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PHAEDRUS
PHAEDRUS PLATO As they are on their way Phaedrus asks the opinion of Socrates respecting
the local tradition of Boreas and Oreithyia. Socrates after a satirical
allusion to the 'rationalizers' of his day replies that he has no time for
these 'nice' interpretations of mythology and he pities anyone who has.
When you once begin there is no end of them and they spring from an
uncritical philosophy after all. 'The proper study of mankind is man;' and
he is a far more complex and wonderful being than the serpent Typho.
Socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should he care to know about
unearthly monsters? Engaged in such conversation they arrive at the
plane-tree; when they have found a convenient resting-place Phaedrus pulls
out the speech and reads:--
The speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the
non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more
rational more agreeable more enduring less suspicious less hurtful
less boastful less engrossing and because there are more of them and for
a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. Phaedrus is
captivated with the beauty of the periods and wants to make Socrates say
that nothing was or ever could be written better. Socrates does not think
much of the matter but then he has only attended to the form and in that
he has detected several repetitions and other marks of haste. He cannot
agree with Phaedrus in the extreme value which he sets upon this
performance because he is afraid of doing injustice to Anacreon and Sappho
and other great writers and is almost inclined to think that he himself
or rather some power residing within him could make a speech better than
that of Lysias on the same theme and also different from his if he may be
allowed the use of a few commonplaces which all speakers must equally
employ.
Phaedrus is delighted at the prospect of having another speech and
promises that he will set up a golden statue of Socrates at Delphi if he
keeps his word. Some raillery ensues and at length Socrates conquered by
the threat that he shall never again hear a speech of Lysias unless he
fulfils his promise veils his face and begins.
First invoking the Muses and assuming ironically the person of the non-
lover (who is a lover all the same) he will enquire into the nature and
power of love. For this is a necessary preliminary to the other question--
How is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? In all of us
there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and desire which
are generally at war with one another; and the victory of the rational is
called temperance and the victory of the irrational intemperance or
excess. The latter takes many forms and has many bad names--gluttony
drunkenness and the like. But of all the irrational desires or excesses
the greatest is that which is led away by desires of a kindred nature to
the enjoyment of personal beauty. And this is the master power of love.
Here Socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow of
eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the inspiration
of the place which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs. Starting again
from the philosophical basis which has been laid down he proceeds to show
how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover. The one encourages
softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot endure any superiority
in his beloved; he will train him in luxury he will keep him out of
society he will deprive him of parents friends money knowledge and of
every other good that he may have him all to himself. Then again his ways
are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty disagreeable; 'crabbed age and
youth cannot live together.' At every hour of the night and day he is
intruding upon him; there is the same old withered face and the remainder
to match--and he is always repeating in season or out of season the
praises or dispraises of his beloved which are bad enough when he is
sober and published all over the world when he is drunk. At length his
love ceases; he is converted into an enemy and the spectacle may be seen
of the lover running away from the beloved who pursues him with vain
reproaches and demands his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too
late the beloved learns after all his pains and disagreeables that 'As
wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' (Compare Char.) Here is
the end; the 'other' or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be
understood for if in the censure of the lover Socrates has broken out in
verse what will he not do in his praise of the non-lover? He has said his
say and is preparing to go away.
Phaedrus begs him to remain at any rate until the heat of noon has passed;
he would like to have a little more conversation before they go. Socrates
who has risen recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him to depart
until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened and like
Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing a palinode
for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes the form of
a myth.
Socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness which he divides
into four kinds: first there is the art of divination or prophecy--this
in a vein similar to that pervading the Cratylus and Io he connects with
madness by an etymological explanation (mantike manike--compare
oionoistike oionistike ''tis all one reckoning save the phrase is a
little variations'); secondly there is the art of purification by
mysteries; thirdly poetry or the inspiration of the Muses (compare Ion)
without which no man can enter their temple. All this shows that madness
is one of heaven's blessings and may sometimes be a great deal better than
sense. There is also a fourth kind of madness--that of love--which cannot
be explained without enquiring into the nature of the soul.
All soul is immortal for she is the source of all motion both in herself
and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a composite nature
made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds. The steeds of the
gods are immortal but ours are one mortal and the other immortal. The
immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens but the mortal drops her
plumes and settles upon the earth.
Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into the
upper world--there to behold beauty wisdom goodness and the other things
of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the lord of
heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods and demi-gods
and of human souls in their train follows him. There are glorious and
blessed sights in the interior of heaven and he who will may freely behold
them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of the gods when they
ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but Hestia who is left at home to
keep house. The chariots of the gods glide readily upwards and stand upon
the outside; the revolution of the spheres carries them round and they
have a vision of the world beyond. But the others labour in vain; for the
mortal steed if he has not been properly trained keeps them down and
sinks them towards the earth. Of the world which is beyond the heavens
who can tell? There is an essence formless colourless intangible
perceived by the mind only dwelling in the region of true knowledge. The
divine mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect and beholds
justice temperance and knowledge in their everlasting essence. When
fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home and the charioteer puts
up the horses in their stable and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to
drink. This is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the
same heights but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer
rises above and sometimes sinks below the fair vision and he is at last
obliged after much contention to turn away and leave the plain of truth.
But if the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth
she is preserved from harm and is carried round in the next revolution of
the spheres; and if always following and always seeing the truth is then
for ever unharmed. If however she drops her wings and falls to the
earth then she takes the form of man and the soul which has seen most of
the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has seen truth in
the second degree into a king or warrior; the third into a householder or
money-maker; the fourth into a gymnast; the fifth into a prophet or
mystic; the sixth into a poet or imitator; the seventh into a husbandman
or craftsman; the eighth into a sophist or demagogue; the ninth into a
tyrant. All these are states of probation wherein he who lives
righteously is improved and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates.
After death comes the judgment; the bad depart to houses of correction
under the earth the good to places of joy in heaven. When a thousand
years have elapsed the souls meet together and choose the lives which they
will lead for another period of existence. The soul which three times in
succession has chosen the life of a philosopher or of a lover who is not
without philosophy receives her wings at the close of the third millennium;
the remainder have to complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their
wings are restored to them. Each time there is full liberty of choice.
The soul of a man may descend into a beast and return again into the form
of man. But the form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once
seen truth and acquired some conception of the universal:--this is the
recollection of the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the
Gods. And men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another
world but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them.
For when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light herself
pure and not as yet entombed in the body. And still like a bird eager to
quit its cage she flutters and looks upwards and is therefore deemed mad.
Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight the keenest of
our senses because beauty alone of the ideas has any representation on
earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the corrupted nature
blindly excited by this vision of beauty rushes on to enjoy and would
fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures. Whereas the true
mystic who has seen the many sights of bliss when he beholds a god-like
form or face is amazed with delight and if he were not afraid of being
thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then the stiffened wing begins
to relax and grow again; desire which has been imprisoned pours over the
soul of the lover; the germ of the wing unfolds and stings and pangs of
birth like the cutting of teeth are everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.)
Father and mother and goods and laws and proprieties are nothing to him;
his beloved is his physician who can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal
sacred writer says that the power which thus works in him is by mortals
called love but the immortals call him dove or the winged one in order
to represent the force of his wings--such at any rate is his nature. Now
the characters of lovers depend upon the god whom they followed in the
other world; and they choose their loves in this world accordingly. The
followers of Ares are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some
philosophical and imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal
love; and in like manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like
their god; and to him they communicate the nature which they have received
from their god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:--
I told you about the charioteer and his two steeds the one a noble animal
who is guided by word and admonition only the other an ill-looking villain
who will hardly yield to blow or spur. Together all three who are a
figure of the soul approach the vision of love. And now a fierce conflict
begins. The ill-conditioned steed rushes on to enjoy but the charioteer
who beholds the beloved with awe falls back in adoration and forces both
the steeds on their haunches; again the evil steed rushes forwards and
pulls shamelessly. The conflict grows more and more severe; and at last
the charioteer throwing himself backwards forces the bit out of the
clenched teeth of the brute and pulling harder than ever at the reins
covers his tongue and jaws with blood and forces him to rest his legs and
haunches with pain upon the ground. When this has happened several times
the villain is tamed and humbled and from that time forward the soul of
the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. And now their
bliss is consummated; the same image of love dwells in the breast of
either and if they have self-control they pass their lives in the
greatest happiness which is attainable by man--they continue masters of
themselves and conquer in one of the three heavenly victories. But if
they choose the lower life of ambition they may still have a happy destiny
though inferior because they have not the approval of the whole soul. At
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