is the time for any extraordinary toil.

Of course.

And, therefore, calculation and geometry and all the other elements of
instruction, which are a preparation for dialectic, should be presented
to the mind in childhood; not, however, under any notion of forcing our
system of education.

Why not?

Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of
knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm
to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains
no hold on the mind.

Very true.

Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early
education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find
out the natural bent.

That is a very rational notion, he said.

Do you remember that the children, too, were to be taken to see the
battle on horseback; and that if there were no danger they were to be
brought close up and, like young hounds, have a taste of blood given
them?

Yes, I remember.

The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these
things--labours, lessons, dangers--and he who is most at home in all of
them ought to be enrolled in a select number.

At what age?

At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over: the period whether
of two or three years which passes in this sort of training is useless
for any other purpose; for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to
learning; and the trial of who is first in gymnastic exercises is one
of the most important tests to which our youth are subjected.

Certainly, he replied.

After that time those who are selected from the class of twenty years
old will be promoted to higher honour, and the sciences which they
learned without any order in their early education will now be brought
together, and they will be able to see the natural relationship of them
to one another and to true being.

Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting
root.

Yes, I said; and the capacity for such knowledge is the great criterion
of dialectical talent: the comprehensive mind is always the
dialectical.

I agree with you, he said.

These, I said, are the points which you must consider; and those who
have most of this comprehension, and who are more steadfast in their
learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they
have arrived at the age of thirty have to be chosen by you out of the
select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will have