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<h2> INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS. </h2>
<p>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 humour 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 (cp, especially in Books V, VI, VII) 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 (cp. Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl), although he has not always avoided the
confusion of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.). 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 (Soph. Elenchi).</p>
<p>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 (cp. Tim.), 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 sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic
independence (cp. Laws), 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 (cp.
Introd. to Critias).</p>
<p>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
recognised, 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 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' (Symp.) 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.</p>
<p>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 quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal
succeeds the government of the soldier and the lover of honour, 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.</p>
<p>The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis in
the Classical Museum.), 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 enquiry, 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 analysed 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.</p>
<p>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 (see
Introduction to 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 labours 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 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 recognise 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
connexion 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.</p>
<p>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 idea. Or, described in Christian language, the
kingdom of God is within, and yet developes 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 (cp. Tim.).
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.</p>
<p>Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and
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 enquiry '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 (cp. the
Introduction to the Phaedrus).</p>
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