by Walter Pater
241. +Transliteration: poikilia, pleonexia, polypragmosynę. Liddell and Scott definitions: “poikilia = metaph: cunning; pleonexia = a disposition to take more than one’s share; polupragmosunę = meddling.”
242. +Transliteration: Prôton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios hekastô, alla diapherôn tęn physin, allos ep allou ergou praxin. E- text editor’s translation: “To begin with, each person is of a nature not the same as another’s; rather, people differ in nature, and so one person will be best fitted for one task, and another for a different kind of work.” Plato, Republic 370a-b.
242. +Transliteration: ergon. Liddell and Scott definition: “work . . . employment.”
242. +Transliteration: poikilia. Liddell and Scott definition: “metaph: cunning.”
243. +Transliteration: gignetai toinyn hôs egômai polis epeidę tunchanei hęmôn hekastos ouk autarkęs. E-text editor’s translation: “As I see it, the city will come into existence because it so happens that as individuals we are not sufficient to provide for ourselves.” Plato, Republic 369b.
243. +Transliteration: Poięsei hôs egômai tęn polin hęmetera chreia. E- text editor’s translation: “As I see it, it will be our needs that create the city.” Plato, Republic 369c.
244. +Transliteration: hoi dęmiourgoi. Liddell and Scott definition of dęmiourgos: “workman.”
245. +Transliteration: eis hen kata physin. E-text editor’s translation: “to one activity in accordance with [a given person’s] nature.” Plato, Republic 372e..
246. +Transliteration: polis ędę tryphôsa. E-text editor’s translation: “a city already [grown] luxurious.” The verb tryphaô means “to live softly or delicately, fare sumptuously, live in luxury.” (Liddell and Scott.) Plato, Republic 372e.
246. +Transliteration: polis ędę tryphôsa. E-text editor’s translation: “a city already [grown] luxurious.” The verb tryphaô means “to live softly or delicately, fare sumptuously, live in luxury.” (Liddell and Scott.) Plato, Republic 372e.
246. +Transliteration: kai hę chôra pou hę tote hikanę smikra ex hikanęs estai. E-text editor’s translation: “And the land that used to be sufficient will be insufficient.” Plato, Republic 373d.
246. +Transliteration: oukoun tęs tôn plęsion chôras hęmin apotmęteon. E-text editor’s translation: “And so we will appropriate for ourselves some of our neighbor’s land.” Plato, Republic 373d.
247. +Transliteration: Phylakes . . . epikouroi. Pater’s translation: “watchmen or auxiliaries.”
247. +Transliteration: hôs en pharmakou eidei ta pseudę ta en deonti genomena. E-text editor’s translation: “timely falsehoods that take the form of medicine.” Plato, Republic 389b and 414b contain parts of the quotation.
247. +Transliteration: phoinikikon pseudos. E-text editor’s translation: “Phoenician story.” Plato, Republic 414c.
251. +Transliteration: nomisma tęs allagęs heneka. E-text editor’s translation: “a common currency for exchange.” Plato, Republic 371b.
254. +Transliteration: oikeiopragia. E-text editor’s translation: “functioning,” from oikeios (proper to a thing, fitting) and pragos or, in everyday non-poetic speech, pragma(deed). Plato, Republic 434c.
255. +Transliteration: dęmos. Liddell and Scott definition: “the commons, common people, plebeians; in Attica, townships or hundreds.”
255. +Transliteration: ta tôn philôn koina. E-text editor’s translation: “the possessions of friends are held in common.” Plato, Phaedrus 279c contains similar language.
257. +Transliteration: archontes. Liddell and Scott definition of archon: “ruler.”
257. +Transliteration: philopolides. Liddell and Scott definition: “[those] loving [their] city, state, or country.”
258. +Transliteration: Ta tôn philôn koina. E-text editor’s translation: “the possessions of friends are held in common.” Plato, Phaedrus 279c contains similar language.
260. +Transliteration: kalokagathos. Liddell and Scott definition: “beautiful and good, noble and good.”
264. +Transliteration: homoiôsis tô theô. Pater’s translation: “a [process or act of] being made like to God.” Plato, Republic 454c.
266. +Transliteration: Kallipolis. Liddell and Scott definition: “beautiful city.” Plato, Republic 527c.
PLATO’S AESTHETICS
WHEN we remember Plato as the great lover, what the visible world was to him, what a large place the idea of Beauty, with its almost adequate realisation in that visible world, holds in his most abstract speculations as the clearest instance of the relation of the human mind to reality and truth, we might think that art also, the fine arts, would have been much for him; that the aesthetic element would be a significant one in his theory of morals and education. Ta terpna en Helladi+ (to use Pindar’s phrase) all the delightful things in Hellas: — Plato least of all could have been unaffected by their presence around him. And so it is. Think what perfection of handicraft, what a subtle enjoyment therein, is involved in that specially Platonic rule, to mind one’s business (to ta hautou prattein)+ that he who, like Fra Damiano of Bergamo, has a gift for poikilia,+ intarsia or marqueterie, for example, should confine himself exclusively to that. Before him, you know, there had been no theorising about the beautiful, its place in life, and the like; and as a matter of fact he is the earliest critic of the fine arts. He anticipates the modern notion that art as such has no end but its own perfection,— “art for art’s sake.” Ar’ oun kai hekastę tôn technôn esti ti sympheron allo ę hoti malista telean einai;+ We have seen again that not in theory only, by the large place he assigns to our experiences regarding visible beauty in the formation of his doctrine of ideas, but that in the practical sphere also, this great fact of experience, the reality of beauty, has its importance with him. The loveliness of virtue as a harmony, the winning aspect of those “images” of the absolute and unseen Temperance, Bravery, Justice, shed around us in the visible world for eyes that can see, the claim of the virtues as a visible representation by human persons and their acts of the eternal qualities of “the eternal,” after all far out-weigh, as he thinks, the claim of their mere utility. And accordingly, in education, all will begin and end “in music,” in the promotion of qualities to which no truer name can be given than symmetry, aesthetic fitness, tone. Philosophy itself indeed, as he conceives it, is but the sympathetic appreciation of a kind of music in the very nature of things.
There have been Platonists without Plato, and a kind of traditional Platonism in the world, independent of, yet true in spirit to, the Platonism of the Platonic Dialogues. Now such a piece of traditional Platonism we find in the hypothesis of some close connexion between what may be called the aesthetic qualities of the world about us and the formation of moral character, between aesthetics and ethics. Wherever people have been inclined to lay stress on the colouring, for instance, cheerful or otherwise, of the walls of the room where children learn to read, as though that had something to do with the colouring of their minds; on the possible moral effect of the beautiful ancient buildings of some of our own schools and colleges; on the building of character, in any way, through the eye and ear; there the spirit of Plato has been understood to be, and rightly, even by those who have perhaps never read Plato’s Republic, in which however we do find the connexion between moral character and matters of poetry and art strongly asserted. This is to be observed especially in the third and tenth books of The Republic. The main interest of those books lies in the fact, that in them we read what Plato actually said on a subject concerning which people have been so ready to put themselves under his authority.
It is said with immediate reference to metre and its various forms in verse, as an element in the general treatment of style or manner (lexis)+ as opposed to the matter (logoi)+ in the imaginative literature, with which as in time past the education of the citizens of the Perfect City will begin. It is however at his own express suggestion that we may apply what he says, in the first instance, about metre and verse, to all forms
of art whatever, to music (mousikę)+ generally, to all those matters over which the Muses of Greek mythology preside, to all productions in which the form counts equally with, or for more than, the matter. Assuming therefore that we have here, in outline and tendency at least, the mind of Plato in regard to the ethical influence of aesthetic qualities, let us try to distinguish clearly the central lines of that tendency, of Platonism in art, as it is really to be found in Plato.
“You have perceived have you not,” observes the Platonic Socrates, “that acts of imitation, if they begin in early life, and continue, establish themselves in one’s nature and habits, alike as to the body, the tones of one’s voice, the ways of one’s mind.”
Yes, that might seem a matter of common observation; and what is strictly Platonic here and in what follows is but the emphasis of the statement. Let us set it however, for the sake of decisive effect, in immediate connexion with certain other points of Plato’s aesthetic doctrine.
Imitation then, imitation through the eye and ear, is irresistible in its influence over human nature. And secondly, we, the founders, the people, of the Republic, of the city that shall be perfect, have for our peculiar purpose the simplification of human nature: a purpose somewhat costly, for it follows, thirdly, that the only kind of music, of art and poetry, we shall permit ourselves, our citizens, will be of a very austere character, under a sort of “self-denying ordinance.” We shall be a fervently aesthetic community, if you will; but therewith also very fervent “renunciants,” or ascetics.
In the first place, men’s souls are, according to Plato’s view, the creatures of what men see and hear. What would probably be found in a limited number only of sensitive people, a constant susceptibility to the aspects and other sensible qualities of things and persons, to the element of expression or form in them and their movements, to phenomena as such — this susceptibility Plato supposes in men generally. It is not so much the matter of a work of art, what is conveyed in and by colour and form and sound, that tells upon us educationally — the subject, for instance, developed by the words and scenery of a play — as the form, and its qualities, concision, simplicity, rhythm, or, contrariwise, abundance, variety, discord. Such “aesthetic” qualities, by what we might call in logical phrase, metabasis eis allo genos,+ a derivation into another kind of matter, transform themselves, in the temper of the patient the hearer or spectator, into terms of ethics, into the sphere of the desires and the will, of the moral taste, engendering, nursing there, strictly moral effects, such conditions of sentiment and the will as Plato requires in his City of the Perfect, or quite the opposite, but hardly in any case indifferent, conditions.
Imitation: — it enters into the very fastnesses of character; and we, our souls, ourselves, are for ever imitating what we see and hear, the forms, the sounds which haunt our memories, our imagination. We imitate not only if we play a part on the stage but when we sit as spectators, while our thoughts follow the acting of another, when we read Homer and put ourselves, lightly, fluently, into the place of those he describes: we imitate unconsciously the line and colour of the walls around us, the trees by the wayside, the animals we pet or make use of, the very dress we wear. Only, Hina mę ek tęs mimęseôs tou einai apolausôsin.+ — Let us beware how men attain the very truth of what they imitate.
That then is the first principle of Plato’s aesthetics, his first consideration regarding the art of the City of the Perfect. Men, children, are susceptible beings, in great measure conditioned by the mere look of their “medium.” Like those insects, we might fancy, of which naturalists tell us, taking colour from the plants they lodge on, they will come to match with much servility the aspects of the world about them.
But the people of the Perfect City would not be there at all except by way of a refuge, an experiment, or tour de force, in moral and social philosophy; and this circumstance determines the second constituent principle of Plato’s aesthetic scheme. We, then, the founders, the citizens, of the Republic have a peculiar purpose. We are here to escape from, to resist, a certain vicious centrifugal tendency in life, in Greek and especially in Athenian life, which does but propagate a like vicious tendency in ourselves. We are to become — like little pieces in a machine! you may complain. — No, like performers rather, individually, it may be, of more or less importance, but each with a necessary and inalienable part, in a perfect musical exercise which is well worth while, or in some sacred liturgy; or like soldiers in an invincible army, invincible because it moves as one man. We are to find, or be put into, and keep, every one his natural place; to cultivate those qualities which will secure mastery over ourselves, the subordination of the parts to the whole, musical proportion. To this end, as we saw, Plato, a remorseless idealist, is ready even to suppress the differences of male and female character, to merge, to lose the family in the social aggregate.
Imitation then, we may resume, imitation through the eye and ear, is irresistible in its influence on human nature. Secondly, the founders of the Republic are by its very purpose bound to the simplification of human nature: and our practical conclusion follows in logical order. We shall make, and sternly keep, a “self-denying” ordinance in this matter, in the matter of art, of poetry, of taste in all its varieties; a rule, of which Plato’s own words, applied by him in the first instance to rhythm or metre, but like all he says on that subject fairly applicable to the whole range of musical or aesthetic effects, will be the brief summary: Alternations will be few and far between: — how differently from the methods of the poetry, the art, the choruses, we most of us love so much, not necessarily because our senses are inapt or untrained: — Smikrai hai metabolai.+ We shall allow no musical innovations, no Aristophanic cries, no imitations however clever of “the sounds of the flute or the lyre,” no free imitation by the human voice of bestial or mechanical sounds, no such artists as are “like a mirror turning all about.” There were vulgarities of nature, you see, in the youth of ideal Athens even. Time, of course, as such, is itself a kind of artist, trimming pleasantly for us what survives of the rude world of the past. Now Plato’s method would promote or anticipate the work of time in that matter of vulgarities of taste. Yes, when you read his precautionary rules, you become fully aware that even in Athens there were young men who affected what was least fortunate in the habits, the pleasures, the sordid business of the class below them. But they would not be allowed quite their own way in the streets or elsewhere in a reformed world, to whose chosen imperial youth (Basilikę phylę)+ it would not be permitted even to think of any of those things — oudeni prosechein ton voun.+ To them, what was illiberal, the illiberal crafts, would be (thanks to their well-trained power of intellectual abstraction!) as though it were not. And if art, like law, be, as Plato thinks, “a creation of mind, in accordance with right reason,” we shall not wish our boys to sing like mere birds.
Yet what price would not the musical connoisseur pay to handle the instruments we may see in fancy passing out through the gates of the City of the Perfect, banished, not because there is no one within its walls who knows the use of, or would receive pleasure from, them (a delicate susceptibility in these matters Plato, as was said, presupposes) but precisely because they are so seductive, must be conveyed therefore to some other essentially less favoured neighbourhood, like poison, say! moral poison, for one’s enemies’ water-springs. A whole class of painters, sculptors, skilled workmen of various kinds go into like banishment — they and their very tools; not, observe again carefully, because they are bad artists, but very good ones. — Alla męn, ô Adeimante, hędys ge kai ho kekramenos.+ Art, as such, as Plato knows, has no purpose but itself, its own perfection. The proper art of the Perfect City is in fact the art of discipline. Music (mousikę)+ all the various forms of fine art, will be but the instruments of its one over-mastering social or political purpose, irresistibly conforming its so imitative subject units to type: they will be neither more nor less than so many variations, so to speak, of the trumpet-call.
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p; Or suppose again that a poet finds his way to us, “able by his genius, as he chooses, or as his audience chooses, to become all things, or all persons, in turn, and able to transform us too into all things and persons in turn, as we listen or read, with a fluidity, a versatility of humour almost equal to his own, a poet myriad-minded, as we say, almost in Plato’s precise words, as our finest touch of praise, of Shakespeare for instance, or of Homer, of whom he was thinking: — Well! we shall have been set on our guard. We have no room for him. Divine, delightful, being, “if he came to our city with his works, his poems, wishing to make an exhibition of them, we should certainly do him reverence as an object, sacred, wonderful, delightful, but we should not let him stay. We should tell him that there neither is, nor may be, any one like that among us, and so send him on his way to some other city, having anointed his head with myrrh and crowned him with a garland of wool, as something in himself half-divine, and for ourselves should make use of some more austere and less pleasing sort of poet, for his practical uses.” Tô austęroterô kai aędesterô poiętę, ôphelias heneka.+ Not, as I said, that the Republic any more than Lacedaemon will be an artless place. Plato’s aesthetic scheme is actually based on a high degree of sensibility to such influences in the people he is dealing with. —
Right speech, then, and rightness of harmony and form and rhythm minister to goodness of nature; not that good-nature which we so call with a soft name, being really silliness, but the frame of mind which in very truth is rightly and fairly ordered in regard to the moral habit. — Most certainly he said. — Must not these qualities, then, be everywhere pursued by the young men if they are to do each his own business? — Pursued, certainly. — Now painting, I suppose, is full of them (those qualities which are partly ethical, partly aesthetic) and all handicraft such as that; the weaver’s art is full of them, and the inlayer’s art and the building of houses, and the working of all the other apparatus of life; moreover the nature of our own bodies, and of all other living things. For in all these, rightness or wrongness of form is inherent. And wrongness of form, and the lack of rhythm, the lack of harmony, are fraternal to faultiness of mind and charac- ter, and the opposite qualities to the opposite condition — the temperate and good character: — fraternal, aye! and copies of them. — Yes, entirely so: he said. —
