hould be promoted, nor how social arrangements
are to be ordered. We shall have no conception of the proper limits and
distribution of activities--what he called justice--as a trait of both
individual and social organization. But how is the knowledge of the
final and permanent good to be achieved? In dealing with this question
we come upon the seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is
not possible save in a just and harmonious social order. Everywhere
else the mind is distracted and misled by false valuations and false
perspectives. A disorganized and factional society sets up a number of
different models and standards. Under such conditions it is impossible
for the individual to attain consistency of mind. Only a complete whole
is fully self-consistent. A society which rests upon the supremacy of
some factor over another irrespective of its rational or proportionate
claims, inevitably leads thought astray. It puts a premium on certain
things and slurs over others, and creates a mind whose seeming unity is
forced and distorted. Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns
furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state will
these be such as to give the right education; and only those who have
rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end, and ordering
principle of things. We seem to be caught in a hopeless circle.
However, Plato suggested a way out. A few men, philosophers or lovers
of wisdom--or truth--may by study learn at least in outline the proper
patterns of true existence. If a powerful ruler should form a state
after these patterns, then its regulations could be preserved. An
education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what
they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning each to the
work in life for which his nature fits him. Each doing his own part,
and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole would be
maintained.

It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic thought a
more adequate recognition on one hand of the educational significance
of social arrangements and, on the other, of the dependence of those
arrangements upon the means used to educate the young. It would be
impossible to find a deeper sense of the function of education in
discovering and developing personal capacities, and training them so
that they would connect with the activities of others. Yet the society
in which the theory was propounded wa