is one of the applications of his moral system. As in the case of all other
things, the idea of love is in God. There it exists in absolute purity,
without any mixture of the idea of pleasure, since pleasure is essentially
ephemeral and perishable. Love in God consists simply in the impassioned
contemplation of beauty (physical and moral); we shall resemble God if we
love beauty precisely in this way, without excitement or agitation of the
senses.

POLITICS.--One of the originalities in Plato is that he busies
himself with politics--that is, that he makes politics a part of
philosophy, which had barely been thought of before him (I say
_barely_, because Pythagoras was a legislator), but which has ever
since been taken into consideration. Plato is aristocratic, no doubt
because his thought is generally such, independently of circumstances,
also, perhaps, because he attributed the great misfortunes of his country
which he witnessed to the Athenian democracy; then yet again, perhaps,
because that Athenian democracy had been violently hostile and sometimes
cruel to philosophers, and more especially to his own master. According to
Plato, just as man has three souls, or if it be preferred, three centres of
activity, which govern him--intelligence in the head, courage in the heart,
and appetite in the bowels--even so the city is composed of three classes:
wise and learned men at the top, the warriors below, and the artisans and
slaves lower still. The wise men will govern: accordingly the nations will
never be happy save when philosophers are kings, or when kings are
philosophers. The warriors will fight to defend the city, never as
aggressors. They will form a caste--poor, stern to itself, and
redoubtable. They will have no individual possessions; everything will be
in common, houses, furniture, weapons, wives even, and children. The
people, finally, living in strict equality, either by equal partition of
land, or on land cultivated in common, will be strictly maintained in