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If then we adhere to our original notion and bear in mind that

our guardians, setting aside every other business, are to

dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in the

State, making this their craft, and engaging in no work which

does not bear on this end, they ought not to practise or imitate

anything else; if they imitate at all, they should imitate from

youth upward only those characters which are suitable to their

profession-the courageous, temperate, holy, free, and the like;

but they should not depict or be skilful at imitating any kind of

illiberality or baseness, lest from imitation they should come to

be what they imitate. Did you never observe how imitations,

beginning in early youth and continuing far into life, at length

grow into habits and become a second nature, affecting body,

voice, and mind?

Yes, certainly, he said.