6 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [i. 



proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that before all they should 

 watch over their offspring, and see what elements mingle with their 

 nature ; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of 

 brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the 

 eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has 

 to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan ; just as 

 there may be others sprung from the artisan class, who are raised to 

 honour, and become guardians and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that 

 when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will then be 

 destroyed.' " l 



Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is 

 powerless against truth ; and the lapse of more than two 

 thousand years has not weakened the force of these wise 

 words. Nor is it necessary that, as Plato suggests, 

 society should provide functionaries expressly charged 

 with the performance of the difficult duty of picking out 

 the men of brass from those of silver and gold. Educate, 

 and the latter will certainly rise to the top ; remove all 

 those artificial props by which the brass and iron folk 

 are kept at the top, and, by a law as sure as that of 

 gravitation, they will gradually sink to the bottom. We 

 have all known noble lords who would have been coach- 

 men, or gamekeepers, or billiard-markers, if they had 

 not been kept afloat by our social corks ; we have all 

 known men among the lowest ranks, of whom every- 

 one has said, " What might not that man have become, 

 if he had only had a little education ? " 



And who that attends, even in the most superficial 

 way, to the conditions upon which the stability of 

 modern society and especially of a society like ours, in 

 which recent legislation has placed sovereign authority 

 in the hands of the masses, whenever they are united 

 enough to wield their power can doubt that every man 

 of high natural ability, who is both ignorant and miser- 



1 " The Dialogues of Plato." Translated into English, with Analysis and Intro- 

 duction, by B. Jowett, M.A. Vol. ii. p. 243. 



