Section 601

Shall we, then, lay it down that all the poetic tribe, beginning with Homer, 1 are imitators of images of excellence and of the other things that they create, 2 and do not lay hold on truth? but, as we were just now saying, the painter will fashion, himself knowing nothing of the cobbler’s art, what appears to be a cobbler to him and likewise to those who know nothing but judge only by forms and colors 3 ? Certainly. And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases 4 the colors of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words, 5 will deem his words most excellent, whether he speak in rhythm, meter and harmony about cobbling or generalship or anything whatever. So mighty is the spell 6 that these adornments naturally exercise; though when they are stripped bare of their musical coloring and taken by themselves, 7 I think you know what sort of a showing these sayings of the poets make. For you, I believe, have observed them. I have, he said. Do they not, said I, resemble the faces of adolescents, young but not really beautiful, when the bloom of youth abandons them? 8 By all means, he said. Come, then, said I, consider this point: The creator of the phantom, the imitator, we say, knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance. Is not that so? Yes. Let us not, then, leave it half said but consider it fully. Speak on, he said. The painter, we say, will paint both reins and a bit. Yes. But the maker 9 will be the cobbler and the smith. Certainly. Does the painter, then, know the proper quality of reins and bit? Or does not even the maker, the cobbler and the smith, know that, but only the man who understands the use of these things, the horseman 10 ? Most true. And shall we not say that the same holds true of everything? What do you mean? That there are some three arts concerned with everything, the user’s art, 11 the maker’s, and the imitator’s. Yes. Now do not the excellence, the beauty, the rightness 12 of every implement, living thing, and action refer solely to the use 13 for which each is made or by nature adapted? That is so. It quite necessarily follows, then, that the user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and that he reports to the maker the good or bad effects in use of the thing he uses. As, for example, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serve rightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made, and the other will obey and serve him. Of course. The one, then, possessing knowledge, reports about the goodness or the badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them. Yes.