The portion of the Cyropædia just cited deserves especial attention, in reference to Xenophon as a companion and pupil of Sokrates. The reader has been already familiarised throughout this work with the questions habitually propounded and canvassed by Sokrates — What is Justice, Temperance, Courage, &c.? Are these virtues teachable? If they are so, where are the teachers of them to be found? — for he professed to have looked in vain for any teachers.[76] I have farther remarked that Sokrates required these questions to be debated in the order here stated. That is — you must first know what Justice is, before you can determine whether it be teachable or not — nay, before you are in a position to affirm any thing at all about it, or to declare any particular acts to be either just or unjust.[77]
[76] Xenoph. Memor. i. 16, iv. 4, 5.
[77] See below, [ch. xiii.], [ch. xxii], and [ch. xxiii.]
Now Xenophon, in his description of the Persian official discipline, provides a sufficient answer to the second question — Whether justice is teachable — and where are the teachers thereof? It is teachable: there are official teachers appointed: and every boy passes through a course of teaching prolonged for several years. — But Xenophon does not at all recognise the Sokratic requirement, that the first question shall be fully canvassed and satisfactorily answered, before the second is approached. The first question is indeed answered in a certain way — though the answer appears here only as an obiter dictum, and is never submitted to any Elenchus at all. The master explains — What is Justice? — by telling Cyrus, “That the lawful is just, and that the lawless is violent”. Now if we consider this as preceptorial — as an admonition to the youthful Cyrus how he ought to decide judicial cases — it is perfectly reasonable: “Let your decisions be conformable to the law or custom of the country”. But if we consider it as a portion of philosophy or reasoned truth — as a definition or rational explanation of Justice, advanced by a respondent who is bound to defend it against the Sokratic cross-examination — we shall find it altogether insufficient. Xenophon himself tells us here, that Law or Custom is one thing among the Medes, and the reverse among the Persians: accordingly an action which is just in the one place will be unjust in the other. It is by objections of this kind that Sokrates, both in Plato and Xenophon, refutes explanations propounded by his respondents.[78]
[78] Plato, Republ. v. p. 479 A. τούτων τῶν πολλῶν καλῶν μῶν τι ἔστιν, ὁ οὐκ αἰσχρὸν φανήσεται; καὶ τῶν δικαίων, ὃ οὐκ ἄδικον; καὶ τῶν ὁσίων, ὃ οὐκ ἀνόσιον; Compare Republ. i. p. 331 C, and the conversation of Sokrates with Euthydêmus in the Xenophontic Memorab. iv. 2, 18-19, and Cyropædia, i. 6, 27-34, about what is just and good morality towards enemies.
We read in Pascal, Pensées, i. 6, 8-9:—
“On ne voit presque rien de juste et d’injuste, qui ne change de qualité en changeant de climat. Trois degrés d’élévation du pôle renversent toute la jurisprudence. Un méridien décide de la verité: en peu d’années de possession, les loix fondamentales changent: le droit a ses époques. Plaisante justice, qu’une rivière ou une montagne borne! Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées — erreur au delà!
“Ils confessent que la justice n’est pas dans les coutumes, mais qu’elle reside dans les loix naturelles, connues en tout pays. Certainement ils la soutiendraient opiniâtrement, si la témérité du hasard qui a semé les loix humaines en avait rencontré au moins une qui fut universelle: mais la plaisanterie est telle, que le caprice des hommes s’est si bien diversifié, qu’il n’y en a point.
“Le larcin, l’inceste, le meurtre des enfans et des pères, tout a eu sa place entre les actions vertueuses. Se peut-il rien de plus plaisant, qu’un homme ait droit de me tuer parcequ’il demeure au-delà de l’eau, et que son prince a querelle avec le mien, quoique je n’en aie aucune avec lui?
“L’un dit que l’essence de la justice est l’autorité du législateur: l’autre, la commodité du souverain: l’autre, la coutume présente — et c’est le plus sûr. Rien, suivant la seule raison, n’est juste de soi: tout branle avec le temps. La coutume fait toute l’équité, par cela seul qu’elle est reçue: c’est le fondement mystique de son autorité. Qui la ramène à son principe, l’anéantit.”