Part I

American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 30, No. 5 (Mar., 1925): 513-533

Abstract: As a sample of dialectic, The Republic is the foremost exhibit of what sociology is not. One section of the sociologists rate everybody as a sociologist who has thought about social relations. This paper represents the view that those only are sociologists who practice a method which is in diametrical contrast with dialectic. Plato did not regard The Republic as a treatise on political science or sociology but as an inquiry in moral philosophy. The Platonic method was an attempt to establish truth by arriving at consistency between concepts or propositions. The scientific method is an attempt to discover truths by observing uniformities of cause and effect in the objective world.

In the first book of The Republic, Plato has Socrates leading a debate on the question, What is justice? The Socratic method, as illustrated in this scene, is to conjure up a series of hypothetical situations, and to ask of each of them, Would such and such conduct in that situation be justice? The effort aims at elimination of all conceivable cases of injustice and consequently at reaching a conclusion about justice by summing up the samples that remain.

Plato's word for this method is "dialectic." The more familiar and for general purposes synonymous word is logic. We shall gain practical immunity from compromising misconception if we bear in mind throughout this analysis that Plato's word "dialectic' was simply his term of confiding respect for the same mental operation which we now, with cautiously qualified respect, call "rationalizing.'

The outstanding peculiarity of the Platonic method, as compared with the method of modern science, is that it advances valuations in the minds of thinkers to the rank of ultimate criteria of the validity of ideas and of the merits of actions.

Modern science would completely reverse this method. It assumes that the processes of the objective world are the ultimate test of the validity of mental processes, and that we must go to those external processes for criteria of subjective valuations.

Perhaps John Stuart Mill's discussion in his Logic of the relations between deductive and inductive reasoning is the most clarifying introduction we have to the problems involved in this contrast. It is not in order here to canvass the question of the relative importance of the two methods. As Mill has shown, our minds are so made that we can never carry thinking very far without team work between the two methods. Either alone soon develops motor troubles or comes to a stop for lack of fuel. On the other hand, the two methods are sharply contrasted in principle. The Socratic, or dialectical method, in so far as it is able to pursue its own peculiarity, sets up judgments inside the minds of thinkers as the final test of truth. The modern or scientific method, in so far as it is able to pursue its own peculiarity,¹ posits observable relations outside the minds of thinkers as the final test of truth. Accordingly there is sharp difference in practice between people who pin their faith to the respective methods.

As an illustration, in contrast with the dialectical problem, What is justice? the objective scientist would assert: The real problem is, What kind of conduct makes for smooth running of that scheme of things in which we find ourselves? At best, the dialectical and subjective method can arrive only at an answer to the question, What is somebody's opinion? At its worst, the scientific method tries to answer the question, What do we positively know?

In contrast with most of the sociology of a generation ago, present sociology is first and foremost an attempt to be scientific, not dialectical. It tries to find out, not what sort of scheme of things would be most compatible with the stock of ideas already lodged in sociologists' minds, or other people's minds; it tries to find out, rather, what systems of causal relations are actually in operation in the objective world, which of those causal factors are within human control, which of them are beyond human control, and the consequent economies of human effort with reference to the controllable relations.

There are two tendencies among sociologists with reference to classification of social theorists. One section of the sociologists prefer to call everybody a sociologist who has ever rationalized about social relations, and to. rate as sociology the whole menagerie of opinions that have ever been held about different phases of the human lot. Of course, with this type of sociologists, Plato is Exhibit A in the sociological museum. On the other hand, some of the sociologists say that the line should be drawn between dialecticians, whether ancient or modern, and social scientists. That is, they insist that the thing which matters among people who are thinking about human affairs is not that they are all thinking about the same human affairs, but the way in which they are trying to pry into human affairs. There is the subjective way, and there is the objective way, the way of the speculator and the way of the scientist. The second sort of sociologist maintains that the line should be drawn between dialectical social philosophers and sociologists, so as to leave in the former category all those thinkers about human affairs whose method is primarily subjective, and so as to advertise as the finding-mark of sociologists the adoption of a genuinely objective method of research into human relations. This argument is from the standpoint of the latter type.

Whether the criterion which we propose is generally adopted or not, there is this actual difference between people who try to understand human life. Some rely for their conclusions about life chiefly upon pictures and valuations of different aspects of life which are formed by organization of ideas that in various more or less fortuitous ways have lodged in the mind. Others deny that conclusions about life which are derived in that way are reliable, and they pin their faith upon systematic research into life as it exists outside the mind, and upon holding the ideas which the mind forms strictly accountable to external reality. People chiefly actuated by the scientific spirit are likely to have short patience with social theories that originate with the first type of theorist. It remains to be seen whether the second type of theorist can accomplish enough with the objective method to win general respect.

It is initial fallacy to suppose that Plato thought of The Republic as either political science or sociology in the modern sense. To him it was an inquiry in moral philosophy, and he could conceive of no higher employment for the human mind. Perhaps he was right about that. This discussion neither assumes nor implies the contrary. This is the present thesis: Whatever the relative merits of dialectical moral philosophy and sociology, they are different and should never be confounded. The procedure of the one is radically contrasted with the procedure of the other. In one of its aspects sociology is a secession from dialectical moral philosophy. Sociology revolted not so much against the conclusions of any particular moral philosophy as against the belief that the methods of dialectical moral philosophy are adequate to establish any conclusions at all. Dialectical moral philosophy and sociology may arrive at identical conclusions in certain instances. If that occurs, it will not be for the reason that the two apply identical methods. The present analysis, then, is an attempt to exhibit the radical contrast in methods. It is not concerned with particular conclusions reached at any time by either method. Plato was not embarrassed by questions about the relative authority of philosophy as he understood it and science as we understand it. To him philosophy was a system of transcendental, not of pragmatic values. It did not need to be vindicated by anything more tangible than a consensus of the mind's operations, regardless of whether anything in the external, objective world corresponds to those operations. How Plato reconciled the transcendental and the mundane in his thinking is a philosopher's problem which need not detain us. The single point that is pertinent for the sociologist is that the thing which Plato was trying to do was a fundamentally different thing from that which the sociologists are trying to do. Their aim is to contribute all they can to discovery of the ways in which actual causes work in the associated life of men. Their starting-point for this discovery is the fact that men are never able to be monads. They always act as members of groups. What is involved in this fact is the peculiar quest of the sociologists; and their findings must be synthesized with the findings of all the other kinds of researches into human relations, if a valid social science is to be achieved. Plato's inquiry was of an entirely different order. It was virtually this: How would men conduct themselves if they ordered their lives in a completely logical way, my own standards of logic being the criterion?

In short, the Socratic or Platonic method was an attempt to establish truth by arriving at consistency between concepts or propositions. The scientific method is an attempt to discover truth by observing uniformities of cause and effect in the objective world.

After the foregoing paragraph was written, Professor Paul Shorey, who now ranks as the foremost Platonist in the United States, said to me, "Plato knew as well as you and I do that the ideas which he expressed in The Republic wouldn't work. That is shown conclusively by certain passages in The Laws."²

Methodologically considered, social philosophy and sociology are as distinct from each other as wishes are from realities. This is not to imply that philosophy and wishes have no place in the economy of life. Precisely the contrary is my belief. Not to speak further of wishes, philosophy and science have complementary functions, but it is an arrest of the proper functioning of each to confuse them. Their contrasted values should be understood for themselves. Neither will be understood nor properly used if it is not clearly discriminated from the other. In order to make the most of sociology, we must give full value to the radical difference of method which distinguishes it from dialectical social philosophy, either ancient or modern.

The last paragraph in Book i of The Republic pictures, as well as the most uncompromising pragmatist could, the futility of dialectic as a means of discovery. It can at most rearrange discoveries already made. It may silence one of the dialecticians, but if so it leaves the successful debater just where he was before, as far as knowledge is concerned. The argument may have been conducted on both sides on the basis of false presumptions about facts; and so long as dialectic runs true to form, i.e., does not go outside itself to get positive knowledge, it is impotent to correct those false presumptions about facts.

Book i, then, is largely occupied with discussion of the contention of one of the company (Thrasymachus) that justice is the interest of the stronger (i. 347. E), with the supporting contention that injustice is more profitable than justice.³ Socrates uses the argumentum ad hominem to such effect that his opponent is silenced. So far as increase of knowledge is concerned, however, Socrates confesses (i. 354. B):

…so have I gone from one subject to another without having discovered what I sought at first, the nature of justice. . .And the result of the whole discussion has been that I know nothing at all. For I know not what justice is, and therefore I am not likely to know whether it is or is not a virtue, nor can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.

I repeat that all of this is of proper interest to the sociologist not in the least because of opinions expressed by either of the fictitious speakers, or implied as the views of Plato, the author of the fictitious discussion. To the sociologist this piece of literature is of prime importance chiefly as a warning to avoid a method of procedure which is necessarily abortive. It is a classical demonstration of the futility of the subjective method as a means of research. It is an exhibit of the impotence of dialectics for purposes of discovery, and it is a dramatic picture of the mental cult which the sociologists are trying to abandon in order to adopt a method which goes to the limit of men's intellectual resources in acquiring positive knowledge.

Analysis of the discussion in Book i reveals certain clues to important facts connected with dialectics in general. For instance:

First, the discussion in Book i has kept very close to the simple conception that justice is a relation between two individuals---parent or guardian and child, debtor and creditor, ruler and ruled, etc. The attempt is to put a universal content into the category "justice' by generalizing all conceivable aspects of such relationships. The discussion passes on later to a larger view.

Second, Book i adheres rather closely to a quantity conception of justice; i.e., justice seems to be contemplated as a measuring out of some good which can be estimated in units of quantity.

The problem presented by the supposition of a promise to return a weapon to a man who has become insane, and would be dangerous to himself and others if he had it, seems to be somewhat in advance of the main current of debate, and must be regarded as anticipating a later stage in the inquiry. Its full significance for the entire dialectic does not appear at this point.

Third, the Platonic dialectic, and every mode of rationalizing which operates on similar principles, employs as its chief instruments generalized ideas represented by abstract nouns--in this instance, the noun "justice." How is this mental structure, the concept represented by the abstract noun, built up? Reduced to illustrative particulars, the process is this: Someone observes cases of conduct between persons, which conduct presents qualities that seem to be common to all the cases. Let us suppose that in a given instance the cases observed are three: (1) that of a parent toward a naughty boy; (2) that of a creditor toward a debtor or vice versa; (3) that of a ruler toward a subject. According to a standard previously lodged in the observer's mind, the conduct in each of these cases seems to be as it should be, or right. A name is needed for that right quality common to all the cases. Thereupon it is agreed to call it "justice.'' Henceforth the word "justice' becomes a standard of measure for every case of conduct which the minds that have adopted that word associate with the quality which they have agreed to designate by that word. In all new cases they ask the question, Does this action carry the quality which we have discovered in other actions and have called justice?

Of course the process thus reduced to its lowest terms has seldom come off as briefly as that. The description recapitulates a multitude of mental actions scattered through long periods, and participated in by many people, but at last precipitating the consensus represented by a name for a generalized judgment.

But now something disturbing occurs. Up to this point "justice"' has been a relation between two persons only. The quality that satisfied the notion of right by which the relations between two persons were tested, is now brought again into judgment by a situation in which more than two persons seem to be concerned. For example here is a case in which a man has robbed another, and a judge is called upon to do what is right, or justice, with reference to the robber. Here is not merely the simple relationship:

A, the robbed

A:B

B, the robber

There is the multiplication of relationships created by addition of C, the judge. The judge is not merely an individual C, reacting simply with the individuals A and B. The judge is an agent with complicated duties. He is not at liberty to act as his individual sentiments and standards of right and wrong prompt him toward A and B. He acts under a mandate from the lawmaking body to declare the law in such a way that the purposes of the body in making the law will be realized. To do what the law contemplates as justice, the judge must perhaps do neither what A wants, nor what B wants, nor what he himself wants. He must perhaps do a modified something which the law was intended to procure, but the precise details of which the law leaves within the discretion of the judge. The right action, therefore, that which is to be included in the abstract noun "justice,'' cannot be discovered by fitting the judge's action into the simple mold of the relations between A and B. Whether he will or no, the action of the judge has consequences. It does not merely have form. It does not merely have quantity. It has causal potency, and in more than one direction. It may tend to make a better or worse man of either A or B, or both. It may tend to make the community in which they live a better or worse community. It may tend to make generations yet unborn more or less competent to promote their common interests. Obviously a new calculus of this abstract conception, justice, is necessary. In our modern days we have reached the outlook, called the scientific view, that the dilemma cannot be resolved by more rationalizing. It must be removed by more knowledge. It is not to be met by more precise comparison with primordial patterns. The problem can be solved only by going outside the mind, by learning how to trace the operation of causes in the external world, and by adjusting our conceptions of what ought to be to ascertained relations of cause and effect in human affairs.

Fourth, as I have already suggested, it is well to remind ourselves often that the most determined and uncompromising rationalizer on the one hand and scientist on the other can never absolutely dissociate rationalizing and objective discovery. This proposition need not now be illustrated in detail. Methodologically considered, the difference between rationalizing and science is a difference of priority and of proportion between the two elements. All human knowledge must be mediated by human minds. In that sense, and in the necessarily involved degree, human knowledge must forever be subjective. The aim of science is to raise objective discovery to its maximum and to reduce subjective construction to a minimum.

The immediate purpose of the present review is to show that the Platonic dialectic moved in an intellectual orbit quite different from that of modern science, and quite different from that in which any social science must move if it aspires to become objective.

It had been a hot afternoon, and both Thrasymachus and Socrates were rather fagged when they came to their lame and impotent conclusion. Not so with one of the younger members of the party.

Glaucon, who is always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus' retirement; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said to me: "Socrates, do you wish really to persuade us, or only to seem to have persuaded us, that to be just is always better than to be unjust?"

"I should wish really to persuade you,"' I replied, if I could."

Upon Glaucon's blunt denial that he had been persuaded, the process of approaching conclusions by rearranging ideas previously lodged in the debaters' minds begins over again in Book ii.

Now I want to repeat, with all the emphasis I can command, that the process illustrated in The Republic has its legitimate place in the economy of human life. For convenience I will call it "persuasion,' the art of bringing ideas common to two or more minds into such arrangement that they seem to enforce conclusions not previously admitted by one or more of the parties. Of all the conscious mental processes, persuasion perhaps bulks largest in human intercourse. Thus far it has been the chief factor in formal education of every sort, although it has been combined in countless forms and proportions with transference of knowledge, or at least of ideas, from more amply to less amply informed minds; and in later years education by discovery has begun to play a part in pedagogy. Persuasion is a chief feature of the normal process of transmitting valuations and attitudes indorsed by experience. It is a large part—not the whole—of the function of parents in the training of children, of all sorts of teachers, preachers, and leaders of every kind.

This side of the case can hardly be stated too forcibly. On the other hand, it would be hard to exaggerate the contrast, as functions, between this, which for convenience I cover by the term "persuasion," and scientific discovery. To borrow a parallel from a different sphere, intellectual persuasion is as widely separated from scientific discovery as economic consumption is from capitalization. Persuasion pure and simple, not mixed with communication of new knowledge, such persuasion as is illustrated in the first book of The Republic, has the same relation to knowledge which a twist of the barrel of the kaleidoscope has to the bits of glass inside. It adds nothing to their quantity. It merely rearranges their relations to one another so that they reflect the light from the outside in new forms.

This is precisely the opposite of the scientific function, whether in physical or in human science. Objective science penetrates into unexplored relations in the objective world and assembles new knowledge. Opinion, whether formed or unformed, must eventually confirm or correct itself by assimilation of this increasing knowledge, not merely by contentment with turning over and over the knowledge once for all deposited in the mind's kaleidoscope.

The perception which I am trying to convey in these notes on The Republic is that there is a great gulf between the processes of persuasion, that is, of bare dialectic, and the processes of investigative science. The gulf is wide, but it is not impassable. Indeed, both dialecticians and scientists are constantly crossing and recrossing it. This frequent mental migration from the territory of dialectics to the territory of scientific discovery, to a certain extent blinds everybody to the contrast between the processes that belong on opposite sides of the gulf. On the one side is penetration into the unknown. On the other side is effort to utilize the already known.

Plato's Republic is among the most monumental examples of the latter process. As such it is among the most conspicuous specimens of the thing which sociologists have resolved not to do in their distinguishing character as sociologists. They are not primarily social philosophers, although it has taken a generation for them to reach this decision. They are trying to be primarily social scientists. Their peculiar function is to investigate group relations which had not previously been explored. Whether they will be content to do that and nothing more, will be determined by the peculiar equipment and circumstances of individual sociologists. In the future as in the past, some of them will doubtless give more time and strength to persuasion than to discovery. They will prefer to spend most of their energy as social philosophers, and the minor portion as social scientists. That will not change the fact that the two functions are radically different, and that the human process would end in stagnation if adequate provision were not made for constant renewal of its vitality through scientific discovery.

While I was writing the last paragraph, boys under my window were shouting the extras that told of the verdict in a notorious murder case (September 1o, 1924). It suggested repetition of a part of the foregoing in the form of a concrete illustration. One of the main contentions of the defense was that the death penalty is inhuman, and ought not to be inflicted under any circumstances. It is in connection with this claim that the case has illustrative value for our present purpose.

It is a rudimentary legal proposition that, provided there is no question of unconstitutionality, an argument that a given law ought not to be in the statute-book has no standing in court. From the point of view of pure reason, the judge has no right to listen to such an argument. It should be made to the legislature, or to the electors of legislators, when the question of capital punishment is an issue. The right or wrong of the death penalty cannot properly be in question as a legal matter in an Illinois court. Psychologically, as an appeal to the man functioning as judge, or to the jury in case of a jury trial, impeachment of capital punishment as barbarous, inhuman, repugnant to the spirit of the times, etc.,is a harp of a thousand strings, and in the instance in mind the leading counsel for the defense strengthened his reputation as a skilled performer upon that instrument.

But what is the exact scientific status of the death penalty as provided in the Illinois statutes?

In the first place, let us select, as representative of all, one of the many reasons which have actuated legislators in enacting the death penalty, viz., not vengeance, not equal retribution, on the principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' but protection of life against people who hold the lives of others in light esteem; in other words, the necessity of the death penalty as protection of other lives.

Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that this is accepted as the one and only reason for the death penalty. The death penalty is enacted then by different lawmaking bodies as an expression of public opinion that it is the most effective deterrent of crimes against life. But who knows? I may believe, with counsel for the defense in the case before me, that the death penalty does not reduce the number of murders. You may believe, with the legislatures of most of our states, and of most civilized countries, that the death penalty does reduce the number of murders. In either case, what has happened? Simply this: the believers in each of these contradictory doctrines have derived a certain body of information, and a certain collection of judgments about facts in general, and respond in ways of their own to different emotional stimuli. When these people, through their representatives, bring their entire subjective accumulations to bear upon a judgment of cause and effect in social relations, the result is contradictory valuations. I, and those legislators who agree with me, think the effect of capital punishment is so and so; you, and those legislators who agree with you, think it is the opposite. Neither of us can establish his position by proof. Each of us can at most play up certain things which he knows, or believes, that tend to lend probability to our respective views. In other words, we may perform the process of persuasion upon ourselves and others. That, however, is a tentative, provisional result. It is not scientific proof.

In this situation, science speaks. It says that neither party rests on a solid foundation. Each party expresses opinions not sustained by conclusive facts. The scientific procedure would be to find out whether it is possible to conduct an investigation, or a number of investigations, which would demonstrate actual tendencies resulting from use or disuse of the death penalty.⁴

This is the point of the illustration: The position taken by the defense that capital punishment does not diminish the number of killings calls attention to the fact that in this matter, and innumerable similar ones, our social practice and our social doctrines rest upon beliefs as to cause and effect, not upon scientifically tested knowledge of cause and effect. The aims of social science in general since 18oo have been guided more and more by the desire to exchange opinion for proof as the basis of our social theories and programs. Whether or not this exchange is feasible is a question by itself. The striving of the social sciences since 18oo to become as objective as physical science is a fact. Sociology in particular differs from dialectical social philosophy, ancient or modern, in that it is trying to investigate certain aspects of human relations, and to make discoveries in those matters take the place of guesses in the shaping of social doctrines.

Going back to Plato, I am using The Republic as an extended exhibit of the contrast in method between the procedure of rationalizing our previously acquired body of impressions from our own and other people's experiences, and the procedure now known as scientific research. I am pointing out that the question with which we are concerned is not whether Plato's opinions, or any single one of his opinions, is likely to correspond in the end with the opinion which the most exhaustive scientific research will sanction. The Republic is worth the study of sociologists first and foremost as a series of illustrations of how not to do it, if one is trying to reach scientifically attested conclusions about human relations. With certain qualifications previously referred to, Plato's method was the non-scientific method of relying for social judgments upon opinions rather than upon facts. Modern social science, including sociology, is directly contrasted with Platonic philosophy, by demanding positive knowledge rather than opinion as the guaranty of social generalizations.

With details changed, all dialectical social philosophy, from Plato to William Jennings Bryan, or the Soviet despotism, or the pacifists, relies on a method which in principle is abhorrent to science, and its conclusions deserve at most the rating "important if true."

Sometimes rationalizing and science utter themselves in complete accord with reference to the desirability of knowledge. For example, Glaucon says (ii. 358. B), "To my mind the nature of justice and injustice have not yet been made clear. Setting aside their rewards and results, I want to know what they are in themselves, and how they inwardly work in the soul.' Here a genuinely scientific attitude is in evidence, or what Herbert Spencer would call the sentiment of science, not the idea of science. Glaucon wanted to know the truth, but he was not within sight of the scientific conception of how truth must be established. One of the evidences to this effect is his naive assumption that the truth can be arrived at about anything by "setting aside their .... results." As we understand reality now, results are a part of the truth of anything. We commit ourselves to unreality from the start if we try to draw a line between anything and its results. This is merely another way of saying what I said before, that knowledge can never be complete in its subjective phases. Knowledge is one of the mind's reactions to objects external to the mind. Glaucon was now challenging Socrates to another effort to arrive at truth, not by going out after further facts, but by some further turnings of their own mental kaleidoscopes.

The sterility of the method which he was using is evident again in another phase of the presumption with which Glaucon prepares to renew the debate. He says: "I will show that all men who practice justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as a good." The conception behind these words is that justice is a standardized operation, having some sort of existence in detachment from the operator, and appraisable by itself, not as a function of the operator. Whatever the content of justice may turn out to be, Glaucon's idea of it was arbitrary, and so far as Socrates fell in with this arbitrary conception he allowed the discussion to become a dialectic of the nonexistent. We may think of justice as a certain mechanical shifting of ballast in social relations by performance or endurance of some process, or by transference of something of value; but the effect of introducing that aspect of justice into the debate was to convert the subject of discussion into an ambiguous middle term. All through the first book each speaker adhered rather closely to the implied presumption that justice is an attribute of persons made manifest in certain performances. This presumption is now one of the bits of material in the mental kaleidoscope jostling the other presumption for position and influence. The ring is now set for a shadow sparringmatch between these conflicting refractions, without the slightest prospect that anything more productive than mental calisthenics can result; at least, nothing more than the persuasion of one of the parties, not new knowledge.

Glaucon offers to "praise the unjust life to the utmost of (his) my power' (ii. 358. D), in order to draw out Socrates in further support of justice, and he begins:

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so, when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of men to do injustice (ii. 358. E).

Here is dialectic nearly at its weakest. To begin with, Glaucon exposes the flimsiness of its superstructure in the opening words, "they say." In its most characteristic forms rationalizing begins with hearsay. "The newspaper says,—therefore, is the most frequent modern specimen of the fallacy. Then the confusion grows worse confounded by variations of assertions in terms of the confessedly unknown factors "justice' and "injustice." The propositions would carry more illumination if they substituted algebraic signs, so as to read "X is good,—X is bad." The fact that a term of unknown meaning is the real subject of the different predicates would then be evident. When it has been confessed that the meaning of "justice,' and consequently of its opposite "injustice,"' is unknown, it should be plain that one is not saying anything when one uses those meaningless terms as subjects of affirmations. One is merely spreading a smoke screen. Yet this is the building-material out of which subjective philosophies are composed.

A little later Glaucon adds (ii. 360. D): "All men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice."' Waiving the fact just discussed that "justice' and "injustice' were confessedly unknown quantities, the assertion "all men believe' may or may not have been true in Plato's time. It was at all events unverified. Supposing it had stated a fact. It would simply have formulated an existing state of mind, not an objective reality, except as that state of mind was a reality. Believing something does not make it so. If it did, the earth would have been flat at Plato's time. Facts ascertained meanwhile amount to a probability that it was not.

All this, I repeat, is not because what Glaucon thought, or what Plato thought, is directly important for us now as sociologists. I am trying to expose the futility of the kind of thinking by which they came to think anything.

In making up this case as devil's advocate, Glaucon delivers an extended monologue, the most striking feature of which is repetition of the adjectives "just"' and "unjust"' in a web of words which, as we have seen, simply serve to camouflage the absence of meaning. His brother Adeimantus comes to his support in still more vigorous assertion that injustice has inherited the earth. Between them they furnish a sample of pessimistic special pleading that might have issued from the same school in which Job's comforters got their training.

When Glaucon and his brother had come to the end of their word-juggling with the adjectives "just"' and "unjust," Socrates was wiser than he knew in his exclamation (ii. 361. D), "Heavens! my dear Glaucon, . . . . how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues."' One of the original sins of the dialectical method is that it easily falls into the mode of treating all human relations as though they were so many statues. Human relations are never statues. They are always functions, and if for no other reason, that fact bankrupts the Platonic dialectic as an ostensible means of increasing knowledge. Plato's own use of it is merely a little more subtle than this sample which he has rendered so obvious that Socrates will be able to make short work of it.

Socrates at once enters upon an account of how the state must have originated from "necessity, who is the mother of our invention"' (ii. 369. C). That is, he calls to mind the diversity of human wants and the occasions for varieties of occupations to ratify those wants. He virtually anticipates all that Adam Smith said about division of labor, beginning in chapter i of The Wealth of Nations. Thereby he also to a certain extent anticipates the view of the origin of the state to which modern theorists tend to return after all their dallyings with other conceptions. Plato's sagacity is scarcely more evident anywhere than in this version of probabilities.

Yet the passage is an example of persuasion, not of scientific demonstration. We do not even yet positively know that the state originated substantially as Socrates supposed. The interpretation is essentially hypothetical. It does not supply new knowledge. It simply adds a fortunate turn to the kaleidoscope of old knowledge. From Plato's time until now, as the recorded history of thought superabundantly shows, reasoners have been able to return to the problem of the origin of the state, and they have not been estopped by conclusive knowledge from propounding theories directly contrary to the one which Socrates expounded. Our constant refrain is that dialectic can prove nothing except temporary compatibilities of mental images. To what extent these mental images and their adjustments have their counterparts in the objective world, other processes than those of dialectic must determine. In general we apply the name "science' to those processes on which we rely for the nearest approaches to proof which our minds have been able to gain. These scientific processes invert the ratio of the subjective to the objective factors which is the rule in dialectical processes.

There is delicious humor, whether intended or not intended by Plato, in the suddenness of the transformation of the two brothers from the character of irreconcilable agnostics into that of pliant disciples accepting everything the master says. There is another reminder of Adam Smith, and even of Polonius, in the tactics by which Socrates leads his young friends out of their denunciatory temper toward the established order. Smith tried to be an economic radical. He started to reconstruct economic justice in terms of labor. Then he gave himself to further contemplation of British institutions, with the result that he found himself unable to imagine human society resting upon any other adequate foundation than the orthodox "land, labor, capital."

Socrates adroitly extemporizes that process in the minds of his two interlocutors. He draws a series of mental crayon pictures of Athenian society idealized as a functioning whole, culminating in the ruling class with the more ingratiating name "guardians." Employing analogies of watch-dogs, both savage and faithful, Socrates commends the like qualities in men who are to be "guardians." By skilful logical legerdemain he produces the illusion that the necessity of such qualities harmonized in guardians gives the actuality of them. Therefore, presto! the Athenian system is a pretty good system after all, the operation of it is justice in the concrete. Which was to be proved!

In fact, nothing has been proved. There has been clever play upon the valuations in stock in the minds of the negative debaters, and things which they knew before have been made to take on a look contrasted with their previous aspect. In other words, not discovery but persuasion.

Incidentally Socrates suggests establishment of censorship over the education of children destined to become "guardians" (ii. 377. C), and he gives illustrations of the sort of moral and theological instruction which he would deal out to future rulers. Jewish synagogue or Puritan conventicle, in the palmiest days of either, could hardly have taught more conservative and disciplinary doctrine, but it consists so obviously of pure opinion, it rests so evidently only on the fact that Socrates thinks so, that it has the effect of anticlimax, and a drop of the argument into undisguised dogmatism. All semblance of search for knowledge, as we understand that phrase today, has disappeared.

The book (ii) ends with eight pages of theology as completely speculative as any of the fabrications of the medieval scholastics.

In spite of their advance notice that they were arguing contrary to their own beliefs, the two brothers were incredibly easy converts from their opposition. This, however, is a trifle. They served as a literary device to assist in the presentation of Plato's philosophy of the ruling or "guardian"' class. He has not announced his main doctrine yet, but we may say that he has made Socrates argue thus far to the effect that justice is the manner of life in a state regulated by an ideally wise and loyal "guardian' class. With this as a presumption, he proceeds in Book iii to inquire what would be the ideal education for such a class. And we must note that soldiers seem to be numerically the chief element in this class. Except in numbers, their place in Plato's fancy was more nearly like that of the German army up to 1918 than like that of the army in any other modern system.

Book iii is a discussion of the pedagogy best adapted to the training of "guardians,' most of whom must be soldiers, the basic constituent in whose personal equation must be courage.

There is wonderful shrewdness on exhibit in this whole passage. Knowledge of probable mental cause and effect under certain conditions is abundantly in evidence. But those conditions have only a hypothetical existence. A modern student of pedagogy might well read this book for stimulation of his interest in educational problems. A modern student of sociology could hardly fail to get from the book some sharpening of his perception that, for better and for worse, education and civic life are correlates. To go to The Republic, however, for scientific pedagogy or sociology would be like taking a long trip into a farming region to find a haymow in which to hunt for a needle, instead of buying an assortment of needles in the shop next block which is stocked with such goods.

With primary reference then to the development of courage in "guardians," and subsidiary reference to other necessary qualities, Socrates begins by drawing inferences from the latter part of Book ii about the sort of theological material that should be used or excluded in education, especially poet-lore, etc., about death and the hereafter, together with legendary material about the character of the gods. After disposing of this subject, Socrates points out that the next topic in logical order would be what should be taught about men. Since, however, the answer to that question depends upon the nature of justice, which must remain undecided until later in the inquiry, discussion of what "guardians' should be taught about men must also be postponed (iii. 392. A-C). The discourse then treats in succession of literary style, including dramatic imitation of virtue and vice; melody and song; and lastly gymnastics, which Plato would prescribe more rigorously than most modern trainers.

Having decided that the process of education is to be conducted by means of the material discussed under the foregoing heads, Socrates turns to the question, Who are to be rulers and who subjects (iii. 412. C)?

By a rapid process of selection, he decides (1) "there can be no doubt that the elder must rule the younger" (loc. cit.); (2) "the best of these must rule'; (3) "they must be those who have most of the character of guardians'; (4) they must be sifted by a period of probationary service, to discover who have the staunchest convictions that the interest of the state must be the rule of their lives (iii. 413. C).

Then Socrates produces the masterpiece of his pedagogy, in the shape of what he calls the "royal lie' (iii. 414. C) to be impressed upon "guardians'; viz., that they were specially fashioned by nature for guardianship, and upon the citizens a counsel of perfection as to the duty of a practice of eugenics, which is pictured in terms of metals of graded value.

All this is with the aim of furnishing the state with real "guardians' who will be watchdogs, not wolves (iii. 416. A).

But the upshot of all the discussion is that Socrates is not very confident that in practice his ideal education would insure ideal "guardians. He confesses (iii. 416. C), "I am much more certain that true education, whatever that may be (!) will have the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize them in their relations to one another and to those under their protection."

And while Socrates is not sure that he knows how to map out an education that will supply the state with ideal "guardians," he throws in for good measure some miscellaneous specifications as to the desirable character and manner of their life (iii. 416. C ff.):

And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon other citizens. Any man of sense must acknowledge that…Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our ideal of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own, beyond that which is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against anyone who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviors of the state. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the state, will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our state be ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for our guardians concerning their houses and all other matters?

This is a favorable point for repetition of my reasons for referring to Plato at all.

The Republic is one of the most famous books in the world

The Republic discusses relations of men in society.

Sociology used to be called "the science of society." Hence many sociologists have inferred that The Republic is among the most important of sociological documents.

My contention is that The Republic is sociologically important, but in the negative sense. It is important as a lurid illustration of what sociology is trying not to be. Sociology has found itself in the United States as a conscious and studied attempt to be something that The Republic is not. If subject-matter determines the boundaries of sciences, then The Republic and sociology must be classed together. If method is the chief test of sciences, then sociology and The Republic are as far apart as mechanics from magic.

[To be concluded]

Notes