Perfect men I take to be those who can blend practical ability |8| with philosophy, and who can achieve both of two best and greatest ends—the life of public utility as men of affairs, and the calm and tranquil life as students of philosophy. For there are three kinds of life: the life of action, the life of thought, and the life of enjoyment. When life is dissolute and enslaved to pleasure, it is mean and animal; when it is all thought and fails to act, it is futile; when it is all action and destitute of philosophy, it is crude and blundering. We should therefore do our best to engage both in public business and in the pursuit |B| of philosophy, as occasion offers. Of this kind was the public career of Pericles, of Archytas of Tarentum, of Dion of Syracuse, and of Epaminondas of Thebes. Of these Dion actually attached himself to Plato as his pupil.
There is no need, I think, to deal at any greater length with mental cultivation. It is, however, further desirable—or rather it is essential—that we should not neglect to possess the standard treatises, but should collect a stock of them, with the result of keeping our knowledge from starvation.[[58]] Farmers stock |*| [their fertilizers], and the employment of books is instrumental to culture in the same way.
|C| Meanwhile we must not omit to exercise the body also. Our boys must be sent to the teacher of gymnastics and receive a sufficient amount of physical training, both to secure a good carriage and also to develop strength. Good condition is the foundation laid in childhood for a hale old age, and, just as our preparations for wintry weather should be made while it is fine, so we should store up provision for age in the shape of regular and temperate behaviour in youth. Physical exertion should, however, be so regulated that a boy does not become too exhausted to devote himself sufficiently to mental culture. |D| As Plato observes, sleep and weariness are the enemies of study.
Upon this topic I need not dwell, but will pass on at once to the most important consideration of all—the necessity of training a boy for service as a fighting-man. For this he must go through hard drill in hurling the javelin, in shooting with the bow, and in hunting. ‘The goods of the vanquished,’ it has been said, ‘are prizes offered to the victor.’ There is no place in war for the physical condition of the cloister, and a lean soldier accustomed to warlike exercises will break through |*| a phalanx of fleshy prize-fighters.
|E| ‘Well but,’ some one may urge, ‘while you promised us a set of rules for the upbringing of free men, it turns out that you have nothing to say concerning that of poor and common people, but are satisfied to confine your suggestions to the rich.’ There is a ready reply to the objection. If possible, I should desire the proposed education to be applicable to all alike. But if there are cases in which limited private circumstances make it impossible to carry my rules into practice, the blame should be laid upon fortune, not upon him who offers the advice. Though a man is poor, he should make every possible effort to bring up his children in the ideal way. Failing this, he must come as near to it as he can.
After thus encumbering our discussion with this side-issue, |F| I will now proceed with the connected account of such other |*| matters as contribute to the right upbringing of the young.
And first, children should be led into right practices of persuasion and reasoning: flogging and bodily injury should be out of the question. Such treatment is surely more fit for slaves than for the free, whom the smart, or even the humiliation, of a beating deprives of all life and spirit, making their tasks a horror to them. The freeborn find praise a more effective |9| stimulus to the right conduct, and blame a more effective deterrent from the wrong, than any kind of bodily assault. In the use of such praise and reprimand there should be a subtle alternation. When a child is too bold, it should first be shamed by reproof and then encouraged by a word of praise. We may take a pattern by nurses, who may have to make an infant cry, but who afterwards comfort it by offering it the breast. We must, however, avoid puffing children up with eulogies, the consequence of excessive praise being vanity and conceit.
I have noticed more than one instance in which the over-fondness |B| of a father has proved to be a lack of fondness. To make my meaning clear, I will use an illustration. Being in too great haste for their children to take first place in everything, they impose extravagant tasks, which prove too great for their strength and end in failure, besides causing them such weariness and distress that they refuse to submit patiently to instruction. Water in moderation will make a plant grow, while a flood of water will choke it. In the same way the mind will thrive under |C| reasonably hard work, but will drown if the work is excessive. We must therefore allow children breathing-time from perpetual tasks, and remember that all our life there is a division of relaxation and effort. Hence the existence of sleep as well as waking, of peace as well as war, of fine weather as well as bad, of holidays as well as business. In a word, it is rest that seasons toil. The fact is obvious, not merely in the case of living things, but in that of the inanimate world. We loosen a bow or a lyre, so that we may be able to tighten it. In fine, the body is kept sound by want and its satisfaction, the mind by relaxation and labour.
|D| There are some fathers who have a culpable way of entrusting their sons to attendants and teachers, and then entirely omitting to keep the instruction of such persons under their own eye or ear. This is a most serious failure in their duty. Every few days they should personally examine their children, instead of confiding in the character of a hireling, whose attention to his pupils will be more conscientious if he is to be brought continually to book. In this connexion there is aptness in the groom’s dictum that nothing is so fattening to a horse as the eye of the king.
|E| Above all things one should train and exercise a child’s memory. Memory serves as the storehouse of culture, and hence the fable that Recollection is the mother of the Muses—an indirect way of saying that memory is the best thing in the world to beget and foster wisdom. Whether children are naturally gifted with a good memory, or, on the contrary, are naturally forgetful, the memory should be trained in either case. The natural advantage will be strengthened, or the natural shortcoming made up. The former class will excel others, the latter will excel themselves. As Hesiod well puts it: |F|