Until either philosophers become kings, said soc rates, or kings philosophers, States will never succeed in remedying their shortcomings. And if he was loath to give forth this view, because, as he admitted, it might Sink him beneath the waters of laughter and ridicule, so to-day among us it would doubtless resound in folly if we sought to apply it again in our own field of State life, and to assert that philosophers must become lawyers or lawyers philosophers, if our law is ever to be advanced into its perfect working.