It gives them a new experience; it teaches them to combine self-control with a measure of indulgence; it may sometimes restore to them the simplicity of childhood.

We entirely agree with Plato in forbidding the use of wine to the young; but when we are of mature age there are occasions on which we derive refreshment and strength from moderate potations.

It is well to make abstinence the rule, but the rule may sometimes admit of an exception.

We are in a higher, as well as in a lower sense, the better for the use of wine.
The question runs up into wider ones--What is the general effect of asceticism on human nature?
and, Must there not be a certain proportion between the aspirations of man and his powers ?--questions which have been often discussed both by ancient and modern philosophers.

So by comparing things old and new we may sometimes help to realize to ourselves the meaning of Plato in the altered circumstances of our own life.
Like the importance which he attaches to festive entertainments, his depreciation of courage to the fourth place in the scale of virtue appears to be somewhat rhetorical and exaggerated.