The greatest objection to these immoral legends was that they were taught in the nursery and the elementary school, at the most impressionable age.[668] Hence Plato wishes to lay down strict canons for the myths, legends, and fables which are to be taught to children. “For the beginning of everything is half the battle, especially in the case of what is young and tender. Young children are like soft wax, ready to take a clear and deep impression of any seal which is laid upon them. Hence the immense importance of the earliest stages of education, the myths and stories taught in the nursery and at school.… The compositions of Homer and Hesiod are fiction, and unlovely fiction at that; even if true, they had better not be told to the young and undiscerning.… The myths must be improving on the surface, not by allegory.”[669]
Plato is not prepared to rewrite the Hellenic Bible: he will only draw up the canons which the poets must follow. It is to be noticed that these canons are peculiar, and would exclude not merely most of Homer and Hesiod, but a large part of the Old and some of the New Testament. The first canon is that God, being good, cannot be the cause or originator of any harm or evil to mankind; for these things some other cause must be discovered. The greater part of the human lot is evil: so God is not the cause of the majority of human events.
Two butts of human fortunes by the gates of Heaven stood, One full of all things evil, and one of all things good. To whom God gives a mixture, his life is weal and woe, But to whom He gives of the evil alone, he lives as a beggar below.
Zeus is the world’s housekeeper, who serves out weal and woe.
God plants the seed of sin among mankind, Whene’er He wills to bring a race to naught.
If God is represented as the cause of misfortunes, the poet must say that the misfortunes were good for the sufferers, making them better and happier.[670]
The second canon is that God is not a wizard, appearing now in one form, now in another. Why should He change? External forces are not likely to change Him: He would not change Himself, since it would necessarily be a transition to the less good and less beautiful, since He is perfect. So the lines――