Plato in Italy

humorous; you will arouse contempt, hatred, everything except laughter against him. Do you want to make me laugh? It is not enough to name the lame man; you must describe him to me, almost make me see him. Now, if Aristophanes had not been able to name Socrates, your comedy would never have had to blush for the death of the most just among the Greeks. Aristophanes could well have shown on the stage a man suspended in mid-air in a basket, teaching his sons to beat their father and debtors to swindle their creditors; but which of the spectators would have been able to say: this is Socrates? And this is how the perfection of every art always tends toward the perfection of the city, and the means to obtain the beautiful in the latter are not different from the means to obtain the good in the former.

I know of no one else who understands the secrets of his art better than Alexis.

The comedy that does not please, he continued, does not instruct; and that comedy does not please which gives us instruction that we do not need, and depicts ideas and affections that are not our own: that one pleases the greatest number, and is useful to the greatest number, which, by depicting the most common ideas and affections, contains the material for more common instruction.

Have you ever heard a symphony in which many voices are joined with harmonic proportions, among which some are very high, others very low, others finally medium, and you might almost say, bindings between the other two? Now the first and the second, alone, either do not please anyone at all, or please very few and only for a short time. It seems that our mechanism does not resonate with them, as, on the contrary, it always happens when one touches one of two instruments tuned to the diapason original: "all'ottava" meaning the octave. Common ideas and affections are the middle strings, the sound of which pleases all men.