Timaeus — Plato

literature or science or even than a good life. Like the youth RepHbUcVii. in the Philebus, they are ready to discourse to any one about a Introducnew philosophy. They are generally the disciples of some '^'°'^- eminent professor or sophist, whom they rather imitate than understand.

They may be counted happy if in later years they retain some of the simple truths which they acquired in early education, and which they may, perhaps, find to be worth all the rest. Such is the picture which Plato draws and which we only reproduce, partly in his own words, of the dangers which beset youth in times of transition, when old opinions are fading away and the new are not yet firmly established.

Their condition is ingeniously compared by him to that of a supposititious son, who has made the discovery that his reputed parents are not his real ones, and, in consequence, they have lost their authority over him. The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is also noticeable.

Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense which recognizes and combines first principles (531 E). The contempt which he expresses at p. 533 for distinctions of words, the danger of involuntary falsehood, the apology which Socrates makes for his earnestness of speech, are highly characteristic of the Platonic style and mode of thought.

The quaint notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon could not have counted his feet ; the art by which we are made to believe that this State of ours is not a dream only ; the gravity with which the first step is taken in the actual creation of the State, namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation, are also truly Platonic. (For the last, compare the passage at the end of the third book (415 D), in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the second generation.)

iteph. BOOK VIII. And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that analysis. ^^^ in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common ; and the education and pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common, and kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the State are to live together.

cxvi Analysis 543-546. Republic having all things in common ; and they arc to be warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the other citizens. Analysis. ]vjow let US return to the point at which we digressed.

' That is easily done,' he replied: 'You were speaking of the State which you had constructed, and of the individual who answered to this, both of whom you affirmed to be good ; and you said that of 54^ inferior States there were four forms and four individuals corresponding to them, which although deficient in various degrees, were all of them worth inspecting with a view to determining the relative happiness or misery of the best or worst man.

Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led to another argument, — and so here we are. Suppose that we put ourselves again in the same position, and do you repeat your question. ' I should like to know of what constitutions you were speaking ?

' Besides the perfect State there are only four of any note in Hellas: — first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils ; thirdly, democracy, which follows next in order ; fourthly, tyranny, which is the disease or death of all government.

Now, States are not made of ' oak and rock,' but of flesh and blood ; and therefore as there are five States there must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them. And first, there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian State ; 54| secondly, the oligarchical nature ; thirdly, the democratical ; and fourthly, the tyrannical.

This last will have to be compared with the perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the happier, and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of Thrasymachus or our own is the more convincing. / And as before we began with the State and went on to the individual, so now, beginning with timocracy, let us go on to the timocratical man, and then proceed to the other forms of government, and the individuals who answer to them.

But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State ? Plainly, like all changes of government, from division in the rulers. But whence came division ? ' Sing, heavenly Muses,' as Homer says ; — let them condescend to answer us, as if we were children, to whom they put on a solemn face in jest. ' And what will they say? They will say that human things are fated to decay, and t^^{ I even the perfect State will not escape from this law of destiny,