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168 PLATO S LIFE AND TIMES use the "humanities" as a vehicle for a really sound and liberal education, the attempts themselves he viewed with distrust. 25 This sense of the general inadequacy of such studies as litera ture, grammar, and rhetoric was doubtless reinforced by his own particular quarrel with the arts. To that quarrel we shall come presently. But for the moment suffice it to say that the same influences as led Plato to burn his own poetry, and, metaphorically speaking, at least, to throw aside his brush and break his lyre, brought him finally to the opinion that the function of all art should be moral edification, and that hence nothing should be read or heard that did not chasten and steel the soul and render her more austere and more de tached. Only, then, a highly censored and expurgated litera ture and music, at the best, could have found any place in his scheme. prev next |