Dialogues

href="#laws-book-6-tr-9">VI 752). The guardians of the law are to be ministers of justice (IX 855 D), and the president of education is to take precedence of them all (VI 765 E). They are to keep the registers of property (VI 754 D), to make regulations for trade (XI 920 C), and they are to be superannuated at seventy years of age (VI 755 B). Several questions of modern politics, such as the limitation of property (VI 754 D), the enforcement of education (VII 804 D), the relations of classes (VI 759 B), are anticipated by Plato. He hopes that in his state will be found neither poverty nor riches; every man having the necessaries of life, he need not go fortune-hunting in marriage (VI 774 C). Almost in the spirit of the Gospel he would say, “How hardly can a rich man dwell in a perfect state.” For he cannot be a good man who is always gaining too much and spending too little (Laws V 742 E following; compare Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics IV 2, § 3). Plato, though he admits wealth as a political element, would deny that material prosperity can be the foundation of a really great community. A man’s soul, as he often says, is more to be esteemed than his body; and his body than external goods. He repeats (IV 705 B) the complaint which has been made in all ages, that the love of money is the corruption of states. He has a sympathy with thieves and burglars, “many of whom are men of ability and greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long” (V 831 E following); but he has little sympathy with shopkeepers or retailers, although he makes the reflection, which sometimes occurs to ourselves, that such occupations, if they were carried on honestly by the best men and women, would be delightful and honourable (XI 918 D). For traders and artisans a moderate gain was, in his opinion, best (XI 920 C). He has never, like modern writers, idealized the wealth of nations (V 742 C following), any more than he has worked out the problems of political economy, which among the ancients had not yet grown into a science. The isolation of Greek states, their constant wars, the want of a free industrial population, and of the modern methods and instruments of “credit,” prevented any great extension of commerce among them; and so hindered them from forming a theory of the laws which regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth.

The constitution of the army is aristocratic and also democratic; official appointment is combined with popular election. The two principles are carried out as follows: The guardians of the law nominate generals out of whom three are chosen by those who are or have been of the age for military service; and the generals elected have the nomination of certain of the inferior officers. But if either in the case of generals or of the inferior officers anyone is ready to swear that he knows of a better man than those nominated, he may put the claims of his candidate to the vote of the whole army, or of the division of the service which he will, if elected, command (VI 755). There is a general assembly, but its functions, except at elections, are hardly noticed (compare VI 758 D and 764 A). In the election of the Boule, Plato again attempts to mix aristocracy and democracy. This is effected, first as in the Serbian constitution, by balancing wealth and numbers; for it cannot be supposed that those who possessed a higher qualification were equal in number with those who had a lower, and yet they have an equal number of representatives. In the second place, all classes are compelled to vote in the election of senators from the first and second class; but the fourth class is not compelled to elect from the third, nor the third and fourth from the fourth. Thirdly, out of the 180 persons who are thus chosen from each of the four classes, 720 in all, 360 are to be taken by lot; these form the council for the year (VI 756).

These political adjustments of Plato’s will be criticised by the practical statesman as being for the most part fanciful and ineffectual. He will observe, first of all, that the only real check on democracy is the division into classes. The second of the three proposals, though ingenious, and receiving some light from the apathy to politics which is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was most needed. At such political crises, all the lower classes would vote equally with the higher. The subtraction of half the persons chosen at the first election by the chances of the lot would not raise the character of the senators, and is open to the objection of uncertainty, which necessarily attends this and similar schemes of double representative government. Nor can the voters be expected to retain the continuous political interest required for carrying out such a proposal as Plato’s. Who could select 180 persons of each class, fitted to be senators? And whoever were chosen by the voter in the first instance, his wishes might be neutralized by the action of the lot. Yet the scheme of Plato is not really so extravagant as the actual constitution of Athens, in which all the senators appear to have been elected by lot (ἀπὸ κυάμου βουλευταί), at least, after the revolution made by Cleisthenes; for the constitution of the senate which was established by Solon probably had some aristocratic features, though their precise nature