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.