Page:The Republic by Plato.djvu/45

Rh are to be found in the mystical number of the State, in the number which expresses the interval between the king and the tyrant, in the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in the great though secondary importance ascribed to mathematics in education.

But as in his philosophy, so also in the form of his State, he goes far beyond the old Pythagoreans. He attempts a task really impossible, which is to unite the past of Greek history with the future of philosophy, analogous to that other impossibility, which has often been the dream of Christendom, the attempt to unite the past history of Europe with the kingdom of Christ. Nothing actually existing in the world at all resembles Plato’s ideal State; nor does he himself imagine that such a State is possible. This he repeats again and again; e. g., in the “Republic” (ix. sub fin.), or in the “Laws” (Book v. 739), where, casting a glance back on the “Republic,” he admits that the perfect state of communism and philosophy was impossible in his own age, though still to be retained as a pattern. The same doubt is implied in the earnestness with which he argues in the “Republic” (v. 472 D) that ideals are none the worse because they cannot be realized in fact, and in the chorus of laughter, which like a breaking wave will, as he anticipates, greet the mention of his proposals; though like other writers of fiction, he uses all his art to give reality to his inventions. When asked how the ideal polity can come into being, he answers ironically, “When one son of a king becomes a philosopher;” he designates the fiction of the earth-born men as “a noble lie;” and when the structure is finally complete, he fairly tells you that his republic is a vision only, which in some sense may have reality, but not in the vulgar one of a reign of philosophers upon earth. It has been said that Plato flies as well as walks, but this falls short of the truth; for he flies and walks at the same time, and is in the air and on firm ground in successive instants.

Niebuhr has asked a trifling question, which may be briefly noticed in this place—Was Plato a good citizen? If by this is meant, Was he loyal to Athenian institutions?—he can hardly be said to be the friend of democracy: but neither is he the friend of any other existing form of government; all of them he regarded as “states of faction” (“Laws” viii.