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216 with its permutations would have been familiar to a Greek
mathematician, though unfamiliar to us: (3) that 216 is the cube of 6,
and also the sum of 3 cubed, 4 cubed, 5 cubed, the numbers 3, 4, 5
representing the Pythagorean triangle, of which the sides when squared
equal the square of the hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25): (4) that it is also
the period of the Pythagorean Metempsychosis: (5) the three ultimate
terms or bases (3, 4, 5) of which 216 is composed answer to the third,
fourth, fifth in the musical scale: (6) that the number 216 is the
product of the cubes of 2 and 3, which are the two last terms in the
Platonic Tetractys: (7) that the Pythagorean triangle is said by
Plutarch (de Is. et Osir.), Proclus (super prima Eucl.), and Quintilian
(de Musica) to be contained in this passage, so that the tradition of
the school seems to point in the same direction: (8) that the
Pythagorean triangle is called also the figure of marriage (Greek).

But though agreeing with Dr. Donaldson thus far, I see no reason for
supposing, as he does, that the first or perfect number is the world,
the human or imperfect number the state; nor has he given any proof
that the second harmony is a cube. Nor do I think that (Greek) can mean
‘two incommensurables,’ which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but
rather, as the preceding clause implies, (Greek), i.e. two square
numbers based upon irrational diameters of a figure the side of which
is 5 = 50 x 2.

The greatest objection to the translation is the sense given to the
words (Greek), ‘a base of three with a third added to it, multiplied by
5.’ In this somewhat forced manner Plato introduces once more the
numbers of the Pythagorean triangle. But the coincidences in the
numbers which follow are in favour of the explanation. The first
harmony of 400, as has been already remarked, probably represents the
rulers; the second and oblong harmony of 7600, the people.

And here we take leave of the difficulty. The discovery of the riddle
would be useless, and would throw no light on ancient mathematics. The
point of interest is that Plato should have used such a symbol, and
that so much of the Pythagorean spirit should have prevailed in him.
His general meaning is that divine creation is perfect, and is
represented or presided over by a perfect or cyclical number; human
generation is imperfect, and represented or presided over by an
imperfect number or series of numbers. The number 5040, which is the
number of the citizens in the Laws, is expressly based by him on
utilitarian grounds, namely, the convenience of the number for
division; it is also made up of the first seven digits multiplied by
one another. The contrast of the perfect and imperfect number may have
been easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle, which were made
first by Meton and secondly by Callippus; (the latter is said to have
been a pupil of Plato). Of the degree of importance or of exactness to
be attributed to the problem, the number of the tyrant in Book IX (729
= 365 x 2), and the slight correction of the error in the number
5040/12 (Laws), may furnish a criterion. There is nothing surprising in
the circumstance that those who were seeking for order in nature and
had found order in number, should have imagined one to give law to the
other. Plato believes in a power of number far beyond what he could see
realized in the world around him, and he knows the great influence
which ‘the little matter of 1, 2, 3’ exercises upon education. He may
even be thought to have a prophetic anticipation of the discoveries of
Quetelet and others, that numbers depend upon numbers; e.g.—in
population, the numbers of births and the respective numbers of
children born of either sex, on the respective ages of parents, i.e. on
other numbers.

BOOK IX. Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to
enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live—in happiness or in misery?
There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the
appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them are
unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various
degrees by the power of reason and law. ‘What appetites do you mean?’ I
mean those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which
get up and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and
there is no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of
which, in imagination, they may not be guilty. ‘True,’ he said; ‘very
true.’ But when a man’s pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a
feast of reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to
rest, and has satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their
perturbing his reason, which remains clear and luminous, and when he is
free from quarrel and heat,—the visions which he has on his bed are
least irregular and abnormal. Even in good men there is such an
irregular wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

To return:—You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the
son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and
repressed the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got
into fine company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father’s
narrow ways; and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth,
he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless or slavish passion,
but of regular and successive indulgence. Now imagine that the youth
has become a father, and has a son who is exposed to the same
temptations, and has companions who lead him into every sort of
iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him right. The
counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining him is to
implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires buzz
around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster
love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest
thought or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and
the tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a
drinking, lusting, furious sort of animal.

And how does such an one live? ‘Nay, that you must tell me.’ Well then,
I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will
be the lord and master of the house. Many desires require much money,
and so he spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has
nothing the young ravens are still in the nest in which they were
hatched, crying for food. Love urges them on; and they must be
gratified by force or fraud, or if not, they become painful and
troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed the old ones, so will the
son take possession of the goods of his parents; if they show signs of
refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if they openly resist,
what then? ‘I can only say, that I should not much like to be in their
place.’ But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for some new-fangled
and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and mother, best
and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour!
Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When
there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket,
or robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he
becomes in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He
waxes strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed
of daring that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a
well-ordered State there are only a few such, and these in time of war
go out and become the mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace
they stay at home and do mischief; they are the thieves, footpads,
cut-purses, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able to
speak, they turn false-witnesses and informers. ‘No small catalogue of
crimes truly, even if the perpetrators are few.’ Yes, I said; but small
and great are relative terms, and no crimes which are committed by them
approach those of the tyrant, whom this class, growing strong and
numerous, create out of themselves. If the people yield, well and good,
but, if they resist, then, as before he beat his father and mother, so
now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and places his mercenaries
over them. Such men in their early days live with flatterers, and they
themselves flatter others, in order to gain their ends; but they soon
discard their followers when they have no longer any need of them; they
are always either masters or servants,—the joys of friendship are
unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and unjust, if the
nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize our dream;
and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life of a
tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the
worst of them, will also be the most miserable.

Like man, like State,—the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which
is the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the
other the worst. But which is the happier? Great and terrible as the
tyrant may appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid
to go in and ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the
happiest, and the tyrannical the most miserable of States. And may we
not ask the same question about the men themselves, requesting some one
to look into them who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and
will not be panic-struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose
that he is one who has lived with him, and has seen him in family life,
or perhaps in the hour of trouble and danger.

Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek,
let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of
all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved—Will there not
be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of
the bad, and the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as
well as to the State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and
the better part is enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would,
and his mind is full of confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman.
The State will be poor and full of misery and sorrow; and the man’s
soul will also be poor and full of sorrows, and he will be the most
miserable of men. No, not the most miserable, for there is yet a more
miserable. ‘Who is that?’ The tyrannical man who has the misfortune
also to become a public tyrant. ‘There I suspect that you are right.’
Say rather, ‘I am sure;’ conjecture is out of place in an enquiry of
this nature. He is like a wealthy owner of slaves, only he has more of
them than any private individual. You will say, ‘The owners of slaves
are not generally in any fear of them.’ But why? Because the whole city
is in a league which protects the individual. Suppose however that one
of these owners and his household is carried off by a god into a
wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him—will he not be in an
agony of terror?—will he not be compelled to flatter his slaves and to
promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose the same
god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them
should be punished with death. ‘Still worse and worse! He will be in
the midst of his enemies.’ And is not our tyrant such a captive soul,
who is tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living
indoors always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and
see the world?

Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more
miserable in a public station? Master of others when he is not master
of himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the
meanest of slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all
things, and never able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and
distraction, like the State of which he is the representative. His
jealous, hateful, faithless temper grows worse with command; he is more
and more faithless, envious, unrighteous,—the most wretched of men, a
misery to himself and to others. And so let us have a final trial and
proclamation; need we hire a herald, or shall I proclaim the result?
‘Made the proclamation yourself.’ The son of Ariston (the best) is of
opinion that the best and justest of men is also the happiest, and that
this is he who is the most royal master of himself; and that the unjust
man is he who is the greatest tyrant of himself and of his State. And I
add further—‘seen or unseen by gods or men.’

This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of
pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul—reason,
passion, desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as
sensual appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love
of reputation. Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of
truth, and careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the
difference of men’s natures, one of these three principles is in the
ascendant, and they have their several pleasures corresponding to them.
Interrogate now the three natures, and each one will be found praising
his own pleasures and depreciating those of others. The money-maker
will contrast the vanity of knowledge with the solid advantages of
wealth. The ambitious man will despise knowledge which brings no
honour; whereas the philosopher will regard only the fruition of truth,
and will call other pleasures necessary rather than good. Now, how
shall we decide between them? Is there any better criterion than
experience and knowledge? And which of the three has the truest
knowledge and the widest experience? The experience of youth makes the
philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the avaricious
and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and wisdom.
Honour he has equally with them; they are ‘judged of him,’ but he is
‘not judged of them,’ for they never attain to the knowledge of true
being. And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only
wealth and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be
the truest. And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the
rational part of the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the
pleasantest. He who has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes the
life of ambition, and, in the third place, that of money-making.

Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust—once more, as in an
Olympian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let
him try a fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the
wise are true and pure; all others are a shadow only. Let us examine
this: Is not pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not a mean state
which is neither? When a man is sick, nothing is more pleasant to him
than health. But this he never found out while he was well. In pain he
desires only to cease from pain; on the other hand, when he is in an
ecstasy of pleasure, rest is painful to him. Thus rest or cessation is
both pleasure and pain. But can that which is neither become both?
Again, pleasure and pain are motions, and the absence of them is rest;
but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other? Thus we
are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and
witchery of the senses. And these are not the only pleasures, for there
are others which have no preceding pains. Pure pleasure then is not the
absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most
of the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of
pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their
anticipations before they come. They can be best described in a simile.
There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who
passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is
already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would
think, and truly think, that he was descending. All this arises out of
his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like
confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.
The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who
compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.
Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and
folly of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge
of the other. Now which is the purer satisfaction—that of eating and
drinking, or that of knowledge? Consider the matter thus: The
satisfaction of that which has more existence is truer than of that
which has less. The invariable and immortal has a more real existence
than the variable and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of
knowledge and truth. The soul, again, has more existence and truth and
knowledge than the body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has
a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on earthly food, are
always going at random up to the middle and down again; but they never
pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true pleasure. They
are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to
kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they are not
filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their
pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and
intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go
fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about
the shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.

The same may be said of the passionate element:—the desires of the
ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior
satisfaction. Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the
other principles do their own business or attain the pleasure which is
natural to them. When not attaining, they compel the other parts of the
soul to pursue a shadow of pleasure which is not theirs. And the more
distant they are from philosophy and reason, the more distant they will
be from law and order, and the more illusive will be their pleasures.
The desires of love and tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of
the king are nearest to it. There is one genuine pleasure, and two
spurious ones: the tyrant goes beyond even the latter; he has run away
altogether from law and reason. Nor can the measure of his inferiority
be told, except in a figure. The tyrant is the third removed from the
oligarch, and has therefore, not a shadow of his pleasure, but the
shadow of a shadow only. The oligarch, again, is thrice removed from
the king, and thus we get the formula 3 x 3, which is the number of a
surface, representing the shadow which is the tyrant’s pleasure, and if
you like to cube this ‘number of the beast,’ you will find that the
measure of the difference amounts to 729; the king is 729 times more
happy than the tyrant. And this extraordinary number is NEARLY equal to
the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730); and is
therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval between a
good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between
them in comeliness of life and virtue!

Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning of our
discussion that the unjust man was profited if he had the reputation of
justice. Now that we know the nature of justice and injustice, let us
make an image of the soul, which will personify his words. First of
all, fashion a multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all
manner of animals, tame and wild, and able to produce and change them
at pleasure. Suppose now another form of a lion, and another of a man;
the second smaller than the first, the third than the second; join them
together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are completely
concealed. When this has been done, let us tell the supporter of
injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and starving the man. The
maintainer of justice, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen the
man; he is nourishing the gentle principle within him, and making an
alliance with the lion heart, in order that he may be able to keep down
the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and
with themselves. Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to
pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the unjust
wrong.

But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in
error. Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or
rather to the God in man; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to
the beast? And if so, who would receive gold on condition that he was
to degrade the noblest part of himself under the worst?—who would sell
his son or daughter into the hands of brutal and evil men, for any
amount of money? And will he sell his own fairer and diviner part
without any compunction to the most godless and foul? Would he not be
worse than Eriphyle, who sold her husband’s life for a necklace? And
intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride
and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent
element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great
relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again arise when the
spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to
become a monkey. The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those
who are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their
desires; therefore we say that they should be placed under the control
of the better principle in another because they have none in
themselves; not, as Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the
subjects, but for their good. And our intention in educating the young,
is to give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a
higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may go their
ways.

‘What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world’ and become
more and more wicked? Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if
the concealment of evil prevents the cure? If he had been punished, the
brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element
liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in
his soul—a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts. The
man of understanding will honour knowledge above all; in the next place
he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and
strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and
soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and
harmony; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he
will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of
his own soul. For the same reason he will only accept such honours as
will make him a better man; any others he will decline. ‘In that case,’
said he, ‘he will never be a politician.’ Yes, but he will, in his own
city; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine
accident. ‘You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which
has no place upon earth.’ But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern
of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image.
Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not; he will act
according to that pattern and no other...

The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:—(1) the
account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the
king from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven.

1. Plato’s account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in
this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which
are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics,
opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of
the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the
Epicureans in describing pleasure as something more than the absence of
pain. This is proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which
have no antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as
the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and
anticipation. In the previous book he had made the distinction between
necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and
he now observes that there are a further class of ‘wild beast’
pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle’s (Greek). He dwells upon the
relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion
which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the
superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the
fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. The pre-eminence of royal
pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of
the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are
incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus, in his treatment of
pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is ‘sawn
up into quantities’ by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally
made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further
technical distinctions. Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the
illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of
pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence
of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the
knowledge from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that
the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting
than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents
of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus).

2. The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant,
and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. Which Plato
characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life,
because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year.
He is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is
immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea.
Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring
(Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the
figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the
pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in modern
times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a
philosophical formula. ‘It is not easy to estimate the loss of the
tyrant, except perhaps in this way,’ says Plato. So we might say, that
although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad
man, yet you may measure the difference between them by valuing one
minute of the one at an hour of the other (‘One day in thy courts is
better than a thousand’), or you might say that ‘there is an infinite
difference.’ But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, ‘They
are a thousand miles asunder.’ And accordingly Plato finds the natural
vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this arithmetical
formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both here and in
the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of the truth
of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical figure;
just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is
verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. In
speaking of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably
intended to intimate that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the
royal life.

The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is
effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the
mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is some
difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained;
the oligarch is removed in the third degree from the royal and
aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third degree from the
oligarchical; but we have to arrange the terms as the sides of a square
and to count the oligarch twice over, thus reckoning them not as = 5
but as = 9. The square of 9 is passed lightly over as only a step
towards the cube.

3. Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more
convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. At the end of
the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city
of philosophers on earth. The vision which has received form and
substance at his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. And yet
this distant kingdom is also the rule of man’s life. (‘Say not lo!
here, or lo! there, for the kingdom of God is within you.’) Thus a note
is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future life in the
following Book. But the future life is present still; the ideal of
politics is to be realized in the individual.

BOOK X. Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was
nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. The
division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation.
I do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage
on the understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge
which heals error. I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even
now he appears to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But much
as I love the man, I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out:
and first of all, will you explain what is imitation, for really I do
not understand? ‘How likely then that I should understand!’ That might
very well be, for the duller often sees better than the keener eye.
‘True, but in your presence I can hardly venture to say what I think.’
Then suppose that we begin in our old fashion, with the doctrine of
universals. Let us assume the existence of beds and tables. There is
one idea of a bed, or of a table, which the maker of each had in his
mind when making them; he did not make the ideas of beds and tables,
but he made beds and tables according to the ideas. And is there not a
maker of the works of all workmen, who makes not only vessels but
plants and animals, himself, the earth and heaven, and things in heaven
and under the earth? He makes the Gods also. ‘He must be a wizard
indeed!’ But do you not see that there is a sense in which you could do
the same? You have only to take a mirror, and catch the reflection of
the sun, and the earth, or anything else—there now you have made them.
‘Yes, but only in appearance.’ Exactly so; and the painter is such a
creator as you are with the mirror, and he is even more unreal than the
carpenter; although neither the carpenter nor any other artist can be
supposed to make the absolute bed. ‘Not if philosophers may be
believed.’ Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect
relation to the truth. Reflect:—Here are three beds; one in nature,
which is made by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the
third, by the painter. God only made one, nor could he have made more
than one; for if there had been two, there would always have been a
third—more absolute and abstract than either, under which they would
have been included. We may therefore conceive God to be the natural
maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker;
but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he
has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality. And the
tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice
removed from the king and from the truth. The painter imitates not the
original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter. And this, without
being really different, appears to be different, and has many points of
view, of which only one is caught by the painter, who represents
everything because he represents a piece of everything, and that piece
an image. And he can paint any other artist, although he knows nothing
of their arts; and this with sufficient skill to deceive children or
simple people. Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he
had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better than
anybody:—should we not infer him to be a simpleton who, having no
discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or enchanter,
whom he fancied to be all-wise? And when we hear persons saying that
Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must we
not infer that they are under a similar delusion? they do not see that
the poets are imitators, and that their creations are only imitations.
‘Very true.’ But if a person could create as well as imitate, he would
rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only; he would
rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? ‘Yes, for then he
would have more honour and advantage.’

Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer, say I to him,
I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your
poems incidentally refer, but about their main subjects—war, military
tactics, politics. If you are only twice and not thrice removed from
the truth—not an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what
good you have ever done to mankind? Is there any city which professes
to have received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from
Charondas, Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? Or was any war ever
carried on by your counsels? or is any invention attributed to you, as
there is to Thales and Anacharsis? Or is there any Homeric way of life,
such as the Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is
called after you? ‘No, indeed; and Creophylus (Flesh-child) was even
more unfortunate in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as
tradition says, Homer in his lifetime was allowed by him and his other
friends to starve.’ Yes, but could this ever have happened if Homer had
really been the educator of Hellas? Would he not have had many devoted
followers? If Protagoras and Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries
that no one can manage house or State without them, is it likely that
Homer and Hesiod would have been allowed to go about as beggars—I mean
if they had really been able to do the world any good?—would not men
have compelled them to stay where they were, or have followed them
about in order to get education? But they did not; and therefore we may
infer that Homer and all the poets are only imitators, who do but
imitate the appearances of things. For as a painter by a knowledge of
figure and colour can paint a cobbler without any practice in cobbling,
so the poet can delineate any art in the colours of language, and give
harmony and rhythm to the cobbler and also to the general; and you know
how mere narration, when deprived of the ornaments of metre, is like a
face which has lost the beauty of youth and never had any other. Once
more, the imitator has no knowledge of reality, but only of appearance.
The painter paints, and the artificer makes a bridle and reins, but
neither understands the use of them—the knowledge of this is confined
to the horseman; and so of other things. Thus we have three arts: one
of use, another of invention, a third of imitation; and the user
furnishes the rule to the two others. The flute-player will know the
good and bad flute, and the maker will put faith in him; but the
imitator will neither know nor have faith—neither science nor true
opinion can be ascribed to him. Imitation, then, is devoid of
knowledge, being only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic and epic
poets are imitators in the highest degree.

And now let us enquire, what is the faculty in man which answers to
imitation. Allow me to explain my meaning: Objects are differently seen
when in the water and when out of the water, when near and when at a
distance; and the painter or juggler makes use of this variation to
impose upon us. And the art of measuring and weighing and calculating
comes in to save our bewildered minds from the power of appearance;
for, as we were saying, two contrary opinions of the same about the
same and at the same time, cannot both of them be true. But which of
them is true is determined by the art of calculation; and this is
allied to the better faculty in the soul, as the arts of imitation are
to the worse. And the same holds of the ear as well as of the eye, of
poetry as well as painting. The imitation is of actions voluntary or
involuntary, in which there is an expectation of a good or bad result,
and present experience of pleasure and pain. But is a man in harmony
with himself when he is the subject of these conflicting influences? Is
there not rather a contradiction in him? Let me further ask, whether he
is more likely to control sorrow when he is alone or when he is in
company. ‘In the latter case.’ Feeling would lead him to indulge his
sorrow, but reason and law control him and enjoin patience; since he
cannot know whether his affliction is good or evil, and no human thing
is of any great consequence, while sorrow is certainly a hindrance to
good counsel. For when we stumble, we should not, like children, make
an uproar; we should take the measures which reason prescribes, not
raising a lament, but finding a cure. And the better part of us is
ready to follow reason, while the irrational principle is full of
sorrow and distraction at the recollection of our troubles.
Unfortunately, however, this latter furnishes the chief materials of
the imitative arts. Whereas reason is ever in repose and cannot easily
be displayed, especially to a mixed multitude who have no experience of
her. Thus the poet is like the painter in two ways: first he paints an
inferior degree of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an
inferior part of the soul. He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles
the reason; and we refuse to allow him to have authority over the mind
of man; for he has no measure of greater and less, and is a maker of
images and very far gone from truth.

But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the indictment—the
power which poetry has of injuriously exciting the feelings. When we
hear some passage in which a hero laments his sufferings at tedious
length, you know that we sympathize with him and praise the poet; and
yet in our own sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as
effeminate and unmanly (Ion). Now, ought a man to feel pleasure in
seeing another do what he hates and abominates in himself? Is he not
giving way to a sentiment which in his own case he would control?—he is
off his guard because the sorrow is another’s; and he thinks that he
may indulge his feelings without disgrace, and will be the gainer by
the pleasure. But the inevitable consequence is that he who begins by
weeping at the sorrows of others, will end by weeping at his own. The
same is true of comedy,—you may often laugh at buffoonery which you
would be ashamed to utter, and the love of coarse merriment on the
stage will at last turn you into a buffoon at home. Poetry feeds and
waters the passions and desires; she lets them rule instead of ruling
them. And therefore, when we hear the encomiasts of Homer affirming
that he is the educator of Hellas, and that all life should be
regulated by his precepts, we may allow the excellence of their
intentions, and agree with them in thinking Homer a great poet and
tragedian. But we shall continue to prohibit all poetry which goes
beyond hymns to the Gods and praises of famous men. Not pleasure and
pain, but law and reason shall rule in our State.

These are our grounds for expelling poetry; but lest she should charge
us with discourtesy, let us also make an apology to her. We will remind
her that there is an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, of
which there are many traces in the writings of the poets, such as the
saying of ‘the she-dog, yelping at her mistress,’ and ‘the philosophers
who are ready to circumvent Zeus,’ and ‘the philosophers who are
paupers.’ Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow
her to return upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in
verse; and her supporters who are not poets may speak in prose. We
confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is useful as well
as delightful, like rational lovers, we must renounce our love, though
endeared to us by early associations. Having come to years of
discretion, we know that poetry is not truth, and that a man should be
careful how he introduces her to that state or constitution which he
himself is; for there is a mighty issue at stake—no less than the good
or evil of a human soul. And it is not worth while to forsake justice
and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of
honour or wealth. ‘I agree with you.’

And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described.
‘And can we conceive things greater still?’ Not, perhaps, in this brief
span of life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of
eternity? ‘I do not understand what you mean?’ Do you not know that the
soul is immortal? ‘Surely you are not prepared to prove that?’ Indeed I
am. ‘Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.’

You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil. In
all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this cannot destroy
them, nothing else will. The soul too has her own corrupting
principles, which are injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and the like.
But none of these destroy the soul in the same sense that disease
destroys the body. The soul may be full of all iniquities, but is not,
by reason of them, brought any nearer to death. Nothing which was not
destroyed from within ever perished by external affection of evil. The
body, which is one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is
another, unless the badness of the food is communicated to the body.
Neither can the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the body,
which is another, unless she herself is infected. And as no bodily evil
can infect the soul, neither can any bodily evil, whether disease or
violence, or any other destroy the soul, unless it can be shown to
render her unholy and unjust. But no one will ever prove that the souls
of men become more unjust when they die. If a person has the audacity
to say the contrary, the answer is—Then why do criminals require the
hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves? ‘Truly,’ he said,
‘injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a cessation of
evil; but I rather believe that the injustice which murders others may
tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the unjust.’ You are quite
right. If sin which is her own natural and inherent evil cannot destroy
the soul, hardly will anything else destroy her. But the soul which
cannot be destroyed either by internal or external evil must be
immortal and everlasting. And if this be true, souls will always exist
in the same number. They cannot diminish, because they cannot be
destroyed; nor yet increase, for the increase of the immortal must come
from something mortal, and so all would end in immortality. Neither is
the soul variable and diverse; for that which is immortal must be of
the fairest and simplest composition. If we would conceive her truly,
and so behold justice and injustice in their own nature, she must be
viewed by the light of reason pure as at birth, or as she is reflected
in philosophy when holding converse with the divine and immortal and
eternal. In her present condition we see her only like the sea-god
Glaucus, bruised and maimed in the sea which is the world, and covered
with shells and stones which are incrusted upon her from the
entertainments of earth.

Thus far, as the argument required, we have said nothing of the rewards
and honours which the poets attribute to justice; we have contented
ourselves with showing that justice in herself is best for the soul in
herself, even if a man should put on a Gyges’ ring and have the helmet
of Hades too. And now you shall repay me what you borrowed; and I will
enumerate the rewards of justice in life and after death. I granted,
for the sake of argument, as you will remember, that evil might perhaps
escape the knowledge of Gods and men, although this was really
impossible. And since I have shown that justice has reality, you must
grant me also that she has the palm of appearance. In the first place,
the just man is known to the Gods, and he is therefore the friend of
the Gods, and he will receive at their hands every good, always
excepting such evil as is the necessary consequence of former sins. All
things end in good to him, either in life or after death, even what
appears to be evil; for the Gods have a care of him who desires to be
in their likeness. And what shall we say of men? Is not honesty the
best policy? The clever rogue makes a great start at first, but breaks
down before he reaches the goal, and slinks away in dishonour; whereas
the true runner perseveres to the end, and receives the prize. And you
must allow me to repeat all the blessings which you attributed to the
fortunate unjust—they bear rule in the city, they marry and give in
marriage to whom they will; and the evils which you attributed to the
unfortunate just, do really fall in the end on the unjust, although, as
you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in silence.

But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when compared
with those which await good men after death. ‘I should like to hear
about them.’ Come, then, and I will tell you the story of Er, the son
of Armenius, a valiant man. He was supposed to have died in battle, but
ten days afterwards his body was found untouched by corruption and sent
home for burial. On the twelfth day he was placed on the funeral pyre
and there he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the world
below. He said that his soul went with a great company to a place, in
which there were two chasms near together in the earth beneath, and two
corresponding chasms in the heaven above. And there were judges sitting
in the intermediate space, bidding the just ascend by the heavenly way
on the right hand, having the seal of their judgment set upon them
before, while the unjust, having the seal behind, were bidden to
descend by the way on the left hand. Him they told to look and listen,
as he was to be their messenger to men from the world below. And he
beheld and saw the souls departing after judgment at either chasm; some
who came from earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who came
from heaven, were clean and bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest
awhile in the meadow; here they discoursed with one another of what
they had seen in the other world. Those who came from earth wept at the
remembrance of their sorrows, but the spirits from above spoke of
glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He said that for every evil deed
they were punished tenfold—now the journey was of a thousand years’
duration, because the life of man was reckoned as a hundred years—and
the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He added something
hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon as they were
born. Of parricides and other murderers he had tortures still more
terrible to narrate. He was present when one of the spirits asked—Where
is Ardiaeus the Great? (This Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who had
murdered his father, and his elder brother, a thousand years before.)
Another spirit answered, ‘He comes not hither, and will never come. And
I myself,’ he added, ‘actually saw this terrible sight. At the entrance
of the chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and some
other sinners—most of whom had been tyrants, but not all—and just as
they fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm gave a roar,
and then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the meaning of the sound,
seized him and several others, and bound them hand and foot and threw
them down, and dragged them along at the side of the road, lacerating
them and carding them like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that
they were going to be cast into hell.’ The greatest terror of the
pilgrims ascending was lest they should hear the voice, and when there
was silence one by one they passed up with joy. To these sufferings
there were corresponding delights.

On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their journey, and
in four days came to a spot whence they looked down upon a line of
light, in colour like a rainbow, only brighter and clearer. One day
more brought them to the place, and they saw that this was the column
of light which binds together the whole universe. The ends of the
column were fastened to heaven, and from them hung the distaff of
Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turned—the hook and spindle
were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in
form like a number of boxes fitting into one another with their edges
turned upwards, making together a single whorl which was pierced by the
spindle. The outermost had the rim broadest, and the inner whorls were
smaller and smaller, and had their rims narrower. The largest (the
fixed stars) was spangled—the seventh (the sun) was brightest—the
eighth (the moon) shone by the light of the seventh—the second and
fifth (Saturn and Mercury) were most like one another and yellower than
the eighth—the third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars)
was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one
motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner
circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness
and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren
stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos,
the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing
of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens;
Clotho from time to time guiding the outer circle with a touch of her
right hand; Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner
circles; Lachesis in turn putting forth her hand from time to time to
guide both of them. On their arrival the pilgrims went to Lachesis, and
there was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from her knees
lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said: ‘Mortal
souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. A new
period of mortal life has begun, and you may choose what divinity you
please; the responsibility of choosing is with you—God is blameless.’
After speaking thus, he cast the lots among them and each one took up
the lot which fell near him. He then placed on the ground before them
the samples of lives, many more than the souls present; and there were
all sorts of lives, of men and of animals. There were tyrannies ending
in misery and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their
different qualities; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and
poverty, sickness and health. Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human
life, and therefore the whole of education should be directed to the
acquisition of such a knowledge as will teach a man to refuse the evil
and choose the good. He should know all the combinations which occur in
life—of beauty with poverty or with wealth,—of knowledge with external
goods,—and at last choose with reference to the nature of the soul,
regarding that only as the better life which makes men better, and
leaving the rest. And a man must take with him an iron sense of truth
and right into the world below, that there too he may remain undazzled
by wealth or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the
extremes and choose the mean. For this, as the messenger reported the
interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man; and any one, as
he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have a good lot,
even though he come last. ‘Let not the first be careless in his choice,
nor the last despair.’ He spoke; and when he had spoken, he who had
drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not see that he was fated
to devour his own children—and when he discovered his mistake, he wept
and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather
than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his
previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he had
only habit and no philosophy. Like many another, he made a bad choice,
because he had no experience of life; whereas those who came from earth
and had seen trouble were not in such a hurry to choose. But if a man
had followed philosophy while upon earth, and had been moderately
fortunate in his lot, he might not only be happy here, but his
pilgrimage both from and to this world would be smooth and heavenly.
Nothing was more curious than the spectacle of the choice, at once sad
and laughable and wonderful; most of the souls only seeking to avoid
their own condition in a previous life. He saw the soul of Orpheus
changing into a swan because he would not be born of a woman; there was
Thamyras becoming a nightingale; musical birds, like the swan, choosing
to be men; the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax, preferring the
life of a lion to that of a man, in remembrance of the injustice which
was done to him in the judgment of the arms; and Agamemnon, from a like
enmity to human nature, passing into an eagle. About the middle was the
soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete, and next to her
Epeus taking the nature of a workwoman; among the last was Thersites,
who was changing himself into a monkey. Thither, the last of all, came
Odysseus, and sought the lot of a private man, which lay neglected and
despised, and when he found it he went away rejoicing, and said that if
he had been first instead of last, his choice would have been the same.
Men, too, were seen passing into animals, and wild and tame animals
changing into one another.

When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each
of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all
brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the
revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were
carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without
turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when
they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of
Forgetfulness and rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water
could not be retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a
certain quantity—some of them drank more than was required, and he who
drank forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from drinking. When
they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were
thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven divers
ways, shooting like stars to their birth. Concerning his return to the
body, he only knew that awaking suddenly in the morning he found
himself lying on the pyre.

Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation, if
we believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the heavenly way
of Justice and Knowledge. So shall we pass undefiled over the river of
Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves and to the Gods, and have a
crown of reward and happiness both in this world and also in the
millennial pilgrimage of the other.

The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions:
first, resuming an old thread which has been interrupted, Socrates
assails the poets, who, now that the nature of the soul has been
analyzed, are seen to be very far gone from the truth; and secondly,
having shown the reality of the happiness of the just, he demands that
appearance shall be restored to him, and then proceeds to prove the
immortality of the soul. The argument, as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is
supplemented by the vision of a future life.

Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and
dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and
especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that
truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are
some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which can only be
expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine
with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably
associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he
should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of
utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students
of Plato. Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we may
show—first, that his views arose naturally out of the circumstances of
his age; and secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as the error
which is contained in them.

He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in his own
lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws, had taken the
place of an intellectual aristocracy. Euripides exhibited the last
phase of the tragic drama, and in him Plato saw the friend and
apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist of tragedy. The old comedy was
almost extinct; the new had not yet arisen. Dramatic and lyric poetry,
like every other branch of Greek literature, was falling under the
power of rhetoric. There was no ‘second or third’ to Aeschylus and
Sophocles in the generation which followed them. Aristophanes, in one
of his later comedies (Frogs), speaks of ‘thousands of tragedy-making
prattlers,’ whose attempts at poetry he compares to the chirping of
swallows; ‘their garrulity went far beyond Euripides,’—‘they appeared
once upon the stage, and there was an end of them.’ To a man of genius
who had a real appreciation of the godlike Aeschylus and the noble and
gentle Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their
‘theology’ (Rep.), these ‘minor poets’ must have been contemptible and
intolerable. There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of Plato
than a sense of the decline and decay both in literature and in
politics which marked his own age. Nor can he have been expected to
look with favour on the licence of Aristophanes, now at the end of his
career, who had begun by satirizing Socrates in the Clouds, and in a
similar spirit forty years afterwards had satirized the founders of
ideal commonwealths in his Eccleziazusae, or Female Parliament (Laws).

There were other reasons for the antagonism of Plato to poetry. The
profession of an actor was regarded by him as a degradation of human
nature, for ‘one man in his life’ cannot ‘play many parts;’ the
characters which the actor performs seem to destroy his own character,
and to leave nothing which can be truly called himself. Neither can any
man live his life and act it. The actor is the slave of his art, not
the master of it. Taking this view Plato is more decided in his
expulsion of the dramatic than of the epic poets, though he must have
known that the Greek tragedians afforded noble lessons and examples of
virtue and patriotism, to which nothing in Homer can be compared. But
great dramatic or even great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with
firmness or strength of mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally
associated with a weak or dissolute character.

In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections. First,
he says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in the third
degree removed from the truth. His creations are not tested by rule and
measure; they are only appearances. In modern times we should say that
art is not merely imitation, but rather the expression of the ideal in
forms of sense. Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his
argument derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist may
ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, or by the
feeling of home which he introduces; and there have been modern
painters who have imparted such an ideal interest to a blacksmith’s or
a carpenter’s shop. The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can
give dignity and pathos to a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed
(Rembrandt), to the hull of a vessel ‘going to its last home’ (Turner).
Still more would this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to
be the visible embodiment of the divine. Had Plato been asked whether
the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was the imitation of an imitation only,
would he not have been compelled to admit that something more was to be
found in them than in the form of any mortal; and that the rule of
proportion to which they conformed was ‘higher far than any geometry or
arithmetic could express?’ (Statesman.)

Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express the
emotional rather than the rational part of human nature. He does not
admit Aristotle’s theory, that tragedy or other serious imitations are
a purgation of the passions by pity and fear; to him they appear only
to afford the opportunity of indulging them. Yet we must acknowledge
that we may sometimes cure disordered emotions by giving expression to
them; and that they often gain strength when pent up within our own
breast. It is not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be
condemned. For there may be a gratification of the higher as well as of
the lower—thoughts which are too deep or too sad to be expressed by
ourselves, may find an utterance in the words of poets. Every one would
acknowledge that there have been times when they were consoled and
elevated by beautiful music or by the sublimity of architecture or by
the peacefulness of nature. Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier
part of the Republic, that the arts might have the effect of
harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind; but in the Tenth Book he
regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only ‘What good
have they done?’ and is not satisfied with the reply, that ‘They have
given innocent pleasure to mankind.’

He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets, since he
has found by the analysis of the soul that they are concerned with the
inferior faculties. He means to say that the higher faculties have to
do with universals, the lower with particulars of sense. The poets are
on a level with their own age, but not on a level with Socrates and
Plato; and he was well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a
rule of life by any process of legitimate interpretation; his ironical
use of them is in fact a denial of their authority; he saw, too, that
the poets were not critics—as he says in the Apology, ‘Any one was a
better interpreter of their writings than they were themselves. He
himself ceased to be a poet when he became a disciple of Socrates;
though, as he tells us of Solon, ‘he might have been one of the
greatest of them, if he had not been deterred by other pursuits’ (Tim.)
Thus from many points of view there is an antagonism between Plato and
the poets, which was foreshadowed to him in the old quarrel between
philosophy and poetry. The poets, as he says in the Protagoras, were
the Sophists of their day; and his dislike of the one class is
reflected on the other. He regards them both as the enemies of
reasoning and abstraction, though in the case of Euripides more with
reference to his immoral sentiments about tyrants and the like. For
Plato is the prophet who ‘came into the world to convince men’—first of
the fallibility of sense and opinion, and secondly of the reality of
abstract ideas. Whatever strangeness there may be in modern times in
opposing philosophy to poetry, which to us seem to have so many
elements in common, the strangeness will disappear if we conceive of
poetry as allied to sense, and of philosophy as equivalent to thought
and abstraction. Unfortunately the very word ‘idea,’ which to Plato is
expressive of the most real of all things, is associated in our minds
with an element of subjectiveness and unreality. We may note also how
he differs from Aristotle who declares poetry to be truer than history,
for the opposite reason, because it is concerned with universals, not
like history, with particulars (Poet).

The things which are seen are opposed in Scripture to the things which
are unseen—they are equally opposed in Plato to universals and ideas.
To him all particulars appear to be floating about in a world of sense;
they have a taint of error or even of evil. There is no difficulty in
seeing that this is an illusion; for there is no more error or
variation in an individual man, horse, bed, etc., than in the class
man, horse, bed, etc.; nor is the truth which is displayed in
individual instances less certain than that which is conveyed through
the medium of ideas. But Plato, who is deeply impressed with the real
importance of universals as instruments of thought, attributes to them
an essential truth which is imaginary and unreal; for universals may be
often false and particulars true. Had he attained to any clear
conception of the individual, which is the synthesis of the universal
and the particular; or had he been able to distinguish between opinion
and sensation, which the ambiguity of the words (Greek) and the like,
tended to confuse, he would not have denied truth to the particulars of
sense.