Greek Texts & Translations

Yes.

Shall we assume that the uneducated man is without choir-training, 654band the educated man fully choir-trained?

Certainly.

Choir-training, as a whole, embraces of course both dancing and song.

Undoubtedly.

So the well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well.

Evidently.

Let us now consider what this last statement of ours implies.

Which statement?

Our words are,—” he sings well and dances well”: 654cought we, or ought we not, to add,—“provided that he sings good songs and dances good dances”?

We ought to add this.

How then, if a man takes the good for good and the bad for bad and treats them accordingly? Shall we regard such a man as better trained in choristry and music when he is always able both with gesture and voice to represent adequately that which he conceives to be good, though he feels neither delight in the good nor hatred of the bad,—or when, though not wholly able to represent his conception rightly by voice and gesture, 654dhe yet keeps right in his feelings of pain and pleasure, welcoming everything good and abhorring everything not good.

There is a vast difference between the two cases, Stranger, in point of education.

If, then, we three understand what constitutes goodness in respect of dance and song, we also know who is and who is not rightly educated but without this knowledge we shall never be able to discern whether there exists any safeguard for education 654eor where it is to be found. Is not that so?

It is.

What we have next to track down, like hounds on the trail, is goodness of posture and tunes in relation to song and dance; if this eludes our pursuit, it will be in vain for us to discourse further concerning right education, whether of Greeks or of barbarians.

Yes.

Well then, however shall we define goodness of posture or of tune? Come, consider: when a manly soul is beset by troubles, 655aand a cowardly soul by troubles identical and equal, are the postures and utterances that result in the two cases similar?

How could they be, when even their complexions differ in color?

Well said, my friend. But in, fact, while postures and tunes do exist in music, ^note which deals with rhythm and harmony, so that one can rightly speak of a tune or posture being “rhythmical” or “harmonious,” one cannot rightly apply the choir masters metaphor “well-colored” to tune and posture; but one can use this language about the posture and tune of the brave man and the coward, 655band one is right in calling those of the brave man good, and those of the coward bad. To avoid a tediously long disquisition, let us sum up the whole matter by saying that the postures and tunes which attach to goodness of soul or body, or to some image thereof, are universally good, while those which attach to badness are exactly the reverse.

Your pronouncement is correct, and we now formally endorse it.

Another point:—do we all delight equally 655cin choral dancing, or far from equally?

Very far indeed.

Then what are we to suppose it is that misleads us? Is it the fact that we do not all regard as good the same things, or is it that, although they are the same, they are thought not to be the same? For surely no one will maintain that the choric performance of vice are better than those of virtue, or that he himself enjoys the postures of turpitude, while all others delight in music of the opposite kind. Most people, however, assert that the value of music consists in its power 655dof affording pleasure to the soul. ^note But such an assertion is quite intolerable, and it is blasphemy even to utter it. The fact which misleads us is more probably the following—

What?

Inasmuch as choric performances are representations of character, exhibited in actions and circumstances of every kind, in which, the several performers enact their parts by habit and imitative art, whenever the choric performances are congenial to them in point of diction, tune or other features (whether from natural bent or from habit, or from all these causes combined), 655ethen these performers invariably delight in such, performances and extol them as excellent; whereas those who find them repugnant to their nature, disposition or habits cannot possibly delight in them or praise them, but call them bad. And when men are right in their natural tastes but wrong in those acquired by habituation, or right in the latter but wrong in the former, then by their expressions of praise they convey the opposite of their real sentiments;