Timaeus — Plato

the legislator, himself the interpreter and servant of the God. The fundamental laws which he gives are not supposed to change with time and circumstances. The salvation of the state is held rather to depend on the inviolable maintenance of them. They were sanctioned by the authority of heaven, and it was deemed impiety to alter them.

The desire to maintain them unaltered seems to be the origin of what at first sight is very surprising to us — the intolerant zeal of Plato against innovators in religion or politics (cp. Laws x. 907-9) ; although with a happy inconsistency he is also willing that the laws of other countries should be studied and improvements in legislation privately communicated to the Nocturnal Council (Laws xii. 95 1 E fif.).

The additions which were made to them in later ages in order to meet the increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed by a fiction to the original legislator ; and the words of such enactments at Athens were disputed over as if they had been the words of Solon himself. Plato hopes to preserve in a later generation the mind of the legislator ; he would have his citizens remain within the lines which he has laid down for them.

He would not harass them with minute regulations, and he would have allowed some changes in the laws : but not changes which would affect the fundamental institutions of the state, such for example as would convert an aristocracy into a timocracy, or a timocracy into a popular form of government. Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress has been the exception rather than the law of human history.

And therefore we are not surprised to find that the idea of progress is of modern rather than of ancient date ; and, like the idea of a philosophy of history, is not more than a century or two old.

It seems to have arisen out of the impression left on the human mind by the growth of the Roman Empire and of the Christian Church, and to be due to the political and social improvements which they introduced into the world ; and still more in our own century to the idealism of the first French Revolution and the triumph of American Independence ; and in a yet greater degree to the vast material prosperity and growth of population in England and her colonies and in America.

It is also to be ascribed in a measure to the greater study of the philosophy of history. The optimist temperament of some great writers has

Intkoduc- TION.

CCXIV Republic. Introduction.

The Republic and the Laws. assisted the creation of it, while the opposite character has led a few to regard the future of the world as dark. The ' spectator of all time and of all existence ' sees more of ' the increasing purpose which through the ages ran ' than formerly : but to the inhabitant of a small state of Hellas the vision was necessarily limited like the valley in which he dwelt. There was no remote past on which his eye could rest, nor any future from which the veil was partly lifted up by the analogy of history. The narrowness of view, which to ourselves appears so singular, was to him natural, if not unavoidable.

V. For the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and the Laws, the two other works of Plato which directly treat of politics, see the Introductions to the two latter ; a few general points of comparison may be touched upon in this place. And first of the Laws, (i) The Republic, though probably written at intervals, yet speaking generally and judging by the indications of thought and style, may be reasonably ascribed to the middle period of Plato's life : the Laws are certainly the work of his declining years, and some portions of them at any rate seem to have been written in extreme old age. (2) The Republic is full of hope and aspiration : the Laws bear the stamp of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which received the last touches of the author : the other is imperfectly executed, and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty of youth : the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the severity and knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age. (3) The most conspicuous defect of. the Laws is the failure of dramatic power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and oppositions of character. (4) The Laws may be said to have more the nature of a sermon, the Republic of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more intellectual. (5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws ; the immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii. 959, 967 ; the person of Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and children is renounced ; the institution of common or public meals for women (Laws vi. 781) is for the first time intro-

The Republic and the Laws.

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