tion of ranks dependent on circumstances prior to
the individual: second, that this distinction is and ought to be broken
through by personal qualities. He adapts mythology like the Homeric
poems to the wants of the state, making 'the Phoenician tale' the
vehicle of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth respecting its own
origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale of earthborn men. The
gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is told, and the analogy
of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification of the 'monstrous
falsehood.' Ancient poetry had spoken of a gold and silver and brass and
iron age succeeding one another, but Plato supposes these differences
in the natures of men to exist together in a single state. Mythology
supplies a figure under which the lesson may be taught (as Protagoras
says, 'the myth is more interesting'), and also enables Plato to touch
lightly on new principles without going into details. In this passage he
shadows forth a general truth, but he does not tell us by what steps the
transposition of ranks is to be effected. Indeed throughout the Republic
he allows the lower ranks to fade into the distance. We do not know
whether they are to carry arms, and whether in the fifth book they are
or are not included in the communistic regulations respecting property
and marriage. Nor is there any use in arguing strictly either from a
few chance words, or from the silence of Plato, or in drawing inferences
which were beyond his vision. Aristotle, in his criticism on the
position of the lower classes, does not perceive that the poetical
creation is 'like the air, invulnerable,' and cannot be penetrated by
the shafts of his logic (Pol.).

6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest degree
fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections, are to
be found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great power of
music, so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us in modern
times, when the art or science has been far more developed, and has
found the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly, the
indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed to
exercise over the body.

In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may
also observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at the
present day. With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few only,
there seems to mingle in Plato a sort