round and to preserve them from revolutions, it really weakens the ties which bind them to one another; instead of unity so complete as to be self-destroying, there will be a watery friendship among them. 11) The transference from one class to another will be impossible; for how can secrecy be maintained? 12) And the citizens who are transferred will be restrained by no ties of relationship from committing crimes against their nearest relations. Whether the citizens of the perfect state should have their c. 5. property in common or not is another question. Three modes of tenure are possible :-1) private ownership of the soil and common use; 2) common ownership and private use; 3) ownership and use alike common. If the cultivators are the owners, they will quarrel about the division of the produce ['chacun produit selon sa capacité et consomme selon ses besoins'], but if they are not their own masters the difficulty will be diminished. There is always an awkwardness in persons living together and having things in common. Fellow-travellers are often said to fall out by the way, and we are apt to take offence at our servants because they are always with us. The present system, if humanised and liberalised, would be far better. There might be private possession and common use among friends, such as exists already to a certain extent among the Lacedaemonians, who borrow one another's slaves and horses and dogs, and take in the fields the provisions which they want. To Plato we reply:-1) When men have distinct interests, they will not be so likely to quarrel; and 2) they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business. 3) There is a natural pride of ownership; and also 4) a pleasure in doing a kindness to others ;-these will be destroyed by communism. 5) The virtues of continence and liberality will no longer exist. 6) When Plato attributes all the ills which states endure to private property, he overlooks the real cause of them, which is the wickedness of human nature. 7) He has a false conception of unity. The state should be united by philosophy, by a common education and common meals, not by community of property. 8) The experience of ages is against him: his theory, if true, would have been discovered long ago. 9) If his scheme were ever realised, he would be compelled to break up the state into tribes and

phratries and other associations. And then, what would be left of the original idea? Nothing but the prohibition of agriculture to the guardians. 10) The plan is not worked out—even the general form of the community is indistinct. He says nothing about the lower classes who are the majority of the citizens. The husbandmen, if they have all things in common, do not differ from the guardians; but if they have wives and property of their own, they will form a state within a state, and the old evils arising out of property will reappear. Education is his panacea which is to take the place of law; but he has confined education to the guardians. 11) Or if the husbandmen own the land on payment of a tribute, is this desirable? will they not be even more unmanageable than the Helots? 12) If the wives of the citizens are common and the land private, who will see to the house? 13) And what will happen if the husbandmen have both lands and wives in common? 14) Once more, it is absurd to argue for the community of women from the analogy of the animals; for animals have not to manage a household. 15) There is a danger in the fixedness of the rulers, who are said to be made of the same gold always. For high-spirited warriors will want to have a turn of ruling as well as of being ruled. 16) The guardians are deprived of happiness, and yet the whole state is supposed to be happy but how can the whole be happy unless the parts are happy? c. 6. Many of these objections apply to Plato's later work, the

'Laws,' in which he intended to delineate a constitution more of the ordinary type; but he gradually reverts to his ideal state. The only differences are, that the women share in the common meals, that the number of the warriors is increased from 1000 to 5000; and that the community of women and property is abandoned. But 1) he has exceeded the bounds of possibility in making so large a state. 2) He has neglected foreign relations; yet a city must be provided against her enemies. 3) He has not defined the amount of property which his citizens may possess. He says a man should have enough to live temperately'-meaning 'to live well.' Yet a man may live temperately but miserably. He should have said enough to live temperately and liberally.' 4) If he equalises property, he should limit population; he fancies that the

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fruitfulness of some marriages would be balanced by the barrenness of others, and so the number of citizens would remain about the same as in existing states. But if the lots are absolutely divided they could not be redistributed. There would then be supernumeraries, who would stir up revolution. 5) He does not say how the rulers are distinguished from the subjects. 6) If other property may be increased five-fold, why not land? 7) His two homesteads, one in the city and one on the border, will be very inconvenient. 8) The citizens are to be heavy-armed soldiers who will form a polity. This constitution, though it may be suited to the greatest number of states, is not the nearest to his ideal. There are persons who think that all the elements of the state ought to share in the government, and these would prefer the more complex constitution of Sparta, which is made up of king, elders, and ephors. According to Plato the best state is a combination of democracy and tyranny; but both of these are bad and can hardly be called constitutions at all; and the constitution which is actually proposed is nothing but an union of democracy and oligarchy, inclining rather to the latter, as may be seen from the mode of choosing the magistrates and the council, and the enforcement on the rich of attendance at the assembly. 9) He contrives the council in such a manner as always to give the predominance to the higher or richer classes. 10) The double election will tend to throw the power of choosing into the hands of a clique or cabal.

Most of the arguments which Aristotle employs against communism are the same which are employed among ourselves: he expresses in them the common sense of mankind. But some are peculiar to him, or characteristic of his age and country. For example, 1) the notion that the lower classes will be more easily retained in subjection if they have wives and children in common ; which may be compared with the desire to suppress education and family life among slaves in some slaveholding countries of modern times; 2) the impossibility of expiating crimes committed against relations when relationships are unknown; 3) the supposed necessity of breaking up the state into tribes and phratries, which is maintained from the point of view, not of Plato, but of an Athenian

citizen; 4) the remark that there is much more quarrelling among those who have all things in common than among the owners of private property; which probably refers to partnerships in business. Several of Aristotle's arguments are unsatisfactory to us. First the attempt to show that the population in ordinary states is kept equal by the compensation of sterile and fertile unions, but that this compensation will not occur under the constitution of the Laws; whereas enactments are expressly made to preserve the equality of families; secondly, the assertion that, according to Plato, the best state is composed of democracy and tyranny: a statement which is nowhere to be found either in the Republic or Laws, though something like it occurs in Laws, vi. 756 E. Again, it is not true to say that Plato has not considered the question of population; for he has treated of it in Laws, v. 740, and provides against the difficulty by 'preventive checks,' by laws of marriage and adoption, and by colonisation.

The relation of the 'Laws' to the Republic is not such as it is represented by Aristotle. The words, that 'Plato, having intended to adapt the "Laws" to an ordinary state, gradually returns to the ideal form,' are not justified by anything found in the book of the Laws which has come down to us, and there is no trace of any other form of the work. He always intended that the constitution of the Laws should be that of a second-rate state, and the distinction, though only once explicitly noted (Laws, v. 739, 740), is present to his mind throughout. The point of which Aristotle makes light, when he says that the only difference between the Republic and the Laws is the community of wives and property, is really essential. He has omitted to mention the other difference, which, in Plato's estimation, was even greater, the government of philosophers. There is little or nothing ideal or peculiar in what remains; for nearly all the other institutions contained in the Laws have their parallel in Sparta or some other Greek state. It can hardly be said that the Lacedaemonian constitution comes nearer than that of the Laws to the ideal state; nor is this remark of Aristotle consistent with his previous remark that the constitution of the Laws gradually reverts to the ideal state.

For this whole subject see the Essay in vol. ii. on the Criti

cisms of Aristotle upon Plato. Oncken (Staatslehre des Aristoteles, vol. i. p. 194 foll.) is of opinion that the Laws of Plato which were known to Aristotle were not the same with the extant work. He argues from the silence of Aristotle on many points, and from his misrepresentation of others. But Aristotle's treatment of Plato in the Laws is not different from his treatment of him in the Ethics and Metaphysics. The hypothesis of Oncken is highly improbable. There is no example of corruption or interpolation on such a scale in a work of such excellence anywhere in the compass of ancient literature. An hypothesis against which so fatal an objection may be urged, would have to be supported by the strongest proofs, and not merely by a weak inference from the statement that Philippus of Opus copied the Laws from the original tablets. (See Introduction to the Laws; Translation of the Dialogues of Plato, vol. v.)

Yet the Plato or the theses of Plato which Aristotle or the diorthotes of the Politics had in his mind in an age when manuscripts were scarce and were not yet divided into books and chapters, may have been very different from the Plato which is known to us. Such a view is confirmed by an examination of Aristotle's references not only to the Laws, but to Plato's other writings, and by the general character of the citations in early Greek literature. The anti-Platonic theses of the Peripatetic school may often have had little foundation in the actual writings of Plato. The arts of interpretation and controversy were in their infancy. This is a more reasonable explanation of the want of correspondence between Plato and Aristotle than to suppose the wholesale corruption or interpolation of an ancient writer.

No constitution is so novel and singular as that of Plato; no c. 7. one else has introduced the community of women and children, or the public tables for women. Other legislators have made the regulation of property their chief aim, deeming that to be the point on which all revolutions turn. Phaleas of Chalcedon saw this danger and was the first to affirm that the citizens of a state ought to have equal possessions. In a new colony he would have started with an equal distribution of property; in an old