The long ethical prefatory matter[129] which we have gone through, includes these among other doctrines — 1. That the life of justice, and the life of pleasure, are essentially coincident. 2. That Reason, as declared by the lawgiver, ought to controul all our passions and emotions. 3. That intoxication, under certain conditions, is an useful stimulus to elderly men. 4. That the political constitution of society ought not to be founded upon one single principle of authority, but upon a combination of several. 5. That the extreme of liberty, and the extreme of despotism, are both bad.[130]
[129] What Aristotle calls τοῖς ἔξωθεν λόγοις, in reference to the Republic of Plato (Aristotel. Politic. ii. 36, p. 1264, b. 39).
[130] Compare on this point Plato’s Epistol. viii. pp. 354-355, where this same view is enforced.
Compared with those of the Republic and of the Xenophontic Cyropædia.
Of these five positions, the two first are coincident with the doctrines of the Republic: the third is not coincident compared with them, but indirectly in opposition to them: the fourth and fifth put Plato on a standing point quite different from that of the Republic, and different also from that of the Xenophontic Cyropædia. In the Cyropædia, all government is strictly personal: the subjects both obey willingly, and are rendered comfortable because of the supreme and manifold excellence of one person — their chief, Cyrus — in every department of practical administration, civil as well as military. In the Platonic Republic, the government is also personal: to this extent — that Plato provides neither political checks, nor magistrates, nor laws, nor judicature: but aims only at the perfect training of the Guardians, and the still more elaborate and philosophical training of those few chief or elder Guardians, who are to direct the rest. He demands only a succession of these philosophers, corresponding to the regal Artist sketched in the Politikus: and he leaves all ulterior directions to them. Upon their perfect dispositions and competence, all the weal or woe of the community depends. All is personal government; but it is lodged in the hands of a few philosophers, assumed to be super-excellent, like the one chief in the Xenophontic Cyropædia. When however we come to the Leges, we find that Plato ceases to presume upon such supreme personal excellence. He drops it as something beyond the limit of human attainment, and as fit only for the golden or Saturnian age.[131] He declares that power, without adequate restraints, is a privilege with which no man can be trusted.[132] Nevertheless the magistrates must be vested with sufficient power: since excess of liberty is equally dangerous. To steer between these two rocks,[133] you want not only a good despot but a sagacious lawgiver. It is he who must construct a constitutional system, having regard to the various natural foundations of authority in the minds of the citizens. He must provide fixed laws, magistrates, and a competent judicature: moreover, both the magistrates and the judicature must be servants of the law, and nothing beyond.[134] The lawgiver must frame his laws with single-minded view, not to the happiness of any separate section of the city, but to that of the whole. He must look to the virtue of the whole, in its most comprehensive sense, and to all good things, ranked in their triple subordination and their comparative value — that is, First, the good things belonging to the mind — Secondly, Those belonging to the body — Thirdly, Wealth and External acquisitions.[135]
[131] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 713-714.
[132] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 687 E — iv. p. 713 B, ix. p. 875 C.
[133] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 710-711.
[134] Plato, Legg. iv. p. 715 C-D. τοὺς δ’ ἄρχοντας λεγομένους νῦν ὑπηρέτας τοῖς νόμοις ἐκάλεσα, οὖ τι καινοτομίας ὀνομάτων ἕνεκα, ἀλλ’, &c. It appears as if this phrase, calling “magistrates the servants or ministers of the law,” was likely to be regarded as a harsh and novel metaphor.
[135] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 707 B, 714 B; iii. p. 697 A.