Note (return) — Chapter II
Reading edition
Plato, with his usual boldness, faced this difficulty, and proposed that the loyalty of the subject-classes in his Republic should be secured once for all by religious faith. His rulers were to establish and teach a religion in which they need not believe. They were to tell their people 'one magnificent lie';[69] a remedy which in its ultimate effect on the character of their rule might have been worse than the disease which it was intended to cure.