ent
on the part of both of them that laws should not be discussed publicly
by those who live under their rule; the difficulty which they alike
experience in following the speculations of the Athenian, are highly
characteristic.

In the second book, Plato pursues further his notion of educating by
a right use of pleasure. He begins by conceiving an endless power of
youthful life, which is to be reduced to rule and measure by harmony and
rhythm. Men differ from the lower animals in that they are capable of
musical discipline. But music, like all art, must be truly imitative,
and imitative of what is true and good. Art and morality agree in
rejecting pleasure as the criterion of good. True art is inseparable
from the highest and most ennobling ideas. Plato only recognizes the
identity of pleasure and good when the pleasure is of the higher kind.
He is the enemy of 'songs without words,' which he supposes to have some
confusing or enervating effect on the mind of the hearer; and he is also
opposed to the modern degeneracy of the drama, which he would probably
have illustrated, like Aristophanes, from Euripides and Agathon. From
this passage may be gathered a more perfect conception of art than
from any other of Plato's writings. He understands that art is at
once imitative and ideal, an exact representation of truth, and also a
representation of the highest truth. The same double view of art may be
gathered from a comparison of the third and tenth books of the Republic,
but is here more clearly and pointedly expressed.

We are inclined to suspect that both here and in the Republic Plato
exaggerates the influence really exercised by the song and the dance.
But we must remember also the susceptible nature of the Greek, and the
perfection to which these arts were carried by him. Further, the music
had a sacred and Pythagorean character; the dance too was part of a
religious festival. And only at such festivals the sexes mingled in
public, and the youths passed under the eyes of their elders.

At the beginning of the third book, Plato abruptly asks the question,
What is the origin of states? The answer is, Infinite time. We have
already seen--in the Theaetetus, where he supposes that in the course of
ages every man has had numberless progenitors, kings and slaves, Greeks
and barbarians; and in the Critias, where he says that nine thousand
years have elapsed since the island of Atlantis fought with Athens--that
Plato is no st