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<div class="chapter">
<p class="noi halftitle">PLATO’S AMERICAN<br>
REPUBLIC</p>
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<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h1>PLATO’S AMERICAN<br>
REPUBLIC</h1>

<p class="noi subtitle">Done out of the original<br>
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<p class=" noi author">DOUGLAS WOODRUFF</p>

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<p class="noic">“<i lang="la">fidelia vulnera amantis</i>”</p>

<p class="p2 noic"><span class="smcap">New York</span><br>
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<span class="smcap">681 Fifth Avenue</span></span></p>
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<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p class="noic smcap">Copyright, 1926<br>
By E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY</p>

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<p class="noic"><i>All Rights Reserved</i></p>

<table class="autotable">
<tr>
  <td class="tdl">First Printing</td>
  <td class="tdr">August, 1926</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdl">Second Printing</td>
  <td class="tdr">October, 1926</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdl">Third Printing</td>
  <td class="tdr">January, 1927</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdl">Fourth Printing</td>
  <td class="tdr">March, 1927</td>
</tr>
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<p class="p6 noic">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
</div>




<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p class="noic"><i>TO<br>
M. C. HOLLIS<br>
AND<br>
M. J. MACDONALD</i></p>
</div>




<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
</div>


<table>
<col style="width: 10%;">
<col style="width: 80%;">
<col style="width: 10%;">
<tr>
  <th class="smfontr">BOOK</th>
  <th class="tdl"></th>
  <th class="smfontr">PAGE</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">I.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_I">Women, Cars, and Men</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">II.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_II">Government</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">18</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">III.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_III">Public Opinion</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">36</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">IV.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_IV">Prohibition</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">53</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">V.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_V">Education</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">71</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="tdrt">VI.</td>
  <td class="tdl smcap"><a href="#BOOK_VI">America and England</a></td>
  <td class="tdrb">93</td>
</tr>
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<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

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<p class="noi title">PLATO’S AMERICAN
REPUBLIC</p>
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<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_I">BOOK I</h2>

<p class="noic"><i>Scene: Athens, 1925</i></p>

<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">Socrates (the Narrator)</span>; <span class="smcap">Agathon</span>;
<span class="smcap">Lysis</span>; <span class="smcap">Phaelon</span></p>
</div>


<p class="p2">We were sitting on the pavement in our
usual way, considering all things, and
examining into them one at a time. There
were with me Lysis and his younger
brother Phaelon, two youths whom I
loved for their inquiring dispositions and
habit of always asking why. As we were
sitting there we suddenly saw Agathon
approaching, and called to him to join
us. When we had made room for him he
turned to me and said: ‘Listen, Socrates,
to a strange thing which happened to me
to-day as I was going down to the Piræus.
For I now work, as you know, in the
Government, and to-day a stranger came
up to me outside my office, proposing to
buy the Parthenon and all the buildings
on the Acropolis and remove them to his
own land, and re-erect them there.’</p>

<p>‘Truly a strange way of honouring the
Athenians,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘I think,’ answered Agathon, ‘that it
was less his idea to honour the Athenians
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>than to make his own countrymen pay
him many <i lang="la">denarii</i> to behold the sight.’
‘And did he wish to buy the hill as well
as the buildings on it?’ ‘Why no,’
answered Agathon, ‘for he spoke as one
most ignorant, but he guessed that there
were as good hills in his own country,
which he explained was also the particular
residence of the Gods.’ ‘Without doubt
he was an American,’ I exclaimed.</p>

<p>At this word ‘American’ the two young
men leaned forward eagerly, and Phaelon
said:—</p>

<p>‘Tell us, Socrates, have you ever lectured
in America?’</p>

<p>‘How not?’ said I.</p>

<p>‘And did you like the Americans?’
asked Lysis. ‘Tell us what manner of
people they are. For we have heard many
stories of them. For Thrasymachus tells
us that he has nowhere been so well
received. And he, you know, has lectured
in all the lands he could. But, he says
that where in other countries he received
nothing but kindness, in America he
received a great many dollars as well.
And he says that he is convinced that the
Gods have emigrated and made it their
country, and that, when it has improved
a little more, he also will follow the
example of the Gods. But Glaucon says
just the opposite, maintaining that as the
Americans are the farthest away of all
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>the barbarians from Athens and civilization,
so are they without any doubt the
most completely barbarian. Tell us, therefore,
what is true about the Americans,
for at your lectures you must have seen
and questioned them all.’</p>

<p>At this Agathon, who had been trying
to repress his laughter since first Lysis
had spoken of my lecture-tour, became
redder than ever in the face, and finally
burst out saying: ‘Yes, indeed, Socrates
is the best person to give you a faithful
picture, if he is sufficiently master of
himself and a true lover of wisdom.’</p>

<p>‘Go on,’ I said, ‘and make your meaning
clearer and cease to bewilder the
young.’ For I knew what Agathon had
in his mind to tell them.</p>

<p>‘Why, then, Lysis and Phaelon,’ said
Agathon, ‘you must forgive Socrates if
he looks like a sheep while I am speaking
shamefully of him, as I intend to do.
But the truth is that his lectures were
much less successful than were those of
his wife Xantippe. There were, it is true,
many Americans who had heard of
Socrates, whose name is painted up on the
walls of many of their libraries, and these
came to look at him. But he is not a great
spectacle to behold, and when he spoke
they found he was not interested in any
of the things which they desired to know,
such as the art of succeeding in the world
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>and the other things which the sophists
profess to teach. Whereas Xantippe
spoke to the women, praising women and
declaring them to be the moral leaders of
the community, and demanding for them
the chief voice in ordering the affairs of
the city.’</p>

<p>‘Go on to the end, my good Agathon,’
said I, ‘for I know you will not be able
to sleep unless you also tell them how I
came to see the Middle West.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was in my mind to
tell them that also. Xantippe’s best
lecture, which she gave more than two
hundred times, was on the management
of the home and the husband, and in
this lecture poor Socrates was made to
assist. For in no other way could he hope
to see the most powerful and strange
region of America, which in their dialect
they term the Middle West. It was also
the only way he could ever pay his passage
back to Athens. Many of the women who
had read the teachings of a local sage,
Emerson, spoke kindly to Socrates and
inquired his angle on the beautiful, as
though he had been Euclid. But Xantippe
showed him to them as an example of the
mismanaged home, blaming the spirit of
Athens which did not give her authority
enough, and warning the women of
America to take care lest their menfolk
should become too much like Socrates.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>But this danger they did not seem to
think imminent.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed,’ said Phaelon, ‘you endured
much, Socrates.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed he did, for Xantippe praised
the women of America and the women
of America praised Xantippe, and with
each exchange of flattery they became
more boastful and reckless. At all such
gatherings the Americans, especially the
women, expect to hear themselves praised.
Indeed, that people is like a Persian
monarch, for all who approach and
speak to them desire gifts from them and
endeavour to recommend themselves by
flattery. Before half her tour was over
Xantippe was openly saying that there
were no truer lovers of the good than
her audience in the whole world, and that
they did quite right to be well satisfied
with themselves and to have nothing to
do with humility and not to believe it
possible they were mistaken in what they
thought to be the proper objects of the
soul’s desire. And in particular she praised
them for their refusal to believe there
was anything requiring deep thought in
philosophy or in public life, saying that
people so wise and good did right to trust
to their first impressions of everything.
Then she told them that the idea that
there was anything difficult and mysterious
in life was only fit for people
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>like Socrates, who were unfit for anything
but philosophy. And she explained
that the reason that more thinking was
done in Europe, and that there was more
philosophical discussion there, was that
people had so much time on their hands
while waiting for their passports to the
United States. For these passports, she
said, are as long in coming as a conclusion
is in the chatterings of Socrates and his
friends, and the Europeans spend the
time in philosophy hoping to learn
resignation and the acceptance of one’s
destiny. Because more and more often
the passport is in the end refused, and
nowhere more often than among the
Greeks. She is already full with engagements
for such addresses for the next
two years.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I am glad I went
there. For as the silent butt of Xantippe’s
scorn I was free to turn my attention
wholly to the strange places we visited.
And in particular I satisfied to the full
my desire to see and study a Woman’s
Club, than which I had not been able to
imagine anything more unnatural.’</p>

<p>‘Tell us,’ said they both, ‘about a
Woman’s Club.’</p>

<p>‘If I did,’ said I with a smile, ‘I do
not think you would believe me. But you
would say that in America I had indulged
myself too freely in potent distillations of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>the tail of the cock, and spoke the thing
which was not.’</p>

<p>‘Oh no, Socrates,’ exclaimed Phaelon,
‘for I have often heard the Americans
spoken of before, and I know about the
women who rule the men in the valley of
the great river. The river is the Amazon,
the greatest of all American rivers, and
the inhabitants are called Amazons. Do
I not understand rightly?’</p>

<p>‘Not quite rightly,’ put in Agathon,
‘for the Amazon River is in another
America altogether, and the chief rivers
where Socrates was are the Mississippi
and the Missouri, named, I believe, after
the two first women who tamed their
menfolk, the one her husband, the other
her father.’</p>

<p>‘You should also tell them, Agathon,
should you not, that the method of
domination is different, and that, whereas
the Amazons triumphed by skill in arms
and valour, the American women triumph
by something more lasting and stronger
than physical force. They have managed
to make the men believe that they are
superior and ought to be obeyed.’</p>

<p>‘How so?’ said Lysis. ‘Is it in fact
true that they are superior?’</p>

<p>‘My answer will surprise you perhaps,’
I replied, ‘but I will answer boldly and
say, Yes, if it is a better thing to be alive
than dead, which, as I have said elsewhere,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>is not a thing we can decide. But it is
certain that in America the women are
more alive than the men. For the men
work so hard that they kill themselves,
and are so busy while living that they
have no time for the proper business of
life.’</p>

<p>‘They must work, must they not,’ said
Lysis, ‘in order to obtain the leisure for
philosophy and public life, for I have
heard that they have no slaves, and no
class beneath the men, and if they did
not work they would starve.’</p>

<p>‘Listen,’ I said, ‘and learn how little
you yet understand about the character
of this extraordinary people, the most
extraordinary, as I believe, that has yet
appeared upon the face of the earth. For
if you see men engaging of their own will
in the most heavy and degrading employments
of commerce, long after they have
accumulated for themselves and their
families not a sufficiency only but an
extreme abundance both of those things
that may be called necessities and those
that are plainly luxuries, can anything be
said of such men except that they are
either ignoble in their own souls and
ignorant of the true nature of what is
good, or else that they are acting in
obedience to the orders of some tyrant,
and are, in fact, not freemen at all, but
slaves?’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span></p>
<p>‘Assuredly,’ they said, ‘they must be
one or the other.’</p>

<p>‘Or both,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘that was well added
by Agathon, for we must not forget the
influence of religion which even tyrants
can modify only through slow degrees.
But as religion is the manifestation of the
soul’s nature, if we find the religion of
these people compelling them to lead the
life they do, shall we not justly decide that
there is in their souls an ignorance of what
is truly good? Now I say that in religion
they are followers of Pythagoras without
rightly understanding his doctrine, and
that they are to be numbered among the
worshippers of the Sacred Number.’</p>

<p>‘Without doubt,’ said Lysis, ‘the Sacred
Number is Number One, which has long
been the favourite among mankind.’</p>

<p>‘You are wrong,’ said I, ‘and you must
not think that the Americans are in general
more selfish than other men. I think
that the opposite is the case, and that nowhere
on earth, not even among the
Athenians, is there so much fellow-feeling
and willingness to help combined with so
much competitiveness and so great a desire
to excel in contests. No, the number is the
symbol <em>n</em>, or whatever you choose that
denotes the greatest quantity. For they
pay a most special and devout worship to
a strange god whom they call Progress,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>and whose will they declare it to be that
there shall be made as great a number
as possible of all objects that men make,
but principally of the machines that are
called “autos” or “cars,” which move men
quickly from place to place.’</p>

<p>‘It is often a fine thing to go quickly
from place to place,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and in addition
the control of these machines gives great
joy to the Americans. So that it may well
happen that they will live altogether in
their cars. For at present they must endeavour
to find some place in the city
where they can leave their car while they
go to an office, and he who is successful
in doing this is said to have parked his
car, and is held in honour. And as among
many peoples a youth is not granted the
dignity of manhood until he has slain an
enemy, so among the Americans must he
first prove himself by parking a car.’</p>

<p>‘They would become men sooner if
theirs was the old test of slaying a man,
would they not?’ said Lysis, ‘for that
requires but little skill in controlling cars
and a stout heart is alone sufficient.’</p>

<p>‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘and it is my
belief that the present state of affairs
cannot endure and that to park will soon
be beyond the wit of any save a true
philosopher, who will guard his place by
his presence upon it night and day. So
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>did Diogenes preserve his claim to the
spot where he parked his tub. For the
truth can be considered in any place, as
I observed to the traffic-policemen in New
York, who objected to my examination
of Glaucon in Broadway. But for the
ordinary Americans, I think, there is no
solution except the abolition of offices
and the transaction of all business in
cars. They will equip their cars as offices
and drive from their homes to the market-place.
These car-offices will enjoy
all the space that is at present filled with
buildings. When their cars are so fitted
as to take all the papers of their business,
they can work freely on the journeys out
and home, dictating to their clerks as they
go. Nor will it much surprise me if the
private home is abolished to give place to
the residential car so that the American
soul may find a final happiness, and men
may be born in cars and live and wed and
die in them, and be cremated in the
engine, without ever having to put a foot
on the ground. And so will arise a new
race to take the place of the centaurs of
old. For, as the centaurs were half men
and half horses, so will these be half men
and half motor-cars. And it would seem
that of such a race the natural sustenance
would be alcohol. So, at least, the future
appears to me, or do you not think so,
Agathon?’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></p>
<p>‘No’, he said.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I replied, ‘you may be right.
It may happen that everybody will be
run over in the next few years, which
will disprove all our prophecies and
speculations.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is much more
likely.’</p>

<p>‘But I think,’ I continued, ‘that we will
say that whether or not the Americans
remain in their cars, we for our part will
have nothing to do with them, but rather
regard them as a vexatious interruption
of right living, and in particular as a
great distraction in the search for truth.
And we will refuse to sit ourselves down
as the Americans love to do and start the
machinery and follow whithersoever the
car leads. For do you notice how we have
wandered out of our course, as generally
happens with these machines, and have
quite forgotten the original thread of
our discourse and the question why the
Americans worship this strange god
Progress, making an incantation of the
name and chanting it as if it were an
explanation of the way they spend their
lives?’</p>

<p>‘Well, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘most
gods are strange, and if they were not
strange we should be doubtful if they
were gods.’</p>

<p>‘True,’ I said, ‘but there is a strangeness
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>which helps the divine part of the
soul and a strangeness which oppresses it.
If we consider the past fortunes of America
we shall see how the worship of theirs
grew up. And, to begin with, are not the
Americans right when they say that
theirs is a great country?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘it is certainly
vast.’</p>

<p>‘And rich in the wealth of its agriculture
and minerals and so offering a fair
field for endeavour and great rewards for
enterprise and skill?’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly,’ he said.</p>

<p>‘Then we must remember that the
Americans are for the most part the descendants
of those who left Europe as
poor men. And this is true whether we
are considering those original Americans
of three hundred years ago, or those who
went there within the last century, after
the others had freed themselves from the
tyrant George.’</p>

<p>‘Was this George a heavy tyrant?’ asked
Lysis, ‘for tyrant is a harsh name, and
I have read that the English themselves
were always well pleased with him.’</p>

<p>‘I must confess,’ I said, ‘that he does
not appeal much to me. Few men have
less resembled the philosopher King. It
is plain that reason was weak in his soul,
and that he was narrow and obstinate and
full of craftiness, and that the English
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>only loved him as a check upon their lesser
overlords and as the chief of their nation
in their wars with the French, which continued
all his reign. And though he did
not actually oppress the Americans it was
not of advantage to them to be his subjects,
nor a thing to which they had of
necessity to submit.’</p>

<p>Here Lysis looked up, and said: ‘Tell
me, Socrates, do you think they regret
it now, and that they will soon return to
their allegiance to King George’s house,
for an English lady told me that it would
happen very quickly, the revolt having
ended in the muddle America is in
now.’</p>

<p>‘That word “muddle” is a favourite
with the English,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘And rightly,’ said I, ‘since our words
are to designate the things among which
we live. I know it is a common view
among the English that the Americans
will abandon this attempt of theirs to
found a new country, and that after this
present President Coolidge they will not
elect another, but will all pack up and
return to the countries from which they
originally came, regretting the increasingly
disastrous experiment and going back
meekly to their respective kings and
rulers, and leaving America to the Red
Indians and the Buffalos, whose political
life runs more easily. But, for my part,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>I reject this opinion, and believe that the
Americans will persevere.’</p>

<p>‘I think so, too,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘And so it is important to consider this
religious view of theirs about Progress.
I said that most of the Americans went
there in the last hundred years and found
abundant rewards for work. The great
need of everybody was that the total
wealth should be increased and the country
rendered fruitful, or in their phrase
“opened up.” This real occupation of
America was the great and absorbing
business of the Americans, who were not
troubled with strong foreign enemies.
Their ablest citizens devoted themselves
to the pursuit of wealth, and received the
public admiration because in general, at
that time, the man who enriched himself
enriched also everyone else. We must
remember that the Americans came from
countries where there was a ruling caste
to which they did not belong, and from
the first they so framed the constitution
that it should be clear that the ministers
were the servants of the people. While
the independence was new and precarious,
interest and prestige still followed those
who transacted the business of the people,
but when the novelty had vanished the
attention of everybody was turned to
developing the estate they had won. No
one was willing to be a minister without
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>the wealth and dignity of European
rulers, and political life attracted not the
best but the less successful and able of
the community, and ceased to fire the
ambition of the young. For the life of the
country was altogether in its economic
development and not in its political
affairs.’</p>

<p>Then Agathon said: ‘And should you
not also say that political life was made
harder in America than elsewhere?’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly, we should,’ I answered,
‘for the truth is that this same worship
of size and numbers that we spoke of
before has nowhere hurt the Americans
more than in the ordering of their political
life. Do you remember, Lysis, hearing of
a discussion over the ideal State and how
many men it was settled should form the
State, and what was the number beyond
which it was unsafe for a State to grow?’</p>

<p>‘Five thousand and forty,’ he said, ‘is
the figure Plato gives.’</p>

<p>‘And will it surprise you to learn that
the Americans considerably exceed that
figure?’</p>

<p>‘I had suspected as much,’ he replied,
‘from the crowds of them that visit
Athens, for they must leave some of their
number behind to hold the country, and
there must be very many thousands of
them to provide all those audiences for
Xantippe. And, after all, nobody ever
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>quite does what Plato says, not even when
he makes you, Socrates, the mouthpiece
of his views. I will guess two hundred
thousand.’</p>

<p>‘And what will you say when I tell
you that you are yet short of the real
number, and that, not to make a long
story, the Americans are far more plentiful
than the subjects of the Great King
himself? There are more than one hundred
million Americans.’</p>

<p>After a long pause, Phaelon said rather
faintly: ‘Why, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘That,’ I answered, ‘is known only to
the Gods, whose ways are not the ways
of mortals, but certainly they have made
this enormous number of Americans and
have not stopped yet.’</p>

<p>‘No wonder so many of them come to
Europe,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘But listen,’ I said, ‘for the most extraordinary
thing is yet to come. What
will you think of such people when I tell
you that they endeavour to live all
under one government and to share one
Assembly?’</p>

<p>‘Socrates,’ said Lysis, sitting up and
looking me straight in the face, ‘I do not
believe you.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_II">BOOK II</h2>
</div>


<p>I then explained to them as well as I
could about the forty-eight States that
make up the United States, making it
plain that each State had its own government,
but that there was also the Federal
Government, which had authority everywhere.
And this they understood readily
enough, for the notion of a federation of
communities was familiar to them. I
told them briefly of how originally there
were North and South, and of the Civil
War, which was fought to establish
the ascendancy of the Federal Government,
and I made it plain that that
ascendancy had grown greater to this
day and that the State Governments had
become more and more unimportant.
And I did not hide from them that the
choosing of parties and policies for the
central assembly became less and less a
thing over which ordinary citizens had
any control at all, and that nowhere else
in the world did the members so chosen
receive less respect or less truly represent
the people electing them. ‘Yet,’ I said,
‘the Americans are extremely attached to
their Central Government, far more than
they are to the governments of their own
States.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p>
<p>Lysis pondered for some moments on
these things, and then said: ‘Was this a
great civil war?’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘we Greeks have
a high standard for such wars, when
Greek meets Greek. But for barbarians
it was a stern struggle.’</p>

<p>‘And terrible in its results,’ I said, ‘as
you will agree if you are of my opinion
that that Civil War was the most disastrous
thing in the history of the Americans,
if it fastened on their necks so great
a mockery of popular government as is
their central government.’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly they would not have fought
for it if they had foreknown the future,’
he said.</p>

<p>‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘most of them
consider that it was the turning point in
their history, and they have made their
chief hero of the statesman who saved the
Union.’</p>

<p>‘Why?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Because being one has made them big
and strong, or rather big and rich. Because
the central government made commerce
easier between men in different States,
and thus assisted the great development
of the country which has marked the
years since the Civil War. In particular
the victory secured the market of the
defeated States for the manufacturers of
the North. It is necessary to remember
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>these things, for in America it is the
manufacturers and their wives who decide
what other people shall think, for among
their other products they manufacture
public opinion.’</p>

<p>‘Come, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘you
forget your old friends the preachers.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I find the preachers
have great influence. Yet they only succeed
in those matters where the manufacturers
support them, though the union of
the two is irresistible.’</p>

<p>‘What would happen,’ asked Lysis, ‘if
the preachers wished one thing and the
manufacturers another?’</p>

<p>‘That seldom happens,’ I said. ‘For
the majority of preachers have never
been known to wage a campaign against
any activities that are thought desirable
by the men of commerce, such as the
prostitution of the soul which is called
salesmanship, or the concentration upon
business success which is called “making
good.” But they attack those pleasures
of ordinary men, like gambling and drinking,
which the manufacturers will support
them in attacking. For I verily believe
they think it worse to be a drunkard than
to sell one’s soul for gold. Nor is it difficult
to understand how they have reached
even such absurdities as this.’</p>

<p>‘We are listening,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘Why, they hold that some sins might
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>unfit a man to serve the Gods, and in
particular the God Progress, for they do
not value all the gods equally, and to
Bacchus they will not agree to pay any
honours at all. Now, to those who think
like that, a man will seem not wholly
bad though the reasonable part of his
soul be subordinated to a shameless desire
for pelf, because such a man can play his
part, and, indeed, be a leader, in that
industrial life, walking calmly among the
whirring wheels and running the machines
whose buzz they consider a perpetual song
of praise to Progress. But a drunkard
cannot safely assist at these services.’</p>

<p>‘He might,’ said Agathon, ‘if he would
not mind being caught up in the wheels
and immolated as a sacrifice, but I can
well believe he sees enough things going
round as it is without going into factories
to see more.’</p>

<p>‘So the manufacturers,’ I resumed,
‘were strongly in favour of this Civil
War, and the preachers were with them.
And these two parties make up the minds
of millions of people.’</p>

<p>‘It must be fine fun, Socrates,’ said
Lysis, ‘to make up so many minds like
that.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed they find it so, yet they must
do it with care, for in many matters they
do not have the power of making the
Americans think absolutely anything they
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>please, but only the power of making one
out of several opinions prevail. For they
see the American soul like a ship with
full-bellied sails, going to one of several
harbours, according as the winds and currents
drive it, and these manufacturers
and these preachers can decide on the harbour
and drive that ship before their
mighty blasts and blowings, scattering
away all contrary winds.’</p>

<p>At this Lysis looked very thoughtful,
and then said slowly: ‘If they have indeed
so much power it must be that there
is some correspondence in the American
soul, and that the manufacturers and the
preachers are strong in the national life
because the manufacturing part of the
soul and the preaching part of the soul
is strong inside the ordinary American.
For so you have explained to me that
the constitution of a State is reflected
in the constitution of the souls of its
citizens.’</p>

<p>‘My excellent Lysis,’ I said, ‘you have
well stated a difficult truth, and much of
the power of these people comes from the
fact that an American thinks he ought to
listen to a manufacturer because he himself,
in his own soul, thinks highly of
manufacturing, and will not listen to a
philosopher, thinking meanly of philosophy.
So also he admires a preacher,
though such are seldom humble and many,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>indeed, go about bursting with presumption
and acting as though they were
wiser and better than all other men. But
there is a further explanation of their
power. These manufacturers and preachers
are organized and have the use of
money, so that they can pay men to write
and repeat the same things over and over
again, till the Americans, from seeing and
hearing them so often, assume that they
are true.’</p>

<p>Then Lysis said: ‘Has the strengthening
of this power, Socrates, been the
worst of the evils that resulted from the
Civil War?’</p>

<p>‘Many and heavy have been the ills,’
said I, ‘resulting from that contest and
the views dictated by the North.’</p>

<p>‘There are those,’ Agathon said, ‘who
say that all that has happened would have
happened without the Civil War.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but we cannot pretend
to know that. And so I am content to
look at what has taken place and to trace
how events have helped each other without
following such writers into the marshes
and bogs of hypothetical imaginings. Now
it seems to me that the Civil War gave
the death stroke to their political life, for
it made the central government supreme
over the states at the same time as it
made the interests of commerce predominant
over the central government.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span></p>
<p>‘Explain to us, Socrates,’ they said, as
I was expecting they would.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘you can easily understand
that the war strengthened the central
government, giving it new duties and
new powers, and fixing all men’s eyes
upon it, and accustoming them to think
its needs and acts of greater importance
than the concerns of their own localities.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘And if that very war is in support of
the government’s claim to authority and
is waged successfully, must not the prestige
of that government be established,
and that of the smaller governments
diminished?’</p>

<p>‘It must,’ they assented.</p>

<p>‘Now, do you think,’ I asked, ‘that an
ordinary man will be able to understand
or even to follow questions of policy,
especially when he is far away from the
place of government and is absorbed in
the pursuit of his private gain?’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly not.’</p>

<p>‘And that in proportion as America has
increased in size and wealth each citizen
has less and less felt able to take part in
the government, or even to weigh and
judge of the opinions of the other citizens
when there are so many of them. For
most citizens know only a small part of
their enormous country. And so most of
them do not follow the questions of the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>public interest and act a part in political
life, which has become in their country a
trade like any other. And as all traders
must keep the goodwill of the public,
so especially must those who provide administration.
But the need for goodwill
is not a great check in any trade where
competition is weak, and two concerns
have a monopoly and can sell what article
they like and call it administration. Furthermore,
this war left strong feelings
so that men stood firmly by their parties,
and it kept floating in the air many fine
names like “American” and “Republican,”
and “Union,” in which the men of commerce
who desired to run the government
could dress themselves up. For
it is difficult for such men themselves
to invent names which arouse emotion,
and yet they do not dare to call things
by their true names and show themselves
as they are. But the memories of the
war made a grand cloak for their business
purposes.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘I am beginning to see
how their power was riveted on the necks
of the Americans, when they had all those
powerful words at their disposal.’</p>

<p>‘At the very time,’ I said, ‘that they
were making those railways of theirs and
were determined to control the public
treasury. And, moreover, does it not
follow that power will belong to whoever
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>can persuade the Americans that popular
opinion is with him and that, the larger
the number and the area, the greater the
power of those who are rich and can pay
for propaganda?’</p>

<p>‘What exactly is propaganda?’ said
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘It is, with advertising, the chief curse
of the Americans, and may, indeed, be
described as political advertising. For
never in the history of the world has there
been so wonderful a field for the
skilful persuader as are these modern
democracies, where all the people can
read and very few of them can think. All
are secretly uncertain of themselves, and
in America more so than elsewhere, and
look to see what their neighbours are
thinking and desire to be counted among
the majority. For nothing is stronger in
America than this desire to belong to the
majority and to say “We think” or “We
feel.” And it is natural for business men
to be timid, for their business depends
upon the good opinion of others, and so
it is that business men very easily become
hypocrites. I believe myself the American
men do not mind dying since it means
joining the great majority.’</p>

<p>‘And one ever growing greater,’ added
Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but they will not enjoy
Hades, where time is not money any more,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>and no one but Charon has any wealth,
so that the most forward salesmanship
will be in vain.’</p>

<p>‘Poor Americans,’ said Lysis, ‘they will
feel very lost.’</p>

<p>‘They will understand giving a sop to
Cerberus,’ said Agathon; ‘it will be like
their own politics. And they will like
the crowds.’</p>

<p>‘Come, my good friends,’ I said, ‘cease
to tarry with the Americans in Hades,
and let me resume my tale of their earthly
misfortunes.’</p>

<p>‘Pray do so, Socrates,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘Then I will say,’ I resumed, ‘that the
second great disaster of that war has been
this: that by the mechanism of the
Constitution (to use a phrase often in
their mouths, by which they mean that
the laws made for other times and conditions
produce different and strange
results to-day), the opinions and ideas of
one part of the country become the laws
that are to be obeyed by all the parts.
For it is the people of the North spreading
westward to the great rivers that have
built up in the great agricultural plains
the growing empire of the Middle West,
of which we spoke earlier, where the
preachers and manufacturers have most
power of all, having secured the ear of the
women. Except for an accident once or
twice the same party has been in power
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>ever since the war, and that is the party
of the North and the manufacturers, and
the South have hardly more voice in the
central government than if they were
frankly governed as subjects.’</p>

<p>‘What sort of people were these in the
South?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘The best of them were the very best
sort of barbarians,’ I replied, ‘and the
nearest to civilization of all the Americans.’</p>

<p>‘But they are from Ethiopia, are they
not?’ said Lysis, ‘for I have heard men
whistling in the streets of Athens songs
in which the singer praises the blackness
of his lover’s or mother’s face and these
songs are what men sing in these Southern
States.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘can you not guess the
explanation, for indeed it is not difficult?
These Southerners had black slaves. Indeed,
the war was largely caused by that.’</p>

<p>‘How,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why, among barbarians it is not natural
that one man should serve another,
for all are slaves by nature. And, in general
all are slaves to one despot, as among
the Persians. Now in America the northern
barbarians were angry that the
Southerners were served by Ethiopians,
whom they declared to be in all respects
the equals of the whites. And when they
won the doubtful struggle, they wrote
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>in their Constitution that that was so.
For they believe they can change the
nature of things by changing that Constitution
of theirs. But, indeed, they have
made much less difference than they think,
and freed individuals rather than the race
itself, and the chief part of the Ethiopians,
and, as I believe, the happiest, are those
serving in the fields and households of
the South. For, if you do not pursue the
life of reason as only the few can do,
it is better to serve a man pursuing,
even faintly, that life than to pass your
days in the fever of petty trading. But
these Northerners came from aristocratic
countries where they had suffered the
insolence of aristocrats, and did not understand
rightly about personal dignity.
For they are filled with pride against personal
service, being full of self-assertion
towards individuals and of slavishness
towards public opinion. Whereas, rightly,
a man should not think himself lowered
by any useful service to a good man,
supposing he should meet with one, but
should feel it extreme degradation to hand
over his soul to the keeping of the crowd.
Or does it not seem so to you?’</p>

<p>‘Why, yes, Socrates,’ answered
Agathon; ‘I can see these Northerners
were the most unsuitable people possible
to have a voice in the ordering of the
South.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span></p>
<p>‘However,’ I said, ‘it has happened
now, and the Southerners were all rendered
poor by the exhaustion of the
struggle, so that sheer necessity has
changed the character of southern life.
But they still continue to show great
understanding, for people who are not
Greeks. They measure things by other
standards than quantity, and they do not
think meanly of leisure. But their
glories they have left upon the field of
battle.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘and though they
were able to prevent the North from
dictating to them how they should live,
they have been unable to do the great
work they were needed to do. For
nothing else could check the Middle West
when that grew strong.’</p>

<p>‘I agree with you, Agathon,’ I said,
‘and now the standards of the manufacturers
spread steadily through the
whole country. That was the third disaster,
and there still remains a fourth.’</p>

<p>‘Tell us, then,’ said Lysis, ‘about the
fourth disaster which, as it seems, this
unfortunate Civil War has caused.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘did we not say that it
had fixed the attention of everybody upon
the central or federal government?’</p>

<p>‘We did.’</p>

<p>‘And made them cease to think of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>themselves as members of this state or
that, but rather as Americans.’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly.’</p>

<p>‘But if the North had failed to impose
unity, not the Southern States only but
in all probability the Northern ones also
would have been virtually independent of
each other, and only joined to one another
in some kind of League such as
we Greeks are used to. North America
would have resembled South America, but
I think there would have been even more
complete peace among the North American
States than among those of South
America.’</p>

<p>‘Certainly,’ Agathon said, ‘they live
with the Canadians in great and striking
amity. But they do not believe their condition
would have been one to envy.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘probably all sorts of other
misfortunes would have visited them. But
they cannot really expect anything else,
it being the nature of barbarians to incur
disasters. We, however, are considering
their actual ills to-day. Can they deny
that they would have been saved from
that glorification of strength which is a
fatal temptation to great and powerful
peoples, and never more than when they
are unchecked by the presence of strong
neighbours?’</p>

<p>‘They cannot deny it, Socrates,’ said
Agathon.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span></p>
<p>‘As it is, must we not say the size of
their political unit has done great harm
to the American soul? For every number
that is sufficiently large is to them a
magical number, and the Americans come
easily to believe that everything they think
or do must be right because there are so
many of them thinking or doing it. And
most of all do they tend to think that they
cannot have anything to learn from
foreign nations because America is
bigger.’</p>

<p>‘Are there really far more Americans
than other people?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘there are, in fact, far more
Chinamen than there are Americans—but
they say that there is another test of
superiority besides size.’</p>

<p>‘And what is that?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Speed.’</p>

<p>‘How?’</p>

<p>‘The speed,’ I explained, ‘with which
the size is attained. And they say they
are greatly superior to the Chinese in
speed of development, and this claim I
believe to be true.’</p>

<p>Lysis nodded his head slowly from side
to side and said: ‘Indeed, Socrates, the
ills affecting the Americans seem to be
many and heavy.’</p>

<p>‘But worse,’ I said, ‘is to come, unless
they will change altogether and abandon
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>their pride and listen meekly to the
philosophers.’</p>

<p>‘How, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘they are doomed to frustration,
for the opportunities of wealth
are not infinite. And at first it was reasonable
to encourage men of business that
the resources of the land might be organized,
but when that has been done
there begins a struggle among the people
for the largest share of the resources.
And, in the end, that phase also passes and
the game is played out and the different
resources are controlled by different
groups of men. No newcomers can fight
against them, and the young men must
be content to serve these groups, finding
their reward in promotion and pay as
though they were soldiers, as in a manner
they are. And these promotions also
grow rigid and mechanical in time. And
great wealth is then only to be won in
some strange and lucky way, and the
battle for the market grows keener, and
the cleverest men devote themselves to
what they call progressive advertising, and
the “Problem of Salesmanship.”’</p>

<p>‘What is progressive advertising?’
asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘It is arousing the widest possible sense
of want.’</p>

<p>‘What is the Problem of Salesmanship?’
asked Phaelon.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p>
<p>‘It is how best to mislead people about
their own desires; persuading them to
give their time and strength and money
to obtain something they do not at all
need, thus making them the instruments
of your private gain.’</p>

<p>Phaelon at once demanded: ‘And do
they kill the salesman who does this?’</p>

<p>‘By the pillars of Hercules, no! they
use the gold of the public treasury to
teach it in their schools, for they think
that all men should learn to prey upon
one another in this way, deceiving and
doing harm to one another with their
tongues.’</p>

<p>‘It seems to me, Socrates,’ said Lysis,
‘that these people spend their energies in
many strange and doubtful ways.’</p>

<p>‘They do, indeed,’ I assented.</p>

<p>‘And they have so much energy,’ said
Agathon.</p>

<p>‘It is stupendous,’ I said. ‘When I
went to Niagara Falls an American said
it made him sad that so much power was
going to waste that might be made productive.
And I replied that I felt in that
manner about the vast energies of the people,
for if they could be harnessed to the
problems of philosophy much knowledge
might result. For if we could have the
energy pure without any of the American
nature fixing its character, armed with so
powerful a tool we could clear up many
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>doubtful speculations. But he seemed to
think I wanted everybody to busy themselves
with serious questions, though the
thoughts of such people would, of course,
be useless, and he recommended me to
take my proposition to an editor of a
magazine, for he said that he “had a
hunch philosophy might catch on, seeing
the success of those other word-puzzle
crazes.”’</p>

<p>‘It was lucky for him, Socrates,’ exclaimed
Lysis ‘that you are so patient with
fools. Did you reason with him?’</p>

<p>‘I attempted it,’ I replied. ‘But he said
he had no time to reason and that if he
once began he would never “make good.”
And in that, at least, I agreed with him.’</p>

<p>‘And you were not angry with him at
all, O excellent Socrates,’ exclaimed
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Pity,’ I answered, ‘and not anger, was
what I felt, for I knew that he had not
a free mind of his own, but was, like
most things in that country, the result of
what they proudly call “mass production
manufacture.”’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_III">BOOK III</h2>
</div>


<p>‘Then tell me, Socrates, do you consider
the Americans to be free?’</p>

<p>‘Why, no,’ I said, ‘they are the least
free of all the peoples of the earth. For
they live under a tyrant, and one not a
whit more merciful than was Procrustes.
For Procrustes forced all over whom he
could obtain power to become standardized,
fitting them to that bed of his
and lopping off the feet of those that
were too long, but racking and stretching
the limbs of those that were too short, so
that the bodies of all should conform to
the same mould. But the tyrant who rules
the Americans—or all whom he can
master—is worse than Procrustes, for he
seeks to fashion and control not the body,
as is the way of ordinary tyrants, but the
soul itself. He standardizes their souls
wherever he is strong.’</p>

<p>‘Truly a terrible tyrant,’ said Lysis;
‘who and what is he?’</p>

<p>‘His title,’ I said, ‘is Public Opinion,
or the Opinion of the Majority, and he is
the offspring of Propaganda.’</p>

<p>‘And why,’ said Lysis, ‘do you call that
opinion by so harsh a name? For it
seems to me that it is more sensible to be
ruled by the opinion of the majority than
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>by the whim of a single tyrant like most
barbarians, or the opinion of the minority
like the English.’</p>

<p>‘Come,’ I replied, ‘and let us examine
this question together. For does it not
seem to you probable that men can be
ruled by opinion in many ways and that
some ways may well be good but others
bad?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ he said.</p>

<p>‘And that there will be a great difference
between opinions, since some will
really belong to the people who hold them
and be indeed a part of themselves, while
others will be forced upon them from outside
and will be repeated and acted upon
through fear, and so far from being an
expression of the soul of him who utters
them, they will act as a great blanket
stifling the breath of the soul and killing
it and making the man an automaton
and a slave and not a reasonable being
at all.’</p>

<p>‘Certainly,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘we will leave for the
present the discussion of the English soul,
being careful to return to it later, and that
for several reasons. For in the first place
it is so odd and extraordinary that it
arouses our sense of wonder and we contemplate
it without effort, and secondly
because it is always necessary to consider
the English when we consider the Americans,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>so great is the effect of the two
races upon each other. But now we will
look as closely as we can into the nature
of this tyrant, who, as I verily believe,
is the chief evil from which the Americans
suffer. And I think I shall lead
you to agree with me when we have seen
how their past history has made them into
a prey for such a monster.’</p>

<p>‘Explain it in your own way,’ said
Agathon, ‘so that eventually you come to
the point.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘I wish to approach this
matter delicately, treading carefully like
a scout at night and not rushing forward
with great shouts, for I do not know how
my words may be repeated and printed
out wrongly in the news-sheets of the
Americans. For the Americans have long
ears, and hear everything that is said of
them. They are sensitive people and
restive when criticized, and if I speak
bluntly, as I generally do, there will be
many who will refuse hereafter to pay
attention not to me only, but to Plato and
to all the Greeks. And yet it is among
the Greeks that they find those who can
teach them most and give them the greatest
benefits, explaining to them the principles
of right living and, in particular,
the necessity for examining our notions
and for being cautious about declaring
that we know things, and, above all, for
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>being tolerant of disagreement and discussion.’</p>

<p>‘The men of Athens,’ said Agathon
slyly, ‘have not always shown you a
proper tolerance, Socrates, and they are
your own countrymen. How, then, can
you be surprised that the Business Men’s
Luncheon Club of Hootsville, Iowa, was
unwilling to hear your doubts, for I know
that that experience is what is in your
mind.’</p>

<p>‘A singular power indeed,’ I exclaimed,
‘has been given to you, dear Agathon, of
reading the minds of your friends. But
I assure you that there is in my mind at
present no such personal recollection. I
have only the power to think of one thing
at a time and I am now thinking that we
shall certainly never finish our inquiry if
you keep laughing to yourself in this way
in order to make Lysis curious over the
incidents of my lecturing tour.’</p>

<p>Here Lysis intervened in a charming
manner, and said to me: ‘Let him tell
us the story, Socrates, for I can see he is
dying to do so, and I will confess that I
want to hear it. And when he has told
it he shall keep quiet, and you shall unfold
to us the nature of this Public Opinion.
And if he thinks he can make me doubt
the wisdom of your talk I will tell him at
once that he is mistaken, and that we are
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>only listening to him as to a sort of
clown.’</p>

<p>‘So they spoke of Socrates in Hootsville,’
said Agathon, who then pulled from
his robe what I saw were news cuttings.
I remembered the great collection
of such cuttings that Xantippe had made,
and sent back with some little malice for
the Athenians to read, especially of cuttings
referring in an outspoken manner to
myself.</p>

<p>When he had refreshed his memory
with these, he turned to Lysis and
said:—</p>

<p>‘You must understand, Lysis, that our
friend here has a different view of time
from that held by the Americans. For
he lives in a leisurely way and is never
hurried even in the pursuit of wisdom.
But the Americans are hurried in everything
they do. They are hurried into the
world and they are hurried out again, and
all the time it is a rush, all crying “Step
along there, please!” and the young applying
to the old their proverb, “Pass
right along down the car.” No one here
has ever told Socrates to step along. Now
in nothing are they more hurried than in
the pursuit of wisdom and truth. Most
of them do not join in the pursuit at all,
saying they have no time to spare from
the pursuit of wealth, but some will give
twenty minutes in the week at a luncheon.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>And it was at one of these luncheons that
Socrates spoke.’</p>

<p>‘Is it possible both to eat and to talk
in twenty minutes?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘The luncheon lasts a full hour,’ replied
Agathon, ‘but you must understand that
men so busy have much to do in that hour.
In the first place they must all keep
friends and indulge in friendly feelings
for which there is no time in the rest of
the day. And so they wear the names by
which their close friends call them on a
piece of paper on their garments, so that
each friend may remember the special
name of the other. The branch of commerce
to which each one is devoted is also
printed on the piece of paper or card, for
the Americans understand that friendship
consists in the exchange of services. And
for this reason they are careful to have
only one of each calling in these clubs.
But it is furthermore necessary to feel
cheerful and light-hearted and to produce
that in the hour is not easy. Least of all
to men who have been deluded into denying
themselves those fermented beverages
which alone can banish the anxieties of
commerce. So these men sing songs as
they eat, rising between the mouthfuls
to sing praises of their club or their town,
or sometimes to sing tenderly of their
mothers, of whom the food before them
has caused them to think with longing.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>Furthermore, there are announcements to
be made and visitors and their callings to
be proclaimed. For the Americans never
forget their proverb that friendship leads
to business. So you will understand
Socrates hardly had time to make his
points, and, whether or not it was that no
one understood him because to save time
they had made him begin while the sweet
was being served with much clatter, yet it
must be admitted that the paper reported
it as “confessedly a disappointment after
last week’s slap-up talk on personal contacts
in business.”’</p>

<p>‘Poor Socrates!’ said Lysis; ‘did no one
call yours a slap-up talk?’</p>

<p>‘I am afraid not,’ I said, ‘but then I
said things they were not very eager to
hear, and even before I spoke there had
been much question whether I should be
asked.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘many doubted the
propriety of asking him, after a local
minister had declared that our friend was
not only a sort of dago but that he was
the lowest of crawling creatures, a man
who had knocked his own home town,
meaning that he had criticized many of
the actions of the Athenians. But another
minister said that he had something in
him and was a prominent citizen back in
Athens, and had secured a wide publicity
for his slogan “Boost Knowledge,”
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>though he was mistaken in thinking that
Socrates had used that actual expression.’</p>

<p>‘But what was the address about?’
Lysis demanded.</p>

<p>I answered him: ‘It was about the
place of liberty in the life of the State,
which they did not seem to me to understand.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed,’ said Agathon, ‘they soon grow
restive if you speak of liberty.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed yes,’ I assented. ‘And yet two
minutes before they had been singing
some praises to a sweet land of liberty
which was also, as I understood the words,
the home of the brave and free. But
when the Americans rejoice that they are
free they mean free from King George
III. For they are slow in some matters.’</p>

<p>‘It is like you Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘to
seize hold boldly of this question of liberty
and not to let go but to force them to
examine it.’</p>

<p>‘My heart had been touched,’ I replied,
‘by a spectacle which I saw when first
our boat anchored in New York Harbour.
There is an island there called Ellis Island,
the abode of the rejected of America,
where I also spent two days. Many emigrants
think that they are emigrating to
the United States when in fact they are
emigrating to Ellis Island, which is not
a land of opportunity at all. So there
crowd on Ellis Island the wretched people
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>whom America will not accept. Among
the figures in that part of the harbour
there was one that at once held my attention
because she was so much greater
and nobler than the rest. But she was
not allowed on the mainland. Going close
to her I saw that it was Liberty herself.
She also was classed as undesirable. I
will confess that I could understand the
Amazons of the Mississippi fearing her,
so great and strong was she, and of such
mighty reputation. Her plight too was
more wretched than that of the others,
because they all stretched out their hands
with longing to the further bank, as the
poet has well sung, but with some hope
also that there would one day be room
for them in the quota. But Liberty had
no quota at all.’</p>

<p>‘What is this quota?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘The quota, dear Lysis,’ I said, ‘is another
of the mystic numbers of the Americans
and one that serves their desires.
For by means of varying numbers
reached in an obscure manner they control
the admission into their country in such
a manner that very few can come of those
who will be likely to resist having their
souls made for them, but a greater number
of those who yield easily to Americanization.
In particular, is it contrived
that hardly any of the Mediterranean peoples
shall be admitted, for these peoples
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>are the hardest of all to Americanize, as
they have lived in civilization for so great
a time.’</p>

<p>‘I understand,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘But the people who are least unwelcome
to-day are the partly civilized peoples
of North Europe and the British
Isles. For these people are not so wild
as to be dangerous and they have lived in
a hard struggle with nature which has
made material prosperity seem to them an
extremely great thing and one worthy of
great efforts. Now material prosperity
is what the Americans offer, and it is the
inducement always held out when those
who make opinion wish to persuade the
populace to any particular course.’</p>

<p>‘But,’ asked Phaelon, ‘why did you not
tell the undesirables what you knew about
America, so that they would have been
glad they had been shut out? It does not
sound much fun being an alien in America
to-day.’</p>

<p>‘It would be grievous indeed,’ I said,
‘did not the aliens live together in communities,
but so banded they maintain
their own life and reproduce Greece or
Italy beyond the seas, as is the purpose
of a colony. And it is a source of merriment
to these men to be told to think
American thoughts, as the judges say who
make them citizens.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘but it is not
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>merriment for their children who become
Americans.’</p>

<p>‘They enjoy it,’ I said, ‘for the children
of bad Greeks make good Americans. And
bad we must consider the Greeks to be
who leave Greece and risk their souls in
America for the sake of wealth. Such
folk do nothing to lead the Americans to
Greek thought.’</p>

<p>‘Being such lovers of profit,’ said Agathon,
‘they are timid and have little influence.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but coming from civilization
they have characters of their own,
and are richly individual, for that is the
mark of civilization, but having left
Greece for gain they have no proper sense
of being members of a political community,
while the Americans are filled to
excess with that sense. But an alien child
brought up in America will often be both
an individual and a citizen.’</p>

<p>Lysis here said: ‘Might not such an
alien child combine the faults rather than
the virtues of both types?’</p>

<p>‘That happens,’ I replied, ‘and I have
great fears for Xantippe’s children if she
keeps them there to be Americanized.’</p>

<p>‘I may be a blockhead, Socrates,’ said
Lysis, ‘but I should like to hear you explain
much more fully about the strength
of the soul when it is Americanized.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span></p>
<p>‘You are prepared to leave the address
to the Business Men’s Lunch Club, then,’
said Agathon, ‘and follow Socrates on a
new path?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘let us leave the business
men. For my part I feel filled with
pity for men leading such a life.’</p>

<p>‘That is well said, Lysis,’ I replied,
‘for I, too, loved these men and had pity
for them, seeing them to work harder
than ever during the short hour of refreshment
that their code allows them
from business. I do not wonder that so
many of them drop dead, and I often
thought of the captives in the galleys being
spurred on to exertions unnatural to
man.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps,’ said Agathon with a sly look
at the other two, ‘your standard of exertion,
Socrates, is lower than that of most
men.’</p>

<p>‘I know not how it is in your government
office, Agathon,’ I replied, ‘but I
do not believe you would long survive the
pace set in America, and, indeed, more and
more Americans themselves are becoming
sensible and ceasing to think a man admirable
in proportion as he is always at
his business. They have some excellent
summer clubs, where they jest and play
not for one day only but for several
weeks. But I was going to tell Lysis that I
can satisfy both his desire and yours, for
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>if you, O Agathon, will tell the substance
of my address to those men that will also
reveal in what they are lacking, according
to my opinion, and in what they are
strong. For they are lacking in reasonableness,
and they are strong in sociability.’</p>

<p>‘Then let me read the report,’ said
Agathon, and he read from the <cite>Hootsville
Courier</cite> the paragraphs dealing with my
address: ‘“The President of the Club
introduced the speaker as one who had
made good in his own line, and though it
was not their own line, they welcomed
success wherever they saw it (<em>applause</em>).
The visitor, as he understood it, was a
specialist in truth and goodness, and
would no doubt give Hootsville some useful
tips. If he, the speaker, understood
their visitor’s vocation he was a person
you went to consult if you became doubtful
about your religion or your politics
and he would make you more doubtful
still (<em>laughter</em>). Fortunately, no one in
Hootsville was troubled with any doubts,
and he must say he could not see how
their visitor would fit into the life there.
Still it was a big world, and they could not
all live in Iowa. He confessed that he had
not known about the visitor till the question
of this address was brought up, but
since then had looked up his record and,
from the reports of the debates that he
had seen in the Plato publications, he
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>had no doubt that their visitor had the
best of his discussions back in Athens and
had hit a home run every time. They
welcomed him as a man who had won
something, even if it was only an argument
(<em>great applause</em>). That was what
appealed to him, and he thought to all of
them, for he did not claim to have read
the reports closely or to know what the
arguments had been about, but he felt
clear their visitor had not come out second
best. Hootsville could fairly claim to be
listening to about the best man in his own
line that old Athens could send them, and
that would help them to see how Hootsville
and Athens compared with one another
(<em>applause</em>). He was reminded of a
story about a negro, called Rastus....”</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘he told a long
story about an Ethiopian, and sat down
with laughter and applause.’ Agathon then
read: ‘“The visitor, Mr. Socrates S.
Socrates, was understood to say: ‘Men of
Hootsville, if you will bear with a stupid
and ignorant man (<em>laughter</em>) I would like
to correct what I am falsely supposed to
think concerning liberty. I am not one
of those who think that the ideal state will
grant an indiscriminate liberty. For the
rulers must regard liberty with caution.
For I do not complain that here there is
authority and that liberty is restricted,
for that is necessary, but that the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>authority is in the hands of men in no
way worthy to hold it and that the
restrictions are not imposed for right objects
but to achieve the mistaken notions
of those holding chief influence in the
land. I would not question your carelessness
of liberty if you were restraining
bad and selfish men, and I would applaud
you if I saw the majority taking steps
against too much interest in commerce.
For commerce can do no more than
provide the basis for the good life, but is
treated here as though it were the good
life itself. Indeed, you put notices, Men
of Hootsville, in your offices to discourage
the conversation of your friends, writing
up: ‘This is our busy day,’ and keeping
up the notice for many days in succession;
exhorting also your friends ‘Come to the
point, but don’t camp on it,’ and these
things hinder a friend from opening his
soul. For there are many points upon
which it is excellent to camp, and
chief among them the nature of the
good.</p>

<p>‘“‘I see everywhere around me refreshing
signs of a growing interest in the
Greeks on the part of the Americans. You
have taken an extreme interest in the
Olympic Games. Your young men love to
band themselves into brotherhoods and
fraternities named after the letters of our
Greek alphabet, while older men band
themselves together in a Klan with a
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>Greek name, when they would reform the
general polity. I very greatly hope, Men of
Hootsville, that it is not true, as your critics
allege, that you are so careless and
ignorant of Greek things that to you anything
Greek is mysterious, and that these
associations desire only to suggest secrecy
and bewilderment when they name themselves
with Greek names. Now we Greeks
rightly understand liberty, for liberty is of
the seas and of the mountains, and Greece
has both indeed but Iowa neither. And
your need in Iowa is for more Greeks to
teach you (<em>vigorous dissent</em>).</p>

<p>‘“‘More Greeks to help you to discover
justice and the rule of reason, O men of
Hootsville, about which you know nothing
(<em>interruption</em>). For great things are here
in issue, the greatest of those that are in
our control. Much indeed of our human
lot we cannot control. Consider how the
poets speak concerning the Fates, how the
three sisters sit, the one Clotho spinning
the stuff of our human lives, and the next
Lachesis, mixing the strands and measuring
off the lengths, while the last, Atropos,
cuts them with her dreaded shears. Men
of Hootsville, we must all accept what the
Fates send us, as they sit eternally weaving
their varied combinations. If I may
use your term, you must all do business
with these three sisters. In the end you
will find you cannot stand out against
them.’” But at that,’ said Agathon, ‘there
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>was a great uproar and they refused to
listen any more, though Socrates had by
no means reached even the middle of his
address, and was but making a preliminary
distinction.</p>

<p>‘No self-respecting American business
citizen, declared the President, red with
anger, would have anything to do with a
concern so out of date in factory methods
as were these three sisters. Did their
visitor know that they in Hootsville and
everywhere else in the States, had machines
which spun, measured, and cut
thread in the single operation. And here
there were three women employed all the
time on what their American machine
could do with a hundredth part of the time
and effort. To come to a go-ahead community
with such a fool proposition was an
insult. Hootsville did not fear the competition
of these Fates. Hootsville had been
insulted as Chicago would not have been,
just because Hootsville had not quite overhauled
Chicago yet in population. But
he could tell their visitor that that was
coming, and would like to warn him that
if he went on travelling on commission
for these Fates and their underwear garments
he had better quit advertising the
obsolete process or he’d be railroaded out
of every decent town. And it was time
for everyone to hurry back to business.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_IV">BOOK IV</h2>
</div>


<p>After we had discussed these clubs a
little longer, and I had given them the full
speech I would have made in Hootsville,
Lysis said: ‘And is it true, Socrates, that
the lecture-tour of Alcibiades also was not
well received?’</p>

<p>‘It is true,’ I answered.</p>

<p>‘Yet is he not most brilliant and accomplished,
and are not his brains, as he says,
first-class?’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly,’ I answered. ‘But his manner
was high-spirited, and he did not
apply himself to win the favour of the
Americans as though they had been the
populace of Athens. He broke also, and
that in a most shameless manner, the law
which is the dearest to them of all their
laws. He violated the Volstead Act.’</p>

<p>At this Agathon leaned forward and
said: ‘You must beware, O Lysis and
Phaelon, of the Socratic irony, which has
been the subject of a great deal of
comment, and of which you are the victims
at this moment. For it is well known
that the Volstead Act is not dear to the
Americans at all and that Alcibiades did
nothing uncommon or scandalous in
violating it.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps,’ said Phaelon, ‘we should
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>first understand clearly what this Volstead
Act is.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘it is the law by which
the Americans imposed upon themselves
a most heavy sacrifice, and denied themselves
in a loud voice that great pleasure
of human life, wine.’</p>

<p>‘Truly a heavy sacrifice,’ exclaimed
both Lysis and Phaelon, and Lysis added
the obvious question whether any reason
could be found for such amazing conduct,
for the folly natural to barbarians seemed
wholly inadequate to account for it.</p>

<p>‘It is indeed,’ I answered, ‘a hard
knot that we have to untangle, and
one that will puzzle future generations.
Many and various are the explanations
put forward. Thus some philosophers
point out that the sacrifice is being
made in a time of great prosperity,
and believe that it is intended to
avert the jealousy of the gods. And
there is much truth in that. For the
Americans found themselves grown
extremely rich, and, believing nothing
to be so desirable as material prosperity,
they feared lest the whole company of
Olympus, both gods and goddesses, should
resolve to become American citizens,
and should achieve their ends by cunning
or magic, despite the immigration
Authorities. The Americans did not at all
desire their company, partly through fear
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>of the intensified and unscrupulous competition
which it is the wont of the gods
to indulge in, but chiefly because they
consider that the gods, with the uncertain
exception of Zeus himself, are not of
Anglo-Saxon stock. To abate the edge of
envy, they resolved to involve themselves
in calamity and, by inserting privation
into their Constitution, to create such a
drawback to their country that not the
divinities only but ordinary mortals also,
should have no desire to share their life.
You have heard how the maidens of
Leucris, to protect their honour, slit off
their noses and went undesired of the
invading hordes. So also the Americans
deemed it prudent to show to the world
a mutilated life. They also believed that
their own gods would be touched by the
sight of such suffering and would augment
the number of their other possessions, and
they were strengthened in this view when
they sent to consult their national oracle
at Detroit. For the oracle said:—</p>

<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">In driest land,</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">’Neath steadiest hand,</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">The iron steed</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">Will fastest breed.</div>
  </div>
</div>

<p class="noi">which they understood to mean that if
they gave up all their potations there
would be more cars. And this was
decisive, for they think that everything,
even life itself, is worthily sacrificed to
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>increase the number of these cars. They
believed furthermore that this sacrifice
would increase the quantity of other
things at their command.’</p>

<p>‘I have heard a different reason,’
here put in Agathon, and seeing us nod
to him to go on, he unfolded what follows:</p>

<p>‘The Americans,’ he said ‘are a
shrewd people, and know that men
easily become lovers of ease unless there is
necessity or some great future delight to
spur them on to exertion. How, they
asked themselves, can the mechanics
and other workers be kept from the desire
for ease and the abandonment of intense
daily toil. For a long time the desire
to possess a car could be trusted to spur
them on, but cars have grown cheap, and
it is found beside that such objects tend
by contrast to make men love real ease
more than ever before. What was needed
was to restore the right conception of
wealth as something ardently to be
longed for, for invention had too greatly
levelled the lives of rich and poor. The
poor man had motion and music and print
and divorce and patent food and cremation,
and everything that was once the privilege
of the rich. Nature had made men
equal in the chief goods like health and
affection, thus seeming herself to render
vain the end for which, as they thought,
men had been created, the production of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>wealth. And they discovered that the devout
worship of Progress, the very process
of creating wealth, made the prize of
private gain relatively less valuable, thus
threatening the springs of energy itself.
As extreme wealth gave men the pleasures
of successful propaganda so must ordinary
wealth have some special privilege
attached. And therefore did their chief
men resolve to prohibit by law one of
life’s greatest amenities, for if a thing is
forbidden by the law, only the rich will
enjoy it. For wealth everywhere lifts a
man above the laws and nowhere more
than in the United States.’</p>

<p>‘Is it perhaps possible,’ asked Phaelon,
‘that it was done from a noble desire to
help the Europeans?’</p>

<p>‘How, dear Phaelon?’ I said.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ he said, ‘it is a great advantage
to the Spartans to make their Helots
drunk that the young Spartans may have
before them the spectacle of drunkenness
and be warned and seek temperance. It
is surely an equal advantage for Europeans
to have at hand a nation of teetotallers
(I believe that is the word for such
people) lest they should be tempted to err
in the opposite direction to the Spartans.
For I have read many notices about the
great charity of America towards Europe
and I wondered if it was this self-denial
of which you speak.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p>
<p>‘That is not badly conceived, Phaelon,’
said I, ‘but I am afraid we cannot take it
as an explanation. In the first place the
nations of Europe do not at all need to
be warned, by example or otherwise
against teetotalism, and, secondly, the
Americans are not at all a nation of
teetotallers.’</p>

<p>‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that the rich can
drink and do.’</p>

<p>‘Not the rich only, but all who will take
a little trouble,’ I answered.</p>

<p>‘Then,’ said he, ‘is it possible that this
law has been imposed not to make teetotallers,
but for the sake of the bribes of
those who wish to break it?’</p>

<p>‘Not so,’ I answered, ‘for it costs the
Americans a great deal of money to make
this change in the way men drink. They
employ many more policemen than before
and if there is a bribe it is these men who
keep it and not the State, and though the
State gains something from the fines it
imposes, yet it loses a great deal more by
not being able to tax wine and the other
drinks.’</p>

<p>Hereupon Lysis exclaimed: ‘Then what
is the real reason for such strange goings
on. For my part, I believe they prohibit
drinks by law in order to give an added
flavour or zest to their drinking. For
forbidden fruit is sweet to taste.’</p>

<p>‘For the same reason, in fact,’ said
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>Agathon, ‘that they mix different drinks
together, to get more stimulus. So that we
may say that Prohibition and cocktails
spring from the same source.’</p>

<p>‘That explanation and the others, my
worthy friends,’ I said, ‘may help us to
understand why so many are resigned to
the privation. But very different is the
true cause why they have poured out so
vast a libation to Efficiency.’</p>

<p>‘Explain it, then,’ said they all.</p>

<p>‘Did we not agree earlier,’ I answered,
‘that in America the State does many
things that are not for its own good, and
that are not done in the interests of the
State itself, but that rich and energetic
minorities could use the machinery of
representative government to make their
own will appear as the will of the State?’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, yes,’ they said. ‘And truly,’
said Agathon, ‘and when he said earlier
that the combination of the manufacturers
and the preachers could never be resisted,
I thought at once of this Prohibition.’</p>

<p>‘It seemed to the interests of those two
classes and the women,’ I said, ‘and they
brought it about. But such men commonly
cannot judge what is to their own
advantage. For the preachers are men
who have chosen for themselves the task
of moral leadership, and have commonly
great earnestness and little else. You
know, Lysis, that the preachers are those
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>who have separated themselves from the
priests and the old religious traditions?
Indeed it was largely by such preachers
and their close followers that the first
colonies were founded in America.’</p>

<p>‘The priests themselves,’ said Lysis,
‘are surely not enemies to drink.’</p>

<p>‘By Hercules, no,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘That means much,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘The priests,’ I continued, ‘took to
Aristotle generations ago, and have held
by his teachings in a most striking manner.
For Aristotle’s mind is much like a corkscrew,
being tortuous but powerful, and
opening up worthy things for our satisfaction.
His reputation has surprised
me somewhat, seeing how often he is
wrong. For he is in general too easily
satisfied, and thinks that because a thing
exists it is therefore justified. But what
he has written about preserving the mean
of temperance is excellent, and to that the
priests have adhered. The United States,
however, is a preachers’ country. Now
the preachers are opposed by their natures
to the humane and easy enjoyment of
life and would sacrifice temperance to
avoid excess. For they rightly hold
drunkenness to be a degrading thing, but
wrongly suppose abstinence to be superior
to moderation or temperance. Now while
they preached against drunkenness they
did no harm, but they made in my opinion
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>a great mistake when they stirred up the
women to tamper with the laws.’</p>

<p>‘Is that what they did?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘though the women did
not want much persuading, for it seemed
obvious to them that money spent by men
in obtaining the enjoyment that friends
gain by drinking together was wasted
money while the same money spent in
adorning the women themselves or their
offspring was money profitably spent. For
they were eager to believe such things.’</p>

<p>A great look of understanding came into
the eyes of both Lysis and Phaelon, and
Lysis said:—</p>

<p>‘Prohibition then is in large measure
a part of that tyranny of the women of
which you spoke a little while back?’</p>

<p>‘Why, yes,’ I replied, ‘they were strong
enough both by the votes that they enjoyed
in many States and by their ascendency
over their men to pass this law.
For it was a strong alliance. The manufacturers
also had great influence with the
men, for they kept repeating that all the
other trades would share more money if
the wine trade was forbidden by the law,
and in each man the trading part of the
soul fought with the reasonable part, and
with many of the Americans it conquered.
And each man thought that he could himself
evade the law.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span></p>
<p>‘Did many say that, Socrates?’ asked
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘No,’ I answered; ‘they use other
words. They say that such a law is a
good thing for the country, by which they
mean that it is helping their business
without changing their private habits.
While others again, both men and women,
are of the nobler sort, and will gladly
make a personal sacrifice, in the belief
that it will help the poor. There are many
rich women who regard the poor as their
family, and seek their good as a mother
seeks that of her children. Such are
called Social Reformers.’</p>

<p>‘But are not the poor grown up?’ asked
Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Of course,’ I answered; ‘but the rich
have different ideas from theirs, especially
if the poor are from south Europe. So
the rich busy themselves to change the
character of the poor. When they are
doing that they call themselves by a
high-sounding title, and say they are
Practical Idealists.’</p>

<p>‘I understand,’ said Lysis, ‘for the
rich are the manufacturers, or share the
outlook of manufacturers, and when they
are considering the character of the poor,
they will identify being a good man with
being a good worker, and will give no
praise at all to such a one as you yourself,
Socrates, forever sitting about in the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>public places and busying yourself with
subjects with which manufacturers have
nothing to do.’</p>

<p>‘You have understood perfectly, O
excellent Lysis,’ I exclaimed, ‘and you
well describe what happens in America
to-day, and among other things why the
manufacturers have abolished, as far as
they could, the drinking of the poor. For
it is perhaps better for a workman to be
a teetotaller if you consider him merely
in his function as a workman, and as a
machine to be treated in a certain way,
but it is quite a different story if you
consider him as a man. For teetotalism
makes a worker more a worker but a man
less a man. And drunkenness makes him
also less a man, but instead of becoming
more of a workman he ceases to be a
workman at all.’</p>

<p>‘But teetotalism,’ said Agathon, ‘is
the more dangerous extreme. For only
a very exceptional man can keep really
drunk for long periods whereas many
teetotallers stay teetotallers for months
together.’</p>

<p>‘Many months,’ I agreed.</p>

<p>‘And even years in some cases,
Socrates,’ he went on, ‘if what I hear is
true.’</p>

<p>‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid we cannot
deny it: there are men in Kansas who
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>have repressed their thirst for upwards
of forty years.’</p>

<p>‘Surely,’ said Lysis, ‘we would pay
more to see them exhibited here than the
Americans would pay to see the
Parthenon? Let us give the Parthenon
to that American who approached you
this morning, Agathon, and let us have
some Kansans.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘such a group of voluntary
Tantaluses would be a spectacle of much
interest to the young, who are commonly
insensible to the griefs of others, and
who would not think it base to let their
eyes have their fill of the dreadful sight.
But I confess my heart was touched,
for the state of these Kansans is like that
of the ponies that are kept in coal pits,
who by long habituation to the dark become
blind. And to their children these
people show imaginary pictures of the
inside of the human body and the effects
of alcohol, for so they love to call all
fermented beverages, so that these children
shall believe they are being saved
from a most terrible dragon. Nor is it
till they visit Europe that they learn that
the poison of alcohol is not always fatal.’</p>

<p>‘It is a good thing for the Americans
that so many of them visit Europe,’ said
Lysis gravely.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for I met a man in Kansas
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>who had never been out of Kansas and
who refused to believe that I was a human
being at all. For he said that Science
had shown that alcohol was a poison, and
as the Europeans were known from history
books to have made a habit of consuming
large quantities of this poison, it
followed that they were all dead. And
he declared that the present peoples in
Europe were nothing but a race of apes
pretending to be the same creatures that
Science showed alcohol to have destroyed.
He said the apes were doing it to win
the affection that the Americans would
show to other human beings, however,
degraded, but not to apes.’</p>

<p>‘Truly a striking view,’ exclaimed
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘It was one that explained everything
to my friend,’ I answered. ‘He declared
the pretence could not last, and that the
apes had accordingly begun to spread a
story round that all men, even the
Americans, were kinsfolk to the apes. But
with this, he said, he and all good hundred
per cent Americans would have nothing
whatever to do, and he added they were
prepared if necessary to disprove it by
an amendment to the Constitution. He
claimed, moreover, that this view of his
gave by far the best explanation of the
chattering and quarrelling that was forever
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>going on over in Europe. And he
added that my appearance corroborated
his theory.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘you
must allow us to excuse him there.’</p>

<p>‘So did I excuse him,’ I answered, ‘for
I knew that that man was intoxicated,
not indeed by wine, but by statistics,
for the Americans find in statistics a drug
more powerful than alcohol, the women
shamelessly revealing their craving and
attending lectures, and crying out for
facts, but meaning these numbers. For all
large numbers and all numbers arranged
in patterns have a magical power over
them. And they will eagerly deny their
own personal experience if it seems to
upset what the statistics say.’</p>

<p>‘Truly a pitiable servitude,’ murmured
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Pitiable indeed,’ I agreed, ‘but they
wear these chains of numbers proudly,
for in general the numbers are large. And
they have no notion that these numbers
must be used with care, but will let themselves
be led into any error by any cunning
piper luring them to destruction, provided
only that he can pipe the proper magic
ciphers and talk to them of percentages.
For these statisticians have more power
to make great crowds follow them than
ever Orpheus had. But I expect that in
the end they will most of them meet
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>with the fate of Orpheus and be torn to
pieces by angry women, filled with a
different kind of madness.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘there is one thing
very hopeful for them and of excellent
augury.’</p>

<p>‘Which?’ I asked.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ he said, ‘when they consider
the number of their crimes and how much
blood is shed and treasure seized each
year, do you not think they will be greatly
impressed and will realize that their chief
trouble is that the laws are not kept and
that obedience is not enforced?’</p>

<p>‘I do,’ I agreed.</p>

<p>‘And are they not an active people
and one ready to make experiment, even
to experiment with European usages?’</p>

<p>‘I believe so.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ he said, ‘will they not be forced
to realize that they were the very last
people in the world who should have
attempted Prohibition, for they cannot
even protect human life well. For if they
had been a very poor people, fighting for
a share in the commerce of nations, and
endowed with a tradition of law observance,
then they might have attempted
this further discipline. But the Americans
were not poor, nor were they desperately
in need of such efficiency. Indeed no
people could better afford to drink.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and their laws were the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>last laws that could stand the strain.
For they have never been well kept, and
there has always been corruption. So that
they did not do well when they outlawed
a permanent human appetite and made
another enemy to the law.’</p>

<p>‘Did you keep the law yourself,
Socrates?’ said Lysis, ‘for you always say
that even a bad law should be obeyed
because it is the law.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I answered, ‘thinking as I do,
and being the guest of the Americans,
I would take no step to avoid the
abstinence that the law imposed. Yet
I must confess that there was no city in
which I went unrefreshed.’</p>

<p>‘A great thing is friendship,’ exclaimed
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘my friends and hosts
everywhere insisted, not all of them everywhere,
but some in every place, who
sought me out, knowing that I was from
the Mediterranean.’</p>

<p>‘And when these drinks were offered
to you, Socrates,’ demanded Lysis, looking
me straight in the face and fixing
his eyes on mine, ‘did you still tell them
that all laws should be obeyed until they
can be altered?’</p>

<p>‘Assuredly.’</p>

<p>‘What did they answer?’</p>

<p>‘That I was to drink my fill, and not
be at all uneasy lest I was breaking any
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>law, because it was lawful to drink the
wine that you possessed in your cellar
before the law was made. It seems it was
always such wine that I was drinking.
Nor did they seem to fear that they would
ever exhaust those cellars of theirs.’</p>

<p>‘Happy Socrates,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘They urged moreover, when they were
not too busy to discuss the point, that a
law among them is not at all the same as
a law among the Athenians. They said
that perhaps in Athens, which was small,
the people made the law knowing what
they did, but that in America thousands
and thousands of laws were made every
year. America was equally the paradise
of her who would make a law and him
who would break one, and in proportion as
the existing laws were not kept was there
a clamour for fresh laws. But there is
no sense of responsibility, either in the
making or the breaking. And we would
do well, my wonderful friends, to give
this advice to the Americans that they
should treat a law as a great luxury, to
be cherished as Helen herself was cherished.
Then when they find they are
observing all, or some part at least, of
the laws they have, they may reward
themselves by a new law. Do those who
juggle and balance plates seek to add
another plate to the row standing edgeways
on their noses or foreheads before
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>they can balance those they already
have?’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, no, Socrates,’ they replied.</p>

<p>‘And if they did,’ I continued, ‘would
they not break all their plates and not
receive any plaudits from the spectators?’</p>

<p>‘Such,’ said Lysis, ‘would be their deserved
misfortune.’</p>

<p>‘And should we not call such jugglers
presumptuous fools and men unskilled in
their art?’</p>

<p>‘What else, indeed, O Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘And yet is their case any different
from that of these Americans who before
they can well keep ten laws will make
fifty more? So that the law ceases to
hold authority among them and they are
careless who makes it and who breaks it.
For there can be no more grievous ill
done to any state than that its citizens
should not think rightly about the laws,
and should forget that a good law is the
expression of Justice, allotting to each
man what is his, and is deserving of all
reverence, while a bad law destroys the
life of the state and ought by all means
to be abolished as soon as possible.’</p>

<p>‘We agree,’ they said.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_V">BOOK V</h2>
</div>


<p>‘Does it not seem to you, O Lysis and
Phaelon, that these Americans suffer
many grievous evils, and do not know
where they are, and may truly be called
Atlantis, the Lost Continent?’</p>

<p>‘Lost, indeed, Socrates,’ answered Lysis,
‘and I pity them, though it is largely their
own fault.’</p>

<p>‘And do you not think,’ I asked, ‘that
education might help them, if it were
begun when they were quite young and
kept up till thirty-five?’</p>

<p>‘It would be worth trying,’ they said,
‘but not safe to stop at thirty-five.’</p>

<p>‘You remember,’ I continued, ‘how in
our ideal State we used to agree that
there must be a guardian class chosen
from those of the best natures and trained
up to watch over the life of the state and
to govern the ordinary citizens.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, Socrates.’</p>

<p>‘But it seems plain that in America
the duties of these guardians, such as suppressing
and encouraging opinions and
the like, have been usurped by manufacturers
and people of that sort who ought
never to be given any power at all.’</p>

<p>‘Such is the unhappy truth in America.’</p>

<p>‘We must therefore educate a guardian
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>class for the Americans who shall drive
these usurpers from their position of influence
and lead the Americans towards
wisdom.’</p>

<p>‘We must.’</p>

<p>‘And shall we draw our guardians from
men or from women?’</p>

<p>‘As it is America, from women,’ suggested
Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘I agree,’ I said, ‘we will make women
guardians, for we are desperate and the
proverb speaks truly:—</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>Desperate diseases need desperate remedies.</p>
</div>

<p class="noi">And we will do so for several reasons.
For in the first place such an arrangement
will seem natural to the Americans themselves,
and the poet has well written:</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>Nature is strong.</p>
</div>

<p>‘And secondly the women live longer
and we shall be able to train them more
thoroughly. And thirdly, the women show
some interest in philosophy, while the
men are hopeless. For the women think
they know something when in fact they
know nothing, but the men are not even
aware that there is anything to know.
And fourthly the women are accustomed
to leisure, and do not fear or despise it,
for the men have passed it on to them,
not knowing what to do with it themselves.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span></p>
<p>‘But there is a better reason than any
of these,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘What is that?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why, that the American women are exceedingly
agreeable when they are young.
Or did you not think so, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘I did think so,’ I said, ‘and though
I did not mention it, I will confess it
was the chief reason. They are not so
attractive as our Grecian youths, indeed,
but they are attractive all the same.
For in America the individuals, both
youths and maidens and women, but
chiefly the maidens, are full of lovableness
and goodwill when they are young,
but are very quickly brought under the
tyranny of propaganda and betrayed by
riches and the sense of efficiency into a
false valuing of what is to be aimed at
in living.’</p>

<p>‘Begin quickly,’ said Agathon, ‘and let
us see you open this college for young
women, for I take it from what you say
you would not wish Xantippe to control
so important a matter.’</p>

<p>‘By the dog, no,’ I cried.</p>

<p>‘Then,’ said Agathon, ‘let us found our
college.’</p>

<p>‘By all means,’ I said, ‘but first let
us see whether any of the existing universities
and colleges will be of any use
to us, for there are many hundreds of
them.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span></p>
<p>‘Indeed, Socrates,’ said Lysis in surprise,
‘many hundred colleges? I should
not have supposed there were any at
all.’</p>

<p>I had been of this opinion, and I said:
‘I had not supposed so either, for I
thought no educated person would be
willing to listen to Xantippe, but I soon
learned the answer to my puzzle, for
nothing is easier in America than to attend
college and nothing harder than to get
educated.’</p>

<p>‘It seems certain that we shall have to
change much,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘for at present they
educate the men and the women together
though they are going to do different work
afterwards and so should receive a different
training.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we must alter that,
and not educate any more of the men.’</p>

<p>‘That will go far to solve one of our
problems, for at present the chances of
education are destroyed by the numbers
of the students, and the Americans think
it finer to give a smattering of information
to everybody than to give education to
a few, and talk with pride of the preposterous
numbers that pass through their
colleges.’</p>

<p>‘If there are so many students,
Socrates,’ asked Phaelon, ‘is there not
a great body of teachers? What part do
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>they play in America and could not they
be the guardians?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘of all who suffer from
the present ill-ordered life there, none
suffer more than do these teachers. But
if you will be patient with me I will describe
how they live.’</p>

<p>‘Proceed, Socrates.’</p>

<p>‘To begin with, does it not seem to
you that those who separate themselves
so sharply from the popular outlook and
embrace the pursuit of learning rather
than that of wealth will be no ordinary
Americans, but will either be above or
below their fellow citizens.’</p>

<p>‘It would seem so, indeed,’ they answered.</p>

<p>‘The best,’ I said, ‘are much above
their fellows and seek this life from a
noble love of noble things. Do you know
what happens to a great number of such
men in America?’</p>

<p>‘What?’ they asked with apprehension.</p>

<p>‘You do well to look frightened,’ I
said gravely. ‘They are made Presidents
of universities and colleges, and after that
there is no peace for them at all. But
they are compelled to spend all their
time like the generals of disorderly and
worthless troops, organizing the great
numbers of their students and providing
useless courses for countless blockheads.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Moreover, they are driven to associate
with the men of commerce and to flatter
them for their great wealth.’</p>

<p>‘Why in the world should they have to
do that?’ Lysis demanded.</p>

<p>‘To make the college bigger,’ I replied.
‘For the Americans estimate a President
by his power to obtain benefactions and
so to build new wings and offices, and
leave a larger institution than he found.
They are soon to build in America the
tallest university in the world. And there
is a worse consequence even than this
waste of fine men in presidential duties.’</p>

<p>‘What can be worse than that?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘with all the colleges
competing for the gifts of rich men will
not those colleges obtain most whose
teachers teach what the rich men like to
have believed?’</p>

<p>‘Naturally.’</p>

<p>‘And where a college has much to hope
from wealthy persons will it not hesitate
to lose large sums of money rather than
discourage free inquiry into everything?’</p>

<p>‘I think it will do more than hesitate,
it will sacrifice the inquiries for the
gold.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘it often happens, and
the teachers do not dare to discuss freely
the most important matters. But they
are fearful of the opinion of the prosperous
and they dread the crowd as no philosopher
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>ought to do. They are careful not
to examine closely into the deepest questions
of all touching morality and the nature
of the gods. They are equally afraid
of the question how wealth should be
divided and how the state should behave
to private riches. So that in the one place
where you might hope to see the existing
system examined freely, you do not find
any such free spirit of questioning, but a
nervous desire to give satisfaction to the
powerful element of society.’</p>

<p>‘Rich men can avail much,’ said Lysis,
‘though they be base, mechanical fellows.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I replied, ‘did I not say a
moment ago that some who embraced
academic life were above their fellows but
others indeed beneath?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘And you did not understand me?’</p>

<p>‘No.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘I meant that many
embrace teaching not from any high-minded
aloofness to commerce or love of
knowledge, but because it is the easiest
employment they can find and they shirk
the labour of business life. Such men are
not really students at all, and spend their
lives repeating over and over the small
stock of information they gathered in
early life. These inferior teachers live the
life of donkeys or mules working a water-wheel,
treading for ever round and round
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>the same narrow course after they have
once learned how the routine goes.’</p>

<p>At which Lysis exclaimed: ‘Truly a
miserable existence.’</p>

<p>‘Wretched, indeed,’ echoed Agathon,
‘and one that does more harm than good,
for the majority of their students despise
them, rightly guessing that they would be
prosperous business men if they knew how
it was done, and so the things of the mind
are brought into dishonour.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but we must not blame
the teachers that they avoid an unequal
contest. For already they have sacrificed
much to pursue their calling. Moreover
a noble minority strives as bravely as did
Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans,
preferring all sacrifices before servitude
to the barbarian hosts. But these men
will agree with us.’</p>

<p>‘Will most of the teachers be with us?’
asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Alas,’ I said, ‘the most part of the
teachers are not valiant.’</p>

<p>‘What do they fear,’ asked Phaelon,
‘for they know that they will never become
at all like Crœsus. It is not a happy
thing to be like Crœsus.’</p>

<p>‘No, Phaelon,’ I said. ‘They have no
great ambition, as it seems to me. Rather
are they driven by fear. They fear,
Phaelon, what the rich will do to them.’</p>

<p>‘What?’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span></p>
<p>‘They might take away their cars.
For they have bought cars for which they
have not paid, promising to do so by a life
of labour. And the rich might take them
away. Then, indeed, the poor teachers
would have to become philosophers of the
Peripatetic School.’</p>

<p>‘They would not love you, Socrates,’
said Lysis, ‘if they heard you speak unfeelingly
like that.’</p>

<p>‘As it is,’ I answered, ‘they do not love
the Greeks, and do not think a knowledge
of Greece anything but a strange superfluity.
They do not consider it a necessity
at all.’</p>

<p>‘Then we will not allow such people to
teach in our ideal America,’ exclaimed
Lysis, hotly.</p>

<p>‘Indeed no,’ I said, ‘for in our college
we will have no necessity for a large staff,
and so we will not have any of these sham
teachers lowering the dignity of learning.’</p>

<p>‘That will be a great gain.’</p>

<p>‘There are already some small colleges
in America which can help us.’</p>

<p>‘How so?’</p>

<p>‘Why, they are colleges that deliberately
limit their numbers. Often they
refuse to train more than five hundred
students at a time.’</p>

<p>‘Five hundred students!’ echoed Lysis—‘you
call that a small number.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘but the Americans do,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>and if you had been among them you
would realize that it is indeed a heroic
sacrifice that they make in opposing the
common tendency and remaining small.’</p>

<p>‘And how are they to help us?’</p>

<p>‘Why, in the first place we shall find,
I think, the best material for our guardians
among the pupils there, and secondly
we can use these colleges as nurseries and
training grounds for assistants for our
guardians. Or do you not think they will
need assistants in their task of giving a
changed outlook to the Americans?’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, yes, Socrates.’</p>

<p>‘And another thing we will altogether
change is the great variety of the instruction.
For that the Americans have
no idea of the purpose of education is
seen in the way they provide courses of
instruction in everything, even in the
things that will only fit a man for low and
base employments. The student hurries
from course to course and becomes acquainted
with the preliminaries of many
studies but is advanced in none.’</p>

<p>‘We will keep our guardians to a few
studies,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and they will have to
be very different studies.’</p>

<p>‘What will be the first great change?’
he asked.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I answered, ‘as it seems to me,
the first thing to destroy is their superstitious
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>reverence for what they call facts
and their contempt for ideas. For they
will often talk as if ideas were less real
than facts, instead of more real.’</p>

<p>‘What are these facts?’</p>

<p>‘They may be anything. Lists of names,
and long technical words are accepted as
facts. The biggest fact is the Divine Fact,
Progress, which they worship.’</p>

<p>‘Might not that be called an idea?’</p>

<p>‘You might say so, Lysis,’ I answered,
‘but I would advise you not to do so, for
the Americans dearly love Progress and
will not tolerate your insults.’</p>

<p>‘Is not evolution another favourite
fact?’ asked Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘some cherish it as much
as Progress, of which they say that it
is the explanation. But others say that
Progress presides over the Americans by
the special wish of the divine powers, as
a reward for their virtues. And these say
evolution is a lie. But neither party will
be content to say it is a theory.’</p>

<p>‘And facts are what they teach in their
colleges?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for they have heard that
knowledge is power, and they desire
power, and they think that knowledge consists
of information.’</p>

<p>‘I have seen them myself, Socrates,’
said Agathon, ‘running about as students,
boasting of the number of courses they
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>could take and of the daily information
that they could gather into notebooks.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they are complacent,
and are sure that when they have
information they will instinctively act
wisely and well. For we must remember
that in a democracy men love to think
they themselves are deciding the great
questions of life and of the State. And
in America they are very much on their
dignity in this, being resolved to judge
for themselves from the facts, of which
they love to speak, and not to value the
opinion of each other.’</p>

<p>‘Except of experts, Socrates,’ said
Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Indeed, they value experts because
experts, they think, know the facts. And
so two rules are to be observed carefully
by all who would make the Americans
think one thing rather than another.
First you must call yourself an expert and
second you must call everything you say
the facts.’</p>

<p>‘And then all will go well with you?’
asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Indeed, yes, for none of them know
anything about the matters in hand and
so they are prepared to hear that the facts
are anything in the world.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Socrates,’ said Phaelon, ‘it
sounds to me a fine pastime to go persuading
these great herds of barbarians
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>that Persians are finer people than
Greeks.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they could easily be made
to believe that or any other piece of
nonsense.’</p>

<p>‘Would it not be fun?’ said Phaelon
eagerly. ‘I must do it. Nor will I fear
the perils of the country. I will go boldly
among them as becomes a Greek, resisting
their hold-up men with my sword
and opposing their cars with my
shield.’</p>

<p>‘You must take care,’ I said, ‘that they
do not fell you from behind with a card-index.’</p>

<p>‘Card-index?’ said Phaelon; ‘what
weapon is that?’</p>

<p>‘It is more than a weapon to the
Americans,’ I said: ‘it is everything.
It is the symbol of their way of life and
they intend shortly to put it on all their
coins, and stamps. It is like a plank to
a drowning sailor, for by its means they
survive in the great heaving oceans of
facts with which they would otherwise
be overwhelmed. Or you may think of
them as a nation of Ariadnes.’</p>

<p>‘That is certainly a more pleasant
picture,’ said Agathon, ‘and for my part
I will take care to think of them like that.
For as Ariadne had a thread whereby her
lover might find his way out of the
Labyrinth, so have the Americans card-indexes
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>to prevent themselves from getting
wholly lost in the modern world.’</p>

<p>At this Phaelon exclaimed: ‘I should
dearly love to see what was inside a card-index.’</p>

<p>‘That would not be easy,’ I answered.
‘For they are compiled with great solemnity
and reverence and are the nearest
things in America to sacred objects. The
ritual of compilation is the chief way of
practising efficiency and so of worshipping
Progress.’</p>

<p>‘But what is on the cards?’ insisted
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘The most sacred things of all—entrancing
statistics and The Facts, and all
the things that Modern Science teaches.’</p>

<p>‘Tell us, Socrates, who is this Modern
Science?’</p>

<p>‘A divine priestess,’ I answered, ‘who
is invoked in all difficulties, whose words
are received with great reverence, and
that though her oracles are more than
usually incomprehensible and fickle and
her words long and horrible. But she
is dear to the Americans because she
speaks principally about machines, and
tells them there shall be more and more
of them, and an increasing number of
parts in each.’</p>

<p>‘And does she speak true things?’ demanded
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘She knows about machines and the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>substances of the earth, and so the
Americans find her “practical,” a word
of supreme praise, and in consequence are
forever seeking to make her speak on
other matters where she has no gift of
utterance. They seek encouragement in
their beliefs about themselves and insist
upon an answer about their race till in
self-defence she takes refuge in gibberish.’</p>

<p>‘That is a disappointment to them,’ said
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘In no wise,’ I answered, ‘for each
can twist her answer to his desires. And
she is surrounded by people crying that
they have heard her voice and they alone,
and using her authority for their own
views. It is from this babble of tongues
that the facts for the card-indexes are
derived. But we will train our guardians
never to use such things and to consider
them only fit for slaves.’</p>

<p>‘We will,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘For their studies will not be the
acquisition of information, which is a
training in acquisitiveness and due to the
hunger of their souls for quantity. They
acquire information as a second best
until they can acquire wealth. But our
guardians will study those matters which
satisfy the reason and those which elevate
the soul. Now these studies are many.’</p>

<p>‘You have described such studies many
times, Socrates,’ said they all.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p>
<p>‘And do you not agree?’</p>

<p>‘We agree,’ said they all again.</p>

<p>‘And shall we,’ I asked them next, ‘permit
our guardians to live in sisterhoods
and sororities as they like to do to-day?’</p>

<p>‘Do the young American women live
much in sisterhoods?’ asked Phaelon, ‘for
I have read of sisterhoods and of convents,
and the great principle of the life
is to have nothing whatever to do with
men.’</p>

<p>I reassured Phaelon. ‘An American
sorority is not at all like that. But I
think we shall have to say that no men
may go near these sororities where we are
training our guardians, at least till our
guardians have reached thirty-five. For
the men are a great distraction.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘we don’t want
any young American men, for they are
excellent to carry out what they are told
but they will never make philosophers.
They will correspond indeed to that
warrior class which you provided for in
your ideal state, but there will be this
difference that they will not often be
called upon to fight and that their chief
duties will be in the ordinary administration,
arranging for food and other necessities,
and holding the various positions
in commerce.’</p>

<p>‘Is commerce still to continue?’ said
Phaelon.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span></p>
<p>‘We must allow it,’ I said, ‘the
Americans being what they are, but we
will take care that it receives no particular
honour.’</p>

<p>‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but how are we
to keep the women from the men?’</p>

<p>‘We must bring them all to Athens,’
I said.</p>

<p>At this Agathon leaned forward eagerly
and exclaimed: ‘And it is agreed that
I am to select the guardians, and I will
bring them to Athens and will myself
superintend their training. And when
we get a new generation I will superintend
the later stages of their training, from
fifteen to thirty-five, while you, Socrates,
who are so patient and good with the
young shall take charge of them till they
are fifteen.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I consider that as
settled.’</p>

<p>‘But I am troubled with a difficulty,’
said Lysis, ‘and one which may put out
all Agathon’s fine plans, for I do not see
how we can educate them in Athens.’</p>

<p>‘How not?’ said Agathon angrily.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ said Lysis, ‘if they come here
they will meet the Greek men and will
see that there are beings much superior
to themselves and lose their belief in themselves,
and fall into despair and pine away.’</p>

<p>‘We will unbend,’ said Agathon.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span></p>
<p>‘Even so, my excellent friend,’ I said,
‘I think Lysis speaks truly: it will not
be good for guardians to grow up among
people so much superior to themselves.
For they will have to rule a race of untravelled
and completely self-confident
people, and they will never do it if they
are doubtful of themselves.’</p>

<p>‘I can loosen the knot of difficulty,’
said Agathon: ‘I will build my college
a little way out of Athens, and when you
come to give them your instructions you
shall be concealed by a partition and I
will say you are the gods themselves.
Nay, there is a machine called the broadcast
in use in America itself which enables
men to practise useful deceptions of that
kind.’</p>

<p>‘I think not, my friends,’ I said. ‘They
have suffered already from being told
that too abundantly, and I think it will
be best to tell them a myth while they
are in their cradles, saying they are the
children of the people of Atlantis, and the
sisters in some sort of the Greeks.’</p>

<p>‘Better say cousins,’ corrected Agathon.</p>

<p>‘The cousins, then, of the Greeks. And
then they shall learn with the pride of
our own youth and maidens both gymnastic
and music and all the other studies
which we agreed to be necessary for our
guardians.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span></p>
<p>Here Lysis said: ‘There is still one
small matter to be resolved: How are
you going to get your guardians, and the
first supply of young girls to train? For
their men will not part with them.’</p>

<p>‘That is easy,’ I said, ‘as they are Americans,
and the men do not control the
women.’</p>

<p>Lysis looked puzzled: ‘But surely the
mothers control the daughters, at any rate
when they are very young.’</p>

<p>‘Why, no,’ I said, ‘that rarely happens
either. We will invite such of the young
girls as seem to us to be the best endowed
by nature and to be likely to make good
guardians and to be susceptible of education,
no matter whether they be five
or fifteen, and they will come if we convince
them, whatever the parents may
think. For I assure you that their parents
have no power over them at all.’</p>

<p>‘Really, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘I cannot
believe that some of these great women
of the Middle West do not rule their
children by terror as well as their husbands.’</p>

<p>‘If we find that to be so,’ I said, ‘and
some of the presidents of these Women’s
Clubs are indeed so overpowering that
it may well prove to be the case, we
can easily convince the parents by a few
statistics. We will tell them that the liver
corrodes and that metabolism is inhibited
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>unless the years from fifteen to thirty-five
are spent in Athens. And as that will
be Science that we are telling them they
will send their children to Athens. For
they all honestly desire the well-being of
their children, even those who are permanent
presidents of their clubs.’</p>

<p>‘We may take it, then, O Socrates,’ said
Agathon, eagerly, ‘that the young women
will be here soon.’</p>

<p>‘And when they are here,’ I said, ‘they
shall live in sororities as they do to-day.
And I think their present sororities are a
foreshadowing of their life here, and that
now they do what they can, but live in a
dark cave compared with the bright sunlight
of their coming existence. To-day
they know little Greek, three letters being
the general standard, but soon they
will speak and think in Greek all the
time.’</p>

<p>‘And when we have educated them,’
asked Lysis, ‘will it be a difficult matter
for them to obtain authority to rule in
America?’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘it will be easy
if they have enough money.’</p>

<p>‘That will be easy,’ I said, ‘for they
will be trained to consider it their duty
that each of them marries a millionaire.’</p>

<p>‘They will find that easy,’ said Agathon,
‘for I will be careful to instruct them in
the arts of courtship.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p>
<p>Lysis then asked: ‘But when they have
these funds at their command, what will
be the quickest way for them to persuade
the ordinary Americans to accept their
rule?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘they must proclaim a
Philosophy Week, for these weeks are
not expensive to buy and they give you
the right to worry people for seven days.’</p>

<p>‘And what shall they say?’ asked
Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘It will be simple enough,’ I said. ‘They
must announce a new way to national and
individual prosperity. For prosperous
peoples are forever looking for ways to
prosperity. And the adjective new recommends
anything.’</p>

<p>‘And then, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘And then they must proclaim that
Philosophy is the key to Bigger and Better
Business, and must tell the story of
Thales, who was a philosopher and easily
outwitted the men of commerce of his
day, amassing a fortune in olive presses.’</p>

<p>‘But Thales lived long ago.’</p>

<p>‘That must be kept dark,’ I said; ‘but
the story will throw a new light on
philosophy and if the propaganda is well
done every progressive business house will
add to its staff a philosopher from Greece.
And our guardians must go about
persuading the women that there will be
no real progress till Congressmen are
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>philosophers or philosophers Congressmen.’</p>

<p>‘Why yes, Socrates,’ said Agathon,
‘you shall yourself question the aspirants
for Congress and say which are truly
philosophers and the guardians will persuade
the populace not to vote for any
of the others. And you shall select trusty
Greeks who will hand over power to the
guardians.’</p>

<p>‘It will take the fortunes of many
husbands,’ I said, ‘but in the end the
guardians will control the central government,
and then they can do what they
like with the country, and make brave
changes and substitute a noble rule for
an ignoble one.’</p>

<p>‘It is important to lose no time,’ said
Agathon, ‘in bringing the maidens to
Athens. For the sake of saving the
Americans,’ he added.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span></p>

<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOK_VI">BOOK VI</h2>
</div>


<p>‘And are you resolved, Socrates,’ said
Lysis, ‘not to give any sort of education
to the American men?’</p>

<p>I thought for a moment and then said:
‘They are not comely like our Greek
youths and they would not be an ornament
to Athens. I do not think they want
any education.’</p>

<p>‘But, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘how are
they to spend their time when they are
young?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘I would let them go on
watching that football game of theirs.’</p>

<p>‘What is that?’</p>

<p>‘It is a mimic battle dear to all their
hearts, and I would let them watch it all
the day, and I would not trouble their
minds at all. For to watch it will be the
right education for them.’</p>

<p>‘Watch it, Socrates?’ demanded Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes, for it is played between coaches
or chief men, using young men as pieces.’</p>

<p>‘Explain it to us,’ they said.</p>

<p>‘I will give you a fine lecture upon it,’
I said; ‘and you will marvel that I know
so much, until I first confess that I went
much among the young Americans in
the colleges from a desire to see into
their minds, and what I saw made it clear
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>to me that America was rightly called the
land of “great open spaces.” For they
spoke of nothing else at all but this football,
and cars, and to a lesser extent, of
another form of contest called baseball.’</p>

<p>‘Would you let them play baseball also?’
asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘If we do,’ I replied, ‘I expect we shall
have to be quick to save it. For many
business men told me that the manufacturers
will forbid it, because it distracts
their workmen from their factory tasks.
They purpose to substitute universal compulsory
basket ball, which will keep their
workers fit but unexcited.’</p>

<p>‘Is not football in danger?’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘It is most completely a students’ spectacle,’
I answered, ‘and I think our guardians
will be in time to save it, and thus
make their rule delightful to the young
men.’</p>

<p>‘Explain about this game,’ said Lysis,
‘and why you will still allow them to
watch it.’</p>

<p>Then I told them of the field marked
out in lines, the gridiron and of the teams
of sixty or seventy warriors a side, of
whom only eleven might do battle at
any one time. I described the armour
of these warriors, and how they were the
widest and weightiest of all the young
Americans, fit foemen for Ajax or Hector.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>And I explained the discipline under
which they lived and how the combinations
were worked out by the coaches
as a general prepares his campaign, and
how the men learnt over and over the
cipher signs that told to each his part in
the brief struggle. And I told of the fine
tradition that made it disgraceful to flee
from the field or avoid the ball, even for
commercial benefits, and I told of the
heroes who preferred fierce hacks to the
displeasure of their coach and death on
the field to his being dismissed.</p>

<p>‘It must be good fun being a coach,’
said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they are held in great
honour provided they bring victory. They
do what they will with the minds and
bodies of the students, and the Professors
are proud to carry water for them. Often
the chosen students are kept shut up by
their coaches before any great battle, lest
their minds should be disturbed. That
will be a good similitude for us to use
when we are moving the young girls to
Athens. For we deserve as great privileges
as games coaches.’</p>

<p>‘But in these contests,’ said Lysis, ‘only
a few can be used. What is the education
of the vast majority?’</p>

<p>‘They cheer to order,’ I replied. ‘For
the Americans are a practical people and
scheme that no single breath shall be
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>wasted, but shall be used where it will be
most effective. Moreover the game is so
designed that the better it is played the
more difficult is it for the onlooker to
follow the fortunes of the ball, the players
struggling in a great bunch, pushing
against one another. There must be some
heralds to tell the crowd which player has
been pushing hardest that he may be rewarded
with a loud shout.’</p>

<p>‘But is shouting like that really the
best education?’ asked Lysis, ‘for you
will have to say a lot more to convince
me.’</p>

<p>‘Have you not often agreed with me,
Lysis, that it is in youth one learns most
easily?’</p>

<p>‘I agree.’</p>

<p>‘And that it is good to master early
those activities which are to fill our after-lives?’</p>

<p>‘Very often it is good.’</p>

<p>‘And if you had to describe in one sentence
the civic life of an American could
you do it better than by saying he spent
his life shouting in chorus praise or blame
about things he did not understand at the
bidding of leaders?’</p>

<p>‘It is true.’</p>

<p>‘Then, can he begin too early to shout
with the crowd?’</p>

<p>‘He cannot.’</p>

<p>‘For if he is by nature incapable of
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>philosophy he must be led, and he must
be brought up to expect to feel to order
without asking what it is about which
he is to be enthusiastic, and without expecting
to understand the details of the
struggles his leaders are conducting.’</p>

<p>‘I agree.’</p>

<p>‘And for that there is nothing better
then these football games. For men
who obey coaches and cheer leaders now
will be ready to obey our guardians
later on.’</p>

<p>‘I think so.’</p>

<p>‘And they enjoy this football of theirs
a great deal more than they enjoy the
lectures and other parts of college life,
so that they will agree very happily to
cheer football all the time.’</p>

<p>‘But,’ said Agathon, ‘I hear the friends
of peace are resolved to prohibit the football
game, because it arouses admiration
for martial qualities.’</p>

<p>‘The friends of peace will fail, my
friends,’ I said. ‘For freedom from foreign
wars reigns among the Americans
from their position rather than their disposition.
The only people who have ever
invaded them are the English. But now
it is the other way about.’</p>

<p>‘I believe,’ said Agathon, ‘that to-day
the English and the Americans are very
well disposed toward one another.’</p>

<p>‘They are,’ I answered. ‘Their friendship
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>is much the chief friendship among
barbarian peoples. For the English regard
the Americans as their country cousins,
living in the backwater of the New World
and out of touch with London life, but
pleased to come and gape. And they
consider them as country cousins with a
very rich farm, from which they and their
neighbours often receive eggs, and they
are careful to keep as friendly as they can.
For they imagine the Americans to be
much like themselves, but without their
advantages.’</p>

<p>‘By advantages do they mean the nearness
to Athens?’ said Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said slowly: ‘If you search the
matter to the bottom it comes to that, for
the English are the link between Athens
and America.’</p>

<p>Then Phaelon said: ‘Is it true, Socrates,
that the English and the Americans speak
the same language?’</p>

<p>‘No.’</p>

<p>‘But,’ went on Phaelon, puzzled, ‘they
understand each other after a fashion, do
they not? Do they use their hands to
speak with?’</p>

<p>‘Only in New York.’</p>

<p>‘Socrates speaks truly,’ said Agathon,
‘but New York is where the Englishmen
go who visit America. They stay in or
near New York. For they do not like to
get far from the sea which is the source
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>of their strength. They love the deep
waters.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘And the strong waters, too, Socrates,’
added Agathon, ‘and that is another reason
why they like New York and are
reluctant to go far inland. For they dread
having to keep up long lines of communication.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘they would be very safe
in Kentucky.’</p>

<p>‘And what happens when the Englishmen
visit America?’ demanded Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I answered, ‘they are surprised
it is not more like England, and at once
complain; and many are offended that
the Americans are not more like the English,
and say so, for they are subjected
to torture to make them say what they
think.’</p>

<p>‘What is the torture?’ cried Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘They call it the Third Degree, and it
consists in endless interrogation.’</p>

<p>‘Could you not get such a post as
torturer in America, Socrates?’ asked
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘There was talk of it,’ I said, smiling
at him, ‘but I cast the proposal from me
as cruel. Anyway the Americans question
their visitors day and night, saying:
“What do you think of us?” till in the
end the visitors confess.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p>
<p>‘And then there is a war?’ asked
Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘they just stop the mouths
of such visitors with pie.’</p>

<p>‘Remember,’ I resumed, ‘that to visit
America is the most expensive thing an
Englishman can do, and so it is only rich
and leisured Englishmen who travel
there. And these men do not admire
commerce, for though their fathers or
perhaps themselves have grown rich by
it, yet it has always been rated at its
proper value in England. It has always
been the means to the leisured life.
Furthermore the Englishman is not impressed
by the very things that the American
thinks will impress him. For the
English do not admire size or reverence
bigness. They were not used to admire
the Spaniards or the French or the
Germans in the past for being twice as
many as they, and for having splendid
courts and great armies and public works.
Nor is there any sight in England more
comical than to behold the rich and vulgar
cosmopolitans, who have bought a share
in their government, attempting to arouse
an audience of Englishmen to enthusiasm
for their own British Empire just because
it is so very big. But the Americans
will point to a crowd of offices
or cars and feel happy in the knowledge
that their country is shouting for itself.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>Now the English discover in the Americans
most excellent hosts, for they are the
most generous of all the barbarians, but
the more grateful the English are, the
more criticisms do they express, finding it
intolerable that the hosts they like so
much should go on pouring out admiration
on useless things and prostrating the
soul before number and quantity.’</p>

<p>‘And what happens when the Americans
come to England?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘That happens a great deal more often.
The English enjoy that. They feel very
superior when they show to the Americans
the cathedrals and castles of their country.
They act as if they had built these
things themselves, whereas, in fact, the
dead who built them were as much the
ancestors of the Americans as of the English.
But the English are the elder branch
that has inherited the place. The buildings
the modern English themselves put up
they do not point out with pride to anybody,
and those that their fathers and
grandfathers built they cover over, when
they can, with great cloths. But many
Americans are forever wandering to these
new buildings and are filled with joy that
they build such places larger and better.
For the pleasure of travelling in Europe
is spoilt for them by the thought that
their hosts do not know what a wonderful
place America is, and they are forever
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>bringing it into the conversation. Then
they grow happy again, but their hosts
less happy.’</p>

<p>‘But it is the old things that they think
they want to see,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they want to see Europe
because they themselves came from it
originally.’</p>

<p>‘They do not go to Mesopotamia,’ said
Agathon, ‘though they believe they came
originally from somewhere there.’</p>

<p>‘It is curious,’ I said, ‘but none of them
boast of belonging to one of the first
families of Mesopotamia. They want distinctions
that are rarer than that. They
get more pleasure from thinking their
ancestors had seats in the Mayflower than
from thinking they had seats in the Ark,
though both voyages were what they call
exclusive cruises.’</p>

<p>‘And have they a special affection for
the island of England?’ asked Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why yes, most of the rich ones came
originally from there,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘Well, why do they not buy it?’ he demanded.</p>

<p>‘Many think that will happen in time,’
I replied, ‘or at least that they will
purchase all the surface to a depth of
forty feet, for that is the earth upon
which English history has happened, and
that they will lay out the island in
their western districts by Yellowstone
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>Park, where there is plenty of room
for it.’</p>

<p>‘Is it true’ asked Phaelon, ‘that the
English will be forced to sell, Socrates,
and that they can only live at all by getting
the Americans to come and look at their
country?’</p>

<p>‘I thought,’ said Agathon, ‘the English
had a great many factories like the
Americans.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I replied, ‘what has happened
to the English is one of the most ironical
things in the world. For during many
years they have sacrificed their old and
pleasant life to attain mechanical efficiency,
and they have made the northern
half of their little island dreary with factories
and blotted out its sky with smoke.
They said: Here are our riches, and in
the name of wealth we must desecrate the
land. But do you, O Lysis and Phaelon,
observe the justice of what is happening
to them. Their factories have grown a
burden to them, and a problem and source
of quarrels and poverty. And their real
wealth lies in what is still preserved of
the old England.’</p>

<p>‘Why, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘Because the Americans will pay to see
it and will not pay to see the factories.’</p>

<p>‘Is their position so desperate?’</p>

<p>‘No’ I said, ‘if we are seeking the
truth we must declare that it is not so
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>desperate as the Americans imagine for
the Americans forget that the English
are in partnership with the Scotch.’</p>

<p>‘Who are the Scotch?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘I should call them the guardian class
in Britain,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they watch over the
English and they have a great empire
all over the world.’</p>

<p>‘And the English are allowed to share
in this Empire?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘by the terms of the partnership
which was by far the most important
event in the economic history of
the English. For this Empire is very
large and rich.’</p>

<p>‘And did the Scotchmen win it by the
sword?’ was Phaelon’s next question.</p>

<p>‘Indeed no,’ I replied. ‘In fact Englishmen
and Irishmen—you have heard
of them?’</p>

<p>(Both Lysis and Phaelon nodded vigorously
and Lysis said ‘Of course,’ in such
a tone that I felt ashamed of the foolish
query.)</p>

<p>‘Englishmen and Irishmen,’ I went on,
‘were rather more prominent in those first
stages. But it was the Scotchmen who
made the Empire pay.’</p>

<p>‘And after all,’ said Agathon, ‘that was
the real point in having an Empire.’</p>

<p>‘And they built up a great trade with
everybody and prospered greatly,’ I said,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>‘the Scotch and the northern English particularly.
And these two together, when
they go abroad to gain money, call themselves
the British. But they make the
mistake of thinking their activities will go
on being profitable for ever. They think
that because all the world, even Greece,
has bought from them in the century
past, the relationship will continue. But
I believe otherwise, and that this foreign
trade will be their destruction, and that
they are selling the swords which will
pierce their own bodies.’</p>

<p>‘How, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘whoever deals with
them finds that they have nothing to give
of the amenities of living. They do not
sell you marbles, or statues, or wine, but
coal and machinery. And if you buy these
things you find they start industry in
your own country also. For of all newcomers
to a country machinery is the most
tenacious of its own character and the
most certain to make its new home resemble
its old one. An Italian will make
Italy again in New York, and a machine
will make Sheffield in the furthest
Indies.’</p>

<p>‘And is that really all the British offer
the world?’ exclaimed Lysis. ‘They will
not last long according to my opinion.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘for it will be realized
that these iron machines of theirs are a
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>more deadly threat to the life of a city
than was the Wooden Horse himself.’</p>

<p>‘By Hercules, yes!’ they agreed.</p>

<p>‘If the British had desired wholly to
destroy and change Troy they would not
have come with besieging armies. They
would have sent some machinery and
divided the rich against the poor by
holding out promises of all the machines
would do to make life pleasanter for the
rich. And in fewer years than ten, the
walls of Troy would have disappeared.
The city would have vanished as though
it had gone up in vengeful smoke. Indeed
it would continue smoking not for a few
days, in the manner of Greek destruction,
but indefinitely, with chimneys to insult
and dwarf the lofty towers of Ilium, if this
industrial system of theirs did not make
chimneys of the very towers themselves.’</p>

<p>‘The British, as it seems to me, are most
dangerous,’ said Lysis.</p>

<p>‘But,’ said Agathon, ‘they also offer
the world other things beside machinery
and the coal to feed it with. Wool.’</p>

<p>‘The sheep’s clothing of the fable,’ I
said, ‘and a snare and one in which you
soon discover the wolf, as many a simple
barbarian race has found. Buy from
them one commodity only and you find
that they use the money you pay them in
a very alarming way. They use it to
develop your country.’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p>
<p>‘How?’ asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I said, ‘they make you spend
the money you owe them in putting yourself
in a position to supply others with
some commodity or other, so that you
can buy more and more from the British.
In this manner they have changed the
face of half the world. Those who buy
little from them they term “backward
peoples.”’</p>

<p>‘I am sorry for the barbarian world,’
said Lysis, ‘with these two great barbarian
races, the British and the American, invading
the rest in this cunning way and
weaving snares about them.’</p>

<p>‘Lysis,’ I said, ‘while you feel so full
of pity, pity also the British. For I said
that what they do they can only do for a
certain time.’</p>

<p>‘How?’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I explained, ‘their prosperity
depends upon being able to persuade other
peoples to buy these goods of theirs.’</p>

<p>‘Yes.’</p>

<p>‘But those who agree eagerly and buy
machines and make railways become, in
proportion as they are eager and active,
independent of the British and manufacture
everything for themselves, as happens
in their own colonies, while the
others, not sharing these ideals, neglect
the machines and remain poor and can
neither pay for what they have had nor
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>buy anything fresh. Against this second
class, who are found largely in the other
or southern Americas, the British merchants
have a strong prejudice.’</p>

<p>After pondering for a moment, Lysis
said: ‘It seems to me the Scotch must
be very like the Americans.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but when the Scotch
first set out to grow rich and important
they had themselves to please a guardian
class that valued learning, and so they
learnt to value it too. Whereas there was
no class that the Americans had to please.
But, in general, there is much in common
between the Americans and the commercial
people of Scotland, and those also of
the North of England, who agree with the
Scotch about life. Of them we may say
with the poet:—</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>“Nursed in so harsh a clime what shouldst
thou know of good?”</p>
</div>

<p>‘And these make the settlers the most
acceptable to the Americans.’</p>

<p>‘Why do they not all go there,’ said
Phaelon; ‘I do not like to think of them
so near Greece.’</p>

<p>‘The men of South England, on the other
hand, find it very useful to have these
Scots and northerners in the same island.’</p>

<p>‘Why?’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘the southern English live
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>a life that is almost reasonable, inquiring
into things, and pondering upon them, and
amusing themselves with games, and,
whenever possible, sitting in the sun.
Those men who are both rich and sensible
settle in South England.’</p>

<p>‘Is their pondering good pondering?’
demanded Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Why no,’ I said, ‘for they like to begin
and end in the middle of all questions.
It is difficult to muddle through in philosophy.’</p>

<p>‘How do they live, apart from what
they get from the Americans?’ asked
Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘Some make these northerners pay them
rents but a large part are concerned one
way or another, I am afraid, in the business
of their great city of London.’</p>

<p>‘What is that?’</p>

<p>‘It is doing the business of other people
for them, because it will be done better
than they could do it themselves. Even
the Athenians use the city of London.’</p>

<p>‘What is the secret of this London business?’
asked Phaelon.</p>

<p>‘There is a special climate in London,’
I answered, ‘which has the property of
making every man feel that he is ruined.
And no one is ever distracted from minding
his affairs by beholding the sun or the
sky, whose contemplation has ever led
men to philosophy. So they do business
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>there in a very careful and concentrated
way.’</p>

<p>‘But you say,’ said Lysis, ‘that they do
not come like the Americans to consider
commerce the end of life?’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said, ‘for the Americans do
their business where the climate makes
them over-sanguine and they become
filled up with the hope of gain and cheerfully
sacrifice everything else to the excitement
of the contest. But the Londoners
regard their business hours as the
scraping of a subsistence and skilful
avoidance of starvation, and flee from the
city every evening. And they live in
homes surrounded by other influences
than that of commerce, and by the marks
of the partial civilization to which South
England has attained. But when they
are at business they do about as much
mischief to the rest of the world as do
the Americans.’</p>

<p>‘Ought we not to hope,’ said Lysis
thoughtfully, ‘that the football game will
in fact make the Americans very warlike,
and that they will attack the English and
Scotch?’</p>

<p>‘Why, Lysis?’</p>

<p>‘That the great barbarian peoples may
destroy each other and that the rest of
the world may be freed from the aggression
of their industrial life.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it might well be the best
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>thing that could happen. But they are
more likely to combine forces in order
to industrialize the rest of the world.
And though they are very different people
yet bonds of similarity are growing up,
for machinery sets its stamp upon souls,
and the same machines will in the end
produce the same souls. To take but one
instance, among both peoples there has
grown up the love of the Dark Cave.’</p>

<p>‘What is the Dark Cave?’ asked Lysis
and Phaelon together.</p>

<p>‘You tell me,’ I said, ‘that you remember
the ideal state that Glaucon and others
worked out with me?’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘it has often been
spoken of since.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘I there pictured the unhappy
lot of men sitting huddled together
in a dark place, condemned all to look in
the same direction and to watch phantoms
and shadows of men as though they saw
something real.’</p>

<p>‘I remember.’</p>

<p>‘And I pitied such men, condemned to
the contemplation of unreality, and sought,
you remember, how they might be rescued
and brought out into the sunlight and
might learn to see men as they were.’</p>

<p>‘You thought,’ said Lysis, ‘no lot could
be more wretched for reasonable men.’</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘the Americans and the
English are not reasonable and will pay
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>money to be imprisoned in these caves,
and to contemplate lies and live altogether
in a false world. This is making them
one, for the greatest bond of union is to
share a common experience.’</p>

<p>‘Have you ever penetrated into a Dark
Cave, Socrates?’ asked Phaelon in excitement.</p>

<p>‘It was the end of my American adventures,’
I answered. ‘For I endeavoured
to save men from entering these
Caves, reasoning and expostulating with
them, asking them why they would give
their substance to be so misled about
life.’</p>

<p>‘And what happened, Socrates?’</p>

<p>‘Alas, my friends,’ I answered, ‘I was
considered disgraced for attacking “our
American Movies.”’</p>

<p>‘And in the end, Socrates, I suppose you
were deported?’ demanded Lysis.</p>

<p>‘What else, indeed,’ I answered.</p>

<p>‘What, then, did they say to you?’</p>

<p>‘That I had lied in filling in my answers
to those first questions that all must
answer who would receive a passport.
For they said I had plainly intended to
subvert the government of the United
States, and that they found, after inquiry
from various publications, that I had been
in prison. And the inspector added that
I had been in an asylum also, for that I
came from Europe, and the Balkans at
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>that, which he considered to be nothing
less than a madhouse.’</p>

<p>‘And do you think,’ said Agathon,
‘they will read your views about them?’</p>

<p>‘I think so,’ I answered, ‘for they find
the topic of themselves of much interest.
But I do not expect them to profit by
what I say, for even Xantippe is handicapped
in their regard by belonging to the
past. For they do not admire the past
at all, nor is the word “ancient” ever used
as praise.’</p>

<p>‘Do they despise all history?’ asked
Lysis.</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and they love the utterance
of their Detroit Oracle, when he
said</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p><em>History is bunk</em>,</p>
</div>

<p class="noi">and they regard him with increasing
honour as he says these things and as
the Europeans have given to Aristotle the
title they think honourable, calling him
the Master of them that Know, though
they do not add how little, so the Americans
hail the Detroit Oracle as the Master
of them that Guess.’</p>

<p>‘But,’ said Lysis, ‘though they despise
even the story of the Greeks, surely they
are eager to know about Rome, for Rome
excelled also in size and great buildings
and bridges and in buying culture from
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>the East. Do they not feel great sympathy?’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I replied, ‘and the priests and
keepers of ancient tradition find the name
of Rome an embarrassment to them, for
the Americans will have no respect for
Rome, since they heard it was not built
in a day.’</p>

<p>‘They have named a city after Plato,’
said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘They will name a city after anybody,’
I answered, ‘and there are but few of their
own citizens whom they do not desire to
forget.’</p>

<p>Here Agathon interrupted what I was
going to explain about the cities, and said:
‘But I believe they think of changing the
names of their cities into numbers and of
numbering the States. And some think
it will help efficiency and be a compliment
to themselves if they abolish the words
United States and America and get everybody
in all countries to call them One,
as being country Number 1 of the whole
world. But this compliment will cost
many dollars.’</p>

<p>‘If only philosophy cost many dollars,’
reflected Lysis, ‘they would value it more.’</p>

<p>‘They would,’ said Agathon, ‘but as it
is you must not despair, Socrates, for
your countenance is one that grows upon
people.’</p>

<p>‘It grew upon me,’ I said.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span></p>
<p>‘We,’ he said, ‘have had to get used to
you, and so it is perhaps with the Americans
and philosophy. They will acquire
the taste—in time.’</p>

<p>‘Anyway,’ said Lysis, ‘they ought to be
grateful to you, Socrates, for examining
into what they think and do and value.’</p>

<p>‘I think so,’ I replied, ‘for I am pointing
out to them something of great
moment to their happiness when I declare
that unless they reopen the question of
the end of living they will grow dissatisfied
and exist wretchedly. For they
must not go on letting themselves be
led by men with a low aim or no aim at
all. For the conditions of the future will
not support the philosophy of “making
good” as did the conditions of the past.
There is a point of view which suits a
man or nation in the early struggle with
poverty which becomes ridiculous when
the struggle is past.’</p>

<p>‘Many of them are beginning to think
so,’ said Agathon.</p>

<p>‘And I am beginning to think,’ said
Lysis rising, ‘that we have considered
these Americans quite long enough, and
that we should now move to some other
place and refresh ourselves, and with new
companions examine something else.’</p>

<p>‘I am of your mind; Lysis,’ said
Phaelon, and he also rose.</p>

<p>‘I will accompany you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>when the Americans hear what
we say of them they will change themselves
of their own accord and become
what we would like them to be. And if
this discussion of ours has that result it
will be more useful, I think, than many
of our talks. But whatever happens we
have done our best for these Americans
by telling them the truth. For there are
times when it is important to know the
truth, and life is one of them.’</p>

<p class="p2 noic">THE END</p>




<hr class="chap">
<div class="tnote">
<p class="noi tntitle">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>

<p class="smfont">Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.</p>

<p class="smfont">Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.</p>
</div>

<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76595 ***</div>
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