Some confusion occurs in the passage in which Plato speaks of the Republic, occasioned by his reference to a third state, which he proposes (D.V.) hereafter to expound. Like many other thoughts in the Laws, the allusion is obscure from not being worked out. Aristotle (Polit.) speaks of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor the best under existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior to either, destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of life apparently such a beginning of primitive society as is described in Laws iii. But it is not clear that by this the third state of Plato is intended. It is possible that Plato may have meant by his third state an historical sketch, bearing the same relation to the Laws which the unfinished Critias would have borne to the Republic; or he may, perhaps, have intended to describe a state more nearly approximating than the Laws to existing Greek states.
The Statesman is a mere fragment when compared with the Laws, yet combining a second interest of dialectic as well as politics, which is wanting in the larger work. Several points of similarity and contrast may be observed between them. In some respects the Statesman is even more ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of paradisiacal life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic looks forward to a coming kingdom of philosophers. Of this kingdom of Cronos there is also mention in the Laws. Again, in the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger rises above law to the conception of the living voice of the lawgiver, who is able to provide for individual cases. A similar thought is repeated in the Laws: 'If in the order of nature, and by divine destiny, a man were able to apprehend the truth about these things, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no law or order above knowledge, nor can mind without impiety be deemed the subject or slave of any, but rather the lord of all.' The union of opposite natures, who form the warp and the woof of the political web, is a favourite thought which occurs in both dialogues (Laws; Statesman).
The Laws are confessedly a Second-best, an inferior Ideal, to which Plato has recourse, when he finds that the city of Philosophers is no longer 'within the horizon of practical politics.' But it is curious to observe that the higher Ideal is always returning (compare Arist. Polit.), and that he is not much nearer the actual fact, nor more on the level of ordinary life in the Laws than in the Republic. It is also interesting to remark that the new Ideal is always falling away, and that he hardly supposes the one to be more capable of being realized than the other. Human beings are troublesome to manage; and the legislator cannot adapt his enactments to the infinite variety of circumstances; after all he must leave the administration of them to his successors; and though he would have liked to make them as permanent as they are in Egypt, he cannot escape from the necessity of change. At length Plato is obliged to institute a Nocturnal Council which is supposed to retain the mind of the legislator, and of which some of the members are even supposed to go abroad and inspect the institutions of foreign countries, as a foundation for changes in their own. The spirit of such changes, though avoiding the extravagance of a popular assembly, being only so much change as the conservative temper of old members is likely to allow, is nevertheless inconsistent with the fixedness of Egypt which Plato wishes to impress upon Hellenic institutions. He is inconsistent with himself as the truth begins to dawn upon him that 'in the execution things for the most part fall short of our conception of them' (Republic).
And is not this true of ideals of government in general? We are always disappointed in them. Nothing great can be accomplished in the short space of human life; wherefore also we look forward to another (Republic). As we grow old, we are sensible that we have no power actively to pursue our ideals any longer. We have had our opportunity and do not aspire to be more than men: we have received our 'wages and are going home.' Neither do we despair of the future of mankind, because we have been able to do so little in comparison of the whole. We look in vain for consistency either in men or things. But we have seen enough of improvement in our own time to justify us in the belief that the world is worth working for and that a good man's life is not thrown away. Such reflections may help us to bring home to ourselves by inward sympathy the language of Plato in the Laws, and to combine into something like a whole his various and at first sight inconsistent utterances.
VI. The Republic may be described as the Spartan constitution appended to a government of philosophers. But in the Laws an Athenian element is also introduced. Many enactments are taken from the Athenian; the four classes are borrowed from the constitution of Cleisthenes, which Plato regards as the best form of Athenian government, and the guardians of the law bear a certain resemblance to the archons. In the constitution of the Laws nearly all officers are elected by a vote more or less popular and by lot. But the assembly only exists for the purposes of election, and has no legislative or executive powers. The Nocturnal Council, which is the highest body in the state, has several of the functions of the ancient Athenian Areopagus, after which it appears to be modelled. Life is to wear, as at Athens, a joyous and festive look; there are to be Bacchic choruses, and men of mature age are encouraged in moderate potations. On the other hand, the common meals, the public education, the crypteia are borrowed from Sparta and not from Athens, and the superintendence of private life, which was to be practised by the governors, has also its prototype in Sparta. The extravagant dislike which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the reverse of Athenian.
The best-governed Hellenic states traced the origin of their laws to individual lawgivers. These were real persons, though we are uncertain how far they originated or only modified the institutions which are ascribed to them. But the lawgiver, though not a myth, was a fixed idea in the mind of the Greek, as fixed as the Trojan war or the earth-born Cadmus. 'This was what Solon meant or said' was the form in which the Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a disputed point of law. And the constant reference in the Laws of Plato to the lawgiver is altogether in accordance with Greek modes of thinking and speaking.
There is also, as in the Republic, a Pythagorean element. The highest branch of education is arithmetic; to know the order of the heavenly bodies, and to reconcile the apparent contradiction of their movements, is an important part of religion; the lives of the citizens are to have a common measure, as also their vessels and coins; the great blessing of the state is the number 5040. Plato is deeply impressed by the antiquity of Egypt, and the unchangeableness of her ancient forms of song and dance. And he is also struck by the progress which the Egyptians had made in the mathematical sciences in comparison of them the Greeks appeared to him to be little better than swine. Yet he censures the Egyptian meanness and inhospitality to strangers. He has traced the growth of states from their rude beginnings in a philosophical spirit; but of any life or growth of the Hellenic world in future ages he is silent. He has made the reflection that past time is the maker of states (Book iii.); but he does not argue from the past to the future, that the process is always going on, or that the institutions of nations are relative to their stage of civilization. If he could have stamped indelibly upon Hellenic states the will of the legislator, he would have been satisfied. The utmost which he expects of future generations is that they should supply the omissions, or correct the errors which younger statesmen detect in his enactments. When institutions have been once subjected to this process of criticism, he would have them fixed for ever.
THE PREAMBLE.
BOOK I. Strangers, let me ask a question of you Was a God or a man the author of your laws? 'A God, Stranger. In Crete, Zeus is said to have been the author of them; in Sparta, as Megillus will tell you, Apollo.' You Cretans believe, as Homer says, that Minos went every ninth year to converse with his Olympian sire, and gave you laws which he brought from him. 'Yes; and there was Rhadamanthus, his brother, who is reputed among us to have been a most righteous judge.' That is a reputation worthy of the son of Zeus. And as you and Megillus have been trained under these laws, I may ask you to give me an account of them. We can talk about them in our walk from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus. I am told that the distance is considerable, but probably there are shady places under the trees, where, being no longer young, we may often rest and converse. 'Yes, Stranger, a little onward there are beautiful groves of cypresses, and green meadows in which we may repose.'
My first question is, Why has the law ordained that you should have common meals, and practise gymnastics, and bear arms? 'My answer is, that all our institutions are of a military character. We lead the life of the camp even in time of peace, keeping up the organization of an army, and having meals in common; and as our country, owing to its ruggedness, is ill-suited for heavy-armed cavalry or infantry, our soldiers are archers, equipped with bows and arrows. The legislator was under the idea that war was the natural state of all mankind, and that peace is only a pretence; he thought that no possessions had any value which were not secured against enemies.' And do you think that superiority in war is the proper aim of government? 'Certainly I do, and my Spartan friend will agree with me.' And are there wars, not only of state against state, but of village against village, of family against family, of individual against individual? 'Yes.' And is a man his own enemy? 'There you come to first principles, like a true votary of the goddess Athene; and this is all the better, for you will the sooner recognize the truth of what I am saying that all men everywhere are the enemies of all, and each individual of every other and of himself; and, further, that there is a victory and defeat the best and the worst which each man sustains, not at the hands of another, but of himself.' And does this extend to states and villages as well as to individuals? 'Certainly; there is a better in them which conquers or is conquered by the worse.' Whether the worse ever really conquers the better, is a question which may be left for the present; but your meaning is, that bad citizens do sometimes overcome the good, and that the state is then conquered by herself, and that when they are defeated the state is victorious over herself. Or, again, in a family there may be several brothers, and the bad may be a majority; and when the bad majority conquer the good minority, the family are worse than themselves. The use of the terms 'better or worse than himself or themselves' may be doubtful, but about the thing meant there can be no dispute. 'Very true.' Such a struggle might be determined by a judge. And which will be the better judge he who destroys the worse and lets the better rule, or he who lets the better rule and makes the others voluntarily obey; or, thirdly, he who destroys no one, but reconciles the two parties? 'The last, clearly.' But the object of such a judge or legislator would not be war. 'True.' And as there are two kinds of war, one without and one within a state, of which the internal is by far the worse, will not the legislator chiefly direct his attention to this latter? He will reconcile the contending factions, and unite them against their external enemies. 'Certainly.' Every legislator will aim at the greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil or external, but mutual peace and good-will, as in the body health is preferable to the purgation of disease. He who makes war his object instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not a true statesman. 'And yet, Stranger, the laws both of Crete and Sparta aim entirely at war.' Perhaps so; but do not let us quarrel about your legislators let us be gentle; they were in earnest quite as much as we are, and we must try to discover their meaning. The poet Tyrtaeus (you know his poems in Crete, and my Lacedaemonian friend is only too familiar with them) he was an Athenian by birth, and a Spartan citizen: 'Well,' he says, 'I sing not, I care not about any man, however rich or happy, unless he is brave in war.' Now I should like, in the name of us all, to ask the poet a question. Oh Tyrtaeus, I would say to him, we agree with you in praising those who excel in war, but which kind of war do you mean? that dreadful war which is termed civil, or the milder sort which is waged against foreign enemies? You say that you abominate 'those who are not eager to taste their enemies' blood,' and you seem to mean chiefly their foreign enemies. 'Certainly he does.' But we contend that there are men better far than your heroes, Tyrtaeus, concerning whom another poet, Theognis the Sicilian, says that 'in a civil broil they are worth their weight in gold and silver.' For in a civil war, not only courage, but justice and temperance and wisdom are required, and all virtue is better than a part. The mercenary soldier is ready to die at his post; yet he is commonly a violent, senseless creature. And the legislator, whether inspired or uninspired, will make laws with a view to the highest virtue; and this is not brute courage, but loyalty in the hour of danger. The virtue of Tyrtaeus, although needful enough in his own time, is really of a fourth-rate description. 'You are degrading our legislator to a very low level.' Nay, we degrade not him, but ourselves, if we believe that the laws of Lycurgus and Minos had a view to war only. A divine lawgiver would have had regard to all the different kinds of virtue, and have arranged his laws in corresponding classes, and not in the modern fashion, which only makes them after the want of them is felt, about inheritances and heiresses and assaults, and the like. As you truly said, virtue is the business of the legislator; but you went wrong when you referred all legislation to a part of virtue, and to an inferior part. For the object of laws, whether the Cretan or any other, is to make men happy. Now happiness or good is of two kinds there are divine and there are human goods. He who has the divine has the human added to him; but he who has lost the greater is deprived of both. The lesser goods are health, beauty, strength, and, lastly, wealth; not the blind God, Pluto, but one who has eyes to see and follow wisdom. For mind or wisdom is the most divine of all goods; and next comes temperance, and justice springs from the union of wisdom and temperance with courage, which is the fourth or last. These four precede other goods, and the legislator will arrange all his ordinances accordingly, the human going back to the divine, and the divine to their leader mind. There will be enactments about marriage, about education, about all the states and feelings and experiences of men and women, at every age, in weal and woe, in war and peace; upon all the law will fix a stamp of praise and blame. There will also be regulations about property and expenditure, about contracts, about rewards and punishments, and finally about funeral rites and honours of the dead. The lawgiver will appoint guardians to preside over these things; and mind will harmonize his ordinances, and show them to be in agreement with temperance and justice. Now I want to know whether the same principles are observed in the laws of Lycurgus and Minos, or, as I should rather say, of Apollo and Zeus. We must go through the virtues, beginning with courage, and then we will show that what has preceded has relation to virtue.