Complete Works (284 page)

C
LINIAS
: What?

[d] A
THENIAN
: 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 concord
⁷
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
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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.

C
LINIAS
: 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.

A
THENIAN
: 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?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly.

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

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

A
THENIAN
: 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
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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?

C
LINIAS
: In some ways I think we are, but certainly not in others.

A
THENIAN
: I expect this is where I sound implausible: suppose a man were to enjoy health and wealth and permanent absolute power—and, if [e] you like, I’ll give him enormous strength and courage as well, and exempt him from death and all the other ‘evils’, as people call them. But suppose he had in him nothing but injustice and insolence. It is obvious, I maintain, that his life is wretchedly
un
happy.

C
LINIAS
: True, that’s precisely where you fail to convince.

A
THENIAN
: Very well, then, How should we put it now? If a man is
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brave, strong, handsome, and rich, and enjoys a life-long freedom to do just what he wants to, don’t you think—if he is unjust and insolent—that his life will inevitably be a disgrace? Perhaps at any rate you’d allow the term ‘disgrace’?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly.

A
THENIAN
: Will you go further, and say he will live ‘badly’?
⁹

C
LINIAS
: No, we’d not be so ready to admit that.

A
THENIAN
: What about going further still, and saying he will live ‘unpleasantly and unprofitably’?

C
LINIAS
: How could we possibly be prepared to go as far as that?

A
THENIAN
: ‘How’? My friend, it looks as if it would be a miracle if we [b] ever harmonized on this point: at the moment your tune and mine are scarcely in the same key. To me, these conclusions are inescapably true—in fact, my dear Clinias, rather more true and obvious than that Crete is an island. If I were a lawgiver, I should try to compel the authors and every inhabitant of the state to take this line; and if anybody in the land [c] said that there are men who live a pleasant life in spite of being scoundrels, or that while this or that is useful and profitable, something else is more just, I should impose pretty nearly the extreme penalty. There are many other things I should persuade my citizens to say, which would flatly contradict what Cretans and Spartans maintain nowadays, apparently—to say nothing of the rest of the world. Zeus and Apollo! Just you imagine, my fine fellows, asking these gods who inspired your laws, ‘Is the life of [d] supreme justice also the life that gives most pleasure? Or are there two kinds of life, one being “the supremely just,” the other “the most pleasurable”?’

Suppose they replied ‘There are two.’ If we knew the right question to ask, we might perhaps pursue the point: ‘Which category of men should we call the most blessed by heaven? Those who live the supremely just life, or the most pleasurable?’ If they said ‘Those who live the most pleasurable life’, then that would be, for them, a curious thing to say. However, I am unwilling to associate the gods with such a statement; I prefer to think of it in connection with forefathers and lawgivers. So let’s suppose [e] those first questions have been put to a forefather and lawgiver, and that he has replied that the man who lives the life of greatest pleasure enjoys the greatest happiness. This is what I’d say then: ‘Father, didn’t you want me to receive as many of the blessings of heaven as I could? Yet in spite of that you never tired of telling me to order my life as
justly
as possible’. In taking up that kind of position our forefather or lawgiver will, I think, appear in rather an odd light: it will look as if he cannot speak without contradicting himself. However, if he declared that the life of supreme justice was the most blessed, I imagine that everybody who heard him would want to know what splendid benefit, superior to pleasure, was to be found in this kind of life. What was there in it that deserved the
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commendation of the law? Surely, any benefit a just man got out of it would be
inseparable
from pleasure? Look: are we to suppose that fame and praise from gods and men are fine and good, but unpleasant (and vice versa in the case of notoriety)? (‘My dear legislator,’ we’d say, ‘of course not’.) Or, if you neither injure another nor are injured yourself by someone else, is that unpleasant, in spite of being fine and good? Is the opposite pleasant, but disgraceful and wicked?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly not.

A
THENIAN
: So the argument that does not drive a wedge between ‘pleasant’ [b] on the one hand and ‘just’ and ‘fine’ and ‘good’ on the other, even if it achieves nothing else, will do something to persuade a man to live a just and pious life. This means that any teaching which denies the truth of all this is, from the lawgiver’s standpoint, a complete disgrace and his worst enemy. (Nobody would willingly agree to do something which would not bring him more pleasure than pain.)

Looking at a thing from a distance makes nearly everyone feel dizzy, especially children; but the lawgiver will alter that for us, and lift the fog [c] that clouds our judgment: somehow or other—by habituation, praise, or argument—he will persuade us that our ideas of justice and injustice are like pictures drawn in perspective. Injustice looks pleasant to the enemy of justice,
¹⁰
because he regards it from his own personal standpoint, which is unjust and evil; justice, on the other hand, looks
un
pleasant to him. But from the standpoint of the just man the view gained of justice and injustice is always the opposite.

C
LINIAS
: So it seems.

A
THENIAN
: And which of these judgments are we to say has a better claim to be the correct one? The judgment of the worse soul or the better?

[d] C
LINIAS
: That of the better, certainly.

A
THENIAN
: Then it is equally certain that the unjust life is not only more shocking and disgraceful, but also in fact less pleasant, than the just and holy.

C
LINIAS
: On this argument, my friends, it certainly looks like it.

A
THENIAN
: But just suppose that the truth had been different from what the argument has now shown it to be, and that a lawgiver, even a mediocre one, had been sufficiently bold, in the interests of the young, to tell them a lie. Could he have told a more useful lie than this, or one more effective [e] in making everyone practice justice in everything they do, willingly and without pressure?

C
LINIAS
: Truth is a fine thing, and it is sure to prevail, but to persuade men of it certainly seems no easy task.

A
THENIAN
: Yes, but what about that fairy story about the Sidonian?
¹¹
That was well-nigh incredible, but it was easy enough to convince men of it, and of thousands of other similar stories.

C
LINIAS
: What sort of stories?

A
THENIAN
: The sowing of the teeth and the birth of armed men from
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them. This remarkable example shows the legislator that the souls of the young can be persuaded of anything; he has only to try. The only thing he must consider and discover is what conviction would do the state most good; in that connection, he must think up every possible device to ensure that as far as possible the entire community preserves in its songs and stories and doctrines an absolute and lifelong unanimity. But if you see the matter in any other light, have no hesitation in disputing my view.

C
LINIAS
: No, I don’t think either of us would be able to dispute that. [b]

A
THENIAN
: Then it will be up to me to introduce the next point. I maintain that our choruses—all three of them—should charm the souls of the children while still young and tender, and uphold all the admirable doctrines we have already formulated, and any we may formulate in the future. We must insist, as the central point of these doctrines, that the gods say the best life does in fact bring most pleasure. If we do that, we shall be telling [c] the plain truth, and we shall convince those whom we have to convince more effectively than if we advanced any other doctrine.

C
LINIAS
: Yes, one has to agree with what you say.

A
THENIAN
: To start with, it will be only right and proper if the children’s chorus (which will be dedicated to the Muses) comes on first to sing these doctrines with all its might and main before the entire city. Second will come the chorus of those under thirty, which will call upon Apollo Paean
¹²
to bear witness that what they say is true, and pray that he will vouchsafe [d] to convince the young. Thirdly, there must be the songs of those between thirty and sixty. That leaves the men who are older than this, who are, of course, no longer up to singing; but they will be inspired to tell stories in which the same characters will appear.