The World's Greatest Books - Volume 14 Part 8

But I have never posed as an instructor or taken money for giving instruction. Anyone who chooses can question me and hear what I have to say. People take pleasure in my society, because they like to hear those exposed who deem themselves wise but are not. This duty the G.o.d has laid on me by oracles and dreams and every mode of divine authority. If I am corrupting or have corrupted youth, why do none of them bear witness against me, or their fathers or brothers or other kinsmen? Many I see around me who should do so if this charge were true; yet all are ready to a.s.sist me.

This, and the like, is what I have to say in my defence. Perhaps some of you, thinking how, in a like case with mine but less exigent, he has sought the compa.s.sion of the court with tears and pleadings of his children and kinsfolk, will be indignant that I do none of these things, though I have three boys of my own. That is not out of disrespect to you, but because I think it would be unbeseeming to me. Such displays, as though death were something altogether terrifying, are to me astonis.h.i.+ng and degrading to our city in the sight of strangers, for persons reputed to excel in anything, as in some respects I am held to excel the generality.

But apart from credit, I count that we ought to inform and convince our judges, not seek to sway them by entreaties; that they may judge rightly according to the laws, and not by favor. For you are sworn. And how should I persuade you to break your oath, who am charged by Meletus with impiety. For by so doing, I should be persuading you to disbelief in the G.o.ds, and making that very charge against myself. To you and to the G.o.d I leave it, that I may be judged as shall be best for you and for me.

_IV.--After the Verdict_

Your condemnation does not grieve me for various reasons, one of which is that I fully expected it. What surprises me is the small majority by which it was carried. Evidently Meletus, if left to himself, would have failed to win the few votes needed to save him from the fine. Well, the sentence he fixes is death, and I have to propose an alternative--presumably, the sentence I deserve. I have neglected all the ordinary pursuits and ambitions of men--which would have been no good either to me or to you--that I might benefit each man privately, by persuading him to give attention to himself first--how to attain his own best and wisest--and his mere affairs afterwards, and the city in like manner. The proper reward is that I should be maintained in the Prytaneum as a public benefactor.

You may think this merely a piece of insolence, but it is not so. I am not conscious of having wronged any man. Time does not permit me to prove my case, and I will not admit guilt by owning that I deserve punishment by a fine. What have I to fear? The penalty fixed by Meletus, as to which I do not know whether it is good or bad? Shall I, to escape this, choose something which is certainly bad? Imprisonment, to be the slave of the Eleven? A fine, to be a prisoner till I pay it?--which comes to the same thing, as I cannot pay. Exile? If my fellow-citizens cannot put up with me, how can I expect strangers to do so? The young men will come to listen to me. If I repulse them, they will drive me out; and if I do not their elders will drive me out, and I shall live wandering from city to city.

Why cannot I go and hold my tongue, you may ask. That is the one thing which I cannot do. That would be to disobey the G.o.d, and the life would not be worth living, though you do not believe me. I might undertake to pay a mina. However, as Plato and Crito and Apollodorus urge me to name thirty minae, for which they will be security, I propose thirty minae.

Your enemies will reproach you, Athenians, for having put to death that wise man Socrates. Yet you would have had but a short time to wait, for I am old. I speak to those of you who have condemned me. I am condemned, not for lack of argument, but because I have not chosen to plead after the methods that would have been pleasant and flattering to you, but degrading to me. There are things we may not do to escape death, for baseness is worse than death, and swifter. Death has overtaken me, who am old, but baseness my accusers, who are strong. Truth condemns them, as you have condemned me, and each of us abides sentence, And for you who have condemned me there will be a penalty swift and sure, and so I take my leave of you.

But to you, my true judges, who voted for my acquittal, I would speak while yet we may. I have to tell you that my warning daemon has in no way withstood the course I have taken, and the reason, a.s.suredly, is that I have done what is best, gaining blessing, death being no evil at all.

For death is either only to cease from sensations altogether as in a dreamless sleep, and that is no loss; or else it is a pa.s.sing to another place where all the dead are--the heroes, the poets, the wise men of old. How priceless were it to hold converse with them and question them!

And surely the judges there pa.s.s no death-sentences!

But be you hopeful with regard to death, for to the good man, neither in life nor in death is there anything that can harm him. And for me, I am confident that it is better to die than to live. Therefore the daemon did not check me, and I have no resentment against those who have caused my death. And now we go, I to death and you to life; but which of us to the better state, G.o.d knoweth alone.

The Republic

The wonderful series of dialogues in which Socrates takes the leading part are at once the foundation and the crown of all idealistic philosophy, and as literary masterpieces remain unmatched. Certain of Plato's disciples would claim that his highest achievement is "The Timaeus"; there are some who set their affections on "The Phaedo"; but a general vote of all Platonists would probably give the first position to "The Republic," and this is undoubtedly the work which has had the widest general influence.

In "The Republic" itself Socrates is, professedly engaged in a disputation, of which the object is to discover what Justice means; and this leads to the description of the building up of that ideal state or commonwealth from which the dialogue derives its t.i.tle of "The Republic."

_I.--How the Argument Arose_

I had gone with Glaucon to attend the celebration of the festival of Bendis--the Thracian Artemis--a picturesque affair, and we were just leaving, when Polemarchus insisted on carrying us off by main force to the house of his father, Cephalus. There we found a small company a.s.sembled. The old gentleman received us with hearty geniality; he is ageing, but would not see any hards.h.i.+p in that, if you take age good-humouredly. Of course, he owned that being wealthy makes a difference, but not all the difference. The best of wealth is that you need not do things which anger the G.o.ds and entail punishment in the hereafter; you need not lie, or be in debt to G.o.ds or men. And this consciousness of your own justice is a great consolation.

"But," said I, "what is justice? Is it always to speak the truth, and always to let a man have his property? There are circ.u.mstances----"

"I must go," said he. "Polemarchus shall do the arguing."

This set us discussing the nature of justice. Glaucon took up the cudgels, after a preliminary skirmish with Thrasymachus.

a.s.suming justice to be desirable--is it so for itself and by itself, or only for its results; or both? The world at large puts it in the second category as an inconvenient necessity. To suffer injustice is an evil, and to protect themselves from that the weak combine to prevent injustice from being done. But if anyone had the ring of Gyges, which made him invisible, so that he could go his own way without let or hindrance, he would get all the pleasures he could out of life without troubling about the justice of it. Again, imagine on the one hand your really consummate rogue who gets credit for all the virtues and is surrounded by all the material factors of happiness; and, on the other hand, a man of utter rect.i.tude, on whom circ.u.mstances combine to fix the stigma of iniquity. He will be rejected, scourged, crucified; while the other is enjoying wealth, honour, everything, and can afford to make his peace with the G.o.ds into the bargain.

Then Adeimantus took the field in support of his brother. "The poets,"

he said, "hold forth about the rewards of virtue here and hereafter. But we see the unrighteous prospering mightily; and the religious mendicants come to rich folks and offer to sell them indulgences on easy terms. A keen-witted lad is bound to argue that it is only the appearance of justice that is needed for prosperity; while the G.o.ds can be reconciled cheaply. This dwelling on the temporal rewards of justice is fatal. What we expect of you is to show us the inherent value of justice--justice itself, not the appearance of it."

"Well argued," said I, "especially as you reject your own conclusion. I can but try, though the task be hard. But my weak sight may enable me to read large characters better than small. Justice is the virtue of the state as well as of the individual; finding it in the state, the greater, may help us to find it in the individual, the less."

_II.--The Socratic Utopia_

Society arises because different people are the better skilled to supply different wants, and the wants of each are supplied by mutual arrangement and division of labour. Wants multiply; the community grows; it exchanges its own foreign products; merchants and markets are added to the producers; and when folk begin to hire servants you have a complete city or state living a life of simplicity. "A city of pigs,"

said Glaucon, "with no refinements." We will go on and develop every luxury of civilisation. But then our city and its neighbours will be wanting each other's lands. We must have soldiers. Our best guardians will be a select band, those who are of the right temper and thoroughly trained; fierce to foes but gentle to friends, like that true philosopher, the dog, to whom knowledge is the test. The known are friends, the unknown foes--knowledge begets gentleness.

So our guardians must be trained to knowledge; we must educate them.

Music and gymnastic, our national intellectual and physical training, must be taught. Literature comes first, and really we teach things that are not true before we teach things that are true--fables before facts.

But over these we must exercise a rigid censors.h.i.+p, excluding what is essentially false.

We must have no stories which attribute harmful doings to the G.o.ds. G.o.d must be represented as He is--the author of good always, of evil never; also as having in him no variableness, neither shadow of turning. G.o.d has no need of disguises. The lie in the soul--essential falsehood--is to Him abhorrent, and He has no need of such deceptions as may be innocent or even laudable for men. G.o.d must be shown always as utterly true.

Similarly, we must not have stories which inspire dread of death; no Achilles saying in the under-world that it were better to be a slave in the flesh than Lord of the Shades. And again, no heroes--and G.o.ds still less--giving way to frantic lamentations and uncontrolled emotions, even uncontrolled laughter. Truth must be inculcated; medicinal untruths, so to speak, are the prerogative of our rulers alone, and must be permitted to no one else. Temperance, which means self-control and obedience to authority, is essential, and is not always characteristic of Homer's G.o.ds and heroes! We must exclude a long list of most unedifying pa.s.sages on this score. As for pictures of the afflictions of the righteous and the prosperity of the unjust, we must wait, as we have not yet defined justice. We turn to the poetical forms in which the stories should be embodied.

The possible forms are the simply descriptive, the imitative, and the mixture of the two: narrative drama, and narrative mixed with dialogue.

Our guardians ought to eschew imitation altogether, or at least to imitate only the good and n.o.ble. The act of imitating an evil character is demoralising, just as no self-respecting person will imitate the lower animals, and so on. Imitation must be restricted within the narrowest practicable limits.

But who are to be our actual rulers? The best of the elders, whose firmness and consistency have stood the test of temptation. To them we transfer the t.i.tle of guardians, calling the younger men auxiliaries.

And we must try to induce everyone--guardians, soldiers, citizens--to believe in one quite magnificent lie: that they were like the men in the Cadmus myth, fas.h.i.+oned in the ground, their common mother.

"I don't wonder at your blus.h.i.+ng," said Glaucon.

That they are brothers and sisters, but of different metals--gold, silver, bra.s.s, iron; not necessarily of the same metal as their parents in the flesh; and must take rank according to the metal whereof they are made. No doubt it will take a generation or two to get them to believe it.

And now our soldiers must pitch their camp for the defence of the city.

Soldiering is their business, not money-making. They must live in common, supported efficiently by the state, having no private property.

The gold and silver in their souls is of G.o.d. For them, though not for the other citizens, the earthly dross called gold is the accursed thing.

Once let them possess it, and they will cease to be guardians, and become oppressors and tyrants.

III.--_Of Justice and Communism_

But now we have to look for justice. Find the other three cardinal virtues first, and then justice will be distinguishable. Wisdom is in the guardians; if they be wise, the whole state will be wise. Courage we find in the soldiers; courage is the true estimate of danger, and that has been ingrained in them by their education. Temperance, called mastery of self, is really the mastery of the better over the baser qualities; as in our state the better cla.s.s controls the inferior.

Temperance would seem to lie in the harmonious inter-relation of the different cla.s.ses. Obviously, the remaining virtue of the state is the constant performance of his own particular function in the state, and not his neighbour's, by each member of the state. Let us see how that works out in the individual.

Shall we not find that there are three several qualities in the individual, each of which must in like manner do its own business, the intellectual, the pa.s.sionate or spirited, and the l.u.s.tful? They must be separate, because one part of a thing cannot be doing contradictory things at the same time; your l.u.s.ts bid you do what your intelligence forbids; and the emotional quality is distinct from both desire and reason, though in alliance with reason. Well, here you have wisdom and courage in the intellectual and spiritual parts, temperance in their mastery over desire; and justice is the virtue of the soul as a whole; of each part never failing to perform its own function and that alone.

To ask, now, whether justice or injustice is the more profitable becomes ridiculous.

Now we shall find that virtue is one, but that vice has several forms; as there is but one form of perfect state--ours--whether it happens to be called a monarchy if there be but one guardian, or an aristocracy if there be more; and, as it has four princ.i.p.al imperfect forms, so there are four main vices.

Here Glaucon and Adeimantus refused to let me go on; I had s.h.i.+rked a serious difficulty. What about women and children? My saying that the soldiers were to live in common might mean anything. What kind of communism was I demanding? Well, there are two different questions: What is desirable? And, What is possible? First, then, our defenders are our watch-dogs. Glaucon knows all about dogs; we don't differentiate in the case of males and females; the latter hunt with the pack. If women are similarly to have the same employments as men, they must have the same education in music and gymnastic. We must not mind ribald comments. But should they share masculine employments? Do they differ from men in such a way that they should not? Women bear children, and men beget them; but apart from that the differences are really only in degrees of capacity, not essential distinctions of quality; even as men differ among themselves. The natures being the same, the education must be the same, and the same careers must be open.

But a second and more alarming wave threatens us: Community of wives and children. "You must prove both the possibility and desirability of that." Men and women must be trained together and live together, but not in licentiousness. They must be mated with the utmost care for procreation, the best being paired at due seasons, nominally by lot, and for the occasion. The offspring of the selected will have a common nursery; the mothers will not know which were their own children.

Parentage will be permissible only between twenty-five and fifty-five, and between twenty and forty. The children begotten in the same batch of espousals will be brothers and sisters.

The absence of "mine" and "thine" will ensure unity, because it abolishes the primary cause of discord; common maintenance by the state removes all temptation either to meanness or cringing. Our guardians will be uncommonly happy. As to practicability: communism is suitable for war. The youngsters will be taken to watch any fighting; cowards will be degraded; valour will be honoured, and death on the field, with other supreme services to the state, will rank the hero among demiG.o.ds.

Against Greeks war must be conducted as against our own kith and kin.

But as to the possibility of all this--this third threatening wave is the most terrific of all.