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443
For example, if an answer were demanded to the question concerning that city and the man whose birth and breeding was in harmony with it, whether we believe that such a man, entrusted with a depositCf. on 332 A and Aristotle Rhet. 1383 b 21. of gold or silver, would withhold it and embezzle it, who do you suppose would think that he would be more likely so to act than men of a different kind? No one would, he said. And would not he be far removed from sacrilege and theft and betrayal of comrades in private life or of the state in public? He would. And, moreover, he would not be in any way faithless either in the keeping of his oaths or in other agreements. How could he? Adultery, surely, and neglect of parents and of the due service of the gods would pertain to anyone rather than to such a man. To anyone indeed, he said. And is not the cause of this to be found in the fact that each of the principles within him does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled? Yes, that and nothing else. Do you still, then, look for justice to be anything else than this potency which provides men and cities of this sort? No, by heaven, he said, I do not. Finished, then, is our dream and perfected —the surmise we spoke of,ὅ: Cf. on 434 D. that, by some Providence, at the very beginning of our foundation of the state, we chanced to hit upon the original principle and a sort of type of justice. Most assuredly. It really was, it seems, Glaucon, which is why it helps,The contemplation of the εἴδωλον, image or symbol, leads us to the reality. The reality is always the Platonic Idea. The εἴδωλον, in the case of ordinary things, is the material copy which men mistake for the reality (516 A). In the case of spiritual things and moral ideas, there is no visible image or symbol (Politicus 286 A), but imperfect analogies, popular definitions, suggestive phrases, as τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν, well-meant laws and institutions serve as the εἴδωλα in which the philosophic dialectician may find a reflection of the true idea. Cf. on 520 C, Sophist 234 C, Theaetetus 150 B. a sort of adumbration of justice, this principle that it is right for the cobbler by nature to cobble and occupy himself with nothing else, and the carpenter to practice carpentry, and similarly all others. But the truth of the matterCf. Timaeus 86 D, Laws 731 E, Apology 23 A. The reality of justice as distinguished from the εἴδωλον, which in this case is merely the economic division of labor. Adam errs in thinking that the real justice is justice in the soul, and the εἴδωλον is justice in the state. In the state too the division of labor may be taken in the lower or in the higher sense. Cf. on 370 A, Introduction p. xv. was, as it seems, that justice is indeed something of this kind, yet not in regard to the doing of one’s own business externally, but with regard to that which is within and in the true sense concerns one’s self, and the things of one’s self—it means thatμὴ ἐάσαντα . . . δόχαν 444 A: Cf. Gorgias 459 C, 462 C. A series of participles in implied indirect discourse expand the meaning of τὴν ἐντός (πρᾶξιν), and enumerate the conditions precedent (resumed in οὕτω δή443 E; Cf. Protagoras 325 A) of all action which is to be called just if it tends to preserve this inner harmony of the soul, and the reverse if it tends to dissolve it. The subject of πράττειν is anybody or Everyman. For the general type of sentence and the Stoic principle that nothing imports but virtue cf. 591 E and 618 C. a man must not suffer the principles in his soul to do each the work of some other and interfere and meddle with one another, but that he should dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is properly his own,Cf. on 433 E. and having first attained to self-masteryCf. Gorgias 491 D where Callicles does not understand. and beautiful orderCf. Gorgias 504. within himself,Cf. 621 C and on 352 A. and having harmonizedThe harmony of the three parts of the soul is compared to that of the three fundamental notes or strings in the octave, including any intervening tones, and so by implication any faculties of the soul overlooked in the preceding classification. Cf. Plutarch, Plat. Quest. 9. Proclus, p. 230 Kroll. ὥσπερ introduces the images, the exact application of which is pointed by ἀτεχνῶς. Cf. on 343 C. The scholiast tries to make two octaves (δὶς διὰ πασῶν) of it. The technical musical details have at the most an antiquarian interest, and in no way affect the thought, which is that of Shakespeare’s For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep one in concent, Congreeing in a full and natural close Like music. (Henry V. I. ii. 179) Cf. Cicero, De rep. ii. 42, and Milton (Reason of Church Government), Discipline . . . which with her musical chords preserves and holds all the parts thereof together. these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit,Cf. Epin. 992 B. The idea was claimed for the Pythagoreans; cf. Zeller I. i. p. 463, Guyau, Esquisse d’une Morale, p. 109 La moralité n’est autre chose que l’unité de l’être. The key to effective life is unity of life, says another modern rationalist. one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in political action or private business, in all such doings believing and namingὀνομάζοντα betrays a consciousness that the ordinary meaning of words is somewhat forced for edification. Cf. Laws 864 A-B and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 9, n. 21. Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 1138 b 6) would regard all this as mere metaphor. the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul, and wisdom the science that presides over such conduct; and believing and naming the unjust action to be that which ever tends to overthrow this spiritual constitution, and brutish ignorance, to be the opinionἐπιστήμην . . . δόχαν: a hint of a fundamental distinction, not explicitly mentioned before in the Republic. Cf. Meno 97 B ff. and Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 47-49. It is used here rhetorically to exalt justice and disparage injustice. ἀμαθία is a very strong word, possibly used here already in the special Platonic sense: the ignorance that mistakes itself for knowledge. Cf. Sophist. that in turn presides ἐπιστατοῦσαν: Isocrates would have used a synonym instead of repeating the word. over this.
