Plato; moral and political ideals

The Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature

PLATO
MORAL AND POLITICAL IDEALS

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PREFACE

When the Editor invited me to contribute this
volume to the Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature, he wrote that he wished for "a clear
account, intelligible to the plain man, of what Plato
did in the moral and political sphere." Recently the
difficulty of deciding what was Plato's teaching in
any part of his philosophy has greatly increased.
The publication in 1911 of Professor A. E. Taylor's
Varia Socratica, First Series, and of Professor J.
Burnet's Introduction to his edition of the Phaedo
has obliged all students of Plato to reconsider their
position. These two writers hold, to put it briefly,
that neither Xenophon nor Aristotle knew much
about Socrates, except what they learnt through
Plato and his school, and that therefore the works
of Plato are practically the only source of our know-
ledge of Socrates. Professor Taylor, moreover,
considers that Aristophanes, in his play, The Clouds,
produced when Plato was a boy of four, draws a
caricature of Socrates, which is confirmed, even in
details, by the picture of him found in the Platonic
writings ; and Professor Burnet thinks that Plato's
original opinions are only to be found in those

vi PLATO

dialogues, generally attributed to his later period,
in which he criticises doctrines upheld in other works,
commonly supposed to be of earlier date.

If this is the case, it would be exceedingly difficult
to write anything about the moral and political
teaching of Plato, and it may be that this book
should have an erratum slip attached to it, stating
that the title ought to be Socrates : Moral and
Political Ideals. But I am not yet prepared to
reduce Plato's achievement to the glory of relegating
Boswell to the second place among biographers.
Xenophon must have been an even more inept
person than he is usually considered, if he carefully
sifted out and rejected all the most interesting
characteristics of Socrates that appear in Plato, in
order to compile his Memorabilia. It may readily
be admitted that the early dialogues of Plato, such
as the Charmides and the Laches, give a much more
attractive and credible account of the historical
Socrates than Xenophon's somewhat lifeless por-
traiture. But the main obstacle to adopting the
view of Professor Taylor and Professor Burnet seems
to be the difficulty of reconciling the content of these
and other " Socratic M dialogues with that of the
Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, and so forth.

Mr F. M. Cornford, who also feels this difficulty,1
meets it by supposing that Plato, when he wrote

1 In From Religion to Philosophy, pp. 242, 247 ff.

PREFACE vii

the early dialogues, was not fully conversant with
the teaching of Socrates, and that it was not until
he had become acquainted with Pythagoreans in
Sicily and Greece, after the death of his master,
that he learnt to appreciate his mystical side. I
prefer, until further evidence is produced, to hold by
the older view, that the vastly increased range of
thought in Plato's greater works represents the
development of his own mental powers. I have
tried to trace this development, as regards one
department of philosophy, and am left with the
conviction that Plato could not have transformed
the Socrates of the Crito into Socrates, who in the
Republic is the spectator of all time and all existence,
merely by becoming, through the good offices of a
group of friends, more familiar with the doctrine of
a teacher (whom he, as a full-grown young man,
knew and loved personally), many years after that
teacher's death.

In the earlier chapters I have made much use of
MS. notes for lectures by my husband. If any
former pupils of Dr Henry Jackson read this book,
they will recognise how great is my debt to him.

A. M. A.

Cambridge, March 1913.

CONTENTS

I. Greek Ethics and Politics before Socrates

II. The Moral and Political Teaching of
Socrates ....

III. Plato as a Pupil of Socrates

IV. Early Development of Plato's Views
V. Extension of Rationalism

VI. Criticism of Contemporary Education
VII. Rhetoric and Disputation
VIII. The True Philosopher in Life and Death

IX. General Plan of the Republic
X. General Plan of the Republic — continued

XI. Last Books of the Republic
XII. The Value attached by Plato to Education

XIII. The Position of Women in the Platonic

Commonwealths .

XIV. Platonic Communism and State Regulation .
XV. The Philosopher in the Politicus and

Theaetetvs — Conclusion
Note on Books . . . . .

Index .......

viii

PAGE
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48
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124

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143
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157

PLATO

MORAL AND POLITICAL IDEALS

CHAPTER I

GREEK ETHICS AND POLITICS BEFORE SOCRATES

In attempting to introduce a reader to any part of
Plato's thought, the first problem that presents
itself is the choice of a starting-point. The ethics
of Plato, like all Greek ethics, are inextricably
bound up with his politics, and neither the one nor
the other can be understood without a study of his
metaphysics or, what comes to the same thing, his
theology. Further, Plato himself does not suddenly
sweep into our ken in the fourth century B.C. as
a new and brilliant planet. Though his light far
outshines that of all his fellow-countrymen who
preceded him as philosophical and religious teachers,
yet every one of these has contributed something
to his splendour, and if we seek to find out at
what Plato was aiming, we must learn upon what
substratum of earlier and contemporary notions
his mind was at work. Above all, we must
consider his relationship to his beloved master

2 PLATO

Socrates, that master whom he described as " the
best of the men of his time whom we knew, yea
and the wisest and most just."

The term " ethics," in Greek rjOiKoi, in Latin
moralia, means by derivation " what appertains
to human character (77^09)." The study of ethics,
7) tjOlkt], is therefore the study of everything which
has a bearing on human character. Now character
is assumed by Plato, and by Aristotle after him,
to depend largely on conduct. " In infancy,"
says Plato, " more than at any other time the
formation of the whole character depends on habit,"
and, similarly, Aristotle enunciates as a general law
the principle that virtuous or vicious moral states
are the result of habitual virtuous or vicious actions.
Aristotle states with great precision at the open-
ing of his Ethics, that every systematic action has
some end in view. It is therefore found that
human character and conduct .(which latter, as
we have just seen, was recognised as a factor of
the highest importance in character) are best
studied with reference to what is called the chief good
or end of man and everything relating to that end.

In our day, the word ethics is used of the study
which relates to the end of man considered as a
private individual, but among the Greeks, down
to the time of Aristotle, man was viewed less as an
individual than as a citizen. We look upon the

GREEK ETHICS BEFORE SOCRATES 3

individual as the unit, the State as an aggregate of
units. Plato or Aristotle would call the State the
unit, the individual merely a fraction. From this
point of view ethics cannot be separated from
politics. For instance, Plato's Republic, or " State,"
though it purports to be a political treatise, is at
least as much a work on ethics as on politics. Aris-
totle, on the other hand, wrote, perhaps some fifteen
or twenty years after Plato's death, two books,
one called Ethics, the other Politics, but, as Professor
Burnet says, he " excuses himself for appearing to
separate " the two subjects. His Ethics is, as it
were, the first instalment of his work on politics.
Similarly, in common Greek parlance, the rule of
morality for the individual is equivalent to the
law of the State ; " what is established by law "
(to vofxifjiov) and " what is right *' (to hUaiov)
are interchangeable phrases.

In the earlier times of Greek thought little or
no trace is to be found of scientific ethic o-political
studies. Hesiod, Theognis and the lyric poets
loved to moralise, but their reflections are sporadic,
not combined into any systematic whole. One
principle that frequently emerges is the duty of
doing good to friends and harm to foes. Hesiod
(Works and Days, 709 ff.) gives us possibly the
earliest statement in Greek literature of this precept.
" If thy comrade is the first to do thee an unkind-

4 PLATO

ness either in word or in deed, forget not to requite
him two-fold ; howbeit, if he would lead thee again
into friendship, and is willing to make restitution,
do not say him nay." We may note in passing
the extreme severity of the maxim as thus pre-
sented ; two eyes, two teeth are to be exacted for
one by him who would do justly. Other doctrines
of much significance were embodied in short sayings,
attributed now to one, now to another of the per-
sonages known as the Seven Wise Men, and the most
celebrated of these aphorisms, " Know thyself " and
" Nothing in excess," were, as we learn from Plato
and others, kept continually before the mind of
the Hellenic world through being inscribed on the
temple of Apollo at Delphi. These two maxims
respectively developed into the important doctrines
of the necessity of self-knowledge, and of virtue
considered as a mean between two opposite ex-
tremes of vice. But the wisdom of the Wise Men
did not attain to a full-grown ethical system, and
before the time of Socrates there were but few
thinkers who tried to make their ethics part and
parcel of their philosophy in general. Of these
few the most important are Pythagoras (or rather
the Pythagorean school), Heraclitus, and possibly
Democritus.

Aristotle and his followers tell us that Pytha-
goras (fior. circ. 530 B.C.) reduced the various

GREEK ETHICS BEFORE SOCRATES 5

virtues to numbers. Justice, for example, was a
square number, because justice (as in the ordinary
Greek view) was looked on as a matter of equal give-
and-take symbolised by the multiplication of a
number into itself. Further, Pythagoras is said
to have held that virtue is a harmony, friendship
a harmonious equality, and so on. The import-
ance of this rudimentary attempt at an ethical
system lies in the effort to find a place for ethics
inside Pythagoreanism in general. He aimed at
bringing ethics into line with his first principle,
which was that all is number. What he meant by
this dictum we need not here inquire. The point
to notice is the method, which in this case is more
valuable than the result.

Heraclitus (flor. circ. 500 B.C.), employing the
same method, reached more striking results. Ac-
cording to him, the only thing that really exists is
change — change, ceaseless and universal. To this
change he gave different names, corresponding
to the aspect in which it may be viewed. Some-
times he called it Fire (which is, as it were, change
materialised), sometimes Justice, or again Fate,
Harmony, the Universal Word or Reason, which
was held to be synonymous with God, a self-con-
scious principle pervading all that is, at once the
creator and controller of the universe. In our
own day a new impulse has been given to the

6 PLATO

Heraclitean view of the world, through M. Bergson's
doctrine that life and reality consist in ceaseless
change and movement. To Heraclitus this all-
pervading principle is in and around us ; we inhale
it with our breath, and through it the discord of
life is turned into music, " for," says Heraclitus,
anticipating Keats, " the unheard harmony is
better than the heard."

How does Heraclitus bring ethics into connexion
with his philosophic principle ? In one of his
fragmentary sayings, preserved to us by quotations
in later authors, he says, " Wherefore we must
follow the Universal, but although Reason is Uni-
versal, most men live as if they had a private
wisdom of their own." That is to say, most men
err in not seeing that their end or chief good con-
sists in subordinating themselves to the spirit that
pervades all nature. " An overweening temper
must be extinguished more than a conflagration."
Law and due measure must be sought, for " the
ever-living fire is quenched and rekindled in due
measure," and " all human laws are fed by the
one divine law," so that " the people must fight
for the law as for their town wall." All this points
forward to the view that we shall presently find
enunciated with emphasis by Plato, that the end
for mankind is assimilation to God, as far as is
possible for a human being.

GREEK ETHICS BEFORE SOCRATES 7

Democritus (flor. circ. 420 B.C.) upheld the doc-
trine of an inexorable natural and materialistic
law. Aristotle tells us that he looked upon the
universe as consisting of a mass of atoms moving
eternally in a void. From their collisions arises
the variety of existing things. Man's duty and
chief good is to cultivate a calm unruffled mind,
seeing that he is a thing of nought in the grip of
the eternal mechanism.

About the time of Democritus there arose in
various parts of Greece a body, not so much of
original thinkers like the three philosophers at
whose opinions we have just been glancing and
others who left ethics and politics on one side,
as of professional teachers, who gave instruction
in all manner of subjects for pecuniary reward.
These men bore the general name of sophists.
They travelled about from place to place, and the
leaders among them gained great reputations and
large fortunes into the bargain. Some taught
astronomy, others mathematics, music, and other
subjects too numerous to mention, but the majority
professed to teach social and civic excellence or
aptTi] — the art of living well (to ev (fiv). The
ministrations of the sophists were provided in
response to the growing demand on the part of
Greek, especially Athenian, youth for such an
education as would qualify them for civic life.

8 PLATO

Now if excellence had to be taiighty it was necessary
that the current vague and inconsistent notions
about the terms " virtue/' " goodness/' " justice/'
and so forth should be systematised and recon-
ciled ; accordingly clearer and better arranged
views on all questions of ethics were sought for.
The sophists, for the most part, were content to teach
the morality of the day, without investigating
its claims to validity, and therefore they failed to
satisfy the needs of the more enquiring spirits
among their contemporaries. Hence the time
was ripe for the introduction of a new method
into philosophy, and Socrates was the man who,
by inventing one, revolutionised the course of
what the last two paragraphs in Aristotle's Ethics
call " the philosophy that deals with things
human," that is to say, the investigation of moral
and political ideas.

CHAPTER II

THE MORAL AND POLITICAL TEACHING OF
SOCRATES

Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates, when on
trial for his life before the Athenian people, on the
charge of corrupting the youth of the city, the
following words : "I do nothing but go to and
fro, endeavouring to persuade you all, both young
and old, not to care about the body or riches,
but first and foremost about the soul — how to make
the soul as good as possible. I tell you that virtue
is not the child of riches, but riches of virtue ;
and so with every other good that men possess,
alike in private and in public life."

We may dispute for ever how far the famous
version of Socrates' defence, given by Plato in
his Apology of Socrates, represents what Socrates
actually said at his trial, but there can be little
doubt that the Apology has preserved for us the
spirit, if not the letter, of the defendant's speech.
Socrates believed that he had a divine mission
to redeem Athens. He was profoundly convinced
that there was something much amiss with the
whole body politic of his native city, and, like a

9

10 PLATO

good physician, he first endeavoured to discover
the cause of the disease. Looking round him he
seemed to see everywhere that ignorance pro-
duced bad results. If right action was to be found
at all, it was only in the sphere of the mechanical
or professional arts, where correct knowledge leads
to correct execution. A man cannot be a good
carpenter without a knowledge of carpentry, a
good shoemaker without a knowledge of shoe-
making, a good doctor without a knowledge of
medicine, a good musician without a knowledge
of music, or, to take an instance which Socrates
would be very likely to use if he were alive now,
a good airman without a knowledge of motor-
engines. Accordingly, if ignorance is the cause
of bad, and knowledge the cause of good lyre-
playing, why should not ignorance also be the
cause of faulty conduct in the individual and the
State ? And in that case is it not plain that the
true remedy is to remove the ignorance and im-
plant knowledge of man's duty ?

Now Socrates was aware that in his own case he
had only to know what he ought to do in order to
do it. His will never rebelled against his judg-
ment, and he maintained that the same harmony
of understanding and action held good for all men,
if only they possessed a sufficiently clear and firmly-
grasped view as to the nature of goodness. For

THE TEACHING OF SOCRATES 11

in proportion to the insight gained into virtue,
the conviction would grow that man's highest
welfare is achieved by virtuous action, and that
therefore it is truly to his interest to eschew evil
and follow good. Nothing but mental blindness
causes anyone to choose an ignoble or vicious life ;
if we could see far enough, we should feel no in-
ducement to fall away from the path of virtue*
Hence Socrates defined virtue as identical with
knowledge, and single virtues he looked on as
varieties of knowledge. Thus the brave man is
one who knows what is or is not terrible, the pious
man one who knows what is due from mankind
to the gods, and so forth.

The maxim that virtue is knowledge is the corner-
stone of Socratic teaching, and the paradox, sharp
as it appears to us at first sight, loses much of
its strangeness when we realise that to Socrates
knowledge meant something very different from
a mere storing-up of ascertained facts in the mind
or in note-books. " The truth is that knowledge,
as understood by Socrates, has the closest possible
relation to the character. It is a certain over-
mastering principle or power that lays hold primarily
indeed of the intellect, but through the intellect
of the entire personality, moulding and disciplining
the will and the emotions into absolute unison
with itself, a principle from which courage, tern-

12 PLATO

perance, justice and every other virtue inevitably
flow." x From this point of view the identification
of virtue with knowledge becomes an expression
of faith in the goodness of human nature, and in
the possibility of guiding every individual in the
right way. Once grant that moral evil may be
cured by pointing out the road to moral good, and
all vices that at present disfigure mankind singly
and collectively will vanish and be no more seen.

When Socrates had satisfied himself that the
disease under which his city was labouring was
lack of knowledge, he set about the cure, en-
deavouring to impart knowledge to the Athenians.
Xenophon, who wrote a book of reminiscences of
Socrates, called the Memorabilia, tells us that his first
step was to delimit the province of knowledge. He
set aside the whole of natural science, because he
believed that man's efforts could not attain to know-
ledge in that sphere. In the Memorabilia (1. 1) reasons
are given why Socrates came to this conclusion,
namely, the inconsistency of philosophers in their
attempts to explain the phenomena of nature,
and the fact that man is powerless to pro-
duce physical forces such as winds, water and
seasons. " If," he argued, " those who know
human arts can make use of them, similarly those
who know divine things ought to be able to make

1 Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 329.

THE TEACHING OF SOCRATES 13

use of them, but they cannot, and therefore we
infer that such things pass man's understanding."
Further, he declared everything relating to the
ultimate issue of human action, all prognostica-
tions as to the success or failure of an enterprise,
to He beyond the scope of human inquiry, being
reserved by the gods for themselves. If we would
fain know these things we must apply to the oracles ;
fiavTLKi], or the art of inspired divination, is the
appointed vehicle of such information. In effect
Socrates cuts the sum total of things into two.
Over one part he sets reason, and assigns that
province to man as the proper object of his study.
The other part, consisting, on the one hand, of
natural phenomena, and, on the other, of insight
into future events, he pronounces to be unknow-
able to man, except in so far as the gods vouchsafe
us a partial knowledge through the instrumentality
of seers. We shall find that in Plato the art of
divination is dethroned, and the dominion of reason
is extended to the whole world, so that thereby
religion becomes subordinated to philosophy.

Cicero says that Socrates was the first to call
down philosophy from heaven to earth, and he is
right in the sense that, according to Socrates, human
beings should confine their attention exclusively
to the study of human virtue. His duty, therefore,
was to reform Athens by becoming an ethical

14 PLATO

teacher. In this self-imposed mission he started
by endeavouring to clear away the rubbish of false
persuasion of knowledge, which clogged, as it
seemed to him, the way for the entry of true
doctrine into men's minds. He would button-
hole men in the streets, and after extracting from
them some opinion given with cheerful confidence,
would convict them of ignorance by demonstrat-
ing the inconsistency and irrationality of their
utterances. His own attitude was habitually that
of the ignorant man asking for information ; and
the term " Socratic irony " is used to describe
this self-depreciation. His victims were not un-
naturally apt to get angry. If this happened they
would leave him and go to swell the gradually-
increasing mass of hostility that in the end burst
upon him, causing his condemnation and death.
On the other hand, if they felt humbled and penitent,
feeling, as Alcibiades says of himself in Plato's
Symposium, that they could not go on living as
before, neglecting their true selves, while taking
it upon them to manage the concerns of the
Athenians ; — if they received the ministrations of
Socrates in this way, then he would proceed to give
them some positive instruction.

His method in this respect, as in the preliminary
clearing and cleansing process, was original, but
it determined the course of all succeeding ethical

THE TEACHING OF SOCRATES 15

philosophy. Aristotle tells us that to Socrates may
justly be ascribed the first introduction of inductive
reasoning and definition. " Both these things,"
he adds, " deal with the foundation of knowledge."
Socrates would choose instances — almost always
from every-day life — of persons or actions to
which we apply some particular predicate denot-
ing a moral quality, and after eliminating all
that seemed unessential, to attempt a definition
of the quality in question. In this way he was
led to define virtue as knowledge, and if asked,
" knowledge of what ? " he would reply, " know-
ledge of the good," or, in other words, what is useful
(o)(j)€XLfiov) for the soul's health.

We see, then, that Socrates was a thorough-going
rationalist as regards the ordering of men's per-
sonal fives. His attitude towards the guidance
of the community is entirely in accordance with
this fundamental principle of his teaching, and
may be summed up in the words, " They only shall
rule who know." In Athens, even more than in
our own country at the present day, every man
thought he knew about politics without the neces-
sity of any preliminary apprenticeship. Moreover,
inasmuch as every freeborn Athenian citizen was
as such eligible to office, it is plain that ignorance
in power might be more instantly disastrous than
with us, for whom the filtering process of repre-

16 PLATO

sentation, however crude it may be, does at least
impose some check on the impetuous folly of un-
thinking rulers. Socrates was right in his diatribes
against the absurdity of requiring every artist
and handicraftsman to have skill, while winking
at ignorance in the greatest of all arts, the art of
pohtics, where the stake is far higher than in any
other. This Socratic demand for knowledge in
politics has been called by Nohle, in his clear-sighted
monograph, Die Staatslehre Platos, " das technische
Prinzip," the recognition of the liability of poli-
ticians, like the rest of the world, to come to grief
if they neglect to learn their lessons. We shall
see presently that the principle is the bed-rock of
Plato's ideal State.

According to Xenophon, Socrates himself was not
fully conscious of the antagonism between his prin-
ciple and the spirit of Athenian democracy. He
thought something might yet be made of the Athens
of his day, and, with what Nohle calls " a certain
naive optimism/' contemplated the possibility that a
few leading men, equipped with superior insight,
would be able to persuade the mass of the citizens
that every one desires to walk uprightly, if some
one will only show him how. Accordingly, Socrates
encouraged his friend Charmides to enter political
life, on the ground that no one ought to withhold
himself from the service of his country who has,

THE TEACHING OF SOCRATES 17

like Charmides, gifts which will enable hiin to en-
hance her greatness. His own abstention from
political life he justifies from purely political motives.
Asked on one occasion how he could expect to make
others statesmen, if he himself, though competent,
took no part in public affairs, he replied (Xen.
Mem. I. 6. 15) : " Should I be doing more for
politics if I merely practised as a politician than
by taking care that as many people as possible
should be qualified to be politicians ? " His
function was to instil a worthy tradition into states-
men, not himself to be an administrator.

In his aspirations after reform, Socrates showed
a curious blend of old-fashioned ideas, combined
with the latest ways of thinking. The Athens for
which he longed was the Athens of the Persian
wars and some thirty years or so after them, the
Athens which lasted until his own early manhood.
He wished to see his fellow-citizens, like the " men
of Marathon," upright and patriotic, preferring
their country's good to their own immediate in-
terest. In all this he was a laudator temporis acti
of the most approved pattern, but he desired to
make use of the new method in order to resuscitate
the old morality. His " men of Marathon " would
have scouted the notion that virtue could be taught ;
virtue to them was a matter of instinct and piety
and holding fast to ancestral tradition. It was

18 PLATO

from those arch-innovators, the sophists, that
Socrates borrowed his principle that teaching
could produce excellence in a statesman, but he
demanded teaching for the sake of establishing
the old type of excellence on a firmer basis, not,
as with many of the sophists' pupils, with a view
to escaping from the tiresome restrictions of an
antiquated moral ideal.

To Socrates it seemed essential that a govern-
ment, besides being founded on knowledge of
virtue, should also be supreme, whether the au-
thority be law, or the word of an absolute ruler.
Both in theory and in practice he upheld unflinch-
ing obedience to the laws. We know that on two
occasions he risked his life in order to prevent
illegal violence being done to fellow-citizens, and,
after his own condemnation, he rejected Crito's
entreaties that he would fly from prison. The
law had pronounced sentence of death upon him,
and that was for him enough. Xenophon reports
that he defined justice as identical with the law
of the State (to vofxifiov). This definition is in-
teresting not only in its bearing on Socrates' actions,
but because it represents the standpoint of Greek
thought before the time sometimes called " the
Age of Illumination/ ' when the sophists began
to turn the search-light of criticism on to the tra-
ditional morality. Socrates, like Hobbes, asserted

THE TEACHING OF SOCRATES 19

the uncompromising authority and irresponsibility
of the ruling power ; Nohle points out that both
these champions of absolute rule arose in periods
when the State was passing through an upheaval, in
England during the time of the Puritan Revolution,
in Athens when the Peloponnesian war and the new
doctrines of the sophists had shaken the foundations
of society.

Though the governing authority should be
supreme, it must seek the good of its subjects ex-
clusively. There must be no exploitation of
offices in the interests of the rulers. As we saw
that reason was to be supreme in its own domain,
but was not suffered by Socrates to trespass into
the area where divination bore sway, so the prin-
ciple of absolutism is limited by the duty of the
governor to be a good shepherd to his flock. We
may end this chapter with the words we placed
at its head. " How to make the soul as good as
possible M — this should be the one and only object
of all mankind. Those who are best fitted to
know where goodness lies, as rulers or guides must
point the way to the rest, who in their turn must
faithfully fulfil the behests laid upon them. Thus,
and thus only, will the welfare of the individual
and the State be attained.

CHAPTER III

PLATO AS A PUPIL OF SOCRATES

Plato came of an aristocratic house, and his early
years were passed in a time which gave little en-
couragement to a young man of such an origin,
himself endowed in surpassing measure with powers
of imagination and thought, to turn to the work
of piloting his country through the difficult waters
of faction and external warfare. The seventh of
the so-called " Letters of Plato " tells us that he
had intended in his youth to enter public life so
soon as he should become his own master, but
adds that the revolutionary troubles at Athens
under the Thirty, and the shock given to him a
few years later, in 399, by the condemnation of
Socrates, led him to abandon his purpose. Though
the letter is of doubtful authenticity, it gives, all the
same, a' reasonable account of Plato's motive for
abstention from practical politics, and the under-
lying tradition is likely enough to have been sound.
His instincts would have led him naturally away
from the noisy democratic party, but on the other
hand the cruelty and rapacity of the oligarchs, of
whom one of the foremost figures was his mother's
20

PLATO AS A PUPIL OF SOCRATES 21

cousin, Critias, repelled him, and he found himself
a homeless wanderer, so far as party politics were
concerned. Several years before the excesses of
the Thirty had stirred in him a feeling of aversion
to the political ways of his own class, the Athenian
disasters in Sicily showed, as Zeller has pointed
out, the terrible punishment which befel the mis-
takes of unrestrained democracy. It is small
wonder that a youth of generous temperament
and gigantic intellect should have taken refuge in
philosophy.

His education had been, to start with, of the
ordinary kind, with music, poetry and physical
exercises as the staple. At an early time — in
Aristotle's words, e/c viov — he had come into con-
tact with Cratylus, a successor of Heraclitus, and
drunk deep from this source of Heraclitean
doctrine, with results of the first importance for
his later development. When he was aged twenty
there came the greatest event of his life, his meet-
ing with Socrates. Unfortunately no external testi-
mony exists as to the relations between Socrates
and the most distinguished of his disciples, except
a few stories found in the biographies of Plato
written several centuries after his death. These
stories are, if not happy survivals of fact, alluring
in their suggestion of what might have been.
When we are told that one night Socrates dreamt

22 PLATO

that a wingless swan perched on him and presently
grew wings and flew away with a sweet cry, and
that the next day when he met the young Plato
for the first time, introduced by his father, he re-
cognised in him the swan of his dream, we should
like to believe that the older man grasped at first
sight the great qualities of his new friend, even
to the point of perceiving how the pupil would
rise to intellectual heights beyond the range of the
master's thought.

And again, when we read how Plato, after he
had begun to seek the company of Socrates, made
a bonfire^ of all the poems, which up to that time
it had apparently given him much pleasure to
write, summoning in a last hexameter the god
Hephaestus to come to his aid, we feel that there
must be a germ of truth in a tale which signifies
so much devotion to an austere master on the
part of a disciple, whose poetical and dramatic
imagination would always out, notwithstanding
his constant warnings to his readers against the
seductions of creative art.

Plato only mentions himself three times in the
whole course of his works, and that in an entirely
unobtrusive manner. But the picture of Socrates
among his followers, which emerges from the
Platonic writings, brings vividly before us the
kind of intercourse that Plato himself must have

PLATO AS A PUPIL OF SOCRATES 23

experienced and relished as much as any member
of the circle. Into the mouth of Alcibiades and
Phaedo, of his own brothers Glauco and Adimantus,
Plato puts the expression of his deep affection for
Socrates ; through Simmias and Cebes he shows
the effect of the Socratic stimulus on keen intellects ;
when Thrasymachus blusters, or the unhappy
Polus ties himself up in argumentative knots, we
are sure that in many such scenes the writer has
watched with a discriminating eye the master's
handling of all sorts and conditions of men, and
made use of the experience thereby gained to
give life to the exposition of further develop-
ments made by himself on the teaching he had
received.

After the death of Socrates, Plato had no more
thought of political life at Athens. For some
twelve years he was hardly in the city at all. He
spent some time at Megara with the Socratic
philosopher, Euclides,1 and then embarked upon
extraordinarily extensive travels, first to Egypt
and Cyrene in North Africa, and then to southern
Italy and Sicily. It seems that his return to Athens
was made after hazardous adventures. In Sicily
he had given offence to Dionysius L, tyrant of
Syracuse, and in consequence he found himself

1 This sojourn has been doubted by LutoslawskI, but he does not
seem to make out a good case.

24 PLATO

turned out and put up for sale as a slave on the
island of Aegina. There he was rescued, as the
story goes, by a wealthy acquaintance from Cyrene.
This man, happening to be at Aegina, paid the price
for Plato's ransom, and used the subscription,
which had been raised by friends at Athens to
compensate him, as a fund to buy a house and
garden for Plato, close to the gymnasium and
grounds called the Academy. The latter part
of the tale, as M. Huit remarks, does not agree
very well with the tradition and probability that
Plato was himself a man of means. However he
may have come by this house, the fact remains
that Plato, about the year 387, settled in it for
the rest of his life and, by combining the accom-
modation given by his private quarters and the
neighbouring gymnasium, established the school
whose name has been ever afterwards associated
with university education in all lands.

Here the Socratic plan of instruction by means
of walks and talks was continued. The master,
in the midst of a group of pupils, would help them
to thresh out difficulties ; we hear of many students
of distinction, and two women are said to have
been among those who attended the school ; this
circumstance, if true, must have startled the con-
ventional world at Athens, though it would have
been thoroughly in accord with Plato's principles.

PLATO AS A PUPIL OF SOCRATES 25

This life of teaching and writing (Plato's works
are thought by some to have been intended for
use as text-books in the school) went on apparently
without break, except for two more visits io Sicily,
for about forty years, until 447, when it is said
that death came to him suddenly at the age of
eighty, while attending a wedding-feast.

The influence of Socrates remained with him to
the last, though he ranged over fields of thought
which his master, if we may trust Xenophon,
had never approached, and though the figure of
Socrates as an interlocutor disappears from those
dialogues which are now generally considered
for various reasons to belong to the latest
period of Plato's life. Zeller and Gomperz point
out that the effect of the death of Socrates upon
Plato is shown in the embittered judgment which
he passes upon Athenian statesmen, especially in
the Gorgias. In the opinion of Gomperz, Plato's
anger had been kindled afresh by the appearance
of a political pamphlet decrying Socrates and
justifying his condemnation. Whether this be
so, or whether, with W. H. Thompson, we think
that Plato's return to his native land was the cause
of a revival of resentment in him, there is a sharp-
ness of tone in certain passages that indicates
wrath against Athenian statesmen, whose policy
had brought about a state of affairs in which such

26 PLATO

a catastrophe as the execution of Socrates could
take place. For example, in Gorg. 515 E he accuses
Pericles of having made the Athenians idle, cowardly,
talkative, and money-grubbing because he first
introduced payment for jurymen ; in 521 D, speak-
ing in the name of Socrates, he says : "I think
that there is hardly an Athenian besides myself,
not to call myself the only one, who exercises the
true art of politics ; I alone of those now alive
am a politician." The Gorgias has been well
called the Apologia Platonis, that is to say, Plato's
defence of himself for abstaining from political
life.1 Such abstention is part of his faithful follow-
ing in the footsteps of his master. We shall see
presently how the shadow of the trial and death
of Socrates caused him not only to despair of his
country as it was then constituted, but to call
forth the vision of an upward road leading, if men
would only cleave to it, to a city set in heaven.

1 Mr Zimmern, in The Greek Commonwealth, p. 154, following the
Finnish writer, Sundwall, says that both in the fifth and fourth
centuries many members of well-to-do families held office in the
State and "showed not the least inclination to be 'driven out of
public life.' ... It is clear that few Athenians followed Plato in
despairing of the Republic and retiring into private life to wait for
more Utopian times."

CHAPTER IV

EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS

At the beginning of Chapter II we said that the
Apology represented the spirit of what Socrates
said at his trial. This is beyond question true,
so far as any statement can be beyond question,
which rests entirely on internal probability. At
the same time Plato's personality colours the
speech. We can only conjecture the date whether
of this or of any other Platonic work, but in all
likelihood the Apology, Crito, Euihyphro, Laches
and Charmides, which we shall consider in this
and the following chapter, all come early in the
list. There is no sign-post to guide us in deciding
the place of any given dialogue except the nature
of the style and subject, with occasionally the
marking of an upper limit of time by mention of
a historical event. Divergencies of opinion have
been astonishingly great ; for instance, the Phaedrus
has been called the earliest dialogue, and also
placed among the latest, whereas most critics
would assign it (and with good reason) to a middle
period. On the whole, however, there is a fairly
general agreement as to what constitutes the early

0

28 PLATO

or " Socratic " group of dialogues, written while
Plato, as a thinker, remained in the position of
Socrates, or advanced not far beyond it. All
those mentioned above belong to this class, together
with the Lysis and Lesser Hippias and some others
whose authenticity is more doubtful. Gomperz
puts the Euihyphro and Crito a good deal later,
on somewhat slender grounds. All the Socratic
dialogues are on a comparatively small scale, and
much less elaborate than those which we shall
count as belonging to the next group. Each one
of them follows the Socratic method of induction,
and harps, with variations, upon the theme that
virtue is knowledge. Special Platonic features,
such as the introduction of myths to drive home
the lessons taught, emphatic assertions of belief
in immortality, and, above all, the characteristic
doctrine known as the Theory of Ideas are entirely
absent. Further, they all agree in having a clear
and flowing style, easy to read and far less com-
plicated than is usually the case with the larger
works.

In the Apology Plato sees more clearly than the
Socrates of Xenophon that there is a gulf between the
Athenian state and the realisation of Socratic prin-
ciples. We saw above, p. 16, that Socrates thought
that the one thing needful was the guidance of a
few great men who would be able to train a docile

DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS 29

people in the way it should go. But the Apology
shows a dissatisfaction with the condition of the
State much greater than we find in any non-
Platonic utterances of Socrates. The Memorabilia of
Xenophon do not indicate that Socrates met with
violent opposition in his ordinary conversations ;
the Apology (23 E) says that he became the object
of hatred and calumny, so that the formal accusa-
tion was only the outcome of a gathering storm
of resentment on the part of various classes whom
his cross-examination had goaded to fury, poets,
statesmen and craftsmen. Such resistance was
not compatible with the cheerful expectation of
reforming Athens which the Xenophontic Socrates
displays ; his mind indeed seems little troubled
with fears lest his views should be unacceptable.
We can hardly avoid attributing to Plato the
despair manifested by Socrates in the Apology
of inducing the Athenians at large to listen to him.
Doubtless Plato has allowed the event of the trial
to direct his backward glance over Socrates'
former life. He saw that Athens would have
none of his master, and brought this antagonism
into a prominence greater than Socrates is likely
to have given it in his actual speech.

Moreover, the Socrates of the Apology says
(31 D) : ;' You know well that if I had long ago
tried to engage in politics, I should long ago have

30 PLATO

perished without doing either you or myself any
good," and a little further on : " there is no man
who shall be saved if he offers a genuine opposition
either to you or to any other democracy, hindering
many unjust and unlawful acts from taking place
in the city, but he who would really fight in defence
of justice must, if he is to remain unscathed even
for a short time, live as a private and not as a public
man." This acerbity does not agree at all with
the passage from the Memorabilia (I. 6. 15) quoted
above, p. 17, where Socrates alleged as his sole
motive for a non-political life his opinion that he
spent his time to better purpose in qualifying
others to be statesmen. How could he without
warning have urged his friend Charmides to enter
the service of the State, if he thought he was send-
ing him to instant destruction ? No, the Socrates
who declared in the Apology (32 E) that neither
he nor anybody else would have reached the age
of seventy if he had been in public life and had
furthered the cause of justice on every occasion
as a good man should, making this his first rule,
was a different person from the Socrates who, in
Xenophon, gave no hint of danger to would-be
politicians of a virtuous sort, but was merely con-
cerned to exhort them to fit themselves for their
high office.

As we have seen, Plato's connexion with Critias

DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS 31

and other leading politicians must have shown
him the inner working of the political machine,
and convinced him of its unsound condition. His
disenchantment may have led him to tinge the
words of Socrates with a darker hue than that
which rightly belonged to them. The unjust
judgement convinced him that the impulsive and
undiscerning democracy of Athens was no instru-
ment for carrying out Socratic ideas. To see the
most pious and inspiring teacher in the country
condemned for impiety and corrupting the youth
of the nation, was enough to drive away from Plato's
mind all hope of reform in the State as it was, and
to make him meditate on an ideal city where such
deeds should be impossible ; in fact, wherever
in his dialogues he insists on the incorrigible blind-
ness of the historic State, allusion to the fate of him
who tried to loose the people from their chains and
lead them to the light {Rep. 517 A) is made in
support of his assertion. Thus, in the Gorgias
(521 D ff.), it is said that the wise reformer will be
judged by the multitude, as a doctor who employs
drastic methods and orders distasteful diet would
be judged by a court of children on the accusation
of a confectioner. " My children," the prosecutor
would say, " see what great evil this man hath
done unto you, maltreating even the youngest
of you with his surgeon's knife and cautery. He

32 PLATO

starves you, he suffocates you till you are at the
last gasp, he gives you most bitter draughts, and
compels you to go hungry and thirsty. How
different am I who have feasted you on all manner
of sweet dainties." " Would not," Plato asks,
" the physician's plea that he was working for the
children's good be howled down by such a bench
of judges ? " Never could the Athenian citizens get
beyond these children's point of view, if they put
to death the one man who could heal their dis-
orders, for, as we read in the Politicus (299 B ff.),
they would call such a man not a physician but
a star-gazer, a babbler and a sophist (all terms
of reproach applied to Socrates), and would them-
selves assume control of his patients. If anyone
should introduce new remedies not sanctioned
by law and custom, he should suffer the extreme
penalty. For no one in a State like Athens would
be held wiser than the law, and every citizen would
know what rules of political medicine the law
would prescribe.

Though he knew it not, the teaching of Socrates
was, in its essence, cosmopolitan. Like Stephen
in the Acts of the Apostles, he had to address a
world-wide message to a peculiar people. Both
preachers roused the anger of their audience and
met their death. Plato saw, to use Nohle's illus-
tration, that it was hopeless to tinker a wheel here

DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS 33

and a wheel there in the actual State ; an entirely
new machine must be built. It was all very well
to try one remedy after another, altering old laws
and laying down fresh ones ; such action on the
part of a State which is unsound at the core is like
the habit of invalids who have recourse to drugs
and nostrums, when what they need to rid them
of their maladies is a radical change in their manner
of life (Rep. 425 E f.). Stephen was followed by
Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles ; Plato gave up
the attempt made by Socrates to graft the states-
manship that is based on knowledge on to the
existing constitution of Athens or any other Greek
city.

The Crito contains nothing that is distinctively
Platonic. The dialogue represents an Athenian
gentleman named Crito, the contemporary and
oldest friend of Socrates, as coming to visit the
condemned man in prison the day before his exe-
cution. He says that the friends of Socrates
are not only willing, but very well able to effect
his escape from prison, at no great expense and
practically no risk to themselves, if only he will
consent. He will be certain of finding a warm
welcome anywhere he likes to go outside of Athens,
and Thessaly is suggested as a suitable place, be-
cause Crito has personal friends there, who will
make much of him and maintain him in safety,
c

34 PLATO

The rest of the dialogue is nothing but the answer
" no " from Socrates, set out at length. The gist
of it is that we ought under no circumstances to
do wrong, or to requite evil with evil. Socrates
pronounces himself convinced of this principle,
and gains the assent of Crito to it. " Very well
then/' says Socrates, "if I escaped, the laws of
my country would arraign me of wrong-doing, and
they would be right. There is no more to say ;
wherefore suffer me, Crito, to walk in the path by
which God leads me." Unconditional obedience
to the State is right in the eyes of Socrates. Plato
holds with his master that the authority of the
law must be supreme ; if the law is found to work
unjustly, that is a reason for persuading the powers
that be to alter it, but none for disobedience.

The question arises whether the principle of
never returning evil for evil was one on which the
historical Socrates took his stand, or whether Plato
was the first (with the exception of Pittacus of
Mitylene) to enunciate it in Greece. We have
seen (p. 4) that the contrary was the usual ethical
law. Not only Hesiod, but many another sage
proclaimed the duty of doing good to friends and
harm to foes. Plato knew very well that all
Hellenic opinion was against him, as is evident
from the emphatic statement in the Gorgias (472),
where Socrates is made to say that almost every-

DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS 35

one, Athenian or stranger, will take the other side,
but he, though one man against the world, will
never agree that it can be well with an evil-doer.
But did the real Socrates ever hold such a view ?
Gomperz indeed thinks that it presents a sharp
contrast to the doctrine of Xenophon's Socrates,
who looks only to what is " useful " (a><£eXi/xoi>),
but Xenophon himself describes the philosopher
(Mem. I. 2. 63) as spending a blameless public and
private life, never inflicting evil on a single soul,
so that if Socrates did not propound the principle,
at any rate he ordered his goings thereby. We
may therefore, without much misgiving, maintain
that in the Crito Plato was content to re-affirm
Socratic injunctions.

In the Euthyphro an attempt is made in the true
Socratic manner to obtain a definition of holiness.
Euthyphro and Socrates meet when the latter is
going on some business connected with the accusa-
tion against him. Euthyphro remarks that he
is starting a prosecution against his father for
manslaughter. Socrates holds up his hands in
real or pretended horror. Euthyphro rejoins that
he is completely in the right, because his father
has allowed a hired labourer, who when drunk
had killed a slave, to die in chains while waiting
till instructions should be received from Athens
what to do with him. "Is it holy," asks

36 PLATO

Socrates, " to prosecute your father ? " Euthy-
phro has not the slightest doubt. " Then teach
me holiness/' Socrates replies, " that I may put
my accuser to confusion, who says that I am all
wrong about religious questions." Thereupon
Euthyphro puts forward five successive definitions
of holiness, each of which in turn is pulled to pieces
by Socrates. When Socrates tries to urge him
on to make a sixth definition, because he is quite
certain that, if Euthyphro did not know well what
holiness is, he would never have taken so desperate
a step as to bring the prosecution, poor Euthyphro
pleads that he is in a hurry, and Socrates pities
himself for having to go away disappointed and
still unable to show his accuser that, whatever
may have been his errors in the past, he now has
learnt what holiness is from so great an authority
as Euthyphro, and is in a position to mend his ways
for the future.

Thus summarised, the dialogue seems to come
to nothing but a negative result. Euthyphro's
definitions represent various aspects of Athenian
orthodoxy, but unlike Athenians in general he
allows his orthodoxy to govern his conduct, find-
ing justification for his conduct towards his father
in the treatment given to the god Cronus by his
son Zeus. Clearly such conduct would shock a
fifth-century Athenian, and the moral to be drawn

DEVELOPMENT OF PLATO'S VIEWS 37

is that the country needs a higher faith. When
Euthyphro is at last driven, after defining holiness
as the saying and doing of what is acceptable to
the gods in prayer and sacrifice, into an admission
that this makes holiness into a kind of trade between
men and gods, he takes the ordinary standpoint
of a professional diviner, and in point of fact he
was one. . The dialogue is accordingly first and
foremost a criticism of current orthodoxy. We
get the impression that a diviner, as exemplified
by Euthyphro, is a person worthy of little respect.
Hence remembering that Socrates wished to refrain
altogether from interference with the province
of divination, we may count the somewhat con-
temptuous portrait of Euthyphro as a stage in
Plato's advance beyond his master's views.

But in addition to the critical attitude taken up
in the Euthyphro, careful search will reveal traces
of more positive teaching. It is a canon, first
laid down by Bonitz, that the key to a Platonic
dialogue is to be found in anything that remains
unrefuted. Now Socrates twice asks Euthyphro
(in 13 E and 14 A) what is the fair work that the
gods do, using men as their servants, and twice
Euthyphro returns an evasive answer, being re-
proached by Socrates for his shiftiness. From
this we may infer that Plato implies holiness to
be a joint working of gods and men to attain

38 PLATO

some " altogether fair result " (irdyKaKov epyov).
Beyond this point the dialogue does not go ;
but Bonitz,1 taking into account other passages
of Plato {Rep. 379 B, Tim. 29 E) where perfect
goodness is ascribed to God, defines holiness as
" perfected morality, only in the form that
man is conscious of being by means of it the
instrument that serves the divine working." That
is to say, holiness comprehends all the virtues,
being the knowledge of God translated into action.
We must, however, be careful to note that, so far
as the Euthyphro goes, Plato merely points out
the unsatisfactory nature of current notions of
holiness, at the same time giving a hint in what
direction we may look for a better definition.

1 Platonische Studien, p. 234.

CHAPTER V

EXTENSION OF RATIONALISM

We now come to a point where the subject-
matter of the dialogues begins to show Platonic
characteristics in a more marked manner and
more frequently than heretofore. It will be
remembered that Socrates thought all judgement
and forecasting whether any given action is good
in itself and likely to be beneficial in its results,
to be beyond the province of human reason, so
that, if knowledge on such subjects is desired,
appeal must be made to the gods, through the
art of divination. Plato does away with this appeal,
and in its place introduces a new science, which
he calls " the knowledge of the good," to do by
means of reason the work reserved by Socrates
for divination. In the Charmides the nature of
this knowledge is developed and explained at
length : in the Laches and the Euihydemus, it is
already presupposed. The Euthydemus, it may
be mentioned, belongs as regards this aspect of
its teaching to the dialogues under review, which
we hold to come before Plato's middle period ;
but the rest of its contents, its style, and its greater

40 PLATO

length seem to give it a more appropriate place
in the next group.

So far as I know, Nohle was the first to point
out this link between the Charmides, Laches, and
Euihydemus, and in what follows I am but repro-
ducing his account of " the knowledge which makes
man happy " {Charm. 174 A).

Human action as a whole consists of a series
of special arts, each one of which has an end of its
own. The doctor strives to cure the patient, the
ship-captain to navigate safely and without losing
ground through unskilful steersmanship. The
shoemaker should make good shoes, the general
should annihilate the enemy, the golf -player should
get round the course with the smallest possible
number of strokes (when Plato wants to use a
game by way of illustration he generally chooses
draughts). But supposing all these arts to work
with complete success, are we necessarily the
nearer to securing human well-being or happiness %
Suppose, as Plato does in the Gorgias (511 Off.), that
a sea-captain brings a passenger to Athens from
a distant port, say in Egypt or on the Black Sea — a
long voyage for those days. He will have done his
professional work well, but if the passenger is
afflicted with some incurable disease, Plato thinks
he is to be pitied for having escaped drowning,
and the skipper's art has done him no real service.

EXTENSION OF RATIONALISM 41

Possibly it would be better for us to go bare-footed
than to wear boots, and it is at least arguable that
the world would be a better place without war.
A doctor may restore to health a malefactor whose
renewed lease of life is very detrimental to his
fellow-creatures ; excellence, again, in sport is
sometimes attained by the sacrifice of higher
qualities.

In the Gharmides Socrates {i.e. Plato) dreams
of a time when " every action will be done accord-
ing to knowledge ; when no person will deceive
us by professing to be a pilot if he is not, nor will
a doctor or general or anyone else remain un-
detected, if he pretends to know something of
which he is ignorant. In such circumstances shall
we not be healthier in body than we are now, and
when we run risks by going to sea or to war, shall
we not be saved, and will not all our utensils, our
wearing-apparel, and foot-gear, and all that we
have for use and much besides, be artistically
made, because we employ genuine craftsmen ?
Nay, if you like, let us also agree that divination
is the knowledge of the future, and that if wisdom x
presides over it she turns away many braggarts,
and gives us true seers as heralds of what is to come.
Now when the human race is thus ordered, I allow
that it will act and live in accordance with know-

1 1 follow Jowott in translating <ru<ppoavvn) " wisdom " here.

42 PLATO

ledge — for wisdom, being on guard, will not allow
ignorance to make her way in among us — but that
by acting in accordance with knowledge we shall
act well and find happiness, of this, my dear Critias,
we cannot yet be sure " (173 A fi\).

After some further lingering over this point,
Socrates presently bursts out : " You villain, you
keep on carrying me round in a circle, hiding from
me that after all it is not living in accordance with
knowledge that makes us act well and find happi-
ness, not even if we know all the other sciences
put together, but only if we know a single one,
the knowledge of good and evil " (174 B f.).

The main subject under discussion in the Char-
mides is temperance. More Socratico the virtue is
soon decided to be a form of knowledge or wisdom.
It is after this point is reached that the above
enquiry into the one essential wisdom is started.
In the Laches the same question crops up when
courage is the subject in hand. A definition of
courage has been given as the knowledge of the
grounds of fear and confidence in war and all
other circumstances (194 E). Among other
objections to this definition (which is given by
Nicias, the soldier and statesman) Laches urges
that it makes out soothsayers to be courageous,
"for who but a soothsayer knows whether it
is better to live than to die ? " Nicias rejoins

EXTENSION OF RATIONALISM 43

that " a soothsayer ought only to know the signs
of what is to be, whether death or disease or loss
of property will come upon a man, or victory or
defeat, in war, or any other contest ; but which of
these things it is better for anyone to suffer or not
to suffer — in what way does it belong to a seer
more than to anybody else to decide this (195 E f .) ? "
Laches thinks that Nicias will not allow anyone
to be called courageous unless it be some god
(196 A). Socrates then intervenes and declares
his belief that there is only one knowledge of good
and evil, in the past, present, or future, and that
courage is concerned not only with the knowledge
of the grounds of fear and confidence (Setvcov re koX
Oappakecov en-ionf/r^), which belong to the future
only, but just as medicine involves the knowledge
of good and evil as regards health, irrespective of
time, so courage, like other sciences, understands
good and evil in the present and past and at any
time, as well as in the future. Nicias agrees to
this, and accordingly is driven to the conclusion
that courage is not a part of virtue, as he said
earlier, but all virtue, whereupon it appears that
the whole matter needs further investigation, and
the conversation is adjourned.

The Euthydemus pursues the same strain. In
the course of it Socrates decides that the youthful
Clinias ought to study philosophy, and it is agreed

44 PLATO

that philosophy is the acquisition of knowledge.
" Very well," says Socrates, " knowledge is of no
good to us, unless we know how to use it. We
should not be a whit better off if we could make
rocks of gold, unless we knew what to do with the
gold when we had got it (289 A). The hunter
must give his quails to the cook or the quail-keeper,
the mathematician (a species of hunter) must hand
over his discoveries to the dialectician." " Yes/'
replies Clinias, " and a general can do nothing with
the city he has taken, but must give it in charge
to the statesman. What, then, is the art that
knows how to use the fruits of all other arts or
sciences, and makes us happy ? " At last, after
a chase as elusive as when " boys go lark-hunt-
ing," Socrates and Clinias fix upon the kingly
art as being the one of which they are in search,
the art which, " in the words of Aeschylus, sits at
the helm of the state, and by steering and guiding
all things, makes aU useful" (291 D). Without
this art, or rather knowledge, which is plainly
equivalent to the knowledge of good and evil in
the Charmides and Laches, all other forms of know-
ledge are unavailing.

If we ask how Plato came to this conception
of the knowledge t)f the good as beyond and above
particular branches of knowledge, it is not unreason-
able to answer that he was led to it in criticising

EXTENSION OP RATIONALISM 45

the view of divination held by Zenophon's Socrates.
Let us consider Charm. 173 E : " You " (Critias)
says Socrates, " seem to me to define the happy
man "x " as the man who lives in accordance with
some particular knowledge. And perhaps you
mean him of whom I spoke just now, who
knows all that is to come, the seer." To this
Critias gives a qualified assent, but Socrates soon
shows the seer to be as inadequate as a doctor in
discerning good and evil, which is the only know-
ledge that really tends to man's welfare. Again,
Lach. 196 A, as we saw above, allows a seer no more
capacity than anybody else of determining whether
it is better for a man to suffer or not to suffer what
the seer may know is coming upon him. In the
Euthydemus 279 D good fortune is expressly said to
be wisdom : " even a child knows that." When this
assertion of Socrates causes astonishment, he backs
it up by declaring that the most fortunate and
successful musicians, clerks, sea-captains, and
doctors, are, speaking generally, those who are wise
in their crafts. Hence wisdom is what makes men
fortunate (Lach. 198 E), and the general ought to
be the master, not the servant, of the soothsayer,
because he knows better what is happening in war,
and what is going to happen. Divination, therefore,
must give place to knowledge : reason must be

1 Reading furra, with Schleiermacher.

46 PLATO

supreme in the sphere of the highest human action,
as well as in arts and crafts.

This is the great advance made by Plato in these
three dialogues. Socrates, in Xenophon, had cut
off from the domain of reason all judgement
as to what is or is not good for man ; and
assigned this work to divination, that is, enquiry
of the gods through oracles and seers and omens ;
Plato now extends rationalism to the whole field
of moral activity.

How the knowledge of the good is to be attained
is not indicated in any of the three dialogues. It
is of great importance to note that Laches suspects
that he who possesses it must be a god (196 A), also
that this knowledge as the kingly art (rj ySacriXiKT?)
is to make men wise and good, if it is to benefit
them and render them happy (Euthyd. 292 C).
We shall see the force of these remarks when we
come to consider the Republic. Some other points
should be stored up for future use. The kingly art
is placed " at the helm of the State " (Euthyd.
291 D). This foreshadows the ruling or guardian
caste of the Republic in whom the wisdom of the
state is embodied. Further, the Charmides enunci-
ates the principle of division of labour. It is said
in 171 D ff. : "If the temperate man knew what
he knows and what he does not know, that is to say,
if he knew that he knows the one and does not

EXTENSION OF RATIONALISM 47

know the other, it would be a great advantage to
us, we say, to be temperate. For we . . . and our
subjects would go through life without making
mistakes. For neither should we ourselves try to
do what we do not know how to do : we should seek
out those who know and put it into their hands :
nor should we allow our subjects to do anything
except that which they could do successfully, that
namely whereof they have knowledge. . . . For
when error is eliminated and truth guides, men who
are thus ordered must needs act rightly and well
in all their doings, and those who act well must
needs be happy." On this idea the Republic is
constructed. One man, one work, is one of its chief
mottoes.

CHAPTER VI

CRITICISM OF CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION

Having arrived at the conclusion that knowledge
of the good is the knowledge that it behoves man
above everything to acquire, since its possession
will make him virtuous (for virtue is knowledge to
Plato not less than to Socrates), Plato set to work
to see what attempts were being made in his time
to teach virtue. The principle that virtue is know-
ledge carries with it the corollary that education is
the most important thing in the world, for right
education will give the right knowledge, and when
once the right knowledge has been gained, the will
cannot fail to translate it into action, because — as
we shall see more clearly shortly — the man who has
attained knowledge of the good can have no motive
to err, inasmuch as he knows that lapses from virtue
would injure his highest interest and happiness.

Several dialogues start the question : " Can virtue
be taught ? " Of these the Protagoras and the
Meno deal with it directly, as their main subject.
Others, such as the Euthydemus, keep other threads
going, which though relevant to this theme, are more
conspicuous. If virtue is knowledge, of course

43

CKITICISM OF EDUCATION 49

Socrates ought to think that it can be taught. In
these dialogues, however, Socrates appears as a
sceptic_or enquirer on this point, who would be
delighted if he could feel sure that virtue can be
taught, for then his dearest hopes would be realised.
What makes him doubt is the fact that nobody has
been successful in teaching it. Distinguished states-
men, who have taken the greatest pains to have
their sons taught riding or music or wrestling, have
signally failed in getting them taught to be good
men, and surely they would not have grudged the
money if the thing could be done. Lately Socrates
has been encouraged by the appearance of professors
of virtue (and of everything else under the sun) who
have come from distant parts to teach the youth of
Athens, and he gladly welcomes every opportunity
of conversing with them, so as to learn their principles
and methods, but each time he comes away saddened
by disenchantment, for every one of these teachers
and every one of their systems turns out to be
hopelessly inadequate, if not positively harmful.
Plato, therefore, makes him appear to alternate
between the opinion that virtue cannot be taught,
but comes to men, if it ever does come, by nature
and divine grace, and the conviction that it can be
taught, and ought to be taught, but that all existing
methods are wrong. So far, Plato's portrait agrees
with what we know of the historical Socrates,

50 PLATO

though it may be doubted whether Socrates ever
subjected the whole body of sophists and rhetoricians,
who claimed to be able to supply everything needful
in the way of education, to so continuous and search-
ing a criticism as we find in the Protagoras, Meno,
Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Euihydemus. Where Plato
goes beyond his master is in the constructive side
of his teaching. He is not content to say that
contemporary systems of education are all at fault ;
he gives us in the Republic a detailed plan for a new
one, which, if it could be carried out in its entirety,
he thinks would ensure virtue and happiness in the
citizen and the State for evermore. As an earnest
of what might be, he started the school of the
Academy, and the effect of the impulse he then
gave has been felt increasingly ever since. The
problem of the governor is now more than ever
the problem of the educator ; but never will the
task to which the educator has to address himself
be more nobly expressed than in Plato's aspiration
to train up lovers of wisdom such that there is no
room for meanness and degrading appetites in their
souls, because they are reaching out after the whole
sum of things human and divine {Rep. 486 A).

The Protagoras is one of the liveliest of Plato's
works. Socrates relates how he had been called up
out of his bed that morning by an excited friend,
Hippocrates, with the news that Protagoras, the

CRITICISM OF EDUCATION 51

famous travelling professor from the north, has just
arrived in Athens. He and Hippocrates set off at
once to the house where Protagoras was staying to
see if he would take Hippocrates as his pupil, and
on the way they had some rather disconcerting
conversation as to the rashness of Hippocrates in
wanting to put his soul in the keeping of somebody
about whose teaching he knew next to nothing.
When they reached the house they found a galaxy
of talent assembled. Besides Protagoras there were
present two other most celebrated sophists, Hippias
and Prodicus, and a select company of men of the
world, largely foreigners, whom Protagoras had
collected from the cities through which he travelled,
" like Orpheus charming them by his voice." All
these admirers were walking up and down a cloister
(built round the court-yard of the house) behind
Protagoras, listening intently to his discourse, and
taking the greatest care (like country-dancers) to
part their lines and fall in behind whenever the
great man turned in his walk. Hippias was presiding
over a sort of conversation class on natural science,
both he and his rival audience being seated in the
opposite cloister. Meanwhile Prodicus was holding
a levde in bed in the store-room. The capacity of
the house was evidently taxed to the utmost, and
the temper of the man who had opened the door to
Socrates and his friend had been very much upset

52 PLATO

by the inroad of sophists. It must have required
the self-possession of a Socrates to interrupt so highly
cultured an assembly : he regretted that he could
not hear anything more of Prodicus, who was in his
opinion " a very wise and inspired man/' beyond his
deep voice booming from the inner room, but
attacking the business in hand, he went straight up
to Protagoras and introduced Hippocrates as a very
promising young man, who aspired to political
eminence, and thought that no one would help him
so well as Protagoras to attain it. Protagoras,
obviously flattered, was very gracious in his recep-
tion ; and expressed his preference for explaining
before the whole company what he could do for
Hippocrates, rather than in a private conversation.
Socrates, suspecting that he would like to show off
to his rivals his power of attracting new admirers,
proposed to call in Hippias and Prodicus to listen,
so the one was summoned from his lecturing-chair,
and the other from his bed, and the discussion
began.

Socrates starts (318 A) : "In what respect are
your pupils made better and wherein do they make
progress ? " Protagoras : " In prudence (evfiovXia)
in private and public affairs." Soc. : " Then you
profess to teach the virtue of a citizen." Prot. :
" Yes."

Then comes the ironical doubt of Socrates, re-

CRITICISM OF EDUCATION 53

f erred to above (p. 49), that virtue cannot be taught,
because on the one hand such distinguished people
as Pericles have failed with their sons, and on the
other we see that the Athenian assembly, if it wants
to build docks or ships, takes expert advice from
technically-trained men, and tells the police to
remove any non-professional speaker, but if it is
considering a question of good policy allows any
body, whether carpenter, smith, rich, poor, gentle
or simple, to get up and say his say, and nobody asks
where he has learnt political wisdom. Plainly the
world thinks it cannot be taught.

Protagoras replies with a myth, telling how when
mankind were in danger of being exterminated by
wild beasts, Zeus gave them justice and reverence
that they might live in cities without destroying
one another. At the express command of Zeus,
Hermes delivered these gifts to all men, so that all
have a share in political virtue. Moreover, if you
are a bad flute-player you would be thought mad to
say that you are a good one, whereas if you pro-
claim yourself destitute of some political virtue, say
honesty, you will be thought mad for saying so, as
though all men need not be good flute-players, but
must possess political virtue, and be able to give
counsel on matters of State.

Virtue can be taught ; otherwise, what would be
the use of punishing wrong-doers ? The State

54 PLATO

punishes them, not for revenge, but for the sake of
their improvement. In point of fact, people do take
trouble to get their children taught virtue, first by
nurses and parents, then by schoolmasters, and then
by law. If good men have bad children, it only
shows that virtue is granted to different people in
different degrees ; the children of good artists are
often poor artists. The truth is, everybody teaches
virtue according to his capabilities. " I," says
Protagoras, have a special gift for teaching virtue,
and therefore rightly receive large payment for my
work."

So far Protagoras : then Socrates takes up the
tale and cross-examines him. Protagoras very soon
dislikes the process, and seizes an opportunity to
deliver a showy harangue. Socrates then says that
he cannot keep long discourses in his head, and
must go, unless Protagoras will talk by means of
short answers. The threatening storm passes away.
To mollify him, Protagoras is allowed to give a kind
of specimen literature lesson to Socrates, on a poem
of Simonides. Socrates then gives a puzzling and
very sophistical explanation of the same poem. His
thesis is that sophists are mistaken in using poetry as
a means of teaching virtue, because in poetry there is
no knowledge, and he uses very quibbling arguments
in support of it, possibly as a satire on the methods
of sophists in general. Whether or no poetry can

CRITICISM OF EDUCATION 55

convey knowledge — a question into which we must
not enter here — the point is, that Protagoras is ex-
tremely reluctant to identify virtue with knowledge.
The Simonides digression over, the original discussion
is resumed, and at last the unconvinced Protagoras
is driven to admit — but only because he condescends
thus to put an end to the persistent contentious-
ness of Socrates — that the particular line of argu-
ment compels him to identify virtue with knowledge
(360 E).

" So then," says Socrates, " I was wrong in sup-
posing that virtue could not be taught, for know-
ledge is just the thing that can be taught. And you,
Protagoras, were wrong in wanting to make out that
virtue is something different from knowledge, for
then it could not be taught, and yet you propose to
teach it. I should like to clear up these difficulties
another time." Protagoras agrees, with amiable
compliments to Socrates for his zeal and skill in
argument, saying : "I have often told my friends
about you that I admire you more than anybody I
meet, especially among men of your age " (Socrates
was about thirty-six at the time) ; " and I declare
I should not be surprised if you were to become a
person celebrated for your wisdom."

The moral to be drawn by us from the dialogue
is that virtue is pre-eminently a matter of education.
Plato wishes to arraign the most distinguished

56 PLATO

teachers of the day — it is not for nothing that
celebrities like Hippias and Prodicus are introduced,
as well as Protagoras — and to convince his readers
that such men are on the wrong tack, because they
have not grasped the truth that virtue is knowledge,
that is to say knowledge of the good, of which we
have caught glimpses in the Charmides and the
Laches. Their aim — at least the aim of some of
them — is right enough, but they do not know how
to grapple with their task. Some day Plato will
set himself to his promised work of clearing up the
difficulties, and give us the Republic.

It should be noted with what great respect he
speaks of Prodicus as ." a very wise and inspired
man " — sophists are not all as black as they are
painted. Protagoras too, though his solemnity and
short temper obviously afford Plato much amuse-
ment, is by no means an undeserving person, in
spite of being tainted, like most other people, by a
false conceit of knowledge. He genuinely desires
to teach civil virtue and to make men good citizens,
according to his lights. Hippias is clearly not liked
by Plato, who puts a bombastic speech into his
mouth in this dialogue, and handles him rather
cruelly in the Lesser Hippias. He claimed to be a
walking encyclopaedia of all the learning of the day.

In the Meno the question " can virtue be taught ? "
is asked in the very first sentence by a young

CRITICISM OF EDUCATION 57

Thessalian named Meno, who adds : "or does it
come by practice or by nature, or in some other
manner ? " Socrates makes the reply we should
expect of him : " First we must find out what
virtue is." Meno incurs the sarcasm of Socrates by
giving him " a swarm " of descriptions of different
virtues, instead of a definition of virtue ; as if it
were an answer to the question " What is a bee ? " to
describe different kinds of bees. Then Meno quotes
the great sophist, Gorgias, as saying that it is the
power of ruling men (73 C). Soc. : " This definition
needs to be modified by the word ' justly.' " So
does Meno's next attempt (77 B) : " Virtue is the
power to provide for yourself good things, when you
desire them : " for nobody " desires " what is bad
(a truly Socratic proviso ; see above, p. 10 f . No one,
if he could see far enough, would desire — /3ov\eo-0aL
— bad in preference to good, because he would be
convinced that it does not pay). The definition
therefore is equivalent to " the power of providing
yourself with good things." There next follows a
highly important section to the effect that
knowledge is recollection, a doctrine which we
shall more conveniently discuss hereafter.1 In
87 C Socrates takes up the position now familiar
to us that if virtue can be taught it must be know-
ledge, as there is nothing but knowledge that can

1 See below, pp. 68, 81, 148.

58 PLATO

be taught. Again, as in the Protagoras, the diffi-
culty crops up — Where are the people who can teach
it ? (89 E). Anytus, who was afterwards one of
the accusers of Socrates, now arrives on the scene,
and is invited, as a person of importance, to give
his opinion whether sophists and their pupils are
teachers and learners of virtue. Anytus repudiates
their claim with vehemence : " They are manifestly
the curse and destruction of those who have to do
with them, and they ought to be driven out of the
country by order of the state M (91 C, 92 B). He
remains unmoved when told of the good reputation
of Protagoras, who in the course of forty years of pro-
fessional life made a fortune superior to that of the
great sculptor Phidias, and was never to that day
detected in corrupting his pupils ; nor is he affected
by the eminence of other sophists. Anytus suggests
that any Athenian gentleman (kciXo? KayaOos)
will teach virtue better than a sophist. Socrates,
of course, rejects such people, on the same grounds
as in the Protagoras. Great men like Themistocles,
Aristides, Pericles, and Thucydides have not managed
to teach their sons virtue. " My friend Anytus, I
am inclined to think that perhaps virtue cannot be
taught." Thereupon Anytus takes offence, saying :
" Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak
evil of men. If you will take my advice I should
recommend you to be careful. Perhaps in any

CRITICISM OF EDUCATION 59

other city it is easier to do men harm than good,
and it is certainly the case here, as I think you know
very well." With this ominous hint to Socrates of
danger to come, he disappears.

We now come to a fresh point, which will be of
great importance hereafter. Socrates casts about
to see what else virtue can be if it is not knowledge.
A person who has a true opinion of the way to a
place where he has never been, might be as good a
guide as one who really knew the way ; similarly a
true opinion about virtue may be just as good a
guide to action as knowledge of virtue (97 B).
Meno is somewhat shocked at this ; he rightly con-
siders knowledge (iirio-TTJiArj) to be of much higher
rank than true opinion (opdrj Sofa). Soc. : " Still,
true opinion is just as good as a working theory,
and a man who possesses it will be no less useful
than one who has knowledge. We are then agreed
that virtue is not knowledge, and not capable of
being taught. Wise men like Themistocles are wise
not by knowledge, but by rightness of opinion,
wherefore statesmen are just in the same position
towards wisdom as soothsayers and prophets ; they
say many true things in an inspired frenzy, but they
know not what they say. If our investigation is
correct, virtues come neither by nature nor by
teaching, but it belongs to those who possess it
by a divine grace, without the aid of reason,

60 PLATO

unless there be a statesman, such that he can make
others statesmen. Such a man would be in
respect of virtue as a reality compared to shadows
(100 A)."

Thus in default of knowledge, virtue, if any be
found, seems to Plato to be based on true opinion.
If we could meet with a right education, virtue would
become knowledge. We can imagine Plato saying
to his friends : " No system that we have already
produces virtue. Let us try to devise a new one,
and see whether we can put it into practice in our
new school, the Academy/' It should be noted
how Socrates in the Meno leans towards knowledge
rather than true opinion, and only identifies virtue
with the latter because he cannot see his way to
acquiring knowledge. It is significant that he has
a lurking doubt as to the correctness of his investi-
gation even at the last (100 A). Also, Meno's
reluctance to give up the notion of virtue as know-
ledge, which is " much more honourable than true
opinion," points to something further to come
hereafter. So do the words : " unless there be a
statesman, such that he can make others statesmen/'
When he appears, the old virtue that comes of true
opinion will give place to his wisdom, as lesser ghosts
in Hades vanished before the shade of Tiresias.

CHAPTER VII

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION

An important class of teachers, sometimes called
sophists, has hitherto been passed over — the
rhetoricians. Their claims to educate the man and
the citizen must now be examined. Let us see what
Gorgias, who was at the head of the profession in
the fifth century B.C., says as to the effect of his art
upon his pupils. Gorgias was a native of Sicily, and
travelled, like Protagoras and other leading sophists,
all over the Greek world. Plato chooses, as the
occasion for representing an encounter between him
and Socrates, a moment when Gorgias is visiting
Athens for the purpose of giving lecturing displays.
The conversation takes place in a large company,
some of whom take a greater share than Gorgias
in the discussion. Gorgias has just finished an
elaborate harangue, which delighted the audience
before the arrival of Socrates, and is tired, but is
kindly willing to answer questions. Naturally he
is asked to define his art. Like Protagoras, he is
with difficulty induced to make his answers short
enough to please Socrates. At last, however,
rhetoric is declared to be an artificer of persuasion

62 PLATO

(weidovsS rjjjLLovpyos 454 A) ; the rhetorician is
one who can persuade people even in opposition to
the special expert. He will have greater power
than a physician to persuade the multitude — " You
mean the ignorant/' interposes Socrates, "in a
question of health. Then/' says Socrates,
" though ignorant he will appear to know among
the ignorant." Gorgias assents with satisfaction ;
he has previously said that if an orator uses his
power in order to persuade men to wrong courses,
that is his fault — his skill is not to blame. Soc. :
" I thought you were inconsistent when you con-
templated the possibility of a rhetorician misusing
his art. For you have admitted that rhetoric pro-
duces persuasion in assemblies and law-courts
about the just and unjust. Therefore the rhetorician
must know what is just and unjust ; consequently
he cannot be unjust ; one who knows justice is
necessarily just, and will use no skill as a weapon
of un justice."

Polus (whose name means " colt "), a young hot-
headed disciple of Gorgias, cannot stand this any
longer. He demands a definition from Socrates
himself. Socrates calls it the semblance of part of
the statesman's art (463 D). Polus : " But have
not rhetoricians great power in states ? " Soc. :
" They have less than any other citizen. They
cannot do what they desire. Everyone desires M

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 63

(ySovXerat as usual) " the good, rhetoricians included.
But their deeds are evil ; is it good to kill and
banish ? Such deeds are often done unjustly
through their persuasion. Therefore they, acting
more unjustly than others, are further than others
from doing what they really wish. The power to kill
or burn is nought. Anyone can assassinate a man,
or set fire to houses or ships. But he who wreaks
unjust destruction is to be pitied, not envied."
Pol. : " Surely Archelaus, the wicked tyrant of
Macedonia, is happy." Soc. : " If he is unjust he
cannot fail to be miserable ; though all Athens
think with you, I, one man, do not agree " (472 B,
referred to above, p. 35). Pol. : " Would you rather
be wronged than wrong another ? " Soc. : " Yes,
and so would you."

At this point Socrates' argument takes a line that
is certainly open to question. There is not room
here to discuss its weaknesses. If we sympathise
with Polus in being somewhat unfairly worsted, we
are nevertheless compelled to admire humbly the
noble fearlessness of Socrates, in upholding an
ethical ideal, so far beyond the standard of his day.
We have already seen, p. 35, that there is ground for
believing that Plato here is only reinforcing his
master's precepts. How completely he made this
maxim an essential part of his own teaching will be
still more manifest, when we come to study the

64 PLATO

picture of the just man persecuted, in the Republic,
Book II.

Callicles, who, as we gather from the dialogue,
was a prosperous, well-educated Athenian of posi-
tion, now intervenes. He thinks Socrates cannot
be serious. Polus was wrong when he admitted
that to wrong is more disgraceful than to be
wronged (482 D). "It was this admission that
caused him to be entangled by you, and if he had
not been ashamed to say what he really thought,
you would never have got the better of him. Con-
vention takes this view, but nature takes the
opposite side. The rule of the strong is nature's
law " (we see that Callicles is a forerunner of
Nietzsche) " and the ordinary code of ethics is only
the endeavour of the many weak to protect them-
selves against the few strong. You would know
this well enough, if you would only give up philo-
sophy and do something better. Philosophy is a
very pretty accomplishment for the young, but
anyone who keeps on with it in later years becomes
altogether ignorant of the world/' Socrates wishes
to know whether these strong men are required to
rule themselves as well as others. Call. : " What
do you mean ? *' Soc. : " I mean, are they to be
temperate and masters of themselves ? " Call. :
" Certainly not : the more they can satisfy their
appetites the better." Socrates will have none of

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 65

this. He calls to mind the words of " some Sicilian
or Italian of a pretty wit," who likened the souls
of the intemperate to leaky sieves, for they can
never be filled, and are of all the souls in Hades the
most miserable. There is a fundamental disagree-
ment between Callicles and Socrates. The one
thinks unrestrained pleasure, if it be secured, is
good and will produce happiness ; the other holds
such a life to be the source of all misery. Even
Callicles is compelled presently to admit that some
pleasures are bad, and Socrates once again insists
on the necessity of having a man of skill and under-
standing (t€x;i>i/co9 olvtjp 500 A) to choose between
them. The rhetoric that aims simply at persuasion,
without regard to the object for which persuasion is
exercised, is like the cookery that seeks only the
pleasure of the palate, and cares nothing for the due
nourishment of the body. No rhetoric, no states-
man— not even if we look at the most famous
names — has yet sought to implant the virtues of
justice and temperance in the people. Till that
effort is made, the rhetoric of Gorgias and his fellow-
teachers is in vain. The true statesman and philo-
sopher will persuade his fellow-citizens to do what is
right, by convincing them of the justness of his
cause, and nothing will be more alien to him than
the juggling and delusive art that goes by the name
of rhetoric.

66 PLATO

We said above (p. 25) that Plato seems, when he
wrote the Gorgias, to have had a fresh outburst of
bitter feeling against the city and her leaders who
put his master to death. He uses harsh language
against the art of rhetoric that could produce so
unjust a result, and therewithal appears not to
contemplate the possibility of a true art of per-
suasion, which shall inculcate virtue, and never be
used to base ends. In the Phaedrus, on the other
hand, together with much scorn heaped upon popular
rhetoric, we are shown a splendid vision of the way
in which discourse can be used to uplift the soul on
mighty wings of spiritual enthusiasm. Taking as
his starting-point a vapid speech of Lysias, an orator
much in vogue, in praise of love, Socrates first criti-
cises it unmercifully, then makes a kind of reply
speech in a similar style of artificial oratory, as if to
show that he can do better even in that department
than a professional speech-maker like Lysias. Sud-
denly he breaks off, and launches forth into his
recantation, as he calls it, for having reviled the
god of love. Souls, he tells us, in a disembodied
state have chariots with winged steeds whereby
they can mount to the uppermost region of heaven
in the train of Zeus and all the gods, who at an ap-
pointed time ride forth in winged chariots to the top
of the celestial vault, there to gaze upon the region
beyond the heavens, of whose glories " no earthly

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 67

poet has ever sung or will sing a worthy song."
The chariots of the gods mount easily, but those of
the human souls are hindered by a vicious steed,
who rebels against the charioteer, and refuses to
work with his yoke-fellow, a horse of noble race.
Sometimes the human soul attains to gazing on the
divine beauty and justice and truth that are only
visible to reason, " the pilot of the soul " (247 C) ;
more often the unruly horse only allows the
charioteer a fleeting glimpse of the region beyond
the heavens or none at all, before the wings droop
and bring both charioteer and horses down to earth.
Thereafter each soul takes the form of man, accord-
ing to the degree in which it has enjoyed the vision
of the eternal realities. Those in whom the charioteer
reason has gained control over the horses will become
true philosophers, others will approach or fall away
from this, the highest lot of mortal man, in pro-
portion to the ascendancy of the charioteer over the
spirited and appetitive elements (seep. 94) symbolised
by the good and bad horse respectively. None will
sink so low as the tyrant, in whom nought but the
vicious horse has dominion. And while incarnate in
a mortal body, if a soul sees beauty on earth, it is
forthwith filled with recollection of the divine
beauty, and unutterable longing. This is the holy
madness called love, and if the lover and his beloved
walk in the paths of wisdom, they will enslave the

68 PLATO

part of the soul which is the abode of vice, and set
free that wherein virtue dwells.

This noble rhapsody (244 A-257 B) should be
read in full in order to estimate aright its claim to
be a fragment of ideal rhetoric. Its splendour and
enthusiasm carry the reader on with the impetus
of a torrent — an impetus that is totally lacking in
the two previous speeches which are carefully
shaped on current rules of oratory. But it is
because justice and truth are represented as the
goal of love that the hymn shows what should be
the aim of eloquence. When the theme is worthy,
no imagery, no rhythmic harmony can be too ex-
alted to give it due adornment. Gorgias and his
fellow-teachers of rhetoric would be free from blame
if they used their skill only to draw men to all things
that are lovely and of good report. True rhetoric
should indeed be what Gorgias called it, " an artificer
of persuasion " (Gorg. 453 A), but persuasion is only
in place when the speaker's thought is fixed on
everlasting righteousness. Those rhetoricians who
teach the use of subtle and ready words for base
ends are as a canker eating at the heart of nations.
Plato would heartily have endorsed the words of
Kenan (Souvenirs de jeunesse, p. 220) in speaking of
the seminary where he received his theological
training : " sans le vouloir, Saint-Sulpice, ou Ton
meprise la litterature, est ainsi une excellente ecole

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 69

de style ; car la regie fondamentale du style est
d'avoir uniquement en vue la pensee que Ton veut
inculquer, et par consequent d'avoir une pensee."

After the palinode in praise of love the dialogue
proceeds to show that great oratory such as that of
Pericles comes from philosophic training and high
speculation concerning natural truths. Anyone
who is a serious teacher of rhetoric will, with all the
exactness in his power, study the nature of the soul,
for all his striving is directed to working on the soul
for good. The orator must learn the difference
between man and man, and having found a fitting
soul " by the help of knowledge will plant and sow
in it words that are able to help themselves and him
who implanted them, having in them a seed . . .
which makes him who possesses it happy as far as
it is possible for man " (277 A). Such an art of
speaking cannot be acquired without much trouble.
" And this trouble the virtuous man ought not to
undertake for the sake of acting and speaking to
men, but for the sake of being able to say and do
with all his might what is pleasing to God " (273 E).

Hence the written is far below the spoken word
in value. For a writer is constrained to set down
his thoughts in a fixed manner, and cannot vary
his expression in accordance with the needs and
characteristics of his listeners, nor can a reader ask
a writer to explain himself. Writing is to discourse

70 PLATO

as a painter's dumb images of life to living beings.
The writing that is precious is the living word of
knowledge inscribed on the soul of the learner. This
is the seed that withers not for lack of root. If any
man there be who thinks that the best of writings
are but a reminder to us of the truths we learnt
while our souls mounted to gaze on the divine beauty,
and that the only clear and perfect way of writing is
the writing on the soul concerning justice and
beauty and goodness, " that man," says Socrates,
" seems to be, Phaedrus, such as you and I would
fain become " (278 B). If his words are based on
truth, and if he is able to defend his writings by
spoken arguments which make those on paper seem
worthless in comparison, then we may call him more
than orator or poet or statesman, we may call him
— not wise, for it would be presumptuous to use a
name only befitting God — but with becoming
modesty, a lover of wisdom or philosopher.

Thus the result of the Phaedrus is in the end much
the same as that of the Gorgias. Knowledge, or
what is the same thing, virtue, is essential to the
orator and the teacher of oratory. The Gorgias is
so full of wrath against the so-called teachers and
practisers of rhetoric that it loses sight of the possi-
bility of a more excellent art of discourse. In the
Phaedrus this omission is made good, and we are
shown the outline of a training for the right exposi-

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 71

tion of noble thought which shall redound to the
service of God and man. It matters little for our
purpose whether we count the Phaedrus as earlier
or later than the Republic. In any case it testifies
to the need of a new departure in the education of
Plato *s fellow-citizens .

The Euthydemus introduces us to a new class of
sophists who stand at a much lower level than
Protagoras or Gorgias. Socrates tells his friend
Crito that Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who have
lately come to Athens in the course of a wandering
life, are made of fighting inside and out, for they are
most accomplished in fighting in armour (and will
teach the art for a suitable fee) and are equally skilled
in the weapons of the law-court. The sophists
themselves tell Socrates that their serious occupation
now is to teach virtue. Socrates professes incredulity
as to their power to fulfil so large a promise, but
wishes them to begin immediately to instruct him-
self and his young companion Clinias. Then
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus proceed to puzzle
Clinias completely, amid shouts of laughter from the
questioners and the bystanders. Socrates points
out to the crestfallen Clinias, who has been driven
to contradict himself in the twinkling of an eye, the
quibbling character of the arguments, and asks the
sophists to desist from making game of the unhappy
youth. He offers to show to the best of his ability

72 PLATO

the sort of conversation-lesson that he wants to
hear, and begs them to excuse his awkward efforts.
As we have learnt to expect, he soon elicits from
Clinias an admission that wisdom is the only good,
ignorance the only evil (281 E). Therefore to get
wisdom should be a man's chief endeavour, if wisdom
can be taught. " What do you think about this,
Clinias ? " "I think," says Clinias, " that wisdom
can be taught/' Socrates rejoices at this answer,
and exhorts Clinias to love wisdom.

" That," continues Socrates, " is my specimen of
hortatory discourse. Will you, my friends, show us
how to make one in a less amateurish and more
artistic manner ? " Dionys. : " You want Clinias
to become wise : therefore you want him to be what
he is not, and not to be what he is — it seems then
that you want him to perish." Naturally this
juggle with words infuriates a member of the
company. Socrates presently intervenes as a peace-
maker, and desires Dionysodorus to experiment on
him. As an old man who has nothing to lose, he is
quite willing to be boiled in the sophists' cooking-
pot, as Pelias was boiled by Medea. Dionysodorus
again seizes an opportunity for an irrelevant logical
puzzle, denying the possibility of contradiction.
Socrates brings him back to the matter in hand,
namely the search for an art which will produce
wisdom, and the important confession of faith in

RHETORIC AND DISPUTATION 73

the " kingly art " is made (291 B). This, the central
point of the dialogue, we have already discussed
above, p. 44. There follows an outburst of logical
puzzles of the most outrageous kind, in which
both sophists take part. Finally, Socrates thanks
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus for their marvellous
display of wisdom, but warns them that they had
better henceforward unfold it only to their paying
pupils, lest people should find out that it is easily
learnt.

Crito, to whom Socrates describes the whole scene
with the sophists, confides his anxieties about the
education of his two sons, for all professional
teachers of philosophy seem to him to be impossible
persons, and he knows not what to do (307 A).
Socrates urges him to disregard the teachers and
think only of philosophy : "If she appear to be
what I think her, you and yours, as the saying
goes, should pursue and practise her with cheerful
confidence."

We have now come to the end of the long series
of dialogues, Protagoras, Meno, Gorgias, Phaedrus,
and Euthydemus , from all of which the lesson to be
learnt is the necessity of a thorough-going reform of
education, in the highest interest of the individual
and the state. If the absurdity of the pretensions
of contentious or " eristic M sophists like Euthydemus
and Dionysodorus to be educators strikes us as

74 PLATO

unworthy of serious attention, we must remember
that logic in Plato's day was in its infancy. Pro-
blems of predication that seem to us mere foolish-
ness were real difficulties, which gave deep concern
to Plato himself, however much he mocks with the
keenest sense of humour the acrobatic tricks of the
sophists. The Euthydemus is well worth reading
all through for its astonishingly vivid portrayal of
the overwhelming banter, that is nevertheless half-
serious, dealt out to bewildered hearers by the
representatives of the art of disputation.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER IN LIFE AND DEATH

Early in the Phaedo (63 E f.) we meet with these
words, spoken by Socrates : " Now I wish to render
to you my account how it seems reasonable to me
that a man who has truly spent his life in philo-
sophy should be of good cheer when he is about to
die, and that he should cherish a hope of winning
the greatest good yonder, when he is dead. . . .
For all who apply themselves aright to philosophy,
do of themselves, unknown to the rest of men,
follow nothing else except dying and death." The
Symposium and the Phaedo together are an expanded
discourse on this text. Gomperz is surely right,
when he calls Alcibiades* speech in praise of Sociates,
which is apparently an appendix to the Symposium,
the essential root of the dialogue. " The words of
Socrates," says Alcibiades {Symp. 221 D ff.), " are
like grotesque images of Silenus which are made to
open. If anyone has a mind to listen to them,
they seem utterly foolish at first ; words and
phrases clothe him round about, as it were the skin
of a wanton satyr. For he talks of pack-asses and
smiths and cobblers and tanners, and always he

76 PLATO

seems to say the same things in the same words, so
that every inexperienced and unknowing man would
make mock of his words. But whoso sees the images
opened and finds himself within them first will
discover that his words alone have sense within
them, and then that they are most divine, and
having in them great store of images of virtue they
are of the widest comprehension, nay rather they
embrace all that it behoves one who is to be good
and honourable to behold."

Hitherto we have watched the development in
Plato's mind of two main ideas. The first, which
he took over from his master, is that lack of know-
ledge is the root of all evil in men and cities. The
second, which presented* itself more clearly to him
than it did to Socrates, is the conviction that no
improvement can be effected until a radically
different system of training for the duties of life
be introduced. Before we consider Plato's own
scheme of regeneration, we pause to look at the
picture he has drawn of one who has become — by
the grace of God, and not thanks to those who
nurtured him — a true lover of wisdom.

The earlier part of the Symposium need not
detain us long. A banquet is taking place at the
house of Agathon, the tragic poet, in honour of his
success the day before in winning the prize with his
first tragedy. Instead of drinking or listening to

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER 77

flute-playing, the company, in whom Socrates is
included, agree to entertain themselves by each
making a speech in praise of love. Five of those
present say their say with varying degrees of elo-
quence and originality. Among these discourses
those of Aristophanes the comic poet, and Agathon
the tragedian and host, stand out, the one for its
magnificent humour and vitality, the other for its
polished rhetoric. As usual, we find many hits
against the sophists and rhetoricians of the day,
especially when Socrates declares his immense
admiration for the speech of Agathon, whose
peroration with its Gorgias or Gorgon-like elo-
quence will, he fears, turn him and his own speech
into stone (198 C).

After this sally, Socrates begins in earnest, with
a solemn note of criticism. " The previous speakers,"
he says, " have one feature in common. They have
heaped upon love every kind of praise they could
think of, regardless of its truth or falsehood. In
my foolishness I had supposed that the praises
would be true, but it seems that the proposal was
that each of us should appear to praise love."
Socrates proceeds to relate how he has been taught
the true nature of love by Diotima, a wise woman
from Mantinea. He, like the rest of his contempor-
aries had called love a mighty god, and fair, but she
showed him that love is desire for what is fair and

78 PLATO

good. A god is endowed with beauty and good-
ness ; love longs for the beauty and goodness he
does not yet possess, and is no god, but a spirit
mid- way between the divine and what is mortal.
He spans the gulf between God and man. He is
not wise, as a god, nor yet is he ignorant, for one
who is ignorant has no desire for wisdom, and love
is a seeker after wisdom or, to use the Greek word,
a philosopher. The lover whose longing is guided
towards true beauty will presently " consider the
beauty of the soul more precious than that of the
body . . . and M (in company with the beloved)
" will search out and bring to birth such words and
thoughts as shall improve the young, that he may
be constrained to rise yet higher and contemplate
the beautiful in institutions and in laws, and per-
ceive that it is all of one family with itself, and so
may consider bodily beauty a trivial thing. And
after he has surveyed institutions, he will be led to
the sciences, that he may now perceive the beauty
of knowledge, and looking at last on the fulness of
beauty may no more be an unworthy trifler, no
more enslaved like a menial to beauty dwelling in
a single object . . . but facing the full sea of the
beautiful and gazing thereon, may by bountiful
philosophy become the father of many words and
thoughts full of beauty and scope sublime. And
when he has gained strength and stature here, he

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER 79

will descry a single science, such as treats of the
beauty I shall next describe. He who has been
thus far instructed in love's mysteries, beholding
things beautiful in proper sequence and after the
right method, on approaching the end of his initia-
tion will suddenly descry a wondrous beauty, even
that for the sake of which all his former toils were
undertaken. The beauty in the first place is ever-
existent, uncreated and imperishable, knowing
neither increase nor decay ; in the second place, it
is not beautiful in one way and ugly in another, or
beautiful at one time and ugly at another, or in
one relation beautiful and in another ugly, or
beautiful here and ugly there, as if beautiful in some
men's eyes, and ugly in the eyes of others. . . .

" Suppose it were permitted to one to behold the
beautiful itself, clear and pure and unalloyed, not
tainted by human flesh or colours or any of the
manifold varieties of mortal existence, but the
divine beauty as it really is in its simplicity, do you
think it would be an ignoble life that one should
gaze thereon and ever contemplate that beauty
and hold communion therewith ? Do you not
rather believe that in this communion only will it
be possible for a man, beholding the beautiful with
the organ by which alone it can be seen, to beget,
not images of virtue, but realities, for that which
he embraces is not an image but the truth, and

80 PLATO

having begotten and nourished true virtue, t(
become the friend of God and attained to immor-
tality, if ever mortal has attained ? " x

When this description of the heights to which a
true philosopher, whose foot is guided aright, may
strive to climb, is followed by Alcibiades' praise of
Socrates, with its insistence on his unlikeness to any
human being in the past or present, it is reasonable
to infer that Plato clothes his master's memory
with the attributes of his ideal seekers after wisdom.
If we turn to the Phcedo the picture is completed
and the impression strengthened by contemplating
the attitude towards approaching death of one who
has " truly spent his life in philosophy."

The conversation takes place between Socrates
and a group of friends assembled in his prison on
the morning of the day at whose close he is to die.
The serenity of Socrates in the face of death causes
his friends to marvel, and is even made a matter of
reproach to him. " Why should I be troubled ? "
he replies ; " what is death, but the separation
of soul and body ? In life body is perpetually
thwarting the soul, by its appetites, by the inac-
curacy of its perceptions, or by illnesses, so that the
soul's free action is impeded. Only death effects
her deliverance. All his life the philosopher is
endeavouring to disengage himself from the body,

1 Symp. 210 B-212 A, tr. Adam.

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER 8l

thereby going through, as it were, a " rehearsal of
death " (fieXerrj davdrov, 81 A). " Wherefore the
lover of wisdom will depart from life with joy,
for he will have an assured conviction that only
after death he will meet with wisdom in her purity.
Would it not be the height of unreason, if such a
man feared death ? "

It appears, then, that Plato expects a philosophic
training to produce an ascetic detachment from
life and bodily pleasures. In the Gorgias (493 A)
he tells us, as a lesson learnt from " the wise men,"
that in this life we are dead, and the body is the
tomb of the soul. The wise men in question were
no doubt Orphic and Pythagorean teachers, who
preached an austere rule of life. But it is only for
the sake of a fuller and better life that the philo-
sopher courts death. The Symposium has shown
us how he who hungers after wisdom strives to
descry eternal truth and beauty, and in the Phaedrus
we saw that souls before birth in the body might,
if blest in the highest degree, gain a fleeting vision
of the ideal verities. While on earth, such souls are
quickened by the sight of justice and beauty in this
transitory world to a recollection (avdfjLvrjo-is) of the
justice and beauty that never fade away, and they
yearn to approach nearer to them. Death is the
means by which the soul can once again quit her
prison-house. If the philosopher is unmoved, nay,

82 tLATO

joyous, when his hour comes * it is because he has
an overwhelming sense that his search for wisdom
in this life, highest music though it be for mortal
man {fyikoaofy'ia fxeyCcrrr) iaovctlkt] Phaed. 61 A),
is but the prelude to a song of immortality.

The proofs which Plato gives of immortality in
the Phaedo, Phaedrus and Republic may, for our
purposes, be passed over. What concerns us is,
not the manner in which he seeks to establish his
belief, but the belief itself. The immortality of the
soul is in Plato a cardinal dogma, forming the very
root of his philosophy. It is a vexed question
whether he held to the end of his life that the in-
dividual soul is immortal. It seems, however, fairly
clear that Plato did believe in some kind of per-
manence of individual personality even while he
taught that soul, after many wanderings, is finally
reunited with the divine mind from whence it issued.
The outstanding feature in Plato's doctrine of
immortality is his unswerving belief in pre-existence
as well as in life after death. Life, as we know it,
is the union of a soul with a body ; death is the
separation of the two factors. What, then, is the
history of a soul before it joins a particular body ?
And what after it leaves a particular body ? These
two questions are to Plato in reality one ; soul is
permanent, body is transient ; therefore soul cannot
be immortal without being pre-existent. In modern

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER 83

times we are apt to think and speak only of the soul's
ultimate destiny, not of its ultimate origin. We
often do not regard the two questions as necessarily
one, but to Plato's mind a far grander and vaster
conception of immortality was present, in the
thought that " the everlasting life of our soul ex-
tends backwards into the infinite past as well as
forwards into the endless future." x

The philosopher, then, is buoyed up by the belief
that he has come from a heavenly home, that while
on earth he has endeavoured to make himself like
to God as far as possible {Theaet. 176 B) by con-
stantly seeking after knowledge, and, finally, that
after death he will in due time be again caught up
and absorbed in the divine wisdom. His whole life is
shaped by the thought that " man is not an earthly
but a heavenly plant " (<$)vtov ovk eyyeiov ak\a
ovpaviov, Tim. 90 A) . Among men, ' ' evils can never
be destroyed, for always there must be something
that is opposed to the good ; nor can they find a
home among the gods, but of necessity they hover
around mortal nature and this earthly place.
Wherefore we must try to flee from hence thither
with all speed. And flying away is to become like
to God as far as possible ; and to become like him
is to become just, holy and wise withal " {Theaet.
176 A f.).

1 Archer-Hind, Phaedo, p. 9.

84 PLATO

From the starting-point of strong and filial affec-
tion for his master, Plato has lifted the figure of
Socrates on to the throne destined for the wisest,
or in other words, the best, man his imagination can
conceive. Such a man has within him a certain
spark of divinity, for his highest faculty, the craving
for wisdom, goodness and beauty, and the power to
satisfy that craving so far as his mortal nature
allows, finks him to God. " Plato," says Mr Lewis
Nettleship, " literally identifies the truly human
nature in us with the divine." The question next
arises : " Is it possible so to train the most gifted
among mankind that their powers may be expanded
to the utmost and used to guide their fellow-men
in the paths of virtue and true happiness ? " We
have seen how Plato cast his eye over various
schemes, offered by his contemporaries for the
nurture of men to take the lead in States, and found
them all grievously wanting. It now becomes our
task to see how he attacked the problem himself in
the Republic.

CHAPTER IX

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC

The name Republic is a translation into English of
the Latin respublica, Cicero's equivalent for the
Greek word Trokireia. Plato meant by it " a state,"
" a city/' or " a commonwealth." By a kind of
metaphor, the word " commonwealth " can be
applied to the constitution of the individual soul
in man. Plato's Republic seeks to depict the ideal
State, and in the end he is driven to confess that
such a State is nowhere to be found on earth, nor
indeed is it ever likely to be. " But perhaps," he
adds, " it is laid up in heaven as an ensample for him
who desires to behold it, and, beholding, found a city
in himself." * Though no society may represent
the kingdom of heaven, yet a man whose soul is
rightly attuned to virtue may have the kingdom
of heaven within him.

The subject of the work is really the sum of
human life in its ethical, political, religious and
philosophic interests. More precisely, its main
purpose is to discover in what way justice is better
than injustice. In the first book, which is called
i 592 Bt tr. Adam.

86 PLATO

by Plato himself a prelude, after a very interesting
introductory scene, the conversation raises the
question, " What is justice ? " Two current views
of justice, with which we are already well acquainted
(see pp. 3, 64), are put forward. The first is the
convention that justice consists in doing good to
friends and ill to foes. It receives a merciless
criticism at the hands of Socrates. The second is
expounded by the blustering Thrasymachus, who,
" gathering himself up sprang at us like a wild
beast as though he would seize and carry us off "
(336 B). It is our old friend " Might is Right/'
which occupied a large portion of the Gorgias.
" Rulers," he says, " are stronger than the ruled.
Everywhere they pass laws in their own interest,
and what is done in their interest they call just."
According to Thucydides (I. 76, 2) this was the
principle on which Athens justified the existence of
her empire, and as it is said later on in the Republic
to be the theory not only of Thrasymachus but of
countless others, we may well understand here that
Plato puts it forward as an ordinary view of politics,
for which he desires to substitute a higher ideal.
Socrates proceeds to demolish the argument of
Thrasymachus by showing that every artist — and
among artists must be included rulers — aims at the
perfection of his own art. A doctor qud doctor
seeks the good of his patient ; a ruler qud ruler that

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 87

of his subjects. A good ruler's chief reward is
escape from the misfortune of being ruled by worse
men than himself. But at the end of Book I
neither Thrasymachus nor Socrates is satisfied.
Thrasymachus is merely unable to find answers to
the arguments of Socrates, who in his turn discovers
that he has been talking about justice and injustice,
and their comparative advantages, without a clear
notion as to what justice is.

Socrates then thought to be quit of the conversa-
tion. But Glauco, the brother of Plato, refused to
let him off, saying emphatically that he has never
heard anyone adequately espouse the cause of
justice, and show in what way it is better than
injustice (358 D). Accordingly, Glauco proposes to
praise injustice at length, in order that he may
afterwards hear from Socrates the refutation for
which he longs of the doctrine that injustice is
superior to justice. He draws the strongest possible
picture of the just man, who, being thought unjust,
is subjected to all manner of torture, and is finally
impaled, while on the other hand an unjust man
may be so skilful in his wickedness that it is never
discovered, and he enjoys the highest reputation
and rewards which a man can attain. Glauco is
reinforced by his brother Adimantus, who brings
forward argument after argument in favour of
injustice, as the course more profitable to the man

88 PLATO

who can practise it with success, not only in life,
but also after death, if so be that the prophets speak
true, who tell of mystic atoning rites and gods who
can deliver us from the consequences of wrong-doing.
" Show us," finally urges Adimantus, " show us,
Socrates, if you can, not merely that justice is better
than injustice, but what effect each in itself has on
its possessor, so that the one is a good, whether seen
or unseen by gods and men, and the other an evil.
No teacher has ever adequately explained how
injustice is the greatest of the evils that the soul
contains within herself, and justice the greatest
good " (367 E and 366 E).

We now have set before us the question : " How
is justice better than injustice ? " The answer to
this question is the main subject of the whole
dialogue. Socrates begins by doubting his com-
petence to come to the aid of justice in distress,
especially as he has not been able to convince Glauco
and Adimantus by his answers to Thrasymachus.
But as it is impious, while he has life and power of
speech, not to come to the rescue when justice is
slandered in his presence, he agrees to do what he
can. And first he proposes to study justice writ
large in a State, as being more easy of recognition
than justice in an individual. He traces the growth
of a city from its first origin in the inability of an
individual to supply his own needs. From the

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 89

smallest of beginnings a community will grow till
it has within it persons qualified to practise all
useful arts, and " guardians " ((f>v\aK€<;) to protect
it from invaders and, if necessary, to gain by con-
quest fresh territory for the increasing population.
Such guardians must unite in themselves two
opposite qualities, gentleness (to irpaov) and spirit
(to dvfJLoeiSe^). Noble dogs are gentle to their
friends, and fierce to those whom they do not know.
They love the known and hate the unknown ; there-
in they are true lovers of knowledge, or philosophers.
So too must our guardians be lovers of knowledge
and learning, that they may be gentle towards
their friends, and they must have spirit and swift-
ness and strength to enable them to serve their
country in war.

If, then, our State is to have such guardians, we
must set ourselves to train them from childhood
by a fitting education, and for this nothing can be
better than the time-honoured music and gym-
nastic. But from " music/' which includes poetry
and literature generally, we must be careful to ex-
clude all such things as may be hurtful to the soul.
No tales may be admitted that impute evil and im-
morality to the gods ; nor, if we wish our guardians
to be brave, shall we allow any dread descriptions
of the life after death, or suffer poets to represent
heroes as making lamentations, or as lacking the

90 PLATO

virtues of truth and self-control. In all arts other
than literature, the arts of rhythm and melody,
painting, architecture, weaving, embroidery and
handicrafts (Plato hardly mentions sculpture,
though he evidently would include it among the
rest), if beauty of form be sought and set before
the young, then will our youth " dwell in a land
of health," and the spirit of music will sink into
their inmost soul, endowing him who is rightly
nurtured with spiritual beauty. As Plato says
elsewhere (Laws, 653 B f.), education consists in
learning to hate what ought to be hated, and to
love what ought to be loved. The man who has
true music in his soul will be in love with what is
fairest, and the goal of music is love of the beauti-
ful, which we have learnt from the Symposium
(204 B) to be philosophy. The Phaedo (61 A) has
also told us that philosophy is the highest music,
and we have just seen that gentleness is a char-
acteristic of the philosophic temperament. There-
fore, gentleness of soul, the love of beauty and the
love of wisdom are three inseparable results of an
education that steeps the youthful mind in all things
fair, and jealously wards off the taint of foulness.

So far as gymnastic, or in other words, physical
training, is concerned, the main principle should
be, as in the case of music, simplicity. Excess
should be avoided, and hygiene should be preferred

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 91

to luxurious living necessitating " cures " and
medical treatment. Military training is, in Plato's
opinion, the best and simplest form of physical
exercise. It must be borne in mind that both
music and gymnastic should be cultivated with
a view to the improvement of the soul rather than
of the body. Athletics undiluted produce hard-
ness and a rough disposition ; too much music
engenders softness and effeminacy. " When a man
allows music to lull him and to pour into his soul
through his ears as through a funnel " langorous and
melancholy tunes, his spirited element is softened
like glowing iron and made useful, but if he con-
tinue too far, he melts and wastes away and becomes,
like Menelaus in the Iliad, a soft warrior. If, on
the other hand, he works too hard at athletics and
lives on a generous diet, keeping music and philo-
sophy at arm's length, he begins by being filled
with pride and spirit, and his physical courage is
vastly increased ; but let him beware, for if he
go too far, he will become as a wild beast, living
in ignorance and ineptitude, devoid of all feeling
for grace and harmony. Music and gymnastic
are alike needed in due proportion to tune the
philosophic and spirited elements of the soul (411 A-
412 A).

Now those who have been thus educated must
be further tested in various ways, to see how far

92 PLATO

they can resist temptation. One who is proved
to be a " good " guardian of himself and of the
music which he has learnt, may rightly be called
a guardian. The word auxiliaries may be applied
to the younger men, whose probation is not ended.
The utmost care must be exercised to maintain
the highest possible standard in the guardian class.
If a child of a humble citizen be found worthy of
receiving a ruler's education, he is to have it, and
become a guardian when he is ripe for the honour ;
on the other hand, the children of guardians must
be relegated without compunction to inferior
classes, if they are found lacking in natural parts.
On this the whole structure of the State depends ;
that community is doomed wherein the noblest
natures are shut out from power, or government is
in the hands of the second and third-rate citizens.

Our State being thus founded, will be perfectly
virtuous and will therefore be wise, brave, temper-
ate and just (427 E). In what part of it shall we
find wisdom ? Where, but in the knowledge pos-
sessed by the guardians, which takes counsel on
behalf of the city as a whole ? From this know-
ledge the State gains the name of being good in
counsel and truly wise, though the guardians, who
alone have this, the only knowledge worthy of the
name, are by a law of nature the least numerous
class in the community.

GENERAL PLAN OE THE REPUBLIC 93

Courage is evidently the peculiar characteristic
of the soldier-section of the citizens, those whom
we called " auxiliaries " above, holding an inter-
mediate position between the true guardians and
the mass of the industrial and agricultural popula-
tion. Their education in music and gymnastic
will have given them an indelible opinion as to
what things should be feared and not feared. No
solvents, such as pleasures or emotions, will destroy
the fast colour of their courage, firmly fixed as it
is by the habit of good order produced by the
influence of right music (429 A ff., 425 A), and
the strengthening element of military gymnastic
(404 B).

The virtue of temperance differs from courage
and wisdom in belonging to the community as a
whole, being present both in rulers and in ruled,
and causing the city to be a harmony of all classes.
For a definition we may say that it is an agreement
between those who are naturally better or worse,
as to which shall rule.

Can we, then, anywhere find justice ? If we look
sharply, like good huntsmen, we shall see that we
have had justice before us for a long time, and
have failed to recognise her. We laid down the
principle that each person must do his own work,
for which nature fits him. This, and this alone,
is justice, the foundation of the State. If each

94 PLATO

citizen faithfully does the task allotted to him by
nature, wisdom will grow and flourish among the
rulers, courage among rulers and auxiliaries, tem-
perance among artisans and farmers as well as
among the two higher classes. To deal justly in
law courts is to assign to every man his own, and
to prevent aggressions on the property of others.

Thus we have discovered, what we set out on
p. 88 to find, the large letters of civic justice
in our State. We may well give it the more
general name of righteousness. Our next duty is
to seek the corresponding virtue in the individual,
using the light that we have already gained
to help us in reading the smaller characters.
The three orders in the State must be discernible
in the individual or State writ small. There is
the rational principle (to Xoyicrri/coV) that/plays the
part of the guardians in the soul's commonwealth,
the spirited or courageous element (to 0vjjlo€l§€s)
that, rightly used, is the helper of -wisdom, even
as the auxiliaries are the helpers of the rulers,
and both together should, when duly trained by
music and gymnastic, bear, sway over the mass
of desires that make up the appetitive part of
soul (to iTnOvfJirjTLKOv), welding the man into a
temperate whole, so that justice in the individual
is produced, when each faculty does its own work
in harmony with the others. When wisdom rules,

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 95

man will be at peace with himself. Justice or
righteousness is the health and beauty and well-
being of the soul, but vice is its disease and ugliness
and weakness (444 D). Glauco thinks it is absurd
any longer to enquire whether justice is better
than injustice, but Socrates holds that different
forms of civic and individual vice must be ex-
amined before the question is finally answered.
This commonwealth that we have pictured may
be called kingship or aristocracy, according to
whether its rulers be one or many.

[APTER X

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC — Continued

So far the development of the dialogue has pro-
ceeded in a direct line, and, as we have seen, Glauco
thinks that the discussion has really reached the
end at which it was aiming, since the company-
has agreed that justice for man and State is better
than injustice. Socrates is just about to enter
on a description of inferior types of city-states,
when he is reminded that he has let fall a remark
requiring some explanation, namely, that the
principle of common property among friends should
hold good as regards wives and children (423 E f.,
449 C ff.). The remark was accepted without
question at the time, nor was there more than a
slight debate over an earlier statement by Socrates
that the guardians (including auxiliaries) must
have no private property, if they are to be truly
guardians of the whole State, and not housekeepers
or husbandmen (416 D-421 C).

The principle of community of worldly goods
we will discuss in a later chapter. At the point
we have reached, the companions of Socrates
become exercised in their minds over community

96

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 97

in the matter of women and children, and desire
further enlightenment. Socrates reluctantly agrees
to deal with a difficult subject as best he can, and
launches himself as a swimmer, to use his own
metaphor, making his way through three successive
waves of argument. In the first wave he upholds
community of education for men and women
guardians (451 C-457 B) ; in the next community
of wives and children (457 B-466 D) ; in the third
" the greatest and most troublesome " (472 A),
he enquires whether his plan of communism, and
with it his ideal State, can ever come into existence.
This leads him on to a far deeper investigation
than any attempted earlier, regarding the nature
and nurture necessary to produce perfect rulers,
and it is not until Book VIII that he is able again
to take up the thread where we left it at the end
of the last chapter, and to depict the polities which
diverge from his ideal commonwealth. The third
wave of discussion, from V. 472 A to the end of
VII. 541 B, forms the central and most important
part of the Republic. It rises to unsurpassed
heights of eloquence and imagination, and there is
hardly a fine that is not full of meaning for the
metaphysician, the religious teacher, the social,
political, and educational reformer in any age, not
least in our own day.

To return to the first wave : Socrates maintains

98 PLATO

that, in all matters concerning the administration
of a State, Nature indicates no difference between
the sexes as regards special capacities. Women
vary in their gifts and qualities, precisely as men
do. Socrates supports the traditional view that
in every physical, mental, or artistic activity women
are, on the whole, weaker than men, although, as
Glauco remarks, many women excel many men
in many things. Women, therefore, who possess
the qualities of a guardian should take their share
along with men in guiding the State, and their
training in music and gymnastics must in no way
differ from that of the male guardians. Thus
only will women reach their highest development,
and there is nothing better for a city than that
its women as well as its men should be as good as
possible (456 E).

We may congratulate ourselves on escaping the
first wave, but it is small in comparison with the
second. If mankind is to be improved by breeding,
care must be taken that the best men should unite
with the best women. The rulers are to decide what
persons are to be joined in wedlock at hymeneal
festivals, keeping their methods of procedure a secret
only known to themselves. When children are
born of good parents, they are to be reared in a
State " fold " or nursery, regarding as their parents
all those who were brides and bridegrooms at a

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 99

marriage festival a certain time before their birth.
In this way the guardians will become one family,
and by sharing one another's joys and sorrows,
they will be bound together by community of
pleasure and pain. Moreover, as they may have no
private property in lands, houses, or other goods,
they will be free from all quarrels occasioned by the
possession of money or children or kindred (464 E).
Women, then, are to share with men a common
education, common responsibility for bringing up
children, common guardianship of the city in peace
and war. This is the natural relationship of the
sexes.

At last we come to the third and mightiest wave.
Is there any hope that our ideal State, where
righteousness reigns supreme, and each member of
each class seeks not his own, but the common good,
can be approximately realised ? Nothing actual
ever perfectly embodies the originator's conception,
but given one change in States, no slight or easy one
yet a possible departure from existing conditions,
all might be well. " Until philosophers become
kings in States, or those who are now called kings
and sovereigns are sincere and competent lovers of
wisdom, and political power becomes one with
philosophy . . . there is no rest from evil for
cities, my dear Glauco, nor in my judgment for the
human race. Neither will this commonwealth that

100 PLATO

we have pictured in our discourse come into being,
so far as may be, until that day, and see the light
of the sun " (473 C f.).

This startling announcement, utterly at variance
with Greek opinion of the day (see on the Gorgias, p.
64) is expected to provoke an immediate and violent
assault on Socrates by practical politicians and
others. It becomes, therefore, necessary to explain
what we mean by a philosopher. We have already
(see above, p. 89) denned the philosopher as one whose
love of knowledge makes him gentle like a noble
dog, who loves his friends. The true philosopher is
he who loves, not a part of wisdom, but all wisdom,
and seeks to contemplate truth (475 B and E). His
vision can penetrate beyond concrete, beautiful, and
just things or persons to gaze on absolute Beauty
and absolute Justice. The Beautiful itself and the
Just itself have true Being, and are the objects
of knowledge. Those who see merely particular
beautiful or just things may be said to have an
opinion but not knowledge about beauty and justice.
For the many beautiful and just individuals have
not Being in the sense that we postulate it for
absolute, eternal, and immutable Beauty and Justice.
Only to those whose hearts go out to true Being can
the name philosopher, lover of knowledge, lover of
wisdom, rightly be applied.

Such a person will love truth with a consuming

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 101

passion, and no room will be left in his nature for
covetous and sensual appetites. He will be brave,
being taught by the spectacle of all time and all
existence that human life is but a thing of nought.
Justice and gentleness will characterise all his deal-
ings with his fellow-men. He must be quick at learn-
ing, and apt to retain what he has learnt ; otherwise
he will be void of knowledge and in the end will
come to hate himself and his occupation. No self-
assertion or extravagance of manner will appear in
his behaviour, for the love of truth leads to due
proportion in all things. Is not this the kind of
man or woman to whom alone, when perfected by
education and ripeness of years, we should be
willing to entrust the helm of the State ?

At this point Adimantus brings forward with
great force the usual arguments about the futility
or roguery of so-called philosophers (see on the
Gorgias, p. 64). Socrates admits that the reproaches
are deserved. He blames partly the chaos prevail-
ing in politics, whereby the true philosopher-states-
man among politicians is like a pilot amid a crowd
of mutinous sailors, who will have none of his
services. A more potent cause, however, of dis-
repute is the fact that men profess to be philosophers
who are in no way entitled to the name. Moreover,
those who might in happier circumstances attain to
the perfection of human wisdom and virtue are now

102 PLATO

unable to resist the corrupting influence of that
clamorous monster, the mighty but ignorant
populace, by whose whims they are led. Flattery
on the part of interested and unscrupulous advisers
completes their ruin, and the place of worthy
aspirants to the hand of Philosophy is taken by base
supplanters, as a little bald coppersmith who has
come into some money seizes the opportunity to
marry his master's daughter, when misfortune
reduces her to poverty and loneliness.

A very few who cling to philosophy, take shelter
as it were under a wall from the rain and wind and
dust of political life, by remaining in retirement,
keeping themselves unspotted from the world,
so as to depart from it when the hour comes
in peace and good hope, having practised the
highest music all their life (see chap. viii. p. 75).
This remnant have indeed done much, but their
highest function is left unfulfilled, as existing
commonwealths give them no proper scope for
serving their fellow-citizens. It may be that in the
fulness of time some ruler wise enough may appear
in a country that is ready to listen to him, and then
all the provisions of our ideal State may be brought
about. Assuming that a perfectly just polity is not
impossible, we must obviously supplement our
former account of the education to be given to the
rulers. That education was directed, as it were, to

GENERAL PLAN OF THE REPUBLIC 103

setting their minds and bodies in tune, so that
nothing common or unclean should be welcome to
them. Music and gymnastics are well suited for
developing the spirited element of soul and keeping
the appetites in due subjection, but reason is the
faculty that should have control in State and in-
dividual, and such philosophers as we have in view
need a training of the intellect far more thorough
than anything yet devised. Their education must
aim at bringing them to the knowledge of the
highest Good, which from this part of the Republic,
and from the Philebus 22 C, may be identified with
the Deity, Creator, and Ruler of the Universe.1

Mankind in a state of ignorance are likened by
Socrates (in the famous simile of the cave at the
beginning of Book VII) to prisoners in a cave, whose
head and limbs are bound so that they only look at
the end of the cave. Behind them a fire burns, and
on the wall in front of them they see shadows of
objects borne by carriers along the breadth of the
cave. They have never seen anything else, and
have no conception of a sun-illumined world, until
a deliverer releases them from their chains, turns
them round and leads them up the toilsome path
from the cave into the light of day. This allegory
represents the task of the educator. It is his

1 For a discussion of other views of the Platonic Supreme Good,
see Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, pp. 442 ff .

104 PLATO

business to turn the eye of the soul round so that
its gaze is directed, not to the transient things of the
visible world, but to the eternal verities which cul-
minate in the Higher Good or God. Plato sets
forth, as the means to be adopted for this end,
a ten years' course of mathematical study (including
arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy
and harmonics, together with two years of re-
vision and co-ordination), followed by an earnest
seeking after ethical and metaphysical truth.
Dialectic is the name given to this crowning science,
since the investigation is carried on, after the
manner of Socrates, by means of question and
answer. At different stages, both during the earlier
studies, and when dialectic is entered upon, tests
are to be applied, with a view to sifting out students
who are not competent to go through the entire
course. When the age of thirty-five has been
reached, those students, whether men or women,
whom the long discipline has lifted out of the cave,
are to descend into it once again, and bear their
part as rulers and generals of the State, not because
they wish it themselves, but because they, being just,
will recognise the justice of this burden laid upon
them, for only in a State where rulers have open to
them a better life than ruling will those rule, who are
truly rich, not in gold, but in a life of goodness and
wisdom (521 A). At fifty the guardians may be

GENERAL PLAN OP THE REPUBLIC 105

released from their toil, and turn themselves to the
contemplation of the Good, only renouncing their
happy freedom to pursue philosophy when from time
to time they take a share in the work of governing,
as a necessary duty. They will train up other
guardians to be like themselves, in whose hands they
will leave the city when they depart to dwell in the
islands of the blest.

Our third and greatest wave is now surmounted,
and we have reached the conclusion that an ideal
State may be possible, if philosophers worthy of the
name be found, to whose hands absolute power may be
trusted. Given the perfect man, he can bring about
the perfect State, but it may be that he can only
behold the ensample laid up in heaven, and beholding,
found a city in himself. Still, " it matters not,
whether it is or shall be anywhere, for the wise man
(o ye vovv e^cov, 591 C) will do the work of that
city alone, and of none other " (592 B).

CHAPTER XI

LAST BOOKS OF THE REPUBLIC

At the beginning of Book VIII, Socrates at last
enters on the discussion, postponed from the end of
Book IV, of the States and corresponding individuals
that fall progressively away from the perfect State
and its counterpart the king-philosopher. Aristo-
cracy, as we have seen, is the name given to the
the ideal polity, in which government is in the hands
of " the best," that is, the wise and virtuous. Sup-
posing that the guardians of this State fulfil their
duties imperfectly with regard to the selection of
parents, the race will begin to degenerate, and
dissension will arise. The spirited element will
prevail over reason, so that ambition takes the place
of love of righteousness. This form of government
is called by Plato a " timarchy " because its ruling
principle is love of honour (TLfirj) and of victory.
Similarly a timocratic man is one who is filled with
a spirit of contention, cherishing a grudge perhaps
against a philosophic father, who declines to take
office in an ill-governed State, and so keeps his son
out of honours and rewards. This spirit is often
fostered by a querulous mother, who sees other

106

LAST BOOKS OF THE REPUBLIC 107

women taking precedence of her, and by mischief-
making old servants.

The next step downwards is to oligarchy, which
Plato represents as equivalent to plutocracy. As
the love of riches increases in a State, the love of
virtue diminishes, for " in proportion as riches and
rich men are honoured in the State, virtue and the
virtuous are dishonoured." * When a property quali-
fication for rulers is established in a State, wealth
instead of knowledge determines the choice of
governors. Such communities are liable to all
sorts of evils arising from extremes of wealth and
poverty. As for the oligarchical man, he may
have had a timocratic father, who has foundered
in political life. The son takes the lesson to heart,
abjures the pursuit of honour, and devotes himself
to amassing wealth. Though his covetous impulses
are at war with his better nature, in most affairs
of life he represses them lest his possessions should
be endangered, but if he can act as a fraudulent
trustee, without fear of detection, he will.

Democracy follows oligarchy in the descending
scale. As riches increase, so does extravagance,
and men of distinction are reduced to beggary.
Such men form a class of stinging drones in the
community. The rulers profit by their financial
misfortunes and do not trouble themselves to check

1 551 A, in Jowett.

108 PLATO

the evil. Then the poor discover the weakness of
the rich who are set over them, and on some slight
occasion they overthrow those in power, establish-
ing a democratic government in which office is for
the most part assigned by lot. This polity is " like
a many-coloured garment, diversified with every
shade of colour " i1 it is a universal provider of con-
stitutions from which the customer who wishes to
found a State can choose according to his fancy ;
every man can do as seems right in his own eyes.

The following is the origin of the democratic man.
An oligarchical or money-loving father is apt to
keep his son too tight. The young man meets with
wild associates — " tastes the honey of drones " is
Plato's phrase — (559 D), and there ensues within
him a contest of desires. Sometimes the more
orderly desires keep the assailants in check, but if
in the end the evil appetites gain the day, insolence
and anarchy hold high revel in the chambers of
the man's soul. One whim succeeds another ;
riotous living is followed by teetotalism ; physical
culture, lounging apathy, politics, philosophy,
business, or soldiering, all appear by fits and starts
in the life of this beautiful and many-coloured
creature (561).

Last comes tyranny and the tyrannical man.
Just as oligarchy was ruined by the insatiate desire

1 557 C, tr. Adam.

LAST BOOKS OF THE REPUBLIC 109

for wealth, so insatiate thirst for freedom produces
intoxication and anarchy. Respect for rulers,
parents, teachers, and elders vanishes. Even dogs
and beasts of burden become self-assertive and
arrogant, law and authority are set at nought.
The drones in the city squeeze honey from the rich,
and the workers whose means of subsistence are
scanty use their political power for the robbing of
hen-roosts. The people's champion is presently
converted into a tyrant so soon as he tastes blood
in the civil war of class against class. In the first
flush of power he enacts popular measures by lavish
cancelling of debts and distribution of lands. Very
shortly, however, he is transformed into an oppressor,
and protects himself against his growing unpopu-
larity by a rabble body-guard of slaves and foreigners.
Thus the people in shunning the frying-pan of
service to free fellow-citizens have fallen into the
fire of bondage to slaves. Unfettered licence has
developed into tyranny.

It remains to trace the genesis of the tyrannical
man. A democratic father has a son, who is drawn
into a life even more lawless than the parental
instability and impatience of restraint. Corre-
sponding with the development of tyranny in the
democratic city, a commanding passion will establish
itself as the leader of other desires, and will finally
enslave the whole man. From spendthrift he

110 PLATO

becomes criminal and parricide. In the last resort,
if he finds himself in a city to match him, he will
become an actual tyrant, hating and hated by all
with whom he comes in contact. The real tyrant
is really a slave, full of desires which he cannot
gratify, a prey to fear and convulsive alarms through-
out his life. The longer his rule, the worse he
becomes. Friendless and wicked, he is miserable
himself, and makes those about him miserable
likewise.

We are now in a position to declare with a
herald's voice that the kingly-philosophic man is
the most virtuous and happy. The tyrannical man
is the worst and most miserable, whether seen or
unseen by gods and men ; the timocratic man leads
a better and happier life than the oligarchical man,
and he again than the democratic man. The
three principles of soul — Reason, Spirit, Appetite —
may be called respectively, knowledge-loving,
honour-loving, gain-loving. If you ask men who
embody each of these principles which of them leads
the pleasantest life, each will declare for his own.
Which opinion is most to be trusted ? Surely that
of the lover of knowledge ; for he has within him
spirit and appetite, and can reject the pleasures of
ambition and gain as inferior to the sweetness of
learning truth, whereas this delight is not known
to those who do not possess the philosophic faculty.

LAST BOOKS OF THE REPUBLIC 111

Only when the spirited element and the appetites
are under the due guidance of reason are such
pleasures as are open to them truly attained. Man
is a compound of a many-headed monster, a lion
and a man.

The supporter of injustice will hardly venture to
maintain his disagreement with us, when we show
him that he is in effect subjecting the man to the
beast within us. The upholder of justice on the
contrary gives to the man, or rather to the God
in man (589 D) lordship over the whole creature,
taming and cherishing the gentle qualities of the
many-headed monster, and curbing the wild ones.
Moreover, he makes the Hon his ally, and unites all
the parts into one common harmonious whole.
Law and education are alike directed to ensuring
that the divine element shall have the upper hand,
if possible by the co-operation of the individual,
if not, then by the subjection of the individual to
external authority. It is better for the unjust not
to remain undetected, for in remedial punishment
lies his best chance of deliverance from the rampant
monster of his passions, and consequently of attain-
ing peace of mind. The wise man, who has true
music in him, will attune his body to the harmony
of his soul ; he will not heap up riches to his own
infinite harm ; he will accept such honours as he
thinks will make him a better man ; and though he

112 PLATO

may dwell in a city too bad for him to serve her as a
statesman, he will bear rule gladly in his own proper
tate, and can at least (see above, p. 105) found an
ideal city in himself.

A complete answer has now been given to Glauco's
request for an exposition of the superiority of
justice over injustice (358 D) in this life. The last
book, after a long digression on poetry and imitative
art, restores to justice the rewards, which she does
receive from gods and men, though it has been
shown that she can dispense with them. Plato has
a robust conviction that even poverty and sickness
or other adversity work together for the good of the
just man in life or death, " for he is never neglected
by the gods, whosoever is willing and zealous to
become just, and by practising virtue to be made
like to God as far as is possible for man " (613 A).
The unjust man may run well in the race of life for
a time, but he brea,ks down in the course, and
justice bears away the palm. To know the rewards
and punishments that are in store for righteous and
unrighteous souls, we may listen to the tale of Er,
(the son of Armenius, who in a twelve days' trance
'saw the heavens opened and the recompense meted
out to the souls of those who had done good and
evil. This myth, showing that justice is better
than injustice for the Jife hereafter^ as well as for
life on earth, finishes the defence of justice, and

LAST BOOKS OF THE REPUBLIC 113

Socrates concludes the dialogue in the following
words : "If we follow my counsel, deeming soul
immortal and able to endure all things good and all
things evil, we shall ever cleave to the upward road,
and follow justice together with wisdom, with all
our strength ; that we may be dear both to one
another and to the gods, while we abide here, and
when we receive the prizes of virtue, like victors in
the games, who go round gathering gifts ; and here
and in the journey of a thousand years that we have
described,1 let us fare well/'

x In the myth.

CHAPTER XII

THE VALUE ATTACHED BY PLATO TO EDUCATION

It is characteristic of Plato's more important works,
as Mr Archer-Hind has shown in his Introduction to
the Phaedo, that several different subjects are inter-
woven in such a way that the reader can hardly say
on which of them the author laid most stress. If
the Republic is constructed so that the whole dialogue
is relevant to the question, " How is justice better
than injustice ? " it is very plain that education is
at least one of the chief topics. We saw in chapters
vi-viii the profound dissatisfaction of Plato with
all contemporary education, and have now followed
the principles on which he based his hopes of a
complete reform. In many respects those principles
have never been superseded, and, in fact, one after
another of latter-day experiments in education are
nothing but attempts to put various parts of Plato's
theory into practice, though the source of indebted-
ness is often not realised.

Plato, as a disciple of Socrates, displays a hopeful-
ness about the results of education, in which it is
difficult for us to follow him, because we too often
see that virtue and knowledge are by no means

114

THE VALUE ATTACHED TO EDUCATION 115

identical in this imperfect world. Even Plato him-
self will not venture to say more than that in the
whole course of ages, possibly one of his philosophers
might be produced (Rep. 502 B). But since

"Who aims a star shoots higher far
Than he that means a tree,"

the loftiness itself of his ideal is an incitement to
walk as far as possible, even though our powers flag
after but a short time, along the upward road to
which he bids his hearers cleave (Rep. 621 C).

His conception of the problem that confronts the
educator becomes much more profound as his work
progresses. At the outset, he is concerned only to
foster the qualities of gentleness and spirit in his
guardians. Austere rhythm and melody, imagina-
tive literature that is free from all taint of vileness,
and vigorous military gymnastics are his appointed
means to this end. So far, so good, but how are
rulers to acquire the intellectual insight and spiritual
fervour necessary to true statesmen ? It is clear
that the training of reason, the master-faculty, must
be taken in hand more seriously. Mere gentleness
does not form the whole content of the philosophic
element of soul. Desire for truth is, or should be,
the characteristic passion of the philosopher, and all
those who possess the necessary natural gifts should
be helped, by wise leading, to satisfy their thirst

116 PLATO

for knowledge, in order that those who attain
wisdom may use it to uplift their fellows and order
the life of the whole State aright.

The stress laid by Plato on mathematics (see p. 104)
may seem to indicate an unduly narrow view of in-
tellectual training. It cannot be denied that many
of the greatest minds would starve if compelled to
devote their whole attention to the study of mathe-
matics for ten years, between the ages of twenty and
thirty. It must be remembered that in Plato's day
the choice of subjects was comparatively restricted,
and he would be the first to accept any modifications
of his curriculum that might be shown to be more
efficacious in producing robustness of mind and
power of exact thought. Mathematics stands to
Plato for the means of strengthening the mental
powers, in order that man's judgement may be made
mature enough to enter on the study of the highest
Good, the source of intelligence, the divine Creator
of the universe.

It has been well said, in a paper lately printed for
private circulation, that the terms " reason " and
" rational " are used by Plato where we should
speak of " spirit " and " spiritual." " There is an
element of passion and ardour in Plato's ' reason '
which is very remote from our usual understanding
of the term. Reason is afire with love of beauty
and of goodness as well as love of truth, and so is

THE VALUE ATTACHED TO EDUCATION 117

capable of inspiring life and action, as reason in our
ordinary sense could not inspire. To Plato the ab-
solute reason is also the supreme good or goodness." *
Whether or no the system of education devised by
Plato is likely to have the effect he desired, it is to
be counted as one of his noblest conceptions, and
one most fruitful for all subsequent generations,
that those who are to serve the State should be
human beings of exceptional gifts, developed to the
utmost, and imbued with a passionate love of all
things good and beautiful.

The philosopher-statesman's duty is to produce
virtue in the State as a whole and in individuals
(Rep. 500 D). His own virtue, if ever he can attain
to knowledge of the Good, will rest on a basis of
truth and reason. In the Republic Plato seems to
look forward to this as a not impossible goal of the
highest education, even though the hint is dropped
that the ideal city is only to be found " in heaven."
Failing the true philosophic virtue founded on
knowledge, " popular and political " virtue, as the
phrase runs (Phaed. 82 A), founded on right opinion,
is possible for the whole community, and, even sup-
posing the rulers have reached full knowledge of the
Good, is the only virtue attainable by the mass of
the citizens. Such virtue may come by the gift of
God (deia fMOLpa, Meno 99 E) in happily constituted

1 ISee also Adam, R. T. 0., p. 329, quoted on p. 11 f. above.

118 PLATO

persons, or it may be the result of good training in
music and gymnastics, or again, of obedience to the
behests of wise rulers (Rep. 590 D). It differs from
the virtue of the true philosopher, because it is
without reason (dvev vov) and comes by habit and
practice (ef eOovs re /cat ^cXeriys yeyovv7a, Phaed.
82 B). Apparently in the Republic even the earlier
scheme of education in music and gymnastics is
reserved for the guardian class, including auxiliaries,
so that the artisans and tillers of the soil, apart from
instinctive impulses towards goodness, can only
contribute to the virtue of the body politic by faith-
fully attending to their business, according to the
rule " one man, one work/' and by serving the
Divine Wisdom through keeping the laws framed by
the guardians in the image of eternal justice and
truth (Rep. 501 A).

The time allowed by Plato for work in the cave,
or in other words, for active direction of the com-
munity, seems veiy short in proportion to a man's
whole life. Fifteen years, from the age of thirty-
five to that of fifty, and occasional spells of labour
after fifty, are all that can be spared from the work
of self -education and contemplation of the Good.
Considering that the guardians have to take upon
themselves the whole task of educating their
successors as well as of administration, we must
surely suppose that Plato would have been

THE VALUE ATTACHED TO EDUCATION 119

forced to modify his distribution of time, if he
had had the chance of putting his theory into
practice.

In the Laws Plato gives us another outline scheme
of education, suited for a State where rulers and
ruled are not sharply differentiated from one
another as in the Republic. The Laws are the work
of Plato's old age. Many scholars have not believed
the book to be genuine, but besides the fact that
there is a good deal of external evidence in favour
of Platonic authorship, most people will refuse to
believe that anyone else could have written it.
The Laws describe the foundation and working of a
commonwealth more within the reach of imperfect
mankind than the city of the philosopher-kings.
Virtue is to be the aim of this State, just as much
as in the Republic, but on the one hand, the
governors do not aspire to complete comprehension
of God's wisdom, and on the other, education is
open to all citizens. To educate is still the most
important function of the State, and the work is
to begin even before birth by careful treatment of
the mother. In early infancy strong nurses will
provide exercise by continually carrying the
children about, so that their bodies may be made
strong, and their souls accustomed to rhythmic
motion. Babies, Plato thinks, ought to live as if
they were always sailing on the sea (790 C). Music

120 PLATO

will also penetrate into the infant mind through the
songs of mothers and nurses, and by the simplicity,
cheerfulness and harmony of the child's surroundings,
for in the earliest years all the character is most
surely formed by habit (792 E). Children aged
from three to six should meet at village temples —
the equivalent in the Laws for kindergarten — under
the care of chosen matrons and nurses, who will
wisely check any tendency to self-will (793 E), but
leave the children to find out their own amusements
and occupations, for it is natural for them to do so.
Plato's village-temples, if established, would have
anticipated Froebel and the Dottoressa Montessori
by more than two thousand years. After the age
of six, boys and girls are to be taught separately in
such a way that "all of them, boys and girls alike,
may be sound hand and foot, and may not, if they
can help, spoil the gifts of nature by bad habits."1
To this end, both sexes should practise the handling
of weapons, and also horsemanship, and the foolish
custom of training only the right hand should be
strongly discouraged; "people are, as it were, maimed
in their hands by the folly of nurses and mothers "
(794 E).

Plato's intense conservatism leads him into a
certain self-contradiction, for after urging that
children's sports should be spontaneous, he goes

1 795 D, tr. Jowett.

THE VALUE ATTACHED TO EDUCATION 121

on to deprecate innovations in games, since such
changes are likely to produce an unstable and
revolutionary disposition in after-life. Let games,
and still more, music, be designed so as to cultivate
all that is best in human character, and then let
them remain unchanged from generation to genera-
tion. In this respect we should follow the example
of the Egyptians, who have fixed forms for music,
dancing, painting and sculpture (656 D f. and
799 A). Plato is so persuaded that the best in
everything can be ascertained, and is equally suit-
able for all conditions of society, that the danger of
decay from stagnation never seems to have crossed
his mind.

There are many detailed instructions in the Laws
as to the kind of music (including literature) and
physical exercise best fitted for rearing virtuous
and healthy citizens. Not much is said about strict
intellectual training, but arithmetic, geometry and
astronomy are again advocated, and unlike the
Republic scheme, every one is to have a taste of these
subjects. Egypt is once more held up as a model,
on account of its arithmetical games, where division
is taught concretely by using apples and garlands
for distribution among varying numbers of persons
(819 B f.). A select few should study these subjects
in a scientific and thorough manner, and unless a
man can acquire such knowledge in addition to civic

122 PLATO

virtues, and can see the connexion between the
sciences, music and human laws and institutions,
he is not competent to be a ruler of the whole
State, but only a subordinate to other rulers (818
A, 967 Ef.). In adult life the geography of the
country ought to be accurately learnt, for no study
is of greater importance (763 B.) ; wherefore hunting
should be encouraged as a pursuit for this and other
reasons, and it should be part of the duty of certain
officials to make a detailed exploration of the land.
The sole aim of all these provisions with regard to
education is to secure, as far as may be, a State which
is " the image of the fairest and best life " (817 B).
At the end of his life Plato clings as firmly as ever
to the doctrine that the true State should be called
the city of God, where rulers possessed of wisdom
strive to obey the principle of immortality within
us, both in public institutions and in their private
lives. In cities where God does not rule through
human instruments " there is no refuge from evil
and trouble for the people " (713 A, E). These
utterances exactly correspond with the declaration
in the Republic (see p. 99) that unless kings become
philosophers or philosophers kings, evils will never
cease in cities. In virtue of the rational element
within him, man is not an earthly but a heavenly
plant (see above, p. 83). Education, rightly ordered,
will fortify the godlike reason in the noblest of

THE VALUE ATTACHED TO EDUCATION 123

mankind, and will enable them to inform the whole
community with the divine spirit, through their
ordinances, which the mass of the people will
follow, holding a true belief in the wisdom of their
rulers as servants of God.

The threefold division of classes in the Republic
into guardians, auxiliaries, artisans and farmers,
corresponding to the philosophic, spirited and
appetitive elements of soul, logically allows no
education to the lowest class, because only the philo-
sophic faculty can profit by the highest training, and
music and gymnastics do nothing for the appetitive
element, except indirectly by teaching the superior
faculties to keep it in due subjection. In the Laws
Plato seems to have developed a less severe view
of mankind in general. By throwing open educa-
tion to all, he admits that every man may have in
him some sparks of the divine, which those in
authority must do their utmost to fan into a flame.

CHAPTER XIII

THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN THE PLATONIC
COMMONWEALTHS

We have spoken above (p. 120) of Plato's intense
conservatism. In a sense it is true that he was
utterly averse to change, but only when change in
his opinion would mean degeneration from an ideal
institution founded on a sure knowledge of the
Good. From another point of view he was perhaps
the most daring innovator that the world has ever
seen. For contemporary Hellenic opinion in matters
social and political he displays a complete disregard,
if he thinks reform desirable, and in no part of his
teaching is his antagonism to convention more
marked than in his views concerning the education
and duties of women.

He starts the question of women's share in the
State by observing that among animals females
not only bear and bring up the young, but take part
in other business. The care of flocks, for instance,
or hunting, is the function of dogs, irrespective of
sex (Eep. 451 D). Why, then^should not women
follow the same pursuits ashmen, SQ_iar~.as~thsiiL
strength allows ? But if they are to do so, they .

124

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 125

must receive the same education as men in both
music and-~gymngstlflfl. In tlllB position Plato
follows Socrates, and other Socratic disciples do so
likewise, but Plato carries the principle that the
nature of women, if weaker, is not worse than that
of men to much more far-reaching consequences
than any other writer of his time. He is fully aware
of the ridicule that the world will pour on the notion
of women going through physical and military drill
along with men, " but," he pertinently remarks,
" foolish is the man who identifies the laughable
with anything but the bad " (452 D). The only
question worthy of serious consideration is : " Are
women capable of sharing the work of men % " ^It
was_laid down as a fundamental principle of the
State that every person was to do the work suited
to his nature (370 B). It might therefore be argued
that as women are different from men they should
perform different tasks. But bald men are different
from long-haired men, yet no one would forbid long-
haired men to be shoemakers because bald men had
taken to the trade (454 C). Individuals may have
different characteristics, but these may not affect
in the least aptitudes for particular pursuits. No
proof is forthcoming that, because a woman bears
children, she is therefore incapacitated from learn-
ing and philosophy, physical culture, music or the
art of healing. In short, women may possess the

126 PLATO

qualities neededJ£rj^arcttaM

of the country (456 A). If so, why allow these
gifts to run to waste ? Women who are worthy to
% $s enter the guardian class', should be the wives and
colleagues of men-guardians. It matters not that
women are, in Plato's view, relatively weaker than
men. The best women are only^excelled by the
best men, "and Nature produces women whose
abilities should be used to guard the city. The
prevailing Hellenic custom of excluding women
from all such work is contrary to nature ; there is
nothing unnatural in assigning to them civic duties
for which they show capacity (456 B f.).

Plato, therefore, is undaunted by any national
prejudice from allowing a perfectly free and open
field in all walks of life to men and women alike.
All that he cares about is to find the best person to
discharge a given work, and he declines to erect any
artificial barriers. It is easy to see that his intel-
lectual conviction outruns his instinct in this respect.
As he develops his scheme of higher education he
is plainly thinking of men-guardians only, until he
sharply reminds himself (540 C.) that the fair images
of philosopher-kings that he has been making re-
present also philosopher- queens. To be consistent,
he ought also to have stated that his degenerate
types of the ambitious, penurious, democratic and
tyrannical man have their counterparts among

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 127

women. But there was no need to insist on the
defects of women in an Athenian company. The
essential thing was to affirm with emphasis the
principle already quoted that there is nothing better
for a city than to be peopled by the best women
and the best men (456 E). For^this declaration
women in all ages and countries owe an immense
debt of gratitude to Plato.

In the Laws Plato is not a whit less convinced of
the good that will accrue to a State through the
education of women and their co-operation in public
affairs. Indeed he is even more vehement in his
denunciations against a policy of exclusion. If
women are inferior to men, he says, in capacity for
virtue, there is all the more reason for attention
to their training, as neglect entails doubly serious
consequences. " Wherefore the reconsideration and
reform of this matter, and the ordering of all pursuits
on a common footing for women as well as men, tends
to further the happiness of the State " (Laws, 781 B).
Still more vigorous are other passages. Plato has
been speaking of the reported proficiency of Scythian
women in horsemanship and the use of weapons,
and he proceeds : "I assert that, if it is possible for
these things to be, the present custom of our own
country is the height of folly, in that all men and
women do not with all their strength and with one
accord follow the same pursuits. For by this means

128 PLATO

every city is reduced to pretty nearly half its proper
size, though its taxes and burdens are the same.
Yet this seems a strange error for a legislator to
fall into " (805 A L). ..." Let him who will,
praise your legislators, but I must say what I think.
The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and
not half a man only ; he ought not to let the female
sex live softly and waste money and have no order
of life, while he takes the utmost care of the male
sex, and leaves half of life only blest with happiness,
when he might have made the whole State happy/' x
In spite, however, of this insistence on the common
duties of both sexes, Plato does assign several
functions to women as their special province in the
work of the State. Women are expressly mentioned
in the Republic as required to regulate, in association
with men, marriages and the bringing-up of children
(460 B). In the Laws, in addition to priestesses,
who are to be elected by lot, after the age of sixty,
to hold office for a year (759 D), we read of a com-
mittee of women-overseers, whose business it is to
supervise married couples for the first ten years of
wedlock, and report cases of obstinate misconduct
to the magistrates (784 A fL). Twelve of these
women are to be in charge of the daily assemblies
of young children at village temples, which we have
described above, p. 120 (794 B). An army of nurses

1 806 C, ir. Jowett.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 129

is required to care for and control the children.
They will act under the authority of the women-
overseers, and are, it seems, directly in the service
of the State. It is the duty also of the women-
overseers to decide whether young widows shall
re-marry, and to arrange for the custody of children,
one or both of whose parents are slaves (930 D f.).
Ten of them, together with ten " guardians of the
law," form a court which may allow divorce for
incompatibility of temper, when their efforts at
reconciliation have failed (929 E f.).

Women are thus called in as adjutants to the male
officials in the State, in questions concerning the
sexes and care of children, but it is clear that Plato,
whenever he remembers his principles, means them,
if found suitable, to take a wider share in the
government and service of the country. He says :
" Let the age for holding office be, in the case of a
woman, forty, in that of a man, thirty years "
(785 B) ; and there is no indication that by
" office " he here means the special office only of a
woman-overseer of marriage. Immediately after-
wards he says : " Let the age of military service be,
for a man, from twenty to sixty, but for a woman,
if it appears needful to employ her in war,
the service that is possible and fitting for each
should be prescribed, after she has borne children,
up to the age of fifty. Later on, we are told under

130 PLATO

what circumstances a woman might be called upon
for military service. Grown-up women should
practise evolutions and tactics, because they may
have to guard the city, while the men are carrying
on operations outside, and " when enemies come
from without and compel them to fight for the
city, it is a great disgrace in a State to have its
women so shamefully trained that they are not even
willing to die and undergo any danger, like birds who
fight for their young against any of the strongest
creatures, but straightway they make a rush for the
temples and huddle at all the altars and shrines,
and cast upon the human race the imputation of
being by nature the most cowardly of all the animal
world " (814 B).

Nohle makes an interesting attempt to account
for Plato's wish to throw all public service open to
women. He assumes that Plato must have taken
this course with reluctance, and that he would have
thought the governing classes much better if they
consisted only of men. But in that case there
might be fear for the offspring of the guardians,
because the mothers would be inferior to the fathers
in education of mind and body, and future guardians
might be dragged down to the level of the industrial
class. To prevent this, wives of guardians must
be admitted into the circle of rulers. But when
there they can find nothing to do, because the com-

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 131

munistic arrangements abolish all housekeeping and
separate married life, and the State takes in hand
the bringing up of the children from the moment
they are born. There remains no possible occupa-
tion for the women except to give them the same
work as the men, in spite of their lack of qualifica-
tion for it.

It seems extremely arbitrary to attribute so
tortuous a mode of reasoning to Plato, in the face
of his express and repeated affirmations that a State
is only half a State if its women are allowed to run
to waste. He sees that the work of bearing children
to uphold the State in the next generation cannot
possibly occupy a woman's whole life, and he rightly
wishes that whatever gifts she may possess should
be turned^to account for the common good.

A distinguished compatriot of Dr Nohle, Dr
Theodor Gomperz, in his Greek Thinkers} while
not willing to go so far as Plato in admitting
women to political life, warmly praises his desire
to allow them the fullest opportunity to cultivate
all their faculties. Dr Gomperz thinks that if
Athens of the fifth century B.C. be compared with
the most civilised nations of the present day, it
will be found that development is taking place in
the direction recommended by Plato, and that a
large part of his aims has already been accomplished.
1 E. T. vol. ill. p. 126.

132 PLATO

Probably Plato's half-unconscious reservation of
certain duties for women foreshadows very nearly
the course that events are likely to take. More and
more the State busies itself with work that used to
be left to private families to carry on as they pleased,
and in all matters concerning the care and education
of children, and the morality of the sexes, the service
of women in vast numbers is already requisitioned.
Nursing also, and the multitudinous agencies for
promoting social welfare, though not at present
mainly State employments, are publicly organised
on a very large scale, and would come to grief
without the labour of thousands of women. It is
reasonable to expect that activities of this nature
will always absorb the energies of most women who
have time to spare from their own families, or whose
families and households in days to come may be
entirely taken charge of by public authority. But
when a woman shows a special aptitude for serving
her country in some other way, Plato's claim that
the country will be well advised that avails
itself of her power for usefulness is likely to be
triumphantly vindicated in the eyes of an increas-
ing portion of the world.

CHAPTER XIV

PLATONIC COMMUNISM AND STATE REGULATION

In the Laws there occurs the following passage :
" Mankind must have laws, and conform to them,
or their life would be as bad as that of the most
savage beast. And the reason of this is that no
man's nature is able to know what is best for human
society ; or knowing, always able and willing to do
what is best. In the first place, there is a difficulty
in apprehending that the true art of politics is con-
cerned not with private but with public good (for
public good binds together States, but private only
distracts them) ; and that both the public and
private good, as well of individuals as of States, is
greater when the State and not the individual is first
considered. In the second place, although a person
knows in the abstract that this is true, yet if he be
possessed of absolute and irresponsible power, he
will never remain firm in his principles or persist in
regarding the public good as primary in the State,
and the private as secondary. . . . For if a man
were born so divinely gifted that he could naturally
apprehend the truth, he would have no need of laws
to rule over him ; for there is no law or order which

133

134 PLATO

is above knowledge, nor can mind, without impiety,
be deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather
the lord of all. I speak of mind, true and free, and
in harmony with nature. But then there is no such
mind anywhere, or at least not much ; and there-
fore we must choose law and order, which are
second best." x

The aim of Plato's ideal State is public good,
realised in such a way that the happiness and true
self-interest of each citizen and class is promoted
by contributing to the common well-being. The
principle " one man, one work, in accordance with
his nature," provides everybody with congenial work,
" and uncongenial labour, whether above or below
one's powers, is a fertile source of misery and
crime."2 Subjects have the boon of good govern-
ment ; guardians escape the fate of being ruled by
those worse than themselves (347 C). Nothing
better than this could be wished for, but it implies
that man's nature is able to know what is best for
human society ; and the insight of Plato's old age
noted, in the passage quoted above, the impossi-
bility of such an aspiration.

If virtue were knowledge, and knowledge were

attainable, philosophers could prescribe a walk in life

to each individual that would make him contented

and the whole community richly blest. Unhappily,

1 875 A ff., tr. Jowett. ■ Adam on Rep. 415 B.

COMMUNISM AND STATE REGULATION 135

our passage from the Laws says " no man's nature,
knowing, is always able and willing to do what is
best," and again, it tells us that of the divine power
to apprehend truth there is none anywhere, or at
least not much, and failing this we must fall back
on laws made by the best wisdom we can find among
our compatriots, regulating our polity by them,
instead of by the word of ideal governors.

In the Republic, however, a hope is cherished —
though even there it sometimes seems to grow faint
— of producing rulers whose knowledge of the Good
imbues their characters with indelible virtue, and
gives them the power of inspiring their subjects with
the love of virtuous living. The State evolved under
these conditions would be a society of co-workers
for good, but it would depend upon the absolute
rule of a body of governors whose ranks are filled
up at their discretion. Guardians alone choose
probationers, and have the power to reject them at
several stages of their education (412 E fi\, 535 A,
536 C f., 537 B, D). It is then smaU wonder that
Plato at last comes to despair of rinding persons
possessed of absolute and irresponsible power, who
will remain firm in their principles or persist in
regarding the public good as primary in the State,
and the private as secondary.

He is, in the Republic, already alive to the danger
of degeneration in the guardians, but has devised

136 PLATO

two safeguards, which he thinks will be adequate.
One is the reluctance of the guardians to bear office.
Those who are worthy to be true philosophers will
not willingly renounce the life of study and contem-
plation for labour in the cave. They will shoulder
their burden because, being just themselves, they
recognise these duties as just (520 D f.). Moreover,
only in the ideal State is the philosopher's life able
to reach perfection, and therefore it is to their highest
interest to toil in the service of that State. But
lower motives of self-interest are absent, owing to
the second guarantee against the abuse of political
power.

♦This safeguard consists in a thorough-going com-
munism, applied to guardians, including auxiliaries,
but not, it seems, to the third class of citizens. No
guardian is to have any private property beyond what
is strictly necessary. Nohle remarks that the com-
munistic principle is carried to the point of allowing
nothing to the individual but the irreducible minimum
of his personality (464 D). They are to receive a
fixed payment from the citizens, enough to meet
expenses each year and no more. They must live
in a camp and have a common mess like soldiers.
They will have no need of human gold and silver,
for they have divine riches in their souls. In
this way they will be saved themselves and will
save the city. For if they were to be allowed

COMMUNISM AND STATE REGULATION 137

homes and property they would become " house-
keepers and husbandmen," instead of guardians
(Rep. 416 D ft.).

The objection urged by Adimantus that these
homeless and penniless guardians will not be happy,
is brushed aside by Socrates with the significant
remark : "It would not be in the least surprising if
they (with the rest of the city) were most happy "
(420 B), but in any case " the welfare of the city
as a whole, not of any one class, is the goal to be
kept in view." This goal cannot be reached unless
the best citizens rule without let or hindrance.
Bearing in mind the persistent tendency of mankind
to misuse absolute power for the sake of personal
gain, Plato devises the prohibition of private property
in the case of his two ruling classes, as a safeguard
against the chance of this last infirmity being found
in minds nobly endowed by nature and fortified by
strenuous training and many tests. The sole object
of his communism, whether in goods and chattels or
in domestic relationships, is to detach his guardians
from material interests. Apart from this the
question of collective property appears to have little
interest for him. In the Republic he makes no
express statement about the tenure of property by
the mass of the citizens, but the sentence in 417 A,
referred to above, prophesying the conversion of
guardians into housekeepers and husbandmen, if

138 PLATO

private possessions are allowed, seems to imply that
the non-governing class are not to be debarred from
ownership of goods. Moreover, the artisans and
husbandmen are to provide out of their earnings for
the maintenance of the rulers, so that it is clear that
they must have property which can be taxed either
in kind or money (416 E). The communistic
principle is not in itself to work salvation in the
State ; it is laid down in order to remove temptation
from the path of those who in other respects are
prepared by their nurture to walk in the ways of
righteousness and just dealing.

It appears, then, that Plato's communism, unlike
most modern socialistic theories, does not aim at
securing the material well-being of the whole
population. On the contrary, it is designed as a
check on the unrestricted power of the rulers.
Nevertheless, the more individual citizens subordin-
ate their own interests to that of the community, the
better it is for the State. In the Republic Plato is
so much occupied with the creation of his ideal
guardians, that he forgets to draw in detail the
picture of the class engaged in tilling the soil. This
may be partly due, as Gomperz remarks,1 to his
aristocratic leanings, but the Laws give us abundant
evidence that he was well able to take thought for
all citizens. We have already seen, pp. 119, 123,
1 Greek Thinkers, E. T. iii. p. 107.

COMMUNISM AND STATE REGULATION 139

that in the Laws education is extended to all
classes. Similarly, with regard to property, elabor-
ate schemes are proposed to the end that destitu-
tion and excessive wealth may alike be prevented in
any part of the community (739 E-745 E et saep.).
No parent should strive to make money in order
to leave great riches to his children, for the best
and most harmonious {^ovcriKOirdrq) state of life
for the young is that which is free from flattery,
while not lacking the necessaries of life. " It is
meet to leave to children much store of reverence,
not of gold " (729 A f.). The legislator who desires
to avoid antagonism, the greatest of plagues in a
city, should strive that neither grievous poverty nor
excessive wealth should exist among his citizens,
for the evil is produced by both (744 D).

Whether the means suggested by Plato would be
at all likely to achieve general well-being in either
an ancient or a modern State, we cannot here stop
to inquire. The permanent lesson that can be
drawn from the communistic teaching in both the
Republic and the Laws is the prime need of an
altruistic spirit permeating society. A passage in
the Laws sums the doctrine up with admirable
fervour and clearness : " The first and highest form
of the State and of the government and of the law
is that in which there prevails most widely the
ancient saying, that ' Friends have all things in

140 PLATO

common/ Whether there is anywhere now, or will
ever be, this communion of women and children and
of property, in which the private and individual is
altogether banished from life, and things which are
by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands,
have become common, and in some way see and
hear and act in common, and all men express praise
and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same
occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the
city to the utmost — whether all this is possible or
not, I say that no man, acting upon any other
principle, will ever constitute a State which will be
truer or more exalted in virtue. Whether such a
State is governed by Gods or sons of Gods, one, or
more than one, happy are the men, who living after
this manner, dwell there ; and therefore to this we
are to look for the pattern of the State, and to cling
to this, and to seek with all our might for one which
is like this." 1

" Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and
" Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal : but lay up for
yourselves treasures in heaven " — these are the
principles which Plato seeks to foster, by enforcing
the claim of the community upon the individual,
and setting at nought the importance of material

1 739 B ff., it. Jowett.

COMMUNISM AND STATE REGULATION 141

wealth. The Republic draws a picture of men and
women rulers devoid of ambition for self -aggrandise-
ment and enrichment. Their desire is to lead a life
of contemplation and study, and far from wishing
to exercise supreme power, they only assume the
direction of affairs with reluctance, because they
know that the State would otherwise fall into worse
hands and would no longer be a fitting abode for
true philosophers.

Aristotle's criticisms of the Platonic communism
in the Politics II. 5, though of considerable force
from a practical point of view, take no account of
the great distance between Plato's guardians and the
level of ordinary humanity. If the ideal human
virtue of which Plato dreams were possible, there
would be no fear of degeneration. Even the rule
forbidding private property among the guardians
might safely be omitted, for, as Aristotle acutely
remarks, it is not the absence of communism, but
the wickedness of mankind that produces evils
connected with property in existing politics {Pol.
1263 b. 23). Given truly virtuous guardians, they
would spontaneously use all that they had for the
benefit of the State, and communistic regulations
would be superfluous.

But, as we have seen, Plato himself believes that
his city is a pattern set in heaven, nowhere to be
realised on earth. In the Laws no class is raised to

142 PLATO

so vast a height, morally and intellectually, above
the rest of the community as is the body of Republic
guardians. Consequently no class is entrusted with
absolute power, and rulers are chosen by a compli-
cated method of election from among the citizens
as a whole. Laws are necessary owing to the im-
perfection of human nature, and among such laws
Plato thinks a modified communism with regard to
property will be serviceable. Any citizen who owns
or acquires wealth beyond a certain maximum is to
place the surplus in the hands of the State, being, as
it were, subject to a super- tax of 100 per cent.
(745 A). We may believe that this provision would
fail to accomplish its purpose of banishing poverty
from the community, but we must needs admire
the spirit that animates all Plato's efforts to dis-
courage base gain, and turn the minds of his citizens
to " diviner riches."

CHAPTER XV

THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE POLITIC US AND
TH EAETETUS. CONCLUSION

The dialogue called Politicus or Statesman deals to a
considerable degree with the same political doctrine
as we find in the Republic. Older scholars, such as
Nohle, Zeller, and others have looked upon it as a
sketch preceding the more developed conception of
a State in the Republic, but apart from questions of
style, the non-political part of the dialogue seems
to place it in the latest group of Plato's writings,
and this view of its position is now generally held.
As in the Republic, the inhabitants of a State are
classified according to their functions. The lowest
class contains those who are employed in practical
and industrial arts (262, 287-290). Among them are
ranked priests and soothsayers. Next come those
who practise the arts of strategy, rhetoric and
judging (303 E ff.). All these arts are precious
and akin to the statesman's art. Still higher
are placed the administrators of a well-conducted
State, namely, those in whose souls a true and un-
shakable (/xera fiepaico crews) opinion about things
fair, just, good, and their opposites, is implanted —

143

144 PLATO

implanted, that is to say, in the heaven-born element
within them (309 C). Finally, there comes the
Statesman himself, the good legislator, to whom
alone, aided by the Muse of the kingly art, it belongs,
to produce this opinion in those who have been
rightly educated.

Thus the Politicus draws a distinction between
the statesman who trains rulers, and the actual
rulers who look to him for inspiration. The states-
man who possesses the kingly art has knowledge,
whereby he can ensure in those who carry out his
teaching a true opinion concerning justice and
beauty. He is, in fact, no other than the philosopher
of the Republic, with this difference, that he does not
himself descend into the cave, to take part in
practical politics. He rules through his pupils, not
in person. He will always be rare, for in any given
city few first-rate draught-players will be found,
and a fortiori far fewer philosopher-statesmen, since
the kingly art is much more difficult than that of
draught-playing (292 E).

The Politicus is much less sanguine than the
Republic in tone. It recognises the difficulty of
finding an adequate supply of rulers possessing
knowledge, and shows how a second-best course
may be adopted, where many administrators may
carry out the principles of a single philosopher, who
alone deserves the name of statesman. Incidentally,

THE POLITICUS AND THEAETETUS 145

it may be remarked that the inferior members of
the community are more like citizens of actual
Greek States than those of the Republic. We are
left to infer from the Politicus that the lowest class
themselves form the mass of the army, and that
they are only officered by members of the next
higher group ; it will be remembered that the whole
army of the Republic forms a class apart from the
industrial workers. Also rhetoricians are placed, in
the Politicus, in the same class as the leaders of the
soldiers. Their business is to persuade the multitude
to just action, thereby acting as helmsmen in the
State, under the orders of the ruler-pilots (304 A),
who determine when persuasion is to be used. No
rhetoric, no power of persuasion, is needed in the
Republic, for none but guardians have any voice in
the government. Similarly, judges are unnecessary
in the Republic, as litigation will be absent from
the perfect State, but the Politicus includes judges
in the same class as generals and rhetoricians. It
seems, then, that the Politicus re-affirms the political
teaching of the Republic, but at the same time makes
concessions which bring the principles more within
the sphere of practical politics. At one end of the
scale an attempt is made to find rulers of a less
exalted calibre than the philosopher-kings, whose
presence in an imperfect world can but seldom be
expected. On the other hand, the rank and file of

146 PLATO

the community are not entirely excluded from State
affairs. But, the necessity of education resting on a
study of the Good remains paramount, as the only
sure basis for a well-ordered State.

The Theaetetus, which is another of the dialogues
usually held by recent scholars to belong to Plato's
latest period, gives a vivid picture of the philosopher
in the alien surroundings of an ordinary State. It
amplifies the description in Book VI of the Republic
of philosophers, who are not corrupted by the world,
but take shelter, as it were, under a wall, by
withdrawing from the storm and stress of public
life (496 D). An apparently chance remark, of
Protagoras, one of the company, causes Socrates, in
the Theaetetus, to contrast the philosopher with the
lawyer ; the one leading a life of contemplation and
leisure, the other always hurrying, speaking against
time in the law-courts, stunted and servile in mind.
The philosopher does not even know the way to the
assembly, or the law-court. He is utterly ignorant
of current events, knowing no more of them than he
does of the number of pints in the sea. Yet his
lack of knowledge is not affected in order to gain
notoriety, but is purely due to the pre-occupation
of his mind with the sum-total of things in the
universe, so that, if he has to visit a law-court, he
seems helpless and foolish, unable to recognise his
next-door neighbour, and indifferent to all that

THE POLITICUS AND THEAETETUS 147

appears great and dazzling in the eyes of the world.
But let him draw the lawyer away from personal
matters into discourse on the nature of justice and
injustice, human happiness and misery, then it will
be the lawyer's turn to grow dizzy and look foolish,
knowing not how to wing his way amid heights so
lofty. The only true wisdom is to flee from the
evils that must needs haunt the region of earth, by
becoming like to God as far as is possible to man.
This is the wisdom sought by the philosopher, for
the greatest penalty of evil-doing is to become like
to evil (172 C-177. Cf. Laws, 728 B).

The philosopher of the Theaetetus leads a blame-
less life, but he misses his full growth. He can only
come to his own where the environment allows him
to make one among a company of spectators of all
time and all existence, as in the Republic, or at least
to pass on, as in the Politicus, his virtue and wisdom
to disciples who cannot themselves reach the fountain-
head. In all the portraits of the true philosopher
that we have studied, in the Phaedo, the Symposium,
the Republic, the Politicus, and the Theaetetus, we
recognise the same essential features, the same
hunger and thirst after righteousness, the same
indifference to the things of this world and to life
itself, and the same zeal to help mankind out of
the mire of ignorance when opportunity arises.

We can now look back over the ground that we

148 PLATO

have covered, and see how consistent, amid all its
varying manifestations, is Plato's conception of the
true good for man, whether as an individual or as
an organised community. He starts from a pro-
found conviction that there exists an eternal Good-
ness, which is to be identified with an eternal Wisdom.
The human soul has kinship with this divine Wisdom,
which it has known before birth, as is shown by its
recognition of mathematical truths, to which reason
is compelled to assent even without previous teach-
ing. " If, then," says Socrates in the Meno, 86 B,
" the truth about things that are always exists in
our soul, the soul will be immortal, wherefore with
a good heart you should try to seek and recollect
the knowledge that you happen not to possess at
present, or rather that you do not remember."
The sight of beauty and goodness upon earth awakes
in the soul a longing to recover the knowledge of
the heavenly Beauty and Goodness that was once
its portion (Phaedr. 250 ; Symp. 207 f.). In this life
some favoured souls are endowed with the capacity
for attaining knowledge of the everlasting Wisdom.
In the Republic, Books VI and VII, Plato seems to
think that such knowledge in its completest form
is not too wonderful for man, provided that the
choicest spirits are disciplined by a life-long course
of education, leading them up the steep path to the
vision of the Good. Elsewhere, recognising human

THE POLITICUS AND THEAETETUS 149

limitations, he sees that the summit is too high to
reach, but he bids mankind never to weary of the
endeavour to gain glimpses of the heavenly glory.
The higher man can climb, the clearer will be his
view. When once a true image of Goodness or
Wisdom has been formed in the mind, the whole
man is made virtuous.

It is the bounden duty of those who can advance
the farthest towards knowledge of the Good to
guide their fellow-creatures in the same road.
Most are only capable of obeying in faith the pre-
cepts of their wiser teachers, but in an ideal State
the humblest citizen will cheerfully carry on his
appointed work, knowing that he is contributing
his share towards the goodness and happiness of
the whole. In existing States Plato thinks the con-
stitution of things all awry. So far from the best
men being called on to govern, every barrier is, as
a rule, placed in their way to keep them out, and
next to the tyranny of an unbridled and licentious
potentate, a complete democracy is the worst form
of State, where all citizens alike are theoretically
thought competent to form equally good judge-
ments on the needs of the nation, and even, where
office, as at Athens, is held by lot, to bear rule in-
discriminately.

Granted that men here and there can be trained
into lovers of wisdom so zealous that their resulting

150 PLATO

virtue is incorruptible, it will be best to leave them
to rule according to their own opinion, which will
be a true one, of what is best. If a physician is
going on a long journey, he will leave written in-
structions for his patients, but if he is always present,
or returns home sooner than he expected, he will
vary his treatment to suit the requirements of the
case at the moment {Pol. 295 C ff.). Just so it is
best that " written laws should not prevail, but a
kingly man who possesses wisdom " (Pol. 294 A).
But seeing that the " kingly man " is seldom or
never to be found, and that, unless his wisdom is
flawless, no man will be proof against the tempta-
tions of absolute power (Laws, 875), the alternative
as a second-best course is to have a code of laws,
devised with the utmost care and insight that can
be secured. Law is inevitably too rigid, and unable
to take account of the endless variations in men and
actions (Pol. 294 B), but, except in the perfect State,
laws there must be, and they must be enforced
" else the life of man will in no way differ from that of
the most savage beast" (Laws, 874 E f.). Such laws,
enacted by an inspired legislator, will preserve his
wisdom to the community as an everlasting treasure,
and will be a check on his successors, who may be
inclined to swerve from strict rectitude.

It may be observed that Plato, in his reaction
against the evils of Athenian democracy, has on his

THE POLITICUS AND THEAETETUS 151

own showing been too rigorous in excluding the mass
of the population in the Republic from all political
power and responsibility. There is hardly, except
perhaps in the case of the unmitigated tyrant, a
soul so perverse but that in it some glimmering of
the divine fire of reason may be found. Human
beings are termed philosophic, spirited, or appetitive,
according to the predominance of one or other of
these elements of soul in them, not because they
exhibit one, to the exclusion of the other two. It is
therefore with good reason that in the Laws and the
Politicus he gives all the citizens a political part to
play. An intricate method of electing rulers is
described in the Laws, which is declared to be mid-
way between a monarchical and democratic system,
" which mean the State ought always to observe '*
(756 E). Since the wisdom of even the best among
mankind is likely to be faulty, it is well to entrust
no one ruler or aristocracy with complete power,
but to use all pains in discovering candidates for office
who have been trained and tested from their youth
up, and to see that those who have to elect should
be well versed in the spirit of the laws, so that they
may have a right judgement in the selection of
officials (751 C). The Laws provide that judges and
magistrates shall have to give account of their office
(761 E). In general, then, Plato's latest work is in
sympathy with the aim of most modern States to

152 PLATO

give the whole people some responsibility for the
national conduct, and to utilise the collective in-
telligence, while at the same time he dwells on the
importance of safeguards to prevent the vagaries of
popular judgment (Laws VI, passim).

Many provisions of the Laws sound strangely
modern, as for instance : " Let there be no duties
imposed in the State either on exports or on imports "
(847 B), or that children shall come to school to
learn the art of soldiery and the art of music, not
simply at the pleasure of their parents, but " educa-
tion shall be compulsory on all alike, for the children
belong to the State rather than to their parents M
(804 D). Reference has already been made to
Plato's censure of mothers and nurses who fail to
train children's left as well as their right hands
(799 E). There are sensible remarks in 918 f. on
the keeping of hotels and shops, two occupations
held in great disrepute by fourth-century Athenians.
" These callings, " says Plato, " if they were con-
ducted on principles of honest dealing, we should
honour, as we honour a mother or a nurse."

But it is not anticipations of later civilisation such
as these that give Plato's moral and political teach-
ing a lasting value. It is rather his insistence on
the divinity of man's soul and his fearlessness of
death — " the partnership of soul and body is in no
way better than the dissolution, as I am willing to

THE POLITICUS AND THEAETETUS 153

maintain seriously " (Laws, 828 D). On this
principle hangs his belief in the unlimited power for
good of education, and, as Plutarch says in the
beginning of the Life of Plato's friend, Dion, his
desire that " power and high place should walk
hand in hand with wisdom and justice." His
theory may well be summed up in words (Laws,
817 B) which every ruler should engrave upon his
heart : " Our whole State is framed to be an imita-
tion of the best and noblest life " — wacra ovv rjfuv
7) TTokireia crvvecrTrjKe /uteris tov kolWicttov /cat
apLCTTOV fiiov.

NOTE ON BOOKS

Greek Text

The most convenient edition is Burnet's, in the Oxford Classical
Texts, 5 vols. The Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, announces
a forthcoming volume of dialogues, text and translation on
opposite pages. References to Plato are made in accordance
with the pages and sub-sections of the edition by Stephanus
(1578). In translations the section-letters are usually omitted.

Translations

The Dialogues of Plato, Jowett, with analyses and introductions,
5 vols., Oxford 1892. Smaller volumes of translations are : Trial
and Death of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, tr.
Church) ; Phaedrus, Lysis, and Protagoras, tr. Wright ; Republic,
tr. Da vies and Vaughan ; all these in Macmillan's Golden
Treasury Series. Theaetetus and PhUebus, tr. Carlill ; Swan
Sonnenschein. The Four Socratic dialogues of Plato, (Oxford), is
a smaller reprint of Jowett's version of the Apology, Euthyphro,
Crito, Phaedo. A translation of the Symposium by P. B.
Shelley is to be found in his Prose Works, or in The Banquet and
other Pieces, CasseU's National Library, 1905.

Other Works

The Republic of Plato, ed. J. Adam, 2 vols., Cambridge University
Press, 1902. The commentary is very full. The Religious
Teachers of Greece, by J. Adam : T. and T. Clark, 1908. The
chapters on Plato deal chiefly with Plato's mysticism, theory of
education, and theory of Ideas. In my manual, " tr. Adam,"
means a translation appearing in one or other of these books.

155

156 PLATO

Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, translated from the German, in 4
vols., Murray, 1901-12, contains an account of Plato in vols. ii.
and iii. Shorter manuals on Plato are Plato by D. G. Ritchie,
T. and T. Clark, 1902 ; Plato, by A. E. Taylor, Constable, 1911.
All these books cover the whole of Plato's philosophy.

Bosanquet's Companion to Plato's Republic, Rivington, 1895, and
Adamson's Education in Plato's " Republic," Swan Sonnenschein,
1903, are very useful to students of the Republic. An admirable
essay on The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato, by
R. L. Nettleship, is to be found in Abbott's Hellenica, Longmans,
reprinted 1907. Nettleship's Philosophical Lectures and Remains,
2 vols., Macmillan, 1897, are invaluable.

Die Statslehre Platos, by C. Nohle, Jena, 1880, often referred to in
the text, is not translated.

INDEX

Absolute rule, 18 f., 105, 133 ff.,

150
Academy, 24, 50, 60
Agathon, 76 f.
Alcibiades, 14, 23, 75, 80
Altruism, 139 f.
Ambidexterity, 120, 152
Anytus, 58

Apology of Plato, 9, 27 ff.
Appetitive soul, 67, 94, 103,

108 ff., 123 f., 151
Aristides, 58
Aristophanes, 77
Aristotle, 2 f., 7J., 15, 21, 141
Artisans and farmers, 94, 118,

123
Asceticism, 81

Assimilation to God, 6, 83, 147
Auxiliaries, 92 ff., 118, 123, 136

Beauty, love of, 66 f., 77 ff.,

absolute, 100, 148
Bergson, 6
Bonitz, 37 f.
Burnet, J., 3

Cave, simile, of 103 f.
Charmides, 27, 39 ff., 56
Cicero, 13

Communism, 96 ff., 133 ff.
Courage, 42, f., 93
Cratylus, 21
Crito, 27 f., 33 ff.

Democracy, 31, 107 ff., 149 ff.

Democritus, 7

Destitution, prevention of, 139,

142
Dion, 153
Dionysius I., 23
Divination, 13, 39, 45.
Division of labour, 46, 118. 134,

143 ff.
Divorce, 129

Dog as philosopher, 89, 100
Drones, 107 ff.

Education in time of Plato, 48 ff. ;

in Republic 89 ff., 104f., 114 ff. ;

in Laws, 119 ff. ; in Egypt 121
Elections, political, 151
Er, myth of, 112
Ethics, 1 ff.
Euclides, 23

Euthydemus, 39, 43 ff., 50, 71 ff.
Euthyphro, 27 f., 35 ff.
Evil, return of evil for, 3 f., 34,

86 ; return of good for, 34

Free trade, 152
Froebel, 120

Geography, 122
Gomperz, 25, 28, 35, 131, 138
Good, return of good for, 3, 86
Good, supreme, 103 f., 116 f., 148 f.
Gorgias, 25 f., 31, 34, 40, 50, 61 ff.,

70, 73, 81, 86, 101
Guardians,89 ff.,98 ff., 104f ., 118,

123, 135 ff.

157

158

PLATO

Gymnastic, education in, 89, 103,
115

Heraclitus, 5 f., 21
Hesiod, 3, 34
Hippias, 51 ff., 56
Hippias, Lesser, 28, 56
Hobbes, 18

Immortality, 81 ff.

Justice, absolute, 100 ; better
than injustice, 63, 86 ff., 1 10 ff. ;
nature of, 100

Keats, 6

Kingly art, 44, 46, 144 ff.
Knowledge of the good, 39
Knowledge is virtue, 10 ff., 40 ff.

Laches, 27, 39 f., 42 ff., 56
Law, 150

Laws, 90, 119 ff., 127 ff.
Love of beauty, 67 f., 78 ff.
Lysis, 28

Mathematics, 104, 116, 121 ,
Meno, 48, 56 ff., 73, 117, 148
Might is right, 64, 86 ff.
Military service, 89, 129 ff.
Montessori, 120
Music and philosophy, 82, 90 ;

education in, 89 ff., 103, 115,

120 ff.

Nietzsche, 64

Nohle, 16, 19, 32, 40, 130, 143

Oligarchy, 107

Opinion, true, 59 f., 117, 143

Pericles, 26, 53, 58, "69

Phaedo, 75, 80 ff., 90, 117 f., 147

Phaedrus, 27, 50, 66 ff., 73, 81 f.,

148
Phidias, 58
Philebus, 103
Philosophio element of soul, 89 f.

100, 115 ff., 123, 151
Philosopher, the true, 80 ff., 89 ff.,

100, 115 ff., 146 f.
Philosopher-kings, 99 ff., 117 ff.,

126, 145
Philosophy, futility of, 64, 101 f.
Pittacus, 34
Plato : life of, 20 ff. ; compared

with St Paul, 33
Pleasure, 65
Plutarch, 153
Plutocracy, 107
Polilicus, 23, 143 ff., 150 f.
Prodicus, 51 f.
Protagoras, 48 ff., 73
Pythagoras, 4 f.

Rationalism, 15, 39 ff.

Reason, 39, 103, 110, 115 f., 122 f.

Recollection, doctrine of, 57, 68,

81, 148
Renan, 68
Republic.Mr-BSJ&ilG f., 50, 56,

64, 71, 82, 85 ff.
Rhetoric, 61 ff., 145

Seven Wise Men, 4

Simonide3, 54 f.

Socrates : teaching of, 9 ff., 34 f. ;
his view of science, 12 ; bis
methods, 14 ; his rationalism,
15 ; his hope of reform, 16 f. ;
his trial, 29 ff. ; compared with
Stephen, 32 f. ; his personality,
75 ; as true philosopher, 80

Socratic dialogues, 28

Socratic irony, 14

Sophists, 7 f., 18 f., 51 ff., 58, 61

INDEX

159

Sophists, disputatious, 71 ff.

Soul, immortality and divinity
of, 81 ff., Ill, 122, 152 ; parts
of, 67, 94 f.

Spirited element of soul, 67, 89,
94,103,106,110,115,1221,151

State, degenerate, 106 ff. ; ex-
isting, 15 ff., 21, 28 ff. ; ideal
92 ff., 105, 117, 122, 135, 141

Strong, rule of the, 64, 86 ff.

Symjvsium, 75 ff., 90, 147 f.

Temperance, 42, 93
Theaetetus, 83, 146 f.
Themistocles, 58 f.
Theognis, 3
Thompson, W. H., 25
Thuoydides, 58, 86

Timaeus, 38, 83
Timarchy, 106 f.
Tyranny, 108 ff.
Tyrant, misery of, 63, 109 f.

Vice as disease of soul, 95
Virtue as knowledge, 10 ff., 40 ff. ;
can be taught, 48 ff. ; philo-
sophic, 117 f. ; popular, 117 f.

Wisdom, 45, 92 ff., 122, 148 ff.
Women and children, 96 ff., 124 ff.
Written and spoken word, 69 f .

Xenophon,
35

12, 16 ff., 28 ff.,

Zeller, 21, 25, 143

PRINTED BY

TURNBULL AND SPEARS,

EDINBURGH

THE

CAMBRIDGE MANUALS

OF SCIENCE AND LITERATURE

Published by the Cambridge University Press
GENERAL EDITORS

P. GILES, LittD.

Master of Emmanuel College

and

A. C. SEWARD, M.A., F.R.S.

Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge

70 VOLUMES NOW READY
HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Ancient Assyria. By Rev. C. H. W. Johns, Litt.D.

Ancient Babylonia. By Rev. C. H. W. Johns, Litt.D.

A History of Civilization in Palestine. By Prof. R. A. S.

Macalister, M.A., F.S.A.
China and the Manchus. By Prof. H. A. Giles, LL.D.
The Civilization of Ancient Mexico. By Lewis Spence.
The Vikings. By Prof. Allen Mawer, M.A.
New Zealand. By the Hon. Sir Robert Stout, K.C.M.G., LL.D.,

and J. Logan Stout, LL.B. (N.Z.).
The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church. By A.

Hamilton Thompson, M.A., F.S.A.
The Historical Growth of the English Parish Church. By A.

Hamilton Thompson, M.A., F.S.A.

English Monasteries. By A. H. Thompson, M.A., F.S.A.
Brasses. By J. S. M. Ward, B.A., F.R.Hist.S.
Ancient Stained and Painted Glass. By F. S. Eden.

ECONOMICS

Co-partnership in Industry. By C. R. Fay, M.A.

Cash and Credit. By D. A. Barker.

The Theory of Money. By D. A. Barker.

LITERARY HISTORY

The Early Religious Poetry of the Hebrews. By the Rev.

E. G. King, D.D.
The Early Religious Poetry of Persia. By the Rev. Prof. J.

Hope Moulton, D.D., D.Theol. (Berlin).
The History of the English Bible. By John Brown, D.D.
English Dialects from the Eighth Century to the Present Day.

By W. W. Skeat, Litt.D., D.C.L., F.B.A.
King Arthur in History and Legend. By Prof. W. Lewis

Jones, M.A.
The Icelandic Sagas. By W. A. Craigie, LL.D.
Greek Tragedy. By J. T. Sheppard, M.A.
The Ballad in Literature. By T. F. Henderson.
Goethe and the Twentieth Century. By Prof. J. G. Robertson,

M.A., Ph.D.
The Troubadours. By the Rev. H. J. Chaytor, M.A.
Mysticism in English Literature. By Miss C. F. E. Spurgeon.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

The Idea of God in Early Religions. By Dr F. B. Jevons.

Comparative Religion. By Dr F. B. Jevons.

Plato : Moral and Political Ideals. By Mrs A. M. Adam.

The Moral Life and Moral Worth. By Prof. Sorley, Litt.D.

The English Puritans. By John Brown, D.D.

An Historical Account of the Rise and Development of Presby-

terianism in Scotland. By the Rt Hon. the Lord Balfour

of Burleigh, K.T., G.C.M.G.
Methodism. By Rev. H. B. Workman, D.Lit.

EDUCATION

Life in the Medieval University. By R. S. Rait, M.A.

LAW

The Administration of Justice in Criminal Matters (in England
and Wales). By G. Glover Alexander, M.A., LL.M.

BIOLOGY

The Coming of Evolution. By Prof. J. W. Judd, C.B., F.R.S.
Heredity in the Light of Recent Research. By L. Doncaster,

M.A.
Primitive Animals. By Geoffrey Smith, M.A.
The Individual in the Animal Kingdom. By J. S. Huxley, B.A.
Life in the Sea. By James Johnstone, B.Sc.
The Migration of Birds. By T. A. Coward.

BIOLOGY (continued)

Spiders. By C. Warburton, M.A.

Bees and Wasps. By O. H. Latter, M.A.

House Flies. By C. G. Hewitt, D.Sc.

Earthworms and their Allies. By F. E. Beddard, F.R.S.

The Wanderings of Animals. By H. F. Gadow, F.R.S.

ANTHROPOLOGY

The Wanderings of Peoples. By Dr A. C. Haddon, F.R.S.
Prehistoric Man. By Dr W. L. H. Duckworth.

GEOLOGY

Rocks and their Origins. By Prof. Grenville A. J. Cole.
The Work of Rain and Rivers. By T. G. Bonney, Sc.D.
The Natural History of Coal. By Dr E. A. Newell Arber.
The Natural History of Clay. By Alfred B. Searle.
The Origin of Earthquakes. By C. Davison, Sc.D., F.G.S.
Submerged Forests. By Clement Reid, F.R.S.

BOTANY

Plant-Animals : a Study in Symbiosis. By Prof. F. W. Keeble.
Plant-Life on Land. By Prof. F. O. Bower, Sc.D., F.R.S.
Links with the Past in the Plant- World. By Prof. A. C. Seward.

PHYSICS

The Earth. By Prof. J. H. Poynting, F.R.S.
The Atmosphere. By A. J. Berry, M.A.
Beyond the Atom. By John Cox, M.A.
The Physical Basis of Music. By A. Wood, M.A.

PSYCHOLOGY

An Introduction to Experimental Psychology. By Dr C. S.

Myers.
The Psychology of Insanity. By Bernard Hart, M.D.

INDUSTRIAL AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE

The Modern Locomotive. By C. Edgar Allen, A.M.I.Mech.E.

The Modern Warship. By E. L. Attwood.

Aerial Locomotion. By E. H. Harper, M.A., and Allan E.

Ferguson, B.Sc.
Electricity in Locomotion. By A. G. Whyte, B.Sc.
Wireless Telegraphy. By Prof. C. L. Fortescue, M.A.
The Story of a Loaf of Bread. By Prof. T. B. Wood, M.A.
Brewing. By A. Chaston Chapman, F.I.C. .

SOME VOLUMES IN PREPARATION
HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The Aryans. By Prof. M. Winternitz.

Ancient India. By Prof. E. J. Rapson, M.A.

The Peoples of India. By J. D. Anderson, M.A.

The Balkan Peoples. By J. D. Bourchier.

Canada of the present day. By C. G. Hewitt, D.Sc.

The Evolution of Japan. By Prof. J. H. Longford.

The West Indies. By Sir Daniel Morris, K.C.M.G.

The Royal Navy. By John Ley land.

Gypsies. By John Sampson.

A Grammar of Heraldry. By W. H. St John Hope, Litt.D.

Celtic Art. By Joseph Anderson, LL.D.

ECONOMICS

Women's Work. By Miss Constance Smith.

LITERARY HISTORY .

Early Indian Poetry. By A. A. Macdonell.

The Book. By H. G. Aldis, M.A.

Pantomime. By D. L. Murray.

Folk Song and Dance. By Miss Neal and F. Kidson.

PHYSICS

The Natural Sources of Energy. By Prof. A. H. Gibson, D.Sc.

The Sun. By Prof. R. A. Sampson.

Rontgen Rays. By Prof. W. H. Bragg, F.R.S.

BIOLOGY

The Life-story of Insects. By Prof. G. H. Carpenter.
The Flea. By H. Russell.
Pearls. By Prof. W. J. Dakin.

GEOLOGY

Soil Fertility. By E. J. Russell, D.Sc.
Coast Erosion. By Prof. T. J. Jehu.

INDUSTRIAL AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE

Coal Minin
Leather. F

C43540094

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