VI ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM 255 



husbandman or artisan ; just as there may be others sprang 

 from the artisan class, who are raised to honour, and become 

 guardians and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man 

 of brass and 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 perform- 

 ance 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 ; re- 

 move all those artificiaTprops 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 coachmen, 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 super- 

 ficial 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 



1 The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English, with 

 Analysis and Introduction, by B. Jowett, M.A. Vol. ii. p. 243. 



