for a person may rule by law, and law may
be so applied as to be the living voice of the legislator. As in the
Republic, there is a myth, describing, however, not a future, but a
former existence of mankind. The question is asked, 'Whether the state
of innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own
which possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is
the preferable condition of man.' To this question of the comparative
happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed
in the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman,
though less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range,
may justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato's dialogues.

6. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to be the
vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express, or which
went beyond their own age. The classical writing which approaches most
nearly to the Republic of Plato is the 'De Republica' of Cicero; but
neither in this nor in any other of his dialogues does he rival the
art of Plato. The manners are clumsy and inferior; the hand of the
rhetorician is apparent at every turn. Yet noble sentiments are
constantly recurring: the true note of Roman patriotism--'We Romans are
a great people'--resounds through the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero
turns away from the phenomena of the heavens to civil and political
life. He would rather not discuss the 'two Suns' of which all Rome was
talking, when he can converse about 'the two nations in one' which had
divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi. Like Socrates again,
speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume
too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is
discussing among friends the two sides of a question. He would confine
the terms King or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will
not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But under
the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the natural
superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to the soul
ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms of government to any
single one. The two portraits of the just and the unjust, which occur in
the second book of the Republic, are transferred to the state--Philus,
one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his will the necessity
of injustice as a principle of government, wh