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The Republic by Plato
page 55 of 789 (06%)
innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived by evil-doers,
because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and therefore the judge
should be of a certain age; his youth should have been innocent, and he
should have acquired insight into evil not by the practice of it, but by
the observation of it in others. This is the ideal of a judge; the
criminal turned detective is wonderfully suspicious, but when in company
with good men who have experience, he is at fault, for he foolishly
imagines that every one is as bad as himself. Vice may be known of virtue,
but cannot know virtue. This is the sort of medicine and this the sort of
law which will prevail in our State; they will be healing arts to better
natures; but the evil body will be left to die by the one, and the evil
soul will be put to death by the other. And the need of either will be
greatly diminished by good music which will give harmony to the soul, and
good gymnastic which will give health to the body. Not that this division
of music and gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for they are
both equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused
and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with
their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much
gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper
which has too much music becomes enervated. While a man is allowing music
to pour like water through the funnel of his ears, the edge of his soul
gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited element is melted out
of him. Too little spirit is easily exhausted; too much quickly passes
into nervous irritability. So, again, the athlete by feeding and training
has his courage doubled, but he soon grows stupid; he is like a wild beast,
ready to do everything by blows and nothing by counsel or policy. There
are two principles in man, reason and passion, and to these, not to the
soul and body, the two arts of music and gymnastic correspond. He who
mingles them in harmonious concord is the true musician,--he shall be the
presiding genius of our State.
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