The following are to be the regulations respecting handicrafts:—No citizen, or servant of a citizen, is to practise them. For the citizen has already an art and mystery, which is the care of the state; and no man can practise two arts, or practise one and superintend another. No smith should be a carpenter, and no carpenter, having many slaves who are smiths, should look after them himself; but let each man practise one art which shall be his means of livelihood. The wardens of the city should see to this, punishing the citizen who offends with temporary deprival of his rights—the foreigner shall be imprisoned, fined, exiled. Any disputes about contracts shall be determined by the wardens of the city up to fifty drachmae—above that sum by the public courts. No customs are to be exacted either on imports or exports. Nothing unnecessary is to be imported from abroad, whether for the service of the Gods or for the use of man—neither purple, nor other dyes, nor frankincense—and nothing needed in the country is to be exported. These things are to be decided on by the twelve guardians of the law who are next in seniority to the five elders. Arms and the materials of war are to be imported and exported only with the consent of the generals, and then only by the state. There is to be no retail trade either in these or any other articles. For the distribution of the produce of the country, the Cretan laws afford a rule which may be usefully followed. All shall be required to distribute corn, grain, animals, and other valuable produce, into twelve portions. Each of these shall be subdivided into three parts—one for freemen, another for servants, and the third shall be sold for the supply of artisans, strangers, and metics. These portions must be equal whether the produce be much or little; and the master of a household may distribute the two portions among his family and his slaves as he pleases—the remainder is to be measured out to the animals.
Next as to the houses in the country—there shall be twelve villages, one in the centre of each of the twelve portions; and in every village there shall be temples and an agora—also shrines for heroes or for any old Magnesian deities who linger about the place. In every division there shall be temples of Hestia, Zeus, and Athene, as well as of the local deity, surrounded by buildings on eminences, which will be the guardhouses of the rural police. The dwellings of the artisans will be thus arranged:—The artisans shall be formed into thirteen guilds, one of which will be divided into twelve parts and settled in the city; of the rest there shall be one in each division of the country. And the magistrates will fix them on the spots where they will cause the least inconvenience and be most serviceable in supplying the wants of the husbandmen.
The care of the agora will fall to the wardens of the agora. Their first duty will be the regulation of the temples which surround the marketplace; and their second to see that the markets are orderly and that fair dealing is observed. They will also take care that the sales which the citizens are required to make to strangers are duly executed. The law shall be, that on the first day of each month the auctioneers to whom the sale is entrusted shall offer grain; and at this sale a twelfth part of the whole shall be exposed, and the foreigner shall supply his wants for a month. On the tenth, there shall be a sale of liquids, and on the twenty-third of animals, skins, woven or woollen stuffs, and other things which husbandmen have to sell and foreigners want to buy. None of these commodities, any more than barley or flour, or any other food, may be retailed by a citizen to a citizen; but foreigners may sell them to one another in the foreigners’ market. There must also be butchers who will sell parts of animals to foreigners and craftsmen, and their servants; and foreigners may buy firewood wholesale of the commissioners of woods, and may sell retail to foreigners. All other goods must be sold in the market, at some place indicated by the magistrates, and shall be paid for on the spot. He who gives credit, and is cheated, will have no redress. In buying or selling, any excess or diminution of what the law allows shall be registered. The same rule is to be observed about the property of metics. Anybody who practises a handicraft may come and remain twenty years from the day on which he is enrolled; at the expiration of this time he shall take what he has and depart. The only condition which is to be imposed upon him as the tax of his sojourn is good conduct; and he is not to pay any tax for being allowed to buy or sell. But if he wants to extend the time of his sojourn, and has done any service to the state, and he can persuade the council and assembly to grant his request, he may remain. The children of metics may also be metics; and the period of twenty years, during which they are permitted to sojourn, is to count, in their case, from their fifteenth year.
No mention occurs in the Laws of the doctrine of Ideas. The will of God, the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have taken their place in the mind of Plato. If we ask what is that truth or principle which, towards the end of his life, seems to have absorbed him most, like the idea of good in the Republic, or of beauty in the “Symposium,” or of the unity of virtue in the “Protagoras,” we should answer—The priority of the soul to the body: his later system mainly hangs upon this. In the Laws, as in the “Sophist” and “Statesman,” we pass out of the region of metaphysical or transcendental ideas into that of psychology.
The opening of the fifth book, though abrupt and unconnected in style, is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the blessedness of living in the truth, the great mistake of a man living for himself, the pity as well as anger which should be felt at evil, the kindness due to the suppliant and the stranger, have the temper of Christian philosophy. The remark that elder men, if they want to educate others, should begin by educating themselves; the necessity of creating a spirit of obedience in the citizens; the desirableness of limiting property; the importance of parochial districts, each to be placed under the protection of some God or demigod, have almost the tone of a modern writer. In many of his views of politics, Plato seems to us, like some politicians of our own time, to be half socialist, half conservative.
In the Laws, we remark a change in the place assigned by him to pleasure and pain. There are two ways in which even the ideal systems of morals may regard them: either like the Stoics, and other ascetics, we may say that pleasure must be eradicated; or if this seems unreal to us, we may affirm that virtue is the true pleasure; and then, as Aristotle says, “to be brought up to take pleasure in what we ought, exercises a great and paramount influence on human life” (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics X 1). Or as Plato says in the Laws, “A man will recognize the noblest life as having the greatest pleasure and the least pain, if he have a true taste” (V 732 E following). If we admit that pleasures differ in kind, the opposition between these two modes of speaking is rather verbal than real; and in the greater part of the writings of Plato they alternate with each other. In the Republic, the mere suggestion that pleasure may be the chief good, is received by Socrates with a cry of abhorrence (VI 509 A); but in the “Philebus,” innocent pleasures vindicate their right to a place in the scale of goods (66 D). In the “Protagoras” (357), speaking in the person of Socrates rather than in his own, Plato admits the calculation of pleasure to be the true basis of ethics, while in the “Phaedo” (68, 69) he indignantly denies that the exchange of one pleasure for another is the exchange of virtue. So wide of the mark are they who would attribute to Plato entire consistency in thoughts or words.
He acknowledges that the second state is inferior to the first—in this, at any rate, he is consistent; and he still casts longing eyes upon the ideal (V 739). Several features of the first are retained in the second: the education of men and women is to be as far as possible the same (VII 804 following; especially 805 C); they are to have common meals, though separate, the men by themselves, the women with their children (VII 806 E); and they are both to serve in the army (VII 805, 806); the citizens, if not actually communists, are in spirit communistic; they are to be lovers of equality (V 741 A); only a certain amount of wealth is permitted to them (VI 754), and their burdens and also their privileges are to be proportioned to this (VI 765 C; XII 955 D). The constitution in the Laws is a timocracy of wealth (V 744 D), modified by an aristocracy of merit (VI 755; XII 951). Yet the political philosopher will observe that the first of these two principles is fixed and permanent, while the latter is uncertain and dependent on the opinion of the multitude. Wealth, after all, plays a great part in the Second Republic of Plato. Like other politicians, he deems that a property qualification will contribute stability to the state (III 698 B, C). The four classes are derived from the constitution of Athens, just as the form of the city, which is clustered around a citadel set on a hill (VI 778 C), is suggested by the Acropolis at Athens. Plato, writing under Pythagorean influences, seems really to have supposed that the well-being of the city depended almost as much on the number 5,040 as on justice and moderation (V 741 A, B). But he is not prevented by Pythagoreanism from observing the effects which climate and soil exercise on the characters of nations (V 747).
He was doubtful in the Republic whether the ideal or communistic state could be realized, but was at the same time prepared to maintain that whether it existed or not made no difference to the philosopher, who will in any case regulate his life by it (Republic IX 592 B). He has now lost faith in the practicability of his scheme—he is speaking to “men, and not to Gods or sons of Gods” (Laws IX 853 C). Yet he still maintains it to be the true pattern of the state, which we must approach as nearly as possible (V 739 E): as Aristotle says, “After having created a more general form of state, he gradually brings it round to the other” (Politics II 6, § 4). He does not observe, either here or in the Republic, that in such a commonwealth there would be little room for the development of individual character. In several respects the second state is an improvement on the first, especially in being based more distinctly on the dignity of the soul. The standard of truth, justice, temperance, is as high as in the Republic;—in one respect higher, for temperance is now regarded, not as a virtue, but as the condition of all virtue (III 696). It is finally acknowledged that the virtues are all one and connected (I 630 A), and that if they are separated, courage is the lowest of them (I 631 C). The treatment of moral questions is less speculative but more human. The idea of good has disappeared; the excellences of individuals—of him who is faithful in a civil broil (I 630), of the examiner who is incorruptible (XII 947), are the patterns to which the lives of the citizens are to conform. Plato is never weary of speaking of the honour of the soul, which can only be honoured truly by being improved (V 727 following). To make the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the end of life (X 904 D). If the Republic is far superior to the Laws in form and style, and perhaps in reach of thought, the Laws leave on the mind of the modern reader much more strongly the impression of a struggle against evil, and an enthusiasm for human improvement. When Plato says that he must carry out that part of his ideal which is practicable (Laws V 746), he does not appear to have reflected that part of an ideal cannot be detached from the whole.
The great defect of both his constitutions is the fixedness which he seeks to impress upon them. He had seen the Athenian empire, almost within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as in the century which had preceded. He fails to perceive that the greater part of the political life of a nation is not that which is given them by their legislators, but that which they give themselves. He has never reflected that without progress there cannot be order, and that mere order can only be preserved by an unnatural and despotic repression. The possibility of a great nation or of an universal empire arising never occurred to him. He sees the enfeebled and distracted state of the Hellenic world in his own later life, and thinks that the remedy is to make the laws unchangeable. The same want of insight is apparent in his judgments about art. He would like to have the forms of sculpture and of music fixed as in Egypt. He does not consider that this would be fatal to the true principles of art, which, as Socrates had himself taught, was to give life (Xenophon Memorabilia III 10 6). We wonder how, familiar as he was with the statues of Pheidias, he could have endured the lifeless and half-monstrous works of Egyptian sculpture. The “chants of Isis” (Laws II 657 B), we might think, would have been barbarous in an Athenian ear. But although he is aware that there are some things which are not so well among “the children of the Nile” (XII 953 E; V 747 C), he is deeply struck with the stability of Egyptian institutions. Both in politics and in art Plato seems to have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a step backwards. Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived, had a sacredness and authority for him: the men of a former age were supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among his contemporaries (XII 948 B, C). He could imagine the early stages of civilization; he never thought of what the future might bring forth. His experience is confined to two or three centuries, to a few Greek states, and to an uncertain report of Egypt and the East. There are many ways in which the limitations of their knowledge affected the genius of the Greeks. In criticism they were like children, having an acute vision of things which were near to them, blind to possibilities which were in the distance.
The colony is to receive from the mother-country her original constitution, and some of the first guardians of the law (VI 752). The guardians of the law are to be ministers of justice (IX 855 D), and the president of education is to take precedence of them all (VI 765 E). They are to keep the registers of property (VI 754 D), to make regulations for trade (XI 920 C), and they are to be superannuated at seventy years of age (VI 755 B). Several questions of modern politics, such as the limitation of property (VI 754 D), the enforcement of education (VII 804 D), the relations of classes (VI 759 B), are anticipated by Plato. He hopes that in his state will be found neither poverty nor riches; every man having the necessaries of life, he need not go fortune-hunting in marriage (VI 774 C). Almost in the spirit of the Gospel he would say, “How hardly can a rich man dwell in a perfect state.” For he cannot be a good man who is always gaining too much and spending too little (Laws V 742 E following; compare Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics IV 2, § 3). Plato, though he admits wealth as a political element, would deny that material prosperity can be the foundation of a really great community. A man’s soul, as he often says, is more to be esteemed than his body; and his body than external goods. He repeats (IV 705 B) the complaint which has been made in all ages, that the love of money is the corruption of states. He has a sympathy with thieves and burglars, “many of whom are men of ability and greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long” (V 831 E following); but he has little sympathy with shopkeepers or retailers, although he makes the reflection, which sometimes occurs to ourselves, that such occupations, if they were carried on honestly by the best men and women, would be delightful and honourable (XI 918 D). For traders and artisans a moderate gain was, in his opinion, best (XI 920 C). He has never, like modern writers, idealized the wealth of nations (V 742 C following), any more than he has worked out the problems of political economy, which among the ancients had not yet grown into a science. The isolation of Greek states, their constant wars, the want of a free industrial population, and of the modern methods and instruments of “credit,” prevented any great extension of commerce among them; and so hindered them from forming a theory of the laws which regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth.
The constitution of the army is aristocratic and also democratic; official appointment is combined with popular election. The two principles are carried out as follows: The guardians of the law nominate generals out of whom three are chosen by those who are or have been of the age for military service; and the generals elected have the nomination of certain of the inferior officers. But if either in the case of generals or of the inferior officers anyone is ready to swear that he knows of a better man than those nominated, he may put the claims of his candidate to the vote of the whole army, or of the division of the service which he will, if elected, command (VI 755). There is a general assembly, but its functions, except at elections, are hardly noticed (compare VI 758 D and 764 A). In the election of the Boule, Plato again attempts to mix aristocracy and democracy. This is effected, first as in the Serbian constitution, by balancing wealth and numbers; for it cannot be supposed that those who possessed a higher qualification were equal in number with those who had a lower, and yet they have an equal number of representatives. In the second place, all classes are compelled to vote in the election of senators from the first and second class; but the fourth class is not compelled to elect from the third, nor the third and fourth from the fourth. Thirdly, out of the 180 persons who are thus chosen from each of the four classes, 720 in all, 360 are to be taken by lot; these form the council for the year (VI 756).
These political adjustments of Plato’s will be criticised by the practical statesman as being for the most part fanciful and ineffectual. He will observe, first of all, that the only real check on democracy is the division into classes. The second of the three proposals, though ingenious, and receiving some light from the apathy to politics which is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was most needed. At such political crises, all the lower classes would vote equally with the higher. The subtraction of half the persons chosen at the first election by the chances of the lot would not raise the character of the senators, and is open to the objection of uncertainty, which necessarily attends this and similar schemes of double representative government. Nor can the voters be expected to retain the continuous political interest required for carrying out such a proposal as Plato’s. Who could select 180 persons of each class, fitted to be senators? And whoever were chosen by the voter in the first instance, his wishes might be neutralized by the action of the lot. Yet the scheme of Plato is not really so extravagant as the actual constitution of Athens, in which all the senators appear to have been elected by lot (ἀπὸ κυάμου βουλευταί), at least, after the revolution made by Cleisthenes; for the constitution of the senate which was established by Solon probably had some aristocratic features, though their precise nature is unknown to us. The ancients knew that election by lot was the most democratic of all modes of appointment, seeming to say in the objectionable sense, that “one man is as good as another.” Plato, who is desirous of mingling different elements, makes a partial use of the lot, which he applies to candidates already elected by vote. He attempts also to devise a system of checks and balances such as he supposes to have been intended by the ancient legislators. We are disposed to say to him, as he himself says in a remarkable passage (IV 709 A), that “no man ever legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us in all sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning governments and changing laws.” And yet, as he adds, the true legislator is still required: he must cooperate with circumstances. Many things which are ascribed to human foresight are the result of chance. Ancient, and in a less degree modern political constitutions, are never consistent with themselves, because they are never framed on a single design, but are added to from time to time as new elements arise and gain the preponderance in the state. We often attribute to the wisdom of our ancestors great political effects which have sprung unforeseen from the accident of the situation. Power, not wisdom, is most commonly the source of political revolutions. And the result, as in the Roman Republic, of the coexistence of opposite elements in the same state is, not a balance of power or an equable progress of liberal principles, but a conflict of forces, of which one or other may happen to be in the ascendant. In Greek history, as well as in Plato’s conception of it, this “progression by antagonism” involves reaction: the aristocracy expands into democracy and returns again to tyranny.
The constitution of the Laws may be said to consist, besides the magistrates, mainly of three elements—an administrative Council, the judiciary, and the Nocturnal Council, which is an intellectual aristocracy, composed of priests and the ten eldest guardians of the law and some younger co-opted members. To this latter chiefly are assigned the functions of legislation, but to be exercised with a sparing hand. The powers of the ordinary council are administrative rather than legislative. The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution, is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of the tribes. Not more than one-twelfth is to be in office at once, so that the government would be made up of twelve administrations succeeding one another in the course of the year. They are to exercise a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies (VI 758). Of the ecclesia over which they presided (VI 758 D, see above) little is said, and that little relates to comparatively trifling duties (VIII 850). Nothing is less present to the mind of Plato than a House of Commons, carrying on year by year the work of legislation. For he supposes the laws to be already provided. As little would he approve of a body like the Roman Senate. The people and the aristocracy alike are to be represented, not by assemblies, but by officers elected for one or two years, except the guardians of the law, who are elected for twenty years (VI 755 B).
The evils of this system are obvious. If in any state, as Plato says in the “Statesman” (292 E), it is easier to find fifty good draught-players than fifty good rulers, the greater part of the 360 who compose the council must be unfitted to rule. The unfitness would be increased by the short period during which they held office. There would be no traditions of government among them, as in a Greek or Italian oligarchy, and no individual would be responsible for any of their acts. Everything seems to have been sacrificed to a false notion of equality, according to which all have a turn of ruling and being ruled. In the constitution of the Magnesian state Plato has not emancipated himself from the limitations of ancient politics. His government may be described as a democracy of magistrates elected by the people. He never troubles himself about the political consistency of his scheme. He does indeed say that the greater part of the good of this world arises, not from equality, but from proportion, which he calls the judgment of Zeus (VI 757; compare Aristotle’s Distributive Justice, Nicomachean Ethics v. 5), but he hardly makes any attempt to carry out the principle in practice. There is no attempt to proportion representation to merit; nor is there anybody in his commonwealth which represents the life either of a class or of the whole state. The manner of appointing magistrates is taken chiefly from the old democratic constitution of Athens, of which it retains some of the worst features, such as the use of the lot, while by doing away with the political character of the popular assembly the mainspring of the machine is taken out. The guardians of the law, thirty-seven in number, of whom the ten eldest reappear as a part of the Nocturnal Council at the end of the twelfth book (961 A), are to be elected by the whole military class (VI 753 B), but they are to hold office for twenty years, and would therefore have an oligarchical rather than a democratic character. Nothing is said of the manner in which the functions of the Nocturnal Council are to be harmonized with those of the guardians of the law, or as to how the ordinary council is related to it.
Similar principles are applied to inferior offices. To some the appointment is made by vote, to others by lot (VI 759). In the elections to the priesthood, Plato endeavours to mix or balance in a friendly manner “demus and not demus” (VI 759 B). The commonwealth of the Laws, like the Republic, cannot dispense with a spiritual head, which is the same in both—the oracle of Delphi. From this the laws about all divine things are to be derived. The final selection of the Interpreters (VI 759), the choice of an heir for a vacant lot (IX 856), the punishment for removing a deposit (XI 913, 914), are also to be determined by it. Plato is not disposed to encourage amateur attempts to revive religion in states. For, as he says in the Laws, “To institute religious rites is the work of a great intelligence” (X 909 E).
Though the council is framed on the model of the Athenian Boule, the law courts of Plato do not equally conform to the pattern of the Athenian dicasteries. Plato thinks that the judges should speak and ask questions:—this is not possible if they are numerous; he would, therefore, have a few judges only, but good ones (VI 766 D, E; IX 855 D, E). He is nevertheless aware that both in public and private suits there must be a popular element (VI 768 A, B). He insists that the whole people must share in the administration of justice—in public causes they are to take the first step, and the final decision is to remain with them. In private suits they are also to retain a share; “for the citizen who has no part in the administration of justice is apt to think that he has no share in the state. For this reason there is to be a court of law in every tribe (i.e. for about every 2,000 citizens), and the judges are to be chosen by lot.” Of the courts of law he gives what he calls a superficial sketch. Nor, indeed is it easy to reconcile his various accounts of them. It is however clear that although some officials, like the guardians of the law, the wardens of the agora, city, and country have power to inflict minor penalties, the administration of justice is in the main popular. The ingenious expedient of dividing the questions of law and fact between a judge and jury, which would have enabled Plato to combine the popular element with the judicial, did not occur to him or to any other ancient political philosopher. Though desirous of limiting the number of judges, and thereby confining the office to persons specially fitted for it, he does not seem to have understood that a body of law must be formed by decisions as well as by legal enactments.
He would have men in the first place seek justice from their friends and neighbours, because, as he truly remarks, they know best the questions at issue (VI 766 E); these are called in another passage (XII 956 B) arbiters rather than judges. But if they cannot settle the matter, it is to be referred to the courts of the tribes, and a higher penalty is to be paid by the party who is unsuccessful in the suit (XII 956 C, D). There is a further appeal allowed to the select judges, with a further increase of penalty. The select judges are to be appointed by the magistrates, who are to choose one from every magistracy (VI 767 C). They are to be elected annually, and therefore probably for a year only, and are liable to be called to account before the guardians of the law (VI 767 E). In cases of which death is the penalty, the trial takes place before a special court, which is composed of the guardians of the law and of the judges of appeal (IX 855 C, D).
In treating of the subject in Book IX (855; compare XII 956 E), he proposes to leave for the most part the methods of procedure to a younger generation of legislators; the procedure in capital causes he determines himself. He insists that the vote of the judges shall be given openly, and before they vote they are to hear speeches from the plaintiff and defendant. They are then to take evidence in support of what has been said, and to examine witnesses. The eldest judge is to ask his questions first, and then the second, and then the third. The interrogatories are to continue for three days, and the evidence is to be written down (IX 855, 856). Apparently he does not expect the judges to be professional lawyers, any more than he expects the members of the council to be trained statesmen.
In forming marriage connections, Plato supposes that the public interest will prevail over private inclination (VI 773). There was nothing in this very shocking to the notions of Greeks, among whom the feeling of love towards the other sex was almost deprived of sentiment or romance. Married life is to be regulated solely with a view to the good of the state. The newly-married couple are not allowed to absent themselves from their respective syssitia, even during their honeymoon (VI 780 B); they are to give their whole mind to the procreation of children (VI 775 D, E; 783 D, E); their duties to one another at a later period of life are not a matter about which the state is equally solicitous (VI 784). Divorces are readily allowed for incompatibility of temper (XI 929, 930). As in the Republic, physical considerations seem almost to exclude moral and social ones. To modern feelings there is a degree of coarseness in Plato’s treatment of the subject. Yet he also makes some shrewd remarks on marriage, as for example, that a man who does not marry for money will not be the humble servant of his wife (VI 774 C). And he shows a true conception of the nature of the family, when he requires that the newly-married couple “should leave their father and mother,” and have a separate home (VI 776 B). He also provides against extravagance in marriage festivals (VI 775 A), which in some states of society, for instance in the case of the Hindus, has been a social evil of the first magnitude.
In treating of property, Plato takes occasion to speak of property in slaves (VI 776, 777). They are to be treated with perfect justice; but, for their own sake, to be kept at a distance. The motive is not so much humanity to the slave, of which there are hardly any traces (although Plato allows that many in the hour of peril have found a slave more attached than members of their own family), but the self-respect which the freeman and citizen owes to himself (compare Republic VIII 549 A). If they commit crimes, they are doubly punished (IX 867, 868; VIII 844 E following); if they inform against illegal practices of their masters, they are to receive a protection, which would probably be ineffectual, from the guardians of the law; in rare cases they are to be set free (XI 932 D, E). Plato still breathes the spirit of the old Hellenic world, in which slavery was a necessity, because leisure must be provided for the citizen.
The education propounded in the Laws differs in several points from that of the Republic. Plato seems to have reflected as deeply and earnestly on the importance of infancy as Rousseau, or Jean Paul (compare the saying of the latter—“Not the moment of death, but the moment of birth, is probably the more important”). He would fix the amusements of children in the hope of fixing their characters in afterlife (VII 797, 8). In the spirit of the statesman who said, “Let me make the ballads of a country, and I care not who make their laws,” Plato would say, “Let the amusements of children be unchanged, and they will not want to change the laws” (VII 798 C). The “Goddess Harmonia” plays a great part in Plato’s ideas of education. The natural restless force of life in children, “who do nothing but roar until they are three years old,” is gradually to be reduced to law and order (VII 792 A; compare II 653 E following). As in the Republic, he fixes certain forms in which songs are to be composed: (1) they are to be strains of cheerfulness and good omen; (2) they are to be hymns or prayers addressed to the Gods; (3) they are to sing only of the lawful and good (VII 800, 801). The poets are again expelled or rather ironically invited to depart; and those who remain are required to submit their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (VII 817). Youth are no longer compelled to commit to memory many thousand lyric and tragic Greek verses; yet, perhaps, a worse fate is in store for them. Plato has no belief in “liberty of prophesying”; and having guarded against the dangers of lyric poetry, he remembers that there is an equal danger in other writings. He cannot leave his old enemies, the Sophists, in possession of the field; and therefore he proposes that youth shall learn by heart, instead of the compositions of poets or prose writers, his own inspired work on laws (VII 810, 811). These, and music and mathematics, are the chief parts of his education.
Mathematics are to be cultivated, not as in the Republic with a view to the science of the idea of good—though the higher use of them is not altogether excluded (VII 818 C, D)—but rather with a religious and political aim. They are a sacred study which teaches men how to distribute the portions of a state (V 737, 8; 746 D following), and which is to be pursued in order that they may learn not to blaspheme about astronomy (VII 821 C). Against three mathematical errors Plato is in profound earnest. First, the error of supposing that the three dimensions of length, breadth, and height, are really commensurable with one another (VII 820). The difficulty which he feels is analogous to the difficulty which he formerly felt about the connection of ideas, and is equally characteristic of ancient philosophy: he fixes his mind on the point of difference, and cannot at the same time take in the similarity. Secondly, he is puzzled about the nature of fractions: in the Republic (VII 525 E), he is disposed to deny the possibility of their existence. Thirdly, his optimism leads him to insist (unlike the Spanish king who thought that he could have improved on the mechanism of the heavens) on the perfect or circular movement of the heavenly bodies (VII 821, 822). He appears to mean, that instead of regarding the stars as overtaking or being overtaken by one another, or as planets wandering in many paths, a more comprehensive survey of the heavens would enable us to infer that they all alike moved in a circle around a centre (compare “Timaeus” 40 following; Republic X 617). He probably suspected, though unacquainted with the true cause, that the appearance of the heavens did not agree with the reality: at any rate, his notions of what was right or fitting easily overpowered the results of actual observation. To the early astronomers, who lived at the revival of science, as to Plato, there was nothing absurd in a priori astronomy, and they would probably have made fewer real discoveries of they had followed any other track. (Compare Introduction to the Republic)
The science of dialectic is nowhere mentioned by name in the Laws, nor is anything said of the education of afterlife. The child is to begin to learn at ten years of age: he is to be taught reading and writing for three years, from ten to thirteen, and no longer; and for three years more, from thirteen to sixteen, he is to be instructed in music (VII 810). The great fault which Plato finds in the contemporary education is the almost total ignorance of arithmetic and astronomy, in which the Greeks would do well to take a lesson from the Egyptians (VII 819 A, B; compare Republic VII 525 following). Dancing and wrestling are to have a military character (VII 796), and women as well as men are to be taught the use of arms (VII 794 D, 804 E). The military spirit which Plato has vainly endeavoured to expel in the first two books returns again in the seventh and eighth. He has evidently a sympathy with the soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws VI 760 following; VII 813; Republic V 467–470), though inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of it (Laws IV 706, 707). Of a supreme or master science which was to be the “coping-stone” of the rest, few traces appear in the Laws. He seems to have lost faith in it, or perhaps to have realized that the time for such a science had not yet come, and that he was unable to fill up the outline which he had sketched. There is no requirement that the guardians of the law shall be philosophers, although they are to know the unity of virtue (XII 965), and the connection of the sciences (967, 968). Nor are we told that the leisure of the citizens, when they are grown up, is to be devoted to any intellectual employment. In this respect we note a falling off from the Republic, but also there is “the returning to it” of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics. The public and family duties of the citizens are to be their main business, and these would, no doubt, take up a great deal more time than in the modern world we are willing to allow to either of them (VII 807). Plato no longer entertains the idea of any regular training to be pursued under the superintendence of the state from eighteen to thirty, or from thirty to thirty-five; he has taken the first step downwards on “Constitution Hill” (Republic VIII 547, 548). But he maintains as earnestly as ever that “to men living under this second polity there remains the greatest of all works, the education of the soul,” and that no bye-work should be allowed to interfere with it. Night and day are not long enough for the consummation of it (VII 807 D).
Few among us are either able or willing to carry education into later life; five or six years spent at school, three or four at a university, or in the preparation for a profession, an occasional attendance at a lecture to which we are invited by friends when we have an hour to spare from housekeeping or moneymaking—these comprise, as a matter of fact, the education even of the educated; and then the lamp is extinguished “more truly than Heracleitus’ sun, never to be lighted again” (Republic VI 497 B). The description which Plato gives in the Republic of the state of adult education among his contemporaries may be applied almost word for word to our own age. He does not however acquiesce in this widely-spread want of a higher education; he would rather seek to make every man something of a philosopher before he enters on the duties of active life. But in the Laws he no longer prescribes any regular course of study which is to be pursued in mature years. Nor does he remark that the education of afterlife is of another kind, and must consist with the majority of the world rather in the improvement of character than in the acquirement of knowledge. It comes from the study of ourselves and other men: from moderation and experience: from reflection on circumstances: from the pursuit of high aims: from a right use of the opportunities of life. It is the preservation of what we have been, and the addition of something more. The power of abstract study or continuous thought is very rare, but such a training as this can be given by everyone to himself.
The singular passage in Book VII (803 C), in which Plato describes life as a pastime, like many other passages in the Laws is imperfectly expressed. Two thoughts seem to be struggling in his mind: first, the reflection, to which he returns at the end of the passage (804 B), that men are playthings or puppets, and that God only is the serious aim of human endeavours; this suggests to him the afterthought that, although playthings, they are the playthings of the Gods, and that this is the best of them. The cynical, ironical fancy of the moment insensibly passes into a religious sentiment. In another passage he says that life is a game of which God, who is the player, shifts the pieces so as to procure the victory of good on the whole (X 903 D following). Or once more: Tragedies are acted on the stage; but the best and noblest of them is the imitation of the noblest life, which we affirm to be the life of our whole state (VII 817). Again, life is a chorus, as well as a sort of mystery, in which we have the Gods for playmates (II 653 C, D; 655 A). Men imagine that war is their serious pursuit, and they make war that they may return to their amusements. But neither wars nor amusements are the true satisfaction of men, which is to be found only in the society of the Gods, in sacrificing to them and propitiating them (VII 803 D, E). Like a Christian ascetic, Plato seems to suppose that life should be passed wholly in the enjoyment of divine things. And after meditating in amazement on the sadness and unreality of the world, he adds, in a sort of parenthesis, “Be cheerful, Sirs” (Shakespeare, Tempest, act IV sc. 1)