Thus, according to Plato, the important thing for a youth to secure by the time he is seventeen is the admiration of noble deeds, and noble words, and noble character. The love of good literature is the backbone of this elementary education. Manual training and nature study, as a means to the appreciation of beautiful works of art and beautiful objects in nature, he would also approve. On the whole Plato is an advocate of those very reforms which are now being introduced into the elementary and secondary schools in the name of the New Education. What one loves is of more importance than what one knows; what one wants to do, and is interested in trying to do, is of more consequence at this stage than what one has done. Early education should be an introduction to the true, the beautiful, and the good in the form of great men, brave deeds, beautiful objects, and beneficent laws. The development of taste is more than the acquisition of information; the inspiration of literature, history, art, and descriptive science is far more valuable than drill beyond the essentials in grammar, geography, and arithmetic. Plato's programme for the years from seventeen to twenty, three of our four college years, is even more startling and heretical; and quite in line with certain tendencies in our own day. He would set apart the three years from seventeen to twenty for gymnastic exercises, including in such exercises, however, military drill. Plato appreciated both the advantage and disadvantage of intense athletic exercises. "The period, whether of two or three years, which passes in this sort of training is useless for any other purpose,--for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning; and the trial is one of the most important tests to which they are subjected."