cate the soul? What better and
more innocent test of character is there than festive intercourse? Would
you make a bargain with a man in order to try whether he is honest? Or
would you ascertain whether he is licentious by putting your wife or
daughter into his hands? No one would deny that the test proposed is
fairer, speedier, and safer than any other. And such a test will be
particularly useful in the political science, which desires to know
human natures and characters. 'Very true.'

BOOK II. And are there any other uses of well-ordered potations? There
are; but in order to explain them, I must repeat what I mean by right
education; which, if I am not mistaken, depends on the due regulation
of convivial intercourse. 'A high assumption.' I believe that virtue
and vice are originally present to the mind of children in the form of
pleasure and pain; reason and fixed principles come later, and happy is
he who acquires them even in declining years; for he who possesses
them is the perfect man. When pleasure and pain, and love and hate, are
rightly implanted in the yet unconscious soul, and after the attainment
of reason are discovered to be in harmony with her, this harmony of the
soul is virtue, and the preparatory stage, anticipating reason, I
call education. But the finer sense of pleasure and pain is apt to be
impaired in the course of life; and therefore the Gods, pitying the
toils and sorrows of mortals, have allowed them to have holidays,
and given them the Muses and Apollo and Dionysus for leaders and
playfellows. All young creatures love motion and frolic, and utter
sounds of delight; but man only is capable of taking pleasure in
rhythmical and harmonious movements. With these education begins; and
the uneducated is he who has never known the discipline of the chorus,
and the educated is he who has. The chorus is partly dance and partly
song, and therefore the well-educated must sing and dance well. But when
we say, 'He sings and dances well,' we mean that he sings and dances
what is good. And if he thinks that to be good which is really good, he
will have a much higher music and harmony in him, and be a far greater
master of imitation in sound and gesture than he who is not of this
opinion. 'True.' Then, if we know what is good and bad in song and
dance, we shall know what education is? 'Very true.' Let us now consider
the beauty of figure, melody, song, and dance. Will the same figures or
sounds be equally wel