THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

PLATO 29
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 intelligence 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 strange beings, not to say utter
scoundrels; and the result with those who may be considered the best
of them is, that they are made useless to the world by the very study
which you extol" (487). This is a fair enough description of some be-
spectacled modern philosophers; but Plato answers that he has guarded
against this difficulty by giving his philosophers the training of life as
well as the erudition of the schools; that they will in consequence be men
of action rather than merely men of thought men seasoned to high
purposes and noble temper by long experience and trial. By philosophy
Plato means an active culture, wisdom that mixes with the concrete busy-
ness of life; he does not mean a closeted and impractical metaphysician;
Plato "is the man who least resembles Kant, which is (with all respect)
a considerable merit." 17
So much for incompetence; as for rascality we may provide against
that by establishing among the guardians a system of communism:
In the first place none of them should have any property beyond what is
absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house, with bars and
bolts, closed against any one who has a mind to enter; their provisions
should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of
temperance and courage; their agreement is to receive from the citizens a
fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year, and no more; and
they will have common meals and live together, like soldiers in a camp.
Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal
is within them, and they have therefore no need of that earthly dross which
passes under the name of gold, and ought not to pollute the divine by
earthly admixture, for that commoner metal has been the source of many
unholy deeds; but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens
may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them,
or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and the
salvation of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys
of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of
guardians; enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating
and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass through
l7
Faguet, p. 10.