[395d]
they imbibe the reality.1 Or have you
not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle
down into habits and (second) nature2 in
the body, the speech, and the thought?” “Yes,
indeed,” said he. “We will not then allow our charges,
whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and
imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven,
loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune
1 Cf. 606 B, Laws 656 B, 669 B-C, and Burke, Sublime and Beautiful iv. 4, anticipating James, Psychology ii. pp. 449, 451, and anticipated by Shakespeare's (Cor. III. ii. 123) “By my body's action teach my mind/ A most inherent baseness.”
2 Cf. my paper on Φύσις, Μελέτη, Ἐπιστήμη, T.A.P.A. vol. xl. (1910) pp. 185 ff.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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