Laws
are laid down respecting taxation, respecting economy in sacred rites,
respecting judges, their duties and sentences, and respecting sepulchral
places and ceremonies. Here the Laws end. Lastly, a Nocturnal Council
is instituted for the preservation of the state, consisting of older and
younger members, who are to exhibit in their lives that virtue which is
the basis of the state, to know the one in many, and to be educated
in divine and every other kind of knowledge which will enable them to
fulfil their office.
III. The style of the Laws differs in several important respects from
that of the other dialogues of Plato: (1) in the want of character,
power, and lively illustration; (2) in the frequency of mannerisms
(compare Introduction to the Philebus); (3) in the form and rhythm of
the sentences; (4) in the use of words. On the other hand, there are
many passages (5) which are characterized by a sort of ethical grandeur;
and (6) in which, perhaps, a greater insight into human nature, and a
greater reach of practical wisdom is shown, than in any other of Plato's
writings.
1. The discourse of the three old men is described by themselves as an
old man's game of play. Yet there is little of the liveliness of a game
in their mode of treating the subject. They do not throw the ball to
and fro, but two out of the three are listeners to the third, who is
constantly asserting his superior wisdom and opportunities of knowledge,
and apologizing (not without reason) for his own want of clearness of
speech. He will 'carry them over the stream;' he will answer for them
when the argument is beyond their comprehension; he is afraid of their
ignorance of mathematics, and thinks that gymnastic is likely to be more
intelligible to them;--he has repeated his words several times, and yet
they cannot understand him. The subject did not properly take the form
of dialogue, and also the literary vigour of Plato had passed away. The
old men speak as they might be expected to speak, and in this there is
a touch of dramatic truth. Plato has given the Laws that form or want of
form which indicates the failure of natural power. There is no regular
plan--none of that consciousness of what has preceded and what is to
follow, which makes a perfect style,--but there are several attempts
at a plan; the argument is 'pulled up,' and frequent explanations are
offered why a particular topic was introduced.
The fictions of the Laws have no longer the verisimilitude which
is characteristic of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus, or even of the
Statesman. We can hardly suppose that an educated Athenian would have
placed the visit of Epimenides to Athens ten years before the
Persian war, or have imagined that a war with Messene prevented the
Lacedaemonians from coming to the rescue of Hellas. The narrative of the
origin of the Dorian institutions, which are said to have been due to
a fear of the growing power of the Assyrians, is a plausible invention,
which may be compared with the tale of the island of Atlantis and the
poem of Solon, but is not accredited by similar arts of deception.
The other statement that the Dorians were Achaean exiles assembled
by Dorieus, and the assertion that Troy was included in the Assyrian
Empire, have some foundation (compare for the latter point, Diod.
Sicul.). Nor is there anywhere in the Laws that lively enargeia, that
vivid mise en scene, which is as characteristic of Plato as of some
modern novelists.
The old men are afraid of the ridicule which 'will fall on their heads
more than enough,' and they do not often indulge in a joke. In one
of the few which occur, the book of the Laws, if left incomplete, is
compared to a monster wandering about without a head. But we no longer
breathe the atmosphere of humour which pervades the Symposium and the
Euthydemus, in which we pass within a few sentences from the broadest
Aristophanic joke to the subtlest refinement of wit and fancy; instead
of this, in the Laws an impression of baldness and feebleness is often
left upon our minds. Some of the most amusing descriptions, as, for
example, of children roaring for the first three years of life; or of
the Athenians walking into the country with fighting-cocks under their
arms; or of the slave doctor who knocks about his patients finely; and
the gentleman doctor who courteously persuades them; or of the way of
keeping order in the theatre, 'by a hint from a stick,' are narrated
with a commonplace gravity; but where we find this sort of dry humour we
shall not be far wrong in thinking that the writer intended to make us
laugh. The seriousness of age takes the place of the jollity of youth.
Life should have holidays and festivals; yet we rebuke ourselves when we
laugh, and take our pleasures sadly. The irony of the earlier dialogues,
of which some traces occur in the tenth book, is replaced by a severity
which hardly condescends to regard human things. 'Let us say, if you
please, that man is of some account, but I was speaking of him in
comparison with God.'
The imagery and illustrations are poor in themselves, and are not
assisted by the surrounding phraseology. We have seen how in the
Republic, and in the earlier dialogues, figures of speech such as 'the
wave,' 'the drone,' 'the chase,' 'the bride,' appear and reappear at
intervals. Notes are struck which are repeated from time to time, as
in a strain of music. There is none of this subtle art in the Laws. The
illustrations, such as the two kinds of doctors, 'the three kinds of
funerals,' the fear potion, the puppet, the painter leaving a successor
to restore his picture, the 'person stopping to consider where three
ways meet,' the 'old laws about water of which he will not divert the
course,' can hardly be said to do much credit to Plato's invention. The
citations from the poets have lost that fanciful character which gave
them their charm in the earlier dialogues. We are tired of images taken
from the arts of navigation, or archery, or weaving, or painting, or
medicine, or music. Yet the comparisons of life to a tragedy, or of
the working of mind to the revolution of the self-moved, or of the aged
parent to the image of a God dwelling in the house, or the reflection
that 'man is made to be the plaything of God, and that this rightly
considered is the best of him,' have great beauty.
2. The clumsiness of the style is exhibited in frequent mannerisms and
repetitions. The perfection of the Platonic dialogue consists in the
accuracy with which the question and answer are fitted into one another,
and the regularity with which the steps of the argument succeed one
another. This finish of style is no longer discernible in the Laws.
There is a want of variety in the answers; nothing can be drawn out
of the respondents but 'Yes' or 'No,' 'True,' 'To be sure,' etc.; the
insipid forms, 'What do you mean?' 'To what are you referring?' are
constantly returning. Again and again the speaker is charged, or charges
himself, with obscurity; and he repeats again and again that he will
explain his views more clearly. The process of thought which should
be latent in the mind of the writer appears on the surface. In several
passages the Athenian praises himself in the most unblushing manner,
very unlike the irony of the earlier dialogues, as when he declares that
'the laws are a divine work given by some inspiration of the Gods,' and
that 'youth should commit them to memory instead of the compositions of
the poets.' The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the Protagoras
and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it. The
legislator is always addressing the speakers or the youth of the state,
and the speakers are constantly making addresses to the legislator. A
tendency to a paradoxical manner of statement is also observable. 'We
must have drinking,' 'we must have a virtuous tyrant'--this is too much
for the duller wits of the Lacedaemonian and Cretan, who at first start
back in surprise. More than in any other writing of Plato the tone is
hortatory; the laws are sermons as well as laws; they are considered to
have a religious sanction, and to rest upon a religious sentiment in the
mind of the citizens. The words of the Athenian are attributed to the
Lacedaemonian and Cretan, who are supposed to have made them their own,
after the manner of the earlier dialogues. Resumptions of subjects which
have been half disposed of in a previous passage constantly occur: the
arrangement has neither the clearness of art nor the freedom of nature.
Irrelevant remarks are made here and there, or illustrations used which
are not properly fitted in. The dialogue is generally weak and laboured,
and is in the later books fairly given up, apparently, because unsuited
to the subject of the work. The long speeches or sermons of the
Athenian, often extending over several pages, have never the grace
and harmony which are exhibited in the earlier dialogues. For Plato is
incapable of sustained composition; his genius is dramatic rather than
oratorical; he can converse, but he cannot make a speech. Even the
Timaeus, which is one of his most finished works, is full of abrupt
transitions. There is the same kind of difference between the dialogue
and the continuous discourse of Plato as between the narrative and
speeches of Thucydides.
3. The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease,
clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in the
scale of human feelings without impropriety; and such is the divine gift
of language possessed by Plato in the Symposium and Phaedrus. From this
there are many fallings-off in the Laws: first, in the structure of
the sentences, which are rhythmical and monotonous,--the formal and
sophistical manner of the age is superseding the natural genius of
Plato: secondly, many of them are of enormous length, and the latter end
often forgets the beginning of them,--they seem never to have received
the second thoughts of the author; either the emphasis is wrongly
placed, or there is a want of point in a clause; or an absolute case
occurs which is not properly separated from the rest of the sentence; or
words are aggregated in a manner which fails to show their relation to
one another; or the connecting particles are omitted at the beginning of
sentences; the uses of the relative and antecedent are more indistinct,
the changes of person and number more frequent, examples of pleonasm,
tautology, and periphrasis, antitheses of positive and negative, false
emphasis, and other affectations, are more numerous than in the other
writings of Plato; there is also a more common and sometimes unmeaning
use of qualifying formulae, os epos eipein, kata dunamin, and of double
expressions, pante pantos, oudame oudamos, opos kai ope--these are too
numerous to be attributed to errors in the text; again, there is an
over-curious adjustment of verb and participle, noun and epithet, and
other artificial forms of cadence and expression take the place of
natural variety: thirdly, the absence of metaphorical language is
remarkable--the style is not devoid of ornament, but the ornament is of
a debased rhetorical kind, patched on to instead of growing out of the
subject; there is a great command of words, and a laboured use of
them; forced attempts at metaphor occur in several passages,--e.g.
parocheteuein logois; ta men os tithemena ta d os paratithemena; oinos
kolazomenos upo nephontos eterou theou; the plays on the word nomos =
nou dianome, ode etara: fourthly, there is a foolish extravagance of
language in other passages,--'the swinish ignorance of arithmetic;' 'the
justice and suitableness of the discourse on laws;' over-emphasis; 'best
of Greeks,' said of all the Greeks, and the like: fifthly, poor and
insipid illustrations are also common: sixthly, we may observe an