30. Art and the Beautiful. -- Plato is the world's first great theorist of the beautiful. His esthetics, however, partake of the fragmentary character common to all Greek esthetics. He leaves in obscurity all the subjective problems suggested by the psychological, fascinating element of the beautiful, and discusses by preference the various metaphysical questions regarding the objective elements of beauty. These latter are identified with order and the constituents of order, namely, proportion, symmetry, and harmony.^{1} In fact, arithmetical and geometrical relations are regarded by Plato as the very essence of beauty (25, 26). Moreover, the beautiful and the good are identical (kalokagathia), for the former is merely an aspect or manifestation of the latter in the physical, and more especially in the moral, orders.

Art is simply the imitation of visible nature: its value is insignificant in comparison with dialectic. It is the shadow of a shadow, since physical nature itself is nothing more than a faint reflex of supra-material reality. It is unworthy of being cultivated for its own sake. Strange words these in the mouth of a poet! The value of art lies solely in its educative and moralizing influence: it falls, accordingly, under State control. The State can veto all art innovations and is bound to see that art does not become an instrument of moral corruption.

{1} See our Études historiques sur l'Esthétique de S. Thomas d'Aquin, Louvain, 1896, pp. 96 sqq.