The Republic
morality of mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of ‘justifying the
ways of God to man.’ Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether
the morality of actions is determined by their consequences; and both
of them go beyond the position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the
class of goods not desirable for themselves only, but desirable for
themselves and for their results, to which he recalls them. In their
attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their
condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. The common life of
Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate deeper into the
nature of things.
It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon
and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not
more truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by
Socrates, and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being,
first in the State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new
answer to his old question (Protag.), ‘whether the virtues are one or
many,’ viz. that one is the ordering principle of the three others. In
seeking to establish the purely internal nature of justice, he is met
by the fact that man is a social being, and he tries to harmonise the
two opposite theses as well as he can. There is no more inconsistency
in this than was inevitable in his age and country; there is no use in
turning upon him the cross lights of modern philosophy, which, from
some other point of view, would appear equally inconsistent. Plato does
not give the final solution of philosophical questions for us; nor can
he be judged of by our standard.
The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the
sons of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark in what
immediately follows:—First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether
indirect. He does not say that happiness consists in the contemplation
of the idea of justice, and still less will he be tempted to affirm the
Stoical paradox that the just man can be happy on the rack. But first
he dwells on the difficulty of the problem and insists on restoring man
to his natural condition, before he will answer the question at all. He
too will frame an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract
justice, but the whole relations of man. Under the fanciful
illustration of the large letters he implies that he will only look for
justice in society, and that from the State he will proceed to the
individual. His answer in substance amounts to this,—that under
favourable conditions, i.e. in the perfect State, justice and happiness
will coincide, and that when justice has been once found, happiness may
be left to take care of itself. That he falls into some degree of
inconsistency, when in the tenth book he claims to have got rid of the
rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted; for he has left those
which exist in the perfect State. And the philosopher ‘who retires
under the shelter of a wall’ can hardly have been esteemed happy by
him, at least not in this world. Still he maintains the true attitude
of moral action. Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he
will be happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident
which attends him. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’
Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine character
of Greek thought in beginning with the State and in going on to the
individual. First ethics, then politics—this is the order of ideas to
us; the reverse is the order of history. Only after many struggles of
thought does the individual assert his right as a moral being. In early
ages he is not ONE, but one of many, the citizen of a State which is
prior to him; and he has no notion of good or evil apart from the law
of his country or the creed of his church. And to this type he is
constantly tending to revert, whenever the influence of custom, or of
party spirit, or the recollection of the past becomes too strong for
him.
Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the
individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early
Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of
influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual
action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are
sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human
action, whenever we either elevate politics into ethics, or lower
ethics to the standard of politics. The good man and the good citizen
only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be
attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all,
by education fashioning them from within.
...Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, ‘inspired offspring of the
renowned hero,’ as the elegiac poet terms them; but he does not
understand how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of injustice
while their character shows that they are uninfluenced by their own
arguments. He knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of
deserting justice in the hour of need. He therefore makes a condition,
that having weak eyes he shall be allowed to read the large letters
first and then go on to the smaller, that is, he must look for justice
in the State first, and will then proceed to the individual.
Accordingly he begins to construct the State.
Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food; his
second a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the
possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together
on the same spot; and this is the beginning of a State, which we take
the liberty to invent, although necessity is the real inventor. There
must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to
which may be added a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are
required to make a city. Now men have different natures, and one man
will do one thing better than many; and business waits for no man.
Hence there must be a division of labour into different employments;
into wholesale and retail trade; into workers, and makers of workmen’s
tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all this
will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be very
large. But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate
exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the
taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too we must
have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers
will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted
in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be
complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of the
citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.
Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend their
days in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their
own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food
is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best
of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children.
‘But,’ said Glaucon, interposing, ‘are they not to have a relish?’
Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and
fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ‘’Tis a city of pigs,
Socrates.’ Why, I replied, what do you want more? ‘Only the comforts of
life,—sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.’ I see; you want not
only a State, but a luxurious State; and possibly in the more complex
frame we may sooner find justice and injustice. Then the fine arts must
go to work—every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be
wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks,
barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for
the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is
the source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part
of our neighbour’s land, and they will want a part of ours. And this is
the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other
political evils. Our city will now require the slight addition of a
camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again
our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The
art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural
aptitude for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who
have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and
strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage,
such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But
these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the
union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears
to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both
qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an
answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your
dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing;
and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness.
The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which
will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without
education?
But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned
sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music
includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false.
‘What do you mean?’ he said. I mean that children hear stories before
they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have
at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early
life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they
will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a
censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of
them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer
and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus
and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never
be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in
a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some
unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their
fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel
by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall
they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of
Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales
may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are
incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to
be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers;
we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be
written; to write them is the duty of others.
And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not
as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the
poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has
two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus
to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of
Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to
destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was
just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was
evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will
allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great
principle—God is the author of good only.