THERE is no reader who has not heard of Solon's apologetic distinction between the actual system of laws, framed by himself for the Athenian people, under his personal knowledge of the Athenian temper, and that better system which he would have framed in a case where either the docility of the national character had been greater, or the temptations to insubordination had been less. Some thing of the same distinction must be taken on behalf of Plato, between the ideal form of Civil Polity which he contemplated in the ten books of his Republic, and the practical form which he contemplated in the thirteen books of his Legislative System. In the former work he supposes himself to be instituting an independent state, on such principles as were philosophically best; in the latter, upon the assumption that what might be the best as an abstraction, was not always the best as adapted to a perverse human nature, nor under ordinary circumstances the most likely to be durable. He professes to make a compromise between his sense of duty as a philosopher, and his sense of expedience as a man of the world. Like Solon, he quits the normal for the attainable; and from the ideal man, flexible to all the purposes of a haughty philosophy, he descends in his subsequent speculations to the refractory Athenian as he really existed in the generation of Pericles. And this fact gives a great value to the more abstract work; since no inferences against Greek sentiment or Greek principles could have been drawn from a work applying itself to Grecian habits as he found them, which it would not be easy to evade. "This," it would have been said, " is not what Plato approved-but what Plato conceived to be the best compromise with the difficulties of the case under the given civilization." Now, on the contrary, we have Plato's view of absolute optimism, the true maximum

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perfectionis for social man, in a condition openly assumed to be modelled after a philosopher's ideal. There is no work, therefore, from which profounder draughts can be derived of human frailty and degradation, under its highest intellectual expansion, previously to the rise of Christianity. Just one century dated from the birth of Plato, which, by the most plausible chronology, very little preceded the death of Pericles, the great Macedonian expedition under Alexander was proceeding against Persia. that time the bloom of Greek civility had suffered. That war, taken in connexion with the bloody feuds that succeeded it amongst the great captains of Alexander, gave a shock to the civilization of Greece; so that upon the whole, until the dawn of the Christian era, more than four centuries later, it would not be possible to fix on any epoch more illustrative of Greek intellect, or Greek refinement, than precisely that youth of Plato, which united itself by immediate consecutive succession to the most brilliant section in the administration of Pericles. It was, in fact, throughout the course of the Peloponnesian war-the one sole war that divided the whole household of Greece against itself, giving motive to efforts, and dignity to personal competitionscontemporary with Xenophon and the younger Cyrus, during the manhood of Alcibiades, and the declining years of Socrates-amongst such coevals and such circumstances of war and revolutionary truce-that Plato passed his fervent youth. The bright sunset of Pericles still burned in the Athenian heavens; the gorgeous tragedy and the luxuriant comedy, so recently created, were now in full possession of the Athenian stage; the city was yet fresh from the hands of its creatorsPericles and Phidias; the fine arts were towering into their meridian altitude; and about the period when Plato might be considered an adult

sui juris, that is just 410 years before the birth of Christ, the Grecian intellect might be said to culminate in Athens.

Any more favourable era for estimating the Greek character, cannot, we presume, be suggested. For, although personally there might be a brighter constellation gathered about Pericles, at a date twenty-five years antecedent to this era of Plato's maturity, still, as regarded the results upon the collective populace of Athens, that must have been become most conspicuous and palpable in the generation immediately succeeding. The thoughtfulness impressed by the new theatre, the patriotic fervour generated by the administration of Pericles, must have revealed themselves most effectually after both causes had been operating through one entire generation. And Plato, who might have been kissed as an infant by Pericles, but never could have looked at that great man with an eye of intelligent admiration to whose ear the name of Pericles must have sounded with the same effect as that of Pitt to the young men of our British Reform Bill-could yet better appreciate the elevation which he had impressed upon the Athenian character, than those who, as direct coevals of Pericles, could not gain a sufficient "elongation" from his beams to appreciate his lustre. Our inference is that Plato, more even than Pericles, saw the consummation of the Athenian intellect, and witnessed more than Pericles himself the civilization effected by Pericles.

This consideration gives a value to every sentiment expressed by Plato. The Greck mind was then more intensely Greek than at any subsequent period. After the period of Alexander, it fell under exotic influences alien and Asiatic in some cases, regal and despotic in others. One hundred and fifty years more brought the country under the Roman yoke; after which the true Grecian intellect never spoke a natural or genial language again. The originality of the Athenian mind had exhaled under the sense of constraint. But as yet, and throughout the life of Plato, Greece was essentially Grecian, and Athens radically Athenian.

With respect to those particular works of Plato which concern the constitution of governments, there is this special reason for building upon them

any inferences as to the culture of Athenian society—that probably these are the most direct emanations from the Platonic intellect, the most purely representative of Plato individually, and the most prolonged or sustained effort of his peculiar mind. It is customary to talk of a Platonic philosophy as a coherent whole, that may be gathered by concentration from his disjointed dialogues. Our belief is, that no such systematic whole exists. Fragmentary notices are all that remain in his works. The four minds, from whom we have received the nearest approximation to an orbicular system, or total body of philosophy, are those of Aristotle, of Des Cartes, of Leibnitz, and lastly, of Immanuel Kant. All these men have manifested an ambition to complete the cycle of their philosophic speculations; but, for all that, not one of them has come near to his object. How much less can any such cycle or systematic whole be ascribed to Plato! His dialogues are a succession of insulated essays, upon problems just then engaging the attention of thoughtful men in Greece. But we know not how much of these speculations may really belong to Socrates, into whose mouth so large a proportion is thrown; nor have we any means of discriminating between such doctrines as were put forward occasionally by way of tentative explorations, or trials of dialectic address, and on the other hand, such as Plato adopted in sincerity of heart, whether originated by his master or by himself. There is, besides, a very awkward argument for suspending our faith in any one doctrine as rigorously Platonic. We are assured beforehand, that the intolerance of the Athenian people in the affair of Socrates, must have damped the speculating spirit in all philosophers who were not prepared to fly from Athens. It is no time to be prating as a philosophical free-thinker, when bigotry takes the shape of judicial persecution. That one cup of poison administered to Socrates, must have stifled the bold spirit of philosophy for a century to come. This is a reasonable presumption. But the same argument takes another and a more selfconfessing form in another feature of Plato's writings; viz. in his affectation of a double doctrine-esoteric, the private and confidential form

authorized by his final ratification-and exoteric, which was but another name for impostures with which he duped those who might else have been calumniators. But what a world of falsehoods is wrapped up in this pretence! First of all, what unreflecting levity to talk of this twofold doctrine as at all open to the human mind on questions taken generally! How many problems of a philosophic nature can be mentioned, in which it would be at all possible to maintain this double current, flowing collaterally, of truth absolute and truth plausible? No such double view would be often available under any possible sacrifice of truth. Secondly, if it were, how thoroughly would that be to adopt and renew those theatrical pretences of the itinerant Sophiste, or encyclopædic hawkers of knowledge, whom elsewhere and so repeatedly, Plato, in the assumed person of Socrates, had contemptuously exposed. Thirdly, in a philosophy by no means remarkable for its opulence in ideas, which moves at all only by its cumbrous superfluity of words, (partly in disguise of which, under the forms of conversation, we believe the mode of dialogue to have been first adopted,) how was this double expenditure to be maintained? What tenfold contempt it impresses upon a man's poverty, where he himself forces it into public exposure by insisting on keeping up a double establishment in the town and in the country, at the very moment that his utmost means are below the decent maintainence of one very humble household! Or let the reader represent to himself the miserable charlatanerie of a gasconading secretary affecting to place himself upon a level with Cæsar, by dictating to three amanuenses at once, when the slender result makes it painfully evident, that to have kept one moving in any respectable manner, would have bankrupted his resources. But, lastly, when this affectation is maintained of a double doctrine, by what test is the future student to distinguish the one from another? Never was there an instance in which vanity was more short-sighted. It would not be sible by any art or invention more effectually to extinguish our interest in a scheme of philosophy-by summarily extinguishing all hope of our sepa. rating the true from the false, the

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authentic from the spurious-than by sending down to posterity this claim to a secret meaning lurking behind a mask. If the key to the distinction between true and false is sent down with the philosophy, then what purpose of concealment is attained? Who is it that is duped? On the other hand, if it is not sent down, what purpose of truth is attained? Who is it then that is not duped? And if Plato relied upon a confidential successor as the oral expounder of his secret meaning, how blind must he have been to the course of human contingencies, who should not see that this tradition of explanation could not flow onwards through four successive generations without inevitably suffering some fatal interruption; after which, once let the chain be dropped, the links would never be recoverable, as, in effect, we now see to be the result. No man can venture to say, amidst many blank contradictions and startling inconsistencies, which it is that represents the genuine opinion of Plato; which the ostensible opinion for evading a momentary objection, or for provoking opposition, or perhaps simply for prolonging the conversation. And upon the whole, this one explosion of vanity, of hunger-bitten penury affecting the riotous superfluity of wealth-has done more to check the interest in Plato's opinions than all his mysticism and all his vagueness of purpose. In other philosophers, even in him who professedly adopted the rule of exoricov,' 'darken your meaning,' there is some chance of arriving at the real doctrine, because, though hidden, it is one. But with a man who avows a purpose of double dealing, to understand is, after all, the smallest part of your task. Having perhaps with difficulty framed a coherent construction for the passage, having with much pains entitled your self to say," Now I comprehend,"next comes the question, What is it you comprehend? Why, perhaps a doctrine which the author secretly ab. jured; in which he was misleading the world; in which he put forward a false opinion for the benefit of other passages, and for the sake of securing safety to those in which he revealed what he supposed to be the truth.

There is, however, in the following political hypothesis of Plato, less real danger from this conflict of two mean

ings, than in those cases where he treated a great pre-existing problem of speculation. Here, from the practical nature of the problem, and its more ad libitum choice of topics, he was not forced upon those questions, which, in a more formal theorem, he could not uniformly evade. But one difficulty will always remain for the perplexity of the student-viz. in what point it was that Socrates had found it dangerous to tamper with the religion of Greece, if Plato could safely publish the free-thinking objections which are here avowed. In other respects, the Ideal Republic of Plato will surprise those who have connected with the very name of Plato a sort of starry elevation, and a visionary dedication to what is pure. Of purity, in any relation, there will be found no traces of visionariness, more than enough.

The first book of the Polity, or general form of Commonwealths, is occupied with a natural, but very immethodical discussion of justice. Justice-as one of those original problems unattainable in a solitary life, which drove men into social union, that by a common application of their forces that might be obtained which else was at the mercy of accident-should naturally occupy the preliminary place in a speculation upon the possible varieties of government. According ly, some later authors, like Mr Godwin in his Political Justice, have transmuted the whole question as to forms of social organization into a transcendant question of Justice; and how it can be fairly distributed in reconcilement with the necessities of a practical administration or the gene ral prejudices of men. A state, a commonwealth, for example, is not simply a head or supremacy in relation to the other members of a politi, cal union; it is also itself a body amongst other coequal bodies-one republic amongst other co-ordinate republics. War may happen to arise; taxation; and many other burdens. How are these to be distributed so as not to wound the fundamental principle of justice? They may be apportioned unequally. That would be injustice without a question. There may be scruples of conscience as to war, or contributions to war. That would be a more questionable case: but it would demand a consideration,

and must be brought into harmony with the general theory of justice. For the supreme problem in such a speculation seems to be this-how to draw the greatest amount of strength from civil union; how to carry the powers of man to the greatest height of improvement, or to place him in the way of such improvement; and lastly, to do all this in reconciliation with the least possible infringement or suspension of man's individual rights. Under any view, therefore, of a commonwealth, nobody will object to the investigation of justice-as a proper basis for the whole edifice. But the student is dissatisfied with this Platonic introduction-1st, as being too casual and occasional, consequently as not prefiguring in its course the order of those speculations which are to follow; 2dly, as too verbal and hair-splitting; 3dly, that it does not connect itself with what follows. It stands inertly and uselessly before the main disquisition as a sort of vestibule, but we are not made to see any transition from one to the other.

Meantime, the outline of this nominal introduction is what follows:Socrates has received an invitation to a dinner party [dv] from the son of Cephalus, a respectable citizen of Athens. This citizen, whose sons are grown up, is naturally himself advanced in years; and is led, therefore, reasonably to speak of old age. This he does in the tone of Cicero's Cato; contending that, upon the whole, it is made burdensome only by men's vices. But the value of his testimony is somewhat lowered by the fact, that he is moderately wealthy; and secondly, (which is more important,) that he is constitutionally moderate in his desires. Towards the close of his remarks, he says something on the use of riches in protecting us from injurious treatment-whether of our own towards others, or of others towards us.

This calls up Socrates, who takes occasion to put a general question as to the nature and definition of injustice. Cephalus declines the further prosecution of the dialogue for himself, but devolves it on his son. Some of the usual Attic word-sparring follows-of which this may be taken as a specimen :-a definition having been given of justice in a tentative way by Socrates himself, as though it might

be that quality which restores to every one what we know to be his own; and the eldest son having adopted this definition as true, Socrates then opposes the case in which, having borrowed a sword from a man, we should be required deliberately to replace it in the hands of the owner, knowing him to be mad. An angry interruption takes place from one of the company called Thrasymachus. This is appeased by the obliging behaviour of Socrates. But it produces this effect upon what follows, that in fact from one illustration adduced by this Thrasymachus, the whole subsequent discipline arises. He, amongst other arts which he alleges in evidence of his views, cites that of government; and by a confusion between mere municipal law and the moral law of universal obligation, he contends that in every land that is just which promotes the interest or wishes of the

governing power-be it king, nobles, or people as a body. Socrates opposes him by illustrations, such as Xenophon's Memorabilia, here made familiar to all the world, drawn from the arts of cooks, shepherds, pilots, &c.; and the book closes with a general defence of justice as requisite to the very existence of political states; since without some trust reposed in each other, wars would be endless, it is also presumable, that man, if generally unjust, would be less prosperous - as enjoying less of favour from the gods; and finally, that the mind, in a temper of injustice, may be regarded as diseased; that it is less qualified for discharging its natural functions; and that thus, whether looking at bodies politic or individuals, the sum of happiness would be greatly diminished, if injustice were allowed to prevail.

In the beginning of this Book, two brothers, Glauco and Adeimantus, undertake the defence of injustice; but upon such arguments as have not even a colourable plausibility. They suppose the case that a man were possessed of the ring which conferred the privilege of invisibility; a fiction so multiplied in modern fairy tales, but which in the barren legends of the Pagan world was confined to the ring of Gyges. Armed with this advantage, they contend that every man would be unjust. But this is change only of fact. Next, however, they suppose a case still more monstrous; viz. that moral distinctions should be so far confounded, as that a man practising all injustice, should pass for a man exquisitely just, and that a corresponding transfer of reputation should take place with regard to the just man: under such circumstances they contend that every man would hasten to be unjust; and that the unjust would reap all the honours together with all the advantages of life. From all From all which they infer two things-First, that injustice is not valued for any thing in its own nature or essence, but for its consequences; and secondly, that it is a combination of the weak many against the few who happen to be strong, which has invested

justice with so much splendour by means of written laws. It seems strange that, even for a momentary effect in conversation, such trivial sophistry as this could avail. Because, if in order to represent justice and injustice as masquerading amongst men, and losing their customary effects, or losing their corresponding impressions upon men's feelings, it is necessary first of all to suppose the whole realities of life confounded, and fantastic impossibilities established, no result at all from such premises could be worthy of attention; and, after all, the particular result supposed does not militate in any respect against the received notions as to moral distinctions. Injustice might certainly pass for justice; and as a second case, injustice, having a bribe attached to it, might blind the moral sense to its true proportions of evil. But that will not prove that injustice can ever fascinate as injustice, or again, that it will ever prosper as regards its effects in that undisguised manifestation. If, to win upon men's esteem, it must privately wear the mask of justice; or if, to win upon men's practice, it must previously connect itself with artificial bounties of honour and preferment-all this is but_another way of pronouncing a eulogy on