The Republic
soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and
harmony; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he
will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of
his own soul. For the same reason he will only accept such honours as
will make him a better man; any others he will decline. ‘In that case,’
said he, ‘he will never be a politician.’ Yes, but he will, in his own
city; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine
accident. ‘You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which
has no place upon earth.’ But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern
of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image.
Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not; he will act
according to that pattern and no other...
The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:—(1) the
account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the
king from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven.
1. Plato’s account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in
this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which
are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics,
opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of
the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the
Epicureans in describing pleasure as something more than the absence of
pain. This is proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which
have no antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as
the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and
anticipation. In the previous book he had made the distinction between
necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and
he now observes that there are a further class of ‘wild beast’
pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle’s (Greek). He dwells upon the
relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion
which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the
superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the
fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. The pre-eminence of royal
pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of
the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are
incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus, in his treatment of
pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is ‘sawn
up into quantities’ by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally
made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further
technical distinctions. Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the
illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of
pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence
of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the
knowledge from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that
the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting
than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents
of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus).
2. The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant,
and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. Which Plato
characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life,
because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year.
He is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is
immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea.
Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring
(Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the
figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the
pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in modern
times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a
philosophical formula. ‘It is not easy to estimate the loss of the
tyrant, except perhaps in this way,’ says Plato. So we might say, that
although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad
man, yet you may measure the difference between them by valuing one
minute of the one at an hour of the other (‘One day in thy courts is
better than a thousand’), or you might say that ‘there is an infinite
difference.’ But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, ‘They
are a thousand miles asunder.’ And accordingly Plato finds the natural
vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this arithmetical
formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both here and in
the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of the truth
of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical figure;
just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is
verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. In
speaking of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably
intended to intimate that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the
royal life.
The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is
effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the
mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is some
difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained;
the oligarch is removed in the third degree from the royal and
aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third degree from the
oligarchical; but we have to arrange the terms as the sides of a square
and to count the oligarch twice over, thus reckoning them not as = 5
but as = 9. The square of 9 is passed lightly over as only a step
towards the cube.
3. Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more
convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. At the end of
the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city
of philosophers on earth. The vision which has received form and
substance at his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. And yet
this distant kingdom is also the rule of man’s life. (‘Say not lo!
here, or lo! there, for the kingdom of God is within you.’) Thus a note
is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future life in the
following Book. But the future life is present still; the ideal of
politics is to be realized in the individual.
BOOK X. Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was
nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. The
division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation.
I do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage
on the understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge
which heals error. I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even
now he appears to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But much
as I love the man, I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out:
and first of all, will you explain what is imitation, for really I do
not understand? ‘How likely then that I should understand!’ That might
very well be, for the duller often sees better than the keener eye.
‘True, but in your presence I can hardly venture to say what I think.’
Then suppose that we begin in our old fashion, with the doctrine of
universals. Let us assume the existence of beds and tables. There is
one idea of a bed, or of a table, which the maker of each had in his
mind when making them; he did not make the ideas of beds and tables,
but he made beds and tables according to the ideas. And is there not a
maker of the works of all workmen, who makes not only vessels but
plants and animals, himself, the earth and heaven, and things in heaven
and under the earth? He makes the Gods also. ‘He must be a wizard
indeed!’ But do you not see that there is a sense in which you could do
the same? You have only to take a mirror, and catch the reflection of
the sun, and the earth, or anything else—there now you have made them.
‘Yes, but only in appearance.’ Exactly so; and the painter is such a
creator as you are with the mirror, and he is even more unreal than the
carpenter; although neither the carpenter nor any other artist can be
supposed to make the absolute bed. ‘Not if philosophers may be
believed.’ Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect
relation to the truth. Reflect:—Here are three beds; one in nature,
which is made by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the
third, by the painter. God only made one, nor could he have made more
than one; for if there had been two, there would always have been a
third—more absolute and abstract than either, under which they would
have been included. We may therefore conceive God to be the natural
maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker;
but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he
has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality. And the
tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice
removed from the king and from the truth. The painter imitates not the
original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter. And this, without
being really different, appears to be different, and has many points of
view, of which only one is caught by the painter, who represents
everything because he represents a piece of everything, and that piece
an image. And he can paint any other artist, although he knows nothing
of their arts; and this with sufficient skill to deceive children or
simple people. Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he
had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better than
anybody:—should we not infer him to be a simpleton who, having no
discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or enchanter,
whom he fancied to be all-wise? And when we hear persons saying that
Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must we
not infer that they are under a similar delusion? they do not see that
the poets are imitators, and that their creations are only imitations.
‘Very true.’ But if a person could create as well as imitate, he would
rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only; he would
rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? ‘Yes, for then he
would have more honour and advantage.’
Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer, say I to him,
I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your
poems incidentally refer, but about their main subjects—war, military
tactics, politics. If you are only twice and not thrice removed from
the truth—not an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what
good you have ever done to mankind? Is there any city which professes
to have received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from
Charondas, Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? Or was any war ever
carried on by your counsels? or is any invention attributed to you, as
there is to Thales and Anacharsis? Or is there any Homeric way of life,
such as the Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is
called after you? ‘No, indeed; and Creophylus (Flesh-child) was even
more unfortunate in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as
tradition says, Homer in his lifetime was allowed by him and his other
friends to starve.’ Yes, but could this ever have happened if Homer had
really been the educator of Hellas? Would he not have had many devoted
followers? If Protagoras and Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries
that no one can manage house or State without them, is it likely that
Homer and Hesiod would have been allowed to go about as beggars—I mean
if they had really been able to do the world any good?—would not men
have compelled them to stay where they were, or have followed them
about in order to get education? But they did not; and therefore we may