THE PLATONIC SUBORDINATION OF LOWER TO HIGHER
I
THE NATURE OF VIRTUE
Epicureanism tells us how to gain pleasure; Stoicism tells us how to
bear pain. But life is not so simple as these systems assume. It is not
merely the problem of getting all the pleasure we can; nor of taking
pain in such wise that it does not hurt. It is a question of the worth
of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of
the things we suffer for. Plato squarely attacks that larger problem. He
says that the Epicurean is like a musician who tunes his violin as much
as he can without breaking the strings. The wise musician, on the
contrary, recognises that the tuning is merely incidental to the music;
and that when you have tuned it up to a certain point, it is worse than
useless to go on tuning it any more. Just as the tuning is for the sake
of the music, and when you have reached a point where the instrument
gives perfect music, you must stop the tuning and begin to play; so when
you have brought any particular pleasure, say that of eating, up to a
certain point, you must stop eating, and begin to live the life for the
sake of which you eat. To the Stoic Plato gives a similar answer. The
Stoic, he says, is like a physician who gives his patient all the
medicine he can, and prides himself on being a better physician than
others because he gives his patients bigger doses, and more of them. The
wise physician gives medicine up to a certain point, and then stops.
That point is determined by the health, which the medicine is given to
promote. Precisely so, it is foolish to bear all the pain we can, and
boast ourselves of our ability to swallow big doses of tribulation and
pronounce it good. The wise man will bear pain up to a certain point;
and when he reaches that limit, he will stop. What is the point? Where
is the limit? Virtue is the point up to which the bearing of pain is
good, the limit beyond which the bearing of pain becomes an evil.
Virtue, then, is the supreme good, and makes everything that furthers
it, whether pleasurable or painful, good. Virtue makes everything that
hinders it, whether pleasurable or painful, bad. What, then, is virtue?
In what does this priceless pearl consist? We have our two analogies.
Virtue is to pleasure what the music is to the tuning of the instrument.
Just as the perfection of the music proves the excellence of the tuning,
so the perfection of virtue justifies the particular pleasures we enjoy.
Virtue stands related to the endurance of pain, as health stands related
to the taking of medicine. The perfection of health proves that, however
distasteful the medicine may be, it is nevertheless good; and any
imperfection of health that may result from either too much or too
little medicine shows that in the quantity taken the medicine was bad
for us. Precisely so pain is good for us up to the point where virtue
requires it. Below or above that point, pain becomes an evil.
Plato spared no pains to disentangle the question of virtue from its
complications with rewards and penalties, pleasures and pains. As the
virtue of a violin is not in its carving or polish, but in the music it
produces; as the virtue of medicine is not in its sweetness or its
absence of bitterness, so the virtue of man has primarily nothing to do
with rewards and penalties, pleasures or pains. In our study of virtue,
he says, we must strip it naked of all rewards, honours, and emoluments;
indeed we must go farther and even dress it up in the outer habiliments
of vice; we must make the virtuous man poor, persecuted, forsaken,
unpopular, distrusted, reviled, and condemned. Then we may be able to
see what there is in virtue which, in every conceivable circumstance,
makes it superior to vice. He makes one of his characters in the
Republic complain that: "No one has ever adequately described either in
verse or prose the true essential nature of either righteousness or
unrighteousness immanent in the soul, and invisible to any human or
divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has
within him, righteousness is the greatest good, and unrighteousness the
greatest evil. Therefore I say, not only prove to us that righteousness
is better than unrighteousness, but show what either of them do to the
possessors of them, which makes the one to be good and the other evil,
whether seen or unseen by gods and men." Accordingly he attributes to
the unrighteous man skill to win a reputation for righteousness, even
while acting most unrighteously. He clothes him with power and glory,
and fame, and family, and influence; fills his life with delights;
surrounds him with friends; cushions him in ease and security. Over
against this man who is really unrighteous, but has all the advantages
that come from being supposed to be righteous, he sets the man who is
really righteous, and clothes him with all the disabilities which come
from being supposed to be unrighteous. "Let him be scourged and racked;
let him have his eyes burnt out, and finally, after suffering every kind
of evil, let him be impaled." Then, says Plato, when both have reached
the uttermost extreme, the one of righteousness treated shamefully and
cruelly, the other of unrighteousness treated honourably and
obsequiously, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the
two. Translating the language of the "Gorgias" and the "Republic" into
modern equivalents: Who would we rather be, a man who by successful
manipulation of dishonest financial schemes had come to be a
millionnaire, the mayor of his city, the pillar of the church, the
ornament of the best society, the Senator from his state, or the
Ambassador of his country at a European Court; or a man who in
consequence of his integrity had won the enmity of evil men in power,
and been sent in disgrace to State prison; a man whom no one would speak
to; whom his best friends had deserted, whose own children were being
brought up to reproach him? Which of the two men would we rather be? And
we must not introduce any consideration of reversals hereafter.
Supposing that death ends all, and that there is no God to reverse the
decisions of men; suppose these two men were to die as they lived,
without hope of resurrection; which of the two would we rather be for
the next forty years of our lives, assuming that after that there is
nothing?
Plato in a myth puts the case even more strongly than this. Gyges, a
shepherd and servant of the king of Lydia, found a gold ring which had
the remarkable property of making its wearer visible when he turned the
collet one way, and invisible when he turned it the other way. Being
astonished at this, he made several trials of the ring, always with the
same result; when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when
outwards he reappeared. Perceiving this he immediately contrived to be
chosen messenger to the court, where he no sooner arrived than he
seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew
him, and took the kingdom. Plato asks us what we should do if we had
such a ring. We could do anything we pleased and no one would be the
wiser. We could become invisible, out of the reach of external
consequences, the instant our deed was done. Would we, with such a ring
on our finger, stand fast in righteousness? Could we trust ourselves to
wear that ring night and day? Would we feel safe if we knew that our
next-door neighbour, even our most intimate friend, had such a ring, and
could do just what he pleased to us, and yet never get caught? Can we
tell why a man with such a ring on his finger should not do any unjust,
unkind, impure, or dishonourable deed?
II
RIGHTEOUSNESS WRIT LARGE
The Republic is Plato's answer to this question. Why, you may ask,
should he give us a treatise on politics in answer to a question of
personal character? Because the state is simply the individual writ
large, and as we can read large letters more easily than small letters,
we shall get at the principle of righteousness more readily if we first
consider what it is in the large letters of the state. In presenting
this analogy of the state I shall freely translate Plato's teachings
into their modern equivalent. What, then, is the difference between a
righteous and unrighteous state?
An unrighteous state is one in which the working-men in each industry
are organised into a union which uses its power to force the wages of
its members up to an exorbitant level, and uses intimidation and
violence to prevent any one else from working for less or producing more
than the standards fixed by the union; it is a state in which the owners
of capital, in each line of industry, combine into overcapitalised
trusts for the purpose of making the small sums which they put into the
business, and the larger sums which they do not put in at all, except on
paper, earn exorbitant dividends at the expense of the public; it is a
state in which the politicians are in politics for their pockets, using
the opportunities for advantageous contracts which offices afford, and
the opportunities for legislation in favour of private schemes, to
enrich themselves out of the public purse; it is a state in which the
police intimidate the other citizens, and sell permission to commit
crime to the highest bidder; it is a state in which the scholars concern
themselves exclusively about their own special and technical interests,
and as long as the institutions with which they are connected are
supported by the gifts of rich men, care little how the poor are
oppressed and the many are made to suffer by the corrupt use of wealth
and the selfish misuse of power. Such is the unrighteous state. And
wherein does its unrighteousness consist? Obviously in the fact that
each of the great classes in the state--working-men, capitalists,
police, politicians, scholars--are living exclusively for themselves and
are ready to sacrifice the interests of the community as a whole to
their private interests. Now a state which should be completely
unrighteous, in which everybody should succeed in carrying out his own
selfish interests at the expense of everybody else, would be
intolerable. United action would be impossible. No one would wish to
live in such a state. There must be honour even among thieves; otherwise
stealing could not be successful on any considerable scale. The trouble
with it is that each part is arrayed in antagonism against every other
part, and the whole is sacrificed to the supposed interests of its
constituent members.
What, then, in contrast to this would be a righteous state? It would be
a state in which each of these classes fulfils its part well, with a
view to the good of the whole. It would be a state where labour would be
organised into unions, which would not insist on having the greatest
possible wages for the least possible work, but which would maintain a
high standard of efficiency, and intelligence, and character in the
members, with a view to doing the best possible work in their trade, at
such wages as the resources and needs of the community, as indicated by
the normal action of demand and supply, would warrant. It would be a
state in which the capitalists would organise their business in such a
way that they might invite public inspection of the relation between the
capital, enterprise, skill, economy, and industry expended, and the
prices they charge for commodities furnished and services rendered. It
would be a state in which the police would maintain that order and law
which is the equal interest of the rich and poor alike. It would be a
state in which the men in political offices would use their official
positions and influence for the protection of the lives and promotion of
the interests of the whole people whom they represent and profess to
serve. It would be a state in which the colleges and universities would
be intensely alive to economic, social, and public questions, and devote
their learning to the maintenance of healthful material conditions, just
distribution of wealth, sound morals, and wise determination of public
policy.
Wherein, then, does the difference between an unrighteous and a
righteous state consist? Simply in this--that in the unrighteous state
each class in the community is playing for its own hand and regarding
the community as a mere means to its own selfish interests as the
supreme end,--while a righteous state on the contrary is one in which
each class in the community is doing its own work as economically and
efficiently as possible, with a view to the interests of the community
as a whole. In the unrighteous state the whole is subordinated to each
separate part; in the righteous state each part is subordinated to the
common interests of the whole. If, then, we ask as did Adeimantus in the
Republic, "Where, then, is righteousness, and in which particular part
of the state is it to be found," our answer will be that given by
Socrates, "that each individual man shall be put to that use for which
nature designs him, and every man will do his own business so that the
whole city will be not many but one." Righteousness, then, in the state
consists in having each class mind its own business with a view to the
good of the whole. On this, which is Plato's fundamental principle, we
can all agree.
As to the method by which the righteous state is to be brought about
probably we should all profoundly differ from him. His method for
securing the subordination of what he calls the lower class of society
to what he calls the higher class is that of repression, force, and
fraud. The obedience of the working-men is to be secured by
intimidation; the devotion of the higher classes is to be secured partly
by suppression of natural instincts and interests, partly by an
elaborate and prolonged education. The rulers are to have no property
and no wives and families that they can call their own. He attempts to
get devotion to the whole by suppressing those more individual and
special forms of devotion which spring from private property and family
affection. In all these details of his scheme we must frankly recognise
that Plato was profoundly wrong. The working classes cannot and ought
not to be driven like dumb cattle to their tasks by a force external to
themselves. The ruling class, the scholars and statesmen, can never be
successfully trained for disinterested public life by taking away from
them those fundamental interests and affections out of which, in the
long run, all public spirit takes its rise and draws its inspiration. In
opposition to this communism based on repression and suppression by
force and fraud, the modern democracy sets a community of interest and a
devotion of personal resources, be they great or small, to the common
good on the part of every citizen of every class. The utter inadequacy
and impracticability of the details of Plato's communistic schemes
about the wives and property of his ruling class should not blind us to
the profound truth of his essential definition of righteousness in a
state: That each class shall "do the work for which they draw the wage"
with a view to the effect it will have, not on themselves alone, but
primarily on the welfare of the whole state, of which each class is a
serving and contributing member. This essential truth of Plato our
modern democracy has taken up. The difference is that, while Plato
proposed to have intelligence and authority in one, and obedience and
manual labour in another class, the problem of modern democracy is to
give an intelligent and public-spirited outlook to the working-man, and
a spirit of honest work to the scholar and the statesman.
The defect of Plato lies in the external arrangements by which he
proposed to secure the right relation of parts to the whole. His
measures for securing this subordination were partly material and
physical, partly visionary and unnatural, where ours must be natural,
social, intellectual, and spiritual. But he did lay down for all time
the great principle that the due subordination of the parts to the
whole, of the members to the organism, of the classes to society, of
individuals to the state is the essence of righteousness in a state,
and an indispensable condition of political well-being.
III
THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
Righteousness in a state then consists in each class minding its own
business, and performing its specific function for the good of the state
as a whole. Righteousness in the individual is precisely the same thing.
There are three grand departments of each man's life: his appetites, his
spirit, and his reason. Neither of these is good or bad in itself.
Neither of them should be permitted to set up housekeeping on its own
account. Any one of them is bad if it acts for itself alone, regardless
of the interests of the self as a whole. Let us take up these
departments in order, and see wherein the vice and the virtue of each
consists. First the appetites, which in the individual correspond to the
working class in the state.
Let us take eating as a specimen, remembering, however, that everything
we say about the appetite for food is equally true of all the other
elementary appetites, such as those that deal with drink, sex, dress,
property, amusement, and the like. The Epicurean said they are all good
if they do not clash and contradict each other. The Stoic implied that
they are all, if not positively bad, at least so low and unimportant
that the wise man will not pay much attention to them. Plato says they
are all good in their place, and that they are all bad out of their
place. What, then, is their place? It is one of subordination and
service to the self as a whole. Which is the better breakfast: a half
pound of beefsteak, with fried potatoes, an omelette, some griddle cakes
and maple syrup, with a doughnut or two, and a generous piece of mince
pie? or a little fruit and a cereal, a roll, and a couple of eggs?
Intrinsically the first breakfast is, if anything, better than the
second. There is more of it. It offers greater variety. It takes longer
to eat it. It will stay by you longer. If you are at a hotel conducted
on the American plan, you are getting more for your money.
Righteousness, however, is concerned with none of these considerations.
What makes one breakfast better than the other is the way it fits into
one's life as a whole. Which breakfast will enable you to do the best
forenoon's work? Which one will give you acute headache and chronic
dyspepsia? Immediate appetite cannot answer these questions. Reason is
the only one of our three departments that can tell us what is good for
the self as a whole. Now for most people in ordinary circumstances,
reason prescribes the second breakfast, or something like it. The second
breakfast fits into one's permanent plan of life. The work to be done in
the forenoon, the feelings one will have in the afternoon, the general
efficiency which we desire to maintain from day to day and year to year,
all point to the second breakfast as the more adapted to promote the
welfare of the self as a whole throughout the entire life history. If we
eat the first breakfast, appetite rules and reason is thrust into
subjection. The lower has conquered the higher; the part has domineered
the whole. To eat such a breakfast, for ninety-nine men out of every
hundred, would be gluttony. Yet, though eating it is vicious, the fault
is not in the breakfast, not in the hunger for it; but in the fact that
the appetite had its own way, regardless of the permanent interests of
the self as a whole; and that so far forth reason was dethroned, and
appetite set up as ruler in its place. Indeed there are circumstances in
which the first breakfast would be the right one to choose. If one were
on the borders of civilisation, setting out for a long tramp through the
wilderness, where every ounce of food must be carried on his back, and
no more fresh meat and home cooking could be expected for several days,
even reason herself might prescribe the first breakfast as more
beneficial to the whole man than the second. Precisely the same
breakfast which is good in one set of circumstances becomes bad in
another. The raw appetite of hunger is obviously neither good nor bad.
The rule of appetite over reason and the whole self, however, is bad
always, everywhere, and for everybody. It is in this rising up of the
lower part of the self against the higher, and its sacrifice of the self
as a whole to a particular gratification that all vice consists.
On the other hand, the rule of reason over appetite, the gratification
or the restraint of appetite according as the interests of the total
self require, is always and everywhere and for everybody good. This is
the essence of virtue; and the particular form of virtue that results
from this control of the appetites by reason in the interest of the
permanent and total self is temperance--the first and most fundamental
of Plato's cardinal virtues.
The second element of human nature, spirit, must be dealt with in the
same way. By spirit Plato means the fighting element in us, that which
prompts us to defend ourselves, the faculty of indignation, anger, and
vengeance. To make it concrete, let us take a case. Suppose the cook in
our kitchen has times of being careless, cross, saucy, wilful, and
disobedient. The spirit within prompts us to upbraid her, quarrel with
her, and when she grows in turn more insolent and impertinent, to
discharge her. Is such an exercise of spirit a virtuous act? It may be
virtuous, or it may be vicious. In this element, considered in itself,
there is no more virtue or vice than in appetite considered in itself.
It is again a question of how this particular act of this particular
side of our nature stands related to the self as a whole. What does
reason say?
If I send this cook away, shall I be a long while without any; and after
much vexation probably put up with another not half so good? Will my
household be thrown into confusion? Will hospitality be made impossible?
Will the working power of the members of my household be impaired by
lack of well-prepared, promptly served food? In the present state of
this servant problem, all these things and worse are quite likely to
happen. Consequently reason declares in unmistakable terms that the
interests of the self as a whole demand the retention of the cook. But
it galls and frets our spirit to keep this impertinent, disobedient
servant, and hear her irritating words, and see her aggravating
behaviour. Never mind, reason says to the spirited element in us. The
spirit is not put into us in order that it may have a good time all by
itself on its own account. It is put into us to protect and promote the
interests of the self as a whole. You must bear patiently with the
incidental failings of your cook, and return soft answers to her harsh
words; because in that way you will best serve that whole self which
your spirit is given you to defend. In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred a quarrel with a cook, on such grounds, in present conditions,
would be prejudicial to the interests of the self as a whole. It is the
sacrifice of the whole to the part; which as we saw in the case of
appetite is the essence of all vice. Only in this case the vice would
be, not intemperance, but cowardice, inability to bear a transient,
trifling pain patiently and bravely for the sake of the self as a whole.
Still, there might be aggravated cases in which the sharp reproof, the
quarrel, and the prompt discharge might be the brave and right thing to
do. If one felt it a contribution one was required to make to the whole
servant problem, and after considering all the inconvenience it would
cost, still felt that life as a whole was worth more with this
particular servant out of the house than in it, then precisely the same
act, which ordinarily would be wrong, in this exceptional case would be
right. It is not what you do, but how you do it, that determines whether
an outburst of anger is virtuous or vicious. If the whole self is in it,
if all interests have been fully weighed by the reason, if, in short,
you are all there when you do it, then the act is a virtuous act, and
the special name of this virtue of the spirit is courage or fortitude.
Anger and indignation going off on its own account is always vicious.
Anger and indignation properly controlled by reason in the interest of
the total self is always good. Precisely the same outward act done by
one man in one set of circumstances is bad, and shows the man to be
vicious, cowardly, and weak; while, if done by another man in other
circumstances, it shows him to be strong, brave, and manly. Virtue and
vice are questions of the subordination or insubordination of the lower
to the higher elements of our nature; of the parts of our selves to the
whole. The subordination of appetite to reason has given us the first of
the four virtues. The subordination of spirit to reason has given us
fortitude, the second.
Wisdom, the third of Plato's cardinal virtues, consists in the supremacy
of reason over spirit and appetite; just as temperance and courage
consisted in the subordination of appetite and spirit to reason. Wisdom,
then, is much the same thing as temperance and courage, only in more
positive and comprehensive form. Wisdom is the vision of the good, the
true end of man, for the sake of which the lower elements must be
subordinated. What, then, is the good, according to Plato? The good is
the principle of order, proportion, and harmony that binds the many
parts of an object into the effective unity of an organic whole. The
good of a watch is that perfect working together of all its springs and
wheels and hands, which makes it keep time. The good of a thing is the
thing's proper and distinctive function; and the condition of its
performing its function is the subordination of its parts to the
interest of the whole.
The good of a horse is strength and speed; but this in turn involves the
cooerdination of its parts in graceful, free movement. The good of a
state is the cooeperation of all its citizens, according to their several
capacities, for the happiness and welfare of the whole community. Wisdom
in the statesman is the power to see such an ideal relation of the
citizens to each other, and the means by which it can be attained and
conserved. The good of the individual man, likewise, is the harmonious
working together of all the elements in him, so as to produce a
satisfactory life; and wisdom is the vision of such a truly satisfactory
life, and of the conditions of its attainment. Since man lives in a
world full of natural objects, and of works of art; since he is
surrounded by other men and is a member of a state; and since his
welfare depends on his fulfilling his relations to these objects and
persons, it follows that wisdom to see his own true good will involve a
knowledge of these objects, persons, and institutions around him. Hence
rather more than half the Republic is occupied with the problem of
education; or the training of men in that wisdom which consists in the
knowledge of the good.
IV
PLATO'S SCHEME OF EDUCATION
Education, therefore, in Plato's ideal Republic, was a lifelong affair,
and from first to last practical. For the guardians, the men who were to
be rulers or, as we should say, leaders of their fellows, he prescribed
the following course: From early childhood until the age of
seventeen,--that is, through our elementary and high school periods,--he
would give chief attention to what he calls music; that is, to
literature, music, and the plastic arts, with popular descriptive
science, or, as we call it nowadays, nature study. This, with elementary
mathematics and gymnastics as incidental, constituted the curriculum for
the first ten or twelve years. The chief stress through all these years
he lays on good literature,--good both in substance and in form; for
children at this age are intensely imitative. Plato practically
anticipated the latest results of child study, which tell us that the
child builds up the whole substance of his conception of himself out of
materials borrowed from others and incorporated in himself by imitative
reproduction; and then in turn interprets and understands others only in
so far as he can eject this borrowed material into other persons. Hence
Plato says it is of supreme importance that the children shall learn to
admire and love good literature. That teachers should be able to teach
the children to read and write and cipher and draw he would take for
granted. The prime qualification, however, would be the ability to so
interpret the best literature as to make the children admire and imitate
and incorporate the noble qualities this literature embodies. Into the
literature thus inspiringly taught in the school, only that which
praised noble deeds in noble language should be admitted. Plato's
description of good literature for schools will bear repeating: "Any
deeds of endurance which are acted or told by famous men, these the
children ought to see and hear. If they imitate at all, they should
imitate the temperate, holy, free, courageous, and the like; but they
should not depict or be able to imitate any kind of illiberality or
other baseness, lest from imitation they come to be what they imitate.
Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth, at last
sink into the constitution and become a second nature of body, voice,
and mind?" "Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one
warlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in
the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and
he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and
at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and
another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of
action, when there is no pressure of necessity--expressive of entreaty,
or persuasion, or prayer to God, or instruction of man, or again of
willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice; and which
represents him when he has accomplished his aim, not carried away by
success, but acting moderately and wisely, and acquiescing in the
event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity
and the strain of freedom, the strain of courage, and the strain of
temperance. We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral
deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon
many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they
silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own souls. Let
our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of
beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid
fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will
meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul, even in
childhood, into harmony with the beauty of reason. Rhythm and harmony
find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they
mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and making the soul
graceful of him who is rightly educated, or ungraceful if ill educated;
and also because he who has received this true education of the inner
being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art or nature,
and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives
into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly
blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is
able to know the reason of the thing; and when reason comes, he will
recognise and salute her as a friend with whom his education has made
him long familiar."
Thus, according to Plato, the important thing for a youth to secure by
the time he is seventeen is the admiration of noble deeds, and noble
words, and noble character. The love of good literature is the backbone
of this elementary education. Manual training and nature study, as a
means to the appreciation of beautiful works of art and beautiful
objects in nature, he would also approve. On the whole Plato is an
advocate of those very reforms which are now being introduced into the
elementary and secondary schools in the name of the New Education. What
one loves is of more importance than what one knows; what one wants to
do, and is interested in trying to do, is of more consequence at this
stage than what one has done. Early education should be an introduction
to the true, the beautiful, and the good in the form of great men, brave
deeds, beautiful objects, and beneficent laws. The development of taste
is more than the acquisition of information; the inspiration of
literature, history, art, and descriptive science is far more valuable
than drill beyond the essentials in grammar, geography, and arithmetic.
Plato's programme for the years from seventeen to twenty, three of our
four college years, is even more startling and heretical; and quite in
line with certain tendencies in our own day. He would set apart the
three years from seventeen to twenty for gymnastic exercises, including
in such exercises, however, military drill. Plato appreciated both the
advantage and disadvantage of intense athletic exercises. "The period,
whether of two or three years, which passes in this sort of training is
useless for any other purpose,--for sleep and exercise are unpropitious
to learning; and the trial is one of the most important tests to which
they are subjected."
At the age of twenty he would select the most promising youths and give
them a ten years' course in severe study of science. This systematic
study corresponds to the graduate and professional period in modern
education, only he extends it over ten years, where we confine it to
three or four. Again at thirty there is another selection of those who
are most steadfast in their learning and most faithful in their military
and public duties, and these are given a five years' course in dialectic
or philosophy. They are trained to see the relation of the special
sciences to each other and how each department of truth is related to
the whole. At the age of thirty-five they must be appointed to military
and other offices. "In this way they will get their experience of life,
and there will be an opportunity to try whether, when they are drawn all
manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or stir at all." And
when they have reached the age of fifty, after fifteen years of this
laboratory work in actual public service, holding subordinate offices
and learning to discriminate good and evil, not as we find them done up
in packages and labelled in the study, but as they are interwoven in the
complicated texture of real life, "those who still survive and have
distinguished themselves in every deed and in all knowledge, come at
last to their graduation; the time has now arrived at which they must
raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all
things and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according
to which they are to order the state and the lives of individuals and
the remainder of their own lives also, making philosophy their chief
pursuit; but when their turn comes, also toiling at politics and ruling
for the public good."
The wisdom which comes of this prolonged and elaborate education is the
third of Plato's four cardinal virtues. In the state it is the ruling
principle, and its agents are the philosophers. As Plato says in a
famous passage: "Until then philosophers are kings, or the kings and
princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and
political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures
who follow either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand
aside, cities will never cease from ill,--no, nor the human race, as I
believe,--and then only will this our state have a possibility of life
and behold the light of day." Precisely so, no individual will attain
his true estate until this philosophic principle, which sees the good,
through training has been so developed that it can bring both appetite
and spirit into subjection to it, as a charioteer controls his
headstrong horses.
V
RIGHTEOUSNESS THE COMPREHENSIVE VIRTUE
We now have three of the cardinal virtues: temperance, the subjection of
appetite to reason; fortitude, the control of the spirit by reason; and
wisdom, won through education, the assertion of the dictates of reason
over the clamour of both appetite and spirit. But where, amid all this,
Plato asks, is righteousness? In reply he remarks, "that when we first
began our inquiry, ages ago, there lay righteousness rolling at our
feet, and we, fools that we were, failed to see her, like people who go
about looking for what they have in their hands. Righteousness is the
comprehensive aspect of the three virtues already considered in detail.
It is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them.
Righteousness in a state consists in each citizen doing the thing to
which his nature is most perfectly adapted: in minding one's own
business, in other words, with a view to the good of the whole.
Righteousness in an individual, then, consists in having each part of
one's nature devoted to its specific function: in having the appetites
obey, in having the spirit steadfast in difficulty and danger, and in
having the reason rule supreme. Thus righteousness, that subordination
and coordination of all the parts of the soul in the service of the soul
as a whole, includes each of the other three virtues and comprehends
them all in the unity of the soul's organic life.
"For the righteous man does not permit the several elements within him
to meddle with one another, but he sets in order his own inner life, and
is his own master, and at peace with himself; when he has bound
together the three principles within him, and is no longer many, but has
become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he
will begin to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or
in the treatment of the body, or in some affairs of politics or of
private business; in all which cases he will think and call just and
good action, that which preserves and cooeperates with this condition,
and the knowledge which presides over this wisdom."
Unrighteousness, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of this. "Then
assuming the threefold division of the soul, must not unrighteousness be
a kind of quarrel between these three--a meddlesomeness and
interference, a rising up of a part of the soul against the whole soul,
an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious
subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal--this is
the sort of thing; the confusion and error of these parts or elements in
unrighteousness and intemperance, cowardice, and ignorance, and in
general all vice." In other words, righteousness and unrighteousness
"are like disease and health; being in the soul just what disease and
health are in the body." "Then virtue is the health and beauty and
well-being of the soul, vice is the disease and weakness and deformity
of the soul." From this point of view our old question of the
comparative advantage of righteousness and unrighteousness answers
itself. Indeed, the question whether it is more profitable to be
righteous and do righteously and practice virtue, whether seen or unseen
of gods and men, or to be unrighteous and act unrighteously if only
unpunished, becomes, Plato says, ridiculous. "If when the bodily
constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with
every sort of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power,
shall we be told that life is worth having when the very essence of the
vital principle is undermined and corrupted, even though a man be
allowed to do whatever he pleases, if at the same time he is forbidden
to escape from vice and unrighteousness, or attain righteousness and
virtue, seeing that we now know the true nature of each?"
Righteousness, according to Plato, is the condition of the soul's health
and life. To part with righteousness for any external advantage is to
commit the supreme folly of selling our own souls. Righteousness is the
organising principle of the soul; unrighteousness is the disorganising
principle. Health and life rest on organisation. Disorganisation and
vice are synonymous with disease and death. Therefore, all seeming gains
that one may win in the paths of unrighteousness really involve the
greatest possible loss.
We have now seen what righteousness is, whether in a state or in an
individual. It is the health, harmony, beauty, excellence of the whole
state or the whole man, secured by having each member attend strictly to
its own distinctive work, with a view to the good of the whole state or
the whole man. Thus defined it is something so obviously desirable and
essential, that nothing else is worthy to be compared with it. Whoever
parts with it even in exchange for the greatest outward honours,
emoluments, comforts, or pleasures, is bound to get the worst of the
bargain. Yet men do part with it; states do part with it. And the eighth
and ninth books of the Republic are devoted to a description of the four
stages of degeneration through which states and individuals pass on the
downward road from righteousness and virtue to unrighteousness and vice.
The breaking up of a thing often reveals its nature as effectually as
the putting it together; and as we have traced the four virtues by which
either the state or the soul is constructed, it will throw added light
upon the problem to trace in conclusion the four stages through which
men and states go down to destruction.
VI
THE STAGES OF DEGENERATION
The first step down is where, instead of the good, men seek personal
honour and distinction. At first the deterioration, whether in state or
individual, is hardly noticeable. An ambitious statesman, on the whole,
will advocate, if he is shrewd and far-sighted, much the same measures
as the statesman who is intent on the welfare of the state. For he knows
that by promoting the public welfare he will most effectively gain the
reputation and distinction he desires. Yet there is a marked difference
in the attitude of mind, and in the long run that difference will
express itself in action. When it comes to a close and hard decision,
where the real interest of the state lies in one direction, and the
waves of popular enthusiasm are running in an opposite direction, the
man who cares for the real welfare of the state will stand fast, while
the man who cares supremely for honour and distinction will be more
likely to give way. Besides, contention and strife will arise, since the
ambitious man is more anxious to do something himself than he is to have
the best thing done by some one else. Hence the state where the
statesmen love power, office, and honour will be less well off than the
state where they are disinterestedly devoted to the public good.
Just so the man who is supremely covetous of power and honour will be
weaker than the man who loves the good and follows the guidance of
reason as supreme, in both these respects. He will be prone to follow
the clamour of the multitude when he knows it is not the voice of
reason; and he will try to have his own way, even when he knows that the
way of another man is better than his. As Plato says, "He gives up the
kingdom that is within him to the middle principle of contentiousness
and passion, and becomes proud and ambitious." Here, then, are the two
tests by which each man may judge for himself whether he is a degenerate
of the first grade or not. First: Will you do what reason shows you to
be right every time, at all costs, no matter if all the honours and
emoluments are attached to doing something a shade or two off from this
absolutely right and reasonable course? Second: Would you rather have
what is best done by somebody else, and let him have the credit of it,
rather than get all the credit yourself by doing something not quite so
good? The man of pride and ambition can never be quite disinterested in
his service of the good, although incidentally most of the things he
does will be good things. As Plato puts it, "He is not single-minded
toward virtue, having lost his best guardian." He has neglected "the one
thing that can preserve a man's goodness through his life--reason
blended with music."
It is a short and easy step, in state and individual, from the love of
honour down to the love of money as the guiding principle of life. The
appetitive side of life is always present, even in the most upright of
men. It may be asleep, but it is never dead. And when there is nothing
more deep and vital than the love of honour to hold it in restraint, it
is sure to wake up and prowl about. Rivalry for honour soon reveals the
fact that directly or indirectly honour and office can be bought. Then
comes the state of things where only rich men can get office, or can
afford to hold it if it comes to them. That in the state is what Plato
calls an oligarchy. The deterioration of a state under this condition is
very rapid, for, as he says, "When riches and virtue are placed together
in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.
And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become
lovers of trade and of money, and they honour and reverence the rich man
and make a ruler of him, and dishonour the poor man." The evils of this
oligarchical rule, he says, are illustrated by considering the nature of
the qualification for office and influence. "Just think what would
happen if the pilots were to be chosen according to their property, and
a poor man refused permission to steer, even though he were the better
pilot?" The other defect is "the inevitable division; such a state is
not one but two states, the one of poor men, the other of rich men, who
are living on the same spot and ever conspiring against one another."
The avaricious man is like the state which is governed by rich men. "Is
not this man likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous elements on
the vacant throne? And when he has made the reasoning and passionate
faculties sit on the ground obediently on either side, and taught them
to know their place, he compels the one to think only of the method by
which lesser sums may be converted into larger ones, and schools the
other into the worship and admiration of riches and rich men. Of all
conversions there is none so speedy or so sure as when the ambitious
youth changes into the avaricious one."
Nowhere is Plato more keen or more fair than in his judgment of the
money-maker. He says that he will generally do the right thing; he will
be eminently respectable; he will not sink to very low or disreputable
courses. All his goodness, however, will be of a forced, constrained,
artificial, and at bottom unreal character. He will be good because he
has to, in order to maintain that standing in the community on which his
wealth depends. In Plato's own words: "He coerces his bad passions by an
effort of virtue; not that he convinces them of evil, or exerts over
them the gentle influence of reason, but he acts upon them by necessity
and fear, and because he trembles for his possessions. This sort of man
will be at war with himself: he will be two men, not one; but, in
general, his better desires will be found to prevail over his inferior
ones. For these reasons such an one will be more decent than many are;
yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will be far out
of his reach."
The next step down for the state is what Plato calls democracy. Of the
democracy of intelligence and self-control diffused throughout the body
of self-respecting citizens Plato had formed and could form no
conception. By democracy he meant the state of things where each man
does that which is right in his own eyes. "In the first place the
citizens are free. The city is full of freedom and frankness--there a
man may do as he likes. They have a complete assortment of
constitutions; and if a man has a mind to establish a state, he must go
to a democracy as he would go to a bazaar, where they sell them, and
pick out one that suits him. Democracy is a most accommodating and
charming form of government, full of variety and diversity, and (this,
perhaps, is the keenest of all Plato's keen thrusts) _dispensing
equality to equals and unequals alike_."
The man corresponding to democracy in the state, is the man whose life
is given over to the undiscriminating enjoyment of all sorts of
pleasures. "In this way the young man passes out of his original nature
which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and
libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures, putting the government
of himself into the hands of the one of his pleasures that offers and
wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands
of another, and is very impartial in his encouragement of them all.
Neither does he receive or admit into the fortress any true word of
advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions
of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he
ought to use and honour some and curtail and reduce others--whenever
this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all
alike, and that one is as honourable as another. He lives through the
day, indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in
drink and strains of the flute; then he is for total abstinence, and
tries to get thin; then again, he is at gymnastics; sometimes idling and
neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher;
often he is at politics, and starts to his feet and says and does
anything that may turn up; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a
warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more
in that. His life has neither order nor law; and this is the way of
him,--this he terms joy and freedom and happiness. There is liberty,
equality, and fraternity enough in him."
The life of chance desire, unregulated by any subordinating principle,
then, is the third stage of the descent and degradation of the soul.
In the state democracy speedily and inevitably passes over into tyranny.
All appetite is insatiable. In a state where each citizen does what he
pleases "all things are just ready to burst with liberty; excess of
liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into
excess of slavery. Then tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." He
then proceeds, with prophetic pen, to trace the evolution of the modern
political boss. First there develops a class of drones who get their
living as professional politicians. Second, "there is the richest class,
which, in a nation of traders, is generally the most orderly; they are
the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of honey to the
drones; this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them.
There is also a third class, consisting of working-men who are not
politicians and have little to live upon; these, when assembled, are the
largest and most powerful class in a democracy; but then, the multitude
is seldom willing to meet unless they get a little honey. Their leaders
take the estates of the rich and give to the people as much of them as
they can consistently with keeping the greater part themselves. The
people have always some one as a champion whom they raise into
greatness. This is the very root from which a tyrant (that is, as we
should say, a boss) comes. When he first appears above ground, he is a
protector. At first, in the early days of his power, he smiles upon
every one and salutes every one; he, to be called a tyrant who is making
promises in public and also in private, and wanting to be kind and good
to every one! Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes
into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery." The worst form of
government, according to Plato, is that which we know too well to-day in
our great cities: the government of the professional politician who
maintains himself by buying the votes of the poor with the money he has
squeezed out of the rich. All pretence of administering the government
in the interest of the community is frankly abandoned. The boss, or
tyrant, as Plato calls him, frankly and unblushingly avows that he is in
politics for what he can get out of it.
The true statesman, the philosopher king, in Plato's phrase, sees and
serves the public good. Such a government Plato calls an aristocracy, or
the government of the best for the good of all. First below that comes
timocracy, or the government of those who are ambitious for power and
place. Next comes oligarchy, the government of the rich for the
protection of the interests of the moneyed class. Next below that, and
as a logical consequence, comes populism, which is our word for what
Plato calls democracy; a government which aims to satisfy the immediate
wants of everybody, regardless of moral, legal, or constitutional
restraints. Last, and lowest of all, comes the rule of the professional
politician who has thrown all pretence of regard for the public good,
all consideration of honour, all loyalty to the rich and genuine
sympathy for the poor to the winds, and is simply manipulating the forms
of government, getting and distributing offices, collecting assessments
and distributing bribes, all in the interests of his own private pocket.
Between disinterested service of the public good and such unblushing
pursuit of private gain, Plato says that there is no stopping place.
Logically Plato is right; historically, too, he was right at the time
when he was writing. Modern democracy, however, is a very different
thing from the populistic democracy with which Plato was familiar and
which our large cities know too well. A democracy, resting on
intelligence and public spirit, diffused through rich and poor alike,
was beyond Plato's profoundest dreams. That great experiment the
American people, with their public-school system, and their principle of
the equality of all before the law, are now trying on a gigantic scale.
Corresponding to the tyrannical state comes the tyrannical man. "The
wild beast in our nature gets the upper hand and the man becomes
drunken, lustful, passionate, the best elements in him are enslaved;
and there is a small ruling part which is also the worst and the
maddest. He has the soul of the slave, and the tyrannical soul must
always be poor and insatiable. He is by far the most miserable of all
men." "He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real
servant and is obliged to practice the greatest adulation and servility
and be the flatterer of mankind; he has desires which he is truly unable
to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor if you
know how to inspect the soul of him. All his life long he is beset with
fear and is full of convulsions and distractions. Even as the state
which he resembles, he grows worse from having power; he becomes of
necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more impious; he
entertains and nurtures every evil sentiment, and the consequence is
that he is supremely miserable and thus he makes everybody else equally
miserable."
VII
THE INTRINSIC SUPERIORITY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
Plato first constructs the ideal character and shows that it consists in
the righteous rule of the intelligent principle in man over the spirit
and the appetites. A soul thus in harmony with itself, under the rule
of reason, is at once healthy, happy, beautiful, and good. Later,
reversing the process, he shows how the good, beautiful, true, healthy
condition of the soul may be destroyed through the successive steps of
pride, avarice, lawless liberty, ending at last in the tyrannous rule of
some single appetite or passion which has dethroned reason and set
itself up as supreme. The consequence of it all is that "the most
righteous man is also the happiest, and this is he who is the most royal
master of himself; the worst and most unrighteous man is also the most
miserable; this is he who is also the greatest tyrant of himself and the
most complete slave."
The reason why the life of a righteous man is happier than the life of
an unrighteous man is that it has "a greater share in pure existence as
a more real being." "If there be a pleasure in being filled with that
which agrees with nature; that which is more really filled with more
real being will have more real and true joy and pleasure; whereas, that
which participates in less real being will be less truly and surely
satisfied and will participate in a less true and real pleasure. Those,
then, who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony
and sensuality, never pass into the true upper world; neither are they
truly filled with true being, nor do they taste of true and abiding
pleasure. Like brute animals, with their eyes down and bodies bent to
the earth, or leaning on the dining table, they fatten and feed and
breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and
butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; they
kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they fill
themselves with that which is not substantial, and the part of
themselves which they fill is also unsubstantial and incontinent." "Thus
when the whole soul follows the philosophical principle, and there is no
division, the several parts, each of them, do their own business and are
righteous, and each of them enjoy their own best and truest pleasures.
But when either of the other principles prevails, it fails in attaining
its own pleasure and compels the others to pursue after a shadow of
pleasure which is not theirs."
Having reached this point Plato introduces a figure, which carries the
whole point of his argument. "Do you now model the form of a
multitudinous, polycephalous beast, having a head of all manner of
beasts, tame and wild, making a second form as of a lion, and a third of
a man; the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than
the second; then join them and let the three grow into one. Now fashion
the outside into a single image as of a man, so that he who is not able
to look within may believe the beast to be a single human creature. Now
unrighteousness consists in feasting the monster and strengthening the
lion in one in such wise as to weaken and starve the man; while
righteousness consists in so strengthening the man within him that he
may govern the many-headed monster." "Righteousness subjects the beast
to the man, or rather to the god in man, and unrighteousness is that
which subjects the man to the beast."
Finally Plato sums up the discussion by anticipating the question which
Jesus asked four centuries later. "How would a man profit if he receive
gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part
of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or
daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the
hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however much might be
the sum which he received? And will any one say that he is not a
miserable caitiff who sells his own divine being to that which is most
godless and detestable and has no pity? Eriphyle took the necklace as
the price of her husband's life, but he is taking a bribe in order to
compass a worse ruin." He even pushes the question a step further and
asks, "What shall a man be profited by unrighteousness even if his
unrighteousness be undetected? For he who is undetected only gets worse;
whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his
nature silenced and humanised; the gentler element in him is liberated
and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of
righteousness and temperance and wisdom. The man of understanding will
concentrate himself on this as the work of life. In the first place he
will honour studies which impress these qualities on his soul and will
disregard others. In the next place he will keep under his body and will
be far from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures, and he will be
always desirous of preserving the harmony of the body for the sake of
the concord of the soul. He will not allow himself to be dazzled by the
opinion of the world and heap up riches to his own infinite harm. He
will look at the city which is within him, and he will duly regulate his
acquisition and expense, in so far as he is able, and for the same
reason he will accept such honours as he deems likely to make him a
better man. He will look at the nature of the soul, and, from the
consideration of this, he will determine which is the better and which
is the worst life and make his choice, giving the name of evil to the
life which will make his soul more unrighteous, and good to the life
which will make his soul more righteous; for this is the best
choice,--best for this life and after death. Wherefore my counsel is,
that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after righteousness and
virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure
every sort of good and every sort of evil; then shall we live dear to
one another and the gods, both while remaining here and when, like
conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our
reward."
With this magnificent tribute to the intrinsic superiority of
righteousness over unrighteousness Plato concludes his greatest work.
The question why a man should do right, even if he wore the ring of
Gyges which would exempt him from all external consequences of his
misdeeds, has been answered by a thoroughgoing analysis of the nature of
the soul, and the demonstration that righteousness is that organisation
of the elements of the soul into an active and harmonious unity, wherein
its health and beauty and life and happiness consist. In conclusion let
us borrow from another of Plato's dialogues the prayer which he ascribes
to Socrates,--a brief and simple prayer, yet one which, in the light of
our study of the Republic, I trust we shall recognise as summing up the
spirit of his teaching as a whole. "Beloved Pan, and all ye gods who
haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward
and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy; and
may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry.
Anything more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me."
VIII
TRUTH AND ERROR IN PLATONISM
Obviously this Platonic principle is vastly deeper and truer than
anything we have had before. The personality at which both Stoic and
Epicurean aimed was highly abstract,--something to be gained by getting
away from the tangle and complexity of life rather than by conquering
and transforming the conditions of existence into expressions of
ourselves. Epicurus makes a few sallies from his cosey comfortable camp,
to forage for provender. The Stoic draws into the citadel of his own
self-sufficiency; and from this fortified position defies attack. Plato
comes out into the open field, and squarely gives battle to the hosts
of appetite, passion, temptation, and corruption, of which the world
outside, and our hearts inside are full. In this he is true to the moral
experience of the race: and his trumpet-call to the higher departments
of our nature to enter the "great combat of righteousness"; his demand
of instantaneous and absolute surrender which he presents to everything
low and sensual within us, are clear, strong notes which it is good for
every one of us to hear and heed. To him as to Carlyle, "Life is not a
May-game, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and
powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green
flowery spaces waited on by the choral muses and the rosy hours; it is a
stern pilgrimage through the rough, burning sandy solitudes, through
regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men, loves men with
inexpressible soft pity, as they _cannot_ love him; but his soul dwells
in solitude, in the uttermost parts of creation. All Heaven, all
Pandemonium are his escort. The stars, keen glancing, from the
immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead,
from the eternities. Deep calls for him unto deep.
"Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? None of
thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of
Heaven; to thee it may be momentous, to thee it may be life or death; to
him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or
forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on
Earth. He wants none of thy rewards; behold also he fears none of thy
penalties. Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets
and law-penalties restrain him. Thou canst not forward him; thou canst
not hinder him. Thy penalties, thy poverties, neglects,
contumelies,--behold all these are good for him. To this man death is
not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest and awful, and
beautiful and terrible as death."
This is a note which appeals forcibly to every noble youth. It has been
struck by the Hebrew Prophets and the Christian Apostles: by Savonarola
and Fichte, and a host of heroic souls; but by no one more clearly and
constrainingly than by Plato. It is the note of earnest and aggressive
righteousness; without which no personality can be either sound or
strong. The man who has never heard this summons to go forth and conquer
the evils of the world without and of his own heart within him, in the
name of a righteousness high above both his own attainment and the
attainment of the world about him as the heavens are higher than the
earth, is still in the nursery stage of personal development.
On the other hand, there is danger in the very sharpness of the
antithesis which Platonism makes between the higher and the lower. For
the most part this danger is latent in Plato himself; though even in him
it came out in his tendency to regard family life and private property
as detrimental rather than serviceable to that development of character
on which the larger devotion to the state, and the ideal order, must
ultimately rest.
In Neoplatonism, in the many forms of mysticism, in certain aspects of
Christian asceticism, and notably in the numerous phases of what calls
itself "New Thought" to-day, what was for the most part latent in Plato,
becomes frankly explicit. In general it is a loosening of the ties that
hold us to drudgery and homely duty; a weakening of the bonds that bind
us to the men and women by our side, in order to gaze more serenely on
the ineffable beyond the clouds. This developed Platonism admits that we
must live after a fashion in this very imperfect world; but says our
real conversation all the time must be in heaven. Individual people are
but faulty, imperfect copies of the pattern of the perfect good laid up
on high. We must buy and sell, work and play, laugh and cry, love and
hate down here among the shadows; but we must all the time feed our
souls on the good, the true, the beautiful, which these distorted human
shadows only serve to hide. These Platonic lovers of something better
than their husbands or wives, or associates or friends, go through the
world with a serene smile, and an air of other-worldliness which, if we
do not inquire too closely into their domestic life and business
efficiency, we cannot but admire. They undoubtedly exert a
tranquillising influence in their way, especially on those who are so
fortunate as to behold them from a little distance. But they are not the
most comfortable people to live with, as husband or wife, colleague or
business partner. Louisa Alcott had this Platonic type in mind when she
defined a philosopher as a man up in a balloon, with his family and
friends having hold of the ropes, trying to pull him down to earth.
A good deal that passes for religion is this Neoplatonism masquerading
in Christian dress. All such hymns as "The Sweet By and By," "Oh,
Paradise, Oh, Paradise," and the like, which set heaven and eternity in
sharp antithesis against earth and time, are simply Neoplatonism
baptized into Christian phraseology; and the baptism is by sprinkling
rather than immersion.
Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," and indeed all the mystical
books of devotion--Tauler, Fenelon, "The Theologia Germanica"--are
saturated with this Platonic or Neoplatonic spirit. "Thou shalt
lamentably fall away, if thou set a value upon any worldly thing." "Let
therefore nothing which thou doest seem to thee great; let nothing be
grand, nothing of value or beauty, nothing worthy of honour save what is
eternal." "Man approacheth so much the nearer unto God, the farther he
departeth from all earthly comfort." These words from the "Imitation of
Christ" sound orthodox enough in our ears. But we ought to understand
once for all that it is Neoplatonic mysticism, not essential
Christianity, that breathes through them.
This type of personality reduces the world to two mutually exclusive
elements, God and self; and permits no reconciliation or mediation
between them. Fenelon puts this dualism in the form of a dilemma. "There
is no middle course; we must refer everything either to God or to self;
if to self, we have no other God than self; if to God, we are then
without selfish interests, and we enter into self-abandonment."
Undoubtedly for evangelistic purposes the sharp antithesis has great
practical advantages. It is an easy way to reach heaven--this of
scorning earth; an easy definition of the infinite to pronounce it the
negation of the finite.
As Carlyle has represented for us the stronger side of Platonism, his
friend Emerson shall serve to illustrate the weakness that lurks half
hidden in all this way of thinking. It is so concealed that we shall
hardly detect it unless we are sharply on the watch for this tendency to
exalt the Infinite at the expense of the finite; the Universal at the
expense of the particular; God at the expense of our neighbour.
"Higher far into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,
Over the flickering Daemon film,
Thou must mount for love;
Into vision where all form
In one only form dissolves;
Where unlike things are like;
Where good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one."
"Thus we are put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person,
nor partiality. We are made to feel that our affections are but tents of
a night. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man,
and make his happiness depend on a person or persons. But the warm loves
and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose their finite character,
and blend with God, to attain their own perfection." "Before that heaven
which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any form of
life we have seen or read of. Pressed on our attention, the saints and
demigods whom history worships fatigue and invade. The soul gives
itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure,
who on that condition gladly inhabits it." "The higher the style we
demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh
and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are
dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart,
that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now
acting, enduring, daring, which can love us and which we can love."
"I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them
where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on
our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot
afford to speak much with my friend. Then, though I prize my friends, I
cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my
own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty
seeking, this spiritual astronomy or search of stars, and come down to
warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the
vanishing of my mighty gods." "True love transcends the unworthy object
and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask
crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its
independency the surer."
Here you have Plato and Thomas a Kempis in the elegant garb of a
heretical transcendentalist. But you get the same dualism of finite and
infinite, perfect and imperfect; unworthy, crumbling earth-mask to be
gotten rid of here on earth, and the stars to be sought out and gazed at
up in heaven.
The combat of the higher against the lower is one in which we must all
engage; and no doubt in order to win we must at times keep the lower
solicitations at arm's-length. If, however, what appeals to us in the
name of the highest counsels any relaxing of definite obligation, any
alienation from the man or woman whom social institutions have placed
closest by our side; any disloyalty to the plain companions and humble
associates whom society or business places in our way; any breaking of
social bonds which generations of self-sacrifice and self-control have
laboriously woven, and centuries of experience have approved as
beneficent; then it is time to abandon Plato, or rather those who have
assumed to wear his mantle, and look for personal guidance to those
greater masters who have transcended the antithesis of higher and lower,
which it was Plato's great mission to make so sharp and clear. The
principle of such a reconciliation we shall find in Aristotle; its
complete accomplishment we shall find in Jesus.