But Plato’s chief denunciation is reserved for the “mimetic” or imitative aspect of poetry. The poet teaches “posing.” Homer, when he described the siege of Troy, is posing as a skilled tactician (as his admirers often claimed that he was), when really the silence of history proves that he was nothing of the sort. So too the painter who represents a plough is posing as an authority upon agriculture: question him, and he will prove to be completely ignorant of the subject. Both poetry and painting are a fraud and a deception; by their pretence of knowledge, they encourage the mind in the habit, to which it is so prone, of accepting vague opinions as certainties without testing their truth.[712] They foster that belief in the sense-perceptions which it is the object of Platonic education to destroy.
But the poet not only poses himself: he makes his audience, his reader, his performer pose. The boy who recites the dying speech of Aias in Sophocles’ play is posing as Aias, pretending to be Aias, and adopting the tone and the traits of Aias. The boy who dances in the dithyramb Semelé is trying to enter into Semelé’s feelings and moods, being helped by the music and the gestures and the words.[713] Such posing, if begun in early years, will invade the character and change it: the boy will become like the personages whom he is accustomed to act. Hence Plato lays down strict laws dealing with the recitations and dances of the young.[714] “If they speak in character, it must only be in the character of those who are, what they themselves must be when they are grown up, brave, temperate, pious gentlemen. They must have no skill in taking unsuitable characters, lest from their dramatic representation of what is vulgar and base they become infected with the reality of vulgarity and baseness. For imitation, if begun in early years and carried far, sinks into a boy’s habits and nature, and influences his voice, his gestures, and his ideas.… So boys must not be allowed to take the character of a woman, young or old, abusing her husband or blaspheming against the gods or uttering lamentations,—certainly not of a woman in sickness or in love or in pangs; nor the character of slaves performing slavish duties; nor of bad men, cowards, insulting or mocking one another, using foul language, drunk or sober; nor yet of madmen.”[715] It will be seen that this will exclude much of Hellenic drama, especially of the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Comedy, according to Plato, should only be acted by foreigners, and should serve as an awful warning of everything that a gentleman ought not to do. The new music is subjected to similar rules. “Boys must not imitate blacksmiths at the forge, or craftsmen occupied in any trade, or sailors rowing, or boatswains giving them orders, or anything of the sort; nor yet horses neighing, or bulls roaring, or the noise of rivers or the sea or thunder or wind or hail or chariot-wheels or pulleys or trumpets or flutes or pipes …; nor the sounds made by dogs and sheep and birds.” So the proper style of poetry for educational purposes will be mostly narrative, with occasional dramatisation of virtuous men. To accompany this simplified and purified poetry only the Dorian and Phrygian “harmonies” will be required: all the others may be rejected. Simple instruments alone will be wanted: many-stringed lyres and the flute can be banished. The seven-stringed lyre and the shepherd’s pipe will be left.
Plato finds it too difficult to carry these principles into rhythm, since he is not an expert in the subject. But he thinks that the metres could be regulated in accordance with his canons; the expert Damon declared that some had a demoralising tendency.
As a whole, Plato’s aim is to restore Doric standards, to combat amateurism and dabbling, by which boys were made Jacks-of-all-trades, and above all to insist that the refined few ought to set the standard of taste in matters musical, literary, and artistic, not the unrefined many. With his view may be contrasted Perikles’ boast to the Athenian people, “We can all criticise adequately, if we cannot all invent,” and Aristotle’s belief that a crowd judges better than an individual because its judgment is compounded of many judgments.
But when we come to Aristotle the creative instinct of the Hellenic nation, apart from a few gifted individuals, is dead. To him and his contemporaries music and painting are no longer rendered necessary parts of education owing to the irresistible craving of an artistic temperament for expression. Listen to his theory. Painting gives boys an eye for beauty, and prevents them from being cheated in art-dealing: there is no inward compulsion to paint. Boys had better learn to sing and play, since children must needs make a noise. All they really need is the power of criticising professional music. This power, unluckily, cannot be acquired without personal study. But let them drop their music as soon as they can, or they might be mistaken for vulgar professionals. Such words could hardly have been addressed to a nation that was still musical and artistic. So Aristotle’s æsthetic criticism is really a study of the past, the discussion of a dead age. He has no natural affinity for such things himself: he prefers to sum up the opinions of experts. Consequently his remarks on the subject are scientific but no more; for a real appreciation of the Hellenic artistic and musical spirit it is necessary to go to Plato, who combated it so fiercely just because he was more in sympathy with it than suited his philosophic desires.
PLATE X. A.
IN A RIDING-SCHOOL
From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s Meisterschalen, Plate 53.
PLATE X. B.
