s, he would substitute for them the study
of his own laws. He insists strongly on the importance of mathematics
as an educational instrument. He is no more reconciled to the Greek
mythology than in the Republic, though he would rather say nothing about
it out of a reverence for antiquity; and he is equally willing to have
recourse to fictions, if they have a moral tendency. His thoughts recur
to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in
which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them;
but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs
have passed away. Though he is no longer fired with dialectical
enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to 'look at one idea gathered
from many things,' and to 'perceive the principle which is the same in
all the four virtues.' He still recognizes the enormous influence of
music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he
seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and
the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the
unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from
the words, and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the
theatres. He assimilates the education of the two sexes, as far as
possible, both in music and gymnastic, and, as in the Republic, he would
give to gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object
is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the
Statesman, he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures--the passionate
with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant
of the Statesman, who has no place in the Republic, again appears.
In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the
degeneracy and incapacity of the rulers of his own time.

In the Laws, the philosophers, if not banished, like the poets, are
at least ignored; and religion takes the place of philosophy in the
regulation of human life. It must however be remembered that the
religion of Plato is co-extensive with morality, and is that purified
religion and mythology of which he speaks in the second book of the
Republic. There is no real discrepancy in the two works. In a practical
treatise, he speaks of religion rather than of philosophy; just as he
appears to identify virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find
the common element of the virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical
theses