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

THEORY OP DEMOCRACY 791
and more knowledgeable through experiment and experience.
Plato says, again) that in a democracy the State
is captured by sectional interests who run it for their own
advantage. The democrat replies that the society which
he advocates is, to quote Professor Laski, "one in which
the incidence of policy is not biased in the direction of
any particular group in the community in which, there-
fore, the interest of any individual in the operation of the
State is approximately equal to that of any other." The
democrat admits, of course, that this is an ideal, never
yet realized; but he insists that it is an ideal to be realized.
The point at issue here is not, I think, one which can be
settled by argument. The following quotation from Lowes
Dickinson's book, AfUr Two Thousand Tears, states the
democratic principle in its
than I can hope to do.
bearing upon this issue better
"PHILALBTHES: . . . Granting, I would say, that your
philosopher-kings could be put into power, and that
they knew Good perfectly and truly, and introduced
their censorship to preserve it uncontaminated, yet
still I should say they would be defeating their own
object, or at any rate mine. For what I would wish
to create is not men like statues, beautifully shaped
for someone else to contemplate, but living creatures,
choosing Good because they know Evil. And if they
are to know it, it must not be silenced. Rather, jufct
as you would have trained your soldiers by the perpetual
presence of danger, so would I my citizens, by
the perpetual solicitation of evil.
PLATO: And if they succumb to it?
PHXLALETHES: And if your soldiers succumbed to the
enemy? They would succumb, and so doubtless many
of them will. Others will slip and recover themselves,
some few will never fall. But always Goodness will be
the method
being tested, as in a free society is truth, by
of trial and error/ 9