THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

PLATO 39
scholarships to all graduates of grammar school, high school and college
who had shown a certain standard of ability, and whose parents were
financially unable to see them through the next stage of the educational
process. That would be a democracy worthy of the name.
Finally, it is only fair to add that Plato understands that his Utopia
does not quite fall within the practicable realm. He admits that he has
described an ideal difficult of attainment; he answers that there is never-
theless a value in painting these pictures of our desire; man's significance
is that he can image a better world, and will some part of it at least into
reality; man is an animal that makes Utopias. "We look before and after
and pine for what is not." Nor is it all without result: many a dream has
grown limbs and walked, or grown wings and flown, like the dream of
Icarus that men might fly. After all, even if we have but drawn a picture,
it may serve as goal and model of our movement and behavior; when
sufficient of us see the picture and follow its gleam, Utopia will find its
way upon the map. Meanwhile "in heaven there is laid up a pattern of
such a city, and he who desires may behold it, and beholding, govern
himself accordingly. But whether there really is or ever will be such a
city on earth, ... he will act according to the laws of that city, and no
other" (592) . The good man will apply even in the imperfect state, the
perfect law.
Nevertheless, with all these concessions to doubt, the Master was bold
enough to risk himself when a chance offered to realize his plan. In the
years 387 B. c. Plato received an invitation from Dionysius, ruler of the
then jSourishirig"^Ln6f powerful "Syracuse, capital
of Sicily, to come and
turn his kingdom into Utopia; and the philosopher, thinking like Turgot
that it was easier to educate one man even though a king than a whole
people, consented. But when Dionysius found that the plan required
either that he should become a philosopher or cease to be a king, he
balked; and the upshot was a bitter quarrel. Story has it that Plato was
sold into" slavery, to be rescued by his friend and pupil Anniceris; who,
when Plato's Athenian followers wished to reimburse him for the ransom
he had paid, refused, saying that they should not be the only ones
privileged to help philosophy. This (and, if we may believe Diogenes
Laertius, another similar) experience may account for the disillusioned
conservatism of Plato's last work, the Laws.
And yet the closing years of his long life must have been fairly happy.
His pupils had gone out in every direction, and their success had made
him honored everywhere. He was at peace in his Academe, walking from
group to group of his students and giving them problems and tasks on
which they were to make research and, when he came to them again, give
report and answer. La Rochefoucauld said that "few know how to grow
old." Plato knew: to learn like Solon and to teach like Socrates; to guide