Shall we begin, then, with the acknowledgment that education is first given through Apollo and the Muses?
What do you say?
CLEINIAS: I assent.
ATHENIAN: And the uneducated is he who has not been trained in the chorus, and the educated is he who has been well trained?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And the chorus is made up of two parts, dance and song?
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: Then he who is well educated will be able to sing and dance well?
CLEINIAS: I suppose that he will.
ATHENIAN: Let us see; what are we saying?
CLEINIAS: What?
ATHENIAN: He sings well and dances well; now must we add that he sings what is good and dances what is good?
CLEINIAS: Let us make the addition.
ATHENIAN: We will suppose that he knows the good to be good, and the bad to be bad, and makes use of them accordingly: which now is the better trained in dancing and music--he who is able to move his body and to use his voice in what is understood to be the right manner, but has no delight in good or hatred of evil; or he who is incorrect in gesture and voice, but is right in his sense of pleasure and pain, and welcomes what is good, and is offended at what is evil?
CLEINIAS: There is a great difference, Stranger, in the two kinds of education.
ATHENIAN: If we three know what is good in song and dance, then we truly know also who is educated and who is uneducated; but if not, then we certainly shall not know wherein lies the safeguard of education, and whether there is any or not.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: Let us follow the scent like hounds, and go in pursuit of beauty of figure, and melody, and song, and dance; if these escape us, there will be no use in talking about true education, whether Hellenic or barbarian.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And what is beauty of figure, or beautiful melody?
When a manly soul is in trouble, and when a cowardly soul is in similar case, are they likely to use the same figures and gestures, or to give utterance to the same sounds?
CLEINIAS: How can they, when the very colours of their faces differ?
ATHENIAN: Good, my friend; I may observe, however, in passing, that in music there certainly are figures and there are melodies: and music is concerned with harmony and rhythm, so that you may speak of a melody or figure having good rhythm or good harmony--the term is correct enough; but to speak metaphorically of a melody or figure having a 'good colour,' as the masters of choruses do, is not allowable, although you can speak of the melodies or figures of the brave and the coward, praising the one and censuring the other.

And not to be tedious, let us say that the figures and melodies which are expressive of virtue of soul or body, or of images of virtue, are without exception good, and those which are expressive of vice are the reverse of good.
CLEINIAS: Your suggestion is excellent; and let us answer that these things are so.
ATHENIAN: Once more, are all of us equally delighted with every sort of dance?
CLEINIAS: Far otherwise.
ATHENIAN: What, then, leads us astray?
Are beautiful things not the same to us all, or are they the same in themselves, but not in our opinion of them?
For no one will admit that forms of vice in the dance are more beautiful than forms of virtue, or that he himself delights in the forms of vice, and others in a muse of another character.

And yet most persons say, that the excellence of music is to give pleasure to our souls.
But this is intolerable and blasphemous; there is, however, a much more plausible account of the delusion.
CLEINIAS: What?
ATHENIAN: The adaptation of art to the characters of men.

Choric movements are imitations of manners occurring in various actions, fortunes, dispositions,--each particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, or songs, or dances are suited, either by nature or habit or both, cannot help feeling pleasure in them and applauding them, and calling them beautiful.

But those whose natures, or ways, or habits are unsuited to them, cannot delight in them or applaud them, and they call them base.