Comparison of Leges with Republic and Gorgias.
There is another point too in which the Athenian speaker here recedes from the lofty pretensions of Sokrates in the Republic and the Gorgias. In the second Book of the Republic, we saw Glaukon and Adeimantus challenge Sokrates to prove that justice, apart from all its natural consequences, will suffice per se to make the just man happy;[92] per se, that is, even though all the society misconceive his character, and render no justice to him, but heap upon him nothing except obloquy and persecution. If (Glaukon urges) you can only recommend justice when taken in conjunction with the requiting esteem and reciprocating justice from others towards the just agent, this is no recommendation of justice at all. Your argument implies a tacit admission, that it will be better still if he can pass himself off as just in the opinion of others, without really being just himself: and you must be understood as recommending to him this latter course — if he can do it successfully. Sokrates accepts the challenge, and professes to demonstrate the thesis tendered to him: which is in substance the cardinal dogma afterwards espoused by the Stoics. I have endeavoured to show (in a former chapter[93]), that his demonstration is altogether unsuccessful: and when we turn to the Treatise De Legibus, we shall see that the Athenian speaker recedes from the doctrine altogether: confining himself to the defence of justice with its requiting and reciprocating consequences, not without them. The just man, as the Athenian speaker conceives him, is one who performs his obligations towards others, and towards whom others perform their obligations also: he is one who obtains from others that just dealing and that esteem which is his due: and when so conceived, his existence is one of pleasure and happiness.[94] This is, in substance, the Epikurean doctrine substituted for the Stoic. It is that which Glaukon and Adeimantus in the Republic deprecate as unworthy disparagement of justice; and which they adjure Sokrates, by his attachment to justice, to stand up and repel.[95] Now even this, the Epikurean doctrine, is true only with certain qualifications: since there are various other conditions essential to happiness, over and above the ethical conditions. Still it is not so utterly at variance with the truth as the doctrine which Sokrates undertakes to prove, but never does prove, in the Republic.
[92] Plato, Republic, ii. pp. 359-367.
[93] See above, [chap. xxxvi. p. 100, seq.]
[94] Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 A.
[95] Plato, Republ. ii. p. 368 B. δέδοικα γὰρ μὴ οὐδ’ ὅσιον ᾖ παραγενόμενον δικαιοσύνῃ κακηγορουμένῃ μὴ βοηθεῖν.
Plato here mistrusts the goodness of his own proof. He falls back upon useful fiction.
The last point which I shall here remark in this portion of the Treatise De Legibus is, the sort of mistrust manifested by Plato of the completeness of his own proof. Notwithstanding the vehement phrases in which the Athenian speaker proclaims his internal persuasion of the truth of his doctrine, while acknowledging at the same time that not only his two companions, but most other persons also, took the opposite view[96] — he finds it convenient to reinforce the demonstration of the expositor by the omnipotent infallibility of the lawgiver. He descends from the region of established truth to that of useful fiction. “Even if the doctrine (that the pleasurable, the just, the good, and the honourable, are indissoluble) were not true, the lawgiver ought to adopt it as an useful fiction for youth, effective towards inducing them to behave justly without compulsion. The law giver can obtain belief for any fiction which he pleases to circulate, as may be seen by the implicit belief obtained for the Theban mythe about the dragon’s teeth, and a thousand other mythes equally difficult of credence. He must proclaim the doctrine as an imperative article of faith; carefully providing that it shall be perpetually recited, by one and all his citizens, in the public hymns, narratives, and discourses, without any voice being heard to call it in question.”[97]
[96] Plato, Legg. ii. p. 662 B.
[97] Plato, Legg. ii. p. 663 D. ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς νέους, &c. Also 664 A. So, in the Bacchæ of Euripides (332), the two old men, Kadmus and Teiresias, after vainly attempting to inculcate upon Pentheus the belief in and the worship of Dionysus, at last appeal to his prudence, and admonish him of the danger of unbelief:—