Statesman Part 13

STRANGER: Well, let us draw nearer, and try the claims of some who have not yet been tested: in the first place, there are diviners, who have a portion of servile or ministerial science, and are thought to be the interpreters of the G.o.ds to men.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: There is also the priestly cla.s.s, who, as the law declares, know how to give the G.o.ds gifts from men in the form of sacrifices which are acceptable to them, and to ask on our behalf blessings in return from them. Now both these are branches of the servile or ministerial art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, clearly.

STRANGER: And here I think that we seem to be getting on the right track; for the priest and the diviner are swollen with pride and prerogative, and they create an awful impression of themselves by the magnitude of their enterprises; in Egypt, the king himself is not allowed to reign, unless he have priestly powers, and if he should be of another cla.s.s and has thrust himself in, he must get enrolled in the priesthood. In many parts of h.e.l.las, the duty of offering the most solemn propitiatory sacrifices is a.s.signed to the highest magistracies, and here, at Athens, the most solemn and national of the ancient sacrifices are supposed to be celebrated by him who has been chosen by lot to be the King Archon.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Precisely.

STRANGER: But who are these other kings and priests elected by lot who now come into view followed by their retainers and a vast throng, as the former cla.s.s disappears and the scene changes?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Whom can you mean?

STRANGER: They are a strange crew.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why strange?

STRANGER: A minute ago I thought that they were animals of every tribe; for many of them are like lions and centaurs, and many more like satyrs and such weak and s.h.i.+fty creatures;--Protean shapes quickly changing into one another's forms and natures; and now, Socrates, I begin to see who they are.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they? You seem to be gazing on some strange vision.

STRANGER: Yes; every one looks strange when you do not know him; and just now I myself fell into this mistake--at first sight, coming suddenly upon him, I did not recognize the politician and his troop.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who is he?

STRANGER: The chief of Sophists and most accomplished of wizards, who must at any cost be separated from the true king or Statesman, if we are ever to see daylight in the present enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is a hope not lightly to be renounced.

STRANGER: Never, if I can help it; and, first, let me ask you a question.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Is not monarchy a recognized form of government?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And, after monarchy, next in order comes the government of the few?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: Is not the third form of government the rule of the mult.i.tude, which is called by the name of democracy?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And do not these three expand in a manner into five, producing out of themselves two other names?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

STRANGER: There is a criterion of voluntary and involuntary, poverty and riches, law and the absence of law, which men now-a-days apply to them; the two first they subdivide accordingly, and ascribe to monarchy two forms and two corresponding names, royalty and tyranny.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And the government of the few they distinguish by the names of aristocracy and oligarchy.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Democracy alone, whether rigidly observing the laws or not, and whether the mult.i.tude rule over the men of property with their consent or against their consent, always in ordinary language has the same name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But do you suppose that any form of government which is defined by these characteristics of the one, the few, or the many, of poverty or wealth, of voluntary or compulsory submission, of written law or the absence of law, can be a right one?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not?

STRANGER: Reflect; and follow me.

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what direction?

STRANGER: Shall we abide by what we said at first, or shall we retract our words?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: If I am not mistaken, we said that royal power was a science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And a science of a peculiar kind, which was selected out of the rest as having a character which is at once judicial and authoritative?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And there was one kind of authority over lifeless things and another other living animals; and so we proceeded in the division step by step up to this point, not losing the idea of science, but unable as yet to determine the nature of the particular science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Hence we are led to observe that the distinguis.h.i.+ng principle of the State cannot be the few or many, the voluntary or involuntary, poverty or riches; but some notion of science must enter into it, if we are to be consistent with what has preceded.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And we must be consistent.

STRANGER: Well, then, in which of these various forms of States may the science of government, which is among the greatest of all sciences and most difficult to acquire, be supposed to reside? That we must discover, and then we shall see who are the false politicians who pretend to be politicians but are not, although they persuade many, and shall separate them from the wise king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, as the argument has already intimated, will be our duty.

STRANGER: Do you think that the mult.i.tude in a State can attain political science?