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Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier part of the Republic,

that the arts might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of

enervating the mind; but in the Tenth Book he regards them

through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only 'What good have

they done?' and is not satisfied with the reply, that 'They have

given innocent pleasure to mankind.'

He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets,

since he has found by the analysis of the soul that they are

concerned with the inferior faculties. He means to say that the

higher faculties have to do with universals, the lower with

particulars of sense. The poets are on a level with their own

age, but not on a level with Socrates and Plato; and he was well

aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a rule of life by

any process of legitimate interpretation; his ironical use of

them is in fact a denial of their authority; he saw, too, that

the poets were not critics-as he says in the Apology, 'Any one

was a better interpreter of their writings than they were

themselves.