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Still less, then, will he be able to combine the practice of any worthy pursuit with the imitation of many things and the quality of a mimic; since, unless I mistake, the same men cannot practise well at once even the two forms of imitation that appear most nearly akin, as the writing of tragedy and comedyAt the close of the Symposium Socrates constrains Agathon and Aristophanes to admit that one who has the science (τέχνη) of writing tragedy will also be able to write comedy. There is for Plato no contradiction, since poetry is for him not a science or art, but an inspiration.? Did you not just now call these two imitations? I did, and you are right in saying that the same men are not able to succeed in both, nor yet to be at once good rhapsodistsThe rhapsode Ion is a Homeric specialist who cannot interpret other poets. Cf. Ion 533 C. and actors. True. But neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comediesCf. Classical Review, vol. xiv. (1900), pp. 201 ff.—and all these are imitations, are they not? Yes, imitations. And to still smaller coinageCf. Laws 846 E, Montaigne, Nostre suffisance est detaillée à menues pièces, Pope, Essay on Criticism, 60: One science only will one genius fit, So vast is art, so narrow human wit. than this, in my opinion, Adeimantus, proceeds the fractioning of human faculty, so as to be incapable of imitating many things or of doing the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses. Most true, he replied. If, then, we are to maintain our original principle, that our guardians, released from all other crafts, are to be expert craftsmen of civic liberty,Cf. the fine passage in Laws 817 B ἡμεῖς ἐσμεν τραγωδίας αὐτοὶ ποιηταί, [Pindar] apud Plut. 807 C δημιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης. and pursue nothing else that does not conduce to this, it would not be fitting for these to do nor yet to imitate anything else. But if they imitate they should from childhood upCf. 386 A. imitate what is appropriate to themi.e., δημιουργοῖς ἐλευθερίας —men, that is, who are brave, sober, pious, free and all things of that kind; but things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor yet any other shameful thing, lest from the imitation they imbibe the reality.Cf. 606 B, Laws 656 B, 669 B-C, and Burke, Sublime and Beautiful iv. 4, anticipating James, Psychology ii. pp. 449, 451, and anticipated by Shakespeare’s (Cor. III. ii. 123) By my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) natureCf. my paper on Φύσις, Μελέτη, Ἐπιστήμη, T.A.P.A. vol. xl. (1910) pp. 185 ff. in the body, the speech, and the thought? Yes, indeed, said he. We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation—still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor. Most certainly not, he replied. Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves. No, not that either.
