en a social evil of the first magnitude.

In treating of property, Plato takes occasion to speak of property in
slaves. They are to be treated with perfect justice; but, for their own
sake, to be kept at a distance. The motive is not so much humanity to
the slave, of which there are hardly any traces (although Plato allows
that many in the hour of peril have found a slave more attached than
members of their own family), but the self-respect which the freeman and
citizen owes to himself (compare Republic). If they commit crimes, they
are doubly punished; if they inform against illegal practices of their
masters, they are to receive a protection, which would probably be
ineffectual, from the guardians of the law; in rare cases they are to be
set free. Plato still breathes the spirit of the old Hellenic world, in
which slavery was a necessity, because leisure must be provided for the
citizen.

The education propounded in the Laws differs in several points from that
of the Republic. Plato seems to have reflected as deeply and earnestly
on the importance of infancy as Rousseau, or Jean Paul (compare the
saying of the latter--'Not the moment of death, but the moment of
birth, is probably the more important'). He would fix the amusements of
children in the hope of fixing their characters in after-life. In the
spirit of the statesman who said, 'Let me make the ballads of a
country, and I care not who make their laws,' Plato would say, 'Let the
amusements of children be unchanged, and they will not want to change
the laws. The 'Goddess Harmonia' plays a great part in Plato's ideas
of education. The natural restless force of life in children, 'who do
nothing but roar until they are three years old,' is gradually to be
reduced to law and order. As in the Republic, he fixes certain forms
in which songs are to be composed: (1) they are to be strains of
cheerfulness and good omen; (2) they are to be hymns or prayers
addressed to the Gods; (3) they are to sing only of the lawful and good.
The poets are again expelled or rather ironically invited to depart; and
those who remain are required to submit their poems to the censorship of
the magistrates. Youth are no longer compelled to commit to memory many
thousand lyric and tragic Greek verses; yet, perhaps, a worse fate is
in store for them. Plato has no belief in 'liberty of prophesying'; and
having guarded against the dangers of lyric poetry, he remembers that
there is an equal dange