The Republic
shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or understood,
should be required to conform only to an external standard of
propriety—cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or
satisfactory condition of human things. And still those who have the
charge of youth may find a way by watchfulness, by affection, by the
manliness and innocence of their own lives, by occasional hints, by
general admonitions which every one can apply for himself, to mitigate
this terrible evil which eats out the heart of individuals and corrupts
the moral sentiments of nations. In no duty towards others is there
more need of reticence and self-restraint. So great is the danger lest
he who would be the counsellor of another should reveal the secret
prematurely, lest he should get another too much into his power; or fix
the passing impression of evil by demanding the confession of it.
Nor is Plato wrong in asserting that family attachments may interfere
with higher aims. If there have been some who ‘to party gave up what
was meant for mankind,’ there have certainly been others who to family
gave up what was meant for mankind or for their country. The cares of
children, the necessity of procuring money for their support, the
flatteries of the rich by the poor, the exclusiveness of caste, the
pride of birth or wealth, the tendency of family life to divert men
from the pursuit of the ideal or the heroic, are as lowering in our own
age as in that of Plato. And if we prefer to look at the gentle
influences of home, the development of the affections, the amenities of
society, the devotion of one member of a family for the good of the
others, which form one side of the picture, we must not quarrel with
him, or perhaps ought rather to be grateful to him, for having
presented to us the reverse. Without attempting to defend Plato on
grounds of morality, we may allow that there is an aspect of the world
which has not unnaturally led him into error.
We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State, like all
other abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato. To us the State
seems to be built up out of the family, or sometimes to be the
framework in which family and social life is contained. But to Plato in
his present mood of mind the family is only a disturbing influence
which, instead of filling up, tends to disarrange the higher unity of
the State. No organization is needed except a political, which,
regarded from another point of view, is a military one. The State is
all-sufficing for the wants of man, and, like the idea of the Church in
later ages, absorbs all other desires and affections. In time of war
the thousand citizens are to stand like a rampart impregnable against
the world or the Persian host; in time of peace the preparation for war
and their duties to the State, which are also their duties to one
another, take up their whole life and time. The only other interest
which is allowed to them besides that of war, is the interest of
philosophy. When they are too old to be soldiers they are to retire
from active life and to have a second novitiate of study and
contemplation. There is an element of monasticism even in Plato’s
communism. If he could have done without children, he might have
converted his Republic into a religious order. Neither in the Laws,
when the daylight of common sense breaks in upon him, does he retract
his error. In the state of which he would be the founder, there is no
marrying or giving in marriage: but because of the infirmity of
mankind, he condescends to allow the law of nature to prevail.
(c) But Plato has an equal, or, in his own estimation, even greater
paradox in reserve, which is summed up in the famous text, ‘Until kings
are philosophers or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease
from ill.’ And by philosophers he explains himself to mean those who
are capable of apprehending ideas, especially the idea of good. To the
attainment of this higher knowledge the second education is directed.
Through a process of training which has already made them good citizens
they are now to be made good legislators. We find with some surprise
(not unlike the feeling which Aristotle in a well-known passage
describes the hearers of Plato’s lectures as experiencing, when they
went to a discourse on the idea of good, expecting to be instructed in
moral truths, and received instead of them arithmetical and
mathematical formulae) that Plato does not propose for his future
legislators any study of finance or law or military tactics, but only
of abstract mathematics, as a preparation for the still more abstract
conception of good. We ask, with Aristotle, What is the use of a man
knowing the idea of good, if he does not know what is good for this
individual, this state, this condition of society? We cannot understand
how Plato’s legislators or guardians are to be fitted for their work of
statesmen by the study of the five mathematical sciences. We vainly
search in Plato’s own writings for any explanation of this seeming
absurdity.
The discovery of a great metaphysical conception seems to ravish the
mind with a prophetic consciousness which takes away the power of
estimating its value. No metaphysical enquirer has ever fairly
criticised his own speculations; in his own judgment they have been
above criticism; nor has he understood that what to him seemed to be
absolute truth may reappear in the next generation as a form of logic
or an instrument of thought. And posterity have also sometimes equally
misapprehended the real value of his speculations. They appear to them
to have contributed nothing to the stock of human knowledge. The IDEA
of good is apt to be regarded by the modern thinker as an unmeaning
abstraction; but he forgets that this abstraction is waiting ready for
use, and will hereafter be filled up by the divisions of knowledge.
When mankind do not as yet know that the world is subject to law, the
introduction of the mere conception of law or design or final cause,
and the far-off anticipation of the harmony of knowledge, are great
steps onward. Even the crude generalization of the unity of all things
leads men to view the world with different eyes, and may easily affect
their conception of human life and of politics, and also their own
conduct and character (Tim). We can imagine how a great mind like that
of Pericles might derive elevation from his intercourse with Anaxagoras
(Phaedr.). To be struggling towards a higher but unattainable
conception is a more favourable intellectual condition than to rest
satisfied in a narrow portion of ascertained fact. And the earlier,
which have sometimes been the greater ideas of science, are often lost
sight of at a later period. How rarely can we say of any modern
enquirer in the magnificent language of Plato, that ‘He is the
spectator of all time and of all existence!’
Nor is there anything unnatural in the hasty application of these vast
metaphysical conceptions to practical and political life. In the first
enthusiasm of ideas men are apt to see them everywhere, and to apply
them in the most remote sphere. They do not understand that the
experience of ages is required to enable them to fill up ‘the
intermediate axioms.’ Plato himself seems to have imagined that the
truths of psychology, like those of astronomy and harmonics, would be
arrived at by a process of deduction, and that the method which he has
pursued in the Fourth Book, of inferring them from experience and the
use of language, was imperfect and only provisional. But when, after
having arrived at the idea of good, which is the end of the science of
dialectic, he is asked, What is the nature, and what are the divisions
of the science? He refuses to answer, as if intending by the refusal to
intimate that the state of knowledge which then existed was not such as
would allow the philosopher to enter into his final rest. The previous
sciences must first be studied, and will, we may add, continue to be
studied till the end of time, although in a sense different from any
which Plato could have conceived. But we may observe, that while he is
aware of the vacancy of his own ideal, he is full of enthusiasm in the
contemplation of it. Looking into the orb of light, he sees nothing,
but he is warmed and elevated. The Hebrew prophet believed that faith
in God would enable him to govern the world; the Greek philosopher
imagined that contemplation of the good would make a legislator. There
is as much to be filled up in the one case as in the other, and the one
mode of conception is to the Israelite what the other is to the Greek.
Both find a repose in a divine perfection, which, whether in a more
personal or impersonal form, exists without them and independently of
them, as well as within them.
There is no mention of the idea of good in the Timaeus, nor of the
divine Creator of the world in the Republic; and we are naturally led
to ask in what relation they stand to one another. Is God above or
below the idea of good? Or is the Idea of Good another mode of
conceiving God? The latter appears to be the truer answer. To the Greek
philosopher the perfection and unity of God was a far higher conception
than his personality, which he hardly found a word to express, and
which to him would have seemed to be borrowed from mythology. To the
Christian, on the other hand, or to the modern thinker in general, it
is difficult, if not impossible, to attach reality to what he terms
mere abstraction; while to Plato this very abstraction is the truest
and most real of all things. Hence, from a difference in forms of
thought, Plato appears to be resting on a creation of his own mind
only. But if we may be allowed to paraphrase the idea of good by the
words ‘intelligent principle of law and order in the universe,
embracing equally man and nature,’ we begin to find a meeting-point
between him and ourselves.
The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a philosopher is
one that has not lost interest in modern times. In most countries of
Europe and Asia there has been some one in the course of ages who has
truly united the power of command with the power of thought and
reflection, as there have been also many false combinations of these
qualities. Some kind of speculative power is necessary both in
practical and political life; like the rhetorician in the Phaedrus, men
require to have a conception of the varieties of human character, and
to be raised on great occasions above the commonplaces of ordinary
life. Yet the idea of the philosopher-statesman has never been popular
with the mass of mankind; partly because he cannot take the world into
his confidence or make them understand the motives from which he acts;
and also because they are jealous of a power which they do not
understand. The revolution which human nature desires to effect step by
step in many ages is likely to be precipitated by him in a single year
or life. They are afraid that in the pursuit of his greater aims he may
disregard the common feelings of humanity, he is too apt to be looking
into the distant future or back into the remote past, and unable to see
actions or events which, to use an expression of Plato’s ‘are tumbling
out at his feet.’ Besides, as Plato would say, there are other
corruptions of these philosophical statesmen. Either ‘the native hue of
resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,’ and at the
moment when action above all things is required he is undecided, or
general principles are enunciated by him in order to cover some change
of policy; or his ignorance of the world has made him more easily fall
a prey to the arts of others; or in some cases he has been converted
into a courtier, who enjoys the luxury of holding liberal opinions, but