of life, are important and probably new ethical conceptions. Nor has Plato
forgotten his old paradox (Gorgias) that to be punished is better than to
be unpunished, when he says, that to the bad man death is the only
mitigation of his evil. He is not less ideal in many passages of the Laws
than in the Gorgias or Republic. But his wings are heavy, and he is
unequal to any sustained flight.

There is more attempt at dramatic effect in the first book than in the
later parts of the work. The outburst of martial spirit in the
Lacedaemonian, 'O best of men'; the protest which the Cretan makes against
the supposed insult to his lawgiver; the cordial acknowledgment on the
part of both of them that laws should not be discussed publicly by those
who live under their rule; the difficulty which they alike experience in
following the speculations of the Athenian, are highly characteristic.

In the second book, Plato pursues further his notion of educating by a
right use of pleasure. He begins by conceiving an endless power of
youthful life, which is to be reduced to rule and measure by harmony and
rhythm. Men differ from the lower animals in that they are capable of
musical discipline. But music, like all art, must be truly imitative, and
imitative of what is true and good. Art and morality agree in rejecting
pleasure as the criterion of good. True art is inseparable from the
highest and most ennobling ideas. Plato only recognizes the identity of
pleasure and good when the pleasure is of the higher kind. He is the enemy
of 'songs without words,' which he supposes to have some confusing or
enervating effect on the mind of the hearer; and he is also opposed to the
modern degeneracy of the drama, which he would probably have illustrated,
like Aristophanes, from Euripides and Agathon. From this passage may be
gathered a more perfect conception of art than from any other of Plato's
writings. He understands that art is at once imitative and ideal, an exact