252 THE REV. H. J. R. MARSTON, M.A., ON 
I will trouble my audience, for the sake of clearness, and of 
what will come after, by indicating how this subject arises in 
the Politeia. That wonderful dialogue begins by describing a 
eathering, friendly and domestic, of Athenians. They are 
discussing the nature of justice. And Socrates, who is amongst 
them, suggests that they should study justice on a large scale— 
in large letters, to use a favourite Platonic image: that they 
should not seek for it in the individual man, but as expressed 
and embodied in the State. They agree. They then proceed 
to discuss what the State is, how it originates, how it works 
itself out. They arrive at the conclusion that the principal 
thing in a State is the ruling class. 
The question then naturally arises—How is this ruling class 
to be educated? They then proceed to discuss the nature of 
the education of the guardians. Thus there are three great 
subjects which alternate and interweave themselves through- 
out the whole of the Politeia. The first is the nature and 
office of the State. The second is the essence and the issues 
of justice. The third is the scope and the method of education. 
Thus it is that education, though only the third of the subjects 
engaging the mind of Plato, becomes a permanent and striking 
matter in the course of his meditations. 
In the next place let me review what is in general terms 
the ground and scale of Platonic education. It begins with 
morals. It then proceeds to music. Music, however, we must 
understand not in the limited and technical sense, but mowsike, 
that is to say, the whole art of the muses. It involves elocu- 
tion and general culture, XéEcs, a mode of diction and demean- 
our proper to the guardians. From music he passes on to 
gymnastic, which is to have the same effect upon the body as 
Movov.xn has upon the soul. Gymnastic is to be followed, so 
it appears, by arithmetic; arithmetic does not mean that painful, 
mechanical form of study from which I have a hereditary and 
an instinctive aversion. (Laughter.) But it means the whole 
of the great science of number and of measurement, for which 
I have a profound but distant admiration. 
Foilowing arithmetic comes dialectic, which covers a great 
deal of what we should call moral and mental philosophy. 
Finally, the close and climax of the Platonic graduation of 
knowledge, of the scheme of education, is philosophy itself. 
Philosophy meant to Plato the power acquired by the highest 
intellects of contemplating pure truth, a power which, unhappily, 
he has at last to confess, is only attainable by the rarest and 
most gifted of the intellects of mankind. 
