ative; and law is limited to external
acts which affect others as well as the agents. Ethics, on the other
hand, include the whole duty of man in relation both to himself and
others. But Plato has never reflected on these differences. He fancies
that the life of the state can be as easily fashioned as that of the
individual. He is favourable to a balance of power, but never seems
to have considered that power might be so balanced as to produce an
absolute immobility in the state. Nor is he alive to the evils
of confounding vice and crime; or to the necessity of governments
abstaining from excessive interference with their subjects.

Yet this confusion of ethics and politics has also a better and a truer
side. If unable to grasp some important distinctions, Plato is at any
rate seeking to elevate the lower to the higher; he does not pull down
the principles of men to their practice, or narrow the conception of
the state to the immediate necessities of politics. Political ideals of
freedom and equality, of a divine government which has been or will be
in some other age or country, have greatly tended to educate and ennoble
the human race. And if not the first author of such ideals (for they are
as old as Hesiod), Plato has done more than any other writer to impress
them on the world. To those who censure his idealism we may reply in his
own words--'He is not the worse painter who draws a perfectly beautiful
figure, because no such figure of a man could ever have existed'
(Republic).

A new thought about education suddenly occurs to him, and for a time
exercises a sort of fascination over his mind, though in the later books
of the Laws it is forgotten or overlooked. As true courage is allied to
temperance, so there must be an education which shall train mankind to
resist pleasure as well as to endure pain. No one can be on his guard
against that of which he has no experience. The perfectly trained
citizen should have been accustomed to look his enemy in the face, and
to measure his strength against her. This education in pleasure is to be
given, partly by festive intercourse, but chiefly by the song and dance.
Youth are to learn music and gymnastics; their elders are to be trained
and tested at drinking parties. According to the old proverb, in vino
veritas, they will then be open and visible to the world in their true
characters; and also they will be more amenable to the laws, and more
easily moulded by the hand of the