"If a good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would coöperate toward his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he knows that these things are assigned to him according to the universal arrangement, and that the whole is superior to the part."
Fourth: Trial brings out our best qualities, is "stuff to try the soul's strength on," and "educe the man," as Browning puts it. This interpretation of evil as a means of bringing out the higher moral qualities, though not peculiar to Stoicism, was very congenial to their system, and appears frequently in their writings. "Just as we must understand when it is said that Æsculapius prescribed to this man horse exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must understand it when it is said that the nature of the universe prescribed to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss of anything of the kind." "Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind, that resolves to live and die master of itself. Adversity is the better for us all, for it is God's mercy to show the world their errors, and that the things they fear and covet are neither good nor evil, being the common and promiscuous lot of good men and bad."
A good test of one's appreciation of the Stoic position is whether or not one can see the measure of truth their paradoxes contain.
The first paradox is that there are no degrees in vice. In the words of the Stoic, "The man who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus, and the man who is only one, are both equally not in Canopus."
One of the few bits of moral counsel which I remember from the infant class in the Sunday-school runs as follows:—
This, in spite of its exquisite lyrical expression, the Stoic would flatly deny. The theft of a pin, and the defalcation of a bank cashier for a hundred thousand dollars; a cross word to a dog, and a course of conduct which breaks a woman's heart, are from the Stoic standpoint precisely on a level. For it is not the consequences but the form of our action that is the important thing. It is not how we make other people feel as a result of our act, but how we ourselves think of it, as we propose to do it, or after it is done, that determines its goodness or badness. If I steal a pin, I violate the universal law just as clearly and absolutely as though I stole the hundred thousand dollars. I can no more look with deliberate approval on the cross word to a dog, than on the breaking of a woman's heart. There are things that do not admit of degrees. We must either fire our gun off or not fire it. We cannot fire part of the charge. We want either an absolutely good egg for breakfast, or no egg at all. One that is partially good, or on the line between goodness and badness, we send back as altogether bad. If there is a little round hole in a pane of glass, cut by a bullet, we reject the whole pane as imperfect, just as though a big jagged hole had been made in it by a brickbat. We get an echo of this paradox in the statement of St. James, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all."
This paradox becomes plain, self-evident truth, the moment we admit the Stoic position that not external things, and their appeal to our sensibility, but our internal attitudes toward universal law, are the points on which our virtue hangs. Either we intend to obey the universal law of nature or we do not; and between the intention of obedience and the intention of disobedience there is no middle ground.
Second: The wise man, the Stoic sage, is absolutely perfect, the complete master of himself, and rightfully the ruler of the world. If everything depends on our thought, and our thought is in tune with the universal law, then obviously we are perfect. Beyond such complete inner response to the universal law it is impossible for man to advance.
Curiously enough, the religious doctrine of perfectionism, which often arises in Methodist circles, and in such holiness movements as have taken their rise from the influence of Methodism, shows this same root in the conception of law. Wesley's definition of sin is "the violation of a known law." If that be all there is of sin, then any of us who is ordinarily decent and conscientious, may boast of perfection. You can number perfectionists by tens of thousands on such abstract terms as these. But if sin be not merely deliberate violation of abstract law; if it be failure to fulfil to the highest degree the infinitely delicate personal, domestic, civic, and social relations in which we stand; then the very notion of perfection is preposterous, and the profession of it little less than blasphemy. But like the modern religious perfectionists, the Stoics had little concern for the concrete, individual, personal ties which bind men and women together in families, societies, and states. Perfection was an easy thing, because they had defined it in such abstract terms. Still, though not by any means the whole of virtue as deeper schools have apprehended it, it is something to have our inner motive absolutely right, when measured by the standard of universal law. That at least the Stoic professed to have attained.
Third: The Stoic is a citizen of the whole world. Local, domestic, national ties bind him not. But this is a cheap way of gaining universality,—this skipping the particulars of which the universal is composed. To be as much interested in the politics of Rio Janeiro or Hong Kong as you are in those of the ward of your own city does not mean much until we know how much you are interested in the politics of your own ward. And in the case of the Stoic this interest was very attenuated. As is usually the case, extension of interest to the ends of the earth was purchased at the cost of defective intensity close at home, where charity ought to begin. As a matter of fact the Stoics were very defective in their standards of citizenship. Still, what the law of justice demanded, that they were disposed to render to every man; and thus, though on a very superficial basis, the Stoics laid the broad foundation of an international democracy which knows no limits of colour, race, or stage of development. Though Stoicism falls far short of the warmth and devotion of modern Christian missions, yet the early stage of the missionary movement, in which people were interested, not in the concrete welfare of specific peoples, but in vast aggregates of "souls," represented on maps, and in diagrams, bears a close resemblance to the Stoic cosmopolitanism. We have all seen people who would give and work to save the souls of the heathen, who would never under any circumstances think of calling on the neighbour on the same street who chanced to be a little below their own social circle. The soul of a heathen is a very abstract conception; the lowly neighbour a very concrete affair. The Stoics are not the only people who have deceived themselves with vast abstractions.
The Stoics had a genuine religion. The Epicureans, too, had their gods, but they never took them very seriously. In a world made up of atoms accidentally grouped in transient relations, of which countless accidental groupings I happen to be one, there is no room for a real religious relationship. Consequently the Epicurean, though he amused himself with poetic pictures of gods who led lives of undisturbed serenity, unconcerned about the affairs of men, had no consciousness of a great spiritual whole of which he was a part, or of an Infinite Person to whom he was personally related.
To the Stoic, on the contrary, the round world is part of a single universe, which holds all its parts in the grasp and guidance of one universal law, determining each particular event. By making that law of the universe his own, the individual man at once worships the all-controlling Providence, and achieves his own freedom. For the law to which he yields is at once the law of the whole universe, and the law of his own nature as a part of the universe. "We are born subjects," exclaims the Stoic, "but to obey God is perfect liberty." "Everything," says Marcus Aurelius, "harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee."
A characteristic prayer and meditation and hymn will show us, far better than description, what this Stoic religion meant to those who devoutly held it. Epictetus gives us this prayer of the dying Cynic: "I stretch out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee for seeing thy administration of the world and following it I have not neglected: I have not dishonoured thee by my acts: see how I have used my perceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with anything that happens or wished it to be otherwise? Have I wished to transgress the relations of things? That thou hast given me life, I thank thee for what thou hast given: so long as I have used the things which are thine I am content; take them back and place them wherever thou mayest choose; for thine were all things,—thou gavest them to me. Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of mind, and what end is more happy?"
He also offers us this meditation on the inevitable losses of life, by which he consoles himself with the thought that all he has is a loan from God, which these seeming losses but restore to their rightful owner, who had lent them to us for a while.
"Never say about anything, I have lost it; but say, I have restored it. Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this been also restored? 'But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.' But what is it to you by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travellers do with their inn."
The grandest expression of the Stoic religion, however, is found in the hymn of Cleanthes. Elsewhere there is too evident a disposition to condescend to use God's aid in keeping up the Stoic temper; with little of outgoing adoration for the greatness and glory which are in God himself. But in this grand hymn we have genuine reverence, devotion, worship, praise, self-surrender,—in short, that confession of the glory of the Infinite by the conscious weakness of the finite in which the heart of true religion everywhere consists. Nowhere outside of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures has adoration breathed itself in more exalted and fervent strains. The hymn is addressed to Zeus, as the Stoics freely used the names of the popular gods to express their own deeper meanings.
"Thee it is lawful for all mortals to address. For we are Thy offspring, and alone of living creatures possess a voice which is the image of reason. Therefore I will forever sing Thee and celebrate Thy power. All this universe rolling round the earth obeys Thee, and follows willingly at Thy command. Such a minister hast Thou in Thy invincible hands, the two-edged, flaming, vivid thunderbolt. O King, most High, nothing is done without Thee, neither in heaven or on earth, nor in the sea, except what the wicked do in their foolishness. Thou makest order out of disorder, and what is worthless becomes precious in Thy sight; for Thou hast fitted together good and evil into one, and hast established one law that exists forever. But the wicked fly from Thy law, unhappy ones, and though they desire to possess what is good, yet they see not, neither do they hear the universal law of God. If they would follow it with understanding, they might have a good life. But they go astray, each after his own devices,—some vainly striving after reputation, others turning aside after gain excessively, others after riotous living and wantonness. Nay, but, O Zeus, Giver of all things, who dwellest in dark clouds and rulest over the thunder, deliver men from their foolishness. Scatter it from their souls, and grant them to obtain wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly govern all things; that being honoured we may repay Thee with honour, singing Thy works without ceasing, as it is right for us to do. For there is no greater thing than this, either for mortal men or for the gods, to sing rightly the universal law."
Modern literature of the nobler sort has many a Stoic note; and we ought to be able to recognise it in its modern as well as in its ancient dress. The very best brief expression of the Stoic creed is found in Henley's Lines to R. T. H. B.:—
The chief modern type of Stoicism, however, is Matthew Arnold. His great remedy for the ills of which life is so full is stated in the concluding lines of "The Youth of Man":—
If now we know the two fundamental principles of Stoicism, the indifference of external circumstance as compared with the reaction of our own thought upon it, and the sanctification of our thought by self-surrender to the universal law; and if we have learned to recognise these Stoic notes alike in ancient and modern prose and poetry, we are ready to discriminate between the good in it which we wish to cherish, and the shortcomings of the system which it is well for us to avoid.
We can all reduce enormously our troubles and vexations by bringing to bear upon them the two Stoic formulas. Toward material things, toward impersonal events at least, we may all with profit put on the Stoic armour, or to use the figure of the turtle, which is most expressive of the Stoic attitude, we can all draw the soft sensitive flesh of our feelings inside the hard shell of resolute thoughts. There is a way of looking at our poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental brilliancy, our humble social estate, our unpopularity, our physical ailments, which, instead of making us miserable, will make us modest, contented, cheerful, serene. The mistakes that we make, the foolish words we say, the unfortunate investments into which we get drawn, the failures we experience, all may be transformed by the Stoic formula into spurs to greater effort and stimulus to wiser deeds in days to come. Simply to shift the emphasis from the dead external fact beyond our control, to the live option which always presents itself within; and to know that the circumstance that can make us miserable simply does not exist, unless it exists by our consent within our own minds;—this is a lesson well worth spending an hour with the Stoics to learn once for all.
And the other aspect of their doctrine, its quasi-religious side, though not by any means the last word about religion, is a valuable first lesson in the reality of religion. To know that the universal law is everywhere, and that its will may in every circumstance be done; to measure the petty perturbations of our little lives by the vast orbits of natural forces moving according to beneficent and unchanging law; when we come out of the exciting political meeting, or the roar of the stock-exchange, to look up at the calm stars and the tranquil skies and hear them say to us, "So hot, my little man";—this elevation of our individual lives by the reverent contemplation of the universe and its unswerving laws, is something which we may all learn with profit from the old Stoic masters. Business, house-keeping, school-teaching, professional life, politics, society, would all be more noble and dignified if we could bring to them every now and then a touch of this Stoic strength and calm.
Criticism, complaint, fault-finding, malicious scandal, unpopularity, and all the shafts of the censorious are impotent to slay or even wound the spirit of the Stoic. If these criticisms are true, they are welcomed as aids in the discovery of faults which are to be frankly faced, and strenuously overcome. If they are false, unfounded, due to the querulousness or jealousy of the critic rather than to any fault of the Stoic, then he feels only contempt for the criticisms and pity for the poor misguided critic. The true Stoic can be the serene husband of a scolding shrew of a wife; the complacent representative of dissatisfied and enraged constituents; maintain unruffled equanimity when cut by his aristocratic acquaintances and excluded from the most select social circles: for he carries the only valid standard of social measurement under his own hat, and needs not the adoration of his wife, the cheers of his constituents, the cards and invitations, the nods and smiles of the four hundred to assure him of his dignity and worth. If he is an author, it does not trouble him that his books are unsold, unread, uncut. If the many could appreciate him, he would have to be one of themselves, and then there would be no use in his trying to instruct them. His book is what the universal law gave him to say, and decreed that it should be; and whether there be many or few to whom the universal law has revealed the same truth, and granted power to appreciate it, is the concern of the universal, not of himself, the individual author. Again, if he is in poor health, weary, exhausted, if each stroke of work must be wrought in agony and pain,—that, too, is decreed for him by those just laws which he or his ancestors have blindly violated; and he will accept even this dictate of the universal law as just and good: he will not suffer these trifling incidental pains and aches to diminish by one jot the output of his hand or brain. When disillusion and disappointment overtake him; when the things his youth had sighed for finally take themselves forever out of his reach; when he sees clearly that only a few more years remain to him, and those must be composed of the same monotonous round of humdrum details, duties that have lost the charm of novelty, functions that have long since been relegated to the unconsciousness of habit, vexations that have been endured a thousand times, petty pleasures that have long since lost their zest: even then the Stoic says that this, too, is part of the universal programme, and must be accepted resignedly. If there is little that nature has left to give him for which he cares, yet he can return to her the tribute of an obedient will and a contented mind: if he can expect little from the world, he can contribute something to it; and so to the last he maintains,—
When there is hard work to be done, to which there is no pleasure, no honour, no emolument attached; when there are evils to be rebuked which will bring down the wrath and vengeance of the powers that be on him who exposes the wrong; when there are poor relatives to be supported, and slights to be endured, and injustice to be borne, it is well for us all to know this Stoic formula, and fortify our souls behind its impenetrable walls. To consider not what happens to us, but how we react upon it; to measure good in terms not of sensuous pleasure, but of mental attitude; to know that if we are for the universal law, it matters not how many things may be against us; to rest assured that there can be no circumstance or condition in which this law cannot be done by us, and therefore no situation of which we cannot be more than master, through implicit obedience to the great law that governs all,—this is the stern consolation of Stoicism; and there are few of us so happily situated in all respects that there do not come to us times when such a conviction is a defence and refuge for our souls. Beyond and above Stoicism we shall try to climb in later chapters. But below Stoicism one may not suffer his life to fall, if he would escape the fearful hells of depression, despair, and melancholia. As we lightly send back across the centuries our thanks to Epicurus for teaching us to prize at their true worth health and the good things of life, so let us reverently bow before the Stoic sages, who taught us the secret of that hardy virtue which bears with fortitude life's inevitable ills.
Why we cannot rest in Stoicism as our final guide to life, the mere statement of their doctrine must have made clear to every one; and in calling attention to its limitations I shall only be saying for the reader what he has been saying to himself all through the chapter. It may be well enough to treat things as indifferent, and work them over into such mental combinations as best serve our rational interests. To treat persons in that way, however, to make them mere pawns in the game which reason plays, is heartless, monstrous. The affections are as essential to man as his reason. It is a poor substitute for the warm, sweet, tender ties that bind together husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend,—this freezing of people together through their common relation to the universal law. I suppose that is why, in all the history of Stoicism, though college girls usually have a period of flirting with the Stoic melancholy of Matthew Arnold, no woman was ever known to be a consistent and steadfast Stoic. Indeed a Stoic woman is a contradiction in terms. One might as well talk of a warm iceberg, or soft granite, or sweet vinegar. Stoicism is something of which men, unmarried or badly married men at that, have an absolute monopoly.
Again if its disregard of particulars and individuals is cold and hard, its attempted substitute of abstract, vague universality is a bit absurd. Sometimes the lighter mood of caricature best brings out the weaknesses that are concealed in grave systems when taken too seriously. Mr. W. S. Gilbert has put the dash of absurdity there is in the Stoic doctrines so convincingly that his lines may serve the purpose of illustrating the inherent weakness of the Stoic position better than more formal criticism. They are addressed
The incompleteness of the Stoic position is precisely this tendency to slight and ignore the external conditions out of which life is made. Its God is fate. Instead of a living, loving will, manifest in the struggle with present conditions, Stoicism sees only an impersonal law, rigid, fixed, fatal, unalterable, unimprovable, uncompanionable. Man's only freedom lies in unconditional surrender to what was long ago decreed. Of glad and original coöperation with its beneficent designs, thus helping to make the world happier and better than it could have been had not the universal will found and chosen just this individual me, to work freely for its improvement, Stoicism knows nothing. Its satisfaction is staked on a dead law to be obeyed, not a live will to be loved. Its ideal is a monotonous identity of law-abiding agents who differ from each other chiefly in the names by which they chance to be designated. It has no place for the development of rich and varied individuality in each through intense, passionate devotion to other individuals as widely different as age, sex, training, and temperament can make them. Before we find the perfect guidance of life we must look beyond the Stoic as well as the Epicurean, to Plato, to Aristotle, and, above all, to Jesus.
Epicureanism tells us how to gain pleasure; Stoicism tells us how to bear pain. But life is not so simple as these systems assume. It is not merely the problem of getting all the pleasure we can; nor of taking pain in such wise that it does not hurt. It is a question of the worth of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of the things we suffer for. Plato squarely attacks that larger problem. He says that the Epicurean is like a musician who tunes his violin as much as he can without breaking the strings. The wise musician, on the contrary, recognises that the tuning is merely incidental to the music; and that when you have tuned it up to a certain point, it is worse than useless to go on tuning it any more. Just as the tuning is for the sake of the music, and when you have reached a point where the instrument gives perfect music, you must stop the tuning and begin to play; so when you have brought any particular pleasure, say that of eating, up to a certain point, you must stop eating, and begin to live the life for the sake of which you eat. To the Stoic Plato gives a similar answer. The Stoic, he says, is like a physician who gives his patient all the medicine he can, and prides himself on being a better physician than others because he gives his patients bigger doses, and more of them. The wise physician gives medicine up to a certain point, and then stops. That point is determined by the health, which the medicine is given to promote. Precisely so, it is foolish to bear all the pain we can, and boast ourselves of our ability to swallow big doses of tribulation and pronounce it good. The wise man will bear pain up to a certain point; and when he reaches that limit, he will stop. What is the point? Where is the limit? Virtue is the point up to which the bearing of pain is good, the limit beyond which the bearing of pain becomes an evil. Virtue, then, is the supreme good, and makes everything that furthers it, whether pleasurable or painful, good. Virtue makes everything that hinders it, whether pleasurable or painful, bad. What, then, is virtue? In what does this priceless pearl consist? We have our two analogies. Virtue is to pleasure what the music is to the tuning of the instrument. Just as the perfection of the music proves the excellence of the tuning, so the perfection of virtue justifies the particular pleasures we enjoy. Virtue stands related to the endurance of pain, as health stands related to the taking of medicine. The perfection of health proves that, however distasteful the medicine may be, it is nevertheless good; and any imperfection of health that may result from either too much or too little medicine shows that in the quantity taken the medicine was bad for us. Precisely so pain is good for us up to the point where virtue requires it. Below or above that point, pain becomes an evil.
Plato spared no pains to disentangle the question of virtue from its complications with rewards and penalties, pleasures and pains. As the virtue of a violin is not in its carving or polish, but in the music it produces; as the virtue of medicine is not in its sweetness or its absence of bitterness, so the virtue of man has primarily nothing to do with rewards and penalties, pleasures or pains. In our study of virtue, he says, we must strip it naked of all rewards, honours, and emoluments; indeed we must go farther and even dress it up in the outer habiliments of vice; we must make the virtuous man poor, persecuted, forsaken, unpopular, distrusted, reviled, and condemned. Then we may be able to see what there is in virtue which, in every conceivable circumstance, makes it superior to vice. He makes one of his characters in the Republic complain that: "No one has ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of either righteousness or unrighteousness immanent in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, righteousness is the greatest good, and unrighteousness the greatest evil. Therefore I say, not only prove to us that righteousness is better than unrighteousness, but show what either of them do to the possessors of them, which makes the one to be good and the other evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men." Accordingly he attributes to the unrighteous man skill to win a reputation for righteousness, even while acting most unrighteously. He clothes him with power and glory, and fame, and family, and influence; fills his life with delights; surrounds him with friends; cushions him in ease and security. Over against this man who is really unrighteous, but has all the advantages that come from being supposed to be righteous, he sets the man who is really righteous, and clothes him with all the disabilities which come from being supposed to be unrighteous. "Let him be scourged and racked; let him have his eyes burnt out, and finally, after suffering every kind of evil, let him be impaled." Then, says Plato, when both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of righteousness treated shamefully and cruelly, the other of unrighteousness treated honourably and obsequiously, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two. Translating the language of the "Gorgias" and the "Republic" into modern equivalents: Who would we rather be, a man who by successful manipulation of dishonest financial schemes had come to be a millionnaire, the mayor of his city, the pillar of the church, the ornament of the best society, the Senator from his state, or the Ambassador of his country at a European Court; or a man who in consequence of his integrity had won the enmity of evil men in power, and been sent in disgrace to State prison; a man whom no one would speak to; whom his best friends had deserted, whose own children were being brought up to reproach him? Which of the two men would we rather be? And we must not introduce any consideration of reversals hereafter. Supposing that death ends all, and that there is no God to reverse the decisions of men; suppose these two men were to die as they lived, without hope of resurrection; which of the two would we rather be for the next forty years of our lives, assuming that after that there is nothing?
Plato in a myth puts the case even more strongly than this. Gyges, a shepherd and servant of the king of Lydia, found a gold ring which had the remarkable property of making its wearer visible when he turned the collet one way, and invisible when he turned it the other way. Being astonished at this, he made several trials of the ring, always with the same result; when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Perceiving this he immediately contrived to be chosen messenger to the court, where he no sooner arrived than he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Plato asks us what we should do if we had such a ring. We could do anything we pleased and no one would be the wiser. We could become invisible, out of the reach of external consequences, the instant our deed was done. Would we, with such a ring on our finger, stand fast in righteousness? Could we trust ourselves to wear that ring night and day? Would we feel safe if we knew that our next-door neighbour, even our most intimate friend, had such a ring, and could do just what he pleased to us, and yet never get caught? Can we tell why a man with such a ring on his finger should not do any unjust, unkind, impure, or dishonourable deed?
The Republic is Plato's answer to this question. Why, you may ask, should he give us a treatise on politics in answer to a question of personal character? Because the state is simply the individual writ large, and as we can read large letters more easily than small letters, we shall get at the principle of righteousness more readily if we first consider what it is in the large letters of the state. In presenting this analogy of the state I shall freely translate Plato's teachings into their modern equivalent. What, then, is the difference between a righteous and unrighteous state?
An unrighteous state is one in which the working-men in each industry are organised into a union which uses its power to force the wages of its members up to an exorbitant level, and uses intimidation and violence to prevent any one else from working for less or producing more than the standards fixed by the union; it is a state in which the owners of capital, in each line of industry, combine into overcapitalised trusts for the purpose of making the small sums which they put into the business, and the larger sums which they do not put in at all, except on paper, earn exorbitant dividends at the expense of the public; it is a state in which the politicians are in politics for their pockets, using the opportunities for advantageous contracts which offices afford, and the opportunities for legislation in favour of private schemes, to enrich themselves out of the public purse; it is a state in which the police intimidate the other citizens, and sell permission to commit crime to the highest bidder; it is a state in which the scholars concern themselves exclusively about their own special and technical interests, and as long as the institutions with which they are connected are supported by the gifts of rich men, care little how the poor are oppressed and the many are made to suffer by the corrupt use of wealth and the selfish misuse of power. Such is the unrighteous state. And wherein does its unrighteousness consist? Obviously in the fact that each of the great classes in the state—working-men, capitalists, police, politicians, scholars—are living exclusively for themselves and are ready to sacrifice the interests of the community as a whole to their private interests. Now a state which should be completely unrighteous, in which everybody should succeed in carrying out his own selfish interests at the expense of everybody else, would be intolerable. United action would be impossible. No one would wish to live in such a state. There must be honour even among thieves; otherwise stealing could not be successful on any considerable scale. The trouble with it is that each part is arrayed in antagonism against every other part, and the whole is sacrificed to the supposed interests of its constituent members.
What, then, in contrast to this would be a righteous state? It would be a state in which each of these classes fulfils its part well, with a view to the good of the whole. It would be a state where labour would be organised into unions, which would not insist on having the greatest possible wages for the least possible work, but which would maintain a high standard of efficiency, and intelligence, and character in the members, with a view to doing the best possible work in their trade, at such wages as the resources and needs of the community, as indicated by the normal action of demand and supply, would warrant. It would be a state in which the capitalists would organise their business in such a way that they might invite public inspection of the relation between the capital, enterprise, skill, economy, and industry expended, and the prices they charge for commodities furnished and services rendered. It would be a state in which the police would maintain that order and law which is the equal interest of the rich and poor alike. It would be a state in which the men in political offices would use their official positions and influence for the protection of the lives and promotion of the interests of the whole people whom they represent and profess to serve. It would be a state in which the colleges and universities would be intensely alive to economic, social, and public questions, and devote their learning to the maintenance of healthful material conditions, just distribution of wealth, sound morals, and wise determination of public policy.
Wherein, then, does the difference between an unrighteous and a righteous state consist? Simply in this—that in the unrighteous state each class in the community is playing for its own hand and regarding the community as a mere means to its own selfish interests as the supreme end,—while a righteous state on the contrary is one in which each class in the community is doing its own work as economically and efficiently as possible, with a view to the interests of the community as a whole. In the unrighteous state the whole is subordinated to each separate part; in the righteous state each part is subordinated to the common interests of the whole. If, then, we ask as did Adeimantus in the Republic, "Where, then, is righteousness, and in which particular part of the state is it to be found," our answer will be that given by Socrates, "that each individual man shall be put to that use for which nature designs him, and every man will do his own business so that the whole city will be not many but one." Righteousness, then, in the state consists in having each class mind its own business with a view to the good of the whole. On this, which is Plato's fundamental principle, we can all agree.
As to the method by which the righteous state is to be brought about probably we should all profoundly differ from him. His method for securing the subordination of what he calls the lower class of society to what he calls the higher class is that of repression, force, and fraud. The obedience of the working-men is to be secured by intimidation; the devotion of the higher classes is to be secured partly by suppression of natural instincts and interests, partly by an elaborate and prolonged education. The rulers are to have no property and no wives and families that they can call their own. He attempts to get devotion to the whole by suppressing those more individual and special forms of devotion which spring from private property and family affection. In all these details of his scheme we must frankly recognise that Plato was profoundly wrong. The working classes cannot and ought not to be driven like dumb cattle to their tasks by a force external to themselves. The ruling class, the scholars and statesmen, can never be successfully trained for disinterested public life by taking away from them those fundamental interests and affections out of which, in the long run, all public spirit takes its rise and draws its inspiration. In opposition to this communism based on repression and suppression by force and fraud, the modern democracy sets a community of interest and a devotion of personal resources, be they great or small, to the common good on the part of every citizen of every class. The utter inadequacy and impracticability of the details of Plato's communistic schemes about the wives and property of his ruling class should not blind us to the profound truth of his essential definition of righteousness in a state: That each class shall "do the work for which they draw the wage" with a view to the effect it will have, not on themselves alone, but primarily on the welfare of the whole state, of which each class is a serving and contributing member. This essential truth of Plato our modern democracy has taken up. The difference is that, while Plato proposed to have intelligence and authority in one, and obedience and manual labour in another class, the problem of modern democracy is to give an intelligent and public-spirited outlook to the working-man, and a spirit of honest work to the scholar and the statesman.
The defect of Plato lies in the external arrangements by which he proposed to secure the right relation of parts to the whole. His measures for securing this subordination were partly material and physical, partly visionary and unnatural, where ours must be natural, social, intellectual, and spiritual. But he did lay down for all time the great principle that the due subordination of the parts to the whole, of the members to the organism, of the classes to society, of individuals to the state is the essence of righteousness in a state, and an indispensable condition of political well-being.
Righteousness in a state then consists in each class minding its own business, and performing its specific function for the good of the state as a whole. Righteousness in the individual is precisely the same thing. There are three grand departments of each man's life: his appetites, his spirit, and his reason. Neither of these is good or bad in itself. Neither of them should be permitted to set up housekeeping on its own account. Any one of them is bad if it acts for itself alone, regardless of the interests of the self as a whole. Let us take up these departments in order, and see wherein the vice and the virtue of each consists. First the appetites, which in the individual correspond to the working class in the state.
Let us take eating as a specimen, remembering, however, that everything we say about the appetite for food is equally true of all the other elementary appetites, such as those that deal with drink, sex, dress, property, amusement, and the like. The Epicurean said they are all good if they do not clash and contradict each other. The Stoic implied that they are all, if not positively bad, at least so low and unimportant that the wise man will not pay much attention to them. Plato says they are all good in their place, and that they are all bad out of their place. What, then, is their place? It is one of subordination and service to the self as a whole. Which is the better breakfast: a half pound of beefsteak, with fried potatoes, an omelette, some griddle cakes and maple syrup, with a doughnut or two, and a generous piece of mince pie? or a little fruit and a cereal, a roll, and a couple of eggs?
Intrinsically the first breakfast is, if anything, better than the second. There is more of it. It offers greater variety. It takes longer to eat it. It will stay by you longer. If you are at a hotel conducted on the American plan, you are getting more for your money.
Righteousness, however, is concerned with none of these considerations. What makes one breakfast better than the other is the way it fits into one's life as a whole. Which breakfast will enable you to do the best forenoon's work? Which one will give you acute headache and chronic dyspepsia? Immediate appetite cannot answer these questions. Reason is the only one of our three departments that can tell us what is good for the self as a whole. Now for most people in ordinary circumstances, reason prescribes the second breakfast, or something like it. The second breakfast fits into one's permanent plan of life. The work to be done in the forenoon, the feelings one will have in the afternoon, the general efficiency which we desire to maintain from day to day and year to year, all point to the second breakfast as the more adapted to promote the welfare of the self as a whole throughout the entire life history. If we eat the first breakfast, appetite rules and reason is thrust into subjection. The lower has conquered the higher; the part has domineered the whole. To eat such a breakfast, for ninety-nine men out of every hundred, would be gluttony. Yet, though eating it is vicious, the fault is not in the breakfast, not in the hunger for it; but in the fact that the appetite had its own way, regardless of the permanent interests of the self as a whole; and that so far forth reason was dethroned, and appetite set up as ruler in its place. Indeed there are circumstances in which the first breakfast would be the right one to choose. If one were on the borders of civilisation, setting out for a long tramp through the wilderness, where every ounce of food must be carried on his back, and no more fresh meat and home cooking could be expected for several days, even reason herself might prescribe the first breakfast as more beneficial to the whole man than the second. Precisely the same breakfast which is good in one set of circumstances becomes bad in another. The raw appetite of hunger is obviously neither good nor bad. The rule of appetite over reason and the whole self, however, is bad always, everywhere, and for everybody. It is in this rising up of the lower part of the self against the higher, and its sacrifice of the self as a whole to a particular gratification that all vice consists.
On the other hand, the rule of reason over appetite, the gratification or the restraint of appetite according as the interests of the total self require, is always and everywhere and for everybody good. This is the essence of virtue; and the particular form of virtue that results from this control of the appetites by reason in the interest of the permanent and total self is temperance—the first and most fundamental of Plato's cardinal virtues.
The second element of human nature, spirit, must be dealt with in the same way. By spirit Plato means the fighting element in us, that which prompts us to defend ourselves, the faculty of indignation, anger, and vengeance. To make it concrete, let us take a case. Suppose the cook in our kitchen has times of being careless, cross, saucy, wilful, and disobedient. The spirit within prompts us to upbraid her, quarrel with her, and when she grows in turn more insolent and impertinent, to discharge her. Is such an exercise of spirit a virtuous act? It may be virtuous, or it may be vicious. In this element, considered in itself, there is no more virtue or vice than in appetite considered in itself. It is again a question of how this particular act of this particular side of our nature stands related to the self as a whole. What does reason say?
If I send this cook away, shall I be a long while without any; and after much vexation probably put up with another not half so good? Will my household be thrown into confusion? Will hospitality be made impossible? Will the working power of the members of my household be impaired by lack of well-prepared, promptly served food? In the present state of this servant problem, all these things and worse are quite likely to happen. Consequently reason declares in unmistakable terms that the interests of the self as a whole demand the retention of the cook. But it galls and frets our spirit to keep this impertinent, disobedient servant, and hear her irritating words, and see her aggravating behaviour. Never mind, reason says to the spirited element in us. The spirit is not put into us in order that it may have a good time all by itself on its own account. It is put into us to protect and promote the interests of the self as a whole. You must bear patiently with the incidental failings of your cook, and return soft answers to her harsh words; because in that way you will best serve that whole self which your spirit is given you to defend. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a quarrel with a cook, on such grounds, in present conditions, would be prejudicial to the interests of the self as a whole. It is the sacrifice of the whole to the part; which as we saw in the case of appetite is the essence of all vice. Only in this case the vice would be, not intemperance, but cowardice, inability to bear a transient, trifling pain patiently and bravely for the sake of the self as a whole.
Still, there might be aggravated cases in which the sharp reproof, the quarrel, and the prompt discharge might be the brave and right thing to do. If one felt it a contribution one was required to make to the whole servant problem, and after considering all the inconvenience it would cost, still felt that life as a whole was worth more with this particular servant out of the house than in it, then precisely the same act, which ordinarily would be wrong, in this exceptional case would be right. It is not what you do, but how you do it, that determines whether an outburst of anger is virtuous or vicious. If the whole self is in it, if all interests have been fully weighed by the reason, if, in short, you are all there when you do it, then the act is a virtuous act, and the special name of this virtue of the spirit is courage or fortitude. Anger and indignation going off on its own account is always vicious. Anger and indignation properly controlled by reason in the interest of the total self is always good. Precisely the same outward act done by one man in one set of circumstances is bad, and shows the man to be vicious, cowardly, and weak; while, if done by another man in other circumstances, it shows him to be strong, brave, and manly. Virtue and vice are questions of the subordination or insubordination of the lower to the higher elements of our nature; of the parts of our selves to the whole. The subordination of appetite to reason has given us the first of the four virtues. The subordination of spirit to reason has given us fortitude, the second.
Wisdom, the third of Plato's cardinal virtues, consists in the supremacy of reason over spirit and appetite; just as temperance and courage consisted in the subordination of appetite and spirit to reason. Wisdom, then, is much the same thing as temperance and courage, only in more positive and comprehensive form. Wisdom is the vision of the good, the true end of man, for the sake of which the lower elements must be subordinated. What, then, is the good, according to Plato? The good is the principle of order, proportion, and harmony that binds the many parts of an object into the effective unity of an organic whole. The good of a watch is that perfect working together of all its springs and wheels and hands, which makes it keep time. The good of a thing is the thing's proper and distinctive function; and the condition of its performing its function is the subordination of its parts to the interest of the whole.
The good of a horse is strength and speed; but this in turn involves the coördination of its parts in graceful, free movement. The good of a state is the coöperation of all its citizens, according to their several capacities, for the happiness and welfare of the whole community. Wisdom in the statesman is the power to see such an ideal relation of the citizens to each other, and the means by which it can be attained and conserved. The good of the individual man, likewise, is the harmonious working together of all the elements in him, so as to produce a satisfactory life; and wisdom is the vision of such a truly satisfactory life, and of the conditions of its attainment. Since man lives in a world full of natural objects, and of works of art; since he is surrounded by other men and is a member of a state; and since his welfare depends on his fulfilling his relations to these objects and persons, it follows that wisdom to see his own true good will involve a knowledge of these objects, persons, and institutions around him. Hence rather more than half the Republic is occupied with the problem of education; or the training of men in that wisdom which consists in the knowledge of the good.
Education, therefore, in Plato's ideal Republic, was a lifelong affair, and from first to last practical. For the guardians, the men who were to be rulers or, as we should say, leaders of their fellows, he prescribed the following course: From early childhood until the age of seventeen,—that is, through our elementary and high school periods,—he would give chief attention to what he calls music; that is, to literature, music, and the plastic arts, with popular descriptive science, or, as we call it nowadays, nature study. This, with elementary mathematics and gymnastics as incidental, constituted the curriculum for the first ten or twelve years. The chief stress through all these years he lays on good literature,—good both in substance and in form; for children at this age are intensely imitative. Plato practically anticipated the latest results of child study, which tell us that the child builds up the whole substance of his conception of himself out of materials borrowed from others and incorporated in himself by imitative reproduction; and then in turn interprets and understands others only in so far as he can eject this borrowed material into other persons. Hence Plato says it is of supreme importance that the children shall learn to admire and love good literature. That teachers should be able to teach the children to read and write and cipher and draw he would take for granted. The prime qualification, however, would be the ability to so interpret the best literature as to make the children admire and imitate and incorporate the noble qualities this literature embodies. Into the literature thus inspiringly taught in the school, only that which praised noble deeds in noble language should be admitted. Plato's description of good literature for schools will bear repeating: "Any deeds of endurance which are acted or told by famous men, these the children ought to see and hear. If they imitate at all, they should imitate the temperate, holy, free, courageous, and the like; but they should not depict or be able to imitate any kind of illiberality or other baseness, lest from imitation they come to be what they imitate. Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth, at last sink into the constitution and become a second nature of body, voice, and mind?" "Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity—expressive of entreaty, or persuasion, or prayer to God, or instruction of man, or again of willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice; and which represents him when he has accomplished his aim, not carried away by success, but acting moderately and wisely, and acquiescing in the event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance. We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own souls. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul, even in childhood, into harmony with the beauty of reason. Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated, or ungraceful if ill educated; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art or nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason of the thing; and when reason comes, he will recognise and salute her as a friend with whom his education has made him long familiar."
Thus, according to Plato, the important thing for a youth to secure by the time he is seventeen is the admiration of noble deeds, and noble words, and noble character. The love of good literature is the backbone of this elementary education. Manual training and nature study, as a means to the appreciation of beautiful works of art and beautiful objects in nature, he would also approve. On the whole Plato is an advocate of those very reforms which are now being introduced into the elementary and secondary schools in the name of the New Education. What one loves is of more importance than what one knows; what one wants to do, and is interested in trying to do, is of more consequence at this stage than what one has done. Early education should be an introduction to the true, the beautiful, and the good in the form of great men, brave deeds, beautiful objects, and beneficent laws. The development of taste is more than the acquisition of information; the inspiration of literature, history, art, and descriptive science is far more valuable than drill beyond the essentials in grammar, geography, and arithmetic.
Plato's programme for the years from seventeen to twenty, three of our four college years, is even more startling and heretical; and quite in line with certain tendencies in our own day. He would set apart the three years from seventeen to twenty for gymnastic exercises, including in such exercises, however, military drill. Plato appreciated both the advantage and disadvantage of intense athletic exercises. "The period, whether of two or three years, which passes in this sort of training is useless for any other purpose,—for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning; and the trial is one of the most important tests to which they are subjected."
At the age of twenty he would select the most promising youths and give them a ten years' course in severe study of science. This systematic study corresponds to the graduate and professional period in modern education, only he extends it over ten years, where we confine it to three or four. Again at thirty there is another selection of those who are most steadfast in their learning and most faithful in their military and public duties, and these are given a five years' course in dialectic or philosophy. They are trained to see the relation of the special sciences to each other and how each department of truth is related to the whole. At the age of thirty-five they must be appointed to military and other offices. "In this way they will get their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity to try whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or stir at all." And when they have reached the age of fifty, after fifteen years of this laboratory work in actual public service, holding subordinate offices and learning to discriminate good and evil, not as we find them done up in packages and labelled in the study, but as they are interwoven in the complicated texture of real life, "those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every deed and in all knowledge, come at last to their graduation; the time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all things and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according to which they are to order the state and the lives of individuals and the remainder of their own lives also, making philosophy their chief pursuit; but when their turn comes, also toiling at politics and ruling for the public good."
The wisdom which comes of this prolonged and elaborate education is the third of Plato's four cardinal virtues. In the state it is the ruling principle, and its agents are the philosophers. As Plato says in a famous passage: "Until then philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who follow either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never cease from ill,—no, nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our state have a possibility of life and behold the light of day." Precisely so, no individual will attain his true estate until this philosophic principle, which sees the good, through training has been so developed that it can bring both appetite and spirit into subjection to it, as a charioteer controls his headstrong horses.
We now have three of the cardinal virtues: temperance, the subjection of appetite to reason; fortitude, the control of the spirit by reason; and wisdom, won through education, the assertion of the dictates of reason over the clamour of both appetite and spirit. But where, amid all this, Plato asks, is righteousness? In reply he remarks, "that when we first began our inquiry, ages ago, there lay righteousness rolling at our feet, and we, fools that we were, failed to see her, like people who go about looking for what they have in their hands. Righteousness is the comprehensive aspect of the three virtues already considered in detail. It is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them. Righteousness in a state consists in each citizen doing the thing to which his nature is most perfectly adapted: in minding one's own business, in other words, with a view to the good of the whole. Righteousness in an individual, then, consists in having each part of one's nature devoted to its specific function: in having the appetites obey, in having the spirit steadfast in difficulty and danger, and in having the reason rule supreme. Thus righteousness, that subordination and coordination of all the parts of the soul in the service of the soul as a whole, includes each of the other three virtues and comprehends them all in the unity of the soul's organic life.
"For the righteous man does not permit the several elements within him to meddle with one another, but he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master, and at peace with himself; when he has bound together the three principles within him, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he will begin to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affairs of politics or of private business; in all which cases he will think and call just and good action, that which preserves and coöperates with this condition, and the knowledge which presides over this wisdom."
Unrighteousness, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of this. "Then assuming the threefold division of the soul, must not unrighteousness be a kind of quarrel between these three—a meddlesomeness and interference, a rising up of a part of the soul against the whole soul, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal—this is the sort of thing; the confusion and error of these parts or elements in unrighteousness and intemperance, cowardice, and ignorance, and in general all vice." In other words, righteousness and unrighteousness "are like disease and health; being in the soul just what disease and health are in the body." "Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul." From this point of view our old question of the comparative advantage of righteousness and unrighteousness answers itself. Indeed, the question whether it is more profitable to be righteous and do righteously and practice virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unrighteous and act unrighteously if only unpunished, becomes, Plato says, ridiculous. "If when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with every sort of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power, shall we be told that life is worth having when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, even though a man be allowed to do whatever he pleases, if at the same time he is forbidden to escape from vice and unrighteousness, or attain righteousness and virtue, seeing that we now know the true nature of each?"
Righteousness, according to Plato, is the condition of the soul's health and life. To part with righteousness for any external advantage is to commit the supreme folly of selling our own souls. Righteousness is the organising principle of the soul; unrighteousness is the disorganising principle. Health and life rest on organisation. Disorganisation and vice are synonymous with disease and death. Therefore, all seeming gains that one may win in the paths of unrighteousness really involve the greatest possible loss.
We have now seen what righteousness is, whether in a state or in an individual. It is the health, harmony, beauty, excellence of the whole state or the whole man, secured by having each member attend strictly to its own distinctive work, with a view to the good of the whole state or the whole man. Thus defined it is something so obviously desirable and essential, that nothing else is worthy to be compared with it. Whoever parts with it even in exchange for the greatest outward honours, emoluments, comforts, or pleasures, is bound to get the worst of the bargain. Yet men do part with it; states do part with it. And the eighth and ninth books of the Republic are devoted to a description of the four stages of degeneration through which states and individuals pass on the downward road from righteousness and virtue to unrighteousness and vice. The breaking up of a thing often reveals its nature as effectually as the putting it together; and as we have traced the four virtues by which either the state or the soul is constructed, it will throw added light upon the problem to trace in conclusion the four stages through which men and states go down to destruction.
The first step down is where, instead of the good, men seek personal honour and distinction. At first the deterioration, whether in state or individual, is hardly noticeable. An ambitious statesman, on the whole, will advocate, if he is shrewd and far-sighted, much the same measures as the statesman who is intent on the welfare of the state. For he knows that by promoting the public welfare he will most effectively gain the reputation and distinction he desires. Yet there is a marked difference in the attitude of mind, and in the long run that difference will express itself in action. When it comes to a close and hard decision, where the real interest of the state lies in one direction, and the waves of popular enthusiasm are running in an opposite direction, the man who cares for the real welfare of the state will stand fast, while the man who cares supremely for honour and distinction will be more likely to give way. Besides, contention and strife will arise, since the ambitious man is more anxious to do something himself than he is to have the best thing done by some one else. Hence the state where the statesmen love power, office, and honour will be less well off than the state where they are disinterestedly devoted to the public good.
Just so the man who is supremely covetous of power and honour will be weaker than the man who loves the good and follows the guidance of reason as supreme, in both these respects. He will be prone to follow the clamour of the multitude when he knows it is not the voice of reason; and he will try to have his own way, even when he knows that the way of another man is better than his. As Plato says, "He gives up the kingdom that is within him to the middle principle of contentiousness and passion, and becomes proud and ambitious." Here, then, are the two tests by which each man may judge for himself whether he is a degenerate of the first grade or not. First: Will you do what reason shows you to be right every time, at all costs, no matter if all the honours and emoluments are attached to doing something a shade or two off from this absolutely right and reasonable course? Second: Would you rather have what is best done by somebody else, and let him have the credit of it, rather than get all the credit yourself by doing something not quite so good? The man of pride and ambition can never be quite disinterested in his service of the good, although incidentally most of the things he does will be good things. As Plato puts it, "He is not single-minded toward virtue, having lost his best guardian." He has neglected "the one thing that can preserve a man's goodness through his life—reason blended with music."
It is a short and easy step, in state and individual, from the love of honour down to the love of money as the guiding principle of life. The appetitive side of life is always present, even in the most upright of men. It may be asleep, but it is never dead. And when there is nothing more deep and vital than the love of honour to hold it in restraint, it is sure to wake up and prowl about. Rivalry for honour soon reveals the fact that directly or indirectly honour and office can be bought. Then comes the state of things where only rich men can get office, or can afford to hold it if it comes to them. That in the state is what Plato calls an oligarchy. The deterioration of a state under this condition is very rapid, for, as he says, "When riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls. And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become lovers of trade and of money, and they honour and reverence the rich man and make a ruler of him, and dishonour the poor man." The evils of this oligarchical rule, he says, are illustrated by considering the nature of the qualification for office and influence. "Just think what would happen if the pilots were to be chosen according to their property, and a poor man refused permission to steer, even though he were the better pilot?" The other defect is "the inevitable division; such a state is not one but two states, the one of poor men, the other of rich men, who are living on the same spot and ever conspiring against one another."