Cf. Plato de Legg. t. viii. p. 44. sqq. On the style of declamation used in the Greek and Roman schools, see Schömann, de Comit. p. 187. Footnote 599: There were likewise poems written in the language of the common people.—Athen. xiv. 43. By other philosophers wandering unrestrained over the vast fields of literature was condemned. They desired to separate the gold from the dross, contending that persons accustomed from their infancy to the loftier and purer inspirations of the muse will regard with contempt every thing mean or illiberal, whereas they who have learned to delight in low and vulgar compositions will consider all other literature tame and insipid. For so great is the force of imitation, that habits commenced from the earliest years pass into the manners and character of a man, affecting even his voice and corporeal developement, nay, modifying the very nature of the thoughts themselves. Among the other branches of knowledge[600] most necessary to be studied, and to which they applied themselves nearly from the outset, was arithmetic, without some inkling of which, a man, in Plato’s opinion, could scarcely be a citizen at all. For, as he observes, there is no art or science which does not stand in some need of it, especially the art of war, where many combinations depend entirely on numbers. And yet Agamemnon in some of the old tragic poets was represented by Palamedes as wholly ignorant of calculation, so that possibly, as Socrates jocularly observes, he could not reckon his own feet.[601] The importance attached to this branch of education, nowhere more apparent than in the dialogues of Plato, furnishes one proof that the Athenians were preëminently men of business, who in all their admiration for the good and beautiful never lost sight of those things which promote the comfort of life, and enable a man effectually to perform his ordinary duties. With the same views were geometry and astronomy pursued. For, in the Republic, Glaucon,[602] who may be supposed to represent the popular opinion, confesses at once, upon the mention of geometry, that as it is applicable to the business of war it would be most useful. He could discover the superiority of the geometrician[603] over the ignorant man in pitching a camp, in the taking of places, in contracting or expanding the ranks of an army, and all those other military movements practised in battles, marches or sieges. To Plato however this was its least recommendation. He conceived that in the search after goodness and truth the study of this science was especially beneficial to the mind, both because it deals in positive verities, and thus begets a love of them, and likewise superinduces the habit of seeking them through lengthened investigation and of being satisfied with nothing less. Footnote 600: