Pagina 465 de 1391

Plato does not seriously intend to expel poets from life and

society. But he feels strongly the unreality of their writings;

he is protesting against the degeneracy of poetry in his own day

as we might protest against the want of serious purpose in modern

fiction, against the unseemliness or extravagance of some of our

poets or novelists, against the time-serving of preachers or

public writers, against the regardlessness of truth which to the

eye of the philosopher seems to characterize the greater part of

the world. For we too have reason to complain that our poets and

novelists 'paint inferior truth' and 'are concerned with the

inferior part of the soul'; that the readers of them become what

they read and are injuriously affected by them. And we look in

vain for that healthy atmosphere of which Plato speaks,-'the

beauty which meets the sense like a breeze and imperceptibly

draws the soul, even in childhood, into harmony with the beauty

of reason.'