It was upon his immediate present that Plato focused his attention; to the analysis of its political and moral strength and weakness that he turned his penetrating intelligence; for its betterment that he wrote and taught and suffered. The past he peopled with creations of his own exuberant fancy, of popular misconception, of defective knowledge. He can be easily convicted of gross historical errors. And what is more serious; he has no real regard for historical truth and no sense whatever for the real factors in historical developments. Without the slightest qualm of conscience, and without taking the least pains to ascertain the facts, Plato alters the divine and profane history of his people to make it serve his purpose. And he does this on principle: "The legislator," he says,[46] "has only to reflect and find out what belief will be of the greatest public advantage, and then use all his efforts to make the whole community utter one and the same word in their songs and tales and discourses all their life long." To disagreeable things in the sacred story he gives a short shrift. Since the gods are perfect, every report that tends to tarnish the lustre of their reputation must be false. The history of mankind is solved by a similar formula; since justice is the _sine qua non_ of public and private prosperity and happiness, all reports which affirm the conjunction of injustice with well-being, or of righteousness with misfortune, need correction or suppression.[47] History, accordingly, becomes a happy hunting-ground for edifying stories. It at once ceases to yield lessons, which, being grounded in the realities of human experience, are less apropos, perhaps, than the political theorist may like, but are alone valuable. Plato's absorption in the present led him to misread not only the past, but also the future. For the false standard with which he measured past policies and institutions is not less characteristic than the false judgment which he formed of the drift of contemporary events. The future belonged, not, as he dreamed, to the autonomous, archaizing city-state, but to the movement for their unification which he condemned. He tried to mend city constitutions when the world required the creation of larger territorial states. He watched with attention domestic politics when foreign politics were chiefly worth watching.