[68] Plato, Republic, iii. pp. 400-401.
[69] Plato, Republic, iii. p. 401 C-D.
Effect of musical training of the mind — makes youth love the Beautiful and hate the Ugly.
This indeed (continues Sokrates) is the principal benefit arising from musical tuition, that the internal mind of a youth becomes imbued with rhythm and harmony. Hence he learns to commend and be delighted with the beautiful, and to hate and blame what is ugly; before he is able to render any reason for his sentiments: so that when mature age arrives, his sentiments are found in unison with what reason enjoins, and already predisposed to welcome it.[70] He becomes qualified to recognise the Forms of Temperance, Courage, Liberality, Magnanimity, and their embodiments in particular persons. To a man brought up in such sentiments, no spectacle can be so lovely as that of youths combining beauty of mental disposition with beauty of exterior form. He may indeed tolerate some defects in the body, but none in the mind.[71] His love, being genuine and growing out of musical and regulated contemplations, will attach itself to what is tempered and beautiful; not to the intense pleasures of sense, which are inconsistent with all temperance. Such will be the attachments subsisting in our city, and such is the final purpose of musical training — To generate love of the Beautiful.[72]
[70] Plato, Republic, iii. p. 402 A.
[71] Plato, Republic, iii. p. 402 D-E.
[72] Plato, Republic, iii. p. 403 C. δεῖ δέ που τελευτᾷν τὰ μουσικὰ εἰς τὰ τοῦ καλοῦ ἐρωτικά.
Training of the body — simple and sober. No refined medical art allowed. Wounds or temporary ailments treated; but sickly frames cannot be kept alive.
We next proceed to gymnastic training, which must be simple, for the body — just as our musical training was simple for the mind. We cannot admit luxuries and refinements either in the one or in the other. Our gymnastics must impart health and strength to the body, as our music imparts sobriety to the mind.[73] We shall require few courts of justice and few physicians. Where many of either are needed, this is a proof that ill-regulated minds and diseased bodies abound. It would be a disgrace to our Guardians if they could not agree on what is right and proper among themselves, without appealing to the decision of others. Physicians too are only needed for wounds or other temporary and special diseases. We cannot admit those refinements of the medical art, and that elaborate nomenclature and classification of diseases, which the clever sons of Æsculapius have invented, in times more recent than Æsculapius himself.[74] He knew, but despised, such artifices; which, having been devised chiefly by Herodikus, serve only to keep alive sickly and suffering men — who are disqualified for all active duty through the necessity of perpetual attention to health, — and whose lives are worthless both to themselves and to the city. In our city, every man has his distinct and special function, which he is required to discharge. If he be disqualified by some temporary ailment, the medical art will be well employed in relieving and restoring him to activity: but he has no leisure to pass his life as a patient under cure, and if he be permanently unfit to fill his place in the established cycle of duties, his life ought not to be prolonged by art, since it is useless to himself and useless to the city also.[75] Our medical treatment for evils of the body, and our judicial treatment for evils of the mind, must be governed by analogous principles. Where body and mind are sound at bottom, we must do our best to heal temporary derangements: but if a man has a body radically unsound, he must be suffered to die — and if he has a mind unsound and incurable, he must be put to death by ourselves.[76]
[73] Plato, Republic, iii. p. 404 B.