VIII
Plato arrives at his apportionment of functions by a method which is old-fashioned, and which anybody versed in modern psychology would regard as a “rationalization.” Plato is trying to give a firm basis to the division of classes which he favored; and so he compares the community to a human being, possessed of the virtues of wisdom, valour, temperance, and justice. Each of these virtues Plato relates to a particular class of people.
Wisdom is appropriate to the rulers of the city. Thus arises the class of guardians.
Valour is the characteristic of the defenders of the city and hence a military class, called auxiliaries, appears.
Temperance, or agreement, is the virtue which relates to all classes.
Finally, there comes justice. “Justice is the ultimate cause and condition of all of them. … If a question should arise as to which of these four qualities contributed most by their presence to the excellence of the State whether the agreement of rulers and subjects or the preservation in the soldiers of the opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of dangers, or wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers would claim the palm, or whether this which I am about to mention,” namely, “everyone doing his own work and not being a busybody—the question would not be easily determined.” Nevertheless, it is plain that justice is the keystone of the Platonic utopia.
We must not misunderstand Plato’s division of classes. Aristotle criticizes Plato in terms of a more simple system of democracy; but Plato did not mean to institute a fixed order; within his Republic the Napoleonic motto—la carrière est ouverte aux talents—was the guiding principle. What lay beneath Plato’s argument was a belief which present-day studies in psychology seem likely to confirm; a belief that children come into the world with a bent already well marked in their physical and mental constitutions. Plato advocated, it is true, an aristocracy or government by the best people; but he did not believe in fake aristocracies that are perpetuated through hereditary wealth and position. Having determined that his city was to contain three classes, rulers, warriors, and workers, his capital difficulty still remained to be faced; how was each individual to find his way to the right class, and under what conditions would he best fulfill his functions there?
The answers to these questions bring us to the boldest and most original sections of the Republic: the part that has provoked the greatest amount of antagonism and aversion, because of its drastic departure from the rut of many established institutions—in particular, individual marriages and individual property.
In order to perpetuate his ideal constitution Plato relies upon three methods: breeding, education, and a discipline for the daily life. Let us consider the effect of these methods upon each of the classes.
We may dismiss the class of artisans and husbandmen very briefly. It is not quite clear whether Plato meant his system of marriage to extend to the members of this class. As for education, it is clear that he saw nothing to find fault with in the system of apprenticeship whereby the smith or the potter or the farmer trained others to follow his calling; and so he had no reason for departing from methods which had proved, on the whole, very satisfactory. How satisfactory that system was, indeed, we have only to look at an Athenian ruin or vase or chalice to find out. Any improvements that might come about in these occupations would result from the Platonic rule of justice; and Plato followed his own injunction strictly enough to keep away from other people’s business.
This of course seems an odd and hasty manner of treatment, as I said before, to those of us who live in a world where the affairs of industry and the tendencies of the labor movement are forever on the carpet. But Plato justifies his treatment by saying that “when shoemakers become bad, and are degenerate, and profess to be shoemakers when they are not, no great mischief happens to the state; but when the guardians of the law and the State are not so in reality, but only in appearance, you see how they entirely destroy the whole constitution, if they alone shall have the privilege of an affluent and happy life.” Hence Plato concentrates his attack upon the point of greatest danger: while the shoemaker, as a rule, knows how to mind his own business, the statesman is for the most part unaware of the essential business which he has to mind; and tends to be negligent even when he has some dim notion as to what it may be—being all too ready to sacrifice it to golf or the favors of a beautiful woman. As we saw in Plato’s original description of the State, the common folk would doubtless have a good many of the joys and delights traditional in the Greek cities; and doubtless, although Plato says nothing one way or the other, they would be permitted to own such property as might be needed for the conduct of their business or the enjoyment of their homes. The very fact that no definite rule was prescribed for them, makes us suspect that Plato was willing to let these things go on in the usual way.
The next class is known as the warriors, or auxiliaries. They are different in character from the guardians who rule the state; but frequently Plato refers to the guardians as a single class, including the auxiliaries; and it seems that they figured in his mind as the temporal arm of that class. At any rate, the auxiliaries as they are painted in the “Critias,” which was the dialogue in which Plato attempted to show his Republic in action, dwelt by themselves within a single enclosure; and had common meals and common temples of their own; and so we may surmise that their way of life was to be similar to that of the higher guardians, but that it was not capable of being pushed to the same pitch of development on the intellectual side. These warriors of Plato are, after all, not so very much unlike the regular or standing army in a modern State: they have a life of their own within the barracks, they are trained and drilled to great endurance, and they are taught to obey without question the Government. When you examine the naked business of the warriors and artisans, you discover that Plato is not, for all the difference in scale, so very far away from modern realities. Apart from the fact that women were permitted an equal place with men in the life of the camp and the gymnasium and the academy, the real difference comes in the matter of breeding and selection. At last we approach the Governors, or the Guardians.
How does the Guardian achieve his position and power? Plato is a little chary of answering this question; he hints that it can only happen at the beginning if a person with the brains of a philosopher happen to be born with the authority of a king. Let us pass this by. How are the Guardians born and bred? This is the manner.
For the well-being of the state the Guardians have the power to administer medicinal lies. One of these is to be told to the youth when their education has reached a point at which it becomes possible for the Guardians to determine their natural talents and aptitudes.
“Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power to command, and these he has composed of gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has made of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that before all things they should watch over their offspring, and see what elements mingle in their nature, for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of the ranks; and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has to descend in the scale and will become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class who are raised to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries.”
As the safeguard of this principle of natural selection of functions, Plato proposed a system of common marriage. “The wives of these guardians are to be common, and their children are also common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.” Starting from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male children who are born ten and seven months afterwards his sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him father. … “And those who were born at the same time they will term brothers and sisters, and they are not to intermarry.” One of the features of this system is that the best stocks—the strongest and wisest and most beautiful—are to he encouraged to reproduce themselves. But this is not worked out in detail. There is to be complete freedom of sexual selection among the guardians; and those who are most distinguished in their services are to have access to a great number of women; but beyond encouraging the guardians to be prolific, Plato did not apparently consider the possibilities of crossbreeding between the various classes.
On the whole, one may say that Plato puts it up to the Guardians to perpetuate themselves properly, and indicates that this is to be one of their main concerns. His good breeding was biological breeding, not social breeding. He recognized—as some of our modern eugenists have failed to—that good parents might throw poor stock, on occasion, and that abject parents might have remarkably good progeny. Even if the Guardians are to be encouraged to have good children, Plato provides that the children themselves must prove their goodness before they are in turn recognized as Guardians. As for the children of the baser sort—well, they were to be rigorously limited to the needs and resources of the community. Plato lived at a time when a great many children were born only to be murdered through “exposure” as it was called; and he had no qualms, apparently, about letting the Guardians send the children with a bad heredity into the discard. If his population could not grow properly in the sunlight without getting rid of the weeds, he was prepared to get rid of the weeds. People who were physically or spiritually too deformed to take part in the good life were to be eliminated. Plato, like a robust Athenian, was for killing or curing a disease; and he gave short shrift to the constitutional invalids.