Chapter XXIII. Concerning Those Who Are Capable of Judging the Odes Composed According to the Mind of God

[P] [1] ‘So far I myself agree with the multitude, that music must be judged by pleasure, not however by the pleasure of chance persons, but that the best music generally is that which gives delight to the best persons who are well educated, and especially that which delights the one man pre-eminent both in virtue and education.

‘And the reason why I say that the judges of this matter must be virtuous is this, that they ought to be endowed with wisdom in general, and especially with courage.

‘For the true judge ought not to judge by what he learns from the theatre, when driven out of his senses by the tumult of the multitude and his own ignorance; nor if, on the other hand, he knows right, ought he through unmaniiness and cowardice carelessly to deliver a false judgement out of the same mouth with which he invoked the gods before proceeding to give judgement. For the judge sits there not as the learner but rather, according to right, as the teacher of the spectators, and to oppose those who neither properly nor rightly give pleasure to the spectators.’

Among the Hebrews also in old times it was not the part of the multitude to judge the discourses pronounced from divine inspiration, and the inspired songs, but they were few and rare persons, themselves partakers of a divine spirit, fit to judge of what was said, who alone were permitted to approve and consecrate the books of the prophets, and to reject those of men unlike them in character.