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nydus/Politics: A Treatise on GovernmentPublic

This treatise examines the role of the legislator in constructing a society that facilitates the good life for its citizens. It posits that the state is a community organized to achieve a perfect and self-sufficing existence, with the legislator serving as a craftsman responsible for shaping the social environment and moral standards.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER III

way as to show that we have the testimony of the ancients in our favour, by what they have delivered down upon education—for music makes this plain. Moreover, it is necessary to instruct children in what is useful, not only on account of its being useful in itself, as, for instance, to learn to read, but also as the means of acquiring other different sorts of instruction: thus they should be instructed in painting, not only to prevent their being mistaken in purchasing pictures, or in buying or selling of vases, but rather as it makes [1338b] them judges of the beauties of the human form; for to be always hunting after the profitable ill agrees with great and freeborn souls. As it is evident whether a boy should be first taught morals or reasoning, and whether his body or his understanding should be first cultivated, it is plain that boys should be first put under the care of the different masters of the gymnastic arts, both to form their bodies and teach them their exercises.

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