The Republic
same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be
prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance
and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other
creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be
prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our
citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our guardians grow up
amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there
browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little
by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in
their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to
discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our
youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and
receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair
works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze
from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years
into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
There can be no nobler training than that, he replied.
And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent
instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way
into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten,
imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated
graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he
who has received this true education of the inner being will most
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a
true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his
soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and
hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to
know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute
the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.
Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that our youth should
be trained in music and on the grounds which you mention.
Just as in learning to read, I said, we were satisfied when we knew the
letters of the alphabet, which are very few, in all their recurring
sizes and combinations; not slighting them as unimportant whether they
occupy a space large or small, but everywhere eager to make them out;
and not thinking ourselves perfect in the art of reading until we
recognise them wherever they are found:
True—
Or, as we recognise the reflection of letters in the water, or in a
mirror, only when we know the letters themselves; the same art and
study giving us the knowledge of both:
Exactly—
Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians, whom we have to
educate, can ever become musical until we and they know the essential
forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence, and their
kindred, as well as the contrary forms, in all their combinations, and
can recognise them and their images wherever they are found, not
slighting them either in small things or great, but believing them all
to be within the sphere of one art and study.
Most assuredly.
And when a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two
are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who
has an eye to see it?
The fairest indeed.
And the fairest is also the loveliest?
That may be assumed.
And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in love with the
loveliest; but he will not love him who is of an inharmonious soul?
That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul; but if
there be any merely bodily defect in another he will be patient of it,
and will love all the same.
I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences of this sort,
and I agree. But let me ask you another question: Has excess of
pleasure any affinity to temperance?
How can that be? he replied; pleasure deprives a man of the use of his
faculties quite as much as pain.
Or any affinity to virtue in general?
None whatever.
Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance?
Yes, the greatest.
And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual love?
No, nor a madder.
Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order—temperate and
harmonious?
Quite true, he said.
Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach true
love?
Certainly not.
Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near the
lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it if their
love is of the right sort?
No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them.
Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would make a
law to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity to his
love than a father would use to his son, and then only for a noble
purpose, and he must first have the other’s consent; and this rule is
to limit him in all his intercourse, and he is never to be seen going
further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of coarseness and
bad taste.
I quite agree, he said.
Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the
end of music if not the love of beauty?
I agree, he said.
After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.
Certainly.
Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the training in
it should be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief
is,—and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion
in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is,—not that the good body
by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that
the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this
may be possible. What do you say?
Yes, I agree.
Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing
over the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid
prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of the subject.
Very good.
That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked by
us; for of all persons a guardian should be the last to get drunk and
not know where in the world he is.
Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take
care of him is ridiculous indeed.
But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in training
for the great contest of all—are they not?
Yes, he said.
And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to them?
Why not?
I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have is but a
sleepy sort of thing, and rather perilous to health. Do you not observe
that these athletes sleep away their lives, and are liable to most
dangerous illnesses if they depart, in ever so slight a degree, from
their customary regimen?
Yes, I do.
Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for our warrior
athletes, who are to be like wakeful dogs, and to see and hear with the
utmost keenness; amid the many changes of water and also of food, of
summer heat and winter cold, which they will have to endure when on a
campaign, they must not be liable to break down in health.
That is my view.
The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple music
which we were just now describing.
How so?
Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our music, is
simple and good; and especially the military gymnastic.
What do you mean?
My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds his heroes at
their feasts, when they are campaigning, on soldiers’ fare; they have
no fish, although they are on the shores of the Hellespont, and they
are not allowed boiled meats but only roast, which is the food most
convenient for soldiers, requiring only that they should light a fire,
and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots and pans.
True.
And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are nowhere
mentioned in Homer. In proscribing them, however, he is not singular;
all professional athletes are well aware that a man who is to be in
good condition should take nothing of the kind.
Yes, he said; and knowing this, they are quite right in not taking
them.
Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the refinements of
Sicilian cookery?
I think not.
Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have a
Corinthian girl as his fair friend?
Certainly not.
Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought, of
Athenian confectionary?
Certainly not.
All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to melody and
song composed in the panharmonic style, and in all the rhythms.
Exactly.
There complexity engendered licence, and here disease; whereas
simplicity in music was the parent of temperance in the soul; and
simplicity in gymnastic of health in the body.
Most true, he said.
But when intemperance and diseases multiply in a State, halls of
justice and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the
doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the
interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about
them.
Of course.
And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state
of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of
people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also
those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not
disgraceful, and a great sign of want of good-breeding, that a man
should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has none of
his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into the hands of
other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?
Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.
Would you say ‘most,’ I replied, when you consider that there is a
further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long
litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or
defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his
litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to
take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole,
bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for
what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not
knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping
judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more
disgraceful?
Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful.
Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has
to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by
indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill
themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh,
compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for
diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace?
Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names
to diseases.
Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in
the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the
hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of
Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese,
which are certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who
were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel who gives him the drink,
or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.
Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given to a
person in his condition.
Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former
days, as is commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the guild of