And you will find that sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth book of the laws of Plato; as founded, for one thing, on the conviction that of all the evils that can happen to a state, quantity of money is the greatest! [Greek: meizon kakon, hos epos eipein, polei ouden an gignoita, eis gennaion kai dikaion ethon ktesin], "for, to speak shortly, no greater evil, matching each against each, can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to its forming just or generous character," than its being full of silver and gold. 139. Of course the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours right, only--[Greek: hos epos eipein]--you can have Greek sculpture only on that Greek theory: shortly expressed by the words put into the mouth of Poverty herself, in the Plutus of Aristophanes, "[Greek: Tou ploutou parecho beltionas andras, kai ten gnomen, kai ten idean]," "I deliver to you better men than the God of Money can, both in imagination and feature." So, on the other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or monochondyloid ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or spirit,--but especially the spiritual character of being [Greek: ptochoi to pneumati],--is the lowest of degradations; and which believes that the desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sentiments. As I have been able to get the popular ideal represented by its own living art, so I can give you this popular faith in its own living words; but in words meant seriously, and not at all as caricature, from one of our leading journals, professedly aesthetic also in its very name, the _Spectator_, of August 6, 1870. "Mr. Ruskin's plan," it says, "would make England poor, in order that she might be cultivated, and refined, and artistic. A wilder proposal was never broached by a man of ability; and it might be regarded as a proof that the assiduous study of art emasculates the intellect, _and even the moral sense_. Such a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art is often regarded by essentially intellectual natures, like Proudhon" (sic). "Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations of a Titian are a great heritage of the race; but if England could secure high art and Venetian glory of color only by the sacrifice of her manufacturing supremacy, and _by the acceptance of national poverty_, then the pursuit of such artistic achievements would imply that we had ceased to possess natures of manly strength, _or to know the meaning of moral aims_. If we must choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton mill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton mill. Only the dilettanteism of the studio; that dilettanteism which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fiber, and which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, would make a different choice."