I.] A DMINISTHA TIVE NIHILISM. 5 



to do things which, in point of pleasantness, cannot be 

 ranked above scavengering yet he always ought to be, 

 and he frequently is, a highly educated man. In the 

 second place, though it may be granted that the words 

 of the catechism, which require a man to do his duty in 

 the station to which it has pleased God to call him, give 

 an admirable definition of our obligation to ourselves 

 and to society ; yet the question remains, how is any 

 given person to find out what is the particular station 

 to which it has pleased God to call him ? A new-born 

 infant does not come into the world labelled scavenger, 

 shopkeeper, bishop, or duke. One mass of red pulp is 

 just like another to all outward appearance. And it is 

 only by finding out what his faculties are good for, and 

 seeking, not for the sake of gratifying a paltry vanity, 

 but as the highest duty to himself and to his fellow-men, 

 to put himself into the position in which they can attain 

 their full development, that the man discovers his true 

 station. That which is to be lamented, I fancy, is not 

 that society should do its utmost to help capacity to 

 ascend from the lower strata to the higher, but that it 

 has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of 

 incapacity from the higher strata to the lower. In that 

 noble romance, the " .Republic " (which is now, thanks to 

 the Master of Balliol, as intelligible to us all, as if it 

 had been written in our mother tongue), Plato makes 

 Socrates say that he should like to inculcate upon the 

 citizens of his ideal state just one " royal lie." 



"' Citizeus,' we shall say to them in our tale ' You are brothers, 

 vet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of 

 command, and these he has composed of gold, wherefore also they 

 have the greatest honour ; others of silver, to be auxiliaries j others 

 again, who are t> be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass 

 and iron ; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. 

 But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will some- 

 times have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden sou. And God 



