Laws
possibility of a great nation or of an universal empire arising never
occurred to him. He sees the enfeebled and distracted state of the
Hellenic world in his own later life, and thinks that the remedy is to
make the laws unchangeable. The same want of insight is apparent in his
judgments about art. He would like to have the forms of sculpture and of
music fixed as in Egypt. He does not consider that this would be fatal
to the true principles of art, which, as Socrates had himself taught,
was to give life (Xen. Mem.). We wonder how, familiar as he was with
the statues of Pheidias, he could have endured the lifeless and
half-monstrous works of Egyptian sculpture. The 'chants of Isis' (Laws),
we might think, would have been barbarous in an Athenian ear. But
although he is aware that there are some things which are not so well
among 'the children of the Nile,' he is deeply struck with the stability
of Egyptian institutions. Both in politics and in art Plato seems to
have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a
step backwards. Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived,
had a sacredness and authority for him: the men of a former age were
supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among
his contemporaries. He could imagine the early stages of civilization;
he never thought of what the future might bring forth. His experience
is confined to two or three centuries, to a few Greek states, and to an
uncertain report of Egypt and the East. There are many ways in which
the limitations of their knowledge affected the genius of the Greeks.
In criticism they were like children, having an acute vision of things
which were near to them, blind to possibilities which were in the
distance.
The colony is to receive from the mother-country her original
constitution, and some of the first guardians of the law. The guardians
of the law are to be ministers of justice, and the president of
education is to take precedence of them all. They are to keep the
registers of property, to make regulations for trade, and they are to
be superannuated at seventy years of age. Several questions of modern
politics, such as the limitation of property, the enforcement of
education, the relations of classes, are anticipated by Plato. He hopes
that in his state will be found neither poverty nor riches; every
man having the necessaries of life, he need not go fortune-hunting in
marriage. Almost in the spirit of the Gospel he would say, 'How hardly
can a rich man dwell in a perfect state.' For he cannot be a good man
who is always gaining too much and spending too little (Laws; compare
Arist. Eth. Nic.). Plato, though he admits wealth as a political
element, would deny that material prosperity can be the foundation of
a really great community. A man's soul, as he often says, is more to be
esteemed than his body; and his body than external goods. He repeats the
complaint which has been made in all ages, that the love of money is the
corruption of states. He has a sympathy with thieves and burglars, 'many
of whom are men of ability and greatly to be pitied, because their souls
are hungering and thirsting all their lives long;' but he has
little sympathy with shopkeepers or retailers, although he makes the
reflection, which sometimes occurs to ourselves, that such occupations,
if they were carried on honestly by the best men and women, would be
delightful and honourable. For traders and artisans a moderate gain was,
in his opinion, best. He has never, like modern writers, idealized
the wealth of nations, any more than he has worked out the problems of
political economy, which among the ancients had not yet grown into a
science. The isolation of Greek states, their constant wars, the want of
a free industrial population, and of the modern methods and instruments
of 'credit,' prevented any great extension of commerce among them; and
so hindered them from forming a theory of the laws which regulate the
accumulation and distribution of wealth.
The constitution of the army is aristocratic and also democratic;
official appointment is combined with popular election. The two
principles are carried out as follows: The guardians of the law nominate
generals out of whom three are chosen by those who are or have been
of the age for military service; and the generals elected have the
nomination of certain of the inferior officers. But if either in the
case of generals or of the inferior officers any one is ready to swear
that he knows of a better man than those nominated, he may put the
claims of his candidate to the vote of the whole army, or of the
division of the service which he will, if elected, command. There is
a general assembly, but its functions, except at elections, are hardly
noticed. In the election of the Boule, Plato again attempts to mix
aristocracy and democracy. This is effected, first as in the Servian
constitution, by balancing wealth and numbers; for it cannot be supposed
that those who possessed a higher qualification were equal in number
with those who had a lower, and yet they have an equal number of
representatives. In the second place, all classes are compelled to vote
in the election of senators from the first and second class; but the
fourth class is not compelled to elect from the third, nor the third
and fourth from the fourth. Thirdly, out of the 180 persons who are thus
chosen from each of the four classes, 720 in all, 360 are to be taken by
lot; these form the council for the year.
These political adjustments of Plato's will be criticised by the
practical statesman as being for the most part fanciful and ineffectual.
He will observe, first of all, that the only real check on democracy
is the division into classes. The second of the three proposals, though
ingenious, and receiving some light from the apathy to politics which
is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little
power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was most
needed. At such political crises, all the lower classes would vote
equally with the higher. The subtraction of half the persons chosen
at the first election by the chances of the lot would not raise the
character of the senators, and is open to the objection of uncertainty,
which necessarily attends this and similar schemes of double
representative government. Nor can the voters be expected to retain the
continuous political interest required for carrying out such a proposal
as Plato's. Who could select 180 persons of each class, fitted to be
senators? And whoever were chosen by the voter in the first instance,
his wishes might be neutralized by the action of the lot. Yet the scheme
of Plato is not really so extravagant as the actual constitution of
Athens, in which all the senators appear to have been elected by
lot (apo kuamou bouleutai), at least, after the revolution made by
Cleisthenes; for the constitution of the senate which was established
by Solon probably had some aristocratic features, though their precise
nature is unknown to us. The ancients knew that election by lot was
the most democratic of all modes of appointment, seeming to say in the
objectionable sense, that 'one man is as good as another.' Plato, who is
desirous of mingling different elements, makes a partial use of the lot,
which he applies to candidates already elected by vote. He attempts also
to devise a system of checks and balances such as he supposes to have
been intended by the ancient legislators. We are disposed to say to
him, as he himself says in a remarkable passage, that 'no man ever
legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us in all
sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are
constantly overturning governments and changing laws.' And yet, as he
adds, the true legislator is still required: he must co-operate with
circumstances. Many things which are ascribed to human foresight are
the result of chance. Ancient, and in a less degree modern political
constitutions, are never consistent with themselves, because they are
never framed on a single design, but are added to from time to time as
new elements arise and gain the preponderance in the state. We often
attribute to the wisdom of our ancestors great political effects which
have sprung unforeseen from the accident of the situation. Power, not
wisdom, is most commonly the source of political revolutions. And
the result, as in the Roman Republic, of the co-existence of opposite
elements in the same state is, not a balance of power or an equable
progress of liberal principles, but a conflict of forces, of which one
or other may happen to be in the ascendant. In Greek history, as well as
in Plato's conception of it, this 'progression by antagonism' involves
reaction: the aristocracy expands into democracy and returns again to
tyranny.
The constitution of the Laws may be said to consist, besides the
magistrates, mainly of three elements,--an administrative Council,
the judiciary, and the Nocturnal Council, which is an intellectual
aristocracy, composed of priests and the ten eldest guardians of the law
and some younger co-opted members. To this latter chiefly are assigned
the functions of legislation, but to be exercised with a sparing hand.
The powers of the ordinary council are administrative rather than
legislative. The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution,
is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of
the tribes. Not more than one-twelfth is to be in office at once,
so that the government would be made up of twelve administrations
succeeding one another in the course of the year. They are to exercise
a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to
preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies. Of the ecclesia
over which they presided little is said, and that little relates to
comparatively trifling duties. Nothing is less present to the mind of
Plato than a House of Commons, carrying on year by year the work of
legislation. For he supposes the laws to be already provided. As little
would he approve of a body like the Roman Senate. The people and the
aristocracy alike are to be represented, not by assemblies, but by
officers elected for one or two years, except the guardians of the law,
who are elected for twenty years.
The evils of this system are obvious. If in any state, as Plato says
in the Statesman, it is easier to find fifty good draught-players than
fifty good rulers, the greater part of the 360 who compose the council
must be unfitted to rule. The unfitness would be increased by the short
period during which they held office. There would be no traditions
of government among them, as in a Greek or Italian oligarchy, and no
individual would be responsible for any of their acts. Everything seems
to have been sacrificed to a false notion of equality, according to
which all have a turn of ruling and being ruled. In the constitution
of the Magnesian state Plato has not emancipated himself from the
limitations of ancient politics. His government may be described as
a democracy of magistrates elected by the people. He never troubles
himself about the political consistency of his scheme. He does indeed
say that the greater part of the good of this world arises, not from
equality, but from proportion, which he calls the judgment of Zeus
(compare Aristotle's Distributive Justice), but he hardly makes any
attempt to carry out the principle in practice. There is no attempt
to proportion representation to merit; nor is there any body in his
commonwealth which represents the life either of a class or of the whole
state. The manner of appointing magistrates is taken chiefly from the
old democratic constitution of Athens, of which it retains some of the