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For we too should admit that a child must receive many lessons

which he imperfectly understands; he must be taught some things

in a figure only, some too which he can hardly be expected to

believe when he grows older; but we should limit the use of

fiction by the necessity of the case. Plato would draw the line

differently; according to him the aim of early education is not

truth as a matter of fact, but truth as a matter of principle;

the child is to be taught first simple religious truths, and then

simple moral truths, and insensibly to learn the lesson of good

manners and good taste. He would make an entire reformation of

the old mythology; like Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is sensible

of the deep chasm which separates his own age from Homer and

Hesiod, whom he quotes and invests with an imaginary authority,

but only for his own purposes.