The Spartan state is his model. The Platonic Republic is aristocratic. There is paternal government in everything, censorship of everything. Each individual’s course is marked out for him. When Greek political life was undergoing dissolution, Plato raised the ideal of political unity as necessary to individual happiness as against the anarchism of segregation. Yet even in this he was reflecting the current distrust of political institutions. The comparison of existing political conditions with his own political ideal reinforced his aristocratic leanings, and made him the more distrustful of the political possibilities of a democracy. He believed that an intelligently worked out scheme of government was practicable, and should be forced upon people, if necessary. In no other way was political salvation possible. Since the State is the man “writ large,” it has three parts, corresponding to the three parts of the human soul. There is (1) the working or peasant class, which corresponds to the appetitive part of man; the only object of such a class is to furnish food for the State, and the highest virtue of this class is temperance. The peasant can only work, eat, and drink, and the highest praise of him is that he controls his appetites. (2) The warrior class guards the State within and without; and its characteristic virtue is courage. The will must show its highest efficiency in guidance of the emotions. (3) Highest of all is the cultured class of philosophers or rulers, who determine by their insight the laws that should rule the State. The virtue of this class is wisdom, for is this class not the brain of the State? The perfection of the entire State exists when the three classes have their proper distribution of power. Then does justice exist. The duty of the rulers is therefore to have the highest wisdom possible, of the warriors to be unflinching in their devotion to duty, of the peasants to exercise self-control. Thus Plato’s Republic is an aristocracy in the hands of the carefully cultured, which consists of the two upper classes. By means of community of wives, the exposure of deformed infants, and the State’s education of the children of the two upper classes, a continuous selection can be made, the two upper classes can be renewed, and all private ends can be renounced in favor of the State. Thus the sole end of a community is moral education, and Plato arranges his ideal community with reference to that. The two upper classes are a great family, to whom this is intrusted. They have dedicated their lives to the furthering of science and to its administration. A SELECTION OF PASSAGES FROM PLATO FOR ENGLISH READERS. By Professor Benjamin Jowett, late Principal of Balliol College, Oxford. The figures refer to the pages in the margin of Professor Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues; the letters (A, B, C, D, E) to the subdivisions of these pages. FIRST VOLUME.