Chương Chương 2 · Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on

continuing the argument. He is not satisfied with the indirect manner

in which, at the end of the last book, Socrates had disposed of the

question ‘Whether the just or the unjust is the happier.’ He begins by

dividing goods into three classes:—first, goods desirable in

themselves; secondly, goods desirable in themselves and for their

results; thirdly, goods desirable for their results only. He then asks

Socrates in which of the three classes he would place justice. In the

second class, replies Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves

and also for their results. ‘Then the world in general are of another

mind, for they say that justice belongs to the troublesome class of

goods which are desirable for their results only. Socrates answers that

this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus which he rejects. Glaucon thinks

that Thrasymachus was too ready to listen to the voice of the charmer,

and proposes to consider the nature of justice and injustice in

themselves and apart from the results and rewards of them which the

world is always dinning in his ears. He will first of all speak of the

nature and origin of justice; secondly, of the manner in which men view

justice as a necessity and not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the

reasonableness of this view.

‘To do injustice is said to be a good; to suffer injustice an evil. As

the evil is discovered by experience to be greater than the good, the

sufferers, who cannot also be doers, make a compact that they will have

neither, and this compact or mean is called justice, but is really the

impossibility of doing injustice. No one would observe such a compact

if he were not obliged. Let us suppose that the just and unjust have

two rings, like that of Gyges in the well-known story, which make them

invisible, and then no difference will appear in them, for every one

will do evil if he can. And he who abstains will be regarded by the

world as a fool for his pains. Men may praise him in public out of fear

for themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts (Cp.

Gorgias.)

‘And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine the

unjust man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes and easily

correcting them; having gifts of money, speech, strength—the greatest

villain bearing the highest character: and at his side let us place the

just in his nobleness and simplicity—being, not seeming—without name or

reward—clothed in his justice only—the best of men who is thought to be

the worst, and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would

rather put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice—they

will tell you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will

have his eyes put out, and will at last be crucified (literally

impaled)—and all this because he ought to have preferred seeming to

being. How different is the case of the unjust who clings to appearance

as the true reality! His high character makes him a ruler; he can marry

where he likes, trade where he likes, help his friends and hurt his

enemies; having got rich by dishonesty he can worship the gods better,

and will therefore be more loved by them than the just.’

I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the already

unequal fray. He considered that the most important point of all had

been omitted:—‘Men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards;

parents and guardians make reputation the incentive to virtue. And

other advantages are promised by them of a more solid kind, such as

wealthy marriages and high offices. There are the pictures in Homer and

Hesiod of fat sheep and heavy fleeces, rich corn-fields and trees

toppling with fruit, which the gods provide in this life for the just.

And the Orphic poets add a similar picture of another. The heroes of

Musaeus and Eumolpus lie on couches at a festival, with garlands on

their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a paradise of immortal

drunkenness. Some go further, and speak of a fair posterity in the

third and fourth generation. But the wicked they bury in a slough and

make them carry water in a sieve: and in this life they attribute to

them the infamy which Glaucon was assuming to be the lot of the just

who are supposed to be unjust.

‘Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry and

prose:—“Virtue,” as Hesiod says, “is honourable but difficult, vice is

easy and profitable.” You may often see the wicked in great prosperity

and the righteous afflicted by the will of heaven. And mendicant

prophets knock at rich men’s doors, promising to atone for the sins of

themselves or their fathers in an easy fashion with sacrifices and

festive games, or with charms and invocations to get rid of an enemy

good or bad by divine help and at a small charge;—they appeal to books

professing to be written by Musaeus and Orpheus, and carry away the

minds of whole cities, and promise to “get souls out of purgatory;” and

if we refuse to listen to them, no one knows what will happen to us.

‘When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what will be his

conclusion? “Will he,” in the language of Pindar, “make justice his

high tower, or fortify himself with crooked deceit?” Justice, he

reflects, without the appearance of justice, is misery and ruin;

injustice has the promise of a glorious life. Appearance is master of

truth and lord of happiness. To appearance then I will turn,—I will put

on the show of virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. I

hear some one saying that “wickedness is not easily concealed,” to

which I reply that “nothing great is easy.” Union and force and

rhetoric will do much; and if men say that they cannot prevail over the

gods, still how do we know that there are gods? Only from the poets,

who acknowledge that they may be appeased by sacrifices. Then why not

sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin? For if the righteous are

only unpunished, still they have no further reward, while the wicked

may be unpunished and have the pleasure of sinning too. But what of the

world below? Nay, says the argument, there are atoning powers who will

set that matter right, as the poets, who are the sons of the gods, tell

us; and this is confirmed by the authority of the State.

‘How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice? Add good

manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of both

worlds. Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from smiling

at the praises of justice? Even if a man knows the better part he will

not be angry with others; for he knows also that more than human virtue

is needed to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is

incapable of injustice.

‘The origin of the evil is that all men from the beginning, heroes,

poets, instructors of youth, have always asserted “the temporal

dispensation,” the honours and profits of justice. Had we been taught

in early youth the power of justice and injustice inherent in the soul,

and unseen by any human or divine eye, we should not have needed others

to be our guardians, but every one would have been the guardian of

himself. This is what I want you to show, Socrates;—other men use

arguments which rather tend to strengthen the position of Thrasymachus

that “might is right;” but from you I expect better things. And please,

as Glaucon said, to exclude reputation; let the just be thought unjust

and the unjust just, and do you still prove to us the superiority of

justice’...

The thesis, which for the sake of argument has been maintained by

Glaucon, is the converse of that of Thrasymachus—not right is the

interest of the stronger, but right is the necessity of the weaker.

Starting from the same premises he carries the analysis of society a

step further back;—might is still right, but the might is the weakness

of the many combined against the strength of the few.

There have been theories in modern as well as in ancient times which

have a family likeness to the speculations of Glaucon; e.g. that power

is the foundation of right; or that a monarch has a divine right to

govern well or ill; or that virtue is self-love or the love of power;

or that war is the natural state of man; or that private vices are

public benefits. All such theories have a kind of plausibility from

their partial agreement with experience. For human nature oscillates

between good and evil, and the motives of actions and the origin of

institutions may be explained to a certain extent on either hypothesis

according to the character or point of view of a particular thinker.

The obligation of maintaining authority under all circumstances and

sometimes by rather questionable means is felt strongly and has become

a sort of instinct among civilized men. The divine right of kings, or

more generally of governments, is one of the forms under which this

natural feeling is expressed. Nor again is there any evil which has not

some accompaniment of good or pleasure; nor any good which is free from

some alloy of evil; nor any noble or generous thought which may not be

attended by a shadow or the ghost of a shadow of self-interest or of

self-love. We know that all human actions are imperfect; but we do not

therefore attribute them to the worse rather than to the better motive

or principle. Such a philosophy is both foolish and false, like that

opinion of the clever rogue who assumes all other men to be like

himself. And theories of this sort do not represent the real nature of

the State, which is based on a vague sense of right gradually corrected

and enlarged by custom and law (although capable also of perversion),

any more than they describe the origin of society, which is to be

sought in the family and in the social and religious feelings of man.

Nor do they represent the average character of individuals, which

cannot be explained simply on a theory of evil, but has always a

counteracting element of good. And as men become better such theories

appear more and more untruthful to them, because they are more

conscious of their own disinterestedness. A little experience may make

a man a cynic; a great deal will bring him back to a truer and kindlier

view of the mixed nature of himself and his fellow men.

The two brothers ask Socrates to prove to them that the just is happy

when they have taken from him all that in which happiness is ordinarily

supposed to consist. Not that there is (1) any absurdity in the attempt

to frame a notion of justice apart from circumstances. For the ideal

must always be a paradox when compared with the ordinary conditions of

human life. Neither the Stoical ideal nor the Christian ideal is true

as a fact, but they may serve as a basis of education, and may exercise

an ennobling influence. An ideal is none the worse because ‘some one

has made the discovery’ that no such ideal was ever realized. And in a

few exceptional individuals who are raised above the ordinary level of

humanity, the ideal of happiness may be realized in death and misery.

This may be the state which the reason deliberately approves, and which

the utilitarian as well as every other moralist may be bound in certain

cases to prefer.

Nor again, (2) must we forget that Plato, though he agrees generally

with the view implied in the argument of the two brothers, is not

expressing his own final conclusion, but rather seeking to dramatize

one of the aspects of ethical truth. He is developing his idea

gradually in a series of positions or situations. He is exhibiting

Socrates for the first time undergoing the Socratic interrogation.

Lastly, (3) the word ‘happiness’ involves some degree of confusion

because associated in the language of modern philosophy with conscious

pleasure or satisfaction, which was not equally present to his mind.

Glaucon has been drawing a picture of the misery of the just and the

happiness of the unjust, to which the misery of the tyrant in Book IX

is the answer and parallel. And still the unjust must appear just; that

is ‘the homage which vice pays to virtue.’ But now Adeimantus, taking

up the hint which had been already given by Glaucon, proceeds to show

that in the opinion of mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of

rewards and reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to

such arguments as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conventional

morality of mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of ‘justifying the

ways of God to man.’ Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether

the morality of actions is determined by their consequences; and both

of them go beyond the position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the

class of goods not desirable for themselves only, but desirable for

themselves and for their results, to which he recalls them. In their

attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their

condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. The common life of

Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate deeper into the

nature of things.

It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon

and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not

more truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by

Socrates, and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being,

first in the State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new

answer to his old question (Protag.), ‘whether the virtues are one or

many,’ viz. that one is the ordering principle of the three others. In

seeking to establish the purely internal nature of justice, he is met

by the fact that man is a social being, and he tries to harmonise the

two opposite theses as well as he can. There is no more inconsistency

in this than was inevitable in his age and country; there is no use in

turning upon him the cross lights of modern philosophy, which, from

some other point of view, would appear equally inconsistent. Plato does

not give the final solution of philosophical questions for us; nor can

he be judged of by our standard.

The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the

sons of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark in what

immediately follows:—First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether

indirect. He does not say that happiness consists in the contemplation

of the idea of justice, and still less will he be tempted to affirm the

Stoical paradox that the just man can be happy on the rack. But first

he dwells on the difficulty of the problem and insists on restoring man

to his natural condition, before he will answer the question at all. He

too will frame an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract

justice, but the whole relations of man. Under the fanciful

illustration of the large letters he implies that he will only look for

justice in society, and that from the State he will proceed to the

individual. His answer in substance amounts to this,—that under

favourable conditions, i.e. in the perfect State, justice and happiness

will coincide, and that when justice has been once found, happiness may

be left to take care of itself. That he falls into some degree of

inconsistency, when in the tenth book he claims to have got rid of the

rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted; for he has left those

which exist in the perfect State. And the philosopher ‘who retires

under the shelter of a wall’ can hardly have been esteemed happy by

him, at least not in this world. Still he maintains the true attitude

of moral action. Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he

will be happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident

which attends him. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his

righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’

Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine character

of Greek thought in beginning with the State and in going on to the

individual. First ethics, then politics—this is the order of ideas to

us; the reverse is the order of history. Only after many struggles of

thought does the individual assert his right as a moral being. In early

ages he is not ONE, but one of many, the citizen of a State which is

prior to him; and he has no notion of good or evil apart from the law

of his country or the creed of his church. And to this type he is

constantly tending to revert, whenever the influence of custom, or of

party spirit, or the recollection of the past becomes too strong for

him.

Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the

individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early

Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of

influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual

action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are

sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human

action, whenever we either elevate politics into ethics, or lower

ethics to the standard of politics. The good man and the good citizen

only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be

attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all,

by education fashioning them from within.

...Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, ‘inspired offspring of the

renowned hero,’ as the elegiac poet terms them; but he does not

understand how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of injustice

while their character shows that they are uninfluenced by their own

arguments. He knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of

deserting justice in the hour of need. He therefore makes a condition,

that having weak eyes he shall be allowed to read the large letters

first and then go on to the smaller, that is, he must look for justice

in the State first, and will then proceed to the individual.

Accordingly he begins to construct the State.

Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food; his

second a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the

possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together

on the same spot; and this is the beginning of a State, which we take

the liberty to invent, although necessity is the real inventor. There

must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to

which may be added a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are

required to make a city. Now men have different natures, and one man

will do one thing better than many; and business waits for no man.

Hence there must be a division of labour into different employments;

into wholesale and retail trade; into workers, and makers of workmen’s

tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all this

will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be very

large. But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate

exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the

taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too we must

have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers

will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted

in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be

complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of the

citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.

Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend their

days in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their

own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food

is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best

of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children.

‘But,’ said Glaucon, interposing, ‘are they not to have a relish?’

Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and

fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ‘’Tis a city of pigs,

Socrates.’ Why, I replied, what do you want more? ‘Only the comforts of

life,—sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.’ I see; you want not

only a State, but a luxurious State; and possibly in the more complex

frame we may sooner find justice and injustice. Then the fine arts must

go to work—every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be

wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks,

barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for

the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is

the source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part

of our neighbour’s land, and they will want a part of ours. And this is

the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other

political evils. Our city will now require the slight addition of a

camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again

our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The

art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural

aptitude for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who

have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and

strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage,

such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But

these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the

union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears

to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both

qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an

answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your

dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing;

and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness.

The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which

will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without

education?

But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned

sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music

includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false.

‘What do you mean?’ he said. I mean that children hear stories before

they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have

at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early

life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they

will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a

censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of

them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer

and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus

and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never

be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in

a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some

unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their

fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel

by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall

they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of

Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales

may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are

incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to

be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers;

we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be

written; to write them is the duty of others.

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not

as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the

poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has

two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus

to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of

Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to

destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was

just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was

evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will

allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great

principle—God is the author of good only.

And the second principle is like unto it:—With God is no variableness

or change of form. Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change

in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself. By

another?—but the best works of nature and art and the noblest qualities

of mind are least liable to be changed by any external force. By

himself?—but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change for

the worse. He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image.

Therefore we refuse to listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging

in the likeness of a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at

night in strange disguises; all that blasphemous nonsense with which

mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be suppressed. But

some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a

form in relation to us. Why should he? For gods as well as men hate the

lie in the soul, or principle of falsehood; and as for any other form

of lying which is used for a purpose and is regarded as innocent in

certain exceptional cases—what need have the gods of this? For they are

not ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their

enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs. God then is true, he is

absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not, by day or night, by

word or sign. This is our second great principle—God is true. Away with

the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis

against Apollo in Aeschylus...

In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato

proceeds to trace the first principles of mutual need and of division

of labour in an imaginary community of four or five citizens. Gradually

this community increases; the division of labour extends to countries;

imports necessitate exports; a medium of exchange is required, and

retailers sit in the market-place to save the time of the producers.

These are the steps by which Plato constructs the first or primitive

State, introducing the elements of political economy by the way. As he

is going to frame a second or civilized State, the simple naturally

comes before the complex. He indulges, like Rousseau, in a picture of

primitive life—an idea which has indeed often had a powerful influence

on the imagination of mankind, but he does not seriously mean to say

that one is better than the other (Politicus); nor can any inference be

drawn from the description of the first state taken apart from the

second, such as Aristotle appears to draw in the Politics. We should

not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a poem or a parable in

too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On the other hand, when we

compare the lively fancy of Plato with the dried-up abstractions of

modern treatises on philosophy, we are compelled to say with

Protagoras, that the ‘mythus is more interesting’ (Protag.)

Several interesting remarks which in modern times would have a place in

a treatise on Political Economy are scattered up and down the writings

of Plato: especially Laws, Population; Free Trade; Adulteration; Wills

and Bequests; Begging; Eryxias, (though not Plato’s), Value and Demand;

Republic, Division of Labour. The last subject, and also the origin of

Retail Trade, is treated with admirable lucidity in the second book of

the Republic. But Plato never combined his economic ideas into a

system, and never seems to have recognized that Trade is one of the

great motive powers of the State and of the world. He would make retail

traders only of the inferior sort of citizens (Rep., Laws), though he

remarks, quaintly enough (Laws), that ‘if only the best men and the

best women everywhere were compelled to keep taverns for a time or to

carry on retail trade, etc., then we should knew how pleasant and

agreeable all these things are.’

The disappointment of Glaucon at the ‘city of pigs,’ the ludicrous

description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and

the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the

nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of

offering some almost unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to

be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to

his mother, are touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In

speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a

child must be trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. Yet

this is not very different from saying that children must be taught

through the medium of imagination as well as reason; that their minds

can only develope gradually, and that there is much which they must

learn without understanding. This is also the substance of Plato’s

view, though he must be acknowledged to have drawn the line somewhat

differently from modern ethical writers, respecting truth and

falsehood. To us, economies or accommodations would not be allowable

unless they were required by the human faculties or necessary for the

communication of knowledge to the simple and ignorant. We should insist

that the word was inseparable from the intention, and that we must not

be ‘falsely true,’ i.e. speak or act falsely in support of what was

right or true. But Plato would limit the use of fictions only by

requiring that they should have a good moral effect, and that such a

dangerous weapon as falsehood should be employed by the rulers alone

and for great objects.

A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question

whether his religion was an historical fact. He was just beginning to

be conscious that the past had a history; but he could see nothing

beyond Homer and Hesiod. Whether their narratives were true or false

did not seriously affect the political or social life of Hellas. Men

only began to suspect that they were fictions when they recognised them

to be immoral. And so in all religions: the consideration of their

morality comes first, afterwards the truth of the documents in which

they are recorded, or of the events natural or supernatural which are

told of them. But in modern times, and in Protestant countries perhaps

more than in Catholic, we have been too much inclined to identify the

historical with the moral; and some have refused to believe in religion

at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was discernible in every part of

the record. The facts of an ancient or religious history are amongst

the most important of all facts; but they are frequently uncertain, and

we only learn the true lesson which is to be gathered from them when we

place ourselves above them. These reflections tend to show that the

difference between Plato and ourselves, though not unimportant, is not

so great as might at first sight appear. For we should agree with him

in placing the moral before the historical truth of religion; and,

generally, in disregarding those errors or misstatements of fact which

necessarily occur in the early stages of all religions. We know also

that changes in the traditions of a country cannot be made in a day;

and are therefore tolerant of many things which science and criticism

would condemn.

We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mythology,

said to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before

Christ by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of

Plato, and here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was

rejected by him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men

have reached another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by

fictions is in accordance with universal experience. Great is the art

of interpretation; and by a natural process, which when once discovered

was always going on, what could not be altered was explained away. And

so without any palpable inconsistency there existed side by side two

forms of religion, the tradition inherited or invented by the poets and

the customary worship of the temple; on the other hand, there was the

religion of the philosopher, who was dwelling in the heaven of ideas,

but did not therefore refuse to offer a cock to Aesculapius, or to be

seen saying his prayers at the rising of the sun. At length the

antagonism between the popular and philosophical religion, never so

great among the Greeks as in our own age, disappeared, and was only

felt like the difference between the religion of the educated and

uneducated among ourselves. The Zeus of Homer and Hesiod easily passed

into the ‘royal mind’ of Plato (Philebus); the giant Heracles became

the knight-errant and benefactor of mankind. These and still more

wonderful transformations were readily effected by the ingenuity of

Stoics and neo-Platonists in the two or three centuries before and

after Christ. The Greek and Roman religions were gradually permeated by

the spirit of philosophy; having lost their ancient meaning, they were

resolved into poetry and morality; and probably were never purer than

at the time of their decay, when their influence over the world was

waning.

A singular conception which occurs towards the end of the book is the

lie in the soul; this is connected with the Platonic and Socratic

doctrine that involuntary ignorance is worse than voluntary. The lie in

the soul is a true lie, the corruption of the highest truth, the

deception of the highest part of the soul, from which he who is

deceived has no power of delivering himself. For example, to represent

God as false or immoral, or, according to Plato, as deluding men with

appearances or as the author of evil; or again, to affirm with

Protagoras that ‘knowledge is sensation,’ or that ‘being is becoming,’

or with Thrasymachus ‘that might is right,’ would have been regarded by

Plato as a lie of this hateful sort. The greatest unconsciousness of

the greatest untruth, e.g. if, in the language of the Gospels (John),

‘he who was blind’ were to say ‘I see,’ is another aspect of the state

of mind which Plato is describing. The lie in the soul may be further

compared with the sin against the Holy Ghost (Luke), allowing for the

difference between Greek and Christian modes of speaking. To this is

opposed the lie in words, which is only such a deception as may occur

in a play or poem, or allegory or figure of speech, or in any sort of

accommodation,—which though useless to the gods may be useful to men in

certain cases. Socrates is here answering the question which he had

himself raised about the propriety of deceiving a madman; and he is

also contrasting the nature of God and man. For God is Truth, but

mankind can only be true by appearing sometimes to be partial, or

false. Reserving for another place the greater questions of religion or

education, we may note further, (1) the approval of the old traditional

education of Greece; (2) the preparation which Plato is making for the

attack on Homer and the poets; (3) the preparation which he is also

making for the use of economies in the State; (4) the contemptuous and

at the same time euphemistic manner in which here as below he alludes

to the ‘Chronique Scandaleuse’ of the gods.

BOOK 3.