[394d]
“What I meant then was just this, that we must
reach a decision whether we are to suffer our poets to narrate as imitators
or in part as imitators and in part not, and what sort of things in each
case, or not allow them to imitate1 at all.” “I
divine,” he said, “that you are considering whether we
shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “and perhaps even more than
that.2 For I
certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of
the argument blows,3 there
lies our course.”
1 Again in the special limited sense.
2 This seems to imply that Plato already had in mind the extension of the discussion in the tenth book to the whole question of the moral effect of poetry and art.
3 Cf. Theaetetus 172 D. But it is very naive to suppose that the sequence of Plato's argument is not carefully planned in his own mind. Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 5.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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