Timaeus — Plato

tJie painter or poet. 3 1 1 What do you mean? Republic x. I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of Socrates, view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, ^'''^^'^<^'^ and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference whose an is ^ * . one of imitain reality.

And the same of all things. tion or ap- Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent. pearanceand , , , a 'ong way Now let me ask you another question : Which is the art of removed from painting designed to be — an imitation of things as they are, '^*^ ^''"^^' or as they appear — of appearance or of reality ? Of appearance.

Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and Any one who can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part ti^ng^does of them, and that part an image.

For example : A painter only a very will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he ^^^^ ^^^^ ^ knows nothing of their arts ; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are' looking at a real carpenter. Certainly.

And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man Any one who who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody ^no'^"^^*" knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of ac- things is igcuracy than any other man — whoever tells us this, I think "r'^^nauire^of that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is knowledge, likely to have been deceiv^ed by some wizard or "actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

Most true. And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians. And he who and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all ^""^'^^f ' ' such unithings human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, versaiknowfor that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows ^ ^^ ^° * ^ 2poets IS his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can similarly never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them ; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that 599 these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, deceived.

A question to be asked of Homer :

Republic X. Socrates, Glaucon.

He who could make the original would not make the image.

If Homer had been a legislator, or general, or inventor, 3because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well? The question, he said, should by all means be considered. Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch?

Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his hfe, as if he had nothing higher in him? I should say not. The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations ; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair ; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.

Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honour and profit.

Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer; not about medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer: we are not going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at second-hand ; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them.

' Friend Homer,' then we say to him, ' if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third — not an image maker or imitator — and if you are able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what State was ever better governed by your help?

The good order of Lacedaemon is due to I.ycurgus, and many other cities great and small have been similarly benefited by others ; but who says that you have been a good legislator to them and have done them any good? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us ; but what city has anything to say about you? ' Is there any city which he might name? I think not, said Glaucon ; not even the Homerids themselves pretend that he was a legislator.