Laws
attained a considerable degree of success 50 or 100 years ago; but it is
doubtful whether attempts such as these could now escape detection,
if there were any writings of the same author or of the same age to
be compared with them. And ancient forgers were much less skilful than
modern; they were far from being masters in the art of deception, and
had rarely any motive for being so.
(b) But, secondly, the imitator will commonly be least capable of
understanding or imitating that part of a great writer which is most
characteristic of him. In every man's writings there is something like
himself and unlike others, which gives individuality. To appreciate
this latent quality would require a kindred mind, and minute study
and observation. There are a class of similarities which may be called
undesigned coincidences, which are so remote as to be incapable of
being borrowed from one another, and yet, when they are compared, find
a natural explanation in their being the work of the same mind. The
imitator might copy the turns of style--he might repeat images or
illustrations, but he could not enter into the inner circle of Platonic
philosophy. He would understand that part of it which became popular
in the next generation, as for example, the doctrine of ideas or of
numbers: he might approve of communism. But the higher flights of Plato
about the science of dialectic, or the unity of virtue, or a person who
is above the law, would be unintelligible to him.
(c) The argument from imitation assumes a different character when
the supposed imitations are associated with other passages having the
impress of original genius. The strength of the argument from undesigned
coincidences of style is much increased when they are found side by
side with thoughts and expressions which can only have come from a great
original writer. The great excellence, not only of the whole, but even
of the parts of writings, is a strong proof of their genuineness--for
although the great writer may fall below, the forger or imitator cannot
rise much above himself. Whether we can attribute the worst parts of a
work to a forger and the best to a great writer,--as for example, in the
case of some of Shakespeare's plays,--depends upon the probability that
they have been interpolated, or have been the joint work of two writers;
and this can only be established either by express evidence or by a
comparison of other writings of the same class. If the interpolation or
double authorship of Greek writings in the time of Plato could be shown
to be common, then a question, perhaps insoluble, would arise, not
whether the whole, but whether parts of the Platonic dialogues are
genuine, and, if parts only, which parts. Hebrew prophecies and Homeric
poems and Laws of Manu may have grown together in early times, but there
is no reason to think that any of the dialogues of Plato is the result
of a similar process of accumulation. It is therefore rash to say
with Oncken (Die Staatslehre des Aristoteles) that the form in which
Aristotle knew the Laws of Plato must have been different from that in
which they have come down to us.
It must be admitted that these principles are difficult of application.
Yet a criticism may be worth making which rests only on probabilities
or impressions. Great disputes will arise about the merits of different
passages, about what is truly characteristic and original or trivial
and borrowed. Many have thought the Laws to be one of the greatest of
Platonic writings, while in the judgment of Mr. Grote they hardly rise
above the level of the forged epistles. The manner in which a writer
would or would not have written at a particular time of life must be
acknowledged to be a matter of conjecture. But enough has been said to
show that similarities of a certain kind, whether criticism is able to
detect them or not, may be such as must be attributed to an original
writer, and not to a mere imitator.
(d) Applying these principles to the case of the Laws, we have now
to point out that they contain the class of refined or unconscious
similarities which are indicative of genuineness. The parallelisms are
like the repetitions of favourite thoughts into which every one is apt
to fall unawares in conversation or in writing. They are found in a work
which contains many beautiful and remarkable passages. We may therefore
begin by claiming this presumption in their favour. Such undesigned
coincidences, as we may venture to call them, are the following. The
conception of justice as the union of temperance, wisdom, courage
(Laws; Republic): the latent idea of dialectic implied in the notion
of dividing laws after the kinds of virtue (Laws); the approval of the
method of looking at one idea gathered from many things, 'than which a
truer was never discovered by any man' (compare Republic): or again the
description of the Laws as parents (Laws; Republic): the assumption
that religion has been already settled by the oracle of Delphi (Laws;
Republic), to which an appeal is also made in special cases (Laws): the
notion of the battle with self, a paradox for which Plato in a manner
apologizes both in the Laws and the Republic: the remark (Laws) that
just men, even when they are deformed in body, may still be perfectly
beautiful in respect of the excellent justice of their minds (compare
Republic): the argument that ideals are none the worse because they
cannot be carried out (Laws; Republic): the near approach to the idea of
good in 'the principle which is common to all the four virtues,' a
truth which the guardians must be compelled to recognize (Laws; compare
Republic): or again the recognition by reason of the right pleasure and
pain, which had previously been matter of habit (Laws; Republic): or
the blasphemy of saying that the excellency of music is to give pleasure
(Laws; Republic): again the story of the Sidonian Cadmus (Laws), which
is a variation of the Phoenician tale of the earth-born men (Republic):
the comparison of philosophy to a yelping she-dog, both in the Republic
and in the Laws: the remark that no man can practise two trades (Laws;
Republic): or the advantage of the middle condition (Laws; Republic):
the tendency to speak of principles as moulds or forms; compare the
ekmageia of song (Laws), and the tupoi of religion (Republic): or the
remark (Laws) that 'the relaxation of justice makes many cities out of
one,' which may be compared with the Republic: or the description of
lawlessness 'creeping in little by little in the fashions of music and
overturning all things,'--to us a paradox, but to Plato's mind a fixed
idea, which is found in the Laws as well as in the Republic: or the
figure of the parts of the human body under which the parts of the state
are described (Laws; Republic): the apology for delay and diffuseness,
which occurs not unfrequently in the Republic, is carried to an excess
in the Laws (compare Theaet.): the remarkable thought (Laws) that the
soul of the sun is better than the sun, agrees with the relation in
which the idea of good stands to the sun in the Republic, and with the
substitution of mind for the idea of good in the Philebus: the passage
about the tragic poets (Laws) agrees generally with the treatment of
them in the Republic, but is more finely conceived, and worked out in a
nobler spirit. Some lesser similarities of thought and manner should not
be omitted, such as the mention of the thirty years' old students in the
Republic, and the fifty years' old choristers in the Laws; or the
making of the citizens out of wax (Laws) compared with the other image
(Republic); or the number of the tyrant (729), which is NEARLY equal
with the number of days and nights in the year (730), compared with the
'slight correction' of the sacred number 5040, which is divisible by all
the numbers from 1 to 12 except 11, and divisible by 11, if two families
be deducted; or once more, we may compare the ignorance of solid
geometry of which he complains in the Republic and the puzzle about
fractions with the difficulty in the Laws about commensurable and
incommensurable quantities--and the malicious emphasis on the word
gunaikeios (Laws) with the use of the same word (Republic). These and
similar passages tend to show that the author of the Republic is also
the author of the Laws. They are echoes of the same voice, expressions
of the same mind, coincidences too subtle to have been invented by the
ingenuity of any imitator. The force of the argument is increased, if we
remember that no passage in the Laws is exactly copied,--nowhere do
five or six words occur together which are found together elsewhere in
Plato's writings.
In other dialogues of Plato, as well as in the Republic, there are to
be found parallels with the Laws. Such resemblances, as we might expect,
occur chiefly (but not exclusively) in the dialogues which, on other
grounds, we may suppose to be of later date. The punishment of evil is
to be like evil men (Laws), as he says also in the Theaetetus. Compare
again the dependence of tragedy and comedy on one another, of which he
gives the reason in the Laws--'For serious things cannot be understood
without laughable, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man
is really to have intelligence of either'; here he puts forward the
principle which is the groundwork of the thesis of Socrates in the
Symposium, 'that the genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy,
and that the writer of comedy ought to be a writer of tragedy also.'
There is a truth and right which is above Law (Laws), as we learn also
from the Statesman. That men are the possession of the Gods (Laws), is
a reflection which likewise occurs in the Phaedo. The remark, whether
serious or ironical (Laws), that 'the sons of the Gods naturally
believed in the Gods, because they had the means of knowing about them,'
is found in the Timaeus. The reign of Cronos, who is the divine ruler
(Laws), is a reminiscence of the Statesman. It is remarkable that in the
Sophist and Statesman (Soph.), Plato, speaking in the character of the
Eleatic Stranger, has already put on the old man. The madness of the
poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the
Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces
in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which
we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with
the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be
punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all goods
without justice and virtue is the greatest of evils if life be immortal,
but not so great if the bad man lives but a short time.'
The point to be considered is whether these are the kind of parallels
which would be the work of an imitator. Would a forger have had the wit
to select the most peculiar and characteristic thoughts of Plato; would
he have caught the spirit of his philosophy; would he, instead of openly
borrowing, have half concealed his favourite ideas; would he have formed
them into a whole such as the Laws; would he have given another
the credit which he might have obtained for himself; would he have
remembered and made use of other passages of the Platonic writings and
have never deviated into the phraseology of them? Without pressing
such arguments as absolutely certain, we must acknowledge that such a
comparison affords a new ground of real weight for believing the Laws to
be a genuine writing of Plato.
V. The relation of the Republic to the Laws is clearly set forth by
Plato in the Laws. The Republic is the best state, the Laws is the best
possible under the existing conditions of the Greek world. The Republic
is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may