Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is also
noticeable. Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the mathematician
is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense which recognizes and
combines first principles (531 E). The contempt which he expresses at p.
533 for distinctions of words, the danger of involuntary falsehood, the
apology which Socrates makes for his earnestness of speech, are highly
characteristic of the Platonic style and mode of thought. The quaint
notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon could not
have counted his feet; the art by which we are made to believe that this
State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity with which the first step
is taken in the actual creation of the State, namely, the sending out of
the city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the
business of education by a generation, are also truly Platonic. (For the
last, compare the passage at the end of the third book (415 D), in which
he expects the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the second
generation.)
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Republic VIII._ Analysis.]
BOOK VIII. *543* And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that in the
perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and the education
and pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common,
and kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the
State are to live together, {cxvi} having all things in common; and they
are to be warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the
other citizens. Now let us return to the point at which we digressed.
'That is easily done,' he replied: 'You were speaking of the State which
you had constructed, and of the individual who answered to this, both of
whom you affirmed to be good; *544* and you said that of inferior States
there were four forms and four individuals corresponding to them, which
although deficient in various degrees, were all of them worth inspecting
with a view to determining the relative happiness or misery of the best or
worst man. Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led
to another argument,--and so here we are.' Suppose that we put ourselves
again in the same position, and do you repeat your question. 'I should
like to know of what constitutions you were speaking?' Besides the perfect
State there are only four of any note in Hellas:--first, the famous
Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of
evils; thirdly, democracy, which follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny,
which is the disease or death of all government. Now, States are not made
of 'oak and rock,' but of flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five
States there must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond
to them. And first, there is the ambitious nature, *545* which answers to
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