hat is so, for power is but concentrated ability to
enjoy, and where most power lies, there lies most ability to enjoy,
and therefore the highest possible aggregate of human happiness, in the
attainment of which the will of the gods shall be done.

SOCRATES--And if a company can take part of a continent, but not the
whole, whatever they are able to take is theirs.

PHAEDO--Undoubtedly.

SOCRATES--And what is theirs is not the property of others.

PHAEDO--By no means.

SOCRATES--And if it does not belong to others, others may not lawfully
use it.

PHAEDO--Surely not.

SOCRATES--And they who do own it may prevent others from entering it.

PHAEDO--Surely, for hath not the poet said:

"That they shall take who have the power, And they may keep who can."

SOCRATES--Therefore it is plain that the United States may keep Chinamen
out of America.

PHAEDO--There can be no doubt of it whatever.

SOCRATES--And Chinese may keep Americans out of China.

PHAEDO--That is another story. One must never let his logic get the
better of him.

And so we might play with these great subjects forever, with reasoning
as leaky as a sieve, but good enough to catch the careless or the
untrained.

One of the most interesting lectures which I ever listened to was
one before the Economic League of San Francisco on the "Dialectics of
Socialism." The lecturer was a very acute man, who would not for one
moment be deceived by the sophistry of my Socrates and Phaedo, but, who,
himself, made willing captives of his hearers by similar methods. I was
unable to hear all his address, but when I reluctantly left, it appeared
to me that he was expecting to prove that Socialism must be sound
philosophy because it was contradictory to all human observation,
experience, judgment and the dictates of sound common sense--and his
large audience was plainly enough with him.

The dialectics of the schoolmen or their equivalent are useless in
Social discussion. Social phenomena do not lend themselves to the
rigorous formulas of mathematics and logic, for the human intellect
is unable to discern and grasp all the factors of these problems. My
travesty of Plato was intended to illustrate the difficulty of close
reasoning on such topics.

Neither, on the other hand, are we to blindly follow the impulses of
emotion which lead us to jump at a conclusion, support it with what
reason we can, but reach it in any event. Emotion is the source of
Social power,