254 ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM vi 



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 bnnSelf into the position in which tlteyCah 

 attain their full development, that the man dis- 

 covers 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 1< >wer 

 strata to the higher, but that it has no machinery 

 by which to facilitate the descen 



the higher strata to^Ahfi 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." 



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

 brothers, yet 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 .-ilver,. 

 to be auxiliaries ; others again, who arc to be husbandmen ami 

 craftsmen, He has made of brass and iron ; and the 

 generally be preserved in the children. But as you are of the 

 same original family, a golden parent wijl sometimes have a 

 silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims 

 ti> the rulers, as a first principle, that before ;ill they should- 

 watch over their offspring, and sec 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 he pitiful towards his 

 child because he has to descend in the scale and become a 



