The Republic 73 



of the Expert, and each specialist must mind his own business. Thus 

 each will enjoy his own proper happiness: friction competition and 

 jealousy will pass away. There will be no more hindrance to the 

 efficiency of craftsmen: we shall not see one tempted by wealth 1 to 

 neglect his trade, while another is too poor to buy the appliances 

 needed for turning out good work. The expert governors or Guardians 

 must be supplied with all necessaries 2 by the classes engaged in the 

 various forms of production. Thus only can they be removed from 

 the corruptions that now pervert politicians. To them at least all 

 private property must be denied. And, in order that they may be as 

 expert in their own function of government as other craftsmen are in 

 their several trades, they must be bred selected and educated on a 

 strictly scientific system the very opposite of the haphazard methods 

 now in vogue. 



This brief sketch of the critical and constructive scope of the Re- 

 public must suffice for my purpose. Plato laid his finger on grave 

 defects, but his remedies seem fantastic in the light of our longer and 

 more varied experience. Any reform of society had to be carried out 

 by human agency, and for the difficulty of adapting this no adequate 

 allowance is made. He recognizes the difficulty of starting an ideal 

 community on his model. Old prejudices will be hard to overcome. 

 So he suggests 3 that it will be necessary for the philosophical rulers to 

 clear the ground by sending all the adult inhabitants out into the 

 country, keeping in the city only the children of ten years and under: 

 these they will train up on their system. He implies that with the 

 younger generation growing up under properly regulated conditions 

 the problems of establishment will solve themselves by the effect of 

 time. This grotesque proposal may indicate that Plato did not mean 

 his constructive design to be taken very seriously. But a more notable 

 weakness appears in the narrowness of outlook. It was natural that a 

 Greek should think and write as a Greek for Greeks, and seek lessons 

 in Greek experience. But the blight of disunion and failure was already 

 on the little Greek states; and their experience, not likely to recur, 

 has in fact never really recurred. Hence the practical value of Plato's 

 stimulating criticism and construction is small. In the labour-question 

 we find no advance. Slavery is assumed as usual, but against the en- 

 slavement of Greeks, of which recent warfare supplied many examples, 

 he makes 4 a vigorous protest. Euripides had gone further than this, 

 and questionings of slavery had not been lacking. Another very Greek 

 limitation of view comes out in the contempt 6 for ffavavaia, the assumed 



1 Republic 421 d. 2 Republ 416 d, <?, 417, 464 c, 543 b. 



3 Republ 540^-541 a. 4 Republ 469-471. 



8 Republ 495 d, 590 c, 522 b. Laws 741. 



