The Republic — Plato

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixxv portunitics of hearing the hving voice of a great teacher. He may select for inquiry some point of history or some unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him " a pleasure not to be repented of " (" Tima^us," 59 D).

Only let him beware of being the slave of crotchets, or of running after a will-o'-the-wisp in his ignorance, or in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming the air of a philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers.

Better to build up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from one thing to another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests in knowledge, than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be realized. But perhaps, as Plato would say, " This is part of another subject " (" Tim. 87 B) ; though we may also defend our digression by his example (" Theset. 72, 77). IV.

We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or the natural growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human affairs ; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of empires (cp. Plato, " Statesman " 301, 302, and Sulpicius's " Letter to Cicero, ad Fam," iv.

5) ; by them fate and chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to have had a great share in political events. The wiser of them like Thucydides believed that " what had been would be again," and that a tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the past. Also they had dreams of a golden age which existed once upon a time and might still exist in some unknown land, or might return again in the remote future.

But the regular growth of a state enlightened by experience, progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the citizens were educated by the fulfilment of political duties, appears never to have come within the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a state had never been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them. Their experience (cp. Aristot. " Metaph." xi. 21 ; Plato, " Laws " iii.

676-679) led them to conclude that there had been cycles of civilization in which the arts had been discovered and lost many times over, 2and cities had been overthrown and rebuilt again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and other natural convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition told them of many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a remnant. The world began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of the fragments of itself.

Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian ; but they had never seen them grow, and could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man which preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but literally, were 10,000 years old (" Laws " ii.

656 E), and they contrasted the antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories. The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the later history : they are at a distance, and the intermediate region is concealed from view ; there is no road or path which leads from one to the other.

At the beginning of Greek history, in the vestibule of the temple, is seen standing first of all the figure of 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. 907-909) ; 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. 951, 952).

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 in3stitutions 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 optimistic temperament of some great writers has 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