and respect their elders. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. In early childhood education is to be made attractive, although to unduly honor the likings of children is to spoil them. The tales which children are permitted to hear must be models of virtuous thought. Harmful tales concerning the gods and heroes are prohibited, but noble traits and deeds of endurance are to be emphasized. Youth should imitate no baseness, but what is temperate, holy, free, and courageous; for "imitations, beginning in early youth, at last sink into the constitution and become a second nature." Children must not be frightened with ghost stories and reference to the infernal world.
Excessive athletics makes men stupid and subject to disease. The kinds of music employed in education must inspire courage, reverence, freedom, and temperance. Art should present true beauty and grace, to draw the soul of childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason. "Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated." Good language and music and grace and rhythm depend on simplicity.
Arithmetic cultivates quickness, and teaches abstract number and necessary truth. Geometry deals with axiomatic knowledge and will draw the soul toward truth. Astronomy compels the mind to look upward. It is to be studied not so much for practical use, as in navigation, but because the mind is purified and illumined thereby. In this connection Plato maintains his position against those who carp at the so-called useless studies.
