Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/59



Perhaps with this "royal fable" we shall secure a fairly general consent to the furtherance of our plan.

But now what of the lucky remnant that ride these succes- sive waves of selection?

They are taught philosophy. They have now reached the age of thirty; it would not have been wise to let them "taste the dear delight too early;…for young men, when they first get the taste of philosophy in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting,…like puppy-dogs who delight to tear and pull at all who come near them" (539). This dear delight, philosophy, means two things chiefly: to think clearly, which is metaphysics; and to rule wisely, which is politics. First then, our young Elite must learn to think clearly. For that purpose they shall study the doctrine of Ideas.

But this famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and ob- scured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging maze to the modern student, and must have offered another severe test to the survivors of many siftings. The Idea of a thing might be the "general idea" of the class to which it belongs (the Idea of John, or Dick, or Harry, is Man); or it might be the law or laws according to which the thing operates (the Idea of John would be the reduction of all his behavior to "natural laws"); or it might be the perfect pur- pose and ideal towards which the thing and its class may develop (the Idéa of John is the John of Utopia). Very probably the Idea is all of these—idea, law and ideal. Be- hind the surface phenomena and particulars which greet our senses, are generalizations, regularities, and directions of development, unperceived by sensation but conceived by reason and thought. These ideas, laws and ideals are more permanent—and therefore more "real"—than the sense-