Republic

Shall we, then, lay it down that all the poetic tribe, beginning with Homer,[*](Cf. 366 E. Gorg. 471 C-D, Symp. 173 D.) are imitators of images of excellence and of the other things that they create,[*](Or about which they versify, playing with the double meaning of ποιεῖν.) and do not lay hold on truth? but, as we were just now saying, the painter will fashion, himself knowing nothing of the cobbler’s art, what appears to be a cobbler to him and likewise to those who know nothing but judge only by forms and colors[*](For the association of χρώματα and σχήματα Cf. Phileb. 12 E. 47 A, 51 B, Laws 669 A, Soph. 251 A, Meno 75 A with Apelt’s note, Cratyl. 431 C, Gorg. 465 B, Phaedo 100 D, Aristot. Poet. 1447 a 18-19.)?Certainly.And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases[*](Cf. Symp. 198 B, Apol. 17 C. The explicit discrimination of ὀνόματα as names of agents and ῥήματα as names of actions is peculiar to Soph. 262. But Cf. Cratyl. 431 B, 425 A, Theaet. 206 D. And in Soph. 257 B ῥήματι is used generally. See Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 56-57. Cf. Euthydem. 304 E with Symp. 187 A, Phaedr. 228 D, 271 C and my note in Class. Phil. xvii. (1922) p. 262.) the colors of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words,[*](Cf. What Plato Said, p. 593 on Soph. 240 A.) will deem his words most excellent, whether he speak in rhythm, meter and harmony about cobbling or generalship or anything whatever. So mighty is the spell[*](Cf. 607 C, Laws 840 C, Protag. 315 A-B.) that these adornments naturally exercise; though when they are stripped bare of their musical coloring and taken by themselves,[*](Cf. Gorg. 502 C εἴ τις περιέλοι τῆς ποιήσεως πάσης τό τε μέλος καὶ τὸν ῥυθμόν, 392, Ion 530 b, Epicharmus apud Diog. Laert. iii. 17 περιδύσας τὸ μέτρον ὃ νῦν ἔχει, Aeschines, In Ctes. 136 περιελόντες τοῦ ποιητοῦ τὸ μέτρον, Isoc. Evag. 11 τὸ δὲ μέτρον διαλύσῃ with Horace, Sat. i. 4. 62 invenias etiam disiecti membra poetae, Aristot. Rhet. 1404 a 24 ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγοντες εὐήθη διὰ τὴν λέξιν ἐδόκουν πορίσασθαι τήνδε τὴν δόξαν. Sext. Empir., Bekker, pp. 665-666 (Adv. Math. ii. 288), says that the ideas of poets are inferior to those of the ordinary layman. Cf. also Julian, Or. ii. 78 D, Coleridge, Table Talk: If you take from Virgil his diction and metre what do you leave him?) I think you know what sort of a showing these sayings of the poets make. For you, I believe, have observed them.I have, he said. Do they not, said I, resemble the faces of adolescents, young but not really beautiful, when the bloom of youth abandons them?[*](Aristot. Rhet. 1406 b 36 f. refers to this. Cf. Tyrtaeus 8 (6). 28 ὄφρ’ ἐρατῆς ἥβης ἀγλαὸν ἄνθος ἔχῃ, Mimnermus i. 4 ἥβης ἄνθη γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα; Theognis 1305: παιδείας πλουηράτου ἄνθος ὠκύτερον σταδίου Xen. Symp. 8. 14 τὸ μὲν τῆς ὥρας ἄνθος ταχὺ δήπου παρακμάζει, Plato, Symp. 183 E τῷ τοῦ σώματος ἄνθει λήγοντι ) By all means, he said. Come, then, said I, consider this point: The creator of the phantom, the imitator, we say, knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance. Is not that so? Yes. Let us not, then, leave it half said but consider it fully. Speak on, he said. The painter, we say, will paint both reins and a bit. Yes. But the maker[*](The δέ γε has almost the effect of a retort.) will be the cobbler and the smith. Certainly. Does the painter, then, know the proper quality of reins and bit? Or does not even the maker, the cobbler and the smith, know that, but only the man who understands the use of these things, the horseman[*](Cf. Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1094 a 10-11 καθάπερ ὑπὸ τὴν ἱππικὴν ἡ χαλινοποιικὴ. . .)? Most true. And shall we not say that the same holds true of everything? What do you mean? That there are some three arts concerned with everything, the user’s art,[*](For the idea that the user knows best see Cratyl. 390 B, Euthydem. 289 B, Phaedr. 274 E. Zeller, Aristotle(Eng.) ii. p. 247, attributes this pertinent observation to Aristotle. Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1277 b 30 αὐλητὴς ὁ χρώμενος. See 1282 a 21, 1289 a 17. Coleridge, Table Talk: In general those who do things for others know more about them than those for whom they are done. A groom knows more about horses than his master. But Hazlitt disagrees with Plato’s view.) the maker’s, and the imitator’s. Yes. Now do not the excellence, the beauty, the rightness[*](So in Laws 669 A-B, Plato says that the competent judge of a work of art must know three things, first, what it is, second, that it is true and right, and third, that it is good.) of every implement, living thing, and action refer solely to the use[*](For the reference of beauty to use see Hipp. Maj. 295 C ff.) for which each is made or by nature adapted? That is so. It quite necessarily follows, then, that the user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and that he reports to the maker the good or bad effects in use of the thing he uses. As, for example, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serve rightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made, and the other will obey and serve him. Of course. The one, then, possessing knowledge, reports about the goodness or the badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them. Yes.

Then in respect of the same implement the maker will have right belief[*](πίστιν ὀρθήν is used because of πιστεύων above. It is a slightly derogatory synonym of δόξαν ὀρθήν below, 602 A. Cf. 511 E.) about its excellence and defects from association with the man who knows and being compelled to listen to him, but the user will have true knowledge.Certainly.And will the imitator from experience or use have knowledge whether the things he portrays are or are not beautiful and right, or will he, from compulsory association with the man who knows and taking orders from him for the right making of them, have right opinion[*](This does not contradict book V. 477-478. For right opinion and knowledge cf. 430 B and What Plato Said, p. 517, on Meno 98 A-B.)?Neither.Then the imitator will neither know nor opine rightly concerning the beauty or the badness of his imitations.It seems not.Most charming,[*](χαρίεις is ironical like χαριέντως in 426 A and καλόν in Theaet. 183 A, but Glaucon in his answer takes it seriously.) then, would be the state of mind of the poetical imitator in respect of true wisdom about his creations.Not at all.Yet still he will none the less[*](Note the accumulation of particles in the Greek. Similarly in 619 B, Phaedo 59 D, 61 E, 62 B, 64 A, Parmen. 127 D, Demosth. xxiii. 101, De cor. 282, Pind. Pyth. iv. 64 A, Isoc. Peace 1, Aristot. De gen. et corr. 332 a 3, Iliad vii. 360.) imitate, though in every case he does not know in what way the thing is bad or good. But, as it seems, the thing he will imitate will be the thing that appears beautiful to the ignorant multitude.Why, what else?On this, then, as it seems, we are fairly agreed, that the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning of the things he imitates, but that imitation is a form of play,[*](Cf. on 536 C, p. 214, note b.) not to be taken seriously,[*](Cf. 608 A.) and that those who attempt tragic poetry, whether in iambics or heroic verse,[*](For ἐν ἔπεσι cf. 607 A, 379 A, Meno 95 D.) are all altogether imitators.By all means.In heaven’s name, then, this business of imitation is concerned with the third remove from truth, is it not?Yes.And now again, to what element[*](The antithesis of περί and πρός marks the transition.) in man is its function and potency related?Of what are you speaking?Of this: The same magnitude, I presume, viewed from near and from far[*](Cf. Protag. 356 A, 523 C.) does not appear equal.Why, no.And the same things appear bent and straight[*](Cf. Tennyson (The Higher Pantheism) For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool. For the illusions of sense, and measurement as a means of correcting them Cf. Phileb. 41 E-42 A f., 55 E, Protag. 356 C-D, Euthyphro 7 C.) to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls. And so scene-painting in its exploitation[*](ἐπιθεμένη helps to personify σκιαγραφία. Cf. Gorg. 464 C.) of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft,[*](Adam’s leaves no magic art untried is misleading. ἀπολείπειν is here used as in 504 C. For the idiomatic οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει see p. 200, note b, on 533 A.) and so do jugglery and many other such contrivances.True.And have not measuring and numbering and weighing[*](Cf. Xen. Mem. i. 1. 9.) proved to be most gracious aids to prevent the domination in our soul of the apparently[*](Cf. Protag. 356 D ἡ τοῦ φαινομένου δύναμις ) greater or less or more or heavier, and to give the control to that which has reckoned[*](λογισάμενον: Cf. Laws 644 D, Crito 46 B.) and numbered or even weighed?Certainly.But this surely would be the function[*](Cf. Vol. I. p. 36, note a. Of course some of the modern connotations of function are unknown to Plato.) of the part of the soul that reasons and calculates.[*](For λογιστικοῦ cf. on 439 D.)Why, yes, of that.And often when this has measured[*](See p. 448, note c, and my Platonism and the History of Science, p. 176.) and declares that certain things are larger or that some are smaller than the others or equal, there is at the same time an appearance of the contrary.Yes.And did we not say[*](436 B, Vol. I. p. 383.) that it is impossible for the same thing at one time to hold contradictory opinions about the same thing?And we were right in affirming that.