THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

PLATO 21
seat in the heart, in the flow and force of the blood; it is the organic
resonance of experience and desire. Knowledge has its seat in the head;
it is the eye of desire, and can become the pilot of the soul.
These powers and qualities are all in all men, but in divers degrees.
Some men are but the embodiment of desire; restless and acquisitive
souls, who are absorbed in material quests and quarrels, who burn with
lust of luxuries and show, and who rate their gains always as naught
compared with their ever-receding goals: these are the men who domi-
nate and manipulate industry. But there are others who are temples of
feeling and courage, who care not so much what they fight for,
as for
victory "in and for itself"; they are pugnacious rather than acquisitive;
their pride is in power rather than in possession, their joy is on the
battle-field rather than in the mart: these are the men who make the
armies and navies of the world. And last are the few whose delight is in
meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory,
but for knowledge; who leave both market and battle-field to lose them-
selves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather
than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of
wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.
Now just as effective individual action implies that desire, though
warmed with emotion, is guided by knowledge; so in the perfect state the
industrial forces would produce but they would not rule; the military
forces would protect but they would not rule; the forces of knowledge
and science and philosophy would be nourished and protected, and they
would rule. Unguided by knowledge, the people are a multitude without
order, like desires in disarray; the people need the guidance ^ofphilosophers
as desires need the enlightenment of knowledge. "Ruin comes
when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler"
(434) ; or when the general uses his army to establish a military dictator-
ship. The producer is at his best in the economic field, the warrior is at
his best in battle; they are both at their worst in public office; and in their
crude hands politics submerges statesmanship. For statesmanship is a
science and an art; one must have lived for it and been long prepared.
Only a philosopher-king is fit to guide a nation. "Until philosophers are
kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power
of philosophy, and wisdom and political leadership meet in the same
man, . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race" (473) .
This is the key-stone of the arch of Plato's thought.
VII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SOLUTION
Well, then, what is to be done?
We must begin by "sending out into- the country all the inhabitants of
the city who are more than ten years old, and by taking possession of the