Plato's American Republic

‘And are you resolved, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘not to give any sort of education to the American men?’

I thought for a moment and then said: ‘They are not comely like our Greek youths and they would not be an ornament to Athens. I do not think they want any education.’

‘But, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘how are they to spend their time when they are young?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘I would let them go on watching that football game of theirs.’

‘What is that?’

‘It is a mimic battle dear to all their hearts, and I would let them watch it all the day, and I would not trouble their minds at all. For to watch it will be the right education for them.’

‘Watch it, Socrates?’ demanded Lysis.

‘Yes, for it is played between coaches or chief men, using young men as pieces.’

‘Explain it to us,’ they said.

‘I will give you a fine lecture upon it,’ I said; ‘and you will marvel that I know so much, until I first confess that I went much among the young Americans in the colleges from a desire to see into their minds, and what I saw made it clear to me that America was rightly called the land of “great open spaces.” For they spoke of nothing else at all but this football, and cars, and to a lesser extent, of another form of contest called baseball.’

‘Would you let them play baseball also?’ asked Lysis.

‘If we do,’ I replied, ‘I expect we shall have to be quick to save it. For many business men told me that the manufacturers will forbid it, because it distracts their workmen from their factory tasks. They purpose to substitute universal compulsory basket ball, which will keep their workers fit but unexcited.’

‘Is not football in danger?’ said Agathon.

‘It is most completely a students’ spectacle,’ I answered, ‘and I think our guardians will be in time to save it, and thus make their rule delightful to the young men.’

‘Explain about this game,’ said Lysis, ‘and why you will still allow them to watch it.’

Then I told them of the field marked out in lines, the gridiron and of the teams of sixty or seventy warriors a side, of whom only eleven might do battle at any one time. I described the armour of these warriors, and how they were the widest and weightiest of all the young Americans, fit foemen for Ajax or Hector. And I explained the discipline under which they lived and how the combinations were worked out by the coaches as a general prepares his campaign, and how the men learnt over and over the cipher signs that told to each his part in the brief struggle. And I told of the fine tradition that made it disgraceful to flee from the field or avoid the ball, even for commercial benefits, and I told of the heroes who preferred fierce hacks to the displeasure of their coach and death on the field to his being dismissed.

‘It must be good fun being a coach,’ said Lysis.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they are held in great honour provided they bring victory. They do what they will with the minds and bodies of the students, and the Professors are proud to carry water for them. Often the chosen students are kept shut up by their coaches before any great battle, lest their minds should be disturbed. That will be a good similitude for us to use when we are moving the young girls to Athens. For we deserve as great privileges as games coaches.’

‘But in these contests,’ said Lysis, ‘only a few can be used. What is the education of the vast majority?’

‘They cheer to order,’ I replied. ‘For the Americans are a practical people and scheme that no single breath shall be wasted, but shall be used where it will be most effective. Moreover the game is so designed that the better it is played the more difficult is it for the onlooker to follow the fortunes of the ball, the players struggling in a great bunch, pushing against one another. There must be some heralds to tell the crowd which player has been pushing hardest that he may be rewarded with a loud shout.’

‘But is shouting like that really the best education?’ asked Lysis, ‘for you will have to say a lot more to convince me.’

‘Have you not often agreed with me, Lysis, that it is in youth one learns most easily?’

‘I agree.’

‘And that it is good to master early those activities which are to fill our after-lives?’

‘Very often it is good.’

‘And if you had to describe in one sentence the civic life of an American could you do it better than by saying he spent his life shouting in chorus praise or blame about things he did not understand at the bidding of leaders?’

‘It is true.’

‘Then, can he begin too early to shout with the crowd?’

‘He cannot.’

‘For if he is by nature incapable of philosophy he must be led, and he must be brought up to expect to feel to order without asking what it is about which he is to be enthusiastic, and without expecting to understand the details of the struggles his leaders are conducting.’

‘I agree.’

‘And for that there is nothing better then these football games. For men who obey coaches and cheer leaders now will be ready to obey our guardians later on.’

‘I think so.’

‘And they enjoy this football of theirs a great deal more than they enjoy the lectures and other parts of college life, so that they will agree very happily to cheer football all the time.’

‘But,’ said Agathon, ‘I hear the friends of peace are resolved to prohibit the football game, because it arouses admiration for martial qualities.’

‘The friends of peace will fail, my friends,’ I said. ‘For freedom from foreign wars reigns among the Americans from their position rather than their disposition. The only people who have ever invaded them are the English. But now it is the other way about.’

‘I believe,’ said Agathon, ‘that to-day the English and the Americans are very well disposed toward one another.’

‘They are,’ I answered. ‘Their friendship is much the chief friendship among barbarian peoples. For the English regard the Americans as their country cousins, living in the backwater of the New World and out of touch with London life, but pleased to come and gape. And they consider them as country cousins with a very rich farm, from which they and their neighbours often receive eggs, and they are careful to keep as friendly as they can. For they imagine the Americans to be much like themselves, but without their advantages.’

‘By advantages do they mean the nearness to Athens?’ said Phaelon.

‘Yes,’ I said slowly: ‘If you search the matter to the bottom it comes to that, for the English are the link between Athens and America.’

Then Phaelon said: ‘Is it true, Socrates, that the English and the Americans speak the same language?’

‘No.’

‘But,’ went on Phaelon, puzzled, ‘they understand each other after a fashion, do they not? Do they use their hands to speak with?’

‘Only in New York.’

‘Socrates speaks truly,’ said Agathon, ‘but New York is where the Englishmen go who visit America. They stay in or near New York. For they do not like to get far from the sea which is the source of their strength. They love the deep waters.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And the strong waters, too, Socrates,’ added Agathon, ‘and that is another reason why they like New York and are reluctant to go far inland. For they dread having to keep up long lines of communication.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they would be very safe in Kentucky.’

‘And what happens when the Englishmen visit America?’ demanded Lysis.

‘Why,’ I answered, ‘they are surprised it is not more like England, and at once complain; and many are offended that the Americans are not more like the English, and say so, for they are subjected to torture to make them say what they think.’

‘What is the torture?’ cried Phaelon.

‘They call it the Third Degree, and it consists in endless interrogation.’

‘Could you not get such a post as torturer in America, Socrates?’ asked Lysis.

‘There was talk of it,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘but I cast the proposal from me as cruel. Anyway the Americans question their visitors day and night, saying: “What do you think of us?” till in the end the visitors confess.’

‘And then there is a war?’ asked Phaelon.

‘No,’ I said, ‘they just stop the mouths of such visitors with pie.’

‘Remember,’ I resumed, ‘that to visit America is the most expensive thing an Englishman can do, and so it is only rich and leisured Englishmen who travel there. And these men do not admire commerce, for though their fathers or perhaps themselves have grown rich by it, yet it has always been rated at its proper value in England. It has always been the means to the leisured life. Furthermore the Englishman is not impressed by the very things that the American thinks will impress him. For the English do not admire size or reverence bigness. They were not used to admire the Spaniards or the French or the Germans in the past for being twice as many as they, and for having splendid courts and great armies and public works. Nor is there any sight in England more comical than to behold the rich and vulgar cosmopolitans, who have bought a share in their government, attempting to arouse an audience of Englishmen to enthusiasm for their own British Empire just because it is so very big. But the Americans will point to a crowd of offices or cars and feel happy in the knowledge that their country is shouting for itself. Now the English discover in the Americans most excellent hosts, for they are the most generous of all the barbarians, but the more grateful the English are, the more criticisms do they express, finding it intolerable that the hosts they like so much should go on pouring out admiration on useless things and prostrating the soul before number and quantity.’

‘And what happens when the Americans come to England?’ asked Phaelon.

‘That happens a great deal more often. The English enjoy that. They feel very superior when they show to the Americans the cathedrals and castles of their country. They act as if they had built these things themselves, whereas, in fact, the dead who built them were as much the ancestors of the Americans as of the English. But the English are the elder branch that has inherited the place. The buildings the modern English themselves put up they do not point out with pride to anybody, and those that their fathers and grandfathers built they cover over, when they can, with great cloths. But many Americans are forever wandering to these new buildings and are filled with joy that they build such places larger and better. For the pleasure of travelling in Europe is spoilt for them by the thought that their hosts do not know what a wonderful place America is, and they are forever bringing it into the conversation. Then they grow happy again, but their hosts less happy.’

‘But it is the old things that they think they want to see,’ said Agathon.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they want to see Europe because they themselves came from it originally.’

‘They do not go to Mesopotamia,’ said Agathon, ‘though they believe they came originally from somewhere there.’

‘It is curious,’ I said, ‘but none of them boast of belonging to one of the first families of Mesopotamia. They want distinctions that are rarer than that. They get more pleasure from thinking their ancestors had seats in the Mayflower than from thinking they had seats in the Ark, though both voyages were what they call exclusive cruises.’

‘And have they a special affection for the island of England?’ asked Lysis.

‘Why yes, most of the rich ones came originally from there,’ I said.

‘Well, why do they not buy it?’ he demanded.

‘Many think that will happen in time,’ I replied, ‘or at least that they will purchase all the surface to a depth of forty feet, for that is the earth upon which English history has happened, and that they will lay out the island in their western districts by Yellowstone Park, where there is plenty of room for it.’

‘Is it true’ asked Phaelon, ‘that the English will be forced to sell, Socrates, and that they can only live at all by getting the Americans to come and look at their country?’

‘I thought,’ said Agathon, ‘the English had a great many factories like the Americans.’

‘Why,’ I replied, ‘what has happened to the English is one of the most ironical things in the world. For during many years they have sacrificed their old and pleasant life to attain mechanical efficiency, and they have made the northern half of their little island dreary with factories and blotted out its sky with smoke. They said: Here are our riches, and in the name of wealth we must desecrate the land. But do you, O Lysis and Phaelon, observe the justice of what is happening to them. Their factories have grown a burden to them, and a problem and source of quarrels and poverty. And their real wealth lies in what is still preserved of the old England.’

‘Why, Socrates?’

‘Because the Americans will pay to see it and will not pay to see the factories.’

‘Is their position so desperate?’

‘No’ I said, ‘if we are seeking the truth we must declare that it is not so desperate as the Americans imagine for the Americans forget that the English are in partnership with the Scotch.’

‘Who are the Scotch?’ asked Phaelon.

‘I should call them the guardian class in Britain,’ said Agathon.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they watch over the English and they have a great empire all over the world.’

‘And the English are allowed to share in this Empire?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘by the terms of the partnership which was by far the most important event in the economic history of the English. For this Empire is very large and rich.’

‘And did the Scotchmen win it by the sword?’ was Phaelon’s next question.

‘Indeed no,’ I replied. ‘In fact Englishmen and Irishmen—you have heard of them?’

(Both Lysis and Phaelon nodded vigorously and Lysis said ‘Of course,’ in such a tone that I felt ashamed of the foolish query.)

‘Englishmen and Irishmen,’ I went on, ‘were rather more prominent in those first stages. But it was the Scotchmen who made the Empire pay.’

‘And after all,’ said Agathon, ‘that was the real point in having an Empire.’

‘And they built up a great trade with everybody and prospered greatly,’ I said, ‘the Scotch and the northern English particularly. And these two together, when they go abroad to gain money, call themselves the British. But they make the mistake of thinking their activities will go on being profitable for ever. They think that because all the world, even Greece, has bought from them in the century past, the relationship will continue. But I believe otherwise, and that this foreign trade will be their destruction, and that they are selling the swords which will pierce their own bodies.’

‘How, Socrates?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘whoever deals with them finds that they have nothing to give of the amenities of living. They do not sell you marbles, or statues, or wine, but coal and machinery. And if you buy these things you find they start industry in your own country also. For of all newcomers to a country machinery is the most tenacious of its own character and the most certain to make its new home resemble its old one. An Italian will make Italy again in New York, and a machine will make Sheffield in the furthest Indies.’

‘And is that really all the British offer the world?’ exclaimed Lysis. ‘They will not last long according to my opinion.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘for it will be realized that these iron machines of theirs are a more deadly threat to the life of a city than was the Wooden Horse himself.’

‘By Hercules, yes!’ they agreed.

‘If the British had desired wholly to destroy and change Troy they would not have come with besieging armies. They would have sent some machinery and divided the rich against the poor by holding out promises of all the machines would do to make life pleasanter for the rich. And in fewer years than ten, the walls of Troy would have disappeared. The city would have vanished as though it had gone up in vengeful smoke. Indeed it would continue smoking not for a few days, in the manner of Greek destruction, but indefinitely, with chimneys to insult and dwarf the lofty towers of Ilium, if this industrial system of theirs did not make chimneys of the very towers themselves.’

‘The British, as it seems to me, are most dangerous,’ said Lysis.

‘But,’ said Agathon, ‘they also offer the world other things beside machinery and the coal to feed it with. Wool.’

‘The sheep’s clothing of the fable,’ I said, ‘and a snare and one in which you soon discover the wolf, as many a simple barbarian race has found. Buy from them one commodity only and you find that they use the money you pay them in a very alarming way. They use it to develop your country.’

‘How?’ asked Phaelon.

‘Why,’ I said, ‘they make you spend the money you owe them in putting yourself in a position to supply others with some commodity or other, so that you can buy more and more from the British. In this manner they have changed the face of half the world. Those who buy little from them they term “backward peoples.”’

‘I am sorry for the barbarian world,’ said Lysis, ‘with these two great barbarian races, the British and the American, invading the rest in this cunning way and weaving snares about them.’

‘Lysis,’ I said, ‘while you feel so full of pity, pity also the British. For I said that what they do they can only do for a certain time.’

‘How?’

‘Why,’ I explained, ‘their prosperity depends upon being able to persuade other peoples to buy these goods of theirs.’

‘Yes.’

‘But those who agree eagerly and buy machines and make railways become, in proportion as they are eager and active, independent of the British and manufacture everything for themselves, as happens in their own colonies, while the others, not sharing these ideals, neglect the machines and remain poor and can neither pay for what they have had nor buy anything fresh. Against this second class, who are found largely in the other or southern Americas, the British merchants have a strong prejudice.’

After pondering for a moment, Lysis said: ‘It seems to me the Scotch must be very like the Americans.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but when the Scotch first set out to grow rich and important they had themselves to please a guardian class that valued learning, and so they learnt to value it too. Whereas there was no class that the Americans had to please. But, in general, there is much in common between the Americans and the commercial people of Scotland, and those also of the North of England, who agree with the Scotch about life. Of them we may say with the poet:—

‘And these make the settlers the most acceptable to the Americans.’

‘Why do they not all go there,’ said Phaelon; ‘I do not like to think of them so near Greece.’

‘The men of South England, on the other hand, find it very useful to have these Scots and northerners in the same island.’

‘Why?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the southern English live a life that is almost reasonable, inquiring into things, and pondering upon them, and amusing themselves with games, and, whenever possible, sitting in the sun. Those men who are both rich and sensible settle in South England.’

‘Is their pondering good pondering?’ demanded Lysis.

‘Why no,’ I said, ‘for they like to begin and end in the middle of all questions. It is difficult to muddle through in philosophy.’

‘How do they live, apart from what they get from the Americans?’ asked Phaelon.

‘Some make these northerners pay them rents but a large part are concerned one way or another, I am afraid, in the business of their great city of London.’

‘What is that?’

‘It is doing the business of other people for them, because it will be done better than they could do it themselves. Even the Athenians use the city of London.’

‘What is the secret of this London business?’ asked Phaelon.

‘There is a special climate in London,’ I answered, ‘which has the property of making every man feel that he is ruined. And no one is ever distracted from minding his affairs by beholding the sun or the sky, whose contemplation has ever led men to philosophy. So they do business there in a very careful and concentrated way.’

‘But you say,’ said Lysis, ‘that they do not come like the Americans to consider commerce the end of life?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘for the Americans do their business where the climate makes them over-sanguine and they become filled up with the hope of gain and cheerfully sacrifice everything else to the excitement of the contest. But the Londoners regard their business hours as the scraping of a subsistence and skilful avoidance of starvation, and flee from the city every evening. And they live in homes surrounded by other influences than that of commerce, and by the marks of the partial civilization to which South England has attained. But when they are at business they do about as much mischief to the rest of the world as do the Americans.’

‘Ought we not to hope,’ said Lysis thoughtfully, ‘that the football game will in fact make the Americans very warlike, and that they will attack the English and Scotch?’

‘Why, Lysis?’

‘That the great barbarian peoples may destroy each other and that the rest of the world may be freed from the aggression of their industrial life.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it might well be the best thing that could happen. But they are more likely to combine forces in order to industrialize the rest of the world. And though they are very different people yet bonds of similarity are growing up, for machinery sets its stamp upon souls, and the same machines will in the end produce the same souls. To take but one instance, among both peoples there has grown up the love of the Dark Cave.’

‘What is the Dark Cave?’ asked Lysis and Phaelon together.

‘You tell me,’ I said, ‘that you remember the ideal state that Glaucon and others worked out with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘it has often been spoken of since.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I there pictured the unhappy lot of men sitting huddled together in a dark place, condemned all to look in the same direction and to watch phantoms and shadows of men as though they saw something real.’

‘I remember.’

‘And I pitied such men, condemned to the contemplation of unreality, and sought, you remember, how they might be rescued and brought out into the sunlight and might learn to see men as they were.’

‘You thought,’ said Lysis, ‘no lot could be more wretched for reasonable men.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the Americans and the English are not reasonable and will pay money to be imprisoned in these caves, and to contemplate lies and live altogether in a false world. This is making them one, for the greatest bond of union is to share a common experience.’

‘Have you ever penetrated into a Dark Cave, Socrates?’ asked Phaelon in excitement.

‘It was the end of my American adventures,’ I answered. ‘For I endeavoured to save men from entering these Caves, reasoning and expostulating with them, asking them why they would give their substance to be so misled about life.’

‘And what happened, Socrates?’

‘Alas, my friends,’ I answered, ‘I was considered disgraced for attacking “our American Movies.”’

‘And in the end, Socrates, I suppose you were deported?’ demanded Lysis.

‘What else, indeed,’ I answered.

‘What, then, did they say to you?’

‘That I had lied in filling in my answers to those first questions that all must answer who would receive a passport. For they said I had plainly intended to subvert the government of the United States, and that they found, after inquiry from various publications, that I had been in prison. And the inspector added that I had been in an asylum also, for that I came from Europe, and the Balkans at that, which he considered to be nothing less than a madhouse.’

‘And do you think,’ said Agathon, ‘they will read your views about them?’

‘I think so,’ I answered, ‘for they find the topic of themselves of much interest. But I do not expect them to profit by what I say, for even Xantippe is handicapped in their regard by belonging to the past. For they do not admire the past at all, nor is the word “ancient” ever used as praise.’

‘Do they despise all history?’ asked Lysis.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and they love the utterance of their Detroit Oracle, when he said

and they regard him with increasing honour as he says these things and as the Europeans have given to Aristotle the title they think honourable, calling him the Master of them that Know, though they do not add how little, so the Americans hail the Detroit Oracle as the Master of them that Guess.’

‘But,’ said Lysis, ‘though they despise even the story of the Greeks, surely they are eager to know about Rome, for Rome excelled also in size and great buildings and bridges and in buying culture from the East. Do they not feel great sympathy?’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘and the priests and keepers of ancient tradition find the name of Rome an embarrassment to them, for the Americans will have no respect for Rome, since they heard it was not built in a day.’

‘They have named a city after Plato,’ said Agathon.

‘They will name a city after anybody,’ I answered, ‘and there are but few of their own citizens whom they do not desire to forget.’

Here Agathon interrupted what I was going to explain about the cities, and said: ‘But I believe they think of changing the names of their cities into numbers and of numbering the States. And some think it will help efficiency and be a compliment to themselves if they abolish the words United States and America and get everybody in all countries to call them One, as being country Number 1 of the whole world. But this compliment will cost many dollars.’

‘If only philosophy cost many dollars,’ reflected Lysis, ‘they would value it more.’

‘They would,’ said Agathon, ‘but as it is you must not despair, Socrates, for your countenance is one that grows upon people.’

‘It grew upon me,’ I said.

‘We,’ he said, ‘have had to get used to you, and so it is perhaps with the Americans and philosophy. They will acquire the taste—in time.’

‘Anyway,’ said Lysis, ‘they ought to be grateful to you, Socrates, for examining into what they think and do and value.’

‘I think so,’ I replied, ‘for I am pointing out to them something of great moment to their happiness when I declare that unless they reopen the question of the end of living they will grow dissatisfied and exist wretchedly. For they must not go on letting themselves be led by men with a low aim or no aim at all. For the conditions of the future will not support the philosophy of “making good” as did the conditions of the past. There is a point of view which suits a man or nation in the early struggle with poverty which becomes ridiculous when the struggle is past.’

‘Many of them are beginning to think so,’ said Agathon.

‘And I am beginning to think,’ said Lysis rising, ‘that we have considered these Americans quite long enough, and that we should now move to some other place and refresh ourselves, and with new companions examine something else.’

‘I am of your mind; Lysis,’ said Phaelon, and he also rose.

‘I will accompany you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps when the Americans hear what we say of them they will change themselves of their own accord and become what we would like them to be. And if this discussion of ours has that result it will be more useful, I think, than many of our talks. But whatever happens we have done our best for these Americans by telling them the truth. For there are times when it is important to know the truth, and life is one of them.’

THE END