would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person?

No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable.

Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view.

What point of view?

If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural
hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and
that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is
satisfied and delighted by the poets;-the better nature in each of us,
not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the
sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another's; and
the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in
praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he
is, and making a fuss about his troubles; he thinks that the pleasure
is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem
too? Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil
of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves. And so
the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the
misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own.

How very true!

And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous? There are jests
which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic
stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused
by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness;--the case
of pity is repeated;--there is a principle in human nature which is
disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by
reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let
out again; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre,
you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet
at home.

Quite true, he said.

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other
affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be
inseparable from every action--in all of them poetry feeds and waters
the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although
they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in
happiness and virtue.

I cannot deny it.

Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any of the eulogists
of Homer declaring that he has been the educator of Hellas, and that he
is profitable for education and for the ordering of human things, and
that you should take him up again and aga