A COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC
 
 A COMPANION TO 
 
 PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 FOR ENGLISH READERS 
 
 Being a Commentary 
 adapted to Davies and Vaughan's Translation 
 
 BY BERNARD BOSANQUET 
 
 M.A. (OXON.), LL.D. (GLASGOW) 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 ' And whom do you mean by the real Philosophers?' 
 ' Those, ' he answered, ' who love to look upon truth. ' 
 
 REPUBLIC, 475 E 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1895
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE idea of writing a ' Companion to Plato's Republic 
 for English Readers ' was suggested to me by the 
 appearance of Mr. Walter Leafs Companion to the 
 Iliad, combined with my own experience of the intense 
 desire for a closer knowledge of Plato, felt by many 
 students who could read him in a translation only. Philo- 
 sophy loses sorely by translation, but less than poetry ; 
 and perhaps a commentator can do more to restore its 
 real meaning. And, indeed, as not all scholars have been 
 trained in philosophy, ' I may perhaps hope,' to quote 
 Mr. Leaf, ' that even those who have a knowledge of 
 the language may find something to help them' in 
 my work. Whether I have succeeded well or ill, I 
 have at least spared no pains to ascertain and express 
 the real import of Plato's ideas ; and this I take to be 
 the true duty of a commentator, especially in dealing 
 with a philosophical genius of the first rank. I ought 
 to say that I have made no attempt at textual criticism. 
 I do not flatter myself that I have propounded any- 
 thing new ; on the contrary, my task has presented itself 
 to me rather as an endeavour to bring home to English 
 readers or to novices in Greek the sort of interpretation 
 which a tutor at Oxford or Cambridge would probably
 
 viii COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 lay before his pupils. The analysis by section-headings, 
 which may seem too formal a treatment of a writer so 
 informal as Plato, was forced upon me by experience 
 in myself and others of the difficulty with which the 
 definite content of his thought is perceived under the 
 fluent transitions of his style. Any student will see 
 how much I owe to the late Mr. R. L. Nettleship's 
 essay in Hellenica on the ' Theory of Education in the 
 Republic.' I have also gathered many hints from his 
 unpublished notes shown to me through the kindness 
 of Prof. A. C. Bradley ; but I could not now discrimi- 
 nate what came to me from that source. The late 
 Master of Balliol was almost the founder of a genuine 
 philosophical study of Plato in England, even for 
 scholars ; while, for readers of English only, his life- 
 work first made a complete knowledge of the Dialogues 
 possible. But here again it would be impossible to 
 distinguish my particular obligations, which extend 
 through the whole of my philosophical education. Mr. 
 Stewart's edition of the Ethics of A ristotle has furnished 
 me with valuable ideas and illustrations ; I have borrowed, 
 he may think, too much, but I am not sure that I ought 
 not to have borrowed more. Hegel's History of Philo- 
 sophy I have also found invaluable. 
 
 The translation to which the Companion is adapted is 
 that of Davies and Vaughan, now a volume of Messrs 
 Macmillan's Golden Treasury Series. I have selected 
 it because, being scholarlike and trustworthy, it is of a 
 size and cost which make it universally accessible. It 
 is natural that I should freely criticise the translation,
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 considering how philosophical views have changed since 
 it was made ; but yet my rendering is often not meant 
 as a substitute for the translators' version, but rather as 
 a supplement to it. The translation is referred to by 
 page and line, the page number being printed in heavy 
 type. It has forty-three lines to a full page, and though 
 in it the lines are not numbered, I hope that the reader 
 will be able with a little practice to pick out readily 
 the passages to which my notes refer. The marginal 
 pages, each divided into five approximately equal parts, 
 indicated in the commentary as in the Greek editions by 
 the letters A, B, C, D, E, in order, will often help the 
 reader to identify a passage ; thus a place marked 
 400 A will be within ten lines or so below the mar- 
 ginal number 400, 400 E within a similar interval above 
 401, 400 C about half way between the two numbers, 
 and so on. 
 
 I have finally to express my sincerest thanks to Miss 
 Porter, a student at the University Hall centre, for her 
 labour under difficult conditions in making an Index 
 both to the translation and the commentary. This is 
 but one out of very numerous instances of an eager and 
 persevering spirit among London students, which have 
 convinced me that a work such as the present, if properly 
 executed, cannot fail to meet a need. 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Age of Plato, ...... i 
 
 The Relative Date of the Republic, ... 3 
 
 The Outcome of Previous Philosophy, ... 8 
 
 Some Hints on Reading Plato, . . . . 14 
 
 Notes on the Greek Household, with reference to Plato's 
 
 readiness to destroy the Family, . . . 17 
 
 Notes on the Unity of the State, and Plato's view of 
 
 Property, . . . . . . 21 
 
 Some Illustrations of the Popular Greek Ideal of Happiness, 28 
 Hints on the Structure of the Republic, 33 
 
 NATURAL DIVISIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 1. Prologue, showing the Rise of the Moral Problem out 
 
 of everyday life, and out of the current theories of 
 
 the time, ...... 37 
 
 2. First Answer to the Moral Problem, by specifying the 
 
 system implied in the existence of the moral being 
 'my station and its duties' as external type, 
 and also as content, of the true morality or inward 
 will, . , . . . . . . . "79
 
 xii COMPANION TO FLAWS REPUBLIC 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3. Second Answer to the Moral problem, Ideal Morality, 
 
 or philosophic religion, and its real or meta- 
 physical basis, .... 198 
 
 4. Negative verification of the connection between well- 
 
 doing and well-being, by concomitant variations of 
 ill-doing and ill-being, . .- . . 311 
 
 5. Psychological corroboration of the criticism passed 
 
 upon unreal appearance, pointing out the connec- 
 tion between the unreal in cognition and in feeling, 377 
 
 INDEX, . . . . . . 417
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. THE AGE OF PLATO. 
 
 PLATO was born about 427 B.C., and lived till about 347. 
 Pericles had passed away in 429, and Plato's youth nearly 
 coincided with the wearing struggle of the Peloponnesian war, 
 which ended after a quarter of a century with the military, 
 political, and commercial downfall of Athens. In 404 the 
 city surrendered to Lysander, and an unscrupulous oligarchy, 
 'the thirty,' was established with Spartan aid. In 399 
 Socrates fell a victim partly to the perplexed passions of 
 the democracy, mistaking friends for foes, and partly to his 
 own defiance of restraint in matters which concerned his 
 conscience. The epoch was in every way significant. The 
 democracy, no longer imperial, had lost the field for its 
 energies, and the harvest of its gains. The individual citizen 
 could no longer draw a salary for judging the causes of an 
 empire, nor profit by the crowds that thronged to the com- 
 mercial capital of Greece, nor gain at once a sailor's pay 
 and training in vigilance and maritime skill by maintaining 
 the naval police of the Eastern Mediterranean. Pauperism ap- 
 peared within the citizen ranks; self-indulgence grew ; energy 
 declined ; Macedon arose in the distance, and the day of the 
 sovereign city-commonwealth was over. 
 
 In a small society causes operate rapidly and the aspects 
 of life exhibit closely correlated variations. The change 
 which affected commerce and politics showed itself at the
 
 2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 same moment in the field of literature, art, and philosophy. 
 The Frogs of Aristophanes, produced in the year preceding 
 the fall of Athens, both reveals a consciousness ,and affords 
 an example of the transition. The great tragic poets are de- 
 parted, such is its burden, and earth has none like them. And 
 in the mere substitution of literary satire for wild humour and 
 audacious invective we feel the lowering pulse ofAthenian life. 
 
 In sculpture for of Greek pictorial art we have little beyond 
 tradition the change is no less marked. Phidias died before 
 Pericles, and the age now dawning was the age of Praxiteles 
 and Scopas, the age in which style was moving from the 
 Caryatid of the Erechtheum or the procession of the Parthenon 
 towards the Aphrodite of Melos or the Apollo Belvedere. 
 If we will, we may give the title of decadence to this transition, 
 and indeed to the whole modernising movement we are 
 indicating. But the word only applies to it in that liberal 
 sense in which speculation marks a decadence compared with 
 action, or saintliness compared with citizenship. The time 
 had come for a change ; and the spirit that fused the fourth- 
 century marble into a new tenderness and a new audacity 
 was continuous with the spirit that dwelt in Leonardo and 
 Michael Angelo. 
 
 In prose-writing there were two factors that now attained a 
 wholly new development. One of them was rhetoric, both in 
 its literary and in its political or forensic shapes Isocrates 
 lived from 436 B.C. to 338, and Demosthenes from 384 to 
 322, and the other was systematic philosophy as known to 
 us in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Neither of these, of 
 course, was a new creation of the fourth century, but their 
 previous history had been colonial, or at most artificially 
 Athenian, as the writers and thinkers of Western and Eastern 
 Hellas had been drawn to the imperial city. Now for the first 
 time they became central achievements of the Greek intellect 
 and leading phenomena of the age. 
 
 This movement, of which Plato was himself so great a part, 
 involved in many ways a reaction against the fifth century,
 
 THE AGE OF PLATO 3 
 
 and a criticism upon it. Our breath is taken away when 
 Plato, however dramatically, puts into Socrates' mouth such 
 words as these : ' For this is what I hear, that Pericles made 
 the Athenians lazy, cowardly, greedy babblers, by teaching 
 them to take pay for citizen duties ' ( Gorgias, 515 E) ; or again : 
 ' For they (the statesmen of the great fifth century) filled the 
 city full with harbours and dockyards, and walls and revenues 
 and such like absurdities, but cared no whit for temperance 
 and for righteousness ' (ib. 519 A). 
 
 But in spite of, or because of, this attitude of criticism, it 
 is the quintessence of Hellenic and even of Athenian life 
 that Plato distils for us. The philosopher must be outside 
 his subject, and also at its heart. This double relation we 
 must bear in mind as the essential condition of philosophy. 
 And this is why speculation belongs to the beginning of what 
 may be called a decadence. 
 
 ' It is only when the actual world has reached its full 
 fruition that the ideal rises to confront the reality, and builds 
 up, in the shape of an intellectual realm, that same world 
 grasped in its substantial being. When philosophy paints 
 its grey in grey, some one shape of life has meantime grown 
 old : and grey in grey, though it brings it into knowledge, 
 cannot make it young again. The owl of Minerva does not 
 start upon its flight until the evening twilight begins to fall.' l 
 
 BOOKS TO READ. Grote and Curtius are not really superseded. 
 Holm's Griechische Geschichte is short, and excellent for those who read 
 German. E. Abbott's History of Greece, and Pericles, are safe guides. 
 Mr. Grant's Greece in the Age of Pericles is a convenient book. 
 
 II. THE RELATIVE DATE OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 No one would be likely to contend that the Republic is other 
 than a work of Plato's prime. Starting from this supposition, 
 we have nothing to learn from the extant historical evidence, 
 
 1 Hegel, Phil, d, Rechts, p. 20, quoted from Wallace, Prolegomena, 
 p. 29.
 
 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 which does not compel the assumption of any absolute date 
 later than an event which brought the Theban Ismenias into 
 prominence about 395 B.C. Indeed, of all unmistakable 
 allusions in Plato's dialogues, there is one only of serious 
 chronological interest, and that is the reference in Symposium 
 193 A, which proves that this brilliant and fantastic dialogue 
 was not yet completed in 384 B.C., when Sparta broke up the 
 Mantineans' city into villages. If Plato in his forty-second 
 year or later composed the Symposium a work to our mind 
 sparkling with youth he may well have written the Republic 
 many years after, 1 and did not, in all probability, write it 
 before. 
 
 The distinction between external and internal evidence is 
 not altogether sound, for each of them rests on an inference 
 in which some aspect of a certain work is compared with 
 something otherwise known. And the impossibility of 
 separating the two is illustrated by every attempt to arrange 
 Plato's dialogues in order of time, so far as it takes account of 
 nearness to the style and thought of Socrates, or of allusions 
 to his trial and death. 
 
 The natural assumption that writings which treat of these 
 incidents belong to a time not far removed from their 
 occurrence is contradicted by other considerations in two 
 instances. The philosophical conceptions of the Phaedo 
 and the Meno are so elaborate, marking indeed the climax 
 of Plato's mysticism, and differ so strikingly in this respect 
 from the simple language of the Crito or the Apology, that it 
 seems natural to separate them by a considerable interval 
 from the time of Socrates' death, and to class them with the 
 Symposium, Phaedrus, and Gorgias as belonging, at the earliest, 
 to an early prime, when Plato had outlined his great con- 
 
 1 I do not lay stress on the suggestion of a reference to Leuctra (371 
 B.C. ) in Republic 423 A, where see note, although the coincidence with 
 Aristotle's allusion is certainly remarkable. It should be noted that if 
 we admit the very conceivable hypothesis of insertions subsequent to first 
 writing, all inference from these allusions is annihilated.
 
 DATE OF THE REPUBLIC 5 
 
 ceptions, but had not, some would add, applied to them the 
 organic criticism which we assign to his later maturity. It 
 is hardly an accident that the four great myths which deal 
 with the fate and nature of the soul are found in the Phaedrus, 
 Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic; of the bearing of this fact 
 on the Republic we will speak below. The mythical language 
 of the Timaeus stands on a different footing from these four 
 myths ; in it, no doubt, the terms are symbolic, but the ideas 
 are not those of current mythology, nor modelled upon them. 
 The mythical form of the Timaeus is no condescension to 
 popular imagination, but a straining of the intelligence be- 
 yond the limits of existing philosophical categories. 
 
 Turning from allusions to the death of Socrates to writings 
 which show kinship with his simple and tentative manner, we 
 feel little doubt that such dialogues as the Lysis, Laches, 
 and Charmides are among the earliest works of Plato. The 
 reader who will compare for himself any one of these 
 beautiful little conversations with the mystical eloquence of 
 the Phaedo or Phaedrus, the constructive thought of the 
 Republic, the analytic insight of the Sophist or Philebus, and 
 the majestic exposition of the Timaeus or the Laws, will see 
 the grounds on which this inference rests more clearly than 
 any detailed criticism can exhibit them. The grace and 
 flexibility of the presentation, the lifelikeness of the con- 
 versational drama, the absence of advanced metaphysic and 
 of a positive conclusion, 1 the prominence of Socrates' per- 
 sonality, all suggest that the memory of Socrates, in some 
 degree as we know him from Xenophon, was still fresh in 
 the writer's mind, and that Plato's peculiar non-Socratic con- 
 ceptions, and more especially his enthusiasm for physical 
 science, were not yet developed. 
 
 It is clear that from considerations like these we shall 
 arrive at no absolute date for the Republic, and in fact the 
 discussion of the order in which Plato's dialogues may be 
 
 1 Cp. notes on Republic, Book I. 336 A and 354 c, and Book IV. 
 444 A.
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 supposed to have originated is valuable for its arguments 
 rather than for its conclusions. So far we have noted the 
 differences between writings which it is natural to take as 
 mature, and those which it is natural to connect with the 
 early years of the fourth century. The further problem, where, 
 among the more mature writings, the Republic may be sup- 
 posed to fall, is likely to be treated in accordance with the 
 critic's view of the so-called 'doctrine of Ideas.' If this is 
 conceived as the culmination of Plato's thought, the Phaedo, 
 Phaedrus, and Republic will be thrown towards the end of 
 his life ; if it is taken to be a half-poetical anticipation of his 
 matured criticism of knowledge, the dialogues which present 
 it in the most distinctive form are likely to be assigned to 
 as early a period as other considerations will allow. Between 
 these mere probabilities I frankly incline to the latter, and 
 will add a few observations tending to confirm it. 
 
 The Laws is later than the Republic; this scrap of 
 ' external evidence ' we have from Aristotle, but it tells us 
 less than we are disposed to affirm without it. The difference 
 of manner between the Laws and the ' earlier ' writings is so 
 great, and that in the direction away from youthful character- 
 istics, that its genuineness has been doubted. We may almost 
 assume that it is among the latest of Plato's works. The 
 Timaeus and Critias presuppose the Republic, and so are 
 later than it ; and in the same way the Sophist and Statesman 
 show themselves later than the Theaetetus, itself a treatise of 
 extraordinary philosophical power. Starting then with the 
 Timaeus, Critias, and Laws, as admittedly later than the 
 Republic, we are forced to observe certain peculiarities of 
 diction, tending to an ornate rhetoric, which those three 
 dialogues share with each other, not to speak of the absence 
 of the person of Socrates, and a lack of the true conversa- 
 tional grace and of the beautiful descriptive setting which 
 mark what we have agreed to call the 'earlier' dialogues. 
 Now these peculiarities extend, when allowance is made for 
 abstractness of subject in the Philebus, to this dialogue
 
 DATE OF THE REPUBLIC 7 
 
 along with the Sophist and Statesman, and of these three, 
 moreover, the Philebus alone gives the wonted importance 
 to Socrates. These three, again, from the standpoint of 
 modern philosophy, are among the most mature and profound 
 of all the dialogues of Plato. I therefore assent to the 
 conclusion which has been reached by Professor Campbell, 1 
 to whose initiative a great part of these investigations are due, 
 that the Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, Critias, and 
 Laws nearly in this order are to be placed as the latest 
 dialogues in a separate group. 
 
 If this result is admitted, the position of the Republic is 
 essentially determined by priority to this important set. It is 
 thus thrown back into Plato's first maturity, as a work 
 connected with the Gorgias, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, by its 
 myth dealing with the eternity of the soul, and with both 
 these and the more 'Socratic' dialogues by its grace and 
 humour and dramatic power, though separated from the latter 
 by its constructive argument and positive conclusion. On 
 the other hand, however, its philosophy looks forward to 
 the latest group, and has been thought to presuppose the 
 Philebus, which really, perhaps, it anticipates. Moreover, 
 the linguistic peculiarities of this group begin in some degree 
 to show themselves in the Republic. Therefore, if really a 
 work of that first maturity which produced the Symposium 
 when Plato was over forty-two, it is yet a work which anti- 
 cipates the later development sufficiently to unite in one, 
 more than any other dialogue, the strands of Plato's thought. 
 The love-philosophy is here from the Symposium and the 
 Phaedrus, and also the psychology of the latter, the account 
 
 1 See Transactions of Oxford Philological Society, 1888-9, on position of 
 Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus in the order of the Platonic dialogues, by 
 Professor L. Campbell, who mentions certain statistics of Platonic formulae 
 collected by German scholars, as confirmatory of his conclusions. The 
 affected rhetoric of the Phaedrus, in which Plato satirises the tendency 
 which subsequently mastered him (as a man imitates a local accent in 
 jest, and then adopts it in earnest) is a striking negative instance corrobo- 
 rating Professor Campbell's view.
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of courage and temperance developed from the Laches and 
 the Charmides, the problem of perception from the Theaetetus, 
 a criticism of knowledge and of pleasure, with an account of 
 the good, which point forward to the Philebus, the analysis of 
 science and philosophy as the union of the one and the 
 many in experience, which was to be more elaborately 
 worked out in the Sophist, the first step towards the immense 
 symbolic plan of the Timaeus which sees in the visible world 
 and its order a revelation of divine law, and the whole 
 brought to a focus in its bearing on man's social nature as 
 symbolised by the scheme of a commonwealth which was 
 repeated with modifications in the Laws. I do not say that 
 this view of the central position of the Republic is demon- 
 strated or demonstrable ; but it appears to me to be the best 
 working hypothesis, and to conflict with no established facts. 
 
 BOOKS TO READ. Zeller's Plato and Older Academy ; Jowett's Intro- 
 ductions, especially On Ideas of Plato, in Introduction to Meno. The 
 best way is to read the dialogues, as suggested in the text. 
 
 III. THE OUTCOME OF PREVIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 It is most important to realise that, while we think of Plato 
 as the founder of speculative philosophy, this was by no 
 means the light in which he appeared to himself. Nothing 
 is clearer than that he felt himself to be navigating a stormy 
 sea of opinion, and intervening in a discussion which had 
 endured for centuries, and by which every term of scientific 
 import had acquired a polarity perceptible to him but nearly 
 lost to us. The few pregnant words in which Aristotle sum- 
 marises Plato's philosophical antecedents, at the close of his 
 own brief history of philosophy, may here be produced. 
 
 'After the philosophies which have been described there 
 succeeded Plato's treatment, which for the most part followed 
 them (apparently the Pythagoreans and Eleatics, who have 
 been last spoken of), but also possessed peculiar features
 
 PREVIOUS PHILOSOPHY 9 
 
 over and above the Italian philosophy. For Plato had been 
 from his youth up familiar with Kratylus and so with Hera- 
 kleitan opinions, to the effect that all which is "sensed" is 
 in perpetual flux and there can be no science about it, and 
 this conception he retained. Socrates, however, though deal- 
 ing with moral ideas and not at all with the nature of the 
 world, yet in those subjects did search after the universal and 
 pay attention to obtaining definitions; and Plato, adopting 
 his method, yet assumed, owing to the influence above- 
 mentioned, that the definition must be of somewhat else, and 
 not of what is " sensed." For he held it impossible that a 
 general determination should apply to any of what are sensed, 
 seeing that these are in perpetual change. Therefore he gave 
 the name of " forms " (ideai] to being of this kind (i.e. to what 
 could be defined), and held that what was sensed had its 
 name from this being, and as alongside it ; for the manifold 
 of what have the same name with the forms (as light objects 
 with lightness, etc.) are what they are (he said) by parti- 
 cipation in the forms.' 1 
 
 Then follows a passage devoted to distinguishing Plato's 
 view of the relation between particulars and universal from 
 that of the Pythagoreans. 2 
 
 It would not, perhaps, be so fanciful as it might seem, to 
 assert that the analysis of predication the explanation, that 
 is, how it is possible to say with truth not merely ' A horse 
 is a horse (A is A)' but 'A horse is an animal' (A is B) 
 which we owe to the theory of Plato working on the 
 practice of Socrates, is the spiritual quintessence and brief 
 abstract of the history of Greece. The identity and diversity 
 which it exhibits as inseparable elements in all rational 
 
 1 Arist. Metaphysic A 6. Note that the term ' metaphysic ' is said to have 
 arisen merely from the fact that Aristotle's treatises on general principles 
 of nature and science were placed in his works after the physical investi- 
 gations, and were named from this position ' the (writings) after the 
 physical (writings) ' l ta meta ta phusika.' Neither logic nor metaphysic, 
 in our sense of the words, are terms employed by Aristotle. 
 
 - On this interesting point see Burnet, note p. 307.
 
 10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 experience had previously caught the eye of different schools 
 of philosophy, flourishing in opposite extremities of colonial 
 Greece, in which, owing to obvious historical causes, Hellenic 
 culture originated. We may take as typical the two splendid 
 figures of Herakleitus of Ephesus in Ionia, and Parmenides 
 of Elea in Italy, the former of whom flourished about 500 B.C. 
 and the latter was so far of a subsequent generation that he 
 distinctly refers to Herakleitus, and in all probability met 
 Socrates at Athens. 
 
 The Ionic mind had an Asiatic tinge. It was fascinated 
 in philosophy as in poetry, and indeed in history, by the 
 perishableness of things. 'Everything gives way, nothing 
 abides. 3 In Herakleitus this conception, which had forced 
 Ionic philosophers to search for a unifying element below the 
 metamorphoses of objects, found classical expression in the 
 doctrine not logical nor psychological, but probably physical, 
 or naively metaphysical of the flux of things. Kratylus, the 
 pedantic successor of Herakleitus, capped his great master's 
 saying that you could not bathe in the same river twice, by 
 the addition 'No, nor once.' By Plato this doctrine was 
 read in a more ' subjective ' or logical sense, and connected 
 with the principle of Protagoras, 'Man is the measure of all 
 things.' 
 
 To Parmenides of Elea it seemed essential above all to 
 preserve identity or unity, though his conception also dealt 
 not with spiritual being, but with a corporeal theory of the 
 world. The oneness or homogeneity of the material universe 
 excludes motion, such is his general contention, and makes 
 the metamorphoses of appearance unintelligible, and in this 
 conclusion we are bound to rest, and accordingly to reject 
 appearances, involving motion and change, as unreal because 
 incapable of rational construction. 
 
 That crushing in of the colonial extremities of Greece upon 
 the central regions, which was due to their precarious 
 situation in contact with powerful native states the same 
 influence to which they owed the priority of their development
 
 PREVIOUS PHILOSOPHY 11 
 
 was reflected in the intellectual world. After the beginning 
 of the fifth century Ionia has no independent existence, but 
 must be protected by Athens if it is not to be oppressed by 
 Persia. In a lesser degree, and from more various causes, 
 the prosperity of Italian and Sicilian Greece was interfered 
 with at the same epoch, while the new power and prestige of 
 Athens made it in intellect as it was in politics the centre of 
 Hellas. At Athens, therefore, in the fifth century, the ends 
 of the world came together, and through Socrates and Plato the 
 conception of intellectual unity in diversity, of the one and 
 the many as inherent in discourse and in experience, and as 
 reconcilable only by the methods of knowledge and critical 
 philosophy, was elaborated under very various influences. 
 Among these must especially be mentioned the analysis of dis- 
 course attendant on the new rhetorical movement, which set in 
 the strongest light the problems attaching to language and to 
 the judgment, and the Pythagorean attention to number and 
 harmonic ratio, which stimulated, though it may not have 
 been adequate to guide, Plato's analysis of enumeration, and 
 his conviction that law or proportion ruled the universe. It 
 is also obvious that just as the critical problem of the relation 
 between reality and intelligence was raised by the deadlock 
 between unity and plurality in naive philosophising, so the 
 situation of the ethical, political, and aesthetic world, of which 
 Socrates had emphasised the leading factors by his life and by 
 his death, was in the fourth century forcing upon the speculative 
 intelligence new provinces of inquiry, which combined with 
 the logical problem in suggesting a deeper conception of what 
 most really is, in the sense of Socrates' phrase ' the matters 
 which are most important.' 1 
 
 Some special ideas from Herakleitus and other earlier 
 philosophers seem to re-echo throughout Plato's writings. I 
 
 1 Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 5. 1 1 ; the Pythagoreans are very likely 
 responsible for impressing upon Greek thought the characteristic and 
 fateful conception that philosophy is a way of life. See Burnet on 
 Pythagoreans.
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 cite a few of the fragments 1 because of their intrinsic merit, 
 and to make partial amends for the necessary meagreness of 
 the foregoing reference to a great philosophical evolution. 
 
 a. The free dynamical view of ( nature? 
 
 Anaximander 2 of Miletus in Ionia, middle of sixth century : 
 ' Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was 
 evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, 
 namely a fish, in the beginning.' 
 
 ' Further, he says that in the beginning man was born from 
 animals of a different species. His reason is, that, while 
 other animals quickly found food for themselves, man alone 
 requires a prolonged period of suckling. Had he been origin- 
 ally such as he is now, he could never have survived.' 
 
 b. The illusions of anthropomorphism and poetry. 
 Xenophanes 3 of Colophon in Ionia, (survived the Ionic 
 
 revolt at beginning of 5th century) : 
 
 'There is one god, the greatest among gods and men, 
 neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals ' (this very 
 possibly was simply the world). . . . 'And he abideth ever 
 in the same place, moving not at all, nor doth it befit him 
 to go about, now hither, now thither.' Cp. Plato's Canons 
 of Theology, Republic, Book n. 379 A. 
 
 ' But mortals think the gods are born as they are, and have 
 perception like theirs, and voice and form.' 
 
 ' Yes, and if oxen or lions had hands, and could paint with 
 their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses 
 would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like 
 oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to 
 the form of each.' 
 
 ' Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things 
 that are a shame and disgrace among men, thefts and adul- 
 teries and deceptions of one another.' 
 
 1 I take them as they stand from Burnet. 2 Burnet, p. 73. 
 
 3 Burnet, p. 115.
 
 PREVIOUS PHILOSOPHY 13 
 
 c. The underlying order in the flux of things. 
 
 Herakleitus 1 of Ephesus in Ionia, about 500 B.C. : 
 
 ' Wisdom is common to all things. Those who speak with 
 
 intelligence must hold fast to the common as a city holds fast 
 
 to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are 
 
 fed by one thing : the divine.' 
 
 ' The people must fight for its law as for its walls.' 
 
 ' Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which 
 
 all things are steered through all things.' 
 ' Man's character is his fate.' 
 
 d. The dream-world. 
 
 Herakleitus : 
 
 ' It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.' 
 ' The waking have one and the same world, but the sleep- 
 ing turn aside each into a world of its own.' Cp. Republic, 
 476 c, and note. 
 
 e. Poetry and superstition. 
 Herakleitus : 
 
 ' For what thought or wisdom have they ? They follow the 
 poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that 
 there are many bad and few good.' 
 
 ' The most esteemed of those in estimation knows how to 
 feign ; yet of a truth justice shall overtake the artificers of lies 
 and the false witnesses.' ('The reference is doubtless to 
 Homer or Hesiod.' Burnet's note.) 
 
 ' Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, 
 and Archilochus likewise.' 
 
 ' Night-walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus and priest- 
 esses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.' 
 
 ' The mysteries into which men are initiated are unholy.' 
 
 ' And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with 
 a man's house, knowing not what gods or heroes are.' 
 1 Burnet, p. 132 ff.
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1 They purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, 
 just as if one who had stepped in mud were to go and wash 
 his feet in mud.' 
 
 BOOKS TO READ. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy (containing the 
 fragments translated); Zeller ; Pater's Plato and Platonism ; Erdmann's 
 History of Philosophy ; Grote's cc. 67 and 68, on Sophists and Socrates. 
 
 IV. SOME HINTS ON READING PLATO. 
 
 I bring together here a few extracts from Hegel's History of 
 Philosophy, which are worth considering by students of Plato. 
 
 a. On the beauties of Plato. Gesch. d. Phil. ii. 200. 
 
 ' Here is a characteristic which sends many away dissatisfied 
 from the study of Plato. When we begin a dialogue, we find 
 in Plato's free manner, beautiful scenes of nature, a splendid 
 introduction, which promises to initiate us by flowery paths 
 into philosophy, and that the highest, the Platonic philosophy. 
 We come upon elevating things, such as particularly attract 
 the young ; but that is soon over. We have been captivated 
 by the animating scenery, but now we have to do without it ; 
 we come to what is strictly dialectic and speculative, and we 
 pursue a laborious road, pricked by the briars and thistles of 
 metaphysic. For look! here come researches about "one" 
 and " many," " being " and " nothing," as the highest of all ; 
 we did not bargain for that, and we creep away, amazed that 
 Plato looks to such matters for knowledge. Then, from his 
 deepest dialectical researches Plato goes back again to picture- 
 ideas and images, to portraying scenes of the intercourse of 
 clever men ; so it is, e.g., in the Phaedo, which Mendelssohn 
 has modernised and turned into Wolffian metaphysic ; begin- 
 ning and end are elevating, beautiful, but the middle engages 
 itself in dialectic. Thus very diverse moods are needed to 
 get through Plato's dialogues; and in studying them we 
 require an indifference of the mind to the variety of the 
 interest. If we read with an interest for the truly speculative,
 
 ON READING PLATO 15 
 
 we skip what is held most beautiful; if our interest is in 
 the elevating and edifying, and all that, we pass over the 
 speculative part, and find it does not correspond to our 
 interest. We are like the young man in the Bible who has 
 done this and that, and asked of Christ what he should do 
 to follow him. But when our Lord commanded him, " Sell 
 all that thou hast, and give to the poor," he went away 
 grieved : he had not bargained for that. Just so, many mean 
 well by philosophy, have studied Fries, and God knows whom. 
 Their breast is full of the true, good, and beautiful; they 
 want to know and see it, and understand what we ought to 
 do; but it is mere goodwill that their heart is big with ' (i.e. 
 goodwill as opposed to actual resolute persistence). 
 
 b. Dangers of the mythical or pictorial mode of representing 
 ideas which Plato adopts. Gesch. d. Ph. ii. 165. 
 
 ' In order to apprehend Plato's philosophy in his dialogues, 
 it is our business to distinguish what belongs to the picture- 
 idea particularly where he takes refuge in a myth to repre- 
 sent a philosophical conception from the philosophical idea 
 or notion itself; it is only so that we can be sure of the sort 
 of thing which belongs to the picture-idea as such, and not to 
 thought, and that it is not the essential point. Now if we do 
 not know in itself what is the notion, or the truly speculative, 
 we inevitably run the risk of being induced by these myths to 
 draw a whole number of propositions and theorems out of the 
 dialogues, and enunciate them as doctrines of Plato's philo- 
 sophy, when in themselves they are nothing of the kind, but 
 simply belong to the fashion of the picture-idea. 
 
 So, e.g. in the Timaeus Plato avails himself of the figure 
 that God made the world, and the daemons had certain func- 
 tions in the work ; all this is said just in the fashion of the 
 picture-idea. Now if it is taken as a philosophical doctrine 
 that God created the world, that higher beings of a spiritual 
 nature exist, and helped God in the creation ; this is literally 
 found in Plato, and yet it does not belong to his philosophy.
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 When he says, pictorially, of the human soul, that it has a 
 rational and an irrational part, this again is only to be taken 
 in the general sense; Plato is not saying as a philosophical 
 truth that the soul is compounded of two sorts of things or 
 substances. When he represents cognition, or acquisition of 
 knowledge, as recollection, this may mean that the soul pre- 
 existed before the birth of the human being. Just so when 
 he speaks of the central point of his philosophy, of the 
 idea, the universal, as the permanently substantial, as the 
 pattern of sensuous things, we may easily be misled into 
 thinking of those ideas, after the fashion of modern categories 
 of the understanding, as substances which exist in the intel- 
 ligence of God, or by themselves independently, e.g. as angels, 
 beyond the real world. In short, everything that is expressed 
 in the mode of the picture-idea the moderns take straight 
 away for philosophy. One may frame a Platonic philosophy 
 in this way, relying on Plato's own words ; but if we under- 
 stand what philosophy is, we do not trouble ourselves about 
 such expressions, but we know what Plato meant.' 
 
 c. The meaning of the Ideas. Gesch. d. Ph. ii. 174. 
 
 ' When Plato spoke of table-ness and cup-ness, Diogenes 
 the Cynic answered, " I see a table and a cup, but not table- 
 ness and cup-ness." "Right," rejoined Plato, "for eyes, 
 wherewith table and cup are seen, you have ; but intelligence, 
 wherewith table-ness and cup-ness are seen, you have not." 
 What Socrates began was completed by Plato, who recognises 
 as the real only the universal, the idea, the good. By the 
 representation of his ideas Plato has revealed the intellectual 
 world ; but it is one which is not beyond reality, in heaven, 
 in some other place, but is the actual world.' 
 
 d. The supposed ' ideality ' of Plato's conceptions (especially 
 the social conceptions). Gesch. d. Ph. ii. 242. 
 
 ' If we thus regard the content of the Platonic idea (i.e. 
 looking below the surface of life to see whether its funda-
 
 THE GREEK HOUSEHOLD 17 
 
 mental facts are grasped), we shall find that Plato did in fact 
 represent the Greek moral system (Sittlichkeif) substantially 
 as what it was ; for Greek civic life is what forms the sub- 
 stantial basis of Plato's Republic. Plato is not the man to 
 worry himself with abstract theories and principles ; his true 
 intelligence has grasped and represented real truth, and this 
 could be nothing else than the truth of the world in which 
 he lived, of that one mind which came to life in him no 
 less than in Greece. No one can jump out of his age ; the 
 mind of his age is his also ; but the point is, to understand 
 it in its content.' 
 
 G. d. Ph. ii. 254: 'People still set it down as his defect, 
 that he was too ideal, but his defect lies much rather in 
 this, that he was not ideal enough. For if reason is the 
 universal power, and this is essentially intellectual; then as 
 intellectual it involves subjective freedom, which had dawned 
 on the world in Socrates as a new principle. Therefore, 
 though rationality ought to be the basis of law, and is so on 
 the whole, yet on the other side it essentially involves con- 
 science, private conviction, in short, all forms of subjective 
 freedom. . . . 
 
 ' This element in general, this movement of the individual, 
 this principle of subjective freedom, is in Plato in part dis- 
 regarded, in part purposely violated, because it displayed itself 
 as that which brought about the ruin of Greece.' 
 
 V. NOTES ON THE GREEK HOUSEHOLD, WITH 
 REFERENCE TO PLATO'S READINESS TO 
 DESTROY THE FAMILY. 
 
 The classical source for our knowledge of the Athenian 
 family about Plato's time is the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, 1 
 in which an Athenian gentleman describes to Socrates the 
 course which he has adopted to secure a healthy and rational 
 
 1 Translated by Collingwood and Wedderburn, in Mr. Ruskin's Biblio- 
 
 theca Pastor it in.
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 relation between himself and his wife, and good management 
 for their household. I make a few extracts. 
 
 (Socrates has asked him whether his wife was capable of 
 managing a household when she came to him.) 
 
 ' What should she know when she came to me ? She was 
 only fourteen, and had always lived under the strictest 
 supervision, that she might see, and hear, and ask questions, 
 as little as possible. All that I could expect was that she 
 could return you a garment if you gave her the wool [making 
 it or setting the slaves to make it], and had seen how work is 
 given out to the servants ; and she was perfectly trained in 
 control of the appetite, which is a very great thing.' . . . 
 ' When she had lost her shyness and become domesticated so 
 that I could converse with her, I asked her what she thought 
 was the purpose of our union,' etc. (vn. 5 and 10). 
 
 In this, plainly held up as an ideal union, the wife was to be 
 house-mistress, and definitely to remain in charge ' at home ' 
 while the man was 'abroad.' One more modern touch 
 occurs in the lecture on her duties : 
 
 ' One of your duties I am afraid you will think unpleasant, 
 viz., that when any of the servants are ill, you will have to 
 attend to them, and see that they are cared for.' 'Why 
 surely,' my wife replied, ' that is a most delightful service, if, 
 as one hopes, those who have been well cared for will be 
 grateful, and have a more kindly feeling than before ' (VH. 
 37), and a beautiful picture is drawn of the reverence which 
 may attend the matron, in place of any decrease of respect as 
 age comes upon her, if she makes herself a valued leader in 
 the household. There is an almost chivalrous expression 
 ' pleasantest of all, if you prove better than me, and make me 
 (the husband) your servant' (vn. 41-42). It appears from ix. 
 10 that she could keep and read an inventory -, 1 but it is 
 
 i See Newman, p. 171 note; Mr. Grant, Greece in the Age of Pericles, 
 p. 184, takes an apparently different view ; but the practical difference is 
 not great. Mr. Grant's quotations on the general feeling about women 
 are well worth studying, especially the splendid passage from Euripides'
 
 THE GREEK HOUSEHOLD 19 
 
 thought that the education of Athenian women did not 
 include more reading and writing than this. This, as I said, 
 is an ideal union ; the ordinary union at Athens involved the 
 same ignorance and seclusion of the wife, often without the 
 safeguard presented by active household occupation. 
 
 ' I advised her not to sit still all day like a slave, but to 
 move about and supervise the establishment, and get exercise 
 in doing so.' The ' sitting still,' with nothing to do but to 
 dress (x. 2, 10, 12), was evidently an evil which Xenophon 
 had in his eye. 
 
 This was the Greek household at its best ; even so the 
 matron had no interests outside the house, nor did ladies, 
 either married or unmarried, dine out, or go to parties at 
 which men were present, or, consequently, take part in general 
 and cultivated conversation. Such cases as that of Aspasia 
 were exceptional. At an ordinary dinner-party the beauties 
 are the young men. In the whole of Plato's dialogues, 
 no woman is represented as taking part in the conversa- 
 tion. What Pericles says in the funeral oration is well 
 known. 'And if I must say a word, to those who now 
 are widows, on the excellence of women, I can sum it up 
 briefly : for it is great glory for you 1 not to fall below the part 
 which nature assigns you, and to be spoken of among men as 
 little as possible whether for good or for evil.' 2 
 
 ' The husband could divorce his wife at a moment's notice 
 by simply turning her out of the house.' 3 The only check upon 
 him was the obligation in that case to pay back her dower. 
 A dowerless wife had therefore a very precarious position. 
 
 And where women were uncontrolled, matters were not 
 
 Medea, containing the striking thought, ' They say of us (women) that we 
 live a secure life at home, while the men do battle with the spear ; Fools ! 
 I had rather stand thrice in the line of battle than be a mother once,' 
 1. 248. 
 
 1 This shows that the women would be present at the public funeral 
 ceremony. As a rule they were not present at the theatre, but were 
 admitted to certain performances. 
 
 - Thucyd. ii. 45. 3 Newman, I.e.
 
 20 < V INTRODUCTION 
 
 better, but worse. Aristotle's account of the total break-down 
 of Spartan institutions in this aspect is a most remarkable 
 indictment of the system which left the household as a centre 
 of extravagance, while subjecting the public life of the men to 
 the severest discipline aimed at a rigorous simplicity. This, 
 it may be observed, is precisely what Plato would have been 
 proposing, if, in the Republic, he had not urged the abolition 
 of the family. 
 
 ' In all cities in which the life of the women is ill ordered 
 you may say that half the community is outside the law. So it 
 is in Sparta ; the legislator wished the whole city to be hardy, 
 and carried it out with the men, but omitted the women. (Aris- 
 totle says below that Lycurgus tried it and failed !) For they 
 live profligately in every way, and luxuriously. . . . During 
 the Spartan empire much power was in the hands of the 
 women. . . . The audacity (to which they are trained) is 
 useless in daily life, and yet in war, when it should be useful, 
 the conduct of the Spartan women was most detrimental to 
 the state.' 1 
 
 Where the peculiar conditions of Sparta did not exist, 
 other safety-valves were found. Plato in the Laws (909 E, a 
 most remarkable passage, to which Mr. Newman's treatment 
 of the subject drew my attention) would actually prohibit all 
 private worship and altars and temples, because of the 
 tendency of women and invalids to make and pay fanciful vows 
 to gods and inferior spirits (saints !), ' filling all the houses and 
 villages with altars and temples,' whereas, Plato says, to found a 
 temple or divine service is a serious thing, and requires a great 
 mind. So Menander's Misogynist (fourth century) complains : 
 ' The gods are especially a nuisance to us married men, for 
 we have always to be keeping some festival.' 'We had 
 family prayers five times a day ; seven maid-servants stood in 
 a circle playing cymbals ; while our ladies chanted ' (frr. 4 and 
 5, Newman, l.c.\ and finally (first century. A.D.) Plutarch's 
 picture, ' It is false to say that idle people are cheerful ; if so, 
 1 Aristotle, Pol. 12696, 22 ff.
 
 THE STATE AND PROPERTY 21 
 
 women would be more cheerful than men, as they mostly stay 
 at home ; but as it is, though " the north wind may not touch 
 the tender maid," as Hesiod says, yet vexation and distraction 
 and ill-feeling, owing to jealousy and superstition and am- 
 bition and innumerable empty fancies, find their way into 
 the boudoir.' (De Tranq. Animi, i. 2, Newman. I.e.} 
 
 It is not altogether surprising that Plato, not seeing his way 
 to the combined freedom and dutifulness of the modern family 
 at its best, which is still so very far from general realisation, 
 should have suggested putting an end to the system. 
 
 BOOKS TO READ. Newman's Introduction to his edition of Aristotle's 
 Politics, 500 pp. ; Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece ; Grant, op. cit. 
 
 VI. NOTES ON THE UNITY OF THE STATE, 
 AND PLATO'S VIEW OF PROPERTY. 
 
 Aristotle criticises Plato, on the basis of a view of the 
 state almost literally drawn from Plato himself, as, in the 
 sense of Section iv. above, 'not ideal enough.' Aristotle's 
 own notion of several property, however, was not quite ours. 
 It did not include 1 apparently the right of bequest, or of 
 unlimited accumulation. Solon, it is worth remarking, had 
 laid restrictions on the acquisition of land at Athens with 
 good results. 
 
 i. Aristotle's conception of the State, Politics, i. i : 
 ' Every state is a community of some kind, and every 
 community is established with a view to some good ; for 
 mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think 
 good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or 
 political community, which is the highest of all, and which 
 embraces all the rest, aims, and in a greater degree than any 
 other, at the highest good.' 
 
 Politics, i. 2 : ' When several villages are united in a single 
 community, perfect and large enough to be nearly or quite 
 self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in 
 
 1 Newman, p. 167.
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake 
 of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society 
 are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the 
 (completed) nature is the end. For what each thing is when 
 fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of 
 a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end 
 of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and 
 the best.' 
 
 ' Hence it is evident that the State is a creation of nature, 
 and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by 
 nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either 
 above humanity, or below it ; he is the 
 
 'Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,' 
 
 whom Homer denounces the outcast who is a lover of war ; 
 he may be compared to a bird which flies alone.' 
 
 ' Now the reason why man is more of a political animal 
 than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, 
 as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only 
 animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And 
 whereas mere sound is but an indication of pleasure or pain, 
 and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature 
 attains to the perception of pleasure and pain, and the intima- 
 tion of them to one another, and no further), the power of 
 speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, 
 and likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a character- 
 istic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of 
 just and unjust, and the association of living beings who have 
 this sense makes a family and a state.' 
 
 ' Thus the State is by nature clearly prior to l the family and 
 to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the 
 part ; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will 
 be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might 
 speak of a stone hand ; for when destroyed the hand will be 
 no better than a stone hand. But things are defined by their 
 
 1 We might say 'implied in.'
 
 THE STATE AND PROPERTY 23 
 
 working and power ; and we ought not to say that they are 
 the same, when they no longer have the same properties, but 
 only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is 
 a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the indivi- 
 dual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing ; and therefore he is like 
 a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live 
 in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for him- 
 self, must be either a beast or a god : he is no part of a state.' 
 
 2. Aristotle's criticism of Plato, Pol. ii. 5 : 'When the hus- 
 bandmen are not the owners, the case will be different and easier 
 to deal with ; but, when they till the ground themselves, the 
 question of ownership will give a world of trouble. If they do 
 not share equally in enjoyments and toils, those who labour 
 much and get little will necessarily complain of those who 
 labour little and receive or consume much. There is always 
 a difficulty in men living together and having things in 
 common, but especially in their having common property. 
 The partnerships of fellow-travellers are an example to the 
 point : for they generally fall out by the way and quarrel 
 about any trifle which turns up. So with servants : we are 
 most liable to take offence at those with whom we most 
 frequently come into contact in daily life.' 
 
 ' These are only some of the disadvantages which attend the 
 community of property ; the present arrangement, if improved 
 as it might be by good customs and laws, would be far better, 
 and would have the advantages of both systems. Property 
 should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, 
 private ; for, when every one has a distinct interest, men will 
 not complain of one another, and they will make more pro- 
 gress, because every one will be attending to his own business. 
 And yet among the good, and in respect of use, " Friends," as 
 the proverb says, " will have all things common." 2 Even now 
 there are traces of such a principle, showing that it is not 
 impracticable, but, in well-ordered states, exists already to a 
 certain extent and may be carried further. For, although 
 1 Cp. Rep. 349 D. 2 Cp. Rep. iv. 424 A.
 
 24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 every man has his own property, some things he will place at 
 the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use 
 with them. The Lacedaemonians, for example, use one 
 another's slaves, and horses, and dogs, as if they were their 
 own : and when they happen to be in the country, they 
 appropriate in the fields whatever provisions they want. It is 
 clearly better that property should be private, but the use of 
 it common ; and the special business of the legislator is to 
 create in men this benevolent disposition. Again, how 
 immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a 
 thing to be his own ; for the love of self is a feeling implanted 
 by nature and not given in vain, although selfishness is 
 rightly censured ; this, however, is not the mere love of self, 
 but the love of self in excess, like the miser's love of money ; 
 for all, or almost all, men love money, and other such 
 objects in a measure. And further, there is the greatest 
 pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or 
 companions, which can only be rendered when a man has 
 private property. The advantage is lost by the excessive uni- 
 fication of the state. Two virtues are annihilated in such a 
 state : first, temperance towards women (for it is an honourable 
 action to abstain from another's wife for temperance' sake) ; 
 secondly, liberality in the matter of property. No one, when 
 men have all things in common, will any longer set an 
 example of liberality or do any liberal action ; for liberality 
 consists in the use which is made of property. Such legisla- 
 tion may have a specious appearance of benevplence ; men 
 readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in 
 some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's 
 friend, especially when some one 1 is heard denouncing the 
 evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions 
 for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said 
 to arise out of the possession of private property. These 
 evils, however, are due to a very different cause the wicked- 
 ness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much 
 more quarrelling among those who have all things in common, 
 1 Rep. v. 464, 465,
 
 THE STATE AND PROPERTY 25 
 
 though there are not many of them when compared with the 
 vast numbers who have private property. 
 
 ' Again, we ought to reckon, not only the evils from which 
 the citizens will be saved, but also the advantages which they 
 will lose. The life which they are to lead appears to be quite 
 impracticable. The error of Socrates l must be attributed to 
 the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there 
 should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some 
 respects only. For there is a point at which a state may 
 attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at 
 which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an 
 inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm 
 which has been reduced to a single foot. The state, as I was 
 saying, is a plurality, 2 which should be united and made into 
 a community by education ; and it is strange that the author 
 of a system of education which he thinks will make the state 
 virtuous, should expect to improve his citizens by regulations 
 of this sort, and not by philosophy or by customs and laws, 
 like those which prevail at Sparta and Crete respecting 
 common meals, whereby the legislator has (to a certain 
 degree) made property common. Let us remember that we 
 should not disregard the experience of ages ; in the multitude 
 of years these things, if they were good, would certainly not 
 have been unknown ; for almost everything has been found 
 out, although sometimes they are not put together ; in other 
 cases men do not use the knowledge which they have. Great 
 light would be thrown on this subject if we could see such a 
 form of government in the actual process of construction ; for 
 the legislator could not form a state at all without distributing 
 and dividing the citizens into associations for common meals, 
 and into phratries and tribes.' 
 
 3. Another form of the same criticism may be added 3 : 
 ' As, in property, my will is made real for me as a personal 
 will that is, as the will of an individual property is 
 
 1 i.e. the Platonic Socrates. 2 Cp. ib. c. ii. 2. 
 
 3 Hegel's Philosophic d. Rechts, sect. 46.
 
 26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 characteristically private property ; while common property, 
 of such things as in their nature can be severally possessed, 
 bears the character of a dissoluble combination, in which I 
 can choose or not choose to let my share remain.' 
 
 ' The use of the elements is incapable of being made a 
 private possession. 1 The agrarian laws at Rome contain a 
 conflict between collectivism and private property in land ; 
 the latter necessarily gained the day, as the more reasonable 
 factor in the social system, although at the expense of other 
 rights. Family trust property contains a factor which is 
 opposed to the right of personality, and therefore to that of 
 private property. But the rules which deal with private pro- 
 perty may be subordinated to higher spheres of right, to a 
 corporation or to the state, as in the case when ownership is 
 vested in a so-called moral person property in mortmain. 
 However, such exceptions must not be founded in caprice or 
 private interest, but only in the rational organisation of the 
 state.' 
 
 ' The idea of Plato's Republic contains as a general principle 
 the injustice against the person of making him incapable of 
 holding private property. The idea of a pious or friendly or 
 even compulsory fraternity of human beings with community 
 of goods, and the banishment of the principle of private 
 property, may easily occur to a habit of thought which 
 mistakes the nature of spiritual freedom and of right, and does 
 not apprehend them in their definite factors. As for the 
 moral or religious point of view, Epicurus deterred his friends 
 from organising such a community of goods, when they 
 thought of doing so, precisely on the ground that to do so 
 would indicate mistrust, and that people who mistrust one 
 another are not friends.' 
 
 ' Note. In property my will takes the shape of a person. 
 Now a person is a ' this ' ; therefore the property is the 
 personification of this will. As I give my will existence by 
 
 1 The elements were res communes according to Roman law. But of 
 course there is property in a water supply.
 
 THE STATE AND PROPERTY 27 
 
 means of property, property in its turn must have the attribute 
 of being this in particular, i.e. mine. This is the important 
 doctrine of the necessity of private property. If exceptions 
 are made by the state, it is it alone that can make them ; and 
 often, especially in our own days, it has restored private pro- 
 perty. So, for example, many nations have rightly abolished 
 the monasteries, because in the last resort a collective institu- 
 tion has no such right to property as the person has.' 
 
 4. Plato, as shown by Republic 464 B, lays but slight stress 
 on the abolition of several property for the guardian class, 
 regarding it purely as a corollary of abolishing the family, and 
 as a means to the highest unity of feeling in the state. If 
 separate households were to be maintained, he would no 
 longer care for common property. From his point of view, 
 however, he was faithful to the notion. See Laws, 739 B-D 
 (J). ' The first and highest form of the state and the 
 government and of the law is that in which there prevails 
 most widely the ancient saying, that, " Friends have all things 
 in common." x Whether there is anywhere now, or ever will 
 be, this communion of women and children and of property, 
 in which the private and individual is altogether banished 
 from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes 
 and ears and hands, have become common, 2 and in some way 
 see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise 
 and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, 
 and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost, 
 whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting 
 upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which 
 will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue.' 
 
 The best thing, perhaps, that we can learn from the dis- 
 cussions of the Greek thinkers on these subjects, is their com- 
 plete subordination of the means of life to the end. What in 
 
 1 Aristotle, I.e., points out that this can be fulfilled without a compul- 
 sory communism, and, as he thinks, better fulfilled. 
 
 2 The purpose and criterion even here is a spiritual unity ; the material 
 means to it are means, and no more.
 
 28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 particular is to be done, every age must beat out for itself. 
 But the relation of life to its material is unchanging. 
 
 VII. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POPULAR 
 GREEK IDEAL OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 The ideas of philosophers are drawn from the life around 
 them, and can neither be interpreted nor accounted for 
 without some knowledge of that life. The history of Greece, 
 if in one way summed up by the theory of predication, in 
 another way has a singular bearing on the notion of happiness. 
 Throughout the utterances of Plato and Aristotle on this 
 matter there echoes the antithesis of Greek and Oriental, 
 citizen and despot, civilisation and barbarism, to maintain 
 which so hard a battle had been fought, and which was there- 
 fore interwoven with the proudest memories of the Greek 
 race. Long before the Republic was written, probably before 
 Plato was born, the Hellenic conception of happiness, as 
 determined by this contrast, had found immortal expression in 
 the story of Solon and Croesus. It is clear that Aristotle 
 knew the work of Herodotus, and in all probability both he 
 and Plato were influenced by it. An allusion to it occurs in 
 Aristotle's Ethics, just where he is discussing the conditions ot 
 human happiness (Book i. 10, i.). I cite a portion of the 
 imaginary conversation, which places the contrast above 
 mentioned in the strongest light; the supreme examples of 
 happiness selected, according to the story, by the great 
 Athenian statesman, being examples of splendid achievement 
 in the service of the state and of the family, in a completed 1 
 and prosperous life, as opposed to the mere possession of the 
 apparatus of luxury and power, on which the typical despot 
 founded his claim to felicity. The conception of Herodotus 
 is marred for us by his Ionian pessimism, to which rather the 
 
 1 I am strongly inclined to think that Aristotle's expression ' a complete 
 life ' is suggested by the content of the stories ascribed to Solon by 
 Herodotus.
 
 GREEK HAPPINESS 29 
 
 negative than the positive l completeness of life is the impor- 
 tant aspect ; but in spite of this the Greek spirit shines through 
 his words. 
 
 ' On the third or fourth day, 2 by order of Croesus, the 
 attendants took Solon round the treasure-houses and showed 
 him the vast wealth that was in them. 3 When he had. seen 
 the whole and had been given full opportunity to examine it, 
 Croesus asked him, " Athenian stranger, we have heard much 
 of you and your wisdom and your journey ings, how in the 
 pursuit of knowledge 4 you have traversed many lands in order 
 to observe 5 them ; now therefore I have a desire to ask you if 
 you have seen any one who is the happiest 6 of all men." 
 Now, he asked this, thinking that himself was the happiest of 
 men. But Solon, in no way flattering him, but speaking the 
 truth, 7 replied, " O King, Tellos the Athenian." And Croesus, 
 amazed at what was said, asked him sharply, " What makes 
 you judge Tellos to be the happiest man?" And Solon 
 answered, " Tellos in the first place lived when his city was 
 prosperous, and he had sons who were true gentlemen, all of 
 whom had children born to them in his lifetime, and lost 
 none of them ; and in the second place, while he was still 
 well off according to our reckoning, 8 a most brilliant ending of 
 
 1 i.e. the ending rather than the filling. 2 Herodotus, i. 30-32. 
 
 3 A curious parallel to the Temptation, ' all the kingdoms of the world 
 and the glory of them, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' The 
 Greek story is so much less picturesque and intense, that we may fail to 
 note the identity of the thought. 4 Lit. 'philosophising.' 
 
 5 Quite lit. 'for the sake of theory,' the word 'theoria' meaning to a 
 Greek 'seeing for seeing's sake'; often as here =' sight-seeing.' The 
 reversal of meaning which the word has undergone is interesting. 
 
 6 Not the philosopher's word ' eudaimon,' but one which rather implies 
 ' prosperity.' 
 
 7 Lit. ' making use of what is,' or ' of being,' quite a current term for 
 truth or fact. This illustrates Plato's usage. 
 
 8 A clear antithesis of the Greek with the Asiatic notion of wealth ; 
 ' Greece is always poor,' Herodotus says elsewhere ; but what suffices for a 
 true Greek life is enough. The very word for ' wealth ' or ' substance,' lit. 
 'life,' indicates this.
 
 30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 life came upon him ; for there was a battle at Eleusis 
 between Athens and the neighbouring city, and Tellos 
 having headed a charge and put the enemy to flight, fell 
 by a most splendid death ; and the Athenians buried him 1 
 at the public cost there where he fell, and greatly honoured 
 him.' 
 
 ' And when Solon had thus excited Croesus by his narrative 
 of the manifold happiness of Tellos, the king asked him whom 
 he had seen that was next happiest after him, hoping at least 
 to carry off the second prize. But Solon said, ' Kleobis and 
 Bito. These were Argives ; they had sufficient substance, 2 
 and in addition to this such bodily force that both of them 
 were prize-winners. And the following story is told. The 
 Argives were holding a festival to Hera, and it was absolutely 
 necessary for the mother of these two to be driven in her 
 waggon to the temple, but the team did not come up from the 
 farm at the appointed time, and being urged by the lateness 
 of the hour the young men went themselves under the yoke 
 and drew the waggon, in which their mother rode, between 
 four and five miles' distance to the temple. And when they 
 had done this, and the whole assembly had seen it, there 
 came upon them an excellent ending of life, and in this the 
 god revealed that it was better for a man to die than to live. 
 The Argive men stood round about, and were congratulating 
 the youths on their strength, and the Argive women congratu- 
 lated their mother that she had such children. And the 
 mother, rejoicing at the deed and its repute, stood before the 
 image and prayed for Kleobis and Bito, her children, who 
 
 1 The naivete with which Herodotus runs on to include in the happiness 
 of Tellos matters which took place after his death illustrates the paradox of 
 duty as it appears in Aristotle's conception of courage. It is not the man's 
 personal satisfaction, but the adequacy of the supreme self-sacrifice to the 
 relations which demand it, which both the historian and the philosopher 
 have in view. The whole together, family, sufficient wealth, a prosperous 
 society, enough length of days to see his children's children, a brilliant 
 self-sacrifice recognised and accepted by society, make up the ' complete ' 
 life. 2 Lit. 'life.'
 
 GREEK HAPPINESS 31 
 
 had greatly honoured her, that the goddess would give them 
 what was best for a man to have. And after her prayer, 
 when they had sacrificed and banqueted, the young men lay 
 down to sleep in the temple, and never rose up again, but 
 ended in that close. And the Argives 1 had statues made of 
 them, and set them up at Delphi, as having been the best of 
 men.' Thus Solon gave to these the second rank in happi- 
 ness ; 2 and Croesus was vexed, and said, ' O Athenian 
 stranger, is our happiness 3 so cast aside by you as naught, 
 that you have not counted us the equals even of private 
 persons ? ' But Solon answered ' O Croesus, you are asking 
 about human fortunes of me, who know that the divinity is 
 altogether jealous 4 (envious) and turbulent.' 
 
 The passage which follows includes the famous saying 
 that no one is to be counted happy till his life is ended. In 
 it we cannot but notice the words (ch. 32), 'No human 
 body is self-sufficing ; it has one thing, but is lacking in 
 another,' in comparison with Republic 3696, 'no one of us 
 is self-sufficing, but (all are) lacking in many things.' 
 Herodotus made the remark in insisting on the impossibility 
 of one man having all good things. Plato gives it a different 
 turn. 
 
 The democratic ideal of the best minds in the age of 
 Pericles, as conceived by Thucydides, is expressed in the 
 funeral oration ascribed to the great statesman as spoken in 
 the first year of the Peloponnesian war. It may be well to 
 insert some extracts from it for comparison with Plato. 
 
 1 A conclusion of the same kind as in the former story. 
 
 2 This is 'eudaimonia,' the philosopher's word. Herodotus obviously 
 attaches no importance to the usage. 
 
 3 ' Eudaimonia. ' 
 
 4 This idea is definitely challenged both by Plato and Aristotle. See 
 Phaedr. 247 A, Republic 379 c and D, Arist. Metaph. i. 2 : ' the divine 
 cannot be envious, but as the proverb says "singers tell many lies."' 
 Here we note the breach with primitive superstition, parallel to the 
 transition from Judaism to Christianity from the 'jealous God' to the 
 God in man.
 
 32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Always remember that two-thirds of the population were 
 slaves. 
 
 ' Our l form of government does not enter into rivalry with 
 the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, 
 but are an example to them. It is true that we are called 
 a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the 
 many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal 
 justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of 
 excellence is also recognised ; and when a citizen is in any 
 way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not 
 as a matter of privilege but as a reward of merit. Neither 
 is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country what- 
 ever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusive- 
 ness in our public life, and in our private intercourse we are 
 not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour 
 if he does what he likes ; we do not put on sour looks at 
 him, which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are 
 thus unconstrained in our public intercourse, a spirit of 
 reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from 
 doing wrong by respect for authority, and for the laws, 
 having an especial regard to those which are ordained for 
 the protection of the injured, as well as to those unwritten 
 laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reproba- 
 tion of the general sentiment. 
 
 ' And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits 
 many relaxations from toil ; we have regular games 2 and 
 sacrifices throughout the year ; at home the style of our life 
 is refined, and the delight which we daily feel in all these 
 things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness 
 of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us ; so 
 that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our 
 own.' 
 
 ' For we are lovers of the beautiful, 3 though simple in our 
 
 1 Thucyd. ii. 37. Cp. Mr. Grant's Greece in the Age of Pericles, c. vii. 
 
 2 Competitions, including the theatrical performances in which the 
 dramatists competed. 3 C. 40.
 
 GREEK HAPPINESS 33 
 
 tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. 
 Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when 
 there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no 
 disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. 
 An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he 
 takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who 
 are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We 
 alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs not 
 as a harmless, but as a useless, character ; and if few of us are 
 originators we are all sound judges of a policy. The great 
 impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but 
 the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion 
 preparatory to action. 
 
 1 ' To sum up : I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, 
 and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to 
 have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms 
 of action with the utmost versatility and grace.' 
 
 VIII. HINTS ON THE STRUCTURE OF 
 
 THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 The Republic as we have it is unquestionably a coherent 
 whole, and the variations of standpoint which it exhibits do 
 not exceed those to which every work of great compass is 
 liable. In considering whether an ancient writing was com- 
 posed as a single book or whether parts of it were intended 
 to exist as separate works, it appears to me that we are too 
 much guided by the analogies of modern printing and 
 publishing. Every work of great compass takes a long time 
 to write, and it is not clear how far, for the Greek in Plato's 
 age, there was a definite epoch of publication implying that 
 what was published had attained a final form. With us the 
 necessities of printing make publication a final and decisive 
 step in the history of a book, which cannot be modified after 
 publication except by a new edition ; and when the multipli- 
 cation of MS. copies came to be thoroughly organised in 
 
 1 C. 41. 
 c
 
 34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 establishments existing for the purpose, the same difference 
 between what had and what had not been published would 
 be practically recognised. But so long as copying was carried 
 on on a small scale, or under the author's eye, I cannot see 
 how any definite date of publication could be spoken of. 
 For dramatic literature the date of representation would 
 occupy this place ; but the composition of a philosophical 
 work might extend over many years, during which copies of 
 portions of it might pass into circulation, and the author's 
 views might alter, without detriment to his intention of 
 ultimately completing it on a certain plan, which might also 
 remodel itself during the execution. If we were to suggest, 
 for example, that certain portions of some modern book were 
 published together at a certain date, and reissued ten or 
 fifteen years later with alterations and insertions, that would 
 be a definite contention which could be established by pro- 
 duction of the printed volume. But the doubt arises whether 
 such a suggestion has any meaning under ancient conditions 
 of publication. If copies were issued of parts of the dialogue, 
 even of some of the later parts before those which now 
 precede them, that need not in any degree imply that Plato 
 even for the moment considered his plan to be completed, 
 although it is no less impossible to show the contrary. If 
 Plato had never meant the work as we have it to be a single 
 treatise, that would be a serious matter. But the constant 
 references from part to part show plainly that this is not so, 
 and everything short of this seems to be purely a matter of 
 degree, involving details of Plato's intention and of the time 
 over which the composition of the work may have extended, 
 which are wholly irrecoverable by mere comparison of the 
 parts of the dialogue. No doubt the psychology of Book iv. 
 is extended in Books viu. and ix. ; the ' first ' education is 
 criticised at the beginning of the second ; the impotence of 
 God in ii. 379 is scarcely reconcilable with the all-pervading 
 ' form of the good ' in Books vi. and vn. ; the Hellenic city 
 which is described down to v. 471, changes its character as
 
 STRUCTURE OF REPUBLIC 35 
 
 the ultimate end of life and nature of the world come into 
 view in the philosophical commonwealth. But even if Plato's 
 plan underwent discontinuous enlargement, the welds are 
 now unbreakable, and, I incline to think, undiscoverable (see 
 notes on Book v.) ; and there is no absolute or external test, 
 such as the event of publication affords to-day, by which we 
 could tell, even if our knowledge of facts were far more 
 complete, whether or no any part of the dialogue was ever 
 regarded by its author as a separate work. 
 
 The five ' natural divisions ' of the dialogue (Jowett) may 
 be briefly characterised as follows : 
 
 1. Book i., beginning n. 367. Prologue, showing the 
 rise of the moral problem out of everyday life, and out of the 
 current theories of the time. 
 
 2. Book n. 368 v. 471. First answer to the moral 
 problem, by specifying the system implied in the existence of 
 the moral being 'my station and its duties' as external 
 type, and also as content, of the true morality or inward will. 
 
 3. Book v. 471 to end of Book vu. Second answer to 
 the moral problem. Ideal morality, or philosophic religion, 
 and its real or metaphysical basis. 
 
 4. Books vni. and ix. Negative verification of the con- 
 nection between well-doing and well-being, by concomitant 
 variations of ill-doing and ill-being. 
 
 5. Book x. Psychological corroboration of the criticism 
 passed upon unreal appearance, pointing out the connection 
 between the unreal in cognition and in feeling. 
 
 BOOKS TO READ. On Republic as a whole, R. L. Nettleship's Essay in 
 Hellenica ; Excursus on Greek Ethics, by Wallace, in translation of 
 Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. For changes imminent in Plato's age, add 
 to the Histories of Greece Wallace's Epicureanism and Butcher's 
 Demosthenes, both of which are on a small scale. See also Warde Fowler's 
 City State.
 
 N.B. Figures printed as i. i, refer to the page and line 
 of Davies and Vaughan's translation (Macmillan & Co.). 
 In references and section-headings these are followed by 
 the 'marginal page,' which is given throughout on the 
 outer margin. See Preface.
 
 REPUBLIC 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 I. i, 327 A 2. 20, 328 B. Sect . lf 
 
 This descriptive opening, with its life and colour, reminds us 
 of those dialogues which we naturally take to be the earlier of 
 Plato's writings, such as the Charmides or Protagoras. In 
 the Philebus, Sophist, and Laws the argument begins abruptly. 
 
 Its picturesqueness is blent, though quite naturally, with sig- 
 nificance. ' All things come to Athens] or her great harbour 
 town Peiraeus, new religions among them, especially towards 
 the end of the $th century B.C. And the Athenian finds them 
 all ' worth seeing} Plato's enjoyment of sheer seeing is like 
 Dante's. 
 
 I. i. 'To Peiraeus.' A walk of about five miles, within the 327 A 
 long walls. 
 
 3. ' Then to be held for the first time.' 38. 13, 354 A, 
 shows that the festival was in honour of Bendis, a Thracian 
 goddess, worshipped with orgiastic ritual, and sometimes 
 identified with Artemis. The introduction of such a worship 
 illustrates the religious conditions of the time (see the Bacchae 
 of Euripides). Plato, however, shows no dislike of the cele- 
 bration at Peiraeus. 
 
 13. 'Where his master was,' literally, 'where himself was.' B 
 Some readers will recall the Scotch usage of ' himsel' ' to indi- 
 cate an important personage. 
 
 37
 
 38 
 Sect. 2. 2. 20, 328 B 6. 2, 331 B. 
 
 Preliminary conversation. The experience of life anticipates 
 the conclusions of philosophy. 
 
 328 B 2. 20-25. This Lysias was the great orator, and we learn 
 from his speeches against Eratosthenes that his father Cephalus 
 was not an Athenian by birth, but a resident alien, whom 
 Pericles had persuaded to come to Athens. Lysias and 
 Polemarchus possessed a shield factory, which they probably 
 inherited. We are to think of Cephalus, not as the Athenian 
 aristocrat, but rather as the cultivated manufacturer or mer- 
 chant-prince, residing, no doubt, in a good house, but in a 
 commercial or industrial quarter. He accepted, we are told, 
 the burdens of an Athenian citizen, and lived for thirty years, 
 unharming and unharmed, under the popular government. 
 But long after the death of Cephalus the reactionary oligarchy 
 of the Thirty (404 B.C.) seized Lysias and Polemarchus as 
 wealthy aliens, and though Lysias escaped, Polemarchus was 
 summarily ordered to drink the hemlock. His fate, as well 
 as that of Socrates, was, of course, in Plato's mind when this 
 dialogue was written (see below, 300-302. 566-7). The dra- 
 matic date of the dialogue is of no importance. But I cannot 
 reconcile the suggestion that Cephalus died in 444 B.C. with 
 the statements of Lysias. There is no reason, however, to 
 defend Plato against the imputation of anachronism. He was 
 wholly careless on such points. 
 
 B 22. 'Chalcedon,' on the Bosphorus, opposite Byzantium. 
 Thrasymachus is mentioned elsewhere in Plato. It was 
 characteristic of the ' Sophists ' or professors that they were 
 not stationary in any one city, but appeared as distinguished 
 foreigners. The brilliant diversity of Greek life was greatly 
 due to the fact that men of such different countries and types 
 could, as Greeks, so easily hold intercourse. 
 
 C 30. ' It is seldom that you pay us a visit.' A hexameter 
 ending, perhaps echoing the courteous words of Hephaestus 
 to Thetis, Iliad xviii. 325 : ' Dear and honoured god-
 
 BOOK I. 39 
 
 dess, what brings you to our house? You are but a rare 
 visitor,' 
 
 35 ff. 'I assure you that I find.' The keynote of the dialogue 328 D 
 is struck at once. There is no enduring satisfaction that is 
 not dependent on intelligence. See the criticism of pleasures, 
 321. 30, 583 B. 
 
 3. 6. ' The threshold of age ': a phrase used by Homer and E 
 Hesiod, recalling the melancholy representation which the 
 poets usually give of old age, as in the case of Laertes in the 
 Odyssey. Their descriptions are criticised by implication in 
 the following passage. The constant conversational reference 
 to the poets helps us to understand Plato's treatment of them, 
 while it is also the vehicle of that treatment. 
 
 10. The old proverb, 'Like to like,' e.g. in Odyssey 329 A 
 xvii. 218. 
 
 1 8. ' Living well ' : a pregnant phrase, because it implies 
 an ideal of human life. Thus, in 38. i, 353 E, 354 A, it is 
 used as the middle term to connect morality with happiness, 
 and Aristotle employs it to designate the purpose for which 
 civic society exists. But in these deeper applications it 
 never loses the attachment to actual life which it has in the 
 present passage. It is never mere ' goodness,' but always ' a 
 good life for man,' or ' a life that satisfies a human being as 
 such.' 
 
 35. 'As if I had escaped from being the slave of a mad- 
 man.' The passions, as tyrant and his bodyguard, see 308. C 
 
 573 E. 
 
 4. i. 'The character of the men.' D 
 Character is the secret of happiness, not circumstance. 
 
 14. Seriphus is an insignificant island among the Cyclades. 
 Note that Plato had no technical language ; and the anecdote 
 takes its place by enshrining a logical point, the distinction 
 between cause and condition. Wealth may be a condition of 
 happiness, but is certainly not its cause. This simple conver- 
 sation raises the great problem of the relation between happi- 
 ness and external goods, and anticipates the conclusion to
 
 40 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 which Plato and Aristotle adhered. Their view is easily 
 parodied, see Milton, Paradise Regained : 
 
 ' The third 1 in virtue placed felicity, . 
 
 But virtue joined with riches and long life.' 
 
 The conception cannot be fully grasped without appre- 
 ciating the whole interdependence between ' life ' and ' good 
 life,' as embodied in the moral ideas of Plato and Aristotle. 
 (See Introduction on Solon and Croesus.) 
 
 40. Cp. Ar. Eth. Nic. iv. i. 20, clearly borrowed from this 
 passage. 
 
 330 C 5- 6. ' Greatest advantage,' literally ' greatest good.' Good 
 is here used quite colloquially, but is the same word which 
 subsequently appears in ' form of the good.' Our word ' good,' 
 which is said to contain the same root, follows its meanings 
 very fairly. It generally means good for some purpose, or in 
 some especial way ' good at boxing,' ' it is not good for a 
 beggar to be modest,' 'a good king,' etc. Socrates said, 2 ' If 
 you ask me about a good which is good for nothing, I don't 
 know it, and I don't care for it.' Just because it is so often 
 defined by context it has no positive implication of its own, 
 such as is conveyed by ' beautiful,' ' pleasant,' ' useful.' When 
 undefined, it has to be interpreted by the general context. 
 Applied thus generally to persons, it often seems to indicate 
 bravery or gentle birth and breeding ; applied in the same 
 way to things, it may mean good in any sense in which we 
 use the term always, perhaps, with a rather comprehensive 
 suggestion of value, simply because the reservation ' good for 
 this or that ' is left out. Here ' advantage ' i.e. anything that 
 promotes any current purpose of life is quite a fair transla- 
 tion. (See preliminary description of the good, 226. 505 E.) 
 D ii. 'About things which never affected him before.' This 
 reference to the future life anticipates the myth of the tenth 
 book, which supports the feeling of Cephalus that the good 
 man has ground for hope. Note that this whole conversation 
 
 1 Aristotle. 2 Xen. Memorabilia, iii. 8. 3.
 
 BOOK L 41 
 
 is not merely a means of introducing a criticism of common 
 opinion, but indicates the data furnished in the healthy moral 
 consciousness, which philosophy has to theorise. That ele- 
 ment, however, which is thrown into the myth is thereby 
 admitted to fall outside the strict theory. 
 
 13. 'Done wrong here, must suffer for it.' These words 33 D 
 introduce the idea of ' Justice,' first in a negative form. 
 'Done wrong '= literally 'Has acted unjustly'; 'suffer for 
 it ' = ' pay the penalty ' (dike), same word as 'justice ' or ' trial.' 
 The positive word also occurs as an adverb 'justly,' 5- 2 9> 
 331 A, below. The acts which seem to Cephalus to constitute 
 justice are put together, 5. 36, 331 B, but without mentioning 
 justice. This putting together a number of acts, instead of 
 eliciting their principle, is characteristic of ' opinion.' (See 
 194. 479 E.) 
 
 1 8. 'The confines of the future state' ' those mysteries.' 33 E 
 It is no doubt necessary, in many instances, to modernise the 
 Greek idiom in translating by supplying a substantive in agree- 
 ment with the neuter of the article, pronoun, or adjective. But 
 none the less it is modernisation, and the English reader 
 should be warned of it in all serious cases. Here a more 
 literal translation would be ' being now nearer to the (things) 
 over there ' (regular phrase for the other world), ' he sees 
 them better.' But even 'things' is an insertion. Cp. 'Das 
 Jenseits,' ' The beyond.' 
 
 6. i. 'This service.' In sum, then, the use of wealth is as 331 B 
 a means to goodness. 
 
 6. 3, 331 B 7. 9, 332 A. Sect. 3. 
 
 The rule of formal honesty is not an adequate account of 
 justice. 
 
 8. ' For example, every one.' These examples show that c 
 in a conceivable case the action prescribed by the rule would 
 be, not just, but unjust ; i.e. the rule is not adequate to our 
 moral consciousness, but expresses only a part of it. 
 
 1 8. 'Definition,' the same word which in Aristotle's logic D
 
 42 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 stands for ' term ' or ' definition.' Its first meaning is limit or 
 boundary, and it has not here, of course, its later technical 
 force. Perhaps ' this is not the right demarcation of justice 
 (from injustice).' 
 
 331 E 22. ' If we are to believe Simonides.' Simonides is ap- 
 pealed to almost as the Bible might be appealed to now. In 
 37. 331 E, the word 'inspired' is literally 'divine,' a common 
 epithet of admiration for poets and singers, probably convey- 
 ing some idea of their direct dependence on Apollo or the 
 Muses ; of course there was no formulated theory of a specific 
 revelation made through them ; on the contrary, it was as 
 mouthpieces of traditional sentiment that they had their 
 authority. The relation of the Jewish literature to us is far 
 more artificial, and therefore has been more dogmatically 
 formulated. But for this very reason, again, the influence of 
 the Greek poets on the Greeks was more intimate than that 
 of the Bible on us ; and Plato, in criticising them, criticises 
 the national past. 
 
 34. ' That to restore to each man,' etc. ' is just.' Note, 
 first, that the sentence has not the form of a true definition. 
 It says not 'Justice is this,' but 'This is just.' Probably the 
 young man's inexperience in dialectic is thus indicated. The 
 word rendered ' due ' is the passive participle of the verb ' to 
 owe ' ; that which is owed in the simplest sense as an actual 
 object that has been lent. The definition is the same as that 
 of Cephalus, and breaks down under the same treatment as 
 before. 
 
 Sect. 4. 7- 10, 332 A 7. 28, 332 c. 
 
 A modification in the definition is suggested substituting 
 1 suitable* for ' owed,' so that the rule may allow of varying 
 conduct according to circumstances; as a corollary, ' good is 
 " suitable " to friends, harm to enemies? 
 
 27. 'Appropriate': 'fitting' or 'becoming,' simply a 
 more general word than ' what is owed,' and therefore allow- 
 ing more free interpretation according to circumstances. The
 
 BOOK L 43 
 
 irony with which Plato interprets Simonides acts as a criticism 
 on the appeal to the poets, and on the methods of interpreta- 
 tion which it involved. The dialogue is full of this irony. 
 (See below, 100. 26, 404 B, on Homer's advice as to diet.) 
 
 7. 28, 332 c 10. 28, 334 c. Sect. 5. 
 
 Criticism of the modified definition begun. The proposed 
 rule, as such, deals with external actions, and not with moral 
 disposition. The criticism is a reduction to absurdity 
 (i.) of morality as capacity without will. 
 (ii. ) of morality as will without capacity. 
 
 7. 30. Literally, ' The art rendering what due and appro- 332 C 
 priate things to what, is called medical art ' ; ' That which 
 (renders) drugs, etc., to bodies ' ; and so on. There is 
 nothing about ' recipients,' and the sentences are not broken 
 up as the translators are forced to break them. Thus the 
 sentence ' Seasoning is the thing rendered ; dishes are the 
 recipients,' consists of five words in the Greek ' That which 
 (renders) seasoning to dishes.' This contrast in the languages 
 will be of great importance when we come to deal with the 
 expression of philosophical ideas. 
 
 41. 'The art that we are to call justice.' We are startled D 
 at finding the discussion to deal first, not with the kind of 
 purpose ascribed to goodness, but with the skill requisite to 
 carry it out ('who is best able?' 8. 6, 332 D). We are 
 not accustomed to think of goodness as an 'art,' or skilled 
 and disciplined habit of action. This idea is always present 
 to Plato ; here, however, partly no doubt in fun, and partly as 
 a criticism on the accidental or external nature of the sug- 
 gested rule, he sets himself first to show that the good man, 
 as such, has no special skill, and then that he is useless with- 
 out it. Yet he does not mention the good will, and, in fact, 
 by pushing the detachment of goodness from ability so far as 
 he does, even the content of the good will would be destroyed 
 a result in which he humorously delights as a criticism of 
 the mere well-meaning person.
 
 44 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 333 A 8. 40. ' Of covenants.' Not, ' for the acquisition of cove- 
 nants,' butj in answer to the question ' What is he good for ? ' 
 ' He is of use with reference to covenants.' 
 
 B 9. 13. ' The horse-dealer is better.' It may be said that 
 this assumes the horse-dealer to be honest. Perhaps Plato 
 might answer that he was being considered qua horse-dealer 
 and not qua money-maker. (See 25. 36, 345 D.) 
 
 C p. 27 10. i, 333 E. 'So that justice,' etc. Goodness 
 cannot be identified with any special sphere of action ; this 
 much was true ; but if it has no sphere at all, it is faith with- 
 out works, the internal without the external will, which is 
 impossible. This is a shrewd criticism by anticipation of the 
 modern or purely ' inward ' notion of goodness. 
 
 E 10. 2 to the end of the section is pure fun, only taking on 
 a serious meaning in the quite just allusion to Homer's Auto- 
 lycus (also made by Grote, Part i. c. 20), with which Plato 
 points his humorous allegation that great poets think knavery 
 a fine thing. The sophism which connects goodness with 
 thieving consists in interpreting the negative quality of the 
 well-meaning man that he can do nothing with money 
 except keep it i.e. abstain from embezzling it as positive 
 skill in defending it from predatory persons. This would 
 really involve the kind of ability which the predatory person 
 has, and such ability, the element of will being neglected, is 
 sophistically taken as identifying the just man with the pre- 
 datory person. 
 
 ct. 6. 10. 29, 334 B 12. 2, 335 B, 
 
 This argument, like that of 17. 36, 339 c below, uses the 
 admission that error is possible in judging of the test quality, 
 to suggest that the test must be something more ' objective ' 
 than the definition has laid down. If you are to treat men 
 well or ill according to their qualities, at least take the ster- 
 ling quality of goodness as your guide, not the mere good- 
 ness to you which will bring you into contradiction with the 
 real qualities of the man. In both cases this argument
 
 BOOK I. 45 
 
 from possible error naturally leads to a treatment on the 
 merits. 
 
 10. 27. 'To love all whom he thinks honest.' This is 334 C 
 strange to our romantic views. We like our friends, we are 
 
 apt to say, because we like them, not because they are 
 virtuous. But Aristotle's developed theory of friendship 
 echoes this passage. Ethics, viii. 3 : ' But the perfect kind of 
 friendship is that of good men who resemble one another in 
 virtue.' Aristotle acutely points out that passion is fugitive 
 unless deepened into a regard for character, I.e. 
 
 11. ii. ' It is just to do evil to those who commit no D 
 injustice,' if your rule is to do evil to your enemies, who 
 may be good. This result shocks common morality. The 
 definition meant to treat people according to what they are ; 
 but by taking too casual a test it has led to the opposite of 
 its intention. 
 
 11. 20. 'Because in their eyes they are wicked'; rather, E 
 ' because they have wicked friends.' If, again, your rule is to 
 do evil to the wicked, you will have to do evil to your friend, 
 which contradicts the law of Simonides. 
 
 38. ' Then you would have us attach.' The definition 335 A 
 is amended by simply limiting it to cases when there is no 
 mistake, and when the qualities which serve as criteria are as 
 ' objective ' as qualities which separate men into classes can be. 
 
 12. 3> 335 B 13. 13, 335 E. Sect. 7 
 Error arising from personal relations being ruled out, it 
 
 remains to consider 'on the merits' whether men's qualities 
 are to be reproduced in the intention (not merely the practical 
 methods) of our behaviour to them. Are we to ' do to others as 
 we know they would do to us ' ? The argument says No, on 
 the ground that to injure a human being as such is to injure 
 him in his distinctively human quality, viz., righteousness, 21 ; 
 and therefore if it were righteous to act thus, righteousness 
 would be self-destructive.
 
 46 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 335 B 12. 6 ff. 'To hurt' may='to give pain' or 'to damage.' 
 The Greek word is very general, and does not specially sug- 
 gest the former meaning. Its root-idea is, perhaps, ' to 
 hinder.' In all argument, and especially in Plato's informal dia- 
 lectic, the sense of the terms employed must be gathered from 
 the use made of them. Here he is plainly considering the case 
 in which damage or injury to some one is our purpose in act- 
 ing, and, if so, we must clearly be debited with the moral harm 
 that may ensue, and not credited with any incidental good. 
 C 1 6. ' Lowered in the scale of human excellence.' The 
 conception of a distinctive excellence anticipates the im- 
 portant argument of 36-7. 353 below. Compare also 69. 380, 
 and 332. 591, which shows how Plato's theory of punishment 
 harmonises with the view of this passage. 
 
 19. 'Justice a human excellence.' (See 36-7. 353'4-) 
 21. ' Those men who are hurt must necessarily be rendered 
 less just.' Compare Shelley, ' I wish no living thing to suffer 
 pain.' If the question is considered from the side of mere 
 feeling, it concerns all sentient beings, but has no really pro- 
 found application to man. Plato motives the golden rule by 
 effect on character, and thereby discloses its deepest meaning 
 and provides against sentimentalism. 
 
 23. ' Can musicians, by the art of music.' Comparison of 
 morality to certain forms of skill. It is quite untrue to 
 suggest that this implies an ' aesthetic ' view of morality. The 
 juxtaposition of music and riding, as equally good examples, 
 shows that what we think the peculiar quality of fine art had, 
 for Plato, nothing to do with the question. Shoemaking, 
 agriculture, medicine, bricklaying, are just as apposite in- 
 stances for him as music and sculpture. It is true that he 
 sometimes distinguished the productive arts from what we call 
 the fine arts, but not true that he conceived the latter as 
 closer parallels to morality. The argument here is simply 
 that a reasonable habit or system of action reasonable in 
 having an aim which gives it unity cannot turn against itself, 
 must, in short, be consistent.
 
 BOOK I. 47 
 
 40. ' Not of good, but of its opposite, to hurt.' If we bear 
 in mind the distinction between paining and damaging, we 
 see that this does not contradict the Christian paradox, ' Not 
 peace, but a sword.' 
 
 13. 10. 'In no instance is it just to injure anybody.' This 335 E 
 is a fundamental conviction with Plato, not a paradox of 
 dialectic : cf. Crito, 49 A.D. The conclusion is there based 
 upon the evil to the wrongdoer, and applied to the injury 
 which Socrates would be inflicting upon his city if he set the 
 laws at defiance by escaping from the prison. There, as here, 
 the principle is supported on the ground of its relation to 
 character, although here the wrongdoer is not the first person 
 considered. 
 
 13. n, 335 E 27, 336 A. Sect. 8. 
 
 We cannot admit that the faulty definition comes from poets 
 and sages, but it really must have come from some splendid 
 tyrant, or foreign despot, or powerful party leader. 
 
 13. 12. 'You and I will make common cause against any 
 one who shall attribute this doctrine to Simonides, or Bias, 
 or Pittacus.' The usual double-edged irony, 'It is so bad 
 that they could not have meant it,' and ' No doubt we can 
 explain it away by the current critical methods.' Bias and 
 Pittacus were of the number of the Seven Sages, and both, it 
 seems, were poets. Pittacus was for a time despot of Mitylene. 
 
 21. 'Periander, Perdiccas, Xerxes, Ismenias.' Ismenias, a 336 A 
 Theban party leader, became prominent in 395 B.C. The 
 mention of him is an anachronism, to whatever incident in his 
 life reference may be made. The humorous juxtaposition of 
 despotic rulers, or party leaders relying on violence, with the 
 poets, as authorities on morality, is characteristic of this 
 dialogue, in which the imitative artist is the incarnation of 
 intellectual and emotional illusion, as the unlawful ruler is of 
 illusion concerning happiness. (See especially Adeimantus in 
 Book ii. and the reference to tragedians as panegyrists of 
 tyranny 303. 3, 568 B.)
 
 48 COMPANION TO PLATO^S REPUBLIC 
 
 25. ' Since we have again failed.' The translation is over- 
 charged. Better, ' Since this again turns out not to be the 
 nature/ etc. Plato seems to feel quite justly that these dis- 
 cussions about abstract terms do not suffice to grasp the 
 nature of morality. Yet a fair amount of prefatory criticism 
 has been applied. It has been shown that respect for pro- 
 perty is an inadequate account of righteousness, even in its 
 simple form of honesty ; that morality is not mere ability, but 
 that without some ability there cannot be real morality ; that 
 personal friendship and enmity are no guides to the right 
 treatment of persons : that goodness excludes malevolence, 
 not from mere repugnance to giving pain, but from respect 
 for character. 
 
 Sect. 9. 13. 28, 336 B 16. 29, 338 B. 
 
 Sparring, preliminary to the new definition. This passage, 
 more than any other, has influenced the popular notion of a 
 sophist. We can now see how Plato is delighting in his furious 
 satire ; cf. the reception of religionists in Newman's Loss and 
 Gain. Extravagant comedy of this kind carries with it a warn- 
 ing against taking it seriously. At the same time we could 
 hardly say that in other instances, such as Aristophanes on 
 Socrates, Newman (I.e.) on Exeter Hall, Schopenhauer on 
 Hegel, or Mansel on Professors in ' Phrontisterion] there were 
 no features at all to explain if not to justify the caricature. 
 
 B 14. 7. ' Let me beg you to beware of denning it as,' etc. 
 This enumeration of abstractions shows how full the air was 
 of commonplaces. We may fancy, perhaps, that Thrasy- 
 machus, who himself employs one of these abstractions in his 
 definition (' expedient/ =' interest/ see 17. 25, 339 A), prided 
 himself I. On the social reference of his formula; II. On its 
 consisting not in a single abstraction but in a generality and 
 limit, such as Aristotle was afterwards to call definition by 
 genus and species. 
 337 A 35. ' Mock-humility/ ' feign ignorance/ literally ' Irony ' and
 
 BOOK I. 49 
 
 'be ironical.' The translation is quite correct. Irony has 
 now come to be loosely understood, so that it is only just dis- 
 tinguished from sarcasm. But the primary meaning is that of 
 dissembling or reserving one's own powers. See Aristotle's 
 Ethics, iv. 7, where the ' ironical man ' occupies one extreme 
 in matters of social intercourse, and the 'boaster' the other. 
 Both ' extremes ' are faulty ; the ' mean,' or laudable habit, is 
 that of ' truthfulness ' or ' true modesty.' Reserve, and a 
 critical attitude, are of course closely connected. 
 
 15. 3. 'What factors make the number 12,' literally, 'how 3376 
 many " twelve " is.' The assumption of the answers, that 
 definition must in some way analyse the term defined, is note- 
 worthy at this early period. 
 
 37. 'You must make me a payment.' This demand, in a D 
 social conversation initiated by the man who makes it, is 
 probably part of the caricature. But it illustrates what we 
 find hard to understand, the disagreeable associations in the 
 Greek mind of teaching general culture for pay. The subjects 
 taught were only beginning to be specialised, and such culture 
 was imparted through conversation. To ask a fee for such 
 teaching was, therefore, to a Greek gentleman, much what it 
 would be to-day for a man to require payment for his talk at 
 a party. Of course, on the other hand, we strongly condemn 
 any attempt to extract an opinion without fee from a lawyer 
 or doctor. The question seems to be in each case how far 
 there is a recognised professional relation. 
 
 16. 3> 338 c 17. 36, 339 B. Sect> 10> 
 
 Definition stated and explained. Justice is wholly social, or 
 rather political. It consists, for the subjects of every govern- 
 ment, in their obeying the laws which that government imposes 
 with a view to its own interest, and so, generally, for the weaker 
 in their subservience to the interest of the stronger. 
 
 17. 3- ' Some cities are governed by an autocrat,' etc. The 338 D 
 appeal to political obligation brings into the discussion a 
 
 D
 
 50 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 fresh element, related to the facts of society, and paving the 
 way for the main argument of the dialogue. ' By a democracy.' 
 In as far as a democracy stands for the whole society without 
 exclusion of any element, its devotion to its own interests 
 could not be blameworthy. But to the Greek theorist, though 
 not perhaps to the Periclean statesman, a democracy, even if 
 it included the whole numerically, would not include all its 
 elements according to their value. See Newman's introduc- 
 tion to Aristotle's Politics, p. 247. Aristotle's classification of 
 constitutions, three ' right ' as for the common advantage, and 
 three ' perversions ' of them, as for the advantage of the rulers, 
 plainly derives from this passage and the discussion founded 
 upon it. 
 
 339 A 26. ' Have defined Justice as interest.' (See on 14. 7 
 
 above.) 
 
 B 34. ' That justice is in harmony with interest,' literally, ' that 
 justice is some interest ' (a species of interest). This usage of 
 the indefinite pronoun became technical in Aristotle. (See on 
 Book x. 'a particular bed,' 337. 32, 597 A.) 
 
 Sect. 11. 17. 37, 339 B 19. u, 340 c. 
 
 Argument from admission that error is possible. See Sect. 6 
 above. The possibility of error implies a further standard by 
 which the assumed standard can be tested ; i.e. in this case that 
 there is something which determines a ' true ' interest for the 
 stronger. As before, the argument leads up to a discussion on 
 the merits. 
 
 C 18. 3. ' Sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly.' Strictly 
 speaking, according to the definition, there was no right or 
 wrong for the stronger or sovereign as such, but only for the 
 weaker or subject. The idea of a true and a mistaken interest 
 involves the idea of arrangements that recognise the needs of 
 society sufficiently to work, and arrangements that do not. 
 
 340 B 19. 10. ' What is for the interest of the stronger will not be 
 
 a bit more just than what is not for his interest,' because what
 
 BOOK L 51 
 
 he commands as his interest may not be to his real interest. 
 This contradiction illustrates the nature of ' opinion ' or ' seem- 
 ing ' as described at the close of the fifth book. The argu- 
 ment has been explained three times over, to make it clear. 
 Plato feels he is introducing novelties. 
 
 19. 12, 340 B 20. 25, 341 B. Sect. 12. 
 
 Distinction taken. Idea of true interest not abandoned, but 
 error not to be imputed to ruler qua ruler, being a defect of his 
 statecraft, not an act of it. 
 
 19. 20. ' Was this definition,' etc. The most consistent 340 G 
 course would have been to withdraw the admission that error 
 
 is possible. The course chosen is more subtle and lends 
 itself better to the progress of the dialogue by leading up to 
 the question what the ruler qua ruler does aim at. This selec- 
 tion of an essential aspect is very much in the style of the 
 Platonic Socrates. (See below, 159. 24, 454 A, on contrast of 
 ' Eristic ' and Dialectic.') 
 
 20. 36, 341 c 22. 36, 342 E. Sect. 13. 
 
 A craft or kind of skill, as such, has a purpose, and directs 
 itself solely to that purpose, is therefore disinterested. Govern- 
 ment may in this respect be treated as a craft, and is therefore, 
 qua government, disinterested. 
 
 21. i. 'There is no need, I imagine,' etc. : cf. 26. 25, 341 D 
 346 B, ' the fact of a man's regaining his health while acting 
 
 as pilot.' His aim does not include any advantage private to 
 himself, though he may accidentally gain such an advantage 
 by being on board the ship. The purpose of a craft not being 
 personal at all in its primary sense, and the person having 
 other qualities besides his craftsmanship, he is not excepted 
 from the benefit of any art, so far as, being on the ship, he 
 falls within its purpose ; but this cannot be treated as a self- 
 regarding aim. Note again the crafts selected as examples :
 
 52 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 medicine, seamanship, and the skill of the groom or horse- 
 trainer. 
 
 7 if. ' Has not each of these (persons) an interest of his 
 own ? ' etc. Jowett, ' Every art has an interest,' and ' For 
 which the art has to provide.' This is more like the mean- 
 ing, but the pronoun 'every' is masculine according to the 
 general reading, and therefore the word supplied cannot 
 strictly be 'art,' which is feminine. Davies and Vaughan's 
 translation (if ' persons ' = ' craftsmen ') cuts the string of the 
 argument, which is that the craft does not aim at the private 
 interest of the craftsman. If we are to accept the reading, we 
 must translate 'each of these classes of subjects,' viz., patients 
 and sailors. Strictly the craft has no interest but its object 
 i.e. a disinterested interest. If Jowett's rendering is right, the 
 process of explaining away the term 'interest' begins, 12, 
 ' Have the arts severally any other interest ? ' and so on. 
 342 A, B 3 1 ff. ' So that every art should require another art to con- 
 sider its interests.' The person who exercises the art may 
 require the art of pay to look after his interest, 26. 21, 346 A. 
 But this does not apply to the art. 
 
 B 33. ' Provisional ' in sense of an art which ' provides for ' 
 or ' looks after ' another. 
 
 34. ' Or will it (look after) its own interest ? ' Implying 
 answer No. See note on 7 above. An art or craft exists 
 neither for the sake of the craftsman, nor for its own sake 
 (e.g. for its own completeness or elaborateness), but wholly and 
 solely for its aim and purpose, embodied in the persons or 
 things with which it has to deal. Plato is thinking primarily 
 of the useful arts and not of the fine arts. So far as by 
 analogy we can compare the view of this passage with the 
 modern sentiment 'art for art's sake,' the two seem to be 
 diametrically opposed. Plato is insisting on the subordina- 
 tion of art to its object, which in the case of a useful art is 
 the good of some person or value of some thing, while in 
 fine art it would be significance or expression. ' Art for 
 art's sake,' if it has a distinctive meaning, seems to imply
 
 BOOK I. 53 
 
 a self-conscious brooding over the means of expression to 
 the neglect of its content. 
 
 22. 4. ' Horsemanship,' literally, ' the art of horses.' Above 342 C 
 it meant horse-dealing and riding, here it rather seems to 
 mean the skill of the groom or trainer. 
 
 ii. ' An art governs,' etc. Compare such phrases as ' being 
 under such and such a physician,' or 'an artist's mastery over 
 his material.' Ultimately the comparison rests on the organ- 
 ising power of intelligence. It is a brilliant application of 
 the analogy to suggest, as here, that government has the 
 disinterested devotedness of science. Of course it anticipates 
 the contention that intelligence the ' philosophers ' should 
 be sovereign in states, Bk. v. 
 
 13. 'The interest of the weaker,' strictly taken, would be 
 a partial and factious interest as much as that of the stronger. 
 But it seems clear from the last page that we must under- 
 stand it of all persons or things dealt with qua weaker or 
 subjects. The object of a craft is generic, not personal (see 
 26, 1 8, 346 A), and so really this passage opposes the interest of 
 the whole to that of the part, not merely part to part. 
 
 32. See on 21. i, and last note. Rulers in respect of their E 
 private interests are subjects as well as rulers, and will regard 
 their own interests qua equally qualified parts of the whole, 
 but not as if they alone constituted the whole. 
 
 22. 37, 343 A 25. 24, 345 B. Sect. 14. 
 
 Restatement of egoistic or atomistic position. Appeal to case 
 of 'tyranny ', and to apparent weak-mindedness of good. 
 
 23. 1 6. 'The former is really the good of another.' We 343 C 
 are not surprised to be told that righteousness consists in 
 seeking another's good, even to our own loss, and if we took 
 
 22. 13, 'the interest of the weaker,' literally, we should be 
 forced to admit that Socrates says exactly the same thing as 
 Thrasymachus, though with reference to other parties (see 
 note, I.e.}. The difference between these two forms of
 
 54 COMPANION TO PLATO? S REPUBLIC 
 
 'altruism' is, of course, that that of the stronger implies a 
 free purpose, and therefore the agent's own good in some 
 sense or other, and therefore again, as noted above, the 
 underlying conception of a common good. That of the 
 weaker, being enforced, implies no identification of his own 
 good with that of another, and therefore is bare altruism, 
 devoid of the conception of a common good, and therefore 
 admits of the assumption that what is gained by one is 
 necessarily lost by another a complete denial of the organic 
 or co-operative nature of society, and a reduction of its basis 
 to force and not Will. See Mr. Stewart's note on Aristotle's 
 Ethics, v. i, 17, especially the conclusion: 'The hope of gain 
 or the fear of superior strength, by itself, could not make 
 men act "justly"; they would cheat, or perish in the attempt 
 to resist, rather than act "justly" if hope of gain or fear of 
 superior force were their only motive. If men act "justly" 
 it is because they really believe that " the most beautiful of 
 things is true justice," and are drawn, " in accordance with 
 the divine element in them," to act in harmony with the law 
 of that beautiful system in which they live and have their 
 being. Cf. Green's Works, vol. ii. p. 427. (Principles of 
 Political Obligation : G. : Will, not Force, is the basis of the 
 State.)' 
 
 344 A 24. 7-9. The most consummate form of injustice, the 
 tyranny, makes the wrongdoer most happy. Cf. below, 314. 
 36, 578 c, the powerful rhetoric with which the ultimate 
 reversal of this position is expressed. The air of bona fides 
 in this argument of Thrasymachus gives a wonderful poignancy 
 to his description of success-worship. 
 
 22. 'For when people abuse injustice,' etc. Injustice is, 
 in short, a sign of strength and justice of weakness. Plato 
 seems to desire the completest analysis of common feeling. 
 We all know the prejudice against obedience to authority, 
 sometimes, as among schoolboys, against all duty imposed by 
 authority, which is apt to arise among persons associated 
 under control which does not, or does not seem to, issue from
 
 BOOK L \ 55 
 
 themselves. In such a case, and such cases run throughout 
 life, defiance, aggression, evasion seem ' fine,' submission, 
 moderation, candour, seem contemptible. The feeling can 
 never be uprooted until it is seen that justice is not something 
 imposed from without, but is, in substance, the general will. 
 Man will always resist what he feels to be alien to him. And 
 so, generally, if goodness is allowed to be represented as 
 merely negative, as obedience or resignation, it will always 
 seem to be weakness, while the rebellion or aggression which 
 embodies enterprise and positive initiation will seem to be 
 ' fine ' and strong. It is therefore a fundamental problem for 
 Plato to explain that Goodness means organisation, co-opera- 
 tion, and strength. 
 
 25. 22. ' Must I take the doctrine and thrust it into your 345 B 
 mind ? ' This humorous suggestion of doing by physical force 
 what can only be done by process of reason strikes the very 
 
 root of the difference between dogma and true speculation. 
 Dogma arises from the attempt to pass ideas from hand to 
 hand like material things. They are ' thrust into the soul by 
 force. 7 But living ideas must be made to grow. 
 
 26. 24, 345 B 28. 28, 347 E. Sect. 15. 
 
 Reconciles disinterestedness of crafts with the fact that people 
 are induced to practise them, by pointing out that making a 
 living is a concomitant of arts and crafts, though not belonging 
 to their essence, and that to pure public spirit the place of ruler 
 is a burden rather than a gratification. 
 
 25. 28. 'Genuine physician,' 'genuine shepherd,' literally, C 
 ' the physician in very truth ' i.e. in the strictest sense, or 
 acting in his capacity as physician. Not ' defined the mean- 
 ing of,' but ' defined the physician to be, for our argument, 
 the physician acting as such.' 
 
 38. ' Sufficient provision is made, I suppose ' (see back 21. D 
 34, note). This again, with a superficial resemblance, is really 
 the very opposite of 'art for art's sake.' An art or craft,
 
 56 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 according to Plato, has no interest, no claim of its own, but 
 loses itself in its purpose, or need of expression, or usefulness. 
 
 346 A 26. 1 8. ' Health,' ' safety at sea,' purposes not restricted to 
 particular persons. (See note on 21. 7, 341 D.) 
 
 21. ' The art of wages ' i.e. the faculty or habit of making 
 a living by our social services. It is a common tendency to 
 consider this as an end to which the social service is a means, 
 and which therefore moulds and prescribes that service. 
 Plato insists on the independence of the social service, which 
 in a true man and right society is not shaped and fettered by 
 needs of money-making. The ' living ' is the means to the 
 ' craft,' not vice versa. 
 
 C 33. 'The physician's art a mercenary art'; better, 'the 
 physician's art an art of wages.' 
 
 39. 'Then whatever benefit accrues in common.' Either 
 the vices of money-making on the one hand, or thrift, 
 energy, and industry on the other, are to a great extent 
 qualities that belong to the man independently of his 
 particular craft. 
 
 D 27. 4. ' The art of healing produces health and the art of 
 wages pay,' etc. Their separateness is the point. The art 
 or craft is free in its nature, and ought to be the same when 
 the artist has to live by it as when he is 'independent.' N.B. 
 idea of distinctive work at end of Book i. 
 
 E 1 8. 'An art or a government never provides that which is 
 profitable for itself.' Just because these activities are essentially 
 disinterested, there must be material wages in some form to 
 make them possible, and there must also be moral compulsion 
 of some kind, whether higher or lower, to indicate to the 
 individual where his work lies. The argument seems to us 
 to disregard the sense of ' vocation,' although (perhaps because) 
 this is so deeply engrained in the structure of the Republic. 
 (See, too, on 28. 18, 347 c.) 
 
 347 C 28. 18-24. ' If there were a city composed of none but 
 good men,' ' every judicious man would choose to be the 
 recipient of benefits rather than to have the trouble of
 
 BOOK I. 57 
 
 conferring them.' This strikes us as crude and selfish ; we 
 think ' it is more blessed to give than to receive.' But the 
 real point lies deeper, see 242. 32, 520 D, which repeats and 
 deepens the thought of this passage. True public spirit does 
 not demand that I shall do the service, but that it shall be 
 done in the best way ; and the only ground such is Plato's 
 thought which justifies my interfering, is that I can do it 
 better than those who are attempting it. That all shall have 
 such resources in themselves as will prevent their being 
 tempted to grasp at government from any motive but this, is 
 the condition which he holds essential to a healthy political 
 life. Thus the rigorous expression which seemed to ignore 
 public spirit really presupposes it in the purest form. The 
 same feeling which assails us on a first reading of this passage 
 often comes over us on a nearer acquaintance with persons 
 who render the most valuable public service. We find their 
 capacities and resources to be so great and various that their 
 work, which we think unique and enviable, is to them a 
 pis aller so far as ambition or enjoyment is concerned. And 
 for that very reason they do it with a certain detachment, 
 purely as a duty, and with a willingness to resign as soon as 
 it can be better done otherwise than by them. Plato, who 
 can be as worldly wise as any man, has, I think, such facts as 
 these in his mind. 
 
 28. 28, 347 E 30. 18, 349 A. Sect. 16. 
 
 It has been shown that the purpose of government as such 
 (its real interest so far as an art can have an interest at all) is 
 not coincident with the private interest of the persons forming the 
 government. In that sense Justice, the rule of life in civil society, 
 is not dictated by the interest of the stronger. The search for a 
 formal definition is now abandoned in order to take up the 
 question, cf. 24. 344, whether justice or injustice is the better 
 life. This is so conducted as to pave the way for a recurrence 
 to the analysis of society by more effective methods. The present 
 section indicates a sense of defect in abstract comparisons, and
 
 58 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 restates the doctrine that injustice, in the sense of a narrow 
 devotion to private pleasure and interest, is the better way 
 of life. 
 
 348 A 29. 3. ' It will be necessary to count and measure the 
 advantages.' Setting out alternative lists of advantages was 
 the well known method of fable or poetry ; see Book n., and 
 compare Prodicus' Choice of Heracles (Xenophon's Memora- 
 bilia, ii. i.) and the discussion between the Just and Unjust 
 arguments in the Clouds of Aristophanes. Plato caricatures 
 the Hedonistic calculus 328. 587 below. He sees that some 
 more systematic method of analysis is necessary. 
 D 2p. 34. ' The cutpurse tribe.' This comparison of the 
 criminal and the tyrant is borne in mind 310. 575 below. 
 The despot is here taken as the extreme case of rebellion 
 against social order. Strictly, the sovereign would on Thrasy- 
 machus' principle be neither just nor unjust. 
 E 30.5. ' According to generally received notions.' See above, 
 14- 8, 336 D, and 31., admission that wisdom implies good- 
 ness and vice versa. Plato evidently intends the reader to 
 understand that there was a good store of accepted moral 
 commonplaces, which facilitated discussion. Some of them 
 are plainly common to Thrasymachus and the Socrates of 
 Xenophon. 
 
 Sect. 17. 30. 21, 349 332. 41, 350 c. 
 
 Argument to prove that the just man is wise and good. Wise 
 = Good is assumed, and the identification of Just and Wise 
 effected by a common quality of the Just man and the man of 
 skill or knowledge, of which the opposite is found in their 
 respective opposites. This common quality is lawfulness or 
 adherence to principle, contrasted with determination by private 
 motives varying vvith purely private relations on every occasion 
 of action. As he has argued before from the consistency (Sect. 7) 
 and disinterestedness (Sect. 13) of rational practice or theory, so 
 now, we might say, he argues from its objectivity.
 
 BOOK I. 59 
 
 30. 23. ' Do you think that a just man would wish to go 349 
 beyond a just man in anything ? ' ' Go beyond ' here repre- 
 sents two Greek words, meaning simply 'have more than.' 
 The whole point turns on the relation between this meaning 
 and the meaning of a single Greek verb containing the same 
 elements but used in the sense of ' overreaching ' or ' defraud- 
 ing.' The noun corresponding to it is the regular term for 
 
 ' covetousness,' and is the very antithesis to the Greek virtue 
 of temperance and moderation. The object of playing on 
 these words is to compare every departure from law or prin- 
 ciple with a moral breach of order. 
 
 28. ' Go beyond ' here stands for the Greek ' overreach,' but 
 with a reference to the simple etymological meaning which 
 the translators have reproduced. A just man will constantly 
 be forced to set his principle in conflict with the unjust man's 
 want of principle. 
 
 31. 5. 'Struggle that he may himself obtain more than any C 
 one else,' literally, ' most of all.' This makes the point clear. 
 The one man has a principle of action, through which he co- 
 operates with all men of principle, and is only in conflict with 
 those who have none ; the other has no principle of adjust- 
 ment or concerted action, but in every case limits his gain 
 only by the opportunity, 
 
 31. 7. ' The just man goes not beyond his like,' etc. This is D 
 the quality which is to identify the just man and the wise man. 
 The just man respects a law which all just men respect, the 
 unjust man is in a war of all against all. 
 
 u. 'The unjust man is wise and good,' a repetition of the 
 thesis to be disproved, in order to point out the logical postu- 
 late involved in either proof or disproof of it. 
 
 1 6 ff 'A man of a certain character.' This phrase stands 
 for one of the Greek demonstrative pronouns which play so 
 great a part in the technical language of Aristotle. More 
 literally, ' of course one who is such will also be like those who 
 are such, and one who is not will not be like,' answered by 
 ' Then each of them (the just and unjust man) is such as
 
 60 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 those whom he is like ' ; i.e. ' Each has the qualities of the 
 class to which he belongs,' answered by ' Each belongs to the 
 class whose qualities he possesses.' This is the principle of 
 analogy, or inference from identity in important known quali- 
 ties to that in unknown qualities. On 160. 454, the principle 
 is limited by relevancy to the purpose of classification. In 
 Plato we have the fascinating spectacle of abstract logic 
 developing in organic unity with general philosophy, an axiom 
 being assumed and illustrated here and there just as required. 
 A striking example of this is the use of the Law of Contradic- 
 tion in Book iv. 
 
 19 ff. to end of section. ' Do you call one man musical, 
 and another unmusical ? ' Skill or science implies wisdom, and 
 wisdom goodness; this is agreed, obviously on a Socratic 
 basis. Then the same contrasted qualities are found in the 
 skilful man and his opposite as were found in the just 
 man and his opposite, and are transferred, in virtue of 
 the above admission, to the wise and good man with their 
 opposites. Therefore through these qualities the just and 
 unjust man respectively resemble in important points the 
 wise and unwise and the good and bad, and therefore, by 
 the postulate of 16, they are wise and unwise, and good and 
 bad respectively. 
 
 E 30. ' Do you think, my excellent friend, that a musician 
 (literally) in tuning a lyre wpuld wish to out do (single verb) 
 another musician in tightening or loosening the strings, or 
 aspire to have more (two words) than him ? ' Both forms of 
 expression are used here, in order to effect the transition of 
 meaning from moral to musical error. In fact, the relation is 
 not personal at all. The musician, in getting his strings in 
 tune, is not affected by the degree in which another musician 
 may succeed in the same object. But no doubt he aims at a 
 result which an unmusical person, qua unmusical, cannot 
 attain. Music and medicine are taken as equally good 
 examples. There is no idea of a specially aesthetic compari- 
 son. Scientific men or artists, it should be noted, may of
 
 BOOK I. 61 
 
 course compete, but only in excellence, not in a direction 
 that admits of unlimited discrepancy. 
 
 ' When workmen strive to do better than well 
 They do confound their skill in covetousness. ' 
 
 This quotation, which Jowett gives, is extraordinarily apposite. 
 The contrasted qualities, then, which justice and its opposite 
 display equally with wisdom and goodness and their opposites, 
 consist in the recognition of an objective law or principle 
 prescribing a common line of action, and the non-recognition 
 of any guide and limit but chance and opportunity. The corro- 
 borative value of negative instances is plainly present to Plato's 
 mind in this discussion. 
 
 32. 41, 350 c 33. 34, 351 A. Sect. 18. 
 
 Transition to discussion on might and right. Escape from 
 commonplaces to direct analysis. 
 
 33. i ff. See note on Section 9 above. 350 D 
 8. 'Strong.' (See 24. 25, 344 above.) 
 
 13. ' Declaiming.' Cf. 24. 29, 3440 above, and Protagoras E 
 329 A, where Plato compares the rhetorician's harangue to the 
 ringing of a brazen bowl, that does not stop till some one puts 
 his hand on it. He likes every sentence to be criticised, as in 
 conversation, before going further, and objects to the set 
 speech because it makes this impossible. 
 
 32. ' It may easily be shown, I imagine, that justice is 351 A 
 likewise stronger' 'But I do not wish to settle the question 
 in that absolute way,' literally, ' so simply,' i.e. deductively, or 
 a priori^ as people still insist on calling it. Plato desires to 
 analyse another aspect of justice. 
 
 33- 35, 35i A 35- 35. 352 D- Sect. 19. 
 
 Pursues an aspect of the argument of Sect. 17. The Just and 
 Unjust man stand in different relations to those like themselves. 
 Injustice^ being the opposite of lawfulness > means dissolution and
 
 62 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 disorganisation in any community, and even in the individual 
 person. Right and Might are causally connected. Bad states 
 only hold together by the justice in them. Plato does not push 
 this last conclusion in the case of the soul. If he had done so, 
 it would greatly affect the argument for the eternity of the soul 
 in Book X. 
 
 33. 39. ' And this will be more frequently done by the best 
 city, that is, the one that is most completely unjust.' 
 Obviously an allusion, with grim humour, to the Athenian 
 empire of the Periclean age. Thrasymachus' complete 
 injustice was realised in tyranny, and Athens had been called 
 a 'tyrant city.' Thucydides, \. 122. 
 
 351 C 34- ii. 'Whether a band of thieves could succeed in 
 
 any enterprise if they were to deal unjustly with one another.' 
 ' Honour among thieves ' ; the effect of the social virtues on 
 the survival of groups of persons is recognised in recent 
 evolutionist theory. This page of course anticipates the later 
 argument of the dialogue, see especially 121. 423. 
 E 35. 'And supposing that injustice has taken up its 
 residence in a single individual.' Compare the development 
 of this idea 150. 444. 
 
 35 2 A 35. 7. 'An enemy to himself and to the just' assigns the 
 
 full reason for the different relation of just and unjust to their 
 likes, assumed above, 31. 7, 349 D. The relation to his 
 like the unjust man is here taken as covering his relation 
 to himself. Cf. the night soliloquy of Richard in. 
 352 C 30. ' And that injustice partly disabled them,' etc. I think 
 the translation emphasises the wrong aspect. Surely it is 
 more as Jowett takes it, 'and in pursuing their unjust 
 purposes they were after all only half corrupted by wickedness, 
 since they had been,' etc. Comparing the reference to the 
 'best city,' 33. 39, 351, we may see in this a half humorous, 
 half pathetic allusion to the great days of Athens. 
 D 32. 'Also thoroughly unable to act.' The rhetoric here is 
 powerful though simple, and has something of the feeling
 
 BOOK I. 63 
 
 which animates the ninth book : ' the absolutely wicked are 
 absolutely weak.' Contrast the argument in Book x. 357. 
 7, 610 E. 
 
 35- 35 35 2 D en( * of Book i. Sect. 20 
 
 Argument from conception of final cause, or distinctive function, 
 purpose, or ' work,' of different objects. The distinctively human 
 ' work ' is to live in the fullest sense i.e. to exercise will and 
 intelligence. An adequate discharge of its ' work ' is dependent, 
 in every object, on a positive quality its excellence. The 
 1 excellence ' by which man adequately discharges his ' function ' 
 is identified with justice or righteousness, so that righteousness 
 becomes the essential condition of ' living vvell? ' Living welV is 
 identified with happiness, and thus serves as a middle term by 
 which righteousness also is identified with human happiness. 
 This argument marks an era in philosophy. It is a first 
 reading of the central facts of society, morality, and nature. In 
 social analysis it founds the idea of organisation and division of 
 labour. Organisation = the adaptation of parts in a whole, as 
 ' Organa ' (instruments), to their ' Ergon ' the word here 
 introduced for work or function. In morality it gives the 
 conception of a distinctively human life which is the content or 
 positive end of the distinctively human will. And for natural 
 knowledge it suggests the connection between function and 
 definition, and consequently between purpose and reality, 
 which is profoundly developed in the sixth and seventh books. 
 These conceptions become corner-stones of Aristotle 's philosophy, 
 and still, when seen in their connection, form the very core of 
 the best thought. 
 
 I do not say that they are suggested in this passage con- 
 clusively or for the first time. In a certain sense the life of 
 Socrates was devoted to them. Nevertheless this passage, 
 standing on the threshold of the concrete analysis of this complex 
 of ideas in the Republic, is unique in its depth of meaning, and 
 appears to have had a peculiar influence on Aristotle.
 
 64 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 D 35- 35- 'Whether the just live a better life': cf. 24. 42, 
 344 E, 'how each of us must conduct his life in order to 
 lead the most profitable existence.' The real question of this 
 dialogue has come to the front by the mechanism of Thrasy- 
 machus' wholesale aggression upon goodness ; ' what is the 
 best way of living ? ' (See 40, ' the manner in which a man 
 ought to live.') 
 
 ' Live a better life,' literally, ' live better.' The phrase has 
 much the same ambiguities in Greek as in English. (See note 
 on 3. 18, 329 A above.) 'Living well' implies living up to 
 your ideal, and ideals differ. But yet the phrase implies .that 
 there is an ideal for man as such. 
 
 E 36. i. 'A horse's function,' 'Ergon,' literally 'work.' Plato's 
 use of this word is continuous with that of colloquial Greek, 
 though in Aristotle it becomes a technical term. ' Use,' 
 ' business,' ' duty ' are equivalents that roughly express the 
 everyday meaning of the word, in such phrases as ' What is 
 the use of bow and arrows ? ' (Why have you got them with 
 you ?) ' This is my business.' ' Torch, do your duty, set 
 the house on fire,' Aristoph. Clouds. 
 
 4. 'The function of a horse or of anything else,' etc. The 
 word instrument is an insertion. A modern thinker will 
 criticise this naive teleology, and especially will point out that 
 to find the function of animals or other natural objects in 
 their utility to man is a very serious assumption. He will ask, 
 ' Do we mean that a Creator made them for this end ? ' etc. 
 But we must bear in mind that the sane and positive views of 
 Greek philosophy deal with nothing of this kind. For it the 
 question is, ' Is there or is there not a central point of view 
 from which we regard the individual thing, according to what 
 it is good for ? ' Even the disinterestedness of science is not 
 so profound an objection to this idea as might be thought. 
 See notes on Book vi. 
 
 7. ' I do not understand.' Probably Plato means to 
 indicate that the idea of final cause was comparatively new. 
 9 and n. 'Eyes' and 'Ears.' Instances of a different
 
 BOOK I. 65 
 
 class from the horse. We admit that the ascription of 
 functions is 'objective' in these cases. Our term ' Organs '= 
 ' Instruments ' ; but its original ' organa ' is applied by Plato 
 and Aristotle rather to the hands or limbs than to the eye or 
 ear, and does not occur in the Greek of this passage. 
 
 1 8. ' Chisel,' etc. Tools made for a certain purpose ; here 353 A. 
 again we admit the function to be objective, though only as a 
 result of man's intelligent design. These instances, there- 
 fore, though quite valid as suggestions, are not independent 
 examples of real function. The argument is really leading up 
 to the strongest case by fainter anticipations of it. 
 
 28. ' Whether the function of a thing ' : definition of function 
 repeated. The function need not fall outside the instrument, 
 so that the real question is whether things have central 
 distinctive characters at all. 
 
 35. ' Proper virtue '; better, 'excellence,' and so through- B 
 out for ' virtue.' The word is very general and means good- 
 ness of any kind recognised by a customary purpose or 
 standard. Of course the quality which forms the excellence 
 is only distinguishable from the function where the function 
 implies a result outside the agent. On an ultimate analysis, 
 the quality and the function would always coincide or the 
 quality would be that which links together the intermittent 
 activities of the function. 
 
 37. 3. 'Discharge their own functions well.' 'Well 'rather 
 complicates the matter, because it implies a further standard 
 outside the function. But the function or final cause is itself 
 the ultimate standard. (See Aristotle, quoted below.) 
 ' Thoroughly ' or ' completely ' is what the thought requires. 
 He is leading up to the phrase 'living well,' which he has 
 borrowed from colloquial speech, and his point is just that 
 full or adequate living includes what common sense means 
 by ' living well.' 
 
 17. 'Has the soul any function?' I subjoin the parallel D 
 argument from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, plainly sug- 
 gested by this passage. Observe that Aristotle is at more 
 
 E
 
 66 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 pains to explain, what Plato merely assumes as obvious, the 
 distinctive character of human life as such. Ethics N., i. 7, 
 9-14 (Peters). 
 
 9 'But perhaps the reader thinks that though no one will 
 dispute the statement that happiness is the best thing in the 
 world, yet a still more precise definition of it is needed. 
 
 10 ' This will best be gained, I think, by asking, What is the 
 function of man ? For as the goodness and the excellence of 
 a piper or a sculptor, or the practiser of any art, and generally 
 of those who have any function or business to do, lies in that 
 function, so man's good would seem to lie in his function, if 
 he has one. 
 
 1 1 ' But can we suppose that, while a carpenter and a cobbler 
 has a function and a business of his own, man has no business 
 and no function assigned him by nature ? Nay, surely as his 
 several members, eye and hand and foot, plainly have each 
 his own function, so we must suppose that man has also some 
 function over and above all these. 
 
 12 ' What then is it ? 
 
 ' Life evidently he has in common even with the plants, but 
 we want that which is peculiar to him. We must exclude, 
 therefore, the life of mere nutrition and growth. Next to 
 this comes the life of sense ; but this, too, he plainly shares 
 with horses and cattle and all kinds of animals. 
 
 13 'There remains then the life whereby he acts the life of 
 his rational nature, with its two sides or divisions, one rational, 
 as obeying reason, the other rational, as having and exercising 
 reason. 
 
 ' But as this expression is ambiguous, we must be under- 
 stood to mean thereby the life that consists in the exercise of 
 the faculties ; for this seems to be more properly entitled to 
 the name. 
 
 'The function of man, then, is the exercise of his vital 
 faculties (or soul) on one side in obedience to reason, and 
 on the other side with reason. 
 
 ' But what is called the function of a man of any profession,
 
 BOOK I. 67 
 
 and the function of a man who is good in that profession, are 
 generically the same, e.g. of a harper and of a good harper ; 
 and this holds in all cases without exception, only that in the 
 case of the latter his superior excellence at his work is added ; 
 for we say a harper's function is to harp, and a good harper's 
 to harp well. 
 
 ' Man's function then being, as we say, a kind of life that 
 is to say, exercise of his faculties and action of various kinds 
 with reason the good man's function is to do this well and 
 beautifully. 
 
 ' But the function of anything is done well when it is done 
 in accordance with the proper excellence of that thing. 
 Putting all this together, then, we find that the good of man 
 is exercise of his faculties in accordance with excellence or 
 virtue, or, if there be more than one, in accordance with the 
 best and most complete virtue.' 
 
 31. 'Its own peculiar virtue'; better, 'its characteristic E 
 excellence.' 
 
 38. 'Did we not grant?' See 12. 19, 335 c, or, in argu- 
 ment with Thrasymachus, the same thing expressed through 
 adjectives, 32. 40, 350 c. The point, of course, is not in the 
 previous admission, but in the suggested identification of 
 righteousness with full and positive human excellence always 
 a striking and fascinating idea, as an escape from the negative 
 and empty notions of morality which tradition tends to stereo- 
 type, as the beginning of this dialogue indicated. 
 
 42. ' The just soul will live well.' The notion of morality is 
 developed by this argument into the complete and adequate 
 discharge of the characteristically human functions ('living 
 well ' according to definition of soul's function, 19, above). 
 
 38. i. ' Living well,' by a recurrence to colloquial usage, 
 makes the transition to happiness. (See note on 3. 18, 329 A 
 above.) Transitions of this kind in Plato are often said to be 
 quibbles. The question is, whether, in the idea that forms 
 the bridge (as here in ' living well '), there is or is not a real 
 identity with the two ideas which are brought into relation by
 
 68 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 its means. The mere two-sidedness of the central idea, so 
 far from being a mark of equivocation, is absolutely essential 
 in all reasoning. But if its two sides do not hold together in 
 a common core of meaning, then the back of the argument is 
 broken, and its appearance of unity is a quibble. This, and 
 not the question of superficial form, is the standard we should 
 have in mind when estimating Plato's discussions. Here we 
 have it pointed out that a truly human satisfaction, such as 
 best contents a normal human being, is on the one side a fair 
 equivalent for happiness, and on the other side may reason- 
 ably be analysed into the complete discharge of those 
 activities which on a sane view constitute the characteristic of 
 human nature. The ultimate appeal is to our view of life as 
 a whole. 
 
 : 29. ' While I do not know what justice is.' What can we 
 know of a thing except its predicates? Socrates means, no 
 doubt, that he has not analysed the nature of the whole 
 system in which justice or righteousness is found, either 
 inwardly in the soul of man, or outwardly in society. It 
 will be observed, however, that in insisting on distinctive 
 function he implies both of these analyses, in order to deter- 
 mine what is characteristically human in the soul, and how 
 man's function organises itself in society. Note that the 
 admission of failure here, and 13. 336 A above, recalls the 
 Socratic or tentative dialogues. Contrast the definite claim to 
 success, 149. 36, 444 A, after morality has been analysed in 
 society, and in the individual as interpreted through society.
 
 BOOK I I 
 
 PART I. continued, down to 52. 6, 367 A. 
 
 Beginning of Book n. 41. 2, 358 E. Sect. 21. 
 
 Transition to restatement of problem, whether Justice or In- 
 justice is preferable, in the light of the distinction between means 
 and end, thus laying bare the root of the controversy in Book I. 
 
 39. 6. ' Really to convince us or only to seem ' : cf. below, 357 B 
 201. 29, 487 B ; the recognition that silencing an antagonist is 
 
 not the same as doing substantial justice to a subject, serves to 
 introduce a new distinction or a set of facts not yet accounted 
 for. 
 
 40. 2. ' I should say, in the highest.' Plato adheres on the D 
 whole to the term justice or righteousness as the appellation of 
 the best life, although he constantly suggests, as at the end of 
 Book i. and in the beginning of Book iv., the idea of happi- 
 ness as practically equivalent to it, and the whole course of 
 his argument supports this equivalence. But, as he here 
 retains the narrower and more purely moralistic term, it is 
 natural that he should adopt a popular way of speaking by 
 describing goodness as valuable qua means and not solely qua 
 end. Aristotle, using the term happiness, does not admit this 
 distinction, and his doctrine really expresses the gist of Plato's 
 ethical position much more profoundly than the present 
 passage, which occurs, we must remember, before the main 
 argument of the Republic is developed. I subjoin a quotation 
 from the Ethics, with Mr. Stewart's excellent note upon it.
 
 70 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Aristotle's Ethics, i. 7, 6-8 (Peters) : ' The final good is 
 thought to be self-sufficing (or all-sufficing). In applying this 
 term we do not regard a man as an individual leading a 
 solitary life, but we also take account of parents, children, wife, 
 and, in short, friends and fellow-citizens generally, since man 
 is naturally a social being. Some limit must indeed be set to 
 this ; for if you go on to parents and descendants and friends 
 of friends you will never come to a stop. But this we will 
 consider further on : for the present we will take the self- 
 sufficing to mean what by itself makes life desirable and 
 in want of nothing. Now happiness is believed to answer 
 this description. 
 
 ' And further, happiness is believed to be the most desirable 
 thing in the world, and that not merely as one among other 
 good things : if it were merely one among other good things 
 (so that other things could be added to it), it is plain that the 
 addition of the least of other goods must make it more desir- 
 able ; for the addition becomes a surplus of good, and of two 
 goods the greater is always more desirable. Thus it seems 
 that happiness is something final and self-sufficing, and is the 
 end of all that man does.' 
 
 On which Mr. Stewart comments: 
 
 'The doctrine of the present section may be explained as 
 follows : Happiness is Life, and, as such, cannot be classed 
 among "the good things" of life. It is the Form and 
 organisation of man's powers and opportunities. To suppose 
 it possible to add one of these powers or opportunities to the 
 already perfect Form, would be to suppose that the power or 
 opportunity in question has not been already organised in the 
 Form, and that consequently the Form is imperfect. The 
 absurdity of such a supposition would equal that of representing 
 a perfectly healthy man as made more healthy by the addition 
 of a heart. As the various organs of the body have no 
 function, and therefore no real existence, apart from the 
 living body, so particular good things (virtue, health, beauty, 
 wealth), have no existence, except as elements of the noble life.
 
 BOOK II. 71 
 
 ' In this section Aristotle virtually maintains all that Plato 
 contended for in his doctrine of the Idea of the Good. As 
 the Idea of the Good is the unity of good things, and that by 
 reason of which they are good in other words, as it is that 
 definite system or order, by belonging to, and subserving 
 which, particular things are said to be good, rather than 
 pleasant, or otherwise attractive to mere sense ; so Happiness 
 is that orderly and beautiful life in relation to which, and 
 only to which, man's powers and opportunities have any 
 significance. The man who has no rational conception of the 
 greatness and beauty of Life, as a system, will cherish, instead 
 of that conception, an image borrowed from sense ; he will 
 identify Happiness or Life with pleasure or honour. Having 
 made this identification, he will easily persuade himself that 
 " Happiness " may be enhanced by the addition of particular 
 good things ; for his " Happiness " is itself only a particular 
 good thing. But Happiness, as the rational man conceives it, 
 is not a thing not something that a man receives passively 
 and possesses, but the use which he makes of the things he 
 has received and possesses. So, a tree is not the inorganic 
 elements into which it may be analysed, but the use, as it 
 were, to which the organising principle puts these elements. 
 Reason in man, like Nature in the plant and animal worlds, 
 recognises and imposes definite limits. Particular details are 
 valued by it, not for themselves (if they were, no limit could 
 be assigned to their desirable multiplication) but for the sake 
 of the beautiful Life which transforms them. But the man 
 who lives by ' sense and imagination ' is immersed in these 
 details. Life or " Happiness " is for him a mere succession 
 of particular experiences an indefinite sum of good things 
 which never satisfies him. To the external view he may seem 
 to be happy, because the material conditions or elements of 
 Happiness are separately present ; but the transforming spirit 
 is inwardly wanting 
 
 " Er hat die Theile in seiner Hand, 
 Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band."
 
 72 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 He is receptive of isolated impressions; he lives by 
 mere affections ; he does not assert a personality in active 
 function.' 
 
 The good life, thus largely conceived, whether it is called 
 Morality or Happiness, cannot be treated even in part as a 
 means to an end. And ultimately this is the view of Plato 
 no less than of Aristotle. Cf. 53. 39, 269 B, 'We are not 
 individually independent'; better, 'self-sufficing' (the word 
 being the same with that so translated in the above quotation 
 from Aristotle), and note. 
 
 358 B 40. 19. ' Taken simply by themselves, when residing in the 
 soul.' It cannot be said that this problem was untouched in 
 Book i. (See especially Sections 19 and 20.) But a more 
 developed analysis was necessary in order to establish what 
 was there implied. 
 
 Sect. 22. 41. 3, 358 E 41. 26, 359 B. 
 
 A theory of social compact. The point is to present justice as 
 artificial, i.e. as arising through a combination of injustices, 
 which are both originally and permanently the real operative 
 forces in society. (See Sect. 14 above, and notes.) The forms 
 taken by somewhat analogous doctrines in Hobbes, Spinoza, 
 Locke, and Rousseau are stated and criticised in T. H. Green's 
 Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, Works, II. 
 335- 
 
 E 41. 5. 'To commit injustice is naturally a good thing.' 
 ' Naturally,' in the sense in which ' naturally ' can be opposed to 
 ' in society] there is neither injustice nor the idea of good. 
 Plato and Aristotle on the other hand treat society as ' natural.' 
 The individual, with his social ideas of right and wrong, is 
 here imagined to exist in an unsocial condition, and yet to 
 identify the violence which he uses in self-assertion at once 
 with an effort towards his own good and with rebellion 
 against a social good. Really in such a world of ' nature ' 
 there would be no right, but mere force. But ' injustice '
 
 BOOK II. 73 
 
 must be thus antedated, in order that 'justice' may appear to 
 arise from it. Observe that the natural good which later 
 theorists call a natural right is for Glaucon a natural wrong 
 (in the sense of a wrong-doing). 
 
 41. 10. 'To make compact of mutual abstinence from 359 A 
 injustice. Hence arose legislation and contracts.' This is 
 then a compact to keep compacts ! Of course compacts rest 
 on the social will, not the social will on compacts. After the 
 social recognition of right has grown up in society, it may be 
 transferred or modified by a consent, the value of which rests 
 on the character of the consenting parties. Therefore the 
 contract theory may fairly represent the reciprocity of obliga- 
 tion in a developed society. But social necessity will always 
 be likely to override even the terms of express consents. In 
 the United States the right of the South to secede was argued 
 on a contract basis, both pro and con. 
 
 19. 'Is regarded with satisfaction'; better, 'is tolerated.' B 
 In agreeing to social order the individual chooses the less of 
 two evils ; unchecked self-assertion would be the only positive 
 good. Quite apart from the fallacy involved in antedating 
 the social conception of right or good, there is here a very 
 important assumption, viz., that unchecked or aggressive self- 
 assertion is more and greater than organised assertion of the 
 self in and through society. Cf. 24. 22, 344 c above. Against 
 this assumption Plato's whole theory of society from 53. 39, 
 369 B is a protest. So long as any such assumption stands, 
 morality will always be treated as a weak and negative thing. 
 It is in other words the assumption that the one's gain is 
 necessarily the other's loss. 
 
 24. After 'should abstain from injustice,' the words 'for he 
 \vould be mad to do so ' have been omitted by an oversight. 
 
 ' Such is the current account.' Aristotle mentions the sophist 
 Lykophron in connection with the idea that law is a conven- 
 tion and mutual security for rights. Politics, iii. 9. It is 
 instructive to compare this view with Aristotle's account of 
 language as ' significant according to convention.'
 
 74 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 23. 41. 27, 359 343. 14, 360 D. 
 
 If the outer conscience were taken away, the inner would go 
 C too, which, it is urged, proves that the inner is not real. 
 
 41. 33. 'That covetous desire,' the same word as the 
 'covetousness' or 'going beyond' on which the argument 
 of Sect. 1 7 turns. 
 
 35. ' As a good ' antedated, or, rather, falsely transferred. 
 There is no idea of a good wholly apart from a common 
 good, and for a creature capable of the idea of a common 
 good the self is from the first larger than the separate animal 
 organism. 
 
 D 40. 'The ancestor of Gyges,' or, with another reading, 'by 
 Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian.' Compare the 
 story of Gyges, Herodotus, i. 8 ff. 
 
 E 42. 15. 'The hoop,' rather the collet the broad part that 
 
 holds the stone. 
 
 360 B 30. < if there were two such rings.' The speeches of Glaucon 
 and Adeimantus strongly emphasise the character of violent 
 hypothesis that belongs to atomistic theories of society. It 
 must be borne in mind that a supposition can only give a 
 conclusion where the supposed modification of reality leaves 
 the reality standing, because it is on the nature of the reality 
 that the conclusion is based. Here, as in the hypothesis 
 of the state of nature, and in the challenge which closes the 
 speech of Adeimantus, we are called upon to imagine that 
 selfishness works in all external consequences as well as 
 unselfishness, or better, and to explain, on that assumption, 
 why unselfishness is preferable. The argument of the Republic, 
 though it takes up the challenge to show the purely inward 
 value of morality, can only treat the reliance on this as an 
 extreme case, and really involves denying the legitimacy of 
 the whole set of hypotheses implied in the challenge. 
 
 D 43. 8. ' For if any one having this licence.' Bad self repre- 
 sented as positive, good self as merely negative. (See note 
 on 24. 22 above.)
 
 BOOK II. 75 
 
 43- i5 36o 45. 21, 362 c. Sect. 24. 
 
 Hypothesis of reversal of outer conscience or moral recognition 
 further worked out, and conclusion drawn that injustice is the 
 real law of the world. 
 
 44. 6. ' We must take away the seeming.' By the violent 361 B 
 hypothesis proposed, the moral recognition of justice is 
 actually turned against it. It is like asking whether we should 
 
 do good actions if they had preponderantly bad consequences. 
 
 32. 'The just man will be scourged,' etc. This, we must 362 A 
 bear in mind, is because of his reputation for injustice, so 
 that a general recognition of some kind of justice is actually 
 presupposed. The prediction applies strictly, therefore, to 
 the ' hero ' who is the martyr of a new principle, but not to 
 the ordinary good man who lives within normal morality. 
 
 39. 'A course allied to reality,' the true point of inquiry 
 throughout the whole dialogue. ' Reality ' here is the word 
 translated 'truth' (its ordinary meaning) on 230. 508-9 below. 
 It is there used for the quality in virtue of which objects of 
 knowledge are capable of being known, 'reasonableness,' 
 'intelligibility,' or in modern phrase, 'uniformity of nature.' 
 
 45. 15. 'Means of paying court to the gods.' Cf. below, C 
 47-8. 364 B and E, and 82. 390 E. The ideas of primitive 
 superstition which linger on in civilised theology, here repre- 
 sented by the poets, are made to criticise themselves by their 
 adaptation to the last conclusions of a cynical pessimism, and 
 are put aside as improper for the education of a gentleman. 
 
 45. 22, 362 052. 6, 367 E. Sect. 25. 
 
 The champions of morality, parents, poets, priests, theologians, 
 all really agree with the champions of immorality that the outer con- 
 science, the recognition and rewards of morality, are the real end of 
 action, and one separable from morality itself. Appeal to argue the 
 question on the merits of morality itself as a principle in the mind. 
 
 45- 39- 'When parents and others set forth the duty ofE 
 being just,' they talk of a moral government of the world by
 
 76 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 rewards and punishments. The outer conscience, or recogni- 
 tion, has, as we argued above, a real connection with morality ; 
 it is here, as always, the failure to grasp life as a whole that 
 does the mischief; the part, insisted on by itself, becomes 
 false. 
 
 363 A 46. 9. ' As the excellent Hesiod tells us,' the poets speak the 
 
 mind of the vulgar. It is really the doctrinal interpretation 
 of poetical language that is in fault, and Plato throughout 
 makes this popular habit criticise itself and reduce itself to an 
 absurdity. 
 
 364 A 47. 6. 'All as with one mouth proclaim,' etc. We are sur- 
 
 prised that Plato associates with vulgar fallacies the poets' 
 references both to the strenuousness of good life, and to the 
 trials imposed upon the good (below, 20). He seems to be 
 pointing out that sentimentalism oscillates between comple- 
 mentary errors, first indicating the rewards of goodness as its 
 essence, and then bewailing and exaggerating the hardships 
 which it meets with, in contrast with the brilliant success of 
 wickedness. 
 
 B 22. 'And there are quacks and soothsayers.' Even the 
 great figures of Pythagoras and Epimenides have some traits 
 of the medicine-man. (See Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, 
 p. 83 ff.) Plato seems to have lived at the right moment to 
 seize the connection between the magic of savagery and the 
 sacerdotalism of civilised society. 
 
 C 33. ' They produce the evidence of poets.' All these 
 references bear on Plato's attitude to imaginative art. Strictly 
 speaking it, is the use of the passages which is here criticised 
 by implication rather than the passages themselves. 
 
 E 48. ii. 'And they produce a host of books,' etc. Compare 
 the purification of Athens by Epimenides after the suppression 
 of Kylon's attempt to make himself tyrant. See Burnet, I.e., 
 and note the analogy of the passage with the attitude of the 
 Hebrew prophets towards ritual. 
 
 365 A 24. ' What can we suppose is the effect produced on the 
 
 minds of all those young men of good natural parts.' Observe
 
 BOOK II. 77 
 
 that the danger here depicted arises not from explicit criticism, 
 but from superstition or commonplace orthodoxy acting on a 
 mind capable of criticism. The danger of the beginnings of 
 criticism was also well known to Plato (see 265. 538). 
 
 39. 'As the wise inform me'; 'the wise' refers to 30016365 C 
 poet. The words immediately following are a quotation. 
 
 49. ii. 'Teachers of persuasion.' Sophists are the in- D 
 structors in the popular morality which poets support. 
 
 1 6. 'Well, but if they do not exist.' The poets, again, are E 
 the popular theologians, and the belief in gods is bound up 
 with their conceptions of them. 
 
 50. 31. 'And the cause of all this' is the fact that the 366 D 
 popular advocates of morality, and other popular teachers who 
 explain it away, are really on the same ground, in both cases 
 explaining it as a means to an end. 
 
 39. ' But what each is in itself, in its own peculiar force.' E 
 The mind is a system in itself, and susceptible of a good and 
 evil in its organisation, though this is not really separable 
 from relation to the good and evil of the system which unites 
 it with other minds. 'Force' stands for the Greek word 
 which later acquired the technical meanings of ' faculty ' and 
 'potentiality,' the word 'dunamis,' from which our term 
 ' dynamic ' is derived. See discussion on ' faculties ' (same 
 word) 192. 477. The root idea is that a thing, more especially 
 an invisible activity, is known by its acts or effects, in relation 
 to which it is a. power. 
 
 51. i. 'And had you tried to persuade us of this from our 367 A 
 childhood ' paves the way for the immense moral importance 
 attached to education. 
 
 1 6. 'But show us what is that influence,' etc.; more B 
 literally, ' show us what each of them does to him who has it, 
 whereby,' etc. 
 
 24. 'Your advice is to be unjust without being found out.' C 
 Regarding goodness as a means must ultimately bring us to 
 this ; the end is always the true rule, and no means can claim 
 a preference except for effectiveness.
 
 78 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 D 35. 'Select for commendation this particular feature of 
 justice, I mean the benefit which in itself it confers on its 
 possessor.' 'The rewards and reputations leave to others.' 
 Note the extreme difficulty (technically an impossibility) of 
 stating the nature of morality in answer to a question in the 
 form ' Why should I be moral ? ' Its ' rewards ' are not to be 
 stated, but yet its ' benefits ' are. The real meaning of the 
 question can only be answered by an account of morality as 
 a system embracing the whole of life, and also constituting 
 the inmost order of the mind.
 
 SECOND OF THE NATURAL DIVISIONS 
 OF THE REPUBLIC 52. 368 A 184. 471 c. 
 
 THE HELLENIC CITY 
 
 52. 7, 368 A 53. 37, 369 B. gect> 26 
 
 Transition to account of commonwealth. Morality is predi- 
 cated of a community as well as of an individual, and in the 
 larger features of the community it may be easier to analyse its 
 nature. Therefore it is proposed to watch the essential phases of 
 the growth of a community into a moral whole, and subsequently 
 to apply the results to the individual mind. 
 
 52. 31. 'Because I am afraid that breath and utterance 368 C 
 are left in me.' The translation hardly conveys the passionate 
 rhetoric of the original. Perhaps ' while the breath is in me 
 and I have strength to utter a sound.' Plato is inspired 
 throughout with the feeling of a great moral and intellectual 
 crisis what we call an age of transition. 
 
 36. ' The real nature of justice and injustice,' literally, ' what 
 each of them does.' We shall often have to notice this direct 
 and simple language of Plato, which became the foundation of 
 the technical terminology imposed by Aristotle upon the 
 world. The term ' real,' meaning ' of the nature of a thing,' 
 is Latin in its origin, and does not correspond in spirit to 
 Plato's favourite usage of ' is ' and ' being,' although we have 
 perhaps no better equivalent in use. 
 
 79
 
 80 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 368 D 53- 5- ' I n larger letters.' This simile is at first sight an 
 
 arbitrary motive for the transition. We are not accustomed 
 to think that there is more morality in society than in the 
 individual (cf. 19, 'in larger proportions,' and note). The 
 meaning may be illustrated by 138. 16, 435 E below, which 
 suggests that the qualities predominant in different types of 
 mind manifest themselves on a large scale in the ranks and 
 classes of the state, especially as these, to a Greek, in some 
 degree rested on racial differences ; or, again, by 148-9. 443 
 A-E, which sums up the argument by treating the order of 
 society as the conspicuous outward symbol, and also the 
 necessary complement, of the moral order in the individual 
 mind. 
 
 E 14. ' Residing in,' a paraphase of the translators. Literally, 
 'There is a justice of one man, and also of a whole city.' It 
 is plain that the convincingness of the transition rests on this 
 assumption, which in modern times would not always be 
 granted. In what sense there is ' a justice of a whole city,' 
 i.e. how a city as such can be called just, according to Plato's 
 interpretation of the admission, we shall see below. 
 
 19. 'In the greater subject ' ; ' subject ' is here the noun in- 
 serted in English to agree with a Greek neuter adjective. (See 
 note above on 5. 18, 330 E.) The aspect and emphasis of the 
 sentence is greatly changed by such an insertion. Literally, 
 'There may be more justice in the greater.' The facts of 
 morality may be more completely presented in the social 
 whole than in the isolated person. Compare Aristotle's sug- 
 gestion that there may be more wisdom and goodness in the 
 community than in the individual, Politics, iii. 6. 
 
 369 A 22. 'Looking for the counterpart of the greater,' more 
 
 literally, ' Examining the likeness of the greater in the form of 
 the less.' Note that the word 'form' here stands for the 
 Greek word ' idea,' the usage of which, in Plato, has been so 
 variously construed. No one would say that a simple text 
 like this refers to the ' doctrine of ideas.' Yet why not ? The 
 sharp separation between one and another use of the word
 
 BOOK II. 81 
 
 ' form ' or ' idea ' is wholly artificial. As to this method of 
 inquiry, note that it is elaborately pursued in the negative 
 discussion of Books vui. and ix., as well as in the positive 
 argument now entered upon. 
 
 25. 'Gradual formation,' 'the growth of; these phrases 
 represent the participle of the verb ' to become ' or ' come into 
 being,' from which the word ' Genesis ' is derived, and on the 
 contrast of which with the verb 'to be ' so much turns in 
 Greek philosophy. 
 
 53- 37, 3 6 9 B 58. 24, 372 c. Sect. 27. 
 
 Logical, not historical, construction of the city. It arises with 
 a -view to exchange of services between individuals (who are not 
 self-sufficing) by division of labour based on natural suitability 
 for different functions. The state of innocence. 
 
 53- 38- ' We are not individually independent,' more literally, 369 B 
 ' that each of us is not self-sufficing, but in want of many 
 things.' See Introduction, Sect. vi. Plato directs his con- 
 struction merely to the operative bond of society stated in the 
 most abstract terms. He points out in the Laws, Book in., 
 what Aristotle insists on in the Politics, that, historically 
 speaking, an immense evolution through other forms of com- 
 munity precedes the civilised commonwealth. 
 
 ' Not self-sufficing.' The word translated ' self-sufficing ' 
 becomes a technical term of great importance in Aristotle. 
 It is the characteristic of every form of life which can be 
 regarded as an end of the city as contrasted with the 
 individual or even the family (Politics i. i), and of happiness 
 as contrasted with anything desired only as a means to 
 satisfaction. See quotation from Aristotle's Ethics, p. 70, 
 above. The principle here laid down is fundamental in every 
 organic philosophy or religion. Stoicism and Epicureanism, 
 in as far as they aim at making the individual self-sufficing, 
 were opposed to this principle, to which Christianity returned. 
 
 ' In want of many things.' Our wants, which only society 
 
 F
 
 82 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 can supply, are of many kinds, both material, as explained 
 in the present section, and spiritual, as indicated 241. 520 A, 
 and 332. 591 D and E. In all of us the divine element needs 
 reinforcement from without. Compare Herodotus, i. 32, 14, 
 ' No single human being is self-sufficing. He has some things, 
 but requires others.' This passage occurs in the history of 
 Solon and Croesus, which seems to anticipate in more ways 
 than one the line taken by the philosophers. 
 
 369 C 54- 9- ' From a belief that he is consulting his own interest,' 
 
 literally, ' thinking that it is better for himself.' From the 
 first in this construction the idea of co-operation as advan- 
 tageous to all parties supersedes the idea of gain by others' 
 loss. 
 
 D 17. ' Sustenance to enable us to exist as living creatures,' 
 literally, ' the provision of nourishment for the sake of exist- 
 ence and life.' This passage, in its relation to the later part 
 of the book, is admirably summarised by Aristotle's famous 
 sentence (Politics, i. i) : '(The city) arises for the sake of 
 life, but is for the sake of good life.' Its root is in necessity, 
 but its flower ie goodness. 
 
 33. ' The single husbandman ' ; by calling him ' husband- 
 man' the question is answered in advance. If the second 
 alternative were taken, there would be no distinction of 
 occupations. The principle of division of labour is here 
 based first on the observation of industrial convenience, but 
 ultimately on a view, which the opening of this section antici- 
 pated, of the relation of individuals to society. Society 
 depends on the fact that individuals are such as to supply 
 each other's deficiencies. 
 
 370 A 55. 4. ' No two persons are born exactly alike.' In this 
 
 sentence two future technical terms ' nature,' and ' function,' 
 are brought into relation, as the true basis of the principle of 
 division of labour. 'Are born' stands for the verb corre- 
 sponding to 'nature,' and 'natural endowments' simply for 
 the word ' nature.' ' Occupation ' is the same word which is 
 translated ' function '=' work ' in the last argument of Book i.,
 
 BOOK II, 83 
 
 and which became in Aristotle closely akin to the idea of 
 ' final cause.' The individual human being, then, so far from 
 being naturally separate, is marked out by nature (as every 
 other object has its function, close of Book I.) for a particular 
 function in society, which is held together by the unlikenesses 
 of its members. Society is therefore natural, as Aristotle 
 argues in Politics ; i. i, ' man is by nature a social (literally, 
 "political") animal,' and it rests on the co-operation of dis- 
 similar parts in a whole. ' No city can arise out of similar 
 members,' Aristotle's Politics, ii. i. Plato seems to us to lean 
 towards reducing the man to his function ; but of course his 
 point at present is to establish the principle and not to modify 
 it. According to the close of Book i., we are entitled to 
 regard the man's particular social function as only an embodi- 
 ment of the distinctive human function there ascribed to the 
 soul. 
 
 ii. ' Many trades,' literally, 'arts '; this term makes no dis- 37 B 
 tinction between professions, industries, and fine arts. 
 
 56. 5. ' No need of imports.' Plato dreads both naval 
 supremacy and maritime trade as deteriorating influences on 
 civic character. (See Laws, Book iv. inif.) The Greek colonial 
 towns were generally on the sea ; Plato preferred a situation 
 like that of Athens, with harbours, but at a greater distance 
 from them. He admits that some foreign trade will be 
 inevitable. 
 
 25. ' Merchants.' Etymologically, ' Passengers,' i.e. people 371 A 
 who actually go on shipboard and take charge of goods 
 whether their own or others'. 
 
 38. 'A currency, for the sake of exchange.' Aristotle B 
 develops the theory of money by considering its use as a 
 standard of value, and its fitness for that purpose. 
 Ethics, v. 5. 
 
 57. 6. ' Persons of excessive physical weakness.' Satire, C 
 partly founded on Greek prejudice, and partly anticipating the 
 real difficulty about the middleman. Aristotle preserves the 
 conjunction between coined money and retail trade in his
 
 84 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 discussion of the subject. Politics, i. 3. The ' infinity ' which 
 both Plato and Aristotle condemn as introduced into money- 
 making by coined money, is more analogous to production for 
 the speculative world market than to the modern ' infinity of 
 wants.' There would perhaps be more room for the latter in 
 Plato's commonwealth than Mr. Bonar admits. See p. 13 of 
 his Philosophy and Political Economy, and compare the con- 
 cluding chapter of Pater's Plato and Platonism. 
 
 371 E 57. 25. 'Then hired labourers,' etc., i.e. the labourers 
 
 belong to the civic body, but are felt to be inferior so far as 
 their service is bodily rather than intellectual. Here, as in 
 many passages, we are apt to receive a shock from Plato's 
 extreme plain speaking, although what he says would be true 
 to-day of our own civilisation. Observe that whether by 
 accident or design nothing is said as yet of slaves. Did he 
 regard them as the result of war ? 
 
 31. ' Where, then shall we find justice and injustice in it ? ' 
 ' I have no notion, except, perhaps, in the mutual relations,' 
 etc. Considering that no government nor guardian class yet 
 exists, and this question and answer are not followed up, I 
 incline to take them as a hint that morality is not distinct 
 enough at this stage to repay examination. Cf. also 58. 37, 
 372 E. The 'city of pigs' does not therefore seem to be 
 Plato's first ideal, as some have thought ; it has rather the 
 appearance of a satire on contemporary cynicism, perhaps that 
 of Antisthenes, of which the point was to 'simplify.' (See 
 Tourgenieff, A Virgin Soil.) 
 
 Sect. 28. 58. 25, 372 D 6l. 16, 374 n. 
 
 The disease of civilisation sets in, and with it war, govern- 
 ment, and education, and, we must suppose, definite or conscious 
 morality. 
 
 372 E 36 ff. ' How it is that justice and injustice take root in 
 
 cities.' The more self-conscious morality, in its contrast with 
 immorality, is more easily analysed. The best city is one that
 
 BOOK II. 85 
 
 has been purged (see below, 94. 33, 399 E), not one that has 
 remained in the state of innocence. 
 
 38. 'The genuine, and, so to speak, healthy.' Plato yields 
 for the moment with a touch of humour to the charm of the 
 state of innocence. 
 
 59. 7. ' Painting,' literally, ' Painting from life,' i.e. artist's 373 A 
 work. ' Gold and ivory ' suggests the chryselephantine statues 
 
 of Pheidias. 
 
 14. 'Hunters' and 'imitators.' (i) The predatory classes, B 
 including lawyers, political orators, and professional teachers 
 (sophists) ; and (2) Those who practise the arts of deception, 
 again including the sophist, together with the sculptor, painter, 
 musician, poet, and here, apparently, those who have to do 
 with women's toilet. The juxtaposition of classes in the pre- 
 sent passage suggests, by comparison with the divisions of the 
 Sophist, probably a later dialogue, that something like this 
 meaning was in Plato's mind. 
 
 30. ' The need of medical men,' anticipates the discussion D 
 of valetudinarianism in Book in. 
 
 60. 8. ' The origin of war.' War comes in with the pres- E 
 sure of population on territory, encouraged by an active 
 civilisation. Why not emigration rather than war? The 
 colonising period of Greece was one of brilliant activity, but 
 had ended with the Persian and Carthaginian wars, and 
 colonisation would no longer present itself as a general pos- 
 sibility. Indeed, the ground being occupied, colonisation 
 might mean war. 
 
 14. 'A whole army.' It is strange at first sight that war, 374 A 
 arising from luxury and self-aggrandisement, should be the 
 point of departure for the introduction of the guardian class, 
 and therefore of government and conscious morality. But 
 both the theory of natural selection and the lessons of history 
 seem to show that it is war which makes a nation. Even 
 Plato admitted that Marathon and Plataea made the Hellenes 
 better, though he would not admit the same of Salamis and 
 Artemisium. Laws, iv. 707.
 
 86 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 C 6l. 5. ' And will it be enough for a man merely to handle 
 a shield ? ' The demand for a professional soldiery is partly 
 founded on the example of Sparta, and partly on the increas- 
 ing use of mercenaries and the development of military tactics 
 in Plato's own day. The Spartans were always regarded as 
 skilled warriors, and all others as unskilled in comparison. 
 (See Herodotus' account of Thermopylae.) The novelty of 
 Plato's view is in the combination of this skill with the best 
 citizen spirit. 
 
 Sect. 29. 6l. 15, 374 064. 7, 3?6 c. 
 
 Selection of the guardians. Their disposition, the natural or 
 animal basis of their character. 
 
 375 A 62. i. ' If it is not spirited.' The appeal to animal 
 psychology throughout this section, in illustration of the endow- 
 ments of man previous to education, is of a very modern 
 type. Note that the Greek word translated ' brave,' is literally 
 'manly,' which makes a strange conjunction with 'horse,' 
 ' dog,' or other animal. On the meaning of ' spirited,' see 
 Nettleship, Hellenica, p. 75. It means, literally, 'of the 
 nature of anger,' and is construed by Plato as the element of 
 pluck and self-assertion or righteous indignation, while capable 
 of degenerating into pugnacity and brutality. The spirited 
 element then comes first, being directly demanded by the 
 military purpose with which the order is instituted. We have 
 not yet the triple division of the soul. The psychology, like 
 other elements of Plato's philosophy, is developed from time 
 to time in accordance with the needs of the general argument. 
 E 63. 1 6. ' His character should be philosophical as well as 
 high-spirited.' The ' philosophical ' element of the mind is 
 here introduced, merely, it must be observed, as supple- 
 mentary to the ' spirited ' element, in order to make this latter 
 compatible with the safety of the community. The humorous 
 identification of a temper which loves knowledge with one in 
 which liking follows familiarity, is one of the many forms in 
 which Plato refers to a reasonableness attainable by feeling.
 
 BOOK II. 87 
 
 The development of the 'philosophical' element from this 
 point onwards in the Republic should be noted by the reader. 
 
 64. 8, 376 c End of Book n. Sect. 30. 
 
 The influence of imaginative literature on character, especially 
 in early education, so far as its substance is concerned, and first, 
 as conveying ideas concerning the divine nature. 
 
 64. 24. ' What, then, is the'education to be ? ' ' Gymnastic 376 E 
 for the body and music for the mind.' The portion of the 
 dialogue which deals with this ' first ' education extends to 
 the close of Book in. The length and elaborateness of the 
 discussion testify to the importance of the subject in Plato's 
 mind. And this subject is mainly identified with the forma- 
 tion of character. The supplementation and criticism which 
 the present treatment of education receives in Book vn. 264. 
 536-7, where it becomes clear that the 'three R's ' and 
 elementary science are not to be neglected, only throw into 
 a stronger light Plato's exclusive preoccupation with the pro- 
 blem of moral nurture in these proposals for the reform of 
 existing Hellenic education. ' Music ' in the present case, 
 whether or no the usage is normal, includes, beside the art of 
 beautiful sound, the substance and form of imaginative litera- 
 ture ; and the educational principles elicited from the discus- 
 sion of 'music' are extended (96. 401) to all formative art 
 and workmanship, and indeed to all the surroundings of life. 
 
 'For the body' and 'for the mind': cf. 107. 410 c and 
 note. 
 
 30. ' Narratives,' literally, ' discourse ' the most general E 
 term for anything read or told. Plato would have in mind, 
 primarily, teaching and story-telling by word of mouth, as we 
 also have in the case of young children. But the store of 
 narratives and ideas would be largely drawn from literature, 
 and would again pass into it, and so we find that his subject 
 expands into a study of matter and form as exemplified by 
 great poets. Even their works, however, would chiefly be
 
 88 COMPANION TO PLATO' 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 thought of as something recited, sung, or acted on the stage, 
 and not as books on a bookshelf. This helps to explain the 
 immense importance which Plato attaches to mode and degree 
 of impersonation, and the like. 
 
 ' Two kinds, the true and the false.' By retaining the term 
 'narratives,' the translators have restricted the reference of 
 this division. It plainly might apply to any kind of teaching, 
 and not merely to history in contrast with fiction. There is 
 little to show that the idea of teaching history existed at this 
 time. 
 
 377 A 34. ' In the false first.' All communication of ideas 
 must be adapted to the mind of the recipient, but the child 
 cannot receive what counts as average truth for the adult 
 intelligence. The paradox propounded is therefore of uni- 
 versal application ; it is, indeed, a truism, and by the inter- 
 locutor's answer, ' I do not understand,' Plato draws our 
 attention to the way in which familiarity blinds us to universal 
 facts of the highest importance. 
 
 65. 9- ' The beginning is the most important,' etc. Plato's 
 real or working conception of the soul cannot be appreciated 
 apart from his views on education and actual life. Nothing 
 is more characteristic of these views than his insistence on the 
 thorough responsiveness of the soul to the moral, intellectual, 
 and physical environment, including heredity. An abstract or 
 negative spiritualism is fundamentally incompatible with the 
 whole tendency of his thought. 
 
 B 1 8. 'The reverse of those, which, when they are grown 
 to manhood,' etc. Imperfect as the first ideas or feelings 
 must be, it is possible to make them a germ of a growth in 
 the right direction, and the educator must keep in view what 
 he desires the adult to become. Cf. 74. 383 c. 
 
 B 21. 'Exercise superintendence,' It is desirable for the 
 modern reader to guard himself against being so much shocked 
 by the crude and definite form of Plato's proposals as to 
 neglect their universal meaning. Here, for example, he 
 should not simply exclaim, ' Moral censorship of imaginative
 
 BOOK II. 89 
 
 literature ! intolerable ! ' but should observe that Plato is 
 enforcing a duty, now generally recognised, with regard to 
 discrimination in the educational employment of literature. 
 The novelty of the conception is marked, as before, by the 
 perplexity of the interlocutor. On whom the duty may be 
 incumbent is, comparatively speaking, a matter of detail. 
 The larger question of his general attitude to art in the 
 Republic will be touched upon below. 
 
 66. 2. ' Gives a bad representation.' The verb here used 78 E 
 = ' to make a likeness,' or ' to treat as likely,' viz., to con- 
 jecture; and its derivative noun 'guesswork,' or 'fancy,' is 
 the name of the fourth or lowest state of cognition at the 
 close of Book vi. 
 
 4. ' Bear no resemblance.' On 49. 365 E, we saw that 
 the poets were the theologians of the time, and the only 
 source of knowledge about divine things. How, then, can 
 Plato criticise their conceptions? All fiction or mytho- 
 logy, which is, it would seem, the appropriate vehicle (see 
 reference above) for speaking of personal deity, although con- 
 fessing itself to be merely approximative, yet claims some 
 positive approximation to truth (65. 2, 377 A, 72. 32, 382 D). 
 In respect, then, of the elements by which it is capable of 
 approaching truth, even a confessed fiction may be criti- 
 cised as true or false (cf. 75- 22, 386 c). It is false if its 
 substance is self-contradictory (69. 31, 380 c), and if it conflicts 
 with our fundamental moral ideas. Falsehood in this deeper 
 sense makes a fiction ' ugly,' i.e. discordant and inexpressive. 
 Plato, for whom the whole complex of religious tradition was 
 from the outset fiction or mythology, had no occasion to 
 apply our favourite test of historical criticism, even if the 
 conception of it had existed in his time. And we are apt to 
 be startled at his proceeding so entirely on general or ethical 
 grounds. But the difference between truth of ideas and 
 truth of facts is not ultimate. Our conception of his- 
 tory depends upon our general ideas of what is important, 
 and our general ideas embody what we take to be the
 
 90 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 leading facts of life. (See Nettleship in Hdlenica, 
 
 P- 93-) 
 
 378 A 24. ' And must not be repeated in our city.' The 
 
 question is suddenly extended beyond early education, in an 
 outburst of feeling. The Greek is, I think, more abrupt and 
 vehement than either Jowett or Davies and Vaughan 
 ' offensive stories,' ' such, indeed, as absolutely must not be 
 told, Adeimantus, in our city.' 
 
 C 34. ' What is indeed untrue,' i.e. an untrue fiction. (See 
 note on 66. 4 above.) 
 
 67. 3. ' No member of a state was ever guilty ' : cf. 2IQ. 
 4, 500, 'every one must imitate that with which he reverently 
 associates.' If the spirit of citizenship is to be instilled into 
 the young, it must be shown to them in those personages 
 whom they are brought up to reverence. 
 
 D 67. 12. ' For a child cannot discriminate between what is 
 allegory and what is not.' An ironical mode of putting aside 
 an artificial system of interpretation. See Phaedrus, 229-30, 
 for a parody of such rationalism. Socrates there says he 
 might explain the story of Boreas carrying off the nymph 
 Oreithyia by suggesting that she had been blown over a cliff 
 by the north wind ; only he has not leisure to invent explana- 
 tions like this so many would be needed. Plato does not 
 use the Greek word from which ' allegory ' is derived, but 
 another which=' sub-meaning.' 
 
 379 A 31. 'Theology.' The Greek word is the same. I believe 
 
 that this is the earliest passage in which this fateful term occurs. 
 
 B 4 2 - ' That which is not hurtful, hurt.' Compare the argu- 
 ment of 12. 335. 
 
 C 68. 16. ' On the contrary, he is the author.' This idea is 
 in some degree anticipated in the self-defence of Zeus, Odyssey, 
 i. 32 ; Plato's inference seems extraordinarily bold to our 
 modern thought, but a Greek had not perhaps the fixed ideas 
 which give it this effect for our minds. On the undertone 
 of melancholy in Greek life, see Butcher's Some aspects of the 
 Greek genius.
 
 BOOK II. 91 
 
 69. 6. ' He plants among its members guilt and sin.' 380 
 Plato seems anxious to preserve human responsibility as well 
 
 as to remove the authorship of evil from God. The doctrine 
 of family destiny in the tragic poets seems to have passed 
 from an idea of external or irrational doom to some such 
 conception as that character is fate. (See Butcher, op. tit.} 
 The doctrine of heredity plays a part in modern literature 
 analogous to that of the divine curse in ancient tragedy. 
 It is hard to see why we should complain of the bad which 
 we inherit without congratulating ourselves on the good. We 
 seem to accept the latter as our right. 
 
 29. 'Injurious to us and self-contradictory' (see the argu- C 
 ment of 67 ff.). 'Nothing that is good is hurtful,' etc. 
 
 35. ' God is not the author of all things, but only of such 
 as are good.' The first of Plato's two canons of theology. 
 We are rather accustomed to the contention ' God is the 
 author of all things, and therefore all things are good,' and 
 there is a trace of this argument in the doctrine of profitable 
 punishment just above. (See, too, 360. below, 613.) What 
 Plato probably desires to contradict is the savage idea of God 
 entertaining malice or anger like a man, which could not but 
 have the worst educational effects. 
 
 70. i. 'Actually assuming such forms,' etc. The second D 
 canon, which is discussed down to 73. 18, 383 A, is again 
 primarily aimed at savage ideas of the metamorphoses of the 
 gods, rooted, as we now suppose, in the most primitive 
 superstition. But the argument is so broadly stated as to 
 tell in some degree against modern religious ideas, and 
 apparently to assume a Jewish standpoint as regards plastic 
 representation of the deity. (See, however, Nettleship in 
 Hellenica, 96-7.) 
 
 12. 'And' is it not the case that are best?' We may 380 E 
 trace this principle, the connection of goodness with single- 
 ness, strength and stability, through the whole of Plato's 
 thought. It forced itself upon him as a corrective to the 
 current doctrine that 'all things pass and nothing endures,'
 
 92 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 and also to the undue predominance of emotion and the love 
 of political change and novelty which he observed in the 
 Greek temper. As here in the account of the deity, so in 
 Phccdo (80 B) this principle asserts itself in his discussion of 
 soul, and throughout his writings in the theory of the object 
 of knowledge. More especially in the Republic it embodies 
 itself in the musical and literary criticism, in the whole system 
 of rules for the guidance and control of the 'imitative' dis- 
 position, and indeed in the entire structure of the common- 
 wealth. 
 
 381 B 28. ' Everything which is good is least liable to be 
 
 changed.' Our ideas demand motion and growth as a 
 condition of life. Probably, however, too much has been 
 made of the opposition between this point of view and that 
 of Plato. (See below, on his conception of Astronomy in 
 Book vn.) If indeed we say that ' the end is progress,' then 
 we seem to push our ideas to an unintelligible extreme. 
 Plato does not seem really to represent the divine being as 
 an empty abstraction. (See 71. i, 381 c.) 
 
 D 71. 14. 'Gods in the likeness of wandering strangers.' 
 This belief in 'entertaining angels unawares' is used in 
 Homer as an argument for kindness to strangers, as again, 
 'All strangers and poor men are sent by God.' Plato dis- 
 regards this aspect. 
 
 E 23. 'How certain gods go about by night,' a prohibition of 
 bogey stories, which is found, I suppose, hard enough to 
 enforce to-day. 
 
 382 A 38. 'A genuine lie,' more literally, 'a true lie,' which is the 
 
 paradox for which Plato apologises. 
 
 72. 2. ' To lie (or ' be mistaken ') with the highest part of 
 himself.' In maintaining that ignorance is by universal 
 consent more objectionable than wilful deception, Plato 
 primarily alludes to the simple fact that every one resents 
 being deceived ; i.e. in his own case every one without excep- 
 tion sets this down as an evil. 
 382 B 10. 'Concerning absolute realities.' This sounding phrase,
 
 BOOK II. 93 
 
 with its echoes of speculation, misrepresents the Greek, which 
 is simply the neuter plural of the definite article joined with 
 the present participle of the verb 'to be.' 'Facts,' 'truths,' 
 ' what is,' seem the natural equivalents. Jowett has ' highest 
 realities ' in allusion to ' highest subjects ' above, but in this 
 line ' highest ' is an insertion of the translator. 
 
 17. 'The spoken lie is a kind of imitation.' This is true 
 of a mistake, but we are surprised that it should be said of 
 a lie, the essence of which is the will to deceive, and which 
 is therefore just not the true reflection of the speaker's mind. 
 Plato seems to have before him ultimately the idea that a 
 voluntary falsehood is something under our control, while in 
 ignorance we are helpless. And in part at least he is alluding 
 to fiction in which there is no question of intent to deceive. 
 
 32. 'Is it not our ignorance of the true history.' (See note D 
 on 66. 4 above.) 
 
 73. 1 8. ' That the gods neither metamorphose themselves.' 383 
 Signs and dreams are not taken as ipso facto imposition, but 
 only when (as with the dream sent to Agamemnon) the 
 intention is to deceive. Cf. i Kings xxii. 22. This and 
 the former ' canon of Theology ' mark a final breach with 
 early superstition. Whether they are inconsistent with what 
 
 is true in later and higher forms of anthropomorphism would 
 be a different question. 
 
 74. 2. 'As godlike and godfearing ': cf. 65. 18 and note, C 
 and also 219. 4, 500, where the term 'godlike' is applied in 
 
 a more developed sense, but still with the implication that 
 men will become like that which they worship. 
 
 This passage closes the discussion of the general light in 
 which the divine nature should be presented to the minds of 
 the young through imaginative literature.
 
 BOOK II I 
 
 Sect. 31. 75- i 386 A 84. 34, 392 c. 
 
 Further elements of the moral ideal, so far as this is con- 
 veyed to the young through the substance of imaginative literature 
 concerning superior beings. 
 
 386 A 75. 4. ' Honour the gods and their parents.' Duty and 
 reverence to parents was a fundamental element of the Greek 
 moral creed. These words refer back to 66. 9, where the 
 story of Cronos is stigmatised as 'the greatest lie on the 
 highest subject.' (See, too, 66. 28.) 
 
 A 5- 'Set no small value on mutual friendship.' Compare 
 66. 36, 378 E, and 62. 13, 375 B. Thus 'the earliest lessons 
 of education are to appeal to that quality in the soul which 
 Plato regarded as the highest and most distinctively human 
 in man, the element in virtue of which he is not a mere 
 isolated atom and centre of resistance, but capable of 
 attraction both to what is higher than himself and what is 
 like himself.' Nettleship, Hellenica, 98, and note the whole 
 passage. 
 
 8. ' If we intend our citizens to be brave.' Courage is the 
 next essential. Death on the battle-field was for the ordinary 
 Greek mind the typical act of loyalty, and not to be afraid 
 of death was the true test of courage (literally, ' manliness '). 
 Plato accepts this notion of manliness as at least a starting- 
 point for the training of youth, although even in this discus- 
 sion he begins to deepen and extend it. The quotations 
 
 94
 
 BOOK III. 95 
 
 which he brings together show how terrible to the Greek 
 imagination the idea of death was. 
 
 22. 'Neither true nor beneficial.' Untrue, although in 386 C 
 fiction, i.e. inconsistent with the main requirements of good 
 life. We do not know the truth about the next world, but 
 that does not abolish our responsibility for the pictures which 
 we draw of it. (See 66. 4 above, and note.) Here again the 
 representations complained of are for the most part a legacy 
 from savage superstition the underworld considered as a 
 grave, and the feeble unintelligent wraith. 
 
 76. 32 ff. 'So much the less ought they to be recited in 387 Band 
 the hearing of boys and men.' It would be difficult to ^ 
 maintain that terrible ideas of the other world have, histori- 
 cally speaking, made men bad soldiers by increasing the 
 
 terror of death, but undoubtedly they tend to make the 
 mind unreliable, and sometimes unhinge it altogether. 
 
 77. 1 6. 'Then shall we also strike out the weepings and D 
 the wailings?' Extreme emotion is unreasonable for two 
 reasons ; for our friend himself death is not terrible, if he is 
 good ; and our own loss should not find us without resources 
 in ourselves, which may enable us to meet it. 
 
 27. 'Such a man contains within himself,' literally, 'isE 
 self-sufficing for good life,' the adjective being the same as 
 that translated ' independent,' 53 3^, 367 B. The present 
 passage need not be taken to contradict that referred to, 
 although it undoubtedly points to another side of the moral 
 ideal, that insisted on at a later time by the Stoics. There 
 are certain obvious links between Socrates, the Cynics, and 
 the Stoics. Cf. 214. 496. We miss here a distinction to 
 which we are accustomed, between self-restraint and in- 
 sensibility. It is well, we think, not to be intoxicated by 
 emotion, but it is not well to be insensible to the breaking 
 of human ties. We must not, however, forget how closely 
 self-indulgence in emotion is bound up with the expression 
 of it. With all this the reader should compare Book x. 347. 
 604-5.
 
 96 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 388 D 79. i. 'For if our young men were to listen seriously.' 
 The tendency to imitation is again insisted on. The con- 
 ception of manliness or courage is passing into that of self- 
 control in general. 
 
 E 15. 'Our guardians ought not to be given to laughter.' 
 Excessive laughter is regarded as a symptom and indulgence 
 of what we might call a hysterical tendency. Every extreme 
 of emotion is likely to produce reaction. Compare the 
 objection to marked and frequent ' transitions ' or changes in 
 music, 90-1. 397. 
 
 3896 33. 'A high value must be set also upon truth.' The 
 duty of truthfulness is brought under the head of obedience, 
 a mode of regarding it which has importance in education, 
 but is only preparatory to the conception of truth as it con- 
 cerns the statesman and thinker. 
 
 D 80. 20. 'Will not our young men need to be temperate?' 
 Temperance or self-control is to the Greek the great quality 
 complementary to manliness or courage. In Plato they tend, 
 as we saw, to come together. He describes it, three lines 
 below, as both external and inward as recognition of the 
 law without and possession of it within. One of the ' needs ' 
 which brings men together in society is, it will be remembered, 
 that of reinforcement from without for the higher element 
 within them. (See above, 53. 38, 369 B, with note and 
 reference.) 
 
 390 A 8l. 5. 'Drunken sot' addressed by Achilles to Agamem- 
 
 non. 
 
 391 D 83. 20. ' Either or ' ; it does not matter how the myth is 
 
 amended, as long as the required effect is attained. 
 
 392 A 84. 8. ' The mode of speaking about men.' The facts of 
 
 human life are the very matter in dispute, and we cannot 
 pass judgment on views of them until we have investigated 
 the real relations of righteousness and happiness in human 
 life. Then how could he judge the presentations of the 
 divine nature and other superior beings ? Perhaps because 
 the central and difficult problems, e.g. of character in relation
 
 BOOK III. 97 
 
 to happiness and to social duty, which concern the mature 
 and civilised man, are not dealt with in those stories of the 
 youth of the race, and he has only passed judgment on certain 
 simple virtues which belong to youth and are merely the 
 foundation of citizen life. 
 
 Here, as often, Plato's directness shocks us, and we should 
 understand him better if he spoke more circuitously. He 
 seems to be demanding from the poet a crude apportionment 
 of rewards to goodness. But it is not so. He is justified in 
 the strength of his statement by the force of the bias which 
 he has to counteract. Pessimism is rooted both in senti- 
 mentalism and in the ostentation of worldly wisdom, and as 
 against this influence it is perfectly fair to demand of art a 
 presentation of life which shall on the whole be typical and 
 true. Sentimental fiction to-day often takes the line of 
 Glaucon on 44. 362. 
 
 84- 35, 392 c 92. 1 6, 398 B. Sect. 32. 
 
 The problem of form in imaginative literature ; that is, the 
 importance for good and evil of the tendency to imitate or throw 
 oneself into alien minds and objects. 
 
 84. 36. ' Narratives ' and ' form,' more literally, ' speech' 392 C 
 and ' speaking,' or ' tales ' and ' telling' ; more simply, ' so much 
 
 for the tales, and now let us consider the telling.' And in the 
 following line, ' What ought to be said and the mode of saying 
 it,' rather ' What ought to be said, and how it should be said.' 
 41. 'I do not understand.' The usual mark of a novel 
 and important distinction. No doubt Plato's treatment is 
 suggested by discussions current at the time, but he clearly 
 intends to indicate that the question of style as a matter of 
 ethical importance is new to the average Athenian. 
 
 85. 40. ' But when he delivers a speech in the character 0/393 B and 
 another man, etc., more literally, 'as being some one else, 
 
 then shall we not say that he, as much as possible, makes his 
 own speaking like to the person whom he has indicated as 
 about to speak ? ' We must remember that though Plato is
 
 98 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 speaking of literature, he has in mind chiefly a public of 
 hearers rather than readers. ' Style ' (literally ' speaking ') 
 includes, therefore, delivery as well as the dramatic element 
 in the written poem. 
 
 C 86. 4. ' And when one man assumes a resemblance,' etc., 
 more literally, 'Now to make oneself like another man in 
 voice or gesture (bearing) is to imitate him to whom one makes 
 oneself like.' These simple definitions must be carefully 
 noted, for they contain what is to Plato the essence of the 
 whole matter. 
 
 E 22. 'The priest came and prayed.' From here to the end 
 of the passage is an analysis of Iliad, i. 17-42, the speeches 
 being turned into oblique oration, so as to become mere 
 narrative. 
 
 394 C 87. 13. ' And is chiefly to be found in dithyrambic poetry.' 
 Lyrical poetry, that is to say, as the direct expression of the 
 poet's personality, comes under the head of pure ' recital.' 
 This is a suggestive meeting of extremes, that the poetry 
 which seems to us most restricted to mere feeling should 
 seem to Plato furthest from unreality. 
 
 24. ' This, then, was precisely what I meant,' etc. The real 
 point at issue in the problem ' hoiv ' things should be said, is 
 how far, and with what kind of exceptions, it is a sound 
 principle in poetry to aim at throwing oneself into alien 
 personalities and strange situations. 
 
 D 29. ' Whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our 
 city.' Adeimantus at last gets hold of the question, but only 
 from the outside. Socrates' answer, by which Plato gives a 
 plain hint to his interpreters (see 254. 529 and note), shows 
 that something more than this is at stake, viz., a fundamental 
 principle affecting the whole of life. ' As a vessel runs before 
 the wind,' more literally, ' whither the argument, like a wind, 
 may take us, thither we must go,' a beautiful expression of the 
 dialectic method in all its faith and freedom. 
 
 E 38. 'Ought our guardians to be apt imitators.' There 
 seems a sharp transition from the question ' is imitative poetry
 
 BOOK HI. 99 
 
 a good thing ? ' to the question ' are our ruling class to be 
 "imitators" or "given to imitation"?' which is discussed 
 from here onwards. We should be inclined to say that novel 
 reading or going to theatres may be a good thing, though it 
 would not be well for us to become novelists or actors. But 
 Plato, regarding the matter as one of principle, considers that 
 as we enter into the poet's work, we really subject ourselves 
 to the vicissitudes of impersonation which it includes. In 
 practice, too, Greek education through poetry involved sing- 
 ing and reciting, which gives the ' how to say things ' much 
 more effect than reading to oneself. The question, when thus 
 stated, is brought under the principle of division of labour 
 (see back, 55. 370). 
 
 88. i. The line of argument seems to be : Experience 394 E 
 shows that even within the province of art each main type of 
 imitation excludes every other; the same is the case with 
 occupations in the province of reality (25, 395 B); a for- 
 tiori, therefore, it will apply to the attempt to combine the 
 province of artistic impersonation with the duties of real life. 
 Of course the principle of division of labour, when thus 
 applied, must be understood to rest on the positively disquali- 
 fying effect of some occupations for others, not merely on the 
 want of time to learn two trades thoroughly. 
 
 30. ' That they may acquire consummate skill,' etc., 395 C 
 more lit., ' to be consummate artificers of freedom for their 
 commonwealth. ' 
 
 34. 'Or if they do imitate, let them imitate.' Imitation 
 cannot be excluded from life ; it is just because it is an all- 
 powerful influence that it needs such strict regulation and 
 direction. 
 
 38. ' Lest from the imitation they be infected with the 
 reality ' : cf. note on 67. 2 above, and 351. 606. 
 
 40. ' Imitations whether of bodily gestures,' etc. Compare D 
 Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 248. ' Imitation it enters into 
 the very fastnesses of character; and we, our souls, our- 
 selves, are for ever imitating what we see and hear the forms,
 
 100 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 the sounds which haunt our memories, our imagination. We 
 imitate, not only if we play a part on the stage, but when we 
 sit as spectators, while our thoughts follow the acting of 
 another, when we read Homer and put ourselves lightly, 
 fluently into the place of those he describes ; we imitate un- 
 consciously the line and colour of the walls around us, the 
 trees by the wayside, the animals we pet and make use of, 
 the very dress we wear.' The depth of this idea of imitation, 
 which Aristotle shares with Plato, is little understood by 
 modern critics of their aesthetic doctrine. 
 
 395 D 89. 2. 'We shall not permit those in whom we take an 
 
 interest to imitate a woman,' etc. We shall understand 
 much of this criticism better, if, in accordance with the wide 
 meaning assigned to ' imitation ' in the previous note, we apply 
 it to our own reading of novels and commonplace poetry, or 
 to our enjoyment of pictorial art simply for the story and the 
 sentiment. The theatre is no such living power to-day as in 
 Plato's time. 
 
 The disparaging reference to woman in this and many other 
 passages (see especially Phaedo, 60, 117, and contrast this 
 with the feeling of John, xix. 26) jars on the modern mind. 
 We should remember that Plato not only felt the evil of 
 women's condition but proposed the remedy. 
 
 396 C pO. 4. ' Will not be ashamed of this kind of imitation.' 
 
 He will throw himself into such characters as he would be 
 content to resemble, but not others, ' unless it be for mere 
 pastime' (17); contrast ' seriously ' (30). 
 
 397 A 27. 'The man who is not of this character.' On the 
 
 connection between the inferior mental elements and the 
 abundance of material for imitation, see 349. 22, 604 E. 
 
 29. ' In his narration' we should expect 'imitation,' which 
 some here substitute for the reading of most MSS. J.'s render- 
 ing is certainly self-contradictory, but D. and V. seem to treat 
 it rightly. Narrative is throughout a general term, including 
 simple narration and impersonation. 
 B 38. ' His style will either consist wholly of the imitation of
 
 BOOK III. 101 
 
 sounds and form,' more literally, ' his mode of speaking will 
 be wholly by way of imitation in sounds and gestures ' : com- . 
 pare above, 86. 4 and note. This paragraph is a piece of 
 furious satire. One who has given up all care for significance 
 and value in that which he makes himself resemble, will not 
 only reproduce any human frame of mind however senseless 
 or hysterical, but will employ the human voice to represent 
 mere animal and mechanical sounds. Probably all schools of 
 criticism are agreed, on one ground or another, that a mere 
 reproduction of trivial detail is a degraded form of art. 
 
 42. ' These, then, are the two kinds of style which I meant.' 
 (Kinds = Eide) The two ' modes of speaking ' are mainly 
 distinguished by the number and nature of the ' transitions,' 
 literally, 'changes,' 91. 4 and 9, 397 B and c, which they 
 respectively include. It is the ' variety ' and ' multiplicity ' of 
 the ' composite ' forms of art which Plato dreads. They 
 appear to him incompatible with the singleness and thorough- 
 ness appropriate to a true masculine and civic character. 
 And although in Plato's time, and far more in later periods, 
 there has been art of the very highest quality which is also of 
 the very highest complexity, yet the question of principle 
 which he raises still goes to the root of the matter. Is it, or 
 is it not, the purpose of art to represent for representation's 
 sake, so as to drag the mind through as many varieties as 
 possible of experience and emotion ? Or is it not true that 
 the highest art, however complex, remains master of its com- 
 plexity, and does not carry the mind aimlessly out of itself, 
 but rather unveils or expresses to it a greater and stronger 
 self? It is quite natural that Plato, coming first, should 
 realise the principle mainly in the simplest case, and assume 
 a hostile attitude to much which for us seems to meet the 
 spirit of his requirements. See Mr. Pater's chapter on ' Plato's 
 ^Esthetics ' in Plato and Platonism. 
 
 91. 20. 'While by far the most attractive to children,' etc. : 397 D 
 compare 132. 23, 4310. Women, children, and slaves are 
 as usual put on a level. It is plain that the correlative to
 
 102 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 what Plato has in mind could not be Shakespeare, Browning, 
 and Brahms, but rather the music-hall and the low-class novel. 
 398 B 92. 5. 'For the sake of our real good,' more literally, 'for 
 our profit.' There is, it might be maintained, a good deal of 
 cant about the danger of introducing ethical considerations 
 into aesthetic. A really substantive ethical requirement could 
 usually be sustained on gesthetic grounds, and the omission to 
 state it in aesthetic terms is not a very serious error except in 
 a modern philosophical treatise. It must be a poor work of 
 art for which we are not ' the better.' 
 
 Sect. 33. 92. 17, 398 096. 9, 401 A. 
 
 Melody and rhythm also are expressive of character and must 
 be controlled accordingly. 
 
 C 92. 27. 'I cannot this moment come to a satisfactory con- 
 clusion ' marks the analysis of musical expression as a new 
 departure. 
 
 D 3 1- ' Three parts the words, the harmony, and the rhythm.' 
 Jowett, ' the words, the melody, and the rhythm.' Nettleship, 
 as a rough equivalent, ' words, key, and time.' See Hellenica, 
 p. 114. It is clear that the ancient world had not what we 
 call ' harmony,' though this term is derived from the word here 
 used, which originally means a joint or fitting together. It 
 seems obvious that something is meant which was not so much 
 a melody as a characteristic of a class of melodies. ' Key ' 
 may suggest the sort of meaning required. 
 
 399 A and 93. 3 2. ' That particular harmony which will suitably repre- 
 sent the tones,' etc, literally, 'will suitably imitate.' It is 
 interesting to note the development of ' imitation ' proper into 
 expression or symbolism. Here Plato speaks of music which 
 would recall certain tones and accents of voice. In 1. 37, 
 ' another harmony, expressive of the feelings of,' the words 
 italicised are inserted by the translators. The construction is 
 elliptical, but I should suppose that that of the former sen- 
 tence runs on, so that here also we are dealing with music as
 
 BOOK III. 103 
 
 recalling the human voice. With the words (41) 'lending 
 himself/ a fresh construction begins, which seems to show 
 that the connection with ' tones and accents of is forgotten 
 or broken off. See below, 94-5. 400 A-E. 
 
 94. 6. ' Imitate the tones of ; he is still thinking of simple 399 C 
 imitation. 
 
 ii. 'A variety of strings.' Note on this page the numerous 
 terms indicating variety or multiplicity, as the element against 
 which war was to be made ; ' all harmonies ' ' many strings ' 
 ' many harmonies ' ' a variety of rhythms ' ; here a peculiar 
 word is used meaning parti-coloured, by which Plato often 
 expresses his aversion. See ' embroidered,' the same word, in 
 account of democracy, 288. 557. 
 
 94. 33. 'Purging the city,' see 58. 372 above. The city E 
 had no morality before it was diseased, but will not be good 
 until purged of its disease. Plato probably did not intend 
 this consequence, but it follows significantly from his de- 
 scription. 
 
 39. 'The natural rhythms of a well-regulated and manly 
 life ' : ' natural ' is an insertion, but perhaps convenient. In 
 saying that a certain ' time ' or rhythm is ' of,' or is natural to, 
 a certain type of life, we have got beyond the representation 
 of sound by sound. 
 
 95. 8. 'Which kinds of rhythm express which kinds of life.' 400 A 
 The translation conceals how the idea of imitation is being 
 pressed. Literally, ' which kinds of rhythm are imitations of 
 which kinds of life.' 
 
 23. 'For I cannot speak positively.' The demarcation C 
 between technical details and general principles of criticism is 
 indicated by the contrast between this expression and ' But 
 this point at least you can settle,' just below. Compare 67. 
 378-9, 'You and I are not poets,' etc. 
 
 28. ' Grace and awkwardness' are effects attaching to good D 
 and bad rhythm. 
 
 31. 'And good and bad rhythm are,' etc., i.e. attach to and 
 assume the quality of (literally, are made like to) good and
 
 104 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 bad modes of utterance (including what we call style and 
 delivery, compare 85. 40 above and note) ; and so do beauty 
 of ' harmony ' and the reverse. For meaning of ' harmony,' 
 see note on 92. 3 1 above. 
 
 39. ' The style and the words. Are they not determined 
 by the moral disposition of the soul ? ' Jowett, ' the temper of 
 the soul.' The Greek word translated by ' moral disposition ' 
 or ' temper ' is ' ethos.' ' Moral,' as normally understood by us, 
 is too narrow a term for ' ethos ' : a good or beautiful ' ethos ; 
 would imply much more than morality in our sense, as we 
 may see even from Plato's first rough sketch of the formation 
 of character in the opening of the present book. On the 
 other hand, however, ethos does not cover ' character ' or 
 1 individuality ' in the full modern sense. It implies some 
 approval or disapproval. The point is that both matter and 
 manner of poetic art are the symbol and utterance of the soul, 
 and (1. 41) the specifically musical qualities of song further 
 carry out the expressive idea of the ' style,' or form and mode 
 of utterance demanded by the thought. 
 
 96. i. 'Then good language and good harmony,' etc. 
 Summing up his series of connections, Plato concludes that 
 beauty in all the aspects of song words, key or melody, 
 and rhythm or time is ultimately the consequence and 
 expression of (literally, follows upon) a good character or dis- 
 position ; and this, as if to guard himself against the narrow- 
 ness of critics, he carefully explains to be 'a mind that in 
 good truth is rightly and beautifully framed in respect of its 
 controlling disposition' The words italicised are an attempt to 
 render the term ethos suitably to the general meaning of the 
 passage. On the whole passage note (a) the high symbolic 
 or expressive capacity attributed to music a view in which 
 Aristotle is thoroughly at one with Plato. This and analo- 
 gous discussions are the real working part of Plato's aesthetic 
 analysis, and though apt to be neglected in favour of more 
 poetical passages, such as the description of abstract beauty in 
 the Phaedrus, undoubtedly contain the germs of sound
 
 BOOK III. 105 
 
 aesthetic theory (ft) the extreme simplicity of the music to 
 which Plato is referring, and to which alone so certain and 
 general an influence can be ascribed. (See Nettleship in 
 Hellenica, p. 118. ' He assumes throughout that music always 
 implies words, and the whole subject of harmony, in its 
 modern sense, is absent from his consideration.') 
 
 96. 10, 401 A 99. 1 8, 403 c. Sect - 
 
 The same dependence of outward grace upon expression of 
 character, which Jias been traced in poetry and music, is also 
 exhibited in formative art and material objects generally. 
 Education through the eye, therefore, belongs to the training in 
 music, which is essentially a training in the love of beauty, and 
 has effects both on perception and on emotion. 
 
 96. ii. 'And such qualities'; here, as two lines above, 4 i A 
 ' qualities ' is inserted by the translators to explain a neuter 
 plural pronoun. The reference is to the outward and inward 
 qualities ' good harmony and grace,' etc., so far as they can be 
 understood of life and of visual form. The Greek ideas of 
 harmony and rhythm can to a great extent be thus under- 
 stood. Even ' style,' as we saw, includes gesture and personal 
 bearing. 
 
 ' Into painting and all similar workmanship.' Everything 
 that has form has expressiveness and therefore beauty or 
 ugliness. This inclusion of the minor ' arts of life ' shows the 
 width and thoroughness of Plato's conception of beauty. It 
 is with the ' higher ' or more strictly representative arts that he 
 finds the greatest difficulty. 
 
 20. 'Allied to and expressive of; the words in italics A 
 are, literally, 'imitations of.' Note how the meaning of 
 'imitation' has been extended since 93. 29, 399 A. 
 
 25. 'The likeness of a good moral character,' more B 
 literally, 'the likeness of the good disposition.' While frankly 
 admitting that Plato's judgment of art is cast more than we like
 
 106 COMPANION TO PLATWS REPUBLIC 
 
 in ethical form, we must not ascribe to him the whole narrow- 
 ness of our negative morality. Compare 95. 39, 400 D and note. 
 The word 'likeness,' or ' image,' with kindred terms, plays a very 
 important part in the Republic. Compare 97. 33, 402 B and 
 note. The account of life in the Republic is, in fact, con- 
 structed on the ascending scale of the ' Den,' Book vii. init. 
 Images of art and fiction, the facts of civic life, are followed 
 by abstract criticism which leads up to a concrete and ultimate 
 reality. 
 
 34. ' Among images of vice,' literally, ' badness,' the most 
 general term possible. Jowett, 'moral deformity.' The 
 context shows that the question is not primarily of excluding 
 representations of great passions or temptations, though 
 these, no doubt, would for the most part have to go, but in 
 the first instance of banishing the sordidness and vulgarity of 
 daily surroundings which actually do defile the mind, not by 
 great shocks, but, as'Plato says, little by little. I venture to 
 extract Jowett's translation of this famous passage. ' We 
 would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral 
 deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and 
 feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little 
 by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of cor- 
 ruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who 
 are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and 
 graceful then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid 
 fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything ; 
 and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye 
 and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and 
 insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness 
 and sympathy with the beauty of reason.' 
 
 401 D 96. 44. ' Imperceptibly from their earliest childhood ' ; this 
 implies the doctrine of moral education, common to Plato and 
 Aristotle, that feelings and habits have to be formed in 
 accordance with a principle which the pupil does not and 
 cannot as yet possess, in order that when he becomes capable 
 of seeing life as a whole, the principle may naturally come
 
 BOOK III. 107 
 
 home to him and he may have nothing to unlearn. Compare 
 97. 17, 402 A, and the epigrammatic statement, Aristotle's 
 Ethics, ii. 2, 1104, b. n, 'wherefore, as Plato says, they should 
 have been trained from their youth up to be pleased and 
 pained by what they ought, for this is the right education.' 
 
 'The true beauty of reason,' more literally, 'the beautiful 
 principle,' the principle which is such that itself, and any 
 embodiment of it, is beautiful. 
 
 97. 5. 'A musical education] rather, as above, 'nurture.' 
 The idea of proper nutriment for a living and growing thing, 
 expressed in the simile of the pasture just above, pervades 
 Plato's whole conception of education and environment in 
 their relation to the soul. See, for a striking instance, 207. 
 491. The conception of ' music ' has been expanded so as to 
 include all that appeals to the mind through the imagination 
 and sense-perceptions by way of expressiveness, that is, the 
 realm of beauty. 
 
 13. 'Will commend beautiful objects'; in this passage the 
 emphasis is on ' most just,' literally, ' rightly,' repeated four 
 lines down. Feeling is to be trained so as to be instinctively 
 ' right,' before the mind is capable of taking in a principle ; 
 and ' when reason comes,' when the principle is presented to 
 the mind, it will be welcome ' by the instinct of relationship,' 
 or, rather, ' because it comes home to ' the feeling thus 
 prepared. Cf. Aristotle's Ethics, i. 3 and 4. 
 
 25. ' Recognising the letters,' a striking simile for learn- 402 A 
 ing to distinguish in our surroundings elements of which we 
 know the value. 
 
 27. 'In either a small word or a great.' Perhaps, rather, as 
 Jowett, occupying ' a space large or small.' Compare above, 
 53- 3, 368 D. 
 
 32. ' The images of letters ' or their reflections ; this points 
 forward to the classification of grades of knowledge at the end 
 of Book vi., the allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book 
 vn. and the argument of Book x. The likenesses, or images, 
 of art and sensuous beauty, belong for Plato to the region of
 
 108 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 least reality, of dreams or shadows. Here, in fact, where he 
 seems to be reaching forward to the fullest conceivable import 
 of an education through sense and feeling, he assigns them a 
 higher value and connection with the realities which they 
 express than in any subsequent passage. ' The same art and 
 study ' : see following note. 
 
 402 B 40. ' Become truly musical.' The effect of ' music ' on 
 perception or cognition. We shall not be men of culture till 
 we are able to recognise the principles of goodness, 'both 
 themselves and their images,' that is, in actual life, and in 
 artistic representations of it or in instinctive feelings and 
 judgments. 'The same art and study.' Plato can hardly 
 mean that the ' principles ' fall within the sphere of ' music ' in 
 the sense in which he has described it. The continuation of 
 the passage seems to show that he has in mind the recogni- 
 tion of great qualities which is sufficient to produce enthusiasm 
 for them, not the theoretical explanation of them. We are to 
 learn to read the world truly, and not as ill-trained minds 
 do, all upside down, mistaking insolence for courage, or 
 prodigality for liberality. The training in right feelings and 
 right perception, through all forms of expressive art and 
 disciplined life under due guidance, is to bring the young 
 people up to a point at which they will readily recognise 
 genuine goodness in the actual world. 
 
 D 98. 9. ' Who combines the possession of moral beauty,' 
 more literally, ' in whom there is the coincidence of beautiful 
 dispositions (ethe, the term from which ' ethical ' is derived) in 
 his soul and (traits) in his appearance congruous and har- 
 monious with those, as partaking of the same pattern ' (mould 
 or type, the term used of the 'canons of theology'). The 
 term 'moral' introduced by Davies and Vaughan is too 
 modern. ' Traits ' is not in the Greek, ' congruous ' and 
 harmonious being neuter plurals. We are apt on reading the 
 translation to ask ourselves whether ' physical ' beauty, as we 
 understand it, can have real connection with ' moral ' beauty. 
 But the original does not assume the two opposites so definitely.
 
 BOOK III. 109 
 
 1 6. Those who combine most perfectly,' etc. ; this 
 repetition is not in the Greek, which merely says 'persons 
 as far as possible such like' (i.e. as described above). 
 The point insisted on is harmony of appearance with a 
 beautiful mind. 
 
 24. 'Has pleasure in excess,' etc. The influence ofE 
 'music' on desire and emotion, as previously on cognition. 
 Cf. IOI. 18, 404 E, and 123. 34-8, 425 A. Loyalty=the 
 spirit of lawfulness, is at the root of the true love of beauty 
 as disciplined by 'music.' 
 
 37. 'In a sober and harmonious temper,' lit, ' temperately 43 A. 
 and musically.' Temperance = safety or preservation of mind, 
 the state of one who keeps his head, opposed to madness or 
 excess of any kind, and is the second great cardinal virtue 
 of the Greeks by the side of fortitude or manliness. The 
 modern reader will observe that even the purest personal 
 affection cannot be identified, as seems here to be attempted, 
 with gesthetic emotion the 'love of the beautiful,' 99. 18. 
 The former must of course always contain a purely individual 
 element, however it may be reinforced by enthusiasm for the 
 beautiful qualities possessed by its object. Plato's theory of 
 the affections is necessarily truncated by the nature of the senti- 
 ment which for a Greek approached most nearly to chivalrous 
 or romantic feeling. But it remains true that beautiful quali- 
 ties and the recognition of them are essential to the highest 
 and most durable forms of affection, and that so far it assumes 
 the character which Plato here assigns it. 
 
 99. 1 8. 'The love of the beautiful.' This includes both 403 C 
 what we understand by a love of beauty as such, and a 
 training of the personal affections to attach themselves to 
 really admirable qualities, and assume a character correspond- 
 ing to that of their object. The two dispositions in question 
 undoubtedly reinforce each other, and even overlap, but 
 they can hardly be reduced to one. The modern idea of the 
 family gives the personal affections an independent basis and 
 justification.
 
 110 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 35. 99. 19, 403 c 107. 3 2 > 4* B. 
 
 Gymnastic, or training of spirit and physique for service in life. 
 
 99. 28. 'A good soul will by its excellence render the body 
 as perfect,' etc. Modern doubts concerning the influence of 
 soul on body do not affect the point of such discussions as 
 these. Plato is merely contrasting ideas as to the aim of 
 education with mere prescriptions for bodily health and vigour. 
 
 403 D 35. ' General principles,' 'types,' the word used for 'canons 
 
 of theology ' above. 
 
 404 A 100- 4. ' Then will the habit of body,' etc. The critique 
 
 of Athleticism and Valetudinarianism which occupies a great 
 part of this section is still of value, and displays Plato's pro- 
 found and direct views of life, democratic in the highest sense 
 of the word, in their full robustness. Compare the excellent 
 comment in Nettleship's essay, Hellenica, p. 130. Aristotle has 
 much to say on the errors of athleticism in Greece. Compare 
 Newman, Aristotle's Politics, vol. i. p. 357 : 'Aristotle would, 
 however, reform " Gymnastic." Some, he says, of the states 
 which paid most attention to the education of the young, 
 gave them a physical training fit rather for professional athletes 
 than for future citizens, fatal to beauty of form and physical 
 growth, fatal also to fitness for political activity and to health 
 and vigour. The Lacedaemonians also erred, though in a 
 different way ; their system produced not gluttonous, sleepy 
 athletes, but fierce, wild, wolf-like men; for courage, they 
 held, went with this temper, which Aristotle denies.' Accord- 
 ing to the scheme of studies in Book vii. below, the 
 'gymnastic' training was to be pursued by itself from the 
 age of 17 or 18 to 20 (264. 537). This provision probably 
 indicated the nature of the training in question, for these 
 were the years in which a young Athenian discharged military 
 or patrol duty within the borders of Attica, as a foretaste of 
 the full military service which was one great aspect of citizen 
 life. Thus we are not here to think merely of ' gymnastics ' 
 with ropes and bars or of ' athletic sports,' but also of drill,
 
 BOOK III. Ill 
 
 riding, hunting, the practice of arms, and some limited share 
 in actual campaigning. 
 
 14. 'A better combined regimen.' Jowett, 'a finer sort of 
 training.' ' Our public schools and universities have no lack 
 of the sleepy and brutalised athlete, who probably could 
 not serve on a campaign or a geographical expedition.' 
 Nettleship, p. 133. 
 
 26. Plato's humorous deference to the authority of Homer 404 B 
 and Asclepius serves as a satire on the uncritical use of poeti- 
 cal ' texts ' in controversy, just as scriptural texts are used to- 
 day, and throws much light on the prevailing misuse of poetry 
 against which his denial of its moral value was a just protest. 
 
 101. i. ' Variety,' see 15 below. Compare above, 94. 38,0 
 399 E, where the same word is used when speaking of rhythm. 
 
 12.' That kind of music and singing': compare 94. 20, 399 D. E 
 
 18. 'As in music it was productive of temperance': 
 compare 98. 24, 402 E and note. 
 
 22. 'Law and physic.' These phenomena of civilisation 405 A 
 are, like the guardian class themselves, introduced in relation 
 to a necessary evil (Cf. 6o-6l. 373-5) and then made subservi- 
 ent to an ideal end. (See 107- 410 A below.) Thus Plato seems 
 to set an example of neither denying the historical necessity 
 which generates civilisation, nor acquiescing in all that is, as 
 right. He rather tries to track out and seize 'the soul of 
 goodness in things evil.' 
 
 32. 'A strong proof of defective education': cf. i Corin- B 
 thians vi. 1-7. 
 
 102. 5. 'Illness incidental to,' etc., probably as Jowett, C 
 simply 'epidemic.' 
 
 9. 'The clever sons of Asclepius,' i.e. the physicians. D 
 They invent out-of-the-way names for illnesses out of polite- 
 ness, not liking to tell their patients that they eat too much 
 and work too little. Cf. 125. 426. 
 
 13. 'Because at Troy.' (See Iliad, xi. 505-641.) Plato E 
 seems to be referring from memory. The wounded man in 
 question is Machaon, himself a physician or descendant of
 
 112 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Asclepius. Eurypylus had also been wounded, but is not 
 treated in the way described. 
 
 406 A 24. 'Which waits upon diseases' 'attendant.' All this 
 
 is a paraphrase, quite correct, of the meaning of a single 
 adjective agreeing with 'medicine' and governing 'disease.' 
 Try, 'which ministers to the disease.' 
 
 27. 'Compound of physic and gymnastic': 'gymnastic' 
 chiefly in the shape of ' training ' or diet. We know the evils 
 of valetudinarianism in a wealthy and leisured class, but on 
 the other hand we attach more importance to care for the 
 weak, and have more experience of a great mind in a sickly 
 body, than Plato seems to recognise. See below, 213. 496, 
 what Plato himself says of the 'bridle of Theages.' The 
 independence of ' mind ' and ' body,' even if they are but two 
 modes of organic activity, is practically more familiar to us 
 than to Plato, not less ; and in this respect, as in some others, 
 the famous criticism applies that he was ' not ideal enough.' 
 
 40. ' It was not because Asclepius did not know ' : again the 
 B humorous parody of didactic and allegorical interpretation. 
 Compare on allegory 67. 3 78 above. 
 
 103. i. ' Each has a work assigned to him,' the principle 
 C of true ' asceticism ' ; this word is derived from a Greek 
 word which means training or practice in some art or calling. 
 On the ' work,' compare 37. 353, and 55- 37- 
 
 3. 'A fact which we perceive,' the passage below this shows 
 how superficially Plato is regarded if his views are stamped as 
 ' aristocratic ' in any current sense. So far as definite service 
 to society is concerned, the workman's life rather sets the 
 ideal than lags behind. 
 
 24. ' Is it because he had a work to do.' In this passage 
 
 407 A the common feeling about rich and poor is so plainly and 
 
 baldly set down that one may almost fail to observe the irony 
 of it, which seems rather to belong to the facts than to be put 
 in by Plato. 
 
 33. ' Practise virtue,' not virtue in our very specialised moral 
 or ecclesiastical meaning, but excellence or merit of some
 
 BOOK III. 113 
 
 positive kind, e.g. as a soldier or magistrate or man of science. 
 (See examples given below, 104. i and 2, 407 B and c.) 
 
 104. 25. ' Thinking medical treatment ill bestowed.' Tne E 
 respect for life as such seems to lie outside Plato's horizon, 
 and while it unquestionably is a gain to be highly sensitive 
 to the claim of the weak and the latent possibilities of all 
 humanity, yet Plato's feeling would find an analogy in that of 
 many men to-day who prefer to die in harness rather than 
 drag on a few years more in idleness, and also in the attention 
 paid to the problem of euthanasia. For some striking 
 observations on hereditary disease in relation to marriage, see 
 Jowett, Introduction to Republic, cxci. 
 
 105. ii. 'The tragedians.' It will be seen from the 408 B 
 context that Plato is really criticising the popular habit of 
 construing poetry as doctrine, almost as much as the matter 
 
 of what the poets say. He has made this false criticism the 
 object of his irony throughout. 
 
 1 8. 'If he was the son of a god,' etc. : compare 83. 391. C 
 22. 'Ought we not to have good physicians in the 
 city?' (See note on ioi. 22, 405 A above.) Plato closes 
 the discussion on bodily training by referring once more to 
 the equivocal good of such training in its most artificial shape, 
 and tries to show in the case of medicine, and in that of its 
 correlative, punishment (a remedial and preventive view of 
 which is thus implied), how the doubtful growths of civilisa- 
 tion may be purified and brought to co-operate towards the 
 true aim of a commonwealth. 
 
 32. 'You spoke of two dissimilar things.' The distinction D 
 here insisted on between bodily and mental evil is superfi- 
 cially interpreted if we take it to contradict the large con- 
 ception of mind or life which Plato shares with Aristotle. 
 The difference between disease and wickedness is not 
 explained away, whatever we suppose to be the relation 
 between body and mind. Compare 355. 609. Bodily 
 disease, even if traced upwards into the region of what we 
 call mind, seems to correspond to mental disease rather than 
 
 H
 
 114 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 to wickedness. Plato does not in these passages take note of 
 this latter distinction. 
 
 34. 'Physicians, it is true.' A certain experience of ill 
 health may be advantageous to the physician by helping him 
 to sensitiveness and insight. 
 
 E 106. 2. 'A juror.' Perhaps 'judge' would be a better 
 translation. The Athenian ' dicast,' though one of a body 
 of some hundreds and therefore not feeling the individual 
 responsibility which we associate with the office of judge, had 
 to do for himself the work of a judge so far as it was done 
 at all. There was no president of the court to control and 
 direct him. 
 
 4090 22. 'Knowledge, not personal experience.' The whole of 
 this passage is an important gloss on Socrates' identification of 
 goodness and knowledge, and at the same time points out the 
 true relation between genuine and spurious ' knowledge of the 
 world,' by which Socrates' doctrine is essentially justified. 
 
 D 34. 'Shews himself no better than a fool.' It is an old 
 remark that a really shrewd man will always believe in honesty. 
 43. ' For vice can never know both itself and virtue,' etc. 
 Thus goodness, though not restricted to knowledge of the 
 good, retains the intellectual superiority which Socrates 
 claimed for it. It knows the whole, while badness is only 
 compatible with knowledge of a part, and therefore, we should 
 add, that part itself cannot be rightly known. Because it 
 does not know both itself and goodness, vice cannot truly 
 know even itself. 
 
 E 107. 6. ' Then will you not establish in your city ' : 
 compare note on 105. 22, 4080. Even if the remedial and 
 preventive theory of punishment is inadequate, it is still a 
 great conception that medical science and the administration 
 of justice should co-operate towards the extinction of bodily 
 and mental defectiveness throughout the community. We 
 are only beginning to grasp the bearings of such an idea, as 
 for example in the provision of judicially sanctioned treatment 
 for inebriates, or of special institutions for other vicious or
 
 BOOK III. 115 
 
 afflicted classes. Of course this policy, according as it is 
 handled, may tend to reduce or to multiply the defective classes. 
 27. ' His object will be rather to stimulate the spirited 
 element of his nature ' : compare 99. 18, 403 c above. 
 There it is pointed out that the mind, or the intelligence, has 
 the task of directing the training of the body, but here we 
 find that the training of the body is not meant to recognise 
 it, so to speak, independently, but constitutes a method of 
 reaction upon the mind through the formation of bodily 
 habits and the discipline of impulses associated with them. 
 By comparing 100. 4, 404 A and note, it will be seen that 
 body and mind are not simply two opposites, on the same 
 level, but that subordinating body to mind means subor- 
 dinating it to a comprehensive purpose in life, and avoiding 
 the onesidedness which in Aristotle's judgment made the 
 physical training of most Greek states a failure. 
 
 107. 3 2 > 4io B no. 9, 412 A. Sect. 36. 
 
 The joint aim of ' Music ' and ' Gymnastic ' to train the 
 cultured and manly man, who alone is in the full sense 
 ' musical,' or a harmonious nature. 
 
 38. ' They introduce both mainly for the sake of the soul ' : C 
 contrast 64. 27, 376. The suggestion made eleven lines 
 above is reaffirmed and developed as the leading principle of 
 education. The actual body, the muscular and organic 
 system, must indeed be made serviceable and not unservice- 
 able, and so 'in a secondary way,' 109. 38, 411 E, body as 
 such is the object of training in sport and arms. But the 
 main point is the effect upon character. 
 
 108. 5. 'The softness and gentleness which mark the D 
 other,' etc. (See above, 63. 375-6.) The ' philosophic ' aspect 
 of the mind is here still regarded as an affectionate and 
 sensitive tendency ; its moral relation as controlling desire, 
 and its intellectual aspect as the organ of science, are not yet 
 fully developed. It is noteworthy that the hardness and
 
 116 COMPANION TO FLAWS REPUBLIC 
 
 coldness of intellectualism, which is so familar an idea to us, 
 does not seem to suggest itself to Plato. 
 
 41 1 A 26. 'And where this harmony exists the soul is both 
 temperate and brave.' Courage or manliness is throughout 
 the excellence of the spirited part, but in the later discussion 
 not temperance but wisdom is the excellence specially 
 corresponding to the philosophic part, temperance being the 
 harmony in which spirit and appetite alike recognise the 
 sovereignty of the reason. Here, too, it would seem that 
 neither the philosophic nor the spirited element can be 
 brought to a due ' pitch ' without involving a definite tension 
 in the other of course they are not really separable and 
 music at any rate has immediate action on the ' spirit ' (32. ff.), 
 though altogether in the way of ' softening,' which does 
 not seem a necessary consequence. Compare 93. 398-9. 
 ' Gymnastic ' appears to have only an indirect action on the 
 philosophic element ; i.e. the principle of music and the 
 philosophic element are already regarded as representing the 
 whole, or the harmony and controlling law of the mind. 
 E 109. 35. 'To correct, then, these two exclusive tem- 
 peraments,' literally, 'For these two (mental elements) I 
 should say that heaven had bestowed two arts on mankind, 
 viz., music and gymnastic for the spirited and the philosophical 
 (elements), not for soul and body] etc. Davies and Vaughan 
 seem to think that Plato is referring to the cross actions, direct 
 or indirect, of the two 'arts,' viz., 'music' on 'spirit' and 
 'gymnastic' on 'the philosophic element,' and the context 
 of the last page, with the order of the words italicised, gives 
 some support to the idea. It is strongly supported by 
 Timaeus, 88 c : ' And therefore the mathematician or any one 
 else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual 
 pursuit, must allow his body to have due exercise and practise 
 gymnastic ; and he who is careful to fashion the body should 
 in turn impart to the soul its proper motions, and should 
 cultivate music and all philosophy.' (Jowett.) At least he 
 is urging that a ' music ' such as to include a right use of
 
 BOOK III. 117 
 
 ' gymnastic ? is necessary for the right training of either side of 
 the mind. (See 108. 5, 410 D.) It follows from this that the 
 martial side of literature and song is not enough by itself to 
 develop bravery ; a habit of action is needed as well. Thus 
 the two sides of education acquire something like an analogy 
 to theory and practice. For the complete conception of the 
 whole mind as organised under the reason, compare 327. 
 586-7, see no. 3, 412 A, and compare the expression 
 'philosophy being the highest music,' i.e. embodiment of law 
 and harmony, Phaedo, 61 A. 
 
 110. 9. ' Such an officer will be quite indispensable.' 412 A 
 As in the moral censorship of poetry, so in the supervision of 
 education, Plato crudely symbolises his sense of a great need 
 by proposing to entrust certain authority to one or more 
 officials. It is quite fair, in seeking the core of his ideas, to 
 treat such a proposal as mere form belonging to the time, and 
 to regard as a partial fulfilment of Plato's suggestion the 
 thought and care bestowed on the educational problem to-day 
 not only but a host of officials, but by the best heads among 
 men of letters and of science. 
 
 110. 10, 412 B end of Book in. Sect. 37. 
 
 Selection of those who are to serve as soldiers and as rulers, 
 and the laws of this order in outline. 
 
 110. 10. 'Outlines' 'why should one enter into detail.' 4 12 B 
 ' Outlines ' moulds or canons, literally ' types,' as in account 
 of theology. Plato's reliance on education and the spirit of 
 the laws as against detailed enactment is very remarkable. 
 Compare especially 124. 425. A reservation must be made on 
 this account, when we speak of the apparent lack of develop- 
 ment in society as he conceives it. 
 
 20. ' Which of the persons so educated.' The ' first educa- B 
 tion ' is criticised, 244. 521-2, and the mode of selection 
 further described, and some matters in the education sup- 
 plemented, 262 ff., 535 ff. These comments very probably
 
 118 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 represent a view adopted by Plato at a later time. But we may 
 assume that the ' three R's,' which he there insists on, were 
 never meant to be altogether omitted. Formation of char- 
 acter, however, is for him as for Robert Owen the chief point 
 in education. (See Nettleship, Hellenica^ p. 103.) 
 412 C 23. 'Rulers must be the elderly men, and the subjects the 
 younger.' The relation of these two bodies to each other and 
 to the rest of the community is not precisely set out, but the 
 process of selection described here and in Book vn. implies 
 clearly that the rulers will be simply those who, having in 
 youth served as soldiers, have distinguished themselves in this 
 and other public service and so come to the front in middle 
 life and old age. The rejected and less distinguished 
 would have to find posts of minor importance, as in actual 
 life. Nothing is yet said about women, and there is no sign 
 that the whole society is to share even in "the first steps of 
 education, but the conception might readily be expanded in 
 this sense. (See note on 114. 8, 415 A ff.) 
 
 28. ' Are not the best agriculturists those who are most 
 agricultural ? ' The repetition of the word in an adjectival 
 form as in ' guardians,' ' most guardianlike,' just below, refers 
 to the doctrine of special function rooted in individual nature. 
 ' Capable ' in the translation is mere paraphrase. 
 D 40. ' Whose interest he regards as identical with his own.' 
 See this idea expanded, 171. 462 ff. The identity of interest 
 between the individual and society may be taken as due either 
 to the narrowing of the social purpose, or to the widening of 
 the individual purpose ; in the former case it is mechanical, in 
 the latter moral. We shall comment on Plato's view at a 
 later point. 
 
 III. 5. 'Have done what they thought advantageous to 
 the state.' This is the first glimpse we get of the moral con- 
 tent involved in the law of function. It occurs four times on 
 this and the following page. ' State ' (Palis) would be better 
 rendered by 'society' or the commonwealth.' We must not think 
 chiefly of the government when we speak of ' Polis.' Morality
 
 BOOK III. 119 
 
 at this stage is considered as purely social ; the goodness of a 
 good citizen, trained in the best habits and purified traditions 
 of his race and his community. In Books v. to vn. this idea 
 is revised, and referred to something more fundamental. 
 
 10. 'Tenacious guardians of this conviction.' The whole E 
 passage which follows (compare also the account of courage, 
 130. 429) is of great psychological interest as interpreting the 
 Socratic view of wrongdoing by a ' forgetful abandonment ' of 
 principle due to moral causes, viz., the 'witchcraft' of 
 pleasure and fear, or the ' force ' of pain or grief. This is 
 quite in accordance with the importance which modern 
 psychologists attach to attention in moral action. Compare 
 for the play on the word guardian such a saying as ' He who 
 would rule others must rule himself.' 
 
 15. 'Opinions appear to me.' The distinction between 
 science and Opinion (or Seeming) has not yet been made (see 
 close of Book v.), but the use of the word Opinion at the 
 present stage is probably intentional, as indicating notions 
 implanted by education, but not yet tested and established 
 either by experience of life, or by profound theory. Plato 
 would not admit that Science, i.e. genuine concrete knowledge, 
 could be thus twisted and obscured. 
 
 1 8. 'By an involuntary act.' The form of Socrates' doctrine, 413 A 
 that vice is ignorance and therefore involuntary, is retained, 
 but the interpretation given greatly alters its bearing. Com- 
 pare 313. 577 on the absence of freedom in the soul of the 
 voluptuary. 
 
 24. ' Is it not an evil thing to be the victim of a lie ? ' Com- 
 pare 72. 2, 382 above on the lie in the soul. 
 
 27. ' When his opinions represent things as they are,' more 
 literally, ' when he opines what is' ; ' things ' being inserted as 
 explained above on 5. 18, 330 E, to fill out the neuter plural 
 which in Greek needs no substantive. The translators' 
 phrase (also in Jowett) conveys a picture, which nothing in 
 the Greek suggests, of our thought as copying a world of 
 objects separate from it and complete without it.
 
 120 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 B 35. ' Theft practised on them ' ; lose something without 
 knowing it, i.e. by a purely intellectual oversight. 
 
 40. ' Violence done to them ' by a present pain. The 
 phenomena of self-sophistication seem to be referred to 
 below, so here we are to think of actual yielding to pain in 
 contradiction to principle. We should not call this a change 
 of opinion, and it is noteworthy that Plato distinguishes it 
 from the strictly intellectual process mentioned above. At the 
 same time, it certainly involves an intellectual change, an 
 alteration of attention. 
 
 413 C 43. ' Bewitched ' by pleasure (present and expected seem 
 
 not to be distinguished) or expectation of evil. This is the 
 field of self-deception, which ' changes opinion ' for the most 
 part in its concrete form, not persuading us that ' drinking is 
 good ' but that 'the act proposed is not drinking in the objec- 
 tionable sense.' Plato and Aristotle so far retain the essence 
 of the Socratic view that they consider all action to aim at 
 something taken to be good, and therefore all immorality 
 to include an element of intellectual error. 
 
 D and E 112. 23. 'Objects of terror,' 'scenes of pleasure.' Hints like 
 these help us to escape from the false air of negation which 
 surrounds Plato's portrayal of life, merely owing to our in- 
 capacity to fill up his abstract scheme. His public, of course, 
 had before them the glowing picture of the Greek world, of 
 which all that was not banished would be understood to sur- 
 vive. Mr. Pater has well insisted on this point. The young 
 men are to see something of life, both in war and adventure, 
 and in society, and their career will be made or marred by 
 their bearing under these conditions. 
 
 E 32. ' Most useful to themselves and the state,' the fourth 
 mention of this principle or moral content in these two pages. 
 For 'state' again read ' commonwealth.' 
 
 414 A 34. ' Being put to the proof as a child, a youth, and a man.' 
 
 This is the general rule of life in all societies, and there is no 
 reason for giving it a highly artificial form in our interpreta- 
 tion of Plato, by thinking of any conventional probation or
 
 BOOK III. 121 
 
 fantastic rules of an order. It was held essential to good 
 administration in a Greek state that its numbers should admit 
 of all citizens knowing each other by reputation ; and a man's 
 ' record ' would determine his advancement with them, just as, 
 to a great degree, with ourselves. 
 
 113. i. 'Give to these the name of perfect guardians.' 414 B 
 Apparently at the age of fifty. Compare 268. 540, and see 
 note on HO. 23, 412 c above. 
 
 1 6. ' A Phoenician story,' ' a miner's story ' : Mr. Pater. C 
 34. ' The earth their real mother.' The Athenians thought E 
 themselves indigenous, sprung from earth-born parents. 
 
 114. 8. ' You are all related to one another,' and therefore 415 A 
 have the same general type of nature, and a workman's child 
 
 may turn out a great general or statesman. This passage 
 seems to assume unity of race, and to exclude any foreign 
 slave-element. 
 
 1 6. 'If a child be born in their class,' etc. A notable 
 passage. Here again compare note 110. 9, 412 A; we should 
 not make much of the mechanical or authoritative mode of 
 selection, or the apparent absence of educational means for 
 enabling a workman's child to show its powers. If it were 
 worth while to speculate, the educational system could easily 
 be conceived as extending to all in proportion to their 
 capacity, and as forming the engine of selection. Compare 
 110. 23, 412 c, and Timaeus, 19 A (in the brief abstract of the 
 Republic with which the latter dialogue begins). ' And you 
 remember how we said that the children of the good parents 
 were to be educated, and the children of the bad secretly dis- 
 persed among the inferior citizens ; and while they were all 
 growing up the rulers were to be on the lookout, and to bring 
 up from below in their turn those who were worthy, and 
 those among themselves who were unworthy were to take the 
 place of those who came up ? ' (Jowett). It is enough, how- 
 ever, that Plato states the principle. It has been well re- 
 marked that even in our democratic days there is a selection 
 by experts crowning that by the popular vote. The latter
 
 122 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 can give a man his chance, but it can hardly maintain him 
 . in leading circles if he is found wanting by his fellows there. 
 
 415 D 29. 'But I think their sons and the next generation.' A 
 
 two-edged jest. First, in the context of a legend which more 
 or less caricatures the current Athenian belief (the word 
 rendered ' children of the soil,' literally, ' earth-born,' below, 
 was an epithet of Erechtheus, the mythical ancestor of the 
 Athenians. See Herodotus^ viii. 55), it implies Plato's usual 
 humorous attitude towards religious mythology, and secondly 
 it points to the real importance of ideas which may be con- 
 veyed by education even in admittedly mythical shape. Com- 
 pare the adoption of a new set of eponymous heroes ( = patron 
 saints) by the Athenian people for the ' demes ' or territorial 
 units instituted by Kleisthenes ; and again, think of the in- 
 fluence of antiquity and tradition in any locality upon resi- 
 dents whose connection with the place is, in fact, quite 
 recent. 
 
 E 115. 2,4, 7. 'Sleeping places' (literally, 'beds'; Jowett, 
 ' dwellings,' which seems to miss the point). 'Houses.' Note 
 the simplicity with which Plato leads up to the asceticism 
 demanded of his 'aristocracy.' 'They must have somewhere 
 to sleep, and must even be protected from the weather ! ' 
 ' Houses, you mean.' ' Why, no, not just what you call houses, 
 i.e. centres of money-making and expenditure.' ' Of moneyed 
 men ' (9) should be rather ' connected with money-making ' ; 
 it is explained by 116. 3,416 D ' storehouse '; 'strong-room' 
 or ' safe ' as we might say. Spartan experience showed 
 according to Aristotle that avarice and extravagance could not 
 be rooted out as long as the household was uncontrolled. 
 Newman, Introduction to Politics, 176. 
 
 416 B 28. ' It is not worth while ' ; better Jowett, ' I cannot be so 
 
 confident.' There is already a reserve as to the adequacy 
 of the first education. 
 
 D 116. 3. 'A dwelling or storehouse': compare for the full 
 significance of this 275. 32, 548 A, which evidently alludes to 
 the experience of Sparta.
 
 BOOK III. 123 
 
 24 ' Whenever they come to possess lands and houses and 417 A 
 money.' It is to such conceptions as this that Hegel's com- 
 ment applies, that Plato, so far from being too ideal, was in 
 fact not ideal enough, because he did not find room for indi- 
 viduality, which is an essential element of all that is rational. 
 See Introduction, Section iv. All this arrangement only refers 
 to the soldiers and guardians.
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 Sect. 38. Beginning of Book iv. 120. 3, 422 A. 
 
 The conditions imposed on warriors and rulers justified by a 
 characteristic conception of the general happiness, and in some 
 degree extended to other classes. 
 
 420 A 117. 22. 'Let us suppose these to be included in the 
 indictment.' Plato's readiness to heighten the objection is 
 meant as a clue to the conception of happiness about to be 
 propounded. He will not shirk the antithesis between indi- 
 vidual enjoyment and the universal purpose, but, for the sake 
 of argument, is quite willing to emphasise it. 
 B 28 ff. ' It would not surprise us if even this class whole state 
 as happy as it can be made.' He does not really think that 
 opportunities for private enjoyment form happiness even for 
 those who have them (compare note on 119. n, 421 c), yet he 
 does not rest his case on this, but on a conception of the general 
 happiness, or, more strictly, of the happiness of the whole com- 
 monwealth. Compare Il8. 4 ff., 420 C-E. The entire passage, 
 especially the simile of the statue with the words immediately 
 following it ' attach to our guardians (such a happiness) as will,' 
 etc., should be compared with the connection between ' happi- 
 ness,' 'work,' and ' proper excellence ' at the close of Book i. A 
 modern will object at once with Aristotle, Politics, ii. 5, ' The 
 city cannot be happy as a whole unless all or most, or at least 
 some of its members, possess the happiness. For being happy 
 
 124
 
 BOOK IV. 125 
 
 is not like being an even number ; the whole may be an even 
 number when none of the parts are, but with happiness this is 
 impossible. But if the guardians are not happy, who are ? ' 
 It is plain that Plato courts this objection and intends to deny 
 that the happiness of the whole is an aggregate of the private 
 enjoyments of its members, while at the same time he claims 
 that by a necessary connection the happiness of the whole 
 would involve the greatest possible happiness of all the indi- 
 viduals composing it. The ' whole commonwealth ' is for him 
 that in which the individual first becomes what he has it in 
 him to be, and develops the capacity of satisfaction as a 
 strictly human being ; and therefore the happiness of this 
 whole is the life thus constituted in which the parts preserve 
 their relation to it, and is utterly different in kind from the 
 aggregate happinesses of all the individuals composing it, so far 
 as by an abstraction these can be considered merely as recipi- 
 ents of private enjoyment. Such an aggregate Plato explicitly 
 denies to be what he means by the happiness of the whole 
 (ll8. 27, 420 E, 'Give not such advice to us'), not merely 
 because it is impossible, but because it contradicts the content 
 the station, work, or function- which alone expresses the 
 individual's nature in his membership of the whole. ' Happi- 
 ness,' therefore, or ' wellbeing,' is here as in Aristotle a pro- 
 blematic term, standing for the truly desirable end which is 
 presupposed by current language, but whose real nature can 
 only be ascertained by philosophic analysis. It is here 
 practically equivalent to 'the common good.' 
 
 Il8. 1 6. 'Whether, by giving each part what properly 430 D 
 belongs to it, we make the whole beautiful.' A statue may 
 be strictly speaking beautiful as a whole, but a city cannot 
 strictly speaking be happy as a whole. See last note. Yet it 
 is quite likely that in assenting to this antithesis we shall go 
 further wrong than if we challenged it. Plato's comparison 
 points to the way in which lives enter into one another. Any 
 recognised sore in a society may fairly be said to prevent the 
 society as a whole from being happy, i.e. each person, so far
 
 126 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 as he identifies himself with society, adopts this misery as his 
 own. There is nothing specially aesthetic in the comparison 
 of the statue the subordination of part to whole is not 
 confined to aesthetic objects, though well exemplified by 
 them. 
 
 421 B lip- i. 'Something which is not a state.' Just as the part 
 ceases to be a part if it loses its function (potter to be potter, 
 ruler to be ruler, and the like), so the whole ceases to be a 
 whole, the commonwealth therefore to be a commonwealth. 
 C 8. ' The best possible workmen at their own occupation ' ; 
 as ' artificers of freedom for their country,' 88. 30, 395 c. 
 
 10. ' Permitting each class to partake of as much happiness 
 as the nature of the case allows to it.' More lit., ' as nature 
 allows to it,' i.e. primarily its own nature, as expressed in its 
 capacity for citizen functions. Compare 327. 12, 587 A below, 
 for this same fundamental notion of Plato and Aristotle, that 
 the truest harmony permits what is the only sound satis- 
 faction of the parts, applied to the three elements of the 
 mind, as here to the three classes in the state to which 
 they correspond. As the present passage shows, Plato would 
 hardly pledge himself that in a true harmony each part gets 
 the intensest pleasure of which it is capable, but only that 
 it gets the most real or reliable satisfaction. The principle 
 is that a part which is in contradiction with the whole is in 
 contradiction with itself. If therefore we put the modern 
 objection stated above in a higher form, viz., ' Is the whole 
 system liberally enough conceived, i.e. so as to afford the 
 best possible life to all its parts ? ' this is a point of fact on 
 which Aristotle would perhaps have decided against Plato 
 (see Newman, Introduction to Politics, 427); but the truth 
 about the relation in principle of the individual's enjoy- 
 ment to the common welfare would not be affected by the 
 answer. 
 
 17. ' The other craftsmen.' 'Both in Aristotle's state and 
 in Plato's the motives which play so large a part in the state 
 as we know it are to lose their power. The quest of wealth
 
 BOOK IV. 127 
 
 is permitted only to the third class in Plato's state, and even 
 in their case only within certain limits. Aristotle hopes to 
 bring all his citizens to see that wealth is but a means to 
 higher things, and to abandon its unlimited and irrational 
 pursuit.' Newman, Introduction to Politics, 429. 
 
 22. 'A potter after he has grown rich.' This seems 10421 D 
 imply that money-making is the only conceivable aim of 
 industry. The apparent crudeness of Plato's view comes 
 here, as frequently, from his simple attention to the broad 
 facts, neglecting all refinements and reservations. Wealthy 
 men may be devoted students or great artists, or industrial 
 leaders or inventors, but on the whole if we look at classes of 
 men, wealth distracts people from a vocation. Plato antici- 
 pates the New Testament saying about those 'who have 
 riches.' We lose his perspective unless we bear in mind that 
 his is not the vulgar argument for restricting wealth to an 
 ' upper ' class. His ' upper ' class is propertyless. His lower 
 class alone are allowed some wealth, we may say, ' because of 
 the hardness of their hearts,' which helps to explain his view. 
 Even they are not to be allowed enough to distract them. 
 
 120. i. 'Wealth, I replied, and poverty'; the relation of 422 A 
 means to end, or instruments to function, is the key to the 
 attitude of Plato and Aristotle on this question throughout. 
 
 120. 4, 422 A 127. 6, 427 c. Sect. 39. 
 
 Strength of the state dependent on its unity, which rests finally 
 on the ' music ' or sense of law in which the citizens are nur- 
 tured, and without which legislative reform is mere political 
 valetudinarianism. 
 
 120. 37. 'No use of gold and silver,' a reminiscence of D 
 Sparta : compare also close of Book in. Sparta, though she 
 had a valuable territory, undoubtedly escaped much hostility 
 through her lack of commercial interests, which were the 
 secret both of the greatness of imperial Athens and of the 
 feuds which led to her fall. The Spartans had always been
 
 128 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 regarded as trained soldiers, against whom all others were 
 mere amateurs. Plato is anxious to master the secret of a 
 city's strength both within and without. See Pater, Plato and 
 Platonism, 218. 
 
 422 E 121. 8. ' Some grander name,' more literally, ' by some 
 
 bigger name.' 
 
 ii. 'The city of the poor.' Such language suggests to us 
 a class either destitute or inadequately maintained, and no 
 doubt there was such a class at Athens in the fourth century 
 B.C., though not all the 12,000 deported in 322 B.C. belonged 
 to it. See Grote, chapter 95. The question of pauperism 
 attracted Aristotle's attention (Politics, i. 5) and clearly was 
 to some extent before Plato's mind (compare 285-6. 555 E 
 below) ; but the present passage does not necessarily imply 
 anything beyond the conflicting claims of a richer and poorer 
 class, which were felt at Athens throughout the fifth century 
 and exist to some extent under every system. 
 
 423 A 21. 'No more than a thousand men.' Aristotle, Politics, 
 
 ii. 6, of the Spartans at Leuctra ' there were not 1000 of them ; 
 the city did not survive a single blow but perished for want 
 of men.' Leuctra was in 371 B.C., which seems too late to 
 admit of an allusion to it in the Republic, but Aristotle's 
 remark sounds very like a reference to this passage. Plato 
 might have meant that with a proper system the Spartiate army 
 (the number in question refers to pure Spartiates only ; there 
 were ' Lacedaemonians ' as well), would have proved sufficient. 
 22. 'One city as large as that.' This is the germ of the 
 fine passage in Aristotle's Politics, iv. 7,4:' For, like other 
 things, a city has its function ; and so that which is able best 
 to discharge its function must be taken to be the greatest 
 (literally, biggest).' 
 
 B 27. 'The best standard,' literally, ' limit/ the same word which 
 afterwards came to mean ' definition,' or, again, ' logical term.' 
 The limit is drawn from 'the essential nature of the thing.' 
 
 32. 'Grow without abandoning its unity': compare New- 
 man, Introduction to Aristotle's Politics, 313, for a complete
 
 BOOK IV. 129 
 
 discussion of this Greek idea of the proper size of a city, 
 which strikingly illustrates the conception of the social organism 
 as understood by the Greeks. See Politics, iv. 7, 4. 'As 
 an animal, a plant, or a machine has a limit of size (dependent 
 on its properties), so, too, has a commonwealth.' Aristotle's 
 limit is essentially the same as that here assigned, ' unity and 
 self-sufficingness ' (' sufficiency and unity,' 40 below : com- 
 pare above, 53. 369). Note that in Aristotle the application 
 of this principle is explicitly determined, as implicitly in Plato, 
 by the range of personal knowledge, sight, and hearing. This 
 shows how even the greatest Greeks tended to naturalism. 
 A nation is a spiritual or ideal object compared to the Greek 
 city. In the -Laws, 737, Plato fixes on 5040 as the best 
 number of citizen families. We must bear in mind, however, 
 that a Greek ' Polis ' was not a town. It was more like a 
 Swiss Canton. It is the citizen body, not the territory, that 
 has to be so small as to be all seen at once (like a work of 
 art. Compare Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 7). 
 
 122. 4. 'Send away any inferior child.' Compare end of 423 C 
 Book in. There is as yet no allusion to the exposure of 
 children, but this is no doubt implied, 168. 460 below, 'in 
 some mysterious and unknown hiding-place.' 
 
 12 and 13. 'Not many men, but one' 'not one city but D 
 many cities.' Each man's ' work ' is his essence relatively to 
 the whole; if he has two 'works,' that implies two 'wholes,' 
 e.g. his trade, which Plato takes as his relation to the state, 
 and his political or religious party. Plato does not attach 
 full weight to the idea, so familiar to us, that these distinct 
 wholes within the state may be subordinate and instrumental 
 to its purpose. Even in abolishing the family he only carries 
 to a climax the intolerance of the Greek state towards minor 
 organisations within itself. 
 
 1 8. 'The one great point.' The 'one thing needful' is a E 
 thorough nurture and education of character and intellect; 
 it is a mistake to suppose that Plato advocates a hide-bound 
 system of irreversible enactment. 
 
 i
 
 130 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 424 A 29. 'Amongst friends everything is common property,' 
 more lit, 'Friends' things are common.' 'Property' is an 
 insertion to support a neuter plural. The proverb covers 
 Aristotle's proposal that property should be common ' in use 
 but not in ownership ' (Politics.! ii. 5). The discussion here 
 anticipated is resumed in Book v. 
 
 32. 'A sort of circular progress in its growth.' Jowett, 
 ' moves with accumulating force like a wheel.' I do not feel 
 sure what the comparison is. The ' circle ' is meant in some 
 way to suggest the opposite of a vicious circle. Good nurture 
 makes good natures, and good natures transmit the qualities 
 they have acquired as better natures to the next generation, 
 when the process repeats itself at a higher level. Compare 
 the corresponding process in evil on following page, and see 
 note on numerical passage 273- 546. The difficulty is to see 
 how either circle can be broken. Note that a progressive 
 development of character, though within certain general types, 
 is undoubtedly contemplated here, and that the transmission 
 of acquired qualities is presupposed. 
 
 C 123. n. 'Styles of music are never disturbed without 
 affecting the most important political institutions.' Music 
 herein the modern sense (contrast 64. 376-7 above). 'In- 
 stitution ' ; ' nonios ' means a strain or song as well as a law 
 or ordinance ; and Plato often has this double meaning in 
 mind. (Compare 'actual hymn' (nomos), 258. i, 531 D 
 below.) We are accustomed to regard all that takes 
 place, music, painting, dress, amusements, as symptomatic of 
 social change, but the exclusive causal action assigned to 
 musical fashions is strange to us. It was not a highly 
 developed but a crude musical art, operating on a very 
 sensitive people in small societies, where moral causes 
 reacted quickly and directly, that could be thus spoken of. 
 Perhaps, too, Plato hardly distinguishes the symptomatic 
 from the causal connection, or we may distinguish them too 
 sharply. 
 D 1 8. 'It is here that lawlessness easily creeps in unawares.'
 
 BOOK IV. 131 
 
 As to the phenomena Plato does not differ widely from the 
 great assailant of Socrates, Aristophanes, who attacks what he 
 considered the decadent taste of his day in music and poetry. 
 (See Clouds, 966, 1361.) As Mr. Nettleship has remarked, 
 there seems no great fear of innovation in our educational 
 system, at least so far as the ' higher ' education is concerned ; 
 our difficulty has been rather to get it moved at all. Never- 
 theless, about all education, especially about our immense 
 primary system, Plato's ideas go to the root. What incalculable 
 social evil is owing to the ' lawlessness ' engendered by want 
 of training after school age and before the full industrial age 
 in town children ! And an education that is out of date may 
 foster ' lawlessness ' by its impotence, no less than one that 
 is too novel by its audacity. 
 
 23. 'Manners and customs,' rather 'character and external 
 behaviour.' The Greeks were very ready to attach political 
 meaning to innovations in personal and social details. Com- 
 pare the phrase ' wore his hair long with a view to tyranny,' 
 i.e. became ostentatious and presumptuous as one who aims 
 at despotism, Herodotus, v. 71 ; and note the very instructive 
 passages (Thucydides, vi. 16 and 28) on 'the undemocratic 
 unlawfulness' of Alcibiades' way of life, meaning his dress 
 and other extravagances, which were taken to point to ' a 
 desire of making himself a despot.' With us, too, all these 
 things are significant, but rather as social symptoms than as 
 direct political influences. This paragraph might be taken 
 as a text for Books vm. and ix. 
 
 38. 'Loyalty,' literally, 'lawfulness,' ' Eunomia,' the term 425 A 
 employed by Herodotus, i. 65, for the reform of Lycurgus at 
 Sparta, and the title of a poem of Tyrtaeus ; opposed to 
 ' Paranomia ' ' unlawfulness,' by which Thucydides, /. c., char- 
 acterises Alcibiades' behaviour. It sums up the result of a 
 ' musical education.' (See above, 98. 402-3.) 
 
 124. 42. ' Not worth while to give directions on these D 
 points.' This breathes a free and organic spirit for which 
 Plato is not always given credit. For some of the details of
 
 132 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 manners mentioned above, e.g. silence in presence of elders, 
 compare Aristophanes' Clouds, 963 and 993. 
 
 25 E 125. 8. 'As those do who are in bad health.' Plato returns 
 to the subject of valetudinarianism to bring out its evils in 
 the social organism. 
 
 426 A 20. 'Who tells them the truth,' which the clever 'sons of 
 
 Asclepius ' are too polite to do, 102. 405-6 above. 
 B 32. 'When, having a bad form of government, they fore- 
 warn their citizens under pain of death,' an enactment 
 reported from more than one Greek state for either a general 
 or particular purpose. The point of view from which Plato 
 here criticises the nostrums of public valetudinarianism is char- 
 acteristic of his tendency to bring extremes together. His 
 objection is that average legislation changes too little, not 
 that it changes too much. The fault is in going on with a 
 vicious constitution instead of remodelling it throughout. 
 (See following note.) 
 
 427 A 126. 23. 'The genuine legislator.' We cannot infer from 
 
 Plato's attitude to the complex legislation of an artificial society 
 that he held the matters touched on just above to be no fit 
 subjects for legislative regulation. Sometimes he leaned to such 
 a suggestion. (See the notion of refusing to enforce contracts, 
 286. 556 A below.) But the rest of the present passage may 
 be interpreted as contemplating some elasticity or develop- 
 ment in minor regulations as opposed to a complete prescription 
 of life by the original legislator, such as was ascribed to Solon 
 or Lycurgus. 
 
 B 41. 'Subjects which we do not understand ourselves.' 
 Perhaps a touch of the irony which may accompany a scrupulous 
 respect for tradition. But it was the custom to consult the 
 Delphic oracle about the foundation of cities. 
 
 C 127. 4. 'Expositor to all men.' The 'all men ' strikes me 
 as emphatic, instead of 'all Hellenes,' which we might have 
 expected. Of course non-Hellenes, e.g. the Asiatic kings, did 
 consult the oracle.
 
 BOOK IV. 133 
 
 127. 7, 427 D 137. 1 8, 435 A. 
 
 The cardinal virtues considered as qualities of a society. Sect. 40. 
 
 127. 24. ' Our state, being rightly organised, is a perfectly 4-7 E 
 good state/ ' Organised,' more lit., 'settled,' the word used 
 for establishing a new town or colony. ' Organised ' is a term 
 that expresses a Greek conception in its fullest modern form, 
 but worn out by popular use. Plato had no such word at 
 command, and if he had, would not use it as a mere counter 
 of current speech. 
 
 'Perfectly good state.' Opinions might differ as to the 
 nature of ' goodness ' in a society. Plato assumes here that 
 it involves the qualities of a moral being. 
 
 27. 'Wise and brave and temperate and just.' The four 
 cardinal virtues, here, for all we know, put together for the 
 first time. There is no philosophical advantage in drawing 
 out a table of virtues at great length ; the modes of right 
 behaviour are as infinite as the relations of life, and the 
 qualities displayed in them can be distinguished or run 
 together almost at will. Subject to this reservation, the 
 absence of the servile virtues, such as humility, is noticeable. 
 But temperance or justice can easily be made to cover them. 
 For a comparison of Greek and Christian moral ideas see 
 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, book iii. c. 5. 
 
 30. 'Some of these qualities,' 'undiscovered qualities.' 
 'Qualities' here, and 'things' in the next paragraph, are 
 alike inserted by the translators to go with the neuter plural 
 pronoun or article. ' Qualities ' seems more suitable than 
 'things.' 
 
 35. 'Contained in any subject'; 'subject' is filled in, to 428 A 
 fit the neuter pronoun ' any.' ' Things ' (see previous note) 
 is not a suitable term to be used in this description of a 
 ' method of residues,' because there is something awkward 
 in comparing the aspects of a moral system to the parts of 
 a whole composed of four things (= objects in space and 
 time). ' Properties,'' or ' relations,' would be a more intelligible
 
 134 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 rendering. Plato's account no doubt presupposes that the 
 elements in question are clearly and correctly distinguished, 
 and together exhaust a certain whole. Mill's account also 
 presupposes this, and an abstract scheme of the argument 
 can hardly be given otherwise. 
 
 128. 6. ' A paradoxical fact presents itself,' viz., the small 
 number of persons in whom that wisdom exists, in virtue of 
 which the whole city is counted wise. 
 
 428 C 24. ' How vessels of wood may best be made ' ; better, 
 'wooden implements,' and in next paragraph, 'brasswork.' 
 There is a side of industrial knowledge which is connected 
 with the statesman's science, as we now recognise. And 
 indeed Plato has above pointed out, 119.421, that the science 
 of industrial conditions enters into the science of government. 
 That this should be so follows strictly from his regarding the 
 classes as organs of the whole. The governmental science, 
 therefore, though not described in the concrete, is implied to 
 be highly concrete. 
 
 35. 'Any kind of knowledge which takes measures on 
 behalf of the state as a whole.' The ideas of all members of 
 the social organism must in fact embody their private relation 
 to the social whole, for this relation expresses itself in their 
 function ; but those who have to deliberate on behalf of 
 society as a unit, must bring to bear on every problem a com- 
 plete or concrete idea of the social whole, in which idea 
 society becomes, as it were, self-conscious through the minds 
 of its members. Their idea of their function, therefore, in- 
 volves a completely co-ordinated notion of the social end; 
 that of soldiers or craftsmen, we must suppose, is purely 
 relative to their limited duties. The difference between the 
 ' carpenter's ' and the ' guardian's ' ideas is ultimately one of 
 degree, and the connection between them is an interesting 
 problem, which in modern times has become acute. The 
 carpenter must have some idea of the whole to which his 
 ' function ' puts him in relation ; in Plato's theory the states- 
 man's conception should apparently include all that, in the
 
 BOOK IV. 135 
 
 carpenter's idea, concerns the general scheme of society. 
 We do not now rely, as Plato proposed to do, mainly on the 
 completeness of the statesman's knowledge, but rather on a 
 logic of fact and community of sentiment by which the ideas 
 of all classes work out their joint result. For Plato, then, 
 society is wise only in respect of that knowledge in which it is 
 explicitly reflected as a whole. 
 
 42. ' Our protective science,' or ' the science belonging to 428 D 
 our guardians ' ; no doubt the adjective is used in a double 
 sense. 
 
 129. 13. 'The knowledge residing in its smallest class or E 
 section which entitles a state to be called wise as a whole' 
 This is the ' paradoxical fact ' referred to a page above. 
 Three elements are perhaps co-operating in the urgency with 
 which Plato insists on this antithesis. First there is a convic- 
 tion that comprehensive minds are rare (compare the account 
 of the philosophical nature in Books vi. and vn.). And so, no 
 doubt, under any system, they are and will be. Secondly, 
 there is a desire to make clear the notion of a part or organ 
 which stands for the whole in a certain relation, although, as 
 one among many organs, it is presumably but a small portion 
 of the entire bulk, like the eye in the body. Thirdly, there 
 is a further degree of the second conception, according to 
 which more especially the intellectual organ, in which the 
 whole is ideally presented as the whole, is regarded as ' small,' 
 owing to its high measure of unity, contrasted with the exten- 
 sion or dispersion characteristic of parts external to, or un- 
 reconciled with, one another. So the human element in the 
 triple monster (Book ix. end), though naturally sovereign, is 
 much the smallest. 
 
 27. 'The quality of courage,' more lit., ' manliness.' 4 2 9 
 Having explained in dealing with Intelligence the conception 
 of an organ or part which represents the whole in one relation, 
 Plato spends less pains on this side of the subject in treating 
 of Fortitude. The soldier class is the organ of necessary 
 self-assertion in society, as the ' spirit ' is in the individual.
 
 136 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 What was said above of the carpenter's idea of his relation to 
 the whole applies in a much higher degree to Plato's soldiery, 
 who form the material out of which the guardians are selected. 
 The personal courage of other citizens, not called upon to 
 fight, does not affect the degree of bravery which society 
 displays through its fighting organ. Plato would of course be 
 the first to admit that the temper of the fighting class and 
 that of the whole society must react on each other. But the 
 fighting class is that, as he 'says just below, in which the mind 
 of the society in relation to danger, the psychological element 
 of ' spirit,' is especially exhibited, and by this test of its train- 
 ing and temper the social whole must submit to be judged, so 
 far as courage is concerned. 
 
 429 C 130. 3. 'A kind of safe-keeping.' (See III. 412 E above, 
 
 and notes.) 
 
 D 14. ' You know that dyers ' (see reference in previous note). 
 In this simile of the dye Plato recurs to his account of the 
 guardians' temper apparently in order to provide against the 
 impression which his intellectual or Socratic phraseology 
 might produce. The education, he insists in the spirit of 97. 
 401 E, is to be one long preparation of the whole character, 
 so that when, in early manhood, the citizen approaches the 
 duties imposed upon him by law (compare 130. 430 A below, 
 with 97 /.*".) they may come to him as the inevitable comple- 
 ment of his second nature, and so far from being skin deep, 
 may find every fibre of his being receptive to the social spirit. 
 The positive content of this ' opinion,' which the guardian 
 class is to 'preserve,' is reiterated several times on III. 
 412 E ff., 'that they are to do what is best for the social 
 whole.' Here for the soldiers it is described as 'a right and 
 lawful opinion regarding what is and what is not to be feared,' 
 but really covers resistance not only to fear and pain, but to 
 pleasure and desire (37, 430 A, B), thus pointing forward to 
 the treatment of courage in the Laws, i. 635. 
 
 430 B 44- 'When the right opinion as by beasts and slaves.' 
 
 He may have in mind the example of the dog, 63. 376 above. 
 We must bear in mind that ' opinion ' includes for Plato all
 
 BOOK IV. 137 
 
 that ' seems.' The dog or slave has a right impression or 
 association, as far as it goes, when he fights for his master, 
 but it is not according to law, because it has not been moulded 
 by training in the social spirit, and may, for instance, turn to 
 the defence of what should be put down. 
 
 131. 6. ' The courage of citizens ' implied not to be the 
 highest, as in Aristotle's Ethics, iii. 7 (see Stewart's note). I C 
 do not think Plato is distinguishing it merely from the lower 
 form he has mentioned ; he seems also to anticipate a deeper 
 analysis, probably referring to the courage of the philosopher 
 which arises from a sense of the littleness of individual life, 
 in a mind which sees the world as a whole. (Compare 200. 
 486 A below.) But yet Plato's description of citizen courage 
 is substantially at one with Aristotle's account of the highest 
 kind ; both, as Mr. Stewart says, ' are habits acquired by the 
 citizen under the influence of laws.' Aristotle's 'citizen' 
 courage is a grade lower, aiming at good repute and the like. 
 
 14. 'Temperance'; the Greek word 'Sophrosune' means, 
 more literally, ' soundness of mind,' or perhaps ' keeping your D 
 senses.' Plato has given a preliminary definition of this 
 moral excellence, 80. 23, 389 D above (where Davies and 
 Vaughan rendered ' sobriety '). Its main features, he there 
 says, are obedience to superiors and control of self, the latter 
 specially as regards sensual pleasures. It is the characteristic 
 virtue of the Greeks, the main excellence of the citizens in 
 time of peace, because of their strong sense of measure, com- 
 bined with an equally strong capacity for excess. See 96. 21, 
 401 A above, on the duty of art to express this quality, there 
 rendered by Davies and Vaughan ' sober minded.' In Greek 
 art of the great time no characteristic is more striking than 
 this. 
 
 27. ' Temperance has more the appearance of a concord or E 
 harmony ' ; i.e. it is a quality not only of the whole, but in all 
 of it. (See 133. 431 E below.) 
 
 31. ' Temperance is, I imagine '; an appeal to the current 
 meaning of the term, as connoting individual character. ' Order 
 and mastery ' or continence.
 
 138 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 34. ' Master of himself,' more literally, ' superior to,' or 
 ' stronger than,' himself. 
 
 35. ' In which we may trace a print' ; popular expressions 
 about temperance, which give us a clue to its nature. 
 
 431 A 38. ' The expression " master of himself " a ridiculous one ' ; 
 with this Plato begins the subject of conflict in the soul, 
 which is developed at greater length in the remainder of the 
 book. If ' he ' is ' master of himself,' then, formally speaking, 
 ' himself ' must be slave of ' him.' So that if ' he ' is ' himself,' 
 he is at once master and slave, or stronger and weaker. 
 
 132. 3. ' In the man himself, that is, in his soul.' The 
 Greek seems to show a special guardedness ; more lit., ' In 
 the man himself, " at," or " near," or " concerned with," his 
 soul ' (compare below, 358. 611 E). Plato does not here wish 
 to commit himself about the relation of the evil principle to 
 the essential soul. 
 
 4. ' A good principle and a bad ' ; ' principle ' is insertion 
 with neuter adjective, literally, ' a better and a worse.' The 
 implied argument is that there must be some reason why 
 popular usage does not, as would be formally correct, treat 
 ' master of self ' and ' slave of self ' as descriptions of the 
 same state. The reason is found by supposing that the ' he,' 
 par excellence, is always the same element a true, or inner, or 
 better self while the 'himself is always, in fact, a relative 
 not-self, something in the mass of our personality against 
 which we have habitually to assert our ' true ' self, and which, 
 even if victorious, does not thereby become our true self, but 
 tends to disintegrate our being. It is, of course, very naive 
 psychology to take the good and bad self as coincident with 
 natural elements in the mind. Plato is paving the way to 
 treating the philosophic element as the good principle. In 
 the first education it has no such pre-eminent place. 
 
 8. ' Evil training' ; better, 'nurture.' 
 
 9. ' Smaller force ' and ' superior numbers ' (better, ' bulk ' 
 or ' volume ') : compare note on 129. 13, 428 E above. 
 
 B 12. 'Slave of self,' literally, 'inferior to,' or 'weaker than,'
 
 BOOK IV. 139 
 
 self. I do not think that the phrase was common in Greek 
 in precisely this form ; with a genitive of the thing than which 
 the man was ' weaker ' it was very common, and might be 
 rendered by ' cannot resist,' e.g. love, a bribe, a joke, or 
 appetite of any kind. Perhaps Plato is summing up these 
 factors of a bad self in the 'self which he substitutes for 
 them in the formula. 
 
 ' Dissolute ' ; the Greek term is ' akolastos,' which Aristotle 
 made technical for the radically and habitually ' intemperate ' 
 person, ' profligate ' (Peters), as opposed to the ' incontinent ' 
 ' akrates,' whose will is weak. 
 
 1 6. 'It may fairly be called master of itself.' He returns 
 to the commonwealth, applying to it his analysis of current 
 moral judgment. 
 
 1 8. ' Governs the bad.' The nature of the bad has not yet 
 been explained, further than that it is large in quantity, and 
 opposed to the good. ' Variety ' has been assumed as its 
 character throughout the education. 
 
 2i. 'Those desires, and pleasures, and pains, which are 431 
 many and various.' The psychological species which has the 
 character (quantity and variety) distinctive of the bad is pre- 
 dominant in a class of persons which forms the bulk of the 
 commonwealth (compare pi. 397 above), whereas (following 
 paragraph) the tolerable part of the same psychological species 
 is found in a small class only. Hence (' Do you not see that,' 
 etc.) this psychological relation (of a bulky bad and a small 
 good) is embodied in the structure of the city, where a small 
 class with good moral natures rules a large class with inferior 
 ones. It is important to notice that Plato here concedes dis- 
 ciplined desires as a necessary element to good men. This 
 makes it impossible to say consistently that desire as such is 
 the bad self, and suggests an analogous treatment of the 
 opposition between reason and desire in the individual mind, 
 viz., that the disciplined desires rule the undisciplined. 
 
 41. 'May we not then call it temperate on all these D 
 accounts?' Because in it the good rules the bad, and the
 
 140 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 small or concentrated embodiment of unity controls the 
 extended variety. 
 
 133. i. 'In which the governors and governed are ' unani- 
 mous,' more literally, ' In which the same opinion (or ' seem- 
 ing ' or ' impression ') is in rulers and ruled on the question,' 
 etc. It cannot be too much insisted on that it is the principle 
 of Plato's state fully to satisfy the nature of all its members. 
 The weakest 'seeming' or 'impression' which does duty for 
 reason in a child or uneducated person is, on the whole, to 
 find itself at peace in a system which evokes its full capacity. 
 
 431 E 6. ' In which the two classes of citizens.' Note the division 
 
 for this purpose into two classes only. He means that taking 
 society strictly as a whole, its reason and desire are both 
 required to constitute temperance. This virtue is therefore in 
 both classes together, not in each. In a further sense, how- 
 ever, it is in each class separately, because it is conditioned by 
 the presence of both the essential elements in some degree 
 within every individual. 
 
 10. ' When we divined just now a kind of harmony': com- 
 pare 131. 430 E. The distinction is not really between a 
 harmony of parts and the act of a single part, but between 
 a general and limited harmony. Both wisdom and courage 
 depend on the harmony between the action of an organ, and 
 the law prescribed by the nature of the whole. This is 
 obscured in the case of the rulers, who prescribe the law to 
 themselves, but is clear in the case of the soldiers, whose 
 courage is the retention of an opinion dictated by the rulers, 
 see 130. 429 D note. The difference is that all classes are 
 social organs of temperance and justice, while the courage of 
 non-soldiers or wisdom of non-rulers would not be credited to 
 the social whole. 
 
 432 A 1 6. ' In literal diapason,' 'dia pason,' 'through all,' a term 
 
 of Greek music. Jowett renders, ' Which runs through all the 
 notes of the scale.' 
 
 1 8. 'Whether you measure by.' Whatever standards 
 you judge the claims of classes by, temperance or sound-
 
 BOOK IV. 141 
 
 mindedness in a society consists in the recognition, by every 
 class, of a right in the governors to govern, and a duty in 
 the governed to obey, which are, in other words, a duty in 
 the governors to govern, and a right in the governed to 
 be governed. This principle is unchanged if, according to 
 Aristotle's definition, the citizen is one who takes it in turn 
 to govern and to be governed. 
 
 22. 'A concord between the naturally better elements' or 
 perhaps ' between better and worse, according to their natural 
 relations.' This definition returns to the idea of self-mastery, 
 but expands and explains it by postulating a right to rule on 
 the part of that element which stands for law and unity. ' He ' 
 is master of self when this rules, slave of self when it does not, 
 and sound-minded or temperate when the ' worse ' element 
 has been moulded so as to obey the ' better ' without reluc- 
 tance. It should be noted that the terms ' worse ' and ' better ' 
 (' cheiron' and ' ameinon ') are here acquiring their distinctively 
 moral meaning, in virtue of their relations to the whole. In 
 ordinary Greek they may refer to many standards, as Plato 
 seems to recognise in the preceding sentence. 
 
 26. ' Three out of the four principles,' literally, ' Three out 432 B 
 of the four.' See 127. 35, 428 A and note. 
 
 27. ' That remaining principle,' literally, ' form ' or ' species,' 
 the same word ' Eidos ' which is often rendered ' idea ' ; there 
 is no reason prima fade for excluding the current use in 
 passages like this from consideration, when we inquire how 
 Plato actually regarded the ' forms.' To isolate all texts which 
 seem to have a mythical sense, and say that Plato's doctrine 
 must be determined by them alone, is a mutilation of the 
 data by which the hypothesis should be tested. This word 
 ' form ' is quite an everyday term with him, in reference to a 
 type or sort of objects. Compare, e.g. Ip2. 25, 477 c : ' If you 
 happen to understand the special conception,' etc., i.e. simply, 
 ' If you understand what sort (or ' form ') I am referring to.' 
 
 134. 14. 'Why, my good sir, it appears': compare with this D 
 paragraph 254. 20, 529 A below, and note, on the metaphor
 
 142 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 which ranks the world of science above the world of sense. 
 The significance of these two passages is not lessened by their 
 humour, which is in Plato often a sign of deep earnestness. 
 The well-meaning popular moralist, with his abstractions, and 
 his ideals, is like a man staring about the room in search of 
 something which he is holding in his hands. Many great 
 religions and great philosophers have combated this false 
 idealism, which continues to be ascribed to them as to Plato. 
 Compare Hegel, 'With such empty and other- world stuff 
 philosophy has nothing to do. What philosophy has to do 
 with is always something concrete and in the highest sense 
 present.' Hegel's Logic, Wallace's translation, second edition, 
 p. 175. The story of Naaman the Syrian is a beautiful 
 apologue to the same effect, and it is needless to point out a 
 kindred spirit in the New Testament. Note the strength of 
 Plato's expression. Looking to some remote point, some far- 
 fetched conception, for the nature of morality, instead of 
 analysing the given relations of life, was not only a mistake, 
 but was a tendency which caused our mistake. 
 433 A 29. 'We laid down as a universal rule of action.' See 55. 
 370 B. The rule was founded on the very nature of man. 
 
 31. 'Some modification of it,' literally, ' some form of it' 
 (Eidos). See note 133. 27. And for full answer to the ques- 
 tion 'What form of it is the essence of justice?' see 149. 443 
 below, ' And so there really was, Glaucon,' etc. 
 
 33. ' Every individual ought to have some one occupation,' 
 etc., more literally, ' that each one ought to practise some one 
 of the (businesses) connected with the social whole (Po!is), to 
 which his nature was most suited.' Compare carefully the 
 closing argument of Book i. 36. 352 ff., which paved the way 
 for this idea. 
 
 37. 'We have often heard people say.' Plato appeals to 
 
 current morality in support of his principle. ' To mind one's 
 
 own business,' etc., more literally ' To do one's own (things) 
 
 and not to be many-businessed.' 
 
 B 41. ' To do one's own ' (things); the famous definition of
 
 BOOK IV. 143 
 
 ' justice.' Note that it is a positive idea, and has not the same 
 implication as our phrase ' mind your own business.' The 
 content, the determination what is ' our own,' rests entirely on 
 the idea of nature and function the development of man's 
 nature in a system of functions. This is the inherent 
 necessity by which the dialogue on Justice turns into a 
 dialogue on Society. It does not follow that the social system 
 is capable of being an exhaustive expression of man's nature. 
 
 43. ' Whence I infer this.' There seem to be three reasons 
 adduced ; first, that the required remainder, which by the 
 hypothesis is justice, ought to be found in something which 
 (like the principle of division of labour resting on natural 
 function) accounts for both the evolution and the co-existence 
 of the other excellences (135. 1-8, 433 A-B), secondly, that the 
 principle in question may fairly be called an excellence or 
 virtue, considering its great value in the life of the common- 
 wealth (135. 10-32, 433 C-D), and thirdly, that the avoidance 
 of encroachment satisfies the current idea of justice in 
 more ways than one (135. 35136. 37, 433 -434 c). 
 
 135. 19. 'The presence of that fourth principle in,' 610:4330 
 compare notes on 133. i and 10. The presence of the 
 principle in every human being within the society must be 
 construed, on the analogy of the other ' virtues,' as involving 
 in all cases some relative mental participation, by impression 
 or trained feeling, in the law set by the nature of the whole. 
 The emphasis with which the universality of this participation 
 is here stated is suggestive in connection with 332. 8, SQOD, 
 which says that government is not to the detriment of the 
 governed, but is meant to reinforce the divine within by the 
 divine without. It is hard to say which has the deeper truth 
 the conception of Aristotle that none are genuine members 
 of the commonwealth who cannot live its good life to the full, 
 or that of Plato that every human being locally within it is 
 a member, and the participation of all may be genuine 
 though variously limited. Both views seem necessary to a 
 complete understanding of society.
 
 144 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 29. ' Rivals these qualities in promoting the virtue of a 
 state/ and therefore may fairly claim so high a title as that 
 of justice or righteousness. (See above, note on 134. 43.) 
 433*E 35. 'The adjudication of lawsuits.' A third reason (see 
 same note) for giving the name of Justice to the quality 
 under discussion. It fills the place of what is commonly 
 meant by civil and criminal 'justice.' Compare the view pro- 
 pounded by Cephalus in Book I., which is here taken up into 
 the higher argument. 
 
 38. 'What belongs to others,' 'What is his own.' A meum 
 and tuum, or alienum, is to be recognised in Plato's common- 
 wealth, but not quite on the ordinary basis. Such as it is, 
 however, civil and criminal justice will aim at maintaining it. 
 To ' have ' cannot be altogether separated from ' to do,' and 
 to bring out the connection with current ideas of the just, 
 Plato suddenly insists on the former aspect. 
 
 434 A 136. 8 fif. ' If a carpenter should undertake to execute the 
 work of a shoemaker,' etc. The essence of the offence is 
 the confusion of functions. Property is regarded as instru- 
 mental to function, and the protection of 'property as inci- 
 dental to the maintenance of proper function. For a similar 
 verification by admitted results of 'justice,' compare 148. 
 
 443 A - 
 
 B 19. 'Their distinctions' practically = 'offices,' positions of 
 moral or legal authority. The small significance of this term 
 in the previous paragraph intentionally enhances its great 
 significance in this, where it applies to a man with a mere 
 workman's or traders mind, taking upon him the responsi- 
 bilities of a teacher or statesman. We interpret Plato by 
 contraries if we do not constantly remember his root-principle 
 of adjustment between function and natural capacity. 
 
 The authority of Plato's ruler corresponds in some degree 
 to the position of experts to-day. 
 
 C 31. ' Evil-doing of the worst kind ' ; better, ' the infliction of 
 the greatest possible harm on.' A recurrence to a more 
 general sense of justice and injustice as = goodness and
 
 BOOK IV. 145 
 
 wickedness, to clinch his argument. ' What hurts your own 
 commonwealth in the highest degree may fairly be called 
 wickedness.' 
 
 34. ' Adherence to their own business.' The three classes, 
 as the principal types of capacity, are the basis of justice as 
 a quality of society, and, strictly speaking, it would only be an 
 interference of one class or its members with the belongings 
 of another class or its members that would make the society 
 as such unjust. Thus if a shoemaker overreached a carpenter 
 (or one Trade Society another) about the distribution of 
 certain work, this would not, according to the strict definition, 
 be a defect in justice as a quality of society. The example 
 given above (136. 6, 434 A) shows, however, that this limitation 
 is not to be rigidly construed, and that any distinctive 
 capacity makes its owner an organ of society through which 
 it is capable of justice or injustice. Compare also 135. 18, 
 433 D. These considerations are important with a view to 
 clearly conceiving Plato's distinction between the virtues of 
 society and of the individual. It is plain that the distinction 
 is merely one of degree so far as the action of the classes 
 towards each other is contrasted with that of the individuals 
 composing each class among themselves, and that the nearest 
 approach to an absolute demarcation would be that between 
 the whole external behaviour of individuals and (as we should 
 say) their state of heart or will. So it seems to be taken, 
 149. 9, 443 c. On the other hand the qualities above 
 demanded from the classes are not restricted to external 
 behaviour, but emphatically include states of the mind and 
 feelings. Therefore, as the simile of the larger letters would 
 suggest (53. 368 D), the distinction in question must be 
 stated to some such effect as this : that society possesses the 
 cardinal virtues primarily in so far as its main structure 
 expresses, and realises by expression, certain types of char- 
 acter in large bodies of individuals who form its organs for 
 the main functions of its existence; but ultimately every 
 individual is an organ of society for a certain function, and 
 
 K
 
 146 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 his qualities and behaviour enter, though less visibly than 
 that of the classes as such, into the moral quality of the 
 social whole. His state of heart and will, however, though 
 even they may enter into the goodness of society, yet when 
 viewed apart from their external expression are qualities of 
 the individual rather than of the commonwealth. This dis- 
 tinction between inner and outer is plainly untenable if taken 
 as more than an emphasis on one aspect of an indivisible 
 whole. But it is another question whether all goodness can 
 really be accounted for by social relations. 
 
 35. ' Industrious,' literally, ' money-making.' ' Producers,' 
 14 above = ' money-makers.' These terms are first applied 
 to the trading and industrial class at this point of the dialogue. 
 They serve to lead the way to the correlation of this class 
 with the psychological element of desire, anticipated 132. 21, 
 43 1 B, which element is to Plato the spring of avarice as of 
 sensuality. (See below, 147. 9, 442 A, and 283. 2, 553 c.) 
 
 137. 7- 'A good city.' It had passed through a stage of 
 disease, and been purged again. (See 94. 33, 399 E.) 
 
 'This view, therefore, let us now apply to the individual.' 
 ' The one (man) ' has, of course, none of the philosophical 
 implications which attach to Individual as a philosophical 
 term. Plato's method, though obscured by many quaint- 
 nesses, and by immature psychology, is essentially sound. 
 He begins by examining morality in its outward and visible 
 signs, and then proceeds with the analysis by searching for 
 correlative elements in the inward and spiritual state. 
 
 Sect. 41. 137. 19, 435 A 138. 40, 436 B. 
 
 The single human being is like the social whole in including 
 the three psychological kinds ; but are they, in him, distinct? 
 
 435 A 137- 2I - 'Unlike or like.' The recognition of identity in 
 difference was the great instrument by which Plato met the 
 eristic difficulties of the day (see below, 159. 454). Likeness 
 and identity are still a disputed problem. It might be urged
 
 BOOK IV. 147 
 
 that in so far as the common name applies, the two things are 
 identical, though because of their partial identity they may 
 also be like. 
 
 27. 'Three classes of characters,' more literally, 'three 4356 
 classes (or ' kinds ' ' Gene ') of natures.' We must bear in 
 mind how the term ' nature ' or ' what we are born to be ' runs 
 through Plato's whole social theory, in antithesis to contract 
 or convention. 
 
 33. ' Supposing him to possess ' ; either clause might be 
 consequent, but the argument seems rather to demand ' if it 
 is right to give him the same moral titles as the social whole, 
 he must possess in himself the same (psychological) forms 
 or kinds,' i.e. ' only supposing him to possess,' etc. etc. 
 'Generic parts '='Eide,' 'forms,' the supposed technical term 
 of the ' idea ' doctrine. It here marks a slight transition in 
 the argument from ' Gene,' the kinds or classes in society. 
 
 39. 'An easy question': ironical. The attainment of dis- C 
 tinct conceptions about the soul is one of Plato's most 
 constant preoccupations, and he feels that to set on foot the 
 science of psychology is no ' trivial ' matter. 
 
 138. 4. ' We shall never attain to exact truth by such 
 methods.' The ' longer route ' seems to anticipate some form 
 of metaphysical inquiry : compare opening words of Book vi., 
 where the similar phrase refers to the theory of knowledge 
 and its object developed at close of Book v. But he does 
 not feel that at any point his own achievements satisfy the 
 requirements which he would make : compare 223. 38, 504 B, 
 where the longer route is again referred to, with 259. 21, 
 533 A. ' My dear Glaucon, you would not be able to follow 
 me further.' 
 
 14. 'Tell me then, I continued.' As to the bare fact that E 
 the same mental ' forms and tempers ' (Eide and Ethe) exist 
 in the man as in society, all doubt is excluded, because the 
 psychological character of a society is that of the human 
 beings who compose it, and you can plainly see the dominant 
 temper of given societies to correspond with that observed in
 
 148 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 persons belonging to them. See note on grounds of transition 
 to city, 53. 5, 368 D. This passage is developed and modified 
 by Aristotle, Politics, vii. 6, dealing only with spirit and in- 
 telligence and their combination. ' The love of riches ' is 
 taken as an aspect of the appetitive element, see 136. 35, 
 434 c and note. Aristotle gives these latter races the benefit 
 of the other side of this quality, classing them as intelligent 
 and ingenious but of slavish character owing to lack of spirit. 
 436 A 30. ' Are all our actions alike,' etc. In order to maintain 
 the parallel with society, it is essential that the three mental 
 forms or kinds should be so far distinct that they can react on 
 one another. If in every action the whole mental condition 
 was reducible to some one ' kind,' there would be no inter- 
 ference or reaction between them such as appeared to con- 
 stitute the moral quality of society. We saw on 133. 10, 
 43 IE, that all the virtues of the social whole really implied 
 such interaction of its elements. The distinctness is not to 
 be taken as destroying the unity of the soul, any more than 
 the distinctness of the social classes destroys the unity of 
 society. This would appear more clearly if the exact turn of 
 the Greek were preserved in rendering the first sentence, as it 
 is in the rest of the paragraph, from ' Do we learn ' onwards. 
 It would run ' Do we perform each kind of action (i.e. of the 
 three kinds in question) with one and the same (organ of 
 mind).' There is no substantive in the place occupied by 
 the translators' term ' faculty ' throughout the paragraph. 
 
 37. 'With the whole soul,' which would assume that in 
 desiring the soul was reduced to mere desire, in anger to 
 spirit, in learning to abstract intellect. For 'perform these 
 several operations ' read ' are we active in each of these ways ? ' 
 Of course a complete moral act may employ the whole soul 
 that will indeed prove to be Plato's contention but the 
 question is whether the soul so employed is a system capable 
 of internal conflict and subordination, or an atom in which no 
 such relation can exist. The three following sections attempt 
 to establish the distinctness of the three ' forms ' in the soul.
 
 BOOK IV. 149 
 
 Note the preliminary designation of them here. The 
 philosophic or refined element of Book n. has become more 
 definitely intellectual, 'that with which we understand,' the 
 spirit remains as before, and the element of desire is for the 
 first time reckoned as a positive third, though its correspon- 
 dence to the money-making class the class concerned with 
 satisfactions which, taken by themselves, are material has 
 already been hinted at. 
 
 138. 40, 436 B 140. 7, 437 A. Sect. 42. 
 
 The criterion of distinctness law of Identity and Contradic- 
 tion or Law of Causation. 
 
 41. 'Whether (the faculties) engaged are' the same or 436 B 
 different. To this and the following sections as to Books vi., 
 vii., and x., there applies in a pre-eminent degree the beautiful 
 saying of Mr. Pater (Plato and Platonism, p. 129.) 'Now it 
 is straight from Plato's lips, as if in natural conversation, that 
 the language came, in which the mind has ever since been 
 discoursing with itself, concerning itself, in that inward dia- 
 logue which is the ' active principle ' of the dialectic method 
 as an instrument for the attainment of truth.' The whole 
 passage should be read. 
 
 139. 2. ' The same thing cannot,' more literally, ' The same 
 will not do or suffer opposites, at once, in the same respect 
 and towards the same, so that if ever we find in them (in the 
 working of our mental 'kinds') this taking place (viz., 
 opposites occurring at once apparently in the same part, or 
 towards the same outside object), we shall know that it was 
 not the same but more than one (that were at work).' 
 ' Opposites,' it would have been enough to say ' differents ' ; 
 differents become opposites by fulfilling the conditions of this 
 definition, and in no other way. Blue and green become 
 incompatible qualities if alleged to be thus related, and so do 
 even blue and square. Differents become opposite if they 
 claim the same relation to the same system. 
 
 'In the same respect' or 'aspect/ practically =' part,'
 
 150 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 illustrated by the case of the top below. Either this or ' to- 
 wards the same ' is ultimately needless ; exclusion of differents 
 from the same relation to the same system is all that the 
 definition requires, but Plato has in mind two interacting 
 things, and so distinguishes ' in the same aspect or part of A ' 
 from ' in relation to the same B.' Plato is even superfluously 
 anxious, in this, the first statement of the fundamental law of 
 thought and existence, to show that identity does not exclude 
 diversity, and therefore to express the nature not of an atom 
 but of a system. This is why he so scrupulously implies that 
 ' the same ' may produce or receive opposite (different) effects, 
 without detriment to its sameness, if they are conditioned 
 by differences of aspect or reacting object. The words ' do 
 and suffer,' i.e. 'produce or receive effects,' together with 
 the objective ring of the whole passage, entitle us to interpret 
 it also as a form of the Law of Causation, which is in fact 
 merely a case of the Law of Identity or Contradiction. The 
 principle 'same cause and same relation, same effect' with 
 the converse 'different effect, different cause or relation,' is 
 indeed more nearly akin to the argument of this place than 
 are the 'Formal Laws of Thought.' In estimating the 
 significance of such a thought as this, we have to face the 
 difficult task of attributing full value to its extraordinarily 
 pregnant form when contrasted with the trivial and abstract 
 renderings which it has met with in later philosophy, without 
 forgetting that what to us is pregnancy was in Plato to some 
 extent naivete, and that it is only by the immense differentia- 
 tion of philosophy and exact science that we have attained 
 the conceptions which lend such importance to this common 
 germ of their method. 
 
 436 C I0 . ' Is it possible for the same thing,' ' in the same part of 
 it,' or ' or in respect to the same ' (part or aspect of it). He 
 drops out ' towards the same object ' and illustrates ' in 
 respect to the same ' by two examples. The ' object ' comes 
 in again when he speaks of desire. 
 D 1 8. 'Part of the man is at rest.' No substantive meaning
 
 BOOK IV. 151 
 
 part ' is used, but simply a phrase roughly equivalent to ' the 
 one somewhat in him' and 'the other.' The translation is 
 perhaps the only one possible in English, but it is well to 
 realise that the words ' faculty,' ' part,' ' thing,' ' state,' ' object,' 
 all through this argument, excepting once where ' Eide ' is 
 used, do not represent different Greek substantives, but 
 simply ' the,' ' this,' ' that,' ' the same,' ' it,' ' they,' and the 
 like. The thought is therefore far less materialised and cut 
 into heads than in the English rendering. It is plain from 
 these examples that the distinctness to be inferred of the 
 psychological ' kinds ' is not to impair the unity of the soul ; 
 see, too, the instance of the bowman, 143. 15, 439 B. 
 
 28. 'In respect of the same parts of them,' 'parts' or 
 ' aspects ' or ' elements,' as we please. 
 
 140. 3. ' Let us assume,' more literally, ' put under,' i.e. 
 ' take as our basis,' ' sup-pose.' The Greek verb is that from 
 which the word ' hypothesis ' is derived. See quotation from 
 Pater on 138. 41 above. People are fond of asking whether 
 principles of this kind come from experience or are prescribed 
 by the nature of the mind. Plato would hardly have under- 
 stood the question. He takes the law as a truth forced upon 
 him by the analysis of the world as he knows it, and makes it 
 the basis of his inquiry till something shall occur to modify or 
 overthrow it. We must not push his language to mean that 
 the principle is for him what we call ' a mere hypothesis.' 
 That is a shade of meaning due to the immense development 
 of ' working hypothesis ' in modern science, which has given 
 the term an implication not far removed from ' fiction.' 
 Plato simply takes it as the best basis he can find by analysis 
 and his attitude to objections shows this as a truth which 
 he is inclined to think that clear conceptions will be able to 
 sustain in every instance. He has no tendency to dissociate 
 ' mind ' from ' experience.' For the purpose of the present 
 argument the Law of Contradiction (or of Causation) sup- 
 plies the rule, ' Opposing dispositions toivards the same object 
 at the same time imply distinct psychological elements.' 1
 
 152 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 43. 140. 9, 437 B ~ *43- *9> 439 B - 
 
 The opposing dispositions towards the same object at the same 
 time, which imply distinct mental elements, are those which can- 
 not be explained away as contradictions, under given circum- 
 stances, within the same element. 
 
 437 B 140. 9. 'Would you place assent and dissent.' From 
 here down to C 29, 'wholly opposed to the former,' lays 
 the groundwork of the argument by pointing out that desire 
 and repugnance are prima facie opposites, coming under the 
 general headings of assent and dissent respectively. Assent 
 and dissent with the two other cases of opposition mentioned 
 in the first paragraph are merely taken as standard examples 
 of opposites, with which the mental dispositions mentioned in 
 the second and third paragraphs are then identified. 
 
 17. 'The former of those general terms,' more lit., (you 
 would place them) 'somewhere within those forms,' Eide. 
 This paragraph speaks of the affirmative instances, and the 
 following of the negative. 
 
 C 26. 'Under the head of mental rejection and repulsion.' 
 The antithesis as stated in this and the last paragraph would 
 not coincide with that between reason and desire, which he 
 is leading up to, although in it reason certainly does appear 
 to him as primarily negative. For in the last paragraph he 
 counts ' will,' which must at least be supposed to admit of a 
 rational element, as a case of affirmation. And in reality of 
 course, ' reason ' (whatever that means in morality) may urge 
 to action, and be opposed by the indolence of ' desire ' ; but 
 this is a fact which moralists seldom emphasise, and which 
 in the following argument Plato does not notice. Here, it 
 might be urged, he is merely illustrating the idea of opposi- 
 sion and not yet applying it to desire versus reason. 
 D 31. 'Shall we say that desires form a class' Eidos 'form' 
 or 'idea.' He now takes the psychological element of desire, 
 and sets himself to prove that it may meet with opposition 
 in the mind in relation to a given object, and that as this
 
 BOOK IV. 153 
 
 opposition is not due to a mere modification of desire within 
 itself, it points, by the hypothesis, to the existence of an 
 element in the mind (viz., reason) wholly distinct from desire. 
 The upshot of this difficult passage is plainly given, 143. 2, 
 439 A, B, so far as it bears on the argument : ' Then the 
 soul of a thirsty man, in so far as he is thirsty,' etc., i.e. 
 When we say that a thirsty man restrained himself from, 
 drinking, we mean that something in him fairly and squarely 
 met and checked the act demanded by the desire as such ; 
 if we had merely meant that he desired hot tea, and did not 
 care for the cold water offered him, we should not have said 
 ' He was thirsty and restrained his desire to drink,' but ' he 
 wanted something hot to drink, and was not attracted by 
 something cold.' Plato, however, becomes interested in the 
 problem of correlatives, and pursues it further than the 
 main argument requires. 
 
 37. 'Can thirst, then, so far as it is thirst.' The main 
 argument would have been equally well supported if Plato 
 had simply alleged as a fact that desire can be restrained 
 when its precise and full satisfaction is attainable. What he 
 does say is that a modification of desire, which makes it con- 
 tradictory and so interferes with its satisfaction, is not a bona 
 fide case of restraining the desire as such. To use the kind 
 of instance which he suggests, we cannot fairly say (so he 
 contends), ' I restrained my thirst,' if I was only offered dirty 
 water which I did not like to drink. In such a case I did 
 not squarely meet and baffle the thirst as such, i.e. the sheer 
 craving for drink. I desired clean drink and that I could not 
 get. Now every counter-desire may be regarded as a modi- 
 fying desire, and therefore Plato is ultimately taking a side in 
 the psychological dispute, whether desire can be restrained by 
 anything but desire. His point at present is that restraint of 
 desire by desire is not genuine restraint at all, but restraint by 
 ' reason ' alone deserves the name. This is hardly consistent 
 with the implication of 132. 33, 431 D. If we confine his 
 contention to desires on the same level as regards rationality,
 
 154 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 which is probably what he has in mind, there is much truth 
 in it. 
 
 437 E 141. 7. ' Every desire in itself has to do with its natural 
 
 object,' more literally, 'Each desire itself is only of each 
 (object) itself (viz., that of which it naturally is), but the 
 accessories are of what is such and such. Plato probably 
 means that the desire can exist in the mind as a general desire, 
 though it would be enough for his argument to say that in 
 referring to it in the abstract we disregard its modifications. 
 
 438 A j-j. 'Drink simply, but good drink.' If modification of a 
 
 desire by the desire of good, taken, e.g. as serviceableness to 
 life in general, were allowed to count as restraint of desire by 
 desire, Plato's argument for a distinct moral element would be 
 destroyed. We could always say ' he did not overcome his 
 desire for champagne, because he only desired it in as far 
 as it was good for him, therefore his abstinence was due to 
 his desire.' Plato seems to urge that, as relatively speaking 
 every object of desire is a good (compare first sentence of 
 Aristotle's Ethics), a desire for good is not prima fade an 
 influence in conflict with desire as such, and (I suggest to 
 complete his thought) any desire for good which could so 
 conflict with or remould ordinary desire must have its source 
 outside the region of desire proper. I see nothing false or 
 obscure in this argument. ' If you mean that drink as desired, 
 is so far a good, that is nothing in restraint of the desire.' 
 ' If you mean a good purpose that restrains you in mode and 
 times of drinking, that is not given by desire.' 
 K 21. 'In the case of all essentially correlative terms.' Plato 
 generalises the principle that in relative terms a qualification 
 of one implies a qualification of the other. No doubt the 
 principle is sound, but no formal rule is possible as to the 
 nature of the second qualification implied by the first. 
 ' Father ' implies ' child,' but we cannot say that ' good ' 
 father implies either ' good ' or ' bad ' child, although no 
 doubt some effect on the second character necessarily 
 follows from the first. See Jevons, Lessons in Elementary
 
 BOOK IV. 155 
 
 -Logic, on added Determinants really a fallacious form of 
 inference. The genesis of technical language is strikingly 
 illustrated by the Greek of this passage, which I will try 
 to render literally as follows, admitting that it only becomes 
 intelligible to us by help of the modernised technical 
 terms, wholly unknown to Plato's day, which Davies and 
 Vaughan introduce. ' In all that is such as to be of some- 
 thing, the such-and-such, as I think, is of a. such-and-such, but 
 it-by-itself is only of an it-by-itself.' The naively puzzling 
 statement is in part humorous, and its novelty is marked by 
 the interlocutor's bewilderment, as we have noted before. 
 ' Such and such,' a rough rendering for ' poios,' Latin ' qualis ' 
 (not ' toios ' ' talis ' the demonstrative = ' such as that '), from 
 which our term ' quality ' is derived. Here we have the first 
 use and meaning of this fateful term, as = ' of a sort ' or ' a 
 such ' as opposed to the mere general ' it ' or ' that.' 
 
 27. ' That greater is a relative term, implying another term,' 
 more literally, ' that the greater is such as to be greater than 
 something.' In Greek a comparative is followed by a 
 genitive; hence the formula here comes under the general 
 scheme 'to be of something ' ; it might be kept by rendering 
 'to be the greater #/" something.' 
 
 35. 'A future greater.' The added determinants are here 
 partly the same, whereas in speaking of desire they were 
 opposite, which shows how impossible a formal rule is. 
 
 142. 2. ' Knowledge in the abstract,' more literally, ' know- 438 C 
 ledge itself (or 'by itself), is of the knowable itself, or what- 
 ever we should set down knowledge as being of, but a 
 science which is such-and-such is of an (object) which is such 
 and such.' All this has a bearing on the position of abstrac- 
 tions, 'absolute' conceptions, or anything 'in itself in Plato. 
 As a rule, these expressions of translators simply represent 
 the addition of a pronoun meaning ' self,' and merely indica- 
 ting, prima facie, that the content of thought in question is to 
 be taken on its merits or as it stands, without extraneous 
 admixture. Most often, as here, the pronoun self ' agrees '
 
 156 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 grammatically with the term to which it applies ; sometimes, 
 but rarely in the Republic (oftener in the Phaedo\ a pre- 
 position is inserted, giving the effect of our phrase 'in' or 
 1 by itself.' See note on 141. 7 above, where the translation 
 gives ' in itself,' for ' self simply agreeing with the substantive. 
 438 D 10. ' Because it is of a particular character,' more literally, 
 ' a such and such ' (not ' talis ' but ' qualis ' ; there is no exact 
 English equivalent), 'like none of the others.' And the 
 following sentence, 'Then itself became a such-and-such, 
 because it was of a such-and-such.' Aristotle continues to 
 employ these pronominal phrases for some of his most 
 important distinctions, e.g. between ' a this ' and ' a such ' 
 (particular and universal). This is a different use from Plato's. 
 
 1 8. 'In the case of all correlative terms.' The Greek is 
 almost the same as in 141. 21, where see note. 
 E 22. 'That the qualities of the two are identical,' more 
 literally, 'that they are such as that of which they are'; this 
 shows a feeling of the difficulty touched in note on 141. 35. 
 
 26. ' Instead of limiting itself to the abstract object of 
 science,' etc., more literally, 'came to be science not of that 
 itself of which science is, but of a such-and-such.' 
 
 28. 'The conditions of health and disease,' literally, 'the 
 healthy and the unwholesome ' or ' diseased.' There is nothing 
 about ' conditions ' in the Greek, just as there is nothing 
 about 'abstract,' or 'qualified,' or 'correlative,' or 'object,' or 
 ' member of relation,' or ' relative term,' in the whole section 
 we are discussing. Yet the use of this technical language 
 may not only be necessary to explain the Greek, but may even 
 have an interest of its own, if we bear in mind that the trans- 
 lation and the original belong to the two opposite ends of an 
 immense historical evolution, the much-worn linguistic coun- 
 ters of the former having their origin, though at a great dis- 
 tance, in the direct and graphic conversational idioms of the 
 latter. 
 
 The above discussion of what is now called Relativity con- 
 ceived by Plato with reference to the connected modifications
 
 BOOK IV. 157 
 
 of contents one of which is 'of the other goes beyond the 
 need of the immediate argument. It lays down the principle 
 not merely that contents vary with circumstances (the vulgar 
 and negative form of negativity), but that the variations of 
 connected contents are themselves connected. The applica- 
 tion of this idea to object and subject, which is foreshadowed 
 at the close of Book v., gives the true modern bearing of 
 relativity, and the whole of Plato's position involves this 
 affirmative aspect of the idea as against the most futile inter- 
 pretation of ' man as the measure of things.' The present 
 passage, too, suggests definition by genus and species. All 
 that the discussion does for the main argument is to exhibit a 
 clear distinction between a modification which can only in a 
 limited sense be contrary to that which it modifies its genus 
 and a fair collision which arises from the conflict of im- 
 pulses belonging to two distinct genera. 
 
 34. ' To recur to the case of thirst,' more literally, ' And as 
 for thirst, will you not set down this, as that which it is (its 
 essential nature, anticipates an Aristotelian term), to be one 
 of these (things that are) of something ? ' ' Certainly ; of 
 drink.' Plato is now prepared to draw the general conclusion, 
 ' If anything fairly checks thirst, it is a different sort of element 
 from that which thirsts.' 
 
 40. ' Thirst in the abstract,' literally, ' Thirst itself.' 439 A 
 
 143. 2. 'Then the soul of a thirsty man' (see note 140. 31). 
 The point is, we are speaking of the desire as such, and the 
 question is not whether it may take on a limited form incom- 
 patible with its gratification, but whether its gratification can 
 be straightforwardly checked. 
 
 6. ' Therefore whenever anything pulls back.' If the soul B 
 can be restrained from the gratification which it desires, in a 
 manner that cannot be explained as the crossing of desire by 
 desire, then the check is due to some other element of it 
 (' principle,' of course, is an insertion, literally, 'the very (thing) 
 which thirsts '). ' Distinct from,' literally, ' other than.' ' Dis- 
 tinct ' is a Latinised technical term, having a long history
 
 158 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 behind it, first in Greek and then in Latin thought, which was 
 only beginning when Plato wrote about 'other' and 'same.' 
 
 10. ' That the same thing should ' : compare 139. 2 and 10, 
 notes. Here ' with the same part of itself ' is a more literal 
 rendering than above, and the word ' thing,' though an inser- 
 tion, happens to suit the meaning. We here get the full value 
 of Plato's careful statement of the axiom, in accordance with 
 which the distinctness of elements within the whole ' thing ' or 
 ' soul ' does not impair its unity. 
 
 15. ' The bowman,' perhaps analysing an example familiar 
 in Heraclitus, who is apt not to distinguish how opposite 
 tensions combine within an orderly system, and therefore to 
 leave the impression that contradiction rather than co-operat- 
 ing diversity is the principle of life. 
 
 Sect. 44. 143. 20, 439 B 146. 12, 441 c. 
 
 It follows that the psychological elements or kinds in the soul, 
 as they do produce bona fide different effects at once towards the 
 same object, are distinct from one another ; and they display 
 themselves as calculation, desire, and spirit. 
 
 439 B 143. 20. ' Now, can we say, that people sometimes are 
 thirsty and yet do not wish to drink' ; better, ' decline to drink.' 
 The result of the long section which preceded was simply to 
 clear the way for this application of the Law of Contradiction 
 to facts. Section 42, ' Opposition of effects involves distinct- 
 ness of agents.' Section 43, ' This opposition of effects is not 
 to be confused with self-modification of an effect.' Section 44, 
 'There is opposition of the kind in question, between the 
 effects of the following agents or elements.' 
 C 23. 'Their soul contains one principle which commands,' 
 more literally, ' There is in their soul that which invites them 
 to drink, and there is that which hinders them from drinking,' 
 the latter being distinct and having authority. 
 
 28. ' Whenever the authority which forbids such indulgence 
 grows up in the soul,' more literally, ' whenever the hindering
 
 BOOK IV. 159 
 
 (element) arises in the soul, it is engendered there by cal- 
 culation.' 
 
 30. ' While the powers which,' more literally, ' while what 439 D 
 leads and drags (to the object of desire) presents itself by 
 means of passion and infirmity.' The connection between the 
 terms ' passive,' ' passion,' ' affection ' and the like, would form 
 a curious chapter in the history of psychology. On the one 
 hand, it suggests that in the states so described the mind is 
 somehow ' suffering ' rather than ' acting ' is exposed to 
 shocks from the not-self; on the other hand, a more active 
 condition than that of extreme passion, in the current mean- 
 ing of the words, it would be hard to conceive. The word 
 translated infirmity, literally disease, illustrates the Greek 
 feeling on this head ; Socrates, e.g. in the Phaedrus, describes 
 himself by this word as having an infirmity (a ' weakness ') for 
 arguments (i.e. being very fond of them), and the poets often 
 apply the term to love. The moral reason appears here first 
 as negative, and although really the account of the education 
 in positive habits with a positive aim has already gone beyond 
 this attitude, yet it is noteworthy as characteristic of the first 
 view of ethics at all times. Compare note on 140. 26, 437 c. 
 
 35. ' That these are two principles distinct one from the 
 other.' ' Principles ' is an insertion throughout the paragraph, 
 as also is ' part.' This sentence draws the definite conclusion 
 of the argument. 
 
 36. ' That part of the soul with which it reasons,' more 
 literally, ' calling that with which it calculates the calculative 
 (kind or part) of the soul.' This is a new term for the 'philo- 
 sophic ' element, and indicates the aspect of reason (ratio, 
 also an elementary meaning of ' Logos,' the derivatives of 
 which term, ' Logismos ' or ' Logistikos,' here applied to the 
 moral reason, distinctly = ' calculation ' and ' calculative ') as 
 calling up the consideration of means and consequences 
 in restraint of ill-advised actions. This is a stage of the 
 process by which ideas control acts, and has its reality in 
 the everyday moral world which Plato is now analysing.
 
 160 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 See note on development of ' philosophic ' element above, 
 108. 5, 410 D. 
 
 40. 'Indulgences,' literally 'fillings.' This word has a 
 close connection with Plato's theory of pleasure ; see the use 
 of 'fulness' and 'to fill' throughout, 324-5. 585 below. Its 
 meaning ranges from the idea of process in satiating a bodily 
 appetite, to that of satisfaction in grasping a substantive good. 
 Aristotle misinterprets Plato so far as he recognises only the 
 former application of the term. It must be conceded, how- 
 ever, that Plato's psychology of pleasure does not distinguish 
 between pleasantness and the other content of objects ; in 
 other words, he uses ' pleasure ' much as we use ' a pleasure,' 
 and, therefore, identifies pleasure with the object of desire. 
 
 439 E 43. ' These two specific parts ' (Eide). The ' spirit ' as a 
 
 passion or affection we speak of the passion of anger has 
 a certain resemblamce, /rma facie, to the appetitive element, 
 which the first answer insists on. The story of Leontius 
 recalls the connection between anger and self-respect or self- 
 assertion. 
 
 440 A 144. 20. ' Fights against the desires.' This gives the con- 
 
 clusion that the two ' kinds ' are distinct according to the 
 argument of the two preceding sections. 
 
 B 28. 'That it should make common cause with the desires.' 
 It does not seem hard to be angry when interfered with in 
 doing wrong; but Plato is not here allowing either for self- 
 deception or for the sovereignty of the bad self (contrast 
 account of tyrant, Book ix.). Jf the moral reason, i.e., we 
 may suggest, the system of objects and principles which forms 
 the active self, is against the presented indulgence, then no 
 doubt the self is ex hypothesi debarred from ' rising as one 
 man ' in favour of the desire. The phrase ' reason pro- 
 nounces ' stands for a common Greek idiom, and throws no 
 light on the psychological process by which Plato supposed 
 reason to pronounce and enforce its verdict. 
 
 C 34. 'Well, and when any one thinks he is in the wrong.' In 
 this and the two following paragraphs, the manifestation of
 
 BOOK IV. 161 
 
 ' spirit ' is described rather as a complex of the higher emotions 
 self-respect, pride, loyalty, honour than as the ordinary 
 impulse of resentment. Thus the question is raised for us 
 whether the intermediate position between reason and 
 appetite, which Plato claims for the educated 'spirit,' might 
 not equally well be claimed for any of the higher emotions, 
 i.e. feelings qualified by comprehensive ideas, such as 
 benevolence, sympathy, veracity, love of purity or beauty. 
 The implied distinction between appetites and emotions is an 
 important step in ethical psychology, though introduced by 
 Plato in a bizarre form. Of course the first education above, 
 and the account of the philosophic temper below, largely 
 supplement Plato's conception of spirit as an account of the 
 more ideal emotions. All these presuppose some idea of self, 
 all, therefore, are in some sense likely to defend the self as a 
 whole against the aggressions of rebel inclination. 
 
 145. 9. ' We made the auxiliaries like sheep-dogs subject to 44 D 
 the rulers' (see 62-3. 375-6). The 'philosophic' element was 
 at first a mere safeguard to the ' spirit.' Later their respective 
 importance was reversed. 
 
 22. 'Or is it only a modification of it?' more literally, 'a E 
 form (eidos) of the calculative.' Plato sees, no doubt, that the 
 ideal feelings must not be absorbed either in appetite or in the 
 calculative intelligence. But the parallel with the classes in 
 the commonwealth, to which he appeals, is not sufficiently 
 analysed to be a cogent reason to us. He himself proceeds 
 to a more psychological reason. 
 
 35. ' Even in little children.' At least the sense of resent- 441 A 
 ment at being interfered with precedes anything like clear 
 intelligence, and some men are under the rule of self-assertive 
 emotion all their lives. This again is not a convincing psycho- 
 logical argument for the absolute distinctness of reason and 
 emotion, but it shows sufficiently for Plato's purpose that they 
 are distinguishable sides in the entire psychosis. He adds that 
 ' spirit ' is clearly visible in animals, and that resentment may 
 be unreasonable. Quotation from Odyssey, 82. 390 above. 
 
 L
 
 162 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 146. 10. 'Corresponding divisions,' literally 'the same 
 kinds,' having also the meaning of ' classes ' when applied to 
 the commonwealth. 
 
 Sect. 45. 146. 13, 441 c 148. 38, 443 B - 
 
 The virtues of the individual, or inward morality, in their 
 correspondence and connection with those of the commonwealth 
 or with outward morality. 
 
 30. 'If his inward (faculties) do severally their proper 
 work,' 'a doer of his proper work.' Although Plato regards 
 inward morality, or, as we say, the good will, as the essence 
 of goodness (see 149, 443 c and D), yet he is careful (compare 
 Book i. 8-p. 332-3) not to make a severance between the two 
 sides of will and deed or faith and works, whereby the inner 
 loses content and the outer freedom. This entire passage 
 should be carefully studied for the sense and bearing in which 
 it is said that intelligence is to be sovereign. Does intelli- 
 gence stand for mere asceticism and abstraction from life, or 
 for an affirmative purpose which shapes the mind and moulds 
 the whole man ? Here Plato strikes the note ' the man will 
 discharge his function if his mental kinds severally discharge 
 theirs.' 
 
 441 E 35- 'The province of the rational principle to command.' 
 Plato points out the part played by the several psychological 
 elements, in a duly organised mind, first with reference to 
 goodness or justice, and then more shortly with reference to 
 the other ' excellences.' The calculative principle is sovereign. 
 It represents the whole mind in a conception of life which 
 gives all elements their due. The ' spirit ' may stand for self- 
 assertive feeling attached to the idea of self which the intelli- 
 gence maintains. It is therefore truly the ally of intelligence. 
 
 41. 'The combination of music and gymnastic,' here very 
 widely conceived as an education which positively nourishes 
 the intelligence with great principles and ideas, while temper- 
 ing the self-assertive emotion to the habit of loyalty and the 
 instinctive sense of fitness.
 
 BOOK IV. 163 
 
 147. 6. ' Having been thus trained, and having truly learnt 44 2 A 
 their parts.' Education, it must be remembered, is to Plato 
 and Aristotle the means by which the mind and character of 
 society are realised in the individual. Thus we have here a 
 fundamental unity between the inner and outer system. The 
 'justice' or ethical organisation of the man is a mirror of the 
 ethical organisation of society. ' Trained ' ; better, ' nurtured.' 
 
 ' Their parts,' literally ' their own (things),' the phrase 
 employed in describing justice throughout. 
 
 8. ' Concupiscent principle.' The insistence on this being 
 the largest part of the soul seems to be Plato's way of indicat- 
 ing its natural want of unity it is to him ' a manyheaded 
 monster thing' : see description of monster (end of Book ix.) ; 
 compare the smallness of the class in which wisdom resides, 
 129. 428 E above, and 30 below. 'Insatiable,' 'covetous': 
 compare the 'industrious' class, 136. 35, 434 c above, and 
 note. ' To do its proper work,' i.e. to serve as a means to 
 good and complete life. It is admitted that desires can be 
 'simple and moderate,' 132. 26, 431 c, D, and they then of 
 course represent the element of ' life,' which is the neces- 
 sary substratum of good life. On the satisfaction of all parts 
 of the mind in a life according to reason, see 327. 586 E 
 below. 
 
 25. 'Spirited element,' literally 'part.' The designation of C 
 the psychological elements varies; 'kind,' ' form,' ' part,' are 
 all used. In a man who belonged to the soldier class, the 
 'instructions of the reason ' would be a direct reflection of the 
 character recognised as courageous ('manly ') by the laws and 
 rulers and imparted by education. The manliness of an 
 artisan would not directly enter into the public virtue of 
 courage (see note I2p. 27, 42 7 A above) and would indeed 
 hardly be recognised as courage proper by a Greek. Com- 
 pare Aristotle, Ethics, iii. 6, 5, n. Aristotle e.g. thinks that 
 maritime danger (excluding naval war, I imagine) is not a 
 field in which true courage can be shown. So he thinks that 
 to be unmoved at the prospect of being scourged is not true
 
 164 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 courage. He is not accustomed to connect these conditions 
 with high-minded men acting from a sense of duty, and also 
 his idea of courage is essentially active, while the landsman, 
 whom he has in mind, is condemned to inaction at sea. 
 There is nothing perhaps in which we differ from the Greeks 
 so widely as in our subtler recognition of heroism. Ours 
 would also however be derived, though less immediately, from 
 the general type of character and discharge of duty demanded 
 from individuals by the accepted social ideal. Of course 
 there is still great practical truth in the idea that certain 
 virtues are expected on the whole of certain classes. 
 
 30. ' Wise, in virtue of that small part ' ; ' part ' is here 
 literal. ' Small ' : see note on 129. 13, 428 E. The ' wisdom ' 
 of each individual would primarily be a conception of his 
 station and its duties, determined by his training and involv- 
 ing a conception of society and the purpose of life, at least 
 sufficient for his needs. Law, tradition, and public opinion 
 would all co-operate to mould his ideal system, which in a 
 'ruler' (according to Plato's theory) would be on the one 
 hand a perfect intelligence of the commonwealth and all its 
 parts and functions, and on the other hand a concrete notion 
 of his own life and duty, furnishing an adequate plan and 
 place for all the elements of his nature. The ' wisdom ' of 
 every individual in the community would have the same 
 double aspect, and would only be enabled to satisfy the whole 
 nature of the individual because the elements of that nature 
 are duly represented in the working system of the community 
 which the private intelligence reflects. This seems to be 
 Plato's view so far; it may be that the second half of the 
 Republic enlarges the nature, which has to be satisfied in 
 morality, beyond the mere social self. 
 
 36. ' Temperance'; the nature of temperance has really been 
 insisted on in describing the relation of the three pyschologi- 
 cal elements, 6 above, 442, ' And so these two having been 
 thus trained,' etc. : cf. below, 332. 590 D, E, on the spiritual 
 need of control by the higher element. The agreement of the
 
 BOOK IV. 165 
 
 desires with the reason involves a modification of their nature 
 and number, such as is produced by the wise ' gardener ' of 
 the soul, 330. 589 B. 
 
 148. i. 'Just.' Justice is really portrayed in the above 442 D 
 account of the parts and excellences of the mind, as it con- 
 sists in the proper working of the whole. 
 
 10. 'Commonplace examples'; verification by comparing E 
 the theory with what common opinion expects of just men. 
 ' By their fruits ye shall know them ' : compare 136. 434 A 
 above, where the account of a just commonwealth is 
 verified in the same way. The 'just' or 'good' man of 
 common parlance will be honest, pious, and loyal, truthful and 
 dutiful to God and his neighbour, much as described by 
 Cephalus and Polemarchus, Book i. This agrees with the 
 character of Plato's 'just' man, and is directly attributable 
 (31 below) to the right unity which is maintained in the 
 organisation of his will. The right unity is that which har- 
 monises with the social idea. There may be a wrong unity, 
 which is of course in some degree false and precarious. See 
 284. 554 on the miser's character, or 293. 561 on the false 
 liberal (' democratic ' man). 
 
 36. 'The power which'; 'power' is here an actual noun, 443 B 
 'dunamis,' sometimes rendered 'faculty.' For definition of 
 a 'dunamis,' see 192. 477 on 'faculties.' It means, in 
 short, a quality only knowable by its effects. 
 
 148- 39> 443 B 151. 7, 444 E. Sect. 46. 
 
 Natural law is the symbol and germ of 'morality ', which is the 
 health of the soul, as wickedness is its disease. 
 
 148. 39. ' Our dream is completely realised ' : see 134. 433 A, 
 ' What at the commencement we laid down as a universal 
 rule of action when we were founding our state, this, if I mis- 
 take not, or some modification (form) of it, is justice.' 'A 
 kind of rudimentary type,' more literally, 'a beginning and 
 type,' i.e. canon or outline, the word used in speaking of
 
 166 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 theology, and constantly recurred to in designating the very 
 general nature of Plato's treatment. 
 
 443 C 149. 2. ' A rude outline of justice,' literally, ' an image,' or 
 ' simulacrum ' (' eidolon,' idol). This echoes the expressions 
 of 97-8. 402 B, c, about reflections and images, and points 
 forward to the allegory of the Den and the ideas connected 
 with it. A natural fact, considered as an image of a higher 
 truth, is a symbol, and so Plato finds that the natural law which 
 assigns a 'work' to everything (close of Book i.), and makes 
 division of labour the economic basis of society (genesis of 
 society, Book IL), is a symbol of morality and derives its 
 value for his investigation (or, its real serviceableness as a 
 principle of social arrangement,) from that character. 
 
 8. 'Justice is indeed,' literally 'was.' This curious use of 
 the past tense includes reference to the former passage in 
 question, but also seems to indicate an identification with 
 reality, as opposed to mere appearance, which is taken as 
 present. Aristotle adopts it in his strange technical formula 
 for essence, 'the what it was to be (a given thing),' i.e. really 
 is. Compare 'Tempus erat,' Horace, Carm. i. 37, 4, 'It is 
 time, as we thought.' 
 
 D ii. 'His own interests,' literally 'the (things) of himself,' 
 exactly the same phrase as that rendered ' his own work,' just 
 above. Try, for the whole passage, ' Not about a man doing 
 what belongs to him without, but about that within, dealing 
 in very truth with himself and with his own.' Plato treats 
 the inward morality, the goodwill, which he regards rather as 
 the ' natural ' or complete and self-consistent organisation of 
 the mind, as the climax and essence of goodness, of which 
 the law of function in things and persons is but a symbol and 
 type. But the latter part of this paragraph, ' he will then at 
 length proceed to do,' shows that external actions, considered 
 as the manifestation of a fully organised good will, are never 
 cut loose by him from their relation to morality, but are 
 considered not only as a necessary consequence, but also 
 as an essential condition of maintaining the right unity or
 
 BOOK IV. 167 
 
 organisation of the will, taking ' will,' for which Plato has no 
 separate name, as simply = the man in relation to action. 
 
 21. 'Reduced the many elements of his nature to a real 443 
 unity,' more lit, ' having in all respects become one out of 
 many,' the true unity of the human soul or actual self is not 
 given but has to be made : compare account of the monster, 
 close of Book ix. This reiterated view of the moral self is 
 exceedingly important for Plato's psychology. Of course a 
 degree of psychical unity is presupposed in the possibility of 
 achieving such a moral self-organisation. 
 
 22. ' He will then at length.' Of course Plato does not 
 really mean to postpone action, which is the means of training, 
 till training is completed. He only follows the custom of 
 regarding action as subsequent to will. 
 
 28. ' The just and honourable course is that which pre- 
 serves and assists in creating the aforesaid habit of mind ' ; 
 ' honourable,' literally ' beautiful.' Compare the fine passage 
 in the simile of the monster, 330-1. 589; and 367. 618 E. 
 The sentence taken by itself is ambiguous. If good life is to 
 be wholly defined with reference to inward morality, then the 
 solid criterion is lost, and the door is opened to any form of 
 superstitious asceticism. But we have seen that the course of 
 action which alone has power to guarantee the right organisa- 
 tion of mind, is that correlative to the social idea, which 
 at the present stage represents the harmonious expression 
 of man's nature according to its individual modification. 
 ' Habit,' Greek ' hexis,' from ' echein ' to have, like Latin 
 ' habitus,' from ' habere.' Here we find, as 151. 6, 444 E proves 
 beyond question, the germ of that great ethical and psycho- 
 logical truth which the translators indicate by rendering 
 ' hexis ' as ' habit.' And Aristotle in adopting the term 
 ' hexis ' to express the effect produced upon disposition by 
 repeated action, exhibits the continuity of Plato's suggestion 
 with his own doctrine, from which the modern conception of 
 ' habit ' is derived. Probably, however, we do wrong in read- 
 ing the whole of this development back into Plato, and we
 
 168 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 should be nearer his literal meaning here, if we understood 
 ' habit ' as it is used in phrases like ' habit of body,' ' habit of 
 a plant,' rather than as indicating custom and its results. 
 Perhaps ' behaviour ' would be a fair gloss. ' Genuine know- 
 ledge,' contrast ' mere opinion ' below. The opposition is 
 intentional, and rightly emphasised by the translators through 
 the insertion of ' genuine ' and ' mere,' which are not in the 
 Greek. For the distinction of Knowledge and Opinion, see 
 close of Book v. 
 
 444 A 36. ' If we were to say we have discovered.' This is in 
 sharp contrast with the tone of some of the ' Socratic ' 
 dialogues, and at two points in Book i. the Republic holds 
 similar language to theirs (see 13. 336 A, ' we have again 
 failed,' and closing passage of Book i.). Plato seems to think 
 that when he has exhibited morality as an actual working 
 system, both in the mind and in the world, he may say that 
 he has so far discovered what it is. 
 
 150. 2. ' Injustice.' The remainder of this section (i.) ex- 
 hibits the nature of goodness more plainly by contrasting it 
 with badness ; (ii.) in doing so reiterates and confirms the 
 argument, 33-4. 351, which deduces the weakness of wicked- 
 ness from its disintegrating effect ; and (iii.) leads up to the 
 following section, which prepares the way for a historical 
 philosophy of social corruption and its causes, as a negative 
 verification of the theory of social health which has just been 
 exhibited. 
 
 B 6. ' A part of the mind against the whole ' ; ' part ' is here 
 literal. It is the relation of part to whole, the whole being of 
 a determinate kind, which explains the subsequent and recur- 
 ring metaphor of the elements whose nature is to obey and 
 rule. 
 
 10. 'To any member of the rightfully dominant class'; 
 better, ' to whatever is of the governing kind.' 
 
 11. 'Such doings as these, I imagine,' more literally, 
 ' this kind of thing, and the confusion and delusion which 
 attaches to it, we shall take to constitute.'
 
 BOOK IV. 169 
 
 12. 'Injustice, licentiousness' the opposites of the four 
 cardinal virtues. ' Licentiousness ' = 'Akolasia,' which Aristotle 
 made the technical name for ' intemperance ' (' Profligacy ' 
 in Peters' translation of the Ethics), the usual opposite of 
 temperance. ' Cowardice ' opposite of fortitude or manli- 
 ness, ' folly ' of wisdom, ' and in a word all vice,' apparently 
 parodying a hexameter line which Aristotle quotes as pro- 
 verbial, ' In Justice, in a word, all virtue lies.' Ethics, v. 
 
 i, 15- 
 
 23. ' The conditions of health,' literally ' healthy (things).' 444 C 
 'A healthy life' would probably render the point of the argu- 
 ment better, as it refers to the effect of repeated acts on 
 permanent states. But in any case the relation of a healthy 
 way of living to health is not quite on all fours with that of 
 moral acts to moral habit. (See note on habit, 150. 28 
 above.) 
 
 26. ' The practice of justice begets the habit of justice.' 
 Here we have the doctrine of moral habituation distinctly 
 stated. Yet the word ' habit ' is not here in the Greek, which 
 is more lit, 'Then does not the doing just (things) make 
 justice in (a man), and the (doing) unjust (things) injustice?' 
 
 30. ' Now to produce health.' The parallel between health D 
 and goodness very strictly carried through. The essential 
 point is that health and goodness are both ' according to 
 nature,' while their opposites are violations of nature. This 
 fateful term ' nature ' is here to be very simply and yet very 
 largely understood. Unfortunately, by introduction of the 
 Latinised noun, beside the English verb, it has lost for us the 
 fundamental meaning which its form at once suggests in 
 Greek or Latin, viz., ' to be born for ' a certain end, or work, 
 or completion of any kind, as a man is ' born for ' a certain 
 growth and life, while the meaning, again, is not restricted, as 
 with us, to human or animal parturition, but can be used of 
 any object, or even idea, in the sense which we should have 
 to express by some paraphrase such as ' to be by nature.' 
 Thus 41. 358 E above, 'To commit injustice is, they say, in
 
 170 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 its nature good,' etc., is, quite literally, ' they say that to do 
 wrong has been born (is by nature) a good. ' (See above, 55. 
 5, 370 A and B, and notes.) This idea of being ' born for ' or 
 ' to ' a certain work, or place, or properties, which determines 
 the meaning of ' by nature ' in Plato or Aristotle, excludes 
 from the first all the brood of fallacies which attach themselves 
 to the notion of a ' natural ' state as excluding development. 
 The whole Hellenic feeling on this point is pregnantly 
 summed up in a sentence of Aristotle : ' Whatever anything 
 is when its growth (genesis) has reached its end (or final 
 cause) is what we affirm to be the nature of the thing, as of a 
 man, a horse, or a house.' Politics, i. i. Thus the working 
 of the developed bodily, mental, or social organism is the 
 test of what is or is not 'natural.' 
 
 444 E 151. 5. ' All fair practices.' The principle of habituation, 
 
 also involving the connection of the inner and outer system 
 (faith and works), emphatically repeated as the last word of 
 the strictly ethical discussion. Of course the essence of it is 
 implied throughout the first education, in the conception of 
 acquiring right likings and being taught to do right acts 
 before the reasons for them are or can be perceived. Never- 
 theless, the special importance of habit in forming the will 
 and as a condition of complete morality is, as Mr. Jowett says, 
 the discovery of Aristotle and not of Plato. 
 
 Sect. 47. 151. 8, 444 E end of Book. 
 
 Anticipation of the negative verification^ the thread of which 
 is resumed at the opening of Book VIII, 
 
 8. ' Whether it be profitable.' Taking up the challenge of 
 24. 344, and 52. 367. 
 
 445 A 18 and 21. 'The constitution,' literally 'the nature,' 
 
 because disease and wickedness were explained to be ' against 
 nature.' ' Of that very principle whereby we live,' literally 
 ' of that very (thing),' or ' of that itself whereby we live,' an 
 exact equivalent for mind or soul in the wide meaning with
 
 BOOK IV. 171 
 
 which Plato and Aristotle employ the word. Compare 37. 
 353 above, ' Shall we declare life to be a function of the 
 soul ? ' The question, ' Why should I be moral ? ' if referred 
 to consequences outside morality, is of course self-contra- 
 dictory. The statement of it on 52. 367 E above, was, as 
 we saw, ambiguous. It now appears, however, that philosophy 
 can only analyse the nature of morality and immorality, and 
 not give external reasons for and against them, but also, that 
 this is enough. 
 
 152. 2. 'Five forms,' 'five characters.' To obtain these 445 
 the psychology has to be made more elaborate, and this 
 alteration is here anticipated. The parts of the dialogue are 
 so skilfully linked together that if there was any interval 
 between the composition or appearance of any of them, as is 
 prima facie quite probable in a work which obviously includes 
 so much development of thought, it is now impossible to 
 discover the junctions. The reference to the five characters 
 anticipates the psychology of Books vm. and ix., and Plato 
 intentionally gives to Books v., vi., and vn., the appearance 
 of a digression or interruption. But we could not attempt 
 to treat these books as a later insertion without falling into 
 further difficulties. Book ix. is thoroughly coherent with 
 Book vm., yet the account of pleasure in Book ix. certainly 
 presupposes the discussions on reality in Books vi. and VIL ; 
 moreover, if we divide the whole of Book v. from the 
 present passage, we shall be separating the conclusion of the 
 ' Hellenic city ' (470) from the account of it down to the 
 present point. The transition to the city of philosophers 
 takes place not here, but at 471. Yet if we try to divide at 
 471, we shall be tearing apart discussions obviously held 
 together by the simile of the three waves, in which the 
 number three is essential. Thus, as the work now stands, it 
 is, and was meant to be, an indivisible whole. Undoubtedly 
 there are appearances of afterthought in such passages as 
 244. 521-2, 262. 535, as in the whole relation of the meta- 
 physic of Books v., vi., VIL, or the psychology of vm. and ix.
 
 172 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 to the social ethic of n., in., iv. But such a work was cer- 
 tainly not written in a brief space of time, ancL'we know that 
 development of views constantly exhibits itrelf even within 
 the rigid frame of a modern treatise. Moreover it is im- 
 possible to say for certain that anything in the growth of 
 ideas or retrospective references which the Republic displays 
 goes beyond the natural freedom of such a writer as Plato, 
 allowing his subject to develop organically in his hands. 
 Lastly, I would point out that publication in the ancient 
 world can hardly have been the definite and irrevocable act 
 which it is with us. (See further, Introduction, Sect. VIIL) 
 The direct traditions which exist that Plato read aloud isolated 
 books or portions of the Republic are of no value, but it is 
 extremely probable that he would do so, and that he might 
 permit copies of them to be circulated. 
 
 5. ' One form of government will be that which we have 
 described.' 
 
 It is of interest at this point, before we leave Plato's 
 simpler exposition of the conditions of a healthy society, to 
 compare his view of social possibilities with that of Aristotle. 
 The condition of social life on the one hand, and its ultimate 
 aim on the other, are expressed in two trenchant sayings of 
 Aristotle, which must be construed as complementary and 
 not contradictory : ' No society can be formed out of 
 similars ' (Pol. ii. i), i.e. the members of a whole must be 
 diverse ; and, ' Society aims at consisting of equals and 
 similars so far as possible ' (Pol. iv. 1 1 ; cf. vii. 7), i.e. the ideal 
 of society is a community of persons on the same general 
 level. In his view as to the true nature of a commonwealth, 
 Aristotle pays more attention to the latter principle, as Plato 
 to the former. For Aristotle (Pol. vii. 7) society is an associa- 
 tion of ' similars ' aiming at the best life ; and as the 'best ' is 
 happiness, which is excellence (virtue) in perfect use and 
 activity, and not all are capable of this, the forms and classes of 
 commonwealths are determined by the distribution of capacity 
 for such participation, and the society or commonwealth
 
 BOOK IV. 173 
 
 as such consists in each case only of those who are so capable, 
 the industrial and commercial classes being omitted, and 
 a fortiori the women. Plato, on the contrary, as we saw, 
 135- 20 > 433 D > faces the problem in its whole difficulty, 
 making- every child, slave, woman, and workman a member 
 of the state, and in his or her degree a vehicle of its principle. 
 But Plato's conception pays the penalty of its thoroughness, 
 and the attractive ideal of society as a company of peers and 
 comrades, banded together to live the good life and all 
 qualified to share alike in government and in obedience, is 
 one which we owe not to Plato, but to Aristotle. Only we 
 must not forget the exclusion by which it is purchased. We 
 need the thoroughness of Plato's ideal, combined with the 
 perfection of Aristotle's, fully to represent the possibilities of 
 society; but though there is no reason to doubt that a 
 general rise of level in civilised humanity has been and may 
 further be attained, it is Plato's account which, if we look at 
 the obvious facts, has always been the truest, and can never 
 wholly cease to be true.
 
 BOOK V 
 
 Sect. 48. Beginning of Book v. 156. 19, 451 c. 
 
 Introduction to the communism of women and children, 
 represented as an afterthought so far as the full exposition of 
 it is concerned, but still within the ' Hellenic ' commonwealth. 
 
 449 A 153. i. 'Good and right' (see Book vin., near beginning), 
 ' you had it in your power to tell us of a still more excellent 
 state, and of a still more excellent man.' 
 
 6. ' Reducible to four varieties,' literally ' are in four forms 
 (eide) of evil.' 
 
 22. 'Section/ literally 'form ' or 'species ' (eide). 
 C 26. 'Common property' (see 122. 424 A), literally 'The 
 (things) of friends are common.' The proverb does not in 
 itself necessarily suggest common ownership ; it may be 
 taken to indicate just the reverse. (See Introduction, Aris- 
 totle's Criticisms upon Plato.) 
 
 45 C 155. 8, ' Among our guardians.' The definite arrange- 
 ments of the Republic affect only the guardian class, in which 
 we must consider the soldier class to be included. The life 
 of the other classes is left in the background, and we cannot 
 say whether it would or would not have been assimilated to 
 that of the guardians if Plato had thought it worth while to 
 develop a scheme in greater detail. The fact is that the 
 main principles which he had in mind were sufficiently 
 illustrated by dealing with the life of the guardians. For 
 a suggestive sketch of his city based on accepting a serious 
 
 174
 
 BOOK V. 175 
 
 difference in degree of asceticism between the guardians and 
 the other citizens, see Mr. Pater's Plato and Platonism, 
 p. 228. 
 
 10. 'The most troublesome business of all.' It is the 
 great physical obstacle (putting out of sight the moral 
 functions of home life throughout) to professional or indus- 
 trial activity on the part of married women, and as such 
 Plato proposes to deal with it. (See 169. 3, 460.) Right or 
 wrong, he goes effectively to his point. 
 
 39. 'I pray that the divine Nemesis,' etc., more literally 451 A 
 'I bow to (deprecate) Adrasteia (Nemesis).' Probably an 
 echo of Aeschylus' Prom. V. 936, in which Poseidon counsels 
 Prometheus to adopt a less defiant attitude . . . ' Who wor- 
 ship Adrasteia, they are wise.' The precise reference here 
 is uncertain, but probably Socrates is excusing his audacity 
 in treating (and treating critically) matters of such immense 
 importance. 
 
 43. 'Noble and good and just institutions,' 1 rather Maws' 
 or ' formulas.' The same word occurs 196. 2, 479 D, where 
 ' the mass of notions current among the mass of men ' is 
 literally, 'the many formulas (or 'rules') of the multitude.' 
 There is a doubtful reading in the present passage, but the 
 meaning is not seriously affected by it. 
 
 156. 9. ' He is clean even in the next world,' literally B 
 ' there,' and 'in this world,' literally 'here.' It is not certain 
 that the reference is to this and the other world, although 
 the Greek suggests that meaning (see 5. 18, note.) Jowett 
 takes it as a contrast between ' in law ' and ' in argument. 
 
 156. 20, 451 0158. 23, 453 B. Sect. 49. 
 
 Proposal that -women should share the occupations and 
 education of men, in the guardian class. 
 
 26. 'Guardians of a flock' (see 63. 375, 115. 416). As C 
 the germs of the psychology, so also the elements of the 
 view to be taken about the work of the female are elicited,
 
 176 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 partly in fun, but not without a genuine sense of fact, from 
 observation of the animal world. 
 
 451 D 32. 'Do we think that the females.' Inference from the 
 
 treatment of animals under domestication : cf. 166-7. 459 
 below, the appeal to the experience of breeders. There is 
 something very modern in this frank recognition of man's 
 animal nature and of the lessons to be learnt from it. By 
 considering exclusively those aspects of Greek thought which 
 bear apparent analogy to mediaeval dualism, we forfeit the 
 understanding of one whole side of the Greek mind, namely, 
 the accessibility to experience and the continuity in its view 
 of the world, which afford so wide and solid a basis for its 
 idealism. 
 
 E 41. ' Is it possible to use animals.' In common speech 
 to-day 'animal' excludes 'man.' In French e.g. 'animal 'is 
 a term of abuse, like ' beast ' in English. The Greek word 
 'zoon,' which has the same etymological meaning 'living 
 thing,' has absolutely no such implication, and when Aristotle 
 denned man as a ' political animal ' there would be to a Greek 
 no feeling of a joke or paradox, as there is to us. Thus, the 
 connection between this and the following sentence is not, as 
 to an English reader, an inference by analogy, but a valid 
 conclusion by help of a general principle which fairly covers 
 it. If we read 'living creature' for 'animal' we should get 
 nearer the spirit of the passage. 
 
 452 A 157. 8. ' A military education.' Plato goes at once to the 
 
 extreme conclusion, a practice which has the advantage of 
 leaving no doubt on the scope of the principle. Any one 
 can put in reservations. ' Any one can fill in the details,' as 
 Aristotle says. 
 
 15. 'The most ridiculous.' An education on the same lines 
 for male and female does not involve all the difficulties of an 
 education in common, e.g. it seems to us a simple thing to 
 establish separate gymnasia. Mixed day-schools and classes 
 are said, however, to have certain advantages. The general 
 formula of our return to the Greeks seems to hold good here
 
 BOOK V. 177 
 
 also, viz., that in coming back to the unity which they so 
 profoundly divined, we bring with us the safeguard of a 
 deeper experience which could not have been gained except 
 by departing from that unity. If Plato's ideas had triumphed 
 from his day onwards, there could have been no Christian 
 family and no chivalry or romance. But after our experience 
 of the family and of chivalry and romance, we may safely go 
 back to the solid truth of Plato's ideas. 
 
 34. 'As it is now among most barbarian nations.' Thucy- 452 C 
 dides, i. 6, points out that in many respects the older Greeks 
 had resembled the barbarians of his 'day. He ascribes the 
 introduction of ' gymnastic ' in the strict sense (from ' gumnos,' 
 naked) to the Lacedaemonians. 
 
 158. 10. 'Whether the regulations proposed are practicable.' E 
 This, as Plato treats it, virtually involves the question of 
 desirability also, as ' practicable '=' suitable to the nature of 
 the persons concerned.' Hence the discussion of this point 
 extends down to 163. 456 c, and leaves little to be said 
 afterwards on desirability. 
 
 158. 24, 453 B 159. 23, 453 E. Sect. 50. 
 
 Statement of objection to identity of vocations for man and 
 woman, drawn from fundamental principle of commomuealth : 
 ' different natures different vocations' 
 
 27. 'At the beginning of your scheme for constructing a 453 B 
 state' : see above, 55. 5, 370 A, and cf. the principle of analogy, 
 32. 349 above, 'every one belongs to the class whose at- 
 tributes he possesses.' A further logical question is opened 
 up, viz., that of the relativity of classification to its purpose or 
 standard ; granting that a and b are of the same class judged 
 by the standard or purpose X, does it follow that they are so 
 if judged by F? 
 
 159. 18. 'We admitted that different natures,' etc. The E 
 objection restated. 
 
 M
 
 178 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 51. 159. 24, 454 A 160. 40, 454 E. 
 
 We cannot determine whether two natures are the same or 
 different until we have considered the standard or purpose in 
 relation to which they are being compared. To omit this 
 consideration is characteristic of verbal contention as opposed 
 to scientific discussion. 
 
 454 A 159. 24. ' Controversy,' dispute for dispute's sake, the 
 same thing as the ( debate ' mentioned below. 
 
 27. 'Fancy they are discussing, when they are merely 
 debating.' ' Discussing,' literally ' using dialectic,' i.e. arguing 
 scientifically. 'Debating,' lit. 'striving' ('erizein,' connected 
 with ' eris,' strife or competition) ; ' contention ' perhaps 
 expresses the meaning. 
 
 ' Because they cannot distinguish the meanings of a term,' 
 etc., more lit. 'because they are incapable of examining the 
 matter under discussion by distinguishing it according to its 
 forms (eide, the modifications or aspects which it takes on in 
 different contexts or relations), but they will urge their con- 
 tradiction of what has been propounded, in reliance on the 
 mere sound of the word, dealing with one another by 
 contention ('eris') and not by scientific argument (' dialectic ').' 
 
 The distinction between Eristic or contentious debate, and 
 Dialectic or scientific reasoning, is not for Plato merely a 
 difference of aim and temper, but has a definite relation to 
 certain elements in the immature logical theory of his day. 
 The great crux of Greek philosophy, how the one can also 
 be many, presents itself in one phase as a denial that a 
 significant predication can be true. Every assertion has the 
 form 'a is b'; but how can this be true? Must we not 
 confine ourselves to the tautology ' a is a'? In other words, 
 do not difference and identity exclude each other? If so, 
 the graduated classification which is implied in all knowledge 
 is destroyed, and about any nameable thing you can affirm 
 either its own name and no more, or any possible predicate 
 with equal truth. This doctrine, with all its consequences.
 
 BOOK V. 179 
 
 Plato calls ' eristic ' or 'contentious,' in opposition to ' dialectic,' 
 which essentially consists in a due gradation of predicates 
 such as forms a scientific system, e.g. systematic botany. To 
 establish a theory of predication in opposition to this fallacy 
 was the great achievement by which Plato became the true 
 founder of logic. In the Philebus (16 c 18 E) Plato analyses 
 the ' eristic ' tendency, which he there describes as refusing to 
 make those intermediate distinctions on which ail science 
 depends, and only recognising a bare unit on the one hand, 
 and an undistinguished and therefore unknown ' indefinite ' on 
 the other hand. This = taking the Law of Identity to mean 
 either ' a is (mere) a,' or ' a is (undistinguished from) b} 
 He takes the instance of human language. If we know 
 simply that 'language is language' on the one hand, or 
 that ' language includes an indefinite mass of sounds ' on 
 the other, we know nothing. We only acquire a science of 
 language by knowing how many components it has, and of 
 what kind, i.e. in Plato's phrase by not ' considering the in- 
 definite immediately after the one, and letting the intermediate 
 distinctions escape us.' The same error is burlesqued in the 
 Euthydemus, 298 c : ' The same man cannot be a father (of 
 one) and not a father (of another), therefore Euthydemus' 
 father is every one's father.' Such arguments are in the 
 strictest sense verbal, because the meaning of a word can only 
 be stated in assertions, while the essence of this view is to 
 isolate the word from the context of all assertions which 
 express a meaning, for the reason that every such assertion 
 modifies the identity by some positive difference in the form 
 ' a is b.' Any one may fall into this blunder when the mere 
 sound of the words causes him to treat two things as identical, 
 which for his purpose are actually different, or vice versa. 
 
 39. 'We are pressing hard upon the mere letter,' more lit. 454 B 
 ' We are following up our (principle), " different natures 
 different vocations," most energetically and contentiously 
 (' eristically ') in reliance on the mere (sound of the) word, 
 but we have not in the least considered what form (' eidos ')
 
 180 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 of "same" and "different" nature, and a form relevant to 
 what, we meant to designate when we assigned,' etc. The 
 ' words ' in question are no doubt ' sameness ' and 'difference.' 
 Plato might also have taken 'man' and 'woman' as the 
 misleading terms, as it is their irrelevant difference which 
 is at the root of the error, as he thinks it. 
 
 454 C 160. 10. 'Whether bald men and long-haired men.' If 
 sameness and difference exclude each other, then no things 
 that have any difference can have any point in common. 
 Thus the mere word ' different ' will suffice to keep them apart 
 in every respect. To get a meaning, we ask ' what difference 
 have you in view?' 
 
 17. 'Except for the reason that,' etc., more lit. 'except for 
 the reason that we were not then postulating our " same " and 
 " differing " nature in general, but were confining ourselves to 
 the particular form (eidos) of variation and resemblance which 
 was relevant to the vocations in question.' There seems to be 
 a circular argument in saying ' difference of nature is proved 
 by difference of work ' and ' difference of work is to be 
 assigned according to difference of nature.' But in all 
 classification this circle is inevitable. The principles which 
 prescribe what ought to be counted essentially different are only 
 discovered by comparing a whole region of phenomena to- 
 gether, and seeing what is different in such a way that, by 
 counting it so, one can organise the whole region conveniently. 
 Here the region of phenomena are the needs and capacities 
 of members in a community. 
 
 22. 'Two men who were mentally qualified for the medical 
 profession.' There is a doubtful reading, but the meaning 
 amounts to this. Jowett, more literally, 'a physician and one 
 who is in mind a physician.' ' Work ' or final cause, and 
 'form' or definition, and in some usages 'nature,' tend to 
 coincide in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle : cf. Section 
 20 above, and note on 55. 4, 370 A. We are inclined to 
 remonstrate that it is a truism to say that two people with 
 minds fit for being physicians have in this respect the same
 
 BOOK V. 181 
 
 nature^ when the question is -what sameness in nature fits 
 people for the same occupation, etc. But the only clue is 
 (see previous note) to elicit the system of functions and of 
 qualities pari passu by comparing the whole data of needs 
 and of capacities. 
 
 160. 41, 455 A 163. 10, 456 c. Sect. 52. 
 
 When the alleged difference of nature is referred to the 
 standard of particular vocations and of tJie qualities needed 
 for guardianship, it is not found to justify the present usage, 
 which is against nature, and a reform is therefore practicable. 
 
 160. 43. ' Connected with the organisation of a state,' more 455 A 
 lit. ' about the equipment of a " polis " ' (civic society). I do 
 
 not think that the original rules out private life and the family 
 at starting, as our term ' state ' does. 
 
 161. 14. 'One man possesses talents for ' a particular study, B 
 lit. 'something.' An important definition of the 'Euphues,' 
 the person whose nature is favourable to such and such a 
 pursuit. Aristotle's Ethics, iii. 5, 17, criticises Plato's view of 
 the ' Euphues' ('well-born ' in Peters' translation) in the fullest 
 sense. The description here is plainly a case of the rule for 
 determining function, close of Book i. : ' The function of 
 anything is that which can be done with it best or exclusively.' 
 Facility, origination, and apt seconding of mind by body, are 
 the marks of one who is ' well-born ' to a certain pursuit. 
 
 40. ' Occupations which comprehend the ordering of a state,' D 
 a narrower expression than that at the beginning of the Section. 
 Plato's language does not deny that within the same general 
 citizen-functions departments might exist more suitable to 
 one sex than the other. But he does not suggest it, excepting 
 perhaps in the words ' the lighter parts,' 164. 9, 45 7 A. 
 
 42. ' But natural gifts are to be found here and there ' ; 
 better, and more lit, ' But the natures (viz., those suitable to 
 particular vocations) are similarly distributed among both 
 (kinds of) creatures (animals).' 
 
 44. ' And so far as her nature is concerned.' The
 
 182 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 emphasis is much less one-sided in the original : ' and woman 
 (speaking of her as a class) is qualified by nature for all 
 occupations, and so also is man, but in all,' etc. Obviously 
 the original might be taken to suggest an extension of man's 
 functions as against the idea that certain arts and industries 
 are peculiarly the property of women. 
 
 456 A 162. 12. 'Have qualifications for gymnastic exercises.' 
 The guardian qualities, like other aptitudes, are distributed 
 among women just as among men. 
 
 27. 'But only various degrees of weakness and strength,' 
 rather, 'except in so far as the one is naturally weaker and 
 the other stronger.' This is the only pervading difference 
 between the sexes which Plato admits, at least as relevant to 
 the duties of citizenship. We may be disposed to think that 
 in this he was blind to essential facts of human nature. But 
 it should be borne in mind that he was in presence of a system 
 all but Oriental in its seclusion of women and exclusion of 
 them from a part in life. The sum and substance of his con- 
 tention was in short that women have souls as much as men. 
 There was extraordinary insight in his judgment that it 
 was the existing system which in truth was 'contrary to 
 nature,' 163. 2, 456 c. 
 
 Sect. 53. 163. ii, 45 6 c 164. 19, 457 B. 
 
 Being practicable, the identity of citizen-function for the two 
 sexes is desirable, because it makes the fullest use of the 
 capacities of members of society. 
 
 456 D 163. 27. 'In our ideal state.' This word 'ideal' has 
 so many vulgar associations in everyday thought that it 
 should be avoided where not strictly required. There is no 
 term employed by Plato which conveys the same mixed 
 meaning of 'unreal' and 'superlatively excellent.' The 
 Greek here simply means 'in the city which we were con- 
 structing.' 
 E 38. ' Can there be anything better for a state than that it
 
 BOOK V. 183 
 
 should contain,' etc. The point is that by educating for the 
 highest functions all women of the necessary ability, selecting 
 them from the whole community as was explained 114. 415 
 above, the number of those able to live the best life and to 
 lead society in the right path will be greatly increased, which 
 is both beneficial to the commonwealth, and is a necessary 
 embodiment of the principle that every nature is to find in 
 society its full development. 
 
 164. 6. ' Must bear their part in war.' It is impossible to 457 A 
 judge how far Plato was serious in this suggestion, which the 
 lessons of chivalry and romance have made inconceivable to 
 civilised man. It is important, however, to put the matter on 
 its right ground. The rational horror which is now aroused 
 by the idea of women acting an combatants seems to be 
 mainly justified by the demoralising consequences of organised 
 physical violence exercised by those who on the whole 
 are physically the weaker, and inevitably, therefore, exercised 
 also against them without any reserve or consideration. 
 But there seems to be no justification for excluding 
 physical courage from the ideal of womanliness or for 
 attempting to refuse to women the privilege of facing pain 
 and danger so far as these are the ordinary lot of humanity 
 outside the range of systematic personal violence. Plato, 
 in assigning to them the function of war, is certainly not 
 more wrong on the one side than those who would exclude 
 them from all arduous and perilous life on the other. 
 The need for his extreme view may perhaps be taken as 
 established by the survival of its opposite after so many 
 centuries. 
 
 9. ' The lighter parts.' This phrase might be pressed as 
 recognising after all a certain division of labour between 
 the sexes. 
 
 ii. 'The man who laughs.' This is a good example of 
 the permanent applicability of Plato's ideas, which his extreme 
 plain-speaking is actually apt to hide from us. The adapta- 
 tion of female costume for athletic or practical requirements
 
 184 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 has always a tendency to provoke the peculiar wit of certain 
 minds. 
 
 4576 17. 'The useful is noble and the hurtful base.' 'Useful,' 
 rather 'profitable' or 'advantageous.' The sentiment is 
 much in the vein of Socrates as described in the Memorabilia. 
 We must not construe it in the technical sense of modern 
 Utilitarianism, in which useful = productive of pleasure. The 
 Greek use is larger, and simply implies conduciveness to a 
 recognised purpose. 
 
 Sect. 54. 164. 20, 457 B 170. 27, 461 E. 
 
 The second of the three waves. Abolition of the family, that 
 is, of all permanent grouping, according to conjugal or parental 
 relations, within the social whole. Nature of the arrangement. 
 
 457 C 164. 33. ' The last law.' The question of woman's 
 employment cannot be touched without in some degree 
 affecting family life, for good or evil. 
 
 36. ' That these women shall be.' The regulation appears 
 to be confined to the guardian class, like that of the com- 
 munity of property. The comparison which is sometimes 
 made between Plato's guardians and a monastic order forgets 
 the broad basis of comradeship between the sexes in all work 
 and play by which Plato's suggestion anticipates the Abbey 
 of Thelema (see 166. 458). For the regulation itself, it should 
 be noted how wholly it is opposed in spirit to a mere laxity 
 in which all private inclinations are supposed to be gratified. 
 The impossible condition that parents and children are not 
 to know each other, is meant to tear up by the roots all 
 tendency to quasi-family relations, which would flourish under 
 a merely ' free ' system. 
 
 D 165. 4- ' I think no one could deny.' This is partly 
 humorous paradox, partly a just insistence on the desirable- 
 ness of that state of things to which Plato is proposing a 
 short cut by inconceivable methods. He saw clearly that 
 family life as organised in his day at Athens deprived society
 
 BOOK V. 185 
 
 of the services of half its members. Not enough has been 
 made, in discussing this question, of the few words, 166. 458, 
 which portray the free and equal companionship of the sexes, 
 and their co-operation in the whole guardian life, i.e. in 
 all higher duties and interests. He might well pronounce 
 that there could not be two opinions as to the desirability 
 of such a state of things when contrasted with existing con- 
 ditions. 
 
 28. 'I am desirous of putting off the question of possi-458B 
 bility.' Surely this amounts to saying, ' Listen to my plan, 
 and you will gather the gist of my meaning and the nature 
 of the advantage which I have in view. The possibility of 
 carrying out these particular enactments is a secondary 
 question.' And in fact, when the question of possibility is 
 reached, the whole horizon of the discussion is widened to 
 infinity, the Hellenic city gives place to the philosophic 
 commonwealth, and the realisation of the plan is referred to 
 the resources of a political science as yet non-existent. 
 
 166. 4. ' Will endeavour to carry out their spirit.' The C 
 translation is quite right. Observe, as throwing light on the 
 meaning of ' imitate,' that the Greek runs (will yield obedience) 
 'in some cases, viz., those which we leave to them, imitating 
 the laws we give them.' 
 
 12. 'Both sexes will live together' (see note on 165. 4 
 above). This is only a side light on the life of the guardians, 
 but it suffices to emphasise the idea of equality and companion- 
 ship between the sexes. 
 
 27. 'The marriages which are most for the public good/ E 
 lit. 'most advantageous.' A protest against a purely 
 superstitious idea of sanctity, and an accentuation of an 
 aspect of duty in the marriage union in its bearing on the 
 excellence of human beings, are fully in the spirit of the 
 saying ' The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
 Sabbath.' On the conception of duty to abstain from 
 marriage by reason of hereditary infirmity, see Jowett, Intro- 
 duction to Republic, cxci.
 
 186 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 459 A 33. ' Do you breed from all alike.' An appeal to the 
 
 acknowledged facts of animal nature (as above, 6l. 375)- It 
 is interesting to find Plato observing the practice of breeders, 
 which has played so important a part in the science of this 
 century. The unquestionable truth which Plato has in mind 
 hardly admits of application to human beings except nega- 
 tively in well defined cases (which are, however, in certain 
 classes very numerous) of abnormal infirmity, which is often 
 both mental and physical. Jowett, I.e., points out the 
 uncertainty of all considerations on which we might be 
 disposed to rely in criticising the unions of normal men and 
 women. We cannot, as Plato well knew (213. 496, and 355. 
 609), reduce the higher mental and moral qualities to cases 
 of physical health, which is the only plain and simple criterion. 
 The achievements of the physically infirm are a striking fact 
 of the modern world. Nor do we know how identical or 
 different qualities react on each other when brought into 
 union, nor is the hereditariness of all infirmity an established 
 truth. It is worth noticing that the remarkable energy of 
 men who are physically infirm is probably often due to 
 what in popular language we must call the reaction of the 
 mind against a bodily defect, a case of his own doctrine 
 (99. 26, 402) which Plato is 'not ideal enough' to 
 appreciate. 
 
 C 167. 15- 'Obliged to use medicine ': cf. 72. 382 and 80. 
 389. This humorous passage plainly indicates the impossi- 
 bility of the arrangement. 
 
 460 A 168. 4. ' Keep the population at the same point.' There 
 
 is a certain analogy between Plato's time and our own in the 
 fact that the great burst of Greek colonisation had long before 
 parcelled out the lands available for settlement under existing 
 conditions, and any great expansion of population presented 
 itself as a cause of embarrassment to governments. At the 
 same time, with the example of Sparta and of the Athenian 
 losses in the great war before him, Plato is thinking as 
 much of maintaining the number as of controlling it. Any
 
 BOOK V. 187 
 
 self-adaptation of population to the means of existence seems 
 to be beyond Plato's horizon. 
 
 28. 'The general nursery.' They would all be 'institution C 
 children,' in whom, as a rule, certain defects are noted arising 
 from an artificial and monotonous mode of life, even if the 
 high mortality referred to in Jowett's Introduction at this 
 point can be avoided. 
 
 34. ' In some mysterious and unknown hiding-place.' This 
 passage (and 170. 7, 461 below) plainly indicates the 
 practice of exposure of children, and worse. 114. 415 above 
 gives no hint of this. The high mortality of young children 
 to-day suggests that we are superior to the ancients more in 
 theory than in practice. If our practice carried out our 
 theory, especially if we superseded parental responsibility, we 
 might find that Plato understood Darwinism better than we. 
 Can any race safely arrest selection ? It is quite conceivable 
 that the actual infant mortality on the ancient system might 
 be less than ours at present. On the loss to the common- 
 wealth by exposure of children for the cause of bodily infirmity, 
 see note 166- 33, 459 A. Theological disputes about the 
 fate in another life of children dying unbaptized indicate the 
 path by which the modern mind has been led, through the 
 dualistic doctrine of soul, to a deeper respect for human life : 
 cf. Aristotle, Pol. vii. 16, and note that Aristotle insists on 
 the necessity of home nurture for children up to the age of 
 seven. 
 
 169. 3. 'A very easy business.' 'And so it should be.' 
 Contrast the direction in which Rousseau's influence operated. 
 Plato is protesting against the woman's absolute absorption in 
 the family, Rousseau against her neglect of that, which, in the 
 family, is of vital importance to society. 
 
 32. ' Under cover of darkness ' : contrast Edmund in Lear. 461 B 
 Note how Plato's scheme is the very antipodes of romantic 
 ' freedom.' 
 
 170. 6. ' To do their best, if possible.' See note 168. 34, C 
 460 c above.
 
 188 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 55. 170. 28, 461 177. 5, 466 D. 
 
 Unity, as the greatest good of society , illustrated by comparison 
 with the individual mind in respect of its unity of feeling. 
 Abolition of private property among guardians a mere corollary 
 of abolition of household, which is condition of unity in feeling. 
 Happiness of guardians. 
 
 461 E 170. 31. 'In keeping ' and ' quite the best ' ; this is the dis- 
 
 cussion of expediency which was to be admitted before that 
 of possibility, 165. 34, 458 B. 
 
 462 A 36. 'As the highest perfection,' literally 'the greatest good.' 
 
 'Perfection' has an echo of ethical dogma which nothing in the 
 Greek suggests. So, four lines down, 'perfection 'is simply 'good.' 
 171. 3- ' A multitude of states instead of one ' : cf. 121. 9, 
 422 E above. 
 
 4. ' Higher perfection ' = ' greater good.' 
 
 B 8 to 15. ' Community,' opposed to ' isolation ' or ' private- 
 making.' Plato does not go round through the feeble modern 
 circuit of 'altruism.' The pleasing or painful event, befalling 
 any element of society, or society itself, is directly a pleasing 
 or painful event befalling the mind which identifies itself with 
 society. Cf. for a relevant case Demosth. de Corona, 217: 
 ' But if he (Aeschines) did not join (in rejoicing), does he not 
 deserve a thousand deaths, since that which made all others 
 glad was a pain to him alone ? ' 
 
 C 1 8. ' Simultaneously,' probably 'on the same occasion,' see 
 instance from Demosthenes above. Plato is speaking rather of 
 one person's concern for events affecting any of the community. 
 Aristotle in criticising him speaks as if 'mine ' and ' not mine ' 
 were primarily terms applied to children or property. 
 
 25. ' Similarly to the same objects.' ' Objects, of course, is 
 not in the Greek : literally, ' To the same in the same ' (cases 
 or relations). Cf. ' simultaneously ' above ; the language 
 seems intentionally to echo the principle of non-contradiction 
 in Book iv., which can be taken as a definition of unity. If 
 Aeschines, e.g., says of any event ' It is my pain,' while other
 
 BOOK V. 189 
 
 citizens are saying of the same event at the same time ' It is 
 not my pain but my pleasure,' then, just as with desire and 
 reason, Aeschines and the others are different parts of the 
 whole to which they belong, and which, if its parts actually 
 conflict, is not at one with itself. 
 
 27. 'Nearest to the condition of ' one human being. This 
 passage is probably the earliest description of the mind as a 
 systematic whole recognising itself as one in all its elements 
 though distinct from each of them, and it also originates the 
 comparison between a mind thus regarded, and society as a 
 spiritual unity. Compare Galatians, iii. 28, 'Ye are all one 
 man (R.V.) in Christ Jesus,' and i. Cor. xii. 12. As in most 
 first-rate comparisons, the terms compared are ultimately 
 grades of the same thing, mind being really incapable of 
 exclusive individuality. I subjoin an alternative rendering, 
 as literal as possible, simply to bring out certain points of 
 interest. ' And (this is the city) which comes nearest to one 
 human being. Thus, when a finger of one of us is struck, the 
 whole community which stretches throughout the body up to 
 the soul into one system, that of the ruling (part) therein (in the 
 soul), feels it, and all of it at once has pain as a whole together 
 because part is hurt, and so we say,' etc. Note (i.) that the 
 one system (literally ' syntax ' = arranging together) is de- 
 scribed as belonging to the ruling element of the soul, i.e. the 
 reason : i.e., the soul is only a fully conscious system in pro- 
 portion as it is focussed or centred in reason, which is the 
 unity of mind as doing justice to all its parts, (ii.) It is in 
 virtue of this unity of intelligence that the whole feels itself as 
 one in its parts and yet more than any part. Nothing is 
 more naively contrary to fact than to represent Plato's view of 
 mind as an intellectualism which neglects feeling, though it is 
 true that he is not content with mere or uneducated feeling, 
 (iii.) The theory may be regarded as an explanation of 
 the simple phrase of common life which fortunately has just 
 the same outline in Greek and in English : ' The man has a 
 pain in his finger.' It is a good example of the direct relation
 
 190 COMPANION TO PLATO^S REPUBLIC 
 
 between sound philosophic analysis and the phenomena em- 
 bodied in language and other creations of man. The point 
 is that the feeling belongs to the man or mind as a whole, 
 although it is definitely referred to a part within that whole. 
 Aristotle, as is frequently the case with him, seems to miss the 
 full point of this passage in his definite allusion to it, although 
 his own theory rests upon the same ultimate basis. Observe, 
 finally, that the primary question is of community in pleasure 
 and pain here and throughout this section. 
 
 462 E 172. 4- ' Go back to our state ' and compare it with what 
 
 Aristotle calls the ' hypothesis,' i.e. the postulate or principle 
 which has been accepted as criterion. 
 
 463 A IZ - 'Magistrates,' literally 'rulers,' the same word which 
 
 figures in the discussions of Book i. 
 
 g 25. ' Servants,' literally ' slaves.' 
 
 C 32. 'As a stranger,' literally 'as another's': cf. 17 1 - 2I > 
 462 c. 
 
 *73' 3- ' To act in every instance ' ; this is to meet a criti- 
 cism such as that of Aristotle when he says in effect that 
 the ' mine ' and ' not-mine ' applied to relationships will be 
 mere fictions, used in a collective but not in an individual 
 sense. 'Better to have a real cousin than a fictitious son.' 
 Plato says here 'habit and training shall make it a reality.' 
 That is the question. Of course a general respect of young for 
 old and a general interest of old in young is desirable, and 
 was embodied in the legislation of Sparta (see 174-5. 465). 
 
 463 E 20. ' It is well with mine.' Here, no doubt, it is implied 
 
 that the supposed relationships were to be the basis of interest, 
 but the point iSj as the next sentence shows, the extension and 
 vitality of the interest itself. After all, not all the lads in the 
 city would be counted as ' my sons ' by any one of the elder 
 men according to 170. 461, but all were to be counted as 
 ' mine ' by civic affection. 
 
 464 A 22. ' A general sympathy ' ; the term sympathy recalls very 
 
 various and obscure modern theories, and it is better not to 
 employ it in Plato's simple and clear account : literally, ' Did
 
 BOOK V. 191 
 
 we not say that with this conception and expression there 
 follow pleasures and pains (felt) in common ? ' i.e. the com- 
 munity of pleasures and pains, as above described, in a social 
 ' me,' which, like the so-called individual ' me ' (in which it is 
 ultimately an element) recognises itself as one throughout a 
 number of manifestations. The commonplace difficulty that 
 there is no social sensorium distinct from the individual 
 organism, is thoroughly met by Plato's comparison if rightly 
 understood. 
 
 32. 'To the fact that our guardians,' a condition of the 
 ' community in pleasure and pain.' 
 
 37. ' The relation of a body to its members ' a living, feel- 464 B 
 ing, and thinking body, i.e. a mind. 
 
 40. ' Highest perfection ' as above, literally 'greatest good.' 
 
 174. 2. 'We said that all private property must be for- 
 bidden,' 116. 416. Note the comparatively small space and 
 attention devoted to the question of private property. The 
 proposal made is a corollary from Plato's treatment of the 
 household, and is not by itself one of the three great ' waves ' 
 or 'paradoxes of the Republic.' In a modern treatise this 
 relation is generally reversed ; the problem of ownership is 
 treated in its industrial and economic bearings, and the 
 effect on the family (the retention of which is usually presup- 
 posed) is a corollary from the conditions thought best for 
 industrial organisation. Plato apparently would not care for 
 an economic communism in which the family was to be re- 
 tained as a centre of private pleasures and pains. It is quite 
 true, however, that a liberal interpretation of this and the 
 following paragraph, in connection with Books vm. and ix., 
 suggests that he held economic evil, e.g. a growth of pauperism, 
 to be ultimately inseparable from the introduction of private 
 property among the ruling class. Nor had he any tendency 
 to go back from his present standpoint, but rather to extend 
 it. See Laws, 739 B-D, cited in Introduction. 
 
 13. ' Applying the term " mine" each to a different object.' 
 Cf. 171. 25, 462 c and note. Here the insertion of 'object'
 
 192 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 is justified by the context, though it is still the resultant 
 pleasure and pain to which attention is mainly drawn. 
 464 D 19. 'Causing them on the contrary,' etc., or, perhaps, ' caus- 
 ing them on the contrary, in virtue of a single conception of 
 what is "one's own," being all concerned with the same 
 (object), to share so far as possible in identical affection of 
 pleasure and pain.' ' Identically' or ' simultaneously affected' 
 represents the Greek adjective ' homopathes,' which seems to 
 indicate a more genuine solidarity than the terms ' sumpathes, 
 sumpatheia,' not, or hardly, used in the great Greek philoso- 
 phers, from which our ' sympathy ' is derived. ' Homopathes ' 
 gives the idea of sharing in one affection which may be in a 
 single self, 'sumpathes' of repeating or copying in one self 
 the affection which is primarily in another. Cf. the verb 
 ' sumpaschein,' 350. 26, 605 D, 'sympathise with the sufferer,' 
 of our feelings in attending to an actor or poet. ' Sumpatheia ' 
 seems to be in the main a Stoic term, and our ' sympathy ' 
 often covers psychological individualism. 
 
 28. 'All those feuds.' Aristotle's summary criticism is that 
 none of these evils come from several property, but only from 
 the badness of human nature ; and he adds that associated 
 owners quarrel much more than separate owners. See Intro- 
 duction. 
 
 E 34- ' To defend oneself,' a curious tempering of Socialism 
 with Anarchy. 
 
 36. ' Recognising the necessity.' Is it not rather 'imposing 
 a necessity for keeping oneself in training ' ? Socrates in the 
 Memorabilia sharply criticises one of his young friends for 
 being in bodily condition ' like a private person,' i.e. unfit for 
 service or self-defence. 
 
 465 A 175- I - 'Will be authorised'; a Spartan rule, and very pro- 
 bably common in Greece. It is of course in some degree 
 embodied in the manners of most countries. Formal rules 
 like this are convenient in the absence of more positive 
 grounds of action, of which Plato here mentions one, and in a 
 highly organised society innumerable others emerge, by which,
 
 BOOK V. 193 
 
 and not by any progressive iniquity, the primitive importance 
 of age is overlaid, and survives chiefly within the family. 
 
 9. ' Fear and shame,' physical and moral fear, representing 
 together the whole influence of the social order upon a Greek. 
 ' Shame,' the untranslatable term ' aidos,' which might also be 
 rendered 'honour' or ' self-respect.' 
 
 22. ' Evils of a very petty nature.' Perhaps we might ven- 465 C 
 ture to say that here as elsewhere Plato is ' not ideal enough.' 
 Though undoubtedly grave evils and losses may attach to our 
 daily worries, yet it would seem that in the true ideal they 
 must be conquered and not run away from. They constitute 
 the discipline of life, and the contact by which we feel 
 and act upon the realities of character in ourselves and in 
 others. If ever we meet with a fugitive and cloistered virtue, 
 it does not impress us as having a hold upon the real world. 
 
 176. 7. ' Some time back we were accused ' : see Book iv. E 
 beginning and notes. 
 
 19. ' Much more glorious and desirable.' This could only 466 A 
 be urged with any show of reason upon a people whose 
 current idea of happiness included energy and devotion. Cf. 
 Herodotus, i. 30, cited in Introduction. The 'preservation 
 of the whole state,' 176. i, 465 D, was just the 'victory ' the 
 achievement of which a Greek citizen would currently accept 
 as a crowning happiness. What Plato does is to interpret and 
 extend the conception of ' preservation of the state ' by making 
 it equivalent to securing the highest life for society. 
 
 26. ' In such a way that they cease to be guardians ' : cf. B 
 Book iv. beginning. This would imply that they had lost the 
 governing conception of the whole to which their natures and 
 functions were relative, and were consequently acting in a 
 way incompatible with the maintenance of the true or natural 
 system in their own souls. See 149. 443 above. The ' silly 
 and childish notion' (lit., opinion or seeming) is of course 
 just one of the illusions typified by the shadows in the cave 
 (Book vii. beginning, see above on 97. 402), and is illustrated 
 in all its grades by the descending scale of Books vin. and 
 
 N
 
 194 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 ix., which begins by the rulers doing what is here referred to, 
 as indeed, he says, the Spartans had done. Cf. 272. 545, and 
 275. 548 below. 
 
 466C 36. 'Women on same footing as men.' This description 
 (cf. 1 66. 458 above) is hardly appreciated at its full value, 
 because we do not apply ourselves to filling up the details 
 which it necessarily involves. It is a complete comradeship 
 of the sexes in the higher duties of society, only allowing 
 (see above, 164. 457) for the lesser physical strength of 
 women. 
 
 38. ' In bearing children ' a slip in rendering should be 
 ' about children ' ; plainly it refers to the means adopted for 
 preventing the entire absorption of women in the care of 
 their children. 
 
 D 177. 4. 'The natural relation' (see 163. 2, 456). He 
 closes the discussion with an emphatic assertion that this 
 equal companionship in the work and interests of life is the 
 natural relation of the sexes, whereas, as he said above (/.^.), 
 it is the existing relation that is unnatural. Plainly after such 
 an assertion the question of possibility can only apply to 
 special forms of realisation. 
 
 Sect. 56. 177. 6, 466 D 184. 9, 47 J c. 
 
 Further regulations, partly as criticism of existing social 
 usages. 
 
 177. 10. 'Conditions of possibility,' and 13, 'As for their 
 war-like operations.' Socrates protracts the conversation, like 
 a man who cannot be got to come to the point. Cf. 184. 10, 
 47 ic. 
 
 24. ' You have doubtless observed in the various trades ' ; 
 a hint of the true 'technical education' that would exist 
 throughout a single society, in which industries were largely 
 hereditary, not as caste, but by natural sequence. 
 
 4670 178. 25. 'Set officers over them': an important criticism. 
 
 The Athenian ' pedagogues,' here rendered ' tutors,' who took
 
 BOOK V. 195 
 
 the young people to their classes and generally supervised 
 them through the day, were slaves. Plato would assign this 
 office, of course re-modelled, to the very best of the citizens. 
 In the pre-eminence given to war as the occupation of a 
 gentleman, Plato is following the mind and necessities of his 
 age, and our just objection to militarism a thing in its 
 modern significance far removed from the spirit of Plato's 
 citizen soldiery must not blind us to the high relative value 
 of such a training. (See above on ' Gymnastic,' 100. 404.) 
 
 179. 9. ' One of the soldiers deserts his rank or throws 468 
 away his arms,' i.e. his shield, which was too heavy to carry 
 off in flight. Gf. the Athenian's oath, ' I will not disgrace my 
 sacred shield. I will not desert my fellow soldier in the 
 ranks.' Athens, and probably every Greek state, as well as 
 Sparta, had laws inflicting loss of citizenship as a penalty for 
 acts of cowardice in the field. Our military discipline is of 
 course far more summary, and a system separate from the 
 ordinary law. The regulations which follow down to l8o. 20, 
 468 E, ' promote their training,' probably represent to some 
 extent the working of natural competition under any social 
 system, but this becomes animalised, not spiritualised, by dis- 
 tinct enactment. Only the familycan trulyspiritualisetheanimal 
 facts of life, and the attempt to dispense with it gives them 
 greater and not less prominence. The utilitarian turn given 
 
 to the Homeric honours of the banquet is meant to throw a 
 touch of comedy and unreality over these suggestions. 
 
 180. 22. 'Give out that belong to the golden race.' Cf. E 
 mythical apologue at close of Book in. All these customs 
 and beliefs are to be matters of enactment, the sanction of 
 the oracle having the effect of placing them beyond criticism. 
 In this there seems to be a distinct undertone of tendency to 
 justify religious beliefs by their utility if not to account for 
 them in this way. Cf. Book in. init. of certain beliefs about 
 the other world, 'they are not true and do no good.' No 
 canonisation, such as Plato here suggests, is referred to in the 
 funeral speech of Pericles.
 
 196 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 469 C l8l. 13. ' From a prudent fear of being reduced to bondage 
 
 by the barbarians.' We should state our reasons in a more 
 humanitarian form. But we should bear in mind that Greek 
 civilisation was to Plato much what white civilisation is to 
 us, and speculations as to the power of white civilisation to 
 maintain itself against ' inferior ' races are not without interest 
 for us to-day. The Persian power never ceased for very long 
 together to press upon the Greeks in one way or another. 
 
 15. 'To have Greek slaves in their possession' as Sparta 
 had, with terrible results. 
 E 182. i. ' To dedicate them there ' : a regular Greek practice. 
 
 470 B 18. 'War and sedition.' We are apt to think civil war the 
 
 most terrible kind of war, just because it is a laceration of a 
 single organism. But it does not follow that it is the most 
 relentless kind, although in Greece at least this was so far the 
 case that we are surprised at Plato's seeming to set up civil 
 war as the preferable type. For he does not exactly say, what 
 the whole passage implies, that it is a gain to extend the 
 area within which all war is regarded with the horror that 
 belongs to civil war. He does, however, distinctly assert that 
 the civilised world as such the Greek world is to be 
 regarded as a single commonwealth within which all war is to 
 be conceived of as civil war. Accepting the parallel above 
 suggested between white civilisation and Greek civilisation, 
 Plato's view is. much nearer our standpoint towards ' inferior ' 
 races than we like to admit, and as regards our attitude to 
 civilised nations, it is on a level which we are only just begin- 
 ning to attain. There is a good deal of cant in the common 
 assertion that Plato had no general conception of humanity in 
 our sense. If the interests of a savage tribe appear to us, as 
 they usually do, to conflict with those of ' civilisation,' what 
 becomes of our humanity? Really, of course, humanity is 
 not a mere numerical idea, and the question is by what we 
 measure it and to what it can be hostile. Plato is going on 
 his view of what is best because most distinctively human in 
 humanity (see close of Book i.) as we go on ours.
 
 BOOK V. 197 
 
 183. 1 6. 'A Grecian city': see Sect. 48 above. We are 47 E 
 here between the second and third of the ' three waves,' which 
 determine the whole structure of Book v. Therefore a new 
 beginning in writing the Republic cannot have been made near 
 
 this point, unless the whole of Book v. has been remodelled. 
 On the other hand, down to this point, the author is still speak- 
 ing of a Hellenic commonwealth, and it is only through the 
 subsequent discussion on possibility that he passes to the more 
 remote conception of the city of philosophers. If therefore 
 it is suggested that a later portion of the dialogue begins with 
 Book v., the division thus made would not coincide with the 
 transition from the Hellenic to the philosophic city. It is 
 noteworthy that the conditions which most distinctly remove 
 the Republic from the province of literal realisation are first 
 introduced by Plato as the conditions of its possibility, i.e. 
 of its hypothetical reality. This surely almost amounts to 
 directing the interpreter neither to look for literal fulfilment 
 nor again to lay the conception aside as ideal in the sense of 
 chimerical, but to expect the verification of its essential points 
 in proportion as the awakened intelligence this is the root con- 
 dition insisted on shall assume the control of human affairs. 
 
 26. 'Like persons who are presently to be reconciled' 471 A 
 (see below 36), 'those few who were the authors of the 
 quarrel.' The imputations of guilt and treason which thus 
 characterise civil war seem to us to make it more and not less 
 bitter than ordinary war, and we look for alleviation rather to 
 stricter rules of the game as regards non-combatants and pro- 
 perty. But no doubt, except when the disruption of a 
 community is in question (and this Plato's idea precisely 
 negatives), all leading minds must feel in civil war that the 
 object is to obtain a state of society in stable equilibrium, and 
 therefore will abstain as far as possible from measures which 
 tend to make that impossible. 
 
 184. 3. 'As the Greeks now behave to one another.' Satire, 471 B 
 with a suggestion that even behaviour towards ' inferior races ' 
 
 is not a matter of indifference.
 
 PART III 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHIC CITY, 
 OR, IDEAL MORALITY 
 
 Sect. 57. 184. 10, 471 c 186. 20, 473 B. 
 
 Transition to the philosophic city, begun by discussing in what 
 sense and under what conditions the system that has been 
 described could be approximated to in actual life. The present 
 Section treats of the only sense in which abstract conceptions can 
 be realised in life, or general propositions in practice. The 
 account of the Philosophic state, which is an expansion and in 
 some degree a criticism of the Hellenic state, goes down to the 
 close of Book VII. 
 
 472 B 185. ii- 'If we find out what justice is, shall we expect 
 the character of a just man not to differ ? ' Cf. 137. 20, 435 B, 
 where it is pointed out that two things bearing a common 
 name (the just man and the just state) are the same in respect 
 of the quality indicated by that name. Here a different point 
 is emphasised, viz., the distinction between a living individual 
 and the quality indicated by an abstract term. This is how 
 Plato at once and naturally envisages the problem of realisa- 
 tion or possibility, and it ought to play a principal part in 
 determining our interpretation of his attitude. An attribute 
 cannot exhaust the nature of a living concrete. ' The char- 
 acter of is an insertion which just obscures the meaning. 
 More lit, ' If we find out what justice is like, shall we expect 
 
 198
 
 BOOK V. 199 
 
 the just man to differ in no point from its very self, but to 
 be in every respect the same as justice is.' Note, in passing, 
 the term 'its very self,' which corresponds to the 'idea' 
 (eidos) : cf. 137. These phrases plainly refer to an attribute 
 as qualifying things, yet they reproduce the language which is 
 constantly supposed to indicate an abstraction erected into a 
 'thing in itself.' 
 
 1 8. ' And the character of the perfectly just man as well as 472 C 
 the possibility'; rather, probably with a slightly different read- 
 ing, ' and what the perfectly just man would be like if he did 
 come to exist.' 
 
 21. 'So that by looking upon the two men,' etc., more lit., 
 ' So that looking upon the two men, with respect to what they 
 seem to us to be, in the way of happiness and its opposite ' ; 
 this adds a point to that of the preceding sentence. The 
 object of inquiry was not only of the nature of an attribute as 
 opposed to a concrete person, but it was a connection between 
 attributes, viz., between goodness and happiness, the reality of 
 which connection may even be habitually verified in everyday 
 phenomena without the extreme cases which were taken as 
 illustrations making their appearance at all. We must not be 
 confused by the fact, which is often rightly insisted on, that 
 in the Reptiblic Plato does aim at exhibiting justice as em- 
 bodied in the living concrete of the social whole. For it is 
 still true that this concrete is relatively abstract and illus- 
 trative, sketched in so far as to explain the essentials of 
 'justice,' and no further. It does not absorb the detail even 
 of ancient life, much less of modern civilisation. It is, as he 
 says, a pattern or illustration schematic or diagrammatic. 
 Note that the state of the bad man as regards happiness is 
 elaborately depicted in Books vin. and ix. 
 
 27. 'To demonstrate the possibility of these things' (add) D 
 'coming to pass,' i.e. of their actual occurrence. Extreme 
 or ' pure ' cases have been considered by analysis for the sake 
 of illustration. The connection, as with every causal or 
 essential relation, is unimpeached by variation, so long as the
 
 200 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 variations are 'concomitant' in the sense required by the 
 law. 
 
 31. 'Who has painted a beau ideal,' lit., 'who has painted 
 what the most beautiful human being would be like,' the same 
 phrase as 18 above, 'what the perfectly just man would be 
 like ' ; and here we must understand, what is there expressed, 
 'if he did come to exist.' Here, as above, the notion is of 
 a conditional or hypothetical presentation for the purpose 
 of emphasising certain fundamental connections as true of 
 reality. In art such a treatment is ' selective ' as in science it 
 is 'analytical' or 'hypothetical.' 
 
 32. 'Cannot prove that might possibly exist.' This is an 
 interesting utterance in Plato, who professes to believe that 
 art is tied down to making copies of commonplace reality 
 which remain inferior to it. For the present purpose the 
 question is, What relation to reality is implied for Plato in the 
 presentation of the highest conceivable human beauty? 
 Following out the spirit of the whole passage, we may observe 
 that (i.) the connections of qualities must be true on the 
 whole, and (ii.) the qualities themselves must be human, i.e. 
 must fall within certain recognisable limits. The slightest 
 element of hypothesis or selection is enough to make the 
 presentation impossible in everyday experience. But of 
 course this does not prevent it from being true of reality 
 under greater or less reservations. 
 
 47 2 E 186. i. 'The true state of the case,' viz., that we cannot 
 show, and are not to be expected to show, a scientific or 
 artistic abstraction existing in phenomenal reality. This argu- 
 ment has special force as regards the Republic, in which we 
 have observed that the principal deviations from ordinary 
 possibility consist in abstractions, or short cuts to purposes 
 which could only be attained in fact by ' a more round-about 
 route.' A true estimate of the standpoint from which Plato 
 regards the possibility of his ' ideal,' or, to use his own 
 favourite term, his ' pattern ' or ' illustration,' would demand a 
 just conception of the nature of the possible, as something
 
 BOOK V. 201 
 
 affirmed to be real under a reservation or condition. (See 
 Bradley's Principles of Logic, p. 187.) On our knowledge as to 
 the existence or partial existence of this condition, in any 
 case before us, our whole estimate of the sense and degree in 
 which the matter affirmed is possible must necessarily depend. 
 Plato, therefore, in perfect logical order, when he turns to the 
 question of possibility begins by explaining that between his 
 abstraction and its realisation in historical fact there is un- 
 doubtedly a condition interposed ; he then proceeds to state 
 this condition (viz., a scientific treatment of politics), and sub- 
 sequently to show, from the connection both of the ideal and 
 of its condition with the central realities of life and mind, 
 that the degree in which the condition is fulfilled will also be 
 the degree in which the essentials of his ' illustration ' will 
 become historical fact. Our view as to the actual reality of 
 his condition or postulate thus suggests to us ' how ' and ' in 
 what respect,' 3, we may by a fair interpretation look for the 
 ' greatest possibility ' of his ideal, i.e. the point at which it may 
 be affirmed of reality with the smallest reservation. 
 
 7. A theoretical sketch.' The paragraph runs more lit., 473 A 
 ' Is it possible for (things) to be done as they are said ? Or 
 is it according to nature that action should lay hold of truth 
 (or 'reality') less than speech?' The Greek does not contain 
 the vulgar .antithesis of theory and practice, as suggested by 
 the translation, but merely points out that things are easier 
 said than done. Genuine ' theory ' or complete vision of 
 what is best would be a part of the practice or performance, 
 which is so slow and difficult to bring about just because it is 
 so great. Plato is not comparing theory and practice as such, 
 e.g. as knowledge and life the separation would be incon- 
 ceivable to him but simply what I can say at a given 
 moment and what I can do at that moment the fluency of 
 speech and the drag of action. 
 
 13. 'Then do not impose upon me,' more lit., 'Then do 
 not require this of me, to show what we went through in 
 our account (or 'story' or 'argument') as coming to pass
 
 202 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 completely in actual fact.' The contrast is obviously not be- 
 tween' ideal' and 'reality' as such, but between the essentials 
 indicated by the illustration and the detailed completeness 
 requisite to make it more than a mere ' illustration.' 
 
 Sect. 58. 186. 22, 473 B 188. 6, 474 c. 
 
 The required condition of possibility is that political power 
 and science in the fullest sense of the word should come together 
 in the same person or persons. Everything in this postulate 
 turns upon the meaning of science or scientific person (f philoso- 
 pher'\ and this accordingly has to be further examined. 
 
 473 B 186. 25. 'What is the smallest change.' Plato, as already 
 said, strictly follows the logic of possibility (see i above, 
 47 2 E note.) What is the minimum condition (that is, the 
 essential condition, because anything superfluous would be 
 accidental), the realisation of which would suffice to make 
 society what we demand of it ? If such a condition can be 
 specified and is or becomes itself in any degree actual, the 
 assertion conditioned by it so far expresses a real possibility. 
 D 187. 2. 'Unless political power and philosophy.' This 
 generalised statement, which contains the gist of the condition, 
 is less often quoted than the picturesque and personal sug- 
 gestion which precedes it. ' In the same person,' the Greek 
 has the abstract neuter =' in the same' ('organ' or 'part of 
 society '), or simply ' unless political power and the spirit of 
 true science can be brought together ' (Jowett, ' meet in one '). 
 4. 'Most of those minds debarred from either.' 'From 
 either 'is not in the Greek, but seems justified by 188. i, 
 474 c. Thus, as so constantly happens, the first meaning 
 conveyed to our ears by Plato's saying as commonly rendered 
 is the precise contrary of his real intention. 'Philosophers 
 should be statesmen and statesmen philosophers' means 
 to an Englishman either that such men as Newton, Locke, 
 Bentham, and Mill should be Cabinet Ministers or that
 
 BOOK V. 203 
 
 Cabinet Ministers should be obliged to read books about 
 evolution or metaphysics. But what Plato says is that neither 
 a mere empiric nor one whose life is one-sidedly devoted to 
 abstract research is fit to be trusted with political duties, and 
 also that a specialised study of merely abstract questions unfits 
 a man for the true grasp of life and character which is the 
 centre of real philosophy. The philosopher, to him, is one 
 who ' sees life steadily, and sees it whole.' We are not really 
 to look for the fulfilment of Plato's requirements in individual 
 statesmen. His form of portrayal is half mythology, and 
 therefore necessarily anthropomorphic. It is mainly in con- 
 ditions which are impersonal or greater than personal, in the 
 growth of the sciences of man, in the experience and practical 
 knowledge and social self-consciousness represented by entire 
 professions, by armies ( )f workers in the public interest, and 
 by the Press, and in the logic of facts by which a general con- 
 ception or standard of life is maintained and elevated, that we 
 find the real analogy to Plato's conception of the philosophy 
 which was to make the statesman. The modern statesman is 
 rather an instrument through which the conditions assert 
 themselves than a source in which they originate. The office 
 of Plato's philosophic statesman, in short, is now in commis- 
 sion, and the truth of his suggestion is, to expand his 
 own generalisation of it, that somehow or other the best and 
 deepest ideas about life and the world must be brought to 
 bear on the conduct of social and political administration if 
 any real progress is to take place in society. We rely much 
 less on the complete intellectual conception and much more 
 on the spirit of a community than Plato did, just because 
 the notion of an indwelling unity, greater than the individual, 
 which he suggested, has become so real to us in Christianity. 
 In the largest sense it is religion which is the root of society, 
 not mere science. 
 
 38. ' Give them our definition of philosophers/ i.e. the 474 B 
 condition is ridiculed because it is understood in a sense 
 precisely opposed to its real meaning.
 
 204 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 59. J88. 7, 474 c 189. 41, 475 E - 
 
 Distinction between the true lover and the amateur, leading up 
 to the distinction between those who have and those who have not 
 a grasp of reality. 
 
 474 C jgg I0 . 'Does not love one part of that object '; if this 
 
 really refers to anything that went before, it must allude to the 
 passage on correlative terms, e.g. 142. 40, 439 A. 
 
 475 B 189. 6. 'The whole class that the term includes,' lit, 'the 
 
 whole of this form ' (eidos) : see reference in previous note. 
 The 'eidos' here is simply the general character which is the 
 object of desire ; not, of course, confined to the idea as 
 presented to the desiring mind, for there is nothing to suggest 
 a psychological interpretation. It is the pure ingenuity of 
 scholasticism either to say that ' form ' as here referred to is 
 itself considered to be a thing besides the things which it 
 stands for, or to say that though it is not so in innumerable 
 passages of this type, yet it is so in others, the terminology 
 of which fades into that here employed by imperceptible 
 gradations. 
 
 9. ' The philosopher or the lover of wisdom ' ; the ' philo- 
 sophic' element of mind has been from the first (see 63. 375) 
 characteristic of the ' guardian ' class, and is now beginning to 
 be expanded into its fullest meaning as the side of the mind 
 which is in contact with the ultimate system and reality of the 
 world. It is highly distinctive of Plato, and in harmony with 
 the whole effect ascribed to the musical education, that the 
 genuine philosophic nature should be designated through 
 a comparison with the true lover. See Pater, Plato and 
 Platonism, p. 155. 
 
 C 22. ' Every kind of knowledge ' ; the ' r ue scientific impulse 
 is roughly described by its generality, especially (see previous 
 paragraph) before critical experience has shown what lines are 
 worth pursuing and what are not. This rough description
 
 BOOK V. 205 
 
 courts the objection of Glaucon, which evokes a more 
 thoroughly grounded definition. 
 
 28. ' Lovers of sights are philosophers,' i.e. if generality 475 D 
 of interest is the test. We should realise Plato's antithesis 
 better by asking ourselves what is the true meaning of 
 ' culture.' We also have the people who are at every concert 
 and every picture gallery, but refuse to undergo the exertion 
 of unifying their ideas. The contrast follows the lines of 
 logic in its divergent interpretations of the ' universal.' The 
 universal may be taken as mere width of area, ' superficial ' in 
 the strictest sense, like a generic concept, in old-fashioned 
 logic, compared with a specific concept. In this sense the 
 universal is abstract and is more properly termed 'general.' 
 Or it may be taken as thorough knowledge, tracing the matter 
 in hand to its roots, and obtaining its width at the surface by 
 a mastery of all the raif .ifications which spring from a con- 
 nected set of data and principles. This is the true or 
 concrete universal, like the biologist's knowledge of ' plant ' or 
 'animal' in the connected variety of their forms. The former 
 kind of universality, Plato is about to show, is always self- 
 contradictory and a world of confusion, because its elements 
 have not gone through the process of being reduced to 
 harmony; and those who live in it are 'counterfeit philosophers.' 
 
 189. 42, 475 E 191. 15, 476 D. g ect> 60 . 
 
 First distinction of ' Science ' and ' Seeming ' (Knowledge and 
 Opinion}, ' Science ' being unified like the world of the waking 
 intelligence, and 'Seeming' resting in mere variety and confusion 
 like the illusions of dreamland. 
 
 190. i. ' Who love to see truth ' a corrected application of 475 E 
 the term ' lovers of sights ' above. ' Those lovers of sights 
 whose love is for the vision of truth.' The term ' truth ' is not 
 
 so precisely restricted to a property of thought or assertion 
 in Plato as in modern philosophy, the antithesis between 
 knowledge and its object, which modern common sense
 
 206 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 assumes, not being familiar to ancient thought. In the 
 discussion that begins at this point it will often be difficult to 
 distinguish 'truth' from 'being' and 'reality.' Of course 
 these conceptions are closely connected, as the reader will see 
 at once if he tries to explain what he means by ' a fact.' We 
 even find modern men of science talking about the ' veracities 
 of nature,' which is a precise parallel to Plato's occasional 
 use of the term ' truth ' as = reality. 
 
 4?6 A 9. ' Since beauty is the opposite of deformity, they are two 
 things.' From this point throughout Books vi. and vn., and 
 again in Book x., we are dealing with the famous doctrine of 
 Ideas or Forms, and it is all-important to read Plato's text as 
 simply and correctly as possible, interpreting it in the first 
 instance by the primary requirements of philosophical thought, 
 and dismissing from our minds the conceptions which have 
 been derived from Aristotle's account of the doctrine, from 
 clearly mythical passages in Plato himself (as in the myth 
 of the Phaedrus), and from vague echoes of Kantian ' things- 
 in-themselves.' The definite renderings which I shall point 
 out affect not only the English reader, but the Greek reader 
 whose mind is imbued with current prejudices, as is plain from 
 the fact of their being accepted by the distinguished authors 
 of the translation on which we are commenting. In the 
 present passage observe, first, the insertion of the innocent- 
 looking word ' thing.' The vice which traditional prejudice 
 ascribes to Plato's 'ideas ' is most shortly expressed by alleging 
 that he treats a universal as a thing an object among objects 
 and it is really a superlative audacity to insert in the text 
 this word (which represents a fault of our own popular 
 conceptions, and which never, I think, in the Greek refers to 
 the form or idea), when practically the whole problem depends 
 on its presence or absence. Jowett here omits it rightly. 
 ' They are two.' 
 
 ' 12. 'Each of them taken separately' is one, not 'one 
 thing.' 
 
 16. ' And all general conceptions,' lit., 'all the forms.'
 
 BOOK V. 207 
 
 1 7. ' Each of them in itself is ' one, not ' one thing.' ' In ' 
 should be omitted ; it carries a wholly unmeaning echo of 
 Kant; 'each of them itself is one.' 'But by the inter- 
 mixture with,' lit., ' by their community with ' or ' participation 
 in'; perhaps 'by their entering into actions and bodies and 
 each other.' 'Each other,' because, e.g., justice is a form of 
 goodness. 
 
 19. 'Each appears to be many things,' lit, 'each appears 
 many.' We have no right to say that appearance must involve 
 illusion except in as far as it is taken to deny some truth or 
 some element of reality. This Plato seems carefully to explain 
 in what follows. 
 
 21. ' By the help of this principle,' more lit., ' In this way, 
 then, I distinguish,' etc. It is essential to bear in mind, 
 as an aid to understanding the distinction, the general 
 description of the classes to which it applies, viz., people who 
 are, and people who are not, capable of adjusting ideas to 
 experience and to each other by a process of criticism. 
 
 31. ' Beauty in itself.' Jowett, ' absolute beauty,' lit., ' beauty 476 B 
 itself; 'in itself and 'absolute' have wholly unwarranted 
 associations. 
 
 34. 'The independent contemplation of abstract beauty.' 
 I take it that this phrase conveys no meaning at all to an 
 English ear. More lit., 'Those who are able to approach 
 beauty itself and look at it qua itself,' i.e. to understand what 
 it is that makes" a beautiful thing beautiful. The preposition 
 which, conjoined with the word ' itself,' Davies and Vaughan 
 render 'abstract,' I represent by l yua'=' according to' or 'in 
 respect of Note that here it is only used where the attitude 
 of the observer and not the mode of being of the content is 
 in question, thus plainly pointing to intellectual selection in 
 perceiving a concrete presentation. 
 
 38. ' Recognises the existence of beautiful things, but dis- C 
 believes in abstract beauty.' Here we really have the word 
 ' things ' in the Greek as nearly as possible, though there is no 
 quite general and direct equivalent for ' things ' in classical
 
 208 COMPANION TO PLA TffS REPUBLIC 
 
 Greek, any more than there is for ' word. 3 The term here 
 used means primarily 'business' or 'affairs,' and no doubt is 
 meant to include material objects (which Plato sometimes 
 mentions as ' bodies '), probably with character and action in 
 addition. Observe that where the word is used, it is meant. 
 Plato is speaking of people who apply the term ' beautiful ' to 
 particular objects and cases, but are unable to realise what is 
 meant by 'beauty itself (not 'abstract beauty'). Conse- 
 quently, of course, their ideas on the subject are all in 
 contradiction with each other. ' They cannot follow,' he 
 says in the next line, if you try to explain it to them. The 
 modern question about objective beauty, i.e. whether any 
 common property can be attributed to all beautiful objects as 
 such, which certain eminent thinkers answer in the negative, 
 illustrates this passage with extraordinary appositeness. Of 
 course the modern controversy is partly whether the common 
 property is in the object as distinct from the perception of it. 
 But still the illustration is to the point. 
 
 42. ' Is it not dreaming when mistakes the likeness,' etc., 
 more lit., ' when any one thinks what is like to any (thing), 
 to be not (merely) like but the very self to which it is like.' 
 This comparison of the confused phases of common thinking 
 to a dreamworld or world of illusions runs through the whole 
 discussion from this point onward. In every illusion there is 
 probably a nucleus of perception, an image of some kind, 
 and the confusion of this with something else which it 
 suggests is the essence of the mental state which Plato refers 
 to. The confusion is only possible because the image or 
 likeness which is its basis is not tested in all respects so as to 
 ascertain its proper place in the context of experience, and 
 this failure shows the mind to be so far inert or under limita- 
 tion. Cf. the saying of Heraclitus : ' The waking have one 
 and the same world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a 
 world of his own.' 
 
 191. 5. 'Of one who acknowledges an abstract beauty,' 
 etc., more lit., ' who acknowledges a certain self of beauty, and
 
 BOOK V, 209 
 
 is able to discern both it and the (objects or cases) which have 
 some of it in them, and neither takes that which has some of 
 it for it, nor it for that which has some of it.' Compare, as 
 regards the word object or thing, 190. 9, 476 A and note. It 
 is literally true that Plato is here describing and condemning 
 that vulgar tendency to treat a universal idea as either a fiction 
 or an isolable thing, either a mere group of objects or itself an 
 object among others, which has been the means of fastening 
 upon him one of the alternatives which he here explicitly 
 repudiates in the name of the waking intelligence. If you 
 treat ' beauty ' as ' a beautiful thing ' (as the doctrine of ideas 
 is supposed to treat it), you are, he says, simply dreaming, 
 like a man who takes a coat and hat to be a living person, 
 or a child who takes a golden crown to be the essence of 
 royalty. 
 
 The waking life is discriminating, and its world therefore 
 coherent. 
 
 12. 'Mental process.' The different words for intellect, 476 D 
 science, reason, and the like, have as yet no technical force. 
 
 The term thus rendered is quite general, though in Book vi. 
 it is appropriated to the mathematical understanding. 
 
 13. 'Knowledge'; not the term which later became appro- 
 priated to science in the strictest sense, and which is rendered 
 science, 192. ff., but a word derived from the verb to know, 
 and used here for the sake of its derivation. 
 
 14. 'Opinion, or 'seeming'; the substantive corresponding 
 to the everyday Greek phrase ' it seems to me,' and conveying 
 a suggestion of difference from truth or reality ; e.g., the 
 substantive translated 'appearances,' 44. 42, 362 A above, is the 
 word here rendered ' opinion.' It includes, we might say, the 
 seeming to me, which is my opinion, and the seeming to 
 others, or their opinion, which is the ' appearance ' presented 
 by me to them. It seems to possess in common usage no 
 special reference to sense-perception, as does the term from 
 which our 'phenomena' is derived, and which directly con- 
 notes presentation to sight, and in many cases implies a very 
 
 o
 
 210 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 strong certainty. There is a well-known grammatical rule in 
 Greek that after the verb ' seems ' there follows the infinitive 
 1 to be' (good or bad, etc.), but after either 'I know' or 'he 
 is shown ' there must come the participle, ' I know him being 
 bad,' ' He is shown being a rogue.' This illustrates the differ- 
 ent nuance of the terms to a Greek mind. The connection 
 between opinion and sense-perception is a logical theory of 
 Plato's, and not assumed in the word. 
 
 Sect. 61. 191. 16, 476 E 194. 41, 478 E. 
 
 Exhaustive process to identify ' opinion] in the only way in 
 ivhich a ' faculty' can be identified, viz., by the nature of its object- 
 matter, described by anticipation as that which both is and is not. 
 
 476 E IQI 20 - ' I n an unsound state '; perhaps 'is not quite sane.' 
 
 477 A 32. 'Something that exists.' The Greek here has the par- 
 
 ticiple ' being,' which admits of no distinction between being 
 and existing, such as is given in Greek by the accent in the 
 present indicative of the verb ' to be,' when it contains 
 the predication and does not merely join subject to predicate. 
 Of course all that is experienced in a certain sense 'is,' e.g. 
 an illusion is a fact in the mind, and so on ; but the object of 
 knowledge is always more than the mere mental fact; this indi- 
 cates something beyond itself, or could not be true ; and 
 further, the known only is, and never 'is not,' i.e. it does not 
 contradict itself or become inconsistent with itself. 
 
 ' How could a thing that does not exist be known ? ' better, 
 ' How could what does not,' etc. All that is known is 
 existent. This is a truism : see last paragraph. The form of 
 assertion, which characterises knowledge, consists in investing 
 the mental fact with a reference and value beyond itself, with 
 some sort of attachment to the single world which is more 
 than momentary experience, and this is what existence, in 
 general, means, though it has a narrower meaning implying 
 existence as a thing or event in time. 
 
 35. 'What completely exists may be completely known';
 
 BOOK V. 211 
 
 better, 'is completely knowable.' It follows from this that 
 what is not completely knowable cannot completely exist. 
 This again is really a truism, apart from refinements about the 
 relation of ' existence ' and ' reality ' within experience which 
 do not concern us here. Plato takes the position which 
 is at once absolutely practical and absolutely critical. The 
 problem from the outset is simply to order our experience. 
 What is in any way suggested to us as real is so far ex- 
 perienced, and exists as the object of direct or conditional 
 knowledge. What is not is nothing for us ; and we only add 
 a certain suggestio falsi by retaining the qualification 'for us.' 
 The region of the unknowable or non-existent is thus simply 
 the boundary of knowledge. 
 
 40. ' At the same time to be and not to be.' ' At the same 
 time' is not in the Greek and is not really necessary, for 
 difference of time explains nothing without change of condi- 
 tions. The point is that ' the same ' is and is not qualified in 
 the same way, without such explanation of the contradiction 
 as may be supposed in the case of relative terms, 195. 479- 
 
 192. i. 'Well, then, as knowledge is correlative to the 
 existent,' lit., 'is over the existent,' etc. The argument is 
 somewhat like that of Book iv. to test the distinctness of the 
 three elements in the soul. Three kinds are suggested ; the 
 two extreme opposites are disposed of first, and something 
 intermediate discussed later. 
 
 21. ' Faculties are a certain general class.' He breaks off, 477 C 
 in inferring that science and opinion, being distinct, must 
 have different object-matters, to show by a definition of 
 faculties that this is a sound inference. ' Faculties,' literally, 
 powers or potentialities. ' Things ' in the following line should 
 of course go out. 
 
 24. 'The special conception,' i.e. 'form ' (eidos). 
 
 27. 'In a faculty I do not see either colour,' etc. If 
 ' things ' stands, it must not imply that faculties are things. A 
 faculty, then, is nothing apart from ' its province and its func- 
 tion,' lit, 'that over which it is, and what it effects.' If
 
 212 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Plato's definition had been adhered to, no harm could have 
 come of the assumption of faculties. It is only by looking away 
 from ' what it effects ' (its law of working), and imagining 
 qualities in the faculty not verified in its working, that mis- 
 chief comes to psychology, e.g. in the theory of the will. 
 E 39. ' General term,' 'genos'=' genus.' ' Denomination ' in 
 the next sentence is 'eidos'=' species' or 'form.' 
 
 193. i. ' That whereby we are able to opine.' 'Able' recalls 
 the word rendered ' faculty,' which might also be translated 
 ' ability.' 
 
 5. 'The fallible with the infallible.' This is a distinction 
 of principle which there is a certain difficulty in applying. 
 Plainly, judged by this test, no book nor thought is pure science. 
 The point is, however, that opinion or seeming is the most 
 itself when it makes mistakes, i.e. perpetrates inconsistencies, 
 while the imperfections of science are impurities in it qua 
 science. Its very essence is criticism and consistency, and 
 Plato's ' science,' we must remember, is not identified, as ours 
 is apt to be, with physical or mathematical knowledge to the 
 exclusion of philosophy. 
 
 478 B 32. 'Impossible to apprehend even in opinion what does 
 not exist.' A bare negative is necessarily without meaning 
 and therefore cannot be presented to the mind even as a 
 ' seeming.' A significant negative is always a concealed posi- 
 tive, and therefore asserts a content and does not embody 
 bare not-being. We may say ' I can think of a Centaur, 
 which does not exist.' But so far as the thought has meaning 
 its object does exist, though subject to endless reservations 
 and contradictions. 
 
 38. ' Has an opinion about some one (thing).' Opinion 
 was distinguished from science by being fallible, and is now 
 distinguished from ignorance (absence of experience), by 
 possessing a positive matter or content. 
 
 C 194- ii. 'Beyond either of these.' Certainty or distinct- 
 ness depends on the degree of organisation of experience, and 
 the nature ascribed to opinion as essentially subject to error
 
 BOOK V. 213 
 
 shows that it is a phase below science in this respect. 
 ' Ignorance,' of course, is the termination of experience in the 
 negative direction. It does not include positive error, which 
 belongs to ' seeming.' 
 
 35. 'What that is which partakes both of being and of not- E 
 being,' and which cannot be identified with either of these 
 apart from the other. The next thing is, then, to explain the 
 nature of this intermediate, or, not reckoning 'ignorance' 
 (which drops out in the following books), this initial stage 
 of thought. 
 
 194. 42, 479 A end of Book v. Sect. 62. 
 
 All isolated or uncritirised judgments are purely relative, and 
 their negation is as true as their affirmation. This incoherence 
 constitutes them the province of seeming' or 'opinion,' in which 
 commonplace minds are content to rest, while those possessed by 
 the true spirit of science the philosophers insist on criticising 
 all judgments till in every group of phenomena they have 
 detected a single and central principle. 
 
 195. i. 'Anything absolutely beautiful, or any form of 479 A 
 abstract beauty,' etc., more lit, 'who thinks that there is no 
 
 self of beauty nor form (Greek 'idea' = outline, contour, 'form ' 
 used as when we speak of ' death in all its forms ') of beauty 
 itself eternally invariable, but believes in many beautifuls ' 
 (perhaps ' many beauties '). The many beautifuls or beauties 
 contrasted with beauty itself are plainly either objects or 
 qualities as judged beautiful at a given moment. 
 
 6. ' Of all these beautiful things,' rather, ' of the manifold 
 beautifuls ' or ' beauties,' i.e. judgments or cases of beauty not 
 unified by an explicit principle, and so certainly unreconciled, 
 and probably unreconcilable, and the same with 'justices ' and 
 ' holinesses,' cases in which justice and holiness are ascribed 
 by ' common sense ' on uncriticised grounds. All of these, it 
 is urged, are purely 'relative,' that is to say, are based, in one 
 way or another, upon standards not assigned, and when 
 assigned, for the most part contradictory. In the simple
 
 214 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 cases of quantitative predicates taken below, 'double, half,' 
 etc., a mere change of comparison is enough to reverse the pre- 
 dicate, and every one will judge according to the comparison 
 uppermost in his mind. In the less easily analysable cases of 
 beauty and the like, the conflicting standards may be found in 
 the feelings of different persons, classes, or peoples. Herodotus 
 has a notable passage dealing with the latter in the form of 
 contrasted religious beliefs (Hdt. iii. 38), and the principle of 
 Protagoras, ' Man is the measure of all things,' embodied 
 this perception of the age. Or the opposition may be seen 
 more subtly in judgments of the same mind which imply con- 
 flicting standards of the same attribute, like the conflicting 
 definitions of justice in the first book. It is just to pay your 
 debts, it is just to treat others as they treat you, to do no 
 injury to any one, to obey the law, to pursue your own interest, 
 etc., and reliance on one or more of such half-thought-out 
 cases as these is the mental condition of the man who 
 merely has opinions, or does not get beyond 'it seems to me.' 
 So again he will pronounce one picture beautiful because it 
 looks like nature, another because it tells a story, a third 
 because it has a mass of bright colours in it, a fourth because 
 it has a pleasant pattern in it, and these judgments are not 
 merely various but, in their implication, conflicting. It is 
 striking to note how readily and thoroughly this principle of 
 relativity is admitted by the interlocutor, the doctrine that 
 man is the measure of things having in fact become at this 
 period a commonplace of philosophy. 
 
 479 B 21. 'Would it be more correct, then, to predicate,' more 
 lit., l Is then or is not each of the manifold (cases) more 
 really that which one asserts it to be ? ' viz., beautiful, just, 
 etc. The question is pronounced unanswerable. 
 D 196. 2. ' The mass of notions, current among the mass of 
 men ' : a depreciatory combination of phrases, the association 
 of the ' hoi polloi ' or the mob being transferred to current 
 opinion, = ' The multitude's multitudinous formulae.' This 
 important sentence clearly bears out the view taken of the
 
 BOOK V. 215 
 
 so-called ' many objects ' above. There is no objection on 
 Plato's part to many beautiful things or just actions as em- 
 bodiments of the true principles of beauty and justice. What 
 stamps common sense as a seeming or appearance is its 
 habit of permitting each case or chance set of kindred cases 
 to constitute a formula 'nomimon,' a rule or standard 
 which it accepts as gospel without perceiving that it conflicts 
 with a hundred and one rules accepted by itself on the same 
 subject. 
 
 4. 'Roam about between the confines,' perhaps 'tumble 
 about in an interspace between what is not and what straight- 
 forwardly is.' 
 
 9. ' These intermediate rovers,' etc., perhaps ' this shifting, 
 intermediate world,' etc. 
 
 12. 'A multitude of beautiful objects.' It is plain that 479 E 
 'many beautifuls' (the literal rendering) may be the plural 
 either of ' the beautiful ' or of ' a beautiful thing.' The 
 sentence about formulae, 196. 2, 479 D, leads me to interpret 
 it in the former sense =' many standards,' or cases accepted 
 as standards, of beauty. Perhaps 'Those who look at 
 manifold beautifuls, but have no eye for beauty itself (omit 
 ' in '), and manifold examples of justice, but not justice itself, 
 and so on, we shall affirm to be simply opining throughout, 
 and to know nothing of what they opine about.' 
 
 21. 'Things as they are in themselves,' more lit., 
 'What are we to say of those who look at the unchanging 
 selves of the several (qualities or principles)?' 'The selves 
 of each (of the qualities) ' is plainly the plural of such an 
 expression as 'beauty itself or 'the self of beauty,' not the 
 plural of 'each,' as indicating an individual phenomenal 
 object; the phrase does not suggest any reduplicated 
 existences corresponding to the things of the actual world, 
 but indicates the attitude of mind which in ' each,' i.e. in 
 every connected group of phenomena, as beauty, justice, 
 quantity, attempts to ascertain the ' self or unifying law. 
 
 25. ' Such persons admire an d love the objects of knowledge. '
 
 216 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 The distinction of knowledge and opinion or seeming is applied 
 to explain the distinction of 189. 28, 475 D, between the true 
 and false philosophers. 
 
 480 A 2 9- 'Will not hear of the existence of an abstract beauty.' 
 Perhaps for the whole sentence ' they enjoy and dwell upon 
 the sight of beautiful sounds and colours and the like, but 
 beauty itself they will not tolerate as being at all,' i.e. they 
 say 'How beautiful that sounds,' 'how beautiful that looks,' 
 but they refuse to unify or reconcile their perceptions. 
 
 39. ' That which in each case really exists.' Observe that 
 we have had ' the self of beauty, of justice,' etc., then ' the 
 selves of each (of the qualities),' and now we have, on the 
 same lines, 'the self of each (form of) being,' which='the 
 selves of each (of the qualities),' with an assertion of reality 
 added. It is noticeable, however, that the Latinised term 
 ' reality,' meaning ' of the nature of a thing,' has no correlative 
 in Plato, whose expressions for that which most truly or 
 intensely is, are almost entirely couched in forms of the 
 verb ( to be.'
 
 BOOK VI 
 
 Book vi. (/#.) 201. 27, 487 A. Sect. 63. 
 
 The fundamental distinction between the 'philosophic' and 
 the vulgar mind having been ascertained in the previous Section, 
 the moral and intellectual qualities which it implies in the 
 ' philosopher ' are explained^ to show that there is no absurdity 
 in committing the affairs of government to such hands. 
 
 197. 14. 'Apprehend the eternal and immutable,' 'the 4846 
 region of change and multiformity,' more lit, ' Since those 
 are philosophers who are able to grasp that which is always 
 uniform and invariable, and those who are unable to do so, 
 but are all abroad (lit., 'wander' or 'are in error') among all 
 sorts of aspects of many ('objects' or 'affairs'), are not 
 philosophers'; the translators' efforts to adapt their render- 
 ing to the English idiom, especially by introducing the 
 convenient word 'region,' most naturally but unfortunately 
 favour the materialised image of, so to speak, a common- 
 sense earth and a philosophic heaven, which disfigures the 
 whole current interpretation of Plato. Without desiring to 
 dogmatise on the insoluble problem how far precisely Plato's 
 occasional imagery influenced his philosophic thought through- 
 out, the interpreter must protest against the superfluous 
 introduction of spatial metaphors, and must also remind the 
 reader that the truths of philosophy cannot be expressed 
 to-day without statements which run very close to Plato's 
 language in such passages as this : cf. e.g. Mill's account of 
 Laws of Nature as 'Uniformities reduced to their simplest 
 
 217
 
 218 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 expression,' Logic, Bk. iii. ch. 4, or Bradley 's ' Once True 
 always True,' Principles of Logic, p. 133, or even Huxley: 
 ' And yet to the eye of science there would be no more dis- 
 order here than in the Sabbatical peace of a summer sea/ 
 after the well-known sentence beginning, ' It is conceivable 
 that man and his works and all the higher forms of organic 
 life should be utterly destroyed.' If therefore we are to 
 re-think Plato's thought at all, we may surely re-think it in 
 terms of those ideas which are both truest, and most nearly 
 akin to his own actual expressions. 
 
 484 C 32. ' Knowledge of things as they really are,' rather, ' know- 
 
 ledge of each (form of) being ' : cf. 196. 39 and note. 
 
 33. 'Possess in their soul no distinct exemplar,' pattern or 
 illustration. Note 'in their soul,' and cf. close of Book ix., 
 where the pattern is said to be in 'heaven,' showing the 
 figurativeness of Plato's language. 
 
 D 198. 2. 'Earthly canons about things beautiful, 'etc. 'Earthly' 
 is a quite correct rendering of the Greek ' here,' the common 
 term for this world as opposed to another ; of course the 
 distinction of ' worlds ' is used figuratively by Plato as by us. 
 'Canons'; the word is the same as 196. 2, 479 D, 'mass of 
 notions ' (see note there). 
 
 9. ' Each thing in its reality ' ; better, ' each (form of) being 
 (see 196. 39, note). 
 
 12. ' Not wanting in the other qualifications ': cf. 62. 375.; 
 the combination of qualities commonly taken to be opposite 
 was the difficulty from the beginning. Plato hinted even at 
 first that there was more natural connection between them 
 than was obvious at first sight. 
 
 485 A 27. 'With regard to the philosophic nature ': cf. 189. 6, 
 
 475 B, and 63. 17, 375 E, and note the development which 
 the ' philosophic nature ' has undergone. Especially in 
 comparison with the ' calculative ' element of Book iv., 
 observe that a new and positive passion is now being invoked, 
 over and above the foresight and estimate of consequences 
 in social life.
 
 BOOK VI. 219 
 
 29. 'That real and permanent existence,' etc., more lit., 485 B 
 ' that being which always is (i.e. never ' is not ' : cf. close of 
 Book, v.) and is not disordered by generation and decay.' 
 
 36. ' On a previous occasion,' see 188. 474-5. 
 
 43. ' Truthfulness ' ; the duty is here deduced from the C 
 passion for knowledge. Contrast the disciplinary necessity of 
 truthfulness in the young and the subjects in the community, 
 79. 389 B. Such cases as this illustrate the growth from 
 habit to principle indicated 97. 401-2. 
 
 199. i. 'If it can be helped,' more lit., 'voluntarily.' 
 Probably the translators had in mind 167. 22, 4590 and 80. 
 i, 389 B, about the necessity that the rulers should use 
 deception. But at this point, I am inclined to think, Plato 
 means to withdraw that humorous suggestion, belonging to 
 the half-mythical detail with which he draws out his imaginary 
 city. 
 
 25. 'Pleasures that are purely mental,' more lit., 'the D 
 pleasure of the mind itself in itself.' Note the caution with 
 which the antithesis is stated. Plato does not speak of 
 ' bodily ' pleasures of course all pleasures are psychical states 
 but of pleasures ' by means of the body,' i.e. those in which 
 bodily conditions are the chief or for our knowledge the sole 
 antecedent. This distinction has still to be taken account 
 of. This drafting off the force of desire by the 'expulsive 
 power of a new affection ' is a different conception from that 
 of the prohibitive reason in Book iv., though, of course, it 
 may be considered as the positive of which that was the 
 negative aspect. On the other hand, the climax of ' musical ' 
 education, in 'the love of the beautiful,' distinctly points 
 forward to this development. It must be repeated that we 
 are not here to think solely of the metaphysician in his study 
 or the physical investigator in his laboratory, although the 
 seventh book shows us how definitely the enthusiasm of exact 
 science was included in Plato's conception; 'philosophy' 
 does not primarily mean to him either natural knowledge or 
 metaphysical research, and it is at least doubtful whether we
 
 220 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 should not do better to employ some other term to represent 
 his thought. But for certain unfortunate associations/ culture ' 
 would perhaps be the most suitable word ; it would have to 
 be understood as the spirit of unity realised in the whole 
 region of knowledge and action so far as is possible for man. 
 
 486 A 199. 41. 'Aspire to grasp truth both divine and human,' 
 
 more lit. (the whole sentence), ' for little-mindedness is surely 
 the most contrary (quality) for a mind destined ever to reach 
 out after the entire totality of the divine and human (world).' 
 It is a pity to put in the word ' truth,' which is not in the 
 Greek, because the passage contains an implicit definition 
 which goes beyond the current conception of truth. 
 
 200. 2. ' A spirit full of lofty thoughts,' etc., more lit., ' an 
 intelligence which has greatness and the vision of all time and 
 of all being.' 
 
 4. ' This life,' lit, ' human life ' ; there is no suggestion 
 of contrast with another life. Compare with this the sketch 
 of the ' high-minded man ' (Peters) in Aristotle's Nicomachean 
 Ethics, iv. 3, and Mr. Stewart's note on it. Aristotle has 
 made the high-minded man, with his deep voice and slow 
 gait, a little ridiculous to our perception. Plato's conception 
 hardly bears being embodied in a single shape of flesh and 
 blood, as Aristotle attempts to present it. It fulfils itself in 
 the individual man only by parts and progressively. The 
 littleness of life is a topic which needs careful handling to 
 avoid mere quietism. It must be understood of the individual 
 life in its detachment or isolation, not of the individual as 
 organ of the universal. Christianity has the same paradox in 
 deeper intensity. 
 
 E 201. 10. 'The forms of things as they really are,' more 
 lit., ' the form of being in each ' (case, or group of pheno- 
 mena). See above, 196. 39, 480 A and note. 
 
 15. 'Of real existence,' more lit., ' of what is.' 
 
 487 A 24. ' A retentive memory,' etc. It is interesting to compare 
 
 this list of qualities with those demanded of the guardian 
 natures at first, 64. 6, 376, ' philosophical, high-spirited,
 
 BOOK VI. 221 
 
 swift-footed, and strong,' with the more elementary account of 
 courage, high-mindedness, and veracity in the first pages of 
 Book in., and with III-I2. 412-14, where moral and intel- 
 lectual steadfastness are valued as a guarantee of loyalty to 
 the welfare of society. Here the civic virtues (taking ' truth ' 
 as corresponding to 'wisdom') are retained, along with the 
 gracefulness insisted on in the musical education ; but ' truth * 
 is beginning to be interpreted as transcending mere civic 
 wisdom, and tends to absorb the ordinary social qualities in 
 a larger unity and a greater motive. 
 
 201. 28, 487 A 204. 37, 489 D. Sect. 64. 
 
 Objection and part of answer. The facts of life sfww that 
 even the more respectable sort of professional philosophers are 
 useless in civic life, while the greater part are quite objectionable 
 people. Why the more respectable sort are useless. 
 
 201. 43. ' Not at all the more convinced ' : cf. opening of 487 C 
 Book n, ' Do you wish really to convince us,' or only to 
 seem to. These objections (cf. also opening of Book iv.) 
 show Plato's consciousness of the danger of arbitrariness in 
 
 his course of argument, and his extreme anxiety to recur to 
 the facts and force the public to follow him. 
 
 202. 8. ' Instead of taking it up for educational purposes,' 
 as a portion of belles lettres in the university curriculum, as we 
 might say. This practice is in Plato's opinion an important 
 cause of the deserved discredit of philosophy (see 215. 39, 
 498 A). Even the professed philosophers had not persevered 
 to any complete maturity of knowledge and judgment. 
 
 38. 'The captain.' Aristophanes personifies the Athenian 488 A 
 Demos (' people ' or ' democracy ') much as we personify 
 John Bull. See Knights (424 B.C.), 42. ' Demos of Pnyx 
 (the assembly-place), an irritable old gentleman, and deafish? 
 as Plato says here. You have to shout, we may suppose, in 
 order to gain his attention, as is more or less the case to-day.
 
 222 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 Perhaps ' the owner ' would be a nearer rendering than ' the 
 captain.' The owner would often be his own captain, so that 
 the word might take either sense. 
 
 488 E 203. 28. 'Thinking it impossible.' There is something attrac- 
 tive in Mr. Richards' argument that the absurdity imputed ought 
 to consist in ' thinking it possible ' to combine the two trades 
 of persuasion or command and seamanship. The argument 
 of the following page seems to support him, so far that the 
 ruler is, as throughout (26. 345 ff., and 243. 521 A), conceived 
 of as needing compulsion to make him take up the work, 
 rather than as exercising compulsion in order to obtain or 
 retain it. A trifling change of reading would give this mean- 
 ing. Still I am not convinced that the change should be 
 made. It is against our best feeling to divorce the power of 
 ruling men from the craft of the ruler. This taken alone 
 might be a prejudice which we should disregard in interpret- 
 ing Plato. But further, I do not think that the discussions of 
 Book i. justify us in separating the power to rule, as a distinct 
 sphere, from any particular skill or professional capacity. 
 The idea throughout seems to be that they involve one 
 another, and the ' I don't want to be a bishop,' which is the 
 attitude of Plato's ideal official, means, ' I have better things 
 to do,' not ' I cannot govern men.' The phrase ' whether 
 some (of the crew) like it,' etc., is peculiar, and often suggests 
 a euphemistic reference to particular individuals, or here to a 
 particular class of individuals, rather than to the general assent 
 of those to be governed. It is like our ' certain persons.' I 
 incline, then, to think the meaning to be that it is absurd to 
 fancy that the born and trained steersman, if once called to 
 the helm, will not be so justified by his inherent capacity for 
 management and command (primarily by his success in 
 manoeuvring the ship, which involves the obedience of the 
 crew) that any factious opposition on the part of discon- 
 tented individuals will be crushed or disarmed by his mere 
 superiority. The change of nomenclature from ' captain ' or 
 'owner' to 'steersman,' seems to me to show that the terms
 
 BOOK VI. 223 
 
 are widely used, and that we are not to lay stress on the 
 difference in authority between steersman and captain. 
 
 204. 20. ' The useless, visionary talkers.' It must be 489 C 
 remembered that Plato demands new conditions for his philo- 
 sopher as well as for his statesman. The present passage 
 needs interpretation in the light of 187. 5, 473 D, where see 
 note. 
 
 204. 38, 489 D 214. 35, 497 A. Sect. 65. 
 
 Why the greater part of philosophers are objectionable people. 
 The true rare natures are the target of all temptations, and are 
 seduced from philosophy and become the worst enemies of society, 
 while a certain pretension which still attaches to the name of 
 philosopher attracts base-born natures to profit by it. 
 
 205. 14- ' To strain every nerve to reach real existence,' 490 A 
 or ' to strive towards what is' 
 
 15. ' Those multitudinous particular phenomena opinion,' 
 etc., rather, 'far from stopping at what opinion (or 'seem- 
 ing ') takes to be a manifold in the case of each (quality), he 
 presses on till he has apprehended the nature of the self of 
 each (quality),' etc. Compare notes on last page of Book v. 
 The contrast is, as above, between ' each ' group seen as a 
 disconnected, and therefore discordant, manifold, and ' each ' 
 group seen in the unity of its 'self or principle. 
 
 24. ' He begets wisdom and truth.' See Davies and B 
 Vaughan's note, and note on 230. 16, 508 D below. It is 
 quite true, as we saw at close of Book v., that Plato maintains 
 a thorough-going relativity of ' subject ' to ' object,' and vice 
 versa, so that reason and truth may always mean, for him, 
 intelligibility and reality. But here he seems to be speaking 
 mainly of intellectual products. The language of the love- 
 philosophy should be noted here as 188. 474-5 above. 
 
 207. 31. ' In the case of all seeds,' according to the saying, 491 D 
 ' the worst corruption is that of the best.' A powerful nature 
 badly nurtured will not be null, but will caricature the great 
 qualities it might have possessed.
 
 224 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 491 E 40. 'An ungenial nutriment.' Note the simile of nurture, 
 
 and cf. 96-7. 401 above. 
 
 208. 3. 'A splendid character.' The word rendered 
 'splendid' is literally 'youthful,' or 'belonging to a young 
 man.' Hence it is used for ' vigorous,' or ' intense,' quite as 
 if these were its primitive meanings, e.g. of intense cold, in a 
 medical work. It is apt to imply insolence or presumption, 
 or in a good sense to apply to ' striking ' or ' dashing ' 
 achievement 
 
 492 A 1 8. 'Themselves the greatest sophists.' The essence of 
 
 sophistry is uncriticised commonplace ; not the practice of the 
 true practical man, but the superstitious theory, which in its 
 everyday utterance constitutes what is often taken for public 
 opinion. There is no more difficult or interesting antithesis 
 than that of the point of view in which, as here, current 
 public opinion appears as the great sophist, and that in which, 
 according to a suggestion of Aristotle (Pol. 1281 b. 7), there 
 is more wisdom in the whole of the citizens than in any one. 
 We saw above that Plato thinks of wisdom primarily in its 
 intellectual form, and does not regard it so much as we do in 
 the light of a self-criticising process inherent in the life of the 
 community. We should, perhaps, conceive of the phenomena 
 which he describes rather as a failure to grasp the reason in 
 society, than as the true working of the collective mind. But 
 none the less they are actual phenomena, and the tyranny of 
 the commonplace is fact, though not the only fact. The 
 account of democracy in Book vin. raises the same problem. 
 E 209. i. 'They chastise the disobedient.' Moral training, 
 good or bad, necessarily comes in great measure from the will 
 of the community. For a companion picture, of what the 
 individual could be said to owe to the community, even in 
 actual Athens, see Crito, 50 -51 c. All this is wrongly read 
 if we do not understand that Plato is insisting merely on one 
 mode of the collective mind, which may take on other modes, 
 as in his ' justice.' In fact both the chaos of opinions and 
 the oneness of social spirit exist side by side, and the
 
 BOOK VI. 225 
 
 machinery which is meant to subserve the public will is some- 
 times controlled by the one mode, and sometimes by the 
 other. 
 
 23. ' All those mercenary adventurers.' There is no reason 493 A 
 for the word ' adventurers ' ; the original merely means private 
 persons, as opposed to those who use the public power to 
 enforce their views. The public and its political leaders 
 tended to be suspicious of the influence of critics and teachers, 
 whose only fault was that they did not get beyond its own 
 current ideas. These ideas when nakedly stated, especially 
 in a time of political or intellectual disquiet, will often excite 
 the hostility of those who are in fact already influenced by 
 them. This was very noticeable at Athens, where the public 
 mind was liable to strong revulsions of feeling, moving all 
 together. To-day we might almost wish that the public was 
 more dissatisfied with its popular teachers than it is; it is 
 rather organised in parties than disposed as a whole to turn 
 against this or that popular school of thought. But the 
 general truth of Plato's view might still be illustrated by 
 pointing out that any two opposite factions, 'Individualist,' 
 ' Collectivist,' or the like, are, as a rule, very much more on 
 the same ground than they think, so that their distrust of the 
 other's ideas is really a distrust of their own, and the solution 
 is on neither side, but somewhere beyond both. 
 
 210. i. 'Calling what it likes good.' (See on 208. 18, c 
 492 A above.) This has in it something of the wild satire 
 that marks the account of Thrasymachus. It might be said, 
 perhaps, in general, that a popular desire indicates a need, but 
 not the need. Cf. Butcher's Demosthenes, p. 7. 
 
 7. ' The compulsory and the good.' The ' compulsory ' or 
 'necessary' has often in Greek a special implication of a 
 'minimum,' 'the least that will serve.' In this sense 
 necessity conflicts with, or rather is less than, freedom ; but in 
 a higher sense slavery, and not necessity, is the opposite of 
 freedom. (See 313. 577.) 
 
 13. ' The whim and pleasures of.' This evil we understand D 
 
 p
 
 226 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 and have experience of to-day : what raised an apparent 
 difficulty on the previous page was the jealousy alleged to 
 subsist among popular leaders against teachers who neverthe- 
 less were really on the same ground with them. 
 
 18. 'Putting himself in their power further than he is 
 obliged,' lit., 'beyond the necessary' (the same word as in 7 
 above). It is not easy to see the exact thought here ; perhaps 
 there is a distinction between satisfying the public taste so far 
 as not to be hindered from doing public work (at that time 
 practically the only work), as may be the case with a great 
 artist backed by an enlightened statesman, and making the 
 highest measure of immediate popular favour the aim of 
 achievement, which would of course be disastrous. 
 
 493 E 27. 'An essential beauty,' etc., rather, according to our usual 
 
 correction, ' the self of beauty, instead of a manifold of beauti- 
 fuls, or (generalising) a self of each (quality) instead of a mani- 
 fold of each.' The word 'multitude' is literally 'plurality,' 
 and has a rhetorical connection with the argument throughout. 
 
 494 B 211. 7. ' From his childhood be first in everything.' This 
 
 and the following paragraphs are probably in some degree 
 tinged with a reference to Alcibiades. Note especially 
 'rich and high-born,' 'direct the affairs of Greeks and 
 foreigners.' 
 
 D 30. 'There is no real wisdom in him.' 'Nous,' the word 
 applied by the philosophers to intelligence in its completest 
 form, is also the current Greek word for good sense or 
 reasonableness; the present sentence is perfectly simple and 
 idiomatic : ' he has no sense, and needs it, and it is a thing 
 that cannot be got without taking trouble for it.' 
 
 495 B 212. 1 8. 'Who inflict the greatest injury on states': again 
 
 an allusion to Alcibiades. See Grote's summary and estimate 
 of his life, ch. 66 end. Alcibiades, it must be remembered, had 
 been the intimate friend of Socrates. (See the Symposium?) 
 C 27. 'Unreal,' lit., not 'true': cf. 205. 24, 490 A and 
 note, and 'a course allied to reality,' 44. 39, 362 A, and 
 the investigation into the comparative ' reality ' of pleasures,
 
 BOOK VI. 227 
 
 321. 29 ff., 583 B, in both of which passages the Greek has the 
 word 'truth.' 
 
 38. 'Like criminals.' The order of the English is un for- 495 D 
 tunate, especially combined with the insertion of the noun 
 ' criminals,' which is not in the Greek, and the rendering ' des- 
 picable ' for the Greek diminutive ' little craft.' The point of 
 the comparison is merely the escape from a mean and confined 
 space into large and splendid surroundings. Every one who 
 has made a name at his own little speciality rushes to the 
 chair or platform to instruct the world on the greatest 
 problems of existence. We see this clearly enough to-day, 
 the tendency being aggravated by the specialisation of 
 philosophy itself. There seems hardly room in Plato's con- 
 ception for the mere student of logic or psychology as we 
 know him, and it is well to be reminded that the scholar or 
 logician is not as such a ' philosopher ' in Plato's sense, who 
 is found perhaps once or twice in a century, except at great 
 epochs. It should be added, however, that if to be a true 
 philosopher needs a greatness beyond the reach of the mere 
 specialist student, yet to have the philosophic temper in a 
 high degree energy, modesty, the passion for truth, readiness 
 to criticise ourselves is within the reach of all who deal with 
 ideas. Plato's conception, if in one sense more exacting than 
 ours, in another is of wider application. 
 
 41. 'Rank and splendour transcend,' rather, 'herreputa-D 
 tion,' or ' pretensions are still loftier than those of.' The fact 
 is that the very discredit into which from time to time 
 philosophy falls is caused in great measure by the alleged 
 contrast between its promise and performance, the former 
 being often grossly misconceived. 
 
 213. 2. 'Grievously marred and enervated,' etc., more lit. 
 the whole sentence would run, 'and whose arts and crafts as 
 they have disfigured their bodies, so too have crippled and 
 mutilated their minds by reason of their sordidness.' The 
 conception of sordidness (banausia) is characteristic of the 
 Greeks, and as described by Aristotle contains two elements :
 
 228 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 (i) the unfitting of mind or body for higher pursuits ; (2) living 
 at the convenience of another. The freeman exists for his own 
 sake (which does not exclude the innate or inherent relation 
 to the community as a whole) and not for that of another. 
 (See Newman, Introduction to Aristotle's Politics, p. in.) 
 The purpose therefore makes a difference : work of an 
 inferior class, done with a noble aim, is relieved of the stigma 
 of sordidness, while a pedantic elaboration of some free arts 
 (probably gymnastic, music, and painting) may be sordid. 
 The current embodiment of this feeling differed widely in 
 different Greek communities. At Athens the artisan was 
 more favourably regarded than the retail trader, and more 
 citizens belonged to the former class. Except at Sparta, 
 agriculture was on the whole thought a free occupation. 
 But according to a well-known saying of Plutarch, ' No well- 
 constituted Greek youth, after viewing the Zeus at Olympia, or 
 the Hera at Argos, would wish to be Phidias or Polycletus, 
 their authors.' I do not feel sure that this represents classical 
 Greek feeling. The great poets were certainly among the 
 most honoured of mankind. (See Newman, I.e. 102 ff.) For 
 us, of course, the student of books is about as much bodily 
 and mentally marked by his calling as any one else, and 
 Aristotle would perhaps have condemned his life as ' sordid.' 
 Thus it is true that every profession leaves its stamp, and 
 after a time unfits its votary for a different line of work, as 
 indeed Plato presupposes throughout. And undoubtedly 
 there are some modes of life which especially disable men for 
 speculative activity. What we miss in Aristotle, and to some 
 extent, though less, in Plato, is a sense of the educational 
 value of the handicrafts. In the Apology, it will be remem- 
 bered, the workmen are distinguished as at least knowing 
 their own business. 
 496 B 213. 38. ' The bridle ' of Theages. Contrast the point of 
 
 view of Bk. in. 102. 406 on valetudinarianism. 
 D 214. 14. 'Such a man keeps quiet.' This striking passage 
 is one of the notes that presage the spiritual individualism of
 
 BOOK VI. 229 
 
 the Stoic period, with its complementary anticipation of an 
 invisible community. It is in sharp contrast with the con- 
 ception of individual incompleteness which lies at the root 
 of Plato's social theory. Cf. 53. 41, 369 B above and note. 
 The following paragraph makes a reservation which stamps 
 quietism as after all a second best. 
 
 214. 31, 497 A 221. 32, 502 c. Sect. 66 
 
 It having been shown that the popular condemnation of 
 'philosophy ' is not founded in the nature of true philosophy, 
 the question arises hoiu to secure the perpetual presence of true 
 philosophy the grasp of reality in the state, and the presenta- 
 tion of this as the one condition of possibility for Plato's common- 
 wealth forms the final transition to the second or higher scheme 
 of education. 
 
 214. 42. 'The seed of a rare exotic,' more simply, ' a seed 497 B 
 from abroad, sown in a soil foreign to it, loses its type under 
 
 the new influence and passes into the native (species).' Plato 
 lived ages before the conception of immutable species arose, 
 and obviously held a view which might be illustrated by the 
 idea that, if, say, a foreign geranium were allowed to run wild 
 in England, it would degenerate into one of the English wild 
 geraniums. Of course, by reversion, something that looks like 
 this may happen, but changed conditions of selection are then 
 at work, as well as the differences of soil and climate. Plato's 
 idea errs by audacity; it is less easy than he fancied for a stock 
 to pass from species to species. He had probably observed 
 great changes of habit and appearance in plants transferred 
 from one country to another, or perhaps even had imagined that 
 the whole difference between native and foreign species arose 
 through degeneration of the one into the other under the 
 direct influence of climatic conditions only. Cf. 2o8. 492 A. 
 
 215. 14. 'The same in all points but one,' etc. For the C 
 anticipation alluded to, see 122. 423 E. The one point to 
 be modified is just the condition which is to^explain the
 
 230 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 nature and degree of the hold on reality possessed by the 
 commonwealth, i.e. its own degree of reality. 
 
 497 D 26. ' In what way a state may handle philosophy,' without 
 
 being destroyed by it. Ideas are forces, and like all forces 
 must be organised if they are not to be dangerous. ' A little ' 
 philosophy 'is the dangerous thing.' 
 
 498 A 40. ' In the intervals of housekeeping and business ' ; better, 
 
 ' in the interval (after boyhood and) before they begin house- 
 keeping and business ' (see Mr. Richards in Classical Review). 
 Cf. Aristotle, Ethics, i. 3, 5 (Peters): 'And hence a young 
 man is not qualified to be a student of Politics, for he lacks 
 experience of the affairs of life which form the data and the 
 subject-matter of Politics.' ' Politics ' for Aristotle is much 
 the same as ethical science, or the science of life. I extract 
 the conclusion of Mr. Stewart's excellent note. ' To sum up 
 the young man is an incapable student and critic of moral 
 philosophy, because he is unacquainted with the facts, a 
 knowledge of which it presupposes. His ignorance is due (i) 
 to the short time he has lived ; (2) to the strength of his 
 passions, which do not allow him to see even the facts, which 
 he has had opportunities of observing, in their true light 
 i.e. as involving the distinction of right and wrong, rather 
 than of pleasant and unpleasant. He has not yet acquired 
 the faculty by which the truths of moral philosophy can be 
 apprehended, viz., the intelligence which neglects the pleasure 
 or pain of the present, and regards the relation in which the 
 pleasant or painful action stands to the whole life. Such 
 knowledge of moral philosophy as the young man acquires is 
 but ear and lip knowledge, of no influence upon his conduct. 
 The moral faculty must be evolved as the result of the right 
 ordering of his desires by moral training, before it becomes 
 profitable for him to study the theory of morals. If the end 
 were merely to construct a speculative system, perhaps a 
 youth might be able to appreciate such a system, as he 
 appreciates the elements of geometry ; but conduct is the 
 . end ; and conduct requires knowledge of the perplexities of
 
 BOOK VI. 231 
 
 life, and a settled character directed towards a high 
 ideal.' 
 
 The resemblance of the system described by Plato to our 
 modern plan of philosophical education can escape no one. 
 
 216. 12. ' A course of training in philosophy suited to their 498 B 
 years.' I think ' suited to their years ' is restrictive, and the 
 meaning of ' philosophy ' is indicated by the preceding co- 
 ordinate term education. They are to have an education and 
 
 a philosophy or 'pursuit of knowledge' suited for boys (cf. 
 264. 536 D and E); apparently some easy instruction in 
 arithmetic and the elements of science, together with the 
 ' musical ' education described above. This would go on till 
 about the age of seventeen ; then come two or three years of 
 bodily training, and after that the more serious work of edu- 
 cation : cf. I.e. The main point is that the study of ' dialectic ' 
 is deferred till the character is settled. (See 265. 537-8.) 
 
 35. ' In a second existence.' Jowett, ' when they live (rather, D 
 ' are born ') again, = ' in a new terrestrial life.' Cf. ' carried up 
 to their birth ' on last page of this dialogue. The feeling of 
 incalculable vistas of time, expressed in the two following 
 sentences, applies primarily to the unknown intervals between 
 the repeated terrestrial lives, which are Plato's mythological 
 way of expressing the continuity of spiritual life, and, it may 
 be, of spiritual progress through the ages. 
 
 42. ' Our present theory,' lit. ' what is now being spoken of 
 i.e. the true philosophic life. 
 
 217. i. 'Proposals somewhat resembling ours'; better, E 
 ' phrases somewhat resembling,' etc.; the contrast is between 
 the true organic life of intellect and feeling, expressed, as 
 Plato holds, most naturally in conversation, and the rhetoric 
 of the professional phrase-maker, which is a dead product of 
 'patching and piecing, adding and taking away,' so as to fit 
 the parts together in a whole which is written, but not vitally 
 thought. (See close of Phaedrus, especially 278 E.) 
 
 1 6. 'Special pleadings,' lit. 'eristic' (arguments). See 159. 499 A 
 454 A above and note. No doubt a great part of the popular
 
 232 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 repugnance to philosophy rests on the belief, not unfounded, 
 that in it the sheer pursuit of truth is lost in prejudice and 
 self-importance. Few would be found to condemn the pursuit 
 of truth as such. 
 
 499 B 23. ' These few philosophers who are at present described 
 
 as useless ' ; this leaves out of sight the condition that the 
 philosopher-statesman must be a man of affairs throughout. 
 (See 187-8. 473-4 above.) 
 
 C 36. ' Persons of first-rate philosophic attainments,' more lit. 
 ' (persons) first rate at philosophy.' The difference may 
 appear small to the reader, but it really involves the distinction 
 between suggesting a man chiefly notable for acquired learning 
 of a very special kind, and a man qualified in the highest 
 degree for a complete insight into life. 
 
 500 A 218. 15. 'Defining, as we have just done': see close of 
 
 paragraph, 'not in the majority of mankind.' It is really 
 misapprehension and not innate hatred of reason that causes 
 the prejudice against the truly educated classes. The fact is, 
 that the people who pose as educated are not educated at all, 
 and necessarily spread a false impression of the character and 
 bearing of educated people. 
 
 B 34. ' Always discoursing about persons.' Personality is the 
 great characteristic of low-class controversy, and rightly 
 produces suspicion in the looker-on that disputants are not 
 truly absorbed in the issue or business in hand. 
 
 38. 'The things that really exist,' has his mind occupied 
 with ' what is.' Plato's meaning would often be better given 
 if this phrase were rendered by ' facts ' in the general English 
 sense as opposed to falsehood or superstition, but of course 
 not indicating restriction to sensible events, so as to exclude, 
 e.g., Laws of nature. It cannot be too often urged that, in the 
 phrase 'what is,' Plato has primarily in mind a judgment which 
 maintains itself and does not prove false. (See close of Book 
 v. and notes.) 
 
 39. ' To look down upon.' For Plato's own warning against 
 interpreting these metaphors in a quasi-spatial, which is also a
 
 BOOK VI. 233 
 
 mystical, sense, see the criticism of such an interpretation 
 254. 529 below. 
 
 43. 'Certain well-adjusted and changeless objects.' 'Objects,' 500 C 
 as usual, a supplementation of a neuter plural, here with most 
 unfortunate associations to an English mind. Try 'looking 
 on (a world whose elements are) definite and uniform, and 
 beholding each other, but are all orderly, and rationally 
 related.' Plato is speaking directly, to judge from Book vn., 
 of the structure of the world as revealed by mathematical 
 science, and ultimately, no doubt, of the moral and spiritual 
 order of the universe as studied by the complete philosophy 
 to which he looked forward without being able to construct it. 
 
 219. 4. ' To avoid imitating that with which he reverently 
 associates.' On the force of imitation, cf. 88-9. 395 above, and 
 the first education throughout. It is equally powerful for good 
 and evil, see especially 351. 606 below. Cf. Aristotle, Poetic. 4, 
 ' Imitation is implanted in human beings from childhood 
 and man differs in this from all other animals, viz., by his 
 superlative turn for imitation, and all his earliest lessons are 
 learned by imitation.' 
 
 9. ' Orderly and godlike himself.' The ' philosophic ' temper 
 or disposition, which has been traced up from the animal 
 mind, here expands into that which apprehends the divine, 
 and is itself the divine in man. See above, 63. 17, 376 A, 143. 
 37, 439 D (the ' calculative ' element), 189. 24, 475 c, and 
 below, 331. i, 589 D. Cf. 'For we know that when He shall 
 appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' 
 i John iii. 2. 
 
 15. 'In that higher region,' lit, ' there ' i.e., according to D 
 frequent usage, 'in the other world.' Cf. 2l8. 39 note on 'to 
 look down.' 
 
 24. ' The divine original,' or pattern. Cf. 197. 34, 484 c, E 
 ' pattern in the mind.' 
 
 28. ' Begin by making a clean surface.' Contrast Schiller, 501 A 
 Aesthetische Briefe, iii. : ' das lebendige Uhrwerk des Staats 
 muss gebessert werden, indem es schlagt, und hier gilt es, das
 
 234 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 rollende Rad wahrend seines Umschwungs auszutauschen.' 
 Here, more than anywhere, just because Plato approaches the 
 notion of an ideal cut off from the springs of actuality, does he 
 seem to our thought ' not ideal enough.' His whole adaptation 
 of social arrangements to the facts of human nature would be 
 stultified if this passage were taken in the full meaning which 
 it seems literally to suggest. If you make a clean slate of 
 social institutions and human dispositions, to what fundamental 
 facts is the new creation to be adapted ? We must take 
 the passage, I imagine, as the strongest possible expression 
 of repugnance to the life of his time, but nevertheless as, 
 technically speaking, implying a distinction between the 
 fundamental tendencies of human nature and their diseased 
 and distorted expression in the society of his day. Cf., for the 
 method of cleaning the surface, close of Book vn., which in a 
 certain sense prefigures our idea that the great hope is to give 
 the children a fair start. It may be remarked that disregard 
 of the continuity involved in family life is of a piece with 
 Plato's readiness to abandon the family. Cf. also note on 42. 
 501 B 41. ' To the ideal forms of justice,' etc., lit., ' to the naturally 
 just and temperate,' etc. Cf. the ' real bed ' which is that ' in 
 nature, '338. 10, 597 B. 
 
 42. ' And then to the notions current among mankind ' ; 
 better, as Jowett, ' to the human copy,' i.e. that which they are at 
 work on. The ' natural ' principles of justice and other moral 
 qualities are no doubt those which Plato believes himself to 
 have found present, in various degrees, throughout inorganic 
 and organic nature and the animal world, and culminating in 
 the life of man. See close of Book i. ; the allusions to 
 'nature' in the construction of society, Book n. ; the rela- 
 tion of economic system to morality, Book iv.; and the frequent 
 references to analogies from the animal world, together with 
 the allusion to the reign of law, 2l8. 43, 500 c, as there 
 explained in note. Thus the comparison is between the life 
 of man, as seen in the light of great principles which appear to 
 pervade the universe, and the life of man as an imperfect
 
 BOOK VI. 235 
 
 embodiment of those principles and the possibilities which 
 they suggest. The 'philosophers' are to apply the larger 
 view in assimilating actual life to the life thus suggested 
 to them. 
 
 220. 36. 'The fabulous constitution which we are describing t; OI jr 
 will not be actually realised,' or, more lit, 'the constitution 
 which we are fabling (' mythologising ') in word will not receive 
 fulfilment in act.' The more literal rendering suggests that 
 
 the realisation may be not so much the execution of a scheme 
 as the fulfilment of a symbolic prophecy. 
 
 221. 2. ' Cannot by any possibility beget sons ' : a pathetic 502 A 
 irony. Can it be a fundamental impossibility that the son of 
 
 a ruler should be a man of lofty character and intelligence? 
 And if not (following paragraph), may not one in some single 
 instance escape corruption ? 
 
 31. ' Difficult, but certainly not impossible.' The condition C 
 on which the realisation of Plato's social ideal depends has 
 been assigned, viz., the application of the best ideas to the 
 task of government, and it has appeared that the condition is 
 of a kind that might present itself in experience. The fulfil- 
 ment of the ideal is therefore a real possibility. It remains to 
 explain the mode and degree in which the condition can be 
 accomplished or fail to be accomplished, and therefore the 
 mode and degree in which reality can appear or fail to appear 
 in society. Thus the underlying contention which the social 
 scheme only illustrates, viz., the thorough-going connection of 
 organised life with happiness and disorganised with misery, 
 will be verified in its whole range. 
 
 221. 33, 502 0224. 31, 504 E. Sect. 67. 
 
 The condition of possibility which has just been explained 
 demands that the subject of educational selection of rulers should 
 be taken tip where it was left off, and completed with reference 
 to that highest kind of study, which deals with something beyond 
 the mere social excellences, and therefore is the only scientific or 
 critical mode of understanding even them.
 
 236 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 502 D 221. 36. ' We shall secure the presence of a body of men,' 
 
 etc., a necessity insisted on 122. 423 A above. 
 
 38. 'And what must be the age.' (See 264. ff. 536-7.) 
 222. i. 'The appointment of the magistrates,' taken up 
 from 112. 41, 414 A. A fresh principle and test is to be added 
 to those which were there described, or rather a genuine 
 understanding of what has been the pervading principle 
 throughout the education is to be demanded as itself the 
 ultimate test. 
 
 503 C 223. 2. ' Steady and invariable characters ' : ' invariable '- 
 
 not liable to reactions or transitions of feeling. Cf. 79- 388 E, 
 and QO-I. 397 B. We are rather inclined to contrast the man 
 of action as brisk and stirring, with the intellectual man as 
 slow and sedentary. But the notion of the student as seden- 
 tary is not a leading idea with the Greeks, though in the Clouds 
 we have some suggestion of the kind. Plato is rather harp- 
 ing on a contrast like that so familiar to us in Thucydides, 
 between the Athenian and the Spartan, the former ' neither 
 resting themselves nor letting any one else rest,' the latter so 
 slow that aggression can hardly rouse them to repel it. Plato, 
 looking always for the elements of strength and durability, 
 was anxious that the latter character, ' like Teneriffe or 
 Atlas, unremoved,' should be the foundation of his citizens' 
 being. 
 
 E 23. ' Will be able to support the highest subject,' or, ' the 
 greatest studies.' Compare Socrates' phrase in the Memora- 
 bilia, iv. 5, ii, 'does not pay attention to the most important 
 concerns (in life).' 
 
 504 B 38. ' A longer route.' Cf. 138. 6, 435 c. The admission 
 
 was made at the point where the moral qualities and psycho- 
 logical elements of the individual mind were about to be 
 inferred from those which had been observed in society, and 
 just before the Law of Contradiction was stated as an instru- 
 ment in the inquiry. Plato probably felt that his division of 
 psychological elements rested on an uncritical foundation,
 
 BOOK VI. 237 
 
 that the social motive assigned as the content of reason bore 
 no distinct relation (except through the analogy of the law of 
 function) to the universe beyond the social whole, and that 
 for both these reasons the unity of mind itself was insufficiently 
 explained or demonstrated. Note the new position of reason, 
 188-9. 475, with which cf. the theory of pleasure in Book ix. 
 The relation of reason to feeling cannot be explained without 
 at least a working conception of the relation of mind to nature. 
 And the relation of mind to nature or the universe is in effect 
 the theme of Books vi. and vn. 
 
 224. 8. ' Fair ; for nothing imperfect,' etc. The word rightly 504 C 
 rendered ' fair ' is formed from the Greek word for ' measure,' 
 which it echoes like our ' moderate ' ; the argument then is : 
 ' No measure which deviates from what is can be taken as a 
 measure ; for in failing to appreciate what is the true nature 
 of the matter in hand it is deprived of all clue to its com- 
 pleteness, and therefore cannot inform us whether or no its 
 right limit has been attained.' In paraphrase, ' No concep- 
 tion, which falls short of an individual system, can be adequate 
 to any reality ; though people are often content to acquiesce 
 in a philosophy of common sense or in a few uncriticised 
 generalities.' 
 
 20. ' The highest science,' or greatest, most important, sub- D 
 ject of study. 
 
 22. ' Still something higher'; the moral qualities as exhibited 
 in social relations are not ultimate or ' the whole,' but are, as 
 a modern writer might say, 'appearances,' though having a 
 certain degree of reality. It is noticeable that the dialectic 
 which passes on to 'something higher' is what makes the 
 noble claim that ' the greatest (matters) demand the greatest 
 exactness ' ; this, therefore, does not refer to a superficial 
 elaboration of detail but to a thorough-going attempt to 
 criticise experience and adjust its parts to one another as 
 parts of a whole.
 
 238 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 68. 224. 33, 504 227. 42, 507 A. 
 
 Nature of the highest study, viz., the Form of the Good. 
 Objections to identification of it with knowledge and with 
 pleasure, and anticipatory description of it as that which all 
 minds pursue. Transition to symbolic account of it. 
 
 505 A 224. 41. 'You have often been told that the essential Form 
 of the Good,' etc. ' Essential ' is 'an addition of the trans- 
 lators, and seems superfluous. We should expect from this 
 passage to find the form of the good constantly discussed by 
 Plato, but, according to Jowett, ' it is nowhere mentioned in 
 his writings except in this passage.' Introduction to the 
 Republic, xcviii. 'The good' indeed is discussed in the 
 Philebus, especially 20 and 22, its main characteristic being 
 there stated, as here implied, to be self-completeness or self- 
 sufficingness (as here 'autarkeia': see note on 40. 2, 357 D, and 
 53- 39) S^Q B )- Plato there expressly portrays the good as an 
 organisation of elements of life, and not as synonymous with 
 any single ' form,' except its own. The actual phrase ' form of 
 the good,' however, does not occur in the Philebus. Opinions 
 differ as to whether the Republic is earlier or later than the 
 Philebus : see Introduction. 
 
 43. 'And that this essence, by blending with just things 
 and all other created objects ' ; this is needlessly elaborate. 
 Try for the whole sentence, ' You have often heard that the 
 most important subject of study is the form of the good, by 
 assuming a relation to which (literally, 'by using which in 
 addition ') the just and all else becomes useful and profitable,' 
 i.e. justice, etc., only have their meaning as subordinate prin- 
 ciples in a complete or self-sufficing scheme of things. 
 
 225. 5. 'This essence,' simply ' it/ viz., the form. 
 
 8. ' To possess everything, without possessing what is good.' 
 See note on 40. 2, 357 D referred to above. 'To gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul.' 
 
 B 9. ' To possess all possessible things, with the single excep- 
 tion of things good,' more lit., ' to have all possessions, but
 
 BOOK VI. 239 
 
 those not good,' and so further, ' to have in mind all else, 
 apart from the good that is, to have in mind nothing good 
 nor beautiful.' 
 
 26. 'That the chief good is insight into good' : this circle 55 
 seems inevitable in any attempt at a definition of the good by 
 a term outside it. For the good, for Plato and Aristotle, is a 
 ' self-sufficing ' or individual whole, and can, therefore, only 
 be explained by exhibiting its system, which alone communi- 
 cates to any isolated term the quality of goodness which it 
 may possess. Cf. Kant's only good, the good will, which is 
 the will that wills the good. Everything which can be denned 
 by a mere reference confesses itself to be a mere relative term 
 which has no internal system nor structure. A foot is 1 2 inches, 
 and a yard is 3 feet, and you cannot define them further except 
 by bringing up more cross-references. But a genuine whole, 
 e.g. ' society,' must be denned by unfolding its system. 
 
 35. 'To admit the existence of evil pleasures'; the same 
 argument, Philebus, 13 B, where Socrates attaches less im- 
 portance than we should to the reply that no pleasures are 
 evil qua pleasures. If any one admits the existence of evil 
 pleasures in the same sense of the term pleasure in which he 
 alleges it to be a good, of course he is caught in the contradic- 
 tion. But the admission is perhaps unnecessary. 
 
 39. ' The same thing to be both good and evil.' If they D 
 considered the pleasurable act as a whole under the head of 
 pleasure they would get into this contradiction ; if not, then' 
 the defence of pleasure would not cover the objectionable 
 sources from which it may spring, except at the cost of denying 
 value to all else than pleasurable feeling. The contradiction, 
 as Plato states it, is a case of the relativity insisted on 195. 479 
 above, and therefore does not imply a need that the data 
 should be rejected (that pleasure, e.g., should be excluded from 
 the good) but only that they should be unified by criticism 
 that it should be shown what place pleasure holds among the 
 objects of action. 
 
 226. 5. ' When you come to things good' : cf. on the lie in
 
 240 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 the mind 72. 2, 382 A above. In other words, 'good' is a 
 name for the all-inclusive end, or the end as such, so that the 
 actual aim in action is always sought qua good : cf. following 
 paragraph, and Philebus, 20 D, of which two passages Aris- 
 totle's opening statement in the Ethics, i. i, is a reminiscence, 
 ' And so it has been well said that the good is that at which 
 everything aims ' (Peters). On this view all action has in it 
 ah element of seeking for good, as all genuine assertion has in 
 it an element of truth, though confusion or narrowness may 
 produce in action any degree of wickedness, or in assertion 
 any degree of error. 
 
 505 E ii. 'As the end of all its actions,' more lit, 'and for its 
 
 sake does all (that it does).' This view involves denying 
 that bad, as such, can be desired for its own sake. I quote 
 the best brief discussion on the point known to me from 
 Bradley's Ethical Studies, p. 273: 'The bad self cannot be 
 desired for its own sake. Facts, in spite of certain appear- 
 ances, proclaim that it is so, that the akolastos [Aristotle's 
 'profligate,' to whom evil has become good] is a creature of 
 theory, that no one chooses evil simply on the ground that it 
 is evil and for its own sake as evil. . . . But let us guard 
 against error. It is false to say that evil is not done as evil ; 
 this or that evil act, when done, is desired for itself, and its 
 content is known to be evil, and under the general head of 
 evil it is committed. But the justification of the mistake is 
 this, that only particular evils are desired ; there is no identity 
 in them which is made an end, because there is none to make 
 an end out of. ... Simply to desire evil, as such, would be 
 simply to hate good as such ; but hate and aversion must 
 rest on and start from a positive centre. You cannot have a 
 being which is nothing but mere negation.' 
 
 506 A 23. 'Just things and beautiful things come to be also 
 
 good,' more lit., '"justs," and " beautifuls," about which 
 one is ignorant in what possible respect they are good, will 
 not find a very valuable guardian in him who is thus ignorant.' 
 Cf. 224. 43, 505 A above. The explanation of these moral
 
 BOOK VI. 241 
 
 and aesthetic data in terms of their general value for life 
 obviously satisfies the requirements implied at the close of 
 Book v. as a differentia of ' science' contrasted with ' seeming.' 
 Till thus systematised the just and beautiful themselves are 
 not really known (close of paragraph), the simple proof of 
 this being that you cannot say what they are. 
 
 34. ' The chief good to be science or pleasure ? ' This is the 506 B 
 question of the Philebus ; the conclusion there is that neither 
 by itself can be identified with ' the good,' but that ' measure,' 
 i.e. as we might say, law or rationality, has the first rank. 
 
 227. 30. ' That which appears to be an offshoot of the E 
 chief good'; 'an offshoot,' lit., 'a child,' cf. 229. 40, 508 c 
 below, 'whom the good begat in its own likeness.' The 
 famous passage which begins at this point, together with 
 the parallel conception of the Tt'maeus, has probably exer- 
 cised an incalculable influence on the religious history of the 
 world : cf. closing sentence of the Timaeus, ' the only-begotten 
 universe, God manifest to sense, the image of its Maker.' 
 It should be noted once for all that Plato's symbolism is 
 inherently connected with his idea of causation. Through- 
 out the symbolic series which begins with this passage, as 
 in the analogous discussions of the Timaeus, the image or 
 likeness is such because it is made on the pattern, or as an 
 embodiment, of the deeper reality to which it owes its being. 
 Compare Timaeus, 27 0-29 D, and Mr. Archer Hind's 
 analysis (p. 84 of his edition) : ' All that comes to be comes 
 from some cause ; so therefore does the universe. Also it 
 must be a likeness of something.' The late Mr. R. L. Nettle- 
 ship, in a review of Mr. Archer Hind's Timaeus, observed 
 that for ' also ' in the last sentence he should prefer to read 
 'therefore' (Mind, xiv. 130). Some logicians love to insist 
 that an effect need not resemble its cause, but this is a matter 
 of the level at which you take the connection. There always 
 is a continuity ; whether, and how far we detect it, is another 
 question. Plato's idea of symbolism is therefore, it will be 
 noted, that of natural symbolism, in which the image has in 
 
 Q
 
 242 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 part the character which is to be symbolised, and knowledge 
 through the image is only imperfect likelihood depending 
 on mere likeness because the image is not the self, i.e. the 
 proper or complete form of the reality to be understood. Cf. 
 Timaeus, 28 c, and A. Hind's note. 
 
 507 A 38, 39, and 41. 'Interest,' 'fruit,' 'offspring'; these all 
 represent the same word, which has the double meaning of 
 ' interest ' and ' offspring.' 
 
 39. ' The essential good,' lit., ' the good itself.' 
 
 Sect. 69. 227. 43, 57 A 22Q. 43> 5 8 c - 
 
 Symbolic account of the form of the good as a ground of con- 
 nection in the intelligible world, analogous to light as a ground 
 of connection in the visible world. 
 
 507 B 228. 6. ' The existence of a multiplicity of things that are 
 beautiful,' more lit., ' we affirm and make the distinction in 
 our thought (or argument) that there are many beautifuls and 
 many goods, and so with every (quality).' Cf. close of Book v. 
 and notes. The present passage is a continuation of the same 
 treatment. The ' distinction,' I suppose, is between the 
 group of goods and the group of beautifuls, etc., or perhaps 
 between the many beautifuls and beauty. 
 
 9. 'And also the existence of an essential beauty,' etc., 
 more lit., ' whereas to the self of beauty and the self of good, 
 and so on with all the (qualities) which before we were 
 reckoning as manifolds, now again (i.e. from another point of 
 view) counting them according to the single form (principle) 
 of each in virtue of its (the form's) being one, we give the 
 title of what each (quality) is.' 
 
 15. 'And we assert that the former address themselves to 
 the eye,' etc., more lit., ' and the former we say are seen and 
 not thought (participle), the latter are thought and not seen.' 
 Here we have the simple distinction between the two worlds, 
 of sense and of thought, from which there has issued so much 
 both of profound wisdom and of monstrous superstition. It 
 s familiar to all of us in the later form, ' the things which are
 
 BOOK VI. 243 
 
 seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are 
 eternal.' If it is the case, as is now maintained, that the 
 ' being ' of the Eleatics was material, Plato is responsible for 
 the first appearance of the fateful distinction in question in 
 the written records of western philosophy. 
 
 The discussion at the close of Book v. should have pre- 
 pared us to understand the simple meaning in which the 
 antithesis is here propounded. Cf. also 247-8. 524, and 346. 
 602 below. The only difficulty arises from our being well 
 aware that sense-perception and thought are not ' cut off with 
 an axe ' from one another. But the passages cited, and the 
 whole of such a dialogue as the Theaetetus, show us that 
 Plato, though not armed with the modern psychology of 
 sense-perception, was perfectly well aware of the part played 
 by thought in the perceptive judgment ; while on the other 
 hand, any good modern logic (see especially Mr. Bradley's 
 Principles of Logic, or Mill, or Lotze) will explain to us how 
 the detail and variety of the simpler sense-perception is 
 mutilated, dissected, and remoulded as we approach the 
 scientific judgment, till, in the organised system of truth, no 
 element of sense-perception survives, except as a mere coin 
 or counter of the intellectual currency. Sense-perception as 
 such is of the ' manifold,' because its judgments are loaded 
 with undistinguished and irrelevant detail, which prevents the 
 unifying principles from coming clearly into view, and there- 
 fore the world of sense is the world of negative relativity 
 (close of Book v.), whose terms are perpetually shifting, of 
 confusion, and contradiction. Any example of that critical 
 observation and reciprocal adjustment of data which is to-day 
 called induction is a perfect type of the progress from sense 
 to thought as Plato conceives it. The world of law or plan, of 
 Causation, Uniformity, or Teleology, is, so far as constructed, 
 eternal and changeless according to the principle ' once true 
 always true.' It is the world of positive relativity, in which 
 the parts, being ' relative ' to a systematic whole, are not, so 
 to speak, taken by surprise and driven out of themselves by
 
 244 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 a change of context. The world as reconstructed and appre- 
 hended by a sense-perception which thought has cleared, and 
 disciplined, and organised the planets as Newton's eye 
 may have seen them is of course no longer a world of 
 sense-perception. The elements of sense have in it become 
 symbols of a vast system which exists for thought only. (See 
 on astronomy 255- 2I ff- S 2 9 E -) If tne world of thought is 
 erected into a world of things, as is constantly tending to 
 happen under pressure of a zeal for its reality, combined with 
 a false conception of the real, then it simply repeats the pro- 
 blem of the world of sensuous perception, and wholly fails to 
 serve as an explanation of it, or indeed to be in any way 
 reconcilable or capable of union with it. 
 
 The pre-eminence given to the sense of sight throughout 
 the whole discussion is notable, and is intensified in a 
 mystical sense in Neoplatonism and the Middle Age. Plato 
 and Aristotle are much better aware than their successors of 
 the great aesthetic importance of sound. 
 
 507 C 3- ' Any other kind of thing,' more lit., ' any respect in 
 which hearing and speech require an additional kind.' They 
 require a conducting medium, but so, we assume, does light, 
 so that this ' third ' would make no difference between the 
 two cases. 
 
 D 22Q. i. ' Granting that vision is seated in the eye.' Plato's 
 point is that this case of perception is a perfect illustration of 
 unity, because the root or principle of connection between 
 the two related objects is typified in a third object. Of 
 course such a representation of unity in difference by three 
 objects in space, or two objects and a spatial movement con- 
 necting them, is purely pictorial, and belongs to the sensuous 
 level of the symbol. Any other case of physical causation 
 would really do as well, the underlying truth being simply the 
 pervading oneness which enables an object in space apparently 
 to respond to the solicitations of another. Plato, by a natural 
 crudeness of early thought, which still survives in common- 
 sense language, seems to treat the mind as in space and
 
 BOOK VI. 245 
 
 enabled to see an object outside it ; but of course this is not 
 intelligible ; the mind cannot be related to objects in space 
 as one among them. The light and visible object, as such, 
 are in the mind. The simile is sufficient without insisting on 
 the erroneous implication in question. 
 
 2. ' Colour is resident in the objects.' We need not ask 
 what precisely Plato meant here by colour; he is actually 
 saying that we see no colour without light. He is probably 
 using the term colour much as we do, for that which would 
 be colour if it was seen. 
 
 ii. 'The sense of sight and the faculty of being seen.' 508 A 
 These are the terms which echo through the whole simile and 
 its application : the qualities which put two distinct elements 
 in responsive connection, and their single root. 
 
 15. 'To whom of the gods.' Plato, in accordance with 
 the orthodox views of the time, regarded the heavenly bodies 
 as divine beings. For us this would involve regarding them 
 as persons, and would make it impossible to consider them as 
 objects of a science like astronomy. But Plato seems to feel 
 no such difficulty, and we have to remember throughout that 
 his conception of life or mind is much less closely bound up 
 than ours with will or consciousness. A modern naturalist's 
 idea of evolution and molecular movement would probably be 
 as near Plato's notion of the universal life on the one side, as 
 would that of a personal will on the other. 
 
 27. 'The eye bears the closest resemblance to the sun.' 
 Cf. Goethe, Zahme Xem'en, iv. : ' War' nicht das Auge sonnen- 
 haft, Wie konnte es das Licht erblicken ! ' and Lotze's 
 criticism, Metaphysic, 109 (E. Tr.) 
 
 34. ' Though not identical with sight.' This and the pre- B 
 vious sentence labour the point that a ' power ' or property 
 may rest on a cause or condition which is beyond or dis- 
 tinguishable from the immediate point at which the power is 
 exercised in short, the fact of identity in diversity. 
 
 36. ' Seen by its aid.' The root of the identity is itself 
 revealed in the system which centres in it. Of course the sun,
 
 246 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 as we see it, is not the sun as it is supposed to operate on 
 the physical eye. 
 
 39. ' Begotten by it in a certain resemblance to itself.' 
 (See 227. 30, 506 E and note.) ' In a certain resemblance,' 
 lit. in ' analogy,' i.e. holding the corresponding relations with 
 the terms of its world, as explained in the rest of the sen- 
 tence. The unity brought about between two correlatives is 
 the point of analogy ; these are, in the one world, ' sight and 
 what is seen,' in the other, ' intelligence and what is under- 
 stood.' The externality of object to faculty, which Plato 
 admits in the lower sphere through a confusion between per- 
 ception and causation inherent in common-sense language, is 
 not to be extended to the higher. There is no ground for 
 the rendering 'pure reason,' a most unfortunate Kantism, 
 conveying precisely the wrong associations. 
 
 Sect. 70. 230. i, 508 c 231. 10, 509 B. 
 
 Explanation of the parts of the symbol. Light, as it 
 illuminates the objects of vision, corresponds to ' trueness ' or 
 knowability ' in the objects of knowledge ; sight, as the property 
 or act by which the eye responds to light, corresponds to science 
 or the intelligent quality of the mind ; and the sun, which is the 
 basis of both sight (at the eye) and illumination (at the object], 
 but is distinct from either, corresponds to the 'form of the good ' 
 as common centre of ' knowability ' or ' trueness,' and of intelli- 
 gence, and even as the cause or ground of ' existence. ' 
 
 i 508 C 230. 8. ' Whenever the same person looks at objects on 
 which the sun is shining ' ; the contrast is really between the 
 different degrees of distinctness in vision according to differ- 
 ences of illumination. We are inclined to say that the object 
 is the same all through, whereas Plato's language implies that 
 it changes with the direction of the faculty ; but as a visual 
 object it does change, and so far the present passage, by 
 insisting on the complete parallelism of object and faculty, 
 undoes the error observed upon 22p. i, 507 D note. 
 
 13. 'Whenever it has fastened upon an object over which
 
 BOOK VI. 247 
 
 truth and real existence are shining ' : ' object ' is an insertion. 
 ' Truth ' appears from the following paragraph to be what we 
 now sometimes call 'knowability' the rational or harmonious 
 character which makes a content convincing, or consistent 
 with thought as a whole. We might perhaps render it by ' true- 
 ness,' to avoid the association of a mind representing an 
 outside world, which ' truth ' conveys to us. In the same way, 
 morally, in Book i., 'truth' is used as practically = ' honesty ' 
 and in Aristotle's Ethics as = ' sincerity ' or 'true humility.' 
 See also the criticism of certain pleasures as 'untrue,' in 
 Book ix. 'Real existence' or 'what /V seems to be a reiterated 
 expression for the same quality as ' truth ' the characteristic 
 of not breaking down nor passing over into what is not. Try 
 for the whole sentence, 'whenever the mind has turned 
 towards that which knowability and (the quality of) genuine 
 being illuminate, it understands and apprehends it, and is 
 said to have intelligence ; but when it has fixed on what is 
 partly dark that which comes into being and perishes then 
 it has mere seeming and is purblind, and shifts its opinions 
 up and down, and is like one destitute of intelligence.' If 
 we throughout keep in mind the comparison as clearly stated 
 in this and the two previous paragraphs, we shall have a 
 clearer notion of Plato's meaning than seems usually to 
 prevail. Vision at night, by starlight or moonlight only, is 
 being compared with vision in broad daylight. In the one 
 we confuse things, and keep changing our judgment as to 
 what a certain object is or where a certain thing begins or 
 ends ; there are gaps in which we can see nothing. In the 
 other we clearly see the margins and connections of all the 
 objects, and we do not take one for the other, nor constantly 
 correct ourselves as to what is part of one and what of the 
 other. Cf. IpO. 43 ff., 476. 
 
 22. ' Now this power which supplies,' etc., more lit., 'this, 508 E 
 then, which imparts knowability (lit. 'truth') to what is 
 known, and furnishes the knower with his power (to know), 
 you must affirm to be the form of the good, and you must
 
 248 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 think of it as being the cause of science, and of trueness (i.e. 
 of knowability or reality) ; and beautiful as are both know- 
 ledge and trueness, you will be right in thinking it still more 
 beautiful than they. And science and trueness just as in the 
 other case (or ' other world ') it is right to think of light and 
 sight as like the sun but not the sun, so in the present case 
 (in the world we are dealing with) it is right to think of both 
 these as like the good, but wrong to think either of them to 
 be the good.' The distinction between science or knowledge 
 on the one hand, which belongs to the knower, and ' trueness ' 
 (really ' being ' or knowability) on the other, which belongs 
 to what is known, is maintained throughout, as parallel to 
 the quality of the seeing eye and of the illuminated object. 
 With us science, knowledge, and truth, would probably be 
 ranked together as ' intellectual ' or ' subjective,' and opposed 
 to being, fact, or reality, as ' actual ' or ' objective.' Plato has 
 not been led thus to oppose the actual to the intellectual 
 world, and for him, as for modern Idealism, all reality and 
 being fall within experience, if not indeed within knowledge, 
 and the distinction which he accepts is plainly shown by 
 his terminology to be a distinction of aspects within the 
 intellectual or ideal world. Of course his Idealism is naive ; 
 that is to say, it has not faced, and historically speaking could 
 not be called upon to face, the full difficulties which attach 
 to the question of knowledge and reality. But the more we 
 study his conceptions, the more we shall understand with 
 what extraordinary directness he was moving towards the 
 truth. The form of the good, as representing the whole, or 
 unity, is beyond and greater than knowledge and trueness, 
 which are aspects within the unity. Cf. 231. 5, note. 
 509 B 231. i. 'Not only the faculty of being seen, but also their 
 reproduction ('genesis,' generation), growth, and nutrition, 
 though he is not "generation,"' i.e. not constantly perishing 
 and being reproduced. Here probably there is a trace of 
 mysticism or confusion between the persistence of objects in 
 space and time and the uniformity of natural law. Plato
 
 BOOK VI. 249 
 
 seems to think that the sun is not perishable like the organic 
 world. We have to remember that he thought him divine. 
 Contrast also the passage on Astronomy in Book VIL, where 
 the line between the perishing appearance and the eternal 
 reality is more truly drawn. The simile is here pushed one 
 step further, and a very important step. The sun is the cause 
 (e.g. to the organic world), not only of visibility, but of exist- 
 ence, though it is not part of the organic world. 
 
 5. 'The objects of knowledge,' etc., more lit., 'so too we 
 must say that to what is known not only its being known is 
 imparted by the good, but also its being (infinitive) and 
 existence (substantive derived from verb ' to be ') attaches 
 to it thereby, though the good itself is not existence, but far 
 beyond existence in dignity,' etc. Here again the parts are 
 much less separate in the truth conveyed than in the simile 
 which conveys it. Visibility seems easy to distinguish from 
 existence (less easy, the more accurately we limit the kind of 
 existence), but to distinguish truth or knowability or reality 
 from existence is seen at once to be a harder matter. Plato 
 is really forcing a corollary by help of the simile. He has so 
 far left it open to say, ' Nature and the world no doubt have 
 trueness or knowability, and this points to some connection 
 with or responsiveness to intelligence, but their existence or 
 being that simply is // need not be relative to experience 
 or intelligence.' But he now pushes his point further and 
 urges that being or existence must follow the fortunes of 
 knowability, trueness, or reality ; the one cannot be taken 
 and the other left ; what gives all detail and organisation to 
 that which is known may as well be taken to give it its being 
 too. It should be noted that we have not here a mere 
 Berkeleyan argument. Plato's aim is rather, standing naively 
 on ground similar to Berkeley's, to find some solid signification 
 for the term reality ; and what gives it him is not the mere 
 ' per dpi' as ' esse,' but the notion of end, or purpose, as 
 expressed in coherent definition, as the ' nature ' of what is. 
 This is why the supreme cause of being is for him the good ;
 
 250 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 and also why the good is something beyond mere existence 
 or presentation. Existence as given at any point may be 
 isolated or inharmonious, but reality on the whole, including 
 existence and ' trueness,' involves connection of aspects, 
 completeness, self-maintenance through consistency. (See 
 note on 230. 22.) The notion of something 'beyond exist- 
 ence ' reappears in Plotinus, and in the sense above indicated 
 no complete philosophy can dispense with it. 
 
 Sect. 71. 231. ii, 509 B to end of Book vi. 
 
 Scheme of the world of sense-perception and the -world of 
 science and philosophy, in illustration of the nature and degrees 
 of reality and the course which the man of true culture will 
 have to pursue. 
 
 5090 26. ' One over an intellectual region.' The spatial phrase 
 ' region ' or ' place ' belongs to the pictorial symbol. It has 
 probably done something to fix the popular notion of Plato's 
 hypostasised ideas. Note the play on ' ouranos,' which in 
 the Timaeus is the term for the visible universe, but com- 
 monly = 'heaven.' Thus Plato does not assign the heavens 
 a different degree of reality from the earth, in spite of the 
 phrase ' not generation,' 231. i, 509 B, where see note. 
 
 34. ' Into two segments.' The word ' segments ' recurs in a 
 somewhat parallel passage, Philebus^ 61 E. The illustration 
 seems to us here needlessly elaborate for what it has to 
 convey. It must be remembered that lecturers find it advis- 
 able to use the black board to convey absolutely simple ideas, 
 merely to relieve the memory and attention of the audience. 
 Plato might be influenced by some such custom ; ' draw a 
 line, divide it, and write the following names against each 
 segment.' If the reading ' unequal' above is right, some 
 such symbolism as that suggested by the translators' ' represent 
 degrees,' etc., seems probable, but the Greek is not decisive. 
 Cf. Jowett, 'compare the subdivisions in respect of their 
 clearness and want of clearness.' 
 E 38. 'Images': cf. 96. 25, 4018, and 97. 33, 402 B, and
 
 BOOK VI. 251 
 
 339- 33> 59** B below. The productions of representative 
 art fall under this head, as we see from the first and last of 
 these passages. Images are a first aid in seeing : cf. 233. 
 IT, n. 
 
 232. 4. ' Stand for the real objects corresponding to these 510 A 
 images,' more lit., ' for that to which this (viz., the segment of 
 images) is like.' The verb ' to be like,' which is used here, 
 echoes the term for image ('likeness'), and suggests such 
 words as likely and likelihood, ' to liken,' in sense of to 
 guess, and so fancy and guesswork as 'going by likeness.' 
 This connection of ideas runs through the whole argument 
 about ' images ' and knowledge. 
 
 6. ' World of nature and of art.' Better, as Jowett, ' every- 
 thing that grows and is made,' the latter meaning the products 
 of industrial art, not of ' fine ' or representative art. 
 
 8. 'With reference to this class,' etc., more lit., 'that it 
 (viz., the lower part of the line) is divided in respect of 
 trueness and untrueness in the same way as (the whole of) 
 seeming from (the whole of) the intelligible, the terms 
 answering to these being the copy and that of which it is a 
 copy.' See on 'trueness' 230. 93, 508 c note. The lower 
 segment of the lower part is to the higher segment as the 
 whole lower part to the whole higher part. Hence it follows 
 almost conclusively that the higher segment of the higher 
 part stands for a concrete world, as does the higher segment 
 of the lower part, the lower segment of each part being 
 emphatically abstract. 
 
 10. c One segment will represent ' ; the lower segment of the B 
 higher part of the line stands for the mathematical sciences, 
 which employ ' the segments of the other part,' i.e. the objects 
 and copies of objects which those segments stand for, as 
 illustrations, as in Euclid's diagrams or in demonstrations by 
 help of cubes, mechanical models, and the like. See follow- 
 ing paragraph, which explains this more at length, and the 
 full development of the scheme 245. ff. 5220. 
 
 21. 'Travelling not to a first principle but to a conclusion,''
 
 252 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 more lit, ' proceeding not to a beginning but to an end.' This 
 is more fully explained in the following paragraph, and again 
 in the next Book, 260. 533. Like ' principle,' the Greek word 
 f arche' = ' beginning,' and the nature of the 'beginning' or 
 starting-point in science or research depends of course on the 
 method adopted and the matter dealt with. To speak of 
 ' proceeding to the beginning ' implies that you may actually 
 have begun in the middle, or, in other words, that the logical 
 or natural beginning may not always be the point which you 
 first get hold of. An ordinary science, Plato is saying, begins 
 where it can and draws its conclusions. It does not go back 
 to any beginning or principle par excellence, i.e. as we say, 
 does not criticise its assumptions. Cf. Mill's Logic, Bk. n. ch. 
 vi. sect. 4 : 'It appears, therefore, that the method of all 
 Deductive sciences is hypothetical. They proceed by tracing 
 the consequences of certain assumptions, leaving for separate 
 consideration whether the assumptions are true or not.' On 
 ' hypotheses ' see next paragraph and note. 
 
 22. 'One other segment will represent the objects of the 
 soul as it makes its way,' rather, ' will represent the passage of 
 the soul.' 
 
 24. ' To a first principle which is not hypothetical,' i.e. to 
 a true natural beginning, which is not a beginning in the 
 middle, such as is simply taken for granted or assumed. Such 
 a true or natural beginning can ultimately of course be pre- 
 scribed only by a conception of the whole of experience. 
 
 25. 'Unaided by those images and shaping its journey 
 by the sole help of real essential forms': 'journey,' Greek 
 ' methodos,' a pursuit, from which our ' method ' comes. In 
 Plato this word, which is almost confined to him and Aris- 
 totle, seems to be acquiring this force of a regular inquiry. It 
 is used with ' hodos,' ' way,' from which it is derived, 259. 38, 
 533 B below, so as to emphasise the idea of 'a pursuit in due 
 course,' Vergil's 'via,' which almost='by method.' 'Real 
 essential forms,' rather, 'with forms themselves and by their 
 own means.' Cf. above, 228. 15, 507 B and note. Few
 
 BOOK VI. 253 
 
 things so simple have been so persistently misconstrued as 
 Plato's perfectly correct assertion that philosophy, and, we 
 might add, the higher sciences, can make no use of spatial or 
 sensuous symbols, and work with thoughts only. The highest 
 value of the sensuous symbol is attained in art and the lower 
 forms of religion. I should think that the mere diagram or pic- 
 torial representation, as distinct from the conventional language 
 of the science, loses its importance to-day at a comparatively 
 early point even in mathematics, though of course in a sense 
 all spatial constructions can be suggested to the eye. 
 
 34. 'You know that the students of subjects like geometry 5100 
 assume,' etc. : ' by way of materials ' is paraphrase, not in 
 Greek. 'Assume,' the verb from which 'hypothesis' is 
 derived ; the word hypothesis and its adjective occur in the 
 Greek where used in the translation. It is hard to bear in 
 mind that they are here only beginning to receive the logical 
 meaning which for us is their primary sense. The verb may 
 mean ' to suggest 'or 'to lay down ' as a sort of foundation. 
 ' Investigation ' is ' methodos.' 
 
 From the beginning of this paragraph down to ' geometry 
 and the kindred arts,' 233. 25, 511 B, is an explanation of 
 that which is represented by the lower segment of the upper 
 part of the line, which upper part stands for the intelligible or 
 scientific world. 
 
 40. ' On the assumption that they are self-evident,' more D 
 lit., ' as being plain to every one.' 
 
 41. 'And making these their starting-point,' lit. 'and begin- 
 ning from these.' 
 
 43. 'With perfect unanimity,' rather, perhaps, 'consistency ' : 
 cf. 260. 13, 533 c, 'by what possibility can such mere admis- 
 sions ever constitute science.' The word used in both places 
 indicates ' agreement,' and points to the fact that the whole 
 proof rests on the ' convention ' which connects its parts and 
 prevents its foundations from being criticised. Self-consist- 
 ency in the argument is implied in the convention being 
 observed. They want to investigate, say, the properties of
 
 254 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 plane triangles ; they start with such postulates and definitions 
 as they think necessary for their purpose (a hypothesis in the 
 Greek sense is more like a postulate than what we call a 
 hypothesis, which for us often = a thing taken to exist for the 
 sake of explanation), and conclude to certain properties and 
 relations of plane triangles. But the question, e.g., what space 
 is, and whether Euclidean space is real or the only real space, 
 they will not raise. Aristotle's account of the ' beginnings,' ele- 
 ments, or principles accepted or postulated by every science, viz., 
 the general axioms of knowledge, the existence of the ' kind ' 
 or department of phenomena which it proposes to investigate, 
 and the meaning of the principal attributes of that ' kind ' 
 which it proposes to examine, is in substance derived from 
 this passage. See Aristotle's Anal. Post., 76, b. n. 
 
 233. 4- 'Summon to their aid visible forms,' rather say 
 visible ' shapes? to avoid confusion with the ' forms.' The 
 Greek is the same. 
 
 6. 'But with their originals,' lit. 'but with those to which 
 they are like,' repeating the phrase of 232. 4, 510 A, which 
 expressed the relation of the reflected images to the objects 
 which cast them. Of course inaccurate drawing in a mathe- 
 matical diagram does not interfere with the demonstration, so 
 long as it suggests the right train of ideas ; which shows that 
 the drawing is a mere aid to the mind, and is not itself the 
 matter discussed. 
 
 9. 'Absolute square and absolute diameter,' simply the 
 square itself and the diagonal itself, i.e. the geometrical 
 conception of them, not the sensuous images whether drawn 
 on paper or reproduced in imagination. 
 
 5 10 E ii-' Which again have their shadows and images in water '- 
 thrown in, probably, to keep the classification in mind and 
 point out exactly where we are. The 'objects' of common 
 sense are mere illustrations in exact science, while they are 
 solid realities as compared to reflections and shadows. ' In 
 water' ; people look at the sun in water to escape being 
 dazzled, e.g. in watching an eclipse. Phaedo, 99 E.
 
 BOOK VI. 255 
 
 13. 'Those abstractions,' more lit. 'those very selves' i.e. 
 the completest mathematical knowledge of the spatial relations 
 in question. 'The eye of thought,' a common simile to-day. 
 Plainly the distinction which it is used to enforce is destroyed 
 if we construe thought as a kind of sense-perception, and, like 
 it, contemplating an actual pictorial image. 
 
 1 6. 'This, then, was the class of things,' etc. : he is only 511 A 
 speaking of one segment of the intelligible world ; the 
 emphasis is ' intellectual, indeed, but hypothetical.' 
 
 21. ' Using as images ' : the need of symbols is connected in 
 Plato's mind with the inferior or uncritical quality of the 
 knowledge. See above on 227. 3, 56 E, and 228. 15, 507 B. 
 It is plain that in proportion as an idea can be appropriately 
 represented, by picture-thinking, it must be fragmentary on the 
 one hand, and loaded with irrelevant detail on the other. It 
 has been pointed out, I think by Mill, that a schoolboy may 
 sometimes be thrown out if the diagram of a proposition in 
 Euclid, which he is supposed to know well, is put before him 
 in an unusual shape, though quite correctly. This proves 
 that the irrelevancies of the picture have really interfered with 
 the idea, though they are intended not to do so. 
 
 22. 'Just the copies accordingly,' or, as Jowett, 'but em- 
 ploying the objects, of which the shadows below are resem- 
 blances, in their turn as images, they having in relation to 
 the shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness 
 and therefore a greater value.' I think that the parallel of 
 233. ii, 510 E is in favour of the latter rendering, in the 
 tendency to speak of the shadow segment in order to make 
 quite clear at each step how the whole classification coheres. 
 If the former rendering is adopted, it is necessary, with Davies 
 and Vaughan, to insert something like 'vulgarly,' which is not 
 in the Greek, but may be understood out of ' esteemed ' as 
 = ' held by opinion! 
 
 28. 'The mere reasoning process,' not 'nous,' but 'logos' B 
 the impersonal reason, or drift of the argument as such. 
 
 29. 'By the force of dialectic,' 'by the power of (self)
 
 256 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 converse.' 'Dialectic,' no doubt, even as a scientific ideal, 
 retains for Plato the associations of give and take in conversa- 
 tion. It is essentially putting a position and criticising it and 
 then advancing upon it, as well as classifying. Its two sides, 
 indeed, are construction and criticism. 
 
 30. ' Not as first principles, but as genuine hypotheses.' 
 Taking experience or knowledge as a whole, an ordinary 
 science, we said, begins anywhere in the middle, so that it 
 treats its own postulates or assumptions (e.g. common space) 
 as if they were ultimates or first principles, which they are not. 
 Dialectic, on the contrary, will force each grade of knowledge 
 to admit that its hypotheses are not first principles but are 
 mere hypotheses; e.g. it will criticise the conception of space, 
 and endeavour to assign its rank in the whole of experience. 
 
 32. ' Something that is not hypothetical.' Cf. previous page, 
 232. 24, 510 B. Here it is explained by the addition 'the 
 first principle of everything,' or perhaps quite literally, 'the 
 beginning of the whole,' i.e. the principle which after we have 
 in a fair degree 'unified' experience, appears to give a 
 sufficient clue or starting-point for understanding it and ad- 
 justing its elements to one another. Of course knowledge is 
 only hypothetical in as far as it is partial or determined by an 
 abstraction, such that there is a reserve of omitted elements, 
 which may, so to speak, take us in flank and revenge 
 themselves for our neglect of them. All special sciences are 
 in this sense avowedly hypothetical ; they as it were cultivate 
 their own gardens and pay no heed to geography or the 
 planetary system. See quotation from Mill's Logic on 232. 
 21 above. But the whole of experience, in so far as we can 
 make any judgments about it at all, is not hypothetical, for 
 nothing falls outside it ; and if we carefully scrutinise what 
 we mean, it becomes plain that to suggest that the whole of 
 experience might be other than it is, or is perhaps not really 
 what it is for us, is strictly and absolutely nonsense. For 
 only experience can indicate a sense in which any assertion 
 can be understood, and all experience falls within the whole
 
 BOOK VI. 257 
 
 of experience. Thus, if and in so far as we can make 
 assertions which characterise the whole of experience, so far 
 we have hold of something unhypothetical, which we can 
 employ in criticising the unadjusted elements that press upon 
 us. Note that in every judgment that has any truth at 
 all, there is, however much disguised, an unhypothetical 
 categorical or absolute element. So, Plato says in this 
 passage, we shall employ our principle not, of course, a 
 mere abstraction, but some vital idea or set of ideas which 
 the organisation of our intellectual world has suggested in 
 criticising or organising first the regions bordering upon // 
 (viz., on the matter in which we have first realised it), then 
 again the regions at the margin of those, and so on until our 
 system reaches its close, or rounded completion (end). Such 
 a criticised system can from its nature contain no element of 
 sensuous data as such ; for, as explained 248. i, 524 c below, 
 criticism of sensuous data necessarily raises them into the in- 
 tellectual sphere by discrimination and systematic connection. 
 We shall employ, therefore, no merely sensible experience 
 whatever, our world being already organised in science, art, 
 morality, and religion, in none of which can any mere sense- 
 perception be presented to us, but the mind proceeds as he 
 says 'with forms themselves, by their means and issuing in 
 them (lit., 'and to them 3 ), and terminates in forms.' The 
 student should dismiss, for the moment at least, all the 
 associations, of popular thought which connect terms like a 
 priori and a posteriori with the absence and presence of 
 sensuous detail, and should try to look steadily and freshly at 
 the actual processes of science in their relation to sensuous 
 detail on the one hand and to philosophy on the other, noting 
 on what kind of results and contentions any great naturalist 
 or philosopher, however devoted to experience, really lays 
 stress, and what sort of rank and value the mere sensuous 
 impressions of the moment, which we construe as derived 
 from some natural object or from some political incident, 
 are found to possess in comparison to the elaborated theory 
 
 R
 
 258 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 of evolution as applied to nature or to national life. So far as 
 method and purpose are concerned, Plato's description of 
 science and philosophy as an attempt to reduce experience to 
 a unity focussed in principles is as true of Hume, Darwin, 
 and Mill as of Kant or Hegel. 
 
 42. 'The field of real existence and pure intellect.' I re- 
 translate the paragraph from this point to ' pure reason ' as the 
 shortest way of explaining it: 'that the part of what is and of the 
 intelligible world which is considered by the science of dialectic,, 
 is more certain (' clear ' including ' true,' as we say ' that is 
 clear ') than the part which is dealt with by what are called the 
 arts (not fine arts, but the mathematical sciences geometry, 
 e.g., was practical in its origin, so too astronomy : see account 
 of them in Book vn.), in which the only first principles are 
 their assumptions ; and though their students are obliged to 
 study the subject with their understanding and not with their 
 sense-perception, yet because they do not examine it with 
 reference to a (true) first principle, you think that they have 
 no intelligence of it (same phrase as 'possessed of reason,' 
 230. 16, see note on 230. 13) though in connection with 
 a first principle it can be intelligently known.' The 'in- 
 telligible ' world (' noeton '), as defined in the division of the 
 line, includes the world of intelligence ('nous,' Davies and 
 Vaughan's 'reason') or dialectic, and also the world of 'under- 
 standing ' or abstract mathematics. These names, ' reason ' or 
 'intelligence,' and 'understanding,' have quite general meanings 
 in Greek usage, and are only beginning to be defined by 
 Plato's adoption of them. Henceforward ' nous ' is usually the 
 supreme or concrete mode of mind which sees a principle in 
 all its details, and might appear to have a right to the 
 rendering ' reason ' which Davies and Vaughan give it, often 
 calling it ' pure reason.' But ' reason ' has so little definite 
 meaning in English, and the associations of ' pure reason ' 
 are so utterly misleading (indicating an attempt to hypostasise 
 the ideas of reason beyond the limits of experience) that it 
 seems better to adopt the fresher term 'intelligence,' which
 
 BOOK VI. 259 
 
 preserves the original connection of ' nous ' with the ' noeton ' 
 or intelligible world. I have just explained that 'nous 'par 
 excellence (in 234. 16 ' noesis ') is here confined to the upper 
 region of this ' intelligible ' or non-sensuous sphere. The use 
 of ' understanding ' for the mathematical faculty corresponds 
 fairly with the philosophical sense of ' understanding ' as the 
 abstract mode of mind. 
 
 234. 19. 'To partake of distinctness in a degree,' etc. ' Dis- 
 tinctness, the same word as 231. 35, 509 E, where the line is 
 being divided, and akin to the word ' clear,' see note 233. 42, 
 which refers to the object. Distinctness of position and con- 
 text in the world of knowledge, like distinctness in the day- 
 light world contrasted with the dark, gives certainty, which 
 is also implied in the term distinctness, referring in this place 
 to the state of mind. Its correlative is ' truth ' or ' trueness ' 
 or ' reality,' here as throughout a property of what is known, 
 not of knowledge as referred to the mind. ' Trueness ' is not 
 indeed strictly confined to objects of Knowledge, though 
 primarily it applies to them. (See note 230. 13, 508 c.) 
 
 There is a parallel passage in the Philebus which throws 
 some light on the precise implication which this set of 
 divisions had for Plato's mind, and I set out the two schemes 
 in tabular form. 1 Note that, of the three divisions at close of 
 Book v., ' ignorance ' with its correlative 'not-being' is here 
 omitted, and ' science ' and ' seeming ' each subdivided. This 
 shows that ' ignorance ' and ' not-being ' were mere limits of 
 the field of 'knowledge ' and ' being.' 
 
 1 See following page.
 
 260 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Philebus, 62 A-C. 
 Cfd. with discussion of arts and sciences, ib. 55 D 59 D. 
 
 1. Understanding about Justice's self, what it is, and other 
 realities (Philosophy). 
 
 (58 E 59 A. Dialectic deals with permanent and uniform 
 matters, not the genesis and dissolution of the world, 
 as do those who inquire into nature.) 
 
 2. Understanding of the divine (real) circle and sphere and 
 the like (Mathematics). 
 
 (Arithmetic, etc., are of two kinds : applied in practice 
 with unequal units, or pursued scientifically, with 
 equal or ideal units, 56 D and E.) 
 
 3. Art of the false (carpenter's) rule and circle and the 
 like (Exact Handicraft). 
 
 (55 E. Distinction between carpentering and the theory 
 of space and number as between practical and theo- 
 retical elements of handicraft.) 
 
 4. Arts, like music, which dispense with exact measure- 
 ment and depend on mere rule-of-thumb or practice, guess- 
 work and imitation \ cf. 55 E. (Rule-of-thumb).
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 261 
 
 Republic, Book vi. end : cf. vn., 533-4. 
 
 Intelligence or Science. Criticism 
 in light of first principle : which 
 is 'form of good.' 
 
 Intelligible world, 
 510 B, cf. 5 34 A, deals < 
 with what is, 534. 
 
 2. (Abstract) understanding. Works 
 with uncriticised hypotheses ; 
 mathematical sciences employ- 
 ing symbols. 
 
 World of seeming 
 or opinion, //. cc., deals 
 with what changes, or 
 perishes and begins 
 again, 534. On mean- 
 ing of 'belief,' see 
 345. i, 602 A. 
 
 Belief. Practical common-sense. 
 Organic creation and industrial 
 productions. 
 
 4. The faculty of images. Images, 
 representations or likenesses. 
 Guesswork, art, poetry, rhetoric, 
 etc., and imagination.
 
 262 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 The comparison with the Philebus suggests that the 'eternal' 
 content of dialectic corresponded chiefly to moral and aesthetic 
 qualities; to them the criticism of scientific assumptions 
 insisted on in the Republic would add a logical system. The 
 mathematical sciences or arts themselves are regarded very 
 pregnantly as the scientific elements abstracted out of the 
 handicrafts, and studied for their own sake as a branch of 
 pure science ; especially the contrast of the material and ideal 
 unit (Philebus, 56 D, E) throws much light on the discussion of 
 arithmetic in Republic, vii. The commendation of carpentering, 
 house-building, and ship-building, for their constant reliance 
 on rule and compass, etc., in comparison with music which is 
 said to proceed by mere sensuous practice, guesswork, trying 
 to hit (the note), and imitation, 55 E and 62 c (i.e. to be 
 guided throughout by a mere feeling of likeness), and with 
 medicine, agriculture, seamanship, and strategy, apparently for 
 analogous reasons, goes far to explain the distinction between 
 'belief and 'conjecture' within the world of seeming and 
 sense-perception; but for this more especially see Rep. x., 
 345. !> 602 A. The small part occupied by ' forms ' of ' things ' 
 in the subject-matter of dialectic, here and elsewhere in Plato, 
 is surely owing to the simple fact that things, i.e. separate 
 objects in space, have no tenable reality for the higher grades 
 of science and philosophy, but turn into phases of evolution 
 and examples of law or purpose. The 'bed' in Republic, 
 x., clearly illustrates this, if we attend to the way in which it 
 is described. Of course ' things ' enter into science, but not 
 as things. See Author's Logic, i. 138, and Bradley's Appear- 
 ance and Reality, pp. 71-4.
 
 BOOK VII 
 
 Beginning of Book vn. 238. 23, 517 A. Sect. 72. 
 
 Simile of the cave, being a continuation of the simile which 
 compares the Sun to the Good, by comparing the lower grades of 
 reality to objects illuminated and shadows projected by an in- 
 ferior source of light. The principal point of the simile lies in in- 
 sisting on the false sense of reality which uncriticised associations 
 acquire for a mind which has never been led to feel their incon- 
 sistency, and on the necessity and possibility of learning, by educa- 
 tion and experience, to apprehend a coherent and concrete world, 
 from which the mind looks back on the guesswork or associative 
 imagination of its uneducated past as on a procession of shadows 
 or likenesses connected by contiguity. 
 
 235. 2. ' So far as education and ignorance,' more literally, 514 A 
 ' education and want of education.' This is the problem 
 throughout this part of the Republic what sort of differ- 
 ence education makes in man and in what direction it 
 leads him. The emphasis is on the point that though man 
 has access to wholly different worlds, yet these are only 
 stages of his mental progress, and the higher include all that 
 was real in the lower. 
 
 4. ' An underground cavernous chamber ' or dwelling-place. 
 Plato's account of the uneducated consciousness may at least 
 be illustrated by that which Aeschylus gives of the cave- 
 dweller's life. 
 
 ' How first beholding, they beheld in vain, 
 And hearing heard not, but like shapes in dreams 
 
 263
 
 264 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time ; 
 Nor knew to build a house toward the Sun 
 With walls of brick, nor any woodwork knew. 
 But lived like silly ants beneath the ground 
 In hollow caves unsunned. ' Prometheus Bound, I. 447. 
 Mrs. Browning's trans, modified. 
 
 Aeschylus represents the use of number as one of the chief 
 changes from the dream-world of primitive man : cf. 245. I 3> 
 522 c below. Plato is rather portraying the dweller in a 
 civilised world, whose mental state, so far as sunk in mere 
 association and superstition, is analogous to that ascribed by 
 the poet to primitive man. 
 
 8. 'So shackled'; for the nature of the fetters see 241. i, 
 519 B. 
 
 515 A 27. 'Seen anything of themselves or of each other.' They 
 have never observed the genuine facts of human nature in 
 themselves or in others. They think that they have a clear 
 idea of their own character and relation to their neighbours, 
 but really the image which does duty in their mind for such 
 an idea is a mere phantasm projected by a false light of senti- 
 ment or association. 
 
 B 32. ' Of the things carried past.' They have looked at 
 everything from a single fixed standpoint, and have therefore, 
 in each case, an impression derived from some superficial 
 aspect of the thing or business, which bears a more or less 
 remote resemblance to the fact, but yet is the only represen- 
 tative of the fact in their minds. 
 
 C 236. ii. 'The shadows of those manufactured articles ' ' to 
 be the only realities,' literally 'the true.' (See 230. 13, 508 c 
 and note.) The restriction to things made by man seems to be 
 dictated by the necessities of the simile, for they do not rank 
 as less real than natural objects, 232. 6, 510 A above. Their 
 inferiority to objects in the daylight world lies only in their 
 being seen by an inferior light. The argument for the 
 secondary reality of the products of industrial art in Book x. 
 must apply ultimately to all material objects, and can make
 
 BOOK VII. 265 
 
 no radical difference between, say, a bed and a tree. But 
 in the artificial surroundings of the simile, detached natural 
 objects trees, real animals, and the like would be out of 
 place. I take it that the human bearers of the things are not 
 supposed to rise above the wall so as to throw a shadow. It 
 might be urged that the higher division of the cave world 
 ought to be a copy of, or inferior to, the lower division of the 
 surface world, viz., the shadows and reflections. I do not 
 mention this as if literal consistency in a comparison like the 
 present could be necessary or possible, but to bring out the 
 point that the analogy between the worlds interferes with their 
 continuity, and is the more important feature. Each lower 
 division is abstract, and each higher is concrete. Therefore 
 the higher division of the lower of the two worlds (either in 
 the simile or in the reality) cannot be strictly a copy of the 
 lower division of the world above it ; the relation is rather 
 that each world as a whole is a likeness of that above it, and 
 is analogous thereto by the relation of its parts. I do not 
 think that either rendering of 233. 22, 511 A seriously inter- 
 feres with this conception of the parallelism, though Jowett's 
 is more favourable to it. But to find resemblances between 
 the lower part of one world and the higher of that below is 
 obviously possible though the latter is not fully correspondent 
 to the former. 
 
 19. 'Towards the light,' viz., the fire in the cave. 
 
 25, ' Nearer to reality and is turned to things more real,' 5 J 5 
 more literally, ' nearer to being and is turned to what in a 
 higher degree is.' 
 
 28. 'The several objects,' the figures, etc., which throw the 
 shadows. 
 
 32 and 33. ' Truer.' See note on line n and reference. 
 
 37. ' Shrink and turn away ' : a striking portrait of the mind's 
 behaviour in face of criticism directed upon customary associa- 
 tions, until the ' drag towards reality ' which comes of feeling 
 it intolerable to rest in contradictions has fairly been estab- 
 lished. (See 245. 43, 523 A.) Note how thoroughly Plato
 
 266 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 emphasises the relativity of mind and experience to each other, 
 which is the true root of every reasonable doctrine of ' other 
 worlds/ as is distinctly exhibited in this passage, which sums 
 up the contentions of Books v. and vi. 
 
 516 A 42. ' Vexed and indignant.' The fact may be observed in 
 any department of experience when people are called upon 
 not merely to exercise common-sense criticism, which was 
 the first step in the transition, but to submit their ' common- 
 sense ' facts and principles themselves to the analysis of 
 abstract science, and subsequently of philosophy. 
 
 237. 3. ' True,' as above, a quality of objects of knowledge. 
 
 5. ' Habit will be necessary.' Psychologically speaking, what 
 underlies the necessity of habituation is what would now be 
 called the formation of appercipient systems. 
 
 6 ff. 'At first he will be most successful.' The subdivisions 
 of the surface world are amplified and run together as com- 
 pared with the statement of them, 231. 30, 509 E, by taking 
 in the less formal account of the simile, 230. 2, 508 c. 
 According to 231. 30, shadows and reflections form one seg- 
 ment or division, and all the rest, from ' the realities ' (literally 
 ' themselves ') to the sun inclusive, would fall within the 
 higher segment. The distinction of ' objects seen by daylight, 
 the heavenly bodies, and the sun,' seems to pave the way for 
 a difference in grades of reality within the science of forms 
 itself, as e.g. between the forms of things, the forms of natural 
 laws, and moral or spiritual qualities, and the form of the 
 good. Cf. 238. 26 ff., 517 B. 
 
 B 20 ' His next step will be.' As he becomes capable of under- 
 standing the visible world as a whole or as a working system, 
 he will learn to regard the sun as the dispenser of fertility and 
 the measure of time, and as indirectly the cause even of the 
 secondary light and existence of the cave-dwellers. Cf. 231. 
 2, 509 B. The sun is of course not really the cause of the 
 order which the solar system exhibits, but is so important a 
 factor in that order, that a pictorial simile may fairly treat him 
 as a symbol of it. His relation to the ' fire ' in the cave may
 
 BOOK VII. 267 
 
 be illustrated by the modern thought that all the artificial 
 heat which we employ is a liberation of stored-up solar 
 energy. 
 
 34. ' And who remembered best all that used to precede and 5 l6 
 follow and accompany it, and from these data divined' : induc- 
 tion conceived as inference from particulars to particulars, its 
 test being prediction (not explanation), and its method being 
 association of images or unanalysed likenesses, by contiguity 
 in co-existence or succession. It should be understood that 
 what is valuable in this method is not lost or need not 
 necessarily be lost by the advance to more analytic know- 
 ledge. We all of us judge of many matters by the look and 
 the feeling, e.g. of the weather ; as when there is a certain 
 look about the clouds and feel in the air which makes us 
 expect rain or sunshine. Savages no doubt have this 
 judgment in a high degree, but many highly-trained men of 
 science have it also, e.g. physicians and skilled experimenters 
 of all kinds. But if all life is immersed in this bare associa- 
 tional mechanism, if we fail to purify and rationalise the 
 connections which influence us, then we remain in Plato's 
 cave, the victims of mere customary aspects and resem- 
 blances which we have never tried to ' get behind ' or ' to look 
 at all round.' The shadows are not ' particulars ' in the sense 
 of fully particularised ideas, but ' likenesses,' superficial and 
 indefinite, on which mere ' likelihoods ' rest. (Cf. old English 
 'like 'for 'likely.') 
 
 238. 2. ' Rather than entertain those opinions,' or perhaps, D 
 'rather than be so the victim of seeming.' The quotation 
 from the Odyssey, ii. 489, has a curious felicity, being the 
 words of Achilles in expressing his detestation of the world of 
 shades (lit. shadows) in comparison with the world of human 
 life. 
 
 n. 'To deliver .his opinion again ' : the compensation for E 
 this passing disadvantage is not mentioned here, but see 242. 
 22, 520 c, 'For when habituated, you will see a thousand 
 times better than the residents (in the cave),' etc.
 
 268 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 517 A 21. 'Put him to death.' The fate of Socrates is of course 
 in Plato's mind, though Socrates himself is the speaker. 
 
 Sect. 73. 238. 24, 517 A 243. 30, 521 B: interpretation of the allegory ; 
 
 followed by method and consequences of the educational ascent. 
 
 The method is Conversion ; the consequences are unity of aim, 
 
 and a high-mindedness which is the guarantee of true public 
 
 spirit. 
 
 B 238. 25. ' Apply in all its parts to our former statements,' i.e. 
 it is an allegorical representation of our ' education and want 
 of education ' (Book vn. beginning) according to the scheme 
 of mental stages set out at the close of Book vi. 
 
 34. 'In the world of knowledge,' lit., 'in the Known,' same 
 word as 196. 9, 479 D, not the term derived from ' nous ' and 
 usually rendered ' intellectual ' or ' intelligible.' The emphasis 
 of the translation seems hardly right ; rather, ' in the world of 
 knowledge, the form of good is perceived last and with 
 difficulty, but when perceived,' etc., i.e. this is the point on 
 which the simile insists as the resemblance between the sun 
 and the good. (See previous Section.) 
 
 C 38. ' Bright and beautiful ' : ' bright ' apparently a misprint 
 for 'right.' 
 
 41. 'Truth and reason,' quality of object and that of 
 mind; 'reality and intelligence,' see 230. 22 ff. and notes. 
 
 42. ' Must keep this Form of Good before his eyes.' The 
 reader should bear in mind throughout the conception of 
 good as that which anything is good for, so that (see close of 
 Book i.) the excellence of anything is that quality in it by 
 which it fulfils its function or work. With this conception 
 before us, a passage like the present explains itself. 
 
 239. 5- ' Unwilling to take part in the affairs of men.' Cp. 
 27-8. 346-7 above. This is to us, as here crudely stated, an 
 unattractive feature in Plato's perfect man, and the world he 
 belongs to, but its true bearing is made plain in the account 
 of ' high-mindedness' below, 241-3. 520-1.
 
 BOOK VII. 269 
 
 1 8. 'Shadows of justice,' or images which throw the 517 D 
 shadows ' ; ' images,' rather ' statues ' or solid figures, referring 
 to the objects which throw shadows in the cave. These solid 
 figures correspond therefore to the ' realities ' with which we 
 deal in the common-sense world of practice ; here, perhaps, to 
 the actual laws of the state. Then the shadows cast by them 
 might be taken as the interested and distorted representation 
 of these in the pleaders' arguments. (Nettleship in Hellenica, 
 p. 141 note.) The difference between the different worlds 
 must not make us forget the positive relation which Plato 
 sees between them ; the actual laws and the pleaders' argu- 
 ments are attempts to copy or embody the actual principles of 
 justice which are involved in human nature and society and 
 the course of the world. Carlyle has said somewhere that 
 after all no man struggles for what has absolutely no shadow 
 of right or justice ; it is always some aspect or distorted con- 
 ception of a true right that, at bottom, he is fighting for. This 
 is a good illustration of Plato's thought. 
 
 21. ' The essential features of justice,' lit., 'justice herself ' 
 i.e. according to Plato's account of justice, the system of 
 society as giving scope to true individuality while repressing 
 interference which thwarts it. 
 
 43. 'The real nature of education is at variance'; the 518 B 
 point here insisted on as to educational method is really the 
 same as that emphasised by the metaphor of nurture through- 
 out the first education. Mind is not a structure that is put 
 together out of heterogeneous parts, like a product of industry, 
 but is one, homogeneous, alive, and can receive nothing 
 except by being solicited in such a way as to produce the 
 required result out of itself. Thus educational method 
 comes to be practically a question of 'conversion' of the 
 mind as a whole, i.e. of directing attention so as to transfigure 
 experience. Nothing can be known which is not lived. 
 Thus the question ' can true goodness the vision of the 
 good be taught?' is answered Yes and No not as (we 
 should say) dates and facts can be crammed, not even as
 
 270 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 military courage or mechanical method and punctuality or 
 skill in routine business can be imparted by habit and 
 training (see below, 26, 5i8E); but yet true wisdom can be 
 developed by a conversion of the whole intelligence, i.e. by 
 such a direction of attention as leads to an enlargement and 
 re-organisation of the whole body of experience, which con- 
 stitutes a new life. 
 
 518 C 240. ii. 'Be wheeled round, in company with the entire 
 soul.' Compare the opening lines of this Book. The whole 
 man was in fetters, and the redirection of his attention in- 
 volved a complete liberation of him and a complete change 
 of position. Here again the pictorial simile necessarily 
 breaks up what in truth is a unity. The eye of the soul 
 really is the soul or mind considered as a whole, and that 
 is why the eye of the soul the focus or unity of experience 
 cannot be converted apart from the entire mental system 
 or body of experience. 
 
 21. 'It assumes that he possesses it' because it is the 
 mind. 
 
 D 26. 'The other so-called virtues of the soul,' rather, 'the 
 other excellences commonly said to be of the soul.' ' Seem 
 to' should qualify 'pre-exist' and 'are formed' as well 
 as 'resemble.' Plato is adopting common opinion. Strictly, 
 all excellences, bodily and mental, must be developed on the 
 basis of pre-existing qualities ; but in regard to partial accom- 
 plishments or abilities, the scope of training and habit is rela- 
 tively very great, and it may roughly be said that you can 
 teach them to any one, who otherwise will not have them, 
 just as you teach him to row or to swim. With wisdom the 
 case is different ; it is the central development of the capacity 
 which in fact is the mind, and which must make itself evident 
 for good or evil in every human creature. 
 
 E 21. ' A more divine substance which never loses its energy ' : 
 ' substance ' is an insertion. ' Somewhat more divine, which 
 never loses its power' (or faculty). 
 
 32. ' By change of position,' lit, 'byconversion.'
 
 BOOK VII. 271 
 
 36. 'How sharply they see through the things'; all this 519 A 
 serves as an explanation and modification of the principle 
 that Goodness is Knowledge. (See 225. 505.) They are 
 thorough masters of their ' world ' or point of view, but they 
 have never been led to see life as a whole. Therefore their 
 knowledge is imperfect as well as their character. Cp. 106. 34. 
 4090. 
 
 241. i. ' Stripped of those leaden earth-born weights.' The 
 fetters which hold men in the cave and hinder their conver- 
 sion are not merely intellectual, but moral. (See 349. 41, 
 6053.) 
 
 13. 'Those who are suffered to linger over their education C 
 all their lives ' : a remarkable phrase, showing an almost con- 
 temptuous sensitiveness to the defects of a life devoid of 
 practical experience. 
 
 1 6. ' No single mark in life ' ; the meaning of this is plain if 
 we bear in mind the underlying conception of Good. Cp. 238- 
 42, 5170. The word 'mark' recurs in Aristotle in a sense 
 almost equivalent to ' end ' (telos). See Ethics, vi. i, i, and 
 Stewart's note. The notion of life as bound into a whole by 
 principle and purpose lay deep in Greek thought. The 
 opposite feeling, as expressed for example by Jocasta, Soph. 
 O. T., 979, 'Tis best to live at random, as one may,' has a 
 suggestion of blasphemy. It is said in insolent triumph at 
 the supposed falsehood of a divine prediction, which soon 
 proves too true. 
 
 33. ' Are we to do them a wrong ? ' The question is now D 
 raised, how far and in what sense their high-mindedness is to 
 be compatible with public spirit or conducive to it. Cp. on the 
 whole discussion 27. 8, 346-7 above. 
 
 36. ' How some one class is to live extraordinarily well.' Cp. E 
 Book iv. beginning. The life of one citizen, he goes on to 
 explain, cannot be considered apart from that of the others, 
 because this would be an unreal point of view, seeing that it 
 cannot exist apart. In a disorganised commonwealth, there 
 is indeed greater laxity of interdependence, and it may be (cp.
 
 272 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 242. 13, 520, with 214. 2 ff., 496 c) that in such a common- 
 wealth the philosopher is useless, and therefore imperfect even 
 as a philosopher. But in proportion as unity is realised a 
 truer relation prevails. 
 
 520 C 242. 22. ' You will see a thousand times better.' This sup- 
 plies a thought which was not touched on in the statement of 
 the allegory, and justifies us in understanding that the thinker 
 who does not re-descend into active life is the less complete 
 even as a thinker, for he has not all experience which he 
 might have. 
 
 23. ' What each image is, and what is its original.' ' Image ' 
 is here ' eidolon,' a word used e.g. in Homer for the ghosts of 
 the dead. It might apply either to the solid figures of the 
 cave, or to the shadows on the wall. Note the positive refer- 
 ence of the ' images.' Each of them does stand for and point 
 to a genuine reality. 
 
 24. 'Because you have seen the realities,' more lit. 
 'because you have seen the truth of what is beautiful, just, 
 and good.' 
 
 26. ' The life of the state is a substance and not a phantom,' 
 more lit. 'is a waking reality and not a dream.' Cp 191. 3 ff., 
 476 c for the contrast of waking and dreaming. This passage 
 retorts the claim of Glaucon, 44. 39, 362 A, that the life of the 
 unjust man is 'a course allied to reality.' Cp. on this whole 
 passage Aristotle's Ethics, i. 5, on the three lives, with Stewart's 
 note on their relation, from which I extract two passages, 
 bracketing the English words where he uses the Greek. . . . 
 ' In the (theoretic life) human nature is not treated as a means, 
 but reverenced as an end. To be reverenced as an end it 
 must be seen sub specie eternitatis as divine, and this involves 
 theoria. Hence human nature cannot be maintained as a 
 ' logos ' (harmony) in the (practical life) except by one who 
 has the (aim) which theoria gives. To have this aim it is not 
 indeed necessary to be oneself a 'philosopher' or 'thinker,' or 
 actually to lead the (theoretic life) strictly so called ; but it is 
 necessary to live in a city which has ' thinkers,' and is
 
 BOOK VII. 273 
 
 regulated for the sake of them. . . . Perhaps the (theoretic 
 life) is most successfully realised, not as a separate life, but as 
 the form of the (citizen) life.' 
 
 'The Neoplatonic rendering of the (theoretic life), which 
 makes it an ecstatic life of entire freedom from bodily influ- 
 ences, is quite foreign to the concrete view of human nature 
 taken by Aristotle. Aristotle's (theoretic life) is the raison 
 d'etre of the (city), in the same sense that the (mind) is the 
 raison d'etre of the (body). We know of no (mind) except 
 as correlated with a (body) ; so we know of no ' theoria ' 
 except as manifested by a civilised man, or (citizen). It is 
 true that in the Tenth Book of the Ethics he uses language 
 which may seem to lend itself to a Neoplatonic rendering ; 
 but his object there is to abstract, and present clearly, 
 the formal principle or theoretic element in actual life, and 
 we must be careful not to make ' a material use ' of this 
 merely ' formal principle,' and suppose that he asserts the 
 possibility or desirability of an actual life of pure ' theoria ' for 
 man, in which the (political animal) should be transformed 
 into the (god). The (wise man), as distinguished in the 
 Tenth Book from the (citizen), is as much an abstraction as 
 (god) considered apart from the (world).' 
 
 The above account is as true on the whole of Plato, at least 
 in the Republic, as of Aristotle, the root and spirit of whose 
 view is entirely Platonic. 
 
 31. 'That city in which the destined rulers are least eager 520 D 
 to rule,' repeated in effect from 28. 18, 347 D, but now with 
 a deeper ground, in the ' high-mindedness ' of the true ruler. 
 
 243. 3. ' A life better than ruling ' not that public spirit E 
 will be destroyed, but that it will be the motive for under- 
 taking the labour of government. See notes on I.e. in 
 previous note. 
 
 8. ' Beggars and persons who hunger after private advan- 521 A 
 tages,' more lit. 'persons who are destitute and starving for 
 lack of goods of their own, undertake public business, fancying
 
 274 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 that it is from thence that their good has to be snatched.' 
 The words ' destitute,' etc., combine the ideas of having no 
 real goods of their own because incapable of them, and of 
 being hungry for goods, which ex hypothesi therefore are not 
 real goods. The contrast is with those described in the line 
 before as rich in the real wealth of good and sensible life. 
 
 12. ' An object of strife ' : same Greek word as ' an object of 
 competition,' 28. 20, 347 D, which see. 
 
 521 B 20. 'Otherwise, their rivals will dispute their claim.' If 
 public spirit is the only motive the main root of quarrel is 
 removed, because public spirit does not require that I or he 
 in particular should rule, but only that the best ruler should 
 rule. It may fairly be noted, in support of Plato's argument, 
 that persons of great gifts and position frequently have so 
 many resources in themselves, that, while devoted to their 
 public work from public spirit, they feel at the same time a 
 certain personal detachment from it, owing to the number 
 and depth of other interests which are continually soliciting 
 their minds. 
 
 Sect. 74. 243. 31, 521 c 245. 2, 522 B. 
 
 Discussion as to what kind of study is suitable as an instru- 
 ment of the ' conversion] forming a preface to the second or 
 scientific and philosophical education. 
 
 521 C 35. 'From the netherworld,' lit. 'from Hades,' the realm 
 of shadows. 
 
 37. 'The revolution of a soul,' or, 'the conversion of a 
 soul.' 
 
 38. ' From a kind of night-like day ': cp. 230. 2, 508. The 
 f day' or most waking life of the uneducated soul is like a 
 night or dream-life compared to that of the educated mind. 
 For the force of the comparison between night and daylight 
 bear in mind I.e. 230. 2. 
 
 244. i. 'A true day of real existence ' : see I.e. in previous 
 note; 'real existence,' more lit. 'what zs.' 
 D 8. 'From the fleeting to the real,' lit. 'from becoming to
 
 BOOK VII. 275 
 
 being.' The popular notion is that expressions of this kind 
 in Plato indicate a contrast between the world on the one 
 hand as more or less systematically known to an ordinarily 
 educated man, with its development, change, and motion in 
 some degree unified by thought, and on the other hand some 
 fixed arrangement of abstractions, allowing no room for 
 change or motion, and such that its contemplation excludes 
 attention to the varied spectacle of the world as presented to 
 the average civilised man. The degree of truth which such a 
 view may contain is far more difficult to estimate than might 
 appear at first sight, and the question is complicated by a 
 substantial difference which is likely to prevail between the 
 point of view of modern metaphysics and that of ordinary 
 practical life. (See F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, 
 especially the chapter on ' Degrees of Truth and Reality.') It 
 is probably the case that in certain moods and phases of his 
 thought Plato applied to the semi-orderly appearance of the 
 world of objects and actions, as apprehended by ordinary 
 culture, a destructive censure which is only deserved by the 
 primitive undiscriminated flux or continuum of sensation, 
 itself rather a hypothesis in psychology than a fact of verifiable 
 experience. All that can be asked of the student is to 
 construe Plato's meaning not by a reference to hard and fast 
 traditional renderings, but first by the details which he himself 
 furnishes as the content of his ideas (e.g. in the ' second 
 education' as the process from becoming to being), and 
 secondly, if he desires a philosophical equivalent to Plato's 
 views, by a really careful study of the conceptions which modern 
 philosophy may offer as at least a counterpart to Plato's aspira- 
 tions. It is unreasonable to say that Plato's ' being ' in 
 contrast to ' becoming ' cannot possibly suggest anything but 
 fixed abstractions in contrast to the working system of the 
 world, when we know that any modern treatment of the logic 
 of science will explain to us how in proportion as we harmonise 
 and systematise our knowledge we necessarily cease to view 
 the world as an aggregate of sensuous detail, and are compelled
 
 276 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 to assign to our ' is ' an increasingly unconditional and in 
 variable value. It is strictly true, as Mill points out (Logic, 
 book iii. i, 2), that ' the result of the reasoning (which gives 
 the moon's distance from the earth) is a general proposition ; 
 a theorem respecting the distance, not of the moon in particular, 
 but of any inaccessible object.' As such a theorem, it is, if 
 rightly reasoned, unconditionally and invariably true, but as a 
 conclusion applying to the moon, it is liable to error or change 
 of data, and therefore not unconditionally and invariably true. 
 Thus there is a plain meaning for Plato's distinction, in the 
 fact, not that natural objects move and change, but that they 
 move and change in ways not as yet reduced to unity by 
 science, and therefore involving conditions which prevent our 
 judgments about them from being unconditionally true. The 
 recognition of this obvious distinction need not in any way 
 imply indifference to the importance of explaining the natural 
 world, or raising it from the sphere of objects which change 
 from what they were taken to be to the sphere of objects which 
 in changing only exhibit what they are taken to be. How far 
 Plato means this or anything like it we must judge from 
 content and details. 
 
 521 E 21. 'Gymnastic, I believe, is engaged upon the changeable 
 and perishing.' No doubt these terms refer to the immedi- 
 ately following expression 'growth and waste of the body.' 
 Then, it may be said, the case is clear ; because a human body 
 grows and wastes, the method which deals with it is set down 
 as no true science ; i,e. the eternal or real cannot appear in 
 the corporeal world. But before drawing quite this conclu- 
 sion it is only fair to ask Plato's purpose as given by the 
 context. He is looking for a starting-point for the study of 
 scientific truth. Should we say that the art of the trainer, or 
 the experience of the man in training, gives such a starting- 
 point ? And if not, why not ? Surely because it is a mere 
 knack or routine, and has not been brought to scientific 
 expression, i.e. to permanent principles. There is no reason, 
 e.g., to pronounce that Plato would have denied educational
 
 BOOK VII. 277 
 
 value to the science of biology. (See examples from Philebus 
 at close of Book vi.) 
 
 30. ' Music was only the counterpart of gymnastic.' Note 522 A 
 the distinction between music as a fine art and aid in forming 
 habits (cp. extract from Philebus, Book vi. end), and music 
 as mathematical acoustics, which is one of the sciences em- 
 ployed in the second education below. The present passage 
 in some degree involves a criticism on the first education in 
 as far as it dealt solely with habits and feeling, although this 
 of course was explicitly recognised as its principle. For 
 further implied criticism on it see 264. 536-7. 
 
 42. ' The useful arts we thought degrading.' (Cp. 88-9. B 
 395-6, and 213. 2, 495 D and note.) 
 
 245- 3) 5 22 B 250. 38, 526 c. Sect. 75. 
 
 The science of number is the simplest exercise of reflection, 
 which arises from the need for discriminating the ideal unit in 
 order to resolve the contradiction presented by the confused per- 
 ception. Therefore arithmetic is the beginning of scientific 
 education, and the first step into the intelligible world. 
 
 245. 15. ' That every art and science is compelled to crave 522 C 
 a share in them/ or ' to employ their services.' (Cp. refer- 
 ence to Philebus in note, end of Book vi.) 
 
 23. ' By the intervention of numbers.' The use of number D 
 is a point now constantly insisted on in connection with the 
 distinction between savage and civilised man. It is remark- 
 able how conscious the Greeks were of this contrast. (Cp. 
 Aeschylus, Prom. V. 459, where the invention of number is 
 ascribed to Prometheus.) 
 
 43. ' But no one appears to make the right use of it as a 523 A 
 thing which tends wholly to draw us towards real existence,' 
 
 i.e. no one appreciates its scientific bearing and educational 
 use, apart from its practical value. The same criticism might 
 have applied to the arithmetical teaching in schools not 
 long ago.
 
 278 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 246. 12. 'Some of the objects of our perception do not 
 stimulate the reflection.' ' Reflection ' all through is a term 
 precisely correlative to that rendered, 'intellectual' or 'intel- 
 ligible world.' Plato is here explaining the precise nature of 
 the contrast which he has drawn between ' what is seen and 
 not thought,' and ' what is thought and not seen.' (See next 
 note but one.) 
 
 5236 14. ' Thoroughly appreciated by the perception,' more lit. 
 ' adequately discerned by sense-perception.' 
 
 1 6. ' Because the perception appears to produce an unsound 
 result.' It is possible to find fault with Plato's psychology of 
 the perceptive judgment on alternative grounds. If ' aisthesis ' 
 = ' sense,' modern purism will remind us that sense does not 
 judge or assert, and therefore cannot be wrong, as, e.g., if 
 sugar tastes bitter to me, my mouth being out of order, there 
 is yet no mistake unless I say it is bitter, meaning that the 
 change is not merely in my sense-organ. The bitter taste is 
 quite real. If, again, ' aisthesis '= the judgment of percep- 
 tion, such as we imply in the assertion ' I see him,' or ' I hear 
 the music,' it is not parted by any absolute gulf from the 
 judgment of science, and therefore need not theoretically and 
 in every case be ' unsound.' But a logic which looks at the 
 great divisions of knowledge as they actually exist, and takes 
 account of their substantive character, will dismiss these 
 objections as formal, and will observe that the judgment of 
 perception, so long as it lingers in what we know as sense- 
 perception, must be more or less unsound, and for the exact 
 reason which Plato assigns, viz., that it is confused (248. 
 i, 524 c), and therefore cannot designate a pure, true, or 
 relevant connection. 
 
 19. 'Painting in perspective,' lit. 'painting in shadow': 
 cp. 346. 12, 602, where it is rendered 'art of drawing.' It 
 must mean something like imitating sculpture with deceptive 
 effect on a flat surface. Plato's attention to ocular illusions is 
 remarkable, and shows how he had studied the difficulties of 
 the perceptive judgment. (See I.e. and Theaetetus.)
 
 BOOK VII. 279 
 
 22. 'I regard as non-stimulants,' or, ' I regard as not invit- 
 ing (to reflection), all that do not come out to a contrary 
 perception at the same moment.' 
 
 27. 'Communicates two equally vivid but contradictory 533 C 
 impressions,' more lit. 'when the perception indicates no 
 more this than the contrary.' 
 
 34. ' On a close inspection,' merely to show that he is not 
 speaking of misjudgment caused by distance, as suggested 18 
 above. , 
 
 39. ' Be in the middle or outside.' (Cp. 247. 10, 523 E.) 
 
 41. 'The mind seldom feels compelled to ask'; rather, D 
 ' the mind of the multitude (i.e. the ordinary mind) is not 
 forced to ask.' 
 
 43. ' Because in no instance has the sight informed the 
 mind.' Mind contrasted with sight is a slip if pressed; of 
 course they must be taken as whole and part. The law of 
 contradiction as used in Book iv. is of course in Plato's 
 mind throughout this discussion. He is preparing, as there, 
 to escape the contradiction by a distinction. The antithesis 
 between the class-name of a thing, which does not stir up 
 reflection, and the contrary relations which do, is only one 
 of degree. Many a plant has a look which causes us to ' ask 
 our reflection ' which of two species it belongs to. But 
 commonly a ' thing ' carries its own point of view with it, 
 and imposes it on us as unmistakable. 
 
 247. 7. 'The relative sizes of the fingers.' This loses the E 
 simplicity of the Greek, ' does the sight adequately see the 
 greatness and smallness of them,' viz., I suppose, which of 
 them is to be called 'long' and which 'short' The third 
 finger will look long compared with the little finger, and short 
 compared with the middle one. Cf. close of Book v. 
 
 10. 'In the middle, or at the outside.' If the third finger, 
 which is intermediate in length, were not between the middle 
 and the little finger, the contrast of length would look very 
 different. 
 
 1 8. 'It feels the same thing to be both hard and soft.' It 524 A
 
 280 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 makes no difference of principle whether we here think of two 
 perceptions of the same thing after different comparisons, 
 which is the easiest form of experiment, or of simultaneous 
 perception with the two hands, which may be made to feel 
 the same water cool and warm, or of conflicting, or rapidly 
 successive contrary associations within the same continuous 
 perception, which Plato seems to have in mind. An elastic 
 surface may well remind us of both hardness and softness, 
 and perhaps the fact that it does so partly accounts for a 
 peculiar sort of interest which attaches to elastic bodies. 
 5246 29. 'To call in the aid of reasoning and reflection,' or, 
 perhaps, ' reckoning and reflection.' 
 
 30. ' Whether each announcement ' ; or rather, ' whether 
 each of the matters announced is one (element) or two. 
 
 33. ' Should it incline to the latter view,' etc. ; more simply, 
 ' and if two, either element will be one and distinct (from the 
 other).' 
 
 37. 'If then each is one,' etc. ; or rather, 'if then either 
 (element) is one, and both together are two, the mind will 
 understand (verb from which term for ' intelligible ' comes) 
 the two as separate. For if not separate, it would have 
 understood them as one, not as two.' 
 
 C 42. ' The sense of sight, we say, gave us an impression ' ; 
 rather, ' sight, too (so far like mind), beheld both a great and 
 a small, only, in its case, not separate, but as a confused 
 somewhat.' 
 
 248. 4. ' Reflection, reversing the process of the sight ' ; 
 rather, ' but to make this impression clear, reflection, in its 
 turn, was obliged to see a great and a small, not confused 
 together but distinguished, which is just the opposite of what 
 sight saw.' ' Distinguished ' and ' separate ' mean the same 
 in this passage, though the words thus rendered have different 
 bearings in later philosophy. 
 
 9. ' Is it not some contradiction of this kind ? ' more lit. 
 ' then is it not from this, or thereabouts, that it first occurs to 
 us to ask ? '
 
 BOOK VII. 281 
 
 13. ' Objects of reflection and objects of sight.' The same 
 words are used as 228. 15, 507 B, where 'pure reason' has 
 unluckily been dragged into the rendering. There the object 
 of ' reflection ' is the principle which unifies a complex of 
 phenomena, here it is the relation which is distinguished 
 within a complex sense-perception. Of course the two are 
 aspects of the same universal. ' Smallness,' e.g., when dis- 
 criminated in a certain comparison, is a point of view under 
 which many related phenomena may be ranked. The 
 ' unseen ' world thus described is the unseen as not accessible 
 to mere sight, but not to be taken as excluding all elements 
 which arise out of sense. And even when Plato goes so far 
 as to speak of knowledge in which no element of sense is 
 employed, it will be found difficult to make sure that he is 
 excluding'anything which modern thought would include, if we 
 consider how little belief modern psychology retains in units 
 of sensation unmodified by the whole intellectual state. (See, 
 e.g., James's Textbook of Psychology', pp. 12 and 13.) 
 
 20. ' Everything that strikes upon the senses in conjunction 524 D 
 with its immediate opposite ' ; everything that announces itself 
 as a focus of attributes depending on relations, as in the school 
 puzzle, ' How can the rat's tail be long if the elephant's (longer) 
 tail is shortl' The rat's tail, when thus compared, appears 
 both long and short, because of the conflict between the 
 relation of proportion to the rat's body, and of actual length 
 to the elephant's tail. The answer lies in distinguishing the 
 relations. This is the field of the abstracting and discriminat- 
 ing relational consciousness. With ' things ' conflicting points 
 of view do not so readily arise ; there is a predominant point 
 of view which asserts itself. A rat is a rat, and suggests no 
 contrary, unless perhaps it is a water-rat, which is not a true 
 rat at all. 
 
 29. 'If unity, in and by itself, is thoroughly grasped by 
 the sight or any other sense, like the finger we spoke of; the 
 point is that the unit is always ideal, and is in fact determined 
 by a selective apprehension which is involved in all counting,
 
 282 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 and supplies the answer to the question ' What are you 
 counting?' The 'thing' (finger) is here accepted as a natural 
 unit (and indeed it is the most natural unit), but even it can 
 only enter into an enumeration on the ground of a common 
 nature which is relevant to the purpose of the enumeration 
 and prescribes its limit. Perhaps on this point I may refer to 
 my Logic, i. 154, or Knowledge and Reality ', p. 78. (Cp. 
 Sigwart's Logic, section 66.) 
 
 524 E 32. 'If some contradiction is always ' seen along with it, 
 
 so that it seems no more one than not one, i.e. if the unit is 
 never given to sense, but has always to be made by ideal 
 selection within a manifold, then the question is forced upon 
 the mind, 'What is the unit, or unity, itself?' 
 
 525 A 39. ' And thus the study of the unit ' will attract the mind 
 
 to the consideration of what is, e.g. of the truth or fact implied 
 in the act of enumeration or the predication of number. (See 
 my Logic, I.e.} 
 
 249. i. 'The same thing presents at the same moment,' 
 more lit. ' we see the same at the same moment as one and 
 as infinite in plurality.' The whole perception is one, its 
 parts or elements may be subdivided without limit. 
 
 3. ' Is it not also the case with all numbers ' ; i.e. all number 
 is the record of counting, which is a process of ideal selection. 
 
 B 15. 'Because he is bound to rise above the changing,' etc.; 
 rather, ' because he can never become an arithmetician without 
 rising above the changing,' etc., i.e. to become an arithmetician 
 will force him to rise above the changing, etc. 
 
 C 24. ' Until, by the aid of pure reason, they have attained to 
 the contemplation of the nature of numbers,' 'pure reason '= 
 ' reflection itself or ' sheer reflection.' The substantive is the 
 same as that rendered 'reflection,' 248. 4, 524 c and after; 
 perhaps ' till they come to look at the nature of the numbers 
 by sheer reflection.' The contrast here insisted on, between 
 a study of the properties and implications of number, and its 
 use for practical purposes, is well illustrated by the reference 
 to PhilebuS) end of Book vi., note. See also 34, 525 D below
 
 BOOK VII. 283 
 
 'for the sake of knowledge and not for purposes of 
 trade.' 
 
 29. ' From the changeable to the true and the real.' The 
 changeable is ' genesis ' or becoming. (See note 244. 8, 5 2 1 D. ) 
 
 37. 'It mightily draws the soul upwards.' Note the warning, 525 D 
 254. 22, 529 A below, against a materialistic, which is also a 
 mystical misapprehension of this simple metaphor. 'Abstract 
 numbers,' lit. ' the numbers themselves.' 
 
 250. i. ' If you divide it into pieces, they multiply it back E 
 again,' lit. 'if you cut it up, they multiply it.' The exact 
 allusion is not certain. Perhaps it means that they regard 
 division of the unit as multiplication, each part being, qua 
 unit, as good as the original unit (not, as with a material 
 object, something less). At all events, the general sense is 
 that in number what we count as one is reckoned as one, and 
 no more nor less, whatever may be the nature and variations 
 of the numerable matter. 
 
 3. 'To prevent the unit from ever losing its unity,' etc., 
 more lit. ' for fear the unit should ever be exhibited as not 
 one, but many parts.' 
 
 10. 'Every unit is equal, each to each and contains 526 A 
 within itself no parts.' (Cp. also note with reference to 
 Philebus at close of Book vi. and following passage from 
 Philebus, 56 D.) 
 
 Socrates. ' But are not these also (arithmetic and the arts 
 of weighing and measuring) distinguishable into two kinds ? ' 
 
 Protarchus. ' What are the two kinds ? ' 
 
 Socrates. ' In the first place, arithmetic is of two kinds, one 
 of which is popular, and the other philosophical.' 
 
 Pro. ' How would you distinguish them ? ' 
 
 Soc. ' There is a wide difference between them, Protarchus. 
 Some arithmeticians reckon unequal units, as for example two 
 armies, two oxen, two very large things, or two very small 
 things. The party who are opposed to them insist that every 
 unit in ten thousand must be the same as every other unit.' 
 
 Pro. ' Undoubtedly there is, as you say, a great difference
 
 284 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 among the votaries of the science ; and there may reasonably 
 be supposed to be two sorts of arithmetic.' 
 
 See 249. i, 525 A, which makes it clear that Plato is not 
 denying, on the contrary he is maintaining, that the relation 
 of parts to whole may be expressed as a ratio. But this, 
 the present passage seems to mean, is a relation of two 
 enumerations, representing different points of view, and the 
 unit, as such the instrument of counting cannot be held to 
 undergo subdivision. If it were really capable of subdivision 
 it would be possible to say truly not merely 'i foot=i2 
 inches,' or ' i inch =^2- foot,' which indicates two different 
 enumerations from different points of view, but 1 = 12, which 
 is impossible. That which is counted as i in one aspect may 
 be counted as 12 in another; but 12 is always twelve times i, 
 and if not, the operation loses its meaning. 
 
 14. 'Are only capable of being conceived in thought.' See 
 my Logic, i. 154, and Sigwart, sect. 66. Number is made by 
 counting, and each step in counting is a judgment which gives 
 a place to something that is counted, as a bare unit in a 
 numerical whole. In dealing with number as such, as in the 
 multiplication table, the nature of these numerical wholes is 
 investigated for its own sake. Number is therefore a creation 
 first of ideal selection and then of abstraction, and so may be 
 said to have a purely intellectual existence. This of course 
 does not mean that it is arbitrary or untrue. 
 
 526 B 19. 'The pure intelligence,' 'pure truth, 'lit. 'intelligence or 
 reflection itself,' and ' truth itself.' In proportion as selection 
 and construction are forced to operate, mind passes beyond 
 sense and into science, or the unified experience which we 
 call truth. 
 
 23. ' Naturally quick at all sciences.' Plato includes under 
 arithmetic something of the theory of number. Those opera- 
 tions in which a bank clerk or a ' calculating boy ' would out- 
 , strip a great astronomer would rank for Plato under ' popular ' 
 arithmetic: see passage from Philebus, cited on 250. 10, 
 526 A. No doubt this appeal to educational experience
 
 BOOK VII. 285 
 
 is well grounded on the whole. The power of seeing through 
 intricate combinations, of such a kind that absolute precision 
 is required at every step, is a general qualification for the 
 pursuit of science. On the other hand, calculation as such 
 has a tendency to substitute itself for the analysis of fact. 
 
 31. 'So much trouble and toil'; the bearing of this is not 
 clear to us. Cp., perhaps, 223. 21, 503 E as suggesting that a 
 severe test is necessary in order to select the natures that 
 ' will not flinch ' from the ' greatest of studies.' (Cp. ' the finest 
 characters,' 35, 526 c below.) 
 
 250. 39, 526 0252. 22, 527 c. Sect. 76 
 
 Naturally bordering on arithmetic (the abstraction of number] 
 is geometry (plane geometry the simplest abstraction of space.} 
 It has its uses (not only in land-surveying^ but) in the noble 
 profession of war ; yet not these, but its power of presenting to 
 the mind a spectacle of truth exempt from inconsistency and 
 fragmentariness, constitutes its educational value. 
 
 41. 'Which borders on arithmetic.' Nothing is said at 526 C 
 this point about the principle of arrangement, but cp. 253. 
 13, 528 A, where the correction is evidently intended to bring 
 a principle to light. The abstractions of space are a step 
 more concrete than that of number. 
 
 251. 2. ' All that part of it which bears upon strategy.' D 
 Here and in the treatment of arithmetic the purposes of war 
 seem to take middle rank between those of common life and 
 those of science. But the consideration of practical purposes, 
 which impose a limit on science other than the necessities of its 
 growth, is here little more than ironical, and the speaker seems 
 by a natural touch suddenly to lose patience, 252. 29, 527 D, 
 as the interlocutor piously imitates his own indication of the 
 practical value of a science. 
 
 15. 'The tendency of everything that compels the soul,' E 
 etc. The form of the good is the supreme unity of the 
 universe the universe regarded in the light of the Greek
 
 286 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 conception of good, as a system having a plan or end. To 
 see it in this light is made easier in some degree by any kind 
 of study which 'compels the soul to contemplate real existence,' 
 i.e. to get beyond the fragmentary and self-contradictory 
 appearances of the world of appearance par excellence, and 
 apprehend the relatively stable and consistent object presented 
 by experience as reconciled in the successive phases of 
 science. We are often inclined sharply to contrast a scientific 
 and a teleological view of the world. But they really imply 
 each other, and tend to coincide as each is completed. 
 ' That region,' 16, is the phase or level of mind which is entered 
 upon in reflection or intelligence, and culminates in dialectic 
 the vision of the whole : ' most blissful,' 17, = ' happiest,' the 
 idea of happiness always indicating for Plato and Aristotle 
 a complete and harmonious condition. 
 
 22. ' Changeful and perishing.' See note 244. 8, 521 D and 
 ref. to Philebus at close of Book vi. Though applying his 
 distinction widely and as a matter of principle, he has present 
 to his mind the difference between theoretical geometry and 
 the art of land-surveying. Plato was the first to chronicle and 
 defend {Philebus, I.e. ) the evolution of the sciences out of the 
 industries, and it is natural that he should labour to drive home 
 so important a distinction. (Cp. 31, 527 A below.) 
 527 A 31. ' Squaring, producing, and adding.' Euclid in the follow- 
 ing century collected, and no doubt completed, the geometrical 
 proofs which appear to have been current in the time of 
 Plato and Aristotle. Even in the order which they assume in 
 Euclid's Elements, these proofs are frequently censured as 
 being merely artificial and ingenious rather than a natural and 
 straightforward presentation of geometrical truth. Plato's 
 comment seems to point to some such criticism. We must 
 remember how new was the conception of a great organism 
 or hierarchy of science, constituting one of the characteristic 
 achievements of the human mind, and suggesting such ideas as 
 the reign of law and the rationality of the world, if we desire 
 rightly to appreciate the heat and emphasis with which, as in
 
 BOOK VII. 287 
 
 the following sentences, he reiterates his demand for purity 
 of scientific purpose. 
 
 252. 2. 'What eternally exists,' lit. 'what always is.' The 
 word ' eternal ' has peculiar associations in modern thought, 
 and it is safer not to use it unless there is special reason to 
 introduce these associations. The truths of every science are 
 ' always ' true, subject to the assumptions upon which the 
 science is based ; but it does not follow that they are, as 
 they stand, a final or ultimate form of truth, and the very 
 position assigned by Plato to the mathematical sciences, with 
 his recognition of their peculiar relation to images of sense- 
 perception, shows that he does not consider them to be 
 ultimate truth. The word ' eternal ' suggests to a modern mind 
 the most complete and least fallible of intellectual possessions. 
 
 6. ' To raise up what at present we so wrongly keep down,' 
 viz., the eye of the soul. On 'up ' and 'down,' see 254. 22, 
 529 A and note. 
 
 15. ' Where a ready reception of any kind of learning is an 
 object.' Arithmetic and geometry were the only developed 
 sciences at that time, and naturally get all the credit due to 
 any example of scientific method as an educational influence. 
 
 252. 23, 527 D 254. ii, 528 D. Sect. 77. 
 
 Astronomy is suggested as third in the order of sciences, but is 
 withdrawn in favour of 'solid geometry ', which follows naturally 
 as the science of three dimensions on the science of two. But 
 this science is backward because society does not see the import- 
 ance of it ; and it is very abstruse, so that the few who do 
 pursue it are left to their own caprices, and become perverse. 
 Its place in the series, however, illustrates the logical order of 
 the sciences. 
 
 29. 'You amuse me by your evident alarm.' In the case 5 2 7 D 
 of arithmetic Socrates had himself suggested the plea of 
 utility. In the case of geometry he had accepted it, though 
 slightingly, when put forward by Glaucon ; but here he loses 
 patience with it altogether. Note that this does not apply to
 
 288 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 educational utility, which for Plato is not essentially distinct 
 from scientific value, both being measured by the degree in 
 which the mind is advanced in the power of apprehending 
 truth (36 below). 
 
 32. 'An organ of our souls,' lit. 'an instrument of 
 mind.' 'Organon,' = ' instrument,' has not in Greek acquired 
 the peculiar meaning which we attach to ' organ ' as a seat of 
 vital or sensitive functions, though some ' organs ' are called 
 'organa' by Aristotle. The hand, Aristotle says, is the 
 bodily ' instrument ' par excellence, as intelligence is the 
 mental; by these two all external instruments ('organa') are 
 used. De Anitna, 432 A, i. Here the instrument in 
 question is of course the power 'with which we learn,' 240. 
 7 and 30, 518 c and E. 
 
 527 E 253. i. 'Or else, if you are you surely'; the emphasis 
 
 seems hardly right in the translation. Surely it is ' or whether 
 you are carrying on but yet have no objection ' to any one 
 else profiting by it. 
 
 528 A 15. Whereas the correct way is 'to proceed from two 
 
 dimensions to three.' The word rendered ' dimension ' is 
 literally ' increase/ and probably conveys the notion of 
 'power' (in algebraical sense) rather than of a pure spatial 
 dimension. First the square, then the cube, then the solid in 
 motion. ' Revolution ' refers to the supposed circular orbits 
 of the heavenly bodies, not to rotation on an axis. This 
 passage seems to show a distinct intention to arrange the 
 sciences according to their object-matter in a direction from 
 abstract to concrete, so that the more partial knowledge will 
 be preparatory to the more complete, and the process must 
 tend to a reconstruction of a solid concrete reality by an 
 analysis which becomes step by step more penetrating and 
 inclusive. The error is contrived so as to emphasise the 
 principle which it violated. 
 
 1 8. 'Thickness' or 'depth,' a genuine spatial term. 
 
 23. ' No state holds them in estimation,' because not useful 
 for land-surveying. This paragraph may allude to some
 
 BOOK VII. 289 
 
 controversy of the time which is lost to us. We can under- 
 stand that there might be some accusation of perverseness 
 against the students of a new science, considered abstruse, 
 and not of such a nature as to interest the public mind. The 
 notion of a state director of studies anticipates Bacon's con- 
 ception in the New Atlantis, and has in some degree been 
 realised by the methods of joint research to-day. 
 
 254. i. 'Of plane surfaces,' a true spatial expression. Plato 528 D 
 recurs to his order of the sciences to lay the greatest possible 
 stress on its principle. 
 
 7. 'Space of three dimensions,' literally, 'of the dimension 
 (or 'power') of depth.' There is no general word for space, 
 in our modern abstract sense, in the Republic or in Greek 
 philosophy down to this point. It just appears in Timaeus 
 52 B. (Cp. Jowett's Introduction to Timaeus, p. 396.) 
 
 254. 12, 528 256. 26, 530 c. Sect. 78. 
 
 Astronomy as the science of solids in motion comes next, and 
 gives occasion for a criticism of the sense in which the spatial 
 metaphors 'up' and 'down' are to be understood; which is 
 developed into a suggestion of the true place which should be 
 held by an astronomical science, and an anticipation of an 
 astronomy tvhich shall be a mathematical science and not a 
 record of observation. 
 
 21. 'To look upwards,' etc. The introduction of 'this 529 A 
 world' and 'the other' is a more plausible extension of the 
 metaphor in Greek than in English, as the Greek words, 
 which by custom had this meaning, are literally 'from 
 hence ' and ' thither.' 
 
 40. ' Real and invisible,' in the sense of ' unseen,' carefully B 
 explained through the preceding discussion. ' Reason,' three 
 lines above, is the word rendered ' reflection,' 248. (noesis), 
 and corresponding to the name ' intelligible,' by which the 
 world of science is designated throughout. 
 
 255. i. 'No objects of sense admit of scientific treatment,' 
 
 T
 
 290 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 more literally, ' nothing of this kind is capable of science,' i.e. 
 of forming or entering into science. ' Objects of sense ' is 
 quite naturally supplied by the translator from the previous 
 line ; but of course the term ' objects ' filled in with the verbal 
 adjective ' sensibles ' makes the thought more remote for the 
 English reader. If we could use a literal rendering like 
 ' what is sensed can never make a science,' we should get 
 nearer the point. (Cp. 244. 8, 521 D and note.) 
 529 B 3. ' Downwards, not upwards'; the metaphor implies degrees 
 of reality or value. It is most unlucky that popular philo- 
 sophy should have associated these degrees of value with 
 degrees of abstraction. 
 
 D ii. ' Since this fretted sky.' I suggest the following as a 
 fair equivalent for this difficult sentence : ' These ornaments 
 of the heavens, considering that it is the visible world which 
 they adorn, we must take to be indeed of the most beautiful 
 and perfect nature which such things can attain, but to fall 
 far short of the true (system), consisting of courses which 
 real swiftness and real slowness, in the true periods (literally, 
 'number') and in all the true figures (orbits), traverse in 
 relation with one another, carrying with them what they 
 contain, all of which are matters to be apprehended by 
 reasoning and the mathematical intelligence, but not by sight.' 
 It has been urged that with the adjective 'true,' where I 
 supply ' system ' in brackets, grammar requires the previous 
 substantive 'ornaments' to be supplied. (See Mr. Richards 
 in Classical Review, viii. 5.) This would at once condemn 
 the. intelligible world to. be in some way a repetition of 
 the visible world, and therefore the point is important. It 
 seems to me that the peculiar order of the sentence, and the 
 attraction of the relative pronoun after 'true (system)' to 
 agree with the word 'courses,' which in the Greek follows 
 much later, shows that the substantival idea is undergoing 
 modification as the sentence develops, and that it is fair to 
 understand a more colourless substantive such as ' system,' 
 instead of simply repeating 'ornaments.' Plato speaks of
 
 BOOK VII. 291 
 
 swiftness and slowness carrying the heavenly bodies ; we 
 speak as a rule of their moving with a certain velocity, but 
 we could also say ' such a velocity will carry a body from this 
 point to that in such a time.' Every motion, in relation to 
 others, may fairly be described as a swiftness or a slowness. 
 His point is that there are no doubt true laws by which the 
 periods, orbits, accelerations, and retardations of solids in 
 motion can be explained, and that it is the function of 
 astronomy to ascertain them : cp. Timaeus, 40 D. 
 
 23. ' Just as we might employ diagrams.' This statement, 5 2 9 
 if rightly understood, goes to the very heart of inductive 
 logic. Plato is speaking of the relation of a mathematical 
 diagram to the law or theorem which it illustrates. We must 
 therefore exclude, to begin with, the notion that he treats 
 imaginary appearances as a basis of science equally good with 
 real ones. Imaginary appearances are affirmed subject to 
 explicit reservations ; but what he says is, that the appear- 
 ances as such do not give the construction, and must be 
 transformed into something else before they can give rise to 
 it. Begin by noting the point made five lines below, that 
 you cannot elicit geometrical truth from diagrams by simple 
 measurement. The diagram, of course, is there merely to 
 enable you to bear in mind certain relations while you inquire 
 into their general connection ; and mere observation of it, 
 though it may suggest connections which prove to be valid, 
 cannot exhibit these connections as rooted in the geometrical 
 nature of the figures in question. Cp. De Morgan, Budget of 
 Paradoxes^ p. 52 : ' Are the results of mathematical deduction 
 results of observation?' This implies no disregard of ex- 
 perience ; it is simply a question of method within the body 
 of experience. Now this example is typical for the rise from 
 sense to science in all induction whatever. The appearances 
 of sense-perception only operate as suggestions, within which, 
 by ideal selection, the elements are found which connect 
 themselves with the intelligible system which is being con- 
 structed. This is why a repetition of identical examples is
 
 292 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 valueless for induction. Instances only work by the new 
 content they suggest. Aristotle is perfectly clear on this 
 point. See Anal. Post., 87 B, 39 and 90 A, 24, and the author's 
 Knowledge and Reality, 285, or Logic, ii. 177. See also note 
 on 244. 8, 521 D, and quotation from Mill's Logic. 
 530 A 41. 'Such corporeal and visible objects.' See reference 
 in previous note and quotation from Mill. On the term 
 ' objects,' see note on i above. The tendency of science is 
 more and more to regard ' things ' as analysable systems, and 
 not as inert or inexplicable ' body.' The point is to dis- 
 tinguish the world as we guess or hope that it might be known, 
 from the world as confusedly and obscurely presented, as an 
 unintelligible something meeting our sense ; and to be sure 
 which of the two we are speaking of. What Plato says is 
 strictly true of the latter, but not of the former ; and it is not 
 easy to be certain how far he confused the two, or how far, 
 in criticising him, we are transferring to him the blunder 
 which is prevalent among ourselves. We seldom realise, what 
 he is insisting on throughout, the total difference of the 
 objects dealt with by mind in its different phases. 
 
 42. 'Changeless and exempt from all perturbations.' This 
 of course demands, as 255. n, 529 D makes clear, not absence 
 of motion, or of variation of motion, but absence of contra- 
 dictory or unintelligible variation, which is characteristic 
 of the world not yet raised into^ the scientific sphere ; and it 
 also insists on the non-permanence of any sensuous appear- 
 ance of the heavens, the permanent element being the system, 
 order, or law. Thus if, e.g., a nebular hypothesis of the origin 
 of solar systems were established, an immense change in 
 the bodily appearance of the world would be assumed, but 
 this assumption would actually be founded on the convic- 
 tion of an identity subsisting through all the phases of the 
 system. 
 
 256. 4, 5. ' With the help of problems ' ' we shall let the 
 heavenly bodies alone.' Cp. De Morgan in Budget of Para- 
 doxes, p. 55: 'Charles 11., when informed of the state of
 
 BOOK VII. 293 
 
 navigation, founded a Baconian observatory at Greenwich, to 
 observe, observe, observe away at the moon, until her motions 
 were known sufficiently well to render her useful in guiding the 
 seamen. And no doubt Flamsteed's observations, twenty or 
 thirty of them at least, were of signal use.' He goes on to speak 
 of the importance which the Platonists' investigations of the 
 ellipse had for Kepler's inferences, and concludes, ' had it not 
 been for Newton, the whole dynasty of Greenwich astrono- 
 mers . . . might have worked away at nightly observation and 
 daily reduction without any remarkable result.' 'Leverrier 
 and Adams calculating an unknown planet into existence by 
 enormous heaps of algebra,' ib. p. 53, is a description that 
 seems just to fulfil Plato's anticipations. 
 
 ii. 'The present mode of studying astronomy.' The full 
 antithesis to Plato's idea would be given by, e.g., Babylonian 
 astronomy, thus described by Professor Burnet (Early Greek 
 Philosophers, p. 21): 'These (Babylonian) observations are 
 of the most minute and careful kind, but they are utterly 
 devoid of all scientific character. There is no theory of the 
 heavens implied in them ; there is nothing but a record of 
 events. Nor are these events recorded for any scientific pur- 
 pose. In the words of Professor Sayce : " If a war with Elam 
 had followed an eclipse of the sun on a particular day, it was 
 assumed that a recurrence of the eclipse on the same day 
 would be followed by a recurrence of the war with Elam." ' 
 But Plato must be immediately referring to Greek astronomy, 
 which was at least more scientific than this. On the whole, 
 however, as in morality and religion, so in science, he breaks 
 with primitive superstition, and brings to bear the construc- 
 tive analysis of the scientific mind. 'Astronomy is not a 
 record of observations, but a theory of the motion of bodies ' 
 is the contention which he has at heart, and perhaps a little 
 overstates. It would be tempting to connect this passage 
 either positively or negatively with the work of the astrono- 
 mer Eudoxus, said to have been his pupil, but the tradition 
 does not seem distinct enough to warrant an inference.
 
 294 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 79. 256. 26, 5300257. 42, S3 1 D - 
 
 The motions which give rise to consonance and dissonance are 
 to the ear as those of the heavenly bodies (should be ' of light') 
 are to the eye, and the science of harmonics or acoustics is there- 
 fore a sister science to astronomy (should be l to optics'). The 
 scheme of the sciences culminates iu their co-ordination. 
 
 531 A 257- 3- 'Measure the notes and combinations distinguished 
 by the ear.' Plato seems to censure as inadequate two modes 
 of acoustical research ; first, here and in Glaucon's answer, 
 the pure empirics, or musicians, who are content to discuss (we 
 may imagine) rival systems of tuning or ' temperament ' with 
 references to the purity of the consonances obtained by them. 
 C 23. 'They investigate the numerical relations.' The second 
 set of inquirers into acoustics would seem to be the Pytha- 
 goreans, who were aware of certain ratios in length of the 
 vibrating strings corresponding to certain musical intervals, 
 but were not, Plato seems to complain, disposed to inquire 
 by more penetrating methods what were the properties, 
 involved in these numerical ratios, on which the qualities of 
 consonance and dissonance depended, 'what numbers are, 
 and what are not, consonant, and for what reason in either 
 case.' It is possible to see a mystical suggestion in these 
 words an idea that numbers have properties, so to speak, in 
 themselves. But we must bear in mind that Plato is distinctly 
 treating acoustics as a branch of the investigation into 
 kinds of motion, and therefore it is fair to credit him with the 
 insight that the true reason of consonance and dissonance lay 
 somewhere in the nature of the motions indicated by the 
 numerical ratios connected with them. The mathematical 
 treatment of the analysis of wave-forms (see Helmholtz, Popu- 
 lar Lectures, E. T., i. 75) seems to be an example of research 
 which would have been after Plato's own heart. 
 
 28. 'Faculties more than human.' It is hardly fair to 
 think of all these expressions as if they pointed to a fanci- 
 ful type of inquiry. Their meaning is far more naturally
 
 BOOK VII. 295 
 
 explained by crediting Plato with having in some degree 
 anticipated the nature and direction of the advance to be 
 made in the future at least by mathematical science. 
 
 31. ' The beautiful and the good.' Words like these in con- 
 nection with a branch of mathematical physics are apt to 
 pass by us as an idle sound, just because Plato uses them so 
 audaciously and directly. But we have only to look at our 
 literature of popular science or popular theology to see how 
 deeply permeated it is with ' edification ' drawn from the ideas 
 of astronomy and mathematical physics. We find, for 
 example, that followers of Plato are lectured on the mean and 
 base conception which they have formed of ' matter,' and on 
 their neglect of the higher point of view which sees in any 
 rusty nail a sort of system of solar systems whose motions 
 form a harmonious totality. (Huxley, Collected Essays, vol. vi. 
 284.) Mr. Huxley's description of his nail is a fair though 
 imperfect illustration of Plato's meaning in taking mathemati- 
 cal analysis as an aid to the vision of the universe in its unity 
 and variety, and consequently to the will and feeling which 
 are imbued with the ' spirit of law.' 
 
 36. 'Their mutual association and relationship.' The co- 531 D 
 ordination of the sciences is by some considered to be the 
 whole of philosophy. See Wallace, Prolegomena to the 
 Study of HegeFs Philosophy, p. 21 ff. and 57 ff. Plato, with 
 a certain delight in transcending the expectation of the 
 popular mind, represented by Socrates' hearer, points out 
 that great as the task is, it is but the prelude to philosophy 
 itself. At the same time it is a necessary prelude, and the 
 sciences themselves lose their scientific or educational value 
 if their interconnection is not seen. 
 
 257- 43. S3 1 0262. i, 535 A. Sect. 80. 
 
 Passing now beyond the ' prelude ' we arrive at the actual 
 hymn, the study of philosophy \ which is characterised as (a) 
 Rational, being contrasted with the finite sciences, as partly 
 sensuous, in terms of the ' Cave ' allegory ; (b) Concrete, as aiming
 
 296 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 at a complete and systematic grasp of every matter presented to 
 it, and therefore (c) Critical or Categorical, because it necessarily 
 attempts to adjust and modify all isolated assumptions so as to 
 fit them for a place in the ultimate unity of reality ; and (d) 
 Moral, or finally, Religious, because the unity thus established 
 is or culminates in the Good which is at once the end of all 
 action and ground of all Reality. With the vision of this 
 ultimate ground the system of knowledge attains a natural com- 
 pletion. Compare with this connection of all reality in the good, 
 Laws, 967 E : * No man can be a true worshipper of the gods 
 who does not know these two principles that the soul (mind) is 
 the eldest of all things which are born, and is immortal, and 
 rules over all bodies ; moreover, as I have now said several times, 
 he who has not contemplated the mind (intelligence) of nature, 
 which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous 
 training, and seen the connection of music with these things, and 
 harmonised them all with laws and institutions, is not able to 
 give a reason of such things as have a reason. And he who 
 is unable to acquire this in addition to the ordinary virtues of 
 a citizen, can hardly be a good ruler of a whole state ; but he 
 should be the subordinate of other rulers? 
 
 258. i. ' The actual hymn.' The Greek word for hymn also 
 means law, and Plato is probably playing on the double 
 meaning. 
 
 6. ' Unable to take a part in the discussion of first prin- 
 ciples,' lit. ' to give and receive an account.' 
 
 532 A 9. ' Have we not here the actual hymn.' In this paragraph 
 
 the study of dialectic is compared with its counterpart in the 
 allegory of the den. Better, 'Have we not here the actual 
 hymn, which dialectic performs ? This hymn, being itself in 
 the intelligible world, finds a parallel 'in the power of sight, as 
 we described it when it makes the effort to look at actual 
 animals,' etc., i.e. in the concrete division of the surface world, 
 above that in which shadows and reflections were the objects 
 of sight.
 
 BOOK VII. 297 
 
 15. 'In the same way, whenever/ restating the process of 
 dialectic, to show its parallelism to the simile. 
 
 16. 'In pursuit of every reality,' more lit. 'of the self of 
 what each (quality) z>.' Cp. close of Book v. and notes. 
 It is almost the same phrase throughout; the notion is 
 that of analysing and unifying the manifold or pheno- 
 mena of a group, say all that are called 'beautiful,' till by 
 criticism and reciprocal adjustment and elimination of the 
 accidental they come to be known as a unity or coherent 
 body of truth. 
 
 17. 'Independent of all sensuous information,' more lit. 
 ' without any of the senses.' Cp. note on 255. i, 529 B. Dia- 
 lectic is Rational. Astronomy, it was admitted, used data 
 obtained out of the appearances of sense, as geometry used 
 diagrams, though neither science dealt with the appearances 
 of sense as such. In philosophy, however, neither diagrams 
 nor any sensuous details are employed even as illustrations 
 or data, the problems being of such a nature and so generalised 
 that pictorial ideas will not even seem to deal with them. 
 Even in geometry the diagram must be confined to a particular 
 exemplification of the proof, and this will often fill the novice's 
 mind with wholly misleading associations, so that the same 
 proof with an unfamiliar drawing of the diagram will not be in- 
 telligible to him. A difficulty may be felt about the banish- 
 ment of sense, owing to the constant presence of images and 
 pictorial detail in thought, however abstract. But this detail, 
 which is not sensation as such, and the use of which is wholly 
 governed by the reference of the idea, so that any part of the 
 image may be treated as irrelevant, is a different thing in 
 principle from a datum or illustration which is taken ex 
 hypothesi as not irrelevant, but as embodying the essence of 
 the matter. No sensuous picture can even pretend to be 
 adequate to such an object as the general will of a nation, 
 the phases of the human intelligence, the conception of the 
 Deity. 
 
 'By an act of the pure intelligence'; better, by 'sheer
 
 298 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 reflection,' or intelligence.' ' Pure ' might be taken to mean 
 without relation to experience, which is not implied. ' Noesis ' 
 is the word above translated 'reflection ' or ' intelligence.' 
 
 1 8. ' The real nature of good ' = ' the self of what good is,' 
 a concrete example filling up the abstract phrase ' the self of 
 what each (quality) is,' above, translated in the text ' every 
 reality,' 16. 
 
 20. ' The last mentioned person,' i.e. the person in the 
 allegory, 237. 1-18, 516 A ff. 
 
 532 B 25. ' The release of the prisoners.' This paragraph restates 
 the portion of the allegory which corresponds to the mathe- 
 matical sciences. But this is strictly exhausted in the sen- 
 tence from ' and when there ' down to ' when compared with 
 the sun,' and it is not easy to see why the two lines and a 
 half, ' the release of the prisoners ' down to ' the light,' should 
 be prefixed to them, as its content belongs to a wholly different 
 portion of the allegory, the counterpart, strictly speaking, of the 
 terrestrial world. We can only say that, for picturesqueness' 
 sake, Plato has not cared to maintain the strict limits between 
 the parts of the original allegory. The whole scientific educa- 
 tion is, of course, in a general way an embodiment of the 
 whole ' release and conversion,' and is spoken of, 243. 38, 
 521 c, as in general the instrument of this conversion. It is 
 just conceivable that the ' arts ' of 259. 2, 532 c include music 
 and gymnastic, by which the mind is raised from the lowest 
 kind of shadows to a trained perception and feeling of law 
 and order. This would preserve the parallelism of allegory 
 and meaning. The difficulty is partly that Plato has begun 
 not with training in the shadows but with conversion from 
 them. Of course the point does not gravely affect his in- 
 tention. 
 
 D 259. 1 6. ' What is the general character of the faculty of 
 dialectic, and into what specific parts it is divided, and, lastly, 
 what are its methods ? ' ' Methods,' literally, ' ways,' the word 
 from which ' method ' is derived, minus a prefix, which indi- 
 cates going 'after' something. We have lost the idea that
 
 BOOK VII. 299 
 
 ' method ' = a pursuit or exploration in search of something. 
 Note that Plato expressly refuses to set out the nature 
 divisions and course or lines of ' dialectic,' and only assigns 
 a few isolated characteristics of it. This slightness or abstract- 
 ness of description does not go to show that the science de- 
 scribed is abstract ; and the whole course of the allegory, as 
 also of the classification of the sciences, indicates that Plato 
 conceived of it, in position and tendency, as a return, with a 
 new completeness and penetration, to the whole of life and 
 experience. This view is confirmed by Plato's refusal to de- 
 scribe the science in detail. He knew that it could not exist 
 as a systematic science till a material had been organised 
 which in his time was only beginning to be observed. 
 
 31. ' Can alone reveal the truth.' Jowett's translation seems 533 
 needed : ' alone and only to one who is master,' etc. 
 
 37. 'No other method which attempts systematically.' 
 Dialectic is Concrete : more literally (whole sentence), ' about 
 the self of each (quality), that which each is, no other inquiry 
 attempts by a (definite) course to ascertain in every case.' 
 On the self of each (quality), see Book v. end and notes. 
 The meaning is more fully explained, first by contrast and 
 then by expansion, in the two following paragraphs. Philo- 
 sophy admits no fictions goes to the self of each matter 
 inquired into; and brings the whole to bear upon every 
 part is systematic these two properties being ultimately 
 the same. 
 
 39. ' All the arts, with a few exceptions.' The exceptions 
 are the scientific element involved in the practical arts, which 
 comes to separate existence in the mathematical sciences. 
 The three groups might be typified by (i) politics as commonly 
 practised, with rhetoric ; (2) the industrial arts ; and (3) medi- 
 cine or gymnastic. See 244. 22 ff., 522 A. The fine arts 
 would no doubt come under the first head. See note at end 
 of Book vr. with reference to Philebus. 
 
 260. 7. ' Dream about real existence.' ' Dream,' because they B 
 make use of sensuous images, and are not thoroughly coherent
 
 300 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 or complete, but begin in the middle with assumptions which 
 have not been criticised, as dreams begin and end anyhow, 
 without attachment or adjustment to a complete order. 
 
 13. 'Such mere admissions,' or such a convention or agree- 
 ment. It is not easy to say whether the convention is thought 
 of as existing with the hearer, or as lying in the internal con- 
 sistency of the intellectual structure described. Both have 
 ultimately the same significance : it is because the 'principles' 
 are only admitted and not demonstrated that the fabric 
 remains a mere convention whether with the hearer or with 
 itself. The curious point is that the whole itself true know- 
 ledge might be described as such a convention, only that it 
 leaves nothing outside it. It is on the completeness and con- 
 sistency of the ' Convention,' and not on its attachment to 
 anything better known outside it, that its character as science 
 depends. 
 
 533 C 17- 'It carries back its hypotheses to the very first prin- 
 ciple of all.' Jowett : ' does away with hypotheses in order to 
 make her ground (i.e. that of the science of dialectic) secure.' 
 The difference between these two versions depends on a differ- 
 ence of reading which cannot be determined by MS. authority, 
 turning as it does on the accentuation of a word. Jowett has 
 made the best of his reading, which would more naturally be 
 rendered ' does away with hypotheses in order to confirm them,' 
 an almost intolerable harshness. Yet, comparing 232-3. 
 510-11, a meaning could be given to it, viz., that the hypo- 
 theses are destroyed as hypotheses, to be incorporated in the 
 body of science in a modified form as assured principles. The 
 famous Hegelian term 'aufheben ' (see Wiss. der Logik, i. 104) 
 seems to have an echo of this meaning. But the rendering 
 embodied in the text quite satisfies the requirements of the 
 passage. Cp. 233. 29, 511 B : ' Not as first principles, but as 
 genuine hypotheses,' i.e. strictly as hypotheses and no more. 
 To recognise a fiction or assumption for what it is is the 
 first step in a criticism which is directed to assigning it, 
 with the necessary modifications, its true place in the whole
 
 BOOK VII. 301 
 
 of reality. Therefore Dialectic is a Critical science, and aims 
 at establishing knowledge on a Categorical or unconditional 
 basis. 
 
 20. ' Gently draws and raises it upwards.' The force of dia- 
 lectic is really active in science from the beginning (247-8. 
 524), when the mind is first confronted with a contradiction 
 and thereby forced to reflect. 
 
 35. 'First division science, second understanding,' etc.: the 533 E 
 same classification as at end of Book vi. 
 
 38. ' Opinion deals with the changing, intelligence with the 534 A 
 real '; or, slightly paraphrased, ' seeming belongs to what comes 
 and goes (literally, becomes), thinking (or ' reflection ') to what 
 is.' See note on 244. 8, 521 D. Plato appears desirous to 
 insist once more on the relativity of object to subject, from 
 which he started at the close of Book v., and on which he has 
 been insisting throughout. 
 
 261. 7. 'Who takes thoughtful account of the essence of B 
 each thing/ or, 'who takes account of what each (quality) 
 is,' i.e. can tell definitely in what each matter that comes 
 before him consists. Plato is leading up to the inference that 
 the philosopher must be able to explain when and how ' the 
 good ' is present in existence. 
 
 10. 'To exercise pure reason'; or better, ' to have intel- 
 ligence of.' The word is ' nous,' which always implies seeing 
 a principle in details. 
 
 12. 'Then shall you not also hold the same language 
 concerning the good,' etc. ; better, perhaps, ' in the same way, 
 then, with the good; he who is not able to distinguish the 
 form of the good by analysis (lit., ' in discussion '), abstract- 
 ing it from all else (' abstracting ' is here literal, though of 
 course the original is devoid of logical associations), and who 
 does not, as though in a battle, passing through every proof, 
 zealous to apply the tests not of what seems but of what is, 
 come out of it all with his principle not overthrown such an 
 one you will affirm neither to know the self of good nor any 
 good at all ; but if he have caught hold of any image of it, to
 
 302 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 have caught it by seeming and not by knowing, and that dream- 
 ing and drowsing his present life through, before ever awaking 
 here, he is gone to Hades to the final sleep.' Dialectic is, to 
 conclude, the apprehension of moral or religious truth ; of the 
 good what everything, including man in society, is good for 
 in all its forms, and ultimately as the ultimate law or reality 
 of the universe, apart from the knowledge of which life is 
 without connection or significance, an idle procession of 
 phantoms. Cp. 242. 26, 520 c and note, and citation from 
 Laws in section heading. The precise suggestion of this 
 passage appears to be that of a knowledge or ' point of view,' 
 which in every perplexity or entanglement, whether practical 
 or theoretical, would give a clue to the point from which the 
 apparent disorder could be seen as order and significance. 
 534 E 37. ' To use the weapons of the dialectician most 
 scientifically ' ; lit., ' to ask questions and give answers most 
 scientifically.' The notion of dialectic never breaks loose 
 from the original associations of conversation. We may 
 explain how they can persist in the notion of developed 
 science by thinking of such phrases as ' framing the right 
 question,' 'putting forward an objection,' 'offering an illustra- 
 tion,' ' finding the true answer.' The terms which originally 
 apply to conversation between different persons continue to 
 have meaning with reference to the process of thought as 
 such, the advance from point to point of the intelligence as it 
 unifies the whole of experience, without reference to the 
 differences of individual minds. It is plain that the abstract 
 postulates, by which the present section, together with 
 510-11, explains the general nature of dialectic, correspond to 
 the task attempted by philosophy, in its systematic modern 
 developments, presupposing, like dialectic, some co-ordination 
 of the natural sciences. (See 257. 36, 531 D.) Modern 
 philosophy is a criticism of knowledge and an attempt to 
 banish fictions and establish degrees of truth and reality (on 
 the conception of degrees of truth and reality, see not only 
 the whole system of ideas connected with the allegory of the
 
 BOOK VII. 303 
 
 Cave, but more especially the criticism of pleasure as the 
 satisfaction of desire, 321-7. 583-7) ; it is further an aspiration 
 to see the good, or at least the significant, throughout experi- 
 ence in its various concrete forms of nature, morality, beauty, 
 and religion, and to explain the inter-relation of the points 
 of view involved in them. This is just, in outline, the com- 
 bined work of thorough intellectual unification, and thorough 
 realisation of a positive tendency and nature in the unity 
 revealed, which Plato sketches out for the form of a science as 
 yet non-existent, in which knowledge and aspiration were to 
 culminate. 
 
 262. 2, 535 A 265. 24, 537 D. Sect. 81. 
 
 Distribution of studies down to the age of thirty. 
 
 262. 7. ' When we were choosing the magistrates some 535 A 
 time ago.' (See 1 10. 412.) They were before required to be 
 intelligent, but the more strictly philosophical qualifications 
 
 are now demanded in addition. 
 
 263. 10. 'Accepts involuntary falsehood,' i.e. ignorance. E 
 (See 72. 10, 382 A, B.) 
 
 264. 3. ' To select persons advanced in years.' (Cp. 112. 536 C 
 33, 414 A.) The selection was to begin with childhood 
 according to the former plan also ; but the change is that the 
 future guardians are now to be so far though not finally 
 selected at an early age, that a distinctive education can be 
 provided for them almost from the first ; and the distinctive 
 education is an afterthought, and supplement to the first 
 education. 
 
 24. ' You must train the children to their studies in a 537 A 
 playful manner.' Plato does not so much mean, perhaps, 
 that the method of education in regular schools and classes 
 should be playful an idea which has grave defects but that 
 no regular systematic study shall be attempted at all in child- 
 hood and boyhood. The whole system of elaborate routine, 
 with examinations, in which our boys are entangled from the
 
 304 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 age of ten or earlier, might have appeared to him a stupend- 
 ous mistake, especially as he recognises no practical need 
 for an early entrance on practical life. 
 
 537 B 38. ' Whether they last for two or three years.' Comparing 
 265. 2 just below, it would seem that this two or three years 
 ends with the age of twenty. It roughly corresponds, there- 
 fore, to the first military service of the young Athenian a 
 sort of ' volunteer ' or ' militia ' service at home (see the 
 account of ' Gymnastic,' 100. 14 ff., 404, and the large part 
 played in it by the idea of service in war). Plato prefers for 
 his young rulers what to us would seem an idle life up to the 
 age of twenty, but a life very much more nearly realised, than 
 it is supposed to be, by the system of our great public schools, 
 at all events some years ago. The lawlessness which tends 
 to be generated by a routine of school work that never is 
 genuinely enforced, nor really attracts the mind, would be 
 avoided on Plato's system by not pretending to a routine of 
 study at all, but aiming rather at exciting and stimulating the 
 desire for exact knowledge by calling attention now and 
 again to the rudiments of science, during a training aimed at 
 turning out a hardy, healthy lad, with taste and character. Of 
 course the importance of the historical past and of the vast 
 fabric of science must lay a weight on our youth which did 
 not exist for the Greek, not to mention the necessity for an 
 early entrance on practical life, which might conceivably be 
 in some degree diminished if there was a general desire to 
 diminish it. Still it is well to remember what a paradox we 
 are embodying in our education, when we confine the regular 
 study of the greatest subjects entirely to the period of intel- 
 lectual immaturity, and never allow or encourage the full- 
 grown intellect of our active classes to apply itself methodically 
 to reflection. 
 
 C 265. 4. ' Must be brought within the compass of a single 
 survey,' etc. It is hard to say whether ' between ' is to 
 be taken with the words ' the nature of real existence ' as 
 well as with ' them,' but probably it is so, as Jowett renders it.
 
 BOOK VII. 305 
 
 The conception of degrees of reality is involved. The different 
 branches of study have different relations to the nature of the 
 real as such. 
 
 ii. ' According as a man can survey,' etc. The crispness 
 of this is lost in the translation ; quite lit., ' the synoptical 
 (man) is dialectical, and the not, not.' The scientific or 
 philosophic mind is that which can hold together the principle 
 and all the details, which ' sees life steadily, and sees it 
 whole.' (Cp. 257. 34, 531 D above.) 
 
 1 8. ' Thirty years old and upwards.' The two lines above 537 D 
 show that war and civic duties are not to be excluded during 
 this time of study. Plato is not contemplating a student life 
 in the sense of the life of a recluse such as to destroy the 
 bodily energies and practical capacities. Socrates took his 
 full share in war though not in politics, and the fakir-like 
 stoic or cynic was a phenomenon only beginning in Plato's 
 time, though rooted in one side of his views and of Socrates' 
 habits. In the Republic, at least, the wholesome wholeness of 
 the citizen life is maintained as the basis of philosophy. 
 
 265. 25, 537 D 268. 6, 539 D. Sect. 82. 
 
 Digression on the dangers of dialectic in its negative aspect as 
 enlightenment, and on the need of maturity and stability in those 
 who study it. 
 
 29. 'Insubordination,' lit. 'lawlessness,' the opposite ofE 
 the quality of loyalty which the first education was to impart. 
 
 266. 26. 'Opinions about things just and beautiful' 1538 C 
 ' opinions,' lit. ' dogmas,' truths that have been approved or 
 accepted by our own minds or by authority. The same word 
 
 is rendered 'conviction,' III. n, 412 E. It is remarkable 
 that Plato here fully admits the possibility that the view, in 
 the maintenance of which as inculcated by the legislator 
 (see I.e.} civic virtue consists, may be overthrown by criti- 
 cism. But if this criticism is only the negative side of the 
 deepening grasp with which a mature and steadfast mind lays 
 
 u
 
 306 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 hold on reality, no harm, he urges, will be done. He does 
 not promise that philosophy will confirm, in its given form, 
 the orthodoxy of the first education. The comparison of our 
 traditional views on, say, religious subjects, with the natural 
 authority of our parents, is in every way striking and suggestive. 
 
 538 E 40. ' As much deformity as beauty in what he calls beauty.' 
 
 Cp. the passage on the relativity of attributes, 195. 479, and 
 the treatment of, e.g., the view of -Cephalus in Book i. on the 
 nature of justice. 
 
 539 A 267. 7. ' Is not that flattering life,' especially if the educa- 
 
 tion has been narrow and meagre to begin with, so as to have 
 no vitality or expansive power in the good principle. (See 
 the transition from the miserly to the profligate or half- 
 profligate mind, described 291. 5 5 9-60.) All this passage 
 comes home to us as if written yesterday. 
 
 12. 'Abandoned his loyalty.' The mere education of habit 
 and feeling, which generates in him the spirit of law, cannot 
 by itself guarantee him against the results of an entire dis- 
 solution of his earlier convictions. Plato has in his mind, no 
 doubt, the case of Alcibiades, to whose life the very word 
 ' lawlessness ' is applied by Thucydides, vi. 15, 28. It would 
 be too much to say that he is tacitly censuring Socrates for a 
 careless use of dialectic, but undoubtedly he is dealing with a 
 problem raised by the accusations made against Socrates. 
 
 22. ' To forbid their meddling with it while young.' Cp. 
 Aristotle, Ethics i. 3, 5, 'a young man is not qualified to 
 be a student of politics (moral philosophy),' 
 B 26. ' Contradiction/ or eristic disputation. See 159. 24, 
 454 A and note, and cp. the more highly charged passage in the 
 Philebus to the same effect (Philebus, 150,;.): ' Any young 
 man, when he first tastes these subtleties, is delighted, and 
 fancies that he has found a treasure of wisdom, and in the 
 first enthusiasm of his joy he leaves no stone, or rather no 
 thought, unturned, now rolling up the meaning into one, and 
 kneading them together, now unfolding and dividing them ; 
 he puzzles himself first and above all, and then he proceeds
 
 BOOK VII. 307 
 
 to puzzle his neighbours, whether they are older or younger, 
 or of his own age that makes no difference ; neither father 
 nor mother does he spare ; no human being who has ears is 
 safe from him, hardly even his dog, and a barbarian (foreigner) 
 would have no chance of escaping him if only an interpreter 
 could be found.' (See also 215. 41, 498 A above.) 
 
 33. ' Disbelief of their former sentiments.' Their world 539 C 
 has not grown, but been torn up by the roots. 
 
 39. ' Discuss,' lit. ' converse,' i.e. use true dialectic. 
 
 268. 2. ' Precaution.' Philosophy is a study for mature D 
 intelligences and steadfast characters. A man of thirty will 
 not think it worth while to meddle with the subject simply to 
 show off intellectual fireworks. 
 
 268. 7, 539 D End of Book vn. Sect. 83. 
 
 Completion of the philosophic life, and method of the reform. 
 
 10. 'Resigning every other pursuit for it.' This is the 
 only absolute divorce of study from practice in Plato's scheme 
 of a complete life. 
 
 24. ' Fifteen years.' Their professional or active life has 540 A 
 thus extended from seventeen to fifty, being, however, clogged, 
 as it were, with examinations, as in some military services to-day, 
 from twenty to thirty, when the inferior sciences are being 
 mastered and co-ordinated, and having a period of absolute 
 retirement from active life inserted from thirty to thirty-five, 
 when philosophy, which admits of no rival, is being studied. 
 It is worth noticing that some colleges, for example, which 
 have a greater freedom of action than is possible in the com- 
 mercial and professional world, are in the habit of granting 
 their teachers from time to time a year's dispensation from 
 work to preserve their vitality of mind and body. Otherwise, 
 no doubt, the citizen of to-day has but little apparent leisure 
 for self-concentration and reflection, except in times of illness, 
 which for that reason may almost be welcome, or by accidents 
 which interrupt his employment, and are not always so
 
 308 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 unwelcome as might be thought. And Plato no doubt did not 
 anticipate the power of organisation which modern life has 
 developed. The command of leisure which is shown by the 
 busiest of men is an instance of the extraordinary meeting of 
 extremes in modern life. Probably it is rather the pressure 
 of trivialities than the pressure of necessary business which 
 hinders a far higher development of mature reflection than is 
 common even among able and high-minded men in the society 
 of to-day. We must assume that throughout Plato's system 
 those who are not selected as the fittest obtain inferior duties 
 and positions, much as in actual life. For the whole of 
 society an increase and right organisation of leisure is begin- 
 ning to be recognised as a question of the first importance. 
 540 A 30. ' Having surveyed the essence of good ' ; rather, ' the 
 good itself.' We should bear in mind the Greek conception 
 of good as that which anything is good for. Apparently the 
 study of dialectic from thirty to thirty-five did not include the 
 study of the good as such. For the meaning of this study, 
 see 261. 12, 534 B and note, as also the close of Book vi. 
 There is a good deal of shrewdness in Plato's apportionment 
 of work to the various periods of life. The ' good ' is the 
 principle of reality, intelligence, and action. Now it is strictly 
 true that the world, for each of us, as his intellectual and 
 volitional system, undergoes much transformation in his pas- 
 sage through life, and that it may presumably, where the 
 development is continuous and consistent, arrive at a certain 
 settled clearness and final sense of values, when life, while 
 still energetic, draws towards the conclusion of its experience. 
 It is not, of course, that any man can become infallible for 
 others ; but it may be worth considering that he becomes, so 
 to speak, infallible for himself he has acquired the greatest 
 completeness and lucidity of which his organism is capable ; 
 he knows what aims and tendencies he thinks important, and 
 he sees the whole of his world in their light, so that they 
 determine what he treats as real and as unreal ; and it is not 
 likely that any experiences, wholly new in kind, can be
 
 BOOK VII. 309 
 
 received by his organism so as to reverse its main lines. 
 Such completeness of intellectual and volitional organisation 
 must be won by each for himself within the limits of his own 
 experience, and cannot be transferred by teaching. This is 
 why the time of life is essential, and not accidental, in respect 
 to it. Compare with the whole of this passage Browning's 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra, especially the stanza 
 
 ' Enough now if the right 
 
 And good and infinite, 
 Be named here, as thou call'st thy hand thine own, 
 
 With knowledge absolute, 
 
 Subject to no dispute 
 From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.' 
 
 36. ' The hard duties of public life.' After his constant 540 B 
 professional or political service is over he is still to take his 
 turn of public duty, directing, we may suppose, the work of 
 younger men who are still in continuous service. The scale 
 of ages at this point seems low to us. Our politicians are 
 young at fifty. 
 
 269. 14. ' Capable of realisation in a certain way,' i.e. in as D 
 far as the condition of realisation is fulfilled by a grasp of 
 reality being brought to bear upon the life of the state. The 
 fulfilment is proportional to the degree in which the condition 
 is realised, and will also differ from the theory as a concrete 
 from an abstract. (See 185-7, 47 2 '3-) Cp. wnat Goethe 
 says in Hermann und Dorothea of the fulfilment of wishes, 
 which is no less true of the fulfilment of theories : 
 
 ' Es hat die Erscheinung flirwahr nicht 
 
 Jetzt die Gestalt des Wunsches, so wie Ihr ihn etwa geheget ; 
 Denn die Wiinsche verhtillen uns selbst das Gewtinschte, die Gaben 
 Kommen von oben herab, in ihren eignen Gestalten.' 
 
 24. 'All who are above ten years old.' Cp. 2IQ. 28, 501 A. E 
 It is impossible to say how far these suggestions are serious ; 
 but, underrating the importance of the family, Plato is very 
 likely to underrate the continuity of social life. There is a 
 distant echo of his suggestion in the modern practice of
 
 310 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 making a fresh start with the children, when the older genera- 
 tion is beyond reform. It is, however, a useful comment on 
 the idea underlying Plato's words, to point out that the 
 modern practice is much more difficult and less successful 
 than might be thought so deeply is even a bad family life 
 bound up with what is good in the members of the family. 
 541 B 40. ' What sort of person we shall expect him to be.' Is 
 Plato thinking for the moment of the guardian class only? 
 In the following Books he takes no account of the difference 
 of classes or characters within each state. Each is, so to 
 speak, focussed and idealised in the one corresponding indi- 
 vidual, and so we must take it to be here. This is the close 
 of the third natural division of the Republic, which began 
 either with the opening of Book v., or after the completion of 
 the Hellenic state, at marg. p. 471.
 
 BOOK VIII 
 PART IV 
 
 NEGATIVE INSTANCES 
 
 Sect. 84. 
 
 Beginning of Book vm. 272. 42, 545 c. 
 
 Method to be pursued in the negative verification of the connec- 
 tion between happiness and goodness. This Section introduces 
 the fourth natural division of the Republic, consisting of Books 
 VIII. and IX., which take up the thread from the close of 
 Book IV., and examine the inferior types of life by the same 
 method which was there applied to the life of normal or com- 
 plete human nature. Bearing in mind the purpose of the 
 investigation, we should not attach great importance to the 
 question whether the succession of constitutions is portrayed in 
 accordance with history, or whether Plato was in earnest with 
 the notion of a cycle of polities, and that going from better to 
 worse. It was natural, in an arrangement based on psychology, 
 to follow the assumed order of merit, or relative completeness, as 
 between the psychological kinds or elements by the predominance 
 of which, in Plato's view, human minds were principally dis- 
 tinguished. Such a treatment corresponds to a natural or 
 normal classification, or at best to a description of phases in 
 plant-life, rather than to a historical inquiry. Not that the 
 links of transition are unreal ; on the contrary, they are 
 shrewdly observed and deduced. But they omit, except in one 
 striking instance, 287. J 4> 5 56 E, the reaction from without 
 (see Laws, 708 E), which plays so vast a part in the history of 
 actual societies, and it is not suggested, though it is not denied, 
 that the typical connections, which are all that they illustrate, 
 
 311
 
 312 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 may have different results in different circumstances. No doubt, 
 hoivever, the general outline of the cycle is partly drawn from 
 the admitted beginning of Greek polities with monarchy and 
 aristocracy, and from the fatal close of the fifth century at 
 Athens with the despotism of the Thirty succeeding the democracy. 
 It is this later period, and not the despotisms of the seventh and 
 sixth centuries, that Plato has chiefly in mind when he speaks of 
 the tyrant. That the language of these books of the Republic 
 may be fully appreciated, the arguments with Thrasymachus, 
 in Book I., and the speeches of Glaucon and Adeimantus in the 
 early part of Book //., should be carefully re-read. 
 
 543 A 270. 5. 'A community of pursuits in war and peace,' i.e. 
 
 between men and women. 
 
 D 271. 5- ' If your state were right, all the others must be 
 wrong.' Cp. 151. 37, 445 c, ' one form of virtue, infinite 
 varieties of vice.' At first sight this strikes us as absolutely 
 false, like saying that there can only be one beautiful form of 
 plants or animals. But in as far as Plato's state, and the 
 others, are merely typical of certain fundamental relations in 
 moral and social life, there is a truth in it. To what an 
 extent this is the case is plain from the mere fact that Plato 
 counts monarchy and aristocracy as one arid the same type, 
 the number of the rulers being a mere accident, and their 
 quality alone essential (see end of Book iv.), and that many 
 actual forms of government are intentionally omitted by him 
 as not typical, i.e. as not essentially differing from the main 
 types which he gives. (See 38, 544 D below.) 
 
 544 A 12. 'Whether the best is happiest,' etc. This universal 
 
 connection of excellence and satisfaction is the problem 
 throughout. (Cp. 185. 26, 472 c.) 
 
 C 28. 'Crete and Sparta.' Both fully discussed in Aristotle's 
 Politics. There is little in Aristotle, except, perhaps, in the 
 definitely biological investigation, which is not suggested by 
 Plato. 
 
 33. ' Despotism.' The polar opposition of the unconsti-
 
 BOOK VIII. 313 
 
 tutional monarch or ' despot ' to the constitutional or natural 
 monarch, the ' king,' is quite in harmony with Greek feeling, 
 and is in itself an important rejoinder to the ethical criticisms 
 provoked by the use of force in government. Aristotle, 
 following a hint in Laws, 7156, applies the distinction between 
 public and selfish aim in the ruler (see Republic, 16-29. 338- 
 348) as a general distinction between ' normal ' constitutions, 
 under which he includes kingship, aristocracy, and polity, in 
 which the one, few, or many govern for the general advan- 
 tage, and ' deviations,' tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, in 
 which the one, few, or many govern for their own advantage. 
 Nothing could be more opposed to the ideas of Plato and 
 Aristotle than the contention that democracy is merely ' a 
 form of government.' See Newman, Introduction to Aristotle's 
 Politics, p. 212, for a very full discussion of the classification 
 of constitutions by the Greek philosophers. Throughout 
 these two Books comparison with Aristotle's Politics suggests 
 itself at every turn, and it seems needless to load the com- 
 mentary with remarks which must occur to every one who 
 reads the two together. Mr. Newman's work is an invaluable 
 guide for those who desire to make a thorough study of Greek 
 political ideas. 
 
 36. ' Conspicuously by itself in kind.' Plato here tells us 544 D 
 in effect that he is only taking account of differences of prin- 
 ciple. (See above, 271. 5, 543 D.) 
 
 272. i. ' Equal in point of number.' That every constitution 
 has its own characteristic laws, which to a Greek meant its 
 own type and spirit, is a fact to which Thrasymachus was 
 made to draw attention, 17. 10, 338 E, the differences between 
 legal systems being in fact the ground of views- which regarded 
 society as artificial. In justifying the connection between 
 individual and social character, the point was again taken up, 
 138. 14, 435 E, into a more concrete notion of the spirit of 
 societies as the complement and emanation of the individual ; 
 will, and here the same treatment is repeated. Plato is con- 
 vinced that the rule of society over the individual is not
 
 314 COMPANION TO FLAWS REPUBLIC 
 
 heteronomy but autonomy. (Cp. Wallace, Hegel's Philosophy 
 of Mind, cxxxii.) 
 
 2. ' A tree or rock ' (Odyssey, xix. 163) : an expression used 
 in asking a man his name and family : ' for you are not 
 sprung from a tree or rock,' i.e. you have a human origin. 
 
 544 E ii. 'Who resembles aristocracy,' including kingship: the 
 
 number of the rulers is not essential (see 271. 5, 543 D, and 
 note). 
 
 545 B 28. ' Moral characteristics,' ' ethe,' plural of ' ethos.' 
 
 33. ' Timocracy.' ' Time,' has the double meaning of 
 ' honour,' and ' price ' or ' assessment,' and this form of 
 constitution must not be confounded with that mentioned in 
 Aristotle's Ethics, viii. 10, as Timocracy, viz., a popular con- 
 stitution with a moderate property qualification not the same 
 as oligarchy, which is there, as in Plato, a narrow constitu- 
 tion determined by a property qualification which excludes 
 the greater number. 
 
 Sect. 85. 272. 43> 545276. 24, 548 D. 
 
 The unaccountable deterioration of the normal or perfect state 
 first shows itself in the emergence of inferior natures, in 
 whose hands the level of culture will fall, and ultimately, by 
 error of the rulers, base natures will be chosen into their number. 
 The result will be a struggle and compromise, leaving the inter- 
 mediate psychical element, the warlike and aggressive temper, in 
 predominance, but with a constant tendency to be dragged down 
 to lower forms of selfishness. Such a society will present the 
 features of Sparta. 
 
 545 C 273. 3- ' Originate in the governing body.' This is like 
 Plato's faith in the unconquerableness of the city which is 
 really one (120. 422). Perhaps change may be said to have 
 such deep-seated causes that it seldom comes without symp- 
 toms which extend throughout society. 
 
 E 14. ' Playing with us as children.' Plato here tells us that his 
 explanation is going to be symbolic,"and is not to be taken 
 literally. '
 
 BOOK VIII. 315 
 
 1 8. ' Everything that has come into being must one day 546 A 
 perish ' : all that has a beginning has an end ; the only un- 
 changing reality is the whole reality. I do not propose to 
 annotate the following numerical puzzle, of which I have no 
 new explanation to offer. It seems more important to suggest 
 that where Plato speaks of numerical or geometrical relations 
 as causes (see on Astronomy and Acoustics in the last Book, 
 and much of the Ttmaeus), he seems to be anticipating the 
 establishment of uniformities which his knowledge did not 
 enable him to construct. Here, then, I take him to indicate 
 that unknown causes, whether in nature or in world-history, 
 lying beyond the control of the wisest management at a given 
 level of knowledge and power in the world, will sometimes 
 bring about the deterioration of a people. He does not 
 indeed affirm that such causes are in their nature magical and 
 unknowable, but implies the contrary. Changes of climate, 
 exhaustion of mines, the growth of powerful neighbours under 
 new conditions, the discovery of new countries, the silent 
 march of economic change or of paralysing formalism in the 
 old, and also causes more distinctly biological, relative to the 
 presence or absence of crossing with new types, and the main- 
 tenance of selection with a definite tendency, which Plato 
 perhaps has more especially in mind all these and many 
 more like them are causes which the statesman either cannot 
 recognise till it is too late, or again can hardly hope to control 
 if he does recognise them. And thus there will set in periods 
 of exhaustion or changes of type. Whether a stock ' wears 
 out ' apart from specific causes hostile to its survival I suppose 
 we cannot be said to know. But even without this conception 
 there is ample illustration for Plato's idea that the course of 
 history and natural causation may be too strong for the 
 wisest and greatest statesman, and the greatness of a people 
 may be lost by causes which are not ' their own fault ' in the 
 common meaning of the term. 
 
 274. 6. 'They will be unworthy of it.' The process is re- D 
 presented as very gradual, and beginning with an inexplicable
 
 316 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 change in the quality of the best citizens. Then follows 
 neglect of education, and not till this has produced its results 
 in the succession of ill-qualified persons to the office of rulers 
 can it happen that members of the wholly unfit races are 
 appointed to govern. One does not see why the first set of 
 inferior rulers should not at once have caused the revolution ; 
 but Plato is anxious to emphasise that the primary fault may 
 be mere carelessness negligence in the public education. 
 547 B 2 7- 'I n tne absence of all poverty,' i.e. being rich in 
 
 spiritual wealth. (Cp. Il6. 417, and 243. 521.) 
 C 30. ' To come to an agreement.' All the states and char- 
 acters between kingship and despotism are compromises, in 
 unstable equilibrium in each case a mere transient balance of 
 disorganising forces. (Cp. 276. 8, 548 c, 277- 4> 549> 278. 19, 
 550, 284. 14, 554, 293. 5, 561, 306. 43. 57 2 -) 
 
 31. 'Divide and appropriate.' The first overt act of the 
 deteriorating government is to place the governing class in 
 the possession of private property, which before was confined 
 to the lower ranks, who in the Timocracy are dispossessed. 
 
 275. i. 'An inferior tribe,' lit, 'Perioeci,' the name given 
 to the inhabitants of Laconia who formed the class between 
 'Spartiates' and 'Helots.' The Helots were slaves of Greek 
 blood, an exceptional and dangerous state of things. 
 
 6. ' A kind of mean between.' (See note on 274. 3-) This 
 judgment anticipates the line both of Plato and of Aristotle in 
 criticising the Spartan system a system that seemed to aim 
 so high, yet constantly fell into miserable narrowness and 
 self-aggrandisement. 
 
 D 15. ' In the respect which the warrior class will pay' : the 
 points here insisted on belong to Sparta. The public messes 
 or ' syssitia' were characteristic both of Sparta and of Crete. 
 E 22. ' In its fear of installing the wise in office.' This and the 
 two following paragraphs thoroughly anticipate Aristotle's 
 criticisms on the Spartan constitution, which were no doubt 
 suggested by this passage. (See Politics, ii. 6.) The narrow 
 purpose of the state, he says, reacts on the character of the
 
 BOOK VIII. 317 
 
 citizen and so defeats itself ; ' the city is poor, but the citizens 
 avaricious,' ' the whole scheme of their laws aims at war, which 
 is but a partial excellence.' The self-indulgence connected 
 with the household and the extravagance of the women at 
 Sparta are strongly insisted on by Aristotle. It is remarkable 
 how Plato here treats as a second-rate excellence the warlike 
 capacity for the sake of which his guardians were introduced 
 in Book ir. The present paragraph down to 'character of 
 its own ' describes qualities centering in the ' spirit ' ; the 
 following one portrays tendencies belonging to the appetitive 
 element in its aspect of cupidity, against which the mere narrow 
 pride of the ' spirit,' devoid of true culture, is no defence. 
 
 32. 'Covetous,' lit. 'appetitive': the word begins the 
 sentence, and stamps the character of the disposition 548 A 
 described in it. 
 
 38. 'Walled houses.' See the description of the Spartan 
 house in Pater's ' Lacedsemon,' Plato and Platonism, p. 190, 
 and cp. end of Book HI. 
 
 276. 6. 'Profound philosophical inquiry,' lit. 'discussion 
 and philosophy ' ; perhaps ' criticism and culture ' would give B 
 the meaning. They have some tradition of musical taste and 
 training ; but it is a mere tradition forming one side of a fierce 
 and rough life and a cruel discipline, not the crown and flower 
 of a liberal education. Compare speech of Pericles, Thuc. ii. 
 35 ff., in its allusions to Sparta, with which Plato's expressions 
 in this passage are fundamentally at one. 
 
 7. 'Gymnastic above music' (cp. 107. 410). Gymnastic 
 primarily deals with the 'spirited' element, music with the 
 'philosophic.' See the consequence of this preference in 
 selfish and quarrelsome ambition, three lines below. 
 
 10. ' It is a compound.' See note 274. 27, 547 c. 
 
 276. 24, 548 D 278. 26, 550 E. Sect. 86. 
 
 The ambitious character, in which the ' spirited' 1 part takes 
 the lead, arises from a struggle between high-mindedness and 
 different forms of selfishness, in a society in which high-minded-
 
 318 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 ness finds it hard to make an impression. Ambition, as the 
 higher form of selfishness, thus becomes the riding motive, the 
 mind being guarded against mere greed by some relics of true 
 greatness, which, however, in lapse of time, tend to wear away. 
 
 549 A 35. ' Will not despise slaves, like the perfectly educated 
 man,' and apparently will be cruel to them just because he 
 does not feel himself securely above them. It is implied that 
 the educated man will not be harsh to slaves, just because he 
 realises the inferiority of their life. The term 'despising,' 
 therefore, must be interpreted in a peculiar sense, not incom- 
 patible with courtesy the courtesy of the aristocrat to his 
 inferiors. Still it must describe an attitude of mind which is 
 shocking to modern ideas. 
 
 B 277. 4. ' Will he not always be paying it more respect.' (See 
 note on 274. 30, 547 c.) Plato is bound to depict a sort of 
 Rake's Progress, by the aim and order of his treatment, which 
 goes through the psychological elements one by one in a 
 definite succession. And the connection here indicated is 
 perfectly real ; it is quite true that one form of graspingness 
 may lead on to another and a lower form, obliterating the 
 habit of reflection and the sense of what really makes life 
 worth living. But the upward connection is no less real, and 
 may be traversed in the opposite direction to that which Plato 
 describes. Ambition or pleasure-seeking may hit upon objects 
 and experiences which may lead back to a larger scheme of 
 life. (Cp. the second part of Faust.} 
 
 14. 'The character of the timocratic young man.' The 
 genuine timocratic man, like the full-blown timocratic state, will 
 only come into being after several generations of growing 
 imperfection. (See 274. 6, 546 A.) There will therefore be 
 politically intermediate phases, and socially intermediate 
 generations, which have ceased to be thoroughly aristocratic 
 though not yet completely timocratic. This is no negligence 
 in Plato's account, but is of course profoundly just. The 
 new elements must have been modifying the old society long
 
 BOOK VIII. 319 
 
 before they take shape in political change, and thereby in 
 turn make possible their own completer manifestation in 
 the character of the citizens. 
 
 24. ' From the time when the son listens to his mother's 549 C 
 complaint.' This amusing passage clearly exhibits the fact that 
 all political change of real importance is, as Carlyle said of the 
 French Revolution, a change in the minds of men, and has 
 its counterpart within every household in the effect of the 
 concrete moral and material conditions of the time. It is 
 interesting to note that after all the Greek ladies sometimes 
 expressed their opinions, not without result. 
 
 278. 15. 'Appetitive and spirited element.' (See note 274. 550 B 
 30, 547 c.) He does not give way altogether, but stops short 
 of yielding to the worst influences which act upon him, 
 though he tends more and more to be infected by them, and 
 develops a character which has a certain affinity to that which 
 they tend to develop. He becomes a hard, ambitious, and 
 more or less selfish man of the world. 
 
 278. 27, 550288. 1 8, 552 E. Sect. 87. 
 
 Oligarchy, the political aspect of plutocracy, is the natural 
 result of permitting the house and household to exist (for the 
 governing class ?) as a means of accumulation and object of ex- 
 penditure. Wealth becomes the chief aim of life, and a property 
 qualification is instituted. Such a society is in-governed, divided 
 against itself, and lacks a due apportionment of functions ; and 
 inherent in it are extravagance and pauperism (involving the 
 existence of a criminal class], which are at bottom the same 
 thing. 
 
 278. 27. 'The words of Aeschylus,' adapted from the 55 c 
 Seven against Thebes, 451. 
 
 40. ' A property qualification.' Plato looks at this form of 
 state from a strikingly modern point of view. The constitu- 
 tion of Solon, and in some degree the modification of demo- 
 cracy introduced towards the end of the Peloponnesian war,
 
 320 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 when the Four Hundred were put down, and approved by 
 Thucydides (viii. 97), were founded on the idea of the services 
 which persons of different degrees of wealth were able to 
 render to the state, and were, in intention, classifications 
 according to function. But Plato has in mind, perhaps, a 
 commercial or plutocratic oligarchy like that of Corinth, and 
 consequently views a property qualification as a restriction 
 purely in the interests of wealth. 
 
 550 D 279. 7. 'The influx of gold into .those private treasuries,' 
 
 etc. 'Treasuries,' see 275. 36, 548 A, and Il6. 3, 4160, 
 where the same word as here is rendered ' storehouse.' This 
 passage again, especially ' in the persons of their wives,' is 
 much in the tone of Aristotle's comments on Sparta, although 
 we learn from Demosthenes that private extravagance, com- 
 bined with meanness in public matters, showed itself in the 
 fourth century even under the Athenian democracy. 
 E 22. 'Such a gulf between wealth and virtue.' The tone of 
 this passage is certainly sombre compared to that of the 
 opening scene in which Cephalus appears. 
 
 551 B 43- 'By violence with arms in their hands.' To an 
 
 Athenian, as to ourselves, this would naturally suggest a 
 revolution against a democratic system, such as took place at 
 the establishment of the Four Hundred in 41 1 B.C., or of 
 the Thirty in 404 B.C., and constantly throughout Greece 
 during the Peloponnesian war. It is difficult to realise, and 
 it may almost be doubted whether Plato at the moment 
 remembered, that according to the context he is speaking of 
 the change from an aristocracy of warriors and landowners to 
 a plutocracy. It might be suggested that he is really general- 
 ising the origin of oligarchy, and not restricting his account 
 to his peculiar cycle of polities. 
 
 280. 2. ' By the alarm which they have inspired.' Cer- 
 tainly this is strongly suggestive of the incidents preceding 
 the establishment of the Four Hundred. Cp. Thucydides 
 (viii. 54), ' and the people at first hearing (the arguments of 
 Peisander) were indignant at the proposal of an oligarchy;
 
 BOOK VIII. 321 
 
 but on having it clearly explained to them by Peisander that 
 there was no other safety, they were frightened and gave in.' 
 
 10. ' Elected our pilots on this principle.' (Cp. 202-3. 488 551 C 
 above.) We are apt to be so fixed in the prejudices which 
 Plato was combating, that we cannot at all appreciate the 
 entire disconnection between the basis of social classification 
 as it existed in his mind, and the sort of grounds on which 
 the ' classes ' are contrasted with the ' masses ' to-day. We 
 naturally interpret, for example, the satire of the passage 
 above referred to as, on the whole, a satire upon democracy. 
 But it is not so. Plato has no shadow of our rooted idea 
 which connects wealth, and an appearance of ' distinction ' 
 and exclusiveness, with culture and capacity. His satire is 
 directed impartially against every society which selects its 
 rulers on any other ground than that of their fitness to rule. 
 
 27. 'Become two cities.' (Cp. 121. n, 422 E, the same D 
 expression.) It is hard to believe that all through Plato is 
 not drawing largely from the experience of Athens in the 
 fourth century, although technically, of course, that was not 
 an oligarchy, but an extreme democracy. 
 
 36. ' Oligarchs in the actual battle,' i.e. few in the actual 
 battle. (Cp. 121. 20, 423 A and note.) Here the reference is 
 perhaps to Sparta. 
 
 38. ' Unwilling to pay war-taxes ' : so Aristotle of Sparta 
 (Pol. ii. 6), ' they are bad at paying taxes.' 
 
 281. 2. 'Various occupations': this, of course, is not true 552 A 
 of the Spartan aristocracy. Plato's picture is much general- 
 ised, and full of details from very different sources. Plato's 
 uncompromising objection to versatility is perhaps to us the 
 most difficult and unreal of all his views. If we could see the 
 Athens of his day we should understand better what he was 
 condemning. Even in the idealised picture which Thucydides 
 draws of the greater Athens of the fifth century, we can see 
 that versatility (eutrapelia) was to a dangerous degree the 
 Athenian's boast. Our own civilisation, though it produces 
 occasionally magnificent displays of varied gifts in the same 
 
 x
 
 322 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 individual, rests essentially and increasingly on the specialisa- 
 tion of functions. Our versatility is chiefly ' for ornament,' 
 and this Plato himself would permit. (Cp. 90. 1 7, 396 E, and 
 note Pater's account of Plato's feeling that strength was the 
 one thing needful in the Greece of his day.) 
 
 9. 'Allowing one person to sell all his property and another 
 to buy it.' It was the duty of the guardians to guard against 
 both wealth and poverty, I2O. i, 422 A; but now the ruling 
 class themselves are depicted as possessing property and 
 desiring to increase it without limit. There were restrictions 
 not so much on the sale as on the acquisition of land at 
 Athens, which seem to have operated fairly well till the close 
 of the fifth century. If there is to be property, and for the 
 classes to whom property is permitted, Plato seems inclined 
 to think it should be inalienable. 
 
 ii. ' Without being a recognised portion,' more lit. 'being 
 none of the members of the city.' This is to Plato the essen- 
 tial note of pauperism, and he finds it in the unemployed rich 
 as in the unemployed poor. Poverty is only the outward and 
 visible sign of a pauperism that exists no less in all who are 
 not ' members,' i.e. organs of society. 
 
 55 2 B 16. ' Is not prohibited.' (Cp. 285. 20, 555 c below.) The 
 attempt to make property inalienable is now generally con- 
 demned on the ground that it is thereby kept in the hands of 
 those who have lost the capacity to employ it rightly. ' Home- 
 stead' laws, and the prohibition of seizing tools for debt, apply 
 the principle in a sphere hardly open to such an objection. 
 
 18. 'To be extravagantly rich.' This seems to imply, 
 what is a fallacy, that no one can become rich except at the 
 expense of others. 
 
 27. ' Only a consumer of its resources.' Here Plato lays 
 down what is surely the true doctrine regarding the expendi- 
 ture of the idle as such, as against the fallacy that mere 
 consumption creates employment. 
 
 '',38. ' The stingless ones end in an old age of beggary, the 
 stiilging ones,' etc. The class of useless rich, the pauper
 
 BOOK VIII. 323 
 
 class, and the criminal class, are fundamentally the same, the 
 difference between the useless or criminal poor and their 
 wealthy counterparts being merely external. For one side of 
 the connection, cp. Economic Journal, Dec. 1893, p. 601 : 'I 
 should like to suggest to those who are more familiar with 
 the wealthy section of the residuum, whether they do not find 
 exactly the same characteristics amongst people whom the 
 mere accident of birth has separated from their natural sur- 
 roundings. There is the same insuperable aversion to steady 
 work, the same self-indulgence, the same eager devotion to 
 trifles and absorption in the interests of the moment. All that 
 they need to complete their likeness to their poorer brethren 
 are the dirty homes and squalid surroundings, and if they 
 were left for only a week to their own exertions, there can be 
 little doubt that these also would appear.' Miss H. Dendy 
 on the Industrial Residuum. Plato embodies the underlying 
 facts of character chiefly in the elementary case in which the 
 idle and extravagant rich man himself becomes a beggar ; 
 but the identity of character is no less real when the useless 
 rich man never becomes poor, and the useless poor man has 
 never been rich. Of course in modern pauperism there are 
 other factors, but character remains the chief. 
 
 282. 6. 'Almost all are beggars except the governors.' 552 D 
 ' Beggars,' rather ' poor ' ; the word does not imply mendi- 
 cancy. We would give a good deal to know what societies 
 Plato had in mind when he wrote these words. 
 
 9. ' Keep down by main force,' like the miser's passions. 
 (See 284. 3, 554 c and D.) 
 
 1 2. ' Bad education, and bad training, and a bad condition 
 of the commonwealth.' The connection between bad educa- 
 tion and economical evils forces itself on our notice to-day. 
 Plato is not thinking of technical education, but of the forma- 
 tion of character, which, however, for him, involved training 
 to some form of serviceableness. ' Condition of the common- 
 wealth ' ; rather, ' constitution.' The true social idea is lost, 
 and therefore the economic organisation is bad, and in this
 
 324 
 
 merely reflects the vulgarity of aim and standard into which 
 the social idea has degenerated. (See 279. 26, 551 A.) 
 
 Sect. 88. 282. 19, 552 E 285. 5, 555 A. 
 
 The miserly character is the result of a selfishness which has 
 been terrified out of the path of ambition, and has consequently 
 found its aim in accumulation of the mere means of life, the 
 objects of -what is afterwards defined as ' necessary ' desire. This 
 aim reacts both on the reason, and on the form assumed by the 
 ' spirit ' of self-assertion, and produces a spurious unity in the 
 character, which is really self -discordant, in an unstable equili- 
 brium of appetites ; the extravagant passions being held in check 
 by caution, as beggars and criminals are by the police in the 
 plutocratic city. 
 
 553 B 282. 38. ' The instant the son has seen and felt this.' It 
 might be asked whether this account is compatible with that 
 implied on 279. 55? which seems rather to indicate a 
 natural progression in selfishness. Plato only asks us to 
 imagine that the natural tendency to graspingness, which is 
 inherent in ambition, 277. 4, 549 B, is intensified and narrowed 
 in the individual by experience of the hazards of a public 
 career. The whole description is steeped in the history of 
 Athens, and the disenchantment portrayed as following upon 
 disaster might well be interpreted of the city as of very 
 numerous individuals in it. 
 
 C 283. 2. 'Appetitive and covetous.' The identification of these 
 elements began with treating the industrial class in society 
 as the money-making class or provider of necessaries par 
 excellence, 136. 35, 534 D, and was definitely stated in the 
 moral analysis of the mind, 147. 10, 442 A. 
 
 6. ' The rational (calculative) and high-spirited elements.' 
 The mind must change as a whole, and the reasonings and the 
 type of self-assertion are necessarily moulded by the nature of 
 the dominant purposes. 
 
 26. ' Necessary appetite? anticipates the distinction drawn 
 out 289. 37> 55 8 E
 
 BOOK VIII. 325 
 
 30. ' A sordid man.' Plato's connection of avarice and 554 A 
 appetite is capable of a wider application than the experience 
 of his time had suggested. His miser is the ' thrifty ' man in 
 the bad sense, with no conception of life as a whole ; he is 
 hardly contemplating the audacious speculator or financier, 
 generated by modern conditions, in whom the connection of 
 avarice and extravagance is not latent but full blown. In 
 portraying the oligarchical society he seemed to have in mind 
 a greater degree of wasteful consumption than his description 
 here would indicate. 
 
 284. i. ' Either beggarly or criminal,' both demanding 
 gratification apart from the general welfare of the mental 
 polity, the one class without doing any service, the other by B 
 doing distinct mischief (=the unlawful desires of Book ix. 
 beginning.) 
 
 8. ' Guardians of orphans,' i.e. where they can act without 
 detection or at least without retribution. This passage retorts 
 the argument of Gyges' ring, 42. 360. C 
 
 14. 'Is holding down by a kind of constrained moderation 
 a class of evil appetites.' (Cp. 31, E, below.) These passages 
 should be read in close connection with the account ofD 
 genuine satisfaction of the complete self, and of the develop- 
 ment of moral unity in Book ix. from 313. 577, to the end of 
 the book. If goodness or morality is a harmony of the self, 
 may there not be many such harmonies obtained by extirpation 
 of the higher elements of man's nature, and though comprising 
 a less range of elements, yet just as good harmonies as the 
 fullest ? It is the same question that is raised in Book iv. 
 by the relation of the inner state of the soul to man's 
 function in society. Plato's answer is quite plain throughout. 
 In a true harmony of the soul, the various impulses become 
 elements in what is really a single desire, directed to the 
 organised scheme of life which is such as to afford satisfaction 
 to man's whole nature as a system of co-operating forces. In 
 fact, therefore, the desires (as every desire is characterised by 
 its object) do not remain isolated or exclusive impulses at all,
 
 320 COMPANION TO FLAWS REPUBLIC 
 
 but are modified and spiritualised throughout by the connec- 
 tion which gives them all a work and meaning in subordination 
 to the end of life. But the narrower 'harmonies' are only 
 apparent or external ; they are, as in each of the descending 
 phases of character represented in Book vin. (see note, 274. 
 30, 547 c), compromises between elements which are not recon- 
 ciled, but urge their isolated demands for gratification. Inter- 
 nally, therefore, they are always battling with each other, though 
 the man in whom they do so may present a fair appearance of 
 respectability if caution is stronger in him than passion. This 
 relation to a system, and its absence, is what Aristotle indicates 
 by pleasures being or not being ' according to nature.' Ethics, 
 i. 8, 1 1 : ' most people's pleasures conflict, because they are not 
 so according to nature, but those who love the beauty (of 
 organised life) take pleasure in what is pleasant' according to 
 nature ' ; where see Stewart's note. 
 
 554 D 26. ' Double-minded,' as the plutocracy was two cities; he 
 
 is inwardly divided against himself, 280. 27, 551 D. 
 
 555 A 32. 'A soul attuned to concord and harmony,' more lit. ' of 
 
 his mind being at one with itself and framed (to unity).' 
 
 41. 'Some few parts of himself.' A mutilated self as a 
 plutocracy is a mutilated society, 280. 36, 551 E. 
 
 Sect. 89. 285. 6, 555 B 289. 19, 558 c. 
 
 Democracy arises out of plutocracy Giving to the growth of an 
 impoverished class, which is multiplied by the blind policy of the 
 rulers, who lose sight of political danger in pursuit of their 
 private interest. At the same time their loss of manly qualities 
 becomes evident to their subjects, who become ready to revolt on 
 the slightest external incitement. The establishment of democracy 
 involves the abolition of all property qualification, and also, as a 
 rule, of election by merit, the offices being assigned (as at Athens, 
 with certain important exceptions) by lot. Democracy is 
 essentially the opposite of government by law ; its note is freedom 
 in the sense of anarchy, equality in the sense of disproportion, 
 and nmltiplicity in the sense which excludes imity. 21iis account,
 
 BOOK VIII. 327 
 
 which clearly is a savage caricature of the ' extreme democracy ' 
 of the fourth century at Athens, reminds us in some degree of 
 Dante s satire on Florence, Purgatorio vi. 127. 
 
 285. ii. 'Extravagant wealth, which is publicly acknow- 555 B 
 ledged ' : this rendering misses the point ; more lit. ' owing to 
 insatiate craving for the good which is the object (of oligarchy), 
 namely, that each should become as rich as possible.' Pluto- 
 cracy is overthrown by its devotion to the one-sided view 
 
 of life which it has made its own. Only a complete conception 
 will bear pressing home. A one-sided aim, if strenuously 
 pursued, must defeat itself. See the same principle applied to 
 the good of democracy, 294. 31, 562 c. 
 
 27. ' Acquire a proper amount of temperance,' because the D 
 love of wealth is at bottom one with the sensual element of 
 the mind, the subordination of which to larger purposes is 
 essential to ' temperance.' 
 
 286. 5. ' They wound him by infusing their poisonous E 
 money.' The metaphor of the sting seems for the moment to 
 be used in describing the money-maker, placing him on a 
 level with the criminal class whom he creates. With Plato 
 there could be no question of the good or bad management of 
 industrial armies, as with us. He is thinking of a compact 
 little society, in which normally all have property (the denial 
 of it to the ruling class being an innovation of his own), being 
 disintegrated by fraud and usury on the one side, and idleness 
 and extravagance on the other. 
 
 10. 'To extinguish this great evil.' It is interesting that 556 A 
 Plato should suggest, with but a slight preference between 
 them, two remedies so opposed to each other as the paternally 
 despotic measure of rendering property inalienable, and the 
 individualistically anarchic policy of refusing to enforce money 
 contracts at law. This has been proposed with regard to 
 small debts in our own time. 
 
 287. 14. ' One party from an oligarchical city.' This method E 
 of interfering in the internal politics of other cities in order
 
 328 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 to support the party favourable to the principles and influence 
 of the city that interfered, was constantly employed in Greece, 
 especially by the leading states, in order to maintain their 
 supremacy or retain their allies, and was responsible for much 
 of the bitterness of internal feuds in the towns. The atomic 
 independence of the Greek states really permitted no other 
 means of attempting to build up a permanent connection 
 between them. The Athenian league or empire, which at first 
 fairly attempted to create a common machinery to represent 
 a common interest, broke down under the inherent difficulties 
 of the task. One city became supreme, and disaster could 
 not but follow. 
 
 557 A 24. ' By lot ' ; much as offices needing no great special skill 
 may be taken in rotation. Of course the ' lot ' does secure 
 real representation, so to speak, by sample; the ordeal of 
 election gives weight to special qualities, which may be un- 
 desirable as well as desirable ones. The saying that you 
 might get a fair average House of Commons by taking the 
 first 670 men you meet in the street illustrates the theory of 
 the lot. At Athens it was not employed for offices requiring 
 special administrative or financial skill. How far it was in 
 truth a typically democratic institution may be questioned. 
 B 37. 'Are they not free.' Cp. the account of true free- 
 dom implied in the judgment on the 'tyrannical' soul, 313. 
 
 43. 577 E - 
 
 C 288. 6. 'Embroidered,' same word 289. 16, 558 c 'parti- 
 coloured,' also rendered ' variety,' of rhythm, 94. 38, 399 E, 
 and of the emotional temperament as an object of repre- 
 sentative art, 349. 22, 604 E. The verb and corresponding 
 adjective seem to be used for the work of any decorative art 
 which produces a highly complex effect, painting, inlaying, or 
 embroidery, also curious metal work (perhaps inlaying), in 
 Homer's account of the shield of Achilles, Iliad, xviii. 590. 
 The adjective is used of peacocks, serpents, deer ( = dappled). 
 It seems strangely to chime in with the character which Plato 
 dislikes and in which he finds the root of the weakness of 
 Greece in his day.
 
 BOOK VIII. 329 
 
 19. ' A bazaar of commonwealths ' (' pantopolion ' ), ' where 557 D 
 they sell every kind ' a universal provider's. How, in Plato's 
 view, could there be any features of a good polity in democracy? 
 Cp. 293. 24, 561 D, where the democratic man has his inter- 
 vals of aspiration and self-denial. The chaos and conflict of 
 elements is the point on which Plato is insisting. In the 
 Athens of his time there were the incorruptible laconic Phocion, 
 the patriot orator Demosthenes, the clique of corrupt poli- 
 ticians, the idle self-indulgent rich, the pauperised and 
 self-indulgent poor. I do not say that Demosthenes and 
 Phocion were known men at the date when the Republic was 
 written, but their respective careers, taken with the other 
 circumstances of the age, well illustrate the conflicting ten- 
 dencies which Plato is depicting. 
 
 25. ' Not obliged to hold office,' etc. Cp. Aristotle's Politics, E 
 iv. 4, where the note of the extreme democracy is, as here, 
 the reign of caprice (technically of special 'decrees' or 
 'privileges,') and not of law. Democracy for Aristotle is 
 therefore not a true polity at all, and the real organised and 
 legal system which makes for the good of the whole and not 
 simply of the most numerous class, he would call by a different 
 name, that of ' polity,' par excellence, or ' constitutional govern- 
 ment.' It must be remembered that in the little Greek 
 state there were not the vast restraining forces which exist 
 to-day in the deep-rooted traditions of legislative, executive, 
 and judicial institutions, of the church, the professions and 
 established industries, and the universities. The sovereign 
 assembly was at once legislative and executive ; it was led by 
 no responsible ministry ; it was both administration and par- 
 liament, and differed but little from the judicial body. The 
 temptation besetting such an assembly or the closely analogous 
 jury-courts when passion ran high or necessity seemed urgent 
 can well be imagined. Considering all the circumstances, it is 
 fair to conclude with Grote that the Athenians were an exceed- 
 ingly law-abiding people. Compare with Butcher's Demos- 
 thenes, ch. i., the opposite view strikingly expounded by Holm, 
 Griech. Gesch. iii. c. 13.
 
 330 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 558 A 39. ' Who have been condemned to death or exile.' The 
 discussion in the Crito, 44-5 B and c, and 53 B, about the 
 possibility of Socrates' escape, and its probable consequences 
 to his friends, may perhaps be taken as illustrating the limits 
 of connivance of the authorities at Athens, when there were 
 influential persons interested on behalf of a certain prisoner. 
 C 289. 1 8. 'Whether they are equal or not,' suggesting the 
 idea of proportion as the true kind of equality in a social 
 whole. All depends of course on the attribute which is taken 
 as the basis of the proportion, and on the matters to which it 
 is applied. Plato seems to imply that ' freedom,' i.e. mere free 
 birth, is the standard chosen by the extreme democracy ; this 
 admits of no degrees, except that slaves and perhaps aliens 
 are excluded by it. But the question still arises in what 
 respects the equality is alleged to obtain. If, for instance, 
 equal treatment obtains as between the representative of law 
 as such and the person who resists him, society is destroyed. 
 Plato seems to be pointing to this, but he very probably does 
 not distinguish it from other kinds of equality, which to us 
 would appear desirable. (Cp., however, 293. 21, 561 c.) 
 
 Sect. 90. 289. 20, 558 294. 7, 561 E. 
 
 The genesis of the democratic man', or false liberal (to whom 
 perhaps Aristotle's ''incontinent' corresponds, and his ''profligate ' 
 to the tyrant), has to be explained by making explicit the dis- 
 tinction between ' necessary ' and ' superfluous' desires, implied in 
 the compromise on which the miserly character rested. The false 
 liberal or incontinent character is constituted by a further 
 compromise, by which the ' superfluous ' desires obtain an equal 
 place and estimation in the moral system with the ' necessary ' or 
 thrifty and respectable desires. The secret of the transition is, 
 that these latter had, as we saw in the miser, no power really to 
 modify and transform the affections and impulses into the service 
 of a true and complete purpose, but merely held them down by 
 force, which a change of circumstances must necessarily overcome. 
 The incontinent character, then, is still a compromise, by which a
 
 BOOK VIII. 331 
 
 weary rotation of appetites and aspirations takes the place of an 
 ordered system. It does not achieve the extreme degree of unity 
 of which the bad self may be ideally capable. 
 
 289. 26. 'Under his father's eyes,' etc. Cp. 291. 8, 559 D, 558 D 
 he has had a narrow and sordid education, which gives him no 
 power to resist the taste of pleasure. 
 
 28. ' Those pleasures.' Plato constantly uses pleasure as all 
 but synonymous with desire or the object of desire. This 
 implies the want of a psychological distinction between the 
 object of desire and the pleasure attending the satisfaction of 
 desire. He is often in fact speaking of the former when in 
 set terms he seems to refer to the latter. 
 
 33. 'Necessary and unnecessary appetites.' The whole sig- 
 nificance of society lies in the character of the wants which it 
 enables or ought to enable us to satisfy (see 53. 40, 369 B 
 above and reff.). This further distinction between the desires 
 is needed to maintain the correspondence between types of 
 society and types of character. 
 
 39. ' Our nature cannot help feeling ' : those desires are 
 necessary which we cannot get rid of, and which are advanta- 
 geous to us. He is speaking, according to his psychology, 
 within the limit of the appetitive division of the soul ; hence 
 the person governed by the necessary desires is the miser. In 
 our wide use of the term ' desire ' the person so governed might 
 be the good man but the aims of desire as trained by reason 
 and self-respect do not count for Plato as objects of 'appetite.' 
 The miser is the man who has made the basis of life its sole 
 purpose. 
 
 290. 5. ' Never does us any good,' etc.. What desires come 559 A 
 under this head, as superfluous or even noxious, must of 
 course in some degree depend on the standard of life. Plato 
 illustrates his standard below, in food, e.g., assuming the 
 necessity of meat, but excluding what he thinks luxuries. 
 
 32. ' Expensive,' whereas the others contribute to 'money- C 
 making ' or the production of wealth, the industrious class as
 
 332 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 such being ' chrematistic.' This is meant to be an economical 
 as well as a moral distinction, the distinction between pro- 
 ductive and unproductive expenditure. The word 'expensive ' 
 here is formed from the substantive rendered 'consumer,' 
 28l. 26, 552 B. 
 
 40. ' " Drone " as one burdened with those expensive 
 pleasures and desires ' : cp. I.e. in previous note. The ' drone ' 
 is economically an unproductive consumer, because morally 
 burdened with useless or harmful desires. The miser is a 
 consumer of necessaries only, 283. 554 A, and is a producer; 
 but it does not really follow that the nature of what he pro- 
 duces is advantageous to society. It may be determined by 
 the expenditure of the ' drone.' In any case the miser is 
 injurious, though commonly approved of (I.e.], because his 
 purpose is after all appetitive, though within a narrow class of 
 appetites. This really involves a distinction between luxury, 
 which is drone-like, and refinement, which is not within 
 scope of the miser's life, but belongs only to the educated 
 man, who is the opposite of the drone and miser alike. 
 
 559 D 291. 8. ' In ignorance and parsimony.' (Cp. 289. 26, 558 A.) 
 
 The root of his weakness is that he has never known the real 
 human interests. 
 
 ii. ' Varied,' the same word as 'embroidered,' 288. 6, 
 557 c, where see note. 
 
 560 A 26. ' A genuine struggle of parties ' : the Greek words are 
 
 ' stasis ' and ' anti-stasis.' ' Stasis ' is a term of terrible import 
 in Greek history, being as it were the technical phrase for the 
 civil feuds by which most Greek cities were torn, frequently 
 embittered, as is here described, by external reinforcement of 
 one side or the other. The classical portrayal of a stasis is in 
 Thucydides' account of the ' Corcyraean seditions ' ( Thuc. iii. 
 70-84), which will be again referred to below. The veiled 
 hostility of elements in the miserly nature has blazed up in a 
 frightful war of appetites under the stress of temptation. 
 B 292. 2. ' Beautiful studies ' ; better, as Jowett, ' pursuits,' or 
 even habits ; ' theories,' better ' principles.' This is the danger
 
 BOOK VIII. 333 
 
 of an empty mind. (Cp. ' When the unclean spirit hath gone 
 out of a man,' etc.) 
 
 35. ' Describing insolence as good breeding. ' Cp. 29. 26 ff. } 5 6x 
 348 B, on the altering of the value of words, with this and the 
 preceding paragraph ; and note the famous passage in Thucy- v 
 dides on the Corcyraean seditions, iii. 82: 'And they 
 transposed in their estimation the accustomed values of words 
 as descriptive of actions. Insane audacity was counted as 
 chivalrous courage, and prudent deliberation as plausible 
 cowardice ; temperance seemed an excuse for weakness, and 
 the exercise of intelligence passed for mere inaction.' The 
 whole narrative should be read with care in Jowett's 
 translation. 
 
 37. 'Is not this pretty much the way.' The risk of reaction 
 which attaches to a narrow and sordid education is familiar 
 enough to-day. 
 
 293. 8. ' Make no distinction between his pleasures,' more B 
 lit. 'bring all his pleasures to a sort of equality.' (Cp. 289. 
 1 8, 558 c.) Equality was the watch-word of democracy. 
 The compromise here is not in accepting a mean betwen two 
 sets of passions, as in the timocratic and oligarchic man, but 
 in forming a scheme of 'large ' or 'liberal' life, which includes 
 them all in a mechanical rotation, without genuine unity. 
 
 21. 'All appetites are alike, and ought to be equally re- C 
 spected.' The terms 'alike' and 'equal' have a political 
 ring. They are the actual words by which Aristotle describes 
 the relation of citizens in the true commonwealth, see note at 
 end of Book iv. above. But he knew (I.e.} that to secure this, 
 even imperfectly, would involve limiting the membership of 
 the state, and that likeness of the parts, in a rigid or mechani- 
 cal sense, destroys the conception of an organism. Plato's 
 picture of the middle-aged voluptuary gravely maintaining that 
 all his desires and aspirations ought in fairness to have their 
 turn is a profoundly witty caricature of the false liberal, 
 and too well describes what is often understood by a ' liberal ' 
 or ' unprejudiced ' attitude.
 
 334 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 26. 'And presently putting himself under training.' The 
 clause before this has dropped out in the translation, lit. ' and 
 again water-drinking and emaciating himself,' i.e. taking up a 
 teetotal craze, and fasting. 
 
 561 E 38. ' A man whose motto is Liberty and Equality,' more lit., 
 'an " equal laws " sort of man.' To be a place where ' equal 
 laws' prevailed was the great boast of Athens, e.g. in the 
 drinking song in honour of the tyrannicides : ' I will carry 
 my sword in a bough of myrtle as did Harmodius and Aristo- 
 geiton, when they slew the tyrant, and made Athens a city 
 with equal laws.' Plato's description of the ' liberal' city and 
 character rests of course on taking the equality as that of 
 atoms in an aggregate, and not of members in a living body. 
 It expresses an evil to which all ' liberal ' sentiment and policy 
 is liable, and which is often intermingled in the most subtle 
 degrees with honest effort to realise and obey the true organic 
 necessity or general will. 
 
 41. Variety of his nature,' same word as ' varied,' 291. u, 
 559 D. (See note and reff. ) 
 
 294. i. 'Very many exemplars.' see 288. 19, 557 D and 
 note. 
 
 Sect. 91. 294. 8, 526 A 299. 12, 565 D. 
 
 The characteristics of democracy which favour the transition 
 to despotism. As excessive wealth-worship destroyed oligarchy, so 
 excessive liberty-worship destroys democracy, and by the same 
 means, viz., the dispossessed class, not now regarded merely as 
 beggars and criminals, but including the political adventurer and 
 party-leader. For the three classes of the democracy have only a 
 distant resemblance to the three of aristocracy ; the reasonable 
 or royal class having degenerated into the more respectable rich, 
 the ' spirited ' or executive class into the needy and adventurous 
 politicians and their followers (the lion has become a tiger- 
 monkey, cp. 331. 38, 590 c), and the industrious class alone 
 remaining relatively true to its discharge of function, but even it 
 being demoralised by the leadership of the adventurous. All
 
 BOOK VIII. 335 
 
 three classes strictly correspond to elements of the appetitive 
 kind ; but the reason and the spirited element are inherent in 
 man, and must be taken as having coalesced, in a stunted and 
 distorted form, with the respectable desires and the active impulses. 
 The despot then arises in tJte person of a champion of the 
 commons, whom they nourish as their protector when the rich 
 are forced to make reprisals for the maltreatment to which the 
 adventurers subject them. For the alleged oppression of the rich 
 at Athens, cp. Butcher's Demosthenes, ch. i. ' Did Plato think,' 
 Mr. Neivman asks, ' that Athens would end with a tyranny?' 
 The account here suggested would not at all apply to the 
 oligarchy of the Thirty, from which, hoivever, some details of the 
 nature of despotism were probably borrowed by Plato. 
 
 27. 'Its insatiable craving for the object which it defines to 562 B 
 be supremely good.' (Cp. 285. n, 555 B and note.) Plato 
 throughout this passage describes under the naive metaphor of 
 quantity as ' too much liberty,' what is really not an advance 
 in the direction of liberty at all, but rather, as he depicts it, 
 points to a dissolution of society. The reaction of public 
 anarchy on the temper of the very brute creation is a 
 humorous exaggeration of the principle that the ethos of the 
 commonwealth is the ethos of all who belong to it. 
 
 295. 30. ' The young copy their elders ' ; rather, ' behave as 563 A 
 if they were elders.' 
 
 42. 'Relations subsisting between men and women.' The B 
 context seems to indicate not what this might mean to-day, 
 but merely that the due subordination of woman to man was 
 not observed. There even seems a malicious humour in the 
 juxtaposition of women and the inferior animals. How is 
 this tone reconcilable with the contention of Book v. as to the 
 equality of the sexes ? Plato is here caricaturing an existing 
 state of society, and would be quite content, it might be 
 suggested, to admit the existence of an evil within an evil : 
 first, that the normal and possible life for women under 
 existing conditions was of a low type, and secondly, that by
 
 336 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 mere degeneracy from this type it was made not better, but 
 worse. Nothing is harder at times than to distinguish the 
 rebellion which points upwards from that which points 
 downwards, especially as both may be united in the same 
 person. 
 
 563 C 296. 7. ' The hound is like the mistress,' not, as Jowett, as 
 good as the mistress, but infected with the same anarchy. 
 
 8. ' Horses and asses.' The regulation of traffic is in some 
 degree a real test of social order. 
 
 D 20. ' Whether statute or customary,' lit. ' written or 
 unwritten.' Contrast Thucydides (ii. 37) giving the ideal of 
 Periclean Athens : ' though in our private intercourse we are 
 thus uncritical, yet in matters of public importance there is a 
 fear that prevents us from transgressing, by respect for those 
 who may be our rulers, and for the laws, and more particularly 
 for those which exist to protect the injured, and those which 
 being unwritten have attached to them the sanction of social 
 shame.' Cp. also Sophocles, Antig., 449 ff. and O. T. 863 ff. 
 See, on the other side, chapter i. in Butcher's Demosthenes, 
 but also Holm, I.e. 
 
 E 31. 'To do anything in excess seldom fails to provoke a 
 violent reaction.' The idea of excess practically involves the 
 idea of reaction, if it is assumed that the proportions by which 
 the excess is judged express the true nature of an actual 
 system. But in order to make this principle of value, it would 
 be necessary to keep it in view in determining what constitutes 
 excess. I do not suppose that there is any direct causal 
 connection between the heat of summer and the cold of 
 winter ; i.e. these ' excesses ' are judged of merely by our 
 convenience, and have no causal influence on each other. 
 But social disorganisation must meet with a check, if society 
 has in it any recuperative force, and is not unlikely to meet 
 with a violent check, especially if the social whole has almost 
 lost the capacity for tranquil growth. The latter, however, 
 is the only remedy for disintegration, and Plato seems to 
 exaggerate the necessity for marked oscillations of tendency,
 
 BOOK VIII. 337 
 
 though probably in all history they would in some degree be 
 traceable. 
 
 297. io. ' Stinging and stingless drones.' (Cp. 28l. 36, 564 B 
 552 c.) They first came into existence in the plutocratic state 
 
 as paupers and criminals ; but in the ' democratic ' or dis- 
 organised society they obtain influence as political adventurers, 
 see D 33-5 below. 'The general principles of policy (at 
 Athens in fourth century) were determined, not by the council, 
 but by the regular speakers of the assembly, forming as a rule 
 a small group of ten or twenty men, who led the debates, framed 
 measures, and were the true politicians of Athens.' Butcher, 
 Demostheties, p. 8. Apparently they at times had at command 
 a sort of political claque in the assembly (see Butcher, pp. 9 
 and io) ; but on the whole question cp. Holm, Griech. Gesch. 
 vol. iii. p. 216, who does not accept the picture of Plato and 
 Demosthenes with at all the same degree of reliance as Prof. 
 Butcher, utterly denying the existence of general demoralisa- 
 tion, and deducing the strange and contradictory action of the 
 assembly from the peculiarities of its power and position 
 (without any responsible executive government) referred to 
 above, 288. 25, 557 E. 
 
 298. 2. ' Most orderly by nature.' Thus the whole triple 
 structure in the democratic state consists of persons in whose 
 souls the appetitive ' kind ' is supreme. 
 
 1 8. ' Unless it receives a share of the honey.' This doubt- 565 A 
 less refers to the system of allowances, either in payment for 
 public services, or in order to make possible participation in 
 public enjoyments, which, as practised at Athens, was due in 
 part to the initiative of Pericles. The issue of entrance- 
 money to the theatre to those who claimed it was due to 
 Pericles himself; the payment for acting as jurors was con- 
 nected with his policy ; the payment for taking part in the 
 public assembly (to which this passage seems more especially 
 to refer) is not ascribed to Pericles, nor is it clear at what date 
 it began. The most serious complaints are made, e.g., by 
 Demosthenes, of abuses with respect to the festival fund
 
 338 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 which developed out of the theatre-fee, and it is probable that 
 Plato is not restricting his reference very precisely to any one 
 species of payment. The following paragraph seems to imply 
 something more than such payments, and may have referred 
 to the alleged confiscation of the property of wealthy men, 
 under false pretences, by the jury courts (see Butcher, I.e.) ; but 
 complaints of this kind are' so readily made and listened to 
 that it would not be safe to yield them complete credence 
 without more detailed knowledge than we possess. Cp. Holm, 
 I.e., for the opposite view to that of Prof. Butcher. It would 
 be difficult for any historian to determine what is the actual 
 position of the rich in England to-day from merely studying 
 the special pleadings of popular writers or speakers. 
 
 26. ' Now these despoiled persons.' Compare the story of 
 Socrates' advice to Crito to keep an advocate to protect him 
 from the ' sycophants,' or informers, Xen. Memor. ii. 9 ; and, 
 apparently an echo of the story, Plato's Crito, 45 B. It is a 
 moot point whether the oligarchical troubles of the close of 
 the fifth century at Athens were in any degree attributable to 
 self-defence on the part of the rich, but it is not at all 
 improbable that Plato thought of them as being so. The 
 despotism of the Thirty, however, in no sense sprang out of 
 democratic championship, as described on the following 
 page. That of Dionysius the elder sprang out of a pretended 
 democratic championship. 
 
 Sect. 92. 299. 12, 565 D Close of Book. 
 
 An ideal picture of Despotism, not historical as a ivhole, but 
 with features drawn from various historical instances, largely, 
 it would seem, from Dionysius of Syracuse. What Plato 
 chiefly insists on is the reversal of tendency in the tyrannical 
 government as compared with the true form of government, the 
 selection exercised by the ruler being unnatural, and his position 
 forcing him more and more to rely on the worse elements of 
 society, and on elements not admitted by a Greek to belong to 
 society at all (aliens and slaves). This corresponds for him, no
 
 BOOK VIII. 339 
 
 doubt, to the supremacy, in the mind, of desires which ought not 
 even to exist in a normal character. Among the worse 
 elements of society he places the tragedians, whose works, 
 belonging to the level of ' images,' are the natural counterpart 
 and ally of the lower passions (as is further explained in 
 Book X.). 
 
 299. 21. 'Metamorphosed into a wolf: some legend 565 E 
 of lycanthropy, a widely-spread superstition. See article 
 ' Lycanthropy ' in Encycl. Britannica. 
 
 24. ' The commons' champion.' The most genuine case of a 
 ' tyrant ' arising out of a champion of the poorest class was 
 that of Peisistratus at Athens. But the remaining incidents 
 alluded to in this paragraph appear to belong to the career of 
 Dionysius the elder, at Syracuse. (See Grote, ch. Ixxxi.) It 
 must be remembered that Plato's letters, which Grote holds to 
 be genuine, are by others for the most part taken to be spurious. 
 The story of the generals being stoned in letter vin., which 
 Grote disbelieves, is much more like the attempt of a forger 
 to support and explain this passage of the Republic by help of 
 a blundering tradition, than a mistake of memory on the part 
 of such a writer as Plato. 
 
 31. 'Cancelling debts and re-distributing the land.' See 
 Grote, ch. Ivii., note (near beginning of chapter). Dionysius 
 seized land for his soldiers. Grote points out that the annual 
 oath of the Athenian jurors had a clause protesting against re- 
 division of the land or extinction of debts. But, taken in con- 
 junction with this place and Aristotle's Politics, v. 5, this hardly 
 perhaps sustains Grote's contention that re-division of land as 
 a revolutionary measure cannot with good grounds be ascribed 
 to Greek democracy. But it is true, as he says, that we 
 have no account of an equal partition of all lands by any 
 such democracy. 
 
 40. ' Banished and afterwards restored.' The story of Pei- 566 A 
 sistratus is fully told in Herodotus, and would be well known 
 to Athenians.
 
 340 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 566 B 300. 7. ' Asking the commons for a body-guard,' Peisistratus 
 
 and Dionysius. 
 
 C 17. ' Oracle given to Croesus ' (Hdt. i. 55). Note that this 
 occurs within a few chapters of the account of Peisistratus 
 and his body-guard, ib. 59. Plato and Aristotle were both of 
 them acquainted with Herodotus' history. The fate of 
 Polemarchus would be in Plato's mind. (See note 2. 20, 
 328 B.) 
 
 D 38. ' A smile and a greeting.' The necessary exasperation 
 of a Greek Tyranny as it progresses, however well-intentioned 
 its founder may be, is illustrated by the history of the 
 Peisistratid despotism. (See Hdt., I.e., and Thucyd. vi. 54.) 
 Xenophon's Hiero, in his ' lesser writings,' is well worth reading 
 as a companion piece to this. It is needless to illustrate 
 every detail of Plato's picture, which is not intended to 
 possess historical precision. The accounts in any good 
 history of the Peisistratid and Gelonian dynasties of earlier 
 times, including Xenophon's Hiero, and of the more recent 
 careers of the Thirty at Athens, and of Dionysius the elder at 
 Syracuse, will show the sources of Plato's description. 
 
 567 E 302. 20. 'Taking their slaves from the citizens, emanci- 
 
 pating them, and enrolling them in his own body-guard.' 
 Slaves were normally of non-Greek race, so this is what 
 enlisting a guard of negroes would be in the United States 
 to-day. To a Greek it would seem a natural parallel to the 
 emancipation and supremacy of lusts, which ought not even to 
 exist within the spiritual polity. (See Book ix. beginning.) 
 
 568 A 38. ' Tyrants are wise by converse with the wise.' Compare 
 
 Book i., e.g., 13. 21, 336 A, where a principle quoted from 
 Simonides, the poet, is maliciously ascribed to some great 
 despot. Xenophon represents Simonides as Hiero's friend. 
 See, too, 46-7. 363-4, where the poets rank with the popular 
 theologians and vulgar moralists, and Book x., which justifies 
 the position that poetry, like art in general, is the counterpart 
 of the lowest cognitive and emotional level. It therefore 
 necessarily flourishes in a form of society in which passion
 
 BOOK VIII. 341 
 
 reigns. Cp. for Sophocles' sympathy with despotism the 
 great speech of Oedipus King, 380. The Prometheus of 
 Aeschylus treats Zeus as a tyrant, but not as enviable. 
 
 303. 13. ' By tyrants chiefly and to a smaller extent by 568 C 
 democracy.' Sparta, for example, possessed a theatre, but 
 Attic tragedy would demand a flexibility of mind, and an 
 interest in casuistical puzzles wholly abhorrent to the spirit of 
 the Spartan constitution, and the Spartan theatre was not 
 used for tragedy. (See Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 204.) 
 Athenian democracy was certainly the hearth and home of 
 tragedy, while in oligarchies or aristocracies lyric poetry was 
 more essentially at home. No doubt tyrants would have 
 tragedies represented at their courts, but no dynasty gave rise 
 to original poets like the great men of Athens. For good and 
 evil, Plato's assertion (note the Dantesque metaphor which 
 closes the paragraph) is true on the whole. 
 
 39. ' The son ought to maintain the father.' We must E 
 remember that maintenance of government by taxation was 
 not the normal method in Greece. The city had its property, 
 like a college or city company, out of which its public duties 
 were supposed to be discharged. Plato's aristocrats had 
 been maintained, we might suppose, on a modest portion set 
 aside as constituting the public share, or furnished out of it. 
 But this, like all normal relations, is reversed by the tyranny, 
 which, instead of benefiting the citizens by economy and success 
 in dealing with the public property, turns upon them and 
 demands to be supported by sacrifices of their private 
 property. Thus the oligarchical condition returns, only that 
 now the adventurers are impoverishing the ' respectable ' 
 citizen instead of the latter the former. 
 
 304. 1 6. ' Has taken away his . . . weapons': a character- 569 B 
 istic of despotism, e.g., in the case of the Peisistratids and 
 Dionysius. (Cp. also the relation of imperial Athens to the 
 subject allies.) 
 
 21. 'The frying-pan of the service of free men,' etc., more 
 lit. ' from the smoke of the service of free men into the fire of
 
 342 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 the mastery of slaves.' See the explanation of slavery, 332. 9, 
 590 D. In tyranny 'this is turned upside down' (Xenophon's 
 Hiero). Instead of the divine intelligence reigning, just that 
 reigns which, if the system is to be workable, and so even for 
 its own sake, must be ruled. Thus the polity is incapable of 
 freedom, 313. 42, 577 E.
 
 BOOK IX Sect. 93. 
 
 BOOK ix. init. 306. 29, 572 B. 
 
 To aid in tracing the psychological transition from the average 
 sensual man to the ideal voluptuary (or from the incontinent to the 
 profligate man\ a further class of desires is singled out, within 
 the extravagant or superfluous desires, as vicious or unlawful 
 per se. This element is conceived of as belonging to man's 
 inherent nature, though capable of being suppressed. Its exist- 
 ence ev$n in apparently well-formed characters is shown by 
 
 ' the cursed thoughts that nature 
 Gives way to in repose.' 
 
 305. 1 6. 'To form an original part.' The translators seem 571 B 
 to have taken the Greek word as = ' to be born with.' Perhaps 
 it does not mean more than 'to arise in.' Cp. the image 
 of the composite creature at the close of this Book, which 
 implies the existence of ' wild ' desires in the soul at starting, 
 but by the extreme plasticity which it ascribes to the appeti- 
 tive nature partially recognises the truth, that no kind of 
 natural impulse \sperse good or bad. The rendering adopted 
 here makes a difference in our estimate of Plato's view on 
 this point, though no doubt in some degree he yields to the 
 commonplace tendency to infer from the conflicts of the 
 formed moral being that there are, so to speak, original 
 bundles of ' good ' desires, and again of ' bad ' desires, just as 
 modern popular ethics treats of egoistic and altruistic impulses. 
 But in truth the desire for this or that object is made good 
 
 343
 
 344 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 or bad by its place in the self as a whole. ' I do not know 
 any one inborn propensity which may not be moralised into 
 good or turned into bad.' Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 249. 
 
 306. 2. ' Whenever a man's personal habit is healthful.' 
 This is the passage 'which, for a certain touch of later 
 mysticism in it, we might call Plato's evening prayer.' Pater, 
 Plato and Platonism, 1 24. 
 
 Sect 94. 306. 30, 572 313. 15, 577 B. 
 
 Genesis and character of ' tyrannical ' man the ideal volup- 
 tuary whose soul is entirely dominated by the craving for 
 satisfaction of a single desire, of a kind that ought not to 
 exist in a healthy soul. Though a single passion is sovereign, 
 it brings others in its train as consequences of itself. The 
 ' tyrannical' soul then is one which has lost the capacity of 
 adjustment, and can recognise no system without, because it has 
 abandoned all system ivithin. Examples of it, in private life, 
 are the slave of passion, and the man who is possessed by an 
 impossible craving under the influence of drink or of mental 
 derangement. Their mind is 'tyrannical' in the double sense 
 that it is incapable alike of resisting its craving within, and of 
 understanding that there are forces which will resist the fulfil- 
 ment of it without. If, however, external circumstances give way 
 to such a character, then what he before could be only in dreams 
 or delusions he will be able to realise in actual life. Such a 
 person is the ' tyrannical man,' who is also a ' tyrant,' in whom 
 the lowest depth of unreality the dream-world of the Cave 
 has uncontrolled existence to the greatest possible degree as a fact 
 in life. 
 
 572 D 43. 'He was drawn in two directions.' (See 293. 2, 561 A.) 
 
 307. 2. 'As he imagined.' Plato hardly intended to pro- 
 nounce the 'democratic' life 'neither liberal nor unlawful,' 
 but, 'as he imagined,' does not grammatically qualify the 
 following words. See Jowett, ' not of vulgar and slavish passion, 
 but of what he deemed moderate indulgence in various
 
 BOOK IX. 345 
 
 pleasures.' As his 'moderation ' (reasonableness) only existed 
 in his own opinion, it is implied that the ' neither illiberal nor 
 unlawful ' character of his life existed chiefly in his own 
 esteem ; he secured liberty, he thought, without abandoning 
 law. (Cp. 293. 36, 561 E.) The fact that he had such a 
 judgment at all, that he cared at all what he did, is set down, 
 comparatively speaking, to his credit. 
 
 13. ' Into perfect freedom,' which can hardly be represented 572 E 
 even to himself as being compatible with law, as the demo- 
 cratic man conceived his measure of freedom to be. 
 
 15. 'These intermediate appetites': which? The democratic 
 man gave preference to no class of appetites in particular. 
 According to the distinction of last Section they should be 
 perhaps those extravagant appetites which are not vicious 
 per se. 
 
 19. 'To champion.' The almost technical term used of 
 the democratic leader who becomes a tyrant. (See 299. 6, 
 
 S^S D.) 
 
 23. ' The passion entertained by such men.' Passion is 573 
 here 'eros,' of course defined by the pronoun 'of such men.' 
 See below, 38, 'love,' which represents the same Greek 
 word. Though we quite admit that ' love ' may be a sin or 
 a misfortune, we should probably prefer to use some other 
 word for a passion so viciously tyrannous as that here de- 
 picted, and including, it would appear, any form of sensuous 
 desire. The Greeks were accustomed to regard the love god 
 as terrible, and Plato's psychology hardly furnished the dis- 
 tinction between normal desire and reflective lust (see Ethical 
 Studies, p. 243), so that the wide use of the word ' love ' was 
 more natural for him than for us. 
 
 38. ' Why love has of old been called a tyrant.' Cp. the B 
 chorus of Soph. Antig. 781, 'Love invincible ever,' containing 
 the lines 
 
 ' Who bringest madness wherever thou art, 
 And turnest to sin the just of heart." 
 
 308. 7. 'Wine, or love, or insanity.' (Cp. almost the same C
 
 346 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 juxtaposition, 90. 8, 396 D.) Bearing in mind that the true 
 philosopher is for Plato the true lover, we see how completely 
 in substance he held the moral value of a passion to depend 
 on its relation to the harmony of the moral organism, a relation 
 which, of course, transforms the passion itself. 
 
 573 E 26. ' Schemes for raising money, and consequent loss of 
 
 property.' The connection of sensuality and greed, which was 
 partly disguised in the miserly character, now reveals itself in 
 frightful forms. 
 
 574 B 309. 1 8. 'His very own indispensable mother,' ' indispen- 
 
 sable/ lit., 'necessary.' The use of this term is here inde- 
 scribably significant and pathetic. First, the word indicates 
 kinship ; a man's relations, or what we call his ' belongings,' 
 are to a Greek his ' necessaries,' and in this meaning there is 
 a suggestion of the sanctity attaching to the social framework, 
 the roots of life. Then, and especially in the context of Plato's 
 argument, it indicates ' necessary ' as opposed to ' the super- 
 fluous ' or to ' luxury,' and the pathos of this is deepened by 
 the contrast of the beautiful friend and the no longer beautiful 
 parent. 
 
 D 37. 'Just opinions which he held from childhood.' (See 
 266. 26, 538 c.) There is a point at which the study of 
 dialectic apparently shares a feature with the rake's progress, 
 and at this point there is a real risk for the student which 
 'demands great precaution.' 
 
 310. i. 'Only in the dreams of sleep.' Note this with 
 reference to the interpretation of 311. 35, 576 B. 
 
 575 B 26. 'Theft, burglary, cutting purses.' The argument has 
 
 the allegations of Book i. in view, and accepts the position 
 there taken up by Thrasymachus, that ' the cut-purse tribe ' is 
 simply the tyrant character as seen in private station. (See 
 24. 1 6, 344 B, and 29. 34, 348 D.) 
 
 D 40. 'Mightiest and hugest tyrant.' This might be inter- 
 preted so as to have some truth, but perhaps it was hardly 
 meant to be historically criticised. It might be true that the 
 leader's mind may have a more intense quality and more
 
 BOOK IX. 347 
 
 extensive range of selfish ambition or greed than the minds of 
 his followers, but it can hardly be true that he is more wholly 
 swallowed up in appetitive craving. This would be fatal to 
 capacity, and there is always some capacity in the leaders of 
 men. Plato is desirous to treat the most prominent example 
 as the most typical ; but the fact is not always so. 
 
 311. 3. 'Will chastise his fatherland.' External circum- 
 cumstances in some cases will fool him to the top of his bent, 
 so that the tyrannical character may display itself on the 
 largest scene. 
 
 33. ' He is one whose ideal and waking state.' The Greek 576 B 
 is very elliptical, and perhaps it would be allowable to render 
 
 it ' one who is in waking reality what we described to take 
 place in dreams.' (See 310. i ff., 574 D, and 314. 40, 578 c.) 
 His misfortune is that circumstances indulge him. 
 
 312. 7. ' Proved to be most vicious.' This seems to be a C 
 conclusion at first sight from the character of the individual as 
 depicted just above. Then Plato returns to the comparison 
 of societies and individuals. 
 
 26. ' Creep into every part of it and look about.' Plato is D 
 pretending to carry out his method very strictly, and thus in 
 speaking of the society he neglects what he has learnt about 
 the tyrant as individual, and scrutinises the city as a whole, 
 this being the standard by which (Book iv. ///.) happiness 
 in a society is always to be measured. He almost seems to 
 admit that if you look at the tyrant from outside as a single 
 part of society, and not as himself a complex organism, you 
 might think him to be happy. 
 
 34. ' Penetrate into a man's character.' When we come to 577 A 
 judge of the individuals, then we are to scrutinise their char- 
 acters as complex wholes, with regard to the happiness or 
 satisfaction which they, as systematic organisms, obtain in 
 
 life. (Cp. 313. 43, 577 E.) 
 
 313. 4. ' His theatrical garb,' more lit, ' his tragic array.' B 
 Again a feeling of the kinship between the shows of tyranny 
 and those of tragedy.
 
 348 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 95. 313. 1 6, 577 317. 30, 580 c. 
 
 This is the first of three remarkable arguments which sum up 
 the comparison of the just or reasonable life with the immoral or 
 unreasonable life, taking the two as exhibited in the whole pre- 
 vious discussion. All three of them deal in different forms with 
 the relation of part to whole, i.e. with the impossibility that a 
 satisfaction adequate to the nature of a human or moral self 
 should be obtained in the shape of an object of any partial desire, 
 unadjusted to the ' natural* system which is represented by the 
 reason. In the present Section the comparison of state and in- 
 dividual is retained, but not in the two later. Here it is applied, 
 firstly, to point out the impossibility of true freedom or satisfac- 
 tion in the soul of the ideal voluptuary ; and, secondly, to lay 
 stress on the spiritual desolation to which such a soul is reduced 
 by being called upon to reign, and consequently withdrawn from 
 the ordinary supports and constraints which regtdate private life. 
 
 577 E 313. 42. ' The soul also, which is the seat of a tyranny.' 
 The stress is on regarding it as a whole, just as with a city in 
 which nearly all are slaves, though some prominent persons 
 may think themselves free. As a whole, the voluptuary's soul 
 is not free, because it has not any formed purpose capable of 
 satisfying it as a whole. So whatever it does, it has always a 
 craving for something in conflict therewith. It may be as well 
 to point out, in case this portrait should strike the reader as 
 overcharged and unreal, compared with the comfortably and 
 thoughtlessly selfish lives which we see, that these could mostly 
 be classed as compromises under one of the foregoing types, 
 and that by making this no longer a compromise, but the very 
 rule of iniquity, Plato indicates that it is not a portrait of an 
 actual permanent life, but an attempt to depict the bad self 
 in a degree of purity in which it could not maintain actual 
 existence. But the results depicted no doubt are realised in 
 various degrees, and especially in crises at which a distracted 
 nature awakes to the full consciousness of its distraction. Note
 
 BOOK IX. 349 
 
 that the opposite of moral freedom is for Plato not necessity 
 but slavery. 
 
 8. 'Poverty-stricken and craving.' This is worked out on 578 A 
 more psychological ground in the third argument. (See 324. 14, 
 585 A, and cp. close of Book in. for the notion of spiritual riches.) 
 
 39. ' The man who being tyrannical is prevented from living c 
 a private life.' The rhetoric of this passage is a reply to that 
 of Thrasymachus, 24. 6, 344 A. Try ' the man who, being of 
 tyrannical mind, lives no private life, but is unfortunate, and by 
 some circumstance has given to him the opening to become a 
 tyrant.' For the nature of the 'tyrannical' soul, which should 
 really be called by some more passive term, e.g. 'the tyrannised 
 soul,' see 308. 8, 573 above. When he becomes a despot 
 society ceases to exercise its controlling force on him, and he 
 is like a lunatic who has escaped from treatment. Absolutely 
 uncontrolled egoism passes into insanity. There is a sug- 
 gestive study of the insanity of despots in Freytag's novel, 
 Die verlorene Handschrift. 
 
 315. 12. 'By considering the individual case ' : an interesting D 
 but rather shocking side-light on slavery in Greece. Plato 
 does not attempt to suggest that the slaves acquiesced in the 
 arrangement. 
 
 316. 3. In a similar prison,' i.e. surrounded by powers the 579 B 
 other Greek states hostile to tyranny. 
 
 17, 'The only citizen that is precluded.' This point is 
 urged in Xenophon's Hiero. 
 
 21. 'Diseased and incontinent body.' His passions and 
 impulses are like the slaves of the proprietor or the subjects of 
 the tyrant ; and when he becomes despot he is put in a 
 position where the normal assistance afforded by society to the 
 normal organisation of its members wholly fails him, and 
 he has to rule others, who are all the time, as individuals, 
 infecting his rebellious passions by their own, though he is 
 unable to rule himself even were he alone. For the normal 
 reinforcement furnished by society to the individual moral 
 organism, cp. 53. 40, 369 B, and 332. 8, 590 D.
 
 350 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 580 A 317. 2. ' In virtue of his power, becoming more and 
 more ' ; the tendency of the despot to be forced from bad 
 to worse by his false position, which actually reverses the 
 normal direction of social constraint, and makes goodness a 
 hostile force, was historically displayed in the Peisistratid 
 dynasty, and in the fate of the thirty oligarchs at Athens. 
 
 Sect. 96. 317. 30, 580 D 321. 30, 583 A. 
 
 This argument (strikingly parallel to Mill's plea for the 
 difference of quality in pleasures, Utilitarianism, p. 12 ff.) is, 
 like the following one, strictly Hedonistic inform. It makes no 
 direct appeal to the ' happiness ' of a whole as its harmony or 
 working system, but starts from the conception of three kinds of 
 pleasure, correlative to three kinds of desire, which correspond to 
 the three psychological elements of the soul. Only the mention 
 of three principles, or forms of self-rule, suggests at starting 
 the comparison of lives as a whole. Formally, the judgment is 
 to be passed on the pleasures of greed, the pleasures of ambition, 
 and the pleasures of the search for truth. The search for 
 truth is not the same thing as the intelligently unified life of a 
 moral being, and the statement is at first therefore somewhat 
 off the track. In assuming, however, that each pleasure may 
 be represented by the life of a man who, by the hypothesis, prefers 
 the life he lives, the starting-point is somewhat rectified, and it 
 becomes clear that the comparison is after all between types of 
 life, though still in respect of their pleasantness. The lover of 
 wisdom, it is lirged, has experience of all three species of 
 pleasure, while the man of ambition, and of greed, respectively, 
 lack the experience of the grades above them. And the lover 
 of wisdom stands alone in possessing the organ of judgment. 
 His preference, therefore, is final, both on the ground of 
 experience and on that of capacity. In this circuitous way it is 
 made clear that the life of the ' lover of wisdom ' includes the 
 lives of the other two, while theirs does not include his, and 
 therefore the comparison is by implication not one of part 
 against part, but one of whole against part. We should not
 
 BOOK IX, 351 
 
 venture to pronounce in favour of a life of mere intellectual 
 self-indulgence, either as against a life of active ambition, or 
 as against a life of commercial or industrial acquisitiveness, 
 whether on moral or on Hedonistic grounds. It is only in 
 as far as the intelligent life implies a more adequate object 
 for the whole man, a larger and more harmonious being, 
 that it claims ethical priority. PlatJs argument, like Milfs, 
 suggests, but does not arrive at, this conclusion. 
 
 317. 42. ' Three appetites, and governing principles,' or 580 D 
 perhaps ' modes of self-government.' ' Appetite,' or ' desire,' 
 used in reference to intellectual objects. (Cp. 2. 37, 328 D.) 
 Strictly, we have here appetites outside the appetitive part, 
 
 and governing principles outside the reasoning part, which 
 alone can hold principles. This would suffice to show that 
 we are dealing with formed types of life, in each of which all 
 the elements are represented with the modification by which 
 those types are arrived at. A long process has been gone 
 through, for example, before the love-impulse, originally 
 sensuous, and belonging to the appetitive species, has been 
 disciplined and elevated (see 330. 588) so as to become a 
 hunger and thirst, 199. 25, 485 E, for knowledge. The 
 ' philosophical part ' itself is animal in its primary form, and 
 the distinction of it from the appetitive part is hardly at first 
 a pure psychological distinction. 
 
 318. 2. ' The organ whereby a man learns.' If this is taken 
 as involving an element of desire for knowledge its own 
 ' appetite ' it is of course a great deal more than the abstract 
 intelligence. 
 
 319. 18. 'The lover of wisdom regards all the other 581 D 
 pleasures.' For Plato's conception of the passion for truth 
 
 and its effects on the whole man, see 199. 25, 485 E. Plato 
 does not here or in the following argument, though he does 
 in the Philebus, 21 B, adhere to the modern conception of 
 pleasure as a mere abstraction, the degree of agreeable 
 feeling regarded as an end to which all else is a means. In 
 the light of this conception his assertion about the pleasantness
 
 352 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 of study could hardly be established, nor, if it were established, 
 would it have ethical value. But he practically treats pleasure 
 as a term under which all objects of desire may be ranked, 
 though it includes states which are not taken as objects of 
 desire ; and therefore when speaking of superior pleasures he 
 really means more desirable purposes. The proof that the 
 works of the intelligence are the more desirable is substantially 
 to be drawn from the lessons of the whole dialogue, as to the 
 place and function of the intelligence in life. The passion for 
 truth, as we understand it, is only a part of this function, but 
 we may better appreciate what it meant for Plato if we take 
 it to include the passion for thoroughness and reality in all 
 thought and conduct. 
 
 581 E 23. 'If not necessary, he would feel no desire for them'; 
 
 rather, 'he would not want them.' Here ' necessary ' = ' indis- 
 pensable ' with a suggestion of ' subordinate ' or mere sine qua 
 non. The higher life involves the lower, but the lower does 
 not involve the higher ; and to live for what is ' necessary ' is 
 to make an end of the means. Yet the subsequent argument 
 urges that the inferior parts obtain their appropriate plea- 
 sure only when the reason guides, and this is by implication 
 their most satisfying and perhaps even their pleasantest 
 pleasure. 
 
 582 A 29. ' In reference merely to their position in the scale of 
 
 pleasure'; this is the formal point of the argument, but it 
 cannot be established in strictness, at least on such grounds as 
 those here adduced. It is a fatal objection, on Hedonistic 
 principles, that by the hypothesis the 'judge ' has not a pure 
 and undistracted experience of the lower life. 
 D 320. 42. ' Reasoning is, in an especial degree, the organ of 
 the lover of wisdom.' This is perhaps a good argument to 
 prove that the man of culture is pre-eminently competent to 
 appraise the value of different ideals of life, but it is not a 
 good argument to prove that he is a good judge of degrees of 
 agreeable feeling in lives fundamenally different from his own. 
 
 583 A 321. 25. 'Then the pleasure of the lover of gain is to be
 
 BOOK IX. 353 
 
 placed last.' The more vicious side of appetitive satisfaction is 
 not insisted on, as it is in the more psychological treatment of 
 the subsequent argument. The purpose has been rather to 
 take the verdict of a critic who sees the whole of life, on 
 the prominent types of character in a fairly normal form. 
 
 321. 30, 583 A 327. 39, 587 B. Sect. 97. 
 
 The argument falls into two parts, besides an application of 
 its conclusion to the ' spirited* element. The first part rests on 
 the distinction between relative or negative and absolute or 
 positive pleasures, treating the former as illusory, and illustrat- 
 ing the illusion involved in them by a distance traversed in 
 space, of which the terminus is misjudged, though the starting- 
 point and direction are known. Those whose idea of pleasure 
 is drawn from the cessation of pain or of a painful craving, as 
 in the satisfaction of desire, are mistaking the point of indiffer- 
 ence for the region of positive pleasure, which lies beyond it, and 
 to which they have never attained. Their ' pleasure ' is there- 
 fore a delusion. 
 
 Then with 324. 27, 585 A a parallel discussion is entered on, 
 which treats 'pleasures* (now clearly = satisfactions or objects 
 of desire) from the point of view of degrees of reality. The in- 
 complete or complete relation to the whole self which in the first 
 part appeared as mere relativity or negativity and their oppo- 
 sites, now appears as want of tnieness, or want of kinship with 
 reality, and their opposites. Therefore the 'pleasures ' of the 
 votaries of sensuous enjoyment have not the character of '' true- 
 ness ' or c reality ' they break down, like a bad theory, when 
 new situations and experiences present themselves. 
 
 Finally these conclusions are applied to the ambitious as well 
 as to the sensuous nature. And this application suggests the infer- 
 ence that if in any degree a ' true pleasure ' can be shared in by 
 the two lower elements of mind, it must be that attendant upon 
 those impulses in each which are guided by the intelligence, 
 and in such a satisfaction these selected impulses may be said 
 to find their proper and highest pleasure. That is to say, 
 
 z
 
 354 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 objects of desire which are a disastrous failure when we attempt 
 to fill our lives with them, may yet add greatly to the zest of life 
 if they receive their spirit from our deeper purposes and merely 
 tinge our moods with their own freshness. In so far as this is 
 not the case, the whole frame of mind is distorted, and all 
 members of it are wrenched away from their true and normal 
 pleasures. The ^vorst instance of this is in the supremacy of the 
 profligate impulses, and the profligate or tyrannical mind is 
 therefore furthest removed from real satisfaction, such as to be 
 organically suited to the structure of the soul. 
 
 5836 34. 'Unreal and ungenuine,' 'unreal '=' not having the 
 quality of trueness' (see 230. 23, 508 E and note); 'un- 
 genuine' 'not pure,' i.e. not unmixed with pain. 
 
 'Slight as the rude outline of a picture,' lit. 'drawn in 
 (light and) shade.' Cp. 346. 12, 602 c, from which context it 
 seems likely that deceptive painting to represent stonework is 
 meant, like that on the ceiling of Milan Cathedral. The point 
 would be then that the pleasure pretended to be solid, but was 
 not. 
 
 C 322. 5. 'There is a point midway between the two at which 
 the mind reposes from both.' The assumption of neutral or 
 indifferent feeling. (See Sully, Human Mind, ii. 5, and cp. on 
 the whole subject, and especially on the illusions possible 
 with regard to pleasure, Bradley in Mind, xiii. 2 ff.) Plato's 
 suggestion is that states normally indifferent can become 
 pleasant by mere contrast. 
 
 1 2. ' Nothing is pleasanter than health,' etc. Health had 
 always been a neutral state, but by contrast has become 
 pleasant. 
 
 D 24. ' This relief does become positively pleasant and de- 
 lightful.' 'Positively' is an insertion here and in the last 
 sentence, but Plato means it ; literally, ' pleasant and accept- 
 able.' The second word tones down the first, as if to smooth 
 the transition from a neutral to a positive state. Plato's 
 observations are true as far as they go, and in fact the
 
 BOOK IX. 355 
 
 purely negative character of pleasure is maintained, e.g., by 
 Schopenhauer. It is true that a state of indifference if there 
 is such a state or even a state of pain, may be turned into a 
 pleasurable state by mere contrast with the memory of pain or 
 of worse pain. But it does not follow from this that pleasure 
 is purely ' relative ' or ' negative ' and pain the only ' positive.' 
 Suggestion or judgment that we are better off than we 
 were may actually modify our feeling. People constantly 
 feel better if you can make them believe they feel better 
 (Bradley, I.e.}. In these cases there is first an illusion of 
 judgment, which is quite possible with regard to a complex 
 state of ourselves, and then a positive change produced by 
 this illusion. Thus it would not be a just criticism to meet 
 Plato or modern pessimists with the simple answer, ' we 
 cannot mistake our own feelings,' for it is plain that in com- 
 plex cases we can. But on the other hand, while admitting 
 the possibility of illusion, it is not necessary to admit the infer- 
 ence that pleasure as such is illusory. Supposing, e.g., that 
 pleasure attends all sensation as such, there will always be a 
 supply of positively pleasurable elements, but the question 
 will be how far these are attended to. Here estimated con- 
 trast and suggestion may have any amount of modifying 
 effect. It is most important to notice that Plato does not 
 hold all pleasure to be negative, but, on the contrary, classes 
 all true pleasure as positive. 
 
 26. 'The repose from pleasure will be painful.' This, it 
 would seem (i) can only apply to the higher life, where 583 E 
 positive or true pleasure (joy) has been enjoyed, for none 
 other is above the point of repose or indifference ; and if so, 
 it suggests that the pains which may intervene between true 
 pleasures are unreal, just as are the pleasures which intervene 
 between painful sensuous cravings ; or (2) is the repose here 
 mentioned a merely relative repose, not the point of indiffer- 
 ence on the pleasure-pain scale, but an element of contrast by 
 which the cessation of illusory pleasure (felt as if positive 
 'joy') intensifies the misery of the subsequent (actual) pain?
 
 356 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 There is something that suggests this in Philebus 42 A : 
 'the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement 
 when placed side by side with the pains, and the pains 
 when placed side by side with the pleasures? (Cp. 323. 4, 
 584 A, and following note.) 
 
 28. The repose must be now the one and now the other.' 
 If we apply to this saying the idea of a scale of pain and 
 pleasure with a point of indifference between, introduced on 
 the following page, it makes the second interpretation suggested 
 in the previous note impossible. The pain caused by absence 
 of a pleasure of the lower kind (which pleasure is by the 
 hypothesis illusory, and is nothing but the central state of 
 mere repose) cannot itself be the central state of mere repose, 
 but must be a descent below repose, viz., must be real pain, 324. 
 1 8, 585 A. But if we are thus forced back on the first inter- 
 pretation in the previous note, then the contradiction, that the 
 central state of repose or point of indifference is now taken for 
 pleasure and now for pain, does not exist within the appetitive 
 life. In the appetitive life repose would always be pleasure, 
 in the philosophic life it would always be pain, though there 
 might be real pain as well. Of course, if we conceive the two 
 lives as not strictly separated, as in reality they are not, the 
 difficulty disappears. 
 
 35. Emotions,' lit. ' motions.' (Cp. Sidgwick, History of 
 Ethics, p. 50 and note, with reference to Timaeus 64-5.) 
 'Sensation is there explained as the result of molecular 
 movement in parts of the body whose minute particles are 
 in a mobile condition. If the movement is a violent and 
 sudden disturbance of the part affected out of its natural state, 
 the result is pain ; while the restoration of the organ to its 
 natural state produces pleasure. But either disturbance or 
 restoration may be gradual and imperceptible, so that there 
 may be pain without consequent pleasure, and pleasure with- 
 out antecedent pain.' 
 
 584 A 43- ' O r tne absence of pleasure as painful.' It is impossible 
 to treat both pleasure and pain as merely negative. (See note
 
 BOOK IX. 357 
 
 on 26.) Either the 'absence of pleasure '=the interval be- 
 tween true or positive pleasures, which is a neutral state mis- 
 taken for pain, or the 'absence of pleasure '= the interval 
 between illusory pleasures, containing a real pain, out of a 
 contrast with which the illusory pleasure sprang. 
 
 323. 3. ' Is not really, but only appears to be.' It is not 
 necessary for the argument to assume that the state of 
 neutrality exists ; we only need the admission that ' one and 
 the same state may be pleasant or painful because of its rela- 
 tions.' Bradley, I.e. 
 
 10. ' Pleasures which do not grow out of pain.' There are B 
 non-illusory pleasures, which proves that the relative or nega- 
 tive (illusory) pleasures are not strictly pleasures at all, and 
 pleasure as such is not the mere negative of pain. There is 
 much confusion in modern writers with regard to Plato's view 
 on this point, owing to the fact that in the present passage he 
 analyses as merely negative many 'so-called pleasures' (27 
 below), and it is forgotten how very explicit his theoretical 
 conclusion is as expressed here and again (c 23 below), that 
 pleasure is not mere relief from pain. 
 
 1 8. 'The pleasures of smell ' : an excellent example, urged 
 by Mr. Bradley, I.e. Compare the very important discussion, 
 Philebus 51, in which to the pleasures of smell are added 
 those of colour, form, and tone, together with the pleasures 
 of knowledge, as examples of ' pure ' pleasures, i.e. not mixed 
 with pain, and not merely relative. 
 
 24. 'Most of the so called pleasures.' Note the cautious C 
 reserve of this statement. In the Phikbus 46 E, he takes as 
 a leading . instance of pleasure inseparable from pain the 
 pleasure of irritating an itching place. 
 
 35. 'In the nature of things a real Above and Below.' D 
 Contrast with this a wonderful passage in the Timaeus 62 c, 
 and Mr. Archer Hind's note. I quote from his translation : 
 ' This being the nature of the universe (viz., ' spherical ') 
 how can one describe any of the said points as upper or 
 lower without justly being censured for using irrelevant terms ?
 
 358 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 For the centre cannot properly be described as being above 
 or below, but simply at the centre ; while the circumference 
 is neither itself central nor has any difference between the 
 points on its surface^ so that one has a different relation to 
 the centre from another point. . . . Indeed, if we were to 
 walk round the sphere, frequently as we stood at the antipodes 
 ('antipous') of our former position we should call the same 
 point on its surface successively 'above' and 'below.' For 
 this universe being spherical, as we said just now, no rational 
 man can speak of one region as upper, and another as 
 lower.' 
 
 For the purpose of the simile it is enough to imagine any 
 distance with an identifiable starting-point and direction. 
 
 324. 7. 'And would be right in so thinking.' His pain, the 
 identifiable starting-point, is real, though perhaps intensified 
 by juxtaposition with the supposed pleasure of relief. 
 
 10. ' Not acquainted with the real Above, and Between and 
 Below.' He does not know how much further he might have 
 advanced, and therefore does not rightly estimate even the 
 ' below ' which he knows. Could there be implied an antici- 
 pation of the doctrine of the Timaeus, which suggests that the 
 true 'above' for the mind is where its kindred lies, in the 
 region of intelligence to which it is attracted as like to like ? 
 (Cp. the rectification of a vulgar misconception of 'above,' 
 254. 529, and the account of the true affinities of the soul, 
 358. 611 E.) 
 
 585 A J 8- 'Are really in pain.' (See note on 322. 43, 584 A.) 
 Pain is the positive in regard to certain pleasures. 
 
 20. 'Fulness of pleasure,' lit. 'filling and pleasure ' = 
 'filling, i.e. pleasure.' Plato's idea was that pleasure was 
 always attendant on, or as he would say, actually consisted 
 in, the process which re-adjusted some disturbance, or re- 
 supplied some depletion, whether bodily or mental, in the 
 living organism. See Sidgwick, quoted above, on 322. 35, 
 583 E, and the second portion of the present argument, 
 especially 34, which shows, moreover, in what sense the
 
 BOOK IX. 359 
 
 satisfaction of vulgar desire is here pronounced not to be a 
 (real) filling, though of course it is a sort of filling. Plato's 
 own conception of pleasure the emptiness previous to which is 
 not perceptible (see Sidgwick, cited above) leads up to the 
 criticism passed on him by Aristotle, especially Eth. x. 4, 4, 
 and endorsed in one way or another by most modern 
 thought, that pleasure is not essentially a process up to an 
 equilibrium, but is complete while it lasts, and is the 
 accompaniment of all psychical life when not obstructed or 
 discordant. Although Aristotle carries the theory a step 
 further than Plato, a careful student will see that he founds 
 himself on Plato's distinction and examples, e.g. Eth. x. 3, 7, 
 (cp. Phikbus 51-2), 'there is no previous pain involved in 
 the pleasures of the mathematician, nor, among the sensuous 
 pleasures, in those of smell, nor, again, in many kinds of sights 
 and sounds, nor in memories and hopes,' and vii. 12, 2, 
 'there are pleasures which involve no previous pain or 
 appetite.' We must clearly bear in mind that Plato draws 
 his theory of true pleasure only from the class of feelings 
 referred to in these two passages, which follow his distinction. 
 Aristotle both re-states in an improved form the theory of 
 these higher pleasures, and a very marked advance applies 
 the improved theory to explain the so-called lower pleasures 
 as ' a reaction of the organism, qua unimpaired, against the 
 pain and want of its partially impaired condition.' Stewart on 
 Ethics vii. 12, 2. But granting that there is an element of 
 positive pleasure in the satisfaction of the sensuous desires, 
 it remains true that the recurrent uneasiness of craving is 
 essential to the recurrence of the pleasures of such satisfaction, 
 and that those who take these pleasures for a main object of 
 life are under illusions as to their pleasantness, both because 
 of the contrast with uneasiness which their nature involves, 
 and because they have not experience of activities, which are 
 able to engage the mind in a more complete and harmonious 
 way. This latter point is now to be insisted on in the 
 second portion of the argument. (See Section-heading.)
 
 360 
 
 585 B 34- ' The man who eats, and the man who gets under- 
 standing, be filled.' (See previous note.) 
 
 37. 'And will fulness induced by a real substance,' etc. 
 Plato's figure, which he applies throughout his theory of 
 pleasure, is quite simple and natural, though open to the 
 criticisms pointed out above, and the whole passage should be 
 as literally rendered as possible. Here, ' Is filling more real 
 (' true ') with that which is in a higher degree or with that 
 which is in a lower degree ? ' lit., with what is more (adverb) 
 or what is less (adverb). 
 
 40. ' The more real the substance,' etc., lit. ' plainly, with 
 the more ' (the Greek has only four words) ; i.e. filling with 
 what has the higher degree of being is more real filling than 
 filling with what has the lower degree of being. If the idea 
 of degrees of reality has any meaning to the reader, this 
 whole argument runs quite easily ; if not, it cannot be under- 
 stood at all. (See chapter on ' Degrees of Truth and Reality ' 
 in Bradley's Appearance and Reality. ) 
 
 42. ' Do you think that pure being,' more lit. ' which 
 kinds do you think partake of more pure being (or ' more 
 of pure being ') ? Things like bread, and meat, and drink, and, 
 in short, all nourishment, or the kind which consists of true 
 C opinion, and science, and intelligence., and, in short, all 
 excellence ? Judge it in this way. Which do you think has 
 the higher degree of being (lit. ( is more, adverb)? That 
 which is connected with the unchanging, and undying, and 
 real ('true'), and itself is such, and is found in such? Or 
 what is connected with the varying and perishing, and 
 itself is such, and is found in such ? ' ' That which is 
 connected with the unchanging is far in advance of the other,' 
 he replied. 
 
 325. 15- 'And does science enter at all less largely?' 
 The translation is not wrong, but seems needlessly inverted. 
 More lit, ' Then does the being of the unchanging partake 
 of being any more than of knowledge ? ' i.e. has not the un- 
 changing the attribute of knowledge (see 230. 22, and notes)
 
 BOOK IX. 361 
 
 in the same degree as that of being or reality? There is a 
 variation of reading here by which ' changing ' would take the 
 place of ' unchanging.' As the implied assertion is that 
 ' being ' and ' knowledge ' vary directly as each other through all 
 experience, the alteration of reading would make no difference 
 in the sense, and the variation is easily accounted for. 
 
 If we read ' changing,' the rest of the translation is just 
 as above, and the sense is, of course, ' has not the changing 
 the attribute of knowledge in the same (low) degree as that of 
 being ? ' To ' partake of knowledge ' does not necessarily 
 mean to be a knowing mind, but may very well be analogous 
 to some such modern phrase as, ' a possible object of science,' 
 or (' the phenomena of sound ') are ' capable of mathematical 
 treatment.' In other words, science is idealised, and treated 
 not as the knowledge in any mind, but in respect of its general 
 character to which all universal order is akin. This brings its 
 meaning rather closer to that of 'trueness' (see 230. l-c.} 
 than is convenient, but the two conceptions are so closely 
 intertwined that the least change of point of view turns one 
 into the other. 
 
 Jowett's version is clearer, rendering the previous question 
 and answer, ' And does the essence of the invariable partake 
 of knowledge in the same degree as of essence ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, of knowledge in the same degree ' ; and continuing, 
 ' And of truth in the same degree ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' And conversely, that which has less truth will also have 
 less of essence?' On truth or trueness, see 230. 22, and 
 notes. Here it is harder to distinguish from ' knowledge ' 
 than there, because ' knowledge ' here has come nearer to 
 ' knowability.' The sum of what Plato is maintaining is this : 
 that reality or being has degrees, and that they are the same 
 degrees as those in which the general characteristics of reason 
 or intelligibility are present in the experience whose degree of 
 reality is in question. Of the nature of these characteristics, 
 as present, not only in abstract science, but in will and
 
 362 
 
 feeling, and, in short, in experience as a whole, the entire 
 dialogue has been an analysis, which is being summed up, so 
 far as the objects of action are concerned, in the present argu- 
 ment. The characteristics of reality are reducible in general 
 to consistency and comprehensiveness. (See close of Book v. 
 on the essence of knowledge as contrasted with opinion.) 
 
 23. ' Does not the cultivation of the body,' etc., more lit. 
 ' have not the kinds concerned with the service of the body 
 a less share of trueness and being than those concerned with 
 the service of the mind ? ' (See following note.) 
 585 D 28. 'The body itself as less true and real than the 
 mind.' The only way to master this conception in its true 
 light is to consider body and mind not as two things (body 
 and soul) on a level or side by side, but, as daily experience 
 really teaches us, under some such point of view as that of 
 part and whole. Our mind is the whole of our experience 
 (this does not mean that experience is no more than a state 
 of a man's mind). Our body is a certain part within this 
 experience, affecting us by pains, needs, desires, or by reflec- 
 tion on our health, our physical capacities, or our appearance. 
 How much of our day, of our thoughts, of our purposes, does 
 it really occupy ? How far do its needs mould our life or 
 supply what we think of as enduring or important in our 
 world ? Of course it is a sine qua non of life, and is the 
 machine by which we think ; but if we take up the idea of 
 degrees of reality we shall not be able to claim for every sine 
 qua non as high a level of reality as that which it renders 
 possible. The relation between food and thought is an in- 
 stance which puts the point clearly. Mind, in fact, is our 
 universe, in which body is a mere element. 
 
 31. ' That which is filled with substances more real,' etc. : 
 omit ' substance ' ; read ' more really filled ' for ' really more 
 filled'; omit 'things.' Plato may be taken, in terms of his 
 examples in the Philebus, to be comparing, e.g., the gratifica- 
 tion of sensuous desires with the gratification afforded by 
 the perception of truth or beauty. The latter, or again
 
 BOOK IX. 363 
 
 the advancement of a great cause, or the good of a country, 
 with which the mind has identified itself, is, as might quite 
 intelligibly be said to-day, a more substantial satisfaction. 
 
 36. 'Pleasant to a subject to be filled with the things that 
 are naturally appropriate to it.' ' Subject ' and ' things ' are, of 
 course, not in the Greek, and ' subject ' seems misleading, for 
 the reference is primarily to the different kinds in the soul. 
 (See 326. 16, 586 B.) I take this paragraph to mean: 'The 
 general definition of pleasure is a grasping or taking into 
 itself by any psychical element of that which it is formed by 
 nature to take in ; and accordingly, within this general defini- 
 tion, that element which grasps what has a higher degree of 
 reality, and having itself a higher degree of reality (preceding 
 paragraph) obtains a more substantial satisfaction, fulfils the 
 definition of pleasure in a higher sense, and so produces in 
 the man the most real and genuine ('true') pleasure; while 
 that element which receives what has a lower degree of reality, 
 and has itself a lower degree of reality (preceding paragraph), 
 will obtain a less real and substantial satisfaction and will 
 participate in a less trustworthy and genuine pleasure.' The 
 words ' less trustworthy ' give the cue for interpretation. It 
 is just the relation of knowledge to opinion over again ; the 
 inferior pleasure or object of desire is that which will not 
 work, will not carry you through life, will become self-contra- 
 dictory with a change of circumstance. In this judgment the 
 different parts of the nature are regarded as the basis of 
 different lives ; but if they act harmoniously together and the 
 whole nature pursues its whole object, then it could no longer 
 be said that the objects of the lower elements are unsubstan- 
 tial, because they have been taken up into the total orderly 
 object of the total orderly nature, and unified with it. (See 
 327. n, 587 A.) Of course we are here not dealing with 
 pleasure as mere agreeable feeling. None of these consid- 
 erations would apply to it when treated in that abstract 
 sense. 
 
 326. 13. 'To satiate their greedy desire.' 'Greedy desire' 586 B
 
 364 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 = c covetousness,' the 'getting or having more,' which played 
 so great a part in the argument of 30-32. 349-50 
 above. 
 
 15. 'Ravenous appetites,' lit. ' insatiateness.' The satisfac- 
 tion which is merely relative to a craving does not satisfy. 
 Only an adequate object can satisfy a human self. This is 
 the thought insisted on throughout these arguments on 
 pleasure, and in the present passage enforced with the whole 
 power of Plato's rhetoric. 
 
 1 6. 'The unreal and incontinent part of their nature, 
 more lit. ' not filling with realities the real and continent part 
 of themselves.' The term rendered ' continent ' has nothing 
 to do with the virtue of continence ; it is a word used of a 
 vessel of any kind that does not leak, i.e. is water-tight. 
 Thus it emphasises the antithesis of permanent satisfaction 
 and perishing enjoyment. (Cp. ' Whoso drinketh of this water 
 shall thirst again.') 
 
 21. 'Mere phantoms and rude outlines.' 'Phantoms' 
 takes us back to the simile of the Den. ' Rude outlines,' 
 lit., 'drawn in (light and) shade,' looking solid when they are 
 not. (Cp. 321. 34, 583 B, note.) 
 
 23. 'They appear in each case to be extravagantly great, 
 and beget.' Both the pains and the pleasures are unreally in- 
 tensified by contrast. (Cp. 322. 26 and 28, 583 E and notes.) 
 How could the fains ' beget a frantic passion ' for them- 
 selves ? I take it that the point is the inseparability of the 
 pains from the pleasures of this class, so that the subject of 
 the verb ' beget ' is ' each of them,' in the sense of pains in- 
 volving pleasures, and pleasures involving pains. A craving 
 for a craving is the ultimate form of lust. But I do not 
 feel sure that ' each of them ' is to be pressed as subject to 
 ' beget.' Perhaps we should supply ' and they beget,' in allu- 
 sion to the pleasures only. 
 
 586 C 26. ' Like that phantom of Helen Stesichorus.' The poet 
 (Sicilian Greek of seventh century B.C.) had spoken evil of 
 Helen, and she struck him with blindness, whereupon he
 
 BOOK IX. 365 
 
 wrote the palinode, or recantation, of which the first three 
 lines are preserved. 
 
 ' It is no true tale ; thou wentest not in the well-benched 
 ships, nor earnest to Troy's towers.' He now said a phantom 
 of her went to Troy, a story followed by Euripides. (See reff. 
 in Mahaffy's History of Greek Literature, i. 203, to which add 
 a curious variant in Herod, ii. 112-118.) 
 
 31. ' The spirited element.' (See Section-heading.) 
 
 37. 'To his own satisfaction,' more lit. 'pursuing his fill of 586 D 
 honour,' etc. The idea is the same as in the treatment of the 
 sensuous nature. Contention or distinction per se will make 
 but discordant and uneasy objects for a man's life. 
 
 327. 6. 'Since what is best for each is also most appro- 
 priate.' The nature of every thing is really one with its 
 function, Book i. end; hence the best for it, i.e. the fullest 
 attainment of its function in the system to which it belongs, 
 is also most according to its nature, or ' homely,' or ' proper ' 
 to it, according to the term here employed. Things can be 
 employed out of their true nature though within the possi- 
 bilities of their nature ; that is how the parts of the soul can 
 get pleasures which come within the general definition of 
 pleasures as 'taking in what one (i.e. that part) is formed 
 by nature to take in,' but yet are not proper par excellence 
 as the pleasure indicated for that part by the complete system 
 of the soul. (See note 325. 36, 585 D. For the general 
 meaning here see Section-heading.) 
 
 10. 'Wisdom-loving.' Beware taking this to mean a sub- E 
 ordination of the whole man to abstract intellectual pursuits. 
 There is perhaps some drift in this direction beginning to 
 affect Plato's expression, but we must of course read what he 
 says in connection with the whole theory of mind and society 
 which he has laid before us. The rank of the intelligence 
 comes primarily from its power to represent the whole. 
 
 12. ' Its own proper pleasures in the best and truest shape 587 A 
 possible ' ; rather, ' its own proper pleasures, and the best (for 
 it) and so far as possible the truest.' Its own pleasures may
 
 366 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 for any part be ' the best,' because the best is judged by the 
 function of the part, but they cannot be the truest except in 
 the highest part, for ' truth ' is judged by absolute degree of 
 reality. Only, as subordinate to a ' true ' object, from which 
 they gain consistency and durability, the pleasures of the 
 inferior parts are true. 
 
 1 8. 'An alien and untrue pleasure.' No part can violate 
 'justice' without wrenching the whole nature out of gear. 
 This has been illustrated throughout ; e.g. in the ' timocratic ' 
 man mere ambition took the lead, and tried to hold down the 
 covetous passions, but it ultimately had not the power to do 
 so ; and the appetitive or greedy element was gradually eman- 
 cipated from its true subjection, while the intelligence became 
 its slave. The pleasure is ' alien ' because incompatible with 
 the ' nature ' in the strict sense as embodied in the system as 
 a whole ; it is, however, so far akin to the psychical part in 
 question as to be a sort of pleasure something which that 
 part is able to take in. Whether the 'untrue' pleasure is 
 less pleasant than the ' true ' pleasure is not absolutely de- 
 monstrated, and one may doubt whether it can be. The 
 presumptions of order, purity (in the Hedonistic sense), 
 durability, comprehensiveness are on the side of the 'true' 
 pleasures; but intensity, as Plato is well aware, is prima 
 facie on the side of the untrue pleasures. The true force 
 of the argument lies in the comparison of lives, and it is 
 significant that this is the central idea of the myth in Book^x. 
 587 B 34- ' True and specially appropriate pleasure.' ' True,' in 
 the degree of being or reality possessed by faculty and object 
 concerned (of which their ' nearness to law and order ' is prac- 
 tically the test) ; ' appropriate ' or ' proper,' in the adjustment 
 of functions to parts of the mind, so that its ' nature ' may be 
 fully developed in a harmonious whole; in short, as a 'just' 
 nature. 
 
 36. ' The tyrant will live most unpleasantly ' : an idealist 
 conclusion in Hedonistic form. Perhaps the next Section 
 shows that Plato is aware of this.
 
 BOOK IX. 367 
 
 327. 39, 587 B 329. 8, 588 A. Sect. 98. 
 
 Attempt at a Hedonistic calculus, in accordance with Plato's 
 manner of symbolising unknown conditions by numerical rela- 
 tions, as in Book VIII. beginning, by a sort of anticipation of 
 nature ; perhaps in this case with a humorous feeling that 
 a Hedonistic argument demands a strict calculus, and if the 
 attempt turns out a parody, that result has its significance. His 
 way of pressing home the demand for a moral and practical value 
 in fine art is a parallel instance of this tendency to pursue a 
 commonplace idea till it breaks down. 
 
 328. i. ' The tyrant has trespassed beyond these last.' He 
 is more than third from reality, which is the miser's place. 
 (See Book x. throughout; Greeks and Romans count the 
 starting-point as 'one.') He is not under dominion of normal 
 desire, but of desire which is extravagant and unlawful, and 
 ought not to exist at all. 
 
 13. ' A copy of a copy.' Better to keep the more literal 587 C 
 rendering, which echoes through Book x. ' If we are right so 
 far, the tyrant consorts with a phantom of pleasure which is 
 third in degree of truth (trueness) from the oligarchical man.' 
 Oligarchical man i, democratic 2, tyrannical 3. 
 
 1 6. 'Reckoning from the kingly man': counting in the 
 starting-point as before, king or aristocrat i, timocratic man 2, 
 oligarchical 3. The oligarchical man is counted twice over ; 
 is taken as a fresh departure on the downward road. Thus 
 we get two threes, which suggest a square. 
 
 26. 'By squaring and cubing' ; or, as Jowett, ' if you raise D 
 the power and make the plane a solid.' Perhaps the whole 
 implies a suggestion that the degradation proceeds by increas- 
 ingly wide intervals. If the series leading up to the square 
 was i, 2, 3, 6, 9, by cubing throughout we should get i, 8, 
 2 7> 396, 729 ; in which each figure would be the cube of that 
 which had indicated the same place in the series, and the 
 whole would express the rapid degradation below the ' oligar- 
 chical ' man (who is represented by 27), i.e. when the region of
 
 368 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 extravagant lawless desire is entered. To symbolise the ratio 
 of the king's pleasure to the despot's as greater to less, the 
 figures must be read in the opposite direction, ' conversely,' 
 29. 
 
 588 A 329. i. 'If days and nights and months are applicable 
 thereto.' The days and nights in a year, taken as twice 365, 
 would be 730, so the ratio j^ might roughly be interpreted 
 as ' one day of the good life is worth a year of the bad ' ; ' a 
 day in thy courts is better than a thousand.' 
 
 Sect. 99. 329. 9, 588 A End of Book ix. 
 
 The true portrait of the good and evil life as they affect 
 the composite soul of man, and their relation to the spiritual 
 meaning of society and to the endeavours of the individual after 
 perfection. 
 
 B 329. ii. 'It was stated, I believe, that injustice is profitable 
 to the man who is consummately unjust while he is reputed 
 to be just.' The first part of this is maintained by Thrasy- 
 machus, 24. 6, 344 A, and the whole by Glaucon and 
 Adeimantus first half of Book n., especially 48. 36, 365 c. 
 
 C 25. ' A creature like one of those,' ' creature,' lit. 'nature.' 
 It is not a bad rendering, for 'nature' here almost='a 
 growth 'or 'a birth.' 'Monsters' not in the Greek; better, 
 ' and many other (instances) in which it is said that several 
 forms have grown together into one.' The turn of the phrase, 
 combining the numerous instances with the fact of many forms 
 having grown into one in each instance, reminds us of the 
 contrast of ' the self of each,' and the ' manifold of each ' at 
 the close of Book v. Observe that the soul as known in 
 human life is not a unity from the outset, but almost infinitely 
 multiform. 
 
 34. ' Which he can produce by turns in every instance out 
 of himself.' The ' tame ' and ' wild ' desires are here made 
 original elements in the soul (see note on 305. 16, 571 B), 
 but at the same moment almost infinitely modifiable. In 
 fact, the distinction is not innate (see note referred to) ; but if
 
 BOOK IX. 369 
 
 a definite portrait was to be given at all it would be hard to 
 dispense with it, as it grows up just in proportion as the desires 
 take definite forms. 
 
 41. 'The first be much the greatest.' We saw how the S 8 ^ D 
 smallness of the intelligence was insisted on apparently as a 
 type of its unified or centralised character, as a focus is 
 smaller than the region whose movements come to a point 
 in it, 129. 13, 428 E. This passage carries out the con- 
 ception of man's rational soul being that in which his distinc- 
 tively human activity resides (end of Book i.). Cp. 330. 7 E 
 below. 
 
 330. i. .'Make them grow together to a certain extent.' 
 Their natural degree of combination is only a possibility of 
 unity their true or normal unity has to be made by a long 
 training. (See 25 below.) 
 
 13. ' The lion and its members,' lit. ' the lion and the parts E 
 about the lion.' (Cp. t 33I. 26, 590 B.) The allusion to some- 
 thing more than the lion, apparently connected with it in 
 particular, seems unexplained. 
 
 25. 'To cultivate, like a husbandman.' The unity of the 5^9 B 
 self as a moral agent is not given but has to be made, and in 
 making it the ' inward man ' has to be brought into being, and 
 the selection of impulses has to be carried out which forms the 
 ' tame ' by discipline and extirpates those which prove wild or 
 rebellious against the law of the whole. The real operative 
 power in this process is described 332. 590-1 ; the psycho- 
 logical history of an isolated soul would only reveal such a 
 process in a very slight degree, through dearly-bought experi- 
 ence, or not at all. 
 
 41. 'May we not assert that the practices,' etc. This C 
 whole passage, including the image of the composite creature, 
 repeats the account which is given of true or universal morality, 
 149. 28, 443 E, only with an express reference to the contrast 
 of animal and divine elements in the mind which the earlier 
 passage does not put prominently forward. At that earlier 
 point the depths and heights of human nature of the. beast 
 
 2 A
 
 
 370 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 and the god in man had not been sounded and scaled, and 
 the fitness of the different psychical elements for different 
 functions with the need for harmony between them, rather 
 than their inherently vicious or exalted tendencies, were in 
 the writer's mind. But the principle is the same. That act 
 is good which confirms the harmonious system (and only the 
 rational system is harmonious), and bad which tends to over- 
 throw it. Plato was well aware of the force of habit, and 
 speaks of it expressly in this connection, 150. 25, 444 D. 
 The action forms the character. 
 
 589 D 331. i. 'To the man perhaps I should say to the divine 
 
 part.' (Cp. 2Ip. 7, 500 D and note.) This is the climax of 
 the development through which the ' philosophic element ' is 
 traced, having been first pointed out as a characteristic of 
 an intelligent and gentle animal (Book n.). It is a remark- 
 able linking together of the organic and spiritual world, and 
 launches into history that thought of deity as a spirit, in man 
 but more than mere man, which has wielded such enormous 
 power in religion. Observe that the idea of an innate ' tame ' 
 and ' wild ' element fails by itself to represent the essence of 
 human wickedness. It is only when the divine part is en- 
 slaved to the animal, that the animal becomes ' more bestial 
 than any beast,' as the analysis of these two books shows. 
 
 590 A 20. ' Do you not think that intemperance.' Intemperance 
 
 stands for the word which, in Aristotle's Ethics^ Peters trans- 
 lates profligacy. This is the germ of a list of vices, taken from 
 common language as a verification of the theory. Profligacy 
 is the opposite of temperance, in the relation of appetite to 
 reason. 
 
 -Q 25. ' Self-will and discontent ': three alternative vices of the 
 ' spirited ' creature are described. The two first, in this and 
 the following paragraph, are anticipated, 108-9. 4 IJ > m speak- 
 ing of errors in the employment of music and gymnastic, but 
 are not depicted in quite the same way. 'Discontent' or 
 bad temper ; does the serpentine element mean self-assertion 
 taking the form of jealousy? This would be the opposite of
 
 BOOK IX. 371 
 
 temperance in the relation of 'spirit' to 'reason.' (Cp. 147. 
 38, 442 D.) 
 
 29. 'Luxury and effeminacy.' This and the former vice 
 seem related as defect and excess an anticipation of 
 Aristotle. These are the opposite of 'courage.' 
 
 33. ' Flattery and servility.' Vices arising from the subjec- 
 tion of the ' spirit ' to the ' appetite,' as in the miserly char- 
 acter and lower in the scale. These would be an opposite of 
 courage or manliness, in the larger sense as a right impression 
 as to what should be feared; but the relation of spirit to 
 appetite is not specially described in Book iv. 
 
 37. 'To become an ape instead of a lion.' Showing how 
 fully Plato recognised that the impulses have their character 
 formed by the objects on which they are directed. 
 
 40. ' Coarseness and vulgarity ' ; more correctly, Jowett, 590 C 
 ' mean employments and manual arts.' This marks our 
 great divergence from Plato, who still, in spite of his high 
 conception of social unity, regarded complete intellectual 
 conceptions, only possible to a few individuals (really, to 
 none), as the cement and principle of society. We regard 
 the whole of society as organic to the social intelligence, in 
 as much as there is, in its spirit and will and actual co-opera- 
 tion, more wisdom than it knows. The cement is religion 
 rather than intellect. (Cp. 187. 4, 473 D and note.) At the 
 same time, we agree that the more we all know, the better, 
 and we see far higher intellectual possibilities for the rank and 
 file than apparently Plato saw. . We do not understand how 
 he came to neglect, in such a place as this, the educational 
 value of manual training, which his idea of 'music' as the 
 perception of beauty seems to insist on. To do him justice 
 we should bear in mind that to him, as to Aristotle, it is 
 chiefly the end that determines whether an employment is 
 base or noble. It is not merely manual industry, but the 
 pursuit of manual industry for gain, which is essentially 
 'mechanical' to the Greek. Aristotle, e.g., pronounces that 
 drawing is good in education, if pursued in order to make
 
 372 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 men sensitive to the beauty of objects ; not, if learned for 
 commercial purposes. Plato's general account, which here 
 follows, of the spiritual relation of society to inferior or 
 immature minds, and in some degree to all minds, is un- 
 impeachable. 
 
 590 D 332. n. 'We believe it to be better for every one to be 
 governed by a wise and divine power,' the spiritual need for 
 which society exists, as also for material needs. (See 53- 4> 
 369 B.) All require this in some degree, as the necessity of 
 law demonstrates, and also in every society there will be some 
 immature minds which are incapable even of full freedom 
 under the law. This is the essential basis of Aristotle's 
 explanation, rather than defence, of slavery, applied to natures 
 incapable of freedom. We refuse to recognise their existence 
 in the case of sane adults. But in practice there are all 
 degrees of dependence, some of which must always be 
 recognised by society. The essential point is the ' good 
 of the ruled,' which includes his freedom within the law when 
 capable of exercising it. The state, or external social whole, 
 represents the unity of the inward principle which is our 
 common guide. To-day, of course, the state is much more 
 differentiated from mere society than it was with the Greeks. 
 But the ultimate principle remains the same ; the mode of its 
 application is a question of expediency. 
 
 E 1 8. ' Law that common friend (ally) of all the members of 
 a state.' In all of us the spiritual frame needs alliance from 
 without, and finds it in the spirit and institutions (law in- 
 cludes ' unwritten ' law) which bind society into a whole. For 
 the simile of alliance, see 291. 15, 559 E; for written and un- 
 written law, 296. 20, 563 E. 
 
 21. 'Until the time when we have formed a constitution in 
 them ' : the structure of the moral self, a system of operative 
 ideas. Morality must exist, as a principle in society, and in 
 the educator who works under society, before it can be com- 
 municated to the child by the gradual process of discipline 
 and habituation described in Books n. and in. The simile of
 
 BOOK IX. 373 
 
 the 'constitution,' the 'polity' of the mind, runs .of course 
 through the whole dialogue. 
 
 29. ' That it is profitable for a man to be unjust' ; aimed at 591 A 
 the first part of the counter-thesis. (See 329. 1 1, 588 B and 
 note.) ' To be unjust ' simply means to go on forming habits 
 which subjugate the divine to the bestial in the soul. 
 
 35. 'The advantages of disguising the commission of in- 
 justice ' ; aimed at the second part of the counter-thesis, I.e. 
 The good luck of escaping detection is really the worst mis- 
 fortune, like that conjunction of circumstances which turns a 
 voluptuary into a despot. 
 
 39. ' Whereas if he is found out and punished.' The B 
 remedial or curative theory of punishment, if understood at 
 this high level, includes what is true in the ' retributive ' theory. 
 Cp. 69. 1 8, 380 B, which as here, but with less explanation, 
 puts forward the interest of the guilty person, and 107. 9, 
 410 A, which refers also to the interest of society, but only 
 as far as being rid of the criminal is concerned. The deterrent 
 effect is not referred to, though really implied in the retributive 
 and remedial aspect of punishment as here stated. Even for 
 remedial purposes, it is here made plain, the first necessity is 
 to strike down the bad will ; and this is really the point relied 
 on by the retributive theory. The moral organism will not 
 tolerate the discord forced upon it by the assertion of the bad 
 will, and reacts against it. The particular form of the reaction 
 may then be a question of expediency. This negation of the 
 bad will involves ipso facto a deterrent element in relation 
 to possible criminals. This does not mean that the State 
 punishes wickedness as such, for the State cannot judge of 
 wickedness as such. But it punishes acts which it takes, on 
 certain general rules, as expressions of a will hostile to the 
 system of rights which it maintains. It seems clear that a 
 thorough-going remedial or curative system, not limited by 
 the idea of reacting only against infringements of a certain 
 order, might vastly extend the limits of criminal law with the 
 worst possible results.
 
 374 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 59i C 333. 6., 'Will direct all his energies through life to this one 
 object.' From the portrait of the psychical material which enters 
 into man, and an analysis of the spiritual operation of society, 
 through education, law, and punishment, upon this material, 
 Plato passes on to depict the perfection at which a duly 
 trained soul will aim, its realised unity as three parts or 
 functions in one whole. And first he mentions the aim of 
 intelligence, to be intent upon such ' studies ' (in the wide 
 meaning which we saw that Plato gave to his conception of 
 ' culture ' or ' philosophy ') as will make the mind realise its 
 most perfect growth. ' Loftiest disposition ' in the previous 
 paragraph is lit. ' best nature.' 
 
 D 1 8. 'Keeping the harmony of the body in tune.' Cp. 107. 
 38, 410 c on the true use of gymnastic, viz., as a mode of 
 training the ' spirited ' element of the mind, which, as we 
 there saw, seemed in general to be especially related to the 
 body conceived as the servant of mind. So here, Plato is not 
 yet speaking of brute pleasures; but is insisting that the 
 bodily qualities in which a Greek delighted health, strength, 
 and beauty are not to form one's ambition ; i.e. one is not to 
 have a separate bodily ambition or desire for distinction ; but 
 the whole spirited and athletic temper, the bodily note, is to 
 be adjusted to that which the full ' strain ' of the ordered self 
 demands. This has much in common with the criticism of 
 existing athletics and the demand for a ' finer kind of training,' 
 100. 10, 404 A. 
 
 24. 'In the acquisition of wealth,' in the work of the 
 appetitive and acquisitive part of the mind, which is necessary 
 to life as caring for its material substructure. This, in 
 accordance with the whole drift of the Republic, anticipates 
 the line taken by Aristotle in dealing with ' chrematistic,' or 
 industry and commerce, and his distinction between that part 
 of it which is ' natural,' i.e, is essential to man's nature as a 
 whole, and that which is not. The epithet ' chrematistic ' is 
 applied to the industrial class of the Republic, 136. 35, 434 c. 
 The introduction of the term ' infinite ' in this place is notice-
 
 BOOK IX. 375 
 
 able, as Aristotle develops the same idea, which is, in short, 
 that sheer money-making has broken loose from any rational 
 purpose, and therefore from any limit. 
 
 42. 'Likely to break up his existing condition.' Perhaps 592 A 
 we may trace a hint of the moral valetudinarian, the saint who , 
 fears to touch the world, in this as in other passages of the 
 latter part of the Republic. We should feel grave doubts 
 whether a man was in good moral health if he refused an 
 important public office for fear it should lead him to act from 
 mixed motives. 
 
 334. 4. ' In his own city.' This, with the words ' in heaven,' 
 below, recalls the phrase ' your conversation (citizenship) is in 
 heaven,' and reinforces the popular idea of other-worldliness 
 which attaches to Plato's views. A certain law of detachment 
 from the present undoubtedly is implied, because the idealist 
 is always, by the nature of the case, tempted to feel that he 
 is not in ' his own city,' i.e. in one of which the facts cor- 
 respond with the idea. But the temptation is one to be 
 resisted, for after all the idea and the idealist are the spirit 
 and issue' of the existing facts, and, so far as this is the case, 
 the present city is always his own. The reservation of the 
 following line should be noted. ' Unless some heaven-sent 
 chance occurs.' Plato may be thinking of an opportunity to 
 intervene as an authority or as adviser to one in authority, 
 but of course such an opening may take many analogous 
 forms of which he had no experience. Perhaps it is a heaven- 
 sent chance when a Matthew Arnold works with an Education 
 Department. 
 
 9. ' Region of speculation,' lit. (the city which) 'lies in dis- 
 course.' ' Region ' is an unfortunate term. 
 
 ii. 'Perhaps in heaven' (see previous note and 197. 33, 593 B 
 484 c, ' who possess /// their soul no distinct exemplar '). The 
 reference to heaven is a mere passing figure of speech, and 
 should in no sense be drawn into connection with the mode 
 of being to be assigned to the ' Forms.' The point of this 
 conclusion is that at least every one may try to organise his
 
 376 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 own nature according to the scheme of a community in which 
 man's being would find perfect expression, and he is not to 
 be discouraged in this attempt by the consideration that such 
 a community can hardly come to exist (for in fact every level 
 of existence would give rise to a fresh demand for perfection ; 
 even the good state would grow in goodness with accelerating 
 velocity, 122. 33, 424 A, note). But he can and will mould 
 his conduct on the plan of such a city (i.e. the best he knows), 
 and not give in to the practices of any other. This involves, 
 to an indefinite extent, withdrawal from some spheres of pre- 
 sent life. In this interpretation I assume, with (I presume) 
 Davies and Vaughan and Jowett, that the meaning of ' inter- 
 fere with politics,' 2 above, has been modified and deepened 
 by 'to organise himself,' 13 (lit. 'plant a city in himself : cp. 
 the 'polity' of the soul, 332. 22, 591 A), and therefore that 
 the last line does not merely mean ' he will take a part in 
 politics in such a city, if realised, but in no other.' It must 
 be remembered that acts of civic relation are to Plato simply 
 the outside of which the organised or moral will is the inside, 
 though of course a private citizen works for the Whole less 
 directly than a Demosthenes. He will do his best to mould 
 himself, and, with himself, necessarily his society ; but there 
 are things (and in Plato's mood at this point we must take the 
 expression to cover a good deal) which he will find himself 
 unable to touch.
 
 BOOK X 
 
 PART V 
 
 ILLUSION AND EMOTION, AND REALITY 
 OF THE MIND 
 
 Prefatory Note. With the end of Book ix. the continuous 
 argument of the Republic is brought to a close. The tenth 
 book, the fifth natural division of the dialogue, forms an 
 Epilogue, as the first book with half the second formed a Pro- 
 logue ; the analysis of morality in its working nature and 
 conditions has occupied the entire interval. Book x. does 
 not, however, knit up all the threads of the discussion, as 
 Book i. began to unravel them. It rather returns on a 
 single though fundamental point, the earlier treatment of 
 which in Books u. and in. can now be confirmed and 
 deepened in consequence of the psychological and meta- 
 physical discussions which formed the body of the dialogue. 
 The point is fundamental, because it determines the whole 
 tendency and system of education and indeed of intellec- 
 tual and imaginative life, and it is on this tendency and 
 system that the character of society, according to Plato's 
 analysis, must depend. The relation of imagination to reality 
 and to feeling is therefore the problem of the tenth book, and 
 the discussion gives us an opportunity of facing the doctrine 
 of Forms in its most difficult and paradoxical shape, and adds 
 to the treatment of perception and cognition, to which the 
 central allegory of the Den has so far been chiefly applied, a 
 parallel criticism of emotion which helps to connect Books 
 
 377
 
 378 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 vin. and ix. with Books v., vi., and vn., by exhibiting the 
 allegory of the Cave in its import for feeling as well as for 
 cognition. The metaphysic and psychology of Book x. are 
 adapted to the triple division of the soul, but combine with 
 this some reference to the four levels of cognitive judgment 
 distinguished through Books vi. and vn. It may be said that 
 the two higher cognitive phases the mathematical and the 
 philosophical judgment are here treated as one, the intel- 
 lectual world ; while the two divisions of ' seeming ' are re- 
 tained. It is then easy to pass from a psychological discourse 
 to the ultimate nature and fate of the soul, in the account of 
 which a note of difference is discernible when compared with 
 the image of the composite creature at the close of Book ix. 
 The change of standpoint may be interpreted either as a re- 
 currence to mystical dualism, or as a larger hope regarding 
 the process of unification described in the earlier passage. 
 The composite creature was after all only the material of a 
 moral being, and not the unified man. 
 
 I see no way of bringing together the various points which 
 illustrate each other in this difficult discussion except by the 
 use of a tabular form. Plato distinctly intends the parts of 
 his subject to be treated as corresponding to each other in 
 definite relations, and the diverse points of view from which 
 the same matter is regarded are exceedingly suggestive if 
 brought together. I therefore subjoin a schematic account 
 of the correspondences of object, cognition, and emotion in 
 Book x., intended to draw the reader's attention to their 
 natural meaning and connection with the whole plan of 
 the Republic.
 
 BOOK X. 
 
 379 
 
 Object and its Author. 
 
 i. ' The Form,' what 
 a (thing) is, its nature, 
 created by God, i.e. 
 by Nature or evolution 
 (SS^-Q. 596-7), seems to 
 = 'the purpose for which 
 produced or evolved ' 
 (344-5. 601). 
 
 2. Object such as we 
 use, or actual law of a 
 state, made by crafts- 
 man or legislator (336. 
 596; 344. 601-2; 341. 
 599)- 
 
 3. Reflections in mirror 
 (337- 59 6 )- pictures (ib. 
 and 1 339. 597-8), poems 
 (349. 605), made by pain- 
 ter and poet, who are 
 'on a level' (349. 605), 
 or, in general, works of 
 'imitator.' (See classi- 
 fication of Cave simile. ) 
 
 Cognitive Attitude. 
 
 1. ' Science, ' such as is 
 possessed by the user 
 of anything that has a 
 purpose, who determines 
 what the thing is to 
 be (344-5. 601-2). The 
 rational element (346. 
 602) passes into cor- 
 rected perception. 
 
 2. 'Belief or Common- 
 sense, of the craftsman 
 who acts on instructions 
 (344. 601-2) : cp. end of 
 Book vi. This seems on 
 a level with the corrected 
 perception furnished by 
 weighing, measurement, 
 and counting (346. 602, 
 and cp. table with refer- 
 ence to Philebus close 
 of Book vi ). 
 
 3. Something which 
 is ' Neither science nor 
 right opinion ' (345. 602) 
 on a level with ocular 
 illusion, which deludes 
 us in spite of measure- 
 ment, etc. (346. 602-3 : 
 cp. table at close of Book 
 vi. , though ' Guess- 
 work ' is not named in 
 Book X). 
 
 Emotional Attitude. 
 
 i and 2. ' One part, 
 prepared to obey the direc- 
 tion of law ' (348. 604). 
 The rational and self- 
 respectingiemper (reason 
 and spirit are treated 
 as acting together and 
 forming this ' one part ' ). 
 
 3. The sentimental 
 (349-SL 604-6), -vulgar, 
 and sensuous disposition, 
 which resists law, as false 
 perception resists reason, 
 and is to the poet as 
 ocular illusion to the 
 painter (349. 605). 
 
 Book x. (beginning) 339. 15, 597 E. Sect. 100. 
 
 The discussion of the nature of ' imitation ' is entered upon by 
 a distinction between levels of reality, the Form, the craftsman s 
 production, and the reflection in a mirror. Applied to the case 
 of representative art, this distinction exhibits the poet and 
 painter as on a level with the person who holds iip a mirror 
 to the objects of sense-perception.
 
 380 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 595 A 335. 5. 'About poetry.' Cp. 91. 24, 39, 397 D and E; 49. 
 22, 365 E; and the connection of poets and tyrants more 
 recently and explicitly referred to, 302. 33, 568 A. 
 
 8. ' Which is imitative.' Definition of imitation in poetry, 
 86. i to 5, 393 B and c. 
 
 9. ' The specific parts of the soul have been' distinguished ; 
 this gives a formal reason for taking up the analysis of 
 imitation again. 
 
 B 15. ' Imitative poets '; rather, ' artists ' in general. 
 
 1 8. 'Who do not possess the antidote in a knowledge of 
 its real nature ' : a most important reservation if pressed. It 
 would indicate Plato's ultimate meaning to be that the right 
 enjoyment of art involves a sense of the artistic illusion, as 
 contrasted with a naive acceptance of the show as true or 
 real. And he certainly does mean this at least, though he 
 paradoxically banishes even such a right enjoyment from his 
 perfect society. 
 
 C 25. 'To honour a man at the expense of truth.' The 
 phrase strongly suggests that used by Aristotle, Ethics i. 6, i, 
 of his relation to Plato whom he is about to criticise ; and 
 I think the place in Aristotle is an echo of this passage. 
 
 31. 'The nature of imitation generally.' The primary 
 contrast in Plato's mind, when he used the word imitation 
 in connection with art, was not as with us between ' imita- 
 tion ' and ' creation,' but between the production of useful 
 objects houses, couches, tools, and the copying of them in 
 pictures or descriptions. See Sophist, 266 D, and cp. Aris- 
 totle's Physics, 199 A, 15. This contrast, easily extended to 
 natural as well as artificial objects, plainly rules the scheme 
 of realities in the present passage, the artist or copyist being 
 inferior to the workman or producer. Thus we can under- 
 stand more easily that Plato's mind was moving, so to speak, 
 upwards and not downwards. His argument is not : 'art is imi- 
 tation, and not inspiration, therefore worthless,' but : ' some of 
 the arts are not useful production, but strictly imitation ; of 
 what are they capable ? ' In other words, ' imitation ' is not
 
 BOOK X. 381 
 
 limited for him by a hard line as against the creative imagina- 
 tion ; the hard line is for him between ' imitation ' and pro- 
 duction, and there is nothing but the initial difficulty of the 
 subject to prevent ' imitation ' from growing in his hands into 
 creation or expression. In the case of music and the archi- 
 tectural or decorative arts, which are for the most part non- 
 representative, he more readily appreciates their expressive 
 or symbolic function, and shows of what elasticity his term 
 ' imitation ' was capable by actually calling a beautiful rhythm 
 or set of proportions ' an imitation ' of a manly self-controlled 
 character. (See 96. n, 401 A.) It is clear, I think, that 
 that passage refers primarily to what are in our sense non- 
 imitative arts, though it also alludes to arts of representation, 
 all of which, of course, have in them purely decorative 
 elements. Therefore we should best understand the follow- 
 ing discussion by regarding it as an attempt to work out 
 theoretically the distinction between production and imitation, 
 on the lines 'decorative and musical beauty I know, and 
 within it the expressive value (' imitative,' if you like) of 
 colour, sound, form, harmony, and proportion (cp. Republic, 
 /.c., and Philebus, 51), but what do we gain by mere copying 
 and impersonation? 1 
 
 336. 10. ' Which includes the numerous particular things ' ; 596 A 
 rather, 'we are accustomed to assign in each case a single Form 
 to each manifold (group of many) which we call by the same 
 name.' (See close of Book v. and notes.) 
 
 14. 'Any one of those numerous things'; rather, 'any 
 manifold.' 
 
 19. 'Of Forms in connection with these articles ' : an appeal B 
 to fact. 'Articles '=' articles of household furniture'; not 
 'only two shapes,' of course, but 'only two characteristic 
 looks, or plans,' such as that by which you know a bed 
 from a table when you see them. 
 
 23. 'Accustomed to say that the manufacturer of; better, 
 ' workman who makes ' ; an appeal to language. ' We commonly 
 say that the workman who makes either of these articles of
 
 382 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 furniture has the Form of it before his eyes (we should perhaps 
 say ' the notion of it in his head ') while he is making the 
 bed or table which we use ' ; ' which we use ' defines their 
 position against the work of fine art and against the notion. 
 596C 26. 'No manufacturer constructs the Form,' no workman 
 creates the notion of the thing. Does not the inventor, we 
 may ask ? And if we consider carefully what sets the pro- 
 blem to the inventor, and how he solves it the evolution of 
 artificial products we shall be on the way to a more vital 
 idea than is common of what Plato may have meant by a 
 Form. What is it that ultimately determines what the work- 
 man is to make ? Plato is on firm ground in denying that 
 the workman, qua workman, determines it for himself. (See 
 scheme at beginning of Book x. as to the 'belief of the 
 craftsman.) We know to-day that our houses, churches, 
 furniture, machinery, all have their growth and history 
 their 'nature' and are not created de novo by individual 
 craftsmen. 
 
 337. T. 'Ingenious person,' lit. sophist, probably in old 
 sense of ' sophos,' a cunning workman, with perhaps a touch 
 of double entendre. 
 
 4. ' Architect,' lit. 'workman.' 
 
 6. ' Manufacturer,' lit. ' poet ' (maker). 
 
 D 13- 'Take a mirror.' Shakespeare's 'hold the mirror up to 
 nature' has, without intention, a deeper meaning than this. 
 See the whole passage, Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 2, especially the 
 words ' and (show) the very age and body of the time his form 
 and pressure.' It would take a good looking-glass to do 
 that. 
 
 E 20. 'Not truly existing things.' This sentence only says 
 that pictures are unreal, but it looks as if the interlocutor 
 used the term 'existing in truth or reality,' at his own natural 
 level, of the common objects of sense-perception. 
 
 22. 'The painter.' The Greek word for the painter as 
 artist, ' life-painter,' seems to reflect a sort of primitive wonder 
 that the hand of man can fix the image of a living thing. We
 
 BOOK X. 383 
 
 call him simply a painter, the wonder having worn off; just 
 as we say ' to shoot,' where a novelist of a century ago would 
 say ' to shoot flying.' ' This class of workman, i.e. likeness- 
 makers as opposed to producers of realities. 
 
 24. ' Unreal,' devoid of ' trueness.' The judgment that they 
 are what they give themselves out to be would be false ; their 
 being is not consistently connected with the whole of experi- 
 ence. (See close of Book vi. on 'trueness.') 
 
 30. ' Which according to our doctrine constitutes the 597 A 
 reality of a bed,' etc., more lit. ' which we assert to be what-a- 
 bed-z>, but only a bed.' The 'is' is accented as when it= 
 ' exists ' ; in merely saying ' a bed is made of wood,' it would 
 not have the same accent. The usage is coloured by associa- 
 tion with such phrases as ' there are times when,' ' there are 
 persons who,' and with 'what zV = 'what exists,' in all of 
 which the verb is accented. It implies a contrast with the mere 
 predication of an attribute. We often accent the verb ' is ' in 
 an analogous way ; e.g. MiH against Whewell, Logic, Book 
 iii. chap. 2, footnote, writes": 'The word inherent is the 
 theory,' i.e. constitutes its nature. These simple pronominal 
 phrases, which we might use in everyday conversation, were 
 the starting-point of some of Aristotle's most technical for- 
 mulae. He constantly employs such a phrase as ' what it is 
 to be ' so and so, and many kindred forms, to express with 
 different .modifications the nature of a thing or attribute; and 
 the use of ' some,' or ' a certain one,' which I have rendered 
 'a bed,' is also quite technical in Aristotle as indicating either 
 an individual or a species as distinguished from a wider class. 
 Here of course the technical meaning is only in germ, and the 
 beautiful directness of the conversational usage is preserved. 
 
 33. ' What really exists ' ; this refers to the ' reality of a bed.' 
 ' If he does not make what (a thing) is,' i.e. ' if he does not 
 constitute or determine the true nature of anything/ 
 
 34. 'A real thing,' lit. ' that which^/.r ' (participle), and so 
 in the next line. The common rendering imbues us uncon- 
 sciously with the notion that the Forms are things.
 
 384 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 43. 'Things as substantial as a bed,' lit. 'even this,' i.e. 
 the craftsman's production. 
 
 338. i. 'Shadowy objects when contrasted with reality,' 
 more lit. 'indistinct in respect of trueness.' Cp. 230. 14, 508 D 
 for the connection between distinct apprehension and true- 
 ness. The craftman's work, we might suggest, is capable of 
 very different degrees of success, in carrying out the idea 
 which he tries to carry out. ' That is not much of a knife,' 
 a common phrase enough in English means that the material 
 production before us is a long way from having the proper- 
 ties which its purpose or notion requires. Its reality as a 
 piece of metal is a different affair, and does not contribute to 
 its reality as a knife, except in so far as it is a property of a 
 knife to be made of metal. 
 
 597 B 7- 'One exists in the nature of things,' lit 'in nature.' 
 'Nature,' in Greek philosophy, is never far removed from the 
 meaning of the corresponding verb, ' to be born,' and ' to 
 grow.' I believe that to render it by ' evolution,' quite 
 understanding that no definite theory of origins is implied, 
 would take us much nearer Plato's meaning than ' nature,' 
 which in our language is opposed both to God and to man. 
 ' One is that which evolution has produced, which we should 
 say, I suppose, was the workmanship of God.' The main 
 properties of objects, natural and artificial, are determined by 
 deep seated conditions ; but in the work of the human work- 
 man, or in the individual specimen of plant or animal, there 
 are variations which, relatively speaking, are accidental due 
 to immediate influences. 
 
 C 22. 'From making more than one in the universe,' etc. 
 ' Universe '=' nature'; perhaps ' from bringing to pass more 
 than one bed in the course of evolution, he made acccord- 
 ingly one only, that very " what-a-bed-w," ' or paraphrased, 
 ' that very self of a bed, which is what a bed is.' 
 
 25. 'Created,' lit. 'begotten,' or 'caused to grow.' 
 
 27. 'If God has made only two (as many as two), a single 
 bed would again,' etc. This sounds like a mere appeal to the
 
 BOOK X. 385 
 
 abstract result of comparison we should compare the two, 
 and get a general idea including both. But this 'general 
 idea,' of course, if true, indicates some character of reality; 
 not that it itself exists as a thing besides the two individual 
 1 beds,' but that there is some condition or necessity which 
 is identical in the two cases, and accounts for both. This 
 the general course of evolution prescribes. 
 
 29. 'This would be the absolute essential bed,' more lit. 
 as above, 'this would be the very what-a-bed-/V.' 
 
 32. 'To be the real maker of the really existing bed,' etc., 597 D 
 try ' wishing to be really the maker (poet) of " bed " in its real 
 being, not merely of a bed, nor to be merely a bed-wright 
 (cp. note on 337. 30, 597 A) he grew it as a unity by course 
 of nature ' ' ephusen ' ' begot/ or ' caused to grow'; ' phusei ' 
 nature,' or 'by the process of growth.' Here again ' evolved 
 it by evolution ' would be nearer the thought he determined 
 what a bed was to be. 
 
 38. 'Creator '=' natural author,' 'begetter.' 
 
 40. 'By creation,' lit. 'by nature.' 'He has made' is 
 literal; the word here is not 'begotten,' as above. The 
 identification of 'nature,' 'growth,' or, as I suggest, 'evolu- 
 tion,' with the workmanship of God is very remarkable. (Cp. 
 closing sentence of Timaeus, ' the only begotten universe.') 
 
 339- 7- 'The author of that which is twice removed from E 
 the thing as it was created ' ; the original is quaintly elliptical, 
 ' then him of the third product from nature you call an imitator.' 
 ' Twice removed ' stands throughout in Davies and Vaughan 
 for the ' third from.' It is better to retain the latter, which 
 has reference to the descending scale of lives in Books vin. and 
 ix. ; ' third,' because the starting-point counts one. Thus there 
 are two intervals (Davies and Vaughan's 'removes,') but three 
 'products.' 'From the thing as it was created,' lit. 'from nature'; 
 but ' nature ' has for us become so petrified a term, that 
 Davies and Vaughan's 'created,' or, as I suggest, 'evolved/ is 
 really closer, and ' as it grew up ' would be another alternative. 
 
 ii. 'Is the third in descent from the sovereign, and from 
 2 B
 
 386 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 truth,' lit. 'is by nature (is born or grown) a third from the 
 King and from Trueness.' The indefinite pronoun attached 
 to 'third' makes it a qualifying attribute, and not a mere 
 ordinal number, 'one of the third class': cp. 328. 587. 
 This seems to bring the imitator as such to the level of the 
 ' oligarchical man,' the first character in whom desire as such 
 has supremacy ; and in reference to ' trueness ' (Books vi. 
 and vii.), taking the intelligible world as one and not two 
 (see prefatory note to Book x.), the maker of reflections or 
 likenesses is third from the intelligible world, the objects of 
 common-sense conviction, which = ordinary educated percep- 
 tion, being between the two. But Plato wants to bring down 
 the tragedian to the level of the tyrannical man, and appar- 
 ently the argument so far is only a first approximation. 
 At best, then, ' imitation ' corresponds to the dreamer's and 
 sensuous man's impressions of life. 
 
 Sect. 101. 339. 15, 598 A 340. 15, 598 D. 
 
 Further analysis of imitation in the case of the pictorial artist. 
 He copies the workman's work without reference to the under- 
 lying nature, and even the former he does not aim at reprodu- 
 cing as it is, but only as it is seen from a single point of view. 
 So he does not imitate even the relative reality of the work- 
 man 's work, but only a phantasm of it. Therefore imitation 
 has no hold of reality in the way of knowledge. 
 
 598 A 339. 1 6. 'The originally created object,' lit. 'the self of 
 each (thing or quality) in "nature."' (Cp. close of Book v. 
 and 338. 7, 597 B.) 
 
 19. 'As they really exist,' as they are or as they appear; 
 ' as they are ' is of course relative, accepting complete or 
 unified sense-perception as a standard. As they 'appear '= 
 as they look to the eye, not, as they are opined to be. 
 Painting, being in two dimensions only, must surrender not 
 only the tactual image, but the combination of ocular images 
 from different standpoints. 
 B 32. ' Imitation of a phantasm.' The painter represents
 
 BOOK X. 387 
 
 not the object in its solid completeness, but only his partial 
 view of it. This seems as if intended to make the painter a 
 third from the workman, and so bring him down to the 
 tyrant's level (328. 587); but of course the workman is not 
 third, but second, from reality. The ' phantasm ' is obviously 
 false only as being partial. It is the right view under its 
 conditions, and any other would be wrong. It presents 
 railway lines as converging, but it does not say that they 
 converge for a train running along them. 
 
 36. ' Seizes upon an object in a small part of its extent, 
 and that small part is unsubstantial.' First, the artist only 
 copies the object of common perception, knowing nothing of 
 its significance or determining conditions, ' only lays hold of 
 each (thing) in a small degree.' Secondly, he cannot attempt 
 to reproduce even this as it is for reflective or combined 
 perception, but only copies (or reproduces) an image or 
 shadow of it what will go on a flat surface ; ' unsubstantial,' 
 lit. ' image,' or ' wraith.' Thus, to illustrate from what 
 follows, he will paint you a picture of a shoemaker. Now, 
 first, he knows nothing of the trade, the work or function, in 
 which the shoemaker's social value and his form or essence, 
 qua shoemaker, consists, and therefore he cannot try to 
 reproduce the spirit of that. Secondly, he only makes a flat 
 image, which can hardly be mistaken for a real man except 
 by silly people and when seen from a distance. I am not 
 sure whether he also implies that an intelligent person looking 
 close into the picture would see that the artist knew no facts 
 of the trade, and so had not painted even an image of a 
 genuine shoemaker. 
 
 340. 1 6, 598 D 343. 38, 60 1 B. Sect. 102. 
 
 Verification of previous assertion that tragic poetry, like 
 painting, is third from reality (at best). 
 
 340. 19. 'That dramatic poets are acquainted not merely 
 with all arts, but with all things human.' Plato is here attack- 
 ing bad criticism, such as still to a great extent prevails, and
 
 388 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 such as he caricatures throughout in his own use of Homer, 
 e.g. 100. 404. This helps us to understand how essential he 
 found it, for the sake of clearness, to establish, even with 
 brutal plainness, the fundamental principle of aesthetic, that 
 art deals with appearances only, and judged by the tests of 
 practical reality must be found hopelessly wanting. Probably, 
 as well as bad criticism, he had also to take account of bad 
 art, though at present he is speaking of Homer. ' All things 
 divine ' : he strongly felt the evil of accepting the poets as 
 popular theologians and moralists, 47. 6, 364 A. 
 
 599 A 28. 'Twice removed from reality,' more lit. 'third in the 
 
 series from reality.' (See note on 339. 7, 597 E.) 
 
 36. ' Both the original and the representation,' lit. ' that 
 about to be copied and the image of it.' Of course the object 
 in question is that which a man ex hypothesi may be able to 
 produce, viz., the second from reality. Plato, omitting all 
 relations of art but that of copy to original, assumes that the 
 original is of more value than the copy. This blindness 
 is probably in part humorous. 
 
 D 341. 20. ' Only once removed from the truth,' etc., more 
 lit. 'only second from truth and not third.' 
 
 28. 'What State attributes to you the benefits derived from 
 a good code of laws ? ' The actual law-giver, then, is second 
 from reality. (Cp. 239. 18, 517 E.) 
 
 600 E 343. 12. 'Copy unsubstantial images.' Here the artists 
 
 are 'imitators of images,' but, 341. 21, 599 D, 'artificer of an 
 image.' It would be easy to explain the variation by regarding 
 the 'imitator' now as copying a true workman's work in his 
 own picture or poem, and again as copying in his work of art 
 the false image or notion of the workman's work which is in 
 his own mind or indeed in the minds of others (cp. 345. 25, 
 602 B, thus putting in a further step between the artist and the 
 reality. You may regard the picture as = the artist's idea, or 
 as one remove below even that. 
 
 601 B 30. ' What a poor appearance the works of poets present.' 
 
 Cp. Apology, 22 B, about the poets under cross-examination.
 
 BOOK X. 389 
 
 343. 40, 601 B 345. 36, 602 B. Sect. 103. 
 
 Position of the ' imitative ' artist, with reference to judging 
 the beauty, goodness, and rightnefs of acts and objects a 
 metaphysical problem. The highest degree of cognition rests with 
 the user of objects, who is familiar with their purpose, which 
 gives him ' science ' of their goodness or badness. The knowledge 
 of the divine author, which ive might have expected to find as 
 the counterpart of his creative activity, is not introduced into the 
 question. It, or some ideal of insight, would have to be appealed 
 to if natural objects were to be treated as artificial products are 
 treated here. When animals are mentioned, it is likely that 
 Plato has primarily iti mind their services to man, cp. close of 
 Book I., instance of the horse. The second level of cognition 
 (the two divisions of ' intelligence ' not being here separated) is 
 the ' belief 1 which guides the producer of the useful object, who 
 acts on the instructions given him by another (the user), and 
 not on his own insight. This ' belief is in other words ' right 
 opinion.' It remains, then, that the 'imitator'' should possess 
 only 'guesswork,' or the mere perception of likeness and proba- 
 bilities about the rightness and wrongness of the matter he deals 
 with, but his position is described only by negation, the technical 
 term from the end of Book VI. not being introduced. He will 
 even copy the disordered impressions current among the multitude, 
 thus being below the third place from reality. (Cp. 343. 12, 
 600 E, and close of Book V.) 
 
 344. 3. ' Examine it satisfactorily,' or adequately, i.e. make 601 C 
 an effort actually to grasp what is designated by the terms 
 appearance and reality used in contrast. 
 
 20. 'Each single thing involves three particular arts.'D 
 The art of the ' user ' is illustrated by those of the rider or 
 flute player : it seems strange to have arts like these treated 
 as involving ' science ' (345. 5, 602 A), when, as. a rule, the 
 useful arts are degrading (244. 42, 522 B), and even in the 
 highest sense the name 'art' can only be applied to such 
 sciences as geometry, and not to dialectic (260. 22, 533 D).
 
 390 
 
 Plato is illustrating his point by very simple cases, and making 
 free use of the flexibility with which the words art and 
 science were commonly employed for any professional skill, 
 as we saw in Book i. So far as a man really grasps the 
 purpose or function of an object, so far he has knowledge 
 about it which belongs to the highest order, although it 
 cannot amount to science in the full sense of dialectic, unless 
 completed by similar knowledge extending through the whole 
 of life and nature. If you understood life and nature and 
 society as a musician understands his instrument (so we may 
 expand Plato's idea), then you would have genuine science 
 or philosophy. (Cp. Hamlet and the recorders.) 
 
 25. ' Excellence, beauty, and correctness.' These are not 
 for Plato other than reality, but are forms in which reality 
 shows itself, and he mentions them rather than it, though it 
 is the subject of the discussion, in order to make quite plain 
 in definite examples what he is talking about arid what is 
 meant by grades of reality. ' Excellence ' is the quality by 
 which anything whatever is enabled to discharge its function 
 (Book i. close). ' Beauty ' is the quality by which objects 
 impress upon feeling the pleasantness of a harmonious whole 
 (96-7. 401-2). 'Correctness' or ' Tightness,' lit. ' straightness,' 
 must mean the agreement of an object with a rule. It is 
 plain to any one who has followed the argument of the 
 dialogue that these three properties express the principle of 
 'trueness' or rationality, and ultimately that of goodness or 
 purpose, from different sides ; and all of them centre, as the 
 rest of the sentence says, in ' the want for which it (product, 
 action, or creature) was made or evolved' (' made ' or ' grown '). 
 This is a popular explanation or application of what is meant 
 by the ' Form ' of things or attributes, in the light of the Form 
 of the Good, or ' what they are good for.' See table at begin- 
 ning of Book x., and cp. Aristotle, Politics i. 2. 'Every- 
 thing is defined by its function.' Throughout Book x., and 
 especially in the present passage, we are inclined to ask how 
 the theory could apply to natural objects or to human life.
 
 BOOK X. 391 
 
 We have 'actions' and 'animals' included in this passage, 
 and for ' actions ' we remember that the common craftsman 
 is the ordinary legislator, while the person who understands 
 their purpose or knows their true function is no doubt the 
 philosopher or philosophic legislator. For ' animals ' Plato 
 may be thinking first of their services to man; but in the 
 doctrine of the Form of the Good he obviously contemplates 
 a larger teleology, which would ultimately open out into the 
 evolutionary point of view the function of everything being 
 that need on the part of the whole which has shaped it. The 
 argument of the following Section is, however, more directly 
 applicable to objects of external Nature than that before us. 
 
 33. ' Keep the maker informed': ' maker' same Greek word 
 as ' poet,' which gives piquancy to the argument. This para- 
 graph explains very clearly what was meant by ' belief in the 
 scheme of cognition, end of Book vi. It is knowledge at 
 second hand, belonging to the region of likenesses or em- 
 bodiments, for the single object is only a more or less im- 
 perfect embodiment of its purpose, and therefore a judgment 
 adequate to it is only likely or probable, not certain. 
 
 41. 'Upon which the other relies,' lit. 'and he, believing, 601 E 
 will make the object.' 
 
 345. i. 'Belief.' (See note on 344. 33, 601 D.) 
 
 4. The user of the same instrument will possess science.' 602 A 
 (See note on 344. 20, 60 1 c.) 
 
 15. 'Neither know scientifically nor entertain correct 
 opinions,' i.e. he is in the region of mere likenesses or 
 reflections, not likenesses of the purpose, but likenesses of 
 an imperfect embodiment of the purpose. This would be 
 the region of the ' guesswork ' or imagination of Book vi. We 
 may think of a painter drawing a ship. First, there is every 
 chance of his drawing it wrong, and secondly, even if he 
 draws what he sees, he may fail altogether to select a model 
 or a moment which display the full beauty of a ship. These 
 are his two stations short of truth. 
 
 22. 'He will go on imitating,' etc., more lit. 'all the same, B
 
 392 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 he will imitate, not knowing about each (object) in what 
 respects it is good or bad ; but, it would seem, he will copy 
 the kind (of thing) that appears beautiful to the multitude 
 who know nothing.' Cp. 196. 2, 489 D, 'the multitude's 
 multitudinous formulae about beauty and the rest.' Whatever 
 may be our theories about idealisation or selection in art, is 
 this assertion not practically true of the greater portion of our 
 art-products ? 
 
 Sect. 104. 345. 37, 602 0347. J 4, 603 B. 
 
 Position of the imitative artist (painter in this Section, poet in 
 the next) as judged of by psychology, with reference to the 
 rational or irrational character of the mental element which he 
 appeals to. Pictorial representation embodies illusory appear- 
 ances^ in conflict with facts as established by rational compari- 
 son. Therefore the part of the mind, the sense-perception, from 
 which it elicits its productions, is worthless and contradictory to 
 reason. 
 
 602 C 346. i. 'Objects of the same size,' etc., more lit. 'the same 
 magnitude does not appear equal when seen close to and at 
 a distance.' Plato's expressions in dealing with the psycho- 
 logy of perception are frequently such as we must consider 
 incorrect; nevertheless his profound interest in the subject 
 shows how fully alive he was to its philosophical importance, 
 and in such passages as 247. 43, 524 B, he rightly anticipates 
 the line of future analysis. His principal treatment of the 
 subject is in the Theaetetus. As to the present passage, of 
 course, we may misjudge the size of objects in consequence 
 of the different angles that distance makes them subtend at the 
 eye. But with familiar objects we do not habitually do so, 
 and the difference of angle subtended of space taken up in 
 the field of vision is by no means identical with such a 
 misjudgment. If a house a mile off had the same optical 
 appearance as it would have close at hand, this would be a 
 contradiction. In its covering a smaller visual space there 
 is no contradiction, but the effect of a condition which we
 
 BOOK X. 393 
 
 discount in judging. If we misjudge, that is owing to some 
 confusion of relations, and not to the mere variation in 
 optical look. Still, the latter may help to mislead us, if 
 we account for it wrongly, as we often do. 
 
 11. 'The art of drawing,' or representing solidity in light 
 and shade. (See note, 246. 19, 523 B.) These ocular illusions 
 seem all to be cases of misjudgment, though there are also 
 many strange instances in which sensations are modified by 
 each other in a way that cannot be called illusion, e.g., in 
 phenomena of colour-contrast, both simultaneous and succes- 
 sive. The confusion of concave and convex surfaces with 
 each other is a question of the interpretation of light and 
 shade rather than of colour. On the whole subject those 
 who are curious should read W. James's Psychology ii. 2 1 2 ff. 
 The relative part played by knowledge (or intellectual mis- 
 take) and by direct reaction to stimulus in these illusions is 
 now sharply disputed, and it almost seems as if in a certain 
 degree the current view were returning towards that of Plato 
 by attributing more to the sensuous and less to the intellectual 
 factor. (See Hering, quoted I.e., 261.) 
 
 1 8. ' Vague notions of degrees of magnitude,' more lit. 'so 602 D 
 that there may not rule in us the apparent greater or less, 
 more or heavier, but that which has calculated,' etc. (See 
 table at end of Book vi.) 
 
 22. ' The rational element,' or ' calculative,' as in Book iv. E 
 
 27. 'It is contradicted at the same moment ' : the rendering 
 would naturally run, 'opposites appear to it at the same 
 moment about the same matter,' but as that to which they 
 appear has been mentioned not as the mind but as ' the 
 reason,' this would be stating an impossibility according to 
 Plato's view, and Davies and Vaughan avoid it. Probably 
 the ' element ' changes in Plato's thought as the sentence goes 
 on, from ' reason ' to ' mind ' or ' man.' Of course an ordi- 
 nary perceived appearance is not held fast as an illusion 
 against measurement, but submits to be interpreted. There 
 are, however, persistent illusions which will not yield to
 
 394 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 measurement, but they are usually rooted in false associa- 
 tion rather than in sensuous appearance. It i's enough for 
 Plato's purpose to say that the partial character of the 
 sensuous appearance, with its liability to originate misjudg- 
 ment by wrong selection, is enough to show that there is 
 something at work in it different at least in degree from 
 intelligence. 
 
 29. 'Entertaining contradictory opinions.' This is not 
 said in so many words in Book iv., but comes under the mean- 
 ing of 139-40. 436-7. The same course of argument is here 
 applied to distinguish intelligence from sense-perception 
 nearly approaching sensation, as in Book iv. to distinguish 
 intelligence from desire. (Cp. 143. 6, 35, 439 B and D.) 
 603 A 34. ' That part of the soul whose opinions run counter to 
 the measurements.' Is the conflict of sense-perception and 
 reflection really different in kind from the intellectual conflict 
 of opposing endeavours to judge in a case of conflicting evi- 
 dence ? Probably it would be admitted to be a more striking 
 case, more nearly approaching the assertion of contraries to- 
 gether. The judgment of perception is so essentially partial 
 that it seems to hold in spite of proof to the contrary, and we 
 say, ' we know it is not so, but it certainly looks so.' Of course 
 the persistence of different appearances, when rightly inter- 
 preted to indicate different conditions, is not in opposition to 
 measurement, though Plato perhaps thought it was. 
 
 38. ' That part which relies on calculation and measurement 
 must be the best part,' at least, it is as whole to part, and 
 consequently as systematic to confused thinking. (Cp. 248. 3, 
 524 c.) Just as desire is usually modified or suppressed by a 
 larger purpose, and not stopped dead by a negative command 
 as represented in Book iv., so sensuous misjudgment is usually 
 set right by interpretation and incorporation in the whole, and 
 does not normally remain confronting it as irreconcilable. 
 But phenomena closely resembling both these conceptions of 
 Plato will take place in extreme cases, and no doubt bear 
 witness to the complexity of the mind.
 
 BOOK X, 395 
 
 347. 8. 'Is the worthless mistress of a worthless friend.' 603 B 
 See 205. 49 for the language of the love-philosophy applied 
 to lofty intelligence. The mind's union with its other self, 
 which is Plato's idea of love, is profoundly applied to the 
 process of experience in its different phases. The copyist in 
 art devotes himself to the least perfect form of experience, and 
 his productions are accordingly (' Es wird auch danach).' 
 
 13. 'That which addresses itself to the ear.' Music is not 
 treated separately from poetry, and poetry is only classed as an 
 art of sound. But a mere phrase of transition must not be 
 emphasised. 
 
 347- T 5> 603 B 350. 14, 605 c. Sect. 105. 
 
 So, too, the part of the mind to which imitative poetry appeals,' 
 and from which it draws its material, is false and worthless. 
 For man is at war with his reason in emotion as in cognition, 
 and emotion hostile to reason or law, as naturally dramatic, 
 is the province of poetry, as perception hostile to measurement 
 was the province of painting. Thus not only are the poefs 
 creations untrue (see Section 100), but they do harm by foster- 
 ing a worthless part of the soul. 
 
 It is striking that emotion should be so especially assigned to 
 poetry, and perception to painting, although, indeed, each mental 
 condition is clearly to be understood as involving the other, false 
 sentiment and narrow or confused perception going naturally 
 together. Sentiment the way in which actions and situations 
 are felt, and ideas the way in which they are regarded, are 
 closely connected and often hardly distinguishabk. Both as a 
 less immediately presentative art than painting, and as in a 
 great measure an art of sound (especially when not clearly 
 separated from music], it is possible that poetry has the more 
 distinctly emotional character. ' Why is sound the only sensa- 
 tion that has ethos ?' i.e. that appeals to our emotional moods ? 
 Aristotle asks in his jottings of problems for inquiry. 
 
 347. 15, ' Do not let us rely only on the probable evidence 603 B 
 derived from painting,' more lit. 'on the likelihood,' i.e. on the
 
 396 COMPANION TO PLATO '5 REPUBLIC 
 
 inference depending on the likeness between painting and 
 poetry, that what is true of painting is true of poetry. This 
 suggests the term ' analogy ' as a rendering of ' guesswork ' or 
 'going by likenesses,' in the scheme of cognition, end of 
 Book vi. Plato is proposing to make a special inquiry into 
 the psychological element with which poetry deals. ' Of the 
 intellect ' : the word has in itself no technical meaning, and is 
 used here, no doubt, of conscious states in general. 
 
 603 C 22. 'Engaged in voluntary or involuntary actions.' (See 
 
 93-4- 399-) 
 
 36. ' We admitted that our soul is fraught with an infinite 
 number of these simultaneous contradictions' : ' simultaneous,' 
 i.e. the mind having opposite impulses at the same moment. 
 (See 143. 22, 439 c.) 
 
 E 348. 4. ' At the time ' ; in the earlier part of the dialogue ? 
 The last reference was apparently to I.e. in Book iv. : this is to 
 77. 20, 387 c in Book in. 
 
 604 A 1 8. ' When he is alone he will venture to say much' ; to 
 
 ' say,' rather, ' to give vent to ' : the word would include in- 
 articulate sounds of sorrow. The Greek word 'venture' has 
 quite a peculiar implication in places like this. It primarily 
 means ' dare ' in the full sense, but is constantly used of moral 
 or rather immoral daring, ' having the face ' to do a thing, e.g. 
 in the Crifo, 53 E : ' will no one cast it up to you that being an 
 old man, with probably but a short time to live, you dared to 
 be so greedy of life as violate the highest laws ? ' The word 
 seems to imply a sort of horror naturalis at the impropriety 
 suggested. A Greek would betray more outward signs of 
 sorrow than are usual among us ; if we can trust Plutarch, 
 even such a man as Solon would break out into Oriental 
 gestures of lamentation on receiving tidings of his son's 
 death (Plut, Solon c. 6.) ; and just because of this tendency 
 there was a strong feeling of the need of self-restraint, and the 
 shame of being seen to give way beyond a certain point. The 
 peculiar danger involved in sentiment, which, because imaginary, 
 escapes criticism, is the theme of the subsequent 'Section.
 
 BOOK X. 397 
 
 25. 'The affliction itself,' lit. 'pathos,' that which befalls or 
 affects the man. This word had not yet acquired the refer- 
 ence to a peculiar quality in expression which jt now carries 
 with it. 
 
 31. 'Is not one part of him prepared' : 'one part of him,' 604 B 
 lit. 'the one,' opposite .to the other, described 349. 16 E. For 
 this purpose the man is regarded in respect of two elements 
 only, either omitting the ' spirited ' element, or assuming that, 
 as self-respect, it coalesces with the spirit of law inspired by 
 education, 'eunomia,' 123. 38, 435 A. 
 
 36. ' Because we cannot estimate the amount of good and 
 evil,' partly, perhaps, that our characters are being moulded 
 by a process which is not pleasant, 69. 20, 380 B, partly 
 that, more generally, we cannot see through the workings of 
 Providence, 360. i, 613 A. 
 
 39. ' None of the affairs of this life deserve very serious C 
 anxiety.' See 200. 4, 486 A and note, 'of this life,' lit. 'human.' 
 The question is with what, if anything, it is contrasted, or is 
 there nothing that deserves serious anxiety ? Two thoughts 
 seem to be blended : one (see I.e.] that any particular incident 
 or the fate of any individual is not enough to produce despair 
 in the mind of one who generally tries to follow the march of 
 the world (cp. a quotation from one of Hegel's letters, Mind 
 xiii. 146) ; secondly (as the following sentence shows), that the 
 frame of mind which is troubled and upset by passing events 
 is not the frame of mind which best responds to the call of 
 duty. The context indicates, though the actual words com- 
 mented on do not involve it, that here at least it is the enjoy- 
 ment of emotion, and not the feeling which is organic to 
 action, that Plato deprecates. 
 
 349. 6. ' Instead of hugging the wounded part,' etc., a 
 quaint bit of observation, and a criticism terribly in point 
 to-day. 
 
 10. ' Putting a stop to lamentation by the aid of medicine ' ; D 
 rather, surely, ' putting lamentation out of our heads by apply- 
 ing ourselves to remedy the evil.'
 
 398 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 17. 'Think of and grieve over,' to keep recalling and 
 lamenting over the misfortune. This clearly portrays the sort 
 of temper in question the sentimental temper which enjoys 
 feeling for feeling's sake. 
 
 21. 'Peevish temper,' sensitive or sentimental, easily roused 
 to feel and exhibit emotion, chiefly painful. This is a real 
 difficulty in gesthetic. The amount of utterance, e.g., which is 
 necessary for the conventional drama is itself in some degree 
 a convention, in which mere inward thought and feeling are 
 taken as revealed in speech. The bearing of a man of charac- 
 ter in actual modern life would afford little material for the 
 stage, and the attempt to present it realistically by refinements 
 of look and gesture coupled with monosyllabic ejaculations is 
 perhaps a hopeless revolt against dramatic convention. What- 
 ever we may think of the Greek sculpture which we know, the 
 Greek dramatist at least, though limited in the range of his 
 passion, almost shocks a reader trained upon Shakespeare by 
 the violence of his recriminations and the ingeniousness of 
 his lamentations. The secret of tragic dignity lies not in the 
 avoidance of 'variety' (see 293. 41, 561 E) but in the 'tem- 
 perance and smoothness ' which Shakespeare orders the actor, 
 and also, no doubt, the poet, to ' acquire and beget ' in the 
 very ' whirlwind of passion. ' Even this Plato did not, or pro- 
 fessed that he did not, appreciate ; but also, of course, there 
 falls rightly under his condemnation the whole mass of morbid 
 sentimentalism which is invented simply for the stage and for 
 the sentiment-loving audience, and has no place in literature 
 because it has no greatness of character. 
 
 28. ' Is far from being their own,' i.e. if a simple and 
 dignified character is put on the stage. 
 
 605 A 3 1 - ' Nothing to do with this (calm) temper of soul.' On 
 the whole, as people imitate what they admire, so they admire 
 what they are able to respond to. So the temper which the 
 poet represents is also in the main the temper he appeals to ; 
 and needing dramatic material, he is forced to represent the 
 changeful (' various ') temper.
 
 BOOK X. 399 
 
 39. ' In producing things that are worthless.' (See Section- 
 heading.) 
 
 42. 'Which is like himself; rather, 'which is also worth- 
 less,' because it opposes law and reason. 
 
 350. 8. 'Implants an evil constitution.' (See 332. 22, 590 E.) 605 B 
 
 9. ' By gratifying that senseless part.' For good and evil, 
 all imitate what they enjoy, and grow to be like what they 
 imitate, 2IQ. 4, 500 c and 88. 39, 395 c. 
 
 11. 'Regards the same things now as great and now as C 
 small.' Cp., perhaps, the account of relative pleasure, 321. ff., 
 583 ff., for the meaning of this on emotional ground. 
 
 12. 'Manufactures fantastic phantoms.' Cp. Silas Marner, 
 ' " It 's perhaps Mr. Snail's bull got out again, as he did before." 
 
 '" I wish he mayn't gore anybody, then, that 's all," said Jane, 
 not altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a few 
 imaginary calamities.' By connection with silly fancies and 
 fictitious occasions for emotion, and with false lights on life in 
 general, the account of sentimentalism is closely linked with 
 the account of ' phantoms ' or shadows as the lowest cognitive 
 stage in the allegory of the Cave. 
 
 350. 14, 605 c 352. 3, 606 D. Sect. 106. 
 
 Poetical presentation feeds the sentimental mood by an in- 
 dulgence which is unguarded just because ideal or imaginary. 
 
 350. 26. ' Sympathise with the sufferer.' (See 174. 21, 464 D D 
 and note.) There the word was 'share in one feeling,' i.e. feel 
 the pain or pleasure of members in the same organised self. 
 Here the word is ' feel with/ closely corresponding to our 
 word ' sympathise,' and it is used, apparently, of the mere 
 contagion of a feeling which being in one individual tends to 
 repeat itself in another without relation to common aims or a 
 common life, a process which is not, like the other, moral, and 
 according to Plato is morally hazardous. It is very important 
 to note that our word 'sympathy' ranges between these two 
 very different meanings. 
 
 351. 1 3. ' Relaxes in its watch over this querulous part.' The 606 A
 
 400 COMPANION TO PLAT&S REPUBLIC 
 
 effect of the imaginary character of what is presented is 
 analogous to that of solitude, 348. 18, 604 A ; the restraints of 
 actual life are thrown off. This is a very acute comment on 
 the dangers of imagination when we think it safe to let our- 
 selves go ; but there is another side to the question, see note 
 on 38. 
 
 606 B 17. 'The conduct of other people,' i.e. in giving way to 
 grief. 'Influence' = 'we must be infected by it,' same word 
 as 88. 39, 395 c. 
 
 C 33. ' Adopting the character of a comic poet ' : a rhetorical 
 climax, with a mixture of humour and horror. Plato in some 
 moods was plainly inclined to ascribe the odium which was 
 finally fatal to Socrates to the influence of Aristophanes (see 
 Apology ', 1 8 D), although Aristophanes appears as a friend in 
 the Symposium. On the moral danger of excessive laughter 
 see 79. 15, 388 D. 
 
 D 38. 'Waters and cherishes.' Plato's general principle is that 
 what is exercised is fostered ; the act makes the habit, and 
 imitation, or what we enter into, becomes second nature. As 
 against the two main principles of this discussion on represen- 
 tative art there are obvious objections, which may be indi- 
 cated by a reference to Aristotle's theory. 
 
 i. As against the view that the representative artist is 
 essentially a reproducer of commonplace reality (see 339. 19, 
 598 A), Plato's 'second production from truth,' the product 
 that the workman makes, or (we may expand) that the vulgar 
 eye sees in nature, Aristotle observes that ' poetry is more 
 serious and more scientific than history ' (which includes, no 
 doubt, 'natural history'). It is Plotinus, however, a neo- 
 Platonist of the third century A.D., who finally enunciates the 
 modern position by declaring that the arts do not simply 
 imitate the visible, but go back to the laws or harmonies from 
 which nature comes. This complete reversal of Plato's real 
 or assumed attitude is even more trenchantly expressed by 
 Schiller, when he says that man is not civilised till he has 
 learnt to prefer the semblance to the reality. Plato's own
 
 BOOK X. 401 
 
 doctrine of symbolism, which made the whole world a gradu- 
 ated embodiment of law and reality, pointed forward to such 
 conclusions as these, which he even applied to beauty as such, 
 and, in his educational theory and analysis of pleasure, to 
 non-representative art. His view was, in part at least, a 
 reductio ad absurdum of current criticism, and a criticism on 
 the copyist tendency, which at all times makes itself felt in art. 
 ii. As against the view that solicitation of emotion by 
 imaginary presentation can only foster the emotion solicited, 
 Aristotle advances the celebrated purgation theory, which, 
 without vouching for absolute accuracy, we may fairly indi- 
 cate as the conception of a safety-valve. It is both pleasur- 
 able and wholesome, he maintains, to ' let yourself go ' on 
 certain occasions ; the tendency to emotion is thus relieved, 
 and the emotional forces lose their mischievous character. 
 How far, and in what sense, this and his former suggestion 
 lend themselves to combination is an interesting question of 
 aesthetic theory. (See the editor's Hist, of Esthetic, pp. 66-7.) 
 
 352. 4, 606 E 354. 2, 608 B. . Sect. 107. 
 
 Then so far from thinking that Homer is a supreme authority 
 on education, politics, and morals, we must not admit him into 
 our community at all, and in this hostility we only maintain an 
 old feud between science and poetry. But if any other justifica- 
 tion for representative art (than its didactic value) can be 
 shown, we will welcome it. And in any case, we have learnt 
 how to read poetry, that is to say, not to treat it as a serious 
 vehicle of knowledge and morality, but to bear in mind that it is 
 of the nature of illusion, and be on our guard against receiving 
 it otherwise. 
 
 We might illustrate these ideas by applying them to the use of 
 
 the Bible, though the cases, of course, are not closely parallel. 
 
 We too have those who think that the Bible is the supreme 
 
 authority on all matters of life, and those who think that it is 
 
 full of error and opposed to science, some of whom (though few} 
 
 2 C
 
 402 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 might be found to say that it is not worth using at all, and 
 lastly, those who think that the chief thing is to know from 
 what point of view to study it. 
 
 607 A 352. 16. 'The highly-seasoned muse of lyric or epic 
 
 poetry,' lit. ' the sweetened muse.' Aristotle applies the same 
 epithet to distinguish (probably) verse from prose in defining 
 tragedy. 
 
 'Of lyric,' etc., or 'in lyric.' The hymns which were to be 
 admitted were surely lyric, and in general, lyric poetry was 
 more at home in the non-democratic communities of Greece 
 than tragedy. 
 
 B 28. ' A quarrel of long standing.' We have the attacks of 
 Heraclitus and Xenophanes upon the poets (see the frag- 
 ments in Burnet), but little of the rejoinder, unless we count 
 the Clouds of Aristophanes. In Laws, xii. 967, expressions 
 similar to these are mentioned, as applied by the poets to 
 philosophers (presumably Anaxagoras and his followers) who 
 denied the divinity of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 353. 1 6. ' We shall be gainers, I presume, if poetry can be 
 proved to be profitable.' This need not be taken as mere 
 irony. Plato was well aware that thought had possibili- 
 ties beyond his immediate horizon, and that especially his 
 psychology was a defective instrument of research (138. 4, 
 435 c). 
 
 608 A 28. 'We must not make a serious pursuit of such poetry, in 
 
 the belief that it grasps truth and is good ' : 'good '=' serious' 
 or 'worthy,' the word of which Aristotle uses the comparative 
 in saying, ' poetry is more serious and scientific (philosophic) 
 than research into fact ' (history). In denying this predi- 
 cate of poetry, Plato undoubtedly goes a long way towards 
 affirming its utter triviality ; but still we must bear in mind 
 the drift of the superstition which he had to encounter (see 
 beginning of the present Section), and which for him coloured 
 the meaning of 'good' or 'worthy' by didactic ideas. We 
 are ' to be on our guard,' ' to take care,' not to forget we are
 
 BOOK X. 403 
 
 dealing with shadows : this seems to be what he desires to 
 insist on. 
 
 36. ' Involves a great stake,' leading up to the argument 608 B 
 for immortality. 
 
 354. 3, 608 c 357. 21, 611 A. Sect. 108. 
 
 What is at stake is not a single life, but all time, for our soul 
 is immortal and indestructible. For the disintegration of any 
 being can only proceed from an evil that attacks it, not from one 
 that attacks something else. Nmu the evil that attacks the soul 
 is wickedness, and this does not produce the dissolution of the 
 soul, nor is it especially traceable at times when (if the soul 
 perished at what we call death) it would be approaching its 
 dissolution. But the evils of the body, as such, are by the hypo- 
 thesis confined to attacking the body, and are not found in 
 experience to set up the characteristic evil of the soul. Therefore 
 there is no evil that can dissolve the soul, and it is indestructible. 
 
 This argument may be said to take up the contention of the 
 Phaedo from page 106 B, before which the essential opposition 
 between death and the soul (which is principle of life) has been 
 exhibited by terming the soul immortal, in the sense of deathless, 
 i.e. in that it cannot die and yet remain a soul. But whether 
 it perishes at the onset of death, or is indestructible as well as 
 deathless, is a question there suggested, but not fully discussed. 
 It is hardly, perhaps, one of the ' 'first hypotheses ' left over as 
 needing additional examination (107 B), but seems to receive it 
 here. The substance of the present argument is closely akin to 
 that of the criticism there directed against the conception of the 
 soul as a music depending on the adjustment of the bodily ele- 
 ments. It ultimately rests on the difference between sin and 
 disease. A soul, however sinful, is yet a soul (or life) as much 
 as the most righteous, whereas a music or ' harmony ' ceases to 
 be music in as far as the adjustments fail on which it depended. 
 If souls were the music of bodies, all would have to be equally 
 righteous, for if not, they would be more and less of souls, as the
 
 404 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 bodily adjustment varied, and that (very suggestive) alternative 
 is ruled out. 
 
 It is a common and attractive modern idea to think of the 
 wicked as diseased, or as in a low phase of vitality, and 
 Plato s conception of Justice as harmony and organisation 
 (34-5. 351-2, and 151. 445) seems to lend itself to the notion 
 that wickedness may be looked on as a disintegration and dissolu- 
 tion of the soul. But the facts on which Plato relies here and in 
 the Phaedo demand attention. Health and goodness, disease and 
 wickedness, are, after all, different things for daily observation. 
 The difference may be ultimately one of degree, but it is practi- 
 cally immeasurable. Sickness may lower the intellectual force, 
 but it quite as often piirifies as impairs the character. Wrong- 
 doing and selfishness may be hostile to survival in the long run, 
 but they cannot precisely be equated with a tendency to shorten 
 life. Even insanity is perplexingly compatible with apparent 
 bodily health. It is a mistake of principle absolutely to deny 
 Plato's position that a bad sou/ may be completely a soul a 
 fully endowed human being. We must not try to reditce wicked- 
 ness to the type of defective evolution. There is such a thing as 
 perverseness and rebellion, and these are not the same as psycho- 
 physical inferiority, though ultimately the bad self can never 
 have the same imity as the good. The psychological problem of 
 soul and body is, of course, still sub judice. 
 
 608 C 354. ii. ' Compared to eternity.' We must be very careful 
 throughout this discussion to distinguish Plato's conceptions 
 from our own. Comparing 2l6. 35, 498 D, and the myth, we 
 see that this does not necessarily mean a personal survival for 
 ever in another world, but the fate and future of unending 
 lives not connected with our own by any link of conscious 
 individuality. 
 
 1 8. 'Is immortal, and never dies,' lit. 'and is never 
 destroyed,' which makes the connection with the argument 
 of the Phaedo. (See Section-heading.) 
 E 32. ' Everything that destroys and corrupts.' So we should
 
 BOOK X. 405 
 
 expect from the whole account of justice, and therefore the 
 drift of the argument rather takes us by surprise. 
 
 355. 6. ' Its own connatural evil and vice.' Of course this 609 A 
 stage of the argument assumes the dualism of soul and body, 
 
 but it hardly begs the question, as the assumption really rests 
 on the observed difference of wickedness and disease. 
 
 42. The depravity of another thing.' Here again the gist of D 
 the argument lies in the distinction of the two depravities. 
 If you allege that disease destroys the soul, what place have 
 you left for wickedness ? 
 
 356. !3- ' Without the introduction of its own native evil' ; 610 A 
 of course quite true of an organism. Infection, e.g., may or 
 may not find in the body a condition favourable to it. The 
 organism may, however, be attacked in more or less organic 
 ways, i.e. its mechanical conditions may be destroyed by 
 violence instead of a detrimental growth being set up within 
 
 it. So the mind may be attacked through its bodily condi- 
 tions as well as in what we call a relatively direct manner, as 
 by temptation. Cp. the story of the prisoner who was drugged 
 with atropine in order to shatter the resolution with which he 
 concealed his comrades' names. 
 
 29. ' Becomes more unjust and unholy.' It is possible, of B 
 course, in certain cases to show that a bodily ailment is con- 
 nected with intellectual and even moral deterioration. But 
 character has extraordinary powers of resistance, though intel- 
 lect is clouded with comparative ease. 
 
 357. 8. ' It endows its possessor_with peculiar vitality.' This E 
 is in a somewhat lighter and more superficial tone, than, e.g., 
 the account of the voluptuary's soul. Perhaps it is worth 
 noticing that the remark is not assigned to Socrates. Still, 
 from an everyday point of view, the fact is as alleged, and 
 Plato may have meant to supplement the ideal account of 
 the voluptuary and the absolutely wicked who is absolutely 
 weak (35. 33, 352 c) by a view more adapted to the sphere 
 of picture-thinking and the unphilosophic consciousness, to 
 which the myth and the insistence on endless temporal dura-
 
 406 COMPANION TO PLATO" 1 S REPUBLIC 
 
 tion belong. Just so, we shall see that the myth attempts to 
 portray the freedom of the will by referring it to a single act 
 of choice at a point in time. These pictures reproduce the 
 ' fact,' the first impression, which it is the duty of philosophy 
 to analyse. 
 
 611 A 20. 'Always existing and therefore immortal.' This infer- 
 ence imposes a restriction on the meaning of what is inferred. 
 If immortal only in the sense in which it is always existent, the 
 soul plainly has not the continued personal consciousness 
 which is principally interesting to us. 
 
 Sect. 109. 357. 22, 611 A 358. 41, 612 A. 
 
 Corollaries from the eternity of the soul. The number of souls 
 cannot alter, and moreover, the soul as we have examined it, 
 being composite and even discordant, cannot be the soul in its 
 eternal nature. To understand this we should have to look at 
 it as intelligence, and to trace its affinity with the real and the 
 divine ; and then we should know whether it includes more 
 kinds than one, or not. 
 
 This passage exhibits a conception of the soul remote from that 
 conveyed by the image of the composite creature in Book IX. 
 But, as we saw, that image deals rather with the psychical 
 material than with a formed moral self. How far Plato 
 would have admitted that, in completing its unity, the embodied 
 soul, with its emotions and affections, might attain to what he 
 conceived as its simple or undiscordant nature, we cannot tell. 
 The natural interpretation of the present passage, to a mind 
 charged with popular mysticism, undoubtedly suggests that the 
 real nature of the soul lies in a simplicity to be attained not by 
 unification but by abstraction. But if we press upon this line of 
 thought, and observe the extreme uncertainty of Plato's language, 
 we shall be carried beyond popular mysticism in yet another 
 direction. Apart from body and personal affections it is hard 
 to conceive of individual immortality. And in thinking of the 
 real and divine affinities of mind we are brought on the track 
 of the human intelligence as portrayed in the Timaeus, a spark
 
 BOOK X. 407 
 
 of universal reason enclosed in the complex personality of man. 
 This again points forward to the conception of Aristotle, accord- 
 ing to which the active intelligence the organising spirit is 
 eternal and indestructible, but the receptive mind, the memory 
 and personality, are perishable and do not survive the body. If 
 ive suppose that Plato is here on some such path (and it is plain 
 throughout that consciousness is not for him as for tis the funda- 
 mental character of mind] we are still not debarred from assum- 
 ing what, indeed, the Timaeus tells us, that within the human 
 or moral self the soul realises its nature in as far as it achieves 
 simplicity in the sense of organic unity. 
 
 28. ' Everything would finally be immortal.' Same argument 61 1 A 
 (Phaedo, 726) reversed, but in more general form. 'If all things 
 went the same way from life to death, and there was no return 
 movement, all would finally have the same form and condition, 
 and life would come to an end ' ; or, 'if all things came together 
 and nothing tended to separate, chaos would result.' 
 
 33. ' The soul in its essential nature,' lit. ' in its truest B 
 nature ' ; there is no suggestion of an essential as against an 
 unessential part. 
 
 34. 'Viewed by itself.' I do not think this is right; there 
 is again no suggestion of a separation between one part and 
 another; it is, surely, '(cannot) teem with disagreement, 
 itself towards itself ' ; i.e. with inward contradiction, as 
 described in Books iv., vin., and ix. 
 
 37. 'Eternal, as we have just proved the soul to be'; 
 surely not, although Jowett agrees. The order and the 
 whole context require ' if compounded, and that not in the 
 best way, as in our present discussion it was shown to be.' 
 Cp. Phaedo, 77-9, on which place it is important to note that 
 Plato is arguing just against the primitive superstition with 
 which many would confound his view. 'You are afraid,' 
 Socrates says, Mike children, that when the soul leaves the 
 body the wind will blow it apart and disperse it, especially if 
 one dies not on a calm day but in a heavy gale.' This refers
 
 408 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 to the Homeric metaphor by which the departing ghost is 
 likened to a wreath of smoke, Phaedo, 70 A, and so 'spiritual' 
 thought often appears to construe immateriality as thinness 
 of matter. It is as a rebuke to this way of thinking that Plato 
 admits some souls to be spectres or phantoms, namely, those 
 which are loaded with material inclinations, ibid. 81 c. 
 
 ' Not compounded in the best way ' ; probably refers to its 
 internal discord. It is a sort of compound in the Timaeus. 
 
 6n C 358. 8. 'Unsullied purity.' The rendering pursues the 
 idea of a sort of angel soul, probably an altogether false 
 track. ' What it is like when you get it pure (i.e. by itself) 
 must be adequately scrutinised by reasoning'; this is very 
 like an anticipation of part of the problem of the Timaeus. 
 E 26. 'In virtue of its close connection with the divine,' 
 more lit. its 'kinship,' or 'affinity with.' 
 
 612 A 34- 'Essentially multiform.' In the Timaeus it is in a 
 sense multiform. An isolated quotation from the Timaeus 
 would hardly be intelligible, but I extract a passage which 
 may be suggestive from the late Mr. R. L. Nettleship's review 
 of Mr. Archer Hind's Timaeus, Mind xiv. 132: 'Plato (in 
 the Timaeus, 35 A) makes soul arise from the union of 
 divisible and indivisible substance + sameness and difference. 
 We seem to have a clue to his meaning when he comes to 
 describe the activity or ' movement ' of soul. He describes 
 the movement as circular, returning into itself, and this 
 circular movement he represents as having two forms, that of 
 sameness and that of difference. In other words, sameness 
 and difference are the elementary forms of discursive thought 
 (cp. 40 A and 44 A) to which all judgments are ultimately 
 reducible, and in the consciousness of which the substance 
 of soul moves eternally out of and into itself.' The soul thus 
 constituted is immortal, and some of it is in the human 
 mind; but in this there is also a mortal soul, consisting 
 of the passions and affections, while sensation is a shock 
 transmitted by the body to the soul (Timaeus, 43, 69). 
 Thus the immortal soul would be the intelligent character
 
 BOOK X. 409 
 
 which mind recognises in itself and in the world, and which 
 is taken as an eternal law of the universe. 
 
 358. 42, 612 A 361. 9, 613 E. Sect. 110. 
 
 The eternal consequences of right and of wrong-doing must 
 be recognised, as to divorce seeming from being was only a 
 (forced) hypothesis for the sake of argument. 
 
 359. 21. 'Still this ought to be granted for the sake of the 612 C 
 argument.' See the entire addresses of Glaucon and Adei- 
 mantus, especially 44. 6, 361 E, and 51- 367. It was an ille- 
 gitimate hypothesis to separate the consequences of law and 
 order from their existence, and in fact has absolutely been 
 disregarded in the analysis of social happiness and misery. 
 
 30. 'Which she earns by her outward appearances.' The D 
 seeming cannot as a matter of principle be disjoined from the 
 reality ; it is, in fact, a part of it, as the act is of the will. 
 Morality is not merely inward. (See 8. 332-3 and 149. 443.) 
 
 37. 'That the gods at least are not mistaken.' The E 
 superstitious doctrines of the poets and popular theologians 
 (49. 365-6) are treated as swept away by the criticism to 
 which the didactic value of poetry has been subjected. 
 
 360. i. 'All things which come from the gods.' It is 613 A 
 hard to say how far this is a limiting condition. (See 68. 14, 
 
 379 c.) 
 
 3. ' Unless some past sin ' ; the doctrine of the myth. In 
 a less mystical form we all understand that the sin of one life 
 influences those which come after. 
 
 8. 'For his final advantage.' Is this a doctrine of com- 
 pensation or of discipline? The same question might be 
 asked about the saying, 'all things work together for good 
 to them that love God.' The two interpretations run into 
 each other. The root-feeling of the frame of mind is that 
 there is a good in the course of life greater than we can see. 
 
 32. 'Then will you suffer me to say of them what you said 
 of the unjust ? ' See 44-45. 3 6z -
 
 410 COMPANION TO PLATO 'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Sect. 111. 361. 10, 614 A End of dialogue. 
 
 The imagery of the myth follows strangely upon Plato's 
 criticism of poetic imagination. It may be noted that by 
 adopting the narrative form he distinguishes his ' lawless and 
 uncertain thought ' from his serious discussions (cp. Phaedo, 
 114 D), and thus observes the condition which he has more than 
 once laid doivn for the use of the imagination, that he who deals 
 with it must know with what he is dealing (see 335. 18, 595 B, 
 353. 32, 608 A). The symbolism or anthropomorphism which 
 creeps into the statement of his most essential ideas, as in the 
 details of the city of the perfect, the gold and iron races, the 
 deception used by the rulers, the philosophic king, the failure to 
 hit the right birth times, or again the vast imagery of the creative 
 process in the Timaeus, stands on a somewhat different footing, 
 and, although the interpreter must allow for it, does not so 
 definitely indicate a reservation confessed by the author himself. 
 The first point in the myth that strikes a modern reader is the 
 idea of retribution. Plato is the first Greek writer from 
 whom we have a detailed picture of this idea, 'which, as Cephalus 
 tells us, had long been a sort of popular nightmare, having 
 practical influence only as death approached (see 5. 10, 330 D). 
 The references to it in the Odyssey appear all to be additions of 
 unknown date. (For the growth of a similar conception in 
 Hebrew thought, during the exile and later, see article ' Escha- 
 tology,' Encycl. Britannica). Both here and in the Phaedo 
 eternal punishment is predicted only for the incurable, among 
 whom, with reference to the argument of the dialogue,- the 
 despots here take the principal place, though the Phaedo does 
 not allude to them. There are probably Dantesque references 
 in the crimes enumerated, but the scheme of the myth forbids any 
 mention of persons in recent memory. All other retribution 
 is partly purification. In the Republic, which herein differs 
 from the Phaedo, there is no suggestion of eternal felicity , in the 
 sense of freedom from re-incarnation. The whole stress is
 
 BOOK X. 411 
 
 laid on the wise choice of life, which is the only path to 
 happiness. 
 
 The myth is based on the doctrine of metempsychosis, which 
 was known to Herodotus, and quite possibly had an Oriental 
 source. But in fact it is a primitive notion implying close kin- 
 ship between man and animals, and the important point is the 
 way in which Plato spiritiialises it by introducing the distinc- 
 tively ethical conception of a free choice of life conditioned only 
 by the soul's own experience and wisdom. Thus here, as 
 throughout Books II. and III., he breaks with primitive 
 superstition, for he refuses to regard re-incarnation either as 
 a mere natural necessity or as a punishment, but treats it as 
 an occasion on tuhich judgment and character reveal themselves 
 in a supreme decision. On metempsychosis, see Burnet, p. 
 100 ff. Herodotits (ii. 123) has heard of it as a natural 
 necessity, according to which the soul assumes all animal 
 forms in rotation. Empedocles speaks of it as a punishment. 
 (See fragment in Burnet, p. 233.) The immortality which 
 Herodotus was told of as a doctrine of Zalmoxis was dif- 
 ferent, more like the Valhalla of the northern nations (Hdt. 
 
 "' 95)- 
 
 The relation of the choice to necessity is very remarkable. 
 
 Virtue is supposed not to be assigned in the allotment, and to be 
 compatible with any lot, though in almost the same words it is 
 proclaimed that the responsibility rests with the chooser (cp. in 
 Odyssey i. the words of Zeus : ( men blame us and say that evils 
 come from us ; but they too of themselves by their own folly have 
 troubles more than is fated'}, implying, what is clearly the case, 
 that the choice once made determines character for the future, as 
 it is itself determined by the character and experience of the past. 
 The reign of law in Nature is typified by the revolutions of the 
 heavens on the knees of Necessity (contrast the Homeric expres- 
 sion ' all this lies on the knees of the gods '), and the choice, when 
 made, is ratified by this supreme order (Atropos= l unturning'\ 
 and, so to speak, becomes part of it. The one 'free ' act of choice,
 
 412 COMPANION TO PLATVS REPUBLIC 
 
 then, recurring at intervals of more than a thousand years (the 
 sum of the whole intermediate life] is a mere image of the daily 
 responsibility of the human soul condensed into a point of time. 
 It never really escapes from Necessity ', but Necessity is for Plato 
 not hostile to freedom, the true opposite to which is slavery (see 
 Book IX.}. 
 
 The description of the heavens has the kind of inconsistency 
 which belongs to a fairy tale, in which things too vast to be 
 brought into a picture are nevertheless seen or handled by a 
 person in the story, as Thor tried to lift a cat, which was really 
 the great earth-serpent that holds the earth together. The 
 whorls of the spindle are the turning heavens, not exactly 
 pictured as spheres. It would be strange if the fateful doctrine 
 of spheres, as material shells one within the other, really drew its 
 origin from this fairy tale. In the Timaeus, 38, where Plato's 
 science is more serious, they are not mentioned. 
 
 The account of the passage of the river Forgetfulness seems to 
 imply that something was to be gained by temperance shown in 
 not drinking to the full ; presumably this is a last trace of the 
 ' recollection ' doctrine, according to which knowledge would be 
 more easily won in proportion as ante-natal impressions re- 
 mained distinct. But as the choice has now determined the soul's 
 future and its character, there seems no room for real emphasis 
 ttpon this matter. It will be seen, then, that the immortality on 
 which Plato lays stress in the Republic is not ultimately a per- 
 sonal continuance, the next terrestrial life having no more 
 conscious relation to the present than the present has to the 
 last. That the life of every human being has incalculable 
 influence on the lives of those who come after, not merely by a 
 tradition of respectability and inoffensiveness, but by bequeathing 
 a high standard of thought, the sole means of meeting new con- 
 ditions without risk of moral disaster (368. i o, 619 D) seems to 
 be the meaning through which, under the veil of compensation in 
 a future life, Plato extends his conception of righteousness to 
 include a duty to unborn generations.
 
 BOOK X, 413 
 
 362. i. 'The unjust were ordered.' This dichotomous 614 C 
 distinction between good and bad must belong, one would 
 suppose, to the mythical form. If we look at the dialogue as 
 
 a whole, who would be good and who bad according to its 
 principles ? Would any of the existing human race, except 
 one or two philosophers, be saved ? It has been pointed out 
 that the annihilation-doctrine of Epicurus was welcome to the 
 world partly because of the narrow limits set to salvation by 
 current theory (Wallace : Lecture on Epicurus). In the Phaedo 
 a middle state is recognised, 113 D. 
 
 36. ' Betrayed and enslaved cities and armies ' : 'enslaved ' 615 B 
 opens a wide category for Greek generals, unless it is to be 
 taken strictly with ' betrayed ' as a result of treason. Even 
 Grote's hero, Callicratidas, who said he would not sell into 
 slavery the citizens of Methymna, had no compunction as 
 regarded the Athenian garrison (Xen. Hell. i. 6, 15), whom he 
 sold on the following day. There is no mention of these par- 
 ticular crimes in the Phaedo, nor of tyrants. The subject of 
 the Republic is a sufficient reason for the difference. 
 
 39. ' Those who had done any charitable acts' ; or, ' if they 
 had done ' ; were those who passed under the earth to receive 
 reward for any good they might have done ? In the Phaedo 
 the people of average lives are both purged by chastisement 
 and rewarded for good deeds (113 D). The absolute alter- 
 native of Protestant Christianity has a far more awful signi- 
 ficance than a theory of this latter kind. 
 
 42. ' Whose death followed close upon their birth.' (Cp. C 
 Verg. Aen. vi. 426, Dante, Inferno iv. 30.) 
 
 363. 1 6. 'The greater part had been despots.' According D 
 to the context the special crime of Ardiaeus was parricide and 
 fratricide, not treason to a city. Cp. 309. 574 and 304. 569 
 (where ' parricide,' of course, is metaphorical). 
 
 366. 2. ' The outermost rim of the distaff.' The Greek words 617 C 
 commonly said to=' distaff' and ' spindle ' appear to be inter- 
 changed in parts of this passage, e.g., elakate= spindle, 365.
 
 414 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 1 6, 616 E. But we must not interchange the English terms. 
 The distaff never revolves ; it is a stick which is held, in 
 spinning, under the left arm, and carries the flax to be spun. 
 The spindle hangs from it. I do not think the picture can be 
 constructed, but if there is any reality at all in the image of 
 spinning with distaff and spindle, the spindle must be vertical. 
 The light, being like a column, is also vertical, so that it 
 would almost seem that the spindle must be in it. But I 
 have no confidence in any interpretation of the passage. 
 
 6170 I0 - ' The maiden Lachesis.' Lachesis = ' allotment.' 
 
 E 15. 'Shall be his irrevocably,' lit. ' of necessity.' 'Virtue 
 owns no master,' etc. (See following note.) 
 
 618 B 32. 'No settled character of soul was included in them.' 
 Plato seems to indicate a contrast between character and 
 circumstances, the latter being absolutely fixed by the choice 
 of ' life,' but the former, though necessarily modified by the 
 latter, being yet capable of more or less excellence (cp. ' lives 
 strenuously,' 367. 38, 619 B). The description of the 'lives,' 
 which are objects of the choice, includes no directly moral 
 quality. But in the nature of the case a course of life involv- 
 ing conduct cannot be pre-determined without pre-determining 
 character, and the words cited really convey the opposite of 
 what they profess to assert. 
 
 D 367. 19. 'Giving the name of evil to the life which,' the 
 principle of distinction between good and bad repeated for 
 the third time. Cp. above, 149. 29, 443 E, and 330. 41, 
 589 D. First the standard was the organisation of the soul 
 as a harmony of principles suggested by the order of society 
 and corresponding to the conception of social duty ; secondly, 
 it was stated as the maintenance of what is human and divine 
 in man, in its due superiority to the animal or bestial element 
 in him ; and here it is the concentration of these ideas, indi- 
 cated by the term justice, in a conception of life as a whole, 
 with all its incidents and capacities, such as to be a reliable 
 guide in choosing the better and refusing the worse through-
 
 BOOK X. 415 
 
 out all alternatives that can be presented (cp. 261. 13, 534 B). 
 The one choice with its unending consequences is obviously 
 a pictorial symbol for the unending consequences of the choice 
 between higher and lower which accompanies every moment 
 of waking life. 
 
 368. n. 'And hence a measure of virtue had fallen to his 619 C 
 share.' Cp. 244. 32, 522 A ; this and the following lines form 
 
 a very important criticism on mere social morality, in which 
 the intelligence has never really been awake. It has no 
 principles, but only custom, and is unequal to a new situa- 
 tion. Thus the only way of escaping a constant to and fro 
 of goodness after discipline and folly after happiness is to 
 lay hold on reality through the exercise of intelligence, and so 
 enter on an upward road which does not turn back. (See 
 370. 1 6, 621 c.) 
 
 369. 5. 'The soul of Atalanta.' Atalanta and Epeus, 620 B 
 perhaps accidentally, illustrate the participation of man and 
 woman in the same capacities, 161. 42, 455 D. It is clear 
 throughout that character is fate. If not, indeed, there would 
 
 be no meaning in preparation, throughout life, for the great 
 act of choice. Cp. the remarkable statement, 22 D, which 
 approximates to the idea of metempsychosis as punish- 
 ment. 
 
 26. The Destiny he had chosen,' lit. 'the daemon' or E 
 ' Genius,' the same word as ' destiny ' in the speech of 
 Lachesis; so Phaedo, 107 D. It is a symbol representative 
 of character as destiny. The choice is portrayed as generat- 
 ing a necessity which binds subsequent life. Of course this 
 is true of every choice, and also that it springs out of a neces- 
 sity. The question of moral freedom is not one of escape 
 from necessity, but of escape from slavery. 
 
 41. 'Those who are not preserved by prudence.' Appa-62i A 
 rently a suggestion of the doctrine of anamnesis or pre-natal 
 recollection, but one hardly sees how the greater or less 
 degree of forgetfulness can now do harm or good. For
 
 416 COMPANION TO PLATO S REPUBLIC 
 
 anamnesis, which has very great psychological interest, as 
 assimilating the whole process of knowledge to the pheno- 
 mena of reproductive association, see Phaedo, 73 ff., especially 
 76 A, where the terms contiguity (as a verb) and similarity 
 occur, though not, perhaps, as in connection with distinct 
 ' laws of association.' 
 C 370. 1 6. The upward road.' See note on 368. u, 619 c.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Reff. to Davies and Vaughan's Transl., as . 224. 
 
 ,, to marginal pages, as ... 504. 
 
 ,, to Companion, as .... 237. 
 
 Accuracy, the greatest desired, for 
 the most important study, 224. 
 504, 837. 
 
 Acoustics, physical, discussion on, 
 2567. 530-1, 294. See also 
 Harmony. 
 
 Adeimantus takes part in the dis- 
 cussion on justice, 45. 362-3, 50-1. 
 
 366-7, 57- 37i. 
 doubts the happiness of the 
 
 guardians, 117. 419-20. 
 Aeschylus misrepresents the be-. 
 
 haviour of the gods, 69. 380, 71. 
 
 38i,73- 383, 83- 391- 
 gives an account of the cave- 
 dweller's life, 263-4. 
 Affection, personal, connection of, 
 
 with aesthetic emotion, 98-9. 402- 
 
 3, 109. 
 Age, consideration of, in choice of 
 
 guardians, 267-8. 539, 118, 303. 
 deference shown to, by Greeks, 
 
 192-3. 
 
 Alcibiades, references to, 226. 
 Allegory of the den. See Den, 
 
 allegory of the. 
 Alliances. See Marriage. 
 Altruism, Socrates' and Thrasy- 
 
 machus', 53-4- 
 Analogy, argument from, 31-2. 349- 
 
 50, 59-60. 
 law of, examined, 159. 453, 
 
 177-31. 
 
 Animal World. See World, the 
 animal. 
 
 Appetite, as distinct from emotion, 
 160-1. 
 
 and avarice, connection be- 
 tween, 283. 554, 325. 
 
 Appetites, the necessary and the 
 unnecessary, 289-90. 558-9, 325, 
 331-3. 
 
 nature and number of the, 
 
 305-7- 571-3, 343. See also De- 
 sire and Pleasures. 
 
 Arguments on the comparison of 
 the good and the unreasonable 
 lives, 313-327. 577-587, 348-366. 
 
 Aristocracy, characteristics of, 152. 
 445, 172. See also City, the 
 pattern. 
 
 Aristotle, his summary of pre-Pla- 
 tonic philosophy, 8-9. 
 
 his criticism of Plato's com- 
 munism, 21-5. 
 
 his explanation of the distinc- 
 tive function of man, 66-7. 
 
 relation of goodness to happi- 
 
 ness in, 69-70. 
 
 his views respecting gymnastic 
 training, 110. 
 
 his definition of nature, 170. 
 
 his conception of social pos- 
 
 sibilities, 172-3. 
 his account of the theoretic 
 
 life, 272-3. 
 his indebtedness 
 
 312-3. 
 
 to Plato, 
 
 2 D
 
 418 
 
 COMPANION TO PLA TO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Arithmetic, the first science of the 
 second education, 245-50. 522-6, 
 277-85. 
 
 Art, Plato's comprehensive view of, 
 46. 
 
 ' singleness of purpose of, 26. 
 
 345, 52, 55-7. 
 of wages, 26-7- 346, 56. 
 
 imitative, 303. 568, 341, 335' 
 
 45- 595-602, 380-92, 347. 603, 
 395-6, 349. 604-5, 397-9. 
 
 Artist. See Imitator. 
 
 Arts, the three groups of the prac- 
 tical, 299. 
 
 Ascent towards the Form of the 
 Good, method of, 243-5. 5 21 2 > 
 274-7. 
 
 Asclefius, the wisdom of his treat- 
 ment, 102-5. 405-6. See also 
 Valetudinarianism. 
 
 Astronomy, the fourth science of 
 the second education, 252-6. 
 527-30, 287-93. 
 
 Athens, conditions of the downfall 
 of, 1-3. 
 
 allusion to, as a tyrant city, 35. 
 
 352, 62. 
 
 Auxiliaries, conditions of the life 
 of, 113. 414, 115-6. 416-7, 122-3, 
 175-6. 465-6, 192-3, 179-80. 
 468-9, 195. See also Guardians. 
 
 Avarice, as equivalent to sensuality, 
 138. 435-6, 318. 580-1, 325. 
 
 B 
 
 Barbarians, the treatment of, 181-4. 
 469-71, 196. See also Civilisa- 
 tion. 
 
 Beauty, the dependence of, on char- 
 acter, 104-9. 
 
 the relation to reality of the 
 
 highest conceivable, 200. 
 
 as distinguished from that 
 
 which is beautiful, 207-9. 
 
 Being and existing, distinction be- 
 tween, 210. 
 
 and becoming, distinction be- 
 tween, 274-6, 283, 301. 
 
 Belief, the third mental state, 234. 
 511,261. 
 
 Blindness, comparison of, with 
 
 ignorance, 197. 484. 
 Body, relation of, to the soul, 98-9. 
 
 402-3, 108-10, 115, 325. 585, 
 
 362. 
 
 health and disease of, 110, 115, 
 
 101. 404, 150. 444, 169, 192, 
 354-5. 608-9. 
 Bridle, the, of Theages, 213. 496, 
 
 Calculation, a distinct psychological 
 element in the soul, 159. See 
 also Element, the philosophic. 
 
 Calculus, the hedonistic, 28-9. 348, 
 58, 328-9. 587-9, 367-8. 
 
 Canons of Theology. See Theology, 
 canons of. 
 
 Causation at the root of Plato's 
 symbolism, 241. 
 
 Cause, the final, argument from 
 conception of, 35-8. 352-4. 63-8. 
 See also Function, Natttre, Pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Cave. See Den. 
 
 Cephalus anticipates the conclu- 
 sions of philosophy, 2-6. 328-31, 
 38-40. 
 
 Change, best things or minds least 
 liable to, 70-1. 381, 91-2. 
 
 in style of music, and system of 
 
 gymnastic detrimental to charac- 
 ter, 101. 404, 111, 122-4. 4 2 4> 
 130-1. 
 
 the smallest, that will reform 
 
 a state, 186. 473, 202. See also 
 Variety. 
 
 Character, the secret of happiness, 
 4. 329, 39, 369. 620, 415. 
 
 the root of beauty, 95-6. 400, 
 
 104-9. 
 
 important in students of dia- 
 lectic, 268. 539-40, 307. 
 
 Children, plasticity of the minds of, 
 65- 377, 88, 67. 378, 71. 382. 
 
 community of, 153, 449, 168- 
 
 70. 460-1, 186-7. 
 
 to have experience of war, 
 
 177-9. 466-7, 195, 244. 521, 264. 
 537, 304.
 
 INDEX 
 
 419 
 
 Children to be made the means of 
 reforming the city, 269. 541, 
 309-10. 
 
 City, economical construction of, 
 53-7- 369-71, 81-4. 
 
 the healthy and the diseased, 
 
 57-60. 371-4, 84-6. 
 
 the moral growth of, by puri- 
 fication, 94-5. 399-400, 103, 146. 
 the democratic, condition of 
 
 the three classes in, 297-8. 564-5, 
 
 337. 
 the pattern, the whole of, to 
 
 be as happy as possible, Il7'9- 
 
 420-21, 124-7. 
 unity in, 120-2. 422-3, 
 
 127-32, 148-9, 170-2. 462-3, 
 188-90, 280. 551-2, 321. 
 compared with the soul, 
 
 132. 431, 139, 148-9, 138. 435= 
 
 147-9, 145. 440-1, 146-8. 441-3, 
 
 162-5. 
 
 relationship in, 170. 461, 
 
 172. 463- 
 
 condition of the realisa- 
 tion of, 186. 473, 201-2. 
 
 the philosophic constitution of, 
 
 219-20. 501, 269. 541, 309-10. 
 
 Civilisation, Plato's care for the 
 preservation of, 196. See also 
 Barbarians. 
 
 Classes, the three in the state, 136- 
 7. 434-5, U4-6- 
 
 Classification, relativity of to pur- 
 pose or standard of class, consid- 
 ered, 158-60. 453, 177-81. 
 
 Climate, the effect of on species, 
 214. 497, 229. 
 
 Community of pleasures and pains, 
 171-3. 462-4, 188-92. 
 
 of property, 21-8, Il6. 416, 
 
 122. 423, 129-32, 153. 440, 174, 
 174. 464, 191-2. 
 
 of wives and children, 153. 
 
 449, 175, 164-5. 457, 184-5, I7<>- 
 461-2, 173. 464, 190-1. 
 
 Compact, the social, formal state- 
 ment of, 41. 358-9, 72-3. 
 
 Composition, literary, the three 
 forms of, 84-92: 392-8, 97-10..'. 
 
 Compromise, a characteristic of all 
 states and characters between 
 
 kingship and despotism, 316-7, 
 
 326. 
 Conceptions, abstract, realisation of, 
 
 in life, 198-201. 
 Concupiscent principle. See Ele- 
 
 ment, the appetitive, and Desire, 
 Confusion of eye and of soul, 236-9. 
 
 515-8, 265-7. 
 Conjecture, the fourth mental state, 
 
 234. 511, 260-1. 
 Conscience, the inner and the outer, 
 
 4 1 '4- 359/62, 74-5. 
 Contradiction, statement and appli- 
 cation of the law of, 139. 436-7, 
 
 149-51, 143-6. 439-41, 158-62, 
 
 159. 454, 178-81, 279. 
 Conversion, beginning of ascent to 
 
 sight of the Form of the Good, 
 
 240. 518, 269-70. 
 Correlatives, statement of the rule 
 
 of, 141-2. 438, 154-8. 
 Courage of the state, 129-30. 429, 
 
 135, 137. 
 of the individual, 74. 386, 94, 
 
 96, 147. 442, 163-4. 
 Craft. See Art, 
 Criticism, effect of, in the behaviour 
 
 of the mind, 239. 515-6, 265-6, 
 
 265-6. 537-8, 305. See z\so Dia- 
 lectic. 
 Cut-purse, comparison of, with 
 
 tyrant, 29. 348, 5S, 310. 575, 
 
 D 
 
 Death, the fear of, 75. 386, 94-5. 
 Debating, use of the word, 178-9. 
 
 See also Eristic. 
 Deception, not practised by God, 73. 
 
 382. See also Theology, canons 
 
 of. 
 Declamation, Plato's dislike to, 24. 
 
 344, 33. 350, 61. 
 Dejnocracy, growth, characteristics, 
 
 and fall of, 285-9. 555'8, 326-30, 
 
 334- 
 Den, allegory of the, 235-40. 514-8, 
 
 268-74, 258-9. 53, ft 
 
 Desire, disciplined and undis- 
 ciplined, 132-3. 43 1 - 2 , 139 -. 
 
 a psychological element in the
 
 420 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 soul, 143-4. 439-4 > 158-61, 147. 
 442, 163. See also Element, the 
 appetitive. 
 
 Despot. See Tyrant and Man, the 
 tyrannical. 
 
 Despotism, growth and character- 
 istics of, 294-304. 562-9, 335-40. 
 
 Development, stages of philosophic, 
 63. 376, 86-7, 189. 475, 204-5, 
 195-9. 485, 218, 205. 490, 223, 
 219. 500, 233, 262. 535, 331. 
 589, 370. 
 
 Diagram, the mathematical, 232-3. 
 
 510, 253-4, 254. 529, 291-2. 
 Dialectic, method of, 87. 394, 98, 
 
 159. 454, 178-9, 255-6. 
 
 position of, among the sciences, 
 
 215. 498, 230, 259. 533, 299. 
 
 use of hypotheses in, 233-4. 
 
 511, 256-9, 300. 
 
 attributes of, 258. 532, 297, 
 
 259- 533, 299, 260. 533, 300-1, 
 261. 534, 302-3. 
 
 dangers of, 265-7. 537-9, 305-7, 
 
 conditions of the study of, 
 
 259- 533, 299, 267-8. 539-4, 
 306-7. 
 
 Dialectician, definition of a, 261. 
 534, SOI. 
 
 training and life of, 262-5. 
 
 535-7, 304, 267-9. 539-40, 306-10. 
 See also Philosopher. 
 
 Difference, as included in identity, 
 
 159-60. 454, 178-81. 
 Disease and Sin, difference between, 
 
 354-7. 608-11, 403-6. 
 Dog, the well bred, philosophic 
 
 disposition of, 61-3. 376, 86-7. 
 
 See also Development, stages of 
 
 philosophic. 
 
 Drone, the stinging and the sting- 
 less, 281. 552, 323, 337. 
 origin and state of, 282. 552, 
 
 323-4, 290. 559, 332. See also 
 
 Appetites. 
 Dyeing, simile of, 130. 429, 136. 
 
 Education in music, 65-96. 377- 
 400. 
 
 Education in gymnastic, 99-107. 
 
 403-10. 
 aims of, 106-7, 107-10. 410-12, 
 
 115-7, 122. 423-4, 129, 146-7. 
 
 441-2, 162-3, 332-4. 590-2, 372-5. 
 results of, 97. 402, 108, 98-9. 
 
 403, 109, 124-5. 425, 163. 456, 
 
 182-3, 263, 367. 6 1 8. 
 for women, 157. 452, 176-7. 
 
 See also Paradox. 
 
 results of want of, 323-4, 
 
 332-4. 590-2. 
 
 in philosophy, 215-16. 497-8, 
 
 939-1. 
 
 sciences of the second, 245-57. 
 522-31, 77-95. 
 
 Element, the appetitive, character- 
 istics of, 163, 283. 553, 324-5, 
 337-9. 
 
 the calculative, as equivalent 
 
 to the philosophic, 143. 439, 159. 
 
 the divine, as embodied in 
 
 law, 332. 590-1, 372-3. 
 
 the philosophic or rational, 
 
 characteristics of, 63. 375-6, 86-7, 
 108. 410, 115, 138, 161. 
 
 the spirited, characteristics of, 
 
 62. 375, 86, 318. 581, 331. 590, 
 
 370-1, 115-6, 161. See also 
 
 Desire, Development, stages of 
 
 philosophic, Reason, and Spirit. 
 Elements, the distinct mental, 
 
 146-9, 152-8, 143. 439, 158-62, 
 
 146-7. 441-2, 162-3. 
 Emotion, hostility of, to reason, 
 
 347-54. 603-8, 395-9. 
 Ends and means, distinction be- 
 
 tween, 27-8, 39. 357, 69-72. 
 Er, the son of Arminius, the myth 
 
 of, 361-70. 614-21, 410-15. 
 Eristic, characteristics of, 159. 454, 
 
 178-9, 217. 499, 231-2. 
 Error, possibility of, in judgment 
 
 admitted, 10-11. 334-5, 44-6, 17- 
 
 19- 339-40, 50-1. 
 Evil, bodily and mental, 105-6. 
 
 408-9, 113, 354-5- 608-9, 303-5, 
 
 356-7. 610-11. 
 Excellences, the moral, 75-^4- 
 
 386-92, 94-7, 127-37. 427-35, 
 
 1318-46, 223-4. 54, 236-7, 240. 
 
 518-9, 270-1. See also Virtues.
 
 INDEX 
 
 421 
 
 Expenditure, productive and unpro- 
 ductive, 281. 552, 322-3, 290-1. 
 559, 331-2. See also Appetites 
 and Drone. 
 
 Eye and reason, comparison of, 
 228-9. 57-8, 242-6, 230-1. 508-9, 
 248-50, 256-9. 532, 292-8. 
 
 Faculty, definition of, by effects, 
 
 165, 192. 477, 211. 
 Family, the abolition of the, 20-1, 
 
 164-9. 457-61, 184-7. 
 Fiction, use of, in education, 64-84. 
 
 376-92, 86-97. 
 Form of the Good. See Good, the 
 
 form of the. 
 of a bed. See Ideas, doctrine 
 
 of. 
 
 as equivalent to idea, 80-1. 
 
 the hedonistic, used by Plato, 
 
 317-27. 580-7, 350-66. 
 Forms of literary composition, 
 
 84-92. 392-8, 97-102. 
 - doctrine of ideas as. See 
 
 Ideas as Forms, doctrine of. 
 of government and of character, 
 
 IS2-3- 445-9, m-4, 272. 544, 
 
 313-4. See also Democracy, 
 
 Oligarchy, Timocracy, Tyranny. 
 Friendship, conception of, IO-II. 
 
 334-5- 45, 75- 3.86, 94. 
 Function, determination of special, 
 
 55. 370, 82-3, 61. 374, no, 412, 
 
 118, 166, 161. 455, 181. 
 adherence to special, 6o-l. 
 
 373-4, 86, 87. 394, 98-9, 118-19. 
 
 421, 125-7, 136. 434, 144, 202. 
 
 488, 222-3. See also Cause, the 
 
 final, Nature, and Purpose. 
 
 Gain, the lover of. See Wealth, 
 
 the lover of. 
 Gentleness, as characteristic of the 
 
 philosopher, 63. 375' 6 , Io8 - 4 J , 
 
 115. See also Development, 
 
 stages of philosophic. 
 Geometry, plane, the second science 
 
 of the second education, 250-2. 
 
 526-7, 285-7. 
 
 Geometry, solid, the third science of 
 the second education, 253-4. 5 2 ^, 
 288-9. 
 
 Glaucon, son of Ariston, his revival 
 of Thrasymachus' argument, 
 39-50- 357-66, 69-77. 
 
 his city of swine, 58. 372. 
 
 God, characteristics of. See Theo- 
 logy, canons of, Good, the form 
 of the, and Gods. 
 
 representation of, in theology, 
 
 67- 379- 
 
 Gods, representation of, by the poets, 
 49- 365, 77, 65-6. 377-8, 89, 
 359-60. 612-13, 409. 
 
 as heroes, 75-83. 386-92, 
 
 94-7. 
 
 Good, the use of the word, 40- 
 
 preliminary description of the, 
 
 21, 224-7. 55-7, 239-41. 
 
 study of the, 261, 534, 301-2, 
 
 268. 540, 308-9. 
 
 the Form of the, nature and 
 
 characteristics of, 71, 224-7. 
 504-7, 237-42, 240-3. 518-21, 
 71-4, 390-1. See also Conver- 
 sion, High - mindedness, Pur- 
 pose. 
 
 symbolic account of, 
 228-31. 507-9, 242-50. See also 
 Den, allegory of the. 
 method of the 
 
 ascent 
 
 towards, 243-5. 521-2, 74-7. 
 Goodness, comparison with the arts, 
 I2 - 335, 46-7. See also Hurt. 
 
 stability of, 91-2. 
 
 recognition of the principles 
 
 of, 108. 
 
 only to be taught by conver- 
 sion, 269-70. See also Justice 
 and Virtue. 
 
 Government, disinterestedness of, 
 20-2, 341-2, 53, 28. 347, 56-7. 
 
 five forms of, 152-3. 445-9, 
 171-4, 271. 544, 312, 2726. 
 545-8, 5^6-17,278-82. 550-3, 319- 
 24, 285-9. 555-8, S37-SO, 294- 
 304. 562-9, 334-42. See also 
 Aristocracy, Democracy, Oli- 
 garchy, Timocracy, Tyranny. 
 
 Greeks, death regarded with horror 
 by the, 75. 386, 94-6.
 
 422 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Greeks, behaviour of, in war, 181-4. 
 469-71, 196-7. See also Civilisa- 
 tion. 
 
 Guardians, selection and qualifica- 
 tions of the, 61-3. 374-6, 86-7, 
 75-80. 386-9, 94-6, 82. 390, 99- 
 100. 403, 109-11, 108. 410-11, 
 115-6, 1 10- 12. 412-14, 117-21, 
 114. 415, 121-2, 226. 506, 242-3. 
 520-1, 273-4, 261-2. 534-6, 
 302-3. 
 
 - education of the, 64. 376, 87, 
 74- 383, 83. 391-3, 96-7- 4oi, 
 106-7, 100. 404, 110-11, 112-13. 
 413-14, 130-1. 
 
 life of the, 6l. 374, 86, 87-9. 
 
 394-6, 98-100, 100. 404, 110, 
 119. 421, 126-7, 174. 464, 191-2. 
 
 happiness of the, 117-18. 419- 
 
 20, 124-5, 176. 466, 193-4. See 
 also Auxiliaries. 
 
 Gyges, the Lydian and his ring, 
 41-2. 359, 325. 
 
 Gymnastic, objects and results of 
 training in, 99-109. 403-12, 109- 
 17, 317. 
 
 H 
 
 Habit, doctrine of, 96-7, 400-2, 
 
 106-7, 150. 444, 167-9, 219, 244. 
 
 522, 277, 370. 
 Happiness, relation of, to wealth, 
 
 28-31, 4. 329, 39-40, 279. 550, 
 
 320. 
 
 relation of, to goodness, 3. 
 
 329, 39, 35-8. 352-4, 63-8, 69-70, 
 
 170-3, 185. 472, 199, 270-334. 
 
 543-92, 311-76. 
 
 as life, 70-2, 125-6. 
 
 of the many, 118. 421, 124-7, 
 
 175-6. 465-6, 193-4, 241. 519-20, 
 271-2. 
 
 of the city and of the soul, 
 
 312-14, 576-8, 347-9. 
 
 Harmony, discussion on, 93-4. 
 398-9, 102-3, 97. 401, 107. See 
 also Acoustics and Mtisic. 
 
 Hedonistic Calculus. See Calculus, 
 the hedonistic. 
 
 form. See Form, the hedo- 
 nistic. 
 
 Hegel, his distinction between the 
 picture-idea and the philosophical 
 idea in Plato, 14-16. 
 
 his criticism of Plato's alleged 
 
 idealism, 16-17. 
 Herakleitus, his doctrines, 10-13. 
 Heredity, the doctrine of, 91, 166. 
 
 458, 185-6. 
 
 Heroes. See Gods as heroes. 
 Hesiod. See Poets. 
 High-mindedness, characteristic of 
 
 the true ruler, 242-3. 520-1, 
 
 273-4. 
 Homer, on simplicity of fare and 
 
 medical treatment, IOO. 404, 111, 
 
 104. 408. 
 
 distinguishes between separate 
 
 principles in the soul, 145-6. 441. 
 See also Poets and Gods. 
 
 Honour, the lover of, 318. 581. 
 See also Element, the spirited, 
 and Man, the timocratic. 
 
 Household, the Greek, 17-19. See 
 also Family. 
 
 Hurt, use and meaning of the word, 
 I2 - 335i 4$- See also Goodness, 
 comparison of with arts. 
 
 Hypotheses, mathematical and dia- 
 lectical, 151,222-2- 510-11, W-9, 
 260. 533, 300. 
 
 I 
 
 Idea, the picture and the philo- 
 sophical, 14-16. 
 
 Idealism, want of, in Plato, 17, 21, 
 193, 234. 
 
 Ideas, the doctrine of Forms, 16, 
 80-1, 206, 336-40. 596-8, 381-7. 
 
 of the public and of popular 
 
 teachers, 209-10. 492-3, 225-6. 
 
 Identity, the recognition of, in 
 difference, 137. 435, 146, 178-81, 
 245. 
 
 the law of. See Contradic- 
 tion, the law of. 
 
 Ignorance, as falsehood in the mind, 
 72. 382, 92, III. 413, 119. 
 
 and the non-existent, 191-3. 
 
 478, 210-12. 
 
 Images, significance of, in the al- 
 legory of the Dep, 239. 517-8,
 
 INDEX 
 
 423 
 
 269, 242. 520, 272. See also 
 Pattern. 
 
 Imitation, definitions of, 85-6. 393, 
 97-8. 
 
 a distinct tendency, 87-8. 394- 
 5, 98-9. 
 
 force and all-pervading charac- 
 ter of, 88-9. 395, 99-100, 102, 
 105, 219. 500, 233, 350-1. 605-6, 
 399-400. 
 
 connection of, with tempera- 
 
 ment, 90-1. 396-8, 100-2, 349. 
 604-5, 398-9. 
 - jrelation of, to reality, 335'9- 
 
 595-7, 379-87. 
 Imitator, remoteness of, from know- 
 ledge and reality, 335-45. 595" 
 602, 380-92. 
 
 dependence of, on sense-per- 
 ception, 345-7. 602-3, 392-5. 
 
 Injustice, nature of, 24. 344, 54-5, 
 33-5- 351-2, 61-2, 150. 443-4, 
 168-9. 
 
 profitableness of, 25. 345, 57- 
 8, 29. 348, 58, 38. 354, 50-1. 
 366-7, 77-5. 
 
 as existing in the city, 53. 
 
 369, 127. 427. 
 Intelligence and sight as correla- 
 tives, 228-30. 507-9, 246, 248. 
 524, 281. 
 
 connection of, with the exis- 
 tent, 260. 534, 301 See also 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Interest of the individual, 20-9. 
 341-5, 51-8. 
 
 community of, HO. 412, 118, 
 171-4. 462-4, 188-92. 
 
 Irony, or mock humility of Socrates, 
 I4-IS- 337, 49, 52- 368, 85. 392, 
 155- 45i- 
 
 J 
 
 Justice as formal honesty, 2-6. 328- 
 
 31, 38-41. 
 
 popular, or Simonides doc- 
 trine of, 6-13. 33 1 ' 6 , 41-8- 
 
 Thrasymachus* doctrine of, 
 
 as weakness, 16-38. 338-53, 49- 
 68, 329-34- 5 88 -9 2 - 
 
 Justice, rewards and recognition of, 
 24. 344, 54-5, 29. 348, 57-8, 
 33- 35i, 43-4- 360-2, 75, 50-2. 
 366-7, 77-5, 359. 612, 409. 
 as a means, or as an end, 39- 
 51. 357-67, 69-78. 
 
 as artificial or repression, 41. 
 
 358-9, 72-3. 
 
 in the individual mind, and in 
 
 the city, 52-3. 368-9, 79-81, 127. 
 427, 133, 137. 434-5, 145-6, 146- 
 8. 441-3, 162-5, 149. 444, 168. 
 
 as knowledge, 106. 409, 114, 
 
 119, 120, 240. 519, 271. 
 
 as division of labour, 134-6. 
 433-4, 142-6, 148-51. 443-4, 165- 
 70, 269. See also Function. 
 
 comparison of, with injustice, 
 149. 444, 330. 589, 367-8. 618-19, 
 
 connection of, with happiness, 
 172-3, 185. 472, 199, 327-9. 
 587-8, 367-8. See also Goodness 
 and Virtue. 
 
 K 
 
 Kinds, the three psychological. 
 See Elements, the distinct mental, 
 Soul, the three parts in the. 
 
 King. See Philosopher. 
 
 Kingdom. See Aristocracy. 
 
 Knowledge as goodness. See Jus- 
 tice as knowledge. 
 
 abstract and qualified, 142. 
 
 438, 156-6. 
 
 as distinct from opinion, 190-2. 
 
 475-6, 205-11. See also Philo- 
 
 sopher, the true. 
 as the good, 
 form of.the. 
 
 the lover of, as 
 
 See Good, the 
 
 a judge of 
 
 pleasure, 319-21'. 581-3, 351-2. 
 relation of to reality, 325. 585, 
 960-%. 
 
 Labour, conception of the division 
 of, 54-5- 369-70, 82-3, 60. 374, 
 99, 149. 443, 166. See also 
 1 Function.
 
 424 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Labourers, Plato's attitude towards, 
 
 84. 
 
 Law, analogy of, with medicine, 
 
 101-7. 404-10, 111-15. 
 the spiritual need of, 332. 
 
 590-1, 372-3. 
 Lawyers, as necessitated by want of 
 
 education, IOI. 405, 111, 107. 
 
 410. 
 
 qualifications of, 106. 408-9. 
 Laziness as productive of ill-health, 
 
 102. 405, 125. 426. 
 
 Learning, love of. See Develop- 
 ment, stages of philosophic. 
 
 Letters, simile of the, 53. 368, 80-1, 
 97. 402, 107-8. 
 
 Lie, in the mind, 71-2. 381-2, 
 98-3, in. 413, 119, 263. 535, 
 303. 
 
 the justifiable, 72. 382, 79-80. 
 389, 96, 113. 414, 167-8. 459-60, 
 186. 
 
 Life, as happiness, 37. 353, 65-7, 
 70-2. 
 
 value of experience of, 1 12. 
 413-4, 120-1. 
 
 the choice of, 366-9. 617-20, 
 
 413-15. 
 
 the dreaming. See Opinion 
 and Philosopher, the false. 
 
 the future, 5. 330, 40, 216. 
 498, 231, 361-70. 614-21, 410- 
 15. See also Soul, eternity of 
 the. 
 
 the good, connection of, with 
 
 morality and happiness, 3. 329, 
 
 37-8- 353-4, 65-8. 
 how to lead, 39, 24. 344, 
 
 35- 352, 64. 
 connection of, with war, 
 
 60. 374, 85. 
 comparison of, with the 
 
 evil, 348-66, 368-76. 
 
 the intellectual, 2. 328, 39-41, 
 321. 583. See also Knowledge. 
 
 the theoretic, 272-3. 
 
 the waking. See Knowledge 
 
 and Philosopher, the true. 
 
 Line, simile of the, 231-2. 59-io, 
 250-9. 
 
 Literary Composition. See Com- 
 position, literary. 
 
 Literature, imaginative, effect of, 
 
 on character, 64-74. 37^-83 , 
 
 87-93. 
 educational use of, 75-84. 
 
 386-92, 94-7. 
 influence of, through 
 
 imitative tendency, 84-92. 392-8, 
 
 97-102. 
 Lover, the true and the amateur, 
 
 188. 474, 204-5, 198. 485, 219. 
 Luxury, connection of, with 
 
 pauperism, 281. 552, 322-3. 
 Lysias, son of Cephalus, 2. 328, 
 
 M 
 
 Magistrates. See Guardians. 
 
 Man, of manifold talents, 91-2. 
 398. 
 
 as a unity, 122. 423, 129. 
 the bald and the long-haired, 
 160. 454, 180. 
 
 the democratic, origin and char- 
 acteristics of, 289-94. 558-6i, 
 
 $90-4. 
 
 the godlike, origin and char- 
 
 acteristics of, 50. 366, 73-4. 382-3, 
 93. 
 
 rewards of, 180. 465-9, 
 
 195. 
 
 the good, temperate behaviour 
 
 of, 90. 396, 100. 
 
 - power of judgment of, 
 
 107. 409. See also Man the 
 just. 
 
 the harmonised, picture of, 
 
 333-4- 591-2, 374-6. 
 
 the just, characteristics of, 13. 
 
 335, 30. 349, 59, 148. 443, 165. 
 
 comparison of, with 
 
 unjust man, 23-4. 343'4, 25. 347, 
 58, 43-4. 360-1, 75, 272. 545. 
 
 as the wise and good, 
 
 32. 350, 58-61. 
 
 happiness of, 35-8. 352-4, 
 
 64-8, 317. 580. 
 
 - treatment and rewards 
 of, 44. 361-2, 75, 47. 364, 76, 
 185. 472, 199-200, 360. 613, 409. 
 the musical, characteristics of, 
 
 97-8. 402, 115, HO. 412.
 
 INDEX 
 
 425 
 
 Man, the oligarchical, origin and 
 character of, 282-5. 553'5 323-6, 
 367. 
 
 the perfect, attitude of, towards 
 
 state affairs, 27-8. 346-7, 56-7, 
 239- 517, 268-9, 242-3. 519-20, 
 273, 277. 549. 
 
 the self-sufficing, character of, 
 
 44- 36i, 75, 70. 381, 91-2, 77. 
 387, 95, 214. 496, 228-9. 
 
 the scientific, connection of, 
 
 with the just, and with the wise 
 and good, 32. 350, 59-61. 
 
 the thirsty, and his desire for 
 
 drink, 140-3. 437-9. 157-9. 
 
 the timocratic, origin and char- 
 acter of, 276-7. 548-9, 318-9, 
 318. 581, 328. 587, 367. 
 
 the tyrannical, origin and life 
 of, 306-12. 571-6, 344-7, 328. 
 586-7, 367. 
 
 with post of tyrant, 
 misery of, 314-7. 578-80, 349-50. 
 the unjust, characteristics of, 
 13- 335. 30-i. 349, 69, 330-1. 
 589-90. 
 
 comparison of, with just 
 man, 23-4. 343-4, 28. 347, 58, 
 43-5- 360-2. 
 
 as the ignorant and bad, 
 
 32. 350, 58-61. 
 
 happiness of, 35-8. 352-4, 
 
 64-8, 3I7- 
 
 treatment and rewards of, 
 
 45. 362, 47. 364, 76, 50. 366, 
 185. 472, 199-200, 272. 545, 360. 
 613, 409. 
 
 the vicious, ignorance of, con- 
 
 cerning virtue and vice, 106. 409, 
 
 114. 
 
 Manliness. See Courage. 
 Marriage, regulations concerning, 
 
 166-9. 458-61, 185-7, 179. 468, 
 
 19S. 
 ' Master of 'himself ",' meaning of the 
 
 expression, 131-2. 431, 137-8. 
 Measure, requirements of a. See 
 
 Accuracy. 
 Merit, selection, according to, 114. 
 
 415, 121. 
 Metals, simile of the, 114. 415, 274. 
 
 547- 
 
 Mind, relation of, to experience, 
 
 265-6. See also Soul. 
 Miser, the origin and character of, 
 
 283-4- 554-5, 324-6. 
 the son of the. See Man, the 
 
 democratic. 
 Monster, the huge and powerful, 
 
 209. 493- 
 
 the composite, 329-30. 588-9. 
 
 Morality. See Goodness, Justice, 
 
 and Virtue. 
 Music, training in, 64-97. 377-4, 
 
 87-109, 244. 522, 277. 
 
 results of training in, 97-8. 
 
 402-3, 107-9, 108-9. 4i-i 5 
 115-7. 
 
 object of training in, 107. 410, 
 
 115. 
 Myth, the, of Er, 361-70. 614-21, 
 
 410-5. 
 
 N 
 
 Narratives, the subject of, 64-84. 
 376-92, 87-97. 
 
 the forms of, 84-92. 392-8, 
 
 97-102. 
 
 Nature, conception of, in Plato 
 and Aristotle, 22, 55. 371, 82-3, 
 134. 433, 147, 169-72, 180-2, 
 234, 249-50, 326, 365-6, 368, 
 338. 597, 384-5. See also Func- 
 tion and Purpose. 
 
 Natures, the finest, most affected by 
 environment, 267-8. 491, 223-4, 
 222. 503. See also Temperament, 
 the philosophic. 
 
 Number, a record of ideal selection, 
 282, 284. See also Unit. 
 
 Nurture. See Education. 
 
 Occttpation, dependent on fitness, 
 55. 370, 82-3, IS7-9- 452-3, 
 176-7, 161-2. 455-6, 181-2. See 
 also Analogy and Nature. 
 
 Oligarchy, growth and character- 
 istics of, 278-82. 550-2, 319-24, 
 327. 
 
 fall of, 334.
 
 426 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Opinion, characteristics of, Jf.1, III. 
 
 412-3, 119, 130. 429-30, 136-7, 
 
 195- 479, 212. 
 destruction of, III. 412-3, 119, 
 
 266. 538, 305-6. 
 distinction of, from knowledge, 
 
 190-1. 475-6, 208-10. 
 object-matter of, 191-5- 477'9, 
 
 210*2, 260. 534, 301. 
 Opposites, nature and use of, 139- 
 
 40. 436-7, 149-51, 152. 
 Optics. See Astronomy. 
 Oracle, the Delphic, 126-7. 4 2 7> 
 
 132, 180. 469, 195. 
 Order. See Law. 
 
 Pain. See Pleasure. 
 
 Paradoxes, the three great, 156-7- 
 
 451-2, 175-84, 164. 457, 184-7, 
 
 186-7. 473, 202-3. 
 Parts, the three pyschological. See 
 
 Elements, the distinct mental, 
 
 Soul, the three parts in the. 
 Passion, comparison of, with a 
 
 tyrant, 3. 329, 39, 90. 398, 307- 
 
 8- 573, 345-6. 
 Pattern, of a perfect state, 185. 472, 
 
 199-200, 197. 454, SIS, 334. 592, 
 
 375. 
 
 Pauperism. See Luxury. 
 Philosopher, to be king, 186-7. 473, 
 
 202-3, 217. 499, 220. 501, 235. 
 
 See also Paradoxes. 
 distinction between the true 
 
 and the false, 190. 476, 205-8, 
 
 196. 479-80, 215. See also Know- 
 ledge and Opinion. 
 
 the false, rise and characteris- 
 tics of, 212-3. 495-6, 226-8, 218. 
 500, 232, 262-3. 535. 
 
 - the true, characteristics and 
 qualifications of, 187-8. 474-5, 
 202-4, 197-206. 484-90, 217-23, 
 212. 495, 227,232,21^-20. 500-1, 
 232-5, 222-3. 53, % 36 > 319-21. 
 581-3, 351-3. 
 
 - destruction of, 206-12. 
 491-5, 223-7, 215. 497. 
 
 education and duties of, 
 
 221-5. 5 02 '5 236-9, 241-2, 519- 
 
 20, 271-3. See also Den, the 
 allegory of the, Dialectician, and 
 Politics. 
 
 Philosophic Development. See Deve- 
 lopment, stages of philosophic. 
 
 Philosophic Temperament. See 
 Temperament, the philosophic. 
 
 Philosophy, characteristics of, 134. 
 432, 141-2, 199. 485, 219-20, 231. 
 509, 252-3, 257-62. 531-5, 295- 
 303. 
 
 study of, 202. 487, 221, 215-6. 
 498, 230-1, 268. 539, 307. 
 
 neglect and discredit of, 207- 
 
 13. 491-6, 223-8, 216-8. 498-500, 
 
 231-3. 
 value of, 214-21. 497-502, 229- 
 
 35. 
 Pha-nician, or miner's story, 113. 
 
 414, 121. 
 Physicians, as necessitated by want 
 
 of education, 101. 405, 111, 107. 
 
 410. 
 
 - qualifications of, 105. 408, 
 113-4. 
 
 Pilot, and sailors, simile of the, 232- 
 
 3. 488, 221-2. 
 Plato, condition of Greece during 
 
 the life of, 1-3. 
 
 order of his dialogues, 4-8. 
 
 - his indebtedness to previous 
 philosophers, 4-8. 
 
 his love of sheer seeing, 37. 
 his protest against the use 
 
 made of passages from the poets, 
 76, 111, 113. 
 
 his desire to preserve human 
 
 responsibility, 91. 
 
 his attitude towards the his- 
 
 torical necessities of civilisation, 
 111. 
 
 his imagery, 217-8, 231, 232- 
 
 3, 241. 
 
 Pleasure, nature and value of, 112. 
 413, 120, 143. 438, 160, 324-6. 
 585-6, 358-66. 
 
 and pain, community of, 171. 
 
 462, 174. 464-5, 189-92. 
 
 relation of, to p'ain, 322-4. 583- 
 5, 355-64. 
 
 Pleasures, distinction of, 199. 485, 
 819.
 
 INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 Pleasures, the three, 317-21. 580-2, 
 
 350-3. 
 positive and negative, 321-4, 
 
 583-4, 353-8, 366. 
 Poetry, views of, 12, 13, 400, 402. 
 
 dramatic, its relation to reality, 
 340-3. 598-601, 387-8. 
 
 emotional effect and danger of, 
 350-1. 605-6, 399-401, 353. 607- 
 8, 402-3. 
 
 study of, 352-3. 606-8, 401-3. 
 
 Poets, faults and duties of, 1$, 13. 
 336, 47, 46-8. 363-4, 76-7, 68-84. 
 379-92, 92. 389, 101, 302. 568, 
 340-1, 341. 599, 350. 605, 399. 
 remoteness of, from reality, 
 340-3. 598-601, 387-8, 349. 605, 
 399. 
 
 Polemarchus, son of Cephalus, his 
 life and fate, 38, 340. See also 
 Justice, popular. 
 
 Politics, as the work of the philoso- 
 pher, 214. 497, 334. 592, .375. 
 
 Possibility of realisation. See Reali- 
 sation. 
 of the Reform. See Reform. 
 
 Poverty, influence of, on perform- 
 ance of function, 119-20. 421-2, 
 127. 
 
 Principle, growth of, from habit, 
 79. 389, 96, 97. 401, 107, 
 219. 
 
 nature of the first, 232-3. 510-1, 
 252-8, 260. 533, 300. See also 
 Element. 
 
 Property, community of. See 
 Community. 
 
 influence of private, 116. 417, 
 122, 171. 462, 316. See also 
 Wealth. 
 
 Piiblic, unphilosophic nature of the, 
 
 208-9. 492-3, 224-5, 219-20. 
 
 500-1. 
 Publication, conditions of, in the 
 
 time of Plato, 33-5. 
 Punishment of the badly governed, 
 
 27-8. 347, 56- 7. 
 - theory of, 69. 380, 91, 107. 
 
 410, 332-3. 591, 372-3. 
 the cycle of, 362. 615. 
 
 Purpose, existence of, in good life, 
 3. 328, 39, 5. 330, 40. 
 
 Purpose, existence of, in all crafts, 
 21-2. 341-2, 51-3, 26-8. 346-7, 
 56-7. 
 as interest, no. 412, 118. 
 
 - included in the good, 224-7. 
 505-7, 239-40, 268, 285-6, 302, 
 308. 
 
 - as reality, 249. 
 
 - in life, second characteristic 
 of the Form of the Good, 241. 
 519, 271. 
 
 test by importance of, 325-6. 
 
 586, 362-5, 371, 344. 60 1, 389- 
 
 91. 
 - knowledge of, as science, 
 
 344-5. 601-2, 390-2. 
 Purposes of science, 250-2. 526-7. 
 
 285. 
 
 Quality, consideration of, in argu- 
 ment, 37. 353, 65, 155. 
 
 R 
 
 Realisation, conditions of possibility 
 of, 184-7. 471-4. 197-203, 221. 
 502, 235, 269, 540, 309. 
 
 Reality, nature and degrees of, 44. 
 361-2, 75, 214-5. 497-8, 229-30, 
 224. 504, 237, 231-4. 509-11, 
 249-59, 254-5. 529, 325-6. 585-6, 
 360-4, 337-47- 596-603, 382-95. 
 
 Reason, in society and in the soul, 
 132-3. 431-2, 1S8-40, 143. 439, 
 152-4, 234. 5"- 
 
 comparison of, with the eye, 
 228-9. 57-8, 258-9. 532. 
 
 characteristics of, 277- 549, 
 
 348-9. 604, 396-9. See also 
 
 Element, the philosophic. 
 Reform, principle of the, 186-7. 473, 
 
 202-3, 218. 499, 221. 502. 
 Relativity, principle of, 195. 479, 
 
 213-4, 247-8. 523-4, 279-81, 266. 
 
 538, 306. See also Correlatives. 
 ' Repttblic,' position and structure 
 
 of the, 4*8, 171-2. 
 Residues, method of, 127. 427, 133, 
 
 135- 433- 
 
 Retrilmtion, views of 5. 330, 362. 
 614-5, 412-3.
 
 428 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Rhythm, nature and power of, 94-5- 
 399-400, 102-5, 343. 60 1. 
 
 Route, the longer, to truth respect- 
 ing the soul, 138. 435, 147, 223. 
 504, 236-7. 
 
 the shorter, 138. 435, 147. 
 
 Ruler, as ruler, infallibility of, 20. 
 340-1. 
 
 disinterestedness of, 21-3. 
 
 341-3, 26-8. 346-8, 56-7, 204. 
 489, 242. 520, 273-4. 
 
 Science, value of the judgment of, 
 246. 522-3, 218. See also Know- 
 
 and political power, juxtaposi- 
 tion of, 187. 473, 202-3. See also 
 
 Faculty and Politics. 
 medical, proper aim of, 107. 
 
 409-10, 114. 
 Sciences of the second education, 
 
 244-57. 522-31, 77-95. 
 co-ordination of the, 257. 531, 
 
 295. 
 the mathematical, nature and 
 
 study of, 259-60. 532-3, 299-300, 
 
 264. 536, 304. 
 Seeming. See Opinion. 
 Sense, the judgment of, 246. 522-3, 
 
 278, 346. 602, 392-5. 
 Sensuality, as equivalent to avarice, 
 
 138. 435-6, 318. 580-1. 
 Service, military, rules of, 179-84. 
 
 468-71, 195-8. 
 Sexes, question of the equality of 
 
 the, 157-8. 452-3, 175-7, 161-4. 
 
 455 - 7, 181 - 4, 176 - 7- 466, 
 
 193-4. 
 
 Sight and intelligence as correla- 
 tives, 228-30. 507-9, 246, 243. 
 
 524, 281. 
 Sin and disease, difference between, 
 
 354-7. 608-11, 404-6. 
 Skill, as goodwill or goodness, 9. 
 
 333, 4*, 31- 349, 60-1. 
 Slave-owner, comparison of, with 
 
 tyrant, 315-6. 578-9. 
 Society, conceptions of a healthy, 
 
 152- 445 
 
 Socrates, his identification of know- 
 ledge and goodness, 106. 409, 
 114, III. 413, 119. 
 
 his supernatural sign, 213-4. 
 
 496. 
 
 allusion to his death, 238. 517, 
 
 265. 
 Songs, form and nature of, 92-6. 
 
 398-400, 102-5. 
 Sophist, as the representative of the 
 
 people, 49. 365, 77, 208-10. 492- 
 
 3, S24-6. 
 Soul, nature and characteristics of, 
 
 37. 343, 65-7, 65. 377, 88, 151. 
 
 444,325. 585,3^,357-8.611-2, 
 
 406-9. 
 
 relation of, to body, 98-9. 
 
 402-3, 108-9, 325. 585, 362. 
 
 complexity of the, 131. 431, 
 
 138, 329-30. 588-9, 368-70. 
 
 comparison of, with the city, 
 
 132. 431, 138-9, 138. 435, 148, 
 
 145-6. 440-1, 161-2, 312-4. 576-8, 
 
 347-9. 
 
 the three parts in the, 137-47. 
 
 435-42, 146-65, 347-9. 602-4, 
 
 396-7. 
 
 unity of the, 148, 158, 149. 
 
 443, 167, 171. 462, 189-90, 330. 
 588-9, 369, 332. 590-1, 372, 357-8- 
 611-2. 
 
 conversion of the, 240. 518, 
 270, 244. 521, 274-6. 
 
 freedom of the, 313. 577, 
 
 348-9, 366. 617-8, 414. 
 eternity of the, 354-7. 608- 1 1, 
 403-6. 
 
 condition of the tyrannical, 
 
 313. 577, 348-9. 
 Spirit, characteristics of, 6l-2. 375, 
 
 86, 144-7. 439-4 2 > 158-64, 276. 
 
 548, 317-8. See also Element, 
 
 the spirited. 
 Stages of philosophic development. 
 
 See Development, stages of philo- 
 sophic. 
 
 State. See City. 
 States, the degrees of the mental, 
 
 234. 511, 259-60, 260. 534. 
 Stimulants, and non-stimulants, 
 
 246. 523, 276. 
 Strife. See Honour.
 
 INDEX 
 
 429 
 
 Sun, as a symbol of the Good, 228- 
 9. 507-8, 244-6, 230-1. 509, 248- 
 50, 236-40. 515-9, 266-7. 
 
 Swine, the community of, 58. 372. 
 
 Temperament, the philosophic, 
 characteristics of, 108. 410, 115, 
 200. 486, -220, 213. 496, 217. 499, 
 ..'I..!, 222-3. 503. See also Deve- 
 lopment, stages of philosophic, 
 Element, the rational, and Na- 
 tures, the finest. 
 
 Temperance, nature of, 80. 389, 96, 
 I3I-3- 430-2, 137-41, 147- 442, 
 164-6. 
 
 Theages, the bridle of, 213. 496, 
 228. 
 
 Theology, Plato's canons of, 68-9. 
 379-8o, 73. 383, 91-3. 
 
 Theory, connection of, with realisa- 
 tion, 186. 473, 201. 
 
 Thought, the law of, 139. 436, 149- 
 50. 
 
 Thrasytnachus, his theory of justice. 
 See Justice, Thrasymachus" doc- 
 trine of. 
 
 Timocracy, rise and characteristics 
 of, 272-7. 545-8, 313-9. 
 
 Trade. See Function. 
 
 Tragedian, the remoteness of, from 
 truth, 339. 597, 386. 
 
 Truth, the nature of, 79. 389, 96, 
 100. 475. 205, 109. 485, 220. 
 as knowledge, III. 413, 118- 
 20, 198. 485, 219. 
 
 symbolised by light, 230. 508, 
 
 246-7 
 
 Types of government. See Govern- 
 ment, five forms of. 
 
 Tyrant, development and life of, 
 299-304. 565-9, 339-40. 
 
 remoteness of, from truth, 328. 
 
 586-7, 367. 
 
 U 
 
 Understanding, the second mental 
 
 state, 234. 511, 261. 
 Unit, ideality of the, 248-50. 524-6, 
 
 981-4. 
 
 Unity, as result of education, 133. 
 
 431, 140, 146-7. 442, 162. 
 of society and of individual, 
 
 171. 462, 188-94. See also City 
 
 and Sou/. 
 
 value of, 273-4. 545-7. 
 
 a spurious, in the miser, 284. 
 554, 325. See also Compromise. 
 
 Universal, true and superficial, 189. 
 
 475, 204-5. 
 User, in place of creator, 344. 601- 
 
 2, 389-90. 
 Utility, want of, in imitative art, 
 
 341-2. 599-600. 
 consideration of, in educational 
 
 sciences, 249. 525, 251. 526, 252. 
 
 527, 287-8. 
 
 V 
 
 Valetudinarianism, evils of, 102-3. 
 405-6, 111-2, 125. 426, 132. 
 in politics, 125-6. 426-7, 132. 
 and intellectual life, 213. 496, 
 
 998 
 
 %%o. 
 
 in morals, 333. 591-2, 375. 
 
 Variety and disease, IOI. 404, 111, 
 125. 426, 132. 
 
 and the uneducated, 91. 397, 
 
 101-2, 132. 431, 139. See also 
 Change. 
 
 Vice, the disease of the soul, 151. 
 
 444, 170. 
 Virtue, characteristics of, 37. 353, 
 
 6 5-7, 277. 549, 279. 550-1, 320, 
 
 285-6. 555-6, 327. 
 
 the health of the soul, 151. 
 
 444, 171. See also Goodness and 
 Justice. 
 
 Virtues, the four cardinal, in the 
 city, 127-37. 427-35. 132-46. 
 
 in the soul, 146. 441, 162, 
 
 223. 504. 
 
 W 
 
 Wages, the art of, 26-7. 346, 56. 
 
 Wants, the spiritual, 332-4. 590-2, 
 372-5. . 
 
 War, origin and nature of, 59-60. 
 373-4, 85-6, 182. 470, .796?. See 
 also Barbarians and Civilisation. 
 
 Waves. See Paradoxes.
 
 430 
 
 COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC 
 
 Wealth, advantages of, 4-5. 33O-I. 
 
 restrictions respecting, 82. 
 
 390, 116-7. 416-20,1^-5, 119-20. 
 421-2, 126-8, 28l. 552, 322. 
 
 dangers of, 119. 421, 126-7 
 
 277. 549, 318, 280. 551, 321. 
 
 incompatibility of, with virtue, 
 
 279. 550, 320, 285-6. 555-6, 327. 
 the lover of, 318. 581. See also 
 
 Man, the oligarchic and Element, 
 
 the appetitive. 
 Will, the good, as the essence of 
 
 goodness, 146. 441, 162, 149. 
 
 443, 166-7. 
 Wisdom, of the state, 128-9. 4 2 ^, 
 
 134-5, 132. 431, 138, 149. 443- 
 
 of the individual, 147. 442, 
 
 164, 189. 475, ^04. 
 
 Wisdom, characteristics of, 199. 485, 
 208. 492, 222, 240. 518-9, 270. 
 
 Women, position of, in Greek house- 
 hold, 18-21. 
 
 duties of, according to Plato 
 
 and Rousseau, 187. 
 
 position of, in a despotism, 
 
 295- 5 6 3> 335-6. See also Com- 
 munity and Sexes. 
 
 Work, fitness for. See Occupation. 
 
 World, the animal, examples from, 
 6i-3- 375-6, 86, 122. 424, 156. 
 451, 175-6, 166. 459, 186. 
 
 Worlds, of sense and of thought, 
 227-9. 507-8, 242-4, 231-4. 509- 
 II, 250-9, 248. 523, 281. 
 divisions of, in the allegory of 
 the Den, 236-7. 515-9, 264-6.
 
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