ii. 1093:--

Nam--pro** sancta Deûm tranquillâ pectora pace, Quæ placidum degunt ævum, vitamque serenam-- Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas?

Compare v. 167-196, vi. 68.]

Comparing the two doctrines, we see that Plato, though he did not reject altogether, as Epikurus did, the agency of the Gods in the universe,--restricted it here nevertheless so as to suit the ethical exigencies of his own mind. He thus discarded so large a portion of it, as to place himself, or rather his spokesman Sokrates, in marked hostility with the received religious faith. If Melêtus and Anytus lived to read the Platonic Republic (we may add, also the dialogue called Euthyphron), they would probably have felt increased persuasion that their indictment against Sokrates was well-grounded:[81] since he stood proclaimed by the most eminent of his companions as an innovator in matters of religion, and as disbelieving a very large portion of what was commonly received by pious Athenians. With many persons, it was considered a species of sacrilege to disbelieve any narrative which had once been impressed upon them respecting the Gods or the divine agency: the later Pythagoreans laid it down as a canon, that this was never to be done.[82]

[Footnote 81: Xenoph. Memorab. i. 1. [Greek: A)dikei= Sôkra/tês, ou(\s me\n ê( po/lis nomi/zei theou\s ou) nomi/zôn, e(/tera de\ kaina\ daimo/nia ei)sphe/rôn; a)dikei= de\ kai\ tou\s ne/ous diaphthei/rôn.]

This was the form of the indictment against Sokrates. The Republic of Plato certainly shows ground for the first part of it. Sokrates did not introduce new names and persons of Gods, but he preached new views about their characters and agency, and (what probably would cause the greatest offence) he emphatically blames the received views. The Republic of Plato here embodies what we read in the Platonist Maximus Tyrius (ix. 8) as the counter-indictment of Sokrates against the Athenian people--[Greek: ê( de\ Sôkra/tous kata\ A)thênai/ôn graphê/; A)dikei= o( A)thênai/ôn dê=mos, ou(\s me\n Sôkra/tês nomi/zei theou\s ou) nomi/zôn, e(/tera de\ kaina\ daimo/nia e)peisphe/rôn . . . A)dikei= de\ o( dê=mos kai\ tou\s ne/ous diaphthei/rôn.]]

[Footnote 82: Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag. c. 138-148. Adhortatio ad Philosophiam, p. 324, ed. Kiessling. See chap. xxxvii. of my "History of Greece," p. 345, last edit.]

[Side-note: Plato conceives the Gods according to the exigencies of his own mind--complete discord with those of the popular mind.]

Now the Gods, as here conceived by Plato conformably to his own ethical exigencies, are representatives of abstract goodness, or of what he considers as such[83]--but they are nothing else. They have no other human emotions: they are invoked for the purposes of the schoolmaster and the lawgiver, to distribute prizes, and inflict chastisements, on occasions which Plato thinks suitable. But Gods with these restricted functions were hardly less at variance with the current religious belief than the contemplative, theorising, Gods of Aristotle--or the perfectly tranquil and happy Gods of Epikurus. The Gods of the popular faith were not thus specialised types, embodiments of one abstract, ethical, idea. They were concrete personalities, many-sided and many-coloured, endowed with great variety of dispositions and emotions: having sympathies and antipathies, preferences and dislikes, to persons, places, and objects: sensitive on the score of attention paid to themselves, and of offerings tendered by men, jealous of any person who appeared to make light of them, or to put himself upon a footing of independence or rivalry: connected with particular men and cities by ties of family and residence.[84] They corresponded with all the feelings of the believer; with his hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows, his pride or his shame, his love or preference towards some persons or institutions, his hatred and contempt for others. They were sometimes benevolent, sometimes displeased and unpropitious, according to circumstances. They were indeed believed to interfere for the protection of what the believer accounted innocence or merit, and for the avenging of what he called wrong. But this was only one of many occasions on which they interfered. They dispensed alternately evil and good, out of the two casks mentioned in that Homeric verse[85] which Plato so emphatically censures. Nay, it was as much a necessity of the believer's imagination to impute marked and serious suffering to the envy or jealousy of the Gods, as good fortune and prosperity to their kindness. Such a turn of thought is not less visible in Herodotus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Lykurgus, &c., than in Homer and the other poets whom Plato rebukes. Moreover it is frequently expressed or implied in the answers or admonitions delivered from oracles.[86]

[Footnote 83: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 379.

In the sixteenth chapter of my "History of Greece" (see p. 504 seq.) I have given many remarks on the ancient Grecian legends, and on the varying views entertained in ancient times respecting them, considered chiefly in reference to the standard of historical belief. I here regard them more as matters of religious belief and emotion.]

[Footnote 84: Nowhere is the relation between men and the Gods, and the all-covering variety of divine agency, in ancient Grecian belief, more instructively illustrated than in the Hippolytus of Euripides. Hippolytus, a youth priding himself on piety and still more upon inexorable continence (1140-1365), is not merely the constant worshipper of the goddess Artemis, but also her companion; she sits with him, hunts with him; he hears her voice and converses with her; he knows her presence by the divine odour, though he does not see her ([Greek: su/nthake, sugku/nage], 1093-1391-87). But he disdains to address a respectful word to Aphrodité, or to yield in any way to her influence, though he continually passes by her statue which stands at his gates; he even speaks of her in disparaging terms (13-101). Aphrodité becomes deeply indignant with him, not because he is devoted to Artemis, but because he neglects and despises herself (20): for the Gods take offence when they are treated with disrespect, just as men do (6-94). His faithful attendant laments this misguided self-sufficiency, and endeavours in vain to reason his master out of it (see the curious dialogue 87-120, also 445). Aphrodité accordingly resolves to punish Hippolytus for this neglect by inspiring Phædra, his step-mother, with an irresistible passion for him: she foresees that this will prove the destruction of Phædra as well as of Hippolytus, but no such consideration can be allowed to countervail the necessity of punishing her enemies. She accordingly smites Phædra with love-sickness, which, since Phædra will not reveal the cause, the chorus ascribes to the displeasure and visitation of some unknown divinity, Pan, Hekatê, Kybelê, &c. (142-238). The course of this beautiful drama is well known: Aphrodité proves herself a goddess and something more (359): Phædra and Hippolytus both perish; Theseus is struck down with grief and remorse (1402); while Artemis, who appears at the end to console the dying Hippolytus and reprove Theseus, laments that it was not in her power, according to the established etiquette among the Gods, to interpose for the protection of Hippolytus against the anger of Aphrodité, but promises to avenge him by killing with her unerring arrows some marked favourite of Aphrodité (1327-1421). "Non esse curæ Diis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem."--Tacitus.]

[Footnote 85: Homer, Iliad xxiv. 527.]

[Footnote 86: The opinion is memorable, which Herodotus puts into the mouth of the wisest and best man of his age--Solon. [Greek: Ô)= Kroi=se, e)pista/meno/n me to\ thei=on pa=n e)o\n phthonero/n te kai\ tarachô=des, e)peirôta=s a)nthrôpêi+/ôn pragma/tôn peri/?] (Herod. i. 32). Kroesus was overtaken by a terrible divine judgment because he thought himself the happiest of men (i. 34). The Gods strike at persons of high rank and position: they do not suffer any one except themselves to indulge in self-exaltation (vii. 10). Herodotus ascribes the like sentiment to another man distinguished for prudence--Amasis king of Egypt (iii. 40-44-125). Compare Pausanias, ii. 33, and Æschyl. Pers. 93, Supplices, 388, Hermann. Herodotus and Pausanias proclaim the envy and jealousy of the Gods more explicitly than other writers. About the usual disposition to regard the jealousy of the Gods as causing misfortunes and suffering, see Thucyd. ii. 54, vii. 77; especially when a man by rash speech or act brings grave misfortune on himself, he is supposed to be under a misguiding influence by the Gods, expressed by Herodotus in the remarkable word [Greek: theoblabê/s] (Herodot. i. 127, viii. 137; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 3; Soph. Oed. Kol. 371). The poverty in which Xenophon found himself when he quitted the Cyreian army, is ascribed by himself, at the suggestion of the prophet Eukleides, to his having omitted to sacrifice to Zeus Meilichius during the whole course of the expedition and retreat. The next day Xenophon offered an ample sacrifice to this God, and good fortune came upon him immediately afterwards; he captured Asidates the Persian, receiving a large ransom, with an ample booty, and thus enriched himself (Xenoph. Anab. vii. 8, 4-23). Compare about [Greek: theô=n phtho/nos], Pindar, Pyth. x. 20-44; Demosthenes cont. Timokratem, p. 738; Nägelsbach, Die Nach-Homerische Theologie der Griechen, pp. 330-355.]

[Side-note: Repugnance of ordinary Athenians in regard to the criticism of Sokrates on the religious legends.]

When therefore the Platonic Sokrates in this treatise affirms authoritatively,--and affirms without any proof--his restricted version of the agency of the Gods, calling upon his countrymen to reject all that large portion of their religious belief, which rested upon the assumption of a wider agency, as being unworthy of the real attributes of the Gods,--he would confirm, in the minds of ordinary Athenians, the charge of culpable innovation in religion, preferred against him by his accusers. To set up _à priori_ a certain type (either Platonic or Epikurean) of what the Gods _must_ be, different from what they were commonly believed to be,--and then to disallow, as unworthy and incredible, all that was inconsistent with this type, including a full half of the narratives consecrated in the emotional belief of the public--all this could not but appear as "impious rationalism," on the part of "the Sophist Sokrates".[87] It would be not less repugnant to the feelings of ordinary Greeks, and would appear not more conclusive to their reason, than the arguments of rationalising critics upon many narratives of the Old Testament appear to orthodox readers of modern times--when these critics disallow as untrue many acts therein ascribed to God, on the ground that such acts are unworthy of a just and good being.

[Footnote 87: Æschines cont. Timarch. [Greek: Sôkra/tê to\n sophistê/n].

Lucretius, i. 80.

Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque Indugredi sceleris--

Plato, in Leges, v. 738 B, recognises the danger of disturbing the established and accredited religious [Greek: phê=mai], as well as the rites and ceremonies.]

[Side-note: Aristophanes connects the idea of immorality with the freethinkers and their wicked misinterpretations.]

Though the Platonic Sokrates, repudiating most of the narratives believed respecting Gods and Heroes, as being immoral and suggesting bad examples to the hearers, proposes to construct a body of new fictions in place of them--yet, if we turn to the Clouds of Aristophanes, we shall find that the old-fashioned and unphilosophical Athenian took quite the opposite view. He connected immoral conduct with the new teaching, not with the old: he regarded the narratives respecting the Gods as realities of an unrecorded past, not as fictions for the purposes of the training-school: he did not imagine that the conduct of Zeus, in chaining up his father Kronus, was a proper model to be copied by himself or any other man: nay, he denounced all such disposition to copy, and to seek excuse for human misconduct in the example of the Gods, as abuse and profanation introduced by the sophistry of the freethinkers.[88] In his eyes, the religious traditions were part and parcel of the established faith, customs and laws of the state; and Sokrates, in discrediting the traditions, set himself up as a thinker above the laws. As to this feature, the Aristophanic Sokrates in the Clouds, and the Platonic Sokrates in the Republic, perfectly agree--however much they differ in other respects.

[Footnote 88: Aristophan. Nubes, 358: [Greek: leptota/tôn lê/rôn i(ereu=]. 885: [Greek: gnô/mas kaina\s e)xeuri/skôn].

1381.--

[Greek: ô(s ê(du\ kainoi=s pra/gmasin kai\ dexioi=s o(milei=n, kai\ tô=n kathestô/tôn no/môn u(perphronei=n du/nasthai.]

894.--

[Greek: (A)/dikos Lo/gos.)--

Pô=s dê=ta di/kês ou)/sês, o( Zeu\s ou)k a)po/lôlen, to\n pate/r' au(tou= dê/sas? (Di/k. Lo/gos) ai)boi=, touti\ kai\ dê\ chôrei= to\ kako/n; do/te moi leka/nên.]

1061.--

[Greek: moicho\s ga\r ê)\n tu/chê|s a(lou/s, ta/d' a)nterei=s pro\s au)to/n, ô(s ou)de\n ê)di/kêkas; ei)=t' e)s to\n Di/' e)panenegkei=n; ka)kei=nos ô(s ê(/ttôn e)/rôto/s e)sti kai\ gunaikô=n.]

While Aristophanes introduces the freethinker as justifying unlawful acts by the example of Zeus, Plato (in the dialogue called Euthyphron) represents Euthyphron as indicting his father for murder, and justifying himself by the analogy of Zeus; Euthyphron being a very religious man, who believed all the divine matters commonly received and more besides (p. 6). This exhibits the opposition between the Platonic and the Aristophanic point of view. In the Eumenides of Æschylus (632), these Goddesses reproach Zeus with inconsistency, after chaining up his old father Kronus, in estimating so highly the necessity of avenging Agamemnon's death, as to authorise Orestes to kill Klytæmnestra.

An extract from Butler's Analogy, in reply to the objections offered by Deists against the Old Testament, will serve to illustrate the view which pious Athenians took of those ancient narratives which Plato censures. Butler says: "It is the province of Reason to judge of the morality of the Scripture; _i.e._ not whether it contains things different from what we should have expected from a wise, just, and good Being, . . . but whether it contains things plainly contradictory to Wisdom, Justice, or Goodness; to what the light of Nature teaches us of God. And I know nothing of this sort objected against Scripture, excepting such objections as are formed upon suppositions which would equally conclude that the constitution of Nature is contradictory to wisdom, justice, or goodness; which most certainly it is not. Indeed, there are some particular precepts in Scripture, given to particular persons, requiring actions which would be immoral and vicious, were it not for such precepts. But it is easy to see that all these are of such a kind, as that the precept changes the whole nature of the case and of the action, and both constitutes and shows that not to be unjust or immoral which, prior to the precept, must have appeared and really been so; which may well be, since none of these precepts are contrary to immutable morality. If it were commanded to cultivate the principles, and act from the spirit, of treachery, ingratitude, cruelty; the command would not alter the nature of the case or of the action, in any of these instances. But it is quite otherwise in precepts which require only the doing an external action; for instance, taking away the property or life of any. For men have no right to either life or property, but what arises solely from the grant of God; when this grant is revoked, they cease to have any right at all in either; and when this revocation is made known, as surely it is possible it may be, it must cease to be unjust to deprive them of either. And though a course of external acts which, without command, would be immoral, must make an immoral habit; yet a few detached commands have no such natural tendency.

"I thought proper to say thus much of the few Scripture precepts which require, not vicious actions, but actions which would have been vicious had it not been for such precepts; because they are sometimes weakly urged as immoral, and great weight is laid upon objections drawn from them. But to me there seems no difficulty at all in these precepts, but what arises from their being offences--_i.e._ from their being liable to be perverted, as indeed they are, by wicked designing men, to serve the most horrid purposes, and perhaps to mislead the weak and enthusiastic. And objections from this head are not objections against Revelation, but against the whole notion of Religion as a trial, and against the whole constitution of Nature." (Butler's Analogy, Part. ii. ch. 3.)

I do not here propose to examine the soundness of this argument (which has been acutely discussed in a good pamphlet by Miss Hennell--'Essay on the Sceptical Tendency of Butler's Analogy,' p. 15, John Chapman, 1859). It appeared satisfactory to an able reasoner like Butler: and believers at Athens would have found satisfaction in similar arguments, when the narratives in which they believed were pronounced by Sokrates mischievous and incredible, as imputing to the Gods unworthy acts. For example--Zeus and Athêne instigate Pandarus to break the sworn truce between the Greeks and Trojans: Zeus sends Oneirus, or the Dream-God, to deceive Agamemnon (Plat. Rep. ii. pp. 379-383). Here are acts (the orthodox reasoner would say) which would be immoral if it were not for the special command: but Agamemnon and the Greeks had no right to life or property, much less to any other comforts or advantages, except what arose from the gift of the Gods. Now the Gods, on this particular occasion, thought fit to revoke the right which they had granted, making known such revocation to Pandarus; who, accordingly, in that particular case, committed no injustice in trying to kill Menelaus, and in actually wounding him. The Gods did not give any general command "to cultivate the spirit and act upon the principles" of perjury and faithlessness: they merely licensed the special act of Pandarus--_hic et nunc_--by making known to him that they had revoked the right of the Greeks to have faith observed with them, at that particular moment. When any man argues--"Pandarus was instigated by Zeus to break faith: therefore faithlessness is innocent and authorised: therefore _I_ may break faith"--this is "a perversion by wicked and designing men for a horrid purpose, and can mislead only the weak and enthusiastic".

Farther, If the Gods may by special mandates cause the murder or impoverishment of particular men by other men to be innocent acts, without sanctioning any inference by analogy--much more may the same be said respecting the acts of the Gods among themselves, which Sokrates censures, _viz._ their quarrels, violent manifestations by word and deed, amorous gusts, hearty laughter, &c. These too are particular acts, not intended to lead to consequences in the way of example. The Gods have not issued any general command. "Be quarrelsome, be violent," &c. If they are quarrelsome themselves on particular occasions, they have a right to be so; just as they have a right to take away any man's life or property whenever they choose: but _you_ are not to follow their example, and none but wicked men will advise you to do so.

To those believers who denounced Sokrates as a freethinker (Plat. Euthyp. p. 6 A) such arguments would probably appear satisfactory. "_Sunt Superis sua jura_" is a general principle, flexible and wide in its application. Of arguments analogous to those of Butler, really used in ancient times by advocates who defended the poets against censures like those of Plato, we find an illustrative specimen in the Scholia on Sophokles. At the beginning of the Elektra (35-50), Orestes comes back with his old attendant or tutor to Argos, bent on avenging the death of his father. He has been stimulated to that enterprise by the Gods (70), having consulted Apollo at Delphi, and having been directed by him to accomplish it not by armed force but by deceits ([Greek: do/loisi kle/psai], 36). Keeping himself concealed, he sends the old attendant into the house of Ægisthus, with orders to communicate a false narrative that he (Orestes) is dead, having perished by an accident in the Pythian chariot-race: and he directs the attendant to certify this falsehood by oath ([Greek: a)/ggelle d' o)/rkô| prostithei/s], 47). Upon which last words the Scholiast observes as follows:--"We must not take captious exception to the poet, as if he were here exhorting men to perjure themselves. For Orestes is bound to obey the God, who commands him to accomplish the whole by deceit; so that while he appears to be impious by swearing a false oath, he by that very act shows his piety, since he does it in obedience to the God"--[Greek: mê\ smikrolo/gôs tis e)pila/bêtai, ô(s keleu/ontos e)piorkei=n tou= poiêtou=; dei= ga\r au)to\n pei/thesthai tô=| theô=|, to\ pa=n do/lô| pra/ssein parakeleuome/nô|; ô(/ste e)n oi(=s dokei= e)piorkô=n dussebei=n, dia\ tou/tôn eu)sebei=, peitho/menos tô=| theô=|.]]

[Side-note: Heresies ascribed to Sokrates by his own friends--Unpopularity of his name from this circumstance.]

In reviewing the Platonic Republic, I have thought it necessary to appreciate the theological and pædagogic doctrines, not merely with reference to mankind in the abstract, but also as they appeared to the contemporaries among whom they were promulgated.

[Side-note: Restrictions imposed by Plato upon musical modes and reciters.]

To all the above mentioned restrictions imposed by Plato upon the manifestation of the poet, both as to thoughts, words, and manner of recital--we must add those which he provides for music in its limited sense: the musical modes and instruments, the varieties of rhythm. He allows only the lyre and the harp, with the panspipe for shepherds tending their flocks. He forbids both the flute and all complicated stringed instruments. Interdicting the lugubrious, passionate, soft, and convivial, modes of music, he tolerates none but the Dorian and Phrygian, suitable to a sober, resolute, courageous, frame of mind: to which also all the rhythm and movement of the body is to be adapted.[89] Each particular manifestation of speech, music, poetry, and painting, having a natural affinity with some particular emotional and volitional state--emanating from it in the mind of the author and suggesting it in other minds--nothing is to be tolerated except what exhibits goodness and temperance of disposition,--grace, proportion, and decency of external form.[90] Artisans are to observe the like rules in their constructions: presenting to the eye nothing but what is symmetrical. The youthful Guardians, brought up among such representations, will have their minds imbued with correct æsthetical sentiment; they will learn even in their youngest years, before they are competent to give reasons, to love what is beautiful and honourable to hate what is ugly and mean.[91]

[Footnote 89: Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 399-400.]

[Footnote 90: Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 400 D-401 B. [Greek: o( tro/pos tê=s le/xeôs--tô=| tê=s psuchê=s ê)/thei e(/petai--prosanagkaste/on tê\n tou= a)gathou= ei)ko/na ê)/thous e)mpoiei=n.]]

[Footnote 91: Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 401-402 A.]

[Side-note: All these restrictions intended for the emotional training of the Guardians.]

All these enactments and prohibitions have for their purpose the ethical and æsthetical training of the Guardians: to establish and keep up in each individual Guardian, a good state of the emotions, and a proper internal government--that is, a due subordination of energy and appetite to Reason.[92] Their bodies will also be trained by a good and healthy scheme of gymnastics, which will at the same time not only impart to them strength but inspire them with courage. The body is here considered, not (like what we read in Phædon and Philêbus) as an inconvenient and depraving companion to the mind: but as an indispensable co-operator, only requiring to be duly reined.

[Footnote 92: Plato, Repub. x. p. 608 B. [Greek: peri\ tê=s e)n au(tô=| politei/as dedio/ti--me/gas o( a)gô/n, me/gas, ou)ch o(/sos dokei=, to\ chrêsto\n ê)\ kako\n gene/sthai.]]

[Side-note: Regulations for the life of the Guardians, especially the prohibition of separate property and family.]

The Guardians, of both sexes, thus educated and disciplined, are intended to pass their whole lives in the discharge of their duties as Guardians; implicitly obeying the orders of the Few Philosophical chiefs, and quartered in barracks under strict regulations. Among these regulations, there are two in particular which have always provoked more surprise and comment than any other features in the commonwealth; first, the prohibition of separate property--next, the prohibition of separate family--including the respective position of the two sexes.

[Side-note: Purpose of Plato in these regulations.]

The directions of Plato on these two points not only hang together, but are founded on the same reason and considerations. He is resolved to prevent the growth of any separate interest, affections, or aspirations, in the mind of any individual Guardian. Each Guardian is to perform his military and civil duties to the Commonwealth, and to do nothing else. He must find his happiness in the performance of his duty: no double functions or occupations are tolerated. This principle, important in Plato's view as regards every one, is of supreme importance as applying to the Guardians,[93] in whom resides the whole armed force of the Commonwealth and by whom the orders of the Chiefs or Elders are enforced. If the Guardians aspire to private ends of their own, and employ their force for the attainment of such ends, nothing but oppression and ruin of the remaining community can ensue. A man having land of his own to cultivate, or a wife and family of his own to provide with comforts, may be a good economist, but he will never be a tolerable Guardian.[94] To be competent for this latter function, he must neither covet wealth nor be exposed to the fear of poverty: he must desire neither enjoyments nor power, except what are common to his entire regiment. He must indulge neither private sympathies nor private antipathies: he must be inaccessible to all motives which could lead him to despoil or hurt his fellow-citizens the producers. Accordingly the hopes and fears involved in self-maintenance--the feelings of buyer, seller, donor, or receiver--the ideas of separate property, house, wife, or family--must never be allowed to enter into his mind. The Guardians will receive from the productive part of the community a constant provision, sufficient, but not more than sufficient, for their reasonable maintenance. Their residence will be in public barracks and their meals at a common mess: they must be taught to regard it as a disgrace to meddle in any way with gold and silver.[95] Men and women will live all together, or distributed in a few fractional companies, but always in companionship, and under perpetual drill; beginning from the earliest years with both sexes. Boys and girls will be placed from the beginning under the same superintendence; and will receive the same training, as well in gymnastic as in music. The characters of both will be exposed to the same influences and formed in the same mould. Upon the maintenance of such early, equal, and collective training, especially in music, under the orders of the Elders,--Plato declares the stability of the Commonwealth to depend.[96]

[Footnote 93: Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 421-A 423 D.]

[Footnote 94: Plato, Repub. iii. p. 417 A-B.]

[Footnote 95: Plato, Repub. iii. pp. 416-417.]

[Footnote 96: Plato, Repub. iv. pp. 423-424 D-425 A-C.]

[Side-note: Common life, education, drill, collective life, and duties, for Guardians of both sexes. Views of Plato respecting the female character and aptitudes.]

The purpose being, to form good and competent Guardians the same training which will be best for the boys will also be best for the girls. But is it true that women are competent to the function of Guardians? Is the female nature endued with the same aptitudes for such duties as the male? Men will ridicule the suggestion (says Plato) and will maintain the negative. They will say that there are some functions for which men are more competent, others for which women are more competent than men: and that women are unfit for any such duty as that of Guardians. Plato dissents from this opinion altogether. There is no point on which he speaks in terms of more decided conviction. Men and women (he says) can perform this duty conjointly, just as dogs of both sexes take part in guarding the flock. It is not true that the female, by reason of the characteristic properties of sex--parturition and suckling--is disqualified for out-door occupations and restricted to the interior of the house.[97] As in the remaining animals generally, so also in the human race. There is no fundamental difference between the two sexes, other than that of the sexual attributes themselves. From that difference no consequences flow, in respect to aptitude for some occupations, inaptitude for others. There are great individual differences between one woman and another, as there are between one man and another: this woman is peculiarly fit for one task, that woman for something else. But speaking of women generally and collectively, there is not a single profession for which they are peculiarly fit, or more fit than men. Men are superior to women in every thing; in one occupation as well as in another. Yet among both sexes, there are serious individual differences, so that many women, individually estimated, will be superior to many men; no women will equal the best men, but the best women will equal the second-best men, and will be superior to the men below them.[98] Accordingly, in order to obtain the best Guardians, selection must be made from both sexes indiscriminately. For ordinary duties, both will be found equally fit: but the heaviest and most difficult duties, those which require the maximum of competence to perform, will usually devolve upon men.[99]

[Footnote 97: Plato, Repub. v. p. 451 D.]

[Footnote 98: See this remarkable argument--Republic, v. pp. 453-456--[Greek: gunai=kes me/ntoi pollai\ pollô=n a)ndrô=n belti/ous ei)s polla/; to\ de\ o(/lon e)/chei ô(s su\ le/geis. Ou)de\n a)/ra e)sti\n e)pitê/deuma tô=n po/lin dioikou/ntôn gunaiko\s dio/ti gunê/, ou)/d' a)ndro\s dio/ti a)nê/r, a)ll' o(moi/ôs diesparme/nai ai( phu/seis e)n a)mphoi=n toi=n zô/oin, kai\ pa/ntôn me\n mete/chei gunê\ e)pitêdeuma/tôn kata\ phu/sin, pa/ntôn de\ a)nê/r; e)pi\ pa=si de\ a)sthene/steron gunê\ a)ndro/s] (p. 455 D). It would appear (from p. 455 C) that those who maintained the special fitness of women for certain occupations and their special unfitness for others, cited, as examples of occupations in which women surpassed men, weaving and cookery. But Plato denies this emphatically as a matter of fact; pronouncing that women were inferior to men (_i.e._ the best women to the best men) in weaving and cookery no less than in other things. We should have been glad to know what facts were present to his mind as bearing out such an assertion, and what observations were open to him of weaving as performed by males. In Greece, weaving was the occupation of women very generally, whether exclusively or not we can hardly say; in Phoenicia, during the Homeric times, the finest robes are woven by Sidonian women (Iliad vi. 289): in Egypt, on the contrary, it was habitually performed by men, and Herodotus enumerates this as one of the points in which the Egyptians differed from other countries (Herodot. ii. 35; Soph. Oed. Kol. 340, with the Scholia, and the curious citation contained therein from the [Greek: Barbarika\] of Nymphodorus). The process of weaving was also conducted in a different manner by the Egyptians. Whether Plato had seen finer webs in Egypt than in Greece we cannot say.]

[Footnote 99: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A.]

[Side-note: His arguments against the ordinary doctrine.]

Those who maintain (continues Plato) that because women are different from men, therefore the occupations of the two ought to be different--argue like vexatious disputants who mistake verbal distinctions for real: who do not enquire what is the formal or specific distinction indicated by a name, or whether it has any essential bearing on the matter under discussion.[100] Long-haired men are different from bald-heads: but shall we conclude, that if the former are fit to make shoes, the latter are unfit? Certainly not: for when we inquire into the formal distinction connoted by these words, we find that it has no bearing upon such handicraft processes. So again the formal distinction implied by the terms _male_, _female_, in the human race as in other animals, lies altogether in the functions of sex and procreation.[101] Now this has no essential bearing on the occupations of the adult; nor does it confer on the male fitness for one set of occupations--on the female, fitness for another. Each sex is fit for all, but the male is most fit for all: in each sex there are individuals better and worse, and differing one from another in special aptitudes. Men are competent for the duties of Guardians, only on condition of having gone through a complete musical and gymnastical education. Women are competent also, under the like condition; and are equally capable of profiting by the complete education. Moreover, the chiefs must select for those duties the best natural subjects. The total number of such is very limited: and they must select the best that both sexes afford.[102]

[Footnote 100: Plato, Republic, v. p. 454 A. [Greek: dia\ to\ mê\ du/nastai kat' ei)/dê diairou/menoi to\ lego/meon e)piskopei=n, a)lla\ kat' au)to\ to\ o)/noma diô/kein tou= lechthe/ntos tê\n e)nanti/ôsin, e)/ridi, ou) diale/ktô|, pro\s a)llê/lous chrô/menoi.] 454 B: [Greek: e)peskepsa/metha de\ ou)d' o(pê|ou=n, ti/ ei)=dos to\ tê=s e(te/ras te kai\ tê=s au)tê=s phu/seôs, kai\ pro\s ti/ tei=non ô(rizo/metha to/te, o(/te ta\ e)pitêdeu/mata a)/llê| phu/sei a)/lla, tê=| de\ au)tê=| ta\ au)ta/, a)pedi/domen.] Xenophon is entirely opposed to Plato on this point. He maintains emphatically the distinct special aptitudes of man and woman. Oeconom. vii. 20-38; compare Euripid. Electra, 74.]

[Footnote 101: Plato, Repub. v. p. 455 C-D.]

[Footnote 102: Plato, Repub. v. p. 456.]

[Side-note: Opponents appealed to nature as an authority against Plato. He invokes Nature on his own side against them.]

The strong objections, generally entertained against thus assigning to women equal participation in the education and functions of the Guardians, were enforced by saying--That it was a proceeding contrary to Nature. But Plato not only denies the validity of this argument: he even retorts it upon the objectors, and affirms that the existing separation of functions between the two sexes is contrary to Nature, and that his proposition alone is conformable thereunto.[103] He has shown that the specific or formal distinction of the two has no essential bearing on the question, and therefore that no argument can be founded upon it. The specific or formal characteristic, in the case of males, is doubtless superior, taken abstractedly: yet in particular men it is embodied or manifested with various degrees of perfection, from very good to very bad. In the case of females, though inferior abstractedly, it is in its best particular embodiments equal to all except the best males, and superior to all such as are inferior to the best. Accordingly, the true dictate of Nature is, not merely that females _may be_ taken, but that they _ought to be_ taken, conjointly with males, under the selection of the Rulers, to fulfil the most important duties in the Commonwealth. The select females must go through the same musical and gymnastic training as the males. He who ridicules them for such bodily exercises, prosecuted with a view to the best objects, does not know what he is laughing at. "For this is the most valuable maxim which is now, or ever has been, proclaimed--What is useful, is honourable. What is hurtful, is base."[104]

[Footnote 103: Plato, Repub. v. p. 456 C. [Greek: Ou)k a)/ra a)du/nata/ ge, ou)de\ eu)chai=s o(/moia, e)nomothetou=men, e)pei/per kata\ phu/sin e)ti/themen to\n no/mon; a)lla\ ta\ nu=n para\ tau=ta gigno/mena para\ phu/sin ma=llon, ô(s e)/oike, gi/gnetai.]]

[Footnote 104: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 B. [Greek: O( de\ gelô=n a)nê\r e)pi\ gumnai=s gunaixi/, tou= belti/stou e(/neka gumnazome/nais, a)telê= tou= geloi/ou sophi/as dre/pôn karpo/n, ou)de\n oi)=den, ô(s e)/oiken, e)ph' ô(=| gela=| ou)d' o(/, ti pra/ttei; ka/llista ga\r dê\ tou=to kai\ le/getai kai\ lele/xetai, o(/ti to\ me\n ô)phe/limon, kalo/n--to\ de\ blabero/n, ai)schro/n.]]

[Side-note: Collective family relations and denominations among the Guardians.]

Plato now proceeds to unfold the relations of the sexes as intended to prevail among the mature Guardians, after all have undergone the public and common training from their earliest infancy. He conceives them as one thousand in total number, composed of both sexes in nearly equal proportion: since they are to be the best individuals of both sexes, the male sex, superior in formal characteristic, will probably furnish rather a greater number than the female. It has already been stated that they are all required to live together in barracks, dining at a common mess-table, with clothing and furniture alike for all. There is no individual property or separate house among them: the collective expense, in a comfortable but moderate way, is defrayed by contributions from the producing class. Separate families are unknown: all the Guardians, male and female, form one family, and one only: the older are fathers and mothers of all the younger, the younger are sons and daughters of all the older: those of the same age are all alike brothers and sisters of each other: those who, besides being of the same age, are within the limits of the nuptial age and of different sexes, are all alike husbands and wives of each other.[105] It is the principle of the Platonic Commonwealth that the affections implied in these family-words, instead of being confined to one or a few exclusively, shall be expanded so as to embrace all of appropriate age.

[Footnote 105: Plato, Republic, v. p. 457 C-D. [Greek: ta\s gunai=kas tau/tas tô=n a)ndrô=n tou/tôn pa/ntôn pa/sas ei)=nai koina/s, i)di/a| de\ mêdeni\ mêdemi/an sunoikei=n; kai\ tou\s pai=das au)= koinou/s, kai\ mê/te gone/a e)/kgonon ei)de/nai to\n au)tou= mê/te pai=da gone/a.]]

[Side-note: Restrictions upon sexual intercourse--Purposes of such restrictions.]

But Plato does not at all intend that sexual intercourse shall take place between these men and women promiscuously, or at the pleasure of individuals. On the contrary, he expressly denounces and interdicts it.[106] A philosopher who has so much general disdain for individual impulse or choice, was not likely to sanction it in this particular case. Indeed it is the special purpose of his polity to bring impulse absolutely under the controul of reason, or of that which he assumes as such. This purpose is followed out in a remarkable manner as to procreation. What he seeks as lawgiver is, to keep the numbers of the Guardians nearly stationary, with no diminution and scarcely any increase:[107] and to maintain the breed pure, so that the children born shall be as highly endowed by nature as possible. To these two objects the liberty of sexual intercourse is made subservient. The breeding is regulated like that of noble horses or dogs by an intelligent proprietor: the best animals of both sexes being brought together, and the limits of age fixed beforehand.[108] Plato prescribes, as the limits of age, from twenty to forty for females--from thirty to fifty-five for males--when the powers of body and mind are at the maximum in both. All who are younger as well as all who are older, are expressly forbidden to meddle in the procreation _for the city_: this being a public function.[109] Between the ages above named, couples will be invited to marry in such numbers as the Rulers may consider expedient for ensuring a supply of offspring sufficient and not more than sufficient--having regard to wars, distempers, or any other recent causes of mortality.[110]

[Footnote 106: Plato, Repub. v. p. 458 E. [Greek: a)ta/ktôs me\n mi/gnusthai a)llê/lois ê)\ a)/llo o(tiou=n poiei=n ou)/te o(/sion e)n eu)daimo/nôn po/lei ou)/t' e)a/sousin oi( a)/rchontes.]]

[Footnote 107: Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 A. [Greek: to\ de\ plê=thos tô=n ga/môn e)pi\ toi=s a)/rchousi poiê/somen, i(/n' ô(s ma/lista diasô/zôsi to\n au)to\n a)rithmo\n tô=n a)ndrô=n, pro\s pole/mous te kai\ no/sous kai\ pa/nta ta\ toiau=ta a)poskopou=ntes, kai\ mê/te mega/lê ê(mi=n ê( po/lis kata\ to\ dunato\n mê/te smikra\ gi/gnêtai.]]

[Footnote 108: Plato, Repub. v. p. 459.]

[Footnote 109: This is his phrase, repeated more than once--[Greek: ti/ktein tê=| po/lei, genna=|n tê=| po/lei--tô=n ei)s to\ koino\n gennê/seôn] (pp. 460-461).

What Lucan (ii. 387) observes about Cato of Utica, is applicable to the Guardians of the Platonic Republic:--

"Venerisque huic maximus usus Progenies. Urbi pater est, Urbique maritus."]

[Footnote 110: Plato, Repub. v. p. 460 A.]

[Side-note: Regulations about marriages and family.]

There is no part of the Platonic system in which individual choice is more decidedly eliminated, and the intervention of the Rulers made more constantly paramount, than this respecting the marriages: and Plato declares it to be among the greatest difficulties which they will have to surmount. They will establish festivals, in which they bring together the brides and bridegrooms, with hymns, prayer, and sacrifices, to the Gods: they will determine by lot what couples shall be joined, so as to make up the number settled as appropriate: but they will arrange the sortition themselves so cleverly, that what appears chance to others will be a result to them predetermined. The best men will thus always be assorted with the best women, the inferior with the inferior: but this will appear to every one, except themselves, the result of chance.[111] Any young man (of thirty and upwards) distinguished for bravery or excellence will be allowed to have more than one wife; since it is good not merely to recompense his merit, but also to multiply his breed.[112]

[Footnote 111: Plato, Repub. v. p. 460.]

[Footnote 112: Plato, Repub. v. pp. 460 B, 468 C. In the latter passage it even appears that he is allowed to make a choice.]

In the seventh month, or in the tenth month, after the ceremonial day, offspring will be born, from these unions. But the children, immediately on being born, will be taken away from their mothers, and confided to nurses in an appropriate lodgment. The mothers will be admitted to suckle them, and wet-nurses will also be provided, as far as necessary: but the period for the mother to suckle will be abridged as much as possible, and all other trouble required for the care of infancy will be undertaken, not by her, but by the nurses. Moreover the greatest precautions will be taken that no mother shall know her own child: which is considered to be practicable, since many children will be born at nearly the same time.[113] The children in infancy will be examined by the Rulers and other good judges, who will determine how many of them are sufficiently well constituted to promise fitness for the duties of Guardians. The children of the good and vigorous couples, except in any case of bodily deformity, will be brought up and placed under the public training for Guardians: the unpromising children, and those of the inferior couples, being regarded as not fit subjects for the public training, will be secretly got rid of, or placed among the producing class of the Commonwealth.[114]

[Footnote 113: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460 D, 461 D.]

[Footnote 114: Compare Republic, v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C, with Timæus, p. 19 A. In Timæus, where the leading doctrines of the Republic are briefly recapitulated, Plato directs that the children considered as unworthy shall be secretly distributed among the remaining community, _i.e._ not among the Guardians: in the Republic itself, his language, though not clear, seems to imply that they shall be exposed and got rid of.]

[Side-note: Procreative powers of individual Guardians required to be held at the disposal of the rulers, for purity of breed.]

What Plato here understands by marriage, is a special, solemn, consecrated, coupling for the occasion, with a view to breed for the public. It constitutes no permanent bond between the two persons coupled: who are brought together by the authorities under a delusive sortition, but who may perhaps never be brought together at any future sortition, unless it shall please the same authorities. The case resembles that of a breeding stud of horses and mares, to which Plato compares it: nothing else is wanted but the finest progeny attainable. But this, in Plato's judgment, is the most important of all purposes: his commonwealth cannot maintain itself except under a superior breed of Guardians. Accordingly, he invests his marriages with the greatest possible sanctity. The religious solemnities accompanying them are essential to furnish security for the goodness of the offspring. Any proceeding, either of man or woman, which contravenes the provisions of the rulers on this point, is peremptorily forbidden: and any child, born from unauthorised intercourse without the requisite prayers and sacrifices, is considered as an outcast. Within the limits of the connubial age, all persons of both sexes hold their procreative powers exclusively at the disposition of the lawgiver. But after that age is past, both men and women may indulge in intercourse with whomsoever they please, since they are no longer in condition to procreate for the public. They are subject only to this one condition: not to produce any children, or, if perchance they do, not to bring them up.[115] There is moreover one restriction upon the personal liberty of intercourse, after the connubial limits of age. No intercourse is permitted between father and daughter, or between mother and son. But how can such restriction be enforced, since no individual paternity or maternity is recognised in the Commonwealth? Plato answers by admitting a collective paternity and maternity. Every child born in the seventh month or in the tenth month after a couple have been solemnly wedded will be considered by them as their son or daughter, and will consider himself as such.[116]

[Footnote 115: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 C.]

[Footnote 116: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 D.]

Besides all these direct provisions for the purity of the breed of Guardians, which will succeed (so Plato anticipates) in a large majority of cases--the Rulers will keep up an effective supervision of detail, so as to exclude any unworthy exception, and even to admit into the Guardians any youth of very rare and exceptional promise who may be born among the remaining community. For Plato admits that there may be accidental births both ways: brass and iron may by occasional accident give birth to gold or silver--and _vice versâ_.

[Side-note: Purpose to create an intimate and equal sympathy among all the Guardians, but to prevent exclusive sympathy of particular members.]

It is in this manner that Plato constitutes his body of Guardians; one thousand adult persons of both sexes,[117] in nearly equal numbers, together with a small proportion of children--the proportion of these latter must be very small since the total number is not allowed to increase. His end here is to create an intimate and equal sympathy among them all, like that between all the members of the same bodily organism: to abolish all independent and exclusive sympathies of particular parts: to make the city One and Indivisible--a single organism, instead of many distinct conterminous organisms: to provide that the causes of pleasure and pain shall be the same to all, so that a man shall have no feeling of mine or thine, except in reference to his own body and that of another, which Plato notes as the greatest good--instead of each individual struggling apart for his own objects and rejoicing on occasions when his neighbour sorrows, which Plato regards as the greatest evil.[118] All standing causes of disagreement or antipathy among the Guardians are assumed to be thus removed. But if any two hot-headed youths get into a quarrel, they must fight it out on the spot. This will serve as a lesson in gymnastics:--subject however to the interference of any old man as by-stander, whom they as well as all other young men are bound implicitly to obey.[119] Moreover all the miseries, privations, anxiety, and dependence, inseparable from the life of a poor man under the system of private property, will disappear entirely.[120]

[Footnote 117: This number of 1000 appears stated by Aristotle (Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. 9), and is probably derived from Republic, iv. p. 423 A; though that passage appears scarcely sufficient to prove that Plato meant to declare the number 1000 as peremptory. However the understanding of Aristotle himself on the point is one material evidence to make us believe that this is the real construction intended by Plato.]

[Footnote 118: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 462-463-464 D. [Greek: dia\ to\ mêde/na i)/dion e)ktê=sthai plê\n to\ sô=ma, ta\ de\ a)/lla koina/.] Compare Plato, Legg. v. p. 739 C.]

[Footnote 119: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 464-465.]

[Footnote 120: Plato, Republic, v. p. 465 C.]

Such are the main features of Plato's Republic, in reference to his Guardians. They afford a memorable example of that philosophical analysis, applied to the circumstances of man and society, which the Greek mind was the first to conceive and follow out. Plato lays down his ends with great distinctness, as well as the means whereby he proposes to attain them. Granting his ends, the means proposed are almost always suitable and appropriate, whether practicable or otherwise.

[Side-note: Platonic scheme--partial communism.]

The Platonic scheme is communism, so far as concerns the Guardians: but not communism in reference to the entire Commonwealth. In this it falls short of his own ideal, and is only a second best: the best of all would be, in his view, a communion that should pervade all persons and all acts and sentiments, effacing altogether the separate self.[121] Not venturing to soar so high, he confined his perfect communion to the Guardians. Moreover his communism differs from modern theories in this. They contemplate individual producers and labourers, handing over the produce to be distributed among themselves by official authority; they contemplate also a regulation not merely of distribution, but of reserved capital and productive agency, under the same authority. But the Platonic Guardians are not producers at all. Everything which they consume is found for them. They are in the nature of paid functionaries, exempted from all cares and anxiety of self-maintenance, either present or future. They are all comfortably provided, without hopes of wealth or fear of poverty: moreover they are all equally comfortable, so that no sentiment can grow up among them, arising from comparison of each other's possessions or enjoyments. Among such men and women, brought up from infancy as Plato directs, the sentiment of property, with all the multifarious associations derived from it, would be unknown. No man's self-esteem, no man's esteem of others, would turn upon it.

[Footnote 121: See Plato, De Legibus, v. p. 739 D. The Republic is _second best_; that which appears sketched in the treatise De Legibus is _third best_.]

In this respect, the remaining members of the city, apart from the Guardians, and furnishing all the subsistence of the Guardians, are differently circumstanced. They are engaged in different modes of production, each exclusively in one mode. They exchange, buy, and sell, with each other: there exist therefore among them gradations of strength, skill, perseverance, frugality, and good luck--together with the consequent gradations of wealth and poverty. The substance or capital of the Commonwealth is maintained altogether by the portion of it which is extraneous to the Guardians; and among that portion there is no communism. The maintenance of the Guardians is a tax which these men have to pay: but after paying it, they apply or enjoy the rest of their produce as they please, subject to the requirements of the Rulers for public service.[122]

[Footnote 122: Aristotle, in his comments upon the Platonic Republic (Politic. ii. 5. p. 1262, b. 42 seq.), advances arguments just in themselves, in favour of individual property, and against community of property. But these arguments have little application to the Republic.]

Nevertheless we are obliged to divine what Plato means about the condition of the producing classes in his Commonwealth. He himself tells us little or nothing about them; though they must constitute the large numerical majority. And this defect is in him the less excusable, since he reckons them as component members of his Commonwealth; while Aristotle, in his ideal Commonwealth, does not reckon them as component members or citizens, but merely as indispensable adjuncts, in the same manner as slaves. All that we know about the producers in the Platonic Commonwealth is, that each man is to have only one business--that for which he is most fit:--and that all are to be under the administration of the Rulers through the Guardians.

[Side-note: Soldiership as a separate profession has acquired greater development in modern times.]

The enlistment of soldiers, apart from civilians, and the holding of them under distinct laws and stricter discipline, is a practice familiar to modern ideas, though it had little place among the Greeks of Plato's day. There prevailed also in Egypt[123] and in parts of Eastern Asia, from time immemorial, a distinction of castes: one caste being soldiers, invested with the defence of the country, and enjoying certain lands by the tenure of such military service: but in other respects, private proprietors like the rest--and receiving no special discipline, training, or education. In Grecian Ideas, military duties were a part, but only a part, of the duties of a citizen. This was the case even at Sparta. Though in practice, the discipline of that city tended in a preponderant degree towards military aptitude, yet the Spartan was still a citizen, not exclusively a soldier.

[Footnote 123: Aristot. Politic. vii. 10. Herodot. ii. 164. Plato alludes (Timæ. 24 A) to the analogy of Egyptian castes.]

[Side-note: Spartan institutions--great impression which they produced upon speculative Greek minds.]

It was from the Spartan institutions (and the Kretan, in many respects analogous) that the speculative political philosophers in Greece usually took the point of departure for their theories. Not only Plato did so, but Xenophon and Aristotle likewise. The most material fact which they saw before them at Sparta was, a public discipline both strict and continued, which directed the movements of the citizens, and guided their thoughts and feelings, from infancy to old age. To this supreme controul the private feelings, both of family and property, though not wholly suppressed, were made to bend: and occasionally in a way quite as remarkable as any restrictions proposed by either Plato or Xenophon.[124] Moreover, the Spartan institutions were of immemorial antiquity; believed to have been suggested or sanctioned originally by Apollo and the Delphian oracle, as the Kretan institutions were by Zeus.[125] They had lasted longer than other Hellenic institutions without forcible subversion: they obtained universal notice, admiration, and deference, throughout Greece. It was this conspicuous fact which emboldened the Grecian theorists to postulate for the lawgiver that unbounded controul, over the life and habits of citizens, which we read not merely in the Republic of Plato but in the Cyropædia of Xenophon, and to a great degree even in the Politica of Aristotle. To an objector, who asked them how they could possibly expect that individuals would submit to such unlimited interference, they would have replied--"Look at Sparta. You see there interference, as constant and rigorous as that which I propose, endured by the citizens not only without resistance, but with a tenacity and long continuance such as is not found among other communities with more lax regulations. The habits and sentiments of the Spartan citizen are fashioned to these institutions. Far from being anxious to shake them off, he accounts them a necessity as well as an honour." This reply would have appeared valid and reasonable, in the fourth century before the Christian era. And it explains--what, after all, is the most surprising circumstance to a modern reader--the extreme boldness of speculation, the ideal omnipotence, assumed by the leading Grecian political theorists: much even by Aristotle, though his aspirations were more limited and practical--far more by Xenophon--most of all by Plato. Any theorist, proceeding avowedly [Greek: kat' eu)chê\n], considered himself within bounds when he assumed to himself no greater influence than had actually been exercised by Lykurgus.

[Footnote 124: See Xenophon, Hellenic. vi. 4, 16, the account of what passed at Sparta after the battle of Leuktra, related also in my "History of Greece," chap. 78, vol. x. p. 253.]

[Footnote 125: Plato, Legg. i. pp. 632 D, 634 A.]

[Side-note: Plans of these speculative minds compared with Spartan--Different types of character contemplated.]

Assuming such influence, however, he intended to employ it for ends approved by himself: agreeing with Lykurgus in the general principle of forming the citizen's character by public and compulsory discipline, but not agreeing with him in the type of character proper to be aimed at. Xenophon departs least from the Spartan type: Aristotle and Plato greatly more, though in different directions. Each of them applies to a certain extent the process of abstraction and analysis both to the individual and to the community: considering both of them as made up of component elements working simultaneously either in co-operation or conflict. But in Plato the abstraction is carried farthest: the wholeness of the individual Guardian is completely effaced, so that each constitutes a small fraction or wheel of the real Platonic whole--the commonwealth. The fundamental Platonic principle is, that each man shall have one function, and one only: an extreme application of that which political economists call the division of labour. Among these many different functions, one, and doubtless the most difficult as well as important, is that of directing, administering, and defending the community: which is done by the Guardians and Rulers. It is to this one function that all Plato's treatise is devoted: he tells us how such persons are to be trained and circumstanced. What he describes, therefore, is not properly citizens administering their own affairs, but commanders and officers watching over the interests of others: a sort of military _bureaucracy_, with chiefs at its head, directing as well as guarding a multitude beneath them. And what mainly distinguishes the Platonic system, is the extreme abstraction with which this public and official character is conceived: the degree to which the whole man is merged in the performance of his official duties: the entire extinction within him of the old individual Adam--of all private feelings and interests.

[Side-note: Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon or Aristotle.]

Both in Xenophon and in Aristotle, as well as at Sparta, the citizen is subjected to a public compulsory training, severe as well as continuous: but he is still a citizen as well as a functionary. He has private interests as well as public duties:--a separate home, property, wife, and family. Plato, on the contrary, contends that the two are absolutely irreconcileable: that if the Guardian has private anxieties for his own maintenance, private house and lands to manage, private sympathies and antipathies to gratify--he will become unfaithful to his duties as Guardian, and will oppress instead of protecting the people.[126] You must choose between the two (he says): you cannot have the self-caring citizen and the public-minded Guardian in one.[127]

[Footnote 126: Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 416-417.]

[Footnote 127: See the contrary opinion asserted by Nikias in his speech at Athens, Thucyd. vi. 9.]

[Side-note: Anxiety shown by Plato for the good treatment of the Demos, greater than that shown by Xenophon and Aristotle.]

Looking to ideal perfection, I think Plato is right. If the Rulers and Guardians have private interests of their own, those interests will corrupt more or less the discharge of their public duties. The evil may be mitigated, by forms of government (representative and other arrangements), which make the continuance of power dependent upon popular estimation of the functionaries: but it cannot be abolished. Neither Xenophon, nor Aristotle, nor the Spartan system, provided any remedy for this difficulty. They scarcely even recognise the difficulty as real. In all the three, the proportion of trained citizens to the rest of the people, would be about the same (so far as we can judge) as the proportion of the Platonic Guardians to the Demos or rest of the people. But when we look to see what security either of the three systems provide for good behaviour on the part of citizens towards non-citizens, we find no satisfaction; nor do they make it, as Plato does, one prominent object of their public training. Plato shows extreme anxiety for the object: as is proved by his sacrificing, in order to ensure it, all the private sources of pleasure to his Guardians. Aristotle reproaches him with doing this, so as to reduce the happiness of his Guardians to nothing: but Plato, from his own point of view, would not admit the justice of such reproach, since he considers happiness to be derived from, and proportional to, the performance of duty.

[Side-note: In Aristotle's theory, the Demos are not considered as members of the Commonwealth, but as adjuncts.]

This last point must be perpetually kept in mind, in following Plato's reasoning. But though he does not consider himself as sacrificing the happiness of his Guardians to their duty, we must give him credit for anxiety, greater than either Aristotle or Xenophon has shown, to ensure a faithful discharge of duty on the part of the Guardians towards the rest of the people. In Aristotle's theory,[128] the rest of the people are set aside as not members of the Commonwealth, thus counting as a secondary and inferior object in his estimation; while the citizens, who alone are members, are trained to practise virtue for its own sake and for their own happiness. In Plato's theory, the rest of the people are not only proclaimed as members of the Commonwealth,[129] but are the ultimate and capital objects of all his solicitude. It is in protecting, governing, and administering them, that the lives of the Rulers and Guardians are passed. Though they (the remaining people) receive no public training, yet Plato intends them to reap all the benefit of the laborious training bestowed on the Guardians. This is a larger and more generous conception of the purpose of political institutions, than we find either in Aristotle or in Xenophon.

[Footnote 128: Aristotle, Politic. vii. 9, p. 1328, b. 40, p. 1329, a. 25.]

[Footnote 129: Aristot. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 12-26, respecting the Platonic Commonwealth, [Greek: kai/toi schedo\n to/ge plê=thos tê=s po/leôs to\ tô=n a)/llôn politô=n gi/netai plê=thos], &c. . . .

[Greek: Poiei= ga\r] (Plato) [Greek: tou\s me\n phu/lakas oi(=on phrourou/s, tou\s de\ geôrgou\s kai\ tou\s techni/tas kai\ tou\s a)/llous, poli/tas.]]

[Side-note: Objection urged by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic, that it will be two cities. Spiritual pride of the Guardians, contempt for the Demos.]

There is however another objection, which seems grave and well founded, advanced by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic. He remarks that it will be not one city, but two cities, with tendencies more or less adverse to each other:[130] that the Guardians, educated under the very peculiar training and placed under the peculiar relations prescribed to them, will form one city--while the remaining people, who have no part either in the one or the other, but are private proprietors with separate families--will form another city. I do not see what reply the Platonic Republic furnishes to this objection. Granting full success to Plato in his endeavours to make the Guardians One among themselves, we find nothing to make them One with the remaining people, nor to make the remaining people One with them.[131] On the contrary, we observe such an extreme divergence of sentiment, character, pursuit, and education, as to render mutual sympathy very difficult, and to open fatal probabilities of mutual alienation: probabilities hardly less, than if separate proprietary interests had been left to subsist among the Guardians. This is a source of mischief which Plato has not taken into his account. The entire body of Guardians cannot fail to carry in their bosoms a sense of extreme pride in their own training, and a proportionally mean estimate of the untrained multitude alongside of them. The sentiment of the gold and silver men, towards the brass and iron men, will have in it too much of contempt to be consistent with civic fraternity: like the pride of the Twice-Born Hindoo Brahmin, when comparing himself with the lower Hindoo castes: or like that of the Pythagorean brotherhood, who "regarded the brethren as equal to the blessed Gods, but held all the rest to be unworthy of any account".[132] The Spartan training appears to have produced a similar effect upon the minds of the citizens who went through it. And indeed such an effect appears scarcely avoidable, under the circumstances assumed by Plato. He himself is proud of his own ideal training, so as to ascribe to those who receive it a sentiment akin to that of the Olympic victors: while he employs degrading analogies to signify the pursuits and enjoyments of the untrained multitude, who are assimilated to the appetite or lower element in the organism, existing only as a mutinous crew necessary to be kept down.[133] That spiritual pride, coupled with spiritual contempt, should be felt by the Guardians, is the natural result; as it is indeed the essential reimbursement to their feelings, for the life of drill and self-denial which Plato imposes upon them. And how, under such a sentiment, the two constituent elements in his system are to be competent to work out his promised result of mutual happiness, he has not shown.[134]

[Footnote 130: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 24. [Greek: e)n mia=| ga\r po/lei du/o po/leis, a)nagkai=on ei)=nai, kai\ tau/tas u(penanti/as a)llê/lais.]

The most forcible of the objections urged by Aristotle against the Platonic Republic, are those contained in this chapter respecting the relations between the Guardians and the rest of the community.]

[Footnote 131: The oneness, which Plato proclaims as belonging to his whole city, belongs in reality only to the body of Guardians; of whom he sometimes speaks as if they were the whole city, which however is not his real intention; see Republic, v. p. 462-463 A.]

[Footnote 132: [Greek: Tou\s me\n e(tai/rous ê)=gen i)/sous maka/ressi theoi=sin, Tou\s d' a)/llous ê(gei=t' ou)/t' e)n lo/gô| ou)/t' e)n a)rithmô=|.]]

[Footnote 133: Plato, Republ. v. 465 D.

Aristotle says (in the Nikom. Ethics, i. 5) when discussing the various ideas entertained about happiness--[Greek: Oi( me\n ou)=n polloi\ pantelô=s a)ndrapodô/deis phai/nontai boskêma/tôn bi/on proairou/menoi.] This is much the estimation which the Platonic Guardians would be apt to form respecting the Demos.]

[Footnote 134: The foregoing remarks are an expansion, and a sequel, of Aristotle's objection against the Platonic Republic--That it is not One City, but two discordant cities in that which is nominally One. I must however add that the same objection may be urged against the Xenophontic constitution of a city; and also, in substance, even against the proposition of Aristotle himself for the same purpose. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, proposes a severe, life-long drill and discipline, like that of the Spartans: from which indeed he does not formally exclude any citizens, but which he announces to be actually attended only by the wealthy, since they alone can afford to attend continuously and habitually, the poorer men being engaged in the cares of maintenance. All the functions of the state, civil and military, are performed exclusively by those who go through the public discipline. We have here the two cities in One, which Aristotle objects to in Plato; with the consequent loss of civic fraternity between them. And when we look to that which Aristotle himself suggests, we find him evading the objection by a formal sanction of the very mischief upon which the objection is founded. He puts the husbandmen and artisans altogether out of the pale of his city, which is made to include the disciplined citizens or Guardians alone. His city may thus be called One, inasmuch as it admits only homogeneous elements, and throws out all such as are heterogeneous; but he thus avowedly renounces as insoluble the problem which Plato and Xenophon try, though unsuccessfully, to solve. If there be discord and alienation among the constituent members of the Platonic and Xenophontic city--there will subsist the like feelings, in Aristotle's proposition, between the members of the city and the outlying, though indispensable, adjuncts. There will be the same mischief in kind, and probably exaggerated in amount: since the abolition of the very name and idea of fellow-citizen tends to suppress altogether an influence of tutelary character, however insufficient as to its force.]

[Side-note: Plato's scheme fails, mainly because he provides no training for the Demos.]

In explanation of the foregoing remarks, I will add that Plato fails in his purpose not from the goodness of the training which he provides for his select Few, but from leaving the rest of his people without any training--without even so much as would enable them properly to appreciate superior training in the few who obtain it--without any powers of self-defence or self-helpfulness. His fundamental postulate--That every man shall do only one thing--when applied to the Guardians, realises itself in something great and considerable: but when applied to the ordinary pursuits of life, reduces every man to a special machine, unfit for any other purpose than its own. Though it is reasonable that a man should get his living by one trade, and should therefore qualify himself peculiarly and effectively for that trade--it is not reasonable that he should be altogether impotent as to every thing else: nor that his happiness should consist, as Plato declares that it ought, exclusively in the performance of this one service to the commonwealth. In the Platonic Republic, the body of the people are represented not only as without training, but as machines rather than individual men. They exist partly as producers to maintain, partly as governable matter to obey, the Guardians; and to be cared for by them.

[Side-note: Principle of Aristotle--That every citizen belongs to the city, not to himself--applied by Plato to women.]

Aristotle, when speaking about the citizens of his own ideal commonwealth (his citizens form nearly the same numerical proportion of the whole population, as the Platonic Guardians), tells us--"Since the End for which the entire City exists is One, it is obviously necessary that the education of all the citizens should be one and the same, and that the care of such education should be a public duty--not left in private hands as it is now, for a man to teach his children what he thinks fit. Public exigencies must be provided for by public training. Moreover, we ought not to regard any of the citizens as belonging to himself, but all of them as belonging to the city: for each is a part of the city: and nature prescribes that the care of each part shall be regulated with a view to the care of the whole."[135]

[Footnote 135: Aristotel. Politic. viii. 1, p. 1337, [Greek: E)pei\ d' e(\n to\ te/los tê=| po/lei pa/sê|, phanero\n o(/ti kai\ tê\n paidei/an mi/an kai\ tê\n au)tê\n a)nagkai=on ei)=nai pa/ntôn, kai\ tau/tês tê\n e)pime/leian ei)=nai koinê\n kai\ mê\ kat' i)di/an; o(\n tro/pon nu=n e(/kastos e)pimelei=tai tô=n au)tou= te/knôn i)di/a te kai\ ma/thêsin i)di/an, ê(\n a)\n do/xê|, dida/skôn . . . A(/ma de\ ou)de\ chrê\ nomi/zein au)to\n au(tou= tina\ ei)=nai tô=n politô=n, a)lla\ pa/ntas tê=s po/leôs . . . ê( d' e)pime/leias pe/phuken e(ka/stou mori/ou ble/pein pro\s tê\n tou= o(/lou e)pime/leian.]]

The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to him with Plato, and lies at the bottom of the schemes of polity imagined by both. Each has his own way of applying it.

Plato clearly perceives that it cannot be applied with consistency and effect, unless women are brought under its application as well as men. And to a great extent, Aristotle holds the same opinion too. While commending the Spartan principle, that the character of the citizen must be formed and upheld by continued public training and discipline--Aristotle blames Lykurgus for leaving the women (that is, a numerical half of the city) without training or discipline; which omission produced (he says) very mischievous effects, especially in corrupting the character of the men. He pronounces this to be a serious fault, making the constitution inconsistent and self-contradictory, and indeed contrary to the intentions of Lykurgus himself; who had tried to bring the women under public discipline as well as the men, but was forced to desist by their strenuous opposition.[136] Such remarks from Aristotle are the more remarkable, since it appears as matter of history, that the maidens at Sparta (though not the married women) did to a great extent go through gymnastic exercises along with the young men.[137] These exercises, though almost a singular exception in Greece, must have appeared to Aristotle very insufficient. What amount or kind of regulation he himself would propose for women, he has not defined. In his own ideal commonwealth, he lays it down as alike essential for men and women to have their bodies trained and exercised so as to be adequate to the active duties of free persons (as contrasted with the harder preparation requisite for the athletic contests, which he disapproves), but he does not go into farther particulars.[138] The regulations which he proposes, too, with reference to marriage generally and to the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, show, that he considered it an important part of the lawgiver's duty to keep up by positive interference the physical condition both of males and females.[139]

[Footnote 136: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 9, p. 1269, b. 12. [Greek: E)/ti d' ê( peri\ ta\s gunai=kas a)/nesis kai\ pro\s tê\n proai/resin tê=s politei/as blabera\ kai\ pro\s eu)daimoni/an po/leôs . . . Ô(st' e)n o(/sais politei/ais phau/lôs e)/chei to\ peri\ ta\s gunai=kas, to\ ê(/misu tê=s po/leôs ei)=nai dei= nomi/zein a)nomothe/têton. O(/per e)kei=] (at Sparta) [Greek: sumbe/bêken; o(/lên ga\r tê\n po/lin o( nomothe/tês** ei)=nai boulo/menos karterikê/n, kata\ me\n tou\s a)/ndras phanero/s e)sti toiou=tos ô)/n, e)pi\ de\ tô=n gunaikô=n e)xême/lêken], &c. . . . [Greek: Ta\ de\ peri\ ta\s gunai=kas e)/chonta mê\ kalô=s e)/oiken ou) mo/non a)pre/peia/n tina poiei=n tê=s po/leôs au)tê=s kath' au(tê/n, a)lla\ sumba/llesthai/ ti pro\s tê\n philochrêmati/an.]

Plato has a similar remark, Legg. vi. pp. 780-781.]

[Footnote 137: Stallbaum (in his note on Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 C, [Greek: tê\n tô=n gunaikô=n par' u(mi=n a)/nesin]) observes--"Lacænarum licentiam, quum ex aliis institutis patriis, tum ex gymnicarum exercitationum usu repetendam, Plato carpit etiam infrà," &c. This is a mistake. Plato does not blame the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens: the four passages to which Stallbaum refers do not prove his assertion. They even countenance the reverse of that assertion. Plato approves of gymnastic and military exercises for maidens in the Laws, and for all the female Guardians in the Republic.

Stallbaum also refers to Aristotle as disapproving the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens. I cannot think that this is correct. Aristotle does indeed blame the arrangements for women at Sparta, but not, as I understand him, because the women were subjected to gymnastic exercise; his blame is founded on the circumstance that the women were not regulated, but left to do as they pleased, while the men were under the strictest drill. This I conceive to be the meaning of [Greek: gunaikô=n a)/nesis]. Euripides indeed has a very bitter passage condemning the exercises of the Spartan maidens; but neither Plato nor Aristotle shared this view.

Respecting the Spartan maidens and their exercises, see Xenophon, Republ. Laced. i. 4; Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14.]

[Footnote 138: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 8. [Greek: Peponême/nên me\n ou)=n e)/chein dei= tê\n e(/xin, peponême/nên de\ po/nois mê\ biai/ois, mêde\ pro\s e(/na mo/non, ô(/sper ê( tô=n a)thlêtô=n e(/xis, a)lla\ pro\s ta\s tô=n e)leutheri/ôn pra/xeis. O(moi/ôs de\ dei= tau=ta u(pa/rchein a)ndra/si kai\ gunaixi/.] Compare also i. 8, near the end of the first book.]

[Footnote 139: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, a. 20, b. 15.]

In principle, therefore, Aristotle agrees with Plato,[140] as to the propriety of comprehending women as well as men under public training and discipline: but he does not follow out the principle with the same consistency. He maintains the Platonic Commonwealth to be impossible.[141]

[Footnote 140: If we take the sentence from Aristotle's Politics, cited in a note immediately preceding, to the effect that all the citizens belonged to the city, and that each was a part of the city (viii. 1, p. 1337, a. 28) in conjunction with another passage in the Politics (i. 3, p. 1254, a. 10)--[Greek: To/ te ga\r mo/rion, ou) mo/non a)/llou e)sti\ mo/rion, a)lla\ kai\ _o(/lôs a)/llou_]--it is difficult to see how he can, consistently with these principles, assign to his citizens any individual self-regarding agency. Plato denies all such to his Guardians, and in so doing he makes deductions consistent with the principles of Aristotle, who lays down his principles too absolutely for the use which he afterwards makes of them.]

[Footnote 141: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1263, b. 29. [Greek: phai/netai d' ei)=nai pa/mpan a)du/natos o( bi/os.]]

[Side-note: Aristotle declares the Platonic Commonwealth impossible--In what sense this is true.]

If we go through the separate objections which Aristotle advances as justifying his verdict, we shall find them altogether inadequate for the purpose. He shows certain inconveniences and difficulties as belonging to it,--which are by no means all real, but which, even conceding them in full force, would have to be set against the objections admitted by himself to bear against other actual societies before we can determine whether they are sufficiently weighty to render the scheme to which they belong impossible. The Platonic commonwealth, and the Aristotelian commonwealth, are both of them impossible, in my judgment, for the same reason: that all the various communities of mankind exist under established customs, beliefs, and sentiments, in complete discordance with them: and that we cannot understand from whence the force is to come, tending and competent to generate either of these two new systematic projects. Both of them require a simultaneous production of many reciprocally adapted elements: both therefore require an express initiative force, exceptional and belonging to some peculiar crisis--something analogous to Zeus in Krete, and to Apollo at Sparta. This is alike true of both: though the Platonic Republic, departing more widely from received principles and sentiments than the Aristotelian, would of course require a more potent initiative.[142] In the treatises of the two philosophers, each explains and vindicates the principles of his system, without including in the hypothesis any specification of a probable source from whence it was to acquire its first start. Where is the motive, operative, demiurgic force, ready to translate such an idea into reality?[143] But if we assume that either of them had once begun, there is no reason why it might not have continued. The causes which first brought about the Spartan constitution and discipline must have been very peculiar, though we have no historical account what they were. At any rate they never occurred a second time; for no second Sparta was ever formed, in spite of the admiration inspired by the first. If Sparta had never been actually established, and if Aristotle had read a description of it as a mere project, he would probably have pronounced it impracticable:[144] though when once brought into reality, it proved eminently durable. In like manner, the laws, customs, beliefs, and feelings, prevalent in Egypt,--which astonished so vehemently Herodotus and other observing Greeks--would have been declared to be impossible, if described simply in project: yet, when once established, they were found to last longer without change than those of other nations.

[Footnote 142: Plato indeed in one place tells us that a single despot, becoming by inspiration or accident a philosopher, and having an obedient city, would accomplish the primary construction of his commonwealth (Republic, vi. p. 502 B). That despot (Plato supposes) will send away all the population of his city above ten years old, and will train up the children in the Platonic principles (vii. pp. 540-541).

This is little better than an [Greek: eu)chê/], whatever Plato may say to deprecate the charge of uttering [Greek: eu)cha/s], p. 540 D.]

[Footnote 143: Aristotel. Metaphys. A. p. 991, a. 22. [Greek: Ti/ ga/r e)sti to\ e)rgazo/menon, pro\s ta\s i)de/as a)poble/pon?]

We find Aristotle arguing, in the course of his remarks on the Platonic Republic, that it is useless now to promulgate any such novelties; a long time has elapsed, and such things would already have been found established if they had been good (Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 2). This would have applied (somewhat less in degree, yet with quite sufficient force) to the ideal commonwealth of Aristotle himself, as well as to that of Plato.

Because such institutions have never yet been established anywhere as those proposed by Plato or Aristotle, you cannot fairly argue that they would not be good, or that they would not stand if established. What you may fairly argue is, that they are not at all likely to be established; no originating force will be forthcoming adequate to the first creation of them. Existing societies have fixed modes of thinking and feeling on social and political matters; each moves in its own groove, and the direction in which it will henceforward move will be a consequence and continuance of the direction in which it is already moving, by virtue of powerful causes now in operation. New originating force is a very rare phenomenon. Overwhelming enemies or physical calamities may destroy what exists, but they will not produce any such innovations as those under discussion.]

[Footnote 144: Plato himself makes this very remark in the Treatise De Legibus (viii. p. 839 D) in defending the practicability of some of the ordinances therein recommended.]

[Side-note: The real impossibility of the Platonic Commonwealth, arises from the fact that discordant sentiments are already established.]

The Platonic project is submitted, however, not to impartial judges comparing different views on matters yet undetermined, but to hearers with a canon of criticism already fixed and anti-Platonic "_animis consuetudine imbutis_". It appears impossible, because it contradicts sentiments conceived as fundamental and consecrated, respecting the sexual and family relations. The supposed impossibility is the mode of expressing strong disapprobation and repugnance: like that which Herodotus describes as manifested by the Greeks on one side and by the Indians on the other--when Darius, having asked each of them at what price they would consent to adopt the practice of the other respecting the mode of treating the bodies of deceased parents, was answered by a loud cry of horror at the mere proposition.[145] The reasons offered to prove the Platonic project impossible, are principally founded upon the very sentiment above adverted to, and derive all their force from being associated with it. Such is the character of many among the Aristotelian objections.[146] The real, and the truly forcible, objection consists in the sentiment itself. If that be deeply rooted in the mind, it is decisive. To those who feel thus, the Platonic project would be both intolerable and impossible.

[Footnote 145: Herodot. iii. 38. [Greek: oi( de/, a)mbô/santes me/ga, eu)phême/ein min e)ke/leuon.]

Plato in a remarkable passage of the Leges (i. 638 B), deprecates and complains of this instantaneous condemnation without impartial hearing of argument on both sides.]

[Footnote 146: See the arguments urged by Aristotle, Politic. ii. 4, p. 1262, a. 25 et seq. His remarks upon the fictions which Plato requires to be impressed on the belief of his Guardians are extremely just. There are, however, several objections urged by him which turn more upon the Platonic language than upon the Platonic vein of thought, and which, if judged by Plato from his own point of view, would have appeared admissions in his favour rather than objections. In reply to Plato, whose aim it is that all or many of the Guardians shall say _mine_ in reference to the same persons or the same things, and not in reference to different persons and different things, Aristotle contends that the word _mine_ will not then designate any such strong affection as it does now, when it is special, exclusive, and concentrated on a few persons or things; that each Guardian, having many persons whom he called _brother_ and many persons whom he called _father_, would not feel towards them as persons now feel towards brothers and fathers; that the affection by being disseminated would be weakened, and would become nothing more than a "_diluted friendship_"--[Greek: phili/a u(darê/s]. See Aristot. Politic. ii. 3, p. 1261, b. 22; ii. 4, p. 1262, b. 15.

Plato, if called upon for an answer to this reasoning, would probably have allowed it to be just; but would have said that the "diluted friendship" pervading all the Guardians was apt and sufficient for his purpose, as bringing the whole number most nearly into the condition of one organism. Strong exclusive affections, upon whatever founded, between individuals, he wishes to discourage: the hateful or unfriendly sentiments he is bent on rooting out. What he desires to see preponderant, in each Guardian, is a sense of duty to the public: subordinate to that, he approves moderate and kindly affections, embracing all the Guardians; towards the elders as fathers, towards those of the same age as brothers. Aristotle's expression--[Greek: phili/a u(darê/s]--describes such a sentiment fairly enough. See Republic, v. pp. 462-463. It must be conceded, however, that Plato's _language_ is open to Aristotle's objection.]

[Side-note: Plato has strong feelings of right and wrong about sexual intercourse, but referring to different objects.]

But we must recollect that it is these very sentiments which Plato impugns and declares to be inapplicable to his Guardians: so that an opponent who, not breaking off at once with the cry of horror uttered by the Indians to Darius, begins to discuss the question with him, is bound to forego objections and repugnances springing as corollaries from a basis avowedly denied. Plato has earnest feelings of right and wrong, in regard both to the functions of women and to the sexual intercourse: but his feelings dissent entirely from those of readers generally. That is right, in his opinion, which tends to keep up the excellence of the breed and the proper number of Guardians, as well as to ensure the exact and constant fulfilment of their mission: that is wrong, which tends to defeat or abridge such fulfilment, or to impair the breed, or to multiply the number beyond its proper limit. Of these ends the Rulers are the proper judges, not the individual person. All the Guardians are enjoined to leave the sexual power absolutely unexercised until the age of thirty for men, of twenty for women--and then only to exercise it under express sanction and authorisation, according as the Rulers may consider that children are needed to keep up the legitimate number.

Marriage is regarded as holy, and celebrated under solemn rites--all the more because both the ceremony is originated, and the couples selected, by the magistrates, for the most important public purpose: which being fulfilled, the marriage ceases and determines. It is not celebrated with a view to the couple themselves, still less with a view to establish any permanent exclusive attachment between them: which object Plato not only does not contemplate, but positively discountenances: on the same general principle as the Catholic Church forbids marriage to priests: because he believes that it will create within them motives and sentiments inconsistent with the due discharge of their public mission.

[Side-note: Different sentiment which would grow up in the Platonic Commonwealth respecting the sexual relations.]

It is clear that among such a regiment as that which Plato describes in his Guardians, a sentiment would grow up, respecting the intercourse of the sexes, totally different from that which prevailed elsewhere around him. The Platonic restriction upon that intercourse up in the (until the ulterior limits of age) would be far more severe: but it would be applied with reference to different objects. Instead of being applied to enforce the exclusive consecration of one woman to one man, choosing each other or chosen by fathers, without any limit on the multiplication of children,--and without any attention to the maintenance or deterioration of the breed--it would be directed to the obtaining of the most perfect breed and of the appropriate number, leaving the Guardians, female as well as male, free from all permanent distracting influences to interfere with the discharge of their public duties. In appreciating the details of the Platonic community, we must look at it with reference to this form of sexual morality; which would generate in the Guardians an appreciation of details consistent with itself both as to the women and as to the children. The sentiment of obligation, of right and wrong, respecting the relations of the sexes, is everywhere very strong; but it does not everywhere attach to the same acts or objects. The important obligation for a woman never to show her face in public, which is held sacred through so large a portion of the Oriental world, is noway recognised in the Occidental: and in Plato's time, when mankind were more disseminated among small independent communities, the divergence was yet greater than it is now. The Spartans were not induced, by the censures or mockery of persons in other Grecian cities,[147] to suppress the gymnastic exercises practised by their maidens in conjunction with the young men: nor is Plato deterred by the ridicule or blame which others may express, from proclaiming his conviction, that the virtue of his female Guardians is the same as that of the male--consisting in the faithful performance of their duty as Guardians, after going through all the requisite training, gymnastic and musical. And he follows this up by the general declaration, one of the most emphatic in all his writings, "The best thing which is now said or ever has been said, is, that what is profitable is honourable--and what is hurtful, is base".[148]

[Footnote 147: Eurip. Androm. 598.

The criticisms of Xenophon in the first chapter of his treatise, De Laced. Republ., exhibit a point of view on many points analogous to that of Plato respecting the female sex, and differing from that which he puts into the mouth of Ischomachus in his Oekonomicus. See above, p. 172, note 3. Among the lost treatises of Kleanthes, successor of Zeno as Scholarch of the Stoic School, one was composed expressly to show [Greek: O(/ti ê( au)tê\ a)retê\ kai\ a)ndro\s kai\ gunaiko/s]. (Diog. Laert. vii. 175.)]

[Footnote 148: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A-B. [Greek: A)podute/on dê\ tai=s tô=n phula/kôn gunaixi/n, e)pei/per a)retê\n a)nti\ i(mati/ôn a)mphie/sontai, kai\ koinônête/on pole/mou te kai\ tê=s a)/llês phulakê=s tê=s peri\ tê\n po/lin, kai\ ou)k a)/lla prakte/on; tou/tôn d' au)tô=n ta\ e)laphro/tera tai=s gunaixi\n ê)\ toi=s a)ndra/si dote/on, dia\ tê\n tou= ge/nous a)sthe/neian. O( de\ gelô=n a)nê\r e)pi\ gumnai=s gunaixi/, tou= belti/stou e(/neka gumnazome/nais, a)telê= tou= geloi/ou sophi/as dre/pôn karpo/n, ou)de\n oi)=den, ô(s e)/oiken, e)ph' ô(=| gela=| ou)d' o(/, ti pra/ttei. _Ka/llista ga\r dê\ tou=to kai\ le/getai kai\ lele/xetai, o(/ti to\ me\n ô)phe/limon, kalo/n--to\ de\ blabero/n, ai)schro/n_.]]

[Side-note: What Nature prescribes in regard to the relations of the two sexes--Direct contradiction between Plato and Aristotle.]

Plato in truth reduces the distinction between the two sexes to its lowest terms: to the physical difference in regard to procreation--and to the general fact, that the female is every way weaker and inferior to the male; while yet, individually taken, many women are superior to many men, and both sexes are alike improvable by training. He maintains that this similarity of training and function is the real order of Nature, and that the opposite practice, which insists on a separation of life and functions between the sexes, is unnatural:[149] which doctrine he partly enforces by the analogy of the two sexes in other animals.[150] Aristotle disputes this reasoning altogether: declaring that Nature prescribes a separation of life and functions between the two sexes--that the relation of man to woman is that of superiority and command on one side, inferiority and obedience on the other, like the relation between father and child, master and slave, though with a difference less in degree--that virtue in a man, and virtue in a woman, are quite different, imposing diverse obligations.[151] It shows how little stress can be laid on arguments based on the word _Nature_, when we see two such distinguished thinkers completely at issue as to the question, what Nature indicates, in this important case. Each of them decorates by that name the rule which he himself approves; whether actually realised anywhere, or merely recommended as a reform of something really existing. In this controversy, Aristotle had in his favour the actualities around him, against Plato: but Aristotle himself is far from always recognising experience and practice as authoritative interpreters of the dictates of Nature, as we may see by his own ideal commonwealth.

[Footnote 149: Plato, Republic, v. p. 456 C. [Greek: ta\ nu=n para\ tau=ta gigno/mena para\ phu/sin ma=llon], &c. Also p. 466 D.]

[Footnote 150: Compare a similar appeal to the analogy of animals, as proving the [Greek: e)/rôtas a)r)r(e/nôn] to be unnatural, Plato, Legg. viii. p. 836 C.]

[Footnote 151: Aristotel. Politic. i. 13, p. 1260 a. 20-30.]

[Side-note: Opinion of Plato respecting the capacities of women, and the training proper for women, are maintained in the Leges, as well as in the Republic. Ancient legends harmonising with this opinion.]

How strongly Plato was attached to his doctrines about the capacity of women--how unchanged his opinion continued about the mischief of separating the training and functions of the two sexes, and of confining women to indoor occupations, or to what he calls "a life of darkness and fear"[152]--may be seen farther by his Treatise De Legibus. Although in that treatise he recedes (perforce and without retracting) from the principles of his Republic, so far as to admit separate properties and families for all his citizens--yet he still continues to enjoin public gymnastic and military training, for women and men alike: and he still opens, to both sexes alike, superintending social functions to a great extent, as well as the privilege of being honoured by public hymns after death, in case of distinguished merit.[153] Respecting military matters, he speaks with peculiar earnestness. That women are perfectly capable of efficient military service, if properly trained, he proves not only by the ancient legends, but also by facts actual and contemporary, the known valour of the Scythian and Sarmatian women. Whatever doubts persons may have hitherto cherished (says Plato), this is now established matter of fact:[154] the cowardice and impotence of women is not less disgraceful in itself than detrimental to the city, as robbing it of one-half of its possible force.[155] He complains bitterly of the repugnance felt even to the discussion of this proposition.[156] Most undoubtedly, there were ancient legends which tended much to countenance his opinion. The warlike Amazons, daughters of Arês, were among the most formidable forces that had ever appeared on earth; they had shown their power once by invading Attica and bringing such peril on Athens, that it required all the energy of the great Athenian hero Theseus to repel them. We must remember that these stories were not only familiarised to the public eye in conspicuous painting and sculpture, but were also fully believed as matters of past history.[157] Moreover the Goddess Athênê, patroness of Athens, was the very impersonation of intelligent terror-striking might--constraining and subduing Arês[158] himself: the Goddess Enyo presided over war, no less than the God Arês:[159] lastly Artemis, though making war only on wild beasts, was hardly less formidable in her way--indefatigable as well as rapid in her movements and unerring with her bow, as Athênê was irresistible with her spear. Here were abundant examples in Grecian legend, to embolden Plato in his affirmations respecting the capacity of the female sex for warlike enterprise and laborious endurance.

[Footnote 152: Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 C. [Greek: ei)thisme/non ga\r dedoiko\s kai\ skoteino\n zê=n], &c.]

[Footnote 153: Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 795 C, 796 C, 802 A.]

[Footnote 154: Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 804-805-806. 804 E: [Greek: a)kou/ôn me\n ga\r dê\ mu/thous palaiou=s pe/peismai, ta\ de\ nu=n, ô(s e)/pos ei)pei=n, oi)=da o(/ti muria/des a)nari/thmêtoi gunaikô=n ei)si\ tô=n peri\ to\n Po/nton, a(\s Sauromati/das kalou=sin, ai(=s ou)ch i(/ppôn mo/non a)lla\ kai\ to/xôn kai\ tô=n a)/llôn o(/plôn koinôni/a kai\ toi=s a)ndra/sin i)/sê prostetagme/nê i)/sôs a)skei=tai.] We may doubt whether Plato knew anything of the brave and skilful Artemisia, queen of Halikarnassus, who so greatly distinguished herself in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 87), and, indeed, whether he had ever read the history of Herodotus. His argument might have been strengthened by another equally pertinent example, if he could have quoted the original letter addressed by the Emperor Aurelian to the Roman Senate, attesting the courage, vigour, and prudence, of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. Trebellius Pollio, Vitæ Triginta Tyrannorum in Histor. August. p. 198 (De Zenobia, xxix.: cap. xxx.): "Audio, Patres Conscripti, mihi objici, quod non virile munus impleverim, Zenobiam triumphando. Næ, illi qui me reprehendunt, satis laudarent, si scirent qualis illa est mulier, quam prudens in consiliis, quam constans in dispositionibus, quam erga milites gravis, quam larga cum necessitas postulet, quam tristis cum severitas poscat. Possum dicere illius esse quod Odenatus Persas vicit, ac fugato Sapore Ctesiphontem usque pervenit. Possum asserere, tanto apud Orientales et Ægyptiorum populos timori mulierem fuisse, ut se non Arabes, non Saraceni, non Armenii, commoverent. Nec ego illi vitam conservassem, nisi eam scissem multum Romanæ Reipublicæ profuisse, cum sibi vel liberis suis Orientis servaret imperium.]

[Footnote 155: Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 813-814.]

[Footnote 156: Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 D.]

[Footnote 157: Plutarch, Theseus, c. 27; Æschylus, Eumenid. 682; Isokrates, Panegyr. ss. 76-78. How popular a subject the Amazons were for sculptors, we learn from the statement of Pliny (**xxxiv. 8, 19) that all the most distinguished sculptors executed Amazons; and that this subject was the only one upon which a direct comparison could be made between them.]

[Footnote 158: Homer, Iliad, xv. 123.]

[Footnote 159: Homer, Iliad, v. 333-592.]

[Side-note: In a Commonwealth like the Platonic, the influence of Aphroditê would probably have been reduced to a minimum.]

The two Goddesses, Athênê and Artemis, were among the few altogether insensible to amorous influences and to the inspirations of Aphroditê: who is the object of contemptuous sarcasm on the part of Athênê, and of repulsive antipathy on the part of Artemis.[160] This may supply an illustration for the Republic of Plato. As far as one can guess what the effect of his institutions would have been, it is probable that the influence of Aphroditê would have been at its minimum among his Guardians of both sexes: as it was presented in the warlike dramas of Æschylus.[161] There would have been everything to deaden it, with an entire absence of all provocatives. The muscular development, but rough and unadorned bodies, of females--

Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus Pernicis uxor Apuli--(Hor. _Epod._ ii. 41-42).

the indiscriminate companionship, with perfect identity of treatment and manners, between the two sexes from the earliest infancy--the training of both together for the same public duties, the constant occupation of both throughout life in the performance of those duties, under unceasing official supervision--the strict regulation of exercise and diet, together with the monastic censorship on all poetry and literature--the self-restraint, equal and universal, enforced as the characteristic feature and pride of the regiment, and seconded by the jealous espionage of all over all, the more potent because privacy was unknown--such an assemblage of circumstances would do as much as circumstances could do to starve the sexual appetite, to prevent it from becoming the root of emotional or imaginative associations, and to place it under the full controul of the lawgiver for purposes altogether public. Such was probably Plato's intention: since he more generally regards the appetites as enemies to be combated and extirpated so far as practicable--rather than as sources of pleasure, yet liable to accompaniments of pain, requiring to be regulated so as to exclude the latter and retain the former.

[Footnote 160: Homer, Hymn. ad Venerem, 10; Iliad, v. 425; Euripid. Hippolyt. 1400-1420.

Athênê combined the attributes of [Greek: philopo/lemos] and [Greek: philo/sophos]. Plato, Timæus, p. 24 D; compare Kritias, p. 109 D.]

[Footnote 161: See Aristophan. Ranæ, 1042.

_Eurip._ [Greek: Ma\ Di/' ou)de\ ga\r ê)=n tê=s A)phrodi/tês ou)de/n soi.]

_Æschyl._ [Greek: Mêde/ g' e)pei/ê. A)ll' e)pi/ soi/ toi kai\ toi=s soi=sin pollê\ pollou= 'pikathê=to.]]

[Side-note: Other purposes of Plato--limitation of number of Guardians--common to Aristotle also.]

The public purposes, with a view to which Plato sought to controul the sexual appetite in his Guardians, were three, as I have already stated. 1. To obtain from each of them individually, faithful performance of the public duties, and observance of the limits, prescribed by his system. 2. To ensure the best and purest breed. 3. To maintain unaltered the same total number, without excess or deficiency.

[Side-note: Law of population expounded by Malthus--Three distinct checks to population--alternative open between preventive and positive.]

The first of these three purposes is peculiar to the Platonic system. The two last are not peculiar to it. Aristotle recognises them[162] as ends, no less than Plato, though he does not approve Plato's means for attaining them. In reference to the limitation of number, Aristotle is even more pronounced than Plato. The great evil of over-population forced itself upon these philosophers; living as both of them did among small communities, each with its narrow area hedged in by others--each liable to intestine dispute, sometimes caused, always aggravated, by the presence of large families and numerous poor freemen--and each importing bought slaves as labourers. To obtain for their community the quickest possible increase in aggregate wealth and population, was an end which they did not account either desirable or commendable. The stationary state, far from appearing repulsive or discouraging, was what they looked upon as the best arrangement[163] of things. A mixed number of lots of land, indivisible and inalienable, is the first principle of the Platonic community in the treatise De Legibus. Not to encourage wealth, but to avert, as far as possible, the evils of poverty and dependence, and to restrain within narrow limits the proportion of the population which suffered those evils--was considered by Plato and Aristotle to be among the gravest problems for the solution of the statesman.[164] Consistent with these conditions, essential to security and tranquillity, whatever the form of government might be, there was only room for the free population then existing: not always for that (seeing that the proportion of poor citizens was often uncomfortably great), and never for any sensible increase above that. If all the children were born and brought up, that it was possible for adult couples to produce, a fearful aggravation of poverty, with all its accompanying public troubles and sufferings, would have been inevitable.[165] Accordingly both Plato (for the Guardians in the Republic) and Aristotle agree in opinion that a limit must be fixed upon the number of children which each couple is permitted to introduce. If any objector had argued that each couple, by going through the solemnity of marriage, acquired a natural right to produce as many children as they could, and that others were under a natural obligation to support those children--both philosophers would have denied the plea altogether. But they went even further. They considered procreation as a duty which each citizen owed to the public, in order that the total of citizens might not fall below the proper minimum--yet as a duty which required controul, in order that the total might not rise above the proper maximum.[166] Hence they did not even admit the right of each couple to produce as many children as their private means could support. They thought it necessary to impose a limit on the number of children in every family, binding equally on rich and poor: the number prescribed might be varied from time to time, as circumstances indicated. As the community could not safely admit more than a certain aggregate of births, these philosophers commanded all couples indiscriminately, the rich not excepted, to shape their conduct with a view to that imperative necessity.

[Footnote 162: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16.]

[Footnote 163: Compare the view (not unlike though founded on different reasons) of the stationary state taken by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in a valuable chapter of his Principles of Political Economy, Book iv. chap. 6. He says (s. 2):--"The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward". This would come near to the views of Plato and Aristotle.]

[Footnote 164: See a striking passage in Plato, Legg. v. pp. 742-743. He speaks of rich men as they are spoken of in some verses of the Gospels--a very rich man can hardly be a good man. Wealth and poverty are both of them evils, p. 744 D. Repub. iv. p. 421.

Pheidon the Corinthian, an ancient lawgiver (we do not know when or where), prescribed an unchangeable number both of lots (of land) and of citizens, but the lots were not to be all equal. Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 14.]

[Footnote 165: Aristot. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 10. [Greek: To\ d' a)phei=sthai (tê\n teknopoii+/an a)o/riston**), katha/per e)n tai=s plei/stais po/lesin, peni/as a)nagkai=on ai)/tion gi/nesthai toi=s poli/tais; ê( de\ peni/a sta/sin e)mpoiei= kai\ kakourgi/an.] Compare ibid. ii. 7, p. 1266, b. 8.]

[Footnote 166: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 28-38. [Greek: leitourgei=n pro\s teknopoii+/an . . . a)phei=sthai dei= tê=s ei)s to\ phanero\n gennê/seôs.]

Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460-461. [Greek: ti/ktein tê=| po/lei--genna=|n tê=| po/lei--tô=n ei)s to\ koino\n gennê/seôn].]

Plato in his Republic (as I have already mentioned) assumes for his Archons the privilege of selecting (by a pretended sortition) the couples through whom the legitimate amount of breeding shall be accomplished: in the semi-Platonic commonwealth (De Legibus), he leaves the choice free, but prescribes the limits of age, rendering marriage a peremptory duty between twenty and thirty-five years of age, and adding some emphatic exhortations, though not peremptory enactments, respecting the principles which ought to guide individual choice.[167] In the same manner too he deals with procreation: recognising the necessity of imposing a limit on individual discretion, yet not naming that limit by law, but leaving it to be enforced according to circumstances by the magistrates: who (he says), by advice, praise, and censure, can apply either effective restraints on procreation, or encouragements if the case requires.[168] Aristotle blames this guarantee as insufficient: he feels so strongly the necessity of limiting procreation, that he is not satisfied unless a proper limit be imposed by positive law. Unless such a result be made thoroughly sure (he says), all other measures of lawgivers for equalising properties, or averting poverty and the discontents growing out of it--must fail in effect.[169] Aristotle also lays it down as a part of the duty of the lawgiver to take care that the bodies of the children brought up shall be as good as possible: hence he prescribes the ages proper for marriage, and the age after which no parents are to produce any more children.[170]

[Footnote 167: Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 772-773-774. The wording is characteristic of the view taken by these philosophers, and of the extent to which they subordinated individual sentiment to public considerations. [Greek: kata\ panto\s ei(=s e)/stô mu=thos ga/mou; to\n ga\r tê=| po/lei dei= xumphe/ronta mnêsteu/ein ga/mon e(/kaston, a)ll' ou) to\n ê(/diston au(tô=|. phe/retai de/ pôs pa=s a)ei\ kata\ phu/sin pro\s to\n o(moio/taton au(tô=|], &c. (p. 773 B). In marriage (he says) the natural tendency is that like seeks like; but it is good for the city that like should be coupled to unlike, rich to poor, hasty tempers with sober tempers, &c., in order that the specialties may be blended together and mitigated. He does not pretend to embody this in a written law, but directs the authorities to obtain it as far as they can by exhortation. P. 733 E. Compare the Politikus, p. 311.]

[Footnote 168: Plato, Legg. v. p. 740 D. [Greek: porize/tô mêchanê\n o(/ti ma/lista, o(/pôs ai( pentakischi/liai kai\ tettara/konta oi)kê/seis _a)ei\ mo/non_ e)/sontai; kai\ ga\r _e)pische/seis gene/seôs_, oi(=s a)\n eu)/rous ei)/ê ge/nesis, kai\ tou)nanti/on e)pime/leiai kai\ spoudai\ plê/thous gennêma/tôn ei)si\n], &c.]

[Footnote 169: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1264, a. 38; ii. 7, p. 1266, b. 10; vii. 16.

Aristotle has not fully considered all that Plato says, when he blames him for inconsistency in proposing to keep properties equal, without taking pains to impose and maintain a constant limit on offspring in families. [Greek: A)/topon de\ kai\ to\ ta\s ktê/seis i)sa/zonta] (Plato) [Greek: to\ peri\ to\ plê=thos tô=n politô=n mê\ kataskeua/zein, a)ll' a)phei=nai tê\n teknopoii+/an a)o/riston], &c. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. fin.)

What Plato really directs is stated in my text and in my note immediately preceding.]

[Footnote 170: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1334, b. 39. [Greek: ei)/per ou)=n a)p' a)rchê=s to\n nomothe/tên o(ra=|n dei=, o(/pôs be/ltista ta\ sô/mata ge/nêtai tô=n trephome/nôn, prô=ton me\n e)pimelête/on peri\ tê\n su/zeuxin, po/te kai\ poi/ous tina\s o)/ntas chrê\ poiei=sthoi pro\s a)llê/lous tê\n gamikê\n o(mili/an], &c. He names thirty-seven as the age proper for a man, eighteen for a woman, to marry. At the age of fifty-five a man becomes unfit to procreate for the public, and none of his children are to appear ([Greek: a)phei=sthai tê=s ei)s to\ phanero\n gennê/seôs], vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 36).]

The paramount necessity of limiting the number of children born in each family, here enforced by Plato and Aristotle, rests upon that great social fact which Malthus so instructively expounded at the close of the last century. Malthus, enquiring specially into the law of population, showed upon what conditions the increase of population depends, and what were the causes constantly at work to hold it back--checks to population. He ranged these causes under three different heads, though the two last are multiform in detail. 1. Moral or prudential restraint--the preventive check. 2. Vice, and 3. Misery--the two positive checks. He farther showed that though the aggregate repressive effect of these three causes is infallible and inevitable, determined by the circumstances of each given society--yet that mankind might exercise an option through which of the three the check should be applied: that the effect of the two last causes was in inverse proportion to that of the first--in other words, that the less there was of prudential restraint limiting the number of births, the more there must be of vice or misery, under some of their thousand forms, to shorten the lives of many of the children born--and _é converso_, the more there was of prudential restraint, the less would be the operation of the other checks tending to shorten life.

[Side-note: Plato and Aristotle saw the same law as Malthus, but arranged the facts under a different point of view.]

Three distinct facts--preventive restraint, vice, and misery--having nothing else in common, are arranged under one general head by Malthus, in consequence of the one single common property which they possess--that of operating as checks to population. To him, that one common property was the most important of all, and the most fit to be singled out as the groundwork of classification, having reference to the subject of his enquiry. But Plato and Aristotle looked at the subject in a different point of view. They had present to their minds the same three facts, and the tendency of the first to avert or abate the second and third: but as they were not investigating the law of population, they had nothing to call their attention to the one common property of the three. They did not regard vice and misery as causes tending to keep down population, but as being in themselves evils; enemies among the worst which the lawgiver had to encounter, in his efforts to establish a good political and social condition--and enemies which he could never successfully encounter, without regulating the number of births. Such regulation they considered as an essential tutelary measure to keep out disastrous poverty. The inverse proportion, between regulated or unregulated number of births on the one hand, and diminution or increase of poverty on the other, was seen as clearly by Aristotle and Plato as by Malthus.

[Side-note: Regulations of Plato and Aristotle as to number of births and newborn children.]

But these two Greek philosophers ordain something yet more remarkable. Having prescribed both the age of marriage and the number of permitted births, so as to ensure both vigorous citizens and a total compatible with the absence of corrupting poverty--they direct what shall be done if the result does not correspond to their orders. Plato in his Republic (as I have already stated) commands that all the children born to his wedded couples shall be immediately consigned to the care of public nurses--that the offspring of the well-constituted parents shall be brought up, that of the ill-constituted parents not brought up--and that no children born of parents after the legitimate age shall be brought up.[171] Aristotle forbids the exposure of children, wherever the habits of the community are adverse to it: but if after any married couple have had the number of children allowed by law, the wife should again become pregnant, he directs that abortion shall be procured before the commencement of life or sense in the foetus: after such commencement, he pronounces abortion to be wrong.[172] On another point Plato and Aristotle agree: both of them command that no child born crippled or deformed shall be brought up:[173] a practice actually adopted at Sparta under the Lykurgean institutions, and even carried farther, since no child was allowed to be brought up until it had been inspected and approved by the public nurses.[174]

[Footnote 171: Plato, Republ. v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C.]

[Footnote 172: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, 10, p. 1335, b. 20. [Greek: Peri\ de\ a)pothe/seôs kai\ trophê=s tô=n gignome/nôn, e)/stô no/mos, mêde\n pepêrôme/non tre/phein; dia\ de\ plê=thos te/knôn, e)a\n ê( ta/xis tô=n e)thô=n kôlu/ê|, mêde\n a)poti/thesthai tô=n gignome/nôn; ô(/ristai ga\r dê\ tê=s teknopoii+/as to\ plê=thos. e)a\n de/ tisi gi/gnêtai para\ tau=ta sunduasthe/ntôn, pri\n ai)/sthêsin e)ggene/sthai kai\ zôê/n, e)mpoiei=sthai dei= tê\n a)/mblôsin; to\ ga\r o(/sion kai\ to\ mê\ diôrisme/non tê=| ai)sthê/sei kai\ tô=| zê=|n e)/stai.] For the text of this passage I have followed Bekker and the Berlin edition. As to the first half of the passage there are some material differences in the text and in the MSS.; some give [Greek: e)thnô=n] instead of [Greek: e)thôn], and [Greek: ô(ri/sthai ga\r dei=] instead of [Greek: ô(/ristai ga\r dê\]. Compare Plato, Theætêt. 149 C.]

[Footnote 173: Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 C. [Greek: ta\ de\ tô=n cheiro/nôn (te/kna), kai\ e)a/n ti tô=n e(te/rôn a)na/pêron gi/gnêtai, e)n a)por)r(ê/tô| te kai\ a)dê/lô| katakru/psousin ô(s pre/pei.] Aristot. _ut suprâ_, [Greek: e)/stô no/mos, mêde\n pepêrôme/non tre/phein], &c.]

[Footnote 174: Plutarch, Lykurgus, c. 16.]

[Side-note: Such regulations disapproved and forbidden by modern sentiment--Variability of ethical sentiment as to objects approved or disapproved.]

We here find both these philosophers not merely permitting, but enjoining--and the Spartan legislation, more admired than any in Greece, systematically realising--practices which modern sentiment repudiates and punishes. Nothing can more strikingly illustrate--what Plato and Aristotle have themselves repeatedly observed[175]--how variable and indeterminate is the _matter_ of ethical sentiment, in different ages and communities, while the _form_ of ethical sentiment is the same universally: how all men agree subjectively, in that which they feel--disapprobation and hatred of wrong and vice, approbation and esteem of right and virtue--yet how much they differ objectively, as to the acts or persons which they designate by these names and towards which their feelings are directed. It is with these emotions as with the other emotions of human nature: all men are moved in the same manner, though in different degree, by love and hatred--hope and fear--desire and aversion--sympathy and antipathy--the emotions of the beautiful, the sublime, the ludicrous: but when we compare the objects, acts, or persons, which so move them, we find only a very partial agreement, amidst wide discrepancy and occasionally strong opposition.[176] The present case is one of the strongest opposition. Practices now abhorred as wrong, are here directly commanded by Plato and Aristotle, the two greatest authorities of the Hellenic world: men differing on many points from each other, but agreeing in this: men not only of lofty personal character, but also of first-rate intellectual force, in whom the ideas of virtue and vice had been as much developed by reflection as they ever have been in any mind: lastly, men who are extolled by the commentators as the champions of religion and sound morality, against what are styled the unprincipled cavils of the Sophists.

[Footnote 175: Aristotel. Politic. viii. 2, p. 1337, b. 2. [Greek: Peri/ te tô=n pro\s a)retê/n, ou)the/n e)stin o(mologou/menon; kai\ ga\r tê\n a)retê\n ou) tê\n au)tê\n eu)thu\s pa/ntes timô=sin; ô(/st' eu)lo/gôs diaphe/rontai kai\ pro\s tê\n a)/skêsin au)tê=s.]

Ethica Nikomach. i. 3, p. 1094, b. 15. [Greek: Ta\ de\ kala\ kai\ ta\ di/kaia, peri\ ô(=n ê( politikê\ skopei=tai, tosau/tên e)/chei diaphora\n kai\ pla/nên, ô(/ste dokei=n no/mô| mo/non ei)=nai, phu/sei de\ mê/.]]

[Footnote 176: The extraordinary variety and discrepancy of approved and consecrated customs prevalent in different portions of the ancient world, is instructively set forth in the treatise of the Syrian Christian Bardisanes, in the time of the Antonines. A long extract from this treatise is given in Eusebius, Præparat. Evang., vi. 10; it has been also published by Orelli, annexed to his edition (Zurich, 1824) of the argument of Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 202. Compare Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv. 30.

Bardisanes is replying to the arguments of astrologers and calculators of nativities, who asserted the uniform and uncontrollable influence of the heavenly bodies, in given positions, over human conduct. As a proof that mankind are not subject to any such necessity, but have a large sphere of freewill ([Greek: au)texou/sion]), he cites these numerous instances of diverse and contradictory institutions among different societies. Several of the most conspicuous among these differences relate to the institutions concerning sex and family, the conduct and occupations held obligatory in men and women, &c.

Compare Sextus Empiric., Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. s. 198 seqq.]

[Side-note: Plato and Aristotle required subordination of impulse to reason and duty--they applied this to the procreative impulse, as to others.]

It is, in my judgment, both curious and interesting to study the manner in which these two illustrious men--Plato and Aristotle--dealt with the problem of population. Grave as that problem is in all times, it was peculiarly grave among the small republics of antiquity. Neither of them were disposed to ignore or overlook it: nor to impute to other causes the consequences which it produces: nor to treat as indifferent the question, whether poor couples had a greater or less family, to share subsistence already scanty for themselves. Still less were these philosophers disposed to sanction the short-sighted policy of some Hellenic statesmen, who under a mistaken view of increasing the power of the state, proclaimed encouragement and premium simply to the multiplication of male births, without any regard to the comfort and means of families. Both Plato and Aristotle saw plainly, that a married couple, by multiplying their offspring, produced serious effects not merely upon their own happiness but upon that of others besides: up to a certain limit, for good--beyond that limit, for evil. Hence they laid it down, that procreation ought to be a rational and advised act, governed by a forecast of those consequences--not a casual and unforeseen result of present impulse. The same preponderance of reason over impulse as they prescribed in other cases, they endeavoured to enforce in this. They regarded it too, not simply as a branch of prudence, but as a branch of duty; a debt due by each citizen to others and to the commonwealth. It was the main purpose of their elaborate political schemes, to produce a steady habit and course of virtue in all the citizens: and they considered every one as greatly deficient in virtue, who refused to look forward to the consequences of his own procreative acts--thereby contributing to bring upon the state an aggravated measure of poverty, which was the sure parent of discord, sedition, and crime. That the rate of total increase should not be so great as to produce these last-mentioned effects--and that the limit of virtue and prudence should be made operative on all the separate families--was in their judgment one of the most important cares of the lawgiver.

We ought to disengage this general drift and purpose, common both to Plato and Aristotle, on the subject of population, from the various means--partly objectionable, partly impossible to be enforced--whereby they intended to carry the purpose into effect.

[Side-note: Training of the few select philosophers to act as chiefs.]

I pass from Plato's picture of the entire regiment of Guardians, under the regulations above described--to his description of the special training whereby the few most distinguished persons in the regiment (male or female, as the case may be) are to be improved, tested, and exalted to the capacity of philosophers: qualified to act as Rulers or Chiefs.[177] These are the two marked peculiarities of Plato's Republic. The Guardians are admirable as instruments, but have no initiative of their own: we have now to find the chiefs from whom they will receive it. How are philosophers to be formed? None but a chosen Few have the precious gold born with them, empowering them to attain this elevation. To those Few, if properly trained, the privilege and right to exercise command belongs, by Nature. For the rest, obedience is the duty prescribed by Nature.[178]

[Footnote 177: Plato, Republic, v. p. 473, vi. p. 503 B. [Greek: tou\s a)kribesta/tous phu/lakas philoso/phous dei= kathista/nai.]]

[Footnote 178: Plato, Repub. v. p. 474 B. [Greek: toi=s me\n prosê/kei phu/ei, a(/ptesthai/ te philosophi/as, ê(gemoneu/ein t' e)n po/lei; toi=s d' a)/llois mê/te a(/ptesthai, a)kolouthei=n te tô=| ê(goume/nô|.]

476 B: [Greek: spa/nioi a)\n ei)=en]. Also vi. 503, vii. 535. They are to be [Greek: e)k tô=n prokri/tôn pro/kritoi], vii. 537 D.]

[Side-note: Comprehensive curriculum for aspirants to philosophy--consummation by means of Dialectic.]

I have already given, in Chap. XXXV., a short summary of the peculiar scientific training which Sokrates prescribes for ripening these heroic aspirants into complete philosophers. They pass years of intellectual labour, all by their own spontaneous impulse, over and above the full training of Guardians. They study Arithmetic, Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy, Acoustics, &c., until the age of thirty: they then continue in the exercise of Dialectic, with all the test of question and answer, for five years longer: after which they enter upon the duties of practice and administration, succeeding ultimately to the position of chiefs if found competent. It is assumed that this long course of study, consummated by Dialectic, has operated within them that great mental revolution which Plato calls, turning the eye from the shadows in the cave to the realities of clear daylight: that they will no longer be absorbed in the sensible world or in passing phenomena, but will become familiar with the unchangeable Ideas or Forms of the Intelligible world, knowable only by intellectual intuition. Reason has with them been exalted to its highest power: not only strengthening them to surmount all intellectual difficulties and to deal with the most complicated conjectures of practice--but also ennobling their dispositions, so as to overcome all the disturbing temptations and narrow misguiding prejudices inherent in the unregenerate man. Upon the perfection of character, emotional and intellectual, imparted to these few philosophers, depends the Platonic Commonwealth.

[Side-note: Valuable remarks on the effects of these preparatory studies.]

The remarks made by Plato on the effect of this preparatory curriculum, and on the various studies composing it, are highly interesting and instructive--even when they cannot be defended as exact. Much of what he so eloquently enunciates respecting philosophy and the philosophical character, is in fact just and profound, whatever view we may take as to Universals: whether we regard them (like Plato) as the only Real Entia, cognizable by the mental eye, and radically disparate from particulars--or whether we hold them to be only general Concepts, abstracted and generalised more or less exactly from particulars. The remarks made by Plato on the educational effect produced by Arithmetic and the other studies, are valuable and suggestive. Even the discredit which he throws on observations of fact, in Astronomy and Acoustics--the great antithesis between him and modern times--is useful as enabling us to enter into his point of view.[179]

[Footnote 179: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 529 C-D.

The manner in which Plato here depreciates astronomical observation is not easily reconcileable with his doctrine in the Timæus. He there tells us that the rotations of the Nous (intellective soul) in the interior of the human cranium, are cognate or analogous to those of the cosmical spheres, but more confused and less perfect: our eyesight being expressly intended for the purpose, that we might contemplate the perfect and unerring rotations of the cosmical spheres, so as to correct thereby the disturbed rotations in our own brain (Timæus, pp. 46-47).

Malebranche shares the feeling of Plato on the subject of astronomical observation. Recherche de la Vérité, liv. iv. ch. vii. vol. ii. p. 219, ed. 1772 (p. 278, ed. 1721).

"Car enfin qu'y a-t-il de grand dans la connoissance des mouvemens des planètes? et n'en sçavons nous pas assez présentement pour régler nos mois et nos années? Qu'avons nous tant à faire de sçavoir, si Saturne est environné d'un anneau ou d'un grand nombre de petites lunes, et pourquoi prendre parti là-dessus? Pourquoi se glorifier d'avoir prédit la grandeur d'une éclipse, où l'on a peut-être mieux rencontré qu'un autre, parcequ'on a été plus heureux? Il y a des personnes destinées, par l'ordre du Prince, à observer les astres; contentons nous de leurs observations. . . Nous devons être pleinement satisfaits sur une matière qui nous touche si peu, lorsqu'ils nous font partie de leurs découvertes."]

[Side-note: Differences between the Republic and other dialogues--no mention of reminiscence nor of the Elenchus.]

But his point of view in the Republic differs materially from that which we read in other dialogues: especially in two ways.

First, The scientific and long-continued Quadrivium, through which Plato here conducts the student to philosophy, is very different from the road to philosophy as indicated elsewhere. Nothing is here said about reminiscence--which in the Menon, Phædon, Phædrus, and elsewhere, stands in the foreground of his theory, as the engine for reviving in the mind Forms or Ideas. With these Forms it had been familiar during a prior state of existence, but they had become buried under the sensible impressions arising from its conjunction with the body. Nor do we find in the Republic any mention of that electric shock of the negative Elenchus, which (in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and several other dialogues) is declared indispensable for stirring up the natural mind not merely from ignorance and torpor, but even from a state positively distempered--the false persuasion of knowledge.

[Side-note: Different view taken by Plato in the Republic about Dialectic--and different place assigned to it.]

Secondly, following out this last observation, we perceive another discrepancy yet more striking, in the directions given by Plato respecting the study of Dialectic. He prescribes that it shall upon no account be taught to young men: and that it shall come last of all in teaching, only after the full preceding Quadrivium. He censures severely the prevalent practice of applying it to young men, as pregnant with mischief. Young men (he says) brought up in certain opinions inculcated by the lawgiver, as to what is just and honourable, are interrogated on these subjects, and have questions put to them. When asked What is the just and the honourable, they reply in the manner which they have learnt from authority: but this reply, being exposed to farther interrogatories, is shown to be untenable and inconsistent, such as they cannot defend to their own satisfaction. Hence they lose all respect for the established ethical creed, which however stands opposed in their minds to the seductions of immediate enjoyment: yet they acquire no new or better conviction in its place. Instead of following an established law, they thus come to live without any law.[180] Besides, young men when initiated in dialectic debate, take great delight in the process, as a means of exposing and puzzling the respondent. Copying the skilful interrogators whom they have found themselves unable to answer, they interrogate others in their turn, dispute everything, and pride themselves on exhibiting all the negative force of the Elenchus. Instead of employing dialectic debate for the discovery of truth, they use it merely as a disputatious pastime, and thus bring themselves as well as philosophy into discredit.[181]

[Footnote 180: Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 538 D-539. [Greek: o(/tan to\n ou(/tôs e)/chonta e)ltho\n e)rô/têma e)/rêtai, ti/ e)sti to\ kalo/n, kai\ a)pokrina/menon o(\ tou= nomothetou= ê)/kouen e)xelegchê=| o( lo/gos, kai\ polla/kis kai\ pollachê= e)le/gchôn ei)s do/xan katabalê=| ô(s tou=to ou)de\n ma/llon kalo\n ê)\ ai)schro\n, kai\ peri\ dikai/ou ô(sau/tôs kai\ a)di/kou, kai\ a(\ ma/lista ê)=gen e)n timê=|], &c.]

[Footnote 181: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 B.]

Accordingly, we must not admit (says Plato) either young men, or men of ordinary untrained minds, to dialectic debate. We must admit none but mature persons, of sedate disposition, properly prepared: who will employ it not for mere disputation, but for the investigation of truth.[182]

[Footnote 182: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 D.]

[Side-note: Contradiction with the spirit of other dialogues--Parmenidês, &c.]

Now the doctrine thus proclaimed, with the grounds upon which it rests--That dialectic debate is unsuitable and prejudicial to young men--distinctly contradict both the principles laid down by himself elsewhere, and the frequent indications of his own dialogues: not to mention the practice of Sokrates as described by Xenophon. In the Platonic Parmenidês, and Theætêtus, the season of youth is expressly pronounced to be that in which dialectic exercise is not merely appropriate, but indispensable to the subsequent attainment of truth.[183] Moreover, Plato puts into the mouth of Parmenides a specimen intentionally given to represent that dialectic exercise which will be profitable to youth. The specimen is one full of perplexing, though ingenious, subtleties: ending in establishing, by different trains of reasoning, the affirmative, as well as the negative, of several distinct conclusions. Not only it supplies no new positive certainty, but it appears to render any such consummation more distant and less attainable than ever.[184] It is therefore eminently open to the censure which Plato pronounces, in the passage just cited from his Republic, against dialectic as addressed to young men. The like remark may be made upon the numerous other dialogues (though less extreme in negative subtlety than the Parmenidês), wherein the Platonic Sokrates interrogates youths (or interrogates others, in the presence of youths) without any positive result: as in the Theætêtus, Charmidês, Lysis, Alkibiadês, Hippias, &c., to which we may add the conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydemus and others.[185]

[Footnote 183: Plato, Parmenidês, pp. 135 D, 137 B. Theætêt. 146 A.

Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês (p. 778, Stallbaum), adverts to the passage of the Republic here discussed, and endeavours to show that it is not inconsistent with the Parmenidês. He states that the exhortation to practise dialectic debate in youth, as the appropriate season, must be understood as specially and exclusively addressed to a youth of the extraordinary mental qualities of Sokrates; while the passage in the Republic applies the prohibition only to the general regiment of Guardians. But this justification is noway satisfactory; for Plato in the Republic makes no exception in favour of the most promising Guardians. He lays down the position generally. Again, in the Parmenidês, we find the encouragement to dialectic debate addressed not merely to the youthful Sokrates, but to the youthful Aristoteles (p. 137 B). Moreover, we are not to imagine that all the youths who are introduced as respondents in the Platonic dialogues are implied as equal to Sokrates himself, though they are naturally represented as superior and promising subjects. Compare Plato, Sophistês, p. 217 E; Politikus, p. 257 E.]

[Footnote 184: Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 ad fin. [Greek: ei)rê/sthô toi/nun tou=to/ te kai\ o(/ti, ô(s e)/oiken, e(\n ei)/t' e)/stin, ei)te mê\ e)/stin, au)to/ te kai\ ta)/lla kai\ pro\s au)ta\ kai\ pro\s a)/llêla pa/nta pa/ntôs e)/sti te kai\ ou)k e)/sti, kai\ phai/netai te kai\ ou) phai/netai. A)lêthe/stata.]]

[Footnote 185: Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2.]

[Side-note: Contradiction with the character and declarations of Sokrates.]

In fact, the Platonic Sokrates expressly proclaims himself (in the Apology as well as in the other dialogues just named) to be ignorant and incapable of teaching anything. His mission was to expose the ignorance of those, who fancy that they know without really knowing: he taught no one anything, but he cross-examined every one who would submit to it, before all the world, and in a manner especially interesting to young men. Sokrates mentions that these young men not only listened with delight, but tried to imitate him as well as they could, by cross-examining others in the same manner:[186] and in mentioning the fact, he expresses neither censure nor regret, but satisfaction in the thought that the chance would be thereby increased, of exposing that false persuasion of knowledge which prevailed so widely everywhere. Now Plato, in the passage just cited from the Republic, blames this contagious spirit of cross-examination on the part of young men, as a vice which proved the mischief of dialectic debate addressed to them at that age. He farther deprecates the disturbance of "those opinions which they have heard from the lawgiver respecting what is just and honourable". But it is precisely these opinions which, in the Alkibiadês, Menon, Protagoras, and other dialogues, the Platonic Sokrates treats as untaught, if not unteachable:--as having been acquired, no man knew how, without the lessons of any assignable master and without any known period of study:--lastly, as constituting that very illusion of false knowledge without real knowledge, of which Sokrates undertakes to purge the youthful mind, and which must be dispelled before any improvement can be effected in it.[187]

[Footnote 186: Plato, Apolog. Sokrat c. 10, p. 23 D, c. 22, p. 33 C, c. 27, p. 37 E, c. 30, p. 39 C.]

[Footnote 187: Plato, Sophist. p. 230.]

[Side-note: The remarks here made upon the effect of Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus against Sokrates.]

We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth--cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates--is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.[188] Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:--to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years--we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.[189]

[Footnote 188: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.]

[Footnote 189: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38.

Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii. Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).]

[Side-note: Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.]

The matter to which I here advert, illustrates a material distinction between some writings of Plato as compared with others, and between different points of view which his mind took on at different times. In the Platonic Apology, we find Sokrates confessing his own ignorance, and proclaiming himself to be isolated among an uncongenial public falsely persuaded of their own knowledge. In several other dialogues, he is the same: he cannot teach anything, but can only cross-examine, test, and apply the spur to respondents. But the Republic presents him in a new character. He is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of fixed, inherited, convictions.[190] He is himself on the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is determined. Hence we now find him passing to the opposite pole; taking up the orthodox, conservative, point of view, the same as Melêtus and Anytus maintained in their accusation against Sokrates at Athens. He now expects every individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions, prescribed by authority: including among those opinions deliberate ethical and political fictions, such as that about the gold and silver earthborn men. Free-thinking minds, who take views of their own, and enquire into the evidence of these beliefs, become inconvenient and dangerous. Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic Apology, nor his negative Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic.

[Footnote 190: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 541.]

[Side-note: Idea of Good--The Chiefs alone know what it is--If they did not they would be unfit for their functions.]

One word more must be said respecting a subject which figures conspicuously in the Republic--the Idea or Form of Good. The chiefs alone (we read) at the end of their long term of study, having ascended gradually from the phenomena of sense to intellectual contemplation and familiarity with the unchangeable Ideas--will come to discern and embrace the highest of all Ideas--the Form of Good:[191] by the help of which alone, Justice, Temperance, and the other virtues, become useful and profitable.[192] If the Archons do not know how and why just and honourable things are good, they will not be fit for their duty.[193] In regard to Good (Plato tells us) no man is satisfied with mere appearance. Here every man desires and postulates that which is really good: while as to the just and the honourable, many are satisfied with the appearance, without caring for the reality.[194]

[Footnote 191: Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 533-534.]

[Footnote 192: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A.]

[Footnote 193: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 A.]

[Footnote 194: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 D.]

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

Plato proclaims this Real Good, as distinguished from Apparent Good, to be the paramount and indispensable object of knowledge, without which all other knowledge is useless. It is that which every man divines to exist, yearns for, and does everything with a view to obtain: but which he misses, from not knowing where to seek; missing also along with it that which gives value to other acquisitions.[195] What then is this Real Good--the Noumenon, Idea, or form of Good?

[Footnote 195: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A-E. [Greek: O(\ dê\ diô/kei me\n a(/pasa psuchê\ kai\ tou/tou e(/neka pa/nta pra/ttei, a)pomanteuome/nê ti\ ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k e)/chousa labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti\n ou)de\ pi/stei chrê/sasthai moni/mô|, oi(/a| kai\ peri\ ta)/lla, dia\ tou=to de\ a)potugcha/nei kai\ tô=n a)/llôn ei)/ ti o)/phelos ê)=n], &c.]

This question is put by Glaukon to Sokrates, with much earnestness, in the dialogue of the Republic. But unfortunately it remains unanswered. Plato declines all categorical reply; though the question is one, as he himself emphatically announces, upon which all the positive consequences of his philosophy turn.[196] He conducts us to the chamber wherein this precious and indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the door. In describing the condition of other men's minds--that they divine a Real Good--[Greek: Au)to\-a)gatho\n] or Bonum _per se_--do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle themselves in vain to grasp and determine what it is[197]--he has unconsciously described the condition of his own.

[Footnote 196: Certainly when we see the way in which Plato deals with the [Greek: i)de/a a)gathou=], we cannot exempt him from the criticism which he addresses to others, vi. p. 493 E. [Greek: ô(s de\ kai\ a)gatha\ kai\ kala\ tau=ta tê=| a)lêthei/a|, ê)/dê pôpote/ tou= ê)/kousas au)tô=n lo/gon dido/ntos ou) katage/laston?]

We may illustrate this procedure of Plato by an Oriental fable, cited in an instructive Dissertation of M. Ernest Renan.

"Aristoteles primum sub Almamuno (813-833, A.D.) arabicè factus est. Somniumque effictum à credulis hominibus: vidisse Almamunum in somno virum aspectu venerabili, solio insidentem: mirantem Almamunum quæsivisse, quisnam ille esset? responsum, Aristotelem esse. Quo audito, Chalifam ab eo quæsivisse, Quidnam Bonum esset? respondisse Aristotelem: Quod sapientiores probarent. Quærenti Chalifæ quid hoc esset? Quod lex divina probat--dixisse. Interroganti porro illi, Quid hoc? Quod omnes probarent--respondisse: _neque alii ultra quæstioni respondere voluisse_. Quo somnio permotum Almamunum à Græcorum imperatore veniam petiisse, ut libri philosophici in ipsius regno quærerentur: hujusque rei gratiâ viros doctos misisse." Ernest Renan, De Philosophiâ Peripateticâ apud Syros, commentatio Historica, p. 57; Paris, 1852.

Among the various remarks which might be made upon this curious dream, one is, that Bonum is always determined as having relation to the appreciative apprehension of some mind--the Wise Men, the Divine Mind, the Mind of the general public. _Bonum_ is that which some mind or minds conceive and appreciate as such. The word has no meaning except in relation to some apprehending Subject.]

[Footnote 197: Plato, Republ. vi. p. 505 E. [Greek: a)pomanteuome/nê ti ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k e)/chousa labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti/n], &c.

The remarks of Aristotle in impugning the Platonic [Greek: i)de/an a)gathou=] are very instructive, Ethic. Nikom. i. p. 1096-1097; Ethic. Eudem. i. p. 1217-1218. He maintains that there exists nothing corresponding to the word; and that even if it did exist, it would neither be [Greek: prakto\n] nor [Greek: ktêto\n a)nthrô/pô|]. Aristotle here looks upon Good as being essentially relative or phenomenal: he understands [Greek: to\ a(plô=s a)gatho\n] to mean [Greek: to\ a)gatho\n to\ phaino/menon tô=| spoudai/ô|] (Eth. Nik. iii. p. 1113, b. 16-32). But he does not uniformly adhere to this meaning.]