The Republic — Plato

improvements in the breed for the loss of the best things in life. The greatest regard for the weakest and meanest of human beings — the infant, the criminal, the insane, the idiot — truly seems to us one of the noblest results of Christianity. We have learned, though as yet imperfectly, that the individual man has an endless value in the sight of God, and that we honor Him when we honor the darkened and disfigured image of Him (cp. "Laws" xi.

931 A). This is the lesson which Christ taught in a parable when he said, " Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. Such lessons are only partially realized in any age; they were foreign to the age of Plato, as they have very different degrees of strength in different countries or ages of the Christian world.

To the Greek the family was a religious and customary institution binding the members together by a tie inferior in strength to that of friendship, and having a less solemn and sacred sound than that of country.

The relationship which existed on the lower level of custom, Plato imagined that he was raising to the higher level of nature and reason ; while from the modern and Christian point of view we regard him as sanctioning murder and destroying the first principles of morality. The great error in these and similar speculations is that the difference between man and the animals is forgotten in them.

The human being is regarded with the eye of a dog or bird-fancier (v. 459 A), or at best of a slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength ; in a few cases at courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the great desideratum. But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for their superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing carts.

Neither does the improvement of the human race consist merely in the increase of the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of the mind. Hence there must be " a marriage of true minds " as well as of bodies, of imagination and reason as well as of lusts and instincts.

Men and women without feeling or imagination are justly called brutes; yet Plato takes away these qualities and puts nothing in their place, not even the desire of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know their own children. The most important transaction of social life, he who is the idealist philos2opher converts into the most brutal. For the pair are to have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal festival ; their children are not theirs, but the State's ; nor is any tie of affection to unite them. Yet here the analogy of the animals might have saved Plato from a gigantic error, if he had " not lost sight of his own illustration " (ii. 375 D). For the " nobler sort of birds and beasts " (v.

459 A) nourish and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another. An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while " to try and place life on a physical basis. But should not life rest on the moral rather than upon the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower; first the human and rational, afterward the animal.

Yet they are not absolutely divided ; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which includes them both. Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but the expansion and enlargement of it — the highest form which the physical is capable of receiving.

As Plato would say, the body does not take care of the body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes care of both. In all human action not that which is common to man and the animals is the characteristic element, but that which distinguishes him from them. Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all virtue into health of body — " la fagon que notre sang circule," still on merely physical grounds we must come back to ideas.

Mind and reason and duty and conscience, under these or other names, are always reappearing. There cannot be health of body without health of mind ; nor health of mind without the sense of duty and the love of truth (cp. " Charm. 156 D, E). That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his regulations about marriage have fallen into the error of separating body and mind, does, indeed, appear surprising.

Yet the wonder is not so much that Plato should have entertained ideas of morality which to our own age are revolting, but that he should have contradicted himself to an extent which is hardly credible, falling in an instant from the heaven of idealism into the crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift of reflection, he appears to have thought out a subject about which he had better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his 3monstrous fancy. The old poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no want of respect for the family, on which much of their religion was based. But the example of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree the tendency to defy public opinion, seem to have misled him. He will make one family out of all the families of the State. He will select the finest specimens of men and women, and breed from these only.

Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part of human nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise of philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because any departure from established morality, even where this is not intended, is apt to be unsettling, it may be worth while to draw out a little more at length the objections to the Platonic marriage.

In the first place, history shows that wherever polygamy has been largely allowed the race has deteriorated. One man to one woman is the law of God and nature. Nearly all the civilized peoples of the world at some period before the age of written records have become monogamists ; and the step when once taken has never been retraced.

The exceptions occurring among Brahmins or Mahometans or the ancient Persians, are of that sort which may be said to prove the rule. The connections formed between superior and inferior races hardly ever produce a noble off^spring, because they are licentious ; and because the children in such cases usually despise the mother, and are neglected by the father, who is ashamed of them.

Barbarous nations when they are introduced by Europeans to vice die out ; polygamist peoples either import and adopt children from other countries, or dwindle in numbers, or both. Dynasties and aristocracies which have disregarded the laws of nature have decreased in numbers and degenerated in stature ; mariages de convenance leave their enfeebling stamp on the offspring of them (cp. " King Lear," Act i. Sc. 2).

The marriage of near relations, or the marrying in and in of the same family, tends constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children, sometimes assuming the form as they grow older of passionate licentiousness. The common prostitute rarely has any offspring.

By such unmistakable evidence is the authority of morality asserted in the relations of the sexes : and so many more elements enter into this " mystery " than are dreamed of by Plato and some other philosophers.