uitable
for war. The youngsters will be taken to watch any fighting; cowards
will be degraded; valour will be honoured, and death on the field, with
other supreme services to the state, will rank the hero among demigods.
Against Greeks war must be conducted as against our own kith and kin.
But as to the possibility of all this--this third threatening wave is
the most terrific of all.

_IV.--Of Philosophy in Rulers_

It will be possible then, and only then, when kings are philosophers or
philosophers kings. "You will be mobbed and pelted for such a
proposition." Still, it is the fact. The philosopher desires all
knowledge. You know that justice, beauty, good, and so on, are single,
though their presentation is multiplex and variable. Curiosity about the
multiplex particulars is not desire of knowledge, which is of the one
constant idea--of that which is, as ignorance is of that which is not.
What neither is nor is not, that which fluctuates and changes, is the
subject matter of opinion, a state between knowledge and ignorance.
Beauty is beauty always and everywhere; the things that look beautiful
may be ugly from another point of view. Experience of beautiful things,
curiosity about them, must be distinguished from knowledge of beauty;
the philosopher is not to be confounded with the connoisseur, not
knowledge with opinion. The philosopher is he who has in his mind the
perfect pattern of justice, beauty, truth; his is the knowledge of the
eternal; he contemplates all time and all existence; no praises are too
high for his character. "No doubt; still, if that is so, why do
professed philosophers always show themselves either fools or knaves in
ordinary affairs?" A ship's crew which does not understand that the art
of navigation demands a knowledge of the stars, will stigmatise a
properly qualified pilot as a star-gazing idiot, and will prevent him
from navigating. The world assumes that the philosopher's abstractions
are folly, and rejects his guidance. The philosopher is the best kind of
man; the corrupted philosopher is the worst; and the corrupted
influences brought to bear are irresistible to all but the very
strongest natures. The professional teachers of philosophy live not by
leading popular opinion, but by pandering to it; a bastard brood trick
themselves out as philosophers, while the true philosopher withdraws
himself from so gross a world. Small wonder that philosophy gets
discredited! Not in the soil of an