Politics   

compose his Mysians as a dithyramb in the Dorian mode, found it
impossible, and fell back by the very nature of things into the more
appropriate Phrygian. All men agree that the Dorian music is the
gravest and manliest. And whereas we say that the extremes should be
avoided and the mean followed, and whereas the Dorian is a mean
between the other modes, it is evident that our youth should be taught
the Dorian music.
Two principles have to be kept in view, what is possible, what is
becoming: at these every man ought to aim. But even these are relative
to age; the old, who have lost their powers, cannot very well sing the
high-strung modes, and nature herself seems to suggest that their
songs should be of the more relaxed kind. Wherefore the musicians
likewise blame Socrates, and with justice, for rejecting the relaxed
modes in education under the idea that they are intoxicating, not in
the ordinary sense of intoxication (for wine rather tends to excite
men), but because they have no strength in them. And so, with a view
also to the time of life when men begin to grow old, they ought to
practice the gentler modes and melodies as well as the others, and,
further, any mode, such as the Lydian above all others appears to be,
which is suited to children of tender age, and possesses the elements
both of order and of education. Thus it is clear that education should
be based upon three principles- the mean, the possible, the becoming,
these three.