When we speak of the four as qualities or attributes of men (as Plato does in this treatise, while considering the proper type of character which the lawgiver should aim at forming) we speak of them in the abstract — that is, making abstraction of particular circumstances, and regarding only what is common to most men in most situations. But in the realities of life these particulars are always present: there is a series of individual agents and patients, acts and sufferings, each surrounded by its own distinct circumstances and situation. Now in each of these situations an agent is held responsible for the consequences of his acts, when they are such as he knows and foresees, or might by reasonable care know and foresee. An officer who (like Charles XII. at Bender) marches up without necessity at the head of a corporal’s guard to attack a powerful hostile army of good soldiers, exhibits the maximum of courage: but his act, far from being commended as virtue, must be blamed as rashness, or pitied as folly. If a friend has deposited in my care a sword or other deadly weapon (to repeat the very case put by Sokrates[497]), justice requires me to give it back to him when he asks for it. Yet if, at the time when he asks, he be insane, and exhibits plain indications of being about to employ it for murderous purposes, my just restoration of it will not be commended as an act of virtue. When we look at these four qualities — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — not in the abstract, but in reference to particular acts, agents, and situations — we find that before a just or courageous act can be considered to deserve the name of Virtue, there is always a tacit supposition, that no considerable hurt to innocent persons is likely or predictable from it in the particular case. The sentiment of approbation, implied in the name Virtue, will not go along with the act, if in the particular case it produce a certain amount of predictable mischief. This is another property common to all the four attributes of mind — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice:— and forming one of the conditions under which they become entitled to the denomination of Virtue.
[497] Plato, Republic, i. p. 331 C; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 17; Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 25.
Plato places these four virtues in the highest scale of Expetenda or Bona, on the ground that all the other Bona are sure to flow from them.
In the first books of the Leges, Plato[498] puts forward Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, as the parts or sorts of Virtue: telling us that the natural rectitude of laws consists in promoting, not any one of the four separately, but all the four together in their due subordination. He classifies good things (Bona or Expetenda) in a triple scale of value.[499] First, and best of all, come the mental attributes — which he calls divine — Prudence or Intelligence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage: Second, or second best, come the attributes of body — health, strength, beauty, activity, manual dexterity: Third, or last, come the extraneous advantages, Wealth, Power, Family-Position, &c. It is the duty of the lawgiver to employ his utmost care to ensure to his citizens the first description of Bona (the mental attributes) — upon which (Plato says) the second and third description depend, so that if the first are ensured, the second and third will be certain to follow: while if the lawgiver, neglecting the first, aims at the second and third exclusively or principally, he will miss all three.[500] Here we see, that while Plato assigns the highest scale of value to the mental attributes, he justifies such preference by assuring us that they are the essential producing causes of the other sorts of Bona. His assurance is even given in terms more unqualified than the realities of life will bear out.
[498] Plato, Legg. i. pp. 627 D, 631 A-C.
[499] Plato, Legg. i. p. 631 B-D, iii. p. 697 B. This tripartite classification of Bona differs altogether from the tripartite classification of Bona given at the commencement of the second book of the Republic. But it agrees with that, the “tria genera Bonorum,” distinguished by Aristotle in the first Book of the Nikomachean Ethics (p. 1098, b. 12), among which τὰ περὶ ψυχήν were κυριώτατα καὶ μάλιστα ἀγαθά. This recognition of “tria genera Bonorum” is sometimes quoted as an opinion characteristic of the Peripatetics; but Aristotle himself declares it to be ancient and acknowledged, and we certainly have it here in Plato.
[500] Plato, Legg. i. p. 631 C. ἤρτηται δ’ ἐκ τῶν θείων θάτερα, καὶ ἐὰν μὲν δέχηταί τις τὰ μείζονα πόλις, κτᾶται καὶ τὰ ἐλάττονα· εἰ δὲ μή, στέρεται ἀμφοῖν.
The same doctrine is declared by Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, pp. 29-30. λέγων, ὅτι οὐκ ἐκ χρημάτων ἀρετὴ γίγνεται, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρετῆς χρήματα καὶ τἄλλα ἀγαθὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἅπαντα καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ (30 B).
In thus directing the attention of the Council to the common property of the four virtues, Plato enforces upon them the necessity of looking to the security and happiness of their community as the paramount end.
When Plato therefore proclaims it as the great desideratum for his Supreme Council, that they shall understand the common relation of the four great mental attributes (Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice) to each other as well as to the comprehensive whole, Virtue — he fastens their attention on the only common property which the four can be found to possess: i.e. that they are mental attributes required in every one for the security and comfort of himself and of society. To ward off or mitigate the suffering, and to improve the comfort of society, is thus inculcated as the main and constant end for them to keep in view. It is their prescribed task, to preserve and carry forward that which he as lawgiver had announced as his purpose in the beginning of the Leges.