The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first
organizes and then administers the government of his own country; and
having made a nation, seeks to reconcile the national interests with
those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a
dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his
mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although
obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts
are fixed not on power or riches or extension of territory, but on an
ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health
and life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the
moral and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely
developed, and “the idea of good” is the animating principle of the
whole. Not the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how
to unite freedom with order is the problem which he has to solve.
The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken
a task which will call forth all his powers. He must control himself
before he can control others; he must know mankind before he can manage
them. He has no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal
enmity under the disguise of moral or political principle: such
meannesses, into which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed
in the consciousness of his mission, and in his love for his country
and for mankind. He will sometimes ask himself what the next generation
will say of him; not because he is careful of posthumous fame, but
because he knows that the result of his life as a whole will then be
more fairly judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans;
not hurrying them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them;
but like the Ruler of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed
time, for he knows that human life, “if not long in comparison with
eternity” (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great
purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going on when he
is no longer here; and he will sometimes, especially when his powers
are failing, think of that other “city of which the pattern is in
heaven” (Republic).
The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to
govern men he becomes like them; their “minds are married in
conjunction;” they “bear themselves” like vulgar and tyrannical
masters, and he is their obedient servant. The true politician, if he
would rule men, must make them like himself; he must “educate his
party” until they cease to be a party; he must breathe into them the
spirit which will hereafter give form to their institutions. Politics
with him are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for
carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a representative man, he
is the representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of
the nation. There is a better (as well as a worse) public opinion of
which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also a deeper current of human
affairs in which he is borne up when the waves nearer the shore are
threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by
force—two or three moves on the political chess board are all that he
can fore see—two or three weeks moves on the political chessboard are
all that he can foresee—two or three weeks or months are granted to him
in which he can provide against a coming struggle. But he knows also
that there are permanent principles of politics which are always
tending to the well-being of states—better administration, better
education, the reconciliation of conflicting elements, increased
security against external enemies. These are not “of to-day or
yesterday,” but are the same in all times, and under all forms of
government. Then when the storm descends and the winds blow, though he
knows not beforehand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like Plato’s
captain in the Republic, half-blind and deaf, but with penetrating eye
and quick ear, is ready to take command of the ship and guide her into
port.
The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the opinion of
the world—not what is right, but what is expedient. The only measures
of which he approves are the measures which will pass. He has no
intention of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the roadway of
politics. He is unwilling to incur the persecution and enmity which
political convictions would entail upon him. He begins with popularity,
and in fair weather sails gallantly along. But unpopularity soon
follows him. For men expect their leaders to be better and wiser than
themselves: to be their guides in danger, their saviours in extremity;
they do not really desire them to obey all the ignorant impulses of the
popular mind; and if they fail them in a crisis they are disappointed.
Then, as Socrates says, the cry of ingratitude is heard, which is most
unreasonable; for the people, who have been taught no better, have done
what might be expected of them, and their statesmen have received
justice at their hands.
The true statesman is aware that he must adapt himself to times and
circumstances. He must have allies if he is to fight against the world;
he must enlighten public opinion; he must accustom his followers to act
together. Although he is not the mere executor of the will of the
majority, he must win over the majority to himself. He is their leader
and not their follower, but in order to lead he must also follow. He
will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power of a statesman,
neither adopting the “laissez faire” nor the “paternal government”
principle; but he will, whether he is dealing with children in
politics, or with full-grown men, seek to do for the people what the
government can do for them, and what, from imperfect education or
deficient powers of combination, they cannot do for themselves. He
knows that if he does too much for them they will do nothing; and that
if he does nothing for them they will in some states of society be
utterly helpless. For the many cannot exist without the few, if the
material force of a country is from below, wisdom and experience are
from above. It is not a small part of human evils which kings and
governments make or cure. The statesman is well aware that a great
purpose carried out consistently during many years will at last be
executed. He is playing for a stake which may be partly determined by
some accident, and therefore he will allow largely for the unknown
element of politics. But the game being one in which chance and skill
are combined, if he plays long enough he is certain of victory. He will
not be always consistent, for the world is changing; and though he
depends upon the support of a party, he will remember that he is the
minister of the whole. He lives not for the present, but for the
future, and he is not at all sure that he will be appreciated either
now or then. For he may have the existing order of society against him,
and may not be remembered by a distant posterity.
There are always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates
in the Gorgias, find fault with all statesmen past as well as present,
not excepting the greatest names of history. Mankind have an uneasy
feeling that they ought to be better governed than they are. Just as
the actual philosopher falls short of the one wise man, so does the
actual statesman fall short of the ideal. And so partly from vanity and
egotism, but partly also from a true sense of the faults of eminent
men, a temper of dissatisfaction and criticism springs up among those
who are ready enough to acknowledge the inferiority of their own
powers. No matter whether a statesman makes high professions or none at
all—they are reduced sooner or later to the same level. And sometimes
the more unscrupulous man is better esteemed than the more
conscientious, because he has not equally deceived expectations. Such
sentiments may be unjust, but they are widely spread; we constantly
find them recurring in reviews and newspapers, and still oftener in
private conversation.
We may further observe that the art of government, while in some
respects tending to improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as
institutions become more popular. Governing for the people cannot
easily be combined with governing by the people: the interests of
classes are too strong for the ideas of the statesman who takes a
comprehensive view of the whole. According to Socrates the true
governor will find ruin or death staring him in the face, and will only
be induced to govern from the fear of being governed by a worse man
than himself (Republic). And in modern times, though the world has
grown milder, and the terrible consequences which Plato foretells no
longer await an English statesman, any one who is not actuated by a
blind ambition will only undertake from a sense of duty a work in which
he is most likely to fail; and even if he succeed, will rarely be
rewarded by the gratitude of his own generation.
Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only
real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words
by applying them to the history of our own country. He would have said
that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the real
politicians of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham,
Ricardo. These during the greater part of their lives occupied an
inconsiderable space in the eyes of the public. They were private
persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds which in the
next generation have become an irresistible power. “Herein is that
saying true, One soweth and another reapeth.” We may imagine with Plato
an ideal statesman in whom practice and speculation are perfectly
harmonized; for there is no necessary opposition between them. But
experience shows that they are commonly divorced—the ordinary
politician is the interpreter or executor of the thoughts of others,
and hardly ever brings to the birth a new political conception. One or
two only in modern times, like the Italian statesman Cavour, have
created the world in which they moved. The philosopher is naturally
unfitted for political life; his great ideas are not understood by the
many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of the day. Yet
perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also
happier than the lives of those who are more in the public eye. They
have the promise of the future, though they are regarded as dreamers
and visionaries by their own contemporaries. And when they are no
longer here, those who would have been ashamed of them during their
lives claim kindred with them, and are proud to be called by their
names. (Compare Thucyd.)
Who is the true poet?
Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to
sense; because they stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice
removed from the ideal truth. And in a similar spirit he declares in
the Gorgias that the stately muse of tragedy is a votary of pleasure
and not of truth. In modern times we almost ridicule the idea of poetry
admitting of a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher, in
primitive antiquity are one and the same; but in later ages they seem
to fall apart. The great art of novel writing, that peculiar creation
of our own and the last century, which, together with the sister art of
review writing, threatens to absorb all literature, has even less of
seriousness in her composition. Do we not often hear the novel writer
censured for attempting to convey a lesson to the minds of his readers?
Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not merely to
give amusement, or to be the expression of the feelings of mankind,
good or bad, or even to increase our knowledge of human nature. There
have been poets in modern times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have
not forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two greatest of
the Greek dramatists owe their sublimity to their ethical character.
The noblest truths, sung of in the purest and sweetest language, are
still the proper material of poetry. The poet clothes them with beauty,
and has a power of making them enter into the hearts and memories of
men. He has not only to speak of themes above the level of ordinary
life, but to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer way than they are
ordinarily felt, so as to awaken the feeling of them in others. The old
he makes young again; the familiar principle he invests with a new
dignity; he finds a noble expression for the common-places of morality
and politics. He uses the things of sense so as to indicate what is
beyond; he raises us through earth to heaven. He expresses what the
better part of us would fain say, and the half-conscious feeling is
strengthened by the expression. He is his own critic, for the spirit of
poetry and of criticism are not divided in him. His mission is not to
disguise men from themselves, but to reveal to them their own nature,
and make them better acquainted with the world around them. True poetry
is the remembrance of youth, of love, the embodiment in words of the
happiest and holiest moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man,
of the greatest deeds of the past. The poet of the future may return to
his greater calling of the prophet or teacher; indeed, we hardly know
what may not be effected for the human race by a better use of the
poetical and imaginative faculty. The reconciliation of poetry, as of
religion, with truth, may still be possible. Neither is the element of
pleasure to be excluded. For when we substitute a higher pleasure for a
lower we raise men in the scale of existence. Might not the novelist,
too, make an ideal, or rather many ideals of social life, better than a
thousand sermons? Plato, like the Puritans, is too much afraid of
poetic and artistic influences. But he is not without a true sense of
the noble purposes to which art may be applied (Republic).
Modern poetry is often a sort of plaything, or, in Plato’s language, a
flattery, a sophistry, or sham, in which, without any serious purpose,
the poet lends wings to his fancy and exhibits his gifts of language
and metre. Such an one seeks to gratify the taste of his readers; he
has the “savoir faire,” or trick of writing, but he has not the higher
spirit of poetry. He has no conception that true art should bring order
out of disorder; that it should make provision for the soul’s highest
interest; that it should be pursued only with a view to “the
improvement of the citizens.” He ministers to the weaker side of human
nature (Republic); he idealizes the sensual; he sings the strain of
love in the latest fashion; instead of raising men above themselves he
brings them back to the “tyranny of the many masters,” from which all
his life long a good man has been praying to be delivered. And often,
forgetful of measure and order, he will express not that which is
truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a great and
nobly-executed subject, perfect in every part, some fancy of a heated
brain is worked out with the strangest incongruity. He is not the
master of his words, but his words—perhaps borrowed from another—the
faded reflection of some French or German or Italian writer, have the
better of him. Though we are not going to banish the poets, how can we
suppose that such utterances have any healing or life-giving influence
on the minds of men?
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:” Art then must be
true, and politics must be true, and the life of man must be true and
not a seeming or sham. In all of them order has to be brought out of
disorder, truth out of error and falsehood. This is what we mean by the
greatest improvement of man. And so, having considered in what way “we
can best spend the appointed time, we leave the result with God.” Plato
does not say that God will order all things for the best (compare
Phaedo), but he indirectly implies that the evils of this life will be
corrected in another. And as we are very far from the best imaginable
world at present, Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic, supposes a
purgatory or place of education for mankind in general, and for a very
few a Tartarus or hell. The myth which terminates the dialogue is not
the revelation, but rather, like all similar descriptions, whether in
the Bible or Plato, the veil of another life. For no visible thing can
reveal the invisible. Of this Plato, unlike some commentators on
Scripture, is fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the manner
in which we are “born again” (Republic). Only he is prepared to
maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right, and declares that no
one, not even the wisest of the Greeks, can affirm any other doctrine
without being ridiculous.
There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are
held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without
regard to consequences is happiness. From this elevation or
exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the
Stoics in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the
rack the philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable
that in the Republic he raises this question, but it is not really
discussed; the veil of the ideal state, the shadow of another life, are
allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of sight. The martyr or
sufferer in the cause of right or truth is often supposed to die in
raptures, having his eye fixed on a city which is in heaven. But if
there were no future, might he not still be happy in the performance of
an action which was attended only by a painful death? He himself may be
ready to thank God that he was thought worthy to do Him the least
service, without looking for a reward; the joys of another life may not
have been present to his mind at all. Do we suppose that the mediaeval
saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the
Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to death by a lingering
disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking of the
“sweets” of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and enough.
Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of man or
of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty, of right, and trust in
God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can reach, in that hour.
If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not have
wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or
of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God has
forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere blank to him. The
greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass away, is his
who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of
men have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present,
or to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind has already
present with him eternal life; he needs no arguments to convince him of
immortality; he has in him already a principle stronger than death. He
who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be a more
faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of
God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And
although only a very few in the course of the world’s history—Christ
himself being one of them—have attained to such a noble conception of
God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be present to us,
and the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may
shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy and theology.