Philosophy And Political Economy in Some of Their Historical Relations

a, but only lands himself in the difficulty which all philosophers have experienced in separating the inseparable. He comes near to anticipate the economic controversy as to the possibility of drawing a line between productive and unproductive labour. He leaves indications that he would have settled it by falling back on the common prejudice of Greek philosophers against " vulgar " trades and in favour of the " liberal " arts. He avoids the difficult questions of exchange and value, though he admits that even in his simplest Ideal State there must be commerce and a market, contracts, and therefore customs and laws. He thus suggests to us the conclusion that the simplest form of industrial society must rest on a basis of complex custom. This appears more clearly when we consider in the third place Plato's conception of Civil Society and the State. III. Plato professes to begin the foundation of his Ideal State by an act of abstraction. He proposes to make a clean sweep of things as they are, both in politics and in manners.1 But he knows very well that his State is to be Hellenic, and not Barbarian;2 and, though the surface is rubbed smooth, the material of the tablet remains. Even his strong imagination cannot body forth the form of a society of men with no character already stamped on them, and no habits already formed. He is deeply impressed with differences of race,3 and we must not suppose him to mean that social as well as political institutions can be...