No mention occurs in the Laws of the doctrine of Ideas. The will of God, the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have taken their place in the mind of Plato. If we ask what is that truth or principle which, towards the end of his life, seems to have absorbed him most, like the idea of good in the Republic, or of beauty in the “Symposium,” or of the unity of virtue in the “Protagoras,” we should answer—The priority of the soul to the body: his later system mainly hangs upon this. In the Laws, as in the “Sophist” and “Statesman,” we pass out of the region of metaphysical or transcendental ideas into that of psychology.
The opening of the fifth book, though abrupt and unconnected in style, is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the blessedness of living in the truth, the great mistake of a man living for himself, the pity as well as anger which should be felt at evil, the kindness due to the suppliant and the stranger, have the temper of Christian philosophy. The remark that elder men, if they want to educate others, should begin by educating themselves; the necessity of creating a spirit of obedience in the citizens; the desirableness of limiting property; the importance of parochial districts, each to be placed under the protection of some God or demigod, have almost the tone of a modern writer. In many of his views of politics, Plato seems to us, like some politicians of our own time, to be half socialist, half conservative.
In the Laws, we remark a change in the place assigned by him to pleasure and pain. There are two ways in which even the ideal systems of morals may regard them: either like the Stoics, and other ascetics, we may say that pleasure must be eradicated; or if this seems unreal to us, we may affirm that virtue is the true pleasure; and then, as Aristotle says, “to be brought up to take pleasure in what we ought, exercises a great and paramount influence on human life” (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics X 1). Or as Plato says in the Laws, “A man will recognize the noblest life as having the greatest pleasure and the least pain, if he have a true taste” (V 732 E following). If we admit that pleasures differ in kind, the opposition between these two modes of speaking is rather verbal than real; and in the greater part of the writings of Plato they alternate with each other. In the Republic, the mere suggestion that pleasure may be the chief good, is received by Socrates with a cry of abhorrence (VI 509 A); but in the “Philebus,” innocent pleasures vindicate their right to a place in the scale of goods (66 D). In the “Protagoras” (357), speaking in the person of Socrates rather than in his own, Plato admits the calculation of pleasure to be the true basis of ethics, while in the “Phaedo” (68, 69) he indignantly denies that the exchange of one pleasure for another is the exchange of virtue. So wide of the mark are they who would attribute to Plato entire consistency in thoughts or words.
He acknowledges that the second state is inferior to the first—in this, at any rate, he is consistent; and he still casts longing eyes upon the ideal (V 739). Several features of the first are retained in the second: the education of men and women is to be as far as possible the same (VII 804 following; especially 805 C); they are to have common meals, though separate, the men by themselves, the women with their children (VII 806 E); and they are both to serve in the army (VII 805, 806); the citizens, if not actually communists, are in spirit communistic; they are to be lovers of equality (V 741 A); only a certain amount of wealth is permitted to them (VI 754), and their burdens and also their privileges are to be proportioned to this (VI 765 C; XII 955 D). The constitution in the Laws is a timocracy of wealth (V 744 D), modified by an aristocracy of merit (VI 755; XII 951). Yet the political philosopher will observe that the first of these two principles is fixed and permanent, while the latter is uncertain and dependent on the opinion of the multitude. Wealth, after all, plays a great part in the Second Republic of Plato. Like other politicians, he deems that a property qualification will contribute stability to the state (III 698 B, C). The four classes are derived from the constitution of Athens, just as the form of the city, which is clustered around a citadel set on a hill (VI 778 C), is suggested by the Acropolis at Athens. Plato, writing under Pythagorean influences, seems really to have supposed that the well-being of the city
