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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: ingenious system of lots,' produce a Shakespeare or a Milton. Even
supposing that we could breed men having the tenacity of bulldogs, or, like
the Spartans, 'lacking the wit to run away in battle,' would the world be
any the better? Many of the noblest specimens of the human race have been
among the weakest physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton, would
have been exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest and strongest men and
women have been among the wickedest and worst. Not by the Platonic device
of uniting the strong and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of
sentiment and morality, nor yet by his other device of combining dissimilar
natures (Statesman), have mankind gradually passed from the brutality and
licentiousness of primitive marriage to marriage Christian and civilized.
The Republic |
