The Psychological Background of the First Education in Plato's Laws

The first advice offered in the Laws regarding the education of the soul concerns curing infants' difficulty in sleeping in the context of gymnastic exercises which contribute to the overall acquisition of courage. The nurses will need to impose shaking on the internal movement which instills terror in the infants (790b-791c). In reality, they need to efface another version of the disorderly motion which characterizes the first man (as well as the infant) in the Timaeus, when the mental abilities of his immortal soul are lost immediately after its incarnation (43a-44b). The aim of the present article is to examine whether Plato, in his reference to the first education of the soul, remains faithful to Timaeus' psychology, and, if this is so, to what extent he considers the relevant physiological mechanisms to be active. The resulting conclusions inevitably constitute grounds for an attempt to exploit the Timaeus in the context of the current interpretative issue concerning the division of the soul in the Laws.