[275] But they would not be allowed quite their own way in the streets or elsewhere in a reformed world, to whose chosen imperial youth (Basilikê phylê)+ it would not be permitted even to think of any of those things--oudeni prosechein ton voun.+ To them, what was illiberal, the illiberal crafts, would be (thanks to their well-trained power of intellectual abstraction!) as though it were not. And if art, like law, be, as Plato thinks, "a creation of mind, in accordance with right reason," we shall not wish our boys to sing like mere birds. Yet what price would not the musical connoisseur pay to handle the instruments we may see in fancy passing out through the gates of the City of the Perfect, banished, not because there is no one within its walls who knows the use of, or would receive pleasure from, them (a delicate susceptibility in these matters Plato, as was said, presupposes) but precisely because they are so seductive, must be conveyed therefore to some other essentially less favoured neighbourhood, like poison, say! moral poison, for one's enemies' water-springs. A whole class of painters, sculptors, skilled workmen of various kinds go into like banishment--they and their very tools; not, observe again carefully, because they are bad artists, but very good ones.--Alla mên, ô Adeimante, hêdys ge kai ho kekramenos.+ Art, as such, as Plato knows, has no purpose but itself, its own perfection. The proper art of the [276] Perfect City is in fact the art of discipline. Music (mousikê)+ all the various forms of fine art, will be but the instruments of its one over-mastering social or political purpose, irresistibly conforming its so imitative subject units to type: they will be neither more nor less than so many variations, so to speak, of the trumpet-call.