Dialogues

old educational ideas. He is still for banishing the poets (VII 817); and as he finds the works of prose writers equally dangerous, he would substitute for them the study of his own laws (VII 810, 811). He insists strongly on the importance of mathematics as an educational instrument (V 747 A, B). He is no more reconciled to the Greek mythology than in the Republic, though he would rather say nothing about it out of a reverence for antiquity (X 886 D); and he is equally willing to have recourse to fictions, if they have a moral tendency (II 663 D). His thoughts recur to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them; but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs have passed away (XII 948 C). Though he is no longer fired with dialectical enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to “look at one idea gathered from many things,” and to “perceive the principle which is the same in all the four virtues” (XII 965 C). He still recognizes the enormous influence of music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from the words (II 669 D), and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the theatres (III 700 E). He assimilates the education of the two sexes, as far as possible, both in music and gymnastic, and, as in the Republic, he would give to gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the “Statesman,” he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures⁠—the passionate with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant of the “Statesman,” who has no place in the Republic, again appears (IV 709 E). In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the degeneracy and incapacity of the rulers of his own time.

In the Laws, the philosophers, if not banished, like the poets, are at least ignored; and religion takes the place of philosophy in the regulation of human life. It must however be remembered that the religion of Plato is coextensive with morality, and is that purified religion and mythology of which he speaks in the second book of the Republic. There is no real discrepancy in the two works. In a practical treatise, he speaks of religion rather than of philosophy; just as he appears to identify virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find the common element of the virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical theses that they are one, or that they are identical with knowledge. The dialectic and the idea of good, which even Glaucon in the Republic could not understand, would be out of place in a less ideal work. There may also be a change in his own mind, the purely intellectual aspect of philosophy having a diminishing interest to him in his old age.

Some confusion occurs in the passage in which Plato speaks of the Republic, occasioned by his reference to a third state, which he proposes (D.V.) hereafter to expound (V 739 E). Like many other thoughts in the Laws, the allusion is obscure from not being worked out. Aristotle (Politics IV 1) speaks of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor the best under existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior to either, destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of life⁠—apparently such a beginning of primitive society as is described in Laws III. But it is not clear that by this the third state of Plato is intended. It is possible that Plato may have meant by his third state an historical sketch, bearing the same relation to the Laws which the unfinished “Critias” would have borne to the Republic; or he may, perhaps, have intended to describe a state more nearly approximating than the Laws to existing Greek states.

The “Statesman” is a mere fragment when compared with the Laws, yet combining a second interest of dialectic as well as politics, which is wanting in the larger work. Several points of similarity and contrast may be observed between them. In some respects the “Statesman” is even more ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of paradisiacal life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic looks forward to a coming kingdom of philosophers. Of this kingdom of Cronos there is also mention in the Laws (IV 713 B). Again, in the “Statesman,” the Eleatic Stranger rises above law to the conception of the living voice of the lawgiver, who is able to provide for individual cases. A similar thought is repeated in the Laws (IX 875 C): “If in the order of nature, and by divine destiny, a man were able to apprehend the truth about these things, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no law or order above knowledge, nor can mind without impiety be deemed the subject or slave of any, but rather the lord of all.” The union of opposite natures, who form the warp and the woof of the political web, is a favourite thought which occurs in both dialogues (Laws VI 773; “Statesman” 310 E).

The Laws are confessedly a Second-best, an inferior Ideal, to which Plato has recourse, when he finds