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.
[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]
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’ (Rep.
vi. 498 D), 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’ (Rep. ix.
592 B).
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 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.
[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]
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.
[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]
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 (Rep. i. 347 C).
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.
[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]
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. (Cp. Thucyd. vi. 16.)
[Sidenote: _The true office of the poet._]
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 commonplaces 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 (Rep. iii. 401).
[Sidenote: _The true office of the poet._]
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 (504 A); that it should make provision for the soul’s highest
interest (501 C); that it should be pursued only with a view to ‘the
improvement of the citizens’ (502, 503). He ministers to the weaker side
of human nature (Rep. x. 603-605); 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?
[Sidenote: _The triumph of right and truth._]
‘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’ (512 E). Plato
does not say that God will order all things for the best (cp. Phaedo,
97 C), 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’ (Rep. vi. 498 D). 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.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Virtue indifferent to reward._]
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
(cp. Rep. ii. 361 ff.). 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.
_The Myths of Plato._
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]
The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are four
longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus (244-256), Phaedo (110-115),
Gorgias (523-527), and Republic (x. 614-621). That in the Republic is
the most elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths,
namely those contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic,
relate to the destiny of human souls in a future life. The magnificent
myth in the Phaedrus treats of the immortality, or rather the eternity
of the soul, in which is included a former as well as a future state
of existence. To these may be added, (1) the myth, or rather fable,
occurring in the Statesman (268-274), in which the life of innocence is
contrasted with the ordinary life of man and the consciousness of evil:
(2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history, which
is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus (21-26) and continued in
the Critias: (3) the much less artistic fiction of the foundation of
the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface to the Laws (iii.
702), but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful but rather
artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his rhetorical
manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him (320-328): (5) the
speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus (231-234), which is a parody of
the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of
it (237-241). To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers,
and (7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus (259 and
274-5): (8) the parable of the Cave (Rep. vii. _ad init._), in which
the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees
of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are
represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Rep.
iii. 414; cp. Laws ii. 664), in which by the adaptation of an old
tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the myth of
Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym. 189: (11) the
parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Rep.
vi. 488), in which is represented the relation of the better part of
the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12) the
ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging
only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that
he is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gorg. 511):
(13) the treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves
by their apprentices,—a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to
illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws
iv. 720). There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them
extend over several pages, appearing and reappearing at intervals: such
as the bees stinging and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth
Book of the Republic (554), who are generated in the transition from
timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the
idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic
(508-9): the composite animal, having the form of a man, but containing
under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Rep. ix. 588-9):
the great beast (vi. 493), i. e. the populace: and the wild beast within
us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out (ix. 571):
the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to
the dishonoured maiden (vi. 495-6), and of the tyrant to the parricide,
who ‘beats his father, having first taken away his arms’ (viii. 569):
the dog, who is your only philosopher (ii. 376 B): the grotesque and
rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws
vi. 752), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias (509 D): the
argument personified as veiling her face (Rep. vi. 503 A), as engaged in
a chase (iv. 427 C), as breaking upon us in a first, second and third
wave (v. 457 C, 472 A, 473 C):—on these figures of speech the changes are
rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or
continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the
Theaetetus (149 ff.), of the midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only
exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the
number of the state (Rep. viii. 546), or the numerical interval which
separates king from tyrant (ix. 587-8), should not be forgotten.
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue,
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The
argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is
no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]
The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological,
and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato
that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a glorified
earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the fishes live
in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which they
put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth
which we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from
the world above, and is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the
shores of the ocean are to us. A part of the myth consists of description
of the interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity of introducing
several mythological names and of providing places of torment for the
wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits
beneath the earth are spoken of as souls only, yet they retain a sort
of shadowy form when they cry for mercy on the shores of the lake; and
the philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body. All the three
myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for repentant
sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and very bad.
It is a natural reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two
extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the generality
of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In
the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the
Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds,
and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners,
who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious
crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of hardly
curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach the shores
of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for mercy; which
if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps
any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent
with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology;
abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into
realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim’s Progress of
Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the incidents
of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings:
they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and
with other fragments of Greek tradition.
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than
either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have,
and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It
will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which
Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by
the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often
made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say
in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes
in their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the
world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame
others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must
acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in
human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That
men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a
poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men
who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest.
We should like to know what became of the infants ‘dying almost as soon
as they were born’ (x. 615 B), but Plato only raises, without satisfying,
our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at
either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out into
the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven, the
voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which have an
indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the
inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is
at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of
Judgment.
[Sidenote: _The myth in the Phaedrus._]
The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental,
or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to
the mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent
they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything like them in
other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they are
mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion
in all ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and
graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is only
affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life. Plato seems
to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human knowledge;
or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing on the
outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style; a few
touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it present to us.
They have also a kind of authority gained by the employment of sacred and
familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words of Scripture, put
together in any form and applied to any subject, have a power of their
own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology; and they are also a
reform of mythology. The moral of them may be summed up in a word or two:
After death the Judgment; and ‘there is some better thing remaining for
the good than for the evil.’
All literature gathers into itself many elements of the past: for
example, the tale of the earth-born men in the Republic appears at
first sight to be an extravagant fancy, but it is restored to propriety
when we remember that it is based on a legendary belief. The art of
making stories of ghosts and apparitions credible is said to consist
in the manner of telling them. The effect is gained by many literary
and conversational devices, such as the previous raising of curiosity,
the mention of little circumstances, simplicity, picturesqueness, the
naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is possessed by Plato
in a degree which has never been equalled.
The myth in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been
already described, but is of a different character. It treats of a former
rather than of a future life. It represents the conflict of reason
aided by passion or righteous indignation on the one hand, and of the
animal lusts and instincts on the other. The soul of man has followed
the company of some god, and seen truth in the form of the universal
before it was born in this world. Our present life is the result of the
struggle which was then carried on. This world is relative to a former
world, as it is often projected into a future. We ask the question, Where
were men before birth? as we likewise enquire, What will become of them
after death? The first question is unfamiliar to us, and therefore seems
to be unnatural; but if we survey the whole human race, it has been as
influential and as widely spread as the other. In the Phaedrus it is
really a figure of speech in which the ‘spiritual combat’ of this life
is represented. The majesty and power of the whole passage—especially of
what may be called the theme or proem (beginning ‘The mind through all
her being is immortal’)—can only be rendered very inadequately in another
language.
[Sidenote: _The myth in the Statesman._]
The myth in the Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in
which men were born of the earth, and by the reversal of the earth’s
motion had their lives reversed and were restored to youth and beauty:
the dead came to life, the old grew middle-aged, and the middle-aged
young; the youth became a child, the child an infant, the infant vanished
into the earth. The connection between the reversal of the earth’s motion
and the reversal of human life is of course verbal only, yet Plato, like
theologians in other ages, argues from the consistency of the tale to its
truth. The new order of the world was immediately under the government
of God; it was a state of innocence in which men had neither wants nor
cares, in which the earth brought forth all things spontaneously, and God
was to man what man now is to the animals. There were no great estates,
or families, or private possessions, nor any traditions of the past,
because men were all born out of the earth. This is what Plato calls the
‘reign of Cronos;’ and in like manner he connects the reversal of the
earth’s motion with some legend of which he himself was probably the
inventor.
The question is then asked, under which of these two cycles of existence
was man the happier,—under that of Cronos, which was a state of
innocence, or that of Zeus, which is our ordinary life? For a while Plato
balances the two sides of the serious controversy, which he has suggested
in a figure. The answer depends on another question: What use did the
children of Cronos make of their time? They had boundless leisure and the
faculty of discoursing, not only with one another, but with the animals.
Did they employ these advantages with a view to philosophy, gathering
from every nature some addition to their store of knowledge? or, Did
they pass their time in eating and drinking and telling stories to one
another and to the beasts?—in either case there would be no difficulty in
answering. But then, as Plato rather mischievously adds, ‘Nobody knows
what they did,’ and therefore the doubt must remain undetermined.
[Sidenote: _Transition in Plato from the abstract to the concrete._]
To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another natural
convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is once
more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to the
government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws are
slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a theocratical.
In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the garb of
mythology. He suggests several curious and important thoughts, such as
the possibility of a state of innocence, the existence of a world without
traditions, and the difference between human and divine government. He
has also carried a step further his speculations concerning the abolition
of the family and of property, which he supposes to have no place among
the children of Cronos any more than in the ideal state.
* * * * *
It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract to
the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is the expression of the
seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region between them. A great
writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes remaining within
the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a wider range
and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same sentence he
may employ both modes of speech not improperly or inharmoniously. It is
useless to criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the
whole is to create a picture not such as can be painted on canvas, but
which is full of life and meaning to the reader. A poem may be contained
in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent images; or
half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often
the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the
other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked
out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and
philosophy we necessarily include both ‘the moral law within and the
starry heaven above,’ and pass from one to the other (cp. for examples
Psalm xviii. 1-25, xix. 1-9, etc.). Whether such a use of language is
puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and
the familiarity of the associations employed.
[Sidenote: _The myths not written, but spoken words._]
In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation
is not forgotten: they are spoken, not written words, stories which
are told to a living audience, and so well told that we are more than
half-inclined to believe them (cp. Phaedrus 274). As in conversation
too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is
quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be
in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The descriptions of
Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in any modern
writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can do
with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed ‘more plastic
than wax’ (Rep. ix. 588 D). We are in the habit of opposing speech and
writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in
which they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest
truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of
daily life are not overlooked.