In the economic foundations of the Republic, we look in vain for a recognition of the labor problem. Now the labor problem is a fundamental difficulty in our modern life; and it seems on the surface that Plato is a little highbrow and remote in the ease with which he gets over it. When we look more closely into the matter, however, and see the way in which men got their living in the “morning lands”--as the Germans call them--we shall find that the reason Plato does not offer a solution is that he was not, indeed, confronted by a problem. Given a valley section which has not been ruthlessly stript of trees; given the arts of agriculture and herding; given a climate without dangerous extremes of heat and cold; given the opportunity to found new colonies when the old city-region is over-populated--and it is only by an exercise of ingenuity that a labor problem could be invented. A man might become a slave by military capture; he did not become a slave by being compelled, under threat of starvation, to tend a machine. The problem of getting a living was answered by nature as long as men were willing to put up with nature’s conditions; and the groundwork of Plato’s utopia, accordingly, is the simple agricultural life, the growing of wheat, barley, olives, and grapes, which had been fairly well mastered before he arrived on the scene. As long as the soil was not washed away and devitalized, the problem was not a hard one; and in order to solve it, Plato had only to provide that there should be enough territory to grow food on, and that the inhabitants must not let their wants exceed the bounties of nature. Plato describes the foundations of his community with a few simple and masterly touches. Those who feel that there is something a little inhuman in his conception of the good life, when he is discussing the education and duties of the ruling classes, may well consider the picture that he paints for us here. Plato’s society arises out of the needs of mankind; because none of us is self-sufficing and all have many wants; and since there are many wants, many kinds of people must supply them. When all these helpers and partners and co-operators are gathered together in a city the body of inhabitants is termed a state; and so its members work and exchange goods with one another for their mutual advantage--the herdsman gets barley for his cheese and so on down to the complicated interchanges that occur in the city. What sort of physical life will arise out of this in the region that Plato describes?