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It will make a great difference whether he is seen or not.

Tell me: will he be more likely to struggle and hold out against his sorrow when he is seen by his equals, or when he is alone?

And yet you were acknowledging a little while ago that knowledge is not the same as opinion?

But will he have no sorrow, or shall we say that although he cannot help sorrowing, he will moderate his sorrow?

Certainly, he said; for opinion is that with which we are able to form an opinion.

Were we not saying that a good man, who has the misfortune to lose his son or anything else which is most dear to him, will bear the loss with more equanimity than another?

Certainly knowledge is a faculty, and the mightiest of all faculties.

And will you be so very good as to answer one more question? Would you say that knowledge is a faculty, or in what class would you place it?

Yes, I said, thus far we were right; but there was an omission which must now be supplied.

Then let me tell you my view about them. I do not see them, and therefore the distinctions of figure, colour, and the like, which enable me to discern the differences of some things, do not apply to them. In speaking of a faculty I think only of its sphere and its result; and that which has the same sphere and the same result I call the same faculty, but that which has another sphere and another result I call different. Would that be your way of speaking?

But in all this variety of circumstances is the man at unity with himself—or rather, as in the instance of sight there was confusion and opposition in his opinions about the same things, so here also is there not strife and inconsistency in his life? Though I need hardly raise the question again, for I remember that all this has been already admitted; and the soul has been acknowledged by us to be full of these and ten thousand similar oppositions occurring at the same moment?

We may state the question thus:—Imitation imitates the actions of men, whether voluntary or involuntary, on which, as they imagine, a good or bad result has ensued, and they rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there anything more?

Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the analogy of painting; but let us examine further and see whether the faculty with which poetical imitation is concerned is good or bad.

I will begin by placing faculties in a class by themselves: they are powers in us, and in all other things, by which we do as we do. Sight and hearing, for example, I should call faculties. Have I clearly explained the class which I mean?

And knowledge is relative to being and knows being. But before I proceed further I will make a division.

And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to the hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry?

The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has inferior offspring.

Then opinion and knowledge have to do with different kinds of matter corresponding to this difference of faculties?

This was the conclusion at which I was seeking to arrive when I said that painting or drawing, and imitation in general, when doing their own proper work, are far removed from truth, and the companions and friends and associates of a principle within us which is equally removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim.

And that which is opposed to them is one of the inferior principles of the soul?