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achieved in this life must be attainable in the life hereafter.
The soul has three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. The spirited part sometimes sides with
reason and obeys its commands. Spirit includes such impulses as ambition, anger, and righteous
indignation, and appetite includes desire for sensuous pleasure, wealth, and all forms of bodily
satisfaction. Sometimes appetite gets the better of it and the two conspire and rebel against
reason. The harmonious soul is that in which all the three parts work harmoniously, each
discharging its own function, the rational part commanding and the spirited and appetitive parts
obeying its commands.
Ethics ‐ The soul is in essence rational and immortal. The world of true beings, the world of ideas,
is the source of all its goodness. The body is material and Not‐Being and is the ground of all evil. It
is only a temporary prison house. Release from the body and contemplation of the beautiful realm
of ideas is the ultimate goal of life. The embodied soul is wise if reason rules all its impulses. It is
brave if its spirited part aids and obeys the rational part, temperate, if both spirit and appetite
obey the dictates of reason, and just if all the three parts perform their respective functions in
unison. The ideal of this life is achieved when a man is wise, brave; temperate, and just. The
highest good of life is the harmony of the soul which is attained by the exercise of all the four
virtues, wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, under the guidance of reason. The greatest
happiness attends the life that achieves the highest good and contemplates the highest ideas.
Aesthetics ‐ All art is functional. Its function is to imitate, but not to imitate the objects of
experience, but ideal realities. The artist, therefore, must learn to contemplate the ideal world.
Sensible objects only participate in the ideas. They are only shadows of reality. If art‐were to
imitate these objects; it would produce nothing better than the shadows of shadows, and if it
created illusions and distortions it would be thrice removed from reality.
All art, intellectual or useful, must be subordinated to the good of the State and the moral life of
its citizens. Only these art‐forms should be encouraged in every art which express the simplicity of
a rightly and nobly‐ordered mind. On their simplicity depend their style, harmony, grace, and
rhythm, which qualities elevate the soul and instil true and noble ideas into it, Our artists should
be only those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful. In poetry
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