Laws. Plato
Theaet.): the remarkable thought (Laws) that the soul of the sun is better than the sun, agrees with the relation in which the idea of good stands to the sun in the Republic, and with the substitution of mind for the idea of good in the Philebus: the passage about the tragic poets (Laws) agrees generally with the treatment of them in the Republic, but is more finely conceived, and worked out in a nobler spirit. Some lesser similarities of thought and manner should not be omitted, such as the mention of the thirty years' old students in the Republic, and the fifty years' old choristers in the Laws; or the making of the citizens out of wax (Laws) compared with the other image (Republic); or the number of the tyrant (729), which is NEARLY equal with the number of days and nights in the year (730), compared with the 'slight correction' of the sacred number 5040, which is divisible by all the numbers from 1 to 12 except 11, and divisible by 11, if two families be deducted; or once more, we may compare the ignorance of solid geometry of which he complains in the Republic and the puzzle about fractions with the difficulty in the Laws about commensurable and incommensurable quantities—and the malicious emphasis on the word gunaikeios (Laws) with the use of the same word (Republic). These and similar passages tend to show that the author of the Republic is also the author of the Laws. They are echoes of the same voice, expressions of the same mind, coincidences too subtle to have been invented by the ingenuity of any imitator. The force of the argument is increased, if we remember that no passage in the Laws is exactly copied—nowhere do five or six words occur together which are found together elsewhere in Plato's writings.
In other dialogues of Plato, as well as in the Republic, there are to be found parallels with the Laws. Such resemblances, as we might expect, occur chiefly (but not exclusively) in the dialogues which, on other grounds, we may suppose to be of later date. The punishment of evil is to be like evil men (Laws), as he says also in the Theaetetus. Compare again the dependence of tragedy and comedy on one another, of which he gives the reason in the Laws—'For serious things cannot be understood without laughable, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either'; here he puts forward the principle which is the groundwork of the thesis of Socrates in the Symposium, 'that the genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy, and that the writer of comedy ought to be a writer of tragedy also.' There is a truth and right which is above Law (Laws), as we learn also from the Statesman. That men are the possession of the Gods (Laws), is a reflection which likewise occurs in the Phaedo. The remark, whether serious or ironical (Laws), that 'the sons of the Gods naturally believed in the Gods, because they had the means of knowing about them,' is found in the Timaeus. The reign of Cronos, who is the divine ruler (Laws), is a reminiscence of the Statesman. It is remarkable that in the Sophist and Statesman (Soph.), Plato, speaking in the character of the Eleatic Stranger, has already put on the old man. The madness of the poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all goods without justice and virtue is the greatest of evils if life be immortal, but not so great if the bad man lives but a short time.'
The point to be considered is whether these are the kind of parallels which would be the work of an imitator. Would a forger have had the wit to select the most peculiar and characteristic thoughts of Plato; would he have caught the spirit of his philosophy; would he, instead of openly borrowing, have half concealed his favourite ideas; would he have formed them into a whole such as the Laws; would he have given another the credit which he might have obtained for himself; would he have remembered and made use of other passages of the Platonic writings and have never deviated into the phraseology of them? Without pressing such arguments as absolutely certain, we must acknowledge that such a comparison affords a new ground of real weight for believing the Laws to be a genuine writing of Plato.
V. The relation of the Republic to the Laws is clearly set forth by Plato in the Laws. The Republic is the best state, the Laws is the best possible under the existing conditions of the Greek world. The Republic is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or son of a God (who can say?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of all other states and the exemplar of human life. The Laws distinctly acknowledge what the Republic partly admits, that the ideal is inimitable by us, but that we should 'lift up our eyes to the heavens' and try to regulate our lives according to the divine image. The citizens are no longer to have wives and children in common, and are no longer to be under the government of philosophers. But the spirit of communism or communion is to continue among them, though reverence for the sacredness of the family, and respect of children for parents, not promiscuous hymeneals, are now the foundation of the state; the sexes are to be as nearly on an equality as possible; they are to meet at common tables, and to share warlike pursuits (if the women will consent), and to have a common education. The legislator has taken the place of the philosopher, but a council of elders is retained, who are to fulfil the duties of the legislator when he has passed out of life. The addition of younger persons to this council by co-optation is an improvement on the governing body of the Republic. The scheme of education in the Laws is of a far lower kind than that which Plato had conceived in the Republic. There he would have his rulers trained in all knowledge meeting in the idea of good, of which the different branches of mathematical science are but the hand-maidens or ministers; here he treats chiefly of popular education, stopping short with the preliminary sciences—these are to be studied partly with a view to their practical usefulness, which in the Republic he holds cheap, and even more with a view to avoiding impiety, of which in the Republic he says nothing; he touches very lightly on dialectic, which is still to be retained for the rulers. Yet in the Laws there remain traces of the old educational ideas. He is still for banishing the poets; and as he finds the works of prose writers equally dangerous, he would substitute for them the study of his own laws. He insists strongly on the importance of mathematics as an educational instrument. He is no more reconciled to the Greek mythology than in the Republic, though he would rather say nothing about it out of a reverence for antiquity; and he is equally willing to have recourse to fictions, if they have a moral tendency. His thoughts recur to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them; but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs have passed away. Though he is no longer fired with dialectical enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to 'look at one idea gathered from many things,' and to 'perceive the principle which is the same in all the four virtues.' He still recognizes the enormous influence of music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from the words, and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the theatres. He assimilates the education of the two sexes, as far as possible, both in music and gymnastic, and, as in the Republic, he would give to gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the Statesman, he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures—the passionate with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant of the Statesman, who has no place in the Republic, again appears. In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the degeneracy and incapacity of the rulers of his own time.
In the Laws, the philosophers, if not banished, like the poets, are at least ignored; and religion takes the place of philosophy in the regulation of human life. It must however be remembered that the religion of Plato is co-extensive with morality, and is that purified religion and mythology of which he speaks in the second book of the Republic. There is no real discrepancy in the two works. In a practical treatise, he speaks of religion rather than of philosophy; just as he appears to identify virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find the common element of the virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical theses that they are one, or that they are identical with knowledge. The dialectic and the idea of good, which even Glaucon in the Republic could not understand, would be out of place in a less ideal work. There may also be a change in his own mind, the purely intellectual aspect of philosophy having a diminishing interest to him in his old age.
Some confusion occurs in the