‘And so it is important to consider this religious view of theirs about Progress. I said that most of the Americans went there in the last hundred years and found abundant rewards for work. The great need of everybody was that the total wealth should be increased and the country rendered fruitful, or in their phrase “opened up.” This real occupation of America was the great and absorbing business of the Americans, who were not troubled with strong foreign enemies. Their ablest citizens devoted themselves to the pursuit of wealth, and received the public admiration because in general, at that time, the man who enriched himself enriched also everyone else. We must remember that the Americans came from countries where there was a ruling caste to which they did not belong, and from the first they so framed the constitution that it should be clear that the ministers were the servants of the people. While the independence was new and precarious, interest and prestige still followed those who transacted the business of the people, but when the novelty had vanished the attention of everybody was turned to developing the estate they had won. No one was willing to be a minister without the wealth and dignity of European rulers, and political life attracted not the best but the less successful and able of the community, and ceased to fire the ambition of the young. For the life of the country was altogether in its economic development and not in its political affairs.’ Then Agathon said: ‘And should you not also say that political life was made harder in America than elsewhere?’ ‘Assuredly, we should,’ I answered, ‘for the truth is that this same worship of size and numbers that we spoke of before has nowhere hurt the Americans more than in the ordering of their political life. Do you remember, Lysis, hearing of a discussion over the ideal State and how many men it was settled should form the State, and what was the number beyond which it was unsafe for a State to grow?’ ‘Five thousand and forty,’ he said, ‘is the figure Plato gives.’ ‘And will it surprise you to learn that the Americans considerably exceed that figure?’ ‘I had suspected as much,’ he replied, ‘from the crowds of them that visit Athens, for they must leave some of their number behind to hold the country, and there must be very many thousands of them to provide all those audiences for Xantippe. And, after all, nobody ever quite does what Plato says, not even when he makes you, Socrates, the mouthpiece of his views. I will guess two hundred thousand.’ ‘And what will you say when I tell you that you are yet short of the real number, and that, not to make a long story, the Americans are far more plentiful than the subjects of the Great King himself? There are more than one hundred million Americans.’ After a long pause, Phaelon said rather faintly: ‘Why, Socrates?’