The Republic | Page 5

led on to the
conception of a higher State, in which 'no man calls anything his own,' and in which there
is neither 'marrying nor giving in marriage,' and 'kings are philosophers' and 'philosophers
are kings;' and there is another and higher education, intellectual as well as moral and
religious, of science as well as of art, and not of youth only but of the whole of life. Such
a State is hardly to be realized in this world and quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal
succeeds the government of the soldier and the lover of honour, this again declining into
democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular order having not
much resemblance to the actual facts. When 'the wheel has come full circle' we do not
begin again with a new period of human life; but we have passed from the best to the
worst, and there we end. The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of the Republic is
now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is discovered to be an imitation
thrice removed from the truth, and Homer, as well as the dramatic poets, having been
condemned as an imitator, is sent into banishment along with them. And the idea of the
State is supplemented by the revelation of a future life.
The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis in the Classical
Museum.), is probably later than the age of Plato. The natural divisions are five in
number;--(1) Book I and the first half of Book II down to the paragraph beginning, 'I had
always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus,' which is introductory; the first
book containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical notions of justice, and
concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues, without arriving at any definite result. To
this is appended a restatement of the nature of justice according to common opinion, and
an answer is demanded to the question--What is justice, stripped of appearances? The
second division (2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of the third and
fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the construction of the first State and the
first education. The third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in
which philosophy rather than justice is the subject of enquiry, and the second State is
constructed on principles of communism and ruled by philosophers, and the

contemplation of the idea of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the
eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of pleasure and the
principle of tyranny are further analysed in the individual man. The tenth book (5) is the
conclusion of the whole, in which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally
determined, and the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been assured, is
crowned by the vision of another.
Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first (Books I - IV)
containing the description of a State framed generally in accordance with Hellenic
notions of religion and morality, while in the second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is
transformed into an ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the
perversions. These two points of view are really opposed, and the opposition is only
veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like the Phaedrus (see Introduction to
Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole; the higher light of philosophy breaks through the
regularity of the Hellenic temple, which at last fades away into the heavens. Whether this
imperfection of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect
reconcilement in the writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought which are
now first brought together by him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at
different times--are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the Odyssey,
which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct answer. In the age of Plato there
was no regular mode of publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering
or adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no absurdity
in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a time, or turned from one work
to another; and such interruptions would be more likely to occur in the case of a long than
of a short writing. In all attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic
writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty