The Republic | Page 6

about any single Dialogue being composed
at one time is a disturbing element, which must be admitted to affect longer works, such
as the Republic and the Laws, more than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the
seeming discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the discordant elements
which the philosopher has attempted to unite in a single whole, perhaps without being
himself able to recognise the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a
judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to anticipate for
themselves. They do not perceive the want of connexion in their own writings, or the
gaps in their systems which are visible enough to those who come after them. In the
beginnings of literature and philosophy, amid the first efforts of thought and language,
more inconsistencies occur than now, when the paths of speculation are well worn and
the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency, too, is the growth of time; and
some of the greatest creations of the human mind have been wanting in unity. Tried by
this test, several of the Platonic Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be
defective, but the deficiency is no proof that they were composed at different times or by
different hands. And the supposition that the Republic was written uninterruptedly and by
a continuous effort is in some degree confirmed by the numerous references from one
part of the work to another.
The second title, 'Concerning Justice,' is not the one by which the Republic is quoted,
either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and, like the other second titles of the
Platonic Dialogues, may therefore be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others

have asked whether the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the
construction of the State is the principal argument of the work. The answer is, that the
two blend in one, and are two faces of the same truth; for justice is the order of the State,
and the State is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society.
The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of the State, as of the
individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of
which justice is the idea. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is
within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; 'the house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens,' is reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or, to
use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through
the whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed, the conception of
justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names throughout the
work, both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards
and punishments in another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which common
honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good,
which is the harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of states and in
motions of the heavenly bodies (cp. Tim.). The Timaeus, which takes up the political
rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly occupied with hypotheses
concerning the outward world, yet contains many indications that the same law is
supposed to reign over the State, over nature, and over man.
Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and modern times.
There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to
design. Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a
large element which was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows
under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not
worked out the argument to the end before he begins. The reader who seeks to find some
one idea under which the whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest
and most general. Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations of
the argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have found the true argument 'in the
representation of human life in a State perfected by justice, and governed according to the
idea of good.' There may be some use in such general descriptions, but they can hardly be
said to express the design of the writer. The truth is, that we may as well speak of many
designs as of one; nor