PLATO’S JUST MAN.
We must now leave the land of Bhārata and seek the shores of Greece.
In the fifth century, B. C., Athens became the focus of Hellenic
culture. Her achievements in the Persian wars had given her very
distinctly the leadership of all the Greek states; and the steady
progress of her commerce brought her not only wealth but abundant
intercourse with other cities. So that in the latter half of the century
we find the peculiar genius of Hellas displayed in Athens with
unexampled vigour, variety and splendour. But space will not allow us
even to outline the achievements of that incomparable age in the various
provinces of human culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy.
The general advance of intelligence, education and culture in Greece
produced the only result possible in communities whose religion was a
traditional polytheism and whose morality rested merely on custom and
proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both religious and ethical, broke in like
a flood. Tradition and custom could not withstand the corrosive
influences of fresh thought fed by deepening experience and widening
science. The Sophists were the exponents, but scarcely the creators, of
this sceptical habit of thought. The philosophers had not done much to
cause it, and they could do as little to cure it. Their theories dealt
with nature rather than man, and stood in no clear relation to the
problems that agitated every thinking mind.
It was at Athens that this sceptical spirit showed itself most
conspicuously, now in the lectures of the chief Sophists of Hellas,
naturally drawn to the centre of intellectual ferment, now in the
stately tragedies of her Dionysiac festivals, now in the _fin-de-siècle_
conversation of her gilded youth. The timid, the old-fashioned, the
conservative scolded and sputtered and threatened, blaming individuals
instead of the time spirit, but had no healing word to utter.[129]
From the very centre of the disturbance came the new spirit of order and
restoration: Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece. The older
philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his attention to
practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted human reason; but
unlike them, he aimed not at a display of intellectual dexterity but at
reaching the actual basis of human morality, society and politics. Human
conduct was the sole subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence
the definite, practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in
the closest possible relation to life and to the problems of the time.
On the other hand, he began with introspection; self-knowledge was what
he demanded of every disciple. Hence the inexhaustible significance of
his work for philosophy. He gave no set lessons to his pupils, delivered
no lectures, wrote no books. He spent his whole time in conversation
with individuals, proceeding always by question and answer, thus
compelling his companion to think for himself. His extraordinary
intellectual skill and the loftiness and simplicity of his character
drew all the best intellects of Athens around him. But what gives him
his unchallenged supremacy in the history of Greek thought is the fact,
that in his hands the sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay
everywhere, proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities
which men had feared for.[130]
In 399 B. C., when he was an old man of seventy years of age, a number
of his fellow-citizens brought a criminal case against him, charging him
with corrupting the youth of Athens and with impiety. He was tried,
found guilty and sentenced to death. A month later he drank the
hemlock—such was the Athenian mode of execution—surrounded by his
friends.[131]
How tragic! Athens, “the school of Hellas,”[132] kills her greatest
teacher! Socrates, the father of ethical philosophy, the founder of the
critical method, the ideal instructor, dies as an impious corruptor of
the youth of Athens!
But Socrates was not merely the greatest teacher of his day. All
subsequent Greek philosophy is filled with his spirit; indeed the
leading schools of thought were founded by his pupils.[133] Consequently
he is the fountain-head of all Western philosophy and science; for in
both Greece was the school-mistress of Europe.
Among all the disciples, Plato best represents the master’s spirit. The
Megarians, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics, and, at a later date, the Stoics
and the Epicureans, certainly carried on the work of Socrates, but they
are deflections from the straight line: they are “imperfect schools,” as
Zeller calls them.[134] Plato is in the direct line of succession.
He was about twenty years of age when he began to listen to Socrates.
Eight years later came the death of the great teacher. Plato then left
Athens and spent a number of years in travel and in study in different
places. About 390 B. C., however, he returned to the city and set up a
philosophical school in a garden called Academia. For forty years
thereafter he was the acknowledged leader of philosophic thought and
teaching in Athens.[135] His influence since his death has rested
chiefly on his Dialogues, one of the most perfect literary treasures in
the Greek language. The form of these beautiful compositions still
reflects the question-and-answer method of Plato’s master; and the debt
of the pupil is everywhere acknowledged; for in most of the Dialogues
Socrates is the chief interlocutor.[136] Among the Dialogues the
_Republic_ is universally recognized as the most precious; for it shows
us not only his literary art at its highest, but the thought of his
matured mind: it represents Plato in his strength.[137]
The subject of the _Republic_ is “What is Justice?” It is thus the
culmination of the ethical teaching of Socrates. Among the preliminary
discussions in this book there occurs a very striking conversation
between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the former gives two ideal
portraits, one of a man consummately unjust, the other of a man
altogether just. Here is the passage:—
“But in actually deciding between the lives of the two persons in
question, we shall be enabled to arrive at a correct conclusion by
contrasting together the thoroughly just and the thoroughly unjust
man,—and only by so doing. Well then, how are we to contrast them?
In this way. Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of
the unjust, or from the justice of the just, but let us suppose each
to be perfect in his own line of conduct. First of all then, the
unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do. For a first-rate pilot
or physician perceives the difference between what is practicable
and what is impracticable in his art, and while he attempts the
former, he lets the latter alone; and, moreover, should he happen to
make a false step, he is able to recover himself. In the same way,
if we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must
suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust
enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out,
we must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of
injustice to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore,
grant to the perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most
perfect injustice: and we must concede to him, that while committing
the grossest acts of injustice, he has won himself the highest
reputation for justice; and that should he make a false step, he is
able to recover himself, partly by a talent for speaking with
effect, in case he be called in question for any of his misdeeds,
and partly because his courage and strength, and his command of
friends and money, enable him to employ force with success, whenever
force is required. Such being our unjust man, let us, in pursuance
of the argument, place the just man by his side, a man of true
simplicity and nobleness, resolved, as Æschylus says, not to seem,
but to be, good. We must certainly take away the seeming; for if he
be thought to be a just man, he will have honours and gifts on the
strength of this reputation, so that it will be uncertain whether it
is for justice’s sake, or for the sake of the gifts and honours,
that he is what he is. Yes; we must strip him bare of everything but
justice, and make his whole case the reverse of the former. Without
being guilty of one unjust act, let him have the worst reputation
for injustice, so that his virtue may be thoroughly tested, and
shewn to be proof against infamy and all its consequences; and let
him go on till the day of his death, steadfast in his justice, but
with a lifelong reputation for injustice; in order that, having
brought both the men to the utmost limits of justice and of
injustice respectively, we may then give judgment as to which of the
two is the happier.”
“Good heavens! my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how vigorously you work,
scouring the two characters clean for our judgment, like a pair of
statues.”
“I do it as well as I can,” he said. “And after describing the men
as we have done, there will be no further difficulty, I imagine, in
proceeding to sketch the kind of life which awaits them
respectively. Let me therefore describe it. And if the description
be somewhat coarse, do not regard it as mine, Socrates, but as
coming from those who commend injustice above justice. They will say
that in such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked,
fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering
every kind of torture, will be crucified; and thus learn that it is
best to resolve, not to be, but to seem, just.”[138]
The picture of the just man here is surely a very remarkable one. It is
dramatically put into the mouth of Glaucon, and part of it is by him
attributed to those who commend injustice; but these are but literary
forms; the picture is Plato’s own. It is his ideal of the just man; and
the extraordinary thing is his belief, here stated so plainly, that a
man whose heart is perfectly set on righteousness may be so completely
misunderstood by those around him, as to be regarded by them as utterly
unjust, and may in consequence be subjected to the extremest torture and
the most shameful death.
No one can doubt that it was the death of his master that led Plato to
perceive the great truth to which he here gives such energetic
expression. The charges against Socrates were a complete inversion of
the truth: his reverence was called impiety; his brilliant work for the
character of the youth of his day brought him the charge of baneful
corruption. From his tragic end Plato learned that the good man who
brings new truth is very likely to be completely misunderstood and to be
classed with the worst wrong-doers.
Footnote 129:
Zeller, _Socrates_, Chaps. I and II.
Footnote 130:
Zeller, _Socrates_, Chaps. III to IX; Bury, _History of Greece_, II,
140-146; Grote, _History of Greece_, Chap. LXVIII.
Footnote 131:
Zeller, _Socrates_, Chap. X; Bury, _History of Greece_, II, 147.
Footnote 132:
So called by Pericles, her greatest statesman. See _Thucydides_, II,
41.
Footnote 133:
See Milton, _Paradise Regained_, IV, 272-280.
Footnote 134:
_Socrates_, Part III.
Footnote 135:
Mahaffy, _Greek Literature_, II, 160-162; Ritchie, _Plato_, Chap. I;
Mayor, _Ancient Philosophy_, 41 ff.
Footnote 136:
For the Dialogues _see_ Ritchie’s _Plato_, Chap. II.
Footnote 137:
On the _Republic_ see Mahaffy, _Greek Literature_, II, 195-201.
Footnote 138:
Plato, _Rep._, II, 360 E-362 A, Davies and Vaughan’s translation.