n and the management of the mothers, and would have
an education which is even prior to birth. But in the Republic he begins
with the age at which the child is capable of receiving ideas, and
boldly asserts, in language which sounds paradoxical to modern ears,
that he must be taught the false before he can learn the true. The
modern and ancient philosophical world are not agreed about truth and
falsehood; the one identifies truth almost exclusively with fact, the
other with ideas. This is the difference between ourselves and Plato,
which is, however, partly a difference of words. For we too should admit
that a child must receive many lessons which he imperfectly understands;
he must be taught some things in a figure only, some too which he can
hardly be expected to believe when he grows older; but we should limit
the use of fiction by the necessity of the case. Plato would draw the
line differently; according to him the aim of early education is not
truth as a matter of fact, but truth as a matter of principle; the child
is to be taught first simple religious truths, and then simple moral
truths, and insensibly to learn the lesson of good manners and good
taste. He would make an entire reformation of the old mythology; like
Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is sensible of the deep chasm which
separates his own age from Homer and Hesiod, whom he quotes and invests
with an imaginary authority, but only for his own purposes. The lusts
and treacheries of the gods are to be banished; the terrors of the world
below are to be dispelled; the misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is
not to be a model for youth. But there is another strain heard in Homer
which may teach our youth endurance; and something may be learnt in
medicine from the simple practice of the Homeric age. The principles
on which religion is to be based are two only: first, that God is true;
secondly, that he is good. Modern and Christian writers have often
fallen short of these; they can hardly be said to have gone beyond them.

The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of the way of
sights or sounds which may hurt the character or vitiate the taste.
They are to live in an atmosphere of health; the breeze is always to
be wafting to them the impressions of truth and goodness. Could such
an education be realized, or if our modern religious education could
be bound up with truth and virtue and good manners and good taste, that
would be the best hope of hum