:--

The institutions of Sparta and Crete are admitted by the Lacedaemonian
and Cretan to have one aim only: they were intended by the legislator
to inspire courage in war. To this the Athenian objects that the true
lawgiver should frame his laws with a view to all the virtues and not
to one only. Better is he who has temperance as well as courage, than he
who has courage only; better is he who is faithful in civil broils,
than he who is a good soldier only. Better, too, is peace than war; the
reconciliation than the defeat of an enemy. And he who would attain all
virtue should be trained amid pleasures as well as pains. Hence
there should be convivial intercourse among the citizens, and a man's
temperance should be tested in his cups, as we test his courage amid
dangers. He should have a fear of the right sort, as well as a courage
of the right sort.

At the beginning of the second book the subject of pleasure leads to
education, which in the early years of life is wholly a discipline
imparted by the means of pleasure and pain. The discipline of pleasure
is implanted chiefly by the practice of the song and the dance. Of
these the forms should be fixed, and not allowed to depend on the fickle
breath of the multitude. There will be choruses of boys, girls, and
grown-up persons, and all will be heard repeating the same strain, that
'virtue is happiness.' One of them will give the law to the rest; this
will be the chorus of aged minstrels, who will sing the most beautiful
and the most useful of songs. They will require a little wine, to mellow
the austerity of age, and make them amenable to the laws.

After having laid down as the first principle of politics, that peace,
and not war, is the true aim of the legislator, and briefly discussed
music and festive intercourse, at the commencement of the third book
Plato makes a digression, in which he speaks of the origin of society.
He describes, first of all, the family; secondly, the patriarchal stage,
which is an aggregation of families; thirdly, the founding of regular
cities, like Ilium; fourthly, the establishment of a military and
political system, like that of Sparta, with which he identifies Argos
and Messene, dating from the return of the Heraclidae. But the aims of
states should be good, or else, like the prayer of Theseus, they may
be ruinous to themselves. This was the case in two out of three of the
Heracleid kingdoms. They did not understand that the powers in a