Aristotle, Politics

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[1339a][1] for there is no small proof that too severe training can produce this result in the fact that in the list of Olympic victors one would only find two or three persons who have won both as men and as boys, because when people go into training in youth the severe exercises rob them of their strength. But when they have spent three years after puberty upon their other studies, then it is suitable to occupy the next period of life with laborious exercises and strict training diet¹ ; for it is wrong to work hard with the mind and the body at the same time; for it is the nature of the two different sorts of exertion to produce opposite effects, bodily toil impeding the development of the mind and mental toil that of the body.

About music on the other hand we have previously raised some questions in the course of our argument, but it is well to take them up again and carry them further now, in order that this may give the key so to speak for the principles which one might advance in pronouncing about it. For it is not easy to say precisely what potency it possesses, nor yet for the sake of what object one should participate in it--whether for amusement and relaxation, as one indulges in sleep and deep drinking (for these in themselves are not serious pursuits but merely pleasant, and ‘relax our care,’ as Euripides says² ; owing to which people actually class music with them and [20] employ all of these things, sleep, deep drinking and music, in the same way, and they also place dancing in the same class); or whether we ought rather to think that music tends in some degree to virtue (music being capable of producing a certain quality of character just as gymnastics are capable of producing a certain quality of body, music accustoming men to be able to rejoice rightly); or that it contributes something to intellectual entertainment³ and culture (for this must be set down as a third alternative among those mentioned). Now it is not difficult to see that one must not make amusement the object of the education of the young; for amusement does not go with learning--learning is a painful process. Nor yet moreover is it suitable to assign intellectual entertainment to boys and to the young; for a thing that is an end does not belong to anything that is imperfect. But perhaps it might be thought that the serious pursuits of boys are for the sake of amusement when they have grown up to be men. But, if something of this sort is the case, why should the young need to learn this accomplishment themselves, and not, like the Persian and Median kings, participate in the pleasure and the education of music by means of others performing it? for those who have made music a business and profession must necessarily perform better than those who practise only long enough to learn. But if it is proper for them to labor at accomplishments of this sort, then it would also be right for them to prepare the dishes of an elaborate cuisine; but this is absurd. And the same difficulty also arises as to the question whether learning music can improve their characters; for why should they learn to perform edifying music themselves,

¹ i.e. compulsion to eat very large rations of prescribed food--the Greek way of training.

² Eur. Ba. 378 (Bromios) hos tad' echei, thiaseuein te chorois meta t' aulôn gelasai anapausai te merimnas

³ The term diagôgê, ‘pastime,’ is idiomatically used of the pursuits of cultured leisure--serious conversation, music, the drama.

This text is based on the following book(s):
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1944.
OCLC: 29752140
ISBN: 0674992911

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