Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: As far as education is concerned, sir, the second is infinitely superior.

  ATHENIAN: So if the three of us grasp what ‘goodness’ is in singing and dancing, we have also a sound criterion for distinguishing the educated man from the uneducated. If we fail to grasp it, we’ll never be able to make up our minds whether a safeguard for education exists, or where [e] we ought to look for it. Isn’t that so?

  CLINIAS: Yes, it is.

  ATHENIAN: The next quarry we have to track down, like hounds at a hunt, will be what constitutes a ‘good’ bodily movement, tune, song and dance. But if all these notions give us the slip and get away, it will be pointless utterly to prolong our discussion of correct education, Greek or foreign.

  CLINIAS: Quite.

  ATHENIAN: Good. Now, what is to be our definition of a good tune or bodily movement? Tell me—imagine a courageous soul and a cowardly [655] soul beset by one and the same set of troubles: do similar sounds and movements of the body result in each case?

  CLINIAS: Of course not. The complexion is different, to start with.

  ATHENIAN: You are absolutely right, my friend. But music is a matter of rhythm and harmony, and involves tunes and movements of the body; this means that while it is legitimate to speak of a ‘rhythmical’ or a ‘harmonious’ movement or tune, we cannot properly apply to either of them the chorus-masters’ metaphor ‘brilliantly colored’. But what is the appropriate language to describe the movement and melody used to portray the brave [b] man and the coward? The correct procedure is to call those of brave men ‘good’ and those of cowards ‘disgraceful’. But let’s not have an inordinately long discussion about the details; can we say, without beating about the bush, that all movements and tunes associated with spiritual or bodily excellence (the real thing or a representation) are good? And conversely bad if they have to do with vice?

  CLINIAS: Yes, that’s a reasonable proposal. You may assume we agree.

  ATHENIAN: Here’s a further point: do we all enjoy every type of performance [c] by a chorus to the same degree? Or is that far from being true?

  CLINIAS: As far as it could be!

  ATHENIAN: But can we put our finger on the cause of our confusion? Is it that ‘good’ varies from person to person? Or that it is thought to vary, although in point of fact it does not? No one, I fancy, will be prepared to say that dances portraying evil are better than those portraying virtue, or that although other people enjoy the virtuous Muse, his own personal liking is for movements expressing depravity. Yet most men do maintain [d] that the power of music to give pleasure to the soul is the standard by which it should be judged. But this is an insupportable doctrine, and it is absolute blasphemy to speak like that. More likely, though, it’s something else that’s misleading us.

  CLINIAS: What?

  ATHENIAN: Performances given by choruses are representations of character, and deal with every variety of action and incident. The individual performers enact their roles partly by expressing their own characters, partly by imitating those of others. That is why, when they find that the speaking or singing or any other element in the performance of a chorus [e] appeals to their natural character or acquired habits, or both, they can’t help applauding with delight and using the term ‘good’. But sometimes they find these performances going against the grain of their natural character or their disposition or habits, in which case they are unable to take any pleasure in them and applaud them, and in this case the word they use is ‘shocking’. When a man’s natural character is as it should be, but he has acquired bad habits, or conversely when his habits are correct but his natural character is vicious, his pleasure and his approval fail to coincide: he calls the performances ‘pleasant, but depraved’. Such performers, in [656] the company of others whose judgment they respect, are ashamed to make this kind of movement with their bodies, and to sing such songs as though they genuinely approved of them. But in their heart of hearts, they enjoy themselves.

  CLINIAS: You are quite right.

  ATHENIAN: Now, does a man’s enjoyment of bad bodily movements or bad tunes do him any harm? And does it do him any good to take pleasure in the opposite kind?

  CLINIAS: Probably.

  ATHENIAN: ‘Probably’? Is that all? Surely there must be a precise analogy [b] here with the man who comes into contact with depraved characters and wicked people, and who does not react with disgust, but welcomes them with pleasure, censuring them half-heartedly because he only half-realizes, as in a dream, how perverted such a state is: he just cannot escape taking on the character of what he enjoys, whether good or bad—even if he is ashamed to go so far as to applaud it. In fact we could hardly point to a greater force for good—or evil—than this inevitable assimilation of character.

  CLINIAS: No, I don’t think we could.

  ATHENIAN: So, in a society where the laws relating to culture, education [c] and recreation are, or will be in future, properly established, do we imagine that authors will be given a free hand? The choruses will be composed of the young children of law-abiding citizens: will the composer be free to teach them anything by way of rhythm, tune and words that amuses him when he composes, without bothering what effect he may have on them as regards virtue and vice?

  CLINIAS: That’s certainly not sensible; how could it be?

  ATHENIAN: But it is precisely this that they are allowed to do in virtually [d] all states—except in Egypt.

  CLINIAS: Egypt! Well then, you’d better tell us what legislation has been enacted there.

  ATHENIAN: Merely to hear about it is startling enough. Long ago, apparently, they realized the truth of the principle we are putting forward only now, that the movements and tunes which the children of the state are to practice in their rehearsals must be good ones. They compiled a list of [e] them according to style, and displayed it in their temples. Painters and everyone else who represent movements of the body of any kind were restricted to these forms; modification and innovation outside this traditional framework were prohibited, and are prohibited even today, both in this field and the arts in general. If you examine their art on the spot, you will find that ten thousand years ago (and I’m not speaking loosely: I mean [657] literally ten thousand), paintings and reliefs were produced that are no better and no worse than those of today, because the same artistic rules were applied in making them.

  CLINIAS: Fantastic!

  ATHENIAN: No: simply a supreme achievement of legislators and statesmen. You might, even so, find some other things to criticize there, but in the matter of music this inescapable fact deserves our attention: it has in fact proved feasible to take the kind of music that shows a natural correctness and put it on a firm footing by legislation.4 But it is the task of a god, [b] or a man of god-like stature; in fact, the Egyptians do say that the tunes that have been preserved for so long are compositions of Isis. Consequently, as I said, if one could get even a rough idea of what constitutes ‘correctness’ in matters musical, one ought to have no qualms about giving the whole subject systematic expression in the form of a law. It is true that the craving for pleasure and the desire to avoid tedium lead us to a constant search for novelty in music, and choral performances that have been thus consecrated may be stigmatized as out-of-date; but this does not have very much power to corrupt them. In Egypt, at any rate, it does not seem to have had a corrupting effect at all: quite the contrary.

  [c] CLINIAS: So it would seem, to judge from your account.

  ATHENIAN: So, equally without qualms, we can surely describe the proper conditions for festive music and performances of choruses more or less like this. When we think things are going well for us, we feel delight; and to put it the other way round, when we feel delight, we come to think that things are going well. Isn’t that so?

  CLINIAS: It is.

  ATHENIAN: In addition, when we are in that state—I mean ‘delight’—we can’t keep still.

  CLINIAS: That’s true.

  [d] ATHENIAN: Our youngsters are keen to join th
e dancing and singing themselves, but we old men think the proper thing is to pass the time as spectators. The delight we feel comes from their relaxation and merrymaking. Our agility is deserting us, and as we feel its loss we are only too pleased to provide competitions for the young, because they can best stir in us the memory of our youth and re-awaken the instincts of our younger days.

  CLINIAS: Very true.

  ATHENIAN: So we’d better face the fact that there is a grain of truth in [e] contemporary thought on the subject of holiday-makers. Most people say that the man who delights us most and gives us most pleasure should be highly esteemed for his skill, and deserves to be awarded first prize, because the fact that we are allowed to relax on such occasions means that we ought to lionize the man who gives most people most pleasure, so that, as I said just now, he deserves to carry off the prize. In theory that’s right, isn’t it? And wouldn’t it be equally right in practice? [658]

  CLINIAS: Maybe.

  ATHENIAN: Ah, my fine fellow, such a conclusion ‘may be’ rash! We must make some distinctions, and examine the question rather like this: suppose somebody were to arrange a competition, and were to leave its character entirely open, not specifying whether it was to be gymnastic, artistic or equestrian. Assume that he gathers together all the inhabitants of the state, and offers a prize: anyone who wishes should come and compete in giving pleasure, and this is to be the sole criterion; the competitor who gives the [b] audience most pleasure will win; he has an entirely free hand as to what method he employs, but provided he excels in this one respect he will be judged the most pleasing of the competitors and win the prize. What effect do we think such an announcement would have?

  CLINIAS: In what way do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: Likely enough, I suppose, one competitor will play the Homer and present epic poetry, another will sing lyric songs to music, another will put on a tragedy, and another a comedy; and it will be no surprise if somebody even reckons his best chance of winning lies in putting on a [c] puppet-show. Now, with all these competitors and thousands of others entering, can we say which would really deserve to win?

  CLINIAS: That’s an odd question! Who could answer it for you with authority before hearing the contestants, and listening to them individually on the spot?

  ATHENIAN: Well then, do you want me to give you an equally odd answer?

  CLINIAS: Naturally.

  ATHENIAN: Suppose the decision rests with the smallest infant children. They’ll decide for the exhibitor of puppets, won’t they?

  CLINIAS: Of course. [d]

  ATHENIAN: If it rests with the older children, they will choose the producer of comedies. Young men, ladies of cultivated taste, and I dare say pretty nearly the entire populace, will choose the tragedy.

  CLINIAS: Yes, I dare say.

  ATHENIAN: We old men would probably be most gratified to listen to a reciter doing justice to the Iliad or Odyssey, or an extract from Hesiod: we’d say he was the winner by a clear margin. Who, then, would be the proper winner? That’s the next question, isn’t it?

  CLINIAS: Yes.

  ATHENIAN: Clearly you and I are forced to say that the proper winners [e] would be those chosen by men of our vintage. To us, from among all the customs followed in every city all over the world today, this looks like the best.

  CLINIAS: Surely.

  ATHENIAN: I am, then, in limited agreement with the man in the street. Pleasure is indeed a proper criterion in the arts, but not the pleasure experienced by anybody and everybody. The productions of the Muse are at their finest when they delight men of high calibre and adequate education—but particularly if they succeed in pleasing the single individual [659] whose education and moral standards5 reach heights attained by no one else. This is the reason why we maintain that judges in these matters need high moral standards: they have to possess not only a discerning taste,6 but courage too. A judge won’t be doing his job properly if he reaches his verdict by listening to the audience and lets himself be thrown off balance by the yelling of the mob and his own lack of training; nor must he shrug his shoulders and let cowardice and indolence persuade him into a false verdict against his better judgment, so that he lies with [b] the very lips with which he called upon the gods when he undertook office. The truth is that he sits in judgment as a teacher of the audience, rather than as its pupil; his function (and under the ancient law of the Greeks he used to be allowed to perform it) is to throw his weight against them, if the pleasure they show has been aroused improperly and illegitimately. For instance, the law now in force in Sicily and Italy, by truckling to the majority of the audience and deciding the winner by a show of [c] hands, has had a disastrous effect on the authors themselves, who compose to gratify the depraved tastes of their judges; the result is that in effect they are taught by the audience. It has been equally disastrous for the quality of the pleasure felt by the spectators: they ought to come to experience more elevated pleasures from listening to the portrayal of characters invariably better than their own, but in fact just the opposite happens, and they have no one to thank but themselves. Well, then, now that we have finished talking about that, what conclusion is indicated? Let’s see if it isn’t this—

  CLINIAS: What?

  [d] ATHENIAN: For the third or fourth time, I think, our discussion has come full circle. Once again, education has proved to be a process of attraction, of leading children to accept right principles as enunciated by the law and endorsed as genuinely correct by men who have high moral standards and are full of years and experience. The soul of the child has to be prevented from getting into the habit of feeling pleasure and pain in ways not sanctioned by the law and those who have been persuaded to obey it; he should follow in their footsteps and find pleasure and pain in the same things as the old. That is why we have what we call songs, which are really ‘charms’ for the soul. These are in fact deadly serious devices [e] for producing this concord7 we are talking about; but the souls of the young cannot bear to be serious, so we use the terms ‘recreation’ and ‘song’ for the charms, and children treat them in that spirit. We have an analogy in the sick and ailing; those in charge of feeding them try to administer the proper diet in tasty foods and drinks, and offer them unwholesome [660] items in revolting foods, so that the patients may get into the desirable habit of welcoming the one kind and loathing the other. That is just what the true legislator will persuade (or, failing persuasion, compel) the man with a creative flair to do with his grand and marvelous language: to compose correctly by portraying, with appropriate choreography and musical setting, men who are moderate, courageous and good in every way.

  CLINIAS: Good Heavens, sir, do you really think that’s how they compose [b] nowadays in other cities? My experience is limited, but I know of no such proceeding as you describe, except among us Cretans or in Sparta. In dancing and all the other arts one novelty follows another; the changes are made not by law but are prompted by wildly changing fancies that are very far from being permanent and stable like the Egyptian tastes you’re explaining: on the contrary, they are never the same from minute [c] to minute.

  ATHENIAN: Well said, Clinias. But if I gave you the impression that I was speaking of the present day when I referred to the procedure you mention, I expect it was my own lack of clarity in expressing my thoughts that led you astray and caused me to be misunderstood. I was only saying what I want to see happen in the arts, but perhaps I used expressions that made you think I was referring to facts. It always goes against the grain to pillory habits that are irretrievably on the wrong lines, but sometimes one has to. [d] So, seeing that we are agreed in approving this custom, tell me this, if you will: is it more prevalent among you Cretans and the Spartans than among the other Greeks?

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: And what if it became prevalent among the others as well? Presumably we’d say that that was an improvement on present practice?

  CLINIAS: Yes, I suppose it would be a tremendous improvement if they adopted the pr
ocedure of Crete and Sparta—which is also in accordance with the recommendations you made just now.

  ATHENIAN: Now then, let’s make sure we understand each other in this [e] business. The essence of the entire cultural education of your countries is surely this: you oblige your poets to say that the good man, because he is temperate and just, enjoys good fortune and is happy, no matter whether he is big and strong, or small and weak, or rich, or poor; and that even if he is ‘richer than Midas or Cinyras’, and has not justice, he is a wretch, and lives a life of misery. ‘I’d not mention a man’, says your poet,8 and how right he is, and ‘I’d take no account of him’, even if all his actions [661] and possessions were what people commonly call ‘good’, if he were without justice, nor even if, with a character like that, he ‘attacked in close combat with the foe’. If he is unjust, I wouldn’t want him to ‘stand the sight of bloody butchery’ nor ‘outdo in speed the north wind of Thrace’, nor ever achieve any of the things that are generally said to be ‘good’. You see, these things men usually call ‘good’ are misnamed. It is commonly said that health comes first, beauty second, and wealth third. The list goes on [b] indefinitely: keen sight and hearing, and acute perception of all the objects of sensation; being a dictator and doing whatever you like; and the seventh heaven is supposed to be reached when one has achieved all this and is made immortal without further ado. You and I, presumably, hold that all these things are possessions of great value to the just and pious, but that to the unjust they are a curse, every one of them, from health all the way [c] down the list. Seeing, hearing, sensation, and simply being alive, are great evils, if in spite of having all these so-called good things a man gains immortality without justice and virtue in general; but if he survives for only the briefest possible time, the evil is less. I imagine you will persuade or compel the authors in your states to embody this doctrine of mine in the words, rhythms and ‘harmonies’ they produce for the education of [d] your youth. Isn’t that right? Look here, now: my position is quite clear. Although so-called evils are in fact evil for the just, they are good for the unjust; and so-called ‘goods’, while genuinely good for the good, are evils for the wicked. Let me ask the same question as before: are you and I in agreement, or not?