Plato's American Republic

We were sitting on the pavement in our usual way, considering all things, and examining into them one at a time. There were with me Lysis and his younger brother Phaelon, two youths whom I loved for their inquiring dispositions and habit of always asking why. As we were sitting there we suddenly saw Agathon approaching, and called to him to join us. When we had made room for him he turned to me and said: ‘Listen, Socrates, to a strange thing which happened to me to-day as I was going down to the Piræus. For I now work, as you know, in the Government, and to-day a stranger came up to me outside my office, proposing to buy the Parthenon and all the buildings on the Acropolis and remove them to his own land, and re-erect them there.’

‘Truly a strange way of honouring the Athenians,’ I said.

‘I think,’ answered Agathon, ‘that it was less his idea to honour the Athenians than to make his own countrymen pay him many denarii to behold the sight.’ ‘And did he wish to buy the hill as well as the buildings on it?’ ‘Why no,’ answered Agathon, ‘for he spoke as one most ignorant, but he guessed that there were as good hills in his own country, which he explained was also the particular residence of the Gods.’ ‘Without doubt he was an American,’ I exclaimed.

At this word ‘American’ the two young men leaned forward eagerly, and Phaelon said:—

‘Tell us, Socrates, have you ever lectured in America?’

‘How not?’ said I.

‘And did you like the Americans?’ asked Lysis. ‘Tell us what manner of people they are. For we have heard many stories of them. For Thrasymachus tells us that he has nowhere been so well received. And he, you know, has lectured in all the lands he could. But, he says that where in other countries he received nothing but kindness, in America he received a great many dollars as well. And he says that he is convinced that the Gods have emigrated and made it their country, and that, when it has improved a little more, he also will follow the example of the Gods. But Glaucon says just the opposite, maintaining that as the Americans are the farthest away of all the barbarians from Athens and civilization, so are they without any doubt the most completely barbarian. Tell us, therefore, what is true about the Americans, for at your lectures you must have seen and questioned them all.’

At this Agathon, who had been trying to repress his laughter since first Lysis had spoken of my lecture-tour, became redder than ever in the face, and finally burst out saying: ‘Yes, indeed, Socrates is the best person to give you a faithful picture, if he is sufficiently master of himself and a true lover of wisdom.’

‘Go on,’ I said, ‘and make your meaning clearer and cease to bewilder the young.’ For I knew what Agathon had in his mind to tell them.

‘Why, then, Lysis and Phaelon,’ said Agathon, ‘you must forgive Socrates if he looks like a sheep while I am speaking shamefully of him, as I intend to do. But the truth is that his lectures were much less successful than were those of his wife Xantippe. There were, it is true, many Americans who had heard of Socrates, whose name is painted up on the walls of many of their libraries, and these came to look at him. But he is not a great spectacle to behold, and when he spoke they found he was not interested in any of the things which they desired to know, such as the art of succeeding in the world and the other things which the sophists profess to teach. Whereas Xantippe spoke to the women, praising women and declaring them to be the moral leaders of the community, and demanding for them the chief voice in ordering the affairs of the city.’

‘Go on to the end, my good Agathon,’ said I, ‘for I know you will not be able to sleep unless you also tell them how I came to see the Middle West.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was in my mind to tell them that also. Xantippe’s best lecture, which she gave more than two hundred times, was on the management of the home and the husband, and in this lecture poor Socrates was made to assist. For in no other way could he hope to see the most powerful and strange region of America, which in their dialect they term the Middle West. It was also the only way he could ever pay his passage back to Athens. Many of the women who had read the teachings of a local sage, Emerson, spoke kindly to Socrates and inquired his angle on the beautiful, as though he had been Euclid. But Xantippe showed him to them as an example of the mismanaged home, blaming the spirit of Athens which did not give her authority enough, and warning the women of America to take care lest their menfolk should become too much like Socrates. But this danger they did not seem to think imminent.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phaelon, ‘you endured much, Socrates.’

‘Indeed he did, for Xantippe praised the women of America and the women of America praised Xantippe, and with each exchange of flattery they became more boastful and reckless. At all such gatherings the Americans, especially the women, expect to hear themselves praised. Indeed, that people is like a Persian monarch, for all who approach and speak to them desire gifts from them and endeavour to recommend themselves by flattery. Before half her tour was over Xantippe was openly saying that there were no truer lovers of the good than her audience in the whole world, and that they did quite right to be well satisfied with themselves and to have nothing to do with humility and not to believe it possible they were mistaken in what they thought to be the proper objects of the soul’s desire. And in particular she praised them for their refusal to believe there was anything requiring deep thought in philosophy or in public life, saying that people so wise and good did right to trust to their first impressions of everything. Then she told them that the idea that there was anything difficult and mysterious in life was only fit for people like Socrates, who were unfit for anything but philosophy. And she explained that the reason that more thinking was done in Europe, and that there was more philosophical discussion there, was that people had so much time on their hands while waiting for their passports to the United States. For these passports, she said, are as long in coming as a conclusion is in the chatterings of Socrates and his friends, and the Europeans spend the time in philosophy hoping to learn resignation and the acceptance of one’s destiny. Because more and more often the passport is in the end refused, and nowhere more often than among the Greeks. She is already full with engagements for such addresses for the next two years.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I am glad I went there. For as the silent butt of Xantippe’s scorn I was free to turn my attention wholly to the strange places we visited. And in particular I satisfied to the full my desire to see and study a Woman’s Club, than which I had not been able to imagine anything more unnatural.’

‘Tell us,’ said they both, ‘about a Woman’s Club.’

‘If I did,’ said I with a smile, ‘I do not think you would believe me. But you would say that in America I had indulged myself too freely in potent distillations of the tail of the cock, and spoke the thing which was not.’

‘Oh no, Socrates,’ exclaimed Phaelon, ‘for I have often heard the Americans spoken of before, and I know about the women who rule the men in the valley of the great river. The river is the Amazon, the greatest of all American rivers, and the inhabitants are called Amazons. Do I not understand rightly?’

‘Not quite rightly,’ put in Agathon, ‘for the Amazon River is in another America altogether, and the chief rivers where Socrates was are the Mississippi and the Missouri, named, I believe, after the two first women who tamed their menfolk, the one her husband, the other her father.’

‘You should also tell them, Agathon, should you not, that the method of domination is different, and that, whereas the Amazons triumphed by skill in arms and valour, the American women triumph by something more lasting and stronger than physical force. They have managed to make the men believe that they are superior and ought to be obeyed.’

‘How so?’ said Lysis. ‘Is it in fact true that they are superior?’

‘My answer will surprise you perhaps,’ I replied, ‘but I will answer boldly and say, Yes, if it is a better thing to be alive than dead, which, as I have said elsewhere, is not a thing we can decide. But it is certain that in America the women are more alive than the men. For the men work so hard that they kill themselves, and are so busy while living that they have no time for the proper business of life.’

‘They must work, must they not,’ said Lysis, ‘in order to obtain the leisure for philosophy and public life, for I have heard that they have no slaves, and no class beneath the men, and if they did not work they would starve.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘and learn how little you yet understand about the character of this extraordinary people, the most extraordinary, as I believe, that has yet appeared upon the face of the earth. For if you see men engaging of their own will in the most heavy and degrading employments of commerce, long after they have accumulated for themselves and their families not a sufficiency only but an extreme abundance both of those things that may be called necessities and those that are plainly luxuries, can anything be said of such men except that they are either ignoble in their own souls and ignorant of the true nature of what is good, or else that they are acting in obedience to the orders of some tyrant, and are, in fact, not freemen at all, but slaves?’

‘Assuredly,’ they said, ‘they must be one or the other.’

‘Or both,’ said Agathon.

‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘that was well added by Agathon, for we must not forget the influence of religion which even tyrants can modify only through slow degrees. But as religion is the manifestation of the soul’s nature, if we find the religion of these people compelling them to lead the life they do, shall we not justly decide that there is in their souls an ignorance of what is truly good? Now I say that in religion they are followers of Pythagoras without rightly understanding his doctrine, and that they are to be numbered among the worshippers of the Sacred Number.’

‘Without doubt,’ said Lysis, ‘the Sacred Number is Number One, which has long been the favourite among mankind.’

‘You are wrong,’ said I, ‘and you must not think that the Americans are in general more selfish than other men. I think that the opposite is the case, and that nowhere on earth, not even among the Athenians, is there so much fellow-feeling and willingness to help combined with so much competitiveness and so great a desire to excel in contests. No, the number is the symbol n, or whatever you choose that denotes the greatest quantity. For they pay a most special and devout worship to a strange god whom they call Progress, and whose will they declare it to be that there shall be made as great a number as possible of all objects that men make, but principally of the machines that are called “autos” or “cars,” which move men quickly from place to place.’

‘It is often a fine thing to go quickly from place to place,’ said Lysis.

‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and in addition the control of these machines gives great joy to the Americans. So that it may well happen that they will live altogether in their cars. For at present they must endeavour to find some place in the city where they can leave their car while they go to an office, and he who is successful in doing this is said to have parked his car, and is held in honour. And as among many peoples a youth is not granted the dignity of manhood until he has slain an enemy, so among the Americans must he first prove himself by parking a car.’

‘They would become men sooner if theirs was the old test of slaying a man, would they not?’ said Lysis, ‘for that requires but little skill in controlling cars and a stout heart is alone sufficient.’

‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and it is my belief that the present state of affairs cannot endure and that to park will soon be beyond the wit of any save a true philosopher, who will guard his place by his presence upon it night and day. So did Diogenes preserve his claim to the spot where he parked his tub. For the truth can be considered in any place, as I observed to the traffic-policemen in New York, who objected to my examination of Glaucon in Broadway. But for the ordinary Americans, I think, there is no solution except the abolition of offices and the transaction of all business in cars. They will equip their cars as offices and drive from their homes to the market-place. These car-offices will enjoy all the space that is at present filled with buildings. When their cars are so fitted as to take all the papers of their business, they can work freely on the journeys out and home, dictating to their clerks as they go. Nor will it much surprise me if the private home is abolished to give place to the residential car so that the American soul may find a final happiness, and men may be born in cars and live and wed and die in them, and be cremated in the engine, without ever having to put a foot on the ground. And so will arise a new race to take the place of the centaurs of old. For, as the centaurs were half men and half horses, so will these be half men and half motor-cars. And it would seem that of such a race the natural sustenance would be alcohol. So, at least, the future appears to me, or do you not think so, Agathon?’

‘No’, he said.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘you may be right. It may happen that everybody will be run over in the next few years, which will disprove all our prophecies and speculations.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is much more likely.’

‘But I think,’ I continued, ‘that we will say that whether or not the Americans remain in their cars, we for our part will have nothing to do with them, but rather regard them as a vexatious interruption of right living, and in particular as a great distraction in the search for truth. And we will refuse to sit ourselves down as the Americans love to do and start the machinery and follow whithersoever the car leads. For do you notice how we have wandered out of our course, as generally happens with these machines, and have quite forgotten the original thread of our discourse and the question why the Americans worship this strange god Progress, making an incantation of the name and chanting it as if it were an explanation of the way they spend their lives?’

‘Well, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘most gods are strange, and if they were not strange we should be doubtful if they were gods.’

‘True,’ I said, ‘but there is a strangeness which helps the divine part of the soul and a strangeness which oppresses it. If we consider the past fortunes of America we shall see how the worship of theirs grew up. And, to begin with, are not the Americans right when they say that theirs is a great country?’

‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘it is certainly vast.’

‘And rich in the wealth of its agriculture and minerals and so offering a fair field for endeavour and great rewards for enterprise and skill?’

‘Assuredly,’ he said.

‘Then we must remember that the Americans are for the most part the descendants of those who left Europe as poor men. And this is true whether we are considering those original Americans of three hundred years ago, or those who went there within the last century, after the others had freed themselves from the tyrant George.’

‘Was this George a heavy tyrant?’ asked Lysis, ‘for tyrant is a harsh name, and I have read that the English themselves were always well pleased with him.’

‘I must confess,’ I said, ‘that he does not appeal much to me. Few men have less resembled the philosopher King. It is plain that reason was weak in his soul, and that he was narrow and obstinate and full of craftiness, and that the English only loved him as a check upon their lesser overlords and as the chief of their nation in their wars with the French, which continued all his reign. And though he did not actually oppress the Americans it was not of advantage to them to be his subjects, nor a thing to which they had of necessity to submit.’

Here Lysis looked up, and said: ‘Tell me, Socrates, do you think they regret it now, and that they will soon return to their allegiance to King George’s house, for an English lady told me that it would happen very quickly, the revolt having ended in the muddle America is in now.’

‘That word “muddle” is a favourite with the English,’ said Agathon.

‘And rightly,’ said I, ‘since our words are to designate the things among which we live. I know it is a common view among the English that the Americans will abandon this attempt of theirs to found a new country, and that after this present President Coolidge they will not elect another, but will all pack up and return to the countries from which they originally came, regretting the increasingly disastrous experiment and going back meekly to their respective kings and rulers, and leaving America to the Red Indians and the Buffalos, whose political life runs more easily. But, for my part, I reject this opinion, and believe that the Americans will persevere.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Agathon.

‘And so it is important to consider this religious view of theirs about Progress. I said that most of the Americans went there in the last hundred years and found abundant rewards for work. The great need of everybody was that the total wealth should be increased and the country rendered fruitful, or in their phrase “opened up.” This real occupation of America was the great and absorbing business of the Americans, who were not troubled with strong foreign enemies. Their ablest citizens devoted themselves to the pursuit of wealth, and received the public admiration because in general, at that time, the man who enriched himself enriched also everyone else. We must remember that the Americans came from countries where there was a ruling caste to which they did not belong, and from the first they so framed the constitution that it should be clear that the ministers were the servants of the people. While the independence was new and precarious, interest and prestige still followed those who transacted the business of the people, but when the novelty had vanished the attention of everybody was turned to developing the estate they had won. No one was willing to be a minister without the wealth and dignity of European rulers, and political life attracted not the best but the less successful and able of the community, and ceased to fire the ambition of the young. For the life of the country was altogether in its economic development and not in its political affairs.’

Then Agathon said: ‘And should you not also say that political life was made harder in America than elsewhere?’

‘Assuredly, we should,’ I answered, ‘for the truth is that this same worship of size and numbers that we spoke of before has nowhere hurt the Americans more than in the ordering of their political life. Do you remember, Lysis, hearing of a discussion over the ideal State and how many men it was settled should form the State, and what was the number beyond which it was unsafe for a State to grow?’

‘Five thousand and forty,’ he said, ‘is the figure Plato gives.’

‘And will it surprise you to learn that the Americans considerably exceed that figure?’

‘I had suspected as much,’ he replied, ‘from the crowds of them that visit Athens, for they must leave some of their number behind to hold the country, and there must be very many thousands of them to provide all those audiences for Xantippe. And, after all, nobody ever quite does what Plato says, not even when he makes you, Socrates, the mouthpiece of his views. I will guess two hundred thousand.’

‘And what will you say when I tell you that you are yet short of the real number, and that, not to make a long story, the Americans are far more plentiful than the subjects of the Great King himself? There are more than one hundred million Americans.’

After a long pause, Phaelon said rather faintly: ‘Why, Socrates?’

‘That,’ I answered, ‘is known only to the Gods, whose ways are not the ways of mortals, but certainly they have made this enormous number of Americans and have not stopped yet.’

‘No wonder so many of them come to Europe,’ said Lysis.

‘But listen,’ I said, ‘for the most extraordinary thing is yet to come. What will you think of such people when I tell you that they endeavour to live all under one government and to share one Assembly?’

‘Socrates,’ said Lysis, sitting up and looking me straight in the face, ‘I do not believe you.’