g 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 inquiry, 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 analyzed 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, 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 Plato
there was no regular mode of publication, and an author would have the
less scruple in altering or adding to a work which was known only to a
few of his friends. There is no absurdity in supposing that he may
have laid his labors aside for a time, or turned from one w