PLATO 



231 



< ' Righteousness ' would perhaps be a better word ) 

 is not the virtue of any special part, but of the 

 whole soul, and is defined as ' every part doing its 

 own work and not interfering with the others.' 

 To arrive at the nature of Justice (the professed 

 object of the discussion ) the Platonic Socrates has 

 turned 'from the small to the large letters' i.e. 

 from the individual to the state, where human 

 nature can be seen ' writ large. ' Wisdom is the 

 virtue of the rulers, Courage of the warriors, Tem- 

 perance or Moderation is the harmony resulting 

 from the obedience of the lower to the higher, and 

 Justice is the virtue of the whole state. A perfect 

 state would require a special ruling caste, and the 

 only true rulers in Plato's opinion are philosophers. 

 Plato allows that there may be ordinary virtues 

 resulting from custom or right opinion (cf. Meno 

 and Phasdo), but the highest type of conduct must 

 be bound up with the highest type of knowledge. 

 Those alone who have the philosophic nature 

 (which is sometimes described by him as the 

 passionate love of truth ) are the proper rulers in 

 a perfect state, and in the philosophic nature all 

 virtues are united. In this ideal commonwealth 

 <the parent of so many 'Utopias'), besides the 

 paradox of the philosopher- king, the other para- 

 doxes by which Plato startled his contemporaries 

 were ( 1 ) that men and women should have the 

 same education and the same pursuits, and (2) 

 that private property and the family should be 

 almlislii-il. All things were to be in common ; and 

 the breeding and rearing of the citizens was to be 

 entirely under the control of the philosopher-rulers. 

 Just as in his theory of knowledge Plato's ideal is 

 unity, so his political ideal is that the state should 

 be as much as possible one, one as a family is one, 

 or rather as one individual is. All are to be 

 members of one body.' Some of the features in 

 Plato's ideal state were doubtless suggested to him 

 by the Pythagorean brotherhoods, many of them 

 by the actual institutions of Sparta. In fact, 

 Plato's ideal state might l>e described as a combina- 



philosophy but military honour is the ruling prin- 

 ciple. Inferior to that comes oligarchy, of which 

 the rnling principle is wealth. Lower still is 

 democracy, the equality of good and bad alike ; 

 and worst of all is tyranny, the rule of the 'wild- 

 beast element in man.' In the Statesman Plato 

 gives a rather different classification of constitu- 

 tions, recognising both a better ami a worse form 

 of democracy, and placing both below aristocracy, 

 but above oligarchy : in the true state the number 

 of the rulers matters not, if only they have ' the 

 science of ruling.' In the Laws he elaborates a 

 second-best state, giving up communism as too 

 difficult of attainment, and proposing a complete 

 equalisation of property. In the Laws also \ny 

 praises 'mixed government.' 



In the earlier part of the Republic Plato dis- 

 russes the place of art in education. Homer and 

 Hesiod were the Greek ' Bible ; ' but Plato objects 

 to much in the poets and in the popular religion as 

 false and immoral. Music and poetry should lie 

 simple (here again the complex, the manifold, is of 

 the nature of evil ), and should imitate only what 

 SM good, hence dramatic art is especially objected 

 to. Towards the end of the dialogue he goes 

 further, and objects to all 'imitation,' whether in 

 painting or in words, as being only a copy of the 

 so-called real things, which are themselves only a 

 copy of the true reality the ideas : and so he 

 <lnves the poets from his ideal state. Aristotle's 

 Poetic* may be regarded as in part a ' Defence of 

 Poesy ' against Plato's criticism. Why, it has 

 often lieen asked, has Plato, himself so great an 



artist, dealt so Puritanically and so unsympathetic- 

 ally with art? Partly, perhaps, because the first 

 steps in reflection about art, as about religion, 

 imply a certain withdrawal from the sway of that 

 which is to be criticised and understood. But the 

 Republic gives only one side of Plato's thought on 

 art. In the Symposium ( in which the banqueters 

 praise Love in turn ) and in the Phcedrus ' the 

 beautiful ' occupies the same place that ' the good ' 

 does in the Republic. Plato is after all a true 

 Athenian, and thinks of the good under the form 

 of the beautiful. (' Beautiful-and-good ' is the 

 Greek equivalent of ' noble ' or ' gentleman ' in its 

 best sense.) 'All that is good is beautiful,' he 

 says in the Timceus. The true lover is akin to the 

 philosopher, and loves the beauty of the soul rather 

 than the beauty of the body, and ascends from the 

 love of the many beautiful to the love of absolute 

 beauty. There is indeed a strain of asceticism in 

 Plato s view of life ; but there is none of the Cynic 

 contempt for the beauty of the human form and 

 for the graces of social intercourse. In the P/tmlo 

 Socrates speaks of the body as 'the prison-house 

 of the soul,' and of philosophy as 'the practising 

 of death.' But Socrates at the banquet speaks 

 somewhat differently from Socrates awaiting M* 

 end : and in the Republic the body has to be care- 

 fully trained that it may be a fit servant of the 

 soul, and the young are to grow up amid fair sights 

 and sounds. 



Plato's influence on human thought has been 

 even more widely diffused, but is more difficult to 

 measure than that of Aristotle. The various 

 schools of the Old, Middle, and New Academy 

 caught only a small portion of his spirit. The 

 Stoics, especially the later Stoics, borrowed much 

 from him. Perhaps no school of Greek philosophy 

 was unaffected by hini. In Alexandria Jewish 

 thinkers fell under his fascination (see PHILO); 

 and Christian theology is largely Platonic. But 

 the Alexandrian Platonists and the Neoplatonists 

 (q.v.) differ from Plato himself in making the 

 Timcens the centre of his system. The writings 

 ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus and Dionysius 

 the Areopagite belong to the Neoplatonic period. 

 The latter was translated by Erigena in tlie 9th 

 century, and Platonism reached the western world 

 in the middle ages through the medium of those 

 mystical writers. The Italian Renaissance and the 

 revolt against Scholastic Aristotelianism revived 

 the study of Plato's own writings ; but the enthu- 

 siasm for Plato in the 15th century at Florence and 

 the less important 'Cambridge Platonism' of the 

 17th century were both after the Neoplatonic 

 manner, and, like the mediaeval ' Aristotehanism,' 

 brought more veneration than understanding to the 

 interpretation of the philosopher. Of all Plato's 

 disciples (to adapt a famous saying) perhaps only 

 one had understood him Aristotle and he did not. 

 His criticisms are often strangely unsympathetic. 

 Yet Aristotle's whole system gives a more trust- 

 worthy clue to Plato's real philosophical signifi- 

 cance than is to be got from mystical interpreters 

 whose /eal was not always according to knowledge 

 (see ARISTOTLE). 



The first printed edition of the Greek text of Plato is 

 the Aldine (Venice, 1513). Plato is constantly cited 

 according to the pages of the edition printed by H. 

 Stephanus ( Paris, 1578). The best and most convenient 

 texts are those of Stallbaum, of Baiter, Orelli and 

 Winckelmann, and of K. F. Hermann. The critical 

 edition by Schanz is not yet completed (1891). Plato 

 was first printed in the Latin translation by Ficino 

 ( Flor. 1483), which was the best outcome of the Platonic 

 revival, and is the basis of the ordinary Latin versions. A 

 complete English translation was published by Thomas 

 Taylor, 'the Platonist ' i.e. Neoplatonist, in 1804 (includ- 

 ing nine dialogues translated by Sydenham about 1750). 

 The poet Shelley translated the St/mpnxium (included 



