PLATO’S THEORY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. 261 
Colonel Atvres.—It applies to Governments and forms of 
government, and the people carrying on the Government, showing 
that there are differences of quality ; and in the New Testament 
we read of a man having five talents, a man having two talents, 
and a man having one talent. There are great differences, and 
there is no doubt if you take your walks abroad into various 
neighbourhoods, you will see in the heads of the men and the heads 
of the children vast differences between class and class ; that some 
have higher qualities, and are capable of being educated to a higher 
pitch than others. And after all, education only means leading out, 
developing the faculties that a man already has, and not trying to 
make him into something that he cannot be. We are born, I am 
told, each one with a certain number of brain cells, and that 
number cannot be added to all the days of your life, though you 
live to the age of Methuselah. 
So I think we find that there are those differences of classes, and 
as most men have to live competitively, those of the highest power 
rise up either to be kings or noblemen, or gentlemen of a humbler 
rank, or lower middle-class, each class a social stratum. Yet even 
in one class there are vast differences, because an artisan is far 
higher than the bricklayer’s labourer ; his intelligence is greater, he 
is a better man. He has either developed his faculties or his 
forefathers have developed their faculties ; and the result has been 
that they have had better offspring, so we cannot put mankind on 
an equality. The old Feudal System had this in it at any rate ; 
men rose to knighthood from the very humblest ranks of life, but 
if a man rose into the higher class he had to leave the lower class 
behind him. If a man has to go from the iron to the bronze class, 
he leaves the iron behind him; if he goes from the bronze to the 
silver he leaves the bronze behind him, and so on. There is no 
mixing up classes. I will not say that Feudalism was right, but it 
had the elements of rightness in it, and it is because the upper 
classes do not treat the lower classes with consideration that there 
has been the assumption that the upper classes are not fit to be 
rulers because they are not just, and that therefore the lower classes 
will be fit to rule. But they will not be any more just than the 
others, and we know the final result of bringing up the lowest class 
into power will be that eventually they will receive Antichrist. 
That is the teaching of the Bible, so we cannot put men on an 
