Ideal Republic. Before they have gone very far it is evident, and indeed it is admitted, that such a state as they envisage cannot exist upon earth, though it may be laid up in the heavens for an example. It is a small Greek city-state. Plato discerns three elements in every state, the producers, the warriors, and the thinking element. Of these he makes three rigid classes, though education, upon the importance of which Plato everywhere insists, is to provide the means of rising for all. Music and gymnastics are the twofold base of Platonic education. The thinking part of the community are to have the sole title to government. They are to live a simple communistic life, rather like the nobles of Sparta, but without their military activity. In order that nothing may disturb their absolute unity, Plato decrees that wives and children are to be held in common, as well as all property. These strange doctrines have caused Plato to be held as the father of Socialism, but it is to be observed that in Plato communism is only advocated for a restricted circle of aristocrats, and that it is based not upon economic considerations, but on ethics in a spirit of asceticism. In a later dialogue Plato regretfully admits that laws are necessary to a state, seeing that you cannot keep your philosophers on the throne when you have got them there. This admission may be occasioned by the failure of Plato to realise his ideals in actual practice. He had an extraordinary chance. He was invited over to Syracuse to mould the character and policy of the young tyrant Dionysius II. He argued that it was useless to place an ideal system of government before a young man who was not of sufficient education to appreciate it. He therefore determined to begin with the education of the prince, and began it with geometry. The issue may be easily guessed.