That the Hebrews, according to Plato, were right in imparting to beginners the belief in their instructions in a simple form because of their incapacity
Our twelfth book of the Preparation for the Gospel will now, from this point, render what was lacking in the former one of Plato’s concord with the oracles of the Hebrews, as in the harmony of a well-tuned lyre, taking its start from a defense of our faith, which is reviled by the many. “Whether one rightly or wrongly criticizes the Laconian and Cretan constitutions would be another discussion; what the many say I could perhaps tell better than you both. For with you, even if your laws are only moderately well framed, one of the finest laws would be that no young man is to inquire which of them are well and which not, but all are to agree with one voice and from one mouth that all are well laid down, since gods laid them down; and if anyone says otherwise, they are not to endure hearing it at all; but if an old man has some thought about your laws, he is to make such remarks to a ruler and to one of his own age, in the presence of no young person. — Most rightly, stranger, you direct.” With good reason, then, the Scripture of the Hebrews, anticipating this, puts faith before the understanding and contemplation of the divine Scriptures, where it says, “If you do not believe, you shall not understand,” and again, “I believed, therefore I spoke.” Hence among us too, to those just being introduced and imperfect in condition, as infants in soul, the reading of the divine Scriptures is handed on more simply, with the instruction that they must believe what is said in them as words of God; while those advanced in condition and gray in mind are allowed to go deeper and test the sense of what is said. These the sons of the Hebrews liked to call deuterotai, as being interpreters and expounders of the meaning of the Scriptures.
That faith, according even to Plato, is the greatest of virtues
“Then next we might say: you praise most, it seems, Tyrtaeus, those who are distinguished in foreign war from outside. He would say this and agree? — Certainly. — But we, though these are good, say that those who show themselves conspicuously best in the greatest war are better still, and far. We too have a poet as witness, Theognis, a citizen of the Megarians in Sicily, who says: ‘A faithful man is worth his weight in gold and silver, Cyrnus, in grievous civil strife.’ This man, we say, in the harder war is much better than the other, nearly as much as justice, temperance, and wisdom joined together with courage are better than courage alone. For no one would ever be faithful and sound in civil strife without the whole of virtue; but of those who stand firm and fight, willing to die in war, as Tyrtaeus says, there are very many mercenaries, most of whom become reckless, unjust, insolent, and the most foolish of almost all men, except some very few. Where then does this argument now end for us, and what does it wish to make clear in saying this? Clearly this: that above all both the lawgiver here from Zeus and every lawgiver of even small use will always lay down his laws looking above all to nothing else than the greatest virtue; and this, as Theognis says, is faithfulness in dangers, which one might call perfect justice.” And among us the saving Word, joining wisdom with faith, approves in his own words the one adorned with both, saying, “Who then is the faithful and wise steward?” and again, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will set you over many.” Clearly in these words he shows that he accepts not irrational faith, but faith joined with the greatest virtues, such as wisdom and goodness.
That we ought to believe what is said concerning the soul, and the other statements concerning things of this kind. From the eleventh Book of The Laws
“For we seem to have gone through the earlier accounts at the right time, that the souls of the dead have a certain power after death, by which they care for the affairs of men. These accounts are true, but long; and one must believe the other traditions about such things, so many and very ancient as they are, and must believe also those who lay it down by law that these things are so, unless they appear altogether foolish.” And in the book of the Maccabees, Jeremiah the prophet is said, after his departure from life, to be seen praying for the people, as caring for men on earth. And Plato too says one must believe these things.
That it will be necessary to deliver the first introductory lessons to children in the form of fables. From the second Book of The Republic
“There are two kinds of discourse, the one true, the other false. — Yes. — And must we educate in both, but first in the false? — I do not understand, he said, what you mean. — Do you not understand, I said, that we first tell children myths? And this, taken as a whole, is false, though there are true things in it too. And we use myths with children before gymnastics. — That is so.” So Plato. Among the Hebrews too it is customary to hand on the histories of the inspired Scripture to those who are infants in soul more simply, like certain stories, but to those trained in condition the deeper and doctrinal contemplations of the words, through what is called deuterosis and the clarification of meanings hidden from the many.
That no hurtful fables must be recited to children, but only those that are beneficial
“Do you not know, then, that the beginning of every work is most important, especially for anything young and tender? For then above all it is moulded, and takes on whatever impression one wishes to stamp on each. — Certainly. — Shall we, then, so easily let children hear any chance stories made up by anyone, and take into their souls opinions mostly opposite to those we shall think they ought to have when they are grown up? — By no means shall we let them. — First, then, it seems, we must supervise the makers of stories, and accept any good story they make and reject any that is not. And we shall persuade nurses and mothers to tell the accepted ones to the children, and to mould their souls with stories far more than their bodies with their hands. Of those they tell now, most must be thrown out.” This too was observed among the Hebrews before Plato. For those who had the divine Spirit, the discerning of spirits, tested what was said and written rightly and from the Holy Spirit, and rejected what was not such, as also the words of the false prophets. And it was customary for parents and nurses to charm little children with the most profitable narratives from the divine Scriptures, as with certain stories, in preparation for the piety that would be theirs when they became men.
That Plato accepted the Faith not only in word, but also confessed that with true disposition of mind he believed and was persuaded of these things which we also believe
“Listen, then, as they say, to a very fine account, which you will think a myth, I suppose, but I an account; for I shall tell you what I am going to tell as true.” And after a little: “That the one who has passed his life justly and piously, when he dies, goes to the Islands of the Blessed and lives in all happiness apart from evils; but the one who lived unjustly and godlessly goes to the prison of retribution and justice, which they call Tartarus.” And again after a little: “Next, they must be judged stripped of all these things; for they must be judged when dead. And the judge too must be naked, dead, beholding with his very soul the very soul of each immediately upon his death, bereft of all his kin and having left behind on earth all that adornment, so that the judgment may be just.” And next he adds: “These are the things, Callicles, which I have heard and believe to be true; and from these accounts I reason that something like this follows: death, as it seems to me, is nothing other than the separation of two things, the soul and the body, from each other. And when they have been separated, each of them keeps no less its own condition, which it had when the man was alive: the body its own nature, and its treatment and its experiences, all plain to see. For instance, if anyone’s body was large by nature or nurture or both while alive, his corpse too is large when he dies; and if fat, fat also when dead; and so with the rest. And again, if he wore his hair long, his corpse too has long hair; or if anyone was a scoundrel deserving the whip and had traces of blows, scars on his body from whips or other wounds while alive, his body can be seen to have these when dead too; or if anyone’s limbs were broken or twisted while alive, so too when dead. And in a word, whatever the body had been made while alive, these things were plain to see also when dead, all or most of them for some time. The same, then, seems to me true of the soul, Callicles: all things are plain to see in the soul when it is stripped of the body, both its natural features and the experiences that the man had in his soul from his pursuit of each thing. When, then, they come to the judge, those from Asia to Rhadamanthys, Rhadamanthys makes them stand and beholds the soul of each, not knowing whose it is; but often, taking hold of the Great King, or some other king or potentate, he sees nothing sound in the soul, but it scourged all over and full of scars from perjuries and injustice, which each of his acts stamped on his soul, and everything crooked from falsehood and boastfulness, and nothing straight, because it was reared without truth; and he saw the soul full of disproportion and ugliness from licence, luxury, insolence, and incontinence in its acts; and seeing it he sent it away in dishonour straight to the prison, where it is to go and endure the sufferings it deserves. It is fitting for everyone under punishment, rightly punished by another, either to become better and be benefited, or to become an example to others, so that others, seeing him suffer what he suffers, may in fear become better. Those who are benefited and pay the penalty from gods and men are those who have committed curable sins; yet the benefit comes to them through pains and anguish both here and in Hades; for it is not possible to be released from injustice otherwise. But those who have committed the utmost injustices and through such injustices become incurable, from these the examples are made; and they themselves are no longer benefited at all, being incurable, but others are benefited who see them, because of their sins, suffering the greatest, most painful, and most fearful sufferings for all time, hung up simply as examples there in the prison in Hades, sights and warnings for the unjust who keep arriving. Of these I say Archelaus too will be one, if Polus speaks the truth, and any other such tyrant. And I think most of these examples have come from tyrants, kings, potentates, and those who have managed the affairs of cities; for these, because of their power, commit the greatest and most unholy sins. Homer too bears witness to this. For he has made kings and potentates those punished in Hades for all time, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Tityus; but Thersites, or any other wicked private man, no one has made bound by great punishments as incurable; for, I think, he did not have the power; and so he was happier than those who had it. But indeed, Callicles, it is from the powerful that the very wicked men come; yet nothing prevents good men from arising among them too, and those who do are very much to be admired. For it is hard, Callicles, and worthy of much praise, to live justly when one has great licence to do wrong; and few become such. For both here and elsewhere there have been, and I think there will be, other good men in this virtue of administering justly what is entrusted to them. And one became very famous among the other Greeks too, Aristides son of Lysimachus. But most, my good man, become bad. Of the judges, as I was saying, when that Rhadamanthys takes such a one, he knows nothing else about him, neither who he is nor of what family, but that he is a wicked man; and seeing this he sends him to Tartarus, marking him as seeming curable or incurable. And he, arriving there, suffers what is fitting. But sometimes, seeing another soul that has lived piously and with truth, the soul of a private man or another, especially, I say, Callicles, that of a philosopher who did his own business and was not a busybody in life, he admires it and sends it to the Islands of the Blessed. And Aeacus does the same; each of them judges holding a staff. But Minos sits alone overseeing, holding a golden sceptre, as Homer’s Odysseus says he saw him, ‘holding a golden sceptre, giving judgment to the dead.’ I, then, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how I shall show my soul to the judge as healthy as possible. So, bidding farewell to the honors of the many and practicing the truth, I shall try in reality to live, as best I can, as the best man, and when I die, to die so. And I call on all other men too, as far as I can; and indeed I call you in turn to this life and this contest, which I say is worth all the contests here; and I reproach you, that you will not be able to help yourself when the trial and judgment I was speaking of come upon you; but, coming before that judge, the son of Aegina, when he takes hold of you and leads you off, you will gape and grow dizzy there no less than I here, and perhaps someone will even strike you dishonourably on the cheek and treat you with every contempt.” “Perhaps, then, this seems to you a myth told as by an old woman, and you despise it. And it would be no wonder to despise it, if by searching we could find something better and truer than it. But as it is, you see that you three, who are the wisest of the Greeks today, you, Polus, and Gorgias, cannot show that one should live any other life than this, which appears profitable there too; but among so many arguments, while the others are refuted, this argument alone stands firm: that one must beware of doing wrong more than of being wronged, and that above all a man must practise not seeming to be good but being good, both in private and in public.” Plato supposed Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthys would be the judges of the dead; but the divine word testifies that all must stand before the judgment seat of God, so that each may receive what he did through the body, whether good or bad. And again: “In the day,” it says, “when God judges the secrets of men, who will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in good work seek glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life; but to those who are contentious and disobey the truth but obey unrighteousness, rage and anger, tribulation and distress on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; for there is no distinction.”
That it would not be right to publish the solemn doctrines of the truth to all
“Take care, however, that these things never fall among uneducated men; for there are hardly, I think, any teachings more ridiculous to the many than these, nor again more wonderful and inspiring to the well-endowed. And being often spoken and always heard, for many years, they are scarcely purified, like gold, with much labor.”
What kind of rulers Plato says should be appointed: simple and illiterate men, if only they were well ordered in moral character. From the sixth Book of The Laws
And among us the saving Word says, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine.” And: “For the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.” [Plato:] “And indeed in one man, when fine reasonings in the soul accomplish nothing more, but rather the very opposite of them: all these I would set down as the most discordant ignorance, both of a city and of each one of the citizens, and not that of the craftsmen, if you understand what I mean, strangers. — We understand, friend, and agree with what you say. Let this, then, be laid down as resolved and declared: that to citizens who are ignorant in these matters nothing that pertains to rule must be entrusted, and they must be reproached as ignorant, even if they are very skilled at calculation and have worked through all refinements and all that makes for quickness of soul; while those of the opposite condition must be addressed as wise, even if, as the saying goes, they know neither letters nor how to swim, and the offices must be given to them as men of sense. For how, friends, could there be even the smallest form of wisdom without harmony? There cannot. But the finest and greatest of harmonies would most justly be called the greatest wisdom; of which the one who lives according to reason partakes, while the one who falls short of it is a destroyer of his house and in no way a savior of the city, but will always be shown ignorant in the very opposite way in these matters.” Let these passages from the Laws be set down here. And the same author in the Statesman says this about not being very much concerned with names and words: “Well said, Socrates; and if you keep from being serious about names, you will appear richer in wisdom in your old age.”
That one should decline offices. From the first Book of The Republic
The Scripture of the Hebrews first presents Moses declining the leadership of the people, when he said to the one who gave the oracle, “I beg you, Lord, appoint another who is able, whom you will send”; and then Saul hiding so as not to accept the kingdom; and the prophet Jeremiah partly declining. Hear how Plato too establishes the reasonableness of declining, speaking thus: “Is this, then, now clear, Thrasymachus, that no art or rule provides what is beneficial to itself, but, as we were saying long ago, provides and commands what benefits the one ruled, looking to his advantage, who is the weaker, and not that of the stronger? For this reason, my dear Thrasymachus, I said just now that no one willingly chooses to rule and take in hand the troubles of others to set them right, but asks for pay; because one who is to practise his art well never does what is best for himself, nor commands it when he commands according to his art, but what is best for the one ruled. For this reason, it seems, there must be pay for those who are to be willing to rule, either money or honor, or a penalty if one does not rule.”
On Plato's idea of Justice
The oracles of the Hebrews teach that their prophets and righteous men endured the utmost insults and abuse and every danger courageously; and you may learn what agrees with this in Plato’s opinion too from these words of his, which he sets down in the second book of the Republic: “Having set up such a one, let us in turn set beside him in our argument the just man, a man simple and noble, wishing, as Aeschylus says, not to seem but to be good. We must take away the seeming. For if he seems just, he will have honors and gifts for seeming such; it will then be unclear whether he is such for justice’s sake or for the gifts and honors. He must be stripped of everything but justice, and made the opposite of the former man: doing no wrong, let him have the reputation of the greatest wrongdoing, so that he may be tested for justice by not being softened by ill repute and its consequences; but let him remain unmoved until death, seeming unjust throughout life but being just.” And after a little he adds: “It must be said, then; and if it is said rather crudely, do not think it is I who say it, Socrates, but those who praise injustice above justice. They will say this: that the just man so placed will be scourged, racked, bound, have his eyes burned out, and at last, having suffered every evil, will be impaled, and will learn that one should wish not to be just but to seem so.” So Plato in words; but in deeds, long before, the righteous men and prophets among the Hebrews are recorded to have suffered all these things, who, being most righteous, were treated as most unrighteous: “they were stoned, they were sawn apart, they died by the sword, they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy.” And the apostles of our Savior, pursuing the highest righteousness and piety but clothed with a reputation for unrighteousness among the many, what they suffered we may hear from their own words: “We have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men”; and, “To this very hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked and buffeted and homeless; being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being slandered we entreat; we have become as the refuse of the world.” And even to this day the noble martyrs of our Savior throughout the whole inhabited world, practicing not seeming but being righteous and pious, have suffered all that Plato listed; for they were scourged, endured chains and racks, and indeed had their eyes put out, and at last, having suffered every terror, were impaled. You would seek in vain among the Greeks for anyone like them, so that one might reasonably say that the philosopher was doing nothing else than prophesying through these words about those among us who excel in piety and true righteousness.
On the Paradise described by Moses
Moses, for certain secret reasons, said that at the beginning of the world’s constitution a paradise of God came to be, and that in it man was deceived through the woman by the serpent. Hear how Plato, all but openly reworking the words, set down something allegorical himself in the Symposium: instead of the paradise of God he named the garden of Zeus; instead of the serpent and the deception it caused he introduced Poverty plotting; instead of the first man, whom God’s counsel and providence had brought forth as a newborn son, he called Resource, son of Counsel; and instead of saying “when this world was being constituted,” he said “when Aphrodite was born,” so allegorizing the world for the sake of its beauty. He says in these very words: “When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a feast, among them Resource, the son of Counsel. When they had dined, Poverty came to beg, as there was feasting, and was at the doors. Resource, then, drunk with nectar (for there was no wine yet), went into the garden of Zeus and, weighed down, fell asleep. Poverty, then, plotting because of her own lack to have a child by Resource, lay down beside him and conceived Love.” Such things Plato too hinted at in these words, in a way like Moses.
How the woman is said to have been taken out of the man
Again, Moses said: “But for Adam there was found no helper like himself. And God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh in its place. And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman.” Plato, not understanding the sense in which this was said, clearly was not ignorant of the account, but attributes it to Aristophanes, as a comic poet accustomed to mock even solemn things, bringing him in in the Symposium saying this: “First you must learn human nature and what happened to it. For our nature of old was not the same as now, but different. First, there were three kinds of human beings, not two as now, male and female, but there was also a third, common to both of these, whose name remains, though it has vanished itself; for there was then an androgynous kind, in form and in name common to both, male and female.” Then next, mocking in his usual way, he adds: “Having said this, Zeus,” in his account, “cut the human beings in two, as people cut sorb-apples to pickle them, or eggs with hairs. And whomever he cut, he told Apollo to turn the face and half the neck toward the cut, so that the human being, seeing his own cutting, might be more orderly; and he told him to heal the rest.
On the mode of life of mankind at first
Moses described the first life of the earth-born as having been in the paradise of God, with God leading them in a life without money or possessions, everything growing for them unsown and unploughed, and they naked of the covering that came later. Hear the philosopher interpreting almost these very things in the Greek tongue. He says: “God himself shepherded them, presiding over them, as now men, being a different and more divine living creature, shepherd other kinds lower than themselves. And while he shepherded them there were no constitutions, nor possession of wives and children; for all came back to life out of the earth, remembering nothing of what went before. All such things were absent; but they had abundant fruits from oaks and much other woodland, not growing by farming, but the earth yielding them of itself. Naked and without bedding, they mostly lived in the open; for the seasons were tempered for them without pain, and they had soft beds from the abundant grass springing from the earth. This life, Socrates, you hear of as the life under Cronus; this present one, said to be under Zeus, you have experienced yourself.”
That they associated even with irrational animals
Again, Moses recorded that the serpent was wiser than all the beasts, and what the serpent said to the woman and the woman to the serpent, setting out the serpent’s conversations. Hear what Plato writes: “If, then, the nurslings of Cronus, having so much leisure and the ability to converse through speech not only with men but also with beasts, used all these for philosophy, conversing with beasts and with one another, and inquiring of every nature whether any, having some power of its own, perceived something different from the rest toward gathering wisdom, it is easy to judge that those of that time were ten thousand times happier than those of today. But if, being filled to excess with food and drink, they told one another and the beasts such tales as are now told about them, this too, to declare my own opinion, is very easy to judge. Nevertheless let us leave these things, until some competent informer appears to tell us which way the men of that time had their desires concerning knowledge and the use of speech.”
How they mention the Flood
Moses, laying down legislation for men, thought he ought to include ancient history in his preface. He mentions the flood and the life of men after it, then describes the way of life of the ancient men among the Hebrews dear to God, and of those otherwise found in transgressions, thinking that the history of these would be appropriate to what he was legislating. And Plato likewise, coming to the writing of laws, emulates the same way as Moses: in the preface of the Laws he uses his own ancient history, mentioning a flood and the life after the flood. Hear what he says at the start of the third book of the Laws: “Do the ancient accounts seem to you to have some truth? — Which ones? — That there have been many destructions of men by floods and plagues and many other things, in which only a small part of the human race was left. — Everything of that sort is very credible to everyone. — Come, then, let us consider one of the many, the one that came by the flood. — Thinking what about it? — That those who then escaped the destruction would be some hill shepherds, small embers of the human race saved on mountain-tops. — Clearly. — And such men must have been inexperienced in the other arts, and in the devices that men in cities use against one another for greed and rivalry, and all the other wrongs they devise against each other. — Likely enough. — Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plains and by the sea were utterly destroyed at that time. — Let us. — Then we shall say that all tools perished, and that whatever belonged to art, earnestly discovered, whether of statecraft or of some other wisdom, all these were lost at that time.” And after other things he says: “Let us say, then, that human affairs were thus at the time when the destruction happened: a vast and frightful desolation, but a great abundance of land.” Having said this and other such things, he goes through the lives of men after the flood; then, as Moses joins the way of life of the ancient Hebrews dear to God to his account after the flood, so Plato likewise after the lives of those after the flood tries to tell the ancient history of the Greeks, as Moses did that of the Hebrews: he mentions the Trojan War, the first constitution in Lacedaemon, the Persians, and those among them who lived rightly or not; then, after the history of these, he begins the arrangement of the laws, in this too following Moses.
That the course of doctrine rightly begins with things divine and ends with things human. From Plato's first Book of The Laws
Moses made all his legislation and his constitution depend on piety toward the God of the universe, began his legislation from the Creator of all, taught that human goods proceed from divine goods, and referred the divine to the ruling Mind of all, the God of the universe himself. See how the philosopher, walking in the same footsteps, blames the lawgivers of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians and teaches the law that pleased Moses, saying thus: “How, then, would I have wished you to distinguish and speak, and myself to hear? Shall I tell you? — By all means, stranger. — You should have said: the laws of the Cretans are not in vain especially esteemed among all the Greeks; for they are right, making those who use them happy; for they provide all goods. And goods are twofold, some human, some divine; and the one kind depends on the divine; and if a city receives the greater, it gains the lesser too; if not, it is deprived of both. The lesser are those led by health; beauty is second; third, strength for running and all other motions of the body; fourth, wealth, not blind but sharp-sighted, if it follows wisdom. And first, again, of the divine goods, the leader is wisdom; second, after mind, a temperate state of soul; from these mixed with courage, third would be justice; and fourth courage. All these are by nature ranked before those, and the lawgiver too must rank them so. After this he must bid the citizens that the other ordinances given them look to these, and of these the human to the divine, and the divine all to the ruling Mind. And in their marriages with one another, and after that in the begetting and rearing of children, male and female, young and growing older up to old age, he must take care of them, honoring and dishonoring rightly; and in all their associations he must consider and watch their pains and pleasures and desires and the pursuits of all their loves, and blame and praise rightly through the laws themselves. And after a little he says: “And having seen this, the one who laid down the laws will set guardians over all these, some proceeding by wisdom, others by true opinion, so that Mind, binding all these together, may show them following temperance and justice, not wealth or ambition. So, strangers, I would have wished you, and still wish now, to go through how in the laws said to be of Zeus and of Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus laid down, all these things are present, and how, having taken their order, they are evident to one experienced in laws by art and certain habits, though to the rest of us they are in no way plain.” And among us it is said: “Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” And Moses too, much earlier, having made his beginning from the teaching about God, and next fitted his constitution and the laws on contracts and common life, sets over all rulers and guardians consecrated to God, as the oracles teach, righteous men, hating arrogance, some proceeding by wisdom and others by true opinion.
That it is good to train children from a still early age in habits of religion
“I say, then, and declare that anyone who is to be a good man at anything must practise this very thing from childhood, in play and in earnest, in the things proper to the matter: for instance, one who is to be a good farmer or builder must play, the one at building some childish buildings, the other at farming; and the one who rears each must provide each with small tools, imitations of real ones; and must have them learn beforehand whatever studies must be learned beforehand, such as a carpenter measuring or using the rule, and a soldier riding in play or doing something else of the kind; and must try through their games to turn the children’s pleasures and desires to the end they must reach. We say, then, that the sum of education is right nurture, which, as the child plays, will lead his soul most of all to love what he must be perfect in when he becomes a man, in the excellence of the matter.” And Moses, anticipating this, legislated, saying: “And these words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart and in your soul, and you shall teach them to your sons.” And this the sons of the Hebrews are accustomed to do, rearing all the young from a tender age in the teachings of piety; and this is pursued even to this day by a kind of ancestral custom among the Jewish nation.
That we should regard as education only that which leads to virtue, not that which leads to money-making or any pursuit for earning a livelihood
“Let not, then, what we call education be left undefined. For now, in reproaching and praising the upbringing of each, we say that one of us is educated and another uneducated, sometimes even of men very highly educated in retail trade and shipping and other such things. But our present account would be of those who do not think these things education, but the education from childhood toward virtue, which makes one desire and love to become a perfect citizen, knowing how to rule and be ruled with justice. Marking off this nurture, this account, as it seems to me, would now wish to call it alone education; while that which aims at money, or at strength, or at any other cleverness without mind and justice, is vulgar and illiberal and not at all worthy to be called education. But let us not quarrel with them over a name; let the account just agreed by us stand, that those rightly educated become, generally, good; and that education must never be despised, as being the first of the finest things that come to the best men; and if ever it goes astray and can be set right, this must always be done by everyone throughout life as far as he can.” And in the second book of the Laws he adds: “I call education the virtue that first comes to children: if pleasure and love and pain and hatred arise rightly in their souls while they cannot yet grasp reason, and when they have grasped reason they agree with reason that they have been rightly trained by fitting habits; this agreement as a whole is virtue; but the part of it that is rightly trained concerning pleasures and pains, so as to hate what one must hate from the very beginning to the end, and to love what one must love, if you cut this off in your account and call it education, you would, in my view, be calling it rightly.” So Plato. But David anticipated him in his psalms, teaching to hate what one must hate and to love what one must love. He says: “Come, children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life, loving to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” And Solomon likewise: “Hear, children,” he says, “the instruction of a father; for I give you a good gift; do not forget my laws.” And again: “Acquire wisdom, acquire understanding; do not forget.” And: “Say that wisdom is your sister, and make understanding your friend.” And: “Do not go on the ways of the ungodly, nor envy the ways of the lawless.” You would find countless other such things in the writings of the Hebrews, instructive toward taking up piety and virtue, fitting for young and grown alike.
That Plato agreed with the Hebrews in thinking that this world is an image of one more divine
The divine oracle said to Moses, “See, you shall make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain,” and the sacred word said more clearly, “who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things,” teaching that the symbols in Moses contain an image of the more divine things in the intelligible realm. Hear how Plato too interprets the like in the sixth book of the Republic, writing thus: “The philosopher, then, associating with what is divine and ordered, becomes ordered and divine as far as is possible for a man; but there is much slander everywhere. — Certainly. — If, then, I said, some necessity comes upon him to practise putting what he sees there into the characters of men, in private and in public, and not to mould himself only, do you think he will be a bad craftsman of temperance and justice and all civic virtue? — Not at all, he said. — But if the many perceive that we speak the truth about him, will they still be angry with the philosophers and disbelieve us when we say that a city could never be happy otherwise unless it were sketched by painters using the divine pattern? — They will not be angry, he said, if they perceive it. But what manner of sketching do you mean? — Taking the city and the characters of men, I said, as a tablet, they would first make it clean, which is not at all easy. But you know that in this they would at once differ from others: they would not be willing to touch either private man or city, nor to write laws, before receiving it clean or making it so themselves. — And rightly, he said. — Then after this do you think they would sketch the outline of the constitution? — Of course. — Then, I think, as they work, they would often look in both directions, to what is by nature just and beautiful and temperate and all such things, and in turn to what is in men, and they would put in, mixing and blending from their pursuits, the likeness of man, judging from that which Homer called, when it appears in men, godlike and the image of God. — Rightly, he said. — And they would rub out one thing and paint in another again, until they made human characters dear to God as far as possible.”
That the young should be prepared for the acquirement of virtue by learning proper hymns and odes. From the second Book of The Laws
“The argument seems to me to have come round for the third or fourth time to the same point: that education is the drawing and leading of children toward the principle declared right by the law and agreed by the most reasonable and oldest, through experience, to be truly right. So that the soul of the child may not be accustomed to feel joy and pain contrary to the law and those obedient to the law, but may follow, rejoicing and grieving at the same things as the old man, for this reason what we call songs have become in reality charms for souls, earnestly designed for such harmony as we speak of; but because the souls of the young cannot bear earnestness, they are called and practised as games and songs; just as for the sick and those weak in body, those who care for them try to give wholesome food in pleasant foods and drinks, and unwholesome in unpleasant, so that they may welcome the one and rightly learn to hate the other. In the same way the right lawgiver will persuade, and compel if he cannot persuade, the poet to compose rightly, in fine and praiseworthy words, the forms in rhythms and the tunes in harmonies of temperate, brave, and wholly good men.” With good reason, then, among us too children are trained to practise the songs composed by the divine prophets and the hymns to God.
What kind of thoughts the odes should contain
“You compel the poets to say that the good man, being temperate and just, is happy and blessed, whether he is great and strong or small and weak, rich or not; but if he is richer than Cinyras and Midas but unjust, he is wretched and lives in misery. ‘Nor would I mention,’ your poet says to you, if he speaks rightly, ‘nor hold of account a man’ who does not do and possess all the things called fine with justice; and indeed, being such, ‘might he reach for the foe, standing close’; but being unjust, ‘may he neither dare to look on bloody slaughter, nor outrun in racing the Thracian north wind,’ nor may any other of the so-called goods ever come to him. For the things called good by the many are not rightly called so. For it is said that the best is health, second beauty, third wealth; and countless other goods are named: to see and hear sharply and to have keen perception in all the senses, and further to do whatever one desires as a tyrant, and the end of all blessedness to be immortal as quickly as possible, having all these. But you and I say this: that all these are the best possessions for just and holy men, but the worst of all for the unjust, beginning with health; and indeed seeing and hearing and perceiving and living at all is the greatest evil for one who is immortal for all time and has all the so-called goods but justice and all virtue, and a lesser evil if such a man lives on as short a time as possible. This, I think, you will persuade and compel your poets to say, as I do, and further to educate your young thus, giving rhythms and harmonies that follow these. For do you see? I say clearly that the so-called evils are goods for the unjust and evils for the just; and the goods are truly good for the good, but evil for the bad. What I asked, then: do you and I agree, or how?” These things are not far from the psalms of David, which he composed long before by the divine Spirit, teaching through songs and hymns who is truly blessed and who the opposite. Indeed his book begins with this, saying, “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,” and the like. Changing these, Plato says the poets must say “that the good man, being temperate and just, is happy and blessed; but if he is unjust, he is wretched.” And this again David set out thus in the psalms: “If riches flow in, set not your heart on them.” And again: “Do not fear when a man becomes rich, and when the glory of his house is increased.” Going through them, you would find each of the philosopher’s sayings set down almost word for word throughout the sacred writing of the psalms.
That it is not every one that can compose the proper odes and songs, but either God alone, or some godlike man
“Remarkably fit for lawgiving and statecraft. But you would find other bad things there; yet this about music is true and worth thinking on: that it was possible to legislate firmly about such things, and confidently to consecrate tunes that by nature have correctness. This would be the work of a god or some divine man.” With good reason, then, among the Hebrews it had been laid down by law to accept in the divine teachings no other hymns and songs than those composed by the divine Spirit through divine and prophetic men, and the tunes fitting these, sung in the manner customary among them.
Concerning those who are capable of judging the odes composed according to the mind of God
“So much I too grant the many, that music must be judged by pleasure, yet not the pleasure of chance comers; but that is nearly the finest music which delights the best and adequately educated, and above all that which delights the one man who excels in virtue and education. For this reason we say the judges of these things need virtue, because they must share in wisdom and also in courage. For the true judge must not judge by learning from the theater and being overwhelmed by the clamor of the many and his own lack of education; nor, knowing better, through cowardice and timidity, give judgment carelessly with the same mouth with which he invoked the gods when about to judge, lying; for the judge sits, as is just, not as a pupil but rather as a teacher of the spectators, and to oppose those who give the spectators pleasure unfittingly and wrongly.” And among the Hebrews of old, the judging of the words brought forth by the divine Spirit and the inspired songs belonged not to the multitude; but there were a few, and rare, sharers themselves of the divine Spirit that discerns what is said, to whom alone it was permitted to approve and consecrate the books of the prophets, and to reject those of others.
That even in banquets the odes should be adopted for laws as it Were of the banquet
“And what the argument wished at the beginning, to show that the aid to the chorus of Dionysus is well spoken of, it has said as far as it could. Let us consider whether this has come about so. Such a gathering necessarily becomes more and more tumultuous as the drinking goes on, which we supposed at the beginning must happen concerning what is now being said. — Necessarily. — Everyone is lifted up lighter than himself, rejoices, is filled with free speech and with not listening to his neighbors in such a state, and thinks himself fit to rule himself and others. — Certainly. — Did we not say that when this happens, the souls of the drinkers, like iron, becoming fiery, grow softer and younger, so that they become easily led by one able and knowing how to educate and mould them, as when they were young? And that this moulder is the same as then, the good lawgiver, whose laws for drinking parties must be able to make the one who has become hopeful and bold, more shameless than he ought, and unwilling to keep order and his turn in silence and speech and drinking and music, willing to do the opposite of all these; and to send in against the shameful boldness, as it enters, the finest fear to fight it, with justice, which we have named reverence and shame, a divine fear. — That is so. — And that the guardians of these laws and their fellow-craftsmen should be the calm and sober.” With good reason, then, it has been handed down to us too to sing at our banquets songs and hymns composed to God, with our guardians attending to the fitting order.
That drinking of wine is not to be permitted to all
[Plato:] “If a city will use the practice just described seriously, with laws and order, using it as training for temperance, and will not abstain from other pleasures in the same way and on the same principle, but devise means to master them, then all these must be used in this way. But if it is used as play, and anyone who wishes may drink whenever he wishes, with whomever he wishes, along with any other pursuits, I would not cast my vote that this city or this man should ever use drunkenness; but I would go even further than the practice of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and add to the law of the Carthaginians: that no one ever taste this drink on campaign, but keep to water-drinking all that time; and in the city, that neither slave nor slave-woman ever taste it, nor magistrates in the year they hold office, nor helmsmen nor judges while on duty taste wine at all, nor anyone who goes to deliberate in any council worth mention; nor anyone at all by day, except for bodily training or illness; nor again by night, when a man or woman intends to beget children. And one could name very many other cases in which wine is not to be drunk by those who have sense and right law; so that by this account no city would need many vineyards, but the other crops and the whole way of life would be ordered.” And Moses, anticipating this, legislates that the priests must not taste wine during the time of their sacred service, saying: “And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, You and your sons with you shall not drink wine or strong drink when you go into the tent of witness, or when you approach the altar, and you shall not die; it is a perpetual statute for your generations.” And he also legislates for those who make a vow, saying: “A man or woman who makes a great vow, to consecrate himself in purity to the Lord, shall abstain from wine and strong drink, and shall not drink vinegar from wine or vinegar from strong drink.” And Solomon too keeps rulers and judges from its use, saying: “Do everything with counsel; drink wine with counsel. Rulers are prone to anger; they should not drink wine, so that drinking does not make them forget wisdom and their labors.” And the apostle permits it to Timothy for illness, saying, “Use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your frequent illnesses.”
That Plato was not ignorant that his enactments were in use among certain Barbarians
“If, then, some necessity to take care of a city has come to those supreme in philosophy, either in the boundless time past, or now is in some barbarian place far outside our sight, or will be hereafter, we are ready to contend in argument that the constitution described has been, is, and will be, whenever this Muse becomes master of a city. For it is not impossible for it to come about, nor do we speak of impossibilities.”
That our warfare is against ourselves and our inward passions
“And is a man to think of himself in relation to himself as an enemy to an enemy, or how do we still say? — Athenian stranger (for I would not call you Attic; you seem to me worthy rather to be named after the goddess), by rightly taking the argument back to its beginning you have made it clearer, so that you will more easily find that we rightly said just now that all are enemies of all, publicly, and privately each to himself. — How do you mean, my admirable friend? — Here too, stranger, to conquer oneself is the first and best of all victories, and to be defeated by oneself the most shameful and worst of all. For these words signify that there is a war in each of us against ourselves.” And after other things he adds: “Shall we, then, set down each of us as one? — Yes. — But possessing within himself two counselors, opposed and foolish, which we call pleasure and pain? — That is so. — And besides both of these, opinions about the future, whose common name is expectation; and in particular fear, the expectation before pain, and confidence, before the opposite. And over all these, reasoning about which of them is better or worse; which, when it becomes the common decree of a city, is named law.” And next he says: “This we know, that these feelings within us, like sinews or cords, pull us and draw against one another, being opposite, toward opposite actions; and there lies the boundary of virtue and vice. For the argument says each must always follow one of the pulls and never let go of it, pulling against the other sinews; and this is the golden and sacred drawing of reasoning, called the common law of the city; the others are hard and iron, while this is soft, being golden, and the others are like all manner of forms. One must always assist the finest drawing, that of law; for since reasoning is fine, gentle and not violent, its drawing needs helpers, so that the golden kind in us may prevail over the other kinds. And so the myth of virtue, about our being puppets, would be preserved, and what it means to be stronger or weaker than oneself would become somehow clearer; and that a city and a private man must, the one taking within himself the true account of these pulls, live following it; and a city, receiving an account from one of the gods or from one who knows these things, making it law, live with itself and with other cities. So vice and virtue would be more clearly distinguished for us.” And among us the divine word teaches the like, saying: “I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind.” And again: “their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another,” and other such things.
That it is not the body but the soul that is the cause of our evil deeds
“We remember having agreed earlier that if soul were shown to be older than body, the things of soul would also be older than those of body. — Certainly. — Then manners, characters, wishes, reasonings, true opinions, cares, and memories would have come before length, breadth, depth, and strength of bodies, if soul is before body. — Necessarily. — Must we not, then, agree next that soul is the cause of good and evil, fair and foul, just and unjust, and all opposites, if we are to make it the cause of all things?” Let these too be set down from the tenth book of the Laws. And Moses agrees with them, saying often in his laws, “And if a soul sins and commits a trespass,” and other things said by him in the same way.
Of the pure philosopher. From the Theaetetus
The Scripture of the Hebrews says of one who earnestly pursues wisdom, “It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth; he will sit alone and keep silent, because he has taken it upon himself”; and of the prophets dear to God, that through the height of their philosophy they lived in deserts and mountains and caves, keeping their minds on God alone. Hear how Plato too deifies such a way of life, describing the perfect philosopher somewhat as follows: “Let us speak, then, as it seems, since you think so, of the leaders; for why should one speak of those who spend their time poorly in philosophy? These from youth do not know the way to the marketplace, nor where the law court is, or the council house, or any other common meeting place of the city; laws and decrees, spoken or written, they neither see nor hear. The eagerness of political clubs for offices, and meetings, and dinners, and revels with flute-girls, does not occur to them to do even in a dream. Whether anything in the city has gone well or ill, or what evil has come to anyone from his ancestors, men or women, escapes him more than the proverbial pitchers of sea-water. And he does not even know that he does not know all this; for he does not hold aloof from them for the sake of reputation, but in truth only his body lies and dwells in the city, while his mind, considering all these things small and nothing, despising them, flies everywhere, as Pindar says, ‘measuring the things beneath the earth’ and the surfaces, ‘and astronomizing above the heavens,’ and searching out every nature of each whole of the things that are, not lowering itself to any of the things near at hand. — How do you mean this, Socrates? — As Thales too, Theodorus, while astronomizing and looking up, fell into a well, and a witty and charming Thracian servant-girl is said to have mocked him, saying that he was eager to know the things in heaven, but what was in front of him and at his feet escaped him. The same jest suffices for all who spend their lives in philosophy. For truly his neighbor escapes such a one, not only what he is doing but almost whether he is a man or some other creature. But what man is, and what it befits such a nature to do or suffer different from others, he seeks and takes pains to investigate. You understand, Theodorus, or not? — I do, and you speak truly. — Therefore, my friend, such a man, in his dealings with each person privately and in public, as I said at the beginning, when he is compelled in a law court or anywhere else to talk about what is at his feet and before his eyes, provides laughter not only to Thracian girls but to the rest of the crowd, falling into wells and every perplexity through inexperience; and his awkwardness is terrible, giving an impression of stupidity. For in abuse he has nothing of his own with which to abuse anyone, since he knows no evil of anyone, not having studied it; so being at a loss he appears ridiculous. And in praises and the boasts of others, laughing not in pretence but really, he is plainly seen and thought a fool. For when a tyrant or king is praised, he thinks he hears one of the herdsmen, a swineherd or shepherd or cowherd, being called happy for milking much; but he thinks they shepherd and milk a creature more troublesome and treacherous than those. And such a ruler must become no less boorish and uneducated than the herdsmen, through lack of leisure, having a wall built round him like a fold on a mountain. And when he hears that someone, possessing ten thousand acres of land or more, possesses an amazing amount, he thinks he hears of very little, being used to look at the whole earth. And when men praise ancestry, saying someone is noble because he can show seven rich grandfathers, he thinks the praise comes from people with dull and short sight, unable through lack of education to look always at the whole, or to reckon that every man has had countless myriads of grandfathers and ancestors, among whom rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks have often been by the ten thousand for anyone. When men pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors, or trace themselves back to Heracles son of Amphitryon, the pettiness seems absurd to him; and he laughs that the twenty-fifth from Amphitryon upward was such as fortune made him, and the fiftieth from him too, because they cannot reckon and rid themselves of the vanity of a foolish soul. In all these things such a man is laughed at by the many, sometimes seeming arrogant, sometimes ignorant of what is at his feet and at a loss in each case. — You describe exactly what happens, Socrates. — But when he himself, my friend, draws someone upward, and that one is willing to step out of ‘What wrong do I do you, or you me?’ into the consideration of justice and injustice themselves, what each is and how they differ from everything else and from each other; or out of ‘Is a king happy who has much gold?’ into the examination of kingship and of human happiness and misery in general, what sort of things they are and in what way it befits human nature to gain the one and flee the other; when that petty, sharp, litigious soul has to give an account of all these, he pays back in kind: dizzy from hanging on high and looking down from above, through unfamiliarity at a loss and perplexed and stammering, he provides laughter not to Thracian girls or any other uneducated person, for they do not perceive it, but to all who have been brought up the opposite of slaves. This is the character of each, Theodorus: the one truly raised in freedom and leisure, whom you call a philosopher, for whom it is no blame to seem simple and of no account when he falls into servile tasks, such as not knowing how to pack a bedding-roll or season a dish or flattering speeches; the other able to perform all such things smartly and quickly, but not knowing how to wear his cloak like a free man, nor to take up the harmony of words and rightly hymn the true life of gods and happy men. — If you persuaded all, Socrates, of what you say as you persuade me, there would be more peace and fewer evils among men. — But evils cannot be destroyed, Theodorus; for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor can they be established among the gods, but they necessarily haunt mortal nature and this region. Therefore one must try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible. And flight is becoming like God as far as possible; and becoming like him is becoming just and holy with wisdom. But, my good man, it is not at all easy to persuade people that it is not for the reasons the many give that one should flee vice and pursue virtue, practising the one and not the other, so as not to seem bad and to seem good. For this is what is called an old wives’ tale, as it seems to me; but the truth we state thus. God is in no way unjust, but as just as possible, and there is nothing more like him than whoever of us becomes as just as possible. On this depend a man’s true cleverness and his worthlessness and unmanliness. For the knowledge of this is wisdom and true virtue, and ignorance of it is folly and manifest vice; while the other seeming cleverness and wisdoms, arising in political powers, are vulgar, and in the arts mechanical. For one who does wrong and says or does unholy things, it is far best not to grant that he is clever through villainy. For they glory in the reproach, and think they hear that they are not triflers, ‘idle burdens of the earth,’ but men such as those who are to be saved in a city ought to be. So the truth must be told, that they are all the more what they do not think, because they do not think it. For they are ignorant of the penalty of injustice, which one should least be ignorant of. For it is not what they think, blows and deaths, which they sometimes suffer while doing no wrong, but one which it is impossible to escape. — What do you mean? — Patterns, my friend, being set up in reality, one divine and most happy, the other godless and most wretched, not seeing that this is so, through silliness and utter folly they do not notice that by their unjust deeds they become like the one and unlike the other; for which they pay the penalty, living the life that suits the one they resemble. And if we tell them that, unless they are rid of their cleverness, when they die that place pure of evils will not receive them, but here they will always have the life like themselves, evil men consorting with evil, they will listen to these things as clever and villainous men listening to fools. — Very much so, Socrates. — I know it, my friend. One thing, however, happens to them: when they have to give and receive an account privately about what they blame, and are willing to hold out manfully for a long time and not flee cowardly, then strangely, my good man, they end up not pleasing themselves with what they say, and that rhetoric of theirs somehow withers away, so that they seem no different from children.”
Of all the sophistry in man
And among us it is said of all the sophistry among men: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?” And about those who philosophize according to God not thinking anything petty, we are taught where it is said: “while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” And on evil being bound up with earth and mortal life, the divine word says somewhere: “redeeming the time, because the days are evil”; and, “sufficient for the day is its evil.” And the prophet says: “Cursing and theft and adultery and murder are poured out on the earth, and they mingle blood with blood.” And about fleeing from here to God, Moses says: “You shall walk after the Lord your God, and cleave to him.” And the same teaches imitation of God, saying, “You shall be holy, because the Lord our God is holy.” And David, knowing that God is just and urging us to become imitators, says, “The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousness.” And the same taught contempt of wealth, saying, “If riches flow in, set not your heart on them”; and, “Do not fear when a man becomes rich, and when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dies he will take nothing with him, nor will his glory go down with him.” And he taught not to admire human offices either, in these words: “Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit will go forth, and he will return to his earth; in that day all his thoughts will perish.”
That it will be necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment
“A lawgiver of even small use, even if this were not so as the argument has now proved it to be, if he ever dared to lie to the young for a good purpose, could he ever tell a more profitable lie than this, and one more able to make all do all just things, not by force but willingly? — Truth is fine, stranger, and lasting; but it seems not easy to persuade.” And you would find countless such things in the Scriptures of the Hebrews too, such as speaking of God as jealous, or sleeping, or angry, or subject to other human passions, used for the benefit of those who need such a manner.
That not men only, but also women and every race of mankind, ought to be admitted to the education above described
[Plato:] “Is what went before agreed by us? — About what? — That every man and child, free and slave, female and male, and the whole city must never cease chanting to the whole city itself these things we have gone through, always changed somehow and offering every variety, so that the singers may have an insatiable desire and pleasure in the hymns. — How could it not be agreed that this should be done?” And in the fifth book of the Republic he writes similar things, saying: “Do you know, then, of anything practised by men in which the male sex does not excel the female in all these respects? Or shall we make a long story of weaving and the care of cakes and boiled dishes, in which the female sex seems to be something, and in which its defeat is most laughable of all? — You speak truly, he said, that one sex is much surpassed by the other in nearly everything; yet many women are better than many men in many things; but on the whole it is as you say. — There is no pursuit, then, my friend, among those who govern a city, that belongs to a woman as woman, nor to a man as man; but the natural gifts are scattered alike in both creatures, and woman shares by nature in all pursuits, and man in all, but in all woman is weaker than man. — Certainly. — Shall we, then, assign everything to men and nothing to woman? — How could we? — But there is, I think, as we shall say, one woman fit for medicine and another not, one musical and another unmusical by nature. — Certainly. — And one fit for gymnastics and war, and another unwarlike and not fond of gymnastics? — I think so. — And one a lover of wisdom and another a hater of it? And one spirited, another spiritless? — These too exist. — There is, then, a woman fit to be a guardian and another not; or did we not choose such a nature for the men who are guardians too? — Such indeed. — Then the nature of woman and man is the same for guarding a city, except in so far as one is weaker and the other stronger. — It seems so. — Such women, then, must be chosen to live with such men and guard with them, since they are capable and akin to them in nature.” With good reason, then, our teaching too receives every race, not only of men but also of women, not only of free and slave but also of barbarians and Greeks, into the education and philosophy that is according to God.
That it is not right to accuse the whole nation from the cases of those who live disorderly among us
“Let us consider it this way. Come, if someone praised the rearing of goats and the animal itself as a fine possession, and another, having seen goats grazing without a goatherd and doing damage in cultivated land, blamed them, and seeing any flock without a ruler or with bad rulers found fault with it so, do we think the blame of such a man would ever be sound about anything? — How could it?” And after a little: “And what of one who praises or blames any association whatever which by nature has a ruler and is beneficial with him, if he has never seen it rightly associating with a ruler, but always without a ruler or with bad rulers? Do we think such observers of such associations will ever blame or praise anything usefully? — How could they?” So among us too, if some appear doing evil without a leader and ruler, or with bad rulers, one must not blame our whole school, but rather admire the God-fearing commonwealth from those who pursue it rightly.
How Plato changed the oracles in Proverbs into a more Hellenic form
In Solomon’s Proverbs it is said concisely, “The memory of the righteous is with praises, but the name of the ungodly is quenched”; and again it is said, “Call no man blessed before his end.” Hear how Plato interprets the sense, saying in the seventh book of the Laws: “Those of the citizens who have reached the end of life having done fine and laborious deeds of body or soul and having been obedient to the laws, it would be fitting for them to receive praises. — How not? — But to honor the living with praises and hymns is not safe, until one has run through his whole life and set a fine end to it. Let all this be common to us for men and women who have clearly become good.”
Of riches and poverty
Solomon having said in Proverbs, “Give me neither wealth nor poverty,” Plato says in the fourth book of the Republic: “We have found, it seems, other things for the guardians, which they must guard against in every way, so that they do not slip into the city unnoticed. — What are these? — Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one producing luxury, idleness, and revolution, the other illiberality and bad workmanship besides revolution.” Bad workmanship (kakoergia) is every dishonourable action.
Of honor to parents
Again, Moses said in the laws, “Let each one fear his father and mother”; and, “Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you.” And Plato, like Moses, speaks of both honoring and fearing, somewhat thus in the Laws: “Every man of sense fears and honors the prayers of parents, knowing that they have often been fulfilled for many.” And again in another place he says: “Let everyone among us reverence his elder in deed and word; and him who is twenty years older, male or female, let him regard and revere as father or mother.”
Of purchasing slaves
Moses in his laws forbade Hebrews to enslave Hebrews, saying, “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve you six years; and in the seventh year you shall send him away free.” And Plato likewise says in the Republic: “Then they themselves are not to own a Greek as slave, and are to advise the other Greeks so? — Certainly, he said; so they would rather turn against barbarians and keep off one another.”
How he altered the saying, 'Do not remove ancient landmarks which were set by your ancestors'
[Plato:] “Let no one move the boundaries of land, either of a fellow-citizen neighbor, or of a bordering foreigner, if he owns land at the frontier; considering that this is truly to move the immovable.” And next he says: “Whoever works over his neighbor’s land, overstepping the boundaries, let him pay the damage; and, to be cured of his shamelessness and meanness, let him pay a further double of the damage to the one harmed.”
A saying like, Visiting the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me
[Plato:] “In a word, the reproaches and punishments of a father are not to follow any of the children, except if someone’s father and grandfather and great-grandfather in succession have incurred the penalty of death.”
Of thieves
Moses’ law said, “If anyone steals a calf or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five calves for the calf and four sheep for the sheep; but if the stolen thing is found alive in his hand, from calf and ass to sheep, he shall pay double.” Hear how Plato follows these, saying: “For a thief, whether he steals much or little, let one law and one penalty apply to all: he must first pay double the stolen thing, if he is convicted in such a suit and has enough other property beyond his allotment to pay; if not, he is to be bound until he pays or persuades the one who convicted him.”
Of slaying a thief
Again Moses said, “If the thief is found breaking in and is struck and dies, there is no bloodguilt for him”; Plato agrees in this too, saying: “If anyone catches and kills a thief entering a house by night to steal property, let him be guiltless; and if he kills a robber in self-defense, let him be guiltless.”
Of a beast of burden
[Plato:] “If a beast of burden or other animal kills anyone, except those that do such a thing while competing in a public contest, let the relatives prosecute the killer for murder, and let some of the country wardens, whoever and as many as the relative appoints, decide the case; and let the guilty animal be killed and cast beyond the borders of the country.” So Plato. But Moses, anticipating him, says: “If a bull gores a man or woman and they die, the bull shall be stoned with stones, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the bull shall be guiltless.”
That Plato uses the same examples as the Hebrew Scriptures
The prophetic Scripture says: “Son of man, look, the house of Israel has become to me all mixed with bronze and tin and iron and lead; in the midst of a furnace they are mixed with silver. Therefore say, Thus says the Lord: Because you have all become one alloy, therefore I will gather you as silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin are gathered into the midst of a furnace, to blow fire upon them, to melt them.” And hear likewise what Plato says: “Hear, then, the rest of the myth. For we in the city are all brothers, as we shall say to them in the myth; but God, in fashioning you, mixed gold in the birth of those of you fit to rule, because they are most precious; silver in the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze in the farmers and the other craftsmen. Since, then, you are all akin, you would mostly beget children like yourselves; but sometimes a silver offspring might be born from gold, and a golden from silver, and all the rest so from one another. To the rulers, then, first and above all God commands that they be good guardians of nothing so much, nor guard anything so carefully, as their offspring, to see which of these metals is mixed in their souls; and if their own offspring has bronze or iron in it, they are in no way to pity it, but giving it the honor fitting its nature, thrust it among the craftsmen or farmers; and if again from these one is born with gold or silver, they are to honor and raise him, some to guardianship, others to the auxiliaries, as there is an oracle that the city will be destroyed when the iron or bronze guardian guards it. Have you any device, then, for persuading them of this myth?”
Further concerning the like examples
The prophecy of the Hebrews says to the leaders of the multitude: “Shepherds of Israel, do shepherds feed themselves? Do not the shepherds feed the sheep? Look, you eat the milk, and slaughter the fat, and clothe yourselves with the wool, and you do not feed my sheep; and the lost you have not sought, and the broken you have not bound up, and the straying you have not turned back.” And the saving Word says: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; but the hireling, who is not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, leaves them.” Hear also how Plato interprets these things in the first book of the Republic: “But now you see, Thrasymachus (for let us still examine what went before), that having first defined the true physician, you no longer thought it necessary afterwards to keep strictly to the true shepherd, but you think he fattens the sheep, so far as he is a shepherd, not looking to what is best for the sheep, but like a banqueter about to feast, to the good cheer, or again to selling them, like a money-maker, not a shepherd. But the shepherd’s art surely cares for nothing else than that over which it is set, how to provide the best for it; since its own needs, to be the best possible, have surely been sufficiently provided, so long as it lacks nothing of being the shepherd’s art. So I thought it necessary for us now to agree that every rule, so far as it is rule, considers what is best for nothing else than the one ruled and cared for, in political and private rule. But do you think that rulers in cities, true rulers, rule willingly?”
Further concerning the same
The prophecy of the Hebrews says, “From fear of you, Lord, we conceived and were in labor and brought forth a spirit of salvation.” Plato in the Theaetetus makes Socrates say this: “Those who associate with me suffer the same as women in childbirth; for they are in labor and full of perplexity night and day, much more than they. And my art can rouse this labor and bring it to an end.”
Further concerning the same
The prophet Ezekiel said, “The hand of the Lord came upon me, and I saw a lifting wind came from the north,” and next, “And in the midst, as it were a likeness of four living creatures; and their appearance was as the likeness of a man upon them; and four faces to each one. And the likeness of their faces: a face of a man, and a face of a lion on the right for the four, and a face of a calf on the left for the four, and a face of an eagle for the four.” Hear likewise what Plato says: “Now, then, I said, let us converse with him, since we have agreed what power doing wrong and doing right each have. — How? he said. — By moulding in speech an image of the soul, so that the one who says those things may know what he was saying. — What sort of image? he said. — One of those, I said, such as the natures that the myths say arose of old, that of the Chimaera, and of Scylla, and of Cerberus, and many others in which many forms are said to have grown together into one. — They are said to, he said. — Mold, then, one form of a creature, many-colored and many-headed, having a ring of heads of tame and wild beasts, and able to change and grow all these out of itself. — It is the work of a skilled moulder, he said; but since speech is more easily moulded than wax and such things, let it be moulded. — Then another form of a lion, and one of a man; let the first be much the greatest, and the second second. — That is easier, he said, and it is moulded. — Join them, then, three as they are, into one, so that they grow together somehow. — They are joined, he said. — Mould round them on the outside the image of one, that of the man, so that to one who cannot see what is inside, but sees only the outer sheath, it appears one creature, a man. — It is moulded round, he said. — Let us say, then, to one who says that it profits this man to do wrong, and that to do right does not benefit him, that he is saying nothing else than that it profits him to feast the many-shaped beast and make it strong, and the lion and what goes with the lion, and to starve the man and make him weak, so that he is dragged wherever either of those leads, and does not accustom one to the other or make them friends, but lets them bite and fight and devour one another. — Entirely so, he said; that is what the praiser of injustice would say. — Then again, the one who says that just things profit would say that one must do and say what will make the inner man most master of the man, and he will take care of the many-headed creature like a farmer, nourishing and taming the gentle parts and preventing the wild from growing, making the lion’s nature his ally, and caring for all in common, making them friends to one another and to himself, and so rear them? — That is exactly what the praiser of justice says.”
That Plato also enacts that the citizens should be divided into twelve tribes in imitation of the Hebrew nation
The whole nation of the Hebrews was divided into twelve tribes, and Plato likewise legislates that this should be kept among his citizens, saying thus: “Let the whole country be divided by us into twelve parts as equal as possible; and let one tribe, allotted to each part, provide each year five country-wardens and tribe-leaders.” And again he says: “The generals chosen are to nominate twelve captains, one captain for each tribe.”
In what kind of place Plato enacts that the city should be founded : he describes certain features like the site of Jerusalem
The royal capital of the sons of the Hebrews, established long before, was far from the sea, settled in the mountains, and had a land producing all things; and Plato says in the Laws that the city founded by him should be of some such kind. He speaks thus: “This is what I ask about it, wishing rather to know: will it be on the sea or inland? — The city we have now been speaking of, stranger, is about eighty stades from the sea. — What then? Are there harbors along it, or is it entirely without harbors? — It is as well provided with harbors as possible, stranger. — Alas, what you say! But what of the country around it: does it produce all things, or does it lack some? — It lacks almost nothing. — Will there be a neighboring city near it? — Not at all; that is why it is being settled; for an emigration from the place long ago has left this country deserted for an immense time. — What then? How much of plains, mountains, and woodland has fallen to our lot? — It resembles the nature of the rest of Crete as a whole. — Would you call it rugged rather than level? — Certainly. — Then it would not be incurable for the acquisition of virtue. For if it were to be on the sea, well harbored, and not producing all things but lacking many, it would need some great savior and divine lawgivers, if it were not to have many varied and bad characters, being of such a nature; but as it is, the eighty stades are a consolation. It lies nearer the sea than it should, about as much as you say it is well harbored. Still even this is acceptable. For the sea, neighbor to a country, is pleasant day by day, but in truth a salty and bitter neighbor; filling the place with trade and money-making through retail, it breeds shifty and faithless characters in souls, and makes the city faithless and unfriendly to itself and likewise to other men. A consolation for this, too, is its producing all things; and being rugged, it clearly could not be both very productive and all-producing. For having this, providing much export, it would be filled in return with silver and gold coin; than which, so to speak, no greater evil could come to a city, one thing for another, for the acquisition of noble and just characters.” But since so much has been shown by us thus far, let us consider how, having accepted the Hebrew way of education through what we have said, he rejects the Greek, writing thus in the tenth book of the Republic:
How Plato deprecates the preparatory teaching of the Greeks as being injurious
“To speak among ourselves (for you will not denounce me to the tragic poets and all the other imitators), all such things seem to be a corruption of the minds of the hearers, of those who do not have as a remedy the knowledge of what they really are. — What are you thinking of in saying this? he said. — It must be said, I said, although a certain love and reverence for Homer, held from childhood, keeps me from speaking. For he seems to have been the first teacher and leader of all these fine tragedians. But a man must not be honored above the truth, and what I mean must be said. — Certainly, he said.” Then next he adds: “About the other matters let us not demand an account from Homer or any other of the poets, asking whether any of them was a physician and not only an imitator of medical talk, whom any poet of old or new is said to have made healthy, as Asclepius did, or what pupils in medicine he left, as he left his descendants; nor let us ask him about the other arts, but let them be. But about the greatest and finest things of which Homer undertakes to speak, wars and generalships and the administration of cities and the education of men, it is surely just to ask him: ‘Dear Homer, if you are not third from the truth about virtue, a maker of an image, whom we defined as an imitator, but second, and could know what pursuits make men better or worse in private and public, tell us which of the cities was better governed through you, as Lacedaemon through Lycurgus and many cities great and small through many others. What city credits you with having been a good lawgiver and benefited it? Italy and Sicily credit Charondas, and we Solon; but who you?’ Will he be able to name any? — I do not think so, said Glaucon; none is spoken of, even by the Homeridae themselves. — But is any war in Homer’s time remembered as well fought under his command or counsel? — None. — But are many ingenious inventions in the arts or other practical matters told of him, as of a wise man in deeds, as of Thales of Miletus and Anacharsis the Scythian? — Nothing of the kind at all. — But if not in public, is Homer said to have been privately in his lifetime a leader of education to some who loved him for his company and handed down to later men a Homeric way of life, as Pythagoras was himself especially loved for this, and his successors, even now calling their way of life Pythagorean, seem somehow distinguished among the rest? — Nothing of that kind either is told, he said. For Creophylus, Socrates, Homer’s companion, would appear even more ridiculous in education than in his name, if what is said about Homer is true. For it is said that Homer was much neglected by that very man while he lived. — It is said, I said. But do you think, Glaucon, if Homer were really able to educate men and make them better, being able not to imitate but to know about these things, he would not have made many companions and been honored and loved by them? But Protagoras of Abdera and Prodicus of Ceos and very many others can persuade their contemporaries, in private intercourse, that they will be unable to manage either their household or their city unless they themselves supervise their education; and for this wisdom they are so loved that their companions all but carry them about on their heads. And would the men of Homer’s time, if he were able to benefit men toward virtue, have let him or Hesiod go about reciting, and not have clung to them more than to gold and compelled them to stay at home with them, or, if they could not persuade them, followed them themselves wherever they went until they had received enough education? — You seem to me, Socrates, he said, to speak entirely the truth. — Shall we, then, set down that all the poets, beginning from Homer, are imitators of images of virtue and of the other things they make, and do not touch the truth; but, as we were just saying, the painter will make what seems a shoemaker, knowing nothing of shoemaking himself, to those who know nothing either, but look at colors and shapes? — Certainly. — So, I think, we shall say that the poet too colors each of the arts with certain colors by his words and phrases, not understanding them except to imitate, so that to others like him, looking from the words, if he speaks of shoemaking in metre, rhythm, and harmony, it seems very well said, or of generalship, or of anything else; so great a charm do these things by nature have; since, stripped of the colors of music, the works of the poets, spoken by themselves, you know, I think, how they appear. You have seen it, have you not? — I have, he said.” This being so, it seems good to me to go through a few of Plato’s passages in which he establishes the doctrine of God and providence more rationally, siding in this too with the doctrines of the Hebrews. First let us see how he sets out the opinions of the atheists:
On the opinion of the Atheists, from the tenth Book of The Laws
“Some say, I think, that all things that are coming to be, have come to be, and will come to be, come to be some by nature, some by art, and some by chance. — Is that not well said? — It is likely, surely, that wise men speak rightly. Following them, however, let us consider what those on that side really have in mind. — By all means. — It seems, they say, that nature and chance produce the greatest and finest of them, and art the lesser; which, receiving from nature the generation of the great and first works, moulds and fashions all the smaller ones, which we all call artificial. — How do you mean? — I will put it more clearly thus. Fire, water, earth, and air, they say, all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art; and the bodies that come next, of earth and sun and moon and stars, came to be through these, which are wholly soulless; carried by chance, each by the force of each, as they happened to fit together in some suitable way, hot with cold, or dry with wet, and soft with hard, and all that by the mixture of opposites were blended by necessity according to chance, in this way and on these terms they have begotten the whole heaven and all that is in heaven, and all animals and plants, all the seasons arising from these; not through mind, they say, nor through any god, nor through art, but, as we say, by nature and chance. And art, arising later from these, itself mortal from mortals, has later begotten certain playthings sharing little in truth, images akin to themselves, such as painting and music produce and the arts that work with them. And the arts that do produce something serious are those that share their power with nature, such as medicine, farming, and gymnastics. And statecraft, they say, is a small part sharing in nature, but mostly art; and so all legislation is not by nature but by art, and its enactments are not true. — How do you mean? — Gods, my blessed friend, these men say first exist by art, not by nature, but by certain laws, and these different in different places, as each people agreed among themselves in legislating. And the noble things are by nature one thing and by law another; and the just things are not by nature at all, but men go on disputing with one another and always changing them; and whatever they change, and whenever, then each is in force, coming to be by art and laws, but not by any nature. These, my friends, are all the sayings of men wise in the eyes of the young, both prose writers and poets, who declare that the most just thing is whatever one can win by force. Hence impieties fall upon young men, as though the gods were not such as the law commands us to think them; and factions arise for this reason, as men draw others toward the life that is right by nature, which is in truth to live mastering others and not serving others according to law. — What an account you have gone through, stranger, and what a ruin of young men, publicly for cities and in private households!” And after other things he says: “But tell me again, Clinias, you too, for you must share in the discussion: the one who says this seems to think that fire, water, earth, and air are the first of all things, and to call these very things nature, and soul to come from them later. And he seems not merely to suggest but really to declare this to us in his argument. — Certainly. — Have we, then, by Zeus, found as it were a spring of the foolish opinion of all men who have ever handled inquiries about nature? Consider, examining every argument; for it makes no small difference if those who handle impious arguments and lead others on are shown to use their arguments not even well but wrongly. Now it seems to me that this is so. — Well said; but try to explain how. — It seems, then, that we must touch on rather unfamiliar arguments.” And after a little he adds: “Almost all of them, my friend, seem ignorant of what soul is and what power it has, both in other respects and especially as to its origin: that it is among the first things, having come to be before all bodies, and governs every change and rearrangement of them more than anything. And if this is so, must not the things akin to soul necessarily have come to be before those belonging to body, since soul is older than body? — Necessarily. Opinion, then, and care and mind and art and law would be prior to hard and soft, heavy and light; and indeed the great and first works and deeds would be those of art, being among the first, while things by nature, and nature itself, which they wrongly so name, would be later than this and governed by art and mind. — How wrongly? — By nature they mean the generation of the first things. But if soul is shown to be first, not fire or air, but soul having come to be among the first, it would most rightly be said to be pre-eminently by nature. This is so if one shows that soul is older than body, and not otherwise. — Most true.
How Plato arranges the argument concerning God
“Come, then, if ever we must call upon God, let it be done now; let the gods be earnestly invoked for the demonstration of their own existence; and holding fast as to a secure cable, let us embark on the present argument. And when I am examined on such matters with such questions, it seems safest to answer as follows. ‘Stranger, when someone says, Do all things stand still and nothing move, or the very opposite; or do some of them move and others remain?’ — Some move, I shall say, and others remain. — ‘Do not the things standing stand, and the things moving move, in some place?’ — Of course. — ‘And some would do this in one location, others in several.’ ‘You mean, we shall say, that things taking the power of the stationary in the center move in one place, as the revolution of circles said to stand still turns?’ — Yes.” And next he adds: “Let us speak in this way too, and answer ourselves again. If all things should somehow come together and stand still, as most of such people dare to say, which of the motions described must first arise in them? — Surely the one that moves itself. For it could never first be changed by another, since there was no prior change among them. — We shall say, then, that the beginning of all motions, the first to arise among things at rest and present in things moving, the self-moving, is necessarily the oldest and mightiest of all changes, and that which is altered by another and moves others is second. — Most true. — Since, then, we are at this point of the argument, let us answer this. — What? — If we see this motion arising somewhere in what is earthy or watery or fiery, separate or mixed, what shall we say is the condition in such a thing? — Are you asking me whether we shall say it lives, when it moves itself? — Yes. — It lives; of course. — And when we see soul in things, must we not admit that this is life, nothing else? — Nothing else. — Stop, then, by Zeus: would you not be willing to think of three things about each thing? — How do you mean? — One, the substance; one, the definition of the substance; one, the name. And indeed there are two questions about everything that is. — How? — Sometimes each of us, proposing the name, asks for the definition; sometimes, proposing the definition itself, asks in turn for the name. Do we wish now to say something of this kind? — What kind? — There is something divided in two into equal parts, in other things and in number. Of this, in number, the name is “even,” and the definition “number divisible into two equal parts.” — Yes. — This is the kind of thing I mean. Do we not name the same thing either way, whether, asked for the definition, we give the name, or, asked for the name, the definition, calling the same thing by name “even” and by definition “number divided in two”? — Certainly. — Then of the thing whose name is soul, what is its definition? Have we any other than the one just stated, the motion able to move itself? — Do you say that self-motion has as definition the same substance which has the name we all call soul? — I do. And if this is so, do we still feel it has not been sufficiently shown that soul is the same as the first generation and motion of all things that are, have been, and will be, and of all their opposites, since it has appeared as the cause of all change and motion in all things? — No; it has been most sufficiently shown that soul is the oldest of all things, being the beginning of motion. — Then is not the motion that arises in one thing through another, but never makes anything move in itself, second, and as many numbers down as one cares to count it, being a change of a body truly soulless? — Rightly. — Then we would have spoken rightly, properly, most truly and completely in saying that soul came to be before body, and body second and later, being ruled by soul, the ruler, according to nature. — Most true. — We remember having agreed earlier that if soul were shown to be older than body, the things of soul would also be older than those of body. — Certainly. — Then manners, characters, wishes, reasonings, true opinions, cares, and memories would have come before the length, breadth, depth, and strength of bodies, if soul is before body. — Necessarily. — Must we not, then, agree next that soul is the cause of good and evil, fair and foul, just and unjust, and all opposites, if we are to make it the cause of all things? — How not? — Must we not say, then, that soul, governing and dwelling in all things that move in every direction, governs the heaven too? — Certainly. — One soul, or more? — More, I will answer for you both; let us set down no fewer than two, one that does good and one able to work the opposite. — You have spoken very rightly. — Well, then. Soul leads all things in heaven and on earth and in the sea by its own motions, whose names are wishing, considering, caring, deliberating, opining rightly and falsely, rejoicing, grieving, being confident, fearing, hating, loving, and all the motions akin to these, or primary motions, which, taking over in turn the secondary motions of bodies, lead all things to growth and decay, separation and combination, and the heat and cold, heaviness and lightness, hard and soft, white and black, harsh and sweet and bitter that follow these; and with all these, soul, when it takes mind as its ally, rightly a god to gods, guides all things to what is right and happy; but when it consorts with folly, it works all the opposite. Shall we set down that this is so? Or do we still doubt whether it is otherwise? — Not at all. — Shall we say, then, that the kind of soul that has become master of heaven and earth and the whole revolution is the wise and virtuous one, or the one that has neither? Do you wish us to answer this as follows? — How? — If, my admirable friend, we say that the whole course and motion of heaven and of all that is in it has a nature like the motion, revolution, and reasonings of mind, and proceeds in a kindred way, clearly we must say that the best soul cares for the whole cosmos and leads it along that path. — Rightly. — But if it proceeds madly and in disorder, the evil soul. — This too is most right. — What nature, then, has the motion of mind? This, my friends, is a hard question to answer wisely. So it is right that I should now join you in the answer. — Well said. — Let us not, then, as though looking straight at the sun and bringing night on ourselves at midday, make our answer as if we would ever see mind with mortal eyes and know it sufficiently; it is safer to look at an image of what is asked. — How do you mean? — Let us take the image of that one of the ten motions which mind resembles; recalling it with you, I shall make the answer together. — You would speak most finely. — We remember, then, this much of what was said then, that of all things we set down some as moving and others as remaining. — Yes. — And of the things moving, some move in one place, others travel in several. — It is so. — Of these two motions, the one traveling in one place must always move about some center, an imitation of circles turned on a lathe, and be in every way as akin and as like as possible to the revolution of mind. — How do you mean? — If we say that mind and the motion traveling in one place both move in the same way and manner, in the same place, about the same things, toward the same things, according to one principle and one order, likened to the movements of a sphere turned on a lathe, we would never appear poor craftsmen of fair images in speech. — You speak most rightly. — Then the motion that is never in the same way, nor uniform, nor in the same place, nor about the same things, nor toward the same, nor in one, nor in order, nor in arrangement, nor in any principle, would be akin to all folly. — Most truly. — Now it is no longer hard to say expressly that, since soul is what drives all things round for us, we must say that the revolution of heaven is necessarily driven round, cared for, and ordered either by the best soul or by its opposite. — Stranger, from what has now been said it would not be holy to say otherwise than that one soul or more, possessing all virtue, drive them round. — You have listened to the arguments most finely, Clinias. Now listen to this further. — What? — If soul drives all things round, does it not drive each one too, the sun and moon and the other stars? — Certainly. — Let us make our argument about one, which will appear to fit all the stars. — Which? — Of the sun every man sees the body, but no one the soul; nor that of any other body of any living creature, alive or dead; but there is much reason to hope that this kind is wholly imperceptible to all the bodily senses and perceptible to mind. Let us grasp by mind and thought alone something like this about it. — What? — If soul drives the sun round, we shall hardly fail if we say it does one of three things. — What? — Either, being within this round visible body, it carries it everywhere, as the soul in us carries us about everywhere; or, providing itself from outside with a body of fire or some air, as some say, it pushes body by body with force; or third, being itself bare of body but having certain other surpassing powers, it guides it by wonder. — Yes. — This, then, is necessary: that soul drives all things doing one of these.” These things, then, are said by the philosopher in the tenth book of the Laws. Hear also how he establishes the same thought in the Philebus: “For all the wise agree, truly exalting themselves, that mind is our king of heaven and earth; and perhaps they are right. But if you wish, let us make the inquiry into this kind at greater length. — Speak as you wish, taking no account of length for us, Socrates, since you will not offend us. — Well said. Let us begin somehow thus, asking in turn. — How? — Protarchus, shall we say that all things and this so-called universe are governed by the power of the irrational and random and the merely chance, or the opposite, as those before us said, that mind and a wonderful wisdom order and steer them? — Not at all the same, admirable Socrates; what you say now does not seem to me even holy; but to say that mind orders all things is worthy of the sight of the cosmos, sun, moon, stars, and the whole revolution, and I would never speak or think otherwise about them. — Do you wish, then, that we too agree with those before us that this is so, and not think we should only repeat others’ views without risk, but share the risk and the blame, when a clever man says these things are not so but disordered? — How could I not wish it? — Come, then, look at the argument that now confronts us about these things. — Just tell it. — We see, I suppose, that the things concerning the nature of the bodies of all living creatures, fire, water, and breath, and earth too, as storm-tossed sailors say, are present in their composition? — Certainly. — For we are truly storm-tossed by perplexity in the present arguments. — Come, then, take something like this about each of the things in us. — What? — That each of these is present in us small and poor and in no way pure, and having a power unworthy of its nature. Take it in one case and understand the same of all. For instance, there is fire in us, and there is fire in the universe. — Certainly. — Is not the fire in us small, weak, and poor, while that in the universe is wonderful in quantity, beauty, and every power that belongs to fire? — What you say is very true. — Well, is the fire of the universe nourished, generated, and ruled by the fire in us, or, on the contrary, do mine and yours and that of the other creatures have all these things from that? — That question is not even worth answering. — Rightly. For you will say the same, I think, about the earth here in living creatures and that in the universe, and you will answer so about all the other things I asked a little before. — For who answering otherwise would ever appear sane? — Hardly anyone. But follow what comes next. All these things just mentioned, seeing them put together into one, did we not name body? — Certainly. — Take the same about this which we call cosmos; for in the same way it would be a body, being composed of the same things. — You speak most rightly. — Is our body, then, wholly nourished from this body, or this one from ours, and has received and holds all that we just said about them? — This too, Socrates, is not worth asking. — Well, is this worth asking? Or how will you say? — Tell me what. — Shall we not say that our body has a soul? — Clearly we shall. — From where, dear Protarchus, did it get it, unless the body of the universe were ensouled, having the same things as this and still more beautiful in every way? — Clearly from nowhere else, Socrates. — For surely we do not think, Protarchus, that of those four, limit, the unlimited, the mixture, and the kind of the cause present in all as a fourth, this last, which in things among us provides soul and produces bodily training and medicine when the body stumbles, and in other things puts together other things and repairs them, is called all and every wisdom, while, these same things being in the whole heaven and in its great parts, and moreover beautiful and pure, it did not after all contrive in them the nature of the most beautiful and precious things. — That would make no sense at all. — Then if not this, we would do better to follow that account and say that there is, as we have often said, much unlimited in the universe and sufficient limit, and over them a cause of no mean sort, ordering and arranging years and seasons and months, most justly called wisdom and mind. — Most justly indeed. — But wisdom and mind could never come to be without soul. — No indeed. — Then you will say that in the nature of Zeus a royal soul and a royal mind come to be through the power of the cause, and in others other fine things, as each likes to be called.”
How he discourses on God's universal providence. In the tenth Book of The Laws
“The one who believes there are gods, but that they do not care for human affairs, must be encouraged. ‘Best of men,’ let us say, ‘that you believe in gods, a certain divine kinship perhaps leads you to honor what is akin to you and think it exists; but the fortunes of bad and unjust men, privately and publicly, not truly happy but greatly esteemed happy in opinion, lead you astray toward impiety, being wrongly celebrated in songs and in all kinds of writings. Or perhaps, seeing men reach old age, leaving children’s children in the greatest honors, you are disturbed now when among all these you have seen, or learned by hearing, or yourself happened to witness, men who through many terrible impious deeds have risen from small beginnings to tyrannies and the greatest positions; then through all such things you are clearly unwilling, because of kinship, to blame the gods as responsible for such things; but led by unreason and unable to be angry with the gods, you have come into this present state, so as to think that they exist, but despise and neglect human affairs. So that the present doctrine may not grow into a greater state of impiety in you, but if somehow we can ward it off by argument as it approaches, let us try, connecting the next argument to the one by which we argued from the beginning against the man who does not believe in gods at all, to use it now. And you, Clinias and Megillus, take up the answering for the young man as before; and if anything difficult comes up in the arguments, I will take you and carry you across the river, as just now. — You speak rightly; do so, and we will do what you say as far as we can. — But perhaps it would not be hard to show this, that the gods care for small things no less, but rather more, than for those of surpassing size. For he heard, I suppose, and was present at what was just said, that being good with all virtue they possess the care of all things as most proper to themselves. — He heard it very well. — Next, then, let them examine together with us what virtue we mean in agreeing that they are good. Come, do we say that to be temperate and to have mind belong to virtue, and their opposites to vice? — We do. — Well, that courage belongs to virtue, and cowardice to vice? — Certainly. — And shall we say that some of these are shameful and others noble? — Necessarily. — And shall we say that whatever is base of these belongs to us, if anything does, but that the gods have no share, great or small, in such things? — Everyone would agree to that too. — Well, shall we set down neglect, idleness, and luxury as virtue of soul? Or how do you say? — How could we? — But as its opposite? — Yes. — Then their opposites as the opposite? — The opposite. — What then? Will everyone luxurious, careless, and idle, whom the poet said is most like the stingless drones, be such a one to us? — Very rightly said. — Then we must not say that God has such a character as he himself hates; nor permit anyone who tries to utter such a thing. — No indeed; how could we? — The one whose part it is to act and care especially for something, but who of this kind cares for great things and neglects the small, on what ground could we praise such a one without utterly erring? Let us consider it thus: does not one who acts so act in one of two ways, whether god or man? — Which two do we mean? — Either thinking it makes no difference to the whole if the small things are neglected, or, if it does make a difference, neglecting through laziness and luxury; or is there some other way neglect arises? For surely, when it is impossible to care for all things, there will be no neglect of small or great in one who does not care for what, through weakness, god or some poor creature is deficient and unable to care for. — How could there be? — Now, then, let the two answer us three, both agreeing that there are gods, but one saying they can be bought off, the other that they neglect small things. First, you both say that the gods know, see, and hear all things, and nothing of which there are senses and knowledge can escape them. Do you say it is so, or how? — So. — Well, that they can do all things of which mortals and immortals have power? — How will they not agree that this too is so? — And indeed we five have agreed that they are good and best. — Certainly. — Then is it not impossible to admit that they do anything at all through laziness and luxury, being such as we say? For in us idleness is the offspring of cowardice, and laziness of idleness and luxury. — Most true. — No god, then, neglects through idleness and laziness, for he has no share in cowardice. — Most rightly said. — The remaining possibility, then, if they neglect the small and few things of the universe, is that they do this either knowing that one should not care for any such thing at all; or what remains but knowing the opposite? — Nothing. — Shall we set you down, my excellent and best friend, as saying that they neglect through ignorance, not knowing it is necessary to care; or knowing that they must, as the worst of men are said to do, knowing other things to be better than what they do, yet not doing them through some defeat by pleasures or pains? — How could they? — Then human affairs share in the ensouled nature, and man himself is the most god-fearing of all living creatures. — It seems so. — And we say that all mortal creatures are possessions of the gods, whose possession the whole heaven is too. — How not? — Now let anyone say these things are small or great to the gods; in neither case would it be fitting for our owners to neglect us, since they are most careful and best. Let us consider this too besides. — What? — Concerning perception and power: are they not by nature opposite to each other in ease and difficulty? — How do you mean? — It is harder to see and hear small things than great; but to carry, master, and care for small and few things is easier for anyone than the opposite. — Much. — If a physician is charged with treating a whole, wishing and able to do so, and cares for the great parts but neglects the members and small ones, will the whole ever be well for him? — By no means. — Nor for helmsmen, generals, household managers, statesmen, or anyone else of the kind, will the many or great go well without the few or small; for even stonemasons say the large stones do not lie well without the small. — How could they? — Let us never, then, think God worse than mortal craftsmen, who, the better they are, the more precisely and perfectly they finish by one art the works proper to them, small and great; and that God, being wisest and willing and able to care, would not care at all for those things which are easier to care for, being small, like someone idle or cowardly shirking through toil, but only for the great. — Let us by no means, stranger, accept such an opinion about the gods; for we would be thinking a thought in no way holy or true. — It seems to me that we have now argued sufficiently with the one who loves to accuse the gods of neglect. — Yes. — In forcing him by argument to agree that he does not speak rightly. Yet he seems to me still to need some charms of myth. — What kind, my good man? — Let us persuade the young man by argument that the one who cares for the universe has arranged all things for the preservation and virtue of the whole, each part of which, as far as it can, suffers and does what is fitting. Over these, rulers are appointed for each, down to the smallest degree of being acted on and acting, accomplishing the end down to the last division; of which your part too, poor wretch, though very small, always contributes to and looks toward the whole. But it has escaped you about this very thing that all becoming takes place for the sake of that, so that a blessed being may belong to the life of the universe; it does not come about for your sake, but you for its sake. For every physician and every skilled craftsman does everything for the sake of the whole, aiming at the common best, and makes the part for the sake of the whole, not the whole for the sake of the part. But you are vexed, not knowing how what is best for you turns out for the universe and for you according to the power of common becoming. And since soul, always joined to a body, now one, now another, undergoes every kind of change, through itself or through another soul, no other task is left for the board-game player than to move the character that becomes better to a better place, and the worse to the worse, so that each may receive its fitting lot. — How do you mean? — In the way in which the gods’ ease of caring for all things would make sense, I think I am explaining. For if one were always to mould and reshape all things looking to the whole, as making ensouled water from fire, and not many from one or one from many, having shared in a first or second or even third generation, the rearranged order would be infinite in number. But as it is there is wonderful ease for the one who cares for the universe. — How again? — Thus. Since our king saw that all our actions are ensouled and that there is much virtue in them and much vice; and that soul and body, having come to be, are indestructible but not eternal, like the gods established by law (for there would never be generation of living things if either of these perished); and he considered that the good of soul by nature always benefits and the bad harms; seeing all this, he devised where each of the parts should be placed so as to make virtue victorious and vice defeated in the universe most fully, easily, and best. He has devised, then, for all this, what seat each must take and dwell in, and what places, as it becomes of what kind; but the causes of becoming of what kind he left to the wills of each of us. For as each of us desires and is in soul, so for the most part each time and of such a kind does each of us become. — That is likely. — All things, then, that share in soul change, having the cause of change in themselves; and changing, they are carried according to the order and law of destiny. Those whose characters change less move less along the level of the earth; those that fall more and into greater injustice go into the depth and the regions called below, which, naming them Hades and the like, men greatly fear and dream of, living and released from their bodies. And when a soul undergoes a greater change of vice or virtue through its own will and strong association, when, mixing with divine virtue, it becomes such especially, it is especially moved to a place wholly holy, carried to some other better place; and when the opposite, it removes its life to the opposite. ‘This is the justice of the gods who hold Olympus,’ Child and young man, who think yourself neglected by the gods: that one who becomes worse goes to the worse souls, and one who becomes better to the better, and in life and in all deaths suffers and does what it is fitting for like to do to like. From this justice neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever boast that he has escaped the gods, the justice which those who ordained it ordained above all others, and which one must beware of altogether. For you will never be neglected by it: not though you were so small as to sink into the depth of the earth, nor so high as to fly up to heaven; but you will pay it the fitting penalty, whether you stay here, or pass to Hades, or are carried to a place still more remote than these. The same account would apply for you to those whom you saw rise from small to great through unholy deeds or some such acts, and thought had become happy from wretched, and supposed you had seen in their deeds, as in mirrors, the neglect of all things by the gods, not knowing their contribution, how it contributes to the whole. And you think, bravest of men, that there is no need to know it; yet without knowing it one would never see even an outline, nor be able to give an account of life with regard to happiness and unhappy fortune. If Clinias here and this whole council of elders persuade you of this, that you do not know what you are saying about the gods, God himself would kindly help you; but if you still need argument, listen as we speak to the third man, if you have any sense at all.” The sense of these things, if not the words, had been laid down beforehand in the oracles of the Hebrews, with the meaning contained very concisely and in few words. For “not though you were so small as to sink into the depth of the earth, nor so high as to fly up to heaven” would be like what David has in this way: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to Hades, you are present. If I take wings and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me.” And also: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands.” And again in Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has shown all these things.” And: “From the greatness and beauty of created things the Creator is correspondingly seen.” And: “For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity.” And “I was envious of the lawless, seeing the peace of sinners” seems to me to have been paraphrased by Plato in “The same account would apply for you to those whom you saw rise from small to great through unholy deeds or some such acts, and thought had become happy from wretched.” And the other things said like these anticipated Plato’s broad exposition in the words of the Hebrews. Examining each of them closely you would find it agreeing with the writings of the Hebrews. And by the words of the Hebrews I mean not only the oracles in Moses, but also those of the other men dear to God after Moses, whether prophets or apostles of our Savior, whose agreement in doctrine would rightly deem them worthy of one and the same name.
Intertextual Commentary on Preparation for the Gospel, Book 12
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