How the Greeks lived in a New World, and utopia seemed just round the corner. How Plato, in the Republic, is chiefly concerned with what will hold the ideal city together. BEFORE the great empires of Rome and Macedonia began to spread their camps through the length and breadth of the Mediterranean world, there was a time when the vision of an ideal city seems to have been uppermost in the minds of a good many men. Just as the wide expanse of unsettled territory in America caused the people of eighteenth century Europe to think of building a civilization in which the errors and vices and superstitions of the old world might be left behind, so the sparsely settled coasts of Italy, Sicily, and the Ægean Islands, and the shores of the Black Sea, must have given men the hope of being able to turn over a fresh page. Those years between six hundred and three hundred B. C. were city-building years for the parent cities of Greece. The city of Miletus is supposed to have begotten some three hundred cities, and many of its fellows were possibly not less fruitful. Since new cities could be founded there was plenty of chance for variation and experiment; and those who dreamed of a more, generous social order could set their hands and wits to making a better start "from the bottom up." Of all the plans and reconstruction programs that must have been put forward during these centuries, only a scant handful remains. Aristotle tells us about an ideal state designed by one, Phaleas, who believed Plato's Republic dates roughly from the time of that long and disastrous war which Athens fought with In describing his ideal community Plato, like a trained workman, begins with his physical foundations. So far from putting his utopia in a mythical island of Avilion, where falls not hail nor rain nor any snow, it is plain that Plato was referring repeatedly to the soil in which Athens was planted, and to the economic life which grew out of that soil. Since he was speaking to his own countrymen, he could let a good many things In the economic foundations of the Republic, we look in vain for a recognition of the labor problem. Now the labor problem is a fundamental difficulty in our modern life; and it seems on the surface that Plato is a little highbrow and remote in the ease with which he gets over it. When we look more closely into the matter, however, and see the way in which men got their living in the "morning lands"—as the Germans call them—we shall find that the reason Plato does not offer a solution is that he was not, indeed, confronted by a problem. Given a valley section which has not been ruthlessly stript of trees; given the arts of agriculture and herding; given a climate without dangerous extremes of heat and cold; given the opportunity to found new colonies when the old city-region is over-populated—and it is only by an exercise of ingenuity that a labor problem could be invented. A man might become a slave by military capture; he did not become a slave by being compelled, under threat of starvation, to tend a machine. So Socrates, in this dialogue on the Republic, describes to his hearers the essential physical elements of the good life. One of his hearers, Glaucon, asks him to elaborate it a little, for Socrates has limited himself to bare essentials. It is the same sort of objection, by the way, that M. Poincaré, the physicist, made to the philosophy of Tolstoy. Socrates answers that a good state would have the healthy constitution which he has just described; but that he has no objection to looking at an "inflamed constitution." What Socrates describes as an inflamed constitution is a mode of life which all the people of Western Europe and America at the present day—no matter what their religion, economic status, or political creed may be—believe in with almost a single mind; and so, although it is the opposite of Plato's ideal state, I go on to present it, for the light it throws on our own institutions and habits. The unjust state comes into existence, says Plato through the mouth of Socrates, by the multiplication of wants and superfluities. As a result of increasing wants, we must enlarge our borders, for the original The sum of this criticism is that Plato saw clearly that an ideal community must have a common physical standard of living; and that boundless wealth or unlimited desires and gratifications had nothing to do with a good standard. The good was what was necessary; and what was necessary was not, essentially, many goods. Like Aristotle, Plato wanted a mode of life which was neither impoverished nor luxurious: those who have read a little in Greek history will see that this Athenian ideal of the good life fell symbolically enough between Sparta and Corinth, between the cities which we associate respectively with a hard, military life and with a soft, super-sensuous æstheticism. Should we moderate our wants or should we increase production? Plato had no difficulty in answering this question. He held that a reasonable man would moderate his wants; and that if he wished to live like a good farmer or a good philosopher he would not attempt to copy the expenditures of a vulgar gambler who has just made a corner in wheat, or a vulgar courtesan who has just made a conquest of the vulgar gambler who has made a corner in wheat. Wealth and Nor does Plato have one standard of living for his ruling classes and another for the common people. To each person he would give all the material things necessary for sustenance; and from each he would be prepared to strip all that was not essential. He realized that the possession of goods was not a means of getting happiness, but an effort to make up for a spiritually depauperate life: for Plato, happiness was what one could put into life and not what one could loot out of it: it was the happiness of the dancer rather than the happiness of the glutton. Plato pictured a community living a sane, continent, athletic, clear-eyed life; a community that would be always, so to say, within bounds. There is a horror of laxity and easy living in his Republic. His society was stripped for action. The fragrance that permeates his picture of the good life is not the heavy fragrance of rose-petals and incense falling upon languorous couches: it is the fragrance of the morning grass, and the scent of crushed mint or marjoram beneath the feet. How big is Plato's community, how are the people divided, what are their relations? Now that we have discussed the lay out of the land, and have inquired into the physical basis of this utopia, we are ready to turn It follows almost inevitably from what we have said of Plato's environment, that his ideal community was not to be unlimited in population. Quite the contrary. Plato said that "the city may increase to any size which is consistent with its unity; that is the limit." The modern political scientist, who lives within a national state of millions of people, and who thinks of the greatness of states largely in terms of their population, has scoffed without mercy at the fact that Plato limited his community to an arbitrary number, 5,040, about the number that can be conveniently addressed by a single orator. As a matter of fact there is nothing ridiculous in Plato's definition: he was not speaking of a horde of barbarians: he was laying down the foundations for an active polity of citizens: and it is plain enough in all conscience that when you increase the number of people in a community you decrease the number of things that they can share in common. Plato could not anticipate the wireless telephone and the daily newspaper; still less would he have been likely to exaggerate the difference which these instrumentalities have made in the matters that most intimately concern us; and when he set bounds to the population his city would contain, he was anticipating by more than two thousand years the verdict of modern town planners like Mr. Raymond Unwin. People are not the members of a community because To Plato, a good community was like a healthy body; a harmonious exercise of every function was the condition of its strength and vitality. Necessarily then a good community could not be simply a collection of individuals, each one of whom insists upon some private and particular happiness without respect to the welfare and interests of his fellows. Plato believed that goodness Has any such society ever come into existence? Do not too hastily answer No. The ideal in Plato's mind is carried out point for point in the organization of a modern symphony orchestra. Now Plato was not unaware that there were other formulas for happiness. He expressly points out however that in founding the Republic he does not wish to Plato arrives at his apportionment of functions by a method which is old-fashioned, and which anybody versed in modern psychology would regard as a "rationalization." Plato is trying to give a firm basis to the division of classes which he favored; and so he compares the community to a human being, possessed of the virtues of wisdom, valour, temperance, and justice. Each of these virtues Plato relates to a particular class of people. Wisdom is appropriate to the rulers of the city. Thus arises the class of guardians. Valour is the characteristic of the defenders of the city and hence a military class, called auxiliaries, appears. We must not misunderstand Plato's division of classes. Aristotle criticizes Plato in terms of a more simple system of democracy; but Plato did not mean to institute a fixed order; within his Republic the Napoleonic motto—la carrière est ouverte aux talents—was the guiding principle. What lay beneath Plato's argument was a belief which present-day studies in psychology seem likely to confirm; a belief that children come into the world with a bent already well marked in their physical and mental constitutions. Plato advocated, it is true, an aristocracy or government by the best people; but he did not believe in fake aristocracies that are perpetuated through hereditary wealth and position. Having determined that his city was to contain three classes, rulers, warriors, and workers, his capital difficulty still remained to be faced; how was each individual to find his way to the right class,
The next class is known as the warriors, or auxiliaries. They are different in character from the guardians who rule the state; but frequently Plato refers to the guardians as a single class, including the auxiliaries; and it seems that they figured in his mind as the temporal arm of that class. At any rate, the auxiliaries as they are painted in the Critias, which was the dialogue in which Plato attempted to show his Republic in action, dwelt by themselves within a single enclosure; and had common meals and common As the safeguard of this principle of natural selection of functions, Plato proposed a system of common marriage. "The wives of these guardians are to be common, and their children are also common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent." Starting from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male children who are born ten and seven months afterwards his sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him father. . . . And those who were born at the same time they will term brothers and sisters, and they are not to intermarry." One of the features of this system is that the best stocks—the strongest and wisest and most beautiful—are to he encouraged to reproduce themselves. But this is not But to breed Guardians is only one-half the problem. The other half comes under the heads of education and discipline; and when Plato discusses these things, he is not speaking, as a modern college president perhaps would, of book-learning alone; he is referring to all the activities that mold a person's life. He follows the older philosopher, Pythagoras, and anticipates the great organizer, Benedict, by laying down a rule of life for his guardians. He did not imagine that disinterested activities, spacious thoughts, and clear vision would arise in people who normally put their personal comfort and "happiness" above the necessities of their office. Let us recognize the depth of Plato's insight. It is plain that he did not despise what a modern psychologist would call "the normal biological career." For the great majority of people happiness consisted in learning a definite trade or profession, in doing one's daily work, in mating, and when the tension of the day relaxed, in getting enjoyment and recreation in the simple sensualities of eating, drinking, singing, lovemaking, and what not. This normal biological career is associated with a home, and with the limited horizons of a home; and a host of small loyalties and jealousies and interests are woven into the very texture of that life. Each home, each small circle of relatives and friends, tends to be a miniature utopia; there is a limited community of goods, a tendency to adjust one's actions to the welfare of the little whole, and a habit of banding together against the world at large. But the good, All these regulations, of course, are for the purpose of keeping the Guardians disinterested. Plato believed that the majority of people did not know how to mind public business; for it seemed to him that the ordering of a community's life required a measure of science which the common man could not possibly possess. Indeed, in a city of a thousand men he did not see the possibility of getting as many as fifty men who would be sufficiently well versed in what we should today call sociology to deal intelligently with public affairs—for there would scarcely be that many first-rate draughts players. At the same time, if the government is to h' entrusted to a few, the few must be genuinely disinterested. If they possessed lands and houses and money It remains to take a glance at the manhood and later life of the Guardians. As young men, the Guardians belong to the auxiliaries; and since they are not permitted to perform any of the manual arts—for skill in any of the trades tended to make a man warped and one-sided, like the symbolic blacksmith god, Hephæstos—their physical edge was maintained by the unceasing discipline of the gymnasium and "military" expeditions. I put military in quotation marks, because a greater part of the warriors' time is spent not in war but in preparation for war; and it is plain that Plato looked upon war as an unnecessary evil, for it arose out of the unjust state; and therefore he must have resorted to warlike discipline for the educational values he found in it. From thirty-five to fifty the potential Guardians undertake practical activities, commanding armies and gaining experience of life. After fifty, those who are qualified devote themselves to philosophy: out of their experience and their inner reflection they figure the essential nature of the good community; and on occasion each guardian abandons divine philosophy for a while, takes his turn at the helm of the state, and trains his successors. What is the business of the Guardian? How does The real concern of the Guardians is with the essential constitution of the state. The means that they employ to perfect this constitution are breeding, vocational selection, and education. "If once a republic is set a-going, it proceeds happily, increasing as a circle. And whilst good education and nurture are preserved, they produce good geniuses; and good geniuses, partaking of such education, produce still better than the former, as well in other respects, as with reference to propagation, as in the case of other animals." What do we miss when we look around this utopia of Plato's? Contacts with the outside world? We may take them for granted. Downy beds, Corinthian girls, luxurious furniture? We can well spare them. The opportunity for a satisfactory intellectual and physical life? No: both of these are here. What Plato has left out are the poets, dramatists, and painters. Literature and music, in order to contribute to the noble education of the Guardians, are both severely restricted in theme and in treatment. Plato has his limitations; and here is the principal one: Plato distrusted the emotional life, and whilst he was prepared to do full homage to man's obvious sensualities, he feared the emotions as a tight-rope walker fears the wind; for they threatened his balance. In one significant passage he classifies "love" with disease and drunkenness, as a vulgar misfortune; and though he was ready to permit the active expression of the emotions, as in the dance or the sexual act, he treated the mere play upon the feelings, without active participation, as a form of intemperance. Hence a great deal of music and dramatic mimicry was taboo. Foreign as this doctrine sounds to the modern reader, there is perhaps more than a grain of sense in it: William James used to teach that no one should passively4
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