R.H.S. Crossman's
PLATO TODAY
__________
CHAPTER I
Plato and the Modern World
PLATO
was born in 427 B.C., nearly two thousand three hundred and ninety years ago
[more correctly 2429 years ago in relation to 2002 - Editor's note.] He lived most
of his life in a tiny city-state in Greece, and busied himself with the
problems of his fellow Greeks, a people living in scattered cities around the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In all
that he tried to do for the Greeks he failed.
Why then should people in this modern world bother to read what he had
to say? Can it be worth while to go to a
Greek thinker for advice upon the problems of an age so utterly different from
his own?
To anyone who is
not so steeped in the classical tradition that he finds all things Greek or
Roman better than all things modern, these questions will seem extremely
pertinent. The Greeks lived in small
cities: we live in large nation-states. The
Greeks depended on slave labour: we have abolished slavery. Greeks religion was a tangle of superstition
and philosophy: we, in the modern world, have the lesson of Christianity and
have learnt from it a humanity and ideal of love and tolerance totally foreign
to Greek thought. Admitted they were a
gifted people who produced great literature, great architecture, and great
sculpture, yet in the realm of science they showed a dilettantism and lack of
interest which must seem repulsive to modern man, who has learnt by scientific
method and patient perseverance to master that nature which the Greeks
feared. We can enjoy Greek art and Greek
literature: we may even enjoy Plato as an artist, but why should we bother
ourselves to study Plato's views on politics and morality unless we happen to
be interested in the byways of history?
Plato is dead; why recall him to life instead of trying to solve the
actual political and social problems of our own world? Why not set out ourselves, fearless and
independent of all authority, to solve them in our own way by the light of our
own native reason?
But can we? Is our modern reason, our modern outlook, so
independent of the past? If social
science has taught us anything, it is this - that man is not a 'completely free
intelligence', but, in large part at least, a product of his environment, conditioned
in his feelings, his thoughts, his actions, by the society in which he
lives. And the society in which he lives
is itself a product of the historical process, not a pattern of life designed
and constructed by rational minds. We
are, in fact, creatures of history, and the story of the human race has been
the story of our struggle to become not the creatures but the creators of
history.
The contribution
of modern science to this struggle has been the fashioning of a weapon with
which man can free himself from the domination of nature. Distance, disease, starvation, are the
tyrants which he can conquer by the aid of science, but even today science can
tell us little about ourselves, or about the way in which we can build a decent
and secure community. The scientist
himself who, as Bacon put it, can control nature by discovering and obeying her
laws, is still as a person the product of the society he lives in. In his own family and citizen life he is
often the slave of the past, blindly submissive to the traditions of his
country, his school, and his family. If
we consider the purposes for which science is used, we shall see that by
freeing himself from the domination of nature man has only accomplished half
the task which his destiny has set him.
the greater the knowledge of nature and the power over nature that he
possesses, the larger the size of the state, the closer the communication
between the continents of the world, the more dangerous becomes the subservience
of man to tradition, and the refusal to ask himself the purpose and the place
of the society in which he lives.
But it was
precisely this problem with which the Greeks were chiefly concerned. Experimental methods in the natural sciences
were almost unknown in Greece, where men were busied with social and
political experiment, with the attempt by the light of reason, or by trial
and error, to devise a way of life, or, as we should call it, a social
system. Greek civilization was, in fact,
a laboratory of social science, and it was precisely its experimental nature
which made it is impermanent, so ruthless, and so alive. The science of self-government both in the
individual and in the community was the central interest of Greek culture.
The very
smallness of the Greek city-state made it specially suitable for such social
experiments. Where few lives are
concerned, great risks can be taken.
Revolution in Greece was not the terrible responsibility which it has
become in modern nation-states. A Greek
city could go off the gold standard without creating a Greek crisis, far less a
world crisis. It could experiment with
countless types of constitutional and legal systems without profoundly
disturbing its neighbours. And very
largely for this reason, the Greeks were the first people to work out systems
of social organization which we call constitutional governments. The experiments which the Greeks tried out on
themselves in the laboratory of the city-state are still, hundreds of years
after those city-states perished, the basis upon which we try to build our
states in modern Europe. The application
of Reason to the problems of morality and politics was their invention
and their legacy to us. Under their
hands tabu became law, government became not a
privilege but a science, religion not a superstition but a creed. They left their rivers unbridged,
their towns undrained, but they tried to make the
life of man in society as clear and reasonable as the sculptures in which they
portrayed him.
For the last
hundred years, Western European man has been so busy conquering nature that he
has left the development of society to the chances of a historical process
which he has called (over-optimistically perhaps) by the name of Progress. This development has been concerned more to
apologize for it after it has happened than to predict or plan its
advance. The wild disarray of our
world-society is in strange contrast to the meticulous neatness of the
discoveries of science. In the latter
there is cooperation and systematic advance in all fields: in the former there
are wars, conflicts, and rumours of final catastrophe.
Perhaps, after
all, the contrast made earlier between Greek and modern life is not so great as
it at first appeared. These scattered
sovereign cities, largely dependent on imports for food supplies, filled with
the jangle of party conflict and the threat of class-war, were like a
small-scale map of modern Europe. The
problems of government which harassed their rulers, the rules of diplomacy and
the techniques of propaganda they employed, have an astonishing similarity to
their modern analogues. And so,
naturally enough, the two fundamental problems of Greek city life, how to give
freedom to the citizen without producing anarchy, and how to retain the
independence of the sovereign state without falling under the constant threat
of international war, are the fundamental problems of the modern world. Why did the Greeks fail to solve both of
these problems?
If we raise this
question, there is one man above all to whom we must turn. Plato's life was lived in the decline of the
city-state. The grandeur of the defeat
of Persia had paled long before he was born.
More than all his contemporaries he felt the failure of Hellenism, and
his diagnosis of that failure is the most ruthless, and the most objective
which we possess. He lived, as we do, at
the end of an epoch of expansion: he was twenty-five when the great war between
Athens and Sparta ended in the defeat and humiliation of his countrymen; the
Athenian Empire crumpled before his eyes, and he saw that the real task was not
to rebuild Athens but to save Greece. To
do that, a searching analysis of the city-state and of the nature of man was
necessary, for he saw that a 'League of Cities' could only be constructed if
the cities were fundamentally changed.
To that task he devoted his life.
Thus in turning
back to the world of Ancient History, we shall not be neglecting our own
problems. On the contrary, to see those
problems in miniature as they were first presented, is to see them isolated
from a host of incidentals and accessories which blind and befog us when we
look at the modern world. It is the
peculiar skill of the scientist to isolate the phenomena he wishes to examine,
and it is the peculiar difficulty of the social scientist that he can never get
society into a laboratory, or dissect human relations under a microscope. The study of Greek politics offers a sort of
substitute for this isolation and abstraction to which modern problems can
rarely be submitted, and the study of Plato is the first step in this study of
Greece.
If we consider
Plato's life we shall see why this is so.
The analysis of
a society can rarely be made at the moment when that society is most creative
and vital. Reflection and criticism
arise only when the rifts begin to show and conflicts refuse to be solved in
action. Philosophy is thus the outcome
of failure: we do not analyse the best till it is past. Then we attempt to recall a golden age, or to
reconstruct a broken society in the pattern of that age. In Greece, as in our own day, the age of
expansion was an age of activity: theory and analysis began when that expansion
ceased, and it became clear that planning, reconstruction, and self-restraint
were necessary if collapse was to be averted.
It is this
striking similarity between the age of Plato and our own which makes him so
apposite a study for the Western world.
It is no exaggeration to say that it is world war that has made Plato
intelligible to us. For us, too, the old
traditions are breaking down; art has lost touch with the life of the people,
democracy is in danger. We, too, are
standing on the edge of the abyss, and philosophy has become a matter of life
and death instead of a matter for polite discussion. Our life has become 'politicized': we are
forced to make up our minds if we are Democrats or Marxists or Fascists.
Is the equality
of man a mere idle dream? Is the freedom
of the spirit worth the bother it gives, or the preservation of national
sovereignty worth the perils it brings?
These are no longer merely questions to discuss; they are political
issues, the expression of conflicts on whose solution depends the future of our
civilization. We can no longer solve
them at our convenience by armchair discussion: they must be solved by action
at any moment when the conflict becomes acute.
These are the
signs of a transitional epoch, and it is not surprising to find that once again
men's minds have been turned to Plato, the philosopher of transition. For many decades the philosopher has been
regarded as an 'academic', a dreamer or thinker, remote from the petty
conflicts of the everyday world: and Plato has inevitably been portrayed as a
philosopher of this kind. Now, when our
civilization has reached a crisis similar to that in which he lived, we are
able to see him as he really was - an idealist, thwarted in action, a
revolutionary reformer who could find no political basis for his reforms.
CHAPTER II
The Historical Background
IF the argument of the preceding
chapter is correct, it is clearly impossible to give a simple answer to the
question, 'If Plato lived again, what would he think of the modern world?' For Plato was no disembodied spirit hovering
with objective gaze over the process of history: he was a Greek, an Athenian,
and an aristocrat who lived a troubled life in the fifth and fourth centuries
before Christ. Before we can bring him
back to our world we must learn to know him in his own, and for this reason we
must pause for a moment to glance at the history of Greek civilization and to
pick out some of its distinctive characteristics.
Greek
civilization was not confined to the country we call Greece, or even centred
there. All round the Mediterranean, from
the Straits of Gibraltar to the Syrian coast, up the Dardanelles, on the Sea of
Marmora, and round the whole of the Black Sea, were scattered the independent
Greek cities. Not only the coasts of the
mainland but the islands too were occupied; in particular Sicily, Crete,
Cyprus, and the Greek Cyclades. Only where the Carthaginians held control in
the Western Mediterranean were the Greeks repulsed in their colonizing
activities. These colonies were quite
unlike any modern colonies. The
colonists, in spite of the ties of blood and commerce which often bound them to
the mother city, were citizens of independent cities and, generally speaking,
lived on equal terms with the 'barbarians' around them. Thus the European notion of the nation-state,
with its coloured empire and imperial rivalries, was completely foreign to the
Greek mind. The Greek recognized his
nationality only in the sense that he felt himself a Hellene, culturally
distinct from the peoples with whom he came into contact. But the idea that cultural unity should imply
a common government or that cultural superiority gave the right to political
domination was fundamentally un-Greek.
A Hellenic state
was envisaged by none save empty dreamers, a federation of Hellenic city-states
only by a few bold statesmen, who foresaw that the internecine rivalries of the
politicians must ultimately exhaust the energy of their peoples. For the ordinary Greek citizen the city-state
seemed to be as obvious a unit of political life, and as essential to security
and freedom, as the nation-state appears to the ordinary European. Equally foreign was the modern notion of
colonization and empire. The imperial
control of foreign peoples, whether for their exploitation or for their
well-being, did not appeal to a merchant people content to trade and live on
equal terms with all. The Greeks did not
feel the weight of 'the white man's burden', or at least did not feel that
Greek culture could be imposed by the political and military control of vast
continents. Alexander, the imperial
missionary of Hellenism, was a Macedonian, not a Greek.
It is idle to
search for a single cause of this remarkable difference between Greek
civilization and our own. Geography
doubtless played its part: for political unity between the townships scattered
round the mountainous shores of the Aegean was difficult to achieve. But more important still is the simple fact
that life in a tiny city-state contrasted so favourably with anything to be
found in any of the great Oriental empires.
The Greek international anarchy (for such it must be called) may have
been the final cause of the collapse of Greek independence: it was also the
chief reason for the well-nigh incredible activity which the Greeks displayed
from about 750 B.C. until, in about 350 B.C., the rise of the Macedonian Empire
brought the end of the 'Classical Period'.
When we remember this we shall understand the reluctance of Greeks as
farsighted as Plato or Aristotle to face the possibility that the city-state
had played its part and must be replaced by new forms of political organization.
The earliest
period of Greek life of which we know enough to write any connected history is
the early eighth century B.C. By this
time the Greeks were settled in Greece proper and along the coast of Asia
Minor. Homer had become a mythical
figure; Mycenae, the city of Agamemnon, a ruin crumbling into the earth. The age of migrations was over, and it was
already difficult to distinguish the newcomers from the original
population. After the dark ages of
confusion in which the Cretan civilization had foundered, the new era dawns
with a burst of colonial expansion by a number of Greek cities. Between 750 and 500 B.C., colonists from
Corinth and Miletus and many other towns occupied
many of the best available sites on the coastlines of the Mediterranean and
Black Sea: hundreds of new cities sprang up and Greek life as we know it began.
What is the
explanation of Greek colonization?
Partly, no doubt, it was caused by the pressure of population in
countries whose agricultural possibilities were strictly limited by the climate
and the poverty of the soil: partly by the fact that the inland territories of
Asia Minor were actually occupied while in Greece proper there is hardly any
inland territory which is not mountain or desert. But though land-hunger may have been a
cause, undoubtedly trade was another.
The Greeks were always a maritime people, and already in the Dark Ages
Greek traders were active. Naturally
enough, therefore, when expansion was necessary, it followed the
trade-routes. Not only the hungry
peasant, but the ambitious merchant was willing to face the risks of a strange
country and to settle overseas.
This brings us
to the second distinguishing characteristic of Greek life. The Greeks were by necessity a seafaring
race, and so the economy of the Greek city-state could not long remain a
self-sufficient agricultural economy; it was bound to develop on mercantile
lines and to become dependent upon foreign trade. Whereas in the Eastern empires the traders
were a small class in comparison with the great mass of peasants, in Greece
trade permeated the whole of city life and its importance was vastly increased
by colonial activity. Rival
trade-leagues sprang up, and the first Greek war of which we have any record
was probably between two such leagues competing for the western trade, the one
headed by Corinth, the other by Miletus. The date of the Lelantine
war, as it was called, is about 700 B.C., and it left Corinth commercially
supreme in the west, while Miletus retained her power
in the Black Sea.
Inevitably the
growing influence of trade proved a no less disturbing factor in the domestic
affairs of the city-states. The Greek
city-state in 750 was usually ruled by an aristocracy or a king: the people met
perhaps in a general assembly, but only to give its consent by acclaim to the
dictates of its rulers. The aristocracy
was an aristocracy of birth and land, and the trader belonged to the common
people. Religion and justice alike were
in the hands of those chosen families who by ancestral tradition claimed to
know the ways of God and man. Such a
political structure is suitable only to a stable agricultural community in
which the wealth of the individual does not conflict with the interests of the
people as a whole. But in the city-state
agriculture was drawn into the orbit of trade as soon as the community ceased
to be self-supporting. Whereas
previously the merchant had imported only the luxuries of life and exported
only the unwanted produce, now production began to be specifically for export,
and cities became dependent upon imports for their raw materials. Corinth, for instance, began to monopolize
the export of pottery to the west, and so became rapidly more and more
dependent on imports for her food supply.
The same thing happened in scores of towns.
The result was
an ever deepening fissure between the supporters of the traditional and of the
new way of life. The aristocracy was
divided. Some sided with the new
mercantilism, others fiercely opposed it; and a social struggle began between
the old-fashioned landowners and the new traders. This struggle was intensified by the
introduction of coinage about 650 B.C.
For at first the control of the new means of exchange was not fully
understood and for this reason it merely accentuated the social misery. The peasant proprietor was often bought up or
enslaved: silver was hoarded and shortage of currency resulted in rising
prices. Increasing misery brought political
consciousness and the struggle between two rival groups of nobles became a
social upheaval of the people claiming the right to live.
This social
upheaval was the prelude to the second epoch of Greek history - the age of the
Tyrants. Up and down the Greek world
dictators supplanted the aristocrats and seized complete political control,
supported frequently by the starving masses and by the merchants.
It is a queer
accident that the word 'tyrant', first used to describe these democratic
dictators, should have come to mean a ruthless despot. Periander in
Corinth, Peisistratus in Athens, and many others like
them were men of great business ability and statesmanship who accommodated the
political structure of their cities to the new economic conditions. They were the bridge between aristocracy and
constitutional government. Without their
work Greece could not have developed that independence of spirit which was the
source of her later brilliance and the chief cause of her success in the
Persian wars.
The age of
tyranny lasted from the middle of the seventh to the end of the sixth
century. Throughout the century and a
half one city after another succumbed to the economic crisis and the ensuing
social revolution which passed from Asia Minor to mainland Greece and then
spread all over the Greek world. It is
impossible to overestimate the importance of this period in Greek history. Misunderstood by the later Greek philosophers
and historians, neglected by some modern Hellenists who like to think of Greek
culture as a unique spiritual phenomenon, remote from the petty considerations
of money and trade, it was, in fact, the age in which were laid the foundations
of the constitutional governments, legal codes, and philosophies of right which
were the glory of classical Greece. It
is as futile to disregard the age of tyranny in the study of Greek democracy as
it would be to disregard the industrial revolution in an analysis of the modern
State. As at the beginning of the
nineteenth century industrialists and workmen united to sweep away an aristocratic
regime, or to modify it to the new conditions, so in Greece the trader and the
common people joined forces behind a tyranny to challenge the authority of the
aristocracy of birth and land.
Thus it was the
tyrants who really created the Greek State. They broke down the old tribal organization
of primitive aristocracy and substituted for it a new patriotism: they
destroyed local religious cults and replaced them by State-religions. By encouraging commerce they gained the
loyalty of the merchant and manufacturer to the new regime: by stabilizing the
currency and helping the peasant proprietor they restored agriculture to
something like prosperity. Last, but not
least, by breaking with the old tradition, they set free the spirit of reason
and harnessed it to useful commercial ends.
Tyranny was the government of the hard-headed businessman who puts
prosperity first in his political programme.
As such it was a necessary stage in Greek development.
Of this new type
of statesman, Peisistratus of Athens was perhaps the
best example. In the colonizing period
Athens had played no prominent part, but had solved her land problem by
unifying Attica as a single State. Till
the end of the seventh century she remained a small agricultural State,
crippled in the closing years in her trade connections by the island power Aegina, just across the bay. But Athens could not avoid the economic
crisis. After 630 social unrest
increased steadily until the supreme power was granted to Solon
(one of the seven wise men of Greece). Solon tried to grapple with the problem by currency
operations, cancellation of agricultural debt, and constitutional reform. But the conflict was too violent to be
settled by peaceful means and the reforms he carried through in 594 B.C. were
largely ineffective. Class-war grew
yearly more violent, until Peisistratus in 560 B.C.
seized control. Under his dictatorship
Athens became a rich commercial state.
The discovery of silver at Mount Laurium
enabled her to mint a coinage famous through the Aegean: the concentration in
agriculture upon the cultivation of the vine and olive made her a great
exporting nation. She was able to
provide the Black Sea towns with the wine and fats which they could not produce
and in return to receive their flax and corn.
Thirdly, she became the leading manufacturer of pottery and, with the
friendship of Corinth, shipped her vases to cities all over the
Mediterranean. Wealth brought culture:
the tyrant's court was filled with poets; Athenian tragedy began and the Acropolis
was adorned with those temples and statues whose fragments are now perhaps more
highly prized than even the later products of the Periclean
Age.
Throughout this
period of colonial expansion and social revolution, one state in Greece had
developed upon highly peculiar lines.
Sparta, in the eighth century, was a normal Greek aristocracy, but it
had solved its population problems not by sending out colonists, but by adding
to its own Laconian territory the rich plain of Messenia. The Messenians became the serfs of the Spartan overlords, no
better than the Helots in Laconia itself, and the new Sparta became a feudal
State. About 650 the Messenians
rose in revolt against the Spartans and for many years Sparta was torn by civil
war. The Spartans were victorious; but
they perceived that, if they were to secure themselves against further
revolution, they could not afford the easy regime of earlier days. They must become a homogeneous and compact
army, always on the watch for signs of social unrest. Within the citizen body there must be no
inequalities of wealth or status such as would tempt the poorer classes to ally
themselves with the serfs. But in the
age of tyranny such inequalities were bound to arise through the new
commercialism and the introduction of coinage.
Towards the end of the seventh century, therefore, the Spartan
constitution was radically reconstructed.
The distinction of aristocrat and people was abolished and all Spartans
were made equal; commerce was forbidden to any citizen on pain of expulsion,
the land was redistributed, and coinage was banished for ever from Sparta. Sparta was fashioned into an equalitarian
feudal State, in which powers were divided between the two hereditary kings and
the five ephors elected by the citizen Assembly.
But the
reconstruction of the constitution was not enough. The serfs outnumbered the citizen body by
fifteen to one, and revolution could only be suppressed by force of arms. Sparta therefore became an armed camp. A rigorous military education was introduced
for boys and girls alike, luxury was forbidden to all, and a secret service was
built up to keep watch upon the serfs.
From now on the Spartans lived the life of foreign conquerors dominating
and terrorizing a subject population, like the Spaniards in Mexico.
These changes
insulated Sparta from the normal course of Greek development. While in the rest of Greece the influence of
commerce broke up the old landed aristocracy, in Sparta feudalism was
artificially preserved. Whereas
elsewhere trade brought intercourse with foreign lands and stimulated the new
culture and philosophy and science, in Sparta these were all sacrificed to the
exigencies of the class-war. The Spartan
army became the most powerful in all Greece, but it was used not to promote the
interests of commerce abroad, but to preserve the feudal order at home.
For although at
first the new regime showed imperial pretensions, and efforts were made to
conquer the Peloponnese, it soon became clear that no
Spartan army could venture far from home without the risk of a revolution
occurring in its absence. Thus Sparta
became the acknowledged leader of the Peloponnesian League, not by conquest,
but by a series of loose alliances and mutual assistance pacts. Her neighbours acknowledged her hegemony with
an easy mind, confident that she could not afford the luxuries of conquest and
aggression.
Sparta was fated
to be the greatest military power in all Greece, yet impotent to use this power
effectively. Such a situation was bound
to exasperate ambitious kings or generals; and when such men gained influence
in Sparta, her foreign policy showed sudden vacillations. In each generation statesmen arose who tried
to forge a Spartan Empire. At first they
would be successful, but always they would end by arousing suspicion and fear
in the minds of the citizens - and they would fall as suddenly as they had
arisen to power. Such men were Cleomenes at the end of the sixth century and his nephew Pausanias at the end of the Persian wars. In both cases a burning patriotism and
imperial zeal were thwarted by the conservatism of a feudal State: in both
cases great Spartan generals were forced to realize that only by emancipating
the serfs could Sparta gain the inner vitality which empire demands. In both cases the suspicion that they
harboured this design was largely responsible for their downfall.
From the middle
of the sixth century Sparta and Athens stood as prototypes of conflicting
policies and contrasted philosophies.
Athens represented the spirit of experiment, of commercialism, and of
culture: Sparta was conservatism incarnate, resolutely opposed to tyranny and
to democracy, and anxious to see in all the Greek cities the rule of the great
landowner and the preservation of the aristocratic tradition.
In 546, at the
height of Athenian prosperity, something happened far off in Asia Minor which
was to change the whole course of European history. Sardis, capital of Lydia, was captured by
Cyrus the Persian, and Greek independence was suddenly in danger of
extinction. As we have seen, the Greek
cities on the whole lived on friendly terms with their neighbours. In Asia Minor the kings of Lydia had from
time to time made war upon them and subdued them, but their regime was not
oppressive. Now in the course of thirty
years a new empire arose to swallow up Babylon and Egypt, Phoenicia and Media
and Lydia, and for the first time in history to organize an imperial government
on a modern scale. Within a few years the
Greeks of Asia Minor were a subject people, and by 510 it seemed clear that
Persia would in time extend its control to mainland Greece.
It is important
not to view this crisis through the eyes of succeeding generations. In 510 it must have seemed fantastic to
suggest opposition to Persia. How could
these hundreds of independent towns unite against a great imperial power? And, moreover, why should they do so? Greek commerce could continue as well under
Persian rule, Greek wealth and prosperity would not be seriously affected by a
centralized foreign empire. We must not
imagine that any feeling of Greek solidarity was manifested at this time: on
the contrary, Greek nationalism was the effect, not the cause, of the victories
at Marathon and Salamis. The first
serious result of the irruption of Persian power into Greek life was not unity
but discord. Sparta was not deeply
concerned by the news, and not even the warning of King Cleomenes
- then at the height of his power - could convince her that she had any
responsibility or call to champion the cause of Greek independence. Sparta was concerned not for Greek
independence but for the restoration of aristocratic government in the Greek
towns, for the security of her position in the Peloponnese
and for the maintenance of her military prestige. At Athens financial stringency was soon
felt. For international trade was
disturbed, the Egyptian market was closed, the Black Sea threatened, and the
North Aegean silver mines lost. The
tyranny which had given Athens peace and prosperity could not maintain its
popularity through a period of depression, and in 510 Peisistratus'
son, Hippias, was expelled.
But the
expulsion of the tyrants solved no problem.
Athens was leaderless and faction reappeared. Rival parties fought for power and 'political
associations' multiplied. It looked as
though civil was inevitable, and Sparta was only too willing to decide the
issue in favour of the old aristocracy.
At this moment, the Alcmaeonidae (a noble
family of dubious commercial reputation) decided to make a bold bid for
power. They had retained their trade
connections with the east throughout a long period of exile under the tyranny:
now they were concerned to strengthen their newly won influence in the city. With this end in view they introduced
democracy and so gained the solid support of the people for their commercial
interests (509-8). Their popularity was
secured by the ignominious expulsion from the city of Cleomenes,
who had appeared with a Spartan army to enforce the restoration of the old
aristocracy.
The democratic
constitution set the seal on the work of the tyranny, for it ensured the
exclusion of the large landowner from a predominating influence on politics,
and it put effective power into the hands of the townsman - the merchant, the
manufacturer, and proletariat. [The
Athenian 'proletariat' was composed of the free citizen artisans and labourers,
and must be distinguished both from the slaves and from the resident
foreigners. Living in the city and its
port at the Peiraeus, it could outvote the peasants
in the Assembly, and by manning the juries could dominate the law-courts. Its interests during the epoch of expansion
were closely allied with those of the merchants, and since the oarsmen of the
fleet were drawn from its ranks, it could demand a considerable price for its
allegiance.
Thus while
democracy in
And here we must
note in passing another distinctive feature of Greek life. The difference between aristocracy,
oligarchy, and democracy in Greece lay not in any principles, but in the
disposition of privilege. Aristocracy
meant a state where the interests of the large landowner, oligarchy where those
of the merchant and manufacturer, democracy where those of the town
proletariat, predominated. Thus democracy
was not the reconciliation of class-conflict but the pre-eminence of a single
class.
The Alcmaeonidae hoped to remain masters in Athens owing to
their popularity and the prosperity which trade would bring. But the international situation proved too
difficult for them. Favouring as they
did the interests of commerce, they wishes to submit to
At this moment a
new statesman, Themistocles, rose to power: unlike
the founders of democracy, he saw that the era of peaceful trade was over. If Athens was to survive and grow rich, she
must arm and fight for her riches. Themistocles was the embodiment of a new democratic
imperialism opposed alike to the conservative aristocracy and to the laissez-faire
merchants who supported the Alcmaeonidae. More than any other man save Pericles, he set his stamp on Athenian democracy.
In 490 a small
Persian fleet was beaten off at Marathon by the Athenian army, and for the next
ten years a fierce battle was waged in Athens between the various political
factions. The issue was decided in 482,
when Themistocles persuaded his countrymen to employ
the profits of a new silver vein at Laurium for the
construction of a huge fleet. From then
on Athens was an imperial maritime power, and in 480 it was she who was chiefly
responsible for repelling the full force of the Persian attack at Salamis,
although Sparta remained the official leader of the Greeks.
Salamis was the
glorious justification of the new Athenian democracy.
[It is significant that Plato in true aristocratic vein
tried to make Marathon, the land victory, the decisive battle of the wars, and
to relegate Salamis to second place. He
could not concede to the Athenian proletariat the credit for saving
Greece! (See LAWS 707.)] The town proletariat
had manned the fleet and proved that a few thousand free citizens could defeat
not only the conscript barbarians of the Persian Empire, but also the Greek
fleets which the Persians had compelled to attack their kinsmen. At once the Greek cities of the Aegean threw
off the Persian yoke and acclaimed Athens as their natural leader. In mainland
The results of
the victory over the Persians were profoundly important in the growth of the
Greek mind. Sparta was forced by her
domestic problems to resign her claim to be the champion of Greece, while
Athens, transformed from a mercantile to an imperial power, welcomed her new
pan-Hellenic responsibility to protect Greek independence from Persian
aggression. To this end she formed the Delian League, an association of free cities pledged to
provide the armaments necessary to maintain their freedom, and to open the seas
again to Greek trade.
It was not till
after the first flush of victory had faded away that the real problems
arose. An uneasy alliance of Greek
cities had defeated Persia and freed their compatriots: the Delian
League had been formed. But how would
these scores of city-states organize their freedom? Would they collaborate or would they fall
into war and dissension again?
Such questions
are seldom solved by discussion or by a rational and deliberate plan. We do not know of any suggestions at this
time that the League should be turned into a real pan-Hellenic federation, and
it is unlikely that they were made. For
independence seemed essentially bound up with the structure of the city-state,
and the sacrifice by any city of its sovereign rights would have been regarded
as the sacrifice of freedom. For this
reason the League was confined to the maritime cities of the Aegean, and the
rest of the Greek world soon returned to its old inter-city rivalries. In Greece proper, for instance, Athens,
Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, and Argos remained the dominant and rival powers.
In the Aegean
the situation was different. Here,
whatever the constitution of the Delian League, the
Athenian fleet was supreme: and gradually, partly by accident, partly by
design, the patron of freedom became the tyrant whose power was used, not only
against Persia, but against recalcitrant members of the League. By 450 the League was rapidly developing into
an Athenian Empire. The cities were
still nominally free, but the real sovereignty was in Athens. To ensure the cooperation of her allies she
imposed democratic institutions, closely modelled on her own, upon most of the
cities: and, if resistance was offered, governors and garrisons were sent out
to preserve order. The contributions for
the upkeep of the anti-Persian fleet became, in effect, taxes imposed by an
imperial power, and used by that power for its own purposes; and a uniform
Athenian coinage, which most of the cities were forced to adopt, confirmed the
supremacy of Athenian trade. Even
justice became Athenian, since all capital offences and other important cases
from the allied cities had to be tried at Athens before an Athenian jury. And lastly, the empire was strengthened at
many strategic points by Athenian colonies in the modern sense of the word -
organized settlements of Athenian citizens permitted to occupy the land of
their nominal allies.
But it must be
repeated that Athens differed profoundly from a modern imperial power. Its situation approximated far more to that
of one member of a league of nations which managed to gain control of the
league machinery and use it for its own ends.
Theoretically it such a case the league would still be a League, and
members independent nation-states. Athens
stood in some such relation to the Aegean cities, and for this reason the
transformation of the Delian League was not reflected
in the speeches of the politicians until long after it had happened. Pericles, the
greatest leader of the Athenian democracy, was, of course, fully aware of the
course events were taking, but he still spoke the language of freedom to the
assembled people, and stressed the responsibilities of
The history of
the years 480 to 404 is little else than the story of the Athenian struggle to
maintain and increase her maritime empire while entering on a fresh effort to
conquer mainland Greece as well. For
seventeen years conservative policy prevailed and Athens was fully employed in
settling accounts with the Persians and in organizing the League, but at last,
in 462, she felt strong enough to challenge Sparta and her confederates on
land. Allying herself with Argos and
with Thessaly, Athens essayed the conquest of mainland Greece. In the course of three short years Aegina - 'the eyesore of the Peiraeus'
- was suppressed, Greece as far south as the isthmus of Corinth was brought
under Athenian control, and Corinthian trade in the west was threatened by
Athenian pressure in the Gulf of Corinth.
Those years mark
the zenith of Athenian democracy. The
conservative policy of the aristocratic party had been content to share the
hegemony of Greece with Sparta. Athens
at sea and Sparta on land should work together in the service of Hellenic
independence. This twofold leadership
could only last so long as Athens did not threaten the commercial interests of
Sparta's confederates. For even if
feudal Sparta had no foreign aspirations, Corinth, her strongest ally, was
vitally concerned with the western trade routes, and realized that as soon as
the Aegean and the Levant were secure, Athens would turn her attention to the
west. It was an Alcmaeonid
- Pericles - who once again broke the conservatives,
denounced the Spartan alliance, and proclaimed Athens' intentions to conquer
mainland Greece. He believed that
compromise was impossible - democracy must go forward or perish - and so in
domestic and foreign affairs he urged a policy of ceaseless activity.
We still possess
the war memorial on which are inscribed the names of Athenians 'who fell in the
same year in Cyprus, Egypt, and Phoenicia, at Haliesis,
in Aegina and in Megara'. Under the inspiration of Pericles,
Athens at the same time challenged the forces of mainland Greece and launched
an unprovoked attack upon the Persians in Egypt, the granary of the
Levant. The democrats knew that their
time was short - they struck when the iron was hot. Almost simultaneously, in Athens itself, the
second stage of the democratic revolution was pushed through. In 461 the Areopagus
(the Athenian House of Lords) was shorn of its power and the leading
aristocratic general banished. The last
defences of conservatism were broken through and supreme power was granted to
the people and to the people's chosen leaders.
But Athens had
overreached herself. In 454 came the
news that the Egyptian expedition had ended in disaster. In Greece too Sparta had been roused from her
inertia and in 447 compelled Athens to surrender most of her land empire. At last, in 445, Pericles
negotiated a thirty-years' peace with
In 432 came the
beginning of the end. Though she had
relinquished her empire, Athens still had designs on the western trade routes to
Sicily and South Italy; but in this field Corinth could brook no rival. Upon the pretext of a colonial dispute, war
was declared and Corinth instigated a reluctant Sparta to put aside her
domestic anxieties and face the menace of Athenian imperialism. The Greek world was divided into two factions
and from 432 to 404 the Athenian navy was pitted against the armies of the Peloponnese.
The final defeat
of Athens was due to many causes. In the
first place, the death of Pericles in the great
plague which decimated the city left her leaderless, and the struggle of
aristocrat against democrat and of town against country was disclosed in its
full bitterness once his unifying personality was removed from politics. In the second place the deadlock produced by the
conflict between an invincible army and an invincible navy was more bearable to
the Spartans than to the impatient spirit of Athens. In the third place the war brought for Athens
a financial stringency which was not felt in feudal Sparta and increasing
taxation made the allies yearly more restive.
And in the fourth place, Athens in 413 lost the flower of her navy in a
reckless attempt to conquer Sicily. From
411 to 404 Athens was convulsed by a series of revolutions culminating in an
aristocratic putsch whose leaders eagerly made peace with Sparta and
signed away the Athenian Empire. In was
Sparta's turn to show if feudal aristocracy could rule with greater moderation
and with stricter regard for justice than the democrats of Athens.
Such in barest outline
is the story of the Athenian democracy and the Athenian Empire. Both began as institutions for the
preservation and enlargement of freedom: both ended in tyrannical discord. They flourished only so long as there were
statesmen in Athens able to dominate the popular assembly and to control its
passions: and it is noteworthy that the rise of real proletarian leadership
during the war against Sparta coincided with their decline. As soon as the people lost confidence in the
statesmanship and expertise of the aristocracy, Athenian policy floundered; and
from 425 on the empire and the democracy alike degenerated with astonishing
rapidity, so that Plato, who was born in the year after Pericles
died, held class-war and ruthless imperialism to be the inevitable
accompaniments of popular self-government.
From his own experience, he could come to no other conclusion.
But even in Periclean Athens, the evils were already latent. The so-called democracies of the allied towns
were really the instruments of Athenian policy, and in Athens itself the
struggle of rich against poor was beginning to destroy the basis of civil
unity, already undermined by the growth of slavery (see Chapter VIII). When we look at the Parthenon and read the
funeral speech of Pericles we must not forget that
the ideals which they express were only partially realized; and this partial
realization was of brief duration. Ten
years after Pericles' death, Athenian democracy meant
not equality and liberty for all, but the exclusion of the countryman and the
aristocrat from the councils of the nation, and the confirmation of privilege
to one class in the State. The Athenian
Empire did for a time protect Greece from Persian aggression, but it
also exposed scores of Greek cities to Athenian exploitation. On the other hand, to admit these defects is
not to minimize the astonishing achievements of democratic Athens. Pericles was not
exaggerating when he said:
'To sum up: I
say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in
his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied
forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but truth
and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities
have raised the State. For in the hour
of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of
her. No enemy who comes against her is
indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no
subject can complain that his masters are unworthy of him....
'I would have
you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become
filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her
glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty
and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of
dishonour always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an
enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely
gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her
feast. The sacrifice which they
collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each
one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all sepulchres
- I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which
their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion
both in word and deed. For the whole earth
is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and
inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an
unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, esteeming courage to
be freedom and freedom to be happiness.... [THUCYDIDES,
II, 41, B. Jowett's translation.]
We must not
forget these words when we examine Plato's condemnation of Athenian
democracy. In it beauty was bound up
with beastliness, rapacity with nobility, slavery with freedom. Athenian civilization, like every other
civilization, contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Its flowers grew out of the dung of social
conflict, but while they lasted they were of unmatched brilliance.
CHAPTER III
Socrates
I - THE LIFE OF SOCRATES
IN the previous chapter we traced the
rise and fall of Athenian democracy. We
must now turn our attention to the one Athenian of this period of whose
personality we can claim to have intimate knowledge. If we look at the portraits which are
preserved to us of the great politicians and poets of the fifth century -
Aeschylus, Cimon, Themistocles,
Alcibiades - we can admire their dignity and poise,
but we cannot claim that they gave us any understanding of the men whom they
portray. They are types like the
characters in Ben Jonson, not Shakespearian
people. But even a second-rate copy of
an original of Socrates is bursting with vitality. Not even the reticence and austerity of
classical sculpture can prevent his personality from dominating the marble and
breaking the sculptor's rules. We get
the impression of an individual so unique and so vital that he cannot be fitted
into any of the established types.
Who was this
individual whose personality has endured when all the famous men of the period
have become thin and ghostly shades, mere names appended to great events? Socrates was not a famous politician, but an
ordinary Athenian citizen who served his city in the normal routine of peace
and war. He was not a great artist or
poet: though he wrote poems, they are not preserved. He was not even a scientist or philosopher,
in the usual sense; for he made no discoveries, and, if he wrote any
philosophy, not a word of his writings survive.
Socrates was not
famous for anything - except for being Socrates. In a sense he did nothing, and yet he was and
is one of the greatest figures of European civilization. Of him and of a few others - Jesus and St
Francis for instance - it can be truly said that their lives and
individualities have moulded the shape of our innermost being and are still the
inspiration of the best that is in us.
For this reason
it is impossible to write an account of Socrates' teaching or to analyse and
evaluate his philosophy. To understand
Socratic philosophy it is necessary to know the man, and this can only be done
by reading the Dialogues of Plato. For
Plato devoted nearly all his literary activity to the composition of dialogues
in which Socrates is the leading character.
Many of them are highly realistic descriptions of actual conversations
which took place before Plato was born: and to make them true to life Plato
took enormous pains to reconstruct Periclean Athens
and to recapture the spirit of Athenian democracy, which he himself had never
known.
The chief justification
for any description of Socrates is that it may persuade the reader to go to
Plato himself and to read the Apology, the Crito,
the Phaedo, the Protagoras,
and the other dialogues in which Socrates' spirit has been so miraculously
preserved. No modern account of Socrates
can pretend to provide any real substitute for reading the dialogues
themselves: and in this chapter there can only be a bare outline of his life,
and a bare indication of the significance of his teaching.
Socrates was
born in 469 B.C., ten years after the battle of
Socrates was
above all things a citizen of Athens. He
loved the city, with its glorious buildings and its thriving port - the
metropolis of the Aegean. He was proud
to claim the privileges of Athenian citizenship and to feel that he was a
living part of the city which was 'the school of Hellas'. Unhindered by aristocratic snobbery or
political prejudices, he mixed with all sorts and conditions of men, and in
democratic Athens he could talk to generals and statesmen, to artists and
craftsmen, to philosophers and scientists, with the easy openness and equality
of which Pericles spoke in his funeral speech. For Athens in the days of her greatness
attracted to her everything that was good in Hellenic culture, and within her
walls a man could learn to know at first hand all the 'glories that were
Greece'.
It is therefore
not surprising that Socrates for most of his life was content to live quietly
in Athens. At first he was probably best
known for his extraordinary appearance.
A small, scrubby man, thick-set and clumsy, with an enormous head, and
eyes sunk deep below a bulging forehead - he was likened by his contemporaries
to an ugly satyr. But if his appearance
was ludicrous he was feared by everyone with whom he talked for his sardonic
humour and his 'Socratic irony', that naive innocence and apparent ignorance
which could with a single simple question explode a pretentious theory and 'debunk'
hypocrisy. The few who knew him really
well loved him for the friendliness which lurked under his grim exterior and
the honesty which made his debunking not mere cleverness but a genuine effort
to sift truth from falsehood.
About 430
Socrates suddenly became a public figure.
The Oracle at Delphi was still respected by all Greece as the voice of
Apollo. Before any important enterprise
every city would send an embassy to discover whether Apollo was favourable and,
for a fee, the Delphic priests would conduct the prophetess to the Holy Chasm,
where, inspired with mysterious fumes, she 'spoke with tongues', and her words
were interpreted by the priests into riddling poems. The embassy would then return home and seek
to elucidate the miracle of the Oracle.
That the Oracle was corruptible had been proved on many occasions. The Alcmaeonidae
had found it useful and had paid for its services by rebuilding the
temple. It had been notoriously
pro-Persian in 480, and in return the Persian invaders had left its riches
untouched. And yet Delphi was still
respected. For its priests were always
well-informed and a 'tip' from the Oracle had often saved the city or an
individual from destruction. It was
therefore no small thing when in answer to a question from one of Socrates'
devotees, the Oracle declared him the wisest man in all Greece.
It is difficult
to analyse Socrates' feelings when he heard the news. For all his rationalism, he was, as we shall see
later, a religious man; and though he may have doubted the motives of the
priests, he must have felt that in some sense God had spoken and declared that
he knew what no other man knew. This
fact gave him a new sense of vocation.
Hitherto he had been content to enjoy the pleasures of Athenian society:
now he became urgently aware of a duty which he must perform and a mission he
must fulfil. No sudden change of life
was demanded of him - to the outside observer he behaved precisely as he had
behaved before - but the life he had led became charged with a new significance
as he perceived that what he had previously done through natural curiosity and
dislike of humbug was something essential to the salvation of the Athens which
he loved.
To understand the
mission to which Socrates from now on devoted his life and in the fulfilment of
which he was finally to die, we must consider the effect of the political and
social upheavals of the previous hundred years upon the life of the individual
Athenian. The democratic revolution had
shaken morality and religion to their very foundations. Not only in Athens, but all over the Greek
world, the destruction of aristocratic authority had brought with it a freedom
of spirit new in the history of mankind, a distrust of authority not only in
the political but in the religious sphere, and a reliance on human reason as
the only proper instrument for the solution of every problem.
To appreciate
this intellectual revolution we have only to consider the effects of the industrial
revolution upon the morality and religion of our own age. Here, too, a new class of manufacturers and
technicians pushed its way into political power: an old technique of production
and distribution was replaced by a new one, and the class-structure of society
was radically reshaped. These political
and social changes were accompanied by an intellectual revolution no less
profound than they. The established
order of scientific and ethical philosophy and the established institutions of
religion were not adapted to the needs of the new industrial society. As liberalism challenged the political status
quo, so Darwinism challenged the dogmas of the Churches. In the triumph of liberalism, it was not only
the statesmen and the manufacturer who were responsible for victory: the
scientist and the philosopher also played their part.
The developments
in Greece were precisely parallel, save that here the revolutionary process was
unprecedented in world history. If we
think for a moment of the great civilizations of Babylon, Egypt and Crete which
preceded that of the Greeks, we shall see that religion and reason were there
kept rigidly apart. Reason or
intelligence was regarded as useful in ordinary life - the craftsman, the
sailor, and the general all applied it to the problems which faced them - but
there was a whole sphere of life where the ordinary man was forbidden to use
his intelligence at all. He must not
dispute how the world came to be, how the gods ruled the world, what was right
and wrong, how sin could be expiated.
These questions were holy and they could be answered only by holy
men. Only the priest had access to the
gods. To the ordinary mortal it was
forbidden. He must be content to accept
the answers which the priests gave him, and he must accept them, not because he
saw that they were true, but because the authority of the priest was
absolute. The Greeks tore down this
dividing wall between religion and intelligence. They challenged the authority of the priest
and set up reason or intelligence was the sole arbiter of what is acceptable
and what is not. In one sense nothing
was holy to them because nothing was left unchallenged by reason; in another
sense everything was holy because they believed everything was intelligible,
finite, clear-cut and amenable to the law of Reason. It is often said that the Greeks were
irreligious people. To say that is to
make religion nothing better than superstition.
True religion cannot forbid the use of reason, or deny the possibility
of truth. It was a deeply religious
feeling which inspired the Greek belief that we can understand the world around
us, and break down the taboos which lurk in every mountain and tree and stream;
it was a profound sense of morality which questioned the primitive religion of
human sacrifice and denied the existence of jealous and licentious gods. The early Greek philosophers were not
free-thinkers or materialists, but pious and devout men who discovered that
reason can free man from fear and hatred, and teach him the nature of
reality. Their speculations were at the
same time an analysis of natural and religious phenomena: and thus they were
both the first scientists and the first theologians.
For this reason
we find in the fragments of their writings which we possess a moral exaltation
matched by few passages in the Hebrew prophets.
In the Old Testament we are still for the most part in a world of
jealousy and fear. God is still the
possession of a people or tribe. Ritual
and ceremonial are confused with morality, and symbols take the place of
intellectual concepts. Sublime visions
are dimly seen, but they remain visions, unclarified
by reason or analysis. To turn from the
Hebrew prophets to the Greek thinkers of the sixth century is to move into
another world, remote from our own, and yet far more akin to it. For here are men, conscious of the reason
which distinguishes them from beasts, and resolved to break through the
curtains of symbol and ritual and ceremony, and to see the reality behind them
face to face. The enterprise is
dangerous, but it must be attempted. If
man is to follow his divine calling and become rational, then first of all
religion and morality must become rational too.
How closely this
attack on priestly authority was connected with the social revolution is shown
by the fact that it began in Asia Minor and South Italy in the middle of the
age of tyranny. One after another
thinkers arose to substitute for the myths and cosmogonies, which had
previously been taken on trust, new scientific accounts of the way that the
world came to be. These early
philosophies seem crude and laughable today: Thales,
for instance, declared everything to be water.
But such a theory was in reality an amazing advance of human reason. Thales had observed that ice, which is solid, turns into
water, water into steam; and he had further noticed how the steam or mist often
seems to be drawn up by the sun. He
concluded that there were four prime substances, earth, air, fire, and water,
which were transformed into one another in a regular cyclical process. What is important is not the theory but the
method. He was trying to give an account
of the world which squared with his observations, and he was searching for
substances whose changes could be understood and shown to account for the
observed changes in nature. We have only
to contrast Thales' philosophy with the first chapter
of the book of Genesis or the Greek myths to appreciate his achievement. From this date (about 580) no religion or
theology or myth could satisfy the Greek thinker which had not been tested by
reason and comparison.
Fifty years
later in South Italy the second discovery was made. Pythagoras, half mystic and half scientist,
the vegetarian believer in the transmigration of souls, founded the study of
Pure Mathematics, and may actually have discovered the theorem which bears his
name. Imbued with a profound veneration
for magic numbers and figures, he found that these holy entities had properties
of their own which only pure thought could discern; a worshipper of the
heavenly bodies, he maintained that they moved not in a mysterious but in a
mathematical way; trained to find in musical incantations the way to religious
ecstasy, he discovered that behind the audible melody there lay numerical
ratios, not heard but understood. In the
course of the next half century his followers had laid the foundations of
astronomy, geometry, and harmonics.
These sciences seemed to their earliest devotees in no way contradictory
to religion, but the beginnings of a new theology which must finally disclose
the nature of the supreme perfect Cause whom no eyes could see, the Eternal
Being, rational and immutable, the Pure Intelligible Godhead.
But although the
early Greek philosophers were theologians 'intoxicated with reason', to whom it
was self-evident that truth was the only priestess and reason the only oracle
of true religion, the effect of their teaching on Greek society was
revolutionary. Freed from all the
authority and restraint, Greek thought roamed at large over the universe,
questioning and denying the accepted order of things. The collapse of religious authority confirmed
the political and social collapse of the aristocratic tradition. The first results were therefore not a new
intellectual discipline to replace the old traditions, but intellectual and
social rebellion. Man, it was felt, had
at last been freed from bondage to superstition and from subjection to
absolutism. Since reason and
intelligence were now the standards by which worth was measured, the aristocrat
and the priest could be treated as ordinary men and judged on their
merits. In future no-one's opinion
should carry extra weight because of his family tree or social position or holy
office.
Thus the cult of
reason developed into an individualist and equalitarian philosophy, which
threatened to break up the whole fabric of society. Where each man is as good as his neighbour,
political parties are inevitable; and the Greek city became a whirlpool of political
intrigue. Where there are political
parties there must be propaganda; and rhetoric and oratory became essential to
the citizen of a democracy who wanted to compete for social or economical or
political success. Where rhetoric is
supreme, the decision of the law-courts will be swayed by brilliant argument
and appeals to the emotions; and so in the law-courts it was persuasion, not
truth, which prevailed. A policy, a
point of view, a moral principle or a religion came to be valued not for its
truth, but for its popular appeal, just as the goodness of an article in modern
life is sometimes assessed by its sales.
In the end the substitution of reason for tradition as the supreme
criterion produced not freedom for the individual, as had been hoped, but power
for the few individuals who were skilled in the arts of salesmanship.
Another result
of these changes was the vogue for science and philosophy amongst the leisured
classes. Knowledge and education became
fashionable, and the demand for scientific lectures was satisfied by the
Sophists, experts who travelled from town to town, living on their lecture
fees. They gave courses in medicine,
astronomy, mathematics, civics, theology, and anything else for which there was
a demand. The demand was forthcoming;
for education had become both a fashion and a necessity in the new commercial
society.
Of all the
courses which they provided, the most popular and the most dangerous was
rhetoric, the art of propaganda. In
democratic Athens, with its passion for litigation, rhetoric seemed essential to
any happiness. It brought political
power, wealth, and personal success. For
rhetoric - like propaganda and advertising - was the art of making others agree
to a point of view whether that point of view was right or wrong. Indeed, the falser it was the greater the
rhetorical success in persuading someone else to accept it: and conversely, the
sounder a doctrine or a legal case or a political judgement, the more the skill
required to make it look ridiculous.
Rhetoric, in fact, was the technique of making the worse appear the
better and the better the worse cause.
Its connection with the Sophists is shown by our modern word sophistical, and it rapidly became the most highly
developed science in all Greece.
Such was the
atmosphere in which Socrates grew up. As
a young man he plunged enthusiastically into the maelstrom of new ideas,
reading and listening to the famous lecturers, even arguing with Zeno and
Parmenides, the propounders of the latest paradoxes
of western Greek philosophy. But soon he
began to feel lost in the buzz of speculation and dialectical cleverness.
A whole-hearted
rationalist, he accepted the revolt of reason and its refusal to be bound be
prejudice and by tradition. Greedy for
the new science and philosophy, he participated eagerly in the Athenian
renaissance and welcomed the new education which the Sophists offered. Endowed with an overwhelming sense of the
value of personality and of true self-realization, he could not deny that the
challenge to the established order had left the individual free to develop his
own talents and his own apprehension of truth and that the Sophists provided
the means to this self-development. But
when he examined Athenian society, he began to see that the old superstitions
had been replaced by a materialistic philosophy, and the old education by
lessons in salesmanship and propaganda.
Just as democracy by 430 meant not freedom for all, but privilege and
political power for one class, so rationalism was coming to mean, not the
destruction of all prejudice, but the replacement of one type by another. Education was not valued as an end in itself,
but purchased as a useful weapon for the social struggle.
Up till the
moment when the Oracle was given, Socrates had been an amused and somewhat
cynical spectator of the Athenian renaissance.
He had enjoyed picking holes in pretentious theories and exposing the illogicalities in the arguments of the philosophers, and he
had not resisted the temptation to apply his destructive criticism to
distinguished statesmen and poets. But
he had done this with a light heart. Now
he admitted to himself what he had long suspected. Life in Athens might well be a glorious
adventure, but it was high time to ask precisely where Athens stood, what the
democratic revolution really meant, what the empire really was, and what
freedom of thought really implied. The
last hundred years had been a period of such colossal changes that no one had
had time to stop and consider their significance. The social process had swept Athens along so
fast that no Athenian had had time to see where Athens was going. Each stage had seemed inevitable, and the
pace had been so rapid that there had only been time to prepare for the next
stage without asking too carefully about the direction of the final goal. Now, in Socrates' view, it was time to call a
halt and ask those quite simple questions to which everyone had a ready answer
on his lips, but about which few had seriously pondered.
This, then, was
his vocation, and this was the meaning of Apollo's words. Socrates, the man who claimed that he knew
nothing, was the wisest man in Greece precisely because he alone realized that
the fundamental questions were not being asked by the Sophists and the
statesmen and the 'educated' Athenians.
They thought they knew the answers, when they did not. He at least recognized his own
ignorance. Let us hear his own
description of the matter:
'When I heard
the answer of the Oracle, I said to myself: "What on earth can the god
mean by this riddle? I am not conscious
of having any wisdom either small or great.
What can he mean by calling me the wisest of men? He cannot be telling a lie; for that would be
against the law of his nature." For
a long time I pondered what he could mean, and then very reluctantly I decided
to put the Oracle to the proof. So I
went to a man with a great reputation for wisdom, in the hope that I could
thereby refute the Oracle and say to the god, "You said I was the wisest
of men, but here is someone who is wiser than I." The gentleman I approached was a politician -
I need not mention his name - and I examined him very carefully. But the result was that after conversation
with him I realized that, although in his own estimation and in that of many
others he was a wise man, in fact he was nothing of the kind. So then I tried to show him that he thought
himself wise but was not really wise, and the consequence was that I made an
enemy of him and many of those present.
So I left him, saying to myself "I really am wiser than this gentleman. I suppose neither of us knows anything
beautiful and good: but whereas he thinks he knows something when he doesn't, I
do at least realize my own ignorance. In
this single trifling way I suppose I am wise than he." Then I went to someone else with a reputation
even greater than his, but I came to the selfsame conclusion about him. And so I made an enemy of him too and of many
others besides." [See
APOLOGY, Chapter 21.]
In this passage
Socrates indicated what he held to be the fundamental weakness of Athenian
society. The democratic revolution had
swept away the old established order.
The authority of priest and noble had been replaced by the autonomy of
individual reason. But reason must not
only destroy the temple of superstition: it must erect a new temple to replace
it, more ordered, more beautiful and more true than the old. To awaken Athens to this task was the bounden
duty of any patriot.
Socrates devoted
the last twenty years of his life to the fulfilment of this duty - the exposure
of ignorance in high places. The
ordinary Athenian saw in him only a typical Sophist, as he sat, day by day,
surrounded by clever young men, demolishing the pretensions of highly
respectable citizens. But, unlike the
Sophists, Socrates charged no fees. Disclaiming
all knowledge, he declared himself incompetent to teach, and claimed that he
was merely trying to discover the truth.
If anyone should pay, it was he, for he was always the pupil, never the
master. This humility naturally
infuriated anyone who had been subjected to the deadly Socratic analysis and
had been forced to realize his state of mental confusion. For it soon became clear that no reputation
could survive a conversation with Socrates, the man who knew nothing.
A few of his
closest friends, among them Plato, had some inkling of the meaning of his life:
but the conservative politician soon recognized him as a danger to Athenian
democracy. In 423 the playwright
Aristophanes attacked him bitterly as a scientific buffoon, a dangerous radical
who ridiculed sound tradition and made decent men look fools. Aristophanes' criticism was politically
justified: a degenerate aristocracy hung on Socrates' words and utilized his
arguments to discredit the democracy which they wished to supplant. Alcibiades and Critias and their friends were only waiting their chance to
overthrow the regime and inaugurate the counter-revolution: Socrates' methods
supplied them with fresh ammunition, which they used unscrupulously against
their democratic opponents. They learnt
his dialectical methods and used them, not as Socrates used them to expose
half-truths, but to annihilate truth.
We must remember
that the last thirty years of Socrates' life were lived in a period of almost
unbroken war. Athens was fighting for
her existence, and it was clear that defeat would mean an aristocratic
counter-revolution. For this reason the
party conflict became ferociously bitter, and any criticism of democracy was
taken to imply support for the aristocratic opposition. However scrupulously Socrates avoided taking
sides, he could not pretend that democracy was perfect or veil his contempt for
many of its spokesmen. Nor could he deny
his association with Alcibiades and Critias, or avoid responsibility for their chequered
careers. By his exposure of ignorance
wherever he found it, he had weakened the Government and strengthened the
opposition.
In 404 Critias and his friends at last made their putsch,
set up the regime of the thirty tyrants, and capitulated to Sparta. Socrates took no part whatsoever in their
conspiracy: and when an attempt was made to implicate him in its crimes, by
instructing him to arrest a wealthy citizen, his refusal nearly cost him his
life. But the fact that Critias was his pupil could not be gainsaid. When the democracy was restored he was
arrested and put on trial ostensibly for worshipping strange gods and
corrupting the youth, actually for aiding and abetting the counter-revolution.
It is probable
that the new democracy was reluctant to push the matter to a conclusion. The legal case against Socrates was known to
be weak; his honesty and integrity were widely recognized, and the temper of
the day was inclined to toleration. But
Socrates was now seventy years old: the Athens he had loved was gone, never to
be rebuilt. Almost deliberately he
seemed to press for a final decision, refusing absolutely to escape from prison
or to accept the various offers of help which came from his many friends. He felt that he had lived his life in the
service of Athens. It was for her sake
that he had exposed the ignorance of her politicians and the corruption of her
social life. But his criticism had been
either unheeded or reviled or perverted, and now he felt sure that only his
death could effect what his life had failed to achieve. If he were prepared to die at the order of
the city which he had served, then perhaps his example would inspire others to
continue the work which he had begun.
And so he
remained in prison awaiting death and talking happily to his friends. Right to the end his loyalty never
wavered. When Crito
urged him once more to escape, he only replied: 'Surely you must see that your
country is something which you must honour and revere more even than your
father or mother or forefathers. In the eyes
of God and of men of understanding it has a higher claim on you than all of
these. If it is angry with you, you must
behave towards it with more deference and humility than you do even to your
father; and you must either persuade it that you are right or else you must do
as it commands and suffer as it commands without complaint. If it orders you to be beaten or imprisoned,
if it sends you to war to be wounded or killed - still you must obey. For it has the right to demand this of you,
and you must not flinch or draw back or desert your post. On the field of battle, in the courts of law
and in all your daily life, you must do whatever the city, which is your
country, commands; or else you must succeed in convincing it that you are in
the right. To use force against your
mother or your father is wicked. How
much more so against your country!' [CRITO,
Chapter 12.]
At his trial,
too, he deliberately courted death.
Refusing to use the usual appeals ad misericordiam,
he made his speech for the defence into a brilliant and humorous justification
of his whole life. It was patriotism, he
urged, which made it impossible to retract what he had said, or to give an
assurance for the future that he would soften his criticism. Finally, when, according to Athenian
practice, he was asked to assess his penalty, he replied that the only penalty
which he deserved was a free meal daily in the town hall as a reward for his
services. He was condemned by a small
majority to die by drinking hemlock.
The last hours
of his life were spent in conversation with his friends. Plato has preserved for us an account of them
in his dialogue the Phaedo, and had painted
the final scene.
'He took the cup
quite serenely, without a tremor or any change of colour or expression, looking
steadily at the warder with that peculiar stare of his. Then he said, "What about pouring a
libation? May I?" The warder answered, "We only prepare
just the correct amount." "I
see," said he, "but I may and must pray to the gods that my journey
from this world to the other may be blessed.
That, then, is my prayer. So be
it!" As he said this he raised the
cup and drank it off quite cheerfully and calmly. Up till then must of us had been able to
restrain our tears fairly well: but when we saw him drinking and when we saw
that he had drunk the poison, we could do so no longer. In spite of myself, my tears poured down, and
I put my cloak over my face and wept. It
was not for him that I wept but for my own bereavement. Crito had been
unable to restrain his tears and had got up before me and gone aside. Apollodorus too had
been weeping all the time, and now he cried out loud and his passionate
outburst made us all break down. Only
Socrates remained calm and said, "Come! Come! What are you doing! The chief reason I sent the women away was to
prevent this sort of scene; for I have been told that death should come to a
man in a holy place. Please be patient
and calm." At these words we felt
ashamed and controlled our tears. Then
he began to walk about until he said that his legs were feeling heavy, and lay
down on his back, as the warder instructed him.
The man who had given him the poison every now and then examined him,
pressing his feet and his legs, and then he squeezed his foot hard and asked if
Socrates felt anything. Socrates said
no. So he squeezed his shins and, moving
gradually up the body, showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then he pressed hard again and said that when
it reached his heart, he would be gone.
'Socrates had
covered his face with his cloak, but when the chill reached his groin, he
pushed back the cloak from his face and said (these were his last words),
"Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius:
don't forget to pay the debt." Crito said, "Very well, Socrates. Is there anything else?" Socrates gave no answer to this question, but
after a little while he stirred. The
warder uncovered him and his eyes were glazed.
Crito saw this and closed the eyelids and the
mouth.
'So Socrates,
our friend, died. Of all the men of his
time whom any of us met, not one was as fine or as wise or as good as he.'
II - THE TEACHINGS OF SOCRATES
Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the youth
and for worshipping strange gods. From
what we have seen of his life, this charge seems so fantastic that it could
hardly have been seriously put forward.
And yet we shall find that the jury's verdict was politically
justifiable. Socrates, the patriotic
Athenian and the devoted searcher after truth, was partially responsible for
accelerating the Athenian collapse and still further disintegrating the social
life of Athens. His philosophy, because
it was incomplete, was pernicious.
Had this not
been the case Plato might never have written his Republic. For it was the fact that the noblest man whom
he had known had been justifiably condemned to death which first forced him to
realize the tragic dilemma of Greek civilization, and made him take upon
himself the completion of the task which
Socrates had left unfinished. To
understand Plato we must try to see why Socrates was condemned to death. In so doing we shall perhaps perceive
something of the nature of his philosophy.
We have seen
that Socrates was deeply perturbed by the Athenian complacency at the
destruction of the old aristocratic religion and morality. He saw that intellectual freedom degenerates
into mere licence unless the free individual voluntarily subjects himself to a
new rational discipline. The old
aristocratic order had imposed a discipline and an education upon the
citizen. It had trained him for war and
given him a rigid standard of right and wrong.
It had provided an education, though not a rational one. Inevitably, therefore, the age of reason must
develop a rational system of education, if it was to bring happiness and not
misery to men.
Socrates called
the new education of which he dreamed philosophy - the search for
wisdom. Athens must be taught not to
accept traditional morality, but to discover rational principles of conduct and
to base its social life upon them. The
old education had consisted in putting into the minds of the young the orthodox
ideas about right and wrong: the new philosophy would try to develop the
individual reason in each man so that he only accepted those ideas which he saw
to be true and rejected all wickedness, not from fear of punishment but because
he understood its folly.
Thus philosophy,
according to Socrates, must be the self-discipline of reason, and it had two
main tasks: (1) to examine and to reject those opinions which it found to be
false, and (2) to substitute for these false opinions a new set of principles
acceptable to reason. The method of this
new education was extremely simple: it consisted of asking for definitions of
everyday words like 'justice' or 'courage' or 'piety' and, by a process of
discussion, sifting the false from the true.
Socrates did not claim that in these discussions he taught anybody
anything at all, but only that he helped others to discover what they really knew
already. He did not provide his hearers
with new and interesting ideas, but like a midwife assisted the pregnant mind
to bring forth its own truths. In the
early dialogues of Plato we can watch 'the midwife' at work. He is usually in conversation with an expert
or a prominent citizen and after a few minutes of desultory talk pounces on
some word which his opponent has used.
What, he asks in conversation with a general, does courage mean
precisely? The general must clearly know
in order to do his job properly. But the
general cannot precisely define it and is caught in a maze of
inconsistencies. Various definitions are
tried, but even those suggested by Socrates are found to be deficient and the
dialogue ends in a complete breakdown.
The only positive result seems to be that one more human being realizes
that he does not know what he means by the very simplest words he uses and
detests Socrates for having brought him to this realization.
On first
reading, these dialogues seem entirely destructive. Frequently the argument is unsound and
Socrates is guilty of what looks like deliberate unfairness. The modern reader will sympathize with the
jury who condemned him, and ask what possible use his verbal cleverness can
be. But if we study them more carefully
we shall notice that - however negative the conclusions may be - these
dialogues are in one sense positive.
This method of analysis - the attempt to define precisely the meanings
of common words - is the great contribution of Socrates to modern philosophy:
for if we do not know precisely the meaning of the words we use, we cannot
discuss anything profitably. Most of the
futile arguments on which we all waste time are largely due to the fact that we
each have our own vague meanings for the words we use and assume that our
opponents are using them in the same sense.
If we defined our terms to start with, we could have far more profitable
discussions. Again, we have only to read
the daily papers to observe that propaganda (the modern counterpart of rhetoric)
depends largely for its success on confusing the meaning of the terms. If politicians were compelled by law to
define any term they wished to use, they would lose most of their popular
appeal, their speeches would be shorter, and many of their disagreements would
be found to be purely verbal. Thus
Socrates believed that the first task of philosophy was to clear away confusion
and misrepresentation by defining the meaning of words.
But that was
only a preliminary. The true task of
philosophy was not to define words but to discover reality. As we have seen, Socrates had studied the
attempts of the scientists and the mathematicians to find in the workings of
nature a rational plan. Mathematicians
had disclosed the possibility of deductive proof and logical certainty. No-one who had understood Pythagoras' theorem
could doubt it or regard it as merely probable: for the mathematician it was
eternally and absolutely true. Socrates
observed that mathematics depended on precise definition of terms, but he also
noticed that it did not consist solely of definitions: it was an ordered and
consistent body of knowledge. It seemed
to him possible to apply to human relations the mathematical method, and he
believed this to be the task of philosophy.
If we could know justice and truth and beauty, understanding their
properties and interrelations as we understand Euclid, then life would be
rational and happy. What the scientists
and mathematicians were doing for the world of nature, philosophy must
accomplish for human society.
The
philosophical discipline is never popular: it is indeed the most exasperating
torture to which the human mind can be subjected. It hunts out our dearest prejudices and shows
that they have no rational foundations, and it exposes what we thought to be a
logical theory as a mass of contradictions.
Although it is directed to the development of the individual, it does
not satisfy our ordinary ideas of self-realization since it calls on each of us
to relegate most of his personal interests to second place. It does not press for the free development of
individual tastes, but demands that the individual should voluntarily regulate
his life by the dictates of reason.
Socrates
believed that this discipline alone could save Athenian democracy from
collapse. Now that the bonds of
tradition had been broken, the individual citizen must forge for himself the
new morality. And education must be
concerned to produce that change of heart which was necessary if he was to be
willing to undertake these great responsibilities. For this reason Socrates was as much opposed
to the type of culture and education which the Sophists were popularizing, as
he was to the point of view of the ordinary uneducated businessman. He saw that education and intellectual
training can be used for purely materialist ends. Men can be naturally clever and highly
educated, and yet totally unphilosophic. They can allow reason to be the slave of
their passions, or of other people's passions: and education can be merely a useful
weapon of self-assertion. Socrates
believed that the teaching provided by the Sophists was little better than
this. It gave to men techniques for
getting what they wanted, and the Sophists were interested not in the spiritual
health of their pupils but in providing something useful for which people were
prepared to pay. Socrates agreed with
the conservatives that such education was no substitute for the old-fashioned
discipline of aristocratic Athens. It
put new power into the hands of the intellectual, but it gave him no principles
for the use of that power. For this
reason it produced a reckless individualism and disregard for the good of the
community. Once the restraints of
morality and religion had been destroyed, the individual citizen was free to do
as he pleased; and education was merely embittering the social conflict instead
of healing it.
This, in
Socrates' view, was the disease from which Athenian democracy was
suffering. Class-conflict and
imperialism were the results of a laissez-faire philosophy of individual
licence; and if Reason could not produce a new self-discipline, then the belief
that might is right would rule in Athens.
As the great war dragged on, it became yearly more clear that this was
happening. For all its faults, Athens in
the age of Pericles had been inspired by an exalted
patriotism and a real sense of pan-Hellenic responsibility. Now these motives were being submerged by
faction and self-interest. No impartial
observer could deny the terrible decline in the standards of Athenian life
which set in after the death of Pericles.
The most sober
and therefore the most ruthless critic of this degeneration was Thucydides, an
Athenian general exiled for his failure on a campaign, who composed a detailed
history of the great war between
'Athens also
made an expedition against Melos. The Melians are of
Spartan descent and were therefore unwilling to become subject to Athens. At first they remained neutral. Then when Athens committed acts of wanton
aggression, they were forced into open warfare.
Athens sent an expeditionary force but before opening hostilities the
Athenian generals entered into negotiations with the Melians. The following conversations ensued:
ATHENS: We do not intend to waste time making flowery speeches
to justify our Empire on the ground of our services to Greece against Persia,
or to pretend that our present invasion is motivated by any past misdemeanours
of yours. We suggest therefore that you,
too, should omit such arguments. Do not
waste time describing how, although you are of Spartan descent, you have not
joined the Spartan alliance against us, or how our aggression is
unprovoked. Let us negotiate on the
basis of our real feelings and of the situation as it really is. We all know that justice in this world is
only possible between two powers of equal strength. Power extorts all it can: weakness concedes
all it must. We are here to strengthen
our Empire. We wish to include you
within it with a minimum of trouble, in order that your existence in future may
be of profit to us both.
MELOS: You will certainly benefit from conquering us. How should we benefit by accepting subjection
to you?
ATHENS: You would have the advantage of submitting before
the worst occurred: we should gain by not destroying one of our subjects.
MELOS: You refuse then to allow us to remain neutral and on
friendly terms with you?
ATHENS: Yes, in the eyes of our subjects your neutrality is
a sign of our weakness: your hostility will occasion a display of our
strength. Our subjects believe that if
any state maintains its independence the reason is to be found in its strength
which makes us hesitate to attack it.
Your subjection, therefore, would at the same time extend our Empire and
increase our security.
MELOS: But surely your security would be best advanced if
we remain neutral; for if you attack us, you will alienate the sympathies of
all the states which are now neutral.
When they see how you are treating us, they will expect their turn to
come soon. In fact, you will be
strengthening the forces against you and driving anyone who has not yet taken
sides into the enemy camp. Furthermore,
if you are willing to take the risks which you admit are necessary to maintain
your Empire, you must agree that we should show a contemptible lack of spirit
if we do not do everything we can to preserve the independence we still
possess.
ATHENS: Not if you take an objective view of the
matter. You have to decide not whether
you should engage in a war between two sides equally matched, but how you can
preserve yourselves against an enemy of vastly superior strength. The question is not one of honour but of
prudence.
MELOS: But we know that victory does not always go to the
big battalions. If we surrender now we
give up all hope; if we fight, there is at least a chance we may
survive.
ATHENS: Hope is indeed very comforting in moments of
danger, and those who have something else to depend on may not be ruined by
accepting her comforts. But do not be
deluded by hopes. Though your position
is desperate, a rational method of self-preservation is still open to you. Do not make the silly mistake of pinning your
hopes in such a situation upon the supernatural and upon the favours of heaven.
MELOS: We recognize the danger we are in. But our cause is just and yours is not, and
in the eyes of God we shall at least find no less favour than you. As for our weakness, it will be compensated
by the support of the Spartans. They are
of common stock with us and cannot refuse us help. Our confidence, therefore, is not so blind as
you suppose.
ATHENS: We expect to receive as much favour from on high as
you. Our attitude in religious matters
is scrupulously correct: our mundane aims are not abnormal. There is a law of nature which declares that
every living creature extends its empire to the limits of its power. We know this is true of the human species: we
believe that it applies in heaven as well.
We did not make this law, nor were we the first to implement it. We inherited it from our fathers, we act upon
it in our own lives, and we expect to bequeath it to posterity for ever. We are also aware that you, like everyone
else, would do as we are doing had you at your disposal the forces which are at
ours. So much for the favour of heaven. As for Sparta, if you imagine that she will
assist you from a sense of honour, we can but admire your innocence; we do not
envy your folly. Sparta is a country of
high moral standards in home affairs: its loyalty to national institutions is
very great. Of its foreign policy we
could say a good deal. Suffice it now to
state that it is second to none in identifying national interests with
international honour, national expediency with international justice.
'The Athenians
left the conference: the Melians after consultation
resolved to persevere in their refusal to surrender. The Athenian delegation then returned to the
army and the generals immediately commenced hostilities. Later on, Melos was
closely besieged and whispers of treachery began to be heard in the city. She therefore made an unconditional surrender
to Athens. The Athenians executed all
the men and enslaved all the women and children. They repopulated the island with five hundred
colonists.'
Thucydides did
not pretend that this was a verbatim account of the negotiations at Melos, or that Athenian statesmen ever talked in this
way. It is doubtful indeed if any of
them had analysed their own motives or thought out the principles of their
foreign policy so carefully as the cool objective spectator. The Melian dialogue
is not literal history, but an attempt to lay bare the real underlying causes
of Athenian imperialism and to show what an Athenian diplomatist would have had
to say if he had been honest enough to think out the implications of his
country's policy. It is certain that
Socrates would regard the Melian dialogue as a fair
analysis.
Thucydides was
an historian: he stated the facts and analysed them without drawing
conclusions. But there were men at
Athens prepared to draw them, and to assert not only that Athenian foreign
policy was ruthlessly imperialistic but that it was right to be so. This school of Realpolitik
was never a popular movement (it was too philosophical for that), but it deeply
influenced the young intellectuals and its slogans were quickly picked up by
the demagogues and popular lecturers. It
maintained (as its modern counterparts maintain) that all politics are and must
be power-politics: state against state, class against class, man against
man. The survival of the fittest is the
only law of human society, and self-interest the only motive of individual
men. Not only international law and
morality, but social morality as well, are tricks and devices for the enslavement
of one group by another. The position is
admirably summarized by Callicles, a character
whom Plato introduces in his dialogue the Gorgias
to represent the philosophy of the younger generation.
'I believe that
the laws are framed by the weak and common crowd. They frame them for their own benefit and
according to their taste they concoct the code of moral praise and
censure. They use them to terrify the
few dominant spirits who could stake out a decent claim for themselves: to
prevent them from doing well or getting the better of their inferiors. They are content was a fair or just
distribution of wealth precisely because they are inferior. And so, Law tells us, it is unfair and
disgraceful to try to do better than the common herd, and they tell us it is
morally wrong to do so. But the real
truth is that the better man ought to do better than the worse, and the more
capable than the less capable. There is
plenty of evidence to support this. Look
at the behaviour of animals, look at the history of cities and of nations. Here you see Right means that the strong
should rule the weak and do better than the weak. What right had Xerxes to attack Greece? I believe Xerxes and his like were doing what
is really and truly right; they were acting by the real law of nature, though
they may well have been transgressing the laws we frame. We take the finest of our children and we
tame them like lion cubs, curbing their spirits with moral spells and
superstitions. And so we enslave them,
telling them they must only take their fair and proper share and that fairness
and justice are right is fine and right.
But if a man should arise with a spirit great enough for the task, he
would shake off this morality: he would burst the chains of convention and make
himself free: he would trample underfoot our codes and hypocrisies and
superstitions and all our unreal laws.
The slave would rise up and show himself to be our master and true
righteousness would shine forth.'
This type of
argument was as common in fifth-century Athens as it is today, and then, too,
it seemed overwhelmingly persuasive to a generation which had grown impatient
of the catchwords and speeches of democracy.
Socrates must have heard it almost daily, and recognized in its
triumphant despair of human nature a genuinely revolutionary tone. The young men who revelled in their
immorality and denounced human kindness as a fraud were largely justified in
their contempt for current morality.
Socrates agreed with them that imperialism and class-way were the two
main elements in the politics of their day.
He agreed that most people in their private lives were moral and decent
and righteous only because and so long as it paid them to be so: they kept
their promises, paid their debts and fulfilled the laws from a mixture of fear
and habit and common sense. And finally
he agreed that at bottom the respectable citizen was often actuated by the same
motive as Callicles - self-interest: the one accepted
and the other renounced the social code, but the motive of self-interest was
the same in both cases. But though he
agreed with the Realpolitiker thus far, he
parted company with them when they went on to affirm not only that men did,
but that they should behave in this way.
For here he saw the difference between philosophical and sophistical education.
For the former was concerned to find a new self-discipline based on
rational moral principles: the latter regarded all morality as a brake on
individual freedom. To Socrates the
philosophy that might is right was the inevitable result of neglecting true
philosophy and allowing education to fall into the hands of irresponsible
Sophists. Class conflict and imperialism
had dominated Athenian life because genuine philosophy had never been taught:
and now a spurious philosophy had arisen designed to preserve precisely those
evils which philosophy should suppress. Realpolitik was, in fact, the philosophy of
Unreason, the justification of those false educational ideals which regarded
knowledge and reason as merely useful instruments for the furtherance of
personal of class-interests.
Socrates opposed
this new philosophy of Unreason as firmly as he opposed the Sophists, and many
of his fiercest arguments were directed against it. But the tide was against him. In a period of open class-war it seemed a hopeless
task to educate Athens to moral and intellectual self-discipline: it was
self-evident that in order to survive man must be prepared to fight for himself
and disregard the obligations which reason and common decency alike imposed. The philosophy of Unreason at least offered a
positive solution of the problems of life.
It was concrete, specific, and 'true to life'. In opposition to it Socrates could offer
nothing clear-cut or definite; his whole philosophy forbade him to teach a
dogma. He could only try to put others
on their way upon the search for truth.
He could show that in the long run 'Might is Right' is self-destructive,
and that the philosophy of Unreason is the denial of all philosophy: but this
was of little use to a generation filled with scepticism and despair.
For this reason
Socrates' philosophy could make no headway against Realpolitik. Its simple patriotism and sense of duty
sounded archaic and naive, and its refusal to offer a ready-made solution of
any problem made it seem nebulous and unworldly. But to the outsider Socrates and his
opponents were much of a madness. For up
to a point both philosophies had a common aim, the exposure of hypocrisy: and
where they differed - in the positive side of their teachings - Socrates' views
were obscure and vague. Thus the two
conflicting educational ideals were lumped together by the ordinary Athenian as
the clever revolutionary propaganda of aristocratic intellectuals whose purpose
was the corruption of the youth and the destruction of all respect for the
democratic tradition. This judgement may
have been strictly incorrect, but it showed a certain political common
sense. For, in fact, the products of
Socrates' teaching were not distinguishable from those of the Sophists. Alcibiades was an
unprincipled careerist, Critias a sadistic and
ruthless politician. Looking at them the
man in the street could not be blamed for assuming that Socratic philosophy was
only another brand of subversive sophistry.
To appreciate,
therefore, the tragedy of Socrates' execution, we must realize that it was
politically justifiable. The statesman
must consider the results of a policy or a creed, and not merely the motives
behind it. Looked at from this point of
view, Socrates' guilt was proved up to the hilt. His teaching had inspired the
counter-revolution, and his theology had produced, not a puritan revival, but a
ruthless and cynical gang of wealthy adventurers. The fact that he had denounced their
philosophy of force did not make any material difference. His disciples had welcomed his attacks on
current morality, and disregarded the positive side of his creed.
The
responsibilities of the teacher are great.
He must consider not only whether his teachings are true, but what
effect they will have on his pupils. In
the eyes of the practical politician it is no justification of Socrates as a
teacher to show that he denounced wickedness, if his virtuous teachings, in
fact, promoted it. However blameless his
life and pure his motives, the effects on Athenian life had been
disastrous. When we remember this, we
cannot blame the jury which found him guilty of corrupting the youth.
We have seen how
Socrates failed to impart to his pupils the rational self-discipline which he
himself practised, and we have suggested that this failure was due to his
inability to give any positive content to his notion of Reason which was
acceptable to an Athenian audience. And
yet Socrates had a positive gospel: and it was this gospel which was attacked
in the second part of his charge which accused him of worshipping strange gods.
Here, too, we
are faced with a paradox. Socrates was a
respectable Athenian. There is no reason
to believe that he was ever blasphemous or disrespectful to Athena of the
Acropolis. How, then, could he be
condemned upon this charge? From all
that we hear of him, there is no doubt that he was a deeply religious man. He often talked of his 'inner voice' which
would suddenly forbid him to do something which he had in mind, and he believed
that on those occasions God had spoken.
He was something of a mystic and would sometimes fall into trances. Once when he was serving in the army in
Northern Greece, he was observed in the early morning standing quite still
meditating. There he stood all day deep in
thought. As night fell some of his
fellow soldiers dragged their beds out into the open to watch him. All night he stood there quite still, and
with the return of light he offered up a prayer to the sun and went on his way.
The inner voice
and the trances were the most obvious signs of a religious sense which
permeated Socrates' whole life. Religion
for most Greeks at this time was a matter of observance and
ceremony. Piety and godliness meant
doing a number of things at the proper time; for the gods were 'powers' to be
appeased by offerings. The respectable
citizen made his offerings, but religion did not demand that he should behave
in any special way in his ordinary life, or offer him any very cheerful prospect
in the next world. Greek gods were
capricious and somewhat mercenary - a bad man, who made the proper offerings,
was pleasing to heaven: a good man, who by some mischance failed to make them,
was punished.
Socrates'
religion was very different. All his
life he had a mystical awareness of the supernatural world, and felt himself a
citizen of the heavenly city. This
otherworldly belief was held by certain sects called Orphics,
which had grown up during the fifty years before he was born. For the Orphic, human life was a vale of woe
to which man had been banished by God, and the body was a tomb in which the
immortal soul had been imprisoned. To
gain true happiness it must be freed from the trammels of the flesh, and return
to its natural dwelling-place in heaven.
But this release could only be achieved if it renounced wealth and power
and bodily pleasure and resolved to live the good life here on earth.
All men alike,
said the Orphic, are banished souls, so all are brothers. Cities and empires and earthly glory are
nothing but vanity. We must renounce
them and renounce our citizenship of this world. For the community of the elect is not bound
by ties of kinship or of nationality, but by the brotherhood of its common
purpose - its resolution to escape the world and seek God. This for the Orphic, religion was no mere
formal observance or empty ritual, but the very life of man. And his morality in the same way ceased to be
the customs of the city he lived in, and became the way of life which the individual
soul must follow if it is to be freed from the prison of the body and return to
heaven.
Orphism often
degenerated into a mystery cult hawked around by quacks and mendicants as a
cheap ticket to heaven. But Socrates met
the very exalted form of it which had been developed by the Pythagoreans. As it permeated their mathematics and made of
them not merely a new science or technique, but a new theology, so it permeated
his new dialectical analysis of the meanings of words and gave it a strange
passion and intensity.
'Perhaps, then,
there is a "narrow way" which leads us to our goal. For as long as we have the body with us in
our search, so that the soul is contaminated by its evilness, we shall never
get complete possession of that truth which we desire. The body must be fed and so it constantly
disturbs us. It is liable to disease and
so it hinders our search for reality. It
fills us with passions and appetites and fears and all sorts of fantasies and
foolishness so that it really never gives us a chance of knowing anything
properly. War and dissension and battle
are all due to the body and its appetites, since every war is fought in order
to acquire wealth, and it is the body which forces us to acquire it. And so we are enslaved to its service, and
are so busy that we have no time for philosophy. But, worst of all, if the body does
ever give us a little spare time and we begin to make some investigation, it
constantly butts in, in the middle of our research, and disturbs and upsets us,
and prevents us from seeing the truth.
It is, in fact, obvious that if we are to gain any pure knowledge, we
must get rid of the body so that the soul by itself can look on reality by
itself. Only then shall we attain that
knowledge which must be the object of our desire, since we claim to be
"lovers of knowledge". Our
argument proves indeed that we shall never know in this life, but only when we
are dead....
'The true
philosophers really practise dying and they are less afraid of death than
anyone. Look at it in this way. They are at loggerheads with the body and
they want to free the soul of all encumbrances.
Wouldn't it be very unreasonable then if they were afraid and upset when
this happened, and were sorry to go to the place where there is a hope of gaining
what they longed for all through their lives, and of ridding themselves of the
companion with whom they were always at loggerheads? Many have been glad to die when the boy or
wife or son whom they loved has been taken from them, simply because they hoped
in the other world to see those whom they longed for and to be with them
again. And so, I suppose, if a man is in
love with knowledge and passionately believes that he cannot really find it
except in the other world, he cannot be upset at dying, but will gladly leave
this world. Surely this must be so if he
is really a philosopher? For he will be
passionately convinced that he can only really find pure knowledge there. If this is so it would be very unreasonable
for him to be afraid of death, wouldn't it?'
In this passage
from the Phaedo [PHAEDO, Chapters 11 and 12.]
we find a clear statement of Orphic religious faith. It can be summarized as follows: (1) The Soul
is immortal. (2) Happiness means the achieving of immortality by renunciation
of this world. (3) All men are brothers whatever their conditions here on
earth. But to these three beliefs
Socrates, under Pythagorean influence, adds a fourth - virtue is knowledge -
transforming Orphism from a mystery cult into a rational philosophy. For now the immortal part of the soul is Reason,
and happiness means freedom for Reason to contemplate reality. At one stroke the new scientific spirit
becomes the instrument of true religion, and philosophical inquiry the proper
method of theology, which alone can satisfy man's rational nature and impose
upon his passions order and restraint.
At first sight
it is not clear why Socrates' religion should have brought him into conflict
with Athenian public opinion. Athens,
too, had her own Eleusinian mysteries - a cult of Demeter and Persephone - which
offered some hope of immortality, though it is doubtful whether the ordinary
citizen regarded it as more than a kind of Freemasonry, a ceremonial observance
which satisfied a deep unconscious craving.
Why, then, was Socrates condemned to death for worshipping strange gods?
There are
several answers to this question. In the
first place Pythagoreanism was an aristocratic creed,
which challenged the sovereignty of the popular will and the authority of the
elected citizen. In South Italy, indeed,
a sort of dictatorship oft he elect had been set up by Pythagoreans, like
Calvin's City of God at Geneva. If
knowledge must be supreme and reason control the passions, it was easy to see
that the freedom which the merchants and town proletariat had won by a century
of struggle would have to be surrendered to a stricter absolutism of
theological kings. Athens rightly felt
that the new puritanism was essentially undemocratic
and that the Pythagorean, who was harmless enough when he confined his
speculations to mathematics and the other world, would become a menace to the
existing order if he applied his analysis to society. But this was precisely the task to which
Socrates felt himself called - to use the new mathematical method of reasoning
in testing the consistency and the correctness of the current morality and
statesmanship. In so doing he must
challenge the basic principles of Athenian democracy.
Secondly the
Athenian was bound to ridicule the Socratic ideal of practising
immortality. In a city where the
pleasures of this world were so keenly appreciated, it seemed absurd to suggest
that Puritanism could bring happiness.
Socrates spoke constantly of the need to sacrifice all for psyche,
the immortal rational part of the soul.
But to the Athenian the psyche meant the breath of life; and if
he conceived it to be immortal, it was only as a thin shade in Hades craving to
return to the body. For him it was the
things of the body and of this world which brought pleasure and made life worth
living, and he felt repelled by a doctrine which taught that man must lose his
life in order to save it.
Thirdly, the
Socratic theology contradicted what little religion he still had. Athena of the Acropolis and the rest oft he
Olympic throng were for the new theologians myths or allegories and nothing
more. The sun and moon and stars were
physical objects and studied as such by science. Homer, who was almost a Greek bible, was
mercilessly criticized and the sexual foibles of his deities were
denounced. It was unreasonable to expect
that the respectable citizen should distinguish between a theologian who thus
trampled on tradition and a vulgar atheist.
Socrates for him was not only a Sophist and a crank - he was blasphemous
as well.
But all this is
not sufficient to explain why Socrates was brought to trial for his religious
beliefs. Athens was not a modern
dictatorship and her citizens could think what private thoughts they
pleased. It cannot have been Socrates'
theology alone to which objection was taken, but its political effects.
What these were
it is easy to see. Socrates taught that
the religion which was ordinarily practised was merely a myth, a symbol
sometimes of truth, sometimes of falsehood.
He believed that religion no less than morality must be purged by reason
and that, before any real knowledge of God could be reached, the lumber of
superstition and ceremony must be seen for what it was. In his own mind this exposure of superstition
was only a preliminary before the real search for reality began. But for his pupils the preliminary stage was
quite sufficient. They were delighted
with his ridicule of Homer and all the sacred books of Greek morality. Rebels against tradition and orthodoxy, they
wanted nothing better than a proof that religion was nonsense. Socrates gave it to them. Thus the effect of Socrates' teaching was not
the restoration of true religion, but the destruction of any little religious
feeling which Alcibiades and his friends still
possessed; and the new theology had the same result in Athens as the new
philosophy - it destroyed belief but was unable to put anything in its
place. The young aristocrats may have
picked up a smattering of Pythagorean teaching from their master, but they were
only interested in its antidemocratic bias.
Socrates was the
lover of truth who could only make men sceptics, the lover of God who converted
his pupils to atheism, the patriot whose hearers became convinced that
patriotism was a mere delusion.
Preaching the rule of reason, he taught a technique of argument which
was used to justify the rule of might.
Concerned above all to challenge the selfish individualism of the
Athenian intelligentsia, he produced by his teaching the worst specimens of
that type.
Perhaps we can
now understand why he refused to escape from prison and preferred to court
death. He knew that he had failed in his
life to fulfil the mission which the Oracle had given him. He knew, on the other hand, that his teaching
was sound and that along the way which he had marked lay the only hope of
salvation for the individual and for the State.
For his philosophy was not wrong, but incomplete. He preached the rationality of man and of
God, and he urged that unless we believe in these two things there can be no
sound education or happy society. His
life had shown that this belief is insufficient and that without knowledge of
the principles of human conduct, and of the nature of God, it can become
positively harmful. But he believed that
his death would inspire others to discover those things, the existence of which
he could only take on trust.
We have said
that it is the personality of Socrates, not his actions or teaching, which is
really important. That he was
justifiably condemned to death is true; but it is irrelevant to his greatness. That he made no important discoveries is also
true and also irrelevant. What mattered
to Plato and what matters to us is his life and death. In them he showed that a man could be found
who believed so passionately in the cause of truth that he would follow it
whatever its political or social effects.
Such people there must always be if civilization is to be
preserved. They are so uncompromising
that they are quite unpractical: so simple that they make wise men look
fools. Oblivious of the disastrous
results of their idealism, they demand truth even where it may ruin a class or
a nation: and if their wickedness is pointed out to them, they merely reply,
'where truth is concerned, compromise is impossible'. All that is free in our Western culture has
sprung from this spirit, whether it is found in scientists, or priests, or
politicians, or quite ordinary men and women who have refused to prefer politic
falsehoods to the simple truth. In the
short term, they often do great harm: but in the end their example is the only
force which can break the dictatorship of force and greed. Socrates was the first of these men and women
of whose personality history has preserved a record.
For he was the
first man who really saw what intellectual integrity implied and yet preferred
it to everything else. He was the
spirit of inquiry, incorruptible, intolerant of sham, greedy for every variety
of human experience, insatiable in discussion, ironic and yet serious. Such a spirit is generally intolerable to any
well-organized community. The statesman
who is responsible for 'carrying-on', the priest who preaches the orthodox
faith, the professor who repeats the traditional dogmas, will all unite to
suppress the free spirit of reason which respects no authority save that of
truth. In the face of completely candid
criticism every established authority must resort to the most irrational of
defences - force. There is no other
weapon against the conscientious objector: and Socrates showed that philosophy
is nothing else than conscientious objection to prejudice and unreason. Perhaps in the last resort it cannot solve
the problems of human right and wrong, and it will have no simple answer to the
questions of the hour. Regarding force
as irrational, it will refuse to use it and ceaselessly demand that those who
are prepared to do so should ask themselves precisely what their purpose and
their motives are. The Athenian
democracy had no answer to this question, and so Socrates died.
Socrates will
always be compelled to die, his death will always be politically justifiable,
and it will always be condemned by succeeding generations, who see so easily in
retrospect that truth is ultimately preferable to any established falsehood,
however efficient it may appear.
Condemning the death of the historical Socrates, each generation kills
its own.
CHAPTER IV
Plato
I - PLATO THE MAN
SOCRATES' execution was not in
vain. By his death like another
conscientious objector four hundred years later, he immortalized the idea which
he served; and the legend of Socrates became the inspiration of all who believe
in reason. But the man who first
formulated the Socratic faith into a systematic philosophy was fundamentally
different from his master. Just as Paul
of Tarsus created an orthodox Christian theology strangely remote in spirit
from that of Jesus, so Plato modified the Socratic ideal of philosophy into a
new Platonic system. Plato and Paul were
both converts to a faith, but each of them changed the faith of his master
almost as much as he was changed by it.
And so in the history both of Platonism and of Christianity we find a
strange tension between the ideals of the master and of the disciple; and at
recurring intervals there is a movement to get behind the disciple's dogma to the
real personality of the master. In the
end loyalty to both is well-nigh impossible.
Consider for a
moment these two men. Plato and
Socrates. No two personalities could be
more sharply opposed: Socrates, the humorous citizen of Periclean
Athens, who knew and loved all sorts and conditions of men; Plato, the
aristocrat, who shook the dust of democratic Athens off his feet: Socrates, the
man who knew that he knew nothing; Plato, the systematic exponent of an
authoritarian creed: Socrates, the conversationalist, and Plato, the master of
prose style: Socrates, the personification of life itself, and Plato, the
remote observer of all things living. It
will be no surprise to find that the Socratic ideal under Plato's hand has
suffered some startling transformations.
However long we
study Plato's writings, we can never feel that we know Plato. He baffles and eludes our search, and
although we may learn a good deal about him, to know or to like him as a
man is almost impossible. This is due
not only to his deliberate self-effacement in the dialogues - in his letters we
possess extremely personal expressions of opinion - but also to his
character. Plato was a divided
personality, a man who deliberately denied himself full realization; a poet who
deliberately allowed the springs of imagination to dry up. Unless we remember this we shall not grasp
the full tragedy of his life. For he was
first and foremost an artist, to whom practical affairs were of small
interest. His poems are among the most
exquisite we possess - and yet the story may well be truth that the young Plato
burned his tragedies and devoted himself tot he cause of philosophy and of the
regeneration of Greece. This decision
was forced upon him by three things: his social position as a member of the
ruling class who was naturally expected to devote his life to public service,
the death of Socrates, which compelled him to see the urgency of the crisis,
and lastly, the experiences of his youth.
Plato was born
in 428. Pericles
was dead: the great plague had ravaged Athens and the dreary years of the
Peloponnesian war had just begun.
Athens, connected by the Long Walls to her port, the Peiraeus,
had become an armed camp into which each summer were huddled the Attic farmers,
sheltering from the Spartan invasion and watching their crops burnt. Plato as a boy can have known little save war
and the rumours of war, revolution and the rumours of revolution. War is never healthy for democracies, and as
Plato grew up, Athens began to crack under the strain. As money ran short and the standard of living
fell, the democratic leaders became more and more imperialist. In 430 Athens had been fighting to defend her
Empire: by 416 it was necessary not only to repel attacks, but to recoup the
losses of the war by some material gains - and Athens launched out on the
enterprise of conquering Sicily, the richest island of the Mediterranean. The failure of the Sicilian expedition -
caused in part by the defection of Socrates' favourite pupil, Alcibiades - meant the downfall of Athens, and in 404, she
capitulated. Defeat in war brought
revolution at home and an aristocratic terror was established. Plato was just twenty-four when this happened.
Belonging to one
of the most distinguished families in all Athens, he had been brought up in an
atmosphere of counter-revolution. In
aristocratic circles, by this time, democracy was only another name for
corruption and class-politics, and it was taken as self-evident that nothing
but armed revolution could save her from collapse. Plato had never seen Periclean
Athens: instead, he had heard the savage jeers of the wealthy nobles at the
inefficiency and vulgarity of the jingo democrats, and felt their growing
terror of the uneducated proletariat with whom sovereignty lay. As the situation became worse, the cry for
leadership grew louder, and at last the people itself began to tire of its
freedom. The aristocratic politicians
saw their opportunity, and Plato believed that the turning-point had now come;
his friends would initiate the rule of Law and Order. Long afterwards, in a letter, he described
his feelings in those troubled days: 'My experience as a young man was by no
means unusual. I thought that as soon as
I became my own master I would immediately enter public lief.
A sudden change, however, in the
political situation diverted me from my plan.
The democratic regime of the time was generally detested and a
revolution took place. It was headed by
fifty-one leaders, of whom eleven were in the City and ten in the Peiraeus: these two committees dealt with the market and
with the administration of the two towns.
Above them was a supreme committee of thirty. Some of the members of this supreme committee
were relations or acquaintances of mine and invited me to join them, imagining
that I should find the new regime to my taste.
My feelings were in no way surprising if you consider my age at the
time. I thought the new regime would
substitute the reign of justice for the reign of injustice, and so I gave it my
closest attention to see what it would do.
And I saw these gentlemen within a very short time make the democracy
they had destroyed seem like a golden age!
They actually ordered my aged friend Socrates, whom I would not hesitate
to call the most upright man of his time, to take part in the arrest of a
citizen whom they wished to put out of the way.
Their intention was to associate Socrates, whether he wished it or no,
with the activities of the new regime.
He refused to obey and was prepared to face death rather than be made an accessory to their
crimes.
'When I saw all
this and a good deal else besides I was deeply disgusted and dissociated myself
entirely from this deplorable government.
Shortly afterwards, the thirty were turned out and their whole regime destroyed. Once again I was really, though less
urgently, filled with a desire to take an active part in politics. Athens was still very unsettled and revolting
incidents were not uncommon. It was not
surprising that those revolutionary times resulted in personal reprisals of a
violent character: but on the whole he restored democracy exercised
considerable moderation. And yet, as
ill-luck would have it, certain influential persons brought an action against
Socrates. The charge was an outrageous
one, of which Socrates was completely innocent.
They accused him of impiety, and on this count the jury condemned to
death the man who previously, when some of them had the misfortune to be in
exile themselves, had refused to take part in the arrest of one of their own
friends.
'When I
considered all this, the type of men who were administering affairs and the
condition of the Law and of public morality - the more I considered it and the
older I grew, the more difficult appeared to me the task of decent government. It was impossible to take action without
friends or political associates, and these it was not easy to find among the
politicians, since their methods of government were false to the true
principles and traditional institutions of our country. To find new men for the job, however, was an
impossibility. Moreover, statues and
usage alike were degenerating in Athens with surprising rapidity, and so,
although at first I was filled with an ardent desire to enter politics, when I
considered all this and saw how chaotic the political situation was, I felt
completely baffled. I continued to
consider how on earth some improvement could be brought about, not only in the
administration, but also in society as a whole, and I was constantly on the
look-out for an opportunity to intervene.
But finally I came to the conclusion that every city without exception
is badly governed, and that the state of legislation is everywhere so
deplorable that no government is possible without drastic reconstruction combined
with some very good luck. And so I was
forced to extol true philosophy and to declare that through it alone can real
justice both for the State and for the individual be discovered and enforced. Mankind (I said) will find no cessation from
evil until either the real philosophers gain political control or else the
politicians become by some miracle real philosophers.' [See Plato, Letter VIII.]
It is clear from
this quotation that the shortcomings of the anti-democratic revolution were the
first great disappointment of Plato's life: they shook him out of his
complacency and made him reconsider his whole position. Up till now he had assumed that everything
could be put right if only the gentlemen gained control. Now he realized that 'gentlemen' could behave
worse than the demagogues of the proletariat.
But this did not alter his profound contempt for the working
population. Plato remained an
aristocrat, convinced that the peasant, the craftsman, and the shopkeeper were
incapable of political responsibility.
Government was the perquisite of the gentry, who did not need to earn a
living and could therefore devote their lives to the responsibilities of war
and politics. In the eyes of the young
Plato there must always be a ruling aristocracy and a subject people. The latter were the producers and
distributors of material wealth, and Plato had a special word, 'banausic', to express his contempt for their menial
occupations. The former had the paternal
care of the state at heart. Living on
the labour of the subject masses, they gave them in return security, justice,
and defence. Because they were of a
nobler breed, culture and education belonged to them while to the subjects was
allotted that technical training which would best increase their efficiency as
craftsmen or farmers. The political
philosophy of the young Plato was at bottom a longing to return to the Homeric
age of chivalry. Drawn from his reading
of the Iliad, it postulated a radical reconstruction of the social
order. The working classes must be put
in their place: the gentry must regain their old self-confidence and sense of
responsibility.
The failure of
the anti-democratic revolution did not profoundly alter Plato's view: it merely
proved that the reconstruction could not come through the normal political
channels. A discredited aristocracy
could never win power at Athens: but this did not prove that aristocracy as
such was wrong. Somehow, on Plato's
view, the gentry must be trained to play their proper part. How that was to be done he did not know, and
was content for the moment to devote himself to mathematics and pure
philosophy, and to discussions with Socrates, his master and friend.
Then came the
trial and the death of Socrates. It is
noteworthy that Plato did not lay it to the charge of the restored democracy,
but admitted that the new government acted with considerable moderation. He saw, indeed, that it was one of those
events which no foresight or human volition could have prevented. But because it could happen under a moderate
democracy, it disturbed him profoundly.
For years he had talked with Socrates and studied with him the new
science and mathematics and theology: more than most of his contemporaries he
had understood the Socratic spirit. He
had not failed to see Socrates' deep disgust with the aristocratic clique and
his contempt for their Realpolitik. He had grasped the reason for his refusal to
escape from prison, and seen him as he was, not an agnostic, but a
conscientious objector. Now that he was
dead, Plato felt himself alone, but he also felt that his vocation was
clear. He must overcome his deep
revulsion from politics and do what Socrates had failed to do. He must answer the questions which Socrates
asked, and discover those eternal principles of human conduct which alone could
bring happiness to the individual and stability to the State. He must use the Socratic dialectic not only
to discredit hypocrisy and false pretensions, but to reveal what real justice
and courage and temperance are, and then work out a constitution and a system
of law consistent with them. And lastly,
he must build a city-state so firmly based upon reason and truth that Socrates,
the conscientious objector, could have given it his wholehearted approval and
loyalty, and lived with a good conscience under its protection. For Socrates' death, he believed, could only
be made good if it inspired his friends and disciples to devote themselves to
this one task.
Throughout his
life Plato regarded himself as the fulfilment of Socrates. Because he believed this, he wrote Dialogues
and made no attempt to show where Socrates speaks in his own name and where he
is the mouthpiece of Plato. Any such
distinction would have seemed unreal to the man who had grasped the meaning of
Socrates' life. Reason and truth are not
the trappings of individual personalities: they are eternal and universal, and
in them individual differences disappear.
So at least both Plato and Socrates believed, and therefore the
distinction of the real from the Platonic Socrates was for Plato absurd. Devotion to his memory would encourage Plato
to a meticulous recreation of the world in which Socrates lived and talked, but
not to a rigid separation of the master's philosophy from his own.
In his written
works Plato tried to give flesh and blood to the Socratic spirit, the spirit of
philosophy. The Dialogues are not
dogmatic assertions of truth, but examples of philosophy at work exposing
falsehood, asserting new principles, finding fault again with these new
principles and ascending ever higher in search of laws completely acceptable to
reason. For Plato, the dialogue was the
proper medium of philosophical thought because it displayed in its very form
the fact that truth can only be found by cooperation; and - up to the time
when he wrote the Republic - the Socratic dialogues were his only
published work because Socrates was for him the supreme embodiment of this
method.
It is impossible
in one short chapter to solve a problem argued by scholars for hundreds of
years. The relation of Plato to Socrates
is a problem of this sort but it is doubtful whether much of the argument has
been of profit. Plato was no Boswell
devoted to the immortalization of a Johnson far greater than himself. On the other hand his Socrates was not a
fiction behind which his own personality was screened. If we look for analogies, we shall find one
not in the writer of the Fourth Gospel, but in St Paul. The Fourth Gospel is the work of a
contemplative and placid mind. The
dialogues are as fiercely controversial and pugnaciously loyal as Paul's
epistles. Both writers feel themselves
so immersed in the mission of the men whom they describe that it is difficult
to separate what was original from the added touches. Socrates was an individual whom Plato had
loved and whose memory he wished to perpetuate, but he was also the founder of
a movement far greater than himself, which Plato believed himself to have
developed upon true Socratic lines, but far beyond the point which Socrates had
reached. For this reason the Socrates of
the Dialogues is at the same time the historical Socrates and the timeless
spokesman of Platonic philosophy. Plato
saw no inconsistency in this.
But writing was
not enough. Socrates had demanded not
only the discovery of truth, but its embodiment in human society: the double
demand must be fulfilled, and Plato decided to prepare himself for the
task. He could not now renounce politics
and find consolation in poetry or in pure philosophy, although every natural
inclination urged him to do so. Science
and mathematics must, if Socrates were right, be harnessed in the cause of
Greek regeneration: they must not be allowed to become a way of escape for an intelligentsia
grown weary and anxious to avoid its civic responsibilities. Plato must have been greatly tempted by the
claims of pure speculation. It was as
easy for him as for the modern academic to pretend that truth alone was his
objective and that its applicability in the real world was not and should not
be the concern of the pure scientist or philosopher: that theory and practice
were rightly divorced from one another and that the former should be proud of
its remoteness from everyday life.
There are many
passages in the Dialogues in which Plato expresses his distaste for practical
life [See particularly the PHAEDO and the
THEAETETUS (172).] and extols the virtues of academic
research. But always on such occasions
an element of self-justification is apparent.
The well-born recluse tries to rationalize his hatred of the mob into a
theory of human stupidity. The academic,
distrusting his political capacities, demonstrates the triviality of
politics. But the apologia is always
uneasy. Plato could never devote himself
to metaphysics without feeling the prick of conscience reminding him that
metaphysics was an escape from life. In
the Republic (496) he says: 'There is only a handful left who are
inspired by the true spirit of philosophy, among them perhaps a man of noble
character who was brought up in a good home and was saved from corrupting
influences by banishment, and so has remained true to his own nature: or a
great personality born in a small city who despises the petty politics of his
home town and can therefore see beyond them.
'Those who
become members of this small company and have made philosophy their own,
realize the pleasures and the blessedness which it brings and appreciate fully
the madness which has taken possession of the masses. They all know that to all intents and
purposes nothing sound is ever achieved by the politicians, and that no-one who
tries to uphold justice will find any support on which he can rely. He will indeed be like a man who had fallen
into a den of beasts, refusing to accept the law of the jungle but unable by
himself to hold out against a bestial world: and so, before he can do anything
for the city or his friends, he is put away, and a life is wasted without
profit to himself or anyone else.
'Considering all
this coolly and objectively, the philosopher will remain quietly at his own
work like a traveller caught in a storm who retreats behind a wall to shelter
from the driving gusts of dust and hail.
Seeing the rest of the world filled full with iniquity, he will be
content to keep his own life here on earth unstained by wickedness and impious
actions, so that he may leave this world with a fair hope of the next, at peace
with himself and God.' This streak in
Plato's character is never wholly absent from his writings. It accounts for his ignorance of human nature
- the natural superior can rarely understand the mob which he despises - and
also for the uncertainty which runs through his whole career as to the purpose
and direction of his researches and teaching.
Later moralists and philosophers have shown the same defect - an inclination
to forestall criticism of practical failure by saying in advance: 'I'm willing
to try my hand at putting the world to rights: but if my suggestions fail, I
take no responsibility since my real interest is in pure theory.'
It was the
influence of Socrates which saved Plato from renouncing practical life. Socrates may have had a remote and mystical
religion, but his intense interest in the world around made it ridiculous even
to suggest that he could take refuge in pure speculation. The fact that Socrates' feelings for Athens
and his enjoyment of the life of the busy city had never wavered even in the
face of death, was a constant reminder to Plato that a great teacher must also
be a simple human being who loves and understands his fellow men. Plato could never be that, but at least he
could apply the knowledge which he gained to the discovery of some cure for the
miseries of his fellow men.
With these
intentions, shortly after Socrates' death, he left Athens and travelled for
several years in the Mediterranean, probably visiting, among other places,
North Africa, Egypt, and Sicily. He
himself has recorded for us the impression which the first sight of the court
of Dionysius I, Tyrant of Syracuse, produced upon him. 'I was by no means content with the
"blissful life" which I found there, consisting, as it did, of
incessant debauches. No-one whose life
is spent on gorging food twice a day and sharing his bed at night, and so on,
could ever attain real wisdom. The human
constitution cannot stand the strain of that sort of life for long. Nor would he ever be likely to learn
self-control or any other virtue. What
is more, no State, however good its laws, can retain any stability if its
citizens believe in mad extravagance and exert themselves only in the
activities of eating and drinking and in the vigorous pursuit of their
armours. Inevitably in such a state
there is a constant succession of tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies; and
politicians cannot endure the mention of just government or equality before the
law.'
This visit to
Sicily and South Italy was to prove of great importance in Plato's
development. In the first place he
became acquainted with Archytas, the geometer, who
was trying to apply Pythagorean principles to the government of his native city
Tarentum. Here Plato could see realized
in a wealthy Italian town his dream of the rule of reason, and the sight must
have encouraged him in his own designs.
In the second place, in Syracuse, he met Dion,
the son-in-law of Dionysius I, and immediately struck up a close friendship
with him. A statesman of great practical
ability, Dion was for Plato the ideal man of
action. A passionate student of
philosophy, he was willing to submit himself tot he Platonic discipline and was
later to become an ardent pupil in the Academy.
But, above all, he was the friend of Plato; the two seemed to be
complementary to each other, the politician with a bent for philosophy and the
philosopher driven by his conscience into the practical world. After Socrates, Dion
was the most important influence in Plato's life.
At the age of
forty Plato returned to Athens to see in 387 the conclusion of the ignominious
peace of Antalcidas by which all Asia Minor was
surrendered to Persia. Hellenic
independence was ebbing, but the old feud between Sparta and Athens still
continued and Athens had won back something of the glories of the empire from
her rival. Plato, however, had made his
decision. Athens offered him no
prospects and so in a shady garden outside the walls he founded his new
university - the Academy.
The Academy was
both a school and an institute of scientific research. There, for the first time, the two sides of
modern university life joined together.
Visited by nearly all the famous scientists of the time, it soon ceased
to be an Athenian institution and one became one of the centres of Greek
learning. The students, too, were by no
means exclusively from Athens, but included the sons (and daughters!) of some
of the most distinguished families in Greece.
Plato renounced Athenian politics to become the president of the first
pan-Hellenic university. In a later
chapter we shall see something of the educational system which he proceeded to
build up: at present we are only concerned to observe the double purpose of the
Academy, on the one side as an organization of pure research, and on the other
as a training ground for young men of the leisured classes (and mostly of noble
blood) who were destined to a political career in their home cities. Here, at last, Plato had found a field for
practical activity which was not confined to Athenian party-politics: here he
could build up a community of young disciples and imbue them with the moral and
intellectual discipline which was necessary if they were to restore the ancient
glories of Greece. In the pure air of
the Academy they could throw off party and factional interests and avoid the
corruption of life in the degenerate city-state. Steeped in the spirit of philosophy, they
would become leaders of a new and purer Hellenism and carry back with them to
their homes the revolutionary creed of the Academy.
For twenty years
Plato was content to guide the policy of the new university, and in a series of
Socratic dialogues to indicate the lines along which its research should be
conducted. But in 367, when he was close
on sixty, an event happened in Sicily which was to provide the philosopher with
a test of the practical utility of his work.
Dionysius I of Syracuse died and was succeeded by his son, Dionysius
II. The latter, a young man of thirty,
was not a strong character and his education, or lack of it, had done little to
improve his natural capacities. For this
reason Dion became the power behind the throne and
suggested to the new tyrant that Plato should be invited to undertake his
education and to advise him on general policy.
The invitation was given and Plato set sail for Sicily.
We need not
carry the story of Plato's life further; [For
some account of Plato's later life see chapter X.] for it is the Plato of 367 B.C. whom we have decided to
confront with the problems of our modern world.
It is clearly impossible to ask what Plato would think today without
specifying more precisely which Plato we mean, the young disillusioned
politician, the middle-aged president of the Academy, serenely certain of the
power of philosophy to rule the world, or the old man, sceptical and cautious,
who composed the Laws. It is the
second of these whom we have chosen, and for this reason we shall take as representative
of his thought the famous dialogue called the Republic, which he
composed some years before his journey to Sicily. The Republic was not only the
manifesto of the Academy, but also the programme of the philosopher statesman,
and if we read it carefully, we can observe many indications that it was
composed with the possibility of an invitation from Syracuse constantly in
view. It has, therefore, a peculiar
appropriateness to our present task, since it discusses all the main
philosophical problems, with reference to practical political questions.
II - PLATO'S PROGRAMME OF POLITICAL
REFORM
The Republic contains Plato's plan for the building
of a perfect state in which every citizen is really happy. He imagines himself invested with supreme power
and asks how he would use it to save humanity from its present miseries. But if you are going to build a perfect
society, you can only do so by reconstructing existing institutions; and so
Plato was forced to consider the city which he knew so well, and to ask himself
what was wrong with Athens. When he had
discovered this, he could construct a city free from the evils of Athenian
society.
Plato believed
that these evils were there in number: class-war, bad government, and bad
education. Class-war was the most
obvious of the three. Most Greek cities
were either oligarchies or democracies and many alternated through a series of
revolutions between these two forms of class dictatorship. In the former political power was held by an
alliance of landowners and merchants with the support of the farmers and
peasants: in the latter the leaders of the town proletariat moulded policy with
the uneasy support of certain commercial interests. In both the opposition was ruthlessly
fleeced. The effect of the Peloponnesian
war had been to intensify the political struggle. It has been described by Thucydides in a
famous passage. [THUCYDIDES, III, 82.]
'The whole Greek
world was convulsed by the great war. In
each city the democratic politicians called on Athens to assist them in their
domestic conflict, while the oligarchs relied on Sparta. In peacetime they would have had no
justification and no desire for foreign intervention; but in war the weapon of
alliance was ready to hand. Each side
could use it for its own benefit and for the destruction of its opponents, and
intervention could be employed by anyone who was plotting a putsch. Revolution brought these horrors to the
cities of Greece which will always occur so long as human nature is unchanged,
and which vary in their intensity and character according to the variations of
the social conditions. In peacetime and
in prosperity state and individual alike are actuated by higher motives,
because they are not faced with inevitable choices. But war destroys the comfortable routine of
life, schools us in violence and adapts our character to the new conditions....
The cause of all these evils was imperialism, whose fundamental motives are
ambition and the acquisitive instinct, and from which arises the fanaticism of
class-conflict. The politicians on each
side were equipped with high-sounding slogans: the Left claimed they were the
champions of the constitutional rights of the people, the Right that they stood
for aristocracy, law, and order. Both
boasted that there were devoted servants of the community and both made the
community the prize of war. The only
purpose of their policy was the extermination of their opponents, and to
achieve this they flinched from nothing.
Even worse were the reprisals which they perpetrated in total disregard
of morality or of the common good. The
only standard which they recognized was party caprice, and so they were
prepared, either by the perversion of justice or by revolutionary action, to
glut the passing passions engendered by the struggle. Religion was respected by neither: they
preferred to applaud the use of fair phrases for the achievement of odious
ends. Between them the middle class was
wiped out, either because they refused to participate or because neither side
could bear to let them survive.
'Thus
class-conflict produced every form of evil in the Greek world. Simplicity, which is an essential element in
true nobility of character, was ridiculed and disappeared. Society was divided into warring camps,
suspicious of one another. Where no
contract or obligation was binding, nothing could heal the conflict, and since
security was only to be found in the assumption that nothing was secure,
everyone took steps to preserve himself and no-one could afford to trust his
neighbour. On the whole the baser types
survived best. Aware of their own
deficiencies and their opponents' abilities, they resorted boldly to violence,
before they were defeated in debate and struck down by a conspiracy of minds
more versatile than their own; whereas the more intelligent, confident that
they could anticipate the others' plans and that it was unnecessary to use
crude methods where subtle policy was possible, were taken off their guard and
so destroyed.'
To the modern
mind, attuned to the concept of indirect aggression, Thucydides' analysis needs
no explanation. In his day, as in ours,
the clash of ideologies could only too easily destroy the possibility of
peaceful change and constitutional government.
Wherever that occurred, violence became the only weapon in the struggle
for survival, and dictatorship the only organization to ensure economic
interests. Plato realized that, unless
the class-war could be ended, Greek culture could not long survive. But between the Left and the Right he, like
Thucydides, found little to choose. Both
were actuated by selfish class interests: both were willing to sacrifice the
national welfare to the immediate interests of their supporters. Both used religion and morality as rhetorical
devices for attaining their material ends.
If there were any advantage, it lay with the oligarchs, for their system
was more stable: because policy was concentrated in the hands of a few, it was
less likely to be swayed by gusts of popular passion. On Plato's view the class-war, if it were
allowed to continue, could end logically only in the destruction of all social
life. For the qualities necessary to
survival were not decency or wisdom or righteousness, but brutality and low
cunning.
But if the
class-war was the prime evil of Athenian life, there were, in Plato's opinion,
two other contributory evils of great importance. The first was the idea that government
belonged by right to a particular social class or to the people as a
whole. He believed that it was a
full-time job and demanded abilities of a peculiar kind. The State could only prosper if political
power were granted to men and women who were capable of using it
correctly. But the oligarchs regarded
government as the perquisite of wealth, the democrats of citizenship, and so
under both parties the government was selected for reasons which had little to
do with its capacity for ruling. The
result was that in each case the machinery of State became the instrument of
class-interest: law did not rule but was enslaved to a section of its own
subjects. It was on this score that
Plato levelled his most bitter attacks against Athenian democracy. The people claimed to govern themselves and
proudly refused to submit the control of policy to any body of experts. Instead the citizen assembly itself made all
important decisions. And what was the
result? The people being incompetent,
power fell into the hands of demagogues: and 'ruling' became the perquisite not
of the wise statesman, but of the mob-orator who knew how to cajole the people
and to pander to its worst tastes.
'Conceive
something of this kind happening on board ship, on one ship or on several. The master is bigger and stronger than all
the crew, but rather deaf and short-sighted.
His seamanship is as deficient as his hearing. The sailors are quarrelling about the
navigation. Each man thinks that he
ought to navigate, though up to that time he has never studied the art, and
cannot name his instructor or the time of his apprenticeship. They go further and say that navigation
cannot be taught, and are ready to cut to pieces him who says that it can. They crowd round the solitary master,
entreating him and offering him every inducement to entrust them with the
helm. Occasionally when they fail to
persuade him and others succeed, they kill those others and throw them
overboard, overpower the noble master by mandragora
or drink or in some other way, and bind him hand and foot. Then they rule the ship and make free with
the cargo, and so drinking and feasting make just such a voyage as might be
expected of men like them. Further, they
compliment anyone who has the skill to contrive how they may persuade or compel
the master to set them over the ship, and call him a good seaman, a navigator,
and a master of seamanship; any other kind of man they despise as useless. They have no notion that the true navigator
must attend to the year and the seasons, to the sky and the stars and the
winds, and all that concerns his craft, if he is really going to be fit to rule
a ship. They do not believe that it is
possible for anyone to acquire by skill or practice the art of getting control
of the helm, whether there is opposition or not, and at the same time to master
the art of steering. If ships were
managed in that way, do you think that the true navigator would certainly be
called a star-gazer and a useless babbler by the crews of ships of that
description?' [REPUBLIC, 488, Lindsay's
translation.]
This was Plato's
picture of Athenian democracy - a poor old skipper bullied, deceived, and
cajoled by a gang of knaves; and he believed that its desperate plight was
caused by its refusal to admit that law and order are only possible if
government are in the hands of an élite
specially trained for the task.
From this
follows naturally his third criticism of Athens. Education, which should be the major
responsibility of the State, had been left to individual caprice and to the
individual's capacity to pay. Here again
was a task which should be entrusted only to the expert and to the man of
proven probity. The future of any State
depends on the younger generation, and it is therefore madness to allow the
minds of children to be moulded by individual taste and force of circumstance. Equally disastrous had been the State's laissez-faire
policy with regard to teachers and schoolmasters and sophist-lecturers. It had allowed anyone who wished to earn his
living in this way, whatever he taught.
As a result the man in the street, under the influence of irresponsible
publicists, demagogues, and rhetoricians, had ceased to believe that such
things as law or justice existed. The
equalitarian philosophy which held that each man's opinion was as good as his
neighbour's, had destroyed respect for authority and had turned democracy into
licentious anarchy. Disregard of
education was primarily responsible for this.
Faced by these
three cardinal errors of Athenian democracy, Plato turned naturally enough -
for he was an aristocrat - to Sparta.
Here was a State which - apart from occasional serf revolutions - had
maintained its social and political stability for 200 years. Sparta had not avoided the class-war, but she
had coped with it so successfully that she had escaped revolution. Plato saw that there were three reasons for
this. In the first place, Sparta's
economy was self-sufficient: she was an agricultural State with no imperial
pretensions. In the second place,
government there was in the hands of a specially trained hereditary ruling
caste to whom the pleasures of wealth and luxury were forbidden; and lastly, in
But his own
political experience had shown him that Sparta was not the perfect State. To begin with, the ruthless suppression of
serfs and the constant fear of revolution which accompanied it could not
satisfy the idealist who wished to make every citizen happy. Plato dreamed of a civilized Sparta in which
the serfs would be subjects, voluntarily submitted to the rule of law, not
slaves terrorized by a secret police.
But further, the Spartan ruling class had in his own lifetime
demonstrated its own limitations. After
404 Sparta had succeeded to the Athenian Empire, and Spartan citizens had been
sent out to administrate many of the towns once ruled by Athens. The results had been disastrous. Soldiers who had been used to barrack
discipline and whose natural desires had been suppressed by rigid social
taboos, found themselves in positions of irresponsible authority where they
could do whatever they liked without let or hindrance. Alone on his island, the Spartan
administrator suddenly discovered a new world of pleasures, and a new delight
in giving, not receiving, commands. Like
the public schoolboy in his first term at the university, he 'let himself go',
and within a few years the Spartan Empire was infamous for the cruelty and
corruption of its administration. Once
the individual was allowed to make money and enjoy the pleasures of
self-expression, he discarded his aristocratic sobriety and military restraint
and became a vulgar and brutal voluptuary: once the State discovered the
pleasures of imperialism, it accepted them without any of its responsibilities.
Plato had seen
this happen, and had realized that the cure for Athens was not simply a dose of
Spartan tonic. Something else must be
added, and he believed that this 'something else' was to be found in the
Academy.
For the Academy
was designed to produce that spirit of disinterested research of which Socrates
had been a living example. Its students
were to become statesmen, who voluntarily submitted to the law of reason
because they saw that this law was true and right. The Spartan boy had been taught the soldier's
unreasoning submission to the commands of his superior. He had been 'socially conditioned' to obey
law, and for this reason, when he had to act on his own initiative and had no
superior officer to control him, he could offer no resistance to natural
desire. Just as 'public school morality'
often breaks down when the public schoolboy is isolated from his social class
and can indulge himself in a whole gamut of forbidden pleasures without fear of
disapproval, so Spartan militarism had failed to resist the temptations of
imperial power. The Academy, however,
provided just the university training which is supposed to turn a conventional
public school morality into a reasoned and intellectual self-discipline: its
products were not to be mere creatures of habit, but adult men with wills of
their own, who understood the principles of law and decided voluntarily to obey
them.
Thus while
Sparta provided the foundations of the Platonic State, the Academy was to turn
it from a tyranny into a benevolent dictatorship, which would rely not on sheer
force, but on impartial government to retain the obedience of the subject
class. The public schoolboy must be put
under the command of the university graduate, his conventional morality
controlled by the law of reason.
In the Republic
Plato sketches the plan of a three-class State.
At the top are the philosopher kings; then come the administrators,
and below them both are all the civilians, who are not fit to rule
themselves. [The words Plato used to describe his
three classes are 'philosophers', 'auxiliaries', and 'craftsmen', but the literal
translation of the two latter are so misleading that I have avoided them in the
text. Since Plato's lowest class
includes all the population except the ruling elite, 'working-classes' is as
misleading a translation as 'craftsmen', and I have finally decided on the word
'civilian' to indicate the passive unpolitical nature
of the third class. Plato's rulers are
also soldiers, so that the word is not wholly amiss as long as it is clearly
understood that its meaning is not exhausted in this contrast of soldier and
civilian but must also include the contrast of 'politically responsible' and
'politically subject'.
The substitution
of 'administrator' for 'auxiliary' needs less defence. 'Auxiliary' to the modern ear means precisely
nothing: administrator at least gives something of the prime ideas of 'active
management' and 'public service', and indicates the difference between the
second class who are executive - at once the army and the civil service of the
new State - and the first who are purely deliberative. Below these two, and carefully segregated
from them, are the civilian masses, whose only civic duty is obedience to law,
and abstention from all political activity.
The Greek city-state is to be regenerated by Spartan discipline under
the direction of the philosophic spirit of the Academy.]
And so we reach
the famous proposition in which Plato summarized his whole political programme:
'The city-state can only be saved if the kings become philosophers or the
philosophers become kings.' Plato was
convinced (as Socrates had been) that the good State is the rational State, and
that the good ruler is the man who knows precisely the plan of life which will
give men happiness. The ruler must
understand the world he lives in, and the laws which control it. He must know the science of politics as
clearly as the craftsman knows his special skill. Ruling his not everybody's job. It is as specialized as any other science or
craft. We do not imagine that anyone
can attend us when we are ill, nor do we elect our doctors democratically. We demand knowledge and experience of them,
and we submit ourselves obediently to their commands. If we did not we should suffer in health. Plato held that the same was true of
politics. The ruler must be as highly trained
as a doctor and he must be obeyed as implicitly as we obey our doctor's orders.
But the doctor
only looks after our bodily health and he only attends us when we are ill. The ruler is always with us: he must direct
our whole lives, plan our existence, and order our thoughts and emotions as
well as our bodies. Because he controls
our whole lives, his training must be more arduous and his knowledge far wider
than that of the doctor. The ruler (in
Plato's language, the philosopher-king) must know the whole good for man and he
must have the character and resolution to impose it upon us without stint. He must not be beguiled by our complaints or
tempted by our bribes. He must care
about the plan which he knows to be our salvation so much that he can overlook
the distress and pain which we shall suffer, just as the doctor must neglect
our suffering if he is to save our life.
In politics there are no anaesthetics or drugs to make the suffering
easier for the patient to bear. For the
good of the State the ruler must punish and banish and kill the citizen who
objects to the political operation the State must undergo.
Thus the
three-class State is really a two-class State with a subdivision in the ruling
class. The civilians are the vast
majority of the population, the peasants and artisans and tradesmen who are
engaged in the production and distribution of wealth. Their function is to provide the material
basis of social welfare, their happiness to enjoy the just fruits of their
labours under the stable regime of law and order. Plato wastes little time in discussing their
organization, but he assumes that his city will be economically self-sufficient
and will not depend on imports for the necessities of life. Self-sufficiency will avoid the need for imperialism
and for the navy which had given political power in Athens to the urban
worker. In his city there will be no
town-proletariat or big-business or international bankers to upset the natural
harmony of economic interest. And so he
need not worry about the civilians since the economic system will run itself
provided that political power is forbidden to the producer and distributor of
wealth. Class-conflict arose through the
control of government by one vested interest: it is removed, according to Plato,
by allowing no vested interest whatsoever to influence the government. By depriving every economic interest of the
means of opposition, he is confident that he can restore the natural identity
of interest, create the possibility of an impartial State, and so remove the
possibility of oppression.
For once he has
destroyed the power of the vested interests, a real aristocracy or dictatorship
of the best is possible. From
earliest childhood the ruling class is segregated from the civilians, and given
a special education. They are to be
gentlemen, unsullied by trade and the menial labours of agriculture and
craftsmanship: and they are to follow the gentleman's calling of public service
in the administration and the army.
Whereas the civilian, with his vulgar interests in his craft, in
money-making and in family-life, is a natural subject, the ruler, conscious of
the social responsibility which higher intellectual and moral capacities bring,
is a natural gentleman; and in Plato's State only the gentleman must rule. As children, these natural gentlemen are
subjected to an iron discipline. Their
fairy stories, their songs and their dances - all the influences which can
mould their character - are censored and controlled. For they are to be the defenders of the State
against internal discord and foreign aggression and on their absolute integrity
depends the well-being of the whole community.
Their education, therefore, is chiefly concerned to ensure three things. In the first place all personal interests
must be suppressed, the desire for wealth, family, bodily pleasures, and so
on. For such interests, if they become
paramount in a ruler's life, will corrupt his administration and make him
another wage-earner no better than the civilians. Plato's élite
therefore must be given a moral training so strict and so severe that nothing
can divert them from their service to the State. Secondly, they must be physically fit, and so
they are brought up to a Spartan simplicity of diet and dress. For they are to be soldiers as well as
administrators and they must be inured to military discipline from earliest
childhood. Lastly, they must be given
the rudiments of mental discipline. But
their real intellectual education starts only at the age of twenty. They must concentrate for ten years upon
higher mathematics and dialectic, until at thirty an examination is held in
which future philosophers are selected.
Those who fail
to pass this examination are the administrators proper, and it is their task to
carry out the commands of the philosopher-kings. Unable themselves to become philosophers,
they see that only obedience to philosophy will bring peace and security to
men. Essentially men of action,
ambitious for themselves and for the city, they have outgrown the petty
pleasures of private life and find in public service their supreme
happiness. Though they cannot themselves
think creatively, they can apply the principles of philosophy once they are
laid down, and their moral training has been such that nothing can divert them
from this purpose.
The philosophers
and the administrators live in barracks apart from the civilians. All military and civil power is in their
hands, but they receive only a scanty wage from the subject population, and
they are absolutely forbidden to have any contact with wealth. Owning nothing, they must guard the property
of others, and they will do this faithfully only if their education has taught
them to care for higher things. If a man
wants wealth, he is not denied the fulfilment of his desire, but he must
forfeit political power. Conversely, if
he wants a life of public service, he is given the opportunity, provided that
he renounces all interest in property.
For it is only, in Plato's view, by the complete separation of political
power from ownership of property that class-war can be abolished and the profit
motive become the servant, not the tyrant, of society.
Plato believed
that in a State reconstructed upon these lines, the happiness of every
individual could be secured. Sacrifices
are demanded from each class, but only to ensure the satisfaction of its
dominant interest. By the surrender of
political freedom, which has only brought him class-war, the civilian gains a
stable regime in which rulers of absolute integrity will dispense justice, and
well-trained soldiers will defend him from attack. He has lost his civil liberties, too, but he
has no need of them, now that the social order is really just and impartial. For criticism is only necessary where rulers
are corrupt: and the civilian is not the man to criticize since he has neither
the knowledge nor the training to do so.
The sacrifice of civil liberties, therefore, is the sacrifice of
something which he was incapable of doing well and only understood under the
pressure of necessity. Apart from these
losses - which many in Europe bear today with equanimity even when they are not
blessed with the rule of philosopher-kings - his gains are enormous: in the
first place, justice which is impossible under any other regime, in the second
place, a certainty that his property will remain his own and that no-one will
take it from him. Plato believed that
few men would ask for more.
The
administrators will be happy too. Since
their dominant interest is in government, and the driving motive of their life
is ambition, they cannot but be content to hold in their hands the executive
power of the State. After their early
training they will not greatly miss the wealth which they must forgo, or even
be upset by the law which forbids them to marry and have families;
[See Chapter VII.] for
they are soldiers, inured to barrack life and to the sacrifice of personal
pleasures for the sake of the common weal.
As soldiers, too, they will be content on all decisive questions to obey
the commands of the philosopher-kings - they know that they themselves do not
know. Lastly, the philosophers will be
happy, although they have the heaviest sacrifice to make. For their paramount interest is in research
and yet they are compelled to spend much time and labour applying the results
of their researches to the practical affairs of State. Plato had a natural sympathy with the few who
were forced to enter the political arena, and among British statesmen would
have recognized in A.J. Balfour the characteristics of a true
philosopher-king. It was men of this
type alone that he chose for supreme political responsibility, hoping that a
select band of Balfours would be able to relieve each
other in rotation of the practical work for which they would all feel a
justifiable distaste.
Such in barest
outline was Plato's programme for the salvation of Greece - the restoration of
the impartial rule of law through the dictatorship of the
philosopher-kings. Only thus could the
three evils of class-war, bad government, and bad education be cured and
happiness provided for every citizen.
The Academy must become not only the conscience but the political
dictator of Greek society. In every city
a Platonic scholar must be vested with absolute power.
There is no
doubt that Plato faced the inevitability of the use of force for the
achievement of these ends. His statesmen
were to be trained soldiers with armies at their disposal, ready if necessary
to meet force with force. But he
believed that the extremes of violence could be avoided by education, and for
this reason the Republic silent on the subject both of how the
philosopher is to attain power and of the details of political
organization. We can, however,
[See Chapter X.] fill
in the gaps in the Republic from the history of Plato's and Dion's experiences in Sicily. Plato lived in aristocratic circles and his
pupils were chiefly drawn from the sons of tyrants or leading aristocratic
politicians. It seemed possible, therefore,
that the 'dictatorship of the best' could be achieved without violent
revolution if these young men could gain control in their respective
cities. The Academy would then become
the central advisory bureau for a network of aristocratic dictatorships, settling
the general lines of policy on which each of the scholar-statesmen should
proceed. It would be the headquarters of
an 'open conspiracy' to clean up Greek politics, the Republic would be
its manifesto and Plato the commander-in-chief.
This plan was no
Utopian dream. Dion
was a force in Sicilian affairs, Archytas in South
Italy, and from many other cities came requests for Plato's advice and
guidance. It seemed possible that the
new university might really convert the rulers in non-democratic cities and
make the kings philosophers. Plato disregarded
the problem of how to capture power not because he was an unpractical dreamer,
but because, in the revolution of which he dreamed, the capture of power would
not prove difficult. He did not wish to
turn out a ruling class, but to convert it.
For this reason he paid little attention to the democracies, even to
Athens. There he knew his chances were
small. Only where an oligarchy or a
military dictator was in control had he a real possibility of achieving his
goal, since here political power was in the hands of a few men of his own
social class.
The real
problems, therefore, were firstly the conversion of the Greek gentleman to
Platonic philosophy, and secondly the pacification of a proletariat avid for
self-government. These are the practical
questions which the Republic tries to answer, and both are in a sense
educational. Of the first we have
already spoken and we shall return to it in a later chapter. But the second is no less important. The civilian must be educated to accept his
subjection to the rule of law. But since
he is naturally incapable of philosophy or of directing his life according to
reason and cannot understand the raison d'ętre of the State, it is
useless to explain the truth to him. He
must therefore be fed on political and religious myths, 'noble lies' as Plato
called them, which appeal to his emotions and stimulate him to obey the law.
By the 'noble
lie' Plato meant propaganda, the technique of controlling the behaviour of the
stupid majority: and he believed that this was the only sort of general
education which the civilian should receive.
He must, in fact, be content with the education which Plato had prepared
for the children of the ruling class, since politically and morally he would
always remain a child. Just as children
are told improving stories to prevent them from biting their nails or stealing
or telling lies, so the civilian must be fed on propaganda to prevent him from
asserting his right to self-government.
One such story Plato himself suggested: 'Yes,' I said, 'you are no doubt
right; but still listen to the rest of the tale. "You in this city are all
brothers," so we shall tell our tale to them, "but God as he was
fashioning you, put gold in those of you are capable of ruling; hence they are
deserving of most reverence. He put
silver in the auxiliaries, and iron and copper in the farmers and the other
craftsmen. For the most part your
children are of the same nature as yourselves, but because you are all akin,
sometimes from gold will come a silver offspring, or from silver a gold, and so
on all round. Therefore the first and
weightiest command of God to the rulers is this - that more than aught else
they be good guardians of and watch zealously over the offspring, seeing which
of those metals is mixed in their souls; if their own offspring have an
admixture of copper or iron, they must show no pity, but giving it the honour
proper to its nature, set it among the artisans or the farmers; and if on the
other hand in these classes children are born with an admixture of gold and
silver, they shall do them honour and appoint the first to be guardians, the
second to be auxiliaries. For there is
an oracle that the city shall perish when it is guarded by iron or copper."
[REPUBLIC, 415, Lindsay's translation. For a macabre modern parallel compare
Hitler's speech at the Nuremberg Rally in 1934.]
Philosophy for
the ruler, and propaganda for the rest - this, says Plato, is the best way of avoiding
bloodshed in the establishment and maintenance of the 'dictatorship of the
best'. The mistake of Socrates had been
his belief that the Law of Reason was suitable to everyone. He had condemned rhetoric and sophistical education altogether and tried to convert the
city of Athens to philosophy. But
philosophy and reason are poison to the masses.
Misunderstood and perverted by them, they merely intensify social
unrest. The masses need not the truth,
but a convenient falsehood. They, like
Adam and Eve, must be forbidden to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil - for their own sakes. The
philosopher-king therefore will not condemn propaganda altogether, but will
demand the absolute control of it by the Government. Literature, music, religion, science -
everything which can disturb their minds must be censored by the rulers and
regulated so as to promote the loyalty of the masses to the new regime. The perfect State will be for the civilian
quite literally 'a fool's paradise', controlled by a few wise men, who out of
their compassion for the masses provide them with superstitions and ceremonies
and popular philosophies fit for their feeble capacities. [Cf. 'The Grand
Inquisitor' in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, where the same theory is worked out.]
Plato's
philosophy is the most savage and the most profound attack upon liberal ideas
which history can show. It denies every
axiom of 'progressive' thought and challenges all its fondest ideals. Equality, freedom, self-government - all are
condemned as illusions which can be held only by idealists whose sympathies are
stronger than their sense. The true
idealist, on Plato's view, will see men as they are, observe their radical
inequalities, and give to the many not self-government but security, not
freedom but prosperity, not knowledge but the 'noble lie'. The perfect State is not a democracy of
rational equals, but an aristocracy in which a hereditary caste of cultured
gentlemen care with paternal solicitude for the toiling masses.
Before the First
World War, the Republic was often treated as the 'Ideal State' which
Plato never intended to put into practice.
Its whole conception seemed far-fetched and remote to a generation which
assumed liberal ideas as self-evident truths of human nature. A world which believed that, under the flags
of science, general education, and democracy, it was marching to perfection,
could not swallow Plato's estimate of the common man, or seriously approve his
educational programme. Unaware of the
class-war, it could not understand his hatred of democracy and acceptance of
dictatorship. But because Plato was a
famous philosopher, he was rarely condemned outright as a reactionary
resolutely opposed to every principle of the liberal creed. Instead, he was elevated to a higher rank,
became an idealist, remote from practical life, dreaming of a transcendent City
of God.
World war has
changed all that. Plato's so-called
'idealism' is now seen for what it is - a grimly realistic estimate of the
moral and intellectual capacities of the masses. Knowing what class-war and revolution mean,
we can understand why Plato advocated dictatorship to prevent them. Having some experience of the effects of
propaganda, we can treat 'the noble lie' not as an amusing fantasy but as an extremely
practical instrument of government. Our
modern objection to Plato is that he is much too 'realistic' in his analysis of
human nature.
For this reason
it is extremely pertinent to ask ourselves: 'If Plato lived again, what would
he make of our world, and what would we make of him?' His cure for the diseases of society are only
too applicable today, and there are many who begin to feel, 'After all, if it could
be done, it would be worth doing.
Perhaps we have been building on foundations of sand. The ideals of freedom and democracy are
crumbling away. Is it not better before
it is too late to replace them with the Platonic "dictatorship of the
best"?' It is to such people that
this book is addressed. For it tries to
show how Plato fared in his own world, and how he would fare in ours.
CHAPTER V
Plato Looks at British Democracy
HAVING seen something of the world in
which Plato lived and wrote, and of the plan which he put forward for its
salvation, we are now faced with the infinitely more difficult task of
transferring the Platonic plan to a modern setting and assessing its value
there. At first sight it seems futile to
ask what Plato would have thought of the nation-state or western democracy or
the USSR [the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: name formerly applying to
Russia and many other Russian-controlled states in Eastern Europe and Asia -
editor's note.]. The whole scale of
politics has been enlarged so vastly by our newly won control of nature that
suggestions for the reorganization of the city-state must appear valueless to
modern thinkers. There is a measure of
truth in this. We cannot apply
conclusions drawn from the study of one epoch to the problems of another, nor
can we rely on words which we have borrowed from the Greek to mean what their
originals meant in Plato's day. We
cannot argue that, because Plato disliked democracy and advocated something
approaching dictatorship, he would therefore approve of Stalin or of Mussolini
and condemn representative democracy as a form of government. For, on the one hand, Greek democracy bore no
resemblance to modern representative government; on the other, Plato denounced
certain forms of dictatorship as tyranny.
We must therefore carry our analysis far deeper than these verbal resemblances
if we wish to discover what position Plato would have adopted when faced with
modern problems.
To do this is
not to indulge in idle speculation.
Plato was not simply a Greek who lived in the fourth century BC. He was also (for good or ill) the inspiration
of much modern political thought and action.
The Republic has become a part of Western European tradition: it
has moulded our ways of thinking, and more than once a new interpretation of it
has contributed to a great revolution which closed one epoch and inaugurated a
new one. Just because the influence of
Plato and Platonism has been so great, it is vital for us today to discover who
the real Plato was and who he now is, to see him both in the Greek and in the
modern world, and to appreciate him as a man speaking to us and demanding our
approval or our refutation. Whether we
call ourselves historians or philosophers or practical men, we must treat his
philosophy not merely as an historical document, but as a challenge to us, an
assertion of values which we must either accept or reject. We must attempt both to recreate the
historical past and to evaluate the significance of Platonism today: and if it
is objected that this must be largely a work of imagination, it can be answered
that no real historian or philosopher has ever lacked that quality.
I have decided
to begin this reinterpretation with a study of democracy: it is indeed the
obvious place to begin, since our modern democracy and its philosophies are
rooted in Greek ideas and Greek practice.
The English tradition of Locke, and even more, the French tradition of
Rousseau, were consciously based on Greek models: and among practical
politicians - at least before World War I - there were few who did not claim to
derive their inspiration from Pericles.
This Greek
tradition of popular government is still alive today. Men still speak with veneration of the will
of the people and still claim that democracy is based upon its sovereignty. The democratic slogans are still in large
part Greek slogans and it is high time that we considered what relevance they
have to our practice - whether they are mere slogans or express ideals which we
are trying to realize. These are
precisely the questions which Plato would ask, and he would ask them in all seriousness,
looking at our modern institutions, because he would see in them hardly a trace
of the Greek originals which we still claim to imitate.
Let us suppose
that Plato were to meet a city councillor, an ardent democrat who
conscientiously occupied every leisure hour in the affairs of his borough, and
was prepared to risk his life to make the world safe for democracy. Plato would be impressed by the man's
sincerity and would ask him what this system was for the sake of which he was
willing to sacrifice so much. The
councillor would probably reply that English democracy is based on the ideal of
individual freedom: it is a form of government which gives to all freedom of
conscience and a part in the control of the affairs of State. The Englishman detests bureaucracy and
officialdom. He wishes to be ruled by
plain men like himself who can interpret his wishes and make Whitehall see
sense. And so we have built up our
representative institutions and our political parties as instruments through
which the wishes of the plain man can still be sovereign, although the
executive power is largely in the hands of officials and experts. It is in this tradition of popular control
that we differ from the Germans [Crossman is here alluding to Nazi Germany
under Hitler - editor's note], who like being bossed and therefore accept
militarism, and from the Russians [an allusion to Soviet Russia under Stalin -
editor's note], who are really not quite civilized and so put up with the
autocracy and cruelty of the Bolshevik regime.
We in England would not stand either of these tyrannies because we are
individuals and free men who like to have a hand in running the affairs of
State. We would rather muddle through in
our common-sense way than surrender to theorists and cranks who claim that they
know the secret of happiness and really want to impose their own ideas on
everyone else.
Plato would
listen politely to this speech, but he would confess at the end that he did not
fully understand the references to freedom and popular control. In what sense, he would ask, are Englishmen
free, and how do they control the State?
He would probably be told that through elections to Parliament they
choose representatives to control the bureaucracy and to decide the lines of
public policy and particularly the ways in which public monies should be
spent. This answer would not satisfy
him. He would point out that
self-government should mean governing yourself; taking part in a general
election can hardly be called that, when the actual work of government is done
by a committee of members of one party in the Commons. What part, he would ask, has the people in
choosing the Cabinet? It is selected by
the Prime Minister from the majority party in the House, which often does not
even represent the majority of the voters.
So the Government may, in fact, be composed of politicians whose
programme has been approved by only a minority of the nation. Plato, I fancy, would ask why we call by the
name of democracy a system of government in which the people as a whole has no
part, but a section of them can vote a party into power, members of which
compose the actual Government. He would
suggest that this scheme might well be described as 'alternative party government',
but he would be puzzled at the notion of called it a government based on the
will of the people.
His bewilderment
would be increased when he found that in local affairs the same system is
used. Here, too, the people do not
govern themselves. Instead, some 30 or
40 per cent vote once a year in municipal elections. There is little speech-making, 'election
addresses' are circulated, and a certain amount of canvassing is done. On the day of the election a few cars (mostly
belonging to one party) can be seen, and possibly a few posters. No-one seems unduly excited, and few could
recognize the candidates. After this
annual ceremonial the affairs of the locality are carried on very much as
before.
Plato's first
reaction to this discovery would be to congratulate the city councillor on the
excellence of the propaganda which he and his friends employ to make the people
believe that they are governing themselves when they are in fact doing nothing
of the sort. His second would be one of
horror when he began to realize that the councillor and others like him
themselves believe that they are members of a democracy. He would conclude that they had most
unmerited good fortune in having been presented by heaven with a 'noble lie'
accepted by rulers and ruled alike which leaves power in the hands of the
former and satisfies the vague ambitions of the latter, and he would, if he
were well-disposed to us, pray that we should continue happily and for ever in
our fool's paradise.
But supposing
that the councillor grew irritable and said, 'My dear sir, you laugh at our
system: but tell me of any other in which the people really rule.' Plato would reply, 'That is not
difficult. I will show you what your
borough would look like if it were a Greek democracy. We in Greece meant by democracy the rule of the
people, and we meant it literally. A
Greek city of your size with, say, 100,000 inhabitants, was independent,
possessed its own army and navy, and waged war upon its neighbours. I myself found such a city far too large and
suggested once that 5,040 male citizens was the ideal number for a
city-state. But that is by the way; if
you want to introduce self-government you must first of all restrict the size
of your State to at most 100,000, and it is obvious that your first requirement
will be a place where all the men of the city can meet together to take all
important decisions. In Athens, where
the climate is dependable, we could meet out of doors, but here in England you
will need a covered hall which will hold 20,000 men. For your citizen assembly will consist of all
the male citizens over seventeen years of age, and it will meet at least once a
month. I have suggested that you need
have room for 20,000 only because I do not imagine all the 25,000 will ever come
on the same day.
'This assembly
will indeed be sovereign. Those citizens
who trouble to attend will vote the budget after detailed discussion: will
appoint by lot committees for special business, ambassadors to represent you in
other towns, and generals to command your army.
They will have the power to double the rates one month and to halve them
the next, and they can impeach and condemn to death any unsatisfactory
official. You will perhaps suggest that
such an assembly is totally unmanageable.
I am inclined to agree with you, but we had politicians in our best days
who could command its ear for years on end, and really control city
policy. They were not leaders of parties
in your sense of the word, and they had no official positions. They ruled by force of personality and by the
loudness of their voices, depending every day on their powers of persuasion to
retain control. For the people were
sovereign, and these were just ordinary citizens whom the people for the moment
trusted; so that the decisions of policy were not theirs, but the people's, and
they were in no sense responsible to the people, but only advisers of
the people. Naturally, they gained a body of support on
which they could rely, and they organized political clubs and factions, but
they could never gain a firm position as rulers because at any moment
they could be voted down by the assembly.
I assure you it demanded more qualities to be a politician in a
city-state.
'But an assembly
of 20,000 will not get through much business unless it is well prepared
beforehand. So in Athens we had a
preparatory council of 500 which worked out the minutes of the assembly and
drafted proposed legislation. The
council also had executive powers in the intervals between meetings of the
assembly, and I know you are going to interrupt me and say that in that case
the people were not sovereign after all: it was the council of 500 who really
held control. In this you would be
wrong: for we were democrats and took care to prevent this council every becoming
a caucus, by making membership of it depend on the chance of the lot. It was composed of citizens of thirty years
of age and over, who sat on the council for one year, and their names were
picked as you pick the names for the jury lists in England. Anyone might become a member and, as no-one
could be a councillor more than twice, every citizen found himself at some
point in his life a member of it. And so
we prevented it from ever becoming a ruling caucus since it changed from year
to year and could not be packed with supporters of any politician or party.
'We believed
that a democracy must be politically educated and we regarded membership of the
council as the proper training for any intelligent citizen. The council also had its executive committee,
membership of which went by rotation, and the chairman of the executive changed
every day, so that the majority of citizens were prime minister for one day of
their lives at least. My master,
Socrates, once found himself on the executive on a very nasty occasion. It was after
the battle of Arginusae, in 406, when we had
staved off final defeat by a brilliant naval victory. The people were nervous and excitable, and
when news came through that after the victory many of our boats had sunk in the
storm and no efforts had been made to save the crews, a motion was introduced
in the assembly to impeach all six generals and try them en bloc. That, of course, was illegal: each man should
have had a separate trial and the chairman of the executive told the people
so. But the people wanted blood and
threatened to impeach him too if he threw out the motion. The executive was nervous, but Socrates said
it must obey the law and face the people.
He held out for a long time, but the chairman and most of the members
would not risk it: so the executive gave way by a majority vote, and the
generals were tried and executed en bloc.
'I think that
will show how much power belonged to the council, how much to the people. The people, believing in democracy, would
tolerate nothing which prevented the exercise of the general will. We could have no proper civil service because
it was feared that it would gain undue control: we could not even have a
non-political judiciary, for the law-courts were also democratic, and nearly
all cases were tried by popular juries with 500 or 1,000 members. The only important officials who were elected
instead of being chosen by lot were the generals, and they could be dismissed
at a moment's notice.
'You will tell
me this system of government could not work.
I can only reply that it continued for a very long time and that it was
democratic
'I do not
imagine you are ever likely to introduce true democracy in England. For one thing your people are, as far as I
can judge, profoundly unpolitical. They do not seem really interested in the
conduct of affairs and are content if someone does that for them. They have not our feeling for collective
action and collective life. If I were
not your guest, I should call them unpatriotic and mercenary. They only seem to get excited about politics
when their pockets are affected, and they do not really believe in themselves
or their civic responsibilities. Of
course, I see that no-one who believes in democracy could take part in your
national politics because the nation is far too big a unit to have any
collective will, and the problems of national politics are too remote and
difficult for the ordinary man. But if
they were democratic, they would be far more active in local affairs, and they
would never allow you city councillors to dictate to them in the way you
do. I gather that local politics in
England is chiefly concerned with "keeping down the rates", but
surely that is a very bad policy for a democracy. If your workmen were proud of your city and
if they had any sense, they would see that public spending is fine, and that the
poorer people can get far more benefit by it than by keeping down the
rates. Instead of each trying to make
his own house look well, they would build great public baths and libraries and
gymnasia and gardens which everyone could enjoy: and they would see to it that
a rich man who did not make large voluntary contributions as well as paying
taxes was thoroughly unpopular. The
fact of the matter is that you all, rich and poor, in England behave as though
you were rich. Our rich men, of
course, were anti-democratic and tried to keep the taxes down: they disliked
collective life and saw that genuine culture and education is only possible for
gentlemen of breeding and education. But
your poor people seem to believe this as much as the rich, and to be content
that they should work, while a leisured class enjoys the fruits of their
labours, provided they are given enough to eat and to drink and to gamble. I regard this natural submissiveness of the
English poor as the fundamental reason for the stability of your form of
government: second only to that I should put the fact that, by a free use of
the wealth which your empire and your mineral resources have provided you have
been able to tame the natural leaders of democracy and to give them bribes
enough to take the sting out of their speeches and the revolutionary spirit out
of their grumbles and their discontent.
'Your country
is, in fact, a lucky blend of aristocracy and oligarchy, whose social structure
is rendered stable by the "noble lie" of self-government and
individual freedom. By retaining the
loyal services of a gentry schooled to political responsibility, you have
avoided the open class-war which plutocracy inevitably brings. By allowing your industrialists and merchants
to grow fabulously rich, you have made them contented and patriotic citizens,
and have then skilfully removed their sons from their mercenary influence and
trained them in boarding schools and universities in the ideals of your
aristocracy. Thus their highest wish is
not to be rich only, but to gain a title as well, and their desire for
aristocratic status softens the acquisitive instinct and moulds it into the
service of the community.
'I myself have
little respect for this British ideal of titled wealth, but I must
confess that, once the end is admitted, the means you have taken to achieve it
are wholly correct; and since you and your countrymen have no feeling for
philosophy or metaphysics, I shall assume in talking to you that your ideals
are sound. Of course they are not, but
they are less vicious than those of most nations which I have visited.
'Admitting then
for the moment the correctness of the end, I regard your form of government as
very skilfully adapted to achieve it.
Your social system has remained rooted in status, not in
equality, and you have therefore achieved in England something not unlike the
class-divisions which I tried to work out in my Republic. Each "civilian" tries to retain his
position as craftsman or doctor or lawyer or shopkeeper: he is content with
that because he regards the established order as ordained by God, and therefore
limits his ambitions to securing his place within that order. The few who are naturally ambitious may wish
to climb a step higher on the social ladder, but they do not wish to knock the
ladder down, and for this reason the ambitious are, more than all others,
upholders of the inequality which is the essence of that order. They believe in my idea of justice "that
each man should do his own proper business, and that only the best should
rule".
'I am especially
interested to see how this notion of status has captured the workmen among whom
I should have expected the ideas of democracy to thrive. Instead of uniting to overthrow the rich,
they have set up combinations and unions to defend their status, and these
unions compete with one another as much as they struggle against the
employers. Craft is matched against
craft, skilled against unskilled, and finally the employed feel themselves bound
together against those social outcasts, the unemployed. For the unemployed have lost status and are
therefore the care of no union or combination of workmen at all. Then, again, I notice among the workmen that
division of ruler and subject which I was at such pains to impose on the city-state. There, too, you find a hierarchy with
officials and politicians at the top, and below, the subject masses, who even
in union and party matters do not wish to rule themselves but are content to
leave that task to others whom they trust and who, because of their high rank,
are well content to leave the world as it is, instead of turning it upside
down.
'In assessing
the goodness and badness of any social system or state, you will agree that the
details of political organization are relatively unimportant and are always
secondary to social habits and tradition.
Your tradition is, if I understand it, an aristocratic tradition which
has maintained itself through unprecedented economic changes. Your aristocrats have conformed themselves to
the dominance of large-scale manufacture more skilfully than ours faced the
growth of trade and commerce. Without
serious disturbance they have habituated the new industrial leaders to their
old traditions, so that the whole population retains its old loyalties and status
in a new setting. They prefer good
government to self-government, and they have only demanded the extension of
privilege where it could be granted without any danger. Whenever a section has pressed its claims too
far, the people has rallied to the Government, assuming that justice is always
on the side of law and order, and that any claim of justice is unreasonable if
it involves any risk for those who are pretty well content with their lot.
'I have been
told of the General Strike which occurred in 1926, and I have been deeply
impressed by the movement of public opinion on that occasion. To begin with it was favourable to the
miners, but immediately the situation threatened to upset the wages and
salaries of the "civilians", not only the public, who were unaffected
by the immediate issue, but the workmen's leaders and many of the workmen
themselves became hesitant in their pressure and the strike collapsed, with the
result that the miners were worse off than before. Again, I am told that the English people had
the cause of the unemployed at heart but in 1931 it voted into power (and I
believe many of the unemployed were in agreement) a Government resolved to
reduce the payments made to them. These
two examples demonstrate to my mind a social tradition of unheard of strength,
which is able to stifle the cries of the suffering and outcast by the mere
suggestion that if they are listened to and if their woes are remedied, the
status of the other "civilians" will be in serious danger of attack.
'It is therefore
clear that you have the good fortune to be possessed of a temper which shrinks
before all thought of poverty, and therefore condemns all changes which may
endanger the national income, and which prefers the preservation of status to
the amelioration of suffering or the claims of justice. And I fancy that the political system which
you call representative government is the expression of this temper. First of all, in the monarchy and in the
House of Lords, you have preserved institutions whose only purpose is to delay
changes and prevent hurried legislation.
Secondly, in your House of Commons, with its first, second, and third
readings and all its other ceremonial of discussion and debate, you have
evolved a legislature which must listen to every minority and vested interest
and make concessions to them. By this
means all violent legislation is robbed of its sting and rendered relatively
impotent. For an injured minority is
always more vociferous and persuasive than the great mass of the people who
will be benefited by reform. Thus in the
interest of the landowner and the speculator your legislature has resolutely
refused to protect the countryside from chaotic and ugly building, or your new
roads from being rendered useless by the erection of houses along their whole
length. I believe that your legislature,
since its ideal is not justice or beauty but titled wealth, has been wise in
its decision to sacrifice beauty and the health of the people on this issue. For once property is challenged, a spirit is
aroused in the masses most difficult to control. I could quote you many other examples of the
same wisdom. You have wisely resisted
the demand that the government should control your farms and industries because
you well realize that a docile people and chaotic industry are preferable to
that ugly greed and self-assertiveness which always grow up when the people
begin to speak with one mind against the claims of salary and status. You are, in fact, convinced that the
maintenance of an ancestral social tradition is worth the suffering of many,
and that that suffering would be increased were their claims to be heard.
'It is an
especial virtue, however, of your political organization that the criticisms
and wishes of the people are not entirely disregarded but caught up and
satisfied in the "noble lie" of representative institutions. By your system of changing governments you do
- it is true - concede some slight influence to the popular will. In so doing you run the very greatest of
perils. But how ingeniously you canalize
it into the mere choice between two or three political parties, so that the
people shall not choose their representatives but only choose between the
candidates dictated to them by those who control the party machines: how skilfully
you prevent any but these traditional parties from growing up and any but a
tiny minority of wealthy persons or lawyers or trade-union officials from
standing for Parliament! Thus the people
are never represented by men or women like themselves but by professional
politicians well versed in the rules of the game, and prepared to defend it
against all change. And if by any chance
some simple man or crazy idealist is elected, how soon he is charmed and
beguiled by the ceremonial and, far off from the miseries he is resolved to
cure, how rapidly he ceases to be the spokesman of the people, and becomes a
Member of Parliament proud of his status and stalwart for its traditions.
'And so you have
taught the people to talk in an educated tone through their representatives,
and persuaded them to prefer the parliamentary tradition to true
democracy. You have taken that great
monster the popular will and divided it into a myriad parts, each speaking for
itself, and each interested only in its own salvation, and you have given them
spokesmen who will attune their demands to the maintenance of the established
order.
'You should
indeed be well satisfied. And yet I am
told that there are among you malcontents and agitators who look with longing
at our Athenian system and wish to increase the influence of the people on your
affairs. Be well advised and suppress
such people at once. Their hearts are
better than their heads; and good intentions in politics are more dangerous
than cool villainy. Consider the little
that the people do now. Do they do it
well? Can they correct the expert's
opinion? They cannot, because they do
not know the facts and have not been trained to give judgement upon them. For this reason, when dealing with questions
remote from their daily life, they will take decisions flowing out of sentiment
instead of based firmly on cool thought, and will surrender, in a watery
feeling of unselfishness, interests and power which they can ill afford to
lose. The truth is that the people need
good government, but that cannot mean popular government in either sense of the
word "popular". For popular
government must mean weak government and short-sighted government: weak because
it does not risk the anger of the people even for its own good; short-sighted,
because the people cannot see beyond the ends of their noses.
'But there is a
second danger in popular control which is even more serious. If you look at politics you will find that
most people's interest is in their own pockets.
The rich want the Government to protect the wealth they have amassed;
the poor want the Government, by taxation and social services, to redistribute
the wealth of the rich. What will happen
then if you allow the democratic control of the machine of government? Obviously the rich will want to use it to
favour their business, and to protect their property: they will only use the
social services as a sop to keep the masses quiet. But the poor will want to use it for
squeezing all they can out of the rich and distributing the benefits among
themselves. And so popular control of
government must degenerate into anarchy: polite party politics will disappear:
class-war will take its place. The
freedom which the democrat claims will be a freedom of the two nations,
the rich and the poor, to fight it out between themselves who shall have the
larger slice of the cake. And what will
happen to the politician? He will not be
able to rule for the good of the nation, because if he tries to do that he will
never get to power. Only a man willing
to defend the interests of either the rich or the poor will be a success. Anyone who is fair-minded and really wants
justice will be shoved aside by the two great factions: and so your politician
will merely become a skilled orator, whose job it is to put his clients' case
without any regard for justice or principles.
'But everyone
will talk about justice and right and honour and integrity and so on. The words and phrases will go on being used
by both sides in order to win the support of the masses. For both sides need propaganda, and the best
propaganda for a bad cause is high-sounding moral principles. But in spite of the speeches of the
politicians, a really democratic nation, in which there are great inequalities
of wealth, must be a nation divided against itself: an uneasy equilibrium of
contending forces which may at any moment turn into the dictatorship of the
rich or the dictatorship of the poor.
Only so long as there is money enough to satisfy the demands of the poor
can it survive. When wealth runs short
one or other of the two gangs will seize control, for real democracy means
anarchy and class-war. You should thank
the Providence which has protected you from it and made you content to dilute authority
with freedom. The seeds of conflict
between rich and poor are there today.
They will grow monstrously if you water them with real popular control.
'That you should
do anything of the sort, my dear sir, is in the highest degree improbable; and
I recognize that warnings of this kind are totally unnecessary in England. For the safest defence against real democracy
is the "noble lie" of Representative Government such as you
possess. With us democracy was a
revolutionary and subversive force: with you it is the greatest single
influence on the side of law and order.
By adopting it your rich men have preserved their riches, your gentry
their professions, and your working classes have persuaded themselves that they
too are rich. You are the most
complacent and therefore the most conservative country in the world. Unless by some mischance you lose all your
empire, or by some divine intervention become philosophical, nothing can shake
your self-content.'
I have imagined
Plato discussing England with a moderately intelligent supporter of the status
quo who believed that he was a democrat.
The reader may feel that he has not grappled with the problem seriously,
and I believe that in fact he would refuse to do so unless his opponent were
willing to dip below the surface, to forget legal fictions and constitutional
forms and discover the real basis of our social system. This the ordinary democrat refuses to do: he
talks cheerfully of the sovereignty of the people, the power of public opinion,
individual freedom, and civil liberty, and he preaches that these are the real
values of our English system which we must be prepared to defend against
all-comers. Plato would attempt to show
him that these are only trimmings: the real basis of our social tradition is
totally different. What we need today is
not more popular control or more education, but a clear understanding between
the two party oligarchies of their responsibilities and of the dangers which
face the country, and to this end he would probably propose that we should
consider the problem of education next.
CHAPTER VI
Plato Looks at British Education
PLATO - I am told that you Englishmen, realizing that the
proper upbringing of children is the most important factor in affairs of State,
and that a happy community can never be achieved unless the education be good,
have decided to grapple seriously with the problem and base your education in
future upon sound principles.
EDUCATIONALIST - Yes, we have. And we have made some very real advances
during the last fifty years. You
probably do not realize that in 1870 we have no State system of education at
all. Parents were not compelled to send
their children to school; there were no Public Schools for girls, and very few
good ones for boys. A Nonconformist was
practically debarred from higher education at school or university, however
rich he was, and for the poor it was well-nigh impossible, even in cases of
real ability, to obtain any sound education at all. But that has all been changed. We have compulsory education for all up to
the age of fourteen (it would be fifteen but for the cowardice of the
Government [Plato's visit to England took place,
if I remember rightly, in 1936, ten years before the school leaving age was
raised to fifteen.]): we have secondary education in
day-schools up to eighteen for at least a good percentage of those who deserve
it, and we have a number of universities which, with the aid of State monies,
carry on higher education up to the age of twenty-one or twenty-three.
PLATO - You have certainly not been inactive, and I
congratulate you on refusing to entrust to the family or other irresponsible
private persons the education of the coming generation. But I am not quite clear about one or two
points. To begin with, why have you
concentrated your energies on providing education for all and sundry?
EDUCATIONALIST - One of the reasons is undoubtedly our
belief in justice. We are democrats and
we think that education should not be the perquisite of one class but should be
open to all. It is no use giving a man a
vote unless he can use it, and universal education is the only way of making
universal suffrage a reality and not a sham.
You can have representative government and parliament and all the
institutions of democracy, even the voting at elections, but they will all be
mere shams unless you have universal education too. Institutions cannot make a country democratic
unless the people have the knowledge and capacity to use them. That knowledge and that capacity do not drop
out of heaven. It costs money and energy
to create them, and we are trying to do that in England through our school
system. We do not want only to polish
and scrape our children into neat little cogs which fit precisely into the
State machine and spend their lives mechanically revolving with perfect
precision, to be pensioned off when they are worn out. In fact, we do not want our children only to
be good technicians, we want them to be citizens of a democracy as well;
competent to play their part in their trade union or the committee of their
football club, or their city council or even in Parliament. We want to teach them to rule themselves and
to help to rule the country. And so we
do not only teach 'the subjects which pay' in our schools, and we do not only
train the children for jobs. We teach
them history and geography and economics, and we try to make them able to give
a sensible judgement about politics.
PLATO - All that you say agrees with something I read in a
speech of one of your statesmen, that universal education is an experiment in
self-government. I was interested in
that remark because I myself have some experience of a State where all the
citizens took a hand in government. I
did not consider the experiment a success, and I should like to know what the
results of your venture here may be. Do
the people now demand a revolution in England and wish to take control of
affairs?
EDUCATIONALIST - Yes, I think they do. You can see the results particularly in
foreign policy. Before the First World
War that was something in which the masses took no interest. Now, through the efforts of the school
teachers and the League of Nations Union [forerunner of the United Nations -
editor's note.], public interest in foreign affairs has been aroused. At question time in the House, the Foreign
Secretary is bombarded with questions, deputations are constantly sent to him
and to the Prime Minister, and in every home in England the issues of peace and
war are strenuously discussed.
PLATO - And has this improved the foreign policy of your
country?
EDUCATIONALIST - It has certainly made it impossible for
any Government to carry on the secret diplomacy and power politics of the bad
old days. It has also given the
Government a new sense of its responsibility to the electorate. It can no longer do just what it wants.
PLATO - But suppose it wants to do something sensible which
the public refuses to accept?
EDUCATIONALIST - We believe that it is better that the
people should do something foolish, if they have really made up their minds,
than that they should be forced to do what is right against their will.
PLATO - Then you believe that freedom is better than
virtue?
EDUCATIONALIST - No, I don't. I believe virtue is impossible without
freedom. You cannot compel a child to be
good - far less a grown man or woman.
PLATO - Perhaps you are right. But then why do you have any government at
all? If you wish your countrymen to
learn by the bitter experience of their own mistakes and to do what they like
provided they do it with a will, isn't it better to abolish the State
altogether?
EDUCATIONALIST - You are just twisting my remarks so that
they sound like nonsense. Of course you
must stop people acting in ways which disturb the freedom of others: that is
the purpose of the State. But, as far as
possible, you must leave them free to make all important decisions for
themselves. Our purpose as
educationalists today is to train up an electorate capable of understanding the
issues on which they are called to vote, not experts on economics and politics,
but men and women imbued with sound political judgement....
PLATO - But you admit that you haven't done that yet. And still, before your educational reforms
are finished, you wish to entrust a half-educated electorate with intricate
political decisions. Surely that is
putting the cart before the horse. First
you should have a system of universal education which produces citizens of the
type you describe, and then perhaps you could safely entrust them with the
control of policy. But surely, when you
have achieved a perfectly educated electorate you will not need a government at
all.
EDUCATIONALIST - You are back again on the same point. Of course, the world is not ideal and never
will be. You have to take it as you find
it, and we believe that by entrusting ordinary people with the control of their
destinies we are giving them that freedom without which all talk of virtue and
morality is absurd.
PLATO - But you said just now that the purpose of the State
was to prevent men encroaching on the rights of others, to compel them against
their will to do their own jobs and leave their neighbours alone. If that is so then surely the State must, in
its foreign policy too, prevent its citizens encroaching on the rights of others. And yet you wish your citizens to instruct
the Government in its conduct of international affairs. Will this not mean that the foreign policy of
England in the future will be actuated by the self-interest and greed of
Englishmen anxious to maintain and extend their empire, and to increase their
well-being at the cost of others?
EDUCATIONALIST - We expect the exact opposite. It is not the people who want wars and
empires, but the politicians. The people
want peace and international justice.
PLATO - Well, that is a very splendid thing. But do they know how to realize their
ideals? I can tell you from personal
experience that diplomacy is a very fine art and that military and naval
science cannot be learnt in a day. Are
the people experienced in the technique of politics and versed in the history
of international relations? or are they just full of noble sentiments which,
coming into contact with reality, explode like a bubble on a rock?
EDUCATIONALIST - We try to teach them all that, but we
believe that what our world really needs is a little less cunning and a good
deal more simple straightforward morality.
PLATO - I agree: sound moral sentiments are all that is
necessary for a 'civilian' or even for an 'administrator'. But they are not sufficient for a ruler, and
your people are to become rulers in your experiment in self-government. For that they will need a great deal
more. Statesmanship is a highly skilled
profession and you must distinguish the sort of education which a statesman
needs from that of a 'civilian'. He must
know both the principles of his policy, and the world in which the policy is to
be realized. In this particular he is
like any other craftsman. A man may have
a great appreciation of pictures and be full of admirable aesthetic emotions:
but that would not be enough to qualify him as a painter. To be a painter he needs a knowledge of the
principles of painting and of the materials, the mixing of colours, the canvas,
the brushes, and so on - and a bit of inspiration besides. The same is true of ruling. The ruler must not only have the right moral
feelings such as a belief in justice and peace, he must also know the
principles of his craft and understand the everyday world of politics in which
he is to practise it. But with regard to
foreign affairs, it is by no means easy to attain the necessary experience or
knowledge of the facts, simply because it is the essence of diplomacy that if
negotiations are to be successful they must be secret until they are completed. So I do not understand how all citizens are
to become qualified to criticize and alter the policy of your Government.
EDUCATIONALIST - They cannot, of course, control the
details of day-to-day policy: but they should decide the main lines which the
policy should follow.
PLATO - I disagree.
For the main lines are all-important and it needs a philosopher to solve
the problems of peace and war, of imperialism and defence. But let us leave foreign policy and return to
your educational reforms. You stated
that your ideal was universal education for all, and I imagine you will soon
mention 'an equal chance for all'. Why
exactly do you wish to achieve this end?
EDUCATIONALIST - It is only common justice that every child
should have an equal chance.
PLATO - A chance of what?
EDUCATIONALIST - A chance of realizing its innate
capacities to the full and of attaining a university education.
PLATO - Clearly that is so.
You wish rightly to allot to each child the vocation in life which suits
it best and to limit entrance to the university only to those who can profit by
it.
EDUCATIONALIST - Yes, that is our aim, and with this in
view we have built up an educational pyramid, with elementary schools at the
base, secondary schools in the middle, and the university at the apex.
PLATO - And would you regard anyone as fully educated who
had not taken a university degree?
EDUCATIONALIST - No, I should not.
PLATO - Then why in heaven's name do you allow him to vote and
to control the destinies of the State when you yourself admit that he is
incapable of doing so? For if the vast
majority of children are not worthy to pass beyond the school, and only a tiny
minority are fit to profit by study in the university, then, surely, we have
almost completed our demonstration that the people should be relieved of a
responsibility they cannot bear, and that political power should be entrusted
only to the man or woman who has passed with distinction the examinations which
the universities impose.
EDUCATIONALIST - That is all very well in theory, but we do
not believe in England that academic education is the only qualification for
political responsibilities. Indeed, we
find that most of our university professors show small political sense compared
to those who have been schooled in the university of life.
PLATO - But if you really believe that, why have you
introduced university education at all?
Why not leave it to providence or life (call it what you like) to
produce your rulers? It served you well
in the past, and it may (for all that you or I know) continue to serve you in
the future. If you do not believe that
education has the power to train a man and to fit him better for his job,
whether it be banking or carpentering, or ruling the State, then I would advise
you to give up your brave experiment altogether and to trust to your English
god called 'muddle through'.
EDUCATIONALIST - It is quite impossible to discuss
education with a man who sacrifices everything to logical consistency. Our system in England cannot be logical
because it has developed out of an historical past. It is full of inconsistencies and ambiguities
precisely because it is not imposed by educational tyrants but fitted into a
complex historical tradition.
PLATO - That may well be - and yet in forming your
educational policy and in deciding the direction in which your social tradition
should move, you must have principles of action, and it is these which I am
trying to elucidate in the course of our conversation. Consistency and logic are not, after all,
positive defects even in an Englishman!
I believe that
your inability to answer my simple questions indicates a real uncertainty in
your mind about the aims you have in view.
You have not yet made up your mind what education is for: and yet you
are busy opening new schools and agitating for the raising of the
school-leaving age. Let me put the
matter to you quite clearly. There is
such a thing as technical education, is there not? And we mean by it the training of a person
for a special vocation or job?
EDUCATIONALIST - Yes.
PLATO - Now it is possible to believe that all education
should be technical, since every man has a job to which he is by nature fitted,
and to which he can be trained. The
farmer can be taught farming, the builder building, and so on. And since you yourself have admitted that
there is such a job as ruling, then must there not be a special sort of
education which will enable a man to practise the art of government really
well? Is that so?
EDUCATIONALIST - Perhaps.
PLATO - I shall assume that 'perhaps' in this case implies
the reluctant agreement of reason hampered by prejudice. Since you agree therefore that there is or
there could be a special training for rulers, let us now consider if your
present university education is a training of this sort. What do you think?
EDUCATIONALIST - Well, as it is largely based on the ideas
you put forward in the Republic, I presume that you expect the answer
'yes'.
PLATO - I was certainly pleased to discover that in your
universities research is combined with general education, and to observe that
abstract theory is regarded as essential to sound education. But I am not so well pleased by your
suggestion that in England university graduates are considered unsuitable for
statesmanship. I expect the reason is
that most of the young men who attend your universities are concerned, not to
prepare themselves for politics, but to gain a special craft-training, which
will enable them to earn their living in industry or commerce or the civil
service. If this is the case, then your
universities no longer preserve the ideals of my Academy, but are becoming
technical high schools for the production of skilled craftsmen who must remain
for ever remote from politics, technicians with their interest in the mill or
the office and not in the supreme affairs of State.
EDUCATIONALIST - Perhaps they are. We certainly do not regard our universities
as mere schools for politicians, or exclude from them men and women with
special aptitudes for research, or even those who merely wish for a general
education. We want to give each a chance
to develop in his own way, not to dragoon them all into politics.
PLATO - I presume from what you say that your are satisfied
with your present politicians: otherwise you could not afford to let each child
follow its own bent so that often the very best of them, for the sake of
personal interests, deny all the responsibilities which superior intelligence
imposes upon them, and employ themselves on activities which contribute nothing
or very little to the common good.
EDUCATIONALIST - I think you have an inflated idea of the
importance of the politician. A country
is not really run by politicians but by the civil servants, and those in
responsible positions in industry and commerce.
They are the really important people: the politicians are mostly
tub-thumpers and don't get very much done.
PLATO - But now I am really confused. You do not by any chance elect your civil
servants or your technicians or industrial administrators, do you?
EDUCATIONALIST - No, of course not.
PLATO - And yet you tell me that in your democracy they are
the really important people and the politicians are merely talkers. But if this is so, how can your people claim
to have political freedom and to control their rulers? Really, I don't understand you at all. You would seem to suggest that your
democratic institutions are only a sham, a gaily painted hoarding, behind which
you keep hidden the Government and the machinery of State. I believe you are right in this, and that
your educational system is not intended to promote general education such as
will equip all to be rulers, but to produce men and women each skilled
in his or her job and each filled with a noble sentiment of public
service. But if this is so, please admit
it openly and contradict all those former statements you made about universal
education being an experiment in self-government. For it is clear that if you believe that
education should train children to their proper vocations, then you must admit
that as those vocations vary, so the education will vary too.
EDUCATIONALIST - Yes, we believe that.
PLATO - And you will be compelled to make a distinction
between the education suitable for those in highly responsible positions and
for those who are merely engaged in some mechanical or craft labour, admitting
that to the former belong higher education, while the latter need only a
technical proficiency in their trades.
EDUCATIONALIST - I am not so sure. We believe that everyone should be given
something more than a merely vocational training. For they all are human beings with latent
possibilities of culture and reasoning: and so all must be given a general
education as well.
PLATO - But do you give the same general education to the
less gifted and to the more gifted alike?
EDUCATIONALIST - No, that is impossible. For one thing the majority stop going to
school at the age of fourteen [as presumably was the case in 1936 - editor's
note.]; and for another, they would not all appreciate a university syllabus.
PLATO - How profoundly I agree! The lower orders, those whom I called
'civilians' in my State, do not for the most part appreciate philosophy, and
the few who do are taken in by the first imposter
whom they meet, a pseudo-philosopher or a popular scientist with a clever turn
of phrase and a cheap theology. Popular
taste is always vulgar and can in no way discriminate between a cheap imitation
and the truth. That is why I suggested
that the masses should be forbidden access to true knowledge and be fed on
myths and fairy stories and religious ceremonials - 'noble lies' I called them
- which the Government should concoct to satisfy their craving for
enlightenment and for a solution of those ultimate questions which they idly
discuss in their spare time. I have
heard that a neighbour State to yours has built up a Ministry of Propaganda and
Popular Enlightenment, and I am delighted with the idea. It suggests that there, at least, there are
statesmen who appreciate the dangers of uncontrolled enlightenment and
literature and music and see that such things may pervert the minds of the less
intelligent and excite them to serious disorders and unrest.
EDUCATIONALIST - I believe you are no better than a Fascist. How can you approve of propaganda and the
enslavement of public opinion to lies and half-truths? It means the destruction of all freedom.
PLATO - But are your people really free? Are they not also enslaved to lies and
half-truths which are pumped into them daily by the newspapers and the cinemas
and the novelists and the preachers and by some of your teachers too?
EDUCATIONALIST - Of course I dislike the penny press [what
would today be called the tabloid press - editor's note.] and the dreadful stuff
which the cinema producers put out. But
at least an Englishman is free to choose: he does not have to listen to
one monotonous stream of propaganda, but can hear all sides of the case and
form his own judgement.
PLATO - Please do not go so quickly. You say he is free to choose and select, but
how can he do that if he has no criterion by which to choose and select and so
discover the truth? He cannot: and so he
stands dazed and bewildered by an astonishing variety of nonsensical fantasies
which buzz in his ears and jumble themselves together until he does not know
whether he is standing on his head or his feet.
I admit that it may be more amusing to listen to many untruths rather
than to a single one, but I do not understand why you claim that a man is free
in the former case and a slave in the latter.
The fact is that if he cannot distinguish truth from falsehood he is
never free, whether he lives in England or in Germany or in Athens.
And so, when I
seriously consider your great experiment in self-government, I perceive that it
is not such thing. For the general
education you so highly praise does not make the masses free, but inculcates
only a false self-esteem and pretentiousness, with the result that they are not
less but more liable to be misled and deceived by the rogues and tricksters
whose profession it is to sell Enlightenment and Culture to them. It is not the humble craftsman but the rich
half-educated upon whom the advertiser and the quack and the get-rich-quick
merchants thrive. The proof of this is
simple. If your general education were
really successful, it would drive out the advertiser altogether and compel the
quack to migrate to another land. But
that has not happened in your country.
Instead, the more 'educated' your people become, the more easily they
are swindled and deceived by the self-same trickery, decked out in the
trappings of science and culture and even of religion.
And the same is
true of politics. There, too, your
general education will not enable the common people to think for themselves: it
will only make them falsely believe that they can do so, and so make them more
susceptible to the arts of propaganda and advertisement. Each man being skilled in his own job and
being provided with a little general education besides, will hold himself
competent to judge of matters where he has no experience or knowledge. How easy it will be then for an orator who
has money enough in his pocket and insolence in his heart, to propose some
high-sounding scheme and to enslave his countrymen to himself with a new myth
which both satisfies their bestial emotions and tickles their educational
pretensions. I have been told of strange
sophistries named Social Credit and Christian Science which thrive in your
country: and I believe that you will not be able to deny that it is the
'educated' among your citizens who chiefly support them with their money and
devotion. Such foolishness is in itself
unimportant, but it should be a warning to you that human nature is tougher and
less manageable than your educators believe.
Man demands not truth but wonders and miracles, and will, if he is given
the opportunity, enslave himself to any superstition rather than accept the
commands of knowledge. For truth is
seldom comforting, and reality has rarely the winning aspect with which
deception can deck itself out.
It is for this
reason that you should now take warning if you are really concerned for the
happiness and virtue of your countrymen.
For you have infected them with false standards and made them believe
that knowledge is easy to come by and open to everyone who has read a book or
heard a lecture. And so your democracy,
which you praise as the home of freedom and the protector of the conscience of
the individual, is in reality not far removed from the dictatorships you
abhor. In the latter the people are
enslaved to a single lie: in the former to many, and freedom belongs neither to
the purveyors of untruth, nor to its luckless purchasers. For even your film magnates and your
newspaper kings, your makers of cosmetics and salves, your political bosses and
your orators and publicists, are not free to do what they please: they too are
enslaved since, to keep their circulations up and their tills full, they must
dance attendance on a stupid public, ministering to its every whim and
considering only what new sensation they can provide to titillate its jaded
palate.
The free spirit
indeed brought up in such an exotic luxuriance of trickery and deceit will have
only one refuge. He will not believe one
word which is told him by the politician or the publicist or the advertiser or
anyone else, but keep himself to himself until such a time as truth can gain
control and rule your country.
EDUCATIONALIST - I suspected that you were a Fascist from
the first and now I am sure of it. You
have no respect for your fellow men, and very little kindness or love in your
nature. You want to boss everybody and
make them believe what you believe.
Well, you won't ever be popular in this country, I can assure you.
PLATO - That is possible, but I at least am not willing to
conceal the truth even for the sake of winning favour among your
countrymen. And yet I am not so sure
that they will detest me: for they have more sense in their heads than you
believe, and until, quite recently, men of your sentiments attained power, they
possessed a very sensible educational system.
EDUCATIONALIST - So you want us to go back to the days of
public ignorance and public schools.
PLATO - No, I do not wish you to go backwards, for that is
impossible; but I would remind you that the old is not necessarily bad, nor the
new good. In the old days, before your
universal education and democracy, your country was not ashamed to be divided
into two classes, the gentry and the common people. The latter were craftsmen and mechanics and
farmers, who delighted in their work and were proficient at it. With no general education, they led happy and
contented lives, trusting their superiors to manage the affairs of State, and
believing the stories which the Churches told them about virtue and sin and the
future life. I must remind you that it
was in those days that England won her empire and produced the artists and men
of letters for whom she is justly famed.
The rulers then were men of substance aware of their responsibilities
and firm in the knowledge that an aristocracy and a Church are necessary to any
stable society.
You mentioned
the public schools just now, and I must say that from what I hear of them, they
must have been at one time excellent institutions. They removed the boys of the ruling class
from the influence of their parents and gave them a sound training in morals
and literature and gymnastics, without any pretensions to 'intellectual' training. And so they engraved on their souls an ideal
of obedience and loyalty to tradition which made them in good time sound
administrators and soldiers, resolute to conserve the constitution of the
country and to defend it against all change.
Cut off from the mollycoddling and sentiment which mothers will always
heap on their children, remote from the petty cares of money and poverty,
living in beautiful buildings and licking each other into shape as boys only
can, they grew up to be true gentlemen, devoted servants of the established
order, and as judges or civil servants or administrators, to preserve a noble
tradition of impartiality and justice.
These things I
consider to be good and worthy of preservation, and I would advise you (if I
didn't know that persuasion with men of your unreasoning nature is useless) to
enshrine them in your new educational system.
But I do not believe them perfect for three very good reasons. In the first place, those who had learnt these
ideals at their schools were not set under the control of philosophers, but of
men no better than themselves who, having no real understanding of the eternal
principles which govern human affairs, were not able to keep in check and to
control the technicians and merchants and industrialists. And so, as time went on and inventions were
made which gave to your country vast wealth at no very great cost of labour or
thought, your administration gradually allowed the motives of greed and power
to overwhelm those of reason and self-control, until desire for profit ruled
your State, and without your administrators or your priests ever suspecting
such a thing, they became the slaves of imperialism instead of the servants of
reason. I admit that their natural good
qualities softened this imperialism and often annulled its worst effects, but I
would warn you that until the ownership of property in land or currency is
forbidden to your rulers, and until they are wise and powerful enough to arrest
the profit motive and to imprison it, you cannot rest secure of your country's
prosperity.
In the second
place, your public schools have always been private institutions uncontrolled
by the State and open only to those who had money enough and to spare. Perhaps this was no bad thing when the State
was controlled by merchants and bankers and suchlike people, but in a just
society they would be in the hands of the rulers and open to all who could
profit by them. In the third place, your
universities have never fully recognized the task which God had in store for
them. They have permitted the State to
be seduced by the profit motive and enchained to the machine of money-making,
and so the natural rulers who frequent them can no longer guide the machine but
have become servants of it.
From all that I
have said, you will see what reforms I would suggest. You must begin at the top and rebuild your
universities and imbue them with the desire to provide for your country rulers
worthy of it. I do not pretend that this
will be easy to do. Learned men, though
they often mention me with praise, have so little understood the spirit of my
Academy that they have actually perverted the word 'academic' so that it now
means something remote from practical life.
I can well understand their hatred and contempt for the world outside,
and their unwillingness to admit that they themselves have renounced it only
because they were unable to impress the men of action, who control affairs,
with their superior learning. But you
will agree that unless they regain the belief that the reason they serve can
and must rule the world, they will be of little use to your countrymen or to
the world.
This is most
unlikely to happen: for professors who lead a comfortable life and combine
personal security with a conviction of their own righteousness are seldom
prepared to risk these things in the attempt to help others. Your universities therefore will probably
remain content to be servants not critics of the world they live in, salving
their consciences by the promotion of a little useless learning and by
lip-service to the ideals of academic freedom and impartiality.
In this case you
must (as I did) set up a rival to all existing institutions, resolved to serve
only the cause of truth, and to proclaim that truth to all. You will be accused of bias and of subversive
teaching and of destroying the ideals of academic sobriety. But you will not listen to these taunts
because you know that the academic who is not also a man of action is no true
son of the academy. In your new
university you will once again combine scientific research with a training for
statesmanship, and you will set up over its portals the motto, 'Knowledge alone
shall rule'. Strong in this belief, you
will welcome all accusations of partiality and of subversive teaching, knowing
well that a new truth is always the exposure of falsehood, and that
impartiality is usually the cloak for a tame submission to the established
order.
And there is one
other change you must make in the beliefs of your young men. At present they are gentle-hearted and
inspired with the naive belief that truth and wisdom can prevail by their
natural virtue against force and cunning.
And so they go forth unarmed to conquer the world and soon come home
with a bruise on their heads and disillusionment in their hearts, having
discovered that wickedness, which delights in violence, is an enemy who cannot
be softened with smooth words and noble sentiments, but must be beaten down and
bound fast with fetters of steel so that it shall not raise its head
again. This lesson you must teach daily
in your new university, and set up as a second motto over its doors, 'No
pacifist shall enter here': and you must constantly remind your pupils, since
in the history of mankind the rule of reason has never once been established by
kindness or speeches only, that the philosopher must be prepared to use force
and violence not less but more resolutely than his opponents. For his cause will always be more unpopular
than the half-truths and easy salves with which his enemies beguile the people,
and therefore must be enforced with every rigour and austerity, until the
ignoble passions of the masses have become tamed and subdued to the rule of
knowledge. Let your young men therefore
know well that if they desire to save their country from destruction, they must
not only be inspired by the peaceful spirit of research, but schooled in the
discipline of military science, which does not shrink from bloodshed for the
sake of the common good.
When your new
university is firmly established and has begun to gain control of the affairs
of State, you must next turn your attention to the schools. Here you must not be perturbed by the bogy of
Fascism, which you just now mentioned, but must be willing to admit that even a
bad Government may have good ideas, and that it is the duty of the statesmen to
examine without bias or prejudice the institutions of other lands. You will not even be disturbed when you hear
that some Americans are aping your national customs and are anxious to
introduce your public school system as an antidote to their democracy. You, of course, will cling fast to this
system and make it the centre of your future schooling. You will take over the existing schools and
will openly proclaim that they are to be the breeding ground of your political
leaders, segregating carefully the children who are best fitted for this
responsibility from those who will be contented with a civilian life. For the latter you will provide technical
schools where they can learn the craft to which they are best suited, and
because this class is of small importance to the State, you will leave them
with their parents and only compel them to attend the schools by day. But for the former you will prepare a sterner
education and you will forbid them to visit their homes except on feast days
and public holidays. Beginning with the
existing schools, you will compel them to return to the Spartan simplicity of
earlier days. You will dismiss the
nurses and matrons and the pseudo-fathers and mothers who by their kindness and
soft sentiments destroy the tough fibre of their youth. In these schools, too, you will put boys and
girls together and make no distinction between them, remembering always that
your task is to bring up a race of soldiers and administrators, not of
elegantly cultured ladies and gentlemen such as are now produced by the
schools. And so the discipline must be
harsh, and mind and body alike must be trained to accuracy and obedience and
efficiency, and to the appreciation of an austere and simple beauty such as
would not shame a soldier. For this
reason you will teach them the elements of mathematics and science and the
study of language, and will combine with these the learning of the noblest of
your national literature and music, and a soldierly type of sport and
gymnastic.
When you have
done all this, you will find it an easy task to solve the problem of general
education for the masses which we were discussing just now. Realizing that they are incompetent to rule
themselves, you will seek above all to induce in them a spirit of loyal
submissiveness to the rulers: and since you cannot restore the influence of
your Church, which fulfilled this task in the past, you must suppress those
warring religious sects altogether, and invent a new political religion,
punishing by death any citizen who dares to preach a doctrine other than
yours. This you can only do if you are
masters of the printing press, the wireless, and all your modern methods of
communication, and you will therefore make a second law forbidding the
unlicensed sale of opinions and superstitions (whether written or spoken or
sung) on pain of death. Then when you
have done all this, you can allow what general education you please, provided
that you are clear in your own mind that such education or popular enlightenment
(call it what you will) is not knowledge or science at all, but a 'noble lie'
suited to the intelligence of those who can never attain true wisdom or
knowledge of God.
EDUCATIONALIST - Thank you very much indeed for your
suggestions. I am sure they would be
most acceptable to Sir Oswald Mosley.
PLATO - I do not know the gentleman, but if they are
acceptable to him, then he has been sadly misrepresented to me by those who do.
CHAPTER VII
Plato Looks at the Family
IN the two previous chapters we have
seen something of the modern Plato's attitude to British democracy, and of his
suggestions for its reform. Not content
to examine institutions or modes of government, he has tried to analyse the
social tradition which inspires them and to discover the principles according
to which its development should proceed.
His advice can be summed up quite briefly. Preserve at all costs your aristocratic
tradition, that ruling is the responsibility of the few; but purge it of the
corrupting influences, which the industrial revolution brought, by the
deliberate formation of a new aristocracy of intellect and character, which
will resolutely aim at political power and use it for the enforcement of reason
and justice.
This advice is
in effect a demand for revolutionary action; for it involves the exclusion from
political power of the property owner and of the mass of the people. But it is not revolution of the accepted
kind, since it is neither in the interest of the capitalists nor of the
proletariat. The Platonic statesman
would be equally opposed to the dictatorship of the 'haves' and to that of the
'have nots', seeing in both the domination of one
social group and the perpetuation of the class struggle. Finding his inspiration in the past, he would
try to restore the harmony of interests which he would claim existed before the
bourgeois revolution, and for this reason he can be called a conservative
revolutionary. For his aim is at all
costs to preserve the ethos of the British tradition from the dangers of
Liberalism and Fascism and Communism.
This ethos, he believes, still lives in the hearts of the people,
but it has been strangled by the foreign excrescences which the industrial
revolution plastered over it. These he
must tear off, in order that the true spirit of the community can flourish
again.
But political
and economic revolution is not enough.
After any such violent changes, it is only a matter of time before the
new Government begins to abuse its power.
There never has been and never will be a revolution which did not teem
with good intentions and inaugurate a new era of social justice. But once the transference of power has been
accomplished and a new class has occupied the seat of government, a change
occurs. The economic advantages of
political control become apparent to the new rulers, their good intentions are
forgotten, and the common man to whom freedom was promised finds himself
enslaved once more. Revolution therefore
is a waste of time and human life, unless it is accompanied by a change in the
men who make it, as well as in the institutions they control.
To change men is
far more difficult than to change institutions.
For the latter can be destroyed and rebuilt by the application of force,
the former cannot. Man cannot be forced
to be good: he can only be trained and persuaded and cajoled into seeing the
folly of his ways. A statesman can draft
a law and publish it: he can even compel men to obey it. But he himself is under no such compulsion,
and it is the maker of laws who must be just and honest if a constitution is to
work. On his morality depends the
happiness of the community, and unless he freely accepts the commands of
justice, he will be a tyrant, and not a true ruler.
But the moral
code is not purely a matter for the individual will, nor is the individual
entirely free to accept or to reject it.
He is himself a product of it, and conditioned by the institutions of
the society in which he lives. The human
soul is not a mysterious force with a life of its own, floating in a spiritual
ether outside the everyday world of action, every now and then darting down to
assert, 'This is right and that is wrong', but a member of that world,
conditioned by it and conditioning it too.
We are both creatures and creators of our environment, and freedom is
just the consciousness of this fact and the understanding of its
implications. I am not free to jump
thirty feet across a river: the laws of gravity and the structure of my body
limit my freedom. But I am free to study
the workings of nature and to build a bridge across which I can safely
walk. Again, I am not free to renounce
the morality of my home and country and civilization; I cannot do it because it
is part of my personality and a mainspring of my will. But I am free to study that morality, to
analyse its implications, and in the light of that knowledge to try to modify
it and redirect it in the direction which I think right.
This
understanding and redirection of current morality must be undertaken if any
political revolution is to achieve success.
The statesman must change not only the constitution and laws and
economic system, but also the moral and social institutions by which men live. For the former must ultimately conform to the
latter. If the ruling class behave
aggressively and self-assertively in their private lives, and their moral code
encourages such behaviour, then no political reform will permanently prevent
war; instead, social habits will modify the political institutions to suit
themselves. If the acquisitive instinct
is stimulated by religion or morality, then no Communist society will remain
Communist for long: property will make its appearance in some form or other.
The Platonic
statesman therefore, like the modern Communist, cannot admit that private life
and morality are the concern only of the individual. For him there is no distinction of
self-regarding and other-regarding actions.
The most intimate secrets of private life must be opened to him and he
must analyse and direct them in the proper way.
If we ask what
are the most important elements in our private life, there can be no real doubt
of the correct answer. Marriage and the
family are the central institutions of all human societies. They engage our attention for more hours a
day than anything, except perhaps our work: they are the cause of more
happiness and misery than any other single factor, and lastly, they are the
thread upon which the future race depends.
They are therefore the first institutions which we must analyse, trying
both to discover their raison d'ętre and to consider the part they must
play in the social order.
Plato's attitude
to them was as simple as it was revolutionary.
With the Greek city-state in mind, he proposed their total abolition for
all members of the ruling élite. No ruler in his State is allowed to be a
husband or a wife. The men and women
will live together in common barracks, without privacy and on perfectly equal
terms. Permanent relationships between
them will be forbidden as absolutely as free love. There will be neither promiscuity nor
marriage, because they will all be so intent on the work of government and the
discovery of truth that they cannot be allowed to waste time on personal
relations.
But children
will be needed for the State, and so regular religious festivals will be
arranged where those suitable and eugenically fit will be brought
together. On these occasions special
privileges will be granted to those who have distinguished themselves in battle
or in public service, and it will be ensured that the best citizens produce
most children. Women will be allowed to
mate between twenty and forty, men between twenty-five and forty-five, but no
permanent relations may be entered into.
They must meet once only in the sacred festival and then depart upon
their respective businesses.
When the child
is born it will be taken from its mother and brought up in a State
nursery. The mother may come to suckle
it, but the greatest care is taken to prevent her recognizing her own child,
for all the rulers are one family and the mother must regard all children
equally hers. So, too, with the
children: they must never know who their parents are, but treat all the elders
of the ruling class as fathers and mothers, all their contemporaries as
brothers and sisters. For they are to be
trained to be not private citizens with private interests, but public servants
caring only for the State.
That, in short,
is Plato's revolutionary plan for the ideal relationship of man to woman and of
parent to child. But he did not propose
it for the man in the street, and more than he proposed the abolition of
private property for him. The subject
classes were to be allowed everything a man could wish - except
self-government. Only the members of the
ruling class were to have no property, no wives or husbands and no families,
and Plato gave three reasons for this strange regulation of the rulers'
life. In the first place he argued that
if a man really cares about his job he will not want to be distracted by
marriage or by children. Love and
marriage are two of the most disturbing things in life. They take up a great deal of time and they
are an interruption to any profession or trade.
The more wrapped up he is in his job the more a man tends to neglect his
family, and Plato argued that if he is really interested in the work for its
own sake, then he will not want to be distracted by wife or children. In the case of civilians the distractions
will not matter so much, because they are under the absolute dictatorship of
the ruling class. The lovelorn farmer or
the banker who is too much of a family man can be kept up to scratch by
Government control. But there is no-one
to supervise the ruling élite, and so they
must be relieved of these distractions.
The ruler must not be a bread-winner or a family man: he must be
interested in philosophy to the exclusion of everything else; and if he is,
then he will not want, and must not be allowed to have, a wife and family.
When Plato
abolished marriage and the family he was not preaching a doctrine of free love
and easy morals. He was demanding a more
rigid self-control for his ruling class than the ordinary man can achieve. His ideal was not unlike that of the monk or
priest who takes vows of celibacy and tries to sublimate his earthly emotions
and his human love into love of God and service to the community. But the Platonic ruler differs from the monk
in two particulars. Firstly, he
considers the future: he sees that if no-one marries there will be no children;
and since the rulers are the pick of the population it is their duty to have as
many children as is consistent with their efficiency as rulers. So Plato advocated not celibacy for his
rulers, but eugenics, the breeding of children as carefully as horses or dogs
are bred today, and with as little personal interest in the woman or the child
as the expert horse breeder feels in his horses. The really responsible citizen, says Plato,
must not produce children just to satisfy a personal whim or to please someone
he or she is in love with. The children
must be produced for the State, and according to scientific principles of
breeding. They are not to be mere
products of love, or by-products of personal pleasures. Child-bearing is, in fact, a duty, like
soldiering or administering the State, and must be strictly regarded as
such. That is the first difference
between the morality of Plato's ruler and that of the monk or the Catholic
priest.
In the second
place, Plato did not believe that human love or physical passion were in
themselves wicked as some religious people are inclined to believe. No Greek could believe the body evil: the
Greeks knew more of its beauty than any other nation, and human love seemed to
them the most natural thing in the world, with its natural expression in
physical emotion. Plato was a moralist
but he was not a Puritan, and he saw no reason to forbid his rulers the
pleasures of physical intercourse any more than he forbade them the pleasures
of physical exercise or of food and drink.
Such pleasures, in his view, do no harm in their proper place; they are
not in themselves wicked: but they are wrong if they distract rulers from their
work. So love and physical emotion were
permissible in his view if they were kept strictly on a level with other
physical emotions, if, in fact, they were depersonalized and given no
continuity or permanence. Plato would
not have minded his rulers liking nice furniture or beautiful buildings: only they
must not want to possess them. So, too,
with human love: if it was treated as a passing pleasure, like a glass of good
wine, Plato would have found it wholesome: but if it meant falling in love with
someone, wanting to be with her always, missing her when she was away, worrying
whether she cared for you, and so on - then Plato would have said it had become
a distraction and must be forbidden to the man whose work was ruling.
For this reason,
if no other, Plato would have welcomed the invention of contraceptives and
encouraged their use among his élite. For the contraceptive emphasizes the
distinction between the two aspects of sex as an expression of love and as a
means of procreation. By decreasing
anxiety with regard to childbirth, it allows a more carefree pleasure in the
sexual act and enables man to plan the breeding of children
scientifically. Plato had admitted the
use of abortion to destroy children produced by women too old for perfect
childbearing and since he encouraged his rulers after a certain age to be free
in their sexual intercourse provided they did not lose interest in their work,
the contraceptive would have seemed to him an instrument by the use of which
reason can control matter and still further depersonalize the sexual act.
This brings us
to Plato's second reason for forbidding marriage and the family to his ruling
class. Falling in love, he argued, and
wanting a family are really expressions of the acquisitive instinct. He had forbidden his ruling class any form of
property whatsoever, and so he argued that marriage and the family, which are
really a sort of property, must be forbidden to them too. The love of man for woman is based on a
longing for ownership and pride of possession.
Each in their own way, husband and wife regard each other as a
possession to be jealously guarded. Each
of them usually dislikes it if the other shows too much interest in the
opposite sex. Why is this unless their
feelings are fundamentally possessive?
We tend to think of the lover as a romantic figure full of
self-sacrifice and devotion. Plato
thought he was far more concerned with getting hold of something he wanted,
enjoying it in private and enjoying the fact that no-one else could share his
enjoyment. Human love between man and
woman was in his view a sort of mutual ownership which built a wall round the
two people and cut them off from other people.
And the same, in
Plato's view, applies to the family. It
is an exclusive organization, a private world into which we try to escape, and
in the security of which we seek comfort and satisfaction. Even if we do make sacrifices for our
children's education and feel ourselves highly magnanimous in doing so, we do
it because they are our children and we are proud of our
productions. A man will sacrifice time
and money for his garden, to make it beautiful: a woman may expend hours on
improving her appearance. They would not
claim to be disinterested in doing either of these things. But is not their attitude to their children
very much the same? They want the
children to be successes, not really for the children's sake, but because the
children belong to them and they want their children to win the prizes of life
in competition against their neighbours'.
Plato thought
this exclusive sense of property was an inevitable accompaniment to marriage,
and that for this reason marriage was just as dangerous to the ruler as
property. It would corrupt his loyalty
to the State and give him a private interest which would distract him from his
job. For Plato was a revolutionary; he
wanted his pupils to be men who could work miracles and change the world: and
he thought that the only people that really change the world are the people who
have no feeling for private property as such, even wives and children. Four hundred and fifty years later Jesus was
to urge the same thing to His chosen apostles.
He, too, insisted that they should give up father and mother and family
- everything for His sake. But, like
Plato, He realized this vocation could only be for the few, and added
the text: 'He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.' Everyone is not capable of the supreme
sacrifice. The real revolutionary, the
man or woman who is to transform the world, must put his work first and his
friends second. He must renounce them,
not grudgingly with a feeling of loss, but gladly, because he cares for
something infinitely more valuable. He
cannot have friends or family in the usual sense of the word because he is so
intent upon achieving his ideal of human society that he has no time or
interest for individual human beings. In
his personal relations he will probably seem cold and inhuman, irresponsible
and changeable, as if he did not care about any human beings at all. He cares too passionately for humanity to
feel much love for human beings.
In the third
place Plato argued that marriage must involve an inferior status for
women. In the Athens of his day it was
little more than the purchase by the man of a chattel to manage his household
and bear him children. The wife was
economically dependent on her husband, she had no political rights, and she was
not given any education. She was not
even a labourer since she received no wages and had no defence against
exploitation, but a bond-servant at the mercy of her parents as to whom she
married, of her husband when she was married.
Plato could not permit such slaves to be members of his ruling class and
to live with his élite. He ruling class demanded women who were the
equal of their men, and he saw that if they are to be this then they cannot be relegated
to the home. He did not deny that most
women are physically weaker than men, and he also believed that they were
intellectually inferior. But he did not
think that a sufficient reason for confining all women to the home and refusing
them citizen rights. He claimed,
instead, that the best women should be educated exactly as the best men are
educated. In his ruling class there was
to be no differential treatment of the sexes at all. They were to live together and even to fight
together on terms of absolute equality.
It is one of the
ironies of history that the phrase 'Platonic love' should have come to mean a
spiritual relationship devoid of physical desire. Such love, in Plato's view, was fit only for
God, and he never advocated it between his citizens. He assumed that human beings will express the
love they feel for one another, and it was in an effort to raise the level of
that love from self-assertion to partnership that he abolished marriage. The inferior place of women in Greece has resulted
in the assumption by men of culture that true love could only be felt by man
for man. Homosexual relationships were
regarded as nobler than marriage, and Socrates, though he disapproved of
certain forms of perversion, had always regarded his marriage and family as
civic duties, inferior in value to his friendships with young men. This the Greek ideal of chivalry often became
homosexual in character - the love of the adult for the boy, not the love of
man for woman.
Plato remained
at heart a Greek. The ideal for him was
the love of man for man, and his twofold aim was to purify homosexual
relationships of their physical brutalities and at the same time to raise the
relationship of man and woman to the homosexual level. Men were to treat women as they treated boys,
and to forget as far as possible that they bore children. His rulers should fall in love with one
another, disregarding their differences of sex, man with man or woman with
woman or man with woman. They should not
take these affairs too seriously or become wrapped up in the physical side, but
should regard the physical desires as minor pleasures, compared to the real
delights of companionship and cooperation and intellectual discussion.
For Plato was
convinced that love is the basis of true philosophy. A true friendship will start on the physical
plane and should not be thwarted on that plane.
But soon it will transcend the body and, as it matures, will become the
cooperation of equals in the achievement of a common purpose. The lovers will feel themselves rivals in
their life's work, encouraging and helping and competing with one another, and
finally they will find the consummation of desire in dialectic and discussion
and philosophizing which alone can attain truth. With this inspiration, the lovers cease to be
'in love', since their love is now centred on truth, and they will regard
sexual satisfaction as 'play' and relaxation from the enterprise which they
share. [See the speech of Diotima
in the SYMPOSIUM.]
Thus Plato was forced
to deny that sex differentiation is in any way fundamental, in order to
maintain that Reason, the immortal part of the soul, is shared by men and women
alike. If woman is not to be relegated
to the Mohammedan level, she must be held capable of
philosophy, and her sexual differences regarded as accidental to her true
nature. In that case, the distinction of
normal and perverse relations is unreal, since the friendship of two rational
beings is equally good, to whichever sex they belong. It is only when we descend to the utilitarian
level and consider the procreation of children, that sex difference becomes
important; but here love must cease, to be replaced by civic obligation and the
iron discipline of eugenic law.
The abolition of
marriage was a tremendous assertion of the rights of woman. It raised her to the level of man, and it
postulated her rational nature. But it
has never been kindly received by Plato's readers, who are often shocked by its
'immorality', its equanimity in the face of perversion, and its clear
separation of sexual pleasure from procreation.
Plato knew that this would happen.
Recognizing the strength of taboo and superstition, he put it forward in
a very tentative fashion, but there is no part of his writing which surpasses
this passage [See REPUBLIC Book V.] in its style, imagination, or philosophical clarity. In the fact of every instinct and prejudice,
he was clear-sighted enough to see that, if women were equals of men, and to be
treated as such, then sexual morality must be drastically altered and marriage
and the family, in the form in which he knew them, must be abolished.
But can you free
women from their bondage? Plato thought
it was only possible for a select few.
Most women are happiest uneducated and doing the work of the home, just
as most men are happiest in the security of subjection to dictatorship. But the women of the ruling class, if they
are to be worthy partners of the men and produce worthy children, must be free,
and to achieve this Plato saw no other way open than to abolish marriage and
the family. It was essential for man and
woman alike. Given marriage, he said,
man will always be the dominant partner, the possessor, woman the passive
recipient, the possessed. And she will
compensate for this inferior position by accentuating her sexual charms and
becoming the possessor in matters of physical emotion. She will spend time and money on making
herself beautiful and attractive, and she will long for the power over men
which those attractions afford. Plato
was a feminist not only in the sense that he wanted to free the best women from
the bondage of the family; he also wanted to free them from the ambitions which
that bondage imposed on them.
It is often said
that women are more influenced than men by consideration of persons. They think in terms of people, not of
programmes and ideas, and they accept ideas not because they are true, but
because those ideas are associated in their minds with male admirers. Plato would argue that this was due to their
inferior position. They never can get
away from personal relations because they are economically and mentally
dependent on men. And so their whole
ambitions are concentrated either on captivating men or on making their
children into successes. To free them
from these narrow ambitions, to get them to look beyond persons, to ideas, and
to give them real intellectual and moral independence, he was willing to
abolish the home, and he argued that most women would not like this at
all. They would not be willing to
surrender the power which physical charm gives them, or to be treated by men
exactly as though they were colleagues of slightly inferior ability. They would feel slighted and disappointed
when they could no longer rely on the chivalry and romantic love of the
dominant male. But women, in Plato's
view, cannot have it both ways: they cannot break up the home and demand
perfect equality and then use that equality merely to further their womanly
ambitions. And for this reason only a
woman who is prepared to be treated as a colleague and fellow-worker would be
allowed to be a member of his ruling class.
If the woman wants to rely on her charms, then she must accept the inferior
position and the inferior responsibilities of home life. She can enjoy either the chivalry of men or
equality with men, but she cannot have both.
It is not
sufficient to treat this theory with disgust and ridicule, or to assert that it
is the product of the perversions of a degenerate age and therefore has no
applicability today. Modern feminist
movements have nearly always urged the complete equalization of the sexes, and
advocated the opening of all professions to women. Claiming that women are 'as good' as men,
they have tried to break down all the ties which bind women to home and
husband, and have often advocated a free and voluntary partnership of the
sexes. Their propaganda has taken the
line that women should be allowed to behave as men behave, not that women
should be free to develop their special talents. And for this reason women's education and
sport have been definitely modelled on that of men, notwithstanding the fact
that on these lines women as a whole are usually inferior to men. We have only to examine the European
university to see that Plato's arguments are still the assumptions of feminism
and of advanced educational theory.
But modern
theory has not often seen as clearly as Plato the consequences of this
assumption. If the proper place of woman
in society is alongside man, if there is no distinction of civic function
between them, and the 'good life' is identical for both sexes, then the chief
justification of marriage as a permanent union disappears. Two men may be good friends and decide to
live together, but it would be fantastic for them to consummate a permanent
union: why, then, should the bond between a man and a woman, each devoted to
his or her professional work, be inviolable provided that, with the aid of
scientific technique, they produce no children, or alternatively that the State
takes over the education of the family?
And secondly, if woman, like man, is to put her profession first and her
home second, can it still be asserted that the home is the best place for the
upbringing of children at all? The
justification for the home as the educational centre disappears when woman
regards it as the place of relaxation from her daily work.
Whether we like
it or not, the equalization of the sexes must seek to approximate the life of
women to that of men, if for no other reason because men have dominated
society and male activity and education have been the model of feminist
agitation. There is no special function
for women in society, apart from the care of children and home, because there
never has been: and therefore feminism is the assertion by the inferior sex
that she can live a man's life nearly as well as men. By this assertion woman denies her
differences and special excellences, and is content to 'place second fiddle' to
the dominant male, as boys ape their adult idols. And so the attempt to demand 'equality of
status' confirms woman in an inferior position, making her the weaker
competitor in a race she must always lose.
The chivalry which men felt for a sex which, in spite of its physical and
theoretical inferiority, could do many things better than they, is replaced by
a kindly sympathy and encouragement for a weaker rival. And conversely the marriage partnership in
which a man's capacities were increased by his wife's personal help and encouragement,
so that she, as a woman, actually contributed something to his work which no
man could give, is turned into an unequal rivalry, with all the friction that
rivalry must bring. The failure of many
modern marriages must be attributed to Platonic ideals: and the decrease in the
birth-rate is due not so much to the introduction of contraceptives, as to
their use by women in order to liberate themselves from the bondage of the
family. Contraceptives have never
stopped a mother from having a family if she wanted to have one: to her they
are only a god-given method of protecting her family's best interests from the
sexual passion of the unruly male.
Plato faces us
with the full problem of 'feminism'.
Granted the initial assumption that woman to be free must adopt the life
of man, he shows (1) that in this case she is likely to be a weaker rival, (2)
that the care of children must be taken from her, and (3) that in a society of
free men and women sexual pleasure and child-bearing will be divorced from one
another. The former will become an
individual gratification of private desire, the latter a civic obligation whose
control can only be entrusted to the State.
But he also shows that this new form of society will only survive if it
can produce a new self-control and a new sexual morality. Men and women may declare themselves 'equal'
and proclaim that the old era of male possession and female slavery is
closed. Such declarations will have no
effect against deep-seated habits so long as permanent marriage-unions are
retained. For sexual passion is
possessive and jealous. The lover, so
long as he is in love, wants some sort of 'permanent' union. If, therefore, woman claims equality of
opportunity in a society where the institution of marriage is still preserved,
the result will be not the depersonalization of sexual relations, but an
intensification of the romantic bond.
There will be more divorces - but while they last marriages will be more
passionate and more jealous than before.
Sex will become a dominant fact in social life, disturbing the
efficiency of the worker even more than before.
For, although the social utility of marriage will have been destroyed,
the institution will remain as a justification and an incentive to
possessiveness and jealous. to equalize
the sexes, while retaining the institutions of marriage and the family, is in
Plato's view to have the worst of two contrasted moral systems.
This would be
Plato's judgement on our age, and on our astonishing obsession with sexual
problems. He would not call us really
equal, since equality of the sexes, in his view, can only be achieved where
passion is depersonalized, and false romance suppressed by the abolition of all
permanent unions. The justification for
permanent marriage was the existence of the family. When this is gone, sexual possessiveness and
marriage have no social utility, and the former becomes the jealous passion of
a child shouting that no-one shall share its toys. The idea that either man or woman has the
right to enjoy friendship as a private pleasure, where there is no social
justification for this privacy, would repel Plato, just as it would repel him
if a man claimed to exclude everyone from his property, when he was not working
on it or enriching the community with its produce. Marriage, like private ownership, when it
ceases to be socially beneficial, becomes a social disease.
And so we are
faced with a tragic dilemma. If woman is
to be free and gain the status of man, then sexual possessiveness - and marriage
with it - must be suppressed. If, on the
other hand, we value the institution of the family and doubt our powers to
change the deep-seated instincts of sexual life, then woman must renounce the
status of man and retain the marriage partnership as the chief function of her
life. There is only one way out of this
dilemma and Plato took it. He suggested
that some men and women are capable of a higher morality, but most are not. If we follow Plato, however, we must face the
fresh problem which a differential morality brings, and devise a legal system
under which there is one code for the élite
and another for the common people.
Plato would
suggest that we had almost reached this stage today without realizing it. We are divided into the emancipated and the
traditionally minded, but the emancipated are not aware of their
responsibilities. They are content to
use the scientific discoveries of birth-control for the gratification of
personal pleasure, and to pour an easy ridicule on the superstitious folly and
brutalities of the conservative majority.
They claim that they alone are free and reasonable: but although they
renounce the old morality, they are enslaved by their own obsessions and refuse
to subject themselves voluntarily to the sterner discipline which true equality
demands. They do not realize that the
common man may, in fact, be happier and contented to remain 'brutal' and
'uncivilized', because they forget that the social and economic conditions of
his life are vastly different from their own leisured and wealthy freedom. The instability and unhappiness of modern
life arise chiefly in Plato's view from this irresponsibility of the leisured
intelligentsia whose reason is employed, not on the constructive task of
discovering the new self-discipline which a changing world demands, but in
ridiculing an institution whose social utility they disregard.
Plato would have
cited the first phase of the Russian Revolution as an example of this false
Liberalism with regard to morality, a crude misapplication of his own theory to
modern life. Basing themselves on the
philosophy of Marx, the Communists urged that to reform society they must
reform private morality as well. They,
too, broke up the home because it made woman the bond-servant of man and
because children should be the possession not of the parents but of the
State. Encouraging women to work as the
equals of men, they made State crčches and nurseries where the children could
be left while the parents were at work, and they enabled men and women to get
divorced as easily as we allow them to get married. They did this not because they disbelieved in
morality and convention, but because they wanted to abolish private ownership
by one person of another person's life.
They argued that if you disapprove of the private ownership of the means
of production, because it puts the worker at the mercy of the employer, then
you must also disapprove of marriage because it makes women and children
dependent on the whims and fancies of the father. And so in the 1920s the Russian Revolution
was not only an experiment in economic planning, but also an experiment in a
new social morality and a new relationship of man to woman and of parents to
children.
But there was
one difference between this Communist attitude to the family and that which
Plato advocated. Just as Plato was
content to leave most people their private property, so he was content to leave
most people their family life. His
Communism was a Communism of the élite. There, as everywhere else, the Russians, to
start with, were more democratic. Their
Communism was for everyone, just as their education was for everyone, and so
they made their new social morality a universal code, and tried to free all the
women of Russia from what they called the servitude of marriage. The freedom which Plato thought that only a
select few would appreciate was given by the Communists to every citizen of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Long ago, in
1848, Karl Marx wrote a warning which Lenin left unheeded. He said that if we merely abolish the
restraints and restrictions of marriage we break down morality and level human
life down to the standard of the beast.
By given men and women absolute freedom in their sexual life we let lust
and greed run rampant, and women who were previously the private property of
men become the public property of all who care to use them. Their position is worse than before: for now
they are the common spoil of the whole community.
Something very
like this did happen in the early years of the Russian Revolution. An old morality was abolished and in its
place came a freedom which the ordinary man and woman were not strong enough to
enjoy. A few idealists in Russia did not
abuse their new freedom: the common man either abused it or disliked it, and
under Stalin the Russians began to build up a new code of social morality. Wanton promiscuity and frequent divorce are
now [presumably 1936 - editor's note] frowned upon: parents are held
responsible for their children. It is
clear already from the Russian experiment that to abolish the home is to expect
a standard of conduct far too high for the common man, and on this point
Plato's pessimism has been justified.
CHAPTER VIII
Plato Looks at Communism
WAS Plato a Communist? No question is more often or more
unprofitably discussed by political philosophers and by students of Plato. On the one hand it is argued that his ruling élite, forbidden to enjoy the pleasures of wealth
and marriage, was the first example of a Communist society; on the other hand,
that since Plato permitted the vast majority of the population to have
property, wife, and children, he can be exonerated from the charge of being the
father of Communist theory. Both
contentions are equally futile. Plato
was a Greek, not a modern European: a citizen of a city-, not a
nation-state. The social and economic
problems which confronted him were those of a mercantile civilization based on
small-scale industries and craft skills, utterly different from the gigantic
factories and machine techniques of modern capitalism: and lastly, he was
brought up to assume slave labour as an integral part of the economic order.
These three
differences make it utterly impossible for Plato to have elaborated a Communist
philosophy. Communism, the product of an
era of international trade which seemed to link the world into a single
economic system, is a universal doctrine and looks forward to a world-order and
to the destruction of national states: the product of an era of expanding
productivity and wealth, it aims at procuring for the working classes the full
fruits of their labours: the product of the exploitation of free labour, it
looks to the control by the people of the economic and political system. In each of these three particulars Plato's
philosophy differs profoundly from that of Marx; he looks forward not to a
world order but a regenerate city-state: he seeks to redeem the working classes
not from economic but from political exploitation and, because he accepted
slavery, he could never envisage the control of the political system by all
'the workers'. The place of slavery in
Greek civilization has often been over-emphasized and misinterpreted. It is simply untrue to suggest that the
city-state was based upon cheap slave labour, or that its citizens were a
leisured class living off the labour of serfs.
There was a working class in
We may press the
analogy still further. The Greek slave was
not entirely without rights: he could bring an action for outrage against his
master in the courts, he received pay for his work, he could purchase his
liberty, and even be granted citizenship for public services: the negro in
The effect of
slavery on Greek social development was most profound in mercantile cities such
as Corinth or Athens, which depended for their food supplies and raw materials
on the export trade. Here, from the
beginning of the fifth century, industry and production began to flourish. Factories with twenty or thirty hands were
not uncommon, and we hear of a shield factory which employed one hundred and
twenty slaves. But the free craftsman,
the peasant, and even the free labourer, were at first so little threatened
that Athens could welcome new citizens and resident foreigners in large
numbers. The reason for this is
twofold. In the first place, since there
was no industrial machinery, mass-production could only be employed on a
limited number of products: in the second, the ownership of slaves was only
remunerative where demand was constant - free labour can be set off at slack
periods, slaves cannot - and it was only open to the rich with capital to
invest. For those who could afford it,
it was a profitable investment, calculated to bring a return of over 30 per
cent.
But although
skilled craftsmen could always hold their own, wage-rates were bound to be
forced down, and it became clear that the steady increase of the citizen
population must be checked. In 451 Pericles limited Athenian citizenship to those of Athenian
birth on both sides, and six years later, when an Egyptian prince presented the
city with forty-five thousand bushels of corn, he struck five thousand names
from the roll before distributing the bounty to the citizen population. From now onwards democracy meant the rule not
of the proletariat, but of the citizen proletariat, and citizenship became not
a right but a privilege. This privilege
was enhanced by payment to jurors (in 451) and to the civic militia, and the
State was forced to repair the ill-effects of cheap slave labour by doles and
bounties and political payments to the citizens. In 432, at the beginning of the great war,
the population of
The effect of
slavery was threefold. By flooding the
market with cheap labour, it retarded technological advance and the
introduction of science into industry.
By threatening the wages of the free workers, it forced down the
birth-rate in the class of free citizens, and thirdly, it hampered the spread
of equalitarian philosophies and the formation of working-class and Socialist
movements.
We must bear
this in mind when we ask ourselves what Plato would think of modern Communism,
and what criticisms he would make of our economic system. For Plato was oblivious to the problem of
slavery. In the Laws he accepted
it as an awkward but necessary fact; in the Republic he refers to it
only when he suggests that Greeks should not enslave Greek prisoners of
war. Otherwise he blithely disregarded
it and built his society on a basis of free citizen labour, with slaves only
for domestic use, thereby implying that the ideal State would not be a
mercantile city with a great export trade, but an agricultural community,
living on its own resources and exporting only its surplus produce. Thus he refused to face the real problem of
Greek civilization, whose highest cultural level was always to be found
precisely in those mercantile cities whose slave economy he tacitly rejected;
and he limited his criticisms and proposals to the reorganization of a
privileged citizen body, disregarding the majority of human beings who fell
outside this category.
It is already
clear that Plato would not be in sympathy with modern Socialism, which is based
on the two demands for economic justice and for workers' control. While admitting the obvious fact of the
failure of capitalism to achieve its objective - the maximization of wealth -
he would argue that Socialists, by concentrating their attack upon economic
injustice, have blinded themselves to the real problem, and by demanding
workers' control are heading for catastrophe.
Workers' control might possibly be no worse than capitalist control, but
on the other hand it is not likely to be much better if the worker's ideal is
no different from that of the capitalist whom he is to supplant. What object can there be, he would ask, in
undergoing the horrors of revolution in order that a new ruling class may gain
power whose only motive is material gains and which demands freedom only to
enjoy the pleasures of prosperity?
Socialism might succeed in distributing wealth more 'fairly': it might
even increase productivity, but it could not eradicate the fundamental evil
that power is permitted to rest in the hands of 'civilians' whose only aim is
worldly happiness. Socialism is the
creed of one side in the class-war and for this reason it cannot overcome
it. For the fundamental fault lies not
in the capitalist system as such, but in the hearts of the individual men and
women of whom that system is made up. If
their hearts can be changed and their intelligence properly disciplined, then
the system will right itself and become not the master whom the statesman must
obey, but the servant of the philosopher-king.
For this reason
Plato would feel only disgust for the Communist glorification of material and
technological advance. The worship of
machine power and of natural science would seem to him merely vulgar, and he
would laugh at the self-complacency with which Russia asserts that she is
outstripping her capitalist rivals.
Plato was not an opponent of applied science: he would have encouraged
any research which increased man's control over nature and thus contributed to
the happiness and security of the civilian population. Believing that it is the purpose of the State
to make men happy, he was bound to welcome scientific advances which really
contributed to that end. But for him the
chief virtue of science was not its practical application: pure science, the
disinterested search for truth, was an end in itself, and the real scientist
was the man who pursued truth to the exclusion of all other interests. The philosopher must always be a pure
scientist in this sense and prefer knowledge to material happiness, whereas the
civilian sees only the material benefits which science can give.
Plato would not
therefore object to the Communist's belief in science as such, but to his
stress on its utilitarian aspect. He
would be pleased to see the possibilities of material happiness steadily
increasing under the Five Year Plan, but he would ask why the ruling class
seemed as pleased as their subjects with these advances. It is not, he would argue, the function of
government to make men rich, but to make them good, and it is therefore no
proof of the excellence of Communism that it can outdo capitalism in the
production of wealth. Wealth is as great
an evil as poverty, and a Government which encourages people to think in terms
of wealth is sowing the seeds of a new class-war. Granted that Russia grows really wealthy, how
can a people taught to regard material success as the highest end, fail to be
divided against itself and to break up into factions each claiming a larger
share of the booty? How can it fail to
become imperialist and seek to exploit the natural resources of others? And lastly, how can its rulers, who extol material
success, avoid the corruption of their own motives and the secret pursuit of
personal gain?
We shall return
later to this criticism of Communist ideals, but already we can observe that
Plato would consider Russian Communism as an attempt to impose the standards of
Western civilization on a barbarian country, arguing that, for all their
differences of political organization, Russia and America are linked by the tie
of a common aim. They are societies
dominated by the acquisitive instinct.
Their ideals are those of the technicians and craftsmen and bankers,
whom he had relegated to his third class; their philosophy of life is
materialistic and anti-religious, suppressing the spirit of true philosophy -
the search for the eternal principles of human conduct - and enslaving reason
to material progress. Giving the highest
place to natural science and the conquest of nature, they put power into the
hands of men who have not duly considered the ends for which power should be
used. Just as Americanism is the
philosophy of a privileged nation enjoying all the benefits of the industrial
revolution, so Communism is the creed of the outcasts and exploited, who claim
their share of the wealth. Both of them
are products of the acquisitive instinct.
The difference
between Western democracy and the Communist State lies therefore not in their
ends, but in their methods, and Plato might well suggest that, whereas the
former cannot obtain permanent success, the latter can, since it is the
wholehearted and scientific application of reason to the maximization of
wealth. Russia and America are both
devoted to this end, but Communism, because it has articulated its principles
and become fully self-conscious of its nature, will succeed where America will
fail. If material progress is accepted
as the only end of man - and this is the underlying assumption not only of
Marxism but of capitalist democracy - then, in a society based on free labour
and not on slavery, the Communist State is the only proper form of political
and economic organization. Any other system
will lead to slumps and economic disturbances which will hinder the march of
material progress. Communism therefore
is Liberalism purified of its inconsistencies and sentimentalities - the
theology of collective wealth - and as such it is the fiercest enemy of true
philosophy.
But in spite of
condemning its ideals, Plato would be passionately interested in the Russian
experiment, just because it is a self-conscious attempt to plan human society
in accordance with a clear philosophy of life.
Communist philosophy may be wrong, but it is a philosophy; and the
rulers of Russia are indeed philosopher-kings who have organized their State on
clear-cut philosophical principles. For
this reason Plato would find much to praise in the political and social structure
of the USSR [formerly Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - editor's note.].
Above all, he
would admire the organization of the Communist Party, an élite
trained for public service, subjected to military discipline, and schooled to
accept without question the philosophy and the policy of its leaders. The party member is the political soldier of
Communism, who sees to it that throughout the length and breadth of the land
the plans of the philosopher-kings are carried out by the subject classes. His task demands two qualities, courage and
obedience - the willingness to die for beliefs accepted on trust from the few
who know. Plato in the Academy had
sought to train 'administrators' of this sort, and the programme for their
education which he sketched in the Republic
[The reference is to Books II-IV. The education of philosophers in Books VI-VII
must be sharply distinguished. Here, of
course, there is no analogy with Soviet methods.]
could be accepted without demur by any Russian educationalist. He, too, had seen that the heroic self-sacrifice
and asceticism which such public service demands, can only be found in a select
and highly trained élite, inspired by a great
idea, for the sake of which they are glad to sacrifice their own lives, as well
as the lives of others. In Communist
Russia he would have seen the tyranny of just such an idea and it would have
confirmed his own belief that real civil courage is only granted to the fanatic
who is so convinced of the rightness of his plan that he cares more for the
idea of human happiness and justice than for actual happiness and actual
justice. For the sake of the Five Year
Plan, the Communist is willing to impose hardship and even death upon his
fellow-workers. His eyes are fixed on
their future happiness, so he can cheerfully neglect their present sufferings.
Here, then,
Plato would find a resemblance between his own ideal State and Communist
Russia. Both are attempts to make life
conform to a strictly rational pattern, which the philosopher believes
essential for human happiness; and to impose this pattern of life, government
is placed in the hands of an élite trained to
obey the philosophers' commands. But the
resemblance does not stop there. Plato
would have agreed with the Communist that it is quite useless to entrust the
lives of men and women to the care of any picked body of rulers, however pure
their motives, if you allow any vested interests to flourish unchecked. No combination of citizens intent on their
own economic ends must be allowed to threaten or cajole the Government, whether
it be a company anxious to increase its profits or a trade union formed to
protect the standard of living of the poorer classes. Every vested interest is a danger to good
government, and there is no way of preventing them from unduly influencing the
Government except to abolish them altogether.
Plato and Lenin were both prepared to do this.
There is,
indeed, a deep similarity between the temper of the two philosophers. They both held that philosophy and science
cannot be permitted to stand aside from life and contemplate the scene. Philosophy must leave the Academy and capture
power if human happiness is to be achieved.
Plato believed the philosopher must become king: Lenin achieved it. It was the belief in the practicability of
philosophy which made both of them so ruthless in the use of force. Those qualities in Communism which shock us
most, its suppression of the opposition, its sacrifice of the individual life
to the great plan, its hostility to all rival creeds, are the qualities which
Plato would have most admired. They are
qualities of a philosophy which knows exactly what life should be, and regards
as bigoted superstitions all religions and philosophies which differ from it. Neither Plato nor Lenin would have hesitated
to order the death penalty for heresy and deviations: and their inhumanity was
due to their complete certainty of the righteousness of their cause and the
truth of their philosophy. Both claimed
that merciless austerity would in the long run prove itself merciful. If surgery is needed, it is not mercy but
fear which prompts us to put aside the knife.
Two objections
will be raised to this analogy between Plato and Lenin. In the first place, it seems blatantly to
contradict an earlier assertion that, on Plato's view, Communism is essentially
a materialist and acquisitive philosophy; and in the second place, it is at
variance with Lenin's own doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The answers to these objections will perhaps
clarify the Platonic attitude to Communism.
Let us begin
with the second. The philosophy of Marx
and Lenin was based on their observed fact of class-conflict and
class-domination, and the theoretical conclusion that the dictatorship of the
proletariat will in the end abolish class-conflict. Communism holds that the class-war will
develop until either the proletariat seizes power or civilization break down,
and it therefore asserts that the dictatorship of the proletariat means not
that each proletarian should be his own king and govern himself as he did at
Athens, but that the Government should serve the interests of the proletariat
and suppress their oppressors. For this
to be achieved, government must be in the hands of the 'philosophers' with an administrative
staff (the Communist Party) and the proletariat must be subjected to a new
dictatorship, or ruling class.
On this point
there is no real difference between the views of Plato and Lenin. Plato also believed that the Government
should serve the interest of 'the civilians' and be freed from the corrupting
influence of 'vested interests'. But he
was philosopher enough to avoid so ambiguous a phrase as the 'Dictatorship of
the Proletariat', and to admit that in a totalitarian State there are no
dictators except the few who control the military and administrative machine.
Where Plato and
Lenin would part company is in the selection of the ruling class. Lenin made his appeal to the industrial
workers and to intellectuals who had thrown in their lot with them, and the
Communist leaders were chiefly drawn from these classes. Seeing that a gigantic lever was needed to
overthrow the existing order, he appealed to the discontent of the industrial
masses on whose work the system depends.
Proletarian solidarity was the means he employed for making a revolution
and giving power to the Communist philosophers, and picked proletarians were
members of his administrative élite. But Plato was convinced that the working
classes, like everyone else engaged in industry or trade, were incapable of political
wisdom. His rulers were to be drawn from
the nobility and the landed gentry, and though he did leave room for the
promotion of a worker, he considered such cases so unimportant that he made no
proper provision for it. He really
wanted a hereditary ruling caste, and for this reason he condemned
general education as destructive of political discipline.
But the
difference between Plato and Lenin is not simply a difference of opinion about
the political capacities of the working classes. Even if Plato went to Russia today and saw
that self-educated working-class people like Stalin can become rulers of
one-sixth of the world, he would still have maintained that these were
exceptions, and that most people, whatever class they come from, are incapable of
political responsibility. He might have
been quite willing to draw his ruling caste from the working classes, but he
would still have maintained a rigid separation of ruler and subject, and
excluded the mass of the people from any share in framing policy. On this point he would have found himself in
disagreement with orthodox Communism which denies that the party is a ruling
caste and tries to make it a flexible voluntary organization open to anyone
with correct views and enthusiasm for public service. Communist theory believes in general
education and the participation of every citizen in government, and urges that
the Soviet system is specially constructed to attain this end. It denounces the idea of a ruling class and
looks forward to a time when all will be fit to govern.
Plato would not,
however, pay much attention to the theorist, and would treat him in much the
same way as he treated the educationalist in an earlier chapter. 'I am content,' he would say, 'to see the
facts as they are. In Russia today
[Plato's visit took place in the 1930s.] you have an able statesman in control. He has built up a political machine which is
able to crush all rivals, and of the theorists and idealists who once
collaborated with him the majority are now dead or in exile. I have every sympathy with Stalin, and I
consider that on his principles he is fully justified in all that he has
done. Seeing that the 'noble lie' of
democracy and proletarian freedom was necessary to unite the people and to
overthrow the Government, he used it at the proper time. Now that it has served its purpose he sees
clearly that it must be suppressed and that those innocents who mistook myth
for reality must be quietly put away. He
knows that government is an affair of the few, and that an efficient
bureaucracy is incompatible with popular control. And so, preferring the wealth of the people
to all else, and seeing that it can only be obtained by the iron discipline of
reason, he rightly denounces as heretical those who seek to introduce
discussion and debate into his ordered kingdom, and to raise among his subjects
the banner of true democracy and popular control. For consider what would happen if the people
were to be given any voice in the affairs of State. Faction and strife would grow, autonomy would
be demanded here, expansion there, and worst of all, the Communist Party, now
the obedient and united instrument of government, would become a vulgar centre
of debate and discussion. Stalin is indeed
wise. If I understand him aright, he
will see to it that education is used to promote not criticism and creative
thought, but efficiency and obedience.
Where he finds revolt, he will ruthlessly crush it: when myths become
awkward he will discard them and substitute new ones. For he, like Marx and myself, is imbued with
a profound contempt for the stupidity of the common man, and an equal certainty
that he and his chosen friends alone are in possession of the knowledge which
can bring happiness to men.
'Most of all I
admire his mastery of propaganda and the sly humour of his employment of the
"noble lie". Deciding that the
time has come to crush all opposition, he first publishes a new and democratic
constitution, and then shoots the advocates of freedom. Thus he accomplishes two ends, both
establishing a democratic constitution and ensuring that there will be no-one
to make use of it. In this he shows
modesty as well, and that readiness to learn from his enemies which is the mark
of a true statesman. Observing the ease
with which the ruler of Germany conducts plebiscites and elections and yet
ensures that the voting is always correct, he has resolved even to outbid
Hitler and to build up the full machinery of representative institutions. He knows that the façade will at once satisfy
the people's craving for power, and decently veil from public curiosity the
working of actual government. For he
observed that, where a people is disciplined and has learnt to respect
authority, there democracy can safely be allowed, since no-one will abuse it
without general disapproval; and he has seen how in England a strong social
tradition can ensure the position of a ruling class more firmly than force of
arms or threats of violence of even a ministry of propaganda. With these examples before him he has decided
that the time is ripe for Russia to enter the ranks of the conservative nations
which have evolved a stable order of society and a proper dislike of
equalitarian sentiment. He will maintain
his secret police and his machinery of internal power for some time to come,
but I have no doubt that Russia will soon become an industrial nation, richer
than all others, less tinged with Radicalism and Liberal licence, and therefore
more able to assert her imperial designs against a divided and distracted world.
'But much though
I admire Stalin, I must confess that I regard him as the greatest enemy of
truth and knowledge. Not only has he
false ideals, but he has developed a philosophy to justify them as perverted as
it is persuasive. Denying the existence
of God and the hope of a future life, he preaches the pursuit of the things of
this world, and sees in the freedom to enjoy wealth and honour and power the
highest pleasures of man. For him, man
is an object the source of whose movements can be found in natural causes,
whose ideas are the product of necessity, and whose every action is predictable
by scientific law. And so he regards
reason as the natural servant of animal desire, and seeks to control nature
only to subject it once more to the tyranny of human appetite and greed. Denying the existence of the rational soul,
he cannot himself contemplate the reality behind the worldly appearances, or
pursue a happiness not of this world but of the next. Through this ignorance of true philosophy he
has raised science, which should be the servant of reason, to the throne of
reason itself and has proclaimed as the ultimate reality the transient process
of history which comes to be and passes away, a chaos of meaningless events.
'The foolish and
short-sighted will laugh at my observations and remark that a false philosophy
can harm no-one; and this will be true as long as philosophy is merely the
recreation of the young or the hobby of the old - as it is in England. But Stalin has harnessed a nation to the realization
of his philosophy on earth, and now there are millions of human beings who will
carry out his will. At present they are
pacific and friendly, for Russia has far to go before it has exploited its
natural wealth to the full, but the time will come when the lust for power and
the greed to subject all men to their plan will grow strong in the rulers. When that time comes only the influence of
true philosophy and self-control can restrain the unruly passions. But philosophy will be long since dead and,
as in the days of Pericles, the revolutionary cry for
bread and justice will become the imperial demand for power.
'Such is my
verdict upon Stalin and upon the future of Russia. But as for the young men and women in your
country who become converted to Communism, not because of its materialist ideas
or the hope it offers of future prosperity, but owing to a spirit of
dissatisfaction with the existing order, and a longing to free their countrymen
from bondage and misery - to them I should say: Beware of harnessing your fine
ideals to a doctrine which exalts material prosperity and whips up the hatred
and greed of an oppressed class. Your
ideals will not harmonize with the passions of those whom you would help: and
when you have liberated the oppressed, you will find that they in turn become
the oppressors. Be clear then in your
own minds that in any revolution, political power must be retained by you and
your like, if any social improvement is to be gained; and that it will be your
first duty to throw into new bondage those whom you have freed, and ruthlessly
to suppress the prophets of materialism and hate. Surrender then your illusion that
dictatorship is only a step on the way to freedom, and dream no longer that a
time will come when the seeds of class-conflict will die and the State can
wither away. The common man will always
need the discipline of the few and will always abuse political power; because
the reason which is within him is not strong, he can never submit himself
voluntarily to the rule of law, or enjoy true freedom.
'Your instinct
and the teaching of your Churches makes you reluctant to admit this fact, which
is confirmed daily by common experience.
And so you preach the equality of man and dream of a time when the human
race will live at peace, each man proceeding upon his appointed way as
effortlessly as the divine planets move in their perfect orbits, never crossing
one another's paths or failing in their duty, a starry system of rational
beings.
'My young
friends, that is a noble ideal which I myself share, but do not expect that you
will see it here on earth. Perhaps in
heaven you will contemplate reality: in this world you must attempt to give to
sluggish and reluctant matter a semblance of order and form. You cannot legislate for rational beings, but
must be content to compel a stupid race to avoid the worst consequences of its
stupidities. For statesmanship, unlike
philosophy, is the art of the second best.
It aims, not at perfecting man, but at preventing his further deterioration:
and the prudent statesman will be content if he can leave his countrymen no
worse off than he found them. One of
your teachers once said: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you". He was a wise man and he surely meant that
perfection can be contemplated by the mind's eye but can never be given earthly
form. If you neglect this saying and,
believing that man on earth can live the life of gods, encourage your
fellow-men in this false hope, you will end - for all your religious ideals and
good intentions - by destroying what little beauty and order we possess.
'Be content then
with smaller hopes, separating clearly from one another your religious ideals
and your practical aims, and recognizing that perfection is not of this world,
but of the next. And at all costs avoid
that heresy which teaches that in the history of the human race we may trace a
progress from imperfection towards perfection.
Your Communism is the product of an age of eager hopes and aspirations
which falsely interpreted the discoveries of natural science as signs that the
world was evolving towards the good, and that a spirit must in the end prevail
and that the workings of historical necessity would finally produce the earthly
millennium. This belief is an empty
delusion which mistakes material progress for spiritual betterment, and
increased wealth for an improvement of manners.
When I observe you and compare you with my countrymen, I notice many
distinctions of convention and habit, and a difference in the importance
attached to particular virtues. We
prized courage, ingenuity, good taste, and independence of spirit: you
Englishmen seem to prefer kindness and honesty.
In this you are different but not better than us, and your differences
are the result not of your actions but of conditions for the most part outside
your control, such as your greater wealth and your mastery of nature. These "blessings" have softened the
struggle for survival and so enabled you to afford a gentle and humanitarian
sentiment, and other such luxuries which in our epoch were not permitted. It is no true virtue to live according to the
standards of your age and to fulfil the obligations of your social code. Anybody equipped with intellect and a little
self-interest would do that! The truly
virtuous man is he who has raised himself above habit and convention and by his
knowledge has criticized and changed the manners of his fellow-citizens. The history of our race is the sombre take of
how a few good men from time to time have seen a little further than their
fellows and rescued them from their misery.
But no such improvements are permanent, always the world slips back into
self-assertion and greed, reverting from the truth it fears to the half-truths
and hypocrisies which are natural to it.
'I lived in a
time when the circle of time was moving from good to bad, from order to
disorder, from beauty to chaos. The
civilization which our forefathers had built was slipping back into barbarism
and anarchy. Art was degenerating into
prettiness and the old civic virtues were disappearing. A few of us, among them Socrates,
understood. We had no illusions that in
some distant future man would be perfect and the State would wither away: we
only hoped to stop the collapse, seeing that as things grew worse, not less but
more force would be necessary to maintain law and order and social
security. So I planned my ideal State as
a brake on the wheel of time, not as a stage in the progress of man: and when I
wished to gaze on perfection, I fixed my eyes on the eternal realities which do
not change, and the beauties which cannot fade because they are not of this
world, knowing that here at least in pure philosophy I had a friend
incorruptible by the inevitable process of change and decay.
'When I look on
your civilization and observe the rifts which are apparent in it, the
uncertainty of its economic order, the dangers of war, and the breakdown of
religion and morality, I do not feel a stranger. For you too are born into an epoch of
dissolution, and can no longer look forward to the unconquerable march of
progress. Try though you may, you cannot
believe that next year will show a splendid advance on last, that Providence is
on your side, and that you need only lend assistance to the powers of good
which by their own propulsion are pressing on towards perfection. And therefore the philosophy of Progress to
which you cling is out of date, and you no longer believe that mankind is on
the march towards freedom. You repeat
the slogans and the catchwords and the ideals of Progress, but they sound
hollow and insincere, because you have begun to suspect they can never be
realized in this world. Be content,
then, to see your fellow-men as they are, and to foresee that they will
degenerate unless you prevent it: concern yourselves as politicians with the
one question - how can we save a little of our civilization from the collapse
which threatens it, and renounce all allies whose ideal is either freedom or
material prosperity? Do not count on
progress or providence to do your work for you, but recognize yourselves as a
tiny company of individuals on whose actions the happiness of your country
depends, and by whose philosophy the rightness of these actions is in turn
determined.
'I read the
other day a poem by one of your few great prophets and it seemed to express
perfectly the spirit of your age and the problems you must face.
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre
The
falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things
fall apart: the centre cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The
best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.
Surely
some revelation is at hand;
Surely
the Second Coming is at hand.
The
Second Coming! Hardly are those words
out
When
a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles
my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A
shape with lion body and the head off a man,
A
gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is
moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel
shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The
darkness drops again; but now I know
That
twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And
what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born? [W.B.
Yeats, COLLECTED POEMS, pp.210-11.]
I would advise you to consider this prophecy and, bearing
it in mind, to give up your Utopias and your reckless belief in the common
man. Judge Russia not by theory, but by fact,
and study Stalin the ruler, not Marx the publicist. When you have done so, I am sure that you
will resolve to impose on your country a dictatorship as severe and as
permanent as the Russian, and to drive out the philosophy of materialism as
ruthlessly as Stalin has banished the spirit of true philosophy and the belief
in the immortal soul.'
CHAPTER IX
Plato Looks at Fascism
PLATO to his friend Aristotle,
Greetings. Knowing, my dear Aristotle,
your interest in the classification of constitutions, I have long intended to
write to you concerning my journey back to the world of space and time and to
relate my experiences to you. Now that
occasion offers, I am anxious to pose you a problem which will tax even your
genius for analysis and definition. For,
during my return to the world of space and time, I caught a glimpse of Germany,
when a certain Adolf Hitler was ruling there, and I
am still puzzling myself to discover in which of my classifications I shall put
National Socialism - which is the name he gave both to the 'noble lie' that he
invented and to the constitution with which he briefly endowed the German
people.
Let me,
therefore, expound to you quite simply the problem which confronts me. And in order that this matter may be
perfectly clear, you must excuse me if I narrate to you something which
happened to me during my stay in the capital of Germany. For while I was there I attended a great
assembly of the people. In one covered
hall were gathered close on thirty thousand men and women - though you will be
glad to hear the women took no part save to applaud and to look with pleasure
on the uniforms and physique of the men.
The gathering was well disciplined and gay with flags and uniforms and
the public - unlike our own unruly Greek assemblies - applauded only at certain
pre-arranged times, and then not with the confused hubbub of a democratic
crowd, but with short and incisive shouts like the barking of well-trained
dogs. At this I was well pleased, since
they had clearly come not to criticize their leaders but to receive from them
inspiration and hope.
There were many
speakers, but two particularly attracted my notice. The first was a small lame man, whose face
bore a strong resemblance to the Hittite type which we used to see in the Peiraeus. He was
clearly a demagogue, not concerned with truth but with persuasion, and I
therefore studied all that he said most carefully, being anxious to learn what
sort of 'noble lie' the National Socialists provide for their common
people. But the second speaker was a
philosopher, a learned man trained in academic research and professing to
distinguish truth from rhetoric; and to him I also listened carefully in order
to discover what is the philosophy of National Socialism, the esoteric truths
of the faith which none but the elect can understand.
In order that
you may appreciate my difficulty to the full, I will repeat to you - as well as
I can remember it - something of what each speaker said. Do not convict me of falsehood if some
details fall short of perfect accuracy, but rest assured that the general tenor
is correct. After much else, which is
not to the point, the little man who looked like a Hittite spoke as follows:
'... for
National Socialism springs from the German soul and boldly vindicates the
German conception of race as the fundamental unity upon which the State must be
based. It claims that the deep sense of
community, which we Germans feel when we stand together on the field of battle,
cannot be analysed into an ideological superstructure whose real basis is
mercenary self-seeking. Only a people
who have permitted their stock to be contaminated with the blood of colonial
peoples can accept the individualist philosophy of life which founds the State
upon the rationalistic contract of a gang of Jews. We Germans, thanks to a deep sense of
blood-brotherhood which binds us together and which enables us to reject
instinctively any "citizen" of mongrel stock, know that the doctrines
of Liberalism and Democracy and Marxism are all variants of one foul disease
with which the Jews seek to infect our people, to weaken its strength and so to
gain the upper hand. For we have seen
how those conspirators rigged up the constitution of Weimar - with its
mathematical "equality", its "individual rights", and its
"toleration" - with the express purpose of eradicating our true
German tradition of obedience to leadership, self-sacrifice for the community
and death to the traitor.
'For we must be
clear in our minds, fellow-Germans, that the enemy is crafty and sly. Dividing his forces, he gives them different
names and pretends they are opposed to one another. He does that to deceive you and to lull you
into false security. In France he veils
his filthy countenance under the form of democracy. In Russia he openly flaunts the Jewish ideal
of class-hatred. But he cannot hoodwink
us. World-capitalism and Communism are
both internationalist organizations willing to sacrifice everything to swell
their money-bags, and to suck the blood of women and children. Democracy is lined up on the side of the
Marxist dictatorship and the criminals of east and west and employing the
League of Nations once more to encircle our country and to deny us our place in
the sun.
'This world
conspiracy against the German people is proved by the famous Protocol of the
Elders of Zion. It does not affect my
argument that this protocol is said to be a "forgery": so-called
scientific proof cannot controvert the fact that in that document the very
essence of Hebraic Reason is disclosed.
No scientist can disprove our racial theory since it does not consist of
biological concepts but is the expression of the German philosophy of
life. Racialism is not an international
science but a German creed, and though ten thousand intellectuals disprove it,
our own German blood will scorn their rational argumentation: we shall always
KNOW deep down and instinctively who our enemy is. World Jewry does not simply means the
subhuman members of the Jewish species: world Jewry is the spirit of Jewish
reason wherever it is found, the spirit of Jewish religion in every land, the
octopus of class-war and capitalist cruelty which threatens to strangle the
Aryan race, to dry up its life-blood and so to weaken our European culture that
it succumbs to the menace of Oriental Bolshevism.
'It is this
spirit of Jewish reason which in the last two hundred years has permeated
European culture and well-nigh destroyed it.
In capitalism it invented an economic machine to exploit the natural
wealth of nations and to divide the spoils among the high-priests of world
finance: a machine whose imperialism and rapacity mobilizes the masses to fight
not for their countries but for the interests of world Jewry. In Christianity it found a religion of
humility and brotherly love to sap the vitality of the race: so that Christian
humanitarians now spend millions a year on preserving the unfit and the
cripples and in encouraging them to breed at the cost of the healthy and
strong. In Liberalism and Communism it
found philosophies ready to make the nonsensical assertion that all men are
equal and rational, to deny blood-brotherhood and the distinction of leader and
follower and so to subject the Western world to the rule of the machine and of
finance. In democracy it found a system
of government calculated precisely to accentuate party differences, to put
power into the hands of political bosses and to destroy the natural leadership
of the nation. Jewish reason instigated
the failure of democracy in order to introduce Communism, and finally to
enslave the German people to Jewish Bolshevism.
'But Jewish
reason has not been content to befoul our politics. It has seeped into our universities and
schools. Everywhere its destructive
spirit of ridicule has tried to weaken our German spirit and to replace German
culture and manners with the drab morality of an international cultural
Bolshevism. Culture, my friends, springs
from the organic life of the race.
Cultural Bolshevism tries to kill that life by clamping on us all the
machine-made products of the intellect.
It destroys imagination and romance and replaces them with rationalistic
cleverness.
'Everywhere you
look, you will find the enemy. True to
his loathsome nature, he knows the arts of concealment and subterfuge, of alias
and alibi. You must smell him out and
when you have found him I know that you will not be knock-kneed or snivel
Christian sentimentalities, but will have your revolvers ready.
'But let us turn
to the positive side of our task.
National Socialism has triumphed: it has destroyed democracy and
forestalled the Communist conspiracy within German itself. It has knocked on the head a few Socialists
and Liberals and Pacifists and Democrats - incurable degenerates - and it has
locked up the cases which were not so hopeless and given them a taste of German
re-education. The German people has been
freed from its slavery to an un-German creed, and, conscious of its destiny
once more, is working as a blood-brotherhood for the Cause. The faction and dissension bred by
parliamentary institutions has been suppressed: the doctrine of class-war has
been eradicated from the German heart, and the employee and employer
collaborate once more for the good of the nation. Only the Churches have been reluctant to toe
the line, but, since we have the youth of the nation behind us, we can afford
to disregard the snivelling scrupulosities of
Lutheran greybeards and of the black moles.
Germany has rekindled the flame of German tradition, and strong in that
tradition we have smashed unemployment at home and the League of Nations
abroad. The whole world trembles before
us - or, rather, the statesmen tremble - while the peoples become gradually
aware of their Aryan inheritance and look to us to liberate them from their miseries.'
I was well
pleased with this speech, displaying, as it did, an understanding of the
popular mind which can only appreciate half-truths tricked up in the vulgar
trimmings of symbol and myth. For I need
not assure you that none of what he said approximated even to the truth, or
remind you that the Jewish people, like all others, is composed of good and
bad, stupid and intelligent, and so on.
But the speaker had seen that the 'noble lie' need not take account of
scientifically ascertainable fact, but must always express truth in the form of
a symbol, and so, for reasons which I need not go into, he had chosen the Jew
to represent all things evil and dangerous for the common man. But most subtle of all, he had grasped that
reason, which for us is the highest good, is for the vulgar a snare and a
delusion, and therefore in his 'noble lie' he displayed an irony worthy of
Socrates himself, making reason and philosophy the chief cause of all our
troubles, and abusing the Jew for possessing the most priceless treasure of
man. How I relished the impudence of the
fellow, seeing well that he had reason enough and to spare and had yoked it to
the service of the very rhetoric and 'intellectualism' which he so vehemently
denounced. If he is strictly subjected
to the commands of a philosopher, I thought, he can indeed be entrusted with
the task of controlling the popular passions.
For he has the power of uniting them in a common purpose, of making them
forget their present discomforts and pains for the sake of future bliss, and of
fixing in their minds the picture of an enemy for whose destruction they will
risk all. But since this enemy is only a
symbol with no real counterpart, he can manipulate it and disguise it in
countless garbs, so that anything which it is to the interest of the State to
oppose and to destroy, appears to the people as an example of Jewish reason,
and anything which is to be defended and advanced is seen as an instance of
Aryan virtue. In this way, by the use of
these two myths, he is able to raise up a well-nigh fanatical enthusiasm among
the populace for any enterprise which he may undertake.
And I observed
that the people were well pleased with the 'noble lie'. Buffeted and bruised by many years of war and
political faction, uncertain of employment, and subjected to currency
manipulation and commercial intrigues on whose ingenuity and devilments even
our traders and bankers would gaze with amazement, they had grown weary of a
self-government which was no self-government, but the tyranny of politicians
and generals and industrialists. They
had been filled, as all these modern democracies were, with vague religious
ideals of brotherhood and love and understanding, and had believed that
parliamentary government was somehow or other connected with these ideals. And so, when they were defeated in war, they
set up a democratic regime and stretched out friendly arms to the democracies
which had defeated them. Poor
souls! They were speedily
disillusioned. For the modern
democracies are as nationalist and imperialist in their actual policy -
whatever their sentiments may be - as the Athens of Pericles
and even of Cleon.
After the war they set up a League of Nations which, like our own Delian League, degenerated into an empire, or rather, an
instrument of empire, for control of which the Great Powers within it fiercely
struggled - all the while speaking words as honeyed and as high-sounding as Pericles himself.
And so at last
the common people in Germany were schooled by hard necessity to see that
democracy is only agreeable for a people with money to spend and rich men to
squeeze; and that though it is pleasant to allow open competition for shares in
a large cake, it is not so pleasant to fight for a loaf of bread against rich
and influential people. For they go off
with the bread and the common man preserves only the freedom to starve.
Thus the German
people saw with regard both to home and to foreign affairs. For in Germany itself, as the class-war grew
fiercer, the plight of the common people became steadily worse: and abroad, the
disturbances of trade caused by the World War compelled the victorious
democracies to regard Germany as a rival and not as a friend, and to seek by
every mean to prevent her jeopardizing their own trade.
Thus history was
preparing the German people to accept a revolution and to welcome a
dictatorship which should impose order upon their own troubled lives and
should, by force of arms and by the rugged language of the soldier, expose the
hypocrisies of the League of Nations.
Now among the townsmen and the labourers in the factories there was a
resolve to impose the dictatorship of the Communists, and this might well have
been achieved if the leaders had not befuddled the minds of their followers
with talk of self-government and workers' control and suchlike democratic
foolery. For these leaders could never
make up their minds whether they wished to be democratic demagogues or
dictators, and so the people had no confidence in them - which was just as well
- and turned with enthusiasm to the 'noble lie' of the National
Socialists. Within the space of a few
months these remarkable men had conquered power, thanks partly to the financial
aid which was rendered by the industrialists and partly to the rhetoric of leaders
like the lame man whom I had just heard.
I have related
all this to you that you may appreciate to the full the capacities of the
fellow. Rest assured he does not need to
study your Politics in order to discover how to retain his power. And so let us leave him and turn our
attention to the second speaker.
You can imagine
with what eagerness I awaited his words.
For I said to myself, 'He must be no mean philosopher if he can control
a sophist so cunning as this fellow has proved himself to be. But since he is a gentleman, well-bred and
well-educated (as the first speaker was not), no doubt he has within him a soul
more resolute and an intelligence more powerful than even my friend Dion of Syracuse.'
In this surmise I was to be sadly disappointed. For judge of my horror and amazement when he
said:
'Fellow Germans,
you have heard the wonderful speech of the Doctor, and you will agree with me
that he has expressed the supreme truths of German philosophy. I am an academic, and I freely admit to you that,
before the revolution, I did not actively support National Socialism. I was blinded by the Jewish Press and by my
fellow academics - most of whom, I am glad to say, are now in exile largely
owing to my zeal - and did not then see the divine qualities of our leader or
the place which God has given him in German history. But now my eyes are opened and I am content
to serve as a humble collaborator in the great work of national regeneration. I see now that intellect and criticism must
be schooled to accept the promptings of intuition and of that knowledge which
streams in the blood of the Aryan and challenges the barren logic of
Liberalism. I have renounced that
scientific spirit which is a product of Jewish intellect and I am devoting my
services to the cause we all have at heart.
Before the great days of March 1933 I called myself a philosopher and
pretended to study Plato: but, in fact, I contented myself with petty
elucidation of the text and tried to read into him my Liberal prejudices. I confess this all to you openly, and I thank
God that my students burnt all the books which I then wrote. I have now written a great work entitled Platon und der ursprung des Nationalsozialistischen
Staatsgedankens.
For it is my intention to prove to the world that all that is true in
philosophy can be found, if you search long enough, in the pages of Mein Kampf, and
that for this reason Plato, insofar as he spoke the truth, was a prototype of
National Socialism. In this book I
maintain that Plato preached the revolution which Adolf
Hitler has so wonderfully carried through, the spiritual regeneration of his
people from commercialism, individualism, and cultural Bolshevism. Rejecting the degenerate democracy of Athens,
he turned to aristocratic Sparta and sought in Syracuse to rekindle the Spartan
spirit. Sparta was a military State: and
the Spartan citizen was a soldier of Laconia (as his land was called) - laconic
in his speech as a soldier should be.
From boyhood he lived a soldier's life and the State saw to his
education. The boys were divided into
"packs" under the leadership of an elder boy and were given a Spartan
training. Their food and their dress was
simple: their intellectual education, that which a soldier needs. They went barefoot, and they were encouraged
to steal if they were hungry: but they were flogged if the theft was
discovered. For to learn to steal
successfully teaches the art of ambush and forage which every warrior needs. This Spartan education is a wonderful
prototype of our Aryan ideals. It
subordinates the individual to the State, and the follower to the leader; and
it develops those qualities of courage, simplicity, and discipline which are
the marks of a warrior - and of a ruling race.
'Sparta was
Plato's ideal, and it is our Nazi ideal too.
We, like Plato, reject the luxury and intrigue and intellectualism of
Athens: we reject the imperialism of mathematical equality which enables the
demagogue and the commercial magnate to rob the natural ruler of his
power. We too claim that the common
people need not self-government but good government: and we believe that the
statesman's job is the education of a warrior class to whom the protection of
the people can be entrusted.
'But how was it
that Plato the Athenian advocated in his Republic the restoration of the
Spartan State? Because, my friends,
Plato was greater than the Athens in which he lived. He was able to free himself from her
corrupting influence and to recreate in his mind the vision of the true Greek
city-state, a simple community of warrior-rulers and happy peasants, and he had
the courage to tell his fellow-citizens that they must learn their lesson from
Sparta. Of course in his writings there
are still traces of the individualism and intellectualism of Athenian thought;
but if we are to discover the true Plato we must disregard these blemishes and
realize that Plato, in his early years, fell under the dangerous influence of
Socrates, the prophet of sophistical rationalism, the
sceptical defamer of the city-state. Plato
was at first charmed by his cleverness, his verbal agility, and his apparent
opposition to democracy, and for many years he succumbed to a dangerous
intellectualism. But in the Republic
his aristocratic spirit reasserted itself; he renounced Socrates and claimed
kinship with Sparta; his discarded toleration and a weak sympathy with the
common man and, aware of his spiritual vocation, advocated the concentration of
all power in the hands of the bearers of Aryan culture - the warriors. The Republic is the abnegation by the
pupil of a perverse master, and the assertion that even friendship must be
sacrificed to the cause of the Aryan race; it is, indeed, the philosophical
archetype of that terrible decision which our leader himself made when he
ordered the blood bath of June 30, 1934.'
You can imagine
my feelings! Dionysius' book on my
philosophy [See Plato, Letter VII, 341.] was nothing to this.
I was just about to rise to my feet when I noticed that the audience had
already become exceedingly restive and that the chairman had hurriedly pushed
the philosopher off the dais. I
therefore made my way towards him, plucked him by the sleeve, and disguising my
identity, said to him with all the self-control I could muster, 'I should be
obliged if you could speak to me for a moment.'
The philosopher recognized me for a foreigner by my accent and (hoping,
I presume, to advance his position by persuading me of the excellence of all
things German) immediately complied with my request.
I will not waste
your time with the details of our conversation.
Anxious to retain the sobriety which is the mark of the true
philosopher, I did not at once attack him for his slanders on the memory of
Socrates, but turned the talk to Sparta and politely expressed my interest at his
delight with Spartan ideals. I asked him
if he really thought that Germany was like Sparta, and when he replied
affirmatively, I reminded him that in Sparta the Helot serfs outnumbered the Spartiates by fifteen to one, and that for this reason the Spartiates, always in fear of a revolt, organized a secret
police to murder any Helot who showed any initiative. Did he think that on this point there was any
resemblance? Not bothering to wait for a
reply, I went on to show that Sparta was an agricultural community, that all
wealth was forbidden to its ruling class, and that in this way the Spartans
avoided the imperialism of Athens. With
no interest in markets or raw materials and with a ban on the participation of
the citizen in trade, they had no incentive to foreign adventures. Furthermore the terror of Helot revolts kept
them always at home. Such was the
condition of Sparta: did he press the analogy here? Did he suggest that in Germany capitalism had
been suppressed or that the National Socialist was forbidden all access to
wealth? Of course he did not. Germany was an industrial State with the same
needs and aspirations as any democracy, and in Germany the industrialist has
even more influence in politics than in the democracies.
I admit to you
that all this was easy game, but I felt it my duty to expose to this professor
of philosophy the full depths of his ignorance and turpitude and
self-deception, and so I concluded the matter by saying, 'My dear sir, there
was among the Athenians many who admired Sparta, but none of us were blind to
her failings. Plato most of all attacked
the one-sidedness of her education and the vile condition of her serfs. As for your suggestion that your new State
has a Spartan constitution simply because it has adopted her boorishness and
cruelty as an instrument for suppressing democracy and furthering its
imperialist pretensions, that is fantastic, and you know it.'
He agreed
reluctantly, muttering something about not pressing analogies too far; but I
would not let him go, and went on to discuss the Republic, showing that
I, so far from renouncing Athens, had tried to fuse together the virtues of
Athenian reason with those of Spartan morale.
I had tried to turn the tyranny of a cruel militarism into the gentle
rule of the philosopher who is resolved to give happiness to his people, and
sacrifices the pleasures of wealth and family to fit himself for the task of
ruling. I argued that I denounced
militarism as fiercely as I denounced democracy, and that no-one had praised
reason and intellect more highly than I.
And then I turned on him personally and said: 'My friend - for we must
be friendly to all - you call yourself a philosopher and you have been
privileged to enjoy all the advantages which money and education can lavish on
a man. You have chosen the highest
calling which man can choose and claim to have devoted yourself to the service
of truth and wisdom. And yet you have
dared to declare before your countrymen that philosophy must serve the
"noble lie" and that reason must be the instrument of intuition and
of the blood. You call yourself not only
a philosopher, but a patriot too; and yet you dare to besmirch the name of
Socrates who, above all men, strove to harmonize these two vocations and died
in the attempt. I tell you that in so
doing you have proved yourself a coward, unworthy of both philosophy and of
your State. For what has happened? A great revolution has taken place, and a
chance has been given to you in that shift of power to make the influence of truth
ad philosophic integrity once again supreme in Germany. The people are disciplined and content to
obey the commands of the soldiers and demagogues who have gained control. And yet you professors and philosophers and
scientists, instead of seeing the duty which rests on your shoulders of gaining
control over the new leaders, and imposing on their myths the law and order
which would give them shape, have accepted these myths as truth, toadying to
the men you should command, and intriguing against one another for comfortable
positions in the new order. It was your
duty to uphold the intellectualism of Athens, and to set it over the Spartan
virtues of the military class: to see to it that the vested interests should
not turn and twist the Aryan myth to their own advantage, making of your new
discipline an instrument of selfish economic oppression. Above all, you should have retained your
universities pure and intact from the noble lies which must be provided for the
lower orders, and seen to it that there, at least, the spirit of pure research
was preserved and strengthened by a resolution among you all to shrink at
nothing in order to achieve power in the State.
'But instead of
this you have flattered and pampered the new rulers, like lackeys fearful of
losing their weekly wage. You have
proclaimed as philosophic truths the myths and symbols of the politicians and
have allowed your universities to become the home of vulgar propaganda and sophistical half-truths.
You will tell me that it was impossible for you to gain power and
influence, and that the new rulers were not amenable to reason. My good sir, that may possibly be true, but
it is not a truth which you have tested.
My two best friends gave their lives in the attempt. Socrates was executed by the Athenians, and Dion was murdered at Syracuse. They did not shrink from the uttermost danger
to proclaim the cause of truth on every occasion and to persuade the rulers to
see the error of their ways and to entrust the conduct of affairs to
reason. They in their time were prepared
to give their lives, but you and your associates will not risk your pay. Instead, you slyly prostitute the cause of
truth to rhetoric and sophistry.
'I do not only
refer to the members of your universities, but to all the "educated"
gentlemen who now sit passive under the tyranny of myth. I know that a few, inspired with true
philosophy, have retired into private life or fled to exile so that the rest of
the world may not forget that your country was once famous for its promotion of
truth, and that Germans can still prefer philosophy to prosperity. But the majority are like yourself, and as a
result the "noble lie" which could be the means of happiness to all
is become an instrument of insane destruction.
Believed no less by the rulers than by their subjects, it has effected
not regeneration, but tyranny. For the
motives of your rulers are ambition and power.
They have suppressed democracy only to replace it by intrigue and secret
corruption and palace revolution.
'But this is not
to be accounted to their fault. They are
men who know no better, loyal and devoted when knowledge rules, but cruel and
insensate when power is left to them alone.
Long ago I foretold what would happen in such a State, and I cannot do
better before I let you go than to repeat to you my own words:
'"Such then
will be the revolution. But after the
revolution how will it be governed?... It will distrust the wise rulers, for
its wise men will now be of mixed character, not simple and sincere as before;
it will prefer spirited and more straightforward men, made more for war than
for peace, will have a great admiration for military tricks and stratagems, and
will always be engaging in war.
'"... These
men will be avaricious ... with a fierce secret passion for gold and
silver. They will have storehouses and
treasuries of their own where they will store their wealth in secret. They will be ringed round with dwellings,
mere private nests where they may squander a lavish expenditure on their wives,
and whomsoever they please.
'"... They
will be sparing of their money ... but their desires will make them enjoy
spending other men's money. They will
pluck the fruits of pleasure in secret, running away from the law, like boys
running away from their father.
Compulsion and not persuasion will have controlled their education,
because they have neglected the true Muse, who is accompanied by reason and
philosophy, and have honoured gymnastics above music."'
[
'You described,'
he said, 'a constitution compounded throughout of good and evil.'
'Yes, it is a
compound,' I said. 'But one single
feature is conspicuous in it, and that is rivalry and ambition.'
When I had
spoken thus, I bade him a curt farewell.
Such, my dear
Aristotle, were my experiences in Nazi Germany, and I have related them at
length, because I was sure it would interest you to see that human nature has
not changed profoundly since you died.
When I return I will ask you to give your opinion on my analysis of the
National Socialist (or Fascist) State, which I hold to be a mixed constitution
containing elements of both democracy and oligarchy, and also to chide me if I
was too severe with the calumniator of my friend Socrates. For I remember that you were always calmer in
your judgement and, expecting little of mankind, were less shocked by iniquity
than I.
CHAPTER X
Why Plato Failed
WE have tried in the preceding chapters
to discover how Plato would have faced the problems of a world very different
from his own. We have seen his
criticism, and sometimes his ridicule of modern institutions, and we have
discovered some concrete proposals which he would probably make. We have, in fact, staged the Republic
in modern dress, and it is now for us to consider our own attitude to it and to
ask ourselves whether we are convinced by the Platonic analysis and the
Platonic solution of our problems.
Before we do,
however, it may be wise to discover how Plato fared in his own Greek world, and
how his theories worked out when applied in his own day - to resume, in fact,
the story of his life which we broke off in the middle of Chapter V. There we had reached the moment when in 367
he set sail for Sicily, resolved to turn a kind into a philosopher. Syracuse, where young Dionysius II ruled, was
at this time the largest city in the Western world; three times as big as
Athens and the Peiraeus put together. It was the capital of the Sicilian Greeks and
the bulwark of Hellenism against Carthage.
The menace of Carthage had been for the Western Greeks the dominating
fact of foreign politics. In the same
year (480) that Athens defeated Persia, Syracuse, under the military
dictatorship of Gelon, had defeated Carthage and
ensured the independence of the Greek cities for half a century. From 480 to 420 they too had prospered:
Sicily and South Italy had become one of the granaries of the world and the
centre of considerable industrial activity too.
Then in 415 had come the attempt by Athens to include Sicily in her
Empire, successfully repelled by Syracuse.
But throughout their history the Western Greeks were like their Aegean
kinsmen. Only danger could unite them;
when that was passed they quarrelled with each other, and Sicily and South
Italy were in a state of intermittent warfare.
Prosperity here, as in the Aegean, brought class-war; democrats and
oligarchs struggled for power in each town and wasted their strength in a war
of attrition. It is not surprising
therefore that, when in 409 Carthage launched a new attack on Sicily, the
Greeks fell an easy prey to a disciplined military power. In 406 Agrigentum
was sacked and its lovely temples ruined: in 405 even Syracuse was
threatened. Once more, as in 480, only
one thing could save Hellenism in the west - military dictatorship to put down
dissension, to instil order and to build up a united front against
Carthage. In 405 Dionysius I, a young
soldier of twenty-five, seized power in Syracuse. With the help of a highly paid bodyguard and
foreign mercenaries he smashed the political factions, gained the support of
the people, and set himself up as democratic dictator. Democracy voted itself out of any but a
formal existence.
Dionysius was a
remarkable man, a living example of the Realpolitiker
whom Plato portrayed in the character of Callicles. Power was the only force which he recognized
in politics; tradition, liberty, and aristocracy were for him outworn
things. Syracuse must become the centre
of the anti-Carthaginian movement and the international anarchy be
crushed. He therefore defeated and
destroyed many of the independent Greek cities and moved their populations to
new Syracuse, planting in their stead loyal colonies of soldiers. Money was needed for armaments; he therefore
taxed mercilessly, stripped the temples, and scrupled at no means of collecting
wealth. Men were needed to fight; he
therefore freed slaves and serfs, smashed the aristocratic reaction, and
hammered the Syracusan proletariat into some sort of
unity. Hated by aristocrat, industrialist,
moralist, and workman alike, abused by historians and philosophers as a foul
and bloody tyrant, he yet succeeded in forging a war machine with which for
thirty years he kept
Such was the man
whom Plato visited on his first voyage to Sicily in 388 B.C. The philosopher was deeply shocked by all he
saw; the ruthless tyranny and the luxurious life of the court alike disgusted
him, and he was bold enough to say so.
Dionysius, in fury, inquired what his business might be in Sicily, to
which Plato replied that he came to seek a virtuous man. 'Waste of time,' said the tyrant shortly, and
the interview closed. But Plato could
never forget the morose grandeur of the soldier who trusted no friend, lived in
terror of assassination and yet had saved Greek independence. Condemning him as he did, he could not deny
his achievements, or the brute fact that force had prevailed to achieve a unity
which no gentlemanly discussion of scruples had achieved.
[
Moreover, Dion, Plato's favourite pupil, was an influential figure at
the court; his sister was one of Dionysius' wives, his father had been one of
his best generals, and he himself was a trusted negotiator and a good
soldier. Through Dion
therefore Plato could exert a decisive influence on the largest city in the
Greek world, the strongest military defender of Hellenic independence. When in 367 the old tyrant died, Dion had hoped to gain some share of power for his own
nephew, but Dionysius II, son of Dionysius' foreign wife, was too quick for him
and seized the throne. Dion, however, remained the most powerful individual in the
court and, in spite of the opposition of Philistus,
an able general and his rival for power, persuaded the young man to invite the
famous philosopher as his adviser.
Dionysius was a shrewd but inexperienced youth, a dilettante by nature,
and he was tickled by the idea. It
seemed possible that under Plato's influence he might develop into a true
philosopher-king: at least it was clear that here, if anywhere, was an
opportunity to test the practicality of Plato's political plans.
It is essential
to discover the nature of Plato's intentions when he sailed for Syracuse in
367. Fortunately, in the letters which
he wrote long afterwards, he has given us some indications. In the first place, he was resolved to
withdraw Dionysius from the corrupting influence of the court, imbue him with
the moral ideals of the Academy, and put him through the course of mathematical
and philosophical study which he held to be the necessary basis of
statesmanship. Only if the tyrant became
a philosopher could the rest of the policy be carried through. Secondly, he was resolved to relax the iron
discipline of the military dictatorship which Dionysius I had exercised over
the Sicilian Greeks. Force must only be
used to impose justice, and the philosopher-king must turn his attention to the
education of his countrymen and to purging the court of its luxury and
self-indulgence. A voluntary abnegation
of wealth must be demanded of it, and a new ruling élite
must be developed, drawn from the aristocratic families and devoted tot he
cause of law and order. Thirdly, the
Greek cities of Sicily, destroyed by Dionysius, must be rebuilt on the basis of
aristocratic institutions, and set under the constitutional monarchy of the
young philosopher-king.
It is probable
that at this period the Platonic programme comprised no more than these three
points, since Plato believed that once the new philosopher-king were in power,
everything else would follow of its own accord.
The new cult was welcomed by Dionysius and philosophy became a royal
craze. Plutarch has given us a picture
of this strange phenomenon.
'This was the
state of affairs when Plato came to Sicily, who, at his first arrival, was
received with wonderful demonstrations of kindness and respect. For one of the royal chariots, richly
ornamented, was in attendance to receive him when he came on shore; Dionysius
himself sacrificed to the gods in thankful acknowledgement for the great
happiness which had befallen his government.
The citizens also began to entertain marvellous hopes of a speedy
reformation when they observed the modesty which now ruled in the banquets and
the general decorum which prevailed in all the court, their tyrant himself also
behaving with gentleness and humanity in all the matters of business that came
before him. There was a general passion
for reasoning and philosophy, insomuch that the very palace, it is reported,
was filled with dust by the concourse of the students in mathematics who were
working out their problems there. Some
few days later, it was the time of one of the Syracusan
sacrifices; and when the priest, as he was wont, prayed for the long and safe
continuance of the tyrant, Dionysius, it is said, as he stood by, cried out,
"Leave off praying for evil upon us."
This sensibly vexed Philistus and his party,
who conjectured that if Plato, upon such brief acquaintance, had so far
transformed and altered the young man's mind, longer converse and greater
intimacy would give him such influence and authority that it would be
impossible to withstand him.'
The new policy
was bound to raise dismay among Dion's rivals. Philistus was now
banished, and it was suggested that the invitation to Plato was a device to
ensure Dion's position at court. The tactlessness and self-righteous demeanour
of Dion did nothing to dispel the suspicion. The devotee of the ideals of the Academy was
something of a prig, and his puritanism had a
ruthless flavour to it which suggested that ambition and self-interest were
mixed with its idealism. Dion at least shoed no signs of surrendering his palatial
house and princely income, or of sacrificing the pleasures of wealth for pure
philosophy. But there were more serious
critics who urged that the reformers were undoing the achievements of Dionysius
I. Sicilian unity had been achieved and
maintained by force of arms, and by the support of the commercial
interests. To relax the dictatorship, to
oust industry from political control and to entrust power to callow idealists,
would break the unity achieved at such terrific cost. Hastily Philistus,
the hard-headed politician of the old school, was recalled, and began to
suggest to the young tyrant the dark motives which Dion's
idealism might cloak. Meanwhile
Dionysius' enthusiasm for mathematics had cooled and he began to ask why he
should pursue these weary studied before beginning the more practical - and
glorious - work of reform. Plato's
austerity impressed but also annoyed him, and his high moral tone began to
jar. On the other hand, the eyes of the
Greek world were upon him: if he dismissed Plato, it would be said that the
great philosopher had found him unworthy.
He decided on a compromise, banished Dion from
Sicily, and retained Plato in courteous captivity. A month or two later a minor war broke
out. Dionysius had no more time for
philosophy and bade his friend a polite 'goodbye', extracting a promise from
him to return soon, and on the way home to negotiate an alliance between
Syracuse and Plato's friend, Archytas the Pythagorean
ruler of Tarentum. Thus the honour of
both was saved and Plato within a year was back in Athens, having apparently
converted the greatest tyrant in Greece to his philosophy.
It is possible
that Plato might never have returned to Syracuse had it not been for Dion's private affairs.
Dionysius, apprehensive that the latter might use his wealth for
counter-revolutionary purposes, confiscated all that Dion
had left in Sicily, and to test whether he had given up all hope of return,
suggested that he should allow his wife (whom he had left behind) to be married
to another courtier. Dion
indignantly refused, whereupon Dionysius began to sell up his estate and,
anxious to cause a rift between his rival and the philosopher, invited Plato to
resume his position as advisor to Syracuse.
Plato refused, whereon Dionysius, with a polite suggestion of blackmail,
hinted that he would only hand over Dion's property
if Plato came. The philosopher
hesitated, but a letter from Archytas of Tarentum
suggesting that Syracuse might break off diplomatic relations if he refused,
tipped the scale in favour of another attempt.
In 361 he reluctantly returned to Sicily.
It seems
probable that Dionysius was really intrigued by Plato's philosophy and anxious
to discuss it with him. But Plato would
not allow the noblest of human activities to become the hobby of a tyrant, and
sternly demanded that Dionysius should submit himself to the full rigours of
the Academic discipline. Dionysius
refused, but neither he nor Plato (for the sake of their reputations) could
allow the breach to become public knowledge, and so Plato lived on in the
acropolis month after month while Dionysius sold up the rest of Dion's estate and disposed of his wife. The court and the mercenaries, deceived by
the official atmosphere of cordiality, began to suspect Plato of undue
influence, and he was nearly killed during a mutiny of soldier demanding higher
pay. At last Archytas
sent a ship to rescue him and Plato escaped.
Left to himself,
Dionysius continued his philosophical studies, and tried to carry out the
Platonic programme, founding new cities and giving them aristocratic
constitutions on Plato's lines. Idealist
dilettantism began to weaken the structure of the military dictatorship and it
was clear that soon Sicily would again become a prey to Carthaginian
invasion. But Dion
had made up his mind. Meeting Plato on
his return, he informed him that he had decided to conquer Syracuse and himself
to impose the rule of the philosopher-kings.
Would Plato help?
His experiences
in Sicily had broken Plato's spirit. He
was close on seventy and the enthusiasm which had inspired the writing of the Republic
had faded. With it had gone the moral
certitude which had justified him in his assertion that truth and right should
impose themselves by force. Syracusan politics had given him a distaste for bloodshed
and made him wonder if any man were good enough to undertake the
responsibilities of absolute dictatorship.
He began to ask himself if the freedom and liberty of the subject which
he had so fiercely derided were after all so futile. At least they gave some protection against
tyranny.
At the breath of
these doubts, the Platonic plan for the salvation of Greece collapsed like a
pack of cards. Plato had denounced all
constitutional government and advocated the dictatorship of the good. His disdain for legal forms and the details
of legislation had been based on a conviction that the education of the rulers
could replace them. Now that he doubted
if such rulers could be produced by his Academy, and began to pin his faith to
detailed legislation as a check on absolutism, the political programme of the Republic
became a Utopian dream. When Dion begged Plato to go with him, the philosopher refused,
excusing himself on the grounds of old age and friendship with Dionysius, and
remarking sagely that it is better to suffer injustice than to practise it.
But the younger
members of the Academy were not of the same temper. For them the Republic was still a
gospel and Dion the man to realize it. While Plato began sadly to work out a new constitution
and legislative programme for the new State, Dion was
recruiting among his pupils. In 357,
with a select staff of philosophers and 500 men, he set sail to conquer the
greatest city in Greece. The second
attempt to put the dictatorship of the good into practice had begun - but the
creator of the plan refused to participate.
Instead, with anxious forebodings and a sense of futile catastrophe,
Plato said goodbye to the man he loved more than any other, and then returned
to teach in the Academy emptied of many of its finest students.
The story of Dion's exploits in Sicily is a confusion of romance,
intrigue, disillusion, and murder. The
philosophers with just 500 men turned out Dionysius, captured Syracuse, and
began once more the attempt to build up a State in which there should be
neither military dictatorship nor yet a democracy, but an authoritarian
constitutional government. The
experiences of the last ten years had modified Dion's
enthusiasm for the tyranny of reason, and he now planned a constitution in
which the powers of the king should be largely formal; while legislative,
judicial, and executive control should be centred in an elected committee of
elder statesmen. The forms of democracy
were also to be preserved in the meetings of the Assembly and of the Council,
so that the new constitution was really an attempt to work out a modern system
of cabinet responsibility to a popular assembly, and depended (as modern
democracy depends) for its success on a social tradition strong enough to
enable the cabinet to exert real authority while listening to the wishes of the
people. If the cabinet failed to win the
people's confidence, then it would be forced to introduce an open dictatorship:
if, on the other hand, it abused its position and showed no respect for the
constitution, it had power enough to do so with impunity.
Dion's ideas pleased no-one. The advocates of unity and military strength
for the war against Carthage saw the reforms as a weakening of central
control. The democrats, observing that
the committee of thirty-five was composed of wealthy men and that all measures
for the redistribution of wealth were rejected, concluded that this was merely
another form of polite oligarchy; and one of Dion's
colleagues - Heracleides - became the leader of a
popular movement for the redistribution of the land. Civil war broke out; Dion
was forced to rely on his foreign soldiers to quell the disturbances and was
finally expelled by the democrats. After
a period of confusion, however, he regained control and patched up a truce with
Heracleides.
But it soon became clear that if the democratic party were to be
suppressed, open dictatorship was unavoidable.
Heracleides was again at the head of the
opposition, and Dion reluctantly gave his consent to
the murder of his colleague.
The murder of Heracleides marks the end of the attempt to put Plato's
philosophy into practice. The idealists
had been forced by the pressure of necessity to behave no better and no worse
than the old Realpolitiker whose regime they
had denounced: the Republic had proved to be not an ideal constitution,
but another variant of oligarchy, unwanted by the people, and as little relying
on constitutional action or justice as naked tyranny. Dion was now a
common murderer, living the self-same life of fear and apprehension which he
had seen in the courts of the older Dionysius, and suppressing with the
self-same ruthlessness all popular movements.
In 353 Kallippus, one-time member of the
Academy, and trusted minister at Dion's court, put
himself at the head of a democratic conspiracy and, breaking into a
dinner-party at Dion's palace, murdered his chief in
cold blood.
It is probable
that the shock for Plato was not very great.
The mission of the Academy to save Sicily had ended in vulgar intrigue
and butchery, and the young men whom he had trained had proved no better than
their contemporaries unversed in true philosophy. The republic, which Plato had resolved to
build so perfectly that even Socrates, the conscientious objector, could live
there with a good conscience, had proved itself no better than any other
oligarchy, and worse than the democratic Athens which he had ridiculed and
despised. All this was true, but Plato
had seen it long before Dion's death, and had waited
only for the inevitable conclusion. The
blood of Dion was on his head: he had inspired him
and sent him to his death, and he had taught and approved his actual
murderer. The application of philosophy
to practical life had failed, and Socrates' death was still unatoned
for by his disciple. Plato had made it
his life's mission to answer the question Socrates asked and to find the
justice which he sought: he had not answered it, and instead of establishing
justice he had instigated bloodshed and civil strife.
Plato was
seventy-five when he heard the news of Dion's
death. In his latter years he had turned
more and more to pure philosophical speculation and given to the Academy that
academic stamp which it was to bear for the thousand years of its life and to impress
on all future universities. He no longer
despised politics as vulgar and ridiculous: he feared them as the terrible
contaminator of pure and holy lives, and tried to forget his own pangs of
conscience in contemplation of eternal reality.
'It is better to suffer injustice than to practise it', and goodness, he
now felt, could only be achieved by a complete renunciation of worldly
power. If just government could not be
attained by peaceful means, then it was better left unattempted:
for the philosopher who put his hand to bloodshed defiles his own soul and his
own philosophy. In the last years of his
life Plato was a pacifist.
But appeals
still came from Dion's friends in Sicily, and all
over the Greek world the rumour of the failure of the Academy was rife. Plato could not renounce politics even now
and, summoning together all his failing strength, he composed two open letters
to his former pupils in Sicily, at once advising them on future policy and
defending himself against the charge that he was responsible for the
catastrophe at Syracuse.
These letters
are among the most pathetic historical documents which we possess. Rambling and discursive in style, they are
the work of an old and broken spirit which feebly takes up one defence only to
throw it away in disgust and pick up another, and, seeing that the main charge
is irrefutable, seeks to divert attention to points of detail. Now he tried to persuade himself that Kallippus was not a real friend of Dion's,
and that for this reason the murder was not so reprehensible: now suddenly, in
the middle of narrating his own experiences in Syracuse, he launches into a
bitter attack on Dionysius for publishing a book which purported to be an
account of Platonic philosophy, and goes on to concentrate in three or four
pages a brilliant summary of his views on the relations between language,
thought, and reality. But always in the
end he returns to his main theme, the salvation of Greek city-life and the cure
of international and domestic anarchy which must be found if Carthage is to be
beaten back. He feebly suggests to a
Sicily, marred once more by a civil war, that unless men seek justice and obey
law, no true happiness is available - could comfort for men struggling for
their lives, who realized too late that it was easier to break down the unity
which military dictatorship had given them than to replace it with the rule of
law; and who, remembering the Academy, held Plato responsible not only for the
murder of Dion but also for the inevitable victory of
barbarian powers which time must bring.
In 347, at the
age of eighty-one, Plato died. The years
later the Macedonians conquered Greece; the age of Greek independence ended and
the Alexandrian epoch began.
At the end of
his life Plato knew that he had failed.
Despite his eminence as a philosopher, he had not achieved the one thing
on which he had set his heart. His
researches in logic, in astronomy, and in mathematics could satisfy his thirst
for knowledge and ensure him lasting fame: they could not console him for his
failure to solve the problem which Socrates had set. For it was precisely the application of
theory to practice, and of philosophy to everyday life, which Socrates had
demanded and for which he had died.
Plato had suppressed his natural inclination to wash his hands of
politics because he felt himself to be Socrates' disciple; he had dedicated the
Academy to the memory of Socrates; and the failure of the Academy to win its
way to the control of the city-state meant that Socrates' death was still unatoned. The spirit
of disinterested criticism and scientific inquiry seemed to have contributed
nothing to the elimination of social evils.
It had diagnosed the disease, but the cure which it applied had been
completely ineffective.
But does this
mean that wisdom and reason can never be of practical use to the
community? If so, the Academy must and
should remain academic, the cloistered refuge of the few who prefer truth to
the other pleasures of life: and the politician, the banker, and the craftsman
must or should reject the advice of the philosopher as useless or positively
harmful.
If we do not
accept this conclusion, then we must admit that Plato failed, not because he
was a philosopher, but because there was something wrong with the methods which
he employed and the plan upon which he worked; and it becomes of vital
importance to discover these flaws in the programme of the Republic. For by discovering these, we shall be able to
base our own political theory upon sound principles and to avoid the
catastrophe which overwhelmed the Platonic statesmen.
In this chapter,
then, I shall try to suggest some of the chief defects in Plato's theory and to
show their relevance to our modern problems.
Plato has criticized us: now it is for us in turn to criticize him.
When we examine
a great philosophical system it is the very simplest axioms which are most
easily attacked, and the most 'obvious' propositions which can most usefully be
questioned. One such axiom of Plato's
thought - and it is the justification of the whole political structure of the Republic
- is that the common man is unreasonable.
Let us start by a consideration of this assumption. Of course it is partly true. Human beings are often short-sighted,
sentimental, and greedy, and if Plato had gone no further than this, he could
not be gainsaid. But Plato assumed (1)
that most men are naturally so deficient that they are incapable of
self-government; (2) that there do exist potential rulers of such supreme
wisdom that absolute government can be safely entrusted to them; and (3) that
these potential rulers will mostly be found not among the peasants and
artisans, but in the ranks of the gentry.
Disregarding (3) - clearly the most questionable - we must admit that
the first two propositions are clearly true.
Mankind is stupid and from time to time men do arise so
pre-eminent in virtue that power could be entrusted to them. But it does not follow that we can build the
State on this assumption. 'Statesmanship
is the art of the second best': it takes men as it finds them, and it cannot
presume that the man of genius will always be to hand. If we could rely upon a constant supply of
supremely wise statesmen, we could disregard all questions of constitutional
forms and political organization. It is
precisely because we cannot do this that the problem of government is
all-important. Thus though Plato's two
propositions are true, they are irrelevant to politics because the class of
'wise men' is not large enough or compact enough to become a permanent ruling élite in any city or nation-state.
When, however,
we add the third proposition, we reach a conclusion which is not only
irrelevant but frankly partisan. The
presumption that wise men are not often found among the 'working classes' transforms
the Republic from an ideal aristocracy in the literal sense - the rule of the
best - to an aristocracy of birth.
The academic proposition, 'the best should rule', becomes a practical
proposition, 'the best of the existing aristocracy should become dictators' and
the Platonic classes of rulers and civilians merge into the Greek political
factions of aristocrats and democrats. [This
point deserves fuller treatment than I can give it here. Plato does in REPUBLIC 415 admit the bare
possibility that a 'civilian' might be found worthy of promotion to the ruling
elite. This admission occurs, however,
in a parenthesis and is nowhere elaborated.
Since the education of the ruler begins at birth, it is difficult to see
how a craftsman could ever show himself worthy of promotion. Plato, with his beliefs about the degrading
effects of 'banausic' occupations, can hardly have
considered it likely that he ever would.]
Plato could
defend this suggestion as sound practical politics: he could say that in his opinion
and from his experience 'the people' had thrown up few leaders and that the
aristocracy still retained its traditions of public service. But in so doing he surrendered his claim to
base the Republic on philosophical principles and self-evident axioms:
he spoke no longer as a philosopher but as a citizen, and his judgement can
properly be questions by anyone else with political experience. For he was advocating the claims of a certain
social class - the dictatorship not of the best, but of the best members of the
aristocracy - and assuming the latter to be identical with the former.
Thus there are
two objections to Plato's argument. In
the first place there will never be a sufficient number of pre-eminent men to
form a ruling class in whom we can have complete confidence; and even if there
were, it would be impossible to select from the citizen population and to
ensure that they alone should have political control. Plato himself often admitted this. He confessed that 'good men' are corrupted by
power, and he had seen enough of politics to know that irresponsible
dictatorship - however carefully the dictators are selected and trained -
always ends in disaster. And yet he
advocated dictatorship!
In the second
place his bias in favour of aristocracy led him to identify the 'gentleman'
with the good man, and he therefore, in searching for his élite,
excluded the vast majority of the population from any serious examination. From the proposition 'most men are
incompetent to govern themselves', he glided imperceptibly into the assertion,
'the working classes are incompetent to govern themselves'.
The Republic
is therefore a solution to the problem of government which could only be
successful if men were not what they, in fact, are. Granting to the aristocratic élite absolute freedom of action, it demands of them
a virtue far beyond their reach: demanding of the lower orders absolute
obedience, it denies to them any possibility of self-realization. It makes the former divinity incarnate, the
latter humanity with only a tiny spark of the divine. For this reason it is no surprise to discover
the Platonic ideal realized in the structure of the Catholic Church. Substitute the clergy for the
philosopher-kings, and the laity for the civilians, and you have the one
practical fulfilment of the Platonic programme.
But in the field of government, Platonism, because it is at once too
ideal and not ideal enough, becomes the rational apologia for reaction. A military despot in Greece, a Roman emperor,
a medieval monarch, a Renaissance prince or a modern dictator, can all justify
themselves as Platonists, claiming special and providential wisdom for
themselves and their friends, special and providential stupidity for the
masses. Power will always vest itself in
priestly robes to hide the wickedness of tyranny.
Thus, although
he denounced military despotism and aristocratic dictatorship, Plato was the aider and abettor of both, and tacitly countenanced them as
the lesser of two evils. Confronted with
the class-war, he dreamt that between the dictatorship of the Left and the
dictatorship of the Right there was a third revolutionary alternative - the
dictatorship of the 'virtuous Right'.
But when we translate this dream into the sober language of politics, it
is seen to be an empty illusion. For it
advocates the formation of a party of good aristocrats opposed equally to the
demands of rich and of poor, and the capture by this party of absolute
political power. But since the
membership of the party will be drawn almost exclusively from the
anti-democratic side, it will be suspect to the working classes: and since it
is opposed to the interests of the rich, it will be hated by them as well. Its government therefore will have no basis
of consent and will be forced either to become a military dictatorship, or to
concede to one side in the class struggle.
Since it is resolutely anti-democratic, and is tied by bonds of kinship
and tradition to the parties of the Right, there can be no doubt of the nature
of those concessions. Resolved to
suppress the equalitarian aspirations of the masses, it will rely on the
support of the wealthy. In that case, it
will find it impossible to destroy property and privilege as well. The 'dictatorship of the virtuous Right' is
transformed into a polite form of Fascism.
Plato had
envisaged his 'third alternative' as the creation of an impartial State,
allotting to each man the life and work which he deserves, favouring no section
of the community at the expense of others and harmonizing all interests for the
common good. His ruling class was to be
exalted above the clash of interests and, from the lofty heights of dictatorial
power, to dispense justice objectively and dispassionately. This sublime vision neglected two simple
facts. (1) No Government is absolutely
supreme: for the power of the Government resides not only in the army and the
civil service - its executive organs - but in those sections of the community
which tolerate or support it. Where
there is inequality of wealth - as there was in Greece - an absolute Government
must be not only the master of all, but the servant of some. On seizing power the philosopher-kings must
come to terms either with the rich or with the poor, in order to retain
control. (2) Whatever the education
provided by the Academy, the deep-seated instincts and traditions of the Greek
aristocracy, its hatred and fear of proletarian dictatorship, and its exclusive
sense of political status would combine to destroy the impartiality of the
Platonic élite. We have seen in the history of Syracuse a
terrible instance of these forces at work.
By neglecting them, Plato had encouraged Dion
to undertake a revolutionary putsch which could only end in disaster.
When Plato and Dion saw the impossibility of their philosopher-kings, they
at least realized that the escape from class-dictatorship is not another
dictatorship but the denial of absolute power to anyone. The impartial State cannot be constructed
from above by any ruling élite, vested with
dictatorial authority, and resolute to harmonize conflicting interests. It must be the product of the harmony of
those interests themselves. Only by the
limitation of powers, and by the representation of all interests, is it
possible to achieve justice and security.
Impartiality and the rule of law are possible only if sovereignty is
denied to any section or group whatsoever and replaced by constitutional
government. This new third alternative
was dimly envisaged by Plato and Dion at the end of
their lives. It implied the surrender of
the whole programme of the Republic and of the Academy, but it substituted for
them an equally fantastic plan.
For the
transformation of the class struggle into party warfare, of absolutism into
constitutional government, and of power politics into the rule of law can only
be effected where there is a pervasive sense of national unity, a long-standing
tradition on the side of peaceful change and an expanding system of production
to supply the wealth needed for social reform.
These conditions were present in nineteenth-century England: they were
not present in fourth-century Greece.
The city-states had no sense of national cohesion. The revolutionary upheavals of the previous
hundred years made any genuine cooperation of rich and poor impossible. The steady increase of slave-labour
intensified the democratic cry for a capital levy, distribution of land, and an
increase of 'bread and circuses' for the citizen population. And lastly, the menace of Macedonia in the
north and Carthage in the west necessitated military dictatorship if Greek
independence was to be preserved. In
these conditions the Platonic plan for constitutional monarchy could please
no-one. It was suspected by the
democrats as a veiled form of reaction, by the wealthy as a concession to the
lower orders, and by the patriot who cared more for Greek independence than for
domestic justice as a dangerous weakening of that military discipline which was
all-important for his ends. Plato's second
plan for the salvation of Greece failed as signally as the first had failed,
since it too tried to construct an impartial state at a time when impartiality
and 'justice' were sheerly impossible, and
constitutional government was bound to become the instrument of the Right in
its struggle to suppress democracy.
This is perhaps
the most valuable lesson which a study of Plato's life can teach us. The rule of law which allots to each man his
due is a dream which can be realized only under certain conditions. It is the one thing which a revolutionary
Government can never achieve, whatever its ideals. A revolutionary is always the resultant of a
gross social maladjustment: and any Government which captures power after a
revolution must suppress one side or the other.
Only when society has adjusted itself to the new equilibrium of forces
can those conditions of peaceful change arise which are essential both to
constitutional government and to the impartial State. You cannot impose the rule of law or constitutionalism
by peaceful discussion upon an economic and social anarchy, and if you try to
do so you will merely be giving to one faction a spurious justification for its
dictatorship. On the other hand, granted
that a country has the supreme good fortune of achieving the economic and
social equilibrium which permits of these things, it cannot retain them as
realities unless the social and economic equilibrium is also maintained. If the system of production and distribution
breaks down, no good will or idealism will prevent the destruction of social
justice and the conversion of legality and constitutionalism into the
instruments of power-politics. The third
alternative once more disappears and decent men and women must once again make
their choice between rival dictatorships and competing interests.
So far we have
analysed Plato's conception of the 'dictatorship of the good' and the 'rule of
law', and we have tried to show on the one hand that they were unrealizable in
the Greek State, and on the other that they were twisted by Plato's aristocratic
bias and justifications for counter-revolution.
But this aristocratic bias had still more detrimental effects on Plato's
political outlook. For he not only
assumed that political leadership could only be found among the aristocracy,
but also that all sound political ideals must be based upon the aristocratic
and conservative tradition. We have seen
how he neglected altogether the problem of slavery, and how he presupposed the
autonomy of the city-state. We must now
observe how he tried to restore the glories of Greece by returning to a
well-nigh feudal economic and social order.
The republic was to be divided into a Homeric order of warrior-kings,
and a Homeric demos of craftsmen and peasants. It was to be economically self-sufficient,
and to export only its surplus produce.
Great disparities of income were to be avoided, and wealthy was to be
regulated according to need. Its noble
rulers were, in fact, to be Spartan citizens softened by Athenian culture:
their subjects, Spartan serfs raised to a higher level by the justice of a
benevolent aristocracy. Plato conceived
this social order as the true ideal of the Greek city-state, purged of the
accretions which imperialism and commercialism had plastered over it; and in
the Republic he tried to strip off the excrescences and display the
perfect archetype of the Greek community.
For this archetype he went far back to the days before the age of
tyranny and the growth of trade, and claimed that agricultural aristocracy was
the 'true' form of Greek life. Big
business, political parties, atheism, working-class unrest - these seemed to
Plato blatant evils which must be abolished, and to abolish them he tried to
revert to the period before they had arisen.
In so doing he
neglected to observe that if they were evils, they were evils essential to the
virtues of Greek civilization. The
culture and the artistic glories of Athens would have been impossible without
her commerce and her empire. Plato's own
philosophical speculations were part and parcel of the rationalism which had
destroyed the old religion and aristocratic authority. The independence of mind which caused social
unrest had also made Socrates the first conscientious objector. To abolish these evils by reverting to feudal
aristocracy was to abolish also the glories of Greek life. In the second place the evils which Plato
denounced were facts which could not be wished away. Slavery could not be made to vanish by neglecting
its existence. The will to freedom and
self-government among the craftsmen and peasants had been strong enough to
sweep away aristocracy: it would not disappear because Plato announced its
futility. The old religion and morality
had perished: they could not gain new life by artificial respiration applied by
a few philosophers. The romantic dream
of resurrecting the golden age was bound to fail because the social and
economic basis of that golden age had gone for ever.
Moreover,
Plato's description of pre-industrial Greece was largely mythical. Himself an individualist, a product of
Athenian civilization, he interpreted history in terms of the present, and read
into the past the fulfilment of his present wishes. Like the German romantics of the early
nineteenth century, he first of all imagined an ideal State, then located it in
the past, and then called on his countrymen to return to their true national
traditions. Had he really studied
history he might have seen that his Athenian ideas of education and culture
could not be grafted on to the primitive stock, and that his ideal rulers -
self-conscious and sophisticated Athenians, robed in mythological dress - were
the products of the very commercialism which he denounced.
Through all
Plato's work there runs the cult of pseudo-history. It makes the political sections of the Republic
a stiff and self-conscious pastiche, just as it made Dion,
who felt himself to be a Platonic statesman, a consciously superior
person. It is the cause of Plato's
obsession that change is dangerous and that at all costs innovations, even in
song and dance and literature, must be suppressed. Early Sparta was alive, but the new 'Athenian
Sparta' of Plato's dream was a rigid and pedantic reconstruction of the past,
dead because it could not face that dying of the old and growing of the new
which is the essence of life. Just as
Plato the poet denied himself poetry, and let his imagination wither, so the Republic
denies itself life, and takes on the stony look of a 'classical' statue, the
product of a tired civilization which rejects with senile agitation the vigour
of youth and change.
Plato was a true
reflection of one aspect of his epoch; he embodied the ideals of a dying
system. Beyond that system he could not
look, and he had no eye for the seeds of the new order which was to replace
it. And so the political programme of
the Republic is rooted in the past and is at bottom the rationalization
and justification of Reaction. It is not
- as if often supposed - typically Greek, or even typically Athenian: but the
unique product of an Athenian aristocratic mind which tried to make sense out
of the prejudices of its class, and succeeded in canalizing the activities of
its best members into the preservation of a lost cause.
But even
admitting all these criticisms, I still find the Republic the greatest
book on political philosophy which I have read.
The more I read it, the more I hate it: and yet I cannot help returning
to it time after time. For it is
philosophy. It tries to reach the truth by
rational discussion and is itself a pattern of the disinterested research which
it extols. It never bullies or deceives
its readers or beguiles him with appeals to sentiment, but treats him as a
fellow-philosopher for whom the truth is worth having.
This
characteristic of the Republic forces the third criticism of Plato's
programme upon our notice. Plato
demanded that the philosopher should become king and impose justice upon the
civilian masses, cajoling them into obedience by the 'noble lie' and even by
force. The seeker after truth must
assert his will, and believe his opinions to be eternal truths. These demands violate the whole spirit of
scientific research. The true scientist
is filled with the humility which knowledge of his own ignorance brings. He knows the impossibility of reaching
finality, and he recognizes the fallibility of his own reason. He cannot ape the self-certainty and
presumption of practical men: nor can he call his own opinions knowledge and
force them on his fellows. He cannot be
the absolute dictator, as Plato demands, without turning hypothesis into dogma,
and persuasion into propaganda.
Socrates, the first conscientious objector to the tyranny of prejudice,
could never condemn others to death for holding beliefs different from his own;
and so he could never accept the arrogance of dictatorship - even dictatorship
of the good. For only an unphilosophical nature can claim absolute knowledge.
The concept of
the philosopher-king violates the nature of the philosopher as flagrantly as
the concept of 'the dictatorship of the virtuous Right' violates the facts of
everyday politics. The spirit of science
and philosophy stands in open contradiction to the policy which Plato
advocated, and declares that Socrates must die again in the State which his
disciple proposed to build. Plato set
his whole hope on the dictatorship of men and women who knew the final and
complete truth: but we have already seen how relative and questionable are the truths
which Plato propounded and how far his conclusions were conditioned by
traditions and instinctive impulses and the prejudices which they
instigate. If a philosopher of Plato's
dimensions was so liable to error and self-deception, what confidence can we
have that in any State a man will be found capable of perfect knowledge? Even if he were found, can we not confidently
say that he would decline every offer of supreme coercive power?
Thus the third
flaw in the reasoning of the Republic is its suggestion that human
reason is capable of infallibility and that the scientific spirit should be
prepared to force others to accept it as infallible. Both these propositions are false and claim
for 'Reason' a position which reason must always reject. The rational man is, above all, aware of his
own limitations. He knows that we are
all - philosophers, politicians, priests, and ordinary folk alike - creatures
of prejudice and emotion, parts in a social process greater than ourselves. He abhors the presumption that 'Reason' can
or should rule, and admits that his task is to analyse that which is given, to
civilize the passions which are the prime motives of action and to admit the
incalculability of change. Philosophy,
by itself, can never discover what is right and just: it can only examine what
we at any moment find right and just and point out the implications of these
assumptions. For philosophy is the
analysis of natural belief, and natural belief is the product of history. The philosopher who asserts that he has
discovered the eternal principles of justice and government is only claiming
for the beliefs of his epoch an absolute truth which does not belong to them,
and trying to perpetuate something which should pass away as conditions
change. And so all dogmatic
philosophies, such as Platonism, become in time instruments of reaction trying
vainly to explain the new epoch in terms of the old, and to torture a new
society into the straitjacket of an outworn code. In an era of transition, when one social system
is breaking up to be replaced by another, the new ideas which should grow into
institutions and moral codes and political forms are inchoate, confused, and
vague. The trained philosopher, if he
accepts the established order as the only right order, can ridicule them,
expose their inconsistency, and convince educated men and women that they
should maintain at any price the framework of thought and life to which they
are accustomed. If he does so, he will
be forced, as Plato was forced, to destroy that freedom without which reason
must die, and with irrefutable logic he will defend a status quo in
which the seeds of revolution are watered by the self-righteous opposition of
the educated classes to social change.
Plato's
philosophy was an example of this type of reasoning. By asserting the existence of an absolute
truth, it gave to a dying order the trappings of eternal verity. It did not discover anything new, but
rationalized into a formal system a set of partisan prejudices. For this reason it contributed nothing to the
solution of the problems of Plato's own age.
It was Aristotle, the renegade pupil, who became the tutor of Alexander
and set his stamp upon the outlook of the Hellenistic world.
CHAPTER XI
The Modern Plato Once More
AND what of the modern Plato? We have listened to his advice. What value do we attach to it? This question has been partially answered in
the preceding chapter. Plato today will
fare no better than he did 2,000 years ago.
Whatever his distinction as a scientist and philosopher, he will have no
lasting success as a politician, and the students whom he has taught will fail
as lamentably as their predecessors in the Academy. For our modern Plato is also a university
teacher, a member of the class which regards authority as its natural
perquisite, and finds it an ever more difficult task to retain that authority
in an industrial age. He is a ruler who
has renounced politics and devoted his time to research and to the education of
the men and women who are destined for positions of influence in the councils
of the nation. Remote from practical
affairs, he lectures on the theory of politics and seeks to give to his
students a respect for reason and impartiality and clear thinking. In discussing current affairs he refuses to
give his allegiance to any party or faction, but regards the political scene
with a sublime and distant objectivity.
But sometimes he laughingly describes himself as a
Conservative-Socialist or Right-wing revolutionary, and sketches his ideal as a
non-party cabinet of all the talents which is strong enough to eradicate the
vices of capitalism while suppressing all seditious movements of the Left. In spite of his respect for tradition, he
strongly deprecates any wild denunciation of Russian planning and admits its
efficiency as an economic system and even its advantages over any other. 'But,' he reminds his hearers, 'the
advantages of a planned economy must be weighed against the horrors of a
revolution which preceded it and the wickedness of that Marxism under whose
banner it is being pushed forward. By
all means let us introduce a planned economy, but not at the cost of our
national tradition.' And so he urges the
formation of a non-party movement composed of intelligent and unbiased persons
who see the virtues both of Socialism and of the Conservative tradition. Such a movement will not be blinded by
factional interests, since it is educated in first principles and therefore
objective. It will seek to cure all
social evils but it will be sure that self-government for the masses would only
mean the rule of the demagogues. In the
interests of freedom, therefore, it will stop the futile party warfare and
impose the authority of a non-party government, which will bring all the
benefits of planning without the crude violence of Communism and Fascism.
The modern
Plato, like his ancient counterpart, has an unbounded contempt for politicians
and statesmen and party leaders who are not university men. He finds politics a dirty game, and only
enters them reluctantly because he knows that at the very least he and his
friends are better than the present gang.
Brought up in the traditions of the ruling classes, he has a natural
pity for the common people whom he has learnt to know as servants, and observed
from a distance at their work in the factory, at their play in the parks and
holiday resorts. He has never mixed with
them or spoken to them on equal terms, but has demanded and generally received
a respect due to his position and superior intelligence. He knows that if they trust him, he can give
them the happiness which they crave. A
man of culture, he genuinely despises the self-made industrialist and
newspaper-king: with a modest professional salary and a little private income
of his own, he regards money-making as vulgar and avoids all ostentation. Industry and finance seem to him to be
activities unworthy of a gentleman, although, alas, many are forced by
exigencies of circumstance to take some part in them. An intellectual, he gently laughs at the
superstitions of most Christians, but attends church regularly because he sees
the importance of organized religion for the maintenance of sound morality
among the lower orders, and because he dislikes the scepticism and materialism
of radical teachers. His genuine
passions are for literature and the philosophy of science and he would gladly
spend all his time in studying them. But
the plight of the world compels his unwilling attention, and when he sees that
human stupidity and greed are about to plunge Europe into chaos and destroy the
most glorious civilization which the world has known, he feels that it is high
time for men of good sense and good will to intervene and to take politics out
of the hands of the plutocrats of the Right and the woolly-minded idealists of
the Left. Since he and his kind are the
only representatives of decency combined with intelligence, they must step down
into the arena and save the masses for themselves.
The form which
this salvation is to take varies from country to country. In Weimar Germany the modern Plato, assuming
that he must choose between the revolutionary extremes of National Socialism
and Bolshevism, hesitatingly chose the former and gave it his tempered
support. Holding that the Communists
would destroy traditional religion and morality, and would probably prove
incompetent to plan the economic system properly, he rejected the parties of
the Left. The personnel of the Nazis was
almost as distasteful to him; but in National Socialism he scented a return of
the masses to common sense and a submission to discipline. He welcomed its stress on Soldatentum
and its spiritual ideals, and excused its racialism as the sort of propaganda
which human nature demands. Seeing
clearly the weakness of the Nazi leaders, he urged his associates to be ready
to take control when the Nazis had achieved power and found themselves
incapable of using it. As the slump
increased in severity, he was appalled at the unscrupulous use which the Nazis
were making of hiss name and of his philosophy to justify cruelties which he
had always condemned; but he was forced still to overlook them by his terror of
proletarian revolution. And so he
supported the counter-revolution until it occurred. Then, when the regime had been established,
he approached its members with proper dignity and offered his services. He was delighted to find that he and his
associates were all immediately accepted by the new leaders and put in
positions of apparent power. But he soon
discovered that his good name was being used by the politicians to further
their own designs, while they showed not the slightest indication of accepting
his advice. The evils of the class-war
still remained, but intensified by a political and social terror: corruption
had increased where was no opposition to expose it, and the new national
strength was being used to further a foreign policy more imperialist than that
of the democracies which he had condemned.
At first, stung by the taunts of his fellows and associates in other lands,
he expostulated and threatened to resign.
But he was reminded that his resignation would weaken Germany in the
eyes of the world, and be an open admission of his own failure. And so he retained his post - now a mere
sinecure - and denouncing politics as wicked, devoted his energies to the literature
and philosophy which were his real interests.
In countries
such as are own, where the social fabric is more stable and the aristocratic
tradition has been better preserved, our modern Plato need take no part in
politics, but seeks to educate the younger generation to the true values of the
national tradition and the true ideals of service to the community. He calls himself a 'Christian Socialist', for
he is easily able to find a form of Anglican orthodoxy compatible with his own
philosophy. He is fond of denouncing the
evils of imperialism and the cruelties of the industrial revolution, and he
paints a noble picture of an eighteenth century when reason ruled and England
prospered. A superb stylist - nicknamed
the second Burke - he is already famous for his Reflections on the Russian
Revolution. The Western world, he
believes, must at all costs unite to man the frontiers of civilization; and on
all suitable occasions he exhorts Europe to stand together against the common
foe and to break down the barriers between peoples linked by a common culture.
In home affairs
he sympathizes with those progressive Conservatives who preach a tempered
State-Socialism and desire to give the workers all that they really need, while
resolutely denouncing all Socialist and Communist agitators. Deeply distressed by the collapse of
organized religion, and by the growth of vulgarity in literature, drama, and
architecture, he tries to imbue his younger friends with a philosophical spirit
resolutely opposed to scepticism, and to inspire them to reconstruct Christian
theology upon a sound philosophical basis, and to reconcile it with
science. Unemployment and war he regards
as necessary evils which can only be cured by elevating the tone of
statesmanship in all countries so that the policy of every nation shall be
determined not by self-interest, but by respect for law. Until the time, he often says, when the
intelligent and the independent mind replaces the professional politician and
agitator, the world will know no cessation from its evils. Meanwhile we must be thankful for the
benefits which Providence has bestowed upon us and be constantly on our guard
to preserve our political tradition from further deterioration, and to ensure
that 'the gentleman' is still the type of English honour.
Stripped of the
brilliance of the Platonic style and its wealth of imagery, the modern
programme sounds dull and a little sententious, the proposals of a thinker
strangely out of touch with the movements of history and with the thoughts and
passions of everyday life. This is as it
should be. Plato was out of touch
with any but the narrow circle of Greek intellectuals which we often identify
with ancient Greece. He had never known
the time when Pericles bridged the gap between the aristocrat
and the plebeian, between the intellectual and the businessman, and thus forged
a real community which gave to every class and to every individual a living
sense of their integration in the social order.
In his lifetime class division and specialization of interest had torn
the close-knit fabric of the city-state and atomized its collective
spirit. So, too, the modern Plato has
little knowledge of the community in which he lives. He believes that the educated gentleman with
whom he associates are the only people in the land with a genuine sense of
social responsibility and a true feeling for the English tradition. For him the Public School is still the
central fact of our social life.
Belonging to the academic world, he knows little of things outside its
quiet walls. Steeped in its high
traditions of integrity and intellectual accuracy, he views with disgust the
shoddiness of the practical man's thought, the commercialism of his motives,
and the blatant contradictions in the policies which he adopts. He is critical of university life, but at
least he sees in it an order and a rationality which can be moulded into proper
shape. But the outside world seems to
him a hopeless bedlam of stupidity, pettiness, and greed.
And yet he
cannot renounce it completely. Many of
the students whom he teaches are destined for commanding positions in industry,
in politics, and in the administration.
Wherever he turns his eyes he finds the university man in authority, and
often enough a cabinet minister or the editor of a great newspaper is his
weekend guest. He is aware that the
British university is - as the ancient Plato had desired - the pedagogue of
practical life and though its unpolitical activities
is shaping the policies of an empire.
The Academy is the brain of the body politic, and through it the old
aristocratic regime is therefore indirectly but vitally responsible for the
government of his country. His
philosophy is the framework of national policy, his morality is recognizable in
the actions of its statesmen. Why then,
he asks himself, does the world seem to be heading for destruction? Why are his students when they return to
practical affairs unable to impose upon them the reasoned order of university
life and university thought? Uneasily, he
feels that Platonic education, though it can school young men to think
rationally, cannot teach them to apply that reason in the outside world. It can produce political philosophers: but it
cannot produce philosopher-kings.
And so in the
tranquillity of the university Plato is ill at ease and labours unceasingly to
elaborate a political and social theory, schooled in whose discipline the
student can go out to kill the dragons of stupidity and greed. But because the university is part of the
established order, and because the philosophy which he teaches is a philosophy
of that order, Plato, the spiritual revolutionary, remains the apologist of the
status quo, and the political programme of the new Republic is as
sterile as that of the old. It is rational
and filled with noble sentiments, but it is backward-looking - the sublime
philosophy of a lost cause. That is why,
although he claims to be a revolutionary, Plato is always honoured by
established authority. His weekend
guests return to work invigorated by his idealism. The Left reveres him as an independent
thinker, while even the crustiest Tory admits that, if the Socialists would
only take Plato's advice, they would sweep the country. Trusted and honoured by all who matter, he is
recognized as the most wholesome influence in British politics.
Yet, in spite of
his fame and in spite of the influence of his pupils, the order and reason of
the Platonic academy stand in horrid contrast to the anarchy outside. The comity of European nations for which he
years is split by ever-growing fissures.
Unheedful of the calm advice of established
reason, the world rumbles towards catastrophe.
Neither Plato nor his pupils - despite their commanding positions and
their gentlemanly ideals - can do anything to prevent it.
Socrates cannot
prevent it either. But at least he knows
that he does not know. He does not sit
in academic tranquillity teaching young men how to think and rule: instead, he
goes out into the everyday world and mixes with all sorts of people, seeking to
know human nature before he condemns it.
He offers no programme of spiritual revolution, and produces no students
with clear-cut philosophies of life who can say precisely what truth and
justice are. He tries not to establish a
new authority, but to disrupt prejudice wherever he finds it - even in the
university. The conscientious objector
to prejudice and intellectual presumption, he condemns the new Plato and the
new Republic as heartily as he condemns any other dogmatism which ossifies the free
spirit of reason and perverts it into an instrument of oppression.
CHAPTER XII
Epilogue
A FRIENDLY critic, who read the proofs
of the following pages, complained that they were entirely negative in
character. 'What you have done,' he said,
'is to expound Plato's case against Greek democracy and then to show that his
own counter-proposals were completely ineffective. After that you turned to the modern world and
repeated the procedure. You allowed
Plato to criticize democracy and Fascism and Communism, and then you went on to
pour cold water on all his positive philosophy.
So far, so good; but what conclusion is your reader meant to come
to? Where do you yourself stand?' To these questions I shall try to give some
answer in this chapter.
In what I have
so far written, I have tried to suppress my own views and to translate Plato's
political philosophy into modern terms.
In so doing I have found myself in the position of an advocatus diaboli
working out a case for dictatorship more convincing than that of most Fascist
apologists whom I have read. The result
will, I fear, shock many readers of Plato.
They will be unwilling to accept the picture which I have presented, and
will urge that it is a caricature, not a portrait, of the Plato whom they
admire. There are two comments to be
made upon this criticism. In the first
place great philosophers have often been bad political and social critics. The political influence of Hegel, for
instance, was disastrous, and it is rare to find men like Aristotle and Hume
who combined profound philosophical insight with an eye for practical
affairs. There is a danger that, out of
respect for his eminence as a metaphysician, we should swallow Plato's
political opinions too easily, and it was partly to meet this danger that Plato
Today was written. In the second
place, I should not myself agree that the views I have attributed to the modern
Plato are either negligible or absurd.
On the contrary, the criticisms which he has made of democracy and communism
(the germs of which may all be found in the Republic) seem to me very
difficult to controvert. The reader may feel
that Plato must be wrong; but he will not find it easy to build a case for
democracy, either in the Liberal or in the Marxian sense of that word, which
will withstand Plato's analysis.
My answer then
to my friendly critic is this: 'I am a democrat and a Socialist who sees
Fascism rejected and democracy defended on quite inadequate grounds; and it is
because I realize that our greatest danger today is not the easy acceptance but
the easy rejection of Totalitarian philosophy, that I have tried to restate the
Republic in modern terms.'
It is a sound
political principle not to underrate your opponent, and in this book I have
tried to make him as formidable as possible, and to expose the weakness of much
so-called democratic theory. If the
reader gets an uneasy feeling that he cannot controvert Plato's arguments, I
shall be well content. For in that case
he will have begun to see that the real menace of Fascism is due to the
scarcity of democrats with a practical and realistic creed. Dictatorships do not arise merely owing to
the folly of foreigners. They are imposed
firstly because democratic institutions become unmanageable and awkward for the
ruling interests, and secondly because the common man does not find
democracy worth defending. The
success of Fascism in the international field is due largely to the 'pacifism'
of Great Britain. This 'pacifism' in its
turn is the result of a profound scepticism about the value of democracy and
the League of Nations [this book, remember, pre-dates the United Nations -
editor's note.]. The ordinary Englishman
is not at the present moment prepared to die for anything really important,
least of all for democracy. And our
statesmen seem to agree with him. It is
difficult to name one principle or obligation or imperial interest which they
will not sacrifice to avoid war.
Democracy, in
fact, has lost belief in itself, and become an inert instead of a dynamic force
in world affairs. Fascism has the
initiative; and we are content to sneer at its philosophy while we concede to
its statesmen one vital interest after another.
This collapse of morale is partly due to our own self-ignorance. Unlike our opponents, we are uncertain what
the democracy is for which we stand. Our
paeans to freedom and justice and peace are empty formulae which hide a horrid
doubt in our own minds, and our philosophy has become little better than an
apology for concessions extorted from us by force of circumstance. Whatever we do we dub 'democratic' and hope
thereby to hide our dishonour from ourselves.
The sacrifice of Abyssinia [present-day Ethiopia] is excused on grounds
of procedure, that of Spain on the score of preventing world-war.
The trouble
about most defenders of democracy is that their theory is so different from
their practice. They paint a picture of
a country where the people is sovereign and where all men are equal before the
law and then they equate this millennial vision with contemporary England. Is it surprising that the man in the street
begins to doubt the sincerity of politicians and publicists who constantly
assure him that he is already in the Kingdom of Heaven? Is it astonishing that he says, 'Well, if this
is equality and liberty and justice, I don't think much of them'? The League of Nations was killed by the
enthusiasts who mistook a clumsy instrument of justice for justice itself. Democracy is on the way to meeting the same
fate.
The first positive
lesson, then, which Plato can teach us is that to defend democracy we must be
as realistic as its opponents. We must
be able to see things as they are, and to distinguish ideal and fact;
we must not only have fine ideals, but count up the cost of realizing them and
recognize what changes they will undergo in the process of realization. Above all we must not overestimate the nature
of human beings, and learn from the Platos of this
world just so much: that the ordinary man accepts comfort and security without
worrying where they come from; that a Government's first job is to govern and
only in the second place to govern well; that morality by itself can never
outweigh interest; that justice is impossible unless there is power to enforce
it; and lastly that political institutions are totally insignificant in
comparison with social tradition and economic organization.
To defend
democracy, in fact, we must accept a great deal, both of Plato's criticism of
democratic theory, and of his analysis of our present democratic
institutions. But this is not
enough. In the second place we must make
up our minds precisely where his philosophy fails. True democracy is un-Platonic, because it
springs from the Christian notion of personality; and it is only if we believe
in this notion that we can refute Plato and show that his philosophy has no
sufficient message for the modern world.
If this is true, it should come as a shock to discover how well Plato's
philosophy is adapted to our 'Christian' ways of thought - most of our
Christian theory and practice is indistinguishable from it. For this reason, as the true democrat must
start with the assumption that the world has still to be made democratic, so
the Christian must assume that it is still pagan, despite the existence of
'democratic' institutions and 'Christian' churches. Only a revolutionary democracy and a
revolutionary Christianity can hope to prevail today. Institutionalism will kill them both, if it
gets the chance, and turn them into 'noble lies' which modern Platonists can
use to defend the status quo.
For
fundamentally both are the assertions of incredibles. Against the realism of those who accept the
existing order and seek to maintain it, they preach an impossibility and try to
make it come true. The true democrat and
the true Christian admit the Platonic analysis of man as he is, but they know
that they can change him by their faith in man as he ought to be. It was this faith which Plato lacked, as I
have tried to show in the concluding pages of the chapter on Communism. He felt himself to be a member of a dying
order in which the good was only a survival from a previous golden age; and so
his philosophy and his political career were devoted to the defence of dying
values against the corrosion of history.
Truth and justice in his view must be rescued by an élite. The sphere of freedom must be contracted
until it includes only those few elect spirits who are worthy of it.
A real
democratic philosophy will be resolutely opposed to such an outlook. It cannot be content to defend a social order
by the maintenance of an authoritarian tradition: on the contrary, it must be
resolved to expand the sphere of freedom and, with this ideal in view, to take
such practical measures as are necessary to enable every citizen to become a
member of the élite. Seeing the pettiness and spiritual poverty of
the 'civilian' as clearly as Plato, it must ask 'what is the cause of this
pettiness and spiritual poverty? Are
they intrinsic or are they resultants of a particular social and economic
order?' Admitting the plight of human
nature, it will assert its infinite possibilities and will be prepared
so to change the present order that these possibilities can become
actualities. For the democratic faith is
not tied to any political or social system.
It regards all systems (including 'democracy') as instruments for the
self-realization of human nature; and if representative institutions are shown
to be no longer useful for that purpose then the democrat must look elsewhere
for other instruments and better institutions.
The modern
democrat too often confounds parliamentary government with democracy, and
assumes that every critic of the one must necessarily be an enemy of the
other. He forgets that parliaments were
forged for specific purposes under specific historical conditions, and that the
instruments of freedom can become, under changed conditions, the instruments of
oligarchy. And so he fails to realize
that a defence of parliamentary government as such may, in certain
circumstances, be completely undemocratic.
History is constantly putting new wine into old bottles.
The faith of
democracy, therefore, can never be expressed in the defence of
anything. You cannot defend
democracy against Fascism, and if you try to, you will find yourself supporting
your enemy unawares. Democracy (because
it is founded upon the infinite possibilities of human nature) must always be
on the attack, always on the side of social change against the forces of 'law
and order', always critical of established institutions and social codes. It knows that, without the dynamic of its
faith, human society will fall back into oligarchy and injustice. Where faith in the impossible dies, Plato's
estimate of human nature becomes correct.
But democracy is
not a mere ideal, mystically envisaged by a few dreamers; for the belief in the
infinite value of human personality is also the belief in human reason,
and at this point the ideal of Jesus is fused with that of Socrates. I have tried to show how Plato, in his
attempt to re-establish a Greek aristocratic order, departed further and
further from the principles of his master, until he turned the Socratic belief
in reason into a dogmatic and authoritarian code. But democracy, just as it is tied to no particular
institution, is tied to no eternal philosophy.
Democratic thought must always remain a searching for truth and the
democrat can never cease to be the man who knows that he knows nothing. He must regard all ready-made systems with
suspicion: he must reject self-evident formulae and 'first principles'
outright. For he is aware of the
all-inclusive nature of the historical process of which he is a part, and he
knows that the dominant classes will and must build themselves rational
structures with which to defend their economic and social supremacy. Most men and all societies are naturally
conservative: they try to deny change and to maintain ways of thought and
action when they are no longer socially useful.
For this reason human intellect is chiefly used to justify inertia, and
to extol as knowledge what is already prejudice. The Socratic search for truth is the
principle which seeks to undermine this dogmatism of inertia, to break down the
rational defences of prejudice, and so to allow human personality to grow and
to adapt itself to new conditions.
Denying that any system of theology or ethics or law or government can
be eternally valid, it appeals against Reason to reason itself, against this
system of justice to justice, against these laws to law.
This appeal to
the common sense and tot he critical faculty of the ordinary man against the
formidable structures of established orthodoxy is the vital force of democratic
philosophy. On the one hand it displays
a deep humility - for it admits its own inability to formulate an eternal
truth. On the other it profoundly
challenges the infallibility of all the promulgators of Reason and denies that
they are an élite endowed with superior
powers. Its innate humility is therefore
the deadliest enemy of absolutism in all forms.
Its simple assertion that all men are equal in their ignorance of the
final values is the dissolvent of vested interests in knowledge and in social
power.
The attack of
democratic reason upon absolutism has taken different forms in different
epochs. Socrates was compelled by his
creed to attack Athenian democracy, Jesus to expose the Pharisees. In our own era the doctrines of natural right
and social contract were in the first place weapons for the destruction of
authoritarian Government and Churches.
Then in their turn they become the philosophical bulwarks of a new
bourgeois social system, and Marxism took their place as the instrument of
social criticism. The democratic spirit,
directly its ideals become accepted and established, is forced to escape from
them and to find other and newer concepts with which to fulfil its task as the
'gadfly' of human lethargy.
The crisis of
the modern world is at bottom caused by the failure of this democratic spirit
to find a new basis for its attack on dogma.
Our world is breaking up; but we remain supporters of one or other of
the established forms - adherents of status, not of equality. The Fascism which confronts us is the
self-conscious refusal of the power-that-be to face the necessity of change;
and it has drawn to itself a pseudo-revolutionary enthusiasm, merely because
the democratic spirit, becoming institutionalized, has lost its forward drive.
This fact is
glaringly obvious if we examine the political Left in our own country. Much of its organization and philosophy is
well-nigh as conservative as that of its opponents. Its early missionary zeal is gone; its
thought has settled down into well-worn dogmatic channels. Instead of uniting the discontented and the
oppressed by the fervour of its message, it is too often content to defend what
privileges its supporters possess, and to purge itself of heresies and of
unorthodox zealots. Left and Right today
are alike social institutions, part and parcel of the existing order, living
alongside one another and scratching each other occasionally according to the
polite ceremonies of parliamentary procedure.
The same holds true of the trade unions and the Cooperative movement,
and above all of the Churches. They,
too, have settled down to fulfil their appointed function in the status quo.
This
institutionalism is mirrored in the thought of many so-called Radicals. For the most part Socialist analysis has
become scholastic, a studious development of a received body of doctrine which grows
ever more academic and more remote from the current problems of society. The result of this loss of social dynamic is
twofold. On the one hand, the
Conservative forces, robbed of the healthy impact of Radical criticism, are
completely immobile, and on the other, the few men and women who still feel the
spirit of democracy find no corporate body in which they can play their
part. Unable to cooperate in the work of
social emancipation, isolated and bitter in their enforced inactivity, they
become anarchic and egocentric prophets, or, retiring from the social struggle,
relapse into aesthetic or mystical dilettantism. Like Socrates, they find no ground where
their seed can grow, and so their criticism, which should stimulate a healthy
movement of change, only goes to accelerate the process of social
disintegration.
Such is the
state of modern democracy in which Fascism is bound to grow. It can be cured only if we become urgently aware
of the imminence of the catastrophe, and if, holding fast to our denial of the
infallibility of established dogma, and believing still in the infinite
possibilities latent in human nature, we try to awaken once more the spirit of
conscientious objection to prejudice and to Phariseeism
of which Socrates was the first example.
Only when Western civilization has shaken off the shackles of the past
and created a new social order worthy of the human dignity of the common man,
will democracy and religion be once more realized in human society. Till then both must remain faiths, filled
with a prophetic anger at the sight of the nations and societies which use
their name in vain, and, because they are grounded in the heart of the common
man, powerful enough to remove mountains.
It is Socrates,
not Plato, whom we need.
PLATO TODAY (polychrome version)