SOCRATES

What is such control usually called?

MANTIAS

Censorship.

ACASTOS

I’m against it.

CALLISTOS

Me too.

SOCRATES

We must not be afraid of names.

MANTIAS

Every state exercises some censorship. [ To Acastos ] Do you want pornographic muck to circulate, like those pictures you hate so? Would you like children to see them?

ACASTOS

Well – no – but –

MANTIAS

And you’re so keen on the rights of minorities, underprivileged groups or whatever jargon you use. Would you like to see plays in our theatres which encourage people to be unkind to slaves and women?

DEXIMENES

They don’t need encouragement.

MANTIAS

You say slavery is contrary to nature. Don’t you want to silence people who say slaves are just animals?

DEXIMENES

Acastos thinks animals have rights too!

MANTIAS

Well things then.

DEXIMENES

Things lib!

MANTIAS

Art must not stir up useless violence or make us hate people just because they’re foreigners –

CALLISTOS

Can’t we hate anyone, not even bloody Spartans?

DEXIMENES

Arguments like this are futile because they assume that we can change things – we can’t. None of us can control the state, even tyrants can’t. We always talk as if we could, we, the intellectuals. But no one controls it – it’s a machine that rolls on under its own laws. Who understands economics? The economists don’t, how can we? We are passengers not drivers in this chariot. There are no drivers.

MANTIAS

People say that who haven’t the wit to see who the drivers are! That sort of talk leads straight to tyranny or mob rule!

DEXIMENES

What about you? – You’d be arresting poets because you couldn’t understand their poems!

ACASTOS

I suppose your dull bad art could do some good –

DEXIMENES

Like stories telling children to wash!

MANTIAS

Then you agree with me!

ACASTOS

No! I don’t want to argue your argument at all – I mean – Oh help me, Socrates!

SOCRATES

Well, we could discuss whether censorship or freedom is better – but I think Acastos wants to say that we have lost sight of our original objective. If we could discover what art really is we would also see how it relates to society.

CALL1STOS

Oh let’s forget society!

SOCRATES

Now you wish to define art in terms of its social role, and this is what Acastos objects to. [ Acastos is nodding agreement ] Now would you agree that art is a skill?

MANTIAS

Yes.

SOCRATES

And properly to understand a skill one must understand what it is to exercise it well? Very well?

MANTIAS dubiously

Yes.

ACASTOS

That’s it, Mantias won’t really look at what I call good art.

SOCRATES

You have different views of what the skill is. So you must reject his definition.

ACASTOS