sort of despair from the sad realities of Athenian life; and instead of writing a bitter satire, as a Roman might have done, or waging war against the society he despises in "latter-day pamphlets," he throws himself as far as he can out of the present, with all its degrading associations, and builds for himself (as we have seen) a new State—after a divine and perfect pattern—in a world a thousand leagues from his own.
Those "three waves" of the "Republic" (as Socrates terms them)—the community of families and that of property, and the assumption that philosophers must be kings—which threaten to swamp the argument even with such friendly criticism as Glaucon and Adeimantus venture to offer, prove with less partial opponents insurmountable obstacles to the realisation of the Platonic State. Aristotle heads the list of objectors, and disapproves both of the end and the means to be pursued. So far from promoting the unity of the State, he argues that Plato's system of Communism will create an endless division of interests and sympathies; will tend to destroy the security of life and property; and, among other evils, will do away with the virtues of charity and liberality, by allowing no room for their exercise. Modern critics generally touch upon the repression of all individual energy, the cramping of all free thought and action, and the necessary abolition of any sense of mutual rights and obligations which are necessary parts of Plato's system; and De Quincey has denounced in an eloquent passage the social immorality encouraged by Plato's marriage regulations, and his "sensual bounty on infanticide"—"cutting adrift the little boat to go
