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[377a] of both, but first of the false?” “I don't understand your meaning.” “Don't you understand,” I said, “that we begin by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before gymnastics.” “That is so.” “That, then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before gymnastics.” “You were right,” he said. “Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the chief thing,1 especially for any creature that is young and tender2?

1 Cf. Laws 753 E, 765 E, Antiphon, fr. 134 Blass.

2 Cf. Laws 664 B, and Shelley's “Specious names,/ Learned in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,” perhaps derived from the educational philosophy of Rousseau.

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