CHAPTER XV
The System of Government in the Laws
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The sovereignty of law is one of the fundamental principles of the Laws. Governments must be accommodated to law, and not law to governments. If sovereignty is thus vested in law, it follows that we need not expect to find any political authority in the State of the Laws which corresponds to the sovereign of a modern community. No body of magistrates; no council or senate; no assembly, however broad, will be other than subordinate to the rule of law.1 That, at any rate, is the thesis of the Laws until we come to the twelfth book; and the twelfth book, for a number of reasons, must be considered as an addendum or postscript, which does not tally with the earlier books, and needs to be considered by itself. There is a further reason for the absence of any sovereign body or person from the State of the Laws. The constitution of that State is, ex hypothesi, to be mixed. It is to reconcile monarchy with democracy, the principle of knowledge with the principle of liberty. A mixed constitution can hardly contain a single sovereign authority. If it is impossible to say of the constitution of Sparta whether it is a monarchy or an aristocracy, a tyranny or a democracy, it must be equally impossible to say of the State which Plato builds in the Laws that it is ruled by any one sovereign authority.
THE PROVISIONS FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE STATE
In building the State, Plato distinguishes the period during which it gets into working order from the subsequent period of regular action. The former is abnormal, and it may need abnormal methods. One such method, he suggests, in a passage in the fourth book of the Laws, would be to conjoin the legislator with a tyrant, young, bold, and magnificent, quick to learn and slow to forget, and possessed of the sovereign virtue of self-control (709 E). The legislator needs a fortunate conjuncture of the stars if he is to succeed, and God gives none more fortunate than the chance which brings him together with such a tyrant. ‘There is not, and there never could be, a quicker or better way of establishing a constitution’ (710 B). Plato is impelled to this view by the feeling that, while it is comparatively easy to define what good laws are, the difficulty lies rather in getting a motive behind the laws which will impress them on a people. The ‘young tyrant’ presents himself as a solution of the difficulty. He will impress the laws on his people, partly by the way of example, and by the force of a personality which men are ready to follow, and partly by the way of coercion and the use of actual force. He will sketch the outline in his own action: he will fill in the outline by coercing those who fail to follow its indication. It is the old ideal of the Republic once more, but bipartite and temporary; instead of philosopher-kings, there is a single philosopher, or legislator, combined with a tyrant, and both are temporary expedients during the throes of birth.1 But the actual method suggested by Plato, when he comes to consider the making of a constitution at the beginning of the sixth book, is widely different. The founders of the colony take the place of the young tyrant; and it is they who, by their co-operation, are to aid the legislator in bringing the new State into regular order and action. The colonists themselves will be ignorant of one another: they will not know whom to elect to office; and being still untrained in the spirit of the laws, they will be liable to error if they are left to their own devices (751). The founders of the colony must therefore choose the first body of guardians of the law; and the majority of those whom they choose must be taken from their own numbers.1 They must also appoint a temporary body of 200 members, half from their own numbers, and half from the ranks of the colonists, to see that the rest of the magistrates are duly chosen for the first time, and undergo proper scrutiny before they enter on office. If they do these things, the founders will have done their work; and henceforth the new State must work out its own salvation for itself (754 D).2
THE PERMANENT INSTITUTIONS OF THE STATE
In the settled colony, which has entered on its regular life, the electoral authority is a popular assembly, which elects the deliberative body, or council, and the various executive magistrates. This assembly is the whole body of 5040 citizens, arranged in four classes, on the basis of a property qualification, according to the differences in the amount of personalty which they possess. Attendance at its meetings is compulsory on the citizens in the first two classes, and optional for the citizens in the third and fourth (764 A); but no citizen in any class may attend, unless he bears arms and has gone through militaty service (753 B).1 The functions of the assembly are almost exclusively electoral, and it may be said to exist for the purpose of electing the guardians of the law and the council, though it also elects the generals of the army and a number of local officials besides. The thirty-seven guardians of the law are to be elected by. a triple ballot: 300 candidates are to be selected by the first vote, 200 of these are to be eliminated by the second, and the final election is to be made by the third from the 100 candidates who remain (753). The election of the council is much more elaborate; and it is here that the system of classes, which apparently finds no place in the election of the guardians of the law, comes definitely into play. The council is to consist of 360 members, elected annually, and ninety of these are to come from each class. The first stage in the election (which we may call, as it was called at Athens, in the fifth century, by the name of προκρίσις) is the selection of candidates. Plato leaves no room for private nominations by individuals or caucuses: the candidates, for a seat on the council, like the candidates for the office of guardian, must be selected by public vote. But the candidates of the different classes are to be selected in different ways. The citizens of every class, compulsorily and under the sanction of a fine, are to select the candidates of the first and second classes. In the selection of the candidates of the third class, the citizens of the first three classes are compelled to vote, under penalty of a fine: the citizens of the fourth class are free to vote or abstain. In the selection of the candidates of the fourth class, the citizens of the first two classes must vote, or submit to a fine, which for citizens of the second class is triple, and for those of the first class quadruple, the amount of the previous fine; but members of the last two classes may either vote or abstain from voting. The first selection of candidates thus made, the next stage (which we may call αἵρεσις) is the voting on all these candidates for the purpose of making a second selection; and in this stage all the citizens, under penalty of the ordinary fine, must join in eliminating all but 180 of the candidates in each of the four classes. The third and last stage (which we may call κλήρωσις) is the selection by lot of ninety members of the council from the 180 candidates left in each class; and thus the election of the whole council of 360 members is finally completed.1
The effect of this system is that the first two classes will tend to exercise a preponderant voice in the selection of candidates. At the same time, all the classes may join in the original selection of candidates in every class; all the classes must join in the process of elimination; and the use of the lot is meant to secure equality in the final stage. The whole system is a carefully calculated combination of universal suffrage with class-suffrage, and again of what the Greeks regarded as the aristocratic method of election by voting with what they regarded as the democratic method of the lot. Plato defends the system as a mean between the monarchical principle of wisdom and the democratic principle of liberty (756 E). The former is represented by the superior power which the upper (and presumably wiser) classes may exercise in the selection of candidates; the latter by the possible participation of all the citizens in the first stage, their necessary participation in the second, and the democratic use of the lot in the third. He also defends the system on the further ground that it is based on that true equality which is ‘proportionate’. To pursue entirely the principle of absolute equality – to give equal power and honour to persons who are unequal in capacity and desert – is to pursue a false equality, and to abandon the way of justice. True equality is proportionate, or an equality of ratios: it can only be attained when the ratio between the desert and the honour of the superior is equal to that between the desert and the honour of the inferior; and that, again, can only be attained when greater desert receives greater honour, and less receives less (757).1 Such proportionate equality, as it is true equality, is also justice: it means that the State does to its citizens according as they do to it. It is also concord and stability; for no State can be at harmony, in which the good have a discontented sense that desert goes unrewarded. The difficulty of this last argument, as Plato feels, is that if it is true it proves too much. There is little reason in principles such as these for any recognition of the absolute equality of the lot. Plato confesses as much.
‘It is necessary for every State at times to use the words “equality” and “justice” in a secondary sense, in order to avoid dissension. At such times it substitutes equity, or even charity, for the proper and perfect standard of justice. That is why the equality of the lot must be followed, in order to avoid the discontent of the people, and why we can only pray that God may direct the lot to the furtherance of justice: that is why we must necessarily use both kinds of equality, though we ought to use as little as possible the equality based on the chance of the lot’ (757 D–E).
It is a difficulty of Plato’s reasoning about equality that it does not prove what we should expect it to prove. His argument for a true equality is based on the thesis, that capacity and desert should be recognized: the method he actually proposes for the election of the council is based on the recognition of wealth, and the principle actually followed is that offices and honour should be adjusted not to men’s virtue or the virtue of their ancestors, or to bodily strength and beauty, but on the basis of wealth or poverty (
: 744 B–C). Yet the whole argument of the Laws shows that Plato was very far from holding the view – which alone would reconcile this contradiction – that wealth is identical with capacity, or property with desert. It follows that his argument for a true equality rests on one basis, while the institution which he proposes rests on another. The inconsistency is natural. It is easy to feel at one time that in an ideal world a man should get what he deserves, and superior desert should receive superior recognition. It is easy to feel at another that men deserve what they get, and that the amount of their possessions is an index to their desert. Neither view can be accepted readily. It is impossible to measure desert, or to proportion the wage received to the quality of the work done; and even if it were possible, a world in which desert was always exactly recognized would be a worse world than that in which we live, where good work can be done, and is done daily, because men believe it good, and therefore well worth doing.1 It is impossible, again, to believe that our gettings bear any necessary relation to our value, or that we should be measured, or take our station in the community, on the basis of possessions which, if they may be due to work and worth, may also be due, and are often largely due, to the chance of our opportunities. Whatever we may say of the economic world (whether, as we do now, we leave wages and prices to be mainly fixed by the degree in which buyers desire services and commodities, or whether here too we seek equality), it would seem that in the political world the only safe course is to seek equality of the sort which Plato described as false. The State, without affirming that all men are equal, should treat them, in its polling-booth and its courts, as if they were equal. It cannot measure them by merit; if it measures them by wealth it measures them by a criterion which is no index to their worth; if, again, it measures them by knowledge, it measures them by a criterion no more true. This may seem to reduce the principle of political equality to a mere matter of Hobson’s choice; and we may seem to be seeking equality, if not ‘in order to avoid the discontent of the people’, at any rate in order to avoid hard thinking. But equality has its deeper roots and its deeper justification. The State gives recognition and guarantees rights to persons. All men who are persons are, in the fundamental fact of personality, on the same level. The State which bases itself on this fundamental fact will be juster, as well as safer, than the State which bases itself on partial or accidental attributes.
The popular assembly, in addition to electing the council, elects also, by a general vote, but only from the ranks of the first two classes, the local officials of city and market (763 D–764 A); and it also elects the generals of the army. The generals, three in number, are to be elected, on the proposition of the guardians of the law, by all the members of the assembly who are of military age and over; but any man may propose a candidate of his own, in lieu of one of those proposed by the guardians, and if, on a preliminary ballot, a candidate thus proposed receives more votes than the official candidate, he is to be duly admitted to the final election (755 B–C).1 Apart from its electoral functions, Plato assigns to the assembly three other rights. It has cognisance of public suits against those who have injured the State (768 A): its consent is necessary to any change in the law, if change should ever be necessary (772 D); and it has the power of giving resident aliens permission to stay in the country beyond the appointed period of twenty years (850 C). On the whole the assembly, as it is Solonian in composition, possesses also what may be called Solonian powers; and like the Athenian assembly after the legislation of Solon, it plays the double part of a popular electorate and a popular judicature. But it does not appear to possess any deliberative functions. The ship of State needs careful watching by day and by night; but a multitude can never discharge such a function with any vigour (758 B). It is the council which, during its annual tenure of office, is to undertake this duty. Following Athenian precedent (but the precedent of a later age than that of Solon), Plato proposes that the council should be divided into twelve parts, and that each of these should act for a month as the main organ of government and the presiding body in the State (
: 758 D). Like the Athenian ‘prytanies’ these divisions, during their tenure of power, receive in audience foreigners and citizens; and like them, again, they convoke and dissolve the meetings of the assembly, ordinary and extraordinary, whether for elections or for justice or, it may be, for a change in the laws.2
The twelve divisions of the council are to act, each in its term, in conjunction with the executive magistrates. The executive magistrates are the guardians of the law, thirty-seven in number, elected, as we have seen, by the general assembly, and each holding office for twenty years. No man can be elected to the office until he is fifty years of age: no man can hold the office after he is seventy. The qualification of age suggests the Spartan Gerusia, whose members, according to Spartan law, must be over the age of sixty; and the number of the guardians of the law is also similar to that of the Gerontes, who, including the two kings, numbered thirty.1 It is curious to find executive officers holding office for twenty years; but we have to remember that the main function of the guardians, as their name indicates, is to ensure due observance of the law. They are also to keep the registers of personalty on which the four-class system is based.2 Their president, if’ he may so be termed, is that one of their number who is charged with the care of education, and holds the office of Minister of Education (
). He is to be elected from the ranks of the guardians of the law, on a secret vote, by a joint assembly of all the magistrates of the State; and he will hold his office for a term of five years. He must be the best of all the citizens in all respects (766 A); his office is far the greatest even among the highest offices of the State (765 E). It is not without significance that the ‘prime minister’ of Plato’s State should be the minister of education.
In treating of the judicial institutions of his State (767–768), Plato begins by distinguishing private and public suits. For the former there are to be three instances and three grades of courts. The court of first instance is a voluntary court, or board of arbitration (956 B), composed of neighbours and friends who best know the question at issue; and of this Plato speaks as the court of ‘greatest competence’. The court of second instance is the tribal court of each of the twelve territorial districts, for which the judges are to be chosen by lot, and in which the principle of a popular judicature is therefore recognized. That principle is one on which Plato lays emphasis: all should have a share in jurisdiction, for the man who does not share in the power of sitting with others injustice is apt to think himself utterly without any part in the State (768 B). The court of third and last instance is a court of select judges, who are annually chosen, one from each body of magistrates, by all the magistrates of the State in conjunction.1 The sittings of this court will be public; each judge will give his decision openly; and the joint board of magistrates by whom they have all been elected must attend the sittings of the court. Here again, if he does not adopt the Athenian system of large popular courts of law (with their hundreds, and sometimes their thousands, of judges), Plato attempts to mix some element, if not of popularity, at any rate of publicity. In public suits, in which there is apparently only one instance, he gives the trial almost wholly to the people. All are wronged when the State is wronged, and all will be aggrieved unless they have a voice in the decision. While, therefore, the examination of the case is reserved for three of the chief magistrates, to be agreed upon between the prosecutor and the defendant, the beginning and the end of the trial – the preliminary proceedings and the final decision – must rest with the public assembly.
The system of local government described by Plato (760 A–764 C) is necessarily slight: a State of 5040 citizens can need little beyond its central government. In the central city there are to be both city inspectors and inspectors of the market-square: in the country there are to be rural inspectors for every tribe. The latter, five in number, are to be elected by their tribe, and to hold office for two years. Their functions, in some respects, are like those of the Justices of the Peace in the old English system of local government. Like them, they have a petty jurisdiction; like them, they are a general board of administration. Unlike the English justices, the five inspectors of each tribe are each to choose a dozen young men for companions and associates, whom it is largely their function to train (cf. infra, p. 441): unlike them, again, they are not tied to one territorial district. It is the duty of each set of inspectors, with their sixty young associates, to make a double tour of the whole State during their tenure of office, from left to right in one year, and from right to left in the next, spending one month in each district as they go, so that they and their companions may acquire an abundant knowledge of all the country. While they are thus on circuit, they are to be busily occupied in requisitioning and in superintending whatever labour is necessary for the making of trenches to defend the country, the building of roads, the provision of a proper supply of water, and the creation of works of irrigation. The duties of the city and market inspectors are less onerous; but the importance of the central city makes their office also important. The three city inspectors, therefore, are to be chosen only from the first class, and the five market inspectors only from the first two classes; but any citizen may propose a candidate, and every citizen must vote in a preliminary selection by which the original candidates are reduced to a number double that of the number of officials to be chosen, while the final choice is left to the arbitrament of the lot. The city inspectors are concerned with the care of the city, its buildings, its roads and its water supply: the market inspectors superintend the market-square and its buildings and business; but both possess a petty jurisdiction.
The general lines of this system of local government follow Athenian precedent. In many other features, as we have seen, the constitutional structure of the State of the Laws is Athenian in character. The council and the general assembly are Athenian: the four-class system is that of Solonian Athens: the division of the State into twelve tribes, and of the council into twelve prytanies, recalls the Athens of Cleisthenes. On the other hand, the social system of the Laws is Spartan rather than Athenian. The method of training, the system of common tables, the position of women, are all ‘bred out of the Spartan kind’. The Laws is more critical of Sparta than the Republic, but the Spartan example is still present to Plato. We may describe the State of the Laws almost as a mixture of Athenian constitutional forms and Athenian liberty with the social system and stable order of Sparta. It is a mixed State in many senses, but not least in the sense that it is a combination of the two opposite types among the contemporary States of Greece.1
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT IN THE LAWS
Such is the system of local government and the constitution of the State described in the sixth book of the Laws. Before we turn to the additions made to this system in the twelfth book, we shall do well to consider the system as it stands. There is a popular assembly, an elected council, and an executive of guardians of the law: there are military officials, courts of justice, and local officials. The assembly is constituted on a system of classes, and a distinction is drawn between the classes which must, and those which may, attend; but every citizen is a member, and every citizen may vote in all its meetings. The council, whose monthly divisions are the presiding body in the State, is elected on a system which combines regard for wealth with regard for universal suffrage, and the use of the election with the use of the lot. The guardians of the law would appear to be freely elected by all the citizens, and from all the citizens, without distinction. But the military officials are partly recruited by popular election, and partly by nomination: the courts of law, while they contain an element of special knowledge in the select judges, are largely based on the principle of a popular judicature; and the local officials of the city and market are elected not indeed from all, but at any rate by all. Throughout, therefore, the element of wisdom, as represented by the upper classes, is given a special representation; throughout, also, the element of liberty, as represented by the whole body of citizens, is given a free field for operation, and every citizen who so desires may cast his vote. The difficulty implicit in the system is that the two higher classes, who are only higher in the sense that they possess a greater amount of personalty, are made to appear as the representatives of wisdom; but apart from that difficulty, the system is consistent, thorough-going, and careful to the verge of complication. The elements are so mixed in the whole State that it may seem hard to describe it as either a democracy or an aristocracy or an oligarchy. Plato, as he is the first, appears to be also the most thorough philosopher of that mixed form of constitution, which Aristotle advocates in the fourth book of the Politics, Polybius in the sixth book of his history, and Montesquieu in the eleventh book of the Esprit des Lois.
Aristotle, while himself an advocate of the mixed constitution, is a critic of the form of the mixed constitution advocated by Plato.1 It is liable, he thinks, to various objections. In the first place, it is based on the assumption that the best constitution should be a blend of democracy and tyranny, which are either no constitutions at all, or the worst of all constitutions: in the next place, a mixture of several constitutions is better than one of two; and finally, there is no monarchical element at all in Plato’s State, which is really a union of oligarchy and democracy, with a bias in favour of the former. Some of this criticism is far from just or even pertinent. Far from mixing tyranny with extreme democracy, as Aristotle implies, Plato, as we have seen (supra, p. 361), is careful to explain that it is only the better side of monarchy which he desires to mix with the better side of democracy. By the better side of monarchy he means the principle of the rule of intelligence: by the better side of democracy he means the principle of popular control. He uses monarchy in a sense so wide, that it includes both the rule of one and the rule of a few; and in mixing monarchy, thus understood, with democracy, he is really creating that mixture of several constitutions which Aristotle desired. He is blending the principle of intelligent government with that of popular control; and these, after all, are the only two principles between which choice can lie, or of which any mixture can be made. On the other hand, there is a basis of very real truth in the last of Aristotle’s objections. In the ordinary sense of the word, there is really no element of monarchy in Plato’s State. In the ordinary sense of the word, there certainly is a very considerable element of oligarchy. Plato’s principles do not square with his practice; and when, in practice, he identifies wisdom with wealth, he really turns the rule of intelligence into that rule of wealth which he himself, like Aristotle, considers to be the essence of oligarchy. Even in the literal sense of the word oligarchy, the State of the Laws can hardly be said to be other than a mixture of oligarchy with democracy; for the members of the first, and even those of the second class, will necessarily be ‘the Few’, and those of the third, and still more of the fourth, will as necessarily be ‘the Many’. Nor is Aristotle really unfair in his further contention, that Plato’s State has a bias in favour of oligarchy; that while the rich are forced to attend the assembly, the poor are free to abstain; that offices such as those of the city and market inspectors are open to the upper, but not to the lower classes; that the method of electing the council gives a premium to wealth. It is a device common in oligarchies, Aristotle explains, when he comes, in a later book of the Politics, to analyse their nature, that the rich should be fined and the poor go unpunished for failure to attend the assembly or to discharge other civic duties; but it is a device which is only meant to make some show of popular liberty, and its real intention is always to concentrate power de facto in the hands of the few (IV. 13, § 1–4: 1297, a 14–35). The criticism of Aristotle, that Plato’s State is biased in favour of oligarchy, involves a complementary criticism, that it is biased against democracy. Such a criticism, though it is not expressly made by Aristotle, is certainly possible. In spite of a wealth of ingenious devices, and in spite of all Plato’s concession of nominal powers, the popular assembly remains something of a shadow. The multitude can never watch the ship of State with any vigour (758 B): the true judgement in matters of art, and (it would also appear) in matters of politics, is that of the aristocracy of intelligence and education (658 E–659 C: 701 A–B). The element in the individual soul which feels pain and pleasure is like the people or masses in a State: as it is folly in an individual, when his desires do not obey reason and knowledge (689 A–B), so it is folly in a State, when the masses do not obey their rulers and the laws. It is hard to reconcile these sayings with any real belief in democracy. If Plato gives the people the power of electing officials, when he can hardly have imagined that they had sufficient wisdom to detect capacity, the gift is really made to ‘avoid the discontent of the people’. We must judge the State of the Laws less by the machinery of its institutions than by the spirit which pervades it. If we do so, we may conclude that the mixed constitution is not a real organic mixture, in which all the elements compounded are active, but rather a combination of popular elements which are mainly passive with an active and directive upper class. This is a fundamental criticism; and it is one which Aristotle made, not so much in the second book, where he directly criticizes the Laws, as in the third, where he states his view of the masses. They represent, he urges, a faculty of collective judgement, in virtue of which they can judge in matters of art, and may equally claim to judge in matters of politics, choosing their rulers freely, and calling their rulers freely to account. Here Aristotle touches that belief in the sovereignty of public opinion, or ‘the general will’, which Plato never accepts, and which, even in the Laws, where he seems for a while to accept it, is only accepted nominally, and is ultimately rejected.
THE CHANGE OF TONE IN THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE LAWS
Already, even in the earlier books of the Laws, the note is struck which, in the twelfth hook, becomes fully dominant. The principle of the rule of knowledge is definitely affirmed in passages such as those which have just been quoted; and if in practice the rule of knowledge seems to be modified, partly by its identification with the rule of wealth, and partly by its combination with the play of liberty in a mixed constitution, there is a large range of social life in which it is still left operative in its purity. Supervision is one of the notes of the Laws. Property is limited: marriage is controlled; and in one passage (730 D–E), in which he speaks of the man who informs the rulers of the wrong-doing of others as worth many men, and of those who co-operate with the rulers in correcting other citizens as yet more worthy, Plato seems to contemplate a system of mutual espionage and mutual censorship. The poet, the dramatist, the musician, are all brought under control (infra, pp. 431–2): liberty may find some scope in politics, but it finds little scope in the field of art; and with all its regulation of life the State of the Laws has some of the features of a Polizeistaat. We are scarcely surprised, therefore, when in the last book the veil is lifted, and we see clearly the figures, hitherto hidden, of guiding and controlling wisdom. Here the normal Greek institutions of assembly and council, officials and courts of laws, which appeared in the earlier books, begin to fade away; and instead there appears a nocturnal council of philosophers, or rather of philosophic astronomers, who guide the State because they know the mysteries of the heavens. Here too the law-state, rigid in character, unalterable in its rules, to which Plato has hitherto sought to ascribe the stability of an Egyptian Pyramid, unchanged and unchanging through the centuries, begins to dissolve; and the outlines of a State based on the free play of reason and guided by ‘genuine free mind’ reveal themselves in its place. It is this which makes Aristotle say that while professing to found a State generally acceptable, Plato veers gradually round to the old ideal of the Republic.1
The first new body of officials to be revealed in the twelfth book is the examiners or censors (εὐθυνταί), whose function it is to examine the conduct of the other magistrates during their tenure of office. Such examination was a general institution in Greece: both executive officials and members of the council had responsibility brought home to them, and had to give an account (
) of their term of office, not only in democratic States (though the institution was especially characteristic of democracies), but also in States under aristocratic or oligarchical government.2 Generally the examination had to be undergone at the end of the term of office and within thirty days of its termination; but it might sometimes be imposed from month to month, or, if less frequently, at any rate from time to time during the tenure of office. The officials who held the examination (generally termed 
, or, as at Corinth, 
) might have power not only to hear evidence, but also to give the final decision; or they might, as was generally the case, merely collect the evidence on the basis of which a court of law eventually decided. We might have expected that the of Plato’s State, as it is their function to guard the laws, would conduct the examination of all other magistrates.3 Plato, however, creates a new and superior magistracy which is to exercise a censorship over all others, and which, just because it is of surpassing importance, is to be filled by men who surpass all others in merit (945 C). He provides that in every year each citizen shall nominate any citizen over the age of fifty whom he considers best in character and conduct. From a certain number (but Plato does not explain the number), consisting of those who have received the highest quota of votes in this preliminary nomination, one-half is to be chosen by a further vote; and from this half, again, three are to be elected by a final vote.1 The three thus elected are to hold the office of examiner till the age of seventy-five; and the college of examiners, thus annually recruited by three new members, will be a body of the best citizens, with a possible number of seventy-five members and a probable number of forty, all over the age of fifty, which supervises all the administration of the State.2 It is the function of the college to keep all the magistrates in the one way of justice, and so to preserve the unity of the State. If it fails, and the magistrates pull in different directions, the city will be full of dissensions, and will become many instead of one (945 D–E). Its members, accordingly, have the power of life and death over all magistrates, though an appeal lies from their decision to the court of select judges (946 D). As is their power, so too is to be their honour. They sit in the chief seats in all public assemblies; the one of the three annually elected examiners who receives the greatest number of votes is to give his name to the year; and when an examiner dies, he is buried with a solemn grandeur. His bier is borne to the tomb in the early morning, with full military pomp, accompanied by a choir of boys singing the national anthem (
); his tomb is an oblong vaulted chamber underground, where stone couches stand side by side; and round the tomb there is to rise a mound crowned by a grove of trees (947).
The examiners, however, are not the summit of the Platonic State, whatever their power or dignity. They are men who excel all others in character and conduct; but the summit of Plato’s State, if Plato is true to himself and his own fundamental principles, must necessarily be a body of men who excel all others in knowledge and in philosophic insight – in a grasp of the meaning of the heavens, and the earth, and their mutual concordance. This body he finds, or constructs, in the shape of a nocturnal council. The appearance of the nocturnal council seems to result, almost incidentally, from a discussion of the relation of the State of the Laws to those of the outer world. Unrestricted intercourse with other States would lead to evil communications and corrupt the good manners of the State (949 E). On the other hand, any attempt at complete isolation is impossible; and even if it were possible it would be regarded by the rest of the world as barbarous.1 It is an error in a State to pay no heed to the reputation in which it is held by other States. Those who are removed from goodness themselves can judge with an accurate instinct the goodness of others; and a good man will always desire to bear a good reputation. What is true of men is (here at any rate) true also of States; and a good State will desire to have a good reputation among other States. It will show itself to other States at its best; when it permits its members to travel, and to carry with them on their travels the reputation of their State, it will be careful to send abroad the best of its citizens. The State which Plato has built will accordingly send to the international congresses of the Greek world, at Olympia and other places of festival, the citizens by whom it would choose to be judged, and so ‘win a glory the reverse of that which is won in war’ (951 A), gaining a reputation not by the force of its arms, but by the merit of its ambassadors. These will be public envoys; but the State will also send private citizens abroad as ‘spectators’, provided they gain the leave of the guardians of the law. These spectators will study other cities and their laws; and comparing them with their own, they will enter into possession of their own laws no longer by habit only, but through that full understanding which is the only way of entering into full possession of the spirit of law and attaining a full civility of life.1 Nor will the spectators confine their studies to institutions only. There are always in the world some few men of a divine quality, who arise no less in badly ordered than in good States, and whom men ought to seek out by land and sea, in order that they may learn from them to corroborate whatever is strong, and correct whatever is defective, in the laws of their own State.2 Here speaks the Plato who had travelled and seen the world; and here, too, speaks the Plato who had embraced philosophy, which is the ‘spectator of time and existence’.
The spectator, when he has held office for ten years, or less, between the age of fifty and that of sixty, must make a ‘relation’ to his State, as the envoys of Venice made relazioni to their Senate; and the body to which he makes his relation is to be the nocturnal council (so called because it meets between dawn and sunrise), which shall listen to his experiences and the lessons they suggest, and act accordingly (951 D–E). The nocturnal council thus introduced has already been mentioned incidentally by Plato in the tenth book, where it is said to have its place of meeting near ‘the House of Reformation’, and its members are mentioned as conversing, for the sake of their reformation, with the heretics who are undergoing imprisonment in that House (908 A). Here the nocturnal council has some of the features of a Dominican Inquisition. In the twelfth book it appears as a society of philosophers, considering and discussing the true way of life, partly in the light of the ‘relations’ of the ‘spectators,1 and partly in the light of philosophy – a philosophy which is one of number and astronomy.3 The basis of its composition, like the basis of so much else in the Laws, is the principle of mixture; but the elements mixed are no longer different social classes, but different ages and different stages of experience and outlook on life, One-half of the council is ex officio, and consists of the higher officials of the State, who, since the offices they hold are open only to men over the age of fifty, will necessarily be advanced in years. To this half belong the examiners, who are all entitled to seats, and are all over the age of fifty; the ten eldest guardians of the laws, who will be between sixty and seventy years of age; the minister of education, who must necessarily be over the age of fifty, along with his predecessors in office, who may well be upwards of seventy; and finally those of the ‘spectators’ who have proved themselves worthy of membership, who again, as a rule, will be men of sixty years and upwards. So far the council is a body of grey-beards; and indeed the whole government of the State, of which the council is a microcosm, may seem, so far as it has hitherto been described, a gerontocracy. But a plan which Plato has already suggested in the sixth book, where he associates with each of the five inspectors of each country district twelve young companions (760 B), is also adopted for the nocturnal council, and introduces a new and important element into its composition. Each of the ex officio members is to choose a young associate, between the age of thirty and that of forty; and this associate, if the rest agree, is to become a regular member of the council (961 B).1 The old, who have had experience of administrative affairs, or who have travelled and seen the world, will thus be aided by the fire and vigour of youth; and in this way Plato would seek to satisfy the old sigh after the unattainable – si jeunesse sauait, si vieillesse pouuait. Youth will strengthen the hands and ease the stiffness of old age: it will prevent the rise of a bureaucracy which would be all the worse because it was also a gerontocracy. Age, again, will add its wisdom and its philosophic lore to the mere instinct and opinion of youth. Not only so, but the young will have a chance of distinguishing themselves in debate with their elders, and of showing by the part which they play in the council their qualifications for office; while the rest of the city will be able to watch all those who acquit themselves creditably, and promote them to office according to their deserts (952 B). Nor is the council only a training-ground and a testing-place for the young: it is also a bond of union between the older officials. It links together the various magistracies: it is, as it were, a cabinet which connects and correlates the activities of various departments – the minister of education, the examiners, the guardians of the law. Finally, with its experienced officials, its young associates, and its travelled spectators, the council will be the brain and controlling mind of the whole State. As such it will survey the whole sphere of law, holding discourse concerning laws at home and any good laws which may be found abroad. It will also, Plato suggests, discuss all branches of study (
) which throw light on the subject of law; and these, if the old members so direct, the young associates must be set to learn with diligence (951 E–952 A).1
The nocturnal council, we have said, is the directing mind of the State. Every living body, Plato argues, needs mind for its direction; and mind, again, needs the senses of sight and hearing for its aid and information. The body politic needs for its direction the mind embodied in the nocturnal council; and that council needs, for its aid and information, the eyes and ears of the ‘younger guardians’,1 who see and hear all the doings of the State (964 B). Now mind, in its nature, always pursues a single aim. The senses see and hear many things, and are manifold themselves; mind is one, and its aim and object is always one (cf. supra, p. 218). Like mind in general, the mind politic must pursue, and to pursue it must know, the one aim which is set before it, and the only means which makes the realization of that aim possible. The one aim which is set before each State is goodness – not wealth, not liberty, and least of all liberty for itself combined with tyranny over other States (962 D–E); and goodness, again, is itself a unity – not a sum or plurality of different qualities, courage and wisdom, self-control and justice, but a single and unitary quality, in which all these qualities are blended, and which must be known as a unity if it is ever to be attained. The only means, therefore, which makes the attainment of goodness possible is knowledge of the unity of goodness: 2 the only way in which the political aim of goodness can ever be secured for a State is through the rule of statesmen who have learned to know its unity. Without such knowledge a man can hardly be called a ruler at all (962 B): he who cannot acquire it, in addition to the ordinary virtues, can hardly ever be a proper ruler of a whole State, though he may serve under others in a subordinate capacity (968 A). But if goodness is to be known as a unity, and if its one true Form or Idea is to be abstracted from the many and various shapes in which it appears, a training of more than ordinary exactitude is required (965 A–D). All things are reduced to unity in God. It is in Him and through Him that goodness is a unity. He who would know the unity of goodness must therefore know God. Only when we have learned to see the universe as a whole, and ourselves as parts of it with our allotted places; only when we have learned to know how His eternal mind pervades that whole, and imbues and sustains our minds in their several functions – only then can we see the unity of goodness, and the unity of all things, in His divine purpose.3 The training which will bring us to the knowledge of God, and therefore to the knowledge of the unity of goodness, is the training which comes from the study of astronomy. It is a mistake to think that astronomy leads to atheism, because it leads men to see nothing in the world but matter actuated by necessary laws of motion. That is a false astronomy, which setting matter before mind, or rather eliminating mind altogether, perverts the order of the universe. True astronomy is the opposite. It leads men to see that mind – which is prior to all matter, ‘the eldest and most divine of all things’ – sways all the motions of the heavens: it teaches us that those motions, in their regular order and perfect beauty, are proofs of a directing mind itself no less regular and no less perfect. To understand God and goodness we must learn to understand the heavens. We must learn to comprehend the mind that moves in the stars and is the cause of being; we must learn to know the branches of study that are preparatory to such comprehension; we must learn to see music in its fellowship with these; and then we must learn to use all we have comprehended, all we have known, all we have seen, in all its full concordance, for the guidance of men’s habits and their customs. This is that same concordantia divina of which Nicolas of Cusa wrote; and it is in virtue of a grasp of this concordance that the nocturnal council must guide and govern the State.
The end of the Laws is thus a return to the doctrines of the Republic, couched in a new and astronomical form, with astronomy and number taking the place of dialectic and the Idea. Once more Plato turns to the rule of ‘genuine free mind’, of which in earlier books he had almost despaired, and for which he had sought to substitute the rule of law: once more he turns to the ideal of unity in place of that of compromise and mixture; once more he turns to a scheme of philosophic training, and, with it, to the sovereignty of philosopher-kings. The nocturnal council is the ‘perfect guardians’ of the Republic, turned collegiate and set to control, in ways that are never explained, a system of political machinery into which they are never fitted. The more exact training necessary for the council is adumbrated at the end of the Laws, as the higher education necessary for the perfect guardians is suggested in the sixth book of the Republic; but while the outlines of the higher education of the guardians are fully sketched in the seventh book of the Republic, the details of the more exact training required for the nocturnal council are never drawn out in the Laws. The Athenian stranger promises, at the end of the dialogue, to ‘run the danger’ of stating his views on education, which is ‘the subject raised again by the course of the argument’ (969 A); but with this promise the Laws comes to an end, halting, as it were, on the threshold of the last room which remains to be explored. If, however, we treat the Epinomis (or ‘appendix to the Laws’) as a Platonic work (and in spirit at any rate it is Platonic), we may find some fulfilment of the promise made at the end of the Laws.1 Once more the speakers are the Athenian Stranger, Megillus and Cleinias; and the question they discuss is ‘What is wisdom, and by what training shall she be found?’ Wisdom is the art of number, the Athenian Stranger replies; for without that art mankind is furthest removed from wisdom and discretion (976 D–E). With number dwell wisdom and all good things; and things that are evil are things without number and measure (978 A–B). The art of number is the gift of God; and He is Heaven – the heavenly mind which turns the stars in their orbits, and gives them their seasons and sustenance (977 A–B). The regular motion of the heavens according to number is a plain proof that they have wisdom and are possessed of mind; for mind is constant and stable, and the constancy of the heavens proves not that they are matter, revolving in obedience to ‘the laws of matter’, but that they are mind, acting with the stability of all true mind (982). He who knows the wisdom of the mind that moves in the heavens has found wisdom; and the way of wisdom is thus astronomy – that true and high astronomy, which is not merely content, like the peasant in Hesiod, to watch the rising and the setting of the stars, but studies the reasons of their movements and contemplates the mind by which they are moved (990 A). He who studies after this manner will grasp the unity of the universe.
‘Every diagram, each system of number, every scheme of harmony and all the consonance in the revolution of the stars, must needs be revealed as one, through all their manifestations, to the student in this school; and revealed indeed they will be, if he studies rightly with an eye to the One; for thought will reveal to him the existence of the one bond that links them all together’ (991 E).
In this way will men attain wisdom, and with wisdom they will attain happiness. Few, indeed, can attain this height; but when those few have reached it by their labours and come to the goal of old age, they must have the highest offices given into their hands. The rest must follow in their train, with thanksgiving to all the gods: ‘the nocturnal council, when they know and have tested us properly, must summon us all to wisdom’ (992).
Thus Plato is Plato still, even to the last. He did not, after all, end on a note of compromise, or with a belief in the ‘second best’ and the mixed constitution and all the workaday world of ordinary political machinery.1 The State of the Laws, like that of the Republic, becomes, in the issue, an ensample laid up in the heavens – or rather, the earthly antitype of the polity of the heavens where the stars move in measure through the operation of mind, which is the first and only mover of all created things. To some the end of the Laws, and still more the Epinomis, may seem fantastic, and Plato may appear to have fallen, in his old age, into a form of mathematical mysticism. But this is perhaps a harsh and erroneous verdict.2 Mathematical mysticism is not the ultimate note of the Laws. The astronomy of which Plato speaks is less astronomy than theology; and his mysticism is really an ardent rationalism, which leads him to find a rational mind behind all movement and existence. The last word of his political theory is in effect theocracy. The State which he envisages in the last book of the Laws is a State guided by a religious assembly, which acts in the light of a divine truth won from the study of astronomy. It was the time of sunset and evening star, and the grey-haired Plato lifted his eyes
1
Mind, he believed, directed all these solemn goings. God, he believed, had given men, through the apprehension of number, the key to this splendour of truth in the heavens; and men must translate the measure and the music of the spheres into the goings of their cities. This, as has been said, may remind us of Nicolas of Cusa. It may also remind us of the medieval papacy, which sought to mould human life into concordance with a divine truth won not from any contemplation of the stars, but from faith in the revelation of the Son of Man.2 The end of the Laws is the beginning of the Middle Ages. This is true not only of the twelfth book, but of all the last three books. Even the astronomical theology, which finds its highest expression in the great tenth book,3 passed into the medieval Church, through the medium of a famous chapter in the Metaphysics of Aristotle; and Dante’s confession of faith
Credo in uno Dio
Solo ed eterno, che tutto ’l ciel muove,
Non moto
came, through Aristotle, ultimately from Plato – the Plato of the Laws.1 The advocacy of religious persecution, which is one of the striking features of the tenth book, is no less medieval; and the nocturnal council, which discourses with heretics for their reformation, has its analogy, as was said above, with the Dominican Inquisition. The State of the Republic, and that of the Laws, are ideals; but they are ideals which, for a time, and in a degree, were realized. The medieval Church was the place of that realization. Partly by its structure, with its papal monarchy corresponding to the philosopher-king, and its hierarchy of priests, monks, and laity corresponding to the three classes of Plato; partly in its function, and its attempt to fashion life into an external order or scheme controlled by one divine Idea, the Roman Church turned Plato’s ideal (and in some measure turns it even still) into an actual and living institution.2
which were used at Athens for the election of the βουλή in the first half of the fifth century (cf. supra, p. 38). Two modern analogies suggest themselves. (1) The compulsory vote is part of the Belgian constitution and of the constitutions of some of the Swiss cantons. (2) The use of the four-class system in the election of the council corresponds in some ways to the use of the three-class system once used in the election of the Prussian diet. There the electorate was divided into three classes, on the basis of a property qualification; and each of these classes, which of course were numerically unequal (the first containing about 5 per cent, and the third some 80 per cent of the whole electorate), elected an equal number of electors. The electors then chose the members from the candidates proposed by the various parties. The Prussian system sought to produce equality of property (at the expense of equality of persons), and it might be said to aim at proportionate equality, which according to Plato is the true equality, but it also accentuated social divisions. The system of Plato is much more moderate, but it is perhaps open, as Aristotle by implication suggests, to the same criticism.
at Sparta; but nothing is known of them. There were also 
thus correspond, in one essential point, to those of the Athenian; and it almost looks as if he had added the number (thirty), and the qualification of age, of the Spartan Gerontes to the number (seven) and the duties of the Athenian 
).
); but the reference is probably to the younger members of the nocturnal council. This illustrates the fact that we must not press isolated phrases in the Laws too far – a remark which bears on the interpretation of such passages as 739–40 (cf. supra, p. 370, n. 1 (2)).
with Protagoras, 326 D sqq., where the word 
occurs, and Politicus, 274 B sqq.).