The Introduction
The Republic of
Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of the Laws, and is
certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer approaches to modern
metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist; the Politicus or
Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of the State are more
clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the
Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has
the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other
shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those
thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of
all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of
humor or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his
writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to
connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around
which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the
highest point to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the
Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a
method of knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the
bare outline or form from the substance of truth; and both of them had
to be content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized.
He was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in
him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future
knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which
have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based
upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition,
the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the
distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,
between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division
of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or
of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary --these and
other great forms of thought are all of them to be found in the
Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The greatest of all
logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most apt
to lose sight, the difference between words and things, has been most
strenuously insisted on by him, although he has not always avoided the
confusion of them in his own writings. But he does not bind up truth in
logical formulae, --logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the
science which he imagines to "contemplate all truth and all existence"
is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to
have discovered.
Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a
still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of
Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of
the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in
importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as
a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth
century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the
wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be
founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood
in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the poems of
Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty, intended to
represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge from the noble
commencement of the Timaeus, from the fragment of the Critias itself,
and from the third book of the Laws, in what manner Plato would have
treated this high argument. We can only guess why the great design was
abandoned; perhaps because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in
a fictitious history, or because he had lost his interest in it, or
because advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we may please
ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever been
finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathizing with the
struggle for Hellenic independence, singing a hymn of triumph over
Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus where
he contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire--"How brave a thing is
freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every
other state of Hellas in greatness!" or, more probably, attributing the
victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo
and Athene.
Again, Plato may be regarded as the "captain" ('arhchegoz') or leader of
a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the
original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City of God, of
the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary
States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which
Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
Politics has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more
necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle. In
English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced, not only in the
works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers like
Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a truth
higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to herself, is a
conviction which in our own generation has been enthusiastically
asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at the
Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest
influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon
education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean
Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan,
he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly
impressed with the un unity of knowledge; in the early Church he
exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature
on politics. Even the fragments of his words when "repeated at
second-hand" have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen
reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism
in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest
conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of
knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been
anticipated in a dream by him.
Argument
The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of
which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old man
--then discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and
Polemarchus --then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained
by Socrates --reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and
having become invisible in the individual reappears at length in the
ideal State which is constructed by Socrates. The first care of the
rulers is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after the old
Hellenic model, providing only for an improved religion and morality,
and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry,
and greater harmony of the individual and the State. We are thus led on
to the conception of a higher State, in which "no man calls anything his
own," and in which there is neither "marrying nor giving in marriage,"
and "kings are philosophers" and "philosophers are kings;" and there is
another and higher education, intellectual as well as moral and
religious, of science as well as of art, and not of youth only but of
the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world
and would quickly degenerate. To the perfect ideal succeeds the
government of the soldier and the lover of honor, this again declining
into democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular
order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When "the wheel
has come full circle" we do not begin again with a new period of human
life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and there we end.
The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy
which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of the Republic
is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is discovered to
be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and Homer, as well as the
dramatic poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is sent into
banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is supplemented by
the revelation of a future life.
The division into books, like all similar divisions, is probably later
than the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number; --(1)
Book I and the first half of Book II down to the paragraph beginning, "I
had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus," which is
introductory; the first book containing a refutation of the popular and
sophistical notions of justice, and concluding, like some of the earlier
Dialogues, without arriving at any definite result. To this is appended
a restatement of the nature of justice according to common opinion, and
an answer is demanded to the question --What is justice, stripped of
appearances? The second division (2) includes the remainder of the
second and the whole of the third and fourth books, which are mainly
occupied with the construction of the first State and the first
education. The third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject of
inquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles of communism
and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea of good
takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth and
ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of
pleasure and the principle of tyranny are further analyzed in the
individual man. The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole, in
which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally determined, and
the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been assured,
is crowned by the vision of another.
Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first
(Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally in
accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in the
second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an ideal
kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the
perversions. These two points of view are really opposed, and the
opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like the
Phaedrus, is an imperfect whole; the higher light of philosophy breaks
through the regularity of the Hellenic temple, which at last fades away
into the heavens. Whether this imperfection of structure arises from an
enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect reconcilement in the
writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought which are now
first brought together by him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the
work at different times --are questions, like the similar question about
the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have
a distinct answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of
publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering or
adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is
no absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labors aside for a
time, or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would
be more likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing.
In all attempts to determine the chronological he order of the Platonic
writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single
Dialogue being composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must
be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws,
more than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the seeming
discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the discordant
elements which the philosopher has attempted to unite in a single whole,
perhaps without being himself able to recognize the inconsistency which
is obvious to us. For there is a judgment of after ages which few great
writers have ever been able to anticipate for themselves. They do not
perceive the want of connection in their own writings, or the gaps in
their systems which are visible enough to those who come after them. In
the beginnings of literature and philosophy, amid the first efforts of
thought and language, more inconsistencies occur than now, when the
paths of speculation are well worn and the meaning of words precisely
defined. For consistency, too, is the growth of time; and some of the
greatest creations of the human mind have been wanting in unity. Tried
by this test, several of the Platonic Dialogues, according to our modern
ideas, appear to be defective, but the deficiency is no proof that they
were composed at different times or by different hands. And the
supposition that the Republic was written uninterruptedly and by a
continuous effort is in some degree confirmed by the numerous references
from one part of the work to another.
The second title, "Concerning Justice," is not the one by which the
Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and,
like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may therefore be
assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked whether
the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the
construction of the State is the principal argument of the work. The
answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same
truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State is the
visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The
one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of the
State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In Hegelian
phraseology the State is the reality of which justice is the ideal. Or,
described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is within, and yet
develops into a Church or external kingdom; "the house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens," is reduced to the proportions of an
earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are
the warp and the woof which run through the whole texture. And when the
constitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not
dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names throughout
the work, both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as
the principle of rewards and punishments in another life. The virtues
are based on justice, of which common honesty in buying and selling is
the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good, which is the
harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of
States and in motions of the heavenly bodies. The Timaeus, which takes
up the political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is
chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet
contains many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over
the State, over nature, and over man.
Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and in
modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether
of nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient writings,
and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element
which was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows
under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of
writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.
The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole may be
conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general. Thus
Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations of the
argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have found the true
argument "in the representation of human life in a State perfected by
justice and governed according to the idea of good." There may be some
use in such general descriptions, but they can hardly be said to express
the design of the writer. The truth is, that we may as well speak of
many designs as of one; nor need anything be excluded from the plan of a
great work to which the mind is naturally led by the association of
ideas, and which does not interfere with the general purpose. What kind
or degree of unity is to be sought after in a building, in the plastic
arts, in poetry, in prose, is a problem which has to be determined
relatively to the subject-matter. To Plato himself, the inquiry "what
was the intention of the writer," or "what was the principal argument of
the Republic" would have been hardly intelligible, and therefore had
better be at once dismissed.
Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which, to
Plato's own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the
State? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or "the day
of the Lord," or the suffering Servant or people of God, or the "Sun of
righteousness with healing in his wings" only convey, to us at least,
their great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State Plato reveals
to us his own thoughts about divine perfection, which is the idea of
good --like the sun in the visible world; --about human perfection,
which is justice --about education beginning in youth and continuing in
later years --about poets and sophists and tyrants who are the false
teachers and evil rulers of mankind --about "the world" which is the
embodiment of them --about a kingdom which exists nowhere upon earth but
is laid up in heaven to be the pattern and rule of human life. No such
inspired creation is at unity with itself, any more than the clouds of
heaven when the sun pierces through them. Every shade of light and dark,
of truth, and of fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a
work of philosophical imagination. It is not all on the same plane; it
easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and
ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities of
history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole;
they take possession of him and are too much for him. We have no need
therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato has conceived is
practicable or not, or whether the outward form or the inward life came
first into the mind of the writer. For the practicability of his ideas
has nothing to do with their truth; and the highest thoughts to which he
attains may be truly said to bear the greatest "marks of design"
--justice more than the external frame-work of the State, the idea of
good more than justice. The great science of dialectic or the
organization of ideas has no real content; but is only a type of the
method or spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the
spectator of all time and all existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and
seventh books that Plato reaches the "summit of speculation," and these,
although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern thinker, may
therefore be regarded as the most important, as they are also the most
original, portions of the work.
It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has been
raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the
conversation was held (the year 411 B. C. which is proposed by him will
do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology, only aims
at general probability. Whether all the persons mentioned in the
Republic could ever have met at any one time is not a difficulty which
would have occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty years later,
or to Plato himself at the time of writing (any more than to Shakespeare
respecting one of his own dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now.
Yet this may be a question having no answer "which is still worth
asking," because the investigation shows that we can not argue
historically from the dates in Plato; it would be useless therefore to
waste time in inventing far-fetched reconcilements of them in order
avoid chronological difficulties, such, for example, as the conjecture
of C. F. Hermann, that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the brothers but
the uncles of Plato, or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato intentionally
left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of his Dialogues
were written.
Characters
The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears in the
introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the first argument,
and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the close of the first book.
The main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus.
Among the company are Lysias (the orator) and Euthydemus, the sons of
Cephalus and brothers of Polemarchus, an unknown Charmantides --these
are mute auditors; also there is Cleitophon, who once interrupts, where,
as in the Dialogue which bears his name, he appears as the friend and
ally of Thrasymachus.
Cephalus, the patriarch of house, has been appropriately engaged in
offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost
done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He
feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to
visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the
consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the
tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his
indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of
character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because their
whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges that
riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to
dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by
Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed
upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young and
old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the question
of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of
it? The moderation with which old age is pictured by Cephalus as a very
tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only of him, but
of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of
Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is described by Plato in
the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As
Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged Cephalus would have been
out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he could neither
have understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic
propriety.
His "son and heir" Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and
will not "let him off" on the subject of women and children. Like
Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and represents the
proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life rather than
principles; and he quotes Simonides as his father had quoted Pindar. But
after this he has no more to say; the answers which he makes are only
elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He has not yet
experienced the influence of the Sophists like Glaucon and Adeimantus,
nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting them; he belongs to the
pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is incapable of arguing, and is
bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he does not know what he is
saying. He is made to admit that justice is a thief, and that the
virtues follow the analogy of the arts. From his brother Lysias we learn
that he fell a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is here
made to his fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family
were of Syracusan origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.
The "Chalcedonian giant," Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard in
the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to
Plato's conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He
is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond of
making an oration, and hoping thereby to escape the inevitable Socrates;
but a mere child in argument, and unable to foresee that the next "move"
(to use a Platonic expression) will "shut him up." He has reached the
stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of
Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a
discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion in banter and
insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were
really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the
infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up
--they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but
we are concerned at present with Plato's description of him, and not
with the historical reality. The inequality of the contest adds greatly
to the humor of the scene. The pompous and empty Sophist is utterly
helpless in the hands of the great master of dialectic, who knows how to
touch all the springs of vanity and weakness in him. He is greatly
irritated by the irony of Socrates, but his noisy and imbecile rage only
lays him more and more open to the thrusts of his assailant. His
determination to cram down their throats, or put "bodily into their
souls" his own words, elicits a cry of horror from Socrates. The state
of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as the process of the
argument. Nothing is more amusing than his complete submission when he
has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems to continue the
discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent good-will, and he
even testifies his interest at a later stage by one or two occasional
remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously protected by Socrates
"as one who has never been his enemy and is now his friend." From Cicero
and Quintilian and from Aristotle's Rhetoric we learn that the Sophist
whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man of note whose writings were
preserved in later ages. The play on his name which was made by his
contemporary Herodicus, "thou wast ever bold in battle," seems to show
that the description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude.
When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents,
Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy,
three actors are introduced. At first sight the two sons of Ariston may
seem to wear a family likeness, like the two friends Simmias and Cebes
in the Phaedo. But on a nearer examination of them the similarity
vanishes, and they are seen to be distinct characters. Glaucon is the
impetuous youth who can "just never have enough of fechting" (cf. the
character of him in Xen. Mem. iii. 6); the man of pleasure who is
acquainted with the mysteries of love; the "juvenis qui gaudet canibus,"
and who improves the breed of animals; the lover of art and music who
has all the experiences of youthful life. He is full of quickness and
penetration, piercing easily below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus
to the real difficulty; he turns out to the light the seamy side of
human life, and yet does not lose faith in the just and true. It is
Glaucon who seizes what may be termed the ludicrous relation of the
philosopher to the world, to whom a state of simplicity is "a city of
pigs," who is always prepared with a jest when the argument offers him
an opportunity, and who is ever ready to second the humor of Socrates
and to appreciate the ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music,
or in the lovers of theatricals, or in the fantastic behavior of the
citizens of democracy. His weaknesses are several times alluded to by
Socrates, who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother
Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been
distinguished at the battle of Megara.
The character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder
objections are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more
demonstrative, and generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the
argument further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy
of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the
world. In the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and
injustice shall be considered without regard to their consequences,
Adeimantus remarks that they are regarded by mankind in general only for
the sake of their consequences; and in a similar vein of reflection he
urges at the beginning of the fourth book that Socrates falls in making
his citizens happy, and is answered that happiness is not the first but
the second thing, not the direct aim but the indirect consequence of the
good government of a State. In the discussion about religion and
mythology, Adeimantus is the respondent, but Glaucon breaks in with a
slight jest, and carries on the conversation in a lighter tone about
music and gymnastic to the end of the book. It is Adeimantus again who
volunteers the criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of
argument, and who refuses to let Socrates pass lightly over the question
of women and children. It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the
more argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative
portions of the Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of
the sixth book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the
conception of the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Then
Glaucon resumes his place of principal respondent; but he has a
difficulty in apprehending the higher education of Socrates, and makes
some false hits in the course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus
returns with the allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the
contentious State; in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon
continues to the end.
Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive
stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden
time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his
life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of
the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher,
who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them,
and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one
another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato, is
a single character repeated.
The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent. In
the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is depicted
in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of Plato, and
in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the old enemy of
the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well as to argue
seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the Sophists abates;
he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the
corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic and constructive,
passing beyond the range either of the political or the speculative
ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato himself seems to
intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who had passed his
whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and not to be always
repeating the notions of other men. There is no evidence that either the
idea of good or the conception of a perfect State were comprehended in
the Socratic teaching, though he certainly dwelt on the nature of the
universal and of final causes (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4; Phaedo 97); and a
deep thinker like him in his thirty or forty years of public teaching,
could hardly have falled to touch on the nature of family relations, for
which there is also some positive evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem. i.
2, 51 foll.) The Socratic method is nominally retained; and every
inference is either put into the mouth of the respondent or represented
as the common discovery of him and Socrates. But any one can see that
this is a mere form, of which the affectation grows wearisome as the
work advances. The method of inquiry has passed into a method of
teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the same thesis is looked
at from various points of view.
The nature of the process is truly characterized by Glaucon, when he
describes himself as a companion who is not good for much in an
investigation, but can see what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give the
answer to a question more fluently than another.
Neither can we be absolutely certain that, Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in the
Republic; nor is there any reason to suppose that he used myths or
revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction, or that he
would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek mythology. His
favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made of the
daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as a
phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching,
which is more prominent in the Republic than in any of the other
Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example and illustration ('taphorhtika
auto prhospherhontez'): "Let us apply the test of common instances."
"You," says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, "are so
unaccustomed to speak in images." And this use of examples or images,
though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into
the form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what
has been already described, or is about to be described, in the
abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of
the divisions of knowledge in Book VI. The composite animal in Book IX
is an allegory of the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship
and the true pilot in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people
to the philosophers in the State which has been described. Other
figures, such as the dog in the second, third, and fourth books, or the
marriage of the portionless maiden in the sixth book, or the drones and
wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of connection in
long passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.
Plato is most true to the character of his master when he describes him
as "not of this world." And with this representation of him the ideal
State and the other paradoxes of the Republic are quite in accordance,
though they can not be shown to have been speculations of Socrates. To
him, as to other great teachers both philosophical and religious, when
they looked upward, the world seemed to be the embodiment of error and
evil. The common sense of mankind has revolted against this view, or has
only partially admitted it. And even in Socrates himself the sterner
judgment of the multitude at times passes into a sort of ironical pity
or love. Men in general are incapable of philosophy, and are therefore
at enmity with the philosopher; but their misunderstanding of him is
unavoidable: for they have never seen him as he truly is in his own
image; they are only acquainted with artificial systems possessing no
native force of truth --words which admit of many applications. Their
leaders have nothing to measure with, and are therefore ignorant of
their own stature. But they are to be pitied or laughed at, not to be
quarrelled with; they mean well with their nostrums, if they could only
learn that they are cutting off a Hydra's head. This moderation towards
those who are in error is one of the most characteristic features of
Socrates in the Republic. In all the different representations of
Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato, and the differences of the
earlier or later Dialogues, he always retains the character of the
unwearied and disinterested seeker after truth, without which he would
have ceased to be Socrates.
Leaving the characters we may now analyze the contents of the Republic,
and then proceed to consider (1) The general aspects of this Hellenic
ideal of the State, (2) The modern lights in which the thoughts of Plato
may be read