Timaeus — Plato
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IVAjy was Plato the cnony of the poets ? clix may ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, Republic X. or by the feehng of home which he introduces ; and there have Introducbeen modern painters who have imparted such an ideal in- ^'°'^' terest to a blacksmith's or a carpenter's shop.
The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can give dignity and pathos to a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed [Rembrandt], to the hull of a vessel 'going to its last home' [Turner]. Still more would ^ this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to be the visible embodiment of the divine.
Had Plato been asked whether the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was the imitation of an imitation only, would he not have been compelled to admit that something more was to be found in them than in the form of any mortal ; and that the rule of proportion to which they conformed was 'higher far than any geometry or arithmetic could express?' (Statesman, 257 A.) Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express the emotional rather than the rational part of human nature.
He does not admit Aristotle's theory, that tragedy or other serious imitations are a purgation of the passions by pity and fear ; to him they appear only to afford the opportunity of indulging them. Yet we must acknowledge that we may sometimes cure disordered emotions by giving expression to them ; and that they often gain strength when pent up within our own breast. It is not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be condemned.
For there may be a gratification of the higher as well as of the lower — thoughts which are too deep or too sad to be expressed by ourselves, may find an utterance in the words of poets. Every one would acknowledge that there have been times when they were consoled and elevated by beautiful music or by the sublimity of architecture or by the peacefulness of nature.
Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier part of the Republic, that the arts might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind ; but in the Tenth Book he regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only * What good have they done ? ' and is not satisfied with the reply, that * They have been of use, or have given pleasure to mankind.
He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets, since he has found by the analysis of the soul that they are concerned with the inferior faculties. He means to say that clx Why was Plato the enemy of the poets ? Republic X. thc higher faculties have to do with universals, the lower with Introduc- ' particulars of sense.
Thc poets are on a level with their own age, but not on a level with Socrates and Plato ; and he was well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a rule of life by any process of legitimate interpretation ; his ironical use of them is in fact a denial of their authority ; he saw, too, that the poets were not critics — as he says in the Apology, * Any one was a better interpreter of their writings than they were themselves ' (22 C).
He himself ceased to be a poet when he became a disciple of Socrates; though, as he tells us of Solon, *he might have been one of the greatest of them, if he had not been deterred by other pursuits' (Tim. 21 C). Thus from many points of view there is an antagonism between Plato and the poets, which was foreshadowed to him in the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
The poets, as he says in the Protagoras (316 E), were the Sophists of their day; and his dislike of the one class is reflected on the other. He regards them both as the enemies of reasoning and abstraction, though in the case of Euripides more with reference to his immoral sentiments about tyrants and the like.
For Plato is the prophet 1 who ' came into the world to convince men ' — first of the fallibility ( of sense and opinion, and secondly of the reality of abstract ideas. Whatever strangeness there may be in modern times in opposing philosophy to poetry, which to us seem to have so many elements in common, the strangeness will disappear if we conceive of poetry as allied to sense, and of philosophy as equivalent to thought and abstraction.
Unfortunately the very word ' idea,' which to Plato is expressive of the most real of all things, is associated in our minds with an element of subjectiveness and unreality. We may note also how he differs from Aristotle who declares ; poetry to be truer than history, for the opposite reason, because it is concerned with universals, not like history, with particulars (Poet. c. 9, 3).
The things which are seen are opposed in Scripture to the things which are unseen — they are equally opposed in Plato to universals and ideas. To him all particulars appear to be floating about in a world of sense ; they have a taint of error or even of evil. There is no difficulty in seeing that this is an illusion ; for there is no more error or variation in an individual man, horse.
JV/tjf was Plato the enemy of the poets ? clxi bed, etc. , than in the classes to which they respectively belong ; nor Repubik x. is the truth which is displayed in individual instances less certain Introducthan that which is conveyed through the medium of ideas.
But '^'°''* Plato, who is deeply impressed with the real importance of universal as instruments of thought, attributes to them an essential truth which is imaginary and unreal ; for universals may be often false and particulars true.
Had he attained to any clear conception of the individual, which is the synthesis of the universal and the particular ; or had he been able to distinguish between opinion and sensation, which the ambiguity of the words 66^a^ <(>aiveadai, elude and the like, tended to confuse, he would not have denied truth to the particulars of sense.
But the poets are also the representatives of falsehood and feigning in all departments of life and knowledge, like the sophists and rhetoricians of the Gorgias and Phaedrus ; they are the false priests, false prophets, lying spirits, enchanters of the world. There is another count put into the indictment against them by Plato, that they are the friends of the tyrant, and bask in the sunshine of his patronage.
Despotism in all ages has had an apparatus of false ideas and false teachers at its service — in the history of Modern Europe as well as of Greece and Rome. For no government of men depends solely upon force ; without some corruption of literature and morals — some appeal to the imagination of the masses — some pretence to the favour of heaven — some element of good giving power to evil (cp. i.
352), tyranny, even for a short time, cannot be maintained. The Greek tyrants were not insensible to the importance of awakening in their cause a Pseudo-Hellenic feeling ; they were proud of successes at the Olympic games ; they were not devoid of the love of literature and art.
Plato is thinking in the first instance of Greek poets who had graced the courts of Dionysius or Archelaus: and the old spirit of freedom is roused within him at their prostitution of the Tragic Muse in the praises of tyranny. But his prophetic eye extends beyond them to the false teachers of other ages who are the creatures of the government under which they live.
He compares the corruption of his contemporaries with the idea of a perfect society, and gathers up into one mass of evil the evils and errors of mankind; to him they are personified in the VOL. III. II
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