ABSTRACT

In a well-known passage in the first book of the Republic Socrates distinguishes between the two arts we all have to practise as members of society: one the art of being of efficient service to others, the shepherd to his sheep, the doctor to his patient, the pilot to his ship; the other the art of making money to support oneself. In the one a man seeks no advantage over rivals, but only over himself in the pursuit of excellence; in the other he may all the time be only seeking to get the better of other people, honestly or dishonestly as the case may be. Plato's Utopia was a scheme for insuring that the citizens should be employed each in the art for which nature had best suited him and excellence was best attained, and that a living should automatically be ensured, and all conflict between the two arts be thus avoided. There was more than irony or bravado in Socrates’ own suggestion at his trial, when asked to propose a substitute for the sentence of death, that he should be supported for the rest of his life in the Prytaneum at the public expense, in return for the service to which God had called him of using his talents to make his fellow citizens uncomfortable about their souls.