 The discussion of Book 1 closes with a model of the soul which, the Athenian says, will make it clearer what virtue and vice are, and will help us to understand what effects various sorts of educational practices, such as the symposia, should be expected to have on the human soul (Laws  645C).[7]  The model is one of a puppet  (thauma)[8]  made by the gods, possessing three cords, two, hard and iron, representing the expectations of pleasure and pain, and one, soft and gold, representing reason or calculation (Laws 644D). This model differs in noteworthy ways from the image of the soul as composed of a human, a lion, and a hydra-headed beast in the Republic and the charioteer and two horses of the  Phaedrus.[9]  The three elements in the puppet image are affections rather than possessors of affections; and the most important division here is between the two iron cords and the golden cord, with no fundamental difference (of the sort that we see when spirit is called reason’s natural ally in the Republic) between the two iron cords. How to explain the differences in the model of the soul that we get here from the ones we get in other dialogues is another important question for interpreters of the  Laws.[10]