| Notes on Plato's |
| Notes on Plato's |
2. In trying to understand the word "imitative," we say that there are three "makers" of a bed: God makes the form "bed," a carpenter makes a material bed, and a painter makes a picture of a bed. 597b
3. The painter or the artist is an imitator of the other two "makers" of beds, and is thrice removed from the reality "bed." 597d
4. You may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. 598a
5. Whenever any one informs us that he has found a man knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man--whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation. 598d
6. If Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind--if he had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator--he would have had many followers, and been honoured and loved by them. But this is not the case. 600c
7. Artists beginning with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach. 600e
8. Knowledge of an object or process comes from the use of the object or process.601d
9.The rebellious elements within us furnish a great variety of materials for imitation, whereas the wise and calm temperament, being always nearly equable, is not easy to imitate or to appreciate when imitated, especially at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is assembled in a theatre. For the feeling represented is one to which they are strangers. 604e
10. We shall be right in refusing to admit the dissipative artist into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. 605b
11. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the dissipative artist implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small. He is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth.
12. It is not right to praise and admire a character in a work of fiction (drama, novel) who is doing something which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person. 605e
23. Dissipative art feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue. 606d
24. We can admit into our commonwealth only that entertainment which celebrates the approbation of the gods and of good men. 607a
25. All evils come to annihilation through their own corruption attaching to them and inhering in them and so destroying them. 609c
26. To see the soul as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity; and then her beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice and all the things which we have described will be manifested more clearly. 611c
27. This must be our notion of the just man, that even when he is in poverty or sickness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him in life and death: for the gods have a care of any one whose desire is to become just and to be like God, as far as man can attain the divine likeness, by the pursuit of virtue. 613a
28. A man must take with him into the world below an adamantine faith in truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and similar villainies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse himself; but let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness. 619a
29. According to the Myth of Er, in the after-life, persons make choices of future lives based on their moral capabilities. 619b
30. With some souls, even those who have lived former lives on earth, their virtue is a matter of habit only, and they have no philosophy. 619d
31. Some souls, coming from heaven, therefore never having been schooled by trial in an earthly life, make foolish choices of a future life.
32. Some souls, who had experienced previous lives on earth, having themselves suffered and seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose a next life. 619e
33. We shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled if we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. 621d
