THE MESSAGE OF PLATO " That which is called the Christian Religion existed among the Ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity" St. Augustine THE MESSAGE OF .^i^ OF 9mce> JUN 20 1936 ) '\ / PLATO A RE-INTERPRETATION OF THE "REPUBLIC BV EDWARD j/uRWIGK, M.A. HEAD or THE HATAX TATO DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAI, SCIENCE AND ADMINISTRATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AUTHOR OF "THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL PROGRESS" METHUEN & GO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published in ig20 PREFACE I HAVE attempted in this book the very bold task of presenting a new interpretation of Plato's teaching, as contained in his masterpiece, the Republic. The inter- pretation is based largely upon the philosophic thought of ancient India — or rather, upon the Indian rehgious thought, since, for the Indian sages, as for Plato, philosophy had httle meaning except in relation to what we call religion. Conse- quently my interpretation is at bottom a religious interpretation. It is therefore in direct antagonism to the interpretation of most recognised commentators. For the latter have interpreted the book in accordance with their dominant interests : they treat it from the standpoint of pohtics, ethics and metaphysics, and criticise it as a philosophic, not a super-philosophic, treatise. The accepted title of the dialogue — Concerning a Pohty or Repubhc — seems to justify this attitude ; the alternative title of the work — Concerning Justice — also appears to justify the view that the book was a contribution to political and ethical speculation. But the Greek word " Dikaiosune," here translated " Justice," means much more : its full meaning is Righteous- ness ; and this, I believe, gives a truer clue to the meaning of the dialogue. For it is a discussion of Righteousness in all its forms, from the just deaUng of the law-abiding citizen to the spirit of hohness in the saint. I do not claim to be at all a quaUfied commentator. Indeed, my sole qualifications are my devotion to Plato, and my firm beUef that the Republic is really his supreme attempt to show us how the human soul can fit itself for that reahsation of the divine Good which is the goal of every soul's hfe. And if this is the motive, then perhaps I may be pardoned for trying to force it upon the notice of others. I may be quite wrong in my view ; but I can only urge, as Socrates himself does in the Republic, viii THE MESSAGE OF PLATO " This at any rate is how I see the matter, though God knows whether I am right or not." The book is intended for the general reader rather than for the scholar. I have therefore omitted many sections dealing with special topics, such as the origin of the doctrine of Ideas and the Platonic conception of the sciences. I have also reluc- tantly omitted a long enquiry into the channels by which Indian thought penetrated Greece in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. Still more reluctantly, I have omitted a detailed comparison between the Indian and the Greek metaphysical speculations. Consequently it must appear that I make some very big assumj>- tions without attempting to justify them. I certainly do assume a fairly direct contact between India and Greece, just as I assume that the influence was profoundly felt by Plato. And for the latter assumption I rely here solely upon internal evidence. Even this is very inadequately dealt with, for lack of space has prevented me from collating the Republic with such important dialogues as the Parmenides, the Sophistes, the Philebus and the Timseus. I hope that critics will make some allowance for the book's shortcomings on the ground of these inevitable omissions. I desire to express my thanks to Mr. J. A. Hobson, who read through an earlier draft of the book and made many valuable criticisms ; to Mr. R. H. Tawney, who read the whole book in manuscript, and suggested several important alterations and additions ; and to my wife most of all, without whose help I could not have written the book at all. I also owe a debt of gratitude to many Indian writers and teachers, who have helped me to gain what understanding I possess of Vedanta. In particular I would mention the writings of the late Swamis, Vivekananda and Swarupananda ; of Sri Ramanathan (Parananda), of Harendranath Maitra, whose Httle book on Hinduism gives a very good picture of the spiritual life of India, and of Babu Bhagavan Das, whose book, the Science of Social Organisation in the Light of the Laws of Manu, I have used extensively in the introductory chapters. But I owe a far greater debt to Ananda Acharya (Professor S. N. Baral), to whose teaching and example ahke I owe most of the knowledge I have of the true meaning of the spiritual philosophy of Vedanta. Perhaps it may be weU to explain here that the name Vedanta PREFACE ix (meaning literally the end or goal of wisdom) signifies the rehgious philosophy of ancient India, contained in the Vedic and other Sanskrit hterature, dating for the most part from a period two to six thousand years ago. Its purest doctrines are contained in the Upanishads, which belong to the later part of the Vedic period ; and its essence is distilled in a single poem, the Bhagavad Gita, or Divine Song (often referred to simply as the Gita) , which was probably written about three centuries before Christ. There are other Gitas, also held in reverence by Indians ; but the Bhagavad Gita is perhaps the nearest approach to a " Bible " in India, for it is revered as the greatest fount of full spiritual teaching. The religion of India, however, is not contained in any holy scriptures, nor is its authority dependent upon any written text. It is always and only a reahty depending upon individual intuition : its mark is spirituality — in any and every form. There are several Enghsh translations of the Gita ; Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, " The Song Celestial," is perhaps the best for English readers, for it best conveys the spirit of the original. A short and popular account of Vedanta doctrines is contained in Max Miiller's book on the subject. CONTENTS PART I The Ancestry of Plato's Faith CHAPTER PAGE I. The Quest OF Socrates : the Western Ancestry of Plato's Doctrine ... ...... i II The Vedic Interpretation of Human Life : the Eastern Ancestry of Plato's Doctrine . . . . -15 PART II The Preparation of the Soul, and an Account of the Righteousness of the Lower Path III. Analysis of the "Republic," Book I and Part of Book II — The Explanation of the Question "What is the Nature of Righteousness? " ; and the Construction of the Good State .......... 42 IV. Analysis of the "Republic," Book II (part) and Books III AND IV — The Purification of the Good State, and the Education of the Good Soul — The Definition of the Righteous Citizen ........ 60 PART III Spiritual Realisation, or the Path of Religion V. Analysis of the "Republic," Book V (part) — The Community of Occupations for Men and Women ; the Community of Husbands, Wives and Children ; the Kingship of the Philosopher ......... 79 VI. An Explanatory Chapter Concerning the Conception of the Upper Path or Path of Religion . . . . • 95 VII. Analysis of the "Republic," Book V (part) and Book VI (part) — The Meaning of Philosophy, or Wisdom-Religion ; AND THE Characteristics of the Philosopher or Seer . 10 1 VIII. Analysis of the "Republic," Book VI (part) and Book VII — The Full Meaning of Spiritual Realisation, and the Final Education of the Philosopher . . . .115 IX. The End of Book VII of the "Republic" — The Disciple's Return to Active Life ; the Philosopher's Return to THE World ; the Possible Salvation of Society . . 145 xi xii THE MESSAGE OF PLATO PART IV The Dangers of the Lower Path CHAITEK PAGE X. Analysis of the " Republic," Books VIII and IX — The Causes OF THE Degeneration of the Good State and of the Good Man ........... 165 XI. The Tenth Book OF THE "Republic" — The Banishment of Art and Poetry ; and the Account of the Soul's Immortality, and the Law of Reincarnation ..... 192 PART V Summary and Discussion XII. Discussion of the Doctrine in the Light of Modern Thought 220 Index and Glossary 261 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO PART I THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH CHAPTER I THE QUEST OF SOCRATES. THE WESTERN ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S DOCTRINE. PLATO was the disciple of Socrates. He was not the pupil of a great teacher : he was the disciple of a great master. This relationship is quite unfamiliar to us, at any rate in the region of philosophical study. We recognise some great exponents — thinkers, discoverers, system- builders — and each of these has his followers, acknowledging their debt, gladly paying tribute to their teacher. But the full relationship of disciple to master is hardly known nowadays, except in the East. In India we find it still : there, every seeker for truth seeks first for a Guru or master to be his guide in the quest ; and the Guru becomes his enlightener, his inspiration, and the life-long object of his fullest devotion and reverence. The Guru alone can " dispel his darkness " (this is the literal meaning of the word) ; the Guru alone can turn the rusty lock of the closed chamber of the soul and open the door to light. For the Guru is one who has himself seen the truth and lives it ; who can therefore teach the wisdom which is also life. And, in return, the disciple hugs close the unpayable debt, glorying in it as a possession beyond price. To the Guru he owes the knowledge of his own soul, the certainty of his immortality, the vision of heaven which he may see whenever he closes his eyes to the moving world. In this sense Socrates and Plato were I 2 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Guru and disciple. Socrates was a true Guru in every essential but one. Like every true Guru, he sought for souls capable of the search for truth, souls not yet tarnished, not yet bewitched by the great sorcerer — the world. Like every true Guru, he tested them, each and all, rejecting those who failed in the spirit of con- stancy and earnestness. Like every true Guru, he taught those who could be taught, not by thrusting conviction bodily into their minds, but first and most by the negative process of convincing them of the futility of their accepted beliefs and dogmas, and so preparing them for the task of striking the sparks of truth out of the clean flint of their own deeper consciousness. But, unUke most Gurus, Socrates never claimed that he had himself seen the truth. He deUghted in confessing his ignorance : that was his great " irony." He loved to put his work and his power on a lowly level. " My mother was a midwife," he would say, " and I must have inherited a little of her art. For this is all I can do : I can bring truth to the birth in the labouring souls of others." Yet he did not pretend to be nothing more than a seeker among other seekers. He had some convictions of truth so sure and so strong that he never hesitated to call them in- spirations. He knew that the Reality which truth would reveal is good and nothing but good, and the cause and creator of all good everywhere. He knew that this ReaUty could be found, if the search were only earnest enough. And, most of all, he knew what was not the road to it : he knew that the way of the world was the wrong road, that most of its estimates were false esti- mates, its knowledge unreal knowledge, its wisdom little better than foolishness. He followed his faith unfalteringly : it caused him to tell his world, and most of its wise men, that they were wholly deluded. He followed his " inherited art," his great natural gift, unfalteringly : this caused him to expose and prove false every convention and dogma and behef behind which comfortable worldhness entrenches itself. His hfe-work earned for him his death, at the hands of his world, " for corrupting the young and perverting reUgion." It was the inevitable wage of such a work in such a world. But it earned for him something more : the reverence of a httle band of disciples, and the passion- ate devotion of the greatest of these disciples — a devotion so strong in a disciple so great as to immortahse not the name only but the character and hfe and mind of the master. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 3 Plato was a disciple in the completest Indian sense. Just as an Indian disciple prefaces everything he says or writes about wisdom and truth with the invocation " Glory to Guru," and writes, not in his own name, but in the name of some spiritual quahty which his master has taught him to love ; so Plato, throughout the greater part of his long Hfe, put all his thoughts into the mouth of Socrates, as if to show that the teaching was his master's, not his own. The most beautiful of all the dia- logues, such as the Phaedo, are like hymns in his master's honour ; in all the dialogues, with few exceptions, Socrates is the chief speaker — critic, questioner, unveiler of error, or expounder of truth. In the few exceptions, written late in Plato's life, Socrates usually appears as a listener only — probably because his disciple felt that, so long after his master's death, his own thoughts ought no longer to appear as the direct utterances of his teacher. In the latest of all the dialogues, the Laws, Socrates does not enter at all ; and for this there is perhaps the additional reason that here Plato sets himself to work out a conception peculiarly his own, relating, not to the kingdom of reahty and truth, but to a second-best state on earth. Now in the very voluminous writings which Plato lays at the feet of his master, we find not only a picture of a character and a mind of singular interest, charm and power, but also a picture of that mind absorbed in a ceaseless quest, animated throughout by a double passion^ — for truth and for goodness. We need not ask here how far the picture is true to the historical Socrates : the character revealed is certainly his ; the nature of the quest equally certainly belongs to Socrates as he was ; but the mind and thought are the mind and thought of Plato, who, taking his master's quest for his own, and his character for his own ideal, interpreted and elaborated in his own way the suggestions of his teacher. But this does not matter in the least ; let us call the picture that of Socrates as Plato liked to think of him. What is important is that we should get a fair and true view of the picture, in order to understand the mind and the quest of Plato himself. Let me try, first, to give an account of the quest. If we read the different dialogues in the order in which they appear to have been written, we are first of all interested and fascinated, and then (let it be confessed) a Uttle irritated and wearied, by the 4 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO elaborate discussion of all those metaphysical and ethical conun- drums with which philosophers and morahsts have made us so familiar. What is knowledge ? How is it possible to know any- thing ? What is it that is known ? Is there such a thing as absolute truth, or permanent fact in and behind the ever-changing universe ? Is there a knowable reality ? And if so, is it one or many ? What are the faculties of cognition ? What are the correct processes and methods of learning, of separating truth from error ? What is the relation of action to knowledge ? What is happiness or pleasure ? Is good conduct based upon know- ledge ? — and of what ? Can society get that knowledge, and so manage itself satisfactorily and scientifically ? Are there any real teachers of pohtical or ethical knowledge ? If so, upon what is their teaching based ? These are the subjects which appear to indicate the great quest of Socrates — subjects discussed and re-discussed through hun- dreds of pages, with frequent excursions into less or greater matters, ranging from the derivation of words to the origin of the soul and of the universe. What are we to make of it all ? We know that for more than a century before the time of Socrates most of these subjects had occupied the minds of Greek thinkers, and that various schools of thought had arisen, giving different answers — the beginnings in Europe of metaphysical and ethical philosophy. ReaUty is multiform and ever changing, and we know it only through the organs of sense perception ; reahty is one and unchangeable, and we cannot know it at all. The good is pleasure, and everyone knows it ; the good is inteUigent judg- ment, and very few can possess it. These were the types of leading theory, already fully expounded, each with its bands of supporters. Are we to conclude, then, that Socrates, entering the philosophical arena, devoted his Ufe to carrying analysis farther, criticising, re-defining, re-combining, what his prede- cessors had left him, sometimes failing altogether to reach a new conclusion, sometimes abandoning the search as hopeless, sometimes merely quibbUng — at very great length — sometimes really managing to reconcile conflicting ideas into a new syn- thesis, always carrying farther the logical method of enquiry, insisting upon a dialectical process which shall separate vaUd concepts from confusions ? That was his quest and his work, then ? That was his contribution to his world's good ? THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 5 This is a very natural view to take, especially for those who have some knowledge of the history of philosophy. The Platonic Socrates (or the Socratic Plato) thus falls into his place among the builders of metaphysical, ethical, political and logical systems — a very high place, for, despite his many contradictions and failures, he undoubtedly advanced far beyond any and all of his predecessors. True, he confused matters which we think are better kept distinct : ethics with pohtics, and metaphysics with both. He failed to distinguish the theoretical from the practical reason, as Aristotle and Kant did. He mixed up argument with metaphor, reasoned statement with mythical story. Even his greatest contribution to metaphysical theory — the doctrine of Eternal Ideas as the great knowable reaUty — was presented in a confused and contradictory way. Nevertheless, he carries us a long way beyond the theories of reality and knowledge upon which he built, the theories of HeracUtus and Cratylus and Protagoras, of Anaxagoras and Parmenides and Zeno. And all through his pages there shine flashes of intuition which point far beyond his own theories, hints of fuller truth which, if only he had followed them up, might have led him even nearer to our more mature and more consistent explanation of the problems of cognition with which he struggled. This, I say, is a very natural view. It is, on the whole, the view of most commentators. It is the academic, and therefore the sane and safe view. It is, for that reason, an utterly lifeless view, an insult to the realities by which Ufe lives. For, candidly, is it not the case that, when we talk and read and write and puzzle our brains about the fundamental subjects of metaphysics — reaUty, essence, appearance, cognition ; or of ethics — the sww- mum bonum, the criterion of right, the moral sense ; is it not the case that we treat the whole business as something, important doubtless, but by no means supremely important ? It is not a matter of hfe and death to us : it is a matter of speculative interest. If we cannot get the matter clear — well, hfe will go on, and happiness will not be destroyed any more than will efficiency. It is not the supreme thing in life ; its teachers have followers indeed, but not followers such as Pythagoras had. There are ardent followers of Green and Bradley, as once there were of Bentham and Mill ; of Hegel, as once of Hume. But would they die for the theories which they hold or follow ? 6 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Now this is just the difference between philosophy as we think of it or look for it in the writings of Plato or anyone else, and " philosophy " as both Socrates and Plato thought of it. Put aside, if you can, the academic interest, and read the Platonic dialogues through, looking for consistency, not inconsistencies, for the One and not the Many. Then you will hardly fail to reahse that, when Socrates is searching for the explanation of cognition, of reahty, or of the standard of right and wrong, his quest and his interest are totally different from ours, in quality and in kind. He is out to find life, and the whole secret of life. It is all in all to him : not a theoretical interest, not a metaphysical or philo- sophic interest, but just everything that matters, the whole key to the soul's wellbeing. For this " reality " or " ens " or "es- sence " (a dead thing with a lifeless name in all our philosophies) is, for him, the living Good and the hving God. He must find it, he must know it — in order to become good, in order to find salva- tion. It was not knowledge or truth which he sought, as we seek knowledge and truth. His life-search was for the knowledge which saves the soul, for the truth which reveals God, for the reality which makes goodness real, makes virtue unshakable, realises the perfection of the soul's relations to all existing things. His eternal questions — What do we mean by knowing ? How is knowledge possible ? are not our questions. We want to explain the possibility of cognition, the functions of sense and intellect in relation to a knowable universe, and the metaphysical imphca- tions of all this. But his question always meant — How are we to know Goodness in order that we may be good and a source of good in the world ? It was his faith — he never attempted to prove it — that Reality, Goodness, and God are all one. To be good, we must know this One, not as the world knows or thinks it knows facts and truths, but with a directness, a cer- tainty, altogether different. Goodness is knowledge, therefore ; but we of the world have not got this knowledge, and therefore we are neither good nor happy, do not even know what goodness and happiness are. The world talks about virtue, about justice and right. But it is hke a man talking about a weaver's shuttle when he has never seen a loom, or about steersmanship when he has never been on board a ship. His search is not a search for perfectly unified knowledge, but for the knowledge which shall itself unify all things in heaven THE ANCESTRY OB^ PLATO'S FAITH 7 and earth. He goes from teacher to teacher, searching for this but never finding it in them. The search is usually negative, critical. He examines the philosophical teachers of Greece : they have not found the True. He examines the moral teachers of Greece : they have not found the Good. He is far more con- cerned to criticise the latter than the former ; of course : for it is not truth as a theory of knowledge which he seeks, but truth as an existent fact, the creator and source of all good everywhere. For this reason the Platonic Socrates in the dialogues of Plato returns again and again to the attack upon both the unconscious teachers and the professed teachers of morality or good conduct : upon the poets and politicians, and upon the Sophists and Rhetoricians. These latter he came as near hating as was possible for so gentle a nature ; for knowing nothing, they professed to teach the greatest thing in the world. They were the new and fashionable Professors of Right Action and Right Speech. They were not bad men : far from it. Protagoras, the Sophist, was a very fine man with a very exalted aim ; even Thrasymachus, the Rhetorician, was only unpleasant by reason of the violence of his dogmatism. But they were false teachers, because they were ignorant ; dangerous teachers, because their ignorance was of the one thing that mattered. They were purveyors of food for the soul, hawkers of goods for the mind, selling for money wares bhndly labelled Virtue and Knowledge. They were concocters of persuasion for the multitude ; clever cooks who served up attractive dishes of Belief without Understanding. Their arts were the counterfeits of the true arts of teaching and of healing. For all they knew, they were selling poison for food, falsehood for truth, ignorance for knowledge and wrong for right. They had not got the wisdom which is also the secret of goodness. He confused metaphysics and ethics and politics, you say ? Of course he did — a noble confusion, which vitalised the truth instead of dissecting it. For how can there be separation in such a quest ? Here again his faith kept the road clear for him. He could not think of a real cause which was not good, nor a Good which was not Nous (wisdom), nor a universe which was not both Nous and Good at bottom — and nothing else real, nor a true society which was not the incarnation of Good Nous. All his questions therefore were but modes of a single question. It appeared in many forms : What is cognition ? Can virtue be 8 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO taught ? What are knowledge and ignorance ? What is false opinion ? WTiat is the One ? What are the Many ? What is right ? What is the Ideal State ? But each and all of these fonns are but aspects of the single search for the secret of hfe and immortaUty, for God and Righteousness, for that flame of knowledge which purifies the soul even as it illumines it and reveals all things to it. Each and all of the questions are but variants of the supreme quest in which and for which Socrates lived and died : " How shall we find God and be Uke Him ? " Now this vital difference, which, for both the master and the disciple, turned philosophy into rehgion, and so fused meta- physics, ethics, politics and everything else into an indissoluble unity, is exactly the difference which distinguishes the specula- tions of ancient India from ours. Like us, the Indian thinkers set out to answer the question — What are knowledge and reaUty and truth ? Like us, they worked out their answers into elaborate philosophical systems. But, unUke us, they never dreamed of searching for a knowledge which was anything but spiritual, for a reality which was anything short of the source of eternal hfe, for a truth which was any less thing than the inspiration of eternal goodness. They called their philosophy Vidya, or knowledge ; but they meant by it knowledge of the spiritual by the spirit, not knowledge of the intelUgible by the intellect. If, like most modem philosophers, they seemed in their speculations to " leave the Lord God out of the business," this was only because they related all their thought to an even greater Reality, trans- cending personality — just as Socrates did. And the text upon which their whole philosophy hung might serve equally well as the text of the whole Socratic philosophy : — " Mankind errs here By folly darkening knowledge. But, for whom That darkness of the soul is chased by light, Splendid and clear shines nxanifest the Truth, As if a Sun of Wisdom sprang to shed Its beams of dawn."* But I do not, at this point, wish to dwell upon the general resemblance of the Indian and the Platonic philosophies. No doubt a modem critic could explain it all away very satisfactorily * Bhagarad Gita, Book V. All the verse quotations given are from Sir Edwin Arnold's translation of the Gita, " The Song Celestial." THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 9 by saying that both represent the beginnmgs of the " meta- physical stage " of thought, in which the confusions of the " theological stage " have not yet been completely shaken off. My reason for noting the similarity is just this : in the Indian conception, the fusion of metaphysics with ethics and politics was as necessary and complete as was the interdependence of good living with the knowledge of the Uving source of good ; and from this a double result followed. On the one hand, only the purified soul could ever know reaUty ; on the other hand, only knowledge of Reality could make purity of soul unchange- able and personal or social goodness real. On the one hand, the equanimity of resolute self-control was a condition of the dis- covery of spiritual truth ; on the other hand, the full vision of truth alone could make the soul for ever " lord of senses and of self." Their philosophy, therefore, was always a rule of life as well as a philosophy ; it was Yoga as well as Vidya, a path of preparation for knowledge as well as an account of the knowledge to be reached. And in this the Platonic Socrates undoubtedly resembled them, not in his theory only, but in his life. His quest, as revealed in the Platonic writings, may seem obscure and confused ; but the character of the seeker, like his faith, stands out with absolute clearness and consistency ; stands out, also, as at once the condition and the result of his quest. There are two dialogues in which Plato has given a picture of the character of Socrates ; and these two dialogues — the Symposium and the Phaedo — are diametrically opposed to one another in the setting, the scene, and all the circumstances. The one depicts Socrates in the midst of life ; the other depicts him in the presence of death. The one reveals him as a reveller among revellers, holding a feast to celebrate a great achievement on the part of one of the company ; the other reveals him as a prisoner in a criminal's cell, waiting, with a few of his friends, for the sunset which marks the hour of his execution. In the one, the subject of the discussion is love ; in the other, death and immortality. In the one, every member of the company becomes shamelessly drunk — except Socrates ; in the other, every member of the band is overcome by grief — except Socrates. The two dialogues are even more opposed to each other than this account suggests ; indeed, there are only two things in which they agree — the character of the central figure, and the gulf 10 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO which separates him from all other men. It seems to have been Plato's desire to make the contrast between the two scenes as sharp as possible, in order to throw into strong reUef the fundamental quality of his master, perfect equanimity in every sort of circumstance. And the picture so presented bears an exact similitude to the character of the enhghtened sage which was the ideal of the Indian Vidya : — " Freed In all his works from prickings of desire, Burned clean in act by the white fire of truth." " He unto whom — soul-centred — grief and joy Sound as one word ; to whose deep-seeing eyes The clod, the marble, and the gold are one ; Whose equal heart holds the same gentleness For lovely and unlovely things, firm-set, Well-pleased in praise and dispraise, satisfied With honour or dishonour ; unto friends And unto foes alike in tolerance." " One who Abandoning desires which shake the mind, Finds in his soul full comfort for his soul," " In sorrows not dejected, and in joys Not over- joyed ; dwelling outside the stress Of passion, fear, and anger ; . . . such an one Bears wisdom's plainest mark." This equanimity, the mark of wisdom, is put before us by Plato as the great characteristic of Socrates. The rest of the picture only amphfies this, at the same time softening the outline, and removing any hint of a strained austerity. He is shown to us as a man, severely temperate indeed, by habit and by choice, yet a willing guest at a feast, drinking as deep as anyone, since water and wine are ahke to him, utterly unmoved by the wine, tranquilly discoursing wisdom so long as any remain sober enough to hsten, and, when no one is left, as tranquilly departing to discourse wisdom to others. A lover of all beauty, attracted more than most by beauty of face and form, yet loving only with the soul, never with the senses, serenely proof against the most terrible temptations, resolute to find even in the passion of love only a stepping-stone to the love of truth. A hater of nothing, except evil and sin, and hating these, not as one who judges and condemns them in others, but as one who sees them as an involuntary blindness, a thick night of ignorance, choking the soul of the sinner, cutting it off from the good. A poor man, THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 11 since wealth had no interest for him, and the satisfactions which wealth can buy held no attraction for him ; scorning to earn money by his power of teaching, since (like every Indian sage) he felt that to take money in return for a spiritual gift was a profanation of the spirit itself. A humble man, never denying his own pecuhar powers, but claiming no credit for them, calhng them just a strange gift from the gods, honestly convinced that the difference between himself and other men was due to a happy accident by which a vein of what the world calls madness had been embedded in his soul, equally convinced that he had no real wisdom, but only an intuition of the direction in which wisdom could be found. Never a pohtician ; taking no part in the strifes of the political arena any more than in the competitions of the market-place, yet longing and striving to find the secret of social good, and to establish this good among men. Never contentious ; unable to understand how men with immortal souls could spend their days disputing in a law-court ; yet devoting most of his hfe to argument — not to prove a point or answer an opponent, but only to make clear to himself and others the way to truth. A peace-lover always ; yet three times marching out to war, not so much for patriotism as for simple duty's sake, the duty of the citizen who owes his hfe to his State, whether he agrees with the sacrifice and the occasion of it or not. Utterly fearless, also, meeting the test of the great terror — death — with a tranquilhty, almost a delight, which even his disciples could not understand, because his soul was rid of that " stupid estimate of things fearful" which keeps the world afraid. And, with it all, gentle, patient and courteous to every- one, even to those ignorant pretenders, the sophists and rhe- toricians, who, knowing nothing, deluded the world by their claim to know everything worth teaching ; even to his accusers and judges who sent him to his death ; for was not their only fault the " involuntary sin " of not knowing what they did ? Such was the character of Socrates, as Plato saw it. But there was something more. The character revealed the necessary qualities of the seeker of truth : equanimity, purity, serenity and indifference to pleasure and pain ; indifference also to all the world's estimates of things worth doing or worth having ; yet all firmly combined with the full dutifulness of the good citizen, the industry of the good worker, the virtue of the good 12 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO man. But behind all these lay something deeper. The character was itself inspired by a faith, an intuitive certainty, that the quest had at its end a goal which might be very far away, but was real and the only reahty. The sun of truth and of righteous- ness did exist : everything else was cloud or shadow — our pleasures and pursuits, our interests and opinions, even our creeds and sciences. Such a quest was worth, not one life-time, but a thousand Ufe-times ; it was a quest in which the powers of body and mind counted for httle, the powers of soul for every- thing. Therefore it is that the picture of Socrates is always a picture of one who has a strange contempt for everything changeable, perishable, mortal ; for the body and its oscillating feelings, for the senses and their fickle perceptions, for the human intellect and its relative knowledge, for human power and its unstable achievements. Therefore also it is the picture of one who has an unshakable belief in the immortality of the soul and the eternity of the good " to which it is by nature akin " ; a picture of one who is carried through hfe, hke a king among philosophers, right up to the very gate of death and beyond it, upon the firm throne of a great conviction — that the soul is " unborn, undying, indestructible, the lord of all things living " : that God is truth, and is to be seen, though hardly, by the eye of the soul, when freed from the mire and weeds of desire : that all existence, all reaUty are one in the Good, and that the unity of Good is all-present in this multiform world — itself the ever- changing child of the eternal and the temporal, though the mists of the temporal hide the eternal from our mortal eyes : that to know and love Good, and so to be and do good, are the keys to all happiness : and that therefore it is better far and far happier for a man to suffer and be punished by men and gods for any evil that may be in him, than to escape punishment and gain enjoyment. This was the faith of the Socrates of the Phaedo, who, as he waits for the poison-cup to be brought to him, explains to his friends how he sees in death, not the end but the beginning of hfe ; how to him this human existence is the real bondage, this mortal body the prison house and death the message of release. Such was Plato's master, as the disciple reveals him. Such were the quest, the character and the faith of the man by whom the Platonic teaching was inspired ; and these are the keys to the meaning of that teaching. WTience were they derived ? THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 13 From what source did they in their turn draw their inspiration ? From his Greek predecessors and contemporaries ? It is usually maintained that the Platonic or Socratic philosophy, Uke the rest of Greek speculation, was original, indigenous, owing very little to any outside influence. But the quest and Ufe and faith of Socrates were as un-Greek as anything could possibly be : that was one of the reasons why the Greeks killed him : the essence of his life belonged to a world unknown to them, and therefore dangerous in their eyes. The Platonic Socrates is never tired of asserting that he stands alone : that he differs from both predecessors and contemporaries, in thought, in aim, in interest, in method, in behef. " I alone among the Athenians hold this view " — that is his constant attitude. It is true that he owed many debts to the Greek thinkers who went before him : to the Relativists and the Absolutists, the Herachtans and the Eleatics ; to Anaxagoras for his suggestion of Nous as the universal reahty, to Eucleides even more, for combining Nous and the Good. But he did not owe his great debt to any of these. He criticises them all, writes long dialogues to show that their speculations led nowhere ; and in his own positive teachings he passes beyond them into a different region, and there, as he says, stands alone, pointing to a goal at which all his world laughs. Now I do not pretend to know how far any of his predecessors may have followed the same quest in the same spirit. We possess very httle of their writings ; we hear of them chiefly through later writers, most of whom were, both mentally and temperamentally, as much out of sympathy with the Platonic Wisdom as are the intellectuaUsts of to-day. Parmenides, Zeno, Eucleides and others may have searched as Socrates and Plato did ; but the evidence is all against this. There is only one " philosopher " whose doctrines, both practical and theoretical, appear to have resembled Plato's in spirit and aim as well as in substance ; and that one is Pythagoras. It is noteworthy that Pythagoras is the only great thinker of Greece whom Plato never criticises, but of whom he speaks with the greatest deference and respect, referring to him or his followers for elucidation of difficulties, instancing him as the great example of a teacher whose teaching had in it hving truth enough to inspire a band of devoted disciples, and to transform their hves as well as their behefs. And every one of the doctrines, which we know formed the " gospel " of Pytha- 14 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO goras and of the Pythagorean brotherhood at Crotona, was an ahnost exact reproduction of the cardinal doctrines of the Indian Vidya and the Indian Yoga — so much so that Indian Vedantins to-day do not hesitate to claim Pythagoras as one of themselves, one of their great expounders, whose very name was only the Greek form of the Indian title. Pitta Guru, or Father-teacher. I am not chiefly anxious to prove or disprove this or that influ- ence. But I boldly make the claim that the Platonic doctrines are not easily understood without reference to the Indian teach- ing. And, in reference to the quest of Socrates, his character and his faith, I will be content to let the resemblance to the quest and character and faith of the ancient Indian sages speak for itself. I will not attempt — it would need a separate volume — to show how the Indian thought may have filtered through to Socrates and Plato ; how far it may have reached Plato in his wanderings, how far through Pythagoras, how far, even before the death of Socrates, a direct stream of the Eastern doctrine may have flowed through Asia Minor into Greece. But I affirm very confidently that if anyone will make himself famihar with the old Indian wisdom-religion of the Vedas and Upanishads : will shake himself free, for the moment, from the academic atti- tude and the limiting Western conception of philosophy, and will then read Plato's dialogues, he will hardly fail to realise that both are occupied with the selfsame search, inspired by the same faith, drawn upwards by the same vision. Definite identities of peculiar doctrine are more marked in some dialogues than in others, most of all perhaps in the ontological dialogues such as the Timaeus. But the Republic is so full an epitome of Plato's positive teaching that I am content to hmit my attention to it, as the most characteristic as well as the most famihar of all Plato's works. And in it, the quest of Socrates is more clearly defined than anywhere else : the quest of the Great Reahty whose vision changes the world for the enhghtened soul even as sunshine changes darkness to hght ; so that for him who has seen it — " What is midnight gloom To unenlightened souls shines wakeful day To his clear gaze ; what seems as wakeful day Is known for night, thick night of ignorance To his true-seeing eyes." CHAPTER II THE VEDIC INTERPRETATION OF HUMAN LIFE. THE EASTERN ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S DOCTRINE. THE pathway of the human soul through hfe may be pictured as containing two distinct segments or arcs, a lower and a higher. To each arc belong different attributes, different duties, different possibilities, dif- ferent attainments. The lower arc covers the whole life of the citizen — the human " socius," who is conditioned on all sides by the fact that he is a member of a social group, of an industrial community, of a pohtical State. The higher arc contains the path of hfe for the free soul — super-social, not bound by any ordinary ties of citizen duty or social necessity, but conditioned only by its relation to the supreme reality which is beyond all societies and above all worlds. In the lower arc, the coping stone of a good life is reached when a man learns to do his duty as a good citizen, a good householder, and a good administrator, obeying the law, honouring the accepted gods, hving his hfe with temperance, obedience, prudence and justice. In the upper arc, the pathway begins only when the performance of all duties has already been learned and has become habitual, and the soul is therefore prepared to pass on to the hfe of single-minded devo- tion to the Good, of ceaseless performance of duties which are not primarily social, of unwearying pursuit of the wisdom which leads to the knowledge of God. We may call the upper arc the hfe of religion, if we choose, but not, as will appear, with any imphcation that the lower is without rehgion ; and we may call the lower arc the life of the citizen soul in the world, remem- bering only that the rehgious soul may be also in the world, though not of it, and may still perform all a citizen's duties, though no longer interested in them in the same way as are the ordinary citizens. In the lower arc, the conduct of hfe is motived and guided by 16 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO three faculties, which we may call, provisionally, desire, emotion and intelligence. These form the human equipment of the soul which fits it for the attainment of whatever ends a man may set before himself in his passage through the life in the world. Each faculty has its own pecuHar characteristic : desire is blind and ignorant, but capable of submission to inteUigent control ; emotion is passionate and restless, but capable of loyalty to moral law ; intelligence has power to direct — for good or for evil — and is capable of prudence. If all three faculties are ordered aright, the soul of the man attains the virtue of dutifulness, and the citizen, at once temperate, steadfast, prudent and just, reaches the highest level of human excellence, the full stature of humanity. The crowning virtue of dutifulness implies not only the per- formance of all " due " or right actions, but also the impulse of right motive throughout. In other words, it has an internal as well as an external side, and may be regarded as right attitude and right activity in all social relationships, as well as in relation to the divine ruler of the world. It is easy to understand the difficulty which arises as soon as the question is asked — \Miat is this dutifulness ? For the word covers a host of higher and lower forms of right doing and right being, from the simple performance of what custom and law enjoin, up to the reaUsation of the spirit of righteousness as the source of all our conduct to our neighbours. And the question opens out issues which are plainly social, as well as concerned with the nature of the individual. It is not enough to consider the human soul : the nature of society, and of the social relation- ships in which alone its virtues and vices become manifest, must be examined too. But the supreme difficulty arises after these obstacles have been surmounted. The righteous man, living the right life in all his social relations, illustrates, after all, only the excellence of the soul on the lower arc ; how are we to explain the nature of that righteousness of which this is but a shadow — even as the whole hfe on the lower path is shadowy and unreal by comparison with the full reality of the higher ? This difficulty is increased beyond measure by the fact that, for most of us, our horizon is bounded by the lower arc. Is not our hfe in it real enough ? Its good and evil real enough ? Can we better the conception of the just or righteous man whose righteousness and justice take the most valuable and practical form of goodness THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 17 in all his doings as father or brother or son, as employer or master or servant, as administrator or soldier or citizen ? It is fantastic, surely, to call such goodness a shadow of reaUty and a lower form of excellence. Add to such a man the fear and worship of God, and the most real substance of righteousness is obtained. Not so, according to the Vedanta conception. The true life of the soul and the condition of its perfection are not yet reached at all. Only on the upper arc are they to be found, an arc resembUng an unseen and unsuspected pathway out of the cave of our present life, to be found only when the soul — even the soul of the " righteous " man — has been converted, and a new sight has been given to it. And in this upper arc there are also three qualities or faculties, which we may perhaps call by the terms familiar to us, love, faith and wisdom ; and they are the perfect forms of which desire, emotion and intelligence are the earthly copies. Each has its own end, also ; and the end of each is a complete excel- lence ; for, unlike the three qualities of the lower soul, all these three are equally good, and all alike lead to the final goal. The end or excellence of love is selfless devotion to God ; of faith, the attainment of powers to be used only in the service of the good ; of wisdom, the attainment of the knowledge of God as He is, in or behind all created forms. To each quahty or faculty there belongs a different mode of activity : to the first, devotion to God and to every creature without any thought of self or of any reward for self ; to the second, ceaseless activity for others without any care about results (so far as the agent is concerned) ; and to the third, discrimination or right discernment in all things, with no aim except to know good from not-good, God from not- God. And for entrance to the path, in all its three forms, there is one great condition : the soul must first renounce all the desires and interests and attachments of the separate self, and so become free — bound by no law but love, subject to no restraint save that of the chosen path itself. For this reason the life of the upper arc is called the hfe of renunciation or of detachment, or — best of all — of liberation ; for its righteousness is no longer dutifulness, even of the completest kind ; there is in it no element of restraint, or of conscious subordination of self-will to law ; it impUes identity of thought and aim and aspiration with the supreme will. I8 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Even so, the essential distinction which separates the upper from the lower arc — the path of religion, as we may call it, from the path of pursuit of ends in the world — does not become clear unless it is realised that the former brings into play new powers of the soul which are dormant and unused upon the latter. It is no mere difference of degree between the two : they belong to diferent worlds, and only the soul which is fully prepared and made perfect upon the lower path can awake to the realisation of the existence of the upper. For then, and then only, can the eye of the soul be opened ; then, and then only, can the righteous man come to the use of that supreme faculty whose power is known only to the rehgious in the sense of seers of God. Science does not recognise it ; psychology has no name for it ; the con- duct of affairs in the world furnishes no use for it. Plato had per- force to call it the true Nous, to which no psychological term at all corresponds — least of all the usual translation, reason. We may call it the eye of faith, or the faculty of spiritual discernment — but the terms are still imperfect. The wise men of the East, with their far more complete spiritual psychology, called it, in its highest form, Purusha — pure spirit — or Atman, the divine spark in man. We may adopt whatever name we will, provided only that we keep it always distinct from the names of faculties in use on the lower arc. This is the supremely important thing, if we are to understand the scheme of Ufe which Plato and his teachers held as true. And this is just what is most difficult. Our thought is so little religious, it is concerned so wholly with the path of pursuit that every single term is debased^ as it were, by being applied to use on the lower level, and not reserved for its proper use on the higher. Plato found this difficulty too, and accepted it as inevitable ; Nous, sophia, philosophia, are terms which he uses with a pecuUar meaning when he leads us on to the upper arc ; but he also uses them in their ordinary meaning to denote reason, knowledge and philosophy, as understood by us on the lower arc. Perhaps we may partly avoid confusion if, in defiance of common usage, we distinguish our terms strictly, in this way : to the lower arc belong intellect, mind and reason, with their results — prudence, knowledge, science, speculation and discovery of facts ; to the higher alone belong Nous and spiritual discernment, with their results : sophia, wisdom, cer- tainty and discernment of reality and truth. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 19 Such, in very meagre outline, is the conception held by Plato of the Ufe open to every soul — a Ufe in which there are two distinct hemispheres or arcs, the one of the world, worldly, the other not of the world, religious ; the one possessing only a quasi-reality, the other absolute reaUty ; the one transitory and evanescent, the other permanent and eternal ; the one subject to incessant change and fluctuation — from relative evil to relative good, from satisfaction to dissatisfaction, from pleasure to pain, from knowledge to ignorance ; the other marred by no such changes, but leading always straight onward towards the perfect Ught, and marked from beginning to end by the character of the Reality in which is no change nor shadow of turning. This is the rehgious conception of life, impUcit in all reUgious teaching. I have tried to present it in the form in which it is given with the greatest completeness — in the reUgious philosophy of ancient India, commonly known as the Vedanta, or the wisdom of the spirit as revealed in the Vedas. I have chosen this form, rather than that in which the same conception is presented in the Christian religion, for two reasons. First, because Plato was pre-Christian, and could only have been familiar with an earlier form of religion ; secondly, because the conception of the upper arc is not now put in the forefront of Christian teaching, and its essential separateness from the lower arc is repudiated by most Christians. We in the West,^ with our intense absorption in the path of pursuit, in attainments and satisfactions and achieve- ments, in this world and the things of it, are almost content to identify reUgion with the goodness of the lower path — a religion of moraUty touched with emotion and linked to occasional worship, which satisfies us because it can be made quite com- patible with a life of pursuit of ends, and with a virtuous worldU- ness. The religion of renunciation and detachment does not appeal to us, any more than it appealed to the Greeks. They were too artistic as well as too pleasure-loving to be religious in this sense ; we are too world-absorbed, too intent upon achieving results, to take as our final rules of conduct the maxims of absolute renunciation contained in the Sermon on the Mount. But the rehgion which Christ taught contains beyond a shadow of doubt, and requires for its understanding, the same conception 1 1 am speaking, of course, not of the individual followers of Christ in this or any country, but only of the mass of those who are called Christians. / 20 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO of the two pathways or arcs, presented, however, in a slightly different form from that found in the Vedanta. And the differ- ence is of some importance in connection with Plato's teaching. It is a difference of emphasis rather than of anything essential. In Christ's revelation, intended primarily for the poor and ignorant and oppressed, the distinguishing qualities of the upper arc appear as faith, hope and love ; and the greatest of these is love. In the revelation of Krishna, contained in the Vedas, the qualities emphasised are those of love, faith and wisdom ; and the greatest of these is wisdom. ^ And this is the emphasis which harmonised with all Plato's attitude, so much so that for him the one predominating quahty which marks the soul on the upper path is wisdom, and wisdom alone, not faith or love. It is necessary now to look a Uttle more closely at this Eastern or Vedantist conception of the soul's hfe in order to make clear the close paralleUsm of Plato's exposition. The lower arc which I have described is called definitely the Path of Pursuit, or more fully the Path of Pursuit of ends in the world ; it is also called the path of bondage to the three quaUties. The three dominant faculties or qualities of the soul are called Tamas, Rajas and Sattva.^ Tamas is the desiring element — the whole part of the man which aims at satisfaction of the senses. Its highest end is sense-pleasure ; its constant characteristic is ignorance. It cannot be said to possess any virtue ; but it is capable of submission to control and guidance by the higher faculties, and when this is the case the man is called temperate. Rajas denotes emotional energy and passion, together with am- bition and the impulse to dominate, succeed, get on in the world. It closely resembles, in one aspect, what we rather barbarously call " pushfulness," but always coupled with excitabiUty and restlessness. But it has also a gentler side — the emotion which, attaching itself to others, becomes affection. Its obvious ends are power and profit. It is not wholly ignorant, but stands mid- way between Tamas, which can know nothing, and Sattva, which is capable of full understanding. And, at its best, it possesses 1 This does not mean that the Krishna gospel was out of the reach of the poor and ignorant ; but that the highest and straightest, albeit the hardest, path to salvation is open only to those who have, as Plato puts it, become " fit for philosophy." * It is quite necessary to keep the Sanskrit terms here, and in a few other cases in which any translation would be misleading. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 21 the virtue of tenacious loyalty to the orders given to it by the highest faculty, together with fortitude and courage, and devotion to those for whom it cares. Sattva is more difficult to explain. It denotes not only the faculty of knowing and understanding — inteUigence — but also the quahty of goodness and stabihty of character. Regarded as faculty, it alone is competent to guide the whole man aright ; on it depend all the virtues — though temperance and loyal fortitude may be specially connected with the two lower faculties. Its one pecuhar virtue is the practical wisdom which the Romans called prudentia ; and its end — the summit of its attainment — is the right performance of all duty. But Sattva has a theoretical as well as a practical side. As intelhgence, its function is to reach scientific knowledge of the phenomena of this world ; and by doing so it may be said to know and to understand. These three fundamental quahties of the soul are, as it were, the mental and moral forms of the three great qualities which run through the whole created universe. For it must be noted — and this is characteristic of the extraordinary consistency of the Vedanta doctrine — that every important conception in psychology or ethics or anything else has its coimterpart in, or is a form of, a wider conception involved in the explanation of the whole universe and every part of it. Thus we find necessarily that Tamas, Rajas and Sattva have a very profound cosmic signifi- cance, which may be explained in this way. The whole of crea- tion— that is the manifested or phenomenal universe — is a com- pound of the two existences. Spirit and Matter, or rather, absolute reahty and absolute unreality. The former is Brahm, the ultimate Being (not to be confused with Brahma, the first manifestation of personal Godhead) ; the latter is Prakriti ; the former is also called Atma (spirit), the latter also appears as Maya (unreality or illusion or the cause of illusion). Each of them is changeless, though in very different ways ; but the created universe, which is compounded of both, is in a state of incessant change or motion, this being one of the conditions of its manifestation in time. Consequently there exist, in all creation and in every part of it, three elements, corresponding to the changeless Spirit, to the fixed matter, and to the state of perpetual change which results from the combination of the two in a phenomenal world. These three elements are the basis of the three Quahties, which, in thei 22 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO cosmic significance, may be called Inertia, Motion and Equili- brium. Tamas or inertia, the lowest quality, corresponds to fixed matter, and is always bad ; Sattva or equilibrium, the highest quahty, corresponds to unchanging spirit, and is always good ; while Rajas or the principle of motion is the intermediate quality, and is partly bad and partly good. These three cosmic qualities appear in different forms in all the different stages of evolution. The forms which dominate the stage reached in the Ufe of the human soul (the mental and moral Hfe) are (i) the three faculties which we very imperfectly translate by the terms Desire, Emotion and Intelligence ; (2) the moral quahties corresponding to these, namely a condition of real badness, an unstable condition of goodness and badness com- bined, and a balanced goodness or prudence or steadfastness. The connection between the psychic faculties and their corre- sponding cosmic quaUties is not at first sight quite clear. It may be explained in this way : The lowest faculty, imperfectly trans- lated desire, or better, appetite, corresponds to Inertia, as well as to illusion (the two chief characteristics of matter), because it is totally unprogressive. Its " movements " resemble those of a squirrel in a cage. It can never lead beyond a ceaseless recur- rence of wants and satisfactions — of a feeUng of emptiness and a temporary filHng of the void. It is therefore really a stagnant condition ; but we usually imagine that it is leading us to some end, and therein lies its illusory character. The intermediate faculty (which of course contains a large element of what we call desire) is rather better, because the " aims " of ambition and the feehngs of attachment to persons and interests are at any rate progressive in the sense that they lead us on to the attainment of some sort of ends or achievements. They do not merely, as appetite does, involve movement oscillating between two fixed points. They move us in the direction of a changed state of being. The highest faculty, intelhgence or prudence, alone leads to a condition which is at once balanced and really progressive ; for it alone can produce a state of " moving equihbrium " (the very antithesis to inertia), and a state of progressive harmony (very different from restless struggUng towards some imperfect goal).* It must be remembered, further, that the three Quahties appear also in the constitution and character of society ; and in ^ See also note at the end of this chapter. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 23 the same form, too, as that in which we find them in the indi- vidual soul. That this must necessarily be the case is shown by two reasons : first, because society is a " created thing," or a part of the created universe, and belongs to the same stage of evolution as the human individuals who compose it ; secondly, because the individuals import into society their own attributes. Consequently, according to the Vedanta doctrine, we are not making use of an analogy at all, but are simply stating a fact, when we assert that the " soul " of society contains the same three qualities or faculties as the soul of the individual, namely Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. Of course it contains them, and each will appear as the dominant mark of certain of the citizens. For, although all human beings possess the three qualities or faculties in their souls, each quahty or faculty is not operative in the same degree in every soul. In some the Tamas element is dominant, in others the Rajas element ; and in others again the Sattva element. And this difference of dominance of one quahty or another is what really differentiates human beings in respect of moral character ; so that the true moral grouping is always under the heads of Tamasic souls, Rajasic souls and Sattvic souls. Moreover, in the present condition of human nature we are bound to admit that by far the greatest number of people in every society belong to the Tamasic group, a smaller number to the Rajasic group, and very few indeed to the Sattvic group. Consequently every society contains a very large class of Ta- masic members, a smaller class of Rajasic members, and a very small class indeed of Sattvic members. And the difference between the classes is fundamental and fixed, a fact which is expressed in the Indian doctrine by the assertion that the Manu of human society (its founder and law-giver) divided society into three castes, and ordained that the distinction between them should never be obhterated. The castes are, as the reader doubtless knows, the Vaishyas, the Kshattryas and the Brah- manas. The Vaishyas are the producers and traders of the com- munity, and represent the Tamasic quahty. The Kshattryas are the warriors and administrators, and represent the Rajasic quahty. The Brahmanas are the priest-rulers, educators and guardians, and of course represent the Sattvic quality. It may be objected here that there are in India not three but four great castes ; and the lowest — that of the Sudras — does not 24 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO fit in with this ingenious explanation. Its existence conflicts with the theory of exact correspondence between the social organisation and the psychical structure of the individual, and between both of these and the essential nature of all creation. There ought, apparently, to be four quahties of the soul, not three ; yet the whole Indian psychology and ethic rest upon the assumption of three divisions only. This difficulty is not hard to explain ; and the explanation has a far-reaching significance. The fourth caste, that of the Sudras, was composed of the lowest and most menial functionaries in society, the slaves or the semi-slaves of the community. Now these were never recognised as an integral part of society in the same way as were the three higher castes. They had no part in the conscious hfe and management of the State ; they belonged to a lower order altogether. We may say, in fact, that they did not belong at all to the true " soul " of society. And this differ- ence between them and the real citizens is shown clearly enough by the doctrine (always an accepted part of Hindu orthodoxy) that, whereas the members of the three highest castes are all " twice-born," those of the Sudra caste are only " once-born," and must be bom again before they can reach the level of the other castes. Their relation, therefore, to the full or conscious soul of society was exactly analogous to the relation of elementary subconscious processes to the fully conscious processes in the individual soul. The Sudra caste thus corresponds to those automatic processes of the organism which never normally rise above the threshold of consciousness. The continued Hfe of the individual depends upon their healthy functioning ; but they do not form a faculty of the soul, nor any part of the soul which is the man. So too the continued Hfe of the ancient State depended upon the due performance of their functions by the Sudras ; yet they formed no part of the combination of castes which constituted the State. It will thus be seen that there exists, both in the individual and in the society which reflects his quahties, a perfect equipment of faculties requisite to all our needs upon the lower path of Hfe. The Tamas element (reflected in the Vaishya caste) suppHes the stimulus needed for all the efforts to gain the satisfaction of our desires ; and, if rightly ordered, gives to us all the material and physical satisfactions we require, in due restraint. The THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 25 Rajas element (reflected in the Kshattrya caste) supplies the stimulus needed for all the necessary efl[orts to excel and succeed, to administer and manage, to increase power and position, to protect and safeguard our well-being — and also to consoUdate our social affections and ties. And, if rightly controlled and directed, it gives us social order and individual orderliness, together with the means of living well, in harmony with the given standard and law. The Sattva element supphes the motive and the means to be virtuous and just and prudent, to know the right and to do it, and also to attain to all necessary scientific knowledge, and to use that knowledge for the good of society and the individual. And the crown of its excellence, in both the individual and society, is known as Dharma, which we may translate pro- visionally as " the right performance of all duty." I will not attempt at this point to explain more fully the upper arc or path of hfe, which I called provisionally the path of religion. The consideration of this belongs to a later division of our enquiry. It will be enough here to state that it is called, in the Vedanta doctrine, the Path of Renunciation and With- drawal (Nivritti) or the Path of Liberation (Moksha). Its three forms, which I rather boldly paraphrased as Love, Faith and Wisdom, are called Bhakti, Shakti and Mukti — pure devotion or love universal, true power or the abiUty to do and to bear all things without effort and without questioning, and the dis- cernment of reahty which frees the soul from all bondage. And, just as on the lower path the good hfe has only one supreme reward — the consciousness of duty done, or the reahsation of Dharma, to which all acquisition of pleasure and of profit is sub- sidiary ; so the upper path has for its one final goal the full spiritual realisation or higher Dharma which belongs only to the soul which knows God. It must be noted, however, that, whereas the psychological analysis and description necessary to make clear the character- istics of the Path of Pursuit of ends in the world are elaborated with great exactness, this is not the case in connection with the Path of Liberation. There are many reasons for this. In the first place, this upper Path is something altogether transcendent. It belongs to another world, the world of true reahty, to which all our ordinary conceptions, thoughts and doctrines are inapphc- / 26 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO able. For they are related only to the phenomenal world in which we now hve. Consequently, though we may say that there are different modes of activity on the upper Path, we cannot speak of difference of faculty or of quaUty, whether psychological or ethical. Indeed, all the categories of every science are super- seded. For in the world of absolute reahty the three funda- mental " quahties " no longer exist : they belong to all created and changing objects, but not to the eternal and spiritual. And every soul which has really entered that path is said to have " passed beyond the Qualities." Again, for the human soul the one important thing is to know what the pathway is, and to have the will to find the gateway to it, and to prepare itself to tread the path when found and entered. This preparation is quite enough to occupy the Hfe of most of us many times over ; and for it, an understanding of the laws and conditions of the lower path is the sole requisite. Further, although the upper path wiD not be the same for all, but may take different forms with different modes of activity, all the forms are equally perfect, and all the modes of activity lead ahke to the perfect good. We shall not lose anything because we may chance to be ignorant of the details of each form. Moreover, on the upper arc the special pathway which is the right one for us is always so straight and clear to the eye of the converted soul that there is no fear of our losing the way for lack of a chart. For these and other reasons the great teachers of humanity seldom have very much to tell us about the details of the soul's life and work on the upper arc : why should they, when it is so certain that illumination wiU come direct from the source of all Hght to every soul whose eye has been turned round from the shadows of the cave of desire ? But they are never weary of explaining, in the clearest way, the essential difference between the two paths — and in that way explaining the conditions which the soul must fulfil before it can enter the higher one. For on this higher path the soul must be free — that is, bound down by no desires, hampered by no care about results, burdened by no camel's hump of worldly ties, disturbed by no interest in any consequences which may affect its self. Indeed, on this path there is no self — in the sense of an ego which seeks its own ends. The entrance cannot be found until the soul has lost its selfhood. The lower path is the path THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 27 of se//-development in all its forms, of self-culture, of the realisa- tion of any and all emotional, aesthetic, or scientific ends, and of any or all interests in results. But on the Path of Religion, none of these is possible or necessary, for there is no self left to satisfy or to reward. We must literally lose our self to find our soul. " When does a man find salvation ? " asks an Eastern disciple of his teacher. " When his egoism dies," is the answer. No less clearly defined is the fundamental difference between the two paths with regard to reaUty and unreality, and the soul's recognition of each. On the lower path, nothing is real : all our experience is made up of pairs of opposites — pleasure and pain, success and failure, joy and grief, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, faith and doubt — always alternating, never remaining fixed or permanent, only real in so far as we for the moment think them so. All our knowledge too is of changing forms, even our know- ledge of the laws of nature or of the laws of social conduct. On this path there is always the one answer to the insistent question — " Is this at last reaUty ? " And the answer is — " Neti, Neti." " Not this, not this ; not any ' this ' which the mind of man discovers." But on the upper path all is real, and all is appre- hended by the pure spirit of which mind is but an earthly shadow and soul itself only the enduring sheath or vehicle. And yet, just as we may not say that the life of the lower path is non-reUgious, so we may not say that it is unreal or illusory. We can only say that the upper path alone is the life of true reality, that it alone is wholly real. So too the life of pursuit is not to be called selfish ; but the religious life alone is selfless ; the former is not bad, but only in the latter is the true good to be found. For on the path of pursuit there are reflected, as it were, all the forms of good which have their reality on the path of liberation ; and all these forms of good have a relative reality on the lower path. Turning now to Plato's Republic, we find a very remarkable parallehsm to all this, not only in the thought, but in the words used to express the thought. His conceptions, arguments and conclusions are in most cases identical with those of the Hindu scriptures ; the language in which he clothes them is often extraordinarily similar ; several of his metaphors are repetitions of metaphors found in the older writings ; and the psychological and ethical terms to which he gives a semi-technical use might 28 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO serve excellently as translations of the corresponding technical terms in the Sanskrit. We will note the similarities in detail in later chapters ; but we may indicate here the most obvious parallels. In the picture of the " righteous " soul and the " righteous " State which corresponds to it, described in the first part of the Republic, Plato is presenting the lower path at its best. All the essential characteristics are there, in their due order. The three great " Qualities " of the Vedanta doctrine appear as the three qualities or elements which both constitute and explain the nature of the soul and of the State. Tamas, Rajas and Sattva (in their psychological and ethical aspects) have their exact equivalents in the Epithumia, Thumos and Logistikon^ which figure so largely in the Republic ; and the characteristic functions and virtues in each case are identical. Epithumia, hke Tamas, represents blind desire with its character of complete ignorance and no virtue at all except the capacity of quiet submission to control ; Thumos, the passionate and ambitious element, stands, hke Rajas, midway between ignorance and knowledge, and is capable of the virtue of fortitude and obedience to reason ; the Logistikon, or the rational element, is the Sattvic quahty or faculty to which belongs not only the special virtue of prudence but also the power to harmonise the whole soul or State into the condition of Dikaiosune or righteousness. Again, just as the Manu of ancient India instituted the caste system upon the basis of the three principles in the individual * These three Greek terms, as used by Plato, are almost as untranslatable as the Sanskrit terms. Epithumia means desire — but by no means all desire. It is confined to the Tamasic appetites, which are chiefly desires for sense-pleasures. Thumos means passion or anger : it is sometimes translated " the spirited element," but this involves a dangerous confusion with the word "spirit" in its true sense of " the spiritual faculty or element." Logistikon means the reason- ing element. Perhaps the nearest English equivalents are Greed, Emotion and Reason ; but it is sometimes quite necessary to use the Greek terms, especially in the case of Thumos. It must be carefully borne in mind that the three faculties or elements do not exhaust the nature of the soul in the full sense, but only that of the lower or normal human soul — that is, the psychical equipment which everyone possesses and uses in ordinary life. Two higher faculties are subsequently described by Plato ; and his complete psychology is explained later. I must also point out that the three Sanskrit terms denote the conditions characteristic of the three faculties, rather than the faculties themselves. But to Tamas belongs the desire or greed which is both bhnd and blinding — Kama ; to Rajas belong anger or passion, ambition, and all the most "pushing" emotions ; to Sattva belongs the reasoning faculty. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 29 soul, so Plato divides his State into three classes, representing the three psychical elements. The lowest class of producers and traders, corresponding to the Vaishya caste, reflects the element of ignorant desire — Epithumia. The class next above this, the Auxiharies, corresponding to the Kshattrya caste, reflects the passionate element — Thumos. The highest class, the Guardians, corresponding to the Brahmana caste, represents the principle of prudent reason — To Logistikon. The paralleUsm is of course repeated in the whole account of the transition from the lower to the higher arc, contained in the central books of the Republic. Plato's conversion of the soul is identical with the Vairagya of the Vedas ; the wonderful allegory of the Cave, and the escape from it of the free soul, or the true Nous, is only an expansion of one of the favourite alle- gories of the Vedic writings ; the description of the real world, with its light from the sunshine of the Good, is, in the main, the Eastern description ; the contrast between ordinary knowledge and true wisdom is exactly the fundamental Vedanta contrast between Vidya in the sense of knowledge of the phenomenal universe and Adyatmavidya, or direct perception of the spiritual universe ; the super-philosophy of Plato is the Gnana of Vedanta ; his Nous is the Atma or Samvit — the spiritual consciousness — of the Vedic doctrine. There is no need to dwell upon the similarity of Plato's ontology, with its account of reahty, quasi-reality and unreaUty, to the ontology of the Hindu philosophy. This is generally admitted, as is also the fact that his theory of reincarnation had an Eastern origin. Equally obvious is the identity of his doctrine of Anam- nesis or Recollection with the doctrine of the origin of all true knowledge proclaimed by Vedantins. And the correlative theory of Eternal Ideas — Plato's greatest contribution to Western meta- physics— has an astonishingly close counterpart in the Vedanta doctrine. But these and other similarities are more marked in other dialogues. My business here is with the Republic, and wdth its pecuUar meaning as a religious philosophy. And, in connection with this, perhaps the most striking paralleUsm to the Vedanta teaching meets us, not in the close and obvious similarities of the conceptions and terms already noticed, but in some less obvious resemblances. Most of all in the explanations of the central difficulties and so-called paradoxes 30 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO which the Republic contains will the parallehsm appear. One example of this must be noted here. Nothing is more baffling to our common sense and understanding than the way in which Plato draws for us, with the most exquisite detail, the picture of the perfectly good man in the perfectly good State, and then, as it were, throws the canvas aside with the assertion that this is not Righteousness, this is not reality. Another picture must needs be drawn, surpassing altogether this perfect human form of the wise and good ; and this other picture is — what ? A philosopher, of all things, fantastically painted in colours which do not appeal to us in the least ; an impossible, useless, grotesque person who has not even the virtue of interesting us. But is not this exactly the paradox of Sattva, the highest of the three quaUties, connoting so perfect an excellence that it is even sometimes called " the very lustre of goodness," with its supreme virtue of Dharma, the full fruition of dutifulness — yet always discarded, always superseded by something intangible, unattractive, cold, unearthly, which we are called upon to hail as the real goodness ? The central paradox of the Republic becomes clear only if we bear in mind the fundamental distinction between the two paths, and remember that the Dikaiosune or Righteous- ness which Plato is trying to explain is really the Dharma of the Indian philosophy, which appears as the crown and glory of each path, but with a very different meaning in each case. I have hitherto given as an Enghsh equivalent for this word the phrase " duty and the right performance of duty " ; but this is a very partial translation. The word is really untranslatable, for it has many distinct though connected meanings, each of which requires a different Enghsh equivalent. Primarily it denotes the complete stage of the development of anything — its fuU evolution, the law of its being and the fulfilment of that law. Thus the Dharma of fire is to bum and give heat ; the Dharma of a plant is to produce flowers and fruit. Secondly, it means the complete function of anything, or, in the moral sense, its whole duty and the performance of that duty. These meanings give the further signification of excellence or virtue or even perfec- tion ; and, in relation to human hfe, the word carries in addition the meanings of morality and goodness. \Mien we speak of the Dharma of the soul on the lower path, we mean the perfect condition of all the three quahties or faculties of the soul working THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 31 : together harmoniously to perform all the duties required of the good man. But there is also a Dharma of the purified soul on the upper path ; and as this also means its perfect condition, and the attainment of the highest state which the spirit of man can reach, we must needs regard it as transcending altogether the excellence attainable on the lower path. If the goal of the spirit is union with God, then that is its Dharma on the upper path, a condition in which virtue and goodness as we ordinarily under- stand the terms are superseded. Finally, the word also means Religion, both in the limited sense in which most of us use the term, and in the full sense suggested in the last sentence. In fact the words Dharma and Religion are, in Hteral meaning, very nearly identical — but not quite ; and the difference is significant of part of the difference between the Eastern and the Western conceptions of rehgion. For the word Dharma means " that which holds the soul to God " ; while the word religion means " that which binds back " to God the soul which has wandered away. * Now this is the word to which the Greek term Dikaiosune, as , used by Plato in the Republic, is very nearly equivalent. It is I therefore clear, I think, why I suggest as our English rendering, I not Justice, with its rather narrow social or even political implica- tions, but Righteousness, which may at any rate be both social and super-social. And the central paradox of the Republic is at least partly intelligible when we remember that each arc of Hfe has its own Dharma or Dikaiosune or Righteousness, that of the lower, human and social, that of the higher, spiritual and super-social ; that of the lower, the goodness of the human soul among men, that of the higher, the perfection of the purified I spirit in the presence of God. In each case it is the virtue of I each faculty doing its proper work well, doing the right thing ■ rightly — the law of its right activity. But the faculties which function on the lower path are those of the natural man ; whereas the faculties which function on the upper path are those of the spiritual man. And that is why, at the very summit of the lower 1 A further difference is also significant. Dharma (from the root dhree) meaning "that which holds fast" to God, implies an internal tie. Religion '(from the root hgare) meaning "that which binds back" to God, impHes an external bond. And this difference is characteristic certainly of the difference between the Indian and the Roman conceptions ; possibly also of the difference between the Indian and our own. I 32 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO path its Law of Righteousness is cast aside, to be superseded by the law of perfect love and faith and wisdom, by the freedom in which all social ties and interests melt away in the fire of selfless devotion to the Sun of Righteousness. That is why, when the perfect social Ufe and the perfect individual Hfe have been described — on the lower path — the kingly soul awakes and dis- covers that they are but a cave of shadows, a Hfe of relative reaUty. A part of the soul that is neither desire nor emotion nor ' intellect, but Nous, the faculty of knowing reaUty, awakes from its long sleep, and soars upward to the real world. The upper arc is reached by the conversion which gives new sight. And not knowledge now, but wisdom is found, the wisdom which means God-knowledge. The shadows of the puppets of the world-life pass away ; the eternal spirit of the man, set free and purified by the discipline of earth, goes forth to find the great Eternal Spirit of all worlds. Perhaps it is now clear why I urge that we cannot read the Republic aright if we regard it simply as a very brilUant com- bination of social, moral and metaphysical speculations. For in that case we hmit ourselves to an interpretation related only to our activities and thoughts on the lower path ; and much of the teaching of the book is then uninteUigible, often perverse, and occasionally almost ridiculous. For when we speak of moraUty, we think almost wholly of social excellences — of right- ness of action and attitude and feeling towards our neighbours. But in Plato's conception that is only the beginning of righteous- ness, though a very necessary beginning : its real essence is super- social and super-moral, something which Ues beyond the scope of all ethical theory and system. Again, when we think of social life, we think of it, not perhaps as the only hfe worth considering, but as the only one whose conditions and conduct seriously concern us here and now, and as the only one whose activities can be dealt with scientifically and philosophically. But Plato posits the existence of another Hfe open to us, if we will, not after our death, but while we are still on earth and members of an earthly society. And its conditions and laws are the true and only subject-matter of the highest " science " and the deepest philosophy. Finally, when we think of metaphysics, of ontology, of speculations about reahty and the knowledge of reahty, our attention is normally concentrated upon the powers of mind and THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 83 intellect in relation to a universe only apprehended through the medium of the sense impressions upon the foundation of which the mental faculties build up an ideal system. But Plato means by philosophy something totally different. It begins only when a faculty which is not mind or intellect cognises a reaUty which is not that of the perceived universe at all, but of a super-world which may indeed be called ideal — provided we mean by the word that which is transcendently real. In other words, our ethics, our social or political philosophy and our metaphysics, are aU concerned with the activities of faculties whose province it is to function on the lower path ; while Plato's deepest teaching is expressly aimed at carrying us beyond that path, and pointing out the existence of a higher one. The antithesis is that of human, worldly and mental, on the one hand, and superhuman, other-worldly, and spiritual, on the other hand. And the latter cannot be interpreted in the Ught of the former. And if this is so, then one is bound to urge that much of the usual interpretation and criticism of the Republic is quite beside the point ; grotesquely so, one is tempted to add, when one finds the moral teaching of the book gravely hailed as a defence of Utilitarianism, and the spiritual teaching explained as a rather faulty form of conceptuaUsm !^ Let me, however, guard here against a probable misunder- standing. I do not in the least desire to claim that all Plato's writings must be interpreted from a transcendental standpoint, and are out of reach of ordinary rationaUst criticism. I see no reason whatever why — to take one example — the arguments of the Protagoras should not be regarded in exactly the same Ught as the arguments of Mill's UtiUtarianism. My sole conten- tion is that his works as a whole have behind them a background of faith and a motive of search which do not belong to any intellectuaUst philosophy ; and that this faith and this motive (I call them boldly a religious faith and a reUgious motive) alone explain the full significance of his writings. This is what I mean when I say that his metaphysics, his ethics, his politics and his science are fundamentally different from ours. With us, these are all departments of enquiry, interdependent indeed, but forming a whole to which alone they are relative, and which is itself independent and complete — this whole being the rational, 1 As by Grote and D. G. Ritchie, respectively. 3 34 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO intellectual knowledge of the world we live in. But with Plato, all these departments, and also the whole to which they belong, are merely the media through which and in which he is obhged to begin his search. But the end sought is outside and beyond them all : outside and beyond the rational or intellectual know- ledge of the phenomenal world altogether. It is the relation to this end which gives their true significance to his discussions in each department of rational enquiry, even in such a department as that of etymology. For the derivation of words (as dealt with in the Cratylus) interests him, not as etymology, but simply because he sees in it a connection with the doctrine of ReaUty, Quasi-reaUty and Unreality which forms part of his transcen- dental philosophy. If many of his etymological theories are, in the philologist's view, grotesque and impossible, that is of very Httle consequence. They serve very well to illustrate and explain the doctrine behind them. They are no more grotesque and impossible than some of his political theories, which, judged as pohtics, are of very doubtful value, but, judged as expressions in the poHtical or social medium of his fundamental doctrines, are much more profound than any poUtical philosophy. For this reason we must expect to find, as we undoubtedly do find, serious inconsistencies in Plato's treatment of the different departments of our knowledge. But there is a much greater difii- culty than this. There are inconsistencies also in the presenta- tion, through these media, of the deeper doctrine itself. The theory of eternal Ideas appears in a different form in almost every dialogue in which it is discussed ; the arguments in proof of the soul's immortality are never twice the same, and are some- times contradictory ; the soul described in the Phaedo appears to be very different from the soul described in the Timaeus ; very varying accounts are given of the constitution of the universe, of its rotatory movement, even of the extent to which it is or is not guided by Providence. These, and many other inconsisten- cies Uke them, are a much more serious matter : do they not negative the assumption of a single firm faith and a single sure motive running through the Platonic works ? I think not in the least, and for this reason. Plato, hke his master, made no claim to have seen the full vision of truth. Like Socrates, he knew where alone it could be found, and how ; knew, too, some of the essentials of the Reahty which it would reveal. His faith in the THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 35 ultimate success of his quest never wavered ; his belief in the Tightness of his conceptions never changed. But he was still groping in partial darkness, seeing only the reflections and shadows of the Real Good which he describes in the Republic. His attempts, therefore, to envisage the truth which he dimly saw could hardly fail to produce inconsistencies in his exposition ; but these inconsistencies are no evidence against the consistency of his faith. Indeed, it would be strange if there were no contra- dictions. When once a man has found the " gospel " which he knows, by an inner conviction, must be for him the final inter- preter of the riddle of existence, the one guide to light through the dark mazes of changing opinion and doubt, the one firm bulwark against temptation and disappointment and disillusion- ment, he is bound, if there is anything of the teacher in him, to put it before others in a hundred different forms, with changing emphasis as his own growth brings changed sense of need, with new appUcations as his own contact with Ufe grows wider. There is only one kind of consistency which we have a right to demand : that all his teachings shall show the same strong set of the current of his thoughts towards a single goal of truth. We cannot say when Plato found the faith which afterwards inspired his writings : part, no doubt, he owed to Socrates, and part — for Socrates died ; when his disciple was only twenty-nine — in his wanderings after his master's death, possibly from the followers of Pythagoras. But once found, it became for him the basis of everything, and his hfe-long aim was to read the lesson of it into all our thought about life and destiny. We are apt to say, as we take up one after another of his i writings, that he is applying the genius of his intellect to the construction, now of a system of ethics, now of a system of meta- physics ; that he is elaborating here a poUtical philosophy, there a beginning of psychology ; and so on. But I think this misses \, the point. It makes him just a brilliant speculator and thinker j at a time when philosophical speculation and thought were rather j crude and immature ; and on that level we misjudge him by ( applying the standards of our undoubtedly fuller and maturer \ philosophies. I prefer a different attitude, which may be ex- 1, pressed thus : Here is a man who has discovered what he believes ; to be the inmost significance of Ufe and reaUty, and would fain I reveal it to others. He Uves in an age in which there is much 36 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO speculation, with very little depth ; much criticism and ques- tioning, with very Httle knowledge ; many beginnings of philoso- phies, but hardly any science. All that is of no consequence — except that it makes more difficult the task of explanation. For his discovery is not a matter of speculation or of science or of philosophy, but a matter of certainty far transcending that of ordinary knowledge ; and it gives the key to every riddle of existence as no philosophy or science ever has done or ever can do. But it must be explained in the language of current thought and the imagery of common experience; it must be explained, too, in reference to every department of our activities and interests. Therefore he must needs write as a philosopher, and most of all as a moral philosopher ; since the moral apphcation of his faith is the most obvious and the most important. Often, too, as a political philosopher ; since the apphcation to the citizen hfe is hardly less vital. He thus appears to us as a speculator hke other speculators, in ethics, politics, metaphysics ; but he is not specu- lating at all. He is trying to illumine our thoughts by the Hght of the super-knowledge which he has found, or believes he has found. He is not to be judged by the criteria of greater or less plausibihty which are all that we speculators can appeal to. I own to one difficulty here. It is generally assumed that Plato was a keen pohtical theoriser and, in a sense, a keen pohtician. How little the Republic justifies this view I have tried to show in this book. But there are also the Pohticus and the Laws to be reckoned with. The latter especially seems to justify the assumption referred to. The pohtical interest is dominant in it. It is a definite attempt to estabhsh, in principle and in detail, the necessary constitution of a satisfactory State. I admit the difficulty. Perhaps I can best meet it by making clear, once for all, Plato's conception. In his view, the " best condition of hving " is essentially the same for the individual soul and for a society of souls ; and this condition may be expressed by the phrase " the guidance of inspired wisdom, together with perfect freedom and an absence of any laws." This best condition of hving is revealed by a true analysis of the nature of the individual soul and of its relations to reahty. It is a condition which is at all times possible for the individual soul, even now, hindered as it is by the environment of an unruly body and a dangerous world. (This is the teaching of the Republic.) It is a condition THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 37 which may once have been possible for human society, perhaps in the Satumian age ; but it is not possible for society to-day, for the world is now in the dark age of its evolution, and society could not be sufficiently purified without far too drastic measures. (Politicus.) But the constitution of society, now or at any time, can only be satisfactory in proportion as it approximates to the " divine pattern " ; therefore it is very important that legislators should have a " second-best constitution " elaborated for them as a present possibiHty, conforming as nearly as may be to the perfect model. (Laws.) And the purpose of the Laws is to de- scribe such a " second-best constitution." But the object of the Republic is boldly to proclaim the absolute best or perfect con- dition, and to do so for the help of the individual soul, deducing it step by step from the analysis of the nature and functions of that individual soul. It is therefore not difficult to explain both the nature and the extent of Plato's " political " interest — let us rather say his social interest, since what we call politics was, in his view, very far removed from that care for the good of society which he felt and felt so strongly. He lived with his eyes fixed upon an im- possibly exalted pattern of " the good Hfe," and he knew it to be impossible for the world as it is. But he will not believe that a fairly close copy of it is impossible, for humanity as a social whole. The ideal — the realisation of absolute good — is every- thing to him, his only touchstone of worth. He cannot help, therefore, trying to carry its conditions into all the most important departments of human life — education, art, and even government and social polity. The conditions will not work in the world as we know it ; so much the worse for the world. There is no other " good " ; it is this or nothing : what the world pursues is a false good. But at least the world shall know what is its real good : some day, somewhere, some society may be wise enough to follow it. Hence it is that his political attitude is, like that of so many mystics, perverse and unreasonable in our eyes. At one time he seems to us to be hopelessly reactionary, for ever harking back to a mythical age in which the children of the world lived, Uke veritable children, in complete submission to divinely wise guides. What we call the progress of mankind he regards as retrogression, rejecting the idea of progress, refusing any such title to the upward march of civilisation. At another 38 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO time we call the attitude absurdly ideal, for he seems to be look- ing on into an age of spiritual perfection, in which all cultured complexity shall have been purified away, and human society shall consist of passionless men and women shepherded through a very dull life for their spiritual good by a small group of ultra- purified philosophers. But, however perverse the attitude may seem to be, it is the attitude of a man who believes intensely in his vision — so much so that no other " pohtics," no other or more intelligible schemes of social improvement, interest him in the least. With his eyes on the vision, and on the ideal it reveals, he tells us first that this and no other is the good fife for the individual soul. Then, thinking of society and its ills, he tells us again — still looking to the ideal — that this and no other is the good life for society. He shows us the path of wisdom, in all its fulness, for the individual soul to follow ; he does his best for society by holding out to it the conditions of that path, modified just so far as he dares to modify the absolute good. Caring for both the individual and society, he " legislates " for both ; but his interest is not in the laws, but in the goal which is his vision. And therefore, in spite of the elaborateness and length of his treatise, the Laws ; in spite of the fact that it was probably his latest work ; in spite of the serious dogmatism which almost justifies the opinion that Plato's ideal was " that of a despotic law-giver and man-trainer, wielding the compelling force of the secular arm for what he believes to be spiritual improvement " ,^ in spite of all this, we may none the less feel confident in our interpretation of Plato if, with Dikaearchus, we regard him as a compound of Socrates and Pythagoras, rather than if, with Plutarch, we regard him as a compound of Socrates and Lycurgus. Note on the three "Qualities," and, their relation to Plato's psychology. I have said that Sattva, the highest quality, corresponds to cosmic equilibrium. But it implies much more than equilibrium. It may be correctly defined as " the essence which brings about the manifestation of a phenomenon, and keeps that phenomenon stable." It is thus directly connected with the spiritual reality behind all phenomena. It must not, however, be regarded as a quality of pure spirit — which has no " qualities " — but as a quality of nature, running universally through all creation, and itself due to the omnipresent background of spirit. Hence the complex meaning of Sattva : it is, as it were, the * Grote. THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 39 reflected form of pure spiritual reality, the nearest approach to spirit which can appear in a " mixed " universe. Therefore it is harmony and the giver of harmony, it is goodness and the cause of goodness, it is knowledge and the faculty of knowledge. But it belongs — as the three " Quahties " necessarily must belong — only to the created world of phenomena. It does not belong to the higher world of the Real or spiritual, in which Sattva — both as harmony and as goodness and as knowledge, and as the principle or faculty of each — is transcended. Plato, concerned chiefly with the mental or psychical aspects of the three Qualities, uses the word Logistikon (the reasonable element) to denote the Sattvic faculty. This he very carefully distinguishes from Nous, the spiritual faculty ; but it connotes the highest excel- lence in the " mixed " world in which we live, and appears as the faculty of goodness, knowledge and harmony in that world. The three Qualities, in their psychical form, are of course all related to desire ; for the word " desire " covers every conceivable conation into which consciousness enters, from the desire for food on the part of a hungry child to the desire for holiness on the part of the saint. The relation in the case of Sattva is simple : it implies " right " desire, which may best be expressed as desire for goodness and for truth ; and it is always as nearly disinterested as any desire can be. It would, however, be wrong to assume from this that the Sattvic condition has no pleasures except those which are the satisfactions of " right " desire. This is an assumption often made, and then used as a confirmation of the belief that the condition of thorough goodness is a remarkably dull and unattractive one. (Even Adeimantus makes this objection in a later book.) But it must be remembered that all the pure pleasures, as Plato calls them in the Philebus, belong to Sattva ; that is, those pleasures which may be very intense, but are not preceded by desire, and therefore are not preceded or followed by any feeling of void. (See the account of pleasure given in Book IX.) I confess that Plato's examples of " pure " pleasures are a little depres- sing. He instances the pleasure of looking at a single pure colour or a perfect geometrical figure ! The relation to desire of the two lower qualities — Rajas or Thumos and Tamas or Epithumia — is not so clear. Both imply desire for cer- tain kinds of definite satisfaction ; but the objects of Tamasic desire always recur again and again in the same form, while the objects of Rajasic desire do not repeat themselves in the same form. And this constant return to the same point is, I think, the mark which best distinguishes the Tamasic desires from the Rajasic. The latter are always something more than recurrent oscillations of motive and effort. Their " end " is always definable as a unique object, or as a state of satisfaction which, when once attained, cannot be repeated. The " ends " of Tamasic desire, on the other hand, may indeed be classified into genera and species, but they cannot be individualised ; and the aim of each desire is to repeat the same satisfaction continually. Thus a drunkard wants drink — constantly ; or he wants some specific 40 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO drink — repeatedly. A hungry man wants food — as often as he is hun- gry. A lustful man wants satisfaction of his lust — again and again. It is true that imagination adds trimming to these Tamasic desires, and so causes their objects to appear unique. Even a drunkard may long for a particular imagined satisfaction, just as when we are hungry we may long for a particular Gargantuan feast which we elaborate in exact detail in our thought. But the true character of all these desires is the recurrence or repetition of sameness of want and of satisfaction : and every satisfaction tends to be the prelude to the same want over again. Not so the Rajasic desires. A man desires to found a family or to win the Derby or to be Prime Minister or to become a miUionaire. In some cases he may appear to repeat the want after obtaining satis- faction. But this is not really so. A man who has " made his pile " may still desire money : but it is a new end : he first desired to be a millionaire, and now desires to be a multi-miUionaire. So in other cases. The end may not be as satisfying as we hoped : we therefore compose a new end in which all the elements are doubled or trebled. I suppose a man who desires to win the Derby a second time does not want to repeat the same gratification but to gain a new one. And in most cases the object of the desire is plainly final : once attained, it is followed by desire for new objects, for fresh fields to conquer, not a repetition of old ones. Herein, I think, lies the essential difference between Tamas and Rajas by which the relative superiority of the Rajasic desires is clearly shown. It is sometimes urged that the difference may be expressed by saying that Epithumia or Tamas stands for those elementary desires (natural appetites, as Plato calls them in the fourth book) which pay no atten- tion to other people ; that Thumos or Rajas denotes desires which are rather more social or other-regarding, at least in so far as they involve conscious competition with others ; while Logistikon or Sattva always implies desire for co-operation. But these differences are not the essen- tial ones : they are not the differences emphasised in the Indian philosophy, nor are they emphasised by Plato. They only happen to fit in with the usual " social and political " interpretation of the Republic, by which they are also suggested. It is true, of course, that the Tamasic desires are usually more limited in their social inter- actions than are the Rajasic desires ; but this is an accident. My desire for drink or for sensual gratification may or may not involve competition or co-operation with others : my desire for power or profit (the two typical forms of the objects of Rajas) certainly must do so. But both kinds of desire may be equally self-centred and self- regarding ; and the Rajasic desires (especially in the form of desire for money) are sometimes actually more anti-social than most of the Tamasic appetites. The difference between them which really is important in the Platonic or Vedanta doctrine is the difference which affects the spiritual progress of the individual man or woman ; and that difference can only be expressed, as I have tried to explain, by THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH 41 reference to the deeper meaning of Tamas and Rajas. The Tamasic desires, if they rule the soul, are utterly and hopelessly unprogressive — moving in a stationary circle which means stagnation or death ; the Rajasic desires always move the soul on from one object to another ; and even if all the objects are illusory, still the movement is not circular, and may lead to movement in a really progressive direction. The further difference, resulting from the less or greater degree in which conscious purpose enters into the desire, is of course obvious. This is expressed by the relation of the two lower faculties to the highest : Rajas or Thumos is nearer to Sattva or Logistikon than is Tamas or Epithumia. This difference is important when the qualities are considered as the marks of social grades : a Tamasic class or group is generally on a much lower level in regard to conscious reflective purpose than a Rajasic class or group. Plato, not being chiefly inter- ested in the social aspect of the matter, does not make much of this distinction, though he indicates it clearly enough. The copper or iron class is incapable of possessing any real virtue, and is not worth educating. PART II THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LOWER PATH. REPUBLIC, BOOKS I TO IV CHAPTER III ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOK I AND PART OF BOOK II. THE EXPLANATION OF THE QUESTION "WHAT IS THE NATURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ?"; AND THE CONSTRUC- TION OF THE GOOD STATE. THE Republic consists of three fairly distinct parts. The first, comprising the first four books, is intended to explain the nature of right and wrong, of righteousness and unrighteousness, of good and evil, of excellence and the reverse of excellence, in the human soul living the life of a citizen in the world. The second part, comprising Books V to VII, is intended to indicate the nature of a righteousness or good- ness or excellence of a higher order altogether, attained only by the purified spirit of man, or the human soul made perfect and set free from all worldliness. The third part, comprising the last three books, explains the chief dangers which beset the imperfect soul in its passage through this and other lives. In the present chapter and the two succeeding ones I attempt to give a summary and an explanation of the first part. The Republic is written, hke most of Plato's works, in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and others ; but the greater portion of it is a continuous exposition by Socrates, with words of agreement appropriately inserted at intervals by one or other of his auditors. In the first book, however, and part of the second, the other speakers are of real importance, and the dialogue form is quite appropriate. This early section is probably felt to be a 42 THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 43 very irritating introduction to the work. Much of the first book seems to be mere quibbling ; all of it is baffling to one who is reading the Republic for the first time ; and none of it establishes any conclusion in a satisfactory way. Yet it is by no means unimportant, though its importance is rather negative than posi- tive. It serves the necessary purpose of clearing the ground of several misconceptions, and at the same time gives some valuable indications of the positive arguments which are to follow. Its very inconclusiveness also is perhaps intentionally exaggerated in order to show the impotence of argumentative reason as an instrument in the search for final truth. The first character introduced in the dialogue is Cephalus, a worthy and pleasant old gentleman, who discourses for a short time to Socrates upon the subject of old age and wealth. Cephalus is brought upon the scene as an example of those who are in the quite uncritical and unreflective stage of morality and religion. Socrates is far too kindly and too wise to disturb his faith by any cross-questioning, though the old man professes a keen interest in philosophical discussion — and characteristically withdraws the moment a philosophical discussion is proposed. But not before he has indicated very clearly the limitations of the stage which he represents by propounding two or three queer maxims of worldly wisdom, supported by sundry quotations of better- I known people's opinions, and at least one Biblical text. He ex- plains that he does not find old age irksome, as most do, but rather reposeful, because, with the decay of the physical powers, one is I delivered from the tyranny of many furious masters of desire and lust. But it has not yet occurred to him that to outgrow a lust without conquering it is merely to gain repose without earn- ing it, and puts off the battle of self-mastery to be fought out in some other life. It has not occurred to him that a virtuousness acquired by the mere process of growing old is not a more valuable moral acquisition than baldness. With the same complacency he explains that wealth is useful because it enables us to pay our I debts and placate our creditors both among men and among the I gods, and so die easily and with a clear conscience. But it has not occurred to him that the freedom from remorse which can , be obtained by the use of the purse is not more valuable in the t after-hfe than a handsome coffin or an extra-sized funeral pyre. And yet Cephalus is a good man, and a religious man, too, in the 44 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO sense which is apphcable to the habitual and almost unconscious stage of morahty and reUgion. His hfe is filled with the services and observances of reHgion. He comes in to greet Socrates fresh from the performance of a sacrifice ; and he returns to his sacri- fices again when the subject of righteousness is proposed for discussion. After his withdrawal, the theme of the Republic is introduced in its simplest form by the question — What do we mean when we speak of performing right and just actions ? What is right con- duct ? Socrates obtains his first answer from Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, who also represents a distinct type of mental and moral development. An excellent and worthy young man, he is quite content to settle the great issues of reUgion and ethics by appeal to the scriptures. The dictum of one of the inspired writers is final, for him ; though probably he has never analysed nor understood the texts which are his sheet-anchor of faith. Critical analysis of them evidently startles and bewilders him. Yet he is willing to learn, and, although quickly reduced to silence by the Socratic method of cross-questioning, becomes an attentive and sympathetic Ustener throughout the rest of the discussion. He has no difficulty in bringing from his armoury of scriptural texts an appropriate one wherewith to answer the first question asked by Socrates. " Right conduct, we are told, is to render to every one his due. That is what the revered Simonides has laid down." Socrates promptly turns this text inside out, or rather shows that what Polemarchus understands by it cannot possibly be true, and is unworthy of so inspired a person as Simonides. For what is due to our friends and to our enemies is not the same thing — so at least Polemarchus maintains. To the one we owe all that is helpful, to the other all that is harmful. So right conduct both helps and harms, does good and does evil — as if it could ever be the function of Right to injure people and make them worse than they are ! The next answer to the question is made by the representative of a very different type of mind. Both the answer and the argu- ments in support of it are put into the mouth of one of the pro- fessional teachers of " the citizen art " in Greece — the rhetorician, Thrasymachus.^ Whether or not the latter is a fair example of the class to which he belonged we cannot say ; but he certainly 1 See Chapter I, p. i. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 45 appears, both here and elsewhere, as a very perfect embodiment of the defects which Socrates saw in that class, namely confident dogmatism based upon what we should now call rationalism. Thrasymachus was not a cynic or a sceptic, except in reference to conventional ideas and the reUgious dogmas upon which they are based. He believed in his own convictions, and still more in the sufficiency of the " reason " which is his instrument of truth. He finds little difficulty in answering the question of Socrates. Right conduct ? Morality ? Justice ? Why, of course : that means the irksome and unpleasant things which foolish people think they must do just because their more astute masters have told them so. Right is might, and justice the invention of the strong, who have been shrewd enough to lay down the rules of the game of life in their own interest — for the weaker and less wise to obey. They know better than to let themselves be bound by the regulations they have made ; and every sensible man follows their example. Riches and pleasures and honours and all satisfactions worth having come to those who are bold enough to play the game in defiance of the rules and clever enough to escape detection or strong enough to defy punishment. One almost expects Socrates to give the simple reply : " My friend, if there is any good in you, you will, sooner or later, out- grow all this. But in the meantime, discussion would be thrown away on you." But Socrates, being more patient than most of us, takes the trouble to argue with Thrasymachus at considerable length, though the argument is only worthy of the disputant who cannot possibly be convinced, but may conceivably be made a little humbler. It is hardly necessary, however, to summarise the argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus, which occu- pies the whole of the remainder of Book I. As argument, it is not in the least convincing, nor is it intended to be, for Plato wishes to show at the outset that the rationaUst or materialist treatment of the problem of right and wrong can never lead to any satis- factory account of righteousness. That is the final answer to every sophist and materialist ; if they cannot accept it, it is because their eyes are blinded by the matter which they have made their universe. But the discussion has a direct bearing upon the serious argument of the succeeding books, for in it two positions of the greatest significance are estabUshed. The first is this : That the art of right conduct, like any other expert 46 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO art such as healing the sick or making music, ^ aims at a standard of absolute excellence which every true expert is perpetually trying to reach. And in the practice of the art nothing competi- tive enters : a true expert's success is never obtained at the expense of another expert. Each one strives to reach the goal of excellence or perfection, but it is with no thought of over- reaching a fellow-expert. That sort of thing — the practice of competition or always trying to get the better of someone else — may be a common practice in our ordinary life and actions, but never in our actions as true experts. How should it be, when the goal of perfection is open to all, and each one's progress towards it makes easier the progress of all others ? Let us banish then from our conception of right conduct all thought of compe- tition, of the effort to overreach others, or to get some advantage at their expense. Such things are wholly alien to the conduct of the good man. And secondly : There is no gain attaching to any art as such, save the single reward of drawing nearer to the goal of excellence. This also is true of right conduct. It may be the case, as Thrasymachus says, that a man who wrongs others on a grand scale, boldly and hke a tyrant, does indeed get what he wants, that is to say he gains the satisfaction of his most im- perious desires. But that does not prove that the path of action he adopts is the " right " one, or that he has come within sight of the art of right conduct ; nor, as we shall see, does it prove that he touches happiness at all. For " getting what we want " has no more to do with happiness than with the perfection which is the goal of art. These two arguments foreshadow the whole teaching of the Republic. There is no relativity about Goodness ; it is not a question of being better than we were, or better than others ; it is not a question of winning any reward, even the reward of heaven. We think too much in terms of more or less, or better or worse. But that is the " competitive " way of thinking, and im- plies an absence of an absolute standard. True virtue (Hke true art) is related to an absolute Good : there is never any question of doing better than anyone else, or of beating one's ovm or others' achievements. We think, again, too much in terms of reward or 1 Plato is very fond of calling moral conduct an " art " ; and he uses the term in the sense of expert action based upon expert knowledge. For him, virtue is knowledge, and good conduct the art based upon it. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 47 punishment. Our theories of morality are always tending to relate good conduct to its effects upon happiness ; and our every- day thought hnks virtue with the notion of merit. But merit implies that we are deserving of reward or praise in consequence of our effort in resisting temptation and overcoming difficulties. All these conceptions belong only to good conduct on the lower arc of Ufe, in which the self is dominant and life is a continual struggle between the claims of duty (or the claims of others) and the claims of self. But Plato is preparing us for the conception of the righteousness which belongs to the higher arc, in which all desire for satisfaction of the self is purged away, and no thought of meritorious action enters any more than any thought of gain. The true goodness is the result of seeing and loving the absolute Good : when that state is reached, desire for praise or reward or satisfaction or happiness has become as meaningless as the conception of competitive struggle. So much for the argument of the opening book of the Republic, which has the useful result of putting out of court sundry modes of approach to the great question — What is Righteousness ? and also of putting into their proper place certain typical modes of crude conception. The world is full of Polemarchuses and Thrasymachuses. Most of us, at one time or other, have been examples of the types they represent ; indeed, the types are perhaps characteristic of normal and necessary stages in the development of all thought. We begin by being content and pleased with the confident use of an accepted authority to settle any and every riddle of Hfe, an authority given to us and accepted unquestioningly, but made our own by our acceptance of it and our respect for it, and therefore felt to be a possession which adds many cubits to our superiority over those who have not made it theirs. And then we pass on to the next stage, in which, all authority contemptuously tossed aside, we proceed to measure the infinite with the foot-rule of our own intelligence. And now we are more than ever satisfied with the results, and proudly confident of their finality. For have we not reached them, unaided, by the use of our own pecuUar faculty, which, as in- telligence, stands supreme, the only possible interpreter of an intelligible universe ? Plato knew these stages well, and dealt with them wisely, kindly, and not impatiently, content to show that they do not 48 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO lead us far along the road to truth, for all their apparent certainty. But he makes no pretence of convincing the representative of the " rationalist " stage ; his dogmatism cannot be changed until at least he is willing to admit the possible existence of faculties of knowing and seeing which far transcend the faculty of whose skilful exercise he is so proud. One other characteristic of this introductory book of the Republic must be noted. All through it we are dealing with the nature of Righteousness as a purely ethical problem, considering only its external or social side, in answer to the narrow question : What is right conduct ? or, What are right actions ? or. What is morality ? Asked in this form, the question may be answered, indeed, but never satisfactorily nor completely, never in its real relation to the greater question, What is Righteousness as a quaUty of the soul, an attribute of the divine in man ? Yet this limited form has usually been taken as the chief question of moral philosophy, leading to three types of answer, all aUke unsatis- factory. According to one type, morahty and the moral law appear as rather arbitrary ordinances of a divine ruler, or of a conscience or moral sense which acts as his viceroy. According to the second type, God is left out of the business, and conscience becomes a natural result of the compulsions of human law and pubhc opinion, whose dictates are in turn determined solely by the pressure of our social needs and considerations of our social welfare. Morahty thus becomes a natural and necessary element- in social hfe ; and right conduct, or the content of the moral law, will vary, with time and place, according to the kind of pressure which the environment may happen to exert, and the kind of aims which society may happen to have made the objective of its dominant desires. And the whole of morahty is relative and subordinate to the human happiness to the attainment of which it is supposed to furnish the means — this " happiness " being nothing more than the greatest possible satisfaction of the greatest possible number of desires on the part of the greatest possible number of people. This is UtiHtarianism, or the rationa- list explanation of right and wrong. According to the third type, morahty and the content of moral law appear as the dictates of the good will in all its relations to other wills, directed to the attainment of a perfection which may be indefinite, but is at any rate something more than the maximum THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 49 satisfaction of desire. But even in this account the emphasis is laid upon the external side of Righteousness — the necessary quality of our actions to others — and not upon its internal side, as a quahty of the soul which we may regard as identical with its perfect wisdom and its supreme bliss. Now in the first two types of ethical theory here outlined, if not also in the third, goodness is made to appear as a mode of restraint upon our activities, which may be salutary, but must needs be felt as irksome. This may be a quite satisfactory account of morality, which is, after all, a social phenomenon dependent upon the requirements of social life. The moral man or the moral soul is the one who obeys the highest known moral law in all his relations and actions, whether towards men or towards God. And the moral quality of tightness has a meaning only in con- nection with these relations to others ; nor is this external reference lost by taking into full account the motive of the moral man's actions in every case. For the motive is also social, even in its highest form, of love for his neighbour and submission to the will of God. If we confine ourselves to the lower forms of these ethical theories — such as Utilitarianism — we find that the element of restraint is so intimately connected with the conception of morality that we are not brought within reach even of the Dharma of the lower path which I have described in the preceding chapter ; and the very highest forms do not really carry us beyond it. It is clear, therefore, that Plato is compelled to brush aside quickly the lower forms, as he does in his first and second books ; and eventually to rise far above even the highest forms. How else can he unfold his conception of Righteousness, not as a useful, salutary and wholly beneficial excellence of the soul, but as the supreme excellence, which alone gives Ufe and the true joy of Ufe, apart from any consequences of pleasure or pain, of reward or neglect, of success or failure ? At the beginning of the second book the question which Socrates is to answer is re-stated, this time in its true form. It is no longer — What is right conduct and the quality of right action ? but — What is Righteousness, and the quality of the righteous soul ? The question in this form is raised by the two brothers of Plato, Glaucon and Adeimantus, who are clearly intended to represent a type far above the stage of unreflective piety exemphfied by Polemarchus or that of dogmatic rationalism 4 50 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO personified by Thrasymachus. For this reason, the whole of the remainder of the dialogue — or rather, discourse, for it is no longer a dialogue in anything but the mere form — is addressed to one or other of the two brothers, and their occasional com- ments and interruptions are used to mark difficulties or tran- sitions in the argument. Adeimantus appears to be the pro- found thinker of the two, Glaucon being sometimes allowed to seem really stupid. It is significant, however, that the deepest and most difficult parts of the exposition are addressed to the latter ; and his failure to understand is probably intended to mark the fact that, at many points, the doctrine expounded by Socrates will be unintelligible to ordinary people. It is not easy to describe the type or stage which these two brothers of Plato stand for. They are perfectly familiar with the sceptical rationahsm expressed by Thrasymachus, and also with the far more plausible forms of it which are neither cynical nor purposely destructive. They confess themselves unable to rebut the arguments of Utihtarianism ; yet they find the con- clusions wholly unsatisfactory, and incompatible with the con- ception of Righteousness which they intuitively beheve to be true, since, without it, the moral universe loses all its reaUty. And they know that the answer which they cannot give is to be found somewhere ; they therefore turn to Socrates — " the hfe-long student of the Good " — as the one man who is hkely to have found it. The question they address to him is as follows : It cannot be denied that Thrasymachus is partly correct ; at any rate the world thinks so. It is generally admitted that mutual agree- ment, or social convention, has estabUshed a code of conduct which we call right. This code acts as a curb on our desires, and the observance of it makes it possible for all of us to hve our hves with a moderate amount of satisfaction, and without the continual suffering which would follow the unchecked pursuit of pleasure by all. Consequently we approve it, very much as we might approve a strict regimen or diet which was necessary to keep us in health. But we don't like to be moral or righteous : who does hke to have his passions and appetites constantly curbed ? We only submit to the necessity, and agree to caU this irksome thing, morahty, a good thing, just as an invalid might call his doctor's strict treatment good ; but we would all be glad to THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 51 escape from it if we could do so without suffering unpleasant consequences. Further, this universal conception of moraUty and virtue as irksome but necessary things is plainly the result of the kind of teaching we all get from our parents and our elders. They bring us up in the behef that the path of virtue is both difficult and unpleasant : but then it is so respectable, and pays so well ! The inference is obvious. If by any means we can secure the semblance and reputation of virtue with none of the restraints which are its true nature, then we shall manage our lives with real success. But surely the gods will see through this cunning device, and punish us after death if not before ? Oh, no. The gods are rather fond of a really clever rogue — if we may take Homer's accounts for true ; and, whether this is the case or not, every orthodox teacher assures us that they can be appeased by due and sufficient sacrifices. And who is in a better position to appease them than the really successful man ? Can you then wonder that the world rates virtue and righteous- ness so low, as disagreeable fetters, which prevent us, indeed, from injuring one another, but at the same time prevent us from benefiting ourselves in the ways we would choose ? So, Socrates, if you are to help us in our instinctive revolt against this belittling conception of goodness, you must show that Righteousness is, in itself and apart from all Consequences, a good to be coveted, and a source of real happiness to its possessor. Take, then, for your example of the righteous man one who, because of his righteousness, is despised and spumed and evilly entreated both by men and gods, and ends this life in torture and crucifixion, without even the consolation of knowing that a heaven of comfort has been prepared for him hereafter by the gods — for his righteousness must be hidden even from them. Strip him bare of all results of his righteousness, except those which his own righteous soul may give him ; let his sole rewards in the world be pain and shame from beginning to end of life. And take as your example of the unrighteous man one who wins all the honours and powers and successes and pleasures which he desires — and also the reputation, among gods and men, of exem- plary righteousness. And then prove to us that the soul of the former is the happy soul, and the soul of the latter miserable. Lay bare the essential nature of Righteousness and Unrighteous- 52 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO ness, as each really exists in the human soul ; and show that " by its own peculiar power, the one is the greatest blessing, the other the greatest curse, which the soul of man can receive into itself. ..." Such is Plato's statement of the question which he undertakes to answer — surely the boldest task which a philosopher has ever set himself to perform ! For note how ruthlessly he has torn down and thrown aside every conceivable prop which may help him in his argument, every known device which moralist or philosopher can use, until he is left face to face with — what ? The final question of ethics ? The crux of human raorahty ? The central problem of social conduct ? Emphatically not : what moral or social philosopher has ever dared to state his problem so ? Imagine, if you can, any sane thinker using such an intro- duction for the starting-point from which to embark upon the construction of a social Utopia or the explanation of social justice or a theory of human knowledge ! What then ? Is it not clear that Plato has purposely put the great ethical questions — What is righteousness ? and WTiat is happiness ? — into a form which shuts out all consideration of social well-being and utility, and can have but one practical answer — the answer of rehgion : " Seek refuge in thy soul ; have there thy heaven. Scorn them that follow virtue for her gifts."* Is it not clear that he is expressly stating, in its deepest form, the central question of all religion, a question of spiritual psychology and spiritual ontology, a question which comes always at last to this : What is the true spirit of man, and the nature of the real world to which it belongs ? WTiat are those quaUties and activities which raise it far above care for any earthly rewards or penalties ? WTiat is the certainty which can carry it through all sufferings and disappointments, counting these rather gain than loss ? What is the vision before its eyes which blots out for it the things of this world, and seems to lead it on, triumphant and serene, into a world wherein there is a new heaven and a new earth, radiant with an unchanging bliss which we have no lan- guage to describe ? For the moraUst may talk of happiness ; but both he and we mean by the word something quite incomparable * From the Bhagavad Gita, Book II (Sir Edwin Arnold's translation). Only a variant, of course, of the better known saying, " The kingdom of heaven is within you." THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 53 with the state which belongs by right to the true soul. We have degraded the term until its connotation is inseparable from satisfaction of desire — a condition in which, while it lasts, all conscious desires are satisfied, in place of a condition in which no desire any longer exists to be satisfied. There shall be no happiness, in our sense, for the perfect soul. On its earthly pilgrimage, every desire shall be thwarted, every affection torn to pieces, every interest baffled — until it discovers, as Goethe discovered, that " our physical as well as our social life — customs, manners, art of Hfe, philosophy, religion, nay, even many an accident — all are crying out to us, that we shall renounce " ; until it reahses, as an Eastern teacher has put it, that " religion is only possible for those who are indifferent to pleasure and pain " ; and that " remsmbering God is life, but forgetting God is death " ; until it has reached the selfless love of which Spinoza was thinking when he warned us that we cannot be said to love God until we can love Him without caring whether He loves or hates us in return. Then, and then only, the soul has come to its true heritage, not of Happiness — Eudaimonia, great good fortune and the consciousness of it — but of Bliss, Makaria, the condition of those to whom alone the beatitudes of Christ apply. Plato begins his task with characteristic skill. He does not draw attention to the fact that the question which he has now propounded cannot possibly be answered by any analysis of social or individual virtues as we know them in the world ; still less does he embark at once upon a semi-mystical account of the spiritual potentiaUties of man. He knew well enough that, had he done so, not one in a thousand of the Athenians would have taken the trouble to read any farther. But he begins quite simply with a search for goodness in the State and in the citizen, as though this would be quite enough to reveal the nature of the Righteousness whose existence he has posited. And the picture he draws of the State wherein goodness may be found is so fas- cinating, so paradoxical, so tantalising that every intelligent reader is led on by its charm until he finds himself plunged, whether he will or no, right into the heart of the religious teach- ing to which all the rest is but a prelude. " I am to show you," he says in effect, " the very essence of righteousness in the soul. Well, it is a hard thing to lay bare the nature of the good soul. Let us then first analyse the nature of the good State, in which 54 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO the qualities of the good soul are written large." Then follows the construction, step by step, of the famous Republic in which goodness resides. Is this intended to be an ideal ? Yes and no. It is asserted to be good, without qualification, else it would not contain the virtue sought for. But it is not what we mean by an ideal State or Utopia. When we speak of a social Utopia, we are thinking of an imaginary condition in which the possibihties of social hfe may be most fully reahsed, and the human development of each " socius " may be most complete. But Plato is thinking of something rather different. When he calls his State perfect, he means that it is good in relation to the needs of spiritual development ; that in it alone can the true Philosopher or lover of Reality find the conditions necessary to his growth and the disciphne compatible with his preparation for the path before him. To these requirements of the good soul the whole social structure and its every detail are subordinated. In all our social Utopias the end is happiness for all the citizens. Not so in his. Will his citizens be happy ? he is asked later. " That is not the point," he rephes, " we are not concerned with what they may or may not gain as individual citizens." Again, we make for ourselves a social ideal as a goal or standard to which our ideas of social progress may be related — which shall, in fact, both justify and give vaUdity to our efforts and schemes of progressive reform. But Plato is not interested in social pro- gress in our sense, any more than he is interested in the increase of complexities, refinements and many-sided development which we call culture or progressive civihsation. All his thought about " social perfection " is determined by reference to an archetype which is essentially not social at all ; and in conformity with that he posits certain social conditions (very far removed from anything which we regard as cultured or progressive or even civihsed) which alone can be called good in relation to the needs of the individual soul. We may say, therefore, that the characteristics of the State which he describes are necessary rather than ideal. They conform and must conform, not only to the spiritual archetype on which his gaze is fixed, but also to the characteristics which mark the really good soul, so far as these can be manifested in the Hfe of this world. He pretends, indeed, that he is building up a perfect State with a view to its social excellence, guided at each step THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 55 by the social interest of each feature. That is what his readers can understand and appreciate. But in reaUty he is doing nothing of the kind. He is merely copying — sometimes at the price of social absurdity — an individual pattern which is necessary and eternal, and, in its final form, independent of social conditions altogether. On no other supposition can we explain some of the almost grotesque features which his " perfect State " presents. Its structure, moreover, is necessary or predetermined in another way. Most critics have accused Plato of straining the analogy between the State and the individual. But this is not the case at all. He cannot even be said to be using an analogy ; still less to be straining one. His conception of the created universe assumes an identity of structure in everything : an identity of psychical structure, also, in all things which are in the same stage of psychical development. The three " quahties " (as explained in the preceding chapter) form the fundamental structural elements of society just as certainly as they form the fundamental structural elements of the individual soul ; and the mode of their functioning, as well as the law of their right activity, is identical too. Plato is therefore completely justified, by his conception of the nature of things, in asserting that society, like the soul, contains the three great quahties or faculties in their psychological form of Desire, Passion and Intelhgence ; that, in society, these qualities are severally inherent in groups or classes of the citizens ; that these classes must differ in their function, and that the difference must never be confused or obliterated ; and that the classes must therefore be kept rigidly distinct in position, work and power. We need not say that he is copying the model estabhshed by the Manu of ancient India as the necessary form of satisfactory poUtical organisation. He sets up an exactly similar model because he is working with the same principles and the same conceptions. But these points will become clearer as we proceed to note the features of the good State upon which Plato insists. I merely wish to remind the reader once more that these features are, as it were, predetennined. Plato is bound, by fidelity to his conception, first, to discover in society, in their proper places, the three psychical elements, Tamas, or ignorant desire, as the necessary basis ; Rajas, or the passionate element, as the possible auxihary and defender ; Sattva, or the reasonable and good element, as 56 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO the guardian of the whole ; and secondly, to reproduce in the society which can be called good the marks of the good soul — perfect simpUcity ; indifference to fluctuations of pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty, reputation and power ; steadfastness and iramutabiUty throughout all the changes of hfe ; and finally, perfect dutifulness or Dharma. His argument proceeds as follows : The first and fundamental condition of social hfe is found in the nature of human desires. Every normal human being has more wants than he alone can satisfy by his own efforts. A community of at least four different producers, or agents of satisfaction, is required if we are to Hve a human hfe at all. And this number is clearly too small if we are to reahse the true condition of healthy satisfaction of wants, namely, that each agent of satisfaction shall perform its own function only. Even our simplest wants will not be met by a farmer, a builder, a weaver, and a shoemaker alone, unless each does more than his proper work. We must have additional agents, carpenters and smiths and shepherds, for instance, and even traders and shop-keepers. Let us add these, in order that our city may reahse its full stature. And having thus got our society in its simplest but adequate form, " a genuine and healthy city," let us see whether we can discover goodness and badness in it. Of course our citizens will Hve the very simplest kind of hfe, with a changeless vegetarian diet, and a changeless round of httle occupations and interests, from the cradle to the grave, from one generation to another. But where is goodness or its opposite to be found among them ? It just is not there. We seem to have made this first idyUic society positively too simple. Glaucon calls it a social condition fit only for pigs or other easily satisfied animals ; and perhaps he is right. Apparently we must comphcate it, and make it luxuri- ous, and then we may find both virtue and vice in it. We must abandon its perfect simpUcity, and add to its necessary agents of satisfaction many who are not necessary, such as butchers and bakers, confectioners and courtesans, jewellers and embroiderers, actors and poets and artists and hosts of others, to say nothing of doctors and lawyers. And now we really have got a society, one which will surely yield us what we want. For do you not see that when its " element of desire " is so fully elaborated and diversified there must needs appear the other two parts or THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 57 elements which we are pledged to find ? It will not long rest content with its present satisfactions ; it will very soon covet more. And so war and quarrelling will arise ; and these entail fighting men, for aggression and defence and the maintenance of order. And the fighting men must needs be speciahsed, and form a separate class, on the principle that each functionary must confine himself to his one special function. So we get our class of Auxiharies, quite distinct from the producers or agents of satisfaction, and marked, as good watchdogs are, by the quaUty of combined fierceness and loyalty. And of these the best, or those in whom the faculty of discrimination and the love of knowing are most marked, will be the Guardians, the third and highest class. . . . I think it is worth while to dwell for a moment upon the few pages in which Plato puts together the essential structure of his State. In the summary given above I have gone a Uttle, but only a very httle, beyond the actual text, in order to emphasise the significant points. Now it is clear that Plato has been driven, both by his conception of the necessary nature of society and by the requirements of his aim, into two contradictions, the one a contradiction of his own beliefs, the other a contradiction of existing fact and opinion ; that is to say, he has aheady been led to do violence to both consistency and common sense in order to obtain the conditions which he beHeves are necessary. Thus, to take the first contradiction, there is no other justification for his weak abandonment of the " genuine and healthy society " which he first describes. It appears to be exactly the simple and perfect society which he wants to get : he says himself that it represents " the true and healthy constitution of the State " ; and consequently we feel that his agreement with Glaucon's criticism of its simphcity is really sarcastic. " You can have a luxurious society, if you hke," he says, and then proceeds to insert those very complexities and vices which he subsequently banishes. He pretends to take this " swollen and inflamed city " as the model in which the virtues are to be found ; but in reahty he only uses it just so long as it is needed, and then discards it. And it really is needed in order to reveal the social counterparts of " desire " and " passion " and " wise control." For the " genuine and healthy city " is altogether too simple to correspond with human nature. There is only one class in it, that of the 58 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO unconscious satisfiers of wants, the simple functionaries who do their day's work, eat their suppers and go quietly to bed every day. We cannot imagine them needing even a poUceman — to say nothing of an army of trained soldiers. Nor do they need a class of rulers or guardians : instinct and habit give guidance enough and protection enough to their hves. Their society, in fact, corresponds only to man in the perfect animal stage, with normal appetites finding each its normal satisfaction, but without any conflict of desires, without any struggle or consciousness of struggle, without temptation or the need to resist it, without the " anger " which arises when desire is thwarted, and the reflective conscience by which desire and anger are controlled. Conse- quently it must be dropped — for the time being ; and a more complex society is substituted, in which it is possible to find, not only the necessary but scarcely conscious functionaries, but also the fully conscious classes of Vaishyas, Kshattryas and Brah- manas : not only the automatic processes of life, but also the complete psychical equipment of Desire, Passion and In- telUgence.^ The second contradiction is equally inevitable. The whole experience of Greece at her best was that a citizen army was infinitely preferable to a separate soldier class. The secret of the strength of the Greek City-State lay in the fact that the first duty of every citizen was to fight for his country ; and that duty was as necessary a complement to his economic functions as the duty of obeying the laws and hving decently. But Plato was compelled to contradict this experience and the true principle underlying it : how else could his model be made to answer its purpose ? A Kshattrya caste was needed, not merely the Kshat- trya or warrior principle in every citizen's breast. The separate caste of Rulers, or true Guardians, is only hinted at so far ; it emerges clearly at a later stage. Its existence does not involve any serious contradiction, except, perhaps, of the contemporary opinion of democratic Athens, which might fairly be disregarded. Plato does not at first clearly distinguish between 1 This " simple and perfectly healthy city " may be said to correspond to the state of a little child — to which (on a different level) we must all return when we are born again, and so begin to walk the upper path of spiritual reahsation. But ordinary human beings must first go through the stage of ever increasing com- plexity and (from the rehgious point of view) unhealthiness, in order to learn its lessons. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 59 the Kshattryas and the Brahmanas. The two classes of Auxili- aries and true Guardians emerge together, the latter being, as it were, a superior class developed out of the former. But the distinction is clearly enough defined later, when the true Guardians are found to be those alone who are " capable of acquiring con- summate skill in the art of ensuring their country's freedom," and who know the social principles which the Auxiliaries can only accept on trust. CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOK II (PART) AND BOOKS III AND IV. THE PURIFICATION OF THE GOOD STATE, AND THE EDUCATION OF THE GOOD SOUL. THE DEFINITION OF THE RIGHTEOUS CITIZEN. THE outline of the social structure completed, Plato proceeds to purify the society so constructed into its proper harmony with the virtue of the good soul. This purification is effected in two ways : by education and by social ordinances. But these methods are not really separated by Plato. In his view, social ordinance and educational system are inseparable ; the social environment is itself the great teacher, and the educator's skill divorced from the legislator's care would be of no effect at all. It is, however, convenient to draw a dis- tinction between the education of the young by direct teaching, and the education of the citizens by the indirect influence of the social environment and the ordinances which regulate it ; and Plato deals first with the former division, devoting to it the whole of the third book. I confess I shrink from giving a summary of this book. The principles which it contains are expressed in language so simple and so beautiful that I would neither detract from its charm nor give any reader the least excuse for not reading it for himself. I am compelled, however, to give an outline of its teaching in order to make clear one very important point. It is this : Plato is not here concerned in the least with education as we usually think of it. His only aim is, as he tells us later, to devise means for " wheeling round the soul " from the worldly to the spiritual ; in other words, he is laying down the principles of a true moral and religious training, and nothing else. Or rather, since even these terms do not convey enough, we had better say that he is think- ing only of the best way to purify the human soul from the evil elements which every normal soul contains, and to set it in tune 60 THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 61 with the spirit of goodness. And this " best way " consists, first, in a very rigorous and even austere purging of the educa- tional influences by which the young are surrounded — especially in literature and art ; and secondly, in an equally austere purifi- cation of the environment and mode of life in which the good soul must pass his days. How these two objects are to be attained is told in the con- cluding pages of the second book and the whole of the third book. Taking first the teaching of religion, in its simple form of the inculcation of beliefs by scriptural stories and myths, Plato banishes all scriptures and hymns and poems which speak of God as other than He really is — the author of good and only of good, the source of all truth and only of truth, incapable of change and incapable of deception. Nor will any writings be admitted which make death seem a thing to be feared : " How can a man be brave who is haunted by a fear of death ? " — or which make suffering and loss seem things to be lamented : "Is not a good man distinguished from the rest of the world by his peculiar independence of external things ? " How then should he mourn for the loss of anything ? Poets who tell us the doings of heroes and demigods shall only sing of examples of fortitude, of indifference to gain, of freedom from wrath and the desire for vengeance, of purity and fair dealing ; for so only shall our young men and young women learn to love the virtues which they must themselves acquire. Next in importance to the substance of the teaching is the form in which it is conveyed. For this the regulations can be laid down without difficulty. We must have whatever form is most simple, most direct, aind most in consonance with the good man's invariable control of his emotions. In our poems we will insist upon the straightforward narrative style, in which there is no imitation of the words and voices of others — " the style, in fact, which an honourable and educated man will adopt whenever he is called upon to narrate anything." For our Guardians are not to learn the art of imitation ; that would not be in harmony with the singleness of function which runs all through our State. And if any skilled imitator, such as a tragedian or an actor, pays us a visit and offers to entertain us, we will praise him for the astonishing cleverness of his versatility, but we wiU ask him, in all respect, to be kind enough to give his performance in some other 62 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO State, since all such entertainments are by law forbidden in ours. Again, the melodies to which our hymns shall be set must be those only which express steadfast endurance in all activities, and peaceful sobriety in all relaxations, Unkcd to a rhythm which is in harmony with the vibrations of the good man's nature. In these ways we shall at once purge our State of its too great luxuriousness, and also obtain the requirements of a true " musi- cal " education for our Guardians, especially if we apply the same canons of simplicity and austerity to all kinds of art and crafts- manship. For then all our poets and artists " will turn the power of their genius to picturing the nature of the fair and graceful in such a way that our young psoplc, dwelling as it were in a healthful region, may drink in good from every quarter from which any emanation from noble works may strike upon their eyes or ears, hke a wind wafting health from an invigorating land ; and so they will be won, from their earliest childhood, to glad and devoted harmony with the true beauty of reason." And then, when they wake from the half-sleep of youth, and know- ledge comes to them, they will recognise her by the instinct of relationship, and will welcome her as their own peculiar friend. So much then for the education by music, by which we mean the whole culture of the soul of which the Muses should have charge. But there is another, though less obvious, way by which the soul is educated — by the proper cultivation of the body and the right use of the whole physical environment. In this education by gymnastic, as we may call it, the same careful insistence upon true principles is necessary. We have seen that simpUcity begets health and goodness, just as variety begets dissolution and disease. Simplicity, therefore, of diet and regimen shall be our rule in the treatment of the body. But do not think that this means a strained or forced simplicity, like that of an athlete's or a faddist's diet. We will have no excessive care of the body ; the less it is thought about the better will it be for the soul. All we require is that its proper growth and function shall be guarded by fixed rules of healthy living, and so its education vn\\ go on naturally and unconsciously. For remem- ber, it is not really the body we are trying to educate, but always and only the soul whose servant it is to be. It Ls not physical THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL strength at which we are aiming, but the fortitude which is a quahty of the soul. Now if we are faithful to this principle of simphcitj- in all our education, both of soul and body, not only shall we find our city purged of all the variety and lux\uy- which destroy good- ness, but we shaU also be able to rid ourselves, almost if not quite, of those twin sjnnptoms of complexit}-, the law\-ers and the doctors. For do you not see that these two estimable pro- fessions only become indispensable in proportion as complexity* and variety' are allowed to supplant the principles of simphcity and sobriety in the education of the young, and in the conduct of Ufe ? They are the necessary concomitants of luxiiry, with its distracting variety of appetite and thought. Our Guardians wUl have no need of them, since, like the labouring poor, they will have no time to be invahds, and, like true philosophers, they will have no squabbles for lawyers to settle. Our commvmity as a whole will perhaps need a few of each ; but they will be rather judges than practitioners, deciding who are fit to go on b\ing, and who are so corrupt that they had better die. . . . The above is a summary of Plato's answer to his own question — How shall we educate the chosen youths who are to become the guardians of our State ? The answer contains aU that he cares about in the matter of principles of education for the young ; and what he cares about has httle or no relation to the principles and systems which we modem educators are so busy elaborat- ing. His account of the " right " education of youth is simply the answer to the question : " How shall we make and keep pure the hearts of the young ? " And the answer is — By sim- phcity, purity, austerity, and yet again simphcity, in aU the influences by which character is unconsciously formed. Secure this, he says, and you will secure for the young that pureness of heart which is the first great step to the knowledge of God. And, in the social picture, he adds — You will secure also freedom from lawyers and doctors — a subtle way of saying that the rightly educated character will be free from the personal ambitions which breed quarrelsomeness and discord in the soul, and from the desires for sense-pleasures which breed ill-health and discord in the body. The modem educationist would hke to claim Plato as one of his foremnners. It would be just as sensible to trace educa- 64 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO tional science back to the prophet Isaiah. For Plato neither gives nor wants to give any hints upon educational science ; and, except so far as we are really intent upon rehgious and moral training, his principles are quite outside the scope of our imitation as educators. Just as the Republic as a whole contains httle or no pohtical doctrine which any poUtician can adopt, so its " ideal education " contains very httle in the way of suggestion which any modem educator can apply. And for the very simple reason that Plato is always thinking of an unworldly aim, while we are thinking of the aims which the world approves. Plato has a single goal before him — the excellence of the perfected soul in its own realm of spiritual reahty. We have before us the many-sided goal of all the excellences which successful manage- ment of this life requires. This is not a stupid criticism of the educational expert of to-day. His task is dictated to him ; he is bound to accept its conditions. Society orders the product ; he, the educator, is bound to furnish it. For education, hke pontics, is and must be what the hfe of society demands ; and the Hfe of society as we know it has for its dominant aims just those things which Plato refuses to consider at all — achievement, success and progress ; and these aims are multiform, changeable and ever opening out into new variety. But the hfe of Plato's society all runs in a single channel, whose end is the unchanging and utterly simple goal of spiritual righteousness. To that end alone his principles of education and of law are related. The modem educator is tied down to his society's purposes, since education, in aim and method alike, is subordinate to the ends to which the whole social hfe is addressed. He cannot be allowed to educate youth along the path of complete simphcity when society has chosen to turn the highway of hfe into a wilderness of complex interests. He cannot make education single in its aim when society has taken variety for its goal. We must needs cultivate in the youth the powers which the man will need, in pursuit of whatever ends society imagines to be good. And every society very definitely puts the stamp of its approval upon successful achievement — by which is meant the doing success- fully anything which the world thinks worth doing. This is the general aim for which the young citizen must be prepared ; moreover, it is necessary that it should be so, and, in a sense, quite right. For the aim includes, first and most obviously, the THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 65 successful attainment of a livelihood by each citizen — an end upon which society is bound to insist. It includes also the attain- ment of numerous ends which are admittedly beneficial to the individual, and are assumed to be beneficial to society too — increase of wealth, for instance, or achievement in any recognised department of activity, such as poUtics or commerce or science or art or Uterature. The pursuit of these ends is not necessarily selfish : the motive as well as the result may be the increase of social well-being. But the point to note is that the end is many- sided, and the approved channels of activity very numerous and diverse ; and therein lies the educator's difiiculty. He must accept society's estimate of good ends, and must devise such instruction for the young as will best " draw out " the faculties Ukely to be most useful in the after-struggle to attain them. In other words, the conditions of his task are dictated to him. He may not and must not be a sheer idealist ; he may not set aside the worldly common sense of parents and society, in favour of any unworldly vision of a possible kingdom of righteousness. The interest of society wiU not allow him to say — " This is what I beheve hfe is meant to lead to, and for this alone I will prepare the young put under my care." He is forced to compromise, and to combine his own single aim with the multitudinous requirements of his society. Even on a very elementary level singleness of aim is not permitted to him. Witness the continual complaints of physiologist and psychologist to-day in the matter of the education of adolescents. These experts merely ask that we shall subordinate all other aims of education to one during the three or four critical years of puberty. The one aim they would have us follow is admittedly of the first importance : no one questions the utiUty of health ; no one disputes the expert's assertion that health in adult Ufe, not physical only, but mental and moral too, depends in great measure upon the careful treat- ment of the child during the period of adolescence. Yet the educationist is not allowed to follow the expert, and to make paramount the known requirements of adolescent development during the years of adolescent change. Society and the parents will not have other ends left out of account : direct preparation for some kind of successful achievement must go on even at the expense of the health which, indirectly at least, is a condition of the very achievement desired. 5 66 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO How then shall we hope to make paramount the supposed requirements of a quite unworldly and intangible end ? A society which could allow us to do so would already be ideal, and perhaps too good for the world of struggle as we know it. It is hardly possible that any human society which intends to live and thrive and succeed among its competitors, should deUberately turn its back upon the " goods " whose solid utihty it has proved, and embrace as its only intrinsic " good " the end of hohness or righteousness, preparing its future citizens for this and this alone, and accepting in faith not only the end itself, but also the method of preparation for the attainment of it. Now Plato is faced by no such difficulty. He brushes aside all ends save one ; he admits no requirements save those of spiritual purification ; his ideal stands alone, free from the confusion of worldly considerations of utility, achievement, success or even welfare. For he is not thinking of a worldly society at all. He is not educating citizens for a citizen life ; still less is he preparing social units for successful competition in the struggle for earthly well-being. He is preparing a human soul to tread a path which is neither social nor earthly ; he is laying down the conditions of development for the man or the woman who shall be "fit for the kingship of wisdom." His education, therefore, is simply the necessary preliminary^ train- ing of the good soul in habit, attitude and behef — a training to which, quite apart from all systems of education, every soul must submit if it is to run the race which leads to eternal peace. In other words, Plato is not outHning a system of education for useful citizens who shall become successful rulers of a prosperous State. He is only defining the conditions of training for a human soul, which must become master of itself in order that it may be able to find its way to God. And, since only the pure in heart can see God, he must needs set every influence to work which makes for purity, and so produce the purged soul, austere in thought and act, indifferent to the promptings of desire, free from all fear and care of consequence, " simplified " far beyond any social or worldly needs and standards. This fundamental difference between the purpose of the Platonic ^ I say " preliminary," because it is followed by a very different and much more advanced education, described in Book VII . Here we are dealing only with the general education outlined in Books III and IV, which Plato afterwards refers to as the " training by habit." THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 67 education and the purposes of all our educational systems is very clearly brought out in a later book (the seventh) where Plato expressly tells us that his education is designed simply and solely to awaken the spiritual faculty which every soul contains, by " wheeling the soul round and turning it away from the world of change and decay." He is not concerned with any of those " excellences of mind " which may be produced by training and discipline : his only aim is to open the eye of the soul, to bring into activity the hidden power of spiritual vision which Ues dormant in every one of us — dormant, yet perfect, the key to all wisdom, the source of all understanding, potentially all-knowing, and there- fore in need of no instruction, but only needing that " uncovering from the mud and mire " of worldly preoccupations which is the task of the true educator. This is tantamount to saying that the whole of Plato's education is a religious education. It is clear, therefore, that its principles are not and cannot be appHcable to the systems and methods of secular education, or training for ordinary hfe in the world, in which we are interested. The danger of any such appUcation may be illustrated by a single example. Plato lays down the principle (in the seventh book) that there must be no compulsion in the teaching, but that " early education must be a sort of amusement." Does this mean that Plato is an advocate of the doctrine that children should never be forced to learn lessons which they do not Uke ? Not in the least : the principle has no appUcation at all to the ordinary education of the young, and becomes ludicrously false when so applied. But in relation to true reUgious education it is absolutely right : you cannot compel the soul — at any age — to love the God which does not appeal to it. Plato's early education has a single aim — to make the soul " in tune " with God. Many souls are not yet ready to be put in tune : very well then, let them not be forced into the rehgious life. We want only those " rare charac- ters " who are naturally fitted for the great quest of the spiritual life ; let our early education reveal them, for they will be known by their instinctive love of the reflections of good with which our whole educative environment surrounds them. And these will be the souls " fit for philosophy," who shall be privileged to pass on to the higher education. If we bear in mind this fact — that Plato is wholly occupied with the education of the soul which is to become righteous : and 68 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO if we remember further that he is not really concerned with the conditions of a social Utopia, but only with those of an individual ideal ; we shall have little difficulty in meeting some obvious objections. To begin with, his sympathies appear to be so narrow that he gives not a single thought to the education of the lower orders — the great and important Vaishya caste or working- class, the toilers and producers upon whose shoulders rests the whole burden of providing the means of livehhood for all. This fault has sometimes been attributed to his aristocratic and con- servative prejudices ; but it is not a fault at all, nor has it any connection with political feeUng. His " working-classes " are simply the desires of a man — writ large ; and you cannot speak of educating desire without grave psychological inaccuracy. The desiring element is merely a given force in the soul, which can be and must be controlled. What can be educated and trained is the faculty of control, the higher elements in the soul by which the desires are governed and kept in their place. The education, therefore, is necessarily confined to the two classes of Auxiliaries and Guardians ; and it is intended far more for the latter than for the former. In the more general " training by circumstance " which we shall find described in the fourth book, the lower orders are allowed a small share : they are to be protected from any excess of wealth or poverty. And this is just all you can do for the desires : you can make it easier for them to do their proper work of leading to satisfaction of vital needs, without the star- vation involved in an exaggerated asceticism, and without the grossness induced by a too plentiful supply of opportunities of satisfaction. Again, it is sometimes said that Plato is too much influenced by his admiration for the famous discipline of Sparta. But the similarity of his educational system to the Spartan model is much less pronounced than the dissimilarity. The Spartan training was a magnificent failure. It attained its aim : but its aim was hopelessly wrong. It treated man as though the Rajas or Thumos element was the highest his soul possessed ; and fortitude there- fore its highest virtue, a kind of loyal fierceness controlled by blind devotion. But the whole gist of Plato's system is its bearing upon the element of Reason, and its virtue of wise prudence ; the soul must be brave and loyal in order that it may learn to be philosophic, in order that it may be able to know and love truth, THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 69 not merely accept in blindness and hold fast in bigotry whatever opinion may be given to it. So far as the more elementary train- ing is concerned, Plato does indeed outdo Sparta ; but that is in obedience to a much higher model. For all through his ruthless pruning away of the excrescences of desire and taste and whim, which the world calls " cultured interests " and which Plato calls pernicious variety, he is following the ideal held up to us again and again in the scriptures of the East. I do not, however, wish to labour this point now, for it might very easily have happened that Plato reached his conception of human goodness, and of the education needed to produce it, independ- ently of any Eastern influence. But the teaching of the Vedas supplies such an illuminating commentary, and makes so clear the aim which dominates Plato's purging of environment and his education of the lower soul, that I cannot refrain from quoting a few passages to illustrate the parallelism. Take, for example, this account of what the good man shall aim at becoming, repeated again and again, like a constant refrain, in the verses of the Hindu scriptures : " One who is freed In all his works from prickings of desire, Burned clean in act by the white fire of truth. The wise call that man wise ; and such an one. Renouncing fruit of deeds, always content, Always self -satisfying, if he works, Doth nothing that shall stain his separate soul. Which, quit of fear and hope, subduing self. Rejecting outward impulse, yielding up To body's need nothing save body, dwells Sinless amid all sin, with equal calm Taking what may befall, by grief unmoved, Unmoved by joy, unenvyingly ; the same In good and evil fortunes ; nowise bound By bond of deeds." Or this, spoken by the divine Teacher, in answer to his pupil's question, " What is his mark who hath the steadfast mind ? " " When one Abandoning desires which shake the mind. Finds in his soul full comfort for his soul, He hath attained the path ; that man is such ! In sorrows not dejected, and in joys Not overjoyed ; dwelling outside the stress 70 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Of passion, fear, and anger ; fixed in calms Of lofty contemplation ; — such an one Is Muni, is the Sage, the true Recluse ! He who to none and nowhere overbound By ties of flesh, takes evil things and good, Neither desponding nor exulting, such Bears wisdom's plainest mark ! " But If one Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs Attraction ; from attraction grows desire, Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds Recklessness ; then the memory, all betrayed. Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind, Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone. But if one deals with objects of the sense Not loving and not hating, making them Serve his free soul, which rests serenely lord, Lo ! such a man comes to tranquillity." ^ These passages are of course intended to describe a perfection of soul far transcending the virtue which Plato is trying to educe in his Guardians by the preUminary education. But the char- acteristics which mark the perfect man in his passage through this life are necessarily manifested in their simplest form as the essential virtues of the worldly path — the very temperance, fortitude, prudence and justice which the Guardians are to show. The diviner excellence is to be developed at a later stage ; but already Plato's interpretation of the cardinal virtues upon which ordinary moraHty insists is very close to the interpretation given by the Eastern writers. It is, in fact, already a rehgious, not an ethical, interpretation. His temperance is more than moderation and control of excessive desire ; his fortitude more than bravery and endurance ; his prudence more than " prudentia " or the sensible management of Hfe ; his justice a far greater thing than fair deahng between man and man. Plato has already distinguished between his true Guardians and his Auxiharies ; but at the end of the third book he makes the distinction clearer. The true Guardians or rulers are those who show an unwavering zeal for the interest of the State, with single-minded devotion to its good and not their own ; those who can show, in face of all temptation, that they are " safe keepers of this inward conviction, that they must always do what ' From the Bhagavad Gita. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 71 is best for the State " ; those whose natures have been " so wrought upon by education as to take, as it were, the colour of the laws — an indelible colour, which even those terribly strong detergents, pleasures and pain and fear and desire, cannot wash away." The AuxiUaries, on the other hand, are just good and faithful watchdogs, not rulers in any sense at all. They have, it is true, their share in the education which has been so carefully arranged ; but it is not really meant for them, and only has a negative effect upon them. It is intended " to lower their tone by its soothing influence, till their wildness has been tamed by harmony and rhythm."^ Well may one wonder what kind of a social Utopia it can be in which many of the most important arrangements are designed for the exclusive benefit of a minutely small section of the citizens, while, of the rest, some are allowed to be so far gainers by them as to " have their tone lowered," and the great majority are not affected at all ! For we must remember that the true Guardians — the one centre of interest in the State — are very few in number : a very select little band of rare natures. Having definitely distinguished the three classes, Plato stamps each with the permanent mark of its grade. The true Guardians are golden in nature, the AuxiUaries silver, the rest — that is, the producers and traders of every sort — copper or iron. These distinctions are never to be confused : the grades are eternally distinct. But it may happen that here and there a golden or silver nature may be found in the lowest class, and a copper or iron nature in the higher, each revealed by its conduct and the manifestation of its character under trial. And in that case, but in that case only, there may be interchange between the classes. Very faithfully is Plato following the model established by the Manu of the Hindus. " I am he who made the castes, portioning to each its place according to its quahties and gifts." Or again, " For the increase of the world's well-being, the Creator sent forth the Brahmana, the Kshattrya, the Vaishya, and the Sudra." And further, " Not birth, nor servants, nor study, nor ancestry, can decide whether a person is one of the twice-born, and to which of the three types he belongs. Character and conduct alone can 1 Republic, p. 442. 72 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO decide." And finally, whenever mixture of the castes appears, then the age of darkness begins. Such is the teaching of the Manu, faithfully reproduced by Plato. ^ The picture of the " ideal State " is completed by a short account of the discipline by circumstance and environment to which the Guardians and AuxiUaries are to be subjected. They are to Uve Uke campaigners in a military camp, sheltered from the weather, rather than housed, with sleeping places instead of homes, without comforts, without possessions, without anything which anyone may call his own rather than another's. Their daily necessaries they shall receive from their fellow-citizens, as wages for their services ; and " they shall feed at common mess tables, and Uve together as men do in a camp." Above all, their hands shall be clean from the touch of silver and gold : they shall not pollute the pure metal of their natures by contact with earthly ore, nor mix their spiritual riches with the counter- feit wealth of the world, defiled as it is with the countless impieties which have flowed from it. (Just so the Brahmana was not allowed to earn his livehhood by ordinary pursuits, but " must lead the hfe of straight simphcity, shunning all riches and all crooked ways of world-minded men," and obtaining from others the bare necessaries of hfe.) At this point in the dialogue Adeimantus interrupts with the objection that Socrates is not making these Guardians particularly happy. He has deprived them of all ordinary opportunities of obtaining that satisfaction of desires which the world calls happi- ness. Quite true, says Socrates, but that is not our object. It will not surprise us to find that they are very happy indeed ; but our object at present is to make not this one class, but the whole State as happy and as good as possible. He then proceeds to ordain that in the State as a whole there shall be no excess of wealth or poverty. As the Guardian and AuxiUary classes shall have no private property at all, so the pro- ducers and traders shall not be allowed to heap up wealth ; else ^ The above quotations are from the Bhagavad Gita and Manu, I and II. In the last passage quoted, " one of the twice-born " means a member oi one of the three highest castes, all of whom were called twice-born. The Sudras alone are only once-born, and therefore on a lower level altogether. The "second birth " (a symbol of regeneration corresponding perhaps to the rite of Confirma- tion in the Christian Church) is not permitted to them. They must be bom again in another life into one of the higher castes before they are qualified for salvation. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 73 we should get not a single city but a double one, for wherever wealth is amassed by one class, the result is a city of the rich side by side with a city of the poor, each hostile to the other. But our State must be really one, and must not be permitted to expand, in size or in possessions, beyond the limits of a true unity. It shall be an unchanging unity too, revealing only the internal progress which comes from the cumulative effects of good nurture acting upon good natures. But innovation of any kind, in the system of education and nurture, shall be wholly forbidden. For innovation opens the door to lawlessness and licence ; and these, whether in education or amusements, lead certainly to ruin of the health of the State, exactly as they ruin the health of the individual. And now the organisation of our State is complete, and we must begin the task of finding wherein Justice may be found in it, and what is the nature of its Justice. Well then : the State being perfectly good, it will of course contain the four cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice ; and if we can discover three of these qualities it will be easy to point to the remaining one. There is no difficulty about the first. Prudence in council, or knowledge, or protective science clearly belongs to the smallest class, the Ruler-Guardians. As to the second, we call a State brave when it fights well ; and we do not look for this quahty anywhere but in the portion of the State which fights for its defence ; so clearly its fortitude must reside in the fighting class, the Auxiliaries. The third quality, temperance, is not so easy to localise, for it is a kind of harmony or orderliness, a mastery of one part over another, of the good principle over the bad. Well, in our State the desires of the many vulgar are con- trolled by the prudence of the educated few ; and that condition of controlUng and being controlled is temperance, a unanimity or concord between the naturally better element and the naturally worse as to which of the two has the right to govern. Of course, we cannot say it resides in the lower elements ; but they are concerned in it — passively. These three virtues being discovered, it should be easy to find the remaining one, justice. Obviously, it is the universal principle upon which we insisted from the very beginning, that every individual and every class should have and hold to one occupation, and only one ; and this principle of 74 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO doing one's own business only is justice ;^ for it is the only principle which can compete with prudence, fortitude and temper- ance, in its importance to the well-being of the whole State. And the opposite of justice, that is, injustice, is any kind of meddling with any other function than one's own, or any confusing of the three great classes. The good State has now served its purpose of reveahng to us the nature of goodness written large in letters which we have been able to read ; and we can, in the Ught of this discovery, interpret the individual soul which is our society's archetype. The soul possesses the same three quahties which we made the basis of our State's structure : ignorant desire, capable of submission ; passion or fierceness, capable of loyal service ; and intelligence, capable, after right education, of the wise guidance of the whole. You can easily prove the existence of these three qualities by a little introspection. Youf desires, you will find, are frequently pulled back and kept in check by a very different principle, which has all the marks of reason and reflection. This is intelh- gence, controlUng the very different element of desire. And you will find also that a third principle constantly appears, a kind of passionate anger, directed, not against the reasonable control of desire, but against the desire itself whenever it breaks from con- trol and leads us into unreasonable excesses. This is passion, distinct from both desire and inteUigence, but by nature inclined to ally itself to the latter.'' In this tripartite individual soul, as in the tripartite State, the four cardinal virtues reside when the whole is well ordered. The soul is temperate when the two lower quahties agree to be governed by the higher ; it is brave, when the passionate element holds fast, through all pain and pleasure, the instructions of reason as to what is to be feared and what is not ; it is prudent in virtue of the dominance of the small part which alone knows what is best ; and it is just or righteous when each of the three * This extraordinary and entirely un-Greek definition of Dikaiosune is explained by the meaning of Dharma. See Chapter II. ' How far Plato is right in regarding Rajas or Thumos as the natural ally of reason, it is difficult to say. In the Hindu philosophy, this quaUty is, in its sim- plest form, the anger which arises whenever desire is thwarted — a description which seems to imply considerable friendship for desire ! But in all its forms, especially as ambition or devotion (the quality of a higher sort of " attachment " than that of desire), it is admitted to be tinged with reason in a way in which desire is not. THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 75 faculties does its right work rightly. And finally, we discover that this Righteousness is " not something to do with a man's outward performance of his work, but with the inward perfor- mance of it which truly concerns the man himself, and his real good." It is, in fact, the virtue of having his house in good order ; so that, having complete mastery of himself, he lives his life in concord with the good, his soul resembhng a well-tuned instrument, from whose strings every chord struck is a perfect harmony. And Unrighteousness is the opposite of this : a con- dition of endlessly jarring discord in the soul, each part always at war with each, each faculty constantly usurping and misusing the powers which are never meant for it to use, each adding to the soul's disharmony and foulness and disease. Our further question — Which of the two shall most profit a man ? — has come to seem ludicrous. Nobody will now maintain that Ufe is worth having on any terms at all, " if the constitution of the very principle by which we live is going to rack and ruin " under the sway of Unrighteousness. . . . Plato's picture of the ideal State has, indeed, served its pur- pose— the delightful purpose of proving the very principles assumed in its construction. The artificiahty of the device becomes almost too obvious when the locaUsation of the four virtues is undertaken. The degradation of the whole industrious and working-class into the ignominious position of " the bad element," which cannot, even at its best, claim the virtue of temperance, would not have been proclaimed so boldly by even the most aristocratic and bigoted philosopher, if his intention had been to put before us a passably plausible " ideal RepubUc." But to Plato, who cares little about the social aspects of the picture, the degradation is necessary and right. Tamas, Epi- thumia, desire, ignorance — call it what you will — this lowest principle of the conscious soul is bad, and is the root of nearly all evil. Then let it be made to appear so, boldly and openly, in the " large picture " of the soul. The placing of the second principle, Rajas or Thumos, involves a much more serious shock to our expectations, and an even braver defiance of common opinion. For just as Plato contra- dicted all Greek experience and conviction when he separated the duty of fighting for one's country from the normal citizen's 76 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO duty, and made his soldiers a peculiar professional class, so he contradicts all poUtical experience when he divorces the fortitude of a State from any relation to the character of the great mass of its citizens, and connects it exclusively with the character of its professional fighters. It is significant, too, that this astonish- ing social psychology implicitly contradicts the great principle of unity upon which he has just insisted so strongly. The State must be really one, in feeUng, thought and action. But what kind of unity is it which allows the quality of fortitude to enter into the State, not through the characters of all its citizens, but through those of a small number only, while the majority have no part nor lot in the very feehng and faith upon which a State's existence so often depends ? If a State is not one in fortitude, it is not likely to remain one in any sense at all for very long. But what would you ? The Rajas element and its virtue are specialised and distinct in the individual soul ; they must be specialised and distinct in the social picture too. I think I have laboured this point enough, or more than enough. The social picture must not all be taken seriously by those who are interested in the betterment of social structure. Its lesson is not social or pohtical, but psychological and ethical — and even more than ethical. And what is to be taken seriously is its revelation of the necessary condition of the growth and nurture of the good soul in any society ; of the necessary conditioning of the character and conduct of the good man in any kind of State ; of the necessary attitude to any social environment and the necessary treatment of all social circumstances which must be learned and practised by every soul that aspires to enter the pathway of spiritual life. All these " necessities " do, indeed, make up an ideal which bears directly, if only we could see the bearing more faithfully, upon all our problems of social better- ment ; but it is not a social ideal. It is far in advance of any Utopia ; it differs, in kind as in degree, from any dreamer's scheme of a perfected social order ; it is a veritable " pattern laid up in heaven," which here and there an individual may reahse — but human society never, since, in reahsing it, human society would cease to be. But I suppose it is, after all, the greatest possible tribute to the genius of Plato that all of us are able to find in his " social picture " just the very things which our dominant interests THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL 77 prompt us to look for. The coldly analytical Aristotle found exactly the political and ethical inaccuracies which he loved to criticise ; the rationalist Grote found, as was to be expected, very much to patronise, and very little to understand ; political philosophers have found continual stimulus to their thoughts about citizenship ; and ardent social reformers have found, not a stimulus merely, but even an inspiration such as few social Utopias have afforded. Yet there is something oddly pathetic in the fact that the Republic has been hailed with deUght even by naturalistic communists, of all people in the world ! For Plato's communism is the very antithesis to that at which they aim. In the first place, it is not intended to apply to any except just those classes which could not exist in the political com- munist's ideal State. In Plato's Republic, possession of wealth and private property are forbidden only to the aristocracy — who do no " useful " work, and hve a kind of " parasitic " or depen- dent Ufe — not to the producers and toilers who really earn their livelihood. To separate these from the use and ownership of wealth would be an impossible absurdity, according to the Pla- tonic psychology ; the producers must both get and have wealth, exactly as the necessary desires must both get and have satisfac- tion ; and not only so, but each separate desire must both get and enjoy its own satisfaction. The only rule is — No excess of wealth or property or enjoyment of satisfaction for any one of them. In the second place, the whole motive of Plato's ideal is, of I course, in the deepest antagonism to the motive of all ordinary communistic schemes for pooling wealth in order that there may be the greatest possible abundance of enjoyable things for each and all. In proportion as Plato's citizens become good, in that proportion is satisfaction of desire withdrawn from them, and all care about enjojnnent falls away from them, until the very best are left bare of everything we count worth having — stripped more particularly of all the good things whose abundance for all is held out as the great attraction of the communist's ideal. This is again only another way of saying that Plato is providing for the needs of the spiritual man, while social Utopians are con- sidering the needs of the natural or worldly man ; and spirit and world are eternally distinct. There is one other feature to be noted in connection with Plato's construction of his perfect State. We have seen how, 78 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO little by little, his social interest is narrowed down until it is entirely focussed upon the very small class of the Guardian- rulers. This is in strict conformity with his preconceived analysis of the soul, of whose parts the largest — ignorant desire — deserves the least attention, and the smallest — intelUgent reason — deserves the most. It is in strict conformity, too, with the motive of the whole work. We shall find, when we reach the " kernel " of the argument in the sixth and seventh books, that Plato's central aim is to explain the path to Righteousness through wisdom, not through faith or love. It is important to bear this fact constantly in mind, for it explains many difficulties (such as the later treatment of art, for example). Its bearing upon the astonishing neglect of the great mass of the citizens of his State is obvious. The " inteUigence element " alone is the ground out of which, as it were, there springs the faculty of " divine discernment " — Nous, or the power of apprehending reahty. Consequently, this " inteUigence element " alone is worth both careful attention and careful education. The other elements in the soul (and therefore in the social picture too) are so subordinate that the highest of them cannot be regarded as more than a useful watchdog, while the lower obtain all the attention they deserve — by being suppressed. PART III SPIRITUAL REALISATION; OR THE PATH OF RELIGION. REPUBLIC, BOOKS V, VI, AND VII CHAPTER V ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOK V (PART). THE COM- MUNITY OF OCCUPATIONS FOR MEN AND WOMEN. THE COMMUNITY OF HUSBANDS, WIVES AND CHILDREN. THE KINGSHIP OF THE PHILOSOPHER. PLATO has finished the picture of the perfect life and the perfect soul on the lower path — the path of pursuit of ends in the world, the path of bondage to the " quaUties," the path whose Dharma is only a reflection of the Righteousness still to be revealed. To his hearers it seemed quite good enough, as fair an ideal as humanity could need. " But," as they say later, " it seemed you had an even better condition to describe to us." This better condition of the soul and its life is the theme of the three books which I have grouped together as the second part ; and they may there- fore be regarded as the kernel of the whole work. In them Plato undertakes his supreme task of revealing the meaning of true reUgion — a task so difficult that he is compelled to state and re-state his arguments in many different forms, to use one analogy after another to make his conceptions clear — and to express himself finally dissatisfied with the result. His hearers cannot understand him : again and again their answers show that they will insist upon interpreting what he says in the hght of what the world calls knowledge, and that their conception of good cannot free itself from worldly considerations of utihty. At one point he is even moved to sarcasm, and rebukes Glaucon with most unusual severity because he cannot rise above the 79 80 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO literal and obvious interpretation of the argument. He is troubled, too, to find words with which to express his meaning : the common use of such terms as " science " and " understanding " has confused all the great issues ; yet we must needs use them as best we can. And more than once he hints that he is not attempting to take the highest road, nor to reach the highest goal. " Tell us more about the supreme science," says Glaucon, towards the end ; " tell us what are its divisions, and its methods ; for these may be the roads which will lead us to the very spot where we may end our search." " My dear Glaucon," is the reply, " I would willingly do so, but you would not be able to follow me farther." Before, however, we try to understand whither Plato is leading us in this search for the Righteousness which is not of this world, we must deal with some of the smaller difficulties which this second part of the Republic presents. Just as, in the earlier part, Plato began the search for human righteousness, not directly, but in connection with a fanciful social State, so again he begins his greater quest by a return to the social counterpart of the soul. It is obvious that this cannot possibly be of use now, even for purposes of illustration, in the account of the nature and powers of the free soul, since all the latter's highest activities belong to a region outside this world altogether, and it must needs be compelled to come back to its social interests and duties, exactly as anyone who is not blind would need to be compelled to leave a world of fight and return to a place of permanent darkness from which he had once managed to escape. WTiy then does Plato go out of his way to drag in the social State once more, and fix our attention upon it more closely than ever ? Is it in order that he may once again succeed, by appealing to our dominant interests, in leading us imperceptibly into the very heart of a difficult philosophical argument ? I am afraid this explanation will not altogether serve. The beginning of the fifth book does, it is true, give the reader a kind of defightful relaxa- tion by its very fascinating discussion of the two daring social proposals — the community of occupations for women and for men, and the community of husbands, wives and children. But these are followed by the final proposal — on which depends the possibiUty of reahsing the ideal State — that the supreme govern- ment must be put into the hands of a philosopher ; and the SPIRITUAL REALISATION 81 whole discussion of this has a far deeper intention than any mere appeal to our interest. Moreover, it is dealt with very seriously, not in the least playfully ; and in the discussion the social aspects of it are treated as being of real importance. All this seems, I confess, to mihtate against my contention that Plato's " ideal State " is not intended to be taken as a serious social Utopia ; for if so, why the repeated assertion of the condition of its realisation ? This difficulty I must deal with, first summarising the contents of the fifth book. Having finished the first four books, Socrates pretends that his real task is completed, and all that remains for him to do is to describe the various causes of demoralisation of a good soul or a good State. But he is reminded that he owes it to his hearers to explain what is involved in the " common possession of all things " which he has ordained for his Guardians and Auxiliaries. Does this mean that they will hold their wives and children in common ? And if so, how ? To this Socrates repUes that for men bom and educated as he has described, the only right method of acquiring and treating children and wives will be to follow the impulse implanted in them, always to do the thing that is best for the flock under their charge. And " the thing that is best " implies, first of all, that no difference whatever shall be made between men and women, whether in the matter of their education, or of their pursuits, or of their position as guardians and rulers. In reference to these things, nature has ordained no essential difference between the sexes : how then shall we dare to differentiate ? Women are rather less strong than men : that is all. They can do, and do well, all the important things which a man can do ; the only difference is that they cannot do some things quite so vigorously or so unwearyingly as men. Clearly then women, as well as men, will be AuxiHaries, doing as the men do in school and gymnasium, in camp and on the battle-field. And women, as well as men, will be Guardians, sharing with them the government, guidance and control of the State. And for all these functions we shall not consider the sex-difference of any more importance than the difference, let us say, between a man who is bald and a man who is not. This, then, is the first impUcation of our " best arrangement " 6 82 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO in regard to the sexes : there must be community of pursuits and activities for men and women. But the second implication is a more difficult matter. It is clear that, when both sexes live and work in such close contact, they will be led, by their strong natural instincts, to mate together. But irregular alliances would be a profanation in our State : the marriage union must be regarded as a very sacred thing, and its sanctity will only attach to marriages which are for the public good. Our rulers must therefore arrange, first of all, that only those shall be allowed to mate who are really fittest to produce good children ; and secondly, that a halo of sanctity shall surround these unions, and these only. Doubtless these arrangements will require a good deal of trickery on the part of the rulers ; those who are deprived of the privilege of mating, and those who are dissatisfied with the mates allotted to them, will need some very clever lying to appease them. But our rulers are authorised to use this kind of medicinal deception. And their method will be this : certain fixed times will be chosen as mating periods, and elevated into times of holy festival. Lots will then be drawn by all the men and women of the right marriageable age — 25 to 55 for men, 20 to 40 for women ; and these lots will decide who, on each occasion, is to mate with whom, and who is to be left without a mate. They will all think it is a real lottery, presided over only by the goddess of chance. But in reaUty the rulers will see to it that all the lots are decided beforehand, and that nothing is left to chance at all. How else can they ensure that children are bred only from the best stocks ? Then, as fast as children are bom, they will be handed over to special officers to rear in a general nursery, where all the mothers will be brought as required to suckle the infants. But no mother will know her own child, nor will any child be hers more than anyone else's. They wiU aU be the children of aU the parents of that year, and each will be brother or sister to aU the rest. In this way, and in this way only, can you turn your State into a real brotherhood or veritable unity, in which the words " mine " and " thine " have no meaning apart from " ours " ; in which, when anything happens to anyone, every member will with one accord say " It is well, or it is ill, with mine " ; in which the community of feehng and the reaUty of sympathy are so deep and true that the whole State is indeed the counterpart of the SPIRITUAL REALISATION 83 body, wherein an injury to any member is felt at once throughout the organism. This, then, is the necessary community of husbands and wives and children which is implied in our ordinance that our AuxiUaries and Guardians shall have all things in common. It is only ordained for these two classes : but then, if the members of this class are free from internal dissensions, there is no danger " that the rest of the citizens wiU quarrel either with them or with one another." Socrates proceeds to add some details about the conduct to be observed by these male and female Auxiliaries when they go out to war, and about the attitude which the State will adopt towards its enemies, when he is pulled up by his hearers, and compelled to face the question of the possibiUty of realising this ideal social community. But before we follow the argument further, we must try to make clear the real significance of the two startHng " com- munistic " proposals just described. We may note, first, that both proposals, considered as sug- gestions of social change, are absolutely opposed to the thought and attitude of the world in which Plato hved, and must have seemed far more outrageous to his contemporaries than they do to us. For in our case, recent upheavals of fixed habits of thought, accompanied by remarkable changes in the occupational Ufe of our people, have accustomed us to the idea of community of pursuits for both sexes ; and still more recent developments of what may be called the eugenic attitude in social reform have at any rate familiarised us with proposals for radical alterations of our views and customs in regard to marriage. But this was not the case in Plato's day^ — a fact which makes such suggestions all the more astonishing, especially in the mouth of a rather conservative and very anti-democratic Athenian. Moreover, though we are now quite inclined to discuss seriously proposals for change which, two or three generations ago, would have been dismissed as impious and insane, even we are seldom called upon to consider anything quite so wild as Plato's two proposals. He seems to have gone out of his way to make them as fantastic * At any rate, only to a small extent. Educated Athenians had, of course, heard of such things as community of wives and of pursuits for women and men. And Aristophanes had already satirised the notion of admitting women to political power. But these were not familiar proposals seriously discussed, as they are among us to-day. 84 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO as possible ; the community of husbands and wives is particularly grotesque, and is accompanied, in the text, by details whose crudity outdoes any suggestions of the very crudest eugenist of to-day. And to all this we must add the fact that he does not even take the trouble to make his proposal workable. The extreme eugenist at the present time is faced by exactly the same difficulty which Plato notices — the tremendous difficulty of changing an old and hallowed institution without injuring its sanctity. But the most desperate eugenist has never suggested anything quite so ludicrous as a scheme by which the educated classes should be permanently hoodwinked — by themselves ! In the second place, Plato's proposal to aboHsh marriage and the monogamous family is really anti-moral in a very deep sense. We feel instinctively that it is both dangerous and wrong ; and this summary verdict of ours rests upon something far deeper than prejudice, and has a vahdity which is hardly affected at all by any considerations, however weighty, of eugenic progress or racial health. For the truth about all our social and moral ordinances seems to be this. It is almost certain that they come to be what they are — certain definite forms of strict regulation of social conduct — because the instinct of society has felt that they best serve the ends of social well-being. So much may be frankly admitted ; and we may admit, therefore, that utility, or the satisfaction of our human wants and needs, is the end to which, as particular ordinances, they are relative. We may say boldly that almost every item of our moral code, every bit of the fabric of social institutions which regulate right conduct, is the result of the pressure of environment, of our felt needs in relation to the environment, and of our interpretation of those needs and that environment. I mean by this that the form and content of each law and ordinance have been dictated by circumstances. Thus, to take the ordinances regulating our sex relations, mono- gamy is the rule which we must obey, and any infringement is bad and wrong. But this rule of monogamy has no special virtue of its own — apart from its relation to existing social circum- stances. A strictly ordered polygamy or polyandry would be better and more right — in different circumstances ; if, for instance, the females or the males naturally outnumbered the other sex in the proportion of three to one, then our marriage ordinance would doubtless have been one enjoining three wives SPIRITUAL REALISATION 85 to one husband or three husbands to one wife ; and good or moral conduct would have consisted in obeying such an ordinance and holding it sacred. But when the ordinance or institution has once become established, and is received as part of a moral code, the basis of social utiUty or of relation to circumstances is superseded. The ordinance acquires a real ethical value — quite apart from its social-utility value — in proportion as we come to regard it in relation to the supreme ethical purpose, that is, the discipline of our desires for the sake of a good end ; and this good end is no longer social well-being, but something much nearer to a spiritual end : let us say, the preparation of our souls and those of all our neighbours, by the discipline of mutual restraint and unselfishness and consideration for others, for the ultimate attainment of spiritual Ufe. Now when any ordinance has reached this level, has become for us a centre and focus of effort towards the good, then we may say that its value rests upon a higher level than that of utility. It is not to be judged by any standard of social welfare or progress as commonly understood, for the tests of its worth he wholly in our attitude to it, in our regard for it. And so long as that attitude and that regard (on the part of most " good " people) are of the true ethical character I have indicated, so long the ordinance is really supremely important. I may be wrong, and some extreme eugenist right, as to the utiUty-value of our strict monogamous family, in relation to the strength of the race or the physical well-being of society. It is possible that this particular ordinance requires some alteration to adapt it better to present social needs. But the paramount considerations of ethical progress demand that it shall not be altered if, and so long as, the ethical respect of most good people is strongly attached to it : so long, that is, as it really possesses the true ethical quahty. This does not commit us to a dangerous conservatism in reference to all our long-estabhshed moral ordinances, for there is no doubt that our ethical sentiment for any ordinance does grow weaker when its utihty- value diminishes in consequence of change of circumstance and change of aim. The impatient reformer may object that the sentiment lingers on too long ; and this may be true. Good people are doubtless rather obstinate, and continue to respect an ordinance even when it has become effete. But the important point to remember is 86 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO that this quahty of ethical respect for a restraining ordinance is itself the morally valuable thing, not the effects which may accrue in relation to social welfare. Consequently, even when the respect is attached to an ordinance whose utility is waning, its preserva- tion is of more value to human progress than any consideration of greater utility. Put quite bluntly, it is far better to go on with a faulty ordinance which we regard as ethically good than to take a new and better-adapted ordinance which we are not yet prepared to endow with the true quahty of ethical value. Now Plato knew all this perfectly well. He knew that even a very defective ordinance cannot be put aside — cannot be re- garded as anything but ethically right — so long as it is really venerated by good people. And yet he proposes to sweep away the one ordinance to which, more than to any other, the vener- ation of good people is attached. What does he mean ? Can it be the case that he is really requesting us, not playfully nor casually, but with all seriousness and in the very centre of his greatest work, to accept as his final vision of a perfect social hfe one in which the most fundamental and the most valuable of all human institutions — marriage and the family — are thrown aside in favour of an unpleasantly animal arrangement for the con- tinuance of the breed ? Such a conclusion jars upon us : it seems unreasonable and improbable ; and if any other interpretation of this part of the book is possible we would gladly accept it. I think a very different interpretation is possible. In the first place, we must be careful to remember that, in these central books of the Republic, Plato is legislating, not for human society as we know it or ever will know it, but for the perfect social state which (as he tells us later) can never be reaUsed for ordinary human life. The reader must constantly bear in mind the fact that Plato is not now sketching the outlines of a social Utopia as we understand it ; so far as the ordinances upon which he here insists have any social appHcation, they apply only to a society of really righteous souls, all Mving for the sake of the spiritual Hfe, and for nothing else whatever. They are not ordained for any humanly possible society — even the best con- ceivable.^ And the " ideal society " to which they are appHcable * This is made clear later. It may be noted here that the conditions described in the central books of the Republic are not introduced as conditions of the best practicable social state described in Plato's chief social work — the Laws. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 87 will be entirely free from those estimates and sentiments which form the groundwork of social morality for us. It will be com- posed only of " unspoilt " souls, for whom the canvas of Ufe has been swept clean of all existing habits of thought and feeling, both social and moral. And so the ground is cut from under the objections which we raise to his proposal for community of wives and husbands and children. The proposal would indeed involve serious ethical loss for us ; but what has that to do with a society of souls quite free from our equipment of ethical sentiment, and possessing instead a far higher equipment, as well as a far purer character ? This is the first answer to the criticisms which we naturally make upon Plato's communistic proposals. We cannot help criticising them — with an eye upon the human society we know, and with our thought fixed upon a possible " best state" for it. Plato would have a right to laugh at such criticisms. They simply have no meaning in relation to the unworldly, purified, wisdom-inspired society of which he is thinking. In the second place, though I am far from asserting that the " social analogy " has no serious intention as a social picture, I must again remind the reader that its chief purpose is to make clear the necessary conditions of righteousness for the individual soul. Plato's Ideal State — which can never exist — is the large- scale pattern of the perfected individual soul — which can exist ; and all its features are the essential characteristics of the in- dividual soul, " writ large " in a social form. To reach his mean- ing, therefore, we have to ask this question : what individual characteristics do these strange social ordinances represent ? And the answer to the question explains fully, not only the pro- posal of community of husbands and wives and children, but the community of pursuits as well. Plato is now providing for the final purification of the soul already habituated to goodness, in order that it may be pre- pared to begin the ascent to the upper path. Now there are four quaUties or conditions which mark the purged soul :^ we * The full " retinue of virtues " requisite for the pursuit of wisdom contains, of course, much more than these four. It is given very completely in the Gita, Book XIII, in a passage which Plato might have had constantly before him. In this, the first of the four groups of qualities covers all the results of the early education of the soul. The other three groups correspond exactly to the higher virtues of chastity, non-attachment, and one-pointedness. Poverty is included 88 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO may call them — followdng the language of the Vedas — poverty, chastity, non-attachment and one-pointedness. These are the last conditions of the freedom to which the good soul must attain. They imply rather more than the terms suggest to us. Poverty is not merely absence of wealth of any kind, but indiffer- ence to possessions of any sort whatever : freedom from the obsession of the possessive case, as it has been called. Chastity is not merely purity in act and thought, but a condition of real indifference to sex. The soul that has learned chastity will not notice distinction of sex at all ; every being becomes for it sex- less, even as the supreme Spirit is sexless. He or she learns to see, in every woman and every man, not the flesh wherein sex resides, but only the spirit for which sex has no meaning. Non- attachment is harder to explain ; it, too, implies indifference, whether in regard to persons or to things. But the word " indiffer- ence " is here peculiarly misleading. We may say, perhaps, that, just as chastity does not mean a perpetual crucifixion of the flesh, but a condition in which desire is so completely con- quered that there is no more " flesh " to be crucified ; so non- attachment does not mean any strained desertion of family or friends or interests, but simply the power to Uve with them and love them without any thought of self, without any cUnging to the conception of them as " mine," without any fear lest "I" may lose them. The condition of one-pointedness wdll be more fully explained later ; it will be enough here to note that it is the paramount condition of the unity or singleness of heart and aim and purpose which is the final mark of the righteous soul. Now Plato has already provided for the first of these four by implication only : it is explicitly enjoined elsewhere. Here is the passage relerred to : " Humbleness, truthfulness, and harmlessness. Patience and honour, reverence for the wise. Purity, constancy, control of self, Contempt of sense-deUghts, self -sacrifice, . . . Detachment, lightly holding unto home. Children and wife, and all that bindeth men ; An ever-tranquil heart in fortunes good And fortunes evil, with a will set firm To worship Me — Me only ! ceasing not ; Loving all soUtudes, and shurming noise Of fooUsh crowds ; endeavours resolute To reach perception of the Utmost Soul, And grace to understand what gain it were So to attain — this is true Wisdom, Prince ! And what is otherwise is ignorance." SPIRITUAL REALISATION 89 conditions — poverty, and has presented it vvdthout any difficulty in a social form, as the ordinance that the Guardian class in the State must not only own and seek no wealth, but must be free from possessions of any kind, aloof from all wealth-making, and unpolluted by the touch of silver or gold. But the other three conditions are much harder to deal with. They are at once harder for Plato to present in a social form, and harder for us to accept as necessary conditions of the good Hfe in any form. Plato has sound reason for fearing that each one of the three will be opposed by " great waves " of vehement dissent ; our human nature and our worldly interests ahke drive us forward in waves of opposition against such incredibly austere conditions. Yet they are necessary, and the opposition must be faced. So Plato boldly puts them in, and " writes them large " in the social letters. The community of pursuits for women and men, and their essential equaUty,^ represent the true sexlessness of the soul in relation to its true Ufe, and the freedom from thought of sex which is the condition of entrance to the upper path. Plato wishes to make it clear that women as well as men can reach that excellence of character which the Guardians typify, and can therefore advance, just as men can, to that far higher state which the Philosopher represents. In a later passage he is very careful to correct Glaucon, when he admits that Socrates has " perfected the leading men in a style of faultless beauty," by the remark — " Yes, and the leading women too, Glaucon. For do not suppose that what I say is intended to apply at all more to men than to women, so long as we can find women whose talents are equal to the work." This, of course, is neces- sarily the case, since the soul itself is sexless, and, in each human life, sex is but an accident of its earthly nature. And, in the preparation for the higher path, men and women ahke must learn to free their minds utterly from the vast mass of prejudices and preoccupations which the thought of sex involves, and so become capable of regarding one another only as souls. And this is the root idea of chastity. * Let it not be imagined that Plato is an advocate for equality of the sexes in a political or social sense. He is thinking of nothing of the kind. He was no advocate of "women's rights" : his pohtical or social feeling in that matter comes out plainly in the eighth book, where he speaks of equality of women as one of the marks of a thoroughly evil and degenerate society. He was very conservative — in poUtics. 90 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Similarly, the community of wives and husbands and children — the cause of the second great wave of opposition — is the social expression of the condition of non-attachment which involves freedom from closely binding ties of personal feeling. This is made clear by his emphatic and repeated assertions that the real purpose of the family communism is to obhterate the strong sense of " mine " which the individuahst family generates in its members. Herein hes the core of the reUgious doctrine of non-attachment. The soul must learn to lay aside the personal interest, the se//-interest, in even the most exquisite ties of human devotion : that is the hardest condition of its freedom. To us in the West this is a peculiarly difficult doctrine, perhaps because our ordinary conception of religion has travelled such a Uttle way beyond that of " morahty touched with emotion " or earthly goodness glowing with human devotion. To most of us, heaven will not be heaven unless we have our loved ones with us — ours as on earth, and loved by us as on earth. It is a creditable but rather crude conception. For in heaven there is no husband or wife, son or daughter, brother or sister. In the form in which we know them, all these relationships disappear. Our " loved ones " must become holy, just as we must ; they must become divine, just as we must ; and in the oneness of divinity all ties are transcended, even as in the preparation for it they are transmuted. We shall not cease to love ; rather we must learn to love much more intensely. But there must be no more trace of self or of the separateness which belongs to our human affections. Our love must become universaUsed, given in equal measure to all. The fourth and last condition, of one-pointedness and all that this implies, is provided for by the final ordinance, that the whole social hfe must be under the rule of the philosopher. This, the greatest of all the " paradoxes," and the cause of the greatest wave of dissent, is the theme of the sixth and seventh books, and the discussion of it must be deferred. Now, if this interpretation is right, then our criticism of the various social ordinances is beside the point, and the only pertin- ent criticisms are those directed against the description of the good individual life which the social picture suggests. It is not necessary here to criticise the essential conditions themselves upon which Plato insists. Poverty, chastity, non-attachment — SPIRITUAL REALISATION 91 are not these the universal conditions which the highest religion everywhere demands ? We may disHke them very vehemently ; we may say — with most commentators, even the Christian commentators — that we would not Uke to live in Plato's ideal State : it is too cold and austere. But, in saying so, we are criticising, not Plato's ordinances, but the injunctions of all pure rehgion. Of this, more must be said later. The objection that we "do not like " to leave father and mother, husband or wife, in order to seek God, raises questions which need not be dis- cussed here. At this point my only concern is to show that we miss Plato's meaning very completely if we interpret and criticise the three so-called paradoxes of the fifth book as the fantastic ordinances of a social Utopia. A different criticism is, however, both legitimate and necessary. Plato is quite in line with the rehgious teaching of East and West in insisting that the purged soul must become free from the obsession of sex interest, and from the close personal ties of absorbing family affections. But the method which he advocates is certainly not in line with the Eastern teaching, whose main principles he adopts. There is (he says in effect) too much self- centred attachment, too much sense of personal possession, in married Ufe and the family : then let the righteous soul be kept away from both— have nothing to do with them, in fact. But is not this rather like cutting down a valuable tree for fear lest some of its fruit may become a danger if allowed to hang too long ? The old Indian teaching points to a far saner method : to let all the fruit grow and ripen and serve its purpose of enrich- ing our life and perfecting our experience before we pass on to a state in which tree and fruit ahke are left behind. Plato cuts at the root of the family affections, of close personal ties between husband and wife, parents and children, because these may stand in the way of the universal spiritual brotherhood which the rising soul must enter, in which there shall be no marrying nor giving in marriage. Far better, surely, to let all these best human affections and ties grow to their greatest strength, and then melt away in the transformation of that very love whose lower form they have helped to bring to perfection. Far better to let the natural discipline of social Hfe have its full effect, so that the final purging of the soul may come as a safe and gradual process, a veritable weaning away from the ties and absorptions 92 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO which are not bad but wholly good — in their place on the " lower path." Similarly, we have a right to say that Plato is wrong in trying to wipe out of our life the whole field of strong attachments. In the life of this world we cannot have too much attachment ; the great defect is having too little. I do not mean interests merely : they are the substitute offered by cold-blooded people. I mean real, intimate loves for people and things — the kind of attach- ment which a child has for the particular toy that it " loves to sleep," or the doll with whom it shares its secrets. That is the kind of feeling we ought to have for hosts of nature's creatures — flowers and trees and animals and comers in the rocks and sunsets, to say nothing of our human fellow-creatures. There is plenty of self in it, of course ; but it is self at its best, going out in a kind of happy fellowship with others. There is no surer preparation than this for the higher state of love in which the soul has no more need of a centre of self to which all feehng must return. But it must be regarded as a preparation. Our danger is to think that it is an end in itself, a condition which is good because the feeUng and appreciation involved in it are so intense. That is one of the pecuhar dangers which beset very artistic natures — as Plato realised. And this condition of attachment is only good in the transitory sense which may be applied to any part of our earthly life : it is not good in the sense in which the word must be used wdth reference to the path of reality. Would not Plato, lover, poet and artist as he was, have admitted the force of these criticisms ? Undoubtedly ; but his answer to them would have been very simple. " All that you say about the discipUne of human ties and the necessary experience of strong attachments is true — for all normal natures. But, as I tell you again and again, I am only concerned with those very rare char- acters who, from their youth up, show clearly that they are naturally fitted for the ' higher Ufe.' They mil not need the slow discipline and experience which are so necessary for us ; let them then follow the more direct road to the Good which I am describ- ing." We may still criticise the road described, and call it dangerous, if we Uke. But the only criticism left to us is one which applies with equal force to the practice of the Christian Church (in most countries and in most centuries), whereby those who are deemed fit for the religious life are, hke Plato's Uttle SPIRITUAL REALISATION 93 band of golden natures, kept away from the close ties of marriage and family life and worldly interests, bound, even in youth, to those ideals of poverty, chastity and non-attachment which Plato's ideal state embodies. We may pass on now to the last of the three strange ordinances, the one which will arouse the greatest wave of opposition, the one, nevertheless, upon which rests the very possibility of ever making real the ideal state. Socrates is asked by his hearers " to leave his loitering " over the details of his perfect community, and to answer the question. Is such a State possible ? And if so, how ? Let me remind you, Socrates repUes, that even if it is not a possi- bility, it will be none the worse as an ideal. But in fact there is one condition, and only one, by which its reaUsation may be secured. It is this : " Unless philosophers become kings, or the rulers of this world acquire the spirit and power of philosophy, there will be no deliverance for societies, no, nor for the human race, as I believe ; and only on this condition will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. ..." To the full explanation of this final condition the whole of the sixth and seventh books of the Republic are devoted. We may, however, gain a preliminary grasp of its meaning by putting together some of the various forms in which the proposal is expressed by Plato. In addition to the one just given, they are as follows : " No State or constitution or individual either can ever become perfect until the few existing philosophers are, by some accident, compelled to accept the charge of a State, which in turn finds itself compelled to be obedient to them." If any philosopher can be found, and then compelled to under- take the task of making a State perfect, " he will take for his canvas a State and the moral nature of mankind, and will begin by making a clean surface of it." This is further explained by saying that the first step will be " to despatch into the country all in the State who are above ten years of age ; and then to bring up the children away from the influence of that common character which their parents and others possess, in the manners and laws of the true philosopher." And by a philosopher is meant " a spirit full of lofty thoughts, and privileged to be a spectator of all time and all existence, who cannot possibly attach any importance to this Ufe." 94 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Moreover, " no existing State is a worthy sphere for a philo- sophic nature. The latter must find the most perfect constitution, answering to itself as the most perfect character ; and it will then give proof that it is the true divine type, whereas all other kinds of character and of vocation are merely human." " Such a perfect constitution is the one we have sketched, but with one addition : that there must be constantly present some authority that will view the constitution in the very Hght in which we, the legislators, viewed it when we framed the laws." I put these quotations together in order to support or give point to an assertion which, for the present, I must make dog- matically. It is thus : that the whole gist of the Republic lies in the statement that human society and the individual human soul can be delivered or saved on one condition only ; and the condition is that Philosophy must be made their absolute lord and master. This is put as the final condition of the real- isation of the ideal State whose outlines have been sketched. But it is not a question of reaUsing the social features of that or any other Utopia, though we may say, if we hke, that it has to do with the reaUsing and making perfect in any society those social virtues which the ideal State contains. But a deeper and vaster question than this is at stake. Plato is now trying to tell in what way the soul, or any society of souls, can be saved. And this is his answer : they must first prepare themselves for, and then accept utterly, the authority of the only true guide and king — the " philosopher." The picture of the ideal State is an explanation of the necessary mode of preparation, and of the condition which the individual or the society must first attain ; the central books give the explanation of the true guidance and kingship, the meaning of philosophy and the philosopher. Salva- tion is possible for all. But only one or two individuals here and there can attain to it ; and of societies, none, unless they can literally be bom again, " the canvas wiped clean " of all the marks of worldliness which make up the character of any existing society. And this magical philosophy, what is it ? The answer is given at length in the sixth and seventh books. We may summarise it here in a single word. The human soul and human society can find dehverance only under the kingship of Religion. CHAPTER VI AN EXPLANATORY CHAPTER CONCERNING THE CONCEPTION OF THE UPPER PATH OR PATH OF RELIGION. WE must now return to the Indian conception of the Ufe of the soul, in order to explain the central books of the Republic which form the real kernel of the whole work (Book V, p. 474 to the end of Book VII) . In Chapter II we saw that the Dharma or Righteousness of the Path of Pursuit might be regarded as the rehgion, as well as the perfection, of that path, for it signifies the attainment, in obedience to divine law, of the highest human excellence ; the performance, in a spirit of submission to a supreme authority, of the full duties of human life ; the develop- ment of all the best powers and attributes of the human person- ality ; and the reahsation, through humility and worship, of the most perfect condition of the soul of which the human being, as such, is capable. But, on this path, the soul is not free ; it is " under the law " ; it must accept and obey the guidance revealed to it. Its Ufe is conditioned also by the " qualities " which run through the whole of the material universe, the principles which appear as inertia, motion and equilibrium in that part of nature which we regard as unconscious, and as the attachment of desire, the restlessness of passion and emotion, and the steadfastness of well-balanced character, when we con- sider them in relation to human Hfe. This last quality, at its best, appears to us to be perfect. But it is not perfect. Its equiUbrium of moral steadfastness is not a stable equihbrium. It is still liable to be overthrown by gusts of passion or desire, and shaken by doubts. It represents the excellence of the man who is rehgious — in the ordinary sense : one who orders his conduct in accordance with the commandments which he beHeves to be from God ; who humbles himself in worship before the divinity which he cannot see but accepts in faith ; who sets his 95 96 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO face towards a horizon beyond which he beUeves there shines the eternal Sun of Righteousness, though the clouds of earth hide it from him ; who, learning the laws of nature, is wilHng to beheve that they are also the laws of God, though they are often difficult to reconcile with what his reason tells him ought to be the laws of love ; and who, finally, holds his soul in readiness for a fuller revelation and a final transformation to a higher state of being. Such a " religious " man is, as the Vedas say, very near to the knowledge of God. But the veil of ignorance is not yet drawn aside. He must still walk by the faculty of behef, not of full knowledge : the reahties among which he lives are not yet the true reahties. Moreover, in the case of most of us who are Uving on the Path of Pursuit, there is not much difficulty in admitting that, just as we fall very far short of the excellence of the good man, so we are very far removed indeed from the knowledge of God. We may be " rehgious," making honest if fitful attempts to worship the God revealed to us, and to order our doings in harmony with the given law. But the interests which we accept as real are quite frankly those of this changing world, just as the science which we accept as important is the knowledge of the phenomenal universe. Our rehgion is like a steadying strand which runs through some of our activities, giving them just enough connection with a possible reality to save them from utter meaninglessness. Now the Eastern conception of a higher arc of hfe, differing entirely from the Path of Pursuit, necessarily carries with it a conception of a higher form of Dharma or Righteousness, and a higher form of Religion. This may also be described as a form of attainment, performance, development and reahsation ; but the excellence to be attained, the functions to be performed, the powers to be developed, and the condition to be reahsed, far transcend those of the lower path. If we must use a single phrase to describe this Rehgion, we may call it the reahsation of the divine nature of the soul, but only on the understanding that this includes the recognition of its unity with the divine spirit of all the world. And with this recognition comes perfect free- dom ; the spirit that knows itself to be one with the universal spirit is no longer " under the law," for bondage and submission disappear in the consciousness of unity of wiU with the source of all law, and the full perception of the purpose behind the law. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 97 The conditions of this realisation of the divine within us and without are, first, the complete purification of the soul which alone makes Uberation possible ; and then the uprising of the true spiritual faculty within the soul into the world of spiritual reality which it alone can find. This passage of the spirit from darkness into light is most easily conceived as its entrance into the realm of true knowledge and true discernment. The spiritual faculty alone can make this entrance, and only when the soul which holds it has been refined into the most transparent purity, and educated up to the very threshold of spiritual knowledge. For the spiritual or real world can only be discerned by the faculty which is in its nature kin with it — a faculty which transcends those by which we learn and " know " and act in the phenomenal world. It now becomes clear why the Religion of the upper path is universally called " wisdom," or more fully, the knowledge of the spirit. Gnana and Adyatmavidya are the Sanskrit terms, the first denoting a wisdom totally different from the knowledge or science which the world calls wisdom, the latter denoting that wisdom applied to its true object — the Spirit. And this latter term — literally, knowledge of the Atman or Spirit within oneself ■ — points to exactly the same path of wisdom as that indicated by the Greek sage's famous command, " Gnothi Seauton," or " Know thyself," which we may expand into the form, " Discover thy real spirit, and so find the key to all reality." For the Atman is simply the spiritual kernel of the soul, the spark of divinity within us which is essentially one with the Sun of Good, and can " reveal all things to the man " if only he can set it free to function as the knower of all reaUty. It is as different from mind or reason (the Manas of the Sanskrit and the Logistikon of the Greek) as these are different from unconscious matter. It is the real or immortal principle within us — potentially omnis- cient, the veritable spectator of all time and all existence, the source of all true power, the one and final witness, for those who find it, of our kinship with God. " For those who find it " : since its existence and power alike are hidden from us so long as we are of the world, worldly : it can be known only to those who reach the high level of pure religion and undefiled. But, though we speak of it as a hidden power, we have no need to bring in any such misleading terms 7 98 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO as occult or mysterious. Occultism and mystery have no place on the path which leads to the great realisation ; but the road is hard and long, and the goal so far beyond our human vision that any description seems mystical and unreal. Now to this spiritual psychology there, of course, corresponds a spiritual ontology. That is to say, answering to the faculty of real knowledge or wisdom, there is a real world which it alone can know. And the nature of this reality, though never capable of description in terms which we can understand, is indicated in this way : The supreme Spirit, or Para-Brahm, is the one God, in whom is all consciousness, all existence, all will. Side by side with Him there is what may be called, according to our point of view, either Nothingness or Matter — that which is not any- thing by itself, but is the potential matter or staff of all mani- fested or created forms. It is called, in the Sanskrit, Prakriti. By the act of creation or self-manifestation, God breathes His spirit into this matter, and thus calls into existence the mani- fested universe, in which every imaginable form may appear. But the universe so created is not real as God is real : it is, as it were, a compound of reaUty and nothingness, of divine spirit and matter, subject always to the law of incessant change, of evolution and involution, of folding out and folding back again, of becoming and ceasing to be. It is the phenomenal universe — all that can be manifest to the faculties with which we or others, as part of it, can feel or see or know. And — again by comparison wth the true reahty — this whole universe of changing forms may be called illusion (Maya in the Sanskrit) , because it is mixed \vith the Nothingness which is the source of all illusion. But behind these changing, illusory forms, these shadows of reahty, there is present also the divine spirit — in every atom, in every lowUest creature, just as much as in man and the beings who are higher than man.i They are aU, therefore, parts of the one divinity, but all in greater or less degree immersed in matter, and, so far as this phenomenal existence goes, subject to the taint of change and decay which matter brings with it. Consequently, we must regard all created beings, from the stones up to the angels and * " God sleeps in the mineral world, dreams in the vegetable world, wakes in the animal world, wakes to self -consciousness in the human world, and wakes to divine consciousness in the spiritual world," is an Eastern (though not an Indian) mode of expressing this universality of the divine spirit. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 99 the great Gods, as belonging to the region in which, as Plato says, " everything roams about midway between Reality and Nothingness " ; for all are bound, by their fusion with matter and its illusion, to the Unreal, even though aU are bound, by the divinity which is in them, to the supreme ReaUty. And this " relativity " belongs, not merely to facts and our knowledge of facts, but to all our human faculties and their work, and even to our souls. For the soul is not itself pure spirit : it is the habita- tion in which the spirit dwells ; and though it is called immortal (in the sense of age-long, or deathless so long as the manifested universe endures), it is not eternal (in the sense of being beyond and above time and change). To the Atman or spirit within the soul alone belongs the eternity which is God's. The whole process of manifestation of created forms is con- ceived as a process of evolution and involution. Its duration is God's day. It begins with brightest sunUght, passes on to cloud and shadow, then to twilight and to deepest night, and then on again through dawn to brightest sunhght again. That is to say, in the process of evolution, every particle of the divine reaUty becomes clothed with more and more complex forms — is more and more deeply immersed in matter ; and in the process of involution, the forms are again httle by little thrown off, until the spirit returns to God who gave it. Moreover, this universal process of evolution and involution, of unfolding into manifold forms and again returning to a spiritual simpUcity, is reflected, as it were, in the normal Ufe of every soul. Throughout the chain of hves^ which it lives, there runs the same order— discernible also in the case of a single Ufe. First, the simple and undifferentiated ; then increasing complexity and differentiation, accompanied by increase of interests and ties, desires and tastes ; then again the return to the simple — but on a different level. For at the beginning the simphcity resembles the quiet of dreamless sleep ; at the close, the quiet of intent wakefulness. The manifold complexity which Ues between these two states appears to us at first as the means for the progressive 1 This chciin of lives is explained later, when the subject of Reincarnation is dealt with. It may be noted here that, in the present evolutionary process, our world has (according to Hindu doctrine) reached the twilight period of immersion in matter, but has a still darker period before it, in which our difficul- ties and complexities must increase. The close similarity of Plato's conception of the evolution of the universe is discussed in a later chapter. 100 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO development of our powers and the enriching of our experience : that i5 \vhy it is called the great illusion. The worldly soul calls this manifold good, and makes it more, and endlessly more, in the belief that it is carrj-ing him to some goal The religious soul sees that it is necessary, since experience and trial must come before awakening ; but good he knows it cannot be, except in the sense in which one mi^t call good the waves througji which he must pass to reach the land, or the stone which he must shape to build his house, or the darkness which makes brigjiter the succeeding dawn. And in the life of human society the same order holds : from simple to complex and then onward to simple again. But with this difference : society is not a being at all, but only a number of beings so arranged as to form a special environment for one another. And when we say that the law holds good for society, as for the individual, we mean merely that it holds good in a special way for individuals who are conditioned by the social environment. For while that environment obviotisly increases the complexity of our experience and our opportunities of learn- ing its lessons, it also intensifies each one's tendency to r^ard that complexity as valuable in itself. And so it comes about that society may become the greatest sorcerer and the nurse of our worst illusions. For to increase of complexity and of variety it gives the name of progress, and the name of well-being to multi- plicity of satisfactions ; thus reinforcing the natural illusion from which its individual members sufier — the illusion of imagin- ing that because they are getting more they are therefore getting on. This condition of idolised complexity is what the scriptures of the East refer to as " mixture of the qualities, and of the social functioning corresponding to them " — a condition always described as anarchy, from which neither society nor individuals can be saved until they find the religion which is also wisdom, or the true discernment which is also the knowledge of God. CHAPTER VII ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOK V (PART) AND BOOK VI (PART). THE MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY, OR WISDOM- RELIGION; AND THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHILOSOPHER OR SEER. WE may now return to Plato's dialogue, taking up the argument again at the point at which he makes his famous declaration, that there can be no salvation for human society or human souls until their activi- ties are ruled by Religion, or the knowledge of spiritual reaUty. These are not the terms which Plato uses. The Greeks had no word for ReUgion ; we have so many meanings for the word that it is hard to use it without almost certain misunderstanding. Plato uses the term " philosophy," which meant rather more to the Greeks than it does to us, inasmuch as its etymological meaning, " love of wisdom," was patent to them. But even to the Greeks, and far more to us, the word had gathered round it sundry associations which did anything but add to one's respect for it. To be called a " philosopher " was equivalent to being called a rather useless dreamer who entangled his mind in the webs of endless speculations about the unknown and the unknowable. Plato boldly adopted this term to describe the man who alone could guide his own soul or the souls of others into the haven of peace and certainty, of Righteousness and illumination. And, as his argument proceeds, it becomes clear that he needs a word which neither his language nor ours possesses — a word which shall connote at once the attributes of sage and saint and seer. In the Sanskrit these attributes are united in the word " Muni " ;^ and this would serve as a translation of Plato's word " philosopher," as the latter is made to appear when the description is complete. But, in the long exposition * Literally, " the silent one " ; because he can never express in words what he has seen. lOI 102 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO in which Plato strives to make clear what he intends the " philos- opher " to represent, many of the arguments hinge upon the double meaning of the word — its literal meaning of " a lover of wisdom," and its universally acquired meaning of " a useless speculator and dreamer." It is advisable, therefore, to keep to Plato's terms, only substituting the word " seer " for " philos- opher," and " true knowledge of reahty " for " philosophy," when these meanings are clearly required by the context. Plato's first step^ towards the justification of his daring assertion is to explain that the true philosopher is one who cares for absolute realities only, as distinguished from the counterfeit philosophers, who devote their attention to the quasi-realities belonging to the changing phenomenal world. A simple example is used to make this distinction plain. There are many people who devote themselves to the study of the beautiful in aU its forms, and imagine that they are dealing with the philosophy of beauty. But unless they have reached the absolute beauty which is the spirit of all beautiful things, they are not philosophers at all. They have not found true knowledge of reahty, but only opinion relating to reflections of reality. For in reference to " knowledge " and " knowing " there are three possible grades or conditions : total ignorance ; partial knowledge, with beUef in its adequacy ; and true or complete knowledge. Each of these has a totally distinct province. The province of ignorance is nothing, or the region of the non-existent ; for if a man can only say " I know not," he is so far in contact only with nothing- ness. The province of the second condition is the world of phenomena, of changing and impermanent copies of reahty ; for the man who says, " This seems to me to be the case ; I am convinced of this by observation of phenomena," has not yet touched reality, but is in contact only with a world which lies midway between the non-existent and the absolutely existent. But the province of the third and highest condition is the world of true reality ; for he who can say " I know," without any shadow of hypothesis or doubt, he alone is in contact with the absolutely real and the eternally existent. The very faculty used in this last condition is quite different from those used in the second. The man who knows does so by the use of a faculty which can only function in relation to abso- * The analysis which follows is from Book V. p. 474 to Book VI, p. 502. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 103 lute realities ; the man who thinks he knows uses faculties which can function in the phenomenal world, but in that only. These latter are the faculties to whose use alone the vast majority of men are awake ; and therefore the only world they touch is the one in which our conceptions about goodness or beauty or any thing else "roam about, as it were, in an uncertain region mid- way between the really existent and the really non-existent." However high their attainments, however deep their researches, we will not call them philosophical, but rather philodoxical, or lovers of what appears to be true. This then is the difference between those who are true philos- ophers and those who are not. Can there be much doubt which of the two ought to have the guidance of a State ? The former are able to apprehend the eternal and immutable ; the latter wander perpetually in the region of change and multiformity. The former have the hght of perfect truth in their souls, for an infalhble guide in all their deaHngs with earthly standards of beauty and goodness ; the latter walk in the darkness of error, blind of soul, with no ray of truth to lighten their path. You must remember, too, that the former have the qualifica- tion of a more easily discernible excellence. Their characters are marked by hatred of falsehood in any shape or form, by desires so strongly set in the direction of knowledge that they cannot wander in the direction of pleasure or profit ; free, there- fore, from all meanness and covetousness, from all anger and sloth, from all fear^ even of death itself, from all attachment to life and the interests of the world. Add to the philosopher this retinue of virtues, and then answer me again : Is he or is he not the man to whom the sole management of affairs should be entrusted ? At this point the argument is interrupted by Adeimantus. " This is all very well, Socrates. You have led us on, by insensible degrees, to a conclusion which seems inevitable, and its opposite palpably absurd. But when I turn away from your seductive words, and look at the world as I know it, I do not feel convinced at all. For the philosophers whom one sees are not in the least what you describe. Many of them are no better than they should be ; the few whose characters are quite respectable appear to be so damaged by their pursuit of philosophy that they have 104 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO become both eccentric and useless to their country. Am I not right ? " You are perfectly right, rephes Socrates, and the explana- tion of what you see is very simple. Imagine a ship whose cap- tain is a much better seaman than any of the crew, but who is, nevertheless, not very efficient — rather deaf, rather short- sighted, rather wanting in nautical skill. But the crew will not allow that he is in any way their superior ; so they put him in irons, and themselves, or some faction among them, take posses- sion of the vessel, letting it drift hither and thither while they eat and drink and make merry, and giving the title of pilot or skilled navigator to anyone who helps them to get what they want. On such a ship, with such a crew, will not the true captain or pilot be called a useless, star-gazing babbler ? And is not this a perfectly true picture of all existing States ? No wonder, then, that when a philosopher does appear, he is useless to the world. But this is not the fault of the philosopher, but the fault of the world, with which the noblest of all callings is not hkely to be in good repute when it is directly opposed to all its most cherished pursuits. Moreover, the quest of wisdom has a bad name for another reason. You just now mentioned that most of its votaries are not even respectable people, but quite the reverse ; and I did not contradict you. It is just this that is the tragedy of philosophy — and the tragedy of so many fine natures. For consider once again what the true philosopher is. He is one who is veritably in love with wisdom, and with the reaUty to which it relates ; and, like every genuine lover, he cannot rest until he has won the object of his love. His whole soul is filled with this ; all his desires are fused into one, and focussed upon this ; no other object can attract him save this. And so, unsatisfied with the multitudinous variety of the world we see, " he presses on until he has grasped the nature of each thing as it really is, with that part of his soul whose function it is to grasp reality, in virtue of its affinity to it. And then, having, indeed, by means of this reached and mingled with real existence, he brings wisdom and truth into being, so that then, and not till then, he is wise, he enjoys true hfe, he receives true nourishment, and he is at last released from his travail pangs." But remember what we have found to be the conditions of such a love as this. There must SPIRITUAL REALISATION 105 be absolute hatred of falsehood in all its forms ; and there must be an equipment of fine qualities besides, such as manliness, a lofty soul, a quick understanding and a good memory. And just here hes the danger. Natures so equipped are rare ; and, alas ! the few there are are exposed to peculiar perils ; and the worst peril of all springs from their very excellence. This may seem strange to you ; but it is not really strange. For just as the finest seeds suffer the most if planted in a bad soil, so these finest natures, because they are the best, suffer most from a bad environment, becoming distorted into much more evil forms than weaker natures can be. And is it not the case that they are exposed to a bad environment, and planted among bad influ- ences ? The world thinks they are corrupted by Sophists, or professional teachers whose doctrines are dangerous. But that is not the danger. It is the world itself which is the great corrup- tor ; it is the mass of people who are worldly who destroy these rare natures. For just think what are the standards of the world, and what its teaching is. By its rewards and penalties, by its praise or censure, it is incessantly crying out to us that our greatest virtue Hes in pleasing it, in thinking as it thinks, in doing as it does, in seeking the ends which it seeks. And it is a powerful j teacher, my friends ; for it can punish with death even as it can I reward with the highest honours. Why, the very Sophists whom \ the world blames are only feeble imitators of the world itself, who have learned the great beast's whims and fancies, and call this learning wisdom ! Wisdom, indeed ! — when neither they nor it ever reach anything higher than opinion, or changing notions about changing experiences. For the world cannot even tolerate the idea of reality as something absolutely opposed to the things it knows and enjoys ; and so the world cannot either care for or believe in wisdom ; but will go on condemning and punishing the real lover of wisdom to the end. Now do you understand the danger the world holds out for the natures fit for philosophy ? Will not these, from their child- hood up, be made the victims of their own fine quahties ? Will not the world try to mould them to its own uses, while their strong natures are still malleable — tempting them with flattery and praise and extravagant promises, in order to seduce them into harmony with its own aims ? So it comes to pass that most of them grow up, not lovers of wisdom at all, but lovers of world- 106 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO shams, and the very worst foes of philosophy. And this is what I meant by the tragedy of noble natures, by the ruin and corrup- tion of the rare characters fitted to be wisdom's mates, reUgion's devotees. And then what happens ? Why, when wisdom is thus left desolate and bereft of her proper followers, their place as suitors for her hand is usurped by a crowd of nobodies, besieging her like a mob of tinkers wooing a queen — base pretenders to a noble calhng, spurious worshippers at a shrine which draws them to it only because they think its lustre will conceal their httleness. And thus the highest of all quests is degraded, and the noblest of all professions is dragged down and brought into evil repute. But of those who are worthy to associate with philosophy just a very few escape the perils we have described, and remain faithful to her. These are they who, by some happy chance, avoid the glamour of a poHtical career, and so escape the greatest tempta- tion of a strong nature — the ambition to excel and win fame by pleasing the populace. Here is one who has had the good luck to be exiled from his country ; here another who is fortunate in having been bom a member of a very insignificant State ; here another who has been blessed with the gift of ill-health, which acts as a kindly curb on his ambitions, as in the case of our friend Theages ; while my own case affords an example, I think it must be a very rare one, of one who has been saved by the gift of an internal monitor, a divine restraining sign. Now when the members of this fortunate httle band have tasted how sweet and blessed their treasure of wisdom is, and have seen the madness of the many, the blind unwisdom of the world, will they not with- draw within the shelter of their own thoughts, hke lonely way- farers sheltering behind a wall from the fury of the hurricane, quite content if they can five their hfe in the world unsuUied by unrighteous deeds, until the time of their deUverance comes, and they can depart in serene hope and happiness ? If they can do this, they will do well, you say. Ah yes ; but not so well as if they had found a State whose constitution harmonised with their natures ; for in that case they might have saved both their country and themselves, and given clear proof to men that their vocation is of the true divine type, whereas all other kinds are merely human. Such a State with such a constitution they would have found in the one we have sketched. But even that needs to be safeguarded still further. It will not serve unless there is in SPIRITUAL REALISATION 107 it some authority to preserve inviolate the spirit and aim with which we designed it ; and, an even more vital matter, it must handle philosophy and educate the philosopher in a manner quite opposed to that now in vogue. For at present those who pursue philosophy are mere striplings who take it up in the intervals of other pursuits, dipping into the deepest part of it, dialectic, but gaining no sure insight into its depths, and losing, as their Ufe in the world goes on, even the little they have gained. But we shall insist that, though in their youth they shall be trained in exercises suited to their age, with special care of their physical faculties, they shall not begin the deeper exercises till their minds are matured ; and finally, only when their active citizen life is over, shall they dedicate themselves to the quest of wisdom, and live out their Uves consecrated to her service. Sophists and others may mock at us for insisting upon such an arrangement ; but that is because they have never yet had a chance of seeing the utterly good man reigning in the utterly righteous State. The world cannot agree with us until it has such a witness before its eyes : that is why I dared to say that no State or constitution or individual can ever become perfect until some- how or other, at some time or other, a true philosopher finds himself accidentally compelled to take charge of a State which in turn finds itself accidentally compelled to obey him ; or until some reigning king becomes divinely inspired with a genuine passion for genuine wisdom. This is not hkely to happen ; but who shall dare to say that it is impossible, at some far distant time or in some far off land ? And the world will agree with us then, when once it has got out of its mind the cause of its ill-will to philosophy — I mean, the examples of counterfeit philosophers who bring shame upon the love of wisdom. The world will agree with us then, when once it has reahsed how different are the true philosophers from those base copies : how impossible are dis- putes and bickerings about mundane matters to those whose thoughts are set upon the things that really exist ; and how their vision of the changeless God renders them unchanging and god- hke too, sole masters of the power to make good on earth the simihtudes of the heavenly goodness which they know ; when it sees all this, then surely the multitude will agree with us that deUverance is possible for all under the rule of such kings. But how, you ask, are they to set about their task ? Well, 108 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO they must first get a clean canvas to work upon, that is, human society and the moral nature of man in a simple and pure form, cleansed of its bad habits and preoccupations. They will have to make the canvas clean by their own exertions, if they cannot find one ready to hand ; and then they will sketch in outhne and fill up in detail as true a copy of the divine excellence as the con- ditions of human nature allow. And the picture produced will be good, for the archetype is perfect and the dehneators as nearly perfect as the philosopher can be. And the worldly enemies whom we feared will, when they look upon it, lose their anger and range themselves on the side of our sure conviction that the reahsation of such a picture in an earthly society is not impossible, though it may be very difficult, if only our great conditions are fulfilled — the appearance of a philosopher as a willing ruler over a society willing to submit to his rule. . . . The pages I have summarised above form the first part of the central theme of the Republic, the explanation of the wisdom- religion to which Plato gives the name philosophy. In it the argu- ment is concerned with four main points : first, the distinction between wisdom and all lower forms of knowing ; secondly, the distinction between real existence and all lower forms of being ; thirdly, the corresponding distinction between the philosopher or true finder of wisdom and all lower forms of human thinkers and knowers ; and fourthly, the opposition of the world and all that is worldly to the spirit and all that is spiritual. These four subjects, all forming part of the central theme, are dealt with not once but several times over, from different points of view. And it is to be noted that, with consummate art, all four subjects are presented as subordinate to what is paraded as the chief theme, namely, the attractive and interesting poHtical question concerning the possibiHty of reahsing a State made perfect by the rule of philos- ophy. I say that this is paraded as the chief theme : we will consider later how far it is to be regarded as raising one of the vital issues of the book. But first let us turn to the four main arguments, and examine them in order. The first and second must be taken together ; for it is clear that the consideration of the nature of wisdom and the consideration of the nature of real existence cannot properly be separated. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 109 The preliminary distinction between ignorance, ordinary knowledge and true wisdom, with their correlatives, nothingness, the phenomenal world, and the real world, is in very close agree- ment with the conception (not, of course, peculiar to Hinduism) of a manifested or phenomenal universe compounded of, and lying midway between, chaos or matter on the one hand and spiritual reality on the other. Each of these can be known or cognised only by the faculties corresponding to it — the phenomenal universe by the human faculties, the senses and the intellect ; the world of spiritual reality only by the spiritual faculty. It seems to us paradoxical to talk of knowing or cognising nothingness ; but Plato is at least logical in regarding ignorance as a faculty corre- sponding to nothingness. And it must be remembered that what I have called by this rather barbarous term is not at all what we mean by nothing. Plato calls it Me On. or that which does not really exist ; it is the Prakriti or matter or mere potential stuff of phenomena, of which, so long as it is untouched by spirit, nothing more can be said. It is also, in another aspect, illusion or Maya ; it is the veil which, in the manifested world, perman- ently hides the spirit or reality behind all phenomena, thus deluding our human faculties. But, for the spiritual faculty which sees only the reality, this veil is non-existent ; it is just pure illusion, Me On, or that which is not really anything.^ With regard to the faculty which cognises reahty and is capable of attaining true wisdom, we must note that Plato emphatically distinguishes it from the mental faculties which we call intellect and reason, just as the Hindu philosophers emphatically dis- tinguish the Atman from the human Manas or mind. In the wonderful passage on page 490 (see page 104 above), the philo- sopher or ardent lover, after struggling upwards till he has taken hold of and united with reality, is said then at last " to beget Nous and Truth," and so become really wise. It is only when reahty is reached that the faculty of true Nous^ comes into being, as it were, or begins to function as the Knower ; not before, during all the years of prehminary mental discipline and struggle with science and knowledge. This absolute distinction between the philosophic faculty and * See Chapter VIII for a fuller explanation of this. * I am compelled to use the Greek word "Nous" throughout. The only possible translation would be " the knowing faculty." To translate the word (as used by Plato) as " reason " is hopelessly misleading nowadays. 110 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO all our mental faculties gives the key to the rather difficult explanation of the nature of the true philosopher. Plato begins by contrasting him with the spurious philosophers who are merely philodoxical, or lovers of what seems to be true. This might imply nothing more than a difference of degree, or perhaps a difference of method. The philosopher might mean only the scientific thinker, as opposed to the unscientific but usually strongly opinionated guesser. Plato then goes on to liken the philosopher to the captain of a ship who knows some astronomy and navigation, while the crew know none at all. Here, too, we might perhaps legitimately conclude that he is merely distin- guishing the man of science from the mass of ignorant people, especially as there is admittedly an analogy between the mutinous crew and a democratic populace. But these commonplace interpretations of Plato's meaning are quite clearly put out of court by the third description of the philosopher, given in the remarkable passage to which I have just called special attention. He there appears as the passionate lover of genuine and absolute wisdom, which none may reach and win save those whose souls and minds have been prepared by an extraordinarily rigorous and almost unearthly disciphne, and who have reached the high point at which they are at last able to bring into being a faculty which can know reality in virtue of its kinship with it. This, at any rate, is pure mysticism, and carries us beyond the level upon which any comparison is possible between the philosopher and even the wisest of thinkers or men of science. For the philosopher appears at last as the saintly seer and devotee, who, rising above all earthly visions, is rewarded by the vision of the eternal and changeless God. That this is the true explanation of Plato's meaning is shown also by its harmony with all that follows. We shall find it fully confirmed in the arguments and allegories of the seventh book. But we can see that it has already been imphed in the distinction between the philodoxical man and the philosophical man, and in the allegory of the ship's captain and crew. For in the former, the sharp contrast between devotion to what seems to be true and devotion to what is true, is clearly meant to emphasise a differ- ence of kind, not of degree, in the truths known. The devotee of apparent reality is the man of science or the philosopher as we know him, who gets what truths he can by the use of his SPIRITUAL REALISATION 111 reason and observation ; but the devotee of true reality is the man of wdsdom, the philosopher as we do not know him, who reaches absolute truth by the use of a spiritual faculty very different from any faculty of mind. The ship's captain, again, differs in the same way from any of the crew who despise him ; for he does at least try to steer by the stars, while they, deriding such a source of knowledge, do not raise their thoughts higher than the ship's level. We may note, further, that the explanation given is also con- firmed by the account of the corruption of philosophic capacities, and of the antagonism between the hfe of the world and the life of the spirit. This, the fourth great theme of the sixth book, requires rather careful explanation. Readers who are famiUar with the text or with any accepted translation will probably have noticed that I have given a much wider significance to the passage describing the ruin of fine natures, by substituting the term " the world " in place of more exact translations of words denoting the populace or the mob or the multitude or the people meeting in the assembly. Now it is undeniable that Plato uses language which gives to the whole passage a kind of political appUcation, making it appear as a bitter condemnation of democracy and a lament over the corrup- tion, in a democratic city, of clever young men such as Alcibiades. Moreover, this application is quite consonant with Plato's own feelings. He really did hate the Athenian democracy, and had good reason to hate it, especially after the death of Socrates. And he meant what he said about the evil influence of democratic poUtics, just as he meant what he said about the possible salvation of States by " philosophic " guidance. But — if my interpretation of the whole of the rest of the book is at all near the truth — ^he meant much more besides. To anyone holding Plato's faith, it is not merely the voice of the passion-swayed assembly, but the voice of the world which is rightly to be described as " the roaring voice of the great illusion." It is not in poUtics only, but in the worldly Ufe all through, that the seductions of false aims and ambitions assault and hurt the soyil and turn it aside from the path of wisdom. The temptatior^ of a brilhant political career may be the most insidious snare for the youth of high talents and high aims ; but every worldly pursuit is equally a danger, and every worldly end is equally unreal. The great peril of the 112 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO soul is a too strong attachment to any of the approved " goods " of this Ufe, whether pohtical or social or personal, artistic or scientific, simple or refined. The pursuit of all ends from which the self may reap reward must be abandoned ; all desires for any kind of worldly achievement must be put away, if the soul is to be free to enter the strait and narrow path which leads to its salvation. This, the teaching of all true reUgion, is Plato's teaching too. And if his language is closely scrutinised, it will be found to point always to this. We must remember that he uses the pohtical analogy aU through the book as the medium by which to convey a far deeper meaning. We must remember too that many of the terms he uses are used perforce in default of the wider terms which we possess but which the Greeks did not. He speaks often of the Pohs or City State, where we now more naturally speak of human society, just as his " pohtical " is often our " social " ; and he speaks of " the multitude " where we more naturally say " the world." Moreover, when he is describing the freedom or aloofness of the true philosopher, it is clearly not an aloofness from political concerns only which is intended. The spectator of all time and all existence " cannot possibly attach any importance to the things of this hfe," not merely of pohtical hfe ; the true philosopher " cannot spare time to look down upon the occupations of men," not merely the occupations of pohticians. The narrow pohtical interpretation of the passage is, I think, due to the fundamental misunderstanding of Plato's real con- tention underlying the sharp distinction which he draws between doxa and sophia.^ We have, I admit, some justification for say- ing that a man's pohtical views, besides being the most " opinion- ated," are also the least reasonable of his convictions. They have very httle connection with any scientific basis, even of an empiri- cal sort ; they are very httle better than guesses supported by his practical and biassed view of self-interest and national interest. For this reason they may be sharply contrasted with the judgment of a scientific man concerning the pertinent objects of his science ; they may be called mere " opinions " by comparison with the latter's " knowledge." But this is not the contrast which Plato is drawing. He is distinguishing all our judgments based upon observation and experience of the phenomenal world with the * Opinion, or believing that we know ; and wisdom, or certainty. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 113 " inspired certainties " of the seer. And most of all is he con- cerned with our estimates of worth, our notions of " good " in relation to any of the activities of Ufe. So long as we walk, unenlightened, on the path of pursuit, all our estimates, all our judgments about " ends worth striving after," are untrustworthy. They are " doxai," not exactly what we mean by opinions, but rather judgments based upon what seems to us to he good. More than this ; they are nearly always wrong, because what seems to us to be good can seldom be really good, so long as the general end we are seeking is the end of self-satisfaction. But the philos- opher, who, by the preliminary annihilation of self, and the sub- sequent attainment of pure spiritual insight, has found the true end, the one supreme good, thereby becomes master of absolute certainty in regard to all " goods " ; and all his judgments are wise and sure, because they are all directly deduced from the supreme principle. We worldly people, therefore, not as politicians, but as all- round practical men and women, are dangerous teachers of the would-be philosopher, unconsciously corrupting him by insisting upon the pursuit of the ends which the world normally approves, when his first duty is to rise above the path of pursuit in the world altogether, to become unworldly in defiance of our common sense, and so to find the heavenly treasure which alone can " nourish his soul and give it hfe." There remains one other point to note. The detailed educa- tion of the philosopher is yet to be described ; but already Plato has made the startling assertion that the real study of philosophy is not for the young, nor even for the middle-aged, but only for those who are advanced in years and have finished their active citizen life. In the seventh book, it is true, he pretends to modify this astounding regulation ; but he does not really do so. He only allows the preparatory exercises to be undertaken at an earlier age than fifty ; the " coping-stone " of the whole educa- tion, philosophy itself, may not be reached till the middle of life has passed. It is clear that Plato wishes to emphasise the fact that by the pursuit of philosophy he means a very perilous and holy quest, so different from all ordinary pursuits and studies that none may undertake it save those who have put the world behind them, either because they have come to the end of their most active worldly duties, or because they have been specially 8 114 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO prepared, disciplined and dedicated to an unworldly calling. The world will deride his strange ordinance about the study of philosophy, only because it does not understand that philosophy is, for him, the vision of God beyond the scope of any except the pure in heart ; and therefore does not understand that all the education about which he cares is the religious education of slowly awakening spiritual faculties, which cannot normally function, cannot certainly function safely, in the worldly souls of those whose senses, hearts and minds are still " cheated by the magic veil of shows " which hides reality, but makes the stuff of our active life. But the regulation is entirely in keeping with the conception of the two arcs or paths of the soul's hfe, and the clear distinction between them which was described in an earUer chapter. It is also (as later chapters will show) exactly in agree- ment with the well-recognised Indian rule — for youth, education (in the simple sense) ; for adult hfe, the citizen duties ; for old age, retirement, meditation and the quest of spiritual realisation. How far it commits us to the view that there is one religion for youth and for active citizens of the world, and another religion for the old, or for those who, in aim and attitude, if not in activity, are no longer of the world, will be considered later. At this point I merely call attention to the additional evidence that the philosophy or religion which Plato is unfolding is something very far removed from the speculations which we dignify by the former term, and even from the beliefs and observances which sometimes exhaust the meaning we give to the latter. CHAPTER VIII ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOK VI (PART) AND BOOK VII. THE FULL MEANING OF SPIRITUAL REALISATION, AND THE FINAL EDUCATION OF THE PHILOSOPHER. WE now reach the really difficult part of the Republic ; and I must warn the reader that the analysis which follows, of the last few pages of the sixth book and the whole of the seventh, is very hard to understand. The difficulty is only partly indicated by saying that the subjects dealt with are of a very abstract kind. I would rather say that Plato is now undertaking an almost impossible task and one which differs very materially from those hitherto attempted. He has already shown us what true religion can do for the soul of man : how it can guide him in all his conduct of life, purifying his character into an almost unearthly beauty, bringing him peace and serenity in all the chances and changes of mortal existence, and endowing him with wisdom, and power to use his wisdom, not for himself alone but for the salvation of his fellow- men. In all the long account he has given of this — even in the rather difficult passages dealing with the nature of reaUty and of true wisdom — he has succeeded (and this is part of his astonish- ing skill) in keeping us close to the interests of our human hfe. The philosopher described may have been far above us, but never out of sight or out of touch. We have been led to feel that even in his highest flights he is always coming back to save his State — our State ; to show how hfe can be Uved perfectly — how our hfe can be hved perfectly here on earth ; to be an example of a righteousness which we can take as our pattern in all our human activities. Even the sharpest contrasts between his world and our world have not really removed him from us : indeed, the very contrast of his unworldhness with our worldliness has somehow kept him near to the world we know. And his righteousness, we feel, is after all our own fitful striving after good made perfect and made constant. His excellences may be superhuman, but "5 116 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO they are never non-human. They are our quaUties, infinitely refined. But now Plato is about to lead us along a path which winds, in a sort of cold lonehness, up above the clouds. Righteousness and conduct, individual and social life, as they interest us, are dropped out of sight. The talk is all about knowing ; and both the process and the result are of a kind quite unfamiliar to us, quite divorced from the science or thought we deal with, pur- posely separated from any sort of appUcation to the utilities which are the goal of all our learning and thinking. And our perplexity is increased by the fact that there are no words with which to express accurately the conceptions presented. Plato talks of science : but it is not our science that he means. " We want some other term," he says ; and we have not got one. We are driven to use the words appropriate to our intellectual processes ; and then we must needs quaUfy everything said in order to avoid the almost certain misunderstandings. This cannot be otherwise : no mystic has ever found a suitable vocabulary ; how, indeed, can he express in the terms of common sense the things that transcend common sense ? But we may at least avoid the crudest errors of interpretation if we bear in mind that Plato is now trying to reveal both the preparatory and the final processes by which the pure spiritual faculty is caused to function in that other world to which it belongs — to function as what we must needs call " the Knower " among objects which we must needs call " knowable " ; and in each case we must try to imagine a knowledge which bears very much the same relation to our knowledge as the hght of the sun bears to the flicker of a fire. Socrates continues the argument as follows : Let us now con- sider how we are to secure the right people to guard the spirit and aim of our State : in what studies we are to educate them ; and at what ages they are to pursue these studies. You remember that, in the earUer part of our discussion, we described the tests through which our Guardians would have to pass in order to determine who were the most perfect or true Guardians. Well, we must now go a step further, and assert boldly that these most perfect Guardians must be made true philosophers,^ such as * I accept the reading of the text here. Some translators and commenta- tors transpose the words " guardians " and " philosophers," an alteration which SPIRITUAL REALISATION 117 we have just described. But we shall find very few of them fit for this final attainment ; for, in addition to all the tests of character which we enumerated, we must now impose searching tests of their real aptitude for hard and prolonged study, in order that we may discover whether they are fit for the highest pursuit of all. For these chosen Guardians will have a long and difficult road before them. They may take none of the short cuts which we have allowed ourselves to take in order to reach the end of our argument, but must work right through all the preliminary stages of study until they reach the goal of the highest wisdom, the knowledge of the Real Good, which is the cause, creator and essence of all good things. For what will it profit them if they win everything else, but not this ? They would then be on the level of the rest of the world, which thinks that the good is pleasure, or, at best, prudence, but has no knowledge of what it really is. Can we allow our most perfect Guardians to walk in such darkness as this ? Can they be fit to guard the earthly forms of good, such as righteousness and beauty, if they do not know that which is the secret and cause of their goodness ? Conviction or belief will not be enough for them here : they must know, or else they will be Uke bhnd men who only keep on the straight path by a happy accident. Of course you ask me to tell you what is the Real Good. My friends, I wish I could tell you ; but I cannot. It is not some- thing which can be explained to you in the way in which I have explained its reflections, righteousness and temperance and the rest. The most I can do is to talk to you about what appears as an offshoot or scion of the Real Good, and very closely re- sembles it ; and this I will wilUngly do. You must remember that we have all along been drawing a clear distinction between the multipUcity of things which are good and beautiful and so on, and the one essential goodness or beauty. The many forms are seen by the eye ; the one essence is apprehended by Nous. Now with reference to the power of seeing, notice what a unique and wonderful faculty it is. Sight belongs to the eye, and the quahties it sees — colour, for instance — belong to the objects seen. Yet neither can the appears to destroy the meaning of the passage. Plato is about to make the final demonstration of the method by which the true philosopher can be made ; and he begins by asserting that the best Guardians must be made philosophers, and then proceeds to show how it can be done. 118 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO one see nor the other be seen without the agency of a third thing, light, which is indispensable to both. And this noble Knk which causes our eyes to see and visible objects to be seen, is derived from the sun, which is thus the cause of sight, and the dispenser of the faculty of seeing, as well as the cause of visible objects. Now you must consider the sun as the offspring and reflection of the Good, and the visible world as the reflection of the real and really knowable world, while the eye, which is the organ of sight, corresponds to the soul, which contains the organ of real knowledge. And just as the eye becomes dim and almost bhnd when the sunUght is withdrawn from the visible objects, so the soul's sight is dim and unsteady when the objects upon which it is fixed belong to this world of birth and decay, and are therefore blent with darkness. For then it rests in " opinion " only ; but when its faculty of Nous fastens upon objects over which truth and reahty are shining, then it knows, and is no longer in the twiUght of error or uncertainty. And this power which gives reaUty and truth to the objects of real knowledge and gives to the soul the faculty of knowing them, is the essential or real Good, the origin of true knowledge and of truth, though itself more beautiful than both, more real than the reaUty they possess. For just as the sun gives to visible things not only their power to be seen, but also their vitaUty and nutriment, although not itself equivalent to vitaUty, so the Good gives to the know- able things not only the gift of being known, but also their real and essential existence, although itself, far from being identical with real existence, actually transcends it in dignity and power. I see you are amused at the miraculous superiority I attribute to the Good. But, beUeve me, I am not saying nearly all that ought to be said about it. And now, following out this simile, let us assume the existence of two distinct worlds each presided over by its own reigning power ; and let us picture these two worlds as the two segments of a hne divided into two unequal parts, the one representing the world of visible objects, the other the world of knowable objects. Let us then divide each segment of the hne again into two unequal parts — the inequahty in each case denoting the degree of distinctness or indistinctness with which the objects are seen or known. You will then get a figure representing four regions or classes of objects : first, and lowest, visible images, such as shadows and reflections ; secondly, SPIRITUAL REALISATION 119 visible objects, or phenomena, by which I mean the whole world of nature and art ; thirdly, knowable but hypothetical outUnes of true reality, discerned by the mind with the help of the phenom- enal world which it uses merely as imagery ; and fourthly, true realities, which the soul reaches without reference to phenomena at all, but using only the outhnes of real things in the third segment in order to make its way unaided to the final goal of reahty, which is known without any kind of hypothesis whatever. This is a difficult conception ; let me explain it further. You know how geometers, for example, assume all the angles and figures with which they deal. They do not give any account of the how and why of a straight line or right angle or circle, but accept the existence of these hypothetically, and so argue from them to their conclusions — but always using visible angles and circles to help them, although it is not with the visible squares and diameters that they are concerned, but with the absolute square and diameter — the abstractions which can only be seen by the eye of thought. Well, this is an example of the process and the kind of objects belonging to the third segment of the line — or the first part of the knowable segment. And by the second part of the knowable segment (the fourth and last segment of the whole line) I denote the process and objects of pure Nous, working with the force of Dialectic, using the hypothetical abstractions of the third segment, not as first principles, but as genuine hypotheses, as stepping-stones to that which is not hypothetical at all, but the absolute first principle of everything ; and when that is done, it descends again to conclusions, now made certain and absolute, by the help of forms which are themselves certain and self-subsisting, and rest on no hypothesis whatever. You see now how our figure of the four segments represents gradations of uncertainty and certainty, from mere guessing in the lowest, to absolute certainty in the highest ; and the faculties or mental states which function in each segment respectively we may call conjecture, belief, understanding and, finally, pure Nous. And now I will show you the difference between the upper and the lower segments of the line in another way. Our natural condition in regard to education and ignorance may be pictured as follows : Imagine a number of people living in a great under- ground cavern, open on one side to the dayUght, in which they 120 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO have been confined from childhood, chained down and firmly bound in such a way as to force them to look always straight forward into the gloom, with no possibility of turning their heads round to the light. And imagine also a bright fire burning a little way off, above and behind them, and a raised roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners, with a low wall running along it, like the screen which conjurers put up between themselves and their audience, and over which they show their wonders. Also, figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall, carrying puppets, in the Hkeness of men and animals and all sorts of things, which overtop the wall ; and imagine some of these persons to be talking and others not. I am describing a weird scene, you say, and weird prisoners ? Yes ; but they resemble us. For let me ask you, first, whether people so confined could ever have seen anything of themselves or one another, or of the things carried past them, except the shadows thrown upon the surface of the cave facing them ? And all these shadows they would give names to, would they not ? And if the voices of those who moved the puppets were echoed from the cave wall in front of them, the prisoners would beheve the sounds came from the shadows ; and they would believe, too, that these shadows of manufactured puppets were real, and the only reahties. Now suppose that, in the course of nature, one of these prisoners has been released and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk with open eyes towards the fight. He would find this process of forcible conversion very painful ; and at first his eyes would be dazzled by the brightness ; and he would be unable to see the objects whose shadows he used to see quite clearly. And if anyone said to him that in those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is a httle nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real, and sees rather more correctly ; and if, further, he were told to look at the objects passing, and to say what they were ; do you not think that he would be puzzled, and would think that his former visions were truer than the objects now forced upon his notice ? And if he were next compelled to gaze at the Hght itself, would not his eyes be hurt, and would he not want to turn back to the shadows which he could see distinctly ? And finally, if someone were to drag him violently up the rough and steep ascent from SPIRITUAL REALISATION 121 the cavern, and refuse to let him go until he had drawn him out into the light of the sun, would he not be angry and indignant at such treatment, and also so completely dazzled by the glare as to be incapable of making out even one of the objects now called true ? He will need time to grow accustomed to the Ught in that upper world. And then he will begin by distinguishing shadows ; then reflections ; then real objects ; and then he will see the moon and the stars — for he will find it easier to look up in the night-time than in the day ; and last of all he will be able to contemplate the nature of the sun — not as it appears in water or on aUen ground, but as it is in itself and on its own territory. And he will conclude that the sun is the author of the seasons, and the guardian of all things in the visible world, and in a way the cause of all those things which he and his old companions used to see. And when he remembers his first habitation, and his old fellow-prisoners, and what passed for wisdom among them, he will congratulate himself on the change, and will feel pity for them. No longer will he covet the prizes which the dwellers in the cave bestow on those who have the keenest eye for a passing object, and who remember best what precedes and follows and accompanies it, and from these data divine what is going to come next. Rather will he be ready to go through anything than live that Ufe and think those thoughts again. But suppose he were to descend once more into the cave, what would happen ? His eyes would now be blinded by the gloom, would they not ? And his inability to recognise the old shadows would make him a general laughing-stock. " That is all the good that comes of making the wonderful ascent ! You go up with your eyes in perfect order, and you come back bUnd ! " That is what the people would say ; and if anyone attempted to set them free and carry them to the light, they would probably put him to death, if they possibly could. Now, my friends, you must apply this imaginary case in all its parts to my former statements. The prison-house is the visible world ; the hght of the fire is the sun ; the steep ascent and the subsequent contemplation of the upper world signify the mounting of the soul into the really knowable region. That, at least, is how I see it ; though God knows whether I am right. And further, in the upper world, or world of real knowledge, the 122 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Absolute Good is the limit of our enquiries, and can barely be perceived ; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful — giving birth to Ught and the sun in the visible world, and in the other world dispensing, directly and with full authority, truth and Nous ; and, also, that if anyone desires to act wisely, in private or in pubUc, he must set this Absolute Good before his eyes. And now tell me. Can you be surprised that those who have cHmbed so high are always unwilhng to return to the affairs of men ? And when they do return, can you be surprised that those who have just quitted the contemplation of divine objects should appear awkward and dazed and ridiculous when they begin again to study our human weaknesses ? Until they are accustomed to the darkness, they are no match, in the law courts or elsewhere, for those who have always hved in the dark, and have never yet had a ghmpse of the true features of justice. For you must remember that the sight is dazed not only by the change from darkness to Ught, but also by the change from light to darkness. If all this is true, we reach at once a right conception of educa- tion. It cannot mean, as many think, infusing into the mind a knowledge of which it was destitute, just as sight might be instilled into bhnded eyes. The faculty of knowledge, the instrument by which each may learn, is already within the soul of everyone ; and true education means wheeUng round this faculty or instrument, together with the whole soul which con- tains it, away from the perishing world, until it is able to endure the contemplation of the real world, and the brightest part of it — the Absolute Good. To this process of revolution of the soul there must belong some art, which teaches how the change can best be brought about. But its object will not be to generate in the person the power of seeing. That is there already, only turned in the wrong direction, and therefore unable to see ; and our educative art will aim at remedying this defect. Moreover, while, on the one hand, all other so-called virtues of the soul are formed in it slowly, by habit and exercise, but do not pre-exist in it ; the virtue of wisdom, on the other hand, really does belong to a more divine substance, which never loses its energy, but requires change of position to bring it into use, while without SPIRITUAL REALISATION 123 that it remains useless and injurious. For this eye of the soul which can guide us to the vision of Good if it is set in the right direction, is normally bound down by the soul's preoccupation with the things below ; and while that is so, it may make us very clever at seeing the things which are not true, and may help us to go far — in the wrong direction ; but it can never lead us to the Hght until our souls are converted. You see, then, why it is that we must use all our efforts as educators to cut away and strip off from the characters of our youths all those heavy earth-born weights which cUng round the pleasures of the senses, in order that they may be able to look upwards and see and love the things that we have called really good. And now note this. When we have started the noblest charac- ters of all upon the path which leads to wisdom, we shall constrain them to press onwards up the steep ascent until they reach the vision of the Most High, by the aid of the highest science. But we will not allow them to lose themselves in the vision, and remain- wrapt in contemplation like souls which have been translated to the islands of the blest. Oh no ! They shall, indeed, gaze their fill upon the Good ; hut, thereafter, they shall be forced to return to the cave, and take their share in the toils of all its prisoners. You say it is unfair to lay this compulsion upon them, and to force them thus to Hve a life which is worse than the one within their reach ? But have you forgotten that our aim is not to make any one class in our State extraordinarily happy, but simply to link all classes together into a perfect unity, each sharing with each whatever good he may find ? So we shall tell these fortunate ones that it is strict justice to compel them to return to the cave. It is not as if they were members of an ordinary State, in which case they might fairly claim that they had risen by their own unaided efforts, growing toward the Hght Hke self-sown plants which owe no debt to anyone. In our State it will be very different. They will owe all their growth and power of rising to the State which has nurtured them ; and therefore they must return to pay back the debt by bringing their wisdom down to earth and making all our human ordinances true copies of the divine originals which they alone have seen. Observe how different our government will then be from all others. In all existing States men actually compete for office. 124 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO and covet authority and the right to rule as though these were the highest prizes. But in ours, those who rule will be just those who are least eager to rule — the true condition of good govern- ment. For this, my friend, is really the truth : if you would have a well-governed State, you must find for your destined rulers an occupation better than ruling, a hfe finer than that of those who have authority ; for only in such a State will your rulers be above all covetousness, and really rich, not in gold, but in wisdom and virtue ; whereas if beggars and hungry seekers for gain or honour take the reins of a State, everything goes to ruin. But let us now consider in detail the preparation for the ascent of which I have been talking — the road which leads from the night-like day of ordinary life up to the true day of real existence, the road, in fact, which we declare to be the path of true philos- ophy. What we need for this preparation is a graduated series of sciences or studies, each of which is marked by its power to turn the soul from the fleeting to the real. Of course we shall be quite pleased if these studies can be shown to be useful for other purposes also, such as the arts of war, since our youths must be trained for fighting. But I am afraid we must rule out of court the studies we originally ordained for the education of the young — I mean gjminastic and the culture of the Muses. These will not meet our present requirements. Gymnastic is concerned with the growth and waste of the body, that is to say, with the changeable and perishing ; while the education of the soul presided over by the Muses is, after all, only a sort of training by the influence of habit imparting a kind of harmoniousness to the nature trained, but giving no science to the soul. But there is one study appropriate to youth which really does answer our purpose, if it is properly taught, and will serve well as the first of our graduated series of sciences — I mean the study of Number, or Calculation. This is not only necessary to every science, and therefore useful even in war ; but it also naturally leads to dis- crimination and reflection, which is exactly what we want. I know it is never properly used for this purpose ; but it can be so used, for it constantly deals with objects of perception which stimulate our reflective faculties into action. I mean that it is always dealing with relative amounts and relative sizes, so that every object it presents to our thought at once suggests other SPIRITUAL REALISATION 125 and different objects with which it has to be compared. You cannot think of any quantity as such without also thinking of more and less : you cannot think of 2 without thinking of i and 3. Nothing in Arithmetic is a single whole, apprehensible by itself : every number requires other numbers to be grasped and thought of, or else it is quite meaningless. And in this way the science of numbers, if rightly presented, positively forces the mind to compare, reflect, and discriminate, and so take the first steps on the road to truth. The next science in our series will be the science of dimensions in space — that is. Geometry. I see you are pleased that I add this study, because it too is useful in war. But I am really think- ing of its other use, I mean its effect as a stimulant to lead us upwards to the contemplation of the Good. Now Geometry, like Arithmetic, is usually treated as if its value lay in its applica- tion to practical ends ; but we will take an exactly opposite view, and will treat it entirely as a study pursued merely for the sake of knowledge, and for the sake of knowledge of what is real and eternal, not of what is transitory and perishable ; for just as we shall concern ourselves, in Arithmetic, only with the purely abstract side of numbers, so in Geometry we shall deal only with lines and figures as abstract and ideal, never confusing these with any hues or figures which our senses can perceive. What shall be our third science ? Astronomy ? That would please you, I see, because of its known utihty to generals in war as well as to farmers and sailors in time of peace ; and really it is as well to mention this, because most people will find it hard to beheve that the true value of these studies lies in their power to cause an organ of our souls to be purged of the bUndness and quickened from the deadness occasioned by other pursuits — an organ whose preservation is of more importance than a thousand eyes, since only by it can truth be seen. But you, my friend, should not need to be told that my allusions to utiUty in warfare or any other worldly utility whatsoever, were merely playful : what have we now to do with such mundane advantages as these ? However, I was wrong to suggest Astronomy as the third in our series of studies. Next in order to Geometry, which deals with concepts of plane surfaces, or space in two dimensions, must come a science which deals with spatial relations in three 126 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO dimensions, that is, with concepts of soUd bodies at rest ; and then we will assign the fourth place to Astronomy, which deals with sohd bodies in motion. Again you say you approve, and this time because Astronomy seems to you particularly suitable for compelling the soul to look upwards, since it is wholly concerned with the stars above our heads. You seem to think that you can make a short cut to heavenly \visdom by lying on your back and gazing at the sky ! O my friend, can you not understand what I am talking about ? And that, when I speak of forcing the soul to look up and not down, this has nothing at all to do with our earthly above and below ? WTiy, no science makes our souls look up- wards so long as it is concerned with any sensible or perceptible objects, but only when it has to do with the Real and the In- visible. " So long as a man is trying to study phenomena, I deny that he can really learn an5rthing, because no objects of sense admit of scientific treatment ; and his soul is pointed dowTiwards, not upwards." That is why I keep warning you that all these sciences must be studied in a manner very different from that now universally pursued. This is the case with Astronomy too. The stars in the fretted sky are doubtless the most beautiful and most perfect of visible things, but we wiU leave them to the ordinary astronomer. They will not be the objects of our science : our study of astronomy wiU be concerned with far more beautiful and perfect things — I mean " those true revolutions which real velocity and real slowTiess, existing in true number and in all true forms, accompUsh relatively to one another " ; and thought, not sight, is the instrument we shall use for our study. That fretted sky shall be but our pattern or figure to help us in our study — just as a diagram helps us in our Geometry. But we shall no more trouble about the actual movements of the visible stars than the Geometer troubles about the colour of the lines in his diagram ; indeed, our true Astrono- mer will hold it quite absurd to devote extraordinary pains to determine the actual movements of the heavenly bodies. Let us remember, then, that our fourth science is not the study of the motions of the stars, but Astronomy in a new sense — the study of pure motion among real sohds, visible only to the mind's eye ; and we shall let the heavenly bodies alone. It will be a far harder study than any known Astronomy, I grant you ; SPIRITUAL REALISATION 127 and the same is the case with all our other sciences. But that must be so, if our students are to reach their goal. There is one more preparatory science which should prove valuable. Just as Astronomy is the science of orderly move- ments among visible objects, so there must be a science of orderly movements among audible objects — a kind of pure Harmonics, in fact. But once again let me warn you that this study will not at all resemble the science of Harmonics as now understood. It will deal, not with audible concords, but with the pure forms of which the sounds we hear are only the reflection. We shall have to ask the followers of Pythagoras to explain its principles for us, for they alone will know what I am seeking. It would be useless to go to the ordinary professors of Harmonics : they would not understand what we mean when we talk about a science of pure Harmonics. And this science, like our pure Astronomy, will be a very difficult branch of study. You seem to think it will all be too difficult, and will require faculties more than human. My dear friend, you must reaUse that this is no ordinary course of scientific research which we are planning. Why, all the studies we have so far arranged are only the preparatory stage — the prelude, as it were, to the actual hymn. And by the actual hymn, or the final study, the coping- stone of our educational structure, I mean simply Dialectic, or the unflinching pursuit of every reahty by the pure exercise of Nous, independently of all sensuous information, until the real nature of the Good is grasped, and the soul arrives at the very end of the really knowable world. And now observe once more the meaning of my earUer account of the two worlds or planes of knowledge. Here on earth, with our human faculties, we begin with reflections and shadows, and go on to the careful study of phenomena, observing their sequences and coexistences and laws, and ending with the observed causes of these, thus rising from mere guesswork about the world we live in to a kind of relative certainty as to its structure and movement. Just so, in that other world I have been speaking of, in which phenomena are exchanged for realities, and our human faculties superseded by divine insight, we begin (as in the five sciences I have named) with the ideal reflections or shadows — pure concepts, as I called them — and then pass on to the realities themselves, learning their harmonies and laws ; 128 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO and we end with the supreme knowledge of the great cause of all things — the Good, thus rising from understanding to wisdom — both the understanding and the wisdom belonging to a plane unknown to human scientists. And the final process in the ascent is Dialectic. You ask me to tell you more about this Dialectic and its methods. My dear friend, you could not follow me farther, though I would gladly lead you to the goal. But I assert boldly that Dialectic, and that alone, can unveil truth, and only to the eyes of those who have mastered the sciences we have described : and that there is no other way. For Dialectic alone can raise us above all hypotheses and uncertainties by connecting all with the absolute first principle ; and then, finding the eye of the soul quite buried in a swamp of barbarous ignorance, it is able to draw it gently upwards using, as handmaids in the task, the studies mentioned. These latter we have hitherto called " sciences," because there is no other name. But they require another name — one which would show their superiority to our ordinary study of phenomena, and at the same time their in- feriority to the final goal of wisdom. And I assert too that all ordinary students of sciences as ordinarily understood are not within sight of reality at all, but only see the phantoms of it ; and unless they too find the road upwards to the other world, they do but dream and sleep away this present Ufe, and lose their chance of finding the life which is real and eternal. But now I must bring you back once more to consider the quahties needed in those who shall attempt this ascent, and the care which we must exercise in the choice of those who shall be apprenticed to Philosophy. We have agreed about the moral quaUties — austerity, fortitude, loftiness of mind, and the Uke. But we must emphasise the importance of one quahty, partly moral, partly intellectual : I mean, a genuine passion for truth, and hatred of any kind of falsehood. It is not enough merely that they should hate Ues and abhor them : many excellent people do that, and yet calmly harbour all kinds of false con- victions without the least distress. But our students must hate involuntary untruth as much as wilful lying, and must be quick to detect any trace of it in their own souls. Further, they must be free and glad learners : no tasks for them, even in their child- hood ; for those who do not love to learn knowledge will never SPIRITUAL REALISATION 129 leam to love wisdom. Moreover, we must not defer their special training till too late in life. I said some time ago that they should not begin the final ascent to wisdom till they reached the age of fifty or so. But that will be too late for the course of study we have now laid down. We must select wisdom's apprentices soon after the age of thirty, testing them to see whether they are really able to divest themselves of their eyes and other senses, and whether they are faithful enough in their love of truth to be able to stand the shock of discovering that all their previous knowledge has been but an illusion and a sham. For Dialectic is a terrible solvent of all accepted behefs and estimates : no youth must be allowed to meddle with it, nor anyone who is not firmly rooted in the love of truth, and able to stand fast by her whatever the cost may be. And when we have chosen them, these constant and incorruptible men and women of thirty or more, we will make them resign every other pursuit, and for five years devote themselves utterly to the studies we have ordained, including Dialectic. Then, for fifteen years more, we will plunge them again into the life of the cave, testing their steadfastness and accustoming them to the duties of administra- tion. And then, at the age of fifty, when all tests are passed and all temptations overcome, they shall undertake their final task, and Ufting up the eye of the soul, shall fix it upon that which gives Ught to all things ; and so, having surveyed the essence of Good, they shall take it as their pattern, to be copied in the work of regulating their country and their fellow-citizens and themselves, which is to occupy them for the rest of Ufe, each in turn leaving his philosophical pursuits for a while and taking his share in the difficult duties of pubhc hfe, holding office for his country's sake, not as a desirable but as a dutiful occupation. And thus, but not otherwise, shall the perfect State be reahsed, under the rule of veritable seers of reaUty, whose eyes have beheld the perfect vision, whose souls have been steeped in truth. And if even one such seer arises at any time, and is given full authority in a State and full power to reform it, the ideal may be made real. But he will, of course, first make a clean sweep of all existing and estabUshed customs and ordinances, in order to obtain a new canvas for his drawing. Indeed, his vision gives him so strange and new a pattern that he will first of all be obhged to isolate, far away from the influence of their parents and their 9 180 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO common character, all children under ten years old, and then wait till these in turn have grown up into a new and unsullied generation, before he can begin his work of fashioning the Ideal State. . . . The long passage which I have tried to summarise (it occupies some forty pages of the Greek text) is at once the hardest and the most important in the whole Republic. We may regard it as Plato's final attempt to explain what he means by the Real and the knowledge of the Real, and to show the process by which we can attain to it. And it is inevitable that the modem philos- opher, or the thinker who does his best, with the aid of the best results of scientific enquiry and logical method, to reach a com- prehensive view of hfe and the world as an inteUigible whole, should attribute the same aim to Plato, and should therefore interpret him in terms of the same philosophy. It follows that modern commentators have, with hardly an exception, assumed that Plato is simply attempting to outhne an epistemology or theory of knowledge, which, as our science and power of analysis increase, may guide us nearer to a theory of facts, comprehensive, logically co-ordinated and capable of focussing the scattered facets of hfe and purpose as harmonious parts of a single whole. They assume that his imagination was fired by the thought of a perfectly unified science or philosophy, reached by a perfected logical method ; and that the whole of these very wonderful books of the Republic must be regarded simply as a high-flown expression of this ideal of science and logic. They therefore assume further that the mental conditions which Plato distin- guishes so carefully denote merely different degrees of knowledge or understanding, ranging from the most superficial to the most exact and complete, and that the faculties which he distinguishes with equal care are nothing more than the faculties or mental states which we too designate by the terms used — opinion and knowledge, beUef, understanding and reason and the like. Such a conception of Plato's aim compels one to treat his exaggerated enthusiasm with a kind of patronising tolerance. He was so obviously at a disadvantage, in the matter of equip- ment for his task. Science was in its infancy in his day ; logical method was httle developed ; the metaphysical stage of thought had not yet given way to the positive. Consequently no theory of knowledge could be anything but fanciful and crude by SPIRITUAL REALISATION 131 comparison with later attempts. Plato's account of the lofty summit which the human intellect may one day reach for its synoptic vision of "all time and aU existence " is inspiring, doubtless, even if much too fantastic and grandiloquent to be useful ; but for soUd value it is not to be compared with, let us say, Bacon's outline of the goal of knowledge, any more than Plato's arrangement of the sciences in the order of their certainty, abstractness and generality, is to be compared with that of Auguste Comte. Now, as I venture to dissent altogether from this modem attitude to Plato's aim, and to believe that it entirely misses the point of his teaching, I must in fairness admit that the terms he uses, if taken in their usual sense, do support the Umited interpretation which commentators have adopted. That is to say, he is trying all through to explain what the knowable universe is, as superior to the visible ; and the Greek word " noetos " means what v/e mean by knowable or intelligible just as certainly as the Greek word " horatos " means what we mean by visible. But, quite apart from the fact that Plato's language is grotesquely extravagant and misleading if it is only meant to apply to a conception of an intelligible universe in the ordinary philosophical sense, I must remind the reader that Plato uses the word " Nous," or the faculty which knows, in a definitely hyper-philosophical sense, in order to designate a pecuHar faculty for apprehending truth, which, as he plainly tells us, is never called into use at all in our normal life and thought, but " lies buried deep within the soul" until conversion comes and a new sight is given to us.^ And in Uke manner he uses the term " noetos," in his most careful expositions (in the Timaeus, for instance, as well as here), to denote the eternal world of reahty knowable only to Nous, as distinguished from the changing world of Ufe and fact which we know. For the rest, readers may judge for themselves whether the ordinary interpretation is satisfactory, or whether a totally different reading must be given to the whole passage. And to help the reader to reach his conclusion, I would ask him to put to himself two questions. First, can he conceive that any sane writer, who is dealing with the problems of epistemology and logic, of realism and conceptuahsm, of the relation of univer- sals to particulars, of scientific method and its goal, of classifica- ' The peculiar meaning of other terms is discussed in a later chapter. 132 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO tion of the sciences, or any other of the much discussed ques- tions concerning the nature of ordinary knowledge, would or could, so long as he kept his sanity, clothe his exposition in such language as Plato adopts in the sixth and seventh books ? Secondly, the reader is perhaps famiUar with the works of the best-known epistemologists, logicians, analysers of scientific method and classifiers of the sciences, such as Aristotle and Bacon, Hume and Hamilton, Comte and Whewell and Mill and Spencer. Has he ever come across, in the writings of any of these, anything even remotely resembling the " extravagance " of style, simile, metaphor and assertion which marks these two books of Plato's ? If he can honestly say " yes " to this question I will not ask him to accompany me farther. But if his answer is " no," then I ask him boldly to try with me to find an explana- tion a little less improbable than that universally put forward by the intellectuaUst commentators. The interpretation I suggest — in harmony, I think, with the explanation of the moral universe which has occupied the pre- ceding books — is as follows : — Rehgion, for most of us, rests upon faith. We beheve in God, and in His goodness upon which our hfe rests ; and our beUef is the tie which binds us to Him, and keeps us in the path of His law. The moral significance of our faith is what matters most ; if this is sound, our conduct will hold true, our estimates of value will be right estimates, and the goal before us will be the goal of the Good. This is enough, indeed, for most of us. But is there not possible a deeper^certainty still, by which faith shall become unshakable, transmuted into the full illumination of perfect knowledge and understanding, binding us to God by even stronger ties than those of unquestioning belief ? There is such a foundation for our faith, though it is hard to reach, and only the few can find it. And this foundation of absolute certainty is the goal which must be set before the eyes of those who are to be the perfect rulers of themselves, and the perfect guardians of the good among men. We may call this certainty absolute knowledge or complete illumination or wisdom wedded to the objects of wisdom. It is as far removed from ordinary knowledge — even scientific knowledge based upon the most accurate observation and reasoning — as the vision of things in the full sunshine is removed from the sight of shadows in the SPIRITUAL REALISATION 183 firelight. And the objects of such knowledge are as superior to the objects grasped by our ordinary perception or understanding as the sun itself is superior to a fire made by hands. Well may we call it a miraculous superiority, inconceivable to ordinary thinkers ! Yet this is what we must try to accept as the differ- ence between the really knowable world and the world we live in and study and analyse. The faculties by which we can know it are equally superior to our ordinary human faculties. This phenomenal world is perceived by the senses — sight and touch and the rest — and is cognised by the intellect or reason, which, working upon the data of sense-perception, arrives at general principles and laws of the phenomena — causal explanations, we may fairly call them, provided we remember that they are all really hypothetical, and assume all through a uniformity of nature and conserva- tion of energy as well as an underlying cause or plan or purpose which our science never pretends to know. In this way, in all our understanding of the world we see, we begin by guesswork and go on to a kind of knowledge — though we had better give this an inferior name, to mark the fact that it is all relative and hypothetical. So we will call it dogmatic conviction that the results of our observation and reasoning are really valid. But the other world, of real and really knowable things, can neither be perceived by the senses nor cognised by the inteUectual faculties. There is, however, buried deep within the soul, a special faculty which lies fast asleep during our normal activities, has nothing to do with our sense-perceptions or reasoning about them, and cannot be awakened by any ordinary scientific study or philosophic thought. But it can be roused by the exercise, first, of a rare devotion to the highest good in all forms of the conduct of hfe, and then by an even rarer devotion to austere practices of meditation. And this faculty we will call Nous, or the Knower — the same word which others use for reason or intelhgence, but which we will use in a special sense. The world and its wise men will call all this mere fooUshness. It belittles their powers ; it impugns the results of their science. And the worst of it is that we cannot prove to anyone that there exists such a super-world of being or such a super-faculty of knowing. These can only be revealed with certainty to those who themselves have trodden the long path which leads beyond 1S4 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO this world, and have had the eye of the soul opened and turned upwards to the Ught. This is clearly the gist of what Plato is trying to explain. His language is all in harmony with this conception. He cannot tell us often enough that he is proclaiming a strange doctrine, and one at which the world will laugh. He insists that the task of explana- tion is really beyond him — or, at any rate, that it is beyond his hearers to understand him fully. " We should have to take a longer road," he tells them. Further, his similes and metaphors confirm this interpretation. The segments of the divided line are the provinces of different faculties, and of these faculties the names, it is true, are those which are famiUar to us as denoting our normal faculties or mental states : conjecture, belief, under- standing and reason are the usual and fair translations of them. But Plato posits a very deep distinction between the two lower and the two upper sections of the line. The upper half plainly refers to existence and knowledge which are not normal or ordinary. The " sciences," beginning with Arithmetic and ending with Dialectic, are the most extraordinary exercises imaginable — purposely and expressly distinguished from what we mean by science. Plato connects them with the teaching of Pythagoras — a most significant reference to a strangely mystical teacher whom he only twice mentions, but each time with evident respect. And these " Pythagorean sciences " are certainly not the sciences we know. The latter belong to and deal only with the phenomenal ; but even the preparatory stage of " true knowledge " belongs to something far more real — though shadowy still by comparison with wisdom itself, even as its objects are shadowy by comparison with real objects ; yet real enough when compared with the wholly illusory " world of change and decay " and its " doctrines " of scientific explanation. And the final segment of the line belongs entirely to Nous, that faculty " of divine substance " which, whatever else it is, is not reason nor intelligence nor any other mental faculty. The allegory of the Cave confirms this sharp distinction between the two chief segments of the divided hue, and proves, as it is expressly intended to prove, that they are separated by an immeasurable distance. All our normal human thoughts and actions belong to the cave in which we are prisoners ; even the scientific enquiries and philosophical explanations achieved by SPIRITUAL REALISATION 185 our wisest men do not reach beyond the puppets and the fire- light which casts their shadows. These are the " causes " we reach : their uncertain movements are the basis of our " laws." But above and beyond, " up a steep pathway " hard to find and harder still to cUmb, Hes another world. In it, too, there are shadows, and the causes of the shadows — the same two grades of being and of knowing which were found in the cave. But the shadows now are shadows of reaHties, not of puppets, cast by the sun, not by a flickering fire ; and the realities are vitahsed and made real by the sun of good itself — " the very goal of this really knowable world, hardly to be looked upon even by the eye of the spirit." So far I am relying entirely upon obvious arguments drawn from the internal evidence of the text itself. This evidence is strong enough, in all conscience ; yet I doubt whether it will carry much weight with the majority of thinkers and commentators who may be called rationahst or intellectualist or any similar name which marks them as reputable, sane and orthodox. For it seems to have become a fixed fashion to interpret the sixth and seventh books of the Republic in accordance with the doctrines of nineteenth-century Positivism, and therefore to compare Plato's scheme of educative sciences with our arrangements of positive sciences in the order of their exactness. Thus one finds even so sympathetic a commentator as the late D. G. Ritchie gravely asserting that, if chemistry or physiology had been dis- covered in his day, Plato would doubtless have inserted them in his scheme after Astronomy ! — a suggestion, one ventures to say, worthy only of Glaucon at his very worst. For is it not abun- dantly clear that Plato is occupied with a wholly different pur- pose ? " Our science of harmony shall have nothing to do with audible sounds : our science of Astronomy shall leave the visible stars alone. We want only those studies which shall tear the soul away from all phenomena, and force it to dwell upon what all the scientific world calls phantasies, but we call the beginnings of reality. Chemistry ? Physiology ? Doubtless excellent ex- amples of the sciences of the lower line. Let the world pursue them, and find out all it can about its bodies and their environ- ment. We are on a different quest, Glaucon. We are out to find the Absolute, not the laws of the relative and phenomenal ; 136 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO to learn all we can about spirit, not to gain useful information about matter." But I must leave the intellectualist to make what he can of Plato's obscurities, and pass on to defend in a different way the interpretation I have assumed to be the true one. And the arguments now to be used are put forward only for the benefit of the few who are willing to admit the existence of faculties far superior to reason, and of knowledge far more certain than any conclusions reached by intellectual processes. They are, in fact, the arguments which follow from the assumption thac Plato had modelled his doctrines upon the ancient Wisdom- rehgion of the Vedas — that frankly transcendental philosophy which, in aim and result, if not in method, is the very antithesis of most of our speculations. These arguments, I think, not only confirm the interpretation I have adopted : they will also be found to explain, as nothing else can, the pecuHar account Plato has given of those " Pythagorean sciences " which educate the soul for " Philosophy," and of the Dialectic which is the coping- stone of the whole educational edifice. In Chapter VI I have already given a very short account of the Vedantist conception of reaUty. Reference to this account will show how closely the Hindu ontology corresponds with Plato's. There is the same conception of this phenomenal world and all our knowledge of it as illusory and unreal ; the same assumption of a far higher world of reaUty and a possible wisdom or real knowledge of it ; the same insistence upon the necessity of a process of conversion, or turning round of the soul, and of its escape from the confining cave of ordinary human Ufe. Usually, it is true, this latter is presented, not as the cave of social Ufe, but as the dungeon of physical existence. The " pohtical analogy," which appealed so strongly to the Greek mind, was much less interesting to the Hindus ; they spoke, it is true, of the necessity of the free soul making its escape " from the city of the nine gates," but they meant by this merely the hmitations of our earthly senses and faculties. Yet they did not fail to insist upon the necessity of shaking off social cares and interests : indeed, this is one of the fixed conditions of hberation. He who would find wisdom must, in some way or other, for a shorter or longer period, withdraw from the world and all its pursuits ; for only I I SPIRITUAL REALISATION 187 when the worldly faculties have sunk to rest can the spiritual faculties be awakened. In another way, also, it may be noted that the conception of the bound prisoners in the cave is one of the essential conceptions of the Vedic philosophy. Everything which we normally perceive, whether in the outer world or in our own thoughts, is either a projection or a reflection of " ideas " which are only real in another sphere.^ We are therefore said, both in our perceptions and in our thoughts, to " have our backs to the Ught " ; the Indian imagery is here identical with Plato's. Very significant, also, is the similarity between the Indian and the Platonic conceptions of the ultimate divine ReaUty. In other dialogues Plato speaks of the Creator or Architect of the Universe ; in the " popular " books of the Republic, as in the chapters on reUgion in the Laws, he speaks of God just as we do — a personal God ; but in the deepest expressions of his faith he uses only the impersonal terms " the Good " or " the Idea of the Good " to express " that which is the source of all hfe and being," that which possesses " the miraculous superiority of actually transcending real existence." In our reUgion, as in most, it is almost blasphemous to assert that the Divine Being is not a personal God, and that the God we worship is only a mode of the Godhead presented in order to come within our comprehension. But in the rehgion of Vedanta any other conception would be impossible, and itself irreverent. Personahty is part of " the lower nature " of the very God of very God. In this " lower nature " the Divine has a thousand forms and a thousand names, expressing all the perfect attributes of Father- hood and Motherhood, of Creator and Protector, Lover and Friend. But the Supreme Being, the source of all life and reahty, transcends personality. The name for It is Brahm ; its essence cannot be described or conceived by human intellect ; no Seer of Reahty can tell us more than that It is absolute existence, absolute consciousness, absolute harmony — the only Real, the only True, the only Good. And this is Plato's conception too. Like the Vedantins, he rises above theology when he draws near • To explain fully this Indian doctrine of projection and reflection is outside my scope. Students of Vedanta are probably familiar with the cardinal doctrine that Ideas which are real in Akriti (or in Gnana) are reflected in the Chitta-akasa, and projected in t'le Buddhi-akasa, both of which belong, so far, to Prakriti and Avidya. 138 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO to " the very goal of the really knowable universe," to " that which actually transcends real existence," to that which neither he can describe nor we understand. His Ultimate is the Ulti- mate of the Vedas : the Unmanifest, the Unqualified, beyond Being and beyond Not-being, " not form, nor the unformed — yet both and more," " ineffable, invisible, by word and thought uncompassed." The similarity, however, is most marked in relation to the pecuUar faculty by which alone knowledge of reaUty can be attained. I do not think there is a single phrase or conception in Plato's account of Nous which does not find its exact parallel in the Vedic teaching concerning " the spirit which Ues hid within the soul of man." This faculty " of divine substance " is said to be buried or covered over by our preoccupations and interests. It must break through a veil of darkness : it hes " coiled up " within the soul, and must be aroused from its long sleep ; the soul that contains it must be turned round in order that it may take up its own appropriate task of gazing upon reahty. For its nature is to know : its name is the Knower : it is, in fact, not only potentially but actually all-knowing, so that its " learning " is but a process of remembering — a kind of " anamnesis," as Plato also calls it. " Then there must be some art by which it can be educated, that is, awakened." So Plato asserts ; and then procesds to define the method of this art. And it is here that the analogy of the Hindu doctrine becomes most interesting and most illumin- ating. For it is just this "art of awakening" which the Hindu sages have for centuries elaborated and proclaimed, and it is in this elaboration that we find the clue to Plato's " higher education " of the soul, and his extraordinary Dialectic. I will describe the Hindu art as shortly as I can, and then show its connection with Plato's system. As true rehgion is the Dharma of the soul — ^that which binds it to God — so it may also be called Yoga — literally, yoking, or uniting. But the latter is generally used to express, not the con- dition of union (that is called hberation or reahsation or bhss), but the process by which the soul unites itself with God — or, as we may paraphrase it, the path of rehgion. It must not be thought, however, that there is only one process or path : there are several, differing in detail, but all ahke leading to the goal SPIRITUAL REALISATION 139 of realisation. And of these paths three stand out, distinct, clearly defined, and fully elaborated : they are — Karma Yoga, or the way to union by right action and dispassionate perfor- mance of all duty ; Bhakti Yoga, or the way of devotion to a personal God ; and Gnana Yoga, or the way of full discernment and wisdom. Of these, none can be called higher or more sure than the rest. But the last-named is perhaps, in our view at any rate, the hardest ;^ and it is this one which, in the main, Plato is expounding. We must, therefore, examine this path more closely. Let us suppose a man or woman to be already prepared, by right conduct and right desire and a fixed determination to find the Good, for entrance upon one of the paths of union. That is to say, let us suppose that he feels that he has reached the point at which he can, and, indeed, must, turn his back upon the world and the flesh, and, becoming a true Sannyasin, ^ or appren- tice to reUgion, devote himself utterly to the quest of spiritual reaUsation. He will then be led, by his whole character and the general set of his mind, to choose one or other of the paths, and to seek a teacher on the path chosen. If his interests and mental qualities fit him for " Philosophy," or the path of wisdom, he will attach himself to an enlightened Guru^ or teacher, who has trodden this path, and he will give up his hfe to learning the lessons taught. The first step will be to learn submission and acquire Shraddha, or unswerving faith — submission to his teacher, and faith in him, as weU as faith in the goal. And, as it is not the teacher who can drag the pupil up the steep ascent, but the pupil's own will and effort which must raise him, so he must become filled with an intense and overmastering determination to win his way — a desire for God " as strong as a drowning man's desire for air to breathe." * The hardest, for us ; for in the Christian reUgion Bhakti Yoga and Karma Yoga are, of course, the paths proclaimed and made familiar. The Gnana Yoga is neither taught nor known to most Christians. Perhaps, too, we instinctively disUke it ; for it appears, superficially, to be the path of self-help, and dependence upon oneself and one's own efiorts only, whereas Bhakti Yoga is more obviously the way of God's help, or dependence upon His mercy and love. Of this more in a later chapter. ' " Sannyasin," literally " the renouncer " ; the disciple who has turned his back upon the world in order to seek God. • "Guru," literally "the dispeller of darkness," or one who removes the veil of ignorance from the spiritual eyes of the pupil. 140 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO He will then begin a series of mental exercises — extraordinarily difficult, but necessary if his thoughts are to be detached from all their usual preoccupations, and fixed habitually upon some few permanent and abiding conceptions. This training of the intellect or reason is a most important preparation ; for, as a modem Hindu teacher^ has said, " the Vedanta recognises the full value of the reasoning power of man, although it says that there is something higher than intellect ; but the road lies through intellect." Moreover, by this process only can steady concentration be learned, to the exclusion of all distracting ideas ; a habit of concentration which enables the mind to focus its attention for long periods upon what we may call the essential qualities of anything, without dissipating its thought upon the numerous accidental quaUties. In this practice of mental concentration all kinds of objects are given for the mind to dwell upon, beginning with concrete things, and leading on to very abstract conceptions belonging to the most abstract sciences. But the practice has no " scientific aim " before it : it is not part of the teacher's intention that the pupil should think out further solutions of scientific or philosophical problems, or make additions to valuable scientific knowledge : what has he now to do with " achievements or results " ? Apart from the creation of a certain mental habit and mental strength, the sole aim of the practice is to bring the mind nearer to the power of dweUing upon unity, that is, upon the one among the many, or oneness behind all differences. This habit of concentration leads on to more and more pro- longed meditation, upon deeper and deeper abstractions ; "for the mind meditating is the nearest thing to spiritual life — the one moment in which we cease to be material." The subjects given for meditation range from words and their meaning to the most universal qualities of nature and their relations, and also the most fundamental attributes of human or divine excellence and their effects ; and these are given to the pupil in a definite order. And the difference between the practice of concentration and that of meditation may be indicated thus : concentration is holding the mind firmly upon some object of thought, and allowing only the strictly appropriate percepts and concepts to enter within the range of attention ; while meditation implies * The late Swami Vivekananda. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 141 an unbroken flow of knowledge concerning a particular object of thought. But let it be noted that throughout this educational process it is the mind alone — the human faculty of intellect — which is being trained : the faculty for which the general term in Sanskrit is Manas, and the special term, expressing the highest combina- tion of thought and will, is Buddhi. And the whole purpose of the education is to harmonise the mind-stuff, Chitta, as it is called, into a condition of stillness, steadiness and freedom from bewildering cross-currents which distract attention, so that all its particles, as it were, may be arranged in the most orderly and uniform way, and are thus Ukely to offer the least possible resistance to the outflow of the deeper power which is yet to be awakened. This condition of polarisation of the mind-stuff by concentration and meditation is called in the Sanskrit " one- pointedness." But the educational process is not yet fully described. Besides concentration and meditation, there is another process which sometimes appears as a final exercise, sometimes as a necessary concomitant or characteristic of the mental training from be- ginning to end. It is called discrimination, and means specifically the practice and power of distinguishing between what is acci- dental and what is essential, what is transitory and what is permanent, what is unreal and what is real. It resembles a logical process, but it is a moral as well as an intellectual practice, just as the highest form of mind, Buddhi, is moral as well as intel- lectual. And — a point to be emphasised specially — it is always a negative process, a method of arriving at truth by constant criticism and rejection ; for this reason it is almost always con- nected with the simple phrase (into which so much of the Hindu philosophy is compressed) — " Neti, Neti," " Not this, Not this," or more fully, " This and that and the other must be discarded as unreal." Now when the pupil's mind is at last prepared by this educa- tion in concentration and meditation, with its coping-stone of discrimination, the awakening of a super-conscious and super- mental faculty takes place, and a condition is reached to which the name " Samadhi " is appUed in the Sanskrit — a condition of trance-Hke vision, or super-conscious intuition — in which truth and reality are at last seen by the eye of the spirit — the Atman, 142 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO which is one in substance with the source of all that is true and good. Then the pupil has reached the goal, and knows and is wise. ^ Let the reader compare this brief account of the Gnana Yoga, or Way of Wisdom of the Vedas, with the education of the Philosopher as described by Plato, and judge for himself how far the two are analogous. The analogy is not perfect. Plato has worked out a form of Yoga along Hues which are character- istic of Greek thought and of his own philosophical attitude. His ladder of Pythagorean sciences is not, as far as I know, described in the writings of the Vedic commentators ; and many other details are probably the product of his own thought. But it is difficult to read any account of the Hindu Yoga without realising how close it is to the Platonic scheme, and how clearly it illumines the Platonic conceptions. It seems to settle quite definitely the teaching which Plato is trying to make plain by his analogy of the ascent from the cave to the upper world, and by his figure of the divided Une. The Gnana Yoga explains, as nothing else does, the provinces and powers belonging to the two segments of the upper half of the Une, to which Plato assigns the names " understanding " and " Nous." Of these, the lower segment belongs to some human mental faculty, refined into a condition very different from ordinary thought or inteUigence. It is the Buddhi made one-pointed — withdrawn by meditation to the study of the most refined abstractions. WTiile the highest segment is plainly the province of the super-mental or spiritual faculty of direct intuition — or, as the Hindu philosophers would say, direct recognition of the reaUty which by right belongs to it ; the province, in fine, of the Atman which is one with God, of the Nous which is one with the Knower of aU reahty. But most of all, I think, does the Gnana Yoga help us to understand that most puzzhng thing, the Platonic Dialectic. ' The Sanskrit terms for these three processes, Concentration, Meditation, and Direct Vision, are — Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi ; and the three together are called Samyama, and are a preparation for the final Samadhi (Xirbija), which is also called Moksha, or the bhss of perfect freedom and supreme wisdom. The process of discrimination is called Viveka. It is to be noted that there are two forms of Samadhi, a higher and a lower. The lower is transitory, and gives flashes of intuition only ; the higher is, or can at will be made, permanent. The condition of trance-like absorption, into which Socrates is said to have passed at will, seems to have had a very close resemblcince to Samadhi. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 143 This, like Philosophy itself, seems to have a double meaning. At one time it appears to be a mere logical process, always critical and destructive, and therefore very dangerous in the hands of boys and young people, because it can so easily be perverted to the negation of anything, whether good or bad — " a puppy-hke tearing to pieces of everything," as Plato says. At another time it appears to be a pecuUarly exalted process of arriving at the threshold of the highest wisdom — an almost sacred method of reaching the door of reaUty. But the " dis- crimination " of the Vedic Yoga has exactly these characteristics : any fool can play with it, and make himself an atheist by its misuse ; for it is so easy to be critical and negative, and to say " Neti, Neti," in reference to all orthodox convictions or accepted estimates. But in the hands of the man prepared by long dis- cipUne, true in his purpose and steadfast in his aim, it is the one safe and necessary instrument by which the covering of the soul's eye can be torn away, and its path of vision cleared of all the falsities and errors which becloud it. Is not this the exact prototype of that " Midwife's Art to which Socrates laid claim, and which, exposing error by the process of question and cross-question, at last opened the way for truth to emerge ? And yet, it is not the final process, but only the highest of the preparatory processes. The final one is sight itself, the instan- taneous passage of Nous or Atman — the Knower — into its own kingdom of wisdom : the union of the spirit with the Sun of Righteousness of which it is itself a spark. Plato has no special name for this highest state. He calls it philosophy or wisdom, and he calls it true happiness or bliss. But I do not think he has any term equivalent to the word Samadhi in its highest sense of permanent union with God. Some of his Neo-Platonic followers used the term " ecstasy " as an equivalent for the lower form 1 of Samadhi. But this does not express the full meaning. For the final Samadhi (technically called the seedless Samadhi, or the condition in which all the seeds of Karma are burnt away), * Socrates called his dialectic a " Techne Maieutike," literally, the art of a midwife ; or, as we may paraphrase it, the art of bringing the faculty of discern- ment to the birth. This, in his hands, was a practical application to the minds of others of the negative process of discrimination, very appropriate to a " Guru " or spiritual teacher, that is, " one who removes the veil of darkness from the spiritual eyes of the pupil." 144 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO is something permanent and abiding : a fixed condition of eternal certainty, unaltered by any return of the soul to the ordinary affairs of Ufe. And this, at any rate, agrees with the condition finally realised by Plato's Philosopher King. CHAPTER IX THE END OF BOOK VII OF THE REPUBLIC. THE DISCIPLE'S RETURN TO ACTIVE LIFE. THE PHILOSOPHER'S RETURN TO THE WORLD. THE POSSIBLE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. THREE points remain for discussion in connection with Plato's ordering of the perfect Ufe. There is first the ordinance by which the disciple is compelled to break off his meditative studies after five years, and return to active life for fifteen years — from the age of thirty-five to the age of fifty. There is, secondly, the ordinance by which the fully enlightened philosopher is compelled to return to the cave of worldly Ufe for a shorter period, after he has attained God- knowledge. And there is, thirdly, the question of the social purpose involved in this second return. I have already explained that the Indian system of spiritual development distinguishes three chief ways to salvation : the way of devotion, the way of service or work, and the way of wisdom. These three represent different pathways to union with the divine ; but the way of wisdom is not and never can be independent of the way of work, since doing or service must form a part of every good Hfe, as well as learning and knowing. In fact, the Bhagavad Gita expHcitly identifies the two paths : they are different aspects of a single path. The apparently sharp antagonism between the hfe of unselfish service and the hfe of self-centred contemplation had led to exactly the same con- troversies among the ancient Indians as have been familiar to Christians since apostolic times — the controversies regarding the relative merits of faith and works, or wisdom and works. The solution of the antagonism is given very fully in the Gita, Books III to VI ; it may be summarised in the following quotations : — " Even as the unknowing toil, wedded to sense, So let the enlightened toil, sense-freed, but set To bring the worid deliverance and its bliss. . . . There is a task of holiness to do, 10 145 146 . THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Unlike world-binding toil, which bindeth not The faithful soul ; such earthly duty do, And thou shalt well perform thy heavenly duty. . . . Regard as true Renouncer him that makes Worship by work, for who renounceth not Works not as Yogin. So is that well said ' By works the votary doth rise to faith, And saintship is the ceasing from all works.' Because the perfect Yogin acts — but acts Unmoved by passions and unbound by deeds. Setting result aside." It will thus be seen that, even on the path of wisdom, the way of " worship by work " has its place, and that a double place : first as a preparation for the saintship of the seer ; secondly, as a never-ending function of the fully enUghtened soul. In the language of Vedanta, " no one can be a good Gnani (devotee of wisdom) unless he is also a good Karmi (devotee of work) " ; and the essence of Karma Yoga is that the soul thus learns to serve the world in obedience to one motive only — the love of God or of Good — and to perform all duty for the sake of God's other children, never for his own sake. In this way he becomes " free from fruit of works," free from the endless Karma of self-interest, from the waves of reaction which, through the long chain of our mortal hves, beat back upon the self as the con- sequence of its persistent self-seeking. On the other hand, the wisdom-devotee is sometimes said, it is true, to " cease from all works," or to be " quit of work " ; but this means only that his actions no longer bind him by producing results in which his self- interest is entangled, nor by sowing seeds of desire which will some day be the inexorable causes of further action. UnUke our actions, his acts are all pure — the pure half of activity, the act without reaction, the doing, without desire for any result of the deed for himself. " What work he does is work of sacrifice Which passeth purely into smoke and ash Consumed upon the altar. All's then God." The " bondage of deeds " and the " taint of deeds " have dis- appeared for one who does all for the glory of God. But his work, his " task of hoUness," remains to the end — ^his never- finished task of " bringing the world deUverance and its bliss." No pohtical motive appears here : there is no question of his SPIRITUAL REALISATION 147 coming back to the world to direct, administer, or rule. The enlightened soul comes back to save his world ; he does so because this is his nature's law, because only so can he fulfil his heavenly purpose — and God's purpose — of dehvering the humanity of which he is a part, of saving his fellow-men who are literally one with him. Now the old Indian method of spiritual training combined the lessons of Karma Yoga with those of Gnana Yoga in a natural sequence. Every good normal life was to be divided into four periods (known as the four Ashramas). The first twenty-five years were the student days, or the years of education of the soul by unconscious habituation to good. The second twenty-five years were the period of active life as householder, citizen, ad- ministrator. Then, at the age of fifty, began the search for knowledge of reahty ; and finally, for the few souls which found the goal, there followed the last stage, " of those who see the truth and teach it," of those whose knowledge has made them free, and whose freedom consists in doing God's work for the world. Now in the second of these periods of life, the good soul learned at least part of the lesson of Karma Yoga — to work, but forget self in the work ; and it learned the lesson naturally and gradually, helped at every step by the changes of normal hfe. The good householder did not violently " renounce " his care for his children : the children grew beyond need of his care. The good business man did not forcibly tear himself away from his business interests, the good administrator did not relentlessly turn his back upon his duties : but both the interests and the duties passed naturally into the hands of the younger generation, leaving him free. His care for results of work came naturally to an end as the significance of all results changed ; the " world " began to leave him, not he the world. And so, at the age of fifty or perhaps later, he was free in fact as well as in feehng, ready to turn to the one task which has no worldly results at all. Only one serious tie might perhaps remain — ^his wife : he was not allowed to leave her, even to seek God, without her consent. But (once more, if the hfe had been well lived, but not otherwise) she would be with him in his quest, at one with him in aim, and at one with him in freedom from the ties of earher days. Now Plato, the disciple of Socrates, was occupied always with the path of wisdom. In accepting his master's cardinal doctrine 148 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO — Virtue is Knowledge — he had accepted also the Gnana Yoga or Wisdom Rehgion which is implicit in that doctrine ; and the Republic shows how he worked it out in detail. But, hke the Vedantins, he knew that the Karma Yoga or ReUgion of Work was also imphcit in the doctrine — as inseparable from it as the virtue which is knowledge is inseparable from the activity which is conduct. And so, hke the Vedantins again, he com- bined the two paths. If the key to the gateway of knowledge is the dialectic of the mind, then the key to the gateway of pure activity or selfless service is the dialectic of the heart ; the one is perfect discrimination between the true and the untrue learned by thought and meditation, the other is perfect discrimination between the worthy and the worthless learned by action and disciphne. Inevitably, therefore, Plato must make room, in the hfe of his apprentice to philosophy, for this training in the path of activity. He does not follow the old Indian rule for normal lives : very hkely he did not know it ; certainly it did not quite fit in with his purpose. For he is concerned with the training, not of a normal soul, but of a " rare and picked nature which shows itself from the very first to be fit for philosophy." From its hfe, as from the hfe of every rehgious devotee, the ordinary ties and interests of family, household and business have been removed ; all the hfe is dedicated to the single quest. Yet, even for such a soul, his first intention was to adopt an order of education almost exactly corresponding to the Indian order. In the sixth book we were given to understand that, after the education by habit of the student days, all the years up to the age of fifty would be given to practical work in the world ; in the seventh book, however, it is decided " on second thoughts " that the disciple will be too old at fifty to undertake the " dianoetic " exercises preparatory to the wisdom-dialectic. Therefore it is ordained that five years (from thirty to thirty-five) shall be devoted to these exercises, the learner then returning to active hfe till the age of fifty. In this way the necessary dis- ciphne of Karma Yoga is combined with the Gnana Yoga : the moral dialectic is learned, the necessary accompaniment of the dialectic of the mind. The disciple learns to " work unfettered by results of work " : he proves himself able to meet the tests of the attraction of desire and the call of ambition. So much for the first ordinance, by which the Philosopher- SPIRITUAL REALISATION 149 apprentice is compelled to break off his studies and devote fifteen of his most vigorous years to active administrative hfe. But the second ordinance raises far graver difficulties. Plato is quite emphatic in declaring that the Master-Philosopher, after his enlightenment is complete, must also return to " the under- ground den " of our citizen hfe, there to work among the prisoners he had left. There is no question here of test or training : his education is finished ; he has run his race and reached the goal. And the goal is everything : it is the consummation of good, the haven of perfect peace and happiness — oneness with the very source of all good. Why then must he, even for a few years, leave this perfect hfe, and " come back to a life which is less good " — even to the shadows and illusions of the prison-house of mortality ? The obvious answer — if my interpretation of Plato's philosophy is correct — is that he can only return to be a spiritual teacher and guide, " to bring the world deliverance and its bhss " by leading others to the hght. For that is the sole work of every Yogi, of every seer of truth everywhere and at all times. That is the whole of their " task of hohness." There is no question of political authority : no question of ruhng or directing a State. No true seer is a poUtician ; that is almost as ahen to his high calhng as money-making. But unfortunately this is just what Plato does not say. On the contrary, he explicitly tells us that the perfect Philosopher must return to the cave to rule. Plato leaves us in no doubt about this. The philosopher's final function on earth is definitely a political function : his kingship is the fact which is emphasised. His function as a teacher is quite secondary : we are told that he will " train up others to be hke himself," but this is merely a part of his work as a ruler. Moreover, the whole argument of the Republic has led up to this conclusion. Side by side the State and the individual soul have been " worked up in a style of faultless beauty " ; the secret of their perfection is the same for both : it is the unquestioned rule of wisdom. The righteous- ness of the soul is found and is secured for all time under the government of true knowledge of the good ; the righteousness of the State is found and is secured only under the government of the possessor of this knowledge. That is the first and last condition of " making the ideal State a waking reahty and not a dream." 150 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Before passing on to the explanation of this, I would draw attention to two points. The one is that the finished philosopher is compelled to return as a ruler, not because he wishes to do so, but because he must. The other is that he only returns to rule in the State which has given him his training, and is hke him in simplicity of aim and of life. He does not return to rule in any State or society now existing. The first point I have dealt with in a note at the end of this chapter ; the second I will deal with fully, after I have first made clear the intention of the ordinance itself and its pohtical purpose. We may admit, at the outset, that the ordinance is quite in keeping with Plato's invariable conception of the Good. He can- not think of either Nous or the Good except as an ever-active, energising cause of good. Goodness for him is righteousness : it is perfect moraUty or virtue : it is excellence in action, not excellence in abstraction. And so, just as later we are told that the utterly unrighteous soul, possessed and debased by the tyranny of evil, does not reach the lowest level of unrighteous- ness until he is forced to function actively as a veritable Tyrant among men ; so here we are told that the utterly righteous soul, possessed and ennobled by the royalty of good, does not fulfil his righteousness unless he, too, is forced to function as a veritable King among men. But further, although so opposed to the present conception of a Yogi's function, Plato's ordinance is, in the form in which he gives it, exactly consonant with the original purpose of the old Indian rule of life. In very early days, the whole scheme of spiritual training through the four Ashramas or periods of Hfe was designed to produce the Rajarshi or Rishi Rajah or Sage Ruler, who should be the all-knowing king of his people, guiding them after the pattern of the divine wisdom which he had found. That was the full ideal — the perfect individual ruUng in the good State. But in later days, this ideal became unattainable. The evolution of the world, involving, as it does, the ever-deeper descent of the spirit into matter, involves also the passing away of the spiritual simpUcity which made possible the Rishi's rule. We are now moving through a darker age, the Pralaya or twihght of evolution, the age of deep immersion in the manifold, of wor- ship of complexity, of ever-growing self-will, of more and more complete aUenation from spiritual rule, of fast-increasing diffi- SPIRITUAL REALISATION 151 culties, therefore, which we must meet by our own efforts even as we make them by our own desires. In this age, the full spiritual education must continue — where it can ; but its goal is no longer the Rishi Rajah but the Yogi, the enlightened individual — spiritual guide still for all who will, but political ruler of none. The perfect State, in which the individual ideal and the social ideal were fused into one, has disappeared : there remains only the goal of spiritual royalty for the individual soul, in its own realm of the spirit, its true supremacy unrecognised by the world, its possessor neither desiring nor expecting such recognition. Now Plato's conception, in general and in detail, is exactly identical vdth this old Indian doctrine. In the Politicus he defines the perfect king or ruler ; and there he tells us that his mark is the possession of real knowledge or wisdom, and by the light of this wisdom he guides the human flock under his care. He is not an active ruler as we think of a ruler : he knows and directs, but does not actively administer. He makes no laws : there are no laws in his State. There is only the single principle of guidance — his own sure knowledge of what is good. All the citizens are the agents or instruments of his rule. And his " kingly art " is the art of weaving the characters of all after the pattern of the good. But this perfect Monarchy of wisdom is no longer possible on earth. Once, in the age of Saturn, it was reahsed, and then humanity was guided by divine rulers, even as the universe was guided by the divine Steersman. Now all is changed ; the evolution of the world is in its own hands, and is all imperfect and irregular. Humanity must manage itself as best it can. And, while the dark age lasts, only inferior forms of government are possible, good in so far as they resemble the perfect form, bad in proportion as they depart from it. But even the best now need to be hedged about and safeguarded by fixed Laws : only the divine form of government — the rule of pure wisdom — may be a real autocracy, free from laws and dependent upon its own will alone. In this account, given in the Politicus, we have the exact Indian picture of the Rajarshi, and the Indian account also of the reason of his disappearance. The " self-willed movement of the universe " is the Indian Pralaya or dark twilight of evolu- tion, through which the world is now passing. In the Republic, the same conception runs through the whole 152 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO account. But the centre of interest is not now the Rishi Rajah or Philosopher- King or Sage Ruler of a State/ but the Kingly Philosopher, the Yogi, who has become the perfect ruler of his own soul. They are one and the same, of course ; but the emphasis in the Republic is on the Philosopher, not on the King. It is his training as an individual, his righteousness as a perfect soul, which forms the central theme : his realisation of Nous and truth as the secret of self-rule, the source of the soul's harmony, the guide to its eternal life. But his possible political function is not forgotten, since every Yogi is a Rishi Rajah unrecognised ; his place as the ruler of mankind, Rajah as well as Rishi, is left open for him still, " at some far-off time, in some distant place." When human society has once more become like him, in simpUcity of soul and singleness of purpose, then he will be its king once more. When " the canvas has been wiped clean " of all existing worldly habits and character, and society has literally been born again, then he will leave his own world of reality and light and will come back to the cave as " political " guide and ruler — not because he desires to rule, but because that is the law of his being and the law of the being of the society which is at one with him. The two vexed questions are answered now : the possibility of reaUsing the Ideal State, and the nature of Plato's " political interest " in the Republic. And the answers may be put in this way : — There is only one constitution of soul belonging to all human existing things — to every society of men as well as to every individual man. This is the constitution of the three Qualities. There is only one good condition for any soul so constituted. This is the Dikaiosune which consists in the right ordering of the work and functions of the Quahties. There is only one power which can make this good condition not only good but perfect and unchangeable and eternal ; which can, in fact, make the ideal real : this is the power of wisdom. There is only one kind of wisdom : it is the knowledge of reality attained by Nous. ^ The term " philosopher-king " is an almost exact translation of the term Rishi Rajah ; but, although it is in the Republic that Plato links together the double conception, it is in the Politicus that we get the definition of his function. The Politicus was the second of a series of three works promised by Plato, on the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher respectively. The last was never written-under that title. But the Republic might very well serve as the work needed to complete the triad. SPIRITUAL REALISATION 158 All true science depends from this ; all true art of action or of conduct. All other forms of science or of art (the forms the world knows) are fallible, relative, blent with falsehood and subject to unending change. There is, therefore, only one true source of guidance for human life : it is Nous, the knower of reality. This holds good for the life of the individual soul and the life of the social soul aUke. But there is this difference. Every human soul possesses Nous — hidden and unknown, but ever-present. But in the social soul Nous is not immanent, except as a possession of the individual souls who form society. For every individual soul the awakening of Nous, and there- fore the attainment of wisdom, and therefore the reaUsation of Dikaiosune, as a permanent and unshakable condition, are all possible in this or any Ufe. For every individual soul, therefore, the Ideal Condition is an ever-present possibility. But for Society no such awakening of Nous is possible ; but fully en- lightened individual souls, one or more, may appear in any society ; and if any one such should appear, then, indeed. Nous would be present, wisdom would be present, the key to Righteous- ness would be present, and there would be at least the possi- bility of making the Ideal State real, as an actual Polity. But this last step could not be taken in the world as it is. The en- lightened one could only function as King in a society fit for his rule ; that is, in a Society so fully at one with his spiritual pur- pose as to be willing to submit everything to him, to lay aside all other aims, to be to him as a group of little children taking guidance from an all-trusted father. Human society may have been like this once : it may some day be like this again. Once, before the fall, the human family was ruled in this way : its kings were also philosophers, Rajarshis, sage and saint and king combined. But since then, the world has eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and has taken its life into its own hands — for good and for evil. The age of the Rishi Rajah has gone : the age of the world's conscious descent into the manifold has come. We are all intertwined in the Qualities : their myriad tentacles hold us back from the simplicity which is the mark of the only perfect State. We must work our way upwards with the help of " second best constitutions," hemmed in with many laws ; the perfect State, with its single rule of the 154 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO Good, waits for us, a " pattern laid up in heaven," to be reached when we have made our own way through the twilight of illu- sions. It, and its Wisdom-King, are not for the world — yet. " Nous is the possession of the gods, and perhaps a very few men." But it, and its King, remain the eternal ideal, the one perfect State : — " There shall no end be hindered, no hope marred, No loss be feared. . . . There shines one rule. One steadfast rule. But shifting souls have laws Many and hard." And must have them : laws which wisdom would never need, but which must be imposed upon us "by some power within the State," and accepted by us in faith, if our State is to be good in any sense at all. Someday, " in some far-off place and age," the Ideal Kingdom may again be made real. But that will only be when the world has become capable of recognising the true Ruler and his divine wisdom ; and then, laying aside its self-will, it will once more submit itself gladly to his rule. And he will be any one among its citizens who has seen the light ; but he will need much per- suasion before he will consent to rule, and his rule wiU only be possible because aU his fellow-citizens are so hke him, so entirely at one with his spiritual purpose, that they will wilhngly give up all direction into his hands, for the sake of their own spiritual progress. He will himself then be the product of the " good State," the State in which all education, every law, every ordi- nance, are directed to the one end — the fitting of souls for philos- ophy. And in such a State — " the State which we have been building up " in the Republic — the Philosopher wiU rule, both because he can, and because he cannot do otherwise. I imagine that most readers will vehemently dissent from this conclusion. How should it be otherwise ? We read the Republic firmly expecting to find in it the picture of a social Utopia : its accepted title — the Pohteia — is our warranty for this ; and the book does not disappoint us. Its fascination lies in its daring pohtical proposals : the final enthronement of the philosopher- autocrat is the coping-stone of them all — paradoxical, no doubt, and a very questionable solution of the problem of good govern- ment ; but quite an attractive idea, and quite in keeping with SPIRITUAL REALISATION 155 the ideals latent in the minds of most of us. Is it to be robbed of its interest, and subordinated to the hackneyed theme of personal righteousness ? We do not want the book to be turned into a treatise on mystical morality : we prefer the poUtical interpretation with its obvious appHcations. And, after all, was not Plato a poUtician too ? Was not his poUtical interest as practical as it was keen ? He did not merely write about political ideals : he spent (so we are told) some years in trying to carry out his ideas in practical form in the State of Dionysius, who for a time believed in him. And his last, and longest, treatise was the elaborate, detailed and entirely practical work the Laws. Yes ; Plato was a politician — in a sense ; but we are forgetting that he was a philosopher first. The goal of philosophy — wisdom or knowledge of the Good — was all in all to him ; but the Sun of Wisdom will hght up everything, the whole conduct of human Ufe, social, pohtical, individual. There stands the ideal — the same for all Mfe. So speaks the philosopher. But, when we come dovm to the level of the practicable and the possible — to practical politics, in fact — we find that the ideal is, for present social life, impossible ; then let us aim at the best copy we can — the Good State, built on the lines of the Perfect State, but very different from it. Now this difference^ between the Perfect State, which is unattainable, and the Good State, which is a present possibiUty, is just the difference between the philosophy and the politics of Plato. In the Republic, Plato the philosopher speaks ; in the Laws, Plato the politician. In the Republic we have the absolute ideal, and its centre is the Good, and the vision of the Good by Nous. In the Laws, the ideal disappears from view : the vision of the Good is gone. Nous and its supremacy are gone, the Royal Philosopher is gone.^ In the Republic we begin with the Good State, and rise to the Ideal — to be plainly told that it is, for human society, only a pattern laid up in the heavens. In the Laws, we begin and end with the Good State, and never rise above it at all. And the difference, the immeasurable difference, between the possible Good State and the unattainable Perfect * This vital distinction is dealt with very fully in a note at the end of Chapter X. * In the Laws, only the good Guardians remain ; and the best of these form a secret nocturnal council for the carrying out of the fixed laws. 156 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO State is just this : in the latter, Nous with its direct knowledge of the Good inspires every activity, bound by no law, needing no fetters, no constitution, no ordinances ; fusing all into a per- fect unity of will and purpose by its own oneness with the Sun of Righteousness, making the whole immortal and unchangeable by its own hold on the principle of eternal life ; while in the former laws are everywhere, fetters and ordinances fix all activities by force — as well as they can — and the whole depends for its con- tinuance in the path of goodness upon the implicit obedience of all — even of the rulers — to the given constitution imposed by the original law-giver. We cannot understand the Republic unless the distinction between the Perfect State and the Good State is kept clear. It is only because it is not observed that we feel baffled by Plato's final abandonment of his ideal as a working model for society, and are unwilhng to admit that he never intended us to think of it as a political possibiHty. We do not notice how we are led up from the Good State described in the early books, to the Per- fect Constitution described in the philosophical books which form the centre of the work ; nor do we notice how definitely we fall back again to the lower level when we return to the " poUtical interest " of the eighth and ninth books. But Plato is not to blame ; it is our own wilful misunderstanding. He tells us plainly enough that the ideal cannot be regarded as a possibihty for social life until society itself is transformed ; he tells us hardly less plainly that the Philosopher cannot be expected to rule in any State except the State which exists for the sake of Philosophy ; and his whole teaching should show us, even if he had never told us this, that the philosophic faculty of wisdom cannot function among the shadows of the cave, so long as it is the cave, and so long as we prisoners are absorbed in the shadows. For remember that the strange power of vision which, once awakened, can carry the purified soul into the world of true reaUty, and in that world can see and know all the eternal verities, is not a power of vision which can deal with " shadows in an ahen territory." Our world of illusions is not its world. The man whose spiritual eye has opened to the hght above comes back " dazed and a laughing-stock " to the cave of our worldly hfe. How could it fail to be so ? Let us admit that the Seer or Philosopher does, indeed, see through this life of ours, as none of us can ; but that SPIRITUAL REALISATION 157 is because he sees beyond it, because his vision is of another life in another world. He sees the futiUties with which we cumber our hves, the meaninglessness of many of the aims and efforts which we deem important, the pettiness of our ambitions and competitions and misunderstandings. But he sees these as unreal, as unimportant, as genuinely petty, by comparison with the things that matter — those things that make the stuff of a different life. If he is to see our affairs as they appear to us, then he must see them with our human eyes, not with his super- human sight ; he must join us again on the path of pursuit, becoming literally one of us prisoners in the cave, subject to our limitations and shackles, compelled hke us to think the shadows real. And then his " divine faculty " falls into abeyance : what has it to do with " shadows in an alien territory " ? It is true, however, that Plato does say, in one passage (p. 520), that the Philosopher who comes back as a King " to the under- ground abode of men " will, " when he has grown accustomed to it, see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den." But that is because it is his own State to which he returns — not ours : the Perfect State in which the myriad phantasies of desire and ambition which make up the life of our societies have been swept away, and all that remains are the habits and activi- ties which genuinely reflect the Forms of Good and which the Philosopher has no difficulty in recognising as the reflections of " the beautiful and the right and the good which he has seen in their reality." He never asks us to believe that the Philosopher can or will be anything but " a shelterer behind a wall " in the politics of our States. Has he not plainly defined the Philosopher as one " who cannot possibly attach any importance to this life " ? Does not his whole teaching show that a Seer who is also a political mentor is a contradiction in terms ? The faculty whose awakening opens the door to truth is a faculty which can only function in its own world, among its own objects. The faculty which alone can know God and only God will not know anything about the not-God of poUtical probabihties and social utihties ; the faculty which can guide us surely on the firm land of reality will not steer us at all in the sea of opinions. That is why the seer cannot also be poUtically wise. A St. Theresa does not carry her saintHness into her diplomacy ; a Socrates may be and must be made a better citizen by his " philosophy," but 158 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO never a better politician. How on earth could it be otherwise ? For in this world their divine faculty of spiritual insight is blind ; and its possessor is not only dazed when he returns to our dark- ness, but must remain dazed, a very laughing-stock to all sharp, practical people, so long as he stays in the darkness. In the Perfect State the case would be different. In a society in which all estimates of things worth having and worth doing were adjusted to the one supreme end, and in which all activities were thereby simpUfied into harmony with the outlines of the " real " world, the philosopher might feel so perfectly at home that, as Plato says, he could then " give proof that his calling is the highest calling," and that his abihty far transcends all other abilities. But never in our imperfect societies ; least of all in a democracy which must find its own way out of its complexities as a condition of its growth. But enough now concerning the poUtical mission of the Philos- opher-King. There is, however, a very different mission ascribed to him, which we, at any rate, do not think of as poHtical. In the individual soul the rule of wisdom is at once the cause of the perfect constitution of the soul, and the fulfilment of its spiritual salvation. In other words, the wisdom-governed man wins not only the harmony which is righteousness but also the salvation which is eternal peace. So, too, in reference to human society, Plato tells us that the Philosopher wiU not only rule his State but save it. We have seen that he cannot and will not rule it as its king until society is ready for his rule : that is, purged into his own singleness of aim and unity of desire. But, if he cannot rule it as king, may he not even now save it as teacher of that God-knowledge which is his title to sovereignty ? May not society, here and now, be made regenerate by the power of pure rehgion ? — for that is the deeper issue. Plato's answer is quite plain. He does not separate the task of the saviour from the task of the ruler, the " salvation " of society from the " perfect ordering " of social Ufe. The two stand and fall together ; neither is possible until the whole character of society is changed. Human society cannot win either the harmony of ideal government or the peace of rehgion until it has returned to the condition of a Httle child, the con- dition of the idyUic society first sketched in the earlier books — and there discarded because it was so desireless and so passionless SPIRITUAL RE.\LISATIOX 159 as not to resemble existing social life at alL That is to say, human society will be capable of rehgion and of the salvation which rehgion alone can bring, when, and only when, it is ready for the full government of the autocrat of wisdom, viiien it has won its way through the worship of complexity, and has come back to simphcitj," — not the simphcity of childish innocence, but the simphcity of wise and fuU experience. And this cannot be until the deepest descent into matter is finished, and humanity has learned the lessons of the manifold, has, in fact, kamed that the shadows of the puppets of the cave are not reality, that the objects of its desires and ambitions are illusions. Is this only another way of saving that society can never be saved imtil it ceases to be what we know as human society ? Undoubtedly : for is it not clear that any society which is pre- pared for the salvation of rehgion has already come to the end of the road of human progress and achievement, has already " risen above the Qualities " whose infinite variations make up the complexity which we call human life ? The conversion of society is not a dream : it is a certainty which will surely be realised — at the last, " in some far-ofi age." But the day of its salvation will be the last day of society's life on earth ; in tbfe moment of its salvation htmian society will cease to be. Plato saw this more clearly than we do. Many of us dream of our nation or society becoming rehgious in fact as well as in name — a veritable City of God fulfilling the law of Christ on earth. It is a possibihty, we say, no matter how great the difficulties may be. But the rehgion which, in our dreams and our hopes, is to rule the world is not the rehgion which Plato had in his thought when he described the full perfecting of the soul's ri^teousness. It is not the final union with divine reahty, which lifts the soul into another world, making it for ever " the spectator of all time and all existence," who therefore " cannot possibly take any interest in the affairs of men " in the way in which we citizens of earth take interest in them. When we speak of the possible conversion of society to rehgion, are we not thinking rather of the reflection of rehgion — ^the worship of God in feittfa, and the ordering of our normal acti\ities, as honestly as may be, after the revealed pattern of righteousness, in so far as thi'^ does not entirely overthrow these normal activities ? Are we not, in other words, thinking of the estabUshment of the Good State, 160 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO but not the Perfect State — that possible good condition for col- lective humanity in which right shall be accepted in faith — but not seen by direct vision — and established by good laws and ordi- nances— but not secured immutably by will made perfect by divine wisdom ? We shall not cavil at Plato's refusal to allow the possibihty of the wisdom-inspired State on earth, if we remember that, to him, religion, or the discovery of the knowledge of God, means freedom from all worldly interests — for ever ; freedom from the chain of action and reaction, of birth and re-birth ; freedom from hfe on earth. It means freedom from the very conditions, not of mortaUty only, but of hfe ; it means hbera- tion from the universe of the Quahties ; it means taking the real and eternal in exchange for the quasi-real and perishable, the incorruptible in exchange for the corruptible. Shall humanity find this freedom ? Yes ; individual by individual, soul by soul, at any time, in any place. But collectively and as a society, only at the very end of its evolution ; certainly not so long as it is bound to the world by its preoccupations and interests : not so long as the souls which are bom into it are still imperfect souls, filled with the Tamas of desire and the Rajas of passion. When all the returning souls are purified from all but the last vestiges of the bonds which bring them back to the wheel of change, then at last the society of human souls will be ready for salvation. Note. — Concerning the Philosopher's compulsory return to the Cave. According to Plato, the perfect Philosopher is compelled to leave his life of contemplation and to return to the cave to work. Three reasons are indicated for this compulsion. Of these, two are simple and can be easily stated ; the third is obscure, and will require more careful consideration. First, it is an essential part of Plato's doctrine that, in a good State, the rulers must be those who are least willing to rule. " Only in the State which offers another and a better life than that of a ruler, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom." The compulsion laid upon the Philosopher is thus a conse- quence of his unwillingness to take office. Secondly, when Glaucon raises the question of the fairness of forcing the Philosopher to leave his perfect life for a life which is less good, he is told that this is perfectly fair, because it is the payment of a debt due to the Good State which has made the ascent to Phil- osophy possible. This is an obvious reason which Glaucon can under- stand. It is also in keeping with the Indian doctrine. I have already SPIRITUAL REALISATION 161 pointed out that the old Vedic rule of the four Ashramas or periods of life was an ideal ordinance intended originally to educate genuine sage-princes who should administer their States disinterestedly according to Vedic principles, after they had attained to the condition of a true Yogi or Seer of reality. This duty of administration was, in a sense, a payment of a debt. Every human soul is considered to have three great debts to pay : they are known as Pitri-rin, Rishi-rin, and Deva-rin. Pitri-rin means the debt to ancestors and to society in return for the use of one's body and faculties ; it can only be paid by service to society, and by leaving children properly equipped to continue the service. Rishi-rin means the debt to all the givers of culture, in return for the enjoyment of all the subtler elements of civilised life. This can only be paid by learning and by teaching. Deva-rin means the debt to the spirits of nature, by which our life is maintained ; and this is only payable by real sacrifice and devotion and worship. The three debts may be described briefly as the debt to the spirit of humanity, the debt to the spirit of civihsation, and the debt to the spirit of the natural universe. All three debts are absolutely binding, and must be paid to the full before the soul is free from all social duties. It is quite in accordance with this ordinance that Plato ordains absolute subordination to society as the necessary payment of a debt. But, in the Eastern doctrine as in Plato's, it is always some- thing more than this : service of humanity, of civilisation, and of the universe, is also a part of the perpetual manifestation of perfect goodness. The third reason is much harder to explain ; but I must try to explain it, because the passage concerning the unwilhng return of the Philosopher to the cave, and his compulsory payment of a debt, has been regarded as a serious flaw in Plato's doctrine. It has even been seized upon as justifying the amazing statement^ that Plato " entirely fails to appreciate the excellence of sacrifice " ; that " accord- ing to his theory, to ask a man to forfeit some self-culture for the sake of social service will be wrong unless it can be claimed as payment of a debt : even then, while no injury, it is still from the individual's point of view regrettable. This is all due to the fact that his mind has never grasped that for a man to sacrifice himself for the community is good, not only for the community, but for the man too ; he never grasped the excellence that is in sacrifice itself." I confess it is difiicult to understand how one can read the Republic without realising that " the excellence that is in sacrifice itself " is the foundation upon which the whole religious life is built. Indeed, the sacrifice demanded of self and of all the self's enjoyments and interests is so extreme, so unlimited, that most of us turn away in despair : it is too high for us, we cannot attain to it. But I imagine the criticism arises from the fact that there is no social motive for the sacrifice required : the righteous man must give up everything (except the one thing needful) 1 Rev. W. Temple, Plato and Christianity. II 162 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO in order to save his own soul. Now let me meet this objection once for all. It has already been pointed out more than once that, in the Hindu doctrine, there are three chief paths to holiness or to God ; and of these three the two which we in the West understand are the path of self-denial in activity and the path of self-surrender in devotion — the way of Martha and the way of Mary, perhaps. At the present time, with our growing (though still lamentably weak) care for the social well-being, it is natural that the former path should appeal to us most. It is active : it produces obvious results : it helps both neighbours and the community : and its self-sacrifice is patent to all in the form of unselfish service. We even demand that the other path — that of devotion — shall also be marked by intelligible activity on behalf of others : by something more than mere prayer, at any rate. I suppose there has never been an age in the history of Christendom when the life of pure devotion was so little respected as now. Is it not easy, then, to understand the difficulty which Christians must find in appreciating the third great path — that of wisdom, or direct knowledge of God ? For in this the soul has no aim except to find and know and become one with God : this is the sole motive for sacrifice of self, the sole reason for every renunciation. And yet this path — so we are always told — ^is the highest and straightest, as it is certainly the hardest, of aU the paths. I know it is difficult at first to conceive how this can be so. It seems so entirely self-centred : its process and aim appear to be — in spite of all self-abnegation — merely refined selfishness. Even so sympathetic a Christian as Mr. Temple cannot see in the philosopher's terrific discipline and struggle anything better than a kind of self- culture ! But is it not a little odd that we should be able to value sacrifice for the sake of the neighbour whom we have seen, but not able to appreciate it for the sake of God whom we have not seen ?^ For this is the task set the " philosopher " : he is to find and unite with the Good, the giver of all life and all well-being ; he is to become holy, even as God is holy ; life must have no other aim to be compared with this ; it is to this goal that he must struggle, putting aside all else. And why ? Because this unknown Good may give him happi- ness ? But with such a motive he is bound to fail. No happiness- seeker can even enter the path. Is it not simply because, since the Good is all-good, the only reaUty, the only being, the only thing of which we can say " It is excellent in itself," therefore to become a part of it means becoming part of the very creative power of good ? And so the sacrifice which was necessary in the seeking goes on when the goal is found : " the excellence that is in sacrifice itself " becomes also the final happiness. The law of both is the same : it is to give, ^ The obvious retort is, I admit, a valid one. If a man does not first show his love for the neighbour whom he has seen, we have a right to look askance at the supposed sacrifice for the unseen God. Certainly ; it is always admitted in the Vedanta teaching that no one can be a Yogi unless he is first a good Karmi. And Plato observes this condition. What else is the fifteen years' discipline be- tween thirty-five and fifty but a long sacrifice for the sake of the community ? SPIRITUAL REALISATION 168 and give, and give. So that in return more shall be added to us ? Not in the least : in return, still more shall be asked of us. This is the Platonic ideal of the philosopher who becomes Righteous and finds the Good, but is spurned, dishonoured, tortured and crucified on the way — and afterwards (Plato might have added) is libelled even by religious people as a mere seeker of self-culture. And when the goal is finally reached, the purified and all-seeing soul is " compelled to return to the underground abode " of ordinary humanity. " Because it is a debt to be repaid," Glaucon is told. But that is not the reason. Another answer is given to explain the rightness of the return : " You have forgotten, my friend, the purpose of the creator of our good State. He did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest : the happiness was to be in the whole, and he bound the citizens by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State and therefore benefactors one of another ; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State." And the disciple of Socrates would certainly have added, if he had heard the modern criticism, " To this end also, in other forms, every soul has been created, and the power to become holy given to it : that it may at last do its work in binding up all souls into the unity of the Good." The motive which leads the purged soul to long for nothing except union with the Good is never presented as a social motive, because it includes this in a much higher form. You must be a master before you can be the servant of all : you must be a son of God before you can help in his work of creating and maintaining all good : you must be pure before you can purify others : you must know the truth before you can enlighten the world : and you must discover your oneness with your neighbours before you can love them as yourself. The Royal Philosopher does not help the world as a disagreeable duty ; nor even because he cares for and pities his neighbours. He works for them because they are himself : because every creature is the indivisible reality which he too is and which God is. There is no " otherness " anywhere. And he works, because activity and real existence are inseparable : whether he works here or elsewhere, as a visible helper or as an invisible spiritual force, makes no difference to him or to us. It is, however, a fact that no saint ever leaves his physical body until it gives him up ; no saint leaves his place and work in the world until physical nature sets him free. Often his body is diseased, and physical existence a constant pain ; that matters not at all ; he never escapes to freedom by his own act, though escape is always within his power. For this reason it may be said that Plato has no need to compel his Philosopher to return. He would never go away — except in spirit. And his work in the cave would go on, so long as his body endured — and afterwards, so long as the cave itself endured and needed his care. For his archetype is the supreme Guardian of the Good, who never ends his work of " succouring the good and thrusting evil back." 164 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO "In the three wide worlds I am not bound to any toil, no height Awaits to scale, no gift remains to gain, Yet I act here. And, if I acted not, Earnest and watchful, those that look to me For guidance, sinking back to sloth again Because I slumbered, would decline from good. And I should break earth 's order and commit Her offspring unto ruin." PART IV (BOOKS VIII TO X). THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH CHAPTER X ANALYSIS OF THE REPUBLIC, BOOKS VIII AND IX. THE CAUSES OF THE DEGENERATION OF THE GOOD STATE AND OF THE GOOD MAN. ^ T the beginning of the eighth book, Plato leads us back to " the point from which he had diverged " at f- — ^ the end of the fourth book, and proceeds to show how ^ jLthe humanly good man may fall away from "the aristocracy of virtue." This account of the possible degenera- tion of the righteous soul, and of the pitfalls which surround its path, has, of course, no application to the soul whose ascent has been described in the intervening books. We have now finished with the Royal Philosopher : for him there can be no pitfalls, no possibility of degeneracy. He sits unshakable on his throne of wisdom, safe in the stability of inspired certainty. But the humanly righteous man, aristocrat indeed, but not yet king, is never secure ; the seeds of evil and of error are not all burnt out of his soul ; his feet are not yet planted upon the rock of wisdom, but are still moving dangerously along the lower path ; and if temptation assails him, even he may fall. As Plato puts it, he is still subject to the law of change which pertains to all things human, to everything not wholly divine : the Karmic law, as the Vedantins call it, which, at the end of a thousand years or more, will bring back from heaven to earth even the very best of souls, if these have not yet taken the final step which merges them entirely in the spiritual reality. It must be constantly borne in mind, therefore, in reading 165 166 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO the remainder of the Republic, that we are back again on the human or " lower " level, and that we are dealing once more with both society and the individual soul in the form in which we ordinarily know them, namely, as compounds of the three quaUties, whose condition may be called good or Sattvic when it consists in an equiUbrium or harmony produced by the un- questioned authority of the best quality over the other two, and whose condition falls away from goodness just in so far as the equiUbrium is disturbed by any usurpation of authority on the part of the two imperfect quahties. The causes and effects of disturbance, whether in a society or in the individual soul, are the theme of the eighth and ninth books. But the exposition has nothing to do with the individual or society which has risen above even the good or Sattvic condition,^ It does not apply to the superhuman or spiritual perfection of the Philosopher-King, or of the really ideal but quite impossible society which is akin to him. Their " goodness " is above and beyond the quaUties ; it is as far superior to the condition of Sattva as the spiritual faculty Nous is superior to human reason or prudence, or as certainty is superior to faith, or knowledge to opinion. It cannot degenerate, but is eternally safe in the unchangeableness of the Good with which it is united. But human goodness which is not yet wholly reUgious or real may decline : must, indeed, decUne some day, unless the faith or doxa on which it rests is changed into the knowledge which cannot be shaken. This return to the consideration of virtue or goodness as we ordinarily understand it is marked by the reintroduction of the poUtical analogy. Just as in the earUer books the full picture of righteousness was drawn for us first in the State and then in the individual soul, so now the account of the dangers which may bring ruin to the soul is given in a double form : first the decUne of the good State is described — for the sake of clearness, we are told — and then the decUne of the good man. But it is still the man, and not the State, that is of real importance ; and it is the constitution of the man's soul, not the constitution of the State, which really explains the degeneration in each case. * In other words, the Aristocratic State and man, whose degeneration is now to be described, is simply the Good State and man, as distinguished from the Ideal State and man. This distinction has already been explained in the last chapter. It is lurther discussed in a note at the end of this chapter. THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 167 The aristocracy of the good soul consists, as we learned in the fourth book, in the orderliness of the three essential elements, reason, passion and desire. This orderHness, dependent as it is upon continual restraint of the lower elements by the highest, requires incessant vigilance if it is to be maintained : once let the vigilance be relaxed for a moment, and disorder will creep in. This is the clue to the possible degeneration of the aristocratic State. In it, too, goodness consists in orderUness, that is, in the right relation of the three classes to each other, and the right performance of its due function by each of them. DecUne from goodness begins, as the old Hindu philosophy puts it, whenever there is any confusion or mixture of the quaUties and of the castes corresponding to them. In other words, the good State will preserve its goodness just so long as the classes are preserved pure and true to type ; or (for this is the important thing) just so long as the golden class of guardians is really golden and is really supreme. Now the existence of everything human, even of the most perfect human excellence, is dependent upon some cycle of birth and death, of growth and decay. There is some such cycle for the good State, and it is connected with the (Kar- mic) law^ by which human births are determined. So long as the cycle endures, the births in the State will be propitious : into each class will be born souls of the right quality, golden to golden, silver to silver, iron or copper to iron or copper. But at the end of the cycle the danger point will arrive. The Guardians who determine all the matings and therefore all the births in the State will not know this cycle (remember, they are not Philos- opher-Kings, endowed with royal wisdom), and so they will not be able to take the necessary precautions. " All their knowledge and education will not attain to the understanding of human fecundity and steriUty : the laws which regulate these will not be discovered by the intelligence which is alloyed with sense." Consequently the end of the cycle will bring a change for the worse. Shghtly inferior souls will be born into the golden class, and degeneration will follow. For, when the children possessing these inferior souls grow up, and take their places as Guardians, they fail to do their duty perfectly. Education and culture are a httle neglected ; and the castes begin to be slightly confused. * Plato expresses this law by a very elaborate mathematical calculation, upon which I comment later. 168 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO The pure gold of reasonableness becomes mixed with the baser metal of ambition : the harmony of Sattva is disturbed by the restlessness of Rajas ; and so the Aristocratic State passes into its first degenerate form — Timocracy, or a constitution based upon worship of honour. Power and profit become the dominant aim of its rulers, though the love of gain is still regarded as a thing to be ashamed of. But it is cherished in secret ; and the other characteristic of the Rajasic element — love of power, or ambition — is openly paraded as the mark of the ruler. ^ The first degeneration of the aristocratic man is very similar. Owing to the defect in the mating of his parents, he inherits from his mother too much of the Rajasic element ; and, as the State in which he Hves is no longer a perfect one, this lower element in his soul, already rather too strong, is fostered by the bad example of the citizens. Many of these, including his mother, despise his righteous father just because he is neither ambitious nor quarrelsome — an unenterprising simpleton, as they call him ; and so the father's good influence is diminished, and the son grows up a Timocratic man, " with a passion for distinction and command," and " with a touch of the money-lover." The second step in the downward descent follows naturally from the first. The quality of Rajas, having once raised its head, proceeds to manifest itself, not only as ambition or passion for power, but in its more sordid aspect of a passion for gain. This, in the State, means the conversion of Timocracy into Oligarchy. " Wealth and the wealthy rise in honour, and, as a consequence, virtue and the virtuous sink in estimation." Property qualifica- tion becomes the recognised title to power. And at once the State loses its unity, and becomes two, not one — a State of the rich side by side with a State of the poor. And of the latter, some become paupers, and cease to perform any useful function ; ^ I think the reader will see here how necessary it is to keep the Sanskrit terms tor the three quaUties . Plato's terms lor them, and our translation of these, quite fail to convey the requisite double meaning, especially in the case of Rajas (Thumos, or the passionate element). This quaUty has, according to the Hindu doctrine, two different objects or aims : Power and Profit. It therefore includes both the quality of ambition or passion for power, and the quaUty of love of gain, or passion for profit. And these two aspects of its meaning respectively furnish the essential characteristics of Timocracy and Ohgarchy, as explained by Plato. The fact that the latter uses this double meaning as the very basis of his account of the degeneration of the State is strong evidence that he is thinking of the Vedic " quahties " ; for, as far as I can discover, the Greek word " thumos " can no more bear the second half of the meaning of Rajas (namely, passion for gain), than can our translation of it — anger or passion or the spirited element. THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 169 while many of the former are drones in a worse sense still. For, as wealthy people, they do but consume the resources of the community, and are a veritable plague to their State — worse than drones, indeed, for God has made all the winged drones stingless, but to some of the two-legged drones he has given formidable stings — nothing less than the power to rob their fellow-citizens, and to commit every kind of crime. The Oligarchical man is Uke the Ohgarchical State. The lower side of the Rajasic element is dominant in his soul. He learns by experience that ambition is a treacherous master : power and fame are far more easily lost than won. But love of gain promises more soUd and abiding satisfaction, provided it is accompanied by careful avoidance of extravagance. So he becomes a money-hunter, greedy to get wealth but not eager to spend it ; a sordid, hard-working, parsimonious creature, just the kind of man the world commends. His appetites are still kept in subjection, but by a low form of prudence, not by prin- ciple. And thus his soul is reaUy divided against itself, and the starved and suppressed Tamasic element is always watching for an opportunity to escape from the control of the Rajasic passion for gain. The third step in the descent carries us down to Democracy. Here again there is a natural transition from the preceding stage. The exaltation of wealth which marks an Oligarchy cannot long persist without giving rise to an exaltation of desire for the satisfactions which wealth can buy. Parsimony seldom lasts more than one generation ; and the extravagance of the young is actually encouraged by the most miserly money-makers, because it gives them an opportunity to increase their wealth. So you get capitaUsts and spendthrifts side by side — and the poor learn to despise them both ; until eventually, when oppor- tunity comes, they rise and overmaster their rich rulers, and establish Democracy upon a basis of so-called equahty and liberty. A beautiful constitution, this, is it not ? For, as every- one does what he Hkes, the most fascinating variety appears ; and the State becomes that most attractive thing, an agreeable, lawless, particoloured community. Now let us turn to the degeneration of the individual soul which corresponds to the decline of the State from OUgarchy to Democracy. This always involves a transition from the domin- 170 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO ance of the Rajasic element, which, in a higher or lower form, is the predominant quaUty in Timocracy and OUgarchy, to that of the Tamasic element, which, in a higher or lower form again, we shall find to be the predominant quality in Democracy and Tyranny. This Tamasic element includes all those ignorant desires which we commonly call appetites ; and we must here distinguish between two kinds of appetites — the necessary and the unnecessary. Some appetities must always be allowed to function, because the satisfactions which they seek are either necessary to Ufe or are advantageous to health of body and mind. But others ought always to be suppressed, because their satis- factions are either unnecessary or positively pernicious. Now in the Oligarchical man these latter are suppressed, for their satisfaction conflicts with his Rajasic passion for gain. But when the soul sinks from internal Oligarchy to Democracy, the thoroughly bad Tamasic element of unnecessary appetites begins to gain the upper hand. These, in increasing numbers, assault and seize the citadel of the man's heart, empty as it is of sound knowledge and true culture. Temperance and modera- tion, the sole virtues which, from prudential motives, the Oli- garchical man possessed, are now branded as cowardice, and expelled with ignominy ; and Insolence, Disorder, Licentious- ness and Shamelessness are enthroned in their stead, under the titles of Good Breeding, Freedom, Magnificence and Bravery. The distinction between necessary and unnecessary appetites and pleasures is henceforth obliterated ; and the Democratic soul lives from day to day in the gratification of every casual appetite in turn, under the proud motto of Liberty and EquaUty — a sort of multitudinous Ufe, answering to the charming variety which marks the Democratic State. We come now to the final degeneration of State and man. Just as OUgarchy is ruined by the excess of its predominant quaUty, intense passion for wealth leading naturally to desire for every kind of satisfaction, so Democracy is ruined by the excess of its peculiar attributes. For Liberty and EquaUty are anything but stable : each is dangerously near its opposite : Liberty worshipped for its own sake turns inevitably to Ucence, which is but a name for the very worst slavery ; and equaUty over-exalted turns as naturally into extreme inequaUty. Now in a Democracy liberty and equaUty are carried to such extreme THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 171 lengths as to invade every social relation. Even slaves are made free, and the sexes are proclaimed equal. Excess brings reaction, and the reaction to the slavery of Despotism comes about in this way : In the course of the State's degeneration from Timocracy to OUgarchy, and from Oligarchy to Democracy, we have seen how the class of drones comes into existence side by side with a class of rich money-lovers ; and, by the time Democracy is reached, a third class has become of real pohtical importance, I mean that of the humble hand-workers and labourers. Of these three, the rich have at any rate the merit of a kind of orderUness, else they could not amass wealth ; but the other two classes are naturally disorderly, and between them manage to despoil the rich for their own advantage. The latter organise every sort of protection, defence and retahation, with the result that the common people in their turn organise their forces, and choose a leader to be their champion. This is the final step. In electing a leader and exalting him, they have created a tyrant to rule over them ; the champion of their rights quickly becomes the despot of their lives, holding sway by every kind of villainy in the approved manner of despots, flouting the Commons who raised him to power, like a parricide who kills the parents who have nurtured him. And that is the genesis of Tyranny in the State. But what of the tyrannical man ? Well, it is easy enough to understand how the democratic soul may pass into the condition of tyranny. If a man has taken variety of satisfactions for his good : if he has fallen a victim to the delusion of Liberty and Equality to such an extent as to welcome equally all pleasurable experiences simply because they are pleasurable : then the inherent instabiUty of his condition will very soon lead to his falling under the dominance of some one master-lust, to which all his normal appetites will be the servitors. Whether he wishes it or not, some desire will grow in him until it has become a kind of monster stinging-drone in the hive of his desires, a ruinous, destroying tyrant, continually growing within his soul. And to understand how terrible is this soul-tyranny, you must remem- ber that it is no ordinary desire that will make the man its slave. We know that there are within us possibilities of malignant desire so evil that we would never harbour them consciously. But they sometimes make themselves known in our dreams ; 172 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO for it is in the condition of sleep that the uncontrolled and dis- orderly soul may sink to the deepest depths, just as the well- ordered and controlled soul may then rise to heights seldom reached in its waking moments. Well, that is the sort of desire which gains the mastery in the tyrannical soul, a desire uncurbed by any sense of decency or restraint, seeking satisfactions which are equally indecent and unrestrained. Surely, you say, the tyrant soul has reached the lowest abyss of misery ! No, my friend, not yet. There is an even lower depth ; and this is reached only when such a soul is compelled by some unhappy accident to be tyrant, not over itself alone, but over others too. For then only will it feel the added pangs of fear, suspicion, jealousy and eternal isolation. But now let us prove, in two different ways, that we are right in our assertion that each successive degeneration of the soul from its aristocratic state imphes a necessary falling away from true happiness. First, of the three elements of the soul, the reasonable, the passionate and the desiring, each aims at an object of its own. The Logistikon, or reason, loves knowledge and truth ; Thumos, or passion, loves strife and honour ; Epithumia, or desire, loves gain. And as the elements, so the men and women in whom they severally predominate. You may classify all human beings into these three classes : the reasonable people, who love truth ; the ambitious people, who love honours ; and the desiring people, who love gain. Now if you ask all these people which object gives the greatest satisfaction, each class will reply dif- ferently, each extolling the object of its particular choice. But it is clear that only the reasonable man is a sound judge, for he alone has passed through all three stages in his growth, and so has experience of each ; and further, the faculty upon which sound judgment depends, namely, reason, has been specially cultivated by him, and not by the others. Again, all satisfactions and dissatisfactions resemble a kind of above and below, a fulness and an emptiness. But there are three, not two, grades involved in Above and Below, the third grade being the level, intermediate between the two. By com- parison with the Below, this level may be regarded as Above ; but by comparison with the Above, it must be regarded as THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 173 Below. It is both — or neither : a sort of negative, half-way stage. Now all satisfactions, in the ordinary sense of satis- factions of desire, really amount to nothing more than a process of filling up an empty hole ; that is, a process of rising from below to the level. (The desiring man sometimes thinks he does more than this : he thinks he has really reached an Above ; but it is never so. Desire is a kind of void, and all pleasure or satisfaction of desire is simply a temporary filling up of the void, which seems entirely satisfactory — until the emptiness is felt again.) This holds true, not only of the desiring man's desire for gain, but also of the ambitious man's desire for honour. But the case of the reasonable man's love of knowledge and truth is quite dif- ferent. His satisfaction is much more than filling up a void or rising to the level. Whenever he finds truth, he really does reach the Above, which the others never do. And, therefore, his satis- faction is permanent and real, while theirs is not ; and the object in which he finds his satisfaction is real and enduring, while the objects of ambition and of desire are unreal and transitory. You see now what a gulf separates the really tyrannical soul from the aristocratic or kingly soul. The former is thrice removed from even the oligarchical soul, which in turn is thrice removed from the aristocratic. So, even in the surface view, the tyrant is nine times removed from the kingly soul ; while, if we look deeper, and consider the soUd reahty of his wretchedness, we must cube our number, and say that he is 729 times lower than the king in the measure of satisfaction or happiness. And now, Glaucon, our task is really finished, our long quest at an end. We have answered the great question — What are Righteousness and Unrighteousness in their own nature, and as they affect the soul of man, apart from all external consequences ? And we may put the answer in this way : our soul is a strange compound of man and Uon and many-headed monster, living and growing side by side. He who says that it is profitable to be unjust is saying in effect that it is good to feed and strengthen the lion and the monster in us, and to starve the man ; for that is what unrighteousness means. While by righteousness is meant the conquest of the man over both monster and lion, so that both may be tamed and used in his service. And actions and 174 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO habits are good or evil just in proportion as they either bring the brutish parts of our nature into subjection to the human (or should I say the divine ?) part, or make the human part the slave of the wild. And all the recognised virtues and vices are rightly sought or shunned for the same reason. Further, to do evil and escape detection and punishment is not a clever but a disastrous thing ; for every escape encourages the beast within us, and so makes the soul more vicious, while right punishment tames the brute, and sets the man free. The man of understanding will avoid unrighteousness, not for fear of punishment, but simply because it is ruinous to his soul ; and he will follow every good practice, not that men may think well of him, but simply because only so can his soul find the harmony which is happiness. Wealth and honours and all other satisfactions he will seek only just so far as they will help to make him a better man ; and in all his conduct of life he will guide his steps by reference to that pattern of goodness on which we modelled our Righteous State. You say now that you do not beheve this perfect State can ever be reaUsed ? Well, the ques- tion of its present or future existence here on earth is of no importance. It exists, perhaps, only as a pattern laid up in heaven for the guidance of the individual soul — a " perfect constitution " which he who wills may see, and, seeing, follow, in all the ordering of his Ufe. . . . The two books briefly summarised above call for Uttle in the way of commentary. They lead us back to the familiar concep- tions of common sense and our common interests, and so round off the discussion of righteousness on the everyday level on which it was begun. But one or two special points need to be emphasised. I have already explained that the " aristocratic " soul and its goodness, which are taken as the pinnacle from which degeneration begins, are to be carefully distinguished from the Royal soul and its Righteousness, which represent, of course, the true summit of possible goodness. The aristocratic soul corresponds to the good Guardian who was deUneated in the fourth book — as good as a man can be before he has attained God-knowledge. He is the incarnation of Sattva ; and his characteristic is steadfastness rooted in faith. He is called in the Sanskrit " didhi " : that is, soothfast or steadfast, because THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 175 he has made perfect by faith the highest human faculty of intui- tion of right, and faithfully accepts its dictates. This faculty is, of course, very different from the really divine faculty — Nous or Atman or the Spirit which is one with God. But it is very far superior to mind or the reasoning faculty. The latter is called in Sanskrit Manas ; the higher faculty is called Buddhi, and is the faculty of decision or will. When the Buddhic con- sciousness is really good it corresponds fairly closely to what some philosophers have called the Good Will, for this term imphes the necessary combination of right knowledge and intuitively right choice, of intelligence and moral excellence, which are associated with Buddhi at its best. And the Buddhic or aristocratic man resembles very exactly the " justum et tenacem propositi virum " (the just man of firm-set purpose) whom no adversity can shake. He is very near to God, as the Hindu scriptures say ; but he is not immovable, because, unhke the Muni or the true Philosopher-King, he has not the full illumination which makes a man for ever a citizen of the City of God, and removes him from the earthly wheel of change and decay. Similarly, the aristocratic State, which, in Book IV and again in Books VHI and IX, is treated as entirely good (" although it appears that you had a still more excellent account to give of it "), is the humanly best or Sattvic State ; but it is not the ideal. At the end of Book IV this good or humanly perfect State has one final and all-important condition attached to it : " God must preserve for the citizens the laws which have been given to them," or " There must be some authority within the State to keep its constitution inviolate." In other words, the " good " State, like the good man, is " didhi " — kept secure by faith, steadfast so long as faith holds unquestioned sway. But this condition falls far short of the condition of the Ideal State, in which the Philosophy of the King is itself the all-sufficient security for all time, even as in the Ideal soul, knowledge, sup- planting faith or prudence, makes righteousness eternal by its own power. This distinction is really vital : to disregard it is to miss the whole meaning of the Republic. But most readers — and, I think, most commentators — fail to recognise the distinction. Misled by the subtlety of Plato's method of presenting the truth, they 176 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO imagine that the Aristocratic State is the same as the Ideal State, and the Aristocratic man the same as the Philosopher- King ; whereas they are in both cases totally and radically different. I must, at this point, make this assertion dogmati- cally. For the benefit of commentators, I have added an argu- mentative note at the close of this chapter ; for the benefit of ordinary readers, I will add here one or two considerations which may help to make the matter clear. The essential characteristics of the ideal condition, for both the individual soul and for society, are elsewhere described by Plato as being two, namely, Im- mortahty and Unity. In the central books of the Republic the necessary unity is secured for the State by absolute fideUty to the principle of " having all things in common," including husbands and wives and children. There is to be no family Ufe : no child has a particular father or mother, no citizen has a particular wife or husband or child. The necessary im- mortahty is secured, of course, by the reahsation of the eternal spirit or Nous as the sole guide and ruler. The Philosopher- King, by " bringing into existence Nous and Truth," saves both his own soul and his own State. But in the Aristocratic State both these essential characteristics are absent. The guarantee of immortahty is lacking : its rulers are just good guardians, possessing prudence, but not wisdom, dependent for their under- standing of the principles of government upon " inteUigence alloyed with sense," and therefore " unable to attain to the knowledge of the laws of human hfe and decay." That is why the State they rule is not immortal, but must eventually degener- ate. The cause of unity is lacking also. Full community has not been attained : the aristocratic man, we find, is just the head of an ordinary particularist family, whose particular wife and son criticise him because he is too Sattvic and not Rajasic or " pushing " enough to please them. To these two defects the degeneration of the Aristocratic State is due. The reader will have no difficulty in keeping this distinction clear if he bears in mind the peculiar structure of the whole book, remembering that it deals with two very distinct levels of life and reahty and knowledge — a lower or human, and a higher or superhuman. The first four books and the eighth and ninth are concerned with the lower level ; the fifth, sixth and seventh with the higher only. On the lower level we reach a " summit THE DANGERS OF THE LOWER PATH 177 of goodness " which seems to be perfect — until the higher level shows its defects. On the lower level we reach the " good and true " condition of man and State — aristocracy, or the rule of the best — only to find it transcended by a "better best" when the higher level is entered. This, of course, is all in harmony with the paradox of Sattva, which is so famiUar in the old Indian philosophy, but so unfamiliar to us. You reach the summit of Sattva, or goodness, in everything — virtue, knowledge, beauty, Hfe, happiness — only to discover that you are on the top of a mole-hill, and that the real Himalayan peaks are above the clouds. So it is with Plato. He discourses, in the lower-level books, on goodness or perfection for man and State, just as though there were no upper world beyond the clouds of sense- perception and the changing phenomena of hfe. And if the central books of the Republic had never been written, we should never have guessed the existence of the real perfection or of the true ideal. At the end of the fourth book he pretends that he has finished his quest, and has found the highest form of righteous man and righteous State. So we should all have thought, unless the three following books had shown " that he had an even better account to give of both State and man." He even says that the highest condition (on the lower level) may be called either aristocracy (that is, government by the best) or monarchy. " It does not matter which term is used." But it does matter enormously, as the three succeeding books plainly show ; for real monarchy (government by the King or the spiritual power which is far above the human best) is on a different plane al- together, and belongs to another world, the really ideal world. Similarly, the account of the degeneration of the " good and true State " in Books VIII and IX is begun and carried through as i though this really ideal condition had never been mentioned. He speaks of there being five possible conditions in regard to the constitutions of States and the dispositions of men, of which Aristocracy is the highest and Tyranny the lowest. This is true — on the lower or human level. But there is a sixth condition, the highest of all, which Books VI and VII have described — the condition of " ImmortaUty and Unity " which the individual soul at least may reach, though not the human State. The account of this highest condition, however, is now finished and done with ; and the discussion proceeds almost as if it had never 178 THE MESSAGE OF PLATO been inserted. There is just one final reference to the really ideal State — at the very end of the ninth book ; and that refer- ence is a definite reminder that we must not regard it as on the same plane as the five States described in Books VIII and IX, but must think of it as " a pattern laid up in heaven."* The relatively perfect or Sattvic condition of both the human State and the human soul is represented by Plato as being subject to an inevitable law of change and decay. It must degenerate some day through its own inherent instability. This does not mean that any good condition of the soul must be merely transitory : that we climb only to fall again. That would be pessimism indeed ! The sole meaning is that there is a danger of falling so long as the highest point is not reached, or so long as real knowledge of the Real Good is not yet attained. No soul need fall back at any point in its ascent ; but it cannot stand still : the danger of a fall is always present, and the only escape from the danger is continual progress upwards until the final goal is found. But the very best human society is bound to fall repeatedly : its progress can never reach to the absolute Good : its constitution can never escape from the " Qualities " or the combination of different classes of individuals representing unequal levels of moral development : it carries the causes of instability within its very being : it is permanently bound to the wheel of change. The causes of degeneration, whether for the good State or for the good soul, appear, from Plato's account, to be of two quite different kinds. There are, first, the obvious internal defects of imperfect knowledge and the presence of Rajasic or Tamasic tendencies. The governing element is prudence or intelligence, which rules by keeping the two lower elements in subjection. It has not yet been transmuted into the wisdom which alone * It will thus be seen that for Plato, as for Aristotle, there were six possible conditions for the inidvidual soul in respect to goodness and badness. The highest is, for both, " something