Laws
men adjudge victors ought to win; for our ways are far and away better
than any which at present exist anywhere in the world.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence
of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be
that of chance persons; the fairest music is that which delights the
best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man
who is pre-eminent in virtue and education. And therefore the judges
must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and courage;
the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought
he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity;
nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness
carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which
have just appealed to the Gods before he judged. He is sitting not
as the disciple of the theatre, but, in his proper place, as their
instructor, and he ought to be the enemy of all pandering to the
pleasure of the spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas,
which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the
judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of
hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets; for they
are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste
of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct
themselves;--and also it has been the ruin of the theatre; they ought
to be having characters put before them better than their own, and
so receiving a higher pleasure, but now by their own act the opposite
result follows. What inference is to be drawn from all this? Shall I
tell you?
CLEINIAS: What?
ATHENIAN: The inference at which we arrive for the third or fourth time
is, that education is the constraining and directing of youth towards
that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of
the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right. In order, then, that
the soul of the child may not be habituated to feel joy and sorrow in
a manner at variance with the law, and those who obey the law, but may
rather follow the law and rejoice and sorrow at the same things as the
aged--in order, I say, to produce this effect, chants appear to have
been invented, which really enchant, and are designed to implant
that harmony of which we speak. And, because the mind of the child is
incapable of enduring serious training, they are called plays and songs,
and are performed in play; just as when men are sick and ailing in their
bodies, their attendants give them wholesome diet in pleasant meats and
drinks, but unwholesome diet in disagreeable things, in order that they
may learn, as they ought, to like the one, and to dislike the other. And
similarly the true legislator will persuade, and, if he cannot persuade,
will compel the poet to express, as he ought, by fair and noble words,
in his rhythms, the figures, and in his melodies, the music of temperate
and brave and in every way good men.
CLEINIAS: But do you really imagine, Stranger, that this is the way in
which poets generally compose in States at the present day? As far as I
can observe, except among us and among the Lacedaemonians, there are no
regulations like those of which you speak; in other places novelties are
always being introduced in dancing and in music, generally not under the
authority of any law, but at the instigation of lawless pleasures; and
these pleasures are so far from being the same, as you describe the
Egyptian to be, or having the same principles, that they are never the
same.
ATHENIAN: Most true, Cleinias; and I daresay that I may have expressed
myself obscurely, and so led you to imagine that I was speaking of
some really existing state of things, whereas I was only saying what
regulations I would like to have about music; and hence there occurred
a misapprehension on your part. For when evils are far gone and
irremediable, the task of censuring them is never pleasant, although at
times necessary. But as we do not really differ, will you let me ask you
whether you consider such institutions to be more prevalent among the
Cretans and Lacedaemonians than among the other Hellenes?
CLEINIAS: Certainly they are.
ATHENIAN: And if they were extended to the other Hellenes, would it be
an improvement on the present state of things?
CLEINIAS: A very great improvement, if the customs which prevail among
them were such as prevail among us and the Lacedaemonians, and such as
you were just now saying ought to prevail.
ATHENIAN: Let us see whether we understand one another:--Are not the
principles of education and music which prevail among you as follows:
you compel your poets to say that the good man, if he be temperate and
just, is fortunate and happy; and this whether he be great and strong or
small and weak, and whether he be rich or poor; and, on the other hand,
if he have a wealth passing that of Cinyras or Midas, and be unjust,
he is wretched and lives in misery? As the poet says, and with truth:
I sing not, I care not about him who accomplishes all noble things,
not having justice; let him who 'draws near and stretches out his hand
against his enemies be a just man.' But if he be unjust, I would not
have him 'look calmly upon bloody death,' nor 'surpass in swiftness the
Thracian Boreas;' and let no other thing that is called good ever be
his. For the goods of which the many speak are not really good: first
in the catalogue is placed health, beauty next, wealth third; and then
innumerable others, as for example to have a keen eye or a quick ear,
and in general to have all the senses perfect; or, again, to be a tyrant
and do as you like; and the final consummation of happiness is to have
acquired all these things, and when you have acquired them to become at
once immortal. But you and I say, that while to the just and holy all
these things are the best of possessions, to the unjust they are all,
including even health, the greatest of evils. For in truth, to have
sight, and hearing, and the use of the senses, or to live at all without
justice and virtue, even though a man be rich in all the so-called goods
of fortune, is the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; but not so
great, if the bad man lives only a very short time. These are the truths
which, if I am not mistaken, you will persuade or compel your poets to
utter with suitable accompaniments of harmony and rhythm, and in these
they must train up your youth. Am I not right? For I plainly declare
that evils as they are termed are goods to the unjust, and only evils
to the just, and that goods are truly good to the good, but evil to the
evil. Let me ask again, Are you and I agreed about this?
CLEINIAS: I think that we partly agree and partly do not.
ATHENIAN: When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts,
and when he is pre-eminent in strength and courage, and has the gift of
immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance these
goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature--of such
an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is miserable
rather than happy.
CLEINIAS: That is quite true.
ATHENIAN: Once more: Suppose that he be valiant and strong, and handsome
and rich, and does throughout his whole life whatever he likes, still,
if he be unrighteous and insolent, would not both of you agree that he
will of necessity live basely? You will surely grant so much?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And an evil life too?
CLEINIAS: I am not equally disposed to grant that.
ATHENIAN: Will he not live painfully and to his own disadvantage?
CLEINIAS: How can I possibly say so?
ATHENIAN: How! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are
of two. To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain
as the fact that Crete is an island. And, if I were a lawgiver, I would
try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and
I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any one in all the land who
should dare to say that there are bad men who lead pleasant lives, or
that the profitable and gainful is one thing, and the just another; and
there are many other matters about which I should make my citizens speak
in a manner different from the Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age,
and I may say, indeed, from the world in general. For tell me, my good
friends, by Zeus and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same
Gods who were your legislators,--Is not the most just life also the
pleasantest? or are there two lives, one of which is the justest and the
other the pleasantest?--and they were to reply that there are two; and
thereupon I proceeded to ask, (that would be the right way of pursuing
the enquiry), Which are the happier--those who lead the justest, or
those who lead the pleasantest life? and they replied, Those who lead
the pleasantest--that would be a very strange answer, which I should not
like to put into the mouth of the Gods. The words will come with more
propriety from the lips of fathers and legislators, and therefore I will
repeat my former questions to one of them, and suppose him to say again
that he who leads the pleasantest life is the happiest. And to that
I rejoin:--O my father, did you not wish me to live as happily as
possible? And yet you also never ceased telling me that I should live
as justly as possible. Now, here the giver of the rule, whether he be
legislator or father, will be in a dilemma, and will in vain endeavour
to be consistent with himself. But if he were to declare that the
justest life is also the happiest, every one hearing him would enquire,
if I am not mistaken, what is that good and noble principle in life
which the law approves, and which is superior to pleasure. For what good
can the just man have which is separated from pleasure? Shall we say
that glory and fame, coming from Gods and men, though good and noble,
are nevertheless unpleasant, and infamy pleasant? Certainly not, sweet
legislator. Or shall we say that the not-doing of wrong and there being
no wrong done is good and honourable, although there is no pleasure in
it, and that the doing wrong is pleasant, but evil and base?
CLEINIAS: Impossible.
ATHENIAN: The view which identifies the pleasant and the pleasant and
the just and the good and the noble has an excellent moral and religious
tendency. And the opposite view is most at variance with the designs of
the legislator, and is, in his opinion, infamous; for no one, if he
can help, will be persuaded to do that which gives him more pain than
pleasure. But as distant prospects are apt to make us dizzy, especially
in childhood, the legislator will try to purge away the darkness and
exhibit the truth; he will persuade the citizens, in some way or other,
by customs and praises and words, that just and unjust are shadows only,
and that injustice, which seems opposed to justice, when contemplated by
the unjust and evil man appears pleasant and the just most unpleasant;
but that from the just man's point of view, the very opposite is the
appearance of both of them.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: And which may be supposed to be the truer judgment--that of
the inferior or of the better soul?
CLEINIAS: Surely, that of the better soul.
ATHENIAN: Then the unjust life must not only be more base and depraved,
but also more unpleasant than the just and holy life?
CLEINIAS: That seems to be implied in the present argument.
ATHENIAN: And even supposing this were otherwise, and not as the
argument has proven, still the lawgiver, who is worth anything, if
he ever ventures to tell a lie to the young for their good, could not