o having now passed into an opposite phase
as to the value of Rhetoric, or continuous address. The family is to
be allowed in its usual form, but with restraints on the age of
marriage, on the choice of the parties, and on the increase of the
number of the population. Sexual intercourse is to be as far as
possible confined to persons legally married; those departing from
this rule are, at all events, to observe secresy. The slaves are not
to be of the same race as the masters. As regards punishment, there is
a great complication, owing to the author's theory that wickedness is
not properly voluntary. Much of the harm done by persons to others is
unintentional or involuntary, and is to be made good by reparation.
For the loss of balance or self-control, making the essence of
injustice, there must be a penal and educational discipline, suited to
cure the moral distemper; not for the sake of the past, which cannot
be recalled, but of the future. Under cover of this theory, the
punishments are abundantly severe; and the crimes include Heresy, for
which there is a gradation of penalties terminating in death.

We may now summarize the Ethics of Plato, under the general scheme as
follows:--

I.--The Ethical Standard, or criterion of moral Right and Wrong. This
we have seen is, ultimately, the Science of Good and Evil, as
determined by a Scientific or Wise man; the Idea of the Good, which
only a philosopher can ascend to. Plato gave no credit to the maxims
of the existing society; these were wholly unscientific.

It is obvious that this vague and indeterminate standard would settle
nothing practically; no one can tell what it is. It is only of value
as belonging to a very exalted and poetic conception of virtue,
something that raises the imagination above common life into a sphere
of transcendental existence.

II.--The Psychology of Ethics.

1. As to the Faculty of discerning Right. This is implied in the
foregoing statement of the criterion. It is the Cognitive or
Intellectual power. In the definite position taken up in Protagoras,
it is the faculty of Measuring pleasures against one another and
against pains. In other dialogues, measure is still the important
aspect of the process, although the things to be measured are not
given.

2. As regards the Will. The theory that vice, if not the result of
ignorance, is a form of madness, an uncontrollable fury, a mental
distemper, gives a peculiar rendering of the nature of m