So, now walking, anon pausing in the shade to rest, the three strangers beguile their journey, which (as the Athenian was made, by one of Plato's cunning touches, to foresee) is a long one; and the dialogue, moving with their deliberate progress, extends to a length which no doubt in the course of some 2,300 years has frightened away many thousands of general readers. Yet its slow amplitude, when you come to think of it, is appropriate; for these elderly men are in no hurry, although they have plenty to talk about, especially on the subjects of youth and religion. "They have," says Jowett, "the feelings of old age about youth, about the state, about human things in general. Nothing in life seems to be of much importance to them: they are spectators rather than actors, and men in general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the gods and of circumstances. Still they have a fatherly care of the young, and are deeply impressed by sentiments of religion. . . ." "Human affairs," says the Athenian, "are hardly worth considering in earnest, and yet we must be in earnest about them--a sad necessity constrains us. . . . And so I say that about serious matters a man should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should not be serious; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our most serious and blessed endeavours. For man, as I said before, is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from what they are at present." But on the subject of youth, too, our Athenian is anxiously, albeit calmly, serious: and especially on the right education of youth, "for," says he, "many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors; but education is never suicidal." By education he explains himself to mean-- "That education in virtue from youth upwards which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; and that other sort of training which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all."