Chương Chương 14 · Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was（5）

But as the philosopher is apt to fail in the routine of political life,

so the ordinary statesman is also apt to fail in extraordinary crises.

When the face of the world is beginning to alter, and thunder is heard

in the distance, he is still guided by his old maxims, and is the slave

of his inveterate party prejudices; he cannot perceive the signs of the

times; instead of looking forward he looks back; he learns nothing and

forgets nothing; with ‘wise saws and modern instances’ he would stem

the rising tide of revolution. He lives more and more within the circle

of his own party, as the world without him becomes stronger. This seems

to be the reason why the old order of things makes so poor a figure

when confronted with the new, why churches can never reform, why most

political changes are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises

in the history of nations have often been met by an ecclesiastical

positiveness, and a more obstinate reassertion of principles which have

lost their hold upon a nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary

statesman may be compared to madness; they grow upon him, and he

becomes possessed by them; no judgement of others is ever admitted by

him to be weighed in the balance against his own.

(d) Plato, labouring under what, to modern readers, appears to have

been a confusion of ideas, assimilates the state to the individual, and

fails to distinguish Ethics from Politics. He thinks that to be most of

a state which is most like one man, and in which the citizens have the

greatest uniformity of character. He does not see that the analogy is

partly fallacious, and that the will or character of a state or nation

is really the balance or rather the surplus of individual wills, which

are limited by the condition of having to act in common. The movement

of a body of men can never have the pliancy or facility of a single

man; the freedom of the individual, which is always limited, becomes

still more straitened when transferred to a nation. The powers of

action and feeling are necessarily weaker and more balanced when they

are diffused through a community; whence arises the often discussed

question, ‘Can a nation, like an individual, have a conscience?’ We

hesitate to say that the characters of nations are nothing more than

the sum of the characters of the individuals who compose them; because

there may be tendencies in individuals which react upon one another. A

whole nation may be wiser than any one man in it; or may be animated by

some common opinion or feeling which could not equally have affected

the mind of a single person, or may have been inspired by a leader of

genius to perform acts more than human. Plato does not appear to have

analysed the complications which arise out of the collective action of

mankind. Neither is he capable of seeing that analogies, though

specious as arguments, may often have no foundation in fact, or of

distinguishing between what is intelligible or vividly present to the

mind, and what is true. In this respect he is far below Aristotle, who

is comparatively seldom imposed upon by false analogies. He cannot

disentangle the arts from the virtues—at least he is always arguing

from one to the other. His notion of music is transferred from harmony

of sounds to harmony of life: in this he is assisted by the ambiguities

of language as well as by the prevalence of Pythagorean notions. And

having once assimilated the state to the individual, he imagines that

he will find the succession of states paralleled in the lives of

individuals.

Still, through this fallacious medium, a real enlargement of ideas is

attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct conception to

the mind, a great advance was made by the comparison of them with the

arts; for virtue is partly art, and has an outward form as well as an

inward principle. The harmony of music affords a lively image of the

harmonies of the world and of human life, and may be regarded as a

splendid illustration which was naturally mistaken for a real analogy.

In the same way the identification of ethics with politics has a

tendency to give definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and

ennoble men’s notions of the aims of government and of the duties of

citizens; for ethics from one point of view may be conceived as an

idealized law and politics; and politics, as ethics reduced to the

conditions of human society. There have been evils which have arisen

out of the attempt to identify them, and this has led to the separation

or antagonism of them, which has been introduced by modern political

writers. But we may likewise feel that something has been lost in their

separation, and that the ancient philosophers who estimated the moral

and intellectual wellbeing of mankind first, and the wealth of nations

and individuals second, may have a salutary influence on the

speculations of modern times. Many political maxims originate in a

reaction against an opposite error; and when the errors against which

they were directed have passed away, they in turn become errors.

3. Plato’s views of education are in several respects remarkable; like

the rest of the Republic they are partly Greek and partly ideal,

beginning with the ordinary curriculum of the Greek youth, and

extending to after-life. Plato is the first writer who distinctly says

that education is to comprehend the whole of life, and to be a

preparation for another in which education begins again. This is the

continuous thread which runs through the Republic, and which more than

any other of his ideas admits of an application to modern life.

He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is

disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are

one and not many. He is not unwilling to admit the sensible world into

his scheme of truth. Nor does he assert in the Republic the

involuntariness of vice, which is maintained by him in the Timaeus,

Sophist, and Laws (Protag., Apol., Gorg.). Nor do the so-called

Platonic ideas recovered from a former state of existence affect his

theory of mental improvement. Still we observe in him the remains of

the old Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge must be elicited from

within, and is to be sought for in ideas, not in particulars of sense.

Education, as he says, will implant a principle of intelligence which

is better than ten thousand eyes. The paradox that the virtues are one,

and the kindred notion that all virtue is knowledge, are not entirely

renounced; the first is seen in the supremacy given to justice over the

rest; the second in the tendency to absorb the moral virtues in the

intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the contemplation of the

idea of good. The world of sense is still depreciated and identified

with opinion, though admitted to be a shadow of the true. In the

Republic he is evidently impressed with the conviction that vice arises

chiefly from ignorance and may be cured by education; the multitude are

hardly to be deemed responsible for what they do. A faint allusion to

the doctrine of reminiscence occurs in the Tenth Book; but Plato’s

views of education have no more real connection with a previous state

of existence than our own; he only proposes to elicit from the mind

that which is there already. Education is represented by him, not as

the filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of the soul towards

the light.

He treats first of music or literature, which he divides into true and

false, and then goes on to gymnastics; of infancy in the Republic he

takes no notice, though in the Laws he gives sage counsels about the

nursing of children and the management of the mothers, and would have

an education which is even prior to birth. But in the Republic he

begins with the age at which the child is capable of receiving ideas,

and boldly asserts, in language which sounds paradoxical to modern

ears, that he must be taught the false before he can learn the true.

The modern and ancient philosophical world are not agreed about truth

and falsehood; the one identifies truth almost exclusively with fact,

the other with ideas. This is the difference between ourselves and

Plato, which is, however, partly a difference of words. For we too

should admit that a child must receive many lessons which he

imperfectly understands; he must be taught some things in a figure

only, some too which he can hardly be expected to believe when he grows

older; but we should limit the use of fiction by the necessity of the

case. Plato would draw the line differently; according to him the aim

of early education is not truth as a matter of fact, but truth as a

matter of principle; the child is to be taught first simple religious

truths, and then simple moral truths, and insensibly to learn the

lesson of good manners and good taste. He would make an entire

reformation of the old mythology; like Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is

sensible of the deep chasm which separates his own age from Homer and

Hesiod, whom he quotes and invests with an imaginary authority, but

only for his own purposes. The lusts and treacheries of the gods are to

be banished; the terrors of the world below are to be dispelled; the

misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is not to be a model for youth. But

there is another strain heard in Homer which may teach our youth

endurance; and something may be learnt in medicine from the simple

practice of the Homeric age. The principles on which religion is to be

based are two only: first, that God is true; secondly, that he is good.

Modern and Christian writers have often fallen short of these; they can

hardly be said to have gone beyond them.

The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of the way of

sights or sounds which may hurt the character or vitiate the taste.

They are to live in an atmosphere of health; the breeze is always to be

wafting to them the impressions of truth and goodness. Could such an

education be realized, or if our modern religious education could be

bound up with truth and virtue and good manners and good taste, that

would be the best hope of human improvement. Plato, like ourselves, is

looking forward to changes in the moral and religious world, and is

preparing for them. He recognizes the danger of unsettling young men’s

minds by sudden changes of laws and principles, by destroying the

sacredness of one set of ideas when there is nothing else to take their

place. He is afraid too of the influence of the drama, on the ground

that it encourages false sentiment, and therefore he would not have his

children taken to the theatre; he thinks that the effect on the

spectators is bad, and on the actors still worse. His idea of education

is that of harmonious growth, in which are insensibly learnt the

lessons of temperance and endurance, and the body and mind develope in

equal proportions. The first principle which runs through all art and

nature is simplicity; this also is to be the rule of human life.

The second stage of education is gymnastic, which answers to the period

of muscular growth and development. The simplicity which is enforced in

music is extended to gymnastic; Plato is aware that the training of the

body may be inconsistent with the training of the mind, and that bodily

exercise may be easily overdone. Excessive training of the body is apt

to give men a headache or to render them sleepy at a lecture on

philosophy, and this they attribute not to the true cause, but to the

nature of the subject. Two points are noticeable in Plato’s treatment

of gymnastic:—First, that the time of training is entirely separated

from the time of literary education. He seems to have thought that two

things of an opposite and different nature could not be learnt at the

same time. Here we can hardly agree with him; and, if we may judge by

experience, the effect of spending three years between the ages of

fourteen and seventeen in mere bodily exercise would be far from

improving to the intellect. Secondly, he affirms that music and

gymnastic are not, as common opinion is apt to imagine, intended, the

one for the cultivation of the mind and the other of the body, but that

they are both equally designed for the improvement of the mind. The

body, in his view, is the servant of the mind; the subjection of the

lower to the higher is for the advantage of both. And doubtless the

mind may exercise a very great and paramount influence over the body,

if exerted not at particular moments and by fits and starts, but

continuously, in making preparation for the whole of life. Other Greek

writers saw the mischievous tendency of Spartan discipline (Arist. Pol;

Thuc.). But only Plato recognized the fundamental error on which the

practice was based.

The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of medicine,

which he further illustrates by the parallel of law. The modern

disbelief in medicine has led in this, as in some other departments of

knowledge, to a demand for greater simplicity; physicians are becoming

aware that they often make diseases ‘greater and more complicated’ by

their treatment of them (Rep.). In two thousand years their art has

made but slender progress; what they have gained in the analysis of the

parts is in a great degree lost by their feebler conception of the

human frame as a whole. They have attended more to the cure of diseases

than to the conditions of health; and the improvements in medicine have

been more than counterbalanced by the disuse of regular training. Until

lately they have hardly thought of air and water, the importance of

which was well understood by the ancients; as Aristotle remarks, ‘Air

and water, being the elements which we most use, have the greatest

effect upon health’ (Polit.). For ages physicians have been under the

dominion of prejudices which have only recently given way; and now

there are as many opinions in medicine as in theology, and an equal

degree of scepticism and some want of toleration about both. Plato has

several good notions about medicine; according to him, ‘the eye cannot

be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body without the mind’

(Charm.). No man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would take physic;

and we heartily sympathize with him in the Laws when he declares that

‘the limbs of the rustic worn with toil will derive more benefit from

warm baths than from the prescriptions of a not over wise doctor.’ But

we can hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority of Homer,

he depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in which he would

get rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving them to die. He does

not seem to have considered that the ‘bridle of Theages’ might be

accompanied by qualities which were of far more value to the State than

the health or strength of the citizens; or that the duty of taking care

of the helpless might be an important element of education in a State.

The physician himself (this is a delicate and subtle observation)

should not be a man in robust health; he should have, in modern

phraseology, a nervous temperament; he should have experience of

disease in his own person, in order that his powers of observation may

be quickened in the case of others.

The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of law; in

which, again, Plato would have men follow the golden rule of

simplicity. Greater matters are to be determined by the legislator or

by the oracle of Delphi, lesser matters are to be left to the temporary

regulation of the citizens themselves. Plato is aware that laissez

faire is an important element of government. The diseases of a State

are like the heads of a hydra; they multiply when they are cut off. The

true remedy for them is not extirpation but prevention. And the way to

prevent them is to take care of education, and education will take care

of all the rest. So in modern times men have often felt that the only

political measure worth having—the only one which would produce any

certain or lasting effect, was a measure of national education. And in

our own more than in any previous age the necessity has been recognized

of restoring the ever-increasing confusion of law to simplicity and

common sense.

When the training in music and gymnastic is completed, there follows

the first stage of active and public life. But soon education is to

begin again from a new point of view. In the interval between the

Fourth and Seventh Books we have discussed the nature of knowledge, and

have thence been led to form a higher conception of what was required

of us. For true knowledge, according to Plato, is of abstractions, and

has to do, not with particulars or individuals, but with universals

only; not with the beauties of poetry, but with the ideas of

philosophy. And the great aim of education is the cultivation of the

habit of abstraction. This is to be acquired through the study of the

mathematical sciences. They alone are capable of giving ideas of

relation, and of arousing the dormant energies of thought.

Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part of that

which is now included in them; but they bore a much larger proportion

to the sum of human knowledge. They were the only organon of thought

which the human mind at that time possessed, and the only measure by

which the chaos of particulars could be reduced to rule and order. The

faculty which they trained was naturally at war with the poetical or

imaginative; and hence to Plato, who is everywhere seeking for

abstractions and trying to get rid of the illusions of sense, nearly

the whole of education is contained in them. They seemed to have an

inexhaustible application, partly because their true limits were not

yet understood. These Plato himself is beginning to investigate; though

not aware that number and figure are mere abstractions of sense, he

recognizes that the forms used by geometry are borrowed from the

sensible world. He seeks to find the ultimate ground of mathematical

ideas in the idea of good, though he does not satisfactorily explain

the connexion between them; and in his conception of the relation of

ideas to numbers, he falls very far short of the definiteness

attributed to him by Aristotle (Met.). But if he fails to recognize the

true limits of mathematics, he also reaches a point beyond them; in his

view, ideas of number become secondary to a higher conception of

knowledge. The dialectician is as much above the mathematician as the

mathematician is above the ordinary man. The one, the self-proving, the

good which is the higher sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to

which all things ascend, and in which they finally repose.

This self-proving unity or idea of good is a mere vision of which no

distinct explanation can be given, relative only to a particular stage

in Greek philosophy. It is an abstraction under which no individuals

are comprehended, a whole which has no parts (Arist., Nic. Eth.). The

vacancy of such a form was perceived by Aristotle, but not by Plato.

Nor did he recognize that in the dialectical process are included two

or more methods of investigation which are at variance with each other.

He did not see that whether he took the longer or the shorter road, no

advance could be made in this way. And yet such visions often have an

immense effect; for although the method of science cannot anticipate

science, the idea of science, not as it is, but as it will be in the

future, is a great and inspiring principle. In the pursuit of knowledge

we are always pressing forward to something beyond us; and as a false

conception of knowledge, for example the scholastic philosophy, may

lead men astray during many ages, so the true ideal, though vacant, may

draw all their thoughts in a right direction. It makes a great

difference whether the general expectation of knowledge, as this

indefinite feeling may be termed, is based upon a sound judgment. For

mankind may often entertain a true conception of what knowledge ought

to be when they have but a slender experience of facts. The correlation

of the sciences, the consciousness of the unity of nature, the idea of

classification, the sense of proportion, the unwillingness to stop

short of certainty or to confound probability with truth, are important

principles of the higher education. Although Plato could tell us

nothing, and perhaps knew that he could tell us nothing, of the

absolute truth, he has exercised an influence on the human mind which

even at the present day is not exhausted; and political and social

questions may yet arise in which the thoughts of Plato may be read anew

and receive a fresh meaning.

The Idea of good is so called only in the Republic, but there are

traces of it in other dialogues of Plato. It is a cause as well as an

idea, and from this point of view may be compared with the creator of

the Timaeus, who out of his goodness created all things. It corresponds

to a certain extent with the modern conception of a law of nature, or

of a final cause, or of both in one, and in this regard may be

connected with the measure and symmetry of the Philebus. It is

represented in the Symposium under the aspect of beauty, and is

supposed to be attained there by stages of initiation, as here by

regular gradations of knowledge. Viewed subjectively, it is the process

or science of dialectic. This is the science which, according to the

Phaedrus, is the true basis of rhetoric, which alone is able to

distinguish the natures and classes of men and things; which divides a

whole into the natural parts, and reunites the scattered parts into a

natural or organized whole; which defines the abstract essences or

universal ideas of all things, and connects them; which pierces the

veil of hypotheses and reaches the final cause or first principle of

all; which regards the sciences in relation to the idea of good. This

ideal science is the highest process of thought, and may be described

as the soul conversing with herself or holding communion with eternal

truth and beauty, and in another form is the everlasting question and

answer—the ceaseless interrogative of Socrates. The dialogues of Plato

are themselves examples of the nature and method of dialectic. Viewed

objectively, the idea of good is a power or cause which makes the world

without us correspond with the world within. Yet this world without us

is still a world of ideas. With Plato the investigation of nature is

another department of knowledge, and in this he seeks to attain only

probable conclusions (Timaeus).

If we ask whether this science of dialectic which Plato only half

explains to us is more akin to logic or to metaphysics, the answer is

that in his mind the two sciences are not as yet distinguished, any

more than the subjective and objective aspects of the world and of man,

which German philosophy has revealed to us. Nor has he determined

whether his science of dialectic is at rest or in motion, concerned

with the contemplation of absolute being, or with a process of

development and evolution. Modern metaphysics may be described as the

science of abstractions, or as the science of the evolution of thought;

modern logic, when passing beyond the bounds of mere Aristotelian

forms, may be defined as the science of method. The germ of both of

them is contained in the Platonic dialectic; all metaphysicians have

something in common with the ideas of Plato; all logicians have derived

something from the method of Plato. The nearest approach in modern

philosophy to the universal science of Plato, is to be found in the

Hegelian ‘succession of moments in the unity of the idea.’ Plato and

Hegel alike seem to have conceived the world as the correlation of

abstractions; and not impossibly they would have understood one another

better than any of their commentators understand them (Swift’s Voyage

to Laputa. ‘Having a desire to see those ancients who were most

renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I

proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their

commentators; but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced

to attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and

could distinguish these two heroes, at first sight, not only from the

crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of

the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the

most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made

use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his

voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect

strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of

them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless,

“That these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from

their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame

and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of

these authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to

Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they

deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the

spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the

account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and

he asked them “whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as

themselves?”’). There is, however, a difference between them: for

whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind, which

developes the stages of the idea in different countries or at different

times in the same country, with Plato these gradations are regarded

only as an order of thought or ideas; the history of the human mind had

not yet dawned upon him.

Many criticisms may be made on Plato’s theory of education. While in

some respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others

he is in advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which

prevailed in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered

new ones. He does not see that education is relative to the characters

of individuals; he only desires to impress the same form of the state

on the minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of

literature on the formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates that

of mathematics. His aim is above all things to train the reasoning

faculties; to implant in the mind the spirit and power of abstraction;

to explain and define general notions, and, if possible, to connect

them. No wonder that in the vacancy of actual knowledge his followers,

and at times even he himself, should have fallen away from the doctrine

of ideas, and have returned to that branch of knowledge in which alone

the relation of the one and many can be truly seen—the science of

number. In his views both of teaching and training he might be styled,

in modern language, a doctrinaire; after the Spartan fashion he would

have his citizens cast in one mould; he does not seem to consider that

some degree of freedom, ‘a little wholesome neglect,’ is necessary to

strengthen and develope the character and to give play to the

individual nature. His citizens would not have acquired that knowledge

which in the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the pilgrims from

their experience of evil.

On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and

theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through

life and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of

some kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of

Solon, ‘I grow old learning many things,’ cannot be applied literally.

Himself ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and

delighting in solid geometry (Rep.), he has no difficulty in imagining

that a lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know

how many more men of business there are in the world than real students

or thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes

for his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of

genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,—a life

not for the many, but for the few.

Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to

our own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be

realized, it may have a great effect in elevating the characters of

mankind, and raising them above the routine of their ordinary

occupation or profession. It is the best form under which we can

conceive the whole of life. Nevertheless the idea of Plato is not

easily put into practice. For the education of after life is

necessarily the education which each one gives himself. Men and women

cannot be brought together in schools or colleges at forty or fifty

years of age; and if they could the result would be disappointing. The

destination of most men is what Plato would call ‘the Den’ for the

whole of life, and with that they are content. Neither have they

teachers or advisers with whom they can take counsel in riper years.

There is no ‘schoolmaster abroad’ who will tell them of their faults,

or inspire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the ambition of

a true success in life; no Socrates who will convict them of ignorance;

no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them of sin. Hence

they have a difficulty in receiving the first element of improvement,

which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir them; they

rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects. A few only who have

come across great men and women, or eminent teachers of religion and

morality, have received a second life from them, and have lighted a

candle from the fire of their genius.

The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons

continue to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not

know the way. They ‘never try an experiment,’ or look up a point of

interest for themselves; they make no sacrifices for the sake of

knowledge; their minds, like their bodies, at a certain age become

fixed. Genius has been defined as ‘the power of taking pains’; but

hardly any one keeps up his interest in knowledge throughout a whole

life. The troubles of a family, the business of making money, the

demands of a profession destroy the elasticity of the mind. The waxen

tablet of the memory which was once capable of receiving ‘true thoughts

and clear impressions’ becomes hard and crowded; there is not room for

the accumulations of a long life (Theaet.). The student, as years

advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than adds to his stores.

There is no pressing necessity to learn; the stock of Classics or

History or Natural Science which was enough for a man at twenty-five is

enough for him at fifty. Neither is it easy to give a definite answer

to any one who asks how he is to improve. For self-education consists

in a thousand things, commonplace in themselves,—in adding to what we

are by nature something of what we are not; in learning to see

ourselves as others see us; in judging, not by opinion, but by the

evidence of facts; in seeking out the society of superior minds; in a

study of lives and writings of great men; in observation of the world

and character; in receiving kindly the natural influence of different

times of life; in any act or thought which is raised above the practice

or opinions of mankind; in the pursuit of some new or original enquiry;

in any effort of mind which calls forth some latent power.