A new thought about education suddenly occurs to him, and for a time exercises a sort of fascination over his mind, though in the later books of the Laws it is forgotten or overlooked. As true courage is allied to temperance, so there must be an education which shall train mankind to resist pleasure as well as to endure pain (I 633 following). No one can be on his guard against that of which he has no experience. The perfectly trained citizen should have been accustomed to look his enemy in the face, and to measure his strength against her. This education in pleasure is to be given, partly by festive intercourse, but chiefly by the song and dance (II 653). Youth are to learn music and gymnastics; their elders are to be trained and tested at drinking parties. According to the old proverb, in vino veritas, they will then be open and visible to the world in their true characters; and also they will be more amenable to the laws, and more easily moulded by the hand of the legislator (I 649 E; II 671 C). The first reason is curious enough, though not important; the second can hardly be thought deserving of much attention. Yet if Plato means to say that society is one of the principal instruments of education in afterlife, he has expressed in an obscure fashion a principle which is true, and to his contemporaries was also new. That at a banquet a degree of moral discipline might be exercised is an original thought, but Plato has not yet learnt to express his meaning in an abstract form. He is sensible that moderation is better than total abstinence, and that asceticism is but a one-sided training. He makes the sagacious remark, that “those who are able to resist pleasure may often be among the worst of mankind” (I 635 D). He is as much aware as any modern utilitarian that the love of pleasure is the great motive of human action. This cannot be eradicated, and must therefore be regulated—the pleasure must be of the right sort (V 732 E following). Such reflections seem to be the real, though imperfectly expressed, groundwork of the discussion. As in the juxtaposition of the Bacchic madness and the great gift of Dionysus (II 672), or where he speaks of the different senses in which pleasure is and is not the object of imitative art (II 667 following), or in the illustration of the failure of the Dorian institutions from the prayer of Theseus (III 687), we have to gather his meaning as well as we can from the connection.
The feeling of old age is discernible in this as well as in several other passages of the Laws. Plato has arrived at the time when men sit still and look on at life (II 657 D); and he is willing to allow himself and others the few pleasures which remain to them. Wine is to cheer them now that their limbs are old and their blood runs cold. They are the best critics of dancing and music (II 665 D), but cannot be induced to join in song unless they have been enlivened by drinking. Youth has no need of the stimulus of wine, but age can only be made young again by its invigorating influence. Total abstinence for the young, moderate and increasing potations for the old, is Plato’s principle. The fire, of which there is too much in the one, has to be brought to the other (II 666). Drunkenness, like madness, had a sacredness and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand, as in the case of the Tarentines (I 637 B), it degraded a whole population, it was also a mode of worshipping the god Dionysus, which was to be practised on certain occasions. Moreover, the intoxication produced by the fruit of the vine was very different from the grosser forms of drunkenness which prevail among some modern nations.
The physician in modern times would restrict the old man’s use of wine within narrow limits. He would tell us that you cannot restore strength by a stimulus. Wine may call back the vital powers in disease, but cannot reinvigorate old age. In his maxims of health and longevity, though aware of the importance of a simple diet, Plato has omitted to dwell on the perfect rule of moderation. His commendation of wine is probably a passing fancy, and may have arisen out of his own habits or tastes. If so, he is not the only philosopher whose theory has been based upon his practice.
Plato’s denial of wine to the young and his approval of it for their elders has some points of view which may be illustrated by the temperance controversy of our own times. Wine may be allowed to have a religious as well as a festive use; it is commended both in the Old and New Testament; it has been sung of by nearly all poets; and it may be truly said to have a healing influence both on body and mind. Yet it is also very liable to excess and abuse, and for this reason is prohibited by Muhammadans, as well as of late years by many Christians, no less than by the ancient Spartans; and to sound its praises seriously seems to partake of the nature of a paradox. But we may rejoin with Plato that the abuse of a good thing does not take away the use of it (I 639). Total abstinence, as we
