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PHAEDRUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be

regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues

together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love,

which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only

introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and

Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the

other. The spiritual and emotional part is elevated into the ideal, to

which in the Symposium mankind are described as looking forward, and

which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the Phaedo, they are seeking to

recover from a former state of existence. Whether the subject of the

Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of the two, or the relation

of philosophy to love and to art in general, and to the human soul, will

be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive at some conclusion

such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly confined to a

single subject, but passes from one to another with the natural freedom

of conversation.

Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated

rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside

the wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not

leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias

has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more

probably in a book hidden under his cloak, and is intending to study

as he walks. The imputation is not denied, and the two agree to direct

their steps out of the public way along the stream of the Ilissus

towards a plane-tree which is seen in the distance. There, lying down

amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will read the speech of Lysias.

The country is a novelty to Socrates, who never goes out of the town;

and hence he is full of admiration for the beauties of nature, which he

seems to be drinking in for the first time.

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 last they leave

the body and proceed on their pilgrim's progress, and those who have

once begun can never go back. When the time comes they receive their

wings and fly away, and the lovers have the same wings.

Socrates concludes:--

These are the blessings of love, and thus have I made my recantation in

finer language than before: I did so in order to please Phaedrus. If I

said what was wrong at first, please to attribute my error to Lysias,

who ought to study philosophy instead of rhetoric, and then he will not

mislead his disciple Phaedrus.

Phaedrus is afraid that he will lose conceit of Lysias, and that Lysias

will be out of conceit with himself, and leave off making speeches,

for the politicians have been deriding him. Socrates is of opinion that

there is small danger of this; the politicians are themselves the

great rhetoricians of the age, who desire to attain immortality by the

authorship of laws. And therefore there is nothing with which they can

reproach Lysias in being a writer; but there may be disgrace in being a

bad one.

And what is good or bad writing or speaking? While the sun is hot in the

sky above us, let us ask that question: since by rational conversation

man lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. And the

grasshoppers who are chirruping around may carry our words to the

Muses, who are their patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings

themselves in a world before the Muses, and when the Muses came they

died of hunger for the love of song. And they carry to them in heaven

the report of those who honour them on earth.

The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a

Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of

enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike,

as the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly

suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly;

it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included

both the rules of Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly

devoid of truth. Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the

help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed

against ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of

truth is required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make

the gradual departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived,

nor guard ourselves against deception.

Socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as

illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the

debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there

ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such

definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection

in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares the

regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not

his own, for the local deities must have inspired him). Although only a

playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first,

that of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly,

analysis, or the resolution of the whole into parts. These are the

processes of division and generalization which are so dear to the

dialectician, that king of men. They are effected by dialectic, and

not by rhetoric, of which the remains are but scanty after order and

arrangement have been subtracted. There is nothing left but a heap

of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus,

Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and

who teach how to be short or long at pleasure. Prodicus showed his good

sense when he said that there was a better thing than either to be short

or long, which was to be of convenient length.

Still, notwithstanding the absurdities of Polus and others, rhetoric has

great power in public assemblies. This power, however, is not given by

any technical rules, but is the gift of genius. The real art is always

being confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The

perfection of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural

power must be aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in

the schools of rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for

instance, who was the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his

eloquence not from rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which

he learnt of Anaxagoras. True rhetoric is like medicine, and the

rhetorician has to consider the natures of men's souls as the physician

considers the natures of their bodies. Such and such persons are to be

affected in this way, such and such others in that; and he must know the

times and the seasons for saying this or that. This is not an easy task,

and this, if there be such an art, is the art of rhetoric.

I know that there are some professors of the art who maintain

probability to be stronger than truth. But we maintain that probability

is engendered by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by

the knowledge of it, and that the aim of the good man should not be to

please or persuade his fellow-servants, but to please his good masters

who are the gods. Rhetoric has a fair beginning in this.

Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true

use of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of

writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he

would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From

this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered

the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture,

which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful

likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses

the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a

bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent

nor anyone else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously

incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will

rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of

earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing

only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will

be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well

as in his own.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows

the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other

men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than

the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when

delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own

bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others.

Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain

become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators,

we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these

principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but

philosophers. All others are mere flatterers and putters together of

words. This is the message which Phaedrus undertakes to carry to Lysias

from the local deities, and Socrates himself will carry a similar

message to his favourite Isocrates, whose future distinction as a great

rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the day has passed, and after

offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs, Socrates and Phaedrus

depart.

There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the

Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of

the Dialogue.

There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato

cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single

subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different

degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example,

far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species

of literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear

to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most

stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art

be hastily transferred to another. The double titles of several of the

Platonic Dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not

observed by Plato. The Republic is divided between the search after

justice and the construction of the ideal state; the Parmenides between

the criticism of the Platonic ideas and of the Eleatic one or being;

the Gorgias between the art of speaking and the nature of the good;

the Sophist between the detection of the Sophist and the correlation

of ideas. The Theaetetus, the Politicus, and the Philebus have also

digressions which are but remotely connected with the main subject.

Thus the comparison of Plato's other writings, as well as the reason of

the thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one

idea pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention

of the writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were

confined to the development of a single idea, this would appear on the

face of the dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether

the Phaedrus treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato

subjects himself to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he

gives unity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics

which he brings together. He works freely and is not to be supposed to

have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write.

He fastens or weaves together the frame of his discourse loosely and

imperfectly, and which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always

be determined.

The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory

passage about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are

first the false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the

inspiration of beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness;

thirdly, dialectic or the art of composition and division; fourthly, the

true rhetoric, which is based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of

persuasion nor knowledge of the truth alone, but the art of persuasion

founded on knowledge of truth and knowledge of character; fifthly, the

superiority of the spoken over the written word. The continuous thread

which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric; this is the ground

into which the rest of the Dialogue is worked, in parts embroidered with

fine words which are not in Socrates' manner, as he says, 'in order to

please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias which has thrown Phaedrus into an

ecstacy is adduced as an example of the false rhetoric; the first speech

of Socrates, though an improvement, partakes of the same character; his

second speech, which is full of that higher element said to have been

learned of Anaxagoras by Pericles, and which in the midst of poetry does

not forget order, is an illustration of the higher or true rhetoric.

This higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort

of inspiration akin to love (compare Symp.); in these two aspects of

philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. And so the

example becomes also the deeper theme of discourse. The true knowledge

of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or love of

the ideas going before us and ever present to us in this world and in

another; and the true order of speech or writing proceeds accordingly.

Love, again, has three degrees: first, of interested love corresponding

to the conventionalities of rhetoric; secondly, of disinterested or

mad love, fixed on objects of sense, and answering, perhaps, to poetry;

thirdly, of disinterested love directed towards the unseen, answering

to dialectic or the science of the ideas. Lastly, the art of rhetoric

in the lower sense is found to rest on a knowledge of the natures and

characters of men, which Socrates at the commencement of the Dialogue

has described as his own peculiar study.

Thus amid discord a harmony begins to appear; there are many links of

connection which are not visible at first sight. At the same time the

Phaedrus, although one of the most beautiful of the Platonic Dialogues,

is also more irregular than any other. For insight into the world, for

sustained irony, for depth of thought, there is no Dialogue superior,

or perhaps equal to it. Nevertheless the form of the work has tended to

obscure some of Plato's higher aims.

The first speech is composed 'in that balanced style in which the wise

love to talk' (Symp.). The characteristics of rhetoric are insipidity,

mannerism, and monotonous parallelism of clauses. There is more rhythm

than reason; the creative power of imagination is wanting.

''Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.'

Plato has seized by anticipation the spirit which hung over Greek

literature for a thousand years afterwards. Yet doubtless there were

some who, like Phaedrus, felt a delight in the harmonious cadence and

the pedantic reasoning of the rhetoricians newly imported from Sicily,

which had ceased to be awakened in them by really great works, such as

the odes of Anacreon or Sappho or the orations of Pericles. That the

first speech was really written by Lysias is improbable. Like the poem

of Solon, or the story of Thamus and Theuth, or the funeral oration of

Aspasia (if genuine), or the pretence of Socrates in the Cratylus that

his knowledge of philology is derived from Euthyphro, the invention

is really due to the imagination of Plato, and may be compared to the

parodies of the Sophists in the Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this

sort occur in the Dialogues, and the gravity of Plato has sometimes

imposed upon his commentators. The introduction of a considerable

writing of another would seem not to be in keeping with a great work of

art, and has no parallel elsewhere.

In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians

at their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the

art.' True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech

which he makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare

Symp.) Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech

seems to consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he

begins with a definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by

going back to general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness

of Socrates, which hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of

the style.

But Plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit Socrates as the

rival or superior of the Athenian rhetoricians. Even in the speech of

Lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the

parallel oration of Socrates. First, passionate love is overthrown by

the sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view

of love which is afterwards revealed to us. The extreme of commonplace

is contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations.

Socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the

disguise of Lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper

vein of irony than usual. Having improvised his own speech, which is

based upon the model of the preceding, he condemns them both. Yet the

condemnation is not to be taken seriously, for he is evidently trying

to express an aspect of the truth. To understand him, we must make

abstraction of morality and of the Greek manner of regarding the

relation of the sexes. In this, as in his other discussions about love,

what Plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves

of women before we can attach any serious meaning to his words. Had he

lived in our times he would have made the transposition himself. But

seeing in his own age the impossibility of woman being the intellectual

helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare instances of a Diotima

or an Aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal beauty, her place was

taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries to work out the

problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. And full

of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of

love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show

that the 'non-lover's' love is better than the 'lover's.'

We may raise the same question in another form: Is marriage preferable

with or without love? 'Among ourselves,' as we may say, a little

parodying the words of Pausanias in the Symposium, 'there would be

one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign

countries appears to be more doubtful.' Suppose a modern Socrates,

in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental

literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of

novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the

world be ready to take off its coat and run at him might and main?'

(Republic.) Yet, if like Peisthetaerus in Aristophanes, he could

persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a rampart,

not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have something

to say for himself. Might he not argue, 'that a rational being should

not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his or

her life'? Who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight,

almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends,

at a time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? And yet

they are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of

their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such

matters. Two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one

another, how can they be said to choose?--they draw lots, whence also

the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' Then he would describe their way of

life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to

the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in

unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior of the

two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family

'breed meanness in their souls.' In the fulfilment of military or public

duties, they are not helpers but hinderers of one another: they cannot

undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women

famous, from domestic considerations. Too late their eyes are opened;

they were taken unawares and desire to part company. Better, he would

say, a 'little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased

it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. In

the days of their honeymoon they never understood that they must provide

against offences, that they must have interests, that they must learn

the art of living as well as loving. Our misogamist will not appeal to

Anacreon or Sappho for a confirmation of his view, but to the universal

experience of mankind. How much nobler, in conclusion, he will say, is

friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and

poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is

much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes,

and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the

courts. Besides, he will remark that there is a much greater choice of

friends than of wives--you may have more of them and they will be far

more improving to your mind. They will not keep you dawdling at home, or

dancing attendance upon them; or withdraw you from the great world and

stirring scenes of life and action which would make a man of you.

In such a manner, turning the seamy side outwards, a modern Socrates

might describe the evils of married and domestic life. They are evils

which mankind in general have agreed to conceal, partly because they are

compensated by greater goods. Socrates or Archilochus would soon have

to sing a palinode for the injustice done to lovely Helen, or some

misfortune worse than blindness might be fall them. Then they would take

up their parable again and say:--that there were two loves, a higher and

a lower, holy and unholy, a love of the mind and a love of the body.

'Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.

.....

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.'

But this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until

they are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must pass

through a time of trial and conflict first; in the language of religion

they must be converted or born again. Then they would see the world

transformed into a scene of heavenly beauty; a divine idea would

accompany them in all their thoughts and actions. Something too of the

recollections of childhood might float about them still; they might

regain that old simplicity which had been theirs in other days at their

first entrance on life. And although their love of one another was ever

present to them, they would acknowledge also a higher love of duty and

of God, which united them. And their happiness would depend upon their

preserving in them this principle--not losing the ideals of justice and

holiness and truth, but renewing them at the fountain of light. When

they have attained to this exalted state, let them marry (something too

may be conceded to the animal nature of man): or live together in holy

and innocent friendship. The poet might describe in eloquent words

the nature of such a union; how after many struggles the true love was

found: how the two passed their lives together in the service of God and

man; how their characters were reflected upon one another, and seemed

to grow more like year by year; how they read in one another's eyes the

thoughts, wishes, actions of the other; how they saw each other in God;

how in a figure they grew wings like doves, and were 'ready to fly away

together and be at rest.' And lastly, he might tell how, after a time

at no long intervals, first one and then the other fell asleep, and

'appeared to the unwise' to die, but were reunited in another state of

being, in which they saw justice and holiness and truth, not according

to the imperfect copies of them which are found in this world, but

justice absolute in existence absolute, and so of the rest. And they

would hold converse not only with each other, but with blessed souls

everywhere; and would be employed in the service of God, every soul

fulfilling his own nature and character, and would see into the wonders

of earth and heaven, and trace the works of creation to their author.

So, partly in jest but also 'with a certain degree of seriousness,'

we may appropriate to ourselves the words of Plato. The use of such a

parody, though very imperfect, is to transfer his thoughts to our sphere

of religion and feeling, to bring him nearer to us and us to him. Like

the Scriptures, Plato admits of endless applications, if we allow for

the difference of times and manners; and we lose the better half of

him when we regard his Dialogues merely as literary compositions. Any

ancient work which is worth reading has a practical and speculative as

well as a literary interest. And in Plato, more than in any other Greek

writer, the local and transitory is inextricably blended with what is

spiritual and eternal. Socrates is necessarily ironical; for he has to

withdraw from the received opinions and beliefs of mankind. We cannot

separate the transitory from the permanent; nor can we translate the

language of irony into that of plain reflection and common sense. But we

can imagine the mind of Socrates in another age and country; and we can

interpret him by analogy with reference to the errors and prejudices

which prevail among ourselves. To return to the Phaedrus:--

Both speeches are strongly condemned by Socrates as sinful and

blasphemous towards the god Love, and as worthy only of some haunt of

sailors to which good manners were unknown. The meaning of this and

other wild language to the same effect, which is introduced by way of

contrast to the formality of the two speeches (Socrates has a sense of

relief when he has escaped from the trammels of rhetoric), seems to

be that the two speeches proceed upon the supposition that love is

and ought to be interested, and that no such thing as a real or

disinterested passion, which would be at the same time lasting, could

be conceived. 'But did I call this "love"? O God, forgive my blasphemy.

This is not love. Rather it is the love of the world. But there is

another kingdom of love, a kingdom not of this world, divine, eternal.

And this other love I will now show you in a mystery.'

Then follows the famous myth, which is a sort of parable, and like other

parables ought not to receive too minute an interpretation. In all such

allegories there is a great deal which is merely ornamental, and the

interpreter has to separate the important from the unimportant. Socrates

himself has given the right clue when, in using his own discourse

afterwards as the text for his examination of rhetoric, he characterizes

it as a 'partly true and tolerably credible mythus,' in which amid

poetical figures, order and arrangement were not forgotten.

The soul is described in magnificent language as the self-moved and the

source of motion in all other things. This is the philosophical theme or

proem of the whole. But ideas must be given through something, and under

the pretext that to realize the true nature of the soul would be not

only tedious but impossible, we at once pass on to describe the souls

of gods as well as men under the figure of two winged steeds and a

charioteer. No connection is traced between the soul as the great motive

power and the triple soul which is thus imaged. There is no difficulty

in seeing that the charioteer represents the reason, or that the black

horse is the symbol of the sensual or concupiscent element of human

nature. The white horse also represents rational impulse, but the

description, 'a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and a

follower of true glory,' though similar, does not at once recall the

'spirit' (thumos) of the Republic. The two steeds really correspond in a

figure more nearly to the appetitive and moral or semi-rational soul

of Aristotle. And thus, for the first time perhaps in the history

of philosophy, we have represented to us the threefold division of

psychology. The image of the charioteer and the steeds has been compared

with a similar image which occurs in the verses of Parmenides; but it

is important to remark that the horses of Parmenides have no allegorical

meaning, and that the poet is only describing his own approach in a

chariot to the regions of light and the house of the goddess of truth.

The triple soul has had a previous existence, in which following in

the train of some god, from whom she derived her character, she beheld

partially and imperfectly the vision of absolute truth. All her

after existence, passed in many forms of men and animals, is spent in

regaining this. The stages of the conflict are many and various; and

she is sorely let and hindered by the animal desires of the inferior or

concupiscent steed. Again and again she beholds the flashing beauty of

the beloved. But before that vision can be finally enjoyed the animal

desires must be subjected.

The moral or spiritual element in man is represented by the immortal

steed which, like thumos in the Republic, always sides with the reason.

Both are dragged out of their course by the furious impulses of desire.

In the end something is conceded to the desires, after they have been

finally humbled and overpowered. And yet the way of philosophy, or

perfect love of the unseen, is total abstinence from bodily delights.

'But all men cannot receive this saying': in the lower life of ambition

they may be taken off their guard and stoop to folly unawares, and then,

although they do not attain to the highest bliss, yet if they have once

conquered they may be happy enough.

The language of the Meno and the Phaedo as well as of the Phaedrus

seems to show that at one time of his life Plato was quite serious in

maintaining a former state of existence. His mission was to realize the

abstract; in that, all good and truth, all the hopes of this and another

life seemed to centre. To him abstractions, as we call them, were

another kind of knowledge--an inner and unseen world, which seemed

to exist far more truly than the fleeting objects of sense which were

without him. When we are once able to imagine the intense power which

abstract ideas exercised over the mind of Plato, we see that there was

no more difficulty to him in realizing the eternal existence of them

and of the human minds which were associated with them, in the past and

future than in the present. The difficulty was not how they could exist,

but how they could fail to exist. In the attempt to regain this 'saving'

knowledge of the ideas, the sense was found to be as great an enemy as

the desires; and hence two things which to us seem quite distinct are

inextricably blended in the representation of Plato.

Thus far we may believe that Plato was serious in his conception of the

soul as a motive power, in his reminiscence of a former state of being,

in his elevation of the reason over sense and passion, and perhaps in

his doctrine of transmigration. Was he equally serious in the rest? For

example, are we to attribute his tripartite division of the soul to the

gods? Or is this merely assigned to them by way of parallelism with men?

The latter is the more probable; for the horses of the gods are both

white, i.e. their every impulse is in harmony with reason; their

dualism, on the other hand, only carries out the figure of the chariot.

Is he serious, again, in regarding love as 'a madness'? That seems to

arise out of the antithesis to the former conception of love. At the

same time he appears to intimate here, as in the Ion, Apology, Meno,

and elsewhere, that there is a faculty in man, whether to be termed in

modern language genius, or inspiration, or imagination, or idealism,

or communion with God, which cannot be reduced to rule and measure.

Perhaps, too, he is ironically repeating the common language of mankind

about philosophy, and is turning their jest into a sort of earnest.

(Compare Phaedo, Symp.) Or is he serious in holding that each soul bears

the character of a god? He may have had no other account to give of

the differences of human characters to which he afterwards refers. Or,

again, in his absurd derivation of mantike and oionistike and imeros

(compare Cratylus)? It is characteristic of the irony of Socrates to

mix up sense and nonsense in such a way that no exact line can be drawn

between them. And allegory helps to increase this sort of confusion.

As is often the case in the parables and prophecies of Scripture, the

meaning is allowed to break through the figure, and the details are not

always consistent. When the charioteers and their steeds stand upon the

dome of heaven they behold the intangible invisible essences which

are not objects of sight. This is because the force of language can

no further go. Nor can we dwell much on the circumstance, that at the

completion of ten thousand years all are to return to the place from

whence they came; because he represents their return as dependent on

their own good conduct in the successive stages of existence. Nor again

can we attribute anything to the accidental inference which would also

follow, that even a tyrant may live righteously in the condition of life

to which fate has called him ('he aiblins might, I dinna ken'). But

to suppose this would be at variance with Plato himself and with Greek

notions generally. He is much more serious in distinguishing men from

animals by their recognition of the universal which they have known in

a former state, and in denying that this gift of reason can ever be

obliterated or lost. In the language of some modern theologians he might

be said to maintain the 'final perseverance' of those who have entered

on their pilgrim's progress. Other intimations of a 'metaphysic' or

'theology' of the future may also be discerned in him: (1) The moderate

predestinarianism which here, as in the Republic, acknowledges the

element of chance in human life, and yet asserts the freedom and

responsibility of man; (2) The recognition of a moral as well as an

intellectual principle in man under the image of an immortal steed; (3)

The notion that the divine nature exists by the contemplation of

ideas of virtue and justice--or, in other words, the assertion of the

essentially moral nature of God; (4) Again, there is the hint that human

life is a life of aspiration only, and that the true ideal is not to

be found in art; (5) There occurs the first trace of the distinction

between necessary and contingent matter; (6) The conception of the soul

itself as the motive power and reason of the universe.

The conception of the philosopher, or the philosopher and lover in one,

as a sort of madman, may be compared with the Republic and Theaetetus,

in both of which the philosopher is regarded as a stranger and monster

upon the earth. The whole myth, like the other myths of Plato, describes

in a figure things which are beyond the range of human faculties, or

inaccessible to the knowledge of the age. That philosophy should be

represented as the inspiration of love is a conception that has already

become familiar to us in the Symposium, and is the expression partly of

Plato's enthusiasm for the idea, and is also an indication of the real

power exercised by the passion of friendship over the mind of the Greek.

The master in the art of love knew that there was a mystery in these

feelings and their associations, and especially in the contrast of

the sensible and permanent which is afforded by them; and he sought

to explain this, as he explained universal ideas, by a reference to a

former state of existence. The capriciousness of love is also derived

by him from an attachment to some god in a former world. The singular

remark that the beloved is more affected than the lover at the final

consummation of their love, seems likewise to hint at a psychological

truth.

It is difficult to exhaust the meanings of a work like the Phaedrus,

which indicates so much more than it expresses; and is full of

inconsistencies and ambiguities which were not perceived by Plato

himself. For example, when he is speaking of the soul does he mean the

human or the divine soul? and are they both equally self-moving and

constructed on the same threefold principle? We should certainly be

disposed to reply that the self-motive is to be attributed to God only;

and on the other hand that the appetitive and passionate elements have

no place in His nature. So we should infer from the reason of the thing,

but there is no indication in Plato's own writings that this was his

meaning. Or, again, when he explains the different characters of men

by referring them back to the nature of the God whom they served in a

former state of existence, we are inclined to ask whether he is serious:

Is he not rather using a mythological figure, here as elsewhere, to draw

a veil over things which are beyond the limits of mortal knowledge? Once

more, in speaking of beauty is he really thinking of some external form

such as might have been expressed in the works of Phidias or Praxiteles;

and not rather of an imaginary beauty, of a sort which extinguishes

rather than stimulates vulgar love,--a heavenly beauty like that which

flashed from time to time before the eyes of Dante or Bunyan? Surely

the latter. But it would be idle to reconcile all the details of the

passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which is for the

greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the meaning to

come through. The image of the charioteer and his steeds is placed side

by side with the absolute forms of justice, temperance, and the like,

which are abstract ideas only, and which are seen with the eye of the

soul in her heavenly journey. The first impression of such a passage, in

which no attempt is made to separate the substance from the form, is far

truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis.

It is too often forgotten that the whole of the second discourse of

Socrates is only an allegory, or figure of speech. For this reason, it

is unnecessary to enquire whether the love of which Plato speaks is

the love of men or of women. It is really a general idea which includes

both, and in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is

reduced to order and measure. We must not attribute a meaning to

every fanciful detail. Nor is there any need to call up revolting

associations, which as a matter of good taste should be banished, and

which were far enough away from the mind of Plato. These and similar

passages should be interpreted by the Laws. Nor is there anything in the

Symposium, or in the Charmides, in reality inconsistent with the sterner

rule which Plato lays down in the Laws. At the same time it is not to be

denied that love and philosophy are described by Socrates in figures

of speech which would not be used in Christian times; or that nameless

vices were prevalent at Athens and in other Greek cities; or that

friendships between men were a more sacred tie, and had a more important

social and educational influence than among ourselves. (See note on

Symposium.)

In the Phaedrus, as well as in the Symposium, there are two kinds of

love, a lower and a higher, the one answering to the natural wants of

the animal, the other rising above them and contemplating with religious

awe the forms of justice, temperance, holiness, yet finding them

also 'too dazzling bright for mortal eye,' and shrinking from them

in amazement. The opposition between these two kinds of love may be

compared to the opposition between the flesh and the spirit in the

Epistles of St. Paul. It would be unmeaning to suppose that Plato, in

describing the spiritual combat, in which the rational soul is

finally victor and master of both the steeds, condescends to allow any

indulgence of unnatural lusts.

Two other thoughts about love are suggested by this passage. First of

all, love is represented here, as in the Symposium, as one of the great

powers of nature, which takes many forms and two principal ones, having

a predominant influence over the lives of men. And these two, though

opposed, are not absolutely separated the one from the other. Plato,

with his great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily

one is transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting

aspiration may return into the nature of the animal, while the

lower instinct which is latent always remains. The intermediate

sentimentalism, which has exercised so great an influence on the

literature of modern Europe, had no place in the classical times of

Hellas; the higher love, of which Plato speaks, is the subject, not of

poetry or fiction, but of philosophy.

Secondly, there seems to be indicated a natural yearning of the human

mind that the great ideas of justice, temperance, wisdom, should be

expressed in some form of visible beauty, like the absolute purity and

goodness which Christian art has sought to realize in the person of

the Madonna. But although human nature has often attempted to represent

outwardly what can be only 'spiritually discerned,' men feel that in

pictures and images, whether painted or carved, or described in words

only, we have not the substance but the shadow of the truth which is in

heaven. There is no reason to suppose that in the fairest works of Greek

art, Plato ever conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of

ideal truths. 'Not in that way was wisdom seen.'

We may now pass on to the second part of the Dialogue, which is a

criticism on the first. Rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first,

as desiring to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly,

as ignoring the distinction between certain and probable matter. The

three speeches are then passed in review: the first of them has no

definition of the nature of love, and no order in the topics (being in

these respects far inferior to the second); while the third of them is

found (though a fancy of the hour) to be framed upon real dialectical

principles. But dialectic is not rhetoric; nothing on that subject is to

be found in the endless treatises of rhetoric, however prolific in hard

names. When Plato has sufficiently put them to the test of ridicule he

touches, as with the point of a needle, the real error, which is the

confusion of preliminary knowledge with creative power. No attainments

will provide the speaker with genius; and the sort of attainments which

can alone be of any value are the higher philosophy and the power of

psychological analysis, which is given by dialectic, but not by the

rules of the rhetoricians.

In this latter portion of the Dialogue there are many texts which may

help us to speak and to think. The names dialectic and rhetoric are

passing out of use; we hardly examine seriously into their nature and

limits, and probably the arts both of speaking and of conversation have

been unduly neglected by us. But the mind of Socrates pierces through

the differences of times and countries into the essential nature of man;

and his words apply equally to the modern world and to the Athenians of

old. Would he not have asked of us, or rather is he not asking of us,

Whether we have ceased to prefer appearances to reality? Let us take

a survey of the professions to which he refers and try them by his

standard. Is not all literature passing into criticism, just as Athenian

literature in the age of Plato was degenerating into sophistry and

rhetoric? We can discourse and write about poems and paintings, but we

seem to have lost the gift of creating them. Can we wonder that few

of them 'come sweetly from nature,' while ten thousand reviewers (mala

murioi) are engaged in dissecting them? Young men, like Phaedrus, are

enamoured of their own literary clique and have but a feeble sympathy

with the master-minds of former ages. They recognize 'a POETICAL

necessity in the writings of their favourite author, even when he boldly

wrote off just what came in his head.' They are beginning to think that

Art is enough, just at the time when Art is about to disappear from the

world. And would not a great painter, such as Michael Angelo, or a great

poet, such as Shakespeare, returning to earth, 'courteously rebuke'

us--would he not say that we are putting 'in the place of Art the

preliminaries of Art,' confusing Art the expression of mind and truth

with Art the composition of colours and forms; and perhaps he might

more severely chastise some of us for trying to invent 'a new shudder'

instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations? These he

would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power.

Turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall

under the lash of Socrates. For do we not often make 'the worse appear

the better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell

lies'? Is not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'?

There is another text of Socrates which must not be forgotten in

relation to this subject. In the endless maze of English law is there

any 'dividing the whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a

whole'--any semblance of an organized being 'having hands and feet and

other members'? Instead of a system there is the Chaos of Anaxagoras

(omou panta chremata) and no Mind or Order. Then again in the noble

art of politics, who thinks of first principles and of true ideas?

We avowedly follow not the truth but the will of the many (compare

Republic). Is not legislation too a sort of literary effort, and might

not statesmanship be described as the 'art of enchanting' the house?

While there are some politicians who have no knowledge of the truth, but

only of what is likely to be approved by 'the many who sit in judgment,'

there are others who can give no form to their ideal, neither having

learned 'the art of persuasion,' nor having any insight into the

'characters of men.' Once more, has not medical science become a

professional routine, which many 'practise without being able to say

who were their instructors'--the application of a few drugs taken from

a book instead of a life-long study of the natures and constitutions of

human beings? Do we see as clearly as Hippocrates 'that the nature of

the body can only be understood as a whole'? (Compare Charm.) And are

not they held to be the wisest physicians who have the greatest distrust

of their art? What would Socrates think of our newspapers, of our

theology? Perhaps he would be afraid to speak of them;--the one vox

populi, the other vox Dei, he might hesitate to attack them; or he might

trace a fanciful connexion between them, and ask doubtfully, whether

they are not equally inspired? He would remark that we are always

searching for a belief and deploring our unbelief, seeming to prefer

popular opinions unverified and contradictory to unpopular truths which

are assured to us by the most certain proofs: that our preachers are

in the habit of praising God 'without regard to truth and falsehood,

attributing to Him every species of greatness and glory, saying that He

is all this and the cause of all that, in order that we may exhibit Him

as the fairest and best of all' (Symp.) without any consideration of

His real nature and character or of the laws by which He governs the

world--seeking for a 'private judgment' and not for the truth or 'God's

judgment.' What would he say of the Church, which we praise in like

manner, 'meaning ourselves,' without regard to history or experience?

Might he not ask, whether we 'care more for the truth of religion, or

for the speaker and the country from which the truth comes'? or, whether

the 'select wise' are not 'the many' after all? (Symp.) So we may fill

up the sketch of Socrates, lest, as Phaedrus says, the argument should

be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (Compare Symp., Apol.,

Euthyphro.)

He next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as

the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a

whole, and which may also be regarded (compare Soph.) as the process of

the mind talking with herself. The latter view has probably led Plato

to the paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem

also to be doing an injustice to himself. For the two cannot be fairly

compared in the manner which Plato suggests. The contrast of the living

and dead word, and the example of Socrates, which he has represented

in the form of the Dialogue, seem to have misled him. For speech and

writing have really different functions; the one is more transitory,

more diffuse, more elastic and capable of adaptation to moods and times;

the other is more permanent, more concentrated, and is uttered not to

this or that person or audience, but to all the world. In the Politicus

the paradox is carried further; the mind or will of the king is

preferred to the written law; he is supposed to be the Law personified,

the ideal made Life.

Yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may

be compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox,

that 'knowledge cannot be taught.' Socrates means to say, that what is

truly written is written in the soul, just as what is truly taught grows

up in the soul from within and is not forced upon it from without. When

planted in a congenial soil the little seed becomes a tree, and 'the

birds of the air build their nests in the branches.' There is an echo

of this in the prayer at the end of the Dialogue, 'Give me beauty in

the inward soul, and may the inward and outward man be at one.' We may

further compare the words of St. Paul, 'Written not on tables of stone,

but on fleshly tables of the heart;' and again, 'Ye are my epistles

known and read of all men.' There may be a use in writing as a

preservative against the forgetfulness of old age, but to live is higher

far, to be ourselves the book, or the epistle, the truth embodied in a

person, the Word made flesh. Something like this we may believe to have

passed before Plato's mind when he affirmed that speech was superior to

writing. So in other ages, weary of literature and criticism, of making

many books, of writing articles in reviews, some have desired to live

more closely in communion with their fellow-men, to speak heart to

heart, to speak and act only, and not to write, following the example of

Socrates and of Christ...

Some other touches of inimitable grace and art and of the deepest wisdom

may be also noted; such as the prayer or 'collect' which has just been

cited, 'Give me beauty,' etc.; or 'the great name which belongs to God

alone;' or 'the saying of wiser men than ourselves that a man of sense

should try to please not his fellow-servants, but his good and noble

masters,' like St. Paul again; or the description of the 'heavenly

originals'...

The chief criteria for determining the date of the Dialogue are (1) the

ages of Lysias and Isocrates; (2) the character of the work.

Lysias was born in the year 458; Isocrates in the year 436, about seven

years before the birth of Plato. The first of the two great rhetoricians

is described as in the zenith of his fame; the second is still young and

full of promise. Now it is argued that this must have been written in

the youth of Isocrates, when the promise was not yet fulfilled. And thus

we should have to assign the Dialogue to a year not later than 406,

when Isocrates was thirty and Plato twenty-three years of age, and while

Socrates himself was still alive.

Those who argue in this way seem not to reflect how easily Plato

can 'invent Egyptians or anything else,' and how careless he is of

historical truth or probability. Who would suspect that the wise

Critias, the virtuous Charmides, had ended their lives among the

thirty tyrants? Who would imagine that Lysias, who is here assailed

by Socrates, is the son of his old friend Cephalus? Or that Isocrates

himself is the enemy of Plato and his school? No arguments can be drawn

from the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the characters of

Plato. (Else, perhaps, it might be further argued that, judging from

their extant remains, insipid rhetoric is far more characteristic of

Isocrates than of Lysias.) But Plato makes use of names which have

often hardly any connection with the historical characters to whom they

belong. In this instance the comparative favour shown to Isocrates may

possibly be accounted for by the circumstance of his belonging to the

aristocratical, as Lysias to the democratical party.

Few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner

of some ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must

necessarily have been written in youth. As little weight can be attached

to the argument that Plato must have visited Egypt before he wrote the

story of Theuth and Thamus. For there is no real proof that he ever went

to Egypt; and even if he did, he might have known or invented Egyptian

traditions before he went there. The late date of the Phaedrus will have

to be established by other arguments than these: the maturity of the

thought, the perfection of the style, the insight, the relation to the

other Platonic Dialogues, seem to contradict the notion that it could

have been the work of a youth of twenty or twenty-three years of age.

The cosmological notion of the mind as the primum mobile, and the

admission of impulse into the immortal nature, also afford grounds for

assigning a later date. (Compare Tim., Soph., Laws.) Add to this that

the picture of Socrates, though in some lesser particulars,--e.g. his

going without sandals, his habit of remaining within the walls,

his emphatic declaration that his study is human nature,--an exact

resemblance, is in the main the Platonic and not the real Socrates. Can

we suppose 'the young man to have told such lies' about his master

while he was still alive? Moreover, when two Dialogues are so closely

connected as the Phaedrus and Symposium, there is great improbability in

supposing that one of them was written at least twenty years after the

other. The conclusion seems to be, that the Dialogue was written at

some comparatively late but unknown period of Plato's life, after he had

deserted the purely Socratic point of view, but before he had entered

on the more abstract speculations of the Sophist or the Philebus. Taking

into account the divisions of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration,

the contemplative nature of the philosophic life, and the character

of the style, we shall not be far wrong in placing the Phaedrus in the

neighbourhood of the Republic; remarking only that allowance must be

made for the poetical element in the Phaedrus, which, while falling

short of the Republic in definite philosophic results, seems to have

glimpses of a truth beyond.

Two short passages, which are unconnected with the main subject of the

Dialogue, may seem to merit a more particular notice: (1) the locus

classicus about mythology; (2) the tale of the grasshoppers.

The first passage is remarkable as showing that Plato was entirely

free from what may be termed the Euhemerism of his age. For there were

Euhemerists in Hellas long before Euhemerus. Early philosophers, like

Anaxagoras and Metrodorus, had found in Homer and mythology hidden

meanings. Plato, with a truer instinct, rejects these attractive

interpretations; he regards the inventor of them as 'unfortunate;' and

they draw a man off from the knowledge of himself. There is a latent

criticism, and also a poetical sense in Plato, which enable him to

discard them, and yet in another way to make use of poetry and mythology

as a vehicle of thought and feeling. What would he have said of the

discovery of Christian doctrines in these old Greek legends? While

acknowledging that such interpretations are 'very nice,' would he not

have remarked that they are found in all sacred literatures? They cannot

be tested by any criterion of truth, or used to establish any truth;

they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; they are--what we

please, and if employed as 'peacemakers' between the new and old are

liable to serious misconstruction, as he elsewhere remarks (Republic).

And therefore he would have 'bid Farewell to them; the study of them

would take up too much of his time; and he has not as yet learned the

true nature of religion.' The 'sophistical' interest of Phaedrus, the

little touch about the two versions of the story, the ironical manner in

which these explanations are set aside--'the common opinion about them

is enough for me'--the allusion to the serpent Typho may be noted in

passing; also the general agreement between the tone of this speech and

the remark of Socrates which follows afterwards, 'I am a diviner, but a

poor one.'

The tale of the grasshoppers is naturally suggested by the surrounding

scene. They are also the representatives of the Athenians as children

of the soil. Under the image of the lively chirruping grasshoppers who

inform the Muses in heaven about those who honour them on earth, Plato

intends to represent an Athenian audience (tettigessin eoikotes). The

story is introduced, apparently, to mark a change of subject, and also,

like several other allusions which occur in the course of the Dialogue,

in order to preserve the scene in the recollection of the reader.

*****

No one can duly appreciate the dialogues of Plato, especially the

Phaedrus, Symposium, and portions of the Republic, who has not a

sympathy with mysticism. To the uninitiated, as he would himself

have acknowledged, they will appear to be the dreams of a poet who

is disguised as a philosopher. There is a twofold difficulty in

apprehending this aspect of the Platonic writings. First, we do not

immediately realize that under the marble exterior of Greek literature

was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion. Secondly, the

forms or figures which the Platonic philosophy assumes, are not like the

images of the prophet Isaiah, or of the Apocalypse, familiar to us in

the days of our youth. By mysticism we mean, not the extravagance of

an erring fancy, but the concentration of reason in feeling, the

enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the

infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties. When

feeding upon such thoughts the 'wing of the soul' is renewed and

gains strength; she is raised above 'the manikins of earth' and their

opinions, waiting in wonder to know, and working with reverence to find

out what God in this or in another life may reveal to her.

ON THE DECLINE OF GREEK LITERATURE.

One of the main purposes of Plato in the Phaedrus is to satirize

Rhetoric, or rather the Professors of Rhetoric who swarmed at Athens in

the fourth century before Christ. As in the opening of the Dialogue he

ridicules the interpreters of mythology; as in the Protagoras he mocks

at the Sophists; as in the Euthydemus he makes fun of the word-splitting

Eristics; as in the Cratylus he ridicules the fancies of Etymologers;

as in the Meno and Gorgias and some other dialogues he makes reflections

and casts sly imputation upon the higher classes at Athens; so in

the Phaedrus, chiefly in the latter part, he aims his shafts at the

rhetoricians. The profession of rhetoric was the greatest and most

popular in Athens, necessary 'to a man's salvation,' or at any rate to

his attainment of wealth or power; but Plato finds nothing wholesome

or genuine in the purpose of it. It is a veritable 'sham,' having no

relation to fact, or to truth of any kind. It is antipathetic to him not

only as a philosopher, but also as a great writer. He cannot abide the

tricks of the rhetoricians, or the pedantries and mannerisms which they

introduce into speech and writing. He sees clearly how far removed they

are from the ways of simplicity and truth, and how ignorant of the very

elements of the art which they are professing to teach. The thing which

is most necessary of all, the knowledge of human nature, is hardly if

at all considered by them. The true rules of composition, which are

very few, are not to be found in their voluminous systems. Their

pretentiousness, their omniscience, their large fortunes, their

impatience of argument, their indifference to first principles, their

stupidity, their progresses through Hellas accompanied by a troop

of their disciples--these things were very distasteful to Plato, who

esteemed genius far above art, and was quite sensible of the interval

which separated them (Phaedrus). It is the interval which separates

Sophists and rhetoricians from ancient famous men and women such as

Homer and Hesiod, Anacreon and Sappho, Aeschylus and Sophocles; and the

Platonic Socrates is afraid that, if he approves the former, he will be

disowned by the latter. The spirit of rhetoric was soon to overspread

all Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar,

the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which

Greek literature was soon to disappear. A similar vision of the decline

of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the

new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three

great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred

years if we exclude Homer, the genius of Hellas had ceased to flower or

blossom. The dreary waste which follows, beginning with the Alexandrian

writers and even before them in the platitudes of Isocrates and his

school, spreads over much more than a thousand years. And from this

decline the Greek language and literature, unlike the Latin, which has

come to life in new forms and been developed into the great European

languages, never recovered.

This monotony of literature, without merit, without genius and without

character, is a phenomenon which deserves more attention than it has

hitherto received; it is a phenomenon unique in the literary history

of the world. How could there have been so much cultivation, so much

diligence in writing, and so little mind or real creative power? Why

did a thousand years invent nothing better than Sibylline books,

Orphic poems, Byzantine imitations of classical histories, Christian

reproductions of Greek plays, novels like the silly and obscene romances

of Longus and Heliodorus, innumerable forged epistles, a great many

epigrams, biographies of the meanest and most meagre description, a sham

philosophy which was the bastard progeny of the union between Hellas

and the East? Only in Plutarch, in Lucian, in Longinus, in the Roman

emperors Marcus Aurelius and Julian, in some of the Christian fathers

are there any traces of good sense or originality, or any power of

arousing the interest of later ages. And when new books ceased to be

written, why did hosts of grammarians and interpreters flock in, who

never attain to any sound notion either of grammar or interpretation?

Why did the physical sciences never arrive at any true knowledge or make

any real progress? Why did poetry droop and languish? Why did history

degenerate into fable? Why did words lose their power of expression?

Why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the

signs of decay in the human mind which are possible?

To these questions many answers may be given, which if not the true

causes, are at least to be reckoned among the symptoms of the decline.

There is the want of method in physical science, the want of criticism

in history, the want of simplicity or delicacy in poetry, the want of

political freedom, which is the true atmosphere of public speaking, in

oratory. The ways of life were luxurious and commonplace. Philosophy had

become extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. At

length it ceased to exist. It had spread words like plaster over the

whole field of knowledge. It had grown ascetic on one side, mystical

on the other. Neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature.

There was no sense of beauty either in language or in art. The Greek

world became vacant, barbaric, oriental. No one had anything new to say,

or any conviction of truth. The age had no remembrance of the past, no

power of understanding what other ages thought and felt. The Catholic

faith had degenerated into dogma and controversy. For more than

a thousand years not a single writer of first-rate, or even of

second-rate, reputation has a place in the innumerable rolls of Greek

literature.

If we seek to go deeper, we can still only describe the outward nature

of the clouds or darkness which were spread over the heavens during so

many ages without relief or light. We may say that this, like several

other long periods in the history of the human race, was destitute,

or deprived of the moral qualities which are the root of literary

excellence. It had no life or aspiration, no national or political

force, no desire for consistency, no love of knowledge for its own sake.

It did not attempt to pierce the mists which surrounded it. It did not

propose to itself to go forward and scale the heights of knowledge, but

to go backwards and seek at the beginning what can only be found towards

the end. It was lost in doubt and ignorance. It rested upon tradition

and authority. It had none of the higher play of fancy which creates

poetry; and where there is no true poetry, neither can there be any

good prose. It had no great characters, and therefore it had no great

writers. It was incapable of distinguishing between words and things. It

was so hopelessly below the ancient standard of classical Greek art and

literature that it had no power of understanding or of valuing them. It

is doubtful whether any Greek author was justly appreciated in antiquity

except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect of the great authors

of the past led to the disappearance of the larger part of them, while

the Greek fathers were mostly preserved. There is no reason to suppose

that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople, much more was

in existence than the scholars of the Renaissance carried away with them

to Italy.

The character of Greek literature sank lower as time went on. It

consisted more and more of compilations, of scholia, of extracts, of

commentaries, forgeries, imitations. The commentator or interpreter had

no conception of his author as a whole, and very little of the context

of any passage which he was explaining. The least things were preferred

by him to the greatest. The question of a reading, or a grammatical

form, or an accent, or the uses of a word, took the place of the aim or

subject of the book. He had no sense of the beauties of an author, and

very little light is thrown by him on real difficulties. He interprets

past ages by his own. The greatest classical writers are the least

appreciated by him. This seems to be the reason why so many of them have

perished, why the lyric poets have almost wholly disappeared; why, out

of the eighty or ninety tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, only seven

of each had been preserved.

Such an age of sciolism and scholasticism may possibly once more get

the better of the literary world. There are those who prophesy that the

signs of such a day are again appearing among us, and that at the end

of the present century no writer of the first class will be still alive.

They think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other

countries less dried up or worn out than our own. They seem to see the

withering effect of criticism on original genius. No one can doubt that

such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects

the manners and character of a nation. It takes away half the joys and

refinements of life; it increases its dulness and grossness. Hence it

becomes a matter of great interest to consider how, if at all, such a

degeneracy may be averted. Is there any elixir which can restore life

and youth to the literature of a nation, or at any rate which can

prevent it becoming unmanned and enfeebled?

First there is the progress of education. It is possible, and even

probable, that the extension of the means of knowledge over a wider

area and to persons living under new conditions may lead to many new

combinations of thought and language. But, as yet, experience does

not favour the realization of such a hope or promise. It may be truly

answered that at present the training of teachers and the methods of

education are very imperfect, and therefore that we cannot judge of the

future by the present. When more of our youth are trained in the best

literatures, and in the best parts of them, their minds may be expected

to have a larger growth. They will have more interests, more thoughts,

more material for conversation; they will have a higher standard and

begin to think for themselves. The number of persons who will have the

opportunity of receiving the highest education through the cheap press,

and by the help of high schools and colleges, may increase tenfold. It

is likely that in every thousand persons there is at least one who is

far above the average in natural capacity, but the seed which is in him

dies for want of cultivation. It has never had any stimulus to grow,

or any field in which to blossom and produce fruit. Here is a great

reservoir or treasure-house of human intelligence out of which new

waters may flow and cover the earth. If at any time the great men of

the world should die out, and originality or genius appear to suffer

a partial eclipse, there is a boundless hope in the multitude of

intelligences for future generations. They may bring gifts to men such

as the world has never received before. They may begin at a higher point

and yet take with them all the results of the past. The co-operation of

many may have effects not less striking, though different in character

from those which the creative genius of a single man, such as Bacon or

Newton, formerly produced. There is also great hope to be derived, not

merely from the extension of education over a wider area, but from the

continuance of it during many generations. Educated parents will have

children fit to receive education; and these again will grow up under

circumstances far more favourable to the growth of intelligence than any

which have hitherto existed in our own or in former ages.

Even if we were to suppose no more men of genius to be produced, the

great writers of ancient or of modern times will remain to furnish

abundant materials of education to the coming generation. Now that

every nation holds communication with every other, we may truly say in

a fuller sense than formerly that 'the thoughts of men are widened

with the process of the suns.' They will not be 'cribbed, cabined, and

confined' within a province or an island. The East will provide elements

of culture to the West as well as the West to the East. The religions

and literatures of the world will be open books, which he who wills may

read. The human race may not be always ground down by bodily toil, but

may have greater leisure for the improvement of the mind. The increasing

sense of the greatness and infinity of nature will tend to awaken in men

larger and more liberal thoughts. The love of mankind may be the source

of a greater development of literature than nationality has ever been.

There may be a greater freedom from prejudice and party; we may better

understand the whereabouts of truth, and therefore there may be more

success and fewer failures in the search for it. Lastly, in the coming

ages we shall carry with us the recollection of the past, in which

are necessarily contained many seeds of revival and renaissance in the

future. So far is the world from becoming exhausted, so groundless is

the fear that literature will ever die out.

PHAEDRUS

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Phaedrus.

SCENE: Under a plane-tree, by the banks of the Ilissus.

SOCRATES: My dear Phaedrus, whence come you, and whither are you going?

PHAEDRUS: I come from Lysias the son of Cephalus, and I am going to

take a walk outside the wall, for I have been sitting with him the whole

morning; and our common friend Acumenus tells me that it is much more

refreshing to walk in the open air than to be shut up in a cloister.

SOCRATES: There he is right. Lysias then, I suppose, was in the town?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, he was staying with Epicrates, here at the house of

Morychus; that house which is near the temple of Olympian Zeus.

SOCRATES: And how did he entertain you? Can I be wrong in supposing that

Lysias gave you a feast of discourse?

PHAEDRUS: You shall hear, if you can spare time to accompany me.

SOCRATES: And should I not deem the conversation of you and Lysias 'a

thing of higher import,' as I may say in the words of Pindar, 'than any

business'?

PHAEDRUS: Will you go on?

SOCRATES: And will you go on with the narration?

PHAEDRUS: My tale, Socrates, is one of your sort, for love was the theme

which occupied us--love after a fashion: Lysias has been writing about

a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was

the point: he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted

rather than the lover.

SOCRATES: O that is noble of him! I wish that he would say the poor man

rather than the rich, and the old man rather than the young one;--then

he would meet the case of me and of many a man; his words would be quite

refreshing, and he would be a public benefactor. For my part, I do so

long to hear his speech, that if you walk all the way to Megara, and

when you have reached the wall come back, as Herodicus recommends,

without going in, I will keep you company.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean, my good Socrates? How can you imagine that

my unpractised memory can do justice to an elaborate work, which the

greatest rhetorician of the age spent a long time in composing. Indeed,

I cannot; I would give a great deal if I could.

SOCRATES: I believe that I know Phaedrus about as well as I know myself,

and I am very sure that the speech of Lysias was repeated to him, not

once only, but again and again;--he insisted on hearing it many times

over and Lysias was very willing to gratify him; at last, when nothing

else would do, he got hold of the book, and looked at what he most

wanted to see,--this occupied him during the whole morning;--and then

when he was tired with sitting, he went out to take a walk, not until,

by the dog, as I believe, he had simply learned by heart the entire

discourse, unless it was unusually long, and he went to a place outside

the wall that he might practise his lesson. There he saw a certain

lover of discourse who had a similar weakness;--he saw and rejoiced; now

thought he, 'I shall have a partner in my revels.' And he invited him to

come and walk with him. But when the lover of discourse begged that he

would repeat the tale, he gave himself airs and said, 'No I cannot,'

as if he were indisposed; although, if the hearer had refused, he would

sooner or later have been compelled by him to listen whether he would or

no. Therefore, Phaedrus, bid him do at once what he will soon do whether

bidden or not.

PHAEDRUS: I see that you will not let me off until I speak in some

fashion or other; verily therefore my best plan is to speak as I best

can.

SOCRATES: A very true remark, that of yours.

PHAEDRUS: I will do as I say; but believe me, Socrates, I did not learn

the very words--O no; nevertheless I have a general notion of what

he said, and will give you a summary of the points in which the lover

differed from the non-lover. Let me begin at the beginning.

SOCRATES: Yes, my sweet one; but you must first of all show what you

have in your left hand under your cloak, for that roll, as I suspect,

is the actual discourse. Now, much as I love you, I would not have you

suppose that I am going to have your memory exercised at my expense, if

you have Lysias himself here.

PHAEDRUS: Enough; I see that I have no hope of practising my art upon

you. But if I am to read, where would you please to sit?

SOCRATES: Let us turn aside and go by the Ilissus; we will sit down at

some quiet spot.

PHAEDRUS: I am fortunate in not having my sandals, and as you never have

any, I think that we may go along the brook and cool our feet in the

water; this will be the easiest way, and at midday and in the summer is

far from being unpleasant.

SOCRATES: Lead on, and look out for a place in which we can sit down.

PHAEDRUS: Do you see the tallest plane-tree in the distance?

SOCRATES: Yes.

PHAEDRUS: There are shade and gentle breezes, and grass on which we may

either sit or lie down.

SOCRATES: Move forward.

PHAEDRUS: I should like to know, Socrates, whether the place is not

somewhere here at which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from

the banks of the Ilissus?

SOCRATES: Such is the tradition.

PHAEDRUS: And is this the exact spot? The little stream is delightfully

clear and bright; I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near.

SOCRATES: I believe that the spot is not exactly here, but about a

quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of Artemis,

and there is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.

PHAEDRUS: I have never noticed it; but I beseech you to tell me,

Socrates, do you believe this tale?

SOCRATES: The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like

them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia

was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the

neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said

to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however,

about the locality; according to another version of the story she was

taken from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge

that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has

to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and

when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and

chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless

other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical

about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of

probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of

time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I

must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious

about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my

own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this;

the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to

know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated

and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a

gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier

destiny? But let me ask you, friend: have we not reached the plane-tree

to which you were conducting us?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, this is the tree.

SOCRATES: By Here, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and

scents. Here is this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus

castus high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest

fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is

deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images,

this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs. How delightful is

the breeze:--so very sweet; and there is a sound in the air shrill and

summerlike which makes answer to the chorus of the cicadae. But the

greatest charm of all is the grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the

head. My dear Phaedrus, you have been an admirable guide.

PHAEDRUS: What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates: when you are

in the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger who is led

about by a guide. Do you ever cross the border? I rather think that you

never venture even outside the gates.

SOCRATES: Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me

when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and

the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the

country. Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with

which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow

before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up

before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica,

and over the wide world. And now having arrived, I intend to lie down,

and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. Begin.

PHAEDRUS: Listen. You know how matters stand with me; and how, as I

conceive, this affair may be arranged for the advantage of both of us.

And I maintain that I ought not to fail in my suit, because I am not

your lover: for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown

when their passion ceases, but to the non-lovers who are free and not

under any compulsion, no time of repentance ever comes; for they confer

their benefits according to the measure of their ability, in the way

which is most conducive to their own interest. Then again, lovers

consider how by reason of their love they have neglected their own

concerns and rendered service to others: and when to these benefits

conferred they add on the troubles which they have endured, they think

that they have long ago made to the beloved a very ample return. But the

non-lover has no such tormenting recollections; he has never neglected

his affairs or quarrelled with his relations; he has no troubles to

add up or excuses to invent; and being well rid of all these evils, why

should he not freely do what will gratify the beloved? If you say that

the lover is more to be esteemed, because his love is thought to be

greater; for he is willing to say and do what is hateful to other men,

in order to please his beloved;--that, if true, is only a proof that he

will prefer any future love to his present, and will injure his old

love at the pleasure of the new. And how, in a matter of such infinite

importance, can a man be right in trusting himself to one who is

afflicted with a malady which no experienced person would attempt to

cure, for the patient himself admits that he is not in his right mind,

and acknowledges that he is wrong in his mind, but says that he is

unable to control himself? And if he came to his right mind, would he

ever imagine that the desires were good which he conceived when in his

wrong mind? Once more, there are many more non-lovers than lovers; and

if you choose the best of the lovers, you will not have many to choose

from; but if from the non-lovers, the choice will be larger, and you

will be far more likely to find among them a person who is worthy of

your friendship. If public opinion be your dread, and you would avoid

reproach, in all probability the lover, who is always thinking that

other men are as emulous of him as he is of them, will boast to some

one of his successes, and make a show of them openly in the pride of his

heart;--he wants others to know that his labour has not been lost; but

the non-lover is more his own master, and is desirous of solid good, and

not of the opinion of mankind. Again, the lover may be generally noted

or seen following the beloved (this is his regular occupation), and

whenever they are observed to exchange two words they are supposed to

meet about some affair of love either past or in contemplation; but when

non-lovers meet, no one asks the reason why, because people know that

talking to another is natural, whether friendship or mere pleasure

be the motive. Once more, if you fear the fickleness of friendship,

consider that in any other case a quarrel might be a mutual calamity;

but now, when you have given up what is most precious to you, you will

be the greater loser, and therefore, you will have more reason in

being afraid of the lover, for his vexations are many, and he is always

fancying that every one is leagued against him. Wherefore also he

debars his beloved from society; he will not have you intimate with

the wealthy, lest they should exceed him in wealth, or with men of

education, lest they should be his superiors in understanding; and he is

equally afraid of anybody's influence who has any other advantage over

himself. If he can persuade you to break with them, you are left without

a friend in the world; or if, out of a regard to your own interest, you

have more sense than to comply with his desire, you will have to quarrel

with him. But those who are non-lovers, and whose success in love is the

reward of their merit, will not be jealous of the companions of their

beloved, and will rather hate those who refuse to be his associates,

thinking that their favourite is slighted by the latter and benefited by

the former; for more love than hatred may be expected to come to him out

of his friendship with others. Many lovers too have loved the person of

a youth before they knew his character or his belongings; so that when

their passion has passed away, there is no knowing whether they will

continue to be his friends; whereas, in the case of non-lovers who were

always friends, the friendship is not lessened by the favours granted;

but the recollection of these remains with them, and is an earnest of

good things to come.

Further, I say that you are likely to be improved by me, whereas the

lover will spoil you. For they praise your words and actions in a wrong

way; partly, because they are afraid of offending you, and also, their

judgment is weakened by passion. Such are the feats which love exhibits;

he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no pain to

others; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to

give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather

than envied. But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my

intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but

also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master;

nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause

is great, slowly laying up little wrath--unintentional offences I shall

forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent; and these are the

marks of a friendship which will last.

Do you think that a lover only can be a firm friend? reflect:--if this

were true, we should set small value on sons, or fathers, or mothers;

nor should we ever have loyal friends, for our love of them arises

not from passion, but from other associations. Further, if we ought

to shower favours on those who are the most eager suitors,--on that

principle, we ought always to do good, not to the most virtuous, but to

the most needy; for they are the persons who will be most relieved,

and will therefore be the most grateful; and when you make a feast you

should invite not your friend, but the beggar and the empty soul; for

they will love you, and attend you, and come about your doors, and

will be the best pleased, and the most grateful, and will invoke many a

blessing on your head. Yet surely you ought not to be granting favours

to those who besiege you with prayer, but to those who are best able to

reward you; nor to the lover only, but to those who are worthy of love;

nor to those who will enjoy the bloom of your youth, but to those who

will share their possessions with you in age; nor to those who, having

succeeded, will glory in their success to others, but to those who

will be modest and tell no tales; nor to those who care about you for a

moment only, but to those who will continue your friends through life;

nor to those who, when their passion is over, will pick a quarrel with

you, but rather to those who, when the charm of youth has left you, will

show their own virtue. Remember what I have said; and consider yet this

further point: friends admonish the lover under the idea that his way of

life is bad, but no one of his kindred ever yet censured the non-lover,

or thought that he was ill-advised about his own interests.

'Perhaps you will ask me whether I propose that you should indulge every

non-lover. To which I reply that not even the lover would advise you to

indulge all lovers, for the indiscriminate favour is less esteemed by

the rational recipient, and less easily hidden by him who would escape

the censure of the world. Now love ought to be for the advantage of both

parties, and for the injury of neither.

'I believe that I have said enough; but if there is anything more which

you desire or which in your opinion needs to be supplied, ask and I will

answer.'

Now, Socrates, what do you think? Is not the discourse excellent, more

especially in the matter of the language?

SOCRATES: Yes, quite admirable; the effect on me was ravishing. And this

I owe to you, Phaedrus, for I observed you while reading to be in an

ecstasy, and thinking that you are more experienced in these matters

than I am, I followed your example, and, like you, my divine darling, I

became inspired with a phrenzy.

PHAEDRUS: Indeed, you are pleased to be merry.

SOCRATES: Do you mean that I am not in earnest?

PHAEDRUS: Now don't talk in that way, Socrates, but let me have your

real opinion; I adjure you, by Zeus, the god of friendship, to tell me

whether you think that any Hellene could have said more or spoken better

on the same subject.

SOCRATES: Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments

of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and

tournure of the language? As to the first I willingly submit to your

better judgment, for I am not worthy to form an opinion, having only

attended to the rhetorical manner; and I was doubting whether this could

have been defended even by Lysias himself; I thought, though I speak

under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either

from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me

ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing

in two or three ways.

PHAEDRUS: Nonsense, Socrates; what you call repetition was the especial

merit of the speech; for he omitted no topic of which the subject

rightly allowed, and I do not think that any one could have spoken

better or more exhaustively.

SOCRATES: There I cannot go along with you. Ancient sages, men and

women, who have spoken and written of these things, would rise up in

judgment against me, if out of complaisance I assented to you.

PHAEDRUS: Who are they, and where did you hear anything better than

this?

SOCRATES: I am sure that I must have heard; but at this moment I do not

remember from whom; perhaps from Sappho the fair, or Anacreon the wise;

or, possibly, from a prose writer. Why do I say so? Why, because I

perceive that my bosom is full, and that I could make another speech as

good as that of Lysias, and different. Now I am certain that this is

not an invention of my own, who am well aware that I know nothing, and

therefore I can only infer that I have been filled through the ears,

like a pitcher, from the waters of another, though I have actually

forgotten in my stupidity who was my informant.

PHAEDRUS: That is grand:--but never mind where you heard the discourse

or from whom; let that be a mystery not to be divulged even at my

earnest desire. Only, as you say, promise to make another and better

oration, equal in length and entirely new, on the same subject; and I,

like the nine Archons, will promise to set up a golden image at Delphi,

not only of myself, but of you, and as large as life.

SOCRATES: You are a dear golden ass if you suppose me to mean that

Lysias has altogether missed the mark, and that I can make a speech from

which all his arguments are to be excluded. The worst of authors will

say something which is to the point. Who, for example, could speak on

this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover

and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of

the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and

must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in the arrangement of

them, for there can be none in the invention; but when you leave the

commonplaces, then there may be some originality.

PHAEDRUS: I admit that there is reason in what you say, and I too will

be reasonable, and will allow you to start with the premiss that the

lover is more disordered in his wits than the non-lover; if in what

remains you make a longer and better speech than Lysias, and use other

arguments, then I say again, that a statue you shall have of beaten

gold, and take your place by the colossal offerings of the Cypselids at

Olympia.

SOCRATES: How profoundly in earnest is the lover, because to tease him I

lay a finger upon his love! And so, Phaedrus, you really imagine that I

am going to improve upon the ingenuity of Lysias?

PHAEDRUS: There I have you as you had me, and you must just speak 'as

you best can.' Do not let us exchange 'tu quoque' as in a farce, or

compel me to say to you as you said to me, 'I know Socrates as well as

I know myself, and he was wanting to speak, but he gave himself airs.'

Rather I would have you consider that from this place we stir not until

you have unbosomed yourself of the speech; for here are we all alone,

and I am stronger, remember, and younger than you:--Wherefore perpend,

and do not compel me to use violence.

SOCRATES: But, my sweet Phaedrus, how ridiculous it would be of me to

compete with Lysias in an extempore speech! He is a master in his art

and I am an untaught man.

PHAEDRUS: You see how matters stand; and therefore let there be no more

pretences; for, indeed, I know the word that is irresistible.

SOCRATES: Then don't say it.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, but I will; and my word shall be an oath. 'I say, or

rather swear'--but what god will be witness of my oath?--'By this

plane-tree I swear, that unless you repeat the discourse here in the

face of this very plane-tree, I will never tell you another; never let

you have word of another!'

SOCRATES: Villain! I am conquered; the poor lover of discourse has no

more to say.

PHAEDRUS: Then why are you still at your tricks?

SOCRATES: I am not going to play tricks now that you have taken the

oath, for I cannot allow myself to be starved.

PHAEDRUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I will do?

PHAEDRUS: What?

SOCRATES: I will veil my face and gallop through the discourse as fast

as I can, for if I see you I shall feel ashamed and not know what to

say.

PHAEDRUS: Only go on and you may do anything else which you please.

SOCRATES: Come, O ye Muses, melodious, as ye are called, whether you

have received this name from the character of your strains, or because

the Melians are a musical race, help, O help me in the tale which my

good friend here desires me to rehearse, in order that his friend whom

he always deemed wise may seem to him to be wiser than ever.

Once upon a time there was a fair boy, or, more properly speaking, a

youth; he was very fair and had a great many lovers; and there was one

special cunning one, who had persuaded the youth that he did not love

him, but he really loved him all the same; and one day when he was

paying his addresses to him, he used this very argument--that he

ought to accept the non-lover rather than the lover; his words were as

follows:--

'All good counsel begins in the same way; a man should know what he

is advising about, or his counsel will all come to nought. But people

imagine that they know about the nature of things, when they don't know

about them, and, not having come to an understanding at first

because they think that they know, they end, as might be expected, in

contradicting one another and themselves. Now you and I must not be

guilty of this fundamental error which we condemn in others; but as our

question is whether the lover or non-lover is to be preferred, let us

first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love, and then,

keeping our eyes upon the definition and to this appealing, let us

further enquire whether love brings advantage or disadvantage.

'Every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers

desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be

distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note that in every one of us

there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they

will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired

opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in

harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the

other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best,

the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which

is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of

misrule is called excess. Now excess has many names, and many members,

and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name,

neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. The desire

of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and

the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it

is called a glutton; the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the

possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious,

and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the

same family would be called;--it will be the name of that which happens

to be dominant. And now I think that you will perceive the drift of

my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the

unspoken, I had better say further that the irrational desire which

overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the

enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires

which are her own kindred--that supreme desire, I say, which by leading

conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very

force, receiving a name, is called love (erromenos eros).'

And now, dear Phaedrus, I shall pause for an instant to ask whether you

do not think me, as I appear to myself, inspired?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you seem to have a very unusual flow of words.

SOCRATES: Listen to me, then, in silence; for surely the place is holy;

so that you must not wonder, if, as I proceed, I appear to be in a

divine fury, for already I am getting into dithyrambics.

PHAEDRUS: Nothing can be truer.

SOCRATES: The responsibility rests with you. But hear what follows, and

perhaps the fit may be averted; all is in their hands above. I will go

on talking to my youth. Listen:--

Thus, my friend, we have declared and defined the nature of the subject.

Keeping the definition in view, let us now enquire what advantage or

disadvantage is likely to ensue from the lover or the non-lover to him

who accepts their advances.

He who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of

course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible.

Now to him who has a mind diseased anything is agreeable which is not

opposed to him, but that which is equal or superior is hateful to him,

and therefore the lover will not brook any superiority or equality

on the part of his beloved; he is always employed in reducing him to

inferiority. And the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward

of the brave, the slow of speech of the speaker, the dull of the

clever. These, and not these only, are the mental defects of the

beloved;--defects which, when implanted by nature, are necessarily

a delight to the lover, and when not implanted, he must contrive to

implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his fleeting joy.

And therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar his beloved

from the advantages of society which would make a man of him, and

especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and

thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. That is to say, in his

excessive fear lest he should come to be despised in his eyes he will be

compelled to banish from him divine philosophy; and there is no greater

injury which he can inflict upon him than this. He will contrive that

his beloved shall be wholly ignorant, and in everything shall look

to him; he is to be the delight of the lover's heart, and a curse to

himself. Verily, a lover is a profitable guardian and associate for him

in all that relates to his mind.

Let us next see how his master, whose law of life is pleasure and not

good, will keep and train the body of his servant. Will he not choose a

beloved who is delicate rather than sturdy and strong? One brought up

in shady bowers and not in the bright sun, a stranger to manly exercises

and the sweat of toil, accustomed only to a soft and luxurious diet,

instead of the hues of health having the colours of paint and ornament,

and the rest of a piece?--such a life as any one can imagine and which I

need not detail at length. But I may sum up all that I have to say in a

word, and pass on. Such a person in war, or in any of the great crises

of life, will be the anxiety of his friends and also of his lover, and

certainly not the terror of his enemies; which nobody can deny.

And now let us tell what advantage or disadvantage the beloved will

receive from the guardianship and society of his lover in the matter of

his property; this is the next point to be considered. The lover will be

the first to see what, indeed, will be sufficiently evident to all men,

that he desires above all things to deprive his beloved of his dearest

and best and holiest possessions, father, mother, kindred, friends, of

all whom he thinks may be hinderers or reprovers of their most sweet

converse; he will even cast a jealous eye upon his gold and silver or

other property, because these make him a less easy prey, and when caught

less manageable; hence he is of necessity displeased at his possession

of them and rejoices at their loss; and he would like him to be

wifeless, childless, homeless, as well; and the longer the better, for

the longer he is all this, the longer he will enjoy him.

There are some sort of animals, such as flatterers, who are dangerous

and mischievous enough, and yet nature has mingled a temporary pleasure

and grace in their composition. You may say that a courtesan is hurtful,

and disapprove of such creatures and their practices, and yet for the

time they are very pleasant. But the lover is not only hurtful to his

love; he is also an extremely disagreeable companion. The old proverb

says that 'birds of a feather flock together'; I suppose that equality

of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets

friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily

constraint is always said to be grievous. Now the lover is not only

unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him. For he is old and

his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he

can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure

him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching,

perceiving him in every way. And therefore he is delighted to fasten

upon him and to minister to him. But what pleasure or consolation can

the beloved be receiving all this time? Must he not feel the extremity

of disgust when he looks at an old shrivelled face and the remainder to

match, which even in a description is disagreeable, and quite detestable

when he is forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is

jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and

has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures

equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and,

besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their

indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk.

And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant,

but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom

he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly

prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives

of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of

another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance

are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change

which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to

his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be

speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to

confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises

which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown

wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was

before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the

oyster-shell (In allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued

according as an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with

the dark or light side uppermost.) has fallen with the other side

uppermost--he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled

to follow him with passion and imprecation, not knowing that he ought

never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a

sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving

himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful

to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to

the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will

be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider

this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is

no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you:

'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.'

But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better

make an end; enough.

PHAEDRUS: I thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a

similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why

do you not proceed?

SOCRATES: Does not your simplicity observe that I have got out of

dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover?

And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover what will become of me?

Do you not perceive that I am already overtaken by the Nymphs to whom

you have mischievously exposed me? And therefore I will only add that

the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of

being deficient. And now I will say no more; there has been enough of

both of them. Leaving the tale to its fate, I will cross the river and

make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by

you.

PHAEDRUS: Not yet, Socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed;

do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun

standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and

talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool.

SOCRATES: Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman, simply

marvellous, and I do not believe that there is any one of your

contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has

compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except

Simmias the Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do

verily believe that you have been the cause of another.

PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the

usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never

bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I

heard a voice saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety,

and that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a

diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my

own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough

for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend, how

prophetic is the human soul! At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and,

like Ibycus, 'I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour

from men at the price of sinning against the gods.' Now I recognize my

error.

PHAEDRUS: What error?

SOCRATES: That was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you

made me utter one as bad.

PHAEDRUS: How so?

SOCRATES: It was foolish, I say,--to a certain extent, impious; can

anything be more dreadful?

PHAEDRUS: Nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe.

SOCRATES: Well, and is not Eros the son of Aphrodite, and a god?

PHAEDRUS: So men say.

SOCRATES: But that was not acknowledged by Lysias in his speech, nor by

you in that other speech which you by a charm drew from my lips. For if

love be, as he surely is, a divinity, he cannot be evil. Yet this was

the error of both the speeches. There was also a simplicity about them

which was refreshing; having no truth or honesty in them, nevertheless

they pretended to be something, hoping to succeed in deceiving the

manikins of earth and gain celebrity among them. Wherefore I must have

a purgation. And I bethink me of an ancient purgation of mythological

error which was devised, not by Homer, for he never had the wit to

discover why he was blind, but by Stesichorus, who was a philosopher and

knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was

the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen,

he at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation, which

began thus,--

'False is that word of mine--the truth is that thou didst not embark in

ships, nor ever go to the walls of Troy;'

and when he had completed his poem, which is called 'the recantation,'

immediately his sight returned to him. Now I will be wiser than either

Stesichorus or Homer, in that I am going to make my recantation for

reviling love before I suffer; and this I will attempt, not as before,

veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare.

PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be more agreeable to me than to hear you say so.

SOCRATES: Only think, my good Phaedrus, what an utter want of delicacy

was shown in the two discourses; I mean, in my own and in that which you

recited out of the book. Would not any one who was himself of a noble

and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his

own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of

their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their

beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt

of sailors to which good manners were unknown--he would certainly never

have admitted the justice of our censure?

PHAEDRUS: I dare say not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Therefore, because I blush at the thought of this person, and

also because I am afraid of Love himself, I desire to wash the brine out

of my ears with water from the spring; and I would counsel Lysias not to

delay, but to write another discourse, which shall prove that 'ceteris

paribus' the lover ought to be accepted rather than the non-lover.

PHAEDRUS: Be assured that he shall. You shall speak the praises of the

lover, and Lysias shall be compelled by me to write another discourse on

the same theme.

SOCRATES: You will be true to your nature in that, and therefore I

believe you.

PHAEDRUS: Speak, and fear not.

SOCRATES: But where is the fair youth whom I was addressing before, and

who ought to listen now; lest, if he hear me not, he should accept a

non-lover before he knows what he is doing?

PHAEDRUS: He is close at hand, and always at your service.

SOCRATES: Know then, fair youth, that the former discourse was the word

of Phaedrus, the son of Vain Man, who dwells in the city of Myrrhina

(Myrrhinusius). And this which I am about to utter is the recantation of

Stesichorus the son of Godly Man (Euphemus), who comes from the town of

Desire (Himera), and is to the following effect: 'I told a lie when I

said' that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have

the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad. It might be so

if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a

divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to

men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the

priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great

benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their

senses few or none. And I might also tell you how the Sibyl and other

inspired persons have given to many an one many an intimation of the

future which has saved them from falling. But it would be tedious to

speak of what every one knows.

There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names

(compare Cratylus), who would never have connected prophecy (mantike)

which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness

(manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed

madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;--they must have thought that

there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two

words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter tau is

only a modern and tasteless insertion. And this is confirmed by the

name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity,

whether made by the help of birds or of other signs--this, for as much

as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous)

and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally

termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made

sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter Omega (oionoistike and

oionistike), and in proportion as prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and

august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as

the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune)

for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. Again,

where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing

to some ancient blood-guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy

prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance

for those who are in need; and he who has part in this gift, and is

truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications

and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil, future as well as

present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him.

The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses;

which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring

frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers; with these adorning the

myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But

he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the

door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he,

I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is

nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

I might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired

madness. And therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that

the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let

him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover

or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. And

we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is

the greatest of heaven's blessings, and the proof shall be one which the

wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve. But first of all, let us

view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try

to ascertain the truth about them. The beginning of our proof is as

follows:--

(Translated by Cic. Tus. Quaest.) The soul through all her being is

immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which

moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to

live. Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move,

and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides.

Now, the beginning is unbegotten, for that which is begotten has a

beginning; but the beginning is begotten of nothing, for if it were

begotten of something, then the begotten would not come from a

beginning. But if unbegotten, it must also be indestructible; for if

beginning were destroyed, there could be no beginning out of anything,

nor anything out of a beginning; and all things must have a beginning.

And therefore the self-moving is the beginning of motion; and this can

neither be destroyed nor begotten, else the whole heavens and all

creation would collapse and stand still, and never again have motion or

birth. But if the self-moving is proved to be immortal, he who affirms

that self-motion is the very idea and essence of the soul will not be

put to confusion. For the body which is moved from without is soulless;

but that which is moved from within has a soul, for such is the nature

of the soul. But if this be true, must not the soul be the self-moving,

and therefore of necessity unbegotten and immortal? Enough of the soul's

immortality.

Of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a theme of large

and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a

figure. And let the figure be composite--a pair of winged horses and a

charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are

all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are

mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is

noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed;

and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to

him. I will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs

from the immortal creature. The soul in her totality has the care of

inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers

forms appearing--when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and

orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings

and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground--there,

finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be

self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of

soul and body is called a living and mortal creature. For immortal no

such union can be reasonably believed to be; although fancy, not

having seen nor surely known the nature of God, may imagine an immortal

creature having both a body and also a soul which are united throughout

all time. Let that, however, be as God wills, and be spoken of

acceptably to him. And now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her

wings!

The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine,

and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates

downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods.

The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the

wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil

and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the

mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in

heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the

array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia alone

abides at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned

among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many

blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro,

along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own

work; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the

celestial choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then they

move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The chariots of

the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others

labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer

to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:--and

this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the

immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand

upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries

them round, and they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which

is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing

worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the

truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with which

true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible

essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine

intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the

intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper

to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth,

is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds

brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution she beholds

justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of

generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge

absolute in existence absolute; and beholding the other true existences

in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the

interior of the heavens and returns home; and there the charioteer

putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and

nectar to drink.

Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows

God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the

outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by

the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another

only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the

unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after

the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they

are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another,

each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and

the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings

broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after

a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being,

go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit this

exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is

found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the

wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law

of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company

with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if

attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow,

and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath

the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her

and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall

at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man;

and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a

philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which

has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king

or warrior chief; the soul which is of the third class shall be a

politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of

gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a

prophet or hierophant; to the sixth the character of poet or some other

imitative artist will be assigned; to the seventh the life of an artisan

or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the

ninth that of a tyrant--all these are states of probation, in which

he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously,

deteriorates his lot.

Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to

the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less;

only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a

lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third

of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from

the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years:--and they

who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them,

and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others (The

philosopher alone is not subject to judgment (krisis), for he has never

lost the vision of truth.) receive judgment when they have completed

their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the

houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished; others

to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and

there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when

in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the good

souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their

second life, and they may take any which they please. The soul of a man

may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into

the man. But the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into

the human form. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be

able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of

reason;--this is the recollection of those things which our soul once

saw while following God--when regardless of that which we now call being

she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind

of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always,

according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to

those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He

is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated

into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he

forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him

mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.

Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness,

which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is

transported with the recollection of the true beauty; he would like to

fly away, but he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward

and careless of the world below; and he is therefore thought to be mad.

And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest

and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and

that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of

it. For, as has been already said, every soul of man has in the way of

nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing into the

form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other

world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have

been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts

turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may

have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only

retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold

here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they

are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly

perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the

higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them:

they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the

images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty.

There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty

shining in brightness,--we philosophers following in the train of Zeus,

others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific

vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most

blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had

any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight

of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld

shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that

living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the

body, like an oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory of

scenes which have passed away.

But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company

with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too,

shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight

is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom

seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been

a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible

counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the privilege of

beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight.

Now he who is not newly initiated or who has become corrupted, does not

easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other;

he looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the

sight of her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish beast he

rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not

afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But

he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many

glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a

godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at

first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him;

then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him,

and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would

sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes

on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an

unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of

beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he

warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto

closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are

melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wing

begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends

under the whole soul--for once the whole was winged. During this process

the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence,--which

may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the

time of cutting teeth,--bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and

tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings,

the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible

warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called

emotion (imeros), and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she

ceases from her pain with joy. But when she is parted from her beloved

and her moisture fails, then the orifices of the passage out of which

the wing shoots dry up and close, and intercept the germ of the wing;

which, being shut up with the emotion, throbbing as with the pulsations

of an artery, pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the

entire soul is pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection

of beauty is again delighted. And from both of them together the soul is

oppressed at the strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait

and excitement, and in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide

in her place by day. And wherever she thinks that she will behold the

beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. And when she has seen

him, and bathed herself in the waters of beauty, her constraint is

loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains; and

this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the reason

why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful one, whom he

esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and brethren and companions,

and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules

and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now

despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed,

as near as he can to his desired one, who is the object of his worship,

and the physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his pain. And

this state, my dear imaginary youth to whom I am talking, is by men

called love, and among the gods has a name at which you, in your

simplicity, may be inclined to mock; there are two lines in the

apocryphal writings of Homer in which the name occurs. One of them is

rather outrageous, and not altogether metrical. They are as follows:

'Mortals call him fluttering love, But the immortals call him winged

one, Because the growing of wings (Or, reading pterothoiton, 'the

movement of wings.') is a necessity to him.'

You may believe this, but not unless you like. At any rate the loves of

lovers and their causes are such as I have described.

Now the lover who is taken to be the attendant of Zeus is better able to

bear the winged god, and can endure a heavier burden; but the attendants

and companions of Ares, when under the influence of love, if they fancy

that they have been at all wronged, are ready to kill and put an end

to themselves and their beloved. And he who follows in the train of any

other god, while he is unspoiled and the impression lasts, honours and

imitates him, as far as he is able; and after the manner of his God he

behaves in his intercourse with his beloved and with the rest of the

world during the first period of his earthly existence. Every one

chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character,

and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image

which he is to fall down and worship. The followers of Zeus desire that

their beloved should have a soul like him; and therefore they seek out

some one of a philosophical and imperial nature, and when they have

found him and loved him, they do all they can to confirm such a nature

in him, and if they have no experience of such a disposition hitherto,

they learn of any one who can teach them, and themselves follow in the

same way. And they have the less difficulty in finding the nature of

their own god in themselves, because they have been compelled to gaze

intensely on him; their recollection clings to him, and they become

possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition,

so far as man can participate in God. The qualities of their god they

attribute to the beloved, wherefore they love him all the more, and if,

like the Bacchic Nymphs, they draw inspiration from Zeus, they pour out

their own fountain upon him, wanting to make him as like as possible

to their own god. But those who are the followers of Here seek a royal

love, and when they have found him they do just the same with him; and

in like manner the followers of Apollo, and of every other god walking

in the ways of their god, seek a love who is to be made like him whom

they serve, and when they have found him, they themselves imitate their

god, and persuade their love to do the same, and educate him into the

manner and nature of the god as far as they each can; for no feelings of

envy or jealousy are entertained by them towards their beloved, but they

do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of themselves and

of the god whom they honour. Thus fair and blissful to the beloved is

the desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation of which I speak

into the mysteries of true love, if he be captured by the lover and

their purpose is effected. Now the beloved is taken captive in the

following manner:--

As I said at the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into

three--two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and

the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in

what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will

now proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a

lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark;

he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower

of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and

admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together

anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark

colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion (Or with grey and

blood-shot eyes.); the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf,

hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the

vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full

of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then

as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the

beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of

the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his

companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and

to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and

will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last,

when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids

them. And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the

beloved; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the

true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image

placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls

backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the

reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches,

the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling; and when

they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder,

and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration; the other, when the

pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with

difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he

heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage

and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and

guilty of desertion. Again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and

will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time.

When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and

he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at

length he on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again.

And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and

takes the bit in his teeth and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is

worse off than ever; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with

a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild

steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his

legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this

has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton

way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer,

and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from

that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty

and holy fear.

And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal

service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also

himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he

has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his

youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be

disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led

to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there

shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall

ever be friendship among the good. And the beloved when he has received

him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the

lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other

friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be

compared with his. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer

to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of

meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in

love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some

enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as

a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it

came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are

the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving

and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining

them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And

thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand and cannot

explain his own state; he appears to have caught the infection of

blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding

himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both

cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is

longed for, and has love's image, love for love (Anteros) lodging in his

breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only,

and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker; he wants

to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long

afterwards his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed

of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer; he would like to have

a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of

the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he

understands not;--he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him

as his dearest friend; and, when they are side by side, he is not in a

state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him; although

his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments

of shame and reason. After this their happiness depends upon their

self-control; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order

and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and

harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and

emancipating the virtuous elements of the soul; and when the end comes,

they are light and winged for flight, having conquered in one of the

three heavenly or truly Olympian victories; nor can human discipline or

divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than this. If,

on the other hand, they leave philosophy and lead the lower life of

ambition, then probably, after wine or in some other careless hour, the

two wanton animals take the two souls when off their guard and bring

them together, and they accomplish that desire of their hearts which to

the many is bliss; and this having once enjoyed they continue to enjoy,

yet rarely because they have not the approval of the whole soul. They

too are dear, but not so dear to one another as the others, either at

the time of their love or afterwards. They consider that they have given

and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not

break them and fall into enmity. At last they pass out of the body,

unwinged, but eager to soar, and thus obtain no mean reward of love and

madness. For those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not

go down again to darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but they

live in light always; happy companions in their pilgrimage, and when the

time comes at which they receive their wings they have the same plumage

because of their love.

Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover

will confer upon you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non-lover,

which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly

ways of doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar

qualities which the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the

earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in

the world below.

And thus, dear Eros, I have made and paid my recantation, as well and as

fairly as I could; more especially in the matter of the poetical figures

which I was compelled to use, because Phaedrus would have them. And now

forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to

me, and do not in thine anger deprive me of sight, or take from me the

art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more

esteemed in the eyes of the fair. And if Phaedrus or I myself said

anything rude in our first speeches, blame Lysias, who is the father

of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny; bid him study

philosophy, like his brother Polemarchus; and then his lover Phaedrus

will no longer halt between two opinions, but will dedicate himself

wholly to love and to philosophical discourses.

PHAEDRUS: I join in the prayer, Socrates, and say with you, if this

be for my good, may your words come to pass. But why did you make your

second oration so much finer than the first? I wonder why. And I begin

to be afraid that I shall lose conceit of Lysias, and that he will

appear tame in comparison, even if he be willing to put another as fine

and as long as yours into the field, which I doubt. For quite lately one

of your politicians was abusing him on this very account; and called

him a 'speech writer' again and again. So that a feeling of pride may

probably induce him to give up writing speeches.

SOCRATES: What a very amusing notion! But I think, my young man,

that you are much mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he

is frightened at a little noise; and, possibly, you think that his

assailant was in earnest?

PHAEDRUS: I thought, Socrates, that he was. And you are aware that the

greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches

and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called Sophists

by posterity.

SOCRATES: You seem to be unconscious, Phaedrus, that the 'sweet elbow'

(A proverb, like 'the grapes are sour,' applied to pleasures which

cannot be had, meaning sweet things which, like the elbow, are out of

the reach of the mouth. The promised pleasure turns out to be a long and

tedious affair.) of the proverb is really the long arm of the Nile. And

you appear to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow

of theirs is also a long arm. For there is nothing of which our great

politicians are so fond as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to

posterity. And they add their admirers' names at the top of the writing,

out of gratitude to them.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? I do not understand.

SOCRATES: Why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins

with the names of his approvers?

PHAEDRUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Why, he begins in this manner: 'Be it enacted by the senate,

the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,' who is our

author; and so putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own

wisdom to his admirers in what is often a long and tedious composition.

Now what is that sort of thing but a regular piece of authorship?

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if the law is finally approved, then the author leaves the

theatre in high delight; but if the law is rejected and he is done out

of his speech-making, and not thought good enough to write, then he and

his party are in mourning.

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: So far are they from despising, or rather so highly do they

value the practice of writing.

PHAEDRUS: No doubt.

SOCRATES: And when the king or orator has the power, as Lycurgus or

Solon or Darius had, of attaining an immortality or authorship in a

state, is he not thought by posterity, when they see his compositions,

and does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god?

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then do you think that any one of this class, however

ill-disposed, would reproach Lysias with being an author?

PHAEDRUS: Not upon your view; for according to you he would be casting a

slur upon his own favourite pursuit.

SOCRATES: Any one may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of

writing.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.

PHAEDRUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And what is well and what is badly--need we ask Lysias, or any

other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or

any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach

us this?

PHAEDRUS: Need we? For what should a man live if not for the pleasures

of discourse? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost

always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are

rightly called slavish.

SOCRATES: There is time enough. And I believe that the grasshoppers

chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun over our heads are

talking to one another and looking down at us. What would they say if

they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but slumbering at

mid-day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think? Would they not

have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves,

who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie

asleep at noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing, and

like Odysseus sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may

perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from

the gods that they may impart them to men.

PHAEDRUS: What gifts do you mean? I never heard of any.

SOCRATES: A lover of music like yourself ought surely to have heard the

story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human beings in

an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they

were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating

and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. And now

they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the

Muses make to them--they neither hunger, nor thirst, but from the hour

of their birth are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and

when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them on

earth. They win the love of Terpsichore for the dancers by their report

of them; of Erato for the lovers, and of the other Muses for those who

do them honour, according to the several ways of honouring them;--of

Calliope the eldest Muse and of Urania who is next to her, for the

philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make report to them; for

these are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and thought,

divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. For many

reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid-day.

PHAEDRUS: Let us talk.

SOCRATES: Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were

proposing?

PHAEDRUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: In good speaking should not the mind of the speaker know the

truth of the matter about which he is going to speak?

PHAEDRUS: And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator

has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely

to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good

or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion

comes persuasion, and not from the truth.

SOCRATES: The words of the wise are not to be set aside; for there is

probably something in them; and therefore the meaning of this saying is

not hastily to be dismissed.

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Let us put the matter thus:--Suppose that I persuaded you

to buy a horse and go to the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was

like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals the one

which has the longest ears.

PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous.

SOCRATES: There is something more ridiculous coming:--Suppose, further,

that in sober earnest I, having persuaded you of this, went and composed

a speech in honour of an ass, whom I entitled a horse beginning: 'A

noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you

may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.'

PHAEDRUS: How ridiculous!

SOCRATES: Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better

than a cunning enemy?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place

of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true

nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied

the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about 'the

shadow of an ass,' which he confounds with a horse, but about good which

he confounds with evil,--what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be

likely to gather after the sowing of that seed?

PHAEDRUS: The reverse of good.

SOCRATES: But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by

us, and she might answer: What amazing nonsense you are talking! As if I

forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth! Whatever

my advice may be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth

first, and then come to me. At the same time I boldly assert that mere

knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.

PHAEDRUS: There is reason in the lady's defence of herself.

SOCRATES: Quite true; if only the other arguments which remain to be

brought up bear her witness that she is an art at all. But I seem to

hear them arraying themselves on the opposite side, declaring that she

speaks falsely, and that rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an

art. Lo! a Spartan appears, and says that there never is nor ever will

be a real art of speaking which is divorced from the truth.

PHAEDRUS: And what are these arguments, Socrates? Bring them out that we

may examine them.

SOCRATES: Come out, fair children, and convince Phaedrus, who is the

father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about

anything as he ought to speak unless he have a knowledge of philosophy.

And let Phaedrus answer you.

PHAEDRUS: Put the question.

SOCRATES: Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of

enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts

and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with

all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all

equally right, and equally to be esteemed--that is what you have heard?

PHAEDRUS: Nay, not exactly that; I should say rather that I have heard

the art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in

public assemblies--not extended farther.

SOCRATES: Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of

Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at

Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes?

PHAEDRUS: No more than of Nestor and Odysseus, unless Gorgias is your

Nestor, and Thrasymachus or Theodorus your Odysseus.

SOCRATES: Perhaps that is my meaning. But let us leave them. And do

you tell me, instead, what are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law

court--are they not contending?

PHAEDRUS: Exactly so.

SOCRATES: About the just and unjust--that is the matter in dispute?

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And a professor of the art will make the same thing appear to

the same persons to be at one time just, at another time, if he is so

inclined, to be unjust?

PHAEDRUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: And when he speaks in the assembly, he will make the same

things seem good to the city at one time, and at another time the

reverse of good?

PHAEDRUS: That is true.

SOCRATES: Have we not heard of the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno), who has an

art of speaking by which he makes the same things appear to his hearers

like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion?

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: The art of disputation, then, is not confined to the courts

and the assembly, but is one and the same in every use of language; this

is the art, if there be such an art, which is able to find a likeness of

everything to which a likeness can be found, and draws into the light of

day the likenesses and disguises which are used by others?

PHAEDRUS: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: Let me put the matter thus: When will there be more chance of

deception--when the difference is large or small?

PHAEDRUS: When the difference is small.

SOCRATES: And you will be less likely to be discovered in passing by

degrees into the other extreme than when you go all at once?

PHAEDRUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: He, then, who would deceive others, and not be deceived, must

exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things?

PHAEDRUS: He must.

SOCRATES: And if he is ignorant of the true nature of any subject, how

can he detect the greater or less degree of likeness in other things to

that of which by the hypothesis he is ignorant?

PHAEDRUS: He cannot.

SOCRATES: And when men are deceived and their notions are at

variance with realities, it is clear that the error slips in through

resemblances?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, that is the way.

SOCRATES: Then he who would be a master of the art must understand the

real nature of everything; or he will never know either how to make

the gradual departure from truth into the opposite of truth which is

effected by the help of resemblances, or how to avoid it?

PHAEDRUS: He will not.

SOCRATES: He then, who being ignorant of the truth aims at appearances,

will only attain an art of rhetoric which is ridiculous and is not an

art at all?

PHAEDRUS: That may be expected.

SOCRATES: Shall I propose that we look for examples of art and want of

art, according to our notion of them, in the speech of Lysias which you

have in your hand, and in my own speech?

PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be better; and indeed I think that our previous

argument has been too abstract and wanting in illustrations.

SOCRATES: Yes; and the two speeches happen to afford a very good example

of the way in which the speaker who knows the truth may, without any

serious purpose, steal away the hearts of his hearers. This piece

of good-fortune I attribute to the local deities; and, perhaps, the

prophets of the Muses who are singing over our heads may have imparted

their inspiration to me. For I do not imagine that I have any rhetorical

art of my own.

PHAEDRUS: Granted; if you will only please to get on.

SOCRATES: Suppose that you read me the first words of Lysias' speech.

PHAEDRUS: 'You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive,

they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain that I

ought not to fail in my suit, because I am not your lover. For lovers

repent--'

SOCRATES: Enough:--Now, shall I point out the rhetorical error of those

words?

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Every one is aware that about some things we are agreed,

whereas about other things we differ.

PHAEDRUS: I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

SOCRATES: When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing

present in the minds of all?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part

company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

PHAEDRUS: Precisely.

SOCRATES: Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

PHAEDRUS: That is true.

SOCRATES: In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has

rhetoric the greater power?

PHAEDRUS: Clearly, in the uncertain class.

SOCRATES: Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and

acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the

many err, as of that in which they do not err?

PHAEDRUS: He who made such a distinction would have an excellent

principle.

SOCRATES: Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the

observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the

class to which they are to be referred.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Now to which class does love belong--to the debatable or to

the undisputed class?

PHAEDRUS: To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love

would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the

lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good?

SOCRATES: Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the

beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well

remember.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.

SOCRATES: Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son

of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias

the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I

am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover's speech did

insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied

him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the

remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:

PHAEDRUS: If you please; but you will not find what you want.

SOCRATES: Read, that I may have his exact words.

PHAEDRUS: 'You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive,

they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought

not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of

the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.'

SOCRATES: Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he

ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through

the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins

where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end.

SOCRATES: Then as to the other topics--are they not thrown down anyhow?

Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in

order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that

he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that

you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the

several parts of the composition?

PHAEDRUS: You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have

any such insight into his principles of composition.

SOCRATES: At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be

a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there

should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to

the whole?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you

can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is

said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

PHAEDRUS: What is there remarkable in the epitaph?

SOCRATES: It is as follows:--

'I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas; So long as water

flows and tall trees grow, So long here on this spot by his sad tomb

abiding, I shall declare to passers-by that Midas sleeps below.'

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will

perceive, makes no difference.

PHAEDRUS: You are making fun of that oration of ours.

SOCRATES: Well, I will say no more about your friend's speech lest I

should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many

other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed

to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students

of rhetoric.

PHAEDRUS: In what way?

SOCRATES: The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one

argued that the lover and the other that the non-lover ought to be

accepted.

PHAEDRUS: And right manfully.

SOCRATES: You should rather say 'madly;' and madness was the argument of

them, for, as I said, 'love is a madness.'

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human

infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of

custom and convention.

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic,

initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the

first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the

third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the

description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be

the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we

introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true though partly erring

myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also

mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung

the hymn in measured and solemn strain.

PHAEDRUS: I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.

SOCRATES: Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made

from blame to praise.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in

these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which

we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us

one.

PHAEDRUS: What are they?

SOCRATES: First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea;

as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave

clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define

his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

PHAEDRUS: What is the other principle, Socrates?

SOCRATES: The second principle is that of division into species

according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any

part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed,

first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which

from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and

right side, each having parts right and left of the same name--after

this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side

and did not desist until he found in them an evil or left-handed love

which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the

madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the

same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded

and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.

PHAEDRUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and

generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any

man who is able to see 'a One and Many' in nature, him I follow, and

'walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.' And those who have this

art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God

knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what

name you would give to your or to Lysias' disciples, and whether this

may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others

teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to

any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, they are royal men; but their art is not the same

with the art of those whom you call, and rightly, in my opinion,

dialecticians:--Still we are in the dark about rhetoric.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? The remains of it, if there be anything

remaining which can be brought under rules of art, must be a fine thing;

and, at any rate, is not to be despised by you and me. But how much is

left?

PHAEDRUS: There is a great deal surely to be found in books of rhetoric?

SOCRATES: Yes; thank you for reminding me:--There is the exordium,

showing how the speech should begin, if I remember rightly; that is what

you mean--the niceties of the art?

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses;

thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great

Byzantian word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation

and further confirmation.

PHAEDRUS: You mean the excellent Theodorus.

SOCRATES: Yes; and he tells how refutation or further refutation is to

be managed, whether in accusation or defence. I ought also to mention

the illustrious Parian, Evenus, who first invented insinuations and

indirect praises; and also indirect censures, which according to some

he put into verse to help the memory. But shall I 'to dumb forgetfulness

consign' Tisias and Gorgias, who are not ignorant that probability is

superior to truth, and who by force of argument make the little appear

great and the great little, disguise the new in old fashions and the old

in new fashions, and have discovered forms for everything, either short

or going on to infinity. I remember Prodicus laughing when I told him of

this; he said that he had himself discovered the true rule of art, which

was to be neither long nor short, but of a convenient length.

PHAEDRUS: Well done, Prodicus!

SOCRATES: Then there is Hippias the Elean stranger, who probably agrees

with him.

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And there is also Polus, who has treasuries of diplasiology,

and gnomology, and eikonology, and who teaches in them the names of

which Licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish.

PHAEDRUS: Had not Protagoras something of the same sort?

SOCRATES: Yes, rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts;

for the 'sorrows of a poor old man,' or any other pathetic case, no one

is better than the Chalcedonian giant; he can put a whole company of

people into a passion and out of one again by his mighty magic, and

is first-rate at inventing or disposing of any sort of calumny on any

grounds or none. All of them agree in asserting that a speech should end

in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word.

PHAEDRUS: You mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in

order to remind the hearers of them.

SOCRATES: I have now said all that I have to say of the art of rhetoric:

have you anything to add?

PHAEDRUS: Not much; nothing very important.

SOCRATES: Leave the unimportant and let us bring the really important

question into the light of day, which is: What power has this art of

rhetoric, and when?

PHAEDRUS: A very great power in public meetings.

SOCRATES: It has. But I should like to know whether you have the same

feeling as I have about the rhetoricians? To me there seem to be a great

many holes in their web.

PHAEDRUS: Give an example.

SOCRATES: I will. Suppose a person to come to your friend Eryximachus,

or to his father Acumenus, and to say to him: 'I know how to apply drugs

which shall have either a heating or a cooling effect, and I can give

a vomit and also a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all

this, as I do, I claim to be a physician and to make physicians by

imparting this knowledge to others,'--what do you suppose that they

would say?

PHAEDRUS: They would be sure to ask him whether he knew 'to whom' he

would give his medicines, and 'when,' and 'how much.'

SOCRATES: And suppose that he were to reply: 'No; I know nothing of all

that; I expect the patient who consults me to be able to do these things

for himself'?

PHAEDRUS: They would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who

fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a

book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real

understanding of the art of medicine.

SOCRATES: And suppose a person were to come to Sophocles or Euripides

and say that he knows how to make a very long speech about a small

matter, and a short speech about a great matter, and also a sorrowful

speech, or a terrible, or threatening speech, or any other kind of

speech, and in teaching this fancies that he is teaching the art of

tragedy--?

PHAEDRUS: They too would surely laugh at him if he fancies that tragedy

is anything but the arranging of these elements in a manner which will

be suitable to one another and to the whole.

SOCRATES: But I do not suppose that they would be rude or abusive to

him: Would they not treat him as a musician a man who thinks that he is

a harmonist because he knows how to pitch the highest and lowest note;

happening to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely, 'Fool,

you are mad!' But like a musician, in a gentle and harmonious tone of

voice, he would answer: 'My good friend, he who would be a harmonist

must certainly know this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony

if he has not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for you only know the

preliminaries of harmony and not harmony itself.'

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And will not Sophocles say to the display of the would-be

tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the preliminaries of tragedy?

and will not Acumenus say the same of medicine to the would-be

physician?

PHAEDRUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And if Adrastus the mellifluous or Pericles heard of these

wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names

which we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what

would they say? Instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary

epithets, as you and I have been doing, to the authors of such an

imaginary art, their superior wisdom would rather censure us, as well

as them. 'Have a little patience, Phaedrus and Socrates, they would say;

you should not be in such a passion with those who from some want of

dialectical skill are unable to define the nature of rhetoric, and

consequently suppose that they have found the art in the preliminary

conditions of it, and when these have been taught by them to others,

fancy that the whole art of rhetoric has been taught by them; but as

to using the several instruments of the art effectively, or making the

composition a whole,--an application of it such as this is they regard

as an easy thing which their disciples may make for themselves.'

PHAEDRUS: I quite admit, Socrates, that the art of rhetoric which these

men teach and of which they write is such as you describe--there I

agree with you. But I still want to know where and how the true art of

rhetoric and persuasion is to be acquired.

SOCRATES: The perfection which is required of the finished orator is,

or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else; partly given by

nature, but may also be assisted by art. If you have the natural power

and add to it knowledge and practice, you will be a distinguished

speaker; if you fall short in either of these, you will be to that

extent defective. But the art, as far as there is an art, of rhetoric

does not lie in the direction of Lysias or Thrasymachus.

PHAEDRUS: In what direction then?

SOCRATES: I conceive Pericles to have been the most accomplished of

rhetoricians.

PHAEDRUS: What of that?

SOCRATES: All the great arts require discussion and high speculation

about the truths of nature; hence come loftiness of thought and

completeness of execution. And this, as I conceive, was the quality

which, in addition to his natural gifts, Pericles acquired from his

intercourse with Anaxagoras whom he happened to know. He was thus imbued

with the higher philosophy, and attained the knowledge of Mind and the

negative of Mind, which were favourite themes of Anaxagoras, and applied

what suited his purpose to the art of speaking.

PHAEDRUS: Explain.

SOCRATES: Rhetoric is like medicine.

PHAEDRUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Why, because medicine has to define the nature of the body

and rhetoric of the soul--if we would proceed, not empirically but

scientifically, in the one case to impart health and strength by giving

medicine and food, in the other to implant the conviction or virtue

which you desire, by the right application of words and training.

PHAEDRUS: There, Socrates, I suspect that you are right.

SOCRATES: And do you think that you can know the nature of the soul

intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole?

PHAEDRUS: Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that the nature even of the

body can only be understood as a whole. (Compare Charmides.)

SOCRATES: Yes, friend, and he was right:--still, we ought not to be

content with the name of Hippocrates, but to examine and see whether his

argument agrees with his conception of nature.

PHAEDRUS: I agree.

SOCRATES: Then consider what truth as well as Hippocrates says about

this or about any other nature. Ought we not to consider first whether

that which we wish to learn and to teach is a simple or multiform thing,

and if simple, then to enquire what power it has of acting or being

acted upon in relation to other things, and if multiform, then to number

the forms; and see first in the case of one of them, and then in the

case of all of them, what is that power of acting or being acted upon

which makes each and all of them to be what they are?

PHAEDRUS: You may very likely be right, Socrates.

SOCRATES: The method which proceeds without analysis is like the groping

of a blind man. Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of

a comparison with the blind, or deaf. The rhetorician, who teaches his

pupil to speak scientifically, will particularly set forth the nature of

that being to which he addresses his speeches; and this, I conceive, to

be the soul.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: His whole effort is directed to the soul; for in that he seeks

to produce conviction.

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then clearly, Thrasymachus or any one else who teaches

rhetoric in earnest will give an exact description of the nature of the

soul; which will enable us to see whether she be single and same, or,

like the body, multiform. That is what we should call showing the nature

of the soul.

PHAEDRUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: He will explain, secondly, the mode in which she acts or is

acted upon.

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: Thirdly, having classified men and speeches, and their kinds

and affections, and adapted them to one another, he will tell the

reasons of his arrangement, and show why one soul is persuaded by a

particular form of argument, and another not.

PHAEDRUS: You have hit upon a very good way.

SOCRATES: Yes, that is the true and only way in which any subject can

be set forth or treated by rules of art, whether in speaking or writing.

But the writers of the present day, at whose feet you have sat, craftily

conceal the nature of the soul which they know quite well. Nor, until

they adopt our method of reading and writing, can we admit that they

write by rules of art?

PHAEDRUS: What is our method?

SOCRATES: I cannot give you the exact details; but I should like to

tell you generally, as far as is in my power, how a man ought to proceed

according to rules of art.

PHAEDRUS: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he

who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they

are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences

between man and man. Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he

will next divide speeches into their different classes:--'Such and such

persons,' he will say, are affected by this or that kind of speech in

this or that way,' and he will tell you why. The pupil must have a good

theoretical notion of them first, and then he must have experience of

them in actual life, and be able to follow them with all his senses

about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters. But

when he understands what persons are persuaded by what arguments, and

sees the person about whom he was speaking in the abstract actually

before him, and knows that it is he, and can say to himself, 'This is

the man or this is the character who ought to have a certain argument

applied to him in order to convince him of a certain opinion;'--he who

knows all this, and knows also when he should speak and when he should

refrain, and when he should use pithy sayings, pathetic appeals,

sensational effects, and all the other modes of speech which he has

learned;--when, I say, he knows the times and seasons of all these

things, then, and not till then, he is a perfect master of his art; but

if he fail in any of these points, whether in speaking or teaching or

writing them, and yet declares that he speaks by rules of art, he who

says 'I don't believe you' has the better of him. Well, the teacher will

say, is this, Phaedrus and Socrates, your account of the so-called art

of rhetoric, or am I to look for another?

PHAEDRUS: He must take this, Socrates, for there is no possibility of

another, and yet the creation of such an art is not easy.

SOCRATES: Very true; and therefore let us consider this matter in every

light, and see whether we cannot find a shorter and easier road; there

is no use in taking a long rough roundabout way if there be a shorter

and easier one. And I wish that you would try and remember whether

you have heard from Lysias or any one else anything which might be of

service to us.

PHAEDRUS: If trying would avail, then I might; but at the moment I can

think of nothing.

SOCRATES: Suppose I tell you something which somebody who knows told me.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: May not 'the wolf,' as the proverb says, 'claim a hearing'?

PHAEDRUS: Do you say what can be said for him.

SOCRATES: He will argue that there is no use in putting a solemn face

on these matters, or in going round and round, until you arrive at first

principles; for, as I said at first, when the question is of justice and

good, or is a question in which men are concerned who are just and good,

either by nature or habit, he who would be a skilful rhetorician has

no need of truth--for that in courts of law men literally care

nothing about truth, but only about conviction: and this is based on

probability, to which he who would be a skilful orator should therefore

give his whole attention. And they say also that there are cases in

which the actual facts, if they are improbable, ought to be withheld,

and only the probabilities should be told either in accusation or

defence, and that always in speaking, the orator should keep probability

in view, and say good-bye to the truth. And the observance of this

principle throughout a speech furnishes the whole art.

PHAEDRUS: That is what the professors of rhetoric do actually say,

Socrates. I have not forgotten that we have quite briefly touched upon

this matter already; with them the point is all-important.

SOCRATES: I dare say that you are familiar with Tisias. Does he not

define probability to be that which the many think?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly, he does.

SOCRATES: I believe that he has a clever and ingenious case of this

sort:--He supposes a feeble and valiant man to have assaulted a strong

and cowardly one, and to have robbed him of his coat or of something or

other; he is brought into court, and then Tisias says that both parties

should tell lies: the coward should say that he was assaulted by more

men than one; the other should prove that they were alone, and should

argue thus: 'How could a weak man like me have assaulted a strong man

like him?' The complainant will not like to confess his own cowardice,

and will therefore invent some other lie which his adversary will thus

gain an opportunity of refuting. And there are other devices of the same

kind which have a place in the system. Am I not right, Phaedrus?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Bless me, what a wonderfully mysterious art is this which

Tisias or some other gentleman, in whatever name or country he rejoices,

has discovered. Shall we say a word to him or not?

PHAEDRUS: What shall we say to him?

SOCRATES: Let us tell him that, before he appeared, you and I were

saying that the probability of which he speaks was engendered in the

minds of the many by the likeness of the truth, and we had just been

affirming that he who knew the truth would always know best how to

discover the resemblances of the truth. If he has anything else to say

about the art of speaking we should like to hear him; but if not, we

are satisfied with our own view, that unless a man estimates the various

characters of his hearers and is able to divide all things into classes

and to comprehend them under single ideas, he will never be a skilful

rhetorician even within the limits of human power. And this skill he

will not attain without a great deal of trouble, which a good man ought

to undergo, not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in

order that he may be able to say what is acceptable to God and always

to act acceptably to Him as far as in him lies; for there is a saying of

wiser men than ourselves, that a man of sense should not try to please

his fellow-servants (at least this should not be his first object)

but his good and noble masters; and therefore if the way is long and

circuitous, marvel not at this, for, where the end is great, there we

may take the longer road, but not for lesser ends such as yours. Truly,

the argument may say, Tisias, that if you do not mind going so far,

rhetoric has a fair beginning here.

PHAEDRUS: I think, Socrates, that this is admirable, if only

practicable.

SOCRATES: But even to fail in an honourable object is honourable.

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: Enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art

of speaking.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But there is something yet to be said of propriety and

impropriety of writing.

PHAEDRUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a

manner which will be acceptable to God?

PHAEDRUS: No, indeed. Do you?

SOCRATES: I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not

they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you

think that we should care much about the opinions of men?

PHAEDRUS: Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell

me what you say that you have heard.

SOCRATES: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god,

whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred

to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and

calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his

great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus

was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great

city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the

god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his

inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have

the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about

their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he

approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all

that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But

when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians

wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the

memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the

parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility

or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this

instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of

your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which

they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness

in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories;

they will trust to the external written characters and not remember

of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to

memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but

only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and

will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will

generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show

of wisdom without the reality.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any

other country.

SOCRATES: There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first

gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to

young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or

rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether

a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country

the tale comes.

PHAEDRUS: I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the

Theban is right in his view about letters.

SOCRATES: He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the

oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive

in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be

intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better

than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?

PHAEDRUS: That is most true.

SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately

like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of

life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.

And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had

intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one

of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they

have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those

who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should

reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no

parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

PHAEDRUS: That again is most true.

SOCRATES: Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than

this, and having far greater power--a son of the same family, but

lawfully begotten?

PHAEDRUS: Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?

SOCRATES: I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner,

which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.

PHAEDRUS: You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of

which the written word is properly no more than an image?

SOCRATES: Yes, of course that is what I mean. And now may I be allowed

to ask you a question: Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take

the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in

sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden

of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing

in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of

amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting

soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the

seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he

will do the other, as you say, only in play.

SOCRATES: And can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and

honourable has less understanding, than the husbandman, about his own

seeds?

PHAEDRUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then he will not seriously incline to 'write' his thoughts

'in water' with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for

themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?

PHAEDRUS: No, that is not likely.

SOCRATES: No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow

and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will

write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness

of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same

path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others

are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be

the pastime in which his days are spent.

PHAEDRUS: A pastime, Socrates, as noble as the other is ignoble, the

pastime of a man who can be amused by serious talk, and can discourse

merrily about justice and the like.

SOCRATES: True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the

dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows

and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who

planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which

others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the

possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.

PHAEDRUS: Far nobler, certainly.

SOCRATES: And now, Phaedrus, having agreed upon the premises we may

decide about the conclusion.

PHAEDRUS: About what conclusion?

SOCRATES: About Lysias, whom we censured, and his art of writing, and

his discourses, and the rhetorical skill or want of skill which was

shown in them--these are the questions which we sought to determine, and

they brought us to this point. And I think that we are now pretty well

informed about the nature of art and its opposite.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, I think with you; but I wish that you would repeat what

was said.

SOCRATES: Until a man knows the truth of the several particulars of

which he is writing or speaking, and is able to define them as they are,

and having defined them again to divide them until they can be no longer

divided, and until in like manner he is able to discern the nature

of the soul, and discover the different modes of discourse which are

adapted to different natures, and to arrange and dispose them in such

a way that the simple form of speech may be addressed to the simpler

nature, and the complex and composite to the more complex nature--until

he has accomplished all this, he will be unable to handle arguments

according to rules of art, as far as their nature allows them to

be subjected to art, either for the purpose of teaching or

persuading;--such is the view which is implied in the whole preceding

argument.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, that was our view, certainly.

SOCRATES: Secondly, as to the censure which was passed on the speaking

or writing of discourses, and how they might be rightly or wrongly

censured--did not our previous argument show--?

PHAEDRUS: Show what?

SOCRATES: That whether Lysias or any other writer that ever was or will

be, whether private man or statesman, proposes laws and so becomes

the author of a political treatise, fancying that there is any great

certainty and clearness in his performance, the fact of his so writing

is only a disgrace to him, whatever men may say. For not to know the

nature of justice and injustice, and good and evil, and not to be able

to distinguish the dream from the reality, cannot in truth be otherwise

than disgraceful to him, even though he have the applause of the whole

world.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But he who thinks that in the written word there is

necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry

nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the

compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be

believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who

thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we

know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility

taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven

in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and

perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and

his legitimate offspring;--being, in the first place, the word which

he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and

relations of his idea which have been duly implanted by him in the souls

of others;--and who cares for them and no others--this is the right sort

of man; and you and I, Phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him.

PHAEDRUS: That is most assuredly my desire and prayer.

SOCRATES: And now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough. Go and

tell Lysias that to the fountain and school of the Nymphs we went

down, and were bidden by them to convey a message to him and to other

composers of speeches--to Homer and other writers of poems, whether set

to music or not; and to Solon and others who have composed writings in

the form of political discourses which they would term laws--to all of

them we are to say that if their compositions are based on knowledge of

the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the

test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in

comparison of them, then they are to be called, not only poets, orators,

legislators, but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious

pursuit of their life.

PHAEDRUS: What name would you assign to them?

SOCRATES: Wise, I may not call them; for that is a great name which

belongs to God alone,--lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest

and befitting title.

PHAEDRUS: Very suitable.

SOCRATES: And he who cannot rise above his own compilations and

compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some

and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker or

law-maker.

PHAEDRUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Now go and tell this to your companion.

PHAEDRUS: But there is also a friend of yours who ought not to be

forgotten.

SOCRATES: Who is he?

PHAEDRUS: Isocrates the fair:--What message will you send to him, and

how shall we describe him?

SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus; but I am willing to hazard

a prophecy concerning him.

PHAEDRUS: What would you prophesy?

SOCRATES: I think that he has a genius which soars above the orations of

Lysias, and that his character is cast in a finer mould. My impression

of him is that he will marvellously improve as he grows older, and that

all former rhetoricians will be as children in comparison of him. And I

believe that he will not be satisfied with rhetoric, but that there is

in him a divine inspiration which will lead him to things higher still.

For he has an element of philosophy in his nature. This is the message

of the gods dwelling in this place, and which I will myself deliver to

Isocrates, who is my delight; and do you give the other to Lysias, who

is yours.

PHAEDRUS: I will; and now as the heat is abated let us depart.

SOCRATES: Should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the local

deities?

PHAEDRUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give

me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be

at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such

a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and

carry.--Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.

PHAEDRUS: Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in

common.

SOCRATES: Let us go.