'Well, and what answer do you give ?' My answer is, that our guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,--I should not be surprised to find in the long-run that they were,--but this is not the aim of our constitution, which was designed for the good of the whole and not of any one part.

If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: 'The eye must be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.' 'Now I can well imagine a fool's paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the other classes of a State lose their distinctive character.

And a State may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into boon companions, then the ruin is complete.

Remember that we are not talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man is expected to do his own work.

The happiness resides not in this or that class, but in the State as a whole.