[
377a]
of both, but first of the
false?” “I don't understand your meaning.”
“Don't you understand,” I said, “that we begin
by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but
there is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before
gymnastics.” “That is so.” “That,
then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before
gymnastics.” “You were right,” he said.
“Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the
chief thing,
1 especially for any creature that
is young and tender
2?
[
377b]
For
it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression
3 that one wishes to stamp
upon it.” “Quite so.” “Shall we,
then, thus lightly suffer
4 our
children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers
and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those
that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown
up?” “By no manner of means will we allow it.”
“We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship
[
377c]
over our storymakers, and what they do well we
must pass and what not, reject. And the stories on the accepted list we will
induce nurses and mothers to tell to the children and so shape their souls
by these stories far rather than their bodies by their hands. But most of
the stories they now tell we must reject.” “What sort of
stories?” he said. “The example of the greater
stories,” I said, “will show us the lesser also. For
surely the pattern must be the same and the greater and the less
[
377d]
must have a like tendency. Don't you think
so?” “I do,” he said; “but I don't
apprehend which you mean by the greater, either.”
“Those,” I said, “that Hesiod
5 and
Homer and the other poets related. These, methinks, composed false stories
which they told and still tell to mankind.” “Of what
sort?” he said; “and what in them do you find
fault?” “With that,” I said, “which
one ought first and chiefly to blame, especially if the lie is not a pretty
one.”
[
377e]
“What is
that?” “When anyone images badly in his speech the true
nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no
resemblance to his models.” “It is certainly right to
condemn things like that,” he said; “but just what do we
mean and what particular things?” “There is, first of
all,” I said, “the greatest lie about the things of
greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how
Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took
his revenge;