Statesman

Str. But we must not always judge of length by fitness, either. For we shall not in the least want a length that is fitted to give pleasure, except, perhaps, as a secondary consideration; and again reason counsels us to accept fitness for the easiest and quickest completion of the inquiry in which we are engaged, not as the first, but as the second thing to be desired. By far our first and most important object should be to exalt the method itself of ability to divide by classes, and therefore, if a discourse, even though it be very long, makes the hearer better able to discover the truth, we should accept it eagerly and should not be offended by its length, or if it is short, we should judge it in the same way. And, moreover, anyone who finds fault with the length of discourses in our discussions, or objects to roundabout methods, must not merely find fault with the speeches for their length and then pass them quickly and hastily by, but he must also show that there is ground for the belief that if they had been briefer they would have made their hearers better dialecticians and quicker to discover through reason the truth of realities. About other people and the praise or blame they direct towards other qualities in discourse, we need not be concerned; we need not even appear to hear them. But enough of this, if you feel about it as I do; so let us go back to the statesman and apply to him the example of weaving that we spoke of a while ago.

Y. Soc. Very well; let us do so.

Str. The art of the king, then, has been separated from most of the kindred arts, or rather from all the arts that have to do with herds. There remain, however, the arts that have to do with the state itself. These are both causes and contingent causes, and our first duty is to separate them from one another.

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. It is not easy to divide them into halves, you know. But I think the reason will nevertheless be clear as we go on.

Y. Soc. Then we had better divide in another way.

Str. Let us divide them, then, like an animal that is sacrificed, by joints, since we cannot bisect them; for we must always divide into a number of parts as near two as possible.

Y. Soc. How shall we do it in the present instance?

Str. Just as in the previous case, you know, we classed all the arts which furnished tools for weaving as contingent causes.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. So now we must do the same thing, but it is even more imperative. For all the arts which furnish any implement, great or small, for the state, must be classed as contingent causes; for without them neither state nor statesmanship could ever exist, and yet I do not suppose we shall reckon any of them as the work of the kingly art.

Y. Soc. No.

Str. We shall certainly be undertaking a hard task in separating this class from the rest; for it might be said that everything that exists is the instrument of something or other, and the statement seems plausible. But there are possessions of another kind in the state, about which I wish to say something.

Y. Soc. What do you wish to say?

Str. That they do not possess this instrumental function. For they are not, like tools or instruments, made for the purpose of being causes of production, but exist for the preservation of that which has been produced.

Y. Soc. What is this class of possessions?

Str. That very various class which is made with dry and wet materials and such as are wrought by fire and without fire; it is called collectively the class of receptacles; it is a very large class and has, so far as I can see, nothing at all to do with the art we are studying.

Y. Soc. No, of course not.

Str. And there is a third very large class of possessions to be noticed, differing from these; it is found on land and on water, it wanders about and is stationary, it is honorable and without honor, but it has one name, because the whole class is always a seat for some one and exists to be sat upon.

Y. Soc. What is it?

Str. We call it a vehicle, and it certainly is not at all the work of statesmanship, but much rather that of the arts of carpentry, pottery and bronze-working.

Y. Soc. I understand.

Str. And is there a fourth class? Shall we say that there is one, differing from those three, one to which most of the things we have mentioned belong—all clothing, most arms, all circuit walls of earth or of stone, and countless other things? And since they are all made for defence, they may most rightly be called by the collective name of defence, and this may much more properly be considered for the most part the work of the art of building or of weaving than of statesmanship.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. And should we care to make a fifth class, of ornamentation and painting and all the imitations created by the use of painting and music solely for our pleasure and properly included under one name?

Y. Soc. What is its name?

Str. It is called by some such name as plaything.

Y. Soc. To be sure.

Str. So this one name will properly be applied to all the members of this class; for none of them is practised for any serious purpose, but all of them merely for play.

Y. Soc. I understand that pretty well, too.

Str. And shall we not make a sixth class of that which furnishes to all these the materials of which and in which all the arts we have mentioned fashion their works, a very various class, the offspring of many other arts?

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. Gold and silver and all the products of the mines and all the materials which tree-felling and wood-cutting in general cut and provide for carpentry and basket-weaving; and then, too, the art of stripping the bark from plants and the leather-worker’s art which takes off the skins of animals, and all the other arts which have to do with such matters, and those that make corks and paper and cords and enable us to manufacture composite classes of things from kinds that are not composite. We call all this, as one class, the primary and simple possession of man, and it is in no way the work of the kingly science.

Y. Soc. Good.

Str. And property in food and all the things which, mingling parts of themselves with parts of the body, have any function of keeping it in health, we may say is the seventh class, and we will call it collectively our nourishment, unless we have some better name to give it. All this we can assign to the arts of husbandry, hunting, gymnastics, medicine, and cooking more properly than to that of statesmanship.

Y. Soc. Of course.

Str. Now I think I have in these seven classes mentioned nearly all kinds of property except tame animals. See: there was the primary possession, which ought in justice to have been placed first, and after this the instrument, receptacle, vehicle, defence, plaything, nourishment. Whatever we have omitted, unless some important thing has been overlooked, can find its place in one of those classes; for instance, the group of coins, seals, and stamps, for there is not among these any kinship such as to form a large class, but some of them can be made to fit into the class of ornaments, others into that of instruments, though the classification is somewhat forced. All property in tame animals, except slaves, is included in the art of herding, which has already been divided into parts.

Y. Soc. Yes quite true.

Str. There remains the class of slaves and servants in general, and here I prophesy that we shall find those who set up claims against the king for the very fabric of his art, just as the spinners and carders and the rest of whom we spoke advanced claims against the weavers a while ago. All the others, whom we called contingent causes, have been removed along with the works we just mentioned and have been separated from the activity of the king and the statesman.

Y. Soc. That seems to be the case, at least.

Str. Come then, let us step up and look from close at hand at those who are left, that so we may know them more surely.

Y. Soc. Yes, that is what we should do.

Str. We shall find, then, that the greatest servants, when seen from near at hand, are in conduct and condition the opposite of that which we suspected.

Y. Soc. Who are they?

Str. The bought servants, acquired by purchase, whom we can without question call slaves. They make no claim to any share in the kingly art.

Y. Soc. Certainly not.

Str. How about those free men who put themselves voluntarily in the position of servants of those whom we mentioned before? I mean the men who carry about and distribute among one another the productions of husbandry and the other arts, whether in the domestic marketplaces or by travelling from city to city by land or sea, exchanging money for wares or money for money, the men whom we call brokers, merchants, shipmasters, and peddlers; do they lay any claim to statesmanship?

Y. Soc. Possibly to commercial statesmanship

Str. But certainly we shall never find laborers, whom we see only too glad to serve anybody for hire, claiming a share in the kingly art.

Y. Soc. Certainly not.

Str. But there are people who perform services of another kind. How about them?

Y. Soc. What services and what men do you mean?

Str. The class of heralds and those who become by long practice skilled as clerks and other clever men who perform various services in connection with public offices. What shall we call them?

Y. Soc. What you called the others, servants; they are not themselves rulers in the states.

Str. But surely it was no dream that made me say we should find somewhere in this region those who more than others lay claim to the art of statesmanship; and yet it would be utterly absurd to look for them in any servile position.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. But let us draw a little closer still to those whom we have not yet examined. There are men who have to do with divination and possess a portion of a certain menial science; for they are supposed to be interpreters of the gods to men.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And then, too, the priests, according to law and custom, know how to give the gods, by means of sacrifices, the gifts that please them from us and by prayers to ask for us the gain of good things from them; now these are both part of a servant’s art.

Y. Soc. At least they seem to be so.

Str. At last, then, I think we are, as it were, on the track of our quarry. For the bearing of the priests and prophets is indeed full of pride, and they win high esteem because of the magnitude of their undertakings. In Egypt, for example, no king can rule without being a priest, and if he happens to have forced his way to the throne from some other class, he must enroll himself in the class of priests afterwards; and among the Greeks, too, you would find that in many states the performance of the greatest public sacrifices is a duty imposed upon the highest officials. Yes, among you Athenians this is very plain, for they say the holiest and most national of the ancient sacrifices are performed by the man whom the lot has chosen to be the King. [*](The second in order of the nine annual archons.)

Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.

Str. We must, then, examine these elected kings and priests and their assistants, and also another very large crowd of people which has just come in sight now that the others are out of the way.

Y. Soc. Who are these people?

Str. A very queer lot.

Y. Soc. How so?

Str. They are of very mixed race at least they seem so now, when I can just see them. For many of them are like lions and centaurs and other fierce creatures, and very many are like satyrs and the weak and cunning beasts; and they make quick exchanges of forms and qualities with one another. Ah, but now, Socrates, I think I have just made out who they are.

Y. Soc. Tell me; for you seem to have caught sight of something strange.

Str. Yes, for ignorance makes things seem strange to everybody. That was what happened to me just now; when I suddenly caught sight of them I did not recognize the troop of those who busy themselves with the affairs of the state.

Y. Soc. What troop?

Str. That which of all the sophists is the greatest charlatan and most practised in charlatanry. This, although it is a hard thing to do, must be separated from the band of really statesmanlike and kingly men, if we are to get a clear view of the object of our search.

Y. Soc. But we certainly cannot give that up.

Str. No, of course not. I agree to that. And now please answer a question.

Y. Soc. What is it?

Str. We agree that monarchy is one of the forms of government, do we not?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And after monarchy one might, I should say, mention the rule of the few.

Y. Soc. Yes, of course.

Str. And a third form of government is the rule of the multitude, called democracy, is it not?

Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.

Str. Do not these three become after a fashion five, producing out of themselves two additional names?

Y. Soc. What names?

Str. People nowadays are likely to take into consideration enforced subjection and voluntary obedience, poverty and wealth, law and lawlessness as they occur in governments, and so they divide two of the forms we mentioned, giving to the two aspects of monarchy the two names tyranny and royalty.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. And the state that is ruled by the few is called, as the case may be, aristocracy or oligarchy.

Y. Soc. To be sure.

Str. In the case of democracy, however, whether the multitude rule those who have property by violence or with their willing consent, and whether the laws are carefully observed or not, no one ever habitually changes the name.

Y. Soc. True.

Str. Now then, do we believe that any of these forms of government which are defined by the distinctions between the one, the few, and the many, or wealth and poverty, or violence and willingness, or written constitution and absence of laws, is a right one?

Y. Soc. I don’t see why not.

Str. Look a bit more closely along the line I am going to point out.

Y. Soc. What is it?

Str. Shall we abide by what we said in the beginning, or dissent from it?

Y. Soc. To what do you refer?

Str. We said, I believe, that royal power was one of the sciences.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And not only a science, but we selected it from the rest as a science of judgement and command.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And from the science of command we distinguished one part which rules inanimate works, and one which rules living beings; and so we have gone on dividing in this manner to the present moment, never forgetting that it is a science, but as yet unable to state with sufficient accuracy what science it is.

Y. Soc. You are right.

Str. Then is this our understanding, that the distinction between forms of government ought not to be found in the words few or many, or voluntary or unwilling, or wealth or poverty, but some science must be the distinguishing feature, if we are to be consistent with our previous statement?

Y. Soc. Yes, indeed; it cannot be otherwise.

Str. Necessarily, then, our present duty is to inquire in which, if any, of these forms of government is engendered the science of ruling men, which is about the greatest of sciences and the most difficult to acquire. We must discover that in order to see what men are to be distinguished from the wise king—men, I mean, who pretend to be, and make many believe that they are, statesmen, but are really not such at all.

Y. Soc. Yes, we must do this; that is implied in what was said before.

Str. Does it seem at all possible that a multitude in a state could acquire this science?

Y. Soc. By no means.

Str. But in a state of one thousand men could perhaps a hundred or as many as fifty acquire it adequately?

Y. Soc. No, in that case this would be the easiest of all the arts; for we know that a city of a thousand men could never produce that number of finished draught-players in comparison with those in other Greek cities, still less so many kings. For the man who possesses the kingly science, whether he rule or not, must be called kingly, as our previous argument showed.

Str. You did well to remind me. And in agreement with this, we must, I suppose, look for the right kind of rule in one or two or very few men, whenever such right rule occurs.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. And these men, whether they rule over willing or unwilling subjects, with or without written laws, and whether they are rich or poor, must, according to our present opinion, be supposed to exercise their rule in accordance with some art or science. And physicians offer a particularly good example of this point of view. Whether they cure us against our will or with our will, by cutting us or burning us or causing us pain in any other way, and whether they do it by written rules or without them, and whether they are rich or poor, we call them physicians just the same, so long as they exercise authority by art or science, purging us or reducing us in some other way, or even adding to our weight, provided only that they who treat their patients treat them for the benefit of their health and preserve them by making them better than they were. In this way and no other, in my opinion, shall we determine this to be the only right definition of the rule of the physician or of any other rule whatsoever.

Y. Soc. Very true.

Str. It is, then, a necessary consequence that among forms of government that one is preeminently right and is the only real government, in which the rulers are found to be truly possessed of science, not merely to seem to possess it, whether they rule by law or without law, whether their subjects are willing or unwilling, and whether they themselves are rich or poor—none of these things can be at all taken into account on any right method.

Y. Soc. Excellent.

Str. And whether they purge the state for its good by killing or banishing some of the citizens, or make it smaller by sending out colonies somewhere, as bees swarm from the hive, or bring in citizens from elsewhere to make it larger, so long as they act in accordance with science and justice and preserve and benefit it by making it better than it was, so far as is possible, that must at that time and by such characteristics be declared to be the only right form of government. All other forms must be considered not as legitimate or really existent, but as imitating this; those states which are said to be well governed imitate it better, and the others worse.

Y. Soc. Everything else that you have said seems reasonable; but that government should be carried on without laws is a hard saying.

Str. You got ahead of me a little with your question, Socrates; for I was just going to ask whether you accepted all I have said, or were displeased with anything. But now it is clear that we shall have to discuss the question of the propriety of government without laws.

Y. Soc. Of course we shall.

Str. In a sense, however, it is clear that law-making belongs to the science of kingship; but the best thing is not that the laws be in power, but that the man who is wise and of kingly nature be ruler. Do you see why?

Y. Soc. Why is it?

Str. Because law could never, by determining exactly what is noblest and must just for one and all, enjoin upon them that which is best; for the differences of men and of actions and the fact that nothing, I may say, in human life is ever at rest, forbid any science whatsoever to promulgate any simple rule for everything and for all time. We agree to that, I suppose?

Y. Soc. Yes, of course.

Str. But we see that law aims at pretty nearly this very thing, like a stubborn and ignorant man who allows no one to do anything contrary to his command, or even to ask a question, not even if something new occurs to some one, which is better than the rule he has himself ordained.

Y. Soc. True; the law treats each and all of us exactly as you describe.

Str. So that which is persistently simple is inapplicable to things which are never simple?

Y. Soc. I suppose so.

Str. Why in the world, then, is it necessary to make laws, since law is not the most perfect right? We must ask the reason for this.

Y. Soc. Yes, of course.

Str. Well, there are here at Athens, as in other cities, classes for practice in athletics to prepare for contests in running or the like, are there not?

Y. Soc. Yes, a great many of them.

Str. Now let us recall to mind the orders given by the professional trainers when they are in charge of such classes.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. They think they cannot go into details in individual cases and order what is best for each person’s physique; they think they must employ a rougher method and give a general rule which will be good for the physique of the majority.

Y. Soc. Good.

Str. And therefore they nowadays assign equal exercise to whole classes; they make them begin at the same time and stop at the same time, whether they run or wrestle or practise any other kind of bodily exercise.

Y. Soc. That is true.

Str. And so we must believe that the law-maker who is to watch over the herds and maintain justice and the obligation of contracts, will never be able by making laws for all collectively, to provide exactly that which is proper for each individual.

Y. Soc. Probably not, at any rate.

Str. But he will, I fancy, legislate for the majority and in a general way only roughly for individuals, whether he issues written laws or his enactments follow the unwritten traditional customs.

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. Yes, quite right. For how could anyone, Socrates, sit beside each person all his life and tell him exactly what is proper for him to do? Certainly anyone who really possessed the kingly science, if he were able to do this, would hardly, I imagine, ever put obstacles in his own way by writing what we call laws.

Y. Soc. No, at least not according to what has just been said.

Str. Or rather, my friend, not according to what is going to be said.

Y. Soc. What is that?

Str. Something of this sort: Let us suppose that a physician or a gymnastic trainer is going away and expects to be a long time absent from his patients or pupils; if he thinks they will not remember his instructions, he would want to write them down, would he not?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. What if he should come back again after a briefer absence than he expected? Would he not venture to substitute other rules for those written instructions if others happened to be better for his patients, because the winds or something else had, by act of God, changed unexpectedly from their usual course? Would he persist in the opinion that no one must transgress the old laws, neither he himself by enacting new ones nor his patient by venturing to do anything contrary to the written rules, under the conviction that these laws were medicinal and healthful and anything else was unhealthful and unscientific? If anything of that sort occurred in the realm of science and true art, would not any such regulations on any subject assuredly arouse the greatest ridicule?

Y. Soc. Most assuredly.

Str. But he who has made written or unwritten laws about the just and unjust, the honorable and disgraceful, the good and the bad for the herds of men that are tended in their several cities in accordance with the laws of the law-makers, is not to be permitted to give other laws contrary to those, if the scientific law-maker, or another like him, should come! Would not such a prohibition appear in truth as ridiculous as the other?

Y. Soc. It certainly would.

Str. Do you know what people in general say about such a case?

Y. Soc. I don’t recall it just now off-hand.

Str. Yes, it is very plausible; for they say that if anyone has anything better than the old laws to offer, he must first persuade the state, and then he may make his laws, but not otherwise.

Y. Soc. And is that not right?

Str. Perhaps. But suppose a man does not use persuasion, but makes an improvement by force. What is this force to be called? Answer me—or, no, not yet; first answer in reference to what we were talking of before.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. Suppose a physician who has right knowledge of his profession does not persuade, but forces, his patient, whether man, woman, or child, to do the better thing, though it be contrary to the written precepts, what will such violence be called? The last name in the world to call it would be unscientific and baneful error, as the phrase is, would it not? And the patient so forced might rightly say anything else rather than that he had been treated in a baneful or unscientific way by the physicians who used force upon him.

Y. Soc. Very true.

Str. But what can we call the unscientific error in the field of statesmanship? Is it not baseness and evil and injustice?

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. Now if people are forced, contrary to the written laws and inherited traditions, to do what is juster and nobler and better than what they did before, tell me, will not anyone who blames such use of force, unless he is to be most utterly ridiculous, always say anything or everything rather than that those who have been so forced have suffered base and unjust and evil treatment at the hands of those who forced them?

Y. Soc. Very true.

Str. But would the violence be just if he who uses it is rich, and unjust if he is poor? Or if a man, whether rich or poor, by persuasion or by other means, in accordance with written laws or contrary to them, does what is for the good of the people, must not this be the truest criterion of right government, in accordance with which the wise and good man will govern the affairs of his subjects?