football team, although they acquire thereby a great superiority. If football were managed as
democratically as the Athenian government, the students to play for their university would be
chosen by lot. But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very
far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in
that of his class or party or creed.
The next point is that Plato's definition of "justice" presupposes a State organized either on
traditional lines, or, like his own, so as to realize, in its totality, some ethical ideal. Justice, we are
told, consists in every man doing his own job. But what is a man's job? In a State which, like
ancient Egypt or the kingdom of the Incas, remains unchanged generation after generation, a man's
job is his father's job, and no question arises. But in Plato's State no man has any legal father. His
job, therefore, must be decided either by his own tastes or by the State's judgement as to his
aptitudes. The latter is obviously what Plato would desire. But some kinds of work, though highly
skilled, may be deemed pernicious; Plato takes this view of poetry, and I should take it of the
work of Napoleon. The purposes of the government, therefore, are essential in determining what is
a man's job. Although all the rulers are to be philosophers, there are to be no innovations: a
philosopher is to be, for all time, a man who understands and agrees with Plato.
When we ask: what will Plato's Republic achieve? The answer is rather humdrum. It will achieve
success in wars against roughly equal populations, and it will secure a livelihood for a certain
small number of people. It will almost certainly produce no art or science, because of its rigidity;
in this respect, as in others, it will be like Sparta. In spite of all the fine talk, skill in war and
enough to eat is all that will be achieved. Plato had lived through famine and defeat in Athens;
perhaps, subconsciously, he thought the avoidance of these evils the best that statesmanship could
accomplish.
A Utopia, if seriously intended, obviously must embody the ideals of its creator. Let us consider,
for a moment, what we can mean by "ideals." In the first place, they are desired by those who
believe in them; but they are not desired quite in the same way as a man desires personal comforts,
such as food and shelter. What makes the difference between "ideal" and an ordinary object of
desire is that the