It is in this spirit that he deals with the traditional, popular, almost consecrated, poetical literature which prevailed around him. He undertakes to revise and recast the whole of it. Repudiating avowedly the purpose of the authors, he sets up a different point of view by which they are to be judged. The contest of principle, into which he now enters, subsisted (he tells us) long before his time: a standing discord between the philosophers and the poets.[52] The poet is an artist[53] whose aim is to give immediate pleasure and satisfaction: appealing to æsthetical sentiment, feeding imagination and belief, and finding embodiment for emotions, religious or patriotic, which he shares with his hearers: the philosopher is a critic, who lays down authoritatively deeper and more distant ends which he considers that poetry _ought to_ serve, judging the poets according as they promote, neglect, or frustrate those ends. Plato declares the end which he requires poetry to serve in the training of his Guardians. It must contribute to form the ethical character which he approves: in so far as it thus contributes, he will tolerate it, but no farther. The charm and interest especially, belonging to beautiful poems, is not only no reason for admitting them, but is rather a reason (in his view) for excluding them.[54] The more beautiful a poem is, the more effectively does it awaken, stimulate, and amplify, the emotional forces of the mind: the stronger is its efficacy in giving empire to pleasure and pain, and in resisting or overpowering the rightful authority of Reason. It thus directly contravenes the purpose of the Platonic education--the formation of characters wherein Reason shall effectively controul all the emotions and desires.[55] Hence he excludes all the varieties of imitative poetry:--that is, narrative, descriptive, or dramatic poetry. He admits only hymns to the Gods and panegyrics upon good citizens:--probably also didactic, gnomic, or hortative, poetry of approved tone. Imitative poetry is declared objectionable farther, not only as it exaggerates the emotions, but on another ground--that it fills the mind with false and unreal representations; being composed by men who have no real knowledge of their subject, though they pretend to a sort of fallacious omniscience, and talk boldly about every thing.[56] [Footnote 52: Plato, Republ. x. p. 607 B. [Greek: palaia\ me/n tis diaphora\ philosophi/a| te kai\ poiêtikê=|], &c.] [Footnote 53: Plato, Republ. x. p. 607 A-C. [Greek: tê\n ê(dusme/nên Mou=san . . . ê( pro\s ê(donê\n poiêtikê\ kai\ ê( mi/mêsis], &c. Compare also Leges ii. p. 655 D seq., about the [Greek: mousikê=s o)rtho/tês].]