Abstract:
Between ancient Greece and Rome and Middle Ages, the “theory of imitation”, a theory about the origin and nature of art in Greek philosophy, was always popular in the west. This theory became perfect continuously from Plato to Aristotle. Generally, Socrates and Plato advocated an imitation of ideal world, which can be regarded as “internal imitation”, while Aristotle and his like emphasized an imitation of objective world, which can be regarded as “external imitation”. Afterwards, it was along these two lines that philosophic and aesthetic trends extended and developed.
