to be taught reading and writing for
three years, from ten to thirteen, and no longer; and for three years
more, from thirteen to sixteen, he is to be instructed in music. The
great fault which Plato finds in the contemporary education is the
almost total ignorance of arithmetic and astronomy, in which the Greeks
would do well to take a lesson from the Egyptians (compare Republic).
Dancing and wrestling are to have a military character, and women as
well as men are to be taught the use of arms. The military spirit which
Plato has vainly endeavoured to expel in the first two books returns
again in the seventh and eighth. He has evidently a sympathy with the
soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the
art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws; Republic), though
inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of
it (Laws). Of a supreme or master science which was to be the
'coping-stone' of the rest, few traces appear in the Laws. He seems to
have lost faith in it, or perhaps to have realized that the time for
such a science had not yet come, and that he was unable to fill up
the outline which he had sketched. There is no requirement that the
guardians of the law shall be philosophers, although they are to know
the unity of virtue, and the connexion of the sciences. Nor are we
told that the leisure of the citizens, when they are grown up, is to
be devoted to any intellectual employment. In this respect we note a
falling off from the Republic, but also there is 'the returning to it'
of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics. The public and family duties
of the citizens are to be their main business, and these would, no
doubt, take up a great deal more time than in the modern world we are
willing to allow to either of them. Plato no longer entertains the idea
of any regular training to be pursued under the superintendence of the
state from eighteen to thirty, or from thirty to thirty-five; he has
taken the first step downwards on 'Constitution Hill' (Republic). But
he maintains as earnestly as ever that 'to men living under this second
polity there remains the greatest of all works, the education of the
soul,' and that no bye-work should be allowed to interfere with it.
Night and day are not long enough for the consummation of it.

Few among us are either able or willing to carry education into later
life; five or six years spent at school, three or four at a university,
or in