Chapter V. That No Hurtful Fables Must Be Recited to Children, but Only Those That Are Beneficial

[P] [1]’Do you not know then that the beginning is the chief part of every work, especially for any young and tender mind? For at that age any character that one wishes to impress on each is most easily formed and imparted.

‘Quite so.

‘Shall we then just carelessly permit our children to listen to casual fables (composed by casual persons), and to receive into their souls opinions for the most part opposite to those which, when they are grown up, we shall think they ought to hold?

‘We must by no means permit it.

‘In the first place then, it seems, we must supervise the writers of fables, and approve any good fable they may compose, and reject any that are not good. And we must persuade nurses and mothers to tell their children those which are approved, and to form their souls by the fables much more carefully than their bodies with their hands. But the greater number of the tales which they tell them now must be rejected.’

These precautions also had been taken by the Hebrews before Plato’s time. For those who had a divine spirit fit for discerning of spirits approved what was rightly said or written with help from the Holy Spirit, and the contrary they rejected, just as they rejected the words of the false prophets. Moreover it was the custom of parents and nurses to soothe their infant children by singing the most edifying narratives from the divine Scriptures, just like any fables, for the sake of preparing beforehand for the religion which they were to learn when approaching to manhood.