Plato passes on to a curious argument about the drama. The good man, he says, ought to be unwilling to imitate a bad man; now most plays contain villains; therefore the dramatist, and the actor who plays the villain’s part, have to imitate people guilty of various crimes. Not only criminals, but women, slaves, and inferiors generally, ought not to be imitated by superior men. (In Greece, as in Elizabethan England, women’s parts were acted by men.) Plays, therefore, if permissible at all, must contain no characters except faultless male heroes of good birth. The impossibility of this is so evident that Plato decides to banish all dramatists from his city:
When any of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall. send him away to another city.
Next we come to the censorship of music (in the modern sense). The Lydian and Ionian harmonies are to be forbidden, the first because it expresses sorrow, the second because it is relaxed. Only the Dorian (for courage) and the Phrygian (for temperance) are to be allowed. Permissible rhythms must be simple, and such as are expressive of a courageous and harmonious life.
The training of the body is to be very austere. No one is to eat fish, or meat cooked otherwise than roasted, and there must be no sauces or confectionery. People brought up on his regimen, he says, will have no need of doctors.
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Up to a certain age, the young are to see no ugliness or vice. But at a suitable moment, they must be exposed to «enchantments,» both in the shape of terrors that must not terrify, and of bad pleasures that must not seduce the will. Only after they have withstood these tests will they be judged fit to be guardians.
Young boys, before they are grown up, should see war, though they should not themselves fight.
As for economics: Plato proposes a thoroughgoing communism for the guardians, and (I think) also for the soldiers, though this is not very clear. The guardians are to have small houses and simple food; they are to live as in a camp, dining together in companies; they are to have no private property beyond what is absolutely necessary. Gold and silver are to be forbidden. Though not rich, there is no reason why they should not be happy; but the purpose of the city is the good of the whole, not the happiness of one class. Both wealth and poverty are harmful, and in Plato’s city neither will exist. There is a curious argument about war, that it will be easy to purchase allies, since our city will not want any share in the spoils of victory.
With feigned unwillingness, the Platonic Socrates proceeds to apply his communism to the family. Friends, he says, should have all things in common, including women and children. He admits that this presents difficulties, but thinks them not insuperable. First of all, girls are to have exactly the same education as boys, learning music, gymnastics, and the art of war along with the boys. Women are to have complete equality with men in all respects. «The same education which makes a man a good guardian will make a woman a good guardian; for their original nature is the same.» No doubt there are differences between men and women, but they have nothing to do with politics. Some women are philosophic, and suitable as guardians; some are warlike, and could make good soldiers.
The legislator, having selected the guardians, some men and some women, will ordain that they shall all share common houses and common meals. Marriage, as we know it, will be radically transformed. * At certain festivals, brides and bridegrooms, in such numbers as are required to keep the population constant, will be brought together, by lot, as they will be taught to believe; but in fact the
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* «These women shall be, without exception, the common wives of these men, and no one shall have a wife of his own.»
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rulers of the city will manipulate the lots on eugenic principles. They will arrange that the best sires shall have the most children. All children will be taken away from their parents at birth, and great care will be taken that no parents shall know who are their children, and no children shall know who are their parents. Deformed children, and children of inferior parents, «will be put away in some mysterious unknown place, as they ought to be.» Children arising from unions not sanctioned by the State are to be considered illegitimate. Mothers are to be between twenty and forty, fathers between twenty-five and fifty-five. Outside these ages, intercourse is to be free, but abortion or infanticide is to be compulsory. In the «marriages» arranged by the State, the people concerned have no voice; they are to be actuated by the thought of their duty to the State, not by any of those common emotions that the banished poets used to celebrate.
Since no one knows who his parents are, he is to call every one «father» whose age is such that he might be his father, and similarly as regards «mother» and «brother» and «sister.» (This sort of thing happens among some savages, and used to puzzle missionaries.) There is to be no marriage between a «father» and «daughter» or «mother» and «son»; in general, but not absolutely, marriages of «brother» and «sister» are to be prevented. (I think if Plato had thought this out more carefully he would have found that he had prohibited all marriages, except the «brother-sister» marriages which he regards as rare exceptions.)
It is supposed that the sentiments at present attached to the words «father,» «mother,» «son,» and «daughter» will still attach to them under Plato’s new arrangements; a young man, for instance, will not strike an old man, because he might be striking his father.
The advantage sought is, of course, to minimize private possessive emotions, and so remove obstacles to the domination of public spirit, as well as to acquiescence in the absence of private
property. It was largely motives of a similar kind that led to the celibacy of the clergy. *
I come last to the theological aspect of the system. I am not thinking of the accepted Greek gods, but of certain myths which the government is to inculcate. Lying, Plato says explicity, is to be a prerogative
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* See Henry C. Lea, A History of Sacerdotal Celibacy.
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of the government, just as giving medicine is of physicians. The government, as we have already seen, is to deceive people in pretending to arrange marriages by lot, but this is not a religious matter.
There is to be «one royal lie,» which, Plato hopes, may deceive the rulers, but will at any rate deceive the rest of the city. This «lie» is set forth in considerable detail. The most important part of it is the dogma that God has created men of three kinds, the best made of gold, the second best of silver, and the common herd of brass and iron. Those made of gold are fit to be guardians; those made of silver should be soldiers; the others should do the manual work. Usually, but by no means always, children will belong to the same grade as their parents; when they do not, they must be promoted or degraded accordingly. It is thought hardly possible to make the present generation believe this myth, but the next, and all subsequent generations, can be so educated as not to doubt it.
Plato is fight in thinking that belief in this myth could be generated in two generations. The Japanese have been taught that the Mikado is descended from the sun-goddess, and that Japan was created earlier than the rest of the world. Any university professor, who, even in a learned work, throws doubt on these dogmas, is dismissed for unJapanese activities. What Plato does not seem to realize is that the compulsory acceptance of such myths is incompatible with philosophy, and involves a kind of education which stunts intelligence.
The definition of «justice,» which is the nominal goal of the whole discussion, is reached in Book IV. It consists, we are told, in everybody doing his own work and not being a busybody: the city is just when trader, auxiliary, and guardian, each does his own job without interfering with that of other classes.
That everybody should mind his own business is no doubt an admirable precept, but it hardly corresponds to what a modern would naturally call «justice.» The Greek word so translated corresponded to a concept which was very important in Greek thought, but for which we have no exact equivalent. It is worth while to recall what Anaximander said:
Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to, one another for their injustice according to the appointed time.
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Before philosophy began, the Greeks had a theory or feeling about the universe, which may be called religious or ethical. According to this theory, every person and every thing has his or its appointed
