Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/214

Rh 204 FLA T ining a piece of actual legislation. Even in his Laws, a far more prosaic writing, Plato himself repeatedly protests against such criticism. In his most aspiring flights he is well aware of the difference between the imaginary and actual embodiment of an ideal, 1 although as a literary artist he gives to his creations, whether in anticipation or retrospect, an air of sober reality and matter-of-fact. He is more in earnest about principles than about details, and if questioned would probably be found more confident with regard to moral than to political truth. He may have been wholly unconscious of the inconsistencies of his scheme, but it would not have greatly disconcerted him to have discovered them, or to have been told that this or that arrangement would not &quot; work.&quot; He would have trusted the correction of his own rough draft to the philo sopher-kings of the future. The Republic falls naturally into five portions. (1) Bk. i. is preliminary, raising the main question about justice. (2) Bks. ii., iii., iv. contain the outlines of the perfect state, including the education of the &quot;guardians,&quot; and leading up to the definition of justice (a) in the state, and (b) in the individual. (3) Bks. v., vi. , vii. (which to some critics present the appearance of an after thought or excrescence on the original design) contain the cardinal provisions (1) of communism (for the guardians only), (2) that philosophers shall be kings, (3) of higher education for the rulers (viz., the philosopher-kings). This third provision occupies bks. vi. and vii. (which have again, as some think, the appearance of an outgrowth from bk. v.). (4) Bks. viii. and ix., resuming the general subject from bk. iv., present the &quot; obverse side,&quot; by showing the declension of the state and individual through four stages, until in the life of tyranny is found the image of ideal injustice, as that of justice was found in the life of the perfect state. (5) Bk. x. forms a concluding chapter, in which several of the foregoing enactments are reviewed, and the work ends, like the Gorgias, with a vision of judgment. Thus the main outlines of the scheme are contained in bks. ii., iii., iv., viii., ix. And yet bks. v., vi., vii. form the central portion, a sort of inner kernel, and are of the highest significance. In speculating about the composition of the Republic (as is the fashion of some interpreters), it is important to bear in mind the general character of Plato s writings. &quot;The conception of unity,&quot; says Professor Jowett, 2 &quot;really applies in very different degrees to diiferent kinds of art, to a statue, for example, far more than to any kind of literary com position, and to some species of literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most stringent ; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art be hastily transferred to another. . . . Plato subjects himself to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he gives iinity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together. He works freely, and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves to gether the frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and which the woof cannot always be determined. &quot; It should be added, that as Dialectic was still a &quot; world not realized,&quot; and he was continually conscious of using imperfect methods, he was not solicitous to bind himself to any one method, or to watch carefully over the logical coherence of his work. &quot; Sailing with the wind of his argument,&quot; he often tacks and veers, changing his method with his subject-matter, much as a poet might adopt a change of rhythm. Absorbed as he is in each new phase of his subject, all that precedes is cancelled for the time. And much of what is to come is deliberately kept out of view, because ideas of high importance are reserved for the place where their introduction will have most effect. Another cause of apparent inconsequence in Plato is what he himself would call the use of hypothesis. He works less deductively and more from masses of generalized experience than Platonists have been ready to admit. And in the Republic he is as much engaged with the criticism of an actual as with the projection of an ideal condition of society. 3 If we knew more of the working of 1 See especially Rej)., v. p. 472; Leyg., : p. 746. 2 Jowett, Introd. to the fhasdrus. 3 Krohn, Der Platonische Klaat, Halle, 1876. Attic institutions as he observed them, we should often understand him better. These general considerations should be weighed against the inequalities which have led some critics to suppose that the &quot;first sketch of the state&quot; in bks. ii.-iv. is much earlier than the more exalted views of bks. v.-vii. If in these later books new conditions for choosing the future rulers are allowed to emerge, if in discussing the higher intellectual virtues the simple psychology of bk. iv. is lost sight of (it reappears in the Tlmxtis), if the &quot; knowledge of the expedient &quot; at first required falls far short of the conception of knowledge afterwards attained, all this is quite in keeping with Plato s manner elsewhere, and may be sufficiently accounted for by artistic and dialectical reserve. It can hardly be an altogether fortuitous circum stance that the culminating crisis, the third and highest wave of difficulty,- the declaration that philosophers must be kings and kings philosophers, comes in precisely at the central point of the whole long work. The great principle of the political supremacy of mind, though thus held back through half the dialogue, really dominates the whole. It may be read between the lines all through, even in the institution of gymnastic and the appraisement of the cardinal virtues. It is a genuine- development of Socratic thought. And it is this more than any other single feature which gives the Republic, a prophetic significance as &quot; an attempt towards anticipating the work of future generations.&quot; 4 Other aspects of the great dialogue, the Dorian frame work, so inevitable in the reaction from Ionian life, the traces of Pythagorean influence, the estimate of oligarchy and democracy, the characters of the interlocutors in their bearing on the exposition, have been fully treated by recent writers, and for brevity s sake are here passed over. There are other points, however, which must not be omitted, because they are more intimately related to the general development of Plato s thoughts. 1. The question debated by Proclus has been raised before and since, whether the proper subject of the Republic is justice or the state. The doubt would be more suggestive if put in a somewhat different form : Is Plato more interested in the state or the individual 1 That he is in earnest about both, and that in his view r of them they are inseparable, is an obvious answer. And it is almost a truism to say that political relations Avere prior to ethical in the mind of a Greek. Yet if in some passages the political analogy reacts on moral notions (as in the defini tion of temperance), in others the state is spoken of in language borrowed from individual life. And it remains questionable whether the ethics or the politics of the Republic are less complete. On the whole Plato himself seems to be conscious that the ideal derived from the life- work of Socrates could be more readily stamped on individual lives than on communities of men (see especi ally Rep., vii. 528 A, ix. 592). 2. The analogy of the individual is often used to enforce the requirement of political unity and simplicity (see especially v. 4G2 C). This is also to be referred, however, to Plato s general tendency to strain after abstractions. He had not yet reached a point of view from which he could look steadily on particulars in the light of universal principles. He recurs often to experience, but is soon carried off again into the abstract region which to him seemed higher and purer. 5 &quot; It has been said that Plato flies as well as walks, but this hardly expresses the whole truth, for he flies and walks at the same time, and is in the air and on firm ground in successive instants &quot;(Jowett). 4 Grote. 5 See, for example, the admission of luxury and the after-purifi cation through &quot;music,&quot; bks. ii., iii.