The Republic
happiness of mankind? Yet here too we may observe that what we term
expediency is merely the law of right limited by the conditions of
human society. Right and truth are the highest aims of government as
well as of individuals; and we ought not to lose sight of them because
we cannot directly enforce them. They appeal to the better mind of
nations; and sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests
to resist. They are the watchwords which all men use in matters of
public policy, as well as in their private dealings; the peace of
Europe may be said to depend upon them. In the most commercial and
utilitarian states of society the power of ideas remains. And all the
higher class of statesmen have in them something of that idealism which
Pericles is said to have gathered from the teaching of Anaxagoras. They
recognise that the true leader of men must be above the motives of
ambition, and that national character is of greater value than material
comfort and prosperity. And this is the order of thought in Plato;
first, he expects his citizens to do their duty, and then under
favourable circumstances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State,
their happiness is assured. That he was far from excluding the modern
principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other
passages; in which ‘the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most
honourable’, and also ‘the most sacred’.
We may note
(1) The manner in which the objection of Adeimantus here, is designed
to draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates.
(2) The conception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of
politics and of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of
criticism, which, under the various names of harmony, symmetry,
measure, proportion, unity, the Greek seems to have applied to works of
art.
(3) The requirement that the State should be limited in size, after the
traditional model of a Greek state; as in the Politics of Aristotle,
the fact that the cities of Hellas were small is converted into a
principle.
(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the
light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the
‘charming’ patients who are always making themselves worse; or again,
the playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave
irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six
feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is
to be pardoned for his ignorance—he is too amusing for us to be
seriously angry with him.
(5) The light and superficial manner in which religion is passed over
when provision has been made for two great principles,—first, that
religion shall be based on the highest conception of the gods,
secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type shall be
maintained...
Socrates proceeds: But where amid all this is justice? Son of Ariston,
tell me where. Light a candle and search the city, and get your brother
and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her. ‘That won’t
do,’ replied Glaucon, ‘you yourself promised to make the search and
talked about the impiety of deserting justice.’ Well, I said, I will
lead the way, but do you follow. My notion is, that our State being
perfect will contain all the four virtues—wisdom, courage, temperance,
justice. If we eliminate the three first, the unknown remainder will be
justice.
First then, of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will
be wise because politic. And policy is one among many kinds of
skill,—not the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of
the husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of
the whole State. Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are
a small class in number, far smaller than the blacksmiths; but in them
is concentrated the wisdom of the State. And if this small ruling class
have wisdom, then the whole State will be wise.
Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in
another class—that of soldiers. Courage may be defined as a sort of
salvation—the never-failing salvation of the opinions which law and
education have prescribed concerning dangers. You know the way in which
dyers first prepare the white ground and then lay on the dye of purple
or of any other colour. Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no
soap or lye will ever wash them out. Now the ground is education, and
the laws are the colours; and if the ground is properly laid, neither
the soap of pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever wash them
out. This power which preserves right opinion about danger I would ask
you to call ‘courage,’ adding the epithet ‘political’ or ‘civilized’ in
order to distinguish it from mere animal courage and from a higher
courage which may hereafter be discussed.
Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. More than the preceding
virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. Some light is thrown
upon the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as
‘master of himself’—which has an absurd sound, because the master is
also the servant. The expression really means that the better principle
in a man masters the worse. There are in cities whole classes—women,
slaves and the like—who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the
better; and in our State the former class are held under control by the
latter. Now to which of these classes does temperance belong? ‘To both
of them.’ And our State if any will be the abode of temperance; and we
were right in describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused
through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to be of one mind,
and attuning the upper and middle and lower classes like the strings of
an instrument, whether you suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength
or wealth.
And now we are near the spot; let us draw in and surround the cover and
watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away and escape. Tell
me, if you see the thicket move first. ‘Nay, I would have you lead.’
Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult;
but we must push on. I begin to see a track. ‘Good news.’ Why, Glaucon,
our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our
eyes into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as
bad as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have
you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every
man doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation
of the State—what but this was justice? Is there any other virtue
remaining which can compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in
the scale of political virtue? For ‘every one having his own’ is the
great object of government; and the great object of trade is that every
man should do his own business. Not that there is much harm in a
carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself
into a carpenter; but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his
last and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single
individual is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil
is injustice, or every man doing another’s business. I do not say that
as yet we are in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. For the
definition which we believe to hold good in states has still to be
tested by the individual. Having read the large letters we will now
come back to the small. From the two together a brilliant light may be
struck out...
Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of
residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the
three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State,
although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony
than the first two. If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be
sought for in the relation of the three parts in the soul or classes in
the State to one another. It is obvious and simple, and for that very
reason has not been found out. The modern logician will be inclined to
object that ideas cannot be separated like chemical substances, but
that they run into one another and may be only different aspects or
names of the same thing, and such in this instance appears to be the
case. For the definition here given of justice is verbally the same as
one of the definitions of temperance given by Socrates in the
Charmides, which however is only provisional, and is afterwards
rejected. And so far from justice remaining over when the other virtues
are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with
difficulty be distinguished. Temperance appears to be the virtue of a
part only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of
the whole soul. Yet on the other hand temperance is also described as a
sort of harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. Justice seems
to differ from temperance in degree rather than in kind; whereas
temperance is the harmony of discordant elements, justice is the
perfect order by which all natures and classes do their own business,
the right man in the right place, the division and co-operation of all
the citizens. Justice, again, is a more abstract notion than the other
virtues, and therefore, from Plato’s point of view, the foundation of
them, to which they are referred and which in idea precedes them. The
proposal to omit temperance is a mere trick of style intended to avoid
monotony.
There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier Dialogues of
Plato (Protagoras; Arist. Nic. Ethics), ‘Whether the virtues are one or
many?’ This receives an answer which is to the effect that there are
four cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in
ethical philosophy), and one supreme over the rest, which is not like
Aristotle’s conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others,
but the whole of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal
conception of justice or order in the first education and in the moral
nature of man, the still more universal conception of the good in the
second education and in the sphere of speculative knowledge seems to
succeed. Both might be equally described by the terms ‘law,’ ‘order,’
‘harmony;’ but while the idea of good embraces ‘all time and all
existence,’ the conception of justice is not extended beyond man.
...Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. But
first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul.
His argument is as follows:—Quantity makes no difference in quality.
The word ‘just,’ whether applied to the individual or to the State, has
the same meaning. And the term ‘justice’ implied that the same three
principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own
business. But are they really three or one? The question is difficult,
and one which can hardly be solved by the methods which we are now
using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time.
‘The shorter will satisfy me.’ Well then, you would admit that the
qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose
them? The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race
intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because the
individual members of each have such and such a character; the
difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or
three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature,
desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul
comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry, however, requires
a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation
cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility
in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is