الفصل الفصل 3 · There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to

banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is afraid of death, or

who believes the tales which are repeated by the poets concerning the

world below. They must be gently requested not to abuse hell; they may

be reminded that their stories are both untrue and discouraging. Nor

must they be angry if we expunge obnoxious passages, such as the

depressing words of Achilles—‘I would rather be a serving-man than rule

over all the dead;’ and the verses which tell of the squalid mansions,

the senseless shadows, the flitting soul mourning over lost strength

and youth, the soul with a gibber going beneath the earth like smoke,

or the souls of the suitors which flutter about like bats. The terrors

and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the

rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. Such tales may have

their use; but they are not the proper food for soldiers. As little can

we admit the sorrows and sympathies of the Homeric heroes:—Achilles,

the son of Thetis, in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up

and down the sea-shore in distraction; or Priam, the cousin of the

gods, crying aloud, rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated

at the loss of children or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him;

and therefore lamentations over the dead should not be practised by men

of note; they should be the concern of inferior persons only, whether

women or men. Still worse is the attribution of such weakness to the

gods; as when the goddesses say, ‘Alas! my travail!’ and worst of all,

when the king of heaven himself laments his inability to save Hector,

or sorrows over the impending doom of his dear Sarpedon. Such a

character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be

imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be given to excess of

laughter—‘Such violent delights’ are followed by a violent re-action.

The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the

clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. ‘Certainly not.’

Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we

were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a

medicine. But this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of

state; the common man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any

more than the patient would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor

to his captain.

In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists

in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which

Homer teaches in some places: ‘The Achaeans marched on breathing

prowess, in silent awe of their leaders;’—but a very different one in

other places: ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the

heart of a stag.’ Language of the latter kind will not impress

self-control on the minds of youth. The same may be said about his

praises of eating and drinking and his dread of starvation; also about

the verses in which he tells of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here,

or of how Hephaestus once detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a

similar occasion. There is a nobler strain heard in the words:—‘Endure,

my soul, thou hast endured worse.’ Nor must we allow our citizens to

receive bribes, or to say, ‘Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend

kings;’ or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he

should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the

meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his

requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or

his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead

Patroclus of his own hair which had been already dedicated to the other

river-god Spercheius; or his cruelty in dragging the body of Hector

round the walls, and slaying the captives at the pyre: such a

combination of meanness and cruelty in Cheiron’s pupil is

inconceivable. The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are

equally unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not the sons

of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any more than

the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth who believes

that such things are done by those who have the blood of heaven flowing

in their veins will be too ready to imitate their example.

Enough of gods and heroes;—what shall we say about men? What the poets

and story-tellers say—that the wicked prosper and the righteous are

afflicted, or that justice is another’s gain? Such misrepresentations

cannot be allowed by us. But in this we are anticipating the definition

of justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry.

The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows

style. Now all poetry is a narrative of events past, present, or to

come; and narrative is of three kinds, the simple, the imitative, and a

composition of the two. An instance will make my meaning clear. The

first scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly

description and partly dialogue. But if you throw the dialogue into the

‘oratio obliqua,’ the passage will run thus: The priest came and prayed

Apollo that the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if

Agamemnon would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks

assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on—The whole then becomes

descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the

narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles—which

of them is to be admitted into our State? ‘Do you ask whether tragedy

and comedy are to be admitted?’ Yes, but also something more—Is it not

doubtful whether our guardians are to be imitators at all? Or rather,

has not the question been already answered, for we have decided that

one man cannot in his life play many parts, any more than he can act

both tragedy and comedy, or be rhapsodist and actor at once? Human

nature is coined into very small pieces, and as our guardians have

their own business already, which is the care of freedom, they will

have enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should

imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask

which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We cannot allow men to

play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping, scolding, or boasting

against the gods,—least of all when making love or in labour. They must

not represent slaves, or bullies, or cowards, drunkards, or madmen, or

blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding

rivers, or a raging sea. A good or wise man will be willing to perform

good and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play an inferior part

which he has never practised; and he will prefer to employ the

descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. The man who has

no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything;

sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will

be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the descriptive style there

are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many. Poets and

musicians use either, or a compound of both, and this compound is very

attractive to youth and their teachers as well as to the vulgar. But

our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for

complexity. And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen

offers to exhibit himself and his poetry we will show him every

observance of respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no

room for his kind in our State; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and

will not depart from our original models (Laws).

Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts,—the subject, the

harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the

first. As we banished strains of lamentation, so we may now banish the

mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as

our citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial

harmonies, such as the Ionian and pure Lydian. Two remain—the Dorian

and Phrygian, the first for war, the second for peace; the one

expressive of courage, the other of obedience or instruction or

religious feeling. And as we reject varieties of harmony, we shall also

reject the many-stringed, variously-shaped instruments which give

utterance to them, and in particular the flute, which is more complex

than any of them. The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the town,

and the Pan’s-pipe in the fields. Thus we have made a purgation of

music, and will now make a purgation of metres. These should be like

the harmonies, simple and suitable to the occasion. There are four

notes of the tetrachord, and there are three ratios of metre, 3/2, 2/2,

2/1, which have all their characteristics, and the feet have different

characteristics as well as the rhythms. But about this you and I must

ask Damon, the great musician, who speaks, if I remember rightly, of a

martial measure as well as of dactylic, trochaic, and iambic rhythms,

which he arranges so as to equalize the syllables with one another,

assigning to each the proper quantity. We only venture to affirm the

general principle that the style is to conform to the subject and the

metre to the style; and that the simplicity and harmony of the soul

should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity has to be

learnt by every one in the days of his youth, and may be gathered

anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as well as from the

forms of plants and animals.

Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or

unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to

the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in

our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians

must grow up, not amid images of deformity which will gradually poison

and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they

will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of

all these influences the greatest is the education given by music,

which finds a way into the innermost soul and imparts to it the sense

of beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious; but

when reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes her as

the friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read, first we

acquire the elements or letters separately, and afterwards their

combinations, and cannot recognize reflections of them until we know

the letters themselves;—in like manner we must first attain the

elements or essential forms of the virtues, and then trace their

combinations in life and experience. There is a music of the soul which

answers to the harmony of the world; and the fairest object of a

musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body. Some defect in the

latter may be excused, but not in the former. True love is the daughter

of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of

bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair

ending with love.

Next we pass on to gymnastics; about which I would remark, that the

soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and therefore if

we educate the mind we may leave the education of the body in her

charge, and need only give a general outline of the course to be

pursued. In the first place the guardians must abstain from strong

drink, for they should be the last persons to lose their wits. Whether

the habits of the palaestra are suitable to them is more doubtful, for

the ordinary gymnastic is a sleepy sort of thing, and if left off

suddenly is apt to endanger health. But our warrior athletes must be

wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and

climate. Hence they will require a simpler kind of gymnastic, akin to

their simple music; and for their diet a rule may be found in Homer,

who feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no fish

although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which

involve an apparatus of pots and pans; and, if I am not mistaken, he

nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic confections

and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and

Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden. Where gluttony and

intemperance prevail the town quickly fills with doctors and pleaders;

and law and medicine give themselves airs as soon as the freemen of a

State take an interest in them. But what can show a more disgraceful

state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you

have none of your own at home? And yet there IS a worse stage of the

same disease—when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the

twists and turns of the law; not considering how much better it would

be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding

justice. And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for

the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because a man has by

laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were unknown in the days

of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. Eurypylus

after he has been wounded drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of

a heating nature; and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the

damsel who gives him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him.

The truth is that this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced

by Herodicus the trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution, by a

compound of training and medicine tortured first himself and then a

good many other people, and lived a great deal longer than he had any

right. But Asclepius would not practise this art, because he knew that

the citizens of a well-ordered State have no leisure to be ill, and

therefore he adopted the ‘kill or cure’ method, which artisans and

labourers employ. ‘They must be at their business,’ they say, ‘and have

no time for coddling: if they recover, well; if they don’t, there is an

end of them.’ Whereas the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who

can afford to be ill. Do you know a maxim of Phocylides—that ‘when a

man begins to be rich’ (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ‘he should

practise virtue’? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent

with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of

virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student imagines that

philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always

unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no

such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not

wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to

wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was

wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and

drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and

worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out

of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a

thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie—following

our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he

was not the son of a god.

Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best

judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience

of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two

professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his

own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But the

judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be

corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to

be wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived

by evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and

therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have

been innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the

practice of it, but by the observation of it in others. This is the

ideal of a judge; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully

suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he

is at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as

himself. Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. This is

the sort of medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our

State; they will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body

will be left to die by the one, and the evil soul will be put to death

by the other. And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good

music which will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which

will give health to the body. Not that this division of music and

gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for they are both

equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused

and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with

their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much

gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper

which has too much music becomes enervated. While a man is allowing

music to pour like water through the funnel of his ears, the edge of

his soul gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited element

is melted out of him. Too little spirit is easily exhausted; too much

quickly passes into nervous irritability. So, again, the athlete by

feeding and training has his courage doubled, but he soon grows stupid;

he is like a wild beast, ready to do everything by blows and nothing by

counsel or policy. There are two principles in man, reason and passion,

and to these, not to the soul and body, the two arts of music and

gymnastic correspond. He who mingles them in harmonious concord is the

true musician,—he shall be the presiding genius of our State.

The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? First, the elder must

rule the younger; and the best of the elders will be the best

guardians. Now they will be the best who love their subjects most, and

think that they have a common interest with them in the welfare of the

state. These we must select; but they must be watched at every epoch of

life to see whether they have retained the same opinions and held out

against force and enchantment. For time and persuasion and the love of

pleasure may enchant a man into a change of purpose, and the force of

grief and pain may compel him. And therefore our guardians must be men

who have been tried by many tests, like gold in the refiner’s fire, and

have been passed first through danger, then through pleasure, and at

every age have come out of such trials victorious and without stain, in

full command of themselves and their principles; having all their

faculties in harmonious exercise for their country’s good. These shall

receive the highest honours both in life and death. (It would perhaps

be better to confine the term ‘guardians’ to this select class: the

younger men may be called ‘auxiliaries.’)

And now for one magnificent lie, in the belief of which, Oh that we

could train our rulers!—at any rate let us make the attempt with the

rest of the world. What I am going to tell is only another version of

the legend of Cadmus; but our unbelieving generation will be slow to

accept such a story. The tale must be imparted, first to the rulers,

then to the soldiers, lastly to the people. We will inform them that

their youth was a dream, and that during the time when they seemed to

be undergoing their education they were really being fashioned in the

earth, who sent them up when they were ready; and that they must

protect and cherish her whose children they are, and regard each other

as brothers and sisters. ‘I do not wonder at your being ashamed to

propound such a fiction.’ There is more behind. These brothers and

sisters have different natures, and some of them God framed to rule,

whom he fashioned of gold; others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries;

others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by

him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock,

a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son,

and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must

descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an

oracle says ‘that the State will come to an end if governed by a man of

brass or iron.’ Will our citizens ever believe all this? ‘Not in the

present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.’

Now let the earthborn men go forth under the command of their rulers,

and look about and pitch their camp in a high place, which will be safe

against enemies from without, and likewise against insurrections from

within. There let them sacrifice and set up their tents; for soldiers

they are to be and not shopkeepers, the watchdogs and guardians of the

sheep; and luxury and avarice will turn them into wolves and tyrants.

Their habits and their dwellings should correspond to their education.

They should have no property; their pay should only meet their

expenses; and they should have common meals. Gold and silver we will

tell them that they have from God, and this divine gift in their souls

they must not alloy with that earthly dross which passes under the name

of gold. They only of the citizens may not touch it, or be under the

same roof with it, or drink from it; it is the accursed thing. Should

they ever acquire houses or lands or money of their own, they will

become householders and tradesmen instead of guardians, enemies and

tyrants instead of helpers, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves

and the rest of the State, will be at hand.

The religious and ethical aspect of Plato’s education will hereafter be

considered under a separate head. Some lesser points may be more

conveniently noticed in this place.

1. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave

irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about

ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting

to distinguish the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the

text from design; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer

inaccurately, after the manner of the early logographers turning the

Iliad into prose, and delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from

his words, or to make ludicrous applications of them. He does not, like

Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but

uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on

a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the

Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them

are sound, although the premises are fictitious. These fanciful appeals

to Homer add a charm to Plato’s style, and at the same time they have

the effect of a satire on the follies of Homeric interpretation. To us

(and probably to himself), although they take the form of arguments,

they are really figures of speech. They may be compared with modern

citations from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power

even when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of.

The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Memorabilia

of Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations. Great in all ages

and countries, in religion as well as in law and literature, has been

the art of interpretation.

2. ‘The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.’

Notwithstanding the fascination which the word ‘classical’ exercises

over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the

Greek poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought

often exceeds the power of lucid expression in Aeschylus and Pindar; or

that rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet

Euripides. Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the

two; in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a

Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away; at

least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them. The

connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not

unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic the poet was

unable to draw out. Many thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and

he had no power of disengaging or arranging them. For there is a subtle

influence of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to

poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by

poetry into prose. In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own

meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full of

associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of

another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to

others. There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets

which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion between

style and subject, in which any half-expressed figure, any harsh

construction, any distorted collocation of words, any remote sequence

of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice ‘coming sweetly from

nature,’ or music adding the expression of feeling to thought. As if

there could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without ease and

clearness. The obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out

of the state of language and logic which existed in their age. They are

not examples to be followed by us; for the use of language ought in

every generation to become clearer and clearer. Like Shakespere, they

were great in spite, not in consequence, of their imperfections of

expression. But there is no reason for returning to the necessary

obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of literature. The English

poets of the last century were certainly not obscure; and we have no

excuse for losing what they had gained, or for going back to the

earlier or transitional age which preceded them. The thought of our own

times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato’s ‘art of

measuring’ is the rule cause of the disproportion between them.

3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a

theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up

as follows:—True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and

ideal,—the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or

repose. To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble and

simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of

influences,—the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought

up. That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will

have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the poets

are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of

reason—like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but

confined to the preliminary education, and acting through the power of

habit; and this conception of art is not limited to strains of music or

the forms of plastic art, but pervades all nature and has a wide

kindred in the world. The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of

Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side.

There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two

or three passages does he even allude to them (Rep.; Soph.). He is not

lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the

Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene. He would probably have

regarded any abstract truth of number or figure as higher than the

greatest of them. Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence, such

as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from

the works of art which he saw around him. We are living upon the

fragments of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of

truth and beauty. But in Plato this feeling has no expression; he

nowhere says that beauty is the object of art; he seems to deny that

wisdom can take an external form (Phaedrus); he does not distinguish

the fine from the mechanical arts. Whether or no, like some writers, he

felt more than he expressed, it is at any rate remarkable that the

greatest perfection of the fine arts should coincide with an almost

entire silence about them. In one very striking passage he tells us

that a work of art, like the State, is a whole; and this conception of

a whole and the love of the newly-born mathematical sciences may be

regarded, if not as the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating

principles of Greek art (Xen. Mem.; and Sophist).

4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better

not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his

own person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of

evil; he is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence,

became acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore,

according to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man

according to Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy.

The bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge

of virtue. It may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection

is well founded. In a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged

that the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. The union of

gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet

was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have

found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence

of it. There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight

into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural

sense independent of any special experience of good or evil.

5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek

and also very different from anything which existed at all in his age

of the world, is the transposition of ranks. In the Spartan state there

had been enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under

special circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit

was certainly recognized as one of the elements on which government was

based. The founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors,

who were raised by their great actions above the ordinary level of

humanity; at a later period, the services of warriors and legislators

were held to entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of

citizenship and to the first rank in the state. And although the

existence of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains

of early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such a

character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual Hellenic

state—or indeed to any state which has ever existed in the world—still

the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of philosophers, who

probably accommodated a good deal their views of primitive history to

their own notions of good government. Plato further insists on applying

to the guardians of his state a series of tests by which all those who

fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing

body, or not admitted to it; and this ‘academic’ discipline did to a

certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. He also

indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of

the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world,

should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware

how deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the

order of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form

of what he himself calls a ‘monstrous fiction.’ (Compare the ceremony

of preparation for the two ‘great waves’ in Book v.) Two principles are

indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent

on circumstances prior to the individual: second, that this distinction

is and ought to be broken through by personal qualities. He adapts

mythology like the Homeric poems to the wants of the state, making ‘the

Phoenician tale’ the vehicle of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth

respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale

of earthborn men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is

told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification

of the ‘monstrous falsehood.’ Ancient poetry had spoken of a gold and

silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another, but Plato

supposes these differences in the natures of men to exist together in a

single state. Mythology supplies a figure under which the lesson may be

taught (as Protagoras says, ‘the myth is more interesting’), and also

enables Plato to touch lightly on new principles without going into

details. In this passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does

not tell us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected.

Indeed throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to fade into

the distance. We do not know whether they are to carry arms, and

whether in the fifth book they are or are not included in the

communistic regulations respecting property and marriage. Nor is there

any use in arguing strictly either from a few chance words, or from the

silence of Plato, or in drawing inferences which were beyond his

vision. Aristotle, in his criticism on the position of the lower

classes, does not perceive that the poetical creation is ‘like the air,

invulnerable,’ and cannot be penetrated by the shafts of his logic

(Pol.).

6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest

degree fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections,

are to be found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great

power of music, so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us

in modern times, when the art or science has been far more developed,

and has found the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly,

the indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed

to exercise over the body.

In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may

also observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at

the present day. With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few

only, there seems to mingle in Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence

for numbers and numerical proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger.

Intervals of sound and number are to him sacred things which have a law

of their own, not dependent on the variations of sense. They rise above

sense, and become a connecting link with the world of ideas. But it is

evident that Plato is describing what to him appears to be also a fact.

The power of a simple and characteristic melody on the impressible mind

of the Greek is more than we can easily appreciate. The effect of

national airs may bear some comparison with it. And, besides all this,

there is a confusion between the harmony of musical notes and the

harmony of soul and body, which is so potently inspired by them.

The second paradox leads up to some curious and interesting

questions—How far can the mind control the body? Is the relation

between them one of mutual antagonism or of mutual harmony? Are they

two or one, and is either of them the cause of the other? May we not at

times drop the opposition between them, and the mode of describing

them, which is so familiar to us, and yet hardly conveys any precise

meaning, and try to view this composite creature, man, in a more simple

manner? Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a

higher and a lower principle, divided by no distinct line, which at

times break asunder and take up arms against one another? Or again,

they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously in the

ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some noble aim,

to be attained not without an effort, and for which every thought and

nerve are strained. And then the body becomes the good friend or ally,

or servant or instrument of the mind. And the mind has often a

wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and weakness

and calling out a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the

intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as

to form a single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting; and

the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the

most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body through the

appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other.

There is a tendency in us which says ‘Drink.’ There is another which

says, ‘Do not drink; it is not good for you.’ And we all of us know

which is the rightful superior. We are also responsible for our health,

although into this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which

may be beyond our control. Still even in the management of health, care

and thought, continued over many years, may make us almost free agents,

if we do not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that

all human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.

We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation

which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,

depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a

definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is

afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does not

recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily

disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by

little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither

does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely

influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any

other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of

the will can be more simple or truly asserted.

7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.

(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing

that he is passing lightly over the subject.

(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he

proceeds with the construction of the State.

(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again

as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains

the reader’s interest.

(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of

the poets in Book X.

(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the

valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the

manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up

into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius,

should not escape notice.

BOOK 4.