Plato and Carlyle are both
possessed with the idea that they are living in a degenerate age, and they
attribute its degeneracy to the same causes:--_Laissez faire_; the growth
of luxury; the effeminate preference of Lydian to Dorian airs in music,
education, and life; the decay of the Spartan and growth of the Corinthian
spirit; the habit of lawlessness culminating in the excesses of Democracy,
which they describe in language as nearly identical as the difference of
the ages and circumstances admit. They propose the same remedies:--
a return to simpler manners, and stricter laws, with the best men in the
State to regulate and administer them. Philosophers, says Plato, are to be
made guardians, and they are to govern, not for gain or glory, but for the
common weal. They need not be happy in the ordinary sense, for there is a
higher than selfish happiness, the love of the good. To this love they
must be _systematically educated_ till they are fit to be kings and
priests in the ideal state; if they refuse they _must_, when their turn
comes, be _made to govern_. Compare the following declarations of
Carlyle:--
Aristocracy and Priesthood, a Governing class and a Teaching
class--these two sometimes combined in one, a Pontiff
King--there did not society exist without those two vital
elements, there will none exist. Whenever there are born
Kings of men you had better seek them out and _breed them
to the work_.
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