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. The contempt which he
expresses 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, in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men
to be believed in the second generation.)
BOOK VIII. 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, 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; 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, which answers to the Lacedaemonian
State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical;
and fourthly, the tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with