Para el concepto de realismo en Galdós y los procesos de simbolización religiosa en sus novelas, véanse mis libros El simbolismo religioso en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Madrid, 1962), y Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá, 1967).

Véase Mario E. Ruiz, «El idealismo platónico en Marianela de Galdós», Hispania, LIII (1970), pp. 870-880.

El artículo de Mario E. Ruiz explora la relación de Marianela con La república. Sin embargo, Galdós debió leer también otros diálogos como el Fedón, el Fedro, El banquete, el Timeo y el Filebo, en los cuales se hallan las ideas más fundamentales del platonismo.

La concepción del cosmos como un gran organismo en forma de animal se halla principalmente en el Timeo: «As I said at first, when all things were in disorder, Cod created in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any proportion except by accident, nor was there anything deserving to be called by the names which we now use -as, for example, fire, water, and the rest of the elements. All these the creator first set in order, and out of them he constructed the universe, which was a single animal comprehending in itself all other animals, mortal and immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring.» Citamos por las obras completas, The Collected Dialogues of Plato (edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns) (New York, 1961), p. 1192.

El concepto de la armonía cósmica está implícito en todos los diálogos de Platón. Los efectos de la falta de armonía y de la discordancia en los asuntos humanos se encuentra principalmente en La república. El amor es no solamente el principio de unión de los hombres entre sí (véanse el Fedro y El banquete), sino también entre los elementos cósmicos: «And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship, and having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand of any other than the framer» Timeo, p. 1164. El platonismo del renacimiento desarrolló esta idea con mayor amplitud. Véase León Hebreo, Diálogos de amor (Madrid, 1949). Platón extiende su teoría del amor a los varios órganos que constituyen el cuerpo humano como base de la salud y de la ciencia de la medicina: «Yes, gentlemen, he must be able to reconcile the jarring elements of the body, and force them, as it were, to fall in love with one another. Now, we know that the most hostile elements are the opposites -hot and cold, sweet and sour, wet and dry, and so on- and if, as I do myself, we are to believe these poets of ours, it was his skill in imposing love and concord upon these opposites that enabled our illustrious progenitor Asclepius to found the science of medicine», El banquete, p. 540.

Refiriéndose al espíritu de armonía y su contrario de facción, en relación con los conceptos de justicia y de injusticia, dice Sócrates en el diálogo: «For factions, Thrasymachus, are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love», p. 601. Cuando el espíritu de facción es llevado al interior de la persona causa resultados igualmente desastrosos a los que se observan en el organismo social: «It will in the first place make him incapable of accomplishing anything because of inner faction and lack of self-agreement, and then an enemy to himself and to the just», p. 602.

Numerosas son las ocasiones en que Platón establece analogías entre la ciudad o el estado y el organismo humano. En el libro V de La república dice: «And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man. For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for 'integration' with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased by pleasure», p. 701. Y más adelante: «But we further agreed that this unity is the greatest blessing of a state, and we compared a well-governed state to the human body in its relation to the pleasure and pain of its parts», p. 703. Las facciones y las contiendas civiles en Grecia son identificadas a una enfermedad: «We shall then say that Greeks fight and wage war with barbarians, and barbarians with Greeks, and are enemies by nature, and that war is the fit name for this enmity and hatred. Greeks, however, we shall say, are still by nature the friends of Greeks when they act in this way, but that Greece is sick in that case and divided by faction, and faction is the name we must give to that enmity», p. 709. Los individuos ociosos en una sociedad son una verdadera amenaza para los gobiernos y deben ser extirpados como células enfermas del organismo: «These two kinds [the class of idle and spendthrift men], then, I said, when they arise in any state, create a disturbance like that produced in the body by phlegm and gall. And so a good physician and lawgiver must be on his guard from afar against the two kinds, like a prudent apiarist, first and chiefly to prevent their springing up, but if they do arise to have them, as quickly as may be cut out, cells and all», p. 792.

«Do you see, then, said I, that we were not wrong in saying that the very qualities that make up the philosophical nature do, in fact, become, when the environment and nurture are bad, in some sort the cause of its backsliding, and so do the so-called goods -riches and all such instrumentalities?... Such, my good friend, and so great as regards the noblest pursuit, is the destruction and corruption of the most excellent nature, which is rare enough in any case, as we affirm», La república, p. 731.

Según Platón, el verdadero filósofo debe alejarse de un ambiente saturado de injusticia: «And those who have been of this little company and have tasted the sweetness and blessedness of this possession and who have also come to understand the madness of the multitude sufficiently and have seen that there is nothing, if I may say so, sound or right in any present polities, and that there is no ally with whose aid the champion of justice could escape destruction, but that he would be as a man who has fallen among with wild beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds and unable to hold out singly against the savagery of all, and that he would thus, before he could in any way benefit his friends or the state, come to an untimely end without doing any good to himself or others -for all these reasons I say the philosopher remains quiet, minds his own affair, and, as it were, standing aside under shelter of a wall in a storm and blast of dust and sleet and seeing others filled full of lawlessness, is content if in any way he may keep himself free from iniquity and unholy deeds through this life and take his departure with fair hope, serene and well content when the end comes», Ibid., p. 732. Es evidente que Rafael del Horro persigue una política que trae la injusticia y es contraria a la que sería practicada por los filósofos que debieran hacerse cargo del estado. El tema de la política destructora del bien común es frecuente en las novelas de Galdós.

La existencia del orden natural comprende el mundo visible e invisible en la filosofía de Platón, e implica la presencia de una razón superior que lo rige todo, haciendo el mundo inteligible. Este orden natural constituye una de las referencias constantes de los diálogos platónicos. El sumo bien de que habla el filósofo en La república se identifica con la suma inteligencia y la suma verdad: «But, at any rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point vis to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have caught sight of this», Ibid., p. 749. Para la importancia que tiene la naturaleza en Galdós, véase el capítulo «La presencia de la naturaleza» de mi libro, Realidad, ficción y símbolo, pp. 231-253.