l should have
any interest apart from the interests of the State. Private interests
clash with those of the community, and must therefore be abolished.
The individual can possess no property either in material things, or
in the members of his family. This involves the community of goods,
community of wives, and the State ownership of children from their
birth.

6. Views upon Art.

In modern times aesthetics is recognized as a separate division of
philosophy. This was not the case in Plato's time, and yet his
opinions upon art cannot be fitted into either dialectic, physics, or
ethics. On the other hand, they cannot be ignored, and there is
nothing for it, therefore, but to treat them as a sort of appendix
{230} to his philosophy. Plato has no systematic theory of art, but
only scattered opinions, the most important of which will now be
mentioned.

Most modern theories of art are based upon the view that art is an end
in itself, that the beautiful has, as such, absolute value, and not
value merely as a means to some further end. Upon such a view, art is
recognized as autonomous within its own sphere, governed only by its
own laws, judged only by its own standards. It cannot be judged, as
Tolstoi would have us believe, by the standard of morals. The
beautiful is not a means to the good. They may be indeed, ultimately
identical, but their identity cannot be recognized till their
difference has been admitted. Nor can one be subordinated to the
other.

Now this view of art finds no place at all in Plato's thought. Art is,
for him, absolutely subservient both to morals and to philosophy. That
it subserves morality we see from the "Republic," where only that
poetry is allowed which inculcates virtue, and only because it
inculcates virtue. It is no sufficient justification of a poem to
plead that it is beautiful. Beautiful or not, if it does not subserve
the ends of morality, it is forbidden. Hence too the preposterous
notion that its exercise is to be controlled, even in details, by the
State. That this would mean the utter destruction of art either did
not occur to Plato, or if it did, did not deter him. If poetry cannot
exist under the yoke of morality, it must not be allowed to exist at
all. That art is merely a means to philosophy is even more evident.
The end of all education is the knowledge of the Ideas, and every
other subject, science, mathematics, art, is introduced into the {231}
educational curriculum so