Now Plato was not unaware that there were other formulas for happiness. He expressly points out however that in founding the Republic he does not wish to make any single person or group happier beyond the rest; he desires rather that the whole city should be in the happiest condition. It would be easy enough “to array the husbandmen in rich and costly robes and to enjoin them to cultivate the ground only with a view to their pleasure,” and so Plato might have conferred a spurious kind of felicity upon every individual. If this happened, however, there would be a brief period of ease and revelry before the whole works went to pot. In this Plato is a thoroughgoing realist: he is not looking for a short avenue of escape; he is ready to face the road with all its ups and downs, with its steep climbs as well as its wide vistas; and he does not think any the worse of life because he finds that its chief enjoyments rest in activity, and not, as the epicureans of all sorts have always believed, in a release from activity.
VIII
Plato arrives at his apportionment of functions by a method which is old-fashioned, and which anybody versed in modern psychology would regard as a “rationalization.” Plato is trying to give a firm basis to the division of classes which he favored; and so he compares the community to a human being, possessed of the virtues of wisdom, valour, temperance, and justice. Each of these virtues Plato relates to a particular class of people.
Wisdom is appropriate to the rulers of the city. Thus arises the class of guardians.
Valour is the characteristic of the defenders of the city and hence a military class, called auxiliaries, appears.
Temperance, or agreement, is the virtue which relates to all classes.
Finally, there comes justice. “Justice is the ultimate cause and condition of all of them. … If a question should arise as to which of these four qualities contributed most by their presence to the excellence of the State whether the agreement of rulers and subjects or the preservation in the soldiers of the opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of dangers, or wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers would claim the palm, or whether this which I am about to mention,” namely, “everyone doing his own work and not being a busybody—the question would not be easily determined.” Nevertheless, it is plain that justice is the keystone of the Platonic utopia.
We must not misunderstand Plato’s division of classes. Aristotle criticizes Plato in terms of a more simple system of democracy; but Plato did not mean to institute a fixed order; within his Republic the Napoleonic motto—la carrière est ouverte aux talents—was the guiding principle. What lay beneath Plato’s argument was a belief which present-day studies in psychology seem likely to confirm; a belief that children come into the world with a bent already well marked in their physical and mental constitutions. Plato advocated, it is true, an aristocracy or government by the best people; but he did not believe in fake aristocracies that are perpetuated through hereditary wealth and position. Having determined that his city was to contain three classes, rulers, warriors, and workers, his capital difficulty still remained to be faced; how was each individual to find his way to the right class, and under what conditions would he best fulfill his functions there?
The answers to these questions bring us to the boldest and most original sections of the Republic: the part that has provoked the greatest amount of antagonism and aversion, because of its drastic departure from the rut of many established institutions—in particular, individual marriages and individual property.
In order to perpetuate his ideal constitution Plato relies upon three methods: breeding, education, and a discipline for the daily life. Let us consider the effect of these methods upon each of the classes.
We may dismiss the class of artisans and husbandmen very briefly. It is not quite clear whether Plato meant his system of marriage to extend to the members of this class. As for education, it is clear that he saw nothing to find fault with in the system of apprenticeship whereby the smith or the potter or the farmer trained others to follow his calling; and so he had no reason for departing from methods which had proved, on the whole, very satisfactory. How satisfactory that system was, indeed, we have only to look at an Athenian ruin or vase or chalice to find out. Any improvements that might come about in these occupations would result from the Platonic rule of justice; and Plato followed his own injunction strictly enough to keep away from other people’s business.
This of course seems an odd and hasty manner of treatment, as I said before, to those of us who live in a world where the affairs of industry and the tendencies of the labor movement are forever on the carpet. But Plato justifies his treatment by saying that “when shoemakers become bad, and are degenerate, and profess to be shoemakers when they are not, no great mischief happens to the state; but when the guardians of the law and the State are not so in reality, but only in appearance, you see how they entirely destroy the whole constitution, if they alone shall have the privilege of an affluent and happy life.” Hence Plato concentrates his attack upon the point of greatest danger: while the shoemaker, as a rule, knows how to mind his own business, the statesman is for the most part unaware of the essential business which he has to mind; and tends to be negligent even when he has some dim notion as to what it may be—being all too ready to sacrifice it to golf or the favors of a beautiful woman. As we saw in Plato’s original description of the State, the common folk would doubtless
