[Sidenote: no means of evolution.] =The Weakness of Plato’s System.=--Thus, where Socrates found the basis of universal truth in everyone, Plato held that only one class of people, the most intellectual, could attain to real knowledge. He, therefore, maintained that the philosophers should absolutely guide the conduct of the state, and that education should be organized with that in view. Plato’s ideal state would thus become a sort of intellectual oligarchy, and in a way was a return to the old principle of subordinating the individual to society. _The Republic_ thus quite neglected human will as a factor in society and assumed that men can be moved about in life like pieces upon the chess board. Plato failed to see, too, that each individual really possesses all human characteristics. The workers have reason, and the philosophers have passions, and a human being is not a man unless all these functions are his. But even if his scheme had been a happy one, the treatise provided no method of evolution from current conditions, and if it were further granted that this order of things could be established at once. Plato put the ban upon all innovation or change, and so closed the door to progress. [Sidenote: _The Laws_ offered a more practical and traditional system of education.] Hence _The Republic_ was viewed as a visionary conception, and had no immediate effect upon education or any other institution of Athens. So in his declining years, without denying _The Republic_ as ideal, he wrote the more practical dialogue known as _The Laws_. In it he welded elements from the educational systems of Sparta and older Athens, and reverted to traditions and ideals not dissimilar to the doctrines of Pythagoras. He replaced the philosophers with priests, an hereditary ruler, a superintendent of education, and various other officials; and the course of study reached its height with the subject of mathematics, while dialectic was not mentioned. [Sidenote: Model for later Utopias.] [Sidenote: The ‘quadrivium’ and ‘formal discipline.’]