In this search for genius all souls shall be tried. Education must be universal and compulsory; children belong not to parents but to the state and to the future.[28] And education cannot begin too early. Cleinias, asking whether education should begin at birth, is astonished to be answered, “No, before”; and if Plato could have his way, no doubt there would be a realization of Dr. Holmes’ suggestion that a man’s education should begin two thousand years before he is born. The chief concern at the outset will be to develop the body, and not to fill the soul with letters; let the child be taught his letters at ten, but not before.[29] Music will share with gymnastics the task of rounded development. The boy who tells his teacher that the athletic field is as important and necessary a part of education as the lecture-room is right. “How shall we find a gentle nature which has also great courage?”[30] Music mixed with athletics will do it. “I am quite aware that your mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, and that the musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him.”[31] There is a determination here that even the genius shall be healthy; Plato will not tolerate the notion that to be a genius one needs to be sick: let the genius have his say, but let him, too, be reminded that he is no disembodied spirit. And let art take care lest its vaunted purgation be a purgation of our strength and manhood; poetry and soft music may make men slaves. No man shall bother with music after the age of sixteen.[32] At twenty a general test will weed out those who give indication that further educative labor will be wasted on them; the others will go on for another decade, and a second test will eliminate those who will in the meantime have reached the limit of their capacities for development. The final survivors will then--and not before--be introduced to philosophy. “They must not be allowed to taste the dear delight too early; that is a thing especially to be avoided; for young men, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting, like puppy-dogs that delight to tear and pull at all who come near them.... And when they have made many conquests and received defeats at the hands of many, they violently and speedily get into a way of not believing anything that they believed before, and hence not only they, but philosophy generally, have a bad name with the rest of the world.”[33]