Complete Works (219 page)

Don’t you understand that we first tell stories to children? These are false, on the whole, though they have some truth in them. And we tell them to small children before physical training begins.

That’s true.

And that’s what I meant by saying that we must deal with music and poetry before physical training.

All right.

You know, don’t you, that the beginning of any process is most important, especially for anything young and tender? It’s at that time that it is [b] most malleable and takes on any pattern one wishes to impress on it.

Exactly.

Then shall we carelessly allow the children to hear any old stories, told by just anyone, and to take beliefs into their souls that are for the most part opposite to the ones we think they should hold when they are grown up?

We certainly won’t.

Then we must first of all, it seems, supervise the storytellers. We’ll select their stories whenever they are fine or beautiful and reject them when they [c] aren’t. And we’ll persuade nurses and mothers to tell their children the ones we have selected, since they will shape their children’s souls with stories much more than they shape their bodies by handling them. Many of the stories they tell now, however, must be thrown out.

Which ones do you mean?

We’ll first look at the major stories, and by seeing how to deal with them, we’ll see how to deal with the minor ones as well, for they exhibit the same pattern and have the same effects whether they’re famous or [d] not. Don’t you think so?

I do, but I don’t know which ones you’re calling major.

Those that Homer, Hesiod, and other poets tell us, for surely they composed false stories, told them to people, and are still telling them.

Which stories do you mean, and what fault do you find in them?

The fault one ought to find first and foremost, especially if the falsehood isn’t well told.

For example?

When a story gives a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like, [e] the way a painter does whose picture is not at all like the things he’s trying to paint.

You’re right to object to that. But what sort of thing in particular do you have in mind?

First, telling the greatest falsehood about the most important things doesn’t make a fine story—I mean Hesiod telling us about how Uranus behaved, how Cronus punished him for it, and how he was in turn punished
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by his own son.
¹⁰
But even if it were true, it should be passed over in silence, not told to foolish young people. And if, for some reason, it has to be told, only a very few people—pledged to secrecy and after sacrificing not just a pig but something great and scarce—should hear it, so that their number is kept as small as possible.

Yes, such stories are hard to deal with.

And they shouldn’t be told in our city, Adeimantus. Nor should a young [b] person hear it said that in committing the worst crimes he’s doing nothing out of the ordinary, or that if he inflicts every kind of punishment on an unjust father, he’s only doing the same as the first and greatest of the gods.

No, by god, I don’t think myself that these stories are fit to be told.

Indeed, if we want the guardians of our city to think that it’s shameful to be easily provoked into hating one another, we mustn’t allow
any
stories about gods warring, fighting, or plotting against one another, for they [c] aren’t true. The battles of gods and giants, and all the various stories of the gods hating their families or friends, should neither be told nor even woven in embroideries. If we’re to persuade our people that no citizen has ever hated another and that it’s impious to do so, then
that’s
what should be told to children from the beginning by old men and women; and as these children grow older, poets should be compelled to tell them the same sort of thing. We won’t admit stories into our city—whether [d] allegorical or not—about Hera being chained by her son, nor about Hephaestus being hurled from heaven by his father when he tried to help his mother, who was being beaten, nor about the battle of the gods in Homer. The young can’t distinguish what is allegorical from what isn’t, and the opinions they absorb at that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable. For these reasons, then, we should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first stories they hear about virtue are the [e] best ones for them to hear.

That’s reasonable. But if someone asked us what stories these are, what should we say?

You and I, Adeimantus, aren’t poets, but we
are
founding a city. And it’s appropriate for the founders to know the patterns on which poets must
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base their stories and from which they mustn’t deviate. But we aren’t actually going to compose their poems for them.

All right. But what precisely are the patterns for theology or stories about the gods?

Something like this: Whether in epic, lyric, or tragedy, a god must always be represented as he is.

Indeed, he must.

Now, a god is really good, isn’t he, and must be described as such? [b]

What else?

And surely nothing good is harmful, is it?

I suppose not.

And can what isn’t harmful do harm?

Never.

Or can what does no harm do anything bad?

No.

And can what does nothing bad be the cause of anything bad?

How could it?

Moreover, the good is beneficial?

Yes.

It is the cause of doing well?

Yes.

The good isn’t the cause of all things, then, but only of good ones; it isn’t the cause of bad ones.

[c] I agree entirely.

Therefore, since a god is good, he is not—as most people claim—the cause of everything that happens to human beings but of only a few things, for good things are fewer than bad ones in our lives. He alone is responsible for the good things, but we must find some other cause for the bad ones, not a god.

That’s very true, and I believe it.

Then we won’t accept from anyone the foolish mistake Homer makes [d] about the gods when he says:

There are two urns at the threshold of Zeus,
One filled with good fates, the other with bad ones… .

and the person to whom he gives a mixture of these

Sometimes meets with a bad fate, sometimes with good,

but the one who receives his fate entirely from the second urn,

Evil famine drives him over the divine earth.

[e] We won’t grant either that Zeus is for us

The distributor of both good and bad.

And as to the breaking of the promised truce by Pandarus, if anyone tells us that it was brought about by Athena and Zeus or that Themis and Zeus were responsible for strife and contention among the gods, we will not
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praise him. Nor will we allow the young to hear the words of Aeschylus:

A god makes mortals guilty
When he wants utterly to destroy a house.
¹¹

And if anyone composes a poem about the sufferings of Niobe, such as the one in which these lines occur, or about the house of Pelops, or the tale of Troy, or anything else of that kind, we must require him to say that these things are not the work of a god. Or, if they are, then poets must look for the kind of account of them that we are now seeking, and say that the actions of the gods are good and just, and that those they punish are benefited thereby. We won’t allow poets to say that the punished [b] are made wretched and that it was a god who made them so. But we will allow them to say that bad people are wretched because they are in need of punishment and that, in paying the penalty, they are benefited by the gods. And, as for saying that a god, who is himself good, is the cause of bad things, we’ll fight that in every way, and we won’t allow anyone to say it in his own city, if it’s to be well governed, or anyone to hear it either—whether young or old, whether in verse or prose. These stories [c] are not pious, not advantageous to us, and not consistent with one another.

I like your law, and I’ll vote for it.

This, then, is one of the laws or patterns concerning the gods to which speakers and poets must conform, namely, that a god isn’t the cause of all things but only of good ones.

And it’s a fully satisfactory law.

What about this second law? Do you think that a god is a sorcerer, able to appear in different forms at different times, sometimes changing himself [d] from his own form into many shapes, sometimes deceiving us by making us think that he has done it? Or do you think he’s simple and least of all likely to step out of his own form?

I can’t say offhand.

Well, what about this? If he steps out of his own form, mustn’t he either change himself or be changed by something else? [e]

He must.

But the best things are least liable to alteration or change, aren’t they? For example, isn’t the healthiest and strongest body least changed by food, drink, and labor, or the healthiest and strongest plant by sun, wind, and the like?

Of course.
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And the most courageous and most rational soul is least disturbed or altered by any outside affection?

Yes.

And the same account is true of all artifacts, furniture, houses, and clothes. The ones that are good and well made are least altered by time or anything else that happens to them.

That’s right.

Whatever is in good condition, then, whether by nature or craft or both, [b] admits least of being changed by anything else.

So it seems.

Now, surely a god and what belongs to him are in every way in the best condition.

How could they fail to be?

Then a god would be least likely to have many shapes.

Indeed.

Then does he change or alter himself?

Clearly he does, if indeed he is altered at all.

Would he change himself into something better and more beautiful than himself or something worse and uglier?

[c] It would have to be into something worse, if he’s changed at all, for surely we won’t say that a god is deficient in either beauty or virtue.

Absolutely right. And do you think, Adeimantus, that anyone, whether god or human, would deliberately make himself worse in any way?

No, that’s impossible.

Is it impossible, then, for gods to want to alter themselves? Since they are the most beautiful and best possible, it seems that each always and unconditionally retains his own shape.

That seems entirely necessary to me.

[d] Then let no poet tell us about Proteus or Thetis, or say that

The gods, in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands,
Adopt every sort of shape and visit our cities.
¹²

Nor must they present Hera, in their tragedies or other poems, as a priestess collecting alms for

the life-giving sons of the Argive river Inachus,
¹³

or tell us other stories of that sort. Nor must mothers, believing bad stories [e] about the gods wandering at night in the shapes of strangers from foreign lands, terrify their children with them. Such stories blaspheme the gods and, at the same time, make children more cowardly.

They mustn’t be told.

But though the gods are unable to change, do they nonetheless make us believe that they appear in all sorts of ways, deceiving us through sorcery?

Perhaps.

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What? Would a god be willing to be false, either in word or deed, by presenting an illusion?

I don’t know.

Don’t you know that a
true
falsehood, if one may call it that, is hated by all gods and humans?

What do you mean?

I mean that no one is willing to tell falsehoods to the most important part of himself about the most important things, but of all places he is most afraid to have falsehood there.

I still don’t understand.

That’s because you think I’m saying something deep. I simply mean [b] that to be false to one’s soul about the things that are, to be ignorant and to have and hold falsehood there, is what everyone would least of all accept, for everyone hates a falsehood in that place most of all.

That’s right.

Surely, as I said just now, this would be most correctly called true falsehood—ignorance in the soul of someone who has been told a falsehood. Falsehood in words is a kind of imitation of this affection in the soul, an image of it that comes into being after it and is not a pure falsehood.

Isn’t that so? [c]

Certainly.

And the thing that is really a falsehood is hated not only by the gods but by human beings as well.

It seems so to me.

What about falsehood in words? When and to whom is it useful and so not deserving of hatred? Isn’t it useful against one’s enemies? And when any of our so-called friends are attempting, through madness or ignorance, to do something bad, isn’t it a useful drug for preventing them?

It is also useful in the case of those stories we were just talking about, the ones we tell because we don’t know the truth about those ancient events [d] involving the gods. By making a falsehood as much like the truth as we can, don’t we also make it useful?

We certainly do.

Then in which of these ways could a falsehood be useful to a god? Would he make false likenesses of ancient events because of his ignorance of them?

It would be ridiculous to think that.

Then there is nothing of the false poet in a god?

Not in my view.

Would he be false, then, through fear of his enemies?

Far from it. [e]

Because of the ignorance or madness of his family or friends, then?

No one who is ignorant or mad is a friend of the gods.

Then there’s no reason for a god to speak falsely?

None.

Therefore the daemonic and the divine are in every way free from falsehood.

Completely.

A god, then, is simple and true in word and deed. He doesn’t change himself or deceive others by images, words, or signs, whether in visions or in dreams.

That’s what I thought as soon as I heard you say it.
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You agree, then, that this is our second pattern for speaking or composing poems about the gods: They are not sorcerers who change themselves, nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deeds.