For the pair are to have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal festival; their children are not theirs, but the state's; nor is any tie of affection to unite them.

Yet here the analogy of the animals might have saved Plato from a gigantic error, if he had 'not lost sight of his own illustration.' For the 'nobler sort of birds and beasts' nourish and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.
An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while 'to try and place life on a physical basis.' But should not life rest on the moral rather than upon the physical?
The higher comes first, then the lower, first the human and rational, afterwards the animal.

Yet they are not absolutely divided; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which includes them both.

Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but the expansion and enlargement of it,--the highest form which the physical is capable of receiving.

As Plato would say, the body does not take care of the body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes care of both.