Every rational system of education is determined by some aim or ideal more or less consciously set up. That of the Dorians, and particularly of the Spartans, may be expressed in one word--STRENGTH, which, in the individual, took the form of physical endurance, in the State, that of self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια). A self-sufficient State, furnishing a field for all the activities and aspirations of all its citizens, and demanding their strongest and most devoted exertions--such is the Dorian ideal. It is easy to see what virtues Dorian education would seek to develop--physical strength, bravery, and obedience to the laws of the State. Among the Dorians the human being is entirely absorbed in the citizen. The State is all in all. The Dorian ideal realized itself chiefly in two places, Crete and Sparta. Both these were repeatedly held up in ancient times as models of well-governed states, and even Plato puts the substance of his _Laws_ into the mouth of a Cretan. About the details of Cretan education we are but poorly informed. Two things, however, we know: (1) that Lycurgus, the reputed founder of Spartan education, was held to have drawn many of his ideas from Crete, and (2) that the final result of Cretan education--and the same is true of all education that merges the man in the citizen--was, in spite of its strictness, demoralizing. The character of the people was summed up by their poet Epimenides, a contemporary of Solon's, in a famous line quoted by St. Paul, "The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies." With regard to Spartan education our information is much greater, and we may therefore select it as the type of Dorian education generally.