Plato's American Republic : Done out of the original

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Title: Plato's American Republic
        Done out of the original

Author: Douglas Woodruff

Release date: July 30, 2025 [eBook #76595]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926

Credits: Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLATO'S AMERICAN REPUBLIC ***





                            PLATO’S AMERICAN
                                REPUBLIC




                            PLATO’S AMERICAN
                                REPUBLIC

                        Done out of the original
                                   by
                            DOUGLAS WOODRUFF


                             [Illustration]


                      “_fidelia vulnera amantis_”


                                New York
                         E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
                            681 Fifth Avenue




                            COPYRIGHT, 1926
                       BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

                         _All Rights Reserved_

                   First Printing        August, 1926
                   Second Printing      October, 1926
                   Third Printing       January, 1927
                   Fourth Printing        March, 1927


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                  _TO
                              M. C. HOLLIS
                                  AND
                            M. J. MACDONALD_




                                CONTENTS


                    BOOK                        PAGE
                      I. WOMEN, CARS, AND MEN      1
                     II. GOVERNMENT               18
                    III. PUBLIC OPINION           36
                     IV. PROHIBITION              53
                      V. EDUCATION                71
                     VI. AMERICA AND ENGLAND      93




                            PLATO’S AMERICAN
                                REPUBLIC




                                 BOOK I

                         _Scene: Athens, 1925_

                   SOCRATES (THE NARRATOR); AGATHON;
                             LYSIS; PHAELON


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.’

‘Truly a strange way of honouring the Athenians,’ I said.

‘I think,’ answered Agathon, ‘that it was less his idea to honour the
Athenians than to make his own countrymen pay him many _denarii_ 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.

At this word ‘American’ the two young men leaned forward eagerly, and
Phaelon said:――

‘Tell us, Socrates, have you ever lectured in America?’

‘How not?’ said I.

‘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 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.’

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.’

‘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.

‘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 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.’

‘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.’

‘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. But this danger they did not seem to
think imminent.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phaelon, ‘you endured much, Socrates.’

‘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 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.’

‘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.’

‘Tell us,’ said they both, ‘about a Woman’s Club.’

‘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 the tail of the cock, and spoke the thing
which was not.’

‘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?’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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

‘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, 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.’

‘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.’

‘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?’

‘Assuredly,’ they said, ‘they must be one or the other.’

‘Or both,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

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

‘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 _n_, 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, 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.’

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

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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?’

‘No’, he said.

‘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.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is much more likely.’

‘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?’

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

‘True,’ I said, ‘but there is a strangeness 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?’

‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘it is certainly vast.’

‘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?’

‘Assuredly,’ he said.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

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.’

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

‘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, I reject this
opinion, and believe that the Americans will persevere.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Agathon.

‘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 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.’

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

‘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?’

‘Five thousand and forty,’ he said, ‘is the figure Plato gives.’

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

‘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
quite does what Plato says, not even when he makes you, Socrates, the
mouthpiece of his views. I will guess two hundred thousand.’

‘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.’

After a long pause, Phaelon said rather faintly: ‘Why, Socrates?’

‘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.’

‘No wonder so many of them come to Europe,’ said Lysis.

‘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?’

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




                                BOOK II


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.’

Lysis pondered for some moments on these things, and then said: ‘Was
this a great civil war?’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘Why?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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 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.’

‘Come, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘you forget your old friends the
preachers.’

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘We are listening,’ they said.

‘Why, they hold that some sins might 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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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

‘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 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.’

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.’

‘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, 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.’

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

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

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

‘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.’

‘Explain to us, Socrates,’ they said, as I was expecting they would.

‘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.’

‘Yes,’ they said.

‘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?’

‘It must,’ they assented.

‘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?’

‘Assuredly not.’

‘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 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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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?’

‘What exactly is propaganda?’ said Lysis.

‘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.’

‘And one ever growing greater,’ added Agathon.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but they will not enjoy Hades, where time is not money
any more, and no one but Charon has any wealth, so that the most
forward salesmanship will be in vain.’

‘Poor Americans,’ said Lysis, ‘they will feel very lost.’

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

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

‘Pray do so, Socrates,’ they said.

‘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 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.’

‘What sort of people were these in the South?’ asked Lysis.

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

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘How,’ said Lysis.

‘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 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?’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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

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

‘We did.’

‘And made them cease to think of themselves as members of this state
or that, but rather as Americans.’

‘Assuredly.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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?’

‘They cannot deny it, Socrates,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

‘Are there really far more Americans than other people?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Phaelon.

‘Speed.’

‘How?’

‘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.’

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

‘But worse,’ I said, ‘is to come, unless they will change altogether
and abandon their pride and listen meekly to the philosophers.’

‘How, Socrates?’

‘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.”’

‘What is progressive advertising?’ asked Lysis.

‘It is arousing the widest possible sense of want.’

‘What is the Problem of Salesmanship?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘They do, indeed,’ I assented.

‘And they have so much energy,’ said Agathon.

‘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
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.”’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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.”’




                                BOOK III


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

‘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.’

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

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

‘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 by the whim of a single tyrant like most
barbarians, or the opinion of the minority like the English.’

‘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?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘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.’

‘Certainly,’ said Lysis.

‘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, 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.’

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

‘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 being tolerant of disagreement and discussion.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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 only
listening to him as to a sort of clown.’

‘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.

When he had refreshed his memory with these, he turned to Lysis and
said:――

‘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.
And it was at one of these luncheons that Socrates spoke.’

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

‘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. 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.”’

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

‘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.’

‘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,” though he was mistaken in
thinking that Socrates had used that actual expression.’

‘But what was the address about?’ Lysis demanded.

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.’

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

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

‘What is this quota?’ asked Lysis.

‘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 are the hardest of all to
Americanize, as they have lived in civilization for so great a time.’

‘I understand,’ said Lysis.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Yes,’ said Agathon, ‘but it is not merriment for their children who
become Americans.’

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

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

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

‘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.’

‘You are prepared to leave the address to the Business Men’s Lunch
Club, then,’ said Agathon, ‘and follow Socrates on a new path?’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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 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.’

‘Then let me read the report,’ said Agathon, and he read from the
_Hootsville Courier_ 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 (_applause_). 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 (_laughter_). 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 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 (_great applause_). 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 (_applause_). He was reminded of a story about a negro, called
Rastus....”

‘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 (_laughter_) 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
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.

‘“‘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 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
(_vigorous dissent_).

‘“‘More Greeks to help you to discover justice and the rule of reason,
O men of Hootsville, about which you know nothing (_interruption_).
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 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.

‘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.’




                                BOOK IV


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?’

‘It is true,’ I answered.

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

‘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.’

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.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Phaelon, ‘we should first understand clearly what this
Volstead Act is.’

‘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.’

‘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.

‘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
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:――

    In driest land,
    ’Neath steadiest hand,
    The iron steed
    Will fastest breed.

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 increase the
number of these cars. They believed furthermore that this sacrifice
would increase the quantity of other things at their command.’

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

‘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 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.’

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

‘How, dear Phaelon?’ I said.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that the rich can drink and do.’

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

‘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?’

‘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.’

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.’

‘For the same reason, in fact,’ said 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.’

‘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.’

‘Explain it, then,’ said they all.

‘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?’

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

‘The priests themselves,’ said Lysis, ‘are surely not enemies to drink.’

‘By Hercules, no,’ I said.

‘That means much,’ said Agathon.

‘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 a
great mistake when they stirred up the women to tamper with the laws.’

‘Is that what they did?’ asked Lysis.

‘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.’

A great look of understanding came into the eyes of both Lysis and
Phaelon, and Lysis said:――

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

‘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.’

‘Did many say that, Socrates?’ asked Lysis.

‘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.’

‘But are not the poor grown up?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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.’

‘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 public places and
busying yourself with subjects with which manufacturers have nothing to
do.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Many months,’ I agreed.

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

‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid we cannot deny it: there are men in
Kansas who have repressed their thirst for upwards of forty years.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for I met a man in Kansas 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.’

‘Truly a striking view,’ exclaimed Lysis.

‘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
going on over in Europe. And he added that my appearance corroborated
his theory.’

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

‘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.’

‘Truly a pitiable servitude,’ murmured Lysis.

‘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 with the fate of Orpheus and be
torn to pieces by angry women, filled with a different kind of madness.’

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

‘Which?’ I asked.

‘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?’

‘I do,’ I agreed.

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

‘I believe so.’

‘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.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and their laws were the 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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘A great thing is friendship,’ exclaimed Lysis.

‘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.’

‘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?’

‘Assuredly.’

‘What did they answer?’

‘That I was to drink my fill, and not be at all uneasy lest I was
breaking any 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.’

‘Happy Socrates,’ they said.

‘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 they can balance those they already have?’

‘Indeed, no, Socrates,’ they replied.

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

‘Such,’ said Lysis, ‘would be their deserved misfortune.’

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

‘What else, indeed, O Socrates?’

‘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.’

‘We agree,’ they said.




                                 BOOK V


‘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?’

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

‘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?’

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

‘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.’

‘Yes, Socrates.’

‘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.’

‘Such is the unhappy truth in America.’

‘We must therefore educate a guardian class for the Americans who
shall drive these usurpers from their position of influence and lead
the Americans towards wisdom.’

‘We must.’

‘And shall we draw our guardians from men or from women?’

‘As it is America, from women,’ suggested Phaelon.

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘we will make women guardians, for we are desperate
and the proverb speaks truly:――

    Desperate diseases need desperate remedies.

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:

    Nature is strong.

‘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.’

‘But there is a better reason than any of these,’ said Agathon.

‘What is that?’ asked Lysis.

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

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘By the dog, no,’ I cried.

‘Then,’ said Agathon, ‘let us found our college.’

‘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.’

‘Indeed, Socrates,’ said Lysis in surprise, ‘many hundred colleges? I
should not have supposed there were any at all.’

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.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘If there are so many students, Socrates,’ asked Phaelon, ‘is there not
a great body of teachers? What part do they play in America and could
not they be the guardians?’

‘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.’

‘Proceed, Socrates.’

‘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.’

‘It would seem so, indeed,’ they answered.

‘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?’

‘What?’ they asked with apprehension.

‘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. Moreover, they are driven to associate with the
men of commerce and to flatter them for their great wealth.’

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

‘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.’

‘What can be worse than that?’

‘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?’

‘Naturally.’

‘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?’

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

‘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
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.’

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

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

‘Yes,’ they said.

‘And you did not understand me?’

‘No.’

‘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 the same narrow course after they have once learned how the
routine goes.’

At which Lysis exclaimed: ‘Truly a miserable existence.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Will most of the teachers be with us?’ asked Lysis.

‘Alas,’ I said, ‘the most part of the teachers are not valiant.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘What?’

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘That will be a great gain.’

‘There are already some small colleges in America which can help us.’

‘How so?’

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

‘Five hundred students!’ echoed Lysis――‘you call that a small number.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but the Americans do, 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.’

‘And how are they to help us?’

‘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?’

‘Indeed, yes, Socrates.’

‘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.’

‘We will keep our guardians to a few studies,’ said Lysis.

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

‘What will be the first great change?’ he asked.

‘Why,’ I answered, ‘as it seems to me, the first thing to destroy is
their superstitious 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.’

‘What are these facts?’

‘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.’

‘Might not that be called an idea?’

‘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.’

‘Is not evolution another favourite fact?’ asked Agathon.

‘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.’

‘And facts are what they teach in their colleges?’ asked Phaelon.

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

‘I have seen them myself, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘running about as
students, boasting of the number of courses they could take and of the
daily information that they could gather into notebooks.’

‘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.’

‘Except of experts, Socrates,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

‘And then all will go well with you?’ asked Lysis.

‘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.’

‘Well, Socrates,’ said Phaelon, ‘it sounds to me a fine pastime to go
persuading these great herds of barbarians that Persians are finer
people than Greeks.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘Card-index?’ said Phaelon; ‘what weapon is that?’

‘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.’

‘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 to prevent themselves from getting
wholly lost in the modern world.’

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

‘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.’

‘But what is on the cards?’ insisted Lysis.

‘The most sacred things of all――entrancing statistics and The Facts,
and all the things that Modern Science teaches.’

‘Tell us, Socrates, who is this Modern Science?’

‘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.’

‘And does she speak true things?’ demanded Lysis.

‘She knows about machines and the 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.’

‘That is a disappointment to them,’ said Lysis.

‘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.’

‘We will,’ they said.

‘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.’

‘You have described such studies many times, Socrates,’ said they all.

‘And do you not agree?’

‘We agree,’ said they all again.

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

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.’

‘Is commerce still to continue?’ said Phaelon.

‘We must allow it,’ I said, ‘the Americans being what they are, but we
will take care that it receives no particular honour.’

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

‘We must bring them all to Athens,’ I said.

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.’

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I consider that as settled.’

‘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.’

‘How not?’ said Agathon angrily.

‘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.’

‘We will unbend,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Better say cousins,’ corrected Agathon.

‘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.’

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.’

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

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

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

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

‘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.’

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

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

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

‘They will find that easy,’ said Agathon, ‘for I will be careful to
instruct them in the arts of courtship.’

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?’

‘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.’

‘And what shall they say?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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.’

‘And then, Socrates?’

‘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.’

‘But Thales lived long ago.’

‘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 philosophers or philosophers
Congressmen.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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




                                BOOK VI


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

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.’

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

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

‘What is that?’

‘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.’

‘Watch it, Socrates?’ demanded Lysis.

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

‘Explain it to us,’ they said.

‘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 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.’

‘Would you let them play baseball also?’ asked Lysis.

‘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.’

‘Is not football in danger?’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

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

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. 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.

‘It must be good fun being a coach,’ said Lysis.

‘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.’

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

‘They cheer to order,’ I replied. ‘For the Americans are a practical
people and scheme that no single breath shall be 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.’

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

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

‘I agree.’

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

‘Very often it is good.’

‘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?’

‘It is true.’

‘Then, can he begin too early to shout with the crowd?’

‘He cannot.’

‘For if he is by nature incapable of 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.’

‘I agree.’

‘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.’

‘I think so.’

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

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

‘They are,’ I answered. ‘Their friendship 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.’

‘By advantages do they mean the nearness to Athens?’ said Phaelon.

‘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.’

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

‘No.’

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

‘Only in New York.’

‘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 of their
strength. They love the deep waters.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘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.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they would be very safe in Kentucky.’

‘And what happens when the Englishmen visit America?’ demanded Lysis.

‘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.’

‘What is the torture?’ cried Phaelon.

‘They call it the Third Degree, and it consists in endless
interrogation.’

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

‘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.’

‘And then there is a war?’ asked Phaelon.

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

‘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. 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.’

‘And what happens when the Americans come to England?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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 bringing it
into the conversation. Then they grow happy again, but their hosts less
happy.’

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

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

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

‘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.’

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

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

‘Well, why do they not buy it?’ he demanded.

‘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
Park, where there is plenty of room for it.’

‘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?’

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

‘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.’

‘Why, Socrates?’

‘Because the Americans will pay to see it and will not pay to see the
factories.’

‘Is their position so desperate?’

‘No’ I said, ‘if we are seeking the truth we must declare that it is
not so desperate as the Americans imagine for the Americans forget
that the English are in partnership with the Scotch.’

‘Who are the Scotch?’ asked Phaelon.

‘I should call them the guardian class in Britain,’ said Agathon.

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

‘And the English are allowed to share in this Empire?’

‘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.’

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

‘Indeed no,’ I replied. ‘In fact Englishmen and Irishmen――you have
heard of them?’

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

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

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

‘And they built up a great trade with everybody and prospered greatly,’
I said, ‘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.’

‘How, Socrates?’

‘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.’

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

‘No,’ I said, ‘for it will be realized that these iron machines of
theirs are a more deadly threat to the life of a city than was the
Wooden Horse himself.’

‘By Hercules, yes!’ they agreed.

‘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.’

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

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

‘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.’

‘How?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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.”’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘How?’

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

‘Yes.’

‘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
buy anything fresh. Against this second class, who are found largely
in the other or southern Americas, the British merchants have a strong
prejudice.’

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

‘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:――

    “Nursed in so harsh a clime what shouldst thou know of good?”

‘And these make the settlers the most acceptable to the Americans.’

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

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

‘Why?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the southern English live 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.’

‘Is their pondering good pondering?’ demanded Lysis.

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘What is that?’

‘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.’

‘What is the secret of this London business?’ asked Phaelon.

‘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
there in a very careful and concentrated way.’

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

‘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.’

‘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?’

‘Why, Lysis?’

‘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.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it might well be the best 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.’

‘What is the Dark Cave?’ asked Lysis and Phaelon together.

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

‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘it has often been spoken of since.’

‘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.’

‘I remember.’

‘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.’

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

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the Americans and the English are not reasonable and
will pay 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.’

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

‘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.’

‘And what happened, Socrates?’

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

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

‘What else, indeed,’ I answered.

‘What, then, did they say to you?’

‘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 that, which he
considered to be nothing less than a madhouse.’

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

‘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.’

‘Do they despise all history?’ asked Lysis.

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

    _History is bunk_,

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.’

‘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 the
East. Do they not feel great sympathy?’

‘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.’

‘They have named a city after Plato,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

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.’

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

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

‘It grew upon me,’ I said.

‘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.’

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

‘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.’

‘Many of them are beginning to think so,’ said Agathon.

‘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.’

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

‘I will accompany you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps 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.’


                                THE END




 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.






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