The foregoing analysis will enable us to appreciate the true significance of the resemblance pointed out by Zeller[153] between the Platonic republic and the organisation of mediaeval society. The importance given to religious and moral training; the predominance of the priesthood; the sharp distinction drawn between the military caste and the industrial population; the exclusion of the latter from political power; the partial abolition of marriage and property; and, it might be added, the high position enjoyed by women as regents, châtelaines, abbesses, and sometimes even as warriors or professors,—are all innovations more in the spirit of Plato than in the spirit of Pericles. Three converging influences united to bring about this extraordinary verification of a philosophical deal. The profound spiritual revolution effected by Greek thought was taken up and continued by Catholicism, and unconsciously guided to the same practical conclusions the teaching which it had in great part originally inspired. Social differentiation went on at the same time, and led to the political consequences logically deduced from it by Plato. And the barbarian conquest of Rome brought in its train some of those more primitive habits on which his breach with civilisation had equally thrown him back. Thus the coincidence between Plato’s _Republic_ and mediaeval polity is due in one direction to causal agency, in another to speculative insight, and in a third to parallelism of effects, independent of each other but arising out of analogous conditions.