Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only real
politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words by
applying them to the history of our own country. He would have said that
not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the real politicians of
their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These during
the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsiderable space in the
eyes of the public. They were private persons; nevertheless they sowed in
the minds of men seeds which in the next generation have become an
irresistible power. 'Herein is that saying true, One soweth and another
reapeth.' We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman in whom practice
and speculation are perfectly harmonized; for there is no necessary
opposition between them. But experience shows that they are commonly
divorced--the ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the
thoughts of others, and hardly ever brings to the birth a new political
conception. One or two only in modern times, like the Italian statesman
Cavour, have created the world in which they moved. The philosopher is
naturally unfitted for political life; his great ideas are not understood
by the many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of the day.
Yet perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also
happier than the lives of those who are more in the public eye. They have
the promise of the future, though they are regarded as dreamers and
visionaries by their own contemporaries. And when they are no longer here,
those who would have been ashamed of them during their lives claim kindred
with them, and are proud to be called by their names. (Compare Thucyd.)

Who is the true poet?

Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to sense;
because they stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice removed from