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[9]
But doubtless it is not enough for people to receive the right
nurture and discipline in youth; they must also practice the lessons they have learnt, and
confirm them by habit, when they are grown up. Accordingly we shall need laws to regulate
the discipline of adults as well, and in fact the whole life of the people generally; for
the many are more amenable to compulsion and punishment than to reason and to moral
ideals.
[10]
Hence some persons hold,1 that while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on
moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will
respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and
ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether.2 For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life
by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on
pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden. This indeed is the ground for
the view that the pains and penalties for transgressors should be such as are most opposed
to their favorite pleasures.
[11]
But to resume: if, as has been said, in order to be good a man must have been properly
educated and trained, and must subsequently continue to follow virtuous habits of life,
and to do nothing base whether voluntarily or involuntarily, then this will be secured if
men's lives are regulated by a certain intelligence, and by a right system, invested with
adequate sanctions.
[12]
Now paternal authority has not the
power to compel obedience,