He was doubtful in the Republic whether the ideal or communistic state could be realized, but was at the same time prepared to maintain that whether it existed or not made no difference to the philosopher, who will in any case regulate his life by it (Republic IX 592 B). He has now lost faith in the practicability of his scheme—he is speaking to “men, and not to Gods or sons of Gods” (Laws IX 853 C). Yet he still maintains it to be the true pattern of the state, which we must approach as nearly as possible (V 739 E): as Aristotle says, “After having created a more general form of state, he gradually brings it round to the other” (Politics II 6, § 4). He does not observe, either here or in the Republic, that in such a commonwealth there would be little room for the development of individual character. In several respects the second state is an improvement on the first, especially in being based more distinctly on the dignity of the soul. The standard of truth, justice, temperance, is as high as in the Republic;—in one respect higher, for temperance is now regarded, not as a virtue, but as the condition of all virtue (III 696). It is finally acknowledged that the virtues are all one and connected (I 630 A), and that if they are separated, courage is the lowest of them (I 631 C). The treatment of moral questions is less speculative but more human. The idea of good has disappeared; the excellences of individuals—of him who is faithful in a civil broil (I 630), of the examiner who is incorruptible (XII 947), are the patterns to which the lives of the citizens are to conform. Plato is never weary of speaking of the honour of the soul, which can only be honoured truly by being improved (V 727 following). To make the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the end of life (X 904 D). If the Republic is far superior to the Laws in form and style, and perhaps in reach of thought, the Laws leave on the mind of the modern reader much more strongly the impression of a struggle against evil, and an enthusiasm for human improvement. When Plato says that he must carry out that part of his ideal which is practicable (Laws V 746), he does not appear to have reflected that part of an ideal cannot be detached from the whole.
The great defect of both his constitutions is the fixedness which he seeks to impress upon them. He had seen the Athenian empire, almost within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as in the century which had preceded. He fails to perceive that the greater part of the political life of a nation is not that which is given them by their legislators, but that which they give themselves. He has never reflected that without progress there cannot be order, and that mere order can only be preserved by an unnatural and despotic repression. The possibility of a great nation or of an universal empire arising never occurred to him. He sees the enfeebled and distracted state of the Hellenic world in his own later life, and thinks that the remedy is to make the laws unchangeable. The same want of insight is apparent in his judgments about art. He would like to have the forms of sculpture and of music fixed as in Egypt. He does not consider that this would be fatal to the true principles of art, which, as Socrates had himself taught, was to give life (Xenophon Memorabilia III 10 6). We wonder how, familiar as he was with the statues of Pheidias, he could have endured the lifeless and half-monstrous works of Egyptian sculpture. The “chants of Isis” (Laws II 657 B), we might think, would have been barbarous in an Athenian ear. But although he is aware that there are some things which are not so well among “the children of the Nile” (XII 953 E; V 747 C), he is deeply struck with the stability of Egyptian institutions. Both in politics and in art Plato seems to have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a step backwards. Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived, had a sacredness and authority for him: the men of a former age were supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among his contemporaries (XII 948 B, C). He could imagine the early stages of civilization; he never thought of what the future might bring forth. His experience is confined to two or three centuries, to a few Greek states, and to an uncertain report of Egypt and the East. There are many ways in which the limitations of their knowledge affected the genius of the Greeks. In criticism they were like children, having an acute vision of things which were near to them, blind to possibilities which were in the distance.
The colony is to receive from the mother-country her original constitution, and some of the first guardians of the law (
