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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: 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
beginner, and gives him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so the
city draws the laws, which were the invention of good lawgivers living in
the olden time; these are given to the young man, in order to guide him in
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