1. The Hellenic Peoples in General
A HISTORY of political theories must begin with the thought of that brilliant aggregation of Mediterranean peoples whose astonishing development in intellectual culture, twenty-three centuries in the past, is still the wonder and despair of civilized man. Probably in no field save that of art are Greek ideals more highly appreciated at the present day than in political theory. This is in some measure due to the wide prevalence of democratic thought and feeling; but more decisive is the fact that the great thinkers of Hellas explored the entire height and depth of human political capacity and outlined the principles which at all times and in all circumstances must determine the general features of political life. With all its universality, however, Hellenic thought, like that of every other age and people, was determined primarily by the institutions amid which it developed. The only path of approach to an accurate apprehension of political philosophy is through political history. Our attention must, therefore, first be devoted to the salient facts in the growth of Greek constitutions.
The opening of authentic history, about 700 B.C., reveals the Hellenic world as a group of little communities scattered about among the hills and valleys of the peninsula which they afterward made so famous, and on the adjacent coasts and islands. Politically each community was isolated and independent; but the tradition of a common origin pervaded them all and was the basis of various social and religious institutions. In the peninsula itself some tendency was indicated toward the creation of larger political aggregates through the voluntary coalescence of neighbouring communities or through the forcible absorption of the weaker by the stronger. On the other hand, the practice of colonization in distant places both reduced the absorptive power of the mother city, and, through the autonomy of the colony, confirmed the influence of the characteristic type. The π;λις;, or city-state, already fixed the lines within which the theory and practice of Hellenic politics were always to move.
In the period now under consideration no single form of government was universal throughout the various communities. But in practically all the more progressive and powerful states, save Sparta, some species of aristocracy or oligarchy prevailed. The patriarchal kingship, which must have been characteristic of the times depicted by Homer, had disappeared, and supreme authority was vested in a relatively small number of privileged persons, whose distinction was based on social or religious tradition. The power wielded by these aristocracies was by no means purely political. The communities themselves were still permeated by the ideas of family and clan relationship, and the aristocratic government expressed merely the recognition of general preëminence to certain families and clans. The heads of these social organizations constituted the body which regulated the whole social, economic, religious and political life of the community. This aristocratic type was characteristic of the Hellenic world during the seventh century B.C.
In the succeeding century the process of social evolution resulted in the general prevalence of another governmental type: aristocratic government was succeeded by tyrannic. Two causes figured largely in this transformation. On the one hand the growth and prosperity of the cities, the expansion of their commerce, and the general intellectual development introduced elements into social thought and structure which tended steadily to undermine the moral foundations of the old system. On the other hand, the degeneracy and dissension that were manifested in the aristocracy itself gave frequent opportunity for an able and ambitious man to take the power into his individual control. Practically every important city of the Hellenic world ( Sparta again being a notable exception) passed under the sway of a tyrant. Monarchy thus became again the prevailing type of government; unlike the Homeric king, however, the tyrant had in most cases no support whatever in social tradition or religious sentiment, but rested his authority on force pure and simple. The very fact of tyrannic power, therefore, must have had much influence in promoting the rationalization of political thought— in removing political reflection from its ancient channel to that which was marked out by the primary consideration, not of the right of the governor, but of the welfare of the governed.
The violence and cruelty which characterized the rule of the tyrant were at first displayed chiefly toward the aristocracy—the supplanted ruling class. In time, however, the whole subject population felt the full force of his arbitrary sway. The many and the few were brought by common suffering to combine for the common relief. One by one the tyrants were expelled from Hellas and a new page was unrolled in Greek political experience. The new era presented, however, no such uniformity as that of the preceding periods. No single type of government attained general recognition; but instead there developed that conflict between democracy and oligarchy which persisted until the distinctive political character of Hellas disappeared. The coalition of aristocracy and populace that overthrew the tyrants vanished at once before the problem of providing an organization to take the place of that which was destroyed. To the aristocrats it seemed obvious that the ancient power of the privileged classes must be restored. But the age of the tyrants had been an age of enormous advance in material prosperity and intellectual culture, and the pretensions of the old aristocracy, none too favourably regarded when the tyrant came, were violently resisted when he disappeared. The perturbations of the Persian wars gave new wrenches and strains to all the old ideals, and from the general unsettlement arose that democratic wave which threatened to ingulf all Hellas. Conservatism rallied, however, and resisted the shock, and under the leadership of Sparta maintained some hold on power till the coming of the Macedonian. It was in the midst of the widespread conflict between aristocracy and democracy that the most brilliant contributions of Greek thought to political theory began to appear.
While the internal politics of each of the citystates had made familiar the facts of aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy, the relations of the states with one another had evoked the conception of a Hellenic national unity. From the earliest times community of language, of oracles and of religious worship had served to mark off the Hellenes from the outer world which they called barbarian, and to impress upon their consciousness the idea of race unity. But only under pressure of danger from the Persian power did this consciousness express itself in institutions of a political character. First to Sparta and then to Athens was assigned by general consent of the threatened states a “hegemony,” or ill-defined leadership in the operations against the enemy. Each of the leading states in turn sought to expand its military hegemony into an imperial dominion, but neither attained more than a temporary and limited success. Political unity through federation might have been achieved if the two strongest states could have coöperated harmoniously; but socially and intellectually Athens and Sparta had nothing in common, and politically they embodied the opposite extremes of democratic and aristocratic tendency. Hence the rivalry which wrecked Hellas in the Peloponnesian War. The idea of political unity, however, by no means disappeared. It played a part in the general movement of Hellenic politics throughout the supremacy of Sparta and of Thebes ( 404-362 B.C.), and furnished in some sense a theoretical basis for the absorption of the Greek states by Macedon. That the idea received no recognition in the political science of the day is largely due to the fact that in every case in which the idea had been to any extent realized, brute force had been conspicuously the determining factor in the result; and philosophy had not yet reached the stage where it could calmly analyze the workings of brute force.
2. The Constitution of Sparta
The institutions which most influenced Greek political theory include not only those involved in the widespread movements sketched above, but also many that were peculiar to individual states. Particularly important in this respect are the two systems which embodied the constitutions of Sparta and Athens. Some special consideration of the organization and development of these two representative states is indispensable to a comprehension of Greek philosophy.
In Sparta the first fact to be noticed is the social basis of the state. Here we find a rigid classification of the people that remained substantially the same from the earliest to the latest period of her history. The population of Spartan territory fell into three classes—Spartans, Perioikoi and Helots. The last named were the most numerous, but their position was at the bottom of the social structure. They were the peasant serfs whose manual labour, almost exclusively agricultural, supplied the subsistence of the whole population. In rights, either civil or political, they had no share; their condition was that of abject slavery, from the burden of which the only relief seems to have come through their employment at times as light-armed troops in the army. The class called Perioikoi constituted in a sense the middle class of the population. They enjoyed full civil rights and apparently a degree of local self-government. Engaged to some extent in agriculture, they conducted practically all the operations of industry and commerce. But in the political life of the state, in its general sense, they had no share whatever.
The political people of Sparta was to be found exclusively in the first named of the three classes— the Spartans proper. This class, representing historically the small band of Dorians who conquered a home for themselves in the Peloponnesus in prehistoric times, was numerically an almost insignificant element of the population; but it never lost the absolute control which it originally assumed over all the affairs of public life. The Spartan, indeed, had no occupation but the training for and performance of public duties. His support was drawn from the land which the Helots cultivated; trade and commerce were absolutely prohibited to him; and all that remained was the military and political career. The institutions attributed to Lycurgus provided a round of duty which determined the daily life of the Spartan down to very minute details; and the observance of the Lycurgean rules gave to the class the character of a military brotherhood whose sole function was dominion. At seven years of age the children were removed from parental care and taken in charge by the officials of the state. By a severe and engrossing system of gymnastic training, they were brought to the highest attainable perfection in physical development. For the boys the training gradually took on a purely military character, so that by the age of manhood they were expert in all the duties of a soldier; for the girls the goal kept in view was the capacity to bring forth hardy offspring. Till the maturity of his physical life was passed the Spartan was chiefly occupied with military affairs; in his declining years he assumed the duties of the magistracy, and shared in counsel and administration. A variety of institutions insured the maintenance of the character which this system impressed upon the community. Most famous was the public mess. Every adult male Spartan was obliged to take his meals with his fellows at a public dining hall, under the supervision of the magistrates. The diet prescribed left no room for the insidious influence of inequality and luxury. A similar purpose was manifest in the discouragement of family life in every form, in the prohibition of the pursuit of trade or agriculture, and in the restriction of intercourse with foreigners to the narrowest possible limits. Finally, an express provision of the Lycurgean discipline forbade written laws, and declared conclusive in every controversy the judgment of the magistrate. Litigation thus, like other luxuries that played so large a part in Athenian life, never gained a foothold in the economy of Sparta.
The enormous influence exerted by the Spartan constitution on Greek thought is due more to the peculiar system just sketched, which marked off the Spartans as a class in the population, than to the organization through which this class performed its political functions. Some notice of this organization is, however, necessary. At the nominal apex of the system stood the kings, two in number, precisely equal in dignity and authority; next came a senate of twenty-eight members, elected for life; third, an assembly consisting of the whole body of Spartans; and, finally, the ephors, an annually elected board of five members. At the time with which we are particularly concerned the functions of these different organs were somewhat as follows. The kings held the highest official positions in the military and in the religious system; their actual authority, however, was not great. The senate performed a variety of administrative functions, mostly of a judicial character. The assembly had practically no significance, meeting only on very rare occasions to register its approval of some especially important project. In the ephorate, on the other hand, was to be found the real centre of the system. This institution seems to have had its origin in a desire to set up a check on the authority of the kings and senate, at the time when the assembly ceased to be efficient for this purpose. By a process of gradual encroachment, the ephors displaced all the other organs in the final determination of administrative and general policy. Even the actual direction of the army in the field was at times taken from the kings, though as a rule the military authority was left intact with royalty.
The aristocratic character of the Spartan state was primarily expressed in the exclusion of the two largest classes of the population from political life. From the standpoint of the governing class alone, the actual system might appear democratic; for the ephors were the annually elected representatives of the people. In fact, however, but a small part of the Spartans themselves, in historic times, participated in political life. For, despite the design of the Lycurgean legislator to secure both equality and fraternity in his system, the former feature, if it ever existed, very early disappeared. The public tables were supported by the contributions of the Spartans from the produce of their lands. Failure to contribute entailed, not a forfeiture of the right or duty of eating at the common mess, but the loss of all right to participate in the government. A progressive decrease in the number of landowners in Sparta characterized the whole of her authentic history, with the consequence that the governing class correspondingly narrowed. It was this class which was represented in the ephorate —a fact which sufficiently explains the opinion of the Greeks themselves that the Spartan state, while in form partly royal and partly democratic, was in essence intensely oligarchic.
3. The Constitution of Athens
The Athenian state presented in every respect the sharpest contrast to the Spartan. Historically, the constitution passed through all the various stages which characterized the general development of Hellenic politics, and at last it became both in form and in essence intensely democratic. The social basis of the state lay primarily in the distinction between slaves and freemen, and secondarily in the division of the latter into nobles (εν + ̉πατρίδαι) and commons. The servile class had not, however, as at Sparta, the character of a conquered population depressed into serfage; nor was there, between nobles and commons, any such traditional distinction of race as between Spartans and Perioikoi. Further, in the fulness of maritime and commercial prosperity, a large resident alien element (μέτοικοι), which had no counterpart whatever in Sparta, became more or less identified with the social and economic life of Athens. Politically, however, Athenian institutions involved only the nobility and commons, who to- gether constituted the citizen-body of the state. Democratization was complete when all members of these two classes stood on an equality so far as participation in political power was concerned.
The dawn of authentic history reveals all authority of a political character in the hands of the small privileged class of Eupatridæ, or nobles. The principal organs through which this authority was exercised consisted of nine annually elected officers, later known collectively as archons, and a council or senate which took its familiar name from the place of its meeting, the Areopagus. About the end of the seventh century B.C., serious disturbances, due chiefly to ill feeling between the wealthy nobles and the poorer commons, resulted in the reforms associated with the name of Solon. The essence of the new system lay in the substitution of wealth for birth as the basis for participation in political power. The monopoly of the Eupatridæ was broken, but the commons were admitted to power only in proportion to their property. A fourfold classification of the whole people according to income served to determine eligibility to office; the highest positions, such as that of archon, being open only to the first class, and no office at all being attainable by the fourth class. In the existing distribution of wealth, this insured to the nobles still a predominating influence in administration. But the germ of democracy lay in two new governmental organs which appeared in the Solonian system, the ekklesia, or general assembly of the people, and the Senate of the Four Hundred. The assembly, which included without discrimination all classes of the free citizens, elected the archons, approved or disapproved the official conduct of all magistrates, and exercised a general political and judicial authority. Its activity was regulated, however, by the Senate of the Four Hundred, or “preconsidering senate.” This was an elected body2 which determined when meetings of the assembly should be called and what matters should be brought before it, and further exercised a wide administrative authority in seeing that the decrees of the assembly were executed. The powers attributed to these two new organs limited pro tanto the importance of the senate of the Areopagus. This body, being recruited by the entrance each year of the retiring archons, remained the stronghold of the old governing class, and continued to exercise judicial functions that gave it a powerful influence in the state.
From 560 to 510 B.C., constitutional life at Athens was in a sense suspended by the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons. Yet the forms of the Solonian system were for the most part preserved, subject to the overruling will of the tyrant. Upon the final expulsion of the Pisistratidæ a sharp democratic impulse was given to the constitution by the legislation of Kleisthenes, and within the next century, principally through the influence of Pericles, the progress was steady to the complete realization of democracy. In its final shape the system presented the following features. At the centre lay the assembly—the general body of citizens, paid for attendance at its meetings. It was the supreme political organ of the state, and spoke the final word in all matters that it chose to consider. The function of the assembly, however, was regarded as primarily executive rather than legislative. Its acts were decrees (ψηΆίσματα), not laws (νόμοι), and were theoretically always subordinate to the vaguely defined body of ancient custom to which the term νόμοι applied. In fact, the assembly was its own final interpreter of the νόμοι, and accordingly the latter per se imposed no check upon the popular will. Practically, however, there existed certain restraints upon the assembly. Every proposition which was recognized as affecting the νόμοι was subject to a special procedure of a judicial character, involving its consideration by a board known as the nomothetæ. But more effective than this as a conservative force was the indictment for violation of the laws (γραΆ&eta + ̀ παρανομω+̑ν). The mover of any proposition before the assembly was subject to indictment and trial, at any time within a year, for illegal action. This imposed a serious and definite responsibility upon every individual who sought to influence the assembly. It enabled the people, after violating the νόμοι in a fit of passion, to atone for its lapse by punishing the mover of the act which it had approved.
The detailed administration of the government in civil affairs was practically in the hands of the Senate of the Five Hundred—the Solonian preconsidering senate as reorganized by Kleisthenes. The body was chosen by lot from the general body of citizens, and its members alternated by lot from day to day in presiding over the conduct of public business. Through their function of preparing the agenda of the assembly they acted in some measure as a check upon its action. In military and diplomatic affairs the state was represented by the generals (στρατηγοί), a board of ten elected by the people in their ten administrative divisions called tribes (Άυλαί). These were the only officials of importance that were chosen by election, rather than by lot, in the Athenian democracy.
The judicial authority of the state—by no means so narrowly marked off from the domain of politics and administration as in modern times—was exercised through popular courts, called dikasteries (Δικαστη + ́ρια). Five thousand citizens, drawn by lot from the general body, were divided into ten panels, among which all important judicial business was distributed. Every juror received pay for his services. As the assembly had absorbed practically all the political functions of the archons and the Senate of the Areopagus, so the administrative powers of these ancient organs had all gone to the Senate of the Five Hundred, and their judicial authority to the dikasteries. The archons, indeed, now chosen by lot from the general body of citizens, had become mere presiding officers of the popular courts, with some petty police-court jurisdiction of their own; and the Areopagus existed merely as a court for the trial of homicide.
In general, the Athenian constitution, in its final form, opened to every citizen an equal opportunity to share in every species of political authority. With reference to all who could claim Athenian citizenship, therefore, democracy was complete. With reference to the total population, however, the existence of a slave and alien element that vastly outnumbered the citizens, rendered the designation democracy, in the modern sense, quite inapplicable.
1. The Precursors of Plato
IT was only when the institutional development sketched in the preceding chapter had run its full course, that a coherent and comprehensive form was given to political speculation. Plato and Aristotle analyzed and classified the principles and organs of a state life that had passed its prime and was rapidly waning. The characteristic features of this life were determined by influences and motives in which rational generalizations and ideals had little part, and when systematic reflection began, the result was rather explication of the past than anticipation of the future.
The various phases of early social and political thought find some illustration in the literary remains of Hellas. The Homeric epos could have taken shape only in a patriarchal régime, based on religious myth. Kings appear always as Zeus-born (Διογενει + ̑Ϛ) and Zeus-nurtured (ΔιοτρεΆει + ̑Ϛ), and rule as shepherds of the people (ποιμε + ́νεϚ λαω + ̑ν). Some significance is attached to the lesser chiefs, who likewise claim divine ancestry, but for the common people Homer shows only a general contempt. In Hesiod there may be detected a change of attitude, or at least a different point of view. More stress is laid on the duties than on the rights of kings, and they are judged with reference to the justice rather than the success of their acts. A similar strain appears in the sayings attributed to the Seven Sages and in the fragments of the Gnomic poets. There is a tendency to measure kings by the same standard as other men, and thus to weaken the supports of royalty. From this it is clear that an ethical consciousness developed during the period of transition from the monarchic to the aristocratic and tyrannic types of government, acting as both cause and effect of the political movement.
That strenuous century which began with the Persian and ended with the Peloponnesian War brought the Hellenic world face to face with every kind of practical problem in statecraft, on a scale beyond anything that had preceded. The close contact with the Persian despotism, the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire, the antithesis and death-grapple of Spartan oligarchy and Athenian democracy, brought into the range of everyday experience the gravest questions of political practice, and correspondingly stimulated political reflection. Not only in this particular field, however, but in every department of intellectual life there was the greatest activity. Literary and plastic art achieved the triumphs which have rendered the age of Pericles famous for all time, and general philosophy began under the guidance of the Sophists and Socrates to take the path which led straight to the immortal work of Plato and Aristotle. The ethical consciousness which had been awakened during the preceding centuries found scope now for the fullest development, especially in the administration of democratic government. As in every other age of what may be called aggressive enlightenment, the general religious faith of the Greek world was tending to disappear at this time, and the peoples entered upon the realization of popular supremacy without a sure support in even that somewhat inadequate moral doctrine which the old myth-ridden theology had embodied. Questions of right and wrong in political practice imperatively demanded a rational solution; and it was in offering some sort of satisfaction to this demand that the Sophists came into prominence.
The work of the group of men commonly designated by this term requires no special analysis in this place. After bearing for twenty-two centuries the obloquy of the civilized world, due chiefly to the odium philosophicum which Plato manifested toward them, they at last received a measure of just recognition through the insight of Hegel1 and Grote. The function of the Sophists was primarily educational. They supplied the demand for instruction in all that would fit a young man for a successful career in the practical life of a citizen. Such a career, in the conditions then existing, could be achieved only through the exercise of political functions; for industry, commerce and agriculture were not recognized as worthy pursuits for the citizen. The teaching of the Sophists, therefore, centred about those branches which were most essential in public life, especially rhetoric and oratory. From a modern standpoint the education which they gave tended to be technical rather than liberal; they emphasized rather the practical methods of pushing a policy to success than the philosophic basis on which the choice of policy should rest. It was at this point that Socrates, himself a public teacher, not distinguishable to the masses from the rest of his class, took issue with his fellows and laid the foundations of a moral science which should include within it the whole of political science. Plato, the pupil of Socrates, represented the rest of the teaching body of the day as tending to set up pleasure and pain as ultimate moral standards, and might as the criterion of political right. That such doctrine was current at the time seems beyond dispute, but that it was held by the Sophists as a class is more than doubtful. Against the doctrine in all its phases a vigorous protest was expressed in that career which makes Socrates so conspicuous a figure in the history of enlightenment.
It is only indirectly that Socrates claims attention in connection with political theory. His most characteristic work was in the capacity, first, of inventor of a scientific method, and second, of founder of an ethical system. The method which he introduced was that of doubt and definition. In the exuberance of intellectual growth that attended the triumph of democracy at Athens there was a fair field for the criticism of so cynical a mind as that of Socrates. With the frost of his tantalizing irony, he nipped many a promising blossom of political omniscience. He insisted that every claimant to the possession of knowledge should define with precision the nature of his treasure. Definition is notoriously the most difficult task of the trained thinker; the demand for it from the ordinary or the immature mind, or even from the superior and cultivated mind suddenly and with premeditated craft, could have only the ludicrous results in which Socrates found such delight. But the influence of his method in the stimulation of close thinking and exact reasoning needs no better illustration than the works of his disciples.
The ethical system of which Socrates laid the foundation is embodied for the most part in the doctrine that virtue is identical with knowledge, vice with ignorance. A proper appreciation of this doctrine requires that it be taken in close connection with the theory of knowledge which his method implied. If by one who “knows” we understand one whose knowledge is of that thorough and ultimate kind that will satisfy the demands for exact definition, then the dictum that nobody who knows the right will do the wrong is not so hopelessly absurd as might at first sight appear. Accordingly, to Socrates, the just man is he who knows what is just. From this point of view he formulated a doctrine which expressed his idea as to the relation of politics to ethics. Specifically, the knowledge which was identical with justice he laid down to be a knowledge of the laws. But laws he proceeded to define as including the two species—written, or the laws of the state, and unwritten, or the will of the gods. The former he held to be of limited and local obligation; the latter to be of universal binding force, and hence to take precedence of all others. Xenophon’s record of the conversation in which Socrates lays down this doctrine is the first appearance in extant literature of a theme which has been a staple of scientific controversy in every succeeding age—the relation, namely, of political to divinely sanctioned moral obligation. In both his life and his death the great Athenian illustrated a steadfast conviction that what he conceived to be the will of the gods must guide his actions in preference to the undoubted will of the Athenian state.
Beyond what has just been mentioned, the work of Socrates did not enter into the field of political theory. The general principles which he laid down became, however, the guiding lines of his disciple Plato, in whose system both moral and political philosophy received elaborate treatment.
2. General Character of Plato’s Thought
An accurate description of Plato’s political theories in a reasonable compass is for various reasons a task of much difficulty. His treatment of politics is in a large measure incidental to other topics, and takes on a different character with each variation in the point of view. As a path-breaker in systematic ethics and metaphysics he frequently employs political doctrine merely as a resource in surmounting the obstacles which he meets, with scant attention to the coherency of the doctrine. The progressive modification of his ideas with the advance of age is also clearly discernible in his works; so that the chronology of his productions must be considered in an account of his views. And finally, the peculiar character of Plato’s genius impressed upon his philosophy a poetic vagueness which makes the comprehension of it more a matter of feeling than of cold reasoning. Especially is this true of his most famous work, The Republic. All his philosophy is represented here, but the treatise is, after all, essentially a romance, embellished with a series of brilliant but not carefully correlated essays on morals and metaphysics.
The most satisfactory approach to his political thought is through his relation to the work of Socrates. The latter, as has been stated, founded, first, a theory of knowledge and a method for all science, and, second, a system of ethical doctrine. Plato expanded the first into a far-reaching metaphysics, and developed the other into a comprehensive ethics. Definition, which the Socratic irony had demanded as the starting-point of all real knowledge, was itself defined by Plato. It was shown to involve the rejection of the transient and accidental in any phenomenon, and the determination of the permanent and essential. Real knowledge, therefore, was attainable only through a process of abstraction which should leave that residuum of qualities which has later been named the general notion. The discovery of the general notion was an achievement of the first importance in the history of the human intellect, and Plato’s exuberant fancy ran riot among the possibilities inherent in his advance. Not things as they presented themselves to common observation, but things as embodied in their abstract ideas, were the subject-matter of real knowledge—of philosophy in its true sense. Not this, that or the other horse, but horse in general, or the idea of horse, was the real horse and the subject of equine science; and, piling abstraction on abstraction, not this, that or the other policy, but policy in general, was real policy and the subject of political science. This idealism, which by the linguistic vagary of a later age is both identical with and at the remotest extreme from, realism, pervades the whole of Plato’s thinking on politics, but determines in a particular way the character of his dialogue on The Statesman, and of some parts of The Republic.
In the development of Socrates’s ethical doctrine Plato made equal progress beyond the point reached by his master. He was faithful to the dogma that virtue was identical with knowledge; but his theory of knowledge gave a much better support to the doctrine than it originally possessed. Real virtue was only the ultimate “idea” of virtue, and real knowledge was only the perception of this idea. Hence good in its true sense could only be predicated of one who had attained this absolute and abstract knowledge. The Socratic dogma, accordingly, assumed substantially this form, that the all-wise philosopher alone could attain to virtue. But Plato was too faithful to the practical purpose of his master’s teaching to be satisfied with so barren a moral doctrine as this. Human conduct required some less forbidding guidance than exhortation to the attainment of the unattainable. Hence Plato worked out a scheme of practical and particular virtues for the actualities of life. He based this system on a psychology which embodied a threefold analysis of the human soul into the rational, the spirited (ΘυμόϚ) and the sensual or appetitive faculties. From the interrelationship of these elements he drew his definition of the particular virtues. Courage was the subordination of the spirited to the rational faculty; temperance (σωΆροσύνη), the subjection of the appetitive to the rational. And justice was described (one can hardly say defined1) as the regulative virtue which produces a general harmony in character and general good order in conduct. The just man, he says, is like a well-ordered city; the unjust, like anarchy. These three particular virtues were presented with profound and fascinating art by Plato, but he never lost sight of his fundamental principle, that they were rooted in “opinion” (δόξα), that partial, fluctuating knowledge which even common men possess, while the one supreme virtue, wisdom in its absolute sense (σοΆία), was immanent only in the complete and permanent “science” (ἐπιστη + ́μη) to which the philosopher attained. The abstract ideal of the good, as determining fixed and immutable canons of morality, was the standpoint from which he assailed the utilitarian ethical and political doctrines which he ascribed to the Sophists. In his view right and justice remained always the same; the demands of a narrow and temporary expediency could never change them—could never convert them into injustice and wrong.
In the expansion of the Socratic metaphysics and ethics is inseparably infolded Plato’s political theory. His thought on politics, profound and brilliant as it often was, never assumed the independent and systematic form of a science. Three dialogues contain substantially all his political ideas, The Statesman, The Republic, and The Laws. Of these the first is primarily an exercise in dialectic, and the second is mainly a treatise on ethics, individual and social. Only the third sets out with a deliberate purpose of dealing with political subjects, and in this, the work of his old age, the writer proceeds steadily within the lines which the matured habit of a long life has made indispensable. In all three of the works, however, there is much that is most valuable and suggestive from both the historical and the scientific point of view.
3. The Republic
The Republic is in every respect Plato’s greatest work. Both the substance of his thought and the form in which it is expressed have fascinated all succeeding generations and have stimulated endless imitation. The familiar name of the dialogue, however, gives a somewhat erroneous idea of its true character. The ideal state, whose outlines are so boldly and beautifully set forth as often to monopolize the attention of the reader, is avowedly a mere incident in the main theme of the dialogue. Plato proceeds to formulate the conception of a state in which justice prevails, in order to discover by analogy the philosophic idea of justice in the individual man. This method expresses in itself the two dominant characteristics of the writer’s political philosophy—its idealism and its subordination to ethical science.
The first cause of the state Plato finds in the diversity of men’s desires and the necessity of mutual assistance in satisfying them. A community arising from this cause must embrace three classes of people: producers of sustenance, to supply the physical wants of the population; warriors, to protect the labourers and insure a sufficient territory for the purposes of the state; and finally, counsellors and magistrates, to regulate the general welfare of the community. These three classes, working in proper correlation, will insure the maximum of well-being throughout the state. Every member of the community must be assigned to the class for which he proves himself best fitted. Thus a perfect harmony and unity will characterize both the state and every person in it.
In laying down this social and economic basis for his republic the philosopher manifests a high appreciation of the principle of specialization and division of labour which has received such marked attention in recent days. His assignment of political functions has hardly so modern a tone. To the third of the classes mentioned above, the guardians (ΆύλακɛϚ), as he calls them, consisting of the oldest and wisest of the community, he ascribes untrammelled discretion in the ordering of the state’s affairs. This class, on whose character and attributes Plato dwells with the most particular interest, is the ultimate product of the long course of training in which the life of a citizen must be passed. Only those who have proved themselves perfect in true knowledge may enter the class, and the judgment of the guardians themselves is conclusive as to the qualification. To the members of this close corporation is assigned a manner of life which is conceived to be appropriate to their exalted character. They have no individual family or property interests; they live in public, eat at common tables and sleep in tents. With the support of their physical existence reduced to the absolute minimum of concern to them, they are enabled to cultivate philosophy and rise to those heights of omniscience which afford an unerring insight into all human affairs. Hence their fitness to guide the state without other rule than the true wisdom in which they share.
Upon the relation of this picture of an ideal community to Plato’s ethical discussion it is unnecessary here to dwell. In brief, the allegory is simply this: The three classes of the people symbolize the three faculties of the soul,—appetitive, spirited and rational,—and the just man, like the ideal state, is found where the first two are in proper subordination to the third. On the political side proper the ideas which he brings out in highest relief are, first, the necessity of an organic unity in social life; second, the importance of systematic education, as contrasted with haphazard legislation, in regulating the common interest; and third, the rational basis of aristocracy in government.
The ideal unity of a state Plato explains in his celebrated discussion of communism. As private property and family relationships appear to be the chief sources of dissension in every community, neither is to have recognition in the perfect state. Unity and harmony require that no individual should differ from any other in the feeling of pleasure or pain in respect to any third person or any object whatever. All must “rejoice and grieve alike at the same gains and the same losses”; “the words ‘mine’ and thine’ must be pronounced by all simultaneously.” Private property, therefore, can have no existence in the ideal state, and, further, Plato works out an ingenious scheme through which children shall not know their own parents, or parents their own children. The discord-making devotion of fathers, and especially of mothers, to their own offspring is thus precluded at the outset. Indeed, the relations of the sexes in general are to be wholly severed from the influence of individual emotion, and are to be subject to the absolute control of the magistrates. Men and women are to be mated with sole reference to a harmonious balance of qualities in the young; and the elements of perfect character thus insured at birth are to be developed to maturity by a system of uniform public education.