The true statesman, the philosopher king, in Plato's phrase, sees and serves the public good. Such a government Plato calls an aristocracy, or the government of the best for the good of all. First below that comes timocracy, or the government of those who are ambitious for power and place. Next comes oligarchy, the government of the rich for the protection of the interests of the moneyed class. Next below that, and as a logical consequence, comes populism, which is our word for what Plato calls democracy; a government which aims to satisfy the immediate wants of everybody, regardless of moral, legal, or constitutional restraints. Last, and lowest of all, comes the rule of the professional politician who has thrown all pretence of regard for the public good, all consideration of honour, all loyalty to the rich and genuine sympathy for the poor to the winds, and is simply manipulating the forms of government, getting and distributing offices, collecting assessments and distributing bribes, all in the interests of his own private pocket. Between disinterested service of the public good and such unblushing pursuit of private gain, Plato says that there is no stopping place. Logically Plato is right; historically, too, he was right at the time when he was writing. Modern democracy, however, is a very different thing from the populistic democracy with which Plato was familiar and which our large cities know too well. A democracy, resting on intelligence and public spirit, diffused through rich and poor alike, was beyond Plato's profoundest dreams. That great experiment the American people, with their public-school system, and their principle of the equality of all before the law, are now trying on a gigantic scale. Corresponding to the tyrannical state comes the tyrannical man. "The wild beast in our nature gets the upper hand and the man becomes drunken, lustful, passionate, the best elements in him are enslaved; and there is a small ruling part which is also the worst and the maddest. He has the soul of the slave, and the tyrannical soul must always be poor and insatiable. He is by far the most miserable of all men." "He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real servant and is obliged to practice the greatest adulation and servility and be the flatterer of mankind; he has desires which he is truly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor if you know how to inspect the soul of him. All his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions. Even as the state which he resembles, he grows worse from having power; he becomes of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more impious; he entertains and nurtures every evil sentiment, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable and thus he makes everybody else equally miserable." VII THE INTRINSIC SUPERIORITY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS