Laws
invent a more useful lie than this, or one which will have a better
effect in making them do what is right, not on compulsion but
voluntarily.
CLEINIAS: Truth, Stranger, is a noble thing and a lasting, but a thing
of which men are hard to be persuaded.
ATHENIAN: And yet the story of the Sidonian Cadmus, which is so
improbable, has been readily believed, and also innumerable other tales.
CLEINIAS: What is that story?
ATHENIAN: The story of armed men springing up after the sowing of teeth,
which the legislator may take as a proof that he can persuade the minds
of the young of anything; so that he has only to reflect and find out
what belief will be of the greatest public advantage, and then use all
his efforts to make the whole community utter one and the same word in
their songs and tales and discourses all their life long. But if you do
not agree with me, there is no reason why you should not argue on the
other side.
CLEINIAS: I do not see that any argument can fairly be raised by either
of us against what you are now saying.
ATHENIAN: The next suggestion which I have to offer is, that all our
three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children,
reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have
already spoken, or are about to speak; and the sum of them shall be,
that the life which is by the Gods deemed to be the happiest is also the
best;--we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth; and the minds of
our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours
than any others which we might address to them.
CLEINIAS: I assent to what you say.
ATHENIAN: First will enter in their natural order the sacred choir
composed of children, which is to sing lustily the heaven-taught lay to
the whole city. Next will follow the choir of young men under the age
of thirty, who will call upon the God Paean to testify to the truth of
their words, and will pray him to be gracious to the youth and to turn
their hearts. Thirdly, the choir of elder men, who are from thirty to
sixty years of age, will also sing. There remain those who are too old
to sing, and they will tell stories, illustrating the same virtues, as
with the voice of an oracle.
CLEINIAS: Who are those who compose the third choir, Stranger? for I do
not clearly understand what you mean to say about them.
ATHENIAN: And yet almost all that I have been saying has been said with
a view to them.
CLEINIAS: Will you try to be a little plainer?
ATHENIAN: I was speaking at the commencement of our discourse, as you
will remember, of the fiery nature of young creatures: I said that they
were unable to keep quiet either in limb or voice, and that they called
out and jumped about in a disorderly manner; and that no other animal
attained to any perception of order, but man only. Now the order of
motion is called rhythm, and the order of the voice, in which high and
low are duly mingled, is called harmony; and both together are termed
choric song. And I said that the Gods had pity on us, and gave us
Apollo and the Muses to be our playfellows and leaders in the dance; and
Dionysus, as I dare say that you will remember, was the third.
CLEINIAS: I quite remember.
ATHENIAN: Thus far I have spoken of the chorus of Apollo and the Muses,
and I have still to speak of the remaining chorus, which is that of
Dionysus.
CLEINIAS: How is that arranged? There is something strange, at any rate
on first hearing, in a Dionysiac chorus of old men, if you really mean
that those who are above thirty, and may be fifty, or from fifty to
sixty years of age, are to dance in his honour.
ATHENIAN: Very true; and therefore it must be shown that there is good
reason for the proposal.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Are we agreed thus far?
CLEINIAS: About what?
ATHENIAN: That every man and boy, slave and free, both sexes, and the
whole city, should never cease charming themselves with the strains of
which we have spoken; and that there should be every sort of change and
variation of them in order to take away the effect of sameness, so that
the singers may always receive pleasure from their hymns, and may never
weary of them?
CLEINIAS: Every one will agree.
ATHENIAN: Where, then, will that best part of our city which, by reason
of age and intelligence, has the greatest influence, sing these fairest
of strains, which are to do so much good? Shall we be so foolish as
to let them off who would give us the most beautiful and also the most
useful of songs?
CLEINIAS: But, says the argument, we cannot let them off.
ATHENIAN: Then how can we carry out our purpose with decorum? Will this
be the way?
CLEINIAS: What?
ATHENIAN: When a man is advancing in years, he is afraid and reluctant
to sing;--he has no pleasure in his own performances; and if compulsion
is used, he will be more and more ashamed, the older and more discreet
he grows;--is not this true?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Well, and will he not be yet more ashamed if he has to stand
up and sing in the theatre to a mixed audience?--and if moreover when he
is required to do so, like the other choirs who contend for prizes, and
have been trained under a singing master, he is pinched and hungry, he
will certainly have a feeling of shame and discomfort which will make
him very unwilling to exhibit.
CLEINIAS: No doubt.
ATHENIAN: How, then, shall we reassure him, and get him to sing? Shall
we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they
are eighteen years of age; we will tell them that fire must not be
poured upon fire, whether in the body or in the soul, until they begin
to go to work--this is a precaution which has to be taken against the
excitableness of youth;--afterwards they may taste wine in moderation
up to the age of thirty, but while a man is young he should abstain
altogether from intoxication and from excess of wine; when, at length,
he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may invite
not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and
festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given
men to lighten the sourness of old age; that in age we may renew our
youth, and forget our sorrows; and also in order that the nature of
the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may become softer and so more
impressible. In the first place, will not any one who is thus mellowed
be more ready and less ashamed to sing--I do not say before a large
audience, but before a moderate company; nor yet among strangers,
but among his familiars, and, as we have often said, to chant, and to
enchant?
CLEINIAS: He will be far more ready.
ATHENIAN: There will be no impropriety in our using such a method of
persuading them to join with us in song.
CLEINIAS: None at all.
ATHENIAN: And what strain will they sing, and what muse will they hymn?
The strain should clearly be one suitable to them.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And what strain is suitable for heroes? Shall they sing a
choric strain?
CLEINIAS: Truly, Stranger, we of Crete and Lacedaemon know no strain
other than that which we have learnt and been accustomed to sing in our
chorus.
ATHENIAN: I dare say; for you have never acquired the knowledge of the
most beautiful kind of song, in your military way of life, which is
modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and
you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts.
No one takes his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows
against his will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom to attend
to him alone, and trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the
qualities in education which will make him not only a good soldier, but
also a governor of a state and of cities. Such an one, as we said at
first, would be a greater warrior than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings; and
he would honour courage everywhere, but always as the fourth, and not as
the first part of virtue, either in individuals or states.
CLEINIAS: Once more, Stranger, I must complain that you depreciate our
lawgivers.
ATHENIAN: Not intentionally, if at all, my good friend; but whither
the argument leads, thither let us follow; for if there be indeed some
strain of song more beautiful than that of the choruses or the public
theatres, I should like to impart it to those who, as we say, are
ashamed of these, and want to have the best.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: When things have an accompanying charm, either the best
thing in them is this very charm, or there is some rightness or utility
possessed by them;--for example, I should say that eating and drinking,
and the use of food in general, have an accompanying charm which we call
pleasure; but that this rightness and utility is just the healthfulness
of the things served up to us, which is their true rightness.
CLEINIAS: Just so.
ATHENIAN: Thus, too, I should say that learning has a certain
accompanying charm which is the pleasure; but that the right and the
profitable, the good and the noble, are qualities which the truth gives
to it.
CLEINIAS: Exactly.
ATHENIAN: And so in the imitative arts--if they succeed in making
likenesses, and are accompanied by pleasure, may not their works be said
to have a charm?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: But equal proportions, whether of quality or quantity, and not
pleasure, speaking generally, would give them truth or rightness.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: Then that only can be rightly judged by the standard of
pleasure, which makes or furnishes no utility or truth or likeness,
nor on the other hand is productive of any hurtful quality, but exists
solely for the sake of the accompanying charm; and the term 'pleasure'
is most appropriately applied to it when these other qualities are
absent.
CLEINIAS: You are speaking of harmless pleasure, are you not?
ATHENIAN: Yes; and this I term amusement, when doing neither harm nor
good in any degree worth speaking of.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Then, if such be our principles, we must assert that imitation
is not to be judged of by pleasure and false opinion; and this is
true of all equality, for the equal is not equal or the symmetrical
symmetrical, because somebody thinks or likes something, but they are to
be judged of by the standard of truth, and by no other whatever.
CLEINIAS: Quite true.
ATHENIAN: Do we not regard all music as representative and imitative?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Then, when any one says that music is to be judged of by
pleasure, his doctrine cannot be admitted; and if there be any music of
which pleasure is the criterion, such music is not to be sought out or
deemed to have any real excellence, but only that other kind of music
which is an imitation of the good.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: And those who seek for the best kind of song and music ought
not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for that which is true; and
the truth of imitation consists, as we were saying, in rendering the
thing imitated according to quantity and quality.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And every one will admit that musical compositions are all
imitative and representative. Will not poets and spectators and actors
all agree in this?
CLEINIAS: They will.
ATHENIAN: Surely then he who would judge correctly must know what
each composition is; for if he does not know what is the character and
meaning of the piece, and what it represents, he will never discern
whether the intention is true or false.
CLEINIAS: Certainly not.
ATHENIAN: And will he who does not know what is true be able to
distinguish what is good and bad? My statement is not very clear; but
perhaps you will understand me better if I put the matter in another
way.
CLEINIAS: How?