Ath. 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.
Cle. Just so.
Ath. 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.
Cle. Exactly.
Ath. 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 ?
Cle. Yes.
Ath. But equal proportions, whether of quality or quantity, and not pleasure, speaking generally, would give them truth or rightness.
Cle. Yes.
Ath. 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.
Cle. You are speaking of harmless pleasure, are you not ?
Ath. Yes ; and this I term amusement, when doing neither harm nor good in any degree worth speaking of.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. 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.
Cle. Quite true.
Ath. Do we not regard all music as representative and imitative ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. 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.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. 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.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And every one will admit that musical compositions are all imitative and representative. Will not poets and spectators and actors all agree in this ?
Cle. They will.
Ath. 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.
Cle. Certainly not.
Ath. 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.
Cle. How ?
Ath. There are ten thousand likenesses of objects of sight ?
Cle. Yes.
Ath. And can he who does not know what the exact object is which is imitated, ever know whether the resemblance is truthfully executed ? I mean, for example, whether a statue has the proportions of a body, and the true situation of the parts ; what those proportions are, and how the parts fit into one another in due order ; also their colours and conformations, or whether this is all confused in the execution : do you think that any one can know about this, who does not know what the animal is which has been imitated ?
Cle. Impossible.
Ath. But even if we know that the thing pictured or sculptured is a man, who has received at the hand of the artist all his proper parts and colours and shapes, must we not also know whether the work is beautiful or in any respect deficient in beauty ?
Cle. If this were not required, Stranger, we should all of us be judges of beauty.
Ath. Very true ; and may we not say that in everything imitated, whether in drawing, music, or any other art, he who is to be a competent judge must possess three things ; — he must know, in the first place, of what the imitation is ; secondly, he must know that it is true ; and thirdly, that it has been well executed in words and melodies and rhythms ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Then let us not faint in discussing the peculiar difficulty of music. Music is more celebrated than any other kind of imitation, and therefore requires the greatest care of them all. For if a man makes a mistake here, he may do himself the greatest injury by welcoming evil dispositions, and the mistake may be very difficult to discern, because the poets are artists very inferior in character to the Muses themselves, who would never fall into the monstrous error of assigning to the words of men the gestures and songs of women ; nor after combining the melodies with the gestures of freemen would they add on the rhythms of slaves and men of the baser sort ; nor, beginning with the rhythms and gestures of freemen, would they assign to them a melody or words which are of an opposite character ; nor would they mix up the voices and sounds of animals and of men and instruments, and every other sort of noise, as if they were all one. But human poets are fond of introducing this sort of inconsistent mixture, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of those who, as Orpheus says, “are ripe for true pleasure.” The experienced see all this confusion, and yet the poets go on and make still further havoc by separating the rhythm and the figure of the dance from the melody, setting bare words to metre, and also separating the melody and the rhythm from the words, using the lyre or the flute alone. For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see that any worthy object is imitated by them. And we must acknowledge that all this sort of thing, which aims only at swiftness and smoothness and a brutish noise, and uses the flute and the lyre not as the mere accompaniments of the dance and song, is exceedingly coarse and tasteless. The use of either instrument, when unaccompanied, leads to every sort of irregularity and trickery. This is all rational enough. But we are considering not how our choristers, who are from thirty to fifty years of age, and may be over fifty, are not to use the Muses, but how they are to use them. And the considerations which we have urged seem to show in what way these fifty year-old choristers who are to sing, may be expected to be better trained. For they need to have a quick perception and knowledge of harmonies and rhythms ; otherwise, how can they ever know whether a melody would be rightly sung to the Dorian mode, or to the rhythm which the poet has assigned to it ?
Cle. Clearly they cannot.
Ath. The many are ridiculous in imagining that they know what is in proper harmony and rhythm, and what is not, when they can only be made to sing and step in rhythm by force ; it never occurs to them that they are ignorant of what they are doing. Now every melody is right when it has suitable harmony and rhythm, and wrong when unsuitable.
Cle. That is most certain.
Ath. But can a man who does not know a thing, as we were saying, know that the thing is right ?
Cle. Impossible.
Ath. Then now, as would appear, we are making the discovery that our newly-appointed choristers, whom we hereby invite and, although they are their own masters, compel to sing, must be educated to such an extent as to be able to follow the steps of the rhythm and the notes of the song, that they may know the harmonies and rhythms, and be able to select what are suitable for men of their age and character to sing ; and may sing them, and have innocent pleasure from their own performance, and also lead younger men to welcome with dutiful delight good dispositions. Having such training, they will attain a more accurate knowledge than falls to the lot of the common people, or even of the poets themselves. For the poet need not know the third point, viz., whether the imitation is good or not, though he can hardly help knowing the laws of melody and rhythm. But the aged chorus must know all the three, that they may choose the best, and that which is nearest to the best ; for otherwise they will never be able to charm the souls of young men in the way of virtue. And now the original design of the argument which was intended to bring eloquent aid to the Chorus of Dionysus, has been accomplished to the best of our ability, and let us see whether we were right : — I should imagine that a drinking assembly is likely to become more and more tumultuous as the drinking goes on : this, as we were saying at first, will certainly be the case.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Every man has a more than natural elevation ; his heart is glad within him, and he will say anything and will be restrained by nobody at such a time ; he fancies that he is able to rule over himself and all mankind.
Cle. Quite true.
Ath. Were we not saying that on such occasions the souls of the drinkers become like iron heated in the fire, and grow softer and younger, and are easily moulded by him who knows how to educate and fashion them, just as when they were young, and that this fashioner of them is the same who prescribed for them in the days of their youth, viz., the good legislator ; and that he ought to enact laws of the banquet, which, when a man is confident, bold, and impudent, and unwilling to wait his turn and have his share of silence and speech, and drinking and music, will change his character into the opposite — such laws as will infuse into him a just and noble fear, which will take up arms at the approach of insolence, being that divine fear which we have called reverence and shame ?
Cle. True.
Ath. And the guardians of these laws and fellow-workers with them are the calm and sober generals of the drinkers ; and without their help there is greater difficulty in fighting against drink than in fighting against enemies when the commander of an army is not himself calm ; and he who is unwilling to obey them and the commanders of Dionysiac feasts who are more than sixty years of age, shall suffer a disgrace as great as he who disobeys military leaders, or even greater.
Cle. Right.
Ath. If, then, drinking and amusement were regulated in this way, would not the companions of our revels be improved ? they would part better friends than they were, and not, as now enemies. Their whole intercourse would be regulated by law and observant of it, and the sober would be the leaders of the drunken.
Cle. I think so too, if drinking were regulated as you propose.
Ath. Let us not then simply censure the gift of Dionysus as bad and unfit to be received into the State. For wine has many excellences, and one pre-eminent one, about which there is a difficulty in speaking to the many, from a fear of their misconceiving and misunderstanding what is said.
Cle. To what do you refer ?
Ath. There is a tradition or story, which has somehow crept about the world, that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Here, and that out of revenge he inspires Bacchic furies and dancing madnesses in others ; for which reason he gave men wine. Such traditions concerning the Gods I leave to those who think that they may be safely uttered ; I only know that no animal at birth is mature or perfect in intelligence ; and in the intermediate period, in which he has not yet acquired his own proper sense, he rages and roars without rhyme or reason ; and when he has once got on his legs he jumps about without rhyme or reason ; and this, as you will remember, has been already said by us to be the origin of music and gymnastic.
Cle. To be sure, I remember.
Ath. And did we not say that the sense of harmony and rhythm sprang from this beginning among men, and that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus were the Gods whom we had to thank for them ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. The other story implied that wine was given man out of revenge, and in order to make him mad ; but our present doctrine, on the contrary, is, that wine was given him as a balm, and in order to implant modesty in the soul, and health and strength in the body.
Cle. That, Stranger, is precisely what was said.