PLATO

All human laws are nourished by the one divine law; for it prevaileth as far as it listeth, and sufficeth for all and surviveth all.—Heraclitus.

Though reason is universal, the mass of men live as if they had each a private wisdom of his own.—Id.

The circle that gathered round Isaiah and his household in these evil days, holding themselves apart from their countrymen, treasuring the word of revelation, and waiting for Jehovah, were indeed, as Isaiah describes them, "signs and tokens in Israel from Jehovah of hosts that dwelleth in Mount Zion." The formation of this little community was a new thing in the history of religion. Till then no one had dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all national forms, maintained without the exercise of ritual services, bound together by faith in the divine word alone. It was the birth of a new era in the Old Testament religion, for it was the birth of the conception of the Church, the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion from the forms of political life,—a step not less significant that all its consequences were not seen till centuries had passed away.—W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel.

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.—Lowell.

That which is to be known I shall declare, knowing which a man attains immortality—the beginningless Supreme Brahma that is said to be neither Aught nor Naught.—Bhagavad GÎtÂ.

The only Metaphysics which really and immediately sustains Ethics is one which is itself primarily ethical, and made of the staff of Ethics.—Schopenhauer.

In answer to the burning question, How can Athens be brought back to moral life and strength? Socrates had answered, "By finding a new moral sanction." He had even gone further, and said: "This sanction is to be found in correct thinking, in thinking whole thoughts, which, because they are whole, are absolutely true, being the very principles according to which God governs the world." This is, obviously, a mere formal answer. If it was to be of any real service, three further questions had to be answered: (1) How can whole thoughts be reached? (2) What do they prove to be when they are reached? (3) How can they be applied to the moral reorganization of human life? Plato's philosophy is but an attempt to answer these questions. It therefore naturally falls into three divisions, (1) Dialectics, including Logic and Theory of Knowledge, (2) Theoretics, including Metaphysics and Physics, (3) Practics, including Ethics and Politics.

It is obvious that any attempt to reform society on Socratic principles must proceed, not from society itself, but from some person or persons in whom these principles are realized, and who act upon it from without. These persons will be the philosophers or, rather, the sages. Two distinct questions, therefore, present themselves at the outset: (1) How does a man become a sage? (2) How can the sage organize human life, and secure a succession of sages to continue his work after him? To the first of these questions, dialectics gives the answer; to the second, practics; while theoretics exhibits to us at once the origin and the end, that is, the meaning, of all existence, the human included. In the teaching of Plato we find, for the first time recognized and exhibited, the extra-civic or super-civic man, the man who is not a mere fragment of a social whole, completely subordinated to it, but who, standing above society, moulds it in accordance with ideas derived from a higher source. Forecasts of this man, indeed, we find in all Greek literature from Homer down,—in Heraclitus, Sophocles, etc., and especially, as we have seen, in Pythagoras;—but it is now for the first time that he finds full expression, and tries to play a conscious part. In him we have the promise of the future Church.

But to return to the first of our two questions, How does a man become a sage? We found the answer to be, By the dialectic method. Of this, however, not all men have the inclination to avail themselves, but only a chosen few, to whom the gods have granted the inspiration of Love (????)—a longing akin to madness (a??a), kindled by physical beauty, but tending to the Supreme Good. This good, as we shall see, consists in the vision (?e???a) of eternal truth, of being, as it is. The few men who are blessed with this love are the divinely appointed reformers and guides of mankind, the well-being of which depends upon submission to them. The dialectic method is the process by which the inspired mind rises from the beauty of physical things, which are always particulars, to the beauty of spiritual things, which are always universals, and finally to the beauty of the Supreme Good, which is The Universal. The man who has reached this last, and who sees its relation to all other universals, so that they form together a correlated whole, sees all truth, and is the sage. What we call universals Plato called "ideas" (?d?a? = forms or species). These ideas he regards as genera, as numbers, as active powers, and as substances, the highest of which is God.

Two things are especially notable in connection with this theory: (1) that it involves that Oriental ascetic view of life which makes men turn away from the sensible world, and seek their end and happiness in the colorless world of thought; (2) that it suggests a view of the nature of God which comes perilously near to Oriental pantheism. Plato, indeed, nowhere denies personality of God; but neither does he affirm it, and he certainly leaves the impression that the Supreme Being is a force acting according to a numerical ratio or law. It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of these two views upon the subsequent course of Greek education and life. The former suggested to the super-civic man a sphere of activity which he could flatter himself was superior to the civic, viz. a sphere of contemplation; while the second, by blurring, or rather ignoring, the essential elements of personality in God, viz. consciousness, choice, and will, left no place for a truly religious or moral life. This explains why Platonism, while it has inspired no great civic movement, has played such a determining part in ecclesiasticism, and why, nevertheless, the Church for ages was compelled to fight the tendencies of it, which it did in great measure under the Ægis of Plato's stern critic, Aristotle.

We are now ready to take up our second question: How can the sage organize human life, and secure a succession of sages to continue his work after him? Plato has given two widely different answers to this question, in his two most extensive works, (1) the Republic, written in his earlier life, when he was under the influence of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Socrates, and stood in a negative attitude toward the real world of history, (2) the Laws, written toward the end of his life, when he became reconciled, in part at least, to the real world and its traditional beliefs, and found satisfaction and inspiration in the teachings of Pythagoras. His change of allegiance is shown by the fact that in the Laws, and in them alone, Socrates does not appear as a character. We shall speak first of the Republic, and then point out wherein the Laws differs from it.

When Plato wrote his Republic, he was deeply impressed with the evils and dangers of the social order in which he lived. This impression, which was that of every serious man of the time, had in his case probably been deepened by the teaching and the tragic death of Socrates. The dangers were, obviously, the demoralization of Athenian men and women, and the consequent weakening and dissolution of the social bonds. The evils, as he saw them, were (1) the defective education of children, (2) the neglect of women, (3) the general disorganization of the State through individualism, which placed power in the hands of ignorance and rapacity, instead of in those of wisdom and worth. The Republic is a scheme for removing these evils and averting the consequent dangers. It is the Platonic sage's recipe for the healing of society, and it is but fair to say that, of all the Utopian and Æsthetic schemes ever proposed for this end, it is incomparably the best. It proposes nothing less than the complete transformation of society, without offering any hint as to how a selfish and degraded people is to be induced to submit thereto. In the transformed society, the State is all in all; the family is abolished; women are emancipated and share in the education and duties of men; the State attends to the procreation and education of children; private property is forbidden. The State is but the individual writ large, and the individual has three faculties, in the proper development and coÖrdination of which consists his well-being: the same, therefore, must be true of the State. These faculties are (1) intellect or reason, (????st????, ?????, ????, etc.), (2) spirit or courage (????, ???e?d??), (3) desire or appetite (?p????a, ?p???et????, f??????at??). The first resides in the head, the second in the heart, the third in the abdomen. The first is peculiar to man, the second he shares with the animals, and the third with both animals and plants. The proper relation of these faculties exists when reason, with clear insight, rules the whole man (Prudence); when spirit takes its directions from reason in its attitude toward pleasure and pain (Fortitude); when spirit and appetite together come to an understanding with reason as to when the one, and when the other, shall act (Temperance); and, finally, when each of the three strictly confines itself to its proper function (Justice). Thus we obtain the four "cardinal virtues." As existing in the individual, they are relations between his own faculties. It is only in the State that they are relations between the individual and his fellows. Rather we ought to say, they are relations between different classes of society; for society is divided into three classes, marked by the predominance of one or other of the three faculties of the soul. First, there is the intelligent class,—the philosophers or sages; second, the spirited class,—the military men or soldiers; third, the covetous class,—men devoted to industry, trade, and money-making. The well-being of the State, as of the individual, is secure only when the relations between these classes are the four cardinal virtues; when the sages rule, and the soldiers and money-makers accept this rule, and when each class strictly confines itself to its own function, so, for example, that the sages do not attempt to fight, the soldiers to make money, or the money-makers to fight or rule. In the Platonic ideal State, accordingly, the three classes dwell apart and have distinct functions. All the power is in the hands of the philosophers, who dwell in lofty isolation, devoted to the contemplation of divine ideas, and descending only through grace to mingle with human affairs, as teachers and absolute rulers, ruling without laws. Their will is enforced by the military class, composed of both sexes, which lives outside the city, devoting itself to physical exercises and the defence of the State. These two classes together constitute the guardians (f??a?e?) of the State, and stand to each other in the relation of head and hand. They produce nothing, own nothing, live sparingly, and, indeed, cherish a sovereign contempt for all producing and owning, as well as for those who produce and own. They find their satisfaction in the performance of their functions, and the maintenance of virtue in the State. What small amount of material good they require is supplied to them by the industrial class, which they protect in the enjoyment of the only good it strives after or can appreciate, the good of the appetites. This class, of course, has no power, either directive or executive, being incapable of any. It is, nevertheless, entirely happy in its condition of tutelage, and, as far as virtue can be predicated of sensuality, virtuous, the excesses of sensuality being repressed by the other two classes. Indeed, the great merit which Plato claims for his scheme is, that it secures harmony, and therefore happiness, for all, by placing every individual citizen in the class to which by nature he belongs, that is, in which his nature can find the fullest and freËst expression compatible with the well-being of the whole. Such is Plato's political scheme, marked by the two notorious Greek characteristics, love of harmony and contempt for labor. It is curious to think that it foreshadowed three modern institutions—the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the standing army, and the industrial community, in which, however, the relations of power demanded by Plato are almost reversed, with (it is only fair to say) the result which he foresaw.

In trying to answer the question, By what means shall these classes be sundered? Plato calmly assumes that his scheme is already in full operation among grown people, so that the only difficulty remaining is with regard to the children. And this is completely met by his scheme of education. The State or, let us say at once, the philosophic class, having abolished the family, and assumed its functions, determines what number and kind of children it requires at any given time, and provides for them as it would for sheep or kine. It brings together at festivals the vigorous males and females, and allows them to choose their mates for the occasion. As soon as the children are born, they are removed from their mothers and taken charge of in State institutions, where the feeble and deformed are at once destroyed. Any children begotten without the authority of the State share the same fate, either before or after birth. Those whose birth is authorized, and who prove vigorous, are reared by the State, none of them knowing, or being known by, their parents. But they by no means suffer any diminution of parentage on that account; for every mature man regards himself as the father, and every mature woman regards herself as the mother, of all the children born within a certain time, so that every child has thousands of fathers and mothers, all interested in his welfare; and the mothers, being relieved from nearly all the duties of maternity, share equally with the men in all the functions of the State.

The system of education to which the children of the State are subjected is, to a large extent, modelled after that of Sparta, especially in respect to its rigor and its absolutely political character. It contains, however, a strong Ionic or Athenian element, notably on the intellectual and Æsthetic side. It may fairly claim to be intensely Hellenic. It accepts the time-honored division of education into Music and Gymnastics, making no distinct place for Letters, but including them under Music. It demands that these two branches shall be pursued as parts of a whole, calculated to develop, as far as may be, the harmonious human being, and fit him to become part of the harmonious State. I have said "as far as may be," because Plato believes that only a small number of persons at any given time can be reduced to complete harmony. These are the born philosophers, who, when their nature is fully realized, no longer require the State, but stand, as gods, above it. In truth, the State is needed just because the mass of mankind cannot attain inner harmony, but would perish, were it not for the outer harmony imposed by the philosophers. This is a sad fact, and would be altogether disheartening, were it not for the belief, which Plato seems to have derived from Pythagoras and the Egyptians, that those human beings who fail to attain harmony in one life, will have opportunities to do so in other lives, so long as they do not, by some awful and malignant crime or crimes, show that they are utterly incapable of harmony. Plato's scheme of political education, therefore, requires, as its complement, the doctrines of individual immortality, of probation continued through as many lives as may be necessary, and of the possibility of final and eternal blessedness or misery. In fact, Plato has a fully-developed eschatology, with an "other world," consisting of three well-defined parts,—Elysium, Acheron, and Tartarus,—corresponding to the Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell of Catholic Christianity; with one important difference, however, due to the doctrine of metempsychosis. While the Christian purgatory is a place or state of purgation for souls whose probation is over forever, Acheron is merely a place where imperfect souls remain till the end of a world-period, or Æon, of ten thousand years, when they are again allowed to return to life and renew their struggle for that complete harmony which is the condition of admission to the society of the gods.

It is from this eschatology that Plato derives the moral sanctions which he employs in his State. It is true that no one has insisted with greater force than he upon the truth that virtue is, in and for itself, the highest human good; he believed, however, that this could be appreciated only by the philosopher, who had experience of it, and that for the lower orders of men a more powerful, though less noble, sanction was necessary. Accordingly, he depicts the joys of Elysium in images that could not but appeal to the Hellenic imagination, and paints Tartarus in gruesome colors that would do honor to a St. Ignatius.

In order fully to understand the method of Plato's political education, we must revert to Chapter III of Book I. There we saw that, according to the Greeks, a complete education demanded three things, (1) a noble nature, (2) training through habit, (3) instruction. For the first Plato would do what can be done by artificial selection of parents; for the second, he would depend upon music and gymnastics; for the third, upon philosophy. In these last two divisions we have the root of the mediÆval trivium and quadrivium. The Platonic pedagogical system seeks to separate the ignoble from the noble natures, and to place the former in the lowest class. It then trains the noble natures in music and gymnastics, and, while this is going on, it tries to distinguish those natures which are capable of rising above mere training to reflective or philosophic thought, from those which are not. The latter it assigns to the military class, which always remains at the stage of training, while the former are instructed in philosophy, and, if they prove themselves adepts, are finally admitted to the ruling class, as sages. Any member of either of the higher classes who proves himself unworthy of that class, may at any time be degraded into the next below.

As soon as the children are accepted by the State, their education under State nurses begins. The chief efforts of these for some time are directed to the bodies of the children, to seeing that they are healthy and strong. As soon as the young creatures can stand and walk, they are taught to exert themselves in an orderly way and to play little games; and as soon as they understand what is said to them, they are told stories and sung to. Such is their first introduction to gymnastics and music. What games are to be taught, what stories told, and what airs sung to the children, the State determines, and indeed, since the character of human beings depends, in great measure, upon the first impression made upon them, this is one of its most sacred duties. Plato altogether disapproves of leaving children without guidance to seek exercise and amusement in their own way, and demands that their games shall be such as call forth, in a gentle and harmonious way, all the latent powers of body and mind, and develop the sense of order, beauty, and fitness. He is still more earnest in insisting that the stories told to children shall be exemplifications of the loftiest morality, and the airs sung to them such as settle, strengthen, and solemnize the soul. He follows Heraclitus in demanding that the Homeric poems, so long the storehouse for children's stories, shall be entirely proscribed, on account of the false ideals which they hold up both of gods and heroes, and the intimidating descriptions which they give of the other world. Virtue, he holds, cannot be furthered by fear, which is characteristic only of slaves. He thinks that all early intellectual training should be a sort of play. The truth is, the infant-school of Plato's Republic comes as near as can well be imagined to the ideal of the modern kindergarten.

While this elementary education is going on, the officers of the State have abundant opportunity for observing the different characters of the children, and distinguishing the noble from the ignoble. As soon as a child shows plainly that it belongs by nature to the lowest class, they consign it to that class, and its education by the State practically ceases. Of course these officers know from what class each child came, and they make use of this knowledge in determining its future destiny. At the same time, they are not to be entirely guided by it, but to act impartially. The education of the lowest class after childhood the State leaves to take care of itself, persuaded that appetite will always find means for its own satisfaction. The nobler natures it continues to educate, without any break, until they reach the age of twenty. And this education is distinctly a military training. As time goes on, the gymnastic exercises become more violent, more complex, and more sustained, but always have for their subject the soul, rather than the body, and never degenerate into mere athletic brutality. Special attention is directed to the musical and literary exercises, as the means whereby the soul is directly trained and harmonized. Plato holds that no change can be made in the "music" of a State, without a corresponding change in the whole organization; in other words, that the social and political condition of a people is determined by the literature and music which it produces and enjoys. He virtually says, Let me make the songs of a people, and he who will may make their laws. Of the character of the music which he recommends we have already spoken. From literature he would exclude all that we are in the habit of calling by that name, all that is mimetic, poetic, or creative, and confine the term to what is scientific, didactic, and edifying. He sends the poets out of the State with mock-reverent politeness, as creatures too divine for human use. He is particularly severe upon the dramatists, not sparing even the sublime Æschylus. In fact, he would banish from his State all art not directly edifying. The literature which he recommends is plainly of the nature of Æsop's Fables, the Pythagorean Golden Words, and the Parmenidean or Heraclitean work On Nature. If we wished to express his intent in strictly modern language, we should have to say that he desired to replace literary training by ethical and scientific, and the poetical mode of presenting ideals by the prosaic. The true music, he held, is in the human being. "If we find," he says, "a man who perfectly combines gymnastics with music, and in exact proportion applies them to the soul, we shall be entirely justified in calling him the perfect musician and the perfect trainer, far superior to the man who arranges strings alongside each other."

There are many matters of detail in Plato's scheme of military training that well deserve consideration, but cannot be even touched upon here. Before we leave it, however, we may give the dates at which the different branches of education are to begin. Care of the body begins at birth, story-telling with the third year, gymnastics with the seventh, writing and reading with the tenth, letters and music with the fourteenth, mathematics with the sixteenth, military drill, which for the time supplants all other training, with the eighteenth. When the young people reach the age of twenty, those who show no great capacity for science, but are manly and courageous, are assigned to the soldier class, and start on a course of higher education in military training, while those who evince great intellectual ability become novices in the ruling class, and begin a curriculum in science, which lasts till the close of their thirtieth year. This course includes arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, the only sciences at that time cultivated, and aims at impressing upon the youthful mind the unity and harmony of the physical or phenomenal universe. At the age of thirty, those students who do not show any particular aptitude for higher studies are drafted off into the lower public offices, while those who do, pass five years in the study of dialectics, whereby they rise to pure ideas. They are then, from their thirty-fifth to their fiftieth year, made to fill the higher public offices, in which they take their orders directly from the sages. During this period they put their acquirements to a practical test, and so come really and fully into possession of them. At the end of their fiftieth year, after half a century of continuous education of body, mind, and will, they are reckoned to have reached the vision of the supreme good, and therefore to be fit to enter the contemplative ruling class. They are now free men; they have reached the goal of existence; their life is hidden with God; they are free from the prison of the body, and only remain in it voluntarily, and out of gratitude to the State which has educated them, in order to direct it, in accordance with absolute truth and right, toward the Supreme Good.

Such, in its outlines, is Plato's theory of education, as set forth in the Republic. It is easy to point out its defects and its errors, which are neither small nor few, but fundamental and all-pervasive. But it is equally easy to see how it came to have these defects and errors, since they are simply those of every Æsthetic social scheme which ignores the nature of the material with which it presumes to deal, and takes no account of the actual history of social institutions or of the forces by which they are evolved. It is emphatically the product of a youthful intellect, carried away by an artistic ideal. It was, however, the intellect of a Plato, who, when he became more mature, saw, without "irreverence for the dreams of youth," the feebleness of ideas for the conflict with human frailties, and strove to correct his exaggerated estimate of their power.

This he did in the Laws, whose very title suggests, in a way almost obtrusive, the change of attitude and allegiance. While in the Republic the State is governed by sages, almost entirely without laws, in the later work, the sages almost disappear and the laws assume an all-important place. In writing the Laws, moreover, he exchanges allegiance to Socrates and ideas for allegiance to Pythagoras and the gods. In saying this, I have marked the fundamental difference between the Republic and the Laws. While in the former Plato finds the moral sanctions, in the last resort, in the ideas of the pure intellect, trained in mathematics, astronomy, and dialectics, in the latter he derives them from the content of the popular consciousness, with its gods, its ethical notions, its traditions. In these, as embodied in institutions, he finds the most serviceable, if not the most exalted, revelation of divine truth. Trusting to this, he no longer seeks to abolish the family and private property, but merely to have them regulated; he no longer banishes strangers and poets from his State, but merely subjects them to State supervision; he no longer demands a philosophical training for the rulers, but only practical insight; he no longer divides his citizens into sages, soldiers, and wealth-producers, but into freemen (corresponding to his previous military class) and slaves. His government is no longer an aristocracy of intellect, but a compound of aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, representing, respectively, worth, wealth, and will. His plan of education is modified to suit these altered conditions. The children, as in Sparta, do not begin the State course of education until about their seventh year, after which their training is very much the same as that demanded in the Republic, with the omission, of course, of dialectics. Though women are no longer to be relieved of their home duties, they are still to share in the education and occupations of men, an arrangement which is facilitated by the law ordaining that both men and women shall eat at public tables. In making these changes, Plato believed that he was falling from a lofty, but unrealizable, ideal, and making concessions to human weakness; in reality, he was approaching truth and right.

BOOK III

ARISTOTLE (b.c. 384-322)