126 Ancient Ideals
anxious, unmoored. The government that refl ects this inner state
is similarly chaotic. Demo cratic man cannot decide what he wants
to do with his life: one day he wants to be a fi ghter, the next a thinker,
the next he simply wants to lay about and enjoy his possessions. The
demo cratic state vacillates in a similar way: no one knows who
should follow, no one knows who should lead. One day we are all
for war; the next day we are a people of peace. In democracy there
is no sense of what matters now and for the future. There is no sense
of continuity. Democracy is a ship that everyone takes turns cap-
taining, just as the soul of demo cratic man continually rearranges
itself, with one then another faculty lording it over the others.
Plato’s major work is a testament to harmony: thus the central
importance of music for him. Nietz sche, who aspired to be Plato’s
great antagonist (he sometimes aspired to be everyone’s antagonist),
was greedy for the rousing sounds of Wagner, who fi red the passions
in his soul. Plato seeks balance in the private sphere and the public
world, and so he is an advocate of music that is harmonious, well
structured, and that helps create in the individual that unity of being
that is conducive to happiness. In time, the young person will study
geometry, another activity that brings balance to the spirit. (The
phrase over the door of Plato’s academy: “Let no one enter who is
ignorant of geometry.”) But the central substance of early education
for Plato is musical.
Plato sees the life of harmony and contentment as the best of
human lives, and he wants to off er it as broadly as he can. But to do
so persuasively, he fi nds he must accomplish a great deal. There is
the critical labor of displacing the heroic ideal— not destroying it,
or even trying to, but putting it in what he perceives as its proper
place. But then so much of a positive or constructive nature remains
to be done. To imagine his ideal city and his ideal life, Plato must
refl ect on every conceivable subject. He broods on music and gov-
ernment, to be sure, but also on lit erature, on art, on crafts, on child