Page:Plato (IA platocollins00colliala).pdf/192

 Dialogue—the "Ion"—Socrates meets the rhapsodist of that name, and congratulates him upon having just won the prize for recitation at a public festival. "It must be a fine thing" (he says, with a tinge of irony) "to be always well dressed, and to study and recite passages from the prince of poets; but is Ion always master of his subject, and is his talent really an art at all? No" (Socrates goes on); "it must be inspiration—a magnetic influence, passing like an electric current from the loadstone of divine essence into the soul of the poet, and from thence into the souls of his hearers."

The simple-minded Ion is delighted at the idea of being inspired, and confesses that he does feel in a sort of ecstasy when he recites some striking passage—such as the sorrows of Andromache or Hecuba, or the scene where Ulysses throws off his rags, leaps on to the floor among the assembled suitors, and bends that terrible bow of his. "Then" (says Ion) "my eyes fill with tears, my heart throbs, my hair stands on end, and I see the spectators also weeping, and sympathising with my grief."

And the conclusion of this short but graceful Dialogue is, that the Deity sways the souls of men through the rhapsodist or poet, who is himself only the vehicle of inspiration, and knows little or nothing of the meaning of the glorious words which it is his privilege to utter.

Plato's own view of poetry and art, then, is, that it should be pure, simple, and ideal—free from the sen-