GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

PLATO'S POLITICAL THEORY 69
as bundles of desires uncontrolled by reason, which is
reduced to the r61e of the servant or instrument of desire
to the third or worker, class.
Wherein Justice in the State Consists. Plato holds
that as a general rule the division of the population
into classes will be determined by hereditary factors. The
children of members of the third class will naturally tend
to belong to that class: but he concedes the possibility that
a child possessing a predominantly "reasonable" soul may
occasionally be born to parents who are members of the
third class. $uch a child will belong by nature to the
Guardian, or ruling, class and provision is made for him
to take his place within it. Now just as the character of
the individual depends upon, and is. determined by, the
part of the soul which in him is predominant, so the
character of the State depends upon, and is determined
by, the class which in it is predominant. For "do you
imagine", Socrates asks, "that political institutions have
any other motive force than the disposition of the citizens
which always turns the scale?" Thus if the disposition of
the citizens is mainly that of men in whom the second
part of the soul predominates, the State will be a military
one; if their disposition is primarily appetitive, it will be
a plutocracy. Now plutocracies turn into extreme demo*
cracies. This doctrine has, as we shall see, an important
bearing upon the theories of leadership propounded by
the authoritarian States of the contemporary world. 1
It follows that, just as the excellence of the soul consists
in the maintenance of a right relation between its three
parts, the reasoning part (with the assistance of the spirited
element) guiding and controlling the appetitive part, so
also in a right relation is to be found the specific excellence
of a State. A good State, in other words, is one in which
the Guardian class rules with the assistance of the soldiers,
and the great mass of workers and business folk obeys;
and not only obeys, but obeys contentedly. For the incul-
1 See Chapter XVI, pp. 653-658, especially 657.