Cle.Possibly.
Ath.But,my dear friend,let us distinguish between different cases,and not be hasty in forming a judgment:One way of considering the question will be to imagine a festival at which there are entertainments of all sorts,including gymnastic,musical,and equestrian contests:the citizens are assembled;prizes are offered,and proclamation is made that any one who likes may enter the lists,and that he is to bear the palm who gives the most pleasure to the spectators-there is to be no regulation about the manner how;but he who is most successful in giving pleasure is to be crowned victor,and deemed to be the pleasantest of the candidates:What is likely to be the result of such a proclamation?
Cle.In what respect?
Ath.There would be various exhibitions:one man,like Homer,will exhibit a rhapsody,another a performance on the lute;one will have a tragedy,and another a comedy.Nor would there be anything astonishing in some one imagining that he could gain the prize by exhibiting a puppet-show.Suppose these competitors to meet,and not these only,but innumerable others as well can you tell me who ought to be the victor?
Cle.I do not see how any one can answer you,or pretend to know,unless he has heard with his own ears the several competitors;the question is absurd.
Ath.Well,then,if neither of you can answer,shall I answer this question which you deem so absurd?
Cle.By all means.
Ath.If very small children are to determine the question,they will decide for the puppet show.
Cle.Of course.
Ath.The older children will be advocates of comedy;educated women,and young men,and people in general,will favour tragedy.
Cle.Very likely.
Ath.And I believe that we old men would have the greatest pleasure in hearing a rhapsodist recite well the Iliad and Odyssey,or one of the Hesiodic poems,and would award the victory to him.But,who would really be the victor?-that is the question.
Cle.Yes.
Ath.Clearly you and I will have to declare that those whom we old men adjudge victors ought to win;for our ways are far and away better than any which at present exist anywhere in the world.
Cle.Certainly.
Ath.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?
Cle.What?
Ath.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.
Cle.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.