Timaeus — Plato
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cxlii Analysis 588-590. Republic IX. icputation of justice. Now that we know the nature of justice Analysis. iind injustice, let US make an image of the soul, which will personify his words. First of all, fashion a multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all manner of animals, tame and wild, and able to produce and change them at pleasure.
Suppose now another form of a lion, and another of a man ; the second smaller than the first, the third than the second ; join them together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are completely concealed. When this has been done, let us tell the supporter of injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and 589 starving the man.
The maintainer of justice, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen the man; he is nourishing the gentle principle within him, and making an alliance with the lion heart, in order that he may be able to keep down the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and with themselves. Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the unjust wrong.
But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error. Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the God in man ; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to the beast ? And if so, who would receive gold on condition that he was to degrade the noblest part of himself under the worst? — who would sell his son or daughter into the hands of brutal and evil men, for any amount of money ?
And will he sell his own fairer and diviner part without any compunction to the most godless and foul ? Would he not be worse than ^go Eriphyle, who sold her husband's life for a necklace? And intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great relaxation of spirit.
Flattery and meanness again arise when the spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to become a monkey.
The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those who are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their desires ; therefore we say that they should be placed under the control of the better principle in another because they have none in themselves ; not, as Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the subjects, but for
Analysis 591, 592. cxliii • their good. And our intention in educating the young, is to Republic ix. )! give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a analvsis. higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may go their ways. ' What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world ' and become more and more wicked ? Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if the concealment of evil prevents the cure?
If he had been punished, the brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in his soul — a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts.
The man of understanding will honour knowledge above all ; in the next place he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and harmony ; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of his own soul.
For the same )2 reason he will only accept such honours as will make him a better man ; any others he will decline. ' In that case,' said he, 'he will never be a politician. Yes, but he will, in his own city ; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine accident. * You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which has no place upon earth.
But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image. Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not ; he will act according to that pattern and no other The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic Introduc- TION are: — (i) the account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the king from the tyrant ; (3) the pattern which is in heaven. I.
Plato's account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the ' views which are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics, opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the Epicureans in describing pleasure cxliv Plato s Account of pleasure. Republic IX. as soiiictbing more than the absence of pain. This is proved Introduc- hy the circumstance that there are pleasures which have no TioN. antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and anticipation.
In the previous book (pp. 558, 559) he had made the distinction between necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and he now observes that there are a further class of ^ wild beast' pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle's drjptorrig.
He dwells upon the relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion.
The pre-eminence of royal pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are incapable of judging the pleasures of reason.
Thus, in his treatment of pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is 'sawn up into quantities' by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further technical distinctions.
Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transcience of pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the knowledge from which they are derived.
Neither do we like to admit that the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents of our bodily state (cp. In trod, to Philebus). 2.
The number of the interval which separates the king from . the tyrant, and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9, which Plato characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life, because nearly equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year. He is desirous of proclaiming ' that the interval between them is immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea.
Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring (Prot. 357 A), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the
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