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V. There is also a paradoxical element in the Statesman which delights in reversing the accustomed use of words. The law which to the Greek was the highest object of reverence is an ignorant and brutal tyrant—the tyrant is converted into a beneficent king. The sophist too is no longer, as in the earlier dialogues, the rival of the statesman, but assumes his form. Plato sees that the ideal of the state in his own day is more and more severed from the actual. From such ideals as he had once formed, he turns away to contemplate the decline of the Greek cities which were far worse now in his old age than they had been in his youth, and were to become worse and worse in the ages which followed. He cannot contain his disgust at the contemporary statesmen, sophists who had turned politicians, in various forms of men and animals, appearing, some like lions and centaurs, others like satyrs and monkeys. In this new disguise the Sophists make their last appearance on the scene: in the Laws Plato appears to have forgotten them, or at any rate makes only a slight allusion to them in a single passage (Laws).
VI. The Statesman is naturally connected with the Sophist. At first sight we are surprised to find that the Eleatic Stranger discourses to us, not only concerning the nature of Being and Not-being, but concerning the king and statesman. We perceive, however, that there is no inappropriateness in his maintaining the character of chief speaker, when we remember the close connexion which is assumed by Plato to exist between politics and dialectic. In both dialogues the Proteus Sophist is exhibited, first, in the disguise of an Eristic, secondly, of a false statesman. There are several lesser features which the two dialogues have in common. The styles and the situations of the speakers are very similar; there is the same love of division, and in both of them the mind of the writer is greatly occupied about method, to which he had probably intended to return in the projected 'Philosopher.'
The Statesman stands midway between the Republic and the Laws, and is also related to the Timaeus. The mythical or cosmical element reminds us of the Timaeus, the ideal of the Republic. A previous chaos in which the elements as yet were not, is hinted at both in the Timaeus and Statesman. The same ingenious arts of giving verisimilitude to a fiction are practised in both dialogues, and in both, as well as in the myth at the end of the Republic, Plato touches on the subject of necessity and free-will. The words in which he describes the miseries of states seem to be an amplification of the 'Cities will never cease from ill' of the Republic. The point of view in both is the same; and the differences not really important, e.g. in the myth, or in the account of the different kinds of states. But the treatment of the subject in the Statesman is fragmentary, and the shorter and later work, as might be expected, is less finished, and less worked out in detail. The idea of measure and the arrangement of the sciences supply connecting links both with the Republic and the Philebus.
More than any of the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems to approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the same decline and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-consciousness, awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is contained the pattern of that second best form of government, which, after all, is admitted to be the only attainable one in this world. The 'gentle violence,' the marriage of dissimilar natures, the figure of the warp and the woof, are also found in the Laws. Both expressly recognize the conception of a first or ideal state, which has receded into an invisible heaven. Nor does the account of the origin and growth of society really differ in them, if we make allowance for the mythic character of the narrative in the Statesman. The virtuous tyrant is common to both of them; and the Eleatic Stranger takes up a position similar to that of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws.
VII. There would have been little disposition to doubt the genuineness of the Sophist and Statesman, if they had been compared with the Laws rather than with the Republic, and the Laws had been received, as they ought to be, on the authority of Aristotle and on the ground of their intrinsic excellence, as an undoubted work of Plato. The detailed consideration of the genuineness and order of the Platonic dialogues has been reserved for another place: a few of the reasons for defending the Sophist and Statesman may be given here.
1. The excellence, importance, and metaphysical originality of the two dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are known to have proceeded from the hands of a forger.
2. The resemblances in them to other dialogues of Plato are such as might be expected to be found in works of the same author, and not in those of an imitator, being too subtle and minute to have been invented by another. The similar passages and turns of thought are generally inferior to the parallel passages in his earlier writings; and we might a priori have expected that, if altered, they would have been improved. But the comparison of the Laws proves that this repetition of his own thoughts and words in an inferior form is characteristic of Plato's later style.
3. The close connexion of them with the Theaetetus, Parmenides, and Philebus, involves the fate of these dialogues, as well as of the two suspected ones.
4. The suspicion of them seems mainly to rest on a presumption that in Plato's writings we may expect to find an uniform type of doctrine and opinion. But however we arrange the order, or narrow the circle of the dialogues, we must admit that they exhibit a growth and progress in the mind of Plato. And the appearance of change or progress is not to be regarded as impugning the genuineness of any particular writings, but may be even an argument in their favour. If we suppose the Sophist and Politicus to stand halfway between the Republic and the Laws, and in near connexion with the Theaetetus, the Parmenides, the Philebus, the arguments against them derived from differences of thought and style disappear or may be said without paradox in some degree to confirm their genuineness. There is no such interval between the Republic or Phaedrus and the two suspected dialogues, as that which separates all the earlier writings of Plato from the Laws. And the Theaetetus, Parmenides, and Philebus, supply links, by which, however different from them, they may be reunited with the great body of the Platonic writings.
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Theodorus, Socrates, The Eleatic Stranger, The Younger Socrates.
SOCRATES: I owe you many thanks, indeed, Theodorus, for the acquaintance both of Theaetetus and of the Stranger.
THEODORUS: And in a little while, Socrates, you will owe me three times as many, when they have completed for you the delineation of the Statesman and of the Philosopher, as well as of the Sophist.
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher! O my dear Theodorus, do my ears truly witness that this is the estimate formed of them by the great calculator and geometrician?
