Complete Works (283 page)

C
LINIAS
: Yes, we should expand it.

A
THENIAN
: Now then, take a man whose opinion about what is good is correct (it really
is
good), and likewise in the case of the bad (it really
is
bad), and follows this judgment in practice. He may be able to represent, by word and gesture, and with invariable success, his intellectual conception of what is good, even though he gets no pleasure from it and feels no hatred for what is bad. Another man may not be very good at keeping [d] on the right lines when he uses his body and his voice to represent the good, or at trying to form some intellectual conception of it; but he may be very much on the right lines in his feelings of pleasure and pain, because he welcomes what is good and loathes what is bad. Which of these two will be the better educated musically, and the more effective member of a chorus?

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

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: Yes, it is.

A
THENIAN
: 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.

C
LINIAS
: Quite.

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

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

A
THENIAN
: 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?

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

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: As far as it could be!

A
THENIAN
: 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.

C
LINIAS
: What?

A
THENIAN
: 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
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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.

C
LINIAS
: You are quite right.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: Probably.

A
THENIAN
: ‘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.

C
LINIAS
: No, I don’t think we could.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

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

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

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

A
THENIAN
: 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
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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.

C
LINIAS
: Fantastic!

A
THENIAN
: 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] C
LINIAS
: So it would seem, to judge from your account.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: It is.

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

C
LINIAS
: That’s true.

[d] A
THENIAN
: Our youngsters are keen to join the 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.

C
LINIAS
: Very true.

A
THENIAN
: 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?
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C
LINIAS
: Maybe.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: In what way do you mean?

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: 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?

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

C
LINIAS
: Naturally.

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

C
LINIAS
: Of course. [d]

A
THENIAN
: 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.

C
LINIAS
: Yes, I dare say.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: Yes.

A
THENIAN
: 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.

C
LINIAS
: Surely.

A
THENIAN
: 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
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whose education and moral standards
⁵
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—