Bab Bab 15 · Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was（6）

If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic education

of after-life, some such counsels as the following may be offered to

him:—That he shall choose the branch of knowledge to which his own mind

most distinctly inclines, and in which he takes the greatest delight,

either one which seems to connect with his own daily employment, or,

perhaps, furnishes the greatest contrast to it. He may study from the

speculative side the profession or business in which he is practically

engaged. He may make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Bacon the

friends and companions of his life. He may find opportunities of

hearing the living voice of a great teacher. He may select for enquiry

some point of history or some unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour

a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as

many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him ‘a pleasure not

to be repented of’ (Timaeus). Only let him beware of being the slave of

crotchets, or of running after a Will o’ the Wisp in his ignorance, or

in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming

the air of a philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers.

Better to build up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from

one thing to another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests

in knowledge, than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be

realized. But perhaps, as Plato would say, ‘This is part of another

subject’ (Tim.); though we may also defend our digression by his

example (Theaet.).

4. We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or the natural

growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political

philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato

and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human

affairs; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of

empires (Plato, Statesman, and Sulpicius’ Letter to Cicero); by them

fate and chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to

have had a great share in political events. The wiser of them like

Thucydides believed that ‘what had been would be again,’ and that a

tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the past. Also they

had dreams of a Golden Age which existed once upon a time and might

still exist in some unknown land, or might return again in the remote

future. But the regular growth of a state enlightened by experience,

progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the citizens

were educated by the fulfilment of political duties, appears never to

have come within the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a state

had never been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them.

Their experience (Aristot. Metaph.; Plato, Laws) led them to conclude

that there had been cycles of civilization in which the arts had been

discovered and lost many times over, and cities had been overthrown and

rebuilt again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and other natural

convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition told them of

many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a remnant. The

world began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of the

fragments of itself. Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown

antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them

grow, and could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man

which preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian

monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but

literally, were ten thousand years old (Laws), and they contrasted the

antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.

The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the later

history: they are at a distance, and the intermediate region is

concealed from view; there is no road or path which leads from one to

the other. At the beginning of Greek history, in the vestibule of the

temple, is seen standing first of all the figure of the legislator,

himself the interpreter and servant of the God. The fundamental laws

which he gives are not supposed to change with time and circumstances.

The salvation of the state is held rather to depend on the inviolable

maintenance of them. They were sanctioned by the authority of heaven,

and it was deemed impiety to alter them. The desire to maintain them

unaltered seems to be the origin of what at first sight is very

surprising to us—the intolerant zeal of Plato against innovators in

religion or politics (Laws); although with a happy inconsistency he is

also willing that the laws of other countries should be studied and

improvements in legislation privately communicated to the Nocturnal

Council (Laws). The additions which were made to them in later ages in

order to meet the increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed

by a fiction to the original legislator; and the words of such

enactments at Athens were disputed over as if they had been the words

of Solon himself. Plato hopes to preserve in a later generation the

mind of the legislator; he would have his citizens remain within the

lines which he has laid down for them. He would not harass them with

minute regulations, he would have allowed some changes in the laws: but

not changes which would affect the fundamental institutions of the

state, such for example as would convert an aristocracy into a

timocracy, or a timocracy into a popular form of government.

Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress has been

the exception rather than the law of human history. And therefore we

are not surprised to find that the idea of progress is of modern rather

than of ancient date; and, like the idea of a philosophy of history, is

not more than a century or two old. It seems to have arisen out of the

impression left on the human mind by the growth of the Roman Empire and

of the Christian Church, and to be due to the political and social

improvements which they introduced into the world; and still more in

our own century to the idealism of the first French Revolution and the

triumph of American Independence; and in a yet greater degree to the

vast material prosperity and growth of population in England and her

colonies and in America. It is also to be ascribed in a measure to the

greater study of the philosophy of history. The optimist temperament of

some great writers has assisted the creation of it, while the opposite

character has led a few to regard the future of the world as dark. The

‘spectator of all time and of all existence’ sees more of ‘the

increasing purpose which through the ages ran’ than formerly: but to

the inhabitant of a small state of Hellas the vision was necessarily

limited like the valley in which he dwelt. There was no remote past on

which his eye could rest, nor any future from which the veil was partly

lifted up by the analogy of history. The narrowness of view, which to

ourselves appears so singular, was to him natural, if not unavoidable.

5. For the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and the Laws, and

the two other works of Plato which directly treat of politics, see the

Introductions to the two latter; a few general points of comparison may

be touched upon in this place.

And first of the Laws.

(1) The Republic, though probably written at intervals, yet speaking

generally and judging by the indications of thought and style, may be

reasonably ascribed to the middle period of Plato’s life: the Laws are

certainly the work of his declining years, and some portions of them at

any rate seem to have been written in extreme old age.

(2) The Republic is full of hope and aspiration: the Laws bear the

stamp of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which

received the last touches of the author: the other is imperfectly

executed, and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty

of youth: the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the

severity and knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age.

(3) The most conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of dramatic

power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and

oppositions of character.

(4) The Laws may be said to have more the nature of a sermon, the

Republic of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more

intellectual.

(5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the

government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws; the

immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii; the person of

Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and

children is renounced; the institution of common or public meals for

women (Laws) is for the first time introduced (Ar. Pol.).

(6) There remains in the Laws the old enmity to the poets, who are

ironically saluted in high-flown terms, and, at the same time, are

peremptorily ordered out of the city, if they are not willing to submit

their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (Rep.).

(7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few

passages in the Laws, such as the honour due to the soul, the evils of

licentious or unnatural love, the whole of Book x. (religion), the

dishonesty of retail trade, and bequests, which come more home to us,

and contain more of what may be termed the modern element in Plato than

almost anything in the Republic.

The relation of the two works to one another is very well given:

(1) by Aristotle in the Politics from the side of the Laws:—

‘The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato’s later work,

the Laws, and therefore we had better examine briefly the constitution

which is therein described. In the Republic, Socrates has definitely

settled in all a few questions only; such as the community of women and

children, the community of property, and the constitution of the state.

The population is divided into two classes—one of husbandmen, and the

other of warriors; from this latter is taken a third class of

counsellors and rulers of the state. But Socrates has not determined

whether the husbandmen and artists are to have a share in the

government, and whether they too are to carry arms and share in

military service or not. He certainly thinks that the women ought to

share in the education of the guardians, and to fight by their side.

The remainder of the work is filled up with digressions foreign to the

main subject, and with discussions about the education of the

guardians. In the Laws there is hardly anything but laws; not much is

said about the constitution. This, which he had intended to make more

of the ordinary type, he gradually brings round to the other or ideal

form. For with the exception of the community of women and property, he

supposes everything to be the same in both states; there is to be the

same education; the citizens of both are to live free from servile

occupations, and there are to be common meals in both. The only

difference is that in the Laws the common meals are extended to women,

and the warriors number about 5000, but in the Republic only 1000.’

(2) by Plato in the Laws (Book v.), from the side of the Republic:—

‘The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of

the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying

that “Friends have all things in common.” Whether there is now, or ever

will be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which

the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things

which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have

become common, and all men express praise and blame, and feel joy and

sorrow, on the same occasions, and the laws unite the city to the

utmost,—whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting

upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state more exalted in

virtue, or truer or better than this. Such a state, whether inhabited

by Gods or sons of Gods, will make them blessed who dwell therein; and

therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to

cling to this, and, as far as possible, to seek for one which is like

this. The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be

nearest to immortality and unity in the next degree; and after that, by

the grace of God, we will complete the third one. And we will begin by

speaking of the nature and origin of the second.’

The comparatively short work called the Statesman or Politicus in its

style and manner is more akin to the Laws, while in its idealism it

rather resembles the Republic. As far as we can judge by various

indications of language and thought, it must be later than the one and

of course earlier than the other. In both the Republic and Statesman a

close connection is maintained between Politics and Dialectic. In the

Statesman, enquiries into the principles of Method are interspersed

with discussions about Politics. The comparative advantages of the rule

of law and of a person are considered, and the decision given in favour

of a person (Arist. Pol.). But much may be said on the other side, nor

is the opposition necessary; for a person may rule by law, and law may

be so applied as to be the living voice of the legislator. As in the

Republic, there is a myth, describing, however, not a future, but a

former existence of mankind. The question is asked, ‘Whether the state

of innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own

which possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is

the preferable condition of man.’ To this question of the comparative

happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed

in the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman,

though less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range,

may justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato’s dialogues.

6. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to be the

vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express, or which

went beyond their own age. The classical writing which approaches most

nearly to the Republic of Plato is the ‘De Republica’ of Cicero; but

neither in this nor in any other of his dialogues does he rival the art

of Plato. The manners are clumsy and inferior; the hand of the

rhetorician is apparent at every turn. Yet noble sentiments are

constantly recurring: the true note of Roman patriotism—‘We Romans are

a great people’—resounds through the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero

turns away from the phenomena of the heavens to civil and political

life. He would rather not discuss the ‘two Suns’ of which all Rome was

talking, when he can converse about ‘the two nations in one’ which had

divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi. Like Socrates again,

speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume

too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is

discussing among friends the two sides of a question. He would confine

the terms King or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will

not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But

under the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the

natural superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to

the soul ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms of

government to any single one. The two portraits of the just and the

unjust, which occur in the second book of the Republic, are transferred

to the state—Philus, one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his

will the necessity of injustice as a principle of government, while the

other, Laelius, supports the opposite thesis. His views of language and

number are derived from Plato; like him he denounces the drama. He also

declares that if his life were to be twice as long he would have no

time to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated by

him word for word, though he had hardly shown himself able to ‘carry

the jest’ of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence the humorous

fancy about the animals, who ‘are so imbued with the spirit of

democracy that they make the passers-by get out of their way.’ His

description of the tyrant is imitated from Plato, but is far inferior.

The second book is historical, and claims for the Roman constitution

(which is to him the ideal) a foundation of fact such as Plato probably

intended to have given to the Republic in the Critias. His most

remarkable imitation of Plato is the adaptation of the vision of Er,

which is converted by Cicero into the ‘Somnium Scipionis’; he has

‘romanized’ the myth of the Republic, adding an argument for the

immortality of the soul taken from the Phaedrus, and some other touches

derived from the Phaedo and the Timaeus. Though a beautiful tale and

containing splendid passages, the ‘Somnium Scipionis; is very inferior

to the vision of Er; it is only a dream, and hardly allows the reader

to suppose that the writer believes in his own creation. Whether his

dialogues were framed on the model of the lost dialogues of Aristotle,

as he himself tells us, or of Plato, to which they bear many

superficial resemblances, he is still the Roman orator; he is not

conversing, but making speeches, and is never able to mould the

intractable Latin to the grace and ease of the Greek Platonic dialogue.

But if he is defective in form, much more is he inferior to the Greek

in matter; he nowhere in his philosophical writings leaves upon our

minds the impression of an original thinker.

Plato’s Republic has been said to be a church and not a state; and such

an ideal of a city in the heavens has always hovered over the Christian

world, and is embodied in St. Augustine’s ‘De Civitate Dei,’ which is

suggested by the decay and fall of the Roman Empire, much in the same

manner in which we may imagine the Republic of Plato to have been

influenced by the decline of Greek politics in the writer’s own age.

The difference is that in the time of Plato the degeneracy, though

certain, was gradual and insensible: whereas the taking of Rome by the

Goths stirred like an earthquake the age of St. Augustine. Men were

inclined to believe that the overthrow of the city was to be ascribed

to the anger felt by the old Roman deities at the neglect of their

worship. St. Augustine maintains the opposite thesis; he argues that

the destruction of the Roman Empire is due, not to the rise of

Christianity, but to the vices of Paganism. He wanders over Roman

history, and over Greek philosophy and mythology, and finds everywhere

crime, impiety and falsehood. He compares the worst parts of the

Gentile religions with the best elements of the faith of Christ. He

shows nothing of the spirit which led others of the early Christian

Fathers to recognize in the writings of the Greek philosophers the

power of the divine truth. He traces the parallel of the kingdom of

God, that is, the history of the Jews, contained in their scriptures,

and of the kingdoms of the world, which are found in gentile writers,

and pursues them both into an ideal future. It need hardly be remarked

that his use both of Greek and of Roman historians and of the sacred

writings of the Jews is wholly uncritical. The heathen mythology, the

Sybilline oracles, the myths of Plato, the dreams of Neo-Platonists are

equally regarded by him as matter of fact. He must be acknowledged to

be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best of

everything on one side and the worst of everything on the other. He has

no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek life, nor

has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise out of

the ruins of the Roman empire. He is not blind to the defects of the

Christian Church, and looks forward to a time when Christian and Pagan

shall be alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of

God shall appear...The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory of

antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with Christian

ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a slender knowledge

of the Greek literature and language. He was a great genius, and a

noble character, yet hardly capable of feeling or understanding

anything external to his own theology. Of all the ancient philosophers

he is most attracted by Plato, though he is very slightly acquainted

with his writings. He is inclined to believe that the idea of creation

in the Timaeus is derived from the narrative in Genesis; and he is

strangely taken with the coincidence (?) of Plato’s saying that ‘the

philosopher is the lover of God,’ and the words of the Book of Exodus

in which God reveals himself to Moses (Exod.) He dwells at length on

miracles performed in his own day, of which the evidence is regarded by

him as irresistible. He speaks in a very interesting manner of the

beauty and utility of nature and of the human frame, which he conceives

to afford a foretaste of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of

the body. The book is not really what to most persons the title of it

would imply, and belongs to an age which has passed away. But it

contains many fine passages and thoughts which are for all time.

The short treatise de Monarchia of Dante is by far the most remarkable

of mediaeval ideals, and bears the impress of the great genius in whom

Italy and the Middle Ages are so vividly reflected. It is the vision of

an Universal Empire, which is supposed to be the natural and necessary

government of the world, having a divine authority distinct from the

Papacy, yet coextensive with it. It is not ‘the ghost of the dead Roman

Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,’ but the legitimate heir

and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and

the beneficence of their rule. Their right to be the governors of the

world is also confirmed by the testimony of miracles, and acknowledged

by St. Paul when he appealed to Caesar, and even more emphatically by

Christ Himself, Who could not have made atonement for the sins of men

if He had not been condemned by a divinely authorized tribunal. The

necessity for the establishment of an Universal Empire is proved partly

by a priori arguments such as the unity of God and the unity of the

family or nation; partly by perversions of Scripture and history, by

false analogies of nature, by misapplied quotations from the classics,

and by odd scraps and commonplaces of logic, showing a familiar but by

no means exact knowledge of Aristotle (of Plato there is none). But a

more convincing argument still is the miserable state of the world,

which he touchingly describes. He sees no hope of happiness or peace

for mankind until all nations of the earth are comprehended in a single

empire. The whole treatise shows how deeply the idea of the Roman

Empire was fixed in the minds of his contemporaries. Not much argument

was needed to maintain the truth of a theory which to his own

contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial. He speaks, or rather

preaches, from the point of view, not of the ecclesiastic, but of the

layman, although, as a good Catholic, he is willing to acknowledge that

in certain respects the Empire must submit to the Church. The beginning

and end of all his noble reflections and of his arguments, good and

bad, is the aspiration ‘that in this little plot of earth belonging to

mortal man life may pass in freedom and peace.’ So inextricably is his

vision of the future bound up with the beliefs and circumstances of his

own age.

The ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More is a surprising monument of his genius,

and shows a reach of thought far beyond his contemporaries. The book

was written by him at the age of about 34 or 35, and is full of the

generous sentiments of youth. He brings the light of Plato to bear upon

the miserable state of his own country. Living not long after the Wars

of the Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is

indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the

nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities

caused by war. To the eye of More the whole world was in dissolution

and decay; and side by side with the misery and oppression which he has

described in the First Book of the Utopia, he places in the Second Book

the ideal state which by the help of Plato he had constructed. The

times were full of stir and intellectual interest. The distant murmur

of the Reformation was beginning to be heard. To minds like More’s,

Greek literature was a revelation: there had arisen an art of

interpretation, and the New Testament was beginning to be understood as

it had never been before, and has not often been since, in its natural

sense. The life there depicted appeared to him wholly unlike that of

Christian commonwealths, in which ‘he saw nothing but a certain

conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name

and title of the Commonwealth.’ He thought that Christ, like Plato,

‘instituted all things common,’ for which reason, he tells us, the

citizens of Utopia were the more willing to receive his doctrines

(‘Howbeit, I think this was no small help and furtherance in the

matter, that they heard us say that Christ instituted among his, all

things common, and that the same community doth yet remain in the

rightest Christian communities’ (Utopia).). The community of property

is a fixed idea with him, though he is aware of the arguments which may

be urged on the other side (‘These things (I say), when I consider with

myself, I hold well with Plato, and do nothing marvel that he would

make no laws for them that refused those laws, whereby all men should

have and enjoy equal portions of riches and commodities. For the wise

men did easily foresee this to be the one and only way to the wealth of

a community, if equality of all things should be brought in and

established’ (Utopia).). We wonder how in the reign of Henry VIII,

though veiled in another language and published in a foreign country,

such speculations could have been endured.

He is gifted with far greater dramatic invention than any one who

succeeded him, with the exception of Swift. In the art of feigning he

is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting from a small portion

of fact, he founds his tale with admirable skill on a few lines in the

Latin narrative of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. He is very precise

about dates and facts, and has the power of making us believe that the

narrator of the tale must have been an eyewitness. We are fairly

puzzled by his manner of mixing up real and imaginary persons; his boy

John Clement and Peter Giles, citizen of Antwerp, with whom he disputes

about the precise words which are supposed to have been used by the

(imaginary) Portuguese traveller, Raphael Hythloday. ‘I have the more

cause,’ says Hythloday, ‘to fear that my words shall not be believed,

for that I know how difficultly and hardly I myself would have believed

another man telling the same, if I had not myself seen it with mine own

eyes.’ Or again: ‘If you had been with me in Utopia, and had presently

seen their fashions and laws as I did which lived there five years and

more, and would never have come thence, but only to make the new land

known here,’ etc. More greatly regrets that he forgot to ask Hythloday

in what part of the world Utopia is situated; he ‘would have spent no

small sum of money rather than it should have escaped him,’ and he begs

Peter Giles to see Hythloday or write to him and obtain an answer to

the question. After this we are not surprised to hear that a Professor

of Divinity (perhaps ‘a late famous vicar of Croydon in Surrey,’ as the

translator thinks) is desirous of being sent thither as a missionary by

the High Bishop, ‘yea, and that he may himself be made Bishop of

Utopia, nothing doubting that he must obtain this Bishopric with suit;

and he counteth that a godly suit which proceedeth not of the desire of

honour or lucre, but only of a godly zeal.’ The design may have failed

through the disappearance of Hythloday, concerning whom we have ‘very

uncertain news’ after his departure. There is no doubt, however, that

he had told More and Giles the exact situation of the island, but

unfortunately at the same moment More’s attention, as he is reminded in

a letter from Giles, was drawn off by a servant, and one of the company

from a cold caught on shipboard coughed so loud as to prevent Giles

from hearing. And ‘the secret has perished’ with him; to this day the

place of Utopia remains unknown.

The words of Phaedrus, ‘O Socrates, you can easily invent Egyptians or

anything,’ are recalled to our mind as we read this lifelike fiction.

Yet the greater merit of the work is not the admirable art, but the

originality of thought. More is as free as Plato from the prejudices of

his age, and far more tolerant. The Utopians do not allow him who

believes not in the immortality of the soul to share in the

administration of the state (Laws), ‘howbeit they put him to no

punishment, because they be persuaded that it is in no man’s power to

believe what he list’; and ‘no man is to be blamed for reasoning in

support of his own religion (‘One of our company in my presence was

sharply punished. He, as soon as he was baptised, began, against our

wills, with more earnest affection than wisdom, to reason of Christ’s

religion, and began to wax so hot in his matter, that he did not only

prefer our religion before all other, but also did despise and condemn

all other, calling them profane, and the followers of them wicked and

devilish, and the children of everlasting damnation. When he had thus

long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, accused him, and

condemned him into exile, not as a despiser of religion, but as a

seditious person and a raiser up of dissension among the people’).’ In

the public services ‘no prayers be used, but such as every man may

boldly pronounce without giving offence to any sect.’ He says

significantly, ‘There be that give worship to a man that was once of

excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as God, but also the

chiefest and highest God. But the most and the wisest part, rejecting

all these, believe that there is a certain godly power unknown, far

above the capacity and reach of man’s wit, dispersed throughout all the

world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power. Him they call the

Father of all. To Him alone they attribute the beginnings, the

increasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things.

Neither give they any divine honours to any other than him.’ So far was

More from sharing the popular beliefs of his time. Yet at the end he

reminds us that he does not in all respects agree with the customs and

opinions of the Utopians which he describes. And we should let him have

the benefit of this saving clause, and not rudely withdraw the veil

behind which he has been pleased to conceal himself.