cause them to neglect their higher welfare.133 However, this prejudice has been read into some passages in Plato by a forced interpretation. The assertion of Socrates,134 that craftsmen have not temperance (σωφροσύνη), since they do other people’s business, is made merely to draw Critias into the argument. The statement that all arts having for their function provision for the body are slavish,135 does not necessarily imply prejudice against physical labor. Such arts are slavish, to Plato, because they have no definite principle of service as gymnastics has. He is merely illustrating the point that it is an inferior type of statesmanship that works without a definite principle for the highest political welfare. The idea, expressed in the Politics,136 that the masses (πλῆθος) cannot acquire political science is a criticism against unprepared statesmanship rather than against labor. Indeed, Plato asserts the same of the wealthy.137
Moreover, the following facts should be observed: that the prejudice of Plato against the manual arts is chiefly limited to the Laws; that even there his prejudice is primarily against retail trade rather than against industry;138 that in so far