remark, that ’those who are able to resist pleasure may often be among the worst of mankind.’  He is as much aware as any modern utilitarian that the love of pleasure is the great motive of human action.  This cannot be eradicated, and must therefore be regulated,—­the pleasure must be of the right sort.  Such reflections seem to be the real, though imperfectly expressed, groundwork of the discussion.  As in the juxtaposition of the Bacchic madness and the great gift of Dionysus, or where he speaks of the different senses in which pleasure is and is not the object of imitative art, or in the illustration of the failure of the Dorian institutions from the prayer of Theseus, we have to gather his meaning as well as we can from the connexion.

The feeling of old age is discernible in this as well as in several other passages of the Laws.  Plato has arrived at the time when men sit still and look on at life; and he is willing to allow himself and others the few pleasures which remain to them.  Wine is to cheer them now that their limbs are old and their blood runs cold.  They are the best critics of dancing and music, but cannot be induced to join in song unless they have been enlivened by drinking.  Youth has no need of the stimulus of wine, but age can only be made young again by its invigorating influence.  Total abstinence for the young, moderate and increasing potations for the old, is Plato’s principle.  The fire, of which there is too much in the one, has to be brought to the other.  Drunkenness, like madness, had a sacredness and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand, as in the case of the Tarentines, it degraded a whole population, it was also a mode of worshipping the god Dionysus, which was to be practised on certain occasions.  Moreover, the intoxication produced by the fruit of the vine was very different from the grosser forms of drunkenness which prevail among some modern nations.

The physician in modern times would restrict the old man’s use of wine within narrow limits.  He would tell us that you cannot restore strength by a stimulus.  Wine may call back the vital powers in disease, but cannot reinvigorate old age.  In his maxims of health and longevity, though aware of the importance of a simple diet, Plato has omitted to dwell on the perfect rule of moderation.  His commendation of wine is probably a passing fancy, and may have arisen out of his own habits or tastes.  If so, he is not the only philosopher whose theory has been based upon his practice.

Plato’s denial of wine to the young and his approval of it for their elders has some points of view which may be illustrated by the temperance controversy of our own times.  Wine may be allowed to have a religious as well as a festive use; it is commended both in the Old and New Testament; it has been sung of by nearly all poets; and it may be truly said to have a healing influence both on body and mind.  Yet it is also very liable to excess and abuse, and