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The Education of the Young in the Republic of Plato
The Education of the Young in the Republic of Plato Author:Plato Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK III. Argument, 386 A—392c. Passing from fables about gods to fables on the whole about persons rather nearer humanity, and dealing with young people of a... more » more advanced age than in the last book, Plato points out how Courage, Truthfulness and Temperance, in elementary forms, may be promoted or the reverse through the imagination. 386 A So far as regards the gods, I continued, it would seem that something like the above should be heard and should not be heard from early childhood by citizens who are to honour the gods and their parents, and are to pay no small regard to friendship with one another'. And I imagine our opinion is just. What next ? If they are to be brave, must not what they are told be of that nature, and what will make them have the B least possible fear of death; or do you think that any one could ever be brave, while having this fear in him ? By Zeus, he answered, certainly not. How then? Do you suppose that one who believes the world of Hades to be real and to be awful will prefer death to defeat and slavery? 1 A summary of the passage just completed. 2 The quotations below show that Plato has mainly in mind not the other world as a place of reward and punishment, but the more primitive idea of a feeble and dreary prolongation of life, similar to life on earth. By no means. Then, as it seems, we ought to attend to these fables too and supervise those who take in hand to tell them, and request them not, as they do, to pour absolute contumely on the world of Hades, but rather to speak well of it; as what they say is not true, and does no good1 to men whose duty it c will be to be valiant. No doubt we must. Then we shall erase everything to that effect, beginning with the following verses : " Rather would I live above groun...« less