Republic

And truly, I said, many other considerations assure me that we were entirely right in our organization of the state, and especially, I think, in the matter of poetry. What about it? he said. In refusing to admit at all so much of it as is imitative; for that it is certainly not to be received is, I think, still more plainly apparent now that we have distinguished the several parts of the soul. What do you mean? Why, between ourselves—for you will not betray me to the tragic poets and all other imitators—that kind of art seems to be a corruption of the mind of all listeners who do not possess, as an antidote a knowledge of its real nature. What is your idea in saying this? he said. I must speak out, I said, though a certain love and reverence for Homer that has possessed me from a boy would stay me from speaking. For he appears to have been the first teacher and beginner of all these beauties of tragedy. Yet all the same we must not honor a man above truth, but, as I say, speak our minds. By all means, he said. Listen, then, or rather, answer my question. Ask it, he said. Could you tell me in general what imitation is? For neither do I myself quite apprehend what it would be at. It is likely, then, he said, that I should apprehend!

It would be nothing strange, said I, since it often happens that the dimmer vision sees things in advance of the keener. That is so, he said; but in your presence I could not even be eager to try to state anything that appears to me, but do you yourself consider it. Shall we, then, start the inquiry at this point by our customary procedure? We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name. Do you not understand? I do. In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; for example, there are many couches and tables. Of course. But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table. Yes. And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he? By no means. But now consider what name you would give to this craftsman. What one? Him who makes all the things that all handicraftsmen severally produce. A truly clever and wondrous man you tell of. Ah, but wait, and you will say so indeed, for this same handicraftsman is not only able to make all implements, but he produces all plants and animals, including himself, and thereto earth and heaven and the gods and all things in heaven and in Hades under the earth. A most marvellous sophist, he said. Are you incredulous? said I. Tell me, do you deny altogether the possibility of such a craftsman, or do you admit that in a sense there could be such a creator of all these things, and in another sense not? Or do you not perceive that you yourself would be able to make all these things in a way? And in what way, I ask you, he said. There is no difficulty, said I, but it is something that the craftsman can make everywhere and quickly. You could do it most quickly if you should choose to take a mirror and carry it about everywhere. You will speedily produce the sun and all the things in the sky, and speedily the earth and yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and all the objects of which we just now spoke. Yes, he said, the appearance of them, but not the reality and the truth. Excellent, said I, and you come to the aid of the argument opportunely. For I take it that the painter too belongs to this class of producers, does he not? Of course. But you will say, I suppose, that his creations are not real and true. And yet, after a fashion, the painter too makes a couch, does he not? Yes, he said, the appearance of one, he too.

What of the cabinet-maker? Were you not just now saying that he does not make the idea or form which we say is the real couch, the couch in itself, but only some particular couch? Yes, I was. Then if he does not make that which really is, he could not be said to make real being but something that resembles real being but is not that. But if anyone should say that being in the complete sense belongs to the work of the cabinet-maker or to that of any other handicraftsman, it seems that he would say what is not true. That would be the view, he said, of those who are versed in this kind of reasoning. We must not be surprised, then, if this too is only a dim adumbration in comparison with reality. No, we must not. Shall we, then, use these very examples in our quest for the true nature of this imitator? If you please, he said. We get, then, these three couches, one, that in nature which, I take it, we would say that God produces, or who else? No one, I think. And then there was one which the carpenter made. Yes, he said. And one which the painter. Is not that so? So be it. The painter, then, the cabinet-maker, and God, there are these three presiding over three kinds of couches. Yes,three. Now God,whether because he so willed or because some compulsion was laid upon him not to make more than one couch in nature, so wrought and created one only, the couch which really and in itself is. But two or more such were never created by God and never will come into being. How so? he said. Because, said I, if he should make only two, there would again appear one of which they both would possess the form or idea, and that would be the couch that really is in and of itself, and not the other two. Right, he said. God, then, I take it, knowing this and wishing to be the real author of the couch that has real being and not of some particular couch, nor yet a particular cabinet-maker, produced it in nature unique. So it seems. Shall we, then, call him its true and natural begetter, or something of the kind? That would certainly be right, he said, since it is by and in nature that he has made this and all other things. And what of the carpenter? Shall we not call him the creator of a couch? Yes. Shall we also say that the painter is the creator and maker of that sort of thing? By no means. What will you say he is in relation to the couch? This, said he, seems to me the most reasonable designation for him, that he is the imitator of the thing which those others produce. Very good, said I; the producer of the product three removes from nature you call the imitator? By all means, he said. This, then, will apply to the maker of tragedies also, if he is an imitator and is in his nature three removes from the king and the truth, as are all other imitators. It would seem so.

We are in agreement, then, about the imitator. But tell me now this about the painter. Do you think that what he tries to imitate is in each case that thing itself in nature or the works of the craftsmen? The works of the craftsmen, he said. Is it the reality of them or the appearance? Define that further point. What do you mean? he said. This: Does a couch differ from itself according as you view it from the side or the front or in any other way? Or does it differ not at all in fact though it appears different, and so of other things? That is the way of it, he said: it appears other but differs not at all. Consider, then, this very point. To which is painting directed in every case, to the imitation of reality as it is or of appearance as it appears? Is it an imitation of a phantasm or of the truth? Of a phantasm, he said. Then the mimetic art is far removed from truth, and this, it seems, is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object and that a phantom; as, for example, a painter, we say, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts, but nevertheless if he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe it to be a real carpenter. Why not? But for all that, my friend, this, I take it, is what we ought to bear in mind in all such cases: When anyone reports to us of someone, that he has met a man who knows all the crafts and everything else that men severally know, and that there is nothing that he does not know more exactly than anybody else, our tacit rejoinder must be that he is a simple fellow, who apparently has met some magician or sleight-of-hand man and imitator and has been deceived by him into the belief that he is all-wise, because of his own inability to put to the proof and distinguish knowledge, ignorance and imitation. Most true, he said. Then, said I, have we not next to scrutinize tragedy and its leader Homer, since some people tell us that these poets know all the arts and all things human pertaining to virtue and vice, and all things divine? For the good poet, if he is to poetize things rightly, must, they argue, create with knowledge or else be unable to create.

So we must consider whether these critics have not fallen in with such imitators and been deceived by them, so that looking upon their works they cannot perceive that these are three removes from reality, and easy to produce without knowledge of the truth. For it is phantoms, not realities, that they produce. Or is there something in their claim, and do good poets really know the things about which the multitude fancy they speak well? We certainly must examine the matter, he said. Do you suppose, then, that if a man were able to produce both the exemplar and the semblance, he would be eager to abandon himself to the fashioning of phantoms and set this in the forefront of his life as the best thing he had? I do not. But, I take it, if he had genuine knowledge of the things he imitates he would far rather devote himself to real things than to the imitation of them, and would endeavor to leave after him many noble deeds and works as memorials of himself, and would be more eager to be the theme of praise than the praiser. I think so, he said; for there is no parity in the honor and the gain. Let us not, then, demand a reckoning from Homer or any other of the poets on other matters by asking them, if any one of them was a physician and not merely an imitator of a physician’s talk, what men any poet, old or new, is reported to have restored to health as Asclepius did, or what disciples of the medical art he left after him as Asclepius did his descendants; and let us dismiss the other arts and not question them about them; but concerning the greatest and finest things of which Homer undertakes to speak, wars and generalship and the administration of cities and the education of men, it surely is fair to question him and ask, Friend Homer, if you are not at the third remove from truth and reality in human excellence, being merely that creator of phantoms whom we defined as the imitator, but if you are even in the second place and were capable of knowing what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what city was better governed owing to you, even as Lacedaemon was because of Lycurgus, and many other cities great and small because of other legislators. But what city credits you with having been a good legislator and having benefited them? Italy and Sicily say this of Charondas and we of Solon. But who says it of you? Will he be able to name any? I think not, said Glaucon; at any rate none is mentioned even by the Homerids themselves.

Well, then, is there any tradition of a war in Homer’s time that was well conducted by his command or counsel? None. Well, then, as might be expected of a man wise in practical affairs, are many and ingenious inventions for the arts and business of life reported of Homer as they are of Thales the Milesian and Anacharsis the Scythian? Nothing whatever of the sort. Well, then, if no public service is credited to him, is Homer reported while he lived to have been a guide in education to men who took pleasure in associating with him and transmitted to posterity a certain Homeric way of life just as Pythagoras was himself especially honored for this, and his successors, even to this day, denominating a certain way of life the Pythagorean, are distinguished among their contemporaries? No, nothing of this sort either is reported; for Creophylos, Socrates, the friend of Homer, would perhaps be even more ridiculous than his name as a representative of Homeric culture and education, if what is said about Homer is true. For the tradition is that Homer was completely neglected in his own lifetime by that friend of the flesh. Why, yes, that is the tradition, said I; but do you suppose, Glaucon, that, if Homer had really been able to educate men and make them better and had possessed not the art of imitation but real knowledge, he would not have acquired many companions and been honored and loved by them? But are we to believe that while Protagoras of Abdera and Prodicus of Ceos and many others are able by private teaching to impress upon their contemporaries the conviction that they will not be capable of governing their homes or the city unless they put them in charge of their education, and make themselves so beloved for this wisdom that their companions all but carry them about on their shoulders, yet, forsooth, that Homer’s contemporaries, if he had been able to help men to achieve excellence, would have suffered him or Hesiod to roam about rhapsodizing and would not have clung to them far rather than to their gold, and constrained them to dwell with them in their homes, or failing to persuade them, would themselves have escorted them wheresoever they went until they should have sufficiently imbibed their culture? What you say seems to me to be altogether true, Socrates, he said.

Shall we, then, lay it down that all the poetic tribe, beginning with Homer, are imitators of images of excellence and of the other things that they create, and do not lay hold on truth? but, as we were just now saying, the painter will fashion, himself knowing nothing of the cobbler’s art, what appears to be a cobbler to him and likewise to those who know nothing but judge only by forms and colors? Certainly. And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases the colors of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words, will deem his words most excellent, whether he speak in rhythm, meter and harmony about cobbling or generalship or anything whatever. So mighty is the spell that these adornments naturally exercise; though when they are stripped bare of their musical coloring and taken by themselves, I think you know what sort of a showing these sayings of the poets make. For you, I believe, have observed them. I have, he said. Do they not, said I, resemble the faces of adolescents, young but not really beautiful, when the bloom of youth abandons them? By all means, he said. Come, then, said I, consider this point: The creator of the phantom, the imitator, we say, knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance. Is not that so? Yes. Let us not, then, leave it half said but consider it fully. Speak on, he said. The painter, we say, will paint both reins and a bit. Yes. But the maker will be the cobbler and the smith. Certainly. Does the painter, then, know the proper quality of reins and bit? Or does not even the maker, the cobbler and the smith, know that, but only the man who understands the use of these things, the horseman? Most true. And shall we not say that the same holds true of everything? What do you mean? That there are some three arts concerned with everything, the user’s art, the maker’s, and the imitator’s. Yes. Now do not the excellence, the beauty, the rightness of every implement, living thing, and action refer solely to the use for which each is made or by nature adapted? That is so. It quite necessarily follows, then, that the user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and that he reports to the maker the good or bad effects in use of the thing he uses. As, for example, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serve rightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made, and the other will obey and serve him. Of course. The one, then, possessing knowledge, reports about the goodness or the badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them. Yes.

Then in respect of the same implement the maker will have right belief about its excellence and defects from association with the man who knows and being compelled to listen to him, but the user will have true knowledge. Certainly. And will the imitator from experience or use have knowledge whether the things he portrays are or are not beautiful and right, or will he, from compulsory association with the man who knows and taking orders from him for the right making of them, have right opinion? Neither. Then the imitator will neither know nor opine rightly concerning the beauty or the badness of his imitations. It seems not. Most charming, then, would be the state of mind of the poetical imitator in respect of true wisdom about his creations. Not at all. Yet still he will none the less imitate, though in every case he does not know in what way the thing is bad or good. But, as it seems, the thing he will imitate will be the thing that appears beautiful to the ignorant multitude. Why, what else? On this, then, as it seems, we are fairly agreed, that the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning of the things he imitates, but that imitation is a form of play, not to be taken seriously, and that those who attempt tragic poetry, whether in iambics or heroic verse, are all altogether imitators. By all means. In heaven’s name, then, this business of imitation is concerned with the third remove from truth, is it not? Yes. And now again, to what element in man is its function and potency related? Of what are you speaking? Of this: The same magnitude, I presume, viewed from near and from far does not appear equal. Why, no. And the same things appear bent and straight to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls. And so scene-painting in its exploitation of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft, and so do jugglery and many other such contrivances. True. And have not measuring and numbering and weighing proved to be most gracious aids to prevent the domination in our soul of the apparently greater or less or more or heavier, and to give the control to that which has reckoned and numbered or even weighed? Certainly. But this surely would be the function of the part of the soul that reasons and calculates. Why, yes, of that. And often when this has measured and declares that certain things are larger or that some are smaller than the others or equal, there is at the same time an appearance of the contrary. Yes. And did we not say that it is impossible for the same thing at one time to hold contradictory opinions about the same thing? And we were right in affirming that.

The part of the soul, then, that opines in contradiction of measurement could not be the same with that which conforms to it. Why, no. But, further, that which puts its trust in measurement and reckoning must be the best part of the soul. Surely. Then that which opposes it must belong to the inferior elements of the soul. Necessarily. This, then, was what I wished to have agreed upon when I said that poetry, and in general the mimetic art, produces a product that is far removed from truth in the accomplishment of its task, and associates with the part in us that is remote from intelligence, and is its companion and friend for no sound and true purpose. By all means, said he. Mimetic art, then, is an inferior thing cohabiting with an inferior and engendering inferior offspring. It seems so. Does that, said I, hold only for vision or does it apply also to hearing and to what we call poetry? Presumably, he said, to that also. Let us not, then, trust solely to the plausible analogy from painting, but let us approach in turn that part of the mind to which mimetic poetry appeals and see whether it is the inferior or the nobly serious part. So we must. Let us, then, put the question thus: Mimetic poetry, we say, imitates human beings acting under compulsion or voluntarily, and as a result of their actions supposing themselves to have fared well or ill and in all this feeling either grief or joy. Did we find anything else but this? Nothing. Is a man, then, in all this of one mind with himself, or just as in the domain of sight there was faction and strife and he held within himself contrary opinions at the same time about the same things, so also in our actions there is division and strife of the man with himself? But I recall that there is no need now of our seeking agreement on this point, for in our former discussion we were sufficiently agreed that our soul at any one moment teems with countless such self-contradictions. Rightly, he said. Yes, rightly, said I; but what we then omitted must now, I think, be set forth. What is that? he said. When a good and reasonable man, said I, experiences such a stroke of fortune as the loss of a son or anything else that he holds most dear, we said, I believe, then too, that he will bear it more easily than the other sort. Assuredly. But now let us consider this: Will he feel no pain, or, since that is impossible, shall we say that he will in some sort be moderate in his grief? That, he said, is rather the truth.

Tell me now this about him: Do you think he will be more likely to resist and fight against his grief when he is observed by his equals or when he is in solitude alone by himself? He will be much more restrained, he said, when he is on view. But when left alone, I fancy, he will permit himself many utterances which, if heard by another, would put him to shame, and will do many things which he would not consent to have another see him doing. So it is, he said. Now is it not reason and law that exhorts him to resist, while that which urges him to give way to his grief is the bare feeling itself? True. And where there are two opposite impulses in a man at the same time about the same thing we say that there must needs be two things in him. Of course. And is not the one prepared to follow the guidance of the law as the law leads and directs? How so? The law, I suppose, declares that it is best to keep quiet as far as possible in calamity and not to chafe and repine, because we cannot know what is really good and evil in such things and it advantages us nothing to take them hard, and nothing in mortal life is worthy of great concern, and our grieving checks the very thing we need to come to our aid as quickly as possible in such case. What thing, he said, do you mean? To deliberate, I said, about what has happened to us, and, as it were in the fall of the dice, to determine the movements of our affairs with reference to the numbers that turn up, in the way that reason indicates would be the best, and, instead of stumbling like children, clapping one’s hands to the stricken spot and wasting the time in wailing, ever to accustom the soul to devote itself at once to the curing of the hurt and the raising up of what has fallen, banishing threnody by therapy. That certainly, he said, would be the best way to face misfortune and deal with it. Then, we say, the best part of us is willing to conform to these precepts of reason. Obviously. And shall we not say that the part of us that leads us to dwell in memory on our suffering and impels us to lamentation, and cannot get enough of that sort of thing, is the irrational and idle part of us, the associate of cowardice? Yes, we will say that. And does not the fretful part of us present many and varied occasions for imitation, while the intelligent and temperate disposition, always remaining approximately the same, is neither easy to imitate nor to be understood when imitated, especially by a nondescript mob assembled in the theater? For the representation imitates a type that is alien to them.

By all means. And is it not obvious that the nature of the mimetic poet is not related to this better part of the soul and his cunning is not framed to please it, if he is to win favor with the multitude, but is devoted to the fretful and complicated type of character because it is easy to imitate? It is obvious. This consideration, then, makes it right for us to proceed to lay hold of him and set him down as the counterpart of the painter; for he resembles him in that his creations are inferior in respect of reality; and the fact that his appeal is to the inferior part of the soul and not to the best part is another point of resemblance. And so we may at last say that we should be justified in not admitting him into a well-ordered state, because he stimulates and fosters this element in the soul, and by strengthening it tends to destroy the rational part, just as when in a state one puts bad men in power and turns the city over to them and ruins the better sort. Precisely in the same manner we shall say that the mimetic poet sets up in each individual soul a vicious constitution by fashioning phantoms far removed from reality, and by currying favor with the senseless element that cannot distinguish the greater from the less, but calls the same thing now one, now the other. By all means. But we have not yet brought our chief accusation against it. Its power to corrupt, with rare exceptions, even the better sort is surely the chief cause for alarm. How could it be otherwise, if it really does that? Listen and reflect. I think you know that the very best of us, when we hear Homer or some other of the makers of tragedy imitating one of the heroes who is in grief, and is delivering a long tirade in his lamentations or chanting and beating his breast, feel pleasure, and abandon ourselves and accompany the representation with sympathy and eagerness, and we praise as an excellent poet the one who most strongly affects us in this way. I do know it, of course. But when in our own lives some affliction comes to us, you are also aware that we plume ourselves upon the opposite, on our ability to remain calm and endure, in the belief that this is the conduct of a man, and what we were praising in the theatre that of a woman. I do note that. Do you think, then, said I, that this praise is rightfully bestowed when, contemplating a character that we would not accept but would be ashamed of in ourselves, we do not abominate it but take pleasure and approve? No, by Zeus, he said, it does not seem reasonable.