Plato finds it too difficult to carry these principles into rhythm, since he is not an expert in the subject. But he thinks that the metres could be regulated in accordance with his canons; the expert Damon declared that some had a demoralising tendency.
As a whole, Plato’s aim is to restore Doric standards, to combat amateurism and dabbling, by which boys were made Jacks-of-all-trades, and above all to insist that the refined few ought to set the standard of taste in matters musical, literary, and artistic, not the unrefined many. With his view may be contrasted Perikles’ boast to the Athenian people, “We can all criticise adequately, if we cannot all invent,” and Aristotle’s belief that a crowd judges better than an individual because its judgment is compounded of many judgments.
But when we come to Aristotle the creative instinct of the Hellenic nation, apart from a few gifted individuals, is dead. To him and his contemporaries music and painting are no longer rendered necessary parts of education owing to the irresistible craving of an artistic temperament for expression. Listen to his theory. Painting gives boys an eye for beauty, and prevents them from being cheated in art-dealing: there is no inward compulsion to paint. Boys had better learn to sing and play, since children must needs make a noise. All they really need is the power of criticising professional music. This power, unluckily, cannot be acquired without personal study. But let them drop their music as soon as they can, or they might be mistaken for vulgar professionals. Such words could hardly have been addressed to a nation that was still musical and artistic. So Aristotle’s æsthetic criticism is really a study of the past, the discussion of a dead age. He has no natural affinity for such things himself: he prefers to sum up the opinions of experts. Consequently his remarks on the subject are scientific but no more; for a real appreciation of the Hellenic artistic and musical spirit it is necessary to go to Plato, who combated it so fiercely just because he was more in sympathy with it than suited his philosophic desires.
From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s _Meisterschalen_, Plate 53.]