The Republic — Plato
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admonition, or on the other hand, when he is expressing his wilUngness to yield to persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents him when by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not carried away by his success, but acting moderately and wisely under the circumstances, 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. And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian harmonies of which I was just now speaking.
Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our songs and melodies, we shall not want multiplicity of notes or a panharmonic scale ? I suppose not. Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with three corners and complex scales, or the makers of any other manystringed, curiously harmonized instruments? Certainly not. But what do you say to fliute-makers and flute-players?
Would you admit them into our State when you reflect that in this composite use of harmony the flute is worse than all the stringed instruments put together; even the panharmonic music is only an imitation of the flute? Clearly not. There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in the city, and the shepherds may have a pipe in the country. That is surely the conclusion to be drawn from the argument.
The preferring of Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas and his instruments is not at all strange, I said. Not at all, he replied. And so, by the dog of Egypt, we have been unconsciously purging the State, which not long ago we termed luxurious. And we have done wisely, he replied. Then let us now finish the purgation, I said.
Next in order to harmonies, rhythms will naturally follow, and they should be subject to the same rules, for we ought not to seek out complex systems of metre, or metres of every kind, but rather to discover what rhythms are the expressions of a courageous and harmonious life ; and when we have found them, we shall adapt the foot and the melody to words having a Hke spirit, not the words to the foot and melody. To say what these rhythms are will be your duty — you must teach me them, as you have already taught me the harmonies. But, indeed, he replied, I cannot tell you.
I only know that there are some three principles of rhythm out of which metrical systems are framed, just as in sounds there are four notes ^ out of which all the harmonies are composed ; that is an observation which I have made. But of what sort of lives they are severally the imitations I am unable to say.
Then, I said, we must take Damon into our counsels; and he will tell us what rhythms are expressive of meanness, or insolence, or fury, or other unworthiness, and what are to be reserved for the expression of opposite feelings.
And I think that I have an indistinct recollection of his mentioning a complex Cretic rhythm ; also a dactylic or heroic, and he arranged them in some manner which I do not quite understand, making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of the foot, long and short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken, he spoke of an iambic as well as of a trochaic rhythm, and assigned to them short and long quantities.^ Also in some cases he appeared to praise or censure the movement of the foot quite as much as the rhythm ; or perhaps a combination of the two ; for I am not certain what he meant.
These matters, however, as I was saying, had better be referred to Damon himself, for the analysis of the subject would be difficult, you know? Rather so, I should say. But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the absence of grace is an effect of good or bad rhythm. None at all.
And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to a good and bad style; and that harmony and discord in like manner follow style ; for our principle is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words by them. Just so, he said, they should follow the words. And will not the words and the character of the style depend on the temper of the soul ? ' The four notes of the tetrachord.
' Socrates expresses himself carelessly in accordance with his assumed ignorance of the details of the subject. In the first part of the sentence he appears to be speaking of pEfonic rhythms which are in the ratio of 3 to 2 ; in the second part, of dactylic and anapaestic rhythms, which are in the ratio of i to i ; in the last clause, of iambic and trochaic rhythms, which are in the ratio of i to 2 or 2 to i.
Yes. And everything else on the style ? Yes. Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity — I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly ? Very true, he replied. And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these graces and harmonies their perpetual aim? They must.
And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art are full of them — weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manufacture ; also nature, animal and vegetable — in all of them there is grace or the ab- k. sence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill-words and ill-nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness.
That is quite true, he said. But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required by us to expressjthe image of the good in their works, on pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State?
Or is the same control to be extended to 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 cannot conform to this rule of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him ?
We would not have our guardians growjjp 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 the beautiful and graceful ; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
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