Chapter XXXVII · REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON THE PLATONIC COMMONWEALTH. (continued 2)

Principle of Aristotle — That every citizen belongs to the city, not to himself — applied by Plato to women.

Aristotle, when speaking about the citizens of his own ideal commonwealth (his citizens form nearly the same numerical proportion of the whole population, as the Platonic Guardians), tells us — “Since the End for which the entire City exists is One, it is obviously necessary that the education of all the citizens should be one and the same, and that the care of such education should be a public duty — not left in private hands as it is now, for a man to teach his children what he thinks fit. Public exigencies must be provided for by public training. Moreover, we ought not to regard any of the citizens as belonging to himself, but all of them as belonging to the city: for each is a part of the city: and nature prescribes that the care of each part shall be regulated with a view to the care of the whole.”135

The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to him with Plato, and lies at the bottom of the schemes of polity imagined by both. Each has his own way of applying it.

Plato clearly perceives that it cannot be applied with consistency and effect, unless women are brought under its application as well as men. And to a great extent, Aristotle holds the same opinion too. While commending the Spartan principle, that the character of the citizen must be formed and upheld by continued public training and discipline — Aristotle blames Lykurgus for leaving the women (that is, a numerical half of the city) without training or discipline; which omission produced (he says) very mischievous effects, especially in corrupting the character of the men. He pronounces this to be a serious fault, making the constitution inconsistent and self-contradictory, and indeed contrary to the intentions of Lykurgus himself; who had tried to bring the women under public discipline as well as the men, but was forced to desist by their strenuous opposition.136 Such remarks from Aristotle are the more remarkable, since it appears as matter of history, that the maidens at Sparta (though not the married women) did to a great extent go through gymnastic exercises along with the young men.137 These exercises, though almost a singular exception in Greece, must have appeared to Aristotle very insufficient. What amount or kind of regulation he himself would propose for women, he has not defined. In his own ideal commonwealth, he lays it down as alike essential for men and women to have their bodies trained and exercised so as to be adequate to the active duties of free persons (as contrasted with the harder preparation requisite for the athletic contests, which he disapproves), but he does not go into farther particulars.138 The regulations which he proposes, too, with reference to marriage generally and to the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, show, that he considered it an important part of the lawgiver’s duty to keep up by positive interference the physical condition both of males and females.139

In principle, therefore, Aristotle agrees with Plato,140 as to the propriety of comprehending women as well as men under public training and discipline: but he does not follow out the principle with the same consistency. He maintains the Platonic Commonwealth to be impossible.141

Aristotle declares the Platonic Commonwealth impossible — In what sense this is true.

If we go through the separate objections which Aristotle advances as justifying his verdict, we shall find them altogether inadequate for the purpose. He shows certain inconveniences and difficulties as belonging to it, — which are by no means all real, but which, even conceding them in full force, would have to be set against the objections admitted by himself to bear against other actual societies before we can determine whether they are sufficiently weighty to render the scheme to which they belong impossible. The Platonic commonwealth, and the Aristotelian commonwealth, are both of them impossible, in my judgment, for the same reason: that all the various communities of mankind exist under established customs, beliefs, and sentiments, in complete discordance with them: and that we cannot understand from whence the force is to come, tending and competent to generate either of these two new systematic projects. Both of them require a simultaneous production of many reciprocally adapted elements: both therefore require an express initiative force, exceptional and belonging to some peculiar crisis — something analogous to Zeus in Krete, and to Apollo at Sparta. This is alike true of both: though the Platonic Republic, departing more widely from received principles and sentiments than the Aristotelian, would of course require a more potent initiative.142 In the treatises of the two philosophers, each explains and vindicates the principles of his system, without including in the hypothesis any specification of a probable source from whence it was to acquire its first start. Where is the motive, operative, demiurgic force, ready to translate such an idea into reality?143 But if we assume that either of them had once begun, there is no reason why it might not have continued. The causes which first brought about the Spartan constitution and discipline must have been very peculiar, though we have no historical account what they were. At any rate they never occurred a second time; for no second Sparta was ever formed, in spite of the admiration inspired by the first. If Sparta had never been actually established, and if Aristotle had read a description of it as a mere project, he would probably have pronounced it impracticable:144 though when once brought into reality, it proved eminently durable. In like manner, the laws, customs, beliefs, and feelings, prevalent in Egypt, — which astonished so vehemently Herodotus and other observing Greeks — would have been declared to be impossible, if described simply in project: yet, when once established, they were found to last longer without change than those of other nations.

The real impossibility of the Platonic Commonwealth, arises from the fact that discordant sentiments are already established.

The Platonic project is submitted, however, not to impartial judges comparing different views on matters yet undetermined, but to hearers with a canon of criticism already fixed and anti-Platonic “animis consuetudine imbutis”. It appears impossible, because it contradicts sentiments conceived as fundamental and consecrated, respecting the sexual and family relations. The supposed impossibility is the mode of expressing strong disapprobation and repugnance: like that which Herodotus describes as manifested by the Greeks on one side and by the Indians on the other — when Darius, having asked each of them at what price they would consent to adopt the practice of the other respecting the mode of treating the bodies of deceased parents, was answered by a loud cry of horror at the mere proposition.145 The reasons offered to prove the Platonic project impossible, are principally founded upon the very sentiment above adverted to, and derive all their force from being associated with it. Such is the character of many among the Aristotelian objections.146 The real, and the truly forcible, objection consists in the sentiment itself. If that be deeply rooted in the mind, it is decisive. To those who feel thus, the Platonic project would be both intolerable and impossible.

Plato has strong feelings of right and wrong about sexual intercourse, but referring to different objects.

But we must recollect that it is these very sentiments which Plato impugns and declares to be inapplicable to his Guardians: so that an opponent who, not breaking off at once with the cry of horror uttered by the Indians to Darius, begins to discuss the question with him, is bound to forego objections and repugnances springing as corollaries from a basis avowedly denied. Plato has earnest feelings of right and wrong, in regard both to the functions of women and to the sexual intercourse: but his feelings dissent entirely from those of readers generally. That is right, in his opinion, which tends to keep up the excellence of the breed and the proper number of Guardians, as well as to ensure the exact and constant fulfilment of their mission: that is wrong, which tends to defeat or abridge such fulfilment, or to impair the breed, or to multiply the number beyond its proper limit. Of these ends the Rulers are the proper judges, not the individual person. All the Guardians are enjoined to leave the sexual power absolutely unexercised until the age of thirty for men, of twenty for women — and then only to exercise it under express sanction and authorisation, according as the Rulers may consider that children are needed to keep up the legitimate number.

Marriage is regarded as holy, and celebrated under solemn rites — all the more because both the ceremony is originated, and the couples selected, by the magistrates, for the most important public purpose: which being fulfilled, the marriage ceases and determines. It is not celebrated with a view to the couple themselves, still less with a view to establish any permanent exclusive attachment between them: which object Plato not only does not contemplate, but positively discountenances: on the same general principle as the Catholic Church forbids marriage to priests: because he believes that it will create within them motives and sentiments inconsistent with the due discharge of their public mission.

Different sentiment which would grow up in the Platonic Commonwealth respecting the sexual relations.

It is clear that among such a regiment as that which Plato describes in his Guardians, a sentiment would grow up, respecting the intercourse of the sexes, totally different from that which prevailed elsewhere around him. The Platonic restriction upon that intercourse up in the (until the ulterior limits of age) would be far more severe: but it would be applied with reference to different objects. Instead of being applied to enforce the exclusive consecration of one woman to one man, choosing each other or chosen by fathers, without any limit on the multiplication of children, — and without any attention to the maintenance or deterioration of the breed — it would be directed to the obtaining of the most perfect breed and of the appropriate number, leaving the Guardians, female as well as male, free from all permanent distracting influences to interfere with the discharge of their public duties. In appreciating the details of the Platonic community, we must look at it with reference to this form of sexual morality; which would generate in the Guardians an appreciation of details consistent with itself both as to the women and as to the children. The sentiment of obligation, of right and wrong, respecting the relations of the sexes, is everywhere very strong; but it does not everywhere attach to the same acts or objects. The important obligation for a woman never to show her face in public, which is held sacred through so large a portion of the Oriental world, is noway recognised in the Occidental: and in Plato’s time, when mankind were more disseminated among small independent communities, the divergence was yet greater than it is now. The Spartans were not induced, by the censures or mockery of persons in other Grecian cities,147 to suppress the gymnastic exercises practised by their maidens in conjunction with the young men: nor is Plato deterred by the ridicule or blame which others may express, from proclaiming his conviction, that the virtue of his female Guardians is the same as that of the male — consisting in the faithful performance of their duty as Guardians, after going through all the requisite training, gymnastic and musical. And he follows this up by the general declaration, one of the most emphatic in all his writings, “The best thing which is now said or ever has been said, is, that what is profitable is honourable — and what is hurtful, is base”.148

What Nature prescribes in regard to the relations of the two sexes — Direct contradiction between Plato and Aristotle.

Plato in truth reduces the distinction between the two sexes to its lowest terms: to the physical difference in regard to procreation — and to the general fact, that the female is every way weaker and inferior to the male; while yet, individually taken, many women are superior to many men, and both sexes are alike improvable by training. He maintains that this similarity of training and function is the real order of Nature, and that the opposite practice, which insists on a separation of life and functions between the sexes, is unnatural:149 which doctrine he partly enforces by the analogy of the two sexes in other animals.150 Aristotle disputes this reasoning altogether: declaring that Nature prescribes a separation of life and functions between the two sexes — that the relation of man to woman is that of superiority and command on one side, inferiority and obedience on the other, like the relation between father and child, master and slave, though with a difference less in degree — that virtue in a man, and virtue in a woman, are quite different, imposing diverse obligations.151 It shows how little stress can be laid on arguments based on the word Nature, when we see two such distinguished thinkers completely at issue as to the question, what Nature indicates, in this important case. Each of them decorates by that name the rule which he himself approves; whether actually realised anywhere, or merely recommended as a reform of something really existing. In this controversy, Aristotle had in his favour the actualities around him, against Plato: but Aristotle himself is far from always recognising experience and practice as authoritative interpreters of the dictates of Nature, as we may see by his own ideal commonwealth.

Opinion of Plato respecting the capacities of women, and the training proper for women, are maintained in the Leges, as well as in the Republic. Ancient legends harmonising with this opinion.

How strongly Plato was attached to his doctrines about the capacity of women — how unchanged his opinion continued about the mischief of separating the training and functions of the two sexes, and of confining women to indoor occupations, or to what he calls “a life of darkness and fear”152 — may be seen farther by his Treatise De Legibus. Although in that treatise he recedes (perforce and without retracting) from the principles of his Republic, so far as to admit separate properties and families for all his citizens — yet he still continues to enjoin public gymnastic and military training, for women and men alike: and he still opens, to both sexes alike, superintending social functions to a great extent, as well as the privilege of being honoured by public hymns after death, in case of distinguished merit.153 Respecting military matters, he speaks with peculiar earnestness. That women are perfectly capable of efficient military service, if properly trained, he proves not only by the ancient legends, but also by facts actual and contemporary, the known valour of the Scythian and Sarmatian women. Whatever doubts persons may have hitherto cherished (says Plato), this is now established matter of fact:154 the cowardice and impotence of women is not less disgraceful in itself than detrimental to the city, as robbing it of one-half of its possible force.155 He complains bitterly of the repugnance felt even to the discussion of this proposition.156 Most undoubtedly, there were ancient legends which tended much to countenance his opinion. The warlike Amazons, daughters of Arês, were among the most formidable forces that had ever appeared on earth; they had shown their power once by invading Attica and bringing such peril on Athens, that it required all the energy of the great Athenian hero Theseus to repel them. We must remember that these stories were not only familiarised to the public eye in conspicuous painting and sculpture, but were also fully believed as matters of past history.157 Moreover the Goddess Athênê, patroness of Athens, was the very impersonation of intelligent terror-striking might — constraining and subduing Arês158 himself: the Goddess Enŷo presided over war, no less than the God Arês:159 lastly Artemis, though making war only on wild beasts, was hardly less formidable in her way — indefatigable as well as rapid in her movements and unerring with her bow, as Athênê was irresistible with her spear. Here were abundant examples in Grecian legend, to embolden Plato in his affirmations respecting the capacity of the female sex for warlike enterprise and laborious endurance.

In a Commonwealth like the Platonic, the influence of Aphroditê would probably have been reduced to a minimum.

The two Goddesses, Athênê and Artemis, were among the few altogether insensible to amorous influences and to the inspirations of Aphroditê: who is the object of contemptuous sarcasm on the part of Athênê, and of repulsive antipathy on the part of Artemis.160 This may supply an illustration for the Republic of Plato. As far as one can guess what the effect of his institutions would have been, it is probable that the influence of Aphroditê would have been at its minimum among his Guardians of both sexes: as it was presented in the warlike dramas of Æschylus.161 There would have been everything to deaden it, with an entire absence of all provocatives. The muscular development, but rough and unadorned bodies, of females —

Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus Pernicis uxor Apuli — (HOR. Epod. ii. 41-42).

the indiscriminate companionship, with perfect identity of treatment and manners, between the two sexes from the earliest infancy — the training of both together for the same public duties, the constant occupation of both throughout life in the performance of those duties, under unceasing official supervision — the strict regulation of exercise and diet, together with the monastic censorship on all poetry and literature — the self-restraint, equal and universal, enforced as the characteristic feature and pride of the regiment, and seconded by the jealous espionage of all over all, the more potent because privacy was unknown — such an assemblage of circumstances would do as much as circumstances could do to starve the sexual appetite, to prevent it from becoming the root of emotional or imaginative associations, and to place it under the full controul of the lawgiver for purposes altogether public. Such was probably Plato’s intention: since he more generally regards the appetites as enemies to be combated and extirpated so far as practicable — rather than as sources of pleasure, yet liable to accompaniments of pain, requiring to be regulated so as to exclude the latter and retain the former.

Other purposes of Plato — limitation of number of Guardians — common to Aristotle also.

The public purposes, with a view to which Plato sought to controul the sexual appetite in his Guardians, were three, as I have already stated. 1. To obtain from each of them individually, faithful performance of the public duties, and observance of the limits, prescribed by his system. 2. To ensure the best and purest breed. 3. To maintain unaltered the same total number, without excess or deficiency.

Law of population expounded by Malthus — Three distinct checks to population — alternative open between preventive and positive.

The first of these three purposes is peculiar to the Platonic system. The two last are not peculiar to it. Aristotle recognises them162 as ends, no less than Plato, though he does not approve Plato’s means for attaining them. In reference to the limitation of number, Aristotle is even more pronounced than Plato. The great evil of over-population forced itself upon these philosophers; living as both of them did among small communities, each with its narrow area hedged in by others — each liable to intestine dispute, sometimes caused, always aggravated, by the presence of large families and numerous poor freemen — and each importing bought slaves as labourers. To obtain for their community the quickest possible increase in aggregate wealth and population, was an end which they did not account either desirable or commendable. The stationary state, far from appearing repulsive or discouraging, was what they looked upon as the best arrangement163 of things. A mixed number of lots of land, indivisible and inalienable, is the first principle of the Platonic community in the treatise De Legibus. Not to encourage wealth, but to avert, as far as possible, the evils of poverty and dependence, and to restrain within narrow limits the proportion of the population which suffered those evils — was considered by Plato and Aristotle to be among the gravest problems for the solution of the statesman.164 Consistent with these conditions, essential to security and tranquillity, whatever the form of government might be, there was only room for the free population then existing: not always for that (seeing that the proportion of poor citizens was often uncomfortably great), and never for any sensible increase above that. If all the children were born and brought up, that it was possible for adult couples to produce, a fearful aggravation of poverty, with all its accompanying public troubles and sufferings, would have been inevitable.165 Accordingly both Plato (for the Guardians in the Republic) and Aristotle agree in opinion that a limit must be fixed upon the number of children which each couple is permitted to introduce. If any objector had argued that each couple, by going through the solemnity of marriage, acquired a natural right to produce as many children as they could, and that others were under a natural obligation to support those children — both philosophers would have denied the plea altogether. But they went even further. They considered procreation as a duty which each citizen owed to the public, in order that the total of citizens might not fall below the proper minimum — yet as a duty which required controul, in order that the total might not rise above the proper maximum.166 Hence they did not even admit the right of each couple to produce as many children as their private means could support. They thought it necessary to impose a limit on the number of children in every family, binding equally on rich and poor: the number prescribed might be varied from time to time, as circumstances indicated. As the community could not safely admit more than a certain aggregate of births, these philosophers commanded all couples indiscriminately, the rich not excepted, to shape their conduct with a view to that imperative necessity.

Plato in his Republic (as I have already mentioned) assumes for his Archons the privilege of selecting (by a pretended sortition) the couples through whom the legitimate amount of breeding shall be accomplished: in the semi-Platonic commonwealth (De Legibus), he leaves the choice free, but prescribes the limits of age, rendering marriage a peremptory duty between twenty and thirty-five years of age, and adding some emphatic exhortations, though not peremptory enactments, respecting the principles which ought to guide individual choice.167 In the same manner too he deals with procreation: recognising the necessity of imposing a limit on individual discretion, yet not naming that limit by law, but leaving it to be enforced according to circumstances by the magistrates: who (he says), by advice, praise, and censure, can apply either effective restraints on procreation, or encouragements if the case requires.168 Aristotle blames this guarantee as insufficient: he feels so strongly the necessity of limiting procreation, that he is not satisfied unless a proper limit be imposed by positive law. Unless such a result be made thoroughly sure (he says), all other measures of lawgivers for equalising properties, or averting poverty and the discontents growing out of it — must fail in effect.169 Aristotle also lays it down as a part of the duty of the lawgiver to take care that the bodies of the children brought up shall be as good as possible: hence he prescribes the ages proper for marriage, and the age after which no parents are to produce any more children.170

The paramount necessity of limiting the number of children born in each family, here enforced by Plato and Aristotle, rests upon that great social fact which Malthus so instructively expounded at the close of the last century. Malthus, enquiring specially into the law of population, showed upon what conditions the increase of population depends, and what were the causes constantly at work to hold it back — checks to population. He ranged these causes under three different heads, though the two last are multiform in detail. 1. Moral or prudential restraint — the preventive check. 2. Vice, and 3. Misery — the two positive checks. He farther showed that though the aggregate repressive effect of these three causes is infallible and inevitable, determined by the circumstances of each given society — yet that mankind might exercise an option through which of the three the check should be applied: that the effect of the two last causes was in inverse proportion to that of the first — in other words, that the less there was of prudential restraint limiting the number of births, the more there must be of vice or misery, under some of their thousand forms, to shorten the lives of many of the children born — and é converso, the more there was of prudential restraint, the less would be the operation of the other checks tending to shorten life.

Plato and Aristotle saw the same law as Malthus, but arranged the facts under a different point of view.

Three distinct facts — preventive restraint, vice, and misery — having nothing else in common, are arranged under one general head by Malthus, in consequence of the one single common property which they possess — that of operating as checks to population. To him, that one common property was the most important of all, and the most fit to be singled out as the groundwork of classification, having reference to the subject of his enquiry. But Plato and Aristotle looked at the subject in a different point of view. They had present to their minds the same three facts, and the tendency of the first to avert or abate the second and third: but as they were not investigating the law of population, they had nothing to call their attention to the one common property of the three. They did not regard vice and misery as causes tending to keep down population, but as being in themselves evils; enemies among the worst which the lawgiver had to encounter, in his efforts to establish a good political and social condition — and enemies which he could never successfully encounter, without regulating the number of births. Such regulation they considered as an essential tutelary measure to keep out disastrous poverty. The inverse proportion, between regulated or unregulated number of births on the one hand, and diminution or increase of poverty on the other, was seen as clearly by Aristotle and Plato as by Malthus.

Regulations of Plato and Aristotle as to number of births and newborn children.

But these two Greek philosophers ordain something yet more remarkable. Having prescribed both the age of marriage and the number of permitted births, so as to ensure both vigorous citizens and a total compatible with the absence of corrupting poverty — they direct what shall be done if the result does not correspond to their orders. Plato in his Republic (as I have already stated) commands that all the children born to his wedded couples shall be immediately consigned to the care of public nurses — that the offspring of the well-constituted parents shall be brought up, that of the ill-constituted parents not brought up — and that no children born of parents after the legitimate age shall be brought up.171 Aristotle forbids the exposure of children, wherever the habits of the community are adverse to it: but if after any married couple have had the number of children allowed by law, the wife should again become pregnant, he directs that abortion shall be procured before the commencement of life or sense in the fœtus: after such commencement, he pronounces abortion to be wrong.172 On another point Plato and Aristotle agree: both of them command that no child born crippled or deformed shall be brought up:173 a practice actually adopted at Sparta under the Lykurgean institutions, and even carried farther, since no child was allowed to be brought up until it had been inspected and approved by the public nurses.174

Such regulations disapproved and forbidden by modern sentiment — Variability of ethical sentiment as to objects approved or disapproved.

We here find both these philosophers not merely permitting, but enjoining — and the Spartan legislation, more admired than any in Greece, systematically realising — practices which modern sentiment repudiates and punishes. Nothing can more strikingly illustrate — what Plato and Aristotle have themselves repeatedly observed175 — how variable and indeterminate is the matter of ethical sentiment, in different ages and communities, while the form of ethical sentiment is the same universally: how all men agree subjectively, in that which they feel — disapprobation and hatred of wrong and vice, approbation and esteem of right and virtue — yet how much they differ objectively, as to the acts or persons which they designate by these names and towards which their feelings are directed. It is with these emotions as with the other emotions of human nature: all men are moved in the same manner, though in different degree, by love and hatred — hope and fear — desire and aversion — sympathy and antipathy — the emotions of the beautiful, the sublime, the ludicrous: but when we compare the objects, acts, or persons, which so move them, we find only a very partial agreement, amidst wide discrepancy and occasionally strong opposition.176 The present case is one of the strongest opposition. Practices now abhorred as wrong, are here directly commanded by Plato and Aristotle, the two greatest authorities of the Hellenic world: men differing on many points from each other, but agreeing in this: men not only of lofty personal character, but also of first-rate intellectual force, in whom the ideas of virtue and vice had been as much developed by reflection as they ever have been in any mind: lastly, men who are extolled by the commentators as the champions of religion and sound morality, against what are styled the unprincipled cavils of the Sophists.

Plato and Aristotle required subordination of impulse to reason and duty — they applied this to the procreative impulse, as to others.

It is, in my judgment, both curious and interesting to study the manner in which these two illustrious men — Plato and Aristotle — dealt with the problem of population. Grave as that problem is in all times, it was peculiarly grave among the small republics of antiquity. Neither of them were disposed to ignore or overlook it: nor to impute to other causes the consequences which it produces: nor to treat as indifferent the question, whether poor couples had a greater or less family, to share subsistence already scanty for themselves. Still less were these philosophers disposed to sanction the short-sighted policy of some Hellenic statesmen, who under a mistaken view of increasing the power of the state, proclaimed encouragement and premium simply to the multiplication of male births, without any regard to the comfort and means of families. Both Plato and Aristotle saw plainly, that a married couple, by multiplying their offspring, produced serious effects not merely upon their own happiness but upon that of others besides: up to a certain limit, for good — beyond that limit, for evil. Hence they laid it down, that procreation ought to be a rational and advised act, governed by a forecast of those consequences — not a casual and unforeseen result of present impulse. The same preponderance of reason over impulse as they prescribed in other cases, they endeavoured to enforce in this. They regarded it too, not simply as a branch of prudence, but as a branch of duty; a debt due by each citizen to others and to the commonwealth. It was the main purpose of their elaborate political schemes, to produce a steady habit and course of virtue in all the citizens: and they considered every one as greatly deficient in virtue, who refused to look forward to the consequences of his own procreative acts — thereby contributing to bring upon the state an aggravated measure of poverty, which was the sure parent of discord, sedition, and crime. That the rate of total increase should not be so great as to produce these last-mentioned effects — and that the limit of virtue and prudence should be made operative on all the separate families — was in their judgment one of the most important cares of the lawgiver.

We ought to disengage this general drift and purpose, common both to Plato and Aristotle, on the subject of population, from the various means — partly objectionable, partly impossible to be enforced — whereby they intended to carry the purpose into effect.

Training of the few select philosophers to act as chiefs.

I pass from Plato’s picture of the entire regiment of Guardians, under the regulations above described — to his description of the special training whereby the few most distinguished persons in the regiment (male or female, as the case may be) are to be improved, tested, and exalted to the capacity of philosophers: qualified to act as Rulers or Chiefs.177 These are the two marked peculiarities of Plato’s Republic. The Guardians are admirable as instruments, but have no initiative of their own: we have now to find the chiefs from whom they will receive it. How are philosophers to be formed? None but a chosen Few have the precious gold born with them, empowering them to attain this elevation. To those Few, if properly trained, the privilege and right to exercise command belongs, by Nature. For the rest, obedience is the duty prescribed by Nature.178

Comprehensive curriculum for aspirants to philosophy — consummation by means of Dialectic.

I have already given, in Chap. XXXV., a short summary of the peculiar scientific training which Sokrates prescribes for ripening these heroic aspirants into complete philosophers. They pass years of intellectual labour, all by their own spontaneous impulse, over and above the full training of Guardians. They study Arithmetic, Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy, Acoustics, &c., until the age of thirty: they then continue in the exercise of Dialectic, with all the test of question and answer, for five years longer: after which they enter upon the duties of practice and administration, succeeding ultimately to the position of chiefs if found competent. It is assumed that this long course of study, consummated by Dialectic, has operated within them that great mental revolution which Plato calls, turning the eye from the shadows in the cave to the realities of clear daylight: that they will no longer be absorbed in the sensible world or in passing phenomena, but will become familiar with the unchangeable Ideas or Forms of the Intelligible world, knowable only by intellectual intuition. Reason has with them been exalted to its highest power: not only strengthening them to surmount all intellectual difficulties and to deal with the most complicated conjectures of practice — but also ennobling their dispositions, so as to overcome all the disturbing temptations and narrow misguiding prejudices inherent in the unregenerate man. Upon the perfection of character, emotional and intellectual, imparted to these few philosophers, depends the Platonic Commonwealth.

Valuable remarks on the effects of these preparatory studies.

The remarks made by Plato on the effect of this preparatory curriculum, and on the various studies composing it, are highly interesting and instructive — even when they cannot be defended as exact. Much of what he so eloquently enunciates respecting philosophy and the philosophical character, is in fact just and profound, whatever view we may take as to Universals: whether we regard them (like Plato) as the only Real Entia, cognizable by the mental eye, and radically disparate from particulars — or whether we hold them to be only general Concepts, abstracted and generalised more or less exactly from particulars. The remarks made by Plato on the educational effect produced by Arithmetic and the other studies, are valuable and suggestive. Even the discredit which he throws on observations of fact, in Astronomy and Acoustics — the great antithesis between him and modern times — is useful as enabling us to enter into his point of view.179

Differences between the Republic and other dialogues — no mention of reminiscence nor of the Elenchus.

But his point of view in the Republic differs materially from that which we read in other dialogues: especially in two ways.

First, The scientific and long-continued Quadrivium, through which Plato here conducts the student to philosophy, is very different from the road to philosophy as indicated elsewhere. Nothing is here said about reminiscence — which in the Menon, Phædon, Phædrus, and elsewhere, stands in the foreground of his theory, as the engine for reviving in the mind Forms or Ideas. With these Forms it had been familiar during a prior state of existence, but they had become buried under the sensible impressions arising from its conjunction with the body. Nor do we find in the Republic any mention of that electric shock of the negative Elenchus, which (in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and several other dialogues) is declared indispensable for stirring up the natural mind not merely from ignorance and torpor, but even from a state positively distempered — the false persuasion of knowledge.

Different view taken by Plato in the Republic about Dialectic — and different place assigned to it.

Secondly, following out this last observation, we perceive another discrepancy yet more striking, in the directions given by Plato respecting the study of Dialectic. He prescribes that it shall upon no account be taught to young men: and that it shall come last of all in teaching, only after the full preceding Quadrivium. He censures severely the prevalent practice of applying it to young men, as pregnant with mischief. Young men (he says) brought up in certain opinions inculcated by the lawgiver, as to what is just and honourable, are interrogated on these subjects, and have questions put to them. When asked What is the just and the honourable, they reply in the manner which they have learnt from authority: but this reply, being exposed to farther interrogatories, is shown to be untenable and inconsistent, such as they cannot defend to their own satisfaction. Hence they lose all respect for the established ethical creed, which however stands opposed in their minds to the seductions of immediate enjoyment: yet they acquire no new or better conviction in its place. Instead of following an established law, they thus come to live without any law.180 Besides, young men when initiated in dialectic debate, take great delight in the process, as a means of exposing and puzzling the respondent. Copying the skilful interrogators whom they have found themselves unable to answer, they interrogate others in their turn, dispute everything, and pride themselves on exhibiting all the negative force of the Elenchus. Instead of employing dialectic debate for the discovery of truth, they use it merely as a disputatious pastime, and thus bring themselves as well as philosophy into discredit.181

Accordingly, we must not admit (says Plato) either young men, or men of ordinary untrained minds, to dialectic debate. We must admit none but mature persons, of sedate disposition, properly prepared: who will employ it not for mere disputation, but for the investigation of truth.182

Contradiction with the spirit of other dialogues — Parmenidês, &c.

Now the doctrine thus proclaimed, with the grounds upon which it rests — That dialectic debate is unsuitable and prejudicial to young men — distinctly contradict both the principles laid down by himself elsewhere, and the frequent indications of his own dialogues: not to mention the practice of Sokrates as described by Xenophon. In the Platonic Parmenidês, and Theætêtus, the season of youth is expressly pronounced to be that in which dialectic exercise is not merely appropriate, but indispensable to the subsequent attainment of truth.183 Moreover, Plato puts into the mouth of Parmenides a specimen intentionally given to represent that dialectic exercise which will be profitable to youth. The specimen is one full of perplexing, though ingenious, subtleties: ending in establishing, by different trains of reasoning, the affirmative, as well as the negative, of several distinct conclusions. Not only it supplies no new positive certainty, but it appears to render any such consummation more distant and less attainable than ever.184 It is therefore eminently open to the censure which Plato pronounces, in the passage just cited from his Republic, against dialectic as addressed to young men. The like remark may be made upon the numerous other dialogues (though less extreme in negative subtlety than the Parmenidês), wherein the Platonic Sokrates interrogates youths (or interrogates others, in the presence of youths) without any positive result: as in the Theætêtus, Charmidês, Lysis, Alkibiadês, Hippias, &c., to which we may add the conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydemus and others.185

Contradiction with the character and declarations of Sokrates.

In fact, the Platonic Sokrates expressly proclaims himself (in the Apology as well as in the other dialogues just named) to be ignorant and incapable of teaching anything. His mission was to expose the ignorance of those, who fancy that they know without really knowing: he taught no one anything, but he cross-examined every one who would submit to it, before all the world, and in a manner especially interesting to young men. Sokrates mentions that these young men not only listened with delight, but tried to imitate him as well as they could, by cross-examining others in the same manner:186 and in mentioning the fact, he expresses neither censure nor regret, but satisfaction in the thought that the chance would be thereby increased, of exposing that false persuasion of knowledge which prevailed so widely everywhere. Now Plato, in the passage just cited from the Republic, blames this contagious spirit of cross-examination on the part of young men, as a vice which proved the mischief of dialectic debate addressed to them at that age. He farther deprecates the disturbance of “those opinions which they have heard from the lawgiver respecting what is just and honourable”. But it is precisely these opinions which, in the Alkibiadês, Menon, Protagoras, and other dialogues, the Platonic Sokrates treats as untaught, if not unteachable:— as having been acquired, no man knew how, without the lessons of any assignable master and without any known period of study:— lastly, as constituting that very illusion of false knowledge without real knowledge, of which Sokrates undertakes to purge the youthful mind, and which must be dispelled before any improvement can be effected in it.187

The remarks here made upon the effect of Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus against Sokrates.

We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth — cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates — is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.188 Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:— to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years — we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.189

Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.

The matter to which I here advert, illustrates a material distinction between some writings of Plato as compared with others, and between different points of view which his mind took on at different times. In the Platonic Apology, we find Sokrates confessing his own ignorance, and proclaiming himself to be isolated among an uncongenial public falsely persuaded of their own knowledge. In several other dialogues, he is the same: he cannot teach anything, but can only cross-examine, test, and apply the spur to respondents. But the Republic presents him in a new character. He is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of fixed, inherited, convictions.190 He is himself on the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is determined. Hence we now find him passing to the opposite pole; taking up the orthodox, conservative, point of view, the same as Melêtus and Anytus maintained in their accusation against Sokrates at Athens. He now expects every individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions, prescribed by authority: including among those opinions deliberate ethical and political fictions, such as that about the gold and silver earthborn men. Free-thinking minds, who take views of their own, and enquire into the evidence of these beliefs, become inconvenient and dangerous. Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic Apology, nor his negative Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic.

Idea of Good — The Chiefs alone know what it is — If they did not they would be unfit for their functions.

One word more must be said respecting a subject which figures conspicuously in the Republic — the Idea or Form of Good. The chiefs alone (we read) at the end of their long term of study, having ascended gradually from the phenomena of sense to intellectual contemplation and familiarity with the unchangeable Ideas — will come to discern and embrace the highest of all Ideas — the Form of Good:191 by the help of which alone, Justice, Temperance, and the other virtues, become useful and profitable.192 If the Archons do not know how and why just and honourable things are good, they will not be fit for their duty.193 In regard to Good (Plato tells us) no man is satisfied with mere appearance. Here every man desires and postulates that which is really good: while as to the just and the honourable, many are satisfied with the appearance, without caring for the reality.194

What is the Good? Plato does not know; but he requires the Chiefs to know it. Without this the Republic would be a failure.

Plato proclaims this Real Good, as distinguished from Apparent Good, to be the paramount and indispensable object of knowledge, without which all other knowledge is useless. It is that which every man divines to exist, yearns for, and does everything with a view to obtain: but which he misses, from not knowing where to seek; missing also along with it that which gives value to other acquisitions.195 What then is this Real Good — the Noumenon, Idea, or form of Good?

This question is put by Glaukon to Sokrates, with much earnestness, in the dialogue of the Republic. But unfortunately it remains unanswered. Plato declines all categorical reply; though the question is one, as he himself emphatically announces, upon which all the positive consequences of his philosophy turn.196 He conducts us to the chamber wherein this precious and indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the door. In describing the condition of other men’s minds — that they divine a Real Good — Αὐτὸ-ἀγαθὸν or Bonum per se — do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle themselves in vain to grasp and determine what it is197 — he has unconsciously described the condition of his own.