Friday, February 02, 2007

From Plato's Republic

Socrates: "Now, all this study of reckoning and geometry and all the preliminary studies that are indispensable preparation for dialectic must be presented to them while still young, not in the form of compulsory instruction."

Glaucon: "Why so?"

Socrates: "Because, said I, a free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for while bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind."

Glaucon: "True," he said.

Socrates: "Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play. That will also better enable you to discern the natural capacities of each."

Glaucon: "There is reason in that," he said.

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