9: THE REPUBLIC

For Plato would have us understand that men are in truth after all naturally much simpler, much more limited in character and capacity, than they seem. Such diversity of parts and function as is presupposed in his definition of Justice has been fixed by nature itself on human life. The individual, as such, humble as his proper function may be, is unique in fitness for, in a consequent "call" to, that function. We [242] know how much has been done to educate the world, under the supposition that man is a creature of very malleable substance, indifferent in himself, pretty much what influences may make of him. Plato, on the other hand, assures us that no one of us "is like another all in all."--Prôton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios hekastô, alla diapherôn tên physin, allos ep allou ergou praxin +.--But for this, social Justice, according to its eternal form or definition, would in fact be nowhere applicable. Once for all he formulates clearly that important notion of the function, (ergon)+ of a thing, or of a person. It is that which he alone can do, or he better than any one else.

That Plato should exaggerate this definiteness in men's natural vocations, thus to be read as it were in "plain figures" upon each, is one of the necessities of his position. Effect of nature itself, such inequality between men, this differentiation of one from another, is to be further promoted by all the cunning of the political art. The counter-assertion of the natural indifference of men, their pliability to circumstance, while it is certainly truer to our modern experience, is also in itself more hopeful, more congruous with all the processes of education. But for Plato the natural inequality of men, if it is the natural ground of that versatility, (poikilia),+ of the wrongness or Injustice he must needs correct, will be the natural ground of Justice also, as essentially a unity or harmony enforced on disparate [243] elements, unity as of an army, or an order of monks, organic, mechanic, liturgical, whichever you please to call it; but a kind of music certainly, if the founder, the master, of the state, for his proper part, can but compose the scattered notes.

Just here then is the original basis of society--gignetai toinyn hôs egômai polis epeidê tunchanei hêmôn hekastos ouk autarkês +--at first in its humblest form; simply because one can dig and another spin; yet already with anticipations of The Republic, of the City of the Perfect, as developed by Plato, as indeed also, beyond it, of some still more distant system "of the services of angels and men in a wonderful order"; for the somewhat visionary towers of Plato's Republic blend of course with those of the Civitas Dei of Augustine. Only, though its top may one day "reach unto heaven," it by no means came down thence; but, as Plato conceives, arises out of the earth, out of the humblest natural wants. Grote was right.--There is a very shrewd matter-of-fact utilitarian among the dramatis personae which together make up the complex genius of Plato. Poiêsei hôs egômai tên polin hêmetera chreia+.--Society is produced by our physical necessities, our inequality in regard to them:--an inequality in three broad divisions of unalterable, incommunicable type, of natural species, among men, with corresponding differentiation of political and social functions: three firmly outlined orders [244] in the state, like three primitive castes, propagating, reinforcing, their peculiarities of condition, as Plato will propose, by exclusive intermarriage, each within itself. As in the class of the artisans (hoi dêmiourgoi)+ some can make swords best, others pitchers, so, on the larger survey, there will be found those who can use those swords, or, again, think, teach, pray, or lead an army, a whole body of swordsmen, best, thus defining within impassable barriers three essential species of citizenship--the productive class, the military order, the governing class thirdly, or spiritual order.

The social system is in fact like the constitution of a human being. There are those who have capacity, a vocation, to conceive thoughts, and rule their brethren by intellectual power. Collectively of course they are the mind or brain, the mental element, in the social organism. There are those secondly, who have by nature executive force, who will naturally wear arms, the sword in the sheath perhaps, but who will also on occasion most certainly draw it. Well, these are like the active passions and the ultimately decisive will in the bosom of man, most conspicuous as anger--anger, it may be, resentment, against known wrong in another or in one's self, the champion of conscience, flinging away the scabbard, setting the spear against the foe, like a soldier of spirit. They are in a word the conscience, the armed conscience, of the state, [245] nobly bred, sensitive for others and for themselves, informed by the light of reason in their natural kings. And then, thirdly, protected, controlled, by the thought, the will, above them, like those appetites in you and me, hunger, thirst, desire, which have been the motive, the actual creators, of the material order all around us, there will be the "productive" class, labouring perfectly in the cornfields, in the vineyards, or on the vessels which are to contain corn and wine, at a thousand handicrafts, every one still exquisitely differentiated, according to Plato's rule of right--eis hen kata physin +; as within the military class also there will be those who command and those who can but obey, and within the true princely class again those who know all things and others who have still much to learn; those also who can learn and teach one sort of knowledge better than another.

Plato however, in the first steps of the evolution of the State, had lighted quite naturally on what turns out to be a mistaken or inadequate ideal of it, in an idyll pretty enough, indeed, from "The Golden Age."--How sufficient it seems for a moment, that innocent world! is, nevertheless, actually but a false ideal of human society, allowing in fact no place at all for Justice; the very terms of which, precisely because they involve differentiation of life and its functions, are inapplicable to a society, if so it may be called, still essentially inorganic. In [246] a condition, so rudimentary as to possess no opposed parts at all, of course there will be no place for disturbance of parts, for proportion or disproportion of faculty and function. It is, in truth, to a city which has lost its first innocence (polis êdê tryphôsa)+ that we must look for the consciousness of Justice and Injustice; as some theologians or philosophers have held that it was by the "Fall" man first became a really moral being.

Now in such a city, in the polis êdê tryphôsa,+ there will be an increase of population:-- kai hê chôra pou hê tote hikanê smikra ex hikanês estai.+ And in an age which perhaps had the military spirit in excess Plato's thoughts pass on immediately to wars of aggression:-- oukoun tês tôn plêsion chôras hêmin apotmêteon?+ We must take something, if we can, from Megara or from Sparta; which doubtless in its turn would do the same by us. As a measure of relief however that was not necessarily the next step. The needs of an out-pushing population might have suggested to Plato what is perhaps the most brilliant and animating episode in the entire history of Greece, its early colonisation, with all the bright stories, full of the piety, the generosity of a youthful people, that had gathered about it. No, the next step in social development was not necessarily going to war. In either case however, aggressive action against our neighbours, or defence of our distant brethren beyond the seas [247] at Cyrene or Syracuse against rival adventurers, we shall require a new class of persons, men of the sword, to fight for us if need be. Ah! You hear the notes of the trumpet, and therewith already the stir of an enlarging human life, its passions, its manifold interests. Phylakes or epikouroi,+ watchmen or auxiliaries, our new servants comprehend at first our masters to be, whom a further act of differentiation will distinguish as philosophers and kings from the strictly military order. Plato nevertheless in his search for the true idea of Justice, of rightness in things, may be said now to have seen land. Organic relationship is come into the rude social elements and made of them a body, a society. Rudimentary though it may still be, the definition of Justice, as also of Injustice, is now applicable to its processes. There is a music in the affairs of men, in which one may take one's due part, which one may spoil.

Criticising mythology Plato speaks of certain fables, to be made by those who are apt at such things, under proper spiritual authority, so to term it, hôs en pharmakou eidei ta pseudê ta en deonti genomena,+ medicinable lies or fictions, with a provisional or economised truth in them, set forth under such terms as simple souls could best receive. Just here, at the end of the third book of The Republic he introduces such a fable: phoinikikon pseudos,+ he calls it, a miner's story, about copper and silver and gold, such as may really [248] have been current among the primitive inhabitants of the island from which metal and the art of working it had been introduced into Greece.--

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