is the order of the State, and the State is the
visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The
one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of the
State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In Hegelian
phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the idea. Or,
described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is within, and yet
developes into a Church or external kingdom; 'the house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens,' is reduced to the proportions of an
earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are
the warp and the woof which run through the whole texture. And when the
constitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not
dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names throughout
the work, both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as
the principle of rewards and punishments in another life. The virtues
are based on justice, of which common honesty in buying and selling
is the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good, which is the
harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of
states and in motions of the heavenly bodies (cp. Tim.). The Timaeus,
which takes up the political rather than the ethical side of the
Republic, and is chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward
world, yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed to
reign over the State, over nature, and over man.

Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and
modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether
of nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient writings,
and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element
which was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows
under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of
writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.
The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole may be
conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general. Thus
Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations of the
argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have found the true
argument 'in the representation of human life in a State perfected by
justice, and governed according to the idea of good.' There may be some
use in such general descriptions, but they can