there is neither right nor
wrong, neither 'yours' nor 'mine,' nor natural privilege, nor natural
subjection, that may not be argued equally for or against. Why be in
such a hurry to pay one's debt, to attend one's mother, to bring a given
sacrifice?"

"He reasons away social order, for he declares the slave as good as his
master, woman equal to man, and even the people competent to govern
itself. 'Why should not the tanner, the lampseller, or the mealman, who
knows his own business so well, know that of the State too?'"

"He ignores the function of poetry, which is to see beauty, and to
create it: for he places utility above grace, truth above all beauty. He
drags human squalor on to the scene because he recognizes its existence.
The world of the poet's fancy, that world into which he was born, does
not exist for him. He spoils his art as well as his life, carving back
to bull what another had carved into a sphinx."

"How are such proceedings to be dealt with? They appeal to the mob. The
mob is not to be swayed by polished arguments or incidental hints. We
don't scare sparrows with a Zeus' head, though the eagle may recognize
it as his lord's. A big Priapus is the figure required."

"And this," so Aristophanes resumes his defence, "comedy supplies.
Comedy is the fit instrument of popular conviction: and the wilder, the
more effective: since it is the worship of life, of the originative
power of nature; and since that power has lawlessness for its apparent
law. Even Euripides, with his shirkings and his superiority, has been
obliged to pay tribute to the real. He could not shake it off all at
once. He tacked a Satyric play to some five of his fifty trilogies: and
if this was grim enough at first, he threw off the mask in Alkestis,
showing how one could be indecent in a decent way."[44]

For the reasons above given, which he farther expands and illustrates,
Aristophanes chooses the "meaner muse" for his exponent. "And who, after
all, is the worse for it? Does he strangle the enemies of the truth? No.
He simply doses them with comedy, _i.e._ with words. Those who offend in
words he pays back in them, exaggerating a little, but only so as to
emphasize what he means; just as love and hate use each other's terms,
because those proper to themselves have grown unmeaning from constant
use. And what is the ground of difference between Balaustion and
himself? Slender enough, in all probability, as he could show her, if
they w