ceded them. He begins
by asking the point at which he digressed; and is thus led shortly to
recapitulate the substance of the three former books, which also contain
a parallel of the philosopher and the State.

Of the first decline he gives no intelligible account; he would not have
liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his ideal State,
which to us would appear to be the impracticability of communism or the
natural antagonism of the ruling and subject classes. He throws a
veil of mystery over the origin of the decline, which he attributes to
ignorance of the law of population. Of this law the famous geometrical
figure or number is the expression. Like the ancients in general, he had
no idea of the gradual perfectibility of man or of the education of the
human race. His ideal was not to be attained in the course of ages, but
was to spring in full armour from the head of the legislator. When good
laws had been given, he thought only of the manner in which they were
likely to be corrupted, or of how they might be filled up in detail or
restored in accordance with their original spirit. He appears not to
have reflected upon the full meaning of his own words, 'In the brief
space of human life, nothing great can be accomplished'; or again, as he
afterwards says in the Laws, 'Infinite time is the maker of cities.' The
order of constitutions which is adopted by him represents an order of
thought rather than a succession of time, and may be considered as the
first attempt to frame a philosophy of history.

The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of
soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; this
is a government of force, in which education is not inspired by the
Muses, but imposed by the law, and in which all the finer elements of
organization have disappeared. The philosopher himself has lost the
love of truth, and the soldier, who is of a simpler and honester nature,
rules in his stead. The individual who answers to timocracy has some
noticeable qualities. He is described as ill educated, but, like the
Spartan, a lover of literature; and although he is a harsh master to his
servants he has no natural superiority over them. His character is
based upon a reaction against the circumstances of his father, who in
a troubled city has retired from politics; and his mother, who is
dissatisfied at her own position, is always urging him towards the life
of political a