Plato, Laws 665a–669e: Book II: The three choirs of Apollo, the Muses and Dionysus; the education of taste in music

Ath. and that the order of motion is called “rhythm,” while the order of voice (in which acute and grave are blended together) is termed “harmony,” and to the combination of these two the name “choristry” is given. We stated also that the gods, in pity for us, have granted to us as fellow-choristers and choir-leaders Apollo and the Muses,—besides whom we mentioned, if we recollect, a third, Dionysus.

Clin. Certainly we recollect.

Ath. The choir of Apollo and that of the Muses have been described, and the third and remaining choir must necessarily be described, which is that of Dionysus.

Clin. How so? Tell us; for at the first mention of it, a Dionysiac choir of old men sounds mighty strange,—if you mean that men over thirty, and even men over fifty and up to sixty, are really going to dance in his honor.

Ath. That is, indeed, perfectly true. It needs argument, I fancy, to show how such a procedure would be reasonable.

Clin. It does.

Ath. Are we agreed about our previous proposals?

Clin. In what respect?

Ath. That it is the duty of every man and child—bond and free, male and female,—and the duty of the whole State, to charm themselves unceasingly with the chants we have described, constantly changing them and securing variety in every way possible, so as to inspire the singers with an insatiable appetite for the hymns and with pleasure therein.

Clin. Assuredly we would agree as to the duty of doing this.

Ath. Then where should we put the best element in the State,—that which by age and judgment alike is the most influential it contains,—so that by singing its noblest songs it might do most good? Or shall we be so foolish as to dismiss that section which possesses the highest capacity for the noblest and most useful songs?

Clin. We cannot possibly dismiss it, judging from what you now say.

Ath. What seemly method can we adopt about it? Will the method be this?

Clin. What?

Ath. Every man as he grows older becomes reluctant to sing songs, and takes less pleasure in doing so; and when compelled to sing, the older he is and the more temperate, the more he will feel ashamed. Is it not so?

Clin. It is.

Ath. Surely, then, he will be more than ever ashamed to get up and sing in the theater, before people of all sorts. Moreover, if old men like that were obliged to do as the choristers do, who go lean and fasting when training their voices for a competition, they would assuredly find singing an unpleasant and degrading task, and they would undertake it with no great readiness.

Clin. That is beyond a doubt.

Ath. How then shall we encourage them to take readily to singing? Shall we not pass a law that, in the first place, no children under eighteen may touch wine at all, teaching that it is wrong to pour fire upon fire either in body or in soul, before they set about tackling their real work, and thus guarding against the excitable disposition of the young? And next, we shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation, but that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire. Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and “incantations” (as we have often called them), in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Clin. Yes! much more ready.

Ath. So then, for the purpose of inducing them to take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

Clin. By no means.

Ath. What manner of song will the men raise? Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. What song, then, would suit godlike men? Would a choric song?

Clin. At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Ath. Naturally; for in truth you never attained to the noblest singing. For your civic organization is that of an army rather than that of city-dwellers, and you keep your young people massed together like a herd of colts at grass:

Ath. none of you takes his own colt, dragging him away from his fellows, in spite of his fretting and fuming, and puts a special groom in charge of him, and trains him by rubbing him down and stroking him and using all the means proper to child-nursing, that so he may turn out not only a good soldier, but able also to manage a State and cities—in short, a man who (as we said at the first) is more of a warrior than the warriors of Tyrtaeus, inasmuch as always and everywhere, both in States and in individuals, he esteems courage as the fourth in order of the virtues, not the first.

Clin. Once again, Stranger, you are—in a sort of a way—disparaging our lawgivers.

Ath. It is not intentionally, my friend, that I do so—if I am doing it but whither the argument leads us, thither, if you please, let us go. If we know of a music that is superior to that of the choirs or to that of the public theaters, let us try to supply it to those men who, as we said, are ashamed of the latter, yet are eager to take a part in that music which is noblest.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Now, in the first place, must it not be true of everything which possesses charm as its concomitant, that its most important element is either this charm in itself, or some form of correctness, or, thirdly, utility? For instance, meat and drink and nutriment in general have, as I say, for concomitant that charm which we should term pleasure; but as regards their correctness and utility, what we call the wholesomeness of each article administered is precisely the most perfect element they contain.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, which is pleasure; but that which produces its correctness and utility, its goodness and nobleness, is truth.

Clin. Quite so.

Ath. Then how about the imitative arts which produce likenesses? If they succeed in their productions, should not any concomitant pleasure which results therefrom be most properly called “charm”?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. But, speaking generally, the correctness of these things would be the result not, primarily, of pleasure, but of equality in respect of both quality and quantity.

Clin. Excellent.

Ath. Then we shall rightly judge by the criterion of pleasure that object only which, in its effects, produces neither utility nor truth nor similarity, nor yet harm, and which exists solely for the sake of the concomitant element of charm,—which element will best be named “pleasure” whenever it is accompanied by none of the other qualities mentioned.

Clin. You mean only harmless pleasure.

Ath. Yes, and I say that this same pleasure is also play, whenever the harm or good it does is negligible.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Should we not then assert, as a corollary, that no imitation should be judged by the criterion of pleasure or of untrue opinion, nor indeed should any kind of equality be so judged? The reason why the equal is equal, or the symmetrical symmetrical, is not at all because a man so opines, or is charmed thereby, but most of all because of truth, and least of all for any other reason.

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. We assert, do we not, that all music is representative and imitative?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. So whenever a man states that pleasure is the criterion of music, we shall decisively reject his statement; and we shall regard such music as the least important of all (if indeed any music is important) and prefer that which possesses similarity in its imitation of the beautiful.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Thus those who are seeking the best singing and music must seek, as it appears, not that which is pleasant, but that which is correct; and the correctness of imitation consists, as we say, in the reproduction of the original in its own proper quantity and quality.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And this is certainly true of music, as everyone would allow,—that all its productions are imitative and representative; that much, at least, they would all admit,—poets, audience, and actors alike, would they not?

Clin. They would.

Ath. Now the man who is to judge a poem unerringly must know in each particular case the exact nature of the poem; for if he does not know its essence,—what its intention is and what the actual original which it represents,—then he will hardly be able to decide how far it succeeds or fails in fulfilling its intention.

Clin. Hardly, to be sure.

Ath. And would a man who does not know what constitutes perfection be able to decide as to the goodness or badness of a poem? But I am not making myself quite clear: it might be clearer if I put it in this way—

Clin. In what way?

Ath. As regards objects of sight we have, of course, thousands of representations.

Clin. Yes.

Ath. How, then, if in this class of objects a man were to be ignorant of the nature of each of the bodies represented could he ever know whether it is perfectly executed? What I mean is this: whether it preserves the proper dimensions and the positions of each of the bodily parts, and has caught their exact number and the proper order in which one is placed next another, and their colors and shapes as well,—or whether all these things are wrought in a confused manner. Do you suppose that anyone could possibly decide these points if he were totally ignorant as to what animal was being represented?

Clin. How could he?

Ath. Well, suppose we should know that the object painted or moulded is a man, and know that art has endowed him with all his proper parts, colors, and shapes,—is it at once inevitable that the person who knows this can easily discern also whether the work is beautiful, or wherein it is deficient in beauty?

Clin. If that were so, Stranger, practically all of us would know what animals are beautiful.

Ath. You are quite right. In regard, then, to every representation—whether in painting, music or any other art—must not the judicious critic possess these three requisites: first, a knowledge of the nature of the original; next, a knowledge of the correctness of the copy; and thirdly, a knowledge of the excellence with which the copy is executed?

Clin. It would seem so, certainly.

Ath. Let us not hesitate, then, to mention the point wherein lies the difficulty of music. Just because it is more talked about than any other form of representation, it needs more caution than any. The man who blunders in this art will do himself the greatest harm, by welcoming base morals; and, moreover, his blunder is very hard to discern, inasmuch as our poets are inferior as poets to the Muses themselves. For the Muses would never blunder so far as to assign a feminine tune and gesture to verses composed for men, or to fit the rhythms of captives and slaves to gestures framed for free men, or conversely, after constructing the rhythms and gestures of free men, to assign to the rhythms a tune or verses of an opposite style. Nor would the Muses ever combine in a single piece the cries of beasts and men, the clash of instruments, and noises of all kinds, by way of representing a single object; whereas human poets, by their senselessness in mixing such things and jumbling them up together, would furnish a theme for laughter to all the men who, in Orpheus’ phrase, “have attained the full flower of joyousness.” For they behold all these things jumbled together, and how, also, the poets rudely sunder rhythm and gesture from tune, putting tuneless words into meter, or leaving time and rhythm without words, and using the bare sound of harp or flute, wherein it is almost impossible to understand what is intended by this wordless rhythm and harmony, or what noteworthy original it represents.