4. By way of an example, the art of weaving is defined. The example shows that kingcraft has first to be separated from other kindred arts, both causal and co-operative. Nine categories are adduced which exhaust social functions. Eight are eliminated, and the ninth, the class of ministers, remains. Of these (a) slaves, (b) hirelings, (c) traders, (d) officials, (e) priests are again parted off, although the last are only with difficulty separated from the king, when (f) a strange medley of monstrous creatures come into view. Some are fierce like lions, some crafty like the fox, and some have mixed natures like centaurs and satyrs. These are the actual rulers of mankind, more sophistical and juggling than the sophist himself. And they too must be separated from the true king.
5. The familiar tripartite distinction of monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, is doubled by introducing into each the distinction involved in the presence or absence of wealth, and in the observance or non-observance of law. But no one of the six carries in itself a scientific principle.
The true government is the rule, not of many, but of one or of a few. “And they may govern, whether poor or rich, by free-will or compulsion, and either with or without law, so long as they govern scientifically.”
6. The respondent, a youthful namesake of Socrates, is shocked at the remark that the true ruler may govern without law.
This leads to a discussion of the nature of law, which is compared to the prescription left by a physician. If present, he might dispense with his own rule. So the presence of a competent ruler is better than the sovereignty of law, which makes no allowance for nature or circumstance, but tyrannically forces its own way. Imagine medicine, navigation, &c., similarly conducted by time-honoured prescription, with penalties for innovation;—what would become of civilization? Yet if law is disregarded by rulers who are unscientific and warped by self-interest, this leads to far worse evils. For the laws are based on some experience and wisdom. Hence, in the continued absence of the true ruler, the best course, though only second best, is the strict observance of law. And he who so rules in humble imitation of the scientific governor may be truly called a king, although if the divine lawgiver were to appear his living will would supersede the law.
7. As it is, though cities survive many evils, yet many are shipwrecked because of the ignorance of those at the helm. The order of badness in the actual states is—
| 1. Constitutional monarchy. | |||
| 2. Constitutional oligarchy. | |||
| 3. Law-abiding democracy. | |||
| 4. Law-breaking democracy. | |||
| 5. Law-defying oligarchy. | |||
| 6. Tyranny. | |||
8. It remains to separate from the true ruler those who co-operate with him as subordinates, the general, the judge, the orator. His own peculiar function is an art of weaving strength (the warp) with gentleness (the woof), when education has prepared them—and this (1) by administration, (2) by marriage.
The four preceding dialogues have shown (1) the gradual transformation of the Platonic ideas (while still objective) into forms of thought, (2) the tendency to group them into series of categories, (3) a corresponding advance in psychological classification, (4) an increasing importance given to method, (5) the inclination to inquire into processes (γενέσεις) as well as into the nature of being.
Meanwhile Plato's approach to the Eleatics, though in the way of criticism, has brought into prominence the notions of unity,Philebus. being, sameness, difference, and has left some what in abeyance the idea of good. To this “highest of all studies” Plato now returns, equipped with his improved instruments, and ready to forge new ones in the same laboratory, or in some other, should occasion serve. His converse with Parmenides ended in his assertion of an element of difference pervading all things—in other words, of an indeterminate element underlying all determinations. This brings him again into relation with the Pythagoreans, who had similarly asserted the combination of finite and infinite in the universe. Taking advantage of their help, he gains a more advanced (but still ideal) conception of the concrete harmony of things, and approaches the definition of that which in the Republic he but shadowed forth. With this most serious inquiry there is combined (as in the Sophistes and Politicus) an ironical and controversial use of dialectic, by which the juggler and false pretender (who is in this case the goddess of pleasure), after claiming the highest place, is thrust down to the lowest.
It must be admitted that the style of the Philebus is far from brilliant, or even clear. In the effort of connecting abstractions Plato's movement is more laboured than in his first glad realization of them.
Instead of attempting here to follow the windings of the dialogue, it must suffice to state the main result. Neither pleasure nor knowledge is the highest good, and the good eludes definition; but the shrine, or habitation, of the good is a complex life of which the elements are, in order of merit: (1) measure, the cause of all right mixture; (2) (a) beauty, the effect, and (b) reality, the inseparable condition; (3) intellect; (4) science, art and right opinion; (5) pure pleasure unaccompanied with pain. “Not all the animal kingdom shall induce us to put pleasure first.”
The Philebus introduces us to the interior of the Academy in the lifetime of the master. More than any other of the dialogues it recalls Aristotle's description of Plato's teaching. But, while his followers seem early to have fallen under the dominance of the latest phase of his doctrine, Plato himself, even in the Philebus, is still detached from any servitude to the creations of his own mind. He manipulates them as the medium for expressing his fresh thoughts, but they are not yet crystallized into a system.
“I will remind you,” Socrates, “of what has been omitted,” says Protarchus at the conclusion of this dialogue. The last (presumably) of Plato's metaphysical writings thus fitly ends with a confession of incompleteness. But if, as Renan says, “the most fatal error is to believe that one serves one's country by calumniating those who founded it,” neither is it for the interest of science to ignore these imperfect anticipations. By methods elaborated in the course of centuries, and far more sure than any which Plato had at his command, mankind have gained an extent of knowledge which he dreamt not of.[1] But the Greek metaphysician is none the less a pioneer of knowledge,[2] while the special sciences of ethics and psychology had been carried from infancy to adolescence in a single lifetime.
VII. Timaeus, Critias [Hermocrates].—As the Sophistes and Politicus were written in continuation of the Theaetetus, so, at some uncertain time, Plato conceived the design of writing a great trilogy, for which the ideal state depicted in the Republic should be the point of departure. The grand outline there sketched by Socrates was now to be filled up by Critias and Hermocrates. The form set up by reasoning should be made alive, the “airy burghers” should be seen “making history.” As a prelude to this magnificent celebration, Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher, who is present at the Panathenaea, is invited to discourse of the origin of all things, and to bring down the glorious theme to the creation of man. What should have followed this, but is only commenced in the fragment of the Critias, would have been the story, not of a fall, but of the triumph of reason in humanity.
In the Philebus (59 A, cf. 62 D) Plato speaks with a touch of contempt of the life-long investigation of nature, as being concerned only with this visible universe, and immersed in the study of phenomena, whether past, present or to come, which admit of no stability and therefore of no certainty. “These things have no absolute first principle, and can never be the objects of reason and true science.”
Yet even this lower knowledge is there admitted as an element of that life which is the habitation of the good. And there are not wanting signs in his later dialogues that Plato's imagination had again been strongly drawn towards those physical studies which, as the Phaedo shows, had fascinated him in youth. That nature and the world proceed “according to God and not according to chance” is the belief of the Eleatic stranger, to which he perceives that Theaetetus will be irresistibly drawn as he grows older (Soph. 265 D). In the midst of dialectical abstractions, the processes of actual production (γενέσεις) have been increasingly borne in mind. And the myth in the Politicus turns on cosmological conceptions which, although differing from those in the Timaeus, and more accordant with Plato's bitterest mood, yet throw a new light on the deeper current of
