[Footnote 71: Plato, Repub. iii. p. 415 C-D. [Greek: Tou=ton ou)=n to\n mu=thon o(/pôs a)\n peisthei=en, e)/cheis tina\ mêchanê/n? Ou)damô=s, o(/pôs g' a)\n _au)toi\ ou(=toi_; o(/pôs me/nt' a)\n oi( tou/tôn ui(ei=s kai\ oi( e)/peita oi(/ t' a)/lloi a)/nthrôpoi oi( u(/steron.]]
We learn hence to appreciate the estimate which Plato formed of the ethical and religious faith, prevalent in the various societies around him. He regards as fictions the accredited stories respecting Gods and Heroes, which constituted the matter of religious belief among his contemporaries; being familiarised to all through the works of poets, painters, and sculptors, as well as through votive offerings, such as the robe annually worked by the women of Athens for the Goddess Athênê. These fictions he supposes to have originally obtained credence either through the charm of poets and narrators, or through the deliberate coinage of an authoritative lawgiver; presupposing in the community a vague emotional belief in the Gods--invisible, quasi-human agents, of whom they knew nothing distinct--and an entire ignorance of recorded history, past as well as present. Once received into the general belief, which is much more an act of emotion than of reason, such narratives retain their hold both by positive teaching and by the self-operating transmission of this emotional faith to each new member of the community, as well as by the almost entire absence of criticism: especially in earlier days, when men were less intelligent but more virtuous than they are now (in Plato's time)--when among their other virtues, that of unsuspecting faith stood conspicuous, no one having yet become clever enough to suspect falsehood.[72] This is what Plato assumes as the natural mental condition of society, to which he adapts his improvements. He disapproves of the received fictions, not because they are fictions, but because they tend to produce a mischievous ethical effect, from the acts which they ascribe to the Gods and Heroes. These acts were such, that many of them (he says), even if they had been true, ought never to be promulgated. Plato does not pretend to substitute truth in place of fiction; but to furnish a better class of fictions in place of a worse.[73] The religion of the Commonwealth, in his view, is to furnish fictions and sanctions to assist the moral and political views of the lawgiver, whose duty it is to employ religion for this purpose.[74]