254 THE REV. H. J. R. MARSTON, M.A., ON 
else 2? If so, it shall be pro tanto incorporated in the scheme of 
education. If not, it shall be peremptorily ruled out. That 
must be carefully remembered as we are discussing Plato’s 
theory of education and what follows from it. 
There is another important, a painful element which it is 
impossible to pass over in describing Plato’s ideal State. It 
became necessary for Plato in constructing his ideal State to 
enquire, how shall this State be preserved? It can only be 
preserved, said Plato, by the perfection of its guardians. What 
is it which the guardians of a State are most likely to be 
corrupted by? It is, said he, “by discord.” All states 
ultimately come to ruin through discord. Our State, therefore, 
at least in its guardian class, must be wholly immune from 
discord. But what are the things which cause discord ? 
“Private property, personal ownership, ‘Mine and thine.’” 
These terms, therefore, must be banished from our guardians. 
They must never know the sound or the meaning of “ Mine 
and thine.” They must, in short, be absolutely communistic. 
With remorseless logic, he carries this out into every detail of 
life; he sweeps away family obligations. To this he sacrifices 
the purity, and the naturalness, of woman. Under this head 
he sanctions sins from which modern legislatures would recoil ; 
this is the sole test of what things are fit and not fit to be 
enjoyed and practised by the guardians of the State. It is 
melancholy, that we have to contemplate in the man whom 
Dr. Jowett has called “ the father of idealism” and the greatest 
metaphysical writer of the world, such a lapse from the high 
standard of morality which has been introduced by the 
Gospel. 
But two things are to be borne in mind. First, that Plato is 
only here arguing upon ideal conditions; and secondly, that he 
was not acquainted with the sacred morality of the Old 
Testament, still less with the more lofty and sacred morality of 
the New. Those things must be said in mitigation of any 
sentence which we pronounce upon Plato’s doctrine of com- 
munism. 
But, those things being said, do not prevent me from saying 
this, viz., that the Politeia of Plato furnishes the most 
illustrious proof in the world, that the theory of a proprietary 
state is lovically inseparable from a communistic view which 
endangers private property, personal liberty, sexual purity, and 
intellectual originality. 
Such, then, is Plato’s State ; and I now pass to enquire, what 
is the influence of such a State upon education, even from 
