Speaking generally, our glory is to follow the better and improve the inferior, which is susceptible of improvement, as far as this is possible.  And of all human possessions, the soul is by nature most inclined to avoid the evil, and track out and find the chief good; which when a man has found, he should take up his abode with it during the remainder of his life.  Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour; and third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural order.  Having determined this, we have next to consider that there is a natural honour of the body, and that of honours some are true and some are counterfeit.  To decide which are which is the business of the legislator; and he, I suspect, would intimate that they are as follows:—­Honour is not to be given to the fair body, or to the strong or the swift or the tall, or to the healthy body (although many may think otherwise), any more than to their opposites; but the mean states of all these habits are by far the safest and most moderate; for the one extreme makes the soul braggart and insolent, and the other, illiberal and base; and money, and property, and distinction all go to the same tune.  The excess of any of these things is apt to be a source of hatreds and divisions among states and individuals; and the defect of them is commonly a cause of slavery.  And, therefore, I would not have any one fond of heaping up riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as rich as possible.  For the possession of great wealth is of no use, either to them or to the state.  The condition of youth which is free from flattery, and at the same time not in need of the necessaries of life, is the best and most harmonious of all, being in accord and agreement with our nature, and making life to be most entirely free from sorrow.  Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence.  We, indeed, fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when they show a want of reverence.  But this quality is not really imparted to them by the present style of admonition, which only tells them that the young ought always to be reverential.  A sensible legislator will rather exhort the elders to reverence the younger, and above all to take heed that no young man sees or hears one of themselves doing or saying anything disgraceful; for where old men have no shame, there young men will most certainly be devoid of reverence.  The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.  He who honours his kindred, and reveres those who share in the same Gods and are of the same blood and family, may fairly expect that the Gods who preside over generation will be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed.  And he who deems the services which his friends and acquaintances do for him, greater and more important