is not denounced by Plato. He takes no trouble to justify it,
because he thinks it so obviously right that it needs no
justification. All that can be said to his credit is that he demands
humane and just, though firm and unsentimental, treatment of slaves.

If in these respects Plato never transcends the Greek view of life, in
one matter at least he does so. The common view of his time was that
one ought to do good to one's friends and evil to one's enemies. This
Plato expressly repudiates. It can never be good, he thinks, to do
evil. One should rather do good to one's enemies, and so convert them
into friends. To return good for evil is no less a Platonic than a
Christian maxim.

_(b) The State_.

We pass from the ethics of individual life to the ethics of the
community. Plato's "Republic" is not an attempt to paint an imaginary
and unreal perfection. Its object is to found politics on the theory
of Ideas by depicting the Idea of the State. This State is, therefore,
not unreal, but the only real State, and its reality is the ground of
the existence of all actually existent States.

We can trace here, too, the same two strains of thought as we found in
considering the ethics of the individual. On the one hand, since the
Idea alone is real, the existent world a mere illusion, the service of
the {226} State cannot be the ideal life for a rational being.
Complete retirement from the world into the sphere of Ideas is a far
nobler end, and the aims of the ordinary politician are, in
comparison, worthless baubles. Though only the philosopher is
competent to rule, yet he will not undertake the business of the
State, except under compulsion. In the political States, as they exist
in the world, the philosopher dwells with his body, but his soul is a
stranger, ignorant of their standards, unmoved by their ambitions. But
the opposite strain of thought is uppermost when we are told that it
is, after all, only in the State, only in his capacity as a citizen
and a social being that the individual can attain perfection. It is
only possible to reconcile these views in one way. If the ideals of
the State and of philosophy seem inconsistent, they must be brought
together by adapting the State to philosophy. We must have a State
founded upon philosophy and reason. Then only can the philosopher
dwell in it with his soul as well as with his body. Then only can
either the individual or the State reach perfection. To found the
S