Martha held her smile as the next question came at her. She began to feel like a boxer in a metaphysical ring. Greater Good. Suddenly aware that this could turn surreal, even dangerous. Invictus watchtowers and Carthian traps of polity lay at every rhetorical corner. In her apparent pause to reply, her mind swiftly rattled through Hume...Hobbes...Locke...skirted around Marx and went back to Plato. "Ah!" she began with an excited tone, hoping in her heart that it was clear she was replying to the query, not offering a lecture on political science: "Who indeed can adjudicate upon these matters, sir? The vox populi is notorious for it's fickle and wanton appetites...so easily occupied by the distractions of bread...circuses...and the passing glory of foreign wars! Can one quantify and indeed add a qualiative value to such things, sir? In the process of doing so, become hostage to the caprice of the Tyranny of the Masses, no less! Often cruel in their application of merciless force...unaccountable by their weight of numbers! The answer to the adjudication of the Greater Good is, sir, arguably, unlikley to be found only in enumerating the countless casualties of rebellion and revolution and calculating the number of toppled despots. More from the state of a society after a revolution. Is it improved? Is want and suffering mitigated? Is more liberty enjoyed...and how is the exercise of this liberty characterised?" she offers in a continued respectful, tone. Eyes wide with eagerness at the debate now. "The Greater Good is, thereby, possibly by some value and definition: the freedom from want and suffering by the greatest number of people...be they of whatever category and quality of citizen; the exhibition of a steady and consistent control and vigilance to their security and some of their needs...such as those unable to be provided for by their own individual labours, by an overseeing, hopefully benevolent, overlord...however one may wish to name such a leader...and the liberty to, largely, make and exercise their own decisions: so long as they do not seek to destabalise the consensus by exhibiting too much harmful deviancy or violent intent! So whom is qualified to judge these matters, as you ask me, sir? Plato would argue, as he did, sir...that only the Philosopher King...the aristokrat in his parlance...was sufficently wise and skilled to adjudiciate on these matters. The other citizens, through no fault or flaw of their own creation, were, he claimed, unable or unwilling to do so. There are endless counter arguments to be made to that, sir...Plato was loose in many aspects of his work. His was not a manifesto. I daresay some counter arguments may well be rehearsed with ease. Now...is this equal to the Greatest Good, Alder Prince? Which, some may argue, is easily distinguished from the more practical questions of the former concerns, by being identified with more philosphical matters of no less value and importance. Indeed, the Philosopher King must, on behalf of the rest, the majority whom benefit from wise rule, and attend to studies. For to be a wise ruler, sir, he must also occupy his time in striving for, not only the theory, but application and practice of: the Quest for Harmony in society...the seeking of Truth...of valuing and attaining Virtue...the Quest for Justice...Arete!" a happy, extraordinarily respectful, smile. She seems to delight in the Greek words in her slightly excited and breathless reply, not from showing off, but rather from simply the sound they make.
Tiny Martha rests her cane at her side, leans on it carefully. Wondering...wondering a great deal as she searched her Prince's face for a clue to the results of her replies.
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