Laws
No customs are to be exacted either on imports or exports. Nothing
unnecessary is to be imported from abroad, whether for the service of
the Gods or for the use of man--neither purple, nor other dyes, nor
frankincense,--and nothing needed in the country is to be exported.
These things are to be decided on by the twelve guardians of the law who
are next in seniority to the five elders. Arms and the materials of war
are to be imported and exported only with the consent of the generals,
and then only by the state. There is to be no retail trade either in
these or any other articles. For the distribution of the produce of the
country, the Cretan laws afford a rule which may be usefully followed.
All shall be required to distribute corn, grain, animals, and other
valuable produce, into twelve portions. Each of these shall be
subdivided into three parts--one for freemen, another for servants,
and the third shall be sold for the supply of artisans, strangers, and
metics. These portions must be equal whether the produce be much or
little; and the master of a household may distribute the two portions
among his family and his slaves as he pleases--the remainder is to be
measured out to the animals.
Next as to the houses in the country--there shall be twelve villages,
one in the centre of each of the twelve portions; and in every village
there shall be temples and an agora--also shrines for heroes or for
any old Magnesian deities who linger about the place. In every division
there shall be temples of Hestia, Zeus, and Athene, as well as of the
local deity, surrounded by buildings on eminences, which will be the
guard-houses of the rural police. The dwellings of the artisans will be
thus arranged:--The artisans shall be formed into thirteen guilds, one
of which will be divided into twelve parts and settled in the city; of
the rest there shall be one in each division of the country. And the
magistrates will fix them on the spots where they will cause the least
inconvenience and be most serviceable in supplying the wants of the
husbandmen.
The care of the agora will fall to the wardens of the agora. Their
first duty will be the regulation of the temples which surround the
market-place; and their second to see that the markets are orderly and
that fair dealing is observed. They will also take care that the sales
which the citizens are required to make to strangers are duly executed.
The law shall be, that on the first day of each month the auctioneers to
whom the sale is entrusted shall offer grain; and at this sale a twelfth
part of the whole shall be exposed, and the foreigner shall supply his
wants for a month. On the tenth, there shall be a sale of liquids, and
on the twenty-third of animals, skins, woven or woollen stuffs, and
other things which husbandmen have to sell and foreigners want to buy.
None of these commodities, any more than barley or flour, or any other
food, may be retailed by a citizen to a citizen; but foreigners may
sell them to one another in the foreigners' market. There must also be
butchers who will sell parts of animals to foreigners and craftsmen,
and their servants; and foreigners may buy firewood wholesale of the
commissioners of woods, and may sell retail to foreigners. All other
goods must be sold in the market, at some place indicated by the
magistrates, and shall be paid for on the spot. He who gives credit, and
is cheated, will have no redress. In buying or selling, any excess or
diminution of what the law allows shall be registered. The same rule
is to be observed about the property of metics. Anybody who practises a
handicraft may come and remain twenty years from the day on which he is
enrolled; at the expiration of this time he shall take what he has and
depart. The only condition which is to be imposed upon him as the tax
of his sojourn is good conduct; and he is not to pay any tax for being
allowed to buy or sell. But if he wants to extend the time of his
sojourn, and has done any service to the state, and he can persuade the
council and assembly to grant his request, he may remain. The children
of metics may also be metics; and the period of twenty years, during
which they are permitted to sojourn, is to count, in their case, from
their fifteenth year.
No mention occurs in the Laws of the doctrine of Ideas. The will of God,
the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have
taken their place in the mind of Plato. If we ask what is that truth or
principle which, towards the end of his life, seems to have absorbed
him most, like the idea of good in the Republic, or of beauty in the
Symposium, or of the unity of virtue in the Protagoras, we should
answer--The priority of the soul to the body: his later system mainly
hangs upon this. In the Laws, as in the Sophist and Statesman, we pass
out of the region of metaphysical or transcendental ideas into that of
psychology.
The opening of the fifth book, though abrupt and unconnected in style,
is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling
which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the
blessedness of living in the truth, the great mistake of a man living
for himself, the pity as well as anger which should be felt at evil,
the kindness due to the suppliant and the stranger, have the temper of
Christian philosophy. The remark that elder men, if they want to educate
others, should begin by educating themselves; the necessity of creating
a spirit of obedience in the citizens; the desirableness of limiting
property; the importance of parochial districts, each to be placed under
the protection of some God or demigod, have almost the tone of a modern
writer. In many of his views of politics, Plato seems to us, like some
politicians of our own time, to be half socialist, half conservative.
In the Laws, we remark a change in the place assigned by him to pleasure
and pain. There are two ways in which even the ideal systems of morals
may regard them: either like the Stoics, and other ascetics, we may say
that pleasure must be eradicated; or if this seems unreal to us, we may
affirm that virtue is the true pleasure; and then, as Aristotle says,
'to be brought up to take pleasure in what we ought, exercises a great
and paramount influence on human life' (Arist. Eth. Nic.). Or as Plato
says in the Laws, 'A man will recognize the noblest life as having the
greatest pleasure and the least pain, if he have a true taste.' If we
admit that pleasures differ in kind, the opposition between these two
modes of speaking is rather verbal than real; and in the greater part of
the writings of Plato they alternate with each other. In the Republic,
the mere suggestion that pleasure may be the chief good, is received
by Socrates with a cry of abhorrence; but in the Philebus, innocent
pleasures vindicate their right to a place in the scale of goods. In the
Protagoras, speaking in the person of Socrates rather than in his own,
Plato admits the calculation of pleasure to be the true basis of ethics,
while in the Phaedo he indignantly denies that the exchange of one
pleasure for another is the exchange of virtue. So wide of the mark
are they who would attribute to Plato entire consistency in thoughts or
words.
He acknowledges that the second state is inferior to the first--in this,
at any rate, he is consistent; and he still casts longing eyes upon the
ideal. Several features of the first are retained in the second: the
education of men and women is to be as far as possible the same; they
are to have common meals, though separate, the men by themselves, the
women with their children; and they are both to serve in the army; the
citizens, if not actually communists, are in spirit communistic;
they are to be lovers of equality; only a certain amount of wealth is
permitted to them, and their burdens and also their privileges are to
be proportioned to this. The constitution in the Laws is a timocracy
of wealth, modified by an aristocracy of merit. Yet the political
philosopher will observe that the first of these two principles is
fixed and permanent, while the latter is uncertain and dependent on the
opinion of the multitude. Wealth, after all, plays a great part in
the Second Republic of Plato. Like other politicians, he deems that a
property qualification will contribute stability to the state. The four
classes are derived from the constitution of Athens, just as the form
of the city, which is clustered around a citadel set on a hill, is
suggested by the Acropolis at Athens. Plato, writing under Pythagorean
influences, seems really to have supposed that the well-being of the
city depended almost as much on the number 5040 as on justice and
moderation. But he is not prevented by Pythagoreanism from observing the
effects which climate and soil exercise on the characters of nations.
He was doubtful in the Republic whether the ideal or communistic state
could be realized, but was at the same time prepared to maintain that
whether it existed or not made no difference to the philosopher, who
will in any case regulate his life by it (Republic). He has now lost
faith in the practicability of his scheme--he is speaking to 'men, and
not to Gods or sons of Gods' (Laws). Yet he still maintains it to be the
true pattern of the state, which we must approach as nearly as possible:
as Aristotle says, 'After having created a more general form of state,
he gradually brings it round to the other' (Pol.). He does not observe,
either here or in the Republic, that in such a commonwealth there would
be little room for the development of individual character. In several
respects the second state is an improvement on the first, especially in
being based more distinctly on the dignity of the soul. The standard
of truth, justice, temperance, is as high as in the Republic;--in one
respect higher, for temperance is now regarded, not as a virtue, but as
the condition of all virtue. It is finally acknowledged that the virtues
are all one and connected, and that if they are separated, courage is
the lowest of them. The treatment of moral questions is less speculative
but more human. The idea of good has disappeared; the excellences of
individuals--of him who is faithful in a civil broil, of the examiner
who is incorruptible, are the patterns to which the lives of the
citizens are to conform. Plato is never weary of speaking of the honour
of the soul, which can only be honoured truly by being improved. To make
the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the
Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the
end of life. If the Republic is far superior to the Laws in form and
style, and perhaps in reach of thought, the Laws leave on the mind
of the modern reader much more strongly the impression of a struggle
against evil, and an enthusiasm for human improvement. When Plato says
that he must carry out that part of his ideal which is practicable,
he does not appear to have reflected that part of an ideal cannot be
detached from the whole.
The great defect of both his constitutions is the fixedness which he
seeks to impress upon them. He had seen the Athenian empire, almost
within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems
to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at
which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as
in the century which had preceded. He fails to perceive that the greater
part of the political life of a nation is not that which is given them
by their legislators, but that which they give themselves. He has never
reflected that without progress there cannot be order, and that mere
order can only be preserved by an unnatural and despotic repression. The