their whole career, under the corrupt forms of government. As then he announces this at the end of our fourth and the beginning of our fifth book, he does accordingly execute his intention in the fifth main division of the work as contained in the eighth and ninth books. But at present he is drawn away into other investigations by Polemarchus and Adimantus, backed also by Thrasymachus, and these, occupying the fifth, sixth and seventh books, form the fourth main division of the work; but notwithstanding their important compass and still more important subject-matter, they are yet, both here, and still more at the beginning of the eighth book where the original thread is again taken up, most distinctly marked as an occasional and almost extorted episode.

The whole of this, the fourth grand division, stands in immediate connection with the request of Adimantus, that Socrates, before proceeding further upon the course prescribed, will first describe, with a view to the completion of the model state, the particular education of those in it who are destined for its government and defence, and at the same time explain himself more accurately than has hitherto been done with regard to the connection of the sexes; and he does indeed request this as a thing of very great importance, not at all with reference to the question of justice, but to the right constitution of the state; so that every fine-drawn application in any way of the matter discussed in these books to that main question respecting justice in the individual mind, and the relation between a just life and happiness, is at once by this expressly protested against. Now, the first investigation with regard to the state, refers almost exclusively to that original state

peculiar to Plato, while the second, which treats of the cultivation of these men and women to that which they are to unite in themselves, has naturally a far more general tendency, and is, considered as a continuation of what was said in the first book respecting the general means of education for early youth, as it were a universal Platonic encyclopædia and methodical synopsis for all knowledge, drawn up indeed from a pædagogic point of view, but still in the most extended sense, as a systematic regulation of life was generally, in the Hellenic mind, the highest problem of philosophy.

Now as regards the first division of this part, that which treats of the connection of the sexes, it does not appear to me that the way in which it is introduced, Socrates' reluctance to enter upon it, and his wish to avoid the subject, refers to the circumstance. that he was here about to introduce into the language of the people a thing contrary to all current opinion, and as yet unheard-of. I rather discover in this the clearest traces of the fact that this doctrine was already known, as it naturally might be from the oral lectures and the communications of his pupils, and had experienced some satirical treatment: consequently, if we suppose this to be the case, the allusions of the comic. poets to the Platonic community of women could prove nothing for the period of the composition of the work before us. But this is so completely a matter of critical feeling lying without the limits of argument, that I can do nothing but invite those readers who are interested in such questions of historical criticism to an attentive consideration of the passage. The regulations. then here made for Plato's state with reference to the connection of the sexes, are founded upon the doctrine

of the similarity of both sexes; where, though it is certainly allowed that the female sex is the weaker, this is done with the reservation that no powers are wanting to that sex to qualify women for every kind of human activity; in this respect, consequently, this doctrine stands in decisive opposition to the predominant views and practice of Plato's time. Now though Christianity has upon the whole struck into the same road, in so far as it has, generally, brought the condition of the female sex nearer to a similarity with the male, still it can by no means be said that this doctrine does in any way belong to or partake in those approximations to the Christian mode of thinking which will be found in Plato. On the contrary, the grounds upon which he starts, as well as the consequences which he developes, are such that, from the standing point of Christianity, we must enter the most lively protestations against them. For instead of going back to the identity of reason in the two sexes, which must, therefore, be in the main developed by the same means in both, and thus brought to supremacy, from which indeed no possibility of a correspondence in gymnastic exercises would be deducible, he refers, in order to prove his position, to brutes, without its occurring to him, however profoundly he endeavours to penetrate into the depths of nature, that the organic opposition between the two sexes becomes more widely strained correspondingly with the gradations in organic life, and, consequently, in the human race, must be at its maximum. And he seems quite as little to reflect what a wide distinction, in reference to common occupations, arises from the fact that recipiency and pregnancy is not periodical in man, but free from all influence of the

seasons. Meanwhile this treatment of the subject, so manifestly and pre-eminently physical, sufficiently shews that Plato took it not in a Socratic but a Pythagorean point of view. And as, again, Christian morality, proceeding upon the greater similarity of the sexes, introduced into the world the purest idea of marriage, and the most perfect form of domesticity, Plato's view on the contrary misled him on the ground of this similarity to an utter destruction of both; and this is what every individual of sound mind among our contemporaries would gladly erase out of this work, even to the very last trace. But these traces lead very far; nay, I might almost say, that here is concentrated all that was mistaken in the development of the Hellenic mind; and we have a clear proof of the incapacity of that nature to form a satisfactory system of ethical relations. Even Plato, to whom in this respect utterly false honour has been ignorantly awarded, is so confined within the merely sensuous view of the sexual relation, that he recognises no motive for the determination of the sexual passion to a particular personal inclination other than the feeling of beauty, which the contemplation of beautiful forms in manifold and animated attitudes produces; so that a spiritual element in sexual love remained utterly unknown to him. Now in the Platonic state a passionate inclination of this kind cannot itself attain its object, but it is only a motive co-operating to assist those persons who bring the couples together. And they, in order to make it yield the greatest possible advantage for the commonwealth, and yet prevent any discord arising about much wished-for beauties, have recourse to a fraud, not publicly indeed, but privately authorised, and consequently, with truth and honesty,

sacrifice to the public good the most essential element of personal morality. But from the same sense of beauty inclinations also in men towards youths might be developed; and Plato by no means regarded even the right of the plastic power of nature sufficiently high to wish to overcome such a direction of passion by shame, but these inclinations were to be favoured as the reward of courage, so that the ambition in the citizens to distinguish themselves in that character might be nourished by the prospect of obtaining the most beautiful out of the two sexes as a reward; and the susceptibility of being thus stimulated to forward the common weal and the common good is numbered among the characteristic traits of more noble natures; a thing at which our more moral austerity is with justice shocked and dismayed.

Nay, we see not only that sensual passion is sanctioned even in the noblest natures as an important motive, but it is difficult to see how, in such a system of life, any other source of free personal inclination remains. On the other hand we must certainly allow, if the principle is once granted that the guards, in order to prevent any self-interest arising in them in opposition to the spirit of community, are to be excluded from all private property, that it follows only much too easily that they can have no home and no marriage, and then a state of community in the procreation and education of their offspring appears to be the most natural result. When an extended fraternization is extolled as the most splendid fruit of this regulation, best calculated to prevent all discord, we reply, that this cannot extend further than the limits of that common school house, resembling in its dimness