representation of truth, and also a representation of the highest truth.
The same double view of art may be gathered from a comparison of the third
and tenth books of the Republic, but is here more clearly and pointedly
expressed.

We are inclined to suspect that both here and in the Republic Plato
exaggerates the influence really exercised by the song and the dance. But
we must remember also the susceptible nature of the Greek, and the
perfection to which these arts were carried by him. Further, the music had
a sacred and Pythagorean character; the dance too was part of a religious
festival. And only at such festivals the sexes mingled in public, and the
youths passed under the eyes of their elders.

At the beginning of the third book, Plato abruptly asks the question, What
is the origin of states? The answer is, Infinite time. We have already
seen--in the Theaetetus, where he supposes that in the course of ages
every man has had numberless progenitors, kings and slaves, Greeks and
barbarians; and in the Critias, where he says that nine thousand years
have elapsed since the island of Atlantis fought with Athens--that Plato
is no stranger to the conception of long periods of time. He imagines
human society to have been interrupted by natural convulsions; and
beginning from the last of these, he traces the steps by which the family
has grown into the state, and the original scattered society, becoming
more and more civilised, has finally passed into military organizations
like those of Crete and Sparta. His conception of the origin of states is
far truer in the Laws than in the Republic; but it must be remembered that
here he is giving an historical, there an ideal picture of the growth of
society.

Modern enquirers, like Plato, have found in infinite ages the explanation