Laws
not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or
son of a God (who can say?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of
all other states and the exemplar of human life. The Laws distinctly
acknowledge what the Republic partly admits, that the ideal is
inimitable by us, but that we should 'lift up our eyes to the heavens'
and try to regulate our lives according to the divine image. The
citizens are no longer to have wives and children in common, and are
no longer to be under the government of philosophers. But the spirit of
communism or communion is to continue among them, though reverence for
the sacredness of the family, and respect of children for parents, not
promiscuous hymeneals, are now the foundation of the state; the sexes
are to be as nearly on an equality as possible; they are to meet
at common tables, and to share warlike pursuits (if the women will
consent), and to have a common education. The legislator has taken the
place of the philosopher, but a council of elders is retained, who are
to fulfil the duties of the legislator when he has passed out of life.
The addition of younger persons to this council by co-optation is
an improvement on the governing body of the Republic. The scheme of
education in the Laws is of a far lower kind than that which Plato had
conceived in the Republic. There he would have his rulers trained in all
knowledge meeting in the idea of good, of which the different branches
of mathematical science are but the hand-maidens or ministers; here he
treats chiefly of popular education, stopping short with the preliminary
sciences,--these are to be studied partly with a view to their practical
usefulness, which in the Republic he holds cheap, and even more with a
view to avoiding impiety, of which in the Republic he says nothing; he
touches very lightly on dialectic, which is still to be retained for
the rulers. Yet in the Laws there remain traces of the old educational
ideas. He is still for banishing the poets; and as he finds the works of
prose writers equally dangerous, he would substitute for them the study
of his own laws. He insists strongly on the importance of mathematics
as an educational instrument. He is no more reconciled to the Greek
mythology than in the Republic, though he would rather say nothing about
it out of a reverence for antiquity; and he is equally willing to have
recourse to fictions, if they have a moral tendency. His thoughts recur
to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in
which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them;
but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs
have passed away. Though he is no longer fired with dialectical
enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to 'look at one idea gathered
from many things,' and to 'perceive the principle which is the same in
all the four virtues.' He still recognizes the enormous influence of
music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he
seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and
the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the
unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from
the words, and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the
theatres. He assimilates the education of the two sexes, as far as
possible, both in music and gymnastic, and, as in the Republic, he would
give to gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object
is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the
Statesman, he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures--the passionate
with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant
of the Statesman, who has no place in the Republic, again appears.
In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the
degeneracy and incapacity of the rulers of his own time.
In the Laws, the philosophers, if not banished, like the poets, are
at least ignored; and religion takes the place of philosophy in the
regulation of human life. It must however be remembered that the
religion of Plato is co-extensive with morality, and is that purified
religion and mythology of which he speaks in the second book of the
Republic. There is no real discrepancy in the two works. In a practical
treatise, he speaks of religion rather than of philosophy; just as he
appears to identify virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find
the common element of the virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical
theses that they are one, or that they are identical with knowledge. The
dialectic and the idea of good, which even Glaucon in the Republic could
not understand, would be out of place in a less ideal work. There may
also be a change in his own mind, the purely intellectual aspect of
philosophy having a diminishing interest to him in his old age.
Some confusion occurs in the passage in which Plato speaks of the
Republic, occasioned by his reference to a third state, which he
proposes (D.V.) hereafter to expound. Like many other thoughts in the
Laws, the allusion is obscure from not being worked out. Aristotle
(Polit.) speaks of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor
the best under existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior
to either, destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of
life--apparently such a beginning of primitive society as is described
in Laws iii. But it is not clear that by this the third state of Plato
is intended. It is possible that Plato may have meant by his third state
an historical sketch, bearing the same relation to the Laws which the
unfinished Critias would have borne to the Republic; or he may, perhaps,
have intended to describe a state more nearly approximating than the
Laws to existing Greek states.
The Statesman is a mere fragment when compared with the Laws, yet
combining a second interest of dialectic as well as politics, which is
wanting in the larger work. Several points of similarity and contrast
may be observed between them. In some respects the Statesman is
even more ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of
paradisiacal life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic
looks forward to a coming kingdom of philosophers. Of this kingdom of
Cronos there is also mention in the Laws. Again, in the Statesman, the
Eleatic Stranger rises above law to the conception of the living voice
of the lawgiver, who is able to provide for individual cases. A similar
thought is repeated in the Laws: 'If in the order of nature, and by
divine destiny, a man were able to apprehend the truth about these
things, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no
law or order above knowledge, nor can mind without impiety be deemed
the subject or slave of any, but rather the lord of all.' The union of
opposite natures, who form the warp and the woof of the political web,
is a favourite thought which occurs in both dialogues (Laws; Statesman).
The Laws are confessedly a Second-best, an inferior Ideal, to which
Plato has recourse, when he finds that the city of Philosophers is no
longer 'within the horizon of practical politics.' But it is curious
to observe that the higher Ideal is always returning (compare Arist.
Polit.), and that he is not much nearer the actual fact, nor more on
the level of ordinary life in the Laws than in the Republic. It is also
interesting to remark that the new Ideal is always falling away, and
that he hardly supposes the one to be more capable of being realized
than the other. Human beings are troublesome to manage; and the
legislator cannot adapt his enactments to the infinite variety of
circumstances; after all he must leave the administration of them to his
successors; and though he would have liked to make them as permanent
as they are in Egypt, he cannot escape from the necessity of change.
At length Plato is obliged to institute a Nocturnal Council which is
supposed to retain the mind of the legislator, and of which some of the
members are even supposed to go abroad and inspect the institutions of
foreign countries, as a foundation for changes in their own. The spirit
of such changes, though avoiding the extravagance of a popular assembly,
being only so much change as the conservative temper of old members
is likely to allow, is nevertheless inconsistent with the fixedness of
Egypt which Plato wishes to impress upon Hellenic institutions. He is
inconsistent with himself as the truth begins to dawn upon him that 'in
the execution things for the most part fall short of our conception of
them' (Republic).
And is not this true of ideals of government in general? We are always
disappointed in them. Nothing great can be accomplished in the
short space of human life; wherefore also we look forward to another
(Republic). As we grow old, we are sensible that we have no power
actively to pursue our ideals any longer. We have had our opportunity
and do not aspire to be more than men: we have received our 'wages and
are going home.' Neither do we despair of the future of mankind, because
we have been able to do so little in comparison of the whole. We look in
vain for consistency either in men or things. But we have seen enough of
improvement in our own time to justify us in the belief that the world
is worth working for and that a good man's life is not thrown away. Such
reflections may help us to bring home to ourselves by inward sympathy
the language of Plato in the Laws, and to combine into something like a
whole his various and at first sight inconsistent utterances.
VI. The Republic may be described as the Spartan constitution appended
to a government of philosophers. But in the Laws an Athenian element is
also introduced. Many enactments are taken from the Athenian; the four
classes are borrowed from the constitution of Cleisthenes, which Plato
regards as the best form of Athenian government, and the guardians of
the law bear a certain resemblance to the archons. In the constitution
of the Laws nearly all officers are elected by a vote more or less
popular and by lot. But the assembly only exists for the purposes of
election, and has no legislative or executive powers. The Nocturnal
Council, which is the highest body in the state, has several of the
functions of the ancient Athenian Areopagus, after which it appears to
be modelled. Life is to wear, as at Athens, a joyous and festive look;
there are to be Bacchic choruses, and men of mature age are encouraged
in moderate potations. On the other hand, the common meals, the public
education, the crypteia are borrowed from Sparta and not from Athens,
and the superintendence of private life, which was to be practised by
the governors, has also its prototype in Sparta. The extravagant dislike
which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the
reverse of Athenian.
The best-governed Hellenic states traced the origin of their laws to
individual lawgivers. These were real persons, though we are uncertain
how far they originated or only modified the institutions which are
ascribed to them. But the lawgiver, though not a myth, was a fixed idea
in the mind of the Greek,--as fixed as the Trojan war or the earth-born
Cadmus. 'This was what Solon meant or said'--was the form in which the
Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a
disputed point of law. And the constant reference in the Laws of Plato
to the lawgiver is altogether in accordance with Greek modes of thinking
and speaking.
There is also, as in the Republic, a Pythagorean element. The highest
branch of education is arithmetic; to know the order of the heavenly
bodies, and to reconcile the apparent contradiction of their movements,
is an important part of religion; the lives of the citizens are to have