The Preamble - Book 8

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_ THE PREAMBLE - BOOK VIII

Next, with the help of the Delphian Oracle, we will appoint festivals and sacrifices. There shall be 365 of them, one for every day in the year; and one magistrate, at least, shall offer sacrifice daily according to rites prescribed by a convocation of priests and interpreters, who shall co-operate with the guardians of the law, and supply what the legislator has omitted. Moreover there shall be twelve festivals to the twelve Gods after whom the twelve tribes are named: these shall be celebrated every month with appropriate musical and gymnastic contests. There shall also be festivals for women, to be distinguished from the men's festivals. Nor shall the Gods below be forgotten, but they must be separated from the Gods above--Pluto shall have his own in the twelfth month. He is not the enemy, but the friend of man, who releases the soul from the body, which is at least as good a work as to unite them. Further, those who have to regulate these matters should consider that our state has leisure and abundance, and wishing to be happy, like an individual, should lead a good life; for he who leads such a life neither does nor suffers injury, of which the first is very easy, and the second very difficult of attainment, and is only to be acquired by perfect virtue. A good city has peace, but the evil city is full of wars within and without. To guard against the danger of external enemies the citizens should practise war at least one day in every month; they should go out en masse, including their wives and children, or in divisions, as the magistrates determine, and have mimic contests, imitating in a lively manner real battles; they should also have prizes and encomiums of valour, both for the victors in these contests, and for the victors in the battle of life. The poet who celebrates the victors should be fifty years old at least, and himself a man who has done great deeds. Of such an one the poems may be sung, even though he is not the best of poets. To the director of education and the guardians of the law shall be committed the judgment, and no song, however sweet, which has not been licensed by them shall be recited. These regulations about poetry, and about military expeditions, apply equally to men and to women.

The legislator may be conceived to make the following address to himself:--With what object am I training my citizens? Are they not strivers for mastery in the greatest of combats? Certainly, will be the reply. And if they were boxers or wrestlers, would they think of entering the lists without many days' practice? Would they not as far as possible imitate all the circumstances of the contest; and if they had no one to box with, would they not practise on a lifeless image, heedless of the laughter of the spectators? And shall our soldiers go out to fight for life and kindred and property unprepared, because sham fights are thought to be ridiculous? Will not the legislator require that his citizens shall practise war daily, performing lesser exercises without arms, while the combatants on a greater scale will carry arms, and take up positions, and lie in ambuscade? And let their combats be not without danger, that opportunity may be given for distinction, and the brave man and the coward may receive their meed of honour or disgrace. If occasionally a man is killed, there is no great harm done--there are others as good as he is who will replace him; and the state can better afford to lose a few of her citizens than to lose the only means of testing them.

'We agree, Stranger, that such warlike exercises are necessary.' But why are they so rarely practised? Or rather, do we not all know the reasons? One of them (1) is the inordinate love of wealth. This absorbs the soul of a man, and leaves him no time for any other pursuit. Knowledge is valued by him only as it tends to the attainment of wealth. All is lost in the desire of heaping up gold and silver; anybody is ready to do anything, right or wrong, for the sake of eating and drinking, and the indulgence of his animal passions. 'Most true.' This is one of the causes which prevents a man being a good soldier, or anything else which is good; it converts the temperate and orderly into shopkeepers or servants, and the brave into burglars or pirates. Many of these latter are men of ability, and are greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long. The bad forms of government (2) are another reason--democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, which, as I was saying, are not states, but states of discord, in which the rulers are afraid of their subjects, and therefore do not like them to become rich, or noble, or valiant. Now our state will escape both these causes of evil; the society is perfectly free, and has plenty of leisure, and is not allowed by the laws to be absorbed in the pursuit of wealth; hence we have an excellent field for a perfect education, and for the introduction of martial pastimes. Let us proceed to describe the character of these pastimes. All gymnastic exercises in our state must have a military character; no other will be allowed. Activity and quickness are most useful in war; and yet these qualities do not attain their greatest efficiency unless the competitors are armed. The runner should enter the lists in armour, and in the races which our heralds proclaim, no prize is to be given except to armed warriors. Let there be six courses--first, the stadium; secondly, the diaulos or double course; thirdly, the horse course; fourthly, the long course; fifthly, races (1) between heavy-armed soldiers who shall pass over sixty stadia and finish at a temple of Ares, and (2) between still more heavily-armed competitors who run over smoother ground; sixthly, a race for archers, who shall run over hill and dale a distance of a hundred stadia, and their goal shall be a temple of Apollo and Artemis. There shall be three contests of each kind--one for boys, another for youths, a third for men; the course for the boys we will fix at half, and that for the youths at two-thirds of the entire length. Women shall join in the races: young girls who are not grown up shall run naked; but after thirteen they shall be suitably dressed; from thirteen to eighteen they shall be obliged to share in these contests, and from eighteen to twenty they may if they please and if they are unmarried. As to trials of strength, single combats in armour, or battles between two and two, or of any number up to ten, shall take the place of wrestling and the heavy exercises. And there must be umpires, as there are now in wrestling, to determine what is a fair hit and who is conqueror. Instead of the pancratium, let there be contests in which the combatants carry bows and wear light shields and hurl javelins and throw stones. The next provision of the law will relate to horses, which, as we are in Crete, need be rarely used by us, and chariots never; our horse-racing prizes will only be given to single horses, whether colts, half-grown, or full-grown. Their riders are to wear armour, and there shall be a competition between mounted archers. Women, if they have a mind, may join in the exercises of men.

But enough of gymnastics, and nearly enough of music. All musical contests will take place at festivals, whether every third or every fifth year, which are to be fixed by the guardians of the law, the judges of the games, and the director of education, who for this purpose shall become legislators and arrange times and conditions. The principles on which such contests are to be ordered have been often repeated by the first legislator; no more need be said of them, nor are the details of them important. But there is another subject of the highest importance, which, if possible, should be determined by the laws, not of man, but of God; or, if a direct revelation is impossible, there is need of some bold man who, alone against the world, will speak plainly of the corruption of human nature, and go to war with the passions of mankind. 'We do not understand you.' I will try to make my meaning plainer. In speaking of education, I seemed to see young men and maidens in friendly intercourse with one another; and there arose in my mind a natural fear about a state, in which the young of either sex are well nurtured, and have little to do, and occupy themselves chiefly with festivals and dances. How can they be saved from those passions which reason forbids them to indulge, and which are the ruin of so many? The prohibition of wealth, and the influence of education, and the all-seeing eye of the ruler, will alike help to promote temperance; but they will not wholly extirpate the unnatural loves which have been the destruction of states; and against this evil what remedy can be devised? Lacedaemon and Crete give no assistance here; on the subject of love, as I may whisper in your ear, they are against us. Suppose a person were to urge that you ought to restore the natural use which existed before the days of Laius; he would be quite right, but he would not be supported by public opinion in either of your states. Or try the matter by the test which we apply to all laws,--who will say that the permission of such things tends to virtue? Will he who is seduced learn the habit of courage; or will the seducer acquire temperance? And will any legislator be found to make such actions legal?

But to judge of this matter truly, we must understand the nature of love and friendship, which may take very different forms. For we speak of friendship, first, when there is some similarity or equality of virtue; secondly, when there is some want; and either of these, when in excess, is termed love. The first kind is gentle and sociable; the second is fierce and unmanageable; and there is also a third kind, which is akin to both, and is under the dominion of opposite principles. The one is of the body, and has no regard for the character of the beloved; but he who is under the influence of the other disregards the body, and is a looker rather than a lover, and desires only with his soul to be knit to the soul of his friend; while the intermediate sort is both of the body and of the soul. Here are three kinds of love: ought the legislator to prohibit all of them equally, or to allow the virtuous love to remain? 'The latter, clearly.' I expected to gain your approval; but I will reserve the task of convincing our friend Cleinias for another occasion. 'Very good.' To make right laws on this subject is in one point of view easy, and in another most difficult; for we know that in some cases most men abstain willingly from intercourse with the fair. The unwritten law which prohibits members of the same family from such intercourse is strictly obeyed, and no thought of anything else ever enters into the minds of men in general. A little word puts out the fire of their lusts. 'What is it?' The declaration that such things are hateful to the Gods, and most abominable and unholy. The reason is that everywhere, in jest and earnest alike, this is the doctrine which is repeated to all from their earliest youth. They see on the stage that an Oedipus or a Thyestes or a Macareus, when undeceived, are ready to kill themselves. There is an undoubted power in public opinion when no breath is heard adverse to the law; and the legislator who would enslave these enslaving passions must consecrate such a public opinion all through the city. 'Good: but how can you create it?' A fair objection; but I promised to try and find some means of restraining loves to their natural objects. A law which would extirpate unnatural love as effectually as incest is at present extirpated, would be the source of innumerable blessings, because it would be in accordance with nature, and would get rid of excess in eating and drinking and of adulteries and frenzies, making men love their wives, and having other excellent effects. I can imagine that some lusty youth overhears what we are saying, and roars out in abusive terms that we are legislating for impossibilities. And so a person might have said of the syssitia, or common meals; but this is refuted by facts, although even now they are not extended to women. 'True.' There is no impossibility or super-humanity in my proposed law, as I shall endeavour to prove. 'Do so.' Will not a man find abstinence more easy when his body is sound than when he is in ill-condition? 'Yes.' Have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum and other wrestlers who abstained wholly for a time? Yet they were infinitely worse educated than our citizens, and far more lusty in their bodies. And shall they have abstained for the sake of an athletic contest, and our citizens be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory,--the victory over pleasure, which is true happiness? Will not the fear of impiety enable them to conquer that which many who were inferior to them have conquered? 'I dare say.' And therefore the law must plainly declare that our citizens should not fall below the other animals, who live all together in flocks, and yet remain pure and chaste until the time of procreation comes, when they pair, and are ever after faithful to their compact. But if the corruption of public opinion is too great to allow our first law to be carried out, then our guardians of the law must turn legislators, and try their hand at a second law. They must minimize the appetites, diverting the vigour of youth into other channels, allowing the practice of love in secret, but making detection shameful. Three higher principles may be brought to bear on all these corrupt natures. 'What are they?' Religion, honour, and the love of the higher qualities of the soul. Perhaps this is a dream only, yet it is the best of dreams; and if not the whole, still, by the grace of God, a part of what we desire may be realized. Either men may learn to abstain wholly from any loves, natural or unnatural, except of their wedded wives; or, at least, they may give up unnatural loves; or, if detected, they shall be punished with loss of citizenship, as aliens from the state in their morals. 'I entirely agree with you,' said Megillus, 'but Cleinias must speak for himself.' 'I will give my opinion by-and-by.'

We were speaking of the syssitia, which will be a natural institution in a Cretan colony. Whether they shall be established after the model of Crete or Lacedaemon, or shall be different from either, is an unimportant question which may be determined without difficulty. We may, therefore, proceed to speak of the mode of life among our citizens, which will be far less complex than in other cities; a state which is inland and not maritime requires only half the number of laws. There is no trouble about trade and commerce, and a thousand other things. The legislator has only to regulate the affairs of husbandmen and shepherds, which will be easily arranged, now that the principal questions, such as marriage, education, and government, have been settled.

Let us begin with husbandry: First, let there be a law of Zeus against removing a neighbour's landmark, whether he be a citizen or stranger. For this is 'to move the immoveable'; and Zeus, the God of kindred, witnesses to the wrongs of citizens, and Zeus, the God of strangers, to the wrongs of strangers. The offence of removing a boundary shall receive two punishments--the first will be inflicted by the God himself; the second by the judges. In the next place, the differences between neighbours about encroachments must be guarded against. He who encroaches shall pay twofold the amount of the injury; of all such matters the wardens of the country shall be the judges, in lesser cases the officers, and in greater the whole number of them belonging to any one division. Any injury done by cattle, the decoying of bees, the careless firing of woods, the planting unduly near a neighbour's ground, shall all be visited with proper damages. Such details have been determined by previous legislators, and need not now be mixed up with greater matters. Husbandmen have had of old excellent rules about streams and waters; and we need not 'divert their course.' Anybody may take water from a common stream, if he does not thereby cut off a private spring; he may lead the water in any direction, except through a house or temple, but he must do no harm beyond the channel. If land is without water the occupier shall dig down to the clay, and if at this depth he find no water, he shall have a right of getting water from his neighbours for his household; and if their supply is limited, he shall receive from them a measure of water fixed by the wardens of the country. If there be heavy rains, the dweller on the higher ground must not recklessly suffer the water to flow down upon a neighbour beneath him, nor must he who lives upon lower ground or dwells in an adjoining house refuse an outlet. If the two parties cannot agree, they shall go before the wardens of the city or country, and if a man refuse to abide by their decision, he shall pay double the damage which he has caused.

In autumn God gives us two boons--one the joy of Dionysus not to be laid up--the other to be laid up. About the fruits of autumn let the law be as follows: He who gathers the storing fruits of autumn, whether grapes or figs, before the time of the vintage, which is the rising of Arcturus, shall pay fifty drachmas as a fine to Dionysus, if he gathers on his own ground; if on his neighbour's ground, a mina, and two-thirds of a mina if on that of any one else. The grapes or figs not used for storing a man may gather when he pleases on his own ground, but on that of others he must pay the penalty of removing what he has not laid down. If he be a slave who has gathered, he shall receive a stroke for every grape or fig. A metic must purchase the choice fruit; but a stranger may pluck for himself and his attendant. This right of hospitality, however, does not extend to storing grapes. A slave who eats of the storing grapes or figs shall be beaten, and the freeman be dismissed with a warning. Pears, apples, pomegranates, may be taken secretly, but he who is detected in the act of taking them shall be lightly beaten off, if he be not more than thirty years of age. The stranger and the elder may partake of them, but not carry any away; the latter, if he does not obey the law, shall fail in the competition of virtue, if anybody brings up his offence against him.

Water is also in need of protection, being the greatest element of nutrition, and, unlike the other elements--soil, air, and sun--which conspire in the growth of plants, easily polluted. And therefore he who spoils another's water, whether in springs or reservoirs, either by trenching, or theft, or by means of poisonous substances, shall pay the damage and purify the stream. At the getting-in of the harvest everybody shall have a right of way over his neighbour's ground, provided he is careful to do no damage beyond the trespass, or if he himself will gain three times as much as his neighbour loses. Of all this the magistrates are to take cognizance, and they are to assess the damage where the injury does not exceed three minae; cases of greater damage can be tried only in the public courts. A charge against a magistrate is to be referred to the public courts, and any one who is found guilty of deciding corruptly shall pay twofold to the aggrieved person. Matters of detail relating to punishments and modes of procedure, and summonses, and witnesses to summonses, do not require the mature wisdom of the aged legislator; the younger generation may determine them according to their experience; but when once determined, they shall remain unaltered.

The following are to be the regulations respecting handicrafts:--No citizen, or servant of a citizen, is to practise them. For the citizen has already an art and mystery, which is the care of the state; and no man can practise two arts, or practise one and superintend another. No smith should be a carpenter, and no carpenter, having many slaves who are smiths, should look after them himself; but let each man practise one art which shall be his means of livelihood. The wardens of the city should see to this, punishing the citizen who offends with temporary deprival of his rights--the foreigner shall be imprisoned, fined, exiled. Any disputes about contracts shall be determined by the wardens of the city up to fifty drachmae--above that sum by the public courts. No customs are to be exacted either on imports or exports. Nothing unnecessary is to be imported from abroad, whether for the service of the Gods or for the use of man--neither purple, nor other dyes, nor frankincense,--and nothing needed in the country is to be exported. These things are to be decided on by the twelve guardians of the law who are next in seniority to the five elders. Arms and the materials of war are to be imported and exported only with the consent of the generals, and then only by the state. There is to be no retail trade either in these or any other articles. For the distribution of the produce of the country, the Cretan laws afford a rule which may be usefully followed. All shall be required to distribute corn, grain, animals, and other valuable produce, into twelve portions. Each of these shall be subdivided into three parts--one for freemen, another for servants, and the third shall be sold for the supply of artisans, strangers, and metics. These portions must be equal whether the produce be much or little; and the master of a household may distribute the two portions among his family and his slaves as he pleases--the remainder is to be measured out to the animals.

Next as to the houses in the country--there shall be twelve villages, one in the centre of each of the twelve portions; and in every village there shall be temples and an agora--also shrines for heroes or for any old Magnesian deities who linger about the place. In every division there shall be temples of Hestia, Zeus, and Athene, as well as of the local deity, surrounded by buildings on eminences, which will be the guard-houses of the rural police. The dwellings of the artisans will be thus arranged:--The artisans shall be formed into thirteen guilds, one of which will be divided into twelve parts and settled in the city; of the rest there shall be one in each division of the country. And the magistrates will fix them on the spots where they will cause the least inconvenience and be most serviceable in supplying the wants of the husbandmen.

The care of the agora will fall to the wardens of the agora. Their first duty will be the regulation of the temples which surround the market-place; and their second to see that the markets are orderly and that fair dealing is observed. They will also take care that the sales which the citizens are required to make to strangers are duly executed. The law shall be, that on the first day of each month the auctioneers to whom the sale is entrusted shall offer grain; and at this sale a twelfth part of the whole shall be exposed, and the foreigner shall supply his wants for a month. On the tenth, there shall be a sale of liquids, and on the twenty-third of animals, skins, woven or woollen stuffs, and other things which husbandmen have to sell and foreigners want to buy. None of these commodities, any more than barley or flour, or any other food, may be retailed by a citizen to a citizen; but foreigners may sell them to one another in the foreigners' market. There must also be butchers who will sell parts of animals to foreigners and craftsmen, and their servants; and foreigners may buy firewood wholesale of the commissioners of woods, and may sell retail to foreigners. All other goods must be sold in the market, at some place indicated by the magistrates, and shall be paid for on the spot. He who gives credit, and is cheated, will have no redress. In buying or selling, any excess or diminution of what the law allows shall be registered. The same rule is to be observed about the property of metics. Anybody who practises a handicraft may come and remain twenty years from the day on which he is enrolled; at the expiration of this time he shall take what he has and depart. The only condition which is to be imposed upon him as the tax of his sojourn is good conduct; and he is not to pay any tax for being allowed to buy or sell. But if he wants to extend the time of his sojourn, and has done any service to the state, and he can persuade the council and assembly to grant his request, he may remain. The children of metics may also be metics; and the period of twenty years, during which they are permitted to sojourn, is to count, in their case, from their fifteenth year.

No mention occurs in the Laws of the doctrine of Ideas. The will of God, the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have taken their place in the mind of Plato. If we ask what is that truth or principle which, towards the end of his life, seems to have absorbed him most, like the idea of good in the Republic, or of beauty in the Symposium, or of the unity of virtue in the Protagoras, we should answer--The priority of the soul to the body: his later system mainly hangs upon this. In the Laws, as in the Sophist and Statesman, we pass out of the region of metaphysical or transcendental ideas into that of psychology.

The opening of the fifth book, though abrupt and unconnected in style, is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the blessedness of living in the truth, the great mistake of a man living for himself, the pity as well as anger which should be felt at evil, the kindness due to the suppliant and the stranger, have the temper of Christian philosophy. The remark that elder men, if they want to educate others, should begin by educating themselves; the necessity of creating a spirit of obedience in the citizens; the desirableness of limiting property; the importance of parochial districts, each to be placed under the protection of some God or demigod, have almost the tone of a modern writer. In many of his views of politics, Plato seems to us, like some politicians of our own time, to be half socialist, half conservative.

In the Laws, we remark a change in the place assigned by him to pleasure and pain. There are two ways in which even the ideal systems of morals may regard them: either like the Stoics, and other ascetics, we may say that pleasure must be eradicated; or if this seems unreal to us, we may affirm that virtue is the true pleasure; and then, as Aristotle says, 'to be brought up to take pleasure in what we ought, exercises a great and paramount influence on human life' (Arist. Eth. Nic.). Or as Plato says in the Laws, 'A man will recognize the noblest life as having the greatest pleasure and the least pain, if he have a true taste.' If we admit that pleasures differ in kind, the opposition between these two modes of speaking is rather verbal than real; and in the greater part of the writings of Plato they alternate with each other. In the Republic, the mere suggestion that pleasure may be the chief good, is received by Socrates with a cry of abhorrence; but in the Philebus, innocent pleasures vindicate their right to a place in the scale of goods. In the Protagoras, speaking in the person of Socrates rather than in his own, Plato admits the calculation of pleasure to be the true basis of ethics, while in the Phaedo he indignantly denies that the exchange of one pleasure for another is the exchange of virtue. So wide of the mark are they who would attribute to Plato entire consistency in thoughts or words.

He acknowledges that the second state is inferior to the first--in this, at any rate, he is consistent; and he still casts longing eyes upon the ideal. Several features of the first are retained in the second: the education of men and women is to be as far as possible the same; they are to have common meals, though separate, the men by themselves, the women with their children; and they are both to serve in the army; the citizens, if not actually communists, are in spirit communistic; they are to be lovers of equality; only a certain amount of wealth is permitted to them, and their burdens and also their privileges are to be proportioned to this. The constitution in the Laws is a timocracy of wealth, modified by an aristocracy of merit. Yet the political philosopher will observe that the first of these two principles is fixed and permanent, while the latter is uncertain and dependent on the opinion of the multitude. Wealth, after all, plays a great part in the Second Republic of Plato. Like other politicians, he deems that a property qualification will contribute stability to the state. The four classes are derived from the constitution of Athens, just as the form of the city, which is clustered around a citadel set on a hill, is suggested by the Acropolis at Athens. Plato, writing under Pythagorean influences, seems really to have supposed that the well-being of the city depended almost as much on the number 5040 as on justice and moderation. But he is not prevented by Pythagoreanism from observing the effects which climate and soil exercise on the characters of nations.

He was doubtful in the Republic whether the ideal or communistic state could be realized, but was at the same time prepared to maintain that whether it existed or not made no difference to the philosopher, who will in any case regulate his life by it (Republic). He has now lost faith in the practicability of his scheme--he is speaking to 'men, and not to Gods or sons of Gods' (Laws). Yet he still maintains it to be the true pattern of the state, which we must approach as nearly as possible: as Aristotle says, 'After having created a more general form of state, he gradually brings it round to the other' (Pol.). He does not observe, either here or in the Republic, that in such a commonwealth there would be little room for the development of individual character. In several respects the second state is an improvement on the first, especially in being based more distinctly on the dignity of the soul. The standard of truth, justice, temperance, is as high as in the Republic;--in one respect higher, for temperance is now regarded, not as a virtue, but as the condition of all virtue. It is finally acknowledged that the virtues are all one and connected, and that if they are separated, courage is the lowest of them. The treatment of moral questions is less speculative but more human. The idea of good has disappeared; the excellences of individuals--of him who is faithful in a civil broil, of the examiner who is incorruptible, are the patterns to which the lives of the citizens are to conform. Plato is never weary of speaking of the honour of the soul, which can only be honoured truly by being improved. To make the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the end of life. If the Republic is far superior to the Laws in form and style, and perhaps in reach of thought, the Laws leave on the mind of the modern reader much more strongly the impression of a struggle against evil, and an enthusiasm for human improvement. When Plato says that he must carry out that part of his ideal which is practicable, he does not appear to have reflected that part of an ideal cannot be detached from the whole.

The great defect of both his constitutions is the fixedness which he seeks to impress upon them. He had seen the Athenian empire, almost within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as in the century which had preceded. He fails to perceive that the greater part of the political life of a nation is not that which is given them by their legislators, but that which they give themselves. He has never reflected that without progress there cannot be order, and that mere order can only be preserved by an unnatural and despotic repression. The possibility of a great nation or of an universal empire arising never occurred to him. He sees the enfeebled and distracted state of the Hellenic world in his own later life, and thinks that the remedy is to make the laws unchangeable. The same want of insight is apparent in his judgments about art. He would like to have the forms of sculpture and of music fixed as in Egypt. He does not consider that this would be fatal to the true principles of art, which, as Socrates had himself taught, was to give life (Xen. Mem.). We wonder how, familiar as he was with the statues of Pheidias, he could have endured the lifeless and half-monstrous works of Egyptian sculpture. The 'chants of Isis' (Laws), we might think, would have been barbarous in an Athenian ear. But although he is aware that there are some things which are not so well among 'the children of the Nile,' he is deeply struck with the stability of Egyptian institutions. Both in politics and in art Plato seems to have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a step backwards. Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived, had a sacredness and authority for him: the men of a former age were supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among his contemporaries. He could imagine the early stages of civilization; he never thought of what the future might bring forth. His experience is confined to two or three centuries, to a few Greek states, and to an uncertain report of Egypt and the East. There are many ways in which the limitations of their knowledge affected the genius of the Greeks. In criticism they were like children, having an acute vision of things which were near to them, blind to possibilities which were in the distance.

The colony is to receive from the mother-country her original constitution, and some of the first guardians of the law. The guardians of the law are to be ministers of justice, and the president of education is to take precedence of them all. They are to keep the registers of property, to make regulations for trade, and they are to be superannuated at seventy years of age. Several questions of modern politics, such as the limitation of property, the enforcement of education, the relations of classes, are anticipated by Plato. He hopes that in his state will be found neither poverty nor riches; every man having the necessaries of life, he need not go fortune-hunting in marriage. Almost in the spirit of the Gospel he would say, 'How hardly can a rich man dwell in a perfect state.' For he cannot be a good man who is always gaining too much and spending too little (Laws; compare Arist. Eth. Nic.). Plato, though he admits wealth as a political element, would deny that material prosperity can be the foundation of a really great community. A man's soul, as he often says, is more to be esteemed than his body; and his body than external goods. He repeats the complaint which has been made in all ages, that the love of money is the corruption of states. He has a sympathy with thieves and burglars, 'many of whom are men of ability and greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long;' but he has little sympathy with shopkeepers or retailers, although he makes the reflection, which sometimes occurs to ourselves, that such occupations, if they were carried on honestly by the best men and women, would be delightful and honourable. For traders and artisans a moderate gain was, in his opinion, best. He has never, like modern writers, idealized the wealth of nations, any more than he has worked out the problems of political economy, which among the ancients had not yet grown into a science. The isolation of Greek states, their constant wars, the want of a free industrial population, and of the modern methods and instruments of 'credit,' prevented any great extension of commerce among them; and so hindered them from forming a theory of the laws which regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth.

The constitution of the army is aristocratic and also democratic; official appointment is combined with popular election. The two principles are carried out as follows: The guardians of the law nominate generals out of whom three are chosen by those who are or have been of the age for military service; and the generals elected have the nomination of certain of the inferior officers. But if either in the case of generals or of the inferior officers any one is ready to swear that he knows of a better man than those nominated, he may put the claims of his candidate to the vote of the whole army, or of the division of the service which he will, if elected, command. There is a general assembly, but its functions, except at elections, are hardly noticed. In the election of the Boule, Plato again attempts to mix aristocracy and democracy. This is effected, first as in the Servian constitution, by balancing wealth and numbers; for it cannot be supposed that those who possessed a higher qualification were equal in number with those who had a lower, and yet they have an equal number of representatives. In the second place, all classes are compelled to vote in the election of senators from the first and second class; but the fourth class is not compelled to elect from the third, nor the third and fourth from the fourth. Thirdly, out of the 180 persons who are thus chosen from each of the four classes, 720 in all, 360 are to be taken by lot; these form the council for the year.

These political adjustments of Plato's will be criticised by the practical statesman as being for the most part fanciful and ineffectual. He will observe, first of all, that the only real check on democracy is the division into classes. The second of the three proposals, though ingenious, and receiving some light from the apathy to politics which is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was most needed. At such political crises, all the lower classes would vote equally with the higher. The subtraction of half the persons chosen at the first election by the chances of the lot would not raise the character of the senators, and is open to the objection of uncertainty, which necessarily attends this and similar schemes of double representative government. Nor can the voters be expected to retain the continuous political interest required for carrying out such a proposal as Plato's. Who could select 180 persons of each class, fitted to be senators? And whoever were chosen by the voter in the first instance, his wishes might be neutralized by the action of the lot. Yet the scheme of Plato is not really so extravagant as the actual constitution of Athens, in which all the senators appear to have been elected by lot (apo kuamou bouleutai), at least, after the revolution made by Cleisthenes; for the constitution of the senate which was established by Solon probably had some aristocratic features, though their precise nature is unknown to us. The ancients knew that election by lot was the most democratic of all modes of appointment, seeming to say in the objectionable sense, that 'one man is as good as another.' Plato, who is desirous of mingling different elements, makes a partial use of the lot, which he applies to candidates already elected by vote. He attempts also to devise a system of checks and balances such as he supposes to have been intended by the ancient legislators. We are disposed to say to him, as he himself says in a remarkable passage, that 'no man ever legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us in all sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning governments and changing laws.' And yet, as he adds, the true legislator is still required: he must co-operate with circumstances. Many things which are ascribed to human foresight are the result of chance. Ancient, and in a less degree modern political constitutions, are never consistent with themselves, because they are never framed on a single design, but are added to from time to time as new elements arise and gain the preponderance in the state. We often attribute to the wisdom of our ancestors great political effects which have sprung unforeseen from the accident of the situation. Power, not wisdom, is most commonly the source of political revolutions. And the result, as in the Roman Republic, of the co-existence of opposite elements in the same state is, not a balance of power or an equable progress of liberal principles, but a conflict of forces, of which one or other may happen to be in the ascendant. In Greek history, as well as in Plato's conception of it, this 'progression by antagonism' involves reaction: the aristocracy expands into democracy and returns again to tyranny.

The constitution of the Laws may be said to consist, besides the magistrates, mainly of three elements,--an administrative Council, the judiciary, and the Nocturnal Council, which is an intellectual aristocracy, composed of priests and the ten eldest guardians of the law and some younger co-opted members. To this latter chiefly are assigned the functions of legislation, but to be exercised with a sparing hand. The powers of the ordinary council are administrative rather than legislative. The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution, is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of the tribes. Not more than one-twelfth is to be in office at once, so that the government would be made up of twelve administrations succeeding one another in the course of the year. They are to exercise a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies. Of the ecclesia over which they presided little is said, and that little relates to comparatively trifling duties. Nothing is less present to the mind of Plato than a House of Commons, carrying on year by year the work of legislation. For he supposes the laws to be already provided. As little would he approve of a body like the Roman Senate. The people and the aristocracy alike are to be represented, not by assemblies, but by officers elected for one or two years, except the guardians of the law, who are elected for twenty years.

The evils of this system are obvious. If in any state, as Plato says in the Statesman, it is easier to find fifty good draught-players than fifty good rulers, the greater part of the 360 who compose the council must be unfitted to rule. The unfitness would be increased by the short period during which they held office. There would be no traditions of government among them, as in a Greek or Italian oligarchy, and no individual would be responsible for any of their acts. Everything seems to have been sacrificed to a false notion of equality, according to which all have a turn of ruling and being ruled. In the constitution of the Magnesian state Plato has not emancipated himself from the limitations of ancient politics. His government may be described as a democracy of magistrates elected by the people. He never troubles himself about the political consistency of his scheme. He does indeed say that the greater part of the good of this world arises, not from equality, but from proportion, which he calls the judgment of Zeus (compare Aristotle's Distributive Justice), but he hardly makes any attempt to carry out the principle in practice. There is no attempt to proportion representation to merit; nor is there any body in his commonwealth which represents the life either of a class or of the whole state. The manner of appointing magistrates is taken chiefly from the old democratic constitution of Athens, of which it retains some of the worst features, such as the use of the lot, while by doing away with the political character of the popular assembly the mainspring of the machine is taken out. The guardians of the law, thirty-seven in number, of whom the ten eldest reappear as a part of the Nocturnal Council at the end of the twelfth book, are to be elected by the whole military class, but they are to hold office for twenty years, and would therefore have an oligarchical rather than a democratic character. Nothing is said of the manner in which the functions of the Nocturnal Council are to be harmonized with those of the guardians of the law, or as to how the ordinary council is related to it.

Similar principles are applied to inferior offices. To some the appointment is made by vote, to others by lot. In the elections to the priesthood, Plato endeavours to mix or balance in a friendly manner 'demus and not demus.' The commonwealth of the Laws, like the Republic, cannot dispense with a spiritual head, which is the same in both--the oracle of Delphi. From this the laws about all divine things are to be derived. The final selection of the Interpreters, the choice of an heir for a vacant lot, the punishment for removing a deposit, are also to be determined by it. Plato is not disposed to encourage amateur attempts to revive religion in states. For, as he says in the Laws, 'To institute religious rites is the work of a great intelligence.'

Though the council is framed on the model of the Athenian Boule, the law courts of Plato do not equally conform to the pattern of the Athenian dicasteries. Plato thinks that the judges should speak and ask questions:--this is not possible if they are numerous; he would, therefore, have a few judges only, but good ones. He is nevertheless aware that both in public and private suits there must be a popular element. He insists that the whole people must share in the administration of justice--in public causes they are to take the first step, and the final decision is to remain with them. In private suits they are also to retain a share; 'for the citizen who has no part in the administration of justice is apt to think that he has no share in the state. For this reason there is to be a court of law in every tribe (i.e. for about every 2,000 citizens), and the judges are to be chosen by lot.' Of the courts of law he gives what he calls a superficial sketch. Nor, indeed is it easy to reconcile his various accounts of them. It is however clear that although some officials, like the guardians of the law, the wardens of the agora, city, and country have power to inflict minor penalties, the administration of justice is in the main popular. The ingenious expedient of dividing the questions of law and fact between a judge and jury, which would have enabled Plato to combine the popular element with the judicial, did not occur to him or to any other ancient political philosopher. Though desirous of limiting the number of judges, and thereby confining the office to persons specially fitted for it, he does not seem to have understood that a body of law must be formed by decisions as well as by legal enactments.

He would have men in the first place seek justice from their friends and neighbours, because, as he truly remarks, they know best the questions at issue; these are called in another passage arbiters rather than judges. But if they cannot settle the matter, it is to be referred to the courts of the tribes, and a higher penalty is to be paid by the party who is unsuccessful in the suit. There is a further appeal allowed to the select judges, with a further increase of penalty. The select judges are to be appointed by the magistrates, who are to choose one from every magistracy. They are to be elected annually, and therefore probably for a year only, and are liable to be called to account before the guardians of the law. In cases of which death is the penalty, the trial takes place before a special court, which is composed of the guardians of the law and of the judges of appeal.

In treating of the subject in Book ix, he proposes to leave for the most part the methods of procedure to a younger generation of legislators; the procedure in capital causes he determines himself. He insists that the vote of the judges shall be given openly, and before they vote they are to hear speeches from the plaintiff and defendant. They are then to take evidence in support of what has been said, and to examine witnesses. The eldest judge is to ask his questions first, and then the second, and then the third. The interrogatories are to continue for three days, and the evidence is to be written down. Apparently he does not expect the judges to be professional lawyers, any more than he expects the members of the council to be trained statesmen.

In forming marriage connexions, Plato supposes that the public interest will prevail over private inclination. There was nothing in this very shocking to the notions of Greeks, among whom the feeling of love towards the other sex was almost deprived of sentiment or romance. Married life is to be regulated solely with a view to the good of the state. The newly-married couple are not allowed to absent themselves from their respective syssitia, even during their honeymoon; they are to give their whole mind to the procreation of children; their duties to one another at a later period of life are not a matter about which the state is equally solicitous. Divorces are readily allowed for incompatibility of temper. As in the Republic, physical considerations seem almost to exclude moral and social ones. To modern feelings there is a degree of coarseness in Plato's treatment of the subject. Yet he also makes some shrewd remarks on marriage, as for example, that a man who does not marry for money will not be the humble servant of his wife. And he shows a true conception of the nature of the family, when he requires that the newly-married couple 'should leave their father and mother,' and have a separate home. He also provides against extravagance in marriage festivals, which in some states of society, for instance in the case of the Hindoos, has been a social evil of the first magnitude.

In treating of property, Plato takes occasion to speak of property in slaves. They are to be treated with perfect justice; but, for their own sake, to be kept at a distance. The motive is not so much humanity to the slave, of which there are hardly any traces (although Plato allows that many in the hour of peril have found a slave more attached than members of their own family), but the self-respect which the freeman and citizen owes to himself (compare Republic). If they commit crimes, they are doubly punished; if they inform against illegal practices of their masters, they are to receive a protection, which would probably be ineffectual, from the guardians of the law; in rare cases they are to be set free. Plato still breathes the spirit of the old Hellenic world, in which slavery was a necessity, because leisure must be provided for the citizen.

The education propounded in the Laws differs in several points from that of the Republic. Plato seems to have reflected as deeply and earnestly on the importance of infancy as Rousseau, or Jean Paul (compare the saying of the latter--'Not the moment of death, but the moment of birth, is probably the more important'). He would fix the amusements of children in the hope of fixing their characters in after-life. In the spirit of the statesman who said, 'Let me make the ballads of a country, and I care not who make their laws,' Plato would say, 'Let the amusements of children be unchanged, and they will not want to change the laws. The 'Goddess Harmonia' plays a great part in Plato's ideas of education. The natural restless force of life in children, 'who do nothing but roar until they are three years old,' is gradually to be reduced to law and order. As in the Republic, he fixes certain forms in which songs are to be composed: (1) they are to be strains of cheerfulness and good omen; (2) they are to be hymns or prayers addressed to the Gods; (3) they are to sing only of the lawful and good. The poets are again expelled or rather ironically invited to depart; and those who remain are required to submit their poems to the censorship of the magistrates. Youth are no longer compelled to commit to memory many thousand lyric and tragic Greek verses; yet, perhaps, a worse fate is in store for them. Plato has no belief in 'liberty of prophesying'; and having guarded against the dangers of lyric poetry, he remembers that there is an equal danger in other writings. He cannot leave his old enemies, the Sophists, in possession of the field; and therefore he proposes that youth shall learn by heart, instead of the compositions of poets or prose writers, his own inspired work on laws. These, and music and mathematics, are the chief parts of his education.

Mathematics are to be cultivated, not as in the Republic with a view to the science of the idea of good,--though the higher use of them is not altogether excluded,--but rather with a religious and political aim. They are a sacred study which teaches men how to distribute the portions of a state, and which is to be pursued in order that they may learn not to blaspheme about astronomy. Against three mathematical errors Plato is in profound earnest. First, the error of supposing that the three dimensions of length, breadth, and height, are really commensurable with one another. The difficulty which he feels is analogous to the difficulty which he formerly felt about the connexion of ideas, and is equally characteristic of ancient philosophy: he fixes his mind on the point of difference, and cannot at the same time take in the similarity. Secondly, he is puzzled about the nature of fractions: in the Republic, he is disposed to deny the possibility of their existence. Thirdly, his optimism leads him to insist (unlike the Spanish king who thought that he could have improved on the mechanism of the heavens) on the perfect or circular movement of the heavenly bodies. He appears to mean, that instead of regarding the stars as overtaking or being overtaken by one another, or as planets wandering in many paths, a more comprehensive survey of the heavens would enable us to infer that they all alike moved in a circle around a centre (compare Timaeus; Republic). He probably suspected, though unacquainted with the true cause, that the appearance of the heavens did not agree with the reality: at any rate, his notions of what was right or fitting easily overpowered the results of actual observation. To the early astronomers, who lived at the revival of science, as to Plato, there was nothing absurd in a priori astronomy, and they would probably have made fewer real discoveries of they had followed any other track. (Compare Introduction to the Republic.)

The science of dialectic is nowhere mentioned by name in the Laws, nor is anything said of the education of after-life. The child is to begin to learn at ten years of age: he is to be taught reading and writing for three years, from ten to thirteen, and no longer; and for three years more, from thirteen to sixteen, he is to be instructed in music. The great fault which Plato finds in the contemporary education is the almost total ignorance of arithmetic and astronomy, in which the Greeks would do well to take a lesson from the Egyptians (compare Republic). Dancing and wrestling are to have a military character, and women as well as men are to be taught the use of arms. The military spirit which Plato has vainly endeavoured to expel in the first two books returns again in the seventh and eighth. He has evidently a sympathy with the soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws; Republic), though inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of it (Laws). Of a supreme or master science which was to be the 'coping-stone' of the rest, few traces appear in the Laws. He seems to have lost faith in it, or perhaps to have realized that the time for such a science had not yet come, and that he was unable to fill up the outline which he had sketched. There is no requirement that the guardians of the law shall be philosophers, although they are to know the unity of virtue, and the connexion of the sciences. Nor are we told that the leisure of the citizens, when they are grown up, is to be devoted to any intellectual employment. In this respect we note a falling off from the Republic, but also there is 'the returning to it' of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics. The public and family duties of the citizens are to be their main business, and these would, no doubt, take up a great deal more time than in the modern world we are willing to allow to either of them. Plato no longer entertains the idea of any regular training to be pursued under the superintendence of the state from eighteen to thirty, or from thirty to thirty-five; he has taken the first step downwards on 'Constitution Hill' (Republic). But he maintains as earnestly as ever that 'to men living under this second polity there remains the greatest of all works, the education of the soul,' and that no bye-work should be allowed to interfere with it. Night and day are not long enough for the consummation of it.

Few among us are either able or willing to carry education into later life; five or six years spent at school, three or four at a university, or in the preparation for a profession, an occasional attendance at a lecture to which we are invited by friends when we have an hour to spare from house-keeping or money-making--these comprise, as a matter of fact, the education even of the educated; and then the lamp is extinguished 'more truly than Heracleitus' sun, never to be lighted again' (Republic). The description which Plato gives in the Republic of the state of adult education among his contemporaries may be applied almost word for word to our own age. He does not however acquiesce in this widely-spread want of a higher education; he would rather seek to make every man something of a philosopher before he enters on the duties of active life. But in the Laws he no longer prescribes any regular course of study which is to be pursued in mature years. Nor does he remark that the education of after-life is of another kind, and must consist with the majority of the world rather in the improvement of character than in the acquirement of knowledge. It comes from the study of ourselves and other men: from moderation and experience: from reflection on circumstances: from the pursuit of high aims: from a right use of the opportunities of life. It is the preservation of what we have been, and the addition of something more. The power of abstract study or continuous thought is very rare, but such a training as this can be given by every one to himself.

The singular passage in Book vii., in which Plato describes life as a pastime, like many other passages in the Laws is imperfectly expressed. Two thoughts seem to be struggling in his mind: first, the reflection, to which he returns at the end of the passage, that men are playthings or puppets, and that God only is the serious aim of human endeavours; this suggests to him the afterthought that, although playthings, they are the playthings of the Gods, and that this is the best of them. The cynical, ironical fancy of the moment insensibly passes into a religious sentiment. In another passage he says that life is a game of which God, who is the player, shifts the pieces so as to procure the victory of good on the whole. Or once more: Tragedies are acted on the stage; but the best and noblest of them is the imitation of the noblest life, which we affirm to be the life of our whole state. Again, life is a chorus, as well as a sort of mystery, in which we have the Gods for playmates. Men imagine that war is their serious pursuit, and they make war that they may return to their amusements. But neither wars nor amusements are the true satisfaction of men, which is to be found only in the society of the Gods, in sacrificing to them and propitiating them. Like a Christian ascetic, Plato seems to suppose that life should be passed wholly in the enjoyment of divine things. And after meditating in amazement on the sadness and unreality of the world, he adds, in a sort of parenthesis, 'Be cheerful, Sirs' (Shakespeare, Tempest.)

In one of the noblest passages of Plato, he speaks of the relation of the sexes. Natural relations between members of the same family have been established of old; a 'little word' has put a stop to incestuous connexions. But unnatural unions of another kind continued to prevail at Crete and Lacedaemon, and were even justified by the example of the Gods. They, too, might be banished, if the feeling that they were unholy and abominable could sink into the minds of men. The legislator is to cry aloud, and spare not, 'Let not men fall below the level of the beasts.' Plato does not shrink, like some modern philosophers, from 'carrying on war against the mightiest lusts of mankind;' neither does he expect to extirpate them, but only to confine them to their natural use and purpose, by the enactments of law, and by the influence of public opinion. He will not feed them by an over-luxurious diet, nor allow the healthier instincts of the soul to be corrupted by music and poetry. The prohibition of excessive wealth is, as he says, a very considerable gain in the way of temperance, nor does he allow of those enthusiastic friendships between older and younger persons which in his earlier writings appear to be alluded to with a certain degree of amusement and without reproof (compare Introduction to the Symposium). Sappho and Anacreon are celebrated by him in the Charmides and the Phaedrus; but they would have been expelled from the Magnesian state.

Yet he does not suppose that the rule of absolute purity can be enforced on all mankind. Something must be conceded to the weakness of human nature. He therefore adopts a 'second legal standard of honourable and dishonourable, having a second standard of right.' He would abolish altogether 'the connexion of men with men...As to women, if any man has to do with any but those who come into his house duly married by sacred rites, and he offends publicly in the face of all mankind, we shall be right in enacting that he be deprived of civic honours and privileges.' But feeling also that it is impossible wholly to control the mightiest passions of mankind,' Plato, like other legislators, makes a compromise. The offender must not be found out; decency, if not morality, must be respected. In this he appears to agree with the practice of all civilized ages and countries. Much may be truly said by the moralist on the comparative harm of open and concealed vice. Nor do we deny that some moral evils are better turned out to the light, because, like diseases, when exposed, they are more easily cured. And secrecy introduces mystery which enormously exaggerates their power; a mere animal want is thus elevated into a sentimental ideal. It may very well be that a word spoken in season about things which are commonly concealed may have an excellent effect. But having regard to the education of youth, to the innocence of children, to the sensibilities of women, to the decencies of society, Plato and the world in general are not wrong in insisting that some of the worst vices, if they must exist, should be kept out of sight; this, though only a second-best rule, is a support to the weakness of human nature. There are some things which may be whispered in the closet, but should not be shouted on the housetop. It may be said of this, as of many other things, that it is a great part of education to know to whom they are to be spoken of, and when, and where. _

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