[411a]
“Certainly.” “And that of the ill adjusted
is cowardiy and rude?” “It surely
is.”“Now when a man
abandons himself to music to play1 upon him and pour2 into his
soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and
dirge-like airs of which we were just now3 speaking, and gives his entire
time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that
the principle of high spirit, if he had it,
[411b]
is softened like iron4 and is made useful instead of useless
and brittle. But when he continues5 the practice without remission
and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefies6 till he completely dissolves
away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes
of himself a 'feeble warrior.'7” “Assuredly,”
he said. “And if,” said I, “he has to begin
with a spiritless8 nature he reaches this result
quickly, but if high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable,
[411c]
quickly irritated by slight stimuli,
and as quickly quelled. The outcome is that such men are choleric and
irascible instead of high-spirited, and are peevish and
discontented.” “Precisely so.” “On
the other hand, if a man toils hard at gymnastics and eats right lustily and
holds no truck with music and philosophy, does he not at first get very fit
and full of pride and high spirit and become more brave and bold than he
was?” “He does indeed.” “But what if
he does nothing but this and has no contact with the Muse in any way,
[411d]
is not the result that even if there
was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of
no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion
or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it
is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and
quickened?” “That is so,” he said.
“And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologist9 and stranger to the Muses. He no longer makes
any use of persuasion by speech but achieves all his ends
[411e]
like a beast by violence and savagery, and in
his brute ignorance and ineptitude lives a life of disharmony and
gracelessness.” “That is entirely true,” he
said. “For these two, then, it seems there are two arts which I
would say some god gave to mankind, music and gymnastics for the service of
the high-spirited principle and the love of knowledge in them—not
for the soul and the body except incidentally, but for the harmonious
adjustment of these two principles
1 Cf. 561 C.
2 Demetrius,Περὶ Ἑρμ. 51, quotes this and the following sentence as an example of the more vivid expression following the less vivid. For the image cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Thesm. 18, Aeschylus Choeph. 451, Shakespeare, CymbelineIII. ii. 59 “Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing.”
3 Cf. 398 D-E, where the θρηνώδεις ἁρμονίαι are rejected altogether, while here they are used to illustrate the softening effect of music on a hard temperament. It is misspent ingenuity to harp on such “contradictions.”
4 For images drawn from the tempering of metals cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 612 and Jebb on Sophocles Ajax 650.
5 Cf. Theaetetus 165 Eἐπέχων καὶ οὐκ ἀνιείς, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Peace 1121.
6 Cf. Tennyson's “Molten down in mere uxoriousness” (Geraint and Enid).
7 A familiar Homeric reminiscence (Iliad xvii. 588) quoted also in Symposium 174 C. Cf. Froissart's “un mol chevalier.”
8 Etymologically ἄθυμος="deficient in θυμός.”
9 A hater of rational discussion, as explained in Laches 188 C, and the beautiful passage in the Phaedo 89 D ff. Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 14. 6 “Igitur nobis providendum est ne odio identidem sermonum laboremus.” John Morley describes obscurantists as “sombre hierophants of misology.”
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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