The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a
task which will call forth all his powers. He must control himself before
he can control others; he must know mankind before he can manage them. He
has no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal enmity under
the disguise of moral or political principle: such meannesses, into which
men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed in the consciousness of
his mission, and in his love for his country and for mankind. He will
sometimes ask himself what the next generation will say of him; not because
he is careful of posthumous fame, but because he knows that the result of
his life as a whole will then be more fairly judged. He will take time for
the execution of his plans; not hurrying them on when the mind of a nation
is unprepared for them; but like the Ruler of the Universe Himself, working
in the appointed time, for he knows that human life, 'if not long in
comparison with eternity' (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of
many great purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going on
when he is no longer here; and he will sometimes, especially when his
powers are failing, think of that other 'city of which the pattern is in
heaven' (Republic).

The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to govern
men he becomes like them; their 'minds are married in conjunction;' they
'bear themselves' like vulgar and tyrannical masters, and he is their
obedient servant. The true politician, if he would rule men, must make
them like himself; he must 'educate his party' until they cease to be a
party; he must breathe into them the spirit which will hereafter give form
to their institutions. Politics with him are not a mechanism for seeming
what he is not, or for carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a
representative man, he is the representative not of the lower but of the
higher elements of the nation. There is a better (as well as a worse)