one kind or another. And, next,
the pleasures of the soul, being of the eternal order, are necessarily
more real than those of the body, which are fleeting--in fact, mere
shadows of pleasure.

Much as I love and admire Homer, I think our regulations as to poetry
were particularly sound; but we must inquire further into the meaning of
imitation. We saw before that all particular things are the
presentations of some universal idea. There is one ultimate idea of bed,
or chair, or table. What the joiner makes is a copy of that. All ideas
are the creation of the master artificer, the demiurge; of his creations
all material things are copies. We can all create things in a way by
catching reflections of them in a mirror. But these are only copies of
particular things from one point of view, partial copies of copies of
the idea. Such precisely are the creations of the painter, and in like
manner of the poet. What they know and depict is not the realities, but
mere appearances. If the poets knew the realities they would have left
us something other than imitations of copies. Moreover, what they
imitate is not the highest but the lower; not the truth of reason, but
emotions of all sorts, which it should be our business not to excite but
to control and allay. So we continue to prohibit the poetry which is
imitation, however supreme, and allow only hymns to the gods, and
praises of great men. We must no more admit the allurements of poesy
than the attractions of ambition or of riches.

Greater far are the rewards of virtue than all we have yet shown; for an
immortal soul should heed nothing that is less than eternal. "What, is
the soul then immortal? Can you prove that?" Yes, of a surety. In all
things there is good and evil; a thing perishes of its own corruption,
not of the corruption of aught external to it. If disease or injury of
the body cannot corrupt the soul, _a fortiori_ they cannot slay it; but
injustice, the corruption of the soul, is not induced by injury to the
body. If, then, the soul be not destroyed by sin, nothing else can
destroy it, and it is immortal. The number of existing souls must then
be constant; none perish, none are added, for additional immortal souls
would have to come out of what is mortal, which is absurd. Now, hitherto
we have shown only that justice is in itself best for the soul, but now
we see that its rewards, too, are unspeakably great. The gods, to whom
the just are known, will reward them