does,
and to whom? He is answered that justice does good to friends and harm
to enemies. But in what way good or harm? ‘In making alliances with the
one, and going to war with the other.’ Then in time of peace what is
the good of justice? The answer is that justice is of use in contracts,
and contracts are money partnerships. Yes; but how in such partnerships
is the just man of more use than any other man? ‘When you want to have
money safely kept and not used.’ Then justice will be useful when money
is useless. And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of
war or any other art, must be of opposites, good at attack as well as
at defence, at stealing as well as at guarding. But then justice is a
thief, though a hero notwithstanding, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero,
who was ‘excellent above all men in theft and perjury’—to such a pass
have you and Homer and Simonides brought us; though I do not forget
that the thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of
enemies. And still there arises another question: Are friends to be
interpreted as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming? And are our
friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil? The answer
is, that we must do good to our seeming and real good friends, and evil
to our seeming and real evil enemies—good to the good, evil to the
evil. But ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will
only make men more evil? Can justice produce injustice any more than
the art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold?
The final conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just
return evil for evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man,
Periander, Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C. 398-381)...

Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is shown to
be inadequate to the wants of the age; the authority of the poets is
set aside, and through the winding mazes of dialectic we make an
approach to the Christian precept of forgiveness of injuries. Similar
words are applied by the Persian mystic poet to the Divine being when
the questioning spirit is stirred within him:—‘If because I do evil,
Thou punishest me by evil, what is the difference between Thee and me?’
In this both Plato and Kheyam rise above the level of many Christian
(?) theologians. The first definition of justice easily passes into the
second; for the simple words ‘to speak the truth and pay your debts’ is
substituted the more abstract ‘to do good to your friends and harm to
your enemies.’ Either of these explanations gives a sufficient rule of
life for plain men, but they both fall short of the precision of
philosophy. We may note in passing the antiquity of casuistry, which
not only arises out of the conflict of established principles in
particular cases, but also out of the effort to attain them, and is
prior as well as posterior to our fundamental notions of morality. The
‘interrogation’ of moral ideas; the appeal to the authority of Homer;
the conclusion that the maxim, ‘Do good to your friends and harm to
your enemies,’ being erroneous, could not have been the word of any
great man, are all of them very characteristic of the Platonic
Socrates.

...Here Thrasymachus, who has made several attempts to interrupt, but
has hitherto been kept in order by the company, takes advantage of a
pause and rushes into the arena, beginning, like a savage animal, with
a roar. ‘Socrates,’ he says, ‘what folly is this?—Why do you agree to
be vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?’ He then
prohibits all the ordinary definitions of justice; to which Socrates
replies that he cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to
say 2 x 6, or 3 x 4, or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is
reluctant to argue; but at length, with a promise of payment on the
part of the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open
the game. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘my answer is that might is right, justice
the interest of the stronger: now praise me.’ Let me understand you
first. Do you mean that because Polydamas the wrestler, who is stronger
than we are, finds the eating of beef for his interest, the eating of
beef is also for our interest, who are not so strong? Thrasymachus is
indignant at the illustration, and in pompous words, apparently
intended to restore dignity to the argument, he explains his meaning to
be that the rulers make laws for their own interests. But suppose, says
Socrates, that the ruler or stronger makes a mistake—then the interest
of the stronger is not his interest. Thrasymachus is saved from this
speedy downfall by his disciple Cleitophon, who introduces the word
‘thinks;’—not the actual interest of the ruler, but what he thinks or
what seems to be his interest, is justice. The contradiction is escaped
by the unmeaning evasion: for though his real and apparent interests
may differ, what the ruler thinks to be his interest will always remain
what he thinks to be his interest.

Of course this was not the original assertion, nor is the new
interpretation accepted by Thrasymachus himself. But Socrates is not
disposed to quarrel about words, if, as he significantly insinuates,
his adversary has changed his mind. In what follows Thrasymachus does
in fact withdraw his admission that the ruler may make a mistake, for
he affirms that the ruler as a ruler is infallible. Socrates is quite
ready to accept the new position, which he equally turns against
Thrasymachus by the help of the analogy of the arts. Every art or
science has an interest, but this interest is to be distinguished from
the accidental interest of the artist, and is only concerned with the
good of the things or persons which come under the art. And justice has
an interest which is the interest not of the ruler or judge, but of
those who come under his sway.

Thrasymachus is on the brink of the inevitable conclusion, when he
makes a bold diversion. ‘Tell me, Socrates,’ he says, ‘have you a
nurse?’ What a question! Why do you ask? ‘Because, if you have, she
neglects you and lets you go about drivelling, and has not even taught
you to know the shepherd from the sheep. For you fancy that shepherds
and rulers never think of their own interest, but only of their sheep
or subjects, whereas the truth is that they fatten them for their use,
sheep and subjects alike. And experience proves that in every relation
of life the just man is the loser and the unjust the gainer, especially
where injustice is on the grand scale, which is quite another thing
from the petty rogueries of swindlers and burglars and robbers of
temples. The language of men proves this—our ‘gracious’ and ‘blessed’
tyrant and the like—all which tends to show (1) that justice is the
interest of the stronger; and (2) that injustice is more profitable and
also stronger than justice.’

Thrasymachus, who is better at a speech than at a close argument,
having deluged the company with words, has a mind to escape. But the
others will not let him go, and Socrates adds a humble but earnest
request that he will not desert them at such a crisis of their fate.
‘And what can I do more for you?’ he says; ‘would you have me put the
words bodily into your souls?’ God forbid! replies Socrates; but we
want you to be consistent in the use of terms, and not to employ
‘physician’ in an exact sense, and then again ‘shepherd’ or ‘ruler’ in
an inexact,—if the words are strictly taken, the ruler and the shepherd
look only to the good of their people or flocks and not to their own:
whereas you insist that rulers are solely actuated by love of office.
‘No doubt about it,’ replies Thrasymachus. Then why are they paid? Is
not the reason, that their interest is not comprehended in their art,
and is therefore the concern of another art, the art of pay, which is
common to the arts in general, and therefore not identical with any one
of them? Nor would any man be a ruler unless he were induced by the
hope of reward or the fear of punishment;—the reward is money or
honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a man worse
than himself. And if a State (or Church) were composed entirely of good
men, they would be affected by the last motive only; and there would be
as much ‘nolo episcopari’ as there is at present of the opposite...

The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and
apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced.
There is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind
do not like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay.

...Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more
important—that the unjust life is more gainful than the just. Now, as
you and I, Glaucon, are not convinced by him, we must reply to him; but
if we try to compare their respective gains we shall want a judge to
decide for us; we had better therefore proceed by making mutual
admissions of the truth to one another.

Thrasymachus had asserted that perfect injustice was more gainful than
perfect justice, and after a little hesitation he is induced by
Socrates to admit the still greater paradox that injustice is virtue
and justice vice. Socrates praises his frankness, and assumes the
attitude of one whose only wish is to understand the meaning of his
opponents. At the same time he is weaving a net in which Thrasymachus
is finally enclosed. The admission is elicited from him that the just
man seeks to gain an advantage over the unjust only, but not over the
just, while the unjust would gain an advantage over either. Socrates,
in order to test this statement, employs once more the favourite
analogy of the arts. The musician, doctor, skilled artist of any sort,
does not seek to gain more than the skilled, but only more than the
unskilled (that is to say, he works up to a rule, standard, law, and
does not exceed it), whereas the unskilled makes random efforts at
excess. Thus the skilled falls on the side of the good, and the
unskilled on the side of the evil, and the just is the skilled, and the
unjust is the unskilled.

There was great difficulty in bringing Thrasymachus to the point; the
day was hot and he was streaming with perspiration, and for the first
time in his life he was seen to blush. But his other thesis that
injustice was stronger than justice has not yet been refuted, and
Socrates now proceeds to the consideration of this, which, with the
assistance of Thrasymachus, he hopes to clear up; the latter is at
first churlish, but in the judicious hands of Socrates is soon restored
to good-humour: Is there not honour among thieves? Is not the strength
of injustice only a remnant of justice? Is not absolute injustice
absolute weakness also? A house that is divided against itself cannot
stand; two men who quarrel detract from one another’s strength, and he
who is at war with himself is the enemy of himself and the gods. Not
wickedness therefore, but semi-wickedness flourishes in states,—a
remnant of good is needed in order to make union in action
possible,—there is no kingdom of evil in this world.

Another question has not been answered: Is the just or the unjust the
happier? To this we reply, that every art has an end and an excellence
or virtue by which the end is accomplished. And is not the end of the
soul happiness, and justice the excellence of the soul by which
happiness is attained? Justice and happiness being thus shown to be
inseparable, the question whether the just or the unjust is the happier
has disappeared.

Thrasymachus replies: ‘Let this be your entertainment, Socrates, at the
festival of Bendis.’ Yes; and a very good entertainment with which your
kindness has supplied me, now that you have left off scolding. And yet
not a good entertainment—but that was my own fault, for I tasted of too
many things. First of all the nature of justice was the subject of our
enquiry, and then whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil and
folly; and then the comparative advantages of just and unjust: and the
sum of all is that I know not what justice is; how then shall I know
whether the just is happy or not?...

Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished, chiefly by appealing
to the analogy of the arts. ‘Justice is like the arts (1) in having no
external interest, and (2) in not aiming at excess, and (3) justice is
to happiness what the implement of the workman is to his work.’ At this
the modern reader is apt to stumble, because he forgets that Plato is
writing in an age when the arts and the virtues, like the moral and
intellectual faculties, were still undistinguished. Among early
enquirers into the nature of human action the arts helped to fill up
the void of speculation; and at first the comparison of the arts and
the virtues was not perceived by them to be fallacious. They only saw
the points of agreement in them and not the points of difference.
Virtue, like art, must take means to an end; good manners are both an
art and a virtue; character is naturally described under the image of a
statue; and there are many other figures of speech which are readily
transferred from art to morals. The next generation cleared up these
perplexities; or at least supplied after ages with a further analysis
of them. The contemporaries of Plato were in a state of transition, and
had not yet fully realized the common-sense distinction of Aristotle,
that ‘virtue is concerned with action, art with production’ (Nic.
Eth.), or that ‘virtue implies intention and constancy of purpose,’
whereas ‘art requires knowledge only’. And yet in the absurdities which
follow from some uses of the analogy, there seems to be an intimation
conveyed that virtue is more than art. This is implied in the reductio
ad absurdum that ‘justice is a thief,’ and in the dissatisfaction which
Socrates expresses at the final result.

The expression ‘an art of pay’ which is described as ‘common to all the
arts’ is not in accordance with the ordinary use of language. Nor is it
employed elsewhere either by Plato or by any other Greek writer. It is
suggested by the argument, and seems to extend the conception of art to
doing as well as making. Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be
noted in the words ‘men who are injured are made more unjust.’ For
those who are injured are not necessarily made worse, but only harmed
or ill-treated.

The second of the three arguments, ‘that the just does not aim at
excess,’ has a real meaning, though wrapped up in an enigmatical form.
That the good is of the nature of the finite is a peculiarly Hellenic
sentiment, which may be compared with the language of those modern
writers who speak of virtue as fitness, and of freedom as obedience to
law. The mathematical or logical notion of limit easily passes into an
ethical one, and even finds a mythological expression in the conception
of envy (Greek). Ideas of measure, equality, order, unity, proportion,
still linger in the writings of moralists; and the true spirit of the
fine arts is better conveyed by such terms than by superlatives.

‘When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness.’ (King John. Act. iv. Sc.
2.)

The harmony of the soul and body, and of the parts of the soul with one
another, a harmony ‘fairer than that of musical notes,’ is the true
Hellenic mode of conceiving the perfection of human nature.

In what may be called the epilogue of the discussion with Thrasymachus,
Plato argues that evil is not a principle of strength, but of discord
and dissolution, just touching the question which has been often
treated in modern times by theologians and philosophers, of the
negative nature of evil. In the last argument we trace the germ of the
Aristotelian doctrine of an end and a virtue directed towards the end,
which again is suggested by the arts. The final reconcilement of
justice and happiness and the identity of the individual and the State
are also intimated. Socrates reassumes the character of a
‘know-nothing;’ at the same time he appears to be not wholly satisfied
with the manner in which the argument has been conducted. Nothing is
concluded; but the tendency of the dialectical process, here as always,
is to enlarge our conception of ideas, and to widen their application
to human life.

BOOK II. Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on
continuing the argument. He is not satisfied with the indirect manner
in which, at the end of the last book, Socrates had disposed of the
question ‘Whether the just or the unjust is the happier.’ He begins by
dividing goods into three classes:—first, goods desirable in
themselves; secondly, goods desirable in themselves and for their
results; thirdly, goods desirable for their results only. He then asks
Socrates in which of the three classes he would place justice. In the
second class, replies Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves
and also for their results. ‘Then the world in general are of another
mind, for they say that justice belongs to the troublesome class of
goods which are desirable for their results only. Socrates answers that
this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus which he rejects. Glaucon thinks
that Thrasymachus was too ready to listen to the voice of the charmer,
and proposes to consider the nature of justice and injustice in
themselves and apart from the results and rewards of them which the
world is always dinning in his ears. He will first of all speak of the
nature and origin of justice; secondly, of the manner in which men view
justice as a necessity and not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the
reasonableness of this view.

‘To do injustice is said to be a good; to suffer injustice an evil. As
the evil is discovered by experience to be greater than the good, the
sufferers, who cannot also be doers, make a compact that they will have
neither, and this compact or mean is called justice, but is really the
impossibility of doing injustice. No one would observe such a compact
if he were not obliged. Let us suppose that the just and unjust have
two rings, like that of Gyges in the well-known story, which make them
invisible, and then no difference will appear in them, for every one
will do evil if he can. And he who abstains will be regarded by the
world as a fool for his pains. Men may praise him in public out of fear
for themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts (Cp.
Gorgias.)

‘And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine the
unjust man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes and easily
correcting them; having gifts of money, speech, strength—the greatest
villain bearing the highest character: and at his side let us place the
just in his nobleness and simplicity—being, not seeming—without name or
reward—clothed in his justice only—the best of men who is thought to be
the worst, and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would
rather put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice—they
will tell you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will
have his eyes put out, and will at last be crucified (literally
impaled)—and all this because he ought to have preferred seeming to
being. How different is the case of the unjust who clings to appearance
as the true reality! His high character makes him a ruler; he can marry
where he likes, trade where he likes, help his friends and hurt his
enemies; having got rich by dishonesty he can worship the gods better,
and will therefore be more loved by them than the just.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. ‘The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.’
Notwithstanding the fascination which the word ‘classical’ exercises
over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the
Greek poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought
often exceeds the power of lucid expression in Aeschylus and Pindar; or
that rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet
Euripides. Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the
two; in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a
Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away; at
least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them. The
connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not
unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic the poet was
unable to draw out. Many thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and
he had no power of disengaging or arranging them. For there is a subtle
influence of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to
poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by
poetry into prose. In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own
meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full of
associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of
another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to
others. There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets
which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion