Plato1 tells us that the Guardians of the State are to be "consummate artificers of freedom," and it is because they are the living depositaries of tradition that they achieve for the State the liberty which it must have if its obedience to law is to be vital. Here again we have the same great principles of rhythm illustrated. The resultant of control and of self-expression is not the resultant of opposed but of combined forces.

To this consideration we may presently return. At present we remark that education is a sacred and serious occupation, because it is an artistic occupation. Before choosing your minister of education you resort to the temple of Apollo. The doctrine put forward in some of the passages already cited, that the rules or laws of art are a kind of nature, or a principle of life, suggests or is suggested by another doctrine of wider scope. It is that life itself is an art. In an early passage of the Republic (1, 342 et seq.), Plato speaks about the disinterestedness of art, and here he is thinking of the several professions and occupations of men-the art of the shepherd, or the art of the practitioner in any department of human activity. There is a general art of life in which all men are engaged both as individuals and also as members of a community which embraces them. The lawgiver is he who sets the music, who gives the tone and determines the modes of this supreme art. He is the subject of a sacred frenzy in which order, become habitual, is

1 See also IV, 421.

raised to the level of passion, and he is entitled to impose his command upon lesser men than himself because he is himself clothed with an authority not his own. It was apparently a circumstance not unknown in Greece, that small offices should seem to give immense importance to still smaller men, who, to adopt Plato's image, believed themselves to be six feet high, because flatterers, built upon an even lower scale, continually told them that they were of that very respectable height. But the true lawgiver is like the poet; indeed he moves upon a larger and a loftier plane: with the gods or the heroes we may dare to compare him. The poet, says Plato (Ion, p. 534), “brings songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the muses; like a bee, he wings his way from flower to flower. The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he is inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer in him; when he has not attained to this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles." A further passage from the same dialogue emphasizes the same teaching, and supplies an example. "GOD takes away the minds of poets and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that GOD himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus, the Chalcidian, affords

us a striking instance of what I am saying: he wrote nothing that anyone would care to remember but the famous paean which is in everyone's mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself says." The lawgiver is numbered among these diviners and holy prophets.

In the ordered state, the embodied harmony of human activities, there will be differences of function, and the differences will be recognised. On this Plato insists, as everyone remembers, with much gravity in the Republic. The stability of the state, he tells us, can only be maintained if everyone will mind his own business, and confine himself to that. And every man being governed by the conditions of his occupation will express himself in accordance with it. It is true that above the particular occupation or calling in which he is engaged, he has to practise the general art of life; but for the most part, he will avoid mistakes in life if he fulfils the claims and performs the duties of that station in which he is placed. But if the citizens are eager to remind themselves that they are human beings first and practitioners of the several arts after that, let them at least note that even if they are human beings, they must be either male or female, and not traverse the natural boundaries of their sex. In the Laws (VII, 802-3), an illustration not common in this context is used. "We must distinguish," we read, "and determine on some general principle what songs are suitable to women and what to men, and must assign to them the proper melodies and

rhythms. It is shocking for a whole harmony (the harmony of society as a whole is meant) to be inharmonical, or for a rhythm to be unrhythmical.... Now both sexes have melodies and rhythm which of necessity belong to them, and those of women are clearly enough indicated by their natural difference." In an earlier passage of the same dialogue (Laws II, 669) Plato contends that the Muses themselves would never make the mistake of confounding what is appropriate for men with what is suitable to women; but poets, being very much inferior to the Muses in character, make this, as he regards it, monstrous blunder.

Rhythm (Laws v, 665), Plato tells us, is the order of motion. It is motion given by freedom, but exercised under control. There need be no opposition between freedom and control, and when rhythm is good there is none. When rhythm is bad, control, as we have seen, is a gentle name for mere coercion. But if there is no essential opposition, there is still contrast between freedom and control. Motion implies a goal, not yet reached; control suggests the negation of motion. It is what Plato calls rest, or inactivity. Let me quote a difficult passage from Theaetetus in illustration (Theaet. 153). We may easily see that "motion is the source of that which is said to be and become, and rest of notbeing and destruction; for fire and warmth, which are supposed to be the parent and nurse of all other things, are born of friction, which is a kind of motion ...and this is the origin of fire. And the race of

animals is generated in the same way. And is not bodily habit spoiled by rest and idleness, but preserved for a long time by motion and exercise? And so...of the mental habit. Is not the soul informed and improved and preserved by thought and attention, which are motions; but when at rest, unstirred by thought or attention, the soul is uninformed and speedily forgets whatever she has learned."

Control means direction, it may be urged; but direction implies choice, and choice means rejection as well as acceptance. Command is at the same time an order to do this and an order not to do that. It is this contrast that Plato illustrates; but not this alone. Motion, as we have seen, implies desire; but what when desire is fulfilled? Will motion be possible, is it conceivable then? Progress implies a destination; what when the destination is reached? Our notion of goodness seems to include the notion of progress. Will goodness cease to be itself when it has reached perfection? And again, rest means cessation from activity; yet rest is sought. We think of the alternation of rest and activity; it is one of the forms of the rhythmic balance of freedom and control, but may we not speak of the goal of endeavour as a repose which will never be disturbed; and if so, have we set before ourselves a mere negation as our end?

The question is asked, the dilemma stated, with indignant eloquence in the Sophistes (249): "0 heavens, can we ever be made to believe that motion and life and soul are not present with absolute Being?