Note 56 — Chapter X · THE GREEK THEORISTS ON EDUCATION—PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.

The critics have shown that Plato gradually softened his recommendations on this point. In the “Timæus” he speaks as if he had never recommended exposal, but only a relegation of the children of unhealthy parents into his third grade of society. In the “Laws” (if it be, indeed, his work) he lets the whole matter drop, though it was to be expected that he should discuss it. Whether this arose from a gradual advance of humanity in Plato himself, or from the adverse criticism of the day, we cannot tell. The German critics (Zeller, Susemihl, etc.) hold the former; I am disposed to the latter, even though his successor, Aristotle, as they remark, is even more inhuman.