with science, a scientific or learned imitation [iσTopɩKýν].' 75 In turn, disregarding the latter class of which the well-informed actor would be a representative, he assumes that the former includes the Sophist, thus again implying the comparison with other bad artists.

This creator of impressions without use of instrument, and without adequate knowledge of the original, may be either simple and serious, or dissembling and ironical. In turn, the latter, who again is the Sophist, may indulge in long or short speeches. The former is the haranguer as opposed to the true statesman and orator; the latter is the Sophist as opposed to the philosopher."

So the Sophist is at last cornered; but the significant fact is not that he has been placed in a particular category, but that he has been regarded as an artist like the painter and sculptor. This being so, we have the key to Plato's classification and theory of criticism of the fine arts. His method, indeed, justifies the assumption that what is true for the Sophist, a bad artist in dialectic, is equally true for his brother artist in poetry. For Plato the naturalistic painter is a Sophist; and the Sophist is a kind of painter of words. It is obvious, moreover, that this Sophist is also far removed from the king and from the truth. The true philosopher and the Sophist are at extremes. Then by analogy, if Sophist and bad artist are in the same category, one ought to be able to say something concerning Plato's conception of the highest poetry.

(1) The highest kind of creative activity is that whereby God made the universe according to a divine pattern. This function receives its most complete exposition in Plato's theology, especially in the myth of the Timaeus, where ideas are represented as existing in their purity only in the mind of God. According to the image of these he created the universe. This highest creative activity has no counterpart in 'acquisitive' activity.

(2) The second type of creation ascribed to God is the production of phantasms' in our dreams and visions. This is comparable, in the 'acquisitive' activity, to the vónois of Republic VI. We must remember, however, that this creation of phantasms is an activity of God, not of man. It results in the inspiration

of poet and prophet. This fury of the inspired madman—receiving these phantasms' from God through a power of phantasy of his own--is analogous to that dialectic which leads to the contemplation of Ideas: only in dialectic there is a striving to attain the idea, while in the operation of divine phantasy (God's creative activity) man is a passive recipient of impressions from above. It is significant, too, that Plato's inspired poets profess an inability to give adequate expression to their visions. They are true to type: the world of vónous is for Plato as for any mystic beyond human imagination. God alone is capable of its expression.

(3) The highest creative function of man, described as the making of things themselves, and typified in Republic VI in the making of the bed, would seem to correspond to Savoia in the processes of knowledge. And just as man in the field of acquisition' (кpηTK), the attainment of knowledge, employed hypothetical images, as in mathematics, so in creative art he uses similar images for its expression. This is to say that the highest human creation involves an act of imagination.' It is true that Plato nowhere explicitly recognizes this use of images in his discussion of creative art; and it is also true that save for a casual reference the distinction between 'imaginative' and 'phantastic' imitation is dismissed in this portion of the Sophist. But there is reason to believe that Plato would have us keep the distinction in mind; and that just as 'phantasy' and 'phantastic imitation' comprehended the lower forms of imagination,' so 'imagination' of a higher type was supposed to participate in the highest creative functions, the ideal aspects of the art of imitation. The carpenter, says Plato, creates the bed in the image of an idea, just as God creates the universe according to a divine pattern. The meaning will perhaps be clearer if we think of this carpenter as an architect aiming to express an immaterial ideal. In this sense the Parthenon or a cathedral is the image or embodiment of a religious conception, the likeness of a spiritual ideal; and the artist is expressing his ideal through the same power of imagination of which the scientist makes use in his schematic representations. Only the one is an aid to the attainment of ideas, the other to their expression. Imagination both in philosophy and poetry, in the science of thought, and in the art of expression, is the connecting link between the real and the ideal, between the realm of ideas and that of material objects.

77

It is imagination' in this more comprehensive sense which Plato has in mind in the Laws where he calls music not only 'imitative' but 'imaginative' (eikaσTIKη). All art is a process of making images; but this imitation is not to be judged by pleasure and false opinion,78 but rather by the ideality of the object and the faithfulness of the image. In this view all art is imitative; and good art is not only imitative of right objects, but is 'imaginative' rather than impressionistic and phantastic.' In this sense 'imaginative' is associated with the higher aspects of representative art; phantastic' only with the lower.

(4) Phantastic imitation' seems to be the creative activity corresponding to eixaoía; the one is the process of making shadows as the other is the process of knowing' by means of shadows. The phantastic' imitator has no higher concern than the production of impressions of material objects, just as the thinker who dwells in eikavia has no loftier conception of knowledge than the receiving of impressions. Each is concerned with opinion rather than knowledge, with things rather than ideas, with the changing rather than the absolute and eternal. The materialistic artist and the Sophist are both imitators of a distinctly inferior type, dwelling not only in a realm of images, shadows, but in a universe of untrustworthy impressions. Both are primarily interested in gazing at the shadows on the walls of the cave. Such art is to be distinguished from that imaginative imitation of a higher sort. It is the lowest kind of imaging with which the phantasy is concerned.

(5) Plato is no longer content to banish the Sophist and the naturalistic painter from the ideal state. They are to be judged not only by the idealistic standard, but also by the standards which their own practice suggests. If the artist imitates material reality, he must be judged according to his knowledge of what he imitates and his attitude towards his subject. That imitator is most to be censured who knows least about the reality which he pretends to represent, and who is ironical rather than simple and direct in his presentation. Judged by this standard, Plato's Sophist is worthy of most censure, and so, we might add, is the painter who with little knowledge of nature insincerely describes on the canvas the impression created in his own mind, trying in turn to stimulate a

"2. 668; Jowett, 5. 47.

13

T3 2. 667 E.

similar impression in the mind of another. Or Plato might have had in mind that 'phantastic' painter of words who, in love with his own half ironical, half-serious conception, insists on giving it artistic expression in the popular lecture or treatise. The comprehensiveness of Plato's method of criticism would bring them under the same condemnation with the cheap public orator, the descriptive poet, and perhaps more than one modern dramatist. Indeed, a modern application of his method of criticism would result in some interesting comparisons.

(6) It would also unite at the other extreme the statesman and the dialectician as having chosen, according to this classification, the highest aims and means. Thus the dialectician as a kind of creator would be called a creator of ideas, not of things or impressions, with knowledge of the original, simply and directly, using short rather than long speeches. He is as far from the Sophist as possible.

In such terms Plato would describe himself as the creator of the Dialogues, thus indicating his use of ideal means, both of acquiring knowledge and of expression, as opposed to the quite unideal science and art of the great popular philosophers of the day. In the same way the ideal statesman of the Republic would be the opposite of the street orator and public haranguer, the natural political products of the Sophistical schools. Plato's dialectician and statesman would be imaginative' men, concerned with the contemplation and expression of the ideal, rather than creators of impressions. These would be both thinkers and creators in the realm of Stávola; for both dialogue and state are the result of κρηтkýν and TоTIKηv, philosophy and poetry, thought and expression. The Republic is a perfect embodiment of Plato's conception of Stávola as a kind of thought which makes use of images, and an imaginative imitation which is the comparable activity of the creative faculty making use of images. By the use of hypothetical images we attain the idea of the perfect state; by means of similar images a dialogue is created, the image of the ideal which the author has in mind. The state which Plato imagines is thus the imitation' of that ideal state which exists in the mind of philosopher and statesman alike. Thus the censure of Sophist and painter, studied in the light of the Platonic method of criticism, leads to a constructive theory of imagination' as a creative

power, and justifies us in calling the Republic 'imaginative' in Plato's sense in both conception and execution.

(7) It is noteworthy that the dramatist is not specifically mentioned as a dealer in phantasies.' It is indeed hard to think of an art essentially so objective as peculiarly liable to the charge of subjectivism. One is inclined to say that Plato felt that drama was on a higher plane than impressionistic painting and sophistry. It is essentially imaginative' rather than phantastic." "

We are prone, then, to ask what in Plato's art takes the place of the drama so severely arraigned in the Republic. A bad play, according to the scheme of the Sophist, would be a copy of the acts of individuals as they appear to be, with no universal insight into character, and by means of ironical speeches. This is, of course, "phantastic imitation.' What would constitute in drama imitation of the higher sort? It would be an imitation of men and women, not as they seem to be, but as they actually are, not as particular persons, but as ideals. The artist must have adequate knowledge of human nature; and express his ideals simply and directly. Plato's imaginative dramatist could hardly have been concerned with characters who possessed tragic flaws, or with situations to which the hero was unequal. His universal type, even in tragedy, would sum up the highest qualities of dialectician, statesman, and poet. The suffering, quite undeserved, would result in admiration of the man-who would be no particular individual, but the incarnation of the poet's ideal. Thus Plato would probably have regarded Prometheus Bound as better drama than Oedipus Rex. He would also, I think, point to his own Dialogues which deal with the trial and death of Socrates as examples of truly imaginative drama, expressions of universal truth through images of flesh and blood. His Socrates is not the historical character, but the incarnation of Plato's ideal of the good man, the last events in whose life furnish the material for perfect tragedy.

Such is Plato's view of imagination in the service of reason. necessary both in thought and its artistic embodiment. Imagination aids reason in arriving at universal ideas, and in turn in giving to them concrete expression. As yet, however, there is no theory comparable to that notion of Wordsworth that imagination is

"He, may, however, regard drama as subjective in Rep. X (602 D).