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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: accident, and therefore he will allow largely for the unknown element of
politics. But the game being one in which chance and skill are combined,
if he plays long enough he is certain of victory. He will not be always
consistent, for the world is changing; and though he depends upon the
support of a party, he will remember that he is the minister of the whole.
He lives not for the present, but for the future, and he is not at all sure
that he will be appreciated either now or then. For he may have the
existing order of society against him, and may not be remembered by a
distant posterity.
There are always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates in
the Gorgias, find fault with all statesmen past as well as present, not
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