It is the lack of order and system in contemporary music which Plato dislikes.[708] In modern dances, he complains, manly words are set to effeminate tunes or gestures, and the voices of men and beasts and instruments are mixed together into a confused and unintelligible hodgepodge.[709] Music without words is equally detestable. Music that runs on without the proper pauses and loves mere speed and meaningless clamour, using flutes and harps without words, is in the worst taste. The meaning must be quite plain. Music must also be good. Poets say much that is good, much that is bad: they are irresponsible beings.[710] The State ought to appoint censors who will reject all unsuitable poems and tunes and dances. Those which are already in existence must be selected and expurgated. If this ruins the poetry, never mind: moral tone is far more important than poetical skill. In fact, poetry ought to be written by moral citizens without any regard being paid to their poetical talents: it would also be well if they did not compose till they were fifty![711] A sketch of a Platonic Censor re-editing Homer is given in Books ii. and iii. of the _Republic_: his methods are drastic. But Plato’s chief denunciation is reserved for the “mimetic” or imitative aspect of poetry. The poet teaches “posing.” Homer, when he described the siege of Troy, is posing as a skilled tactician (as his admirers often claimed that he was), when really the silence of history proves that he was nothing of the sort. So too the painter who represents a plough is posing as an authority upon agriculture: question him, and he will prove to be completely ignorant of the subject. Both poetry and painting are a fraud and a deception; by their pretence of knowledge, they encourage the mind in the habit, to which it is so prone, of accepting vague opinions as certainties without testing their truth.[712] They foster that belief in the sense-perceptions which it is the object of Platonic education to destroy.