Laws
Yet this confusion of ethics and politics has also a better and a truer
side. If unable to grasp some important distinctions, Plato is at any
rate seeking to elevate the lower to the higher; he does not pull down
the principles of men to their practice, or narrow the conception of
the state to the immediate necessities of politics. Political ideals of
freedom and equality, of a divine government which has been or will be
in some other age or country, have greatly tended to educate and ennoble
the human race. And if not the first author of such ideals (for they are
as old as Hesiod), Plato has done more than any other writer to impress
them on the world. To those who censure his idealism we may reply in his
own words--'He is not the worse painter who draws a perfectly beautiful
figure, because no such figure of a man could ever have existed'
(Republic).
A new thought about education suddenly occurs to him, and for a time
exercises a sort of fascination over his mind, though in the later books
of the Laws it is forgotten or overlooked. As true courage is allied to
temperance, so there must be an education which shall train mankind to
resist pleasure as well as to endure pain. No one can be on his guard
against that of which he has no experience. The perfectly trained
citizen should have been accustomed to look his enemy in the face, and
to measure his strength against her. This education in pleasure is to be
given, partly by festive intercourse, but chiefly by the song and dance.
Youth are to learn music and gymnastics; their elders are to be trained
and tested at drinking parties. According to the old proverb, in vino
veritas, they will then be open and visible to the world in their true
characters; and also they will be more amenable to the laws, and more
easily moulded by the hand of the legislator. The first reason is
curious enough, though not important; the second can hardly be thought
deserving of much attention. Yet if Plato means to say that society
is one of the principal instruments of education in after-life, he has
expressed in an obscure fashion a principle which is true, and to
his contemporaries was also new. That at a banquet a degree of moral
discipline might be exercised is an original thought, but Plato has not
yet learnt to express his meaning in an abstract form. He is sensible
that moderation is better than total abstinence, and that asceticism is
but a one-sided training. He makes the sagacious remark, that 'those who
are able to resist pleasure may often be among the worst of mankind.' He
is as much aware as any modern utilitarian that the love of pleasure is
the great motive of human action. This cannot be eradicated, and must
therefore be regulated,--the pleasure must be of the right sort.
Such reflections seem to be the real, though imperfectly expressed,
groundwork of the discussion. As in the juxtaposition of the Bacchic
madness and the great gift of Dionysus, or where he speaks of the
different senses in which pleasure is and is not the object of imitative
art, or in the illustration of the failure of the Dorian institutions
from the prayer of Theseus, we have to gather his meaning as well as we
can from the connexion.
The feeling of old age is discernible in this as well as in several
other passages of the Laws. Plato has arrived at the time when men sit
still and look on at life; and he is willing to allow himself and others
the few pleasures which remain to them. Wine is to cheer them now that
their limbs are old and their blood runs cold. They are the best critics
of dancing and music, but cannot be induced to join in song unless they
have been enlivened by drinking. Youth has no need of the stimulus
of wine, but age can only be made young again by its invigorating
influence. Total abstinence for the young, moderate and increasing
potations for the old, is Plato's principle. The fire, of which there is
too much in the one, has to be brought to the other. Drunkenness, like
madness, had a sacredness and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand,
as in the case of the Tarentines, it degraded a whole population, it was
also a mode of worshipping the god Dionysus, which was to be practised
on certain occasions. Moreover, the intoxication produced by the fruit
of the vine was very different from the grosser forms of drunkenness
which prevail among some modern nations.
The physician in modern times would restrict the old man's use of wine
within narrow limits. He would tell us that you cannot restore strength
by a stimulus. Wine may call back the vital powers in disease, but
cannot reinvigorate old age. In his maxims of health and longevity,
though aware of the importance of a simple diet, Plato has omitted to
dwell on the perfect rule of moderation. His commendation of wine is
probably a passing fancy, and may have arisen out of his own habits
or tastes. If so, he is not the only philosopher whose theory has been
based upon his practice.
Plato's denial of wine to the young and his approval of it for
their elders has some points of view which may be illustrated by the
temperance controversy of our own times. Wine may be allowed to have a
religious as well as a festive use; it is commended both in the Old and
New Testament; it has been sung of by nearly all poets; and it may be
truly said to have a healing influence both on body and mind. Yet it is
also very liable to excess and abuse, and for this reason is prohibited
by Mahometans, as well as of late years by many Christians, no less than
by the ancient Spartans; and to sound its praises seriously seems to
partake of the nature of a paradox. But we may rejoin with Plato that
the abuse of a good thing does not take away the use of it. Total
abstinence, as we often say, is not the best rule, but moderate
indulgence; and it is probably true that a temperate use of wine may
contribute some elements of character to social life which we can ill
afford to lose. It draws men out of their reserve; it helps them to
forget themselves and to appear as they by nature are when not on their
guard, and therefore to make them more human and greater friends to
their fellow-men. It gives them a new experience; it teaches them to
combine self-control with a measure of indulgence; it may sometimes
restore to them the simplicity of childhood. We entirely agree with
Plato in forbidding the use of wine to the young; but when we are
of mature age there are occasions on which we derive refreshment and
strength from moderate potations. It is well to make abstinence the
rule, but the rule may sometimes admit of an exception. We are in a
higher, as well as in a lower sense, the better for the use of wine.
The question runs up into wider ones--What is the general effect of
asceticism on human nature? and, Must there not be a certain proportion
between the aspirations of man and his powers?--questions which have
been often discussed both by ancient and modern philosophers. So
by comparing things old and new we may sometimes help to realize to
ourselves the meaning of Plato in the altered circumstances of our own
life.
Like the importance which he attaches to festive entertainments, his
depreciation of courage to the fourth place in the scale of virtue
appears to be somewhat rhetorical and exaggerated. But he is speaking
of courage in the lower sense of the term, not as including loyalty or
temperance. He does not insist in this passage, as in the Protagoras,
on the unity of the virtues; or, as in the Laches, on the identity of
wisdom and courage. But he says that they all depend upon their leader
mind, and that, out of the union of wisdom and temperance with courage,
springs justice. Elsewhere he is disposed to regard temperance rather
as a condition of all virtue than as a particular virtue. He generalizes
temperance, as in the Republic he generalizes justice. The nature of the
virtues is to run up into one another, and in many passages Plato makes
but a faint effort to distinguish them. He still quotes the poets,
somewhat enlarging, as his manner is, or playing with their meaning. The
martial poet Tyrtaeus, and the oligarch Theognis, furnish him with
happy illustrations of the two sorts of courage. The fear of fear, the
division of goods into human and divine, the acknowledgment that peace
and reconciliation are better than the appeal to the sword, the analysis
of temperance into resistance of pleasure as well as endurance of pain,
the distinction between the education which is suitable for a trade or
profession, and for the whole of life, are important and probably new
ethical conceptions. Nor has Plato forgotten his old paradox (Gorgias)
that to be punished is better than to be unpunished, when he says, that
to the bad man death is the only mitigation of his evil. He is not less
ideal in many passages of the Laws than in the Gorgias or Republic. But
his wings are heavy, and he is unequal to any sustained flight.
There is more attempt at dramatic effect in the first book than in
the later parts of the work. The outburst of martial spirit in the
Lacedaemonian, 'O best of men'; the protest which the Cretan makes
against the supposed insult to his lawgiver; the cordial acknowledgment
on the part of both of them that laws should not be discussed publicly
by those who live under their rule; the difficulty which they alike
experience in following the speculations of the Athenian, are highly
characteristic.
In the second book, Plato pursues further his notion of educating by
a right use of pleasure. He begins by conceiving an endless power of
youthful life, which is to be reduced to rule and measure by harmony and
rhythm. Men differ from the lower animals in that they are capable of
musical discipline. But music, like all art, must be truly imitative,
and imitative of what is true and good. Art and morality agree in
rejecting pleasure as the criterion of good. True art is inseparable
from the highest and most ennobling ideas. Plato only recognizes the
identity of pleasure and good when the pleasure is of the higher kind.
He is the enemy of 'songs without words,' which he supposes to have some
confusing or enervating effect on the mind of the hearer; and he is also
opposed to the modern degeneracy of the drama, which he would probably
have illustrated, like Aristophanes, from Euripides and Agathon. From
this passage may be gathered a more perfect conception of art than
from any other of Plato's writings. He understands that art is at
once imitative and ideal, an exact representation of truth, and also a
representation of the highest truth. The same double view of art may be
gathered from a comparison of the third and tenth books of the Republic,
but is here more clearly and pointedly expressed.
We are inclined to suspect that both here and in the Republic Plato
exaggerates the influence really exercised by the song and the dance.
But we must remember also the susceptible nature of the Greek, and the
perfection to which these arts were carried by him. Further, the music
had a sacred and Pythagorean character; the dance too was part of a
religious festival. And only at such festivals the sexes mingled in
public, and the youths passed under the eyes of their elders.
At the beginning of the third book, Plato abruptly asks the question,
What is the origin of states? The answer is, Infinite time. We have
already seen--in the Theaetetus, where he supposes that in the course of
ages every man has had numberless progenitors, kings and slaves, Greeks
and barbarians; and in the Critias, where he says that nine thousand
years have elapsed since the island of Atlantis fought with Athens--that
Plato is no stranger to the conception of long periods of time. He
imagines human society to have been interrupted by natural convulsions;