The Republic of Plato; With Studies for Teachers (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: d. Finally Plato holds that the music and gymnastic selected for elementary education must be determined by the absolute truth and beauty which philosophy reveals in an explicit form. 3. Conditions Affecting the Healthy Unity of the State (III. 4I5-IV. 427). SUMMARY. The warriors must not be savage tyrants, but gentle allies of the people. True education will civilize and humanize the warriors in their relations to one another and to the people, but their mode of life must also be conducive to the virtues of a guardian. They should have a common dwelling, but no private property, and only enough pay to meet expenses. True gold they have within them. Earthly gold they can not have lest for private interests they be tempted to desert the interests of the State (415-417). (Book IV.) Adeimantus says some one may raise the objection that the real owners of the city are poor and miserable, no better than mere mercenaries. Socrates replies that the State, like a statute, must be regarded as a whole. It exists for the good of all, and not for the happiness of one class. The guardians must not be given a happiness that will take from them the character of guardians. If a class of artisans desert business for pleasure, the loss to the State is not so serious, but when the guardians of the law and of the government become corrupt, the ruin of the State is complete. In order that the State as a whole may be happy, every class must do its own work in the best way, receiving the proportion of happiness which naturally falls to it. ' The city should be neither rich nor poor. Wealth causes luxury and indolence, poverty, meanness and viciousness, and both cause discontent. Lack of wealth would be no disadvantage in war. Our trained warriors could easily hmidli1 many times their n...