Page:The Republic by Plato.djvu/16

viii manifestations of, for instance, courage or generosity, of man or beast, or even of actual chairs or tables, we come nearer to some typical conception, or, as Plato poetically puts it, we recall imperfectly to mind that ideal type which the soul actually beheld in its higher estate. Even in its crudest and half-grotesque statements this belief is evidently an approach, as is so often the case with Plato’s sublimest guesses, to the methods of modern science.

These peculiar doctrines of Plato, more fully defended in other dialogues, are here largely taken for granted from time to time as the argument requires. In general, the philosopher is at war with the spirit of the age. Perhaps this has been and must be always true, until, as Socrates says, “the kings of earth become sages, or the sages are made our kings.” Then, as now, the average man sought wealth, luxury, power, fame, by means more or less selfish and unscrupulous. Now, as then, the art most studied is the art of “getting on in the world.” The Sophists, against whom so many a Socratic or Platonic arrow of satire is sped, taught very much what, mutatis mutandis, business colleges, schools of commerce, etc., undertake to-day. For such fluency in rhetoric and oratory, or such general information, as would help to ready success in business or politics, there was a good demand, at generous prices; and the “Sophists” have continued to pocket their fees, though the barefoot Socrates and the wealthy aristocrat Plato never wearied of gibing at them for it.

The features of Plato’s commonwealth most repugnant to Greek or Yankee, community of goods, dissolution of the family, etc., were expressly intended to force upon a reluctant folk a somewhat ascetic ideal of simple living, with abundant leisure for high, philosophic thought. It was a scholar’s paradise; and the late Thomas Davidson doubtless re-established in his summer home many of the conditions under which Plato actually dwelt with his disciples of the suburban Academy. The monastery, and its offspring the mediæval university, have close kinship with the dream as with the reality of Academeia. But the great mass of men still prefer free social life, and individualism in gaining and spending; perhaps they always will. Though the plan itself of such an ideal State was felt by Plato himself to be unattainable, and was, indeed,