Such art has no need of 'imagination' in any sense in which Plato has yet defined it.

But even in the Symposium it seems as if there is place for this higher type of imagination just described. For there the true order of going . . . is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only.' 25 Surely the use of the image in the service of the understanding would have constituted no unimportant step. But neither in the Symposium nor in the Republic is there an explicit theory of the symbolic imagination in fine art. The materials, however, for such a theory were at hand. It is alone surprising that the scientist and the mathematician had been specifically recognized as men of imagination before the painter and the poet. The latter were still concerned with that lower kind of imagemaking, eikaơía, rather than with the creation of images in the service of conceptual thought.

In the allegorical myth immediately following this description, at the beginning of Book VII, it is the artist who is contemplated throughout in the account of the worker in eixaría, making likenesses of material objects. And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials. . . ?' 26 The activity of the sculptor thus becomes the type of the lowest art. Judged by the Socratic ideal, a person pleased with such shadows has no true vision. The truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.' 27 As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to imagination [eikaoía].' 28

The first impulse of the disciple of Parmenides is to deny that the world of sense-impressions exists, and hence to regard phantasies and images as unreal. Once it is seen, however, that the world of things cannot be so easily ignored, the next impulse is to substitute a dualism in which the two realms are sharply divorced. Then comes the attempt to bring them together, to explain one in terms of the other. Of this impulse Plato seems to give evidence in the Symposium. In Republic VI-VII, however, is the first

2211 C; Jowett, 1. 581. 2514 E; Jowett, 3. 214.

515 C; Jowett, 3. 215. 28 534 A; Jowett, 3. 237.

significant attempt to bridge the gulf,—and, especially significant for us, in terms of 'imagination.' It is important that Plato's psychology led him to assert that things could constitute for conceptual thought images of the higher realm of ideas. It is no great step to the position that the world of phenomena is an image of this ideal world.

But such a theory-especially in its bearing on fine art he is not ready to espouse. He insists, rather, throughout the Republic upon the transcendental character of Ideas. It is this dualism which is at the bottom of his attack upon the poets and painters in the tenth book. In the ideal state poetry is to have no place, for all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers. . . . The knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them.' 29 It is the aim of Socrates to show that they are not concerned with Ideas, the object of vónois, but with this lowest type of eiκaoía. This he proposes to do through a discussion of creative or poetic art in general. God creates in the highest sense when he brings into being the idea e. g. of bed.30 This is clearly in the realm of vónois. Now the carpenter can make a particular bed in accordance with the idea,' i. e. in keeping with his power to comprehend the general notion of bed; but no artificer makes the ideas themselves.' 31 This activity is clearly in the realm in which faith was said to operate; the artisan creates a material thing, which is only an image of a higher idea. A third class, however, comes forward, claiming to be creators in that they proclaim themselves capable of all the works of the other workmen, not only vessels of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and all other things-the earth and heaven, and the things which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the gods also.' 3 This can be done merely by turning a mirror around and around.33 Through such a process of piunois they too claim to be creators.

34

32

But this painter, or sculptor-or poet, especially if he be a dramatic poet, would be a maker of appearances only. Even the carpenter, for all his labor, could not make the idea which is

29 595 B; Jowett, 3. 307. 30 597 B; Jowett, 3. 309. 596 B; Jowett, 3. 308.

2596 C. $3 596 D.

596 E; Jowett, 3. 309.

the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed; his work was 'an indistinct expression of truth.' 35 How much less claim, then, has the painter to the designation of creator' (novpyóv), or even to that of 'poet' (won).36 Rather, both he and the tragic poet are imitators thrice removed from the king and from the truth.' 37 Thus the plastic arts and the drama in particular are to be censured as species of imitation, i. e. dealing with images or faint reflections of truth rather than with truth itself, with products of imagination rather than with ideas.

It is apparent that Plato has had in mind throughout the discussion the psychology of Book VI, and that he here deals with at least three of the four functions therein described. God's creative activity is the result of Divine Intelligence, to which man's highest capacity, vónois, at least faintly corresponds. It is the creative function analogous to the highest capacity for knowledge, the contemplation of God's creation in its eternal nature. The human 'maker' works in a realm imitative of this higher realm, that in which Tíoris is the chief faculty. The painter and the poet, imitating only the creations of others, concerned with the image of an image, are clearly in the realm of eixaría.38 Their imitations constitute image-making of this most material type, 'imagination' in its most literal sense. The plastic artists in general are thus seemingly depreciated as imitative or imaginative. The latter term suggests in Greek as well as in English 'the idea of a solid body-of "images" in the sense of the plaster-cast cry about the streets.'s These artists are makers of likenesses rather than contemplators of eternal ideas.

239

But a still more serious charge was to be brought against painting in particular—and, we may add, the plastic arts in general, and poetry as it is comparable. The painter, says Socrates, deals in 'phantasy' as well as in 'imagination.'

Plato makes nice use of the two terms. When he speaks of an

35 597 A.

597 D; Jowett, 3. 310.

87 597 E.

One might also have added by way of anticipation that the function of diávoia would be represented in the constructive scientist who studies phenomena in order to 'create' a general law.

39

Leigh Hunt, What is Poetry? ed. by A. S. Cook, p. 33.

image, he is thinking of the correspondence of the likeness to the original, whether idea or material object. Thus the carpenter's bed and the picture of the bed are both images, although the former product is not brought under the term eixaría. His use of the terms pavraoía and þávтaopa, on the other hand, implies no necessary reference to an original, certainly never to one which is immaterial. Thus the artisan's bed may be called an 'image' but never a phantasm.' For these terms properly suggest the picture set up in the mind as the result of sensation, the individual appearance or impression, sometimes with no reference to its validity, often with a strong presumption of its unreliability. Thus reflections in the water and in mirrors are phantasies'; there is no assurance that the reflections are true, or that they will produce the same impressions in different individuals. They are in these respects typical of our mental processes; but they are also images of the external world. Hence the term 'phantasies,' comprehending for the most part these lower images,' could be used for the class as a whole, especially when one did not have in mind the correspondence to an original. Thus, although phantasies' belong under the general term 'images,' it is natural that the former should in the thought of Plato-and in Greek thought in general-come to be used as the comprehensive term.

Added impulse was given to this tendency when Socrates charged the painter with laboring in the field of 'phantasy.' He deals with objects, not as they are, but as they appear. To explain:

You may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same of all things. Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent.

Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting designed to be an imitation of things as they are, or as they appearof appearance [pavráoμaros] or of reality?

Of appearance."

The charge against the painter-and the sculptor and the dramatist-is that through phantasy they become subjective artists. Not only are they concerned with material objects rather than with ideas, but they insist upon reproducing this material world from

0598 B; Jowett, 3. 311.

their peculiar point of view. 'Imagination' leads the artist to deal with the material, the changing, the objects of opinion. 'Phantasy' leads him to an error still more serious: to deal with the individual and the relative. He is by so much farther from the absolute, unchanging ideal.

And the same objects appear straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water; " and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colors to which sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic." By phantasy' the vision of the artist is liable to be distorted. For phantasy' is prey to all those influences symbolized by the deceptive surface of the water, where a ripple is likely at any moment to distort the reflection, or by the relatively imperfect mirrors of the time, in a word, by man's lower appetitive nature. It will be remembered that Plato had already placed 'phantasy' in the irrational soul, the seat of the appetites and passions.

Moreover, the artist pursues his work with neither real knowledge nor true opinion about the goodness or badness of his imitations. He will know little of the art of healing or horsemanship when writing of these.

And still he will go on imitating without knowing what makes a thing good or bad, and may be expected therefore to imitate only that which appears to be good to the ignorant multitude."

Such in its relation to the theory of 'phantasy' and 'imagination is the substance of Plato's attack upon the fine arts, and especially upon dramatic poetry. The strictures, if taken literally, would seem to condemn the art of the Symposium and the Phaedrus, and belittle those very powers in virtue of which Plato is a creative artist. One would like to think, rather, that the censure of Homer and his fellow-artists is put into the mouth of Socrates to indicate what logically ought to be said about fine art if the Eleatic doctrine of the One were to be consistently applied. This would make the Republic, or at least the tenth book, in part an

"See above, p. 6.

602 C, D; Jowett, 3. 316. 3602 B.