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has all the advantages that come from being supposed to be righteous, he sets the man who is really righteous, and clothes him with all the disabilities which come from being supposed to be unrighteous. "Let him be scourged and racked; let him have his eyes burnt out, and finally, after suffering every kind of evil, let him be impaled." Then, says Plato, when both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of righteousness treated shamefully and cruelly, the other of unrighteousness treated honourably and obsequiously, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two. Translating the language of the "Gorgias" and the "Republic" into modern equivalents: Who would we rather be, a man who by successful manipulation of dishonest financial schemes had come to be a millionnaire, the mayor of his city, the pillar of the church, the ornament of the best society, the Senator from his state, or the Ambassador of his country at a European Court; or a man who in consequence of his integrity had won the enmity of evil men in power, and been sent in disgrace to State prison; a man whom no one would speak to; whom his best friends had deserted, whose own children were being brought up to reproach him? Which of the two men would we rather be? And we must not introduce any

consideration of reversals hereafter. Supposing that death ends all, and that there is no God to reverse the decisions of men; suppose these two men were to die as they lived, without hope of resurrection; which of the two would we rather be for the next forty years of our lives, assuming that after that there is nothing?

Plato in a myth puts the case even more strongly than this. Gyges, a shepherd and servant of the king of Lydia, found a gold ring which had the remarkable property of making its wearer visible when he turned the collet one way, and invisible when he turned it the other way. Being astonished at this, he made several trials of the ring, always with the same result; when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Perceiving this he immediately contrived to be chosen messenger to the court, where he no sooner arrived than he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Plato asks us what we should do if we had such a ring. We could do anything we pleased and no one would be the wiser. We could become invisible, out of the reach of external consequences, the instant our deed was done. Would we, with such a ring on our finger, stand fast in righteousness?

Could we trust ourselves to wear that ring night and day? Would we feel safe if we knew that our next-door neighbour, even our most intimate friend, had such a ring, and could do just what he pleased to us, and yet never get caught? Can we tell why a man with such a ring on his finger should not do any unjust, unkind, impure, or dishonourable deed?

II

RIGHTEOUSNESS WRIT LARGE

The Republic is Plato's answer to this question. Why, you may ask, should he give us a treatise on politics in answer to a question of personal character? Because the state is simply the individual writ large, and as we can read large letters more easily than small letters, we shall get at the principle of righteousness more readily if we first consider what it is in the large letters of the state. In presenting this analogy of the state I shall freely translate Plato's teachings into their modern equivalent. What, then, is the difference between a righteous and unrighteous state?

An unrighteous state is one in which the working-men in each industry are organised into a union which uses its power to force the wages of

its members up to an exorbitant level, and uses intimidation and violence to prevent any one else from working for less or producing more than the standards fixed by the union; it is a state in which the owners of capital, in each line of industry, combine into overcapitalised trusts for the purpose of making the small sums which they put into the business, and the larger sums which they do not put in at all, except on paper, earn exorbitant dividends at the expense of the public; it is a state in which the politicians are in politics for their pockets, using the opportunities for advantageous contracts which offices afford, and the opportunities for legislation in favour of private schemes, to enrich themselves out of the public purse; it is a state in which the police intimidate the other citizens, and sell permission to commit crime to the highest bidder; it is a state in which the scholars concern themselves exclusively about their own special and technical interests, and as long as the institutions with which they are connected are supported by the gifts of rich men, care little how the poor are oppressed and the many are made to suffer by the corrupt use of wealth and the selfish misuse of power. Such is the unrighteous state. And wherein does its unrighteousness consist? Obviously in the fact that

each of the great classes in the state-workingmen, capitalists, police, politicians, scholars—are living exclusively for themselves and are ready to sacrifice the interests of the community as a whole to their private interests. Now a state which should be completely unrighteous, in which everybody should succeed in carrying out his own selfish interests at the expense of everybody else, would be intolerable. United action would be impossible. No one would wish to live in such a state. There must be honour even among thieves; otherwise stealing could not be successful on any considerable scale. The trouble with it is that each part is arrayed in antagonism against every other part, and the whole is sacrificed to the supposed interests of its constituent members.

What, then, in contrast to this would be a righteous state? It would be a state in which each of these classes fulfils its part well, with a view to the good of the whole. It would be a state where labour would be organised into unions, which would not insist on having the greatest possible wages for the least possible work, but which would maintain a high standard of efficiency, and intelligence, and character in the members, with a view to doing the best possible work in their trade, at such wages as the

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