practice of it (Laws).  Of a supreme or master science which was to be the ‘coping-stone’ of the rest, few traces appear in the Laws.  He seems to have lost faith in it, or perhaps to have realized that the time for such a science had not yet come, and that he was unable to fill up the outline which he had sketched.  There is no requirement that the guardians of the law shall be philosophers, although they are to know the unity of virtue, and the connexion of the sciences.  Nor are we told that the leisure of the citizens, when they are grown up, is to be devoted to any intellectual employment.  In this respect we note a falling off from the Republic, but also there is ‘the returning to it’ of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics.  The public and family duties of the citizens are to be their main business, and these would, no doubt, take up a great deal more time than in the modern world we are willing to allow to either of them.  Plato no longer entertains the idea of any regular training to be pursued under the superintendence of the state from eighteen to thirty, or from thirty to thirty-five; he has taken the first step downwards on ‘Constitution Hill’ (Republic).  But he maintains as earnestly as ever that ’to men living under this second polity there remains the greatest of all works, the education of the soul,’ and that no bye-work should be allowed to interfere with it.  Night and day are not long enough for the consummation of it.

Few among us are either able or willing to carry education into later life; five or six years spent at school, three or four at a university, or in the preparation for a profession, an occasional attendance at a lecture to which we are invited by friends when we have an hour to spare from house-keeping or money-making—­these comprise, as a matter of fact, the education even of the educated; and then the lamp is extinguished ’more truly than Heracleitus’ sun, never to be lighted again’ (Republic).  The description which Plato gives in the Republic of the state of adult education among his contemporaries may be applied almost word for word to our own age.  He does not however acquiesce in this widely-spread want of a higher education; he would rather seek to make every man something of a philosopher before he enters on the duties of active life.  But in the Laws he no longer prescribes any regular course of study which is to be pursued in mature years.  Nor does he remark that the education of after-life is of another kind, and must consist with the majority of the world rather in the improvement of character than in the acquirement of knowledge.  It comes from the study of ourselves and other men:  from moderation and experience:  from reflection on circumstances:  from the pursuit of high aims:  from a right use of the opportunities of life.  It is the preservation of what we have been, and the addition of something more.  The power of abstract study or continuous thought is very rare, but such a training as this can be given by every one to himself.