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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: more gentle, and harmonious, and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech
and action; for the life of man in every part has need of harmony and
rhythm. Then they send them to the master of gymnastic, in order that
their bodies may better minister to the virtuous mind, and that they may
not be compelled through bodily weakness to play the coward in war or on
any other occasion. This is what is done by those who have the means, and
those who have the means are the rich; their children begin to go to school
soonest and leave off latest. When they have done with masters, the state
again compels them to learn the laws, and live after the pattern which they
furnish, and not after their own fancies; and just as in learning to write,
the writing-master first draws lines with a style for the use of the young
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