Message of Plato

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
.î^ OF 9mce>
JUN 20 1936 )
'\ /
THE
MESSAGE OF 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
HAVE attempted in this book the very bold task of

I 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.
II
Doctrine ...
The Quest OF Socrates :
The Vedic Interpretation of Human Life

......
the Western Ancestry of Plato's
: the Eastern
i
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
IV.
State ..........
of Righteousness? " and the Construction of the Good
;
Analysis of the "Republic," Book II (part) and Books III

42
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
VI.
Philosopher .........
Husbands, Wives and Children ;
;
the Kingship of the
An Explanatory Chapter Concerning the Conception of the

79
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 .
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
Analysis of the " Republic," Books VIII and IX The Causes
XI.
X.
...........
OF THE Degeneration of the Good State and of the Good
Man

The Tenth Book OF THE "Republic" The Banishment of Art
165
and the Law of Reincarnation .....

and Poetry and the Account of the Soul's Immortality,
192
PART V
Summary and Discussion
XII. Discussion of the Doctrine in the Light of Modern Thought 220
Index and Glossary 261

PART I
THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH
CHAPTER I
THE QUEST OF SOCRATES. THE WESTERN ANCESTRY OF

PLATO'S DOCTRINE.
He was
PLATO was the disciple of Socrates.
pupil of a great teacher : he was the
not the
disciple of a great
This relationship is quite unfamiliar to us, at
master.
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 ifshow that the teaching was
to
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
all those metaphysical and ethical conun-
elaborate discussion of
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 ? Whatthe relation of action to knowledge ? What
is
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, re-defining, re-combining, what his prede-
criticising,
cessors had him, sometimes failing altogether to reach a
left
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 ?
This a very natural view to take, especially for those who

is
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 ?

Now this
is just the difference between philosophy as we think
of or look for it in the writings of Plato or anyone else, and

it
" 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 out to find life,
is 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. was not knowledge or truth which he sought, as we seek
It
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
taught ? What and ignorance ? What is false
are knowledge
opinion ? WTiatthe One ? What are the Many ? What is
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 toit. 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 both the master and the

this vital difference, which, for
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 darkening knowledge. But, for whom
folly
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."
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
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 and joy grief
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 overjoyed 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
wisdom to others.
to discourse 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,
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 pleasureand 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
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 is always
that the picture of Socrates
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 ?

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-
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. I boldly make the claim that the Platonic doctrines
But
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 drawn upwards by the same vision. Definite identities
faith,
of peculiar doctrine aremore 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

pictured as containing two distinct segments or arcs,
a lower and a higher. To each
may be
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

conditioned on all sides
is
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 relation to the supreme reality which is beyond all
its
and above all worlds. In the lower arc, the coping stone
societies
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
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
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 upper arc there are also three qualities or faculties,

in this
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 ; unlike the three qualities of the lower soul, all these
for,
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.

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, maxims of
to take as our final rules of conduct the
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.
/
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.
necessary now to look a Uttle more closely at this Eastern
It is
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 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 more difficult to explain. It denotes not only the
is
faculty of knowing and understanding inteUigence but also the

quahty of goodness and stabihty of character. Regarded as
faculty, it competent to guide the whole man aright on
alone is ;
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
scientificknowledge 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
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
and a state of progressive harmony (very
antithesis to inertia),
differentfrom 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 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 individualswho 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
;
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
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. be enough here to state that it is called,
It will
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-
the Path of Pursuit of ends in the world are elaborated
istics of
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-
/

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,the categories of every science are super-
all
seded. For world of absolute reahty the three funda-
in the
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 wiU come direct from

so certain that illumination
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
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 the fundamental difference between
defined is
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
thispath there always the one answer to the insistent question
is
" 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, sowe 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

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.
;
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
Epithumia. The class next
of ignorant desire 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 no need to dwell upon the similarity of Plato's ontology,
is
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
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
:
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
therefore clear, I think, why I suggest as our English rendering,
I
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
each faculty doing its proper work well, doing the right thing
I

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
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
and thoughts on the lower path and much of
to our activities ;
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 feelingtowards 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
intellect in relation toa universe only apprehended through the

medium of the sense impressionsupon 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
intellectual knowledge of the world we live in. But with Plato,
all and also the whole to which they belong,
these departments,
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

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
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-
i
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
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

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
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 and length of his
therefore, in spite of the elaborateness
treatise, the Laws ; was probably his
in spite of the fact that it
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.
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
drink repeatedly. A
hungry man wants food as often as he is hun-
gry. Alustful 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
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
gods, and so die easily and with a clear conscience. But it has
I
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
sense which apphcable to the habitual and almost unconscious
is
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.
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 But in the meantime, discussion would be thrown
all this.
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
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 For " getting what we want "
all.
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.
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
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
satisfaction of desire. But even

account the emphasis is
in this
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 elsecan 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
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
;
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 Consequences, a
all
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-
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 human
raorahty ? The
of
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 which comes always at last
spiritual ontology, a question
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."
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 on by its charm until he finds himself plunged,
led
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
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 every detail are subordinated. In all our social
its
Utopias the end happiness for all the citizens. Not so in his.
is
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
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
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 isfound 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 and add to its necessary agents of
perfect simpUcity,
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
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
unconscious wants, the simple functionaries who do
satisfiers of
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, only hinted
is
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 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
giveany 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-
way to purify the human soul from the evil
ing only of the best
elements which every normal soul contains, and to set it in tune
60
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 examples of fortitude,
shall only sing of
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
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
the same careful
call it,
insistence upon true principles is seen that

necessary. We have
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
itseducation 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-
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 This is not a stupid criticism of the
requires.
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
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 singleaim 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
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."
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 : aim is to open the eye of the soul, to bring into
his only
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 ; our early education reveal them, for they will be known
let
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
ifwe 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 ;intended far more for the latter than for
and it is
"
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,
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
;
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.

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
and gifts." Or again,
to each its place according to its quahties
" 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.
decide." And whenever mixture of the castes appears,
finally,
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 be clean from the touch of silver and gold

shall :
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.
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 willbe 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
;
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 by a
easily prove the existence of these three qualities
little introspection. Youfyou will find, are frequently
desires,
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.
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
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
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 muchto 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,
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
and
has finished the picture of the perfect life

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
and obvious interpretation of the argument. He is troubled,
literal
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 men bom and educated as he

this Socrates repUes that for
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
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 isa 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
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, ifthe 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.
as possible ; the community
of husbands and wives is particularly
grotesque, and accompanied, in the text, by details whose
is
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
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
have indicated, so long the ordinance is really
ethical character I
supremely important.
I may be wrong, and some extreme eugenist right, as to the
utiUty-value of our strictmonogamous 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
isstrongly 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
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.
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 now
providing for the final purification of the soul
is
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 " retinue of virtues " requisite for the pursuit of wisdom contains,
full
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
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."

conditions poverty, and has presented it vvdthout any difficulty

in a social form, as theordinance 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
its true Ufe, and the freedom from thought
the soul in relation to
of sex which the condition of entrance to the upper path.
is
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 And, in the
earthly nature.
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.
community of wives and husbands and children
Similarly, the
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 the " paradoxes," and the cause of the greatest
all
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
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 : too cold and austere. But, in saying so, we are
it is
not Plato's ordinances, but the injunctions of all pure

criticising,
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 bothhave 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
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 the whole field of strong attachments. In
life
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, am
only concerned with those very rare char-
I
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
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 perfectcommunity, 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 :
" NoState 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."
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
face towards a horizonbeyond which he beUeves there shines the
eternalSun 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.
The conditions of this realisation of the divine within us and

without are, the complete purification of the soul which
first,
alone makes Uberation possible and then the uprising of the

;
true spiritual faculty within the soul into the world of spiritual
realitywhich 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 denoting a wisdom totally different from the knowledge
first
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
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 realknowledge 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
that can be manifest to the faculties with which we or others,
all
it, can feel or see or know.
as part of
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.
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
orderdiscernible 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
This chciin of lives is explained later, when the subject of Reincarnation

1
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.
development of our powers and the enriching of our experience :
that i5 \vhy it is The worldly soul calls

called the great illusion.
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 mi^t call good the waves througji

which one
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 rârd
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

argument again at the point at which he makes his
famous declaration, that there can be no salvation
for human society or human
up the
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
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 towards the justification of his daring
step^
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.
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 amore 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 theargument is interrupted by Adeimantus.

" This very well, Socrates. You have led us on, by insensible
is all
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

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 very simple. Imagine a ship whose cap-
see is
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
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 ever reach anything higher than opinion, or changing
it
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-
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
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,
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
centraltheme of the Republic, the explanation wisdom-
of the
religion towhich 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.
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.
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
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
differentfrom any faculty of mind. The ship's captain, again,
the same way from any of the crew who despise him
differs in ;
forhe 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,
not merely the voice of the passion-swayed assembly, but the
it is
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
soul a too strong attachment to any of the approved " goods "
is
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
man concerning the pertinent objects of his science ;
of a scientific
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.
" 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
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 and
now reach the really difficult
I
part of the Republic
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 can guide him in all his conduct of life, purifying
it
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
they are never non-human. They are our quaUties, infinitely
refined.
But now Plato about to lead us along a path which winds,
is
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
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 forhard 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 distinctionbetween 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.
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, theone 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,
visible objects, or phenomena, by which I mean the whole world

of nature and thirdly, knowable but hypothetical outUnes
art ;
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 a
difficult conception
is 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 thehow 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
help them, although it is not with the visible squares
circles to
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

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
the cavern, and refuse to him go until he had drawn him out
let
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 conclude that the sun
will 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 you must apply this imaginary case in all

friends,
its parts to myformer 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

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
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.
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
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, was wrong to suggest Astronomy as the third in

I
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
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 ;
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 knowable world.
really
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 ;
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
;
leam to love wisdom. Moreover, we must not defer their special

training till too late in I said some time ago that they should
life.
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
common character, all children under ten years old,
and then
wait till grown up into a new and unsullied
these in turn have
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
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.
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
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 ita 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

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
to learn all we can about spirit, not to gain useful information
about matter."
But must leave the intellectualist to make what he can of
I
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
when the worldly faculties have sunk to can the spiritual

rest
faculties be awakened. In another way,it may be noted
also,
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.
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 theHindu 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
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 duty Bhakti Yoga, or the way of devotion to a
of all ;
personal and Gnana Yoga, or the way of full discernment

God ;
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.
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.

an unbroken flow of knowledge concerning a particular object

of thought.
let it be noted that throughout this educational process
But
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

criticismand 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 mind is at last prepared by this educa-
the pupil's
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,
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 Hindu philosophers would
the
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 theNous 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.
be noted that there are two forms of Samadhi, a higher and a lower.
It is to
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.
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 hands of the man prepared by long dis-
in the
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."
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

There is first the
Plato's ordering of the perfect Ufe.
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 .
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 a good Karmi (devotee of
is also
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
:
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 thesecond 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
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 would be given to practical work in the
of fifty
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-
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 it is the consummation of good, the

everything :
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."
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 The
first point I have dealt with
existing.
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-
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
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 only one constitution of soul belonging to all human

is
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.
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
lifeof 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, one with his spiritual pur-
in a Society so fully at
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 human family was ruled in this way its

fall, the :
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
;
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 citizenswho 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 then be the product of the " good
will himself
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
;
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.
; in a sense
Yes Plato was a politician ; but we are forgetting
that he was a philosopher The first. goal of philosophy
wisdom or knowledge of the Goodwas all in all to him but ;
the Sun of Wisdom

hght up everything, the whole conduct
will
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 In the Republic we begin with the Good
gone.^
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.
State is just this : in the latter, Nous with its direct knowledge
of the Good inspires every activity, bound by no law, needing
no no constitution, no ordinances fusing all into a per-
fetters, ;
fect unity of willand 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
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
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 doesthi'^
not entirely overthrow these normal activities ? Are we not,

in other words, thinking of the estabUshment of the Good State,

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
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
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 îs
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 ?
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."
"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
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 of the quaUties and
any confusion or mixture
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.
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 good influence is diminished, and the son

so the father's
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 ;
^ Ithink 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.
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 a natural transition from the preceding stage.
is
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 us turn to the degeneration of the individual soul
let
which corresponds to the decline of the State from OUgarchy to
Democracy. This always involves a transition from the domin-
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
lengths as to invade every social relation. Even slaves are made

free, and the sexes are proclaimed Excess brings reaction,
equal.
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
Tyranny in the State.
genesis of
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 : he has fallen a victim to the delusion of Liberty and
if
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
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

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 fillingup 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
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 part, or make the human part the
say the divine ?)
slave of the wild. And
the recognised virtues and vices are
all
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 every good practice, not that men may think
will follow
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 steadfastness rooted in faith. He is called in

is
the Sanskrit " didhi " that is, soothfast or steadfast, because
:
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 the faculty of decision or will. When the Buddhic con-

is
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.
Book IV and again
Similarly, the aristocratic State, which, in
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 "), the humanly best or Sattvic State
is 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
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. must, at this point, make this assertion dogmati-
I
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 by the reahsation of the eternal
secured, of course,
spirit or Nous The Philosopher-
as the sole guide and ruler.
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
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
;
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 a definite reminder that we must not regard it as on the
is
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 imperfectknowledge 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 <livine " (as Aristotle also calls it) the lowest is " some-
;
thing beastlike." But it is characteristic of the whole difference between the

two philosophers that, whereas Aristotle dismisses the highest form of goodness
with a single phrase, and devotes all his attention to the intermediate (or humanly
intelligible) forms, Plato's deepest interest is centred in that highest form, the
" something divine," and is only given in a secondary degree to the lower forms.

Or to put the difference in another way Aristotle regards the condition of
absolute perfection as something which can be imagined indeed but cannot possi-
bly be made real while Plato regards it as the only reality, all the lower forms
;
being but quasi-real. It would be difficult to find a better example of the differ-
ence between the intellectualist and the true mystic.
is capable of changing the very nature of the lower elements.

And so long as Rajas and Tamas exist in a form capable of
Rajasic and Tamasic aai\dty, so long is the eqmlibrium, secured
by the authority of prudence, liable to disturbance. In the
second place, there is an apparently very different cause which
operates in the case of every existing thing possessing a mortal
nature. This is represented as a cycUcal law of decay, and appears
to be external to and independent of the character or disposition
of any individual soul or society. It resembles a cosmic force,
which no virtue or prudence can resist. But this is not the true
account of it. It is a universal cosmic law but it is no more
:
something external to the individual's character than is fate

or destiny ^which it very closely resembles. For it is only one
aspect of the great law of Karma, by which every being in every
kingdom of existence (short of the purely spiritual) is forced to
return from a higher to a lower level of Ufe and experience, if
there is in it any live germ of impulse towards the satisfactions
and activities of that lower leveL Put plainly in moral terms,
the law means that, if in any soul there still*remains any hanker-
ing after honours or any desire for the satisfactions which make
up our human notion of happiness, that soul must inevitably
come back to a Ufe in which ambition or pursuit of happiness
will be a ruling motive.
Two things, however, are ob\'ious. This cosmic law of Karma
is not something external to the individual choice and character.
In so far as the soul possesses the power not only to subjugate

but actually to transform its desires ^to change the heart, in
fact it possesses also the power to make its own Karma, and
eventually to rise above Karma altogether. And, further, the

law is seen to be simply another aspect of the fact of the existence
of the three Qualities. It is, indeed, the law of the activity of

Rajas and Tamas in relation to Sattva ; or in regard to moral
life the law of desire in relation to equanimity. It is the law
of destiny, indeed ; but the destiny is our own creation, the
result of our own conscious actions and our own conscious
desires.
Now Plato introduces all these connected causes clearly
enough in his accoimt of the degeneration of the aristocratic
State and man. The defective knowledge of the Guardians is
there as the deepest cause, the explanation of the very possibiUty
of change according to Karaiic law. The tendency to Rajasic
activity is there also the
explanation of the Timocratic form
immediately assumed by State and man when the first change
takes place. And the Karmic law is introduced as the instru-
mental cause of change, not in its general form, but in the form
in which it operates most strikingly, namely, as the law of
human births, or of the return of souls to human existence.^
Plato expresses this Karmic law, in so far as it affects the con-
tinued re-peopling of his good State, as a kind of cycUcal law,
or necessary revolution of the wheel of change at the end of some
definite cycle. And he indicates the length of the cycle by a
very elaborate and whollyincomprehensible mathematical
calculation. Concerning the only two comments are
latter,
necessary. First, it is fairly certain that we have lost the clue to
its meaning, and are not likely to discover it now by any exercise
of ingenuity. Secondly, it is not in the least important that we
should understand it even if such a cycle exists, and if its
:
length can be known, the knowledge of it would not in the very

slightest degree assist our moral or spiritual progress. At the
same time, I am very far from suggesting that Plato introduces
the calculation as a sort of elaborate satire on the occult use of
numbers. He is perfectly serious he believes in the existence
;
of the cycle and in the possibility of knowing its duration. He

was profoundly impressed by the mystical use of numbers of
which Pythagoras appears to have made so much use he ;
adopted the Pythagorean interpretation of the meaning of num-

bers as the basis of the first of his " higher sciences " he evi- ;
dently adopted it also as an aid in the interpretation of the

highest truth. 2 And it is clear from his own references to Pytha-
goras that he had far too much reverence for the latter's teaching
to treat any part of it as a joke. It is safe to assume, therefore,
that in this passage, and perhaps also in the simpler passage in
Book IX concerning the distance which separates the tyrant
from the good man, Plato is expressing a serious meaning which
we cannot now understand. We may note, moreover, that this
1 The law of reincarnation is also the most popular form of the cosmic law
of Karma, and it is, of course, the same as the law of births which Plato refers to.
For, according to the Eastern doctrine of reincarnation which he fully accepts,
all humanbirths are rd-births of souls into particular human bodies with particu-
lar stations in society. The birth of wrong souls into the three great classes of
the State is the mode by which its decline takes place.
See the account of his public lecture on the Good, given elsewhere.
very same occult use of numbers is characteristic, not only of

Pythagoras, but of the Indian philosophy from which both
Pythagoras and Plato derived so much. It is not a part of the
Vedanta teaching, which is wholly free from anything approach-
ing occultism ;but it is a conspicuous element in the general
doctrines of Hinduism. There you will find the same elaborate
calculations of cycles, which define the term of existence for all
sorts of created things. There is an exact cycle expressing the
duration of the phenomenal universe (any Brahman will tell
you how many millions and thousands of years make up each
Kalpa of creation, as it is called) ; there are also cycles for the
growth of each body, for the development of each soul, for the
length of time spent in each heaven or hell, and so on. I do not
know or care enough about the subject to say whether or not
the occult numbers of Hinduism might throw any light on the
cycle of Plato's good State. It is quite possible that they would.
The much simpler calculation by which, in Book IX, Plato
shows that the aristocratic soul is 729 times happier than the
tyrannical soul, does not call for much comment. Its apphcation,
if not its whole meaning, is plain enough. The good or aristo-
cratic soul is wholly happy : we may represent his happiness
by the integer i. The oligarchical soul, third in the downward
scale, can have but ^ of this amount of happiness ; and
the tyrannical soul, third in the downward descent from the
oligarch, can have but J of the oligarch's happiness
that is, i of the aristocrat's. But this is making the cal-
culation on the assumption that happiness may be represented
by lines on a plane surface, whereas, of course, it is a very soUd
thing, and can only be fairly represented by a solid figure. Conse-
quently, to get a true representation of the facts, we must cube
our numbers : i, \ and i thus become i, ^V, ris; and ihis is the
true measure of the proportion of happiness which the different
souls enjoy. And, since the number 729 corresponds almost
exactly with the number of days and nights in every year, we
are entitled to say that the good soul enjoys as much happiness
in a single day or night as the tyrant enjoys in a whole year.
It is not hkely that Plato attached any very serious importance
to this ingenious calculation. It is just a graphic and popular
mode of enforcing his point. The whole of the second half of
Book IX is, as I have said, on a popular level. Its arguments
concerning the relative advantages and disadvantages of
righteousness and unrighteousness are intended to appeal to
readers who do not appreciate the deeper teaching of the central
books. They are unnecessary and beside the point so far as the
Real Philosopher is concerned. His condition is absolute and
infinite no comparison with any ordinary human condition is
:
possible. But on the human or lower level the degrees of happi-

ness or misery according to the accompanying degrees of
righteousness or unrighteousness are worth explaining :the
arguments given to press home the point are both serious and

valuable on the popular level.
This fact of the popular character of the books we are now
considering is the clue to the contradictions which they contain.
Of these there are several. The greatest of all is the one which
I have already discussed enough I mean, the apparent con-
fusion between the good man and the true Philosopher, or
between the highest relative goodness and the real or absolute
goodness, which runs all through the simpler books. This
dehberate fusion of the two " ideals " is very marked at the
end of Book IX, where the human and the divine, the man and
the God in man, are spoken of as if they were the same, and
where the terms Aristocratic and Royal are dehberately
" reckoned as one." It is to be noted, also, that Plato allows
himself to carry this contradiction into details. We have been
told in the central books that equality of the sexes is one of the
essential characteristics of the really ideal State. In the eighth
book this very characteristic is treated as something positively
dreadful, a sign of real degradation. Equality of the sexes, hke
equahty and liberty applied to slaves and animals, is one of the
viciousmarks of democracy !
An even more glaring contradiction occurs in the psychology

upon which the arguments rest. In the eighth book we have
the exact and right explanation of the two lower of the three
QuaUties, according to Indian philosophy. Thumos or Rajas,
the restless element, carries the double meaning of love of honour,
or ambition, and love of gain, or devotion to profit-making ;
while Epithumia, or Tamas, the desiring element, connotes the
appetites or desires for all kinds of sensual enjoyments. These
meanings are essential to the whole argument only thus is it
;
possible to explain, by reference to the uprising force of Rajas,

THE DANGERS OF THE LOW^R PATH 183
the emergence of the two leading types of the pushing man of

affairs, who is very much a man of the world, worldly (whether
honour or gain is his object), but not at all a slave of the flesh,
as are all the representatives of Tamas, the followers of sense-
pleasure ; while the Tamasic element alone is the explanation
of the two lowest types, the democrat and the tyrant, who are
entirely at the mercy of the lusts of the flesh. This, as I have
said, is the correct psychology, according to the Vedanta system,
in which Rajas is definitely connected with the double object
power and profitwhile Tamas is equally definitely confined to
sense-pleasure. But in Book IX Plato entirely contradicts this,
and returns to the ordinary meanings of the Greek terms, limiting
Thumos (the element of high spirit) to love of power, and making
love of gain the leading characteristic of Epithumia (desire in the
ordinary sense). By so doing, he simply obliterates the whole
distinction upon which the account of the degeneration of soul
and State depends.
Now this contradiction is not only easy to explain, but is
exactly what we should expect to find. For us, as for a Greek,

it is a real strain to make our psychological terms correspond to
the Sanskrit connotations. " Anger " (the passionate or high-
spirited element) does not naturally connote desire for anything,
though it is possible to make it include love of honour or dignity ;
while " desire " covers the whole range of conscious aiming at
satisfactions, including desire for money. We may, by an
effort, keep the terms in correspondence with the Indian mean-
ings, so long as we are working out an argument on Indian hues.
But as soon as we come back to our ordinary discussions, we are
quite sure to fall back into the meanings appropriate in our own
psychology. This and the fact is
is exactly what Plato does :
the very strongest proof of the influence of Indian thought upon

his philosophy. So long as he is working out his argument along

the Unes of Indian philosophy as he does not only in the central

books but also in a great part of the simpler books he manages
to keep his terms in fairly close harmony with the Indian mean-
ings. But when he returns to popular arguments on ordinary
lines, he reverts to the accepted Greek psychology, using its
terms in their natural connotations. And it will be observed
that all the arguments relating to the connection between
Righteousness and its rewards (or happiness as we understand
it)are on a popular level, and are not in any way connected
with Indian thought or Vedanta philosophy. Hence the con-
tradictions which those arguments contain.
There is one of the popular arguments in the ninth book
which calls for a short comment. Plato bases part of his plea
for the reahty of the good man's happiness upon an assumed
difference in kind between the objects of our desires. This
raises, in a rather crude form, the question dear to moral philos-
ophers, whether pleasures can be said to differ in kind. To
many such philosophers, especially the Utihtarians, this ques-
tion isof real importance ; but not to Plato. He would admit,
of course, that a love of amusements is better than a passion for
drink, even as the Democratic man is better than the Tyrant
or that a passion for distinction is better than a passion for
financial success, even as Timocracy is better than Oligarchy.
But none of these differences is vital. Pleasures, in the sense
of satisfactions of the aims of the self, do not reaDy differ in
kind, though perhaps we may speak of different species related
to the psychical condition indicated by the desire, and to the

grade of development reached as well as to the social conse-
quences involved. But the only genuine difference between
objects of pursuit is that which distinguishes, for example, the
love of truth from the love of honours or of gain, or from any
other attachment in which the self is the centre. And the distinc-
tion is this in the one case the aim is as nearly as possible dis-
:
interested ; in all other cases, the self-satisfaction is the obvious

motive.
It is very noticeable that, in summing up the relative values
of the objects pursued by each of the three Quahties, and of the
happiness derived from the pursuit, Plato does not take into
account at all their social reactions. It has been maintained
(e.g. by Mr. Temple in his Plato and Christianity) that the
" governing principle " which determined Plato's analysis of
the soul was a social principle, consisting of the simple fact that
" there are three primary relations in which a man may stand
to other men, and there are only three. He may ignore them,
he may compete with them, and he may co-operate with them."
Consequently the really important fact concerning the three
qualities or faculties of the soul is their relation to the socially
important process of co-operation. The Logistikon, the highest.
is altogether good because it involves complete co-operation
with others Epithumia, the lowest, is bad, because it is quite

;
self-centred Thumos, the middle faculty, is partly good and

;

partly bad because it is always competitive and competition
is a kind of distorted co-operation. I have already dealt with
this attempt to force into Plato's teaching a meaning which is
primarily social. I would only point out here that, if this is his
meaning, he very successfully misses the opportunity of saying
so. All through his summing up of the gains which accrue from
the dominance of the Logistikon (or Sattva) and the disadvantages
resulting from the dominance of either of the other quahties, he
has no word to say about the social benefits or drawbacks in-
volved. He simply does not think of them at all his whole
:
interest is individuahstic, centred in the individual soul and its

happiness or misery. Is it not clear once more that it is the
relation to the soul's hfe and progress, not the relation to social
well-being, which furnishes the principle determining his psycho-
logical distinctions ?
There is, however, one passage in the ninth book which shows
very clearly how and to what extent the social considerations

must be taken into account and shows also how completely
they are subordinated to the theme of individual well-being.
In discussing the essential wretchedness of the tyrannical con-
dition of the soul, Plato expressly says that the tyrant cannot
be said to have reached the lowest depth of misery until he is
forced to tyrannise over others as well as suffer tyranny in his
own soul. The significance of this remark Hes in its bearing upon
the return to active hfe of the Royal soul, insisted upon in
Book VII. These two, the Philosopher-King and the Tyrant,
are at the extreme ends of the scale of Righteousness and Un-
righteousness, of happiness and unhappiness. Each is therefore
a perfect representative of the extreme to which he belongs.
The King is wholly attuned to a single principle, his divine
faculty of Nous the tyrant is wholly enslaved to a single ele-
;
ment, a ravening, bestial lust. The King is utterly at peace

within, for his soul is in harmony with the unchanging reahty
of the Good the tyrant's soul is all discord, because, although

;
it is in subjection to a single element, that element is itself the
very acme of discordant jarring, namely, vice at its worst. We

naturally expect, as Glaucon did, that we may further assume
each to represent, in himself, the extreme of happiness or misery.
In fact, the whole argument has gone to show that these two
representatives of Righteousness and Unrighteousness do really
reach the extremes of happiness and unhappiness, in the con-
dition of their own individual souls, apart from any relation to
their social setting. This is the great contention of the book.
And yet Plato insists that the hmit is not quite reached for
either until each is forced to function actively according to his
nature in his society : the Philosopher- King must come back
to earth to guide his people, the tyrant must exercise his tyranny
over others, if the full significance of the quaUties of each is to
be seen. For each manifests himself most completely in action :
each reahses his full potentiahty for good or for evil only " by
doing his right work rightly." The Philosopher is most kingly
only when he is saving his State ; the tyrant is utterly a tyrant
only when he is ruining his State by oppressing it.
The concluding sentences of the ninth book are yet more
significant. Glaucon is driven to confess at last that he no longer
beUeves in the possible reahsation of the Ideal State and
;
Socrates repUes that it does not matter whether or not it can

become a reahty on earth. It is only needed as a divine pattern
for the guidance of individual souls in the management of their
own Uves. Thus the Ideal society, so long dangled before our
earth-bound vision as a lure to lead us on in the quest for divine
truth, is finaUy drawn up into the spiritual realm to which it
has always belonged. This is, I think, a final confirmation of
the interpretation I have put forward throughout of the real
purpose of the " pohtical analogy " and of the picture of the ideal
community. In this work, at any rate, Plato's teaching is not
intended to be appHed poHtically or socially. We are taught the
way of the good soul, not the way of the good State the govern-
;
ance of the individual hfe is the dominant theme from beginning

to end, not the management of any social community. The
Republic contains no Utopia, but only a " heavenly model " of
the perfect constitution, which the soul of man may copy, and
so be saved. " In heaven there is laid up a pattern of it, me-
thinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding may
set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or
ever will in fact exist, is no matter for he will Hve after the
;
manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other."

Note. Concerning the distinction between the Ideal State and the
Aristocratic State.
The sharp distinction which I have assumed between the Ideal

State and the Aristocratic State, and between the Philosopher-King
and the Aristocratic man, has not, I believe, been recognised by
commentators. I must therefore explain more fully the reasons which
justify the distinction.
If any reader is familiar with the old Hindu philosophy, and also
accepts my contention that Plato's deepest philosophy is very closely
akin to it, then he will need no further arguments to convince him that
the ideally righteous man or State cannot possibly be the one whose
degeneration is described. No degeneration can befall that which is
beyond the Qualities for it no longer contains the seeds of instability,
;
whether these take the form of defective knowledge or excess of rest-

lessness or of the deeper ignorance which is vice. No decline is possible
for the really " converted " soul nor would it be possible for a really
;

religious society if such a thing could exist. This Plato definitely
admits, by implication, at any rate, if not explicitly. His description
of the Philosopher-King is quite patently the description of a soul
which has united with the Good, never again to be separated from it.
His account of the Philosophic State is less clear but he has already,
:
at the close of Book VII, shown us that it can never exist on earth
except by a kind of miracle ; and at the end of Book IX he settles the
matter by making it a veritable ideal existing only in heaven, and in
this way he puts it finally beyond the reach of change.
But it will be objected that, if Plato's real meaning requires this
distinction between the perfect State and the aristocratic State, he
would surely have made the distinction clear instead of obscuring it
by the language he uses. Now I readily admit that Plato seems to
mislead us by the opening words of Book VIII. The seventh book
ends with the words " enough then of the perfect State, and of the
man who bears his image. . Nothing remains to be said about
. .
them." The eighth book opens with the words, " And so we have
arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children
are to be in common," and he goes on to recapitulate the conditions
on which the Ideal State depends, namely, community of families, of
property, and of pursuits, even bringing in the rule of Philosophy by
the rather confusing phrase " the best philosophers and the bravest
warriors are to be their kings." He then continues, " Now that this
division of our task is concluded, let us find the point at which we
digressed, so that we may return into the old path," so going back to the
end of Book IV. This piecing together of the two different levels of the
argument is certainly baffling but (a) it is characteristic of Plato's
;
entire treatment of his subject in the Republic ; {b) it contains signifi-

cant clues to the real meaning, which is made perfectly plain a little
later.
() All through the Republic, Plato presents his deepest convictions
with a sort of assumed diffidence. He knew perfectly well what would
have been the effect upon his Greek readers if he had said plainly,

" So far I have been dealing with the facts of life moral, social, and
intellectual as you know them. Now I am going to carry the dis-
cussion into another plane, that of the spiritual or religious or other-
worldly." He therefore purposely refrains from separating too clearly
the different levels of the argument let all readers pass unconsciously
:
from one to the other, reading both with equal interest let all find
;
the doctrines which appeal to them most the distinction will be

;
clear enough to those whose special interest lies in the spiritual plane.
This obviously the explanation of the delightful and astonishingly
is
skilful transition made in Book V I think the more abrupt transition
;
at the beginning of Book VIH is to be explained in the same way.

(6) For it is significant that we are brought back from the higher level
to the lower, from the spiritual to the social, by a reference to the com-

munity of wives and children and pursuits the very same vexed
question which was used as the stepping-stone from the lower level to
the higher in Book V. But in Book V this topic led us on to the really
vital condition of perfection
the rule of philosophy which is the
theme of the central books and the real basis of the Ideal State. In
the opening passage of Book VIII this vital condition is slurred over :
" the best philosophers " and " the bravest warriors " are grouped
together just as if they were on the same level ; while the principle of
" all things in common " is emphasised as the chief characteristic
of the perfect State. This latter principle represented, in Plato's
thought, the social expression of one of the two essential marks of the
ideal, namely, absolute unity. The other essential mark, namely,
immortality or unchangeableness, was of course dependent upon the
supremacy of Spirit or Nous. Now in the fourth page of Book VIII he
"
definitely rules out this supremacy of pure spirit from the " good
or aristocratic State. The latter is, he says, governed by Guardians
who do not possess absolute knowledge, but only " intelhgence alloyed
with sense." And this inferior faculty in the rulers is the first cause of
the State's decline.
The other condition absolute unity he is
unwilling to rule out of the realm of social possibihty quite so explicitly.
He had posited the existence of unity (as a general principle only) as
a mark of the good State in Book IV. But the terribly difficult detailed
requirements of the principle are only worked out in Book V the
transition to the higher level. In Book VIII there is no definite
assertion that the aristocratic State does not comply with these
requirements (as there is in the case of the other great condition,
the rule of absolute wisdom ) ; but it is clear from the description
of the aristocratic man that the requirements were not comphed with.
Even among the very best of the Guardians family life is seen to be
going on as usual there is no community of husbands and wives and
:
children. And, just as the absence of true wisdom is the first and most
obvious cause of the aristocratic State's decUne, so this absence of
true unity is seen to be the secondary cause.

One feels, in reading other works of Plato's especially some passages
in the Laws that he found it very hard to abandon his dream of a
perfectly unified society, just as we feel, in reading the Republic, that
he found it hard to abandon his dream of a society made perfect by
wisdom. It is customary to say that, although he obviously abandoned
the latter while writing the Republic, he did not give up his belief in
the possibility of a society made ideal by the unity which should come
from complete community until later until, in fact, he wrote some of
:
his later works, such as the Laws, in which this complete community
is given up, and only a " second best " constitution is described as
possible. But this is not the case. The possibility of the Ideal State
in all its essentials is abandoned in the Republic, including the essential
of community of wives and children ;or rather, as I prefer to believe,
it is not abandoned, but its impossibility is a foregone conclusion from
the very beginning. The semblance of a gradual and reluctant aban-
donment of it is part of the art with which the whole book is written.
But whether this is so or not, it is certain, I think, that the aristocratic
State whose decline is described in Book VIII is only a " second best,"
and not the Ideal, which, as we learn from the Laws, must rest on the
basis of complete community of all things, and must possess both
immortality and unity.
The assertion on p. 544E of the text that the constitutions of
States are five in number, and the dispositions of individuals are
also five, presents little difficulty, if, as is clear, Plato has placed the
divine type of constitution on a pinnacle by itself, and is now dealing
with constitutions of States and minds in their normal human
form.
The distinction I have drawn between Aristocracy (the government
by Sattva) and Monarchy (the rule of Royal Wisdom) may be objected
to as involving a contradiction of Plato's words in Book IV (p. 445)
where he says that the best (human) constitution may be called
either aristocracy or monarchy, according as it is ruled by one eminent
man or by several. But there is no real contradiction. The Sattvic
condition is the best possible condition for human society, and you
may therefore call it by either of the two political terms which you may

take to represent the best condition whether aristocracy or monarchy.
The term monarchy has here, in effect, the same meaning as aristocracy,
namely, government by Sattva, or the good element, whether regarded
as residing in the good Guardian or in the whole Guardian class. But
when we come to the Philosopher-King the case is entirely altered.
Then we reach a condition of monarchy of a very different order no
longer government by Sattva, but government by the Royal Nous
and its wisdom. I have thought well to emphasise this dis-
it
tinction by separating sharply the condition of aristocracy from
that of monarchy, giving to the latter term the higher meaning just
explained.
It may be noted, further, that the distinction which I have drawn
agrees in essentials with the divisions laid down in the Politicus.

Plato there distinguishes six possible constitutions and one ideal one,
which is on a plane by itself. The six possible constitutions correspond
to the five described in the Republic, with only unimportant differ-
ences. In the Politicus (as in the Republic) Plato insists that the essence
of a good constitution depends upon the existence of good Law, and
of respect for the good Law, on the part of the Rulers. An autocracy
(or rule by a single good Guardian) is best provided he rules in accord-
ance with the given good Law but the same form of constitution is
;
also the worst of all if the ruler does not respect the Law ; for then
autocracy becomes tyranny. Aristocracy (or rule by a class of good
Guardians) is the next bestgranted the same condition of respect
for the given Law. But, without this, the same form of constitution
becomes oligarchy, which is bad. Democracy (or rule by all the citi-

zens) is even allowed to be passably good if, once more, the fixed
and given Law is respected but it is, of course, bad (only less bad
;
than tyranny) without this supreme condition. All through the ac-
count, it is not the form of Government which is the all-important
matter, but the principle which animates the Governors. The Ideal
Ruler (the Philosopher-King of the Republic) alone rules without
Laws by the guidance of his own sure wisdom. But all ordinary
human rulers must have Right Law given to them and if they rule
;
in strict conformity with this, then their rule is good, whether the power
is in the hands of a single man, of a class of men, or of the whole body
of citizens.
An interesting illustration of the confusion which I am here combat-
ing may be found in the Rev. W. Temple's recently pubhshed Plato
and Christianity, p. 96 :
" In Plato's Ideal State there were three
main classes the philosopher-kings who governed in the light of
eternal truth ; the warrior class obedient to the kings, and fighting
either for the defence of the State or for the sake of civilisation against
barbarism and the craftsmen who produced the necessities and com-
;
forts of life generally." I think this statement confuses the whole

teaching of the Republic the rehgious teaching, certainly, with
"
which Mr. Temple is specially concerned. In the " good and true
State dealt with in the simpler or lower-level books, there were, of

course, three classes the good Guardians {not Philosopher-Kings),
the warriors, and the craftsmen. But in the Ideal State, dealt with only
in Books V, VI, and VII, this is not so. To it, and to it alone, the
Philosopher-King belongs and there is really no other class in it.
;
In the Royal individual soul the three Qualities are transcended and
practically cease to exist the perfected soul passes beyond the
:
Qualities, and is for that very reason beyond the possibihty of change
or degeneration. It has no longer any ambitious element or pleasure-

seeking element in it no warrior or craftsman element to disturb
it.
And in the Royal State if it could ever be realised there would
be but one class also ; for all, whatever their work, would be philoso-
pher-kings either actually or in embryo. It too would be " beyond the

QuaUties," and their social reflections, the three castes or classes at
any rate so far as these latter represent any differences of moral

importance. And this, of course, is one of the reasons why the Ideal
State can never exist on earth ; or rather, let us say, why the Ideal
State can never exist as a State or Polis, any more than the ideal
individual can exist as a politician.
CHAPTER XI
THE TENTH BOOK OF THE REPUBLIC. THE BANISHMENT
OF ART AND POETRY; AND THE ACCOUNT OF THE
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, AND THE LAW OF RE-
INCARNATION.
WE have now reached the logical end of the Republic.

But there is still another book the tenth which
maybe described as a very extraordinary addition
to the rest of the work. It is divided into two parts,

of which the second, consisting in an account of the immortality

of the soul and of its hfe after death, is entirely relevant and
adds force to the whole preceding argument. But the first
part is the exact reverse it consists merely in a very laboured
;
and very unconvincing attack on art and poetry, which probably

seems to the reader to be as irrelevant as it is wrong-headed.
I doubt whether anyone can read it without a feehng of exaspera-

tion of surprise, certainly, that Plato should have marred the
beauty of his masterpiece by such an unnecessary' attack upon
those who reveal to us the ideal in painting or sculpture or verse.
But let th^ reader judge for hunself. I will give as fair a summary
as I can ; and then we will try to reach a more careful decision.
Socrates begins by saying that, while he is convinced of the
excellence of the regulations laid down for the organisation of
the ideal State, he feels this conviction most strongly in reference
to the regulation which placed a ban upon all the imitative poets,
from Homer to the great tragedians. For there is something
utterly wrong about all imitation. To begin with, we know
that there one and only one real archetype or Form for every
is
class of created phenomenal things, whether natural or made by

hands. We human beings may talk about making or creating
things, such as tables or bedsteads but in " making " these things
;
we are really only copying the archetype made by the Great

Artificer. Still, our imitations have a certain amount of reality
192
about them they are at least first-hand copies of the eternal

:
Forms which God has made for each existent class of things.
But suppose someone were to take a mirror and so make a
reflection of the table or bed we have made, we should say
that he had only produced a copy or imitation of the thing
which we, in the first instance, had produced as a copy of the
eternal Form. In other words, he would have produced a copy
of a copy.
Now is just what the painter does.
that \\Tien he paints a
picture of any created phenomenal thing, he is producing a copy
of that which is itself a copy of the Real Thing the eternal
archetype and his production is therefore thrice removed from
;
reality and truth. ^ If he paints a picture of a bed, his production

is as far removed from what we call a real bed, as this in turn is
removed from the real bed which is the archetype of all beds.
And, in painting it, he is much lower, in skill and knowledge,
than the carpenter who makes a bedstead, and who, at any rate,
knows enough about the archetype to copy it fully, in all its
parts and purposes.
Apply this to poetry, and note the result. All the great tragic
poets, including their master, Homer, draw for us pictures of all
sorts of things, including virtues and great deeds. But that does
not argue any knowledge on their part of virtue or of greatness
or of anything else which they describe. They only know just
enough about the partial appearance of these things to be able
to copy them in word-pictures and they can make this sort of
;
copy of virtue without knowing nearly as much about the matter

as any ordinary good man must know in order to be virtuous.
(Did you ever hear of any people taking one of the poets for their
master and guide, and following him in the way, for instance,
the disciples of Pythagoras followed him ? Of course not even ;
Homer and Hesiod were left to wander about the world alone.
They could write about peace and war and victories and valour ;
but they did not know enough to teach anyone how to fight or
capture a city.) The fact is, the poets are even farther removed
from knowledge than this account suggests. For there are three
* It must be remembered that the
' '
ancients
' always counted the first of a
'
series as being also the first in the reckoning from the beginning of the series.
Thus Sunday was the third day from Friday Friday being counted as the first
in the succession. This explains how the artist comes to be called thrice removed
fcom truth, not twice, as we should say.
13
degrees of knowledge involved here, not two and theirs is the;
third or lowest grade of all. We

spoke just now as though the
maker of a bedstead stood nearest, in knowledge of beds, to the
Creator. But, in regard to most things, the man who is nearest
to real knowledge is the man who knows how to use a thing ;
and him comes the man who knows how to make the thing.
after
Thus, the flute player knows more about flutes than the flute-
maker the rider knows more about saddles and bridles than the
;
saddler and so on. Consequently we may say that the skilled

;
user has knowledge, and the maker has right opinion, derived
from the skilled user's knowledge but the imitator, below
;
both in the scale, has nothing but ignorance. Or look at this

matter of faculties in another way. We know that the faculties
of sight and hearing are very deceptive they give numerous
:
confused and contradictory impressions which the reason alone

can analyse, correct and unify. We know also that the internal
faculty of feeUng is similarly deceptive, and subjects us to
countless impressions of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, whose
multipUcity breeds hopeless confusion in our minds unless
checked and corrected by reason. Well, just as the painter and
musician imitate the objects which appeal to the deceptive
senses of sight and hearing, so the poet imitates the things which
appeal to feeling, and he is therefore concerned \vith the irrational
part of the soul. And he not only appeals to feeling with his
word-pictures he is also constantly exciting our feelings and
;
encouraging us to give way to them. He shows us good men

suffering and lamenting their sufferings. He draws out our
admiration for them so that we think their lamentations are
quite right and proper he draws out our sympathy too, so that
:
we weep with them as well as for them and then, when our ;
troubles come, it follows that we think it right to weep for our-

selves. That, Glaucon, is the real curse of tragedy and imitative
poetry. Its influence is dead against that unruffled serenity
which we have seen to be the mark of the really good man it ;
undermines his steadfastness it unmans the noblest part of

;
the man. " For poetry waters and cherishes those emotions
which ought to wither with drought," the emotions of grief and
anger and desire, which, in the steadfast soul, never appear
at all.
But it is not pleasant, Glaucon, to dismiss poetry Uke this,

even though what we say is quite in line with the well-known

antagonism between poetry and philosophy. I am not blind
to the charms of poetry indeed, I know what it is to feel its
:

enchantment. But now truth is at stake a far bigger thing
than the charm of what pleases us. " And I have learned that
we must not make a serious pursuit ofany poetry that may
delight us, in the belief that grasps truth and is good. On
it
the contrary, we must be on our guard against it, because we

realise its danger to our souls. ..."
WTiat does Plato mean by all this ? What can have induced

him, of all people Greek, artist, and himself a poet to deal so
savagely with art, and, most of all, the poetic art ? How shall
we explain or excuse an attack which seems to be not only un-
reasonable but even in bad taste ? At the end of the whole
passage Plato pretends to excuse himself by a playful reference
to the long-standing feud between philosophy and poetry. But
clearly this excuse will not serve. We all know that philosophers
are inclined to be suspicious of poetry, partly because the latter
attaches our emotions to an object, or leads us by feeling alone
to a conclusion, without any of the rational analysis and criticism
which are so necessary partly, too, because all art tends to
;
focus the attention upon the " particulars " of sense impressions,
rather than upon the " generalia " of science. For this reason,
the method of poetry may be said to be dangerous and delusive.
But Plato is the last person who should use this argument. His
" philosophy," as expounded in the Republic, is very different
from the rational philosophy of the intellectualists and its
;
" method " is at least as dangerous as that of art. For it struggles

to the vision of truth by the aid of a faculty as far removed from
reason as the artistic perception itself its " intuition " seems
:
to be very much more akin to the latter than to the analytic or

synthetic intellect of the rational philosopher. Moreover, it is
probably wrong to say that Plato was not personally conscious
of the ennobling influence of art. Unlike a Mill or a Darwin, he
could never say that his aesthetic sense had been starved. In
his youth he felt the fascination of art to the full. He loved and
admired the great tragedians of Greece, ^schylus and Sophocles ;
he loved and admired the work of Phidias too he had himself

;
been a poet, and might have been a very great one and aU his
;

writings breathe the highest artistic spirit so much so that
in some dialogues he even identifies beauty with the supreme
good. Yet we know that, when he came into contact with
Socrates, he was induced to abandon poetry altogether.
A rather more satisfactory, but still very incomplete, explana-
tionis found in his conception of the essential nature of the soul.
His psychology, and its relation to the whole theory of the path
to Wisdom, compel him to assign a rather humble position to
the artistic faculties. In Book VII he distinguishes carefully
between two kinds of impressions of objects those which :
stimulate reflection and discrimination and those which do not.

Only the former (among which impressions of numbers and
mathematical objects are pre-eminent) are really aids to philos-
ophy ;the latter do not help at all. Now it is clear that all
artistic perception deals with impressions of the second class
impressions which do not stimulate discrimination. " Therefore,"
as he says in Book X, " imitation is an amusement and not a
serious business " that is to say, not serious by comparison with
;
the business ofthe soul.

It may also be urged, and, indeed, this is obvious from the
text, that the ethic of his Wisdom-Rehgion carries with it a
condemnation of art as a pursuit. He is so intent upon the need
of utter simphcity of soul that he cannot tolerate any influence
which tends towards complexity, or towards elaboration of
unnecessary tastes and sentiments and interests. But art is
one of the great variety agents. Therefore the good soul must
shun its fascination.
Again, it is possible to find both explanation and excuse for
the almost contemptuous treatment of Homer. In Book III,
Plato takes Homer's poetry as a kind of popular Bible of the
Greeks, and criticises its moral and religious teaching immerci-
fuUy. In Book X
he returns to the attack, on more general
grounds. " People tell us," he says in effect, " that we should
accept Homer as a great teacher that he is the true educator
;
of Greece and that his

; doctrine deserves to be accepted as
our nile of Ufe in all our private and pubUc affairs. But, besides
the defects of his moral teaching, he has none of the marks of
the great teacher. He had no followers he founded no school
:
he inspired no disciples he gave no vaHd rule of hfe." He

:
then proceeds to contrast Homer with Pythagoras, who did

inspire a band of disciples, who did lay down for them a way of
life, who did found a lasting school, and gained the confidence
of followers who believed so strongly in his teaching as to cUng
to it This is significant in several
in face of dire persecutions.
ways. It has been said that Homer
represented the old, popular,
unilluminated, nature-rehgion of the Greeks, in sharp distinction
from the inspired Orphic teaching which came from the East,
and was always confined to the few. This Orphic teaching
(very similar, it would seem, to the ancient Hindu Adyatma-
vidya) appears to have been the basis of Pythagoras's doctrine
and rule of hfe, with its austere asceticism, its voluntary poverty
and community of goods, its belief in reincarnation, its respect
for animal hfe, its mysticism and " inner " teaching, and its
spiritual psychology and cosmogony. And after the persecution
and dispersal of the Pythagorean brotherhood of Crotona, his
disciples reappeared later under the title of " Orphic " brother-
hoods.
Here, then, we appear to have part of the explanation of the
strong antagonism felt Homer by
against Plato, the undoubted
follower of Pythagoras, and probably an initiate in the Orphic
mysteries.
Another point may be noticed in this connection. The Pytha-
gorean brotherhood consisted chiefly of the aristocracy of Crotona,
and was finally attacked and dispersed by the democracy (at
the beginning of the sixth century). And the Orphic successors
in the fourth century became the butts of the satire of the comic

poets of Athens even as Socrates had been the butt of Aris-
tophanes in the fifth century. No wonder Plato thought httle
of the " wisdom " of a democracy, or of the discernment of its
popular poets !
But all these explanations leave something still unexplained.

We feel that there must be some far greater issues at stake ;
that Plato's banishment of art must have some deeper reason
behind it. And here, I think, it will be best to go straight to the
root of the matter, and make clear the undercurrent of profound
principle which we may fairly assume to underlie the whole
argument for this will put Plato's position in the plainest
;
possible hght, without any compromise, and without any need

for defence or excuse.
We saw how, in the sixth and seventh books, he appUed the
process of discrimination to all our modes of thought and know-
ledge with the result that science (as we. understand it) was
degraded and placed in the lower half of the line which repre-
sents degrees of reaUty and truth. Even so, in this book, he
applies the same principle of discrimination to our practices
and appreciations connected with art. In the former case, he
was using the intellectual dialectic but now it is the moral
;
dialectic which is brought to bear

the process of negation
applied to the most subtle of all the influences to which the soul
of man is subject. But he seems to go too far. The apphcation
of the intellectual dialectic merely put science in its place the ;
apphcation of the moral dialectic leaves no place at all for art.

So, at least, it would appear from the argument. But, in fact,
this is not the case. Plato hm left art its place in the ideal hfe
and a most important place. All education is founded upon it
the environment of healthy growth is permeated with it art,;
at its best, is the great teacher of the young in the perfect State.
For that is its function : to lead forth the feehngs on the road
to good just as far as progress depends upon feehng. It is by
the best forms of art that the growing soul shall be made emo-
tionally good, in tune with beauty, in love with ideal copies of
the real. In this way, art not only has its place, but stands
supreme among all the influences for good, leading the soul
farther along the road to truth than any other influence.
But just here the danger comes in. Because art can do so
much, we think that it can do more. We think that it can raise
us to the highest that by its help we can reach the Ideal. In
;
the ecstasy produced by perfect music or the contemplation of

perfect beauty, we beheve that we are soaring to the highest
heights. We sit in a cathedral and jeel our spirit rising God-
wards far more surely and swiftly than any intellectual exercise
or meditation can upUft it. We read one of those marvellous
poems which the innermost chords of our being, and we
thrill
feel that it brings to hfe the most God-like and holy parts of our
souls. This, we say, is what the noblest art can do for us it :
alone opens heaven within us in it alone we lose all trace of

;
earth and of our earthly selves, and touch divinity.

'Not so, Plato would reply this is art's great iUusion.
; The
ecstasy of the art-inspired soul the ecstasy of God-
is not
knowledge. It is only an emotional shadow of the true ecstasy
fleeting, impermanent, unreal. Dangerous, too, as are all extreme
emotional states. For if you think these are real, you will never
reach the true vision of God. You will place a barrier between
your soul and Him, all the harder to remove because you love
it and idoUse it. And the penalty of all emotional states will
overtake you. As certainly as emotion is unstable, so certainly
will reaction follow on realisation. You will rise to the heights
only to fall again to deeper depths ;
you will seem to be in
heaven to-day, but to-morrow you will be in the abyss of
despondency and doubt. You worship your picture of the divine
now, dreaming the while that you have really God before your
eyes; but very soon you will awake and find that it is only a
copy, and no reahty at all.
No, my friends ; there is no emotional path that leads all the
way to the good. A point will come at which you must turn your
back upon it, and face the colder, austerer pathway I have
shown you, therein to walk upwards with mind indrawn and
senses stilled, forgetting all beauties of sight and sound, applying

to these the constant touchstone of dialectic the incessant
" Not this, not this " of discrimination ; content to press up-
wards in faith towards the dim outUne of Reality, which shall
be beautiful to you only when you really reach it, and shall then
shine with the unfading beauty of eternal spiritual hght.
Now, regarded from this point of view, Plato's banishment
of art and devotion to art from the higher training or conscious
preparation for the religion of wisdom, seems to be not only
intelligible but also inevitable. The apparent paradoxes in both
argument and conclusion disappear : both are found to be in

harmony with his whole doctrine in harmony also with the
Gnana Yoga of the Vedantins which he follows so closely. For,
if there is a great gulf between the absolute truth revealed by
Nous and the relative truths of our sciences, our philosophies,

our beliefs, there is an even deeper gulf between the goal of
Wisdom or Gnana, apprehended only through the discipline
of pure noetic exercises, and the goal of art, the road to which
is through devotion to sensuous imagery and emotional ecstasy.
Plato has already dealt very faithfully with ovir sciences, our
philosophies, our beUefs ; he is now deahng equally faithfully
with our art and our trust in it not as an education and a delight
for even the best of souls in the " good " Ufe of the lower path
(this he has already by implication conceded to us), but as a
delusion and a snare in the soul's austere struggle towards the
full awakening of Nous.
Observe now the entire relevance of his arguments the entire:
appropriateness, also, of their pitiless severity, intensified, as

it always is for the Gnana Yogin, by the very fact of the ap-
parently divine heights of ideal reality to which art leads us.

What is the " faculty " on whose exercise it depends ? It is
intuition or super-rational insight, you say. Granted but is it :
not intuition based on feeling or emotion ? And is it not therefore

a dangerous copy of the true insight, which (as has been shown,
and as the very name of Nous implies) is, at any rate, akin to
reason, is awakened by the exercise of reason at its best, and
can only be reached by resolute suppression of the lower " emo-
tional " faculties ? So, in loyalty to Nous, whose rival it appears
to be, let us boldly call the artistic intuition a fraud. Masquerad-
ing as true intuition, and pretending to lead the soul to truth,
it is really inferior not only to honest reason, but even to honest
emotion too for these, at any rate, do not pose as being anything
;
but what they are. Further, this artistic " faculty," which we
thus see to be a false form of emotion (itself only a quasi-real
thing), is much more deeply steeped in ignorance (avidya), and
the illusion (Maya) which is the cause of ignorance, than are
our ordinary feelings and perceptions. For these at least are
quasi-real but a delusive form of them can have no contact
;
with reality at all it has, as it were, no root even in the quasi-

:
reahties of life to which our sense-perception is attached.

But it is creative, you say ?^ Certainly and so are the
;
senses, though far more truly so. But all " creation " is pro-
jection or superimposition of the unreal upon the real. The
mind of the individual " creates " the world he lives in by pro-
jecting or superimposing the illusions of self upon it. But in
this " creation," he superimposes illusion upon that which has
some independent reahty in other words, he superimposes
;
the unreal upon the partly real. Not so the artist. He, too,
" creates " by projection or superimposition. But his " crea-
tion " is far more illusory than that of the ordinary man, for he
1 This paragraph may be hardly intelligible to those unfamiliar with Vedantic
philosophy, and had better be passed over unread. It is a purely Vedantic

argument but it is fairly closely akin to the argument used by Plato in the
;
text.
is always superimposing not the unreal upon the partly real,

but his own reflections of the unreal upon the partly real.
Now poetry is the worst of all forms of art just because, unlike
all others, it wears a rational mask, and deludes us into thinking
that we are reaching great heights of understanding by a short
road in which our faculty of reason need hardly work at all.
We can forgive a painter or a sculptor who does not pretend to
make his appeal to anything but aisthesis or aesthetic sense, even
if he does pretend that his " idea of beauty
" has some real
affinity to the true Idea. But we can not forgive a poet whO;
pretending that his appeal is made to our minds, pretends also
that he is awakening super-mind within us, and so deludes us
into imagining that he is leading us nearer to the Idea of truth.
There is one difficulty still to be considered. How does Plato's
attitude to art compare with that of the Indian Vedan^n ? In
one respect at least their agreement is complete. Art has no
place in the Yogi's life ; nor is there any place for it on the path
of Gnana. Yet we find even a Vedantin uttering such words as
these :
" The drama in India is a very holy thing. Drama and
music are themselves held to be rehgion. They say that song
leads to the same goal as meditation." Is there not here a total
opposition to Plato's estimate of art ? I think not ; and for two
reasons. On the one hand, all such sayings as that quoted are
the opinions of the followers of the path of Bhakti or devotion;
they would not be uttered by those who have chosen the path
of Gnana or Wisdom the path with which alone Plato is con-
cerned. On the other hand, it has been abundantly clear that
Plato believes intensely in art in subordination to the needs of
preparation for the spiritual hfe. Everything has its place at
its best in this subordination. And the value of art, both in
his view and in that of the Indian teachers of Gnana Yoga, may
be compared to the value of symbols and the use of symbols :
they are a necessary support and prop through many stages of

preparation for the knowledge which needs no shadows to help
it. We ordinary followers of rehgion cannot do without symbols,
cannot do without even the worship of them in some form or
other. All religions are idolatrous in this sense including the
Christian. And the symbol-worship is a good aid, if and so long

as the spiritual meaning behind it is never lost sight of as Roman
Cathohcs and High Churchmen would assert is the case in their
symbol-worship, though they are very loth to allow the same
plea in the case of the symbol-worship of others. But if and
when the symbol itself is worshipped and the spiritual reality
behind it forgotten, then it becomes the idolatry which is damn-
able. And this is just what Vedantists, with Plato, would say
of art. Make it, if you will, the basis of all your early religious
education make it, as you must, the groundwork of the good
:
environment in which the learning soul should live. Treat it in

this way, as the servant of the spiritual life, and its dangers are
gone. But if it is protested, as it is to-day, and as it was beginning
to be among the Greeks in Plato's time, that art cannot reach
its highest development in any subordination whatever, but

must be free a cult in itself, an end in itself then, hke every-
"
thing else which makes such a claim, it must be " bowed out
of the good life. Plato saw, as we see to-day, the inevitable
assertion of this claim, for art, Hke science and like every form
of human effort which achieves great things, always tries at last
to usurp wisdom's throne. And when the danger is upon us,
when it is made either a blasphemy or a mark of the Philistine
to suggest that art must be subordinate to moraUty or to the
standards of religious Ufe, when even good people cannot think
of any way to lessen the materiaUsm of their age save by in-
creasing the attention paid to music and poetry then, indeed,

we may echo the words of Plato " Nothing seems to me, upon
;
reflection, so satisfactory as the regulation we have made about

the pursuit of imitative art, that it shall be banished from the
State which we call good."
In the final pages of the Republic Plato introduces a proof of

the immortality of the soul and an account of its fife after death.
There is, he says, one last argument to be added in defence of
Righteousness some people may think it is the greatest of aU.
:
But as it has to do with the reward or punishment of the soul

after death, it is necessary first to prove that the soul is immortal.
This proof, Socrates tells us, is much easier than we suppose.
We know that every physical thing perishes most surely and
most easily in consequence of some malady appropriate to its
nature our bodies die of disease, timber decays through rot,
:
rust eats away iron, and so on. Other influences may appear
to destroy these things ; but they can only do so by first pro-
ducing the appropriate malady. Our bodies may perish because

of bad food, we say it is not, however, the badness of the food,
;
but the badness or diseased state of the body produced by the

bad food which really causes the bodily death. We may, in
fact, assert that nothing except its own connatural evil can
really destroy anything ; and if a thing is not destroyed by its
own connatural evil, then we must conclude that it is inde-
structible. If rust left iron unweakened, we should not expect
anything else to corrupt it if disease did not harm the body,
;
we should not believe that any external agency could destroy it.
Now the soul has its own peculiar evil or malady, which we
call wickedness. But no one can maintain that this kills the
soul, or even weakens it. We could almost wish it did, for then
wickedness would put a speedy end to itself, and would itself
provide the release from its own evils. But unfortunately we
know that evil souls are remarkably vigorous it is a matter of
:
common observation that the wicked wax fat and kick, instead of
quickly dying of their depravity. If, then, wickedness, the soul's
own peculiar disease, cannot weaken or destroy the soul, no alien
evil or disaster can do so ;and we may infer that it is immortal.
Now consider what this impUes. If souls are immortal, then
there must always be, and must always have been, the same
number of souls in existence. They cannot become fewer and :

no new ones can be created for such creation would involve
turning the mortal into the immortal, and that could not happen.
Further, this imperishable thing, the soul, must be naturally
pure and single in its essence if there was any trace of variety
:
or difference of substance in it, then it could not be eternal

it would contain the seeds of decay. Clearly, then, it must be
wonderfully pure and beautiful in its nature ;and you must

try to think of it in this light not as it imperfectly appears
" when marred by association with the physical body and other
evil things." For now it resembles the mythical sea-god, whose
appearance is so distorted by the waves and by incrustations of
shell and weed that we cannot recognise him for a god. But
you must think of the soul as utterly pure and free from all
disfigurements and you will do this best if you fix your attention
;
upon the genuinely spiritual part of it, the part that is akin to
Wisdom. In this way alone can you realise what its divine
nature is, and what it would become if only it could be Uberated
from that uncouth multitude of earthy substances with which
it is now overgrown, as a result of the indulgences which we
call pleasures.
And now, Glaucon, since the soul lives for ever, we may fairly
claim for the righteous soul the rewards which its future life will
bring. All through our long defence of Righteousness we have
refused to consider these, for we undertook to show that
Righteousness meant Happiness, apart from all rewards or
honours, here or hereafter. But now it is fair to remember that
the righteous man does not go unrewarded all his days. The
gods are not mistaken as to his real character ;and whom the
gods love they surely reward at the last. It does not matter
what the good man's lot in life may be :
" whether poverty
befall him or any other of the things which men call
sickness or
evil, you will
find that they all work togethei; for his final good,
either in this fife or the next." The gods never neglect the man
who has done his best to become god-Hke. And it is false to think
that men neglect him either. They may not reaUse at first how
well he is running his race but at the close he will be hailed
;
as victor, and wiW receive the prizes which men give to those
they honour.
But far, far greater are the rewards which the good man
reaps after the body's death. Listen to the story of Er, and
then you will understand what righteousness brings to the soul
in the next world. Er was the son of Arminius, a native of
PamphyUa and we are told that he was killed in battle, but
;
when
that, the bodies of the dead were being taken up for burial
ten days later, it was found that Er's body was not at all decom-
posed and on the twelfth day, as he lay on the funeral pyre,
;
he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the other
world. His story was that his soul had travelled, along with
many others, to the double gate of judgment, where all the
souls were divided, according to the judgment passed upon them,
into two companies, to pass on, the one company through the
right gate upwards into heaven, the other through the left gate

downwards beneath the earth every soul carrying with it the
record of its past deeds. Er was not allowed to pass on, but was
bidden to stay and watch and he next saw two other com-
;
panies, not going but returning, through two similar gates the
one coming down from heaven, the other coming up from below,
the one pure and bright, the other squaUd and dusty, each
arriving from its long sojourn in the place of reward or the place
of punishment. And these two companies passed together into
a meadow, and there the souls all mingled together and told
each other their experiences. Each, it seemed, had spent a thou-

sand years, in heaven or in purgatory for it is ordained that
each soul shall hve ten times over the cycle of deserved reward
or deserved punishment, and each cycle, of a hundred years,
corresponds to the fullest span of human life. Tenfold penalty
and tenfold recompense had each received for the evil or the
good of his last life on earth. And now, the debts all paid, they
were come together to the threshold of a new hfe. But not all
the souls could pay their debts, even in a thousand years. Er

heard of some incurably wicked people chiefly tyrants, but with
a few extraordinarily bad private individuals among them
who were not allowed to leave purgatory at the end of their
thousand years, but were driven back for renewed tortures.
And in hke manner, the rewards of the pre-eminently good souls
were proportionately prolonged.
At the end of seven days, all the returning souls were com-
pelled to leave the meadow, and to travel for three days, until
they reached a place overlooking a great pillar of light, which
runs right across the whole heaven and earth, and binds the
universe together. And there they saw the universe revolving
on this axis of pure hght, turned by the distaff of Necessity
the universe itself consisting of eight concentric whorls, revolving
each in its own way, with varied degrees of speed, each distin-
guished from the others by differences of thickness and differences
of radiance, and also differences of sound. For each whorl or
sphere gives out a note of its own as it spins, the whole eight
forming a single harmony. And the three Fates, the daughters
of Necessity, sit round on thrones, their hands keeping up the
motion of the whorls of the universe, while their voices chant

the events of which each is mistress Lachesis, the events of the
past, Clotho, those of the present, Atropos, those of the future.
Now as soon as the souls were assembled, a herald took from
the lap of Lachesis, the Fate of past deeds, a number of lots,
and also a number of destinies or plans of Ufe. And he threw the
lots among the souls, for each to pick up as chance directed
but the destinies he spread upon the ground for all to see. Then
he told the souls that they were on the point of beginning a new
cycle of mortal life, and were now to choose the earthly Ufe or
destiny which each preferred. For their destinies were not
allotted to them, but were to be chosen by each. " With the
chooser lies the responsibihty heaven is guiltless."
:
The kinds of lives displayed were of every sort, both human

and animal, and far outnumbered the souls who were to make
their choice, so that the choice of the last to come forward should
be as free as that of the first. And this, Glaucon, is apparently
the supreme moment for the soul, when everything turns upon
the choice it makes for this reason, above all others, is it our
;
duty to pursue, to the neglect of every other matter, the know-

ledge which shall haply enable a man to discriminate between
a good and an evil life, and to choose, always and everywhere,
the life that is really good. With
iron resolution must a man,
when he enters the future hold fast to the faith in righteous-
life,
ness and its excellence, in spite of all appearances so that when

;
his turn comes he may make his choice aright.

But to return to the souls whom Er was watching. When
the
word was given, the soul who had drawn the first lot advanced
and chose, without a moment's thought, the Ufe of the greatest
tyrant he could find. Poor headlong fool He was one of those
!
who had come from heaven he had lived his last Ufe on earth
;
in a well-ordered State, and so had acquired a kind of virtue

dependent on habit, but unaided by philosophy. Indeed,
according to Er, more than half the souls who were deluded into
making a bad choice had spent their thousand years in heaven,
and had never felt the discipUne of affliction. The others, who
had been in purgatory, were more careful experience of trouble
;
made them so.

Strange were many of the choices made the choosers being
in most cases guided by the experience of their former Ufe. The
soul of Orpheus chose the life of a swan he refused to be bom
:
of a woman again, since women had caused his death. Ajax,

too, and Agamemnon refused to be men again, and chose, the one
a lion's, the other an eagle's Ufe. He saw, too, the souls of
animals choosing the lives of men. The last lot of all had fallen
to Odysseus, whose memory of his former sufferings had so
worn away his ambition that he searched diUgently among the
destinies until he found a quiet, obscure life, which all the others
had despised. And this he chose gladly, saying that his choice
would have been just the same if he had drawn the first lot.
Then, when all had chosen, they were taken in turn before
Lachesis, who assigned to each his Genius, to be the guardian
of the Ufe chosen, and the fulfiUer of his choice. Then Clotho
ratified the destiny of each, and Atropos made it irrevocable ;
and then together passed under the throne of Necessity, and

all
so into the plain of Forgetfulness, where flows the river of Un-
mindfulness. And of this water each soul must drink a certain
portion, and so forget the past. But some, who were not pro-
tected by wisdom, drank more than they needed. And at last, when
midnight came, there was thunder and an earthquake, and in a
moment the souls were driven up to their birth, hke shooting
stars. And then Er, who had not been allowed to drink of the
river, awoke, and found himself lying on the funeral pyre.
In this way, Glaucon, the story has won through to us and ;
we shall win through, if we are obedient to

teaching
its for ;
so we shall pass over the river of Lethe safely, and our souls
will not be defiled. Let us then hold fast to the upward path,
and follow after Righteousness and Wisdom always, that so it
may be well with us, both in this Ufe and in the long Hfe to come.
Plato's proof of the immortality of the soul need not be taken

very seriously. He would have been the fi.rst to admit that in
such a matter proof is beside the point. The whole of the real
teaching of the Republic (and, I think, of all his other writings)
rests on the assumption of the spiritual nature of man and ;
faith in immortality can only become more than faith for the few
who, reaching the vision of reahty, find that the one supreme
certainty is the existence of the eternal spirit, theirs and God's.
But Plato attempts to prove the fact, partly perhaps because
this is the only way of keeping up the illusion that all his argu-
ments are on the intellectual plane, and therefore worthy of
attention by the intellectualist thinkers who will certainly form
the majority of his readers partly also because, like all of us, he
;
cannot help doing his best to give demonstration of the truth in

which he believes, and so to make it more acceptable to others.
It is significant that he elaborates " proofs " of immortality
in some of his other works (e.g. the Phcedo and the Phcedrus),
and that all the " proofs " are quite different. This is entirely
natural. I imagine that most of us who believe in the soul's
immortality believe in it very much as we beheve in the existence
of God or of good. We feel it to be part of the eternal fact which
holds our universe together as something intelligible and real
it is everywhere, in everything, an element of the reality of life
for us. We do not want proofs we simply do not trouble our-

:
selves about anything so trivial. Yet, again and again, if we

chance to be of a rational or even an argumentative tempera-
ment, we find ourselves formulating so-called proofs, either in
our discussion with others or in our own thoughts. And, Uke
Plato, we find ourselves putting forward different proofs at
different times, relying now upon this argument, now upon that.
Moreover, we are quite in earnest in the matter we are not at
:
all pretending, or playing with a rational process which we know

cannot carry us to anything absolute. We do very seriously
try to prove our great fact our arguments are as serious as
:
Paley's evidences and yet in our hearts, when we face the

;
matter quietly, we smile at our own serious efforts. This is all

part of the eternal paradox of reason and intuition (or faith) :
it forces us into the role of intellectuahsts even against our
better judgment ; for there is no other way of expressing our

faith to others, and impressing them with it
except, indeed,
the supremely difficult way of silently living it.
Putting the matter in another way, and following Plato's
classification of conditions in relation to knowledge, we may
say that, in regard to fundamental facts, there are just three
conditions possible ignorance, faith and the direct vision
:
which is also absolute knowledge. Our ignorance may be either

the complete ignorance of atheism or the conjecture (eikasia)
of carelessness. Our faith may be either the doxical (or dog-
matic) beUef of good, orthodox people, or the much higher
recognition of reflections or shadows of spiritual reality every-
where. Direct vision has, of course, no varieties, but is always
one and the same. Of these conditions, the last alone hfts us
completely beyond the range of argument and proof it is the :
condition of the Muni, the Seer or the silent one, who teaches
most by the example of his fife, a Uttle by parables, but by
argument hardly at all. Plato never pretended to have reached
this condition : he had not himself seen the Good. But, of the
two stages of faith, even the higher is still " dianoetic " or intel-
lectual enough to require rational expression, and sometimes to

demand and attempt rational proof. Proof is not necessary to
anyone who has reached that stage the : vision of even the
shadows of reality is worth the arguments of all the wise
all
men of all the ages. Still, knowledge is not yet made

since
absolute, the human desire for rational proof remains, and is
bound at times to find expression. Hence the repeated attempts
of Plato and many other good peopleto prove to an unseeing
world, by all varieties of argument, that God exists or that the
soul is deathless.
The importance of the passage Ues in the deductions he draws
from the fact of immortaUty. In these he is entirely in agree-
ment with the Eastern doctrine, which is much more logical
than the position adopted by most Christians. According to
the Vedic philosophy, immortality does not refer to the future
only, but equally to the past. The soul that will live on for
ever has Uved for ever too. There can be no such thing as a
special creation of new souls incarnating, as embryo immortals,
in human infants. Every soul has an infinitely long record of
Ufe behind it, as well as an infinitely long prospect in front. This
record of past Ufe is a record of innumerable incarnations, in
every grade of existence up to and including the human. Deferring
for a moment the explanation of this doctrine of reincarnation
and its relation to Plato's version of the subject, it is necessary
here to point out that the phrase " immortality of the soul " is
not quite accurate. The eternal principle or part in every human
being is the Atman or Spirit. This Atman alone is absolutely
real, for it alone is divine the God in man, or, as we sometimes
call it, the divine spark in us. But this Atman
not the same is
as the soul. I confess not easy to explain

that the distinction is :
perhaps it may be made clear in this way. At the beginning of

creation, when God began the age-long process of evolution and
involution, of unfolding into the manifest and folding back again
into the unseen, the Divine ReaUty must be conceived as changing
its unity into diversity
the one into the many Hke a fire
throwing off innumerable sparks. This is the first condition of
any manifestation. Each of the innumerable sparks then com-
bines with, or clothes itself in, ReaUty's opposite Matter, or

that which is not real thus becoming a changing phenomenal
thing. This is the second condition of manifestation, and may
be called figuratively the descent into matter. Once begun,
the process of change continues, form succeeding form along
an infinite series, according to evolutionary law. The Atman or
divine spark does not itself change or evolve, for it is unchange-
able even as it is absolutely real but the matter in which it
;
takes form suffers change and decay. And we may conceive the
Atman as clothed in garments of varying degrees of permanence
and impermanence, of fineness or coarseness. What we call
the soul is such a garment, complex and of different degrees of
fineness ;and the finest part of this complex soul is so nearly
permanent that it may be called age-long, for it accompanies
the Atman or Spirit through the whole cycle of evolution and
involution, serving, as it were, the purpose at once of garment
and of vehicle. It is this enduring soul which persists through
all incarnations, learning, suffering, undergoing every sort of
experience, growing in grace, until at last it, too, is refined away

the last " form," the last envelope of matter which the Atman
discards, even as it was the first to be put on. And the Atman,
divine in substance at the end as at the beginning, may be
regarded as being imprisoned in this soul, and in aU the other
garments or envelopes, including the very coarse one which

we know as the physical body. It the Spirit does not evolve ;
it does not change it cannot even be said to learn anything

;
during the process. It falls asleep and wakes again it forgets :
and remembers : or, more accurately, since it is ridiculous to

predicate sleeping or forgetting of the eternal reahty, we must
say that seems to sleep and to forget. But it is aU-knowing
it
and all-conscious and the whole process of age-long manifesta-

:
tion is, as it were, a process of holding up a mirror to its own

impHcit knowledge and experience.
This, the true aspect of immortaHty, is the one expressed in
the well-known lines from the Bhagavad Gita :
" Never the Spirit was born, the Spirit shall cease to be never.
Never was time it was not End and Beginning are dreams.
:
Birthless and deathless and changeless the Spirit remaineth for ever,
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems."
Or again :
" Nay, but as when one layeth

His worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayeth
These will I wear to-day,'
'
So putteth by the Spirit

Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh."
In both these passages, it is the Spirit or Atman which is

described as being eternal, not any of its robes or houses.
It would, I know, require many pages to make these conceptions
even moderately intelligible and I have not the requisite abiUty
;
or knowledge for the task. I am

only trying to reproduce enough
of the Vedanta doctrine to Plato's position clear. And the
make
main points are these So
: long as the Atman is involved in the

process of manifestation is passing through the cycle of change

and decay so long it is enveloped in garments which, in greater
or less degree, are subject to changeand decay. These garments

form the mask of personality a personaUty which is really
changing from day to day, obviously and rapidly changing, if
we regard the outermost or most superficial parts of it, but in the
innermost parts changing so slowly as to seem to us almost
permanent. All our normal consciousness, with its desires and
feehngs, its thoughts and speculations, is a mode of this changing
personality. Part of it is obviously changeable, most of all that
part which is dependent upon its relation to a physical body and
to the physical universe. Part is less obviously subject to
change that part which (so it is asserted) functions indepen-
dently of the physical body, and therefore continues to function
after the body's death. But this part also is changing, growing
purer, we hope, as it learns the lessons of life after life in physical
and in super-physical worlds, to become at last so transparently
pure as to be no more a covering or envelope at all. And all
through the process, the Atman is Uke a spiritual eye, wholly
clouded over so long as the envelope is dense with the mud of
lust or opaque with the dust of personal interests, but coming
to its own kingdom of light and sight as the purification becomes
more complete.
I cannot hope that even now this account will be very intel-
ligible to anyone. But at least it will serve to illustrate Plato's
version of the doctrine of immortality. As he is writing popularly,
he does not carefully distinguish between the relative immortahty
of the higher soul, and the absolute immortality of the spirit.
Popular thought really never carries the idea or hope of im-
mortality much beyonda conception of some continued existence
of personality in some other world,
better, it is hoped, than this
one, and peopled with a selection of the same persons. We
just hope to awake on the other side of the grave very much as

we now are only considerably improved in condition and
surrounded by our friends and a few of our relations also very
much as they now are, only vastly improved in temper. Conse-
quently it is natural that Plato should be content to describe just
such a continued existence for the soul, but adding its obvious
moral lessons. But, as in Book VII, so here he does refer to the

really divine part of the soul the part akin to wisdom and he ;
describes, in language which might have been taken direct from

the Hindu scriptures, the " incrustation of the spirit in the
impurities of this world," in the mud and weeds of desire which
hide the God within us.^
To the doctrine of immortality, thus popularly expounded,
Plato adds an equally popular account of the doctrine of re-
incarnation. Now I am very far from insisting that he must
have borrowed this from an Indian source. The belief in re-
incarnation has been an integral part of the faith of the followers
of numerous rehgions, from the Hindus to the Druids it is ;
so widespread as to give good reason for supposing that it formed

a part of the earliest revelation made to man. The wonder is
that it was ever allowed to drop out of the Christian faith. It is
clear, therefore, that the doctrine might have found its way into
a Greek mind from any one of several different sources. But
when it appears side by side with many other essential elements of
the Hindu teaching, as it undoubtedly does in the doctrines of
Pythagoras, and as I have tried to show that it does also in the
philosophy of Plato, then it is fair to assume that it was derived
directly from India. And this assumption is borne out by the
details with which the doctrine is presented. For, although the
account of the return of souls to human life is purposely given
in a popular form, it contains most of the important points of
the Hindu doctrine. The souls of the dead have a long sojourn
in another form of existence, whose character heavenly or
purgatorial or penal is determined by their past Hfe and deeds.
^ A much more elaborate account of the constitution of the soul is given in the
Timaeus, a later dialogue. But it is beyond the scope of my present t^sk to

comment upon thig,
Its period is not fixed several centuries may be the normal

:
length for most souls, while for some great sinners a longer period
of punishment is required, and for some very good souls a longer
period of heavenly happiness may be allowed. Plato seems to
suggest
but he does not actually say so that a few " incurably
wicked " souls, Uke Ardiaeus the tyrant, are kept in hell for ever.
This is certainly not the Indian doctrine. The soul of a tyrant
would return to physical existence, but on an immeasurably
lower level than the human and its " hell " would consist in
;
having to work its way up again, through many forms of lower

Ufe, always carrying with it the consciousness of its fall. There is,
I think, only one statement in Plato's account which really seems
to conflict with Hindu thought and that is his assertion that
;
Orpheus chose the hfe of a swan. This, at first sight, is hope-

lessly unintelligible. Orpheus was regarded as the great en-
lightened teacher of Greece. The Orphic mysteries were the

most profound of all as Plato certainly knew and the perse- ;
cuted followers of Pythagoras adopted the title of Orphic brother-

hoods. How then could such a very " advanced " soul fall
back into the body of an animal ? Even a return to a human
existence would be impossible. There is a very simple explana-
tion of Plato's apparent mistake. Orpheus is represented as
passing into the form of a swan. If Plato knew anything at all
of Indian allegory, he must have known that the swan (Hamsa)
is in Hinduism the invariable symbol of the immortal Spirit
and to say, as he does, that Orpheus chose the hfe of a swan,

refusing to be bom again of a woman, is just an allegorical way
of saying that he passed on into the spiritual life, having come
to an end of mortal existence. I imagine (though I do not know)
that any Indian Vedantin, reading the passage, would interpret
it naturally in this way. But it is not worth while making much
of the point it is quite as possible that Plato, in giving a very
:
popular account of the reincarnation of souls, fell into some

inaccuracies, as that he concealed a deeper meaning beneath
an apparent confusion.
I am obhged to harp upon the popular character of the accovmt
of reincarnation given in the tenth book for two reasons. One
is that the whole account of the soul's rewards and punishments
is, hke the arguments about happiness in the ninth book, intended
to be a popular addition which may give force to the real argu-

ments concerning Righteousness in the eyes of many people,
but which does not really add anything to the conclusion reached
in the seventh book. The other reason is that all accounts of
heaven or hell or reincarnation are outside the true spiritual

teaching of reUgion are but trimmings, in fact, which appeal
to us reward-loving and curiosity-consumed souls who cannot
be content with the essential fact of spiritual existence. It is
the case, I beUeve, that the truest teachers seldom say anything
which will satisfy our curiosity about the details of past or future
hves. In the purest Vedanta teaching the fact of reincarnation
is asserted, and
moral lessons explained
its but no questions ;
are answered about the thousand and one matters upon which
we should Uke to have information. The reasons are obvious.
There is only one thing needful that we should fix our whole
:

attention upon the possibility and the path of the spiritual
reahsation which will carry us beyond all births and deaths, all
departures and returns, all heavens and purgatories. It will
not help us to speculate about the kind of Ufe we may have hved
before or the kind of life we shall hve next time. The natural
tendency of human curiosity (with or without any sinister
motive) is to ask, " Had this man sinned, or was it his parents'
fault that he was bom bhnd ? " And the true teacher always
brushes away the question, and brings us back to the sole essential

matter the possibihty of the manifestation of the grace of God.
Further, the very word " reincarnation " is not the right one
upon which to fix our thoughts. The great fact behind it is
Re-birth that is, birth into spiritual Ufe. Heaven and purgatory
:
and hell are all facts : but they are Uttle facts. The normal
chain of mortal hves is a fact but it is a httle fact. On the lower
:
path we pass repeatedly from one corruptible to another cor-

ruptible through a long series of " raisings-up and layings-down
of other and of other hfe-abodes." The wise man knows these
facts, and neither fears nor cares for beyond them all is the big
;
fact of re-birth into the incorruptible and eternal Ufe.

At the same time, the moral aspect of the doctrine of reincarna-
tion not a small matter, but one of the very deepest importance
is ;
and it is generally expressed by the law of Karma, by which

the chain of mortal hves is determined. The word Karma, like
many of the Sanskrit philosophical terms, has first of all a cosmic
significance from which the ethical and rehgious meanings are
derived. has the same root as the word " creation," this root
It
meaning to do or to act. The constant signification of Karma
is actions and results, or the law of action and reaction. When
we speak of our Karma, we mean our own creation of destiny :
that is, the results of the totaUty of our past acts, desires and
thoughts, which determine our present and our future. The
law of Karma may be regarded as the law of causation operative
in aU existence. We are all subject to the law so long as our
lives are merged in the material universe. Every action and
every thought have their inevitable reactions, for us as well
as for others. Our lot in any life is the sum-total of these re-
actions. But this complete subjection to the law of causation
does not involve determinism. Free will enters all along the
line. We cannot alter the results of past actions but we can
;
alter the quality of those results by our present use of them,

and we are ourselves at every moment the conscious creators
of our future destiny.
Consequently, in relation to our desires and actions, the law
of Karma means the law of just reward and penalty. According
to the law, every event in our conduct is followed, sooner or
later, by its inevitable result
for us. But the working of the
law is slow justice often moves " with a lame foot."
: The
effect of our actions may not be worked out in this Ufetime, in
which the general circumstances may be already fixed. But
other hfetimes are to follow and in these the whole setting of
;
our Ufe, and many of its sufferings and satisfactions will be

what we have made them, the sure sequel of our treatment of
this hfe, or the full growth of the seeds of Karma which we are
now sowing.
These seeds of Karma we carry with us from hfe to Ufe in the
form of what is called our Samskar, the latent memory-record
of all past acts and desires which every soul contains and carries
with it in every hfe. This Samskar is, as it were, the agent
through which Karma works upon us. It is a constantly opera-
tive agent which partially determines all our activities. It
resembles an ever-present impulse or bundle of impulses pushing
us towards certain ways of acting and thinking. It is thus the
explanation of the character and tendencies with which each of
us is born. But we are not normally conscious of it in our human
life; the memory is latent :
every soul as Plato puts it is
bound to drink of the river of Unmindfulness before it returns to
mortal existence. Much of our knowledge, like much of our
character, is due to its working ;
many of our intuitions are
recognitions of truths learned long ago in this sense to know
;
is to remember, as Plato also held. But its work is subconscious :
only very rarely is the recognition a conscious one.

It now becomes clear why the goal of rehgion, which is regarded
as Uberation or salvation from the turmoil and sufferings of our
unstable existence, may be even more truly regarded as freedom
from Karma and the seeds of Karma, or liberation from the fruit
of works, or salvation from sin and the power of sin. And it
becomes clear also why one of the chief conditions of Hberation
is desirelessness, or the condition of not caring about results as
they affect us. The soul that has learned to do all for the glory
of God, not for any reward or result for itself, has already poten-
tially freed itself from Karma. The law of action and reaction
has no more hold upon it ;and it is saved. For such a soul,
the seeds of Karma are said to be all burnt out and it has
;
no more need of re-birth into mortal hfe, for there are no more
debts to be paid. Freedom from the wheel of change, freedom
from works, freedom from mortal existence, freedom from
Karma and freedom from sin, are all one and the same thing.
It becomes clear, again, why the final condition of liberation
is represented as knowledge or wisdom. Just as reason super-
sedes instinct, so knowledge of reahty, or true Vidya, alone can
supersede Samskar and all its influences. The soul that " knows
itself," and in so doing knows its own spiritual reahty, not only

knows its Samskar, but knows it for what it is a seed-bed of
tendencies and impulses which may be steriUsed in an instant
by " union with the will of God." Behind the Samskar is the
divine spark of Nous or Atman, ready to bum it away the moment
the covering of illusion is removed, just as behind Karma is God
the unchangeable, ready to bum away the whole chain of
phenomenal causation when the great barrier of Maya is
destroyed.
But the road to Uberation is a long one, and the soul must
live many times over before it can leam the final lesson. There-
fore it must retum to physical existence again and again, each
time with increased opportimities of learning. For though it
does not now recognise that its present sufferings are the result
of its own past deeds, in the interval between each mortal Ufa
itbecomes conscious of its Samskar or memory-record of the past,
and so is forced to realise the justice of Karma. This interval,
spent in a mode of existence more or less like heaven or more
or less like purgatory, is also determined, both as to its character

and as to its duration, by Karma now recognised as just reward
or punishment. The law of causation may lead anywhere to
a heaven or to a hell. But both the heaven and the hell are
temporary destinies whether the destiny or deserts which we
:
have earned be happy or unhappy, we exhaust them in time,

and then return to another " ordinary " life. We win heaven
by striving ardently to deserve heaven, and by striving success-
fully.
Our reward is heaven for a thousand years, perhaps.
But we must come back to finish our lesson of life the winner
:
of heaven has still to learn not to desire any rewards and it

;
may be that heaven is not good for us. Hence the Vedantist
assertion that those who strive after heaven are not to be envied.

They are weaving chains for themselves pleasant chains, but
chains none the less. And salvation means escape from all
chains. For those who long for heaven have not yet learned
to long for God : we are brought back once more to the terribly
hard saying of Spinoza, that we have not really learned to love
Him until we no longer care whether He loves or hates us in
return.
In each mortal life, the soul which incarnates in a human
body becomes subject to the limitations of human consciousness,
and therefore forgets the past. But in each new birth it starts
where its past has placed it, and where its own destiny has led
it. And the soul that has profited much from its former lessons
is, during its human hfe, on a higher level than before enough
:
of Samskar or memory anamnesis) will force its way through

(or
the human envelope to guide and control it. Thus we may speak
of " advanced " souls
always conspicuous for their quality,
"
even, in many cases, from childhood. And the most " advanced
of all, such as the soul of Socrates appears to have been, may
I be so near the condition of freedom as to be able to put aside
I
the Umits of human consciousness at will, and to hold com-
i
munion with the spirit within. This, indeed, is open to all if
only we can free ourselves enough from the preoccupations of
the flesh and the world, can force the outward-turning conscious-
"
ness inwards, and so withdraw into the " chamber of the heart
and be still. For it is to be noted that, though the scheme of
evolution seems to involve us in a fixed order of development,
with all the slow steps predetermined by necessary sequences
of causeand effect, nevertheless it is open to every soul to quicken
the development (or retard it) by right (or by wrong) choice.
AU souls will become free at last, after many lives. But your soul
or mine may become free in this hfetime if we will.
The whole Vedanta doctrine of Karma and Samskar,
of this
of the causation of destiny for the reincarnating soul, and of
the interval-existence in heaven or hell, is treated popularly by
Plato. Like a true Vedantin, he excludes it all from the real
gospel of hberation heaven and rewards, reincarnation and
:
destiny, are of no importance to the true Philosopher. So the

account of these things, like all the references to theology and
reUgion as popularly understood, is relegated to the simpler parts
of the book. 1 Rewards of righteousness meaningless for the
perfected soul are brought in as a last argument for oiu: world-
absorbed minds. But, as any reader may see for himself, the
account is a correct enough reproduction of the Indian doctrine,
at any rate in essentials while the moral lessons of the doctrine
;
are very clearly explained. Plato is careful to emphasise the

combination of free choice with the strong element of necessity
attaching to Karma. Every destiny is taken from the lap of
Lachesis, the fate of past deeds each soiil is supposed to choose
;
its destiny but the choice itself is predetermined (in great

;
part) by the blind reactions of experience. It is significant

here, and and the Vedanta
characteristic of both the Platonic
teaching, that the worst choice is made by souls who have come
from heaven, not from purgatory, who have had an easy and
pleasant time, without any taste of the waters of affliction, and
who have been virtuous in the past only because habit, induced
by favourable circumstances, has made them so. But the choice
* He presents it all in the form of a myth

a common device of his, when he
wishes to expound a doctrine which is likely to appear extravagant or foolish to
an intellectual Greek reader. But he never puts his deepest philosophy into
allegorical form. For the presentation of that he adopts the still more ingenious

device as in the Republic of putting it in a form capable of different inter-
pretations, so that an intellectuaUst will find in it matter worthy of serious atten-
tion, without suspecting that its real meaning is something which, if baldly
tated, would be dismissed by him as mystical or obscurantist or otherwise
ridiculous.
may be made with full consciousness and knowledge. In propor-

tion as the soul can hold fast to " right belief," in that degree
will the choice be safe ; and if it has gained any measure of
genuine knowledge, then it will pass over the river of Lethe
safely, not only choosing the life that is good, but also carrying
with it into that hfe the knowledge that is needful for its salvation.
The really determining factors are, as always, the vice that is
ignorance and the virtue that is knowledge ; or, as we should

say, the normal character that is nothing more nor less than
our chosen estimate of things good and things evil, the order of
our moral universe which we have built up for ourselves by
countless acts of will in the past.
PART V
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
CHAPTER XII
DISCUSSION OF THE DOCTRINE IN THE LIGHT OF

MODERN THOUGHT
WE have reached the end of the Republic and of the

interpretation
for me now
doctrines with
of
to
its teaching. It only remains
connect and contrast some of its
some of the characteristic assump-
tions of our own thought and faith. But before attempting so
perilous a task,I would like to disarm criticism on a few fimda-
mentcd matters. There are some elements in the doctrine, as

I have presented it, which must certainly arouse the hostility
of the Western mind, and will cause both thinkers and behevers
both the votaries of science and the votaries of reUgion to
rush forward in soUd waves of attack. In order to examine the
grounds of this hostihty, let me boldly group together the most
obviously objectionable elements in the argument. They are,
I think, just these :
The distinction between the path of pursuit (or Ufe as we

know it), and the path of religion (or Ufe as we do not know it,
and do not particularly wish to know it).
The distinction between the goodness we understand and
value, and a goodness called real, few of whose features we can
even recognise as good.
The distinction between the religion and faith which are
everything to many of us, and a rehgion which seems so little
reUgious as to have no place for beUef in a personal God and
our devotion to Him.
The distinction between the positive scientific knowledge
220
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 221
which is the great hope of progressive civihsation, and a

" science " which, while pretending to supersede human know-
no credentials, no proof of
ledge, offers its validity, and has no
obvious practical utility whatsoever.
The between the objects of our religious faith
distinction
God and His Son and His angels and ministers, on the one hand
and a so-called eternal Reality, unintelligible and wholly
unlovable, on the other.
The distinction between the objects of our knowledge (which
are real enough to be the very obvious causes of our weal or
woe), and the objects of assumed wisdom (which are not real
enough to us to merit any name except Eide or Forms or Ideas).
The distinction between the faculties of knowing (whose
worth is proved every moment of our hves), and the faculty of
super-knowing (whose very existence is a sheer assumption).
The distinction between the philosophy which, not finally
perhaps, but with ever-increasing success, systematises our
whole knowledge and thought, and a " real " philosophy, which
is admittedly useless as a guide in life, and does nothing to
co-ordinate the elements of our knowledge.

In every case, there is much more than a distinction drawn.
There is also the definite assertion of the existence of a vast
gulf between the things distinguished an assertion, too, of the
;
immeasurable inferiority of the entire group of objects, faculties

and states which we know as real and valuable. Add to this
degradation a wilful casting out of the details of life which we

know as best home and family, art and the pursmt of art,
poetry and the inspiration of poetry, progress and its many-
sided culture, effort and achievement in almost every direction
and you have an array of " objectionable elements " which does
most emphatically call for explanation.
Now I should be arrogant, indeed, if I imagined that I could,
like Socrates in the fifth book of the Republic, " breast the huge
waves of opposition." The defence is even harder now than it
was in Plato's day for our experience has deeper roots, om
;
common sense rests upon a broader basis of proved facts of Ufe,

our science is full-grown and no longer a weakling, our religion
has an authority quite unknown to the Greeks. And these, I
suppose, are my antagonists the experience, the common sense,
the science and the religion of the modern Western world, Add
to these the careful verdict of learned commentators, the weight
of erudition for many generations and then let the reader
;
judge whether I can hope to defend my position against such

odds.
But I will not attempt a formal defence. I have only under-
taken in this chapter to examine the grounds of opposition, and
so perhaps show cause for questioning their permanent validity.
Then, leaving the opposition on one side, I will try, for the
benefit of the very few who may share my doubts about the
strength of the enemy's position, to harmonise the Platonic
teaching, as I see it, with the known needs and good aims of our
life in the Western world.
Let me again begin by recalling the story of the public lecturt

given by Plato in Athens when his reputation had been long
established. It was annoimced that he would lecture upon the
Good, and a large audience assembled to hear him. " They
thought that they would hear about the accepted human goods
which they understood but they were startled to hear a lecture
;
all about Mathemata and number and geometry and astrology ;
and so most of that great and varied throng were disappointed

and went away." Is it not true that " the great and varied
throng " of people of all kinds who have read the Republic have
come to the study of it with just the same expectations ? We
all expect to find an intelligible account of what we consider
good but, though some may go away disappointed, most of

;
us do actually find the very meaning to which our predilections

point us. This is excusable, certainly for there never was
;
a book of which the Latin couplet is more true :
" Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque,

Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua."*
Now need not go farther to explain why it is that most of

I
us, all modem commentators, have adopted

including nearly
the interpretation which holds the field to-day. This alone
harmonises with our " generally accepted human goods," with
our dominant interests, with the things we chiefly care about,
we members of the strenuous, pushing, practical Western world.
' " This is a book in which each reader seeks his own opinions ; in Mrhich each
likewise finds opinions which are his own."
We are all politicians, intensely interested in the machinery of

welfare, in the building and improving of the shell of social life,
its institutions and laws, its paraphernalia of well-being, its
concrete, visible structure of appliances for a satisfactory life.
No wonder we fasten upon the " politics " of the Republic,

dwelling, in appreciation or criticism, on the Autocratic Philos-
opher, on the rigid class system, on the military police and on
" the medicinal lying," which is so excellently allowed as a
device for hoodwinking the lower orders. We are all social
reformers, intensely interested in the outer regulation of other
people's lives, in the national provision for their needs, in the
devices for the care of health and the improvement of the race.
No wonder we fasten upon the social reforms of the Republic,
harping, with endless discussion, upon the community of goods,
the community of pursuits for women and men, the equality
of the sexes, and the daring eugenic proposals which defy the
marriage tie for the sake of a healthy stock.
We are all scientific people, too, or firm believers in science,
with an intense interest and a blind faith in the power of our
sciences to produce obvious and measurable increase of our
" accepted goods " to cure our diseases, to lengthen our lives,
;
to enable us to harness nature to the yoke of our desires. No

wonder we examine anxiously the sciences about which Plato
talks,
excusing his primitive ignorance, or if we cannot bear to
criticisehim struggling manfully to show that he really is in
line with the methods of modern research. ^
But these interests of ours are all good, you will say they ;
are the marks of vigorous, unselfish people who insist upon

making the world better than we find it, who refuse to sit with
folded hands watching the world go wrong, ourselves and others
stagnating in apathy instead of striving onwards with the effort
that is life. Why, of course who would say that they are not
:
good ? Who would be so foolish as to rule out the path of pursuit

from our lives, when we cannot even begin to live well until we
have done our best and achieved our utmost upon it ? But you

must at least admit and this is all I claim that these good
* E.g. Bosanquet ; who makes the extraordinary remark that the modern
discovery of the planet Neptune would have been dear to the heart of Plato.
Extraordinary, at least, in connection with the Jiepublic, in which we are expressly
told that " our astronomy will have nothing to do with the fretted sky, but will
leave the visible stars alone,"
preoccupations make it ver\' difficult for us to find Plato's
meaning. That is all my present point : we will discuss relative
values together in a moment.
You will observe, further, that our passionate attachment to
progress and ci\-ilisation, and to the complexity which is the
essence of both, is still a deeper obstacle. For this worship of
progressive ci\-ihsation leads us to subordinateall activities to
that which progress seems to demand. In an extreme form of
this worship, society is regarded as a beautiful organism, ever
evolv-ing in increasing variety, though without any known goal
before it just trailing through eternity, alwav's to be but never
being perfect. Each social member must fit into this evolutionary
process in which he has his place, and become what it requires for
its There cannot, then, be any one
increasing differentiation.
single ideal of human perfection no rigid t\-pe for all, no one
:
mould into which all must be nm, no Christ-man, with his stark
simplicity, which all must become. It takes all sorts of people
to make a world, we say how else shall we get our many-sided,
;
progressive life ? How else shall we, each in his own way, find
the culture which suits him ? How obviously true But how !
certainly the ob\ious truth blinds us to the equally obvious

falsehood ! Of course it takes all sorts to make the imperfect
world we know. But it takes only one sort to make a good world,
and that sort is the all-good man and woman of whom Plato
wTote. Does not the universal ideal of rehgion " Be ye there-

fore as Christ
"

mean just this ? Never mind your many-sided
culture let that take care of itself.
: Aim, all of you, at the
single but infinite quahty of a Christ, the full stature of humanity,
and the good society will follow as a matter of course too good
for progress to need talking about any more. But, once again,
how are we to be expected to find and welcome this message in
Plato's writings, so long as we are under the spell of the cultural
progress which rightly belongs to the hfe of the world ?
You may many of us are also philosophers.
urge, however, that
I grant it but you ; observe that even our philosophy is
will
subordinated to the poUtics and the science and the progress in
which we beheve. That philosophy as we understand it
should be so subordinated matters hardly at all. If it is only
a keen intellectual exercise, always trying to find truth where
it is not to be found, with faculties which cannot touch anything
above the relative and the contradictory, then it is of little

consequence that such an exercise should fall into line with
scientific method, and anchor its specvilations to the relatively
firm discoveries of physics, biology and psychology. Only it
must be remembered that, in doing so, it abandons its assumed

quest to find the truth and, just as the man of science can
;
never understand a Swedenborg who asserts that the real use

of the senses is to see God, so the votaries of such a philosophy
can never understand a Plato who finds that the real use of the
intellect is to serve as a handmaid in preparing a different faculty
for its upward fhght to the Good.
But, finally, may it not be urged that many of us are religious,
and therefore ready to find and to value a more profound teaching
than science or philosophy can reveal ? I gladly grant it but ;
is it not true that just here there has come to be the most fatal
subordination, and therefore the greatest obstacle of all ? I
mean the very general subordination of religion to politics, to

progress, and which has made even religious
finally to science,
leaders unwilling or unable to recognise the rehgious message
of Plato.
It is very easy, I know, to exaggerate here. But it will hardly
be denied that, in quite early times, the pure religion of Christ
"
lost something of its simplicity by being " institutionalised
or " politicised," with the definite establishment of the Church,
It became Christianity men spoke and still speak of conversion
:

to Christianity, even of belief in Christianity a dreadful sub-
stitute, surely, for behef in Christ for behef in Christianity has
;
led to inquisitions, but belief in Christ can only lead to love.

Nations were labelled Christian, just as they might be labelled
parts of the Roman Empire. And Church was combined with

State an ingenious and very sure way of banishing the Sermon
on the Mount and all the core of utter unworldliness which is
the essence of true religion. It was perhaps not an accident

that Aristotle, and not Plato, became the accepted fount of
philosophic wisdom for such a Church how could it have been
:
otherwise ?
But Protestantism restored the loss, some think, bringing
back religion to itspure source and its true meaning, making it
once more a matter for the individual soul, concerned only with
the relation of the soul to God, and so raising it from the degrada-
tion of mixture with a political institution. There was a gain,
no doubt, even though clergy have not yet ceased to measure
the progress of their " religion " by counting the milhons of

adherents to Christianity as if that had anything to do with
the number of followers of Christ. But two new dangers have
since appeared, whether as a result of Protestantism or not,
I do not care to guess. One is the definite exaltation of science ;
the other, the passion for human progress. It would be perverse

and foolish to make much of the latter danger, even though it
may sometimes lead to making religion an affair of drainsas the
early Christian Socialists were (most unfairly) accused of doing.
For, as I will explain later, the care for human progress in the
right place is so closely bound up with the practice of true religion
that there is not very much to be feared from a closer linking
of the two. The only danger lies in the fact that we are inclined
to identify all religion with the good conduct of the lower path
(with Dharma or religion), and so forget that every individual
its
soul has its

own upper path to tread alone. For even in the
modern world it is not true to say that, though we may seek
God in the desert, the God we find must be the God of the city.
Now, as at all times, the God we find will be our God, of sohtude
and city alike.
But the other danger, arising from the exaltation of science,
has proved to be more real and much more insidious. When
science became really formidable, as an authoritative guide of
thought and belief, and therefore an apparent foe to religion,
religious leaders made the tragic blunder of opposing it on its

own ground that of the lower path. One cannot help thinking
that the blunder was made because the religious leaders had not
fully understood what a gulf separates the province of Nous,
the faculty which can see God in the spiritual world, and the
province of intellect, the faculty which can see order and causa-
tion among phenomena. They did not perceive that they were

descending into the cave to fight unnecessarily a hopeless
battle ;
they seem to have been unconscious that they were
making any such descent, perhaps because they were chiefly
interested in the lower form of religion, or that which depends
upon evidences and rational arguments, upon appeals to histori-
cal documents, upon proofs of signs and wonders, and upon all
the other paltry props of our inferior faith which has in it so little
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 22T
of absolute certainty as to be shaken to its foundations if its

own pegs are touched. And so the priests of the middle
little
of the nineteenth century set to work to " disprove " the new

science not seeing that it would have been just about as relevant
to try to disprove a new planet.
A succeeding generation of leaders, recognising the futility
of this attack, changed its attitude, though not its ground, and
opened its arms to science, only stipulating that, if any very
startling discovery were made, such as the possible manufacture
of " life " by chemists' ingenuity, it should be allowed to
harmonise it decently with its necessary religious beliefs. But
this attitude also involves the subordination of the religious
faculty to the intellectual, in other words, the degradation of
religion to the level of science for the only harmony possible
;
is that of one set of intellectual conceptions with another set
and the attempt to make religion scientific cannot achieve more

than a reconcihation, to changing views of the phenomenal
universe, of changing mental concepts of God's purpose in that
universe. But spiritual truth neither asks for nor needs any such
reconciliation. It cannot be in opposition lines lying in different
:
planes never meet at all.*

An odd result has followed the unnecessary fear and equally
unnecessary respect for modern science on the part of religious
teachers. In the nineteenth century the chief reproach of
Christianity did not arise from the badness of its " bad speci-
mens " so much as from the excellence of numerous people who
lived exemplary Uves but disclaimed all profession of religious
belief. They frankly preferred science to its very impotent
adversary. In the present century, the reproach seems likely to
arise from the fact that a Christian Church, which is now trying
to be scientific (in a narrow sense) repels numerous good people
*I do not mean that our faith ought to be without intellectual concepts, nor,
if itmust have them, that it should allow them to be as absurd as we please. I
simply mean that the intellectual concepts are not any essential part of the faith,
but only a changing dress in which we may try to present the reality of our faith
to our own or others' intellects. And, as an illustration of the different planes,
consider the unnecessary flutter of excitement among religious people when
a scientific man announces the possibility of making living protoplasm out of
dead matter in the laboratory. It obviously does not matter two straws whether
or not we discover how God (or nature) " creates " life, in lower or higher forms ;
it is no more important to reUgion than the discovery of how He sends the rain
or makes a plant grow. It only matters if we mistake the knowledge for under'

standing of life or of God.
who have discovered for themselves that truth Ues far deeper
than modem science or the scientific intelligence can reach ;
who, instead of dropping a belief in miracles, as unscientific,

have discovered that what is really true is always miraculous
and often unintelligible to reason and who are actually kept
;
out of the fold, not because they believe too little, but because
they are ready to believe too much not because they find
;
religion opposed to reason, but because they find it

pretending to be rational. And meanwhile, some of the leaders
of the Christian religion, steering a middle course between
religion and science, tend to become
like all who compromise

between the spiritual and the earthly themselves the greatest
sceptics in regard to the greatest spiritual truths. This is why,
even among the exponents of religion, there are so few who are
prepared to recognise in Plato an explicit champion of the
" philosophical " foundation of religious truth. Some of the
early Christians hailed him as " the
Moses of the Greeks."
St.Augustine was glad to declare that he found Christ insinuated
in every page of his writings. Very different is the estimate
formed by the priestly commentators of later days. Jowett

Churchman and cleric hardly finds in the Republic a profounder
meaning than did the rationalist Grote. Bussell Churchman

and cleric too traces the influence of Eastern thought in Plato's
myths, only to find that this explains his pessimism. Adams
comments on some of his profoundest utterances by excusing
the childishness of his blunders. The Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Oxford can see nothing more in the ecstasy of
Plotinus (and, by implication, in the ecstasy of Plato's Philos-
opher) than " a phenomenon deserving attention by the physio-
logist as well as by the psychologist."
Another different explanation of our narrow interpretation
of the Republic is to be found in the fact that most of us are
educated in complete ignorance of antiquity. At our Univer-
sities we are taught in effect that Greece and Rome were the
ancient world, or, at any rate, that they represented the high-
water mark of thought and speciolation among the ancients.
The wisdom of the East is a sealed book to us Sanskrit is not
;
studied, nor any other Eastern language, as part of a classical

education. In our elaborate study of Greece and Rome we
gather (e.g. from Herodotus) that there were some very cranky
people in Egypt, such as the priests of Memphis, who professed

to know secrets which even some of the clever Greeks were
curious to learn we gather also that there were " mysteries,"
;
such as those of Eleusis, in which a hidden doctrine was supposed

to be veiled. But all these were the delusions or the make-
beUeve of children and, in any case, the most sensible of the
;
clever children of the old world were the intelligent Greeks and
the capable Romans, who devised constitutions, learned how
to fight and organise, wrote plays and histories and made the
fine beginnings of sensible speculation in politics, ethics, logic
and metaphysics. Of course these speculations must not be
taken too seriously they were only beginnings, such as one
:
would expect from the youth of mankind. But at least they

were sane. And, as Plato is the most charming of all the specula-
tors, we certainly will insist upon treating him as sane too. He
shall not be regarded as one of the cranks, of whom our know-
ledge is vague, but quite enough to show that they were very \
fantastic and deluded people.

Now I am not exaggerating this narrow point of view in-
evitably produced by our accepted modem education. If proof
were needed, it would only be necessary to ask how many of our
University graduates, who are quite familiar with Aristotle's
Logic and Ethics, have any knowledge at all of the philosophy
of the Chinese or of the Hindus or of the Persians or how many;
of our educated clergy have even read a translation of the Bhaga-

vad Gita, that wonderfully beautiful summary of the religious
philosophy of Hinduism. And the worst result of our ignorance
is that it vitiates our estimates and distorts our perspective
in regard to the most important issues in life. Books are con-

tinually written, and innumerable sermons are preached, which
unintentionally mislead us concerning the things that matter
most, because the writers and the preachers have no inkling
of the vast background of profound speculation and life-giving
revelation which lies behind our familiar " classical " authori-
ties.^ And the greatest error creeps in with reference to Greek
* With reference to Plato, witness the preposterous but quite typical assertion
by Grote that " Plato was the first to introduce into ethical speculation the theory
that the just mind blesses the possessor of itself " ; and in reference to modern
thought generally, witness the general belief in the newness of the doctrine of

pragmatism a doctrine which was fully worked out, named, and put in its
right place, at least two thousand years before Bergson wrote or William James
popularised his teaching.
thought, for this so obviously holds in solution two different
elements, the one really new and original, representing the early
effort of the mind Western civilisation to grapple with the
of
difficulties of rational speculation and scientific method the ;
other very old, an inheritance from the ancient East, which

had filtered through and had become the possession of a few
minds only, but in those minds had produced a profound result,
and emerged in the form of a transcendental philosophy, totally
different from the original but very limited speculations of the
native genius of Greece. The mind of Plato seems to have
combined, as no other mind did, both these elements. Side by
side with the flashes of purely Greek thought, expressive of new
analysis of intellectual concepts in pohtics and ethics and meta-
physics, there shines out also the reflection of the ancient wisdom,
with its mature and settled view of a spiritual universe explaining
adequately and at all points the phenomenal universe and man's
place in it with its elaborate philosophy, also, the outcome of
;
hundreds of generations of acute thinkers appljdng minds no

less subtle than those of the Greeks to the eternal problems of

Ufe and knowledge and reaUty but, unlike the Greeks, always
with the " spiritual idea " deeply rooted in their thought.
But, indeed, most of the obstacles I have mentioned are the
outcome of something much deeper. We in the West have
taken it for our task to make good the Path of Pursuit. Whether
the task is self-chosen or is forced upon us for our contribution
to the evolution of humanity. Heaven only knows. But it is a
fine task, even though it brings with it pecuhar danger and
loss. We may say, therefore, that it is not merely an accident
that our rehgion has largely* lost the distinction between the
way of the world and the way of the spirit that a religion of
:
works, and of faith expressed in works, is the true reUgion in

our eyes that human progress seems very real, and real too
:
its ministers, science and invention

far more real than the
* I say " largely," for I am speaking only of the present day, and chiefly
of the Protestant Churches. There is little doubt that in mediaeval times it vrai
definitely recognised that two distinct orders had been instituted by God, the one
spiritual, to guide men to spiritual life, the other temporal, to conduct the afiairs
of the world, the latter necessary because of the innate turbulence of human
nature, but only representing the sword of temporal power which St. Peter was
commanded to put back into its sheath, and not use at all as a disciple. The
distinction is still recognised in a large part of the Christian Church, though not,
I imagine, by most Protestants.
mystic's progress towards an intangible beatitude of soul to the

neglect of all earthly goods : that our creed has dropped re-
incarnation out of its content, and made heresies of many a
belief whose sole fault was its tendency to lessen the importance
of this present
life that Plato was forgotten, while Aristotle was
:
exalted that the youthful " antiquity " of practical Western

:
nations has been studied, and the far older " antiquity " of the
East neglected. May we not see in all this the working of the
selective instinctWestern temperament, unceasingly
of the
forcing us to concentrate all our attention upon those things
alone which will help us to deal shrewdly and act strenuously
and judge practically in all that belongs to the path of pursuing
and achieving results ?
It is not accident but the loss is as real as the gain. We
;
have turned outwards to find both truth and happiness, although

our rehgion tells us plainly that they can only be found within.
In a sense, therefore, we have lost the secret of religion, because
our chosen mission in the world bUnds us to it. It is not that
we are ignorant of the secret : it is written large in all the teach-
ings of our divine guide. But we simply cannot face the Sermon
on the Mount, with paradoxical exaltation of the meek
all its
and lowly, the persecuted and suffering the failures in the

worldly life. So we interpret it all compromisingly, trying hard
to make it fit in with our hot pursuit of laudable successes. We
will turn the other cheek
when we are convinced that our
proper pride and dignity will not be imperilled we will give to ;

him that asketh when careful investigation has proved that
he more worthy to receive than we to keep we
is resign ; will
allearthly goodswhen we are quite persuaded that our right
position in society does not require us to have them we ; will
take no thought for the morrowwhen we are entirely certain
that somebody taking adequate thought for us
else is we will ;
beheve in the moral of the camel and the needle's eyewhen we

have discovered a microscopically small camel and a mon-
strously large needle.
This is a Hbel on many Christians, you say. No doubt it is.
But it is true of most of us, quite inevitably true. Here and

there a httle sect or group may tear itself away from the general
materiahsing of the spirit but not often for long. The Quakers
:
tried to take the mandate of non-resistance hterally but they ;

soon found that, though they could refuse to draw a sword to
get the better of an enemy, they could not refrain from drawing
a cheque to get the better of a business competitor. And when
I say it is inevitable, I simply mean that it cannot be otherwise
so long as we are compelled to live the Ufe of the world, so long
as the very condition of our living an active Ufe at all is that we
shall do our best to compete in the cave for the rewards which
belong to the cave.
Then there is no way of escape ? That is just what there is :
and it is Plato's way, the Eastern way, rehgion's way everywhere

and at all times. But there is no escape from a materiaUsed
rehgion if we close the door to the upper path, or try to com-
promise it with the lower. That is our final error. We see that
the active strenuous life is good so it is. We see that its lasting
:
achievements and successes are worthy of our efforts so they

:
are. But we do not see that such life and such achievement
are not the whole of good, not the best, but only the beginning ;
we forget that, in the progress of the soul, the road turns round
upon itself when the middle of the ascent is reached and that
;
at some point in every life a new form of effort with a new goal
before it must supplant the effort and aim that went before.
The spiritual Ufe must take the place of the worldly, the inner
activity of the outer the path of Uberation must add the
;
coping-stone to the good achievements of the path of pursuit.

Both paths are good, though in very different degree both are
;
necessary, though at different stages of Ufe both form part

;
of the full Dharma of the soul, though they cannot be combined.

First the life of strenuous pursuit of manifold ends, with its
struggles, its competitions, its ambitions, its achievements, aU
made orderly and good so far as the conditions of human Ufe
allow
then and only then the life of " freedom from the
;
dust of deeds," disinterested, dispassionate, dissociated from

ambition, free from the prickings of desire, the Ufe of the meek
and lowly in spirit for whom aU the paradoxical conditions of
beatitude have become the natural conditions of the only possible
good.
But we have confused it aU. We preach salvation to children
who have aU the worldly path before them while our old men
;
and women refuse to grow old gladly, and insist upon playing
the worldly game, like schoolboys and schoolgirls, to the very
end. We make young men into priests at an age when, with

all others who have boyhood, they ought to be (and
just left
usually are) with the world's interests and aims, enamoured
filled
of its estimates (its right estimates, for it), keen on its pursuits.
And we make the priesthood a " profession " like any other
worldly profession, only veiling the fact by paying it less than
most.
Is not our thought confounded, too, by the same confusion ?
We are all at sea when we try to define the place of religion in
our hfe. Is war religious ? Can business be ? The answers
should be clear enough, as to a Plato they were. Call fighting
a rehgious duty, by all means but remember that its god is
;
the god of war, whose names are fortitude and self-denial. Refuse,
by all means, to divorce religion from business and administra-
tion ; but remember that their gods are the gods of human
endeavour, whose names are honesty, energy and care for others.
They are all true gods but they are not God. Devotion to them
;
is reUgious ;
but it is not Religion not the Rehgion which
Krishna and Christ came to earth to reveal, and Socrates and
St. Paul Uved and died to teach. Devotion to them is religious ;

but it is the Dharma the righteousness and the religion of
the lower path, or of human life at its best. It is not the Dharma
of the free soul. Did you not notice how, in the Republic, Plato
has much to say, in the preparatory books, about religion as we
think of it, about God and His attributes and our duty to imitate
Him but there is no mention of this in the deeper part of the
;
book, no talk of the God of human duty, but only of a " miracu-
lously superior " Good ? And how, in his other writings where

as in the Laws he keeps to the familiar level of our human
interests, there is no mention at all of the Good, but much
reference to the forms of religious observance which we all
understand ? This is all in keeping with his firm distinction,
which I have tried to express by saying boldly that there is not
one reUgion, but two, a lower and a higher and the lower
;
all-good though it is for the stage of human endeavour is but

a reflected form of the higher.
I suppose some label-loving readers will imagine that all this
is intended as a plea for the reintroduction of mysticism, of
which they have heard enough to suspect that it is a very danger-

ous substitute for sound moraUty and robust faith in a personal
God. But
hold no brief for mysticism, as usually misunder-
I
stood. If I am
pleading for anything, besides a deeper interpre-
tation of Plato, it is for a httle more attention to rehgion as he
understood it, the religion whose universal mark is its antagonism
to our worldly standards of value. Plato was a mystic, of course ;
but it is necessary to remember that he was a pure mystic, by

which I mean that there is nothing mysterious in his teaching :
it is merely difficult to grasp because it is so ahen to our ordinary
conception of " generally accepted goods." In that sense all

true rehgion is mystical. And it is worth while guarding against
a danger here. There are many people who are strongly attracted
by the idea of a mysticism veiUng profound truths which can
be revealed only to the select few. It is pleasant to think that
one is being admitted into an inner ring, a fellowship of initiates,
to whom alone the most secret doctrines are laid bare. My
interpretation of Plato may seem to them too obvious and open.
Now I do not deny that there are hidden secrets which are
revealed only to the few who have prepared themselves carefully
to understand and use the knowledge and power so gained. But
I do deny that the truth which is necessary to our salvation is
ever hidden at all, except in the sense that aU profound truth
is hidden from those who are not ready for it. But all such
truth is everywhere, and always patent it is we who are veiled
:
or bhnd, and see it only when our souls are turned round and
our ears and eyes opened. Or, to put it in another way, let us
say that there is nothing occult or mysterious about the spiritual
purpose of the universe it is only its mechanism and mode of
:
working which are mysterious, and a knowledge of these is not

necessary or even useful for salvation. Yet we are always
hankering after revelations we think we could be so much
:
better and do so much more if only a sign were given and an

obvious illumination vouchsafed to us. But we have got all
revelation within our reach the hght is everywhere, on every-
;
thing ; it is only we whoWe fail to see that we must

are dark.
grow to knowledge and hght must purify ourselves from the
;
scales of darkness, and so make our own revelation, win the sign
we want, hght our own torch of illumination.
Does this conflict with the doctrine of mysteries ? I neither
know nor care. There have certainly been, at all times, elaborate
concealments of truth, by men from men, by good men from
other men ; a the principle of not throwing pearls

belief, too, in
before swine. And far more important
inspired teachers
have taught in secret part of their message to men. But I think
the secrecy has only been that of a small circle of chosen disciples,
not a closed circle of initiates and all who are ready may and
;
do enter the circle. Clearly there is no need to be mysterious.

You may shout the truth from the housetops none wiU hear it, :
except those who have ready ears to hear. You may shovel out
pearls before the noses of swine they will neither smell nor
:
see them until they areno longer swine. We imagine that some-
thing may be seen or heard which will mislead or endanger the
uninstructed soul. Certainly the truth proclaimed may be dis-
torted into error by the crooked ears of unready listeners but ;
that happens to every proclamation, of man or God or devil

and the falsehood which the crooked soul makes or takes is not
lessened by shutting close the truth, and leaving error alone at
large.
Plato, at any rate, pure mystic though he is, makes no mystery
about the highest truths. All that can be explained in words,
he explains as clearly as words allow. If his meaning is obscure,
it is for two reasons only the summit of truth cannot be shown
:
to us Glaucons and Adeimantuses of the world, for we have not

the eyes to see it "I would gladly lead you farther, but you
;
could not follow me now " and the truth of intuition cannot
;
be expressed in the language of rational concepts "we need :
new terms," we need a spiritual vocabulary, which we in the

West have never had.
But enough of the obstacles which hinder us from under-
standing the spiritual teaching of the Republic. What of the

teaching itself its value, or even its reasonableness, as com-
pared with the best Christian behefs ? To begin with, I do not
admit that there is any essential difference but I had better
;
emphasise the word "essential" here, lest I shock good people

by seeming to say that Plato taught all that Christ taught.
Let me say boldly, however, that, just as all pure mystics are

brothers, all the world over, so all religion is one in its central

message. To ask Is the Christian rehgion true ? Is the Hindu
religion true ?
is hke asking
Is European truth true ? Is
Indian truth true ? There is no Christian rehgion there is :
no Hindu religion. There are only several versions of Christ's

truth ; there are only several
versions of Krishna's truth.
And all of these are partial and clouded aspects of the full
truth revealed by Christ and by Krishna. Religion is just
knowing God. What we take for religion is often no more than
a nodding acquaintance with Him. Think of yourself many :

people know you a little one-sidedly and very partially your ;
acquaintances know each one aspect, probably a very trivial

and external aspect your friends know more of you
; and ;
your intimates know you still better, and in many aspects ;
but the " truth " of you is not really known to any of them.
You know yourself very differently. Is not this just how God is

known ? But and this is religion's real secret God can be
known by you or by me, not merely as you know yourself and
as I know myself, but far more fully and completely. That is
how religious people know God and the revelation of that
;
knowledge, and of the way to it, is reUgion, at all times and in all
places. It cannot matter in the least whether a man draws his
inspiration from the way of the Cross of Christ or the Eight-
fold Path of Buddha or the way of realisation of Vedanta. The
one thing needful is that he shall understand that nothing short
of a Calvary, a desert, or a wilderness, is the beginning of the
way, by each of which his self is crucified or starved to death or
lost never to be found again and that the way itself is a dying
;

daily to the world and the flesh not to the bad world and the
bad flesh only, but to the good world and the good flesh too.
That is why the way is so narrow, and so cold. So lonely, also ;
since none can go abreast of others, but each must tread alone
his path to his God. Well, if anything is clear in Plato's writings,
it is his intense belief in this " gospel," and his uncompromising
statement of it. So much so, that all we worldly people are
repelled by it, and even refuse to recognise it or, when we
;
cannot help seeing complain piteously, with Grote, that he

it,
banishes all the elegances and amenities of life, and leaves us

only the bare skeleton.
But every statement of the gospel differs from every other
statement, in emphasis at least and the Eastern or Platonic
;
statement must seem to the Christian West to contain many

elements which are both strange and wrong. In the first place,
it seems to present us with a purely aristocratic form of rehgion
intended only for the few, and those not the poor and needy
who are exposed to life's hardest trials, nor for the young who
are beset with strong temptations, but only for the leisured, the
elderly, the controlled. It is an intellectual religion, too there :
is in it no salvation for the ignorant and foolish, nor for those

who have no time to cultivate dialectic or train their minds in
the slow lessons of discrimination. It is icily cold, moreover :
in its passionlessness there is no room for love, for faith, for the
glow of devotion to a personal God or Saviour, even for prayer.
And it is a very dangerous religion for the life of contemplation
;
which it exalts may become for many people a form of indolent

apathy, of subtle self-indulgence wearing the mask of virtue.
Every count in this indictment has some validity, though not
as much as we are inclined to think hardly any, indeed, as
:
applied to the Vedanta of Hinduism, a more as applied to

little
Plato's doctrine. There is certainly a tinge of aristocratic

prejudice in all the religion of the East. It meets us in the
orthodox Hindu belief that full salvation is only for the twice-
born, not for the lowest castes it meets us even more markedly
;
"
in Plato's concentration of attention upon the " golden caste
of Guardians in his State. But the Hindu orthodoxy is only the
distorted form into which human prejudice has twisted a pro-
found spiritual truth. Salvation is only (as Christians admit)
for those who have been " bom again " and have attained the
condition of Uttle children in spirit, free from the preoccupations
and cares of the full life in the world. But this condition

cannot be reached so the Indian doctrine asserts until ex-
perience has taught its lessons for only experience can dissolve
;
for us the absorption in the world which the young ought to feel,
and which the poor and needy cannot help feehng so long as
they are forced to devote nearly all their time and strength and
thought to the task of obtaining a bare livelihood. According
to the Indian conception, full salvation (which means so much
more than going to heaven when we die) cannot be won except
by those souls which have reached the condition typified by the

true Brahman exactly resembling the true Guardian whose
way of Ufe Plato describes. This condition, with all its necessary
experience behind it, is only attained after many incarnations
into human life ; and the soul which has nearly reached it will,
naturally and in all normal cases, incarnate in the Brahman
or golden caste for its final life on earth. At the same time,
both the Indian and the Platonic doctrine allow for the excep-
tional appearance of true golden natures in a lower caste and ;
in the parables of Hinduism few things are more striking than

the constant reference to examples of the very highest reUgious
life manifested in members of the very lowest castes. Witness
the often-told story of the pious Brahman sent to learn the
secret of rehgion from the life of an outcast and untouchable
butcher. In practice, every religion shows a tendency to become
aristocratic, or rather oligarchic
even in an English Church ;
but that is only part of the human distortion which every reUgion
suffers,and from which it has to be delivered by frequent up-
heavals and new movements. It must be remembered, more-
over, that in India aU castes and rules of caste are wiped out as
soon as the spiritual life is embraced. The Sannyasin renounces
caste when he renounces the world the Yogi is above and beyond
;
caste. And the fullest rehgious teaching is open to all all :
may sit at a Yogi's feet, even as according to the ancient rule,

at least all may in youth enter the Brahman's house for teaching.
But this does not bring reUgion within the reach of those to
whom poverty is both a preoccupation and an obsession. Let
us grant it. But is religion in any existing society free from
this defect which gives its sting to the
It is part of the truth
?
bitter old saying of the

Greek cynic " Let a man first obtain
a competence, and then practise virtue." But the reUgion of
Hinduism, at any rate, can face this reproach as well as any
other ;for in it every form of religious hfe is offered, for every
temperament and every condition of work or wealth.^ There is
some path of salvation within the reach of all and each path is;
all-sufiicient and all-good.

But here we touch upon the second count in the indictment
the super-intellectual form of the Vedanta reUgion, by which
it is put quite out of the reach of the ignorant and fooUsh, as
weU as of the hard-working poor. Now it is perfectly clear that

no one can become the true Philosopher described by Plato
unless he or she has leisure enough to give up most of life to the
task, to " leave all and foUow " the truth. But it is also per-
* I do not refer to the " lower forms " of religion in which Hinduism abounds.
These forms of the reflections of religion are a necessary accident of the adaptation
of rehgion to worldly life, and are found, in greater or less abundance, in all
countries at all times. I am deaUng here only with the paths of true rehgion,
as explained.
fectly clear that Plato does not want to adapt his " best of all
possible lives " to anything worldly : he has chosen, in the
Republic, to picture the life of the absolute devotee, who literally
does leave to follow truth. We can no more expect him to
all
reconcile with the needs of the wage-earner or man of business

it
than we can ask any celibate religious order to adapt its way
of living to the needs of a householder. Further, Plato is con-
cerned solely with the religious path of wisdom or Gnana and ;
that, too, in its most intellectualised form. But, as I have

more than once pointed out, Vedanta recognises two other

paths the Karma Yoga, or path of work, and the Bhakti Yoga,
or path of devotion. Now in both of these the essentials are,
indeed, the same as in Gnana Yoga both must begin with dis-
;
interestedness and dispassion, and end with full discrimination

between what really matters and what really does not matter.
But the methods are totally different. Karma Yoga is all activity:
ceaseless action for thegood of others, never for oneself but ;
with no care about successful results of any action. The one

rule is Do all you can, and leave the rest to God. Bhakti Yoga
is alldevotion it is worship at its best
: that is, the unceasing
;
expression of wholly selfless devotion to God. The path of

activity is for those who can serve better than they can think
or meditate, and who must give of their service if they are to
reaUse their spiritual brotherhood with all men. The path of
devotion is for those who must pour out their love to a personal
Saviour, and worship God as the Father and Mother and Child.
One of the great incarnations of the Godhead was that of
Krishna, the Christ-child who never grew up, an incarnation of
love, appeahng to the childlike and simple souls who can be
saved only if their faith is merged in love. To us, these two
paths are intelligible they express two sides of the Christian
:
ideal which we all understand. The disinterestedness of Karma

Yoga may be very foreign to our practice, and very repugnant
to us as a constant condition of our activities but at least we ;
do lip-service to the principle of sweeping a room only to the

praise of God, and so making " it and the action clean." ^ And
* The well-known and rather horrid little verse about the pious servant girl
and her task at least embodies the true principle of work-worship. It is horrid
only because it misapplies the principle so hopelessly. For the full gospel of
work is not to be offered (either as a sop of consolation or as an inducement to
be contented with an unsatisfactory lot) to drudges who are not, will not be,
the devotion of Bhakti is and always has been the central Christian
ideal. Further, it is part of our generally accepted belief that
both these paths are open to the poorest and most menial citizens
everywhere. I suppose it is an ideal of a Salvation Army at its
best to present them in combination for the religious life of even
the outcasts of society. For they are compatible with the hardest
lifeand the lowest position they do not require anyone to turn
:
his back upon the world of work or the world of care they only :
demand a new heart and a new spirit, changing everything

indeed, yet leaving the forms of all activity unchanged.
So far, then, we cannot accuse the Vedanta reUgion as a whole
of neglecting the poor and needy. At the same time, there is
always this deep difference between the Vedanta view and the
general conception of religion in the West. According to the
former, religion is such a tremendous thing that it cannot be
really followed along any path until the dust of preoccupation
with the world has been shaken off. Before that, preparation
alone is possible, nothing more. The true Karma Yogin and
the true Bhakti Yogin are " out of the world," not in it, just
as the Gnana Yogin must be. Ordinary hfe is never more than
a preparatory stage you must leave it to find your freedom
:
;
then, if you hke, return as a Karma Yogin, to work for the

world, as a Bhakta, to pray for it, as a Gnani, to enlighten it.
But according to our popular conceptions, no such separation
is necessary the gulf between the life of the world and the life
:
not of the world is recognised only by reUgious orders following

an old rule of Ufe : the great mass of Christians have decided,
for the present at all events, that religion shall be both for the
world and in the world. And this difference makes the final
doctrine of Vedanta peculiarly difficult. The intelligible paths
and should not be satisfied with doing menial duties all their lives. It is meant>
like every full gospel, for those who have passed through the variety of interests
which make normal satisfactory to " return to simplicity " in
life, and are fit
work as in everything else. It is the Karma Yogin, or for the
meant, in fact, for
true philosopher doing gladly any work that comes to hand, however menial or
dull. He alone can do it all " but for the praise of God," with no other interest
in his heart. To the servant girl, continual room-sweeping is a task to be done,
a discipline to be gone through, like most regular monotonous work. Her motive
ought to be to make the room thoroughly clean to do the work properly because
:
it is her task and if she hopes all the time that, by doing it well, she will get
;
better and more important work to do, so much the better. Room-sweeping is
not a fine life's work for any normal woman or man but it would be a perfectly
;
satisfactory life's work for a " true philosopher."

of work and devotion must both end in the wisdom of perfect

discrimination. To this they lead : this is their coping-stone :
this wisdom is the highest state of reUgion. So, after all, Gnana
or the path of knowledge is supreme it is really the royal path,
;
the direct road to the Good, as Plato saw. And Gnana is not
a gospel for the poor or the ignorant if (as Plato would have
denied)we intend always to have the poor with us, in the sense
of men and women who are debarred from getting or enjoying
the minimum of satisfactions which every human being ought
to have, and always to have the ignorant with us, in the sense
of men and women who are debarred from obtaining the
minimum of education of faculties and leisure to use them which
every human being ought to obtain.
Now Plato is an exponent of the Gnana or Wisdom path, and
of that alone. And because his religion wears an intellectual
dress, in fact, presented as an affair of elaborate intellectual
is,
exercise from beginning to end, we find it unintelligible, irritating,

and quite out of relation to what we mean by religion or even
morality. His first principle in ethics is the Socratic principle
that virtue is knowledge, with its corollary that vice is ignorance.
The Republic shows what he really means but we, missing the ;
meaning, feel vaguely insulted and directly baffled by the

doctrine. We know that we are sinners we will not admit :
that we are therefore fools. We prefer to think that our vices

are wilful, of our desires and
and due to the great strength
passions : there is about that, even though for
something fine
the moment it means defying God. The Platonic doctrine not
only beUttles us, but even seems to put our goodness and bad-
ness outside the range of our will altogether. It makes them
dependent upon causes beyond our control, upon our inherited
mental abilities and our given opportunities for mental culture.
In other words, it makes wickedness the result of the accident
of being born rather stupid, and it makes righteousness the
result of the accident of being a superior person. Yet to Plato
the doctrine is plainly vital, for desire is ignorance, while to be
virtuous is to know, that is, to possess absolutely binding know-
ledge of the real values of all things, or to be a master of moral
dialectic. And in this way alone he unites morahty with religion.
For in religion his first principle is the famous maxim of Solon,
" Know thyself," which the Republic also explains. But again
i6
we miss the meaning and if the ethical principle insulted us,
;
we feel that the religious principle insults God. We, tiiming

outwards, would fain get away from our imperfect selves, and

find God anywhere else in His heaven or in His universe.
But, once more, to Plato the principle of " inward turning "
is vital vital, too, the difficult process of the search within.
; For
in the individual soul alone is to be found the guide to God, the
faculty which is itself divine and the revealer of divinity to man.
the knowledge which is at once the sole founda-

Finally,
tion of righteousness and the sole condition of religious Ufe, is
not an accidental boon outside the scope of our willing, vouch-
safed only to the lucky few endowed with superior minds. It
is
within the reach of all though not within our immediate
reach. The road is long and hard few can jump to God in a
:
single lifetime but the road is open to aU who will to be pure

;
in heart.
The faculty of real knowing Nous or Spirit or Atman
is the same in all. Intellectual ability is not the saving grace
;
but rather moral capacity for the " dialectic " to which intel-
lectual ability is, more often than not, the foe. Plato has not
made this clear. He might perhaps have endorsed the hard
saying of one of the old Upanishads " Those who follow Avidya
:
(false knowledge or ignorance) enter into the region of darkness ;
but they enter into a stiU darker region who follow Vidya (know-
ledge as the world understands it)." Certainly his contempt for
the clever people of the cave of our world, his persistent degrada-
tion of the learning and the science which we exalt, his almost
wearisome insistence upon the stark simplicity of interests in

which true philosophy starts all these bring him near to the
doctrine that truth is revealed to babes and sucklings and
hidden from the learned, that it is to the wise foohshness and
to the intelhgent Greeks a stumbling-block. But, with the
seventh book of the Republic in our minds, it would be paradoxi-
cal to assert that Plato holds the door of his Wisdom pathway
open to any stupid but willing seeker. He narrows down the
entrance until it excludes all who have not at the least a very
good memory and a remarkable capacity for sustained though ;
and by doing so he hmits very emphatically the apphcation of

his gospel. Is he wrong ? Let wiser people answer. I am con-
tent to fall back upon the old assurance " Even a very Uttle
:
Gnana wiU save a man for the beginnings of wisdom are never
;
lost,the mustard seed of understanding never dies, but grows

from life to life till the tree of knowledge fills the soul, and
ignorance has no more room to live."

The third count in the indictment brings us back to more
familiar ground. have no intention of denying that there is,
I
in the philosophic life, a loneliness and a coldness which must

at first repel us.
That must be so, if as Vedantins assert
religion is always an intensely individual matter. But the
fault lies in us, not in the religious life
; the kingdom of heaven
must always seem chilly to us citizens of the world who have
no inkling of what communion with God really means. Yet
even the religious people of the West will complain that Plato
makes the good life unnecessarily cold by refusing to admit the

four great sources of warmth faith and devotion and prayer
and worship. Faith he hardly mentions, except to degrade it.
It is a poor thing right opinion, at its best. It belongs to the
:
lower hne of faculties and their objects, to the " doxical " group
of quasi-realities. What he means is that faith is a poor thing
by comparison with knowledge who would be content to believe
:
when he might really know ? And it gives an uncertain anchor-

age : like everything dependent upon doxa or dogma, it may
endure for a time, but will surely change at last. Is he wrong
about much that passes by the name of faith ? The history of
many an individual Ufe, the history of many ages of Christianity
or of any other rehgion, above all the history of our own age, all
prove that he is right. There is no sure anchorage except in the
direct knowledge of God which transcends behef. But, if by
faith we mean something deeper, if we mean the continual
spiritual vibration of our whole being in response to the spiritual
outpouring which comes from God, then Plato does recognise
it, for it is the cause of the harmony which the righteous soul
finds and never loses.

And he recognises it too. It is the sheet-
in its simpler form,
anchor of the " good state " which is preparatory to the perfect

path. The young citizen-soul learns in faith to attach him-
self to the given forms of good whose reaUty he will some day
know. It is his early faith alone which prepares him for the
final recognition of the Good when at last he finds it. So, too,

the disciple is led on by faith. He cannot know until the end ;
but, Uke Glaucon and Adeimantus, and like Plato himself, he

believes that there is a very different account to be given of the
Good from the one which the world gives he beUeves in a divinity
;
far surpassing the God imperfectly revealed even in his scrip-

tures ; he beUeves so intensely that " nothing else can profit
a man " except to find this divinity that he is willing to sacrifice
everything to the quest. Is not this faith ? His very courage
is expressly described as a sort of faith as, indeed, it is. And
finally, to make
the fact more plain, Plato tells us definitely
that the whole of the " good and true state " (the right con-
dition of Hving which disciples must adopt) is based upon faith
upon beUef in the wisdom of the great Legislator " whose ordin-
ances are to be kept inviolate." But, when the Royal Path is
reached, faith fades into insignificance before the Ught of true
knowledge. It is not mentioned any more, except as something
inferior which must be outgrown, something which must and
will be far transcended when the Kingly state is attained. And,
because of this, we turn round upon Plato and complain that he
fails to reaUse the importance of faith
exactly as we complain
that he fails to realise the value of art just because he banishes
the pursuit of it from the highest stage of the soul's progress
lest it should distract it from concentration upon the Good.
A similar explanation, I think, accounts for the omission
unintelligible, at first, to many of us
of the other essential
elements of reUgious fife and feeling. It has been asserted that
Plato's religion falls short of the Christian revelation chiefly
because it lacks the revelation of God as love because " his
:
highest good is Justice and not Love " and therefore his
;
doctrine " leaves us at the last strangely cold. We do not

want to hve in his Ideal State it would be dull and mechanical.
:
We do want to feel the emotions of pity and tenderness which

he regards as weakness. His absolute morality is in the end
repellent, because the revelation which alone can give it attrac-
tive force had not yet been granted to men."^ Putting aside
* Rev. W. Temple, Plato and Christianity, Chapter III. I cannot help thinking
that Mr. Temple's sympathetic criticism is vitiated throughout by three things.
First, he looks for Plato's religious teaching only in the more elementary and
popular books of the /Republic, which contain simple and quite intelligible
discussions about the nature of the personal God and the immortahty of the soul.
It does not occur to him that Plato's real religious teaching is not here at all,
but in the sixth and seventh books, in which God and immortahty are hardly
mentioned, and in which the whole discussion is very far removed from our
"accepted human goods." Indeed, Mr. Temple appears to be unable to see
anything in the " philosophic " training described in these books except a kind of
the various misunderstandings of Plato's meaning which this

passage contains, let us admit that it does very accurately
express what we all feelat first in reference to his apparent
failure to find a place for love, or for its reflections pity and
tenderness and devotion. The omission jars upon us very much
as his strange condemnation of the artistic worship of the beauti-
ful jars upon us. It is all so unhke Plato as we know him, the
Plato who could both feel and express the exquisite pathos of
the PhcBdo, the Plato who was himself poet and lover, the Plato
whose devotion to Socrates was the ruHng motive of his life,
the Plato who elsewhere identifies beauty with the supreme
good. Yet in his masterpiece, in his most elaborate and careful
exposition of his doctrine, all this seems to be forgotten and
contradicted. No wonder his Christian admirer and critic falls
back upon the notion that " his theory falls short of his intui-
tion " or instinctive feeUng, and lags behind the truth which
his heart tells him is right. But this is the exact reverse of the
fact. It is not his theory which lags behind his intuition, but
our understanding which lags behind his theory. It is not the
case that his doctrine falls short of his instinctive feeUngs : it
passes far beyond his or anyone else's feelings. With his eyes
wide open, with full knowledge of what he is doing and its
terrific cost
he points his and our souls to the narrow path
whose strait gate shuts out everything we prize and cHng to,
even love and pity and beauty as we now feel them. He knew
what the loss meant, far better than most of us. What are his
words, when he passes the sentence of banishment upon poetry
rather contemptible " self-culture." In the second place, he seems to be entirely
unconscious ot the fact that, before Plato wrote and before Christ came, there
had been revelations of God as the God of love and tenderness, in which theso
aspects of the divine nature were emphasised quite as completely as in the
Christian revelation. If he had known anything of the true Krishna worship
of India, if he had ever talked with a fervent Vaishnava, or Hindu follower of
the path of love, he could not have made the wild assertion which he does make
about the impossibility of anyone in Plato's day realising to the full that God is
mercy and love and tenderness as well as justice. I suppose a devout Christian
is bound to regard the revelation of Christ as unique. That is right enough, for
every true revelation is unique, not in time and place merely, but in its
deepest meaning. But the Christian, who has every right to call it a perfect
revelation of God's love, certainly cannot, without gross ignorance, call it the
first or only revelation of that love.

In the third place though this is a smaller matter Mr. Temple, like other
commentators, unconsciously limits his appreciation of Plato's meaning by using
the word "justice " throughout as the translation of the Dikaiosune or Right-
eousness which the Republic describes. And, as the passage quoted shows, he
makes full use of the implications of that hard and narrow word.
and all that poetry stands for as the expression of tenderness
and noble feeling ? " Always from my earliest youth have I felt
a reverence and love of Homer, which even now makes the words
falter on my Hps."
But he knew too as we do not that the
final path, the Solar path, the Royal Road to God, begins in a
sacrifice which is utter and complete, a sacrifice of all that seems
best, as well as all that is bad. And he knew, too, that at the
end of that road aU the best things will come back in a form
in which there is no longer any trace of iUusion. Love ? Tender-
ness ? Beauty ? They are all eternal Forms which are just
different aspects of the eternal Good. We only know them now
in their reflections : we shall not see the reahties till the reflec-
tions are left behind.
I hope I have made it am not bhnd to
clear elsewhere that I
the dangers of this doctrine. Just as the good Christian or the
good Vaishnava is alive to the dangers of a kind of spiritual
eroticism on the one hand, and, on the other, of a sentimentaUty
which can only be called sloppy, so the behever in the Wisdom
Path sees clearly enough the danger of atrophied feeUng and
sterihty of emotion without any foDowing rush of all-embracing
love. It is not wise to forget that the Royal Path which Plato
is explaining is only possible for the " very rare and golden
'
natures. But at least it should be possible for us who are brought

'
up in the Christian reUgion of love to understand how Plato's

" union with the Good " includes love at its highest in an
actually higher form, that is, than love as we are bound to
feel it. For in the love we feel, whether it is love of our friend
or love of God, there is always an element of separateness. We
and our friend, we and our God, are distinct from one another.
We regard them both as " other " however closely love may
:
unite us, God and our friend remain separate from us. So it is
with the philosopher, in the earlier stages of his ascent. Just
as we saw that he must first walk by faith, to be exchanged for
full knowledge later, so we find that he advances first by the
power of love. insists upon the necessity
Again and again Plato
of his being a veritable lover of truth and reaUty his language :
in the early part of Book VI is all an emphasis upon the first

half of the word " philosophy " or love of wisdom. But when,
by the full power of the spirit within him, he has at last " mingled
and become incorporate with very Being," love, like faith, is
swallowed up in something greater. Separateness and otherness

disappear in identity the philosopher becomes himself the
:
Good he and his God, he and his friend, the lover and the
;

loved all are seen to be one in the unity of the sole spiritual
reality. The very word love has become unnecessary, meaning-
less. We may say that we do not hke it that we would prefer
:
to remain in the condition of separateness which makes possible

our human love. Very well but because we cannot even in
:
thought pass beyond the duaUsm which we find essential, we

have no right to assert that the pure monism which transcends
it is a descent to something lower.
The omission of all reference to prayer is difficult to explain

without giving offence to many good people. I suppose most
Christians will be rather shocked by the assertion that many
of the most deeply religious people in the world never pray at
all. Yet the assertion is undoubtedly true of many of the most
devout Vedantins and Buddhists, who have no interest in life
at all except the religious interest. The assertion needs qualifica-
tion, however. It is very intelligible if by prayer is meant what
has cynically been called " besieging God with beggars' peti-
tions." The religious soul can have no need to pray in that
sense, for he can have no wants and no fears. But this is not the
essence of prayer. It is true that we are beggars and self-

centred beggars a great part of our time. We beg for the
confusion of our enemies and the success of our own under-
takings, for abundance of prosperity and increase of all kinds
of worldly goods ; and it is all on the level of the religion of
impatient children whose anxiety about their own welfare is
far greater than their trust in an aU-kind and all-seeing Provi-
dence. But we pray for holiness, too, and for the salvation of
others and to call this mere begging is simply an abuse of
;
language.
It is
or should be part of the real communion
with God which is of the essence of prayer. The paradox of
prayer remains, of course ; there can be no need to ask God
to care for His world : to do so even seems to imply a lack of
trust. And yet the very asking is itself an expression of trust,
and an expression of our genuine efforts to identify our will with
the supreme will.
All this the Vedantin would gladly allow. But he goes rather
farther than we. In struggling towards the goal of union with
the absolute Good, he is struggling towards a state in which
prayer and faith and identification of our will with God's are all
left behind in the final merging of his whole being in the etemcJ
All-being. Devotion to a personal God, submission of will,
ceaseless effort to express our oneness
all these are ladders
needed in the ascent. In the final stage they all disappear

and that is perfect harmony.
The omission of any sort of worship is now explained. Like
faith and prayer, worship impUes some difference between our-
selves and God, some separation which has to be bridged over.
But when the spirit has risen in its last ascent, difference and
separation are at an end. The soul that is one with the Good
does not need to worship Good any more.
Have we answered the accusation of coldness and loneUness ?
Does the reUgious life still repel us because it is so chilly and so
isolated ? It must seem so to us, for many plain reasons. How
can it seem anything but icy cold to us to leave the glow of the
great fire in the cave, and all our companions there, and pass

up the ascent to that other world, in which for a time at least
we shall not even be able to lift our eyes and see the sun of
Good ? Mystics have spoken of the dark night of the soul
"
it is a good description of that " steep and rugged pathway
along which the soul must pass, in a forsaken darkness in which

even the God we thought we knew is hidden, and the " miracu-
lously greater " Good is not yet revealed.
It willbe seen that aU this defence of Plato's omissions is
bound up with the essential distinction between rehgion in its
most exalted sense, and rehgion in all the preparatory stages

which we know. Plato goes straight to the highest point
naturallywe are left behind, stumbhng and complaining. And
perhaps we have a right to complain that he removes all our
props and stays too soon. Not only in the cave, not only during
the terribly upward chmb, but even in our first sojovim
difl&c\ilt
in the " world of the real " we need, and need incessantly, these

three pillars of the reUgious life faith and prayer and worship.
It is not for consolation we must learn to do without that.
:
It is for the keeping ahve of our sense of nearness to the Spirit

which isnot yet fuUy revealed a sense which is still feeUng,
:
still emotion, stUl dependent upon the daily food which even
the highest emotion needs ; it is not yet the calm and sure per-
ception which lifts the philosopher above emotion. But I do

not think we are justified in complaining that Plato has no
place for worship as a social form of religious expression. I
believe it was Carlyle who said that there can be no religion with-
out a Church, " for the action of mind on mind is mystical,
infinite ; religion, worship, can hardly, perhaps not at all, sup-
port itself without this aid." This is the natural view of the
Western mind, intent always upon the social side of religion,
interested always in its social processes and its social reactions.
Plato's view, like the Vedantin's, is quite different. He is in-
tensely interested in the social reactions of reUgion : is not the

Philosopher destined to save the world ? But the social pro-
cesses by which the soul is influenced are not, and cannot be
for him, more than preparatory processes, belonging to the
" lower level " of reMgious hfe, leading the soul up to the entrance
to the higher path. And there nothing social enters at all

there is only the individual soul and God. That is why, as I
have so often insisted, the " ideal society " fades away into the
background when the sixth and seventh books of the Republic
are reached. We may blame Plato for not making more of
the influences which we find so important it is quite likely that
:
he never realised the value of the " mystical action of mind on

mind," and therefore omits all reference to the danger of forsaking
the assembling of ourselves together for worship. But, even if
he had realised it to the full, he would not and could not have
taken it into account when he begins the real training of the
philosophic soul. For in that training the whole essence of the f
matter is that we turn our backs upon everything social, even

those elements in socicd intercourse which to us seem almost

divine devotion at its best, love at its purest, the concord of
souls at its highest. We may, indeed, say that we don't like it,
dislike it vehemently, in fact, and disbelieve in the possibility
of such a completely individualised path to God. But we cannot
blame Plato because he refuses to confuse his ideal by mixing into
it the elements which we think essential. An Indian Vedantin
would find nothing strange in the omissions which puzzle and
offend us : it is our omissions which puzzle him, as well as our
insistence upon matters which he finds unimportant. Witness

the thoroughly Platonic saying of a modem Vedantin upon this
very subject :
" If a young man does not go to church, he ought
to be condemned ; but if an old man goes to church, he ought
to be condemned also."*
I have, I imagine, led up very successfully to the last count
in the indictment : it is a very dangerous as well as an unlovely
doctrine. The danger, many will think, is staring at us im-

ashamed from the paragraph.
last No wonder Socrates was
put to death for subverting reUgion and corrupting the youth
of Athens if this was what he taught But the danger is not !
this at all. It is something far deeper it is the tendency of the :
whole teaching to produce and exalt a condition of apathy and

self-deception of the most odious kind. We in the West are
not children, turning impatiently away from an untried gospel
of renunciation just because the syren voices of the world draw
us so strongly. We have had our experience and we have learned
its lessons. Asceticism had its
day a wasted, useless day :
may we never return to it ! Puritanism had its day, too

gloomy and oppressive day : our escape from it has been a
dehverance into a brighter and better Ufe. Our common sense,
therefore, the outcome, not of our desires, but of long ages
is
of trial and error it is the sanity of proved experience, and it

;
tells us that the doctrine of Nivritti, of desirelessness and un-

worldHness, is a fool's doctrine. Shut the door upon the world,
and it will come in again by the chimney, in a much fouler
form ;
sweep the chamber clean of desire, and seven worse
devils will enter in. Degrade the body and its legitimate satis-
"
factions, and you will soon have a " rehabihtation de la chair
which will swing the pendulum over on to the side of frank
sensuahty. It is no use talking at large about renunciation :
sanity and moderation are what we all need, with an honestly

keen enjoyment of all the good gifts of Providence.
And on whose authority do you degrade the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and the society of men and women who, together
and as a society, are destined to be the visible church of God
on earth ? With what semblance of justification do you wrap
yourself round in your mantle of self-righteousness, and sneak out
to find a " philosopher's shelter " in which to cower, inert and
^ Vivekananda. Collected works, Mayavati edition. Part IV. An un

necessarily hard saying, perhaps but it is only intended to emphasise the
;
cardinal doctrine that, as the soul advances, it must learn to do without the
support of a Church, just as it must pass beyond the need for a creed of
any sort.
self-absorbed, because the busy rush of healthy human life
disturbs the serenity of your unhealthily sensitive soul ? Out

upon it ! Be a man, and do a man's work, and be thankful
that, so doing, you can bring happiness to yourself as well as
to others.
See, too, how
the source of your doctrine betrays its sure
tendencies. India claims that she is the home of spirituahty,
the mother of rehgions, the fountain head of that other-worldh-
ness which alone regenerates mankind. Does she not boast
to-day of her fifty-four lakhs ^ of holy men and women re-
nouncers all, hving out of the world, owning nothing but their
begging-bowls, yet owning everything worth having because
they have lost their Hves to save them ? Surely a force mighty
enough to raise any nation to the summit of virtue But look !
at Hindu India as she is whatever may be the excellences of

:
her people, energy and capacity for sustained effort are not
the most marked of them, nor perhaps are some of the essential
social virtues, such as mutual trust and co-operation and the
character that makes these possible. You may say that the
argument is too double-edged for Christian nations to use safely ;
but at least it raises a presumption on the side of the criticism

we make. 2
Further, is there not also strong reason to suspect that the
whole of this doctrine of " separation from the world " is a subtle
product of senihty ? There was a shrewd pertinence in the
retort made by an American to a Vedantist teacher " You :
come from a country which has been dead for five thousand
years, and you preach renunciation to us " It is so easy, when
!
powers pass away and the impotence of age creeps on, to evolve
a doctrine of dis passion and call it righteousness. But in a
healthy and vigorous society your only disciples will be the
1 That is, five millions four hundred thousand ; but how many of them are
genuine sannyasins and yogis Heaven only knows.
I tliink it is probable that the contempt felt, perhaps unconsciously, by a
successful imperial nation for a very unsuccessful people whom it has conquered,
has caused us to underrate the wisdom and philosophy of the Hindus even of
the ancient Hindus in the days when they were powerful as well as wise. At
the same time I am afraid it is useless to deny that some obvious defects in the
character as well as in the ability of many of the Hindus are now the chief obstacle
in the way of our due appreciation of their nation's enormous contributions to
the most vital elements of human good. But because they do not all live up to
the grandeur of their ancient wisdom, shall we therefore refuse to recognise its
worth ?
weaklings and the slackers they will embrace your gospel,
:
exactly as work-shy beggars will put on the sannyasin's robe,

because it covers their feebleness and throws a fair cloak over
their laziness. Let us hear no more of your ideal philosopher
and his contemplative Ufe the suffering and evil of the world
;
call aloud for effort and always more effort, and the joy of vigorous
life is both the condition and the reward of effort.
Just one word before I begin the last defence. I am not sure
what is meant by the contemplative Ufe but I think it is rather
;
different from a Hfe of sonmolence. And, if this world of ours

should ever become Christian, will it not be rather amazed by
the fact that there was once an age in which the proclaimed
followers of Christ were totally unable to appreciate the intrinsic
worth of a hfe spent in prayer and communion with God ?
But it is not my business to defend such a hfe. Plato's
ideal is different. His philosopher can face without flinching
most of the accusations made against him. It would have been
odd, indeed, if Socrates had held aloft as our pattern a way of
hfe which failed to make a man a good citizen and a good neigh-
bour. Until the age of fifty, his philosopher-that-is-to-be hves
a remarkably strenuous hfe in the world (apart from the excus-
able episode of five years spent in meditation and discipHne).
And he has a still more strenuous period of
after the age of fifty,
service to pass through before he can finally " take shelter
behind the wall." And, as most of his hard work is done with-
out thought of reward, solely for the good of others with no
sort of gain for himself, he will bear comparison with most of
the sturdy citizens whom we admire.
But the two chief difficulties remain. His goal is always
a hfe of inactivity, of indrawn stillness, of solitude and aloofness,
in which, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, he fimds his
heaven in lonely contemplation of the Good. That, and that
alone, is really hfe. And the path to the goal is the path of self-
abnegation. It may or may not deserve the name of asceticism :
it may or may not be called a puritanical mode of Ufe ; but

at least it involves the steady, purposeful shedding of desire and
emotion, of interests and enjoyments, till only the husk of a
satisfactory Ufe is left.
I willtry to grapple finaUy with the two difficulties. Taking

the second first, let me assert, as emphatically as I can, that
the whole value, as well as the sanity, of the path of self-abnega-

tion or " desirelessness " depends upon its gradualness. The
spiritual process, like the natural process, does nothing by
leaps. For every change there must be slow and patient prepara-
tion, and the preparation is usually unseen, and leaves the outer
and unchanged. In the spiritual changes of the human
visible Ufe
soul, these conditionshold absolutely. The process of unwinding
ourselves from the meshes of worldly interests needs many years
of patient effort and it must take the form of a slow but very
;
sure change of attitude or of estimate, which will leave un-

changed all the outer activities which we rightly call the healthy
and necessary conditions of a vigorous life. I have already
explained, in an earlier chapter, how the process should take
place how it cannot even begin in youth (normally at least),
:
and how it can go on during middle life without taking anything

away from our energy in action or our energy in enjoyment.
When the internal, preparatory changes are complete, then and
then only the outer life must change too. The royal philosopher

may withdraw to his shelter some time after the age of sixty.*
Now the assertion that this gradual change of attitude and
estimate is a necessary process in the good life may be defended
in two ways. First, for Christians, it should be enough to appeal
to the very definite teaching of their Master relating to the
change of heart, the unworldUness and the reversal of all popular
estimates, which are necessary to salvation. But the appeal
seems to have lost its force strangely enough, it is likely to
:
carry more weight with some non-Christians than with many

Christians. For, at the moment when teachers from the East
are reminding us that " no one can possibly believe in Providence
until he has become absolutely improvident," our fashionable
theologians are busy explaining away all the sayings of Christ
which convey the same lesson.'
* Plato seems to make
the process begin in childhood. But it must always be
remembered that he only considering the rare golden natures, and that he
is
assumes for these many previous lifetimes of preparation. These golden natures
are certainly not normal.
* This, at any rate, seems to be the aim of the newest theology. In an extreme
form, it has discovered this very satisfactory solution of Christ's most difficult
utterances. When He commanded His disciples to be utterly improvident. He
really meant that they need not take any thought for the morrow since there
was not likely to be any morrow worth taking thought for. A delightful result,
surely, of the world-intentness of our age But it is consohng to remember that
!
religion has always survived the attacks

even of theologians.
We shall do upon a different argument,
well, therefore, to rely
more in accord with ourmomentary reverence for science rather
than for religion. It may be put in this form. Life as we know
it involves continual change, and the change must be progressive
in the sense that it must be a movement from less to greater

power, from less to greater ability to do and to enjoy. If we
use the word in a wide sense, we may say that this means that
there must be continual growth, if not physical, then mental
and moral. When progressive change ceases, then decay sets
in, and the beginning of slow death has come. Now, in the
human hfe, increase of physical power ceases fairly early but ;
the period of mental gro\vth goes on for a far longer time. This,
too, comes to and with it there is an end to all
an end at last,
increase of purely human
power. The fact is obscured for us in
two ways. Many people keep the semblance of increase of power
by the shrewd use of external instruments, such as position and
wealth, very much as an ancient patriarch not only kept but
increased his power as he grew older, by the help of his ownership
of property and the power and prestige which custom assigned
to him. But there is no real internal growth here the increase
:
of power is all outside the man or woman within is gradual

;
decline or movement towards death and for this reason many

;
of the possessors of such power become drags upon progress and

serious nuisances to their dependents, exactly as many of the
patriarchs were (or would have been in a progressive age) a drag
upon their famiUes in consequence of their senile debihty of
mind.
Other people appear to grow in power of what we vaguely
call judgment and in many cases doubtless an increase of power
;
to apply knowledge and experience does continue far into old

age.
But that also ceases at last sooner, perhaps, than old
people will admit and so once again the mental growth reaches
;
its end, with loss of power not only to learn and apply new
knowledge, but to appreciate and use new interests.
WTiat Hne of growth remains open ? I suppose most of us
will agree that moral growth at least is always possible. And
this true, but not without much quahfication. It is not a Ubel
is
on old age to say that many of its virtues are the result of increase
of weakness, not of increase of strength that decline of appe-
;
tite, desire and passion sometimes lends to age a gentleness

which good by contrast with the turbulence of earlier years

is
and so may happen that many a stormy and rather unlovely

it
life ends in a tranquil and almost golden sunset. But that is an

illusion, not a reaUty of growth of strength. If, however, the
moral growth of mature age is real, then there is an increase

of inner power behind it. Of what power ? Not physical,
clearly, nor mental but what then ? Here the Platonic doctrine
;
(the doctrine, that is, of all religion) brings its Hght. We may
go on from strength to strength, in spite of the decUne of all

human powers, in one way only by discovering the secret of
spiritual growth. By this one way, decay and death are held
at arm's length :are defied, rather, or swallowed up in victory ;
for there is no term set to this growth increase of the power

:
of the spirit has no Umit and no end, and he who finds the secret
goes on triumphantly living, passing on, if his body endures,
into " the best that is yet to be " of human existence, or, if his
body dies, greeting its death with the gratitude of one who sees
opened to him the door to endless Ufe.
Herein lies the valid answer to the question why should I
turn away at last from satisfactions and enjoyments and all the
interests of flesh and world ? It is because, otherwise, you die
while you are yet Hving because human faculty and human
:
power of doing and enjoying wax and wane, grow and then
decay, give good life but end in death and, if we would have
;
hfe and have it more abundantly we must root it in some different

faculty and power. The superhuman faculty of knowing, and
the power of being which it brings with it, are Umitless and
endless, for they are related to the infinite and eternal ; find
them, cultivate them, anchor yourself to their strength alone,
and decay and death can have no more meaning for you. This
is the growth in wisdom which Plato describes as the foundation
of all righteousness and the creative source of all good it is ;
the growth in freedom which the old Hindu philosophers describe

as the condition of hberation from the wheel of births and
deaths, of the passage from a hfe which is always running down
to death, to a Hfe in which there is no weakening and no decay ;
it is the growth in grace which the Christian truth proclaims as
the beginning of hfe eternal, and the victory over death.

But still it is not clear why there need be any deliberate
turning away from the healthy use of the human faculties,
physical or mental, and from the enjoyment of their exercise,
even from interest in the results of their exercise. Why should
not the higher powers begin their growth side by side with the
development of the lower ones ? Why must there be a deliberate
putting behind us of the good results of human powers, while
these are still growing ? The answer must be a double one :
first, nothing of the kind is necessary at least, nothing in the

way of sour renunciation or gloomy self-denial but secondly,
;
a very real " putting behind us " is necessary, because the con-
ditions of the final growth require it. The different stages of
growth do undoubtedly overlap, and must do so is not that
:
part of the healthy gradualness of all growth ? But each higher

stage does eventually leave the lower behind. Thus, the mental
growth really supersedes the physical, as the latter reaches its
limit. A middle-aged man of science or administrator may still
play cricket ; but not with a schoolboy's devotion, nor with
that worship of the physical which is healthy and right in the
young. So, too, the spiritual growth really supersedes the
mental, not discarding it suddenly, but becoming gradually
independent of it. As it increases, devotion to and worship of
all the mental powers and their results will, necessarily, pass
away thai is the essential thing but the cessation of all the
: ;
activities of the mental stage is neither essential nor good. In

other words, the spiritual growth must bring with it a very real
shifting of interest the man or woman who is really on the
:
way to " philosophy " will not any longer make a pursuit of art
or poetry or science or politics or anything else ; but equally
certainly he will not shut his eyes to a beautiful picture, nor
refuse to read (or even to write) a poem or a scientific work, nor
hesitate to take the chair at a political meeting.
It is now time to turn to the far more difficult question concern-
ing the dangers of both process and goal. Let us face the difficulty
fairly and squarely by admitting at once that the dangers are
as real as they are insidious. Every step on the path is sur-
rounded by pitfalls every
;
upward stage has a dozen base
copies beside it, each resembhng the better state, and each an
arch delusion ;while the goal itself is set among phantasms
of the real, so Uke it in appearance that even the best of men
may be deceived. Does this make it a false path or a false
goal ? The old Greeks were wise enough to know that " the
good is always difficult " ; we have considerably better authority

for saying that the waynarrow that leads to the Good, and
is
few are they who find it. The burden of defence would seem to
he upon those who would have it that the path must be both
safe and easy, not upon those who
with Plato see it as a very
razor's edge of danger. But I fancy that it is the kind of danger
rather than the simple fact of danger which offends the Western
mind. Though some Christians appear to have forgotten that
salvation cannot be made easy, most will admit that the Christian
path has its dangers too, such as spiritual pride and false emotion
and a faith that is often very heated but fails to bum out evil or
purify the soul. But the pecuhar danger of apathy to the whole
pressing business of life is not one to which we are prone nor ;
is the cognate danger of letting our right to happiness lapse
without ha.ving first found the good which is greater than happi-
ness. And we cannot in the least imderstand how it can be worth
while to risk these dangers in order to become the philosopher,
the sage, the silent one, who does nothing except know, and
can never tell what he knows, whose ideal it is to sit, motionless,
sightless, soundless, desireless, until his useless body leaves him
free to go to another world.
Now the dangers are very real, as we all admit. Their reahty is
wTitten large in the history of the Hindu and Buddhist East.
Moreover, the dangers are so close to the right path that, when
men are wise, they insist upon every sort of stringent safeguard
barring the entrance to all inexperienced souls, requiring that
none shall attempt the path without a genuine guide, applying
frequent tests even to the oldest disciples, and so weeding out
and sending back to the easier path of social duty all who are in
peril of becoming " bad examples of philosophy." These safe-
guards are explained fully in the Indian expositions of the
reUgious hfe. I think it will be enough here to end with a warn-
ing, which is at the same time an admission that the opposing
instinct of the Western temperament is, in a way, both sound
and true.
The way of religion which I have traced in Plato's writing is
the Eastern way. The Western way does not differ in essentials :
but some differences there must and will be. The Eastern
teachers of Vedanta seldom, perhaps never, understand this ;
and they fail to grasp the full pertinence of our fundamental

17
assumptions. They think that we must necessarily believe, as
they do, that the world is a poor place, and life a rather dismal
affair. We have no intention of letting the world be a poor
place, nor will we regard life as anything but a very healthy
and joyous adventure. They assume (and cannot think that the
assumption needs any proof) that religion must have its roots
in sorrow, in pessimism, in the sadness of human existence.
We know there issorrow enough, but happiness and its possi-
bilities are the great facts we see, and therefore we regard pessim-
ism as a bhght and a sad view of life as a disease to be stamped
out. Are we not right ? Our buojâncy is the secret of our
virtues and of our good endeavours. We are out to make the
world better our mission may not have been a very conspicuous
:
success so far, but our very optimism means that we shall go

on in spite of centuries of failure. But it is not all failure. There
is progress, and it is not all the progress in material things which
means increase of complexity ;

deeper foundations are being
laid, and deeper results are even now apparent. We are out to
make human hfe happier and fuller, not to give it up as a hope-
less task, and withdraw into the vision of a hypothetical super-
human existence. In this, too, we are succeeding, fitfully it may
be, but by no means slowly. And, with these tasks on our
hands, we do not intend to decry the worth of the instruments
which we use, or of the conditions of life which we find important.
If our science is only relatively true, the relation is to something
very vital ; if our philosophy belongs to " the lower Hne " of
reality, at least it makes us active, vigorous and hopeful ; if
we are too much obsessed by the sense of " mine " and " thine,"
thisis, at any rate, preferable to the watery worship of a common
good, in which " good " is lost in the over-emphasis of " com-
munity."
I speak as one of the West, beUeving in its mission and its
work. But, granting that these are good, is it not true that,
amid all our activities, religion tends to sHp away unnoticed ?
I do not mean its reflected forms they are numerous enough
:
and ever3rwhere obvious, in our politics, in our customs, in our

talk and thought as a problem which is always interesting,
;
as a consolation which is often valuable, as a safeguard which is

sometimes (and for some grades of people) very salutary, as a
ground of appeal when common sense fails. We are not without
religion : in forms far higher than these.

and But as the real
element in our real Hves, as the one great interest among our many
interests, as the true goal behind all our endeavours, as the back-
ground which gives meaning to all our activities is it this ?
We have many aristocrats of virtue, as Plato calls the best

citizens we have many
; more timocrats ;
perhaps we have
fewer democrats and tyrants than ever before in the history of the
world. It is good but have we many Kings ? Every individual
:
life must be crowned at last with the invisible crown of the
royal philosopher do we even aim at this ? The way is very

:
dangerous, we say certainly;

no one has ever discovered a safe
:
road from this-worldliness to other-worldliness. Anyone who

could devise a really satisfactory compromise would be the most
ingenious malefactor humanity has ever seen. But the path
of Socrates and Plato, if I have read it right, can be followed
by any vigorous spirit in the West, without loss of vigour or of
any kind of good, if he or she will master the conditions. In the
long journey of Hfe we do not at first either see or care about
the ultimate goal. We travel all the better for our short-range
vision the goals of the middle distances are on the right road,
:

and they are tremendously real until we have passed them.
But in the later stages of the journey we do not move at all
unless the ultimate goal is seen and known for what it is no ;
loiterer or dreamer will ever see it only those who have travelled
:
well and arduously. And then they will move faster and more
actively than before, though we who are behind them will per-
haps not know that they are moving at all. We have two coats
for the journey the one we wear is the garment of right ambition
:
to do things well and to enjoy things well, and of intense interest

in both the doing and the enjoying. That is entirely right
this garment of activity is what we can understand and use for
good ;
the other coat the garment of pure reUgion is, to
speak plainly, rather a nuisance than a help, for, if we carry it
at all, we cannot wear it while we move. But, in the last stages,
this is the only coat which will serve us the other we must
:
give away to anyone who asks for it. Religion is thus the great
supplanter. Esau is always a great hunter and a really fine
man but, if the old allegory had not been distorted in the
;
telling, we should see that Jacob, the weaker twin, is the one
who is dear to God, and must inevitably supplant his
brother and win the blessing which can be given only to
one.
Is the meaning clear ? The active and achieving West is right
all through except one thing needful. We individual
in the

members of it have yet to discover how without any halting
we may see the real goal, change the garments of interest, give
the supplanter his place, and so at the end find for ourselves
the path of infinite progression which, on a different level, we
believe belongs to the human society for which and in which
we Hve our human lives.
INDEX AND GLOSSARY
Adeimantus, 49 Dharma (Religious duty and excel-
Adyatmavidya (Knowledge of Reality), lence), 25, 30, 96
29, 97 Dhyana (Meditation), 142
Alcibiades, 11 Dialectic, 128, 142, 198
Ananda Acharya, viii Dialogues referred to
Aristocracy, Chap. X Cratylus, 34
Aristotle, 5, 77, 178 Laws, 3, 36, 155, 189
Arithmetic, 124 Pheedo, 3, 9
Arnold, Sir Edwin, ix Philebus, 39
Art, Chap. XI Politicus, 36, 151, 189
Art of conduct, 46 Protagoras, 33
Ashramas (the four periods of life), 147 Symposium, 9
Astronomy, 125 Timseus, 34, 131
Atman (the Spirit of Eternal Reality Dikaearchus, 38
within each individual), 18, 109, Dikaiosune, vii, 31
141, 209 Discrimination, 141
Augustine, St., 228 Dutifulness, Chap. II ,
Bacon, Francis, 131 Education, Chap. IV, 124 S.

Bhagavad Gita (the Divine Song), ix, 8 Epithumia, 28
Bhakti (religious devotion), 25 Er, Myth of, 204
Bhakti Yoga (the religion or path of Eschatology, 253
devotion), 139, 239 Eudaimonia, 53
Bosanquet, Bernard, 223 n. Evolution and Involution, 99
Brahm (the Absolute, the final Real-
ity), 21, 98, 137
Buddhi (the higher faculty of will and Faith, 132, 208, 243
judgment), 141, 175 Family, 84 li.
Fortitude, 73
Carlyle, Thomas, 249

Castes, 23, 58, 71, 238 Geometry, 125
Cave, Allegory of, 119 Glaucon, 49
Cephalus, 43 Gnana (true Wisdom), 29, 97
Chastity, 88 Gnana Yoga (the path of Wisdom).
Communism, 77 139, 147, 239
Community of pursuits, 81 fi. Goethe, 53
Community of husbands, wives and Good, The, Chap. VIII
children, 82 fE. Grote, 33, 38, 77
Competition, 46 Guru (Spiritual guide), i and passim.
Comte, Auguste, 131 See 139
Concentration, 140 Gymnastic, 124
Das, Babu Bhagavan, viii Harmonics, 126

Democracy, Chap. X Hobson, J. A., viii
Dharana (Concentration), 142 Homer, 193
261
Ideas, Theory of, 29 Poetry, Chap. XI
Ignorance, 109 Polemarchus, 44
Imitation, Chap. XI Poverty, 88
ImmortaUty, Chap. XI Prakriti (the Stuff of Nature), 21, 98,
Immortality and Unity, 175 109
Pralaya (the twilight of the day of
Evolution), 151
Jowett, B., 228 Prayer, 247
Justice, 73 Protagoras, 7
Prudence, 73
Purusha (the Spirit), 18
Kama
28 n.
(sense pleasure and desire),
Pythagoras, 5, 13, 35, 127, 134, 180,
Kant, 193. 197
5
Karma (action and reaction ; the law
of results), 146, 179, 214
Knowledge and Knowing, Chaps. VII Qualities, The Three, 20 ff ., 38 ff.
and VIII
Krishna, 20
Rajarshi (Philosopher- King), 150
Rajas (emotional energy), 20, 55,
Liberty and Equality, 170 74 ff., 168
Logistikon (the faculty of reason), 28 Ramanathan, P., viii
Reincarnation, 180, 212
Religion, Double meaning of. Chap.
Maitra, Harendranath, viii VI. 10
Makaria (Bliss), 53 Religion and Faith, 132
Manas (!Îind), 97, 109, 141, 175
Rhetoricians, 7
Manu, 23, 55, 71 Rishi Rajah (Philosopher-King), 150
Marriage, 84 fi.
Matter, 98, 109
Maya (illusion), 21, 98, 109
Me On (that which has no Samadhi (Condition of super-conscious-
real exist-
ness), 141
ence), 109
Meditation, 140
Samskar (complete latent memory),
Moksha 215
(Liberation), 25, 142
Sam\at (spiritual faculty), 29
Motion, Science of, 125
Mukti (Freedom from the chain Sannyasin (a disciple who has re-
of
nounced the world), 139
births), 25
Sattva (equihbrium, goodness), 20, 55
Muni (the Seer or the Silent One), 10
Sciences, 124 ff.
Mysticism and Mysteries, 233
Shakti (power), 25
Shraddha (faith), 139
Nivritti (withdrawal), 25 Socrates (Character of). Chap. I

Sophists, 7
Non-attachment, 88
Nous, 18, 32, 78, 109, Chap. VIII, 131, Soul, 203, 209
Spinoza, 53, 217
138, 153
Spiritual growth, 254
State, The Ideal, 54, 76 fi'.
Ohgarchy, Chap. X Swarupananda, Swami, viii
One-pointedness, 88 Swedenborg, 225

Opinion, Chap. \ll
Orpheus, 197, 213
Tamas (inertia, ignorant desire), 20, 55
Tawney, R. H., viii
Path of Pursuit, Chap. II, 96 Temperance, 73
Path of ReUgion, Chap. II, Chap. VI Temple, Rev. W., 161, 184, 190, 244
Philosopher-King, 93, Chap. IX Thrasymachus, 7, 44
Philosophy, Meaning of. Chap. VII Thumos (emotional energy), 28, 168,
Philosophy, Rule of, 33, 93, Chap. IX 182
Plutarch, 38 Timocracy, Chap. X
INDEX AND GLOSSARY 263
utilitarianism, 33, 48 Viveka (Discrimination), 142
Vivekananda, Swami, viii, 140, 250 n.
Vairagya (conversion from the attrac-
tion of desire), 29 Women, Equality with men, 89
Vaishnava (a devotee of Vishnu, the Worship, 249
Mercy and Love element in the god-
head), 246
Vedanta (defined), viii, Chap. II Yoga (uniting :the process of uniting
Vidya (Knowledge), 8, 29 the soul with God), 9, 139, 146, 239
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THE MESSAGE OF PLATO

" That which is called the Christian Religion existed among

true religion which already existed began to be called

METHUEN & GO. LTD.

HAVE attempted in this book the very bold task of

criticise it as a philosophic, not a super-philosophic, treatise.

ness ; and this, I believe, gives a truer clue to the meaning of

but I can only urge, as Socrates himself does in the Republic,

manuscript, and suggested several important alterations and

could not have written the book at all.

Ramanathan (Parananda), of Harendranath Maitra, whose Httle

Science of Social Organisation in the Light of the Laws of Manu,

owe a far greater debt to Ananda Acharya (Professor S. N.

(meaning literally the end or goal of wisdom) signifies the rehgious

was probably written about three centuries before Christ. There

The Ancestry of Plato's Faith

The Vedic Interpretation of Human Life

Ancestry of Plato's Doctrine . . . . -15

The Preparation of the Soul, and an Account of the

III. Analysis of the "Republic," Book I and Part of Book II

Analysis of the "Republic," Book II (part) and Books III

AND IV The Purification of the Good State, and the

Spiritual Realisation, or the Path of Religion

V. Analysis of the "Republic," Book V (part) The Community

the Kingship of the

An Explanatory Chapter Concerning the Conception of the

Upper Path or Path of Religion . .

VII. Analysis of the "Republic," Book V (part) and Book VI

AND THE Characteristics of the Philosopher or Seer 10 .

VIII. Analysis of the "Republic," Book VI (part) and Book VII

IX. The End of Book VII of the "Republic" The Disciple's

THE World the Possible Salvation of Society

The Dangers of the Lower Path

and the Law of Reincarnation .....

Index and Glossary 261

THE ANCESTRY OF PLATO'S FAITH

THE QUEST OF SOCRATES. THE WESTERN ANCESTRY OF

and the life-long object of his fullest devotion and reverence.

in return, the disciple hugs close the unpayable debt, glorying

good everywhere. He knew that this ReaUty could be found, if

ate devotion of the greatest of these disciples a devotion so

Plato was a disciple in the completest Indian sense. Just as

in all the dialogues, with few exceptions, Socrates is the chief

that here Plato sets himself to work out a conception peculiarly

equally certainly belongs to Socrates as he was but the mind ;

the picture that of Socrates as Plato liked to think of him.

is happiness or pleasure ? Is good conduct based upon know-

one and unchangeable, and we cannot know it at all. The good

new conclusion, sometimes abandoning the search as hopeless,

This a very natural view to take, especially for those who

have some knowledge of the history of philosophy. The Platonic

both. He failed to distinguish the theoretical from the practical

our brains about the fundamental subjects of metaphysics

case that we treat the whole business as something, important

interest. If we cannot get the matter clear well, hfe will go

die for the theories which they hold or follow ?

of or look for it in the writings of Plato or anyone else, and

and earth. He goes from teacher to teacher, searching for this

as an existent fact, the creator and source of all good everywhere.

Now both the master and the