PLATO'S THEORY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. 255 
Plato’s point of view? I answer, that it has two distinctly 
disadvantageous consequences. 
First, although it would secure to the guardians a thorough 
education, it would make that education restricted in a marked 
degree. The guardians may know and practise only such things 
as by knowing and practising would make them better citizens. 
Now that is good from the point of view of Napoleon. It is 
odious from the point of view of Dr. Arnold. On the other 
hand, while this Platonic State would give to the guardians a 
thorough, though restricted, education, it appears tu leave the 
lower classes wholly uneducated, or it passes them over. 
In illustration of this statement I read the following extract 
from the Politeia, “ All you who live in the city are brothers,* 
but God in fashioning you mingled ingredients of gold in the 
composition of those who were capable of ruling the State. 
On that account they are to be the most highly honoured. 
Those who are capable of becoming auxiliaries to the guardians 
He composed with silver; while husbandmen and the working 
class in general He mingled with elements of iron and of 
bronze.” 
Popular education could never flourish, could perhaps scarcely 
exist, under such a theory of Society as that. 
Passing now from the effect of Platonic education upon the 
upper class and the mass of the community, | turn to consider 
wherein a Christian system of education differs from that 
expounded by Plato. 
In order to meet that consideration I must trouble the 
Society to allow me to examine the Christian doctrine of 
human nature. I find that the word guaus, or nature, occurs in 
the Greek Testament at least fourteen times. It occurs in the 
writings of St. James, St. Peter, and St. Paul. 
St. James uses it twice ;¢ St. Peter uses it once;t St. Paul 
uses it eleven times.§ St. Paul uses it in the earliest of his 
Epistles—that to the Galatians ; and in the Ephesians, one of 
his latest Epistles. It is distributed through the New Testa- 
ment in Gentile and Jewish scripture. This word and the 
notion which it expresses runs through the teaching of the 
Apostolic Age. 
St. Peter uses it in connection with God. St. James uses it 
* Book iii. Feige g Fini, ty 4. 
§ Galatians ii, 15 ; iv, 8. 1 Corinthians xi, 14. Romans i, 26; ii, 14; 
xi, 21, 24. Ephesians ii, 3. 
