4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better
not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his
own person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of
evil; he is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence,
became acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore,
according to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man
according to Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy.
The bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge
of virtue. It may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection
is well founded. In a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged
that the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. The union of
gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet
was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have
found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence
of it. There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight
into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural
sense independent of any special experience of good or evil.
5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek
and also very different from anything which existed at all in his age
of the world, is the transposition of ranks. In the Spartan state there
had been enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under
special circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit
was certainly recognized as one of the elements on which government was
based. The founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors,
who were raised by their great actions above the ordinary level of
humanity; at a later period, the services of warriors and legislators
were held to entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of
citizenship and to the first rank in the state. And although the
existence of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains
of early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such a
character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual Hellenic
state—or indeed to any state which has ever existed in the world—still
the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of philosophers, who
probably accommodated a good deal their views of primitive history to
their own notions of good government. Plato further insists on applying
to the guardians of his state a series of tests by which all those who
fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing
body, or not admitted to it; and this ‘academic’ discipline did to a
certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. He also
indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of
the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world,
should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware