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