While this elementary education is going on, the officers of the State have abundant opportunity for observing the different characters of the children, and distinguishing the noble from the ignoble. As soon as a child shows plainly that it belongs by nature to the lowest class, they consign it to that class, and its education by the State practically ceases. Of course these officers know from what class each child came, and they make use of this knowledge in determining its future destiny. At the same time, they are not to be entirely guided by it, but to act impartially. The education of the lowest class after childhood the State leaves to take care of itself, persuaded that appetite will always find means for its own satisfaction. The nobler natures it continues to educate, without any break, until they reach the age of twenty. And this education is distinctly a military training. As time goes on, the gymnastic exercises become more violent, more complex, and more sustained, but always have for their subject the soul, rather than the body, and never degenerate into mere athletic brutality. Special attention is directed to the musical and literary exercises, as the means whereby the soul is directly trained and harmonized. Plato holds that no change can be made in the "music" of a State, without a corresponding change in the whole organization; in other words, that the social and political condition of a people is determined by the literature and music which it produces and enjoys. He virtually says, Let me make the songs of a people, and he who will may make their laws. Of the character of the music which he recommends we have already spoken. From literature he would exclude all that we are in the habit of calling by that name, all that is mimetic, poetic, or creative, and confine the term to what is scientific, didactic, and edifying. He sends the poets out of the State with mock-reverent politeness, as creatures too divine for human use. He is particularly severe upon the dramatists, not sparing even the sublime Æschylus. In fact, he would banish from his State all art not directly edifying. The literature which he recommends is plainly of the nature of Æsop's _Fables_, the Pythagorean _Golden Words_, and the Parmenidean or Heraclitean work _On Nature_. If we wished to express his intent in strictly modern language, we should have to say that he desired to replace literary training by ethical and scientific, and the poetical mode of presenting ideals by the prosaic. The true music, he held, is in the human being. "If we find," he says, "a man who perfectly combines gymnastics with music, and in exact proportion applies them to the soul, we shall be entirely justified in calling him the perfect musician and the perfect trainer, far superior to the man who arranges strings alongside each other."