[401a]
and
in all similar craftsmanship1—weaving is full of
them and embroidery and architecture and likewise the manufacture of
household furnishings and thereto the natural bodies of animals and plants
as well. For in all these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness
and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper
but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober
and good disposition.” “Entirely so,” he said.
[401b]
“Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel
to embody in their poems the semblance of the good character or else not
write poetry among us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and
forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the
illiberal, the graceless, either in the likeness of living creatures or in
buildings or in any other product of their art, on penalty, if unable to
obey, of being forbidden to practise their art among us, that our guardians
may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were
[401c]
in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely
and cropping from many such day by day they little by little and all
unawares accumulate and build up a huge mass of evil in their own souls. But
we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable
of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men,
dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all
things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty
may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome
places health,
[401d]
and so from earliest
childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with
beautiful reason.” “Yes,” he said,
“that would be far the best education for them.”
“And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,” said I,
“that education in music is most sovereign,2 because
more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul
and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if
one is rightly trained,
[401e]
and otherwise
the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in
things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was
properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste3 rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take
delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and
become himself beautiful and good.
1 The following page is Plato's most eloquent statement of Wordsworth's, Ruskin's, and Tennyson's gospel of beauty for the education of the young. He repeats it in Laws 668 B. Cf. my paper on “Some Ideals of Education in Plato's Republic,”Educational Bi-monthly, vol. ii. (1907-1908) pp. 215 ff.
2 Schopenhauer, following Plato, adds the further metaphysical reason that while the other arts imitate the external manifestations of the universal Will, music represents the Will itself.
3 Cf. 362 B, 366 C, 388 A, 391 E, and Ruskin's paradox that taste is the only morality.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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