first
book containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical notions of
justice, and concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues, without
arriving at any definite result. To this is appended a restatement of
the nature of justice according to common opinion, and an answer is
demanded to the question--What is justice, stripped of appearances? The
second division (2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole
of the third and fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the
construction of the first State and the first education. The third
division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which
philosophy rather than justice is the subject of enquiry, and the
second State is constructed on principles of communism and ruled by
philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea of good takes the place
of the social and political virtues. In the eighth and ninth books (4)
the perversions of States and of the individuals who correspond to them
are reviewed in succession; and the nature of pleasure and the principle
of tyranny are further analysed in the individual man. The tenth book
(5) is the conclusion of the whole, in which the relations of philosophy
to poetry are finally determined, and the happiness of the citizens
in this life, which has now been assured, is crowned by the vision of
another.

Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first
(Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally in
accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in the
second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an
ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the
perversions. These two points of view are really opposed, and the
opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like
the Phaedrus (see Introduction to Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole; the
higher light of philosophy breaks through the regularity of the
Hellenic temple, which at last fades away into the heavens. Whether this
imperfection of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan;
or from the imperfect reconcilement in the writer's own mind of the
struggling elements of thought which are now first brought together
by him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at different
times--are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and
the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct
answer. In the age of