THE REPUBLIC

                                    by Plato

                         translated by Benjamin Jowett

                                   


  THE INTRODUCTION



  THE Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception

of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer

approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;

the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of

the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the

Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other

Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same

perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world,

or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and

not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper

irony or a greater wealth of humor or imagery, or more dramatic power.

Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave

life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The

Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be

grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point to which ancient

thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the

moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although

neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the

substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an

abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest

metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than

in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are

contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied

so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the

analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the

law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the

distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,

between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the

division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible

elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary

--these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found

in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The

greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on

philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words

and things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him, although

he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own writings.

But he does not bind up truth in logical formulae, --logic is still

veiled in metaphysics; and the science which he imagines to

"contemplate all truth and all existence" is very unlike the

doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered.

  Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of

a still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of

Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment

of the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second

only in importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and

is said as a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the

sixteenth century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a

history of the wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis,

is supposed to be founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which

it would have stood in the same relation as the writings of the

logographers to the poems of Homer. It would have told of a struggle

for Liberty, intended to represent the conflict of Persia and

Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of the Timaeus,

from the fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third book of

the Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated this high

argument. We can only guess why the great design was abandoned;

perhaps because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a

fictitious history, or because he had lost his interest in it, or

because advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we may

please ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever

been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathizing with

the struggle for Hellenic independence, singing a hymn of triumph over

Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus where

he contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire--"How brave a

thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed

every other state of Hellas in greatness!" or, more probably,

attributing the victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the

favor of Apollo and Athene.

  Again, Plato may be regarded as the "captain" ('arhchegoz') or

leader of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be

found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City

of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other

imaginary States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to

which Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the

Politics has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more

necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two

philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and

probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in

Aristotle. In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced,

not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great

original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas.

That there is a truth higher than experience, of which the mind

bears witness to herself, is a conviction which in our own

generation has been enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps

gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought

a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest influence. The

Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of

which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and

Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has

a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed

with the un unity of knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a

real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on

politics. Even the fragments of his words when "repeated at

second-hand" have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have

seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of

idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the

latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity

of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have

been anticipated in a dream by him.



  ARGUMENT



  The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature

of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old

man --then discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates

and Polemarchus --then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially

explained by Socrates --reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and

Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the individual reappears at

length in the ideal State which is constructed by Socrates. The

first care of the rulers is to be education, of which an outline is

drawn after the old Hellenic model, providing only for an improved

religion and morality, and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a

manlier strain of poetry, and greater harmony of the individual and

the State. We are thus led on to the conception of a higher State,

in which "no man calls anything his own," and in which there is

neither "marrying nor giving in marriage," and "kings are

philosophers" and "philosophers are kings;" and there is another and

higher education, intellectual as well as moral and religious, of

science as well as of art, and not of youth only but of the whole of

life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world and would

quickly degenerate. To the perfect ideal succeeds the government of

the soldier and the lover of honor, this again declining into

democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular

order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When "the wheel

has come full circle" we do not begin again with a new period of human

life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and there we end.

The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and

philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of

the Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry

is discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and

Homer, as well as the dramatic poets, having been condemned as an

imitator, is sent into banishment along with them. And the idea of the

State is supplemented by the revelation of a future life.

  The division into books, like all similar divisions, is probably

later than the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number;

--(1) Book I and the first half of Book II down to the paragraph

beginning, "I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and

Adeimantus," which is introductory; the first book containing a

refutation of the popular and sophistical notions of justice, and

concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues, without arriving at

any definite result. To this is appended a restatement of the nature

of justice according to common opinion, and an answer is demanded to

the question --What is justice, stripped of appearances? The second

division (2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of the

third and fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the

construction of the first State and the first education. The third

division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which

philosophy rather than justice is the subject of inquiry, and the

second State is constructed on principles of communism and ruled by

philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea of good takes the

place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth and ninth

books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who

correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of

pleasure and the principle of tyranny are further analyzed in the

individual man. The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole,

in which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally determined,

and the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been

assured, is crowned by the vision of another.

  Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the

first (Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed

generally in accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and

morality, while in the second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is

transformed into an ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all other

governments are the perversions. These two points of view are really

opposed, and the opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The

Republic, like the Phaedrus, is an imperfect whole; the higher light

of philosophy breaks through the regularity of the Hellenic temple,

which at last fades away into the heavens. Whether this imperfection

of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan; or from the

imperfect reconcilement in the writer's own mind of the struggling

elements of thought which are now first brought together by him; or,

perhaps, from the composition of the work at different times --are

questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the

Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct

answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of

publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering

or adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends.

There is no absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labors

aside for a time, or turned from one work to another; and such

interruptions would be more likely to occur in the case of a long than

of a short writing. In all attempts to determine the chronological

he order of the Platonic writings on internal evidence, this

uncertainty about any single Dialogue being composed at one time is

a disturbing element, which must be admitted to affect longer works,

such as the Republic and the Laws, more than shorter ones. But, on the

other hand, the seeming discrepancies of the Republic may only arise

out of the discordant elements which the philosopher has attempted

to unite in a single whole, perhaps without being himself able to

recognize the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a

judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able

to anticipate for themselves. They do not perceive the want of

connection in their own writings, or the gaps in their systems which

are visible enough to those who come after them. In the beginnings

of literature and philosophy, amid the first efforts of thought and

language, more inconsistencies occur than now, when the paths of

speculation are well worn and the meaning of words precisely

defined. For consistency, too, is the growth of time; and some of

the greatest creations of the human mind have been wanting in unity.

Tried by this test, several of the Platonic Dialogues, according to

our modern ideas, appear to be defective, but the deficiency is no

proof that they were composed at different times or by different

hands. And the supposition that the Republic was written

uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is in some degree confirmed

by the numerous references from one part of the work to another.

  The second title, "Concerning Justice," is not the one by which

the Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity,

and, like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may

therefore be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others

have asked whether the definition of justice, which is the professed

aim, or the construction of the State is the principal argument of the

work. The answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of

the same truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State

is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human

society. The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the

Greek ideal of the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a

fair body. In Hegelian phraseology the State is the reality of which

justice is the ideal. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom

of God is within, and yet develops into a Church or external

kingdom; "the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," is

reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a

Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof

which run through the whole texture. And when the constitution of

the State is completed, the conception of justice is not dismissed,

but reappears under the same or different names throughout the work,

both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as the

principle of rewards and punishments in another life. The virtues

are based on justice, of which common honesty in buying and selling is

the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good, which is the

harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of

States and in motions of the heavenly bodies. The Timaeus, which takes

up the political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and

is chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world,

yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed to reign

over the State, over nature, and over man.

  Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient

and in modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works,

whether of nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient

writings, and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a

large element which was not comprehended in the original design. For

the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in

the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end

before he begins. The reader who seeks to find some one idea under

which the whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the

vaguest and most general. Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the

ordinary explanations of the argument of the Republic, imagines

himself to have found the true argument "in the representation of

human life in a State perfected by justice and governed according to

the idea of good." There may be some use in such general descriptions,

but they can hardly be said to express the design of the writer. The

truth is, that we may as well speak of many designs as of one; nor

need anything be excluded from the plan of a great work to which the

mind is naturally led by the association of ideas, and which does

not interfere with the general purpose. What kind or degree of unity

is to be sought after in a building, in the plastic arts, in poetry,

in prose, is a problem which has to be determined relatively to the

subject-matter. To Plato himself, the inquiry "what was the

intention of the writer," or "what was the principal argument of the

Republic" would have been hardly intelligible, and therefore had

better be at once dismissed.

  Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which,

to Plato's own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the

State? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or "the

day of the Lord," or the suffering Servant or people of God, or the

"Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings" only convey, to us at

least, their great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State

Plato reveals to us his own thoughts about divine perfection, which is

the idea of good --like the sun in the visible world; --about human

perfection, which is justice --about education beginning in youth

and continuing in later years --about poets and sophists and tyrants

who are the false teachers and evil rulers of mankind --about "the

world" which is the embodiment of them --about a kingdom which

exists nowhere upon earth but is laid up in heaven to be the pattern

and rule of human life. No such inspired creation is at unity with

itself, any more than the clouds of heaven when the sun pierces

through them. Every shade of light and dark, of truth, and of

fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a work of

philosophical imagination. It is not all on the same plane; it

easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures

of speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it,

and ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the

probabilities of history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas

into an artistic whole; they take possession of him and are too much

for him. We have no need therefore to discuss whether a State such

as Plato has conceived is practicable or not, or whether the outward

form or the inward life came first into the mind of the writer. For

the practicability of his ideas has nothing to do with their truth;

and the highest thoughts to which he attains may be truly said to bear

the greatest "marks of design" --justice more than the external

frame-work of the State, the idea of good more than justice. The great

science of dialectic or the organization of ideas has no real content;

but is only a type of the method or spirit in which the higher

knowledge is to be pursued by the spectator of all time and all

existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh books that Plato

reaches the "summit of speculation," and these, although they fail

to satisfy the requirements of a modern thinker, may therefore be

regarded as the most important, as they are also the most original,

portions of the work.

  It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which

has been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which


the conversation was held (the year 411 B. C. which is proposed by him

will do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially

a writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology,

only aims at general probability. Whether all the persons mentioned in

the Republic could ever have met at any one time is not a difficulty

which would have occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty

years later, or to Plato himself at the time of writing (any more than

to Shakespeare respecting one of his own dramas); and need not greatly

trouble us now. Yet this may be a question having no answer "which

is still worth asking," because the investigation shows that we can

not argue historically from the dates in Plato; it would be useless

therefore to waste time in inventing far-fetched reconcilements of

them in order avoid chronological difficulties, such, for example,

as the conjecture of C. F. Hermann, that Glaucon and Adeimantus are

not the brothers but the uncles of Plato, or the fancy of Stallbaum

that Plato intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at

which some of his Dialogues were written.



  CHARACTERS



  The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus,

Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus

appears in the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of

the first argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the

close of the first book. The main discussion is carried on by

Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Among the company are Lysias (the

orator) and Euthydemus, the sons of Cephalus and brothers of

Polemarchus, an unknown Charmantides --these are mute auditors; also

there is Cleitophon, who once interrupts, where, as in the Dialogue

which bears his name, he appears as the friend and ally of

Thrasymachus.

  Cephalus, the patriarch of house, has been appropriately engaged

in offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has

almost done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all

mankind. He feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and

seems to linger around the memory of the past. He is eager that

Socrates should come to visit him, fond of the poetry of the last

generation, happy in the consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at

having escaped from the tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of

conversation, his affection, his indifference to riches, even his

garrulity, are interesting traits of character. He is not one of those

who have nothing to say, because their whole mind has been absorbed in

making money. Yet he acknowledges that riches have the advantage of

placing men above the temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. The

respectful attention shown to him by Socrates, whose love of

conversation, no less than the mission imposed upon him by the Oracle,

leads him to ask questions of all men, young and old alike, should

also be noted. Who better suited to raise the question of justice than

Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of it? The

moderation with which old age is pictured by Cephalus as a very

tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only of him, but

of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of

Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is described by

Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible

touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged Cephalus

would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and

which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a

violation of dramatic propriety.

  His "son and heir" Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness

of youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening

scene, and will not "let him off" on the subject of women and

children. Like Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and

represents the proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life

rather than principles; and he quotes Simonides as his father had

quoted Pindar. But after this he has no more to say; the answers which

he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He

has not yet experienced the influence of the Sophists like Glaucon and

Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting them; he

belongs to the pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is incapable of

arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he does

not know what he is saying. He is made to admit that justice is a

thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the arts. From his

brother Lysias we learn that he fell a victim to the Thirty Tyrants,

but no allusion is here made to his fate, nor to the circumstance that

Cephalus and his family were of Syracusan origin, and had migrated

from Thurii to Athens.

  The "Chalcedonian giant," Thrasymachus, of whom we have already

heard in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists,

according to Plato's conception of them, in some of their worst

characteristics. He is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse

unless he is paid, fond of making an oration, and hoping thereby to

escape the inevitable Socrates; but a mere child in argument, and

unable to foresee that the next "move" (to use a Platonic

expression) will "shut him up." He has reached the stage of framing

general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and

Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion,

and vainly tries to cover his confusion in banter and insolence.

Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really

held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the

infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily

grow up --they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in

Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato's description

of him, and not with the historical reality. The inequality of the

contest adds greatly to the humor of the scene. The pompous and

empty Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master

of dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and

weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates, but

his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open to the

thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram down their

throats, or put "bodily into their souls" his own words, elicits a cry

of horror from Socrates. The state of his temper is quite as worthy of

remark as the process of the argument. Nothing is more amusing than

his complete submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. At

first he seems to continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon

with apparent good-will, and he even testifies his interest at a later

stage by one or two occasional remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is

humorously protected by Socrates "as one who has never been his

enemy and is now his friend." From Cicero and Quintilian and from

Aristotle's Rhetoric we learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made

so ridiculous was a man of note whose writings were preserved in later

ages. The play on his name which was made by his contemporary

Herodicus, "thou wast ever bold in battle," seems to show that the

description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude.

  When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal

respondents, Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as

in Greek tragedy, three actors are introduced. At first sight the

two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the two

friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer examination

of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be distinct

characters. Glaucon is the impetuous youth who can "just never have

enough of fechting" (cf. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii. 6);

the man of pleasure who is acquainted with the mysteries of love;

the "juvenis qui gaudet canibus," and who improves the breed of

animals; the lover of art and music who has all the experiences of

youthful life. He is full of quickness and penetration, piercing

easily below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus to the real

difficulty; he turns out to the light the seamy side of human life,

and yet does not lose faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who

seizes what may be termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to

the world, to whom a state of simplicity is "a city of pigs," who is

always prepared with a jest when the argument offers him an

opportunity, and who is ever ready to second the humor of Socrates and

to appreciate the ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music, or

in the lovers of theatricals, or in the fantastic behavior of the

citizens of democracy. His weaknesses are several times alluded to

by Socrates, who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his

brother Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been

distinguished at the battle of Megara.

  The character of Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder

objections are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more

demonstrative, and generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the

argument further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick

sympathy of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up

man of the world. In the second book, when Glaucon insists that

justice and injustice shall be considered without regard to their

consequences, Adeimantus remarks that they are regarded by mankind

in general only for the sake of their consequences; and in a similar

vein of reflection he urges at the beginning of the fourth book that

Socrates falls in making his citizens happy, and is answered that

happiness is not the first but the second thing, not the direct aim

but the indirect consequence of the good government of a State. In the

discussion about religion and mythology, Adeimantus is the respondent,

but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest, and carries on the

conversation in a lighter tone about music and gymnastic to the end of

the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers the criticism of

common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and who refuses to

let Socrates pass lightly over the question of women and children.

It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more argumentative, as

Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions of the

Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of the sixth

book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the conception of

the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Then Glaucon resumes

his place of principal respondent; but he has a difficulty in

apprehending the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false

hits in the course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns

with the allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the

contentious State; in the next book he is again superseded, and

Glaucon continues to the end.

  Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive

stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden

time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating

his life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization

of the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great

teacher, who know the sophistical arguments but will not be

convinced by them, and desire to go deeper into the nature of

things. These too, like Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are

clearly distinguished from one another. Neither in the Republic, nor

in any other Dialogue of Plato, is a single character repeated.

  The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly

consistent. In the first book we have more of the real Socrates,

such as he is depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest

Dialogues of Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking,

questioning, the old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask

of Silenus as well as to argue seriously. But in the sixth book his

enmity towards the Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are

the representatives rather than the corrupters of the world. He also

becomes more dogmatic and constructive, passing beyond the range

either of the political or the speculative ideas of the real Socrates.

In one passage Plato himself seems to intimate that the time had now

come for Socrates, who had passed his whole life in philosophy, to

give his own opinion and not to be always repeating the notions of

other men. There is no evidence that either the idea of good or the

conception of a perfect State were comprehended in the Socratic

teaching, though he certainly dwelt on the nature of the universal and

of final causes (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4; Phaedo 97); and a deep thinker

like him in his thirty or forty years of public teaching, could hardly

have falled to touch on the nature of family relations, for which

there is also some positive evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem. i. 2, 51

foll.) The Socratic method is nominally retained; and every

inference is either put into the mouth of the respondent or

represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates. But any one

can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation grows

wearisome as the work advances. The method of inquiry has passed

into a method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the

same thesis is looked at from various points of view.

  The nature of the process is truly characterized by Glaucon, when he

describes himself as a companion who is not good for much in an

investigation, but can see what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give

the answer to a question more fluently than another.

  Neither can we be absolutely certain that, Socrates himself taught

the immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple

Glaucon in the Republic; nor is there any reason to suppose that he

used myths or revelations of another world as a vehicle of

instruction, or that he would have banished poetry or have denounced

the Greek mythology. His favorite oath is retained, and a slight

mention is made of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded

to by Socrates as a phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element

of Socratic teaching, which is more prominent in the Republic than

in any of the other Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example and

illustration ('taphorhtika auto prhospherhontez'): "Let us apply the

test of common instances." "You," says Adeimantus, ironically, in

the sixth book, "are so unaccustomed to speak in images." And this use

of examples or images, though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by

the genius of Plato into the form of an allegory or parable, which

embodies in the concrete what has been already described, or is

about to be described, in the abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in

Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions of knowledge in Book VI.

The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory of the parts of the

soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true pilot in Book VI are

a figure of the relation of the people to the philosophers in the

State which has been described. Other figures, such as the dog in

the second, third, and fourth books, or the marriage of the

portionless maiden in the sixth book, or the drones and wasps in the

eighth and ninth books, also form links of connection in long

passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.

  Plato is most true to the character of his master when he

describes him as "not of this world." And with this representation

of him the ideal State and the other paradoxes of the Republic are

quite in accordance, though they can not be shown to have been

speculations of Socrates. To him, as to other great teachers both

philosophical and religious, when they looked upward, the world seemed

to be the embodiment of error and evil. The common sense of mankind

has revolted against this view, or has only partially admitted it. And

even in Socrates himself the sterner judgment of the multitude at

times passes into a sort of ironical pity or love. Men in general

are incapable of philosophy, and are therefore at enmity with the

philosopher; but their misunderstanding of him is unavoidable: for

they have never seen him as he truly is in his own image; they are

only acquainted with artificial systems possessing no native force

of truth --words which admit of many applications. Their leaders

have nothing to measure with, and are therefore ignorant of their

own stature. But they are to be pitied or laughed at, not to be

quarrelled with; they mean well with their nostrums, if they could

only learn that they are cutting off a Hydra's head. This moderation

towards those who are in error is one of the most characteristic

features of Socrates in the Republic. In all the different

representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato, and the

differences of the earlier or later Dialogues, he always retains the

character of the unwearied and disinterested seeker after truth,

without which he would have ceased to be Socrates.

  Leaving the characters we may now analyze the contents of the

Republic, and then proceed to consider (1) The general aspects of this

Hellenic ideal of the State, (2) The modern lights in which the

thoughts of Plato may be read.