Whoever compares the doctrine of the Politikus[55] with the portion of the Protagoras[56] to which I have just referred, will see that they stand to each other as theory and counter-theory. The theory in the Politikus sets aside (intentionally or not) that in the Protagoras. The Platonic Protagoras, spokesman of King Nomos, represents common sense, sentiment, sympathies and antipathies, written laws, and traditional customs known to all as well as reverenced by the majority: the Platonic Politikus repudiates all these, as preposterous fetters to the single Governor who monopolises all political science and art. Let us add too, that the Platonic Protagoras (whom many commentators teach us to regard as a person of exorbitant arrogance and pretensions) is a very modest man compared to the Eleate in the Platonic Politikus. For the former accepts all the written laws and respected customs around him, — admits that most others know them, in the main, as well as he, — and only professes to have acquired a certain amount of superior skill in impressing them upon others: whereas the latter sets them all aside, claims for himself an uncontradicted monopoly of social science and art, and postulates an extent of blind submission from society such as has never yet been yielded in history.
[55] Plato, Politik. p. 301 E.
The portion of this dialogue, from p. 296 to p. 302, enunciates the doctrine of which I have given a brief abstract in the text.
[56] Plato, Protag. pp. 321-328.
The Eleate complains that under the Protagorean theory no adverse criticism is allowed. The dissenter is either condemned to silence or punished.
The Eleate here complains of it as a hardship, that amidst a community actually established and existing, directed by written laws, traditional customs and common sentiment (the Protagorean model), — he, the political artist, is interdicted from adverse criticism and outspoken censure of the legal and consecrated doctrines. If he talks as one wiser than the laws, or impugns them as he thinks that they deserve, or theorises in his own way respecting the doctrines which they sanction — he is either laughed to scorn as a visionary, prosing, Sophist — or hated, and perhaps punished, as a corrupter of youth; as a person who brings the institutions of society into contempt, and encourages violators of the law.[57]
[57] Plato, Politik. p. 299 B. ἂν τις . . . ζητῶν φαίνηται παρὰ τὰ γράμματα καὶ σοφιζόμενος ὁτιοῦν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα.
In the seventh book of Republic (p. 520 B), Plato describes the position of the philosopher in an established society, springing up by his own internal force, against the opposition of all the social influences — αὐτόματοι γὰρ ἐμφύονται ἀκούσης τῆς ἐν ἑκάστῃ (πόλει) πολιτείας, &c.
Intolerance at Athens, not so great as elsewhere. Plato complains of the assumption of infallibility in existing societies, but exacts it severely in that which he himself constructs.
The reproach implied in these phrases of Plato is doubtless intended as an allusion to the condemnation of Sokrates. It is a reproach well-founded against that proceeding of the government of Athens:— and would have been still better founded against other contemporary governments. That the Athenians were intolerant, is not to be denied: but they were less intolerant than any of their contemporaries. Nowhere else except at Athens could Sokrates have gone on until seventy years of age talking freely in the market-place against the received political and religious orthodoxy. There was more free speech (παῤῥησία)[58] at Athens than in any part of the contemporary world. Plato, Xenophon, and the other companions of Sokrates, proclaimed by lectures and writings that they thought themselves wiser than the laws of Athens: yet though the Gorgias was intended as well as adapted to bring into hatred and contempt both those laws and the persons who administered them, the Athenian Rhetors never indicted Plato for libel. Upon this point, we can only speak comparatively: for perfect liberty of proclaiming opinions neither does now exist, nor ever has existed, any where. Most men have no genuine respect for the right of another to form and express an opinion dissentient from theirs: if they happen to hate the opinion, they account it a virtue to employ as much ill-usage or menace as will frighten the holder thereof into silence. Plato here points out in emphatic language,[59] the deplorable consequences of assuming infallibility and perfection for the legal and customary orthodoxy of the country, and prohibiting free censure by dissentient individuals. But this is on the supposition that the laws and customs are founded only on common sense and traditional reverence:— and that the scientific Governor is among the dissenters. Plato’s judgment is radically different when he supposes the case reversed:— when King Nomos is superseded by the scientific Professor of whom Plato dreams, or by a lawgiver who represents him. We shall observe this when we come to the Treatise de Legibus, in which Plato constitutes an orthodoxy of his own, prohibiting free dissent by restrictions and penalties stricter than any which were known to antiquity. He cannot recognise an infallible common sense: but he has no scruple in postulating an infallible scientific dictator, and in enthroning himself as such. Though well aware that reasoned truth presents itself to different philosophers in different versions, he does not hesitate to condemn those philosophers who differ from him, to silence or to something worse.