The anxiety of Plato over the effect of trades or professions upon character is well worthy of modern imitation, and this is, to a considerable extent, an economic as well as a moral question.
Zimmern241 has well observed:
“Our neglect to study the effect of certain modern professions upon character, when we are always insisting, and rightly, upon the importance of a character-forming education, is one of the strangest lapses, due to the sway of nineteenth-century economics.”
As we have seen, one of the chief purposes of Plato in his limitation of commerce was to eliminate graft from the government.
Though his remedy was not acceptable, yet his remarkable appreciation of a very grave problem that still faces us should be recognized.
Furthermore, no better solution for it has ever been offered than the separation of politics from big business. This was the underlying principle of his suggestion, and it is in accord with the trend of modern statesmanship.
Another impelling motive of Plato in his stringent legislation was to render impossible the development of extremes of wealth or poverty in the state. Again, we should credit him with having clearly appreciated the problem, though we may criticize his attempted solution. The great commercial prosperity of today has made the situation vastly more acute, and still economics has no satisfactory solution to offer. After all, in the light of modern tendencies toward the regulation of industry and commerce, some of Plato’s ideas do not seem so “grandfatherly,” but rather prophetic, and in accord with sound economy.