1 Cf. Isocrates ii. 47, on “those who in solitude do not deliberate but imagine what they wish,” and Chesterton's saying, “All feeble spirits live in the future, because it is a soft job”; cf. further on day-dreams, Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. p. 71, and Lucian's Πλοῖον ἢ εὐχαί. Plato's description anticipates the most recent psychology in everything except the term “autistic thinking.”
3 Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Clouds 727.
4 Cf. Herodotus ix. 8. He returns to the postponed topic in 466 D, but again digresses and does not take it up definitely till 471 C or rather 473 C-D. The reason is that the third wave of paradox is also the condition of the possibility of realization. Cf. Introduction p. xvii.
5 Cf. on 340 A-B.
6 That is to say, they are to imitate or conform to our principles in the details which we leave to them. So in the Laws, 770 B, 846 C, 876 E, and the secondary divinities in the Timaeus, 69 C. Cf. Politicus 301 A, and Aristotle Politics 1261 b 2μιμεῖται.
7 Cf. 456 B. Plato has already explained that he means “of like nature in respect to capacity for government.” There is no contradiction of the doctrine of the Politicus, 310 A (Cf. Laws 773 A-B) that the mating should blend opposite temperaments. Those elements are already mixed in the selection of the guardians. Cf. 375 B-C, 410 D-E and Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 62, n. 481.
8 The phrase is imitated by Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1122 Dφυσικαῖς, οὐ γεωμετρικαῖς ἑλκόμενος ἀνάγκαις.
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