THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

38 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
policies must be determined by the economically dominant group, it is
better that those policies should be administered by officials specifically
prepared for the purpose, than by men who stumble out of commerce or
manufacturing into political office without any training in the arts
of statesmanship.
What Plato lacks above is
all, perhaps, the Heracleitean sense of flux
and change; he is too anxious to have the moving picture of this world
become a fixed and still tableau. He loves order exclusively, like any
timid philosopher; he has been frightened by the democratic turbulence
of Athens into an extreme neglect of individual values; he arranges men
in classes like an entomologist classifying flies; and he is not averse to
using priestly humbug to secure his ends. His state is static; it might easily
become an old-fogey society, ruled by inflexible octogenarians hostile to
invention and jealous of change. It is mere science without art; it exalts
order, so dear to the scientific mind, and quite neglects that liberty which
is the soul of art; it worships the name of beauty, but exiles the artists
who alone can make beauty or point it out. It is a Sparta or a Prussia,
not an ideal state.
And now that these unpleasant necessities are candidly written down,
it remains to do willing homage to the power and profundity of Plato's
conception. Essentially he is right is he not? what this world needs is
to be ruled by its wisest men. It is our business to adapt his thought to
our own times and limitations. Today we must take democracy for
granted: we cannot limit the suffrage as Plato proposed; but we can put
restrictions on the holding of office, and in this way secure that mixture
of democracy and aristocracy which Plato seems, to have in mind. We
may accept without quarrel his contention that statesmen should be as
specifically and thoroughly trained as physicians; we might establish departments
of political science and administration in our universities; and
when these departments have begun to function adequately we might
make men ineligible for nomination to political office unless they were
graduates of such political schools. We might even make every man
eligible for an office who had been trained for it, and thereby eliminate
entirely that complex system of nominations in which the corruption of
our democracy has its seat; let the electorate choose any,. roan who,
properly trained and qualified, announces himself as a candidate. In
this way democratic choice would be immeasurably wider than now,
when Tweedledum and Tweedledee stage their quadrennial show and
sham. Only one amendment would be required to make quite democratic
this plan for the restriction of office to graduates in administrative
technique; and that would be such equality of educational opportunity
as would open to all men and women, irrespective of the-raeadas-of their
parents, the road to university training and political advancement It
would be very simple to have municipalities and counties and states offer