Then we have found the desired natures; and now that we have found them, how are they to be reared and educated? Is not this an enquiry which may be expected to throw light *376D* on the greater enquiry which is our final end--How do justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do not want either to omit what is to the point or to draw out the argument to an inconvenient length. [Sidenote: Socrates, Adeimantus.] Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great service to us. Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if somewhat long. Certainly not. Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. *376E* By all means. And what shall be their education? Can we find a better {59} than the traditional sort?--and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul. True. [Sidenote: Education divided into gymnastic for the body and music for the soul. Music includes literature, which may be true or false.] Shall we begin education with music, and go on to gymnastic afterwards? By all means. And when you speak of music, do you include literature or not? I do. And literature may be either true or false? Yes. *377A* And the young should be trained in both kinds, and we begin with the false? I do not understand your meaning, he said. You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories which, though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious; and these stories are told them when they are not of an age to learn gymnastics. Very true. That was my meaning when I said that we must teach music before gymnastics. Quite right, he said. [Sidenote: The beginning the most important part of education.] You know also that the beginning is the most important *377B* part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Quite true. And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up? We cannot. [Sidenote: Works of fiction to be placed under a censorship.] Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of *377C* the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded. {60} Of what tales are you speaking? he said. You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said; *377D* for they are necessarily of the same type, and there is the same spirit in both of them.