As for the training of the body– we spoke of it as the dancing of
creatures at play–when the process culminates in goodness of body,
let us call scientific bodily discipline with that purpose gymnastics.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 2, 673a
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It is an admitted principle that gymnastic exercises should be
employed in education, and that for children they should be of
a lighter kind, avoiding severe diet or painful toil, lest the
growth of the body be impaired. The evil of excessive training
in early years is strikingly proved by the example of the Olympic
victors; for not more than two or three of them have gained a prize
both as boys and as men; their early training and severe gymnastic
exercises exhausted their constitutions. When boyhood is over,
three years should be spent in other studies; the period of life
which follows may then be devoted to exercise and strict diet.
Men ought not to labor at the same time with their minds and with
their bodies; for the two kinds of labor are opposed to one another;
the labor of the body impedes the mind, and the labor of the mind
the body.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 8, 1338b–1339a
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So this, it seems, would not be the whirling of a shell in the
children's game, but a conversion and turning about of the
soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day– the
ascension to reality of our parable which we will affirm to
be true philosophy.
— Plato, Republic, Bk. 7, 521c
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The move-ment of animals may be compared with those of automatic
puppets, which are set going on the occasion of a tiny movement
(the strings are released, and the pegs strike against one
another); or with the toy wagon (for the child mounts on it and
moves it
straight forward, and yet it is moved in a circle owing to
its wheels being of unequal diameter—the smaller acts like
a center on the same principles as the cylinders).
— Aristotle, Movement of Animals, 701b
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Well, the point would be more readily understood by my own countrymen,
thanks to the undue devotion of some of them to sport. Among
us, in fact, children, and some who are no longer children, too,
are
in the habit of rearing young birds for the purpose of cockfighting.
Now they are very far from thinking that the performances in
which they train these animals by pitting them against one another
adequate
discipline for such creatures. Over and above all this, everyone
keeps birds somewhere on his person–the smaller ones in the
hand, the bigger within his cloak, under the elbow–and takes
walks of many furlongs, with an eye not to his own physique but
to that of his beasties–a practice which at least indicates
to the intelligent observer that all bodies are beneficially
braced by every sort of shaking and stirring, whether due to
their own
movements, to the oscillations of a conveyance or a boat, the
trot of a horse, or however the motion of the body may be caused.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 789b–789d
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Then, as we were saying in the beginning, our youth must join
in the more law-abiding play, since, if play grows lawless and
the children likewise, it is impossible that they should grow up
to be men of serious temper and lawful spirit.
Of course, he said.
And so we may reason that when children in their earliest play
are imbued with the spirit of law and order through their music,
the opposite of the former
supposition happens–this spirit waits upon them in all things and fosters
their growth, and restores and sets up again whatever was overthrown in the
other type of state.
— Plato, Republic, Bk. 4, 424e–425a
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Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion
but by play. That will also better enable you to discern the natural
capacities of each.
— Plato, Republic, Bk. 7, 536e–537a
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And now we have to determine the question which has been already
raised, whether children should be themselves taught to sing and
play or not. Clearly there is a considerable difference made in
the character by the actual practice of the art. It is difficult,
if not impossible, for those who do not perform to be good judges
of the performance of others. Besides, children should have something
to do, and the rattle of Archytas, which people give to their children
in order to amuse them and prevent them from breaking anything
in the house, was a capital invention, for a young thing cannot
be quiet. The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education
is a rattle or toy for children of a larger growth. We conclude
then that they should be taught music in such a way as to become
not only critics but performers.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 8, 1340b
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Well, I proceed at once to say that he who is good at anything
as a man must practice that thing from early childhood, in
play as well as earnest, with all the attendant circumstances of the
action. Thus, if a boy is to be a good farmer, or again, a
good builder, he should play, in the one case at building toy houses,
in the other at farming, and both should be provided by their
tutors with miniature tools on the pattern of real ones. In particular,
all necessary preliminary instruction should be acquired in
this way. Thus, the carpenter should be taught by his play to use the
rule and the plumb line, and the soldier to sit a horse, and
the like. We should seek to use games as a means of directing children's
tastes and inclinations toward the station they are themselves
to fill when adult. So we may say, in fact, the sum and substance
of education is the right training which effectually leads
the soul of the child at play on to the love of the calling in which
he will have to be perfect, after its kind, when he is a man.
But, as I said, you must consider whether what has been said has your
approval so far.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 1, 643b–643d
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Why, as to this matter of children's games, I maintain that our
communities are sunk in a universal ignorance; it is not seen
that they have a decisive influence on the permanence or impermanence
of a legislation once enacted. Where there is prescription
on this
point, where it is ensured that the same children shall always
play the same games in one and the same way, and get their
pleasure from the same playthings, the regulations in more serious matters
too are free to remain undisturbed, but where there is change
and innovation in the former, incessant variation of all sorts
and
perpetual fluctuation in the children's tastes: where they
have
no fixed and settled standard of what is pretty or the reverse
in their own bearing and movements, or in the pattern of their
toys where the inventor and introducer of an innovation in
pattern, color or the like is always held in particular esteem–how
truly may we say society can suffer from no worse pest. Such
a man is
constantly changing the young folks' character behind your
back; he teaches them to despise the old-fashioned and worship novelty.
Once more I say, there can be no graver danger to society than
such language and such notions. Pray let me explain how serious
this evil is.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 797a–797c
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They all suppose, as we were saying, that innovation in children's
play is itself a piece of play and nothing more, not, as it is in
fact, a source
of most serious and grievous harm; hence they make no attempt to
avert such changes, but compliantly fall in with them. They never
reflect that these
boys who introduce innovations into their games must inevitably grow
to be men of a different stamp from the boys of an earlier time,
that the change
in themselves leads to the quest for a different manner of life,
and this to a craving for different institutions and laws, and thus
none of them is
apprehensive of the imminent consequence, of which we just spoke
as the worst misfortune for a community. A change in other respects,
in mere external
forms, would, of course, do less mischief, but frequent modifications
of moral approbation and disapprobation are of all changes the gravest
and need
to be anxiously guarded against.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 798b–798d
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And so our young folk are eager to dance and sing themselves, while, as for
us elders, we think it the becoming thing to pass the time by looking on
at them and enjoying their play and merriment. We miss the agility which
is beginning to fail us at our years, and so we are glad to arrange competitions
for performers who can reawaken the youthfulness in us by reminiscence.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 2, 657d
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And the tolerance of democracy, its superiority to all our meticulous
requirements, its disdain for our solemn pronouncements made when
we were founding our city, that except in the case of transcendent
natural gifts no one could ever become a good man unless from childhood
his play and all of his pursuits were concerned with things fair
and good.
— Plato, Republic, Bk. 8, 558a–558c
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Oceanos: Yes, I see,
Prometheus, and I want, indeed I do,
to advise you for the best, for all your cleverness.
Know yourself and reform your ways to new ways,
for new is he that rules among the Gods.
But if you throw about such angry words,
words that are whetted swords, soon Zeus will hear you,
even though his seat in glory is far removed,
and then your present multitude of pains
will seem like child’s play.
— Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 310–320
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Boy: There’s
something, Father, for which I pine:
Would you grant a request of mine?
Chorus: Certainly,
child, tell me what’s the pretty ting
That you’d like for me to bring.
Knucklebones is it, eh my laddie?
Boy: No knucklebones; figs, please, Daddy.
Chorus: No figs; be hanged, say I.
From my paltry pay I have to try
Flour, wood, and groceries to buy.
Figs indeed—up in the sky!
— Aristophanes, Wasps, p. 152
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The children, placing purple reins upon you, goat
And a noseband about your shaggy mouth,
Train you in horse racing around the god's temple
To make you carry them gently for your pleasure.
— Hellenistic epigram by Anyte
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Why, when he was still a tyke this high, he could make clay houses at home,
and carve boats, and fashion figwood carts, and he'd make frogs out of pomegranates
as pretty as you please.
— Aristophanes, Clouds, 878–881
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