Phaedrus — Plato

p. 233"As for the words, there will be no difference between words that are and are not set to music ; both will conform to the same laws, and these have been already determined by us.*' / Now the melody or harmony and the rhythm will depend /upon the words. Harmony is first considered. As lamentations and strains of sorrow were forbidden, so harmonies which are expressive of sorrow must be banished.

Likewise since the guardians must be temperate and not hear examples of drunkenness and indolence in poetry or song, clrinking melodies must be banished. There are two kinds of harmony which Socrates would allow.

He says : ] I want to have onewarlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man^ifcers in the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance ; and another J^ , which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity — expressive of entreaty or persuasion, of prayer to God, or instruction of man, or again, of willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty and advice ; and which represents him when he has accomplished his aim, not carried away by success, but acting moderately and wisely and acquiescing in the event.

These two harmonies I ask you to leave ; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance ; these, I say, leave. [As the harmonies which Socrates permits are very simple and do not require multiplicity of notes or a complex scale, there is no need for complex musical instruments.

He would allow only the lyreand harp in the city and the gl^epherd's pipe in the country. Rhythni is next considered.

Here as everywhere the answer to the question what shall be. permitted, must be determined by the end of education. ** We ought not to have complex or manifold systems of metre, but rather to discover what rhythms are the expressions of a courageous and harmonious life ; and the words should come first and the rhythms should be adapted to them. For, Socrates says:]

p. 234Our principle is thai rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words by them. Certainly, he said, they should follow the words. And the words and the character of the style should depend on the temper of the soul ? Yes. And everything else on the words ? Yes.

Then good language and harmony and grace and rhythm depend on simplicity, — I mean the simplicity of a truly an37 nobly ordered mind, not thaj other simplicity which is only a| euphemism for folly ? Very true, he replied. And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these their perpetual aim ? They must.

And all life is full of them, as well as every creative and constructive art ; the art of painting, weaving and embroidery, and building, and the manufacture of vessels, as well ^ as the frames of animals and of plants ; in all of them there is grace or the alienee of grace.

And absence of grace and inharmonious movement and discord are nearly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the sisters and images of goodness and virtue. That is quite true, he said. But is our superintendence to go no further, and are the poets only to be required by us to impress a good moral on their poems as the condition of writing poetry in our State ?

Or is the same control to be' exercised over other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other creative arts ; and is he who does not conform to this rule of ours to be prohibited from practicing his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him ?

We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace ; then will our youth dwell in a land of

THE REPUBLIC ^35 health, amid fair sights and sounds ;. and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason.

There can be no nobler training than that, he replied. ^^_^ Is not this, I said, the reason, Glaucon, why musical train- ^j ing is so powerful, because rhythm and harmony find their way I into the secret places of the soul,"dn which they mightily fasten, ' Bearing grace in their movemqjte, and making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated, or ungraceful if ill-educated ; and also because he who ms received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over, and receives into his. soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and ^^^l hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason of the thing ; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute her as a friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that these are the reasons why there should be a musical education.

Just as in learning to read, I said, we want to know the various letters in all their recurring sizes and combinations; not slighting them as unimportant whether they be large or small, but everywhere eager to make them out ; and are not supposed to be perfect in the art until we recognize them wherever they are found : True— Or, as we recognize the reflection of letters in the water, or in a mirror, only when we know the letters themselves ; the same art giving us the knowledge of both : Exactly — Even so, I have no hesitation in saying that neither we nor our guardians, whom we have to educate, can ever become \ / musical until we know the essential forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence, as well as the cognate and contrary forms, in all their combinations, and can recognize them and their images wherever they are found, not slighting them either in small things or great, but believing them all to be within the sphere of one art and study. Most assuredly.