Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/63

 only of fools and politicians. We want to be ruled by the best, which is what aristocracy means; have we not, Carlyle- like, yearned and prayed to be ruled by the best? But we have come to think of aristocracies as hereditary: let it be carefully noted that this Platonic aristocracy is not of that kind; one would rather call it a democratic aristocracy. For the people, instead of blindly electing the lesser of two evils presented to them as candidates by nominating cliques, will here be themselves, every one of them, the candidates; and will receive an equal chance of educational election to public office. There is no caste here; no inheritance of position or privilege; no stoppage of talent impecuniously born; the son of a ruler begins on the same level, and receives the same treatment and opportunity, as the son of a boot-black; if the ruler's son is a dolt he falls at the first shearing; if the boot- black's son is a man of ability the way is clear for him to become a guardian of the state (423). Career will be open to talent wherever it is born. This is a democracy of the schools—a hundredfold more honest and more effective than a democracy of the polls.

And so, "setting aside every other business, the guardians will dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of free- dom in the state, making this their craft and engaging in no work which does not bear upon this end" (395). They shall be legislature and executive and court in one; even the laws shall not bind them to a dogma in the face of altered cir- cumstance; the rule of the guardians shall be a flexible in- telligence unbound by precedent.

But how can men of fifty have a flexible intelligence? Will they not be mentally plaster-casted by routine? Adeimantus (echoing, no doubt, some hot brotherly debate in Plato's home) objects that philosophers are dolts or rogues, who would rule either foolishly, or selfishly, or both. "The votaries of philosophy who carry on the study not only in youth with a view to education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years—these men for the most part grow into very