The whole is summed up in the famous expression of Aristotle, “Man is a creature formed for the life of the City-state.” The {7} working out of this idea, as we find it in Plato’s commonwealth, is bizarre to our minds; but its difficulty really lies in its simplicity and directness; and there is no sound political philosophy which is not an embodiment of Plato’s conception. The central idea is this: that every class of persons in the community--the statesman, the soldier, the workman--has a certain distinctive type of mind which fits its members for their functions, and that the community essentially consists in the working of these types of mind in their connection with one another, which connection constitutes their subordination to the common good. This working or adjustment obviously depends in the last resort on the qualities present in the innermost souls of the members of the community; and thus the outward organisation of society is really as it were a body which at every point and in every movement expresses the characteristics of a mind. We must not pause here to follow up the consequences of such a conception; but it will be seen at once, by those who reflect upon it, to imply that every individual mind must have its qualities drawn out in various ways to answer to--in fact, to constitute--the relations and functions which make up the community; and that in this sense every mind is a mirror or impression of the whole community from its own peculiar point of view. The ethical assumption or principle of Plato’s conception is, that a healthy organisation of the commonwealth will involve, by a necessary connection, a healthy balance and adjustment of qualities in the individual soul, and _vice versa_. An attempt will be made to illustrate this principle further in the latter portion {8} of the present work. The general nature of Plato’s conception--the characteristic conception of Greek political philosophy--is all that concerns us here.