Plato would have been delighted with the training of the sultan’s great family, though his nature would have revolted from its lowliness of birth. He would have approved of the life-long education, the equally careful training of body and mind, the separation into soldiers and rulers (even though it was not complete), the relative freedom from family ties, the system’s rigid control of the individual, and, above all, of the government by the wise. Whether the founders of the Ottoman system were acquainted with Plato will probably never be known, but they seem to have come as near to his plan as it is possible to come in a workable scheme. In some practical ways they even improved upon Plato,—as by avoiding the uncertainties of heredity, by supplying a personal directing power, by insuring permanence through a balance of forces, and by making their system capable of vast imperial rule. In the largest sense the Ruling Institution was a school in which the pupils were enrolled for life. Constantly under careful drill and discipline, they advanced from stage to stage through all their days, rewarded systematically in accordance with their deserts by promotions, honors, and gifts, and punished rigorously for infraction of rules, while both rewards and punishments increased from stage to stage until the former included all that life under the Moslem scheme could offer, and the latter threatened to take away the life itself. The system also cared for all sides of the nature of its pupils, subject to the considerable limitation that it was especially a school of war and government. The bodies of all were trained as thoroughly as were the minds of the best. Though all received some mental training, including at least an acquaintance with the Moslem mode of life, the ablest were put through a severe course in Oriental languages and Moslem and Ottoman law, which embraced ethics and theology. Thus both body and mind, as well as the religious nature, were provided for systematically and through life. Looked at thus, the Ottoman educational scheme, in its relations to the whole lives of those under instruction, was more comprehensive than any Western institution of learning. The officers of a Western army are educated and organized in a life-long system which provides for both body and mind; but they do not learn theology and they do not govern the nation. Great American railroads and manufacturing corporations possess schemes of education and advancement which bear comparison to the Ottoman system in life-long scope, promotion for merit, and the possibility of rising from the bottom to the top; but the mental training which they give even to their ablest helpers is of a highly technical sort, which bears no comparison to the general learning and finished culture bestowed upon the most studious in the Ottoman scheme. In general, Western universities and educational systems, although they far surpass the