d07TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. 
MONDAY, APRIL 18rn, 1910. 
Proressor E. Hutu, F.R.S. (VICE-PRESIDENT), IN THE CHAIR. 
The Minutes of the 505th Ordinary General Meeting were read and 
confirmed. 
The following lecture was then delivered by the author :— 
PrEATOS THEORY OF “PUBLIC. EDUCATION: IN. 
RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
OF HUMAN NATURE... By. the. Rev. Hs" J. ki. 
Marston, M.A. 
HE acknowledged greatness of Plato as a writer and a 
thinker, and his perennial influence upon thought, 
especially in connection with education, justify me in approach- 
ing what is, perhaps, the most interesting and thorny of 
problems, through the great Greek thinker. Moreover, there 
are in his opinions, especially as expressed in the Republic and 
the Laws, certain phases on which he insists, which have 
visible affinities with opinions of leading educationalists in the 
present day. 
This is specially true of the emphasis which Plato lays upon 
the State. For weal or for woe during the last generation and 
a half in England, in France, in Germany and in America it 
has passed into an axiom, or at least, an assumption, that the 
State has to have the first and the last word in education. 
This subject has divided mankind always, and there are 
incidental advantages in passing from the beat and din of 
current controversy to the culm and the cool of the academic 
grove, and in trying to gather first principles from one whose 
voice has long been mute, although his spirit still rules ours 
from his immortal urn, 
