The Preamble - Book 12

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_ THE PREAMBLE - BOOK XII

If a false message be taken to or brought from other states, whether friendly or hostile, by ambassadors or heralds, they shall be indicted for having dishonoured their sacred office, and, if convicted, shall suffer a penalty.--Stealing is mean; robbery is shameless. Let no man deceive himself by the supposed example of the Gods, for no God or son of a God ever really practised either force or fraud. On this point the legislator is better informed than all the poets put together. He who listens to him shall be for ever happy, but he who will not listen shall have the following law directed against him:--He who steals much, or he who steals little of the public property is deserving of the same penalty; for they are both impelled by the same evil motive. When the law punishes one man more lightly than another, this is done under the idea, not that he is less guilty, but that he is more curable. Now a thief who is a foreigner or slave may be curable; but the thief who is a citizen, and has had the advantages of education, should be put to death, for he is incurable.

Much consideration and many regulations are necessary about military expeditions; the great principal of all is that no one, male or female, in war or peace, in great matters or small, shall be without a commander. Whether men stand or walk, or drill, or pursue, or retreat, or wash, or eat, they should all act together and in obedience to orders. We should practise from our youth upwards the habits of command and obedience. All dances, relaxations, endurances of meats and drinks, of cold and heat, and of hard couches, should have a view to war, and care should be taken not to destroy the natural covering and use of the head and feet by wearing shoes and caps; for the head is the lord of the body, and the feet are the best of servants. The soldier should have thoughts like these; and let him hear the law:--He who is enrolled shall serve, and if he absent himself without leave he shall be indicted for failure of service before his own branch of the army when the expedition returns, and if he be found guilty he shall suffer the penalty which the courts award, and never be allowed to contend for any prize of valour, or to accuse another of misbehaviour in military matters. Desertion shall also be tried and punished in the same manner. After the courts for trying failure of service and desertion have been held, the generals shall hold another court, in which the several arms of the service will award prizes for the expedition which has just concluded. The prize is to be a crown of olive, which the victor shall offer up at the temple of his favourite war God...In any suit which a man brings, let the indictment be scrupulously true, for justice is an honourable maiden, to whom falsehood is naturally hateful. For example, when men are prosecuted for having lost their arms, great care should be taken by the witnesses to distinguish between cases in which they have been lost from necessity and from cowardice. If the hero Patroclus had not been killed but had been brought back alive from the field, he might have been reproached with having lost the divine armour. And a man may lose his arms in a storm at sea, or from a fall, and under many other circumstances. There is a distinction of language to be observed in the use of the two terms, 'thrower away of a shield' (ripsaspis), and 'loser of arms' (apoboleus oplon), one being the voluntary, the other the involuntary relinquishment of them. Let the law then be as follows:--If any one is overtaken by the enemy, having arms in his hands, and he leaves them behind him voluntarily, choosing base life instead of honourable death, let justice be done. The old legend of Caeneus, who was changed by Poseidon from a woman into a man, may teach by contraries the appropriate punishment. Let the thrower away of his shield be changed from a man into a woman--that is to say, let him be all his life out of danger, and never again be admitted by any commander into the ranks of his army; and let him pay a heavy fine according to his class. And any commander who permits him to serve shall also be punished by a fine.

All magistrates, whatever be their tenure of office, must give an account of their magistracy. But where shall we find the magistrate who is worthy to supervise them or look into their short-comings and crooked ways? The examiner must be more than man who is sufficient for these things. For the truth is that there are many causes of the dissolution of states; which, like ships or animals, have their cords, and girders, and sinews easily relaxed, and nothing tends more to their welfare and preservation than the supervision of them by examiners who are better than the magistrates; failing in this they fall to pieces, and each becomes many instead of one. Wherefore let the people meet after the summer solstice, in the precincts of Apollo and the Sun, and appoint three men of not less than fifty years of age. They shall proceed as follows:--Each citizen shall select some one, not himself, whom he thinks the best. The persons selected shall be reduced to one half, who have the greatest number of votes, if they are an even number; but if an odd number, he who has the smallest number of votes shall be previously withdrawn. The voting shall continue in the same manner until three only remain; and if the number of votes cast for them be equal, a distinction between the first, second, and third shall be made by lot. The three shall be crowned with an olive wreath, and proclamation made, that the city of the Magnetes, once more preserved by the Gods, presents her three best men to Apollo and the Sun, to whom she dedicates them as long as their lives answer to the judgment formed of them. They shall choose in the first year of their office twelve examiners, to continue until they are seventy-five years of age; afterwards three shall be added annually. While they hold office, they shall dwell within the precinct of the God. They are to divide all the magistracies into twelve classes, and may apply any methods of enquiry, and inflict any punishments which they please; in some cases singly, in other cases together, announcing the acquittal or punishment of the magistrate on a tablet which they will place in the agora. A magistrate who has been condemned by the examiners may appeal to the select judges, and, if he gain his suit, may in turn prosecute the examiners; but if the appellant is cast, his punishment shall be doubled, unless he was previously condemned to death.

And what honours shall be paid to these examiners, whom the whole state counts worthy of the rewards of virtue? They shall have the first place at all sacrifices and other ceremonies, and in all assemblies and public places; they shall go on sacred embassies, and have the exclusive privilege of wearing a crown of laurel. They are priests of Apollo and the Sun, and he of their number who is judged first shall be high priest, and give his name to the year. The manner of their burial, too, shall be different from that of the other citizens. The colour of their funeral array shall be white, and, instead of the voice of lamentation, around the bier shall stand a chorus of fifteen boys and fifteen maidens, chanting hymns in honour of the deceased in alternate strains during an entire day; and at dawn a band of a hundred youths shall carry the bier to the grave, marching in the garb of warriors, and the boys in front of the bier shall sing their national hymn, while the maidens and women past child-bearing follow after. Priests and priestesses may also follow, unless the Pythian oracle forbids. The sepulchre shall be a vault built underground, which will last for ever, having couches of stone placed side by side; on one of these they shall lay the departed saint, and then cover the tomb with a mound, and plant trees on every side except one, where an opening shall be left for other interments. Every year there shall be games--musical, gymnastic, or equestrian, in honour of those who have passed every ordeal. But if any of them, after having been acquitted on any occasion, begin to show the wickedness of human nature, he who pleases may bring them to trial before a court composed of the guardians of the law, and of the select judges, and of any of the examiners who are alive. If he be convicted he shall be deprived of his honours, and if the accuser do not obtain a fifth part of the votes, he shall pay a fine according to his class.

What is called the judgment of Rhadamanthus is suited to 'ages of faith,' but not to our days. He knew that his contemporaries believed in the Gods, for many of them were the sons of Gods; and he thought that the easiest and surest method of ending litigation was to commit the decision to Heaven. In our own day, men either deny the existence of Gods or their care of men, or maintain that they may be bribed by attentions and gifts; and the procedure of Rhadamanthus would therefore be out of date. When the religious ideas of mankind change, their laws should also change. Thus oaths should no longer be taken from plaintiff and defendant; simple statements of affirmation and denial should be substituted. For there is something dreadful in the thought, that nearly half the citizens of a state are perjured men. There is no objection to an oath, where a man has no interest in forswearing himself; as, for example, when a judge is about to give his decision, or in voting at an election, or in the judgment of games and contests. But where there would be a premium on perjury, oaths and imprecations should be prohibited as irrelevant, like appeals to feeling. Let the principles of justice be learned and taught without words of evil omen. The oaths of a stranger against a stranger may be allowed, because strangers are not permitted to become permanent residents in our state.

Trials in private causes are to be decided in the same manner as lesser offences against the state. The non-attendance at a chorus or sacrifice, or the omission to pay a war-tax, may be regarded as in the first instance remediable, and the defaulter may give security; but if he forfeits the security, the goods pledged shall be sold and the money given to the state. And for obstinate disobedience, the magistrate shall have the power of inflicting greater penalties.

A city which is without trade or commerce must consider what it will do about the going abroad of its own people and the admission of strangers. For out of intercourse with strangers there arises great confusion of manners, which in most states is not of any consequence, because the confusion exists already; but in a well-ordered state it may be a great evil. Yet the absolute prohibition of foreign travel, or the exclusion of strangers, is impossible, and would appear barbarous to the rest of mankind. Public opinion should never be lightly regarded, for the many are not so far wrong in their judgments as in their lives. Even the worst of men have often a divine instinct, which enables them to judge of the differences between the good and bad. States are rightly advised when they desire to have the praise of men; and the greatest and truest praise is that of virtue. And our Cretan colony should, and probably will, have a character for virtue, such as few cities have. Let this, then, be our law about foreign travel and the reception of strangers:--No one shall be allowed to leave the country who is under forty years of age--of course military service abroad is not included in this regulation--and no one at all except in a public capacity. To the Olympic, and Pythian, and Nemean, and Isthmian games, shall be sent the fairest and best and bravest, who shall support the dignity of the city in time of peace. These, when they come home, shall teach the youth the inferiority of all other governments. Besides those who go on sacred missions, other persons shall be sent out by permission of the guardians to study the institutions of foreign countries. For a people which has no experience, and no knowledge of the characters of men or the reason of things, but lives by habit only, can never be perfectly civilized. Moreover, in all states, bad as well as good, there are holy and inspired men; these the citizen of a well-ordered city should be ever seeking out; he should go forth to find them over sea and over land, that he may more firmly establish institutions in his own state which are good already and amend the bad. 'What will be the best way of accomplishing such an object?' In the first place, let the visitor of foreign countries be between fifty and sixty years of age, and let him be a citizen of repute, especially in military matters. On his return he shall appear before the Nocturnal Council: this is a body which sits from dawn to sunrise, and includes amongst its members the priests who have gained the prize of virtue, and the ten oldest guardians of the law, and the director and past directors of education; each of whom has power to bring with him a younger friend of his own selection, who is between thirty and forty. The assembly thus constituted shall consider the laws of their own and other states, and gather information relating to them. Anything of the sort which is approved by the elder members of the council shall be studied with all diligence by the younger; who are to be specially watched by the rest of the citizens, and shall receive honour, if they are deserving of honour, or dishonour, if they prove inferior. This is the assembly to which the visitor of foreign countries shall come and tell anything which he has heard from others in the course of his travels, or which he has himself observed. If he be made neither better nor worse, let him at least be praised for his zeal; and let him receive still more praise, and special honour after death, if he be improved. But if he be deteriorated by his travels, let him be prohibited from speaking to any one; and if he submit, he may live as a private individual: but if he be convicted of attempting to make innovations in education and the laws, let him die.

Next, as to the reception of strangers. Of these there are four classes:--First, merchants, who, like birds of passage, find their way over the sea at a certain time of the year, that they may exhibit their wares. These should be received in markets and public buildings without the city, by proper officers, who shall see that justice is done them, and shall also watch against any political designs which they may entertain; no more intercourse is to be held with them than is absolutely necessary. Secondly, there are the visitors at the festivals, who shall be entertained by hospitable persons at the temples for a reasonable time; the priests and ministers of the temples shall have a care of them. In small suits brought by them or against them, the priests shall be the judges; but in the more important, the wardens of the agora. Thirdly, there are ambassadors of foreign states; these are to be honourably received by the generals and commanders, and placed under the care of the Prytanes and of the persons with whom they are lodged. Fourthly, there is the philosophical stranger, who, like our own spectators, from time to time goes to see what is rich and rare in foreign countries. Like them he must be fifty years of age: and let him go unbidden to the doors of the wise and rich, that he may learn from them, and they from him.

These are the rules of missions into foreign countries, and of the reception of strangers. Let Zeus, the God of hospitality, be honoured; and let not the stranger be excluded, as in Egypt, from meals and sacrifices, or, (as at Sparta,) driven away by savage proclamations.

Let guarantees be clearly given in writing and before witnesses. The number of witnesses shall be three when the sum lent is under a thousand drachmas, or five when above. The agent and principal at a fraudulent sale shall be equally liable. He who would search another man's house for anything must swear that he expects to find it there; and he shall enter naked, or having on a single garment and no girdle. The owner shall place at the disposal of the searcher all his goods, sealed as well as unsealed; if he refuse, he shall be liable in double the value of the property, if it shall prove to be in his possession. If the owner be absent, the searcher may counter-seal the property which is under seal, and place watchers. If the owner remain absent more than five days, the searcher shall take the magistrates, and open the sealed property, and seal it up again in their presence. The recovery of goods disputed, except in the case of lands and houses, (about which there can be no dispute in our state), is to be barred by time. The public and unimpeached use of anything for a year in the city, or for five years in the country, or the private possession and domestic use for three years in the city, or for ten years in the country, is to give a right of ownership. But if the possessor have the property in a foreign country, there shall be no bar as to time. The proceedings of any trial are to be void, in which either the parties or the witnesses, whether bond or free, have been prevented by violence from attending:--if a slave be prevented, the suit shall be invalid; or if a freeman, he who is guilty of the violence shall be imprisoned for a year, and shall also be liable to an action for kidnapping. If one competitor forcibly prevents another from attending at the games, the other may be inscribed as victor in the temples, and the first, whether victor or not, shall be liable to an action for damages. The receiver of stolen goods shall undergo the same punishment as the thief. The receiver of an exile shall be punished with death. A man ought to have the same friends and enemies as his country; and he who makes war or peace for himself shall be put to death. And if a party in the state make war or peace, their leaders shall be indicted by the generals, and, if convicted, they shall be put to death. The ministers and officers of a country ought not to receive gifts, even as the reward of good deeds. He who disobeys shall die.

With a view to taxation a man should have his property and income valued: and the government may, at their discretion, levy the tax upon the annual return, or take a portion of the whole.

The good man will offer moderate gifts to the Gods; his land or hearth cannot be offered, because they are already consecrated to all Gods. Gold and silver, which arouse envy, and ivory, which is taken from the dead body of an animal, are unsuitable offerings; iron and brass are materials of war. Wood and stone of a single piece may be offered; also woven work which has not occupied one woman more than a month in making. White is a colour which is acceptable to the Gods; figures of birds and similar offerings are the best of gifts, but they must be such as the painter can execute in a day.

Next concerning lawsuits. Judges, or rather arbiters, may be agreed upon by the plaintiff and defendant; and if no decision is obtained from them, their fellow-tribesmen shall judge. At this stage there shall be an increase of the penalty: the defendant, if he be cast, shall pay a fifth more than the damages claimed. If he further persist, and appeal a second time, the case shall be heard before the select judges; and he shall pay, if defeated, the penalty and half as much again. And the pursuer, if on the first appeal he is defeated, shall pay one fifth of the damages claimed by him; and if on the second, one half. Other matters relating to trials, such as the assignment of judges to courts, the times of sitting, the number of judges, the modes of pleading and procedure, as we have already said, may be determined by younger legislators.

These are to be the rules of private courts. As regards public courts, many states have excellent modes of procedure which may serve for models; these, when duly tested by experience, should be ratified and made permanent by us.

Let the judge be accomplished in the laws. He should possess writings about them, and make a study of them; for laws are the highest instrument of mental improvement, and derive their name from mind (nous, nomos). They afford a measure of all censure and praise, whether in verse or prose, in conversation or in books, and are an antidote to the vain disputes of men and their equally vain acquiescence in each other's opinions. The just judge, who imbibes their spirit, makes the city and himself to stand upright. He establishes justice for the good, and cures the tempers of the bad, if they can be cured; but denounces death, which is the only remedy, to the incurable, the threads of whose life cannot be reversed.

When the suits of the year are completed, execution is to follow. The court is to award to the plaintiff the property of the defendant, if he is cast, reserving to him only his lot of land. If the plaintiff is not satisfied within a month, the court shall put into his hands the property of the defendant. If the defendant fails in payment to the amount of a drachma, he shall lose the use and protection of the court; or if he rebel against the authority of the court, he shall be brought before the guardians of the law, and if found guilty he shall be put to death.

Man having been born, educated, having begotten and brought up children, and gone to law, fulfils the debt of nature. The rites which are to be celebrated after death in honour of the Gods above and below shall be determined by the Interpreters. The dead shall be buried in uncultivated places, where they will be out of the way and do least injury to the living. For no one either in life or after death has any right to deprive other men of the sustenance which mother earth provides for them. No sepulchral mound is to be piled higher than five men can raise it in five days, and the grave-stone shall not be larger than is sufficient to contain an inscription of four heroic verses. The dead are only to be exposed for three days, which is long enough to test the reality of death. The legislator will instruct the people that the body is a mere shadow or image, and that the soul, which is our true being, is gone to give an account of herself before the Gods below. When they hear this, the good are full of hope, and the evil are terrified. It is also said that not much can be done for any one after death. And therefore while in life all man should be helped by their kindred to pass their days justly and holily, that they may depart in peace. When a man loses a son or a brother, he should consider that the beloved one has gone away to fulfil his destiny in another place, and should not waste money over his lifeless remains. Let the law then order a moderate funeral of five minae for the first class, of three for the second, of two for the third, of one for the fourth. One of the guardians of the law, to be selected by the relatives, shall assist them in arranging the affairs of the deceased. There would be a want of delicacy in prescribing that there should or should not be mourning for the dead. But, at any rate, such mourning is to be confined to the house; there must be no processions in the streets, and the dead body shall be taken out of the city before daybreak. Regulations about other forms of burial and about the non-burial of parricides and other sacrilegious persons have already been laid down. The work of legislation is therefore nearly completed; its end will be finally accomplished when we have provided for the continuance of the state.

Do you remember the names of the Fates? Lachesis, the giver of the lots, is the first of them; Clotho, the spinster, the second; Atropos, the unchanging one, is the third and last, who makes the threads of the web irreversible. And we too want to make our laws irreversible, for the unchangeable quality in them will be the salvation of the state, and the source of health and order in the bodies and souls of our citizens. 'But can such a quality be implanted?' I think that it may; and at any rate we must try; for, after all our labour, to have been piling up a fabric which has no foundation would be too ridiculous. 'What foundation would you lay?' We have already instituted an assembly which was composed of the ten oldest guardians of the law, and secondly, of those who had received prizes of virtue, and thirdly, of the travellers who had gone abroad to enquire into the laws of other countries. Moreover, each of the members was to choose a young man, of not less than thirty years of age, to be approved by the rest; and they were to meet at dawn, when all the world is at leisure. This assembly will be an anchor to the vessel of state, and provide the means of permanence; for the constitutions of states, like all other things, have their proper saviours, which are to them what the head and soul are to the living being. 'How do you mean?' Mind in the soul, and sight and hearing in the head, or rather, the perfect union of mind and sense, may be justly called every man's salvation. 'Certainly.' Yes; but of what nature is this union? In the case of a ship, for example, the senses of the sailors are added to the intelligence of the pilot, and the two together save the ship and the men in the ship. Again, the physician and the general have their objects; and the object of the one is health, of the other victory. States, too, have their objects, and the ruler must understand, first, their nature, and secondly, the means of attaining them, whether in laws or men. The state which is wanting in this knowledge cannot be expected to be wise when the time for action arrives. Now what class or institution is there in our state which has such a saving power? 'I suspect that you are referring to the Nocturnal Council.' Yes, to that council which is to have all virtue, and which should aim directly at the mark. 'Very true.' The inconsistency of legislation in most states is not surprising, when the variety of their objects is considered. One of them makes their rule of justice the government of a class; another aims at wealth; another at freedom, or at freedom and power; and some who call themselves philosophers maintain that you should seek for all of them at once. But our object is unmistakeably virtue, and virtue is of four kinds. 'Yes; and we said that mind is the chief and ruler of the three other kinds of virtue and of all else.' True, Cleinias; and now, having already declared the object which is present to the mind of the pilot, the general, the physician, we will interrogate the mind of the statesman. Tell me, I say, as the physician and general have told us their object, what is the object of the statesman. Can you tell me? 'We cannot.' Did we not say that there are four virtues--courage, wisdom, and two others, all of which are called by the common name of virtue, and are in a sense one? 'Certainly we did.' The difficulty is, not in understanding the differences of the virtues, but in apprehending their unity. Why do we call virtue, which is a single thing, by the two names of wisdom and courage? The reason is that courage is concerned with fear, and is found both in children and in brutes; for the soul may be courageous without reason, but no soul was, or ever will be, wise without reason. 'That is true.' I have explained to you the difference, and do you in return explain to me the unity. But first let us consider whether any one who knows the name of a thing without the definition has any real knowledge of it. Is not such knowledge a disgrace to a man of sense, especially where great and glorious truths are concerned? and can any subject be more worthy of the attention of our legislators than the four virtues of which we are speaking--courage, temperance, justice, wisdom? Ought not the magistrates and officers of the state to instruct the citizens in the nature of virtue and vice, instead of leaving them to be taught by some chance poet or sophist? A city which is without instruction suffers the usual fate of cities in our day. What then shall we do? How shall we perfect the ideas of our guardians about virtue? how shall we give our state a head and eyes? 'Yes, but how do you apply the figure?' The city will be the body or trunk; the best of our young men will mount into the head or acropolis and be our eyes; they will look about them, and inform the elders, who are the mind and use the younger men as their instruments: together they will save the state. Shall this be our constitution, or shall all be educated alike, and the special training be given up? 'That is impossible.' Let us then endeavour to attain to some more exact idea of education. Did we not say that the true artist or guardian ought to have an eye, not only to the many, but to the one, and to order all things with a view to the one? Can there be any more philosophical speculation than how to reduce many things which are unlike to one idea? 'Perhaps not.' Say rather, 'Certainly not.' And the rulers of our divine state ought to have an exact knowledge of the common principle in courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, which is called by the name of virtue; and unless we know whether virtue is one or many, we shall hardly know what virtue is. Shall we contrive some means of engrafting this knowledge on our state, or give the matter up? 'Anything rather than that.' Let us begin by making an agreement. 'By all means, if we can.' Well, are we not agreed that our guardians ought to know, not only how the good and the honourable are many, but also how they are one? 'Yes, certainly.' The true guardian of the laws ought to know their truth, and should also be able to interpret and execute them? 'He should.' And is there any higher knowledge than the knowledge of the existence and power of the Gods? The people may be excused for following tradition; but the guardian must be able to give a reason of the faith which is in him. And there are two great evidences of religion--the priority of the soul and the order of the heavens. For no man of sense, when he contemplates the universe, will be likely to substitute necessity for reason and will. Those who maintain that the sun and the stars are inanimate beings are utterly wrong in their opinions. The men of a former generation had a suspicion, which has been confirmed by later thinkers, that things inanimate could never without mind have attained such scientific accuracy; and some (Anaxagoras) even in those days ventured to assert that mind had ordered all things in heaven; but they had no idea of the priority of mind, and they turned the world, or more properly themselves, upside down, and filled the universe with stones, and earth, and other inanimate bodies. This led to great impiety, and the poets said many foolish things against the philosophers, whom they compared to 'yelping she-dogs,' besides making other abusive remarks. No man can now truly worship the Gods who does not believe that the soul is eternal, and prior to the body, and the ruler of all bodies, and does not perceive also that there is mind in the stars; or who has not heard the connexion of these things with music, and has not harmonized them with manners and laws, giving a reason of things which are matters of reason. He who is unable to acquire this knowledge, as well as the ordinary virtues of a citizen, can only be a servant, and not a ruler in the state.

Let us then add another law to the effect that the Nocturnal Council shall be a guard set for the salvation of the state. 'Very good.' To establish this will be our aim, and I hope that others besides myself will assist. 'Let us proceed along the road in which God seems to guide us.' We cannot, Megillus and Cleinias, anticipate the details which will hereafter be needed; they must be supplied by experience. 'What do you mean?' First of all a register will have to be made of all those whose age, character, or education would qualify them to be guardians. The subjects which they are to learn, and the order in which they are to be learnt, are mysteries which cannot be explained beforehand, but not mysteries in any other sense. 'If that is the case, what is to be done?' We must stake our all on a lucky throw, and I will share the risk by stating my views on education. And I would have you, Cleinias, who are the founder of the Magnesian state, and will obtain the greatest glory if you succeed, and will at least be praised for your courage, if you fail, take especial heed of this matter. If we can only establish the Nocturnal Council, we will hand over the city to its keeping; none of the present company will hesitate about that. Our dream will then become a reality; and our citizens, if they are carefully chosen and well educated, will be saviours and guardians such as the world hitherto has never seen.

The want of completeness in the Laws becomes more apparent in the later books. There is less arrangement in them, and the transitions are more abrupt from one subject to another. Yet they contain several noble passages, such as the 'prelude to the discourse concerning the honour and dishonour of parents,' or the picture of the dangers attending the 'friendly intercourse of young men and maidens with one another,' or the soothing remonstrance which is addressed to the dying man respecting his right to do what he will with his own, or the fine description of the burial of the dead. The subject of religion in Book X is introduced as a prelude to offences against the Gods, and this portion of the work appears to be executed in Plato's best manner.

In the last four books, several questions occur for consideration: among them are (I) the detection and punishment of offences; (II) the nature of the voluntary and involuntary; (III) the arguments against atheism, and against the opinion that the Gods have no care of human affairs; (IV) the remarks upon retail trade; (V) the institution of the Nocturnal Council.

I. A weak point in the Laws of Plato is the amount of inquisition into private life which is to be made by the rulers. The magistrate is always watching and waylaying the citizens. He is constantly to receive information against improprieties of life. Plato does not seem to be aware that espionage can only have a negative effect. He has not yet discovered the boundary line which parts the domain of law from that of morality or social life. Men will not tell of one another; nor will he ever be the most honoured citizen, who gives the most frequent information about offenders to the magistrates.

As in some writers of fiction, so also in philosophers, we may observe the effect of age. Plato becomes more conservative as he grows older, and he would govern the world entirely by men like himself, who are above fifty years of age; for in them he hopes to find a principle of stability. He does not remark that, in destroying the freedom he is destroying also the life of the State. In reducing all the citizens to rule and measure, he would have been depriving the Magnesian colony of those great men 'whose acquaintance is beyond all price;' and he would have found that in the worst-governed Hellenic State, there was more of a carriere ouverte for extraordinary genius and virtue than in his own.

Plato has an evident dislike of the Athenian dicasteries; he prefers a few judges who take a leading part in the conduct of trials to a great number who only listen in silence. He allows of two appeals--in each case however with an increase of the penalty. Modern jurists would disapprove of the redress of injustice being purchased only at an increasing risk; though indirectly the burden of legal expenses, which seems to have been little felt among the Athenians, has a similar effect. The love of litigation, which is a remnant of barbarism quite as much as a corruption of civilization, and was innate in the Athenian people, is diminished in the new state by the imposition of severe penalties. If persevered in, it is to be punished with death.

In the Laws murder and homicide besides being crimes, are also pollutions. Regarded from this point of view, the estimate of such offences is apt to depend on accidental circumstances, such as the shedding of blood, and not on the real guilt of the offender or the injury done to society. They are measured by the horror which they arouse in a barbarous age. For there is a superstition in law as well as in religion, and the feelings of a primitive age have a traditional hold on the mass of the people. On the other hand, Plato is innocent of the barbarity which would visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and he is quite aware that punishment has an eye to the future, and not to the past. Compared with that of most European nations in the last century his penal code, though sometimes capricious, is reasonable and humane.

A defect in Plato's criminal jurisprudence is his remission of the punishment when the homicide has obtained the forgiveness of the murdered person; as if crime were a personal affair between individuals, and not an offence against the State. There is a ridiculous disproportion in his punishments. Because a slave may fairly receive a blow for stealing one fig or one bunch of grapes, or a tradesman for selling adulterated goods to the value of one drachma, it is rather hard upon the slave that he should receive as many blows as he has taken grapes or figs, or upon the tradesman who has sold adulterated goods to the value of a thousand drachmas that he should receive a thousand blows.

II. But before punishment can be inflicted at all, the legislator must determine the nature of the voluntary and involuntary. The great question of the freedom of the will, which in modern times has been worn threadbare with purely abstract discussion, was approached both by Plato and Aristotle--first, from the judicial; secondly, from the sophistical point of view. They were puzzled by the degrees and kinds of crime; they observed also that the law only punished hurts which are inflicted by a voluntary agent on an involuntary patient.

In attempting to distinguish between hurt and injury, Plato says that mere hurt is not injury; but that a benefit when done in a wrong spirit may sometimes injure, e.g. when conferred without regard to right and wrong, or to the good or evil consequences which may follow. He means to say that the good or evil disposition of the agent is the principle which characterizes actions; and this is not sufficiently described by the terms voluntary and involuntary. You may hurt another involuntarily, and no one would suppose that you had injured him; and you may hurt him voluntarily, as in inflicting punishment--neither is this injury; but if you hurt him from motives of avarice, ambition, or cowardly fear, this is injury. Injustice is also described as the victory of desire or passion or self-conceit over reason, as justice is the subordination of them to reason. In some paradoxical sense Plato is disposed to affirm all injustice to be involuntary; because no man would do injustice who knew that it never paid and could calculate the consequences of what he was doing. Yet, on the other hand, he admits that the distinction of voluntary and involuntary, taken in another and more obvious sense, is the basis of legislation. His conception of justice and injustice is complicated (1) by the want of a distinction between justice and virtue, that is to say, between the quality which primarily regards others, and the quality in which self and others are equally regarded; (2) by the confusion of doing and suffering justice; (3) by the unwillingness to renounce the old Socratic paradox, that evil is involuntary.

III. The Laws rest on a religious foundation; in this respect they bear the stamp of primitive legislation. They do not escape the almost inevitable consequence of making irreligion penal. If laws are based upon religion, the greatest offence against them must be irreligion. Hence the necessity for what in modern language, and according to a distinction which Plato would scarcely have understood, might be termed persecution. But the spirit of persecution in Plato, unlike that of modern religious bodies, arises out of the desire to enforce a true and simple form of religion, and is directed against the superstitions which tend to degrade mankind. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, is in favour of tolerating all except the intolerant, though he would not promote to high offices those who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul. Plato has not advanced quite so far as this in the path of toleration. But in judging of his enlightenment, we must remember that the evils of necromancy and divination were far greater than those of intolerance in the ancient world. Human nature is always having recourse to the first; but only when organized into some form of priesthood falls into the other; although in primitive as in later ages the institution of a priesthood may claim probably to be an advance on some form of religion which preceded. The Laws would have rested on a sounder foundation, if Plato had ever distinctly realized to his mind the difference between crime and sin or vice. Of this, as of many other controversies, a clear definition might have been the end. But such a definition belongs to a later age of philosophy.

The arguments which Plato uses for the being of a God, have an extremely modern character: first, the consensus gentium; secondly, the argument which has already been adduced in the Phaedrus, of the priority of the self-moved. The answer to those who say that God 'cares not,' is, that He governs by general laws; and that he who takes care of the great will assuredly take care of the small. Plato did not feel, and has not attempted to consider, the difficulty of reconciling the special with the general providence of God. Yet he is on the road to a solution, when he regards the world as a whole, of which all the parts work together towards the final end.

We are surprised to find that the scepticism, which we attribute to young men in our own day, existed then (compare Republic); that the Epicureanism expressed in the line of Horace (borrowed from Lucretius)--

'Namque Deos didici securum agere aevum,'

was already prevalent in the age of Plato; and that the terrors of another world were freely used in order to gain advantages over other men in this. The same objection which struck the Psalmist--'when I saw the prosperity of the wicked'--is supposed to lie at the root of the better sort of unbelief. And the answer is substantially the same which the modern theologian would offer:--that the ways of God in this world cannot be justified unless there be a future state of rewards and punishments. Yet this future state of rewards and punishments is in Plato's view not any addition of happiness or suffering imposed from without, but the permanence of good and evil in the soul: here he is in advance of many modern theologians. The Greek, too, had his difficulty about the existence of evil, which in one solitary passage, remarkable for being inconsistent with his general system, Plato explains, after the Magian fashion, by a good and evil spirit (compare Theaet., Statesman). This passage is also remarkable for being at variance with the general optimism of the Tenth Book--not 'all things are ordered by God for the best,' but some things by a good, others by an evil spirit.

The Tenth Book of the Laws presents a picture of the state of belief among the Greeks singularly like that of the world in which we live. Plato is disposed to attribute the incredulity of his own age to several causes. First, to the bad effect of mythological tales, of which he retains his disapproval; but he has a weak side for antiquity, and is unwilling, as in the Republic, wholly to proscribe them. Secondly, he remarks the self-conceit of a newly-fledged generation of philosophers, who declare that the sun, moon, and stars, are earth and stones only; and who also maintain that the Gods are made by the laws of the state. Thirdly, he notes a confusion in the minds of men arising out of their misinterpretation of the appearances of the world around them: they do not always see the righteous rewarded and the wicked punished. So in modern times there are some whose infidelity has arisen from doubts about the inspiration of ancient writings; others who have been made unbelievers by physical science, or again by the seemingly political character of religion; while there is a third class to whose minds the difficulty of 'justifying the ways of God to man' has been the chief stumblingblock. Plato is very much out of temper at the impiety of some of his contemporaries; yet he is determined to reason with the victims, as he regards them, of these illusions before he punishes them. His answer to the unbelievers is twofold: first, that the soul is prior to the body; secondly, that the ruler of the universe being perfect has made all things with a view to their perfection. The difficulties arising out of ancient sacred writings were far less serious in the age of Plato than in our own.

We too have our popular Epicureanism, which would allow the world to go on as if there were no God. When the belief in Him, whether of ancient or modern times, begins to fade away, men relegate Him, either in theory or practice, into a distant heaven. They do not like expressly to deny God when it is more convenient to forget Him; and so the theory of the Epicurean becomes the practice of mankind in general. Nor can we be said to be free from that which Plato justly considers to be the worst unbelief--of those who put superstition in the place of true religion. For the larger half of Christians continue to assert that the justice of God may be turned aside by gifts, and, if not by the 'odour of fat, and the sacrifice steaming to heaven,' still by another kind of sacrifice placed upon the altar--by masses for the quick and dead, by dispensations, by building churches, by rites and ceremonies--by the same means which the heathen used, taking other names and shapes. And the indifference of Epicureanism and unbelief is in two ways the parent of superstition, partly because it permits, and also because it creates, a necessity for its development in religious and enthusiastic temperaments. If men cannot have a rational belief, they will have an irrational. And hence the most superstitious countries are also at a certain point of civilization the most unbelieving, and the revolution which takes one direction is quickly followed by a reaction in the other. So we may read 'between the lines' ancient history and philosophy into modern, and modern into ancient. Whether we compare the theory of Greek philosophy with the Christian religion, or the practice of the Gentile world with the practice of the Christian world, they will be found to differ more in words and less in reality than we might have supposed. The greater opposition which is sometimes made between them seems to arise chiefly out of a comparison of the ideal of the one with the practice of the other.

To the errors of superstition and unbelief Plato opposes the simple and natural truth of religion; the best and highest, whether conceived in the form of a person or a principle--as the divine mind or as the idea of good--is believed by him to be the basis of human life. That all things are working together for good to the good and evil to the evil in this or in some other world to which human actions are transferred, is the sum of his faith or theology. Unlike Socrates, he is absolutely free from superstition. Religion and morality are one and indivisible to him. He dislikes the 'heathen mythology,' which, as he significantly remarks, was not tolerated in Crete, and perhaps (for the meaning of his words is not quite clear) at Sparta. He gives no encouragement to individual enthusiasm; 'the establishment of religion could only be the work of a mighty intellect.' Like the Hebrews, he prohibits private rites; for the avoidance of superstition, he would transfer all worship of the Gods to the public temples. He would not have men and women consecrating the accidents of their lives. He trusts to human punishments and not to divine judgments; though he is not unwilling to repeat the old tradition that certain kinds of dishonesty 'prevent a man from having a family.' He considers that the 'ages of faith' have passed away and cannot now be recalled. Yet he is far from wishing to extirpate the sentiment of religion, which he sees to be common to all mankind--Barbarians as well as Hellenes. He remarks that no one passes through life without, sooner or later, experiencing its power. To which we may add the further remark that the greater the irreligion, the more violent has often been the religious reaction.

It is remarkable that Plato's account of mind at the end of the Laws goes beyond Anaxagoras, and beyond himself in any of his previous writings. Aristotle, in a well-known passage (Met.) which is an echo of the Phaedo, remarks on the inconsistency of Anaxagoras in introducing the agency of mind, and yet having recourse to other and inferior, probably material causes. But Plato makes the further criticism, that the error of Anaxagoras consisted, not in denying the universal agency of mind, but in denying the priority, or, as we should say, the eternity of it. Yet in the Timaeus he had himself allowed that God made the world out of pre-existing materials: in the Statesman he says that there were seeds of evil in the world arising out of the remains of a former chaos which could not be got rid of; and even in the Tenth Book of the Laws he has admitted that there are two souls, a good and evil. In the Meno, the Phaedrus, and the Phaedo, he had spoken of the recovery of ideas from a former state of existence. But now he has attained to a clearer point of view: he has discarded these fancies. From meditating on the priority of the human soul to the body, he has learnt the nature of soul absolutely. The power of the best, of which he gave an intimation in the Phaedo and in the Republic, now, as in the Philebus, takes the form of an intelligence or person. He no longer, like Anaxagoras, supposes mind to be introduced at a certain time into the world and to give order to a pre-existing chaos, but to be prior to the chaos, everlasting and evermoving, and the source of order and intelligence in all things. This appears to be the last form of Plato's religious philosophy, which might almost be summed up in the words of Kant, 'the starry heaven above and the moral law within.' Or rather, perhaps, 'the starry heaven above and mind prior to the world.'

IV. The remarks about retail trade, about adulteration, and about mendicity, have a very modern character. Greek social life was more like our own than we are apt to suppose. There was the same division of ranks, the same aristocratic and democratic feeling, and, even in a democracy, the same preference for land and for agricultural pursuits. Plato may be claimed as the first free trader, when he prohibits the imposition of customs on imports and exports, though he was clearly not aware of the importance of the principle which he enunciated. The discredit of retail trade he attributes to the rogueries of traders, and is inclined to believe that if a nobleman would keep a shop, which heaven forbid! retail trade might become honourable. He has hardly lighted upon the true reason, which appears to be the essential distinction between buyers and sellers, the one class being necessarily in some degree dependent on the other. When he proposes to fix prices 'which would allow a moderate gain,' and to regulate trade in several minute particulars, we must remember that this is by no means so absurd in a city consisting of 5040 citizens, in which almost every one would know and become known to everybody else, as in our own vast population. Among ourselves we are very far from allowing every man to charge what he pleases. Of many things the prices are fixed by law. Do we not often hear of wages being adjusted in proportion to the profits of employers? The objection to regulating them by law and thus avoiding the conflicts which continually arise between the buyers and sellers of labour, is not so much the undesirableness as the impossibility of doing so. Wherever free competition is not reconcileable either with the order of society, or, as in the case of adulteration, with common honesty, the government may lawfully interfere. The only question is,--Whether the interference will be effectual, and whether the evil of interference may not be greater than the evil which is prevented by it.

He would prohibit beggars, because in a well-ordered state no good man would be left to starve. This again is a prohibition which might have been easily enforced, for there is no difficulty in maintaining the poor when the population is small. In our own times the difficulty of pauperism is rendered far greater, (1) by the enormous numbers, (2) by the facility of locomotion, (3) by the increasing tenderness for human life and suffering. And the only way of meeting the difficulty seems to be by modern nations subdividing themselves into small bodies having local knowledge and acting together in the spirit of ancient communities (compare Arist. Pol.)

V. Regarded as the framework of a polity the Laws are deemed by Plato to be a decline from the Republic, which is the dream of his earlier years. He nowhere imagines that he has reached a higher point of speculation. He is only descending to the level of human things, and he often returns to his original idea. For the guardians of the Republic, who were the elder citizens, and were all supposed to be philosophers, is now substituted a special body, who are to review and amend the laws, preserving the spirit of the legislator. These are the Nocturnal Council, who, although they are not specially trained in dialectic, are not wholly destitute of it; for they must know the relation of particular virtues to the general principle of virtue. Plato has been arguing throughout the Laws that temperance is higher than courage, peace than war, that the love of both must enter into the character of the good citizen. And at the end the same thought is summed up by him in an abstract form. The true artist or guardian must be able to reduce the many to the one, than which, as he says with an enthusiasm worthy of the Phaedrus or Philebus, 'no more philosophical method was ever devised by the wit of man.' But the sense of unity in difference can only be acquired by study; and Plato does not explain to us the nature of this study, which we may reasonably infer, though there is a remarkable omission of the word, to be akin to the dialectic of the Republic.

The Nocturnal Council is to consist of the priests who have obtained the rewards of virtue, of the ten eldest guardians of the law, and of the director and ex-directors of education; each of whom is to select for approval a younger coadjutor. To this council the 'Spectator,' who is sent to visit foreign countries, has to make his report. It is not an administrative body, but an assembly of sages who are to make legislation their study. Plato is not altogether disinclined to changes in the law where experience shows them to be necessary; but he is also anxious that the original spirit of the constitution should never be lost sight of.

The Laws of Plato contain the latest phase of his philosophy, showing in many respects an advance, and in others a decline, in his views of life and the world. His Theory of Ideas in the next generation passed into one of Numbers, the nature of which we gather chiefly from the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Of the speculative side of this theory there are no traces in the Laws, but doubtless Plato found the practical value which he attributed to arithmetic greatly confirmed by the possibility of applying number and measure to the revolution of the heavens, and to the regulation of human life. In the return to a doctrine of numbers there is a retrogression rather than an advance; for the most barren logical abstraction is of a higher nature than number and figure. Philosophy fades away into the distance; in the Laws it is confined to the members of the Nocturnal Council. The speculative truth which was the food of the guardians in the Republic, is for the majority of the citizens to be superseded by practical virtues. The law, which is the expression of mind written down, takes the place of the living word of the philosopher. (Compare the contrast of Phaedrus, and Laws; also the plays on the words nous, nomos, nou dianome; and the discussion in the Statesman of the difference between the personal rule of a king and the impersonal reign of law.) The State is based on virtue and religion rather than on knowledge; and virtue is no longer identified with knowledge, being of the commoner sort, and spoken of in the sense generally understood. Yet there are many traces of advance as well as retrogression in the Laws of Plato. The attempt to reconcile the ideal with actual life is an advance; to 'have brought philosophy down from heaven to earth,' is a praise which may be claimed for him as well as for his master Socrates. And the members of the Nocturnal Council are to continue students of the 'one in many' and of the nature of God. Education is the last word with which Plato supposes the theory of the Laws to end and the reality to begin.

Plato's increasing appreciation of the difficulties of human affairs, and of the element of chance which so largely influences them, is an indication not of a narrower, but of a maturer mind, which had become more conversant with realities. Nor can we fairly attribute any want of originality to him, because he has borrowed many of his provisions from Sparta and Athens. Laws and institutions grow out of habits and customs; and they have 'better opinion, better confirmation,' if they have come down from antiquity and are not mere literary inventions. Plato would have been the first to acknowledge that the Book of Laws was not the creation of his fancy, but a collection of enactments which had been devised by inspired legislators, like Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon, to meet the actual needs of men, and had been approved by time and experience.

In order to do justice therefore to the design of the work, it is necessary to examine how far it rests on an historical foundation and coincides with the actual laws of Sparta and Athens. The consideration of the historical aspect of the Laws has been reserved for this place. In working out the comparison the writer has been greatly assisted by the excellent essays of C.F. Hermann ('De vestigiis institutorum veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis de Legibus libros indagandis,' and 'Juris domestici et familiaris apud Platonem in Legibus cum veteris Graeciae inque primis Athenarum institutis comparatio': Marburg, 1836), and by J.B. Telfy's 'Corpus Juris Attici' (Leipzig, 1868). _

Read next: Excursus On The Relation Of The Laws Of Plato To The Institutions Of Crete And Lacedaemon And To The Laws And Constitution Of Athens

Read previous: The Preamble - Book 11

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