§ 62. It is usual in books on Greek education to give a very large space to the discussion of the “Republic” and “Laws” of Plato and the “Politics” of Aristotle, because they contain elaborate and systematic recommendations as to the training of youth. But the states of both philosophers are ideal, Aristotle’s not less than Plato’s; and, though the educational portion of Aristotle’s work seems fragmentary and unfinished, we cannot hold that any further developments would have brought it within the range of practical politics. Plato’s notions were confessedly theoretical, and are discussed as such by all his commentators; but some scholars have given themselves endless trouble to find out how much of his system, especially in the tamer and less extravagant “Laws,” was borrowed from real life, and from actual states, as opposed to the creations of his own fancy. But in nearly every detail the distinction is purely conjectural. It is really for want of positive evidence that these theories have assumed such undue importance. To the philosophical theorist and the educational reformer the speculations of such splendid intellects in the early post-meridian of the glorious day of Greece must ever be most attractive and suggestive; but it is idle to transfer to a practical book, or to an historical account, what has never been realized.[53] These speculations, however, may fairly find a limited space here as showing what general effect the practical education already described had produced upon the most advanced thinkers of the day. Unfortunately, we have here again only the aristocratic side, and that which would assert the State to be paramount and all-interfering through individual and private life. If we had the speculations of Lycophron and his school, who held, with truly democratical instinct, that laws were only useful to repress crime, and that the rest of the citizen’s life was to be left free and uncontrolled, our notions about the theories of Greek education might be considerably modified. But, on the other hand, we have preserved to us the Hellene of the Hellenes; the school of Lycophron might only have recommended to us what we know by practical experience in modern society.