vice and intemperance
and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other
creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be
prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our
citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our guardians grow up
amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there
browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little
by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in
their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to
discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our
youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and
receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair
works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze
from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years
into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.

There can be no nobler training than that, he replied.

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent
instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way
into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten,
imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated
graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he
who has received this true education of the inner being will most
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a
true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his
soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and
hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to
know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute
the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that our youth should
be trained in music and on the grounds which you mention.

Just as in learning to read, I said, we were satisfied when we knew the
letters of the alphabet, which are very few, in all their recurring
sizes and combinations; not slighting them as unimportant whether they
occupy a space large or small, but everywhere eager to make them out;
and not thinking ourselves perfect in the art of reading until we
recognise them wherever they are found:

True--

Or, as we recognise the reflection of letters in the water, or in a
mirror, only