Promise and Performance 127 



after all, in their essence the same as those that have 

 always confronted free peoples striving to secure 

 and to keep free government. No political philos 

 opher of the present day can put the case more clear 

 ly than it was put by the wonderful old Greeks. 

 Says Aristotle : "Two principles have to be kept in 

 view : what is possible, what is becoming ; at these 

 every man ought to aim." Plato expresses precisely 

 the same idea : 'Those who are not schooled and 

 practiced in truth [who are not honest and upright 

 men] can never manage aright the government, nor 

 yet can those who spend their lives as closet phi 

 losophers ; because the former have no high purpose 

 to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof 

 from public life, having the idea that even while yet 

 living they have been translated to the Islands of the 

 Blest. . . . [Men must] both contemplate the good 

 and try actually to achieve it. Thus the state will 

 be settled as a reality, and not as a dream, like most 

 of those inhabited by persons righting about shad 

 ows."* 



* Translated freely and condensed. 



