or bird-fancier, or at best of a
slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder
of animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength; in a few cases at
courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the
great desideratum. But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for
their superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing carts. Neither
does the improvement of the human race consist merely in the increase
of the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of the mind.
Hence there must be 'a marriage of true minds' as well as of bodies, of
imagination and reason as well as of lusts and instincts. Men and women
without feeling or imagination are justly called brutes; yet Plato
takes away these qualities and puts nothing in their place, not even
the desire of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know their own
children. The most important transaction of social life, he who is the
idealist philosopher converts into the most brutal. For the pair are to
have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal festival; their
children are not theirs, but the state's; nor is any tie of affection to
unite them. Yet here the analogy of the animals might have saved
Plato from a gigantic error, if he had 'not lost sight of his own
illustration.' For the 'nobler sort of birds and beasts' nourish and
protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.

An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while 'to try and place life
on a physical basis.' But should not life rest on the moral rather than
upon the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower, first the
human and rational, afterwards the animal. Yet they are not absolutely
divided; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they
seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which
includes them both. Neither is the moral the limit of the physical,
but the expansion and enlargement of it,--the highest form which the
physical is capable of receiving. As Plato would say, the body does not
take care of the body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes
care of both. In all human action not that which is common to man and
the animals is the characteristic element, but that which distinguishes
him from them. Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all
virtue into health of body 'la facon que notre sang circule,' still on
merely physical grounds we must come back to ideas. Mind a