than in the earlier dialogues.
The distinction between ethics and politics has not yet dawned upon Plato's mind. To him, law is still floating in a region between the two. He would have desired that all the acts and laws of a state should have regard to all virtue. But he did not see that politics and law are subject to their own conditions, and are distinguished from ethics by natural differences. The actions of which politics take cognisance are necessarily collective or representative; and law is limited to external acts which affect others as well as the agents. Ethics, on the other hand, include the whole duty of man in relation both to himself and others. But Plato has never reflected on these differences. He fancies that the life of the state can be as easily fashioned as that of the individual. He is favourable to a balance of power, but never seems to have considered that power might be so balanced as to produce an absolute immobility in the state. Nor is he alive to the evils of confounding vice and crime; or to the necessity of governments abstaining from excessive interference with their subjects.
Yet this confusion of ethics and politics has also a better and a truer side. If unable to grasp some important distinctions, Plato is at any rate seeking to elevate the lower to the higher; he does not pull down the principles of men to their practice, or narrow the conception of the state to the immediate necessities of politics. Political ideals of freedom and equality, of a divine government which has been or will be in some other age or country, have greatly tended to educate and ennoble the human race. And if not the first author of such ideals (for they are as old as Hesiod), Plato has done more than any other writer to impress them on the world. To those who censure his idealism we may reply in his own words – 'He is not the worse painter who draws a perfectly beautiful figure, because no such figure of a man could ever have existed' (Republic).
A new thought about education suddenly occurs to him, and for a time exercises a sort of fascination over his mind, though in the later books of the Laws it is forgotten or overlooked. As true courage is allied to temperance, so there must be an education which shall train mankind to resist pleasure as well as to endure pain. No one can be on his guard against that of which he has no experience. The perfectly trained citizen should have been accustomed to look his enemy in the face, and to measure his strength against her. This education in pleasure is to be given, partly by festive intercourse, but chiefly by the song and dance. Youth are to learn music and gymnastics; their elders are to be trained and tested at drinking parties. According to the old proverb, in vino veritas, they will then be open and visible to the world in their true characters; and also they will be more amenable to the laws, and more easily moulded by the hand of the legislator. The first reason is curious enough, though not important; the second can hardly be thought deserving of much attention. Yet if Plato means to say that society is one of the principal instruments of education in after-life, he has expressed in an obscure fashion a principle which is true, and to his contemporaries was also new. That at a banquet a degree of moral discipline might be exercised is an original thought, but Plato has not yet learnt to express his meaning in an abstract form. He is sensible that moderation is better than total abstinence, and that asceticism is but a one-sided training. He makes the sagacious remark, that 'those who are able to resist pleasure may often be among the worst of mankind.' He is as much aware as any modern utilitarian that the love of pleasure is the great motive of human action. This cannot be eradicated, and must therefore be regulated, – the pleasure must be of the right sort. Such reflections seem to be the real, though imperfectly expressed, groundwork of the discussion. As in the juxtaposition of the Bacchic madness and the great gift of Dionysus, or where he speaks of the different senses in which pleasure is and is not the object of imitative art, or in the illustration of the failure of the Dorian institutions from the prayer of Theseus, we have to gather his meaning as well as we can from the connexion.
The feeling of old age is discernible in this as well as in several other passages of the Laws. Plato has arrived at the time when men sit still and look on at life; and he is willing to allow himself and others the few pleasures which remain to them. Wine is to cheer them now that their limbs are old and their blood runs cold. They are the best critics of dancing and music, but cannot be induced to join in song unless they have been enlivened by drinking. Youth has no need of the stimulus of wine, but age can only be made young again by its invigorating influence. Total abstinence for the young, moderate and increasing potations for the old, is Plato's principle. The fire, of which there is too much in the one, has to be brought to the other. Drunkenness, like madness, had a sacredness and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand, as in the case of the Tarentines, it degraded a whole population, it was also a mode of worshipping the god Dionysus, which was to be practised on certain occasions. Moreover, the intoxication produced by the fruit of the vine was very different from the grosser forms of drunkenness which prevail among some modern nations.
The physician in modern times would restrict the old man's use of wine within narrow limits. He would tell us that you cannot restore strength by a stimulus. Wine may call back the vital powers in disease, but cannot reinvigorate old age. In his maxims of health and longevity, though aware of the importance of a simple diet, Plato has omitted to dwell on the perfect rule of moderation. His commendation of wine is probably a passing fancy, and may have arisen out of his own habits or tastes. If so, he is not the only philosopher whose theory has been based upon his practice.
Plato's denial of wine to the young and his approval of it for their elders has some points of view which may be illustrated by the temperance controversy of our own times. Wine may be allowed to have a religious as well as a festive use; it is commended both in the Old and New Testament; it has been sung of by nearly all poets; and it may be truly said to have a healing influence both on body and mind. Yet it is also very liable to excess and abuse, and for this reason is prohibited by Mahometans, as well as of late years by many Christians, no less than by the ancient Spartans; and to sound its praises seriously seems to partake of the nature of a paradox. But we may rejoin with Plato that the abuse of a good thing does not take away the use of it. Total abstinence, as we often say, is not the best rule, but moderate indulgence; and it is probably true that a temperate use of wine may contribute some elements of character to social life which we can ill afford to lose. It draws men out of their reserve; it helps them to forget themselves and to appear as they by nature are when not on their guard, and therefore to make them more human and greater friends to their fellow-men. It gives them a new experience; it teaches them to combine self-control with a measure of indulgence; it may sometimes restore to them the simplicity of childhood. We entirely agree with Plato in forbidding the use of wine to the young; but when we are of mature age there are occasions on which we derive refreshment and strength from moderate potations. It is well to make abstinence the rule, but the rule may sometimes admit of an exception. We are in a higher, as well as in a lower sense, the better for the use of wine. The question runs up into wider ones – What is the general effect of asceticism on human nature? and, Must there not be a certain proportion between the aspirations of man and his powers? – questions which have been often discussed both by ancient and modern philosophers. So by comparing things old and new we may sometimes help to realize to ourselves the meaning of Plato in the altered circumstances of our own life.
Like the importance which he attaches to festive entertainments, his depreciation of courage to the fourth place in the scale of virtue appears to be somewhat rhetorical and exaggerated. But he is speaking of courage in the lower sense of the term, not as including loyalty or temperance. He does not insist in this passage, as in the Protagoras, on the unity of the virtues; or, as in the Laches, on the identity of wisdom and courage. But he says that they all depend upon their leader mind, and that, out of the union of wisdom and temperance with courage, springs justice. Elsewhere he is disposed to regard temperance rather as a condition of all virtue than as a particular virtue. He generalizes temperance, as in the Republic he generalizes justice. The nature of the virtues is to run up into one another, and in many passages Plato makes but a faint effort to distinguish them. He still quotes the poets, somewhat enlarging, as his manner is, or playing with their meaning. The martial poet Tyrtaeus, and the oligarch Theognis, furnish him with happy illustrations of the two sorts of courage. The fear of fear, the division of goods into human and divine, the acknowledgment that peace and reconciliation are better than the appeal to the sword, the analysis of temperance
