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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind; but
in the Tenth Book he regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He
asks only 'What good have they done?' and is not satisfied with the reply,
that 'They have given innocent pleasure to mankind.'
He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets, since he has
found by the analysis of the soul that they are concerned with the inferior
faculties. He means to say that the higher faculties have to do with
universals, the lower with particulars of sense. The poets are on a level
with their own age, but not on a level with Socrates and Plato; and he was
well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a rule of life by any
process of legitimate interpretation; his ironical use of them is in fact a
The Republic |
