GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON MYTHS WHICH SET FORTH THE NATION'S, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM HITHERTO We have seen the Individual's Ideals and Categories set forth in Myth. Let us now conclude our review of the Platonic Myths by looking at two, in one of which—the Atlantis Myth-we have a Nation's Ideal set forth-we assist at the spectacle of a Nation led on by a Vision of its Future; while in the other-the Myth of the Earth-Born, the Foundation-myth of the Kaλλiπoλis 2-we have a Nation's Categories deduced the life of the "social organism is exhibited as conditioned by its Past, as determined a priori by certain deep-cut characteristics. The Atlantis Myth is introduced in the Timaeus as necessary to complete the ideal of the kaλλíπOMs, or Perfect State, presented in the Republic. The Timaeus, we must remember, stands in very close artistic and philosophic connection with the Republic, and begins with a recapitulation of the first five books of the Republic. Having recapitulated, Socrates says that he wishes now to see the Constitution of their yesterday's conversation exhibited in action; and it is to meet this wish that Critias tells the story of Atlantismerely summarised in the Timaeus, but afterwards begun on full scale in the Critias, unfortunately a fragment. There are two chief points to be noticed about the following on of the Atlantis Myth to complete the Republic :— (1) It is an imaginary Athens in the Atlantis Myth, which is the kaλions of the Republic in action. Much has been 1 Timaeus, 19 ff. (where it is sketched), and Critias (where it is begun on a large scale, but not finished). 2 Republic, 414 B. said and written about Plato's dislike of Athenian democracy and admiration of Spartan institutions as shown in the Republic. The ideal city of the Republic has been epigrammatically described as " a Dorian State and a Pythagorean Order." But it is a glorified Athens, not Sparta, which represents Hellas against barbarism in the Myth told by Critias. "Athens, with all thy faults I love thee still," is Plato's deepest sentiment. (2) The action of the xaxiTTOMS is assumed without question to be war. The education of the Republic is the education of warriors, and the Myth of Atlantis is the History of a Great War which puts that education to practical test. Of all Utopias, Plato's is the most militant. The Philosophers who rule are recruited from the Army. Only those who have first learnt, as patriotic soldiers, to reverence the ideal of Country one and indivisible, can afterwards comprehend that ideal intellectually in its contour and articulation-can take the synoptic view" required in the Philosopher-King. Industrial people immersed in private affairs never rise, either as patriots or as statesmen, to the ideal of Country one and indivisible. A "Philosophic Banker," as Grote was called, Plato could not have conceived. Civilisation, as its course is sketched in the Second Book of the Republic,1 begins with the formation of an Army. The little rustic iyins πóls— the City of Pigs-contented with mere comfort, can never become the home of civilisation. It is out of the unrest and lust of the pλeyμaívovσa mós that civilisation is evolved; for in order to satisfy its lust it must go to war, and in order to wage war successfully it must have professional soldiers, who, if they are not to turn upon their fellow-citizens and rend them, must be trained in a certain manner. What, then, is to be the training of these soldiers? They were called into existence solely, it would appear, for the purpose of serving the evil policy of the φλεγμαίνουσα πόλις. But where is now the pλeypaívovσa móλis? It is gone-only its soldiers remain; and, by one of those dream-like transformations which mean so much in Plato's Philosophy, its soldiers are changed into the Guardians of the Kaλλíπоλis to be; and, without a word of explanation offered, a beginning is straightway made 1 Republic, 372, 373. of their training for the service of that city. And what does this dream-like transformation mean? That the highest good is won only in the struggle against difficulties into which evil passions have brought us What we call sin I could believe a painful opening out The contented life of the vins Tóλis must be succeeded by the restless lustful life of the φλεγμαίνουσα πόλις, in order that upon the necessity of war the beauty of true civilisation may be grafted by discipline and education. The doctrine of the Republic, then, is that the leaders of civilisation are men who have been trained for war-ó dé ye ἡμέτερος φύλαξ πολεμικός τε καὶ φιλόσοφος τυγχάνει ὤν. Here Plato seems to me to take hold of a fundamental principle in biology. Look at the races of living creatures: their specific beauty and intelligence have been developed on lines laid down by the necessity of defence and attack: victrix causa deis placuit. It does not astonish the reader of the Republic, then, to see the Myth of the xaλλimoλis completed by the Atlantis Myth, in which the Military State, small and disciplined, overthrows the Commercial State, large and luxurious. The individual Soul may indeed pass out of the κύκλος γενέσεων and enter into peace-e venni dal martirio a questa pace; but the State has no immortal destiny-it is of this world, and is always implicated in the struggle of the earthly life. Πολεμούμεν ἵν ̓ εἰρήνην ἄγωμεν is not in Plato's vein. Were war to cease in the world, what would become of the Platonic system of Education? Plato does not expect and, more than that, does not wish to see war cease. His ideal of earthly life is Hellas in arms against Barbarism. War began in émiovμía, in appetite; then it was waged to satisfy Ovpós-for la gloire; and we ought to hope that the time will come when it will be waged only in the cause of λóyos-to propagate an idea; but let us remember-this is Plato's message to us, as I understand it-that the "idea" we fight for our év Tоúτ vikas-is a sign which shines only 3 1 Clough, Dipsychus. 2 Republic, 525 B 3 Par. xv. 148. before the eyes of the militant, and would fade from the sky if we laid down our arms. The Atlantis Myth throws the future back into the pastit reflects, in the form of a History of Invaders coming from the West, Plato's hope and fear as he looks towards the East. The shadow of Persian Invasion still darkened Greece. Plato, in the anxious of the Republic and the Atlantis Myth, sets forth his ideal of a glorified Athens which, under the spiritual leadership of the Delphian Apollo,' shall undertake the political leadership of a united Hellas, in order to stem the onslaught of the Barbarian, and maintain the Hellenic ideal of "culture" against the barbaric reality of "material civilisation." Thus, taken in connection with each other, as they certainly ought to be, the Republic and the Atlantis Myth set forth a dream of the future which takes rank beside Dante's dream of Empire and Church in the de Monarchia. "The Plato's dream was soon to come true, though not in the manner which any forecast of his could have anticipated; for even Aristotle writes as if Alexander had not conquered Asia and opened a new epoch for Hellas and the world. history of Greece," says Prof. Percy Gardner,2 "consists of two parts, in every respect contrasted the one with the other. The first recounts the stories of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, and ends with the destruction of Thebes and the subjugation of Athens and Sparta. The Hellas of which it speaks is a cluster of autonomous cities in the Peloponnesus, the Islands, and Northern Greece, together with their colonies scattered over the coasts of Italy, Sicily, Thrace, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and Africa. These cities care only to be independent, or, at most, to lord it over one another. Their political institutions, their religious ceremonies, their customs, are civic and local. Language, commerce, a common Pantheon, and a common art and poetry are the ties that bind them together. In its second phase, Greek history begins with the expedition of Alexander. It reveals to us the Greek as everywhere lord of the barbarian, as founding kingdoms and federal systems, as the instructor of all mankind in art and science, and the spreader of civil and civilised life over the known world. In the first period of her history Greece is forming herself, in her second she is educating the world. We will venture to borrow from the Germans a convenient expression, and call the history of independent Greece the history of Hellas-that of imperial Greece the history of Hellenism." The ideal, adumbrated in the Republic and the Atlantis Myth, of a Hellenic Empire, created and maintained by the joint forces of Athens and Delphi, is one between which and the ideal of personal salvation through union with Godópoiwσis TW Dew-there is a very real opposition. The more men live for the ideal of national greatness the less does the ideal of personal salvation concern them. Plato's chief interest undoubtedly was in the ideal of personal salvation, which he derived mainly from the Orphic religion; and it was exactly this Orphic element in Platonism which constituted by far the most important part of its influence on subsequent philosophy, and, more especially, on the development of Christian doctrine and practice. The Heaven and Hell and Purgatory of Christian eschatology come not, to any large extent, from Jewish sources, or from the teaching of the Gospels and Epistles, but mainly from the Apocalypses, which are thoroughly Orphic in matter and spirit.' It is not to be supposed, of course, that the Apocalypses got their Orphism or "Sacramentalism "to use a term which covers the ground better-from Plato. They got it from the teaching of the Orphic and similar sacramental societies which existed throughout the world. But the direction given, at the beginning, to Christian thought and feeling, and, it is safe to add, to Christian practice, by the influence of these societies, produced a condition of religious belief which afterwards lent itself easily to the influence of the refined Orphism of the Platonists. Just as the ideal of national greatness on Earth, though we see it in the Republic and Atlantis Myth swimming into Plato's ken, was of little account to him, and to those whom he influenced, beside the ideal of personal salvation through union with God,-so, in the development of Christianity, to which Platonism contributed so much, the materialistic Jewish 1 See Gardner's Exploratio Evangelica, p. 270, with reference to Dieterich's analysis of the Apocalypse of Peter. |