For Plato would have us understand that men are in truth after all naturally much simpler, much more limited in character and capacity, than they seem. Such diversity of parts and function as is presupposed in his definition of Justice has been fixed by nature itself on human life. The individual, as such, humble as his proper function may be, is unique in fitness for, in a consequent "call" to, that function. We [242] know how much has been done to educate the world, under the supposition that man is a creature of very malleable substance, indifferent in himself, pretty much what influences may make of him. Plato, on the other hand, assures us that no one of us "is like another all in all."--Prôton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios hekastô, alla diapherôn tên physin, allos ep allou ergou praxin +.--But for this, social Justice, according to its eternal form or definition, would in fact be nowhere applicable. Once for all he formulates clearly that important notion of the function, (ergon)+ of a thing, or of a person. It is that which he alone can do, or he better than any one else. That Plato should exaggerate this definiteness in men's natural vocations, thus to be read as it were in "plain figures" upon each, is one of the necessities of his position. Effect of nature itself, such inequality between men, this differentiation of one from another, is to be further promoted by all the cunning of the political art. The counter-assertion of the natural indifference of men, their pliability to circumstance, while it is certainly truer to our modern experience, is also in itself more hopeful, more congruous with all the processes of education. But for Plato the natural inequality of men, if it is the natural ground of that versatility, (poikilia),+ of the wrongness or Injustice he must needs correct, will be the natural ground of Justice also, as essentially a unity or harmony enforced on disparate [243] elements, unity as of an army, or an order of monks, organic, mechanic, liturgical, whichever you please to call it; but a kind of music certainly, if the founder, the master, of the state, for his proper part, can but compose the scattered notes.