Timaeus — Plato

by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul ; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated? Clearly.

And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways : first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth — in this, I say, he is like him ; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul ; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason.

As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small — he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth ^.

Exactly, But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation: — the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing ? Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say.

Hear and judge : The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in which he represents some pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or weeping, and smiting his breast — the best of us, you know, dehght in giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most. Yes, of course I know.

But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you may observe that we pride ourselves on the opposite quality — we would fain be quiet and patient ; this is the manly part, and the other which delighted us in the recitation is now deemed to be the part of a woman. Very true, he said. ^ Reading eWw/ioTTo^owra . . . a^zGiiiTa.

Now can we be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person? No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable. Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view. What point of view?

If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is satisfied and delighted by the poets ; — the better nature in each of us, not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another's ; and the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he is, and making a fuss about his troubles ; he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem too?

P"ew persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves. And so the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own. How very true! And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous?

There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness; — the case of pity is repeated;— there is a principle in human nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let out again ; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre, you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet at home.

Quite true, he said. And the same may be said of lu.st and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and plea.sure, which are held to be inseparable from every action — in all of them VOL. III. — 36

Republic X. Socrates, Glaucon.

We fail to observe that a sentimental pity soon creates a real weakness.

In like manner the love of comedymay turn a man into a buffoon.

p. 322

The old quarrel betiveen philosophy and poetry.

Republic X, Socrates, Glaucon.

We are lovers of Homer, but we must expel him from our State.

Apology to the poets.