And then again it may be sought, more objectively, whether the solid content of pleasure which they afford cannot, purely as pleasure, be measured and estimated. And in this last proof much is presumed which was said upon the distinctions of pleasure in the Phædo, but above all in the Philebus, which, viewed from this point, appears as the true and immediate introduction to our work. And Socrates crowns this perfect proof for the good cause of justice by a new image of the mind. I say new, because no true reader will be able to avoid, on occasion of the present image, recurring to that description in the Phædrus of the chariot and its driver. Now if we compare the two, we shall find that that would yield an excellent work of art, if a sculptor or painter executed as Plato designed it; and even in words it developes a much-admired, and we may add, a truly admirable brilliancy of description and elegance of application. That at present under consideration, on the contrary, seems coarsely and almost negligently treated in the execution, and the application, extremely prosaically, is step by step in correspondence with the preceding didactic exposition. And should an attempt be made to express it as an image, it would, as Plato makes us feel distinctly enough, turn out a random performance, and acquit itself but little better than those well-known ascetic counterfeits of the human heart, in which the evil principle dwells, and from which all evil thoughts proceed. It is, however, excellently conceived for the purpose of clenching all the doctrines set up in this work with regard to the mind, and exhibiting in detail the different relations among them, and is perhaps only all the more effective as it will not bear the pencil or chisel, but can only be expressed in words. But if we consider how, if otherwise our

arrangement is to be of any value, Plato's entire doc trine of the mind, in so far as he treats of it in a preponderantly ethical view, is confined as it were between these two images, we are then drawn deeper into the comparison. Neither of the two indeed represents the human mind as a perfect unity, or makes the distinct elements which may be discovered in it intelligible from a common centre-point; but still the strangely-compounded monster must ever be more a living unity than that chariot. The subdivision is in the main the same, but in the instance of which we are now speaking it comes out in much better relief, as the complexity of the principle of desire is here expressed, which in the other case is utterly wanting. And thus we come by degrees indulgently to attribute the luxurious abundance in the earlier picture, which has something of a coquettish character, partly to the rhetorical form of that work, and partly to the youthfulness of the composer, while in the one now before us we praise as meritorious the absence of all pretence to imitative virtuosity, which, standing as it does in strong contrast with the former, is at the same time perfectly in character with the philosophy of the work itself. And as this image recapitulates all that is properly ethical in the collective subject-matter of the work itself, it certainly appears to be a perfectly fit conclusion to the books themselves. For such it really is; the problem is solved, inasmuch as the superiority of the moral life is proved; nay, even the conditions under which such a life is possible are laid down. And if questions, not falling within the limits of the problem, and referring only to the great image of the perfect Republic, interwoven with the whole work, are digres

sively answered, this noble image itself has as it were the spunge passed over it; for as when, after the completion of the structure, the scaffolding is again broken away, Socrates expressly declares that this republic exists only in imagination, and nowhere upon earth, and he leaves it standing only as a heavenly model, according to which every man is to regulate himself, and can then perform the duties of this constitution only, and of no other.

At the end, then, of the ninth book every reader would go away satisfied, and miss nothing connected with the subject. But it can in no way be intended to be only an exhibition of the Socratic gluttony in conversation, when, as if he were yet far from the end, Socrates subjoins immediately something new, and that without even taking breath; as if he were afraid that otherwise interlocutors and hearers would not let themselves be again brought to the task.

On the contrary, we must be the more curious with respect to the subject-matter of this sixth grand division, which occupies the tenth book, forming the only real concluding piece, because it is clear that Plato must have felt himself imperiously called upon to make this addition before quitting his work, or he would not have done so. The composition of this part is as follows. The first section recurs once more to the subject of poetry, a subject out of whose province some matter is discussed in the third book, and being renewed in this, is to be here dispatched. It is, what the prevailing character should be in the descriptions given of men in order to be employed with advantage in the education of youth. And, as was said also in that book, this matter cannot be dispatched until the grand

question is decided which these descriptions always involve in their ultimate result, whether unjust men can be happy or just men miserable.

This subject accordingly could not have been taken up earlier than in this place, though it must be allowed that no one would have felt the want of it, if it had remained where it was. For it is now clear at once that Plato, according to all appearance, would have had strict poetical justice in this department of the fine arts treated in a manner completely contrary to the rules that have become valid among us. Meanwhile he does indeed profess himself satisfied provided only the just man proves himself a happy one amid tortures and insults, to which even our own critics would have no objection to make. But instead of here explaining this point, he again takes up the general accusation against the art of imitative composition generally, which had already made its appearance in the third book; only as he had there shown more that the guards themselves should not practise the mimic arts, he here enlarges more upon the disadvantage which must ensue only from hearing and seeing mimic exhibitions. Now there may indeed be truth in what Plato says, that poets would be bad poets if they were only to represent perfectly just men, but it is not on that account necessary that men of contrary characters should be so represented and extolled, as to seduce others to follow their example. little can it be overlooked that Plato proceeds upon a very narrow hypothesis, when he thinks that every one is inclined, at least, in solitude to indulge those effeminate emotions which in company he attempts to restrain, as well as when he wagers his head with even

And quite as

the best of men, that they would always relax something of their strictness towards themselves in relation to what, if publicly exhibited, is not only overlooked but praised and admired. So that the censure cannot properly apply to the dramatic and dramatising art of poetry in and for itself, but only relatively to a certain inferior order of moral cultivation, and moreover, not to the art in general, but only to the Hellenic form and method of it, in which, however, Plato does not seem to have regarded even in the slightest degree its historical value. And it must surprise us all the more, that Socrates maintains with perfect confidence that this art will never be able to defend itself, and that the feud between philosophy and it, as it existed from the very earliest times, is likewise to endure for ever for life and death. There does not however appear, utterly unworthy indeed as such an ingredient would have been of such a work, the slightest trace that Plato wrote this in a humour excited by the comic poets, notwithstanding the very great probability there exists of their having already satirized his Republic from hearsay, before this work was publicly put forth. But it is because the dramatic art is only conversant with the mind in its present scarcely understood, though multifariously deformed state, and although so far removed from truth, affects nevertheless to be considered as something true, this it is which, to Plato, represents the state of antagonism with it as unintermitting. And if in the corresponding passage of the third book he seeks more to expose himself to the censure than in any degree to excuse himself from it, because, as he says, the perfect writer is as little as possible, and only in a case of the most extreme necessity, to make use of