THE LIBRARY

OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
LECTURES AND REMAINS

RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP

.VOL. II.
5-
 I

18"j(1.
 PHILOSOPHICAL
LECTURES AND REMAINS

RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHII

Ml
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD

EDITED, WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BV

A. C. BRADLEY
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
FORMERLY FELLOW AND LECTURER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
AND

G. R. BENSON
OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD

IN TWO VOLUMES: VOL. II

Pontoon
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

1897
\All rights reserved}
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
 NOTE
A large part of the subject-matter of the

lectures which form the contents of the present

volume was also treated by Nettleship in his

essay in Helleuica, entitled '

The Theory of
Education in the Republic of Plato,' and again
in an essay on '
Plato's Conception of Goodness
and the Good,' which will be found in vol. i.

of these Lectures and Remains. Students of

the Republic who make use of this volume may
be recommended also to read the two essays
above mentioned.
In reproducing Nettleship's lectures on the
Republic, I have followed in the main the very
full notes taken by several pupils in the year

1887 and the beginning of 1888. I have, how-

ever, made much use of my own and other notes
of the lectures as given in 1885, adopting from
them, besides single sentences and phrases, many
VI NOTE

whole passages in which some subject happened

to have been more fully treated than in the later
year. In every case where there was a substantial

discrepancy between the lectures given in the two

years I have followed the later version.

In the actual lectures Nettleship used Greek

terms and English equivalents for them almost
indifferently. As the lectures may be read by
some who do not read the original Greek, I have
throughout adopted English words, except where
no English equivalent for the Greek seems pos-
sible, or where the meaning of the Greek word
is itself the subject referred to.

While remaining solely responsible in every

point for the form in which these lectures finally

appear, I have to thank Mr. Bradley, the editor

of the preceding volume, for most valuable advice
and assistance which I have received from him at

several stages in my task.

GODFREY R. BENSON.
 CONTENTS OF VOL. II

LECTURES ON THE 'REPUBLIC OF PLATO

I. Introduction ......... PAGE
3
II.

Justice . .......
Examination of some Representative Opinions about
. 14

I II. Statement of the Problem of the 'Republic' . .

47
IV.

V. Education of
Indicated .........
The Main Elements of Society and of Human Nature

Rulers in Early Life :

67

1. Introductory . . . . . . . 77
2.

3.

4.
Movaitct]
MovcriKT]
MovffiKT):
:

:
Myths and the
the Art of Literature
Beliefs

Music and the Arts generally

....
Taught in Literature.

. .
-99
.
84

108
5. TvfjLvaffTiKTj and Digression on Law and Medicine . 123

VI. Principles of Government in the Ideal State . . 130

VII. Statement of the Principle of Justice . . . 145

VIII. Communism and Digression on Usages of War . . 162

IX. Philosophy and the State 184

X. The Good as the Supreme Object of Knowledge 212

.....
.

XL The Four Stages of Intelligence 238

XII. Education in Science and Philosophy:

1. The Existing Want ....
......
of Education 259
2.

3.

4.
Dialectic
Plan of the
.........
Education in the Sciences

Whole Course of Education . . .

263
277
289
XIII.
Soul ..........
Successive Stages of Decline of Society and of the

XIV. Comparison of the Just and the Unjust Life

294

XV. Digression on Poetry

XVI. The Future Life of the Soul
.......
.....
. . 315
340

355
 LECTURES
ON

PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC

VOL. II.
 LECTURES ON PLATO'S
'REPUBLIC

I. INTRODUCTION
The Republic, though it has something of the nature
both of poetry and of preaching, is primarily a book of
philosophy. In studying it, therefore, we have to pay
attention above all to the reasoning, the order and con-
nexion of thought. A philosopher is a man with a greater
power of thinking than other people, one who has thought
more than others on subjects of common interest. All
philosophy must be critical and in thinking facts out to
;

their consequences the philosopher necessarily arrives at

conclusions different from and often contradictory to the
ideas current around him. Often indeed the conclusions
he arrives at seem no different from those of plain people,
and yet the difference between the philosopher and the
mass of mankind remains a great one, for, though starting
from the same facts and arriving at similar conclusions,
he has in the interval gone through a process of thinking,
and the truth he holds is reasoned truth. What seems
B 2
 '

4 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

at first sight the same truth,and may be put in the same

words that anybody else would use, is yet a very different
truth to the philosopher, containing a great deal that is not
present to the minds of most men. In either case, whether
the results, at which the philosopher arrives, are what we
believe or what we do not believe, the first thing we have
to do is to follow his enquiries. We should see how he
arrives at his conclusions before we begin to criticize them.
To study the Republic in this way is difficult. Plato's
ideas are often expressed in a manner very different from
any that we are accustomed to. This is, in part, a diffi-

culty common to all reading in philosophy. In arriving

at ideas unlike those of most people philosophy does not
differ at all from the special sciences : but while the
elementary conceptions of the sciences are approximately
fixed, and the meaning of the terms used can be seen at
once or quickly learnt, it is otherwise with philosophy ;

for the subject-matter of philosophy is of a comparatively

general character, being chiefly the main facts about
human knowledge and human morality, and in such
subjects there can be no absolutely fixed terminology.
Sometimes also, in Plato and other Greek philosophers,
the significance of what is said escapes us just because it

is expressed in a very simple way. The Republic, more-

over, has special difficulties arising from the peculiarities
of its form and method; — every great book has character-
istics of its own. which have to be studied like the
characteristics of a person.
What, in the first place, is the subject of the book?
Its name might suggest that it was a book of political
philosophy, but we very soon find that it is rather a book
of moral philosophy. (It starts from the question l
What
i.- ju.st.ice (biKauxTvvr)) ? '
that being the most comprehensive
 INTRODUCTION 5

of the Greek names for virtues, and in its widest sense,

as Aristotle tells us, equivalent to '
the whole of virtue as
1
shown in our dealings with others .') It is a book about
human life and the human soul or human nature, and
the real question in it is, as Plato says, how to live best 2 .

What then is implied in calling it the Republic (7roAireta)?

To Plato one of the leading facts about human life is that
it can only be lived well in some form of organized
community, of which the Greeks considered the civic
community to be the best form. Therefore the question,
What is the best life ? is to him inseparable from the
question, What is the best order or organization of
human society? The subject of the Republic is thus
a very wide one ; and a modern critic, finding such
a variety of matter in it, is inclined to think that Plato
has confused quite distinct questions. This is not so ;

he gives us in the Republic an ideal picture of the rise

and fall of the human soul, its rise to its highest stage
of development and its fall to its lowest depth and in ;

doing so he has tried to take account of everything in

the human soul, of its whole nature. Modern associations
lead us to expect that the book should be either distinctly
ethical or distinctly political, that it should either con-
sider man in his relations as a citizen or consider him
simply as a moral agent. Because the Greek philosophers
did not separate these two questions it is frequently said
that they confused them
would be truer to
; whereas it

say that they looked at human life more simply and

more completely than we are apt to do. But of course
there are questions which we have to differentiate as
ethical or political, and which the Greeks did not thus
differentiate. The reason is that their actual life was
1 a
Eth. Nic. V. i. 15 and 20. 344 E.
 '
6 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

less differentiated than ours ; that law, custom, and

religion were not in practice the distinct things that they
are now.
Along with the main subject there are many incidental
and subordinate subjects in the Republic there is a great ;

deal of criticism of existing institutions, practices, and

opinions. The book may be regarded not only as a
philosophical work, but as a treatise on social and political
reform. It is written in the spirit of a man not merely
reflecting on human life, but intensely anxious to reform
and revolutionize it. This fact, while giving a peculiar
interest to Plato's writing, prejudices the calmness and
impartiality of his philosophy. He is always writing
with crying evils in his eye —a characteristic in which
he differs widely from Aristotle.
We must next consider the form of the book. It was
not peculiar to Plato to throw his speculations into the
form of dialogues. Several of the pupils of Socrates
wrote dialogues, and the fashion lasted to the time of
Aristotle. The fact that this form came naturally to
a Greek philosopher is part of a more general literary
phenomenon. Greek literature is certainly less personal
than modern literature (the Greek drama, for instance, is

less subjective than ours), but on the other hand Greek

literature is more concrete. Thucydidcs' history differs
from modern books of history both in the absence of
personal detail and in the absence of general reflexions.
The place of general reflexions is taken in Thucydidcs

by fictitious speeches put into the mouths of actual

persons ;
and in this we sec that the distinction now
observed between the exposition of ideas and
in literature

principles and the representation of persons and character

had not then become prominent. So Plato takes a number
 INTRODUCTION 7

of actual personages, some contemporary, some belonging

to the last generation, some of them public men, others
own, and makes them the exponents of the
friends of his
philosophical opinions and ideas that he wishes to set
before us. These persons are not used as mere lay-

figures ; they are chosen because they actually had in

them something of what the dialogues attribute to them,
and they are often represented with dramatic propriety
and vivacity. Nevertheless they are handled without the
slightest scruple as to historical truth ;
— (the sense of
historical truth is a feature of modern times, its absence
a feature of ancient, and we see this in Plato, just as we
see it in Aristophanes). So the personages of the dialogue
are on the one hand simply ideal expressions of certain
principles on the other hand they carry with them much
;

of their real character. The Platonic dialogue is a form

of writing which would be impossible now. We require
a writer to keep the exposition of principles distinct from
the representation of persons, and to treat characters pri-
marily with an historical interest if they are actual people,
primarily with a dramatic interest if they are fictitious.

As a rule, when the form of dialogue has been used by

modern philosophers, as it was by Berkeley, the person-
ages are not characters at all; the dialogue of Bunyan

is the best analogy in English literature to that of Plato.

In Plato the dramatic element is present in different de-
grees in different dialogues. The Protagoras is the most
finished philosophical drama, and in the Euthydemus we
have a philosophical burlesque. In the later dialogues
the dramatic element is smaller, but all of them are real
dialogues, except the Laivs, in which the conversation is

very and the Timaeus, in which even the form of

slight,

conversation is dropped for that of exposition. In the

8 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

Republic itself the dramatic element diminishes as the

book proceeds, but is occasionally resuscitated.
While however Plato's adoption of this form is in
agreement with other tendencies in Greek literature
generally, there is also a special reason to be found for
it in the history of philosophy ; the dialogue form has
a serious import. Philosophic dialogue had its origin
in Socrates himself, with whom Greek philosophy, as
distinct from the investigation of nature, practically begins.
He passed his life in talking. It was the impulse given by
his life that produced Plato's dialogues. Socrates is unique
among philosophers because he lived his philosophy ;

he put out what he had to put out, not in books, but in

his and he developed his ideas by constant contact
life,

with other men. That he was able to do this was his

great power he was a man who, wherever he was and
;

whomsoever he met, showed himself master of the situa-

tion. In his case, then, it was apparent that philosophy
is a living thing developed by the contact of living minds.
We are apt to think of it as something very impersonal
and abstract, but, emphatically, all philosophy deals with
something in human nature, and differences in philosophy
are differences at the bottom of human nature. When,
however, philosophy is concentrated and embodied in
a book, it speaks a language not understood by most
people, and the author, when once he has published his
book, cannot help it if his readers misunderstand what
he says, for he is not in immediate contact with them.
Plato stands between Socrates and a modern writer on
philosophy. He has endeavoured to preserve the living
philosophy in the written words ; he takes types of
human nature more or less familiar to his readers, and
he makes them develop his ideas by the natural process
 INTRODUCTION 9

of question and answer. The literary "function of the

Platonic dialogue is in modern literature distributed
between different kinds of books, chiefly between books
of philosophy, and novels, in which ideas grow, embodied
in the lives of the characters.
Further, the form of question and answer seems to
Plato the natural form for the search after truth to take.
He constantly opposes this to the mode, which the
sophists adopted, of haranguing or preaching — producing
effect by up words
piling Why does he thus insist
1
.

on question and answer? Because the discovery of

truth must be a gradual process, and at every step we
should make ourselves realize exactly at what point
we have arrived. In Plato this is effected by the dia-
logue form, each step being made with the agreement of
two or more persons. Now, though philosophy need not
proceed by discussion between two people, its method
must always be in principle the same ; a person who
really thinks elicits ideas from himself by questioning
himself, and tests those ideas by questioning ; he does,
in fact, the same sort of thing with himself that Socrates
did with other people. In dialogue two or more minds
are represented as combining in the search for truth, and
the truth is elicited by the contact of view with view
in this respect it is replaced in a modern philosophy
book by a criticism which endeavours to elicit the truth
from opposing views.
In addition to Plato's use of dialogue we have to
reckon with his habit of stating ideas in a picturesque
manner. Thus in Book II of the Republic, when he is

analyzing principles which are at work in existing society,

1
See, for example, Rep. I.348 a and B, and 350 D and E, and for a favour-
able representation of the manner of the sophists see the Protagoras.
 '
io LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

he exhibits them in what appears to be an historical

sketch. He describes first a state organized solely for

the production of the necessaries of life, and afterwards
makes it grow into a luxurious state ; but he knows all

the time that the features he ascribes to each are simply-

taken from the Athens of his own day. This is more
noticeable still in Books VIII and IX, where he wishes
to exhibit various developments of evil in a logical order
of progress, and to do so takes five characters and five
states in succession, describing them as historically grow-
ing one out of the other. The result of this tendency
is to make his writing more vivid, but it is misleading
and gives unnecessary occasions for retort. The order
in which Plato's thoughts follow upon one another in the

Republic is logical, but the dramatic or the picturesque

medium through which he is constantly presenting his
ideas disguises the logical structure of the work.
The logical method of the Republic is in accordance
with the form of conversational discussion. Plato does
not start by collecting all the facts he can, trying after-
wards to infer a principle from them the book is full ;

of facts, but they are all arranged to illustrate principles

which he has in mind from the beginning. Nor does he
set out by stating a principle and then asking what
consequences follow from it. Starting with a certain
conception of what man he builds up a picture of
is,

what human life might be, and in this he is guided

throughout by principles which he docs not enunciate
till he has gone on some way 1

. He begins the con-

1
Wc may say that the ultimate principle of the Republic is that the
universe is the manifestation of a single pervading law, and that human
lit' i
good si) for as it obeys that law; but of this principle 1'lato docs
ik till the end of Book VI.
 — ;
''

INTRODUCTION ir

struction of his picture with admitted facts about human

life,and he gradually adds further elements in human
life he at once appeals to and criticizes popular ideas,
;

as he goes on, extracting the truth and rejecting the false-

'
hood in them. Thus neither induction nor deduction '
'
'

is a term that applies to his method it is a genetic ;

'

or '
constructive ' method ; the formation of his principle
and the application of it are going on side by side.
Before beginning to follow the argument in detail, we
must notice the main divisions into which it falls. They
are the following :

i. Books I and II, to 367 E. This forms an intro-

duction ; in it several representative views about human
life are examined, and the problem to which the Republic
offers a solution is put before us. That problem arises
in the following manner : we believe that there are moral
principles to be observed in life ; but this belief is in
apparent contradiction to the fact, which meets the eye,
that what we should commonly call success in life does
not depend upon morality. The sense of this contradic-
tion leads to thedemand, with which the Introduction
culminates :
'
Show
us what morality really is, by explain-
ing (without any regard to its external and accidental
results) how it operates in the soul of him who possesses
it. What does morality mean in a man's innermost life ?

This question indicates the central idea of the Republic.

2. From Book II, 367 E, to the end of Book IV.
In this section Plato describes in outline what, as he
conceives,would be the best form of human society
'justice' to be traced first in the institutions of this
is

society. These are based, as he considers, upon the

requirements of human nature. The society is a com-
munity in the life of which every element in human
 '
12 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

nature has its proper scope given to it ; and in this its

justice consists. The external organization, of which

this section treats, is only of importance because the
inner life of man finds its expression in it. Beginning
therefore with the organization of life in the state, and
discovering in every part of it a principle upon which
the welfare of the community depends, Plato endeavours
to trace this principle to its roots in the constitution of
human nature, showing how whatever is good or evil in

the external order of society depends upon the inner

nature of the soul.
3. Books V to VII. Beginning with a further dis-
cussion of some points in the institutions of the ideal
main part of this section, starts from
society, Plato, in the
the question by what means this ideal could be realized.
The answer is that human life would be as perfect as it
is capable of being, if it were governed throughout by

knowledge while the cause of all present evils is that

;

men are blinded, by their own passions and prejudices,

to the laws of their own life. Plato expresses this by
saying that, if the ideal is to be reached and if present

evils are to be brought to an end, philosophy must rule

the state ;
— (by philosophy he means the best knowledge
and the fullest understanding of the most important
subjects). In these Books he is occupied on the one
hand with the evils that result from the waste and
perversion of what he feels to be the most precious thing
in human nature, the capacity for attaining truth, and

on the other hand with the means by which this capacity

might be so trained and so turned to account as to bring
the greatest benefit to mankind.
4. Books VIII and IX. As the earlier Books put
before us a picture of what human life might be at its
 INTRODUCTION 13

best, so these put before us an ideal picture of human

evil, tracing the fall of society and of human nature to
the lowest depths they can reach. Plato here tests and
develops further his idea of the principle upon which
human good depends, by undertaking to show that all

existing evil due to the neglect of that principle.

is

5. Book X. This is the most detached part of the

Republic, and consists of two disconnected sections. The
first half of it treats over again the subject of art, and

especially of poetry, which has already been considered

in Book III. The last half continues the consideration
of the main subject, the capabilities and destinies of
the human soul, by following the soul into the life

after death.
II. EXAMINATION OF SOME REPRE-
SENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT
JUSTICE
[Republic, Book I.]

THE First Book of the Republic, and the First Book

only, is in construction and method closely similar to
the earlier dialogues of Plato, the '
Socratic ' dialogues.
It serves as a prelude to the rest of the work, as we are
told at the beginning of Book II. In it certain accepted
ideas of morality, modern work would have
which in a

been formulated as abstract ideas, are embodied before

us by various persons. We must first try to see what
different kinds of characters Plato has intended to
represent to us in these persons.
Socrates is always in the dialogues of Plato the
representative of the true philosophic spirit, but this
reveals itself in different dialogues in different ways.
In this Book
it shows itself as a critical spirit which
arrives atno apparent positive result whatever. Socrates
is the representative of an clement always present in

philosophy, the sceptical or enquiring spirit which never

takes things on trust, but requires that everything shall
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 15

approve itself to reason. What makes a philosopher

is the presence of this spirit, balanced by the conviction
that, though everybody must find the truth for himself,
the truth is to be found. Socrates then in the First
Book comes before us as Philosophy, putting certain ques-
tions to certain typical characters and examining certain
accepted principles.
In Cephalus we have the gathered experience of3 2 7Ato
a good man of the generation which was just passing
away when Socrates was beginning his philosophical
work. Philosophy comes to learn from this experience,
not to criticize it. Cicero remarks that it would have
been inappropriate for Socrates to question Cephalus.
What he does is an instance of what Aristotle tells the
student of philosophy to do ; we should, he says, attend
to the undemonstrated experience of old men, because
experience has given them the eye to see rightly 1
. The
sort of experience expressed in simple terms, of which
Cephalus is made the exponent, is not what we can call

a reason ed e xperien ce, but t he outcome of a life ; the

person who has it has not reflected upon it, and is not
in a position to answer the questions which the philo-
sopher has to ask. Accordingly, when the criticism
begins and the experience is to be analyzed, Cephalus
gives way to his son.
In Cephalus' simple utterances some of the philoso-
phical results of the body of the Republic are anticipated.
In him the delight of philosophical discourse has taken
2
the place of the pleasures of the flesh ; he has thereby
got rid of l
a raging and cruel master ' like the '
tyrant
love' of Book IX :i
. In the course of a long life he
1
Eth. Nic. VI. xi. 6. - 328 D, cf. 485 d-e.
3
572 E sqq.
 16 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

has come to see that, though poverty can mar happi-

ness, no material prosperity can command it, and that
character is the arbiter of happiness 1
. He retains
with a sort of apology his old-fashioned belief in the
poet's pictures of a future life, but further he retains the
substantial truth of the belief without the accompanying
perversions. Thus his religious belief in its simple and
yet pure form contrasts with the corruption of popular
religion, which as described in Book II is a gross form of
the theory of rewards and punishments. So the Republic
begins, as it ends, with the thought of a future life.

With Cephalus morality is summed up in the formula,

'
to have been true in word and deed, and to have
paid one's debts to gods and men,' which, if taken
widely and deeply enough, says all that one need wish
to say.
331 d to When we come to Polemarchus we pass from the old
generation of which Plato knew by report, to a new
generation which has inherited the experience of the
old, but in a partial Polemarchus, son of Cephalus
way.
and brother of Lysias the orator, was put to death by
2
the Thirty Tyrants he is mentioned in the Pkaedrus a
;

as a convert to philosophy. Of what sort of person

docs Plato mean him to be a type? He comes forward
in a confident way to answer the question, What is justice

or morality? not with th e resu lt of his ovvn experience,

but with a borrowed principle of which he is not the
master. We have passed from a man whose conception
of justice, though would not stand as a complete
it

philosophical is yet, in what

conception, it means to
him, substantially the expression of a good life, to one

2
330 a-h, cf. 591 e. Lysias, In Eratosthenent.
3
257 B.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 17

who only accepts the same conception from tradition.

He it in a maxim borrowed from the poets,
formulates
which he only very partially understands, and which,
so far as he does understand it, is a very imperfect
definition of virtue. The maxim may or may not
be a good one with that we are not concerned all
; ;

depends on how in this case you understand it.

The argument with Polemarchus falls into two sec-
tions. In the first he is gradually led to feel that he
does not in the least know what he meant by his maxim
from Simonides, that he is at the mercy of any one who
can manipulate his definition better than himself, and that
his words can be made to mean things quite the contrary
to what he does mean. The argument ends in a feeling
of intellectual helplessness, or consciousness of ignorance
(airopCa), which it was the first object of the Socratic
dialogue to produce. The second part of the argument
has a more positive result it shows Polemarchus that:

what he thought to be the meaning of Simonides,

really
his own real moral belief, that it is right to do good
to friends and harm to enemies, does not satisfy the
elementary requirements of a moral principle. Yo.ii

cannot say morality isjtQ_da~harm to anybody without

contradicting the very notion of morality. very A
similar expression to that of Polemarchus, the maxim
that we should love our friends and hate our enemies,
is criticized in the Sermon on the Mount. The idea was
a commonplace of Greek popular morality 1
. Thus in

the poems of Solon there is a prayer, ' May I be pleasant

to my friends, hateful to my enemies.'
The method employed in the first part of the argu-
ment (331 D to 334 b) is a very good instance of one form
1
Cf. Meno, 71 E.

VOL. II. , C
 '
i8 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of what is called the Socratic method. The actual con-

clusion arrived at need not be taken to be what Plato
thought the natural consequence of the principle of
Simonides ; that principle might mean many different
things ; the point to which we must attend is how and
why Polemarchus allows himself to be led to the absurd
conclusion to which he is led. His definition of justice is

that it consists in giving to every man what

due to is '
'

him (6(J)€lX6ij.€vov). Everything depends on the meaning

of d(f)€iX6fxevov, and the object is to get him to explain
the conception which exists in his mind in a vague
and fluid state. This is done by the Socratic Z-nayooyij ;

which means brino-ingr forward admitted facts or in-

stances, which resemble in some points those on which
a given idea is based, with the view of modifying,
correcting, or destroying that idea. We first take that
sense of oQeiKoftevov in which it means '
legally due.'
This is clearly not what Polemarchus means, for an
instance can be found in which legal restitution is not
just. He then substitutes a vaguer word for 'due.'
TipoarjKov. Now 'due' implies a something which is

due, and a somebody to whom it is due. To make him

define his conception further, Socrates brings forward
a number of familiar instances of things 'due' to some-
body, each of which he is compelled to exclude from
the conception, thereby gradually narrowing it. Thus
the art of medicine renders something which is due to
somebody. On that analogy what docs justice render
thatis due, and to whom ? This puts justice in the
same category as the arts. What is the point of iden-
tity? It is not a fanciful analogy. Justice is a thing
which enables a person to do something (a hvvanis which
makes a person Ivvcltos). That is the point of contact
 ;

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 19

between justice and the arts. The just man is a man

who has a certain gift or power of doing something
the question is, What? Polemarchus takes the most
obvious instance that occurs to him in which services

are rendered by justice he says the just man is

;

most able to help his friends and hurt his enemies in

war. Then, seeing that the utility of justice must
extend to peace, he again takes the most obvious in-
stance, business. This enables Socrates to compel him
again to narrow the conception. Business is a trans-
action in which two or more persons are concerned ;

what sort of transaction has Polemarchus in mind ?

Money transactions. Taking then transactions that
have to do with money, Socrates shows that there are
many of them in which justice does not enable a man
to help his friend. Polemarchus admits that, for
instance, it is not justice that makes a man useful to
his friend in buying a horse, but knowledge of horses ;

just as he previously admitted that what enables a man

to be useful to his friend in sickness is the art of medi-
cine and not of justice.
By this line of argument Polemarchus is led.jstep__by
step to empty the conce ption of justice of everything
1
thatJs_of practicaj^yahie . This happens because, using
a formula which he does not understand, he is at the
mercy of any superior dialectician. He ought to have
said, justice or morality is not a thing enabling a man
to do this or that thing demanding specific knowledge,
but a principle of universal application enabling a man
todo well everything that he does it ; is not one among
many arts of doing good, it is the one art of doing the
1
Cf. the more elaborate argument on temperance or self-control in the
Charniides.

C 2
ao LECTURES ON PLATO S 'REPUBLIC

one good. The whole setting of the argument is so

strange to us that it hardly makes any impression on us ;

yet we might throw it into a modern form. Take

easily
any current saying about morality, like honesty is the '

best policy,' and ask any one taken at random to explain

it, and you would probably find him as much confused as

Polemarchus.
The second part of the argument (334 B to 336 a)
begins with the confession of Polemarchus that he does
not know what he meant but he
; still maintains that at
any rate justice is to do good to friends and harm to
enemies. Is this really consistent with the most elemen-
tary conception of morality ? The argument by which
Socrates shows thatit is not, seems purely verbal in all ;

moral discussion however we have to examine words.

What he does is to show that if the words good and '
'

'
evil mean anything definite, this cannot be an adequate
'

account of morality, because it involves the contradiction

thatgood can be the cause of evil. For what is 'hurting'
a man or doing him 'harm'? It is to make him worse
in respect of human excellence ; tl;e_j)iLly_3ViLyjto_liurt

a man man
is_to_jna ke hi m_ a-_:w£trse Now whatever ]
.

else justice is, it is a form of human excellence, and

therefore to say it is just to make a man worse is like

saying heat can make us cold. So if Simonides meant
what Polemarchus thinks he did, it is not true, and
probably that is not what he meant.
The appeal to Simonides is an instance of the constant
practice in Greece at that time of appealing to the poets
as authorities on conduct and morals. It seems strange
to us ; but nearly all the reflective literature of Greece
was then to be found in the poets. The poets were the
1
This Tvas later one of the chief maxims of the Stoics.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 21

precursors of Greek philosophy ; they first gave expres-

sion to the thoughts of man about himself. It was in
poetry, not in prophecy as among the Hebrews, that the
early ideas of the Greeks found expression. The result

was that, when people wanted to find their ideas formu-

lated, they went to the poets. In that sense Homer and
some of the other poets were a sort of Greek Bible '.

They had not indeed distinct and formally recognized

authority ; they remained literature and poetry on the
same footing as other literature and poetry; but so far

as anything took the place taken by the Bible in English

thought, it was the older poets. In Plato's time the use
of the poets in moral discussion hadbecome something
more than a sort of instinctive tradition learning to ;

interpret them formed a recognized branch of culture.

In this passage Simonides spoke in
Socrates says '

2 ,'
riddles like a poet as he and in the Protagoras
was
he parodies the practice of interpreting the words of the
poets as riddles or allegories. This practice arose from
the growing feeling that new ideas about life could not
be got from the poets by superficial reading they had ;

to be read into them or worked out of them. Here

Plato makes Socrates' attitude to Simonides one of
ironical courtesy, but his treatment of the poets is

different on different occasions.

The analogy between morality and the arts, which
is employed argument with Polemarchus, appears
in the
frequently in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is im-

portant to realize what is the exact point of comparison,

and what it was that led Socrates to employ this com-
parison so frequently. The arts used as illustrations are

1
Cf. Rep. X, especially 606 E.
2
See also Lysis, 214, Charmidcs, 162 A, Theaet. 194 C, Protag. 339 sq.
22 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

not, as a rule, the fine arts ; they are either mechanical

or professional arts, medicine, navigation, shoemaking,
cookery, &c. If the art of the sculptor or painter is

employed in illustration, it is treated in exactly the same

way as these other arts. The point of analogy is not
a resemblance between the products of morality and of
the arts, but a certain cap acity or ability whic h mu st
be common t o the a rtist and t he good m an. Justice is
a power to do something, and so far it is like any art.
The cook and the shoemaker are those who possess
ability to do certain things better than other people ;

and this ability rests on knowledge of their business.

This is the point of analogy with morality. In order
to live properly we must understand life according to ;

a saying attributed to Socrates, '

virtue is knowledge,'
which really means that to understand life is to be
master of it. In order to be a successful artist at any-
thing you must understand the theory of the thing ; and
morality is represented as an art because the good man
may be represented as a masterjof _.the art of_ living, one
who knows the circumstances in which he lives and the
best mode of living. One must not jump to conclusions
and think this means that morality, or the art of living,
can be learnt like shoemaking. The Greeks, who saw
a point of contact between morality and the arts which
is a real one, were not generally inclined to push the
analogy too and Plato was at great pains to draw
far,

clearly the between the art of living and

distinction
other arts 1
the most obvious difference being that the
,

art of living cannot be mastered in the same way. The

applications which Greek thinkers did make of the com-
parison were that morality is nothing at all unless it

1
Sec Mcuo and Proiagorus,
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 23

makes a man practically a better liver, and that, to live

you must study life with as much attention
well, as any
sane man would give to learning his trade. It is naturally
supposed that, when the Greeks compared morality to
the arts, they were thinking of the fine arts and meant
that there was a resemblance between a moral life and
a work of art. Many people have looked upon a good
life as a work of art, and that is a legitimate point of

view but it was not the characteristic point of view

;

of Plato or Aristotle, though morality is sometimes in

their phraseology described as a beautiful thing (kclKov).

To express modern language the analogy which they

in
found between morality and the arts, one might say that

morality means a theory or principle carried out in life,

and that we must make life a scientific thing, following
the example of the applied sciences, in which success is
due to understanding, and failure to ignorance. This
is really the characteristic Greek way of looking at life,

for the Greeks were not only an artistic but an intellectual

people, to whom such a point of view was natural.
Thrasymachus, who next enters into the argument, is 33 6Kto
not to be taken as representing Plato's idea of the sophists Book I.

generally for there was no one class of people called

;

sophists, and they could not be typified by one individual,

nor does the antagonism between Plato and them appear
in one form but in many. The simplest way of describ-
ing the sophists is to say that they were persons who in

the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. supplied culture to

Greece, or, in other words, who made it their profession
to diffuse and popularize ideas. To understand the
position they filled one should consider what are the
agencies which diffuse culture in the nineteenth century.
There is no one agency, no class of persons with one
24 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

name. But there are, first, writers in newspapers and

periodicals, by themselves a large and various assortment
of people ; there are, further, writers of fiction ; there are
preachers who diffuse moral or religious ideas ; and there
are men who, without being in all cases exactly savants
or philosophers, popularize certain ideas about science or
philosophy. For example, Professor Huxley, besides
being a man is a popularizer of science
of science, and ;

again, Mr. Matthew Arnold, though in the first place

a poet, has done a very great deal to spread certain ideas
about life and about religion. Now the Greek sophists
are no more to be thought of as men of a single kind
than any one man is to be taken as a type of the
spreaders of culture in England. The class comprised
the greatest and the meanest men, men actuated by the
most various motives. Some were truly interested in
the spread of education, others aimed at overthrowing
certain beliefs, others had no higher object in view than
making a fortune.
The conditions of Greece were different from those
of England, and the particular things in which the
sophists educated Greece were different from those
taught in England by any analogous agency. Nearly
all of them taught rhetoric that is to say, the power
;

of using language as an instrument in life. A modern

analogy to this teaching of rhetoric may be found in

the '
higher educationEngland.'
in is the main What
tiling taught in the English Public Schools and Uni-
versities? An outside observer might say with a good
deal of truth that was how to use words, that is, how
it

to understand and to write. Acquiring the

literature
power to express oneself is an indispensable element
in education, and in Greece it was absolutely necessary
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 25

in order to get on in life. The sophists therefore

nearly all But teaching language is
taught rhetoric.
more than teaching the use of words one learns from ;

it inevitably how to think and speak about subjects

of importance. The chief subjects of interest in Greece
were subjects bearing on public life or politics, and the
sophists practised their pupils in speaking on these.
Thus incidentally, and sometimes intentionally, the
teaching of the sophists was a moral education, an
education in things which have to do with life. It is

not true to say of higher education in England that

it is '
a mere linguistic training,' for linguistic training
means getting hold of and handling many ideas ; nor
is it true that the sophistic education in Greece was
merely rhetorical, for the sophists were, to a great extent,
the moral educators of Greece.
The sophists were more or less professional men ;

they made their living by teaching, and from the neces-

sities of the case they had to address themselves to
a certain public and to strive to get influence over
it, just as a modern press-writer has to consider for
whom he writes, and, to a certain extent, has to adapt
his styleand matter to his public. This makes a great,
perhaps a most vital distinction between a man of
science and a man who discharges a function like that
of the sophists. A man of science has not, as such,
any interest in the spreading of truth ; he is one whose
function is to find out what is true, whether any one
else believes it or not. Many of the greatest men of
science have been grossly misunderstood by their con-
temporaries, and generally their ideas have to filter

through others to the world at large : that filtering is

the work of the sophists. Any one who does this work
 '
26 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

stands, as a man with a gospel to propagate stands,

in a difficult and dangerous position ; he has to com-
promise between the truest and most effective way of
putting things ; the adjustment is difficult, and there
are sure to be some who err in it through unscrupu-
lousness. The sophists who appear in Plato include
people as different from one another as a distinguished
savant or literary man is from the most unscrupulous
newspaper writer. Protagoras and Gorgias are repre-
sented as honourable men desirous of doing good,
but still as men who, while desiring to be leaders of
the people, really only reflect popular ideas. In other
cases sophists appear as charlatans, whose sole object is

to produce an effect or to make money. Plato's attitude

towards the sophists varies from genuine respect, always
touched with a little irony, as towards Gorgias and Pro-
tagoras, to scathing contempt, as towards Euthydemus.
Thrasymachus 1
belonged to the class of sophists who
made their rhetoric the chief subject of their teaching.
We learn that his peculiar strength lay in teaching
how to appeal to the passions of an audience. He
came from Chalcedon. We
have no means of know-
ing whether Plato is just to him, nor does it matter to
us. Certain traits in this picture of him are common
to most of Plato's representations of sophists. Indiffer-
ence to truth, love of money, and caring only for verbal
victory, these are characteristics common to all the
inferior sophists in Plato, while a disinclination to
reason and a tendency to harangue arc shared by
nearly all. Put there are special features in Thrasy-
machus — perhaps exaggerations by Plato of the features
of the real man —coarseness, unmannerliness (which is very
1
Phaccims, 267 c; and Arist. Rhtt. 1404 a. 14.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 27

unusual in Plato's dialogues), shameless audacity and

disregard of consequences, and cynicism. In fact, it is

not primarily as a teacher of rhetoric that he is repre-

sented here. He appears first as a man who takes
a cynical view of political morality, and does not really
believe that there is such a thing as morality at all. He
is at the same time a man who assumes the garb of
science, and will be nothing if not exact (a/cpt/3?/s) and ;

he can put his case in a way which, even in this bur-

lesqued form, would be extremely effective with a popular
audience inclined to be unscrupulous. The view of which
he is the exponent is one which was very much in the
air at that time, though not often put in this naked
form. We
meet with it in the Melian dialogue in Thu-
1
cydides and in the argument between the Swcaios and
,

adiKos Ao'yos in the Clouds of Aristophanes. We meet

with it also in the Gorgias, where it is both stated and
answered in a more serious and powerful manner for ;

Calliclcs in that dialogue expresses what is essentially

the same position in the most effective way in which it
has ever been put.
The argument with Thrasymachus falls into two main
sections. The
result of the first (338 c to 347 E) is gradu-
from the ambiguous formula of Thrasyma-
ally to elicit
chus what he really means. This is that the real art of
living is to know how to aggrandize oneself (-nkeoveKTdv)
with impunity ; successful selfishness is the true end of
life; the distinction between the so-called just and unjust
is only a difference in the point of view ; if selfishness is

successful it is just, if not it is unjust. The second part

of the argument (347 E to end of Book I) aims at showing
that, if you take this principle seriously as a principle
1
Time. V. 89 sqq.
 '
28 LECTURES ON PLATO'S i
REPUBLIC

on which to live, it contradicts itself, because it is the

negation of all principle. It cannot be made to satisfy-
any of the requirements of wisdom, goodness, or happi-
ness (ao(j)ia, dper?/, zvhai{j.ovia). Jn manner both parts of the
argument bear a resemblance to that with Polemarchus.
Certain terms are taken and assumed to bear at least
a certain definite minimum of meaning, and it is asked
what logically follows if they are taken in their strict
meaning (rw d/cpi^et Aoyw). It is essentially an argument
from the abstract meaning of certain conceptions. It

must therefore strike us at first as unsatisfactory and

unconvincing. We feel that Thrasymachus is thinking
all the time of certain concrete facts, as we call them,
while the argument against him is not concerned with
the question what the facts of life are. It merely asks
whether, assuming the facts of life to be as Thrasymachus
states them, they satisfy certain abstract conceptions ;

whether, for example, government is universally selfish,

if

it has any right to be called government. This feeling

is expressed by Glaucon at the beginning of Book II.

Thrasymachus, he says, has been logically silenced, but

the hearers have not been convinced that there is nothing
in what he says they want Socrates not only to prove
;

to them in argument that justice is better than injustice,

but to show them justice and injustice as operative prin-
ciples in human life.

I. Thrasymachus begins (338 c) by laying down the

proposition that 'Justice is the interest of the stronger'
(Kp€LTT(joi>). The first thing to do is to clear away the
ambiguity of his terms. The word KpdrTiov includes
the conceptions of stronger and and the first better,
question is, In what particular sense docs he mean
stronger or better ? Putting aside the meaning physi- '
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 29

cally stronger,' Thrasymachus says that he means the

government or sovereign for the time being, which is
a perfectly good meaning, for the government is always
as a matter of fact backed by force amongst other things.
By his statement that justice is the interest of the stronger
Thrasymachus means, then, that the government legis-
lates in its own interest. This however is ambiguous.

It is true that, as he says, the laws of democracy or

oligarchy serve democratic or oligarchic interests, because
a democracy is a community based on the theory that the
democratic interest is the true and best interest of the

state,and so with an oligarchy. But the statement may

mean something else than this, namely that those who
govern legislate in their own personal interests and it ;

soon becomes clear that this is what Thrasymachus really

means.
The first step in the examination of the position as it
has now been explained (viz. that justice is the interest
of the sovereign or government) is to lead Thrasymachus
to admit that there is an art, theory, or principle of
government. Socrates does this by appealing to the
fact that governments make mistakes as to their interests,
so that what the government commands may not be its

real interest ; upon which Thrasymachus asserts (340 C

sqq.) that, in speaking of the sovereign or government
for the time being, he does not mean anybody who
happens to be in power, but the persons who, holding
have also the real capacity and
positions of authority,
knowledge to govern. By government, he says, he
only means the government so far as it does not make
mistakes. This at once puts us on different ground,
and enables Socrates to advance to a new and important
point. It puts government in the category of applied
30 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC*

principles or arts ; so that we may apply to it all that

can be said of art in general.

The next step in the argument is accordingly to

develop the abstract conception of art. How does the
notion of '
interest ' (^vfx(p4i>ov) apply in the case of art ?

In what sense has an art an interest, or in what sense

has any artist an interest qua artist ? (The form in
which the question is put implies the identification of
the artist with the art ; the artist is regarded as the art
embodied. And there is truth in this, for the arts have
no existence whatever except in given persons. Art
means the living artists and what they make just as ;

science again means the living states of certain persons

and the fruits of those states.) An art may be said
to have an interest in two senses. First, there is the
interest which would more accurately be called the interest
of its subject-matter. The arts come into existence
l
because of certain wants, flaws, or imperfections in
certain things. There is an art of medicine because of
the imperfection of the human body ; there would be
no such art if the body could be kept in perfect health
without it. The interest of the subject-matter of the
art is that these imperfections should be supplemented ;

and in a loose way we may call this the interest of the

art. But, secondly, what is the interest of the art in
the strict sense? An art is a certain power to meet
certain wants or supplement certain defects its interest, ;

end, or motive then can be no other than to do this in

the best way possible ; its interest is its own perfection (on
fiaXta-ra rekiav civai, Suppose an artist to be doing
341 I)).

his work as well as he can would he feel, qua artist, ;

1
Expressed by the word -novripla, whirl) is badness in the sense of
having flaws, the Latin vitiutn.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 31

a want of anything further? No; if he is susceptible

to any other interest, it means that he has gone outside
his art and is something else than an artist. The art
in itself has no want or imperfection for other arts to
supplement, it is self-sufficient.The perfection of art
is its own reward. The argument will be clearer to us
if we speak of the artist instead of the art. We should
allow that the doctor or painter, as doctor or painter,
can have no other interest than to treat his patients or
to paint as well as he can, and, so far as he has any
other interest, he is not for the time being strictly doctor
or painter. Of course it is not implied that he is any
the worse because, as a matter of fact, he has other
interests beyond his art.
Now, to apply this to the art of government, the
relation of arts to their subject-matter or material is

the relation of governor to governed ; they are masters

of it and deal with it as they like. When we spoke of
the governors who were really governors, and called
them the stronger or better, it was implied that the
superiority which made them real governors was the same
superiority that any artist has over his subject-matter.
This subject-matter is in their case the community over
which they rule: government is called into existence by
certain wants in its subject-matter, society. Then if
there really is such a thing as this art of government,
which, it is implied, exists, and ifwhat we have called
by that name is not to be resolved into some other quite
different thing, the only sense in which you can speak of
an interest of government is that of securing the interest
of the governed. The only interest of the governor, as
a governor, is to govern well ; and if we say justice is
the interest of governors, we do not mean it is their
32 LECTURES ON PLATO S l
REPUBLIC

interest as doing anything else but govern. Thrasymachus

of course meant it was their interest in quite a different
sense.
This a perfectly abstract argument the result of it
is ;

is that Thrasymachus gives up the pretension to be

scientific and logical, which he has so far made. In his
answer (343, 344) he does not touch this argument but
appeals to the facts. He says look at what governments '

do,' and gives a cynical, though no doubt to some extent

a true, picture of some Greek governments. They are

like shepherds who feed sheep, not in the interest of the
sheep, but in their own. As a matter of fact, he proceeds
to say, the honest and honourable man comes off worse
in life, he makes less and he is disliked more. The real
interest of the stronger is injustice ; not injustice on the
small scale of ordinary crime, but injustice on a grand
scale. What is called justice and what is called injustice
are in reality the same thing, only described from dif-
ferent points of view. If the doer of unjust things
is strong enough, then what he does is called justice by
weaker men ;
if he is weak, then it is called injustice
by stronger men and he is punished.
We thus gradually pass to a different and a wider
question, What is the real nature of the distinction
between justice and injustice? and (ultimately), What is
the real aim or good of human life ? For Thrasymachus
does away with any distinction of right and wrong the ;

only principle he recognizes is that of self-interest if ;

self-interest is successful it gets called justice, that is all.

In the first part of his answer (344 n) Socrates, taking

up Thrasymachus' illustration of the shepherd and the
sheep, appeals to the admitted fact that all arts which
are paid are paid because it is assumed that the artist,
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 33

as such, does not work for his own profit. He goes on,
still in a rather abstract way, to develop his conception
of art. He has before considered the nature of single
arts ; he now takes the concrete case of a paid artist,
and shows that two absolutely distinct arts
in his case

are involved, his own and the art of wage-

specific art,

earning which is common to him and other artists. Art

is the ability (bvvafus) to do a certain thing its product ;

is specific to it (Ibiov). If, then, we take a steersman

who gets money by steering, and a doctor who gets
money by curing disease, we can distinguish the specific
product of the particular art of either of them, and the
common That this analysis is true, and
product, money.
that we not only can but must thus distinguish the two
products, is shown by the fact that a doctor may cease
to take fees, and none the less continue to heal. The
specific product, then, is not convertible with the common
product of the arts. Coming to the art of government,
Socrates appeals to the fact that rulers are paid for their
work. They are paid either in money or position, or
else they have their reward in avoiding the evil to
themselves and the community of the bad government
which would rule if they did not. This shows that the
accepted theory of government is that it is not in itself
a paying thing and, further, Socrates adds that the
;

best governors are those who do not do the work for

pay at all, or even for reputation, but simply because,
if they did not govern, somebody else would do it worse.

Advancing upon what he says, we might say that,

the better a man governs, the more he finds his reward
simply in performing the function of government as well
as it can be performed.
Where Plato distinguishes the art of getting paid
VOL. II. D
34 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

(fjuo-duiTLKi'j) from the other arts, which, in his language,

it accompanies, he is making a distinction which, though
in different language, we also might really make. We
might, for instance, say that a doctor, considered as a
person making an income, was a subject for the econo-
mist or the statistician. To them the only question
about the doctor might be, What is the price of his
work? and it might make no difference what was the
specific nature of the art by which he got his income.
Conversely, it might have no influence on the art whether
the artist was making ,£io,oco a year or ;£i,ooo. The
essential point for which Socrates is contending may be
illustratedby what is now a generally admitted principle
as to the payment of public officers. It is that they

should be paid to such an extent as will enable them to

devote themselves entirely to their work, and will remove,
as far as possible, the temptation to make money out of
their offices. Thus it complained that the low pay
is

of judges in many of the United States has a bad

upon their work as judges. The
effect facts to which
Thrasymachus appeals arc undoubted facts, but it is

equally clear that the ordinary conscience of mankind

accepts in substance Socrates' view of the nature of
public authority.
2. We come now (347 e) to the second section of the
argument with Thrasymachus. Having completed the
analysis of the conception of government, Socrates turns
to a more important question Is successful self-aggran-
:

dizement the true principle of life does the life of the

;

unjust man pay better than that of the just man? For
it has come out in the course of the argument that this
is what Thrasymachus actually meant by saying justice *

is the interest of the stronger.' To make his exact

 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 35

meaning clearer, he is led to say that what is called

injustice is, in the true sense of the words, virtue (dper?/)

and wisdom (aocpia).

What do these words mean in Greek ? 'Aper?/ is that
quality in an agent in virtue of which it does its particular
work well there is no other virtue than that. The
;

corresponding adjective to aper-q is ayaOos, good. A thing

is good of its kind when it does its work well. Thus,
whatever else may mean, it must mean
'
a good man '

a man who does his work well, a man who lives well,
whatever meaning you may attach to that. Unfortunately
our words '
goodness ' and '
good,' which are the natural
equivalent for aper?/ and ayados, no longer have this
wide signification when they are applied to men, and
4
morality '
and '
moral ' never had it.

2o$ia is a specific form of open/ ; Aristotle, describing

the original use of the word, says it is the virtue of
re'xm? (that is, of art in the widest sense l
).
'
Wise and'

'
cunning are used
' in this sense in the Old Testament.
If we look at human life as the subject-matter of a certain
art, then aocpbs avijp means a man who is master of the

art of living. What Thrasymachus means, then, is that

the so-called unjust man is the man who understands the
real art of living. In applying these words, apenj and
(rocpia, to injustice, he is, of course, putting his disbelief

in justice in the form that would seem most paradoxical

to his hearers ; and this is what Plato intends. If, as
Socrates remarks, Thrasymachus had compromised, and
had said that injustice was advantageous though base
it would have been easier to answer him.
(alaxpov),
Next we must understand what he means by injustice
1
Eth. Nic. VI. vii. 1. He proceeds immediately to give it a very different
sense.

D 2
36 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

(abiKia) ? The essence of injustice was traditionally

understood to lie in irXeove^a. the attempt to get more
than anybody else of the good things of life. The unjust
man is he who is always trying to get more of something
than somebody else. The dominant idea of justice in
Greek thought was some sort of equality ; that is, that
every one should have, not actually the same amount,
but a fair proportion, measured according to his position
by some other standard.
in life or

Thrasymachus then claims for injustice that it is the

true wisdom of life, and, as will be understood from
what has been said of the meaning of the words, the
claim that it is the true virtue or goodness is taken
as standing or falling with this ; he further claims that
it is the true strength of life ; and lastly, that it is

the true happiness or welfare (ei>5cu/xow'a) of life. His

position is now examined under the head of these three
claims.
(a) On the first of these claims the substance of
Socrates' argument (349 A to 350 c) may be stated as
follows. If we examine the principle upon which the
man who is perfectly unjust acts, we find it consists
in the denial that there is any principle at all. He says,
Let every man get what he can ; because he recognizes
no distinction of good and bad, right and wrong, and
does not allow that there is any such thing as a limit
beyond which he ought to get no more. Thrasymachus
is taken as accepting this view, and asserting that the
man with no principle is the true artist in life (the aro(f>6s).
Now let us compare such a man with a good artist or
craftsman in other arts. In all other arts the man who
is without the idea of right or wrong (in the wider sense
of the words), or the idea of a limit at which he must
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 37

is not the man who understands his art

stop, he is the ;

man who knows nothing about it. For suppose two

musicians meet over the tuning of an instrument; if they
are really musicians, they at once recognize a principle
of right and wrong, which sets a limit beyond which it

would never occur to them to go; in plain English, if

the instrument is rightly tuned, the musician, the man
who knows, would never think of tuning it further. Or.
if two good doctors meet in consultation, when the one
has treated the patient rightly the other would not
depart from the right treatment in order to outdo him.
This idea of a limit, up to which you try to go
and beyond which you do not try to go is that of
a standard of perfection or of rightness which you try
to hit off exactly. It appears, then, that in all arts the
mark of skill and understanding is that the man who has
them (the <rocf)6s or k-nunrifxodv) knows when that limit is
reached. He does not, Plato says, go beyond another
person who understands his art ; or, as we should rather
say, he does not go beyond what he knows to be the
principle of his art. If this then is the case with all

good craftsmen, the unjust man, the man of limitless

acquisition (irXeove^ia), would seem to be the type of the
bad and ignorant craftsman.
Socrates' argument seems unconvincing, not only be-
cause of its abstract character but for a further reason.
It goes very much to the root of the whole question,
and people are very seldom able to face the ultimate
issues raised by any question. There are several other
passages in Plato that throw light on the argument
here. In the Politicus two kinds of measure (ixerpov) '
'

are distinguished —
that by which things are measured
against each other in respect of magnitude, and that by
 '
38 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

which things are measured against each other, not in

respect of theirmere magnitude, but in respect of some
proportion between them and Plato goes on to say ;

that all arts depend for their existence on measure in

the latter sense *. A passage in the Gorgias expresses
much we find here. Callicles is
the same antithesis as
made to maintain, though more forcibly, the same
position as Thrasymachus, and it is shown against him,
more fully than here, that if you are quite logical in
this position you make life strictly impossible, that the
logically non-moral life is logically impossible and self-

destructive ;
proportion (t<roV?/? yeoo^erpi/07) is the great
principle that holds life and the universe together 2 . In
the Pkilebus, Socrates talks of limit (-rrepas) ; this is

essentially what is measure

elsewhere described as ;

it is what makes things measurable which would be

incomparable and immeasurable without it and this ;

principle is declared to be that on which not only arts

but also laws of nature depend 3 In various other .

passages we have the same idea applied equally to

morality and the life of man, to nature and its processes,
and to art and its processes.
There is one total misunderstanding of this idea which
we must avoid. The modern associations of the word
'
and sometimes also those of the word measure,'
limit,' '

are the exact opposite of those which these words had for
Plato. The word limit certainly suggests to us something
that stops progress, and prevents us reaching perfection
in anything. The Greek associations of the words, at least
in Plato and Aristotle, are quite different. The idea of

'/'..''. '•
is in this passage iliat we find tlio nearest
verbal approach in Plato to Aristotle's doctrine of the '
mean.'
:i
1
Gorgias, 507 E sq. Philebus, 25 B sqq.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 39

limit is that of something on the attainment of which

perfection is attained ; it is not that which puts a stop
to progress, but that without which progress would be
a meaningless process ad infinitum. Both ways of using
the word are justifiable ; but it is a difference in the use
of language which indicates a fundamental difference
between our ways of looking at things. The modern
conception, which most answers to the Greek idea of
measure, is that of law. In our conceptions of nature
and morality the idea of law is becoming more and more
dominant. This idea also admits of two different appli-
cations. Law may be looked upon as a restraining and
repressive force, or it may be looked upon as an undc-
viating mode of activity ; the latter is the true mean-
ing of '
laws of nature,' and it is also the true meaning
of 'measure' in Plato. To Plato and Aristotle alike
the natural way of expressing the truth that there is

some distinction between right and wrong, or that there

is such a thing as moral principle, is to say that there

is such a thing as limit or measure, without which it is

literally true that human life would be impossible. The

whole of the Aristotelian doctrine, that virtue is a mean
between two extremes, is an expression of the same con-
ception of measure, that the right, or good, or beautiful,
always appears as something which is neither too much
nor too little. With the Greeks the presence of such
a standard is the symbol of the presence of reason in
the world, and in morals, and in the whole of human
life. It is not a moral conception, but a perfectly
universal conception applied to human life. The
characteristicallyGreek way of describing morality is
to say, that the moral man is the man who recognizes
that there is a principle. That is to the Greeks the
 '

40 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

point of between morality, art, science, and

contact
everything which reason is concerned.
in Thus the
issue involved in this argument with Thrasymachus
is the most elementary issue conceivable that is, it ;

goes very much further back than we are accustomed

to go in our discussions of morality. The question is
whether there is or is not any principle in human life
at all. We, in our discussions about what is 'right' or
1
move in a much more concrete atmo-
good,' generally
sphere. (The answer that Thrasymachus could at once
have made to the argument is, of course, that by the
man who takes all he can (the TrAeo^e/cn/s-) he did not
mean the man who takes absolutely and literally all he
can without recognizing any principle or any limit at all.
But to make this answer would have been to surrender
the position he had undertaken to defend.)
(b) Injustice, or taking all one can, has further been

represented as power or strength. Under this head of

the argument (351 A to 352 d) the issue is again between
having some principle and having none. Thrasymachus'
contention is met by showing that, if we take any
instance of the successful exertion of force, we always
find present some element of unity, some standard
which the people acting together tacitly recognize ;

and that absolutely taking all one can, absolute absence

of principle, means incapacity to act together^ and con-
sequently disintegration and dissolution. In any society,
in the large society of the state, in an army, or in

a small body of men such as a band of robbers, success

in injustice isalways due to some implicit recognition
of justice. This leads Socrates to the assertion that
justice is not a term describing a mere external form
of action, but something with a power or force (hyvafxa)
 —

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 41

of its own, which wherever it exists, either in society

or in the individual soul, will always make itself felt ;

and, passing to the individual soul, he points out that

this principle of union is the condition of strength
in it as in society. Here we have a transition from
the view of justice as a matter of external conduct
to the view of it as a living principle in the human
soul which works itself out in the conduct of life. This
is the first indication of a manner of looking at the
subject which dominates the whole of the rest of the
Republic. The principle of absolute injustice means
the impossibility of union with oneself, with other men,
and with God and wherever strength is found, it is in
;

virtue of some admixture of justice or unity.

(c) There remains the contention that the unjust man

is happier (more evbaCiMnv) or 'lives better' than the just

man. In answer to this Plato (352 D to end of Book I)

develops very simply a conception which is the funda-
mental conception of Aristotle's Ethics. In the first Book
of the Ethics 1
, Aristotle asks the question, What is hap-
piness what is the true thing to live for ? And
(evbaiiJLovLa),

to answer it he asks, What, if any, is the function (Zpyov)

of man as man ? Virtue (aperry) he defines as strictly
correlative to function it simply means excellence of
;

work, excellence in the performance of function 2 and ;

to understand what is said of virtue in Greek thought ' '

one must realize that this is its meaning. In the

present passage the argument of Socrates is as follows :

Everything which has a function everything, that is to —

say, which does or produces anything has a corre- —
sponding virtue. The function of a thing is that for
which it is the sole agent, or the best agent. The
1 2
I. vii. 9-15. II. vi. 1-3.
 ;

'

42 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

virtue of a thing is that quality in it which enables

it to perform its function ; virtue is the quality of
the agent when it is working well. For example, the
function of the eye is to see, and that of the ear to
hear, and their virtues are seeing and hearing well.
Now the soul of man is a thing with a function
itmay be said to have various functions, but they
may be expressed in general terms by saying that its
function is to live (the '
soul ' meant to the Greeks the
principle of life). Its virtue, then, will be that quality
which enables it to live well. So, if we have been
right in saying that not injustice but justice is the virtue
of man, it is the just man and not the unjust who will
live well ; and to live well is to be happy.
Here again the argument is intensely abstract. We
should be inclined to break in on and say that virtue it

means something very different in morality from what it

means in the case of seeing or hearing, and that by
happiness we mean a great many other things besides
what seems meant here by living well. All
to be
depends, in this argument, on the strictness of the terms,
upon assuming each of them to have a definite and
distinct meaning. The virtues of a man and of a horse
are very different, but what is the common element in
them which makes us call them both virtue ? Can we
call anything virtue which docs not involve the doing

well of the function, never mind what, of the agent that

possesses the virtue? Is there any other sense in which

we can call a thing good or bad, except that it does

or docs not do well that which it was made to do?
Again, happiness in its largest sense, welfare, well-being.
or doing well, is a very complex thing, and one cannot
readily describe in detail all that goes to make it up but ;
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 43

does it not necessarily imply that the human soul,

man's vital activity as a whole, is in its best state, or

is performing well the function made to perform ? it is

If by virtue and by happiness we mean what it seems

we do mean, this consequence follows when men are :

agreed that a certain sort of conduct constitutes virtue,

if they mean anything at all, they must mean that in
that conduct man finds happiness. And if a man says
that what he calls virtue has nothing to do with what
he calls happiness or well-being, then either in calling

the one virtue he does not really mean what he says,

or in calling the other happiness he does not really mean
what he says. This is substantially the position that
Plato takes up in this section.

The last two argument prepare the

sections of the
way for the first Book II. The view of morality
half of
is becoming less external, we are invited to regard it now

as an inherent activity of the soul. In Book II Glaucon

and Adeimantus demand that this idea should be taken
up and developed.
Before leaving Book I, we may consider two further
incidental points. (1) Thrasymachus is made to refer

bitterly to the well-known 'irony' (dpoovda) of Socrates

(337 A). In the Ethics of Aristotle 1 the 'ironical' man
[dpow) is a person who in his conversation represents
himself at less than his actual worth. In this general
sense '
irony ' is a social quality which is the extreme
opposite of boastfulness or vanity. It becomes affecta-
tion or false modesty when a person is always depre-
ciating himself, and we generally think that such
a person is in reality anything but modest. But the
'
irony of Socrates was not a mere grace
' of manner
1
IV. vu.
 '

44 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

in social behaviour less was it affectation or mock

; still

humility. It arose in him from a genuine sense of the

inexhaustibility of knowledge. We may compare his
expressions of it with the question in the Gospels, '
Why
callest thou me good ? ' This is the deeper significance
of the Socratic irony compared with what is to be
'
' ;

known, neither Socrates nor anybody else knows any-

thing he was wiser, he said, than those with whom he
;

conversed only because he knew his own ignorance 1

.

But the people with whom he spoke were, no doubt,

generally more ignorant than he, and if one had been
a stranger talking with him, this perpetual assumption
of ignorance would have appeared a sort of humorous
irony, in our sense of the word, designed to make
Socrates appear to advantage 2
. (One may compare
the expression '
irony of fate '
; we speak of the irony
of fate when we see a man behaving in a way which
shows that he is quite unconscious of the real circum-
stances.)

(2) Thrasymachus in the Republic (337 d) requires to be

paid for his contribution to the discussion. It is always

represented in Plato as one of the contrasts between

Socrates and the sophists that the latter took pay
and the former did not. We know from Xenophon
that Socrates, like Plato, regarded this practice of
taking pay not indeed as wrong, but as marking
a certain inferiority in the receiver. Xenophon in

saying how little Socrates cared about luxury or

money, mentions that he never demanded pay for
his teaching. 'In this.' he tells us, 'he conceived

1
Apology, 2i 11.

I "i- the irony of Socrates compare Symp. 216 B, Thcaet. 150 C, Mtno,
Ho \. and Xen. Mini. I. ii. 36, and IV. iv. 9.
 REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 45

he was assuring his liberty, for he felt that those

who took pay for the advantage of their society
made themselves the slaves of those who paid them.'
It was not money but the acquisition of good friends

that he regarded as his greatest gain Xenophon 1

.

tells us Antiphon reproached Socrates with

too that
not taking money, because it showed that, though he
was an honest man, he did not know his own interests.
Socrates answered that he regarded wisdom as beauty,
and thought that to sell wisdom for money was to
prostitute it that is to say, that truth is something
;

which cannot be bought or sold, and to put a money

value on it is to degrade it.
The notion that there is a degiadation in taking pay
for anything seems absurd to the modern mind. The
whole question is whether, and how far, money taken
affects the motive and attitude of the person who takes
it. Some persons are not affected by it in the smallest
degree but there is a very real danger in the relation
;

of the receiver of pay to the giver, and with the majority

it does diminish independence and clearness of view. It

is often felt now, chiefly perhaps about the clergy, but

also and with equal justice about barristers, doctors, and
men of any profession, that every kind of work tends
to be lowered by becoming a profession. This is exactly
what Socrates and Plato seem to have felt about the
sophists, and it is quite a true feeling. No doubt, by
being professional men whose business it was to com-
municate wisdom, the sophists put themselves more
under the public that paid them than they would
otherwise have been, and exposed themselves more
to the danger of confounding what was true with
1
Xen. Man. I. ii. 6 and 60; v. 6 ;
vi. 13, 14.
 '

46 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

what was likely to please the public. At the same

time there is no ground for accusing the greater sophists
of having been avaricious ; Protagoras, for example,
is said to have left it to his hearers to pay him what
they thought fit.
III. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
OF THE 'REPUBLIC
[Republic, II. to 367 E.]

At the end of Book I, Plato himself gives us

a criticism upon it. He makes Socrates confess that
in one way the argument is nothing,
result of the
because we have what justice is, and
not settled
cannot therefore determine whether it is a virtue
and whether it makes men happy. We have been
discussing the concomitant circumstances of the thing
1
without knowing what it is in itself .

If we ask what the discussion has done, we may

say that it has shown several things which justice
cannot be ; that various leading conceptions, those,
for example, of art, wisdom, function, interest, have been
analyzed ; and further shown that
that it has been
the theory of Thrasymachus naked form will in its

—
not account for the facts that consistent and thorough-
going selfishness will not give one a working principle
of life at all. But Glaucon and Adeimantus feel that,
though Thrasymachus has been silenced, the argument
1
Cf. Me no, 71 B.
43 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

is They undertake to renew his con-

not convincing.
tention, and they demand an answer quite different
from that which has so far been given. They want,
as Glaucon says, to be shown what justice and in-
justice are in themselves, as powers in the soul of
man or. as Adeimantus says, not merely to have
;

it logically proved that justice is better than injustice,

but to be shown the actual effects of each upon the
possessor. This is the question to which the last
sections of Book
have led.I

In passing then from Book I to Book II, we pass

from the region of logic, and from an analysis of terms
in which all depends on their being used precisely and
consistently, to the region of psychology and to the
analysis of concrete human nature (an analysis which
leads Plato to construct an imaginary community upon
the basis of his psychology). We pass at the same
time from the consideration of utterances of individual
experience, borrowed and half-understood maxims, and
paradoxes of cynical rhetoricians, to criticism of the
voice of society and public opinion, as it speaks through
its recognized leaders or in the everyday intercourse
of social and family life. To notice one more feature
of the transition from Book I to Book II, we pass
from a Socrates represented as knowing nothing, but
simply listening, questioning, and refuting, to a Socrates
represented as the exponent of a new and higher
morality.
The two personages through whom this transition
is made, Glaucon and Adeimantus, are of a type
that Plato takes an interest in representing. They
cannot be better described than in the words of
Adeimantus himself, where he speaks of 'young men
 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 49

of the day, who are gifted (ev^ueis), and able to flit

over the surface of public opinion and draw infer-

ences from it ' as to the true principle of (365 a).

life

They are greatly interested in speculation, convinced

in their hearts that justice is better than injustice,

but unable to defend their conviction against the voice

of public opinion in its various manifestations they ;

arc dissatisfied with the modern enlightenment, but

cannot see where the real flaw in it lies, and how it

should be corrected. They differ from one another in

character, as Professor Jowett points out but one;

feeling, common to both, is at the root of all they

say both are puzzled by the apparent incongruity
:

between morality itself and the external circumstances

amid which it exists, between the being of things
and the seeming, the externals of life which all seem
to point one way, and the principles which, they are
themselves point the other way.
convinced, The
literature of all peoples shows that this has always
been one of the first problems to strike the human
mind.
Glaucon begins with a classification of good things,
based on the distinction of things good in themselves
and things good for their ulterior results. He and
Adeimantus are persuaded that justice is good in
itself and for its results, but to realize the intrinsic

good of justice they wish to have it examined abso-

lutely apart from its results for until you distinguish
;

morality from the external or tangible results and

accompaniments which are always found connected
with it, you cannot be sure what it is you are dealing
with. Thrasymachus' position had resulted in reducing
morality to certain external results of conduct, and had
VOL. it. E
 ;

'
50 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

in factdone away with any real moral distinctions.

The objectto aim at was to get as much material
prosperity as one could success in this was called
;

justice, and failure was called injustice; there was no

essential morality, but only conventional. Accordingly
Glaucon requires that the distinction between justice
and injustice should be represented in the most naked
way. He will have justice put on one side, and on
the other side he will have put all the material results
of justice that can be separated from it. Strip justice
bare, he says ; set against it all the good things that
may often go with it but are not connected with it

really, and may equally result from being thought just

when one really is unjust ; and then, convince me that
this bare principle, with nothing to show for itself except
itself, is better worth living for than everything that can
be set against it.

This is the view which both young men wish Socrates

to maintain. They themselves, for the sake of putting
before him something to answer, give expression to views
opposed to it, current views, which are not their own but
which they have a difficulty in withstanding.
Glaucon represents the view which troubles him
First,

most. It is that morality is indeed a good thing, but

is only good because it secures certain external results

it is not the 'natural good' (the best thing), but a com-

promise between a greater good and a greater evil the ;

greater good is to obtain the same external rewards

without justice, the greater evil is to suffer the retribution

of injustice. There arc three distinct points in Glaucon 's

representation of this view. First (358 E to 359 b), he
gives a theory of the origin of justice, explaining the
nature of justice by showing how it arose. Secondly
 ;

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 51

(359 B to 360 d), he maintains that justice is only pursued

by men as a second-best thing, and not naturally but
against their real desire ; if we dared, he says, we should
all be unjust. Thirdly (360 E to 362 c), he argues that
in this the general feeling of mankind is reasonable,
because if we look at the facts we see that all the
advantages of life are on the side of injustice, or at any
rate may be if the unjust man is clever. The conclusion
is this : it is at any rate a possibility that you might
have to choose between, on the one side, all the powers
and all the material advantages of life, and on the other
side the naked principle of justice. In that case, can
you say that justice is the better of the two? And if
you do say so, then what do you understand by good ? ' '

Adeimantus gives expression to two different beliefs.

The first (362 D to 363 e) is one which externally seems
the direct opposite of that described by Glaucon, but
which really tends to the same practical results. It says,
Be just for justice pays best in this world and the next
;

on the whole, the just man prospers. It says, Honesty

is the best policy, and it says nothing more. It does

not add, If you can be immoral with impunity, so much

the better. Thus it is widely different from Glaucon's
position ; and yet, like Glaucon's, it resolves justice into
the seeking of external rewards. And therefore it leads,

as Adeimantus points out, to the same conclusion,

namely that the really valuable thing is the reputation
of justice and not justice itself. This, he says, is the
view which is inculcated in ordinary education and in
family life. The second view he expresses (363 E to 365 a)
is this : Justice is in itself the best thing in the world,
but injustice much pleasanter, and, if proper steps be
is

taken, can be made to secure as satisfactory results for, ;

E 2
 '
52 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

to go to the root of the matter, the gods are not just

themselves, but can be bought over with the fruits of
injustice. This is the most thorough-going demolition
of justice, for it asserts that the divine nature, its

fountain-head, can be corrupted.

The passage in which these various beliefs are expressed
has a great incidental interest for us from the light that
it throws on certain opinions current at that time about
358 e to and law. First, as we have seen,
religion, political right,
Glaucon gives us a popular theory of the nature of
justice, explaining it by its historical origin. This is the
earliest written statement that we have of a theory
which has ever since played a great part in the world,
the theory that moral obligations have their origin
(whether wholly or in part) in contract (^wfl)jq) ! This .

theory can be and has been applied in the most opposite

interests and the most opposite positions.
in defence of
As Glaucon statesand as we here have to deal with
it,

it, it is simply this In the nature of things to do in-

:

justice is best, but men have found by experience that

they cannot do it with impunity, and the greatest evil
is to suffer injustice without power of retaliation. Men
have therefore compromised the matter by making laws
and institutions which save them from the worst evil,
but do not secure them the greatest good.
The conception of an original contract upon which
society is based is, emphatically, unhistorical (in some
writers, who have used it, it is avowedly fictitious), but
it has not the less been influential. It is one of the
most striking examples of the reflexion of an idea into
the past to give it apparent solidity and concrcteness.
In this respect it is like the beliefs about a golden age
1

See Maine's Ancient Law.

 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 53

which reflect into the past an ideal which men carry

about with them for the present. Again, it may be
compared with beliefs in a future millennium. It is
based upon a very important fact, that every civilized
community, perhaps any real community, requires, in
order that it may exist at all, a mutual recognition of

rights on the part of its members, which is a tacit

contract. It becomes unhistorical if one goes on to say

that at a certain period in the world's history people

met together and said, Let us come to an understanding,
and make a society on the basis of contract. This has
never taken place, but the potency of the idea lies not
in the fictitious historical account it gives of the matter,

but in the real present truth which it expresses.

As has been remarked, this idea has been used in the
most diverse It was applied by Hobbes to
interests.
justify absolute monarchy, and by Rousseau to prove the
absolute authority of the will of the people. It is easy
to see how it lends itself to such opposite applications.
On the one hand it may be said, Members of a civilized
community have contracted themselves out of certain
original rights, and the existence of the community
depends on the maintenance of that contract ; therefore
a strong government, or at any rate the maintenance of
some government, is necessary, and nothing can be
allowed to violate existing law. On the other hand it

may equally well be said, The present government depends

only on tacit contract, and the people who entered into
this contract are at liberty to dissolve it whenever they
think fit. As Glaucon here applies it, the theory is used
destructively and in a revolutionary interest, to show that
justice is a matter of contract and convention only and ;

there is further amost important implication that all

 ;

'

54 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

convention, and therefore all law, is a sort of artificial

violence done to human nature.

x
The antithesis of nature (Qvo-is) and law or convention
(rd/xo?), which thus lies at the root of Glaucon's argument,
isone which was widely current Like in Plato's time 2 .

many other antitheses, it has meanings in different

different people's mouths, and it generally owes its
effectiveness to the fact of having no definite meaning
but confusing different views. We first hear of it in the
history of philosophy as applied to physical nature.
Democritus distinguished the real constitution of the
physical world from those secondary qualities which
plainly are relative to human sensation ('hot' and
'
cold,' '
sweet ' and '
bitter,' and the like), saying that
the former existed (pvaeL and the latter z>o/ma>. And in
the various uses of the antithesis we can generally trace
a contrast between that which and underived is radical
and that which is acquired, or between that which is
permanent and universal and that which changes with
circumstances. But no word is more ambiguous than
nature and in applying the formula to human action
;

and feeling, some theorists have held that what is

'
natural in man is what he has most in common with
'

the rest of the animal world ; some, at the opposite

extreme, think (as Plato and Aristotle emphatically did)
that human natureis properly that in man which most

distinguishes him from the rest of the animal world, the

'
differentia '
of man, not his genus.' '

In one sense everything that man docs is natural to

him, law, morality, science, as much as anything else
1
The word j^/ios combines the senses of 'law' and '
convention.'
2
Cf. Gorgias, 482 B sqq., 492 A-C, Tlieact. 172 it, Laws, X. 888 E to
890 a. Cf. also Aristotle, Eth. Ntc. I. iii. 2 and V. vii. 2.
 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 55

his nature is all that he does. When this antithesis

between law and nature is made, the antithesis is, so to
say, within man. What then, it may be asked, re-
membering all the time that we are within human
nature, is the ground upon which certain products of
human nature are distinguished as natural, and others
as conventional ? In the antithesis as it is here used
'
conventional ' appears to stand for that which depends
for its existence uponmutual understandings
certain
which society necessarily employs. Now, to speak of
these as conventional is to recognize the truth that the
existence of society does in the last resort depend on
a mutual understanding ; all the institutions of the state
and of society are forms of mutual understanding, and,
as they are emphatically creations of man, there is no
reason why he should not dispense with them if he
wished. If the theory of contract is understood in this

sense, it is not profitable to dismiss it by saying it is

unhistorical. That does not invalidate the fact, for it

is a fact, that society is based upon contract. And we
may go on to say with equal truth that the existence of
society implies that the individual members of it agree
to sacrifice a part of their individuality, or to sacrifice
a part of their rights, what a man can do
if we call

his rights. Two and work together

people cannot live

without surrendering something which they would do if

separate, for joint action is not the same as separate
action. But is there any point in representing the results
of this mutual understanding not only as conventional
but as merely conventional, contrasting them with some-
thing natural which has a deeper authority? What is
this something natural ? What would man be naturally,
in this sense of the word ? The only answer to the
56 LECTURES ON PLATO S 'REPUBLIC

question is would be himself minus everything

that he
that he is by convention, and that means minus every-
thing in him which the existence of society implies.
Such a natural man does not exist, but that is the way
'
'

in which we should have to think of him.

It appears, then, that while we may, in a true sense,

describe laws and institutions as conventional,' it does

'

not follow that they are therefore, in any true sense,

contrary to 'nature' and that there is all the difference
;

in the world between saying that the institutions of

society are based on compact, and saying that therefore
they are unnatural or merely conventional. How is it,

then, that the antithesis between natural and conventional

is so common and has such a strong hold on us, and what

do we mean by conventional when we use the word, as

'
'

we commonly do, with a bad signification ? When we

say an institution or custom is merely conventional, what
we really mean is that it has no right to exist, because
it has ceased to have the use which it once had. A law
which has ceased to have any justification for its
existence is the best instance of what people have in
mind when they employ this antithesis. And the reason
why there are endless debates as to what is merely
conventional and what is not, is simply that people
have very different ideas as to when the real occasion
for a law or custom or institution has ceased to exist.
While then Glaucon's theory, by which justice is set
down as a something conventional and contrary to
nature, contains the great truth that laws and customs
would not exist but for a mutual understanding, it
ignores the significance of this mutual understanding. For
not only is this understanding the work of man, it is
what man in society has deliberately judged to be best.
 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 57

How has this deliberate judgment come to be passed ?

If were true that to commit injustice with impunity

it

is the real nature of man, there would have been no force

to create society. The strongest motives are those which

impel to action and it would be impossible to account
;

for the existence of society at all, if injustice had a special

claim to be called the natural tendency of human action.
Glaucon, in the second place, goes on to contend that, 359 b to
3 °
as a matter of fact, justice is always observed unwillingly;

that is to say, that morality, public and private, is only

maintained by force. Here again a very real and im-
portant fact is made the basis of a very false theory. The
existence of society does imply force, which is exercised
in various ways. In every civilized community the
established order of things is ultimately backed by
the force of the police and the army. There are
a certain number of people who can only be kept from
injuring society by force, and the law of the land can
only exist if there is physical force in the background.
But it is quite another thing to say that force and the
fear of force, in that sense of the word, what main- is

tains morality in the community and it would be easy ;

to show that, if the morality of a community really

depended on force and on fear in the usual sense, it
could not possibly continue to exist. You may, however,
use '
force ' in a quite general sense to include not only
the police and army but the force of public opinion, the
force of principles, ideas, conscience, and so on. These
agencies are rightly called forces. They make themselves
felt in very different ways in different individual cases ;

the force by physical

of society acts on a criminal
compulsion, and acts in quite a different way on a well-
conducted citizen. But in these very various ways there
 ;

'
58 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

is great force acting upon the component elements of

society and that is the truth at the basis of Glaucon's
;

argument here. What is untrue is that society, in obey-

ing its own laws, is acting against its own will. As soon
as society begins to obey its laws unwillingly, their
abolition is only a question of time. The most thorough-
going despotism in the world never existed on a basis
of mere force. be said that everybody would break
If it

the laws if he dared, the answer is that if that were true,

everybody would dare there would be no force sufficient;

to frighten him from it. This does not in the least

exclude the fact that a large number of the members
of society do obey the law from fear, and that a large
number do not obey it at all.
360 e to To complete his theory Glaucon, in the third place,
undertakes to show that this inward protest of the
members of society supposed compulsionagainst the
exercised by law is and justifiable feeling,
a natural
because the advantages of life are all on the side of
injustice. There is no impossibility, he argues, in
imagining all the advantages of life to be secured by
the mere appearance of justice without the reality
while the reality of justice might well exist without
a single element of good fortune. This supposition is
put by Glaucon in a very violent way in order to press
home the question, If there is such a possibility as this
in life, in what does the real advantage of justice
consist? It may
be said that what he describes is not
altogether possible the appearances and the reality
;

of justice cannot be kept separate throughout every

part of life the consistently unjust man must some-
;

where drop the appearance of justice, and the man who

consistently maintains the appearance cannot always
 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 59

escape the reality. But even if the picture is overdrawn,

it brings out a very real difficulty, a difficulty which we
cannot get away from so long as we measure the ad-
vantage of moral goodness by anything other than
itself. As the world is so ordered
a matter of fact,

that there no necessary correspondence between moral

is

good and the material elements of prosperity and so ;

long as people expect to see such a correspondence,

so long as they regard material prosperity as the proper
result of goodness, they will be perpetually liable to
have their theory of the world upset by facts.
In this passage and in several others, especially in the
1
Gorgias where the true philosopher is represented as
,

standing solitary antagonism to the world, we can

in

distinctly see the impression which the death of Socrates

left on Plato's mind. We find in such passages some-
thing approaching to the contrast between the kingdom
of God and the kingdom of the world, with which
Christianity has made us so familiar. It is true that
in the New Testament the antagonism between spiritual
and non-spiritual powers is closely associated, though
not identified, with the antagonism between the poor
and the rich, while of this latter antagonism there is no
trace in Greek philosophy. But the idea of ranging all
the powers that be, and all the external goods of life,
on one side, and the naked principle of right on the
other, is the same in Greek philosophy and in the New
Testament.
We now pass to Adeimantus. The first view that he 362 d to
3 3
represents contradicts expressly that which is represented
by Glaucon, but it more
brings out clearly the same
point that Glaucon had made, namely that the preachers
1
See especially Gorgias, 521 v, sqq.
 :

'
60 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of morality have always in one way or another confused

it with its material results, though immoral consequences
do not always follow from this teaching. Glaucon ends
by showing that it is quite a possible supposition that
the just should be miserable and the unjust happy ;

Adeimantus' first position may be briefly stated thus

justice secures happiness ; therefore it should be pursued.
This, he says, is the view of parents and of teachers
generally. A certain prosperity, separable from goodness
itself, is alleged to be the natural concomitant of good-
ness. Such a view is a natural distortion of a feeling in
human nature that justice should have its reward. There
is a kind of instinctive demand in the human mind that
there should be some reward for good living, that life

should be reasonable, that it should approve itself to

us as just. The idea that God blesses the just man is

expressed in all early literature, and notably in the Old

Testament. It has nothing in it prejudicial to high
morality, till in later times the principle that men are
in some way better for virtue, is interpreted to mean
that good men have a right to material prosperity, and
material success thus comes to be made the criterion of
goodness. In early times the idea is merely the readiest
way of expressing belief in the righteous government of
the world, but as a reasoned theory of later times it pro-
vokes the retort that good men do not always prosper.
The ordinary facts of life arc appealed to with opposite
motives. '
Never yet saw I the righteous forsaken, nor
his seed begging their bread'; the wicked 'have children
at their desire and leave the rest of their substance for
their babes'; each of these is an appeal to experiences
which do happen, and the one appeal provokes the other.
People who seek for a justification of their moral belief
 :

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 61

in observations of this kind, and are distressed if they

cannot find it, commit the fallacy of resolving what is

good in one sense into what is good in another ; they

start with a wrong expectation as to the consequences
of morality. If a man complains that goodness often
does not bring prosperity, there is an obvious reply
If you believe that what you understand by prosperity
is the real motive and end of life, then live for it if ;

you do not, then why expect that it should have any

connexion with morality ?

This general idea of morality as connected with

reward extended by Adeimantus into a future life.
is

The Eleusinian Mysteries have, he says, been agencies

in increasing the expectation of reward in a future life
for goodness in this life, and —
for this is the point of the
passage — this expectation of reward is made the motive
of a good life. There is a great difference between say-
ing that the soul is immortal and that it is better for it

always to be good, whichis the burden of the Republic,

and saying that certain moral actions should be done

for the sake of obtaining certain other desirable things.
The second view which Adeimantus gives utterance
to 363 e to
3 5A '

is the natural counterpart of the

first. It is one that is

in vogue in private conversation, but poets and prose-

writers may also be found expressing it. It dwells on
the hardship and troublesomeness of the path of justice,
and on the readiness of the gods to prosper the wicked
and neglect the good. What the poets sometimes say
of the indifference of the gods to justice in this life
is reinforced by prophets and dealers in Mysteries.
These teach expressly that sacrifices and prayers and
ceremonies of initiation win the favour of the gods, for
this life and the next, better than justice does. The
62 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

complaint of the poets and the teaching of these

prophets follow naturally from the tendency to identify
goodness with material prosperity, or to make material
prosperity the criterion of real success in life. There
are abundant expressions in Greek literature of this
1
belief in the injustice of Providence .

In the references which Adeimantus makes to the

Mysteries there are two kinds of Mysteries to be dis-
tinguished. We are told first (363 c) that Musaeus and
his son Eumolpus teach men to expect rewards and
punishments of a gross sort in a future life. This must
refer to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were supposed
to have been founded by Eumolpus. The complaint
Adeimantus makes of them is simply that they en-
couraged a belief in rewards and punishments which
tended to weaken belief in the intrinsic worth of moral
goodness. Further on (364 B to 365 a) he speaks no
longer of the state-recognized Mysteries, but of private
mystery- mongers, who were not regular priests attached
to particular places or perhaps to particular gods, but
men who wandered about the country, professing to be
able by spells and invocations to exercise an influence on
the gods and to obtain dispensations for sin. The Mys-
teries they conducted were associated with the names
of heroes, generally with that of Orpheus. Against them
Adeimantus has a further complaint ; they encouraged
the idea that the consequences of crime could be averted
by some trifling payment or sacrifice'-.
Both these kinds of rites were known as fiva-njpia or
re'Arj. The former word signifies that they involved
1
Cf. Elcctra, 583 and It. 293
Eurip. Thcognis (BcrglO, 373
; sq.,
with 743 and elsewhere and the Melian dialogue in Thucydidi s.
sq. ;

' See Laws, X. 909 A sqq. and XI. 93:2 B sq.

 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 63

secrecy 1
,
and were confined to initiated persons. The
practice of excluding certain classes of persons from
religious rites was originally widespread, and not con-
fined to what were expressly called Mysteries.' Most '

of the gods appear at some time to have had some sort

of Mysteries connected with their worship. The word
re'Arj is sometimes thought to refer to the payment that

had to be made at the time of initiation, but it came at

last to bear a reference to a sort of religious perfection
or consummation 2 These rites have left their stamp
.

upon language in the words, bearing now a much wider

sense, mystery and initiation.'
' ' '

It is generally agreed now that there was no preach-

ing or teaching connected with the Mysteries. The

Eleusinian Mysteries were religious pageants, in which
Demeter and Dionysus formed the principal subjects
forrepresentation. The two main ideas which these
pageants expressed were that of the earth as the place
of the dead, and that of the earth as the womb of life.
These were symbolized by Demeter looking for her
lost daughter Persephone, and by Persephone's return.
Like all symbolism, this depended very much upon the
mind of the worshipper for the interpretation put upon
it. In Greek literature we find evidence both of very
gross and of very exalted views of the Eleusinian Mys-
teries. The idea which attached to them, that the future
of the soul was to dwell for ever with God, was an
exalted idea, but it was capable, of course, of perversion ;

a passage in Sophocles which expresses it is said to

have provoked Diogenes to the question whether an
initiated thief was really to be better off in the other

1
fivtiv to shut the lips.
2
Tt\ei<r0at meaning both '
to be perfected '
and '
to be initiated.'
64 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

world than a hero like Epaminondas 1

. Like the Eleu-
sinian, the Orphic Mysteries clearly had their higher and
their lower side, the higher interpretation of them ex-
pressing the idea that the life of the soul was unending,
and that it expiated in one stage of existence any crimes
it had committed in a previous stage.

There has been much discussion as to the effect of the

Mysteries in inculcating the belief in one God and the
belief in a future state. There is really no ground for
supposing that they had anything to do with the former
belief, but with the latter they had a good deal to do.
They both and gave a solemn and magnifi-
recognized it

cent expression to it and, though there is no evidence

;

that there was direct teaching or preaching, there is no

doubt that the Mysteries did contribute to intensify and
diffuse brighter views about the future of the soul than
had been held in the early times of Greece. It has
often been noticed that the expectation of rewards after
death for good done in the body is a late idea ; the idea
of future punishment appeared earlier and took more
hold on the Greek mind. In Homer the life after death
has very little placemost a negative, bloodless
; it is at
sort of existence 2 As men began to think more about
.

the good and evil in life, and as their views on the

subject became deeper, the fate of the soul for good or
evil not only in life but after death became a subject for

See Plutarch, Mora/ia, p. 21 F, where Soph. Fr. 719 (Dindorf) occurs.

1

Other passages showing the higher view of the IVtystcrics (Elcusinian

or Orphic) are Pindar, Fr. 137 (Bcrgk the Homeric Hymn /<> DemtUr,
,

478 sq., and Isocrates, Pawg. 28 also in Plato himself, Cm/. 400 C,
;

Phacdo. 62 and 69 c, and Laivs, IX. 870 D. Examples of the grosser

is

view may be found in Aristophanes. Fiogs, 146 to 163, and Peace, 374-5.
Til"- Kleventli Monk tin- Odyssiy. where Odysseus visits the spirits
'-'

1 I

of the depart- d, is generally supposed to be later than the rest.

 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 65

consideration ; the interest taken in the idea of a future

life was an extension of growing thoughtfulness about
this life. In Aeschylus, as in Pindar, we find the idea

of punishment for sin after death, but the strong belief

in future rewards which we find expressed in Pindar

is peculiar to him among the older poets. All the

comfortable ideas about death and the future life which
grew up in a later time, seem to have received expres-
sion in the Eleusinian, and still more in the Orphic,
Mysteries.
In concluding part of his speech Adeimantus
the 365 a to

3 7
sums up what is common to the views which he and
Glaucon have put forward. They all depend upon the
one belief that justice and injustice are to be sought
or avoided, not for their own sake, but for the sake of
something else. He proceeds to put in a vivid way the
difficulty in which men like himself and Glaucon find
themselves. They see the whole of public opinion arrayed
upon the side of this belief ; and, further, the burden of
most that they hear is that with skill and by proper
devices we may commit injustice, without forfeiting the
material rewards of justice. As for the gods, either
there are none at all, or, if there are, we only know
of them through the poets, and these poets all represent
them as open to corruption. In the face of this almost
irresistible mass of public opinion what is there to keep

a man from injustice except weakness and want of spirit?

He can only be saved from it in two ways by some —
divine grace or inspiration which gives him an instinctive
repulsion from injustice 1 S or by his somehow coming to

1
Plato is fond of using the phrases Otia <pvots and Bt'ia fioipa or Otia
TVXV, to express the idea of some unaccountable influence to which it is
due that justice does not perish out of the world entirely. Cf. 368 A and
VOL. II. F
66 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

understand its nature better than it is generally under-

stood now.
The cause of this difficulty is that no one has yet ade-
quately explained what are the intrinsic good and evil
which justice and injustice, whether seen or unseen, have
in them. This is what Socrates is now called upon to
explain, dismissing for the present all consideration of
the results to which justice and injustice lead through the
impression they produce on others (ho£a) K
This brings us to the end of the introductory part
of the Republic ; the constructive part of the work now
begins.

VI. 492 a. This is also elsewhere contrasted with emoTr/fir], reasoned

conviction or knowledge.
1
8o£a means either what seems to me or what seems to others about
me, the impression I receive or the impression I make. Here of course
it is the latter.
 IV. THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY
AND OF HUMAN NATURE
INDICATED
[Republic, II. 367 E to 376 E.]

The problem, which has been put before Socrates

and reiterated again and again, is to show what is the
effect of justice or injustice on the soul of the man that
has it, or,, as we should rather say, on the life of the man,
and especially on his inner life. There seems at first
sight scarcely any connexion between this question and
the answer that he proceeds to give to it. For he begins
by passing suddenly to the subject of the genesis of
society. To understand the import of this transition is

to understand the principle of the whole argument of

the Republic.
To explain the method of his answer Socrates tells us 36 7 E t<>

that it will be very difficult to show the effect of justice

man, and that it will
in the inner life of the individual
be best not to begin by an analysis of the soul but by
looking at human nature where it can be seen on a large
scale
— ' in large letters,'as he puts it in the broad —
outlines of the state and of society. Beginning with the
F 2
 >

'
68 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

outside of human nature where it is easy to read, we are

afterwards to try and read on the inside with these it

'
large letters in our mind. In other words, his method
'

is to analyze facts about human nature which are ap-

parent to everybody, and to examine the significance of
those facts till he arrives eventually at the inmost prin-
ciple of human nature of which they are the expression.
The whole Republic is really an attempt to interpret
human nature psychologically; the postulate upon which/
its method rests is that all the institutions of society, 3
class organization, law, religion, art, and so on, are
ultimately products of the human_soul, an inner principle
of life which works itself out in these outward shapes.
Plato's position is sometimes described by saying he
assumes that there is an analogy between the individual
and the state, and that the life of the individual is the
counterpart of the life of the state but this is not an ;

adequate description of His position is that the life it.

of the state is the life of the men composing it, as

manifested in a way comparatively easy to observe.
Later on, when he speaks of the justice or courage of the
state, he means the justice or courage of the citizens as
shown in their public capacity. The 'justice of the
state,' then, is the justice of the individuals who compose
it. This docs not mean that justice in a state manifests
itself in exactly the same way as justice in a private
individual, but simply that, if there is such a thing as
justice, its essential nature is the same, however and
wherever it manifests itself, whether in a man's private
life or in his public relations. It is true that the virtue
of the state is a larger thing than the virtue of individuals ;

a nation is brave when its army is brave, and the army

is a greater and more conspicuous thing than a single
 ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 69

person ; but the courage of the state as shown in its

army is the manifestation, in the public action of certain

men, of the same principle that makes men brave in all
the relations of business or of private must life. We
bear in mind throughout argument that there is
Plato's
no state apart from the individual men and women who
compose it.

We have now to notice a second feature in Plato's 369 a to

37 E '

method ;
the state is to be looked at in its origin and
growth. The phrase, 'origin of society,' suggests to us
at first the most elementary state of society historically
discoverable ; but we must put that idea aside, for that
is not what interests Plato here. He is not concerned
with an historical enquiry, such as how Athens came to
be what she was, but with Given the fact this question :

of society as it is, what are the conditions which its

existence implies, what is it in human nature which
makes society exist ? The question is not by what stages
society has grown up, but how it is that it exists at all.

We gather, though he does not tell us, what

that in
follows he pursues not the historical order of development
but the logical order. That is to say, he takes society
roughly as it and begins at what seems its lowest
is

point, at that aspect of society in which it is an organiza-

tion for the satisfaction of certain physical wants. This
may be called the lowest psychological basis of society ;

for if man had only these wants he would be a fragment

of what he actually is. Beginning then with this, Plato
asks, regarding man as a creature of these wants, what
there is in him to produce society. As he goes on he
brings in gradually the higher elements of human nature,
until he has made the picture of society complete in its

main outlines ; and at each stage he asks what, if any,

 '

7o LECTURES ON PLATO'S '

REPUBLIC

seems to be the principle of the good life of society at

that stage. By the end of the first section of his argu-
ment (376 E) the main constituent elements which go to
make up human life have been put before us. Given
these, we proceed to consider the development and
education of them.
We should have a modern parallel to this method if

a sociologist, taking England as it is, were to set out

from the idea that, since life would not go on at all if its
necessaries were not provided, the life of England rests
ultimately on its industrial organization, and were to
proceed to ask whether there was any principle of good
and bad, right and wrong, discoverable in this industrial
organization. But Plato has embarrassed us by the form
of his enquiry. Instead of putting the question in an
abstract way, he has put it in a picturesque way, asking
us to imagine a society of human beings engaged merely
in themost obviously useful industrial occupations. Thus
he appears to be describing an actual historical beginning,
and as a description of this, the picture he draws is open
to obvious criticisms for instance, both builders and
;

shoemakers would be out of place in a really primitive

society. Of course the substance of the picture is taken
direct from Plato's own time. We may call it a logical
picture of the origin of society in this sense, that it

illustrates what the existence and maintenance of society

demands, and how those various demands can best be
satisfied, taking those demands in a certain logical order.

First then (369 13 to 372 i>) Plato sketches, in mere

outline, the elementary conditions of society so far as it

exists for the production of the necessaries of life. His

tate is to be one whose function is to satisfy necessary
wants alone (avayKaioTUTi] 770'Atv), as distinguished from
 ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 71

the unnecessary appetites which the luxurious state

(rpvcpcoaa 7T0A1?) aims at satisfying in addition. In this
sketch the fundamental principles of the Republic, which
constantly recur later in a developed form, are clearly
seen. What is_ the general principle whLciL^produces
human society? It is ,w_ant in various forms. Society
depends upon a double fact: the fact that no man is

and the complementary

sufficient for himself (avTapn-qs;),
fact that other men want him. While every man is
insufficient for himself, every man has it in him to give
to others what they have not got. This is what we may
call the principle of reciprocity ; the limitation of the
individual goes along with the fact that he supplements
the limitations of others. Throughout the Republic this
conception is adhered The whole growth of society
to.

is one great organization, resting upon this principle, for

the satisfaction of various human wants.
This passage looks at first sight like an elementary
treatise on economy, but the principle which is
political
here put before us in its economic form is not to Plato
an economic principle what economists call the principle
;

of the division of labour is to him a moral principle.

Nevertheless his first illustration of it is taken from
productive labour. What, he asks, are the conditions
under which production will be most successful ? Pro-
duction will be largest, easiest, and best if the producer
confines himself to one special work, does his own work
as well as he can, and shares the results with others.
Nature has pointed out this principle for no two men ;

have been made exactly the same. The very fact of

individuality organizes men for the community; each
man wants others and can contribute something to them.
This principle results in the gradual growth of industrial
 '

72 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

society through the specialization of productive functions.

Accordingly we find pastoral industry, agricultural in-
dustry, and mechanical industries of various sorts, practised
by distinct classes of producers. Next we notice, arising
from the same cause, the phenomena of retail trade and
of currency and along with these an export and an
;

import trade, which are the application of the same

principle to the state in its relations with other states.
These are the main constituents of an industrial com-
munity, or a community regarded as an organization for
producing the necessaries of life. Where in all this, asks
Socrates, is justice to be found ? Probably, Adeimantus
answers, somewhere in the mutual needs of these people
(37 ie)-
But the answer thus suggested is not developed till
we have gone a great deal further with the organization
of society. The mention of justice leads to the question,
how would a community such as we have described live,
confined as it is to the normal and healthy satisfaction of
elementary wants ? Socrates here describes a people living
a life of animal simplicity. Their life would be little

better, says Glaucon, than that of a city of pigs. Human

society cannot stop at this elementary point, in a con-
dition of idyllic innocence in which merely these bare
wants are satisfied ;
for this life of ideal simplicity devoid
of progress (like the life of the South Sea Islanders
imagined in Tennyson's Lockslcy Hall) excludes the
greater part of the elements which make up human life

as we know it ; it exeludes civilization.

Plato therefore proceeds to sketch brief!)' the elements
uf ci\ ili/.atiun, in .1 description <>l the luxurious state

(372 D to 373 Jl). lie describes the growth of social

refinement, of luxury, and the material appliances of
 '

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 73

life ; the growth also, as accessories to this development,

of the fine arts, the decorative arts and poetry ; and, further,
the complication of the conditions of health and the
consequent growth of medicine. In this expansion of
human nature we have seen added to the necessary
wants of man further wants, capable of leading to his
highest development, capable, at the same time, of
leading to all sorts of extravagance and evil. We
have also, as we shall find, got additional elements in
human nature to consider. The state as first described
exhibited the working of that element which Plato calls
'
appetite,' that which seeks the satisfaction of material
wants ; in the more developed state we shall see, dis-
tinguished from this, what he calls the element of spirit '

and what he calls the '

These two
philosophic ' element.
elements in human nature afterwards appear to be the
causes of the growth in civilization here pictured. Plato's
conception of these two elements in man is only gradually
put before us.

The other development of material

side to the
comfort is, we rise of war (373 E), for
are told, the
the expansion of human wants beyond bare necessity
brings with it the desire of aggression. Plato, however,
passes immediately from aggression, which is the origin
of war, to defence, which is its justification. The function
of the military organization of the state, which he now
at once proceeds to consider, is to protect the state against
aggression and to assist in maintaining internal order ; for

conquest nowhere recognized by Plato as the true end

is

for which the state should be organized l Having now .

brought to our notice the necessity for armed force in the

state, he has put before us the natural elements which go to
1
Cf. Aristotle, Pol. 1333 b, 5 sq.
74 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

make up the life of

it is. He has done
human society as
so without distinguishing thegood and the bad in them.
In the defence of the community we have clearly
a social function of vital importance, and the principle
of the specialization of functions will therefore apply
still more rigidly here. If, as we have seen, nature
has .specially adapted people for particular kinds of
work, and if it is important for the production of com-
modities to get the right nature for the right work, much
more will it be important for the purpose of guarding
the state. This leads Socrates to take up, as the
foremost problem that concerns the organization of
the state, the question what sort of nature will make
what he calls a good Guardian of the state. Clearly
;
'

it must be a nature good for fighting, a nature possessed

of spirit
' ' (6vij.6$ or to Ovixoetbis), the fighting element in
human nature (375 a). This is not merely the instinct of
aggression, but rather that which prompts to resistance ;

it is described as something '

unconquerable,' which makes
a man in all things fearless and not to be beaten. But the
Guardians must also possess in a high degree an element
complementary to this for if we imagine men entirely con-
;

sisting of spirit such men would simply tear one another

' '

in pieces; a society composed of them could not exist.

The complementary clement, which is wanted in the

Guardians, is an clement of attraction instead of repul-
sion. what Plato (375 E sq.) calls the 'philoso-
This is

phic clement' (to

<f>ih6o-o<j>ov). There is even in the lower
animals something which chaws them to what they
know and arc familiar with, and this is an elementary
form of the 'philosophic element' in man, which is
something in man's nature in virtue of which he is at-

tracted to whatever he recognizes as akin to him. It

 ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 75

may be an attraction to human beings, friends, relations

or fellows, or it may be not to human beings but to other
objects, either beautiful things in nature or art, or truth
in science or philosophy. Plato never abandons this way
of looking at human and at human reason.
affection
Philosophy n i ma n is that w hich draws
him_to_what he
r ecogniz es, as the dog instinctively feels at home with

those whom he knows. Familiarity, to put it abstractly,

is the basis of affection. The real meaning of this passage
where the dog is discovered to be philosophic because it
likes those it knows, comes out as we read the rest of the
book. It is, as is so often the case in Plato, an anticipa-
tion of what he says more intelligibly later on. In Book
III he speaks of the love of beauty as a sort of recogni-
tion by the what is akin to it la the world about
soul of
it the soul welcomes (do-7rd£erou) what is beautiful from
;

a sense of kinship. In Book VI the desire of knowledge

and truth is represented as the desire of the soul to unite
itself to what is akin to it in the world. Not to go further
into these two passages, the point common to them and
to the present passage is that the elem ent of the so ul
which Plato calls t!ie_philjQsophic, is described a s con-
sistinjrjn_j.^eehjig^of attraction to s omethi ng ot her tha n
oneself and yet akin _to__oneself.
From the manner in which these two last elements
in human nature are brought in, Plato might be thought
to be describing some special form of human nature
exhibited only in exceptional persons but we find as we ;

go on that he is really describing what he takes to be

normal human nature, and that every man must have
in him something of each of the three elements, the

element of appetite, the element of spirit, and the philo-

sophic element.
 '

76 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

Thus we have given us the main elements of society

without which human life as it is could not go on. It

could not go on unless animal wants were satisfied,

unless men could protect themselves, and unless men
were somehow drawn to one another. The two higher
elements in human nature are here deduced from these
requirements of society. The process could equally
well have been reversed, and it could have been shown
that, human nature having these elements in it, the
essential features of society necessarily result.
 V. EDUCATION OF RULERS IN
EARLY LIFE
[Republic, II. 376 c to III. 412 B.]

i. Introductory.
After this slight introduction of his conception of
the main elements in human nature which tend to bring
about society, Plato passes rapidly to a discussion of the
nurture and education of that nature. He has fixed
his attention on one function of the greatest importance
in the state, that of defence, and he has told us that those

who are to discharge this function must be men in whose

nature the two higher elements are strongly developed.
His next question accordingly is, how such a character
ought to be trained, and he proceeds to consider the
education which will most fully for the highest
fit it

functions in the state. Nature {fyvais) and nurture

(rpo(f)ri) are the two things which go to make up human
character. Neither will do without the other ; you
cannot create the required nature, but you can by
nurture do everything short of that ; and without the
proper nurture the best nature is as likely to turn out ill

as to turn out well.

Plato's general view of education is most forcibly
 '

78 LECTURES ON PLATO'S '

REPUBLIC

expressed in Book VII l

. Its object is there said to be
tectum the _eye, wh ich the soul already po ssesses, tojhe
light. The principle which Plato conveys by this meta-
phor is that the whole function of education is not to put
knowledge into the soul, but to bring out the best things
that are latent in the soul, and to do so by directing it

to the right objects. How is this to be done ? First,

by surrounding the soul with objects which embody

those ideas and characteristics which are to be developed
in it. The method Plato advocates depends upon the
theory that the human soul is essentially an imitative
thing, that is, that it naturally as simil ates it self to _it s
surroundings. His belief in the overwhelming impor-
tance to the soul of the surroundings in which it grows
up is most forcibly put in Book VI, where he represents
the human soul as a living organism, and says that, just
as a plant when sown in the ground develops according
to the soil and the atmosphere it lives in, so it is with
2
the soul . The soul, he considers, is indestructible, but,
though ill-nurture cannot entirely destroy it, it may very
nearly do so. The problem of education, then, is_io-give
it^the jjght_surround ings. which itsThe chief way in
surroundings affect it is, Plato thinks, through its tendency
to become like the things it is accustomed to it is, he ;

says, impossible to be constantly with a thing you admire

without becoming like it and so, in the system of
;

education which he first describes, nothing is said of

direct teaching ; the whole system consists in surrounding
the soul with objects like what it is to be, that it may
live in a healthy atmosphere. The first and most
obvious instance of this imitative tendency is the force
with which the example of other men acts upon us;
1 2
518 b sq. VI. 491 d.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 79

hence the importance of accustoming the soul to think

about great men and to have a worthy conception of the
gods it worships. But the same thing is revealed in
another aspect when we come to consider the effect of art,
for the soul, Plato thinks, assimilates beauty from con-
templating and a third aspect of the same fact will
it ;

be found when he deals with the education of science.

The soul, then, adapts itself to its environment, and it is
all-important what the environment is 1
.

The next question for consideration is, What instru-

ments of education did Plato find ready to his hands 2 ?
He found literature the main instrument. Every Athe-
nian gentleman was brought up on a system of what we
should call general culture, studying the standard litera-

ture of his country ; there might be added to this an

elementary knowledge of some art, and the rudiments
of the sciences of numbers and figures. Plato also found
gymnastics in common practice. These agencies he
adopted, and gave them a new and deeper significance.
He conceived that in early life the main instruments for
bringing out what was best in the soul were, first, litera-

ture, beginning with stories for children and going on to

poetry; secondly, music in our sense of the word, playing
and singing and thirdly, the plastic arts (as we should
;

call them) in general. All these come under the head of

3
IxovatKi] .

In Books
and III Plato deals with education in
II
Ixova-LKq. VI and VII he describes a further
In Books
and more elaborate system of education for later life.
1
Cf. 383 c, 391 e, and 401 a to 403 c, especially 401 v.
3
See Aristotle, Politics, 1337 b sq.
3
Compare the word '
arts,' which, in addition to its ordinary use, is
employed, in such terms as '
Bachelor of Arts,' with special reference to
literature.
80 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

The education in fxova-LK-q would, he conceives, go on till

manhood, that is, to the age of eighteen, when it was to

be succeeded by a special gymnastic training intended
to fit the young citizens for military and other duties
which require a strong and healthy physique. Then was
tocome an education in science, leading to philosophy.
The education in ixovaiKi] and this we must remember —
in reading these books which deal with it alone — would
be accompanied along not only by a certain amount
all

of gymnastic training, but by elementary teaching in

x
science .

The next point to be noticed, though it does not

become apparent till this section of the Republic is read
in connexion with Books VI and VII, is that the order

of education is based on a certain theory concerning the

nature of the soul. Th£_si2iil_is__x£ached at differ ent
stages of its growth by different agencies and through
different media. It is affected in the first place through
certain susceptibilities which we should perhaps call

fancy and imagination. The education described in

Books II and III isan education through these, and acts

upon the soul in that stage of growth in which imagi-
nation, fancy, and feelings are the strongest things in it.

It is supplementedBooks VI and VII by an education

in

calculated to act on the soul when reason has begun

to develop and to require training. That which the
training in \xova-iK7} ought essentially to produce is love
of what is beautiful (fyoos tov kciXov), love of the beautiful
in whatever form it appears. By the education which
supplements it at a later stage, the soul is to be made
receptive of truth, as before of beauty; the object of
training in the sciences is to make the soul love truth
1

Sec I',t>. ik VII. 533 l> and 537 C.

 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 8r

(<f>i\oo-o(f>eu'). The ultimate purpose of both kinds of

education is to present to the soul the good under various
forms, for beauty is the good under a certain form, and
so also is truth. 'The good 'in Book VI is that supreme
source of light of which everything good, everything true,
and everything beautiful in the world is the reflexion,
and if education could reach its utmost aim it would be
in the knowledge of this. The greatest thing a man can
learn is to see according to a man's measure the presence
of reason and divine intelligence in the world about him.
So from its earliest stages education is a method of
helping the soul to see the good, but in all kinds of
different ways.
The object, then, of early education should be to
present to the soul in various imaginative forms the good
which it wil l afterw ards_cpme to know in ration al forms.

Through what forms and in what order is this to be

done ? With what does education begin ? It begins with
religion ; that is to say, the good is presented to the
soul first in the form of a being who is perfectly good

and true; and the purpose of teaching about such a being

1
is that the soul maybe as like God as possible . Hence
the importance of determining the true nature of God,
and of putting it before the minds of children in the
simplest and clearest way. Accordingly, Plato's system
of education begins with stories of a mythological kind,
whose very essence is to be
treating of the divine nature,
good and true stories which, though in a poetical form,
;

are about the same object that is afterwards to be

presented to the soul as a study for the reason. Beginning
by presenting the gods as beings absolutely good and
true, education goes on to present heroic nature, and also
1
See 383 C, and cf. Theact, 176 A sq.

VOL. II. G
 '
82 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

human nature, in its highest and truest forms. It goes

on again to present reason in the guise of beauty, whether
beauty of harmony and rhythm, which is the work of
music in our sense of the word, or beauty of form, which
is the work of the plastic arts. The function of
fMova-LKi] is to teach the soul to read the sensible world
around it ; it will attain its end if it teaches the soul
to discern and recognize in the worlds of art, of nature,
and of human life, the infinitely various forms of the
good circulating everywhere about it (402 c).
'
'

Throughout the discussion of education and throughout

the Republic, Plato combines with the exposition of what
he himself considers right, a great deal of criticism of
existing institutions. The criticism is so constant that
people are apt to miss the positive side of the discussion.
Plato's views are developed by antagonism. He finds
Homer, Hesiod, and other writers read and looked upon
with indiscriminate reverence by the Greeks without
regard to what is really noble in them, and he naturally
begins by criticizing their works. His criticism may
often strike us as pedantic, because the Greek poets are
not to us what they were to Plato we do not look upon ;

them seriously, as the Greeks did to Plato they are x

;

the food upon which the Greek mind is nurtured in youth.

Plato himself is aware that in his treatment of poetry he
seems to take away a great deal and put nothing in its
place. As if in apology for this he tells us (379 a) that
his business in this dialogue is not to write poems but to
found a state, and that accordingly he is only concerned
to lay down general principles for poets to observe.
It is a natural result of this that his criticism should
to a great extent seem merely negative.
1
Sec X. 598 D Sq, and 606 E.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 83

The most obvious divisions into which the subject of

early education, as Plato treats it, falls,are ^ovo-ikt} (376 E
to 403 C) and yvuvao-TiKT} (403 c to 412 b). Plato at first

takes this division in the popular sense, according to which

the former is the training of the soul and the latter of the
body ; but he afterwards corrects this, explaining that
both act upon the soul, but by different means and
through different elements in the soul. In the section on
he treats first of literature (376E to 398 b), after-
lxovcriKr\

wards of music (398 B to 400 E) and the plastic arts (400 E

to 403 c). The treatment of literature resolves itself into
that of the matter and that of the form of literature
(376 E to 392 c and 392 c to 398 b). Here again the
ground of the division does not answer to what we should
understand by it. It is not what we should call literary
form or style that Plato is interested in when he deals
with what he calls Ae£i?. The prominent question still is,

What is the soul to be taught ? and it is only because

certain forms of literature are calculated to affect the
soul in a particular way that the question of form comes
to be treated at all.

As regards matter, the primary subject of educational

literature is the divine nature as shown in stories of the

gods, from which Plato passes to the semi-divine nature

represented in the stories of heroes and divine men.
Parallel with this division of the subject runs a division
according to the moral principles which this literature
ought to inculcate, the virtues which Plato conceives should
be made the basis of human character. We begin with
the two fundamental virtues in which children should be
brought up, reverence for parents and brotherly feeling.

Then we pass (at the beginning of Book III) to the

virtues no longer of the growing child but of the grown

G 2
 '

84 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

man, the two recognized cardinal virtues of courage

and self-control (o-oxppocrwT/), and a third, added
(avbpeta)
by Plato, truth.

2. Moysikh Myths and the Beliefs

:

taught in Literature.
376 e to upon the subject of iiovcnio'i with the
Plato enters
Book II. must begin with what
startling assertion that education
is false. He has in mind two senses in which a thing
may be false. All literature and all words are in
a sense false if they represent things otherwise than
they actually are or have happened ; in this sense
mythology must be untrue God can never have acted —
in the human way in which he is represented as acting

in myths, and Plato tells us that the myths are all false

(382 D). He purposely abstained from rationalizing the

myths, as was customary about that time, and in the Phae-
x
drus he expressly on the whole
rejects this practice as
an unprofitable thing. But no writer ever used myths
with greater effect than Plato, for the very reason that
he knew what he was about. In the Tii)iacus he says
that though he cannot tell us the exact truth about
the creation of the world, he will give us an acount of it

in picture-language and in a myth made as like the

truth as possible -. When however he wished to speak
most in earnest about the nature of the gods, he spoke
not in the language of myth but in that of philosophy.
Plato considered all anthropomorphic language about
God or the gods as mythological.
But there is another sense of the word false in which
1 3
229 U. Tiinacus, 29 C.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 85

not all myths are false. That which is false in the

sense of being fiction, may be fiction well done or ill

done ; it is well done when

embodies a true idea of
it

that which it is intended to represent, and in this sense

it is then true. Myths which represented the divine
nature as doing things which we know it does not do,
would yet, if they represented as nearly as possible
what the divine nature really is, be true in this sense.
A myth which represented God as doing evil would
be false in both senses. Plato, then, would have em-
ployed myths, knowing them to be untrue in form,
but as expressing substantial truth of idea.
Accordingly immoral myths,
(after criticizing certain
chiefly those in which gods are represented as undutiful
to their parents) Plato lays down certain outlines or
principles of the way
which God is to be spoken
in
of (tvttoi deoXoyias), which will determine what is a true
myth and what is a false myth. These principles occupy
the place of what we should call a system of dogma, so
far as that place is occupied at all in the thought of any

Greek writer. The first is that God good and the

is

cause of good alone ; the second is that God

is true and

incapable of change or deceit. These two canons are

directed against certain false ideas of the popular
religion.
1. When Plato speaks (377 E to 380 c) of the goodness

of God, the prominent idea is that of beneficence or doing

good. We draw a distinction between moral goodness or
being good, and active goodness or doing good ; to Plato
there was no such distinction. He rejects therefore all
tales which assert that God dispenses evil to men or
injures them. We may find an analogous passage to
this in the chapter of Ezekiel where he declaims against
86 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

the saying, (
The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Against
popular opinions of that kind Plato urges the simple
logical deduction that, if God is good, he cannot be
the cause of anything not good. In the Timaeus l
we
are told that God made the world because he is good
and, being good, wills that everything should be as like
himself as it is possible to be, by being as good as
possible. Thus Plato is brought across the old problem
of the origin of the world. He admits that the evil
things in human
outnumber the good whence comeslife ;

this evil ? He gives one of the commonest solutions

of the problem when he tells us we must either say of
human misfortunes that they are not the work of God,
or that they are not really evils, but punishments for
which man is the better. We must not then say that
God is the cause of men's misery, and we must not
call men miserable (aOXtot) because they receive punish-
2
ment when they deserve it . This really means that
evil, in the sense of misfortune, is not evil if it is looked
at in the right way.
The same question is touched upon in various ways in
other dialogues 3
. We are told in a number of passages
4
that evil in some sense or other is a necessary ingre-
dient in human life and in this world as it is for man, in

the physical as well as in the moral world ; only in

the divine nature is evil wholly absent. How are

1
29 K.

477 E, and the whole passage of which it forms a part.

1
Cf. Gorgias,
3
See Theaet. 176 a Polit. 269 c sq. and 273 B sq.
; Lysis, 221 A-c ;
;

(rat. 403 K sq. ; Tim. 48 A and 86 sq. and especially Laivs, X.903 H to
I! ;

905 I).

4
The word for evil (yrovrjpia) covers any kind of defect or blemish,
moral or otherwise.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 87

we to regard this necessary element in our life ? In the

Laws Plato's answer comes to this : We only call things

evil because of our ignorance ; if we saw the whole

of things instead of a little fragment close to ourselves,
we should see that everything works for good. The
conception in the Republic of '
the good '
as the cause
of all is, and as the highest object of knowledge
that
and that which man is to try to see in the world,
involves the same idea. Understanding the world is
seeing the good that is in it to see the good in the
;

world is to see the reason of things. No man can

attain to this, but it is the ideal which is to guide
man's imperfect knowledge. Plato, then, has two
leading convictions on this subject. He holds that
the universe, so far as man has experience of it, is

essentially imperfect,and has evil in it there is an ;

element in the world which resists the action of

reason or the will of God l But equally strongly he
.

holds that, the more we understand things, the more

we shall see that evil has a reason for it and therefore
is not really evil. He treats these as two ultimate facts,
and he nowhere attempts to reconcile them. It would
be difficult to say whether Plato does or does not
assume a principle of evil in the world co-ordinate
with the principle of good. On the whole the idea
of the beneficent work of divine reason is far the more
prominent in his writings.
2. principle laid down (380 D to end of
The second
Book II) is the truth of God, and Plato takes this as
meaning two things first, that God cannot change and,
: ;

secondly, that God cannot lie. (a) Of change, he tells us,

there are two kinds : change from without produced by

1
See Timacus, 48 a and 53 B, and of. 42 D.
88 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

external agents, and change from within by the will of the

person changing. First then, can we conceive that God
is liable to change owing to external agencies ? Plato
answers by enunciating a characteristic idea of Greek
philosophy, that liability to change imposed from without
is a sign of inherent vice or weakness. He takes the most
varied instances, living things, the human soul, works of
art, and applies to all the same principle, that in propor-
tion as a thing is good of its kind it is less liable to be
changed by external influences. God then, being the
best of things, is least liable to this. We also should
regard being easily affected by outside influences (in

a certain sense) as a sign of inferiority ; the stronger

a man is. the less do changes of climate, food, and the
like, affect no such sign of inherent
him, and there is

moral force as being able to stand any number of

changes without being affected. This view contains
the germ of the idea which lies at the root of Stoicism,
that strength or virtue shows itself in the capacity
to remain unchanged by any conceivable circumstances.
As for the question whether God can change himself,
this is answered by the conception of divine perfection.
The only motive to voluntary self-change must be want,
and that motive cannot operate with God, for he is
from the first perfect and wanting nothing '.

The divine nature, then, is constant and unchanging.

This canon is directed mainly against the polymorphism
of Greek gods, and under it Plato forbids stories,
analogous to ghost stories, by which children were
frightened ; all these are in his view a degradation of
the divine being. A good deal of polytheistic mytho-
1
Cf. Aristotle, Elh. Nic. VII. xiv. 8, where change is connected with
irovfjpia, imperfection.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 89

logy of the sort that he is speaking of 1 survives in

modern Europe in thebyways of popular religion

and superstition. Throughout this passage Plato speaks
of God without hesitation as having form and shape
(using the words fxopc^-q and ethos) quite in accordance
with the ordinary language of his day and he speaks ;

indifferently of God and principle he of gods. The

lays down is essentially a monotheistic principle, and
excludes the idea of God hav ng shape at all, since what :

has shape is of course liable to change but when he is ;

speaking of education, and of how religious ideas can be

presented to children's minds in an intelligible form, he
does not scruple to use the language of the popular
religion. In the Pliacdrns'1 he tells us by implication
that though we may think of God as having a body, this
conception of him due to our imperfect way of thinking,
is

and is only our

about him.fiction
{b) Next we come to the question whether God can

lie for in answer to what has just been said, it may

;

be objected that, though the gods do not change, they

may delude us and make us think they do they may, ;

without really changing themselves, appear to us in all

sorts of shapes. This brings us to the consideration of

lying (\l/evb€a0ai) in general. Under this head Plato
includes all modes of producing false impressions, but
in the first place he describes falsehood in a peculiar
sense of the word, a falsehood in which no being, god
or man, would, if he knew it, acquiesce. For \{/evdeadai,

besides meaning to make a false statement with intent to

deceive, may mean to be in a state of \j/evbos (falsehood)

1
381 e. Cf. Laws, XI. 932 E sq. , where laws against the pretence of
witchcraft are advocated.
2
246 c.
 '

'
go LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

oneself, or to be the victim of an illusion. This is what

Plato calls the '
lie in the soul,' which is what we might
call self-delusion ; and this, he tells us, gods and men
equally hate. It seems at first a very strong way of
speaking of ignorance. We can best understand it by

comparing a passage about ignorance in the Sophist 1 ,

where he says there are two forms of mental evil vice, :

which he compares to bodily disease, and ignorance, which

he compares to bodily deformity (aia^os). Ignorance, he
says, means that the soul, having an impulse towards the
truth, thinks '
beside the mark,' like a man who cannot
guide the motions of his limbs as he wishes; and this
deformity he also describes as '
want of proportion
(d/xerpta). So in Book VI of the Republic he describes
the opposite of this deformity as '
proportion ' (e/x/xerpia)

of the soul 2
. He thinks of the soul as being either
proportioned or disproportioned so as to be well or ill

adapted to take hold of truth, just as a hand may be

well or ill adapted for taking hold of things. We mean
by ignorance simply want of information, and this of
course is a part of what Plato means by ignorance but ;

the radical sense of it with him is something far more

important than this it is being out of harmony with
;

the facts of the world and we may compare Plato's ;

language about it with the way in which Carlyle con-

stantly speaks of incapacity to recognize the '
fact,' or
with the phrase in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians,
'
God shall send them strong delusion, that they should
believe a lie.' By truth as a quality attributed to human
character, Plato means being, so to say, in a true state,
a state which answers to the facts or to the order of the
world ; ignorance, in its deeper sense as the opposite of
'
1 2
228 c sq. 486 v.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 91

this, is, he tells us, a thing that everybody abhors ; for

if it were put to any one, ' Do you wish to believe lies?'
he would refuse with honor it is a form of madness, ;

madness being an extreme and permanent form of

believing lies.

This sense of lying is only mentioned here to be set

'
'

aside; God cannot be conceived of as creating illusion

in us because he is the victim of illusion himself. Can
he then be conceived of as deluding us by telling a lie or
by presenting to us deceiving circumstances ? We must
first ask what circumstances there are under which
lying is not detestable. There are cases in which it has
a remedial use, like a medicine, as in dealing with mad
people ; and there is the analogous case of war, in
which it is assumed that lying is justifiable. Like every
remedy it is in itself an evil, but in such cases it is the
lesser of two evils. It is sometimes justifiable also on
the ground of ignorance. When we do not know all the
truth, we may represent it as nearly as we can, knowing
that our representation is partly false. But none of these
motives can apply to God for he has no enemies to fear,
;

and no emergencies like that of dealing with a madman

to meet and he is omniscient.
; The conclusion is there-
fore that God is perfectly simple and true both in deed
and in word he neither changes nor deceives. (The
;

spoken lie is here said to be a sort of imitation of the

affection of the soul it is an image of later birth.' The
;
'

phrase may seem to suggest that the man who tells

the lie has the lie in the soul '
first and is himself '

deluded, but it merely means that the spoken lie is the

expression of a previously conceived false thought, not
that the liar is ignorant of its falsehood.)
The passage sometimes gives people an uncomfortable
 —

'
92 LECTURES ON PLATO'S '
REPUBLIC

feeling that Plato considers deliberate lying not so bad

as being ignorant, but the question of moral guilt is not
raised at all in the comparison between them. Plato
simply says that a state of delusion is a state everybody
would naturally hate to be in he implies that most ;

people, if they had the choice, would rather tell a lie

than be under some complete delusion about some very
important truth and he is probably right
; how the ;

two compare in moral worth is a further question, on

which he says nothing 1 In what he does say as to .

the morality of deceiving others, he makes it a question

of motive and of the object to be obtained. If the good
to be obtained by a falsehood is greater than the harm
done, and is not to be obtained in any other way, then
the lie does not matter. In accordance with this principle
Plato, later on, justifies the maintenance among the
people of a belief known by the rulers to be false, which
he says conduce to patriotism among those who are
will
not enlightened enough to appreciate the real reason for
2
it Such passages show us that in one direction at any
.

rate, where we should see a very great danger in the

mere fact of saying what was untrue, Plato did not see
it. Nevertheless, whenever he thinks lying justifiable it
is as a compromise, a concession to human weakness.
It implies the presence of an evil which you arc too
weak to deal with in any other way. The point in

which people really differ about this is as to where

the necessity for saying what is not true begins. The
[The conception of the lie in the soul is not returned to, but later
1
'
'

on Plato closely associates immorality anil low aims in life with illusion
(se< specially IX. 585 K sq.), and it is a fair interpretation of him to say
i

that to have the 'lie in the soul' in the fullest degree would be to be
completely immoral. Ed.]
3
See 414 B sq.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 93

greater a man is the less he finds the necessity for

lying ; the possibility of telling the truth under diffi-

cult circumstances is one of the greatest tests of strong

character.
There can be no doubt that telling the truth was
not a national virtue of the Greeks, and though in the
passage which shortly follows what Plato says about *

it is strict and emphatic, we see here that he is more

concerned about the being in a state of truth than about
the telling of the truth 2
. A connecting link between
the idea of truth as being in a true state and that of
truthfulness in our sense, may be found in a quality to
which Aristotle gives the name of truth 3
. This is not
truth-telling in general but being true to yourself in what
you say, being what you profess to be and professing to
be what you are. Truth in this sense seems to have
struck the Greeks as more important than what we call
truthfulness. The sense of its importance goes along
with the hatred of versatility and of want of personality
which comes out so strongly in the Republic 4
. We know
that some at Greek peoples were very
any rate of the
much inclined to a sort of aimless versatility and no ;

doubt it was this fact that led Plato to insist upon this
matter so strongly. This too leads him to make it one
of the first principles to be observed about the divine
1
389 E to D.
2
485 c, where the philosophic nature is said to be truthful in
[Cf. VI.
every way, and a curious motive for truthfulness is given the philosopher ;

is passionately desirous himself to attain the truth, and lying, it appears,

willbe odious to him, by a sort of association of ideas, because they
remind him of false belief which he wishes himself to be free from.— Ed.]
3
In the list of virtues, Eth. Nic. II. vii. 12. When he discusses this
quality later, ibid. IV. 7, he says it has no name, but the man who
possesses it iv \uyq> teal iv picy a\rjQevei, rS> tt)v %£iv toiovtos elvai.
* See especially 394 E sqq.
 94 LECTURES ON PLATO S l
REPUBLIC

nature, that it is '

simple and least of all things capable
of departing from own form x (380 d).
its '

ill. a to At the beginning of Book III we pass from the con-

sideration of God himself, or the gods themselves, to
that of the divine nature as it appears fused with human
nature; for most of the myths criticized and appealed
to are not about the gods, but about semi-divine beings
and heroes, and the rest are myths in which
(baifxoves)

Zeus and Sarpedon) gods are affected

(as in the story of
by human emotions with regard to men we are thus ;

moving in the borderland between gods and men. Inci-

dentally this gives Plato the opportunity both toexpound
positively what he conceives to be the highest moral
nature, and also to criticize negatively the current con-
ceptions about it, suggesting what poets ought to say
by examples of what they ought not to say. (This is
a double process going on all through the Republic, and
often the polemical side seems uppermost.) At the same
time we pass from the foundation of education, which is
to be laid in the feeling of reverence to gods and to
parents and in brotherly feeling, to the specific virtues
of courage, truthfulness, and self-control. These virtues
arc to be inculcated by setting before the soul heroic
types of them, just as in the preceding passage the more
ultimate principles of morality, goodness and unchange-
ableness, were presented to the soul in stories about the
divine nature. Further, whereas in the last part of
Book II Plato is speaking mainly of the education of
children, in the beginning of Book III it is clearly young
men and not children that he has chiefly in mind. It is

necessary to look at this part of the Republic from all

1
For further treatment of Plato's attitude towards truth, see Section
VI, page 135.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 95

these points of view in order to see the full scope of it.

It is partly concerned with a system of education, partly

with the exposition of moral principles, partly with
criticism.
Courage is treated of first (386 A to 389 b). There
are different accounts of the virtues in different parts of
the Republic, and if we want to form a true estimate
of Plato's ideas about any virtue we must put all the
passages about it So we shall have to return
together.
to courage later Here, as in other cases, we start with
1
.

the popular Greek conception of courage as meaning

fearlessness of death to the Greek mind (as Aristotle
;

tells us) death is the typically terrible thing (betvov),

and the bravest man is he who is not afraid to die.

Afterwards the conception of courage, while still of
course including this, is widened so as to include all
holding out against anything terrible, anything from
which human nature is wont to shrink. The primary
sense of courage leads Plato here to make some remarks
about the nature of death and the life of the soul after
death. He says that a good man at any rate has no
cause to think death terrible. It follows that he will
not think it terrible for his friends who are good, and,
both for this reason and because of all men the good

man most independent, he will bear the loss of friends

is

better than other men. As for the terrible pictures

that are drawn of the world below, though they are
poetically effective and stimulate the imagination and
the emotions, they are not true and they do no good.
It is to be noticed how Plato always associates the truth

of a belief with its expediency he did not think they ;

1
Cf. IV. 429 A to 430 C, 441 E to 442 C ; VI. 486 A sq., 503 B to E ;

and with the last compare VII. 535 B.

96 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

were one and the same thing, but they were connected
1
in his mind .

We pass almost imperceptibly from courage, which has

been expanded to include not only fearlessness of death
for oneself but fearlessness of death for one's friends, to
endurance (na-prepta), the passive side of courage ; and here
Plato has occasion to criticize the extravagant expressions
of grief that appear in Homer, condemning them the more
severely since they are put into the mouths of men and
even of heroes. Is the picture of a hero rolling on the
ground with grief really a worthy example? From
endurance in the sense of control of grief we pass to con-
trol of excessive feeling in general. Endurance is thus
the meeting-point of courage and of temperance or self-
control (a-Mcppoavvq). It is very characteristic of Plato to
be perpetually showing, as he does in this passage, points

of connexion between things apparently very different ;

his conceptions are never at rest in his hands, but are

continually passing into one another. Throughout the
treatment of these virtues we find the characteristic Greek
idea that excess, whether in grief, or in laughter, or in
appetite, or in any passion or emotion, is intrinsically bad.
We have to remember that dignity was not a strong
point of Greek character. The Greeks, or some sections
and
of the Greek race, were very liable to violent emotions ;

hence was that the Greek moral philosophers insisted

it

on control of emotion as they did. The Greeks had a sort

of natural want of self-respect and a tendency to forget
themselves, which particularly struck the Romans as
unworthy. If we do not bear this in mind, the treatment
of grief iu this passage will appear hard and stoical, and
the mention of laughter absurd. The basis of Plato's
'
391 '••
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 97

view not that it is bad to feel, but that excess of emotion

is

reactsupon the character and weakens it 1 .

Between the passages on courage and on self-control

comes a short passage on truthfulness (389 B to d). This
is here considered as a part of obedience, and in re-

ference to recognition of authority in general. It is

assumed that lying is hateful in itself unless justified by

circumstances, and the circumstances which justify lying
can only, Plato says, apply to persons in authority. A
doctor may deceive his patient for his patient's benefit,
and the rulers may deceive for the public good. To all

others truthfulness is a principle without exception. For

the citizen to tell a lie to those in authority is like a man's
telling a lie to his doctor.
2
This leads up to self-control or temperance (o-cotypoavvri) ,

the essence of which is obedience to authority, whether

to a ruler, or to the higher self within oneself (389 D to
392 a). Plato treats of self-control, first as obedience
to persons in authority, secondly as the control of the
appetites (and especially as to the restraint of lust and of
avarice, which latter is constantly associated with bodily
appetites in the Republic), thirdly as the control of wanton-
1
Cf. X. 604 A
sq., especially 604 C.
2
430 e to 432 A and 442 c. 'Temperance' is the word
[Cf. IV.
generally used in translations. Self-control covers the ground better,
'
'

but its defect as a translation is that it suggests effort and constraint,

whereas a man is not aweppcuv in Plato's or in Aristotle's sense, unless his
mastery of his passions and impulses is so easy and assured that there is
no sense of constraint about it. Aristotle expressly contrasts aaxppoovvr)
with (yKparaa, the forcible restraint of oneself; and in Rep. IV. 430 E
'
to 432 A the same distinction is implied (aaicppoavvq being the harmony '

and 'agreement' of the different elements in the soul). In addition to the

senses of autypoavv-q mentioned above, one of its commonest senses in
Greek is that of sanity. "Zwippcuv was also used, almost as a party name,
to describe the upholders of aristocracy or of a very much limited de-
mocracy.— Ed.]
VOL. II. H
98 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

ness, insolence, or pride (fySpis), which is illustrated by

the stories of Achilles. The meaning of aoicppocrvvrj is

best understood by its opposite, i'/3pi9, which is the general

spirit of setting oneself up against what is higher than
oneself,whether by insubordination to constituted autho-
rity and divine law, or by the rebellion of the appetites
against the law of reason. Thus this quality in some
degree includes what we call humility. It is often said

that the virtue of humility is not recognized in the Greek

moral code, but the man who was a-wcppcav in regard to
the gods would be the humble man, and the vj3phttik6$ is
the proud man in the language of the Bible.
' '
The mis-
representations of the divine and heroic nature which
are incidentally criticized throughout this passage are
peculiarly Greek, and could easily be compared and con-
trasted with the misrepresentations of the divine nature
which are criticized by the Hebrew prophets. The
human weaknesses which the Jews attributed to their God
are very different from those that appear here. The
most notable are jealousy and anger, resulting in unjust
revenge and the like as the essence of the divine nature
;

in the Old Testament is righteousness or justice, so the

human weakness attributed to God is injustice.
Now that we have laid down certain principles as to
the true nature of gods, demi-gods, and the world after
death, it would remain, Plato says (392 A to c), to lay
down principles as to human nature and how it should
be represented In literature if it is not to be falsified. As
in regard to the divine nature there arc principles by the
violation of which talcs about the gods are made false
in the most serious sense, so, as to human nature and
human life, there arc certain true principles which popular
literature and popular ideas commonly violate. We arc
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 99

constantly told that the unjust are happy and the just

miserable, and this goes to the root of our beliefs about

human life. Is it true ? This question cannot be an-
swered yet, he tells us ; because it is really the question
which the Republic as a whole is designed to answer.
Ifwe eventually find that this is not the true view of
human life, that justice is not really loss and injustice
not really gain, then, looking back at this question, we
shall be able to say that these popular representations
of human life are misrepresentations. At present we
can only say it by anticipation.

3. Moysikh: the Art of Literature.

c to
Plato has so far considered the matter of literature, or 392
398 B.
the question what things are to be said. The next
question he asks is, how these things are to be said (Ai£is),
or, What is to be the form of literature ? In the transition
to this question we really pass to the consideration of Art,
for the principles which Plato lays down about literature
are carried on in his treatment of the whole of the rest of
IxovaiKrj. It is a fair interpretation of his procedure to say
that, regarding education as a gradual nourishment of the
soul in its various stages, he passes here to a stage in
which the artistic sense is distinctly developed, and there-
fore has to be educated rightly or wrongly. As long as
education is confined either to teaching young children
or to inculcating definite and simple moral qualities, the
not called into play, and it scarcely matters
artistic sense is
in what form you represent truth. But at a certain stage
this question does become important, because the soul
that is being educated becomes susceptible to artistic
form proper. From this point onwards the discussion
II 2
 —

too LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

of ixovaiKri has to do with this stage in the soul's growth;

throughout the question of form, whether in literature
or music or the plastic arts, is the principal one con-
sidered, and the susceptibility to form is being taken
account of as the chief thing requiring nurture for the
present.
We begin with the treatment of form in literature.
First, the idea of imitation (juijiujo-is) is explained in its

application to literature (392 C to 394 c). Then the

educational requirements of a literature, which should
really develop the sort of character which is worth
developing, are explained (394 c to 396 b). Next, the
good and bad in literature are distinguished in the light
of the results thus attained (396 B to 397 c). Lastly,
a judgment is passed on poetry (397 C to 398 b). It is

above all necessary to realize first what is the question

that Plato has in his mind. The first impression
made is that he is discussing a purely literary or aesthetic
question, and we naturally suppose that he will try to
make out what form of poetry — epic, lyric, dramatic, &c.
is best for education. But he does not do this at all ;

the answer to the question, What is good poetry ? is given

in terms of ethical not of literary criticism. The question
of form in literature becomes the question, Are the men
whom we arc training to be imitative (juu/^tikoi), and, if so,

imitative of what ?

First, then, we must consider Plato's conception of

imitation. The word fxlfirjins is used in the Republic in

two ways, in a general and in a specific sense. In its

more general sense we have already seen it applied to
literature poets were blamed for making bad copies
;

of the gods and the use of myths was said to be that

',

1
377 E and 388 C.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 101

they should give representations of gods and heroes which

were as far as possible like them. In this more general
sense of the word '
imitation,' how does poetry imitate ?

One must dismiss from one's mind here the question

whether a poet or artist imitates nature, or whether he
originates or creates. When Plato talks of the poet as
imitating, in this general sense of the word, he is merely
thinking of the fact that the poet represents things, that
words are to the poet, what colour is to the painter,
a medium through which he represents certain objects or
events. The use of the word imitation in this wide sense'
'

was familiar to the Greeks, and its import was to put the
function of the poet alongside that of other artists.
'
Representation '
is the best word for piix-qo-is in this sense.
It is important here again to remember that Plato
regards the human soul as essentially an imitative thing,
a thing which naturally and instinctively makes itself

like to its surroundings. When we read books or see

plays or hear stories, if we are interested we do to a certain
extent make ourselves like the characters in whom we
are interested. Accordingly, when Plato is talking of
imitation we must think of the audience quite as much
as of the dramatic poet or actor ; the spectator enters
into the situation and, so far as he does so, is an imitator
(ij.lijlj]tijs). were not so in Plato's view, literature
If this
would not have such enormous importance in his eyes.
Men are naturally imitative (jui/x?;tikoi), and literature is
one of the things that call out this tendency. Now all
imitation tends to become the real thing ; by simu-
lating a thing one catches something of the reality ; one
imitates the thing one is interested in, and one gradually
becomes the thing one imitates. With this conception
of the effect of literature in his mind, Plato now asks
 '
io2 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

what is the best literature for drawing out what is best in

human nature ; and that is the ultimate question before
him throughout this discussion.
The discussion, however, is first raised with regard to
the value of literature which is imitative in a specific
sense ; for while all literature is imitative, one kind of
literature differs from another in manner and degree
of imitation, that is to say, in the extent to which it
brings before us the actual circumstances described, or,
as we should now say, in the degree to which it is

realistic. Here accordingly '

imitation' is used not in the

generic sense, but in an emphatic sense to describe that

sort of literature which imitates most, or is most realistic.
The employs narrative, that is,
poet, Plato says, either
simply tells the story, or he employs imitation, or he
does both. By imitation he here means impersonation
— the poet puts himself as much as he can into the actual
position of the person described. The drama is the form
of literature in which this is done throughout epic poetry ;

employs both kinds of writing certain sorts of choric ;

and lyric poetry employ only narrative.

We must not suppose that, because this distinction
answers to a distinction of literary form, Plato rests what
he has got to say on grounds of literary form. Having
distinguished these three kinds of literature, he at once
tells us that the question is not (at present, at any rate 1

whether we arc to have the drama, but whether the men

who are eventually to be guardians of the state are to
be imitators. Now if the question in his mind were
confined to mere forms of literature, this would mean that
he was going to consider whether they should be actors
1
Notice the phrase used in tliis connexion, 1
wc must go whithersoever
the argument, like a wind, bears us '
^394 l>).
 —

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE ro3

or not but what he actually discusses is not so much

;

whether they are to be imitative as of what they are to

be imitative; what characters they are to impersonate
with what characters, that is, they are, so far as imagina-
1
tion enables them, to identify themselves So the real
.

question in his mind is not, as he first makes it appear,

whether the right form of literature is dramatic or epic
or lyric (that is quite a subordinate matter, and in the
conclusion of the argument here nothing is decided about
it), but what sort of human nature is worth imitating in
literature. And that means (for we are here using
imitation in the narrower sense), What sort of human
nature ought to be most realistically represented, or
embodied in that particular way which most stimulates
imagination ? Ought the poet, he asks, to represent as
he can, with all the force of his genius,
realistically as
anything and everything that can be made impressive
and exciting, or ought the poet, regarded as the servant
of the state, to make a selection and throw all his force

into representing realistically what is great and good in

human nature ? To Plato there can be only one answer.
Only that in human nature which is worth making part
of one's own character is worth artistic imitation of this
intense or realistic kind. If the type of the greatest man
was the man who could put himself indiscriminately into
the greatest number of situations or characters, then the
greatest poet would also be such a man. But human
nature, Plato tells us, is so cut up into little bits that
one man can neither imitate nor practise well more than
one sort of life. Since, then, what a man imitates settles
into a sort of second nature with him, he must discrimi-
nate in what he imitates. The good writer will only
1 This is clear in 395 c sq.
 ;

'
io 4 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

own personality in some other worthy of himself;

lose his
and what applies to the writer applies also to the spectator
or the reader.
This being the real question at issue, Plato gives no
explicit answer to the question of the best form of litera-

ture. He
has left it an entirely open question how the
great poet is to fulfil the demands here made of him he ;

has, he says, only to lay down outlines for the guidance

of the poet. He demands of poets first that they shall
be, in a sense, servants of the community ; for otherwise

there is no place for them in the community. He then

says to them, You are men with the genius to represent
life in a vivid way, in a way that stimulates imagination ;

exercise this faculty upon those things which are really

worth imitating. He believes that men are extremely
susceptible to the influence of literature, and that its

power to affect character is very great. Accordingly, he

says, not that good literature is that which moralizes (in
our depreciatory sense of the word), but that it is that
which represents human nature in such a way as to
stimulate what is There are two sorts of
best in man.
poets, he says. though he may be a man
The bad poet,
of great genius, will throw himself into any and every
character, and will thereby become extremely popular,
especially with children and slaves. The poet with
a proper sense of what is suitable (fxt'r/uos bvrjp, 396 c),
when he has to treat of the actions or speeches of good '

men (a phrase which meant something more with the

'

Greeks than it does with us), will throw himself as much

as possible into them and will represent them dramatically
when he meets with the weaknesses, and imperfections,
them less space
failures of a great character he will give ;

and upon quite unworthy characters and objects on —

 ;

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 105

madness or disease, for example, or on any condition in

which man falls conspicuously below himself he will —
spend himself least of all, unless it be in a humorous'

way ' (this qualification leaves a considerable door of

escape open, and gives a place for comedy). As to what
form of literature would best answer these requirements
no clue is given us ; that is left to the poet.
Plato is writing with direct reference to certain con-
temporary facts and to contemporary poets, though we
have not the key to his allusions. Probably all the
instances that he takes of the abuse of imitative literature
were innovations that had come in during his time. He
describes certain new tendencies in tragedy (395 D sq.)

probably scores of dramatists were altering the character

of tragedy in the same direction as Euripides, but with
much less power K As to comedy (396 A sq.), he refers to
horseplay on the stage, and to certain, then novel, ways of
producing broad effects, which struck him, let us say, as a
coach and horses on the stage might strike a modern critic.

The passage about imitating the neighing of horses, the

bellowing of bulls, and so on probably refers to some form
of dithyrambic poetry, perhaps parallel to the modern
pantomime 2 From these passages, and from Book X,
.

and from many similar passages in the Lazvs, it is clear

that Plato felt strongly that Greek literature and music
were declining literature, he thought, was becoming a
;

mere provider of stimulants to a rather morbid imagina-

tion. The kind of aimless variation and want of principle
which he describes in contemporary art, is the counter-

1 [Nettleship here apparently referred to Arist. Poetics, 1460 b, 34 sq.,

where Sophocles is reported to have said that he represented men as they
should be and that Euripides represented them as they actually were.]
2
Cf. Laws, II. 669 C sq., and Aristophanes, Phtiiis, 290.
106 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

part of what, in regard to the more serious matters of

life, he describes in the character of the democratic man 1
.

Plato's principle is a more serious principle than most

people care to apply to literature, and his attitude strikes
us as austere and despotic, not only because of the limita-
tions of his view, but still more because he takes the
matter more gravely than we do. If we would really
put ourselves in an analogous position to Plato's, we must
not think only of drama or of romance, but of religious
literature, the Bible and all that takes its startfrom
the Bible. We shall then recognize the sort of problem
which Plato has before him in this discussion of litera-
ture. And if we do take literature in a serious sense, and
see in it the greatest educational power in society, the
question how it should be employed becomes one which
must be put, in considering how society could be
made fundamentally better. But to understand not
merely the serious spirit in which Plato regards litera-
ture but his earnestness about the particular points to
which he directs attention, we must further remember
the inherent tendency of many Greek peoples to
be imitative men,' always posing instead of being
'

themselves.
If we take the bare which Plato lays down,
principle
there is nothing in itany great literature or
hostile to
art (though any high and exacting standard may be said
to be hostile to literature and art at their ordinary level),
nor is there any reason why Plato's requirements should
limit the genius of the great poet. In what particular
way literature may be made to conform to the principle
is another question, and one so difficult that, with the

exception of certain religious bodies, no state or society

1
VIII. 561 Cto K.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 107

has tried to find a practical answer to it. But the great

poets of the world have on the whole, except in comedy,
dealt with what is great in human nature. They have
of course differed in their conceptions of what is the
great and the really beautiful in human nature ; and
there never can be one definite and final answer to the
question in what way this principle can be best applied.
In one respect most thoughtful people now would dis-
agree with the which Plato seems to apply his
spirit in

own principle and in one respect the modern mind, in

;

its highest view of art, differs widely from the Greek

mind it is, that on the whole it looks for what is great

;

and what is beautiful over a much wider range. But,

mutatis mutandis, there is just the same question in the
minds of men now as to the limits in art between the
great and the small, the beautiful and the ugly. We
should think it absurd for the state, certainly for the
British Parliament, to lay down canons of art, but that
does not prevent us from having canons. The great
artists of the world have, though of course without
telling us their theory or perhaps formulating it at all to
themselves, recognized such canons, and as to those
canons we can see that there has been substantial agree-
ment among them. In one point, and that the main
point, they have acted upon Plato's principle ; all the
great artists and poets are ideal ; that which interests
them most is something above the ordinary level of
human life. On the other hand, in one way, no poet has
ever come up to Plato's requirements, for none has ever
deliberately set himself to be the educator of the society
he lived in. Yet if we take a very great poet like Dante,
however little he may himself have contemplated the
effect he produced, there can be no doubt of the strength
 '
108 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of his influence in forming the mind of generations

after him.

4. Moysikh : Music and the Arts generally.

398 c to Winding up his treatment of literature by describing

403 c'

how the great dramatic genius, who can imitate every-

thing, will be bowed out of the reformed state, Plato
goes on to deal with music proper upon the same prin-
ciple that he has applied to literature, namely, that it

must be and approved or condemned, as an

criticized,

influence for good or evil upon character.

What is the ground for this principle for we here pass —
to something different from the direct representation of
human action and character which has so far been under
consideration? It is that music and every art expresses
character (?]0os
J
) in the soul of the man who produces it,
and in the soul of the man to whom it appeals. One art
differs from another in the medium that it uses, but in
all there is character, good or bad (tvi'jdeia or KaKoiideta).
No art, therefore, can help being educational ; it affects
character because it expresses character. This is a general
principle which can still be held without committing us
to saying in what particular way music or any art affects
character. You cannot put music into words, or pictures
into words, and the attempt to do so has even been
harmful ; each art uses its own medium, and has its own
laws ; all we can say is that in all the forms of art soul
speaks to soul ; each art has its own form of sense, and
through sense soul comes in contact with soul.
treatment of music (398 C to 400 E), Plato must
In his
have seemed even to his contemporaries still more
1
400 !•"..
*H0os does not mean '
a moral,' it means character.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 109

conservative and puritanical than in his treatment of

literature. He not only requires the musician to recog-
nize that he has a work to do in the state he says ;

definitely modes or harmonies of Greek

which of the ' ' '
'

music are to be allowed (namely, the Dorian and the

Phrygian), and forbids the use of any others among ;

musical instruments he allows only the lyre and the

cithara, and (for herdsmen in the country) the Pan-pipes
(avpiy£), forbidding the use of all instruments upon which
more complex effects could be produced, and of the flute;
he limits rhythm, though not so definitely, to a few simple
forms, rhythms which will be suitable to an orderly and
brave man and finally he insists that music is to be
;

subordinate to the words it accompanies, that rhythm

and harmony must be adapted to the words and not
the words to them. As he remarks, we have now begun
the purgation of the 'luxurious city,' eliminating all those
elements of civilization which are not really valuable, but
l
are simple luxuries .

It is not difficult to see the leading idea which runs

through all Plato's criticisms of the music and of the
artistic and literary work of his time. It is that of
simplicity as opposed to complexity. There is a right
and a wrong sense in which it may be said that art
should be simple. to mere indis-
Plato's objections
criminate imitation of human
from the feeling life arise
that such indiscriminateness implies that no principle of
good or bad in human life is recognized his saying that ;

men ought to be simple, not multiform 2

, is the expres-
sion of his demand that some principle should be recog-

1 For more detailed treatment of the passage on music see note at end
of this subsection.
2
397 E (with reference to music).
 '
no LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

nized. So when he comes to music, he objects to those

kinds of music which involve every variety of rhythm,
scale and the like, evidently seeing in them the same vice
which produces in literature the indiscriminate imitation
of anything interesting (397 B, c). In this Plato has
probably confused two ideas of simplicity. In one sense
every great work of artis simple it is the working out, ;

in however complicated a manner, of certain simple and

great ideas. But there is another sense in which art can
be simple, and in which we often speak of early art as
being distinguished by simplicity. It is simple in the
sense that it carries its meaning on its face ; we can easily
perceive the idea it is intended to embody. There is

comparatively little put into an early picture ; the

attitudes and gestures in it express very obviously what
they are intended to express. So with a very simple
tune, we easily catch the principle on which it is put
together. Early poetry, too, is simple ; we at once take
in the situation. In the same way we speak of simple
characters meaning that one easily understands their
;

acts, and sees what are their feelings and principles. In

contrast to this we say that the more civilization we have,
the more complex and involved docs human life become.
Our art might appear confused to an early artist, but the
work of a great artist of later times is not really confused ;

he has his own distinct and dominating idea as well as

the earlier artist, only it is harder to express and harder
to interpret. So with character ; simplicity in the
important sense (hies not vanish from life as time goes
on ; great characters preserve their concentration and
unity of purpose ; but it becomes harder to interpret
them. Doubtless also in later times every great work of
art is labyrinthine and we have to find the clue to it ; but
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE in

there is a great difference between complexity in the sense

of having a great number of elements combined in a
harmony which it is hard to analyze, and complexity
in the sense of confusion and absence of principle. The
great question about a work of art is whether there is

a clue to it, whether there is a unity in it or not.

It is obvious that Plato thought that the Athenians
were losing their simplicity in every direction. Not that
he wanted them to go back to the simplicity of primitive
times. What he wanted was that there should be reality
in them that they should not become, as they seemed
;

to him to be becoming, a nation of actors, but should

assume genuine characters. Athens, as he describes it to
us, isbecoming like a theatre 1 The arts, too, are afflicted
.

with the same disease, and foster it they are complicated ;

in the sense of being confused they lack principle, and ;

admit everything without discrimination. The under-

lying idea is true enough great art, like great character,
;

is doubtless simple in the sense of being harmonious.

But we feel that in working out his idea Plato is led to
advocate things which are really retrograde, things which
would have the effect of arresting the development of art
and of civilization generally at moments indeed he ;

appears to be doing away with art altogether. This is

because he has not been true to his own principles, but
has allowed his view to be narrowed by fixing his atten-
tion too much on certain particular facts which he saw or
thought he saw close to him. We find the same thing
later on in his treatment of property and the family.
Thus, while there is nothing in his principles which is
derogatory to art or which need limit its scope, yet in his
particular applications of them he does limit it. To us,
1
See again VIII. 561 c to E.
ii2 LECTURES ON PLATO S 'REPUBLIC

who are interested first he says, Let all

in his principles,

art express something, and let it be something worth

expressing do not let it be meaningless, or cater simply
;

to the morbid fancies of a mob and to its desire for

excitement. But on the other hand it probably seemed
to his contemporaries that he was setting aside a great
part of the most valuable productions of the age. We
find something of the same combination in Mr. Ruskin.
In a very condensed passage (400 E to 402 c) Plato
proceeds to extend his conception of the educational
power of whole field of art. Of the arts which
art to the
he now enumerates he makes no detailed criticism.
Accordingly we here pass entirely from the polemical
side of his writing to his positive theory of the ethical
effect of art ; this, so far from reducing the function of
art to a minimum, is at once as liberal, and as high in

the aim that it sets, as anything that could be said

on the subject. It really contains the pith of what there
is to be said about it.

He first tells us that in painting and sculpture, in

weaving, embroidery, the making of pottery and furniture,
in architecture, and beyond these in the whole of organic
nature, in fact wherever there is sensible form, there is
the capacity for beauty or ugliness, and that beauty or
ugliness both of figure and of sound is associated with
what is beautiful or ugly in character. He goes on to
describe the effect that might be produced upon the soul
if, as it grew up, it was surrounded by an atmosphere of
beauty. We must not suppose that he thinks the world
can be reformed by art alone, but he docs ascribe to it

a function, among other factors in human life, more

important than perhaps any other philosopher has
ascribed to it.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 113

What was it that he thought art could do ? Phrases

about the '
moral ' influence of art are apt to make us
think of art that expressly illustrates moral principles, of
didactic poetry or pictures ; but there is no idea of this
here. Throughout his treatment of education, here and
further on, there is present the general idea of the soul as
having certain powers or tendencies which may be called
out (not created) by its environment. Among the media
through which these tendencies may be brought out are
two most important ones, seeing and hearing, through
which the soul comes in contact with the exterior world.
It is through them, in the first instance, that the
soul acquires knowledge, or in other words is brought
into conformity with the truth of the world outside it.

Amongst other aspects of that truth, the soul is through

eye and ear brought into contact with the beauty of the
world. For in Plato's mind the world as a whole is
beautiful. There is reason in the woj^d,, which make s
it in telligib le, and the reason in the world shows itself

also in the_aspect of_beauty. So in the Timaeus l Plato ,

says that the great value of sig ht an^Mheaxuig is that

through them the soul may understand the visible and
audible rhythm and harmony of the world ; the great
type of rhythm and harmony was the movements of the
starsin them the Greeks saw, so to
; say, the harmonious
movement of reason. The function of the artist, then, is

to show us the beauty of the world. We must, says

Plato (401 c), look for craftsmen who have the genius to
track out beauty and grace wherever they are to be found ;

they are to show it to those who have not the eye to see
it or the ear to hear it in the world for themselves. He
regards rhythm as rational movement ; it is movement
47 A to E.
1

VOL. II. I
 ii 4 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

arranged upon a certain principle ; beautiful form, simi-

larly, is form arranged upon a certain principle. In all

products of art (400 D sq.) there is goodness or badness

of rhythm (evpvdpLia and appvdpiia) or of harmony (evap-
jxon-TLa and avapp.oaTia) and
or of form [evcryjip-oavvt]

and right rhythm or right form is akin on

a(ryjip.o(Tv iri),

the one hand to the reason, the rhythm and harmony,

which is to be traced in the world as a whole, and akin
on the other hand to what is right and rational in
human character. This is the real relation between art
and character or morality l .

In what definite way, then, is the character affected

by artistic surroundings? Plato gives two descriptions
of the way in which they influence the soul; one de-
scribeswhat we should distinguish as the more moral,
and the other what we should distinguish as the more
intellectual influence of art, but they are not different
in his view. He tells us (401 D) that the soul appro-
priates to itself the characteristics of rhythm, harmony,
and shapeliness. He would no doubt say that it shows
this in the actual movements of the body, in speech
and gesture and bearing, for there are certain modes
of movement which are expressive of moral or spiritual
qualities 2 and the fact that they are recognized as thus
,

expressive shows that there is an association between

thej|ense_of rhythm and of form and the sense of what is
right jn char acter. But his view of the influence of art
is best summed up in the metaphor of learning to read

1
For the association in Plato of the highest moral state with the
power of entering into the meaning of the world, sec Section X, pages
325 to 229.
See 399 v. and 400 it. Throughout the discussion of musical rhythm,
it is manifest that hi regards it as based upon the movements of march-
ing and dancing.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE ti 5

the world (402 A). He tells us that we have got to learn

to read the world about us with a view to understand-
ing what is good. The world as it first presents itself to
our observation contains both what we call real objects,

living men and women and 'images' or

for instance,
reflexions of real objects in the various reflecting media
of words, music, colour, and the rest of the media of art.
The problem is to learn to read this world. If we are
able to read the real world we must also be able to read
the reflexions to be /xovo-iko?, to have the real eye for
;

beauty, is to be able to read both the real world and the

reflected world of art. and to discern self-control and
manliness and liberality and all other good qualities and
their opposites wherever they occur. It is possible to

learn from what we call little things as well as from

great, and in learning to recognize and to value the
reflexion of good qualities in art we necessarily learn also
to recognize and to value them in their more important
expression in real life.

We must notice further that thus learning to read

the sensible world, or the world as it presents itself to
ordinary experience, is a preparation for learning to read
the world in another way. A man who has been
educated thus will have an what is
instinctive sense of
beautiful and what is ugly, and will love the one and
hate the other, before he is able to frame in his mind
a reason for loving or hating them. But when reason
comes, a man so nurtured will recognize it and welcome
it from natural kinship to it, that is to say, because
his own feelings are already in accord with it. Plato
conceived that there was a real continuity between the
education of art and the education of science and philo-
sophy, which he afterwards requires should follow it up.
I 2
 n6 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

In childhood the soul of man is completely subject to

the senses, its perceptions are Gradually
all disordered.
it from the tumultuous influences of sense,
frees itself
and establishes order and connexion in what it perceives
and thinks. The great agents by which this process can
be helped are, first, the education in fxowi/c?/, and, secondly,
the education in science and philosophy. In both Plato
would say there was reason (\6yos) in its earlier,
!
; *N

sensible form it shows itself as rhythm, harmony, and

shape; in its later, it shows itself as principles or laws.S.

which are apprehended by the intelligence (understood, /

not seen or heard or felt).
Thus the education of /xotm/a; is the education of eye
and ear in the widest sense it is to be accomplished by ;

presenting to the eye and ear good works, which will

interpret to the soul the beauty of the world and enable
it to find it for itself. The artist, by creating for the
soul a sort of atmosphere of beauty which becomes
familiar to it. will develop in it the power of recognizing
what is beautiful in widely different forms, and of making
that beaut\- its own.
It is curious that Plato seems to attribute much more
educational influence to music proper than to sculpture.
We think of the Greeks as a nation of sculptors, and we
do not think of them as a nation of musicians : we might
therefore have expected him to attack the idolatry of
form in the same way in which he attacks the idolatry
of words '-'.
Rut sculpture is only alluded to in a list

of many arts, and then not expressly named 8

. It is

'
In 4or D we hav< the phrase koAuv \6yos, i.e. reason in the form
• i i» auty.
'-'

See Section XI, page 344, and Section XV.

:'
401 A,where he speaks of painting and all work of that
'
kind.'
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 117

a justifiable inference that the existence of great sculpture

in Greece was not so important an educational influence
as we suppose. On the other hand the Greeks were
extremely susceptible to words, and, further, they must
have been especially susceptible to rhythmical words ;

and so Plato speaks of music (rhythm and harmony),

which he has treated throughout as the accompaniment
of words, as having the most penetrating influence on
the soul. Aristotle speaks of music in a similar way in
the Politics, and tells us that the influence of the plastic
l
arts is comparatively slight .

The discussion of iaovo-lkj'] concludes with the considera-

tion of beauty of human form (402 D to 403 c). The
man on whom this education has had its due effect, who
is and who therefore has the keenest
really iaovctikos,
perception of beauty everywhere, will necessarily value
beauty of soul far more than beauty of body. Physical
beauty which is not the expression of a lovable soul
will not move him. Moreover, Plato tells us, there is

no fellowship possible between this sense of beauty and

the madness of animal passion. Excessive passion, he
says, like excessive pain, puts a man beside himself;
he considers that there is a real affinity between madness
and any passion which possesses a man for the time
'

being z Under the influence of any passion so strong

.

the perceptive power is almost extinguished nobody ;

trusts the judgment of a person under the influence of

absorbing jealousy or fear or any other passion and ;

so, Plato says, the perception of beauty is incompatible

with excessive passion. This is empirically true it has :

been observed about poets that they have not often

1
Politics, 1340 A, 28 sq.
2
See the whole passage, IX. 5-71 A to 573 C, and cf. 329 c and 577 D.
n8 LECTURES ON PLATO S 'REPUBLIC

written under the immediate influence of violent emotions,

but usually afterwards ; and there can be no doubt that
the deeper is the sense of beauty, the less it is compatible
1
with simple animal passion, and vice versa .

In this passage we find that the word iaouo-lkos has

acquired an extended and higher sense ; it means a man
to whom life itself is the highest art ; and a little later
we find that the real ^ovctlkos is the man who can
harmonize his own life, putting iaovo-lki] itself in its right

place in his life in relation to '

gymnastic '
and to other
2
elements in life . The use of this and other phrases
derived from the arts to describe morality, may incline
one to say that Greek morality was aesthetic morality ;

but the truth is not that Plato takes moral distinctions

to be, as we should say, only aesthetic distinctions, but
that he gives '
beauty,' 'harmony,' '
rhythm,' and similar
words a wider sense than we do.

NOTE ON GREEK MUSIC.

The Greek theory of music took account of poetry, tune, and
dancing as elements in one artistic product (fxeXos). Aristoxenus,
a pupil of Aristotle's, is the greatest authority upon it. It fell
under the heads of apfiaviiai and fwOfwcij, the latter of which at
first included and was afterwards distinguished from ptTpiKr].

Appovia does not mean harmony in the sense of the simultaneous

'

sounding of two or more tones oi' different pitch, but a scale,

a certain sequence of tones of different pitch. 'Appovucfi means
that branch of the theory of music which deals with the interval
between tones and their arrangement in what we call scales or

'
With this whole passage compare Symposium, ^09 B to aia C.

I
r u a ; cf. IX. 591 I), ;m<] Lac/us, 188 D.
:

(
Iii this Note several additions have been made to the original, im-
portant works on Greek music having been published since the lecture
was given. — Ed. ]
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 119

keys. 'Pv6p6s is etymologically connected with words which

have to do with movement. The typical form of rhythmical
motion is dancing. The essence of rhythm is that a certain
sequence of motions or sounds is measured, according to time,
into portions which recur upon a certain principle. 'PvdpiKrj is

that part of the theory of music into which time enters. MtrpiKr),
or the theory of metre (perpov), is the theory of rhythm in its
special application to language.
Plato lays it down as a fundamental principle that rhythm
and harmony are to follow the words. This shows us the great
difference between Greek and modern music the former grew
;

up as an accompaniment to words or dancing, or both. It was

comparatively late that music began to develop independently
of these, and Plato looks upon this independent development as
a wrong development. The earlier of the great dramatists not
only wrote their plays, but wrote the music for their chorus.
It is stated that Euripides got others to compose the music for
him, and that this was made a reproach to him. One of
Wagner's leading ideas has been that of recurring to the
principle that poet and musician should be the same.
According to the theory that has been received till lately,
the differences between the various appovUu, or '
modes,' were
analogous to the difference between our major and minor keys.
That is to say, the places in which intervals of tones and of

semi-tones occurred, differed in different modes. But whereas

we have only two apfioviai (supposing this to be the sense of
the word), the Greeks had seven, one for each note of the scale.
There seem to have been originally three main modes, the
Lydian, the Phrygian, and the Dorian. On these three funda-
mental modes there were three variations, the Hypo-Lydian,
the Hypo-Phrygian, and the Hypo-Dorian (In a- in this com-
binationmeaning lower in pitch). To these must be added the
Mixo- Lydian \ According to the received theory we get these
seven modes by playing upon the white notes of the piano as

1
The Ionian mode appears have been the same as the Hypo-
to
Phrygian, and the Aeolian same as the Hypo-Dorian.
the Plato
mentions also a mode called Syntono-Lydian, which is believed not
to have been identical with any of the foregoing, but to have been
akin both to the Lydian and the Hypo-Lydian.
 — —

i2o LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

follows :— Hypo-Dorian or Aeolian, A to A Mixo-Lydian, ;

B to B ;
Lydian, C to C ; Phrygian, D to D Dorian, E to E ; ;

Hypo-Lydian, F to F Hypo-Phrygian or Ionian, G to G 1

;
.

There is however another theory, according to which there

is no evidence that in Plato's time the modes, or at any rate all

seven of them, differed in the way described above, and the

main difference between modes was a difference of pitch (the
difference between one major scale and another, or one minor
2
scale and another, in modern music) .

The two modes which Plato would leave in use are considered
by him to be appropriate to two sets of circumstances, and to
have a tendency to stimulate two qualities of character, courage
and self-control. Whatever may have been the differences
between the modes, the Greeks generally attributed to each of
them a specific character which made it suitable for particular
kinds of poetry and music 3 Modes were classified as those
. :

which had to do with action, and had a stimulating effect

(nf)(iKTiK(u upfjiovLai) modes which stirred emotion (fudnva-marinai,
;

nadrjTiKai, 6prjva8t is) and modes which affected character,

;

especially by producing a calming effect (!]6iKai). Naturally,

though there was a certain traditional agreement as to the
character of these modes, different writers had different opinions
upon them. The Dorian mode was considered to be the Greek
mode par excellence. Among the epithets applied to this mode
are av8pwbt]s (manly), p.(ya\oTTpcrrT)s (stately), ardaipos (steady),
(khvus (dignified), o-cpobpas (forcible), and <TKvdpam6s (sombre).
The Phrygian mode is called opyiaoTinos (having to do with
religious orgies), n-aA}ruc<fc (expressing deep feeling), tvdovo-iaoriKi'is
(expressing violent religious emotions). The Lydian is called

1
[This must not be taken as implying that the keynote of the mode was
in each case the note here mentioned. Ed.]
[For the former of these two views see Westphal's works and
1

Gevaert's Histoireet Theorie de la Musique de FAntiquite. Fur the latter

view see Monro's Modes of Ancient Greek Music: sec also review of this
by II. Stuart Jones in the Classical Review for Dec. 1894, and the reply
to it in the Classical Rt vu W for Feb. 1895. See also Monro's article in the
Dictionary of Antiquities for an outline of all principal theories.
1 1Ed.]
1 * -

See Aristotle, 1340 A (especially 40 and 1341

:

Politics, line sq.), B,

9 sqq.
 EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 121

yXvKv* (sweet) and it is also said to be appro-

notniXos (varied) ;

priate to the young. accepted theory about the modes is

If the
correct, both Plato's view of the Dorian mode and Aristotle's
illustrate the fact that the present associations of the minor key
are due to a late development of musical sentiment. In the
early Christian Church grandness and sternness were associated
with it;and early ecclesiastical music inherited the character-
istics of Greek music.
Upon the subject of rhythm the Greek writers are still
valuable. The Greeks had an extraordinary sense of rhythm,
and expressed the true principles of it in a final way. In a
general sense all spoken language is rhythmical every one ;

observes unconsciously a certain rhythm. This becomes rhythm

proper when treated artistically and brought under laws. For
this purpose we require units of measurement, the units in music
being notes sounded for a certain time. These units are com-
bined in music into bars, in verse into feet and a dactyl or an
;

iambus, or any other foot in metre, is best thought of as the

equivalent to a bar in music. Each bar in music and each foot
in metre is made into a unity by having a certain accent or
stress on one of its elements (the use of accent in metre being
a development of the use of accent in speech, where stress is
laid on a certain part of every non-monosyllabic word, and
again on a certain part of every sentence). Poetry then is
rhythmical because it is divided into feet of a certain length,
and there is a certain stress recurring in each foot. Here comes
in the connexion between poetry and dancing. In dancing the
foot is put down with a certain stress at equal intervals of time
— the simplest possible illustration of this kind of rhythm being
military marching. The Greeks called the stressed part of
every foot of metre dean or Kara xP' wos ar>d the unstressed a/jo-is
j

or ava> these words referring to the putting down and

xpo"°s ;

taking up of the foot in marching or dancing. So (400 c)

Damon, the philosophical musician, is said in his criticisms of
metre to have in mind the motion of the foot no less than the
rhythm of the words. Modern writers apply the words arsis
and thesis in the reverse way, meaning by arsis the raising,
and by thesis the lowering of the force of the voice. All the
metres of poetry are a development of these simple principles.
122 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

A hexameter line is a largerunity composed of six smaller

unities (feet), each of which can be resolved into four beats,
four units of time, which are the ultimate elements of the metre.
A stanza again (e. g. the Spenserian) is a larger and somewhat
more complicated unity, divided first into lines, secondly into
feet,and lastly into beats. In Pindar we find a rhythmical
system still more subtle and complicated, but still founded
upon the same principles.
Just as different modes seemed Greeks appropriate to
to the
different subjects, so did different metres or times. Plato does
not say definitely, as he does in the case of modes, what form
of rhythm he would allow, but he lays down the principle that
rhythms must be admitted or rejected in accordance with the
character they express. He mentions the three great classes
into which metres were divided. To understand this division
we must remember certain facts. Ancient metre is based upon
quantity, that is to say upon the length of time which is taken
in uttering a given syllable. Modern metre is based upon
accent, stress or ictus, that is the increased loudness of the voice
on a given syllable. There is quantity in modern language, for
you can quite well distinguish long and short syllables, and
quantity does enter into metrical effect but the quantity of
;

a syllable and the amount of stress upon it are distinct things ;

and while in modern languages it is the difference of stress on

different words and syllables which is most noticeable and by
which metre is governed, in ancient Greek and Latin it was
quantity. The fundamental principle in which musical rhythm
and metre come together is that a short syllable answers to
a unit of time in music. Remembering this, and remembering
that the Greeks divided every foot of metre and every bar of
music into two by distinguishing 0eVts and apms (the stressed
part and the unstressed), we shall understand the following
simple classification of metres or times, to which Plato alludes.
There is the lurov yivos of time, our four time, in which the
stressed and unstressed parts arc equal. Of this the dactyl
and the anapaest arc t3'pcs each represents a bar of four beats
;

(quavers), and is divisible into two parts of two beats each, of

which parts one is stressed and the other unstressed. There is
next the dnrXuainu yivos (our three time), in which the stressed
 — '

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 123

part is to the unstressed as 2 to 1. The iambus and trochee

are types of this. There is lastly the q/uoAtoi/ yevos, 'one and
a half time (our five time), in which the stressed part is to the
unstressed as 3 to 2. Plato does not give instances of this, but
the type of it is the paeon. Throughout it must be remembered
that a short syllableanswers to a single beat of the music, and
that a long syllable equalstwo short.
In modern musical accompaniments to words, the composer
does what he likes with the metre of the words he subordinates ;

it to his own rhythm, and does not make every short syllable

correspond to a beat. But the earlier we go back the more we

find that the time of the tune corresponds to the natural time
of the words. This was not universally the case in Greece, as
Plato thought that it should have been. The parody of Euripides
in the Frogs 1 of Aristophanes makes a single syllable spread
out over many beats.
Plato requires that the instrumentation of music should be of
a simple kind, as well as the rhythm. The '
panharmonion
which he would exclude is a stringed instrument on which all
the modes could be played. In his preference of stringed to
wind instruments he is following traditional Greek feeling,
which associated wind instruments with excitement and emo-
tional effects, and stringed instruments with the sense of form
and precision. The stringed instruments in use were mainly
varieties of the harp, and not like the modern violin.

5. tymna2tikh and digression on law and

Medicine.

It remains to consider 'gymnastic,' which has been 403 c to

4I2
said to mean the training of the body, but in discussing
this Plato diverges into widely different subjects. The
order of his thought is briefly as follows :
(a) The prin-
ciple which he lays down for the training and management
of the body is the same that he has laid down for the arts ;

1
1309 sq.
 '

124 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

it is simplicity. Simplicity of life leads in one direction

to bodily health, and in another to sanity, self-control,
or temperance in the soul (auxjypoavvi]). The one is to
the body what the other is to the soul, and there is

a close connexion between them (403 C to 404 e).

(b) This leads to the consideration side by side of two

analogous phenomena of Athenian life, legal proceedings
and medicine, of which the former had always been
prominent, and the latter evidently had entered upon
a new development. Constant recourse to law and
to medicine are evidences of the same fault in civiliza-
tion, and Plato lays down corresponding principles
with regard to each, especially contrasting the modern
habit of valetudinarianism with the simple ways of
ancient times (404 E to 410 b). (c) By the way, he

shows a difference in the conditions necessary to the

training of a good doctor and of a good judge, which
is based on the distinction between soul and body
(408 c to 409 e). (d) The consideration of body and
soul side by side leads him finally to the thought that
and yvuvacrTinij are both really means of influ-
fj.oviri.Kri

encing the soul, though on different sides. He tells

us that the ideal of education is to harmonize the two,
so as to produce a harmonious character and he points ;

out the evils of a one-sided education (410 B to 41 2 b).

(a) Plato considers first the kind of physical training

that is fitted to produce a good citizen soldier. He finds
in vogue an elaborate system of training which aims
at producing professional athletes, and which seems
to strike him as a part of the general complexity of
modern life. lie criticizes it on the ground that it does
not produce that habit of body which befits a soldier.
In the first place it produces a sleepy habit, broken only
 '
;

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 125

by short periods of great and abnormal activity in the ;

second place it produces a habit of body which cannot

stand changes of diet and climate and the like. This

criticism is substantially the same as Aristotle's 1
. In
bodily training the most important thing is simplicity
of diet. Syracusan dishes, Sicilian subtleties of flavour,
Athenian confectionery, and the rest of the luxuries that
were introduced into the state when it passed above its
most elementary stage 2 are condemned. Here Plato .

observes the close connexion between health in the

body and self-control in the soul. The relation he
sees between them consists in something more than the
fact that intemperance produces disease. We are apt
to think of the soul as something which is inside the
body if in a box
as in Plato, we have to remember,
;

' means primarily the principle of unity and move-

soul '

ment in the body which makes it an organic and a living

whole.
{b) When disease in the body and '
intemperance
(aKokaaia, the opposite of o-axppoavvij) in the soul abound,
then Law and Medicine hold their heads high. Plato
criticizes the recent development of these, as he has
criticized that of art. He tells us that to have con-
stantly to go to law is a sign of want of education
(aircabevcria K.a.1 aTtzipoKakia), and so is the inability to
keep oneself in health without the doctor. This shows
us in what a wide sense Plato understands education
the educated man is the man who knows how to manage
his own life physically and morally. He writes with
great animosity about the growth of medicine, regard-
ing it as a luxury of the rich who can afford to give
up their work for the sake of nursing their health. If
1 2
Politic*, 1338 n, 9 sq. 373 A.
 '

126 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

a man is radically diseased and cannot go about the

business of his life, he had better die, as a poor man

in such a case has to, and doctors ought not to be

allowed to keep useless folk out of the grave. The
general idea of the passage is that, except in compara-
tively rare cases of accident and the like, a man ought
to be able to keep himself in health without the aid
of doctors. This is a sound enough idea, within limits,
but no doubt Plato's remarks about medicine are far too
sweeping. The craving for simplicity in life leads him
to a good deal of cruelty, as it has led him to austerity
in regard to art. To many of his contemporaries his
treatment of medicine must have appeared altogether
retrograde, and as a mere refusal to avail himself of
the advance of civilization. This is one of the cases
where the spirit of the reformer, of which Plato had
a good deal in him, does not harmonize with the philo-
sophic temper, and where impatience of what he thinks
abuses vitiates his theory. The principle that the man
who can be of no use had better be let die (as the incur-
able criminal ought to be put to death) would of course
be an extremely dangerous one to act upon at all. No
means have yet appeared by which it could be carried
out as it was intended and not only so, but we rightly
;

feel that it rests with people themselves to decide whether

they are justified in keeping themselves alive when their
usefulness is gone. We rightly feel, too, that the existence
of the sick and incurable calls out a great deal of virtue
which would otherwise be latent.

(c) Incidentally Plato asks whether great experience

of bodily disease in the one case, and of vice and crime
in the other, is not necessary to make a good doctor
and a good judge? He answers that the two cases
 :;

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 127

are different. The good doctor must not only have

scientific knowledge (eTrio-n/p?) of disease, but wide
experience (f^-nupia) of it ; and it is best that he
should have experienced ill health in his own person,
for his own physical weakness will not affect his soul,
the organ by which he acts on others. But in the
case of the judge, to have experienced the mental disease
of vice in his own person does not mean that the
soul, the organ with which he acts upon others, is im-
paired. He goes on to say that the apparent cleverness
of a man who has had much personal familiarity with
wrongdoing is limited to cases where he has to deal with
persons of similar character and experience to his own
he judges only by the examples (napaodyp.a.Ta) which
have come within his own experience, and will be at
a loss when he has to judge of the motives and conduct
of a different sort of people. This is what distinguishes
empirical knowledge, which is confined within the limits
of a certain number of experiences, from knowledge
which is based on principles (kin<rTr}p,-i]). The application
of this is knowledge of the good
that, in order to get real
and evil in human nature, the soul must be kept healthy
from the first. The man who has grown up amid healthy
surroundings and with a healthy mind, will come to
understand the evil which he sees in other people com-
paratively late, but will then understand it better than
the man who by personal experience of evil.
begins
Plato is not to be supposed to mean that an innocent
simpleton is a better judge of character than a man who
has knocked about the world the issue he raises is this
;

Supposing people of equal ability, is it better for this

purpose that they should have had a large amount of
evil experience, or that they should have kept their souls
 ;

128 LECTURES ON PLATO S 'REPUBLIC'

free from and have studied the evil in the world

evil,

late in life when

their characters were formed ? It is

best, Plato decides, if you wish to have men trained

for the function of judges, that you should aim at
developing what is good in them morally and intel-
lectually to the highest pitch, and then trust to their
insight. What this implies is that no line can be
drawn between the intellectual and the moral nature
what is called knowledge is not an entirely separate part
of the mind unaffected by other parts, and a man cannot
be affected by moral evil in one part of his soul and
retain intellectual insight into its nature with another
part 1
. We are sometimes inclined to suppose that
a man can keep his intellectual judgment apart from
his personal character : to this Plato emphatically says
no : if the character is affected the organ of judgment
is affected, is one and continuous.
because the soul
We shall Books VI and VII. that his whole
find in
conception of the philosopher and of philosophic educa-
tion is based on the close relation which he asserts
to exist between the intellectual and the moral powers
of the soul.
It may be asked how far experience bears out Plato's
theory of the possibility of understanding things in

human nature of which one's own experience is slight.

With average men it would be difficult to show that

it is true ; you take only the
but it proves true if

greatest men and those who have shown the greatest

knowledge of, and insight into, human nature. Men
of genius get their knowledge of the world nobody
knows how ; Shakespeare, for instance, cannot have
had personal experience of more than a fraction of
1
Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VI. xii. 10.
 ;

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 129

what he wrote about. In fact, genius is the power

of getting knowledge with the least possible experience,
and one of the greatest differences between men is in
the amount of experience they need of a thing in order
to understand it 1 There are some people, especially
.

women, who seem able to understand other people's

characters by instinct. The greatest of all instances
of such a power is the instance of Christ, of whom
it is said that he understood all human nature without
having personal experience of evil in the ordinary sense.
But the chief psychological question which this passage
raises is how far one part of one's nature can act inde-
pendently of others, how far intellectual judgment can
act apart from character. This is a matter in which
men vary very much, some being able to isolate the
parts of their mind much more than others.
(d) Returning to /xouo-ik?;, Plato makes a final state-
ment as to its relation to yv^vaariKri. One is said to
deal with the soul and the other with the body, but
both really have to do with the soul for misdirection ;

or neglect of physical training has a direct influence on

character, no less than the misdirection or neglect of
culture. Both are required to develop the elements in
the soul which are essential to a good Guardian. The
training of gymnastic acts upon spirit this when '
'
;

rightly trained shows itself in courage and manliness

if trained to the neglect of the rest of the soul, it

degenerates into hardness and brutality. The training

of literature and the arts affects the philosophic element,
the gentle element in man which is susceptible to
attraction. This if rightly developed makes a man
temperate or self-controlled ; if over developed it makes
1
Cf. Section XIV. p. 321.

VOL. II. K
 '

130 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

him soft, effeminate, morbidly susceptible, unstable and

weak in character. The problem of education is to
harmonize these two sides of character, and he who
best deserves the name of musician (ixovctlkos) is the man
who can thus tune human nature *.
1
Cf. the description of the art of the statesman in Politicus, 305 e
to end.
 VI. PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
IN THE IDEAL STATE
[Republic, III. 412 b to IV. 427 E.]

PLATO has now finished his outline of the education

of the rulers up to the age (about twenty, as we after-
wards learn) at which a man enters public life. The
Republic is a representation of the gradual development
of the soul in society ; and the subject we have before
us in the section which now follows, and in which an
outline is given of the institutions of the ideal state,
is that stage of thegrowth of the soul in which the
young citizen becomes aware for the first time of his
true position in, and his duty to, the community. It is

introduced by the question, Upon what principle are we

to select, from among those whose training has been
described, those who are to be in public authority, and
whom the others will have to obey ?
This question at once indicates the leading fact about
this new stage in the development of the soul when :

it first enters upon practical life it will have to recognize

its subordination to authority, and to act upon principles

which it accepts from authority. The question brings

K a
 —

132 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

out also a fundamental fact about the state, which will

have to be considered a good deal in the course of the
discussion there must be in the community authorities
;

who impose boyixara, beliefs or principles, upon those in

subordination.
412B to How the governing class are to be constituted depends
.}I4 B.
upon the question what should be the spirit of those who
are to rule the state. Their function is to be Guardians
((f)vkaK€s) of the state, and that man will guard the state
best who most fully believes that the interests of the state
are identical with his own. This, then, is the test that
we must use to discover whether those whom we have
been training will become fit to rule ; we must observe
whether under all circumstances they hold fast the belief
that the thing that is best for the community is the thing
for them to do. This is to be their boyfia, something,
that is to say, which he who holds it accepts without
understanding all the grounds of it ; for the attitude
of a man must be that of accepting
entering public life

certain principles from others. We have got to discover

whether they are safe guardians of this creed,' and that
'

means whether they can resist the influences which are

calculated to make them give it up. Such a belief may
be stolen from us, that is, given up either in the lapse
'
'

of time from intellectual indolence, or because some one

persuades us out of it. Or it may be '
forced' out of us
by suffering or painful toil. Or it may be 'juggled' out
of us by pleasure or fear f
juggled,' because both
these feelings affect us by producing illusion, or making
us see things in a false light. These, therefore, arc
the influences by which those whom we arc educat-
ing will have to be tested at all stages of their career.
The test will show whether they are good guardians
 PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 133

of themselves and of the music which they have

'
'

learned, whether the rhythm and harmony have become

a law to them. Those who stand the test best must be
made to rule. This in outline (tvttu>) is the principle
upon which those in authority are to be chosen — the
outline will be filled in later 1
. Those who have stood
the tests well to the end will, when they are older, be
Guardians in the full sense ($vAaKe? TravreXels) the ;

younger members of the service will be 'Auxiliaries'

(eTTLKovpoi) to the Guardians, and will carry out the

principles they lay down (8o'y/xara).

In this passage two simple principles are put before
us in combination with a proposal of certain machinery
for carrying them out, which is strange to us. On the
one hand we find the principles, first, that a man will
serve the community well in proportion as he is ready
to devote himself and give up his own interests to it,
and secondly, that men should be promoted in the public
service in proportion as they show that they can bear
responsibility. On the other hand we find the idea
of a system by which the state can continue the educa-
tion of childhood into later life, and test its progress
at each stage. Such an idea, which is repugnant to
modern ideas generally, is perhaps particularly so to the
English mind. Something analogous to what Plato
proposes exists in the system of the Jesuits.
The young citizen of the upper class has now been 414 b te

placed in his proper position, under authority. The

question next asked is how authority is to be established
in,and made acceptable to, the community at large.
The two essential things which have to be maintained
are the unity of the whole society, and the distinction
1
See 503 sqq.
 '

134 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of classes, that is of social functions, within it. What

will be the basis upon which patriotism (the sense of
belonging to a community) and submission to authority
will rest in the minds of the bulk of the community?
Plato's answer, when rationalized, comes to this, that the
mass of the people really cannot understand the reason
of these principles, and that therefore they can best be
maintained by being associated with a myth, a story
of past events. They are to be taught to believe in
a myth a
which will make them regard the country
they live in as their mother, their fellow-citizens as
brothers, and the social order with its distinctions of
classes as a thing of divine institution. There will,

Plato indicates, always be persons in the community

who know that this myth is not true, and that
patriotism and subordination have their sanction not
in historical events, but in the constitution of human
nature ; but the rest are to be encouraged by a myth
to hold a belief about the order of the community,
which is somewhat analogous to the belief in the divine
right of kings.
The social organization which Plato thus seeks to
invest with a divine sanction, might at first be compared
to that of caste. But in the caste system birth absolutely
determines a man's position, while Plato's system is
based, not on birth, but on capacity and attainments.
He fully recognizes that children do not always follow
their parents in character and ability, though there is

a general tendency for them to do so ; and he insists

1
The
materials for tliis myth are partly supplied to Plato by the
belief,which he found existing, thai there were actual air6x9ovfsf or men
born from the soil, and partly perhaps by the belief ill a golden,' a silvei ' '
.

nnd an iron age, which had succeeded one another in the past.
' '
 PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 135

that every man is to be assigned to the rank and

function for which his character and abilities fit him,
whatever his parentage may be 1 . He insists, accord-
ingly, that provision must be made for cases where
children are fitted either for higher or for lower social
functions than their parents. To him, as to Aristotle,
the hereditary principle seems to hold good as a general
rule, but he wishes to provide a corrective for occasional
cases in which it works ill.

With regard to the use of mythology which Plato

here proposes, there is no doubt that there are great
dangers upon the principle that historical truth
in acting

does not matter as compared with truth of ideas. But

we should not forget the fact that suggested Plato's
proposal. It cannot be denied that truth is held in
different forms by different people ; that religious,
political, social, and scientific truths take very different
shapes in unlearned or undeveloped, and in learned or

developed, minds. This fact Plato has recognized. We

might say in criticizing him that it is the duty of
society, while recognizing this inevitable fact, to be
always trying to do away with it, by raising the
intellectual level of the lower classes. This duty is
in theory admitted now. But whatever has yet been
done to remove the fact, the fact remains and there ;

would not be any real difference of opinion among us,

that it is often justifiable to allow people to retain

beliefs which contain a substantial truth, although the
1
[See 415 B and c, and cf. 423 c, d; but the system, as later
developed in Book V (where Plato relies on attention to breeding to
keep up the standard of the ruling class), would apparently not admit of
promotion from the lower class, but only of degradation to it. He is
evidently apprehensive of the tendency of aristocracies to degenerate
;

cf. VIII. 546 d.— Ed.]

 '

136 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

form in which it is put We have to

is not the truest.
recognize the which truths are
differences of form in
held we have at the same time to try and make the
;

form as adequate as possible, to make the truest truth

true to everybody. This is the real function of
education.
415 d to The Guardians and Auxiliaries, as we have seen, are

Book III
*° b e watched and tested throughout their public life

to see how well they retain the principles which their

education has formed in them their promotion will
;

depend upon the results. The next point which con-

cerns their development is that the external arrangement
of their lives shall be conformable to the principles of
their education. The way of living now described is

to be the complement of the system of education

(416 c). Its ultimate object is the same; the man is to

be made to realize that he is first and foremost a servant

of the community. That is the way in which Plato first
introduces his communism, which is more fully deve-
loped in Book V, and which we shall have to discuss
later. His principle being that a man's happiness consists
in doing his work as well as he can, it seems to him

to follow logically that we should make it as hard as

possible for a man to do otherwise. Therefore these
young citizens, when they enter public life, arc to have

no inducements to neglect the public interest they are ;

to have no houses, land, or money of their own, but

to live under a kind of military monasticism. The
theory of mediaeval monasticism might in effect be
expressed thus You are going to serve God let the
: ;

external organization of your life express that; do

without everything that is not really necessary to the
service of God. Plato's theory is the same, with
 PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 137

the substitution of the community for God. Both

theories have in common the belief that a great deal
can be done for human character by depriving men of
material facilities for doing wrong, and by compelling
them to live externally a certain kind of life. How
much can really be done way, and whether it is
in this

not better for society, having given its members educa-

tion, to leave them free as far as possible, is a question
which in one form or another, and in different degrees
of intensity, is continually reviving. For many centuries
in the history of Europe what Plato proposes in this
passage was literally carried into effect. Whatever harm
the system did, it is certain that it also did enormous
good, and it is questionable whether, under the circum-
stances under whichit arose, the same good could have

been done any other way. In Plato's own time there

in
were in some Greek states, especially Sparta, partial
examples of what he proposes and this must have ;

prevented what he says from seeming altogether para-

doxical to his readers. Throughout the Republic we
often find a fusion between the Spartan principle of
absolute discipline and the Athenian principle of culture.
The proposal that has now been made leads to the Book IV to
421
question what account we are taking of the happiness
(evbaiixovta) of this ruling class. Here are men with
brains and power ; is it sensible to propose to take away
from them all the elements which are generally supposed
by such people to make life worth living ? According
to what has been said they cannot travel, or keep
mistresses, or entertain their friends, or offer private
sacrifices of their own ; they are not even to be paid
money, but only to be given the provisions they need.
Plato's answer is that we are not yet in a position to
138 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

consider this question for the present we must proceed

;

on the principle on which we started, that each man is

a part of a whole, the community, and cannot escape
from that fact it is futile to ask how we can make the
;

part happy without considering the whole. He takes

a simple and good illustration to make his meaning
clear if you were painting a statue you would not think
:

it artistic to paint the eye purple, because you thought

purple a beautiful colour. And why not ? Because

beauty is not an abstract thing it always means a cer- ;

tain quality of something in relation to something

else ; so you cannot start in painting with abstract
beauty of colour, for there is no colour which will not
look hideous in certain combinations. In this case you
must start by considering the eye in relation to the
body. Now apply the same principle to happiness.
People talk as if certain things, fine houses and so forth,
were absolutely worth having but they are not abso- ;

lutely good whether they are good or not depends on

;

who it is that has them. As for our Guardians, then, it

is of no use to say that as they are the best men in the

state they must have the best things. It will not be

surprising if it turns out (as it docs in Book V *) that they
are the happiest of men, but the present point is to fit

them for their function in the community for it is owing ;

to their function in the community that they arc what

they arc, as the eye is made what it is by its function
in the body. Our object, then, is to give not to the
Guardians but to the whole state as much happiness
as possible. We must leave the happiness of each class
to be determined by nature by which Plato means, ;

by the operation of those principles in the human soul

1
.{65 I) to 466 c.
 PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 139

of which his state is the expression. The question of the

happiness of this or that class has in fact no sense until
you have determined the functions of the class in the
state. If you take agricultural labourers or potters and
put them in fine clothes, and tell them they need not
work any more, you will not, as we should say, be
making gentlemen of them, you will simply be unmaking
them as members of the community it will no more ;

be for their happiness than it will be for the advantage

of the community ; and the same applies to all classes.

This incidentally introduces us to a consideration 421 c to

422
of some of the duties which, in governing the state, the
Guardians will have to discharge. The application of
the principle just laid down to the industrial classes
makes us aware that it is injurious to them in the dis-
charge of their functions to possess either too much
wealth or too little. The former makes them indolent,
the latter destroys their efficiency. The principle is
therefore laid down, though the means of carrying it out
are not considered, that the Guardians will have to keep
both riches and poverty out of the state.
This raises a difficulty, for is not wealth the strength 422 a to

of the community, which, we must remember, will have 423 B *

to fight for its existence with other states ? This sug-

gestion Plato answers by a bitter satire on the present
condition of Greek states. His citizens will fight against
theirs as trained athletes against fat plutocrats ; for
though, as this comparison reminds him, the rich young
men of Greece do often know something of boxing and
other forms of athletics, they are generally, it is implied,
getting physically degenerate, and they are all ill-trained

the art of war x

in . But what is more important is, that
1
Cf. Meno, 93 C to 94 D, and Rep. 404 A.
 '

'

140 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

a really united state could divide any one of these states

of Greece against itself by offering one class the goods of
another 1
. Not one of them can really be called a city ;

you want a larger name for them, for each contains at

least two cities, one of rich and another of poor. You

will hardly find a state, Greek or barbarian, which has

a force of a thousand fighting men and which forms a
really united body.
423 c to r>. To preserve the unity of the state, the Guardians will
not only have to keep out excessive wealth and poverty,
they will have to see that the state remains at its proper
level of population. must neither be too great to be
It

really united, nor too small to be able to supply its own

needs adequately. Harder still, they have to take care
that the system upon which the social classes are divided
is maintained upon the basis of merit, and not of birth

solely.
423 e to These, Plato says ironically, are easy tasks for the
425 A.
Guardians ; then, dropping the irony, he declares that
all these things will be comparatively easy to them if the
one essential thing, education, is maintained. If they
have once been educated in the principle of devotion
to the community, the)' will easily recognize the con-
sequences of that principle.upon this In enlarging
text Plato expresses an idea which we very seldom find
in him, that of a natural tendency to progress if the ;

constitution is once started upon a right basis and with

a right spirit, it will go on with accumulating force, like
a wheel increasing its speed as it runs. '
The guard-
;
house of the Guardians must then be built in juoixriK?/
without that, legislation is useless. In a strong, para-
doxical way he tells us that the fashions of music can
1
Cf. Thucydidcs, III. 82.
 PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 141

nowhere be changed without consequences of the gravest

importance to the state. The spirit of lawlessness grows
from tiny beginnings. When it begins to appear in
music, it may do no harm at first, but it gradually filters
into the minds of men and becomes in time a great
subversive force. The utmost care, therefore, must be
taken that even the amusements of our Guardians shall
be instinct with the spirit of law l .

Plato's belief that changes in the fashion of popular

music are signs of great political change seems exagge-
rated merely because it is stated so simply. A modern
writer would establish the connexion between these
things at greater length, but the idea is certainly not
foreign to modern thought. It cannot be doubted that
great political changes have their precursors, if we could
only see them, in trifling changes of this order ; and
after the event of a great revolution, people often set
themselves to study these precursory symptoms, as
M. Taine has done in writing about the Ancien Regime
and the French Revolution. But the mental and moral
state of a population of millions cannot be observed in
the same way as that of a small independent community
in Greece might have been. If a community something
like a University were an independent state, it would
be far more true than it is now that every change
in such things as musical taste was a thing to take
account of; and in a state like Athens a few prominent
people, such as Alcibiades, who adopted new fashions,
could produce a change which was very noticeable and
very important.
Plato next tells us, in accordance with what he has 425 a to
4270 '

just said, that it is not worth his while as a political

1
Cf. Laws, III. 700 A sqq., and VII. 797 A sqq.
 '
i 42 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

philosopher to go into the details of legislation upon

any subjects which he has not yet dealt with. Among
the subjects of legislation he mentions not only matters
of police, commerce, and political organization, but
matters of social behaviour, dress, acts of politeness,
and the like. In a state like Sparta, though there was
little written law, nearly all such things were regulated
by custom, which had the force of law. All these
questions of legislation, he says, will settle themselves
if only the Guardians carry out the laws he has already
laid down upon the subject of education. If, on the
contrary, the right spirit has not been created by educa-
tion, no legislation on minor matters will cure the evils
of the state. There remains one subject of legislation
which he has not dealt with, which does vitally concern
education, and that is ceremonial religion (427 b). This,
however, is a matter he does not understand ; all ques-
tions about it must be settled by the oracle at Delphi,
the Trarpios e£?jyrj7?/s — the interpreter of divine things to
the Greek nation 1
. This is an illustration of how con-
servative Plato was, though in matters of religious belief
he was unsparingly revolutionary.
The mention of political legislation leads him to
satirize the legislative reformers of his own time (425 E
sqq.). They always act upon the idea that the prin-
ciple of the constitution must not be touched, but that it is
a good thing to be constantly tinkering the constitution
in details. According to Plato, the one thing necessary
is to change existing political institutions radically in
their principle and in their spirit, and when that is once
done to keep them as they are the legislative reforms ;

1
This is what the epithet irurpios implies; the word for an ancestral
institution of the Athenian people would be varpwos.
 ;

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 143

that statesmen now deal in are all of them quack medi-

cines. The thought and the metaphor are the same as
in the chapter of Past and Present Morrison's Pills ') ('

in which Carlyle satirizes the reformers of his day.

If we ask what is Plato's principle in all that he here
says of legislation, we find at first a paradoxical result
he would leave untouched all the things about which
we legislate ; he would
about things which no
legislate
one would think of asking Parliament to settle, for the
'
laws (425 e), which he says it is important to make,
'

concern the great principles of education, the principles

which should regulate artistic production, and the like.
According to him, the function of government as a
legislative power is to lay down certain general and
elementary principles of life, and to establish a social
rjdos (character) which people shall take in as naturally
as the air If that be done, legislation
they breathe.
on the which our legislation touches will be
details
superfluous, as merely formulating and putting on parch-
ment what everybody naturally does. If that be not
done, legislation is ineffectual, as merely altering little
points in life and leaving untouched the spirit within.
Aristotle is quite at one with Plato in maintaining that
the great problem for statesmen is to keep up a certain
character among the citizens 1 It is difficult to apply
.

that idea to a modern state, because the function of

legislation in a modern and its scope
state is different
more where the lines,
limited than in ancient Greece,
which now separate law and custom, government and
public opinion, had not been drawn as they now are.
However important questions of what we call politics
may be, it cannot be denied that of the most important
1
Aristotle, Politics, 1310 A, 12 and 1287 B, 8.
 '
144 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

things in life comparatively little is touched by Parlia-

mentary measures and it is an admitted principle with
;

us, that government must keep its hands off many things

which are of vital importance in the life of the nation.

On the other hand, what we call public opinion does
'
'

to a great extent perform the functions which the Greeks,

unlike us, attributed to legislation. We differ from Plato
and Aristotle not in our view of what is fundamentally
important to the community, but in the line we draw
between things with which the state can interfere to
advantage, and things which it should leave alone.
Every age and every country must draw that line dif-
ferently, and though we are never likely to assign
to the legislature proper such duties as the Greeks
would, there will always be an opposition between
those who deprecate every attempt to regulate life by
legislation, and those who would say, Let legislation do
as much for the improvement of life as it can. There is
a feeling among us which is expressed in the formula,
that the object of all legislation should be ultimately to
make legislation superfluous it may be said that the
;

more perfect a state of society is, the less it will need

laws and the more will a few elementary principles suffice
for it. On the other hand, there is a feeling that in a free
community the amount of things that can be regulated
well by law is a great test of the general morale it ;

would indicate a very high morale in a community that

it should allow a great part of its life to be governed by

laws laid down by the wisest people in it. The force of

both these principles is recognized in Plato.
VII. STATEMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE
OF JUSTICE
[Republic, IV. 427 E to end.]

The remainder of Book IV falls into three divisions.

(1) In the first of these Plato determines the virtues of
the state, with the special object of discovering justice
among them (427 E to 434 d). (2) He then investigates
the nature of the soul, and shows that the virtues of the
state are merely expressions of the inward conditions
of the soul (434 D to 441 C). Finally (3), he applies the
results of this investigation in determining the virtues,
and among them the justice, of the individual.
1 . The outlines of a good community have now been IV. 427 e
° 434D
traced, and the question arises, Where is 'justice,'
-

which we started to seek, to be found in this community,

and what is it ? In answering this question Plato simply
continues further the analysis of the conception of a good
community, stating the problem of the main elements
of a good community in this specific form What are the :

virtues of such a community ? He starts, as elsewhere,

with accepted ideas ;
goodness shows itself in four main
VOL. II. L
 '

146 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

forms, the cardinal virtues of the Greeks. Every nation

and every epoch has its own idea of virtue and its

own way of expressing and the Greeks conceived of

it,

complete virtue as showing itself under these four

principal aspects :
—wisdom (o-otyia), courage (avhpeia),

temperance or self-control (awcppoaijvr]), and justice

Accordingly Plato proceeds to enquire in
(biKaioavvrj).

turn how each of these cardinal virtues exhibits itself

in the life of the state.
The method of this discussion is an example of
the genetic method which Plato follows throughout the
Republic; that is to say, he gradually develops certain
conceptions which have been present from the first.

The discovery of the virtues of the state is simply the

deeper analysis of modes of action on the part of the
citizens, which have already been implied in the con-
stitution of the state. The definition of 'justice,' when
we arrive at it, is the explicit statement of the point of
view from which the welfare of the state has all along
been considered.
In talking about the Republic people sometimes speak
as if the virtues of the state were qualities not of indi-
viduals but of some non-human entity, but Plato (as
has already been remarked) means by them qualities of
individual men. The reason why he speaks of them as
virtues of the state is that they are virtues which certain
persons in it exhibit in their public functions. When
you talk of a state as being well governed, you are
describing a certain quality of certain persons in it,

namely those who govern it. What quality, Plato here

asks, do we imply when we say that a state is wise or
brave or self-controlled or just, and in whom is that
quality to be found?
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 147

He begins (428 a to
429 A) with wisdom (crocpia or
<pp6vri<TLs). some kind of knowledge but what
This is ;

kind of knowledge makes a state wise ? The people of

a state may be clever in agriculture or in making wooden
articles, but we should not therefore call it a wise state.

We should call it wise when it showed knowledge not

of this or that particular branch of life, but of how to
conduct itself generally in the whole of its domestic
affairs and of its relations with other states. The essence
of wisdom good counsel or deliberation (ei//3ouAia). If
is

therefore we ask in whom it resides, the answer is that it

must be looked for in those who exercise the deliberative
function of government. The deliberative faculty is very
rare ; there will be many good smiths in the state, but
not many good statesmen. Plato therefore asserts as
an important principle that very few ought to take part
in the deliberative function of the state. It seems to
him a law of nature that only a very few men are so
constituted as to be able to embrace in their minds the
good of the community as a whole. The wisdom of our
state will reside in the full Guardians (re'Aeoi (pvAaKes),
the deliberative body that forms the legislature and
directs the executive of the state. We have already
seen that these Guardians in the full sense were to govern
all, and that the whole function of the younger Guardians
or Auxiliaries was to accept upon their authority and to
carry out certain h6y\xara, of which the sum was that
the interest of the community was supreme. What was
implied in this conception is developed in what is here
said of wisdom and, afterwards, of courage. Wisdom,
then, is the virtue of the Guardians, their knowledge of
the good of the community as a whole.
Next (429 A to 430c) comes courage (avbpeia, i.e.,
L 2
148 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

etymologically, manliness). If we want to know whether

a state is brave we must look at its army, not because
the soldiers are the only brave people in the community,
but because it is only through their conduct that the
courage or cowardice of the community can be manifested.
From the external manifestation of courage, however,
Plato at once turns to its inward nature, and defines it

in a surprisingway, not as bravery in the field of battle,

but as the preservation under all circumstances of a right
opinion as to what is, and what is not, to be feared. In
a former passage (413) he has already described exactly
the same quality that he here calls courage he there ;

enumerated the influence under which a man is likely to

give up the beliefs that he holds the young Guardians
;

were to be tested as to their power of holding fast under

all these influences the belief (hoyfia or bo^a) that the
interest of the community is supreme. Here we are
told that they must have held fast under all influences
a right opinion (op0?/ bo£a) as to what is to be feared
(bewov). A(umv means anything calculated to excite
fear,and the typical Seam- is death but there are many ;

other things that we naturally shun all forms of pain or ;

deprivation of pleasure are in their degree to be feared.

Courage accordingly, the power of resisting fear, is not
confined to the one form of bravery in battle. That is

its typical form, but such bravery is ultimately based

upon the power of sticking to what one believes to be
right, and of holding in their proper estimation the
things that might make one shrink from one's duty.
This, then, is courage. For the state to secure servants
who possess this courage great care is necessary. Just
as a dyer, if he wishes a wool to take the right colour
and to hold it, must choose the right material carefully
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 149

and take pains in preparing it for dyeing, so we must

first choose the right nature to train for our purpose, and
then take great pains in preparing it by early education,
in order that afterwards, by the process of obedience to
the law, the belief which the law expresses may sink into
it past washing out. From this courage of the citizen
Plato distinguishes the courage of the brute and the
slave,which do not express any such character as he has
described they are not the result of education, but are
;

blind and irrational, and not subservient to law. In

leaving the subject, he indicates that his account of
courage is not final, and does not tell us all that complete
courage would involve. What does this mean ? Courage,
as he has here described it, implies an authority which
imposes the belief that is to be preserved and there ;

must be a kind of courage which shows itself in holding

fast beliefs which result from one's own reason and

conviction. Such a virtue is briefly described later

(486 A, B). Starting, then, from a narrow conception of
courage, Plato widens it to include everything that we
should call moral courage, and represents the courage of
the soldier as a particular instance of this more general
moral principle.
We should notice here and further on how Plato
calls virtues '
powers ' (Swa/xeis). One is apt to think
of virtues as abstractions, or as, so to say, appendages
hung on to a man. He emphatically represents them
as forces, powers to do something a man of great ;

virtue in Greek means a man with a great power of

doing certain things.
'

The next (430 D to 432 B),

virtue self-control '

{aoocfipoavvrj), has been implied in the constitution of the

state, with its distinction between higher and lower
150 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

orders and the recognition by the citizens generally that

this is a right distinction. Appealing to the popular
usage of the word, Plato finds that adxfrpuv means
'stronger than oneself (/cpetrrcou clvtov), or, as we might
say, master of oneself. This phrase seems a contradiction
in terms. It can only be explained by the conception
that the self is not simple but complex, and that there
is in it a superior and an inferior part. In using the
phrase we imply that one part of the self ought to rule
the other. Turning to society, where do we find this
self-control showing itself on a great scale ? We find that
the superior elements in the soul are chiefly developed
in the minority who are fit to rule, and the inferior
chiefly in the masses. For a state to be called self-
controlled there must be a distinction of the naturally
superior and the naturally inferior, and the former must
rule. But this is not enough ; there must also be
agreement (o/xoVota) between the classes, and a general
recognition that this constitution is right. The inferior
might be subordinate without this agreement ; but a
really self-controlled community like our state is unani-
mous as to who should rule and who obey. We may
then call self-control, whether as seen in the public life
of the state, or as seen in the way an individual man
regulates the different parts of his own nature, a sort of
harmony or symphony, because the essence of it is

a unity of different elements; and we cannot say that it

resides in any one class of the community more than in
the rest, any more than in a concord the harmony resides
in one particular note.
Lastly (432 I! to 434 n), what is justice? Really,
Socrates exclaims, the principle of justice has been
tumbling about before our feet for some time. At the
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 151

very beginning of our examination of society a principle

began to appear, at first in its economic form, afterwards
in a more general form, that each man should devote
himself to that one function in the state for which he
was by nature best fitted. That principle in some form
must be justice. Popular language confirms this idea by
representing it as typical of the just man that he does '

his own business (rd to, avrov -npaTTtiv).

' But to establish
this we must ask what element of goodness remains in
the state after we have eliminated from consideration
the other three virtues, for the remaining element must
be justice. There remains that which enables the other
virtues to exist and maintains them in existence, and it
is the principle which has just been indicated. We may
perhaps explain what Plato means in the following
—
way: One can imagine a community in which there was
a spirit of intelligence, hardihood, and of general agree-
ment but unless the classes and the individual citizens
;

of that community had in addition the power to do,

each of them, their own duty and to concentrate them-
selves on their own work, intelligence would not develop
into wisdom or governing capacity, nor hardihood into
disciplined courage, and the tendency to general agree-
ment would remain a tendency and not produce a really
unanimous state. Justice, in Plato's sense, is the power
of individual concentration on duty. If a soldier is just
in this sense, he is of course a brave man if a man in
;

a subordinate position is just, he of course accepts and

maintains authority, or is 'self-controlled.' Justice there-
fore, though it has been spoken of as one among other
virtues, and though it manifests itself in many particular
actions which are called in a specific sense just, and to
which the names of the other virtues are not applied, is
 ;

152 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

really the condition of the existence of all the virtues

each of them is a particular manifestation of the spirit
of justice, which takes different forms according to
a man's function in the community. In modern phrase
it is equivalent to sense of duty.
Plato proceeds to confirm himself in his idea of the
nature of justice. The quality that has just been de-
scribed as justice compete with any
is certainly fit to
other virtue in its community.
beneficial results to the
Again, this quality corresponds with the principle upon
which it is acknowledged that justice should be ad-
ministered by judges ; this is that every man should
have what is properly his own, which is a particular
application of to to. avrov irpdrreiv. Lastly, we cannot
imagine a greater harm to the state than a thorough carry-
ing out of the opposite of this principle (TToXvirpayixocrvvi]),

which would mean that every one neglected his own

business and meddled with that of others. Apparently
then, if we take what is implied by popular phrases, the
means doing your own work and not
idea that justice
meddling with what belongs to others, and if we apply
this idea in its deeper sense, we shall find in it the
principle that we were seeking for.

434 1> to 2. Plato, however, will not yet pronounce finally what
44 ir.
justice is. Retaining this idea, we turn to the analysis
of the individual soul to see whether the same conception
will apply. If it docs we shall take it to be true. Each
of the virtues that arc found in a well-governed state
has an external and an internal side. Each expresses
certain observable facts about the public life of the
community ; wc can sec whether or not there is in it

governing capacity, military efficiency, public unanimity,

and a general tendency for all classes to perform their
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 153

own social functions. On the other hand, each virtue

expresses a state of mind or feeling, on the part of
certain persons, underlying and producing these facts.
This is what interests Plato most, and this is the
meaning of the question, What is justice in the soul ?

He wishes to continue his analysis of a good com-

munity till he finds its ultimate roots in human nature,
showing how all these public virtues depend upon
certain psychological conditions in the members of
the community.
The connexion must be shown by an analysis of the
soul. In this Plato develops the psychological view, of
which we have already seen something in his treatment
of education. He
begins (435 b) by enquiring what are
the different forms of soul, or parts of the soul, present
in each individual man. What is the exact point
from which he starts in this enquiry, and what place
does it take in the development of the argument
of the Republic? Analysis of society has already
shown us that there are three main social functions,
the deliberative or governing, the protective and exe-
cutive, and the productive ; and the good of society
has been seen to depend upon these functions being
kept and upon each being rightly performed.
distinct
Can we discover any deeper reason for this organization
of society? Is the distribution of functions dependent
on the constitution of human nature? If so, shall we
not find that the right performance of function on the
part of society is dependent upon a corresponding per-
formance of function on the part of the souls of in-
dividuals, and that justice and the other virtues, which, as
we have so far seen them, consist in certain relations
between certain kinds of men in the state, are the
 ;

'

154 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

expression of corresponding relations between certain

elements in the soul of man ? Justice, Plato lays down,
must be the same so far as its form goes (or, as we
should say, must be in principle the same), whether
it is man that
manifested in the state or in a single ;

is to say, we may expect to find in the right perform-

ance of function by the soul some similar principle to
that which governs the right performance of function
by the state.
In beginning this discussion Plato tells us that he
is dissatisfied with the method by which he is seeking
to define justice, and further on in the Republic he comes
back to this passage (504 A sq.). However, the method
is in accordance with that of other parts of the book

it consists partly in appealing to popular conceptions,

refining on them and developing them, partly in apply-
ing a preconceived principle of his own by which he
criticizes them. In the first place, he tells us, it is

a truism that the character of a nation or a state is the

character of individual men in it. Men belonging to
the various nations, which came within the field of his

observation (Greeks, Scythians and Thracians, Phoeni-

cians and Egyptians), exhibit the dispositions and the
characteristic activities which are the marks of the
several classes of which the state is composed. The real
question, he says, is whether in the various activities or
functions of the soul, which arc characteristic of parti-
cular classes or particular nations, the whole soul is

active, or only a form or part of the soul. What

makes him think this question so important? If it

turned out that the whole soul was equally involved in

each of these various activities (each of which is specially

.
haracteristic of the functions of one social class), the
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 155

question would arise whether any one soul could not

equally well be employed upon any one of these social
functions, and whether any one man could not equally
well be a governor or a soldier or a trader. The whole
structure of society, as Plato conceives it, is based upon
the fact that the activities in question are activities of
different '
parts ' of the soul, and that, though each of
these parts is present in a degree in every man, the
different parts are very differently developed in different
men.
To determine this question Plato first (436 B sq.) lays
down a general principle, which is an application of
what sometimes called the Law of Identity and Con-
is

tradiction,and which he formulates thus the same :

thing cannot act or be acted upon in the same part of it

and at the same time in opposite ways. To apply
this to the soul do we find in it certain forms of
;

action or taking place at the same time

reaction
and towards the same thing, which are mutually ex-
clusive and opposite to one other? Appetite generally,
he answers, may be defined as a form of assenting to
something, drawing something to ourselves, or reach-
ing out towards something if, then, we ever find in
;

the soul an activity, the direct opposite to this, mani-

fested at the same time and in regard to the same
object, we must infer that there are two different
agents present, two different forms of soul. Now as
a matter of fact we are familiar with this phenomenon.
We often find ourselves, for example, desiring to drink
and at the same time reflecting that it is better not to, and
we must conclude that the element of desire or appetite
(eTTiOvixia, or to €Tn6vfxriTiK.uv) which attracts us to the
drink, and the element of reason (to AoyurriKoV, or w Aoyt-
156 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

Cerat fj
^x 7
i) which holds us back from it, are two
1
distinct parts or forms of the soul .

So far the observation of admitted facts has led us to

distinguish two forms of psychical activity, appetite and
reason. Can we further say that what we have already
called '
spirit ' (Ov^oi or 0u//oei5e's or <L 0vjj.oviJ.e8a) is a third
form distinct from either (439 E sqq.)? Plato observes
that when a man is conscious of having acted against
his judgment in consequence of the stress of
better
is angry with himself and with the appetites
appetite, he
which have made him go wrong men have been heard ;

to swear at their appetites at the moment of yielding

to them ; whereas when a man follows an appetite which
he thinks he is right in following, he feels no such anger.
Further, he observes that when a man thinks that he is

in the wrong and has to suffer for it, the nobler his
nature the less he is capable of feeling indignation ; while
conversely, if he thinks he is unjustly treated, the nobler
his nature the more his blood boils. These facts lead
to a double conclusion : first, that '
which is that
spirit,'

in us with which we feel anger, is not convertible with

any form of appetite ; secondly, that there is a sort
of natural affinity between '
and the better self
spirit '

— not indeed that it is never wrong, but that it has

a natural tendency to side with reason rather than with
appetite. On the other hand, it is obvious that 'spirit'
is not convertible with reason, for we sometimes find
it rebuked by reason, and we also find it present in
a high degree in children and in the lower animals.
This passage (435 B 10441 C) is sometimes appealed

There followed in the lectures a discussion of difficulties in the argu

1

ment leading to this conclusion hut the passage has been omitted, as it
;

was not found possibleto reproduce it with the necessary exactness. Ed.] —
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 157

to as the one complete and authoritative statement of

Plato's psychology. It is not so ; it is only a link in

the argument, and brings out a single point, the incon-

vertibility of certain psychical functions. What those
functions are is not completely stated here, but must
be gathered from the whole of the Republic and the ;

clearest and, on the whole, most satisfactory statement

on the subject is at the end of Book IX. (a) We find
that Plato's conception of '
spirit ' covers three great
facts which seem to him to have a common source.
First, it is the fighting element in man, which makes
him and also makes him aggressive.
resist aggression,

Secondly, it is something in man (not itself rational,

but seeming to have an affinity with his better self)
which makes him indignant at injustice, and again
leaves him a coward when he feels himself in the
wrong. Thirdly (in Book IX), it is that which
makes a man competitive and ambitious. (b) The

rational part of the soul (here called to AoyioruoV,

and elsewhere generally to tyiXoaofyov) has two totally-

different functions. It is intelligence, the element in

man which enables him to understand things. But in
Plato's mind this is inseparably connected with a form

of love (which is what the (f>i\o- in $iAoVo$oi> indicates).

The philosophic element, as it first appears in Book II,

is something in man which makes him fond of what he

understands, and again makes him want to understand
what he is attracted to. Accordingly in Book III it is
this which makes man capable of understanding litera-
ture and art, and makes him love what is beautiful the ;

understanding and the attraction go together. It is

this again which holds society together, attracting men

to one another and enabling- them to understand one
 '
158 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

another (we also associate these two things together ;

you must understand him, and to under-

to like a person
stand him you must like him or sympathize with him).
In Books VI and VII the same element in man is the
source of science and philosophy these arise from ;

the fact that there is something in man which draws

him to nature and makes him want to understand it,

or that, in other words, there is a sort of affinity between

the soul and nature. In the present passage the philosophic
element or reason is described merely as something
which is found in certain cases to oppose certain kinds
of appetite, (c) The appetitive part of the soul here
consists in what we should call bodily appetites, and
the desire for wealth (436 a) as the means of satisfying
1
them .

When Plato suggests that a difficulty might be raised

on the ground (apparently) that appetite or desire is for
something good and therefore is never unqualified attrac-
tion to the particular object desired, he is on the point
of passing from tinOviAia in this narrower sense, which
is best conveyed by our word appetite,' to eindvij.ia in the
'

wider sense of any desire, any consciousness of a want.

Taking the word in this latter sense it is difficult to
apply the opposition between reason and desire on which
he bases his conclusions. In every desire there is an
element of rational activity, and in the most reasonable
direction of our activities there is an clement of desire.
So we may say that the real conflict is not between reason
as such and desire as such, but between different kinds
of desires, and accordingly in Book IX we find that
each of the three forms of soul has its own special
ita.Qvy.la. Plato, however, generally keeps to the nar-
1
Cf. IX. 580 I), E.
 THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 159

rower sense of the word eu-iflu/aia, the kind of desire in

which the element of simple attraction is most prominent, .

and the element of reason or thinking is smallest ; and.

in that sense of t-mdvixia or appetite, the opposition,
which he adopts from popular phraseology, between it
and reason is quite intelligible. (The division of the
soul into three parts, three forms or kinds of psychical
activity, is an anticipation not so much of the division
of ' faculties '
(the '
will,' the '
reason,' &c.) as of Aristotle's
1
distinction of kinds of soul in the Ethics .)

3.
.
It remains to apply this analysis of the individual
r
soul so as to confirm our supposition as to the nature Book iv.
... 44 1 c to
end of

of justice. The manner

which it will be applied is in

obvious ; but what does

mean, what is the distinction it

between the virtues of the state and the virtues of the

individual, and what is the advance that we make in
passing from one to the other ? The virtues of society
consisted in the ways in which different classes of men
with certain functions in society performed those func-
tions. The organization of society, owing to which they
had these functions in it, depended upon the fact that

certain characteristics were dominant in certain men,

just as different nations too are distinguished from one
another by the predominance of one or other of the
same characteristics, the fighting spirit being dominant
in one, the commercial spirit and the desire for material
prosperity in another. But while
and different classes
races of men thus no human being in
differ, there is

whom these characteristic things exist alone no human ;

being is all appetite, or all 'spirit,' or all philosophy.

And so morality, beyond implying the performance
by each individual of the function in society to which,
1
Eth. Nic. I. xiii. 8 to 19.
160 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

in a well-ordered state at any rate, the dominant element

in his soul assigns him, means also certain modes of
action and certain mutual relations on the part of these
fundamental forms of psychical activity in the individual.
A happy instinct, Plato says, has from the first led us
on the track of We
dreamt that the principle of
justice.
'
doing one's own business (rd to. avrov -npa.TTe.tv), spoken
'

of first in its simple economic sense, was justice. It

proves to have been an image,' an outward

'
expression
of justice. Real justice means not the mere doing of
one's own business in the state, but such outward doing
of one's own business as is an expression of a correspond-
ing mode of action within the soul if the outward action ;

is really just, it means that the soul is just within, that

like a just state the whole soul and the several parts
of it perform their proper functions in relation to one
another. In all points the virtue of a well-constituted
state is shown to be identical in principle with the virtue
of a healthy individual soul. When we call a man wise,
we mean he has the power of understanding what is for
his real interest as a whole man when we call a state
;

wise, we ought to mean that the men who have the gift
for governing have their understandings entirely set
upon the interest of the whole state. Again, a brave
man is one who has the courage of his opinions, that is,

one who will carry out his principles, whether those

principles arc the result of his own reason or received
from others ; and a brave state is one where the men
who have to defend it, have the courage to carry out
the laws and principles imposed by constituted authority.
Again, by a temperate or self-controlled man we mean
not merely one who governs his appetites, but one in
whose soul there is harmony and no internal conflict
 ;

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 161

between and by a self-

different parts of his nature ;

controlled state we mean one in which social order

is not merely preserved by the army and police, but

rests upon general agreement. Lastly, a man is found

just in all relations of life in so far as the different
elements of his nature are doing their own business, in
so far, that is, as he is really one man and not many
and a state is just when it iswhich
a united whole, in

each class upon doing that which (looking at the

is set
interests of the community at large) it can do best.
Thus the virtues of the state, which are the modes of
action of the citizens in their public capacity, are, when
traced to their source, the expression of a certain
condition of their souls, which Plato calls justice in the
soul. And further, this inward condition of the soul
and the constitution of society, which is its outward
expression, are so far one in principle that each„ consists
in the proper discharge ofjunction by distinct parts in
a single-whole.
Under all the forms which the argument in the later
Books of the Republic takes, the chief object in which
Plato is interested is to work out this conception of the
healthy constitution of the soul.

VOL. II. M
 VIII. COMMUNISM AND DIGRESSION
ON USAGES OF WAR
[Republic, V. to 471 c]

Books V- BOOKS V to VII

form a section of the Republic which
is by its subject-matter from what
clearly distinguished
comes before and after, and is described at the beginning
of Book VIII as having been a digression. Some
critics have thought that these Books were written later

than those that follow them, and were inserted into the
original work, because it would be possible to read
straight on from the end of Book IV to the beginning
of Book VIII without noticing any break in the subject
or any great difference in the philosophy or psychology.
The tone of Books V to VII is also different from that
of the previous Books. There is more bitterness, a deeper
conviction of the evils which beset mankind, and a
stronger feeling of the difficulty of reform. Socrates is

represented as feeling at every step that he is in direct

antagonism to public opinion, as almost afraid to say

what he has to say, and yet as convinced and prepared
to face the scepticism and ridicule with which he knows
he will be met. It is impossible to prove any theory
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 163

as to how Plato composed his work, nor does it matter

so long as it is clear that there is a real logical connexion
between the subjects of the different parts. It is con-
ceivable that the Books were published first,
first four
and that criticisms which fastened on the most obviously
paradoxical suggestions in them induced Plato to work
out at fuller length the consequences of his conception
of an ideal state. But it is quite possible also that
Plato intended from the compose the work in its
first to
present form. There are in the earlier Books indications
of his feeling that there was a great deal more to be said
about certain points that he raised by the way 1 In .

a modern book a writer might announce his intention

of treating his subject first in a general and superficial
manner, not because he was unaware of the consequences
to which his principles led, but because he preferred to
reserve till a later stage a fuller discussion of those con-
sequences : writing as Plato does in a dramatic way
he brings in again at this point certain personages of
the dialogue, and makes them criticize the procedure
of Socrates and insist on his returning to a point which
needs further working out.
To show the connexion between Book V and the
earlier Books, we must sum up the results that have so
far been reached. Plato has been seeking to discover
the principle, if there is one, by obeying which human

life in society will become the best that it can be. He

has found it in the fact that on the one hand no soul is
but each requires the help of society, and
self-sufficient,

on the other hand every soul can contribute something to

the social whole of which it forms part. It results from
1
See, for example, 414 A, 435 D : and see Book V. 450 B, 453 c,

472 A, 473 E; Book VI. 497 c, D, 502 E, 504 A, B.

M 2
 '
164 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

this that the ideal of human society is a collection of

souls so organized that each may contribute its best to
the whole and get from the whole what most wants it ;

everybody in such a society would do what he was best

fitted to do, and the result would be that everybody

would do both what was best for himself and what was
best for others. The principle upon which such a society
would be based is, according to Plato, that in which
justice consists. His perfect state is substantially the
same in its conception as St. Paul's perfect Church or
perfect spiritual community, and each represents his ideal
under the figure of a perfect human body (462 c).

The particular point, in the description of a state

based on this principle, which forms the connexion
between Books IV and V is the proposed community
of wives, accompanied here by the proposal of com-
munity of pursuits between men and women. It has
been laid down in a cursory way (423 E sq.) that the
family along with private property would cease to exist
among the guardians of the ideal community, and this,
it now appears, was meant to imply further that men

and women should both take part in the public life of the
community. Paradoxical as this suggestion is. it is not
thrown out casually it is simply the most startling of the
;

consequences which to Plato himself seem to follow from

the principle which governs the ideal community. The
ideal community would be one which was literally and
indeed a community (itoivoavta), and every member of it
would be absolutely a partaker in it (Koircoro's) he would ;

have nothing private (Zhtoi') he would not be content

;

with doing certain external acts of a common life, but

would literally feel that he was one with other men. In
fixing upon this point, community of wives, as deserving
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 165

further discussion, Plato is forcing himself to carry out

his fundamental principle in detail and to the fullest

consequences which, he thinks, can be drawn from it.

But Book V goes on to a subject which has little

apparent connexion with this. The divisions of the Book

correspond with three difficulties which Socrates has
to face in succesion, more over-
three '
waves,' each
whelming than the one before it. The first difficulty
is to show that men and women should have the same

education and partake in the same public functions

(451 c sqq.) ; the second, that the family as it now exists
should cease to exist amongst the highest classes, and
that they should form instead one family (457 B sqq.); the
third, that the salvation of society, and its only salvation,
lies inthe sovereignty of philosophy (473 B sqq.). The
simplest way of expressing what is meant by this last
contention is to say that human
would be as nearly life

ideal as it is were regulated by

capable of being, if it

the best possible knowledge on all subjects, and that

it follows from this that the. ideal of society would be

realized if statesmanship were combined with the most

profound knowledge. We should observe that Plato
speaks of this idea as one that he has had before him
all along but has been afraid to express ; it is the ulti-
mate consequence of the principle upon which the ideal
state was based. He speaks also as if there was a close
connexion in his mind between this idea and that of
communism so that the three waves of the argument
;
'
'

form one series. One naturally wonders at first what

connexion there is between the two subjects. The con-
nexion in Plato's mind is an idea that if society were
governed by real knowledge and if men saw clearly
what their real interest is, they would see that the}'
166 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

could only live at their best by living a perfectly

common life. He finds in the constitution of human
nature something which makes common life possible to
man ; and this is the highest thing in man, that which
makes him human and that also in which he partakes of
the divine ', the philosophic element. The more it pre-
dominates the better ; its complete predominance over
the lower elements in man would involve a perfectly
common life, and, conversely, perfect community would
only be possible through its complete predominance.
To look at the matter from the other side, all the evils
of life appear to him to arise from selfishness ; and
selfishness is simply seeking one's own satisfaction in the
wrong way, seeking it in the lower instead of the higher
elements of one's nature. Unselfishness, which enables
a man most completely to live a common life with
others, one and the same thing with the predominance
is

of the philosophic element, the highest element in

man's own soul. Thus communism and the sovereignty
of philosophy, which together form the subject of this
Book, appear together to Plato as the ultimate conse-
quences of the principle upon which his ideal state is
based.
We may two aspects of the general
notice at once
idea which is he makes this
in Plato's mind, when
proposal that philosophy should by some means be
made sovereign in the state, (a) The philosophic ele-
ment, which is in which enables
the first place that
man to understand and to live with his fellows, is also

what we sometimes call the speculative clement,' the '

instinct of free thought which makes men wish to get

to the bottom of things. To a certain limited extent
1
Cf. IX. 588 I) and 589 I).
 '

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 167

this exists in every man, and without it he would not

be a human being ; but in the majority it is present only
in a subordinate form. It enables them, perhaps, to
obey certain precepts of reason which society has taught
them, and to feel that they are right in obeying them.
But it only exists in a few people as a really philosophic
or speculative impulse. It is clear that Plato was very
deeply impressed by the evils resulting from the aber-
ration of this impulse in the men in whom it is by nature
strongest. If wrongly developed, he believes it is the
greatest instrument of destruction in society; the majority
of men do no great good and no great harm in the world,
those who do great evil do so by reason of a perversion
of the philosophic element in them. The good of man-
kind requires that this, which is inherently the best thing
in human nature, should not be allowed to become
a destructive force, but should be enlisted in the service
of man. It has already been attempted, in the ideal
state, to enlist the artistic instinctand the fighting
instinct in that service ; let the power of thinking, a
still more potent force in the world, be so enlisted too.
(b) Again, the philosophic element in man answers to
what we should call the 'spiritual' element and mediaeval ;

and modern analogies to the idea of a state ruled by

philosophy may be found in the idea of a '
spiritual

state, which has been entertained, though in different

senses,by many people. One result of this idea at its
best was the mediaeval Catholic Church, and in England
in the seventeenth century many men had the idea of

a state in which religion should literally rule.

Of the particular consequences which the true idea
of the state seemed to Plato to involve, theform of
communism which he advocates is the most remarkable.
 ;

168 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC '

With regard to this, we should guard against the mis-

understanding that communism means to him the
sacrifice of the individual. As we have seen, the simple
and inevitable result of the conception of a community
in the real sense of the word seems to him to be that
the individual should lead a completely common life

but he certainly does not think that the individual would

be sacrificing himself to the community in leading this
life. On the contrary, when he demands that the best
should be done for the community, it is not in order
that the individual man may be nothing, but in order
that he may be the most that he is capable of being.
The highest lifefor each individual is that in which the
greatestnumber of people share, and the lowest that in
which the least number share.
Communism has been advocated frommany different
points of view. As advocated by Plato, it has hardly
anything in common with the communism of this
century ; it is not suggested by the evils of poverty,
and it only applies to the highest classes in the state.
The one point common to all systems of communism
is, that all meet certain assumed evils by the
profess to
external regulation ofhuman life in whole or in large
part. Plato introduces communism as supplementary
machinery to give effect to and reinforce that spirit
which education is to create. Nobody has insisted
more than he on the comparative usclcssness of legisla-
tionwhen the souls of men arc not in a right stale,
but he also feels strongly the logical necessity that the
external order of life should be made to contribute its

utmost to the moral education of men. We have already

in the earlier Books seen indications of the attitude of

mind which makes him think that for this end the
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 169

abolition of the family is devoutly to be wished for.

In his treatment of the arts, despite his intense artistic

sympathies, he adopts a theory which might easily lead
to the extirpation of art from human life. Two feelings
struggle in him, the feeling of what art may do for men,
and the feeling of the evil that is often associated with it;

and the result of the conflict is the idea that art can only
be made serviceable in the world by limiting it. In the
same way, when he deals with property and the family,
starting from the idea that the more a man leads a
common life the higher life he leads, he becomes filled
with a sense of the enormous evils which attach to these
institutions they appear to him as the great strongholds
;

of selfishness. There can be no doubt that selfish-

ness has, in fact, found in these two institutions not its
cause but its most pernicious expression. To Plato,
writing in the spirit of an enthusiast for social reform,
this factseems to prove that in order to bring about
a commonlife we must cut away these along with all

other inducements to selfishness.

Two distinct ideas therefore are combined in this part
of the Republic : the idea that the highest life is acommon
life and that, so to say, in losing himself a man finds
himself; and the idea that men had better be stripped
of all inducements not to lead this life. The latter idea
will always attract more attention. There seems to be
a perpetual conflict in the world between two feelings.
One, of which Plato may be considered a type, is that
the way to bring about an ideal state of things is to do
away with all occasions of evil. The other is, that the
way to make the best of human life is not to begin by
taking away opportunities of evil, but to use everything
that human life offers in the service of the ideal principle,
 170 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

whatever we may take it to be. This latter feeling, we

may say roughly, is represented by Aristotle. It is by
no means the opposite of idealism ; Aristotle has a more
ideal conception of human life than Plato. The prin-
ciple of pressing everything in human life into the service
of what is highest is harder to carry out, and it may
easily sink into a principle of '
accommodation ' with
evil, but it is the most ideal conception of life all the
same. Plato's theory may be compared with the idea
upon which monasticism rests, that a man can only
serve God by avoiding certain temptations which tend
to prevent him from serving God, and that therefore,
as it has sometimes been put, a man should live outside
the world. Those who hold an opposite view would say
it is a harder thing and a higher thing to serve God in

the world. At the same time it must be remembered

that it is a harder thing, and there is no doubt that
people living in the world constantly justify by their
behaviour those who would seek refuge in monasteries;
for they make use of their circumstances in the
fail to
world. men have been impressed sometimes by
Great
the thought that most people make the worst of the
circumstances surrounding them in ordinary human
society, sometimes by the thought that the only way
to mend this is to make the best of circumstances, not to
evade them.
451 c to t. To come to the various sections of the Book,
Plato first discusses the question whether
and men
women arc to share in the same education and the
same pursuits in life. He begins (451 c to 452 E) by
laying down the principle that this question must be
decided with reference to the functions which women
arc qualified to fulfil in the community. The name
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 171

Guardians which he has given to the rulers (for it is

the women of the ruling class alone that he is consider-

ing) suggests to him the analogy of watch-dogs. In
their case sex makes no difference to the function for
which they are employed is there any good reason why
;

it should in the case of human beings ? If there is not,

then women must be trained for and employed in the
service of the state, like men. The consequences may at
first appear ridiculous and grotesque, but no regard must
be paid to this feeling ; everything must give way to the
one consideration of the good of the community. This
is the principle of the Republic from beginning to end.

Plato is intensely '

utilitarian ' in the sense that he puts
the good of the community before everything else, and
we have in this passage the strongest expression of his
utilitarianism.
Assuming this principle, we have first to ask (452 E
to 456 c) whether it is possible for men and women to
share in the same occupations, for if it is possible, Plato
has no doubt that it is expedient. May he not be con-
futed upon this point out of his own mouth, since he has
all along insisted upon differentiation of functions in the
state and attributed all evils to the neglect of this
principle ? This argument, he says, though it sounds so
logical, is only superficially logical. It is a specimen of

the art, not of reasoning but of wrangling, of the mere

verbal logic, which sticks to the word and is verbally
consistent but disregards real differences of kind. To
say thatmen and women are different and must therefore
have different public functions, is like saying that long-
haired men and bald men are different and therefore
cannot both be shoemakers. For different is a wide '
'

and vague term, and the point in question is not whether

 ;

'
172 LECTURES ON PLATO'S l
REPUBLIC

men and women are different, but what the particular

kind of difference between them and whether it affects
is,

their capacity for the functions we have in view. This

is a questionof fact. Is there, asks Plato, anything
for which men, as men, and women, as women, arc
respectively gifted by nature? He answers no; men in
general show superiority to women in every pursuit
there is a general side, but no
superiority on their
specific on either side. If this is so, we
natural gift
shall expect to find between woman and woman the
same varieties of natural endowment as between man
and man, some women specially fitted for philosophy,
some for war, and so on. So far then from being
contrary to nature, the state of things now being ad-
vocated is the natural one, and the existing state of
things is unnatural.
So much then as to the proposal being possible. As
to its expediency, Plato argues (456 c to 457 B) that

no one can doubt that it is the interest of the state

that the women in it and the men in it should be as
good as possible, and that if a certain course of educa-
tion produces good men, it will also produce good
women. So the studies and pursuits that have been
prescribed for the rulers must also be followed by
their wives. Here Plato repeats the principle from
which he started there is only one thing beautiful,
;

that which does good, and only one thing ugly, that
which docs harm.
In this discussion the consideration of the '
rights
of women,' the modern aspect of the question, docs not
appear at all ;
it is a question solely of their duties to
the community, and Plato does not make his proposal
in the interest of women as a class whom he supposes
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 173

to be wronged, but in the interest of the community.

Whether would have struck an Athenian
his proposal
as favourable to women is doubtful it might very likely
;

have seemed to be dragging them out of a position in

which they would rather be left. Hardly any one would
dispute Plato's position that the real good of the com-
munity ought to prevail over every other consideration
in this matter. Most people too would accept his view
of what the good of the community is they would ;

agree that the more co-operation there is in a community

and the more every one contributes to the common life,

the better. The great question is that of the best way

to carry out this conception of public good in this case.
Plato's view of the way which men and women can
in

co-operate together for the public good is a compara-

tively narrow view. The main public functions he has
in view are the deliberative and administrative and the
military but, as it might be put now, there are thousands
;

of ways of contributing to the service of society besides

being a Member of Parliament or a soldier. One has,
then, to distinguish between Plato's principle and the
particular application which he makes of it, which is to
a certain extent determined by the circumstances of his
time. His position that the more co-operation there is
between men and women, the better, is irrefragable. As
to his application of it he has himself told us the point of
view from which it must be criticized we cannot refute
;

his conclusion by merely saying that men and women are

different, we require to consider thoroughly the question
in what respect they are different. Aristotle, when he
deals with the question, starts from the principle that
the difference between men and women is one which
fundamentally affects their social functions they ought ;
 i
74 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'
1
not to do the same things, but to supplement each other .

From the point of view which he adopts

2
it may also be
said that the analogy of the lower animals to which Plato
appeals would prove nothing, for even granting that in
certain kinds male and female are not widely differen-
is due to the fact that animals
tiated in character, this
are not so highly developed as man in man, the most ;

highly developed animal, the differentiation of the sexes

is greatest.
457 b to 2. The second ' wave '
of the argument is the dis-
cussion of the proposal to abolish the family among the
ruling class. A state family is to be substituted for
it,and the most important section of the state made
one great family. Here, as often, we are
literally into
apt to be struck by the incongruity between Plato's
principle and the machinery by which he proposes to
realize it. The principle he appeals to is as high a
principle as a man could have, the machinery makes one
realize forcibly how barbaric much of Greek civilization
was 3 But what he says cannot be dismissed with
.

a laugh or by merely saying that the proposal is im-

possible if he does go wrong, it is worth while to
;

make out where he goes wrong. He puts forward this

1
Eth. Nic. VIII. xii. 7. Cf. also Politics, 1264 b, i sq.
-
Hist. An. 608 a, 21.
:i
It is not clear whether Plato intended unpromising children and
children born unlawfully to be put to death. 459 E seems to mean this,

but the other references to the matter (460 C and 461 c) are obscure, and
in the summary given of part of the Republic in the Timatus, the ex-

pression used is tol St ruiv icaicu/v tls tjjv ak\rjv \a0pa UtaboTtov ttuKiv {Tint.
19 a), i. e. they arc to be brought up as traders, artisans, &c. It is quite
possible that in 459 e Tpi<pav is used in the emphatic sense of educating

as Guardians and Auxiliaries, as it is in the Timatus (ibidem), and in

that case the sentence docs not imply that their children should be
destroyed.
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 175

proposal upon two distinct grounds. First, it is part

of a system for regulating the number of children born
to the community, and still more for ensuring that they
shall be well bred. Secondly, it is a means for increasing
the common spirit or esprit dc corps of the community,
by extirpating the various forms of selfishness which he
conceives to arise from or attach to the present institution
of the family.
(a) First then (458 E to 461 e) he takes, as before, the
analogy of the lower animals, and asks why we should
not take the same care about the breeding of human
beings as we do about the breeding of domestic animals.
If the breeding of animals is important, much more so
is that of men and women. Accordingly he devises an
elaborate system by which the production and rearing
of children of the ruling class is to be brought under
state control, and regulated upon scientific principles.
Nowadays the question that Plato raises occupies many
people's minds very seriously. It is evident that the
conditions under which members of the community are
born are most important, and the evils which result from
entire disregard of this elementary fact are enormous.
But what extent
to is it possible, men and women
being what they are, to regulate marriage ? Plato ad-
mits that his proposal could only be carried out by an
organized system of deception, without which it would
be unendurable. Now the reasons which would make
it unendurable to those who had to submit to it are
really sound reasons. On the one hand, there never
would be in any community people so much wiser than
the rest that they could safely be trusted to regulate
other people's lives in such a matter. On the other
hand, to place men under such a control would be to
 '
176 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

treat them like animals, to ignore their reason. To

put the matter in another way : in breeding domestic
animals man clearly determines the purpose for which
they are bred ; this may or may not be better for them,
but the end of their existence man. To introduce
is in

such a scheme into a human society would imply that

certain persons in the community were to determine the
end for which other persons, the majority, were to live.
Slavery has been considered the greatest wrong that can
be done to humanity, because it is treating men like
lower animals, ignoring the right, which belongs to
every reasonable being, to make his own life and the ;

systematic breeding of slaves would be carrying this

wrong to the extreme point. In any system in which
one set of men assumed such an authority as this over
the lives of others,we should feel that the same wrong
was being committed.
{b) It is more important to consider the second argu-

ment (461 e to 466 d) by which Plato supports his

scheme, for in this he sets forth in the most striking
way his whole conception of the relation of the citizen
to the state. It is often said that his radical fault In

this and in his preceding argument is that he ignores

individuality, or sacrifices the rights of the individual
to community. But these phrases do not truly
the
indicate the point where the fault lies, or the advance
which has been made since Plato's time. We have not
come to believe, any more than he did, that an individual
has a right to do just what he pleases with himself or
his property, or a right to disregard absolutely the
interests of the community in respect to the children
he produces. Every right which he possesses depends
on the recognition of others and is held on certain
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 177

conditions ; in other words, it implies a Koivoivia. In-

dividuality and community, we ought to recognize, are
not mutually exclusive things, as the antithesis of '
the
individual and the community ' suggests. The contrast
expressed by this antithesis is really a contrast between
different forms of individuality, or between the less

comprehensive and the more comprehensive ends with

which a man identifies himself. There is no such thing
as an individual in the abstract, a human being literally
independent of all others. Nor, conversely, is there such
a thing as a community which is not a community of
individuals, or a common life or interest which is not
lived or shared by men and women. Nor is individuality,
in the true sense of the word, diminished by participation
in this common life or interest. A public servant who
devotes as much of himself as he can to the public
service does not cease to be an individual ; he puts as
much of liimsclf into his work as does the most selfish
miser. When a man so completely throws himself into
the common interest that he can be said to live for
others, he does not lose his individuality ; rather his
individuality becomes a greater one. In this sense it
may be said that what Plato had in view was not the
abolition of individuality, but the raising of it to the
highest possible pitch through esprit de corps.
It would be instructive in this connexion to examine

two common expressions, the phrase esprit de corps, and

the saying that corporations have no conscience,' which
'

seems to contradict the notions that we attach to esprit

de corps. By esprit de corps we mean a spirit which
is felt and possessed by individual men ; a member of
a regiment who is stimulated by it does not feel it to be
something outside himself. As we all know, a man at
VOL. II. N
 '

'
178 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

times does in the strength of this spirit things which

he could never do without it, and when he does so he

certainly is not losing his individuality. On this fact
Plato has seized. He practically says that the ideal
of human life would be realized if every man lived
perpetually in the feeling which all men under great
excitement at great national crises do feel. We may say
that this is impossible, but then so is every ideal, and
it is none the less noble an ideal for that. Aristotle
however says that Plato's scheme for abolishing the
family and re-creating it on a larger scale would not
accomplish the result it aims at at all. It would not
really re-create family feeling on a larger scale the ;

family affection which it would diffuse among members

of the community would be but a watery affection '

1
(vbafjrjs (jyiXCa) This is a true enough criticism, and it
.

brings us to the considerations which have made people

say that corporations have no conscience. It is an

undoubted and humiliating truth that when a number

of men act together their sense of responsibility is often
weakened instead of being intensified. Here again the
fact of acting together with others does not destroy
a person's individuality, it simply means that he so far
assumes a new individuality ; in the supposed case this
new individuality is lower than his customary indi-
viduality, in the cases mentioned before it is higher.
Such observations as Corporations have no '
conscience,'
or '
What is everybody's business is nobody's business,'
bring out an important fact — that human nature is

limited in the degree to which it can really lead a

common life. What is more, if human nature is over-
strained in this way, it docs indeed live a common life

Politics, 1^6^ Bj 15. Sec also the whole passage beginning 1261 B, 33.
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 179

in a sense, but it does so at the cost of its own higher

individuality. When it is said that Plato ignores the
rights of the individual, the real point is that he has not
seized upon this half of the truth.
We may now apply this remark to the particular case
of the family. There can be no doubt that the various
evils which Plato associates with the family are all to

some extent real. He regards the family as the centre

of mean and petty selfishness. So it often is. Take for
example what is implied in our word nepotism,' or '

consider how many of the greatest evils in history have

been due to dynastic interests, which are simply family
interests on a large scale. Nowhere does the selfishness
of man come out more obviously than in matters con-
nected with the institution of the family. But also
nowhere does the unselfishness of man come out more
obviously. Some of the noblest things that have ever
been done, as well as some of the basest, have been
associated with the love of man and woman or with the
love of parent and child. In fact the individuality of
men here asserts itself in its intensest form, both for
good and for evil. That being so, the problem raised
by Plato's proposal is this there being certain elementary
:

and ineradicable instincts in human nature, capable at

once of being the most selfish and the most unselfish,
what is the best way to deal with them and with the
institutions which are their result ? Plato says that it

is best in the first place to remove as far as possible

all opportunities for the selfish development of these
instincts, and in the second place to give them scope in

such a sphere and on such a scale that they must be

unselfish. We might answer : The latter part of this
idea is impossible, and the attempt to carry it out
N 2
 ;

'
180 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

would only result in the '

watery affection '
that Aristotle
describes ; the right way to deal with the instincts which
create the family is not to attempt to resolve them into
something higher, but to make the best of them as they
are and use them as a preparation and education for
something higher we cannot make the state a gigantic
:

family, but we can make the life of the family a prepara-

tion for the service of the state ; for the family may be
an institution which people learn from their earliest
in

years an unselfishness which is not limited by the family.

Aristotle in his criticism of Plato's communism puts
the most obvious and far-reaching objection when he
says that Plato's fundamental fallacy is an exaggerated
conception of the virtue of unity. criticism, how- This
ever, would be expressed more truly by saying that
Plato has a one-sided and defective conception of unity
he does not realize enough that unity in human society
can only be obtained through diversity. The ideal state
of society would be one in which there was the greatest-
scope for individual diversity, and in spite of that the
greatest unity.
To return to Plato's demand that the production of
children should be regulated, perhaps most people who
thought about would agree with him that the production
it

of children is one of the most important factors affecting

the welfare of the community, that it ought therefore to
be governed by the best knowledge that can be had
about it, and that individual members of the community
ought to feel their responsibility in this more than in
most things. Hut Plato goes on to say that the way
to accomplish his end is to entrust the regulation of the
matter to a few highly trained and all -powerful persons.
Now we, on the contrary, should probably all agree that
 COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 181

Plato's object can only be accomplished in one way,

namely, by the diffusion throughout the community of
that knowledge and that sense of responsibility which
Plato would have concentrated in a few people. This of
course could only be a matter of slow growth.
At this point in the argument there follows a digression 466 d to
471
upon the usages of war, by which Socrates evades for
a time the question whether such a state of society as he
has sketched is possible. He first describes how children
are to be brought up to be soldiers (466 D
467 e), and
to
then treats of the bearing of citizens towards one another
and towards their enemies (468 a to 47 1 c). There are
here several curious anticipations of mediaeval chivalry.
Young people are to serve as squires ; love is made
a motive to military prowess ;
poetry is to be the
handmaid of war and there is a general
; fusion of
sentiment and policy 1
Again, hero-worship, . to which
emphatic recognition is given, takes the form of a regular
2
canonization of great men
in which the Delphic oracle ,

may be said to take an analogous position to the Church,

as the ultimate authority. The Delphic oracle is pro-
minent in the Republic ; Plato conceives it to be a centre
of unity to the Greek race, and one of the agencies which
counteract its Here the oracle is made
disintegration.
to regulate to some extent the usages of war 3 Plato .

lays down that no one is ever to allow himself to be

taken alive in battle, and that any one who disgraces
himself in battle is to be degraded to a lower social

1
Cf. especially 468 B with 458 E ('We will make the nuptial union as
sacred as it can be, and it will be most sacred when it is most useful ').
2
Thuc. V. 11.
3
Of such canonization as Plato speaks of there is a famous historical
instance in the worship of Brasidas at Amphipolis.
 '
1 82 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

class. As to the treatment of enemies, no Greek, he

insists, ought ever to be enslaved by a Greek. He
has in mind throughout the unity of the Greek race,
and the natural antagonism of Greece as a whole to
the barbarians. This feeling determines his attitude
towards the usages of war, and makes him forbid not
only the enslavement of Greeks but other usages which
tend to perpetuate and intensify enmity between Greeks,
the offering of arms in temples, the ravaging of the land,
and the burning of houses. The war of Greeks against
Greeks should be regarded not as legitimate war but
as civil (oratri?) 1 for the Greeks are one race.
, What
he says reminds us that, as we find in Thucydides,
the Peloponnesian War acquired, as it went on, more
and more of the character of a social war between
class and class, and that horrible results followed from
this. Some of the principles which Plato lays down
appear to have been recognized by the Spartans. The
spoiling of the dead beyond a certain point was for-
bidden so in ; Plutarch's ApopJithegmata Laconica-
we have a saying, attributed to Lycurgus, which closely
resemblcs what Plato says upon the subject. The
Spartans also differed from the rest of Greece in not
hanging up arms as offerings in temples, which again
is the subject of a saying of Cleomcncs in the Apoph-

tlicgmata Laconical. The refusal of leave for the van-

quished to bury their dead was very rare in Greece
and a sign of bitter hatred. Leave was refused to
the Phocians in the Second Sacred War (B.C. 353).

1
Cf. Callicratidaa In Ken. Hell. i. 0. 1
1

"
p. 228 K.
:
'
p. 224 is. The reason there given foi the practice 1- very differenl
Ml PI
 ;

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 183

Lysander also was reproached for leaving the Athenians

unburied at Aegos Potami.
Having dealt with the usages of war between Greek
and Greek, Plato concludes in a very Greek way by
putting the barbarians in quite a different category
to them Greeks may behave in war as they now do
to one another. It is a striking instance of how limited
a conception some of the greatest men have had of the
rights of humanity.
 '

IX. PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE

[Republic, V. 471 c to VI. 502 c]

47 1 c to After this interlude Socrates can no longer postpone

meeting the third and greatest of the '
three great waves
of the argument : All that has been said of the ideal
state is excellent, and we can say a great deal more
about it ; but is it possible ?

Before revealing the paradoxical secret which he has

got in store, Socrates makes some preliminary remarks
on the relation of ideals generally to reality. An ideal,
he tells us, is none the worse for being unrealizable.
We started with asking, What is justice ? and that
means, What is justice in itself or as such? Now we
must not expect any human being whom we call just to
be, so to say, embodied justice, but must be content to
regard justice as a -napdhtiyjxa or pattern, to which the
justcst man approximates most nearly, but only approxi-
mates. In other words there will always be, in Plato's
phraseology, a certain difference between things as they
are in themselves (to. Spra), and things as they come
l
into existence in our actual experience (ra yiyvo^(va) .

1
Cf, for example, 485 B.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 185

The same difference may be expressed as the difference

between the ideal and the actual. Justice being of the
nature of a pattern for we may say boldly human action,
that what we decided to be the
ideal community is the
truth of human life true human life would be as we ;

have described it. All actual forms of human life are

to a certain extent falsifications of the truth ; they fall

short of it. When we are asked to show the possibility

of an ideal, we must first lay down that no ideal is

actually possible, and that to expect it to be so is to

misunderstand it. For it is in the nature of things that
action should get less hold of the truth than words
(Aefis), or, as we should rather say, than thought. This
is a general principle applicable to all ideals. Accord-
ingly in the Laivs, in looking back to the Republic, Plato
still insists that the true pattern was what he had there
drawn ; but he says that it was only practicable for gods
l
or children of gods . In the Republic he abates nothing
of his ideal ; he is simply content to exhibit it as an
ideal ; when challenged as to its possibility, he feels
bound to show, not how human nature can realize this
ideal, but how it can approximate to the realization of it.

This task resolves itself into the question, What is it

in human life, as it is, which prevents it from realizing

its and what is
ideal, the least change in things, as they
are, which would enable do so? (It is implied that it to
the questions of the ideal good of man and of the source
of evil in man are really the same.) There is one change,
not a small one but still possible, which would bring about
the ideal of human life ; and, again, there is one great
source of evil in human life. The change would consist

1
Laws, V. 739 B sqq. Plato there proceeds to show what he thinks tht
nearest practicable approximation to the institutions of Rep. IV. and V.
 ;

'
186 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

in making philosophy sovereign, or, in other words, in

the union of political power and philosophical insight
and the radical source of all the evils of mankind is the
divorce between these two factors. This union of political
power and philosophical insight would involve negatively
the exclusion from power of most of those who now
have it, and from philosophy of most of those who now
pursue it.

This negative requirement is of course what will

excite most opposition and outcry. It touches at their
tenderest point most of the leading men of the time,
whether political leaders or leaders of thought ; and this
explains why in what follows Plato is at such pains to
defend his position. In his defence he addresses himself
rather to the leaders of thought than to the leaders of
politics. He is more impressed by the evils which
resultfrom the waste or wrong use of speculative genius
than by those which result from the comparative ignor-
ance of governors. Book VI is full of the tragedy which
iscontinually going on in the ruin or uselessness of the
most gifted men for by philosophers he does not under-
;

stand merely what we understand, he means men of

genius in the fullest sense of the word ; and whereas we
mean by '
philosopher ' a man with one special kind of
gift, his description of a philosopher enumerates all the
qualities which go to make up a great man.
From this point to the end of Book VII there is no real
break in the argument. It is a continuous development

of what is involved in the position just laid down, (i)

The first obvious section is that in which it is shown what
is meant by philosophers (474 to the end of Book V). 1:

(2) The second section (VI. 4S4 a to 487 a) shows that,

if this is what we understand by philosophers, they should
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 187

be the only persons fit to rule, because all the

logically
and excellences, required of the perfect man, follow
gifts
from the conception of the philosophic nature. These
two sections together put before us Plato's ideal of the
philosophic nature, and show us what philosophy ought
to mean ; and accordingly (3) the next section gives us
the converse of the picture and shows us what philosophy
does mean as a matter of fact. Here (487 a to 497 a)
Plato tries to explain the admitted and glaring contrast
between the ideal of the philosophic nature and the
actual facts about it. The result is to show that these
facts are due to the want of adjustment between the
philosophic nature and its environment, that it is society
itself which is to blame for these facts, for society corrupts
or makes useless its noblest natures. (4) The next step
therefore is to point out how society can adjust itself to
philosophy, and how the environment of the philosophic
nature is to be made favourable (497 A to 502 c). This
finally leads us round again to (5) the question of educa-
tion ; for the adjustment of the soul to its surroundings
and of its surroundings to it, is a question of education
in the large sense of that word. Therefore, starting with
a new and enlarged conception of the philosophic nature,
we have to ask what education implies over and above
the education of ^ovctlki] which has already been con-
sidered. The nurture of the philosophic nature through
a training in the sciences, which leads eventually to the
study of what we should call philosophy, is the subject of
a section extending from VI. 502 C to VII. 534 E. The
philosophic nature in its essence is that in man which
seeks to understand things, which draws him to ask
questions of the world about him and to try to find
himself at home in it. The sciences represent the efforts
 188 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

of man to understand the world, and by being trained in

them the soul comes to understand the world. They
are the product of the philosophic spirit, just as art again
is the product of it in another phase or stage ; and as, in
the part of education previously described, art was used
to be the nurture of the soul, so here the sciences are
used to be the nurture of the soul in another stage.
(6) The last section of the argument {535 A to the end
of Book VII) accordingly deals with the practical
application of this idea and the actual distribution of the
educational life of the Guardians, the order of studies
and the time spent on each.
.;74i;to t. First then we come to Plato's analysis of the

Book V philosophic nature, intended to justify the statement that

it alone is fit to rule. It is a passage in which we must
be careful not to jump at conclusions, and must be
content with what Plato actually says.
He first treats of the generic character of the philo-
sophic and then gives us its
spirit, differentia, that is,

what distinguishes it from other spirits which bear

a resemblance to it.

The generic character of the philosopher is deduced

(474]; to 475 k) from the simple meaning of the word;
he is a lover of something, namely of 'wisdom.' In
English the word has lost its etymological meaning.
'
Speculative,' in a general sense, is a more appropriate
word than 'philosophic' to describe what is meant by

(/jt\o'o-o0o?, though it scarcely covers the same ground.

Probably in Plato's time all that the word necessarily
implied in ordinary use was ;i sort of higher culture and
a claim to pursue some subject in a rather higher spirit
than was common, so that the most different men,
a statesman, an artist, a man of science, might be said
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 189

to be philosophic (</HAo<ro</>eif), not necessarily with the

meaning that they speculated or theorized on their
subject, but simply in so far as they followed it in
a higher spirit. We sometimes use the word in this
sense still; we might speak of a 'philosophic'
thus
doctor or lawyer, meaning one who pursued his subject
for its own sake, and who went beyond the ordinary
range of it. Plato fixes at once on that element in the
word which in our use of the word '
philosopher ' we tend
to leave out of sight, the element which signifies emotion.
'
Philosopher means somebody peculiarly fond of a certain
'

thing. What does this fondness imply? When we

characterize a man as being essentially a man fond of
a certain thing, as a man peculiarly susceptible to beauty
(e/jcouKo's), or a born lover of distinction (^tAort/xo?), or
aman with a natural taste for wine ((plkoivos), or the like,
we mean that he has a sort of indiscriminate enthusiasm
or appetite for the particular thing to which he is thus
susceptible. The man susceptible to beauty is normally
and perpetually in love accordingly a whole vocabulary
;

has literally been invented in order to enable such

persons to describe the object to which they are sus-
ceptible, and to leave none of it unmarked. There is
to them a certain charm in youth which they will do
anything not to lose. So with the lover of distinction ;

he has an indiscriminate appetite for honours if he ;

cannot be a general he will be a lieutenant ; he will be

anything rather than not get some title. (We must not
suppose that in this description Plato ignores facts about
which he is silent. He has emphasized one side of
enthusiasm for a given object, and with perfect truth ;

but he has omitted to remark that all these tempera-

ments are peculiarly critical as well as indiscriminate.
 '
igo LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

The undoubted and curious fact is that, when a person

is intensely fond of a given thing, he is peculiarly critical
about it. In the case of wine, and again in the case of
ambition, this is obviously so.. Yet, as in these cases,
the good critic must be enthusiastic about what he
criticizes. When we call a man by a name which
implies that fondness for a certain thing is of the essence
of him, we ought to mean that this fondness is in the
first instance an indiscriminate appetite. The best analogy
to express what he should be is the most homely ; he
should be like a man who has a good and strong diges-
tion, he should be the opposite of squeamish.)
Nowto apply this to the philosophic nature. We
must not say that a man is of a philosophic nature unless
he has this indiscriminate appetite for fxad^ixara. We are
here again at a loss for a word for knowledge is not ;
'
'

general enough. Plato includes under the title $iAo/za0eis,

people whom we should certainly not include under the

title '
seekers of knowledge '
; he includes theatre-goers,
lovers of art, anybody to whom it is a keen pleasure to
exercise his eyes and cars. MavOdvtiv means, in fact,

any exercise of mind through which we get a new

experience.
We have so far arrived at this, that the philosopher
is a person who has a boundless curiosity for new
experience ; and this is his generic character. But it

is obvious that we cannot say that every one that has

this character is a born philosopher. It is shared by
many whom we should not call philosophers; by theatre-
goers, concert-goers, and intelligent artisans. They have
some affinity with the philosopher, in having this indis-

criminate pleasure in exercising their minds ; but we must

ask, What is it that differentiates the philosopher from
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 191

those who share this generic character ? The philosopher

proper is not one who likes looking at everything new,
but one who likes looking at the truth l
.

But what do we mean by the truth, the specific object

of the philosopher's vision, and how are we to distinguish
the truth ? Plato proceeds (475 E to end of Book V) in a
preliminary and general way to answer this question, and
his answer brings before us, though in a statement which,
he implies, is only a brief resume of something already
familiar to his hearers, his conception of '
forms ' or
'
ideas ' (dbr], elsewhere iSe'ai).

The assumption with which he starts, is simply that

there are distinct kinds of things or forms of being ;

justice, for instance, is absolutely distinct from injustice,

good from evil, beauty from ugliness. Further, when-
ever we speak of a 'kind' or 'form' of thing, as of justice
or beauty, we mean that it is one; that there is a likeness
in all the things that belong to this kind ; that justice,
for example, in however many things it may occur,
remains one and the same justice. Each distinct form
or kind is thus a unity. But, further, each distinct kind
of thing appears as a great many things or, as he puts ;

it, communicate with one another

these forms or kinds '

and with bodies and with actions'; and thus each appears
as a multiplicity. What are called '
forms then ' are, in
the first place, the elements of unity in the manifold
objects or things which we apprehend by the senses.
Now if we go back to the people who like using their
eyes and ears, and from whom the philosopher has
to be distinguished, we find that the objects on which
they exercise their minds are just these manifold things,
1
Toil? rr)s a\T]6eias (pi\o6edfj.ova.s, — OtaoQai is the word used of spectators
at the theatre.
 '
i9 2 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

voices, colours, figures, not beauty as such, but this, that,

and the other beautiful thing. Whereas the philosopher
is the man who is able to distinguish the 'kind' or 'form,'
and who loves to do so.

In order to characterize these states of mind further,

Plato goes on to show (476 d) that the philosopher has
knowledge (yvanrj), while the mere (fuXofxadijs has only
'opinion' (bo^a) 1
. Now when we say that we 'know'
a thing we imply that it has being — in plain English.
that itand the being of a thing is exactly conter-
is ;

minous with its knowableness if you ask what anything ;

really is, the answer must be that it is all that is known

about it. On the other hand what is the negation of
being is also the negation of knowableness it is nothing, ;

—
nonentity not a mysterious something beyond what
we know, but just nothing, of which we can say nothing
and think nothing. What answers to this on the part
of the mind, as knowledge answers to being, is utter
ignorance. (Ignorance in the full sense is blankness of
the mind, and we must not read this passage as if Plato
spoke of ignorance as a faculty, having an object called
'
not-being '
; ignorance is the negation of faculty, and
its object is no object.) Now in ordinary language we
distinguish knowing from mere thinking or opinion, which
lies between these two extremes of perfect knowledge or

mental illumination and perfect ignorance or darkness.

And knowledge and opinion arc both called powers or
faculties (Bwcijueis). How do wc distinguish one power
from another? It is not something that we can sec,

distinguished by colour or shape wc distinguish it only ;

by what it does, by its province and operation. Know-

1
Besides what we call opinions, hli^a covers what we should call

perceptions and even fi 1 lings,

 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 193

ledge and opinion, we agree, are different powers they ;

must therefore have different objects or operations, or

produce different effects. The object of knowledge is
what is or, in other words, the operation of knowledge
;

is to produce consciousness of what is. Opinion also

must have an object we cannot think nothing. On the
;

other hand, it cannot have the same object as knowledge.

It results that the object of opinion must both be and

not be. We can neither say that it is in the full sense,

nor that it is not in the full sense ; for if we could, opinion
would not be different both from knowledge and from
ignorance.
With these results let us turn back (479 a) to the
distinction we found between the manifold objects
which present themselves to ordinary perception, and
the distinct forms or elements of unity which underlie
them. There are those, as we saw, who like to use
their minds on the audible, visible, tangible world and
its multiplicity this they take to be the reality, and it
;

is the sole reality that they believe in. And there are
those, on the other hand, who assume the reality of what
Plato calls forms (of some principle, for instance, which
constitutes beauty itself, or justice itself), in which the
manifold objects participate, but which none of them is.

If we asked people of the former sort to tell us what

is beauty, justice, weight, they would answer by pointing
out beautiful objects, just actions, heavy things. But if

we take any one of these many things, and observe it in

a different relation or position, we find that, in Plato's
language, it plays double, or exhibits opposite qualities.
Take a beautiful thing and put it in a different situation,
and it is made ugly
easily ;
— this is most obvious in the
case of colours. Take a just thing, an act or a law ;

VOL. II. O
 '

194 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

do the act or apply the law under different circumstances,

and it is easy to make it unjust. Take a heavy thing,
and it will be light when compared with what is heavier
still. Thus what Plato says is illustrated alike from
the spheres of art,morality, and nature. Each of the
many things that come under any one category holds
of opposite qualities ; there seems no reason for saying
it is this rather than that ; we can most simply express
its by saying that it is both. It both is and is
nature
not, e. is and is not beautiful, is and is not heavy.
i.

It answers then to what has been said of the object of

opinion. These manifold objects, which we point to

if asked what anything is, are the very objects which

the bulk of mankind hold to be the only reality.

Opinion is thus the state of mind of most people on
most things. Yet it is clear that this state of mind does
not correspond to what we expect knowledge to be, nor
its object to what we expect reality to be. We may
therefore say generally that what appears as the reality
to ordinary people in their ordinary, received opinions
x
about most things is '
tumbling about between what
'
'

is' (the full reality) and 'what is not' (what has no

reality at all).
Returning to the point at which we started, we have
defined the philosophic nature as that which loves to
look at the truth, and this is now found to mean that
the philosophic nature is always looking for unity in the

manifold or variety of which our ordinary experience is

made up. For our ordinary experience is emphatically

contained in a great number of separate objects ; but,
when we think, we cannot but see that these many things
do not satisfy our idea of complete reality, and we have
1
TSi twv iroWuJv TtoWd. v^jxi^a icaXov n vipi ical twv aWuv, 479 D.
 '

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 195

to seek for some principle or law or unity underlying

these many objects. Everybody, we may remark, admits
this to some extent. For instance, we all must recognize,
if it is put to us, that justice did not come into existence
with any particular law, and does not perish when any
particular law becomes obsolete and that there must be ;

some more permanent principle of justice underlying

the actual laws and customs of society. And the same
thing is still more obvious in physical science the first ;

thing we have to learn when we try to understand

physical phenomena is that such things as weight are
relative. What Plato here calls philosophy is the clear
and complete recognition of what we some extent
all to
admit. To state his conception of the philosophic mind
briefly, it is one which constantly looks for principles or
laws or unities of which the manifold of our experience
is the phenomenon *.

Plato's conception of forms corresponds to what we

have in mind when we speak of '
principles ' in morality
and of '
laws ' in science. What he says applies alike to
moral, aesthetic, and physical conceptions ; the form in
every case is that which is constant under variation, and
it is what the man of science is always trying to get at.
To the ordinary mind it seems at first unreal, less real

than the ordinary view of things as they appear, the

sensible world ; but the world as it is for science, the
world of what Plato calls forms, is not a second, shadowy,
unreal world, it is the same world better understood.
Plato speaks in this passage of the '
communion

1
We may compare Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and stanzas
52 and 54 in his Adonais, and Rossetti's sonnet, Soul's Beauty, with the
language in which Plato contrasts sensible phenomena with the unseen
principles which underlie them.
O 2
196 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

(koivoovlo) of forms '

with acts and bodies,' their being
communicated and bodies (476 a). The meaning
to acts
of the expression may be put as follows: — If you take
any given act called a just act, you will see it is not the
whole of justice it only partakes in justice along with
;

other acts. Justice may be regarded as something com-

municable (kowov) in which various acts and persons
partake without diminishing or modifying justice, as the
common interest of a community is shared in by all its
members without being diminished, and remains some-
thing one and the same in them all. The sense in which
forms are said, in the same place, to communicate with
one another, is different. If you take a given act, person,
or thing, you find it is the meeting-point of various
principles or forms. A particular act is never merely
just ; it always has other qualities besides, and it may
even be partly unjust. So the forms of justice and
injustice and other forms meet and communicate with
one another in this act. In the Sophist Plato tells us
that one of the great ways
which scientific knowledge
in

shows itself is in recognizing what forms thus communicate

with one another, and what forms have no communication
with one another \
Plato contrasts clear and complete perception of a truth
(perception of the form) with confused perception of it,

by contrasting waking with dreaming vision (476 c). The

ordinary man is in a dream with regard (amongst many
other things) to justice like a man in a dream he takes
;

the resemblance for that which it resembles, or in other

words takes one thing for another with which it is so far,

but only so far, the same. For, Plato says, he identifies

1
See Sophist, 251 D, and 252 E to 253 c. Cf. also Politicus, 277 E to
378 E.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 197

particular just laws and actions with the principle of

justice. What does Plato mean by this? Our first im-
pulse, if asked what justice is, would be to instance some
familiar actions, precepts, or institutions. We may be
right in thinking that the main part of justice for us
consists in them ; but if (to take this instance) a man
identifies justice with certain laws, he may be reduced
to a hopeless difficulty if it can be pointed out that the
laws become unjust or obsolete. This has always made
mankind look for principles that remain constant as the
world changes. Laws, people say, may change, but
justice remains justice. acts on the
Again, if a man
principle which Plato describes, that certain actions he
is familiar with are justice, when he comes to a just

action which looks rather different he thinks it is not

just, because he has identified justice with another thing.
In this he is like a man to whom shadows and superficial
resemblances are the whole reality. This is the meaning
of Plato's insistence that the just act is not justice, but is,

as he puts it, like justice.

2. The next section of the argument is complementary Book vi to

4 7 A
to that which has gone before it ; it develops the con-
ception of the philosophic nature from its more ethical
side. From the general description he has given of that
nature Plato now proceeds to deduce the ethical charac-
which it seems to him to imply. If the philosophic
teristics

nature were what this deduction shows it ought to be, there

could, he claims, be no doubt that it should be placed at
the head of society.
We have reached this conclusion first, the philosophic :

nature has an indiscriminate appetite for knowing about

things ; secondly, its search for knowledge is distinguished
from other kindred forms of activity by the fact that it is
 '
198 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

always trying to get at the underlying principles or

'
forms of which the manifold and changing world of
'

experience, as it presents itself to us, is the partial

appearance. We have next to ask. What is the bearing
of this conclusion on the fitness of the philosophic nature
to govern ? and this again brings us back to the question,
What is involved in being a good ruler or guardian

(484 c)?
In order to keep or guard a thing you must have
a clear vision of it. If then a man is to keep or guard
laws and institutions and to improve them when they
want reforming, he clearly must not be blind he must ;

have in his mind some clear pattern or principle by

which he can know whether what he is maintaining is
really just and expedient, and to which he can appeal
when he wants to change existing institutions. To
expand what Plato says, a statesman cannot know
when the existing order is failing to serve its purpose,
and in what way to reform it, unless he has in his
mind some definite principle to go upon as to the
purpose of that order. The perception of forms or prin-
ciples is therefore of vital importance for the governor ;

and if a man who possesses it can add to it what is

called experience (lix-neipia) he will have the essential

requisites for whether used
good government. 'EfiireipCa,

in a good or in a depreciatory sense, means that knowledge

which comes from habitually having to do with a thing.
It may be extremely valuable it may be almost worth- ;

less. Thus ifx-neij>ia sometimes denotes mere superficial

acquaintance with a thing, and is contrasted with know-
ledge of principles as we contrast rule of thumb with
science 1
. Sometimes, as in this passage, it is used to
'
In this sense Plato often uses Tpt0f/ ; cf. 493 B.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 199

denote the real acquaintance which comes from practice.

In all such cases, it is represented as the necessary filling

up of knowledge of principle for a man cannot carry ;

out principles unless he knows how to recognize them in

the details of life and to apply them to details. True
knowledge of principles involves a fortiori the knowledge
of details. Plato is impressed with this truth and in ;

his scheme of philosophic education in Book VII, the

fifteen years from the age of thirty-five to the age of
fifty are set apart exclusively to the special purpose
of acquiring the experience which is necessary in men
who are to become But what is here
leading statesmen.
insisted on is the supreme importance for the statesman
of having a principle in his mind. Without that ex-
l
perience is nothing .

It to ask (485
only remains now A to 48 7 a) whether
the philosophic nature carries with it the other qualities,
moral and intellectual, which go to make up a good and
great character. This is somewhat analogous to the
question in Book II, whether 'spirit' is compatible with
gentleness. In that case Plato decided that the one
quality, if real, implied the other, and his answer is

the same here. He proceeds to deduce from the simple

conception of love of truth all the virtues which seem
to him to be part of perfect human nature. He first

describes afresh in emphatic language the essence of the

philosophic nature. It involves the passion for reality,
the impulse to get at, and to be at one with, the per-
manent laws or principles of things. To such a nature,
he remarks, there nothing too great and nothing too
is

little for study, because everything is capable of leading

to the truth (cf. 402 c). From such a disposition there
1
Cf. 409, 493 B, 520 c and 539 B.
 '
2oo LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

follows instinctive hatred of falsehood. Self-control

follows no less, because the love of truth is emphatically
an absorbing passion it is an appetite {kinQv^ia), and
;

when a man's appetites are intensely set in one direction,

other desires grow weaker like a stream whose waters
are diverted. Again, any kind of meanness or spiteful -
ness or little-mindedness is inconsistent with such
a nature, for the essence of it is to be always reaching
out after the whole world, divine. Courage human and
must follow too, for the fear of death is impossible to
a mind to which human life is a mere fragment in
a greater whole, and which has its vision set on all time
and on all existence. And justice must follow, for a
mind not influenced by fear, greed, or personal passion
has nothing to make it unjust 1
. There are also intel-

lectual qualities which will go with such a nature. It

must be quick and retentive, for a man cannot love

learning if the practice of it is constant pain to him.
It must also possess eju/^erpux —a sort of mental symmetry
or proportion. This is a quality which makes the mind,
2
so to say, naturally adaptable to the nature of things .

(Plato is fond of representing the relation between subject

and object in knowledge as the relation between two
things which are akin to one another and like one
another. It is habitual with him to say that a soul which
easily learns is one which has a great and natural affinity

1
Or 8u<r£t5/i/3oAo9, i. c. difficult to deal with in business.
3
£11070)705, i. c. easily converted into any required shape, is used in
nnc sentence as an equivalent to ifi/jurpos. The epithet «ux<Jp<s,
literally '
graceful,' is coupled with them. This also is a word expressing
primarily a physical characti n In It 1 ,
equivali at l<> tvnxvtia' \ 'well-
,

shaped.' In III. 400 11 sq. /xovcticrj is, in effect, said to make the mind
and tvap/joaro^ (apt or adaptable
fvrr^Tjfxojv In . that passage good taste,

good manners, good feeling are what the words refer to.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 201

to things about Learning is the conforming of one's

it.

mind so as to everybody finds in learning

fit things ;

that, while most things are difficult, there are some which
it is comparatively easy for him to conform his mind to ;

and the mind which is well proportioned (e/xjixerpos) is the

mind which is most ready to be thus conformed to most
things. Thus in the Sophist 1
, the soul is said to be
liable two forms of evil, corresponding to bodily
to
disease and to bodily deformity the former is vice, the ;

latter is ignorance it is described as a condition where

;

the soul has an impulse to think, but '

thinks beside the
mark because
'
there is a want of frv^/xerpta between the
soul and truth ; ignorance is ajwerpta. The philosophic
nature, then, will have a natural predisposition to get hold
of things; it will naturally adapt itself to the form and
nature of things.) now, Plato asks, who would
And
hesitate to entrust the state to people endowed with
the philosophic nature, if it necessarily implies all the
qualities we have enumerated ?
Plato has here described the philosophic nature, as
he understands it, in its fullness. It is simply the ideally
good nature ; human nature completely gifted, and with
free play given to all its gifts. His idea of it is at
variance with our use of the word '
philosophic,' but it is

quite consistent with the gradual development of the

philosophic element in the soul as it has been described
in the Republic from the first. The leading idea in
Plato's conception of this element is that it is that in the
soul which prompts it to go out of itself and unite itself
with something else which is akin to it. It is thus the
source in man of very different things. It is the source
of gentleness and sociability, for it is that which draws
1
228.
 '
ro2 LECTURES ON PLATo's l
REPUBLIC

men together with a sense of the familiarity of man to

man. It is the source of the love of beauty, including
the literary and the artistic sense, for in what is beautiful
the soul finds something which it recognizes as its own
(oiKtlov) and in the presence of which it feels at home.
Lastly, it is the source of love of truth, and this means
the impulse to understand and be at one with the world
about us. Though ordinary English psychology would
not agree with Plato in deriving these three different
things from a single source, there are many familiar
facts which illustrate, and to a certain extent bear out,
what he says. For example, we all know that for us
to understand another person, or to understand human
nature, sympathy is the essential thing. An '
unsym-
pathetic '
man is a stupid man. The great masters in
understanding human nature have been those who have
felt at home with all mankind. Similarly in studying
things, even the most abstract, we cannot understand
them unless we feel a certain interest in them, and that
is the same sort of feeling as sympathy.
The philosophic element in man, then, is the essentially
human clement it is what makes a man a man, and there-
;

fore in its fullness it implies a perfect humanity, a fully

gifted human nature. For a conception parallel to this
we should turn in modern times to religious thought.
It is to be found God and man which is
in the love of
represented in the New
Testament as resulting in all
virtues, and making a perfect man. There is an analogy,
for instance, between Plato's deduction of all virtues
from philosophy, and St. Paul's deduction of all virtues
from 'charity' in i Corinthians xiii. For in this
conception of philosophy there are combined the
scientific spirit and the religious spirit in their highest
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 203

forms. It is the desire to be at one with the laws of

nature, and to live according to nature and as to Plato ;

the world is emphatically the work of a divine intelli-

gence, being at one with nature is also in a sense being

at one with God. That is why he speaks of such
understanding in terms which we should apply to
religious emotion.
3. To the proof that the philosophic nature is fit 487 a io
497
to ruleAdeimantus (487 A) makes precisely the objection
which every reader of the Republic is inclined to make.
This sounds very logical, he says, but the facts are all
the other way if you look at the people who are called
;

philosophers, who pursue the study of philosophy beyond

the mere purposes of education, the best are made use-
less by the pursuit of philosophy, and the majority are

either eccentric or disreputable. One may compare this

with what might be said with equal truth about the
religious spirit some people are disposed to say that
;

what is called the love of God results either in a saintli-

ness which does no good to mankind, or in a zeal which
is alloyed with ambition, cruelty, and fanaticism, or,
worst of all, in cant and hypocrisy.
Socrates, so far from denying the facts alleged about
philosophers, heartily admits them. It is the very truth
of these facts which has led him to say that the evils
of mankind result from the divorce between speculation
and action. He goes on to attempt to explain them,
considering in order the uselessness of the few genuine
philosophers, the corruption of most of those who are
gifted with the philosophic nature, and the usurpation
of the name of philosopher by charlatans.
E to 489 d) Plato puts before us, in the
First (487
allegory or image (eiKow) of the ship, a picture of the
 '
204 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

situation in the world of the few genuine philosophers

that there are. In that allegory the owner of the ship
who sailsthe Athenian people, which owns the
in it is

state supreme therein. Plato's description of him

and is

is noticeable though he is the biggest and strongest

:

man in the ship, he is rather deaf and short-sighted,

and he is ignorant of navigation, but he is a noble sort
of fellow, good at bottom. With this we may compare
the passage further on (499 e), where he says of the
masses, Don't be so hard on them
'
it is not their own ;

fault that they are so hostile to philosophy, it is because

they have never been shown what it means.' Aristocrat
as he is by birth and intellect, Plato has a kind of half-
pity, half- sympathy for the people. The men he really
hates are demagogues in politics or philosophy. The
sailors in the ship are the statesmen and leaders of
public opinion. Their principle is that in order to sail

the ship it is not necessary ever to have learnt the art of

navigation, and indeed they hold that the art really
cannot be taught at all. The one man on board who
could sail the ship, who possesses the double qualifica-
tion of theoretical knowledge and skill to command,
represents the true philosopher. He is regarded by
the others on the ship as a mere star-gazer. This is the
simple explanation of the uselessncss of the philosopher;
he is useless because the world will not use him. And
it is not in the nature of things. Plato thinks, that
a doctor should go about to his fellow-citizens and ask
them to let him heal them ;
the natural relation is that
those who want should go to those who can give 1
.

uselessness and helplessness of the philosopher are vividly de-

1
Tlic

scribed in Theatt. i 7-' < to i

76 a, and Gorgias, 484 C to 486 D but in the ;

former passag< Plato il St glories in them, and in the Gorgias the

 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 205

But, secondly (489 D to 495 b), this uselessness of the

genuine philosopher is the least of the causes which ruin
the state. A far more serious cause is the demoralization
of most of those who have the gift for philosophy. Before
describing this, Plato returns to his account of the philo-
sophic nature. He repeats in stronger terms what he
has already said of it, that its essence is the irrepressible
impulse to get behind the manifold and penetrate to the
reality; that there is a certain kinship (£vyyeveia) between
the soul and reality, and that the philosophic nature
is not satisfied until the soul has become actually one
with reality 1
. How is it, then, that most of those who
have this nature become demoralized ? Its very gifts 2
help to destroy it by drawing it away from philosophy,
its true life; and the external good things of life, beauty,

strength, wealth, and powerful connexions, also help

to destroy it. If we look at this phenomenon as part
of a more general phenomenon, and regard the human
soul as one among other living organisms, coming under
the same category as plants and animals, we can under-
stand how it comes about. All these things require
a certain environment to live in, and they grow according
to it. The strongest of them, Plato says, suffer more
serious consequences from bad nourishment than the

philosopher is declared to be, in spite of them, the only true statesman.

Plato's tone in the present passage is different ; he feels that the only
hope for mankind lies in the reconciliation of philosophy and the world.
1
He describes knowledge under the image of sexual love. Truth and
intelligence are, so to say, the offspring of the union between the soul
and and the attainment of truth is the satisfaction of the pangs of
reality,
the soul. So
in the Symposium, the attainment of knowledge of the good
is represented under the figure of love clasping the beautiful and the ;

progress by which the mind comes to desire this knowledge is repre-

sented as a gradual progress from a lower to a higher idea of beauty.
a
The ipvaiKal dpfral of Aristotle ; Eth. VI. xiii. 1.
 '
so6 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

weaker ; and so the most gifted souls are the most

injured by noxious surroundings ; and the great criminals
of the world have never been small or weak natures, but
always great natures corrupted. This being so, let us
ask what is the environment into which our supposed
philosophic soul is born. It is born into an atmosphere
of public opinion which meets it in the assembly, the

law-courts, the theatre, the army — everywhere where

men are gathered together. This public opinion is

invincible and irresponsible no individual soul can

;

assert its own independence of it except by some super-

human gift of nature; it is the source of law; practically
it is the great educator, and there
is no other education

worth talking about. Public opinion is the one great

sophist, and those poor amateurs whom public opinion
represents as corrupting the youth, merely repeat and
formulate the dictates of the very society that thus stig-
matizes them. Here Plato's tone towards the sophists is

one of contemptuous pity ; they are simply bear-leaders of

the people. The people, symbolized before by the owner
of the ship, is here described, with less good nature, but
with no actual dislike, as a great and strong beast who
letshimself be handled by his keepers provided they
study his whims and do all they can to humour him 1 .

The so-called leaders of opinion, then, only formulate

opinion. They have no knowledge of the things they
speak of; and though they talk of good and bad, just
and unjust, these are no more to them than names for
the likes and dislikes of the multitude 2
. And the

1
Cf. Demosthenes, Olynth. III. 31.
1
They can only say, Plato adds, that the just and good arc the
necessary. Sec Timaeus, 47 e sq., for the antithesis of the necessary and
the rational.
 :

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 207

multitude can never be philosophers, but will tend to be

distrustful of philosophic principles, and hostile to them.
Born into this atmosphere, what is likely to become of
the philosophic nature with all its gifts ?

The passage in which Plato answers this question (494)

is supposed to refer to Alcibiades l
. He certainly seems
to be speaking of some actual man ; and we know that
it was made a reproach to Socrates that Alcibiades and
others among his most distinguished friends turned out
badly. Suppose, says Socrates, after describing a man
born into Athenian society with every gift of nature
and of some one goes to the man so gifted
fortune, that
or surrounded, and tells him the truth, that he has not '

got wisdom, that he needs it, and that to win wisdom

a man must be a slave under the burden of that task '

what will happen? If at first he shows a disposition to

listen, the leaders of society will at once be up in arms,

and set in motion every means to destroy the influence

of the one man who could save him they want to use ;

him for their own ends 2

This is the way.in which men

of a nature which ought to make them the benefactors

of mankind generally become its destroyers. Society,
partly unconsciously and partly deliberately, corrupts
those who might be itsnoblest members.
Thus, to come to the third point (495 B to 496 a),
Philosophy is deserted by those who ought to be her

followers. Yet she still retains the splendour of a great

name, and the reputation of a philosopher remains an
object of ambition and competition. From this state-

1
Cf. with this passage Alcibiades Prim. 105 B, 132 A, 135 E.

There is a certain likeness in this passage to the saying of the New

2

Testament How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
:
'

kingdom of heaven.'
208 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

ment one may gather, as one may also gather from

Isocrates 1
, that philosophy was a name over which
people fought, men of different kinds claiming for them-
selves the title of philosopher, as a title conveying
distinction. (There is no English parallel to this
name ; but, though the word culture has not the same
'
'

grand associations, it has been the subject of similar

contention.) Plato was one of those who aspired to bear
this and to exhibit a true conception of what
title,

philosophy should be, and in developing that conception

he necessarily fell foul of others. Doubtless in contem-
porary literature he was called a sophist, and denied the
name of a philosopher but on the whole it was Plato
;

who did most to fix the meaning of the word in its

highest sense. He now proceeds, in a most picturesque
and powerful passage, to describe the usurpation of the
name of philosophy by unworthy aspirants. It is the
most personal passage in the Republic. We cannot
be certain what kind of people no doubt a particular —
set of people, known to his readers —he was thinking of.
But one can guess that they were probably inferior
lawyers and rhetoricians, who were indelibly dyed with
what we might call the professional taint. He describes
them as having their souls cramped by their trade. (The
quality of fiavavaU (the taint of the shop) which he
attributes to them, seems originally to have described
a sort of physical distortion which arose from intense
application to mechanical arts, and to which was largely
due the contempt of the Greeks for such arts. Here this
analogy is applied to men's souls, as also in the Thcactctus 2 ,

1
For the meaning which Isocrates attached to the words philosopher
and sophist sec Kara tujv Ioijuotuiv, and Titpl 'AvriSuafcos.
2
173 A.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 209

where we are told how the slavery of the law courts

gradually makes men small and crooked in soul.) Little
creatures of this sort, who are smart at their own trades,
take a leap into philosophy. To change the metaphor,
they marry Philosophy because there is no one else to do
so, so poor is she and the fruit of their union is seen in
;

those misbegotten theories and ideas which circulate

in the world under the name of philosophic principles.
This it is which brings upon philosophy the reproach
that it is not only a useless thing, but is charlatanry.
It remains (496 A to 497 A) to mention a few causes
which still keep a small remnant of true philosophic
natures in the service of philosophy. Sometimes a man
of noble nature, well educated, is banished, and thus
escapes demoralization. Sometimes a great mind is
born some petty state, and despises its political life.
in
Some few come to philosophy from contempt of the
art or profession in which they are engaged a few are
;

kept from politics by ill-health ;and a few, perhaps, by

a sort of divine intimation like the divine sign which
keeps Socrates himself from politics. All these are
abnormal circumstances, which (except the last-named)
would not arise if the world were as it ought to be ;

and these few true philosophers who do survive, have

nothing better to do than to keep themselves as pure
from taint as they can, and to wait. man who has A
lived a life like this will have done something great
before he dies, says Adeimantus. Yes, answers Socrates,
but not the greatest thing unless he finds a city fit for
him for in that case, he will save both himself and the
;

commonwealth.
4. In the section which now follows, we are shown 497 a to

in a general way how the divorce between the world

VOL. 11. P
 '
210 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

and philosophy, so mischievous to both of them, may

be brought to an end. The foregoing sections have
shown us what philosophy really is, namely the perfection
of human life, and what the actual facts of human society
are this section brings us to the reconciliation between
;

the elements which have been so violently contrasted

just before. Various incidental passages in it express
thesame spirit of reconciliation. Socrates and Thrasy-
machus are declared to have been made friends and ;

Socrates himself, as he rises to the height of the argu-

ment, is made to picture the work of reconciling men
to the truth in this life as only a fragment of a process
which extends through eternity. The world at large is

declared not to be so bad as we think ; the hostility

men feel to and
philosophy arises from ignorance of it,

if they could only be shown what it means, they would

be reconciled to it. The reason why the mass of man-

kind will not believe us is because what is generally
called philosophy is an artificial jargon of words and
ideas fitted together like a puzzle, so as to look consistent,
whereas true philosophy is a natural harmony of word
and deed, theory and practice. And, again, the so-called
philosophers are men who are generally occupied in
personalities ; whereas the true philosopher must from
his own nature be at peace with men, for he dwells
in a kingdom of peace, constantly in the presence of
a world where injustice is neither done nor suffered,
a world of unchangeable law, which is embodied reason 1
.

If then there could be found a man who could transfer

the perfect law, of which he has the vision, into the

1
This passage states most strongly the belief that the mind assimilates
the law and reason which it sees in the world. Cf. Tint. 90 1); Tlicact.

176U-E.
 PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 211

characters and institutions of men, like a great artist

taking human nature as he finds it and moulding it in
the light of his own high conception, we should indeed
have a reconciliation between the ideal and the reality.
However difficult this may be it is not impossible, for
it is not impossible that a genuine philosopher may
be found, possessed of great power, who will escape
deterioration, and it is not impossible that mankind may
listen to him.
5. The question which remains after this general
indication of the possibility of reconcilement between
philosophy and society, concerns the course of study
and the method of life by which the men who have the
philosophic nature can be trained, so as to be not the
destroyers but the saviours of society. '
How,' as Socrates
puts it, '
can the state handle philosophy so as not to be
ruined ? '
The form of his question gives a strong, strange
impression of the double-edged and dangerous character
of the force in human nature with which he is dealing 1
.

537 d
1
479 d. Cf. VII. to 539 c.

P 2
 X. THE GOOD AS THE SUPREME
OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE
[Republic, VI. 502 C to 509 C.]

The failure of society to provide the right^myironment

for the philosoph[c_nature having been made apparent,
we are brought again to the question of education,
which forms the subject of discussion from this point
to the end of Book VII. A system of education is
to be sketched out which will supplement, where this
is necessary, the partial education already given through

fxovcriKri and yv\xvaaTiKi). What is the particular defect

of this education which requires to be supplemented ?
It is that it provided no adequate nourishment for the

philosophic nature in its more advanced stage. There

is an essential continuity between Books II to IV, and

Books V to VII, in their treatment of the philosophic

nature still, so great an advance has been made in the
;

latter Books in the conception of that nature and in the

corresponding conception of the education it requires,
that it looks as if Plato were beginning all over again,
and had forgotten or ignored what seemed in the earlier
Books to absorb his whole attention.
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 213

All the very different things that are said of the

philosophic nature from Book II to Book IX are bound
together by a common idea. This is the conception of
the philosophic element in the soul, as that which makes
the soul go out of itself under the attraction of something
which is familiar to it and akin to it, and in union with
which it finds satisfaction. In all its various senses the
philosophic element in man is the attraction to what is

like oneself and yet outside oneself, whether it be attrac-

tion to other people, or attraction to beautiful things in
art or nature, or attraction to truth. In these different
things Plato seems to see the more and the less developed
stages of a single impulse in the soul, the highest stage
being that in which the soul goes out not only to human
beings, nor only to what is attractive through being
beautiful, but to the truth of the world about it, in
understanding which the soul finds a satisfaction of the
same nature as that which it finds in union with its

fellow-men. The problem, then, is to find a system of

education which shall provide nurture for the soul in this
stage, that is to say, for those very few souls in whom
the philosophic impulse is so far developed as to require
further nurture. The great bulk of men would find
satisfaction for this element of the soul in the active
life of good citizenship in which they are engaged in
common work with their fellows, but there would be
a few among them driven by an inherent impulse of
their natures to look for laws, or principles u nderly ing
the_ institutions which the bulk of men accept with
various degrees of_acquiescence. In the case of such it
is of the utmost importance both to themselves and to

society that they should be trained rightly, for otherwise

they will follow their impulse wrongly. By what actual
 '
2i 4 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

method of study and life will these few become, as Plato

says, the saviours of society ?

502 c to More than any other passage of the Republic, the

504 E '
passage in which this question is introduced explains
the relations between the earlier and the later parts of
the dialogue. A
criticism is made on Books II to IV,
and we are told what advance on them is required. We
are told that the community of wives and the appoint-
ment of rulers are two difficulties which Socrates had
been conscious of all along, and of which in the earlier
Books he had intentionally put off the treatment. Com-
munity of wives has been further discussed in Book V,
and here we are brought back to the question of the
appointment of rulers. Socrates refers explicitly to the
sentence in Book which the selection and appoint-
III, in
ment of rulers is said to have been dealt with in outline and
not with dfcpl/3eia a and the nature of the advance now
;

to be made is summed up in the word aKpi/3eta. This is

a quality originally associated with artistic work, and
aKpifiijs means primarily, not accurate or precise, but

exact, in the etymological sense of finished. It is the

opposite of what merely sketched, and we constantly
is

find Aristotle opposing it to what is in outline' (tvtt<i>)~.

'

All through this passage we find the same contrast

between what is to follow and what has gone before,
insisted on from different points of view. The earlier
treatment was incomplete (drtAe'v), it was a sketch
'
(uxroypar/;//), it was something without its full measure '

(not accurately measured). Where did this want of

completeness in the earlier parts of the work lie? It

appeared in two principal points in the account of

:

the selection and appointment of Guardians, and in the

'
2
1
414 A. e.g. in Eth. Nk. II. ii. 3.
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 215

account (which really underlay this) of justice and the

other virtues1
Plato begins with the appointment of
.

rulers.

The upon which the original rulers were

principle
selected was that the best man to guard anything is
the man who loves it most. Accordingly the supreme
qualification for a Guardian of the state was that he
should really love the state. The test to be applied to
his qualifications consisted in exposing him to various
emotional trials, pleasures, pains, and fears, which would
be calculated to make him give up the belief (8o'yM a ) he
had learned, that he should do in everything that which
'

seemed best for the state.' If he showed his constancy

by withstanding all these tests he would be a full
Guardian (<j)v\a£ Travrekris)'. But this selection was said
at the time to be only provisional, and now the course
of the argument has brought us back to the question
who are fitted in the fullest sense of all to be Guardians
(tovs aKpLfieo-raTovs <pvka.Ka$), and we have already found
that they will have to be philosophers. This involves
a fuller training and a severer testing of the character
of the Guardians than we at first thought necessary.
It means that the philosophic element in human nature,
which we saw from the must be strong in those
first

who are to rule, contains in it capacities for development

greater than we had then any idea of. Out of this
element arises the irrepressible speculative impulse in
human nature with all its capacities, and this impulse is
a double-edged thing. We see now that it is not enough

1 What is described as want of axpifliia refers indifferently to the state

of mind of the Guardians selected, and to our own state of mind or that
of the supposed electors of the Guardians.
2
See 412 B to 414 B.
 216 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

merely to regard constancy of character (PefiaiSrqs) in

selecting our Guardians, for we have to look also for
a quality which seems just the opposite of that. The
speculative temperament does not naturally fit with the
orderly and solid and constant temperament it is quick, ;

impatient, aspiring, and this side of it cannot be ignored.

And yet we cannot dispense with that constancy which
we before made the essence of a Guardian's character.
So we have again come upon the problem of how to
effect a reconciliation between contradictory qualities,

, for we have to combine in our Guardians the intellectual

restlessness and aspiration of the philosophic character,
with that orderliness and constancy which is equally of
the essence of a good nature. We want, then, to fill up
the sketch of the choice and education of Guardians by
showing how to test and train this new and dangerous
element. Therefore to the tests of pleasure and pain
we have to add the tests of intellectual work, and
shall
see whether the Guardian has also the sort of courage
that will stand them. We have besides to supplement
our former system of education by taking account of the
philosophic faculty, not in the sense of the love of beauty
and the like, which ixovaiKi) took account of, but in its

present sense of hunger for knowledge.

Again (504 a), there was a want in the account given
of human morality in the earlier Books. The general
principle by which we determined its nature was one of
empirical psychology. We took from observation three
main elements in the soul, and explained the four main
virtues that arc generally recognized by showing that
they expressed certain states of these three elements and
certain relations between them. But, as was stated at
the time (43J D), the description then given of these
 ;

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 217

virtues was inadequate. We now want to see the

moral nature of men wrought out into a perfect and
finished picture. (It is to be noticed in this passage
(504 d) how naturally and almost without warning the
supposed Guardians, whose education is under discussion,
are identified with ourselves, the parties to the discussion.
This is a good instance of the fact that the education of
the Guardians is primarily meant for ourselves.)
The result of this whole passage is that, whether we
regard the Republic as a treatise on political and social
reform, or simply as the exhibition of an ideal theory of
human life which every one may apply for himself, it is

necessary that the previous conception of what man is

and needs should be carried further and filled up. And

if we ask why, the answer is that there is something in

human nature, at any rate in the nature of those who

influence the world, which will not be satisfied with the
development of character which, in the earlier Books,
seemed to fulfil the requirements of morality.
The next question therefore is, What addition in 504 e.

knowledge will supply the want we have discovered in

the training which the earlier Books prescribed ? What

sort of knowledge is required to convert the previous
conception of the virtues into a finished conception, and
the Guardian as previously described into a Guardian in
the fullest sense ? The answer is :
' knowledge of the
good.' The Guardians will be poor guardians of justice
unless they understand wherein is the good of justice
until a man learns what it is that makes the different
sorts of goodness intrinsically good, his possession of
them is only the hold of opinion and not of knowledge.
The knowledge of the good will fill up to their full
measure all the inchoate ideas of morality which we
 ;

'
218 LECTURES ON PLATO'S l
REPUBLIC

have thus far come across. This is the highest object

of knowledge (\x£yi<TTov \xa6r\ix,a), and in it all the utmost
aspirations of the speculative spirit will find satisfaction.
The more developed form of education which is now
to be described must therefore be an education which
gradually leads up to the conception of the good.
It is essential to the understanding not only of Plato
but of Greek philosophy generally, both moral philo-
sophy and the philosophy of knowledge, to realize the
place held in them by the conception of the good.' '

We see at once from what Plato now proceeds to say

of the good, that three ideas, which to us seem to have
little concern with one another, are for him inseparable.

The good is at once first, the end of life, that is. the
:

supreme object of all desire and aspiration secondly, ;

the condition of knowledge, or that which makes the

world intelligible and the human mind intelligent
thirdly, the cr eativeand sustaining cause of the world.
How did Plato come
to combine under one conception
ideas apparently so remote from one another ?
We must banish from our minds at starting the
ordinary moral associations of our word good,' those, '

for instance, which attach to the phrase 'a good man 1 .'

To ayaOov does not in the first instance involve any

moral qualities both to ordinary people and to philo-
;

sophers among the Greeks the good meant the object of

desire, that which is most worth having, that which we

1
[The phrase dyaOos dv-qp as actually used in Greek seldom or never
means what we mean when we call a man simply a good man. It means
a man good at some work or function implied by the context, and in fact
is most commonly used of a man good at fighting. The modern colloquial
usage by which in discussing, say, football players, we might say So- '

and-so is a good man' is identical with the usage of the term in Greek.
—Ed.]
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 219

most want. We also are quite familiar in books with

the conception of the desirable as the object of human
will, butwe do not at once realize its meaning. The
best way to make ourselves realize it is to say that
the good any given moment to any
or desirable at
given man is that which he would rather be or do
or have than anything else. If at any given moment
a man will give up his life in order to get money or to
save his country or avenge himself, then money, or the
safety of his country, or vengeance, is to him at that
moment the one good for it he is ready to give
;

up everything which he can give up. Therefore what

is the good to us varies every day, but at every
moment there is something which we take as our
good. In Greek philosophy and popular thought, it
was a sort of ultimate truth that man is a being who
lives for something, that is to say that he has a good.
This is the most fundamental fact about man he is;

always living for something, however much he tries

not to do so.

Further, to a Greek, certainly to Plato and Aristotle,

this is only another way of saying that man is a rational
creature. When we speak of '
a rational person '
we
generally mean one who does not make a fool of himself;
this and other phrases, such as '
a rational being,' do not
with us refer to anything so back as do the Greek
far
phrases which we should by them. To the
translate
Greeks the statement that man is a rational being meant
simply that man cannot help aiming at something he is ;

a creature of means and ends everything that he does

;

is from the constitution of his nature regarded by him

as a means to something. This is a fundamental point

of Greek moral philosophy Hence the inseparable
 '
220 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

connexion in Plato and Aristotle between reason and

the good. This is not an association between some
particular good thing, some true end of life, and some
particular kind of reason which is specially rational,
'

word rational
as our use of the '
word good ' and of the '

might suggest, but between reason as such and an end

as such. The rationality of man means that he is
a creature who has ideals, and who cannot help having
them. An ideal is something which is not fully present
at this particular moment in this particular thing, but is

yet partly attained in it. The conception of an ideal

involves,on the one hand, that it is never wholly realized,
on the other that it is continually being realized. How-
ever much and however often the object with which
man acts may change, he never lives absolutely in the
present in the moment he is always thinking of some-
;

thing beyond the moment and it is in virtue of reason

;

that he does so. It is owing to this that man is what we

call a moral being. He is capable of morality because

he has reason, and reason compels him to live for an end ;

and the problem of moral philosophy to the Greeks is

always, starting from this fundamental conception, to
determine the true end for which man should live. It
follows that to the Greek thinkers the moral life
is practically identical with the rational life (in the
sense of the which reason performs its functions
life in

most truly). The moral life can only mean that in

which a man does all that he docs with a view to, and
in the light of, the true good. The man to whom the
true good most constantly present in all that he does
is

is the best man. Thus the best life is the most rational
life, because it is that in which action and thought arc

most concentrated upon, and regarded most as a means

 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 221

to, the central principle or end of life, which is what the

Greeks call the good.
It is in this point that what we commonly distinguish
as the moral and the scientific views of life converge in
Greek philosophy. We say that Greek moral philosophy,
as compared with modern, lays great stress on knowledge
and gives excessive importance to intellect. That im-
pression arises mainly from the fact that we are struck
by the constant recurrence of intellectual terminology,
and omit to notice that reason or intellect is always
conceived of as having to do with the good. Reason is
to Greek thinkers the very condition of man's having
a moral being, because, as has just been said, by reason
they understand that in man which enables him to live
for something. Their words for reason and rational cover
to a great extent the ground which is covered by words
like spirit,'
'
spiritual,' and
'
ideal in our philosophy.
' '

They would have said that man is a rational being,

where we should say that he is a spiritual being. It is
true, however, that Greek moral philosophy is intensely
intellectual, and that the moral and the scientific do
tend, especially in Plato, to converge.
From the point of view of the study of human life,

we have already seen that the necessity of living for

something is due to the presence of reason in man and ;

now, turning from human action to nature as the object

of science, we find the Greeks assigning essentially the
same For the presence of
function to reason as before.
reason in the world, which what makes it possible to
is

understand things, means for them that every object in

nature or art contains and expresses some good or end.
The philosophy of morals and the philosophy of science
in Plato and Aristotle are dominated by what is called
222 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

a teleological view. In their writings intelligence and

the good are treated as almost correlative ideas ; wher-
ever there is intelligence there is a good aimed at. And
this idea is not merely confined to human life, but is

applied all the world over.

We must, however, be careful not to misunderstand
this idea. We generally mean by a teleological view
of the world one which explains nature by showing that
nature has been made to serve the purposes of men.
When popularized in this crude form, teleology leads to
the notion that nothing has any purpose, meaning, or
interest, unless it is shown to be serviceable to man ;

and as our notion of what is serviceable to us is very

narrow, the so-called teleological view comes to be
an absurdly narrow and false one, against which the
scientific spirit is always protesting. But teleology in
any really philosophical sense means something very
different. Plato and Aristotle did not at all regard
man as being the highest thing in the universe, and
were therefore far from regarding the universe as made
for man. For them the evidence which everything gave
of the operation of reason lay simply in the fact that
each thing had a certain function, was calculated to do
one thing and not another, and that the various parts
of it converged to that end. If you take any complex
object (and all objects arc complex), that is any object
which is a whole of parts, the only way to explain it or
understand it is to sec how the various parts arc related
to the whole ; that is, what function each of them
performs in the whole, how each of them serves the
good or end (t«Aov) of the whole. The good or end of
the thing is the immanent principle which we have to
suppose in it in order to explain it, and which is involved
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 223

a whole at all.
in calling it The progress of knowledge
is and Aristotle the increased realization of the
to Plato
fact that each thing has thus its function, and the world
is, in Plato's phraseology, luminous just so far as it
reveals this fact.
The best instance by which to approach this view
is art. When a man,
the simple instance of any work of
to take the example used by Plato in the Gorgias (503 e),
is making a ship, he does not go to work at random ;

you observe that he puts the pieces together in a certain

order with a certain end in view. The best ship-builder
is the one who puts the parts together in that order which
best enables them to serve the purpose intended. To
serve this purpose is the ship's good. The good of any-
thing is to be or do what it is meant to be or do and ;

the ship realizes its good, or object, or end in sailing well.

Thus it is literally true that every bit of the ship-builder's
work is determined by the good, that is by what the
whole thing he is making is intended to be or to do.
Reason, therefore, as embodied in human art, artistic

reason, shows itself in making a certain material express

a certain good ; and the most artistic work will be found
to be that which most, in every part of
it, expresses such

an end, good, or principle 1 This is the teleological .

view that view simply consists in seeing everywhere

;

a certain function to be exercised, a certain work to be

done, or a certain end or good to be worked out. From
this point of view the more we can detect the function
or good of anything, the better we understand it. To
a person who knows nothing about the function of a ship,
it may truly be said to be an unintelligible thing. And
1 It is the same fact that is pointed to when we say that the condition
of good artistic work is proportion.
224 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

that of course is our attitude towards the great majority

of things in the world ; we wonder what they can be for,

we do not see the good of them.

This conception, then, is applied to all spheres of
existence, to nature, art, and moral life, because in all

of these there is present intelligence. It is clear how

the view applies in the case of art and morality, but it

applies also under certain limitations in the case of nature.

For in regard to nature, where he does not make but
observes, man uses the same principle theoretically, which
in art and moral life he uses also practically ; his reason
works on the same lines. Thus in regarding a plant
or an animal, he assumes from the first and unconsciously,
that it is a unity, an organism. He begins to analyze it

into parts, and throughout the process of analyzing it and

putting it together again, he is guided by the conception
of the plant or animal as a whole, having a principle
which makes it that plant or animal. An organism is

a natural object of which the parts can be seen to be

means to an end, instruments (opyava) serving a purpose.
The conception of an organism thus implies teleology.
Accordingly modern science, however much it repudiates
teleology of a certain kind, and must be inspired by
is

the spirit of teleology. A book on botany, for instance,

exhibits this spirit in every page, for, throughout, the
problem which the botanist proposes to himself is to
discover the function of something (its (pyov) l . But

1
[In the sciences which deal with what we call, by comparison, in-
1
organic nature, the conceptions of '
organism '
and 'function are of
course not prominent, hut it is nevertheless obvious that everything in
nature is understood through the connexion of its own elements and by

the way it acts on and is acted upon by Other things, that is by the part
it plays in relation to other elements in an ordered whole. Cf llcthtiica,

p. 173.) The ' tclcological view' as applied to nature generally is simply

 —

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 225

when scientific men repudiate teleology they are right

so far as they are insisting on this : that we must not
interpret the postulate that everything has its function to
mean that each particular thing has its end in serving

some other particular thing ; and that we must not allow

the postulate to make us anticipate the results of in-
vestigation. It is one thing to say we can only interpret
nature if we suppose it to have some meaning, and
another thing to say that the first meaning we find in
things is the true one.
The view then which sees everywhere means and ends
is emphatically the view of Greek philosophy. This may
be simply expressed Greek phraseology by saying that
in

the one question is, What is the good ? For, to put the
matter in a summary way the word 'good means that
: '

which anything is meant to do or to be. The use of the

word implies a certain ultimate hypothesis as to the nature
of things, namely that there is reason operating in the
world, in man and in nature. This reason shows itself
everywhere in the world in this particular way, that
wherever there are a number of elements co-existent
there will be found a certain unity, a certain principle
which correlates them, through which alone they are
what they are, and in the light of which alone they can
be understood. Thus the good becomes to Plato both
the ultimate condition of morality and the ultimate
condition of understanding. These are not two things,
but one and the same principle showing itself in different
subject-matters.
To come back to human life and morality, how does
this view apply to them ? In the first place, it implies

the recognition of this fact. The significance of it will be seen later in

considering Plato's theory of science. Ed.]

VOL. II. Q
 ;

'
226 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

that the life of human society and that of the individual

will inevitably be regarded as a certain adaptation of
means to an end, and that human society and the in-
dividual soul will be regarded as organisms. Thus, as
regards society, at the beginning of Book IV, where the
question is raised whether we are making the Guardians
happy, the reply you can only consider the well-
is that
being of a part when you have considered the good of
the whole. So again in Book VIII the ruined spendthrift
is described as seeming to be a member of the community

without really being so, because he is, so to speak, in-

organic l
. And the whole decline of human society
which Plato describes in Book VIII consists in its

gradually ceasing to be organic. It is easy to see the

bearing of this idea on virtue. Virtue is that quality
of a thing which makes it good of its kind that it is ;

good of its kind means that it does its work well

a morally good man is one who does his work well ;

the man who does his work well is the man who fills
the place assigned to him in the world well. The as-
sumption, as regards society, is that every man has his
place and his work. And the same idea of an organism
in which each part has its place and its work is applied
also to the individual soul. The virtue of the soul is that
each part of work well and what the
it should do its ;

work of each part is, is determined by the good or interest

of the whole soul. Whether any given act you do is
good may be simply tested by the question, Can you
honestly say that it contributes to the good of you taken
a whole ?

Thus the notion of the good, in its moral application,

resembles the notion of principle. A man of principle
1
/xrjSlv uvra rwv rfjs ttuKkus ntpwi'. 552 A.
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 227

means a man who can be said more than most men to

live with a purpose, or (if you like) consistently, a con-
centrated man, whose acts, thoughts, and desires converge
tosome one end l It might be said that this description
.

would include any man who had a strong will, good or

bad. We should reply that every man is really an
element in a world, in a society, ultimately in the koij}ios,

the intelligible order of the universe. Accordingly the

purpose which dominates his life, the good for which he
lives, will be good in itself in proportion as it serves
a wider purpose, and ultimately the purpose or good of
the order of the world. As every picture, every ship,
every man's life, everything which is an ordered and
organized whole, may be called a Koa-fios, a little world,
so the whole world, if we could see it, is the k6<tiaos, the
one order or whole in which all the rest are organic
parts. This idea is worked out in the Timaens, and is
the animating thought of that dialogue it is applied ;

there primarily to the physical universe, but is applicable

also to society and human life
2
, and it is so applied in
the Republic.
A mans life then is morally good in proportion as it

exhibits purpose, and not merely purpose, but a purpose

going beyond himself. It is good in proportion to its
concentration on the one hand, and on the other hand
in proportion to the amount which it embraces and the
width of the interests it serves. The greater part of our
lives is practically purposeless, and it is just for that
reason that they come to so little. We have an idea
of something of supreme value, some good, but as to

1
This is what is expressed by the metaphor of harmony in 443
D. & E.
2
Cf. e.g. Timaeits, 47 D, where KaraHoa^rjaii of the soul is spoken of.

Q2
228 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

what it is we
are in darkness we do not see where we
'
'
;

are going or what we are doing and therefore most of ;

the means we use, most of the so-called good things

which are the immediate objects of our aims, are of little
profit to us (505 e). This is the case even with the
actions which we do in accordance with our views of
justice and honour. Hence the necessity that the
guardians, whose business it is to govern others and
to direct the moral purpose of the community, should
have knowledge of the good. A man who does not see
what is the good of justice or honour (what is the place
that it holds in the world) will not be much of a guardian
of it, for he has no firm hold of it (506 A). We see then
why it has been said that the conception of the good is

wanted to fill up our sketchy, fragmentary view of human

life, and to give it finish (aKpifieia). The more a man sees
what he is going after, the more he will see life not as
a mere outline, but as a whole with a structure and
a plan.
Further, the more this is the case with a man, the
more his life will become a work of intelligence on his
own part, and intelligible to other people. We under-
stand things just in proportion as we sec the good of
them ; and the supreme good, the end to which all things
converge, is, in Plato's metaphor, the sun that gives light
to the intelligible universe. Intelligibility is the reflected
light of the supreme purpose which pervades the world
and is through various media to us. Everything
reflected
in the world in its measure reveals, or is the appearance
of, the good. We may say therefore, to give a general
statement of Plato's conception, that for a man to attain
the good, so far as it is given to man to do so, would be
for him to live in the light. So to live means that he
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 229

should realize constantly his position in the economy

of things, in the society of which he is a member, in
humanity, in the world. And, seeing his position, he
would realize how he can best be that which he is and
best do that which he does. We see then how closely
related morality and knowledge are in Plato's mind.
This ideal of a man's life might equally well be described
as perfect knowledge and understanding (so far as that
is possible) of himself and of his own life, or as perfect

performance (so far as that is possible) of his true function

in the world of which he is a part. From both points
of view, the conception of what we call an organic whole
with a unifying principle in it lies at the bottom of
Plato's conception. On the one hand to understand the
world, or any bit of it, is to see it in the light of the
good, that is to see how the different parts of it converge
to their common end. On the other hand, to be perfectly
good is to do one's own business (ra avrov ttpolttclv),
'
'

which always means to do what, in virtue of what one

is, one can do best, and what contributes best to the

good of the whole of which one is a part.

We have seen that the good is also the end of life.
When man is spoken of as living for an end (re'Aos), we
have to remember that the Greek word primarily means,
not an end in the sense of what we come to last, but
the finished or consummated work. In the case of man,
the end is just to be, in the course of his life, in his
imperfect way what nature has given him the capacity
to be. Thus when we speak of the good as the end of
life we must guard against supposing that it is any single

tangible thing which a man can get and have done with.
It is an ideal which cannot possibly be attained, or it

would cease to be an ideal. This is just as true of

230 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

Aristotle's ideal as of Plato's ;

just as true of the
Utilitarian ideal as of any other. Everybody means
by the ultimate ideal not wealth, health, power, or
knowledge, but always something which makes these
good to him, as is proved by the fact that nobody is

ever finally satisfied, or down and says, I have the

sits '

good.' The difference between one theory about life

and another does not concern this point it lies in the ;

particular ways in which men conceive of the ultimate

good, and in the ways in which they connect this good
with the rest of their lives.

The good, as we remarked at starting, is represented

by Plato not only as the end of life and as the cause of
things being understood, but also as the source of the
being of everything in the world ; it makesactually
things what they are, and sustains them or keeps them
in being. What Plato means by this may be seen from
the passage in Book IV (already referred to) where he
is answering the question whether the guardians would
be happy. If one takes a human society one sees that
it is literally true that a member of that society is
exactly what he does in that society, just as a hand or
a foot is what it does in the body. For the function
or tpyov of a thing is its being you cannot separate the
;

two ideas. If you arc asked what anything is, every

answer you give describes a function of the thing. The
being of a thing is its activity. When a man ceases to
do that which makes him himself, he has really ceased
to be that man ; if he is performing no civic function he
is no citizen, just as if you cut off a foot from the body
it is not a foot. This is the simple principle which
makes Plato say that the good is the source of the being
of things. The reality of things is what they mean ;
 r

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 23

what they mean determined by their place in the

is

order of the world what determines their place in the

;

order of the world is the supreme good, the principle of

that order. Thus their very being is determined by
that order ; they realize their true being in proportion
as they recognize that order ; and so far as they refuse
to recognize it they fall out of that order, and literally
give up so much of their being.
The same conception of the good appears in other
dialogues. The Gorgias has already been referred to.
In the Phaedo the good is represented as the final cause
of the world, which is what in the truest sense makes
and holds together the world ; it is contrasted with what
are ordinarily called material causes, which Plato calls
'
the conditions without which the cause would not be a
1 .'
cause In the Philebus it is represented as manifest-
ing itself in three principal forms, truth, beauty, and
2
proportion ; but under all its aspects it is the principle
of the order of the universe. In the Timaeus, where
Plato describes in '
picture language ' the creation of the
world, the creator (brifiLovpyos) embodies to a great extent,
in a personal and mythological form, the same attributes
as are ascribed to the form of the good in the Republic.
He makes the world to be as good as possible, because
he is himself perfectly good and therefore free from all
envy and perfectly beneficent. Further, he makes the
world as we perceive it with the senses (8o'£?7 fxer atV0?;<recos-

aXoyov ho^arrTov) after the pattern of a world which is

'
intelligible '
(i'o?}<rei which means
fiera Xoyov ti epikriiiTov) ;

not that there are really two worlds, but that, as we might
say, the world as it is revealed through the senses is the

2
1
Phaedo, 97 B to 99 c. Philebus, 64 B to 65 a.
 '
232 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

manifestation of an intelligible order 1

At the end of
.

the Timaeus we find the distinction between the Creator

and the intelligible world tending to disappear, while
the sensible world itself becomes God made manifest to
human senses (Oebs aio-0?/ros)
2
. As in the Republic we
are told of the good that it cannot be explained to us
it is, so in the Timaeus we are told that
in its fullness as
itwould be impossible to speak of the gods and of the
origin of the world in exact and altogether consistent
language 3 The two dialogues then, in spite of the
.

difference in form, agree in this, that the world as we

see it is represented as revealing, though revealing im-
perfectly, those intelligible principles upon which it is
really constructed, and that this system of intelligible
forms is represented as leading up to and depending upon
some supreme creative and sustaining power. Moreover,
in the Timaeus as well as the Republic, we are told that
the highest bliss of man consists in getting to be at one
4
with the universe of which he is a part . In the
Timaeus the supreme power in the universe is described
in a personal way, in the Republic it is described in
what we call an abstract way. Of the two ways no
doubt Plato thought the latter truer. Though he never
hesitated to use the language of popular Greek theology
to express philosophical ideas of his own, he often lets

us know that this language did not and could not

embody the truth as it is. The form of the good '
' in

the Republic occupies the place in regard both to morals

and to science which the conception of God would

a Ibid.
1

Timaeus, 27 D to 30 B. 92 B.
[bid. 29 h & ( [when 'the gods' is seen from the context to be
equivalent to ''God.' — Ed.]
'

[bid. 47B & c.

 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 233

occupy in a modern philosophy of morals and nature,

if that philosophy considered the conception of God as
essential to its system. Plato in the Republic does not
God but form. He has assigned to
call this principle

a form or principle the position and function which

might be assigned to God, but he still speaks of it as
a form or principle. With this reserve, we may say that
the easiest way to give Plato's conception a meaning
is to compare it with certain conceptions of the divine
nature, for example with the conception of the light of '

the world.'
We may now summarize the passage in which the 504 e to

conception of the '

good ' is introduced to us in the
Republic. Certain preliminary and more or less accepted
notions of the good are first brought forward. In the
first place everybody allows that, whatever else the good
means, it is that which gives all other things their value.

We must not think of it as a thing that can be taken

from or added to health, wealth, and the rest it is ;

simply that in everything which makes it really worth

having all men, philosophers and others alike, assume
;

this. Plato goes on to mention two current theories

as to what is most worth having in the world. Some
call pleasure the good, holding that what we want is to

feel pleased, to get enjoyment. Others call intelligence

the good, holding that what we want is to understand

things. These two which form the subject
theories,
of discussion in the P/iilebi/s, are but briefly mentioned

here. Plato simply points out where they both fall

short. Those who make pleasant feeling the one object
of life are obliged to allow distinctions of good and evil
in pleasure, and this at once introduces a standard other
than pleasure. So again those who say that understand-
 '

234 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

ing is the true good are obliged to import into their

definition the very conception that they suppose them-
selves to be denning ; for when asked the question,
'understanding of what?' they answer, 'understanding
of the good '
; so that both parties are full of inconsistency
(nXavq). But amid all this inconsistency one thing is

certain, that people are and that

in earnest on this matter,
when they talk about the good they mean something
real. Many are found quite willing to put up with the
appearance of morality; there the appearance has a certain
value ; but nobody would willingly put up with the ap-
pearance of the good, for the good, their own good, is

what people really want. But it is just this real thing

about which they are so much in the dark; every soul
surmises that there is something of this sort, something
in comparison with which nothing else is worth having ;

but every soul is in doubt what it is, and is without any

sure or permanent belief about it (airopel). And this
very uncertainty makes us miss what is good in other
things ; our being in the dark about the real or ultimate
1

good re-acts on our ideas of the ordinary good things, '

commonly so called, and makes our aims uncertain.

Certainly then, this ultimate good is the one thing about
which men who are going to govern the state should not
be in the dark.
506 p, to After this preliminary survey of accepted beliefs and
509 c.
diverse theories, Socrates, who has been spending his
life in enquiring into the nature of the good, is called
upon to say what he himself thinks about it. He answers
that to express what is in his mind all at once would be
a flight above his power the utmost he can do at first;

is to explain his conception of the good by an analogy:

'
I cannot show you the good, but I can show you the
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 235

child of the good.' From what follows later on 1

it is

pretty clear that Plato was quite serious with the notion
that the world, as it is to human sense, is a manifestation,
a likeness or image, of an intelligible and non-sensible
order. So that the passage, which now follows, about
the sun. is not merely an illustrative simile, but expresses
to Plato's mind a real analogy between the phenomena
of the sensible world and the non-sensible principles they
2
express . In the comparison which he draws the good

1
Cf. the passages from the Timactis, quoted on p. 232.
2
[It is not possible to reproduce the whole of this passage as it occurred
in the lectures, and the foregoing sentences as they stand might give
a false impression of what the comparison between the good and the sun
leads to. In order to follow the main course of Plato's thought we must
be careful at first not to press this comparison at all beyond the points
which he specifically uses it to bring out. The position of the sun
in the visible universe here supplies Plato with imagery to express the
idea that the good is the source of all knowledge and the source of all
being. In Book VII the sun affords Plato more imagery for describing
the stages by which man may be led up to a clear vision of the good.
Now it is probable, as this passage in the lecture suggests, that Plato felt

it was no accident that made

imagery available for him, by placing in
this
the world, as seen by the eye, a visible object thus comparable to the chief
object in the world as thought could make it known. He probably thought
that, so to speak, it was part of the function of the sun thus to present
a type of the good. Compare the language used about the heavenly
bodies generally in VII, 529 c, sq., and the passage already referred to
in the Timaetts, 47 A to E. But he does not develop this idea, and the
point of this passage, in the agreement of the Republic, lies simply in the
statement that the good is the cause of all knowledge and of all being.
In the following passage (the comparison of the divided line) where this
is expanded and explained, the real relation of the good to the visible

world begins to appear in its main outlines, and then of course the sun
does not play a part different from that of any other visible object. As
we make an advance in understanding the world when we turn our
attention from things as we see them to the unities or principles which
underlie what we see, so we make a further advance when we rise from
the principles which thought first discovers in the world to the ultimate
principle of all, the good. As the varying multitude of things pre-
 '

236 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

is said to be in the intelligible world as the sun is in the

visible. He works out the comparison of the good with
the sun through a theory of light and of vision which
was wrong, but this does not affect the points which he
wished to bring out in his conception of the good. They
are briefly these. First, the good is the source of in-
telligence in the mind and intelligibility in the object,

just as the sun is the source of vision in the eye and

of visibility in Truth is the reflexion of the
its object.
good ; the world and the soul intelligent in
is intelligible
proportion as the good is strongly or weakly reflected.
Just as in a sense there are colours and vision without
light, so we may speak of an object and a mind as being

potentially intelligible and intelligent yet there is not ;

really intelligence and truth until the good shines upon

the mind and the world. Secondly, as the sun is the
source not only of light and vision, but also of the actual
generation and growth of the organic world, so the good
is the source not only of truth and knowledge, but actually

of the life and being of the world.

This passage then assigns to the good its position in
the world. The world as it is to sense is the image and
the product of the good, and the world as it is to intelli-

sented to the senses are made what they are by laws or principles which
the senses do not directly reveal, so the whole scheme of laws or
principleswhich thought or science discovers owes its being, and the
things of sense in turn owe their being, to one ultimate principle, the
good. Such is Plato's account of the good as completed by subsequent
passages. Looking then at the passage about the sun in its place in the
course of the argument, we might say that it is not really the sun in
particular, but the whole visible world, whether as seen or as understood
l>y thought, that is the child of the good in whom its image may lie traced.

In the Timaens the metaphor of paternity comes up again, and there it is

tin world, not the sun in particular, that is called the child of the creator.
Ed !
 GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 237

gence is also the image and the product of the good ;

so, we might say, the whole world, whether as it is

to sense or as it is to intelligence, whether in its more

superficial or in its more profound aspect, reflects the

jrood.
 XI. THE FOUR STAGES OF
INTELLIGENCE
[Republic, VI. 509 D to end.]

509 u to the HAVING described in a general way the position and

function of the good in knowledge, Plato goes on to
more in detail the stages of development
distinguish
through which the human mind passes or might pass
from ignorance to knowledge, from a point at which
the x&jective world-is, so to say, perfectly dark and
unintelligible, to a point at which it is perfectly lumi-
nous. He represents to us by a very obvious symbol
an ascending scale of mental states and a corresponding
scale of objects of thought. Imagine a vertical straight
line, and divide it into four parts. The line must be
conceived of as beginning in total darkness at one end,
and passing up to perfect light at the other. It is

a continuous line, though it is divided into sections.

Plato, in choosing this symbol, may have wished to

express the continuity of the process which it represents.
At any rate we have to remember that there is no
sudden break between the visible and the intelligible

world, which the two main sections of the line stand for l
,

1
There is a curious uncertainly as to whether Plato wrote av' iaa
Tfx-qnara or avioa rny/MTa, i.e. whether the line is divided into four
 —

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 239

The scale which the four sections of the line represent

is a scale of luminousness. It is an attempt to represent

the stages through which the human mind must go if

it would knowledge of the world
arrive at a perfect ;

and, again, an attempt to represent the different and suc-

cessive aspects that the world presents to the human
mind as it advances in knowledge. When we speak of
the objects of the mind's thought in its different stages,

we should divest ourselves of the notion that they repre-

sent four different classes of real objects ; they only
represent four different views of the world, or differe nt
aspects o f the same objects . For what we call the same
object has very different aspects to different people ; for
example, the scientific botanist and the person who
knows no botany may see the same flower as far as the
eyes go, but they miderstandit^in totally different ways ;

equal parts, or into four unequal but proportional parts. As it is uncer-

tainwhich he wrote, and as the line is never referred to again, it is not
worth while trying to make out what might have been meant by the
inequality of the parts. [I think it is clear that avian (unequal) is

the right reading. Otherwise there is nothing to show what the line
symbolizes for the suggestion in the lecture that the line passes from
;

totaldarkness to complete illumination is not founded on anything in

the text of the present passage, but derived from Plato's use of the
metaphor of light in the preceding and following passages. But if we
read avioa the meaning is clear. The proportion in length between
the different sections of the line symbolizes the proportion in clearness
or in profundity of insight between the different mental states described.
Cf. Kai aoi 'iarai aaiprjvfiq. mil aocKpiiq npus dAA^Aa, k.t.A.., 509 D. The
sentence is not brought to its logical completion, but it starts as if Plato
was going to state a proportion between the mental states, as, according
to this reading, he has already stated a proportion between the sections
of the line. That proportion would obviously have been (marrj/xt] is to :

5o£a, in respect of aaipTjvaa, what, within the sphere of 5o£a, seeing real
objects is to seeing shadows and, further, within the sphere of what
;

we have called emoT-fiftr), vorjais is to diavota what intuTTj/xT] itself is to

8o£a. Ed.]
 '

240 LECTURES ON PLATO'S l

REPUBLIC

to the former it is the image of_aJl_bo£aju'ca1 _laj&s.

Plato is anxious throughout to emphasize the difference
between these views of things. They differ in degree
of superficiality and profundity as well as of obscurity
and luminousness. This means, we may__regard pro-
gress in knowledge as a_ progress from the most super-
ficial to the m ost penetrating view of things. Hence
the relation between each higher and each lower stage
is expressed by Plato as the relation between seeing
an image or shadow and seeing the thing imaged or
shadowed. This metaphor bears a great part in his
theory of knowledge. It means that there is a great
deal more in what the mind perceives at each stage
than in what it perceives in the stage below. There
ismore in the actual solid object than there is in a
mere reflexion or picture of it and when science comes
;

and says that these solid objects, which we call the real
things in the world, are not the ultimate truth, that it

is the principles winch they embody which are really

worth knowing, that not some particular plant or animal,
but the permanent and uniform nature which appears
in all such things, is the object of real knowledge,
then science, though it seems to be leaving the real
world behind, tells us more than the ordinary view
of things tells us.

Through these different stages all human minds which

develop their powers of understanding fully must more
or less pass; the most gifted as well as the least begins
by what Plato calls seeing things as images; different
minds advance to different distances in different stages,
and the same mind advances to different stages with
different parts of itself. Plato's ideal for education is

that, recognizing this law of mental development, it

 ;

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 241

should provide for different minds by giving them,

according to the stage they are in, appropriate objects
of thought, and should lead them gradually, according
to their capacity, and as easily as may be, to the truest
view of things of which they are capable. Want of
education in this sense means that minds which ought
to have advanced further remain in a lower stage, and
mistake the comparatively superficial view of truth they
get there for the whole truth.
The four stages of mental development are called
(beginning with the lowest) eUaata, ttl<ttl$, hiavoia, and
voria-Ls (later called eirt,(rTijiJLr)). The two former are stages
of what has previously been described as bo£a the two ;

latter are stages of what hasbeen called yvuxns or

e7riaT?/^77 and is later on called z^otjo-i? (a term which in this

passage is limited to the higher of them) 1 .

(1) The most superficial view of the world, that which

conveys least knowledge of it, is called by Plato dx-ao-La.
The word has a double meaning it has its regular ;

meaning of conjecture, and an etymological meaning

of which Plato avails himself, the perception of images,
that state of mind whose objects are of the nature of
mere images (eUoves). There is a connexion between
the two meanings when we talk of a conjecture we
;

imply that it is an uncertain belief, and we imply also

that it from a consideration of the appearance
arises
or surface of the thing in question. Plato has availed
himself of both meanings of the word, so as to express
a certain character or property of the object of mental
apprehension and a certain state of mind in the subject
the mental state is one of very little certitude, its objects
are of the nature of '
images,' shadows and reflexions.
1
Cf. 533 E sq.

VOL. II. R
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242 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

Why
does he describe this lowest group of objects
as shadows or reflexions ? Shadows, images, and dreams,
are the most obvious types of unreality, and the contrast
between them and realities is very striking to early
thinkers, as it is to a mind which is just beginning to
think. In what respect does a shadow differ from the
real thing? It resembles it merely in the outline, and
that is often very vague and inexact ; the rest of the
real thing, its solidity, its constitution, even its colour,
vanishes in the shadow. In what respect does a reflexion
differ from the real thing ? A reflexion reproduces more
of the real object than a shadow does ; its outline is very
fairly defined and exact ; the colour of the object is

retained to a certain extent ; but a reflexion is still only

in two dimensions. Any state of mind of which the
object stands to some other object as a shadow or
reflexion does to the real thing, is elKarria.

This at once opens field but what an enormous ;

mind had Plato in view? We may

particular states of
find an example of his meaning in the Allegory of the
Cave, the prisoners in which sec only shadows of
images (ayaKuara) 1
. An instance of an image, in the
language of that allegory, would be the conception of
justice as embodied, perhaps, in Athenian law. which
according to Plato would be a very imp erfect e mbod i-
ment . A step further from reality, a shadow of that
image, would be the misrepresentation of the Athenian
law by a special pleader. Suppose a man believed that
justice really was this misrepresentation, his state of
mind would be (Uaaia ;
justice would come to him

VII, 517 1).

1
Note that the tlxdvts of our present passage (509 e) do
not correspond to the dya\fiara of the Allegory of the Cave, but
to the shadows of the aydXnara.
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 243

through a doubly distorting medium, first through the

medium of Athenian legislation, and further through the
words of the lawyer.
We may take another example from Book X, where
Plato works out this idea in his attack on the imitative
arts. The effect of arts like painting is due to the fact

that the artist puts before us not the actual thing, but
its image (aScoAoz-) or its appearance at a certain distance.
He puts things before us not as they are but as they
'
'
'

appear ' (the word dKacria is not used, but it is the same
idea). He is so far like a man who goes about holding
up a mirror before things 1 If any one then were so far .

taken in by the perspective and colouring as to think the

picture before him the actual thing, he would be in
a state of dKaaia. The moment a man knows that
a shadow is only a shadow, or a picture only a picture,
he no longer in a state of euao-ia in that particular
is

respect. But, though the arts do not produce illusion of

that simple kind, Plato attacks them in Book X, entirely
on the ground that they are constantly used to produce
and stimulate a multitude of illusory ideas of another
kind. He takes painting as the most obvious instance of
imitative art, but he applies the principle which he makes
it illustrate to Poetry and rhetoric are the great
words.
sources of the kind of illusion he has in mind. The poet
gives us an image of his experience but, if we think we ;

know all about a thing after reading about it, we are just
as much deluded as if we took a picture for the reality.
1
Like the pleaders in the Allegory of the Cave he gives us a piece of
work which, in Plato's language, is two steps removed from the reality.

First comes the idea of the thing represented, beauty then the first
'
' ;

copy or expression of that 'idea,' in the beautiful human face (the actual
thing) then comes the second copy, the artist's representation of that
;

face (the reflexion or shadow).

R 2
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244 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

When then Plato talks of '

images,' he is not thinking
specially of pictures or statues, what he is primarily
thinking of is images produced by words. Sensitiveness
to the force of words is a marked feature of Plato ; and
he seems to have felt intensely the power, of evil they
may have when used by a skilful sophist '. as if his own
great mastery over them had made him realize the possible
perversion of such skill. He looks upon language as the
power of putting images between men's minds and the
facts. He felt this about rhetoric still more than about
poetry 2 the two being closely associated in his mind,
,

and both being arts of using language which exercised

a great power over the Greeks 3 .

But we must not suppose that Plato regarded the

power of language as only a bad thing, and incapable of
good. In Book III we have the metaphor of images
used in a good sense and we learn that it is one of the
;

functions of art (including both poetry and the plastic

arts) to put before us true images of self-command,
courage, generosity &c, and to train the mind to recognize
them 4
. The scholar, he says, who knows his letters must
be able to recognize them just as well in their reflexions
in water or in a mirror, and so the jjiuv(tiku* will recognize
the types of beauty and the reflexions of virtue in art.

Thus }xov(tlk)'i is conceived in this passage as the education

of etKao-ta, a training of the soul to read the reproductions
of reality in art aright it is intended to develop rightly
;

that side of the soulon which it is appealed to by images,

a condition of mind which is predominant in children and
undeveloped races, and in many men throughout their

2
'
Cf. Sophist, 234i:-E. Cf. 254 A. B. Cf. VII. 517 n.
3
Cf. Gurgias, 501 K sqq., where poetry and rhetoric are classed together.
1
401 l: and 402 11 sq.
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 245

whole lives. In Book X, on the other hand, where Plato

denounces imitative art and exposes its dangers, all that
he says dominated by the idea that the artist gives us
is

only the external appearance of things. His general view

of art may be thus expressed the right function of art :

is to put before the soul images of what is intrinsically

great or beautiful, and so to help the soul to recognize

what is great or beautiful in actual life when art makes ;

people mistake what isonly appearance for what is more

than appearance, it is performing its wrong function.
We are a state of dKao-Ca about many things,
all in
and to get a general idea of the sort of views that Plato
had in mind when he spoke of shadows and reflexions
which are taken for realities we must think how many
views there are which circulate in society and form a large
part of what we call our knowledge, but which when we
examine them are seen to be distorted, imperfect repre-
sentations of fact, coming to us often through the media
of several other men's minds, and the media of our own
fancies and prejudices.
The literal translation of eiKa<ua is imagination.' But '

it would be very misleading to translate the one word by

the other; for, while eiKacria expresses the superficial side

of what we call imagination, it does not express the deeper
side. Imagination in English has two senses. In one
sense it really does answer to Plato's conception of seeing
images. When we say that something is a mere imagina-
tion, or that a man is the slave of his own imagination,
we do mean to describe a very superficial view of things.
But when we say that a poet is a man of great imagina-
tion we mean almost the exact opposite. We mean that
the appearance of things suggests to him all kinds
of deep truth which to the ordinary person it does not
 '
246 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

suggest at all. The great poet, while it is true that he

regards things on their sensuous side, is great because
he reads through what his senses show him, and arrives
by imagination at truths not different in kind from those
which another might arrive at by what we call thinking.
Plato seems much more impressed by the possible misuse
of imaginative work than by its possible use, though he
himself is a standing example of what the union of
thought and imagination can do. And it isan undoubted
fact thatwe are apt to live habitually in an unreal world
in which we take the image for the reality, instead of
reading the reality by the image.
Plato's conception of the mental condition of the great
body of men is put before us in the Allegory of the
Cave their state is for the most part such that all that
;

occupies their minds is of the nature of shadows it is, ;

further, such that they firmly believe these shadows to

be real and the only reality. And in this lies their
illusion, for so long as a man realizes that the shadows
are shadows there is no illusion 1
. Their state is also
one of great uncertainty. Among the prisoners in the
allegory those who are honoured and rewarded most
are those who are quickest at learning to remember the
order in which the shadows pass, and who are thus best
able to prophesy what will pass next. This is meant to
illustrate how uncertain or conjectural their judgments
necessarily are. In proportion as our knowledge is not
first-hand, not derived from actual contact with things,
we ought to regard our beliefs as uncertain.

Wc must remember, however, that the degrees of such illusion as

Plato is speaking of arc very subtle there are, to develop his metaphor,
;

many intermi diate Stag* I between taking the shadow as altogether real
and ceasing altogether to be misled by it.
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 247

(2) Thus dnaaia is conjecture, and the next stage,

maris, is so called because it contrasts with ehac-ia in
regard to certitude, riums- is a feeling of certainty.
When people have themselves come in contact with
things, they feel far more certain about them than if they
had only come into connexion with them through others,
and tuoti? is the state of mind in which we know what we
call the actual tangible things of life ; these are not the
sole reality by any means, yet we feel about them a good
deal of certainty.
We must remember that both dK.a<Tia and ttio-tls are sub-
divisions of '
opinion '
(ho£a), so that what has been said of
it is true of them. To the state of mind called opi nion
truth and reality exist under the form of a number of
separate and apparently independent objects, each with
a character and position of its own, whether these objects

are real or reflected. Whether, for instance, one's know-

ledge of justice is derived from books or from what we
are told, or derived from personal experience, it is equally
true that, so long as we are in the state of '
opinion,' the
only answer we could give to the question What is justice,
would be to point to some particular acts or laws or
institutions. Still we feel a difference when we come
out of the region in which we can only know things at
second hand, or can only imagine them, into that in
which we have to do with them ourselves. It is the
transition from uncertainty to a sort of certainty *.
Further, just as there is a good state of tlnaaia and also
a bad state, a state which contains some truth and
1
The state of 'right opinion' described in Books III and IV, with its

attendant virtue of courage, i.e. tenacity, is a state of ir«rm. It is

a state of mind which is continually being tested by action, as contrasted

with a previous state of mind in which the soul was not in contact with
real life.
 ;;

'
248 LECTURES ON PLATO'S l
REPUBLIC

a state which contains none, so it is with all opinion.

It is important to remember this, for in Book III
1
right opinion ' is the sum of virtue, the virtue of the
Guardian ; so that it is surprising to us when, in Book
V, Plato begins to speak of opinion in a tone of con-
tempt. Now et/catria is only described as a state of
mind which we have to get out of, when it is regarded
as one which we are satisfied with and accept as final
the harm of the shadow or reflexion arises only when
one takes it for something else ; illusion is the misinter-
pretation of appearance, but the appearance which
is the occasion of illusion is capable also of being
rightly interpreted. And so with opinion generally
it is only so far as one believes the object of opinion
to be ultimate truth that it is a thing to get rid of.
'
Right opinion,'which true principles are embodied
in

however imperfectly, is a state of mind which is quite

laudable, and beyond which we cannot get as regards
the great bulk of our experience. What is unsatisfac-
tory in this state of mind is that it is bound up with
certain particular objects, and is liable to be shaken
when we discover that these objects are not so fixed and
permanent in their character as we thought, but depend
on their surroundings for their properties. Then the
mind is set to ask, If what I have known as justice, or
beauty, or weight, changes in this extraordinary way,
when seen in different relations, and is in such a continual
state of fluctuation, what can justice, or beauty, or weight
be 1
?

It is this feeling or perception that the objects of 5o'fa

are self-contradictory which sets the mind to ask for
other forms of truth. The sense of difficulty and cm-
VII. 524.
1

( f.
 ;

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 249

barrassmcnt arising when what we are accustomed to

believe in fails drives us to look for something else.

We are impelled to search for what Plato calls 'forms.'

principles or laws which-ma-ke these_yarious things what
th ey are or for the unity which underlies this changing
,

and manifold world.

(3) Plato calls the stage of mental development in
which he describes us as beginning to do this, hiavoia.
The word itself gives no clear idea of the thing meant
it was to the Greeks what the word intellect is to us. '
'

Like intellect, it has no very fixed meaning, and de-

scribes no one state of mind *, but it was a word obviously
applicable to the state of mind of which the scientific
man is the best instance. Plato's illustrations of hiavoia
are taken from the only sciences of his time; and, though
there are differences, there is a great substantial simi-
laritybetween the things he says of it, and modern
ideas of what we should call the scientific habit of
mind 2 .

Plato gives us two characteristics of this state, without

showing us the connexion between them (a) It deal s :

with, sensible t hings but it employs them as symbols of

,

something which is not sensible (b) it reasons from ;

'
hypotheses.' Arithmetic and geometry are the most
obvious types of hiavoia in both these respects.

1
Thus in Aristotle SiavorjriKal dperal is a name which covers ability in
all high forms of intellectual activity, in art, philosophy, morality, &c.
a
The word is often translated by understanding,' while votjois, to
'

which it is opposed, is translated by 'reason,' because these are words

which have been used to describe a lower and a higher phase of intelli-
gence. Atavoia and vo-qais or tm<TTr)/AT] stand in the same relation to one
another as Verstand and Vernunft' in Kant; and Coleridge gave the
' ' '

words understanding and reason technical senses intended to cor-

'
' '
'

respond with 'Verstand' and 'Vernunft.'

250 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

(a) The arithmetician and the geometrician, while they

use visible forms, are not actually thinking of them.
The geometrician is thinking about the triangle or the
circle as he uses the circle which he draws as a
such ;

symbol of and though, without such symbols, the

this ;

study of mathematics would be impossible, the circle

which he draws remains a mere symbol. Visible images
such as he uses are just the objects of opinion separate, —
independent, sensible things, each with a position and
character of its own. The objects of which these real '

things are symbols to him are what Plato calls forms.,

'

such as the form of the triangle or the triangle itself,'

' ' '

for these two expressions are used indifferently.

What Plato here says of mathematics applies to all
science whatever. All science treats the actual objects
of experience as symbols. It is always looking for laws,
and the sensible things around us become to it symbols
of them, or, in other words, are looked upon only as
the expression of principles ; the botanist or zoologist
has to speak of particular animals or plants, but it

does not matter to him what particular animal or plant

of the same species he takes. We express the same
fact by saying that science is abstract. The man of
science necessarily and consciously leaves out of account
a great deal in the objects he contemplates, and fixes
his attention on ceriain p oints in them. It is a matter
of indifference to the geometrician, in investigating the
relations between the sides and angles of a triangle,
how big, or of what colour, or of what material the
particular triangle is ; it may be of great interest to
some one else, but not In him yet all these things go ;

to make up the visiMc triangle.'

'
In using this phrase
and contrasting the 'visible triangle' with an ' intel-
 ;

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 251

ligible triang le,' which is the object of the geometrician's

study, we are speaking as if there were two triangles,
and may easily be led to think of the '
intelligible tri-
angle '
as if it were another triangle which is a faint
image of the sensible one. From this difficulty of lan-
guage arises the greater part of the difficulty of Plato's
idealism. We must, therefore, be clear what we mean
when we speak of the intelligible triangle ; the use of
the phrase does not imply that there are two different
classes of triangles, the intelligible and the sensible ; it

means simply that there is in the sensible triangle

a property distinguishable from all its other properties,
which makes it a triangle. The sensible triangle is the
'
intelligible triangle ' plus certain properties o ther than
triangularity. These other properties the geometrician
leaves out of account, or, in Plato's language, regards
as merely symbolic. The phrase, which is familiar to us,
that science abstracts, expresses just what Plato means
when he says that science treats particular objects as
merely symbolic, symbolic of s omething \vhich__they_a5 a
wh ole are no t. All science does this.
We may put this in a different way so as to illustrate
itsbearing upon education. The study of the sciences
compels us to think it compels us, as Plato says, to let
;

go our senses and trust to our intellects. In Book VII

he insists upon this in the case of all the sciences he
mentions ; we have in each to set aside our senses and
their associations, and to look at things with our minds
that is we have to set aside all but that particular law
or principle which is our object of interest for the time
being. That is why science seems at first to upset all
our ordinary associations and to be less real than our
ordinary experience.
 '
252 LECTURES ON PLATo's ' REPUBLIC

{b) Plato tells us further that bidvoia reasons from

'
hypotheses.' We mean by a hypothesis a theory tem-
porarily assumed to be true, which we are prepared to
abandon if the facts do not agree with it a hypothetical ;

view would mean a provisional view, awaiting confirma-

tion or disproof. But the use of the word vTrodecris in
Plato and Aristotle is different from this. Plato meant
by a hypothesis a truth which is assumed to be ultimate
or primary when it really depends upon some higher
truth ;
not that it is untrue or could ever be proved false,

but that it is treated for the present as self-conditioned.

The point of contact between Plato's use of the word
and ours is that, in both, a '
hypothesis ' is regarded as
conditional or dependent upon something; but Plato's
hypotheses are by no means provisional theories, they
are the truths at the basis of all the sciences. Arithmetic
and geometry rest upon certain assumptions or hypo-
theses. The ultimate assumption of arithmetic is

number with its primary properties of odd and even.

The arithmetician docs not expect to have to give
an account of this if any one denies the existence of
;

number, the possibility of his studying arithmetic is de-

stroyed ;
but, granted number as a starting-point («pxv),
the arithmetician reasons from it connectedly and con-

sistently, and discovers from any particular arithmetical

it

truth he wants. So with the geometrician what he takes ;

as his starting-point is the existence of geometrical space

with a few of its most elementary properties. If, when
he brings a truth back to his postulates, axioms and
definitions, you deny them, he can only say it is impos-
sible to argue with you ; it is not his business as a
geometrician to prove them. In the same way the
physicist starts with the conceptions of matter and
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 253

motion, the biologist with life, the economist with wealth,

the moralist with .morality. These, with a few of their
most elementary forms and attributes, are the hypotheses
of the sciences concerned with them, and each science
has similarly its own hypotheses.
By calling such conceptions hypotheses, in the sense
that they depend for their validity on some other truths,
what does Plato mean Not that they are untrue, for
?

he speaks of them as a form of being.' They are hypo- '

theses because, if we saw things wholly and as they are,

we should see that being is one whole (a koo-hos), and that,
as it is one whole, the various forms or kinds of it must
be connected whereas the arithmetician and the geome-
;

trician treat their respective forms of being as if they

were perfectly independent ; that is, they assume them
without giving an account of them. The truths they
startfrom await the confirmation (/3e/3aia>o-iv) of being
shown to be elements in an interconnected whole 1 It .

is thus an imperfection of hiuvoia that its 'starting-points'

are hypothetical, that they are not seen in their true
or full connexions ; for the ideal of science is perfect
connexion and perfect explanation. And these are the
same thing. As long as you can ask Why ? the ideal
of knowledge is not satisfied. To ask Why ? is the
same as to ask What is this dependent on ? Perfect know-
ledge would imply seeing everything in its dependence
on an unconditional principle (awuudeTos apyj)). The
human mind, though it never reaches such a principle,
is always demanding it, and, so long as it falls short
of cannot attain the ideal of knowledge.
it, This points
the way to the description of the final stage of intelli-
gence, voTjcris or hrurrrifiri.
1
See 531 D sq. and 533 B sq.
 ;

'

254 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

(4) This, as Plato describes it, is a pure ideal ; to

realize it is not within the scope of the human mind. But
it expresses his idea of what we should aim at and what
knowledge tends towards. It involves, he tells us, first,
a state of perfect intelligence with no element of sense
in it. It involves, secondly, the absence of hypothesis
the various principles of the specific sciences would be
seen not as hypotheses but as they really are, all natur-
ally following from the fact that the world is a world
of reason, each being a step to the one above it, and
so leading ultimately to the unconditional principle on
which they all depend.
(a) The statement that in perfect intelligence there
is n o. elem ent of se nse p erception (nothing alcrdiiTov) is
difficult to understand. Probably we may explain it in
the following way. Take, by way of example, any object
regarded by a geometrician, and used by him as a sym- '

bol,' say a triangle. We have seen that the real object

which he thinks about is not that particular triangle,
but the triangle as such. There remains therefore
in the sensible object a great deal which is no object
for the geometrician, but fal's outside his intellectual
vision. It is to him of the utmost importance that he
should ignore it, what makes
that he should not confuse
the triangle a triangle with a certain size or colour.
Otherwise, having seen a triangle an inch high, when
he came to sec another a foot high, he would suppose
the properties of the two as triangles were different.
In such a simple case no educated person would make
such a mistake, but in more complicated things we are
always making it, and it is because he thinks mathe-
matics train men not to do this that Plato insists on
their educational value. Every political economist knows
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 255

how difficult it is, even with the best intentions, to

disentangle complex phenomena in which the actions
of a number of human beings are involved and in ;

ordinary life we are continually doing what Plato calls

mistaking the symbol for the reality. Now the other

properties of the triangular object, which are ignored by
the geometrician, may of course themselves be made
the subjects of scientific investigation. The student
of optics may investigate its colour, some one else its
chemical composition, and so forth. And so with more
complex objects ; every single property of_any__Qbject
has what Plato calls a form ; as there is a triangle
as such, or a form of triangularity, so there is colour
as such, or a form of colour. Every particular object
is the meeting- point of innumerable laws of nature,
or, as Plato says, in e very particular object many forms
communicat e. Suppose then that different men of
science had set themselves to work to exhaust all the
properties of an object, and that all these properties
came to be understood as well as the triangularity o£
a triangle is understood by the geometrician, we should
regard the object which a number
as the centre in
of laws of nature, would call forms,
or what Plato
converged and, if an object ever were thoroughly
;

understood, that would mean that it was resolved into

forms or laws. The fact would have become a very
different fact, a fact which, so to say, had a great deal
more-init, though none the less a fact; the. object_as it
LsJx>-a«4g-norant person would have disappeared. There-
fore in_per£ect k nowle dge there would be no ele ment
of sense ; not that anything which our senses tell us
would be lost sight of, but that every sensible property
of the object would be seen as the manifestation of some
256 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

intelligible form ; so that there, would, be no symb olic

or irrelevant element in it, and it would have become
perfectly intelligible. As the geometrician sees the
various properties of a triangle and fixes his eyes on
triangularity, disregarding everything in the sensible
properties of his symbol that could cause him illusion
or confusion, so, if he understood the whole object
perfectly, he would see all its properties in the same way.
It would not be to him a. .confused collection of pro-

perties which seem to be constantly changing and

constantly contradicting themselves, but a.meetingjx>int
o f vario us permanent arjxL_imchanging forms or prin-
ciples. That is to say, it would take its place in an
order or system of '
forms ' it would be seen
; in all

the relations and affinities which it has. This is an

ideal ; but we do know that everything has relations and
affinities with everything else in the world, and the only
way which we can
in represent to
ourselves perfect
intelligenceis by supposing a mind to which all the

properties of everything, all its relations and affinities

with other things, are thus perfectly understood. This
remains a true statement of the ideal of our intelligence,
though of the great bulk of things our experience must
be always to a large extent sensible.' '

(/>) In perfect intelligence there would moreover be

no hypothesis. To describe how the world would pre-
sent itself to a perfect intelligence, Plato uses a figure;
it would present itself as a sort of scale or series of forms
of existence, each connected with the one above it and
the one below it, and the whole unified by one uncon-
ditioned principle, the good. The good is that on which
the)' all depend, and that which, to use another figure
of Plato's, is reflected in them all; or, again, the position
 THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 257

and function of each in the world are determined by the

supreme purpose of the world, the good. To a perfect
intelligence it would be possible to pass up and down
this scale of forms without any break, so that from any
one point in the world it could traverse the whole. In
proportion as we do understand one fragment of truth,
one subject, we find it possible to start anywhere and
to get anywhere in it and in the subjects most closely
connected with it and a very fair test of how far one
;

understands a thing is the extent to which one can

develop any given point in it. Such a state of mind
in its perfection would be votjo-ls or vovv e'xeiv in the
fullest sense of the words.
And here Plato introduces a new term, of which we
shall have to consider the meaning. The power or faculty,
he tells us, by which such a state of intelligence could be
brought about is that of dialectic (to SiaAeyeo-flcu, elsewhere
bia\eKTLKij). This term he eventually uses to describe
knowledge as it would be if perfect 1
and the passage
;

in which he then introduces it throws light on the passage

before us. Speaking of the application of the various

specific sciences in his system of education, he says that if
the study of them is to be made profitable to the end in
view we must try to see their relations with one another.
This is a principle to be borne in mind throughout the
more advanced part of the education in science which he
proposes ; the points of contact between the sciences
must be perpetually brought out. The test, we are told
later, of whether a man has the dialectical nature is
whether he is avvoTTTLKos, which means whether he has
the power of seeing together at one view the relationships
(oixeiorr/res) between the various specific branches of
1
531 D sq.

VOL. 11. S
 '
258 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

knowledge 1
. Now this brings out strongly, what is

hinted at in the passage before us, that progress in

knowledge is progress in the perception of the unity
.

of knowledge. A man who has a gift for perceiving this

is a natural dialectician, and dialectic in the fullest sense
is simply what knowledge would be if this possibility
of seeing the and communion between the dif-
affinities

ferent branches of knowledge (not, of course, only the

particular sciences to which Plato refers, but all branches
of knowledge) were realized. In this use of the word
dialectic is equivalent to perfect knowledge. Later on
we shall have to consider this conception in more detail.
1
537 c.
 ;

XII. EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND

PHILOSOPHY
[Republic, VII.]

i. The Existing Want of Education.

At the point which has now been reached in the VII. 514.V
° 52r B
argument, Socrates says that he will describe by an "

image what is the actual condition of mankind '

in regard
to education and the want of it.' The description is

given in the passage known as the 'Allegory of the Cave.'

To see the place which this passage fills in the argument,
we must recall the course of the discussion in Book VI.
It had been shown that the philosophic nature was the
gift which most fitted men to rule human society, but that

there were inherent in it certain dangers and causes of

difficulty. We were thence led to consider the question
how this nature is to be educated, and how its full de-
velopment can be secured, so that it may really prove the
saviour of society. The answer was that the knowledge
which would satisfy all the requirements of education would
be the knowledge of the good the relation of this know-
;

ledge to the rest of human knowledge was pointed out

and a sketch was given of the stages of the advance by
S 2
 '
260 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

which the world becomes more and the mind

intelligible
more intelligent. Now Plato turns round and asks what
is man's actual position in this scale of intelligence.
He is here no longer dealing with an ideal community,
but describing as they are the facts about the human
race and they are exactly what they ought not to be.
;

So far from progressing from darkness to light through

the stages which have just been described, men, as he
here represents them, practically remain in the lowest
stage of intelligence.
We need only notice a few points in the allegory
(514 A to 5uSb). In the first place we are told that the
state of the human race at large is one of elKaa-ia.

Instead of passing out of this initial stage to some truer

understanding of the world, most people abide in it all

their lives. If any man rises out of it, it is not by his

own doing, nor is his liberation due to any method of
education or any help which society gives him. but it

comes no one knows how (515 c). The prisoners

(jjuaei,

see only shadows and hear only echoes of the truth, and
each is tied fast to his own shadowy experience. In
other words, the view of men generally with regard to
themselves and the world around them is a view distorted
by falsifying media, by their and pre- own passions
judices, and by the passions and prejudices of other
people as conveyed to them by language and rhetoric.
And there is no advance in their view, they are perma-
nently in the state of understanding in which children
are, except that they believe in the truth of what they

see and hear with the force and tenacity of grown men.
This is not the state of a few miserable outcasts, it is our
own state.

In the second place, not only is this the normal condi-

 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 261

tion of men, but it is one from which they do not desire

to escape. They have no
idea of anything better beyond
it, for the which they are tied keep their faces
bonds in

perpetually turned away from the light, and there is no

system of education to free them from their bonds.
Moreover, the few who do get free find that every step
in their progress towards true knowledge is attended
with pain. In the third place, if here and there a
prisoner from the cave does get up to the light, and
then, being filled with pity for the other prisoners, returns
to tell them what he has seen, they laugh at him and
perhaps kill him. In other words, instead of co-operating
with the leading minds that arise in its midst, society is

either indifferent or actively hostile to them.

These are the main points to be noticed in the allegory.
The prisoner set free from the cave and gradually accus-
tomed to bear the strongest light passes through a series
of stages which correspond generally to that which was
symbolized by the divided line in the preceding section
of the argument. The stage in which he is turned round
from the position in which he was originally bound and
made to face the light is that in which a man is forced
to face the real world and see things as they are, coming
out of the false preconceptions which fancy and hearsay
and prejudice have made for him. This is represented
as a painful process. The second stage is that in which
he is led to take a scientific view of facts, and that too is
represented as painful. It would be pressing the allegory
too closely if we tried to find definite stages in education
corresponding to the steps by which the released prisoner
is led to look at the sun.
Such being the actual facts of man's condition, the
passage (518 B to 519 b) which immediately follows the
 ;

'
262 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

allegory draws a contrast between the true theory of edu-

cation and the actually prevailing theory. Education,
we are told, is not like putting sight into blind eyes, it is

like turning the eye to the light. And further, it is as if

this could only be done by turning the whole body
round ; means not merely illuminating the
education
intellect, but turning the whole soul another way. For
the great causes of the blindness of the mind are the
appetites and pleasures which overpower the soul
these are compared to leaden weights with which the
soul is encumbered at birth, and which must be cut
away before it can lift up its eyes from the ground.
Next (519 C to 521 b) we are shown what ought
to be the relation between society and its leading
minds. The facts that have been described make
it quite natural for those who have been freed and
have got to the light to wish to stay there and to
stand aloof from the world ;
for they owe nothing
to society. But the relation between society and
those who can serve it in any way ought to be just
the opposite it ought to be one of reciprocal service
;

between society and its members, each contributing

to the other something that the other wants. And
this principle, which lias already been applied to minor
matters, ought a fortiori to be applied to the relation
of society to great minds. They should be made to
feel that they are not sprung from their own roots, but

owe their nurture to society, and are therefore bound

to society. In a state which does give philosophers
the nurture which they need, it will be no wrong to
them to tell them that they must rule and take an
active part in society. They will do it willingly
because they will feel that it is a duty which they owe
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 263

in return for their nurture and they will govern well

;

because they will feel that they have already something

better than any of the rewards which generally accrue to
office, for that state will be best governed whose rulers

rule, not from any wish to enrich themselves, but simply

from a sense of public duty 1

.

2. Education in the Sciences.

The question which has now to be dealt with is, How 521 b to
53
are we to escape from the state which has been sym-
bolized by the position of the prisoners in the cave ;

how are those who are to rule and save society to be

brought up from darkness to light ? In the first place,
What are they to be taught? Socrates begins by re-
viewing very briefly the education which the Guardians
have already received. They have been trained in fxov-
and yvfivacTTiK-q and the former of these will have
(tlkij ;

produced a sort of harmony and rhythm of character,

by means of habituation, for the soul has had the order
and beauty of the world put before it in such a way that
it cannot but unconsciously assimilate them. But in all
this there was no learning in the true sense of the word
(ixdOrjixa). What then are the studies or branches of
by which the soul is to be led to the
learning (jua^/xara)
knowledge of the good, the greatest thing to be learned
(fx£yi(T7ov \xa61nxa) ?

Here (523 E sqq.) follows the important passage in

which Plato points out that the sciences are the proper
1
Notice also (520 c) that the philosopher when first he turns back
from philosophy to the life of the world sees badly, like a man going
back from the light into the darkness of the cave but with practice
;

he will come to have a far better insight than others in practical affairs,
because of all that he has seen in the clear light. (Cf. VI. 484 E.)
 '
26-| LECTURES ON PLATO'S '
REPUBLIC

instruments to mediate between the state of mind which

the previous education of the rulers has produced and
the perfect intelligence which (as far as may be) they
must possess. In this passage he describes the begin-
nings of thinking (vorjais), showing how the soul passes
from sense-perception (ato-O-qo-Ls), and such certainty as
that can give it, to thought. There are. he begins
by telling us, two sorts of things that we perceive
by the senses. The first are objects which are ade-
quately apprehended by the senses, so that they do
not provoke thought. For instance, as he says, if
we see three fingers, the perception which we get
through sight raises, as a rule, no further question ; there
is nothing mere perception to impel the ordinary
in this

mind to ask what is a finger. Such perceptions con-

stitute the state of mind called Trurnv. Here what a man
knows consists of a number of separate objects (ttoWo.
(Kaara), and up to a certain point the mind rests satisfied
with them, and is not anxious to find out any connexion
between them. But at a certain point the soul becomes
conscious of things like quantity, and such qualities as
hardness, softness, &c. The separate sensible object
which was at first regarded as a whole thing,
{ai<r6r)Tov).

then seems to break up into a number of attributes,

and these arc the objects th.it provoke thought. For
suppose we observe the size of the three fingers, or their

hardness or softness, or their colour, these arc also sen-

sible things, as the kind of objects previously mentioned
are, but with this curious difference, that sense no longer
adequately perceives them ;
the attributes have no fixity,
and pass into their opposites ; we find the same finger in
different relations great and small, hard and soft, &c.
It is the sense of this contradiction which sets the
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 265

mind thinking upon the question, What is each of these

qualities which the senses report? If each of them is

one distinct thing it cannot also be its opposite, and

when we them thus confused with its
see each of oppo-
site the question arises what hardness, or greatness, or

the like really is. So we are brought to the distinction

between the object of thought (vot]t6v) and the object
of sight (oparov), or of the senses generally (aladriTov).
There is magnitude as seen in a separate visible object
in this confused and self-contradictory way, so that
a thing is both great and small in different relations ;

and there is '

the great.' '
the small,' which is apprehended
by thought and is quite clear and definite, so that the
great is never small and the small never great. And
thus we get to the point of view which was described
as that of btavoia. in which the objects with which the
mind is occupied are not the sensible things that happen
to be before one, but the various intelligible principles
which can be apprehended through the objects of sense,
magnitude, weight, and the like.
What is here said about the objects of sense corre-
sponds exactly to what was said in Book V. 479 about
the objects of opinion. It applies, of course, not only to
the perceptions of simple sight or sound or touch, such
as are here instanced, but also to our perceptions of
what is pleasant or painful, good or bad, and the like.

The passage must be taken as an attempt to describe

the way in which the soul passes from a state of
unreflecting perception, through a state of perplexity
and bewilderment (cnropia), into a state of more or
less developed intelligence. Sometimes, from various
causes, the mind becomes dissatisfied with the con-
dition of mere opinion and mere feeling in which it
 '
256 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

finds itself. It is, of course, generally in the sphere of

morality that we first feel keenly how, as Plato observes,
the objects of opinion contradict themselves. Thus,
further on \ he describes the position of a man brought
up in certain beliefs about justice and honour, to whom
the questioning spirit comes, asking him, What is justice,
What is honour ? When he gives the answer that he has
been taught, reason confutes him and shows him that
what he calls just may also be unjust. Then, unless he
knows how to deal with this new spirit of questioning,

he gets to think that thereno such thing as justice

is

or honour, and the commonness of this result is one

reason of the general discredit of philosophy. Plato
describes this in order to show the necessity of that
constancy to which the Guardians were trained while
still in the state of mere opinion, a constancy which,
holds fast what it has been taught,
in spite of difficulties,

till knowledge comes to take its place.

further The
bewilderment which he thus describes as arising in
regard to moral ideas is of the same kind as that which
has been shown to arise with regard to the physical
properties of sensible objects. It is to meet this diffi-

culty, in the minds in which it occurs, that the sciences

take the place in education which Plato proceeds to
assign to them. If a man has the sort of mind that
is going to think, it is most important that it should

be trained to think in the best way and on the best

method.
What has just been said of the tendency of certain
kinds of sensible objects to arouse thought has now
to be applied to the problem of education (524 I)

to 531 D). The question is what particular studies are,

1
537 E to 539 A.
 :

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 267

from the nature of the objects that they deal with, suited
to provoke and stimulate thought. Take first the object
with which arithmetic deals, number. We find that
every sensible object is both one and infinitely many,
like a chain which is one but consists of many links.

Thus, since unity and multiplicity co-exist in the same

thing, to sense the one is many and the many are one. Yet
if you said this to the arithmetician he would laugh
at you, and say that a unit is always a unit, and can be
nothing else. Clearly therefore the arithmetician is not
thinking of a sensible unit but of something else. The
same thing is shown to be true of geometry, astronomy,

and harmonics. In each the object as it is to sense

seems to contradict itself, and the object as it is to
thought is distinct and self-consistent. Thus the sciences
by compelling the mind to think, that is to disentangle
and see through the confusion and contradiction of the
senses, are or ought to be great educational instruments,
in fact just the instruments we want to facilitate the
transition of the soul from mere perception to intel-
ligence and it is with this end constantly in view that
;

the sciences are to be studied.

Of the present manner
which the sciences are pur-
in
sued, Plato speaks in a very depreciatory way, rebuking
the practice of studying them merely for what we should
call utilitarian purposes. He does not say that these
uses of the sciences are not extremely valuable ; on the
contrary, he insists more than we should on the value
of geometry for a man who is going to be a soldier;
he wishes that such men should cultivate the geometrical
sense. What he does say is, in effect, simply this
the study of the sciences, if it be confined to the limited
objects of trade, finance, the arts, and so forth, is not
 '
263 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

really educational, or educational only in an infinitesimal

degree ; and so, until people are encouraged, by the state
or otherwise, to a further study of the sciences than
is required for these purposes, the standard of education
will be very low. Useful the study of the sciences ought
to be; but useful for what? Plato is a thorough utili-

tarian ; but, he says, trade, navigation, and the like, are

not the end of life the end is to do the best for the soul
;

you can, to make the best man you can and the object ;

you have in view will make a great difference to the

spirit in which you learn.

What, according to him, is the real value of the study

of the sciences ? It is twofold. Their first great function
is to teach us to think. Thinking means asking questions
which difficulties and apparent contradictions in our
experience force upon us. Now science owes its origin
to the fact that the soul has found such difficulties in
its sensible experience, and has felt a certain necessity
to clear them up. Science is the result of thought
exercised on sense. If men never felt in their experience
such bewilderment as Plato has described, or were
never impelled to find their way out of it, the spirit
of enquiry which creates science would not exist. There
could not be a science of arithmetic, for example, till
some one was driven to form a clear conception of unity
as apart and there can be
from particular single objects ;

any subject only so far as the subject-matter

a science of
can be thus clearly and separately conceived. All
sciences then have originated in difficulties of this kind,
and result in the solution of such difficulties. Naturally
therefore the sciences which already exist form the best
instruments for training themind to think; for in study-
ing them each man's mind is led to do over again
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 269

what has been done by the minds that have made them.
They are embodied bcavoia, representing the results
of thinking. If you want to learn to think, study the
sciences in which past thought is embodied, for you
cannot do so without being compelled to think yourself.
That, according to Plato, is the first great function of
science in education.
The most elementary airopta of all is that which
concerns the one and the many ; therefore Plato puts at
the bottom the science of number, which is the result of
thinking upon this antithesis. Next to arithmetic, the
study of number, comes plane geometry, the study
of space in two dimensions ; then solid geometry, the
study of space in three dimensions ; then astronomy,
the study of solid bodies in motion ; and, lastly, har-
monics, the study of the motion of bodies as producing
sound. This is the order of his scientific course. Each
step adds something to the complexity of the subject
studied, and in each case he reiterates that, along with
simple observation by the senses, the mind has got to
be used on the subject.
As yet we have only seen the most obvious use of
the sciences in education. There is another, to Plato in-
separable from the first. If their first use is that they
train the mind in thinking in general, the second is that
in studying them the mind comes gradually to under-
stand certain principles or forms of being which are a
firststep towards understanding the good, the principle
which governs all being. It is puzzling to us that Plato
should speak of these sciences as putting the mind on the
track of the good, and we naturally ask what the study
of number, or of space, can have to do with the final
cause of the world. The answer is that each of the
2-o LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

sciences deals with a particular branch, kind, or form

of existence that existence is one, forming a koo-}j.os
; ;

and that the ideal of knowledge is to be able to pass

freely from any one point in the system of existence to
any other so that, though number, space, and motion
;

are not directly manifestations of the good, and the very

abstract sciences which deal with them have no moral
influence in the ordinary sense, yet, as everything in the
world is ultimately a manifestation of the divine intelli-

gence, even in these abstract sciences we are really on

the ladder which leads up to the good. Let us translate
this into modern language, such as many modern philo-
sophers have used : The study of the laws of nature,
which begins with the laws of number, space, and motion,
is already the study, though in a very elementary form,

of the reason of things nature does everywhere reveal

;

reason, that God, so that all the laws of nature are

is

laws of God, and even the study of number is a study of

the laws of God.
Education in the sciences has then in Plato this double
function first, it is a sort of mental gymnastic
: and, ;

secondly, it introduces the mind to positive knowledge

about certain elementary forms in which the presence of
the good in the world is manifested. It is, as he puts it,

the '
prelude '
to the study of '
dialectic '
; in it we hear
the beginning of that great music of the world which the
human race has to learn (53] n).
In Plato's treatment of each of the sciences that he
mentions, we arc struck directly by the strong distinction
that he draws between those aspects of things which are
sensibly perceived and something which is not seen or
heard but thought or understood and we observe that ;

he treats the latter as more real than the former. Our

 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 271

first impulse on a superficial reading of the Republic is

to say that Plato altogether ignores what we call observa-

tion and experiment, and writes as if we could construct
laws of nature simply by thinking out certain axioms to
their consequences. We think so because, coming to
Plato with certain expectations, derived from what we
know of the methods of modern science, and with a certain
modern phraseology in our minds, we apply these to him.
Really he says nothing which has not been practically
confirmed in its spirit by modern science 1
.

The most examples of his view occur in his

striking
discussion of astronomy and harmonics, for we are apt to
accept what he says of arithmetic (524 D to 526 c) and
geometry (526 E to 527 d). No one denies that arithmetic
is concerned with the nature of number as such. If we said
we saw or touched a number, we should know we were
speaking in an inaccurate way ;when we use counters for
numbers we recognize that the visibility and tangibility of
the objects reckoned with are accidental, not essential, and
that these objects are merely symbolical and suggestive of
number as apprehensible by thought. As to geometry,
what Plato says might perhaps be disputed. His position
simply is that the visible and tangible triangle, for
example the diagram on paper, is not the real object of
our thought, but a symbol suggesting the real object,
triangularity, which is not seen and touched, but thought.
This position can not be disputed. But of course trian-
gularity in its essence, though it can only be thought^ is
still the result of thinking about what we can sec and

touch. On this ground objection might be taken to

Cf Whewell's Philosophy of Discovery, especially Appendix B.
1 '

Remember, however, that facts and theories are not opposite and
mutually exclusive things, as Whewell implies.
272 LECTURES ON PLATO S < REPUBLIC

Plato's antithesis between sensible experience and thought.

He does not, however, really ignore this fact, and, if we
are to dispute whether the language which he uses is

justifiable, the whole question at issue will really be what

exactly weare to call sensible experience. When, how-
ever, Plato comes to astronomy and harmonics, the way
in which he writes of them seems strange at first. He
makes Glaucon say that astronomy (527 D to 530 c) will
have a grand educational influence, because it compels
us to direct our minds upwards and he makes Socrates
;

laugh at him for supposing that star-gazing can enlighten

the soul. He proceeds to say that a man might gaze at
the stars all his life and yet find out nothing of their
movements. Now he does not say that the truths of
astronomy can be arrived at without observing the stars ;

and he often says that knowledge can only be arrived

at through the eyes and ears
1
The question here is,
.

Could we ever get at the truths of astronomy by simply

looking? Newton would never have thought of the
law of gravitation if he had not had eyes, but if we
chose to say therefore that Newton saw the law of
gravitation in the falling apple we should be giving
the word 'see' a meaning different from its usual
meaning, and to be consistent we ought to adopt a new
phraseology altogether.
Plato goes on to distinguish the visible motions of the
heavenly bodies from their true motions, but he docs not
mean that the former are, in the ordinary sense, untrue
or unreal. He contrasts apparent motion with real
motion, as we do. No one can say that .simple observation
of the movements of the sun tells us the truth about them,

47 a sq.
1
CI. especially 1Vitnaeus,
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 273

for no one now believes that it moves as it seems to do ;

and yet no one supposes that the simple observation that

the sun occupies different places in the sky at different
times of the day is not a true observation it is a real ;

fact, it is what we see. The question is how we are to

interpret this fact. This interpretation is an act of
thought we put together this simple observation and
;

many others, and correct one appearance by another until

at last we arrive at a hypothesis which will account per-
fectly for them all. We all believe that the truths dis-
covered by Kepler and Newton are truer than the casual
notions of persons ignorant of astronomy. How are they
truer (for in one sense every experience we have is equally
a fact and equally real) ? What is the difference between
one fact and another? The most real facts are those
which contain most, the widest and deepest the most ;

superficial facts, mere empirical facts, are those which

'
'

contain least. The laws of motion are facts so are the ;

things that I myself observe in the sky. The difference

between these facts lies in the amount which they enable
people who know them to say. My fact of observation
of the sun's position tells me very little about the sun ;

but the fact of observation is not denied or ignored by

the greatest astronomer, it is used along with a great
deal more. There is no hard-and-fast line between
empirical facts and ultimate laws ; a fact is empirical
so far as it is isolated. A great generalization, such
as that of Newton, is a stupendous fact, it connects
and contains innumerable facts ; it simply a very-
is

large fact. What Plato says then is that the apparent

motions of the heavenly bodies are to be used as
examples (7rapa8eiyfxaTa) or symbols which suggest to
us to think out the real motions ; not that they
VOL. II. T
274 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

are unreal, for they are not visions, or illusions, or

l
untrue .

Harmonics (530 C to 531 c) one of the branches of

is

the science of motion. Plato says that motion has

many branches, but he takes only two, the motion of
heavenly bodies which are seen by the eye, and the
motion of bodies which produce sound to the ear. Here
again he begins by laughing at those professional
musicians who think that the science of sound can be
discovered by, and consists what we actually hear,
in,

and that the person who has the and is capable finest ear
of appreciating the smallest intervals knows most of the
laws of sound. Next he criticizes quite a different class

of people, the Pythagorean theorists. The great dis-

covery that musical intervals are mathematically ex-
was attributed to Pythagoras, but it does not
pressible
seem to be known exactly what he really discovered,
or what was discovered by other Greek theorists on
music. Plato speaks with approval of the Pythagoreans
in that they have investigated the principles of harmony,
but he also criticizes their enquiries as superficial. They
have confined their investigations to intervals and con-
cords which can be heard, and for these they have found
numerical expressions, but they have not gone on '
to
what are harmonic numbers, and what
ask, in general,
are not, and what is the reason for each being such.'
He means that, though they have worked out the
numerical expression of the ordinary intervals of the
scale, they have not raised the question what harmony

In the passage where he speaks of the absurdity of supposing that

m< n Star-gazing will reveal the laws of the stars, Plato is very likely
thinking of Aristophanes, Clouds, 171 sqq., where Socrates is represented
as hoisted up in a basket gazing at the sky.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 275

itself is, and what is the ultimate law which explains

why sounds harmonize at all. This is a question that
has exercised the minds of some of the greatest thinkers.
Here again Plato does not say, Music is trifling, it ought
to be resolved into harmonics. He does say, If youj
think that, because you have a delicate ear, you necessarily
understand the science of sound, you are very much
mistaken, for no amount of listening to sounds will show
you the principles upon which the musical scale is

based.
So far, we may say, Plato understands the real prin-
ciples upon which all science is based ; his language, if

pressed, is hardly less true than Mill's in speaking of the

same But he has expressed himself at least:
subject.
in a dangerous way in speaking as if real motion were'

another kind of motion from that which we see. The

laws of motion are the truth of the motion we see. •

A person who fully understood the laws of any sensible

phenomenon would, in apprehending the phenomenon
by sense, also understand it, for these would not be two
separate acts. If he understood all the laws of the
phenomenon there would, in Plato's language, be no
sensible (that is, merely sensible) element in his appre-
hension of it, for whatever he saw, heard, or touched,
would be to him the expression of laws he could not
see or hear or touch. And yet, we may say, his thus
understanding phenomenon which he had first
the
apprehended by sight or hearing or touch would mean
that he would know that if he put himself in certain
other positions he would have certain other sensations
of sight or hearing or touch. We must therefore, in
reading Plato, guard against that sort of bastard Plato-
nism which resolves experience into two worlds, the
T 2
276 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

sensible and the intelligible world, of which the in-

telligible world, if you ask what it is, can only be
described as a fainter reproduction of the sensible. He
certainly often gives occasion to this misunderstanding,
but he does not himself draw a sharp line between the
sensible and the intellectual for he constantly calls the
;

sensible the appearance of, the image of, the suggestion

of, what is intelligible the one is essentially related to
;

the other. What he does is to realize and work out

powerfully the fact on which all science and philosophy
is really based, that it is by thought and not by simple

sensations (as the term is ordinarily understood), or any

amount of combinations of them, that truth is really found,
and that therefore truth is, so far, an intelligible, not
a sensible, thing ; it is an interpretation of sense, or, as

he would say, sensible experience is a symbol of it or is

a reproduction of it, or participates in it.

The difficulty in appreciating this idea is to know

what exactly is by sense and what is
given arrived at
by thinking. Language leads us to believe that first

there are certain well-ascertained facts given us by

observation, and that then we theorize on those facts 1
.

But is one continuous process of ascertaining

really there
going on from the most elementary sensible observation
up to the highest generalizations of thought, a process
jn which, inone meaning of the words, we may be said
to get away from sense, but in which all the time the
more elementary facts are not done away with, but are
explained by being taken gradually into wider and wider
connexions. As
Plato says that what is sensibly per-
ceived is symbol of the intelligible truth, so we
the
might say that we do not sec or hear the laws of motion
1
See tli<- work of Whewell, already referred to.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 277

or sound, but thatwhat we see and hear are parts of the

factswhich those laws express. The progress of what
he calls thought or intelligence means that experience
gets more and more clear to us as we go on, the world
as it is known to us at first by the senses being very-
confused. We may represent that progress to ourselves
by comparing the sort of impression which we get, if
we have no musical education, on first hearing a chord
struck, with what we experience when, by practice or
otherwise, we have come to hear the different notes
distinctly and to know the intervals between them. The
difference between these two experiences, carried out
further, may give us some notion of that process of clari-
fying confused things which Plato calls the work of
thought.
In any fuller enquiry into the relation of sense and
thought everything must turn on these questions : First,
what is meant by sense'
' ? Secondly, how much do we
really experience in sensible experience ? Thirdly, what
is the nature of the change that takes place when we
come to understand better the thing we have expe-
rienced ? (Every one would agree in the one point of
calling this change a process in which thought becomes
clearer.)

3. Dialectic.

The system of education in the sciences is a prepara- 531 d to

534E -

tion for 'dialectic' (hLaXtnTocrj or to bia\eyeo-6cu), and will

be of use so far as it enables the Guardians to become
'
dialecticians ' (8taAe/crtKoi). There is for several reasons
a difficulty in understanding what Plato definitely means
when he talks of dialectic in the Republic. In this,

as in other cases, and notably in that of the doctrine

 — ;

'

278 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of ideas, he takes for granted a great deal which he

has developed elsewhere, so that here, as often, what
we are told in the Republic is rather an indication of
his meaning than an actual account of it. Further, he
repeatedly uses the word to describe an ideal science,
and, as to what that would be. he could only give us
a general idea — an idea the filling up of which must
be left to one's imagination and to the progress of the
human race. Moreover, the word is used in the Republic,
as elsewhere in Plato, in other senses besides this.
The word itself means originally the art or process

of discourse, of asking questions and giving answers

it is equivalent to hihovai ml Se'xeo-0ai koyov, to be able to
give an account of a thing to another man, and to get
from him and understand his account of a thing. This
is a standing phrase in Greek for reasoning, and hihovai
koyov 1
is to give an exact definition of the thing you are
speaking of. A man who understands a thing can give
an account of it to others, and on the other hand you
cannot give an account of a thing unless you understand
it. The faculty of doing this attracted the attention of
ordinary people in Greece, and in Aristotle it becomes
a large part of the subject of logic. The Topica is an
elaborate treatise on practical logic in this sense, logic
as used in society for conversational purposes, in the
pursuit of science, in the law courts, and the like. But
the art of giving an account of what you yourself think
is scarcely more important than the art of extracting

from others their opinions or beliefs {koyov hi^eaOai or

Knyov Xa\xftav(tv). To know how to put a question is

and as important as to know how to give

just as hard
an answer to one; and a process analogous to that
1
More fully \6fov rfjs ovaias. — 534 n.
 '

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 279

of questioning others goes on in the mind of the single

enquirer.
In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Socrates says that the
word bia\iye<r9at came from the practice of men meeting
together to deliberate, Siakiyovres Kara ykvr\ ra TTpdy/xaTo.,

'
laying apart the things they discussed according to
their kinds '
; everybody, he says, ought to practise this
and fit himself for it, for this is what makes men the
'

best men, and leaders of men, and masters of discourse

(apLo-Tovs not T)ye\AOviKuiTa.Tov$ kcu StaAe/crtKCorarou?) . This
is the germ of the Platonic dialectic. We must re-

member with regard to Greek logic and reasoning that

philosophy in Greece had its being, to a great extent,
in oral discussion. The Greeks were to an extraordinary
degree a nation of talkers ; and therefore not only elo-
quence, rhetoric, and poetry, but the other arts of words,
logic in the true sense and in the sense of mere dispu-
tation,were highly developed among them. Socrates
himself spent his life in talking, and that fact never lost
its effect on Greek philosophy. what In Plato we get
was the habit of Socrates' life formulated as a method of
enquiry. Plato took up the word 'dialectic,' as one
might the word logic,' and gave it a meaning which it
'

has never since entirely lost. It came to mean with

him, and most commonly, true logical method in
first

contrast to false or assumed methods and, secondly, not ;

the method of knowledge at all, but completed know-

ledge, or what we may imagine would be the result if the

1
Mem. IV. v. 11 and 12. The etymology is of course strained. In
the same passage this intellectual capacity of distinguishing has a moral
side as well only men who control their passions can see what is
:
'

best in things, and distinguish between things according to their kinds

in thought or in action; and only they can choose what is good and
refrain from what is bad.'
280 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

true method had been carried out completely through

all branches of knowledge.
In the first of these senses the word has passed from
meaning simply discourse to meaning discourse with the
object of attaining the truth, and this discourse may
either be carried on by words between two persons or be
a 'dialogue silently carried on by the soul with itself We 1 .'

may ask why a word meaning discourse should be used

to signify the true method of gaining knowledge. The
fact points to Plato's conviction that the only way to
attain truth is to advance step by step, each step being
made our own before we go on to the next, and that for
this purpose the process of questioning and answering
is the natural method. Moreover, his conception of
questioning and answering as the natural way of eliciting
truth from, and putting truth into, the mind, is closely
associated with his idea that education does not mean
simply putting something into the mind as if were it

a box, but is a turning of the eye of the soul to the

2
light , or a process of eliciting from the soul what in

a sense it already knows, —a process in which the soul

which learns must itself be active. Hence the constant
contrast in Plato between the continuous speeches of
some distinguished teachers of his time and the conversa-
tions of Socrates ; he has a strong feeling that the only
true way of communicating knowledge is to bring two
minds into contact. Thus in the Phaedrus* Plato tells
us how inferior written truth is to spoken truth, because
a book cannot answer the questions which arise in the
reader's mind. The same principle applies to the
thinking of the individual mind ; if we arc to learn we
1
Sophist, 263 !•:. ' 518 c.
3
275 c sqq.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 281

must not simply put the facts of a book into our minds,
we must question and answer ourselves.
Again, dialectic, the true logician's reasoning, is

reasoning which is in conformity with facts. It is often

contrasted with reasoning used merely for the purpose

of gaining a victory in argument (epiori/cTj or avriXoyiKij l
).

The characteristic of such reasoning is that it reasons

according to the names of things. Plato has already
described it, in a passage in Book V, as '
pursuing merely
2 ,'
verbal oppositions and as thus opposed to dialectic,
which follows the forms of the things in question (that is,
distinguishes the precise facts which the name is meant
to indicate in each case where it is used). Thus in the
passage referred to, where Socrates is talking of com-
munity of pursuits between men and women, the objector
is made to argue that on Socrates' own principle
different pursuits must be assigned to different natures.
To reason thus, Socrates says, is only to wrangle the ;

person who argues so only takes the words different '

nature,' different pursuits,' and argues from the one

'

to the other, without enquiring what specific forms of

difference there are that is, in this case, what is the
;

specific form of difference between the natures of men

and women, and to what specific form of difference
in occupation it ought to lead. In what he says of
reasoning Plato, we observe, starts with the conception
of certain objective differences of kind, differences which
are there whether we recognize them or not ; it is the
function of true reasoning to discover and follow them.

"S,o<f>iaTiK-q again is reasoning known to be illegitimate and used

1

designedly with the object of blinding another person for one's own
advantage.
454 A " Kar'
2
aiiTu to oVo/ta SiuiKtiv rod \€xQivTOS r^v Ivavrioiatv"
 '
282 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

The differences embodied in ordinary language, the

terms of which form a sort of classification of things
which is amongst ordinary men, are often not real,
in use
or at least not the most real differences; they only go
a little way in. True logic is therefore a perpetual
antagonism to, and criticism of, the ordinary use of words
and the ordinary manner of discussion it is the knowing ;

how to use words rightly, that is how to use them so

that they shall conform not to the fancies of the speaker,
but to the real distinctions of things, the real system of
the world.
Plato's account of dialectic as a method depends then
upon a certain view of the constitution of the world.
Anybody's conception of the method of knowledge must
by his conception of the form
ultimately be determined
in which truth exists men have always distinguished
;

between reasoning which touches facts and reasoning

which docs not. And so Plato's conception of method
is the reflex of his metaphysical conception of the nature
of things. How did he conceive the world would look
to us if we understood it perfectly? It is obvious from
many of the dialogues that he conceived it would present
the form of an articulated whole, what we should prob-
ably call an organism or whole of parts in which each
part only understood by reference to other parts and
is

to the whole, and every branch of which exhibits on

a small scale the fundamental characteristics of the
whole. Such being the order of the world, we must,
tells us, in any enquiry, approach tilings
x
as the PJiilcbus
with the expectancy of finding such an order. The
nature of reasoning, as Plato conceives it, is determined
by this characteristic of the material it deals with ; it

16 c to ii.
 ;

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 283

must conform itself to that material. So in the Phae-

dras 1
he illustrates the nature of discourse (Ao'yov) by
the metaphor of a body, and again in the same dialogue
he compares the bad reasoner to the bad cook who cuts
across the joints instead of following the natural articula-
tion of the body. Thus the idea of the world as an
organic whole gives his theory of knowledge its most
2
prominent characteristic .

He himself expresses his leading idea by saying that

all knowledge has to do with the one '
in many and '
'
the
many in one.' This is a technical expression of the idea
of organism ; for every organism each is one in many ;

part can only be conceived with reference to the whole

the whole is present in the parts to understand it we ;

must give attention not to the one alone, nor to the

many alone. In the Pliilclms z where this idea is most ,

worked out, Plato remarks that the fundamental fact

from which dialectic springs is the co-existence of unity
and multiplicity in all things. Wherever we take the
world it is a one in many wherever there is something
;

of which we predicate being, we always find that more

than one thing may be predicated of it and everything ;

either is a particularized form of some generic form,

principle, or law, or, if it is itself an abstract principle or
property of things, exists in a great many different
instances, though maintaining its unity throughout them.
(We have already met with this conception in Book V.)
The method of learning about things must therefore be
one which recognizes this fundamental fact. Accord-
ingly dialectic, in the sense of the method of knowledge,
1
264 c.
2
Cf. Phacdrus, 265 C sqq.. 273 D sq., 276 E to 277 C.
3
14 C to 18 E.
 '

'
284 LECTURES ON PLATO'S l
REPUBLIC

will be a double process consisting of combination and

l
division (avvaycoyri and biaipecns) . This means that, as
any truth will always be found to be a one in many, the
way to realize it will be either, starting from many
instances of it, to arrive gradually at the unity which
pervades them all (this is avvayooyr]), or, if you start with
the one principle or law, to see how it can be divided up
into its many instances (this is hiaipeais).

Under this simple form we recognize what, from

Plato's time onward, have been held to be the two
sides of all scientific method. In '
inductive ' reasoning
you start with a number of different instances and en-
deavour to find one constant principle, the '
law of them '
;

'
this answers in principle to '
combination.' In '
deductive
reasoning you start with a given conception or fact and
follow it out in its particular applications or occurrences,
seeing how the general principle applies to a new case,
or, in Plato's phrase, how '
the one ' particularizes itself
in 'the many'; this answers in principle to 'division;
In 'combination' we have the exercise of the same gift

that we have already seen referred to as '

seeing together
2
(crvvotyis) . Atatpecrts, though the word itself is not used
in the Republic, is the method that the true reasoner was
said to follow in Book V in the passage already referred
to,where the failure of the contentious reasoner is said
to be failure to distinguish properly the different kinds
of the same thing. 'Combination' is shown primarily
in collecting the 'form' out of the many objects of
sense, and '
division '
in seeing how the '
form ' appears
in a number of different objects of sense. For the many
1
Phacdrus, 266 B.
1
In the Phacdrus (265 I) Plato uses avvopav, to sec together, as an
equivalent to ovvaytiv, to bring together.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 285

(~oAAa ocaoTa), the multitude of particular instances of

the one, mean in the first instance the objects which
the senses present to us. And forms are primarily
spoken of as elements of unity in a multiplicity of
sensible things. But it is important not to overlook
the further application of the same principle which
is implied in the Republic each form is itself related to
;

other forms, and ultimately all the forms of things are

connected together and make one system.
Thus when Plato describes the perfect reasoner as one
who, starting from any single form, could pass up along
the ladder of forms to the ultimate unconditional prin-
ciple on which all depends, and could descend in like
manner, the ideal of science which he describes is simply
the result of his conception of logical method. True
reasoning, in all cases, consists in the union of combina-
tion and division ; and to do both completely, to see
the many in their unity and the one in its multiplicity
completely, would be to have a perfect knowledge about
the world. All wrong reasoning is the failure to do
either the one or the other. Plato tells us in the Philebus
that most people either pass too hastily from unity to
variety, that is from a general principle to a particular
case, or generalize too hastily from a number of instances
to one principle.
This logical method may be variously applied to the
discovery, the communication, or the definition of truth
(evptV/cet^, hibdo-Keiv, bpi^iv) ; and these are the three
main applications of it that we find considered in Plato K
In the attempt to discover truth, the expectation as to
the truth with which the enquirer starts makes a great
difference, and the main point for him to bear in mind as
1
For its application to teaching cf. PhaeJrus, 276 B sq.
286 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

to the method of discovery is that he must never be

with what he thinks he has discovered until he
satisfied
has shown all the differentiations of the single form or
principle which he thinks he sees exemplified in the case
before him, nor until he has brought all the particular
instances of it into unity \ The power of denning things
(Xoyov kKacTTov Xanfiaveu' rr/i ovarias) is made a prominent

characteristic of the dialectician in the Republic. Defini-

tion plays an enormous part in Greek philosophy ; to
be able to define things was its ideal. How then does
definition connect with this conception of method ?

Anything we wish to define will necessarily be found

to be a certain specific form of one or more generic forms
or principles. To be able to define it, that is to have
an accurate conception of it, is to be able to see exactly
what modification it is of what form or forms. Merely
to know that a certain act, for example, is a good act,
is not to have a definite conception of it ; to have an
adequate conception of a good act we must sec exactly
in what sense it is good, or how, in the particular circum-
stances of the act. good is best realized. We might say
that definition consists in assigning to the particular
its position in reference to the principle of which it is

an instance. Dialectic, Plato tells us in the Republic 2 ,

is the method, and the only method, which attempts

systematically to arrive at the definition of any given
thing. The process of defining a given thing is there
(implicitly) represented as consisting in taking it away
from, and holding it apart from, every other thing with
which it is combined or to which it is akin :i
. But this
process of abstraction is only the other side of the process
of concretion, which sees in what ways a given form or
1 2 3
Philebus, c6d. 5331'. 534 « sq.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 287

principle is in fact combined with others. We are some-

times told that modern science aims at the classification,
or again at the explanation, of things, whereas the Greeks
aimed only at defining them. But to explain anything,
or to classify anything, is to assign it its place in the
scheme of knowledge, and to define it is the same.
In the latter part of Book VII, in a passage already
referred to, Plato dwells on the dangers of dialectic. He
describes in a graphic way the effect produced on the
mind in youth by the first taste of logic, which is that
the young man goes about proving that every thing
is something else. Plato connects these first beginnings
of thinking, which are the beginnings of dialectic, with
the first perception of the curious fact of the co-existence
of one and many. This is to him the natural way to
describe the awakening of speculative thought. We have
1
already seen that he describes thought as beginning with
the perception that the same thing is not the same, or
that one many. All through Plato we find that
is also
this old logical problem is that around which all his
conceptions of method hang. It was the first form in

which any metaphysical question forced itself on the

human mind 2 .

We may now pass to dialectic as completed science.

This is a sense of the word which is more prominent in
the Republic than in other dialogues. The conception
has already been discussed in reference to the passage
at the end of Book VI, where Plato defines vorjais 3 or ,

thought in the fullest sense, as distinguished from hidvoia.

Dialectic, as completed science, is the result which would
be obtained by the method we have been speaking
1
votjois in the wider sense as opposed to diavoia.
2
Cf. Philcbus, 15 D sq. 3
vurjafi as opposed to Siavoia.
 —

'
288 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

of, if it could be fully carried out. We often hear

method and result spoken of as if they were two
mutually exclusive conceptions. Is philosophy, we
are asked, a method or a result ? It is a result, for

as we advance in philosophy we are conscious of

attaining something. But at the same time we are
compelled to say that no result in knowledge is final,
and therefore knowledge is a perpetual method and ;

we may add that the methods of knowledge change

and are modified by every fresh step in knowledge.
Between Plato's conception of perfect knowledge and
his conception of the method of attaining to know-
ledge there is a very obvious correspondence. Perfect
knowledge would be a state of mind to which all things
presented themselves as a perfectly connected order
an order which every part down to the smallest
in

detail proper place, and was seen by the mind

had its

to be eventually connected with every other part and

with the principle which makes them all one. Now
dialectical method applied to the discovery of truth
means coming more and more to see not only that
things are one in many, but how they are so the ;

dialectical view of things is that which studies them

with a constant regard to their mutual relations 1
.

Let us suppose a method like this worked out to its

completion, and we get dialectic in its sense of com-
pleted knowledge. This of course would not be brought
about merely by what we call a logical process in the
ordinal}' sense it would only be possible if the whole
;

world of facts lay open to our observation. Dialectic

1
Sophist, 253 it sf|., may be referred to, together with the passages
already referred to in the Pkilgbus and the Phaedrus, as throwing
light on Plato's practical conception of dialectic.
 — '

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 1S9

therefore is not a branch of science existing alongside

other sciences. The word may be used either of a uni-
versal method to be applied, differently in different cases,

to all the questions with which human thought is con-

cerned, or of an ideal science which is the system of
all the sciences, an ideal which can only be realized
which nevertheless describes the
to a slight extent, but
end towards which the progress of human knowledge
works *

4. Plan of the Whole Course of Education.

We
have described the studies which the Guardians 535 a to
end of VII.
must go through, and it remains to say what place they
are to take in the course of the Guardians' lives, and
who are to be chosen to enter upon each successive
stage of study. Plato begins by enforcing again the
necessity of choosing, to be rulers, men who combine
the two complementary qualities of constancy and of
intellectual quickness (/3e/3atoVrj? and S/h/avttjs), telling us
that hard intellectual work, such as they will have to
undergo, will require of them more courage even than
hard physical exertion. He dwells upon the evils

which result from choosing what he calls cripples '

to be leaders in the state. By a cripple he means '

'

a person who is one-sided, or not developed on all

1
[The concluding sentences of the discussion of dialectic may here be
noticed. Having hitherto spoken of it in language which suggests that
he is occupied only with a remote ideal, Plato suddenly changes his tone
and makes Socrates appeal to Glaucon to educate his sons as dialecti-
cians. They are to be educated in dialectic because they may be called
upon to deal with important public affairs and dialectic is described
;

simply as the art of asking and answering questions most intelligently

'

or scientifically.' Ed.]
VOL. II. U
 — ;

25 o LECTURES ON PLATO S l
REPUBLIC

sides of his nature. One form of this one-sidedness

is to like athletic exertion but hate intellectual toil

another is the reverse of Yet another such defect

this.

of nature is insufficient care for truth it is not enough ;

to put what Plato says in modern language— to have

what is ordinarily called a truthful nature, a man must
have that love of truth which makes him not only hate
1
to tell a lie, but hate to be the victim of false ideas .

These and other requirements Plato sums up by saying

that the Guardians must at the outset be sound in limb
and sound in mind. He concludes with a characteristic
apology for the earnestness with which he is speaking.
Those who are to go through the advanced course of
study that has now been proposed must begin their training
young, and even their first studies are to be as little
compulsory as possible. Up to the age of about seven-
teen or eighteen the education of juoim/o/ described in
the earlier books will go on ;
and in addition the ele-
ments of the sciences will be learnt, but without system
{\6hr\v). After this will come a course of exclusively
'gymnastic' training, lasting till the age of twenty.
This means a systematic bodily training, including
military exercises, and directed towards preparing the
young men for the service of the state in keeping order
at home and in fighting against foreign enemies. It

serves the further purpose of giving them a good foun-

dation of bodily health for their future work, and of
training them in courage and self-control. It will be
so hard that they cannot at this period do any intel-
lectual work but, says Plato, what a man shows himself
;

to be at his gymnastics will be a very good test of his

general character. At the age of twenty, a further
1
Cf. 382 A sq. and 412 B sq.
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 291

selection will be made of those who have distinguished

themselves most, and these will be advanced to the
next stage of education. This will consist of two parts.
There will be a systematic scientific course continuing to
the age of thirty ; and, while they are occupied in this,

the great point to be attended to will be whether they

show the faculty for dialectic, the power of 'seeing things
together' (avi>o\}ns). But alongside of this a training in
the public service, chiefly military, will be going on ; and
here the chief test to be applied to a man is whether he
is steadfast (ixoviiios) and shows constancy to the principles
he has been taught. At the age of thirty, a further
selection will be Those who are now approved
made.
will enter upon the study of dialectic proper, which will
continue for five years, unaccompanied by any other
work. (Probably this is meant to include a study of the
principles of morality and human life for it is in this ;

connexion that Plato describes the dangers of dialectic

for those who are not fitted for it by the tenacity with
which they hold fast to the principles of right that they
have been taught 1
.) At thirty-five begins the really
serious work of the public service, and it lasts for fifteen

years. During these years the Guardians will be ac-

quiring the experience (e/i7rei/na) necessary for rulers by
actual contact with the various forms of good and evil

about which they have been taught ; and all the while
they will be continually tested to see if they stand
being '
pulled about in all directions ' by the circum-
stances with which they have to contend. From fifty

onwards, those who are still approved are, alternately,

good itself, and in the light of it to govern

to study the
and organize the state. They will be the supreme
1
Cf. Phaedo, 90 B and C.

U %
29^ LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC'

council in the state, dividing their time between theo-

retical study of the good, and practical government.
Finally, when they die, they will be buried with public
honours, and worshipped, if the Delphic oracle allows,
as divine beings (bai/jLoves), or at any rate as blessed and
favoured by the gods (evbaCnoves).
The actual machinery of this scheme is the least
important part of it, nor is it of any use to enquire
whether it is practicable, for Plato himself only professes
to be describing an ideal state. The question is, What
substantial truth is there in it for mankind, and in what
sort of way could we appropriate Plato's principles?
There are three important ideas in his system of edu-
cation. First, there is the idea that education must
meet all the demands that human nature brings with it.

Secondly, there is the conception that as long as the human

soul is capable of growth the work of education ought to
go on. Education should be co-extensive with life, for
education simply means keeping the soul alive ; it is

only by a concession to human nature's weakness that it

is supposed to be restricted to the first twenty-five years

of one's life. Thirdly, the great organs of education are
all those things which human nature in the course of its

growth has produced religion, art, science, philosophy,

;

and the institutions of government and society are all to

be enlisted in the service of education. Here we see how
utterly remote from Plato is the idea that there can be
any contest between art and science, between study and
practical life, or between any of the great products of the
human mind he uses all as links in one chain.
;

Though Plato spends so much time in the Republic

upon the higher branches of education, he is really con-
templating them as intended only for a very few men he ;
 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 293

thinks that the bulk of those who are educated would

stop their education about the same time as we do now.
It is only the small number who ultimately rule the
state who go through the complete course. No one can
doubt that, if were possible to do something in his
it

spirit for the training of the most influential people in the

state, modern government would be considerably better

than it is, for, if the function of government is the hardest

and highest of all, it clearly requires the best training
and the best instruments.
 XIII.

SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF DECLINE

OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL
[Republic, VIII and IX to 576 B.]

We may say that Books II to VII of the Republic

put before us a logical picture of the rise of the human
soul to what Plato conceived to be its highest capa-
bilities, while Books VIII and IX give a similar picture

of the fall of the human soul to what seemed to him the

lowest point consistent with its remaining human at all.
The first of these pictures shows us how man may
rise to a level where he is very closely akin to the divine
nature, the second shows us how he may fall to a point
where he is almost on a level with the brute. We called
the first a logical picture because Plato, in describing
a perfect state, or certain stages in the process of form-
ing a perfect state, writes throughout as if one stage of
that process succeeded another in a historical order ]
;

1
[The first stape is the ivayfcaiorirrj7r6\is,i.e. the state containing the
barest essentials of a healthy state, described in II. 369 H to 372 K. The
second that described from 372 E to the end of IV.
is The third, that of
V to VII, which lie speaks of (in 543 I)) as a state distinct from and
better than that of II to IV. —Ed ]
 - ;

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 295

whereas we know all the time that the process is abso-

lutely unhistorical, and that he does not mean that any-
state has grown up in this way. The real order of the
development he describes is a purely logical order, based
on his psychological analysis of the main elements in
a perfectly developed society. The appearance of his-
torical order is still more striking in Books VIII and IX,
in which the picturesque element is so much more pro-
minent that some commentators have taken Plato to be
describing the actual evolution of Greek political society,
and have criticized him seriously upon that ground,
pointing out that the various forms of government he
l
speaks of did not occur in the order he describes .

Nothing is easier than to show this, but it is quite

inconceivable that Plato should have been ignorant of
such elementary facts. If we look closer we see that
here too the order of arrangement is logical and psycho-
The question he puts before himself
logical. is this :

The human soul being as we have described it, and

having in it a certain ca paci ty forevil as_weU_as_for
good, what would it come to, and through wha t stage s
wo uld it pass, for ev il were realize d
if its Rapacity
gradually bu t abatement ?
without any
In actual .

human experience there is always some abatement

there are always counteracting circumstances which
prevent any one tendency working itself out in isolation
and unhindered but the philosopher may, as Plato here
;

does, w ork out thj_result_gf a single tendency logically.

These books therefore put before us an ideal history of
evil,, as ihe4ireviojis_books put .befor e us an ide al history
of j£pod.
Plato has undertaken in the Republic to explain human
1
Aristotle {Politics, 1316 A and b) criticizes Plato on this ground.
296 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC*

life psychologically (that word being taken in the widest

sense). He has here to interpret in this manner Greek
history and Greek life. He has asked himself, How can
we show that the various forms of Greek life are trace-
able to the working of certain forces in human nature ?

To do this he has ransacked Greek life to find material,

and has concentrated in these books a most extraordinary
knowledge of human nature in general and of Greek
nature in particular. Each of the constituti ons o f society
which he describes is really an expression of the do mi-
nat ion of a cert ain psychol^g^aj__tenclency which, if

unchecked, will inevitably produce certain results in

society and individual life. In modern
times an en-
quirer with a similar might ask
object what in its
essence is the democratic spirit having defined it, he
;

might then go on to ask how in the various so-called

democracies of the world this spirit has manifested itself;
and he would not confine himself to democracies alone,
he would find democratic elements in countries in which
the government is not strictly democratic. If he then
put together into a picture all the material he had
collected, it would answer to no actual form of demo-
cracy, but it would give in a concentrated shape what he
conceived to be the general effects of the democratic
spirit. This is the method which Plato has followed
here.
What arc the tendencies of which Plato traces the
working? His conception of the soul is the same that
has been unfolded in Books II to IV. The soul is one
thing, but it is also triple its normal, natural, and ideal
;

condition is that in which each one of its three elements

contributes its proper work to the economy of the whole.
Further, this condition of the soul involves society, for
 '

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 297

the soul reaches out to other souls at every point. An

ideal community of souls would be one in which the
capacities of ev ery ind ividual soul werejully dev eloped
and its wants fully satisfied. This would be the case if

the philosophic element in man ruled, because this is the

element in him which is capable of understanding his
true interests, and of living for those interests— that is,

living a common life. Any other organization than that

in which the philosophic element rules is necessarily, in
its degree, imperfect, and is one in which the relative
position of the elements of human nature is not normal.
The progress of evil is therefore a progress in disorgani-
z ation ; that is to say, as it goes on, different organs or
elements of society or of the individual soul come more
and more to perform their wrong functions. What
Plato calls timocracy, the first stage in the downward
progress, is that state of life in which the '
spirited
element dominates ; the philosophic element is not
thereby eliminated, it simply sinks to a lower level and
performs functions not its own, becoming the servant of
'
'
spirit.' The next logical step is taken when '
appetite
becomes dominant, and '
spirit ' and reason fall into the
position of its servants and instruments ; this is '
olig-
archy,' which makes the satisfaction of material wants
the end of life, but preserves a certain external order
by subjecting the crowd of appetites under the rule of
one. The next step downward is within the region of
appetite ; freed from the domination of the desire for
wealth, the appetites struggle promiscuously for the
mastery, till a sort of temporary equilibrium without any
principle is effected between them ; this is '
democracy.'
The last step is taken when this equilibrium of appetites
passes into the absolute despotism of the lowest or of
 '
298 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

several of the lowest — that is to say, the least compatible

with the common life of society, the most selfish ; this is

'
tyranny.'
In the picture given of each of these stages we must
understand the relation between the individual man
described and the community described. Plato de-
scribes the man and the state as they are, and also the
process by which they came to be what they are. In
each of these accounts the individual represe nts th e
inner psycho logica l con dition w hich, if sufficiently domi-
nant in a state, will give it a certain character or bring
about in it a certain change but he does not intend to
;

imply that such an individual can exist only in a corre-

sponding state. Take oligarchy, for example. The
individual oligarchic man is one who is dominated by
the principle of seeking material wealth; he is oligarchic
so far as he consistently lives for the accumulation of
wealth. Suppose a large number of such men get
together any society and are backed by a certain
in

amount of force, you will inevitably get a political

oligarchy based on wealth. Such men will naturally
try to rule the rest, and the ruling principle in themselves
will direct them to form a constitution in accordance
with itself. An oligarchic state is thus the oligarchic
principle in men 'writ large.' But there may of course
be many oligarchic men in society without the govern-
ment being an oligarchy. In the same way we must
interpret Plato's descriptions of the transitions from one
of these types to another. As has been said, he does
not give them as historical accounts of bow any parti-
cular Greek constitutions arose. He has taken certain
salient features in the history of a number of individuals
and a number of societies, and compounded them
 DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 299

together into typical cases made to illustrate a cer-

tain principle in the clearest way. His account, for
instance, of the transitionfrom oligarchy to democracy
means that, if you get a state of society in which
the pursuit of wealth is the absorbing object of life
to the leading people, then it is only a question of time
for that tendency to sap the strength of the community
and substitute for it a lower form, and that a similar
degradation is inevitable in the case of individual men or of
families when once they have come to regard wealth as the
chief aim in life. In each picture all the traits described
are symptoms of a psychological change going on within ;

and all the details are worth studying. These Books

have been called the first attempt to construct a philo-
sophy of history. A philosophy of history implies that
the historian can see certain laws or principles of which
human history exhibits the working. Plato has taken
certain inherent tendencies of human nature, and inter-
prets Greek history in the light of them ; not that the
tendencies he describes were actually working alone, so
that historically events could exactly correspond to his
description, but that wherever he looks in Greek society
he sees symptoms of them working underneath.
Plato arrives finally at the exact reverse of what he
has pictured as the ideal good state of man and society.
The best man would be one whose self was as

nearly as possible identified with the life of the society

of which he was a member, and ultimately with the laws
or order of the world of which he, and the society also,
were parts. Men never completely accomplish this
ideal, but they are actually good in proportion as they
accomplish it the test of a man's goodness and of his
;

greatness is the extent to which he can lead a common

 '
300 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

life (not necessarily in the most obvious way of doing

1
so ), or can identify himself with, and throw himself into,
something not himself; and this applies to men of the
meanest station as well as to the philosophic statesman.
Accordingly the worst man in the world is the man who
is most limited and selfish. Plato's typical tyrant,
who embodies the tyrannical principle, satisfies at all
costs one of the poorest of his appetites. Supposing
such a person in circumstances which are not favourable,
he remains the :
tyrannical man,' the slave of a despotic
passion. But supposing him to find a favourable environ-
ment, and supposing him to have this passion strongly
enough, he becomes a full-blown '
tyrant,' just as the
philosopher, if he finds a state that is fit for him,
becomes a king, a constitutional ruler. The tyrant is the
exact counterpart of the philosopher. The philosophic
king is at one with everybody and everything about him.
The tyrant — his personality concentrated in a single
dominant passion — is absolutely alone; he is the enemy
of his own better self, of the human kind, and of God.
Theoretically the owner of the state, in reality he is

absolutely poor.
Throughout downward
by which this
the course
lowest condition end which men set
is reached, the
before themselves in life becomes gradually less and less
worthy of human nature and, as it is with the end in ;

life, so it is with the various parts of life which work for

this end. At each step the true principles of education

are more and more neglected, and the soul fails more
and more to find its proper nurture,
to The account of these various stages of decline begins
with the fall of the ideal state. Mow does decay first set

1
Cf. Section X. p. 227 of the Lectun .
 —

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 301

in in the perfect state ? In asking this Plato really has

before him the general problem of the origin of evil
the question, how does it come about that the world is

not so perfect as it might be ? But the transition from

the ideal society to timocracy is related as if it were
an historical event. It is impossible to say whether Plato
thought there actually had been forms of human life

much more perfect than existed in Greece in the times

of which he knew. He certainly saw in what he believed
to be the best forms of society in Greece some imperfect
approximations to what human society might be, but we
need not suppose that he thought any more perfect
approximation to it had gone before
these. Having
formed his own ideal conception as a standard of criti-
cism, he naturally represents the types of existing society
which he is going to judge as so many removes from it ;

but this does not imply a serious belief in the existence

of his ideal. He is however quite serious with the idea,
which he here expresses, that no human institutions,
even the most perfect, can be permanent. Can our '

present European civilization permanently progress, or

permanently exist ? Can any national life go on without
'
'

—
decay?' these are analogous questions to that which
was in Plato's mind.
The cause of decline in any society must, he asserts,
be division and faction ^'orao-is) among its rulers. As
long as they are of like mind, it is impossible for the
society to break up. So much is clear, but we must
call on the Muses to tell us the beginning of divisions
in our ideal state. This is an example of a way of
speaking, half serious, half humorous, which Plato uses
when he comes across a question that cannot be scienti-
fically dealt with ; in the same way he adopts the Ian-
 ;

'
302 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

guage of mythology or poetry when he is speaking of

the ultimate destiny of the soul. Let us suppose,' '

he says here, 'that the Muses are speaking to us jest-

ingly, as if we were children, and in language of mock
solemnity.'
The principle at the foundation of the answer given by
the Muses is that everything which has come into being
is liable to cease to be. Therefore human society, which
has come into being, however well itmay be knit together,
is subject to dissolution. And what form will the disso-
lution of this society take? Here another general law is

enunciated, applying to all organic life, or, as he says,

to everything in which soul and body are united. All
organic things have predestined periods, longer or shorter
according to their nature, upon which their inherent
vitality and power of reproducing themselves depend 1 .

At certain intervals the vitality of souls that are in human

bodies becomes feeble and the soul is comparatively
unproductive. If a number of children are produced at
such times they will form an inferior race, and society
must decline.The number which Plato now gives in
an enigmatic way expresses the periods at which these
critical moments occur. We need not attach any im-
portance to the particular number ; the passage expresses
Plato's belief that there arc fixed laws governing this
matter, which arc capable of being definitely stated.
But, he says, however wise the best minds of a society
may be, their intelligence is necessarily alloyed with
sense ; hence they will not perfectly understand the

The notion of fixed recurring periods of fatal importance to the soul

isfound in various forms in Politicus, 1169c sqq. (especially 272 n and rc)

Phacthus, 248 a to 249 u ; Laws, X. 903 )i sqq. ; Tiinacus, 42 b-e ; and

Republic, X. 617 D.
 DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 303

laws of human generation, and owing to their mistakes

children will inevitably be born who are inferior to their
parents ; and, when the decline has once set in, it will

inevitably increase. Thus the decline of human society

is brought about by its failure to understand the laws
of its own life.

Plato has anticipated the notion that a human society

is in some sense an organic thing, having its own laws

of growth and decay. He offers no evidence for what

he says, but his fundamental idea, that there are unknown
conditions favourable and unfavourable to the mainte-
nance of the vigour of a race, has remained to the
present day. It still seems to many natural to suppose

that every decay of a nation is caused by some loss of

vital power, and that there are laws, however undiscover-
able they may be, upon which the loss or maintenance
of that vital power depends.
Society then will inevitably fall away from the ideal 547 a to

state ; at any rate the best forms of existing society are

a compromise between that which is highest and that

which is lowest in human nature. What are the par-

ticular symptoms of imperfection which even the best,
timocracy 1
, exhibits? Its inherent imperfection shows
itself, when judged by the standard of the ideal state,
in two main points. The first is the institution of private
property in the possession of the ruling class ; the second
is the fact that those who are ruled are regarded as the
subjects and slaves of the rulers. The first of these
defects does away with the perfect identity of interests
between the rulers and the state. The second destroys

1
Timocracy means here the state in which honour is made the
dominant motive of action. It is used in quite another sense in
Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VIII. x. r.
 ;

30 4 LECTURES ON PLATO S '

REPUBLIC

the relation of perfect co-operation and give and take,

which ought to exist between the different classes of
the community. Those who are ruled should regard the
ruling class as their protectors and saviours, and the
rulers should regard them as the friends who supply
all their material needsAs soon as you get society
1
.

divided into and kings, slaves and masters,

subjects
this relation of common interests and reciprocal services
is at an end.

Plato traces these facts to their psychological origin.

They are concessions to the selfish principle in man, and
they express the fact that the highest element in human
nature, reason, has been dethroned from its place. In
its stead '
spirit,' the honour-loving element, the element
that seeks for personal distinction, rules. Personal dis-
tinction is the guiding principle of the timocratic man
that is to say, it is the thing which such a man at his best
moments lives for. From the rule of 'spirit result several
'

features of Spartan life, which Plato mentions with

approval : the prevailing respect for authority, the atten-
tion paid to gymnastic and military training, the common
meals of the governing class (£i>o-<rma), and the law that

they should not engage in trade. On the other hand

reason has been degraded and made merely the servant
of military organization and strategy. Therefore reason
itself becomes degenerate, and the general suspicion in

which exceptional abilities are held shows that reason,

not being exercised on the highest object, the good of
the community, loses its simplicity and integrity. And,
as the highest clement suffers, so the whole life of the
society suffers. The appetites for the commodities which
give the command of enjoyment, instead of being kept in
1
Cf. V. 463 n.
 DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 305

their place and being absorbed in providing the neces-

saries of life, begin to assert themselves on their own
account ; the great symptom of this which Plato notices
is that avarice, which is professedly tabooed in this society,
is nevertheless growing up in the dark. You cannot
eradicate appetite, and the more you fail to educate the
best things in human nature the more the worst things
will assert and so beneath the fair exterior
themselves ;

of honour one_of the lowest qualities is developing

itself. The secret growth of avarice in spite of the laws
is alluded to by Aristotle 1
also as a feature of Spartan
2
society in his time . Here, in the description of the
typical timocratic state, the love of money is represented
as growing till it becomes the dominant force in social
life, and the institutions of the state are transformed in
accordance with it, political power being made to depend
on wealth.
In the life of the individual timocratic man a similar
process is at work. The typical timocratic man is

represented as the son of a '

good man, ' a philosopher,
in a state where the best men are divorced from public
life, and where public affairs are in the hands of the
selfish and unprincipled. Ambition makes him despise
his father's ways, and he plunges into a public career.
At first honour keeps him straight but as he gets ;

older this impulse, unsupported in his case by reason,

degenerates into mere self-assertion, and, the appeti-
tive element breaking loose, he ends by becoming a
lover of money. This takes place because he has
neglected the '
one thing that can preserve a man's

1
1270 A, 11 sqq. and 1307 A, 34 sq.
Politics, ,

2
For the explicit connexion of timocracy with Sparta and with Crete
see 544 c.

VOL. II. X
 '
306 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

goodness through his life, reason blended with music

(Aoyos fxova-LKJ] KeKpaixevos).'

Plato's view of Sparta is well illustrated by a

passage in the Laws 1 . He there tells us that the self-
control of which the Spartans are so proud fails under
circumstances to which they are not used, namely when
they are exposed to the temptations of pleasure instead
of those of danger and pain. His admiration of Sparta,
like Aristotle's, was confined to one point. The Spartans
were the only people in Greece who had deliberately
adopted a certain principle of life and had carried it
through ; and both writers admired the care given to
education of a certain kind, the respect for order and
discipline,and the absorption of the individual in the
social organization, which resulted from this but both ;

saw well enough that the Spartan life and the objects
2
at which this organization aimed were very narrow .

550 c to The rule of spirit (unsupported by reason, which was

'
'

555 A -

made to lead and not to serve) having allowed appetite,

the third element in human nature, to grow, this in turn
becomes the ruling power, and first in its most respect-
able form, desire for wealth. Oligarchy means to Plato
the supremacy of those appetites for the necessaries
of life, which, when kept in their proper subordination,
are the most serviceable appetites. It is that form of
constitution in which wealth openly acknowledged as
is

the end of life, the thing most worth living for, and the
thing the possession of which makes one man better than
another. The political constitution by which political
power is given to the wealthy is only the expression and

1
I. 633 H sqq.
2
Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. X. 9, § 13 ; also Politics, 1333 B, 12 sqq. ;

'337 A, 31 ; 1338 B, 9 sqq. ; and 1294 II, 18 sq.

 ;

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 307

public recognition of what the leading men in the state

believe to be the true end of life. The most important
typical consequences of the adoption of this constitution
are now described. First, it still further breaks up the unity
of the state \ which depends upon every class doing its own
proper work for the community ; there are now two cities,

one of rich, and one of poor, no longer bound together

by community of interest, but separated by diversity of
interests. Secondly, the strength of the state diminishes
as its unity diminishes ; for the rich are afraid to arm
the poor, and they themselves are getting less and less
capable of military service ;
there is growing physical
degeneracy. Thirdly, the growth of money-getting
involves the growth, alongside of it, of money-wasting
and the laws, which are made of course in the interest
of the rich nobility, allow and encourage unlimited
alienation of property. Outside the ranks of the rich,

there is poverty sinking into pauperism and generating

a dangerous class, which is swelled by numbers of ruined
spendthrifts from the ranks above. The existence of
this dangerous class involves forcible repression, but the
government does not continue long to be backed by force.
In the account of the genesis of the oligarchic man we
have a typical picture of Greek life. Aspirants to
political distinction are constantly being ruined by mali-
cious accusations ((rvKo^avTia). and therefore a revulsion
from public life takes place in the better class, and they
narrow their minds to trade and commerce. Reason
is now still further degraded into a mere instrument of

money-making and spirit is schooled into a worship of

;

rich men and riches. Continued neglect of education

1 In the '
timocracy ' there was still unity for purposes of military
defence.
X 2
 308 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

(airaibeva-La, 552 E, 554 B) continues to produce lowering

of character. Externally there is decency, order, and

respectability in the life of the oligarchic man, but the

'
drone appetites are beginning to make themselves felt,
'

though as yet kept in check by the absorbing appetite

for wealth. As in the state the rich restrain but do not
direct the poor, so in the individual this dominant passion
chains the others but does not employ them, and they
develop into a dangerous element within him. The
man, like the state, is becoming weak because he cannot
employ the whole of himself.
555 b to Plato's picture of the rise of 'democracy' makes
S&2 A.
clearer than before the principles which underlie his
description of the gradual decline of human life. In the
first place, this decline is determined throughout by a
gradual change in that which is made the good or end
of life . In the second place, the course it takes follows
logically from the principle that, when men have an
appetite for a certain thing, that appetite must grow
stronger and stronger unless there is something else in
them competent to check it at each stage of the decline
;

mere appetite absorbs more and more of man's life into

itself
1
. The psychological explanation of the origin of
democracy is found in the object which is recognized as
the good in oligarchy, and the insatiable appetite for it
which oligarchy encourages. In the oligarchic state
everything is done with a view to wealth, and the char-
acter of the legislation, the most important means by
which the life of society is regulated, expresses openly
the recognition of greed as the true principle of life by
the dominant people in the state. This principle ulti-

mately overthrows the state. Oligarchic legislation fails

' Cf. IV. 424 A, where the opposite process to lliis decline is referred to.
 ;

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 309

to check that accumulation of wealth in a few hands

which leads to the overthrow of oligarchy. Plato men-
tions two possible legislative checks upon this accumu-
lation, restrictions upon the alienation of private pro-
perty, which would hinder its accumulation in a few
hands, and the abolition of legal means for the recovery
I
of debts , which would check the gradual ruin of the
spendthrift class. Neither of these steps is taken in
the oligarchic state, because it is the interest of the
leading people to sell up as many of their own class
as possible. Ultimately oligarchy is overthrown be-
cause the rulers, being set upon wealth only, become
degenerate, and the people discover their weakness
having overthrown them, either with foreign help or
through factions among the oligarchs themselves, the
people come into power.
Democracy in Plato means that form of it which
Aristotle distinguishes as unmitigated or pure demo-
cracy, inwhich liberty and equality, in the sense of the
liberty ofeverybody to do whatever he pleases, and the
equality of everybody with everybody else in every
respect, are the strongest principles in the constitution.
It violates, and in all but the most intense way, the first

principle of society. That principle is that everybody

differs from othe rs, and should do that which he is fit to

do^ and nothing else. In defiance of this, democracy

'assigns equality alike to the equal and the unequal.'
This sums up Plato's charge against what he understands
by democracy. The most vital point in which this
comes out is government democracy asserts that there
;

is no need at all for anybody to be or to make himself

peculiarly fitted in order to be able to govern -.

1
Cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. IX. i. 9. - Cf. VI. 488 b.
 ;

310 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

The democratic man exhibits in his individual life the

character which, when it becomes dominant and com-
mands public approval, produces democracy in the sense
that has been described. The psychological foundation
of democracy is a new form of the rule of appetite in the
individuals who give the state its character. In the olig-
archic man the desires which are most necessary, and
are also most orderly, concentrated, and respectable,
dominate ;
in the democratic man no particular appetite,

but appetite generally, governs. This absence of prin-

ciple he, like the democratic state, makes into a principle.
To distinguish him from the oligarchic man Plato here
gives us a division of the appetitive element in the soul
there are two great classes of appetites, the necessary and
the unnecessary. '
Necessary appetites are those which'

cannot be got rid of, and to this class belong all those the
—
which does good good, that is to say, to
satisfaction of
the whole man. Unnecessary appetites' are those which
'

can be got rid of by education and practice, and these

are appetites the satisfaction of which does no good.
The necessary appetites are also called the' wealth -

getting' appetites (x/»?jmaTioTiKai), because they are

productive of something which is of use and the ;

unnecessary appetites, which are unproductive, are

called the 'spending' appetites. Thus the appetite
for food up to the point to which it is good for the
bodily organism is necessary and productive desire ;

for food beyond that point is unnecessary and unpro-

ductive. The typical democratic man, then, is the son
of an oligarchic man in whom the productive desires are
predominant. brought up without education, and
lie is

he comes into fashionable and fast society. He has

nothing to feed his reason upon ; therefore there is no-
 DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 311

thing to give unity to his appetites, and so they become

1
motley and many-headed.' They fall, however, into two
main divisions one of these consists of appetites which
;

are still partly rational, and at -first these have the

mastery over those which are wholly irrational, being
supported by the traditions of the mans family. But,
as the more rational appetites are unsupported in their
control by anything in the man himself, that is by his
reason, the unproductive appetites, however much they
have been cut down, sprout again whenever the external
influences which have helped to repress them are removed.
The empty place of reason in such a man is occupied by
a counterfeit reason ;
quack theories (\^eu5ei? kcu a\a£6v€s

Ao'yoi), which ally themselves with his unproductive

appetites, develop into a brilliant cynicism which ex-
poses the fallacies of so-called morality. This is the
stage of initiation,' in which the soul gets rid of illusions,
'

and comes to see through many things and to call them

by their right names, calling, for example, all sense of
shame cowardice. Through this stage the soul passes
into freedom, or one pleases, in other words
living as
anarchy. Such a life tends to bring about the ultimate
mastery of one ruling passion, which is tyranny but, '
'
;

with luck, as the man grows older, he will settle down

into a state of compromise or balance of appetites, in
which his principle is to be the creature of the moment.
He denies any distinction of better or worse, and gives
himself in turn to every desire upon which the lot falls.

Asceticism and debauchery, philosophy, sport, idleness,

politics, war, successively engage him 1
; and this is what

he calls the free development of his nature. Such a

1
Cf. Dryden's Zimri in Absalom and A chitophel, 544 sqq.
 '

312 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

man will be the object of general admiration and envy

in the democratic state.
562 a to As democracy developed out of oligarchy, so the
IX. 576 v..
tyrannic principle develops logically out of the demo-
cratic. Tyranny arises from the inevitable excessive
pursuit of that which democracy recognizes as the good,
namely absolute liberty. All appetite is essentially
insatiate 1 and it
, is the inherent tendency of the demo-
cratic desire for liberty to grow, unless it is checked.
All the peculiar institutions ascribed to extreme demo-
cracy proceed from this, and the tendency increases
until at last makes people so delicate that they can
it '
'

stand no restraint whatever. There is, Plato observes, a

law of reaction, to be seen in the changes of the weather
and in the varying states of physical organisms, and in
the history of political communities no less, according
to which excess in one direction is generally followed by
excess in the opposite direction. And so, in the case of
the democratic state, out of absolute liberty absolute
servitude proceeds. In the typical case of such a revo-
lution, which he goes on to describe, democratic society
has fallen into three main divisions. There is a class of
ruined spendthrifts and adventurers, which already
existed under oligarchy, but which under democracy has
become the most prominent and the loudest-voiced
clement in the state. There is a class of orderly and
quiet money-makers whose wealth forms the pasture of '

the drones' of society. There is lastly the mass of citi-

zens who work with their hands. Theoretically they arc
the ruling class, for they have the majority of votes, but
they only can or only will take ;i constant part in public
affairs if they are paid for so doing, and accordingly the
1
Cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. III. xii. 7.
 DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 313

adventurers, who are the political leaders of the state, are

always paying them out of the money of the rich '. In
time the rich come to an end of their endurance, and
resist this system of plunder. Thereupon an outcry
is raised against them, they are denounced as cursed
oligarchs,and accusations of seditious conspiracy are
brought against them. In this time of excitement the
boldest and most unscrupulous of the political adven-
and the
turers steps forward as the friend of the people
champion of democracy. The critical point, when his
destiny is decided, and the champion of the people
becomes a tyrant, is reached when he first sheds the
blood of the rich who oppose him. He is then no longer
his own master, but is inevitably driven on to shed more
blood. Under the pretext that the enemies of the state
are plotting against his he persuades the people to life,

grant him a body-guard. force is once at When armed

his disposal he has obtained the power of a tyrant, and
the necessities and fears of the position in which he is
now placed lead him to further and further acts of
tyranny, to establish his power.
In describing how the '
tyrannic ' type of individual
character arises, Plato brings in a further division of the
appetitive elements in the soul. Among the unnecessary
appetites there are some that are altogether lawless,
2
•
wild-beast ' appetites . These, Plato says, exist even
in men of the best regulated life, but they are kept in
check, or come out only in dreams, when reason has least
1
Cf. Aristophanes, Knights, 791 sqq. and 12 18 sqq. (in attack on
Cleon) ; also Demosthenes, Olynth. III. 31.
2
Td 0Tjpia>5es re ical a-ypiov. In somewhat the same way Aristotle
\Eth. VII. i. and v.) describes the 6r/piujSeis efeis as the extreme of human
badness, corresponding to 'heroic and divine virtues' which are the
extreme of human goodness.
3M LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC

control over the soul l

. They cannot be tamed ; most
desires can be made to fill a serviceable part in the
economy of life, but these cannot. The tyrannic man, of
whom the actual tyrant is the most extreme type, is one
who is himself tyrannized over by a single dominant
appetite of this sort. He thus differs from the democratic
man. The has gradually lost
soul of the democratic man
its between the varied
unity, but a sort of equilibrium exists
desires which sway it. He can only remain democratic,
and live upon the principle of having no principle, so long
as this equilibrium lasts. But it cannot be expected to last
long the tendency must be for a few of his appetites, and
;

ultimately for a single appetite, to become dominant over

the others and, when once a single appetite has got the
;

lead, it goes on, like the tyrant in the state, extending its
sway, till at last it swallows up the whole man. A man
so mastered by a single bestial passion will for the sake
of it commit any crime. When there are only a few such
men in a state, they will be criminals on a small scale,
but when this lawless character becomes common, the
end will be that the most tyrannic man, the man most
dominated by his one passion, will make himself tyrant
of the state.

1
On dreams and visions in this connexion cf. Tint. 70 D-72 B.
 —

XIV. COMPARISON OF THE JUST

AND THE UNJUST LIFE
{Republic, IX. 576 B to end.]

The leading types of imperfect states and of imperfect

individual lives have now been described, ending with
a state which in utmost conceivable degree
is the
opposite to the ideal state \ and with a life which is
in the utmost conceivable degree opposite to the just
life. Plato proceeds to deal with the question of the
happiness of these lives, matching the just man against
the unjust in three comparisons drawn from three
different points of view, three Olympic contests as he
calls them, which Glaucon, who began by stating the
in
claims of injustice, is made to declare which is victor.

1
[This state is no longer called apiaroKparia, as in VIII. 544 E, 545 D,
but (by implication) 0aat\da (legitimate monarchy), i. e. the state in which
the one best man of all has most power, the extreme opposite to rvpavvts.
See Politicus, 302 B sq. ,and cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1279 A, 33 sq. In the
connecting section at the end of IV. (445 D) the ideal state, we are told,
may be called indifferently apiaroKparia or PaatAtia. There is probably no
political significance in the change of phrase here the @aai\evs is brought
;

in for the sake of comparison with the rvpavvos, being the good man
placed in the position where his goodness can develop itself on the
largest scale. Ed.]
 3i6 LECTURES ON PLATO'S 'REPUBLIC*

This is therefore the formal answer to the original

question with which the argument began in Book II.

The discussion that follows is unsatisfactory, as any

discussion of the relative values of different states of
consciousness always must be. Nobody can prove that
his own life or his own form of happiness is better worth
having than another, for everybody is ultimately his
own judge. But, if there is to be a discussion in which,
as in this case, the arguer has practically prejudged the
question before he begins his argument, its interest for
us lies in observing the principle upon which he has
formed his judgment, and the canons of criticism which
he applies. Here Plato begins by laying down the
principle upon which the comparison between these
different lives is to be made. It must be made not

upon an external view but on a view which penetrates

to the inner life of the man, and which sees him, not
as he shows himself to the world, but stripped and bare ;

or, as we may say, interpreting the method which Plato

actually applies, it must be made upon a complete view

which takes in the whole man.
577 b to (
1
) First of all Plato takes three of the principal forms
;8o c.
of well-being: freedom, wealth, and security from fear,
which answer in some degree to the ends which the
democratic, the oligarchic, and the timocratic characters
respectively set themselves to obtain. He asks, from
the point of view of an intelligent and impartial out-
sider who has observed the different lives as they have
been described, Which man is really free, which is really
rich, which is really without fears — the most just or the
most unjust? The most important point in this passage
is the conception of freedom which it involves. It may
be said, no doubt, that the tyrannic man, being one who
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 317

does exactly what he pleases, is man, and

the freest
especially if circumstances let him develop to the full and
he becomes a tyrant, for he is then ex hypothesi auto-
cratic and omnipotent. Plato asserts on the contrary that
he is an absolute slave, because if you look at his whole
soul you will see that he least of all men does what
he wishes. This is a simple expression of Plato's con-
ception of freedom of will. Freedom is doing what one
wills, the freest man is he who most does what he wills.

and that means the man whose whole what it self does
wills. Now in the tyrannic man nearly the whole self
is in abeyance ; it is enslaved to one shred or fragment
of human nature. Similarly in the Gorgias x
Plato
declares that do nothing that they
tyrants desire
(a fiovkovTcu). Here what one desires means the
' '
really
desirable (in Aristotle's phrase, airXios /SouAtjtoV). The
really desirable is that which is desirable to the real
or true self, and the real self means the whole self.

Throughout the moral philosophy of Plato and Aristotle

there runs the conception of an order not only of the
physical but of the moral world, to which we must
conform if we would be at our best, or, in other words,
if we would satisfy our nature and along with this :

ffoes the kindred idea that the higher nature is, so to

speak, the truth of the lower, that is that the lower
nature finds what it aims at in the satisfaction of the
higher. Freedom, accordingly, or doing what one wills,
is not the power to satisfy any and every desire, but the

power to satisfy those desires in which the whole self

finds satisfaction.
The idea of true wealth, which is next introduced
in this passage, and which is like that of the New Tes-
1
466 D sqq.
 318 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

tament, has already appeared in Book III, where Plato

refused to let the Guardians be rich in money and land
on the ground that, if they lived up to their position,
they would always have the true wealth l . Unlike them
the tyrannic soul is emphatically poor, for it is always

wanting and never satisfied ; it is incapable of being

2
filled (cnrXTjoTos) . Similarly, it is the nature of such
a soul always to have something to fear and never to
feel secure.

The tyrannic soul, then, is all unsatisfied desire. But,

completely to realize this ideal of misery, the tyrannic
man must have scope given to his nature by becoming
a full-blown tyrant. As the philosopher is not all that
he can be unless he finds a state meet for him, where
3
his activity has full scope , so it is with the tyrannic
man. It is only when he becomes the ruler of a com-
munity that he reaches the full measure of his destruc-
tivencss, and then he attains the complete misery of
absolute isolation. The ideal of well-being is that a man
should realize to the full his communion with his fellow
men ; the tyrant is absolutely cut off from his fellows.
Moreover, seeming to be free and powerful, he, beyond
all other men, is under the compulsion of constant fear.

580 1) to (2) In the second part of the comparison between

3A
5
the just and the unjust, the question put is how these
different lives compare in respect of pleasantness (ijbovij).

The point of view from which Plato enquires into this

is psychological, and the passage throws a good deal
of light on his conception of the soul.

1
416 E.
s
Cf. Gorgias, 493 a to i>, where the soul of the incontinent man is

compared to a sieve.
3
497 A.
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 319

There are, as we have already learned in Book IV,

three '
parts '
or '
forms '
of the soul, the rational, the
spirited, and the appetitive (emflu/xrjTiKoV). To each of
these forms, as we are now told, there corresponds
a typical object of desire (e-rndvixia), and a pleasure
which attends the satisfaction of that desire. Plato
thus attributes a desire to two higher forms of the
this soul as well as to the part called par excellence
(TTLdv^TiKov. 'ETTLOvjjiLa, that is, is used, as in this passage,
in the general sense of desire (desire for food, or for
truth, or for anything and also (like the English
else),
'
appetite ') in the narrower and more usual sense of
physical desires. It is in the latter sense that the
name eindv^TiKov has been given to the third element in
the soul. It is given because certain bodily appetites,
owing to their intensity ((ripobporrjs), have acquired
such a prominence among the different desires of
this part of our nature that they may be allowed
to give the name to it (580 e). But the dominant
object among all the various objects which the 'appeti-
tive '
element seeks is material wealth, because that
is the general instrument for satisfying appetites.
Accordingly Plato here calls this element the '
wealth-
seeking' or 'gain-seeking' part of the soul ((pikoxp-qy-aTov 1
koI <pi\oKepb<£s) ; and in speaking of those in whom the
appetitive side of the soul predominates as lovers of
gain he does not distinguish the oligarchic, the demo-
cratic, and the tyrannic characters 2
. By the appetitive

1
Also in IV. 435 E.
2
Some of those who are here classed together may of course be
prodigal of money, but they all the same set their hearts upon the
things which money can buy. In the description of the tyrannic man
573 s 1- the development of lust is represented as bringing with it at first
prodigality, then avarice and extortion.
 1

320 LECTURES ON PLATO S '

REPUBLIC

man he does not at all necessarily mean a sensual man,

but merely one whose dominant wish is to be physically
x
comfortable and satisfied ; and he represents the great
majority of men in every state as appetitive, not because
he thinks the majority of men are sensualists and volup-
tuaries, but because the desire for physical comfort plays
a very large part in most men's lives. In the present
passage, then, for the sake of simplicity the pleasure of
material gain is taken as the characteristic pleasure of
this form of soul. Next, to the spirited element the
typical object of desire is to win, and to get distinction,
the reward of winning (vikclv koi evboKifXilv) ; so it may
be described as that which loves strife and loves honour
((\)iX6v€lkov and fpiXoTiy.ov). Lastly, the desire of the
rational element is to see things as they are, and it
may therefore be described as that which loves know-
ledge and wisdom (4>i\o[xa6es kcu <f>t\6<ro<f>ov).

Mankind, then, falls into three great classes, according

as one or another of these three elements in the soul
prevails in them. Each class judges its own pleasure
to be the most pleasant, and regards the pleasures of
the other two as not worth having. How can we decide
which judges best ? The question must be decided by
intelligent experience and by reasoning ^ixireipiq icai

(f)l>ovri(T€i teal Ao'yw). Which then of these three types

of men has the widest experience to enable him to
1

I Nor arc all the tastes in which a man shows himself fTTt6vfJ.ijTiKoi

necessarily tastes for bodily pleasures anil comforts, tu tmBvfirjriKuv

covers besides bodily appetites the desire for anything that we should
call mere amusement. The democratic man, for instance, amuses liimsc 1

wiiliphilosophy and even with occasional ascetic practices, without Plato

thinking him any the less tmffv/ttyrticds for that Art and literature also,
not only when they arc specially sensuous, but so far as they are simply
the gratification of fancy, emphatically minister to the pleasure of to
i niOv}lT]TtKUl>. — Ed. ]
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 321

judge? The philosopher has necessarily from his

earliest years had experience of the pleasures which
men derive from gain and the pleasure of winning,
;

and of the honour which rewards winning, has been

experienced by everybody who has ever attained
what he has striven for, since success and its
rewards are not the prerogative of any one kind of
man. Therefore, so far as personal experience goes,
the philosopher has the experience of the others ;
but
they have not his ; nor has their experience been
intelligent (fxera (ppovqaeoos) ; and, so far as reasoning
on the matter goes, he is of course the best reasoner.
He then is the best judge.
The argument is unsatisfactory, because the question
at issue could only be solved for any one by an appeal
to his own personal experience a man who had no
;

experience of a kind of pleasure which he was asked

to believe was better than his own could not be con-
vinced by the experience of another. So that, if such
an appeal as this is to be made to a man, he must start

with some conception of a higher and a lower persona-

lity in himself. But the passage is interesting because
it shows that by the philosophic form of soul Plato
does not mean one which exists, so to say, alongside
of and to the exclusion of the others. He thinks of
it as the fullest form of human nature. As you go
downwards from this fullest form of personality,
experience becomes more limited. We may illustrate
this conception from the case of what we call genius.' '

We should all recognize in Shakespeare a personality

which was not exclusive, but which might be said to
have embraced the experience of all kinds of lives.
We cannot understand the works of such a genius
VOL. II. Y
 322 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

fully, because we have not the experience to follow

it,and so genius is generally incomprehensible to the
majority of mankind but so far as we can follow the
;

works of genius we do enter into its experience, and

we should admit that we therein taste of a fuller
experience than our own. We must be careful, again,
not to misunderstand what Plato means by experience.
When he speaks here of the philosophic soul having
of necessity the experience of the other souls, he does
not mean that the philosopher, any more than the
great poet, has gone about the world testing various
kinds of life, but that the higher kind of man learns
more from the experience which he shares with the
lower kind without having to go through nearly the
same amount of it and, as a matter of fact, this is true.
;

583 b to (3) In the third place Plato compares the pleasures

588 a.
Q£ tnese different kinds of life in another way. The form
in which he puts his question is no longer, Which is

the plcasantest of these pleasures ? or, Which is the

best worth having? but, Which is the most real pleasure?
The pleasure of the lower kind of life is, he contends,
comparatively not pleasure at all. First, he endeavours
to show that something which is not really pleasure is

constantly by an illusion taken for pleasure. True or

unmixed {KaOajA) pleasure cannot, he says, consist in
mere relief from pain, nor true pain in mere cessation
of pleasure. Between pleasure and pain there is a neutral
state which is neither. When pain passes away and they
enter into this state, people call it pleasure, and equally
when pleasure ceases and they enter into this state they
call it pain. But it is logically absurd to call a state,
which is neither pleasure nor pain, both pleasure and
pain. This neutral state is one of quiescence (i]avyj-a),
 —

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 323

whereas both pleasure and pain are movements (ki^o-cis)

of the soul. Now, it can be shown by simple instances
that there are pleasures which are not preceded by pain,
and of which the cessation is painless ; but most of what
are ordinarily called bodily pleasures are of the nature
of cessation of pain ; and, on the principle just laid
down, they cannot be real pleasures. But it is easy
to see how the name of pleasure gets appropriated to
them by so many people. Just as a man who has
risen half-wayfrom a lower to a higher elevation, and
who has never seen beyond half-way, may think him-
self at the top, so these cessations of pain are regarded
as pleasure by those who have no experience of what
real pleasure is. Now what is the real pleasure ?
Pleasure means being satisfied (ttAt^coo-i?) with that
which naturally satisfies. The reality of the pleasure
is proportionate to the reality of the satisfaction at-
tained. If the satisfaction is transient and the want
keeps recurring, there is no real satisfaction and no
real pleasure. And so the question, What is the real
pleasure ? brings us back to the question : What is the
most real element in the human soul ; or what do
we mean by ourselves? For the real satisfaction is
l
that which satisfies our real selves .

whether certain pleasures are real

Plato's question
is difficult to understand. There is a difficulty in all
questions about the truth of feelings. In one sense all
feelings are real what we feel, we feel and we cannot
; ;

suppose that Plato is questioning that. But the same

1
[In the last few sentences and in parts of the following discussion
certain points in Plato's argument acquire a relatively stronger emphasis
than they have in the original ; but it has been thought better to leave

the passage untouched. Ed.]

V 2
324 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

remark applies to anything of which the reality is called

in question. Everything is in one sense real and when ;

we ask, Is this real ? we do not mean, Is this what it is ?

but, Is it what it suggests? or, Is it accompanied by
what we suppose it to be accompanied by? or, Is it
related as we suppose it to be related? or, Does it
occupy the place that we believe it to occupy ? In fact,
it is absolutely true that, in asking whether a given thing

is real, we are always asking about something else

besides it. Suppose, to take an instance of a feeling

other than pleasure, that some one asked, Am I really
hot ?would that be a sensible question ? It would
only be so if he meant, Is this feeling, which I have,
connected with certain processes in my body which
a physiologist would associate with heat ? or, If I
applied a thermometer to myself would the mercury rise
to a certain height ? or something of that sort. The
question can only be intelligently asked and answered
if there is, in the feeling which it concerns, an implied

reference to something else for asking the question

;

implies the possibility of testing the feeling, and it

cannot be tested by itself, but only by something other
than it. To apply this to Plato's question about the
reality of pleasure and pain, there can be no discussion
as to whether a man does or does not feel pleasure
or pain, in what is perhaps the most obvious sense of the
words, (' you cannot argue a man out of his feelings,' as
we say). If Plato's question is to be asked and answered
intelligently, there must be in pleasure or pain an implied
reference to something else.
Now Plato takes pleasure in the sense of being satisfied 1

1
[The only difficulty of the most important part of the argument arises
from the fact that neither '
pleasure in English nor ijhovq
' '
in Greek is
'
 —

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 325

(to nXripovo-dai), which is a natural enough way of defining

it. In this sense any particular part of the self receives
pleasure when it is satisfied with own appropriate
its

object, and it can be satisfied with none but its own appro-
priate object ;
you cannot satisfy hunger with drink or
thirst with solid food. This gives us a point of view from
which it can be asked which is the most real pleasure.
If we answer that the self or soul, though it is a manifold
thing, is still one thing, it is intelligible to ask, In which
of the various kinds of satisfaction is the self most really
satisfied ? and that is what Plato means when he asks
which is the most real pleasure. He puts the question
in a naive and simple form. he asks, equally
Is the self,
satisfied in the satisfaction of hunger and in the satisfac-
tionwhich attends the attainment of truth ? Satisfaction
is it is permanent (/3^/3atos).
real in proportion as Now
when we satisfy hunger the satisfaction attained has
very little permanence indeed we are always getting ;

hungry, and we cannot say that our hunger becomes

more satisfied as we grow older. To put this in another
way: the self which is satisfied by eating is neither
'

necessarily or indeed commonly equivalent to this. The word pleasure '

applies to a temporary state of feeling, and we use it sometimes with

more, sometimes with less reference to the belief on which that feeling
depends, and to the feelings which will succeed it, and to the other
feelings, pleasant or painful, with which the specific feeling we are speak-
ing of is bound up
inextricably sometimes we use it with no such
;

reference at all.narrow sense, which is very common, a pleasure

In the
is just as truly and as really a pleasure, even if it depends on an entire

mistake, or if none but a fool would feel it. Aristotle, in the tenth Book
of the Ethics, expressly limits the use of the word ySovf) to this narrow
sense, and opposes it to what Plato here calls pleasure. This latter is
what a man would deliberately and with full understanding choose, and
be permanently content to have had, and which is therefore of course
a more real pleasure the more a man can choose it deliberately and with
his whole mind. Ed.]
326 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

a large part of the self, nor a part which is constantly

and permanently present in the self. We might try to

imagine a self which had nothing to satisfy but physical
hunger, and we might ask how much satisfaction it
attains or we might equally ask how much of a self
;

it is, what is the amount of its reality for we must ;

remember that the self and the satisfaction of the self

are not separable, the self is the satisfaction it attains.
Such a being would be always going up and down from
pain to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to pain ; it

would be in a state of perpetual fluctuation between

these limits and we should have to say that the satis-
;

faction attained in such a life was very small indeed,

that it was very little of a life, and the self very little of
a self. Now we may ask another question Why do we :

all despise a man who lives to eat ? The ultimate reason

is that we assume that there are in him other capacities
requiring satisfaction, and that the part of the man's self
which is satisfied in eating is very small. Adopting
Plato's phraseology, we may say that the man who lives

to eat sacrifices nearly the whole of self to one small

fragment. A very good practical test to apply to the
value of different satisfactions is to ask how much of
oneself is honestly satisfied by each. All reflexions on
the transient nature of certain satisfactions come back
to this fact: self docs not exist merely in isolated
moments of satisfaction ; each satisfaction has to be taken
as a contribution to the satisfaction of self as a whole, as
isseen in the fact that wc may feel remorse even in the
moments of satisfaction.
Thus Plato's comparison of the pleasures of the higher
and lower forms of life resolves itself into this that : in
the higher form of life a larger part of what there is in
 '

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 327

the soul is satisfied ; that in it the soul as a whole

is more fully what it has the capacity to be. This view
he helps out by various arguments and figures. In the
first the figure (584 D
place there is sq.), derived from
space, of the higher and the lower. He compares life

with its changing states of pleasure and pain to rising and

falling in space (and many other people have described
pleasure as the sense of elevation). He applies this
figure seriously ; and his question may be put in the
form: In what kind of satisfaction does the soul rise to
its highest elevation, and remain most permanently
at a high elevation ? Every soul is perpetually, in the
language of this figure, rising and sinking; no one lives
at a permanent height.
Plato (584 c and 586 B sq.) upon the
lays stress
observation that in the satisfaction of most bodily appe-
1
tites the pleasure which results is of a markedly relative
character ; as he and Aristotle say, these are '
mixed
pleasures.' The very intensity of many of these plea-
sures, Plato and Aristotle notice, is due to the fact that
they are in felt contrast with a previous pain. The
previous pain is, so to say, carried on into the pleasure
2
and '
colours ' it . Thus these pleasures are not pure or
unmixed (Kadapai), and in some cases, Plato points out in
z
the Philebtis , it is impossible to say whether a feeling
is pleasant or painful, and a phrase like our '
bitter-sweet
has to be invented to describe it.

In the satisfaction of bodily want, the sense of transi-

1
We commonly use the phrase '
bodily pleasures' of pleasures which
we have come to localize in different parts of the body, but of course
all pleasures are consciousness and in that sense not bodily.
a
586 B. Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VII. xiv. 4.
46 C. The word occurs
3 in a fragment of Sappho (37), epos . . .

yXvKvmKpov a^axo.vov upireTov.

 —

328 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

tion from one state to another is often very prominent

and violent, and probably it was mainly this which led
Plato to describe pleasure as a movement (ku/tjo-is) *. In
all pleasures whatever we are conscious of transition
to some Every human being, when he is pleased,
extent.
is conscious of passing from a state, which was at any
rate negative in regard to pleasure, into a new state. It

1
[This must not be taken to imply that Plato uses the word kIvt)<tis
with special reference to the class of pleasures in which the sense of
transition is most violent. In the passage where it is brought in (583 E)
the bodily pleasures which are said to be so intensely felt because they
are transitions from previous pain are not more of the nature of Kivrjaets
than the other and more real pleasures are. The point there made about
them is that they arise merely from the recovery of the soul from the
previous Kivrjais of want and pain, its return to the original state in which
it was before the pain came {f]avxia %
. It is implied that the pleasure
the soul gets in obtaining hold of truth is a more real icivqats, because
it is the accompaniment of an elevation of the soul above its original
level, and not of a mere recovery from previous depression, and because
this elevation is, comparatively at least, permanent. In the more obvious
sense Plato would certainly have said that the lower kind of soul was
more subject to movement and change. But its movement is mere
fluctuation (irXavq) between two points which it never gets beyond
(586 a). Pleasure was described as a Ktvrjais of the soul by Dcmocritus
(v. Ritter and Preller, 158), who meant that it was literally a disturbance

of the arrangement of the material atoms of which the soul consisted.

He contrasted pleasure with (vOv^iia (content), which was the real good
thing to aim at in and which, according to Seneca, he took to be
life,

'
stabilis animi sedes (perhaps stable equilibrium of the soul' would
'
'

be the best translation). In contrast with this idea Plato and Aristotle
conceive the good state of the soul not simply as a state in which it is
undisturbed by -rraOi) (though it is that), but as a state in which it steadily
develops into all that it has in it to become. Possibly the fact that here
Plato describes the higher satisfactions of the soul as Kivrjotis (though
Kivrjat'; consisting not in fluctuation but in progress) is asymptom of
this difference in his view. But, though the word Kivrjais was probably
derived directly or indirectly from Dcmocritus, there is of course no
reason to assume any allusion to his views. Nor is it necessary in this
confused passage to assume that all the ideas which come in can be
developed consistently with one another. Ed.]
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 329

is true, no doubt, as Aristotle remarks \ that the actual

sense of pleasure is not a sense of change, but still it

implies change. (Can we imagine a being perfectly un-

changeable to feel pleasure or pain ? Plato's own state-
2
ment that pleasure cannot be predicated of a divine
life may paradox yet we also, while we
strike us as a ;

regard the capacity to change for the better as an ad-

vantage, on the other hand regard the necessity for
change as a mark of imperfection and so to us a per- ;

fectly changeless being may either mean one so far

above us as not to require change, or one so far below
us that it cannot change for the better 3 .) Now, most
people would agree with Plato that in the higher kinds
of satisfaction the sense of transition is much less violent

and marked than in the bodily pleasures for example, :

in the enjoyment of art it is so.

But an objection might be raised. Is it not an equal

necessity, whether the satisfaction be higher or lower,
that it should always be preceded by a want ? Why
too, we may ask, does Plato dilate on the insatiable
nature (a 77X17 or ia) of bodily appetite, insisting that bodily
satisfaction no satisfaction, as if there was some kind
is

of satisfaction which left no desire behind ? For the

answer to these questions we must go back to Plato's
notion of permanence in satisfaction. The want of
knowledge is a want, and a want which is never com-
pletely satisfied ; but in the case of the satisfaction,
partial though it may be, which we can obtain for this
want the soul is not always falling back to the same

1
Eth. Nic. X. iii. 4. ' Phil. 33 B.
3
Aristotle, in Eth. Nic. VII. xiv. 8, after describing the necessity for
change as an imperfection of our mortal nature, declares that 'God enjoys
ever one simple pleasure.'
33Q LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

level as before the satisfaction. There is progress

made, the self definitely advances, and each satis-

faction remains a permanent element in the self.

Plato expresses this in a bold figure. The part of the

soul which bodily pleasures satisfy is the part which is
1
not 'water-tight' (artyov 586 b). In the Gorgias the
metaphor is developed, and the appetitive part of
the soul, at least in those who live for the satisfaction
of it alone, is compared to a vessel full of holes. The
idea which these passages bring out is that, if there
is any self at all, there must be a permanent satisfaction

for it. For the fact is that the soul or self is exactly as
much as it gets out of the world and so far as the ;

satisfaction it gets is perishable the self is perishable,

and so far no self. The only test we can apply to
different forms of satisfaction of ourselves is the question,
How far is each, when we have obtained it, a permanent
element in ourselves ?

Here (585 B sq.) and in the Gorgias the idea of the

unsatisfactory nature of certain pleasures is associated
with the idea of their illusoriness. We should recognize
that to take what will not satisfy us for what will is

a form of mental illusion, but we should not naturally

dwell upon that side of moral failure. In Plato, however,
the ideas of intellectual illusion generally, and of moral
failure to find satisfaction, arc closely associated. As in

the sphere of knowledge, according to his idea, the soul

is what it gets and retains of truth, so in the sphere of
desire the soul is what it gets and retains. On the side
of knowledge and on the side of desire, the soul identifies
itself with the object which it pursues. On each of these

1
493 A to I).
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 331

sides, if that with which we identify ourselves is unreal

and transient, so too are we.
What has been said of living for the satisfaction
of bodily desires applies also, Plato briefly tells us
(586 c sq.), to the pursuit of the satisfaction of the
'
spirited ' element of the soul for its own sake, the
'
seeking to attain personal distinction, or victory over
others, or the satisfaction of one's anger without reason
and sense.' Then follows an important passage. Not
only are the lower kinds of satisfaction less true and
real than the higher, but, further, the amount of reality
which they have is proportionate to the degree in which
they are subservient to higher satisfactions. At first

this sounds rather a paradox there are reasons which ;

might make us say that, the more independent of any

ulterior object a desire is, the more likely it is to find
full satisfaction. Plato puts the matter in the opposite
way ; throughout Books VIII and IX he continually
asserts that, the more one element of the soul disengages
itself from the whole, the less satisfaction it attains.

To take a crude instance, a person who lived merely for

eating would get less out of eating, less permanent
satisfaction for himself, than a person who ate with
the consciousness that eating served some higher pur-
pose. A person who could say with St. Paul, whether '

I eat or drink, I do all to the glory of God,' might

mean : That in the most trivial satisfactions there may
be a sense of serving something wider and higher than
animal appetite ; that this gives to the satisfaction of
appetite a permanence and a satisfactoriness which by
itself it cannot have ; and yet that in this lies the only
appropriate satisfaction of appetite, or, as Plato says, its

'own' (oIkciov) satisfaction.

 —

'

332 LECTURES ON PLATO'S * REPUBLIC

We have now finished the threefold comparison

between the bliss of two lives, that of the tyrannical soul
which lives most completely in its own lowest element,
and that of the kingly soul which lives most completely in
its highest and Plato winds up the discussion with
;

a fantastic mathematical expression of the difference we

have found between them (587 a sq.). Starting with
the original triple division of the soul upon which the
description of these lives was based, and measuring in
one dimension the differences which we have found
between them, we may say that the life of the timocratic
man, in which the highest element of soul is unsatisfied,
reaches two-thirds as far as that of the philosopher or
king, in which all these elements are satisfied, and
that the life of the oligarchic man, in which only the
appetitive element is satisfied, reaches one-third as far.

Then taking which is the life of

the oligarchic life,

appetite at its best, and remembering the triple division

of the appetitive soul, we may say that the democratic
life reaches two-thirds as far as the oligarchic and the

tyrannic one-third as far. So the tyrannic life reaches

one-ninth as far as the kingly. But this measurement
docs not give us the full extent of the difference 1
. We
must measure the difference in three dimensions, de-
veloping the line into the square, and the square into
the cube, which is a complete and perfect thing. The
result is that the bliss of the philosopher king is 9 x 9 x 9
= 729 times as full as that of the tyrant.
588 a to Socrates is now made to look back to the beginning
n<l (it IX.
I

of the whole argument and the contention of Thrasy-

1
[In the triple division of the soul, and again in that of the appetitive
element, the three parts were not each of equal value in the life of the
soul which is what the calculation if it stopped here would imply. Ed.]
 ;

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 333

machus that perfect injustice is the true interest of man.

He will express the main facts which he has shown
about the life of man in a figure which will make it

clear how far injustice is from being man's interest.

The general drift of this section is to throw the whole
question of interest back upon the inner life of the soul
happiness, interest, gain, must be expressed in terms of
man's most inward life, or seen in their relation to the
essence of his soul. '
What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul ?
' is the burden of the section ;
'
we have
talked of gain or profit
'
— what is the ultimately precious
thing (tijaiov) ?

First (588 B to e) Plato repeats his analysis of human

nature. Man, while he is indeed not only one in his
bodily form, but one self or soul, is at the same time
a complex creature 1
. A new light is here thrown on the
elements of which he is composed. The appetitive
element is represented as a many-headed beast, con-
stantly changing and capable of an infinite development
of new heads out of itself; this beast is partly wild and
partly tame ; it is, in bulk, the largest element in human
nature. The '
spirited ' element is represented as a lion.
It was no mere figure of speech with Plato to represent
these psychical tendencies in man as animals, for he
clearly believed that there was continuity between the
different forms in which life appears ; that somehow or
other souls rose and fell in the scale of being according
as they behaved in each form in which they were
embodied and that there was a real identity between
;

certain elements in man's soul and certain elements in

other organic creatures. Such an idea receives a new
For the idea of man as a strangely composite being,
1
cf. Phacdrus,
229 E sq.
 ;

334 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

light from the modern conception of evolution. The

third element in human nature, and in bulk the smallest,
is the strictly human element, the man in us. This
element is also represented as the divine in man 1
. This
again, though not much is here made of it, is a very im-
portant idea for consideration in a theory of human nature.
Both Plato and Aristotle thought that there was in
human nature a certain imperfect presence of God, and
that it was this divine presence, however small, which
made it specifically human nature 2
. It is in this
conception that the true anticipations of such Christian
ideas as that of the Incarnation — 'taking the man-
hood into God' — are to be found. Plato here literally
identifies the truly human nature in us with the divine.
But the ideas are not developed in Plato and Aristotle.
Such then is man. The question of his true gain and
profit has to be considered on the basis of this analysis.
When a man says that injustice secures the real interest
of human nature, he cannot realize what he is saying
let us persuade him. To do so, Plato takes the principal
recognized forms of moral goodness and badness, and
shows what each means in terms of his analysis of human
nature (588 E to 590 d). The just and the noble (koAoV)
are what brings everything in human nature under the rule
of the truly human element in it. which is also the truly
divine. The unjust and the base {auryjpov) arc what
enslaves the man in us to the beast. When a man says
that pays or profits him to do a base action, such as
it

taking a bribe, he is really saying that he gains by en-

slaving what is more precious to him than wife or child
to the most godless thing in him. 'Intemperance' or
profligacy, again (ro u.Ko\a<TTaiveiv, the opposite of crwcfypo-

1
589 n. ' Aristotle, Eth. A'i . X. vii. i, and 7 to 9.
 ;
'

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 335

a-vvT}), means the letting loose of the wild creature within

us. Self-will and discontent or irritability
(avdabeLa)
from the lion-like element being developed
(bva-KoXia) arise
in bad adjustment to its place in our nature. Both
'
spirit and appetite
' are however involved in them *
'
'

in the description of the timocratic man in whom '

spirit
is dominant, and who is then said to be '
self-willed,' we
were shown how under the dominion of spirit certain ' '

excessive appetites were growing up in the dark, because

the highest element in man had been dethroned from its
place. Next, the vices of effeminacy, luxury, and the
like come from the weakening of the '
spirited '
element
in us. Flattery and meanness imply that it is being
enslaved to the mob of appetites, and that in consequence
2
the lion in us is being turned into an ape . Lastly come
fiavavaCa and \Hponyvia. These words, which signify
a sort of vulgarity which was associated with certain
occupations, may be compared with the word •mechanic'
as used in a depreciatory sense in Shakespeare. The
Greeks thought that mechanical occupations had a
tendency, not necessarily fulfilled in every case, to
develop this fault ; as indeed every nation stigmatizes
certain occupations, and uses words derived from them,
e. g. '
flunkeyism,' to describe certain vices. The vices

1
Especially if we read XeovruiSes re kol ux^&Ses (turbulent^, the latter
being 'appetite.' The MSS. read KeovruiSes re kcil o</>ta>5es the latter ;

(serpent-like) would be a new name for the spirited' element. But utfxwSes,
'

which is a strangely formed word and does not occur elsewhere except
in late writers who might have derived it from this passage after it had
been corrupted"), is very likely a mistake for ux^&Sts, which occurs just
below as a designation of the appetitive element. If however we read
6<ptw5(s, the introduction of this new term still implies that the lion-like
'
'

element is to some degree identifying itself with the nvKvaSis Opeftfia.

2
Cf. X. 620 c, where the soul of Thersites is ,at his own choice turned )

into an ape.
 '
336 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

named here really mean that the truly human element

is in some degree enslaved to the appetitive.

Thus, in brief, Plato has indicated the nature of various

sorts of vice. They are all of them forms of disorgani-
zation of the soul, all of them forms of slavery. The
question for man (590 D to 591 b) is, What is the right
slavery — the slavery which is not to the hurt of the
slave ? It is that he should be the slave of that in him
which is most fit to rule. Everything in man should
serve what is divine in him. It is best of all that he
should have the ruling principle in himself; but, if he
has it not, the next best is that he should obey it as
imposed on him from without. This shows us the
principle upon which both the law in states and the
education of children are based l Law was represented
.

at the outset by Glaucon as a restraint which a reasonable

man would overcome or evade wherever he was able to
do so. But law is the public reason embodied, the ally
of everybody in the community without distinction,
because the ally of that which is best in him. On
the same principle we do not allow children to be their
own masters by education, we have set up a con-
until, '

stitution' in them and enabled them to be to some

extent a law to themselves. In moral education, the
principle which imposed on the learner from
is at first
without gradually becomes his own principle. This,
which parents and teachers aim at accomplishing for
children, the law also aims at accomplishing for every
member of the community.
Human nature then being what it is, it is impossible
that it can 'profit' a man to be unjust. Nor will his

injustice profit him any the more for being undetected

1
Cf. Aristotle, Elh. Nk. X. ix.
 THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 337

and unpunished by the law. Thrasymachus has main-

tained that if a man could do any wrong he pleased and
escape punishment he would be prosperous here it is ;

asserted that the greatest ill that can befall a man is

that he should do wrong and escape punishment l

.

In conclusion (591 C to end of IX) Plato sums up the

principles upon which a wise man will regulate his life.
First, as to what he will wish__to_learn he \Vill value :

every study in proportion as it helps to bring the soul

into that good state which has here been described 2 .

Next as regards his body; he will not make the domi-

nant principle in his life the attainment of simply animal
pleasures, neither will he make it the attainment simply
of bodily health and strength, for he will value health
and strength of body according as they promote the
control of reason within him (o-uxppoo-vvri). He will
regulate the harmony of his body for the sake of the
harmony of his soul, if he wishes to be really [jlovo-lkos
3
;

the phrase is like the saying of Milton, that the true poet
must make his life a poem. Similarly with wealth ; he
will regulate his acquisition of wealth by asking whether
it does or does not put the '
constitution ' within him out
of gear. So lastly, as to honour and power, he will or
will not seek them according as he conceives that they
will or will not make him better.
Here follows a curious passage the mention of honour :

makes Glaucon say,' Then he will not take part in public

life,' and Socrates answers, '
Indeed he will in his own
city, but perhaps not in the city where he was born, unless
1
Cf. Gorgias, 472 D sqq.
2
i.e. He will regard the object of all study as intended to give the
philosophic or divine element in the soul the nurture necessary for its

development.
3
Cf. 410 and 411.
VOL. II. Z
 '
338 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

some divine chance befalls.' In Book VI ! Plato says it

isonly by divine grace, that is by some process which,
humanly speaking, cannot be reckoned on, that a great
character can escape demoralization in present society.
In a similar spirit he says here that it will only be as an
exception that a man who has attained harmony of the
soul will find public life congenial to him or compatible
with it ; only under exceptional circumstances will the
'
goodness of the man and the goodness of the citizen
' '
'

2
coincide . But such a man will carry about the ideal
him and live the
state with life of it ; whether it exists
anywhere on earth (or even in heaven) makes no differ-
ence to that. Plato in the Republic oscillates between
two conflicting feelings. His dominant feeling is that
the philosopher does neither the best for himself nor the
best for the world unless he finds a state in which he can
play the part he is fit for (irpocnjKovaa 7roAire'a). The
loss which results in every direction from the highest
minds not being applied to the government of society
forces itself upon him as an appalling loss. But another
feeling runs under this and emerges from time to time
in passages like the present. It is that, as the world
stands, the divorce between the philosopher and political
affairs is, humanly speaking, inevitable, and that the highest
life for man will generally have to be not a public life.

In describing the philosophic life in the T/icactcfns*

Plato almost glories in the fact that, in the ordinary
sense, it is of no use. We find precisely the same two
ideas struggling in many Christian writers. The saving

1
492 A. Cf. 493 A, 499 C.
J
1
Cf. Aristotle, I ul. 1276 It, 16 sqq., 1278 A, 41 sq., and also 1324 a, 4 to
'3 2 5> !
> 3°-
'
173 c sqq.
 ;

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 339

of one's soul has often been represented as inconsistent

with '
living in the world.' This mode of thought was
fairly well known in Greece even before Plato's time
both before his time and later there were philosophers
who lived, in retirement, a sort of monastic and ascetic
life. On the other hand we are familiar with the view
that the Christian principle is best realized in some
kind of public service, or in doing good in some sort of

social life. is no doubt that which is most

This idea
prominent Greek philosophy, and represents the
in
ultimate outcome of Greek moral thought in its best
form.

Z 2
 XV. DIGRESSION ON POETRY
[Republic, X. to 608 B.]

The first half of Book X is disconnected from the rest

of the Republic, and the transition to the subject of art
and poetry, which is here made, is sudden and unnatural.
We may, indeed, gather from the opening sentences
what is the connexion of ideas in Plato's mind. The
latter part of Book IX has brought vividly before us,
by a fresh analysis, what human nature really is ; moral
evil has been described as the surrender of the self to
the inferior elements in it : and this has been constantly
represented as the submission of the mind to living in
a kind of illusory world. This perhaps suggests the real
nature of the danger of imitative art, which has been
pointed out to some extent already. It tends to stimu-
late the illusorincss of feeling above all it panders to
;

an inferior kind of emotion, whether of pleasure or of

pain ; and Plato's peculiar way of describing the infe-
riority of an emotionshow that it is illusory, depen-
is to
dent on something unreal. So much connexion, then,
is traceable. Still this section breaks the continuity
of the Republic. It does not bear in any way on the
last section of Book X, in which the immortality of
 DIGRESSION ON POETRY 341

the soul is treated, and which would naturally follow

at the end of Book IX, forming a fitting conclusion

to the whole work. Further, within each of these two
sections it is easy to see the traces of more than one
redaction of the same topic *.

From the very apologetic opening and the neverthe-

less polemical tone which pervades the whole discussion,
one might infer that Plato had been attacked by critics
for what he had previously said about poetry, and that
he therefore returned to the subject with greater animus,
prepared to go a good deal further. In any case he
writes throughout with a deep feeling that the influence
of the poetry of his time, especially the dramatic poetry,
isalmost entirely bad, and that the extravagant belief
which prevails in the educational value of Homer and
other poets is and pernicious. He tells us
unjustifiable
that it Homer and the tragic poets that
was claimed for
they knew all arts, all things human, whether bearing
on virtue or vice, and even things divine, and again
that it was said that Homer was the educator of Greece,
and that a man might direct his whole life by what he
learnt from him 2 To us Homer is mere literature no
. ;

one regulates his life according to Homer but we must ;

take these statements as representing facts, or we cannot

understand Plato's attitude. He treats the matter as in
the utmost degree a serious one. People sometimes say
that Homer was the Greek Bible, and this expresses

in a crude way what Plato is here referring to.

Extravagant and illogical claims made for the Bible

have produced similar attacks upon it.

1
See, for example, the passages referred to in a note on p. 349, and at

the beginning of the next section of the Lectures.

'
598 D sq. and 606 E.
 —

342 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

Plato here treats poetry as a great means of tickling

the palate of the Athenian mere caterer demos ; it is a
of excitement. We in connexion
must take what he says
with various other passages in his dialogues, where the
power of words to produce illusion is dwelt upon. There
has never been a greater master of words than Plato
himself, and it seems as if this made him all the more
conscious that the art of using language is beset with
weaknesses and dangers. Thus, as he insists in the
Phaedrus the written word, whether rhetoric or poetry
x
,

or what not, is only valuable as a sort of record and

suggestion of the living word,' which is the truth that
'

the writer has present to his mind unless a writer can ;

feel that he knows something better than he writes, he is

not really a good writer and as soon as he begins to ;

think that words are the best thing he ceases to under-

2
stand them (The antithesis of 'letter' and 'spirit'
.

embodies the same idea.) In his own time, Plato felt,

literature was written for the sake of the pleasure that
the mere words gave. Thus in the Gorgias poetry,
especially tragic poetry, is classed with rhetoric as
a branch of the art of appealing to and pleasing the
crowd ;
and it is associated with the arts of the confec-
tioner and the perfumer
3
. Various passages in the Laws
too describe bitterly the change that has come over the
Athenian stage in the old days the audience were
;

swayed by people who knew better than they at present ;

there is a '
thcatrocracy,' the taste of the general public
is a law to the dramatist '.

1
[Of which dialogue, it is to be noticed, a large part is an exhibition
(given for a special purpose) of Plato's mastery of various styles of com-
position. Ed.]
3
*
275 C to end. Gorgias, 501 and 502.
4
Laws, III, 701 a.
 —

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 343

There are two leading ideas in this attack on art and

poetry. First, there is the idea that imitative art from
its very nature can only represent what things look like,

their outsides, which are a very littleandpart of them ;

that if any one takes the outsides of things whole for the
—
of them as, it is implied, a great many people do
then he is living in a world of illusion. Secondly, there
is the feeling that the emotions generally appealed to

and stimulated by contemporary art, and especially

by dramatic poetry, are not those which are worth
appealing to and stimulating. The whole treatment
of the subject presents us with the reverse side of the
picture of art given by Aristotle in the Poetics. The
two works do not deal with the subject from the same
point of view. Plato has set himself to write an indict-
ment of art. He deals with its perversions, and what
he says of them is to a great extent true, though no
doubt he accounts for the bad effects of art by a theory
which makes it look, at any rate, as if they necessarily
followed from the nature of imitative art, and not merely
from perversions of it. Aristotle's treatise, on the con-
trary (so far as it refers to the may be
same subject),
said to aim at a definition of tragedy as it is in its
essence and at its best. It is a matter of indifference
to him whether there ever was a tragedy answering
to his definition, he wants to get at the typical or ideal
nature of tragedy. The situations of the two men,
according to ordinary conceptions of their characters, are
here reversed ; Aristotle puts the ideal side of things,
while Plato writes like a controversialist concerned only
with present facts.

The discussion falls into three parts; in the first,

Plato investigates the nature of the 'imitation' which

 '
344 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

constitutes art, characterizing objectively the nature of

art (595 C to 602 c) ; in the second and third he really
puts the same thing from the other side, dealing, in two
separate sections which can hardly be said to differ in
subject, with the subjective effects of imitative art upon
the soul (602 C to 605 c. and 605 c to 6c8 b).
595 c to In the first section of the argument Plato starts with
6o2C.
the implied postulate that art is imitation (ju^o-is) ; he
first explains his theory of the nature of art by taking
the illustration of painting ; he then applies the result to
poetry.
Whatdoes he mean by saying that art is imitation ?
A modern writer in calling art imitative would probably
have in mind the question whether the artist copies from
his experience, or creates. It is clear in what Plato says,

and in a great part of what Aristotle says, that this is

not what they had in mind. Plato does not consider
whether the artist originates ; he is thinking of the
extremely obvious fact that the artist does not in any
case put before us the actual objects of real life, but
certain appearances only ; and only re-
he represents,
presents. In this, poetry and painting, though very
different in most respects, stand on the same footing. It

is obvious that the painter represents things to us in

colours merely as they appear from a certain point of

view. The poet uses words, as Plato says, '
like paint '
;

his words arc no more what they describe than painted

colours are what they represent the pout, no less than ;

the painter, presents to us what things look like from

;i partial point of view.
Imitation, which both the painter and the poet
exercise, is a certain kind of production or making
(WTjrriy) ; but what kind ? According to Plato there
 —

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 345

are three grades of making and three corresponding

makers to be distinguished. There is, first, the making
of that which is in the order of nature (to ev ti} <£wa,
o IcrTt, to 6v, to elhos, Ihia), of which the only maker fj

is God, who is therefore called the maker of the original

or natural ((f>vTovpyos). Secondly, there are the ordinary
artificial things used in life, which are made by the
craftsman or artisan ; he makes, Plato tells us, some-

thing like that which God makes (tolovtov olov to 6v),

a particular form l
of the thing God is maker of.

Thirdly, there is a product which consists in the

appearance of such things (particular concrete objects)
as the artisan makes, and the maker of this product
is the artist, who makes the appearance as a man
might make it by holding up a mirror before a thing.
We see at once that this is not a true account of artistic
production yet the artist's production and the reflexion
;

in a mirror are so far alike that they both represent only

partial aspects of things. The artist, according to Plato,

merely holds up the mirror to nature, and does nothing
more.
What does Plato mean by 'that which is in the order
of nature,' and the various phrases he uses as equivalent to
this ? He takes an instance which it is very difficult

to make sense of. What meaning is there in speaking

of the '
idea ' of a table or of a bed ; of a table as it is in

nature ; of a table in a sense in which there is one table

and no more ; of a table which is really a table, while
the things we call tables are not ? To get at the mean-
ing of Plato's language, we may start by asking what we
imply when we say that of two or more quite different

1
[Not, of course, '
form '
in the sense of tidos or idea as above. Ed.]
 '

346 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

tables each is a form or example of table. We clearly

imply that there is something in them which is the same
and therefore one. In the fact that they are many and
different forms of the one thing after which they are
called, Plato sees this consequence involved each is :

meant to be what it is called, but no one of them is really

quite what it is called or what it is meant to be. And
it is true that they are not quite what they are meant

to be, nor (it may be said) what they are called. Every
table has limitations ; to begin with, it perishes ; but,
besides that, it never absolulely answers its purpose,
we can always defect in it, and at any rate it
find some
only serves its purpose under certain conditions. This
then is the import of the particularity of tables they all ;

purport to be the same thing, namely, that which they

are really meant to be, but none of them is that thing.
The meaning of the conception is much more obvious
in the case of things to which we apply the notions of an
ideal, or of perfection. For instance, there are many
just acts, many forms of justice, each of which is only
partially what we call it; and we easily understand such
a conception as 'justice itself,' the one principle which

all just acts imperfectly embody. Plato applies the

same conception to tables and beds in a way that sounds
harsh and ludicrous. In the ordinary sense, as we should
at once say, there is no such thing as this one table that
he talks about. Nevertheless there is a truth about the
construction of tables, and the truth of everything must
be supposed to exist eternally. We may think of this
truth, or of the 'true table' in this sense, as existing in
what we might call an ideal order of the world (what
Plato here calls e/)iW), which we imperfectly apprehend
and reproduce, or as existing in the mind of the Creator ;
 ';

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 347

Plato would probably say that these were only different

ways of putting the same thing l .

This distinction of three things —the nature of tables,

which is made not by the craftsman but by the Creator,
the actual table which the craftsman makes, and the
copy of a table which the artist makes — leads up to
a comparison (601 c sqq.) of the knowledge that the
artistmust possess of a thing to copy it successfully,
and the knowledge that other men may possess of the
same thing. The man for whom the craftsman makes
any instrument, and who knows how to use it, knows
most about its nature and what it should be like the ;

horseman, for instance, knows what harness should be

this is not the kind of knowledge the artist has of harness,
or tables, or beds, or any object that he may imitate.
The craftsman who is not himself the user of what he
makes has not this knowledge either ; but he has
a certain right opinion (opdrj ho£a) about the thing he
makes, he can carry out the directions of the man for
whom he makes it. The knowledge of the artist who
can only produce the superficial resemblance of the
thing is clearly much less than this. It corresponds,
though the word is not used here, to the '
conjecture
(ductaia) of Book VI, and this passage throws a light
on the four-fold division of knowledge in that Book.
The conclusion drawn from this comparison is that what
the artist does is not earnest but play ; and this con-
clusion is applied to all artistic or poetic imitation ; if we
1
Nothing is said here about the manifold particular objects, not made
by human craftsmen, which make up the sensible world but, as here the ;

craftsman makes artificial objects after a pattern which is represented

as existing eternally, so in the Timaeus the whole sensible world is
represented as being the expression to sense of an eternal intelligible
napadei-yfjia. Cf. Timaeus, 28 esq.
 ;

348 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

take such imitation seriously we are making ourselves

the victims of illusion.
How far such a description of the work of artists and
poets is depends first on the particular artist
justified
or poet in question, on his own conception of his
functions, and on the way in which he carries it out
it depends, secondly, on the attitude of those who see

or read his works. Plato here has in the main great

poets and artists in view. Even in the case of the
greatest poet he is prepared to maintain that his work
is not the highest kind of work ; if he had done the
things he relates he would have been a greater man.
The comparative value of poetic or artistic work and of
other kinds of work is an unprofitable question to discuss.
It is certain and artists perform a great
that poets
function, and that the great poets and artists have done
a great service to mankind. But it is also true that they
are constantly misunderstood by their admirers, that
poetry and art are often taken as if they were something
which they arc not, and that claims are made for them
which fairly provoke the sort of reaction that we find
here, where Plato describes them as mere play. He
clearly has in mind people who fancy that merely to
read literature and gather impressions of life from it is
enough to give one an understanding of life. Such
persons arc as much under an illusion as if they
were taken in by clever scene-painting. Doubtless only
a childish or untrained mind can be so taken in 1 but ;

language is a far subtler thing than colour and form,

and, in reading things which strongly affect us, we arc
liable to suppose that the fact of being strongly affected

1
And wc are not to suppose that any great painter or other artist
makes illusion his object.
 ;

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 349

by the representation gives us a grasp of the thing

represented. The question whether a poet adds some-
thing to your understanding of the world, or gives you
nothing but the mere pleasure of representation and
expression, really depends on your understanding of the
poet. Having in mind people who imagine that the mere
enjoyment of poetry is something more than it is, Plato
contends that the presentation of life in literature gets hold
of a very small part of it. The condemnation he passes on
imaginative literature is valid as against a certain misunder-
standing of its true function. But the point of view from
which imaginative literature could be looked upon as con-
taining the whole reality of life, and from which Plato
answers that it gives one merely the most superficial
appearance, is not one which comes very naturally to us.

The two sections which follow are slightly different

l
treatments of one question : Imaginative art being,
as it has just been described, the production of mere
superficial appearance, what is its effect on the soul
what is it that it appeals to in the soul, and what is the
result upon the soul of its so appealing ?

In the former of these sections Plato again begins 602 c to

6 °5 C -
with painting, imitation which appeals to the eye, and
applies the analogy of it to poetry. The success of
painting, he points out, depends upon its exercising
a certain illusion, making us, by means of ingenious
devices, think of a certain object as being in three
dimensions when it is really in two 2 . It follows from

1 The opening words of the section beginning 605 C do not naturally

follow on the words which precede (there is nothing for aiirfji to refer

to), but they would naturally follow on the concluding words of the
section which ends at 602 B.
2 He illustrates this by referring to reflexions in water and the like,

which were his examples of tiicac'ia in Book VI.

' '
350 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

this that, for painting to exercise its influence, reason

(by which he means the which leads
scientific impulse,

us to set right all the illusions of sense by measuring

and weighing things, and the like) must be in abeyance.
As painting takes advantage of certain illusions of sight,
so poetry takes advantage of certain illusions of feeling
and emotion and as, in the case of painting, reason is for
;

the time being kept in abeyance by mere appearance, so,

for poetry to have its effect, the feeling of the moment
must blind us to some facts. Take, for example, the case
when poetry makes us feel keenly about what we should
call a great misfortune. When we think about it we see
that we do not know whether what gives us pain is really
an evil or not, we see again that grieving over it does no
good, and (Plato says) that nothing human is worthy
of grave consideration. These facts are analogous to
those which reason tells us when we test the data of
sight by measurement and calculation ; and as in enjoy-
ing a painting we are made to occupy ourselves with the
simple appearance of things from a single point of view,
to the exclusion of the facts of which reason would
inform us, so when we enter into the feeling of
it is

poetry. Poetry makes the emotion of the moment

exercise a sort of illusion over us. Further, Plato dwells
upon the fact that under the influence of a tragedy, and
similar influences, a man allows himself to enter into
emotions which he would be ashamed to give way to
in real life. Moreover, he points out that the subject-
matter which best lends itself to effective representa-
tion in poetry is indiscriminate variety of feeling and
emotion, not feeling and emotion restrained by a prin-
ciple. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is

that imitative poetry nourishes and strengthens, not

 DIGRESSION ON POETRY 351

the rational part of the soul, but that which is the

source of illusion.
The main subject of the latter section of the discussion 605 c to
°
is one which Plato has glanced at immediately before,
namely, the encouragement given to unworthy emotions
by hearing or reading emotional poetry. This effect, he
shows, is produced not only by tragedy but by comedy,
and by artistic representation generally. It appeals
to the appetitive side of our nature, letting loose the
emotional element in us, while keeping in abeyance
reason, which should restrain appetite. If then we
allow the Muse of sweetness to prevail in our city, we
shall be governed by pleasure and pain, and not by
principles and by regard for the common good. Poetry,
then, in the ideal community must be bound within very
narrow limits. Religion and patriotism are its two great
legitimate themes. Hymns to the gods, and panegyrics
on heroes, are the two forms of poetry which this criti-
cism has left uncondemned.
While Plato writes chiefly with the influence of the
drama in view, we should not look to the stage, in
England at any rate, for an analogous influence now. In
considering the new question about imaginative literature
which these sections raise we should most naturally have
in mind the effect of novels. No doubt the effect of
imaginative literature is due to the fact that we are
emotionally susceptible ; it appeals in the first instance
to one side of our nature ; and further it is true, as Plato
says, that when we upon by imagina-
are strongly acted
tive literature a certain part of us is in abeyance for the
time being it takes us, as we say, out of ourselves. But
;

the question is what self it is that it takes us out of.

Does it take us out of our common, every-day, mean

352 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

self? Are the emotions which it appeals to, not emotions

which we should be ashamed to feel in ordinary life, but
emotions which we are not able to feel in ordinary life ?
Does it, to put the question in the form which Aristotle
suggests, give to pity and fear something worth pitying
and something worth fearing for? Or does it, as Plato
thinks, give us feelings which in the ordinary business of
life, or at any time if we thought people could see into us,

we should be ashamed to feel ? and does it take us, not

out of our prosaic self, but out of the self that is practically
useful in life? These questions represent a real issue;

we could easily find examples of each of these effects of

imaginative literature; and most people have had some
experience of the worse as well as of the better effects of
such literature upon themselves. Most of us, for instance,
would have to admit that a great deal of the excitement
which we get out of novels does not develop the parti-
cular things in us of which we are proud, though we
cannot deny the great effectiveness and charm of many
of those works. Plato here writes with nothing in view but
the lower kind of effects that imaginative literature can
produce. There can be no doubt that there are times
in the history of the worldwhen only the lower sorts of
art become popular, when imaginative art docs aim at
mere popularity, and when its only interest is to appeal
to those susceptibilities of human nature which arc com-
monest or strongest, because it has to cater for excitement.
Further, it is true in a certain sense, as Plato says, that, the
more indiscriminate you are in what you appeal to, the
easier artistic work becomes; it is much easier to excite
if you do not care what you excite, or how. In Book III,
where also Plato discusses the effects of imitation, taking
the word in a narrower sense than here, he objects to
 DIGRESSION ON POETRY 353

the drama (the literature which is in that sense most

imitative) on the ground that the merely imitative
instinct is probably a symptom of, and certainly stimu-
lates, weakness of character, want of personality. Here,
again, we can hardly doubt that the readiness, which he
speaks of, to throw oneself into different characters can
have the effect which he attributes to it but on the ;

other hand one of the greatest helps to the development

of character lies in being encouraged to put oneself into
characters above one's ordinary level and this help is ;

what great art gives. But, rightly or wrongly, Plato has

here come to the conclusion that nearly all the imitative
art of his time has degenerated into indiscriminate
catering for common excitement. He treats art as being
this and only this, and in consequence the whole passage
remains rather an attack upon certain developments of
art than an adequate theoretical treatment of it.

Plato characteristically represents the dispute in which

he here engages, not as one between the moral and
the immoral in literature, but as one between poetry
generally and philosophy generally (607 B sq.). He
quotes sentences to express the feeling which certain
poets on their side have about philosophy and science ;

they regard them as the spinning of cobwebs, or as

audacious and blasphemous talk about things above us.
The same feeling of antagonism between poetry and
philosophy is often expressed now by saying that philo-
sophy and and the mystery out
science take the interest
of life. To Plato, on the contrary, the real ground of
quarrel seems to be that poetry gets hold only of the
outside of things, appealing always to the most super-
ficial susceptibilities of man, while philosophy gets hold

of the real laws and facts of the world. Now there is no

VOL. II. A a
354 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

reason why a poet should not really in his own way be

animated by the same spirit as a philosopher. There is
a point, as Wordsworth indicated, where philosophy and
poetry, imagination and science, meet. It is generally
in their lower phases that poetry and philosophy strike
one another as antagonistic. The greatest philosophers
and the greatest poets have not as a rule felt themselves
to be at enmity. Plato himself is something very like
a great poet.
 XVI. THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE
SOUL
[Republic, X. 608 C to end.]

The second part of Book X, like the first, shows

symptoms of having been left in an unfinished state.
In the opening words which introduce the subject of
immortality, '
And yet nothing has been said of the
greatest prizes and rewards of virtue (608 c), there is '

no transition from what has gone before. Plato has

not, as they imply, been talking of the rewards of
justice on earth. He first begins to speak of them
in 612 A and after that there occurs in 614 a another
;

opening similar to that in 608 C, and this time in its

proper connexion. Thus the argument about immor-
tality (608 c to 6 1 2 a) does not seem to be in any
organic connexion either with what actually precedes
or with what actually follows it. It would seem that

Plato had two plans in his mind as to how to finish the

l
Republic .

1
Notice too the fragmentary character of 611 A, where the doctrine
that the number of souls existing must remain constant is introduced
abruptly, and dismissed in a single sentence.

A a 2
 356 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

Taking the section, however, as it stands, we find

that in the first part of it Plato asserts that the soul
is immortal, and gives a brief argument in support of
this belief, asserting that the true nature and capacities
of the soul cannot be seen in its earthly state (608 C to
612 a). He then passes to the question whether justice,
which has been shown to be good in itself apart from
consequences, is not also attended by external rewards ;

and, having pointed out that on the whole it is so in this

life (612 A to 6 14 a), he winds up the whole work by
discoursing, by means of the Myth of Er, on the destiny
of the soul after death (6 14 A to end).
Plato makes no attempt here to deal completely with
6ll A.
the question of the immortality of the soul. In the
PJiaedo he treats the whole question, but here it is only
its bearing on morality that concerns him, and the ques-
tion is touched upon just far enough to give completion
to his picture of the destiny of the soul on earth. The
point of view from which he argues that the soul is

immortal is one which is in keeping with the whole

subject of the Republic. Throughout the Republic the
question has been, What the real good and the real evil
is

of the soul ? In accordance with all that has gone

before, Plato here insists that the only form of evil or
of good that affects the soul is moral or spiritual. Now
moral or spiritual evil docs not make the soul die, in the
ordinary sense. Hence, he argues, the soul is not subject
to death in the ordinary sense ; death is a form of evil
which affects the body only,
mi 1. to Having said that the soul in its essence does not die
6l2 A.
with bodily death, Plato modifies this statement. When
we assert the immortality of the soul we must remember
that this immortality only belongs to it in its true nature.
 THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 357

and that on earth we never see it in its true nature.

The soul as it exists in union with the human body is

emphatically a composite thing, and the composition is

by no means perfect ; so that the soul as it appears in

its earthly life is liable to all kinds of internal distraction

and inconsistency. The ideal condition of the soul is one
of harmony and perfect synthesis, and this is unattainable
under the conditions of human life ; so that, as we see
the soul here, its original nature is almost entirely
obscured, like the human form of the sea-god Glaucus
in by overgrowths which come upon it when
the myth,
it enters the body. If we want to see the immortal
part of it we mutt look at the element of philosophy
which is in it we must imagine what the soul would be
;

if it could entirely follow the impulse of philosophy,

which would lift it out of this sea in which it is now
2
sunk and show us its real nature 1
. Aristotle , in the
same way, tells us that the immortality of the soul lies in

vovs, and is to be seen in the speculative capacity of the

mind. With Aristotle and Plato the impulse of the soul,
or of reason, the truly human element in it, is, literally,

to be at one with the eternal being in the world. The

imagery which the present condition of the soul is
in

described as one of being sunk in the sea, and there

much beaten about and grown over with various extra-
neous growths, is not mere figure of speech. In the
Phaedo 3 we find the idea that our position on the earth
1
Cf. 490 b. See also 519 b, where Plato represents the soul as fettered
with leaden weights attached to it at birth, which means the affections to
which the body makes the soul liable and 518 E, where reason is the
;

divine thing in the soul, which, however much perverted and rendered
useless, still retains its ancient power. Cf. with the whole passage
Phaedo, 64 A to 68 B.
2 3
Eth. Nic. X. vii. 8, 9. 109 A sq.

VOL. II. a a 3
 358 LECTURES ON PLATO S '
REPUBLIC

is really comparable to being at the bottom of a hollow

or insome deep marshy place if we could get up higher ;

we should come to a region where everything was purer,

and where we should see much more clearly. Both
Plato and Aristotle regarded the earth as imposing all

kinds of restrictions and hindrances on the life of the

soul ; both thought, further, that the fixed stars were
made of finer matter, and that the souls connected with
them had correspondingly finer perceptions l Their .

view of the soul is bound up with a physical theory of

2
the universe .

The soul then, whatever metamorphosis it may undergo

when it enters the body, is in the essential part of it
immortal ; and the Republic, which may be regarded
(6 12 a) as a picture of the affections which the soul
undergoes and the forms which it assumes in human life,

its highest aspirations, its lowest descents, and the inter-

mediate forms of life between them, will fittingly conclude
with the prospect that lies before the soul after death.
6i2Ato But first Plato returns to the question, which was laid
613 E *
aside at the outset of the argument in Book II. of
the rewards of justice. Socrates had been asked to show
that justice was the true interest of the soul, without
regard to any external results of justice in this world
or another; it has now been admitted that he has
done so, and he may turn to the further question of
the facts about the external results of justice. Plato,
having devoted the whole dialogue so far to showing
that the good and evil of man arc the good and evil

177 a. 31 ff. from Cicero, <l< Nat. Deorum, II. 15.

1
Aristotle, Frag.
i<). 1. ,

-'
90 ad, where Plato asserts that in coming to understand
Cf. Tintat us
the laws of nature, e.g. of lie motion d tin :,tars, the soul on earth gets
I

some sort of anticipation of its own true lite and nature.

 THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 359

of the soul, does not, as has sometimes been said, retract

this because he here proceeds to reward the just man
with external goods. He points out first that, assuming
the moral nature of God, we must believe that the good
soul pleases God, and that, whatever appearances there
may be to the contrary, the good man is never neglected
by God ; all things must be well for the good man, except
so far as there is some evil made necessary for him by
previous sin l
. Again, if we turn to the relations of other
men to those who are just, the case is not as Thrasy-
machus represented it. Experience shows rather that
honesty is good policy. Thrasymachus had appealed to
certain common and admitted facts, Socrates appeals to
other common and admitted facts. But his conclusion
that justice is man's true interest is not drawn from the
account he gives of its usual external results, and
he does not abandon his position that justice is good
apart from all outward consequences, as being nothing
else than the healthy life of the soul.
The purport of the mythical account which now follows 613 e to
en '
of the soul's fate after deathis to insist that whatever is

done by the soul on earth has a direct effect upon its

future. Under all the mythological and poetical forms
in which Plato clothes what he says of the past and future

of the soul, one thought is present, that the immortality

of the soul, involving as it does the continuity of its

existence, adds to the moral responsibility which lies

upon us. The concluding words of the Republic give us

the key-note of the whole passage ; the one thing to study
on earth is how to make oneself better and wiser, not for
this life alone, but for another, and in order that we may
choose wisely when the chance comes to us, as it will, of
1
Cf. 379 c to 380 B on the nature of human ill-fortune.
360 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

choosing another form of life. Life on earth is a great

1
process of learning and gaining experience .

According to the tale of what was seen by Er the

Armenian, who twelve days after he had been killed in
battle was sent back to life, the soul immediately after
death proceeds to a spot where it is judged. The just
souls are there seen ascending, through an opening in the
sky on the right hand, to a thousand years of happiness,
and the unjust descending, through an opening in the
2
ground on the left, to a thousand years of punishment .

At the same spot, also, perpetual streams of souls are

seen arriving, some coming down by another opening in

the sky from their sojourn in heaven, others coming up

by another opening in the earth from their sojourn below.
As each soul returns, whether from bliss or from pain, it

goes into a meadow, where it rests for seven days before

it chooses a new life upon earth. The ordinary punish-
ment allotted to the unjust soul at death is the requital
ten times over of the evil done in life and so too the ;

recompense to the just of the good done in life is tenfold.

But there are other measures of punishment also. Those
whose lives have been very short are differently dealt with.
Some again whose guilt has been extreme are held not
to have been sufficiently punished when they return after

a thousand years, and are sent back again ; and there are
some incurable sinners who arc cast for ever into Tar-
tarus 11
. In the Gorgias we are told that such souls serve
as examples. The punishment of all who are not incurable
is of the nature of purgatory, and souls generally return
the wiser for what th<y have undergone. Conversely, the

1
Cf. VI. 498 i).
1
Cf. Gorgias 524 a sqq., and Phatdrtu
1
. 248 B to 249 d.
3
Cf. Gorgias, 52511 sq., and Photdo, 1
[3 1) sq.
 THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 361

enjoyment of bliss sometimes leads a soul to make a worse

choice than it would otherwise make of the life to which

it will return. If, however, the soul after being rewarded

makes a wise choice, and goes on living better and better

in each successive life, and getting better and better in
each sojourn in heaven, it at last escapes the necessity of
taking a mortal body again (this we gather from a
passage in the Phacdrus 1
, if we may put it together
with this passage).
At the end of their seven days' rest the souls which
have returned from bliss or punishment are brought
a long journey into the presence of the three Fates,
the daughters of Necessity, before whom their choice of
a new life has to be made. The choosing of new lives

takes place at a spot from which the mechanism of the

universe is visible, and of this the myth gives a detailed
2
description (6 1 6 B sqq.) . Plato conceives of the heavens
[ovpavos) as a hollow sphere which revolves with a motion
of own, and of which the outermost portion is that in
its

which the fixed stars are. Within it are seven other

hollow spheres containing the orbits of the sun, the moon,
and the five planets which were then known. These
have various revolutions of their own, in the opposite
direction to the uniform motion of the ovpavos as a whole.
All these eight spheres revolve round the earth, which is

the centre of the whole. The whole ovpavos is bound

round with a band of bright light, which is supposed to
mean the Milky Way 3 This astronomical conception
.

1
249 A.
2
For the astronomical part of this description see Bockh, Kleine
Schriften, III. p. 297 foil.
3
The souls on their journey arc said to see this band of light first as
an upright column in front of them. This looks at first as if it was a pole
passing from top to bottom of the sphere, but the word vwu^aifxa suggests
 ;

362 LECTURES ON PLATO'S ' REPUBLIC

iscombined by Plato with the old notions of Necessity

moving the world, and of destiny being spun by the
Fates and the image which results from this com-
;

bination is, of course, not clear or consistent in all its

details. The whole hollow sphere, with the seven

separate spheres with separate motions of their own
fitted in it, forms the whorl (o-(p6i'bv\os) of the spindle
(arpcLKTos) of Necessity. It is fastened by the Milky
Way and other bands to the hook (ayiaa-Tpov) of the

spindle. The shaft (?}\a«a7?y) of the spindle passes

right through the whole of the eight spheres and, ;

around the point where it enters them, the lips of the

spheres are seen as a continuous surface of eight con-
centric rings, of which the colours and the relative widths
are described in accordance with the colours and the
relative distances from the earth ascribed to the heavenly
bodies which move with them. The spindle rests on the
knees of Necessity, and the whole mechanism is turned
by the Fates — Clotho, Lachcsis, whose name signifies

chance, and Atropos, whose name signifies the inevitable.

The and the hook of the spindle are of adamant,

shaft
that is to say they arc imperishable and unchanging
but the whorl, the system of spheres, that is to say the
whole visible universe, is partly of adamant, partly of
other substances, which means that the universe partly
exhibits uniform and eternal law, and partly irregularity
and change.

a band passing round the sphere, and moreover the shaft of the distaff
passes through the centre of the sphere. The souls must be supposed to
bi ill en to a point outside the whole phere the word vwtov, in 616 e (cf.
;

PhaedruSf ^47 shows this, and further they pass under the throne of
c),

;,, , My. upon whose knees the spindle upon which the sphere turns
,

1 n ling. From a certain point outside the sphere a band passing

round it would be seen as an upright column.
 THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 363

Plato further introduces into the image the Pytha-

gorean idea that in some way the motions of the heavenly
bodies make up a musical harmony. It arose from the
attempt to find a law regulating the various distances
of these bodies from the earth some Pythagoreans ;

imagined that a relation could be established between

these distances and the intervals between the notes of the
scale. This is the origin of the idea of the music of the '

spheres.' In Plato's picture a Siren sits upon each of

the rings formed by the spheres, and is carried round
with it. Each Siren sings a single note, and the eight
notes make a scale (ap/xozna). The three Fates sing to
the music of the spheres, Lachesis of the past, Clotho of
the present, Atropos of the future.
The choice which the souls make of life is the all-

important crisis in their history. Plato in his description

of their choosing (617 D sqq.) has expressed his opinion

upon Free Will and Necessity. In every human life

there isan element of necessity or of what (so far as the

man himself is concerned) may be called chance there ;

is also an element of choice. This idea is applied here

to the causes which determine the conditions under which
a man is born. In the first place, the order in which the
souls choose is determined for them by lot. In the
second place, however late in the order a soul gets its

choice, it still gets a choice, and, as is proclaimed to them

in the name of the Fates, even the soul that chooses last
will have a life worth living, if it chooses wisely, and
thereafter lives intently (<tvvt6vcos). In the third place,
when the soul has made its choice of life it has chosen
1
its destiny (baifxiov) ; that is to say, practically, a man's

1
For the 5aiy.aiv cf. Phaedo, 107 D-108 C, where the Saifiaiv takes the soul
back to the other world when it has finished its life on earth. Here, in
364 LECTURES ON PLATO S ' REPUBLIC

own will is his destiny, in the sense that he can never

reverse what he has once willed to do, nor its con-
1
sequences . Circumstances, the fact of choice, and the
irrevocableness of choice are the three great elements in
life.

At this choosing of lives, many souls of animals become

men, and vice versa (620 A sq.). As has been seen
was quite serious in the idea of continuity
already, Plato
between animal and human life. There is no doubt, too,
that he was perfectly serious in the belief which is —
expressed in the whole myth of Er, and particularly
where the soul's choice of a new life is represented
as the outcome of the way in which it has previously
lived —
that man's conduct in one phase of existence
has a determining effect on his destiny in some future
phase.

620 E, the Fates send with each soul a Sa'tftwv to attend it through life

and fulfil for it the destiny it has chosen. This is a sort of mythological
expression of the idea that the man's character or personality determines
his own particular destiny. Cf. Timacus, 90 A, where Plato speaks of the

highest element of the soul as a man's ha'ifiwv. It is easy to pass from this

to the notion of attendant spirits watching over men's lives, and that is
the connexion between the sense of ^aifxwv here and the sense in which
great men are said to be worshipped as Saifiovft (540 c).
In the /3iW irapafidynaTa (samples of lives) which are thrown before the
1

souls to choose from, all kinds of circumstances in various combinations

are present in a determinate character, but the one vital element of the de-
terminate character of the soul itself, if/vxijs T(*f< s is said not to be present,
>

'
because it is fated that the soul in choosing a given life should become
likewhat it chooses.' Here we have the old distinction of the externals
of and the actual vital principle itself; the soul is to choose the
life

external conditions of its life, but by its choice of life it becomes what it
is to be (618 n).

THE END.
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