men suddenly to the true
light, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as though
they had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in pain
and sorrow they will be tempted to grope back again to the familiar
darkness.

Yet if they hold on in patience, and struggle up the steep till the sun
himself breaks on their vision, what pain and dazzling once more, yet
at the last what glorious revelation! True, if they revisit their old
dwelling-place, they will not see as well as their fellows who are
still living contentedly there, knowing nothing other than the shadows.
They may even seem to these as dreamers who have lost their senses; and
should they try to enlighten these denizens of the cave, they may be
persecuted or {149} even put to death. Such are the men who have had a
sight of the heavenly verities, when compared with the children of
earth and darkness.

Yet the world will never be right till those who have had this vision
come back to the things of earth and order them according to the
eternal verities; the philosopher must be king if ever the perfect life
is to be lived on earth, either by individual or community. As it
would be expressed in Scriptural language, "The kingdoms of this world
must become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ."

For the training of these ideal rulers an ideal education is required,
which Plato calls dialectic; something of its nature is described later
on (p. 170), and we need not linger over it here.

The argument then seems to fall to a lower level. There are various
approximations in actual experience to the ideal community, each more
or less perfect according to the degree in which the good of the
individual is also made the good of all, and the interests of governors
and governed are alike. Parallel with each lower form of state is a
lower individual nature, the worst of all being that of the tyrant,
whose will is his only law, and his own self-indulgence his only
motive. In him indeed Might is Right; but his life is the very
antithesis of happiness. Nay, pleasure of any kind can give no law to
reason; reason can judge of pleasure, but not _vice versa_. There is
no profit to a {150} man though he gain the whole world, if _himself_
be lost; if he become worse; if the better part of him be silenced and
grow weaker. And after this 'fitful fever' is over, may there not be a
greater bliss beyond? There have been stories told us, visions o