r mutual help and comfort, the
perfect realisation of this virtue can only be in a perfect civic [278]
community. And corresponding with the three parts of the man there
will be three orders in the community: the Workers and Traders, the
Soldiers, and the Ruling or Guardian class. When all these perform
their proper functions in perfect harmony, then is the perfection of
the whole realised, in Civic Excellence or Justice.

[281]

To this end a careful civic education is necessary, _first_, because to
_know_ what is for the general good is difficult, for we have to learn
not only in general but in detail that even the individual good can be
secured only through the general; and _second_, because few, if any,
are capable of seeking the general good, even if they know it, without
the guidance of discipline and the restraints of law. Thus, with a
view to its own perfection, and the good of all {170} its members,
Education is the chief work of the State.

It will be remembered (see foregoing page) that in Plato's division of
the soul of man there are three faculties, Desire, Passion, Reason; in
the division of the soul's perfection three corresponding virtues,
Temperance, Courage, Wisdom; and in the division of the state three
corresponding orders, Traders, Soldiers, Guardians. So in Education
there are three stages. First, _Music_ (including all manner of
artistic and refining influences), whose function it is so to attemper
the desires of the heart that all animalism and sensualism may be
eliminated, and only the love and longing for that which is lovely and
of good report may remain. Second, _Gymnastic_, whose function it is
through ordered labour and suffering so to subdue and rationalise the
passionate part of the soul, that it may become the willing and
obedient servant of that which is just and true. And third,
_Mathematics_, by which the rational element of the soul may be trained
to realise itself, being weaned, by the ordered apprehension of the
'diamond net' of laws which underlie all the phenomena of nature, away
from the mere surface appearances of things, the accidental,
individual, momentary,--to the deep-seated realities, which are
necessary, universal, eternal.

And just as there was a perfectness of the soul {171} transcending all
particular virtues, whether of Temperance or Courage or Wisdom, namely,
that absolute Rightness or Righteousness which gathered them all into
itself, so at the end of