BOOK I

PLATO’S AMERICAN

REPUBLIC

PLATO’S AMERICAN

REPUBLIC

Done out of the original

by

DOUGLAS WOODRUFF

[Illustration]

“_fidelia vulnera amantis_”

New York

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 Fifth Avenue

COPYRIGHT, 1926

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

_All Rights Reserved_

First Printing August, 1926

Second Printing October, 1926

Third Printing January, 1927

Fourth Printing March, 1927

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_TO

M. C. HOLLIS

AND

M. J. MACDONALD_

CONTENTS

BOOK PAGE

I. WOMEN, CARS, AND MEN 1

II. GOVERNMENT 18

III. PUBLIC OPINION 36

IV. PROHIBITION 53

V. EDUCATION 71

VI. AMERICA AND ENGLAND 93

PLATO’S AMERICAN

REPUBLIC

BOOK I

_Scene: Athens, 1925_

SOCRATES (THE NARRATOR); AGATHON;

LYSIS; PHAELON

We were sitting on the pavement in our usual way, considering all

things, and examining into them one at a time. There were with me Lysis

and his younger brother Phaelon, two youths whom I loved for their

inquiring dispositions and habit of always asking why. As we were

sitting there we suddenly saw Agathon approaching, and called to him

to join us. When we had made room for him he turned to me and said:

‘Listen, Socrates, to a strange thing which happened to me to-day as

I was going down to the Piræus. For I now work, as you know, in the

Government, and to-day a stranger came up to me outside my office,

proposing to buy the Parthenon and all the buildings on the Acropolis

and remove them to his own land, and re-erect them there.’

‘Truly a strange way of honouring the Athenians,’ I said.

‘I think,’ answered Agathon, ‘that it was less his idea to honour the

Athenians than to make his own countrymen pay him many _denarii_ to

behold the sight.’ ‘And did he wish to buy the hill as well as the

buildings on it?’ ‘Why no,’ answered Agathon, ‘for he spoke as one

most ignorant, but he guessed that there were as good hills in his own

country, which he explained was also the particular residence of the

Gods.’ ‘Without doubt he was an American,’ I exclaimed.

At this word ‘American’ the two young men leaned forward eagerly, and

Phaelon said:――

‘Tell us, Socrates, have you ever lectured in America?’

‘How not?’ said I.

‘And did you like the Americans?’ asked Lysis. ‘Tell us what manner

of people they are. For we have heard many stories of them. For

Thrasymachus tells us that he has nowhere been so well received. And

he, you know, has lectured in all the lands he could. But, he says

that where in other countries he received nothing but kindness, in

America he received a great many dollars as well. And he says that he

is convinced that the Gods have emigrated and made it their country,

and that, when it has improved a little more, he also will follow the

example of the Gods. But Glaucon says just the opposite, maintaining

that as the Americans are the farthest away of all the barbarians

from Athens and civilization, so are they without any doubt the most

completely barbarian. Tell us, therefore, what is true about the

Americans, for at your lectures you must have seen and questioned them

all.’

At this Agathon, who had been trying to repress his laughter since

first Lysis had spoken of my lecture-tour, became redder than ever

in the face, and finally burst out saying: ‘Yes, indeed, Socrates is

the best person to give you a faithful picture, if he is sufficiently

master of himself and a true lover of wisdom.’

‘Go on,’ I said, ‘and make your meaning clearer and cease to bewilder

the young.’ For I knew what Agathon had in his mind to tell them.

‘Why, then, Lysis and Phaelon,’ said Agathon, ‘you must forgive

Socrates if he looks like a sheep while I am speaking shamefully of

him, as I intend to do. But the truth is that his lectures were much

less successful than were those of his wife Xantippe. There were, it is

true, many Americans who had heard of Socrates, whose name is painted

up on the walls of many of their libraries, and these came to look at

him. But he is not a great spectacle to behold, and when he spoke they

found he was not interested in any of the things which they desired to

know, such as the art of succeeding in the world and the other things

which the sophists profess to teach. Whereas Xantippe spoke to the

women, praising women and declaring them to be the moral leaders of

the community, and demanding for them the chief voice in ordering the

affairs of the city.’

‘Go on to the end, my good Agathon,’ said I, ‘for I know you will not

be able to sleep unless you also tell them how I came to see the Middle

West.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was in my mind to tell them that also. Xantippe’s

best lecture, which she gave more than two hundred times, was on the

management of the home and the husband, and in this lecture poor

Socrates was made to assist. For in no other way could he hope to

see the most powerful and strange region of America, which in their

dialect they term the Middle West. It was also the only way he could

ever pay his passage back to Athens. Many of the women who had read

the teachings of a local sage, Emerson, spoke kindly to Socrates and

inquired his angle on the beautiful, as though he had been Euclid.

But Xantippe showed him to them as an example of the mismanaged home,

blaming the spirit of Athens which did not give her authority enough,

and warning the women of America to take care lest their menfolk should

become too much like Socrates. But this danger they did not seem to

think imminent.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phaelon, ‘you endured much, Socrates.’

‘Indeed he did, for Xantippe praised the women of America and the

women of America praised Xantippe, and with each exchange of flattery

they became more boastful and reckless. At all such gatherings the

Americans, especially the women, expect to hear themselves praised.

Indeed, that people is like a Persian monarch, for all who approach

and speak to them desire gifts from them and endeavour to recommend

themselves by flattery. Before half her tour was over Xantippe was

openly saying that there were no truer lovers of the good than her

audience in the whole world, and that they did quite right to be well

satisfied with themselves and to have nothing to do with humility and

not to believe it possible they were mistaken in what they thought

to be the proper objects of the soul’s desire. And in particular she

praised them for their refusal to believe there was anything requiring

deep thought in philosophy or in public life, saying that people

so wise and good did right to trust to their first impressions of

everything. Then she told them that the idea that there was anything

difficult and mysterious in life was only fit for people like

Socrates, who were unfit for anything but philosophy. And she explained

that the reason that more thinking was done in Europe, and that there

was more philosophical discussion there, was that people had so much

time on their hands while waiting for their passports to the United

States. For these passports, she said, are as long in coming as a

conclusion is in the chatterings of Socrates and his friends, and the

Europeans spend the time in philosophy hoping to learn resignation

and the acceptance of one’s destiny. Because more and more often the

passport is in the end refused, and nowhere more often than among the

Greeks. She is already full with engagements for such addresses for the

next two years.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I am glad I went there. For as the silent butt of

Xantippe’s scorn I was free to turn my attention wholly to the strange

places we visited. And in particular I satisfied to the full my desire

to see and study a Woman’s Club, than which I had not been able to

imagine anything more unnatural.’

‘Tell us,’ said they both, ‘about a Woman’s Club.’

‘If I did,’ said I with a smile, ‘I do not think you would believe me.

But you would say that in America I had indulged myself too freely in

potent distillations of the tail of the cock, and spoke the thing

which was not.’

‘Oh no, Socrates,’ exclaimed Phaelon, ‘for I have often heard the

Americans spoken of before, and I know about the women who rule the men

in the valley of the great river. The river is the Amazon, the greatest

of all American rivers, and the inhabitants are called Amazons. Do I

not understand rightly?’

‘Not quite rightly,’ put in Agathon, ‘for the Amazon River is in

another America altogether, and the chief rivers where Socrates was

are the Mississippi and the Missouri, named, I believe, after the two

first women who tamed their menfolk, the one her husband, the other her

father.’

‘You should also tell them, Agathon, should you not, that the method

of domination is different, and that, whereas the Amazons triumphed by

skill in arms and valour, the American women triumph by something more

lasting and stronger than physical force. They have managed to make the

men believe that they are superior and ought to be obeyed.’

‘How so?’ said Lysis. ‘Is it in fact true that they are superior?’

‘My answer will surprise you perhaps,’ I replied, ‘but I will answer

boldly and say, Yes, if it is a better thing to be alive than dead,

which, as I have said elsewhere, is not a thing we can decide. But it

is certain that in America the women are more alive than the men. For

the men work so hard that they kill themselves, and are so busy while

living that they have no time for the proper business of life.’

‘They must work, must they not,’ said Lysis, ‘in order to obtain the

leisure for philosophy and public life, for I have heard that they have

no slaves, and no class beneath the men, and if they did not work they

would starve.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘and learn how little you yet understand about

the character of this extraordinary people, the most extraordinary,

as I believe, that has yet appeared upon the face of the earth. For

if you see men engaging of their own will in the most heavy and

degrading employments of commerce, long after they have accumulated for

themselves and their families not a sufficiency only but an extreme

abundance both of those things that may be called necessities and those

that are plainly luxuries, can anything be said of such men except that

they are either ignoble in their own souls and ignorant of the true

nature of what is good, or else that they are acting in obedience to

the orders of some tyrant, and are, in fact, not freemen at all, but

slaves?’

‘Assuredly,’ they said, ‘they must be one or the other.’

‘Or both,’ said Agathon.

‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘that was well added by Agathon, for we must not

forget the influence of religion which even tyrants can modify only

through slow degrees. But as religion is the manifestation of the

soul’s nature, if we find the religion of these people compelling them

to lead the life they do, shall we not justly decide that there is

in their souls an ignorance of what is truly good? Now I say that in

religion they are followers of Pythagoras without rightly understanding

his doctrine, and that they are to be numbered among the worshippers of

the Sacred Number.’

‘Without doubt,’ said Lysis, ‘the Sacred Number is Number One, which

has long been the favourite among mankind.’

‘You are wrong,’ said I, ‘and you must not think that the Americans

are in general more selfish than other men. I think that the opposite

is the case, and that nowhere on earth, not even among the Athenians,

is there so much fellow-feeling and willingness to help combined with

so much competitiveness and so great a desire to excel in contests.

No, the number is the symbol _n_, or whatever you choose that denotes

the greatest quantity. For they pay a most special and devout worship

to a strange god whom they call Progress, and whose will they declare

it to be that there shall be made as great a number as possible of all

objects that men make, but principally of the machines that are called

“autos” or “cars,” which move men quickly from place to place.’

‘It is often a fine thing to go quickly from place to place,’ said

Lysis.

‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and in addition the control of these machines

gives great joy to the Americans. So that it may well happen that they

will live altogether in their cars. For at present they must endeavour

to find some place in the city where they can leave their car while

they go to an office, and he who is successful in doing this is said to

have parked his car, and is held in honour. And as among many peoples

a youth is not granted the dignity of manhood until he has slain an

enemy, so among the Americans must he first prove himself by parking a

car.’

‘They would become men sooner if theirs was the old test of slaying a

man, would they not?’ said Lysis, ‘for that requires but little skill

in controlling cars and a stout heart is alone sufficient.’

‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and it is my belief that the present state of

affairs cannot endure and that to park will soon be beyond the wit of

any save a true philosopher, who will guard his place by his presence

upon it night and day. So did Diogenes preserve his claim to the spot

where he parked his tub. For the truth can be considered in any place,

as I observed to the traffic-policemen in New York, who objected to my

examination of Glaucon in Broadway. But for the ordinary Americans,

I think, there is no solution except the abolition of offices and

the transaction of all business in cars. They will equip their cars

as offices and drive from their homes to the market-place. These

car-offices will enjoy all the space that is at present filled with

buildings. When their cars are so fitted as to take all the papers of

their business, they can work freely on the journeys out and home,

dictating to their clerks as they go. Nor will it much surprise me if

the private home is abolished to give place to the residential car

so that the American soul may find a final happiness, and men may be

born in cars and live and wed and die in them, and be cremated in the

engine, without ever having to put a foot on the ground. And so will

arise a new race to take the place of the centaurs of old. For, as the

centaurs were half men and half horses, so will these be half men and

half motor-cars. And it would seem that of such a race the natural

sustenance would be alcohol. So, at least, the future appears to me, or

do you not think so, Agathon?’

‘No’, he said.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘you may be right. It may happen that everybody

will be run over in the next few years, which will disprove all our

prophecies and speculations.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is much more likely.’

‘But I think,’ I continued, ‘that we will say that whether or not the

Americans remain in their cars, we for our part will have nothing to do

with them, but rather regard them as a vexatious interruption of right

living, and in particular as a great distraction in the search for

truth. And we will refuse to sit ourselves down as the Americans love

to do and start the machinery and follow whithersoever the car leads.

For do you notice how we have wandered out of our course, as generally

happens with these machines, and have quite forgotten the original

thread of our discourse and the question why the Americans worship this

strange god Progress, making an incantation of the name and chanting it

as if it were an explanation of the way they spend their lives?’

‘Well, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘most gods are strange, and if they

were not strange we should be doubtful if they were gods.’

‘True,’ I said, ‘but there is a strangeness which helps the divine

part of the soul and a strangeness which oppresses it. If we consider

the past fortunes of America we shall see how the worship of theirs

grew up. And, to begin with, are not the Americans right when they say

that theirs is a great country?’

‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘it is certainly vast.’

‘And rich in the wealth of its agriculture and minerals and so offering

a fair field for endeavour and great rewards for enterprise and skill?’

‘Assuredly,’ he said.

‘Then we must remember that the Americans are for the most part the

descendants of those who left Europe as poor men. And this is true

whether we are considering those original Americans of three hundred

years ago, or those who went there within the last century, after the

others had freed themselves from the tyrant George.’

‘Was this George a heavy tyrant?’ asked Lysis, ‘for tyrant is a harsh

name, and I have read that the English themselves were always well

pleased with him.’

‘I must confess,’ I said, ‘that he does not appeal much to me. Few

men have less resembled the philosopher King. It is plain that reason

was weak in his soul, and that he was narrow and obstinate and full

of craftiness, and that the English only loved him as a check upon

their lesser overlords and as the chief of their nation in their wars

with the French, which continued all his reign. And though he did not

actually oppress the Americans it was not of advantage to them to be

his subjects, nor a thing to which they had of necessity to submit.’

Here Lysis looked up, and said: ‘Tell me, Socrates, do you think they

regret it now, and that they will soon return to their allegiance to

King George’s house, for an English lady told me that it would happen

very quickly, the revolt having ended in the muddle America is in now.’

‘That word “muddle” is a favourite with the English,’ said Agathon.

‘And rightly,’ said I, ‘since our words are to designate the things

among which we live. I know it is a common view among the English

that the Americans will abandon this attempt of theirs to found a new

country, and that after this present President Coolidge they will not

elect another, but will all pack up and return to the countries from

which they originally came, regretting the increasingly disastrous

experiment and going back meekly to their respective kings and rulers,

and leaving America to the Red Indians and the Buffalos, whose

political life runs more easily. But, for my part, I reject this

opinion, and believe that the Americans will persevere.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Agathon.

‘And so it is important to consider this religious view of theirs about

Progress. I said that most of the Americans went there in the last

hundred years and found abundant rewards for work. The great need of

everybody was that the total wealth should be increased and the country

rendered fruitful, or in their phrase “opened up.” This real occupation

of America was the great and absorbing business of the Americans, who

were not troubled with strong foreign enemies. Their ablest citizens

devoted themselves to the pursuit of wealth, and received the public

admiration because in general, at that time, the man who enriched

himself enriched also everyone else. We must remember that the

Americans came from countries where there was a ruling caste to which

they did not belong, and from the first they so framed the constitution

that it should be clear that the ministers were the servants of the

people. While the independence was new and precarious, interest and

prestige still followed those who transacted the business of the

people, but when the novelty had vanished the attention of everybody

was turned to developing the estate they had won. No one was willing to

be a minister without the wealth and dignity of European rulers, and

political life attracted not the best but the less successful and able

of the community, and ceased to fire the ambition of the young. For the

life of the country was altogether in its economic development and not

in its political affairs.’

Then Agathon said: ‘And should you not also say that political life was

made harder in America than elsewhere?’

‘Assuredly, we should,’ I answered, ‘for the truth is that this same

worship of size and numbers that we spoke of before has nowhere hurt

the Americans more than in the ordering of their political life. Do you

remember, Lysis, hearing of a discussion over the ideal State and how

many men it was settled should form the State, and what was the number

beyond which it was unsafe for a State to grow?’

‘Five thousand and forty,’ he said, ‘is the figure Plato gives.’

‘And will it surprise you to learn that the Americans considerably

exceed that figure?’

‘I had suspected as much,’ he replied, ‘from the crowds of them that

visit Athens, for they must leave some of their number behind to

hold the country, and there must be very many thousands of them to

provide all those audiences for Xantippe. And, after all, nobody ever

quite does what Plato says, not even when he makes you, Socrates, the

mouthpiece of his views. I will guess two hundred thousand.’

‘And what will you say when I tell you that you are yet short of the

real number, and that, not to make a long story, the Americans are far

more plentiful than the subjects of the Great King himself? There are

more than one hundred million Americans.’

After a long pause, Phaelon said rather faintly: ‘Why, Socrates?’

‘That,’ I answered, ‘is known only to the Gods, whose ways are not the

ways of mortals, but certainly they have made this enormous number of

Americans and have not stopped yet.’

‘No wonder so many of them come to Europe,’ said Lysis.

‘But listen,’ I said, ‘for the most extraordinary thing is yet to come.

What will you think of such people when I tell you that they endeavour

to live all under one government and to share one Assembly?’

‘Socrates,’ said Lysis, sitting up and looking me straight in the face,

‘I do not believe you.’