The Republic
with blessings greater still—they and their children having a better
maintenance during life, and after death an honourable burial. Nor has
the happiness of the individual been sacrificed to the happiness of the
State; our Olympic victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he
has a happiness beyond that of any cobbler. At the same time, if any
conceited youth begins to dream of appropriating the State to himself,
he must be reminded that ‘half is better than the whole.’ ‘I should
certainly advise him to stay where he is when he has the promise of
such a brave life.’
But is such a community possible?—as among the animals, so also among
men; and if possible, in what way possible? About war there is no
difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted to military service.
Parents will take their children to look on at a battle, just as
potters’ boys are trained to the business by looking on at the wheel.
And to the parents themselves, as to other animals, the sight of their
young ones will prove a great incentive to bravery. Young warriors must
learn, but they must not run into danger, although a certain degree of
risk is worth incurring when the benefit is great. The young creatures
should be placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they
should have wings—that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which
they may fly away and escape. One of the first things to be done is to
teach a youth to ride.
Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen;
gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented
to the enemy. But what shall be done to the hero? First of all he shall
be crowned by all the youths in the army; secondly, he shall receive
the right hand of fellowship; and thirdly, do you think that there is
any harm in his being kissed? We have already determined that he shall
have more wives than others, in order that he may have as many children
as possible. And at a feast he shall have more to eat; we have the
authority of Homer for honouring brave men with ‘long chines,’ which is
an appropriate compliment, because meat is a very strengthening thing.
Fill the bowl then, and give the best seats and meats to the brave—may
they do them good! And he who dies in battle will be at once declared
to be of the golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of
Hesiod’s guardian angels. He shall be worshipped after death in the
manner prescribed by the oracle; and not only he, but all other
benefactors of the State who die in any other way, shall be admitted to
the same honours.
The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies? Shall Hellenes be
enslaved? No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing
under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall the dead be despoiled?
Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and
has been the ruin of many an army. There is meanness and feminine
malice in making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the
owner has fled—like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels
with the stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of
Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are
a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds
there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory—the
houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried
off. For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is
properly termed ‘discord,’ and only the second ‘war;’ and war between
Hellenes is in reality civil war—a quarrel in a family, which is ever
to be regarded as unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted
with a view to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of
those who would chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against
a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women, and
children, but only against a few guilty persons; when they are punished
peace will be restored. That is the way in which Hellenes should war
against one another—and against barbarians, as they war against one
another now.
‘But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a
State possible? I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness
of being one family—fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out to
war together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal
State.’ You are too unmerciful. The first wave and the second wave I
have hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the
third. When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to
take pity. ‘Not a whit.’
Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after
justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this ideal at
all the worse for being impracticable? Would the picture of a perfectly
beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? Can any
reality come up to the idea? Nature will not allow words to be fully
realized; but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a
measure, I think that an approach may be made to the perfection of
which I dream by one or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes
in the present constitution of States. I would reduce them to a single
one—the great wave, as I call it. Until, then, kings are philosophers,
or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor
the human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being. I know
that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive.
‘Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you with
sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to prepare an
answer.’ You got me into the scrape, I said. ‘And I was right,’ he
replied; ‘however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing,
well-meaning ally.’ Having the help of such a champion, I will do my
best to maintain my position. And first, I must explain of whom I speak
and what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and
rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how
indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn
blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning
grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are
faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new
term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is ‘honey-pale.’
Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their
affection in every form. Now here comes the point:—The philosopher too
is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity.
‘But will curiosity make a philosopher? Are the lovers of sights and
sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac
festivals, to be called philosophers?’ They are not true philosophers,
but only an imitation. ‘Then how are we to describe the true?’
You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice,
beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various
combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are
philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and
understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or
waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the
light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only.
Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify
him without revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if
he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of
something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and
there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of
opinion only. Opinion and knowledge, then, having distinct objects,
must also be distinct faculties. And by faculties I mean powers unseen
and distinguishable only by the difference in their objects, as opinion
and knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is
unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the
object of knowledge, and not-being of ignorance, and these are the
extremes, opinion must lie between them, and may be called darker than
the one and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent
matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence
and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good friend, who denies
abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many
just, whether everything he sees is not in some point of view
different—the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? Is
not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative
terms which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the
old riddle—‘A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a
bird with a stone and not a stone.’ The mind cannot be fixed on either
alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted
objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being
and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable
objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the
world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is
not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only...
The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the
community of property and of family are first maintained, and the
transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these
Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of
Book IV, which fall unperceived on the reader’s mind, as they are
supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus.
The ‘paradoxes,’ as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the
Republic will be reserved for another place; a few remarks on the
style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added.
First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of
scheme or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third
and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All
that can be said of the extravagance of Plato’s proposals is
anticipated by himself. Nothing is more admirable than the hesitation
with which he proposes the solemn text, ‘Until kings are philosophers,’
etc.; or the reaction from the sublime to the ridiculous, when Glaucon
describes the manner in which the new truth will be received by
mankind.
Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the
communistic plan. Nothing is told us of the application of communism to
the lower classes; nor is the table of prohibited degrees capable of
being made out. It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal
festival may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of
its parents, at another. Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at
the same time he does not wish to bring before us the fact that the
city would be divided into families of those born seven and nine months
after each hymeneal festival. If it were worth while to argue seriously
about such fancies, we might remark that while all the old affinities
are abolished, the newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural
or rational principle, but only upon the accident of children having
been born in the same month and year. Nor does he explain how the lots
could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together the
fairest and best. The singular expression which is employed to describe
the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet.
In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature
of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of
Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or