e analysed
the complications which arise out of the collective action of mankind.
Neither is he capable of seeing that analogies, though specious as
arguments, may often have no foundation in fact, or of distinguishing
between what is intelligible or vividly present to the mind, and what
is true. In this respect he is far below Aristotle, who is comparatively
seldom imposed upon by false analogies. He cannot disentangle the arts
from the virtues--at least he is always arguing from one to the other.
His notion of music is transferred from harmony of sounds to harmony of
life: in this he is assisted by the ambiguities of language as well as
by the prevalence of Pythagorean notions. And having once assimilated
the state to the individual, he imagines that he will find the
succession of states paralleled in the lives of individuals.

Still, through this fallacious medium, a real enlargement of ideas is
attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct conception to
the mind, a great advance was made by the comparison of them with the
arts; for virtue is partly art, and has an outward form as well as an
inward principle. The harmony of music affords a lively image of the
harmonies of the world and of human life, and may be regarded as a
splendid illustration which was naturally mistaken for a real analogy.
In the same way the identification of ethics with politics has a
tendency to give definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and ennoble
men's notions of the aims of government and of the duties of citizens;
for ethics from one point of view may be conceived as an idealized law
and politics; and politics, as ethics reduced to the conditions of human
society. There have been evils which have arisen out of the attempt to
identify them, and this has led to the separation or antagonism of
them, which has been introduced by modern political writers. But we may
likewise feel that something has been lost in their separation, and
that the ancient philosophers who estimated the moral and intellectual
wellbeing of mankind first, and the wealth of nations and individuals
second, may have a salutary influence on the speculations of modern
times. Many political maxims originate in a reaction against an opposite
error; and when the errors against which they were directed have passed
away, they in turn become errors.

3. Plato's views of education are in several respects remarkable;
like the rest of the Republic they are partly G