During many years of consideration, I have grown into a firm conviction that two of the greatest masters of the human psyche have been Plato and St Augustine. There is a close connection between them. Both considered philosophy to be a sort of therapeia, both were personally and theoretically concerned with the problem of integration, and both saw clearly that the personal and the social problem are at bottom one and the same. That is why we can take so much of our material from Augustine’s City of God.

Everybody knows that Plato declares in the Republic that the individual is the state writ small. Usually this is taken to be a proposition of political philosophy, and this is true enough if we have a right understanding of what Plato intended by politics. If we read the Gorgias we shall find a remarkable sentence in which Socrates says that the science which takes care of the health of the body is medicine, but that that which takes care of the health of the psyche is—politics! The argument with Polus, near the commencement of which this statement stands, concludes by saying that the man who is sick with guilt ought to go to the judge and legislator and beg them for the punishment which will cure him. If we consider how much profit we ourselves could expect for our guilt-ridden souls by approaching Parliament or the minister of justice as the agents for our release, we can imagine the incredulity of Socrates’ hearers. But his point is clear: politics should be regarded as psychotherapy. The right environment for integrated personal living is a community under just laws.