Republic of Plato

“ THE REPUBLIC [235] "THE Republic," as we may realise it mentally within the limited proportions of some quite imaginable Greek city, is the protest of Plato, in enduring stone, in law and custom more imperishable still, against the principle of flamboyancy or fluidity in things, and in men's thoughts about them. Political "ideals" may provide not only types for new states, but also, in humbler function, a due corrective of the errors, thus renewing the life, of old ones. But like other medicines the corrective or critical ideal may come too late, too near the natural end of things. ”

“ Hence it became necessary to imagine a form of society in which the ideal man might find himself at home, a state to which the philosopher might stand in harmonious relationship, no longer as an alien sojourner, but as a native citizen, not standing aloof in lonely contemplation, but acting with the full consent of other men and ruling in the right of wisdom. Plato did not regard his own republic as a barren dream. ”

“ 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 this was what we foresaw, and this was the reason why truth forced us to admit, not without fear and hesitation, that neither cities nor States nor individuals will ever attain perfection until the small class of philosophers whom we termed useless but not corrupt are providentially compelled, whether they will or not, to take care of the State, and until a like necessity be laid on the State to obey them; or until kings, or if not kings, the sons of kings or princes, are divinely inspired with a true love of true philosophy. ”

“ But don't get into a passion: to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. Minute enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones.
And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all things—that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any sense, in an affair of such magnitude. ”

“ I said: ‘Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,—nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.’ Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant ”

“ The question is asked, ‘Whether the state of innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own which possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is the preferable condition of man.’ To this question of the comparative happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed in the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman, though less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range, may justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato’s dialogues. ”

“ His vision is not a very practical one, but Plato was not a practical statesman. The great value of the Republic to the world to-day is that just because its ideals could never be wholly carried out, the questions which all statesmen in all ages have had to settle, could be and were fearlessly discussed, unhampered {382} by the compromises and conventions which beset modern politics. ”

“ Plato, labouring under what, to modern readers, appears to have been a confusion of ideas, assimilates the state to the individual, and fails to distinguish Ethics from Politics. He thinks that to be most of a state which is most like one man, and in which the citizens have the greatest uniformity of character. He does not see that the analogy is partly fallacious, and that the will or character of a state or nation is really the balance or rather the surplus of individual wills, which are limited by the condition of having to act in common. ”

“ The truth is, that the question has hardly any meaning when applied to a great philosopher whose writings are not meant for a particular age and country, but for all time and all mankind. The decline of Athenian politics was probably the motive which led Plato to frame an ideal State, and the Republic may be regarded as reflecting the departing glory of Hellas. ”

“ Though not in the strict sense communists, the principle of communism was maintained among them in their division of lands, in their common meals, in their slaves, and in the free use of one another’s goods. Marriage was a public institution; and the women were educated by the State, and sang and danced in public with the men.
Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with which the magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music and poetry; as in the “Republic” of Plato, the newfangled poet was to be expelled. ”

“ These two points of view are really opposed, and the opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like the 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. ”

“ The spirit of harmony and the Dorian mode are to prevail, and the whole State is to have an external beauty which is the reflex of the harmony within. But he has not yet found out the truth which he afterwards enunciated in the Laws—that he was a better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who trained them for war. The citizens, as in other Hellenic States, democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an upper class; for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented in the individual by the passions. ”

“ We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State, like all other abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato. To us the State seems to be built up out of the family, or sometimes to be the framework in which family and social life is contained. But to Plato in his present mood of mind the family is only a disturbing influence which, instead of filling up, tends to disarrange the higher unity of the State. No organization is needed except a political, which, regarded from another point of view, is a military one. ”

“ 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) ”

“ If, following the example of Aristotle, we criticise the Platonic Republic as a scheme of political constitution, we find that on most points which other theorists handle at considerable length, Plato is intentionally silent. ”

“ Thus in the Statesman, as in the Laws, we have three forms of government, which we may venture to term, (1) the ideal, (2) the practical, (3) the sophistical—what ought to be, what might be, what is. And thus Plato seems to stumble, almost by accident, on the notion of a constitutional monarchy, or of a monarchy ruling by laws.
The divine foundations of a State are to be laid deep in education (Republic) , and at the same time some little violence may be used in exterminating natures which are incapable of education (compare Laws) . ”

“ From 1860 to 1870 his labours were such as would have overwhelmed any other man. At one time he writes that he is seeing every undergraduate in college once a week ! In the vacations his hours were given to Plato. He had begun with the idea of a commentary on the 'Republic,' a work which he never dropped, though he did not live to finish it. But he soon felt that a complete analysis of all Plato's writings was required if any one wished thoroughly to understand the 'Republic,' and the analysis in time became an analysis and translation. ”

“ The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; this is a government of force, in which education is not inspired by the Muses, but imposed by the law, and in which all the finer elements of organization have disappeared. The philosopher himself has lost the love of truth, and the soldier, who is of a simpler and honester nature, rules in his stead. The individual who answers to timocracy has some noticeable qualities. He is described as ill educated, but, like the Spartan, a lover of literature ”

“ But if you deal with them as many, and give the wealth or power or persons of the one to the others, you will always have a great many friends and not many enemies. And your State, while the wise order which has now been prescribed continues to prevail in her, will be the greatest of States, I do not mean to say in reputation or appearance, but in deed and truth, though she number not more than a thousand defenders. A single State which is her equal you will hardly find, either among Hellenes or barbarians, though many that appear to be as great and many times greater. ”

“ Every State has subjects and rulers, who in a democracy are called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our State they are called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in other States are termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and paymasters, and those who are termed comrades and colleagues in other places, are by us called fathers and brothers. And whereas in other States members of the same government regard one of their colleagues as a friend and another as an enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to another ”

“ But the Platonic Communism was one where equality and humanity were left out. Plato could not escape the Time-Spirit. The Platonic Republic was his Athens idealized. "The very age and body of the time" gave to the philosopher's dream its form and pressure. The actual Hellenic Republics were not based upon the rights of man; a few ruled over a nation of proletariats and slaves. When they came into rough contact with the vigorous Roman civilization, they were shattered like iridescent bubbles. Even so wise-browed a philosopher as Plato failed to recognize sufficiently the human element. ”

“ Hence, from a difference in forms of thought, Plato appears to be resting on a creation of his own mind only. But if we may be allowed to paraphrase the idea of good by the words ‘intelligent principle of law and order in the universe, embracing equally man and nature,’ we begin to find a meeting-point between him and ourselves.
The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a philosopher is one that has not lost interest in modern times. ”

“ As a young man, Plato had seen in Athens under the rule of the Thirty, the lawlessness and confusion that arose from a tyrannously ordered state, and the Republic was an attempt to show what he thought life in an ideal state might be. ”

“ He attempts a task really impossible, which is to unite the past of Greek history with the future of philosophy, analogous to that other impossibility, which has often been the dream of Christendom, the attempt to unite the past history of Europe with the kingdom of Christ. Nothing actually existing in the world at all resembles Plato’s ideal State ”

“ But the people of the Perfect City would not [273] be there at all except by way of a refuge, an experiment, or tour de force, in moral and social philosophy; and this circumstance determines the second constituent principle of Plato's aesthetic scheme. We, then, the founders, the citizens, of the Republic have a peculiar purpose. We are here to escape from, to resist, a certain vicious centrifugal tendency in life, in Greek and especially in Athenian life, which does but propagate a like vicious tendency in ourselves. We are to become— like little pieces in a machine! ”

“ If then, in the countless ages of the past, or at the present hour in some foreign clime which is far away and beyond our ken, the perfected philosopher is or has been or hereafter shall be compelled by a superior power to have the charge of the State, we are ready to assert to the death, that this our constitution has been, and is—yea, and will be whenever the Muse of Philosophy is queen. ”

“ If we suppose the Sophist and Politicus to stand halfway between the Republic and the Laws, and in near connexion with the Theaetetus, the Parmenides, the Philebus, the arguments against them derived from differences of thought and style disappear or may be said without paradox in some degree to confirm their genuineness. There is no such interval between the Republic or Phaedrus and the two suspected dialogues, as that which separates all the earlier writings of Plato from the Laws. ”