Plato, Laws, Book 7, section 791e

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[791e]

Clinias
In what way, then, should the State at large rear up infants that are still incapable of understanding speech or receiving other kinds of education?

Athenian
In this way: it is usual for every creature that is born—and the human child as much as any— to utter at once a loud outcry; and, what is more, the child is the most liable of them all to be afflicted with tears as well as outcries.

Clinias
Quite true.

Athenian
When nurses are trying to discover what a baby wants, they judge by these very same signs in offering it things.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.

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