Laws

by Plato

What will be the manner of life of men in moderate circumstances, freed from the toils of agriculture and business, and having common tables for themselves and their families which are under the inspection of magistrates, male and female? Are men who have these institutions only to eat and fatten like beasts? If they do, how can they escape the fate of a fatted beast, which is to be torn in pieces by some other beast more valiant than himself? True, theirs is not the perfect way of life, for they have not all things in common; but the second best way of life also confers great blessings. Even those who live in the second state have a work to do twice as great as the work of any Pythian or Olympic victor; for their labour is for the body only, but ours both for body and soul. And this higher work ought to be pursued night and day to the exclusion of every other. The magistrates who keep the city should be wakeful, and the master of the household should be up early and before all his servants; and the mistress, too, should awaken her handmaidens, and not be awakened by them. Much sleep is not required either for our souls or bodies. When a man is asleep, he is no better than if he were dead; and he who loves life and wisdom will take no more sleep than is necessary for health. Magistrates who are wide awake at night are terrible to the bad; but they are honoured by the good, and are useful to themselves and the state.

When the morning dawns, let the boy go to school. As the sheep need the shepherd, so the boy needs a master; for he is at once the most cunning and the most insubordinate of creatures. Let him be taken away from mothers and nurses, and tamed with bit and bridle, being treated as a freeman in that he learns and is taught, but as a slave in that he may be chastised by all other freemen; and the freeman who neglects to chastise him shall be disgraced. All these matters will be under the supervision of the Director of Education.

Him we will address as follows: We have spoken to you, O illustrious teacher of youth, of the song, the time, and the dance, and of martial strains; but of the learning of letters and of prose writings, and of music, and of the use of calculation for military and domestic purposes we have not spoken, nor yet of the higher use of numbers in reckoning divine things—such as the revolutions of the stars, or the arrangements of days, months, and years, of which the true calculation is necessary in order that seasons and festivals may proceed in regular course, and arouse and enliven the city, rendering to the Gods their due, and making men know them better. There are, we say, many things about which we have not as yet instructed you—and first, as to reading and music: Shall the pupil be a perfect scholar and musician, or not even enter on these studies? He should certainly enter on both:—to letters he will apply himself from the age of ten to thirteen, and at thirteen he will begin to handle the lyre, and continue to learn music until he is sixteen; no shorter and no longer time will be allowed, however fond he or his parents may be of the pursuit. The study of letters he should carry to the extent of simple reading and writing, but he need not care for calligraphy and tachygraphy, if his natural gifts do not enable him to acquire them in the three years. And here arises a question as to the learning of compositions when unaccompanied with music, I mean, prose compositions. They are a dangerous species of literature. Speak then, O guardians of the law, and tell us what we shall do about them. 'You seem to be in a difficulty.' Yes; it is difficult to go against the opinion of all the world. 'But have we not often already done so?' Very true. And you imply that the road which we are taking, though disagreeable to many, is approved by those whose judgment is most worth having. 'Certainly.' Then I would first observe that we have many poets, comic as well as tragic, with whose compositions, as people say, youth are to be imbued and saturated. Some would have them learn by heart entire poets; others prefer extracts. Now I believe, and the general opinion is, that some of the things which they learn are good, and some bad. 'Then how shall we reject some and select others?' A happy thought occurs to me; this long discourse of ours is a sample of what we want, and is moreover an inspired work and a kind of poem. I am naturally pleased in reflecting upon all our words, which appear to me to be just the thing for a young man to hear and learn. I would venture, then, to offer to the Director of Education this treatise of laws as a pattern for his guidance; and in case he should find any similar compositions, written or oral, I would have him carefully preserve them, and commit them in the first place to the teachers who are willing to learn them (he should turn off the teacher who refuses), and let them communicate the lesson to the young.

I have said enough to the teacher of letters; and now we will proceed to the teacher of the lyre. He must be reminded of the advice which we gave to the sexagenarian minstrels; like them he should be quick to perceive the rhythms suited to the expression of virtue, and to reject the opposite. With a view to the attainment of this object, the pupil and his instructor are to use the lyre because its notes are pure; the voice and string should coincide note for note: nor should there be complex harmonies and contrasts of intervals, or variations of times or rhythms. Three years' study is not long enough to give a knowledge of these intricacies; and our pupils will have many things of more importance to learn. The tunes and hymns which are to be consecrated for each festival have been already determined by us.

Having given these instructions to the Director of Music, let us now proceed to dancing and gymnastic, which must also be taught to boys and girls by masters and mistresses. Our minister of education will have a great deal to do; and being an old man, how will he get through so much work? There is no difficulty;—the law will provide him with assistants, male and female; and he will consider how important his office is, and how great the responsibility of choosing them. For if education prospers, the vessel of state sails merrily along; or if education fails, the consequences are not even to be mentioned. Of dancing and gymnastics something has been said already. We include under the latter military exercises, the various uses of arms, all that relates to horsemanship, and military evolutions and tactics. There should be public teachers of both arts, paid by the state, and women as well as men should be trained in them. The maidens should learn the armed dance, and the grown-up women be practised in drill and the use of arms, if only in case of extremity, when the men are gone out to battle, and they are left to guard their families. Birds and beasts defend their young, but women instead of fighting run to the altars, thus degrading man below the level of the animals. 'Such a lack of education, Stranger, is both unseemly and dangerous.'

Wrestling is to be pursued as a military exercise, but the meaning of this, and the nature of the art, can only be explained when action is combined with words. Next follows dancing, which is of two kinds; imitative, first, of the serious and beautiful; and, secondly, of the ludicrous and grotesque. The first kind may be further divided into the dance of war and the dance of peace. The former is called the Pyrrhic; in this the movements of attack and defence are imitated in a direct and manly style, which indicates strength and sufficiency of body and mind. The latter of the two, the dance of peace, is suitable to orderly and law-abiding men. These must be distinguished from the Bacchic dances which imitate drunken revelry, and also from the dances by which purifications are effected and mysteries celebrated. Such dances cannot be characterized either as warlike or peaceful, and are unsuited to a civilized state. Now the dances of peace are of two classes:—the first of them is the more violent, being an expression of joy and triumph after toil and danger; the other is more tranquil, symbolizing the continuance and preservation of good. In speaking or singing we naturally move our bodies, and as we have more or less courage or self-control we become less or more violent and excited. Thus from the imitation of words in gestures the art of dancing arises. Now one man imitates in an orderly, another in a disorderly manner: and so the peaceful kinds of dance have been appropriately called Emmeleiai, or dances of order, as the warlike have been called Pyrrhic. In the latter a man imitates all sorts of blows and the hurling of weapons and the avoiding of them; in the former he learns to bear himself gracefully and like a gentleman. The types of these dances are to be fixed by the legislator, and when the guardians of the law have assigned them to the several festivals, and consecrated them in due order, no further change shall be allowed.

Thus much of the dances which are appropriate to fair forms and noble souls. Comedy, which is the opposite of them, remains to be considered. For the serious implies the ludicrous, and opposites cannot be understood without opposites. But a man of repute will desire to avoid doing what is ludicrous. He should leave such performances to slaves,—they are not fit for freemen; and there should be some element of novelty in them. Concerning tragedy, let our law be as follows: When the inspired poet comes to us with a request to be admitted into our state, we will reply in courteous words—We also are tragedians and your rivals; and the drama which we enact is the best and noblest, being the imitation of the truest and noblest life, with a view to which our state is ordered. And we cannot allow you to pitch your stage in the agora, and make your voices to be heard above ours, or suffer you to address our women and children and the common people on opposite principles to our own. Come then, ye children of the Lydian Muse, and present yourselves first to the magistrates, and if they decide that your hymns are as good or better than ours, you shall have your chorus; but if not, not.

There remain three kinds of knowledge which should be learnt by freemen—arithmetic, geometry of surfaces and of solids, and thirdly, astronomy. Few need make an accurate study of such sciences; and of special students we will speak at another time. But most persons must be content with the study of them which is absolutely necessary, and may be said to be a necessity of that nature against which God himself is unable to contend. 'What are these divine necessities of knowledge?' Necessities of a knowledge without which neither gods, nor demigods, can govern mankind. And far is he from being a divine man who cannot distinguish one, two, odd and even; who cannot number day and night, and is ignorant of the revolutions of the sun and stars; for to every higher knowledge a knowledge of number is necessary—a fool may see this; how much, is a matter requiring more careful consideration. 'Very true.' But the legislator cannot enter into such details, and therefore we must defer the more careful consideration of these matters to another occasion. 'You seem to fear our habitual want of training in these subjects.' Still more do I fear the danger of bad training, which is often worse than none at all. 'Very true.' I think that a gentleman and a freeman may be expected to know as much as an Egyptian child. In Egypt, arithmetic is taught to children in their sports by a distribution of apples or garlands among a greater or less number of people; or a calculation is made of the various combinations which are possible among a set of boxers or wrestlers; or they distribute cups among the children, sometimes of gold, brass, and silver intermingled, sometimes of one metal only. The knowledge of arithmetic which is thus acquired is a great help, either to the general or to the manager of a household; wherever measure is employed, men are more wide-awake in their dealings, and they get rid of their ridiculous ignorance. 'What do you mean?' I have observed this ignorance among my countrymen—they are like pigs—and I am heartily ashamed both on my own behalf and on that of all the Hellenes. 'In what respect?' Let me ask you a question. You know that there are such things as length, breadth, and depth? 'Yes.' And the Hellenes imagine that they are commensurable (1) with themselves, and (2) with each other; whereas they are only commensurable with themselves. But if this is true, then we are in an unfortunate case, and may well say to our compatriots that not to possess necessary knowledge is a disgrace, though to possess such knowledge is nothing very grand. 'Certainly.' The discussion of arithmetical problems is a much better amusement for old men than their favourite game of draughts. 'True.' Mathematics, then, will be one of the subjects in which youth should be trained. They may be regarded as an amusement, as well as a useful and innocent branch of knowledge;—I think that we may include them provisionally. 'Yes; that will be the way.' The next question is, whether astronomy shall be made a part of education. About the stars there is a strange notion prevalent. Men often suppose that it is impious to enquire into the nature of God and the world, whereas the very reverse is the truth. 'How do you mean?' What I am going to say may seem absurd and at variance with the usual language of age, and yet if true and advantageous to the state, and pleasing to God, ought not to be withheld. 'Let us hear.' My dear friend, how falsely do we and all the Hellenes speak about the sun and moon! 'In what respect?' We are always saying that they and certain of the other stars do not keep the same path, and we term them planets. 'Yes; and I have seen the morning and evening stars go all manner of ways, and the sun and moon doing what we know that they always do. But I wish that you would explain your meaning further.' You will easily understand what I have had no difficulty in understanding myself, though we are both of us past the time of learning. 'True; but what is this marvellous knowledge which youth are to acquire, and of which we are ignorant?' Men say that the sun, moon, and stars are planets or wanderers; but this is the reverse of the fact. Each of them moves in one orbit only, which is circular, and not in many; nor is the swiftest of them the slowest, as appears to human eyes. What an insult should we offer to Olympian runners if we were to put the first last and the last first! And if that is a ridiculous error in speaking of men, how much more in speaking of the Gods? They cannot be pleased at our telling falsehoods about them. 'They cannot.' Then people should at least learn so much about them as will enable them to avoid impiety.

Enough of education. Hunting and similar pursuits now claim our attention. These require for their regulation that mixture of law and admonition of which we have often spoken; e.g., in what we were saying about the nurture of young children. And therefore the whole duty of the citizen will not consist in mere obedience to the laws; he must regard not only the enactments but also the precepts of the legislator. I will illustrate my meaning by an example. Of hunting there are many kinds—hunting of fish and fowl, man and beast, enemies and friends; and the legislator can neither omit to speak about these things, nor make penal ordinances about them all. 'What is he to do then?' He will praise and blame hunting, having in view the discipline and exercise of youth. And the young man will listen obediently and will regard his praises and censures; neither pleasure nor pain should hinder him. The legislator will express himself in the form of a pious wish for the welfare of the young:—O my friends, he will say, may you never be induced to hunt for fish in the waters, either by day or night; or for men, whether by sea or land. Never let the wish to steal enter into your minds; neither be ye fowlers, which is not an occupation for gentlemen. As to land animals, the legislator will discourage hunting by night, and also the use of nets and snares by day; for these are indolent and unmanly methods. The only mode of hunting which he can praise is with horses and dogs, running, shooting, striking at close quarters. Enough of the prelude: the law shall be as follows:—

Let no one hinder the holy order of huntsmen; but let the nightly hunters who lay snares and nets be everywhere prohibited. Let the fowler confine himself to waste places and to the mountains. The fisherman is also permitted to exercise his calling, except in harbours and sacred streams, marshes and lakes; in all other places he may fish, provided he does not make use of poisonous mixtures.