Nature and Convention
The Open Society and Its Enemies, Chapter 5
Karl Popper

Plato was not the first to approach social phenomena in the spirit of
scientific investigation. The beginning of social science goes back at
least to the generation of Protagoras, the first of the great thinkers
who called themselves ‘Sophists’. It is marked by the realization of the
need to distinguish between two different elements in man’s
environment—his natural environment and his social environment. This is
a distinction which is difficult to make and to grasp, as can be
inferred from the fact that even now it is not clearly established in
our minds. It has been questioned ever since the time of Protagoras.
Most of us, it seems, have a strong inclination to accept the
peculiarities of our social environment as if they were ‘natural’.

It is one of the characteristics of the magical attitude of a primitive
tribal or ‘closed’ society that it lives in a charmed circle¹ of
unchanging taboos, of laws and customs which are felt to be as
inevitable as the rising of the sun, or the cycle of the seasons, or
similar obvious regularities of nature. And it is only after this
magical ‘closed society’ has actually broken down that a theoretical
understanding of the difference between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ can
develop.

I

An analysis of this development requires, I believe, a clear grasp of an
important distinction. It is the distinction between (a) natural laws,
or laws of nature, such as the laws describing the movements of the sun,
the moon, and the planets, the succession of the seasons, etc., or the
law of gravity or, say, the laws of thermodynamics and, on the other
hand, (b) normative laws, or norms, or prohibitions and commandments,
i.e. such rules as forbid or demand certain modes of conduct; examples
are the Ten Commandments or the legal rules regulating the procedure of
the election of Members of Parliament, or the laws that constitute the
Athenian Constitution.

Since the discussion of these matters is often vitiated by a tendency to
blur this distinction, a few more words may be said about it. A law in
sense (a)—a natural law—is describing a strict, unvarying regularity
which either in fact holds in nature (in this case, the law is a true
statement) or does not hold (in this case it is false). If we do not
know whether a law of nature is true or false, and if we wish to draw
attention to our uncertainty, we often call it an ‘hypothesis’. A law of
nature is unalterable; there are no exceptions to it. For if we are
satisfied that something has happened which contradicts it, then we do
not say that there is an exception, or an alteration to the law, but
rather that our hypothesis has been refuted, since it has turned out
that the supposed strict regularity did not hold, or in other words,
that the supposed law of nature was not a true law of nature, but a
false statement. Since laws of nature are unalterable, they can be
neither broken nor enforced. They are beyond human control, although
they may possibly be used by us for technical purposes, and although we
may get into trouble by not knowing them, or by ignoring them.

All this is very different if we turn to laws of the kind (b), that is,
to normative laws. A normative law, whether it is now a legal enactment
or a moral commandment, can be enforced by men. Also, it is alterable.
It may be perhaps described as good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable
or unacceptable; but only in a metaphorical sense can it be called
‘true’ or ‘false’, since it does not describe a fact, but lays down
directions for our behaviour. If it has any point or significance, then
it can be broken; and if it cannot be broken then it is superfluous and
without significance. ‘Do not spend more money than you possess’ is a
significant normative law; it may be significant as a moral or legal
rule, and the more necessary as it is so often broken. ‘Do not take more
money out of your purse than there was in it’ may be said to be, by its
wording, also a normative law; but nobody would consider seriously such
a rule as a significant part of a moral or legal system, since it cannot
be broken. If a significant normative law is observed, then this is
always due to human control—to human actions and decisions. Usually it
is due to the decision to introduce sanctions—to punish or restrain
those who break the law.

I believe, in common with a great number of thinkers, and especially
with many social scientists, that the distinction between laws in sense
(a), i.e. statements describing regularities of nature, and laws in
sense (b), i.e. norms such as prohibitions or commandments, is a
fundamental one, and that these two kinds of law have hardly more in
common than a name. But this view is by no means generally accepted; on
the contrary, many thinkers believe that there are norms—prohibitions or
commandments—which are ‘natural’ in the sense that they are laid down in
accordance with natural laws in sense (a). They say, for example, that
certain legal norms are in accordance with human nature, and therefore
with psychological natural laws in sense (a), while other legal norms
may be contrary to human nature; and they add that those norms which can
be shown to be in accordance with human nature are really not very
different from natural laws in sense (a). Others say that natural laws
in sense (a) are really very similar to normative laws since they are
laid down by the will or decision of the Creator of the Universe—a view
which, undoubtedly, lies behind the use of the originally normative word
‘law’ for laws of the kind (a). All these views may be worthy of being
discussed. But in order to discuss them, it is necessary first to
distinguish between laws in the sense of (a) and laws in the sense of
(b), and not to confuse the issue by a bad terminology. Thus we shall
reserve the term ‘natural laws’ exclusively for laws of type (a), and we
shall refuse to apply this term to any norms which are claimed to be, in
some sense or other, ‘natural’. The confusion is quite unnecessary since
it is easy to speak of ‘natural rights and obligations’ or of ‘natural
norms’ if we wish to stress the ‘natural’ character of laws of type (b).

II

I believe that it is necessary for the understanding of Plato’s
sociology to consider how the distinction between natural and normative
laws may have developed. I shall first discuss what seem to have been
the starting point and the last step of the development, and later what
seem to have been three intermediate steps, which all play a part in
Plato’s theory. The starting point can be described as a naïve monism.
It may be said to be characteristic of the ‘closed society’. The last
step, which I describe as critical dualism (or critical
conventionalism), is characteristic of the ‘open society’. The fact that
there are still many who try to avoid making this step may be taken as
an indication that we are still in the midst of the transition from the
closed to the open society. (With all this, compare chapter 10.)

The starting point which I have called ‘naïve monism’ is the stage at
which the distinction between natural and normative laws is not yet
made. Unpleasant experiences are the means by which man learns to adjust
himself to his environment. No distinction is made between sanctions
imposed by other men, if a normative taboo is broken, and unpleasant
experiences suffered in the natural environment. Within this stage, we
may further distinguish between two possibilities. The one can be
described as a naïve naturalism. At this stage regularities, whether
natural or conventional, are felt to be beyond the possibility of any
alteration whatever. But I believe that this stage is only an abstract
possibility which probably was never realized. More important is a stage
which we can describe as a naïve conventionalism—a stage at which both
natural and normative regularities are experienced as expressions of,
and as dependent upon, the decisions of man-like gods or demons. Thus
the cycle of the seasons, or the peculiarities of the movements of the
sun, the moon, and the planets, may be interpreted as obeying the ‘laws’
or ‘decrees’ or ‘decisions’ which ‘rule heaven and earth’, and which
were laid down and ‘pronounced by the creator-god in the beginning’². It
is understandable that those who think in this way may believe that even
the natural laws are open to modifications, under certain exceptional
circumstances; that with the help of magical practices man may sometimes
influence them; and that natural regularities are upheld by sanctions,
as if they were normative. This point is well illustrated by Heraclitus’
saying: ‘The sun will not outstep the measure of his path; or else the
goddesses of Fate, the handmaids of Justice, will know how to find him.’

The breakdown of magic tribalism is closely connected with the
realization that taboos are different in various tribes, that they are
imposed and enforced by man, and that they may be broken without
unpleasant repercussions if one can only escape the sanctions imposed by
one’s fellow-men. This realization is quickened when it is observed that
laws are altered and made by human lawgivers. I have in mind not only
such lawgivers as Solon, but also the laws which were made and enforced
by the common people of democratic cities. These experiences may lead to
a conscious differentiation between the man-enforced normative laws,
based on decisions or conventions, and the natural regularities which
are beyond his power. When this differentiation is clearly understood,
then we can describe the position reached as a critical dualism, or
critical conventionalism. In the development of Greek philosophy this
dualism of facts and norms announces itself in terms of the opposition
between nature and convention.³

In spite of the fact that this position was reached a long time ago by
the Sophist Protagoras, an older contemporary of Socrates, it is still
so little understood that it seems necessary to explain it in some
detail. First, we must not think that critical dualism implies a theory
of the historical origin of norms. It has nothing to do with the
obviously untenable historical assertion that norms in the first place
were consciously made or introduced by man, instead of having been found
by him to be simply there (whenever he was first able to find anything
of this kind). It therefore has nothing to do with the assertion that
norms originate with man, and not with God, nor does it underrate the
importance of normative laws. Least of all has it anything to do with
the assertion that norms, since they are conventional, i.e. man-made,
are therefore ‘merely arbitrary’. Critical dualism merely asserts that
norms and normative laws can be made and changed by man, more especially
by a decision or convention to observe them or to alter them, and that
it is therefore man who is morally responsible for them; not perhaps for
the norms which he finds to exist in society when he first begins to
reflect upon them, but for the norms which he is prepared to tolerate
once he has found out that he can do something to alter them. Norms are
man-made in the sense that we must blame nobody but ourselves for them;
neither nature, nor God. It is our business to improve them as much as
we can, if we find that they are objectionable. This last remark implies
that by describing norms as conventional, I do not mean that they must
be arbitrary, or that one set of normative laws will do just as well as
another. By saying that some systems of laws can be improved, that some
laws may be better than others, I rather imply that we can compare the
existing normative laws (or social institutions) with some standard
norms which we have decided are worthy of being realized. But even these
standards are of our making in the sense that our decision in favour of
them is our own decision, and that we alone carry the responsibility for
adopting them. The standards are not to be found in nature. Nature
consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral
nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in
this way introduce morals into the natural world⁴, in spite of the fact
that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature
has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing
and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for
which we are morally responsible. Yet responsibility, decisions, enter
the world of nature only with us.

III

It is important for the understanding of this attitude to realize that
these decisions can never be derived from facts (or from statements of
facts), although they pertain to facts. The decision, for instance, to
oppose slavery does not depend upon the fact that all men are born free
and equal, and that no man is born in chains. For even if all were born
free, some men might perhaps try to put others in chains, and they may
even believe that they ought to put them in chains. And conversely, even
if men were born in chains, many of us might demand the removal of these
chains. Or to put this matter more precisely, if we consider a fact as
alterable—such as the fact that many people are suffering from
diseases—then we can always adopt a number of different attitudes
towards this fact: more especially, we can decide to make an attempt to
alter it; or we can decide to resist any such attempt; or we can decide
not to take action at all.

All moral decisions pertain in this way to some fact or other,
especially to some fact of social life, and all (alterable) facts of
social life can give rise to many different decisions. Which shows that
the decisions can never be derivable from these facts, or from a
description of these facts.

But they cannot be derived from another class of facts either; I mean
those natural regularities which we describe with the help of natural
laws. It is perfectly true that our decisions must be compatible with
the natural laws (including those of human physiology and psychology),
if they are ever to be carried into effect; for if they run counter to
such laws, then they simply cannot be carried out. The decision that all
should work harder and eat less, for example, cannot be carried out
beyond a certain point for physiological reasons, i.e. because beyond a
certain point it would be incompatible with certain natural laws of
physiology. Similarly, the decision that all should work less and eat
more also cannot be carried out beyond a certain point, for various
reasons, including the natural laws of economics. (As we shall see
below, in section iv of this chapter, there are natural laws in the
social sciences also; we shall call them ‘sociological laws’.)

Thus certain decisions may be eliminated as incapable of being executed,
because they contradict certain natural laws (or ‘unalterable facts’).
But this does not mean, of course, that any decision can be logically
derived from such ‘unalterable facts’. Rather, the situation is this. In
view of any fact whatsoever, whether it is alterable or unalterable, we
can adopt various decisions—such as to alter it; to protect it from
those who wish to alter it; not to interfere, etc. But if the fact in
question is unalterable—either because an alteration is impossible in
view of the existing laws of nature, or because an alteration is for
other reasons too difficult for those who wish to alter it—then any
decision to alter it will be simply impracticable; in fact, any decision
concerning such a fact will be pointless and without significance.

Critical dualism thus emphasizes the impossibility of reducing decisions
or norms to facts; it can therefore be described as a dualism of facts
and decisions.

But this dualism seems to be open to attack. Decisions are facts, it may
be said. If we decide to adopt a certain norm, then the making of this
decision is itself a psychological or sociological fact, and it would be
absurd to say that there is nothing in common between such facts and
other facts. Since it cannot be doubted that our decisions about norms,
i.e. the norms we adopt, clearly depend upon certain psychological
facts, such as the influence of our upbringing, it seems to be absurd to
postulate a dualism of facts and decisions, or to say that decisions
cannot be derived from facts. This objection can be answered by pointing
out that we can speak of a ‘decision’ in two different senses. We may
speak of a certain decision which has been submitted, or considered, or
reached, or been decided upon; or alternatively, we may speak of an act
of deciding and call this a ‘decision’. Only in the second sense can we
describe a decision as a fact. The situation is analogous with a number
of other expressions. In one sense, we may speak of a certain resolution
which has been submitted to some council, and in the other sense, the
council’s act of taking it may be spoken of as the council’s resolution.
Similarly, we may speak of a proposal or a suggestion before us, and on
the other hand of the act of proposing or suggestion something, which
may also be called ‘proposal’ or ‘suggestion’. An analogous ambiguity is
well known in the field of descriptive statements. Let us consider the
statement: ‘Napoleon died on St. Helena.’ It will be useful to
distinguish this statement from the fact which it describes, and which
we may call the primary fact, viz. the fact that Napoleon died at St.
Helena. Now a historian, say Mr. A, when writing the biography of
Napoleon, may make the statement mentioned. In doing so, he is
describing what we called the primary fact. But there is also a
secondary fact, which is altogether different from the primary one,
namely the fact that he made this statement; and another historian, Mr.
B, when writing the biography of Mr. A, may describe this second fact by
saying: ‘Mr. A stated that Napoleon died on St. Helena.’ The secondary
fact described in this way happens to be itself a description. But it is
a description in a sense of the word that must be distinguished from the
sense in which we called the statement ‘Napoleon died on St. Helena’ a
description. The making of a description, or of a statement, is a
sociological or psychological fact. But the description made is to be
distinguished from the fact that it has been made. It cannot even be
derived from this fact; for that would mean that we can validly deduce
‘Napoleon died on St. Helena’ from ‘Mr. A stated that Napoleon died on
St. Helena’, which obviously we cannot.

In the field of decisions, the situation is analogous. The making of a
decision, the adoption of a norm or of a standard, is a fact. But the
norm or standard which has been adopted, is not a fact. That most people
agree with the norm ‘Thou shalt not steal’ is a sociological fact. But
the norm ‘Thou shalt not steal’ is not a fact, and can never be inferred
from sentences describing facts. This will be seen most clearly when we
remember that there are always various and even opposite decisions
possible with respect to a certain relevant fact. For instance, in face
of the sociological fact that most people adopt the norm ‘Thou shalt not
steal’, it is still possible to decide either to adopt this norm, or to
oppose its adoption; it is possible to encourage those who have adopted
the norm, or to discourage them, and to persuade them to adopt another
norm. To sum up, it is impossible to derive a sentence stating a norm or
a decision or, say, a proposal for a policy from a sentence stating a
fact; this is only another way of saying that it is impossible to derive
norms or decisions or proposals from facts.⁵

The statement that norms are man-made (man-made not in the sense that
they were consciously designed, but in the sense that men can judge and
alter them—that is to say, in the sense that the responsibility for them
is entirely ours) has often been misunderstood. Nearly all
misunderstandings can be traced back to one fundamental misapprehension,
namely, to the belief that ‘convention’ implies ‘arbitrariness’; that if
we are free to choose any system of norms we like, then one system is
just as good as any other. It must, of course, be admitted that the view
that norms are conventional or artificial indicates that there will be a
certain element of arbitrariness involved, i.e. that there may be
different systems of norms between which there is not much to choose (a
fact that has been duly emphasized by Protagoras). But artificiality by
no means implies full arbitrariness. Mathematical calculi, for instance,
or symphonies, or plays, are highly artificial, yet it does not follow
that one calculus or symphony or play is just as good as any other. Man
has created new worlds—of language, of music, of poetry, of science; and
the most important of these is the world of the moral demands, for
equality, for freedom, and for helping the weak⁶. When comparing the
field of morals with the field of music or of mathematics, I do not wish
to imply that these similarities reach very far. There is, more
especially, a great difference between moral decisions and decisions in
the field of art. Many moral decisions involve the life and death of
other men. Decisions in the field of art are much less urgent and
important. It is therefore most misleading to say that a man decides for
or against slavery as he may decide for or against certain works of
music and literature, or that moral decisions are purely matters of
taste. Nor are they merely decisions about how to make the world more
beautiful, or about other luxuries of this kind; they are decisions of
much greater urgency. (With all this, cp. also chapter 9.) Our
comparison is only intended to show that the view that moral decisions
rest with us does not imply that they are entirely arbitrary.

The view that norms are man-made is also, strangely enough, contested by
some who see in this attitude an attack on religion. It must be
admitted, of course, that this view is an attack on certain forms of
religion, namely, on the religion of blind authority, on magic and
tabooism. But I do not think that it is in any way opposed to a religion
built upon the idea of personal responsibility and freedom of
conscience. I have in mind, of course, especially Christianity, at least
as it is usually interpreted in democratic countries; that Christianity
which, as against all tabooism, preaches, ‘Ye have heard that it was
said by them of old time … But I say unto you …’; opposing in every case
the voice of conscience to mere formal obedience and the fulfilment of
the law.

I would not admit that to think of ethical laws as being man-made in
this sense is incompatible with the religious view that they are given
to us by God. Historically, all ethics undoubtedly begin with religion;
but I do not now deal with historical questions. I do not ask who was
the first ethical lawgiver. I only maintain that it is we, and we alone,
who are responsible for adopting or rejecting some suggested moral laws;
it is we who must distinguish between the true prophets and the false
prophets. All kinds of norms have been claimed to be God-given. If you
accept the ‘Christian’ ethics of equality and toleration and freedom of
conscience only because of its claim to rest upon divine authority, then
you build on a weak basis; for it has been only too often claimed that
inequality is willed by God, and that we must not be tolerant with
unbelievers. If, however, you accept the Christian ethics not because
you are commanded to do so but because of your conviction that it is the
right decision to take, then it is you who have decided. My insistence
that we make the decisions and carry the responsibility must not be
taken to imply that we cannot, or must not, be helped by faith, and
inspired by tradition or by great examples. Nor does it imply that the
creation of moral decisions is merely a ‘natural’ process, i.e. of the
order of physico-chemical processes. In fact, Protagoras, the first
critical dualist, taught that nature does not know norms, and that the
introduction of norms is due to man, and the most important of human
achievements. He thus held that ‘institutions and conventions were what
raised men above the brutes’, as Burnet⁷ puts it. But in spite of his
insistence that man creates norms, that it is man who is the measure of
all things, he believed that man could achieve the creation of norms
only with supernatural help. Norms, he taught, are superimposed upon the
original or natural state of affairs by man, but with the help of Zeus.
It is at Zeus’ bidding that Hermes gives to men an understanding of
justice and honour; and he distributes this gift to all men equally. The
way in which the first clear statement of critical dualism makes room
for a religious interpretation of our sense of responsibility shows how
little critical dualism is opposed to a religious attitude. A similar
approach can be discerned, I believe, in the historical Socrates (see
chapter 10) who felt compelled, by his conscience as well as by his
religious beliefs, to question all authority, and who searched for the
norms in whose justice he could trust. The doctrine of the autonomy of
ethics is independent of the problem of religion, but compatible with,
or perhaps even necessary for, any religion which respects individual
conscience.

IV

So much concerning the dualism of facts and decisions, or the doctrine
of the autonomy of ethics, first advocated by Protagoras and Socrates⁸.
It is, I believe, indispensable for a reasonable understanding of our
social environment. But of course this does not mean that all ‘social
laws’, i.e. all regularities of our social life, are normative and
man-imposed. On the contrary, there are important natural laws of social
life also. For these, the term sociological laws seems appropriate. It
is just the fact that in social life we meet with both kinds of laws,
natural and normative, which makes it so important to distinguish them
clearly.

In speaking of sociological laws or natural laws of social life, I do
not think so much of the alleged laws of evolution in which historicists
such as Plato are interested, although if there are any such
regularities of historical developments, their formulations would
certainly fall under the category of sociological laws. Nor do I think
so much of the laws of ‘human nature’, i.e. of psychological and
socio-psychological regularities of human behaviour. I have in mind,
rather, such laws as are formulated by modern economic theories, for
instance, the theory of international trade, or the theory of the trade
cycle. These and other important sociological laws are connected with
the functioning of social institutions. (Cp. chapters 3 and 9.) These
laws play a rôle in our social life corresponding to the rôle played in
mechanical engineering by, say, the principle of the lever. For
institutions, like levers, are needed if we want to achieve anything
which goes beyond the power of our muscles. Like machines, institutions
multiply our power for good and evil. Like machines, they need
intelligent supervision by someone who understands their way of
functioning and, most of all, their purpose, since we cannot build them
so that they work entirely automatically. Furthermore, their
construction needs some knowledge of social regularities which impose
limitations upon what can be achieved by institutions⁹. (These
limitations are somewhat analogous, for instance, to the law of
conservation of energy, which amounts to the statement that we cannot
build a perpetual motion machine.) But fundamentally, institutions are
always made by establishing the observance of certain norms, designed
with a certain aim in mind. This holds especially for institutions which
are consciously created; but even those—the vast majority—which arise as
the undesigned results of human actions (cp. chapter 14) are the
indirect results of purposive actions of some kind or other; and their
functioning depends, largely, on the observance of norms. (Even
mechanical engines are made, as it were, not only of iron, but by
combining iron and norms; i.e. by transforming physical things, but
according to certain normative rules, namely their plan or design.) In
institutions, normative laws and sociological, i.e. natural, laws are
closely interwoven, and it is therefore impossible to understand the
functioning of institutions without being able to distinguish between
these two. (These remarks are intended to suggest certain problems
rather than to give solutions. More especially, the analogy mentioned
between institutions and machines must not be interpreted as proposing
the theory that institutions are machines—in some essentialist sense. Of
course they are not machines. And although the thesis is here proposed
that we may obtain useful and interesting results if we ask ourselves
whether an institution does serve any purpose, and what purposes it may
serve, it is not asserted that every institution serves some definite
purpose—its essential purpose, as it were.)

V

As indicated before, there are many intermediate steps in the
development from a naïve or magical monism to a critical dualism which
clearly realizes the distinction between norms and natural laws. Most of
these intermediate positions arise from the misapprehension that if a
norm is conventional or artificial, it must be wholly arbitrary. To
understand Plato’s position, which combines elements of them all, it is
necessary to make a survey of the three most important of these
intermediate positions. They are (1) biological naturalism, (2) ethical
or juridical positivism, and (3) psychological or spiritual naturalism.
It is interesting that every one of these positions has been used for
defending ethical views which are radically opposed to each other; more
especially, for defending the worship of power, and for defending the
rights of the weak.

(1) Biological naturalism, or more precisely, the biological form of
ethical naturalism, is the theory that in spite of the fact that moral
laws and the laws of states are arbitrary, there are some eternal
unchanging laws of nature from which we can derive such norms. Food
habits, i.e. the number of meals, and the kind of food taken, are an
example of the arbitrariness of conventions, the biological naturalist
may argue; yet there are undoubtedly certain natural laws in this field.
For instance, a man will die if he takes either insufficient or too much
food. Thus it seems that just as there are realities behind appearances,
so behind our arbitrary conventions there are some unchanging natural
laws and especially the laws of biology.

Biological naturalism has been used not only to defend equalitarianism,
but also to defend the anti-equalitarian doctrine of the rule of the
strong. One of the first to put forward this naturalism was the poet
Pindar, who used it to support the theory that the strong should rule.
He claimed¹⁰ that it is a law, valid throughout nature, that the
stronger does with the weaker whatever he likes. Thus laws which protect
the weak are not merely arbitrary but artificial distortions of the true
natural law that the strong should be free and the weak should be his
slave. The view is discussed a good deal by Plato; it is attacked in the
Gorgias, a dialogue which is still much influenced by Socrates; in the
Republic, it is put in the mouth of Thrasymachus, and identified with
ethical individualism (see the next chapter); in the Laws, Plato is less
antagonistic to Pindar’s view; but he still contrasts it with the rule
of the wisest, which, he says, is a better principle, and just as much
in accordance with nature (see also the quotation later in this
chapter).

The first to put forward a humanitarian or equalitarian version of
biological naturalism was the Sophist Antiphon. To him is due also the
identification of nature with truth, and of convention with opinion (or
‘delusive opinion’¹¹). Antiphon is a radical naturalist. He believes
that most norms are not merely arbitrary, but directly contrary to
nature. Norms, he says, are imposed from outside, while the rules of
nature are inevitable. It is disadvantageous and even dangerous to break
man-imposed norms if the breach is observed by those who impose them;
but there is no inner necessity attached to them, and nobody needs to be
ashamed of breaking them; shame and punishment are only sanctions
arbitrarily imposed from outside. On this criticism of conventional
morals, Antiphon bases a utilitarian ethics. ‘Of the actions here
mentioned, one would find many to be contrary to nature. For they
involve more suffering where there should be less, and less pleasure
where there could be more, and injury where it is unnecessary.’¹² At the
same time, he taught the need for self-control. His equalitarianism he
formulates as follows: ‘The nobly born we revere and adore; but not the
lowly born. These are barbarous habits. For as to our natural gifts, we
are all on an equal footing, on all points, whether we now happen to be
Greeks or Barbarians … We all breathe the air through our mouths and
nostrils.’

A similar equalitarianism was voiced by the Sophist Hippias, whom Plato
represents as addressing his audience: ‘Gentlemen, I believe that we are
all kinsmen and friends and fellow-citizens; if not by conventional law,
then by nature. For by nature, likeness is an expression of kinship; but
conventional law, the tyrant of mankind, compels us to do much that is
against nature.’¹³ This spirit was bound up with the Athenian movement
against slavery (mentioned in chapter 4) to which Euripides gave
expression: ‘The name alone brings shame upon the slave who can be
excellent in every way and truly equal to the free born man.’ Elsewhere,
he says: ‘Man’s law of nature is equality.’ And Alcidamas, a disciple of
Gorgias and a contemporary of Plato, wrote: ‘God has made all men free;
no man is a slave by nature.’ Similar views are also expressed by
Lycophron, another member of Gorgias’ school: ‘The splendour of noble
birth is imaginary, and its prerogatives are based upon a mere word.’

Reacting against this great humanitarian movement—the movement of the
‘Great Generation’, as I shall call it later (chapter 10)—Plato, and his
disciple Aristotle, advanced the theory of the biological and moral
inequality of man. Greeks and barbarians are unequal by nature; the
opposition between them corresponds to that between natural masters and
natural slaves. The natural inequality of men is one of the reasons for
their living together, for their natural gifts are complementary. Social
life begins with natural inequality, and it must continue upon that
foundation. I shall discuss these doctrines later in more detail. At
present, they may serve to show how biological naturalism can be used to
support the most divergent ethical doctrines. In the light of our
previous analysis of the impossibility of basing norms upon facts this
result is not unexpected.

Such considerations, however, are perhaps not sufficient to defeat a
theory as popular as biological naturalism; I therefore propose two more
direct criticisms. First, it must be admitted that certain forms of
behaviour may be described as more ‘natural’ than other forms; for
instance, going naked or eating only raw food; and some people think
that this in itself justifies the choice of these forms. But in this
sense it certainly is not natural to interest oneself in art, or
science, or even in arguments in favour of naturalism. The choice of
conformity with ‘nature’ as a supreme standard leads ultimately to
consequences which few will be prepared to face; it does not lead to a
more natural form of civilization, but to beastliness¹⁴. The second
criticism is more important. The biological naturalist assumes that he
can derive his norms from the natural laws which determine the
conditions of health, etc., if he does not naïvely believe that we need
adopt no norms whatever but simply live according to the ‘laws of
nature’. He overlooks the fact that he makes a choice, a decision; that
it is possible that some other people cherish certain things more than
their health (for instance, the many who have consciously risked their
lives for medical research). And he is therefore mistaken if he believes
that he has not made a decision, or that he has derived his norms from
biological laws.

(2) Ethical positivism shares with the biological form of ethical
natural ism the belief that we must try to reduce norms to facts. But
the facts are this time sociological facts, namely, the actual existing
norms. Positivism maintains that there are no other norms but the laws
which have actually been set up (or ‘posited’) and which have therefore
a positive existence. Other standards are considered as unreal
imaginations. The existing laws are the only possible standards of
goodness: what is, is good. (Might is right.) ‘According to some forms
of this theory, it is a gross misunderstanding to believe that the
individual can judge the norms of society; rather, it is society which
provides the code by which the individual must be judged.

As a matter of historical fact, ethical (or moral, or juridical)
positivism has usually been conservative, or even authoritarian; and it
has often invoked the authority of God. Its arguments depend, I believe,
upon the alleged arbitrariness of norms. We must believe in existing
norms, it claims, because there are no better norms which we may find
for ourselves. In reply to this it might be asked: What about this norm
‘We must believe etc.’? If this is only an existing norm, then it does
not count as an argument in favour of these norms; but if it is an
appeal to our insight, then it admits that we can, after all, find norms
ourselves. And if we are told to accept norms on authority because we
cannot judge them, then neither can we judge whether the claims of the
authority are justified, or whether we may not follow a false prophet.
And if it is held that there are no false prophets because laws are
arbitrary anyhow, so that the main thing is to have some laws, then we
may ask ourselves why it should be so important to have laws at all; for
if there are no further standards, why then should we not choose to have
no laws? (These remarks may perhaps indicate the reasons for my belief
that authoritarian or conservative principles are usually an expression
of ethical nihilism; that is to say, of an extreme moral scepticism, of
a distrust of man and of his possibilities.)

While the theory of natural rights has, in the course of history, often
been proffered in support of equalitarian and humanitarian ideas, the
positivist school was usually in the opposite camp. But this is not much
more than an accident. As has been shown, ethical naturalism may be used
with very different intentions. (It has recently been used for confusing
the whole issue by advertising certain allegedly ‘natural’ rights and
obligations as ‘natural laws’.) Conversely, there are also humanitarian
and progressive positivists. For if all norms are arbitrary, why not be
tolerant? This is a typical attempt to justify a humanitarian attitude
along positivist lines.

(3) Psychological or spiritual naturalism is in a way a combination of
the two previous views, and it can best be explained by means of an
argument against the one-sidedness of these views. The ethical
positivist is right, this argument runs, if he emphasizes that all norms
are conventional, i.e. a product of man, and of human society; but he
overlooks the fact that they are therefore an expression of the
psychological or spiritual nature of man, and of the nature of human
society. The biological naturalist is right in assuming that there are
certain natural aims or ends, from which we can derive natural norms;
but he overlooks the fact that our natural aims are not necessarily such
aims as health, pleasure, or food, shelter or propagation. Human nature
is such that man, or at least some men, do not want to live by bread
alone, that they seek higher aims, spiritual aims. We may thus derive
man’s true natural aims from his own true nature, which is spiritual,
and social. And we may, further, derive the natural norms of life from
his natural ends.

This plausible position was, I believe, first formulated by Plato, who
was here under the influence of the Socratic doctrine of the soul, i.e.
of Socrates’ teaching that the spirit matters more than the flesh¹⁵. Its
appeal to our sentiments is undoubtedly very much stronger than that of
the other two positions. It can however be combined, like these, with
any ethical decision; with a humanitarian attitude as well as with the
worship of power. For we can, for instance, decide to treat all men as
participating in this spiritual human nature; or we can insist like
Heraclitus, that the many ‘fill their bellies like the beasts’, and are
therefore of an inferior nature, and that only a few elect ones are
worthy of the spiritual community of men. Accordingly, spiritual
naturalism has been much used, and especially by Plato, to justify the
natural prerogatives of the ‘noble’ or ‘elect’ or ‘wise’ or of the
‘natural leader’. (Plato’s attitude is discussed in the following
chapters.) On the other hand, it has been used by Christian and other¹⁶
humanitarian forms of ethics, for instance by Paine and by Kant, to
demand the recognition of the ‘natural rights’ of every human
individual. It is clear that spiritual naturalism can be used to defend
any ‘positive’, i.e. existing, norm. For it can always be argued that
these norms would not be in force if they did not express some traits of
human nature. In this way, spiritual naturalism can, in practical
problems, become one with positivism, in spite of their traditional
opposition. In fact, this form of naturalism is so wide and so vague
that it may be used to defend anything. There is nothing that has ever
occurred to man which could not be claimed to be ‘natural’; for if it
were not in his nature, how could it have occurred to him?

Looking back at this brief survey, we may perhaps discern two main
tendencies which stand in the way of adopting a critical dualism. The
first is a general tendency towards monism¹⁷, that is to say, towards
the reduction of norms to facts. The second lies deeper, and it possibly
forms the background of the first. It is based upon our fear of
admitting to ourselves that the responsibility for our ethical decisions
is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God,
nor to nature, nor to society, nor to history. All these ethical
theories attempt to find somebody, or perhaps some argument, to take the
burden from us¹⁸. But we cannot shirk this responsibility. Whatever
authority we may accept, it is we who accept it. We only deceive
ourselves if we do not realize this simple point.

VI

We now turn to a more detailed analysis of Plato’s naturalism and its
relation to his historicism. Plato, of course, does not always use the
term ‘nature’ in the same sense. The most important meaning which he
attaches to it is, I believe, practically identical with that which he
attaches to the term ‘essence’. This way of using the term ‘nature’
still survives among essentialists even in our day; they still speak,
for instance, of the nature of mathematics, or of the nature of
inductive inference, or of the ‘nature of happiness and misery’¹⁹. When
used by Plato in this way, ‘nature’ means nearly the same as ‘Form’ or
‘Idea’; for the Form or Idea of a thing, as shown above, is also its
essence. The main difference between natures and Forms or Ideas seems to
be this. The Form or Idea of a sensible thing is, as we have seen, not
in that thing, but separated from it; it is its forefather, its
primogenitor; but this Form or father passes something on to the
sensible things which are its offspring or race, namely, their nature.
This ‘nature’ is thus the inborn or original quality of a thing, and in
so far, its inherent essence; it is the original power or disposition of
a thing, and it determines those of its properties which are the basis
of its resemblance to, or of its innate participation in, its Form or
Idea.

‘Natural’ is, accordingly, what is innate or original or divine in a
thing, while ‘artificial’ is that which has been later changed by man or
added or imposed by him, through external compulsion. Plato frequently
insists that all products of human ‘art’ at their best are only copies
of ‘natural’ sensible things. But since these in turn are only copies of
the divine Forms or Ideas, the products of art are only copies of
copies, twice removed from reality, and therefore less good, less real,
and less true²⁰ than even the (natural) things in flux. We see from this
that Plato agrees with Antiphon²¹ in at least one point, namely in
assuming that the opposition between nature and convention or art
corresponds to that between truth and falsehood, between reality and
appearance, between primary or original and secondary or man-made
things, and to that between the objects of rational knowledge and those
of delusive opinion. The opposition corresponds also, according to
Plato, to that between ‘the offspring of divine workmanship’ or ‘the
products of divine art’, and ‘what man makes out of them, i.e. the
products of human art’.²² All those things whose intrinsic value Plato
wishes to emphasize he therefore claims to be natural as opposed to
artificial. Thus he insists in the Laws that the soul has to be
considered prior to all material things, and that it must therefore be
said to exist by nature: ‘Nearly everybody … is ignorant of the power of
the soul, and especially of her origin. They do not know that she is
among the first of things, and prior to all bodies … In using the word
“nature” one wants to describe the things that were created first; but
if it turns out that it is the soul which is prior to other things (and
not, perhaps, fire or air), … then the soul, beyond all others, may be
asserted to exist by nature, in the truest sense of the word.’²³ (Plato
here re-affirms his old theory that the soul is more closely akin to the
Forms or Ideas than the body; a theory which is also the basis of his
doctrine of immortality.)

But Plato not only teaches that the soul is prior to other things and
therefore exists ‘by nature’; he uses the term ‘nature’, if applied to
man, frequently also as a name for spiritual powers or gifts or natural
talents, so that we can say that a man’s ‘nature’ is much the same as
his ‘soul’; it is the divine principle by which he participates in the
Form or Idea, in the divine primogenitor of his race. And the term
‘race’, again, is frequently used in a very similar sense. Since a
‘race’ is united by being the offspring of the same primogenitor, it
must also be united by a common nature. Thus the terms ‘nature’ and
‘race’ are frequently used by Plato as synonyms, for instance, when he
speaks of the ‘race of philosophers’ and of those who have ‘philosophic
natures’; so that both these terms are closely akin to the terms
‘essence’ and ‘soul’.

Plato’s theory of ‘nature’ opens another approach to his historicist
methodology. Since it seems to be the task of science in general to
examine the true nature of its objects, it is the task of a social or
political science to examine the nature of human society, and of the
state. But the nature of a thing, according to Plato, is its origin; or
at least it is determined by its origin. Thus the method of any science
will be the investigation of the origin of things (of their ‘causes’).
This principle, when applied to the science of society and of politics,
leads to the demand that the origin of society and of the state must be
examined. History therefore is not studied for its own sake but serves
as the method of the social sciences. This is the historicist
methodology.

What is the nature of human society, of the state? According to
historicist methods, this fundamental question of sociology must be
reformulated in this way: what is the origin of society and of the
state? The reply given by Plato in the Republic as well as in the
Laws²⁴, agrees with the position described above as spiritual
naturalism. The origin of society is a convention, a social contract.
But it is not only that; it is, rather, a natural convention, i.e. a
convention which is based upon human nature, and more precisely, upon
the social nature of man.

This social nature of man has its origin in the imperfection of the
human individual. In opposition to Socrates²⁵, Plato teaches that the
human individual cannot be self-sufficient, owing to the limitations
inherent in human nature. Although Plato insists that there are very
different degrees of human perfection, it turns out that even the very
few comparatively perfect men still depend upon others (who are less
perfect); if for nothing else, then for having the dirty work, the
manual work, done by them²⁶. In this way, even the ‘rare and uncommon
natures’ who approach perfection depend upon society, upon the state.
They can reach perfection only through the state and in the state; the
perfect state must offer them the proper ‘social habitat’, without which
they must grow corrupt and degenerate. The state therefore must be
placed higher than the individual since only the state can be
self-sufficient (‘autark’), perfect, and able to make good the necessary
imperfection of the individual.

Society and the individual are thus interdependent. The one owes its
existence to the other. Society owes its existence to human nature, and
especially to its lack of self-sufficiency; and the individual owes his
existence to society, since he is not self-sufficient. But within this
relationship of interdependence, the superiority of the state over the
individual manifests itself in various ways; for instance, in the fact
that the seed of the decay and disunion of a perfect state does not
spring up in the state itself, but rather in its individuals; it is
rooted in the imperfection of the human soul, of human nature; or more
precisely, in the fact that the race of men is liable to degenerate. To
this point, the origin of political decay, and its dependence upon the
degeneration of human nature, I shall return presently; but I wish first
to make a few comments on some of the characteristics of Plato’s
sociology, especially upon his version of the theory of the social
contract, and upon his view of the state as a super-individual, i.e. his
version of the biological or organic theory of the state.

Whether Protagoras first proposed a theory that laws originate with a
social contract, or whether Lycophron (whose theory will be discussed in
the next chapter) was the first to do so, is not certain. In any case,
the idea is closely related to Protagoras’ conventionalism. The fact
that Plato consciously combined some conventionalist ideas, and even a
version of the contract theory, with his naturalism, is in itself an
indication that conventionalism in its original form did not maintain
that laws are wholly arbitrary; and Plato’s remarks on Protagoras
confirm this²⁷. How conscious Plato was of a conventionalist element in
his version of naturalism can be seen from a passage in the Laws. Plato
there gives a list of the various principles upon which political
authority might be based, mentioning Pindar’s biological naturalism (see
above), i.e. ‘the principle that the stronger shall rule and the weaker
be ruled’, which he describes as a principle ‘according to nature, as
the Theban poet Pindar once stated’. Plato contrasts this principle with
another which he recommends by showing that it combines conventionalism
with naturalism: ‘But there is also a … claim which is the greatest
principle of all, namely, that the wise shall lead and rule, and that
the ignorant shall follow; and this, O Pindar, wisest of poets, is
surely not contrary to nature, but according to nature; for what it
demands is not external compulsion but the truly natural sovereignty of
a law which is based upon mutual consent.’²⁸

In the Republic we find elements of the conventionalist contract theory
in a similar way combined with elements of naturalism (and
utilitarianism). ‘The city originates’, we hear there, ‘because we are
not self-sufficient; … or is there another origin of settlement in
cities? … Men gather into one settlement many … helpers, since they need
many things … And when they share their goods with one another, the one
giving, the other partaking, does not every one expect in this way to
further his own interest?’²⁹ Thus the inhabitants gather in order that
each may further his own interest; which is an element of the contract
theory. But behind this stands the fact that they are not
self-sufficient, a fact of human nature; which is an element of
naturalism. And this element is developed further. ‘By nature, no two of
us are exactly alike. Each has his peculiar nature, some being fit for
one kind of work and some for another … Is it better that a man should
work in many crafts or that he should work in one only? … Surely, more
will be produced and better and more easily if each man works in one
occupation only, according to his natural gifts.’

In this way, the economic principle of the division of labour is
introduced (reminding us of the affinity between Plato’s historicism and
the materialist interpretation of history). But this principle is based
here upon an element of biological naturalism, namely, upon the natural
inequality of men. At first, this idea is introduced inconspicuously
and, as it were, innocently. But we shall see in the next chapter that
it has far-reaching consequences; indeed, the only really important
division of labour turns out to be that between rulers and ruled,
claimed to be based upon the natural inequality of masters and slaves,
of wise and ignorant.

We have seen that there is a considerable element of conventionalism as
well as of biological naturalism in Plato’s position; an observation
which is not surprising when we consider that this position is, on the
whole, that of spiritual naturalism which, because of its vagueness,
easily allows for all such combinations. This spiritual version of
naturalism is perhaps best formulated in the Laws. ‘Men say’, says
Plato, ‘that the greatest and most beautiful things are natural … and
the lesser things artificial.’ So far he agrees; but he then attacks the
materialists who say ‘that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist
by nature … and that all normative laws are altogether unnatural and
artificial and based upon superstitions which are not true.’ Against
this view, he shows first, that it is not bodies nor elements, but the
soul which truly ‘exists by nature’³⁰ (I have quoted this passage
above); and from this he concludes that order, and law, must also be by
nature, since they spring from the soul: ‘If the soul is prior to the
body, then things dependent upon the soul’ (i.e. spiritual matters) ‘are
also prior to those dependent upon body … And the soul orders and
directs all things.’ This supplies the theoretical background for the
doctrine that ‘laws and purposeful institutions exist by nature, and not
by anything lower than nature, since they are born of reason and true
thought.’ This is a clear statement of spiritual naturalism; and it is
combined as well with positivist beliefs of a conservative kind:
‘Thoughtful and prudent legislation will find a most powerful help
because the laws will remain unchanged once they have been laid down in
writing.’

From all this it can be seen that arguments derived from Plato’s
spiritual naturalism are quite incapable of helping to answer any
question which may arise concerning the ‘just’ or ‘natural’ character of
any particular law. Spiritual naturalism is much too vague to be applied
to any practical problem. It cannot do much beyond providing some
general arguments in favour of conservativism. In practice, everything
is left to the wisdom of the great lawgiver (a godlike philosopher,
whose picture, especially in the Laws, is undoubtedly a self-portrait;
see also chapter 8). As opposed to his spiritual naturalism, however,
Plato’s theory of the interdependence of society and the individual
furnishes more concrete results; and so does his anti-equalitarian
biological naturalism.

VII

It has been indicated above that because of its self-sufficiency, the
ideal state appears to Plato as the perfect individual, and the
individual citizen, accordingly, as an imperfect copy of the state. This
view which makes of the state a kind of super-organism or Leviathan
introduces into the occident the so-called organic or biological theory
of the state. The principle of this theory will be criticized later³¹.
Here I wish first to draw attention to the fact that Plato does not
defend the theory, and indeed hardly formulates it explicitly. But it is
clearly enough implied; in fact, the fundamental analogy between the
state and the human individual is one of the standard topics of the
Republic. It is worth mentioning, in this connection, that the analogy
serves to further the analysis of the individual rather than that of the
state. One could perhaps defend the view that Plato (perhaps under the
influence of Alcmaeon) does not offer so much a biological theory of the
state as a political theory of the human individual³². This view, I
think, is fully in accordance with his doctrine that the individual is
lower than the state, and a kind of imperfect copy of it. In the very
place in which Plato introduces his fundamental analogy, it is used in
this way; that is to say, as a method of explaining and elucidating the
individual. The city, it is said, is greater than the individual, and
therefore easier to examine. Plato gives this as his reason for
suggesting that ‘we should begin our inquiry’ (namely, into the nature
of justice) ‘in the city, and continue it afterwards in the individual,
always watching for points of similarity … May we not expect in this way
to discern more easily what we are looking for?’

From his way of introducing it we can see that Plato (and perhaps his
readers) took his fundamental analogy for granted. This may well be a
symptom of nostalgia, of a longing for a unified and harmonious, an
‘organic’ state: for a society of a more primitive kind. (See chapter
10.) The city state ought to remain small, he says, and should grow only
as long as its increase does not endanger its unity. The whole city
should, by its nature, be one, and not many.³³ Plato thus emphasizes the
‘oneness’ or individuality of his city. But he also emphasizes the
‘manyness’ of the human individual. In his analysis of the individual
soul, and of its division into three parts, reason, energy, and animal
instincts, corresponding to the three classes of his state, the
guardians, warriors, and workers (who still continue to ‘fill their
bellies like the beasts’, as Heraclitus had said), Plato goes so far as
to oppose these parts to one another as if they were ‘distinct and
conflicting persons’³⁴. ‘We are thus told’, says Grote, ‘that though man
is apparently One, he is in reality Many … though the perfect
Commonwealth is apparently Many, it is in reality One.’ It is clear that
this corresponds to the Ideal character of the state of which the
individual is a kind of imperfect copy. Such an emphasis upon oneness
and wholeness—especially of the state; or perhaps of the world—may be
described as ‘holism’. Plato’s holism, I believe, is closely related to
the tribal collectivism mentioned in earlier chapters. Plato was longing
for the lost unity of tribal life. A life of change, in the midst of a
social revolution, appeared to him unreal. Only a stable whole, the
permanent collective, has reality, not the passing individuals. It is
‘natural’ for the individual to subserve the whole, which is no mere
assembly of individuals, but a ‘natural’ unit of a higher order.

Plato gives many excellent sociological descriptions of this ‘natural’,
i.e. tribal and collectivist, mode of social life: ‘The law’, he writes
in the Republic, ‘… is designed to bring about the welfare of the state
as a whole, fitting the citizens into one unit, by means of both
persuasion and force. It makes them all share in whatever benefit each
of them can contribute to the community. And it is actually the law
which creates for the state men of the right frame of mind; not for the
purpose of letting them loose, so that everybody can go his own way, but
in order to utilize them all for welding the city together.’³⁵ That
there is in this holism an emotional æstheticism, a longing for beauty,
can be seen, for instance, from a remark in the Laws: ‘Every artist …
executes the part for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the
sake of the part.’ At the same place, we also find a truly classical
formulation of political holism: ‘You are created for the sake of the
whole, and not the whole for the sake of you.’ Within this whole, the
different individuals, and groups of individuals, with their natural
inequalities, must render their specific and very unequal services.

All this would indicate that Plato’s theory was a form of the organic
theory of the state, even if he had not sometimes spoken of the state as
an organism. But since he did this, there can be no doubt left that he
must be described as an exponent, or rather, as one of the originators,
of this theory. His version of this theory may be characterized as a
personalist or psychological one, since he describes the state not in a
general way as similar to some organism or other, but as analogous to
the human individual, and more specifically to the human soul.
Especially the disease of the state, the dissolution of its unity,
corresponds to the disease of the human soul, of human nature. In fact,
the disease of the state is not only correlated with, but is directly
produced by, the corruption of human nature, more especially of the
members of the ruling class. Every single one of the typical stages in
the degeneration of the state is brought about by a corresponding stage
in the degeneration of the human soul, of human nature, of the human
race. And since this moral degeneration is interpreted as based upon
racial degeneration, we might say that the biological element in Plato’s
naturalism turns out, in the end, to have the most important part in the
foundation of his historicism. For the history of the downfall of the
first or perfect state is nothing but the history of the biological
degeneration of the race of men.

VIII

It was mentioned in the last chapter that the problem of the beginning
of change and decay is one of the major difficulties of Plato’s
historicist theory of society. The first, the natural and perfect
city-state, cannot be supposed to carry within itself the germ of
dissolution, ‘for a city which carries within itself the germ of
dissolution is for that very reason imperfect’³⁶. Plato tries to get
over the difficulty by laying the blame on his universally valid
historical, biological, and perhaps even cosmological, evolutionary law
of degeneration, rather than on the particular constitution of the first
or perfect city³⁷. ‘Everything that has been generated must decay.’ But
this general theory does not provide a fully satisfactory solution, for
it does not explain why even a sufficiently perfect state cannot escape
the law of decay. And indeed, Plato hints that historical decay might
have been avoided³⁸, had the rulers of the first or natural state been
trained philosophers. But they were not. They were not trained (as he
demands that the rulers of his heavenly city should be) in mathematics
and dialectics; and in order to avoid degeneration, they would have
needed to be initiated into the higher mysteries of eugenics, of the
science of ‘keeping pure the race of the guardians’, and of avoiding the
mixture of the noble metals in their veins with the base metals of the
workers. But these higher mysteries are difficult to reveal. Plato
distinguishes sharply, in the fields of mathematics, acoustics, and
astronomy, between mere (delusive) opinion which is tainted by
experience, and which cannot reach exactness, and is altogether on a low
level, and pure rational knowledge, which is free from sensual
experience and exact. This distinction he applies also to the field of
eugenics. A merely empirical art of breeding cannot be precise, i.e. it
cannot keep the race perfectly pure. This explains the downfall of the
original city which is so good, i.e. so similar to its Form or Idea,
that ‘a city thus constituted can hardly be shaken’. ‘But this’, Plato
continues, ‘is the way it dissolves’, and he proceeds to outline his
theory of breeding, of the Number, and of the Fall of Man.

All plants and animals, he tells us, must be bred according to definite
periods of time, if barrenness and degeneration are to be avoided. Some
knowledge of these periods, which are connected with the length of the
life of the race, will be available to the rulers of the best state, and
they will apply it to the breeding of the master race. It will not,
however, be rational, but only empirical knowledge; it will be
‘calculation aided by (or based on) perception’ (cp. the next
quotation). But as we have just seen, perception and experience can
never be exact and reliable, since its objects are not the pure Forms or
Ideas, but the world of things in flux; and since the guardians have no
better kind of knowledge at their disposal, the breed cannot be kept
pure, and racial degeneration must creep in. This is how Plato explains
the matter: ‘Concerning your own race’ (i.e. the race of men, as opposed
to animals), ‘the rulers of the city whom you have trained may be wise
enough; but since they are using calculation aided by perception, they
will not hit, accidentally, upon the way of getting either good
offspring, or none at all.’ Lacking a purely rational method,³⁹ ‘they
will blunder, and some day they will beget children in the wrong way’.
In what follows next, Plato hints, rather mysteriously, that there is
now a way to avoid this through the discovery of a purely rational and
mathematical science which possesses in the ‘Platonic Number’ (a number
determining the True Period of the human race) the key to the master law
of higher eugenics. But since the guardians of old times were ignorant
of Pythagorean number-mysticism, and with it, of this key to the higher
knowledge of breeding, the otherwise perfect natural state could not
escape decay. After partially revealing the secret of his mysterious
Number, Plato continues: ‘This … number is master over better or worse
births; and whenever these guardians of yours—who are ignorant of these
matters—unite bride and bridegroom in the wrong manner⁴⁰, the children
will have neither good natures nor good luck. Even the best of them …
will prove unworthy when succeeding to the power of their fathers; and
as soon as they are guardians, they will not listen to us any more’—that
is, in matters of musical and gymnastic education, and, as Plato
especially emphasizes, in the supervision of breeding. ‘Hence rulers
will be appointed who are not altogether fit for their task as
guardians; namely to watch, and to test, the metals in the races (which
are Hesiod’s races as well as yours), gold and silver and bronze and
iron. So iron will mingle with silver and bronze with gold and from this
mixture, Variation will be born and absurd Irregularity; and whenever
these are born they will beget Strife and Hostility. And this is how we
must describe the ancestry and birth of Dissension, wherever she
arises.’

This is Plato’s story of the Number and of the Fall of Man. It is the
basis of his historicist sociology, especially of his fundamental law of
social revolutions discussed in the last chapter⁴¹. For racial
degeneration explains the origin of disunion in the ruling class, and
with it, the origin of all historical development. The internal disunion
of human nature, the schism of the soul, leads to the schism of the
ruling class. And as with Heraclitus, war, class war, is the father and
promoter of all change, and of the history of man, which is nothing but
the history of the breakdown of society. We see that Plato’s idealist
historicism ultimately rests not upon a spiritual, but upon a biological
basis; it rests upon a kind of meta-biology⁴² of the race of men. Plato
was not only a naturalist who proffered a biological theory of the
state, he was also the first to proffer a biological and racial theory
of social dynamics, of political history. ‘The Platonic Number’, says
Adam⁴³, ‘is thus the setting in which Plato’s “Philosophy of History” is
framed.’

It is, I think, appropriate to conclude this sketch of Plato’s
descriptive sociology with a summary and an evaluation.

Plato succeeded in giving an astonishingly true, though of course
somewhat idealized, reconstruction of an early Greek tribal and
collectivist society similar to that of Sparta. An analysis of the
forces, especially the economic forces, which threaten the stability of
such a society, enables him to describe the general policy as well as
the social institutions which are necessary for arresting it. And he
gives, furthermore, a rational reconstruction of the economic and
historical development of the Greek city-states.

These achievements are impaired by his hatred of the society in which he
was living, and by his romantic love for the old tribal form of social
life. It is this attitude which led him to formulate an untenable law of
historical development, namely, the law of universal degeneration or
decay. And the same attitude is also responsible for the irrational,
fantastic, and romantic elements of his otherwise excellent analysis. On
the other hand, it was just his personal interest and his partiality
which sharpened his eye and so made his achievements possible. He
derived his historicist theory from the fantastic philosophical doctrine
that the changing visible world is only a decaying copy of an unchanging
invisible world. But this ingenious attempt to combine a historicist
pessimism with an ontological optimism leads, when elaborated, to
difficulties. These difficulties forced upon him the adoption of a
biological naturalism, leading (together with ‘psychologism’⁴⁴, i.e. the
theory that society depends on the ‘human nature’ of its members) to
mysticism and superstition, culminating in a pseudo-rational
mathematical theory of breeding. They even endangered the impressive
unity of his theoretical edifice.

IX

Looking back at this edifice, we may briefly consider its ground-plan⁴⁵.
This ground-plan, conceived by a great architect, exhibits a fundamental
metaphysical dualism in Plato’s thought. In the field of logic, this
dualism presents itself as the opposition between the universal and the
particular. In the field of mathematical speculation, it presents itself
as the opposition between the One and the Many. In the field of
epistemology, it is the opposition between rational knowledge based on
pure thought, and opinion based on particular experiences. In the field
of ontology, it is the opposition between the one, original, invariable,
and true, reality, and the many, varying, and delusive, appearances;
between pure being and becoming, or more precisely, changing. In the
field of cosmology, it is the opposition between that which generates
and that which is generated, and which must decay. In ethics, it is the
opposition between the good, i.e. that which preserves, and the evil,
i.e. that which corrupts. In politics, it is the opposition between the
one collective, the state, which may attain perfection and autarchy, and
the great mass of the people—the many individuals, the particular men
who must remain imperfect and dependent, and whose particularity is to
be suppressed for the sake of the unity of the state (see the next
chapter). And this whole dualist philosophy, I believe, originated from
the urgent wish to explain the contrast between the vision of an ideal
society, and the hateful actual state of affairs in the social field—the
contrast between a stable society, and a society in the process of
revolution.

---

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

  1. The ‘charmed circle’ is a quotation from Burnet, Greek Philosophy,
I, 106, where similar problems are treated. I do not, however, agree
with Burnet that ‘in early days the regularity of human life had been
far more clearly apprehended than the even course of nature’. This
presupposes the establishment of a differentiation which, I believe, is
characteristic of a later period, i.e. the period of the dissolution of
the ‘charmed circle of law and custom’. Moreover, natural periods (the
seasons, etc.; cp. note 6 to chapter 2, and Plato (?), Epinomis, 978d,
ff.) must have been apprehended in very early days.—For the distinction
between natural and normative laws, see esp. note 18 (4) to this
chapter.

  2. *Cp. R. Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology. Eisler says that the
peculiarities of the movement of the planets were interpreted, by the
Babylonian ‘tablet writers who produced the Library of Assurbanipal’
(op. cit., 288), as ‘dictated by the “laws” or “decisions” ruling
“heaven and earth” (pirishte–shame–u irsiti), pronounced by the creator
god at the beginning’ (ibid., 232 f.). And he points out (ibid., 288)
that the idea of ‘universal laws’ (of nature) originates with this
‘mythological … concept of … “decrees of heaven and earth” …’*

For the passage from Heraclitus, cp. D5, B 29, and note 7 (2) to chapter
2; also note 6 to that chapter, and text. See also Burnet, loc. cit.,
who gives a different interpretation; he thinks that ‘when the regular
course of nature began to be observed, no better name could be found for
it than Right or Justice … which properly meant the unchanging custom
that guided human life.’ I do not believe that the term meant first
something social and was then extended, but I think that both social and
natural regularities (‘order’) were originally undifferentiated, and
interpreted as magical.

  3. The opposition is expressed sometimes as one between ‘nature’ and
‘law’ (or ‘norm’ or ‘convention’), sometimes as one between ‘nature’ and
the ‘positing’ or ‘laying down’ (viz., of normative laws), and sometimes
as one between ‘nature’ and ‘art’, or ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’.

The antithesis between nature and convention is often said (on the
authority of Diogenes Laertius, II, 16 and 4; Doxogr., 564b) to have
been introduced by Archelaus, who is said to have been the teacher of
Socrates. But I think that, in the Laws, 690b, Plato makes it clear
enough that he considers ‘the Theban poet Pindar’ to be the originator
of the antithesis (cp. notes 10 and 28 to this chapter). Apart from
Pindar’s fragments (quoted by Plato; see also Herodotus, III, 38), and
some remarks by Herodotus (loc. cit.), one of the earliest original
sources preserved is the Sophist Antiphon’s fragments On Truth (see
notes 11 and 12 to this chapter). According to Plato’s Protagoras, the
Sophist Hippias seems to have been a pioneer of similar views (see note
13 to this chapter). But the most influential early treatment of the
problem seems to have been that of Protagoras himself, although he may
possibly have used a different terminology. (It may be mentioned that
Democritus dealt with the antithesis which he applied also to such
social ‘institutions’ as language; and Plato did the same in the
Cratylus, e.g. 384e.)

  4. A very similar point of view can be found in Russell’s ‘A Free
Man’s Worship’ (in Mysticism and Logic); and in the last chapter of
Sherrington’s Man on His Nature.

  5. (1) Positivists will reply, of course, that the reason why norms
cannot be derived from factual propositions is that norms are
meaningless; but this shows only that (with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus)
they define ‘meaning’ arbitrarily in such a way that only factual
propositions are ‘meaningful’. (See also my The Logic of Scientific
Discovery, pp. 35 ff. and 51 f.) The followers of ‘psychologism’, on the
other hand, will try to explain imperatives as expressions of emotions,
norms as habits, and standards as points of view. But although the habit
of not stealing certainly is a fact, it is necessary, as explained in
the text, to distinguish this fact from the corresponding norm.—On the
question of the logic of norms, I fully agree with most of the views
expressed by K. Menger in his book, Moral, Wille und Weltgestaltung,
1935. He is one of the first, I believe, to develop the foundations of a
logic of norms. I may perhaps express here my opinion that the
reluctance to admit that norms are something important and irreducible
is one of the main sources of the intellectual and other weaknesses of
the more ‘progressive’ circles in our present time.

(2) Concerning my contention that it is impossible to derive a sentence
stating a norm or decision from a sentence stating a fact, the following
may be added. In analysing the relations between sentences and facts, we
are moving in that field of logical inquiry which A. Tarski has called
Semantics (cp. note 29 to chapter 3 and note 23 to chapter 8). One of
the fundamental concepts of semantics is the concept of truth. As shown
by Tarski, it is possible (within what Carnap calls a semantical system)
to derive a descriptive statement like ‘Napoleon died on St. Helena’
from the statement ‘Mr. A said that Napoleon died on St. Helena’, in
conjunction with the further statement that what Mr. A said was true.
(And if we use the term ‘fact’ in such a wide sense that we not only
speak about the fact described by a sentence but also about the fact
that this sentence is true, then we could even say that it is possible
to derive ‘Napoleon died on St. Helena’ from the two ‘facts’ that Mr. A
said it, and that he spoke the truth.) Now there is no reason why we
should not proceed in an exactly analogous fashion in the realm of
norms. We might then introduce, in correspondence to the concept of
truth, the concept of the validity or rightness of a norm. This would
mean that a certain norm N could be derived (in a kind of semantic of
norms) from a sentence stating that N is valid or right; or in other
words, the norm or commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’ would be
considered as equivalent to the assertion ‘The norm “Thou shalt not
steal” is valid or right’. (And again, if we use the term ‘fact’ in such
a wide sense that we speak about the fact that a norm is valid or right,
then we could even derive norms from facts. This, however, does not
impair the correctness of our considerations in the text which are
concerned solely with the impossibility of deriving norms from
psychological or sociological or similar, i.e. non-semantic, facts.)

  * (3) In my first discussion of these problems, I spoke of norms or
decisions but never of proposals. The proposal to speak, instead, of
‘proposals’ is due to L. J. Russell; see his paper ‘Propositions and
Proposals’, in the Library of the Tenth International Congress of
Philosophy (Amsterdam, August 11–18, 1948), vol. I, Proceedings of the
Congress. In this important paper, statements of fact or ‘propositions’
are distinguished from suggestions for the adoption of a line of conduct
(of a certain policy, or of certain norms, or of certain aims or ends),
and the latter are called ‘proposals’. The great advantage of this
terminology is that, as everybody knows, one can discuss a proposal,
while it is not so clear whether, and in which sense, one can discuss a
decision or a norm; thus by talking of ‘norms’ or ‘decisions’, one is
liable to support those who say that these things are beyond discussion
(either above it, as some dogmatic theologians or metaphysicians may
say, or—as nonsensical—below it, as some positivists may say).

Adopting Russell’s terminology, we could say that a proposition may be
asserted or stated (or a hypothesis accepted) while a proposal is
adopted; and we shall distinguish the fact of its adoption from the
proposal which has been adopted.

Our dualistic thesis then becomes the thesis that proposals are not
reducible to facts (or to statements of facts, or to propositions) even
though they pertain to facts.*

  6. Cp. also the last note (71) to chapter 10.

Although my own position is, I believe, clearly enough implied in the
text, I may perhaps briefly formulate what seem to me the most important
principles of humanitarian and equalitarian ethics.

(1) Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not
propagate intolerance. (For this exception, cp. what is said in notes 4
and 6 to chapter 7.) This implies, especially, that the moral decisions
of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do
not conflict with the principle of tolerance.

(2) The recognition that all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency
of suffering or pain. I suggest, for this reason, to replace the
utilitarian formula ‘Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the
greatest number’, or briefly, ‘Maximize happiness’, by the formula ‘The
least amount of avoidable suffering for all’, or briefly, ‘Minimize
suffering’. Such a simple formula can, I believe, be made one of the
fundamental principles (admittedly not the only one) of public policy.
(The principle ‘Maximize happiness’, in contrast, seems to be apt to
produce a benevolent dictatorship.) We should realize that from the
moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as
symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case
much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the
attempt to prevent suffering. (The latter task has little to do with
‘matters of taste’, the former much.) Cp. also note 2 to chapter 9.

(3) The fight against tyranny; or in other words, the attempt to
safeguard the other principles by the institutional means of a
legislation rather than by the benevolence of persons in power. (Cp.
section 11 of chapter 7.)

  7. Cp. Burnet, Greek Philosophy, I, 117.—Protagoras’ doctrine referred
to in this paragraph is to be found in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras,
322a, ff.; cp. also the Theaetetus, esp. 172b (see also note 27 to this
chapter).

The difference between Platonism and Protagoreanism can perhaps be
briefly expressed as follows:

(Platonism.) There is an inherent ‘natural’ order of justice in the
world, i.e. the original or first order in which nature was created.
Thus the past is good, and any development leading to new norms is bad.

(Protagoreanism.) Man is the moral being in this world. Nature is
neither moral nor immoral. Thus it is possible for man also to improve
things.—It is not unlikely that Protagoras was influenced by Xenophanes,
one of the first to express the attitude of the open society, and to
criticize Hesiod’s historical pessimism: ‘In the beginning, the Gods did
not show to man all he was wanting; but in the course of time, he may
search for the better, and find it.’ (Cp. Diels⁵, 18.) It seems that
Plato’s nephew and successor Speusippus returned to this progressive
view (cp. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1072b30 and note 11 to chapter 11)
and that the Academy adopted with him a more liberal attitude in the
field of politics also.

Concerning the relation of the doctrine of Protagoras to the tenets of
religion, it may be remarked that he believed God to work through man. I
do not see how this position can contradict that of Christianity.
Compare with it for instance K. Barth’s statement (Credo, 1936, p. 188):
‘The Bible is a human document’ (i.e. man is God’s instrument).

  8. Socrates’ advocacy of the autonomy of ethics (closely related to
his insistence that problems of nature do not matter) is expressed
especially in his doctrine of the self-sufficiency or autarky of the
‘virtuous’ individual. That this theory contrasts strongly with Plato’s
views of the individual will be seen later; cp. especially notes 25 to
this chapter and 36 to the next, and text. (Cp. also note 56 to chapter
10.)

  9. We cannot, for instance, construct institutions which work
independently of how they are being ‘manned’. With these problems, cp.
chapter 7 (text to notes 7–8, 22–23), and especially chapter 9.

10. For Plato’s discussion of Pindar’s naturalism, see esp. Gorgias,
484b; 488b; Laws, 690b (quoted below in this chapter; cp. note 28);
714e/715a; cp. also 890a/b. (See also Adam’s note to Rep., 359c20.)

11. Antiphon uses the term which, in connection with Parmenides and
Plato, I have translated above by ‘delusive opinion’ (cp. note 15 to
chapter 3); and he likewise opposes it to ‘truth’. Cp. also Barker’s
translation in Greek Political Theory, I—Plato and His Predecessors
(1918), 83.

12. See Antiphon, On Truth; cp. Barker, op. cit., 83–5. See also next
note, (2).

13. Hippias is quoted in Plato’s Protagoras, 337e. For the next four
quotations, cp. (1) Euripides Ion, 854 ff.; and (2) his Phoenissae, 538;
cp. also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (German edn, I, 325); and Barker, op.
cit., 75; cp. also Plato’s violent attack upon Euripides in Republic,
568a–d. Furthermore (3) Alcidamas in Schol. to Aristotle’s Rhet., I, 13,
1373b18. (4) Lycophron in Aristotle’s Fragm., 91 (Rose); (cp. also the
Pseudo-Plutarch, De Nobil., 18.2). For the Athenian movement against
slavery, cp. text to note 18 to chapter 4, and note 29 (with further
references) to the same chapter; also note 18 to chapter 10 and Addendum
III (Reply to a Critic), especially pp. 330 f.

(1) It is worth nothing that most Platonists show little sympathy with
this equalitarian movement. Barker, for instance, discusses it under the
heading ‘General Iconoclasm’; cp. op. cit., 75. (See also the second
quotation from Field’s Plato quoted in text to note 3, chapter 6.) This
lack of sympathy is due, undoubtedly, to Plato’s influence.

(2) For Plato’s and Aristotle’s anti-equalitarianism mentioned in the
text, next paragraph, cp. also especially note 49 (and text) to chapter
8, and notes 3–4 (and text) to chapter 11.

This anti-equalitarianism and its devastating effects has been clearly
described by W. W. Tarn in his excellent paper ‘Alexander the Great and
the Unity of Mankind’ (Proc. of the British Acad., XIX, 1933, pp. 123
ff.). Tarn recognizes that in the fifth century, there may have been a
movement towards ‘something better than the hard-and-fast division of
Greeks and barbarians; but’, he says, ‘this had no importance for
history, because anything of the sort was strangled by the idealist
philosophies. Plato and Aristotle left no doubt about their views. Plato
said that all barbarians were enemies by nature; it was proper to wage
war upon them, even to the point of enslaving … them. Aristotle said
that all barbarians were slaves by nature …‘(p. 124, italics mine). I
fully agree with Tarn’s appraisal of the pernicious anti-humanitarian
influence of the idealist philosophers, i.e. of Plato and Aristotle. I
also agree with Tarn’s emphasis upon the immense significance of
equalitarianism, of the idea of the unity of mankind (cp. op. cit., p.
147). The main point in which I cannot fully agree is Tarn’s estimate of
the fifth-century equalitarian movement, and of the early cynics. He may
or may not be right in holding that the historical influence of these
movements was small in comparison with that of Alexander. But I believe
that he would have rated these movements more highly if he had only
followed up the parallelism between the cosmopolitan and the
anti-slavery movement. The parallelism between the relations Greeks:
barbarians and free men: slaves is clearly enough shown by Tarn in the
passage here quoted; and if we consider the unquestionable strength of
the movement against slavery (see esp. note 18 to chapter 4) then the
scattered remarks against the distinction between Greeks and barbarians
gain much in significance. Cp. also Aristotle, Politics, III, 5, 7
(1278a); IV (VI), 4, 16 (1319b); and III, 2, 2 (1275b). See also note 48
to chapter 8, and the reference to E. Badian at the end of that note.

14. For the theme ‘return to the beasts’, cp. chapter 10, note 71, and
text.

15. For Socrates’ doctrine of the soul, see text to note 44 to chapter
10.

16. The term ‘natural right’ in an equalitarian sense came to Rome
through the Stoics (there is the influence of Antisthenes to be
considered; cp. note 48 to chapter 8) and was popularized by Roman Law
(cp. Institutiones, II, 1, 2; I, 2, 2). It is used by Thomas Aquinas
also (Summa, II, 91, 2). The confusing use of the term ‘natural law’
instead of ‘natural right’ by modern Thomists is to be regretted, as
well as the small emphasis they put upon equalitarianism.

17. The monistic tendency which first led to the attempt to interpret
norms as natural has recently led to the opposite attempt, namely, to
interpret natural laws as conventional. This (physical) type of
conventionalism has been based, by Poincaré, on the recognition of the
conventional or verbal character of definitions. Poincaré, and more
recently Eddington, point out that we define natural entities by the
laws they obey. From this the conclusion is drawn that these laws, i.e.
the laws of nature, are definitions, i.e. verbal conventions. Cp.
Eddington’s letter in Nature, 148 (1941), 141: ‘The elements’ (of
physical theory) ‘… can only be defined … by the laws they obey; so that
we find ourselves chasing our own tails in a purely formal system.’—An
analysis and a criticism of this form of conventionalism can be found in
my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially pp. 78 ff.

18. (1) The hope of getting some argument or theory to share our
responsibilities is, I believe, one of the basic motives of ‘scientific’
ethics. ‘Scientific’ ethics is in its absolute barrenness one of the
most amazing of social phenomena. What does it aim at? At telling us
what we ought to do, i.e. at constructing a code of norms upon a
scientific basis, so that we need only look up the index of the code if
we are faced with a difficult moral decision? This clearly would be
absurd; quite apart from the fact that if it could be achieved, it would
destroy all personal responsibility and therefore all ethics. Or would
it give scientific criteria of the truth and falsity of moral
judgements, i.e. of judgements involving such terms as ‘good’ or ‘bad’?
But it is clear that moral judgements are absolutely irrelevant. Only a
scandal-monger is interested in judging people or their actions; ‘judge
not’ appears to some of us one of the fundamental and much too little
appreciated laws of humanitarian ethics. (We may have to disarm and to
imprison a criminal in order to prevent him from repeating his crimes,
but too much of moral judgement and especially of moral indignation is
always a sign of hypocrisy and pharisaism.) Thus an ethics of moral
judgements would be not only irrelevant but indeed an immoral affair.
The all-importance of moral problems rests, of course, on the fact that
we can act with intelligent foresight, and that we can ask ourselves
what our aims ought to be, i.e. how we ought to act.

Nearly all moral philosophers who have dealt with the problem of how we
ought to act (with the possible exception of Kant) have tried to answer
it either by reference to ‘human nature’ (as did even Kant, when he
referred to human reason) or to the nature of ‘the good’. The first of
these ways leads nowhere, since all actions possible to us are founded
upon ‘human nature’, so that the problem of ethics could also be put by
asking which elements in human nature I ought to approve and to develop,
and which sides I ought to suppress or to control. But the second of
these ways also leads nowhere; for given an analysis of ‘the good’ in
form of a sentence like: ‘The good is such and such’ (or ‘such and such
is good’), we would always have to ask: What about it? Why should this
concern me? Only if the word ‘good’ is used in an ethical sense, i.e.
only if it is used to mean ‘that which I ought to do’, could I derive
from the information ‘x is good’ the conclusion that I ought to do x. In
other words, if the word ‘good’ is to have any ethical significance at
all, it must be defined as ‘that which I (or we) ought to do (or to
promote)’. But if it is so defined, then its whole meaning is exhausted
by the defining phrase, and it can in every context be replaced by this
phrase, i.e. the introduction of the term ‘good’ cannot materially
contribute to our problem. (Cp. also note 49 (3) to chapter 11.)

All the discussions about the definition of the good, or about the
possibility of defining it, are therefore quite useless. They only show
how far ‘scientific’ ethics is removed from the urgent problems of moral
life. And they thus indicate that ‘scientific’ ethics is a form of
escape, and escape from the realities of moral life, i.e. from our moral
responsibilities. (In view of these considerations, it is not surprising
to find that the beginning of ‘scientific’ ethics, in the form of
ethical naturalism, coincides in time with what may be called the
discovery of personal responsibility. Cp. what is said in chapter 10,
text to notes 27–38 and 55–7, on the open society and the Great
Generation.)

(2) It may be fitting in this connection to refer to a particular form
of the escape from responsibility discussed here, as exhibited
especially by the juridical positivism of the Hegelian school, as well
as by a closely allied spiritual naturalism. That the problem is still
significant may be seen from the fact that an author of the excellence
of Catlin remains on this important point (as on a number of others)
dependent upon Hegel; and my analysis will take the form of a criticism
of Catlin’s arguments in favour of spiritual naturalism, and against the
distinction between laws of nature and normative laws (cp. G. E. G.
Catlin, A Study of the Principles of Politics, 1930, pp. 96–99).

Catlin begins by making a clear distinction between the laws of nature
and ‘laws … which human legislators make’; and he admits that, at first
sight the phrase ‘natural law’, if applied to norms, ‘appears to be
patently unscientific, since it seems to fail to make a distinction
between that human law which requires enforcement and the physical laws
which are incapable of breach’. But he tries to show that it only
appears to be so, and that ‘our criticism’ of this way of using the term
‘natural law’ was ‘too hasty’. And he proceeds to a clear statement of
spiritual naturalism, i.e. to a distinction between ‘sound law’ which is
‘according to nature’, and other law: ‘Sound law, then, involves a
formulation of human tendencies, or, in brief, is a copy of the
“natural” law to be “found” by political science. Sound law is in this
sense emphatically found and not made. It is a copy of natural social
law’ (i.e. of what I called ‘sociological laws’; cp. text to note 8 to
this chapter). And he concludes by insisting that in so far as the legal
system becomes more rational, its rules ‘cease to assume the character
of arbitrary commands and become mere deductions drawn from the primary
social laws’ (i.e. from what I should call ‘sociological laws’).

(3) This is a very strong statement of spiritual naturalism. Its
criticism is the more important as Catlin combines his doctrine with a
theory of ‘social engineering’ which may perhaps at first sight appear
similar to the one advocated here (cp. text to note 9 to chapter 3 and
text to notes 1–3 and 8–11 to chapter 9). Before discussing it, I wish
to explain why I consider Catlin’s view to be dependent on Hegel’s
positivism. Such an explanation is necessary, because Catlin uses his
naturalism in order to distinguish between ‘sound’ and other law; in
other words, he uses it in order to distinguish between ‘just’ and
‘unjust’ law; and this distinction certainly does not look like
positivism, i.e. the recognition of the existing law as the sole
standard of justice. In spite of all that, I believe that Catlin’s views
are very close to positivism; my reason being that he believes that only
‘sound’ law can be effective, and in so far ‘existent’ in precisely
Hegel’s sense. For Catlin says that when our legal code is not ‘sound’,
i.e. not in accordance with the laws of human nature, then ‘our statute
remains paper’. This statement is purest positivism; for it allows us to
deduce from the fact that a certain code is not only ‘paper’ but
successfully enforced, that it is ‘sound’; or in other words, that all
legislation which does not turn out to be merely paper is a copy of
human nature and therefore just.

(4) I now proceed to a brief criticism of the argument proffered by
Catlin against the distinction between (a) laws of nature which cannot
be broken, and (b) normative laws, which are man-made, i.e. enforced by
sanctions; a distinction which he himself makes so very clearly at
first. Catlin’s argument is a twofold one. He shows (a¹) that laws of
nature also are man-made, in a certain sense, and that they can, in a
sense, be broken; and (b¹) that in a certain sense normative laws cannot
be broken. I begin with (a¹). ‘The natural laws of the physicist’,
writes Catlin, ‘are not brute facts, they are rationalizations of the
physical world, whether superimposed by man or justified because the
world is inherently rational and orderly.’ And he proceeds to show that
natural laws ‘can be nullified’ when ‘fresh facts’ compel us to recast
the law. My reply to this argument is this. A statement intended as a
formulation of a law of nature is certainly man-made. We make the
hypothesis that there is a certain invariable regularity, i.e. we
describe the supposed regularity with the help of a statement, the
natural law. But, as scientists, we are prepared to learn from nature
that we have been wrong; we are prepared to recast the law if fresh
facts which contradict our hypothesis show that our supposed law was no
law, since it has been broken. In other words, by accepting nature’s
nullification, the scientist shows that he accepts a hypothesis only as
long as it has not been falsified; which is the same as to say that he
regards a law of nature as a rule which cannot be broken, since he
accepts the breaking of his rule as proof that his rule did not
formulate a law of nature. Furthermore: although the hypothesis is
man-made, we may be unable to prevent its falsification. This shows
that, by creating the hypothesis, we have not created the regularity
which it is intended to describe (although we did create a new set of
problems, and may have suggested new observations and interpretations).
(b¹) ‘It is not true’, says Catlin, ‘that the criminal “breaks” the law
when he does the forbidden act … the statute does not say: “Thou canst
not”; it says, “Thou shalt not, or this punishment will be inflicted.”
As command’, Catlin continues, ‘it may be broken, but as law, in a very
real sense, it is only broken when the punishment is not inflicted … So
far as the law is perfected and its sanctions executed, … it
approximates to physical law.’ The reply to this is simple. In whichever
sense we speak of ‘breaking’ the law, the juridical law can be broken;
no verbal adjustment can alter that. Let us accept Catlin’s view that a
criminal cannot ‘break’ the law, and that it is only ‘broken’ if the
criminal does not receive the punishment prescribed by the law. But even
from this point of view, the law can be broken; for instance, by
officers of the state who refuse to punish the criminal. And even in a
state where all sanctions are, in fact, executed, the officers could, if
they chose, prevent such execution, and so ‘break’ the law in Catlin’s
sense. (That they would thereby ‘break’ the law in the ordinary sense,
also, i.e. that they would become criminals, and that they might
ultimately perhaps be punished is quite another question.) In other
words: A normative law is always enforced by men and by their sanctions,
and it is therefore fundamentally different from a hypothesis. Legally,
we can enforce the suppression of murder, or of acts of kindness; of
falsity, or of truth; of justice, or of injustice. But we cannot force
the sun to alter its course. No amount of argument can bridge this gap.

19. The ‘nature of happiness and misery’ is referred to in the
Theaetetus, 175c. For the close relationship between ‘nature’ and ‘Form’
or ‘Idea’, cp. especially Republic, 597a–d, where Plato first discusses
the Form or Idea of a bed, and then refers to it as ‘the bed which
exists by nature, and which was made by God’ (597b). In the same place,
he proffers the corresponding distinction between the ‘artificial’ (or
the ‘fabricated’ thing, which is an ‘imitation’) and ‘truth’. Cp. also
Adam’s note to Republic, 597b10 (with the quotation from Burnet given
there), and the notes to 476b13, 501b9, 525c15; furthermore Theaetetus,
174b (and Cornford’s note 1 to p. 85 in his Plato’s Theory of
Knowledge). See also Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1015a14.

20. For Plato’s attack upon art, see the last book of the Republic, and
especially the passages Republic, 600a–605b, mentioned in note 39 to
chapter 4.

21. Cp. notes 11, 12 and 13 to this chapter, and text. My contention
that Plato agrees at least partly with Antiphon’s naturalist theories
(although he does not, of course, agree with Antiphon’s equalitarianism)
will appear strange to many, especially to the readers of Barker, op.
cit. And it may surprise them even more to hear the opinion that the
main disagreement was not so much a theoretical one, but rather one of
moral practice, and that Antiphon and not Plato was morally in the
right, as far as the practical issue of equalitarianism is concerned.
(For Plato’s agreement with Antiphon’s principle that nature is true and
right, see also text to notes 23 and 28, and note 30 to this chapter.)

22. These quotations are from Sophist, 266b and 265e. But the passage
also contains (265c) a criticism (similar to Laws, quoted in text to
notes 23 and 30 in this chapter) of what may be described as a
materialist interpretation of naturalism such as was held, perhaps, by
Antiphon; I mean ‘the belief … that nature … generates without
intelligence’.

23. Cp. Laws, 892a and c. For the doctrine of the affinity of the soul
to the Ideas, see also note 15 (8) to chapter 3. For the affinity of
‘natures’ and ‘souls’, see Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1015a14, with the
passages of the Laws quoted, and with 896d/e: ‘the soul dwells in all
things that move …’

Compare further especially the following passages in which ‘natures’ and
‘souls’ are used in a way that is obviously synonymous: Republic,
485a/b, 485e/486a and d, 486b (‘nature’); 486b and d (‘soul’), 490e/491a
(both), 491b (both), and many other places (cp. also Adam’s note to
370a7). The affinity is directly stated in 490b(10). For the affinity
between ‘nature’ and ‘soul’ and ‘race’, cp. 501e where the phrase
‘philosophic natures’ or ‘souls’ found in analogous passages is replaced
by ‘race of philosophers’.

There is also an affinity between ‘soul’ or ‘nature’ and the social
class or caste; see for instance Republic, 435b. The connection between
caste and race is fundamental, for from the beginning (415a), caste is
identified with race.

‘Nature’ is used in the sense of ‘talent’ or ‘condition of the soul’ in
Laws, 648d, 650b, 655e, 710b, 766a, 875c. The priority and superiority
of nature over art is stated in Laws, 889a, ff. For ‘natural’ in the
sense of ‘right’, or ‘true’, see Laws, 686d and 818e, respectively.

24. Cp. the passages quoted in note 32 (1), (a) and (c), to chapter 4.

25. The Socratic doctrine of autarky is mentioned in Republic, 387d/e
(cp. Apology, 41c, ff., and Adam’s note to Rep., 387d25). This is only
one of the few scattered passages reminiscent of Socratic teaching; but
it is in direct contradiction to the main doctrine of the Republic, as
it is expounded in the text (see also note 36 to chapter 6, and text);
this may be seen by contrasting the quoted passage with 369c, ff., and
very many similar passages.

26. Cp. for instance the passage quoted in the text to note 29 to
chapter 4. For the ‘rare and uncommon natures’, cp. Republic, 491a/b,
and many other passages, for instance Timaeus, 51e: ‘reason is shared by
the gods with very few men’. For the ‘social habitat’, see 491d (cp.
also chapter 23).

While Plato (and Aristotle; cp. especially note 4 to chapter 11, and
text) insisted that manual work is degrading, Socrates seems to have
adopted a very different attitude. (Cp. Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, 7;
7–10; Xenophon’s story is, to some extent, corroborated by Antisthenes’
and Diogenes’ attitude towards manual work; cp. also note 56 to chapter
10.)

27. See especially Theaetetus, 172b (cp. also Cornford’s comments on
this passage in Plato’s Theory of Knowledge). See also note 7 to this
chapter. The elements of conventionalism in Plato’s teaching may perhaps
explain why the Republic was said, by some who still possessed
Protagoras’ writings, to resemble these. (Cp. Diogenes Laertius, III,
37.) For Lycophron’s contract theory, see notes 43–54 to chapter 6
(especially note 46), and text.

28. Cp. Laws, 690b/c; see note 10 to this chapter. Plato mentions
Pindar’s naturalism also in Gorgias, 484b, 488b; Laws, 714c, 890a. For
the opposition between ‘external compulsion’ on the one hand, and (a)
‘free action’, (b) ‘nature’, on the other, cp. also Republic, 603c, and
Timaeus, 64d. (Cp. also Rep., 466c–d, quoted in note 30 to this
chapter.)

29. Cp. Republic, 369b–c. This is part of the contract theory. The next
quotation, which is the first statement of the naturalist principle in
the perfect state, is 370a/b–c. (Naturalism is in the Republic first
mentioned by Glaucon in 358e, ff.; but this is, of course, not Plato’s
own doctrine of naturalism.)

(1) For the further development of the naturalistic principle of the
division of labour and the part played by this principle in Plato’s
theory of justice, cp. especially text to notes 6, 23 and 40 to chapter
6.

(2) For a modern radical version of the naturalistic principle, see
Marx’s formula of the communist society (adopted from Louis Blanc):
‘From each according to his ability: to each according to his needs!’
(Cp. for instance A Handbook of Marxism, E. Burns, 1935, p. 752; and
note 8 to chapter 13; see also note 3 to chapter 13, and note 48 to
chapter 24, and text.)

For the historical roots of this ‘principle of communism’, see Plato’s
maxim ‘Friends have in common all things they possess’ (see note 36 to
chapter 6, and text; for Plato’s communism see also notes 34 to chapter
6 and 30 to chapter 4, and text), and compare these passages with the
Acts: ‘And all that believed were together, and had all things in
common; … and parted them to all men, as every man had need’ (2,
44–45).—‘Neither was there any among them that lacked: for …
distribution was made unto every man according as he had need’ (4,
34–35).

30. See note 23, and text. The quotations in the present paragraph are
all from the Laws: (1) 889, a–d (cp. the very similar passage in the
Theaetetus, 172b); (2) 896c–e; (3) 890e/891a.

For the next paragraph in the text (i.e. for my contention that Plato’s
naturalism is incapable of solving practical problems) the following may
serve as an illustration. Many naturalists have contended that men and
women are ‘by nature’ different, both physically and spiritually, and
that they should therefore fulfil different functions in social life.
Plato, however, uses the same naturalistic argument to prove the
opposite; for, he argues, are not dogs of both sexes useful for watching
as well as hunting? ‘Do you agree’, he writes (Rep., 466c–d), ‘that
women … must participate with men in guarding as well as in hunting, as
it is with dogs; … and that in so doing, they will be acting in the most
desirable manner, since this will be not contrary to nature, but in
accordance with the natural relations of the sexes?’ (See also text to
note 28 to this chapter; for the dog as ideal guardian, cp. chapter 4,
especially note 32 (2), and text.)

31. For a brief criticism of the biological theory of the state, see
note 7 to chapter 10, and text. *For the oriental origin of the theory,
see R. Eisler, Revue de Synthèse Historique, vol. 41, p. 15.*

32. For some applications of Plato’s political theory of the soul, and
for the inferences drawn from it, see notes 58–9 to chapter 10, and
text. For the fundamental methodological analogy between city and
individual, see especially Republic, 368e, 445c, 577c. For Alcmaeon’s
political theory of the human individual, or of human physiology, cp.
note 13 to chapter 6.

33. Cp. Republic, 423, b and d.

34. This quotation as well as the next is from G. Grote, Plato and the
Other Companions of Socrates (1875), vol. III, 124.—The main passages of
the Republic are 439c, f. (the story of Leontius); 571c, f. (the bestial
part versus the reasoning part); 588c (the Apocalyptic Monster; cp. the
‘Beast’ which possesses a Platonic Number, in the Revelation 13, 17 and
18); 603d and 604b (man at war with himself). See also Laws, 689a–b, and
notes 58–9 to chapter 10.

35. Cp. Republic, 519e, f. (cp. also note 10 to chapter 8); the next two
quotations are both from the Laws, 903c. (I have reversed their order.)
It may be mentioned that the ‘whole’ referred to in these two passages
(‘pan’ and ‘holon’) is not the state but the world; yet there is no
doubt that the underlying tendency of this cosmological holism is a
political holism; cp. Laws, 903d–e (where the physician and craftsman is
associated with the statesman), and the fact that Plato often uses
‘holon’ (especially the plural of it) to mean ‘state’ as well as
‘world’. Furthermore, the first of these two passages (in my order of
quoting) is a shorter version of Republic, 420b–421c; the second of
Republic, 520b, ff. (‘We have created you for the sake of the state, as
well as for your own sake.’) Further passages on holism or collectivism
are: Republic, 424a, 449e, 462a, f., Laws, 715b, 739c, 875a, f., 903b,
923b, 942a, f. (See also notes 31/32 to chapter 6.) For the remark in
this paragraph that Plato spoke of the state as an organism, cp.
Republic, 462c, and Laws, 964e, where the state is even compared with
the human body.

36. Cp. Adam in his edition of the Republic, vol. II, 303; see also note
3 to chapter 4, and text.

37. This point is emphasized by Adam, op. cit., note 546a, b7, and pp.
288 and 307. The next quotation in this paragraph is Republic, 546a; cp.
Republic, 485a/b, quoted in note 26 (1) to chapter 3 and in text to note
33 to chapter 8.

38. This is the main point in which I must deviate from Adam’s
interpretation. I believe Plato to indicate that the philosopher king of
Books VI–VII, whose main interest is in the things that are not
generated and do not decay (Rep., 485b; see the last note and the
passages there referred to), obtains with his mathematical and
dialectical training the knowledge of the Platonic Number and with it
the means of arresting social degeneration and thereby the decay of the
state. See especially the text to note 39.

The quotations that follow in this paragraph are: ‘keeping pure the race
of the guardians’; cp. Republic, 460c, and text to note 34 to chapter 4.
‘A city thus constituted, etc.’: 546a.

The reference to Plato’s distinction, in the field of mathematics,
acoustics, and astronomy, between rational knowledge and delusive
opinion based upon experience or perception is to Republic, 523a, ff.,
525d, ff. (where ‘calculation’ is discussed; see especially 526a); 527d,
ff., 529b, f., 531a, ff. (down to 534a and 537d); see also 509d–511e.

39. * I have been blamed for ‘adding’ the words (which I never placed in
quotation marks) ‘lacking a purely rational method’; but in view of
Rep., 523a to 537d, it seems to me clear that Plato’s reference to
‘perception’ implies just this contrast.* The quotations in this
paragraph are from Rep., 546b, ff. Note that, throughout this passage,
it is ‘The Muses’ who speak through the mouth of ‘Socrates’.

In my interpretation of the Story of the Fall and the Number, I have
carefully avoided the difficult, undecided, and perhaps undecidable
problem of the computation of the Number itself. (It may be undecidable
since Plato may not have revealed his secret in full.) I confine my
interpretation entirely to the passages immediately before and after the
one that describes the Number itself; these passages are, I believe,
clear enough. In spite of that, my interpretation deviates, as far as I
know, from previous attempts.

(1) The crucial statement on which I base my interpretation is (A) that
the guardians work by ‘calculation aided by perception’. Next to this, I
am using the statements (B) that they will not ‘accidentally hit upon
(the correct way of) obtaining good offspring’; (C) that they will
‘blunder, and beget children in the wrong way’; (D) that they are
‘ignorant’ of such matters (that is, such matters as the Number).

Regarding (A), it should be clear to every careful reader of Plato that
such a reference to perception is intended to express a criticism of the
method in question. This view of the passage under consideration (546a,
f.) is supported by the fact that it comes so soon after the passages
523a–537d (see the end of the last note), in which the opposition
between pure rational knowledge and opinion based on perception is one
of the main themes, and in which, more especially, the term
‘calculation’ is used in a context emphasizing the opposition between
rational knowledge and experience, while the term ‘perception’ (see also
511c/d) is given a definite technical and deprecatory sense. (Cp. also,
for instance, Plutarch’s wording in his discussion of this opposition:
in his Life of Marcellus, 306.) I am therefore of the opinion, and this
opinion is enforced by the context, especially by (B), (C), (D), that
Plato’s remark (A) implies (a) that ‘calculation based upon perception’
is a poor method, and (b) that there are better methods, namely the
methods of mathematics and dialectics, which yield pure rational
knowledge. The point I am trying to elaborate is, indeed, so plain, that
I should not have troubled so much about it were it not for the fact
that even Adam has missed it. In his note to 546a, b7, he interprets
‘calculation’ as a reference to the rulers’ task of determining the
number of marriages they should permit, and ‘perception’ as the means by
which they ‘decide what couples should be joined, what children be
reared, etc.’. That is to say, Adam takes Plato’s remark to be a simple
description and not as a polemic against the weakness of the empirical
method. Accordingly, he relates neither the statement (C) that the
rulers will ‘blunder’ nor the remark (D) that they are ‘ignorant’ to the
fact that they use empirical methods. (The remark (B) that they will not
‘hit’ upon the right method ‘by accident’ would simply be left
untranslated, if we follow Adam’s suggestion.)

In interpreting our passage we must keep it in mind that in Book VIII,
immediately before the passage in question, Plato returns to the
question of the first city of Books II to IV. (See Adam’s notes to 449a,
ff., and 543a, ff.) But the guardians of this city are neither
mathematicians nor dialecticians. Thus they have no idea of the purely
rational methods emphasized so much in Book VII, 525–534. In this
connection, the import of the remarks on perception, i.e. on the poverty
of empirical methods, and on the resulting ignorance of the guardians,
is unmistakable.

The statement (B) that the rulers will not ‘hit accidentally upon’ (the
correct way of) ‘obtaining good offspring, or none at all’, is perfectly
clear in my interpretation. Since the rulers have merely empirical
methods at their disposal, it would be only a lucky accident if they did
hit upon a method whose determination needs mathematical or other
rational methods. Adam suggests (note to 546a, b7) the translation:
‘none the more will they by calculation together with perception obtain
good offspring’; and only in brackets, he adds: ‘lit. hit the obtaining
of’. I think that his failure to make any sense of the ‘hit’ is a
consequence of his failure to see the implications of (A).

The interpretation here suggested makes (C) and (D) perfectly
understandable; and Plato’s remark that his Number is ‘master over
better or worse birth’, fits in perfectly. It may be remarked that Adam
does not comment on (D), i.e. the ignorance, although such a comment
would be most necessary in view of his theory (note to 546d22) that ‘the
number is not a nuptial … number’, and that it has no technical eugenic
meaning.

That the meaning of the Number is indeed technical and eugenic is, I
think, clear, if we consider that the passage containing the Number is
enclosed in passages containing references to eugenic knowledge, or
rather, lack of eugenic knowledge. Immediately before the Number, (A),
(B), (C), occur, and immediately afterwards, (D), as well as the story
of the bride and bridegroom and their degenerate offspring. Besides, (C)
before the Number and (D) after the Number refer to each other; for (C),
the ‘blunder’, is connected with a reference to ‘begetting in the wrong
way’, and (D), the ‘ignorance’, is connected with an exactly analogous
reference, viz., ‘uniting bride and bridegroom in the wrong manner’.
(See also next note.)

The last point in which I must defend my interpretation is my contention
that those who know the Number thereby obtain the power to influence
‘better or worse births’. This does not of course follow from Plato’s
statement that the Number itself has such power; for if Adam’s
interpretation is right, then the Number regulates the births because it
determines an unalterable period after which degeneration is bound to
set in. But I assert that Plato’s references to ‘perception’, to
‘blunder’ and to ‘ignorance’ as the immediate cause of the eugenic
mistakes would be pointless if he did not mean that, had they possessed
an adequate knowledge of the appropriate mathematical and purely
rational methods, the guardians would not have blundered. But this makes
the inference inevitable that the Number has a technical eugenic
meaning, and that its knowledge is the key to the power of arresting
degeneration. (This inference also seems to me the only one compatible
with all we know about this type of superstition; all astrology, for
instance, involves the apparently somewhat contradictory conception that
the knowledge of our fate may help us to influence this fate.)

I think that the rejection of the explanation of the Number as a secret
breeding taboo arises from a reluctance to credit Plato with such crude
ideas, however clearly he may express them. In other words, they arise
from the tendency to idealize Plato.

(2) In this connection, I must refer to an article by A. E. Taylor, ‘The
Decline and Fall of The State in Republic, VIII’ (Mind, N.S. 48, 1939,
pp. 23 ff.). In this article, Taylor attacks Adam (in my opinion not
justly), and argues against him: ‘It is true, of course, that the decay
of the ideal State is expressly said in 546b to begin when the ruling
class “beget children out of due season” … But this need not mean, and
in my opinion does not mean, that Plato is concerning himself here with
problems of the hygiene of reproduction. The main thought is the simple
one that if, like everything of man’s making, the State carries the
seeds of its own dissolution within it, this must, of course, mean that
sooner or later the persons wielding supreme power will be inferior to
those who preceded them’ (pp. 25 ff.). Now this interpretation seems to
me not only untenable, in view of Plato’s fairly definite statements,
but also a typical example of the attempt to eliminate from Plato’s
writing such embarrassing elements as racialism or superstition. Adam
began by denying that the Number has technical eugenic importance, and
by asserting that it is not a ‘nuptial number’, but merely a
cosmological period. Taylor now continues by denying that Plato is here
at all interested in ‘problems of the hygiene of the reproduction’. But
Plato’s passage is thronged with allusions to these problems, and Taylor
himself admits two pages before (p. 23) that it is ‘nowhere suggested’
that the Number ‘is a determinant of anything but the “better and worse
births”’. Besides, not only the passage in question but the whole of the
Republic (and similarly the Statesman, especially 310b, 310e) is simply
full of emphasis upon the ‘problems of the hygiene of reproduction’.
Taylor’s theory that Plato, when speaking of the ‘human creature’ (or,
as Taylor puts it, of a ‘thing of human generation’), means the state,
and that Plato wishes to allude to the fact that the state is the
creation of a human lawgiver, is, I think, without support in Plato’s
text. The whole passage begins with a reference to the things of the
sensible world in flux, to the things that are generated and that decay
(see notes 37 and 38 to this chapter), and more especially, to living
things, plants as well as animals, and to their racial problems.
Besides, a thing ‘of man’s making’ would, if emphasized by Plato in such
a context, mean an ‘artificial’ thing which is inferior because it is
‘twice removed’ from reality. (Cp. text to notes 20–23 to this chapter,
and the whole Tenth Book of the Republic down to the end of 608b.) Plato
would never expect anybody to interpret the phrase ‘a thing of man’s
making’ as meaning the perfect, the ‘natural’ state; rather he would
expect them to think of something very inferior (like poetry; cp. note
39 to chapter 4). The phrase which Taylor translates ‘thing of human
generation’ is usually simply translated by ‘human creature’, and this
removes all difficulties.

(3) Assuming that my interpretation of the passage in question is
correct, a suggestion may be made with the intention of connecting
Plato’s belief in the significance of racial degeneration with his
repeated advice that the number of the members of the ruling class
should be kept constant (advice that shows that the sociologist Plato
understood the unsettling effect of population increase). Plato’s way of
thinking, described at the end of the present chapter (cp. text to note
45; and note 37 to chapter 8), especially the way he opposes The One
monarch, The Few timocrats, to The Many who are nothing but a mob, may
have suggested to him the belief that an increase in numbers is
equivalent to a decline in quality. (Something on these lines is indeed
suggested in the Laws, 710d.) If this hypothesis is correct, then he may
easily have concluded that population increase is interdependent with,
or perhaps even caused by, racial degeneration. Since population
increase was in fact the main cause of the instability and dissolution
of the early Greek tribal societies (cp. notes 6, 7, and 63 to chapter
10, and text), this hypothesis would explain why Plato believed that the
‘real’ cause was racial degeneration (in keeping with his general
theories of ‘nature’, and of ‘change’).

40. (1) Or ‘at the wrong time’. Adam insists (note to 546d22) that we
must not translate ‘at the wrong time’ but ‘inopportunely’. I may remark
that my interpretation is quite independent of this question; it is
fully compatible with ‘inopportunely’ or ‘wrongly’ or ‘at the wrong
time’ or ‘out of due season’. (The phrase in question means, originally,
something like ‘contrary to the proper measure’; usually it means ‘at
the wrong time’.)

*   (2) Concerning Plato’s remarks about ‘mingling’ and ‘mixture’, it
may be observed that Plato seems to have held a primitive but popular
theory of heredity (apparently still held by race-horse breeders)
according to which the offspring is an even mixture or blend of the
characters or ‘natures’ of his two parents, and that their characters,
or natures, or ‘virtues’ (stamina, speed, etc., or, according to the
Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws, gentleness, fierceness, boldness,
self-restraint, etc.) are mixed in him in proportion to the number of
ancestors (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) who possessed these
characters. Accordingly, the art of breeding is one of a judicious and
scientific—mathematical or harmonious—blending or mixing of natures. See
especially the Statesman, where the royal craft of statesmanship or
herdsmanship is likened to that of weaving, and where the kingly weaver
must blend boldness with self-restraint. (See also Republic, 375c–e, and
410c, ff.; Laws, 731b; and notes 34 f. to chapter 4; 13 and 39 f. to
chapter 8; and text.)*

41. For Plato’s law of social revolutions, see especially note 26 to
chapter 4, and text.

42. The term ‘meta-biology’ is used by G. B. Shaw in this sense, i.e. as
denoting a kind of religion. (Cp. the preface to Back to Methuselah; see
also note 66 to chapter 12.)

43. Cp. Adam’s note to Republic, 547a 3.

44. For a criticism of what I call ‘psychologism’ in the method of
sociology, cp. text to note 19 to chapter 13 and chapter 14, where
Mill’s still popular methodological psychologism is discussed.

45. It has often been said that Plato’s thought must not be squeezed
into a ‘system’; accordingly, my attempts in this paragraph (and not
only in this paragraph) to show the systematic unity of Plato’s thought,
which is obviously based on the Pythagorean table of opposites, will
probably arouse criticism. But I believe that such a systematization is
a necessary test of any interpretation. Those who believe that they do
not need an interpretation, and that they can ‘know’ a philosopher or
his work, and take him just ‘as he was’, or his work just ‘as it was’,
are mistaken. They cannot but interpret both the man and his work; but
since they are not aware of the fact that they interpret (that their
view is coloured by tradition, temperament, etc.), their interpretation
must necessarily be naïve and uncritical. (Cp. also chapter 10 (notes
1–5 and 56), and chapter 25.) A critical interpretation, however, must
take the form of a rational reconstruction, and must be systematic; it
must try to reconstruct the philosopher’s thought as a consistent
edifice. Cp. also what A. C. Ewing says of Kant (A Short Commentary on
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, 1938, p. 4): ‘… we ought to start with
the assumption that a great philosopher is not likely to be always
contradicting himself, and consequently, wherever there are two
interpretations, one of which will make Kant consistent and the other
inconsistent, prefer the former to the latter, if reasonably possible.’
This surely applies also to Plato, and even to interpretation in
general.