sphere there enter some elements of necessity which may be beyond
our control. Still even in the management of health, care and thought,
continued over many years, may make us almost free agents, if we do
not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that all human
freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.

We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation
which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,
depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a
definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is
afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does
not recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily
disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by
little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither
does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely
influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any
other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of
the will can be more simple or truly asserted.

7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.

(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato's way of expressing
that he is passing lightly over the subject.

(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he
proceeds with the construction of the State.

(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again
as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains
the reader's interest.

(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of the
poets in Book X.

(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the
valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the
manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken
up into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius,
should not escape notice.

BOOK IV. Adeimantus said: 'Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that you
make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they are
the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men, lands
and houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and are
always mounting guard.' You may add, I replied, that they receive no
pay but only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or a
mistress. 'Well, and what answer do you give?' My answer