453-456--[Greek: gunai=kes me/ntoi pollai\ pollô=n a)ndrô=n
belti/ous ei)s polla/; to\ de\ o(/lon e)/chei ô(s su\ le/geis.
Ou)de\n a)/ra e)sti\n e)pitê/deuma tô=n po/lin dioikou/ntôn
gunaiko\s dio/ti gunê/, ou)/d' a)ndro\s dio/ti a)nê/r, a)ll'
o(moi/ôs diesparme/nai ai( phu/seis e)n a)mphoi=n toi=n zô/oin,
kai\ pa/ntôn me\n mete/chei gunê\ e)pitêdeuma/tôn kata\
phu/sin, pa/ntôn de\ a)nê/r; e)pi\ pa=si de\ a)sthene/steron
gunê\ a)ndro/s] (p. 455 D). It would appear (from p. 455 C) that
those who maintained the special fitness of women for certain
occupations and their special unfitness for others, cited, as
examples of occupations in which women surpassed men, weaving and
cookery. But Plato denies this emphatically as a matter of fact;
pronouncing that women were inferior to men (_i.e._ the best
women to the best men) in weaving and cookery no less than in
other things. We should have been glad to know what facts were
present to his mind as bearing out such an assertion, and what
observations were open to him of weaving as performed by males. In
Greece, weaving was the occupation of women very generally,
whether exclusively or not we can hardly say; in Phoenicia,
during the Homeric times, the finest robes are woven by Sidonian
women (Iliad vi. 289): in Egypt, on the contrary, it was
habitually performed by men, and Herodotus enumerates this as one
of the points in which the Egyptians differed from other countries
(Herodot. ii. 35; Soph. Oed. Kol. 340, with the Scholia, and the
curious citation contained therein from the [Greek: Barbarika\] of
Nymphodorus). The process of weaving was also conducted in a
different manner by the Egyptians. Whether Plato had seen finer
webs in Egypt than in Greece we cannot say.]
[Footnote 99: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A.]
[Side-note: His arguments against the ordinary doctrine.]
Those who maintain (continues Plato) that because women are
different from men, therefore the occupations of the two ought to
be different--argue like vexatious disputants who mistake verbal
distinctions for real: who do not enquire what is the formal or
specific distinction indicated by a name, or whether it has any
essential bearing on the matter under discussion.[100] Long-haired
men are different from bald-heads: but shall we conclude, that if
the former are fit to make shoes, the latter are unfit? Certainly
not: for when we inquire into the formal distinction connoted
by these words, we find that it has no bearing upon such
handicraft processes. So again the formal distinction implied by
the terms _male_, _female_, in the human race as in
other animals, lies altogether in the functions of sex and
procreation.[101] Now this has no essential bearing on the
occupations of the adult; nor does it confer on the male fitness
for one set of occupations--on the female, fitness for another.
Each sex is fit for all, but the male is most fit for all: in each
sex there are individuals better and worse, and differing one from
another in special aptitudes. Men are competent for the duties of
Guardians, only on condition of having gone through a complete
musical and gymnastical education. Women are competent also, under
the like condition; and are equally capable of profiting by the
complete education. Moreover, the chiefs must select for those
duties the best natural subjects. The total number of such is very
limited: and they must select the best that both sexes
afford.[102]
[Footnote 100: Plato, Republic, v. p. 454 A. [Greek: dia\ to\ mê\
du/nastai kat' ei)/dê diairou/menoi to\ lego/meon e)piskopei=n,
a)lla\ kat' au)to\ to\ o)/noma diô/kein tou= lechthe/ntos tê\n
e)nanti/ôsin, e)/ridi, ou) diale/ktô|, pro\s a)llê/lous
chrô/menoi.] 454 B: [Greek: e)peskepsa/metha de\ ou)d'
o(pê|ou=n, ti/ ei)=dos to\ tê=s e(te/ras te kai\ tê=s au)tê=s
phu/seôs, kai\ pro\s ti/ tei=non ô(rizo/metha to/te, o(/te ta\
e)pitêdeu/mata a)/llê| phu/sei a)/lla, tê=| de\ au)tê=| ta\
au)ta/, a)pedi/domen.] Xenophon is entirely opposed to Plato on
this point. He maintains emphatically the distinct special
aptitudes of man and woman. Oeconom. vii. 20-38; compare
Euripid. Electra, 74.]
[Footnote 101: Plato, Repub. v. p. 455 C-D.]
[Footnote 102: Plato, Repub. v. p. 456.]
[Side-note: Opponents appealed to nature as an authority
against Plato. He invokes Nature on his own side against them.]
The strong objections, generally entertained against thus
assigning to women equal participation in the education and
functions of the Guardians, were enforced by saying--That
it was a proceeding contrary to Nature. But Plato not
only denies the validity of this argument: he even retorts it upon
the objectors, and affirms that the existing separation of functions
between the two sexes is contrary to Nature, and that his
proposition alone is conformable thereunto.[103] He has shown that
the specific or formal distinction of the two has no essential
bearing on the question, and therefore that no argument can be
founded upon it. The specific or formal characteristic, in the
case of males, is doubtless superior, taken abstractedly: yet in
particular men it is embodied or manifested with various degrees
of perfection, from very good to very bad. In the case of females,
though inferior abstractedly, it is in its best particular
embodiments equal to all except the best males, and superior to
all such as are inferior to the best. Accordingly, the true
dictate of Nature is, not merely that females _may be_ taken,
but that they _ought to be_ taken, conjointly with males,
under the selection of the Rulers, to fulfil the most important
duties in the Commonwealth. The select females must go through the
same musical and gymnastic training as the males. He who ridicules
them for such bodily exercises, prosecuted with a view to the best
objects, does not know what he is laughing at. "For this is the
most valuable maxim which is now, or ever has been,
proclaimed--What is useful, is honourable. What is hurtful, is
base."[104]
[Footnote 103: Plato, Repub. v. p. 456 C. [Greek: Ou)k a)/ra
a)du/nata/ ge, ou)de\ eu)chai=s o(/moia, e)nomothetou=men,
e)pei/per kata\ phu/sin e)ti/themen to\n no/mon; a)lla\ ta\ nu=n
para\ tau=ta gigno/mena para\ phu/sin ma=llon, ô(s e)/oike,
gi/gnetai.]]
[Footnote 104: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 B. [Greek: O( de\ gelô=n
a)nê\r e)pi\ gumnai=s gunaixi/, tou= belti/stou e(/neka
gumnazome/nais, a)telê= tou= geloi/ou sophi/as dre/pôn karpo/n,
ou)de\n oi)=den, ô(s e)/oiken, e)ph' ô(=| gela=| ou)d' o(/, ti
pra/ttei; ka/llista ga\r dê\ tou=to kai\ le/getai kai\
lele/xetai, o(/ti to\ me\n ô)phe/limon, kalo/n--to\ de\
blabero/n, ai)schro/n.]]
[Side-note: Collective family relations and denominations
among the Guardians.]
Plato now proceeds to unfold the relations of the sexes as
intended to prevail among the mature Guardians, after all have
undergone the public and common training from their earliest
infancy. He conceives them as one thousand in total number,
composed of both sexes in nearly equal proportion: since they are
to be the best individuals of both sexes, the male sex, superior
in formal characteristic, will probably furnish rather a greater
number than the female. It has already been stated that they are
all required to live together in barracks, dining at a common
mess-table, with clothing and furniture alike for all. There is no
individual property or separate house among them: the collective
expense, in a comfortable but moderate way, is defrayed by
contributions from the producing class. Separate families are
unknown: all the Guardians, male and female, form one family, and
one only: the older are fathers and mothers of all the younger,
the younger are sons and daughters of all the older: those of the
same age are all alike brothers and sisters of each other: those
who, besides being of the same age, are within the limits of the
nuptial age and of different sexes, are all alike husbands and
wives of each other.[105] It is the principle of the Platonic
Commonwealth that the affections implied in these family-words,
instead of being confined to one or a few exclusively, shall
be expanded so as to embrace all of appropriate age.
[Footnote 105: Plato, Republic, v. p. 457 C-D. [Greek: ta\s
gunai=kas tau/tas tô=n a)ndrô=n tou/tôn pa/ntôn pa/sas ei)=nai
koina/s, i)di/a| de\ mêdeni\ mêdemi/an sunoikei=n; kai\ tou\s
pai=das au)= koinou/s, kai\ mê/te gone/a e)/kgonon ei)de/nai to\n
au)tou= mê/te pai=da gone/a.]]
[Side-note: Restrictions upon sexual intercourse--Purposes
of such restrictions.]
But Plato does not at all intend that sexual intercourse shall
take place between these men and women promiscuously, or at the
pleasure of individuals. On the contrary, he expressly denounces
and interdicts it.[106] A philosopher who has so much general
disdain for individual impulse or choice, was not likely to
sanction it in this particular case. Indeed it is the special
purpose of his polity to bring impulse absolutely under the
controul of reason, or of that which he assumes as such. This
purpose is followed out in a remarkable manner as to procreation.
What he seeks as lawgiver is, to keep the numbers of the Guardians
nearly stationary, with no diminution and scarcely any
increase:[107] and to maintain the breed pure, so that the
children born shall be as highly endowed by nature as possible. To
these two objects the liberty of sexual intercourse is made
subservient. The breeding is regulated like that of noble horses
or dogs by an intelligent proprietor: the best animals of both
sexes being brought together, and the limits of age fixed
beforehand.[108] Plato prescribes, as the limits of age, from
twenty to forty for females--from thirty to fifty-five for
males--when the powers of body and mind are at the maximum in both.
All who are younger as well as all who are older, are expressly
forbidden to meddle in the procreation _for the city_: this
being a public function.[109] Between the ages above named,
couples will be invited to marry in such numbers as the Rulers may
consider expedient for ensuring a supply of offspring sufficient
and not more than sufficient--having regard to wars, distempers,
or any other recent causes of mortality.[110]
[Footnote 106: Plato, Repub. v. p. 458 E. [Greek: a)ta/ktôs me\n
mi/gnusthai a)llê/lois ê)\ a)/llo o(tiou=n poiei=n ou)/te
o(/sion e)n eu)daimo/nôn po/lei ou)/t' e)a/sousin oi(
a)/rchontes.]]
[Footnote 107: Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 A. [Greek: to\ de\
plê=thos tô=n ga/môn e)pi\ toi=s a)/rchousi poiê/somen, i(/n'
ô(s ma/lista diasô/zôsi to\n au)to\n a)rithmo\n tô=n
a)ndrô=n, pro\s pole/mous te kai\ no/sous kai\ pa/nta ta\
toiau=ta a)poskopou=ntes, kai\ mê/te mega/lê ê(mi=n ê( po/lis
kata\ to\ dunato\n mê/te smikra\ gi/gnêtai.]]
[Footnote 108: Plato, Repub. v. p. 459.]
[Footnote 109: This is his phrase, repeated more than
once--[Greek: ti/ktein tê=| po/lei, genna=|n tê=| po/lei--tô=n
ei)s to\ koino\n gennê/seôn] (pp. 460-461).
What Lucan (ii. 387) observes about Cato of Utica, is applicable
to the Guardians of the Platonic Republic:--
"Venerisque huic maximus usus
Progenies. Urbi pater est, Urbique maritus."]
[Footnote 110: Plato, Repub. v. p. 460 A.]
[Side-note: Regulations about marriages and family.]
There is no part of the Platonic system in which individual choice
is more decidedly eliminated, and the intervention of the Rulers
made more constantly paramount, than this respecting the
marriages: and Plato declares it to be among the greatest
difficulties which they will have to surmount. They will establish
festivals, in which they bring together the brides and
bridegrooms, with hymns, prayer, and sacrifices, to the Gods: they
will determine by lot what couples shall be joined, so as to make
up the number settled as appropriate: but they will arrange the
sortition themselves so cleverly, that what appears chance to
others will be a result to them predetermined. The best men will
thus always be assorted with the best women, the inferior with the
inferior: but this will appear to every one, except themselves,
the result of chance.[111] Any young man (of thirty and upwards)
distinguished for bravery or excellence will be allowed to have
more than one wife; since it is good not merely to recompense his
merit, but also to multiply his breed.[112]
[Footnote 111: Plato, Repub. v. p. 460.]
[Footnote 112: Plato, Repub. v. pp. 460 B, 468 C. In the latter
passage it even appears that he is allowed to make a choice.]
In the seventh month, or in the tenth month, after the ceremonial
day, offspring will be born, from these unions. But the children,
immediately on being born, will be taken away from their mothers,
and confided to nurses in an appropriate lodgment. The mothers
will be admitted to suckle them, and wet-nurses will also be
provided, as far as necessary: but the period for the mother to
suckle will be abridged as much as possible, and all other trouble
required for the care of infancy will be undertaken, not by her,
but by the nurses. Moreover the greatest precautions will be taken
that no mother shall know her own child: which is considered to be
practicable, since many children will be born at nearly the same
time.[113] The children in infancy will be examined by the Rulers
and other good judges, who will determine how many of them are
sufficiently well constituted to promise fitness for the duties of
Guardians. The children of the good and vigorous couples, except
in any case of bodily deformity, will be brought up and placed
under the public training for Guardians: the unpromising children,
and those of the inferior couples, being regarded as not fit
subjects for the public training, will be secretly got rid of, or
placed among the producing class of the Commonwealth.[114]
[Footnote 113: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460 D, 461 D.]
[Footnote 114: Compare Republic, v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C, with
Timæus, p. 19 A. In Timæus, where the leading doctrines of the
Republic are briefly recapitulated, Plato directs that the
children considered as unworthy shall be secretly distributed
among the remaining community, _i.e._ not among the
Guardians: in the Republic itself, his language, though not clear,
seems to imply that they shall be exposed and got rid of.]
[Side-note: Procreative powers of individual Guardians
required to be held at the disposal of the rulers, for purity of
breed.]
What Plato here understands by marriage, is a special, solemn,
consecrated, coupling for the occasion, with a view to breed for
the public. It constitutes no permanent bond between the two
persons coupled: who are brought together by the authorities under
a delusive sortition, but who may perhaps never be brought
together at any future sortition, unless it shall please the same
authorities. The case resembles that of a breeding stud of horses
and mares, to which Plato compares it: nothing else is wanted but
the finest progeny attainable. But this, in Plato's judgment, is
the most important of all purposes: his commonwealth cannot
maintain itself except under a superior breed of Guardians.
Accordingly, he invests his marriages with the greatest possible
sanctity. The religious solemnities accompanying them are
essential to furnish security for the goodness of the offspring.
Any proceeding, either of man or woman, which contravenes the
provisions of the rulers on this point, is peremptorily forbidden:
and any child, born from unauthorised intercourse without the
requisite prayers and sacrifices, is considered as an outcast.
Within the limits of the connubial age, all persons of both sexes
hold their procreative powers exclusively at the disposition of
the lawgiver. But after that age is past, both men and women may
indulge in intercourse with whomsoever they please, since they are
no longer in condition to procreate for the public. They are
subject only to this one condition: not to produce any children,
or, if perchance they do, not to bring them up.[115] There is
moreover one restriction upon the personal liberty of intercourse,
after the connubial limits of age. No intercourse is permitted
between father and daughter, or between mother and son. But how
can such restriction be enforced, since no individual paternity or
maternity is recognised in the Commonwealth? Plato answers by
admitting a collective paternity and maternity. Every child born
in the seventh month or in the tenth month after a couple have
been solemnly wedded will be considered by them as their son or
daughter, and will consider himself as such.[116]
[Footnote 115: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 C.]
[Footnote 116: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 D.]
Besides all these direct provisions for the purity of the breed of
Guardians, which will succeed (so Plato anticipates) in a large
majority of cases--the Rulers will keep up an effective
supervision of detail, so as to exclude any unworthy exception,
and even to admit into the Guardians any youth of very rare and
exceptional promise who may be born among the remaining community.
For Plato admits that there may be accidental births both ways:
brass and iron may by occasional accident give birth to gold or
silver--and _vice versâ_.
[Side-note: Purpose to create an intimate and equal sympathy
among all the Guardians, but to prevent exclusive sympathy of
particular members.]
It is in this manner that Plato constitutes his body of Guardians;
one thousand adult persons of both sexes,[117] in nearly equal
numbers, together with a small proportion of children--the
proportion of these latter must be very small since the total
number is not allowed to increase. His end here is to create an
intimate and equal sympathy among them all, like that between all
the members of the same bodily organism: to abolish all
independent and exclusive sympathies of particular parts: to make
the city One and Indivisible--a single organism, instead of many
distinct conterminous organisms: to provide that the causes of
pleasure and pain shall be the same to all, so that a man shall
have no feeling of mine or thine, except in reference to his own
body and that of another, which Plato notes as the greatest
good--instead of each individual struggling apart for his own objects
and rejoicing on occasions when his neighbour sorrows, which Plato
regards as the greatest evil.[118] All standing causes of
disagreement or antipathy among the Guardians are assumed to be
thus removed. But if any two hot-headed youths get into a
quarrel, they must fight it out on the spot. This will serve as a
lesson in gymnastics:--subject however to the interference of any
old man as by-stander, whom they as well as all other young men
are bound implicitly to obey.[119] Moreover all the miseries,
privations, anxiety, and dependence, inseparable from the life of
a poor man under the system of private property, will disappear
entirely.[120]
[Footnote 117: This number of 1000 appears stated by Aristotle
(Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. 9), and is probably derived from
Republic, iv. p. 423 A; though that passage appears scarcely
sufficient to prove that Plato meant to declare the number 1000 as
peremptory. However the understanding of Aristotle himself on the
point is one material evidence to make us believe that this is the
real construction intended by Plato.]
[Footnote 118: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 462-463-464 D. [Greek: dia\
to\ mêde/na i)/dion e)ktê=sthai plê\n to\ sô=ma, ta\ de\
a)/lla koina/.] Compare Plato, Legg. v. p. 739 C.]
[Footnote 119: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 464-465.]
[Footnote 120: Plato, Republic, v. p. 465 C.]
Such are the main features of Plato's Republic, in reference to
his Guardians. They afford a memorable example of that
philosophical analysis, applied to the circumstances of man and
society, which the Greek mind was the first to conceive and follow
out. Plato lays down his ends with great distinctness, as well as
the means whereby he proposes to attain them. Granting his ends,
the means proposed are almost always suitable and appropriate,
whether practicable or otherwise.
[Side-note: Platonic scheme--partial communism.]
The Platonic scheme is communism, so far as concerns the
Guardians: but not communism in reference to the entire
Commonwealth. In this it falls short of his own ideal, and is only
a second best: the best of all would be, in his view, a communion
that should pervade all persons and all acts and sentiments,
effacing altogether the separate self.[121] Not venturing to soar
so high, he confined his perfect communion to the Guardians.
Moreover his communism differs from modern theories in this. They
contemplate individual producers and labourers, handing over the
produce to be distributed among themselves by official authority;
they contemplate also a regulation not merely of distribution, but
of reserved capital and productive agency, under the same
authority. But the Platonic Guardians are not producers at all.
Everything which they consume is found for them. They are in the
nature of paid functionaries, exempted from all cares and anxiety
of self-maintenance, either present or future. They are all
comfortably provided, without hopes of wealth or fear of poverty:
moreover they are all equally comfortable, so that no sentiment
can grow up among them, arising from comparison of each other's
possessions or enjoyments. Among such men and women, brought
up from infancy as Plato directs, the sentiment of property, with
all the multifarious associations derived from it, would be
unknown. No man's self-esteem, no man's esteem of others, would
turn upon it.
[Footnote 121: See Plato, De Legibus, v. p. 739 D. The Republic is
_second best_; that which appears sketched in the treatise De
Legibus is _third best_.]
In this respect, the remaining members of the city, apart from the
Guardians, and furnishing all the subsistence of the Guardians,
are differently circumstanced. They are engaged in different modes
of production, each exclusively in one mode. They exchange, buy,
and sell, with each other: there exist therefore among them
gradations of strength, skill, perseverance, frugality, and good
luck--together with the consequent gradations of wealth and
poverty. The substance or capital of the Commonwealth is
maintained altogether by the portion of it which is extraneous to
the Guardians; and among that portion there is no communism. The
maintenance of the Guardians is a tax which these men have to pay:
but after paying it, they apply or enjoy the rest of their produce
as they please, subject to the requirements of the Rulers for
public service.[122]
[Footnote 122: Aristotle, in his comments upon the Platonic
Republic (Politic. ii. 5. p. 1262, b. 42 seq.), advances arguments
just in themselves, in favour of individual property, and against
community of property. But these arguments have little application
to the Republic.]
Nevertheless we are obliged to divine what Plato means about the
condition of the producing classes in his Commonwealth. He himself
tells us little or nothing about them; though they must constitute
the large numerical majority. And this defect is in him the less
excusable, since he reckons them as component members of his
Commonwealth; while Aristotle, in his ideal Commonwealth, does not
reckon them as component members or citizens, but merely as
indispensable adjuncts, in the same manner as slaves. All that we
know about the producers in the Platonic Commonwealth is, that
each man is to have only one business--that for which he is most
fit:--and that all are to be under the administration of the
Rulers through the Guardians.
[Side-note: Soldiership as a separate profession has
acquired greater development in modern times.]
The enlistment of soldiers, apart from civilians, and the holding
of them under distinct laws and stricter discipline, is a practice
familiar to modern ideas, though it had little place among the
Greeks of Plato's day. There prevailed also in Egypt[123] and in
parts of Eastern Asia, from time immemorial, a distinction of
castes: one caste being soldiers, invested with the defence of the
country, and enjoying certain lands by the tenure of such military
service: but in other respects, private proprietors like the
rest--and receiving no special discipline, training, or education.
In Grecian Ideas, military duties were a part, but only a part, of
the duties of a citizen. This was the case even at Sparta. Though
in practice, the discipline of that city tended in a preponderant
degree towards military aptitude, yet the Spartan was still a
citizen, not exclusively a soldier.
[Footnote 123: Aristot. Politic. vii. 10. Herodot. ii. 164. Plato
alludes (Timæ. 24 A) to the analogy of Egyptian castes.]
[Side-note: Spartan institutions--great impression which
they produced upon speculative Greek minds.]
It was from the Spartan institutions (and the Kretan, in many
respects analogous) that the speculative political philosophers in
Greece usually took the point of departure for their theories. Not
only Plato did so, but Xenophon and Aristotle likewise. The most
material fact which they saw before them at Sparta was, a public
discipline both strict and continued, which directed the movements
of the citizens, and guided their thoughts and feelings, from
infancy to old age. To this supreme controul the private feelings,
both of family and property, though not wholly suppressed, were
made to bend: and occasionally in a way quite as remarkable as any
restrictions proposed by either Plato or Xenophon.[124] Moreover,
the Spartan institutions were of immemorial antiquity; believed to
have been suggested or sanctioned originally by Apollo and the
Delphian oracle, as the Kretan institutions were by Zeus.[125]
They had lasted longer than other Hellenic institutions without
forcible subversion: they obtained universal notice, admiration,
and deference, throughout Greece. It was this conspicuous fact
which emboldened the Grecian theorists to postulate for the
lawgiver that unbounded controul, over the life and habits of
citizens, which we read not merely in the Republic of Plato but in
the Cyropædia of Xenophon, and to a great degree even in the
Politica of Aristotle. To an objector, who asked them how they
could possibly expect that individuals would submit to such
unlimited interference, they would have replied--"Look at
Sparta. You see there interference, as constant and rigorous as
that which I propose, endured by the citizens not only without
resistance, but with a tenacity and long continuance such as is
not found among other communities with more lax regulations. The
habits and sentiments of the Spartan citizen are fashioned to
these institutions. Far from being anxious to shake them off, he
accounts them a necessity as well as an honour." This reply would
have appeared valid and reasonable, in the fourth century before
the Christian era. And it explains--what, after all, is the most
surprising circumstance to a modern reader--the extreme boldness
of speculation, the ideal omnipotence, assumed by the leading
Grecian political theorists: much even by Aristotle, though his
aspirations were more limited and practical--far more by
Xenophon--most of all by Plato. Any theorist, proceeding avowedly
[Greek: kat' eu)chê\n], considered himself within bounds when he
assumed to himself no greater influence than had actually been
exercised by Lykurgus.
[Footnote 124: See Xenophon, Hellenic. vi. 4, 16, the account of
what passed at Sparta after the battle of Leuktra, related also in
my "History of Greece," chap. 78, vol. x. p. 253.]
[Footnote 125: Plato, Legg. i. pp. 632 D, 634 A.]
[Side-note: Plans of these speculative minds compared with
Spartan--Different types of character contemplated.]
Assuming such influence, however, he intended to employ it for
ends approved by himself: agreeing with Lykurgus in the general
principle of forming the citizen's character by public and
compulsory discipline, but not agreeing with him in the type of
character proper to be aimed at. Xenophon departs least from the
Spartan type: Aristotle and Plato greatly more, though in
different directions. Each of them applies to a certain extent the
process of abstraction and analysis both to the individual and to
the community: considering both of them as made up of component
elements working simultaneously either in co-operation or
conflict. But in Plato the abstraction is carried farthest: the
wholeness of the individual Guardian is completely effaced, so
that each constitutes a small fraction or wheel of the real
Platonic whole--the commonwealth. The fundamental Platonic
principle is, that each man shall have one function, and one only:
an extreme application of that which political economists call the
division of labour. Among these many different functions, one, and
doubtless the most difficult as well as important, is that of
directing, administering, and defending the community: which is
done by the Guardians and Rulers. It is to this one function
that all Plato's treatise is devoted: he tells us how such persons
are to be trained and circumstanced. What he describes, therefore,
is not properly citizens administering their own affairs, but
commanders and officers watching over the interests of others: a
sort of military _bureaucracy_, with chiefs at its head,
directing as well as guarding a multitude beneath them. And what
mainly distinguishes the Platonic system, is the extreme
abstraction with which this public and official character is
conceived: the degree to which the whole man is merged in the
performance of his official duties: the entire extinction within
him of the old individual Adam--of all private feelings and
interests.
[Side-note: Plato carries abstraction farther than Xenophon
or Aristotle.]
Both in Xenophon and in Aristotle, as well as at Sparta, the
citizen is subjected to a public compulsory training, severe as
well as continuous: but he is still a citizen as well as a
functionary. He has private interests as well as public duties:--a
separate home, property, wife, and family. Plato, on the contrary,
contends that the two are absolutely irreconcileable: that if the
Guardian has private anxieties for his own maintenance, private
house and lands to manage, private sympathies and antipathies to
gratify--he will become unfaithful to his duties as Guardian, and
will oppress instead of protecting the people.[126] You must
choose between the two (he says): you cannot have the self-caring
citizen and the public-minded Guardian in one.[127]
[Footnote 126: Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 416-417.]
[Footnote 127: See the contrary opinion asserted by Nikias in his
speech at Athens, Thucyd. vi. 9.]
[Side-note: Anxiety shown by Plato for the good treatment of
the Demos, greater than that shown by Xenophon and Aristotle.]
Looking to ideal perfection, I think Plato is right. If the Rulers
and Guardians have private interests of their own, those interests
will corrupt more or less the discharge of their public duties.
The evil may be mitigated, by forms of government (representative
and other arrangements), which make the continuance of power
dependent upon popular estimation of the functionaries: but it
cannot be abolished. Neither Xenophon, nor Aristotle, nor the
Spartan system, provided any remedy for this difficulty. They
scarcely even recognise the difficulty as real. In all the three,
the proportion of trained citizens to the rest of the people,
would be about the same (so far as we can judge) as the
proportion of the Platonic Guardians to the Demos or rest of the
people. But when we look to see what security either of the three
systems provide for good behaviour on the part of citizens towards
non-citizens, we find no satisfaction; nor do they make it, as
Plato does, one prominent object of their public training. Plato
shows extreme anxiety for the object: as is proved by his
sacrificing, in order to ensure it, all the private sources of
pleasure to his Guardians. Aristotle reproaches him with doing
this, so as to reduce the happiness of his Guardians to nothing:
but Plato, from his own point of view, would not admit the justice
of such reproach, since he considers happiness to be derived from,
and proportional to, the performance of duty.
[Side-note: In Aristotle's theory, the Demos are not
considered as members of the Commonwealth, but as adjuncts.]
This last point must be perpetually kept in mind, in following
Plato's reasoning. But though he does not consider himself as
sacrificing the happiness of his Guardians to their duty, we must
give him credit for anxiety, greater than either Aristotle or
Xenophon has shown, to ensure a faithful discharge of duty on the
part of the Guardians towards the rest of the people. In
Aristotle's theory,[128] the rest of the people are set aside as
not members of the Commonwealth, thus counting as a secondary and
inferior object in his estimation; while the citizens, who alone
are members, are trained to practise virtue for its own sake and
for their own happiness. In Plato's theory, the rest of the people
are not only proclaimed as members of the Commonwealth,[129] but
are the ultimate and capital objects of all his solicitude. It is
in protecting, governing, and administering them, that the lives
of the Rulers and Guardians are passed. Though they (the remaining
people) receive no public training, yet Plato intends them to reap
all the benefit of the laborious training bestowed on the
Guardians. This is a larger and more generous conception of the
purpose of political institutions, than we find either in
Aristotle or in Xenophon.
[Footnote 128: Aristotle, Politic. vii. 9, p. 1328, b. 40, p.
1329, a. 25.]
[Footnote 129: Aristot. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 12-26,
respecting the Platonic Commonwealth, [Greek: kai/toi schedo\n
to/ge plê=thos tê=s po/leôs to\ tô=n a)/llôn politô=n
gi/netai plê=thos], &c. . . .
[Greek: Poiei= ga\r] (Plato) [Greek: tou\s me\n phu/lakas oi(=on
phrourou/s, tou\s de\ geôrgou\s kai\ tou\s techni/tas kai\ tou\s
a)/llous, poli/tas.]]
[Side-note: Objection urged by Aristotle against the
Platonic Republic, that it will be two cities. Spiritual pride of
the Guardians, contempt for the Demos.]
There is however another objection, which seems grave and
well founded, advanced by Aristotle against the Platonic
Republic. He remarks that it will be not one city, but two cities,
with tendencies more or less adverse to each other:[130] that the
Guardians, educated under the very peculiar training and placed
under the peculiar relations prescribed to them, will form one
city--while the remaining people, who have no part either in the
one or the other, but are private proprietors with separate
families--will form another city. I do not see what reply the
Platonic Republic furnishes to this objection. Granting full
success to Plato in his endeavours to make the Guardians One among
themselves, we find nothing to make them One with the remaining
people, nor to make the remaining people One with them.[131] On
the contrary, we observe such an extreme divergence of sentiment,
character, pursuit, and education, as to render mutual sympathy
very difficult, and to open fatal probabilities of mutual
alienation: probabilities hardly less, than if separate
proprietary interests had been left to subsist among the
Guardians. This is a source of mischief which Plato has not taken
into his account. The entire body of Guardians cannot fail to
carry in their bosoms a sense of extreme pride in their own
training, and a proportionally mean estimate of the untrained
multitude alongside of them. The sentiment of the gold and silver
men, towards the brass and iron men, will have in it too much of
contempt to be consistent with civic fraternity: like the pride of
the Twice-Born Hindoo Brahmin, when comparing himself with the
lower Hindoo castes: or like that of the Pythagorean brotherhood,
who "regarded the brethren as equal to the blessed Gods, but held
all the rest to be unworthy of any account".[132] The Spartan
training appears to have produced a similar effect upon the minds
of the citizens who went through it. And indeed such an
effect appears scarcely avoidable, under the circumstances assumed
by Plato. He himself is proud of his own ideal training, so as to
ascribe to those who receive it a sentiment akin to that of the
Olympic victors: while he employs degrading analogies to signify
the pursuits and enjoyments of the untrained multitude, who are
assimilated to the appetite or lower element in the organism,
existing only as a mutinous crew necessary to be kept down.[133]
That spiritual pride, coupled with spiritual contempt, should be
felt by the Guardians, is the natural result; as it is indeed the
essential reimbursement to their feelings, for the life of drill
and self-denial which Plato imposes upon them. And how, under such
a sentiment, the two constituent elements in his system are to be
competent to work out his promised result of mutual happiness, he
has not shown.[134]
[Footnote 130: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1264, a. 24. [Greek:
e)n mia=| ga\r po/lei du/o po/leis, a)nagkai=on ei)=nai, kai\
tau/tas u(penanti/as a)llê/lais.]
The most forcible of the objections urged by Aristotle against the
Platonic Republic, are those contained in this chapter respecting
the relations between the Guardians and the rest of the
community.]
[Footnote 131: The oneness, which Plato proclaims as belonging to
his whole city, belongs in reality only to the body of Guardians;
of whom he sometimes speaks as if they were the whole city, which
however is not his real intention; see Republic, v. p. 462-463
A.]
[Footnote 132: [Greek: Tou\s me\n e(tai/rous ê)=gen i)/sous
maka/ressi theoi=sin,
Tou\s d' a)/llous ê(gei=t' ou)/t' e)n lo/gô| ou)/t' e)n
a)rithmô=|.]]
[Footnote 133: Plato, Republ. v. 465 D.
Aristotle says (in the Nikom. Ethics, i. 5) when discussing the
various ideas entertained about happiness--[Greek: Oi( me\n ou)=n
polloi\ pantelô=s a)ndrapodô/deis phai/nontai boskêma/tôn
bi/on proairou/menoi.] This is much the estimation which the
Platonic Guardians would be apt to form respecting the Demos.]
[Footnote 134: The foregoing remarks are an expansion, and a
sequel, of Aristotle's objection against the Platonic
Republic--That it is not One City, but two discordant cities in that
which is nominally One. I must however add that the same objection
may be urged against the Xenophontic constitution of a city; and
also, in substance, even against the proposition of Aristotle himself
for the same purpose. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, proposes a
severe, life-long drill and discipline, like that of the Spartans:
from which indeed he does not formally exclude any citizens, but
which he announces to be actually attended only by the wealthy,
since they alone can afford to attend continuously and habitually,
the poorer men being engaged in the cares of maintenance. All the
functions of the state, civil and military, are performed
exclusively by those who go through the public discipline. We have
here the two cities in One, which Aristotle objects to in Plato;
with the consequent loss of civic fraternity between them. And
when we look to that which Aristotle himself suggests, we find him
evading the objection by a formal sanction of the very mischief
upon which the objection is founded. He puts the husbandmen and
artisans altogether out of the pale of his city, which is made to
include the disciplined citizens or Guardians alone. His city may
thus be called One, inasmuch as it admits only homogeneous
elements, and throws out all such as are heterogeneous; but he
thus avowedly renounces as insoluble the problem which Plato and
Xenophon try, though unsuccessfully, to solve. If there be discord
and alienation among the constituent members of the Platonic and
Xenophontic city--there will subsist the like feelings, in
Aristotle's proposition, between the members of the city and the
outlying, though indispensable, adjuncts. There will be the same
mischief in kind, and probably exaggerated in amount: since the
abolition of the very name and idea of fellow-citizen tends to
suppress altogether an influence of tutelary character, however
insufficient as to its force.]
[Side-note: Plato's scheme fails, mainly because he provides
no training for the Demos.]
In explanation of the foregoing remarks, I will add that Plato
fails in his purpose not from the goodness of the training which
he provides for his select Few, but from leaving the rest of his
people without any training--without even so much as would
enable them properly to appreciate superior training in the few
who obtain it--without any powers of self-defence or
self-helpfulness. His fundamental postulate--That every man shall do
only one thing--when applied to the Guardians, realises itself in
something great and considerable: but when applied to the ordinary
pursuits of life, reduces every man to a special machine, unfit
for any other purpose than its own. Though it is reasonable that a
man should get his living by one trade, and should therefore
qualify himself peculiarly and effectively for that trade--it is
not reasonable that he should be altogether impotent as to every
thing else: nor that his happiness should consist, as Plato
declares that it ought, exclusively in the performance of this one
service to the commonwealth. In the Platonic Republic, the body of
the people are represented not only as without training, but as
machines rather than individual men. They exist partly as
producers to maintain, partly as governable matter to obey, the
Guardians; and to be cared for by them.
[Side-note: Principle of Aristotle--That every citizen
belongs to the city, not to himself--applied by Plato to women.]
Aristotle, when speaking about the citizens of his own ideal
commonwealth (his citizens form nearly the same numerical
proportion of the whole population, as the Platonic Guardians),
tells us--"Since the End for which the entire City exists is One,
it is obviously necessary that the education of all the citizens
should be one and the same, and that the care of such education
should be a public duty--not left in private hands as it is now,
for a man to teach his children what he thinks fit. Public
exigencies must be provided for by public training. Moreover, we
ought not to regard any of the citizens as belonging to himself,
but all of them as belonging to the city: for each is a part of
the city: and nature prescribes that the care of each part shall
be regulated with a view to the care of the whole."[135]
[Footnote 135: Aristotel. Politic. viii. 1, p. 1337, [Greek:
E)pei\ d' e(\n to\ te/los tê=| po/lei pa/sê|, phanero\n o(/ti
kai\ tê\n paidei/an mi/an kai\ tê\n au)tê\n a)nagkai=on ei)=nai
pa/ntôn, kai\ tau/tês tê\n e)pime/leian ei)=nai koinê\n kai\
mê\ kat' i)di/an; o(\n tro/pon nu=n e(/kastos e)pimelei=tai tô=n
au)tou= te/knôn i)di/a te kai\ ma/thêsin i)di/an, ê(\n a)\n
do/xê|, dida/skôn . . . A(/ma de\ ou)de\ chrê\ nomi/zein
au)to\n au(tou= tina\ ei)=nai tô=n politô=n, a)lla\ pa/ntas
tê=s po/leôs . . . ê( d' e)pime/leias pe/phuken e(ka/stou
mori/ou ble/pein pro\s tê\n tou= o(/lou e)pime/leian.]]
The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to
him with Plato, and lies at the bottom of the schemes of
polity imagined by both. Each has his own way of applying it.
Plato clearly perceives that it cannot be applied with consistency
and effect, unless women are brought under its application as well
as men. And to a great extent, Aristotle holds the same opinion
too. While commending the Spartan principle, that the character of
the citizen must be formed and upheld by continued public training
and discipline--Aristotle blames Lykurgus for leaving the women
(that is, a numerical half of the city) without training or
discipline; which omission produced (he says) very mischievous
effects, especially in corrupting the character of the men. He
pronounces this to be a serious fault, making the constitution
inconsistent and self-contradictory, and indeed contrary to the
intentions of Lykurgus himself; who had tried to bring the women
under public discipline as well as the men, but was forced to
desist by their strenuous opposition.[136] Such remarks from
Aristotle are the more remarkable, since it appears as matter of
history, that the maidens at Sparta (though not the married women)
did to a great extent go through gymnastic exercises along with
the young men.[137] These exercises, though almost a singular
exception in Greece, must have appeared to Aristotle very
insufficient. What amount or kind of regulation he himself would
propose for women, he has not defined. In his own ideal
commonwealth, he lays it down as alike essential for men and women
to have their bodies trained and exercised so as to be adequate to
the active duties of free persons (as contrasted with the harder
preparation requisite for the athletic contests, which he
disapproves), but he does not go into farther particulars.[138]
The regulations which he proposes, too, with reference to marriage
generally and to the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens,
show, that he considered it an important part of the lawgiver's
duty to keep up by positive interference the physical condition
both of males and females.[139]
[Footnote 136: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 9, p. 1269, b. 12. [Greek:
E)/ti d' ê( peri\ ta\s gunai=kas a)/nesis kai\ pro\s tê\n
proai/resin tê=s politei/as blabera\ kai\ pro\s eu)daimoni/an
po/leôs . . . Ô(st' e)n o(/sais politei/ais phau/lôs e)/chei
to\ peri\ ta\s gunai=kas, to\ ê(/misu tê=s po/leôs ei)=nai dei=
nomi/zein a)nomothe/têton. O(/per e)kei=] (at Sparta) [Greek:
sumbe/bêken; o(/lên ga\r tê\n po/lin o( nomothe/tês** ei)=nai
boulo/menos karterikê/n, kata\ me\n tou\s a)/ndras phanero/s
e)sti toiou=tos ô)/n, e)pi\ de\ tô=n gunaikô=n e)xême/lêken],
&c. . . . [Greek: Ta\ de\ peri\ ta\s gunai=kas e)/chonta mê\
kalô=s e)/oiken ou) mo/non a)pre/peia/n tina poiei=n tê=s
po/leôs au)tê=s kath' au(tê/n, a)lla\ sumba/llesthai/ ti pro\s
tê\n philochrêmati/an.]
Plato has a similar remark, Legg. vi. pp. 780-781.]
[Footnote 137: Stallbaum (in his note on Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 C,
[Greek: tê\n tô=n gunaikô=n par' u(mi=n a)/nesin])
observes--"Lacænarum licentiam, quum ex aliis institutis patriis,
tum ex gymnicarum exercitationum usu repetendam, Plato carpit etiam
infrà," &c. This is a mistake. Plato does not blame the
gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens: the four passages to
which Stallbaum refers do not prove his assertion. They even
countenance the reverse of that assertion. Plato approves of
gymnastic and military exercises for maidens in the Laws, and for
all the female Guardians in the Republic.
Stallbaum also refers to Aristotle as disapproving the gymnastic
exercises of the Spartan maidens. I cannot think that this is
correct. Aristotle does indeed blame the arrangements for women at
Sparta, but not, as I understand him, because the women were
subjected to gymnastic exercise; his blame is founded on the
circumstance that the women were not regulated, but left to do as
they pleased, while the men were under the strictest drill. This I
conceive to be the meaning of [Greek: gunaikô=n a)/nesis].
Euripides indeed has a very bitter passage condemning the
exercises of the Spartan maidens; but neither Plato nor Aristotle
shared this view.
Respecting the Spartan maidens and their exercises, see Xenophon,
Republ. Laced. i. 4; Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14.]
[Footnote 138: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 8. [Greek:
Peponême/nên me\n ou)=n e)/chein dei= tê\n e(/xin,
peponême/nên de\ po/nois mê\ biai/ois, mêde\ pro\s e(/na
mo/non, ô(/sper ê( tô=n a)thlêtô=n e(/xis, a)lla\ pro\s ta\s
tô=n e)leutheri/ôn pra/xeis. O(moi/ôs de\ dei= tau=ta
u(pa/rchein a)ndra/si kai\ gunaixi/.] Compare also i. 8, near the
end of the first book.]
[Footnote 139: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, a. 20, b.
15.]
In principle, therefore, Aristotle agrees with Plato,[140] as to
the propriety of comprehending women as well as men under public
training and discipline: but he does not follow out the principle
with the same consistency. He maintains the Platonic Commonwealth
to be impossible.[141]
[Footnote 140: If we take the sentence from Aristotle's Politics,
cited in a note immediately preceding, to the effect that all the
citizens belonged to the city, and that each was a part of the
city (viii. 1, p. 1337, a. 28) in conjunction with another passage
in the Politics (i. 3, p. 1254, a. 10)--[Greek: To/ te ga\r
mo/rion, ou) mo/non a)/llou e)sti\ mo/rion, a)lla\ kai\ _o(/lôs
a)/llou_]--it is difficult to see how he can, consistently with
these principles, assign to his citizens any individual
self-regarding agency. Plato denies all such to his Guardians, and
in so doing he makes deductions consistent with the principles of
Aristotle, who lays down his principles too absolutely for the use
which he afterwards makes of them.]
[Footnote 141: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1263, b. 29. [Greek:
phai/netai d' ei)=nai pa/mpan a)du/natos o( bi/os.]]
[Side-note: Aristotle declares the Platonic Commonwealth
impossible--In what sense this is true.]
If we go through the separate objections which Aristotle advances
as justifying his verdict, we shall find them altogether
inadequate for the purpose. He shows certain inconveniences and
difficulties as belonging to it,--which are by no means all real,
but which, even conceding them in full force, would have to be set
against the objections admitted by himself to bear against other
actual societies before we can determine whether they are
sufficiently weighty to render the scheme to which they belong
impossible. The Platonic commonwealth, and the Aristotelian
commonwealth, are both of them impossible, in my judgment, for the
same reason: that all the various communities of mankind exist
under established customs, beliefs, and sentiments, in complete
discordance with them: and that we cannot understand from whence
the force is to come, tending and competent to generate either of
these two new systematic projects. Both of them require a
simultaneous production of many reciprocally adapted elements:
both therefore require an express initiative force, exceptional
and belonging to some peculiar crisis--something analogous to Zeus
in Krete, and to Apollo at Sparta. This is alike true of both:
though the Platonic Republic, departing more widely from received
principles and sentiments than the Aristotelian, would of course
require a more potent initiative.[142] In the treatises of the two
philosophers, each explains and vindicates the principles of his
system, without including in the hypothesis any specification of a
probable source from whence it was to acquire its first start.
Where is the motive, operative, demiurgic force, ready to
translate such an idea into reality?[143] But if we assume that
either of them had once begun, there is no reason why it might not
have continued. The causes which first brought about the
Spartan constitution and discipline must have been very peculiar,
though we have no historical account what they were. At any rate
they never occurred a second time; for no second Sparta was ever
formed, in spite of the admiration inspired by the first. If
Sparta had never been actually established, and if Aristotle had
read a description of it as a mere project, he would probably have
pronounced it impracticable:[144] though when once brought into
reality, it proved eminently durable. In like manner, the laws,
customs, beliefs, and feelings, prevalent in Egypt,--which
astonished so vehemently Herodotus and other observing
Greeks--would have been declared to be impossible, if described
simply in project: yet, when once established, they were found to
last longer without change than those of other nations.
[Footnote 142: Plato indeed in one place tells us that a single
despot, becoming by inspiration or accident a philosopher, and
having an obedient city, would accomplish the primary construction
of his commonwealth (Republic, vi. p. 502 B). That despot (Plato
supposes) will send away all the population of his city above ten
years old, and will train up the children in the Platonic
principles (vii. pp. 540-541).
This is little better than an [Greek: eu)chê/], whatever Plato
may say to deprecate the charge of uttering [Greek: eu)cha/s], p.
540 D.]
[Footnote 143: Aristotel. Metaphys. A. p. 991, a. 22. [Greek: Ti/
ga/r e)sti to\ e)rgazo/menon, pro\s ta\s i)de/as a)poble/pon?]
We find Aristotle arguing, in the course of his remarks on the
Platonic Republic, that it is useless now to promulgate any such
novelties; a long time has elapsed, and such things would already
have been found established if they had been good (Politic. ii. 5,
p. 1264, a. 2). This would have applied (somewhat less in degree,
yet with quite sufficient force) to the ideal commonwealth of
Aristotle himself, as well as to that of Plato.
Because such institutions have never yet been established anywhere
as those proposed by Plato or Aristotle, you cannot fairly argue
that they would not be good, or that they would not stand if
established. What you may fairly argue is, that they are not at
all likely to be established; no originating force will be
forthcoming adequate to the first creation of them. Existing
societies have fixed modes of thinking and feeling on social and
political matters; each moves in its own groove, and the direction
in which it will henceforward move will be a consequence and
continuance of the direction in which it is already moving, by
virtue of powerful causes now in operation. New originating force
is a very rare phenomenon. Overwhelming enemies or physical
calamities may destroy what exists, but they will not produce any
such innovations as those under discussion.]
[Footnote 144: Plato himself makes this very remark in the
Treatise De Legibus (viii. p. 839 D) in defending the
practicability of some of the ordinances therein recommended.]
[Side-note: The real impossibility of the Platonic
Commonwealth, arises from the fact that discordant sentiments are
already established.]
The Platonic project is submitted, however, not to impartial
judges comparing different views on matters yet undetermined, but
to hearers with a canon of criticism already fixed and
anti-Platonic "_animis consuetudine imbutis_". It appears
impossible, because it contradicts sentiments conceived as
fundamental and consecrated, respecting the sexual and family
relations. The supposed impossibility is the mode of expressing
strong disapprobation and repugnance: like that which Herodotus
describes as manifested by the Greeks on one side and by the
Indians on the other--when Darius, having asked each of them at
what price they would consent to adopt the practice of the other
respecting the mode of treating the bodies of deceased parents,
was answered by a loud cry of horror at the mere proposition.[145]
The reasons offered to prove the Platonic project impossible, are
principally founded upon the very sentiment above adverted to, and
derive all their force from being associated with it. Such is the
character of many among the Aristotelian objections.[146] The
real, and the truly forcible, objection consists in the
sentiment itself. If that be deeply rooted in the mind, it is
decisive. To those who feel thus, the Platonic project would be
both intolerable and impossible.
[Footnote 145: Herodot. iii. 38. [Greek: oi( de/, a)mbô/santes
me/ga, eu)phême/ein min e)ke/leuon.]
Plato in a remarkable passage of the Leges (i. 638 B), deprecates
and complains of this instantaneous condemnation without impartial
hearing of argument on both sides.]
[Footnote 146: See the arguments urged by Aristotle, Politic. ii.
4, p. 1262, a. 25 et seq. His remarks upon the fictions which
Plato requires to be impressed on the belief of his Guardians are
extremely just. There are, however, several objections urged by
him which turn more upon the Platonic language than upon the
Platonic vein of thought, and which, if judged by Plato from his
own point of view, would have appeared admissions in his favour
rather than objections. In reply to Plato, whose aim it is that
all or many of the Guardians shall say _mine_ in reference to
the same persons or the same things, and not in reference to
different persons and different things, Aristotle contends that
the word _mine_ will not then designate any such strong
affection as it does now, when it is special, exclusive, and
concentrated on a few persons or things; that each Guardian,
having many persons whom he called _brother_ and many persons
whom he called _father_, would not feel towards them as
persons now feel towards brothers and fathers; that the affection
by being disseminated would be weakened, and would become nothing
more than a "_diluted friendship_"--[Greek: phili/a
u(darê/s]. See Aristot. Politic. ii. 3, p. 1261, b. 22; ii. 4, p.
1262, b. 15.
Plato, if called upon for an answer to this reasoning, would
probably have allowed it to be just; but would have said that the
"diluted friendship" pervading all the Guardians was apt and
sufficient for his purpose, as bringing the whole number most
nearly into the condition of one organism. Strong exclusive
affections, upon whatever founded, between individuals, he wishes
to discourage: the hateful or unfriendly sentiments he is bent on
rooting out. What he desires to see preponderant, in each
Guardian, is a sense of duty to the public: subordinate to that,
he approves moderate and kindly affections, embracing all the
Guardians; towards the elders as fathers, towards those of the
same age as brothers. Aristotle's expression--[Greek: phili/a
u(darê/s]--describes such a sentiment fairly enough. See
Republic, v. pp. 462-463. It must be conceded, however, that
Plato's _language_ is open to Aristotle's objection.]
[Side-note: Plato has strong feelings of right and wrong
about sexual intercourse, but referring to different objects.]
But we must recollect that it is these very sentiments which Plato
impugns and declares to be inapplicable to his Guardians: so that
an opponent who, not breaking off at once with the cry of horror
uttered by the Indians to Darius, begins to discuss the question
with him, is bound to forego objections and repugnances springing
as corollaries from a basis avowedly denied. Plato has earnest
feelings of right and wrong, in regard both to the functions of
women and to the sexual intercourse: but his feelings dissent
entirely from those of readers generally. That is right, in his
opinion, which tends to keep up the excellence of the breed and
the proper number of Guardians, as well as to ensure the exact and
constant fulfilment of their mission: that is wrong, which tends
to defeat or abridge such fulfilment, or to impair the breed, or
to multiply the number beyond its proper limit. Of these ends the
Rulers are the proper judges, not the individual person. All
the Guardians are enjoined to leave the sexual power absolutely
unexercised until the age of thirty for men, of twenty for
women--and then only to exercise it under express sanction and
authorisation, according as the Rulers may consider that children
are needed to keep up the legitimate number.
Marriage is regarded as holy, and celebrated under solemn
rites--all the more because both the ceremony is originated, and
the couples selected, by the magistrates, for the most important
public purpose: which being fulfilled, the marriage ceases and
determines. It is not celebrated with a view to the couple
themselves, still less with a view to establish any permanent
exclusive attachment between them: which object Plato not only
does not contemplate, but positively discountenances: on the same
general principle as the Catholic Church forbids marriage to
priests: because he believes that it will create within them
motives and sentiments inconsistent with the due discharge of
their public mission.
[Side-note: Different sentiment which would grow up in the
Platonic Commonwealth respecting the sexual relations.]
It is clear that among such a regiment as that which Plato
describes in his Guardians, a sentiment would grow up, respecting
the intercourse of the sexes, totally different from that which
prevailed elsewhere around him. The Platonic restriction upon that
intercourse up in the (until the ulterior limits of age) would be
far more severe: but it would be applied with reference to
different objects. Instead of being applied to enforce the
exclusive consecration of one woman to one man, choosing each
other or chosen by fathers, without any limit on the
multiplication of children,--and without any attention to the
maintenance or deterioration of the breed--it would be directed to
the obtaining of the most perfect breed and of the appropriate
number, leaving the Guardians, female as well as male, free from
all permanent distracting influences to interfere with the
discharge of their public duties. In appreciating the details of
the Platonic community, we must look at it with reference to this
form of sexual morality; which would generate in the Guardians an
appreciation of details consistent with itself both as to the
women and as to the children. The sentiment of obligation, of
right and wrong, respecting the relations of the sexes, is
everywhere very strong; but it does not everywhere attach to the
same acts or objects. The important obligation for a woman never
to show her face in public, which is held sacred through so large
a portion of the Oriental world, is noway recognised in the
Occidental: and in Plato's time, when mankind were more
disseminated among small independent communities, the divergence
was yet greater than it is now. The Spartans were not induced, by
the censures or mockery of persons in other Grecian cities,[147]
to suppress the gymnastic exercises practised by their maidens in
conjunction with the young men: nor is Plato deterred by the
ridicule or blame which others may express, from proclaiming his
conviction, that the virtue of his female Guardians is the same as
that of the male--consisting in the faithful performance of their
duty as Guardians, after going through all the requisite training,
gymnastic and musical. And he follows this up by the general
declaration, one of the most emphatic in all his writings, "The
best thing which is now said or ever has been said, is, that what
is profitable is honourable--and what is hurtful, is base".[148]
[Footnote 147: Eurip. Androm. 598.
The criticisms of Xenophon in the first chapter of his treatise,
De Laced. Republ., exhibit a point of view on many points
analogous to that of Plato respecting the female sex, and
differing from that which he puts into the mouth of Ischomachus in
his Oekonomicus. See above, p. 172, note 3. Among the lost
treatises of Kleanthes, successor of Zeno as Scholarch of the
Stoic School, one was composed expressly to show [Greek: O(/ti ê(
au)tê\ a)retê\ kai\ a)ndro\s kai\ gunaiko/s]. (Diog. Laert. vii.
175.)]
[Footnote 148: Plato, Repub. v. p. 457 A-B. [Greek: A)podute/on
dê\ tai=s tô=n phula/kôn gunaixi/n, e)pei/per a)retê\n a)nti\
i(mati/ôn a)mphie/sontai, kai\ koinônête/on pole/mou te kai\
tê=s a)/llês phulakê=s tê=s peri\ tê\n po/lin, kai\ ou)k
a)/lla prakte/on; tou/tôn d' au)tô=n ta\ e)laphro/tera tai=s
gunaixi\n ê)\ toi=s a)ndra/si dote/on, dia\ tê\n tou= ge/nous
a)sthe/neian. O( de\ gelô=n a)nê\r e)pi\ gumnai=s gunaixi/, tou=
belti/stou e(/neka gumnazome/nais, a)telê= tou= geloi/ou sophi/as
dre/pôn karpo/n, ou)de\n oi)=den, ô(s e)/oiken, e)ph' ô(=|
gela=| ou)d' o(/, ti pra/ttei. _Ka/llista ga\r dê\ tou=to kai\
le/getai kai\ lele/xetai, o(/ti to\ me\n ô)phe/limon, kalo/n--to\
de\ blabero/n, ai)schro/n_.]]
[Side-note: What Nature prescribes in regard to the
relations of the two sexes--Direct contradiction between Plato and
Aristotle.]
Plato in truth reduces the distinction between the two sexes to
its lowest terms: to the physical difference in regard to
procreation--and to the general fact, that the female is every way
weaker and inferior to the male; while yet, individually taken,
many women are superior to many men, and both sexes are alike
improvable by training. He maintains that this similarity of
training and function is the real order of Nature, and that
the opposite practice, which insists on a separation of life
and functions between the sexes, is unnatural:[149] which doctrine
he partly enforces by the analogy of the two sexes in other
animals.[150] Aristotle disputes this reasoning altogether:
declaring that Nature prescribes a separation of life and
functions between the two sexes--that the relation of man to woman
is that of superiority and command on one side, inferiority and
obedience on the other, like the relation between father and
child, master and slave, though with a difference less in
degree--that virtue in a man, and virtue in a woman, are quite
different, imposing diverse obligations.[151] It shows how little
stress can be laid on arguments based on the word _Nature_, when
we see two such distinguished thinkers completely at issue as to the
question, what Nature indicates, in this important case. Each of
them decorates by that name the rule which he himself approves;
whether actually realised anywhere, or merely recommended as a
reform of something really existing. In this controversy,
Aristotle had in his favour the actualities around him, against
Plato: but Aristotle himself is far from always recognising
experience and practice as authoritative interpreters of the
dictates of Nature, as we may see by his own ideal commonwealth.
[Footnote 149: Plato, Republic, v. p. 456 C. [Greek: ta\ nu=n
para\ tau=ta gigno/mena para\ phu/sin ma=llon], &c. Also p.
466 D.]
[Footnote 150: Compare a similar appeal to the analogy of animals,
as proving the [Greek: e)/rôtas a)r)r(e/nôn] to be unnatural,
Plato, Legg. viii. p. 836 C.]
[Footnote 151: Aristotel. Politic. i. 13, p. 1260 a. 20-30.]
[Side-note: Opinion of Plato respecting the capacities of
women, and the training proper for women, are maintained in the
Leges, as well as in the Republic. Ancient legends harmonising
with this opinion.]
How strongly Plato was attached to his doctrines about the
capacity of women--how unchanged his opinion continued about the
mischief of separating the training and functions of the two
sexes, and of confining women to indoor occupations, or to what he
calls "a life of darkness and fear"[152]--may be seen farther by
his Treatise De Legibus. Although in that treatise he recedes
(perforce and without retracting) from the principles of his
Republic, so far as to admit separate properties and families for
all his citizens--yet he still continues to enjoin public
gymnastic and military training, for women and men alike: and he
still opens, to both sexes alike, superintending social
functions to a great extent, as well as the privilege of being
honoured by public hymns after death, in case of distinguished
merit.[153] Respecting military matters, he speaks with peculiar
earnestness. That women are perfectly capable of efficient
military service, if properly trained, he proves not only by the
ancient legends, but also by facts actual and contemporary, the
known valour of the Scythian and Sarmatian women. Whatever doubts
persons may have hitherto cherished (says Plato), this is now
established matter of fact:[154] the cowardice and impotence of
women is not less disgraceful in itself than detrimental to the
city, as robbing it of one-half of its possible force.[155] He
complains bitterly of the repugnance felt even to the discussion
of this proposition.[156] Most undoubtedly, there were ancient
legends which tended much to countenance his opinion. The warlike
Amazons, daughters of Arês, were among the most formidable forces
that had ever appeared on earth; they had shown their power once
by invading Attica and bringing such peril on Athens, that it
required all the energy of the great Athenian hero Theseus to
repel them. We must remember that these stories were not only
familiarised to the public eye in conspicuous painting and
sculpture, but were also fully believed as matters of past
history.[157] Moreover the Goddess Athênê, patroness of Athens,
was the very impersonation of intelligent terror-striking
might--constraining and subduing Arês[158] himself: the Goddess
Enyo presided over war, no less than the God Arês:[159] lastly
Artemis, though making war only on wild beasts, was hardly less
formidable in her way--indefatigable as well as rapid in her
movements and unerring with her bow, as Athênê was irresistible
with her spear. Here were abundant examples in Grecian legend, to
embolden Plato in his affirmations respecting the capacity of the
female sex for warlike enterprise and laborious endurance.
[Footnote 152: Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 C. [Greek: ei)thisme/non
ga\r dedoiko\s kai\ skoteino\n zê=n], &c.]
[Footnote 153: Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 795 C, 796 C, 802 A.]
[Footnote 154: Plat. Legg. vii. pp. 804-805-806. 804 E: [Greek:
a)kou/ôn me\n ga\r dê\ mu/thous palaiou=s pe/peismai, ta\ de\
nu=n, ô(s e)/pos ei)pei=n, oi)=da o(/ti muria/des a)nari/thmêtoi
gunaikô=n ei)si\ tô=n peri\ to\n Po/nton, a(\s Sauromati/das
kalou=sin, ai(=s ou)ch i(/ppôn mo/non a)lla\ kai\ to/xôn kai\
tô=n a)/llôn o(/plôn koinôni/a kai\ toi=s a)ndra/sin i)/sê
prostetagme/nê i)/sôs a)skei=tai.] We may doubt whether Plato
knew anything of the brave and skilful Artemisia, queen of
Halikarnassus, who so greatly distinguished herself in the
expedition of Xerxes against Greece (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 87),
and, indeed, whether he had ever read the history of Herodotus.
His argument might have been strengthened by another equally
pertinent example, if he could have quoted the original letter
addressed by the Emperor Aurelian to the Roman Senate, attesting
the courage, vigour, and prudence, of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra.
Trebellius Pollio, Vitæ Triginta Tyrannorum in Histor. August. p.
198 (De Zenobia, xxix.: cap. xxx.): "Audio, Patres Conscripti,
mihi objici, quod non virile munus impleverim, Zenobiam
triumphando. Næ, illi qui me reprehendunt, satis laudarent, si
scirent qualis illa est mulier, quam prudens in consiliis, quam
constans in dispositionibus, quam erga milites gravis, quam larga
cum necessitas postulet, quam tristis cum severitas poscat. Possum
dicere illius esse quod Odenatus Persas vicit, ac fugato Sapore
Ctesiphontem usque pervenit. Possum asserere, tanto apud
Orientales et Ægyptiorum populos timori mulierem fuisse, ut se non
Arabes, non Saraceni, non Armenii, commoverent. Nec ego illi vitam
conservassem, nisi eam scissem multum Romanæ Reipublicæ profuisse,
cum sibi vel liberis suis Orientis servaret imperium.]
[Footnote 155: Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 813-814.]
[Footnote 156: Plato, Legg. vi. p. 781 D.]
[Footnote 157: Plutarch, Theseus, c. 27; Æschylus, Eumenid. 682;
Isokrates, Panegyr. ss. 76-78. How popular a subject the Amazons
were for sculptors, we learn from the statement of Pliny (**xxxiv.
8, 19) that all the most distinguished sculptors executed Amazons;
and that this subject was the only one upon which a direct
comparison could be made between them.]
[Footnote 158: Homer, Iliad, xv. 123.]
[Footnote 159: Homer, Iliad, v. 333-592.]
[Side-note: In a Commonwealth like the Platonic, the
influence of Aphroditê would probably have been reduced to a
minimum.]
The two Goddesses, Athênê and Artemis, were among the few
altogether insensible to amorous influences and to the
inspirations of Aphroditê: who is the object of contemptuous
sarcasm on the part of Athênê, and of repulsive antipathy on the
part of Artemis.[160] This may supply an illustration for the
Republic of Plato. As far as one can guess what the effect of his
institutions would have been, it is probable that the influence of
Aphroditê would have been at its minimum among his Guardians of
both sexes: as it was presented in the warlike dramas of
Æschylus.[161] There would have been everything to deaden it, with
an entire absence of all provocatives. The muscular development,
but rough and unadorned bodies, of females--
Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus
Pernicis uxor Apuli--(Hor. _Epod._ ii. 41-42).
the indiscriminate companionship, with perfect identity of
treatment and manners, between the two sexes from the earliest
infancy--the training of both together for the same public duties,
the constant occupation of both throughout life in the
performance of those duties, under unceasing official
supervision--the strict regulation of exercise and diet, together
with the monastic censorship on all poetry and literature--the
self-restraint, equal and universal, enforced as the characteristic
feature and pride of the regiment, and seconded by the jealous
espionage of all over all, the more potent because privacy was
unknown--such an assemblage of circumstances would do as much as
circumstances could do to starve the sexual appetite, to prevent
it from becoming the root of emotional or imaginative
associations, and to place it under the full controul of the
lawgiver for purposes altogether public. Such was probably Plato's
intention: since he more generally regards the appetites as
enemies to be combated and extirpated so far as
practicable--rather than as sources of pleasure, yet liable to
accompaniments of pain, requiring to be regulated so as to exclude
the latter and retain the former.
[Footnote 160: Homer, Hymn. ad Venerem, 10; Iliad, v. 425;
Euripid. Hippolyt. 1400-1420.
Athênê combined the attributes of [Greek: philopo/lemos] and
[Greek: philo/sophos]. Plato, Timæus, p. 24 D; compare Kritias, p.
109 D.]
[Footnote 161: See Aristophan. Ranæ, 1042.
_Eurip._ [Greek: Ma\ Di/' ou)de\ ga\r ê)=n tê=s
A)phrodi/tês ou)de/n soi.]
_Æschyl._ [Greek: Mêde/ g' e)pei/ê. A)ll' e)pi/ soi/ toi
kai\ toi=s soi=sin pollê\ pollou= 'pikathê=to.]]
[Side-note: Other purposes of Plato--limitation of number of
Guardians--common to Aristotle also.]
The public purposes, with a view to which Plato sought to controul
the sexual appetite in his Guardians, were three, as I have
already stated. 1. To obtain from each of them individually,
faithful performance of the public duties, and observance of the
limits, prescribed by his system. 2. To ensure the best and purest
breed. 3. To maintain unaltered the same total number, without
excess or deficiency.
[Side-note: Law of population expounded by Malthus--Three
distinct checks to population--alternative open between preventive
and positive.]
The first of these three purposes is peculiar to the Platonic
system. The two last are not peculiar to it. Aristotle recognises
them[162] as ends, no less than Plato, though he does not approve
Plato's means for attaining them. In reference to the limitation
of number, Aristotle is even more pronounced than Plato. The great
evil of over-population forced itself upon these philosophers;
living as both of them did among small communities, each with its
narrow area hedged in by others--each liable to intestine dispute,
sometimes caused, always aggravated, by the presence of large
families and numerous poor freemen--and each importing bought
slaves as labourers. To obtain for their community the quickest
possible increase in aggregate wealth and population, was an
end which they did not account either desirable or commendable.
The stationary state, far from appearing repulsive or
discouraging, was what they looked upon as the best
arrangement[163] of things. A mixed number of lots of land,
indivisible and inalienable, is the first principle of the
Platonic community in the treatise De Legibus. Not to encourage
wealth, but to avert, as far as possible, the evils of poverty and
dependence, and to restrain within narrow limits the proportion of
the population which suffered those evils--was considered by Plato
and Aristotle to be among the gravest problems for the solution of
the statesman.[164] Consistent with these conditions, essential to
security and tranquillity, whatever the form of government might
be, there was only room for the free population then existing: not
always for that (seeing that the proportion of poor citizens was
often uncomfortably great), and never for any sensible increase
above that. If all the children were born and brought up, that it
was possible for adult couples to produce, a fearful aggravation
of poverty, with all its accompanying public troubles and
sufferings, would have been inevitable.[165] Accordingly both
Plato (for the Guardians in the Republic) and Aristotle agree in
opinion that a limit must be fixed upon the number of children
which each couple is permitted to introduce. If any objector had
argued that each couple, by going through the solemnity of
marriage, acquired a natural right to produce as many children as
they could, and that others were under a natural obligation to
support those children--both philosophers would have denied the
plea altogether. But they went even further. They considered
procreation as a duty which each citizen owed to the public,
in order that the total of citizens might not fall below the
proper minimum--yet as a duty which required controul, in order
that the total might not rise above the proper maximum.[166] Hence
they did not even admit the right of each couple to produce as
many children as their private means could support. They thought
it necessary to impose a limit on the number of children in every
family, binding equally on rich and poor: the number prescribed
might be varied from time to time, as circumstances indicated. As
the community could not safely admit more than a certain aggregate
of births, these philosophers commanded all couples
indiscriminately, the rich not excepted, to shape their conduct
with a view to that imperative necessity.
[Footnote 162: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16.]
[Footnote 163: Compare the view (not unlike though founded on
different reasons) of the stationary state taken by Mr. John
Stuart Mill, in a valuable chapter of his Principles of Political
Economy, Book iv. chap. 6. He says (s. 2):--"The best state for
human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one
desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back
by the efforts of others to push themselves forward". This would
come near to the views of Plato and Aristotle.]
[Footnote 164: See a striking passage in Plato, Legg. v. pp.
742-743. He speaks of rich men as they are spoken of in some verses
of the Gospels--a very rich man can hardly be a good man. Wealth
and poverty are both of them evils, p. 744 D. Repub. iv. p. 421.
Pheidon the Corinthian, an ancient lawgiver (we do not know when
or where), prescribed an unchangeable number both of lots (of
land) and of citizens, but the lots were not to be all equal.
Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 14.]
[Footnote 165: Aristot. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1265, b. 10. [Greek:
To\ d' a)phei=sthai (tê\n teknopoii+/an a)o/riston**), katha/per
e)n tai=s plei/stais po/lesin, peni/as a)nagkai=on ai)/tion
gi/nesthai toi=s poli/tais; ê( de\ peni/a sta/sin e)mpoiei= kai\
kakourgi/an.] Compare ibid. ii. 7, p. 1266, b. 8.]
[Footnote 166: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 28-38.
[Greek: leitourgei=n pro\s teknopoii+/an . . . a)phei=sthai dei=
tê=s ei)s to\ phanero\n gennê/seôs.]
Plato, Republic, v. pp. 460-461. [Greek: ti/ktein tê=|
po/lei--genna=|n tê=| po/lei--tô=n ei)s to\ koino\n gennê/seôn].]
Plato in his Republic (as I have already mentioned) assumes for
his Archons the privilege of selecting (by a pretended sortition)
the couples through whom the legitimate amount of breeding shall
be accomplished: in the semi-Platonic commonwealth (De Legibus),
he leaves the choice free, but prescribes the limits of age,
rendering marriage a peremptory duty between twenty and
thirty-five years of age, and adding some emphatic exhortations,
though not peremptory enactments, respecting the principles which
ought to guide individual choice.[167] In the same manner too he
deals with procreation: recognising the necessity of imposing a limit
on individual discretion, yet not naming that limit by law, but
leaving it to be enforced according to circumstances by the
magistrates: who (he says), by advice, praise, and censure, can
apply either effective restraints on procreation, or
encouragements if the case requires.[168] Aristotle blames this
guarantee as insufficient: he feels so strongly the necessity
of limiting procreation, that he is not satisfied unless a proper
limit be imposed by positive law. Unless such a result be made
thoroughly sure (he says), all other measures of lawgivers for
equalising properties, or averting poverty and the discontents
growing out of it--must fail in effect.[169] Aristotle also lays
it down as a part of the duty of the lawgiver to take care that
the bodies of the children brought up shall be as good as
possible: hence he prescribes the ages proper for marriage, and
the age after which no parents are to produce any more
children.[170]
[Footnote 167: Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 772-773-774. The wording is
characteristic of the view taken by these philosophers, and of the
extent to which they subordinated individual sentiment to public
considerations. [Greek: kata\ panto\s ei(=s e)/stô mu=thos
ga/mou; to\n ga\r tê=| po/lei dei= xumphe/ronta mnêsteu/ein
ga/mon e(/kaston, a)ll' ou) to\n ê(/diston au(tô=|. phe/retai
de/ pôs pa=s a)ei\ kata\ phu/sin pro\s to\n o(moio/taton
au(tô=|], &c. (p. 773 B). In marriage (he says) the natural
tendency is that like seeks like; but it is good for the city that
like should be coupled to unlike, rich to poor, hasty tempers with
sober tempers, &c., in order that the specialties may be
blended together and mitigated. He does not pretend to embody this
in a written law, but directs the authorities to obtain it as far
as they can by exhortation. P. 733 E. Compare the Politikus, p.
311.]
[Footnote 168: Plato, Legg. v. p. 740 D. [Greek: porize/tô
mêchanê\n o(/ti ma/lista, o(/pôs ai( pentakischi/liai kai\
tettara/konta oi)kê/seis _a)ei\ mo/non_ e)/sontai; kai\ ga\r
_e)pische/seis gene/seôs_, oi(=s a)\n eu)/rous ei)/ê
ge/nesis, kai\ tou)nanti/on e)pime/leiai kai\ spoudai\ plê/thous
gennêma/tôn ei)si\n], &c.]
[Footnote 169: Aristotel. Politic. ii. 6, p. 1264, a. 38; ii. 7,
p. 1266, b. 10; vii. 16.
Aristotle has not fully considered all that Plato says, when he
blames him for inconsistency in proposing to keep properties
equal, without taking pains to impose and maintain a constant
limit on offspring in families. [Greek: A)/topon de\ kai\ to\ ta\s
ktê/seis i)sa/zonta] (Plato) [Greek: to\ peri\ to\ plê=thos
tô=n politô=n mê\ kataskeua/zein, a)ll' a)phei=nai tê\n
teknopoii+/an a)o/riston], &c. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, p.
1265, a. fin.)
What Plato really directs is stated in my text and in my note
immediately preceding.]
[Footnote 170: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1334, b. 39.
[Greek: ei)/per ou)=n a)p' a)rchê=s to\n nomothe/tên o(ra=|n
dei=, o(/pôs be/ltista ta\ sô/mata ge/nêtai tô=n
trephome/nôn, prô=ton me\n e)pimelête/on peri\ tê\n su/zeuxin,
po/te kai\ poi/ous tina\s o)/ntas chrê\ poiei=sthoi pro\s
a)llê/lous tê\n gamikê\n o(mili/an], &c. He names
thirty-seven as the age proper for a man, eighteen for a woman, to
marry. At the age of fifty-five a man becomes unfit to procreate
for the public, and none of his children are to appear ([Greek:
a)phei=sthai tê=s ei)s to\ phanero\n gennê/seôs], vii. 16, p.
1335, b. 36).]
The paramount necessity of limiting the number of children born in
each family, here enforced by Plato and Aristotle, rests upon that
great social fact which Malthus so instructively expounded at the
close of the last century. Malthus, enquiring specially into the
law of population, showed upon what conditions the increase of
population depends, and what were the causes constantly at work to
hold it back--checks to population. He ranged these causes under
three different heads, though the two last are multiform in
detail. 1. Moral or prudential restraint--the preventive check. 2.
Vice, and 3. Misery--the two positive checks. He farther showed
that though the aggregate repressive effect of these three causes
is infallible and inevitable, determined by the circumstances of
each given society--yet that mankind might exercise an option
through which of the three the check should be applied: that the
effect of the two last causes was in inverse proportion to that of
the first--in other words, that the less there was of
prudential restraint limiting the number of births, the more
there must be of vice or misery, under some of their thousand
forms, to shorten the lives of many of the children born--and _é
converso_, the more there was of prudential restraint, the less
would be the operation of the other checks tending to shorten
life.
[Side-note: Plato and Aristotle saw the same law as Malthus,
but arranged the facts under a different point of view.]
Three distinct facts--preventive restraint, vice, and
misery--having nothing else in common, are arranged under one general
head by Malthus, in consequence of the one single common property
which they possess--that of operating as checks to population. To
him, that one common property was the most important of all, and the
most fit to be singled out as the groundwork of classification,
having reference to the subject of his enquiry. But Plato and
Aristotle looked at the subject in a different point of view. They
had present to their minds the same three facts, and the tendency
of the first to avert or abate the second and third: but as they
were not investigating the law of population, they had nothing to
call their attention to the one common property of the three. They
did not regard vice and misery as causes tending to keep down
population, but as being in themselves evils; enemies among the
worst which the lawgiver had to encounter, in his efforts to
establish a good political and social condition--and enemies which
he could never successfully encounter, without regulating the
number of births. Such regulation they considered as an essential
tutelary measure to keep out disastrous poverty. The inverse
proportion, between regulated or unregulated number of births on
the one hand, and diminution or increase of poverty on the other,
was seen as clearly by Aristotle and Plato as by Malthus.
[Side-note: Regulations of Plato and Aristotle as to number
of births and newborn children.]
But these two Greek philosophers ordain something yet more
remarkable. Having prescribed both the age of marriage and the
number of permitted births, so as to ensure both vigorous citizens
and a total compatible with the absence of corrupting
poverty--they direct what shall be done if the result does not
correspond to their orders. Plato in his Republic (as I have already
stated) commands that all the children born to his wedded couples
shall be immediately consigned to the care of public nurses--that the
offspring of the well-constituted parents shall be brought up,
that of the ill-constituted parents not brought up--and that no
children born of parents after the legitimate age shall be brought
up.[171] Aristotle forbids the exposure of children, wherever the
habits of the community are adverse to it: but if after any
married couple have had the number of children allowed by law, the
wife should again become pregnant, he directs that abortion shall
be procured before the commencement of life or sense in the
foetus: after such commencement, he pronounces abortion to be
wrong.[172] On another point Plato and Aristotle agree: both of
them command that no child born crippled or deformed shall be
brought up:[173] a practice actually adopted at Sparta under the
Lykurgean institutions, and even carried farther, since no child
was allowed to be brought up until it had been inspected and
approved by the public nurses.[174]
[Footnote 171: Plato, Republ. v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C.]
[Footnote 172: Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, 10, p. 1335, b. 20.
[Greek: Peri\ de\ a)pothe/seôs kai\ trophê=s tô=n gignome/nôn,
e)/stô no/mos, mêde\n pepêrôme/non tre/phein; dia\ de\
plê=thos te/knôn, e)a\n ê( ta/xis tô=n e)thô=n kôlu/ê|,
mêde\n a)poti/thesthai tô=n gignome/nôn; ô(/ristai ga\r dê\
tê=s teknopoii+/as to\ plê=thos. e)a\n de/ tisi gi/gnêtai para\
tau=ta sunduasthe/ntôn, pri\n ai)/sthêsin e)ggene/sthai kai\
zôê/n, e)mpoiei=sthai dei= tê\n a)/mblôsin; to\ ga\r o(/sion
kai\ to\ mê\ diôrisme/non tê=| ai)sthê/sei kai\ tô=| zê=|n
e)/stai.] For the text of this passage I have followed Bekker and
the Berlin edition. As to the first half of the passage there are
some material differences in the text and in the MSS.; some give
[Greek: e)thnô=n] instead of [Greek: e)thôn], and [Greek:
ô(ri/sthai ga\r dei=] instead of [Greek: ô(/ristai ga\r dê\].
Compare Plato, Theætêt. 149 C.]
[Footnote 173: Plato, Republic, v. p. 460 C. [Greek: ta\ de\ tô=n
cheiro/nôn (te/kna), kai\ e)a/n ti tô=n e(te/rôn a)na/pêron
gi/gnêtai, e)n a)por)r(ê/tô| te kai\ a)dê/lô| katakru/psousin
ô(s pre/pei.] Aristot. _ut suprâ_, [Greek: e)/stô no/mos,
mêde\n pepêrôme/non tre/phein], &c.]
[Footnote 174: Plutarch, Lykurgus, c. 16.]
[Side-note: Such regulations disapproved and forbidden by
modern sentiment--Variability of ethical sentiment as to objects
approved or disapproved.]
We here find both these philosophers not merely permitting, but
enjoining--and the Spartan legislation, more admired than any in
Greece, systematically realising--practices which modern sentiment
repudiates and punishes. Nothing can more strikingly
illustrate--what Plato and Aristotle have themselves repeatedly
observed[175]--how variable and indeterminate is the _matter_ of
ethical sentiment, in different ages and communities, while the
_form_ of ethical sentiment is the same universally: how all
men agree subjectively, in that which they
feel--disapprobation and hatred of wrong and vice, approbation and
esteem of right and virtue--yet how much they differ objectively,
as to the acts or persons which they designate by these names and
towards which their feelings are directed. It is with these
emotions as with the other emotions of human nature: all men are
moved in the same manner, though in different degree, by love and
hatred--hope and fear--desire and aversion--sympathy and
antipathy--the emotions of the beautiful, the sublime, the
ludicrous: but when we compare the objects, acts, or persons,
which so move them, we find only a very partial agreement, amidst
wide discrepancy and occasionally strong opposition.[176] The
present case is one of the strongest opposition. Practices now
abhorred as wrong, are here directly commanded by Plato and
Aristotle, the two greatest authorities of the Hellenic world: men
differing on many points from each other, but agreeing in this:
men not only of lofty personal character, but also of first-rate
intellectual force, in whom the ideas of virtue and vice had been
as much developed by reflection as they ever have been in any
mind: lastly, men who are extolled by the commentators as the
champions of religion and sound morality, against what are styled
the unprincipled cavils of the Sophists.
[Footnote 175: Aristotel. Politic. viii. 2, p. 1337, b. 2. [Greek:
Peri/ te tô=n pro\s a)retê/n, ou)the/n e)stin o(mologou/menon;
kai\ ga\r tê\n a)retê\n ou) tê\n au)tê\n eu)thu\s pa/ntes
timô=sin; ô(/st' eu)lo/gôs diaphe/rontai kai\ pro\s tê\n
a)/skêsin au)tê=s.]
Ethica Nikomach. i. 3, p. 1094, b. 15. [Greek: Ta\ de\ kala\ kai\
ta\ di/kaia, peri\ ô(=n ê( politikê\ skopei=tai, tosau/tên
e)/chei diaphora\n kai\ pla/nên, ô(/ste dokei=n no/mô| mo/non
ei)=nai, phu/sei de\ mê/.]]
[Footnote 176: The extraordinary variety and discrepancy of
approved and consecrated customs prevalent in different portions
of the ancient world, is instructively set forth in the treatise
of the Syrian Christian Bardisanes, in the time of the Antonines.
A long extract from this treatise is given in Eusebius, Præparat.
Evang., vi. 10; it has been also published by Orelli, annexed to
his edition (Zurich, 1824) of the argument of Alexander of
Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 202. Compare Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv. 30.
Bardisanes is replying to the arguments of astrologers and
calculators of nativities, who asserted the uniform and
uncontrollable influence of the heavenly bodies, in given
positions, over human conduct. As a proof that mankind are not
subject to any such necessity, but have a large sphere of freewill
([Greek: au)texou/sion]), he cites these numerous instances of
diverse and contradictory institutions among different societies.
Several of the most conspicuous among these differences relate to
the institutions concerning sex and family, the conduct and
occupations held obligatory in men and women, &c.
Compare Sextus Empiric., Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. s. 198 seqq.]
[Side-note: Plato and Aristotle required subordination of
impulse to reason and duty--they applied this to the procreative
impulse, as to others.]
It is, in my judgment, both curious and interesting to study the
manner in which these two illustrious men--Plato and
Aristotle--dealt with the problem of population. Grave as that
problem is in all times, it was peculiarly grave among the small
republics of antiquity. Neither of them were disposed to ignore or
overlook it: nor to impute to other causes the consequences which
it produces: nor to treat as indifferent the question, whether
poor couples had a greater or less family, to share subsistence
already scanty for themselves. Still less were these philosophers
disposed to sanction the short-sighted policy of some Hellenic
statesmen, who under a mistaken view of increasing the power of
the state, proclaimed encouragement and premium simply to the
multiplication of male births, without any regard to the comfort
and means of families. Both Plato and Aristotle saw plainly, that
a married couple, by multiplying their offspring, produced serious
effects not merely upon their own happiness but upon that of
others besides: up to a certain limit, for good--beyond that
limit, for evil. Hence they laid it down, that procreation ought
to be a rational and advised act, governed by a forecast of those
consequences--not a casual and unforeseen result of present
impulse. The same preponderance of reason over impulse as they
prescribed in other cases, they endeavoured to enforce in this.
They regarded it too, not simply as a branch of prudence, but as a
branch of duty; a debt due by each citizen to others and to the
commonwealth. It was the main purpose of their elaborate political
schemes, to produce a steady habit and course of virtue in all the
citizens: and they considered every one as greatly deficient in
virtue, who refused to look forward to the consequences of his own
procreative acts--thereby contributing to bring upon the state an
aggravated measure of poverty, which was the sure parent of
discord, sedition, and crime. That the rate of total increase
should not be so great as to produce these last-mentioned
effects--and that the limit of virtue and prudence should be made
operative on all the separate families--was in their judgment one
of the most important cares of the lawgiver.
We ought to disengage this general drift and purpose, common both
to Plato and Aristotle, on the subject of population, from the
various means--partly objectionable, partly impossible to be
enforced--whereby they intended to carry the purpose into effect.
[Side-note: Training of the few select philosophers to act
as chiefs.]
I pass from Plato's picture of the entire regiment of Guardians,
under the regulations above described--to his description of the
special training whereby the few most distinguished persons
in the regiment (male or female, as the case may be) are to be
improved, tested, and exalted to the capacity of philosophers:
qualified to act as Rulers or Chiefs.[177] These are the two
marked peculiarities of Plato's Republic. The Guardians are
admirable as instruments, but have no initiative of their own: we
have now to find the chiefs from whom they will receive it. How
are philosophers to be formed? None but a chosen Few have the
precious gold born with them, empowering them to attain this
elevation. To those Few, if properly trained, the privilege and
right to exercise command belongs, by Nature. For the rest,
obedience is the duty prescribed by Nature.[178]
[Footnote 177: Plato, Republic, v. p. 473, vi. p. 503 B. [Greek:
tou\s a)kribesta/tous phu/lakas philoso/phous dei=
kathista/nai.]]
[Footnote 178: Plato, Repub. v. p. 474 B. [Greek: toi=s me\n
prosê/kei phu/ei, a(/ptesthai/ te philosophi/as, ê(gemoneu/ein
t' e)n po/lei; toi=s d' a)/llois mê/te a(/ptesthai, a)kolouthei=n
te tô=| ê(goume/nô|.]
476 B: [Greek: spa/nioi a)\n ei)=en]. Also vi. 503, vii. 535. They
are to be [Greek: e)k tô=n prokri/tôn pro/kritoi], vii. 537 D.]
[Side-note: Comprehensive curriculum for aspirants to
philosophy--consummation by means of Dialectic.]
I have already given, in Chap. XXXV., a short summary of the
peculiar scientific training which Sokrates prescribes for
ripening these heroic aspirants into complete philosophers. They
pass years of intellectual labour, all by their own spontaneous
impulse, over and above the full training of Guardians. They study
Arithmetic, Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy, Acoustics, &c.,
until the age of thirty: they then continue in the exercise of
Dialectic, with all the test of question and answer, for five
years longer: after which they enter upon the duties of practice
and administration, succeeding ultimately to the position of
chiefs if found competent. It is assumed that this long course of
study, consummated by Dialectic, has operated within them that
great mental revolution which Plato calls, turning the eye from
the shadows in the cave to the realities of clear daylight: that
they will no longer be absorbed in the sensible world or in
passing phenomena, but will become familiar with the unchangeable
Ideas or Forms of the Intelligible world, knowable only by
intellectual intuition. Reason has with them been exalted to its
highest power: not only strengthening them to surmount all
intellectual difficulties and to deal with the most complicated
conjectures of practice--but also ennobling their
dispositions, so as to overcome all the disturbing temptations and
narrow misguiding prejudices inherent in the unregenerate man.
Upon the perfection of character, emotional and intellectual,
imparted to these few philosophers, depends the Platonic
Commonwealth.
[Side-note: Valuable remarks on the effects of these
preparatory studies.]
The remarks made by Plato on the effect of this preparatory
curriculum, and on the various studies composing it, are highly
interesting and instructive--even when they cannot be defended as
exact. Much of what he so eloquently enunciates respecting
philosophy and the philosophical character, is in fact just and
profound, whatever view we may take as to Universals: whether we
regard them (like Plato) as the only Real Entia, cognizable by the
mental eye, and radically disparate from particulars--or whether
we hold them to be only general Concepts, abstracted and
generalised more or less exactly from particulars. The remarks
made by Plato on the educational effect produced by Arithmetic and
the other studies, are valuable and suggestive. Even the discredit
which he throws on observations of fact, in Astronomy and
Acoustics--the great antithesis between him and modern times--is
useful as enabling us to enter into his point of view.[179]
[Footnote 179: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 529 C-D.
The manner in which Plato here depreciates astronomical
observation is not easily reconcileable with his doctrine in the
Timæus. He there tells us that the rotations of the Nous
(intellective soul) in the interior of the human cranium, are
cognate or analogous to those of the cosmical spheres, but more
confused and less perfect: our eyesight being expressly intended
for the purpose, that we might contemplate the perfect and
unerring rotations of the cosmical spheres, so as to correct
thereby the disturbed rotations in our own brain (Timæus, pp.
46-47).
Malebranche shares the feeling of Plato on the subject of
astronomical observation. Recherche de la Vérité, liv. iv. ch.
vii. vol. ii. p. 219, ed. 1772 (p. 278, ed. 1721).
"Car enfin qu'y a-t-il de grand dans la connoissance des mouvemens
des planètes? et n'en sçavons nous pas assez présentement pour
régler nos mois et nos années? Qu'avons nous tant à faire de
sçavoir, si Saturne est environné d'un anneau ou d'un grand nombre
de petites lunes, et pourquoi prendre parti là-dessus? Pourquoi se
glorifier d'avoir prédit la grandeur d'une éclipse, où l'on a
peut-être mieux rencontré qu'un autre, parcequ'on a été plus
heureux? Il y a des personnes destinées, par l'ordre du Prince, à
observer les astres; contentons nous de leurs observations. . .
Nous devons être pleinement satisfaits sur une matière qui nous
touche si peu, lorsqu'ils nous font partie de leurs
découvertes."]
[Side-note: Differences between the Republic and other
dialogues--no mention of reminiscence nor of the Elenchus.]
But his point of view in the Republic differs materially from that
which we read in other dialogues: especially in two ways.
First, The scientific and long-continued Quadrivium, through which
Plato here conducts the student to philosophy, is very
different from the road to philosophy as indicated elsewhere.
Nothing is here said about reminiscence--which in the Menon,
Phædon, Phædrus, and elsewhere, stands in the foreground of his
theory, as the engine for reviving in the mind Forms or Ideas.
With these Forms it had been familiar during a prior state of
existence, but they had become buried under the sensible
impressions arising from its conjunction with the body. Nor do we
find in the Republic any mention of that electric shock of the
negative Elenchus, which (in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and
several other dialogues) is declared indispensable for stirring up
the natural mind not merely from ignorance and torpor, but even
from a state positively distempered--the false persuasion of
knowledge.
[Side-note: Different view taken by Plato in the Republic
about Dialectic--and different place assigned to it.]
Secondly, following out this last observation, we perceive another
discrepancy yet more striking, in the directions given by Plato
respecting the study of Dialectic. He prescribes that it shall
upon no account be taught to young men: and that it shall come
last of all in teaching, only after the full preceding Quadrivium.
He censures severely the prevalent practice of applying it to
young men, as pregnant with mischief. Young men (he says) brought
up in certain opinions inculcated by the lawgiver, as to what is
just and honourable, are interrogated on these subjects, and have
questions put to them. When asked What is the just and the
honourable, they reply in the manner which they have learnt from
authority: but this reply, being exposed to farther
interrogatories, is shown to be untenable and inconsistent, such
as they cannot defend to their own satisfaction. Hence they lose
all respect for the established ethical creed, which however
stands opposed in their minds to the seductions of immediate
enjoyment: yet they acquire no new or better conviction in its
place. Instead of following an established law, they thus come to
live without any law.[180] Besides, young men when initiated in
dialectic debate, take great delight in the process, as a
means of exposing and puzzling the respondent. Copying the skilful
interrogators whom they have found themselves unable to answer,
they interrogate others in their turn, dispute everything, and
pride themselves on exhibiting all the negative force of the
Elenchus. Instead of employing dialectic debate for the discovery
of truth, they use it merely as a disputatious pastime, and thus
bring themselves as well as philosophy into discredit.[181]
[Footnote 180: Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 538 D-539. [Greek: o(/tan
to\n ou(/tôs e)/chonta e)ltho\n e)rô/têma e)/rêtai, ti/ e)sti
to\ kalo/n, kai\ a)pokrina/menon o(\ tou= nomothetou= ê)/kouen
e)xelegchê=| o( lo/gos, kai\ polla/kis kai\ pollachê=
e)le/gchôn ei)s do/xan katabalê=| ô(s tou=to ou)de\n ma/llon
kalo\n ê)\ ai)schro\n, kai\ peri\ dikai/ou ô(sau/tôs kai\
a)di/kou, kai\ a(\ ma/lista ê)=gen e)n timê=|], &c.]
[Footnote 181: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 B.]
Accordingly, we must not admit (says Plato) either young men, or
men of ordinary untrained minds, to dialectic debate. We must
admit none but mature persons, of sedate disposition, properly
prepared: who will employ it not for mere disputation, but for the
investigation of truth.[182]
[Footnote 182: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 539 D.]
[Side-note: Contradiction with the spirit of other
dialogues--Parmenidês, &c.]
Now the doctrine thus proclaimed, with the grounds upon which it
rests--That dialectic debate is unsuitable and prejudicial to
young men--distinctly contradict both the principles laid down by
himself elsewhere, and the frequent indications of his own
dialogues: not to mention the practice of Sokrates as described by
Xenophon. In the Platonic Parmenidês, and Theætêtus, the season
of youth is expressly pronounced to be that in which dialectic
exercise is not merely appropriate, but indispensable to the
subsequent attainment of truth.[183] Moreover, Plato puts into the
mouth of Parmenides a specimen intentionally given to represent
that dialectic exercise which will be profitable to youth. The
specimen is one full of perplexing, though ingenious,
subtleties: ending in establishing, by different trains of
reasoning, the affirmative, as well as the negative, of several
distinct conclusions. Not only it supplies no new positive
certainty, but it appears to render any such consummation more
distant and less attainable than ever.[184] It is therefore
eminently open to the censure which Plato pronounces, in the
passage just cited from his Republic, against dialectic as
addressed to young men. The like remark may be made upon the
numerous other dialogues (though less extreme in negative subtlety
than the Parmenidês), wherein the Platonic Sokrates interrogates
youths (or interrogates others, in the presence of youths) without
any positive result: as in the Theætêtus, Charmidês, Lysis,
Alkibiadês, Hippias, &c., to which we may add the
conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydemus and
others.[185]
[Footnote 183: Plato, Parmenidês, pp. 135 D, 137 B. Theætêt. 146
A.
Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês (p. 778, Stallbaum),
adverts to the passage of the Republic here discussed, and
endeavours to show that it is not inconsistent with the
Parmenidês. He states that the exhortation to practise dialectic
debate in youth, as the appropriate season, must be understood as
specially and exclusively addressed to a youth of the
extraordinary mental qualities of Sokrates; while the passage in
the Republic applies the prohibition only to the general regiment
of Guardians. But this justification is noway satisfactory; for
Plato in the Republic makes no exception in favour of the most
promising Guardians. He lays down the position generally. Again,
in the Parmenidês, we find the encouragement to dialectic debate
addressed not merely to the youthful Sokrates, but to the youthful
Aristoteles (p. 137 B). Moreover, we are not to imagine that all
the youths who are introduced as respondents in the Platonic
dialogues are implied as equal to Sokrates himself, though they
are naturally represented as superior and promising subjects.
Compare Plato, Sophistês, p. 217 E; Politikus, p. 257 E.]
[Footnote 184: Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 ad fin. [Greek:
ei)rê/sthô toi/nun tou=to/ te kai\ o(/ti, ô(s e)/oiken, e(\n
ei)/t' e)/stin, ei)te mê\ e)/stin, au)to/ te kai\ ta)/lla kai\
pro\s au)ta\ kai\ pro\s a)/llêla pa/nta pa/ntôs e)/sti te kai\
ou)k e)/sti, kai\ phai/netai te kai\ ou) phai/netai.
A)lêthe/stata.]]
[Footnote 185: Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2.]
[Side-note: Contradiction with the character and
declarations of Sokrates.]
In fact, the Platonic Sokrates expressly proclaims himself (in the
Apology as well as in the other dialogues just named) to be
ignorant and incapable of teaching anything. His mission was to
expose the ignorance of those, who fancy that they know without
really knowing: he taught no one anything, but he cross-examined
every one who would submit to it, before all the world, and in a
manner especially interesting to young men. Sokrates mentions that
these young men not only listened with delight, but tried to
imitate him as well as they could, by cross-examining others in
the same manner:[186] and in mentioning the fact, he expresses
neither censure nor regret, but satisfaction in the thought that
the chance would be thereby increased, of exposing that false
persuasion of knowledge which prevailed so widely everywhere. Now
Plato, in the passage just cited from the Republic, blames this
contagious spirit of cross-examination on the part of young men,
as a vice which proved the mischief of dialectic debate addressed
to them at that age. He farther deprecates the disturbance of
"those opinions which they have heard from the lawgiver respecting
what is just and honourable". But it is precisely these
opinions which, in the Alkibiadês, Menon, Protagoras, and other
dialogues, the Platonic Sokrates treats as untaught, if not
unteachable:--as having been acquired, no man knew how, without
the lessons of any assignable master and without any known period
of study:--lastly, as constituting that very illusion of false
knowledge without real knowledge, of which Sokrates undertakes to
purge the youthful mind, and which must be dispelled before any
improvement can be effected in it.[187]
[Footnote 186: Plato, Apolog. Sokrat c. 10, p. 23 D, c. 22, p. 33
C, c. 27, p. 37 E, c. 30, p. 39 C.]
[Footnote 187: Plato, Sophist. p. 230.]
[Side-note: The remarks here made upon the effect of
Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus
against Sokrates.]
We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with
youth--cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato
there puts into the mouth of Sokrates--is decidedly anti-Sokratic;
and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It
belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their
indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is
identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and
inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of
established customs and opinions heard from their elders.[188] Now
the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that
dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce
this effect:--to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And
when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age
than thirty years--we remark as a singular coincidence, that this
is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually
imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of
the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.[189]
[Footnote 188: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare
Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.]
[Footnote 189: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38.
Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in
disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares
that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such
exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii.
Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).]
[Side-note: Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a
dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and
dictator of the Platonic Republic.]
The matter to which I here advert, illustrates a material
distinction between some writings of Plato as compared with
others, and between different points of view which his mind took
on at different times. In the Platonic Apology, we find Sokrates
confessing his own ignorance, and proclaiming himself to be
isolated among an uncongenial public falsely persuaded of
their own knowledge. In several other dialogues, he is the same:
he cannot teach anything, but can only cross-examine, test, and
apply the spur to respondents. But the Republic presents him in a
new character. He is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of
fixed, inherited, convictions.[190] He is himself on the throne of
King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as
spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom
orthodoxy is determined. Hence we now find him passing to the
opposite pole; taking up the orthodox, conservative, point of
view, the same as Melêtus and Anytus maintained in their
accusation against Sokrates at Athens. He now expects every
individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions,
prescribed by authority: including among those opinions deliberate
ethical and political fictions, such as that about the gold and
silver earthborn men. Free-thinking minds, who take views of their
own, and enquire into the evidence of these beliefs, become
inconvenient and dangerous. Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic
Apology, nor his negative Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in
the Platonic Republic.
[Footnote 190: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 541.]
[Side-note: Idea of Good--The Chiefs alone know what it
is--If they did not they would be unfit for their functions.]
One word more must be said respecting a subject which figures
conspicuously in the Republic--the Idea or Form of Good. The
chiefs alone (we read) at the end of their long term of study,
having ascended gradually from the phenomena of sense to
intellectual contemplation and familiarity with the unchangeable
Ideas--will come to discern and embrace the highest of all
Ideas--the Form of Good:[191] by the help of which alone,
Justice, Temperance, and the other virtues, become useful and
profitable.[192] If the Archons do not know how and why just and
honourable things are good, they will not be fit for their
duty.[193] In regard to Good (Plato tells us) no man is satisfied
with mere appearance. Here every man desires and postulates that
which is really good: while as to the just and the honourable,
many are satisfied with the appearance, without caring for the
reality.[194]
[Footnote 191: Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 533-534.]
[Footnote 192: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A.]
[Footnote 193: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 A.]
[Footnote 194: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 D.]
[Side-note: What is the Good? Plato does not know; but
he requires the Chiefs to know it. Without this the Republic would
be a failure.]
Plato proclaims this Real Good, as distinguished from Apparent
Good, to be the paramount and indispensable object of knowledge,
without which all other knowledge is useless. It is that which
every man divines to exist, yearns for, and does everything with a
view to obtain: but which he misses, from not knowing where to
seek; missing also along with it that which gives value to other
acquisitions.[195] What then is this Real Good--the Noumenon,
Idea, or form of Good?
[Footnote 195: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A-E. [Greek: O(\ dê\
diô/kei me\n a(/pasa psuchê\ kai\ tou/tou e(/neka pa/nta
pra/ttei, a)pomanteuome/nê ti\ ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k
e)/chousa labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti\n ou)de\ pi/stei
chrê/sasthai moni/mô|, oi(/a| kai\ peri\ ta)/lla, dia\ tou=to
de\ a)potugcha/nei kai\ tô=n a)/llôn ei)/ ti o)/phelos ê)=n],
&c.]
This question is put by Glaukon to Sokrates, with much
earnestness, in the dialogue of the Republic. But unfortunately it
remains unanswered. Plato declines all categorical reply; though
the question is one, as he himself emphatically announces, upon
which all the positive consequences of his philosophy turn.[196]
He conducts us to the chamber wherein this precious and
indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the
door. In describing the condition of other men's minds--that they
divine a Real Good--[Greek: Au)to\-a)gatho\n] or Bonum _per
se_--do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle themselves
in vain to grasp and determine what it is[197]--he has
unconsciously described the condition of his own.
[Footnote 196: Certainly when we see the way in which Plato deals
with the [Greek: i)de/a a)gathou=], we cannot exempt him from the
criticism which he addresses to others, vi. p. 493 E. [Greek: ô(s
de\ kai\ a)gatha\ kai\ kala\ tau=ta tê=| a)lêthei/a|, ê)/dê
pôpote/ tou= ê)/kousas au)tô=n lo/gon dido/ntos ou)
katage/laston?]
We may illustrate this procedure of Plato by an Oriental fable,
cited in an instructive Dissertation of M. Ernest Renan.
"Aristoteles primum sub Almamuno (813-833, A.D.) arabicè
factus est. Somniumque effictum à credulis hominibus: vidisse
Almamunum in somno virum aspectu venerabili, solio insidentem:
mirantem Almamunum quæsivisse, quisnam ille esset? responsum,
Aristotelem esse. Quo audito, Chalifam ab eo quæsivisse, Quidnam
Bonum esset? respondisse Aristotelem: Quod sapientiores probarent.
Quærenti Chalifæ quid hoc esset? Quod lex divina probat--dixisse.
Interroganti porro illi, Quid hoc? Quod omnes
probarent--respondisse: _neque alii ultra quæstioni respondere
voluisse_. Quo somnio permotum Almamunum à Græcorum imperatore
veniam petiisse, ut libri philosophici in ipsius regno
quærerentur: hujusque rei gratiâ viros doctos misisse." Ernest
Renan, De Philosophiâ Peripateticâ apud Syros, commentatio
Historica, p. 57; Paris, 1852.
Among the various remarks which might be made upon this curious
dream, one is, that Bonum is always determined as having relation
to the appreciative apprehension of some mind--the Wise Men, the
Divine Mind, the Mind of the general public. _Bonum_ is that
which some mind or minds conceive and appreciate as such. The word
has no meaning except in relation to some apprehending Subject.]
[Footnote 197: Plato, Republ. vi. p. 505 E. [Greek:
a)pomanteuome/nê ti ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k e)/chousa
labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti/n], &c.
The remarks of Aristotle in impugning the Platonic [Greek: i)de/an
a)gathou=] are very instructive, Ethic. Nikom. i. p. 1096-1097;
Ethic. Eudem. i. p. 1217-1218. He maintains that there exists
nothing corresponding to the word; and that even if it did exist,
it would neither be [Greek: prakto\n] nor [Greek: ktêto\n
a)nthrô/pô|]. Aristotle here looks upon Good as being
essentially relative or phenomenal: he understands [Greek: to\
a(plô=s a)gatho\n] to mean [Greek: to\ a)gatho\n to\ phaino/menon
tô=| spoudai/ô|] (Eth. Nik. iii. p. 1113, b. 16-32). But he does
not uniformly adhere to this meaning.]