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1334b]
[1]
in their holding a different opinion from
others as to what things are the greatest goods, but rather in their believing
that these are obtained by means of one particular virtue; yet because they both
deem these things and their enjoyment to be greater goods than the enjoyment of
the virtues . . .
1
. . . and that it is to be practised for its own
sake is manifest from these considerations; but it must now be considered how and by what means this
will come about. Now we have indeed previously decided that it requires nature
and habit and reason, and among these, what particular quality of nature men
ought to possess has been defined previously; but it remains to consider whether
men ought to be educated first by means of the reason or by the habits. For
between reason and habit the most perfect harmony ought to exist, as it is
possible both for the reason to have missed the highest principle and for men to
have been as wrongly trained through the habits. This therefore at all events is clear in the first place,
in the case of men as of other creatures, that their engendering starts from a
beginning, and that the end starts from a certain beginning that is another
end,
2 and that reason and intelligence are for
us the end of our natural development, so that it is with a view to these ends
that our engendering and the training of our habits must be regulated.
And secondly, as soul and body
are two, so we observe that the soul also has two parts, the irrational part and
the part possessing reason, and that the states which they experience are two in
number,
[20]
the one being desire and
the other intelligence; and as the body is prior in its development to the soul,
so the irrational part of the soul is prior to the rational. And this also is
obvious, because passion and will, and also appetite,
3 exist in children even as soon as
they are born, but it is the nature of reasoning and intelligence to arise in
them as they grow older. Therefore in the first place it is necessary for the
training of the body to precede that of the mind, and secondly for the training
of the appetite to precede that of the intelligence; but the training of the
appetite must be for the sake of the intellect, and that of the body for the
sake of the soul.
Inasmuch therefore as it is the duty of the lawgiver to
consider from the start how the children reared are to obtain the best bodily
frames, he must first pay attention to the union of the sexes, and settle when
and in what condition a couple should practise matrimonial intercourse. In
legislating for this partnership he must pay regard partly to the persons
themselves and to their span of life, so that they may arrive together at the
same period in their ages, and their powers may not be at discord through the
man being still capable of parentage and the wife incapable, or the wife capable
and the man not (for this causes differences and actual discord between
them), and also he must
consider as well the succession of the children, for the children must neither
be too far removed in their ages from the fathers (since elderly
fathers get no good from their children's return of their favors, nor do the
children from the help they get from the fathers),