Section 11. Sceptical Criticism of the Basis of the State.
Having thus supplemented our general account of the Greek conception of the state by a description of their two most prominent polities, it remains for us in conclusion briefly to trace the negative criticism under whose attack that conception threatened to dissolve.
We have quoted, in an earlier part of this chapter, a striking passage from Demosthenes, embodying that view of the objective validity of law under which alone political institutions can be secure. "That is law," said the orator, "which all men ought to obey for many reasons, and especially because every law is an invention and gift of the gods, a resolution of wise men, a correction of errors intentional and unintentional, a compact of the whole state, according to which all who belong to the state ought to live." That is the conception of law which the citizens of any stable state must be prepared substantially to accept, for it is the condition of that fundamental belief in established institutions which alone can make it worth while to adapt and to improve them. It was, accordingly, the conception tacitly, at least, accepted in Greece, during the period of her constructive vigour. But it is a conception constantly open to attack. For law, at any given moment, even under the most favourable conditions, cannot do more than approximate to its own ideal. It is, at best, but a rough attempt at that reconciliation of conflicting interests towards which the reason of mankind is always seeking; and even in well-ordered states there must always be individuals and classes who resent, and rightly resent it, as unjust. But the Greek states, as we have seen, were not well-ordered; on the contrary, they were always on the verge, or in the act, of civil war; and the conception of law, as "a compact of the whole state, according to which all who belong to the state ought to live," must have been, at the least, severely tried, in cities permanently divided into two factions, each intent not merely on defeating the other, but on excluding it altogether from political rights. Such conditions, in fact, must have irresistibly suggested the criticism, which always dogs the idea of the state, and against which its only defence is in a perpetual perfection of itself—the criticism that law, after all, is only the rule of the strong, and justice the name under which they gloze their usurpation. That is a point of view which, even apart from their political dissensions, would hardly have escaped the subtle intellect of the Greeks; and in fact, from the close of the fifth century onwards, we find it constantly canvassed and discussed.
The mind of Plato, in particular, was exercised by this contention; and it was, one may say, a main object of his teaching to rescue the idea of justice from identification with the special interest of the strong, and re-affirm it as the general interest of all. For this end, he takes occasion to state, with the utmost frankness and lucidity, the view which it is his intention to refute; and consequently it is in his works that we find the fullest exposition of the destructive argument he seeks to answer.
Briefly, that argument runs as follows:—It is the law of nature that the strong shall rule; a law which every one recognises in fact, though every one repudiates it in theory. Government therefore simply means the rule of the strong, and exists, no matter what its form, whether tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy, in the interests not of its subjects but of itself. "Justice" and "Law" are the specious names it employs to cloak its own arbitrary will; they have no objective validity, no reference to the well-being of all; and it is only the weak and the foolish on whom they impose. Strong and original natures sweep away this tangle of words, assert themselves in defiance of false shame, and claim the right divine that is theirs by nature, to rule at their will by virtue of their strength. "Each government," says Thrasymachus in the Republic, "has its laws framed to suit its own interests; a democracy making democratic laws; an autocrat despotic laws, and so on. Now by this procedure these governments have pronounced that what is for the interest of themselves is just for their subjects; and whoever deviates from this, is chastised by them as guilty of illegality and injustice. Therefore, my good sir, my meaning is, that in all cities the same thing, namely, the interest of the established government is just. And superior strength, I presume, is to be found on the side of government. So that the conclusion of right reasoning is, that the same thing, namely, the interest of the stronger, is everywhere just." [Footnote: Plato, Rep. 338.—Translated by Davies and Vaughan.]
Here is an argument which strikes at the root of all subordination to the state, setting the subject against the ruler, the minority against the majority, with an emphasis of opposition that admits of no conceivable reconciliation. And, as we have noticed, it was an argument to which the actual political conditions of Greece gave a strong show of plausibility.
How then did the constructive thinkers of Greece attempt to meet it?
The procedure adopted by Plato is curiously opposed to that which might seem natural to a modern thinker on politics. The scepticism which was to be met, having sprung from the extremity of class-antagonism, it might be supposed that the cure would be sought in some sort of system of equality. Plato's idea is precisely the contrary. The distinction between classes he exaggerates to its highest point; only he would have it depend on degrees, not of wealth, but of excellence. In the ideal republic which he constructs as a type of a state where justice should really rule, he sets an impassable gulf between the governing class and the governed; each is specially trained and specially bred for its appropriate function; and the harmony between them is ensured by the recognition, on either part, that each is in occupation of the place for which it is naturally fitted in that whole to which both alike are subordinate. Such a state, no doubt, if ever it had been realised in practice, would have been a complete reply to the sceptical argument; for it would have established a "justice" which was the expression not of the caprice of the governing class, but of the objective will of the whole community. But in practice such a state was not realised in Greece; and the experience of the Greek world does not lead us to suppose that it was capable of realisation. The system of stereotyping classes—in a word, of caste—which has played so great a part in the history of the world, does no doubt embody a great truth, that of natural inequality; and this truth, as we saw, was at the bottom of that Greek conception of the state, of which the "Republic" of Plato is an idealising caricature. But the problem is to make the inequality of nature really correspond to the inequality imposed by institutions. This problem Plato hoped to solve by a strict public control of the marriage relation, so that none should be born into any class who were not naturally fitted to be members of it; but as a matter of fact the difficulty has never been met; and the system of caste remains open to the reproach that its "justice" is conventional and arbitrary, not the expression of the objective nature and will of all classes and members of the community.
The attempt of Aristotle to construct a state that should be the embodiment of justice is similar to Plato's so far as the relation of classes is concerned. He, too, postulates a governing class of soldiers and councillors, and a subject class of productive labourers. When, however, he turns from the ideal to practical politics, and considers merely how to avoid the worst extremes of party antagonism, his solution is the simple and familiar one of the preponderance of the middle class. The same view was dominant both in French and English politics from the year 1830 onwards, and is only now being thrust aside by the democratic ideal. In Greece it was never realised except as a passing phase in the perpetual flux of polities. And in fine it may be said that the problem of establishing a state which should be a concrete refutation of the sceptical criticism that "justice" is merely another name for force, was one that was never solved in ancient Greece. The dissolution of the idea of the state was more a symptom than a cause of its failure in practice to harmonise its warring elements. And Greece, divided into conflicting polities, each of which again was divided within itself, passed on to Macedon and thence to Rome that task of reconciling the individual and the class with the whole, about which the political history of the world turns.