Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [210]
CLEINIAS: Just so.
ATHENIAN: Thus, too, I should say that learning has a certain accompanying charm which is the pleasure; but that the right and the profitable, the good and the noble, are qualities which the truth gives to it.
CLEINIAS: Exactly.
ATHENIAN: And so in the imitative arts--if they succeed in making likenesses, and are accompanied by pleasure, may not their works be said to have a charm?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: But equal proportions, whether of quality or quantity, and not pleasure, speaking generally, would give them truth or rightness.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: Then that only can be rightly judged by the standard of pleasure, which makes or furnishes no utility or truth or likeness, nor on the other hand is productive of any hurtful quality, but exists solely for the sake of the accompanying charm; and the term 'pleasure' is most appropriately applied to it when these other qualities are absent.
CLEINIAS: You are speaking of harmless pleasure, are you not?
ATHENIAN: Yes; and this I term amusement, when doing neither harm nor good in any degree worth speaking of.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Then, if such be our principles, we must assert that imitation is not to be judged of by pleasure and false opinion; and this is true of all equality, for the equal is not equal or the symmetrical symmetrical, because somebody thinks or likes something, but they are to be judged of by the standard of truth, and by no other whatever.
CLEINIAS: Quite true.
ATHENIAN: Do we not regard all music as representative and imitative?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Then, when any one says that music is to be judged of by pleasure, his doctrine cannot be admitted; and if there be any music of which pleasure is the criterion, such music is not to be sought out or deemed to have any real excellence, but only that other kind of music which is an imitation of the good.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: And those who seek for the best kind of song and music ought not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for that which is true; and the truth of imitation consists, as we were saying, in rendering the thing imitated according to quantity and quality.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And every one will admit that musical compositions are all imitative and representative. Will not poets and spectators and actors all agree in this?
CLEINIAS: They will.
ATHENIAN: Surely then he who would judge correctly must know what each composition is; for if he does not know what is the character and meaning of the piece, and what it represents, he will never discern whether the intention is true or false.
CLEINIAS: Certainly not.
ATHENIAN: And will he who does not know what is true be able to distinguish what is good and bad? My statement is not very clear; but perhaps you will understand me better if I put the matter in another way.
CLEINIAS: How?
ATHENIAN: There are ten thousand likenesses of objects of sight?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And can he who does not know what the exact object is which is imitated, ever know whether the resemblance is truthfully executed? I mean, for example, whether a statue has the proportions of a body, and the true situation of the parts; what those proportions are, and how the parts fit into one another in due order; also their colours and conformations, or whether this is all confused in the execution: do you think that any one can know about this, who does not know what the animal is which has been imitated?
CLEINIAS: Impossible.
ATHENIAN: But even if we know that the thing pictured or sculptured is a man, who has received at the hand of the artist all his proper parts and colours and shapes, must we not also know whether the work is beautiful or in any respect deficient in beauty?
CLEINIAS: If this were not required, Stranger, we should all of us be judges of beauty.
ATHENIAN: Very true; and may we not say that in everything imitated, whether in drawing, music, or any other art, he who is to be a competent judge must possess three things;--he must know, in the first place, of what the imitation