370 BC THE REPUBLIC by Plato

THE Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception

of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer

approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;

the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of

the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the

Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other

Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same

perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world,

or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and

not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper

irony or a greater wealth of humor or imagery, or more dramatic power.

Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave

life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The

Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be

grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point to which ancient

thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the

moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although

neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the

substance of truth; and both of them had to be content with an

abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He was the greatest

metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than

in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are

contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied

so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the

analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the

law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the

distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,

between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the

division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible

elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary

--these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found

in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The

greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on

philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words

and things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him, although

he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own writings.

But he does not bind up truth in logical formulae, --logic is still

veiled in metaphysics; and the science which he imagines to

"contemplate all truth and all existence" is very unlike the

doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered.

Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of

a still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of

Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment

of the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second

only in importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and

is said as a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the

sixteenth century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a

history of the wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis,

is supposed to be founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which

it would have stood in the same relation as the writings of the

logographers to the poems of Homer. It would have told of a struggle

for Liberty, intended to represent the conflict of Persia and

Hellas. We may judge from the noble commencement of the Timaeus,

from the fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third book of

the Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated this high

argument. We can only guess why the great design was abandoned;

perhaps because Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a

fictitious history, or because he had lost his interest in it, or

because advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we may

please ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever

been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathizing with

the struggle for Hellenic independence, singing a hymn of triumph over

Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus where

he contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire--"How brave a

thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed

every other state of Hellas in greatness!" or, more probably,

attributing the victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the

favor of Apollo and Athene.