Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.].
<<Pl. Leg. 665b Pl. Leg. 667b (Greek) >>Pl. Leg. 669a

666cmay lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire. Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and “incantations” (as we have often called them), in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Clinias

Yes! much more ready.

Athenian

So then, for the purpose of inducing them 666dto take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

Clinias

By no means.

Athenian

What manner of song will the men raise? Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Clinias

Of course.

Athenian

What song, then, would suit godlike men? Would a choric song note?

Clinias

At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Athenian

Naturally; for in truth you never attained to 666ethe noblest singing. For your civic organization is that of an army rather than that of city-dwellers, and you keep your young people massed together like a herd of colts at grass: none of you takes his own colt, dragging him away from his fellows, in spite of his fretting and fuming, and puts a special groom in charge of him, and trains him by rubbing him down and stroking him and using all the means proper to child-nursing, that so he may turn out not only a good soldier, 667abut able also to manage a State and cities—in short, a man who (as we said at the first) is more of a warrior than the warriors of Tyrtaeus, inasmuch as always and everywhere, both in States and in individuals, he esteems courage as the fourth in order of the virtues, not the first.

Clinias

Once again, Stranger, you are—in a sort of a way—disparaging our lawgivers.

Athenian

It is not intentionally, my friend, that I do so—if I am doing it but whither the argument leads us, thither, if you please, let us go. If we know of a music that is superior to that of the choirs or to that of the public theaters, 667blet us try to supply it to those men who, as we said, are ashamed of the latter, yet are eager to take a part in that music which is noblest.

Clinias

Certainly.

Athenian

note Now, in the first place, must it not be true of everything which possesses charm as its concomitant, that its most important element is either this charm in itself, or some form of correctness, or, thirdly, utility? For instance, meat and drink and nutriment in general have, as I say, for concomitant that charm which we should term pleasure; 667cbut as regards their correctness and utility, what we call the wholesomeness of each article administered is precisely the most perfect element they contain.

Clinias

Certainly.

Athenian

Learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, which is pleasure; but that which produces its correctness and utility, its goodness and nobleness, is truth.

Clinias

Quite so. 667d

Athenian

Then how about the imitative arts which produce likenesses? If they succeed in their productions, should not any concomitant pleasure which results therefrom be most properly called “charm”?

Clinias

Yes.

Athenian

But, speaking generally, the correctness of these things would be the result not, primarily, of pleasure, but of equality in respect of both quality and quantity. note

Clinias

Excellent.

Athenian

Then we shall rightly judge by the criterion of pleasure 667ethat object only which, in its effects, produces neither utility nor truth nor similarity, nor yet harm, and which exists solely for the sake of the concomitant element of charm,—which element will best be named “pleasure” whenever it is accompanied by none of the other qualities mentioned.

Clinias

You mean only harmless pleasure.

Athenian

Yes, and I say that this same pleasure is also play, whenever the harm or good it does is negligible.

Clinias

Very true.

Athenian

Should we not then assert, as a corollary, that no imitation should be judged by the criterion of pleasure 668aor of untrue opinion, nor indeed should any kind of equality be so judged? The reason why the equal is equal, or the symmetrical symmetrical, is not at all because a man so opines, or is charmed thereby, but most of all because of truth, and least of all for any other reason.

Clinias

Most certainly.

Athenian

We assert, do we not, that all music is representative and imitative?

Clinias

Of course.

Athenian

So whenever a man states that pleasure is the criterion of music, we shall decisively reject his statement; and we shall regard such music as the least important of all (if indeed any music 668bis important) and prefer that which possesses similarity in its imitation of the beautiful.

Clinias

Very true.

Athenian

Thus those who are seeking the best singing and music must seek, as it appears, not that which is pleasant, but that which is correct; and the correctness of imitation consists, as we say, in the reproduction of the original in its own proper quantity and quality.

Clinias

Of course.

Athenian

And this is certainly true of music, as everyone would allow,—that all its productions are



Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.].
<<Pl. Leg. 665b Pl. Leg. 667b (Greek) >>Pl. Leg. 669a

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