The Republic
to form a single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting; and
the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the
most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body through the
appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other.
There is a tendency in us which says ‘Drink.’ There is another which
says, ‘Do not drink; it is not good for you.’ And we all of us know
which is the rightful superior. We are also responsible for our health,
although into this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which
may be beyond our control. Still even in the management of health, care
and thought, continued over many years, may make us almost free agents,
if we do not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that
all human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.
We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation
which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,
depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a
definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is
afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does not
recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily
disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by
little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither
does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely
influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any
other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of
the will can be more simple or truly asserted.
7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.
(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing
that he is passing lightly over the subject.
(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he
proceeds with the construction of the State.
(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again
as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains
the reader’s interest.
(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of
the poets in Book X.
(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the
valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the
manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up
into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius,
should not escape notice.
BOOK IV. Adeimantus said: ‘Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that
you make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they
are the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men,
lands and houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and
are always mounting guard.’ You may add, I replied, that they receive
no pay but only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or
a mistress. ‘Well, and what answer do you give?’ My answer is, that our
guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,—I should not be
surprised to find in the long-run that they were,—but this is not the
aim of our constitution, which was designed for the good of the whole
and not of any one part. If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for
having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not
purple but black, he would reply: ‘The eye must be an eye, and you
should look at the statue as a whole.’ ‘Now I can well imagine a fool’s
paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple
and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand,
that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the
other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. And a State
may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into
boon companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we are not
talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man
is expected to do his own work. The happiness resides not in this or
that class, but in the State as a whole. I have another remark to
make:—A middle condition is best for artisans; they should have money
enough to buy tools, and not enough to be independent of business. And
will not the same condition be best for our citizens? If they are poor,
they will be mean; if rich, luxurious and lazy; and in neither case
contented. ‘But then how will our poor city be able to go to war
against an enemy who has money?’ There may be a difficulty in fighting
against one enemy; against two there will be none. In the first place,
the contest will be carried on by trained warriors against well-to-do
citizens: and is not a regular athlete an easy match for two stout
opponents at least? Suppose also, that before engaging we send
ambassadors to one of the two cities, saying, ‘Silver and gold we have
not; do you help us and take our share of the spoil;’—who would fight
against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join with them in preying
upon the fatted sheep? ‘But if many states join their resources, shall
we not be in danger?’ I am amused to hear you use the word ‘state’ of
any but our own State. They are ‘states,’ but not ‘a state’—many in
one. For in every state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor,
which you may set one against the other. But our State, while she
remains true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of
Hellenic states.
To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of unity;
it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. This is a matter
of secondary importance, like the principle of transposition which was
intimated in the parable of the earthborn men. The meaning there
implied was that every man should do that for which he was fitted, and
be at one with himself, and then the whole city would be united. But
all these things are secondary, if education, which is the great
matter, be duly regarded. When the wheel has once been set in motion,
the speed is always increasing; and each generation improves upon the
preceding, both in physical and moral qualities. The care of the
governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from
innovation; alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon
end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at first, and
begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly
upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial
relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is
ruin and confusion everywhere. But if education remains in the
established form, there will be no danger. A restorative process will
be always going on; the spirit of law and order will raise up what has
fallen down. Nor will any regulations be needed for the lesser matters
of life—rules of deportment or fashions of dress. Like invites like for
good or for evil. Education will correct deficiencies and supply the
power of self-government. Far be it from us to enter into the
particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education,
and education will take care of all other things.
But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will
make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by
some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of
living. If you tell such persons that they must first alter their
habits, then they grow angry; they are charming people. ‘Charming,—nay,
the very reverse.’ Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good
graces, nor the state which is like them. And such states there are
which first ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the
constitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and out
of anything; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them, is their
leader and saviour. ‘Yes, the men are as bad as the states.’ But do you
not admire their cleverness? ‘Nay, some of them are stupid enough to
believe what the people tell them.’ And when all the world is telling a
man that he is six feet high, and he has no measure, how can he believe
anything else? But don’t get into a passion: to see our statesmen
trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the
Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. Minute
enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones.
And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to
Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all
things—that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon
the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any
sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No foreign god shall be supreme
in our realms...
Here, as Socrates would say, let us ‘reflect on’ (Greek) what has
preceded: thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens,
but only of the well-being of the State. They may be the happiest of
men, but our principal aim in founding the State was not to make them
happy. They were to be guardians, not holiday-makers. In this pleasant
manner is presented to us the famous question both of ancient and
modern philosophy, touching the relation of duty to happiness, of right
to utility.
First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas.
The utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of error, and
shows to us a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. It may be
admitted further that right and utility are co-extensive, and that he
who makes the happiness of mankind his object has one of the highest
and noblest motives of human action. But utility is not the historical
basis of morality; nor the aspect in which moral and religious ideas
commonly occur to the mind. The greatest happiness of all is, as we
believe, the far-off result of the divine government of the universe.
The greatest happiness of the individual is certainly to be found in a
life of virtue and goodness. But we seem to be more assured of a law of
right than we can be of a divine purpose, that ‘all mankind should be
saved;’ and we infer the one from the other. And the greatest happiness
of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest happiness in the
ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised in a life of pain, or
in a voluntary death. Further, the word ‘happiness’ has several
ambiguities; it may mean either pleasure or an ideal life, happiness
subjective or objective, in this world or in another, of ourselves only
or of our neighbours and of all men everywhere. By the modern founder
of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested motives of
action are included under the same term, although they are commonly
opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. The word happiness has not
the definiteness or the sacredness of ‘truth’ and ‘right’; it does not
equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the
conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the comforts and
conveniences of life; too little with ‘the goods of the soul which we
desire for their own sake.’ In a great trial, or danger, or temptation,
or in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely thought of. For these
reasons ‘the greatest happiness’ principle is not the true foundation
of ethics. But though not the first principle, it is the second, which
is like unto it, and is often of easier application. For the larger
part of human actions are neither right nor wrong, except in so far as
they tend to the happiness of mankind (Introd. to Gorgias and
Philebus).
The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or expedient
seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater authority. For
concerning political measures, we chiefly ask: How will they affect the