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by his satellites, and has the applauses of Europe and Asia to all, and is not so great an evil as an unworthy life, or ringing in his ears; though he is the civilizer or liberator of rather, if rightly regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good half a continent, he is, and always will be, the most miser-man the greatest good. For in all of us there are slumbering able of men. The greatest consequences for good or for ideals of truth and right, which may at any time awaken and evil cannot alter a hairs breadth the morality of actions develop a new life in us.
which are right or wrong in themselves. This is the standard which Socrates holds up to us. Because politics, and Second Thesis:
perhaps human life generally, are of a mixed nature we It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to must not allow our principles to sink to the level of our suffer.
practice.
And so of private individualsto them, too, the world There might have been a condition of human life in which occasionally speaks of the consequences of their actions:
the penalty followed at once, and was proportioned to the if they are lovers of pleasure, they will ruin their health; if offence. Moral evil would then be scarcely distinguishable they are false or dishonest, they will lose their character.
from physical; mankind would avoid vice as they avoid pain But Socrates would speak to them, not of what will be, but or death. But nature, with a view of deepening and enlarg-of what isof the present consequence of lowering and de-ing our characters, has for the most part hidden from us grading the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all men the consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee everywhere, if they were not tempted by interest or pas-them by an effort of reflection. To awaken in us this habit sion, would agree with himthey would rather be the vic-of reflection is the business of early education, which is tims than the perpetrators of an act of treachery or of tyr-continued in maturer years by observation and experience.
anny. Reason tells them that death comes sooner or later The spoilt child is in later life said to be unfortunatehe had better have suffered when he was young, and been saved 38
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from suffering afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally argument:
unfortunate whose education and manner of life are always concealing from him the consequences of his own actions,
Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished
until at length they are revealed to him in some terrible downfall, which may, perhaps, have been caused not by his this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of own fault? Another illustration is afforded by the pauper Proverbs, Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him, etc., and criminal classes, who scarcely reflect at all, except on quoted in Romans.)
the means by which they can compass their immediate ends.
Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side We pity them, and make allowances for them; but we do of their own lives: they do not easily see themselves as oth-not consider that the same principle applies to human ac-ers see them. They are very kind and very blind to their tions generally. Not to have been found out in some dis-own faults; the rhetoric of self-love is always pleading with honesty or folly, regarded from a moral or religious point them on their own behalf. Adopting a similar figure of of view, is the greatest of misfortunes. The success of our speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in de-evil doings is a proof that the gods have ceased to strive fence but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided with us, and have given us over to ourselves. There is noth-by feeling rather than by reason, to their feelings the appeal ing to remind us of our sins, and therefore nothing to cor-must be made. They must speak to themselves; they must rect them. Like our sorrows, they are healed by time; argue with themselves; they must paint in eloquent words the character of their own evil deeds. To any suffering which
While rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.
they have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit. Under the figure there lurks a real thought, which, ex-The accustomed irony of Socrates adds a corollary to the pressed in another form, admits of an easy application to 39
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ourselves. For do not we too accuse as well as excuse our-when they are not prompted by wisdom, are of no value.
selves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer and We believe something to be for our good which we after-preaching, which the mind silently employs while the wards find out not to be for our good. The consequences struggle between the better and the worse is going on within may be inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, us. And sometimes we are too hard upon ourselves, be-yet they may often be the very opposite of what is expected cause we want to restore the balance which self-love has by us. When we increase pauperism by almsgiving; when overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may hear a we tie up property without regard to changes of circum-voice as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort stances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove; of drama is often enacted by the consciences of men ac-when we do in a moment of passion what upon reflection cusing or else excusing them. For all our life long we are we regret; when from any want of self-control we give an-talking with ourselves:What is thought but speech? What other an advantage over uswe are doing not what we will, is feeling but rhetoric? And if rhetoric is used on one side but what we wish. All actions of which the consequences only we shall be always in danger of being deceived. And so are not weighed and foreseen, are of this impotent and para-the words of Socrates, which at first sounded paradoxical, lytic sort; and the author of them has the least possible come home to the experience of all of us.
power while seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually bringing about the reverse of what he intended. And Third Thesis:
yet the book of nature is open to him, in which he who We do not what we will, but what we wish.
runs may read if he will exercise ordinary attention; every day offers him experiences of his own and of other mens Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contem-learnthat good intentions, and even benevolent actions, plation of the consequences of actions, and the ignorance 40
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of men in regard to them, seems to have led Socrates to his Fourth Thesis:
famous thesis:Virtue is knowledge; which is not so much To be and not to seem is the end of life.
an error or paradox as a half truth, seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but also the half of the truth which is The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one especially needed in the present age. For as the world has of the chief incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the grown older men have been too apt to imagine a right and opinion of their fellows is a leading principle of action.
wrong apart from consequences; while a few, on the other Hence a certain element of seeming enters into all things; hand, have sought to resolve them wholly into their conse-all or almost all desire to appear better than they are, that quences. But Socrates, or Plato for him, neither divides they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man of nor identifies them; though the time has not yet arrived ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and either for utilitarian or transcendental systems of moral there is an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy philosophy, he recognizes the two elements which seem to which, according to Socrates, is the worst of the two. Again, lie at the basis of morality. (Compare the following: Now, there is the sophistry of classes and professions. There are and for us, it is a time to Hellenize and to praise knowing; the different opinions about themselves and one another for we have Hebraized too much and have overvalued do-which prevail in different ranks of society. There is the bias ing. But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism given to the mind by the study of one department of hu-remain for our race an eternal possession. And as human-man knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger ity is constituted, one must never assign the second rank to-far the prejudice engendered by a pecuniary or party interday without being ready to restore them to the first to-mor-est in certain tenets. There is the sophistry of law, the soph-row. Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.) istry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology. All of these disguises wear the appearance of the 41
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truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do not easily collectively and subjected to the influences of society.
disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them, Then comes Socrates, impressed as no other man ever and they have become a part of us. The sophistry of an was, with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular opin-ancient Greek sophist is nothing compared with the soph-ion, and tells mankind that they must be and not seem.
istry of a religious order, or of a church in which during How are they to be? At any rate they must have the spirit many ages falsehood has been accumulating, and everything and desire to be. If they are ignorant, they must acknowl-has been said on one side, and nothing on the other. The edge their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious of conventions and customs which we observe in conversa-doing evil, they must learn to do well; if they are weak, and tion, and the opposition of our interests when we have deal-have nothing in them which they can call themselves, they ings with one another (the buyer saith, it is noughtit is must acquire firmness and consistency; if they are indiffer-nought, etc.), are always obscuring our sense of truth and ent, they must begin to take an interest in the great ques-right. The sophistry of human nature is far more subtle tions which surround them. They must try to be what they than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely would fain appear in the eyes of their fellow-men. A single from their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he can for himself: most of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions be true and innocent, simple and independent; he can know of those around us, which we partly help to make. A man what he does, and what he does not know; and though not who would shake himself loose from them, requires great without an effort, he can form a judgment of his own, at force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the search least in common matters. In his most secret actions he can after truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is show the same high principle (compare Republic) which not a n abstraction of theologians, but the most real of all he shows when supported and watched by public opinion.
things, being another name for ourselves when regarded And on some fitting occasion, on some question of human-42
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ity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the natural how to unite freedom with order is the problem which he rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms has to solve.
against a whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims much for them.
has undertaken a task which will call forth all his powers.
He must control himself before he can control others; he Who is the true and who the false statesman?
must know mankind before he can manage them. He has The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal who first organizes and then administers the government of enmity under the disguise of moral or political principle: his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to recon-such meannesses, into which men too often fall uninten-cile the national interests with those of Europe and of man-tionally, are absorbed in the consciousness of his mission, kind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedi-and in his love for his country and for mankind. He will ents; the whole and the parts grow together in his mind; sometimes ask himself what the next generation will say of while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although him; not because he is careful of posthumous fame, but obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His because he knows that the result of his life as a whole will thoughts are fixed not on power or riches or extension of then be more fairly judged. He will take time for the execu-territory, but on an ideal state, in which all the citizens have tion of his plans; not hurrying them on when the mind of a an equal chance of health and life, and the highest educa-nation is unprepared for them; but like the Ruler of the tion is within the reach of all, and the moral and intellectual Universe Himself, working in the appointed time, for he qualities of every individual are freely developed, and the knows that human life, if not long in comparison with eter-idea of good is the animating principle of the whole. Not nity (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going 43
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on when he is no longer here; and he will sometimes, espe-political chessboard are all that he can foreseetwo or three cially when his powers are failing, think of that other city of weeks or months are granted to him in which he can pro-which the pattern is in heaven (Republic).
vide against a coming struggle. But he knows also that there The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In or-are permanent principles of politics which are always tend-der to govern men he becomes like them; their minds are ing to the well-being of statesbetter administration, better married in conjunction; they bear themselves like vulgar education, the reconciliation of conflicting elements, in-and tyrannical masters, and he is their obedient servant.
creased security against external enemies. These are not The true politician, if he would rule men, must make them
of to-day or yesterday, but are the same in all times, and like himself; he must educate his party until they cease to under all forms of government. Then when the storm de-be a party; he must breathe into them the spirit which will scends and the winds blow, though he knows not before-hereafter give form to their institutions. Politics with him hand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like Platos captain are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for in the Republic, half-blind and deaf, but with penetrating carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a representa-eye and quick ear, is ready to take command of the ship tive man, he is the representative not of the lower but of the and guide her into port.
higher elements of the nation. There is a better (as well as a The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the worse) public opinion of which he seeks to lay hold; as there opinion of the worldnot what is right, but what is expedi-is also a deeper current of human affairs in which he is ent. The only measures of which he approves are the mea-borne up when the waves nearer the shore are threatening sures which will pass. He has no intention of fighting an him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by uphill battle; he keeps the roadway of politics. He is unwill-forcetwo or three moves on the political chess board are ing to incur the persecution and enmity which political con-all that he can fore seetwo or three weeks moves on the victions would entail upon him. He begins with popularity, 44
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and in fair weather sails gallantly along. But unpopularity seek to do for the people what the government can do for soon follows him. For men expect their leaders to be better them, and what, from imperfect education or deficient pow-and wiser than themselves: to be their guides in danger, ers of combination, they cannot do for themselves. He their saviours in extremity; they do not really desire them knows that if he does too much for them they will do noth-to obey all the ignorant impulses of the popular mind; and ing; and that if he does nothing for them they will in some if they fail them in a crisis they are disappointed. Then, as states of society be utterly helpless. For the many cannot Socrates says, the cry of ingratitude is heard, which is most exist without the few, if the material force of a country is unreasonable; for the people, who have been taught no from below, wisdom and experience are from above. It is better, have done what might be expected of them, and not a small part of human evils which kings and govern-their statesmen have received justice at their hands.
ments make or cure. The statesman is well aware that a The true statesman is aware that he must adapt himself great purpose carried out consistently during many years to times and circumstances. He must have allies if he is to will at last be executed. He is playing for a stake which may fight against the world; he must enlighten public opinion; be partly determined by some accident, and therefore he he must accustom his followers to act together. Although will allow largely for the unknown element of politics. But he is not the mere executor of the will of the majority, he the game being one in which chance and skill are com-must win over the majority to himself. He is their leader bined, if he plays long enough he is certain of victory. He and not their follower, but in order to lead he must also will not be always consistent, for the world is changing; and follow. He will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power though he depends upon the support of a party, he will of a statesman, neither adopting the laissez faire nor the remember that he is the minister of the whole. He lives not
paternal government principle; but he will, whether he is for the present, but for the future, and he is not at all sure dealing with children in politics, or with full-grown men, that he will be appreciated either now or then. For he may 45
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have the existing order of society against him, and may not We may further observe that the art of government, while be remembered by a distant posterity.
in some respects tending to improve, has in others a ten-There are always discontented idealists in politics who, dency to degenerate, as institutions become more popular.
like Socrates in the Gorgias, find fault with all statesmen Governing for the people cannot easily be combined with past as well as present, not excepting the greatest names governing by the people: the interests of classes are too strong of history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling that they ought for the ideas of the statesman who takes a comprehensive to be better governed than they are. Just as the actual phi-view of the whole. According to Socrates the true governor losopher falls short of the one wise man, so does the ac-will find ruin or death staring him in the face, and will only tual statesman fall short of the ideal. And so partly from be induced to govern from the fear of being governed by a vanity and egotism, but partly also from a true sense of worse man than himself (Republic). And in modern times, the faults of eminent men, a temper of dissatisfaction and though the world has grown milder, and the terrible conse-criticism springs up among those who are ready enough quences which Plato foretells no longer await an English states-to acknowledge the inferiority of their own powers. No man, any one who is not actuated by a blind ambition will matter whether a statesman makes high professions or only undertake from a sense of duty a work in which he is none at allthey are reduced sooner or later to the same most likely to fail; and even if he succeed, will rarely be re-level. And sometimes the more unscrupulous man is bet-warded by the gratitude of his own generation.
ter esteemed than the more conscientious, because he has Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is not equally deceived expectations. Such sentiments may the only real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the mean-be unjust, but they are widely spread; we constantly find ing of his words by applying them to the history of our own them recurring in reviews and newspapers, and still oftener country. He would have said that not Pitt or Fox, or Can-in private conversation.
ning or Sir R. Peel, are the real politicians of their time, but 46
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Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These by their own contemporaries. And when they are no longer during the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsid-here, those who would have been ashamed of them during erable space in the eyes of the public. They were private their lives claim kindred with them, and are proud to be persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds called by their names. (Compare Thucyd.) which in the next generation have become an irresistible Who is the true poet?
power. Herein is that saying true, One soweth and another Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are reapeth. We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman in allied to sense; because they stimulate the emotions; because whom practice and speculation are perfectly harmonized; they are thrice removed from the ideal truth. And in a simi-for there is no necessary opposition between them. But lar spirit he declares in the Gorgias that the stately muse of experience shows that they are commonly divorcedthe tragedy is a votary of pleasure and not of truth. In modern ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the times we almost ridicule the idea of poetry admitting of a thoughts of others, and hardly ever brings to the birth a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher, in primitive new political conception. One or two only in modern times, antiquity are one and the same; but in later ages they seem to like the Italian statesman Cavour, have created the world in fall apart. The great art of novel writing, that peculiar cre-which they moved. The philosopher is naturally unfitted ation of our own and the last century, which, together with for political life; his great ideas are not understood by the the sister art of review writing, threatens to absorb all litera-many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of ture, has even less of seriousness in her composition. Do we the day. Yet perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are stiller not often hear the novel writer censured for attempting to and deeper, are also happier than the lives of those who are convey a lesson to the minds of his readers?
more in the public eye. They have the promise of the fu-Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not ture, though they are regarded as dreamers and visionaries merely to give amusement, or to be the expression of the 47
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feelings of mankind, good or bad, or even to increase our themselves, but to reveal to them their own nature, and knowledge of human nature. There have been poets in make them better acquainted with the world around them.
modern times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have True poetry is the remembrance of youth, of love, the em-not forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two bodiment in words of the happiest and holiest moments of greatest of the Greek dramatists owe their sublimity to their life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of the greatest deeds of ethical character. The noblest truths, sung of in the purest the past. The poet of the future may return to his greater and sweetest language, are still the proper material of po-calling of the prophet or teacher; indeed, we hardly know etry. The poet clothes them with beauty, and has a power what may not be effected for the human race by a better of making them enter into the hearts and memories of men.
use of the poetical and imaginative faculty. The reconcilia-He has not only to speak of themes above the level of ordi-tion of poetry, as of religion, with truth, may still be pos-nary life, but to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer sible. Neither is the element of pleasure to be excluded.
way than they are ordinarily felt, so as to awaken the feeling For when we substitute a higher pleasure for a lower we of them in others. The old he makes young again; the fa-raise men in the scale of existence. Might not the novelist, miliar principle he invests with a new dignity; he finds a too, make an ideal, or rather many ideals of social life, bet-noble expression for the common-places of morality and ter than a thousand sermons? Plato, like the Puritans, is politics. He uses the things of sense so as to indicate what is too much afraid of poetic and artistic influences. But he is beyond; he raises us through earth to heaven. He expresses not without a true sense of the noble purposes to which art what the better part of us would fain say, and the half-con-may be applied (Republic).
scious feeling is strengthened by the expression. He is his Modern poetry is often a sort of plaything, or, in Platos own critic, for the spirit of poetry and of criticism are not language, a flattery, a sophistry, or sham, in which, without divided in him. His mission is not to disguise men from any serious purpose, the poet lends wings to his fancy and 48
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exhibits his gifts of language and metre. Such an one seeks or life-giving influence on the minds of men?
to gratify the taste of his readers; he has the savoir faire, or
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Art then trick of writing, but he has not the higher spirit of poetry.
must be true, and politics must be true, and the life of man He has no conception that true art should bring order out must be true and not a seeming or sham. In all of them of disorder; that it should make provision for the souls order has to be brought out of disorder, truth out of error highest interest; that it should be pursued only with a view and falsehood. This is what we mean by the greatest im-to the improvement of the citizens. He ministers to the provement of man. And so, having considered in what way weaker side of human nature (Republic); he idealizes the
we can best spend the appointed time, we leave the result sensual; he sings the strain of love in the latest fashion; in-with God. Plato does not say that God will order all things stead of raising men above themselves he brings them back for the best (compare Phaedo), but he indirectly implies to the t yranny of the many masters, from which all his life that the evils of this life will be corrected in another. And as long a good man has been praying to be delivered. And we are very far from the best imaginable world at present, often, forgetful of measure and order, he will express not Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic, supposes a pur-that which is truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a gatory or place of education for mankind in general, and great and nobly-executed subject, perfect in every part, some for a very few a Tartarus or hell. The myth which termi-fancy of a heated brain is worked out with the strangest nates the dialogue is not the revelation, but rather, like all incongruity. He is not the master of his words, but his similar descriptions, whether in the Bible or Plato, the veil wordsperhaps borrowed from anotherthe faded reflec-of another life. For no visible thing can reveal the invisible.
tion of some French or German or Italian writer, have the Of this Plato, unlike some commentators on Scripture, is better of him. Though we are not going to banish the poets, fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the manner in how can we suppose that such utterances have any healing which we are born again (Republic). Only he is prepared 49
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to maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right, and Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St.
declares that no one, not even the wisest of the Greeks, can Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who affirm any other doctrine without being ridiculous.
lately devoted himself to death by a lingering disease that There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure he might solace and help others, was thinking of the sweets
and pain are held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and action and without regard to consequences is happiness.
enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation to duty, of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far maintain that when impaled or on the rack the philosopher as the mind can reach, in that hour. If he were certain that may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in there were no life to come, he would not have wished to the Republic he raises this question, but it is not really dis-speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or cussed; the veil of the ideal state, the shadow of another of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose life, are allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of that God has forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or truth is blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on a cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might believed. A very few among the sons of men have made he not still be happy in the performance of an action which themselves independent of circumstances, past, present, or was attended only by a painful death? He himself may be to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind ready to thank God that he was t