Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence
of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be
that of chance persons; the fairest music is that which delights the
best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man
who is pre-eminent in virtue and education. And therefore the judges
must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and courage;
the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought
he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity;
nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness
carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which
have just appealed to the Gods before he judged. He is sitting not
as the disciple of the theatre, but, in his proper place, as their
instructor, and he ought to be the enemy of all pandering to the
pleasure of the spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas,
which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the
judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of
hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets; for they
are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste
of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct
themselves;--and also it has been the ruin of the theatre; they ought
to be having characters put before them better than their own, and
so receiving a higher pleasure, but now by their own act the opposite
result follows. What inference is to be drawn from all this? Shall I
tell you?

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: The inference at which we arrive for the third or fourth time
is, that education is the constraining and directing of youth towards
that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of
the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right. In order, then, that
the soul of the child may not be habituated to feel joy and sorrow in
a manner at variance with the law, and those who obey the law, but may
rather follow the law and rejoice and sorrow at the same things as the
aged--in order, I say, to produce this effect, chants appear to have
been invented, which really enchant, and are designed to implant
that harmony of which we speak. And, because the mind of the child is
incapable of enduring serious training, they are called plays and songs,
and are performed in play; just as when men are sic