The science of dialectic is nowhere mentioned by name in the Laws, nor is anything said of the education of afterlife. The child is to begin to learn at ten years of age: he is to be taught reading and writing for three years, from ten to thirteen, and no longer; and for three years more, from thirteen to sixteen, he is to be instructed in music (VII 810). The great fault which Plato finds in the contemporary education is the almost total ignorance of arithmetic and astronomy, in which the Greeks would do well to take a lesson from the Egyptians (VII 819 A, B; compare Republic VII 525 following). Dancing and wrestling are to have a military character (VII 796), and women as well as men are to be taught the use of arms (VII 794 D, 804 E). The military spirit which Plato has vainly endeavoured to expel in the first two books returns again in the seventh and eighth. He has evidently a sympathy with the soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws VI 760 following; VII 813; Republic V 467–470), though inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of it (Laws IV 706, 707). Of a supreme or master science which was to be the “coping-stone” of the rest, few traces appear in the Laws. He seems to have lost faith in it, or perhaps to have realized that the time for such a science had not yet come, and that he was unable to fill up the outline which he had sketched. There is no requirement that the guardians of the law shall be philosophers, although they are to know the unity of virtue (XII 965), and the connection of the sciences (967, 968). Nor are we told that the leisure of the citizens, when they are grown up, is to be devoted to any intellectual employment. In this respect we note a falling off from the Republic, but also there is “the returning to it” of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics. The public and family duties of the citizens are to be their main business, and these would, no doubt, take up a great deal more time than in the modern world we are willing to allow to either of them (VII 807). Plato no longer entertains the idea of any regular training to be pursued under the superintendence of the state from eighteen to thirty, or from thirty to thirty-five; he has taken the first step downwards on “Constitution Hill” (Republic VIII 547, 548). But he maintains as earnestly as ever that “to men living under this second polity there remains the greatest of all works, the education of the soul,” and that no bye-work should be allowed to interfere with it. Night and day are not long enough for the consummation of it (VII 807 D).
Few among us are either able or willing to carry education into later life; five or six years spent at school, three or four at a university, or in the preparation for a profession, an occasional attendance at a lecture to which we are invited by friends when we have an hour to spare from housekeeping or moneymaking—these comprise, as a matter of fact, the education even of the educated; and then the lamp is extinguished “more truly than Heracleitus’ sun, never to be lighted again” (Republic VI 497 B). The description which Plato gives in the Republic of the state of adult education among his contemporaries may be applied almost word for word to our own age. He does not however acquiesce in this widely-spread want of a higher education; he would rather seek to make every man something of a philosopher before he enters on the duties of active life. But in the Laws he no longer prescribes any regular course of study which is to be pursued in mature years. Nor does he remark that the education of afterlife is of another kind, and must consist with the majority of the world rather in the improvement of character than in the acquirement of knowledge. It comes from the study of ourselves and other men: from moderation and experience: from reflection on circumstances: from the pursuit of high aims: from a right use of the opportunities of life. It is the preservation of what we have been, and the addition of something more. The power of abstract study or continuous thought is very rare, but such a training as this can be given by everyone to himself.
The singular passage in Book VII (803 C), in which Plato describes life as a pastime, like many other passages in the Laws is imperfectly expressed. Two thoughts seem to be struggling in his mind: first, the reflection, to which he returns at the end of the passage (804 B), that men are playthings or puppets, and that God only is the serious aim of human endeavours; this suggests to him the afterthought that, although playthings, they are the playthings of the Gods, and that this is the best of them. The cynical, ironical fancy of the moment insensibly passes into a religious sentiment. In another passage he says that life is a game of which God, who is the player, shifts the pieces so as to procure the victory of good on the whole (X 903 D following). Or once
