the first republic; Sadi Carnot was a pioneer of thermodynamics; Hippolyte Carnot was Minister of Public Education under the Second Republic and Senator under the Third; Sadi Carnot was President of the Third; and the sons of President Carnot are now holding honorable places in the political world. But the test must be convincing. No one wants an aristocracy of the "effete" European type. Mere self-assertion and disinclination to work are not sufficient credentials. Of all the criteria for the selection of a ruling class, careful dressing, correct dancing and a mastery of etiquette are by far the most preposterous. Neither is the mere acquisition of wealth a sure sign of superiority. It may be due to energy, foresight, service; but it may also represent unscrupulous greed and cunning coupled with luck. It is no safe basis even for a life-aristocracy, still less for an hereditary one. Neither is culture: much of our culture is mere cramming or shibboleth. Although I respect the Brahmin class and the Levitical tribe, I would be the last to advocate an hereditary mandarinate for America. But I would rather rely upon any of the tests that made the Brahmin and the Levite, than upon the color of the eyes.

In the present state of our knowledge, there is nothing safer than plain justice. As our knowledge increases, our justice will be more enlightened: but knowledge will never justify injustice. If certain physical types are better able to perform certain services, let their deeds fulfill the promise of their eyes and hair. If you want tall men in the police, do not accept an undersized Scandinavian and refuse a gigantic Italian on the plea that the Scandinavians, as a race, are taller than the Italians, and therefore ought to secure a monopoly of such positions. If our present tests are too crude, let us make them more accurate. If the rewards for the finer kinds of service are inadequate and discouraging, let us put our trust in the attractiveness of congenial work, in the gradual enlightenment of the masses, perhaps in the generous wisdom

of a few individuals. The Xanthochroic theory is merely a bridge between a loose heap of facts and a mass of prejudices. It is interesting, but it is far from harmless. It has hurled Germany against the world. It is clamoring for the conquest of Mexico. It is preparing Armageddon between America and Asia. There is no reason why we should abandon Lincoln and Wilson for Gobineau and Chamberlain.

THE GREAT FALSE PROPHETS

ERHAPS there is no rôle so difficult as that of

PERE

thorough-going reformer. Were Socrates to try it to-day he would be even more severely handled than he was in classical Greece. Plato seems to have confined his activities chiefly to mere speculation and the teaching of a few disciples; yet there are signs in his later writings of a bruised spirit. A number of reformers have lost their heads, and a still greater number their reason, men like Rousseau, Ruskin, and Tolstoi with spiritual conflicts that led to mental unbalance. For it is not safe, clad only in the armor of abstract theory, to cast oneself into the conflict with reality.

Yet nothing is more stimulating than to read the hearty appeals of these men for a nobler and more rational system of living. "The divine pattern, which is laid up in heaven," and which they call upon us to behold, is at first glance so flawless that for the moment we would gladly enroll as their followers; but they stumble so pitifully against the most obvious realities, and contradict each other and themselves so brazenly. Perhaps it is to the heartache because fact will not square with theory, that we must look for the tragedies of their lives.

To see the full significance of the effort to produce a social state that shall be founded upon reason and justice, and thus do away with the ills of humanity and the meaninglessness of life, we must turn to the first great speculator upon purely human problems. Like any great teacher, Plato had two methods of conveying his teaching - the one direct, by means of analysis and exposition, the other allegorical. And in the Republic there is as much of the one method as of the other. Thrasymachus has maintained with some heat that injustice is more prof

itable than justice, that the wicked prosper in their wickedness, and that even the gods may be blinded by ~ oblations. Glaucon and Adeimantus, near followers of Socrates, though they cannot accept this unorthodoxy, are nevertheless shaken, and look to Socrates for a final defense of their faith. The rest of the ten books is a justification of Socrates' "will to believe" in the transcendental and yet practical worth of justice.

Justice in the individual consists in the harmonious working of man's whole being under the direction of his higher nature, his reason, - the classical ideal of restraint, or culture, as Matthew Arnold, borrowing the term from Goethe, has defined it. Likewise culture or justice in the state, for Plato, consists in an ideal harmony between the rulers, the soldiers, the tradespeople, and the menials, who respectively correspond, in the individual, to the reason, the will, the passions and instincts; with the three lower orders under the direct control of those in whom the principle of reason and discipline is most developed.

All this seems excellent enough. It is only when we take his allegory of the perfect state too seriously (as some are tempted to take a new effort along Platonic lines by H. G. Wells in the perfect planet on the other side of Sirius), that difficulties begin to multiply. For Plato himself is more than skeptical concerning his own polity.

However, in heaven there is laid up a pattern of it, which he who desires may behold, and beholding may set his house in order. But whether such a one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter: for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other.

Precisely! the man loving justice, will, when he knows what justice is, have nothing to do with the allurements of this earth. But so long as things are as they are, "a man must take with him into the world below, an adamantine faith in truth and right; that there he may not be dazzled

by the desire of wealth or the allurements of evil." It is with the individual, after all, that Plato, as a genuine teacher, is rightly concerned. The state, according to the true individualist may look after itself. It is after all only a means to an end, forms and constitutions are nothing more than an outward expression of the inner man. Reformers who can see no farther than the external faults they would correct, are like boys playing with the mechanism of a clock, not knowing the end which the springs, balances, and wheels serve. For "they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra." Granted, but why then all the minutiae of legislation in the Laws?

But, paradox of paradoxes! Plato, in his philosophy an individualist of individualists, when he would illustrate his notion of the just man by showing a just state, gives us a picture of monstrous injustice. It is true that his state produced order, the one thing Athens needed after the collapse of her democracy. And orderliness in the state may be of the nature of cleanliness, and a great blessing, but it is not Platonic justice; for it is not founded upon any general sense of responsibility and free choice. To this end we may quote Plato against himself. "Virtue is free, and as a man honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser - God is justified." But freedom based upon responsibility to one's self, except for the philosopher-kings, is at one blow swept from his state. To say that all have the opportunity of becoming philosopher-kings holds out the terrible possibility that all may imagine themselves philosopher-kings, like Bronson Alcott and his company at Fruitlands. It is hard for one who thinks of himself in terms of infinity to occupy himself with cabbages.

But there is one still more serious difficulty. Ants and bees have perfect order because there is no difference of