sagacious remark, that 'those who are able to resist pleasure may often be
among the worst of mankind.' 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. 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, or where he speaks of the
different senses in which pleasure is and is not the object of imitative
art, or in the illustration of the failure of the Dorian institutions from
the prayer of Theseus, we have to gather his meaning as well as we can
from the connexion.

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; 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, 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. Drunkenness, like madness, had a sacredness
and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand, as in the case of the
Tarentines, 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.