For thus it is.--If you can find out a life better than being a king, for those who shall be kings, a well-governed city will become possible, and not otherwise. For in that city alone will those be kings who are in very deed rich. But if poor men, hungering after their private good, proceed to public offices, it is not possible; for, the kingly office becoming an object of contention, the sort of battle which results, being at home and internal, destroys them, along with the common- wealth.--Most truly, he replied.--Have you then, I asked, any kind of life which can despise political offices, other than the life of true philosophers?--Certainly not.--Yet still it is necessary that those who come to office should not be lovers of it; otherwise the rival lovers will fight.--That must be so.--Whom then will you compel to proceed to the guardianship of the city save those, who, being wisest of all in regard to the conditions of her highest welfare, are themselves possessed of privileges of another order, and a life better than the politician's? Republic, 520. More capable than others of an adroit application of all that power usually means in the way of personal advantage, your "legitimate," and really elect royalty or aristocracy must be secured from the love of it; you must insure their magnanimity in office by a counter-charm. But where is such a charm, or counter-charm, to be found? Throughout, as usual in so provident a writer as Plato, the answer to that leading [263] question has had its prelude, even in the first book.--