Plato’s views respecting special laws and criminal procedure generally are remarkable. He not only manifests that repugnance towards the Dikastery — which is common to Sokrates, Xenophon, Isokrates, and Aristophanes — but he excludes it almost entirely from his system, as being superseded by the constant public discipline of the Guardians.
Professional soldiers are the proper modern standard of comparison with the regulations of Plato and Xenophon.
It is to be remembered that these propositions of Plato have reference, not to an entire and miscellaneous community, but to a select body called the Guardians, required to possess the bodily and mental attributes of soldiers, policemen, and superintendents. The standard of comparison in modern times, for the Lykurgean, Xenophontic or Platonic, training, is to be sought in the stringent discipline of professional soldiers; not in the general liberty, subject only to definite restrictions, enjoyed by non-military persons. In regard to soldiers, the Platonic principle is now usually admitted — that it is not sufficient to enact articles of war, defining what a soldier ought to do, and threatening him with punishment in case of infraction — but that, besides this, it is indispensable to exact from him a continued routine of positive performances, under constant professional supervision. Without this preparation, few now expect that soldiers should behave effectively when the moment of action arrives. This is the doctrine applied by Plato and Xenophon to the whole life of the citizen.
Music and Gymnastic — multifarious and varied effects of music.
Music and Gymnastic are regarded by Plato mainly as they bear upon and influence the emotional character of his citizens. Each of them is the antithesis, and at the same time the supplement, to the other. Gymnastic tends to develop exclusively the courageous and energetic emotions:— anger and the feeling of power — but no others. Whereas music (understood in the Platonic sense) has a far more multifarious and varied agency: it may develop either those, or the gentle and tender emotions, according to circumstances.[45] In the hands of Tyrtæus and Æschylus, it generates vehement and fearless combatants: in the hands of Euripides and other pathetic poets, it produces tender, amatory, effeminate natures, ingenious in talk but impotent for action.[46]
[45] Plato, Republic, ii. p. 376 B-C. If we examine Plato’s tripartite classification of the varieties of soul or mind, as it is given both in the Republic and in the Timæus (1. Reason, in the cranium. 2. Energy, θυμός, in the thoracic region. 3. Appetite, in the abdominal region) — we shall see that it assigns no place to the gentle, the tender, or the æsthetical emotions. These cannot be properly ranked either with energy (θυμὸς) or with appetite (ἐπιθυμία). Plato can find no root for them except in reason or knowledge, from which he presents them as being collateral derivatives — a singular origin. He illustrates his opinion by the equally singular analogy of the dog, who is gentle towards persons whom he knows, fierce towards those whom he does not know; so that gentleness is the product of knowledge.
[46] See the argument between Æschylus and Euripides in the Ranæ of Aristophanes, 1043-1061-1068.
Great influence of the poets and their works on education.
In the age of Plato, Homer and other poets were extolled as the teachers of mankind, and as themselves possessing universal knowledge. They enjoyed a religious respect, being supposed to speak under divine inspiration, and to be the privileged reporters or diviners of a forgotten past.[47] They furnished the most interesting portion of that floating mass of traditional narrative respecting Gods, Heroes, and ancestors, which found easy credence both as matter of religion and as matter of history: being in full harmony with the emotional preconceptions, and uncritical curiosity, of the hearers. They furnished likewise exhortation and reproof, rules and maxims, so expressed as to live in the memory — impressive utterance for all the strong feelings of the human bosom. Poetry was for a long time the only form of literature. It was not until the fifth century B.C. that prose compositions either began to be multiplied, or were carried to such perfection as to possess a charm of their own calculated to rival the poets, who had long enjoyed a monopoly as purveyors for æsthetical sentiment and fancy. Rhetors, Sophists, Philosophers, then became their competitors; opening new veins of intellectual activity,[48] and sharing, to a certain extent, the pædagogic influence of the poets — yet never displacing them from their traditional function of teachers, narrators, and guides to the intelligence, as well as improving ministers to the sentiments, emotions, and imagination, of youth. Indeed, many Sophists and Rhetors presented themselves not as superseding,[49] but as expounding and illustrating, the poets. Sokrates also did this occasionally, though not upon system.[50]
[47] Aristoph. Ranæ, 1053. Æschylus is made to say:—