Timaeus — Plato

A Ji a lysis 370-375. ■ xxxiii tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all Republic IL this will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be analysis. ;7i very large. But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships.

In the city too we must have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of 172 the citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear. Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life.

They spend their days in houses which they have built for themselves ; they make their own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children. * But,' said Glaucon, interposing, 'are they not to have a relish?

Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ' 'Tis a city of pigs, Socrates.* Why, I replied, what do you want more ? ' Only the comforts of life, — sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets. I see; you want not only a State, but a luxurious State ; and possibly in the more complex frame we may sooner find justice and injustice.

Then ;73 the fine arts must go to work — every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks, barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is the source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part of our neighbours' land, and they will want a part of ours.

And this is the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes 174 as other political evils. Our city will now^ require the slight addition of a camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural aptitude for military duties.

There will ;75 be some warlike natures who have this aptitude — dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. And VOL. III. — 3

Republic II. as Spirit is the foundation of courage, such natures, whether of Analysis. w^^n or animals, will be full of spirit. But these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another ; the union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities. Who then can be a guardian ? The image of the dog suggests an answer.

For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. 376 Your dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing; and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness. The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without education ? But what shall their education be ?

Is any better than the oldfashioned sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic ? Music includes Hterature, and literature is of two 377 kinds, true and false. ' What do you mean ? ' he said. I mean that children hear stories before they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood.

Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up ; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others.

Some of them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies ; stories about Uranus and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, 378 and which should never be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all ; or, if at all, then in a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable animal.

Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten ? Such tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are incapable of understanding allegory.

If any one asks what tales are to be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and 379 not book-makers; we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be written ; to write them is the duty of others.

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he Republic il. is ; not as the author of all things, but of good only.

We will analysis. not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies ; — or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God go caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished.

But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle — God is the author of good only. And the second principle is like unto it : — With God is no variableness or change of form. Reason teaches us this ; for if we suppose a change in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself.

By another ? — but the best works of nature and 8 1 art and the noblest qualities of mind are least liable to be changed by any external force. By himself? — but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change for the worse. He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image.

Therefore we refuse to listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging in the likeness of a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at night in strange disguises ; all that blasphemous nonsense with which mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be sup- 82 pressed. But some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a form in relation to us. Why should he?

For gods as well as men hate the lie in the soul, or principle of falsehood; and as for any other form of lying which is used for a purpose and is regarded as innocent in certain exceptional cases — what need have the gods of this? For they are not ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their 83 enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs.

God then is true, he is absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not, by day or night, by word or sign. This is our second great principle — God is true. Away with the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis against Apollo in Aeschylus. . . . In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato Introducproceeds to trace the first principles of mutual need and of